Tertius Syllus

Tertius Syllus is a man generally considered to be the best military commander of modern Aurgentia, and one of the main architects of the victory against Lord Hellfire during the Hellfire War. Due to that he was officially inducted into the ranks of the Hero Company as the representative of the Republic of Nova.
What makes him a rather unorthodox hero is his effective lack of combat skills. That he made up entirely with his commanding skills.

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

He is often described as one of the least heroic looking people in history, leading to most of his sculptures and paintings having no similarity to the actual Syllus. He is short, overweight, and has large, almost 'fish-like', eyes, leading to his face repeatedly described as downright ugly.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Pre-Hellfire War

He was born as a third son of a minor senatorial house in Nova. He was brought up knowing that inheriting his father's seat in the Republican leadership was nearly impossible - and, in fact, no one was ready to even consider him for that seat. Mostly due to his rather odd behaviour that made him an outsider even in his own family.
Tertius was a boy that did his absolute utmost to avoid any degree of physical exercises, a fact that made him stand out in his native country, which considered military service of their elites to be a necessary part of their moral and physical formation. Instead, he spent his childhood with a nose in the books, despite the attempts to discourage that behaviour which was seen as obsessive and unhealthy.
Eventually, the family has mostly given up on him, and let him continue his studies in peace. He kept doing that for most three decades, becoming the odd uncle/cousin/sibling that no one knew how to exactly interact with, and that was allowed to use the small part of the family's wealth to obtain more and more books.
In a way, he paid back for this by becoming something akin to a curator for a library of House Syllus, which was slowly becoming a point of fame and pride for the family. Which greatly contributed to Tertius being tolerated as a part of it, despite his intensely eccentric behaviour.
This continued as is until the years soon before the Hellfire War, when infernal cultists assaulted the Syllus house, and killed most of the family members. No one knows how why it happened, but some suggest that the cultists were linked to Lord Hellfire, and attacked the house due to an attempt of divination that claimed that someone from this family could be a threat to their lord.
However whether that theory was a later fabrication to make Syllus into more of a heroic figure.

Hellfire War, Early

When the war started, Syllus was finally forced to take a stand. With most of his family dead, there was a precious little adult members left to appropriately participate in a military campaign, and not doing that would risk the family losing their senatorial position. He joined the Republican army as an officer, and was treated as de facto staff officer, with little to no occassion to directly order soldiers around.
This changed following the Battle of Asurtha, during which the Hellfire's Northern Army crushed combined forces of the Rhiyan Federation and Republic of Nova, effectively capturing the southern part of the Federation and pressing deep into the central territories of it, threatening the entire northern frontline to collapse entirely.
Most of the officers involved in the joint army were either slain, injured, fled or used any political power they had to get mover elsewhere. To his own surprise, Tertius Syllus found himself to be the highest ranked remaining officer of the group of around ten thousand heavily demoralized Rhiyan and Novian soldiers.
Just as an order arrived to attempt to delay Hellfire's takeover of central Rhiya until the first snow. This would sever the enemy supply lines going through the Razortail Mountains in the middle of Rhiya, giving the defenders time to catch some breath and, hopefully, for the promised reinforcements from Kirska and Volsinnia to arrive.
First act of Tertius as a commander of his army was to cause a panic in its ranks by staging fake reports of demonic armyflanking it cutting it off from their allies in the north. Once that happened, he had the army flee in the only available direction - through Frostmouth Pass in the Razortail Mountains, onto the southern part of Rhiya.
Syllus made sure that most of the supplies were lost in the retreat. By the time other officers realized what truly happened, the army was effectively trapped on the wrong side of the mountains, with about a week's worth of food... and about three days from the nearest supply base for the Hellfire's Northern Army.
If his soldiers were too demoralized too be rallied back together, he had to relay on other means. The realization that they could either fight like bloodthirsty berserkers or get weakened with starvation before being captured and tortured to death by the demons worked wonders.
It's believed by many that the only reason why he wasn't lynched by the officers was that the three potential successors to his position hated each other, meaning that erasing him from the equation would cause the army to collapse on its own.
His gambit paid off. Most of the Northern Army was on the northern side of the Razortail Mountains, busy laying siege to Rhiyan cities. With passage through the mountains difficult even in Autumn, their commanders believed them to be a good enough way of securing their flanks.
As a result, the resistance his army encountered south of the mountain turned out to be more than managable. Every destroyed outpost and supply caravan limited the ammount of supplies reaching the Northern Army. The captives they liberated - now with nothing but limitless hatred for demons - were inducted into his ranks as quickly as they could be taught how to march in formation and swing their weapons.
In less than two months - and while his superiors in Rhiya fought their entire army to be lost, the rare reports of their survival being considered demon-made fakes - the Southern Rhiya was set up in flames, and the river of supplies going north shrivelled up before drying up completely.
Soon after that, the Northern Army has effectively collapsed as an organized fighting force, to genuine surprise of the defenders of the Central Rhiya. Their forces - now starved and suffering from the crippling lack of medical supplies, which meant being weakened by plagues and even frostbite while braving the mountain passes - began to retreat south, trying to get to Lothria while they could still defend themselves.
While they succeded in passing the Razortail Mountains (through the largest and easiest-to-travel-through pass that was held by their soldiers the whole time and due to that was never attacked by Syllus forces), their happiness didn't last for long. Less than four days later they discovered that they walked right into a trap, with Syllus army already waiting for them.
The result of the subsequent Battle of Satori was nearly complete destruction of the Northern Army, with only few thousand soldiers managing to escape and get to Lothria.
The Northern Army started their campaign with more than a hundred thousand soldiers, outnumbering Syllus' army ten to one. While a lot of casualties were caused by the defenders of central Rhiya, the fact that the attack on it failed was still caused by Syllus' rampage through enemy supply lines. Leading to the victory being attributed mostly to him.
Less than three days after the battle, the snow began. This victory was the main contributing factor to Syllus' ascension into a demigod going by the name of the Strategist of Autumn Leaves.

Hellfire War, Late

Syllus victory led to a significant confusion of his own superiors, as while the results were great, the whole thing was still a rather extreme gamble that could easily bury all the hopes of defending central Rhiya. A lot of them has also suspected that the reason while Tertius didn't report his decision to move to the other side of the mountains was so that he wouldn't have to bother following orders.
He was, in other words, a great example of a military maverick. However, he brought back results. Due to that he was seen as too valuable to simply discard.
For some time, he continued to be send to take command of really troublesome parts of the frontline, with limited oversight of the more 'traditional' officers. In a way, he was the northern front's unofficial firefighter, send in whenever a part of it caught fire. He proved over and over again to be a unorthodox and unpredictable strategic genius.
This earned him a lot of popularity among the soldiers. As wherever and whenever he showed up, the demons began to suffer from long strings of military disasters.
He was eventually dealt with by receiving a kick upstairs. In other words, he was made into the Republic of Nova's representative in the Hero Company. While utterly incapable of fighting, he proved to be a tactical mastermind that also managed ot make sure that not only the Company itself but also the honor guard surrounding it was always perfectly equipped and supplied.
At some point before the final battle he became aware of Flamelight's scheme. It is believed that Mirriam Artori and January 34th shared their suspicions with him, seeing him as the best person to confirm or deny them - and, in the former case, find a way of dealing with it.
As a result, he promptly formulated a counter-plan that lead to Flamelight's plans being foiled, and the man's subsequent near-death.

Post-Hellfire War

After the war ended, Tertius Syllus has vanished. His position as a confirmed demigod made him a potential target, especially with his general physical weakness.
He is still active, however. Ever since the war, multiple people throughout Aurgentia received letters marked with his personal seals, with instructions inside. Sometimes, it tells them how to kill their hated enemies. Sometimes, it tells them how to save someone that was recently kidnapped.
Thus far, no clear agenda has been found in this cases, meaning that Syllus' goals remain undeciphered. Some, especially his fellow former heroes, suspect that he is still fighting the Hellfire War, playing a long game against the remnants of the demonic army within Conflagration - and, presumably, against Flamelight.

Sexuality

There are no signs of him ever engaging in any sort of sexual behaviour, or forming anything even resembling a romantic relationship.

Intellectual Characteristics

Tertius Syllus is an eccentric genius, with wealth of knowledge in his head and wide capabilities in terms of forming plans on its basis. However, he often appears to be odd, strange and even somewhat stupid, but that's because his social skills are FAR beneath his intelligence, meaning that he finds finds its extremely hard to properly explain his line of reasoning.
As a result, it's not uncommon for him to come to a correct conclusion through what appears to others to be a completely illogical line of reasoning.

Morality & Philosophy

It's hard to properly classify him in terms of his moral system. He is a product of his own society, the one that respects performing your duty for the society and taking responsibility for your own actions, but in the meantime sees no issue with slavery, and considers killing people that insulted your family as understandable.
He pays little mind to moral quandaries in general, instead focusing on his books and - when truly needed - performing his duty towards his family (and, through it, the Republic). If he is truly still waging the Hellfire War in his own way, it's not because he is interested in saving people of the continent, but because he believes that such a war would threaten the remains of House Syllus, and the Republic in general.

Personality Characteristics

Personality Quirks

He has a long list of nervous ticks and odd behavioural traits. Too long to go into detail, as he appears to be constantly evolving on that field, and not in the good direction.
Sometimes he acts downright insane, an example of that might be his occassional bouts of hiding in the variety of furniture pieces (wardrobes, but on some occasions even chests), that he himself claims to be making him feel safe. In one case he almost got a search party send for him due to his absence in Hero Company meeting, only to be discovered to be hidden under his bed on the upper floor of the building. For no discernible reason.
He appears to have a degree of obsessive-compulsive disorder, that gets especially noticable in times of heavy stress. When it happens, he is often found counting and arranging things in his vicinity, and appears to be briefly losing his contact with reality in the process.

Hygiene

He appears to have an aversion to the concept of hygiene in general. He doesn't bathe too often, and often needs to be downright threatened into doing that by his servants. (typically when other people start complaining about the smell). Without the servants to remind him of it, you can also bet on him wearing the same clothes over and over again, ignoring stains and smell of it.
He has occassional issues with drooling when deep in thoughts, which doesn't help hygiene status or his public reception in general.

Basic Information

Species: Human
Class: Strategist of Autumn Leaves
Level: 122

Attributes

Strength: 24
Endurance: 23
Agility: 42
Intelligence: 212
Willpower: 102
Charisma: 12

Class Skills

Command, Tactics: 122
Command, Strategy: 134
Command, Logistics: 123
Politics: 112
Intrigues: 132
Lore, History [Aurgentia]: 111