Max Wolfbrother

Physical Appearance
Standing at roughly 6’6’’ (just over 2 meters) and weighing in 19 stones, (260lb), Max appears to have distinctive traits associated with several different peoples, mostly pict. Striking are the color of his eyes, a bright and vibrant amber like tarnished gold with darker rings around the edges, and a distinct ‘feral’ look about his features. He bears many scars ranging from small and recent to old and large, some old enough to be nearly faded completely.

History
Born to unknown parents somewhere along the Black River, Max’s birth was viewed as an ill omen to the tribal people in his parents village. His first screams of life were given under a full moon after several months of famine, and because of his odd colored eyes, the village elders believed he was some sort of demon spawn, an evil spirit taking the form of a man. His parents were ordered to set him afloat in a basket of reeds, as to carry his curse far down the river from the village and that was the last they ever saw of him, given back to the wilds as a sort of sacrifice so the rest might live. He was found much later by a troupe of wandering circus performers, camped along the river much further downstream before meaning to cross into Aquilonia to ply their trade. They took the babe in and went about their way, later adopting him into the act as the ‘savage Wolf-boy’. The owner of the circus caravan, a man named Loian, would dress the boy in fur and loin cloths, and Max’s stage was a cage, where he was encouraged to mimic the noises of wolves and chew on bare bones for the amusement of patrons, who paid a few bronze to see him.

Time passed and the boy grew while the troupe traveled, suffering the hardships and easy times as performers might. Around his 5th birthday another of the troupe commented that he reminded her of a nephew of hers named Max, and it quickly became the name he was called when the curtains were closed, where he was allowed to live a ‘civilized’ life so he might learn to speak and hear the stories of the other circus folk. They traveled extensively up and down the coast and across the continent, and by his 12th birthday Max had visited more kingdoms than most grown men did their entire lives, always viewing the strange cultures he witnessed from behind the bars of his ‘cage’.

Eventually the boy was quickly growing into a man, and during particularly hard times the circus owner was forced to reduce the size of the circus to make ends meet. Max was one such reduction, no longer possessing boyish features and getting too big to feed easily. He was sold in Argos to a school that trained pit fighters, and his career in the arena sands began

Max was naturally hearty and made a bit of a name for himself in the lower circuits, brandishing brute strength and his features in equal measure. The arena became his new stage and he delighted in battling in as savage a manner as possible, often laughing with the crowd and using his persona as a not quite human fighter to his advantage. They dubbed him ‘Wolfbrother’ and often styled him as a berserker from the north. Off the ‘stage’ he continued his rowdy behavior, drinking to excess and spending what little coin he was allowed to keep on prostitutes and other excesses, further solidifying his reputation of being some sort of foreign wild man.

This came to an end during a match which would have let him leave the lower circuits of slave pit fighting and launched him into a career as a full and free gladiator. He was set to fight in Stygia, at a festival in honor of Set, against Amon the Serpent Son. He discovered before the match however that the fight was rigged, Amon had been provided with a poisoned dagger and the entire affair was designed to make Max a sacrifice to the great serpent and embarrass the school of fighters he was trained in. Armed with this knowledge and having no real desire to die in the arena, he resolved to fight dirty, throwing sand into the eyes of his foe and stealing the dagger from him. Max killed Amon with that dagger, and the priests behind the match were exposed to have rigged the game in favor of their fighter. But their anger and influence were great, and they declared Amon had been a priest of the sect, branding Max a priest killer. Since the fight had been witnessed and fearing creating a martyr, they sentenced Max to banishment rather than execution, stripping him of his possessions and leaving him to fend for himself in the wilds.