Guy Fortage

Fortage is in excellent physical condition, strengthened by years of warmongering and living roughly on campaign. He is a large man, towering over most others around him.

Fortage has ripped out his right eye, replacing it with a green adderstone in a small apparatus. There is extensive scarring around the socket, visible even with the eyepatch he covers it with.

Guy Fortage walks with a pronounced limp, a result of an injury sustained in a campaign on Douarnenez Bay.

As an addereye, Guy's right eye has the ability to see through glamour. This effect causes nausea to manifest in magical creatures falling under his gaze.

Fortage uses a hand-and-a-half sword, wielding it one handed with ease. He also frequently uses a Windblade forged of cold iron, sharpened to a killing edge.

Early Life

  Born the Secondson of the Lordship of Fanch, Guy Fortage was not satisfied with living in his elder sister’s shadow, and was sent to study in Per-Ys at the age of 15. Within two years, however, he had sold his books to buy a Windblade and a sword, setting off for Aurelien to join a Staunchist movement sweeping the region. He was robbed en route at a Pas d’Armes by a troupe of Korrigan bandits, returning to Letha in humiliation.  

The Black Bull Free Company

 

Early Campaigns

Returning to Letha, Fortage gained the patronage of Dame Moccus of Poher, allowing him to gather a troop of men that would form the Black Bull Free Company, a collection of foreign mercenaries and local ruffians, eventually growing to 400 riders and between 1000 and 2,000 foot soldiers. The company, more a collection of bandits than a proper army, had little discipline, with commanders often acting on their own accord. Fortage sought to change that, forging the group into an elite fighting force   Less than a year after returning to Letha, Fortage began to campaign in Dreger, well known supporters of the Fair-aligned Ermine faction. He sacked and commandeered a castle in the region, using it as a base of operations to raid Landreger and the surrounding area, quickly seizing a second castle to build a potent base of power, reinforcing and supplying each stronghold. The Black Bulls operate with impunity, looting, burning and raping their way across the countryside.   Emboldened, Fortage began to raid in the Fair Counties, as far south as Poher. Learning that the inhabitants were moving to file complaints against him at the assembly at Gwened. Fortage rode to the assembly, storming the meeting an threatening to cut the throats of any who dared speak against him. He was arrested, but released at the request of Staunchist nobles to assist in breaking a siege in Cenomannie.   Fortage sacked the town of Landreger and seized a local castle near Kermaria. At Gwengamp, his assault was repulsed by the Dragons of Dreger, an elite force of Caballos of the Barony of Blackwater. He was spared execution, but banished from Letha. He would soon return, breaking his vow and returning to banditry. Angered at his defeat at the hands of the Milliget Salia Blackwater, he gouged out his eye, replacing it with an Adderstone.  

The Butcher of Granec

Fortage moved his operations into the Kastellin Basin near the city of Ker-Ahes, capturing, capturing the newly constructed Kastell-Granec. Pretending to be reinforcements from Ermine allies in Montroulez, he was able to capture the castle without firing a shot.   With a new base of operations, Fortage headed North to raid Montroulez. The local peasantry rose up to rescue their lord and laid siege. On the morning of the eighth day, the bandits returned, lead by Fortage. The riders rode through the poorly constructed and guarded earthworks, slaughtering all within. By the end of the day, 800 civilians were dead. Not content with this butchery, Fortage forbade the bodies to be buried or collected, assigning guards throughout the night and killing any who came to collect them or perform last rites. When asked by an allied lord how he could stand the stench of those rotten corpses, he replied that the smell of dead enemies was sweet.   From Granec, Fortage raided from Montroulez to Kemper, and in the mountains from the Rade de Brest to Pont-Ivi. The Kont of Kernev besieged Fortage's forces during one such raid on Enez-Tristain in Douarnenez Bay, where Fortage's leg was permanently injured when the floor collapsed beneath him. From then on, he would walk with a limp, but he esacped to his stronghold in the mountains. During the campaign his army of 700 men, many of them riders, destroyed a peasant army of 2,000, killing most of them.

Guy Fortage is the commander of the Black Bulls Free Company, a mercenary army of bandits contracted to the nobles of the Moccus Conspiracy. As commander, Fortage is ultimately in charge of strategy and logisitics for the company, but also takes a direct role, leading the charge in many combat engagements and directing siegeworks. Despite the lofty titles bestowed upon him, he is functionally a bandit and brigand, more renowned for cruelty and barbarism than martial strategy or organizational aptitude.

Fortage has a reputation for military prowess, successfully orchestrating numerous raids and sieges against larger, but often ill-trained and disorganized forces. He has successfully campaigned across Dreger and Kernev, sacking large towns and cities, including Kastellin, Ker-Ahes, Kermaria, Kemper, Landern, Landreger and Montroulez.

Fortage's early loss to a troupe of Korrigan on his foundational journey from Per-Ys to Aurelian still burns, despite his later capture and brutal execution of the gang, a hate compounded by his defeat at the hands of the Milliget Salia Blackwater and her Fae allies. Fortage has not forgiven these defeats, which drive him to enact even crueler vengeance upon the populations who fall under him, Bediz and Fair alike.

Sadistic and cruel, Fortage delights in inflicting physical and emotional torment on his enemies. He will often attack during festivals to cause additional fear and panic, and torture prisoners, freezing them inside tubs of water, making them sit on hot irons, assaulting or killing their loved ones before their eyes and preventing the burial of the dead. in one infamous episode, he ordered one prisoner force-fed while their twin was starved, to see which would die first.