Wilhelm Kehlmann

A mercenary and adventurer in Arcania.

Description
A hard life is worn across Wilhelm's features. Now approaching his Fifth decade, he cuts the figure of an weathered veteran. Often seen wearing the bright slashed clothing and striped leggings of his old company, under worn but maintained armour and carrying a greatsword so long that the crossguard is at his shoulder.

History
Wilhelm was born to a swineherd in Schallitz, a small village in Ostmark. His early life was one of poverty until the age of 10 when a passing mercenary band came through offering gold and a way out. Wilhelms parents quickly took the deal and from there Wilhelm's life truly began.

The group that took Wilhelm on was the the Landsknecht, an Ostmark mercenary company that could field an entire army for the right price. The company was known both for their flamboyant outfits, discipline and order on the job, but also their lack outside of work. Mayors have been known to employ Landsknecht as guards or for basic tasks just to ensure that they dont cause mischief in their towns. This discipline was drilled into recruits by taking them in at a young age from orphanages or poor villages.

Wilhelm was assessed to be fit and strong, but without a magical spark, so he was trained as a foot soldier until he came of age and began to serve as a junior mercenary around the mountains and forests of Ostmark. 20 years with the Lansknecht caused Wilhelm to raise to position of Rottmeister of his Doppelsoldner unit by the election of his comrades.

Unfortunately it was about this time that the Landsknecht began to loose their momentum. The stability they helped create reduced the amount of work and the number of recruits available. After 6 years of rapid decline the Landsknecht were forced to disband by the Ostmark ruling groups who were fearful of what a large organisation of underemployed soldiers might do if they sat around waiting for work for too long. The remaining members spread across Henfyd, finding work where they could. Wilhelm took work as a town guard for a while, before working as a caravan guard as the roads slowly became dangerous once more without the routine clearing of bandit camps by the landsknecht.

Wilhelm eventually found himself in Dezil, Valejo where he met a familiar face in Hilde Krugger. Hilde was once a high ranking member of the Landknecht scouts, a unit that often worked as spies as well as forward scouts for the company. She asked Wilhelm for help with a job she was currently working that involved raiding a compound of a merchant baron before he could summon a fiend in an attempt to gain a monopoly on the local grain business. The success of this job lead to Wilhelm's introduction to the White Ravens, an organisation secretly working to counter the raising Chaos.

Now approaching 50, Wilhelm takes jobs for the Ravens and fills the time between with small jobs dealing with bandits, trasgu and anything else that might come wander out of the mountains unwelcome. His current contract has him working as a bodyguard to a historian deep in the Valejo forests...