Scato The Desert Mercenary

This is the current look of one of my thieves ( soon to be Deadeye when PoF finally releases) I wanted to go for a rugged wanderer or bandit type look, someone that looks like they are prepared for an adventure in the harsh heat and dusty sands of a desert.

Story ( attempt heh)

I am Scato, a gladium whose warband was wiped out over an internalised conflict within, an embarrassing way to become a gladium. Many of the gladiums in the Citadel live in an overcrowded dump or die with sword in hand at the Bane. Few ever get another chance at living life beyond the walls of the Citadel like Rox did, I am one of the those poor souls.

I tried so hard to find a place within Ascalon without being a punching bag or the butt end of everyone's jokes, but I never could. I tried scouring and reaching out to non-charr groups like the Lion Guard, but my profession of being an long ranged assassin made me harder to trust. My gladium status did not help, as many charr in the Lion Guard assumed I had assassinated my own warband, why on Tyria would anyone do that, I do not know, but continuing on, the Lion Guard did not want someone with my skills, they wanted frontline fighters, loud and proud, not sneaky assassins that are hard to keep an eye on.

I scouted out the Sentinels in the Brand, given the fact I was a charr and a very skilled assassin, I was accepted into the Sentinels, this lasted for only a few years; I was travelling with a scouting party in the southern Brand, West of Ebonhawke, when a giant Branded creature with three heads caught our attention. Instead of retreating or taking it out at range, my team, even though they did not know what they were up against, decided to take swift and rash action. I decided to stick to range and kite the beast around; it's three heads could prove difficult to be effective at close-quarters combat. We managed to decapitate one of it's heads and I blinded the beast with bullets, but just as we thought we had one head down, the decapitated head rose up behind the healer of our scouting party, and tore a deep gnash down his torso, killing him immediately.

From there it went downwards, half of the party diverted their attention to the head on the ground, the other half to take on the other heads, because the party was split in what to focus first, the beast took advantage of this, and one by one killed my party until I was the last charr standing. By the time it had gotten to this point, two of the heads had been decapitated, the first bled out and finally died, whilst the second was close to death, however, the rest of the beast was as angry as ever and was spitting Branded crystals everywhere, as if it was screaming with anger. At first, I was overwhelmed with the thoughts of run away and " I am going to die here", it felt as if my body was frozen! The beast took a swing at me, head-butting me in stomach, sending me flying. In that moment I felt my ribs cracking, my spine twist and legs buckle; I couldn't move my lower half.

I panicked, and in this panic I decided, if I am going to die, I will take this beast down with me. I crawled over to where my rifle landed from when I was thrown, took a deep breath, aimed towards the beasts last head, and pulled the trigger. That was my last bullet, and to my luck or misfortune, the bullet went straight through the bridge of wherever it's eyebrows where, and straight through the beasts brain. Flop! It finally died. I somewhat felt relieved, but I also felt remorse and great sadness, as once again I lost the people that would fight by my side.

I passed out from my wounds, and awoke days later in Ebonhawke, and sitting next to me was a young black-haired Priestess of Dwayna, she saw me awaken and simply smiled, the other Priestesses and healers stayed away from me, but she did not fear me, who could blame the humans that feared me though? I wondered why she did not speak, only to see her using sign language, it then struck me, she was deaf and never heard people talking in her life. After months of healing, I was able to leave, but before I could I decided to give the Priestess a gift, my favourite sword, although she seemed to be confused, although she accepted it and placed it in her workspace, for display for all to see, I was fine with this. I brought new weapons at the market place, there was lots of anxiety in the voices of the people there.

After a while of journeying, I arrived back at the Sentinel headquarters, only to be hounded with questions as to my whereabouts and my parties whereabouts, I told them they had died fighting a new Branded beast, and I was the only one to survive. They did not believe me, as an assassin they thought I had killed them, I told them that there would of been no point in me doing that, but still they insisted I did it. I then decided that I'd take them to where the battle took place, hoping that their decaying corpses would still be there. They weren't. Something or someone had moved the corpses, and recently too. Because there was no bodies or anything, the charr that was in charge of managing my party, assumed I had led him out there to assassinate him. He became hostile and attacked me, and in my defense, I shot him once in the head, and he hit the ground hard. I killed a high ranking Sentinal official... I knew at that moment I no longer had a place in the Sentinels. I had nothing left, no warband, no party, no job, no life, nothing.

I thought long and hard about what I should do. Should I go back to Ebonhawke? I decided against this, as Ebonhawke could be somewhere the Sentinels would search. "South" I thought to myself "Further South than Ebonhawke". I headed to Ebonhawke only to quickly resupply, I headed to the crystal gate only for me to be unable to travel there. Instead of finding another way around, I waited and waited for a small frame of time when the guards went on a break. In this break, the gates would still be locked, but there would still be a few guards further away looking over it, but because of my stealth abilities, I lock picked the door and slipped through without anyone noticing.

After that I travelled for days, visiting temples and housing for a place to rest, because I spent my last of my gold, I offered to do work in exchange for a roof over my head and some food in my belly. Most of this work was dealing with local pests and beasts. Eventually I arrived at the Amnoon Oasis. The council was a bit on edge about an outsider in their lands, but through helping around the farms, taking on mercenary jobs and helping keep the peace up at the stations, the council finally decided to let me inside and let me stay as a honorary resident of the Oasis.

Those peaceful days were short lived; the human god Balthazar apparently returned to Tyria, and stormed through the Desert, leaving havoc and chaos in his wake. Refugees poured in, and the amount of requests asking me to kill beasts and followers of Balthazar rose, some of my work was even gathering supplies for the refugees as well. I hear rumours of the so-called Commander of the Pact will be coming here, as there was Krytan here on behalf of her queen who mentioned the Commander would help to defeat Balthazar, I hope this is true, as I would love to join the Commander to hunt down a rouge god and to help make those good peaceful days somewhat return; I'm sick of having to put down Balthazar's Forged and Zaishen.

Whew I hope her story isn't too long or boring heh.