Sterling
Information
Contents
Player: Aerikan
Character Full Name: Sterling Hart
Character In-Game Name: Sterling
Association(s): Silvermoon
Race: Blood Elf
Class: Hunter
Age: 116
Sex: Male
Hair: Long, wild, and fiery red
Eyes: Fel-Green, though with slightly less of a glow than most Sin'dorei
Weight: 145 lb
Height: 6'
Alignment: Chaotic Good (though intellectual curiosity occasionally gives him a more neutral outlook)
Appearance
A stylish but worn business suit, with a greatcoat, boots, and gloves with various gears, clasps, and buckles, plus occasional goggles. Sterling always dresses professionally, but also always has some damage, wayward item, or other mar on his attire from his last adventure. Very rarely he can be seen in mail while adventuring. Prefers to wield a dwarven pistol, handles a sword when absolutely necessary.
Other: Usually accompanied by his faithful feline friend, Watson
Personality
Exuberant, above all things. Sterling is fiercely curious, easily excitable, easily distracted. His mind is a whirring mess of questions, thoughts, ideas, and plans. His perceptive powers are incredible, and the details he notices about the world only add to the constant processing of information in his busy brain.
Sterling is at once incredibly friendly and somewhat socially inept. He gives everyone the benefit of the doubt and approaches people openly, invitingly. He makes an effort to obey etiquette with strangers, though prefers to speak his mind. His lack of filter and inability to distinguish when he is being overly talkative or overly friendly can make people irritated by him. This is exacerbated by his tendency to make deductions about people based on what he observes, often exposing personal information.
Sterling might accurately be described both as a genius and madman, meddler and welcoming friend, agent of justice and disturber of the peace. He detests boredom above all things, which often leads him to trouble.
History
On the edge of the once-mighty empire of Quel'Thalas lived Sterling parents, purposefully avoiding the crowds of the cities, the influx of visitors, and the perils of war. Sterling's father was a low-level magistrate of impressive intelligence, not rising through the ranks because of his preference for solitude. His mother was a skilled huntress, at her best tracking in the wild. His grandparents owned a tavern, the Silver Stag, which young Sterling Hart would be named after. They were commoners, respected for their professions but largely unnoticed in the grand scale of things.
Sterling was given training in the areas one might expect. His father kept him literate, advanced his studies in a multitude of subjects, and sharpened his mind for details as he helped parse through vast information in bureaucracy. His mother taught him to be nimble, to hone his eyes, and to be a crack marksman. These skills would serve him well should he have chosen to follow either professions, but it was not to be.
In the wild, in the solitude, Sterling felt that he was going mad. Nature, with her inevitable and unchangeable order, offered him no puzzles, no challenges. Animals were simple, plants more so. The wild was its own, no place for a man to interfere. His brain struggled to be satiated, to be challenged. Even the grand library could only take him so far. What was all this knowledge worth without an outlet for it, without practical application?
He dabbled in engineering, replaced his bow with a gun, began tracking people instead of animals, and began meddling in government affairs rather than passively assisting. His small town was just as eager to be rid of him as he to be rid of it. It was on a whim that he stowed away on a passing airship. Taking only the clothes on his back, a pistol, and his hunting companion Watson, he left to seek his glories in Silvermoon.
Sterling landed in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mere days after his arrival, Arthas' army swept through Quel'Thalas and was pounding at the gates to Silvermoon. Sterling was no soldier, but he had the skills needed to survive. His study of the city, tracking and stealth skills, and perceptive powers helped him to hide. He sought refuge in tunnels, ruins, and anywhere where there wasn't immediate fighting, defending himself when necessary. He began to help others as well, ferrying them out of the city, leading them to safe havens, helping lost, injured, and displaced elves find sanctuary wherever they could in the crumbling city. Sterling never left SIlvermoon during the war. Rather, he learned its every nook and cranny and used them to help others survive.
Busy surviving day to day in the ruined city, his furious mind filled problems to solve, Sterling was slow to notice the lack of mana. He was in decent control, perhaps through force of will, perhaps distraction, perhaps because the Prince lied and new magic was not needed. Regardless, Sterling did weaken, did finally realize his pains and cravings were more than just his own flavor of madness. Through his borrowed living space in a sanctum of warlocks, he learned how to feed off the Fel new energies. Together they pooled their talents to seek out those that were turning into Wretched, a specialty of Sterling's work today. Sterling is careful to keep his needs in check, and his constant search for mental stimulation aids in this.
When the war was done and SIlvermoon finally started rebuilding, Sterling turned to his former refugee friends to find work and build a life. Subsisting any way he could with odd jobs, his incredible talent for observation and deduction allowed him to solve quite a few problems for employers, friends, and even passersby. A small but awed reputation began to grow around the wanderer with the incredible eye for clues and mind for mysteries.
After earning enough of a reputation to be called on by the authorities, he took on the title Consulting Detective, finding his true calling. The Silvermoon Guards and various other individuals and associations call on him whenever they have a crime they cannot solve. While his success rate is phenomenal, his dismissive attitude toward the [what he considers] incompetent city inspectors, and his tendency to rack up collateral damage grants him mixed feelings from the city authorities at best. He is also occasionally hired by private citizens highborn and low. Sterling is more interested in the intrigue presented by the case than any payment, and will take on any task to keep his swimming mind busy. He also has a tendency to drag others into cases for the sheer fun of it. Anything to keep him active.
