Lhorne is 5’8’’ and wide. The first glance gives off a cherubic impression. Deceptively fat, the thick lining around his mid-section and the wide fleshy cheeks mask a layer of heavy bone and dense muscle. His dirty blonde hair and effeminate features further enhance the effect, despite the prominent hooked beak. Sparkling light green eyes and a wide smile combine with an overall cheerful demeanor tend to disarm others, leaving them unguarded. A more studied look belies the angelic appearance to reveal the hardened killer beneath. Despite the dainty, slightly chubby fingers, the heavily scarred hands and forearms hint at darker tale, though many stop here and assume he is a chef. Where you to peel off the shirt and pants, old wounds paint a tale of carnage and destruction, shrapnel and burn scars dot over old gunshot wounds and wide scars from blades.

Lhorne normally wears a beaten leather jacket that retains some shine, a heavy silk shirt and dark gray or blue jeans. A matte black chain serves as a belt, while a beaten metallic watch rests on his right forearm. A pair of twin tungsten carbide rings rest on his first and third fingers on both hands, and a pair of shined dress shoes with rubber soles peak out from beneath. A knock-off pair of shades usually finishes the look, which hides both where he is looking as well as the not-infrequent remnants of a hangover.

Lhorne is outwardly an uncaring hedonist with strong nihilistic tendencies. Killing is a drug that he is addicted to, especially the sight of blood. However, he also hates both the dependency on the adrenaline rush, and the strong internal moral sense still protests the unadulterated joy he feels from killing. Due to the fact that he has had this same moral sense been trampled over both for his personal history as well as the world’s, he has come to the conclusion that nothing matters. As a corollary, Lhorne drowns himself in pleasures trying to silence both the moral outrage and the seething bloodlust. While normally easy going, pricking one of his various pet peeves will lead to an explosive and a response that most victims would have preferred to be lethal.

Despite the overindulgence in food and drink that keeps his body comfortably padded, Lhorne rigorously exercises. Sometimes it’s a punishment, other times it is an exaltation of being alive and enjoying the body. Similarly, Lhorne is rigorously disciplined in furthering his skills, when he hasn’t been too incapacitated by a night’s excesses. The skills developed depend on his interests, but food and alcohol have led to a rich understanding of chemistry, while more practical skills such as anatomy, emergency medicine, as well as various methods of dealing death.

Lhorne was born a dock rat. Abandoned at birth, Lhorne was raised by a pair of homeless eight year old girls. He doesn’t remember much of them, as life crushed one then the other around the time he turned five years old. The first few months were the most difficult, but after biting out the jugular of the first pedophile to assault the boy, he was mostly left alone by the adult predators that prowled the area. Despite some moral outrage about his personal life, he soon discovered a talent for life of crime, violence, and survival, which trumped any internal doubt or guilt. Within two years, he was a mover and shaker in the children’s gangs, which were farming grounds for adult syndicates, mercenaries, and occasionally other militant factions.

He truly started gaining notoriety when he began raiding older gangs secretly, inflaming passions by acting as an informant, and making out like a bandit in the ensuing chaos. Juggling the hate of several groups, the information and lies they each received, and unexpected circumstances was walking the edge of knife, and he did it successfully for years. Being independent of the children’s groups helped keep his secret, but it was only a matter of time before he slipped up and was targeted for assassination by one of the gangs he had been manipulating, and then robbing.

For three years, the young man was a puppet master, living in the shadows and playing with other people’s lives like a god. While the brutality and cruelty sickened him, it was like a drug that kept calling no matter how hard he tried to stay away. When it all came crashing down, the eight year old surprised the older cutters when they came after him. The tenement he had claimed was a rotting maze of corridors, natural traps and inconsistent lighting. Ten went in, all between the ages of 14 and 18, but none came out. Lhorne killed the last three personally, the taste and smell of their blood lighting a fire within him. Blood-drunk and ecstatic for his survival, he stumbled out in the early morning light into another trap.

The cheeky little brat had attracted the notice of some of the stronger mercantile syndicates, and one of them scheduled the event as an audition. Despite passing, a ruthless group of trained enforcers tazed the young boy, smacked him around and tortured him mildly before making an offer he couldn’t refuse. Indoctrinated into the Endless Waves, he and group of four other children around the age of twelve were put under the watch of an ambitious seventeen year old woman, Mari Coldwell. The initial training was rigorous and ruthless, were physical punishment for slacking was common and food was rationed so that bottom performer would starve if they didn’t perform.

Initially, Lhorne struggled. Having never truly socialized with others, or even learned the tricks of the trade or common information, his formal education was sadly lacking. Despite being the brightest of the bunch, the material was the toughest for him for the first few months from simple lack of exposure. Half-starved by the second year of his education, he even began struggling in in his native talent for violence. It wasn’t the age or size that allowed the other talented children to defeat him, but exhaustion and lack of food. But even half-starved, Lhorne was a beast driven mad by desperation. His ruthless brutality further isolated him from the other four, and they started began cooperating to defeat the younger man. The next three years were difficult for Lhorne, and he never managed to develop any teamwork with the older, terrified members of his cadre. When they were all sent into a final elimination challenge, Lhorne emerged the lone victor. His own cadre tried to murder him in the beginning, but he alone emerged from their starting building covered in blood, quite a bit of it his own. Despite being wounded, the young man decimated the other cadres, and emerged as the clear victor at the end of the weeklong death match. He also emerged with a fanatic loyalty to his beautiful instructor.

Mari emerged with the approval of the elders in the organization, and gained influence and the ability to plan operations. Many hinged on Lhorne’s still rapidly growing ability for sheer carnage and chaos combined with a fearless devotion to the first person that did well by him. For the next four years, Mari was largely successful in gaining influence, territory and loyalty of members within her organization, as well as expanding the Wave’s overall influence and territory. She was a rising star, but when one plan went catastrophically wrong, some of her influence crumbled. Lhorne was sacrificed to the public authorities in attempt to double down, play a longer game and come back stronger than before. Given his age and lack of notoriety from a physical recognition point of view, Lhorne lied about his name, and was officially recognized under his new name. Given his young age, the judge gave him an option of prison in an adult population for fifteen years, or joining the military, a faction which he silently was a part of. Lhorne easily made the transition into the military, which was capable of even more force, and exert even more power than any individual syndicate. While hopelessly corrupt, the army officials also knew how to run things from behind the scenes. Mari’s plan was for Lhorne to be a mole, and eventually emerge with either breaking the power hold of the military over public approval, weapons, and financial influence, or come out into the limelight as a legitimate public influence as the owner of a powerful public corporation in her own right. The distancing between the elders and their fallen star was mutual, and Mari was quite capable of peeling some of the best people away to run her own games.

For the first two years, Lhorne was introduced first hand as to why the syndicates feared the military. They were professional killers without par, and the best of the elite were guaranteed a cushy public position or power and influence from the shadows. It was the brutality of the training that shocked Lhorne, which was in far less than his upbringing, but the degree of dispassionate professionalism and skill that each of the instructors had. While he had the capabilities of defeating a few, in general they were far more knowledgeable and trained than he was. The basic training knocked off his rough edges and rounded out the skills he was lacking. Recognized for his talents, he was given advanced training to polish him to a high shine. While the brass recognized that he was hopelessly compromised from his upbringing, they were also sophisticated enough to realize that he was still useful. After all, they used the troops for their own side projects and gain anyway, and a skilled assassin was a skilled assassin.

After three years of solo covert operations, Lhorne was on the wrong end of a grenade blast. While he eventually recovered to full strength, it was also a convenient time for the brass to rotate him out of the more openly accountable section of their operations. For a time Lhorne served two masters while operating independently. Mari began cutting ties with the Waves in blood, slowly eliminating those who remembered her, while also getting paid for reducing one of the more influential syndicates by the military. Eventually, Lhorne assassinated all the elders and caused a furor for destroying a powerful syndicate “single handed.”

Lhorne now went fully freelance, although retained strong loyalties two both the military and Mari. Operating independently began to tax on Lhorne’s mental state, as guilt and moral outrage began bubbling back to the surface now that he had enough money and influence to live a quiet comfortable life without killing. He took months off at a time, but was never able to resist the big jobs that headed his, gaining a reputation for exclusivity and results. Instead of it being his preference, it was more often than not thate he could no longer resist the next job.

About when King started gaining public power, Lhorne was assigned to assassinate one of his advisors. Lhorne clashed with another assassin from the church several times while attempting to complete the job. The religious fanatic was Lhorne’s equal in overall skill and every time they fought ended in a draw, and every fight took place in the shadows where the guard was weak. Even though most of the security was oblivious, a running battle made enough noise to be investigated. Ironically enough their efforts did eventually scare the older man into a fatal heart attack when he walked into one of their fights in a hotel room.

Mari used this opening to slide into King’s good graces, taking a chance to go legitimate. In order to prove her loyalties, she once again offered up Lhorne, outing him as a former assassin. She even sent some of her own men, men that Lhorne recognized, to kill him. They failed, the gutter cutters not equal to hardened professional in his own territory. While this might have been a repeat of his old audition, Lhorne vanished out of sight in disgust. Unable to kill his first unrequited love at the time, Lhorne is now conflicted on what to do with King. Old military factions want him around, if he is pliable. His old instructor obviously chose King over him, and that indicates the power of the man. Finally, Lhorne sympathizes with King’s ambitions, even while seething at his methods.

Jereth is lean 6’5” with gaunt features. An acquiline profile sits over thin severe lips and surprisingly charming smile. Piercing blue eyes blaze from beneath his large brows. He shaves his head but cares for a small well-kept beard around the mouth. Jereth takes extra time and care to keep the short blond hair from becoming bristly and unruly. He has two prominent facial scars. One is across the his nose and top of his cheeks just under the eyes. The second traces down his left temple and cheek bone almost to his mouth. He is intermittently scarred across his body, and has a intricate wheel tattoo across his left shoulder blade.

Jereth normally wears one of two outfits. The first is a simple monk’s habit with a braided cord around the waist. The only easily noticeable difference is the dark grey color. While at the monastery, Jereth does not wear any shoes, but if wearing the monk’s habit elsewhere, he wears a pair of simple leather sandals. The second outfit is his work outfit, which is a suit of dark grey. He wears a leather watch with a silver faceplate, silver cuff links and buttons. He typically also wears a white tie with a silver clasp, a silver necklace with an emblem of the order of the wheel, and black leather belt. Hidden in the tailoring are layers of interwoven spider silk filament and Kevlar, a .45 pistol and few combat blades stationed at various points.

Jereth believes in strict discipline, calm cold decision making, and God. He rigorously follows the strictures of his order which include minimal luxury, humility before god, and lethal physical might. While Jereth struggles to remain level headed and humble, his faith is his strength and the keystone to his life. He dislikes excess of any kind, especially for violence. While all of God’s children are family and can be redeemed, that does not mean that humanity is necessarily the right voice to convince them. If they cannot repent, they must be saved by God himself, or so Jereth believes. He is relatively naïve on how the world at large functions, and struggles with a mild disdain for other less disciplined and those who wouldn’t strive to eliminate suffering from this world.

The Church has been a stabilizing force since the fall, and have a truce with the assassins that rule the dark. After a brief war after the collapse, the two have had a truce, where each have their own spheres of power they guard jealously. Playing the long game, church leaders have decided to slowly convert the population to gain control of the world, and the assassins have provided an excellent foil to do so. Also, the Church provides a safe home for retired assassins, corrupt politicians and other valuable or vulnerable souls. In exchange for the sanctity of practice, assassins have covert access to much of the information gathered through Church through the Order of the Lamb. While they occasionally spar with the Order of the Lion when a particular soul is important, both the assassins and the Lion avoid conflict of interest. Finally, the while the Order of the Wheel represents a potential threat, the assassins of the Wheel are far more interested in protecting their orthodoxy, or removing any figure that is too openly critical of the Church.
There are usually only two ways to enter the Order of the Wheel. You either are selected as young orphaned boy, or retire into it after a long, successful career as a dealer of death. Few live to grow old in the Order of the Wheel, and the hierarchy purposefully keeps the numbers low to both ensure quality, and reduce any exposure from a large corps of assassins that would conflict with the public position of the Church.

Jereth was born under another name, but his parents gave him up for reasons unknown to him when he was five. All the orphaned children were initially placed into large communal orphanages out in the countryside. A strict schedule of prayer and meditation, formal education and physical training was developed to sort out their wards into separate categories. The most promising are taken by the Order of the Wheel, much to the dismay and grumbling of the many orders of the church. The children, some of whom have been abused or been on the street, knew about the separation process and most strove to either place out in hopes of improving their situation in the world, or get enough education to escape the strict atmosphere of the church.

Jereth was placed in the program and separated out normally in his twelfth year. His rigid devotion and high physical ability were noted and was placed into one of the four groups of fifty that were shifted to the Wheel. He placed somewhere in the middle of the recruits, and was shifted to a monastery in the mountains. An even more draconian schedule of training and ideology was implemented, where before going with a light meal was going without food and a beating or a night’s sleep. Classics and other highbrow information was drilled into the young recruits, such as the expected color of wine, or the smells and tastes of poisons.

After the instructors became satisfied with a student’s overall knowledge of religion, history and science, the moved on to their final field of study, one that had much more potential for damage. In fact, while all the students could eventually pass the knowledge portion, whether it took six or sixteen years, the weeding out truly began with field training. Any recruit with any mental weakness was rotated out of the program, and quietly informed that any passing of knowledge would result in their swift death. Those who became crippled in the program became support staff for their brethren, and would live out their life within the armories of the order or possibly spies. The failure rate was around 40% before the final test, where each was assigned a target to assassinate to graduate. Unknowingly tailed by a master to ensure the completion of the contract, another 20% failed here, either by becoming caught and eliminated, or by mental inability to kill.

After graduation, the cadres were broken up into cells, where each assassin was paired with two support personnel, a contact with the Order of the Lamb, and a senior priest to report to. After an addition 6 to 8 months of working up with each other, each cell is distributed throughout the world, usually replacing one that had fallen earlier. Jereth was twenty two when he finished training up for the world and placed into a port city. He initially had trouble adjusting to outside life, and still finds it difficult to accept. The others in his team also bothered him for reasons he could not say, but was probably their outward piety.

For the next two years, Jereth was only given two assignments. The first was to kill a corrupt bishop. The church official had not only been skimming off the top, which was relatively normal, but also using the funds to increase his own personal power and political influence, which was strictly forbidden. The first kill was actually easy for him, as it was as simple as slipping in some nut extract into the corpulent pastor’s evening wine, and replacing the epi-pen with another one that had “expired.”

The second was far more difficult, both in terms of target method and preparation. One of King’s advisors had not only been publically criticizing the church, but exerting political influence to change some key laws for his own benefit. Despite rigorous research and preparation, the job was long string of failures. Every attempt or avenue was compromised by another assassin, one whose skill with a knife carved another scar into his body with every encounter. Jereth feels like he didn’t even come close to winning any of the engagements, and the seething resentment has been a drive ever since. While the target eventually had a heart attack after walking in on Jereth and the other man sparring in his hotel room, the job was neither as clean nor as efficient as his superiors expected. Jereth has strong feelings of failing some trusted mentors, as well as failing his sacred mission. It also resulted in a volcanic temper and a fanatical training drive almost as dedicated as he is to his faith.

Two months ago, his support team was butchered. Jereth is unsure of who did it, by gutter rumblings and a few pointed conversations with the local pastors indicated his old nemesis was around during the time of the killings, as well as vague rumblings that it might have been one of King’s clean-up crews.