Name: Karl Wynnhurst Player: WynnDark
Kith: Redcap Seeming: Wilder
Court: Unseelie House: Commoner
Legacies: Beast(U) \ Wayfarer (S)
Concept: Monster Hunter Turned Gator Farmer

Attributes


PhysicalSocialMental
Strength (Vise Grip)4Charisma1Perception3
Dexterity (Catlike Reflexes)5Manipulation2Intelligence2
Stamina3Appearance3Wits3

Abilities


TalentsSkillsKnowledges
Alertness3Animal Ken2Academics0
Art0Crafts0Computer0
Athletics3Drive0Enigmas1
Brawl (Dirty Fighting)4Etiquette0Greymare2
Empathy1Firearms1Esoterica0
Expression0Larceny0Investigation2
Intimidation3Melee3Law0
Kenning3Performance2Medicine1
Leadership0Stealth3Occult0
Streetwise1Survival3Research0
Subterfuge0Technology0Science0
Other TalentsOther SkillsOther Knowledges
___0Martial Arts1Lore: Gallain2

Advantages


Advantages
Backgrounds
Allies3
Chimera Items1
Contacts1
Resources3
Treasure3
 
Arts
Chronos3
Primal3
Summer2
Wayferer1
Dragons Ire1
 
Realms
Actor3
Fae4
Nature3
Prop0
Scene0
Time0
 
Misc
Glamour5
Willpower5
Banality3

Ravaging/Musing Threshold: Karl has largely survived off part of all 'payment' for the hunt involving time spent before balefires and occasionally consuming the Glamour infused prey of the hunt. As such, he had no thresholds, though he understands the basics of ravaging and given time might learn how to act as a peculiar muse.

Antithesis: Seeing a heavily one sided fight, Karl must at least offer to help the belabored side.

Birthrights
Dark Appetite
Bully Browbeat
Frailty
Bad Attitude
Merits
_0
_0
Flaws
Twitch1
Enemy2
Health Levels
Bruised-0 
Hurt-1 
Injured-1 
Wounded-2 
Mauled-2 
Crippled-5 
Incapacitated- 

Description:

Mortal Seeming

A lean figure of middling height moves with a loose and boneless grace. A wiry body, long limbed, is made even smaller seeming by the duster hanging open on narrow shoulders. Easily the young man could weigh under a hundred pounds, a paradoxical scarecrow that moved with a lazy economy of motion. A guitar case, scarred and worn often hangs from his back. Deep black hair is shaved to stubble save for the top, which is long and greased back, cut into a point at the back of his skull. With his face clean shaven his age could easily be anything between sixteen and twenty five, though most guess young.

That face is memorable, acid green eyes watch the world from a window of luxurious lashes, the kind girls are jealous of. Likewise his high, fine cheekbones and slender jaw line would look good on a young woman, as would the smooth burnished brown skin and the small nose, and the sensually soft pink lips. Pretty boy fit well, or would have if it weren't for the thick band of scar tissue that ran from his left eyebrow, widening just beneath that eye, crumpling the cheekbone and exiting in a curve across the left jaw. Puckered white flesh with a deep red core, the scar skips down his neck and terminates in a gouged mass at his collar bone, often semi exposed by his clothing.

Fae Mein

The first thing most notice is his hair, shaved high and left long on top, greased back with something that stains it the color of just-drying blood. The hair has a very, wet, look to it and occasionally a small smear of red will run down into the shaved portion. Then there is the smooth, soft gray and rubbery looking skin, the pointed ears, and that mouth. For a Redcap he really is pretty, but those soft looking lips spread far too wide to reveal a maw filled with to many teeth. Big slab like teeth with jagged ends, all stuck in jaws that somehow still seem delicate. The brutal scar that mangles half his face is even more livid than it is to mortal eyes, like a thick vein of blood running down his face and neck, angry and bright on his face.

The duster isn't oilcloth, but rather the hide of something with supple scales, patterned in stripes of pale gray and with a faintly violet sheen in bright light. A necklace of bright red leather hangs from his neck with an assortment of claws and teeth suspended from it.

NOTES:

Equipment
boot knife, switchblade, lead loaded wallet on chain, lighter, flint and steel, guitar, overlarge guitar case (he carries spare clothes and the like to pad the guitar), cigarette case with hand rolled cigarettes (at least a few are.marijuana), a container of toothpicks, hair pomade mixed with chimerical blood, a comb, straight razor, pocket mirror and his chimerical dagger.

Warfetter (war ax) (Treasure 3):
Burning Thew (Dragon's Ire 1), Quicksilver (Wayfare 2):
The wielder of the Ax receives two dots of temporary strength (even if it raises him above 5) and has 1 extra action per combat round. The Ax deals Strength+3/L damage. This requires spending a dot of glamour to activate for the whole battle.
Flaw: Any miss creates a reverse Strength action -2 to strength if target is missed.

Nick Names: Dvarg Frost, 'Pretty Boy'

Allies (3):

Amanda and James Bloodharrow: The boss's (really Amanda) of the Bloodharrow corbie, a group of far wandering monster hunters with a serious reputation. James is where Karl's occasional 'ja ja' comes from, the redcaps maternal ancestors still spoke Dutch and the habit stuck with Karl. James is the fiddle player in the very rough 'band' that acts as mortal cover for the corbie. Amanda was born in Louisiana and her vocal patterns attribute to the peculiarity of Karl's southern accent not being from the part of the south he grew up in. She is the lead singer of the band and absolutely the bloody fisted leader of the corbie.

Michael Collins: The longest running farm hand at Wynnhurst Farms and the current manager.

Chimera (1) (dagger):
A beat up old maglite of the kind that work as a club, at least to mortal eyes. To the dreaming the 'flashlight' is a cruel fighting dagger, with a D shaped handle guard and a wide, stout blade.

Contacts (1):

Harrison Gnasher: Whether Gnasher was his real surname or not, Karl didn't ask, but the grump was known to him as one of the many gray faces that occasionally appeared to fight beside the Bloodharrows. Likewise Karl doesn't know if old Gnasher is a Bloodharrow, the name referring both to the bosses and the corbie, or just a redcap that was known to them. it was Harrison Gnasher that they told him to contact on getting into Starkey though, a mean old bastard but one that would know what was going on amongst the motley and houses of the region. The contact information was a cell number James hadn't trusted to still be right, and the name of a greasy spoon off county road 100A but the name of Papa's where the grump was a regular.

Flaws:
Twitch (1): Toothpick habit, if he isn't smoking Karl generally has a toothpick he's playing with between his lips. When nervous he chews and tends to eat them.
Enemy (2): Mr. Jilted, a disfigured Nocker whom has convinced a motley of his fellows to help him hunt down Karl for having the audacity to not die when he tried to kill him.

Birthrights:

Dark Appetite - Redcaps can literally eat anything. They can chew through cars and eat their way through walls. Their bulldog teeth are brutally flat and hard as steel; their digestive systems (thankfully) remain a mystery. Most prefer human or animal meat, but when hunger strikes, anything will do. We do mean anything. As long as a Redcap can put his mouth around something, he can eat it. Large objects can be chewed into smaller pieces. Digesting something particularly vile or tough (such as wood, steel, romance novels or toxic waste) requires the expenditure of a point of Glamour. Keep all arms and hands away from Redcaps at all times. Any Time a Redcap attempts to use this Birthright in combat, he must spend a point of Glamour, just as if he were trying to eat something not normally edible. The base damage for a Redcap bite is Strength + 2 (difficulty 5). Additionally, the Redcap may try to sever an opponent's limb. Severing a limb with this ability requires five successes on a Dexterity + Brawl roll (difficulty 8), or three successes if the victim has been grappled first. This attack inflicts a minimum of three Health Levels of damage if successful, in addition to any damage rolled.

Bully Browbeat - Redcaps can intimidate anything, even imaginary or chimerical objects. The difficulties of all Intimidation rolls are reduced by one. A successful roll causes Chimera to obey without question; sentient creatures can resist with Willpower (rolled at a difficulty equal to the Redcap's Willpower). This Birthright functions normally at all times, even in the presence of mortals or unenchanted supernaturals.

Frailty:

Bad Attitude - No one likes a Redcap, not even other Redcaps. Some noble freeholds try to ostracize or kill Redcaps just on general principles. As part of this stigma, they suffer a +2 difficulty (or greater) for any roll involving a social situation other than browbeating.

HISTORY:

The Crackers of Florida, as the generally poor farmers were once known, were a hard working, self dependent and on occasion wild lot. Though the Wynnhursts no longer raised the traditional cattle, sheep or goats (those called Spanish rather than Cracker) they did live in an old 'Cracker Style' house back in a swampy hollow. Just south of Starke proper the Wynnhurst Farm is studded with ponds, high raised tracks of crushed shell and stone, and raised walks to get across the ground that is far too soft for any tractor. in short the land holding, though large at forty acres, was exceedingly poor land for farming. Pine flats, sand hills and swamp, did not make for prime modern farm land and generations ago the herds that could survive there were sold off. It was Edward Wynnhurst, young Karl's gruff and taciturn father that put the land back to use finally, as an alligator farm.

On that farm the often lonely Karl was raised, his mother having died of complications during birthing him, Karl was raised by his father and the farm hands. Those farm hands were often a rotating bunch of teens working the summer, along with the odd older hand scrounged up from the surrounding town and rural squalor. Growing up on a 'gator farm' could be a rough experience or a magical one for any child, for Karl it was both, rough for his distant father and his misfortune to grow into a rather pretty, rather than handsome, boy...magic because the great lizards spoke to some inner part of him.

From a very young age Karl was set to work, at first taking care of the large chicken flock kept on the sand hills around the land, they were kept largely to provide meat for the alligators and something for the bunk house table. The workers had to live somewhere after all, and soon enough it was Karl doing the cooking and washing up on top of his other chores. The occasional crass remark about the youngster being the lady of the house tended to get the unfortunate hand quickly fired...later on it didn't result in a firing so much as a beating at Karl's hands. School was almost a blessing when it started, for while Karl still had plenty of work at home his father did hire on a few extra full time hands to supplement the loss of his son's full time drudge work.

Early 'public life' experience taught Karl all about bullies, and how to deal with them easiest by being the most vicious of the lot. Karl learned that you didn't have to constantly bully others, so long as you occasionally made an example out of someone...and that better be someone everyone else was afraid of. Needless to say, Karl got into a heap of trouble for playground and schoolhouse brawls, which usually resulted in a good belting at home...mostly for getting caught and causing problems for the farm. Still the punishments could have been worse, the rough crowd he began running with could have been worse too.

Life went on, chores, school, helping his father skin and butcher alligators, and then there were the whispers. The swamp in particular was full of them, whispers of beings not quite seen, hints of impossible creatures in the water, the enchanting voice that moved in the walls of the old house. Karl had heard and seen strange things his whole life, some were pleasantly weird, others menacing, but since no one else saw them he soon learned to keep silent about their presence. He'd almost begun to forget them when a week before his sixteenth birthday, the whispers and the glimpses became something more.

Green fleshed women with alligator eyes called to him from the ponds, things that looked like wind and ice given human form danced in the pine trees, chilling them unseasonably, and a pale woman was seen pacing the breezeway of the house. All of these beings and more watched Karl, the cold ones followed him to school, he thought he was going mad but refused to speak of them to others.

On the night of his birthday, after a small party thrown by the live on farm hands and his father, a party much interrupted by the howling winds that Karl knew were not winds, Karl went out into the dark to face his madness. Things slithered in the dark, great winged shapes flitted across the cloudy sky, more shadows than solid shape, and red eyes stared from the dark without need of a spotlight. The Dream Dance overtook him as he was chasing after those red eyes, red eyes that retreated into one of the main alligator ponds. The alligators just watched, languid on shore or drifting in the waters, oddly unconcerned about the youth in the water, as the red eyed maidens danced in a ring around him and the winds howled names of ages past. For a few brief and glorious moments he truly saw, the span of his many lives, violent and thrilling affairs they had been. Soon enough the vision was gone though, the wind died, the maidens sunk beneath the waves...and the slithering things went gibbering into the night all around him. The alligators also became aware, wary but aware, of the predator amongst them.

Karl was waist deep in the pond when he started slowly wading out, lips skinned back as he tried to keep track of all the scaled bodies in the dark. One of the big alligators started for him and Karl bolted, straight into hands that snatched him up onto the boardwalk to safety.

The green skinned maidens hadn't been the only ones to witness the dance, standing there on the boardwalk was a man and a woman. They had gray skin and far too many teeth, reflections of which he'd seen in the water, reflections he'd known were his. They were a couple, the Bloodharrows, and they were redcaps...just like him.

The Bloodharrows took Karl in, more fully than any family or friends he'd ever known, took him in and educated him about changeling society and more importantly taught him their trade. The Bloodharrows were then and remain monster hunters for hire, and over the course of the next several days they threw Karl into that bloody profession, teaching him the very basics on the nightmarish chimera that had been brought forth by his chrysalis. It wasn't long before they hit the road with the sixteen year old along for the ride...he was failing in school by then anyway and his father was too worn down to try beating sense into him anymore. so Karl took his guitar and went 'on tour' with his new 'friends'.

They stuck to the wilds mostly, or at least to the woods paralleling civilization. Sometimes they hitched a ride, but they seemed like trouble so it was rare, usually involving Amanda Bloodharrow wearing something scanty to trick someone into stopping long enough for Karl and James to jump in the back of a truck. Mostly they walked though, the better to sniff out prey and to teach Karl the ways in which all Redcaps hunt, in addition to showing him how to hunt chimera.

There was also more time to drum the few rules thr Bloodharrows really followed into their young protégée with the slower mode of travel. Things like 'Never betray a client, so long as you're in their hire', 'Always finish the job', 'Always get paid', and 'Clients that don't pay are prey'. After the Evanescence, Concordia was a good place for monster hunters that had a solid reputation for getting the job done, and the Bloodharrows have that reputation in spades. They were even known for hunting down and gleefully killing Thallians, though that usually involved the extended clan...for though the Bloodharrows as a couple were the only redcaps walking around of that line, they gave their name to an extended corbie. A network of other redcap monster hunters, most trained by the Bloodharrows, would come together seemingly at random when the need arose. Like polar bears who just seemed to know when to come together for a hunt, when usually solitary, these other hunters passed in and out of Karl's life with the Bloodharrows.

They traveled extensively throughout Concordia, going from kingdom to kingdom looking for work. It was a rough life but rarest boring and Karl collected his share of scars, from teeth, claws and blades. It was a wonderfully exciting time for the wilder. After a year and a day under their wing, the Bloodharrows took Karl to a River Hag for his Saining, which was inherently more dangerous than going to a freehold but at least the Hag wouldn't spread the information she gleaned. They ended up helping her evict a particularly intractable group of fungi-people-like chimera that the Hag alone couldn't shift, and the River Hag took another bit of payment from Karl...leaving some interesting scars on his back. So Karl found out his name was really Dvarg Frost, but the Bloodharrows still called him Pretty Boy.

Not a full six months later, the corbie was in a Nocker freehold in the Appalachian mountain range. The Nocker's had woken something up in their tunneling, a great wyrm that they couldn't put down on their own. The beast had already devoured a fair number of the freehold's warriors, combat suits and all, when the Bloodharrows were called in. Once the deal was struck, the three redcaps entered the sealed off mines and were locked in. By then, Karl's niche on tee crew was well defined, he'd become a skilled tracker for his age, made all the more so by his editic sense on taste. So Karl, after ingesting a bit of scale left behind on a gutted suit of mechanized armor, was able to sneeringly track the wyrm through the honeycombed mountain. His other roll was that of 'rabbit', or bait.

Sometimes, being the bait, is the safest place you can actually be. They came across the wyrm in a large cavern, the plan was to get at to chase Karl into the tunnels where it couldn't turn and face Amanda and James who would attack from side tunnels after it had passed. They hadn't counted on the wyrm's amazingly flexible body, though it was large enough to leave scrape marks on the sides of the tunnels, it turned out to be able to fold itself neatly and fluidly in half over itself. As such, both Amanda and James were hard pressed to keep the thing's highly corrosive jaws from taking them apart in the suddenly desperate fighting beneath the mountain.

The wyrm's mistake was to be so busy trying to kill the two older redcaps, that it didn't attack Karl often enough...and though he was battered around in the tunnel a good deal, when the wyrm folded itself to attack his mentors it briefly left itself open to attack. During one such manover, Karl hurled himself at the wyrm and sunk his dagger into it...or rather he tried. The blade stuck in the beast's scales but didn't penetrate deeper. This resulted in Karl being dragged along with the wyrm, who couldn't back out with a redcap clinging to it's neck and could barely move forward...so it instead started bashing him against the stone, and Karl promptly started chewing through the beast's neck.

That night Karl carried the wyrm's head out of those mines, all three redcaps were bloodied, but Karl was drenched in the monster's life fluids and grinning like a mad man. They say the fights between Redcaps and Nockers are legendarily ugly, but they dont compare to the riots that are the two kiths partying together.

One thing led to another and Karl's night went exceedingly well, with one delicious freak of a Nocker girl taking him to her bed. The Bloodharrows Didn't have any explicit rules about screwing clients literally after all. It made for one very good and wild end to the night, one that ended on the floor of her room.

The alarm clock was a real bitch though. The cleaver was old and made of cold iron, it had been lashed to a stave of wood so his attacker didn't have to get too close to Karl...that saved Karl's life. He woke in time to move, lashing out at his attacker's knee and using the leverage from the strike to push away, writhing like a serpent to get away from the headily iron. The cleaver tore into his face, slashed down his neck as he twisted and turned on his collar bone. It was pain like Karl had never known before, as a bit of his very soul was torn away in that act meant to destroy it forever. The desperate escape turned into a savage attack, as he snapped the cleaver off it's makeshift handle and promptly used it to severe the toes off one foot of his assailant.

Before the howling Nocker man could start hopping on one foot, Karl was on him and in a cacophony of breaking bone and ripping flesh the Nocker was shoved away, with a large portion of his face missing and his jaw nearly torn free. Karl spat some of the man's teeth back at him. By then his previous night's conquest was cursing a blue streak at both of them and Karl's parting shot to the unconscious man was "hope she was worth it for you too."

The freehold leadership was, unhappy, about the violence but the Bloodharrows were released considering one of their own had tried to murder Karl in his sleep. Pretty Boy, the nickname the Bloodharrows had called him by almost from the start, took on a new air and Karl wore it almost like a badge of pride. It turned out that Karl had unknowingly bedded another man's girlfriend and the enraged lover had tried to 'deal with it' the only logical way, though the Bloodharrows suspected the freehold leadership really just didn't want to pay up what they were owed. Needless to say, the corbie never worker for them again. They did hear rrumors in later years of a badly disfigured Nocker with a limp hounding their trail, though they never ran across Mr. Jilted or his crew of fellow Nockers again.

The years and miles rolled by, stories got told, music (rough music) got played, monsters got killed and comrades came and went. Thr night James went to negotiate with a man for crossing a bit of forest was memorable, because the Bloodharrows were nervous even if they didn't show it, they told him later the man was a prodigal, a bloody werewolf whose turf they were cutting through. Big, mean, chainsaws with fur that didnt die easy and hunted in groups, charmingly similar to them really. They went into cities on occasion, mostly for work or to catch a party, good bands played cities and mosh pits were a good place to cut loose. The night Amanda ended up shoving a broken pool cue through some guy's chest when he tried to bite her, well that was his brief crash course on vampires. They dragged that 'horny' bastard out to a seedy park and left him for the sun, even if vampires supposedly were just wayward redcaps...they were too far gone as far as the Bloodharrows were concerned. They thought it was funny and kind of sweet the night he got a stylized iron harrow, slathered in blood, tattooed on his right shoulder.

On and off again Karl would keep touch with his father, usually via pay phone, as for the five years he roamed with and fought beside the Bloodharrows he never did carry a cellphone. The father and son didn't have much to say to each other, but they kept in touch anyway. One day it was Michael who answer's his father's phone. Michael had been a hand on Wynnhurst Farm for years before Karl left, they were almost of an age and had gotten on well enough. Michael told Karl he needed to come home, his father had died. Cancer, a secret that had been kept from him in those wandering years. It surprised Karl how much the news hit him, but he was in the Kingdom of Pacifica when the news came in so there were many miles to work that mess out on.

The Bloodharrows were not surprised when Karl told them he was going, as with most of their extended clan it was normal for Karl to go eventually. The bonds of loyalty and kinship forged on the road meant that they would always come when needed, just as he would come to their aid as well. They did gift him with a name before he left them, and a way to contact a (kith) called (name) that was living in Starke county when last they visited. With a warning that the place was anar his enough the contact might not be alive or in a position to help Karl, the Bloodharrows told him that (name) owed them and to use their name to get himself introduced around the rabble of changelings that called the place home.

So Karl found himself alone on the road for the first time, as the Bloodharrows went north he went back East and South. Michael had told him, the farm was his, it would be waiting for him when he got there. Home, the prodigal son was going home.