Character Avatar: Nikolaj Coster Waldau
Character Name: Léandre Fay
Age: 54
Rank/Title: Citizen
Race: d'Angeline
Country/Province: Terre d'Ange, L'Agnace
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Player: Janet
Appearance:
Léandre is a man of two halves. His upper torso is well built and muscular, clearly fit and hale. Below the waist, however, it is a different story. Four years of inactivity meant that his leg muscles have begun to waste away. His hair is a dirty blonde peppered with grey, shaggy and generally unkempt - unless his sister forces him to clean up. Léandre thinks there's more important things to focus on than his hair. Likewise, his jaw is usually covered in stubble, for the same reason.
Léandre's facial features are bold and strong. His jaw is angular and he has a large nose that has often been broken. He has many scars, those speak of his life as a soldier on the front lines. The injury that changed his life left but a small scar though, the damage being mostly internal as opposed to external. In fact, unless you know what you were looking for, you'd likely miss it.
His eyes are a deep blue and his face is weathered and creased with his years and the pain he suffers on a daily basis. Despite that though, he's often found with either a smile on his lips or a scowl of concentration.
Personality:
Léandre is a strong willed man, stubborn and competitive - traits that have served him well. He refuses to let negativity dwell for long, always finding a way to shake himself out of the doldrums and give himself focus. Focus is something he's always had and that's another thing that has helped him adapt to the change in his circumstances. For all his stubbornness though, Léandre has also grown to accept his limitations...after trying to combat them first. Once he's accepted his limitations, he generally moves on and works on what he can achieve instead.
History:
Léandre is the eldest of two children, his sister (Charlotte, or Lottie as Leandre calls her) following a few years later, and they were born to hard-working parents who barely kept their heads above poverty. His mother was a cook at a local inn and his father was a woodworker, but not rich enough to own his own shop. He was a hard working man though and was good at his craft - however, neither of Léandre's parents were financially savvy and thus they barely kept a roof over their heads and food in their children's bellies.
Léandre and his sister weren't really educated. Their parents could not afford to send them to school, and they hadn't much education to speak of themselves. As a result, Léandre and his sister had a hodge-podge education. Sometimes learning at the feet of a relative, at a local temple or even sometimes lessons came in the form of the local children - fights and whathaveyou. When Léandre reached sixteen, he had a choice to join his father at his job or, being so little educated as he was, to join the army as a general soldier. Whilst Léandre had picked up a good deal of his father's expertise in woodwork, and in some cases surpassed it, he felt that being a soldier was more reliable, pay-wise. So he joined up with the Royal Army and began his life as a soldier with the dedication and ambition of youth. The army shaped and moulded the young Léandre by giving him a structure and education that he had been lacking and three square meals a day saw the scrawny youth grow into a fit young man. Léandre was taken under the wing of an officer who became like a second father to him. Under the man's tutelage, Léandre became an able fighter and was able to manage to send money back home to help his parents and still managed to save some for a rainy day.
That rainy day eventually came in the form of a battle against the Skaldi.
Léandre was a good deal older than the bright eyed, eager youth that had joined the army when his life changed irrevocably. He'd just passed his fortieth natale when his country went to war with the Skaldi. Having risen to the rank of Sergeant, Léandre was leading his men into battle against them when disaster struck. In the melee a hard blow hit Léandre in his lower back and he fell face forwards into the mud. Unable to move, he lay there as the war raged on around him, watching and listening to his fellow soldiers cry out and fall alongside him, heard their voices retreat and return as the fight ebbed and flowed.
Eventually, things calmed enough for the injured, of which Léandre was assuredly one, to be found and carried off the field to be assessed and attended to. It was quickly ascertained that Léandre would never walk again. A sharp blow with a blunt object, likely a shield edge, had crushed some of the vertebrae in his back. Léandre hadn't seen the blow coming, nor the person that wielded it. Despite the drastic change in his circumstances, Léandre never once felt animosity toward the Skaldi for his injury. To his mind, he was a soldier and this was the risk he'd taken when he fought. For the next few months, Léandre was bedridden as he recovered. Enduring being poked and prodded and the complete and thorough indignities that his injury visited upon him.
After a long period of rest and recuperation, Léandre was discharged and moved in with his sister who fussed over him and tried to treat him like the invalid he clearly was. Léandre, whilst admittedly suffering through the darkest days of his life, decided that enough was enough. He had been active before and would be again. So began the slow process of figuring out what he could do and how he could do it. His sister looked on with alarm, frightened that her brother would do even more damage to himself, but Léandre persevered. Training his upper body so he could have the strength to pull himself about, keeping a watchful eye on what his body could and couldn't tell him and adapting accordingly. Altering his diet and hygiene habits to reduce the likelihood of accidents and then, finally, finding a way to become mobile once more.
The latter was courtesy of his father. He made his son a wheelchair, with large wheels to cope with cobbled streets and a padded seat. He also included handles, but Léandre told him to remove them, not wishing to rely on anyone else to get about. It took many months of trial and error, but eventually the chair was adapted to suit Léandre's needs and he began to help his father with his wood-craft as a way of keeping busy.
When it became clear that Léandre had not lost his skill for the craft, he used his savings and some of his invalid fund from the army to open his own small wood-craft shop, making small items of furniture and wooden ornaments. His military background has enabled him to keep to a strict regime, necessary for his health and well-being. Eventually, he was able to move out of his sister's home and gain some independence by moving into a small, specially adapted bungalow in the south district. His sister still comes by to cook and clean (and fuss) but on the whole, he's adapted quite well to life on his own.
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