Iain Arx

• When the crown sent out advertisements for adventurers to go off on a scouting mission, it's no surprise Iain was amongst those to sign up. On returning, however, he's been uncharacteristically tight-lipped about what he and the others found there, and any attempts to draw him out are met with stony silence -- surprising in a man who values a well-spun yarn. Those who know him probably assume this means he embarrassed himself somehow.
  
  

• Iain is a memorable character mentioned in any number of Niamh Cavanagh's books, though not often by name and rarely in a less than strictly humorous light. He's taken on a larger-than-life personality as a result, and more than a few people refuse to believe that the relic-stealing, town-fleeing, joke-cracking, womanizing storyteller from the books could be anyone so mundane as the lordling. He claims that her stories are reprehensibly embellished and sensationalized to sell more copies, and she dismisses any such claims out of hand. The truth may lie somewhere between, but neither of them is likely to compromise, as anyone to see the two of them endlessly bickering could attest.
  
  

• In the Spring Festival of 506, Iain took first place in the hunter-jumper race that would later be called the Lucitania, riding for the Empress on her gelding, Blaze, for which he was given two bottles of good thirty-year whiskey and a guarantee that his father, Bane, would not take the first ship from Guardians to Gateway to break his legs.
  
  (He was later noted to receive a very fine short sword from the Stavros forge marked with the Imperial crest, as well as a pair of -- this is true -- above-the-knee black leather boots with skulls worked into the leather, lined in crimson silk. He does not wear either gift, though they've both been given places of honor amongst the eclectic and extensive collection of oddities in his rooms that he's assembled in his travels.)
  
  

• With something of a reputation attached to his name when it comes to pursuing women -- briefly and ardently, if fickle in his attentions -- it's probably a surprise that after months of being in Gateway there isn't a long roster of names connected to his private life. It seems the Arx scion has either recanted his ways or else decided that some discretion is wise in the shadow of a castle full of people who could, at the slightest provocation, decide to marry him off -- something of which he lives in obvious and abject terror, or so he says.
  
  

• There was some kind of to-do in the woods outside of Gateway in June. Things exploded. Pineapples flew. The heir apparent of Soaring Skies took one to the side of the head and the more he tells of that story the less plausible it seems, but two things are certainly true: the junior advocate Cynara Dhaval was there at the time (as proven by her sudden, lamentable and certain delight in sending him pineapples), and afterward he turned up in the castle with two tiny fox kits, one of which an anonymous healer (Imani Paggion) agreed to assist him in restoring to health. They're apparently living in his room in the castle until such time as they've recovered and grown enough to be released, much to the chagrin of the cleaning staff. For once, when Iain publically mentions being covered in vixen bites -- which is often of late -- he is being entirely socially appropriate.
  
  

• On the night of the ill-starred Hunt he'd returned to Gateway on a boat, having been at sea searching -- he said -- for something that didn't exist.
  
  

The ordinary pebble that he brought back with him, though, was very real indeed.

• A second 'scouting mission' seemed to follow the first one, at a much later date and involving a number of other citizens as well. It was likely uneventful, as it doesn't ever seem to arise in conversation.
  
  

• He disappeared sometime in 506, and was assumed to have met with an unfortunate end while traveling abroad and researching the island he'd been referencing for some months prior.

• Iain was returned to the Empire in late spring/early summer of 507 aboard the vessel El Cazador, after eight months of being detained outside of the Barrier. Despite the unfortunate conditions of those eight months, a large amount of weight lost from a frame that didn't have much weight to spare to begin with and an injury to his right leg, he made a swift recovery with the aid of Imani Paggion -- and found time to traumatize her with a stuffed pineapple, too. It was fortunate that he returned when he did, as the barrier was closed to travel not long afterward thanks to an incident with the Avannese.
  
  

• Once an absurdly gifted crackshot with a bow, it seems Iain's diminished strength has left him unable to pull the heavy-test bowstring of the longbow he once favored -- Eirian, the honey-yellow heartwood bow that was snapped and broken, and whose ivory scrimshaw grip he still possesses -- and he fatigues more easily than he did. It's a source of great personal bitterness for the young Guardians lord, who now spends a great deal of time at the legion training fields outside of the city proper in an effort to regain what skill he lost.
  
  

• On the night of the Eclipse, things seemed to be looking up for Iain. Still confined at that point to walking with a cane as the stitches in his knee knitted his weakened skin together, he got creative and adapted his (costume) to suit that unfortunate accessory. With a recent understanding with advocate and newly-minted Lady Dhaval finally having followed two years of deference and uncertainty, it was shaping up to be an enjoyable evening back in the Empire...right up until he took a sip from a free ale and found himself literally center-stage for an unexpected nightmare scenario along with the young Lord Copper Run.
  
  

• At Harvest, Iain seemed to be in high spirits. He participated in the pie-eating contest and had a terrible showing, coming in fairly close to last and winding up covered in pie when the chandler, Sage Coibran, tipped the table and emptied its contents directly onto him (to be fair, he was totally asking for it), and also participated in a very enthusiastic pair of drinking games -- Have You Ever and Truth or Dare -- in the tavern one night after the obstacle course he and Lady Dhaval planned was rescheduled due to rain, during which a distressing harem dancer that looked suspiciously like a man in drag showed up to flirt loudly and in Guardians brogue with Koen Staas, much to the amusement (and probably also horror) of the rest of the participants.

What happened the next day to change his mood isn't clear, but the man was decidedly twitchy and worried-looking.