Castor
Information
Player: Sol
Character Name: Castor Rookwood
Character In-Game Name: Castor
Nicknames: Cas, Rooks, Kid
Associations: The Sons of Lothar, the Argent Crusade
Race: Human
Class: Paladin
Age: 22
Sex: Male
Hair: A thick, curly, unkempt mop of chestnut brown, falling to jaw length.
Eyes: Grassy green.
Weight: 174lbs.
Height: 5'11
Appearance
An average-looking youth of average height and average weight, his build compact with lean, athletic muscle. He has the callused hands and ruddy tan of a field labourer, the slouched posture and nonetheless proud bearing of a professional soldier and the big daft grin of a ten-year-old boy.
Typically dressed in tough, practical leathers, wools and cottons, with lightweight scale mail armour worn above it if he expects battle. More recently, he's acquired a suit of steel half-plate that he wears for his duties with the Crusade.
Personality
Headstrong, brash and with a wry sense of humour that permeates almost everything he does, Castor swaggers through life with an easy gait and easier smile, never hesitating to extend his aid and his friendship to complete strangers. He makes a conscious effort to appear competent and experienced, when in truth he is scarcely neither. Fact is, Castor is very new to Azeroth, having been born and raised amongst the Alliance Expedition in Outland, and he does his best not to show it, but it shines through regularly in his attitudes and his occasionally lacking knowledge of current affairs. Nonetheless, he is quick to proclaim that he a fully ordained and anointed Knight of the Silver Hand and doesn't take well to being led along by the hand in something he's unfamiliar with, even if it's really for the best.
While he gives the appearance of extreme humility in his reliance on Holy Light dogma and scant possessions, Castor has a swollen sense of pride beneath the surface, one that is easily offended and one he constantly seeks to affirm. He will readily shoulder burdens too big to realistically carry and undertake challenges too great to persevere through in a vain attempt to prove his worth to this around him, a habit that stems from an underlying complex. While he's open and outgoing, he's actually withdrawn into a fairly secure shell due to his wariness of the strange world around him. Fellow Sons of Lothar and faithful of the Light, as well as those who show kindness to him generally, tend to find the boy rapidly developing a strong emotional attachment to them, whether they like it or not.
Castor takes matters of faith very seriously. Growing up in a world where Infernals fell from the sky, in a fortress under regular assault from the forces of darkness, has cultivated in him a certain siege mentality that he applies even to his everyday life. Beneath his chuckling goofball demeanour, he is zealously driven by his code, his oath and the tenets of the Light, and has demonstrated stubborn, almost frightening conviction in his beliefs at times. Furthermore, recent events have instilled in him a coldly vindictive streak.
History
A soldier from Gilneas and a maid from Stromgarde sharing beds while camping on the march during the Second War was hardly something entirely unheard of. Castor's parentage is entirely unremarkable in this regard, but what matters, I suppose, is where they were marching to. That soldier, a Sergeant Dandric Rookwood, and that servant, a miss Stella Bruce, were both part of the brigades assigned to the Alliance Expedition en route to the alien world of Draenor. Stella was with child since shortly before she went through the Portal, and shortly after the fortress-city of Honor Hold was constructed, she gave birth. Sergeant Rookwood was not amused – even less so when miss Bruce decided to give the bastard his name.
Castor's earliest memories are of the ruin that once was Draenor. He was not the only child born amongst the Sons of Lothar in those days, but as you might expect, there were hardly many of them. Castor was raised communally by the some of the support staff of the Expedition, chiefly his mother and her friends. As soon as he was old enough to walk, he was helping out around the Hold – in the kitchens, the stables, the smithies, wherever he could be trusted. As soon as he was old enough to hold a sword, he was practising with routine regularity. As soon as he was old enough to read, at the insistence of one Sir Malleck the Just of Northshire, he was partaking in the Paladin's collection of theologies and holy scriptures, who sought to supervise the child's 'moral education' to compensate for both the sinful circumstances of his birth and the frankly demonic surroundings of the Hold. When he recognised his grasp of the Holy Light's teachings as well as well as the content of the boy's characters, he took him under his steel wing as a page, and later, as a squire.
Sir Malleck was a harsh and haughty master, one who Castor would struggle to cope with for much of his life. Nonetheless, Castor's punishing routine of arduous training, extensive study, and partaking in the menial habits of a squire was fixed and firmly established by the time he was thirteen. Accepting that the Alliance Expedition and their descendants may be stranded on Draenor forever, Sir Malleck and his Silver Hand brothers who had been stranded alongside them supervised the tutoring of a new generation of their order to serve as their 'spiritual vanguard' in the future. First contact with the Draenei prompted a small alteration to their teachings, and Castor soon found himself making regular appointments with an Anchorite Maguun and a Vindicator Rashara.
When the Dark Portal reopened, the core of Castor's being was shaken. After all, he'd been taught all his life that they were stranded and abandoned on the Outland – and here the Grand Alliance was once more, marching to reinforce them. Sir Malleck and his brethren ventured to Shattrath to fight alongside the Shattered Sun Offensive when the call was sounded, whereas Castor remained in Honour Hold, continuing his training. By this point, Castor was deemed old enough and competent enough to accompany the soldiers garrisoned in the Hold on their patrols and duties, and here was his first taste of real combat – chiefly against the Fel Orcs of Hellfire Peninsula in small skirmishes, something he still has nightmares about.
A few years later, after Sir Malleck's return, he was taken to Shattrath City at the age of twenty-two where he, alongside many pious believers, fasted and meditated in the presence of a Naaru for several days. Later on, he knelt, took his oath and was dubbed Sir Castor the Pure by Sir Malleck, who fully ordained and anointed him as a Knight of the Silver Hand and sent him on a mission of discovery to that most alien of worlds: Azeroth. His task was to develop his understanding of the Light, to punish the wicked and offer respite to the meek, and to walk, as Sir Malleck put it, the 'Path of the Righteous'.
That was a few months ago, and on Azeroth he has remained. He's gotten off to a shaky start, admittedly, with several run-ins with possessive madwomen and sinister warlocks, but after enlisting with the Argent Crusade, the successor of his Order on Azeroth, he thinks he may have found his niche.
Skills and abilities
Besides a heap of minor practical skills he picked up during his days as a page and squire, as well as reading and writing, Castor's primary area of expertise lies in the fine art of swinging an edged weapon at people and causing them pain by doing so. He is a more than competent combatant with a sword and shield, although his techniques are somewhat textbook, and he fairs better in duels than he does in open battles.
His mastery of the Light at presence is limited to healing minor wounds, cleansing minor afflictions, projecting a lesser Devotion Aura, invoking a Seal of Righteousness, issuing weak Blessings of Might and entering a state of battle-meditation which allows him to better cope with pain. In those moments of powerful emotion when his faith is the strongest (i.e. when he is convinced his life is about to end in the heat of battle), he is capable of mustering greater still feats of divine power, but these are few and far between. His ability to harness the Light is fettered by his faith, his routine of meditation and prayer and the demands of his Paladin Oath. Deviating from any of this will cause him to lose his powers until he undertakes an act of penance.
