Meet The Barbarian | Adventures and Academia

Dear Adventurer-in-training,

Hopefully you’ve got an idea of which of the four Houses you’d like to join. But, perhaps, it’s best that you’re introduced to the students too, it might help firm up your decision.

Let’s meet Arthur Hrafgar of House Might…

Arthur Hrafgar (He/Him), Lionfolk Barbarian

Luck in the grounds of the Academy is no substitute for hard work.

Arthur has never met a challenge he hasn’t hit straight on and with a smile. He has also never come across a rule at the Academy he hasn’t taken to heart.

Being the middle child, Arthur worked hard to keep up with the strength and force of his older sister Dortha. The two went out to train with their mother’s ancestral axe, a relic from her days of adventuring, when the axe began to glow. A spirit manifested and challenged the siblings to defeat it in a test of power. Dortha swung the axe, hitting the spirit so hard the tree behind it was cleaved in two and fell with an earth-shaking thud. Yet the spirit remained upright. With a few choice words, Dortha called the spirit a cheat and left. Arthur raised the axe and matched the spirit blow for blow until the sun set. As his hands bled and his muscles ached, the spirit impressed, yielded and offered Arthur a small badge cloaked in a crimson glow. The badge depicted a sword with a single word emblazoned on the back, ‘Might’.

Upon returning home, his younger brother Timmat challenged Arthur on the spot for the badge. Their mother had also possessed such an item, and they had grown up surrounded by the legends of her escapades. Arthur triumphed but would later realise it was not through skill, but simply because he was lucky—Timmat tripped and fell out of the ring—a lesson he has internalised. Arthur vowed to never again let luck be the deciding factor. He didn’t defeat the spirit through luck but through determination, yet the question still lingers, should it be Timmat at the Academy not Arthur?

Arthur has made it his mission to become a prefect of House Might, to embody the house’s highest virtues. He first struggled to learn to accept the leadership of others when he arrived at the Academy as his family always linked brute strength with the right to rule, but Arthur has learned that to lead, one must first learn when to follow—though he has little intention of following for long. In his studies and trials, Arthur would rather lose the right way than win through bending the rules or something as fleeting as luck.