________________________________________ Sir Jannick Weber
Male | 28 | Veradis
Templar of Wind | “Look at this shit, man. It might as well just say 'shoot here.’”
Minor Holy Sigil Location
Much to his chagrin, Jannick's minor sigil was placed over his heart.
Appearance
5’10 and built solid, Jannick wouldn't stand out much in a lineup of his knighted peers. Nothing about him is flashy: his skin is as fair as the next Veradian's, his hair is the colour of wet sand, and his eyes are a flat hazel anyone could acceptably mistake for muddy brown. His expressions rarely extend beyond bored, tired, or irritated, and his only feature worth noticing is the perpetual presence of dark circles under his eyes.
For the everyday, he has capitulated to dressing half-decently, usually sporting some combination of slacks and a button-down shirt, although ties don't usually make it to the end of the day. While he's still antsy without body armour, he has begrudgingly accepted that it's not always necessary or practical; however, he will never relinquish his shoulder holster, which he wears at all times. For formal occasions, he cleans up nice, and he usually wears his Templar uniform without modification. His hair is a bit longer now than it was in his crew-cut days, and ideally, he would maintain a clean shave. Ideally.
Personality
It is outwardly apparent that Jannick does not want to be here. He held it together well enough to get through his Templar training, but every day that passes is a day that it gets a little bit harder to pretend that his Blessing is the greatest gift on earth. He rolls his eyes in interviews, he smokes inside, he even refers to his Scion as “Holiness” - and sometimes just uses her given name. His patience grows thinner by the day, and his charge’s escape artist tendencies do nothing to alleviate his recurring headaches. He is a man of many words once you get him talking, but these days, very few of them are likely to be good.
The one thing he doesn’t scrimp on, however, is vigilance. Jannick may not take the vaunted positions of Scion and Templar very seriously, but he does appreciate his duty: keeping people safe. Annoying or not, his charge is as worthy of protection as anyone, and his head is always on a swivel, always looking for the signs he was trained to watch out for to spot a dangerous situation before it occurs. But he just can’t wrap his head around protecting his Scion and nobody else - as such, he has a tendency to slip back into his old habits and stick his nose in brewing conflicts when he finds them, even if his Scion isn’t involved.
Biography
Faith is a staple of everyday life in Veradis, and nowhere more than Juniperus itself. As such, Jannick, the middle child of six, got all the fixings of the pious upbringing: he went to a religious school, he served as an altar boy, and his parents made sure the whole family was in the pews every Sunday. To him, it was as routine as it was rigorous, with one teaching drilled deepest of them all: the Goddess loves you.
That wasn’t to say he didn’t love the Church, but what captured his young mind was not the priest at the altar, but the guards at the door: the Church Knights in their gleaming armour, shining like angels in the sun. Juniperus was crawling with them; with no civilian authority in the Holy City, all matters of public order were handled by the Church. Church Knights patrolled the streets, directed traffic, put out fires, and of course, fought crime. To Jannick, it seemed like they were the very force that made the world go round. And he wanted to be one of them.
The year of his seventh birthday, he begged and pleaded with his parents for months to let him become a page. While they were apprehensive at first, his pitiable whining must have worn them down eventually, because when the day finally came, he was introduced to Sir Ulrich Gerhardt, a man not too long out of knighthood himself. The new year would see Jannick join Sir Ulrich at the Civitas Equitum, where he got the chance not only to learn the basics of knighthood, but to rub elbows with the scores of other Knights, pages and squires who called the city barracks home. It was a dream come true.
The instruction of an aspiring Church Knight is rigorous and demanding, but Jannick sucked up every drop of it, from the mounted swordplay lessons to the late-night toilet cleaning. But his very favourite part was the field work, when he got to accompany Sir Ulrich on his duties. Sir Ulrich wasn’t the Knight Jannick had always pictured when he played Knights and Monsters with his siblings: instead of a traveling monster slayer or the Templar to a Scion, he was an officer of the Juniperus Police Department. His duties were varied and unique, and during his time as a squire Jannick accompanied Sir Ulrich on mounted patrols, investigations of crime scenes, arrests of petty criminals, and more small-time court appearances than Jannick cared to remember.
It was a strange job for a Knight, Jannick initially thought. It had its share of action, no doubt, and the JPD took immense pride in keeping the streets of the Holy City safe from all manner of crime - but at the same time, the job possessed a level of intimacy with the people of Juniperus that had never before come to Jannick’s mind, but soon became to him the very essence of a Knight. In the stories of his youth, the Knights were always slaying monsters on behalf of faceless villagers or questing at the behest of nameless clergymen for the good of the all-encompassing Church. But in Sir Ulrich’s line of work, the villagers had faces, names, and children who got lost and needed finding; the clergy consoled people whose apartments were broken into and whose assailants needed to be held accountable for their crimes. After a while, police work became, to Jannick, the truest expression of knighthood.
When he was 21, the time for his own knighting finally came. It surprised no one, least of all Sir Ulrich, when Jannick traded his golden breastplate for a kevlar vest and joined the JPD.
No one would argue that it was the right choice for Jannick, but life came at him fast, and he learned soon after his knighting that the calls Sir Ulrich saw fit to bring his squire along on were not the only calls the JPD had to deal with. Juniperus had no more crime than any other city of comparable size - with its heavy Knight presence, it probably had less - but the police department was kept busy all the same. Crushing boredom on patrol could turn into a deadly encounter in an instant; every time the radio screeched, Jannick never knew what he would face next. At first, it was exhilarating. In time, it came to test his faith.
He grew up learning - knowing - one thing above all others: the Goddess loved her children. That was why she created them; that was why, when they called out to her in anguish, she gifted them her essence, creating the Scions. But he was no theologian; despite his training as a Knight, he didn’t know or understand the deep mysteries of the faith Incepta had instilled into her Church. He didn’t know why, if she loved her children so much, they so frequently forgot her teachings and turned on each other. He didn’t know why the Mother was so content to let it happen.
As a police officer, Jannick saw firsthand the depths of human suffering and depravity. He unearthed the OD victims from their squalid apartments, nameless and known only to landlords complaining of the smell. He wrestled battered women as they begged him hysterically to let their boyfriends go free, only to respond to their house again the next weekend. He pulled the mangled bodies of children from twisted cars while the drunks who hit them walked away spotless.
When he looked up, Jannick saw the gleaming spires of the Cathedra Incepta, the points of the Sigil star embracing the city like the open, loving arms of the Goddess herself. But when he looked around, he wondered if he and his heavenly Mother were seeing the same thing.
The years passed, and he didn’t pray much anymore.
Jannick’s growing burnout must have been apparent, because unbeknownst to him, Sir Ulrich had taken it upon himself to give Jannick a chance at a different career: a Templar. But when news came that Sir Ulrich had recommended him for the position and he’d been accepted, Jannick was devastated; he couldn’t deny that the reality of police work weighed heavily on him, but the answer wasn’t to walk away. If there was so much evil in the world, and Incepta clearly wasn’t doing anything about it, then somebody had to act. He had been working ever more intently, foregoing leisure and taking on a daunting overtime regimen, because someone had to do something. He needed to be out in the streets, not guarding some vaunted magic brat.
But there was nothing he could do. Sir Ulrich meant well, but it doomed him: if Jannick refused such an honour, his reputation as a Church Knight serving the Holy City would be irreparably cratered. No citizen of Juniperus would trust a police officer who didn’t think guarding a Scion was worth his while, and even if the people didn’t care, his superiors certainly would. The best job he could hope for if he refused would be as a deputy in some backwater Rodion village shooting polar bears, if he wasn't stuck at a customs desk in some forsaken train station. If he wasn't stripped of his Knighthood altogether under suspicion of apostasy, that is.
The choice was made for him, made all the more painful by the fact that he had to accept it himself. And now he’s no longer Officer Weber, but Sir Jannick, Templar of Wind, in charge of a Scion who somehow takes the whole “blessed by the Goddess” schtick about as seriously as he does. Honestly, that’s probably even more insulting.
Weapon of Choice
They took back his standard-issue handgun when he left the police department, so Jannick spent his stipend on a pair of his own, which he carries in his shoulder holster at all times. In addition to that, he'll suit up with a military-style carbine when he has time to prepare, and he's always been an advocate of the good old-fashioned baton.
Misc.
- Jannick has been the Templar of Wind for about 6 months.
- It’s pronounced “yannick”
- He has a set of throwing knives he’s been practicing guiding with wind from his Blessing, but he’s not good enough at it to keep them on his person just yet. At the moment, he mostly uses his Blessing to eavesdrop on conversations and make his frequent smoking less conspicuous.
- Yes, he still has handcuffs. No, your jokes aren't funny.
|
Member
Kronshi
puddingpunter
Asura
FulgrimLives
ezio ac2
Tim the Yeti
Sunny Suzuki
Eviledd1984
