Samuel Thrageson-Clemens

Sam, as he prefers to be known, is a half orc, half human inventor from the community of Arcadia, the site of the last Eldritch invasion just 500 years ago. Sam is a member of the King's Punishers, the 23rd Sapper Regiment, unit 3 also nicknamed "the Residuals", an exraordinarliy unlucky team of special operations engineers whose members have all died or been committed to mental institutions. Sam is the only remaining active duty member of the unit, but due to superstition, the dwarves will not disband the unit until after he dies or leaves service, and new personnel are not assigned to the unit. Normally Sam is extremely easy going, and is friendly towards outsiders, however, here is a deep streak of hidden paranoia in Sam's nature which is not apparent most of the time, but occasionally causes him to act abruptly in highly anti-social ways. His commanding officers will not comment on this, nor will they correct it, leading one to suppose that it may be related to his past experiences with the Residuals. Sam entered the dwarven military at the age of 9, considered the age of majority for a warrior among the Arcadians who often take positions as mercenaries with countries with whom Arcadia is not at war. The Arcadians, in spite of being an extremely militaristic culture, are good international neighbors and do not engage in conflict with outsiders. They are protective and secretive and do not welcome strangers to their small country. Their entire culture revolves around preparing for the next Eldritch invasion which they believe will occur in Arcadia where the intersection of magical leylines creates a thinning of the weave that protects the universe from the Eldritch horrors. Sam's people are innovative weapon designers and have perfected the marrying of the soul of sentient beings with mechanical constructs thus forming self aware, intelligent, and highly opinionated implements of warfare. These weapons are finely tuned and have decided preferences amongst their "riders" with whom they form mental and emotional bonds. When a warrior approaches old age, it is considered to be a great honor to be soul-mated into a weapon and so continue to serve Arcadia and Arrhynsia long after the warrior would have normally died. The oldest of these sentient weapons was a warrior during the first Eldritch invasion, named Izak Steelbone. He is Sam's great great ... grandfather and Sam (and many of the other younger warriors) refer to him as "Popop". Steelbone is currently standing in the central square of the Arcadian capital, seemingly as lifeless as a statue, however, none of the Arcadians believe that he is dead, nd all are certain he would revive if danger threatened his people or world. Sam's mother is a "rider" of a construct named "K. Sam is highly romantic and attracted to the beautiful Bughuula Liadon, the "clan mother" of the Knife Brigade. While hopeful of a positive outcome, he is extremely patient and endures a great deal of ambiguity in the definition of the relationship between himself and the high elf, as she consistently treats him as though he is mated to her, yet without expected benefits. Sam is highly idealistic and fully committed to a notion he calls "good", something that he occasionally attempts to explain to Adenshur Kenghym. He sees himself as a broken and imperfect warrior who has committed moral atrocities, but seeks to attone for these through committing himself to valorous deeds in the defense of the defenseless. Sam's greatest joy, beyond catering to Bughuula, is bound up with his cultural heritage in the creation of war weaponry. He has been working on hand-held ranged weapons that throw a projectile a long distance using explosives rather than mechanical advantage to create the force to move the projectile. His experiments have been successful and he has acquired a prototype and production contract with Galmiir’s Smithy in Uftlon who produces these weapons for use by the dwarven military.