Name: Kael Stonewind
Race: Human
Role/Class: Cliffwarden Scout
Appearance: Kael Stonewind is tall and rangy, built for distance rather than strength, with weathered skin and wind-chapped hands that never quite lose their roughness. His hair is dark and kept short, always flattened by salt air, and his eyes are a pale gray-blue that match storm clouds more than sea. A thin scar runs from the edge of his jaw to his collarbone, half-hidden beneath his cloak—clean, deliberate, the kind left by a blade that knew exactly where to land.
He wears layered coastal leathers over a quilted gambeson, reinforced at the shoulders and knees for climbing. His cloak is slate-gray and weighted at the hem so it won’t flare in gusts, and his boots are wrapped with extra cord and traction grips for slick cliff paths. A longbow rides over one shoulder, a shortsword at his hip, and a coil of rope hangs like a second belt. Around his neck is a simple carved stone charm—smooth, thumb-worn, and never removed.
Backstory
Kael was born in a small Bluffs hamlet that no longer exists—one of the places the storms took in a single season. After the collapse, he was brought to Thorn’del as a child among other displaced families. He grew up watching the city endure: rebuilding steps into cliff faces, shoring bridges, re-hanging lantern routes, and turning survival into routine.
He joined the Cliffwardens young, drawn to the order’s structure and the clarity it brought to chaos. Kael learned how to read fog, how to judge the “pull” of wind on a ledge, and how to track footprints across wet stone where nothing should hold a print. He has escorted ore caravans from Thorn’del to coastal lift stations, guided civic lampwrights like Helja through gale season recalibrations, and pulled wreck survivors out of sea caves when everyone else decided the tide had already claimed them.
Kael is not fearless—he simply refuses to let fear pick the route.
He carries a quiet guilt that never leaves him: his village wasn’t lost because the storm was strong. It was lost because the warning was ignored.
