Kubotai Sobatsu
| Kubotai Sobatsu | |
|---|---|
| KOO-bo-tie so-BAT-soo | |
| Created by | Jolly |
| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Gaidin |
| Affiliation | The Grey Tower |
| Nationality | Shienaran |
| Attributes | |
| Weapon Skills |
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Kubotai Sobatsu is a Shienaran Gaidin of the Grey Tower.
Description
Twenty years an errant Gaidin strips the last, clinging bits of the child and wears down any application of the merriments of adventurous youth. Furrowed brows had thinned in the time, while green-brown eyes had sharpened in the weather of the Borderlands. Long gaunt cheeks held the coarse and scratchy hair brought down to the coarse beginnings of a forked Kandori-styled beard, though the sides of his head remained as bare as newfallen snow as he kept to his Shienaran heritage. Deep furrows had since gouged their way under the eyes as age will often do, but not out of place in the pockmarked and leathery face of a mand too used to the campaign and unused to the city walls.
Moodiness had smoothed away to a consistent unspoken dissatisfaction with the world and the amount of Shadow growing in it. The old hunger in glinting eyes was still there, more sated but more particular about the delicacy of the next fight; Trollocs amounted to tavern brawlers and street toughs. The fight must be sharper, more dire now.
What was once well formed youth had gotten harder. He ate well when he could, and went without far more often in a self-given mission of roaming the Borderlands and throwing his lot in wherever the need was sharper, the application of grand armies and heroic generals less necessary. The man of many blades, he had long since shaken off the heavy plate and shield, trusting to the blade itself.
Twenty years of moving from one purpose to the next had been...enough. Nearly failing his Aes Sedai charge when he had raised to Gaidin, perhaps now he had learned enough to be more reliable in the duty. Nevertheless, the place that had taught him the most would suit him as home again. Perhaps then he might find that final key that would unlock what his role would be in the Last Battle, or in the Light's cause leading up to it at least.
Biography
Kubotai was, and always would be, of the old guard. His father had been a Shienaran lancer. His father's father, and the father before him. Generations born and died in his line as simple soldiers, bearers of that stoic standard that was steel and courage, stubborn ferocity and noble bearing. No, titles and lands were not of House Sobatsu, but instead it was service and fealty unwavering to their Lord in Fal Dara.
Kubotai was...large, from birth. His size was better fitted to one a few seasons past him in age, but it mattered not to him. Age was but a measure of time, and not of experience. He was quick of learning, mastering numbers and letters early in life, and eagerly pursuing that which his forefathers had mastered in the ways of sword and horse, lance and armor. He made scant few friends, but considered himself of his peers' social standing, even though he was, at best, an outsider. To combat this, he read; fanciful stories of Ages long past, and of curiosities sated through adventure and travel across the broad horizons.
Upon his nineteenth nameday, his mother and father - both well respected but humble of means - presented him with a neatly tied velvet purse and tears in their eyes. Hibatsu had taught him all he knew of the sword, and desired better for his son. Kisara had taught her son to values the simplicities in life, and to not want for more than what he himself could achieve. Together they bid him not destine himself to death in the face of the Shadow, and instead to travel the world and learn more from it than ever they could teach him.
His first instinct was to disobey, to stay and to help and to fight against what his brothers in arms fought. But his outsider's view on the world in which he had matured bid him forethought, and with quiet sadness he accepted the bidding of those who wrought him.
South, always south. He sought warmer climes, where snow was a fanciful tale and Old Grim was but a fear of children. Tar Valon saw his mouth agape and eyes wide as dinner plates at the masive architecture and magnificence that was the One Power at work. Cairhien saw his meager purse - the entire savings of his humble parents - snatched before he had even reached the city gates. Aringill saw the misuse of power in reaching for more than one could grasp - in both Andorian and Cairhienen hands - and also saw the bits of armor his father had given him sold away for food he had not seen in near four days.
Caemlyn was a hilltop ahead of him, then a hilltop behind him; large cities he shied from once he saw the degradation of honor in the hopes of gaining a few more measly lumps of gleaming metal. Lugard was the cesspit that drew him down to his very bottom: there, in the rutted streets and carousing mud, he was attacked by thugs. His meager sword skills fended off the first, but his training was no match for numbers. His pride was taken that day, as well as the sword of his father, which had been in his family for three generations. The beating that he suffered once they had their prize was nothing next to the humiliation of his naivety. Bruised and bloodied, it was through sheer determination that he dragged himself from the alley in which they had left him to rot, making so far as the outskirts of Lugard before succumbing to his battered state. Someone caught him as he fell, and the next two weeks fled his memory as water through the reeds.
Juran was the small village where he learned the most valuable virtue: compassion. Her name was Lisette, a widower with but a thin streak of grey to her hair and children who were grown and gone with children of her own. She had found the beaten youth and brought him to her home. Herbs and care were all she provided, talking to him in his long sleep about her children and her life. She had led a happy one, but the loneliness of her recent years had not allowed her such the gift of so much as someone to speak to. Kubotai healed under the care of her voice and her compassion, and unbeknowst to him, a seed was planted in his soul.
She cared for him, and when he recovered thanks to her ministrations, he in turn cared for her in his own way. To repay her he cared for her cottage, repairing those things that had fallen to disrepair. For two years he did thusly, and she taught him many things of life that no city or dirty-packed road would teach; what herbs were used for healing, which for suffering, and which for taste. What the wilds could offer to sustain one's self on long journeys, and how to pay attention to the trees and the animals that lived within nature. She taught him many things that a 'city-bound lad' would not necessarily understand.
Two years saw her waste away from a terrible, sudden illness. It had come with great urgency, after a particularly good harvest of their meager garden. The loss of her taught him yet one more lesson of life that girded him for the road that leads to where he now stands, before these gates: to achieve what one desires most, one must lose a part of that which he cares for most.
Time will tell whether what he desires to learn - the skill and perseverance to protect compassion, justice, and innocence - will be worth the price he must pay...of himself.
Career History
- Drin
- Ji'val (14 September 2008)
- Gaidin (17 May 2010)
