Jane

The man’s hands drove deeper. Had he not resisted, Tarbus was certain he would have oozed out of himself and into an undignified puddle upon the floor. He could not recall the last time he had been touched so fiercely yet with such kind intention. Since the raid upon his tribe – his last contact with men, he supposed, and how dreadfully that had ended! – Tarbus had kept decidedly to himself. 

Begrudgingly, he relaxed a fraction beneath the masseuse’s hands. The conversation certainly helped to distract Tarbus. “Yes, it’s much better than the games. Although I’d sooner there were no chariots.” 

Galloping along upon horseback was far superior, but Tarbus scarcely had chance to explain as much. If he had not been touched so in some time, if ever, then the compliment (was it a compliment, or was he mocked) proved more disarming still. 

It had not escaped his notice that the masseuse was a handsome man. Different: well-built, but hardly rough ‘round the edges like those Tarbus was accustomed to. Just as, er, vigorous. 

“Well,” Tarbus was began, willing his voice not to sound as strained as he felt his breath in his throat, “it is quite… hard.” Gods save him. “I s’pose both of us work up quite a sweat.”

@leely

Beyond the boundaries of the tent, sounds of the camp stumbling to life coaxed Tarbus loose from his fitful doze. Sleep had not been generous to come to him as he both wished and required it, but in many ways, he thought himself fortunate for that. 

For in the night, memory invaded bearing the cloak of dreams. Nightmares, in truth. At length, Tarbus considered himself a resilient man; he had not endured great hardships in his life, beyond the minor scrapes and miscellaneous incidents that a boy whose destiny was to become a warrior must endure, but he considered himself made of stern stuff. Like the iron that had lacerated him – betrayed him – brought him to this gods-forsaken place.

And how undignified was such a fate. The ropes that bound Tarbus bore fiercely into his flesh. He felt rather like a pig strung up before the fire, to be gutted and devoured. With his arm sliced to ribbons, he certainly looked it. 

It might’ve been appropriate, then, to suffer embarrassment before the Roman who stood before him now. The man’s gaze was vexing: Tarbus glared beneath the weight of the sweeping, appraising look, but doing so was insufficient. The water they had provided had been scarcely enough to wet his tongue, never mind erase the filth that had been ingrained into every pore of his skin. 

Jaw clenched and tight, Tarbus continued to glare till the bloke at last piped up. 

“I’d say you could release me from these binds, but I won’t waste my breath,” he sneered. Instead, Tarbus demanded, “What have you done with my family?” Likely, he would not know any more than Tarbus did – every triumph was the same, he supposed – but asking was all that stood between Tarbus and utter helplessness. 

@Liv

Ah, yes. The boy’s tongue. Tarbus did not know what misfortune had befallen Azarion in the time that preceded his arrival in Rome, but he did not doubt, either, that it was an agonising ordeal. If Tarbus’s own suffering had been keen, both psychologically and physically, then he conceded that it was nothing set against Azarion’s terrible loss. His own scars would heal and perhaps one day he might wield a sword again; Azarion would surely not speak again. 

It did not surprise Tarbus that Azarion had found some solace in caring for the horses here: a shred of familiarity, perhaps, the likes of which Tarbus had been keen to retain himself.

He followed the boy’s gaze. “The horses?” For a moment, Tarbus paused, attempting to parse his meaning. Was it not so bad because of the horses? Did it prevent him from working efficiently with them? He settled upon the latter. “I’m fortunate that it doesn’t affect my work with them. I’ve been around them since I was a boy. My father was the stable-master for our tribe. I s’pose I would’ve taken after him, if it weren’t for… Well.” He gave another shrug, his expression rather more grim this time. 

@Chevi

His life had been one marked by scars, though few of them had caused him as much anguish as the one that curled like a viper around his arm. When his fingers went to brush the leathered skin there, Tarbus endured in brutal flashes the day that had snatched his freedom away. Ferried around like a prized slab of meat, rather than a man. 

The bruises and nicks and wounds gained during the natural life of a warrior was nothing beside that great monstrosity, then. Tarbus supposed a fellow slave, even one as young as Azarion, must understand better than most. 

“My tribe was attacked,” he explained. That much was likely obvious. “By Romans. I tried to protect my family, to fight back, but… Well, this happened. I was brought here after that.” 

Those days had passed in a bleak, painful blur. Much of Tarbus’s time in Rome had eddied along in a similar manner, though much of the sting that he endued was the indignity of it all. The physical pain in his arm had abated, though the same could not be said for his pride. 

With that, Tarbus withdrew his arm and shrugged: a jaunty thing, aided by a crooked, sheepish smile. “It isn’t as bad as it looks,” he said, though in truth he thought it far worse. 

@Chevi

The thought of a lady prancing around Rome’s cobbled streets on a horse named Ferox was positively laughable. As the masseuse rubbed oil into his shoulders, Tarbus was distracted enough by the vision for a smirk to curl onto his expression rather than the jolt of alarm that almost certainly would have followed instead. 

Proudly, as ever, he lifted his chin. “Certainly not. I train the charioteers and their horses. For the races. For Factonis Album.”

That he could ever derive some pride from the fate that had been forced upon him was as repugnant as accepting a massage from a Roman sycophant, but with some resignation, Tarbus acknowledged that he was a mite boastful of his achievements with the faction. After all, his years as a boy had been marked by his father’s efforts in the tribe’s stables. Such sandals had been fairly large to fill, but Tarbus considered himself triumphant. 

Then, the masseuse’s fingers dug fiercely – satisfyingly – into a particularly fearsome knot in his shoulder. Tarbus grunted and subsequently flushed scarlet.

“Have you been to see the races?” He asked through gritted teeth. Concentrating upon his work would be the closest thing to distraction he could attain with the other man’s fingers so… slick, gods, on his back. 

@leely

Warily, Tarbus approached the low couch and did as he was bidden. Sitting before the man so pliantly felt disarming; he found himself ashamed by how promptly he had followed instructions, by a man no more his superior than the sodding stable boys. Evidently, Rome had already taken its toll. He had endured the yoke of the city for far too long. 

The baths had once performed for Tarbus the precarious act of salving at least a fraction of his worries. These ones in particular were favoured by ordinary folk to such an extent that Tarbus considered it a lagoon of respite in the city he had grown to despise so fiercely. To him, Rome was the beacon of all he had striven to fight. That he continued to conspire against. 

Getting a fucking massage, then, made him positively Roman. 

As if to protest his reluctance, Tarbus’s back gave a fierce twinge. He grimaced. “It’s tense all over, really, but I think I pulled it a bit earlier. It’s near my shoulder, really. Ferox was being an irritating bastard,” he grumbled. The horse would be a fearsome opponent to train, but even more fearsome a competitor once he made it onto the tracks.  

@leely

Yes, that was it: Tarbus hadn’t liked the thought of being tied up, either. It struck him as a morbidly shrewd representation of what he felt in Rome anyway, without adding literal binds to the equation. Slaves bound to chariots, to horses, roaring towards a precarious victory (if they were so lucky). Were it not for his work with the horses, Tarbus would have scorned his own fate, working for the racing factions.
 
Azarion, at least, understood that. Hadn’t been absorbed into that life with promises of riches and glory, or not yet, anyway.
 
Tarbus followed the boy’s gaze towards the chariots. His brow furrowed.
 
“I don’t think I could stand racing one of those,” Tarbus confessed. He could hold his own in one by the necessity of training the charioteers, but careening around the track in one, tied to his death, struck him as deeply alarming. “Besides,” he continued, “I’m not sure how good I’d be in the long run with this damned thing.”
 
The short sleeves of his tunic fell back further as Tarbus lifted his right arm, displaying the vicious scars that wound like bands around his flesh. It was the reason he hadn’t been simply shoved into the colosseum, after all, and why he was reluctant to enter into those treacherous races, too.

@Chevi

Of all the peculiarities of Rome that Tarbus had been forced to navigate, the thermae were amongst the more pleasant. As a boy he had grown accustomed to a frigid dunk in the river or in the rear of the stables: less of a luxury, but far more efficient than the lengthy pilgrimage through the bloody baths. In the beginning, Tarbus had been quite alarmed. 

Soon enough, however, the disconcerting stretch of dithering and bathing and lounging (not to mention the scrubbing) had been mitigated by the bone-deep satisfaction it afforded Tarbus after a long week with the horses. At times it felt that the dirt he accumulated could not be eroded by mere mortal hands. Fortunately, those at the thermae seemed in possession of loftier digits. 

Never, though, had Tarbus strayed towards the masseuses. The thought of them touching him so—Augh! He grew hot at the thought. He could not bear it. 

It’d been a long week, however. A handful of the newer purchases (horses, not slaves, though Tarbus was chagrined to find that the distinction grew ever narrower) were pesky blighters: Ferox and Astutus lived up to their nomenclatures, it seemed. The former had tugged ferociously against the reins that morning; Tarbus’s back was subsequently smarting. 

Reluctantly, Tarbus trailed towards the brightly clothed masseuse and admitted, “My back. The horses were troubling me this morning.” He considered it a challenge to be overcome, not shied from, but he could only do so when his bloody back didn’t pain him so. 

@leely

Tarbus knew little of the lad who stood before him. He knew, vaguely, that Azarion was young, though maltreatment had apparently stunted him. Not for the first time since arriving in Rome, then, Tarbus was grateful for the privilege that years of freedom had afforded him. Strange: he felt better equipped to fight, somehow, or to resist, even if both were impractical. 

Between himself and Azarion, Tarbus knew little of what they had in common. Perhaps that didn’t matter. The horses were apparently enough. 

“With great difficulty sometimes,” Tarbus replied with a grin to that final gesture. The four horses. How unnatural it had seemed to him, at first. Only by necessity had he grown accustomed to it. “I don’t understand why they can’t just ride the poor things properly. Race them properly. Why involve the chariots?” 

Still, they were easier to sabotage. 

But none of that. Not here. “It’s more difficult to feel the horses that way, but I think you have an advantage anyway, knowing them like you do,” Tarbus decided. Some of the charioteers who’d emerged, ready (or not, as the case often was) to be trained, were damned useless.

@Chevi

February 75CE

But for the steady huff of the horses’ breath in the heady air around him, Tarbus felt – as ever in these stables – that he was alone, a novel sensation in a city that swirled with intrigue and interference. By rights, his time was not his own these days. The shackles of ownership steered him, mostly, even if he had been released at least partially to the finer act of training horses and riders. 

Charioteers, rather. 

In truth, Tarbus did not understand the Romans’ compulsion toward chariots. They were dangerous, as most man-made things were in the end, and one could not feel the beast beneath him in those great, monstrous contraptions. Perhaps that was why Tarbus had resisted racing himself, though the pulse of promised glory lingered as a temptation. Training others and seeing, at least partially, his hand in their victory would suffice. For now. 

The crunch and rustle of footsteps amongst the hay drew his attention from the warm flank of the gelding to which he currently tended. In the illuminated light of the doorway stood the scrawny figure of the stable boy. 

Tarbus turned. “Azarion,” he piped up in greeting and lifted an eyebrow. “Had enough of racing the chariots, have we?”

@Chevi

Tarbus

Dacian Slave - Horse Trainer - Application

Once a prideful warrior in his Dacian tribe, the life of a slave has proven difficult for Tarbus to grow accustomed to. His life was marked by freedom and by the wilderness, running free as the horses his family once cared for. He considers it a bitter irony now that he trains the beasts captured by Romans to race for them just as Tarbus must do their bidding, through no choice of his own. Captured as he defended his wife, child, and cousin, Tarbus was sold to Titus Sulpicius Rufus and was then leased to  Factonis Album due to his history and subsequently great skill with horses.

Defiant and reckless, Tarbus's temper prickles just beneath the surface, ever liable to burst free. He is keenly disgruntled by the fact he's been subjected to a life of slavery, not least by those who slaughtered his wife and son. His anger has been placated only faintly by his work with the racing factions - and if only because it gives him the opportunity, so he thinks, to earn his freedom. The betting scams amongst the local gangs were quick to seize his notice; Tarbus has begun to get involved with rigging races here and there in order to earn enough coin to get himself and his family out of Rome. 

I'm happy to plot here or over Discord (chthonics#1306)! 

Tarbus

35 | 2nd November 40CE| Slave | Horse Trainer | Homosexual | Wanted | Michael Fassbender

Personality.

The shackles of slavery are reprehensible to a man like Tarbus, a once fiercely proud warrior confined now to a life of indignity. Throughout him courses the spirit of rebellion, a reckless streak that had ignited him long before his tribe were dominated by the Romans. Like his brother, Tarbus was raised to be a warrior and that fighting spirit persists even despite the injuries he sustained defending his tribe. Although he can no longer fight, the sentiment persists, as bright as ever – or more so. 

Tarbus’s fitful energy is tempered only by a fervent desire to protect those he deems family. In the past, this has been confined to his tribe, but the longer he spends in Rome, the further these tendrils stretch. His defiance at facing the shame of slavery has forced in him a keen kinship with fellow slaves – whilst also stoking a disdain for those who presume to own them. 

Beyond the bulwark of furious defiance and sharp temper, then, Tarbus is good-hearted, good-humoured, and a stout friend. He holds justice close; his moral compass generally rings true, even if he has a tendency to march to the beat of his own drum. He’s an easy friend to make at the popinae, favouring a ribald humour and with a fondness for plenty of wine. Even if his sheer desperation to be free of slavery and to save his family from a similar fate steers him into dubious activities at times, Tarbus is an inherently good man. 

Appearance

A tall, well-built man, Tarbus strikes the intimidating figure that chimes every inch the warrior he once was. That he still strives to be. He holds himself tall and proud, more often than not with a disgruntled, defiant scowl set into his dark brow. Were it not for his injury, he would be a natural fit for a gladiator. Indeed, standing at over 6’0” Tarbus would have made a memorable figure upon the sands of the colosseum. Instead, he maintains his strength and fitness training the horses and riders for Factionis Album.

Thanks to his work with the racing factions, Tarbus’s skin is peppered with a persistent blanket of scars and bruises. Most apparent, however, is the injury he sustained to his sword-arm, striving to defend his family from the invading Romans. Brutal lacerations drive waxy scars across the length of his right arm. But for that, his skin is weather-beaten and sun-marred. His work largely takes place under the beating sun and it’s well apparent.

Beyond that, Tarbus is a handsome enough man. His nose sports the marks of having been broken a dozen times over, but his broad, crooked grin and bright blue eyes have some charm about them. His chin is often poorly shaven – not much stock in a slave’s appearance when he’s lathered in the filth of the stables, more often than not – and his auburn hair is cropped short but tousled. Between that and the simple, well-worn tunics he wears, Tarbus evidently isn’t a man who places much stock in his appearance.

Family

Father: Rubobostes (of the Appuli tribe) - deceased.

Mother: Bendis (first wife of Rubobostes) - alive.

Siblings:

Duccidava (elder sister, married to a warrior of the Appuli) - alive.

Duras (elder brother, warrior of the Appuli) - deceased.

Spouse: Semele (of the Ratacenses tribe, eastern Dacia) - deceased.

Children: Oroles (son, born 65 CE) - deceased.

Extended family:

Nieces and nephews by his siblings. 

Zia (cousin)

Diegis (cousin-in-law)

Other: Titus Sulpicius Rufus & Valeria Flacca (owners)

History

CHILDHOOD:
Tarbus was born as the third child – and second son – to Rubobostes of the Appuli tribe (a fierce warrior and the tribe’s stablemaster) and his first and only wife, Bendis. His elder siblings, particularly his brother, Duras, welcomed to their younger brother, having often envied the fuller families of their tribe mates. Tarbus’s childhood was a happy one, spent brawling and sparring with Duras or, as soon as he was able, helping his father with the horses. Their gentle strength swiftly appealed to him as an ideal foil to Tarbus’s rapidly gathering sense of adventure and haphazardness; without the responsibilities of being the family’s first-born son, like Duras, he found great joy in the freedom of the tribe. His spirit from an early age was one prone to running loose, often on the back of one of his father’s horses.

Throughout his childhood, both Tarbus and his elder brother dreamed of following their father into battle, despite their mother’s chiding. Having lost many of her own family members to war, seeing her boys off into the wilderness just as she did her husband was almost reprehensible, despite the courage and honour that it brought. The ambition soon drew to a crashing, predictable halt when their father was killed in battle. Life swiftly changed for them all and Tarbus moved into adolescence with a rising temper. 

ADOLESCENCE:
Swiftly, Duras took over the running of the stables, having apprenticed under Rubobostes for long enough that his boots were not too daunting to fill. As his brother was forced to swiftly grow up, so too was Tarbus, and he took with him a cloak of fierce resentment, too. Life amongst the Appuli continued otherwise normally, though without his partner in crime to spar with, Tarbus turned to the other boys of the tribe to keep him company. Tsinna, an elder lad whose father had fought with Tarbus’s own, became his favourite. 

In the beginning, it was as Tarbus missed dearly with his brother: sparring together, play-fighting, taking the horses out along the river. Before long, teenage curiosity led to an inevitable exploration. Sooner still, Tarbus fell: head over heels. 

How strange, it was, to love another another man. Boy, really. There was shame in it: not that it was another man, but the things he allowed Tsinna to do to him. That was the thing: when he looked at Tsinna and when his thoughts drifted to those ideas, the sort his brother had joked about with women alone, Tarbus could not bring himself to mind. They left along the river frequently, hidden amongst the copses and the bushes and the rest of the wilderness, that did not judge, and that bowed comfortingly around him when Tsinna, bastard that he was, shoved Tarbus away one day with a punch. 

Why do you let me do that, he snarled, the passion in his frown recast as a scowl of disgust. Like a woman, he spat. You're a man now, Tsinna insisted, when his fist crunched agaist Tarbus's nose. And he was, though it had taken an awfully long time to realise it. They were men. It wasn't right for a man to—

Tarbus bit his tongue and fought back: the first of many. The brawls were no longer in jest. Perhaps they never had been.

It was just as well, in the end, that Tarbus and his sister, Duccidava, were sent along with their cousins to safety with their family in the Caucoense tribe. A fresh start, that was all he needed. He was a man now, after all: time for a family and time to cease hauling his family into disrepute. Besides, there was the well-being of the rest of his family to consider. With another tribe, in other lands, there was nothing to help him recall Tsinna but the babbling waters they passed and the crooked rise of his broken nose that looked back, cross and hurt and ever resentful.

ADULTHOOD:
Only three years later saw their return to Apulum, though it was not to last. Uncle Brindis, chief of the Appuli, was understandably concerned with standing defiant and strong against Roman aggression, despite the war that claimed Tarbus’s father and brother having drawn to a close. An close alliance with another tribe was natural. Understandable. Sensible. And, faced with the opportunity to defend rather than shame his family again, Tarbus was all too glad to follow his cousin, Zia, to the Ratacenses tribe.

Surcea brought with it a precarious happiness. Gone were the tendrils that bound Tarbus’s anger to his family and to his childhood home. To Tsinna. His marriage to Semele was a swift one, steered by the impetus of protecting his cousin, but as far as wives went, Tarbus was pleased: she was a fine fit for him, with a bite as sharp as his own, and he enjoyed her company enough (even if she was not entirely his heart’s desire) that their first child was soon on the way. To both of their delight, their son, Oroles, was brought strong and heathy into the world.

The peace wasn’t to last. Where occupation lies, there’s sure to be conflict. Where Zia and her new husband, Diegis, were concerned, it seemed ironically conducive to peace.
He cautioned against their plans. Of course he did. The reckless, furious young man of years gone by had ducked his head for his family: his young lad, his wife, his legacy. Invariably, and till the end of his days, Tarbus defended their efforts even when others disapproved. He warned against them, always, but when Rome’s aggression burst into a celebratory feast, he felt a grim, vexing sense of inevitability. On its heels, anger rose, fierce and terrible and inevitable. The brutal deaths of Semele and Oroles.

The screams and the terror drove through to his heart through the long slog to Rome; with every jostle and every barked order, the physical and mental bruises chimed savagely of memories Tarbus would rather have forgotten. 

First: the peace of the feast lacerated by the sudden, terrible violence. Next: the disorienting haste as he leapt to his feet, sword in hand, and the unending rage that flooded his chest and his stomach and every damnable fibre of his being. Then: in the ensuing struggle, the awful pain in his arm, and the blood, and the sudden blackness. 

Tarbus awoke to darkness and to agony. After that, the months passed in misery. By 75CE, having passed his 35th birthday under the yoke of slavery, the fury mutated. The freedom of his youth is tethered, ironically, forever to his heart; Tarbus is not a man to idly suffer slavery. Although his talents with horses were quickly realised, leading to his lease to Factonis Album as a horse-trainer, the work leads only to recollection of his youth, riding free with his tribe. He’ll be damned if he’s to linger in Rome as a slave for too long. Of late, he has come to the conclusion that the solution, if not his future, lies in the only form of defiance he can conceivably achieve in his current situation: aiding the Lupii of Roma in their betting scams. After all, he has the privilege of working closer than anyone with the horses of the racing factions. Influencing the betting scams is not exactly the flawless moral high ground that Tarbus would prefer, but he considers it a means to the end. After all, plotting and scheming to their advantage has long been a family trait. 

Jane | GMT | Discord

@Gothic

@Sara Thanks! Ah, excellent, I won't be too out of place then. As for books... Hmm, I guess that depends on what you're into! I've been reading a lot of sci-fi at the moment; I'm re-reading The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, which is one of my all-time favourites. I also recently finished Normal People by Sally Rooney, which was excellent if you're into more general fiction. 

@Liv Thanks for the welcome! Well, I'm a sucker for playing dwarves, haha, so always a dwarf. At the moment I have a barbarian, a monk, and a cleric. I think barbarians are my favourite, as it speaks to my love of hot-headed but good-hearted characters, haha. Also, spells are complicated! You'll have to let me know how Curse of Strahd is; I've been itching to play that for ages. 

@Atrice Hello! Oo I have a friend who's an archaeologist, too. It looks like such a cool job! Thanks for the warm welcome

@Sharpie Hi there! Oh wow, that's awesome. I have to say, I'm always tempted to sit in on some of the ancient history lectures at uni... though I'm scared they'll ask me a question! XD Thanks, and I'm looking forward to getting involved too!

Hello! I'm Jane. I've been lowkey lurking here for weeks, but couldn't resist any longer. I've been roleplaying for about ten years now and through all of that I've been a massive sucker for historical sites. My go-to is definitely 20th-century history, but I'm excited to try something new! I'm from the UK where I'm currently studying for an English Lit MA, so I guess that makes me an amateur historian (like the best of us XD). Other than that, I'm really into D&D, gaming, and books (naturally). All books. My goal this year is to read my height in them. 

As a side note, is there a working link to the site Discord? The widget doesn't seem to work and I couldn't find a link elsewhere. Thanks, and nice to meet you all!