Name: Clementine Haschwalden
Title: The Giantslayer
Race: Hume
Job: Dark Knight
Age: 21
Gender: Male
Warrior of Light: Yes

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Physical Features:

When you look at him, at his young jaw and his soft skin, you might think that Clementine Haschwalden is just a boy playing knight, that’s he’s too small and too quiet and too much like a dandelion about to be blown away in the wind. Or maybe you look at him and think to yourself, that young, soft look to his face is a red herring, because looks deceive, and the dangerous ones are the ones who don’t look dangerous at all, and he must have earned that sharp and shadowy armor for a reason, right? But Clementine isn’t really any of the things he looks like. He’s not much of a dandelion, and he’s not much of a knight.

Clementine Haschwalden has snowy white hair cut short and boyish, large round eyes that might be black, or muddy blue, and he stands at an unimpressive 5’3”, maybe 5’3-and-a-half”. His legs are long, and his shoulders are round and hard, and he might appear a bit like a gymnast, or a long-distance runner. A distracted look tends to meander around his face, like a part of him got lost in thought one day and never came back home.

His eyes are always so serious, and if they’re not serious then they’re worried.

Clothing/Armor/Weapons:

Clementine wears the highly recognizable armor of a Dark Knight, with horned shoulder-plates and a huge, angry-looking helmet that might’ve fallen off a chess board. A lacey white cape flies over his shoulders, and his lower arms are covered up by thick white opera gloves, with black hands. The tight and form-fitting armor of a Dark Knight is, as is traditional, very dark, and makes little noise when it moves.

At Clementine’s hip is Arondight, a witch-sword aligned with the Darkness element. It is simple, long, and unadorned, made of solid black metal, and its cut can inflict Slow on its targets.

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Personality Traits:

Shy | Self-Doubting | Thoughtful | Fussy | Self-Destructive | Awkward

If you are injured, Clementine will fuss and fret and treat you to the best of his abilities. If you are noticeably upset, he will ask if there’s anything he can do. If you are about to march out into danger, some place where he can’t follow, he will go with you all the way to the door and watch you vanish over some distant hilltop. But he is not the kind of person who would extend that courtesy to himself.

Clementine works best and most confidently when following another person’s orders, and he works best as a tool, not a person. He has a bad habit of undervaluing or ignoring his own happiness or value, and if required to make decisions for himself, Clementine will um and uh and crumple with hesitation.

Clementine is somewhat starved for affection, and will brighten up noticeably at very simple acts of kindness.

Likes:

Flowers | Cronquist | Home-cooked Meals

Dislikes:

Attention | Arrogance | Pranks

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Hometown:

Cronquist

Current Residence:

Thorne City

Occupation:

Monster Hunter

Backstory:

Tol Mannagan, the Dark Capital, central city of Cronquist, hung over Clementine’s childhood like cloudcover. The long black towers that peeked over the horizon, just out of reach, spoke of safety and knights and mages and untold possibilities, and when he was young, Clementine would sit on the hill in the center of town and watch the city’s silhouette, and he would think about all these things and more. Clementine and his family lived in one of the townships just beyond Tol Mannagan’s walls, and though it was safer there than in the provinces, safe, in this case, was a very relative word. By the time he was eleven, Clementine knew what it was like to have another child not show up to class one day, and never appear again.

Clementine was not a wanted son. That isn’t to say he was treated badly, or that his parents were unkind, but maybe they kept him at arm’s length more than most parents would, and maybe they looked at him with a kind of wariness that left long, thin wounds on the preteen Clementine. Sometimes he heard them talking in low and serious voices over the kitchen table late at night, when they thought he was asleep.

Cronquist, Clementine’s home for nearly twenty years, was a country at war. Unkindness was expected, and kindness was measured almost exclusively in lives saved, and, if not that, then days survived. The best and the brightest were warriors, or doctors, and the Dark Knight and the White Mage were symbols of escape and prestige for every child in the country. Clementine, never a violent boy, urged on by the shadow of Tol Mannagan, decided at a young age that he would be a White Mage, he would, he really would, and when he turned fifteen, he left town for the first time in his life, and made the long and troubling journey to Tol Mannagan and the Academy of Mercy

Clementine managed two straight years of study before dropping out. Despite his best efforts and his countless hours of work, nothing could make up for his complete lack of magical talent. Unwilling to go home, Clementine sought employ as a nurse in one of the Dark Order’s reserve battalions, and served under one of the few Dark Knights put in charge of a military attack force.

During the next few months of service, Clementine showed a certain affinity for Darkness that his Knight-Commander noticed, and he was eventually recommended to enter Dark Knight training. This time, he managed the full three years. Because, although Clementine was only ever an average Knight, only ever an average swordsman, only ever an average fighter, he could plunge himself into Darkness like no other student. He soon accepted his slow progress as a swordsman and athlete, and ultimately chose to focus on mastering Darkness itself. Soon, though other could dance circles around him, or duel him into submission, Clementine could fell giants in a single, Darkness-powered hit.

Upon graduation, Clementine set out alone, as most Dark Knights were known to do, and served quite admirably as a defender of the people, far too self-destructive to demonstrate the usual corruption and extortion even the best Knights could occasionally fall prey to. Though no more effective than many other strong and popular members of the Order, Clementine Haschwalden was thrust violently and wildly into the limelight one day on his first real test as a Knight—a behemoth in the Hud Province. Two others had been assigned to join him and, as the rookie, Clementine was expected to organize the civilians’ escape while the others fought. The behemoth was too much, however, and soon the beast had killed Clementine’s companions, torn through the township, and rained tooth and nail down on the villagers. Clementine, however, was there, Darkness ready, and with just three strikes the behemoth was cut down.

It took nearly a week to regain consciousness after the massive injuries his Darkness inflicted. When he woke up, to his blank and utter bemusement, ‘Clementine Haschwalden’ was suddenly a household name. He was the Giantslayer now, the Dark Knight who felled a behemoth in just three hits and saved hundreds of innocent lives. In reality, of course, the behemoth was worn from a battle with two other, more experienced Knights—but of course, that’s not what the people saw.

When he was fully recovered, Clementine was immediately sold out to the nation of Thorne by his government, who saw him as a useful political tool; the Giantslayer would go out into the world beyond, and he would demonstrate the might (and price tag) of Cronquist’s Dark Order, and make trade deals for much needed food and supplies much more attractive to outside nations. Unhappy as a soldier of the Thorne government, however, Clementine soon struck a deal with his superiors, and arranged to take on more down-to-earth monster hunting as his main source of income and publicity. He didn’t want to be cooped up in the palace like a luxury item, dispatched only when the monster was dangerous enough to warrant his price tag. He wanted to there, here, now, out and about, seeing people and doing things and making change happen.

Clementine spent the better part of a year and a half wandering Thorne in a kind of publicity tour. Though he would always love his home in Cronquist, the rolling brown hills and soft yellow grass, the scrubby white wildflowers and the gray-white twilight, Clementine grew a soft spot for the more hospitable country of Thorne, and soon came to enjoy the time he spent as the dark and mysterious Giantslayer. Never one for socializing, he made few friends, though his efforts were, distrust-aside, largely appreciated. His wandering lifestyle was recently put on hold, however, after receiving orders to return to the Palace as additional security for the coming festival.

Other:

Left over from his training as a White Mage, Clementine has an unusual amount of endurance and stamina, and knows the rudimentary basics of weak Cures and Esunas.