Appearance

Solidly built and unmistakably a soldier, even at rest, Garrow stands with her weight settled and her hand never far from her sword. Her hair is a fierce copper red, cropped practically short and left to curl as it likes, with a broad streak of grey swept back from one temple. Her face is weathered and freckled from years under open sky, lined at the brow and mouth, with sharp amber eyes that seem to be measuring everyone she meets and rarely finding them adequate. She carries old scars without any effort to hide them, a testament rather than an embarrassment.

Her gear is plain and functional to the point of austerity, as though decoration were a resource she long ago decided not to spend on herself. Her plate is well-kept but battered, dulled and pitted from long service, worn over mail and buckled with heavy, scuffed leather. The only color she allows herself is not her own: a faded green tabard bearing the white tower and golden thorns of House Thornwood, its hem frayed and ragged, still worn with stubborn pride long after the house it represents has fallen. A dark green cowl wraps her shoulders against the weather, and a plain longsword hangs at her hip, its grip worn smooth by her hand.

Personality

Blunt, steady, and entirely unsentimental in speech, though not in substance. Garrow says what needs saying and little else, and has never much cared whether plain truth was welcome. Where Fenn rations his warmth, Garrow simply doesn't perform warmth at all, yet her loyalty to the Thornwood cousins is absolute and has never once been in question, expressed through action rather than word. She has little patience for ceremony, old titles, or the manners of a nobility she served but was never part of, and has grown even less patient with such things since the Fall of Lordaeron.

Direct to the point of terseness. Rarely uses titles or formal address, even for the Thornwood cousins. Tends to communicate approval through action (a nod, a shared task, an unspoken trust with a blade at someone's back) rather than words. In the practice yard she becomes, if anything, more terse still: corrections come as a single word, a tap of the flat of her blade, or a long silence that says more than either.

Rumors

• They say she once held a bridge alone against a band of orcs in the Second War, and that the scars on her arms came from that day. Some say it was a dozen orcs; others say it was three and a very angry ogre.

• Some claim she was offered a knighthood after the war and turned it down, though no one can agree on why.

• It’s whispered that she and the huntmaster were sweethearts once, long ago, and that whatever ended it is the reason they still bicker every morning like an old married couple.

• A rumor holds that she still wears the Thornwood colors because she swore an oath to the old Baron on his deathbed, and that she’ll serve the family until she dies or they’re restored.

• Folk around the camps say she hasn’t slept a full night since the estate fell, and that she walks the camp’s edge every hour until dawn.

• Some swear she has a husband and children somewhere in Lordaeron who never made it south, and that she never speaks of them.

• They say she trained Lady Makenna harder than any squire she’d ever had, and that the young lady once broke Garrow’s nose in the practice yard. Garrow reportedly called it the proudest day of her life.

• It’s said she keeps a list of every Thornwood soldier lost in the Fall, and that she means to see each one avenged.

• A soldier from Stormwind’s garrison claims she once knocked a nobleman flat in the Trade District for speaking ill of Lordaeron’s refugees, and that it took four guards to convince her to stop.

RP Hooks

• Second War veterans: Old soldiers may come to share war stories, find familiar faces, or settle old debts with someone who stood on the same fields.

• Lordaeron’s soldiers: Survivors of Lordaeron’s armies and the Thornwood guard may seek her out for news of lost comrades or a place among those who remember.

• Protection: Anyone in danger, from threatened refugees to travelers on dangerous roads, may look to her for a sword arm they can trust.

• Field remedies: Those with battle wounds needing quick tending may find her a capable hand when no healer is close by.

• The road to Lady Makenna: Those with business concerning the young paladin often learn that Garrow is the one to win over first.

• Order in the camp: Anyone with a complaint about rowdy recruits, missing gear, or a fight brewing among the Company knows Garrow is the one who’ll put it right.

Everything on this page is readable out of character. It isn't something other characters know in character.