Personality

Brassenor’s temperament is similar to that of a doused flame. Where once the light of life burned brightly, it has been quenched by the careful pinch of tragedy. He holds his reservations close and prefers to listen before speaking. When he does speak, it is short, clipped, and efficient: why would he waste his breath when being direct can save much miscommunication? That is not to say he is cruel; he finds that there is no kindness in blunt, unfiltered language, only that he does not prohibit himself from saying what he means.

His decisions are calculated and meditated upon in private; his faith in the Valar, after Gondolin’s fall, was so thoroughly shaken that it leaves him feeling hopeless, adrift. When faced with a world that is ever-changing and seems to be on the brink of one conflict or another, and he cannot even find it within him to turn to the faith that had brought his kith and kin so far, what else is he to do but keep such doubts quiet?

If given the choice, he would never step out or raise his sword in violence.

History

A Noldo born and raised in Aman alongside his sister, Brassenor was privileged to grow up with a sense of idyllic safety. Upon his lips passed the flavors of a city lost to time; his ears grew up on the melodies of his mother’s kin, and he was clad in the armor of the great-smiths who were lost in the fall. As a child, he wished to be a minstrel or a bard, and growing up, his mother taught him the gentle ways to pry songs loose from the strings of the lute.

It was an idyllic livelihood that was not meant to last. Behind Fingolfin, he traveled across the Helcaraxë alongside his sister, not content to let her go alone. His resentment towards kinslayers and towards the Valar themselves started young, when the passion for his anger burned bright. He followed his kin to Gondolin. Maeglin the traitor came with the orcs, and the wolves, and the dragons, the city fell under the combined strength of Morgoth’s armies. Among the House of the Golden Flower, Brassenor stood to defend his sister. In return for his courage, he received the burn of dragon’s fire, and had to be half-carried out of the city through Idril’s secret way. From then on he would carry scars on the right half of his body, and he would become blind in his right eye. He did not receive much of a reprieve among the other refugees at the Mouths of Sirion.

Only some twenty-ish years passed before Maedhros marched with his followers to enact the Third Kinslaying; there he was sundered from his sister, and he fled to the Isle of Balar when Cirdan and Gil-galad came to offer aid to the survivors. There Brassenor remained until war again demanded his hand; when the First Age ended and the Second began, he remained a staple in Lindon, in Gil-galad’s court, a warrior merely by necessity and not desire. He seeks peace, and, above all things, he demands an answer from the Valar and Eru himself as to why they stood by and allowed all of this.