(Backdated entry.)
Albrecht Torsten is a military engineer for hire and a master stonemason. He specializes in the construction and reduction of earthworks and fortifications. He can also organize an army, coordinate its supply chain, oversee the training of troops and support personnel, teach mathematics, tell amazingly improbable stories and considers himself an expert on fine wine and food.
Captain of the airship Schnellvögel, he takes almost nothing seriously except manners, honor and food. If he must fight, it will be with a smile. If he must die, it will be laughing. Life, he thinks, is too short, too important to spend even a second of it shadowed in despair and gloom.
“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”
— Mark Twain
“A little levity is appropriate in a dangerous trade.”
— Walter M. Schirra Jr.
The boy who would grow up to be Albrecht Torsten was born somewhere near the Seven Willows sometime in 727, though he does not know exactly where or when.
Later in life he would come to suspect Arrosa, but that is more a feeling than anything else. In 729, at the tender age of two, he was the sole survivor of a bandit attack that claimed the lives of his parents and their traveling companions somewhere east of Seven Willows. Albrecht was found wandering along the roadside by a caravan of mercenaries returning to northern city-state of Gilderven from the siege of Dorvinta. The circling vultures overhead soon led them to the grisly remains of Albrecht's parents. One of the mercenaries, a stonemason and military engineer named Hans Torsten, took pity on the helpless child and adopted him. Albrecht grew up in the Torsten household and when he was ten, he was apprenticed to his adopted father and learned the craft of stonemasonry.
Now in those days Gilderven was a member of the Karvorberg League, an alliance of northern city states to the north of Rubylak. Originally organized to fend off the Wyld barbarians that menaced its early members, what began as a defensive alliance grew and prospered. The League pushed back the barbarians, freed neighboring city-states from the yoke of the Kursvolger Satrapy and made the region safe for free men and free trade. The Karvorberg League was even able to turn a profit by selling the services of its soldiers and officers, the Karvorberg Freikorp, to other city-states.
In 742, when Albrecht was 15, the League came under a massive barbarian attack unlike any it had ever experienced. Caravans were slaughtered, entire cities besieged and overrun, all with a level of discipline and coordination unheard of for barbarian forces. It soon became obvious that the Kursvolger Satrapy and the barbarians had formed an alliance to conquer the League. For three years the war ground on, until at the Battle of Gilderven, when victory was within their grasp, the barbarian hordes turned on the armies of Satrapy.
The carnage was beyond belief. The two formerly allied armies clawed at each other in the ruins of the city, while its defenders, among them the Torsten family, made both sides pay dearly for every inch of ground. Into this chaos, the vaunted Karvorberg Freikorp made a last desperate attack into the middle of the fighting between the barbarian and Satrapy armies. Against all odds, the Freikorp prevailed, routing both armies, though at terrible cost. Gilderven lay in ruins, most of its defenders dead, among them Albrecht's adopted family. The League took another year and a half to push back the Satrapy and barbarian forces, but could not muster the strength to finish them off once and for all. An uneasy peace settled over the land, and people set about rebuilding.
Most people at any rate. The philosopher Vomba Ursa once said that it's human nature to look for what we lose where we lose it. Perhaps that explains why Albrecht, having lost his home, his family and his innocence on the field of battle, became a mercenary. For the next six years or so he plied his trade in the cold north, fighting in actions large and small. During the siege of Saluchi by the Haslanti League in 753, Albrecht's lightly manned position was overrun by Saluchi huscarls attempting to break out from the siege and admit fresh supplies from the river.
Despite overwhelming odds that claimed the lives of all but three of the men under his command, Albrecht's small force somehow prevailed and stopped the breakout attempt. The city surrendered the next day, the best of its fighting force spent and demoralized by the assault on Albrecht's position. In recognition for his valor, the Haslanti League made a present of an airship to Albrecht.
Two days later, the Realm landed a sizeable task force that began to drive on Saluchi, searching hard for someone or something. Hearing this, Albrecht and the three survivors of the huscarl assault quickly decided that a change of scenery would be in everyone's interest and set sail for the west, seeing what work a military engineer might find across the vast oceans. They spent two years there, mostly in the employ of the small kingdom of Saronica against the feared pirate Vermillion Scar. With the defeat of the Scar at the battle of Halfway in 755, Albrecht and crew said their farewells and headed south. There they spent three years searching for the fabled Hall of the Wombat King, supposedly the most magnificent underground stone structure ever constructed, before heading east.
Eventually, between various mercenary and engineering jobs (even one or two for the Realm), dodging the Wyld Hunt, and staying a few steps ahead of a growing list of people who want him dead for things he has done on previous jobs, Albrecht got homesick. He decided that he might try to find his actual birthplace and so set sail for Seven Willows, not entirely sure of what to do when he got there. The rest as they say, is history.