Defender General Sally Williams
Current Status: Permanently MIA.
Portrait:
Physical Description: Tall, muscular, and possessing an simultaneously imposing and distant air, Defender General Sally Williams carries herself head and shoulders above most men. Her facial expressions are almost always that of cold austerity, matched by her gray hair and wizened female features. Her voice carries with it a tone of arctic command, and her eyes are almost always narrowed with a combination of both principled judgment and pragmatic, militaristic calculation. She is never seen out of her Defender uniform. She carries a large sword on her back, and a blade the size of an arm-and-a-half at her hip.
Public Knowledge: Sally Williams was one of the former Captain Talbot Anderson's lieutenants, alongside Carl Tusker and Jean Taschereau. When Anderson was defeated and slain on grounds of treason, Federic Del'Rosa promoted Sally to Captain by the recommendation of Peltarchian adventurers. During the grand meeting to decide Anderson's fate, Sally was the only voice pleading for a military trial rather than execution on the field. Peltarch's heroes, encouraged by Guard Captain Oscar Halbrook, instead chose to slay Anderson on sight for his crimes. Being the sole voice to have asked for such mercy has led many to question Sally's loyalty to the Crown, wondering if her true allegiance rested with the traitor and rebel would-be usurper Anderson. These suspicions are only exacerbated by rumors that she confronted the traitor during the raid on Anderson's creche-forge rebel base in combat, and lost, but was nevertheless spared by her former Captain.
Her compatriots in the Defenders know her as a proficient swords-woman and a capable leader. She is known to cast a variety of combat enhancements using divine magic. Few know who her deity is, for she rarely gives sermons or lectures. Close observers note that the backside of her gauntlets sport the symbol of a staring eye with blue pupil. There is talk that she began her career in the Order of the Divine Shield, and transferred to the ranks of the Defenders a decade or so ago. Some soldiers have complained that her protocols are too strict. She is known to disallow with harsh, physical reprimand any forms of post-battle reprisals against foes defeated by her regiment that go beyond the necessities of current objectives. This holds true be the defeated foes bandits, uprising satellite towns, or foreign armies, and holds true even for the typical spoils and pleasures of war such as the property, land, women and wives of the conquered. During her tenure as Captain, soldiers called her "the stiff Captain," or "the boring one," though never to her face.
She is known to have a rivalry with Guard Captain Oscar Halbrook, the two often butting heads in areas of concurrent jurisdiction due to their divergent methods and perspectives.
More recently, Williams was chosen by Defender General Del'rosa to be his successor following his retirement. Del'rosa was, apparently, insistent that it be Williams, and none of the other Captains.
Following a sequence of bandit attacks on the city, as well as the Trial of Reyhenna Jorino, Defender General Sally Williams has vanished and the public does not know where she is or whether she is even alive.
Thematic Music:
Vigilance and ire.
