Aric Tyne

To understand Aric Tyne one must understand his past and motivations. This will be broken into segments covering both of the “masks” he wears as well as explaining what brought him to this point in his life.


Lord Aric Tyne of High Rock


Falling firmly within the crowd of young, bored nobles with too much time and money on their hands, Aric Tyne is known for attending parties to which he is invited and many to which he is not. Seen to enjoy the company of others who would make scenes and by all accounts adopting a hedonistic lifestyle, he is widely regarded within his social circles as irresponsible, irrepressible, and a lover of women and wine. He’s also known to enjoy “slumming” with friends, visiting lower class establishments and houses of pleasure while drinking late into the night. The young lord often embarks on hunting trips and attends archery contests, concerning which he has publicly declared himself to be a “protégé of the art of archery”.

“If that young man has a responsible bone in his body, I’m inclined to think he must have broken it falling drunkenly from a table while reciting terrible poetry.”


“Blues”, Assassin of the Dark Brotherhood


Professional, self-assured, and coldly efficient, “Blues” received his moniker from the fact that due to the mask and face paint he wears to conceal his identity the only discerning feature notable about him was his blue eyes. He tends prefer his assassination missions be carried out both precisely and efficiently. If there is collateral damage in the sense of lives lost besides his target then he believes he’s failed in his mission and not only taken lives that were unnecessary but sent unworthy souls to the dread father.

Blues is known to dabble in other underworld activities with a high enough payout, but his primary profession seems to be in the taking of lives. Very little is known about him and he prefers it that way. The number of people who have seen him without his mask, excluding his “family” within the Brotherhood, can be counted on one hand and are those he feels he can either trust or eliminate if they become a problem.

At times he will instead shed the mask and carry out an assignment as Lord Aric Tyne of High Rock when the assignment in question requires infiltration which is best carried out by inserting himself into the setting. Though his favored weapon is the bow, he has been known to use blades, garrotes, and notably poisons to accomplish a kill.

"Unnerving, if I had to describe him. Cocky bastard, of course, brusque...but unnerving. Too matter-of-fact about killing, like it's something you do on a Morndas afternoon."


Aric


The true face of the man behind the masks he wears, Aric adopts the personas listed above in order to protect what’s most important to him. He grew up amidst concerns that his family, long gone into debt by the gambling habit of his grandfather and the poor financial management of his father, would end up effectively stripped of their lands and status. Despite his criticism of his father’s mismanagement of scant resources left to their family he is nonetheless a dutiful son who, despite the public appearance he keeps up, has never once taken his responsibilities to his family anything less than seriously. The story might have ended there if not for happening to learn that his father was considering marrying off one of his two younger sisters, siblings he loves dearly and feels deeply protective of, to a man he knew from his forays into courtly intrigues to be cruel and given to inflicting severe pain on the girls who went to his bed.

When appeals to his father failed to convince him of the veracity of what Aric had seen evidence of with his own eyes, he committed himself to a path that, at the time, he had no inkling would go as far as it eventually would. Inviting himself along on one of the hunts the noble in question often took, Aric feigned illness once they arrived at the lodge and took to bed. It was only after the hunting party had departed that he followed and tracked them through the woods. Though he had originally taken up archery as a sport (a practice which he would continue with in the coming years), he found that the same skill which allowed him to strike a target accurately from a distance enabled him to place an arrow through the other man’s heart from a concealed location. From there, it was simple to steal back to the lodge and ensconce himself once more in bed, even going so far as to take a mild poison in order to make his symptoms appear genuine and remove any suspicion from himself in the case of Lord Jasper’s murder.

It was not a week later that he received a sheet of paper with the print of a hand upon it and only two words. “We know.”

His initiation into the Dark Brotherhood from that point was not a difficult one. The Brotherhood promised wealth and purpose, testing his skills and instructing him in techniques which he could never have learned elsewhere. More than anything else it provided a means for him to begin bringing in money to pay his family’s outstanding debts, enough to keep them afloat, and ensure that his sisters would not be married off to unfitting men or wind up on the streets. He adopted the role of Blues for his work which took him into the disreputable parts of society and played up his persona as a young noble concerned only with partying and enjoying life to cement his cover so that no one could connect him with the assassin he’d become and thus threaten his family in High Rock.

If one gets to know the true Aric Tyne they will find someone who laughs easily, smiles often, and loves his family. They will also find a man who is very committed to ensuring his responsibilities are met and that those he cares about have no harm befall them. Even if he must live many lies to do so.

"I once saw Aric with his family a few years back. Laughing and smiling like he didn't have a care in the world, and not that annoying too loud laugh he uses at parties. It's like he's a totally different person around them."