And number two. The other assassins I have don't fit the world, so hopefully you find them interesting characters.

Name: Brother Jereth Carrow
Age: 24
Gender: Male

[hider=Appearance]
Jereth is lean 6’5” with gaunt features. An acquiline profile sits over thin severe lips and surprisingly charming smile. Piercing blue eyes blaze from beneath his large brows. He shaves his head but cares for a small well-kept beard around the mouth. Jereth takes extra time and care to keep the short blond hair from becoming bristly and unruly. He has two prominent facial scars. One is across the his nose and top of his cheeks just under the eyes. The second traces down his left temple and cheek bone almost to his mouth. He is intermittently scarred across his body, and has a intricate wheel tattoo across his left shoulder blade.

Jereth normally wears one of two outfits. The first is a simple monk’s habit with a braided cord around the waist. The only easily noticeable difference is the dark grey color. While at the monastery, Jereth does not wear any shoes, but if wearing the monk’s habit elsewhere, he wears a pair of simple leather sandals. The second outfit is his work outfit, which is a suit of dark grey. He wears a leather watch with a silver faceplate, silver cuff links and buttons. He typically also wears a white tie with a silver clasp, a silver necklace with an emblem of the order of the wheel, and black leather belt. Hidden in the tailoring are layers of interwoven spider silk filament and Kevlar, a .45 pistol and few combat blades stationed at various points. [/hider] 

[hider=Personality]
Jereth believes in strict discipline, calm cold decision making, and God. He rigorously follows the strictures of his order which include minimal luxury, humility before god, and lethal physical might. While Jereth struggles to remain level headed and humble, his faith is his strength and the keystone to his life. He dislikes excess of any kind, especially for violence. While all of God’s children are family and can be redeemed, that does not mean that humanity is necessarily the right voice to convince them. If they cannot repent, they must be saved by God himself, or so Jereth believes. He is relatively naïve on how the world at large functions, and struggles with a mild disdain for other less disciplined and those who wouldn’t strive to eliminate suffering from this world.[/hider]

[hider=General History]
The Church has been a stabilizing force since the fall, and have a truce with the assassins that rule the dark. After a brief war after the collapse, the two have had a truce, where each have their own spheres of power they guard jealously. Playing the long game, church leaders have decided to slowly convert the population to gain control of the world, and the assassins have provided an excellent foil to do so. Also, the Church provides a safe home for retired assassins, corrupt politicians and other valuable or vulnerable souls. In exchange for the sanctity of practice, assassins have covert access to much of the information gathered through Church through the Order of the Lamb. While they occasionally spar with the Order of the Lion when a particular soul is important, both the assassins and the Lion avoid conflict of interest. Finally, the while the Order of the Wheel represents a potential threat, the assassins of the Wheel are far more interested in protecting their orthodoxy, or removing any figure that is too openly critical of the Church.
There are usually only two ways to enter the Order of the Wheel. You either are selected as young orphaned boy, or retire into it after a long, successful career as a dealer of death. Few live to grow old in the Order of the Wheel, and the hierarchy purposefully keeps the numbers low to both ensure quality, and reduce any exposure from a large corps of assassins that would conflict with the public position of the Church.

Jereth was born under another name, but his parents gave him up for reasons unknown to him when he was five. All the orphaned children were initially placed into large communal orphanages out in the countryside. A strict schedule of prayer and meditation, formal education and physical training was developed to sort out their wards into separate categories. The most promising are taken by the Order of the Wheel, much to the dismay and grumbling of the many orders of the church. The children, some of whom have been abused or been on the street, knew about the separation process and most strove to either place out in hopes of improving their situation in the world, or get enough education to escape the strict atmosphere of the church.

Jereth was placed in the program and separated out normally in his twelfth year. His rigid devotion and high physical ability were noted and was placed into one of the four groups of fifty that were shifted to the Wheel. He placed somewhere in the middle of the recruits, and was shifted to a monastery in the mountains. An even more draconian schedule of training and ideology was implemented, where before going with a light meal was going without food and a beating or a night’s sleep. Classics and other highbrow information was drilled into the young recruits, such as the expected color of wine, or the smells and tastes of poisons. 

After the instructors became satisfied with a student’s overall knowledge of religion, history and science, the moved on to their final field of study, one that had much more potential for damage. In fact, while all the students could eventually pass the knowledge portion, whether it took six or sixteen years, the weeding out truly began with field training. Any recruit with any mental weakness was rotated out of the program, and quietly informed that any passing of knowledge would result in their swift death. Those who became crippled in the program became support staff for their brethren, and would live out their life within the armories of the order or possibly spies. The failure rate was around 40% before the final test, where each was assigned a target to assassinate to graduate. Unknowingly tailed by a master to ensure the completion of the contract, another 20% failed here, either by becoming caught and eliminated, or by mental inability to kill.

After graduation, the cadres were broken up into cells, where each assassin was paired with two support personnel, a contact with the Order of the Lamb, and a senior priest to report to. After an addition 6 to 8 months of working up with each other, each cell is distributed throughout the world, usually replacing one that had fallen earlier. Jereth was twenty two when he finished training up for the world and placed into a port city. He initially had trouble adjusting to outside life, and still finds it difficult to accept. The others in his team also bothered him for reasons he could not say, but was probably their outward piety. 

For the next two years, Jereth was only given two assignments. The first was to kill a corrupt bishop. The church official had not only been skimming off the top, which was relatively normal, but also using the funds to increase his own personal power and political influence, which was strictly forbidden. The first kill was actually easy for him, as it was as simple as slipping in some nut extract into the corpulent pastor’s evening wine, and replacing the epi-pen with another one that had “expired.”

The second was far more difficult, both in terms of target method and preparation. One of King’s advisors had not only been publically criticizing the church, but exerting political influence to change some key laws for his own benefit. Despite rigorous research and preparation, the job was long string of failures. Every attempt or avenue was compromised by another assassin, one whose skill with a knife carved another scar into his body with every encounter. Jereth feels like he didn’t even come close to winning any of the engagements, and the seething resentment has been a drive ever since. While the target eventually had a heart attack after walking in on Jereth and the other man sparring in his hotel room, the job was neither as clean nor as efficient as his superiors expected. Jereth has strong feelings of failing some trusted mentors, as well as failing his sacred mission. It also resulted in a volcanic temper and a fanatical training drive almost as dedicated as he is to his faith.

Two months ago, his support team was butchered. Jereth is unsure of who did it, by gutter rumblings and a few pointed conversations with the local pastors indicated his old nemesis was around during the time of the killings, as well as vague rumblings that it might have been one of King’s clean-up crews.[/hider]

Weapons Used: Blunt weapons are favored for close combat, whether a staff or truncheon withmercury sealed in a vaccuum tube in the middle to give the weapon a little extra force, and mid-range combat rifles
Strengths: Rigorous and methodical preparation, fanatical dedication, ambushes and subtlety
Weaknesses: Strong temper, his faith is a lever for manipulation, and he isn’t actually skilled in unarmed hand to hand combat or long range sniping.
Loyalties (if any): The Church, and especially the Order of the Wheel