Jared

Jared Richter
Title	<Executor of the Black Harvest>
Gender	Male
Race	Forsaken
Class	Warrior
Age	Died 28 (37 total)
Height	6'3"
Weight	223 lbs.
Eyes	Empty black pits of eye sockets
Hair	Brown, grimy, dirty and shaggy
Affilliation(s)	Black Harvest
Occupation	Soldier, commander
Relative(s)	Hendel Richter (Father), Agatha Richter (Mother), Martha Richter (Wife), Sofia Richter (Daughter), Jonah Richter (Son) - all deceased
Mentor(s)	None
Student(s)	Malachai (in a sense)
Companion(s)	Malachai, Damien, Atius, Lendri, Ordin, Blaudia and many more
Alignment	Lawful Evil
Status	Undead

Information

Player: Sol

Character Full Name: Jared Jonas Richter

Character In-Game Name: Jared

Nickname(s): "Rictus", "Smiler", "Dancer" and a heap of other aliases, most not of his own choice

Association(s): The Forsaken, the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow, the Black Harvest

Race: Forsaken

Class: Warrior

Age: Late twenties at death

Sex: Male

Hair: A grimy mess of tangled strands hanging lank around his features.

Eyes: Two empty, staring holes where eyes should be.

Weight: 223lbs. of withered muscle and not much else.

Height: A veritable giant of a corpse, 6'6" fully straight, 6'3" when hunched.

Appearance

The strong, hard features of Jared's past life are still visible in his heavy jaw, his wide forehead and his pronounced, sharp cheekbones, which might have left him looking reasonably rugged - perhaps handsome, even, many years ago. But now his face, stripped of meat around his mouth and cheeks, is forever set into a snarling rictus grin. It seems the only part of his face capable of emoting properly is his brow, and that's usually furrowed in frustration. Routinely, twitches and spasms crawl up the bare strings of muscle on the lower half of his face, and those who spend time around Jared quickly learn that these are his closest approximations of smiles and frowns.

Rotted and dismembered it may be, Jared's body remains that of a hulking brute, with wide, bullish shoulders that his hunchback only emphasises, a broad chest and mighty arms that terminate in wicked, bony claws. Withered flesh and pallid skin, shredded and some not his own, is tight around his mighty framework of knotted muscle and crooked bone. Notably, his shinbone has been removed - likely not of his own volition - and a steel prosthetic has been inserted into his leg in its stead. The same can be said for several of his knuckles. Well, that certainly explains why his punches hurt so much, doesn't it?

Jared is always clad in dark armour and nothing else. Clanking plate, jingling mail and creaking leather punctuate his motions. It's distinctly without ornamentation, all squared edges and rounded ridges, and it all affords him a certain presence that only makes him seem even bigger and uglier than he actually is. Its pitted, battle-scarred look is certainly intimidating, but really only serves to show it's gone without repair for some time. What he wears is at odds with what he wields, for his weapons (and he has a lot of them) are all sharp and spotless clean. He invariably wears a surcoat of azure and indigo, adorned with the Forsaken Icon of Torment.

Three knives fit for throwing are tucked away in his right vambrace and either greave, ready to be drawn. A hatchet sits at his side and a truesilver dagger is sheathed in the small of his back, both weighted to be thrown if needs be. A shield is strapped perpetually to his left forearm with two curved fighting knives strapped to the inside as contingencies. His primary weapon varies, but he typically uses it alongside his shield, be it a cavalry sabre, a battle axe or a halberd.

Personality

Jared takes in the world around him with gruff cynicism and a seen-it-all attitude that's more to do with being narrow-minded, conceited and angry than having actually seen it all. Quick to anger and thoroughly belligerent, Jared structures his unlife around fighting, simply because it's one of the two things he's good at, and there isn't much business for Forsaken woodcutters. He is blunt, straightforward - often ruthlessly so - and while it's entirely possible that he might feel remorse and fear, he seems to have difficulty reconciling them with the actions he takes.

A similarly easy thing to notice is that he hates anything with a pulse. He's become "stronger" after dying, so logically, anyone alive must automatically be weak. He makes judgements quickly and changes them slowly, and to him, "friendship" is a wholly transactional arrangement based on the exchange of favours. Unless, of course, you're also a Forsaken - in which case, he assumes friendship by default, perhaps naively so. Although he can appear needlessly cruel and crass at times, he is not without his own personal code of conduct, which, while it seems incredibly nebulous and hard to track to most others, governs his every action.

Perhaps Jared's defining personality trait is his unswerving patriotism and loyalty to Lordaeron as a nation, the Forsaken as a faction, and Sylvanas Windrunner as his queen and personal messianic figure. He is a selfless servant to all three, something which runs at odds with his proclaimed piety in the egocentric faith of the Forgotten Shadow. It all makes sense in his head, however, for in his eyes, the only reasons he has to be strong are his people, their leader and the kingdom she rules. Every waking moment - and he has a lot, for he never sleeps - he spends striving towards strengthening and securing his Queen, his country and his brethren.

Deep down, Jared is a simple creature of impulses and impressions. He is not one to question why things are, and such thoughts are almost alien to him. Instead, he questions how he can best deal with these things, and he finds the answers accordingly in the aforementioned manner in which he acts. Jared has been this way throughout his existence till today, though admittedly it has taken a sharp negative turn when he died.

History

A loving father and husband, a keen woodcutter, a proud patriot and generally a big, friendly lunk of a man from Andorhal, Jared Richter was levied into the King's armies when the Plague came. He spent his last months training for war and psychologically preparing himself for a bloody death in battle. Instead, he died a fevered, bedridden wreck, bleeding out of every orifice, in a quarantined barracks after his company dined on plagued rations, only to rise again and begin to consume his comrades-in-arms. A year he spent as a shambling wreck, and a year he spent killing and eating his countrymen at the command of a fatherly voice in his mind. Gone was his thinking self – only the voice remained. When that voice vanished, Jared returned, only to find that he had missed the war he had (literally) been dying to fight.

Fortunately, the banner of Sylvanas Windrunner offered him another one, and he eagerly swore himself into her newly constituted Deathguard. Any grief he felt at his condition, his demise or the loss of his family was internalised, left to fester within him. As the years went by, Jared only became angrier and angrier, but he soon convinced himself that undeath was a significant improvement to the alternative, and even an improvement from mortality. He did not tire, he did not feel pain, and injuries which would kill a living man could be mended with thread, stolen flesh and an Apothecary's steady hand. This was the duty he had died for, and even in death he still served – sworn to obey whoever held the throne of Lordaeron and to guard the lands they reigned over.

After a few years of vaguely contemplating his existence, Jared fell in with a particular sect of the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow led by a man calling himself Father Hollow. This sect, calling itself the Brotherhood of the Black Harvest, believed that individual power - the most important thing in the Forgotten Shadow - could best be strengthened by a place in a unified whole with a greater cause. The Forsaken were these individuals, Hollow preached. Lordaeron was this unified whole and the greater cause was the will of the Dark Lady. Naturally, this appealed to his sense of patriotism and his unswerving commitment to his duty both at once, and while he would not become a truly fanatical adherent to this interpretation of the Forgotten Shadow for several years, it remained a constant in his mindframe.

He served loyally for years, but with the Wrathgate came repercussions, and among them came a brutal civil war amongst the Forsaken. Jared, then in charge of a small section of soldiers, made some crucial tactical mistakes that saw several priceless tomes from the Magic Quarter stolen or put to the torch, and was suspended from duty in the Queen's armies. Indeed, many Deathguard were put out of duty when the Horde imposed sanctions on the Forsaken's military and put the Undercity under watch by Kor'kron overseers. Taking personal offence, he turned in his tabard and left for neutral territory, becoming a soldier of fortune and pit fighter for several years and encountering a host of strange and unusual folk.

His faith in his country was briefly rekindled when he returned to Lordaeron to join a fledgeling order of militant undead knights. However, a long and seemingly senseless deployment south in Duskwood led him to deem this order's cause to be a hopeless one, and he eventually left their company when there was no company left to keep. He could do little but slip back into his freelancing.

But as the months became years and the fighting jobs became a steady, monotonous routine, he came to contemplate the point of fighting for a living when he wasn't actually alive. What good was warring for coin when he had nothing meaningful to spend it on? He felt no hunger, so he needn't buy food; he felt no thirst, so he needn't buy drink; he felt no fatigue, so he needn't pay for lodgings. His coinpurse fattened, filling evermore with worthless metal, until he decided it need grow no more. He decided it need never grow again.

He decided he would make the act of fighting a reward in itself. He decided he would find a cause to fight for, a call to answer. And he could find no call more needing, no cause more worthy than that of a dead kingdom that refused to die.

Returning home shortly after the fall of the Lich King, he began to patrol the roads and wilds of Lordaeron, seeking out its enemies and besting them where he could. Eventually, he fell in with like minds in the form of an organisation proclaiming itself the Hand of Sylvanas, which strove towards the goal of serving Lordaeron's interests - mainly by way of helping the Horde, in the hopes of setting a positive example for the Forsaken and potentially inciting the Kor'kron's withdrawal.

When the Hand of Sylvanas, Jared was left listless, striving almost alone towards the cause he'd taken it upon himself to serve. But after experiencing a reawakening of faith and befriending a cleric called Elias Stranger, and with the blessings of Father Hollow himself, he began to rally his own force under the banner of the Black Harvest.

Skills and abilities

Jared was freakishly tall and remarkably strong once upon a time, a combination of lucky genetics and a life of hard labour. His lifelong routine was one of felling trees with an axe and hauling huge logs from place to place, and the atrophied leftovers of what physical power this cultivated remain even in death. Combined with an utter, innate disregard for pain and fatigue, he has become a formidable opponent indeed. Heavily armed and heavily armoured to take extreme punishment and give it in equal parts, he fights in full plate, backed with mail and leather, and uses its weight to his advantage.

He accumulated skill at arms throughout his life through his obligations to Andorhal's town militia and honed it with the military training he underwent immediately prior to his death. Since then, though, he has spent many years fighting in the Deathguard, honing his expertise with a variety of weapons. His fighting style is typically quite slow and cumbersome, focused on being able to absorb a lot of damage until the moment arises to hit back twice as hard. He is not an agile or dexterous combatant by any stretch, but thinking him reliant on mere brute strength is a grave mistake; he is capable of remarkable finesse with arms when pushed. Three surefire ways to best him are superior agility, magic and Holy prayer, but those without any of these may have difficulty indeed.