Vincent Strauss, the Nyss Bastard
My one foray into the Warmachine & Horde based RP
Basic Biodata:
Name (& pronunciation): Born Vixis Nytokuna, adopted the name Vincent Strauss, nicknamed Vince
Date of Birth (& age): Donard 17th, Tempen, 19 y/o
Place of Birth: Nearby Laedry
Gender: Male
Species/Racial Origin: Mix between a Nyss father and human mother
Social Class/Community Status: Street urchin who got bad rumors swirling around him. Slightly more respected as a guild worker and mercenary, but generally people wouldn't get close to him unless they're really desperate.
Language: Cygnaran (self-taught. Mostly spotty, but understandable), Llaelese (native), barely literate as well, self-taught himself how to read Caspian, enough to understand his job description, but not enough to read actual books
Family/Friends/Pets/Etc: None. Father disappeared, mother passed away from overworking, and not everyone wants to get close to someone with such bad omen regarding his birth situation. Some of the people, namely the guild master, the bartender of a bar he frequents, and the landlord, does tolerate his presence, but it's mostly on a business standpoint, as he does do what he said he'd do, but none would get into a personal level with him. Both Gasteau and Elodie is the only one that has been able to tolerate his presence, and even get closer to him on a more personal bond as well. While Vincent does make some connection through his jobs, and some even through direct request, he always treated it as business only, so he never really had a chance to further their relationship apart from being a client. However, these people does hold the same contempt to Vincent as Gasteau and Elodie does, it's just that Vincent never really further this connection since he's already too used to being shunned.
Height: 182 cm
Weight: 57 kg
B/W/H: 88/72/90, packing average size
Hair: Scruffy medium length dark blue with slight white highlight on the bangs. He's mostly seen with a ponytail as well
Eyes: Dark green, his right eye glows red when he uses magic
Limb Dexterity: Ambidexterous, prefers right hand
Detailed Physical Description: Vince has a pale gray skin and pointy ears, thanks to his Nyss ancestry, but his general bone structure resembles more of a human. He has a medium length hair that he purposely left unkempt, as he doesn't care about his outward appearance. He often leave his hair in a ponytail, as he gets stuffy often. He's quite underweight for his height, due to the fact that he needs to cut on spending, but while he may look rather scrawny, the only fat and meat that he has on his bone is mostly turned into muscle, thanks to his physically demanding jobs. He got a long Nyssian traditional tattoo starting from his right shoulder to the back of his right hand, one that he always covers with apparels. Vince also carries several scars throughout his body, notably one on the edge of his left eye, spanning from the temple, one on the bridge of his nose, another on the right side of his lips, some smaller cuts and scratches on both arms, and one large gnash on his left shoulder. He also suffered several burn scars on his hands and legs, discoloring those areas forever. His right ear is slightly chipped as well, due to a work accident, but it made people think he was some slave. He has a permanent eye bags, as he rarely sleeps more than 5 hours per day, and his teeth are visibly sharper than most.
Typical Clothing/Equipment:
Clothing: Generally, Vince wore a dark brown hooded cloak, along with a lighter brown vest. As an inner, he wore a simple tunic and pants, as he can't really afford much. After a few close call, Vince opted to put some armors on his body as well, covering the chest areas, part of his stomach, and his whole right hand, fashioned from some scraps. On top of that, he also worn a dark grey scarf on his neck, which he often pulls up if he wants to be less recognizable, and if the situations requires going to a less breathable space, he uses a plague doctor mask fashioned from scraps that he found. His coat also have some grey fur around the hood part. Vince mostly kept his hood up to covers his ears, so to not draw too much attention, and in cases that he doesn't uses the long coat, he wore an aviator hat, or an oversized newsboy cap where he can slip his ears under the cap, depending on the temperature. While travelling, Vince would opt to wear an extra brown coat on top of his usual apparel.
When he's not doing anything dangerous, or requires combat, he'd forgo the coat and armor, and instead opted for a disheveled grey shirt, black tie, and dark grey cargo pants. He would still wear his black scarf, and choices of his two hats. When only wearing shirt, he'd roll up his left sleeve, while letting the right sleeve be. He also often wears a brown battered leather bag, where he mostly keeps his documents and stuff. No matter the situation, he always worn his utility belt, which also extends as his weapon holster, and plain grey boots. Under his clothes as well, Vince would wear black skintight long-sleeved shirt and leggings to cover the tattoos and scars. On most cases as well, Vince is often seen wearing a dark grey fingerless gloves which he often changes to black work gloves when touching anything that's not supposed to touch the skin.
Equipment: His array of weapons includes a long ranged sniper rifle that he pilfered from one of the dead solider he encountered while going to his job, a pair of standard issue revolvers that he also pilfered from the dead, which he then modified with detachable blades, which is his main attack method. For actual one to one combat, where a short blade wouldn't suffice, Vince uses a collapsible spear that he made himself using some scraps. The handle itself is telescopic, but the tip is bladeless, so Vince has to manually attach the blades from the revolver to the spear before using, else he'll be using it as a bo staff. To be as inconspicuous as possible, Vince often leave his rifle and spear back in his room, only carrying the revolver and the dagger. His utility belt is also filled with tools for sabotaging, thieving, and repairing, although not as effective if he brought the whole toolbox.
Personality/Attributes:
Personality/Attitude: Vince is mostly an apathetic guy, being brought up in the harsh world with a lot of prejudices laid upon him. From early age, he faces a lot of disgust and aversion, making his life significantly harder than it already is, having to live as a homeless orphan who inherited his mother's debts, which she uses to take care of him ironically. As such, from his childhood, he already learned to put a wall around himself, not trusting anyone but himself, not even the deities. He's almost totally cold and calculating when doing his work, showing little to no empathy when killing others.
Under this apathetic mask however, lies a kind soul who felt joy when the client genuinely thanked him, one that would risk his life for someone he genuinely cared about, like his mother for example, one that wouldn't even hurt a fly, but the unforgiving world has taught him that all these traits is just a hindrance on his survival, so he merely channeled his hatred from being so repressed to cover these kind traits, which does helps with his works, which often times includes stealing, and sometimes even killing. He still retains part of this kindness, although it's mostly directed towards flora and faunas. Perhaps this is his ancestry in play, perhaps it's just his nature. He would also try to not hurt any child or females, unless he saw with his own eyes that they deserve the business end of his guns.
Although initially seems uninterested in most thing, he actually hold quite the interest regarding machinery, especially the warjacks. He rarely talks about it, as he rarely has someone to talk to about it, but when the conversation arose, he's often seen hanging around the corner listening to the conversation. When he does finally get to work on machinery, or even warjacks on some occassion, his eyes would lit up like a kid on his birthday. Once he got into this mode, he can rarely be disturbed, as he will spend his whole attention towards the machinery at hand. While his face wouldn't show too much smile, anyone can see that he's clearly the happiest when he's tinkering. This also extends to his own weapons, modding it, repairing, maintaining it, all of things that involves machining all brings him joy. He's also naturally curious about these, often spending time dismantling scraps and junks just to learn about the inner working of it.
The more time he spent with Elodie and Gasteau, the more the ice melts, as he'd smile more often, talks more freely with the two, and sometimes would even joke with them. He's a huge fan of puns though, so it's not always greeted with a laugh, but any reaction from the two is good enough. He has started to regard the d'Trouvé as a second family, but as he really doesn't want to bother anyone else, thinking that spending time with a 'freak' like him would bring the d'Trouvé name down, Vince rarely acts like he's already a really close person to them, often masking it as a strictly-job purpose, even though he knew that Elodie could tell. He still avoids too much affection as well though.
Skills/Talents: Slight knowledge of alchemy, quite skillful with repairing warjacks and other machinery, relatively good at being stealthy, quite the crackshot with guns. Due to his ancestry, he does have some innate magic power of life controlling, which he can use to heal by absorbing life from other thing. He rarely wants to use this magic though, since if anyone found out about this, he'd be even more shunned, he can only apply the healing in a very small radius, only as far as his palm can cover, and he has yet to gain full control of the amount of life that he can transfer, which may result in insignificant amount of healing, or totally draining the source, which would then in turn drain his own life.
Favorites/Likes: Machine, Warjacks, weapons, silence, the forest, the winter
Most Hated/Dislikes: Most living being other than the d'Trouvé, floras, and faunas. Some Vince only acts wary around, some he loathes with his whole being. The latter includes people who treats anyone lower than them like trash, liars and corrupt individuals, those who treats flora, faunas, and machines like disposable, disrespectful ones, and most loathed of them all, those who judges people by appearance alone. Recently he also finds distaste in people who pushes their belief to other people, and strong hate towards fanatics.
Goals/Ambitions: Currently none, other than surviving another day. He does dreams of getting his own Warjacks and owning his own workshop, but with the pace he gains money and his living condition, those are merely just fleeting dreams
Strengths: Quite the professional, as he will try his darnest to finish any job he took, has quite the creative mind in regards of problem solving, able to stay calm in most situation, able to do quick decision making, willing to try anything, quite deft and nimble with his limbs, rather agile for his size.
Weaknesses: Rather weak in direct combat, both strength and defense wise, which is why he chose the spear, as he could keep his distance with it, making him extremely reliant on his tools of trades to be useful. Is really socially awkward and too distrusting of new people. Rarely cares about what others thinks, often works alone, and often fails to comprehend that the other can't do what he does with certain stuff.
Fears: Betrayal and backstabbers, death of someone close to him, not being able to control his magic
Hobbies/Interests: Junk diving for scraps, dismantling stuff to understand how they work, watching Warjacks, modding, repairing, maintaining, and tweaking his weapons. If he could actually read, he'd also be reading a lot of books regarding machine, but he can't.
Philosophy of Life: "Do it yourself, don't rely on anybody else, and if you really need to rely on somebody else, then you already screwed up something"
"Machines, Warjacks, flora, faunas, I can understand them. People? Not so much, and I don't plan to"
Religion/Beliefs: Used to believe in both Nyssor and Morrow, his parent's patron saint, but has became disillusioned due to the amount of unanswered prayer, both from himself, and from others. Lately however, has been showing some form of interest towards Cyriss, as her uncaring attitude pretty much fits with what he already learned.
Fetishes/Strange Behaviors: Likes being dominated, really loves skin-tights outfits, has certain attraction to nape and armpit, prefers hairless body, and has certain love towards contraptions. He likes gnawing on something, and likes to chew and crunch anything that is edible, but is supposed to be sucked. Really wants to be pampered and head-patted.
Most Instructive/Painful/Memorable Experience: The death of his mother. After a lot of struggling, during which his mother had forced himself to work, his mother finally collapsed from exhaustion, yet despite his best effort, Vince couldn't find anyone who'd be willing to help a penniless street urchin. So his mother passed away, and he hadn't even given her a proper burial when a group of men barged in and demanded Vince to pay for the debts that his mother owed. Of course, not having any money or jobs, the group resorted to selling him to a travelling act. He was never able to properly bury his mother, who died in Laedry, and when he finally broke free and went back to Laedry, he found that his old home has been torched down. No one knows where his mother's body ended up. Vince took solace in believing that at least her mother's body was cremated along with the house.
His escape, and his first kill, is also another one of his instructive one. The ringmaster abuses a lot of his performers, forcing them to overwork themselves, giving barely subpar meal, and forcing them to live in a cage. One night, the ringmaster came barging in, took one of the girl, who's around his age, and proceeded to rape her. This was the last straw, and Vince took his first life that night. However, the girl committed suicide later on, and the other performers turned Vince in to the authority, taking reward and freedom for themselves, as if they escaped with Vince, they'll be hunted down as well, while Vince got thrown into jail. This taught him that nobody is trustworthy, even the one that he shared pain with. He served his sentence though, which is relatively light for the crime committed, thanks to the allegations towards the ringmaster as well, and he got out of prison at the age of 14, after serving a 5 year sentences.
His more positive memorable experience was the first proper meal he had in a decade, which was given to him by the d'Trouvé. Gasteau bumped into him when he was wandering the streets, looking for scraps, and gave him some of the bread he was buying. Of course, Vince wanted to repay him, but Gasteau denied. He persisted quite a bit, and then decided to gave him some jobs to repay for that bread, which was just simple lawn mowing and home cleaning. This is when Vince and Elodie first met. Elodie then invited Vince for some meal, as it was nearing dinnertime, which Vince rejected immediately, and excuses himself. After several days of bumping into the two, some more jobs and chores, and some push though, Vince reluctantly agreed to join them. That night, he almost cried as he shove the food into his mouth. Tears did form, but he didn't cry. He however, did cry silently when he got back home.
