Aric
Protection, named before it became strategy.
First Recognition
The hall called him Aric the Bold.
He heard the weight beneath the title.
Praise did not make him larger. It made the people behind him harder to ignore.
Under Pressure
Aric looks for what does not belong: the wrong glance, the wrong silence, the clean line where chaos should be.
He can command a field. That is not the wound.
The wound is whether command can protect without turning lives into arithmetic.
What He Carries
Duty.
Doubt.
Names.
He fears failure because failure is never abstract to him. It arrives with a face.
Known Associations
Aric stands near Lyria, Kain, Vex, the Capital, the Verdant Clearing, Cinder Keep, and the first fracture between obedience and protection.
Aric stands where protection stops being an ideal and becomes a cost.