Laus

Information

Player: Zenethen

Character Full Name: James Laus

Character In-Game Name: Laus

Nickname(s): Capp

Association(s): Kul Tiras, the Grand Alliance, the Mistresses’ Herald, Knights of Darkfall

Race: Human

Class: Mariner Captain

Age: 34

Sex: Male

Hair: Blonde colored, up in a professional military ponytail at all times.

Eyes: Hazel

Weight: 179 lbs

Height/Scale: 5’ 10”/1

Skills and Abilities

• Protection of Darkfall – Being a member of the Knights of Darkfall, Laus carries with him a golden medal that protects him from mind-probing and –control spells.

• Captain’s Knowledge – Being both a Tirasian and a mariner, it could be said that Laus knows his fair share about the sea. This comes from both spending his life mostly on ships and just taking a unique interest in the sea. He has knowledge of the sea where others may not have ever even heard legends of.

• Tirasian Frigate - His ship is a force to be reckoned with, having two whole decks of cannons, and built with the cunning of the Tirasian shipwrights. It is more than a match for any typical pirate vessel, and Laus prides himself on the crew of Tirasian marines aboard the frigate. However, being a frigate, it has an unfortunately weaker armored back, as well as lacking the speed of a typical speedy ship. It can easily be outmaneuvered by most smaller ships, and turns very slowly.

• Man's Best Friend - Laus has a dog with him he has named Jameson that he attained during his travels as a privateer in Booty Bay. The dog is a domesticated, loyal companion to the ship captain, and is of a breed not often seen (German Shepard would be the IRL equivalent). Not comparable in communication as a hunter's pet, but still a loyal companion and friend to the captain, the dog holds minimal combat capability in the case of attack - if something's armored, the dog's teeth and claws are relatively useless.

Appearance

Usual Garments/Armor: If he is not in his common captain’s attire, he can be seen in either quality Tirasian plate armor, or in simply-elegant Tirasian-colored clothing.

Personality

Laus is a gentlemanly, professional sailor of Kul Tiras. Born of the mighty naval kingdom, he often boasts of his homeland’s superior naval power to all he meets, though he holds his tongue when the situation is not fitting to the subject. Above all other things, he holds personal honor and the doing of good deeds to be the highest thing any man or woman can hold. He will do favors for strangers only on the whim of needing to transport dead relatives to safer lands. While being adamant in his beliefs that the Alliance will win the new ‘Fourth War’, Laus views all of his enemies – even the savage orcs – with the same honor he would give his human brethren. However, if Laus’ honor is insulted through either himself, his ship, his crew, his family, or his nation, he will be a very stern man and will likely end the encounter in either a heated argument or a brawl. While he is always carrying a professional demeanor, Laus is doubly so during situations where he is the commanding person. His voice will be unwavering and confident, if at least to rub off confidence to his sailors. Even in the heat of battle, however, Laus has a deathly and paralyzing fear of Death Knights, shadow priests, obvious creatures of shadow, and most forms of undead.

Alignment: Neutral Good

History

James Laus was born four years before the invasion of the orcs to a seemingly simple priest and his equally simple wife on the Tirasian island of Crestfall. However, behind closed doors, Laus’ seemingly simple father-of-a-priest was in fact a fiend-conjuring shadow priest. Laus’ mother kept his secret well within her, as she was a very sadomasochistic person. Together, they sought to raise their new son as a fitting example of both of them. However, with their combined and mixed personalities, they did not take parenting well.

Laus was treated relatively well as a child, as his mother often paraded him proudly in front of his mother’s brother, who was fifteen years older than Laus’ mother. His uncle, who had been unable to find a wife to produce an heir, was tortured himself as Laus’ mother paraded the young boy in front of the well-kept Tirasian sailor. However, whenever the boy’s mother was not near, he tried his best, and succeeded, in becoming like a new father figure for the young Laus.

It was only in these ‘visits’ with his uncle that he saw any compassion. As he grew older, and began to throw worse tantrums, he began to see the ever darker intentions of his parents. His mother often beat him when he cried in defiance, and his father, often bored from ‘hard days of work’, would summon small shadowfiends to be ‘play-pals’ with his son. This process continued through the years until Laus was ten years old. The visits with his uncle ceased, as the elder sailor was called to fight the orcs as captain of one of Kul Tiras’ ships, the Mistresses’ Herald.

For two years, Laus’ childhood slowly weathered away as the process of beatings and ‘harmless experiments’ continued on the pre-teen. When he heard his uncle had returned from the war, Laus immediately ran from his home and sought refuge with his uncle. He revealed to his uncle all that had happened to him, and his uncle took the young man’s words to heart, feeling pity for him, and immediately setting out for the family’s home with a group of fellow sailors.

When Laus’ uncle arrived at the home, the boy’s mother was nowhere to be found, having fled to Lordaeron because Laus' father had told her to, but his father conjured horrors within the house and only through the coming of a local post of guards, Laus’ uncle survived, and Laus’ father was regretfully slain. They searched the entire street for the boy’s mother, but she was nowhere to be found. For the next ten years, Laus’ uncle raised him into a man, and into a proper sailor for Kul Tiras, even holding the young Tirasian whenever he would have nightmares of his childhood.

Laus eventually was granted his own title of Captain as he was raised adamantly for the title under his uncle, who was a respected man amongst the Tirasian Navy. As a ship, he was given the Mistresses’ Herald, and his uncle used that as a note of his retirement to both Laus and the navy. When Laus was twenty-five, during the confusion of the sailing to Kalimdor alongside Admiral Proudmoore’s fleet, the mighty Mistresses’ Herald was separated from the armada by a storm.

The Mistresses’ Herald found itself in the far southern seas, where Laus ordered the banners of Kul Tiras taken down so as to not attract pirates to think the frigate to be a lost treasure ship. Later, when a daring vessel did attack, the frigate held true and decimated the enemy vessel, the Tirasian crew stealing their banners and putting them up as their own. In order to avoid further encounters, Laus convinced most of his men to join him in simply becoming a privateer, as for all his loyalty to Kul Tiras, he did not wish for them to think his ship and his crew mutinous for not rejoining with Admiral Proudmoore’s armada.

When Laus was thirty-two, now a refined privateer amongst the kind of Stormwind and Booty Bay, he and his men were on an expedition inland of the Stranglethorn Vale. A woman in dark plate armor came from the brush of the thick jungle, glowing blue eyes and a face of determination. He recognized her face and her voice, and immediately drew his blade. Through the ensuing fight against his mother, half of his men were slain and raised as ghouls by his mother’s runeblade, but he eventually succeeded in cutting his mother’s head clean off her shoulders and leaving her body to rot in the jungle.

His mind engulfed in renewed nightmares of his childhood, his ghoulish crew, and his mother’s presence as a Death Knight, Laus gained a new fear for all such things. He learned later, through a very intense and painful conversation with a Knight of the Ebon Blade, that his mother had survived the Third War after fleeing Kul Tiras, and fought alongside the Scarlet Crusade, where she was slain amongst their hierarchy and raised as a Death Knight. After being freed of the Lich King's grasp, and her state as a Death Knight enhancing her thirst for pain on others and herself, she apparently sought out her son, to 'display' her new powers. Laus was glad, at least, that he had not been alone when his mother approached him.

He sailed for a good year, befriending many people, a few paladins amongst those that passed through Booty Bay, and then at thirty-three, the hairy-chested privateer captain decided to send a request of remission to the mainland of Kul Tiras. They accepted his request, on terms that he return to service to the Tirasian navy. Laus sailed for Boralus, where he was reunited with his uncle, and swore his renewed oath of fealty to the Tirasian navy.

Now a member of the Tirasian navy, Laus often sailed to protect their merchant vessels, as the island nation was having a falling out economically with recent events in the world. In these travels, Laus encountered a priestess who called herself the Pure Maiden. She said that she led an organization called the Knights of Darkfall, and that they were seeking a vessel to call their own. Laus turned her down for a permanent support, but offered what help he could give.

With the Cataclysm, and contact with Kul Tiras severed, Laus decided to keep the banner of his homeland, but rekindle his promise to the Pure Maiden. He joined with her Knights of Darkfall, and now sails under their command, though he does occasionally do desperate voyages in the seeking of his homeland, to no avail as of yet.