[b]Name:[/b] Earl Tyler Taylor
[b]Archetype:[/b] Sharpshooter
[b]Race/Ethnicity:[/b] Anglosaxon
[b]Appearance:[/b]

[img]http://cdn.blogs.sheknows.com/celebrityphotos.sheknows.com//2010/12/true-grit-jeff-bridges.jpg[/img]

Not really what I'm going for, but it's the closest thing that came to mind. I might end up just drawing him.

His face is dominated by a thick, wiry mustache that drapes down over his chin that obscures his mouth from view. A fat, blocky nose sits above his mustache and runs up to two wooly eyebrows. Recessed under these bushy brows are stern eyes - the left one is pointed directly forward regardless of where the right is looking. In situations requiring more decorum, he wears a black eyepatch over his left eye though he prefers not to when he can get away with it.

His preferred attire is comprised of a tattered duster jacket paired with buckskin pants - but in Richmond this sort of attire tends to attract unwanted attention from the Klan and their network of informants.

[b]Background:[/b] This went on a lot longer than I had hoped. Oh well...

The most defining and unfortunate point of Earl's life took place early in his youth when he witnessed a taskmaster whip one of his father's slaves to death. The young Taylor was left disturbed and his mental development was irrevocably stunted. While his peers were groomed into the next generation of the South's landed elite, Earl withdrew himself from the social maneuverings of the young Gentry class and developed what could be perceived as antisocial tendencies - much to the disapproval of his mother and father. In his later boyhood, Earl discovered rifle-shooting as a palliative outlet for his frustrations. From morning to evening, the young Taylor would disappear into the cypress swamps on the far end on his father's property and fired off countless minie balls on his improvised firing range. In the interest of making his hobby more affordable, Earl recast the deformed bullets he could find downrange in an improvised forge, and as his skill behind the sights improved, he supplemented his allowance by selling what game he shot. While not particularly enthused by his disinterest in social interaction, Earl's father was impressed by his son's resourcefulness and marksmanship. By his 25th birthday, Earl became something of a local celebrity in southwestern Arkansas on the merit of his exceptional shooting ability. Even so, his relationship with his father had become particularly strained by this time - who was irritated by his eldest son's failure to find a spouse and provide him with grandchildren. Earl's father took to calling him "useless", "good-for-nothin'", and "a waste of a son" during these years.

Earl Tyler Taylor was 26 years old when Fort Sumter came under attack and Arkansas joined the Confederacy. Earl's father, an ardent secessionist, urged his son to "do something productive with [his] life for once" and provide his marksmanship to the Arkansas Militia materializing in Little Rock. Earl had no interest in inflicting the kind of death that had scarred him 20 years before and refused to join. A heated argument between Earl and his father broke out which escalated into an altercation. Earl pointed the rifle at his father in an attempt to get him to back down, but the gesture only served to enrage him. Earl's father seized the gun and clubbed him with the stock. He awoke the next evening to discover his left eye had become "lazy". That night, Earl unceremoniously left the plantation, never to return.

As the war raged in the East, Earl joined with a band of trappers and hunters in Little Rock who traveled northwest into the wilderness of the Dakota Territories. In the wilderness of America's western frontier, Earl made a meager yet fruitful living hunting the mighty beasts of the west and bartering what he could spare with French-Canadian trappers and the native Lakota and Sioux Indians. The Lakota with whom Earl dealt were pleasantly surprised by his resourcefulness and respect for the land - traits seldom found in many of the whites traveling to the Dakota Territory. During his nine years living in the hills of the Dakota Territory, Earl was impressed by the relatively egalitarian society of the Lakota Indians among which he shared the land and eventually came to call the rugged inhabitants of the northern plains his friends. At last, Earl felt at home.

In the spring of 1870, Earl's new home came under assault. News trickled in from the east that the Confederacy had supplanted the United States of America during Earl's self-exile in the wilderness. A zealous Confederacy emboldened by its victory expanded across the continent to exploit the vast, untapped riches to be had in the West. Poachers armed with powerful, modern arms cut down swathes of mammoth and bison. The plains stank of thousands of corpses of majestic beasts stripped of horns and tusks. The Lakota were distraught; their chiefs summoned Earl and asked him to demand the poachers to leave their lands. Earl knew it would be a futile task, but did as the chiefs requested out of respect. Predictably, the poachers with whom Earl treated rebuffed his demands, and sent him away from their encampments at gunpoint on many occasions. He had little sympathy for his fellow white man when he heard that the Lakota, Sioux, Blackfoot, and Ogallala had joined together in expulsing the invaders from their lands.

By next spring, the Confederacy had returned with vengeance on their mind and a slave army at their heels. With cannon and devilish coatyl steeds, General Stewart's army ravaged the Lakota Nation. Seeing firsthand the devastation wrong by Stewart's forces, Earl could stand by no longer. With his trusty Whitworth rifle, Earl went into the hills and took up arms against his fellow man for the first time. General Stewart and his command chain were too accustomed to the set-piece battles against Union line infantry on the eastern coast. The Confederate officers, decorated and riding atop coatyl, made for obvious targets; their bloated armies lumbering across the open hills were easily harried. The Lakota alongside which Earl fought granted him a name in their language: [i]Otatay[/i] - He Kills Many.

Though he killed many men, Earl and his native companions could only slow General Stewart's westward march, but never halt it. Coatyl-mounted cavalry headed off the fleeing Lakota and enslaved those that did not meet a grisly end at the tearing beaks of their steeds. The free Lakota insisted that they retreat deep into the Badlands and regroup for another assault, but Earl Tyler Taylor decided to part ways here with his native brothers-in-arms, knowing the Plains War could never be won on the plains. As the Lakota say, to kill a rattlesnake, one must crush the head.

And so he set out to the east: to Virginia. 

[b]Skills:[/b] Exceptional marksmanship, wilderness survival, general resourcefulness.
[b]Talent:[/b] Shooting, especially in ambush situations
[b]Flaw:[/b] His lazy eye is mosty fixed in place. While this is somewhat helpful in taking aim, it does little to help his peripheral vision. A lifetime of shooting has also done serious damage to his hearing. As a result, it is terribly easy to sneak upon or surpise Earl.
[b]Motivation[/b]: The rape of the land by his fellow white man and their destruction of the Lakota nation - with which Earl sympathizes with far more than he ever did the United States or Confederacy.