- "If I led an army, I'd pay big money to hire someone as good as me and consider ever coin well spent. That's the god's honest truth."
- ―Alten Ashley gives his unbiased appraisal of his own abilities
Some men are just rugged through and through, mean as a gorax, born with an eagle's eye, and possessed of such irrepressible gumption that they become legends in their own time, or at least their own minds. Alten Ashley is one such man. Unlike some braggarts, he lives up to his reputation of being a truly exceptional hunter of the great beasts stocking the Wilds of western Immoren. The onset of war and the emergence of previously hidden enemies install fear in the hearts of most men, but Alton Ashley sees the gleam of gold and the promise of danger.
His jealous detractors dismiss Alten as a money grubbing mercenary, but for him the wealth is the least of the equation. He enjoys earning a healthy purse, but he considered is it fair for the skill he brings to the table. Monetary awards have nothing to do with the reasons for taking to the wilderness- it is the thrill of taking down the most dangerous creatures on the face of Caen. There is a madness which takes over some men and demands that a seek danger instead of turning from it. For Alten it is neither the reward nor the kill that matters. It is the excitement of the hunt.
Alten does not speak about his youth, but he is clearly Cygnaran born. His accent puts his roots somewhere on the western coast, and he has traveled more than most. He has stories about tracking one of Blighterghasts dragonspawn deep in the Wyrmwall mountains, narrowly escaped with his life against a rampaging dire troll in the Gnarls, and hunting the largest frost Drake ever recorded in the frozen wastes of Khador. After a few years in Khador he decided the cold did not suit him and he swung through the Thornwood forest killing warpwolves before making his way out to the fringes of the Bloodstone Marches. The only place he is seen with any regularity is the Sanity's Bastion saloon in the dusty no-man's land of a town called Ternon Crag, fifty miles east of Cygnar's border and unclaimed by any nation. He is a reputation for being bolsters to the point of obnoxious and has earned a few friends. Despite this he is the respect of both Kossite woodsman and Morridane scouts . Even the Widowmakers grudgingly admits he's a passable shot.
Though never trained formally, Ashley is a crack shot with his rifle it is a truly monstrous weapon with a thick, large board barrel designed to blast holes in the thickest hides. It's hardened ammunition can punch straight through a man as if he were not even there, and the rifles bipod allowing more accurately hiding prone under underbrush. He relies heavily on his oversized gun, but he is no amateur with the sword either. He can hold his own when his target inevitably closes to tear him apart.
Alten will be the first to insist it is not the weapons that we can deadly but his experience and lore. The monster hunter has fought more dangerous creatures a couple of short decades then a Nyss ranger might face in a century. He knows all of their habits, their strengths, and their weak points. He knows just the spot to hit a dire troll so he can shoot between the ribs to deflate a lung. Almost nothing alive can survive a few shots from Alten's rifle, and he is just a as good at slipping a blade up between the ribs to take a beast's heart. Alton does not seek the easy life and throws himself from one dangerous battle to another. Somehow he always escapes unscathed with a new story to tell.