Charlie

Information

Player: Geoni

Character Full Name: Charles Elgro Blacksteel II

Character In-Game Name: Charlie

Nickname(s): Charlie (preferred spelling), Wendel (alias), Noai

Association(s): Gnomeregan (survivor) and Ironforge (criminal status)

Race: Gnome

Class: Techno-Warlock

Skills and Abilities: Aside from the essential warlockery knowledge and skills, Charlie adds a touch to the class with his background in engineering and tinkering, and has found a way to utilize the power of fel to power technology.

Age: 123

Sex: Male

Hair: His hair is black in color, and is in the shape of a Mohawk that becomes fluffy on the front end, with the bangs hanging over his forehead a little. He has a thick beard, a full mustache, and bushy eyebrows to boot.

Eyes: Brown

Height: 3’3”

Scale: 1.07

Weight: 51 lbs.

Appearance

Usual Garments/Armor: Charlie wears a black wardrobe composed of black leather pants, a black leather jacket, and white and gold embroidered shirt underneath.

Other: He also owns a black and gold colored scarf, a bluish pair of goggles that are useful in cold weather, and a pair of black sunglasses. He also weighs a few more pounds than a Gnome should for his height due to having had to bulk up in the process of having to survive on his own and take on a new alias.

Personality

Charlie, with good reason, is paranoid and full of anger and grief. He still has all of the emotions any other person would have; the catch is that these emotions are often influenced by and filtered through that grief. His actions and motivations are almost always influenced by his desired revenge against his enemy, Luther. He tends to judge people based on their body language and professions, rather than by their actions or what they say. The latter has an influence on how he sees people, but after observing people long enough, he’s good at reading them immediately. After all he has been through, he is withdrawn from all societies and only chooses to interact with a select few, often because he is forced or compelled to do so. Philosophically, he’s nihilistic, and has a quiet and yet mean-spirited sense of humor because of this.

History

Charles Elgro Blacksteel II was born over a hundred years ago in the depths of Gnomeregan to a happy and newly paired couple: his father, also named Charles, was an engineer. His mother, Syri, worked as a painter, both for machinery and creatively. For the first few years of his life, he grew up close to the two, crawling around and causing a mess for the couple as they worked together, the father building and the mother painting whatever he built. Eventually, they decided that Charles II needed a brother or sister to play with, and so they tried for another child. However, as hard as they tried, they would end up failing. Some of the failures were simple spontaneous miscarriages that only damaged Syri emotionally, and other failures were later miscarriages that damaged her physically.

As a result of this series of birth-traumas, Charles was left to the tutelage of his father, and the torment of the children that he was pushed to play and interact with as a child. Many of these children belonged to the Spannerhouse family that lived next-door to the Blacksteels, and their parents were much more fertile with six children to look after. Two of these children would go on to impact Charles’ life significantly: Luther and Katlily. Luther and Charles became enemies as children, and Katlily his good friend. While Luther bullied Charles, Katlily played nurse (sometimes literally). When he turned fourteen, his mother finally had the child she was trying so hard for, a baby girl they named Chicory. Unfortunately for the family, she was born with a disorder that led to a number of signs that told them that she wouldn’t live long, such as displaying a morphed body that didn’t allow for healthy growth or bodily activity. Examined by a doctor, they could only fear the worst, not knowing what could have caused this, all caused by a simple non-disjunction during gamete formation, resulting in an extra copy of one of her chromosomes.

The following was a difficult year for the four members of the Blacksteel family. Charles Sr. had difficulties focusing on work, and had to take care of his wife so often that he was fired by his employer. Syri did all that she could to take care of her fate-sealed baby girl, and in the process became sick due to lack of sleep and disregard of her own bodily needs, namely eating enough food. Charles Jr. was ignored by both his father and his mother, and became frustrated over their neglecting him for his sister, who they all knew would eventually die soon. And Chicory, well, she tried to survive the best she could, but didn’t. She died at the age of one and a half years old.

Each member of the family dealt with the death differently. Charles Sr., having realized that the loss is a loss, found a new job and resumed work, and resumed his attempts at educating his son again. Attempts, because Charles Jr. reacted to his little sister’s death with anger and a compulsion to rebel against his parents; it was a time of both puberty and discovery of the realities that makes being alive a struggle. Having grown taller than his previous tormentor, Luther, he began to bully him back for the next few years of his life. His other, Syri, fell into a two-year long pit of depression, but survived and eventually found her muse in painting stunning and magnificent murals, which often depicted the pain and suffering of mothers.

Eventually, Charles would mature into a cool-headed young man. He stopped bullying Luther, continued his friendship with his sister Katlily, and committing himself to receiving an education from his father until the age of thirty two, and reading and doing his own research for ten more years until he decided that he wanted to become an engineer, just like his father. As he stepped into the business of becoming an engineer, he became his father’s assistant. It was during this time when he learned that his father and his neighbor, Findris Spannerhouse, were coming up with the same idea for the same engine, not even realizing it. To make things worse, they tried to get their blueprints approved at the same time, and as a result, it was believed that one of them copied the other. Having received a number of threats and attempts at blackmail from the Spannerhouse family, Charles Blacksteel Sr. decided to revoke his blueprint from examination and abandon it as a project. After this happened, the two families began a long string of competition that would likely still be going on to this day if it weren’t for that unfortunate event that destroyed the city of Gnomeregan.

Charles Jr. had to learn how to become a full-fledged engineer under these pressures, and find a way to enter the business without being chewed up by the competition that the Spannerhouse family unnecessarily provoked. At the same time, he was becoming close to Katlily Spannerhouse, who had been his childhood friend, and now a fellow engineer herself. Despite the pressures, Charles Jr. decided to ask her hand in courtship. Although she accepted it, his father disallowed it from happening, and so it didn’t. Having felt betrayed, Charles Jr. left his father’s business and went on to do his own independent research that would keep him occupied for decades, all the way until the invasion of Gnomeregan by the Troggs. In the process of this event, Charles would lose both his mother and father. On the other side of the fence, Katlily lost two of her brothers, her only sister, and her mother as well. Having found each other after the destruction, the two would escape to Ironforge with the rest of her family, despite Charles having broken his anklebone due to rubble falling on top of it.

During the following years, every one of these engineers would have to start from scratch, having lost all of their blueprints and many of their books in the disaster. To make things worse, Luther and his father felt like continuing the tradition and decided to be antagonistic towards Charles, kicking him out of their household, refusing his second attempt at courtship with Katlily, and trying to do whatever they could to prevent Charles from becoming a great engineer. In reaction to this, Charles began to dabble in magic that many Gnomes didn’t know about: fel. He saw it as a resource that could produce a great and cheap supply of energy for technology, and began to work on an engine schematic that utilized this energy. The development of this schematic had gone on for years, and up until seven months ago, it went on without any bloodshed. Then one day, Charles went home to find that his blueprint had gone missing. It was Luther, the very boy that he bullied so many years ago, getting his revenge.

However, Katlily wasn’t going to have it when she found out that her brother had done this, and after learning that it happened, attempted to go to the authorities. In panic, both Luther and his father collaborated in murdering Katlily in order to protect the blueprint that they stole, believing that its price was worth more than losing her. Off to find a place to hide the body, their house was empty. Charles saw this as the opportunity to steal back what was stolen from him, but in the process, he was found by the other surviving brother, who called out for the authorities. One step ahead, Charles escaped before he could be caught, and hid out in a building that was only rarely rented by military officials that were stopping by the city. He was able to hide here for a solid five months, long enough to grow out his hair enough to change his appearance and take on a new alias, along with learning what had been done to the woman that he loved. In grief, he struggled only to survive in hiding rather than taking action against those who killed her, or trying to run away and start a new life away from all of this mess. Instead, he spent most of his time trying to learn more about the arts of the warlock, in hopes of one day using them against Luther and his father. However, he couldn’t hide long enough, since military officials were coming to Ironforge more and more often, and that building was being rented out every other week. He would run out into Dun Morogh whenever it was rented, and return to hide out once again whenever it was vacant. However, this wouldn’t last forever, and one day he was caught.

The man that caught him was, to Charles, enigmatic. It was a Draenei that went by the name of Ce. Instead of turning Charles over to the authorities, he felt like he was the authority in this situation. After hearing the man out, he decided to gag him, tie him up, and ship him to Hearthglen where he was to work alongside him in the Argent Crusade. It was labeled with both to and from Ce. Utilizing a portal, the Draenei was able to get there before him so that he could be unpacked discreetly, but after unpacking and untying Charles, the man was able to escape the next night. He didn’t stay true to his word, and Ce felt betrayed. A frequent visitor of Ironforge (because apparently he spends his time there on vacation because of the food), Ce found Charles slinking around the city once again, now safe in his new identity. Well, safe from everyone but the Draenei, who knew who he was...