Edit 1: If someone could fix my syntax, I'd totally be grateful.
Edit 2: Oh, it's full. Well, if there are slots open, PM me. I'd be glad to join.
Edit 3: Post fixed and cleaned up.
Name: Jan Helmski Krazowicz
Age: 26
Appearance:
Jan is a man of strong musculature wrought about by training and experience on the battlefield, from skirmishes against bandits to participation in the petty conflicts sprung by local lords so greedily vying for power. His irises are of a light blue, their brightness contrasting with the almost rictus grim look a veteran soldier such as himself keeps on constantly. His hair, of a dark brown, is cropped short so as not to interfere with the fit of his helm, but he has allowed his forward locks to grow a bit, having them peer slightly over his forehead. An ugly blotch of scarred flesh mars his right thigh, and his left forearm is charred with burn scars. Holes in his palms and feet are concrete memories of his brutal crucifixion.
Race: Human, Half-Demon (Host and Partially Soulbound to Egradel the Magnificent)
Allegiance: Supporter of the Immortal Nine
Class: Warrior, Demonic Shock Troop
Profession: Soldier, Light Cavalryman
Biography:Jan Helmski Krazowicz was born to two farmers, Drodovko Krazowicz and Imelda Krazowicz, as the 2nd eldest of five siblings, with the eldest being his older brother and the rest, his sisters. Life was simple: he helped his parents and siblings tend to the wheat fields and the vegetable garden, getting into trouble at times as he played with the other village children. Times both hard and relatively easy came and he weathered all of them out, as peasants like himself should. His childhood was normal, and the local priests even taught him how to sing a few Ecclesiastic hymns!
One event of great shame was when he was found fornicating with a girl he fancied -- behind the local church -- and by his father, no less. Valentina and him were scolded loudly and at length, and they could not bear to look Drodovko in the eye, partially because he did not give them a chance to dress. But such passionate and daring things were what adolescence was about, and they kept seeing each other behind everyone’s backs.
Drodovko was no fool and suspected it, but he pretended not to know. He could not admonish the fourteen-year-old Jan once more. How could he, when he himself was guilty of such things at his son's age, prolific, even? Let boys be boys, he decided, and, to the young couple’s great and welcoming surprise, he arranged for the two to be married when they reached the legal age of 16.
But a draft had come. Count Kasloz Saffeud, Jan’s lord, had pressed a claim on the title of a fellow count whose demesne neighbored his . Scouts travelled to the villages and towns under his domain and they picked young, able-bodied men to fight and die for the Count’s cause. Jan, to his great displeasure, found an armored gauntlet pointing at him. He protested that he was only 15, that he was not of legal age, but the man in armor said that it did not matter. Those who refused were punished, as was the norm in Jan’s medieval society, and so, after saying wistful goodbyes to his lover under the silver light of the full moon -- and oh, how romantically did they make love beforehand -- he graciously received the weapons and armor gifted to him by his fellow villagers and went to Castle Schmertzen’s mustering grounds.
He endured three months of training from gymnastics to sparring. His body, already hardened by the intense labor of working the fields, became stronger as he was subjected to mud-crawls, fistfights and hundred-meter dashes in full gear and armor. He forged strong bonds with his comrades in training and drank the night away with them in contentment. Being a young man driven by hormonal urges, he also wasted away much of his salary on whores.
The Battle of Fedorov Fields saw him taking part in logistical raids against Count Alfred Stoutheart. Armed with a crossbow, a board shield, a spear, and feeling moderately secure in his light armor of mail and a kettle hat, he, along with two dozen others, charged from the underbrush of Aliasce Forest into the narrow dirt road that guided a slow-moving caravan into the town of Yarrick. He does not want to admit it, but he relished in his first kill: the lead horseman could only hang his jaw agape as Jan’s spear tore through his chest and pierced his heart. With astonished eyes, the young Jan looked at the corpse as it fell from the stirrups. In the din of screams and metal clanging against metal, he looked for another target, which he quickly acquired.
Of the twenty men of the caravan, ten were killed, four were maimed for life, and the last six surrendered before they could be harmed. Jan mainly fought in skirmishes until the main and actual open-field battle at Fedorov Fields. However, he did not see much action there as his regiment was assigned to a reserve position, and Count Stoutheart’s line broke and routed when Count Saffeud himself and his personal bodyguard charged from the flank.
He participated in the siege of Castle Yarrick, helping to construct defensive palisades against defender missile fire, but the siege was lifted in but a mere seven days as Count Stoutheart surrendered. However, when Count Saffeud entered his rival’s court, expecting complete submission, he was suddenly assailed by Stoutheart and whatever knights remained of his bodyguard. Jan was present at the time and helped to defend his lord, suffering a wound in the thigh, but managing to spear a knight through his vision-slit. Saffeud personally beheaded Stoutheart for this last act of defiance that cost him quite a number of his men.
Of those that survived and were not rendered disabled by the attack, Saffeud offered promotions. As a mage was healing Jan in the sick tent, the Count suddenly brushed through the tent flap and declared that Jan was now a professional soldier with the slightly prestigious position of light cavalryman. From that day on, he was expected to soldier for his lord until death or told otherwise; never would he be demobilized.
With the petty war over after a year, Jan underwent retraining. He was given a steed to care, a heraldic kite shield and his very own arming sword. He was trained under an excellent stablemaster who knew when and how to be harsh and lenient to his students. In just four weeks, he was able to ride gracefully in formation. In just a few more, he could fight comfortably while mounted. Even if his armor did not have gleaming plates yet, he felt rather satisfied with himself.
At age 17, almost nearing his 18th birthday, he returned to his home village of Worsowa, hoping to marry his sweetheart, Valentina. However, he found himself betrayed when it was revealed that she had married Yarrick’s mayor’s son. Grumbling, he left the village almost immediately after greeting his friends and family and handing a portion of his monthly pay to his parents. Vladislaw, his older brother, was already married to Tina; and his sisters were, too, married, save for the youngest at age 12, who was only betrothed. In a time where marrying at 16 was the norm, he was feeling rather behind in life. But heartache kept him from finding love, and he was in under no obligation to marry as his siblings already were, so he did not hurry.
For seven years, then, he was involved with the Inquisition into investigating the possible existence of an Erthantis-worshiping cult within the area of Count Saffeud’s domain. Reports of uneasiness and strange noises around select areas from the local populace came increasingly, such that the nobles actually had to intervene. To unearth the conspiracy, Jan was volunteered by Inquisitor Thaddeus himself and taken from his Eastern homeland to the West, entering the capital city of Kathar for the first time, and then back again, and then to the South, in a sort of wild goose chase for clues and suspects. He was praised by Thaddeus for staying with the cause even after the nobles had become unsupportive due to the costs, time, and the intrusive nature of the operation. He fought summoned demons on quite a few occasions and slew one crazed mage himself, though suffering great injury from one of the dying woman’s offensive fire spells.
In the final battle, against a traitorous priest named Basilius Aggnathaea, Jan was knocked out and captured by heretical forces. He was dragged into the deepest cave of the cavernous expanse wherefrom the cult operated. Stripped of his armor, he was nailed to a cross, the pain jolting him awake but his agonized screams overpowered by the insane chanting of the black-robed figures that surrounded him.
With the cross propped up at the center of a chalk-drawn ritual circle, Basilius began to shout in a language Jan could not understand, a language otherworldly. Mocking, laughing imps flew around the tortured man and nipped at his exposed flesh with their little fanged teeth. Basilius convulsed and began to have seizures as he neared the end of his litany, such that five of his underlings had to steady him. The symbolically-placed candles around the crucified Jan were suddenly and ominously snuffed out as the mad priest uttered the final word of the litany.
The tortured Jan felt something pushing against his stomach from the inside, something warm. But before he could speculate as to what it was, the shaking old man already had the tip of a longsword almost against his navel. With Jan screaming at death so close, Basilius was slain by a distant Inquisitor Thaddeus with a crossbow bolt to the neck. The long minutes came by with a brutal battle he was too wounded to pay attention to. The cult members tried to retrieve him but all were slain to the last man. Rescued, Jan was immediately put in the care of the best mages the Inquisitorial Palace in Kathar City could provide.
Jan was also brought before High Priest Fingar, the future Arch-Traitor, himself, for exorcism. Thaddeus was worried that Jan might have had evil influences pressed onto his soul. Taken blindfolded into one dark, damp room of a dungeon, he was tricked into thinking the ceremony performed before him was holy when, it was, in fact, not so. Though Fingar spoke suspiciously the same utterings as Basilius did, Jan suspected nothing as he trusted the Priest with his life, being an inborn follower, as a peasant should before someone who was both a noble and a spiritual leader. No Inquisitorial personnel were present during Jan’s “exorcism,” which was, in truth, a partial soulbinding. As such, the 25-year-old illiterate peasant soldier from the peaceful farming village of Worsowa became a sleeper agent. However, there was no codeword for activation as his profession as a soldier would see him at the forefront of the violence to come. When slain, or when tricked and convinced by the demon himself, Jan Helmski Krazowicz and Egradel the Magnificent shall bind together soul and body to coalesce into one of the most powerful and brutal soldiers to ever walk the land, loyal only to Erthantis and whose existence is centered only upon death.
Jan returned to Castle Schmertzen with hearty congratulations and gracious promotion to Cavalry Sergeant from his lord, Count Saffeud. A year came and went without him noticing himself becoming more aggressive but smiling, drinking, and taking whores noticeably less. His peers, lords and friends understood that this was an effect of the mad missions the Inquisition took, for if a man was forced to swear an oath of secrecy, then what came to Jan’s eyes and ears must truly be terrible indeed, such that it was best not to speak of it but the barest of details. Yet Jan’s personality would have made him more reclusive, not more aggressive. No-one, not even Jan, knew of the taint that slowly grew within him.
When he returned to Worsowa to share with his family the gold he made working with the Inquisition, his father brought up the subject of marriage. Jan laughed and said, “Father, the battlefield is my spouse, and the sword, our child. I am enjoying my life as it is, free like a man like myself should be, making gold, drinking heavily and fucking whores every night. I do not need someone who would but slow me down, burdening me with a bastard and emptying my coinpurse as I rise through the ranks. I would rather not marry, father, for Knighthood, chaste and pure, is my goal.”
At this, his father laughed, for he could not believe that the crybaby he had raised could come up with such an answer. The aging man smiled, gripped his son’s shoulder, and said that he was proud of him. During his visit, Jan also purchased fine arms and plate armor from Vladislaw, his brother, who had become the village blacksmith and was filling out orders from Count Saffeud's marshall and Jan's commanding officer, Captain Iosif Avtokratoraz. He also bought clothing from his sister-in-law, Tina, one of the village's clothiers, as what he owned at the time were just about to amount to rags.
The one night that shook the whole Empire finally came: just a few hours before the Empress’ assassination, at nighttime, Count Saffeud personally picked the men he trusted the most within his castle for a secret mission, and Jan was one of them. Wanting to travel fast, Saffeud chose only cavalrymen. He assembled eighteen knights, four not of his personal bodyguard, and two peasant cavalrymen. His scorn for his own family made it so that he did not invite his sons along, and so, in the dead of night, his party of 21 followed him under the gaze of the twinkling stars, ignorant of the nature of their mission, simply out of unquestioning loyalty.
In the middle of the journey, though, they were assailed by assassins. Outnumbering his party two to one, Saffeud knew he could not possibly win this one; he did not even have a mage with him! It was not late into the battle, then, that the count suffered a grievous wound. He fell off his horse, and his men formed a protective circle around him. Just barely clinging to consciousness, he could see Jan fighting the hardest of them all, yelling, screaming and cursing, every blow he delivered seemingly stronger than the last as he cut down men like pigs at a slaughtering block.
It was such that he beckoned Jan to him, and the young man kneeled before his dying lord. He was handed a letter with the wax seal of the Empress Herself! There was grim humor as Jan asked out loud,
“You were screwing the Empress behind everyone’s back, my lord?!”
Saffeud could not help but laugh as much as his lungs would allow at that point. He quickly corrected Jan, saying that it was not so, that he was entrusted via the given letter to gather along with willing heroes and adventurers at a set mustering area to combat the Erthanti threat which loomed just over the near horizon, and that, since they were all about to die, he wanted Jan, as his last hope, to ride, and ride as fast as he could to that mustering area: an inn on the outskirts of Kathar called 'The Rusty Brewer' and to ask for a man named Lukas there. And he did so immediately, putting the letter in his breast pocket as he dodged arrows, bolts and javelins as his steed sprinted away through the forest undergrowth, knocking down veiled assassins to the ground, breaking their bones.
Managing to escape his assailants, he begins his new adventure with cold sweat lacing his skin, a tired steed, and a uniform and weapon both coated in the blood of the slain. He reigns in Zarogien, his noble stallion, and lets him walk to regain his strength. Lifting up the visor of his sallet helm, he looks up to the night sky and the gleaming orb of the full moon, contemplating, the look of his blue eyes ever so sharp, what fate had in store for him.
“For the Empress,” he mutters, and once more, he rides with purpose.
Personality:“We cannot allow them to live. They are dishonest people and even if we put them in chains, they cannot learn honesty, for the trait is inborn and cannot possibly be taught. Slit their throats and then burn their bodies; the Nine -- praise be Their Names -- shall know Their own.” - Jan, age 26, after a victory over a 40-man company of bandits, half of whom surrendered.
Gone were Jan’s optimism, mercifulness and romanticism the moment Egradel had entered his body. Now, he is without compassion for those who oppose him, preferring to kill rather than to let live the surrendered. Egradel constantly suggests to Jan by injecting thoughts into his mind which he cannot distinguish from his own. Though still fond of drink, gold and wine, he finds such pleasures to be less and less enjoyable, and more and more does he look to his sword, to his steed, and to the readiness of his comrades. In other words, he is molding to become the perfect soldier: without pity, without remorse, without hope -- little by little does he accept that he is already dead, and that war is all but a game; a game where there is much joy and loot to be had, if one has the proper mindset...
Weapons of Choice:-Arming Sword
-Heraldic Kite Shield
-Zarogien, his War Horse
-Partial Plate Armor
Powers & Abilities:
- Dradovka Cavalryman: Jan Helmski Krazowicz is a member of the Dradovka Light Cavalry. He is adept at mounted combat and riding and excels at skirmishes, raids and scouting missions.
- Stannisdra Spearman: Jan Helmski Krazowicz has served as a peasant spearman in the armies of one of the Duchies of the western parts of Highwayman’s Hold and as such is comfortable with polearms ranging from the humble spear to the fearsome billhook, but this does not extend to pikes: a weapon type he doesn’t have experience in.
- Demonic Intuition: Through subtle cues, Egradel is able to steer Jan into the most effective but the most brutal and bloody of choices, then soothes his conscience by convincing him that there was simply no other way. This makes Jan a sadistic fighter and a competent tactician.
- To Kill for the Sake of Killing: Egradel the Magnificent is excited by the carnage of battle and provides boons to Jan varyingly depending on the severity of the surrounding struggle. At its highest point, reached when fighting something fierce such as a dragon or when facing an army, Jan is an utterly deranged sociopath who can barely distinguish friend from foe and barely even notices pain no matter how grievous his wounds. He will not feel fatigue and every single one of his strikes will be at his hardest and swiftest, much to his physical detriment.
- Unknown to Death nor Known to Life: When Jan is mortally wounded, his psyche is dazed to the point where Egradel can do a partial takeover and keep him alive and fighting still. Jan’s eyes will glow a bright red to reflect his possession and will have all the effects of the highest state of To Kill for the Sake of of Killing, except for being unable to distinguish friend from foe, for Egradel’s intellect is broad and deep, and thus he is able to think.
- Demonic Ascension:
”I have ascended! NONE, may challenge me!”
/
”Hear ye, all who would listen: tremble at my words and abandon your homes, for I have awoken and come to you with the gift of DEATH!”
Jan either willingly joins his soul with Egradel's fully when he is finally aware of its presence within him, when the demon, sensing the turmoil in the land, reveals itself, or he dies and it takes over Jan completely, using his humanoid form as a template wherefrom to grow its demonic characteristics. The new demon's name and personality will differ in either scenario, but its strengths will be the same. Jan either becomes a demonic lord who seeks to subjugate all for Lord Erthantis, anglicizing his name, or Egradel will go on to fulfill its purpose as one of the ruinous plagues on the land, representing bloody death and the churning carnage of war, also in service to Erthantis.
Relationships:-Egradel the Magnificent, partially soulbound and host to;
-Drodovko Krazowicz, father;
-Imelda Krazowicz, mother;
-Vladislaw Torune Krazowicz, older brother;
-Tina Sophia Krazowicz, sister-in-law;
-Helga Krazowicz-Petrenko, younger sister;
-Irina Vladiminora Putina, younger sister;
-Anka Sylwia Jussepski, younger sister;
-Count Kasloz Saffeud, lord and army commander,
deceased;
-Captain Iosif Avtokratoraz, commanding officer;
-Corporal Dmitri Askopov, best friend and fellow Dradovka Cavalryman,
deceased;
-Valentina Williams, ex-girlfriend;
Other:Jan Krazowicz, having been born a peasant, has not received proper education and is thus illiterate.
