(Age: 54)
Once a nameless lookout on a pirate galley, Daurades Hardsand rose from obscurity by sheer obsession. At fourteen, he was recruited by Ephram himself for his uncanny skill with thrown spears — a boy who could strike gulls from the sky or pierce sails from the crow’s nest. Where others sought glory in raids or crowns, Daurades sought only mastery. Decades later, he is no longer a boy with a spear — he is the commander of Arnot’s greatest host, the King of Spears, lord of the Border Marches.
From his rugged domain, where desert collides with jungle and steppe, he has forged the largest army in the empire’s history. His soldiers march with fanatical loyalty, hardened by endless raids and invasions. To enemies, Daurades is not a man but an inevitability: a tide of spears blotting out the horizon.
Build: A long-limbed giant, 10 feet tall, whipcord lean where Ephram is colossal and Achilles is massive. His strength is deceptive, hidden in the precision of every motion.
Face: Weathered, sharp, and focused. A hawk’s gaze, narrow and golden-brown, that has unnerved kings. His mouth rarely smiles — but when it does, it is the smile of a predator who has already measured your weakness.
Attire: Bronze-scaled armor lacquered black, adorned with red tassels. His cloak is made from thousands of broken spear-shafts, bound and lacquered into a strange mosaic of victories. His personal weapon, Skyfang, is a spear said to have pierced a leviathan’s skull.
The Relentless Student: Daurades never stopped training, even when kingship was his. His rise from commoner burns in his marrow — he believes perfection is not birthright, but discipline.
Cold Precision: Unlike Achilles’s laughter or Ephram’s thunder, Daurades speaks rarely, commands clearly, and never wastes a word. His army moves like his spear: direct, sharp, and fatal.
Fanatical Loyalty Returned: He demands total devotion, but he gives it in return. His soldiers are not pawns — they are his family, his creation, his proof that even commoners can rival giants if forged hard enough.
Quiet Rivalry: He respects Ephram above all, but his true rival is Achilles. Where the Mountain-Splitter is brute devastation, Daurades believes in the spear’s perfection: speed, precision, inevitability.
The Spear Host: Daurades’s legions are the most numerous in Arnot, disciplined into living machines of war. Slave soldiers, conscripts, and veterans march side by side — their cohesion forged by his presence.
The Arrowstorm: His archers are trained to fire in endless rhythm, capable of blotting out the sun for hours. Enemies call it “the Black Rain,” and entire cities have surrendered rather than face it.
Commander of the Border Marches: He thrives on the frontier — raids, invasions, and ceaseless war. Where others see wasteland, he sees an eternal crucible for his army.
(Not Will, not Force — but something in between: the absolute perfection of projectile warfare and spear mastery, turning discipline into a superhuman art.)
Horizon Piercer
Concept: Distance is meaningless.
Effect: His spears and javelins fly farther than sight, always striking true. Armies think themselves safe behind walls, only to find their commanders pinned from leagues away.
Signature Use: Killing a rival lord across a battlefield before the armies even clashed.
Storm of Suns
Concept: Archery turned divine.
Effect: His order unleashes such volleys that the sky itself darkens — then glitters like a falling sunburst. Arrows rain for hours, guided by his precision.
Signature Use: Blotting out the sun for an entire afternoon during the Siege of Kareth, forcing surrender without a single melee.
Unbroken Phalanx
Concept: Discipline embodied.
Effect: His soldiers hold formation under any assault. Cavalry charges shatter, giants stumble, even Achilles himself once found the phalanx unbroken after three days of assault.
Signature Use: Holding against a nomad horde ten times their number, spears unmoving until the desert itself drank the invaders dry.
Rain-Splitter
Concept: Precision beyond sight.
Effect: His thrown spears can cut through volleys of arrows, storms of bolts, even lightning strikes — unraveling enemy attacks midair.
Signature Use: Shattering a naval bombardment by splitting cannon-shot in flight.
Spear of Nations
Concept: His will is his spear, his spear his nation.
Effect: When he throws Skyfang, it is no longer a weapon but a phenomenon — piercing fortresses, tearing through armies, or summoning the morale of his legions into a single, unstoppable strike.
Signature Use: The duel with Achilles Teach, where Skyfang and Bloodwake struck together and reshaped a peninsula.
The General King: Among the vassal kings, Daurades is the one most feared by foreign nations. His legions are the empire’s largest, his borders the bloodiest.
Rival to the Hammer: While Achilles is destruction incarnate, Daurades is the unyielding spear — not less strong, but honed differently. Their duel is remembered as a cataclysm.
Proof of the Game: He is living proof of Ephram’s creed — that the throne belongs not to blood, but to the strongest. A commoner rose to rival kings and nobles alike, and his legend makes peasants dream of greatness and nobles fear their own weakness.
⚔️ Style Note:
If Ephram is the immovable will, and Achilles is raw annihilation, then Daurades is the edge of inevitability. He is discipline made flesh — not a storm, but the spear that strikes exactly where it must, backed by an army that has become as inhuman as its commander.