Group: Welsh

Name: Maenwallon

Age: 30

Occupation: Mercenary

Sexuality: Straight

Physical Description: He's a tall, well-built man, and girls seem to find him good-looking enough.  He's got blond hair, blue eyes, and sun-bronzed skin.  He dresses well because mercenary work in Constaninpole paid handsomely for the survivors; he is often confused for a nobleman because he's got silks and furs.

Personality:

Biography:  Maenwallon was born to free landowners in the kingdom of Gwent.  His early education was Romanesque - he was taught that the landowning freeholders such as themselves were the salt of the earth, who should be ready to defend their lands and was taught the use of weapons from a young age.  But, at the same time, learning was to be respected, both the verbal learning of his Celtic ancestors but also as contained in books.  He was given a passable command of Latin from the small library kept by his family.

He was taught no love of the Saxon, either.  In his household, with its Romanesque heritage, the Saxons were also invaders, part of the barbarous wave that destroyed the Roman Empire.  Still, he learned their language because it was necessary to deal with them in trade.  They bought the food from his family's farm, orchards, and ranching provided.

Maenwallon was captured as a slave at a young age by Vikings raiding in Gwent when he was ten years old.  They defiled his mother and father, burned his books, and destroyed his home.  The Vikings, overall, didn't treat young slaves particularly badly, preferring to raise them in a Viking way, and even allowing them to bear arms.  His master, Alfhild Ironbone, however, thought he was "hard but fair," but he was brutal with his children and moreso with Maenwallon.  He was shifty and fearful of their growing strength and manipulated them so that his boys intrigued against each other for his attention and praise - but putting Maenwallon firmly at the bottom.  When he grew of age, he realized that it wouldn't ever get better, slew Alfhild, stole a boat and was in France two days later.

Over the next couple of years, his movements tended south.  He found that knowledge of the Viking language and tactics was in high demand, and he grew curious about Rome, itself.  He didn't like Rome, but he did like Constantinople.  For ten years, he alternated between mercenary work in the Black Sea, bodyguard work in the City, and the then illegal fighting dens that carried on a debased form of gladiatorial tradition.  He had a family - a wife and two children - but when he was away fighting the Rus, they died in a plague.  He feels guilty, though he knows no degree of bravery or skill at arms can save a person from disease.

Eventually, though, he got the idea to "go home."  He hadn't forgotten the lands of his birth, and he was growing tired of the crazy politics of the Empire, which was being convulsed in ANOTHER obscure religious struggle that meant nothing to him but fired up the Greeks with great intensity.  He couldn't even understand the point, but they were starting to kill each other over it, and since he wasn't even a Greek Christian, it seemed like a good idea to go somewhere else.

After visiting Gwent, he found that he didn't belong there.  He had no proof he was whom he said he was, and there was a brisk trade of charlatans pretending to be the long lost children of landholders looking to scam their way into some land.  He was not well-received, seeming a mostly foreign mercenary.

So, he's traveled to Jarl Erland's lands to get some money, assess his life, and decide what to do.  He speaks the language and knows the culture, after all.

Family: His parents and grandparents are dead, and he has no siblings.  He has several uncles and aunts alive in Gwent, and who knows how many cousins, but he doesn't know them, and he has no proof he is who he knows himself to be.