 |
| Portrayed by Mauro van de Kerkhof |
| Artwork by Athena |
| Name: | Reckoning Brynnal "Bryn" Baird |
| (Brin) | |
| AKA: | Bryn, Baird |
| Gender: | Male |
| Race: | Human |
| Class: | Hunter |
| Role: | Damage |
| Faction: | Alliance, Fallon Fleet |
| Professions: | mining, engineering |
| Homeland: | Stormwind |
| Player: | inkie |
RP Hooks
- Anyone involved with the Fallon fleet may be acquainted with Bryn, at least in passing. (They would know him as "Baird.")
- Other children in Stormwind City in the time period from post-Second War to the year 15 might have been acquainted with him. (They might have known him as "Reckoning." A socially-inconspicuous nickname did not occur to him until later.)
Appearance
Baird is a lean, athletic young man who stands just under six feet tall. He has clear, blue-gray eyes and a steady gaze that can be disconcerting; he tends to stare when he is thinking about something, and it is easy for people to assume they are being stared at when in fact they are being stared through.
(Although sometimes he's staring because he's listening. See note below.)
He has a sailor's tan, and his shock of curly hair is naturally a golden brown but has been bleached by sun and salt to an uneven ash-streaked blond. He wears it short in an effort to keep the curls situation under control; as a consequence, however, he tends to be cowlicky.
He has a few tattoos, the most evident of which are the black kraken wrapped around his left forearm, the bracelet of rope around his right wrist, and the small pair of crossed cannons inked on the web between his left thumb and forefinger. On his right bicep is an anchor with a banner that reads A ship in a harbor is safe; on his back is a tattoo of the Wind-wise, his first ship, with the inscription I am the captain of my soul.
Personality
UNSWERVING ⬥ DELIBERATE ⬥ KEEN ⬥ CURIOUS
Bryn Baird is thinking.
That's a pretty evergreen observation. Bryn's a thinker. He doesn't talk much but it isn't because he's shy: It's because he's thinking. He looks at the logic; he considers all the angles. When he has an opinion or a conclusion, he has no problem letting you know, and if he thinks you're wrong he'll tell you so, plainly and reasonably. Bryn is the one his crewmates — even his much older crewmates — bring disputes to, because they trust he will hear them out fully and mediate fairly. He keeps his head in situations where other tempers flare, and his calm can be contagious, his rationality reassuring.
Despite the surface impression, he is not staid. As a sharpshooter and sniper, Bryn has learned to be patient, be still, wait for his moment, and then pull the trigger coolly and without hesitation. That is his nature in a nutshell: patient control, focused intensity.
He is quietly ambitious — as evidenced by his steady, dogged climb from deckhand to officer — and absolutely devours knowledge. It is a quality that has helped him in his advancement, but it wasn't calculated for that purpose: He is naturally, insatiably interested in learning almost anything about anything. He is both an autodidact and something of an accidental polymath, picking up information in passing like burrs; he's also the sort of guy who, if you tell him a cool fact about whales, will immediately go to the library and check out three books on the natural history of cetaceans. He now needs All the Whale Facts. Not to regale anyone with them; just to know them.
It's a trait that can make him unexpectedly helpful when someone is confronted with a novel problem: "Baird probably knows" is something of a refrain among his fellows.
BRYN IS CURRENTLY IN A ROMANCE.
History
Reckoning Brynnal Baird was born in Hillsbrad in 3 ADP.
His parents, Bryson and Vira Baird, were Stormwind natives forced to flee north like so many of their countrymen when their homeland fell to the orcs. When their firstborn child arrived during their northern exile, Vira — being both a patriot and a woman of intemperate feeling — saddled him with the first name Reckoning.
(His little sister, who arrived a couple of years later when things were beginning to look up, is Liberty Bryling Baird.)
Tragically, Vira would not live to see Reckoning and Liberty come to Stormwind; she passed away from lingering complications three days after little Liberty's birth. When the Alliance at last freed the south, Bryson Baird brought his two small children home to Stormwind alone.
Bryson was a master joiner and skilled carpenter, and had little trouble finding work in the recovering kingdom. One job he won not long after his return to Stormwind was in the restoration of a manor house on the coast south of the city; the noble line that held the estate previously had been tragically cut short by the orcs, and the ruins had passed into the hands of a newly-ennobled Kul Tiran Admiral.
A number of the tradesman with whom Bryson worked on the renovation of Fallon House were Tirasian shipwrights and stonemasons, simultaneously involved in the construction of the shipyard and village south of the estate where they would be settling long-term. Bryson made friends among the foreign craftsmen, and the job not only paid well but was ideal for a single father: childcare came free courtesy of the Kul Tiran laborers' wives and sisters, who obligingly looked after his children along with their own. The lovely Phryne Tarrant, sister of shipwright Arne Tarrant, was particularly obliging.
In the year 15, three years after Fallon House and Harbor had been completed and Bryson had resumed work in the city, the refusal of the Stormwind House of Nobles to fully compensate the stonemasons involved in the city's reconstruction led to widespread labor unrest. Unrest turned to riots, riots led to the death of the young Queen Tiffin, and Bryson decided that Stormwind City was no longer a comfortable place to be. He moved his little family south to Fallon Harbor, where the shipwrights were only too pleased to have a familiar carpenter of proven skill join their ranks and the lovely Phryne Tarrant was only too pleased to become the lovely Phryne Baird.
Young Reckoning was twelve years old when they moved to Fallon Harbor, and he found himself at home immediately. He remembered the place happily from his childhood visits and was soon roaming the docks and scrambling inadvisably around the shipyard and swimming and diving and rowing with his Kul Tiran peers like he'd been born in Boralus. (His peers also suggested, with the compassionate tact of adolescents everywhere, that he should perhaps go by something other than "Reckoning," and thus he became "Bryn.")
When the Admiral's gallant and much-admired son Siamus was promoted to post captain in year 19 and given command of the ship Wind-wise, Bryn managed to wedge a place aboard for himself as an ordinary seaman. He was 16 years old.
In the wake of the bloody events at Theramore, when Captain Fallon made the fateful decision to stay with Stormwind and feelings on all sides were running high, there was some resentful muttering on the lower decks. Bryn — Stormwind native, adopted Kul Tiran — stepped in calmly to talk down at least one burgeoning mutiny.
He was still a teenager.
Bryn worked his way up quietly and steadily: from ordinary to able seaman, then to gunner's mate, and then, by the time of the Northrend campaign, to gunner. During the reorganization of the fleet in the aftermath of the Cataclysm, he made the jump from warrant officer to officer when now-Admiral Fallon promoted him to Second Lieutenant of the Lady Blanche. As a sailor who became an officer by working his way up through the seamen's ranks rather than by any shortcut of privilege, Lieutenant Baird is widely respected by his crewmates aboard the Blanche despite his youth. He has a reputation for unflinching, clear-eyed reason and steady temperament, a knack for problem-solving and mediation, and a sturdy loyalty to the Admiral and the fleet.
He is also a crack sharpshooter.
Birthday: July 9th, 3 ADP
Relationships
| Captain Fallon Study. Use of a sextant; Arnaud’s Spherical Trigonometry; Greene’s Atlas of Tirasian History; categories of navy service medals and awards; wind and weather portents. |
| Lt. Shine Study. Forbes’ Guide to Signals; Alliance Military Code of Conduct; rules of poker; “Boatman, thrice I’ve called thee o’er, / Waiting on life’s solemn shore.” |
| Captain Eulysses Reeve Study. Harte’s Gilnean Maritime History; facts about the worgen curse; species of toxic plant. |
| Duchess Esprit Parlor. Fouchard’s Kings of Lordaeron; forms of address; archaic devices of torture; Emleur’s painting “The Winter Queen”; varieties of pineapple. |
| Lady Cressidha Aspenwood Parlor. “A sad tale's best for winter: I have one of sprites and goblins”; types of hand stitches; Veauchard’s painting “The Mirror’d Maid”; how ice wine is made. |
| Mrs. Shine (formerly Miss Coit) Library. Map of Northrend coastal waters; lyrics to “A-Roving” (“In Theramore there lived a maid…”); traditional folklore hexes and charms of the northern kingdoms; the mogu dynasties. |
| Janice Mattingly Library. “Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair”; history of the printing press; species of herding dogs; Varrin’s Ellyn Swift detective series. |
| Woe Grimlocke Den. Anthology of Classical Poetry; taxonomy of crustaceans, cephalopods, and echinoderms; artillery weights and bores; “Across a world where all men grieve / And grieving strive the more”; cold-hardy vegetables. |
| Sil Sullivan Silentstep Den. Morrow's Beginner's Sleight of Hand; Trade District patrol routes of the Stormwind Guard (ca. year 12 ADP); how to pick a lock; several (not very) dirty jokes; Boy's Adventure magazine. |
| Bryling Baird Breakfast room. “The sister-pest”; “And give my rage a brother – Liberty!”; four ways to braid hair; “The fog comes / on little cat feet”; A Child’s Treasury of Rhyme; recipe for sugar cookies; how to throw a punch; limpets and periwinkles. |
| Ralaea Westwind Breakfast room. Henrich’s Principles of Combat; varieties of apples; “East of the Sun and West of the Moon”; species of deciduous trees. |
| Captain Skylarke Hothouse. Cultivation and varieties of oranges; species of tropical flower; 12 K.T.C. § 370 (Kul Tiran laws on piracy); Tomkin’s Lady Wilde series (banned in Stormwind). |
| Aszera Swiftstrike Conservatory. Nightbloom’s Fall of Queen Azshara (explicit version); legendary swords of the quel’dorei; stars in the constellation Huntress; “Without name or creed or people.” |
| Sir Dane Atley Courtyard. Troy’s Arathi Kings and Conquerors; characteristics of red soils and clay; “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”; techniques for folding steel. |
| Colson Aspenwood Courtyard. The Three Virtues; Soren’s Dreams of Mereldar; the fire assay method for gold; cultural history of silverware. |
| Bishop Mordecai Aspenwood Garden. “See how everything / we have made gathers / the light inside itself / and overflows?”; Terne’s Cathedral Architecture; species of moths; difference between choux and shortcrust pastry; marigolds. |
| Kaerix Garden. Cultivation of irises; taxonomy of migratory species; names of stars in the constellation Water-Bearer; “Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change.” |
| Melancholy Grimlocke Garden. “Ay, in the very temple of Delight / Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine”; species of night-blooming flowers; species of rose; “She blushed as fair, as lovely too — / The living rose of morning”; apiculture and honey; history of the bicycle; facts about the albatross; “they were delicious / so sweet / and so cold.” |
| Theris Lysander Cellar. “When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, / They shall have stars at elbow and foot”; the phenomenon of eyeshine in nocturnal predators; Tomoe’s painting “Youth at Dusk”; the four states of matter. |
| Caspis Silvershade Attic. “One for sorrow, two for mirth”; Moonscythe’s Ancient Forests; condors and vultures; hibernatory species; hallucinogenic mushrooms. |
| Shun Kuroda Secret staircase. Bain’s Assassin Crow stories; how to treat a snakebite; “Who has seen the wind? / Neither you nor I”; igneous rocks. |
| Gwenivene Whittle Foyer. Mrs. Fizzle’s Magic Carpet books; shades of green; species of garden and tree frogs; “Doors forget but only doors know what it is / doors forget.” |
Writings
| Title | Summary |
|---|---|
| (2026-05-15) Little Melancholy's Suitor | Lt. Baird writes to the Grimlockes. |
| (2026-05-06) Unmoving, Pt. 2 | Bryn Baird has made a decision, and reports back to Captain Fallon with a request. Captain Fallon contacts his wife with a request of his own. |
| (2026-04-29) Unmoving | Lt. Baird returns to the ship to consult with his captain. Neither of them is happy about it. |
| (2026-04-26) Care Package | Bryling Baird sends a care package to her brother Bryn. |
| (2026-04-19) Grateful for your Insight | Cressidha Aspenwood receives a thank you note. |
| (2026-03-24) Facts About Albatrosses | Shine runs into Baird and finds himself accidentally in a high school poetry and/or ornithology seminar. Fun fact about albatrosses: the plural really is albatrosses. |
| (2026-03-09) There Will Be Blood | Siamus responds to the news from home. His response is, perhaps, not nuanced. |
| (2026-02-21) Target Acquired | Admiral Fallon has an assignment for his 2nd Lieutenant. |
| (2026-02-18) Poetry Lessons | Bryn Baird has diverse interests. |