Description

Personality

Edo is very light-hearted and cheery in nature, despite his troubled past. He regards most situations with a tabletop-sense of morality, quickly deciding who must be wrong and who is righteous, though he always later regrets this behavior. Regardless, it's rare that he will act on his sense of justice, instead leaving such philanthropy to those who can afford it. Because his life style doesn't have the financial capacity, he's hardly ever giving, most often just snatching what he can and getting on with his day. That said, he does believe in and respect hard work, but to live off of what little he makes as a courier almost justifies his behavior.

Edo is typically mild-tempered, though certain subjects (typically the loss of his people) can set him off without a second thought. He otherwise plays the safe-card whenever possible, except for when the risk may yield a high benefit for himself. Towards girls he can generally be awkward, part of his lonesome upbringing, but he always means well. To authority he can sometimes appear rebellious and anxious, but this too is a personal defect and is rarely sincere.

Towards machinery and engineering, Edo becomes highly analytical. He enjoys breaking apart designs and understanding how they work, but in terms of sacred relics this is unscathed territory. He has a high amount of respect for those that understand the complicated details of watchmaking and smithing and would preach any day that they are unsung frontiers. Towards magic he is highly skeptical, mainly because he has trouble trusting that which he doesn't understand, but he respects mages for their practicing of equally shunned skills. He is troubled in seeing the unjust treatment of Jackals, their helpfulness a fond memory of his childhood, but hasn't yet got the capacity to pity them as a suffering people. Elves bother Edo to an unreasonable anxiety around them as their strange culture and charisma makes him feel threatened and uncertain in their presence.

Equipment

The primary piece of equipment Edo is known for is a relic of his people and their "gods", a large mechanical prosthetic known only as "The Hand of Solomon". The hand is quite literally a giant glove-like device which is worn over the right arm, with a large skeletal hand on the end made from various composite metals. Each finger of the hand is approximately two feet long, without factoring in the length of the skeletal palm. The fingers are made from wolframite, with a length of copper wiring through them to apply tension and cause them to flex and release. Each joint operates through the use of coils which keep the hand clenched, while a series of rings inside the glove operate each finger by drawing back the copper wires. The palm uses crossed beams of steel between each "bone" for structural stability, with a series of gears inside to operate the thumb and keep it in place. A scratchy piece of leather is stretched over the inside palm to prevent anything falling inside the gears, while a thin plate of iron is bolted onto the outside of the palm. The entire palm itself is an additional foot long, making the hand span out three feet forward when opened with a rough two inches between each finger. The actual brace which goes over the arm and holds the hand in place is made primarily out of bronze. A large cylinder is worn over the user's hand and wrist from which the fingers are operated and the hand itself is attached. The brace continues up to the elbow with straps of leather and a bronze frame to help hold the Hand of Solomon in place on the user's arm.

Because of the strength of the coils and their stiffness over the years, the glove takes considerable strength to operate, aside from the weight of carrying it at any given time. Through practice and training, Edo has managed to operate the glove with ease and even swing and punch with it. The strength of the metal used alone makes it a great tool for bludgeoning, but also highly protective and durable. When not using it, Edo will typically carry the hand in his messenger bag.

The aforementioned Messenger Bag is a bag which Edo carries for his courier service. Rugged and resilient, it is brown and layered with multiple types of fabric developed from flax. Inside it he always keeps a tin of Grease made from pig fat, and a box of Flint and Tinder for warmth when he can't afford lodging.

History

Born in the Western settlement of Ferrous Reach, Edo was only a child at the Great War's end. The Anguish had had a devastating impact on his homeland and its people, leaving them barely recognizable. Before the War, they were a culture of blacksmiths, praising the work of a long lost civilization of builders and worshiping what relics they could uncover from these "Chosen People" and their temples. After the war, they were left in a war-torn collection of shanty towns, every deposit of minerals they had completely used up, put forth in making weapons during the war. They were a people without a trade, without a cause, and without a resource. Across the land, the temples of the Chosen People, ancient factories they had once praised were now burned to the ground. The Reckoning had left them in shambles, a nomadic bunch of watchmakers and thieves left to wander the plains of Hesphett.

Out of this desolation came, for one clan, redemption. Edo Fodder, his family, came across a forsaken temple in the vast expanse of nothingness. It was as far out that anyone had ever found a relic of the Chosen People, and in the temple hid a treasure far more valuable than any of their people before it. The Hand of Solomon, the great creator and craftsman of ancient time, sat at his forge in the abbey. A silence fell over the group, a moment of awe so thick that it hung in the air like tangible rain- and then, chaos. Each clan member clawed and kicked and bit towards the treasure, as nothing before had ever inspired such lust or longing among their people. Never before had desire ran so blood-deep that brothers murdered sisters and that mothers smothered babies. Lives spilled across cathedral floors, the silent eternity of the temple forever rocked with the greed of man so primordial and strong that it severed all loving ties among family- except for one. Among shattered stained-glass, among the corpses of loved ones, shook a young and frightened Edo, to young to comprehend or feel such unbinding desire. Too young to understand why everyone had murdered, and why everyone was dead.

Edo would later have persuaded himself that the occurrence inside the temple was a relapse; that the Anguish had somehow sparked back into existence, for just a moment, and filled the hearts of everyone in the room. It was easier to believe than the truth, so it was what he would believe. He made his way across the plains, Hand of Solomon in tow, working towards human settlements in the far East. He was aided along the way by the Jackals, another people who had suffered the wrath of the Anguish, and he was happy to see that there was compassion in their seclusion. By the end of a long journey, however, it was slave cartels that had got him into Keldon Tor. He had grown through his travels into a respectable and persuasive young man, and it wasn't long until he was liberated by a local postage courier. He took up a job beneath the man and begin delivering post by foot, gaining an affinity for the town and its many roof-top surfaces to run along. Over time he had saved up enough to afford what essentials he needed to life in one place for a long time, but continued to lodge about the town however he could afford to. Today he still lives in 'Tor, though the urge for adventure and movement leaves him so tense that it's a wonder he hasn't sprung out of there by now.