Character Name: Gottrik Faust
Sex|gender: Male
Race: Dangh'Vah
Appearance:
Gottrik in his prime as an up and coming engineer in the fortress-city of Golgath, though he's become a lot more daper since he left the city to make his own fortune.
Distinguishing features: His bright orange but neatly trimmed beard and mohawk, as well as his bushy eyebrows.
Age: 354
Occupation: Golgath Engineer, Gunsmith and Mercenary
Crimes: Sabotage (False), Accomplice to Murder (False), Theft (True), Falsification of Credentials (False), Desertion (True), Fraud (False), Destruction of Property (False), Murder of an Officer of the Courts x 12 (He contests 5 of those counts as false, and contests the validity of the other 7 as self-defence)
Starting Equipment: A Dagden Double-barrel shotgun with a handful of shells, a set of simple mechanic's tools, and an officer's flintlock pistol. He's wearing his prison civvies.
Personal Items: His Engineer badge which he wears around his neck as a necklace. Though he's no longer officially a member of Golgath's garrison and therefore the badge no longer holds much authority in the city, it is still something he holds dear as a mark of his skills and accomplishments.
Personality: A pragmatic and innovative mind, Gottrik considers himself to be a fairly versatile person, quite in contrast to a lot of Dangh'Vah who are steeped in tradition and cling to their old ways and beliefs for sustenance. He keeps his own interests first and foremost, and has no qualms with taking more severe measures to get jobs done, but he treats friends, comrades, and associates with respect so long as they show him the same. It was this mind that benefited him tremendously in becoming one of the many esteemed engineers along the walls of Golgath, but it is also what made he realize how the situation in the old city was not likely to change and that he had to leave while he still could.
Character Quest: Gottrik seeks to make a life of his own far and away from Golgath and traditional Dangh'Vah society, whatever it may be. His whole reason for leaving the city and deserting his duties as one of the garrison's many engineers was because he saw no future there, and he'll be damned if he's thrown into the martyrdom units of the Oathsworn or spend his life and that of any of his descendants married to the walls of the formidable but constantly assailed city. He believes the Dangh'Vah have to move on, and for starters find a place where they're not constantly harassed or assaulted by enemies who want to kill them every couple years. To this end, he's travelled around trying to find a place he likes, and trying to obtain a substantial amount of capital.
Bio: Born into a traditional Dangh'Vah family of lesser noble heritage in the city of Golgath, Gottrik was raised to hold a position of distinction within Golgath society that would bring honour to his ancestors and his descendants. To this end, he was enrolled in the renowned military sciences academy in Golgath, earning his certification as an Engineer after 30 years of education and training at the age of 50. He was immediately assigned to the Golgath city garrison and assigned a section of its walls to oversee and maintain.
For the next 120 years Gottrik refined his education with experience, overseeing wall repairs, maintenance and repair of the massive cannons and guns along the walls, and ensuring his crew's equipment was in peak condition. He gained defence and siegecraft experience as he held his section of the walls against warbands of Ornoks over the years. He also gained some experience in command, for although Engineers were not strictly officers or commanded the same authority as higher noble-blooded Lords or Princes, most of those higher commanders were often off leading charges beyond the walls, overseeing the immense administration of the Golgath military, or were often having to jump between various wall sections, often leaving the Engineers to coordinate troops since they were of noble blood and had immense knowledge themselves of how to properly coordinate personnel and material.
Eventually though, Gottrik became more and more irritated with the Golgath military administration. He more and more viewed the constant meat-grinder that were the walls of Golgath as a tedious and ultimately meaningless endeavour since they were never any closer to actually solving the problem: the sources of the Ornok warbands themselves. Even with the creation of the Oathsworn, Gottrik was not impressed. He saw it mostly as a means for the higher noble families to not have to spill their own blood and risk their own precious lineage when they could have an army of criminals eager to redeem themselves and their lineages sacrifice themselves in what was essentially Martyrdom. Though he admired the pragmatism in letting criminals fight in this way, he didn't approve of how comparatively little risk the majority of nobles in Golgath were willing to take upon themselves to help move towards the ultimate goal of trying to reclaim their empire of lost tunnels and holds from the monsters that not infested them. He thought that the formidable walls of Golgath having grown ever more greater and impressive over the centuries had made the administration extremely complacent to the point of stagnation. Though he was prudent enough not to voice these thoughts openly, as insulting the courage the noble could have dire consequences for one in Golgath, but nonetheless those thoughts grew in his mind.
Until eventually, at 188 years old, after realizing in his own mind that the Golgath military administration was as likely to move in their mindset as the mountains Golgath was built upon, Gottrik decided to leave Golgath to seek his own fortune. A highly risky and dangerous move for himself to make, as not only were personnel in the Golgath city garrison required to serve until they died or were otherwise unfit for service, but effectively deserting his post would essentially make him a pariah among most respectable parts of the city society. But he saw no alternative, as he knew that his superiors would never accept his reasons for discharge, and that he knew that outside of Golgath, most other races were unlikely to give a shit what his people thought of him given the fact that he was of a profession in high demand all over the known world. So, informing nobody of his reasons, not even his own family or friends, Gottrik simply packed up his gear, tools, and his couple of choice Dangh'Vah firearms as he rode off out one of the many gates of the city on Mountain-Goat, cloaked and covered in coal dust to make himself look like a miner as he headed in the direction of Algria lands. He has never returned to the city since.
For the next 166 years, Gottrik has wandered the Kingdom of Algria, often hoping from town to town, taking whatever jobs he can find to earn some money, and even doing some pro bono work on ocassion from people grateful to have a Dangh'Vah engineer do work for them, though in those cases it was often to avoid the law. For Golgath does not take kindly to deserters, especially not Engineers, and after a short amount of time, the The Iron Gavel of Golgath, the title given to the head Judge of the city's military tribunal had issued a warrant for Gottrik's arrest on charges of Theft and Desertion, with a reward starting at 5,000 pieces of silver to whoever brought him back for justice. In Algria, many hunters tried to apprehend Gottrik, and were often the cause of him having to leave one town to another, with those official or impromptu officers of the law depending on their origin he couldn't elude winding up dead as he murdered some in order to escape.
His luck ran out in the town of Oldenford, an Algrian settlement several miles from the Algrian/Jaku border. Gottrik had been on his way to Jaku Territory to see if his luck would fair much better there, but had decided to stick around in Oldenford in order to do one or two jobs to get enough Marks to set himself up pretty nicely when he made it across the border. He didn't necessarily like Oldenford, it was a town of people who were distrustful of outsiders and foreigners due to the misfortunes of being a border down near Jaku lands, and conflicts between Algria and Jaku having led to the sacking of the town more than once. This also meant however that they weren't adverse to having a Dangh'Vah engineer do some work for them so that they might stand a better chance the next time, so they paid him to build them better guns and cannons out of tons of scavenged parts, and to give their paltry defences a once-over.
As he was working though, news reached some of his Bounty Hunters that the Iron Gavel had raised the bounty of the warrant on Gottrik's capture to a substantial five tons of pure silver. The reward had raised slightly over the decades, but the frustration at Gottrik's continued evasiveness which essentially made a mockery of Golgath's administration and courts finally drove them to drastically increase the incentive. To this end, many Bounty Hunters started gathering in force to track him down and bring him back to Golgath, and the Algrian Constabulary started to take an even greater interest in organizing their own bands.
Thankfully and unthankfully, Oldenford's relative remoteness and reputation for disliking outsider ensured that this news was unlikely to reach Gottrik, or the townsfolk quickly. Though that didn't mean that some bigots didn't already had a bone to pick with the Dangh'Vah. Believing that the Dangh'Vah would simply go across to The Free States, inform some Reavers there of the great prize he had made Oldenford into and then scalp them of even more of their wealth for his own greedy machinations, a gang of Townsfolk conspired a plot to ruin Gottrik. After being given some of their newly made weapons and cannons, the conspirators sabotaged the guns themselves to misfire in secret and blew up one of the new cannons, causing a fire and killing a couple people accidentally. Though that was not the original plan, it only served to rile the townsfolk further when the conspirators accused Gottrik of purposely sabotaging the equipment to do just these very things. With the local constabulary and a mob at their backs, they had Gottrik arrest and charged for a panapoly of charges and having him sent back towards Algria proper for trial long before they even found out that Golgath wanted him for other crimes.
This presented a problem for Algria, as they had Gottrik on trial for more crimes associated with their own territory than Golgath had for theirs, though Golgath desperately wanted Gottrik back for trial themselves. So Algria made a deal, they would still charge Gottrik for his crimes in Algria for which the penalty would be a hanging, but they would send his body back to Golgath for the Iron Gavel to decide what he wanted with it for half the price in silver. The Iron Gavel begrudingly agreed to these terms, believing that a dead Gottrik to showcase as an example would be as acceptable as a live one for a show trial and for half the price in silver.
Thus, that is how Gottrik found himself to be hanged for Algrian and Golgath crimes, most of them false charges, but some true. His gear confiscated and sent back to Golgath along with all of his money, he was condemned to die by the magistrates. Though the noose would not claim Gottrik then, as he found himself caught up in the mass prisoner escape, and beating up a couple of his captors alongside his fellow inmates and stealing a couple of human-made guns off of them, he would follow them to the Bastard's Bastion and a whole new world in the sky for him to escape to.
Theme Song: "Pirate Metal - Carpe Diem" by Adrian Von Ziegler:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhlhVc2NbogRP Example: Fourth post down on the IC tab:
roleplayerguild.com/topics/136393-open..Cartographer