Benwyn Aristad

Sir Benwyn Aristad is a former landed knight currently in service to Lord Jason Ryder and the Ryder Family. He is currently quartered in Falador looking for recruits for Lord Jason's knighthood. He is played by Aristad.

General
Benwyn was born to the low noble Aristad family in the year 126 of the Fifth Age. His father was an advisor to the Duke and his mother was a socialite and courtier. Benwyn was bepaged at age six to the Duke's brother, Sir Amory Renlis. Amory was killed in a skirmish with a swamp goblin clan, cutting Benwyn's squirehood short and preventing him from being fully recognized as a knight of the court. This unusual status of 'half-knight' drove the better part of his actions for the next twenty years, driving him to make irrational decisions in order to gain the acceptance of his peers and local lords.

The Aristad Family
At age 23, Benwyn wed his first and only wife; a noble lady come to the duke's court from Ardougne, Lady Isilreth. Not long afterward, his father died of natural causes. Benwyn had felt that he had never impressed him, stuck always a few rungs below full knighthood. In truth, hey had never thought less of him, and he was generally accepted to be a knight, whether or not he truly held the title. At age thirty, the couple had their first child, Rayell. A year later, Isilreth gave birth to a daughter, Iseult. The Aristad family colors are red and gold, and their sigil is a blood-red horse passant on a golden field.

The Arnham War
Not long after the birth of his second child, one of the more prevalent houses at the duke's court, House Arnham grew restless of it's rather low standing and attempted to assassinate the duke and take control of Lumbridge county for themselves. While they did not succeed in killing the duke, many of his court attendees were cut down as the assassins made their way through the crowd, including Benwyn's now aged mother. As a result of this, Sir Benwyn and his bannermen rallied around that of the near-deposed duke. The result was a small scale, year-long war that took the lives of 1,000 fighting men and uncounted peasantry. The most notable battle of this war was the Battle of the Lum, in which Arnham forces, harbored by the Kharidians, attempted to cross the Lum and lay siege to Lumbridge. Sir Benwyn rode at the head of what would come to be known as "The Charge of the Militiamen", leading a group of ragged conscripts behind the Arnham forces and taking them by surprise in a thunderous charge. Amazingly, he sustained only minor wounds during the battle, and returned to his worried wife unharmed, if shaken.

The Black Lips Massacres
Three years ago, Benwyn returned to his stead from a routine visit to the duke's court to find his home charred and his servants slaughtered, lining the road in front. He entered the smoking remains of his estate to find his wife flayed, his son quartered, and his daughter missing. He gathered what servantry had hidden, armed them, and rode out into the night to find who had taken his life. Evidence gathered from wine halls on the road suggested The Black Lips, a group of psychotic bandits so named because of their initiation, which required that inductees consume hallucinogenic swamp tar, turning their lips black. It was three days until Benwyn and his posse located the Black Lips camp, but upon it's discovery, he wasted no time. He ordered his motley host into battle, gutting the waking bandits and setting fire to their tents as those too slow of waking scrambled out ablaze. Once all the bandits had been killed, Sir Benwyn found his daughter amidst the chaos. He has never relayed what became of her to an outside source, but the grim nature he takes on when recounting the event may speak for itself.

Vagrancy
For the next two years, Benwyn became a hedge knight, drifting from town to town and selling his sword to the highest bidder, on the sole condition that his employer order him to do nothing so bad as what had been done to his own family, on pain of death. One night, while in Falador, he met a pair of hooded, out of place men that offered him land and service should he accept. After mulling it over, he shook hands with the disguised Jason and entered service of the Ryder family, gaining a place in the world once more.