[b]Name[/b]: Ajax Diagorides [b]Species[/b]: Human [b]Age[/b]: 40 [b]Description[/b]: Ajax is an olive skinned and tanned man who stands at 6 feet 4 inches and weighs around 300 pounds. A thick, muscle bound figure with powerful, sinewy arms and robust legs which end in burly hands and feet and a log-like neck that holds up a head as large as the rest of his body, with a prominent jaw and chin as well as dark brown eyes, short, curly black hair and a thick but not overly long beard, he bears a more than passing resemblance to the real-life [URL=http://i.imgur.com/qm1QrNU.jpg]Boxer of Quirinal[/URL], except far more muscular, with a build closely resembling that of a powerlifter or strongman competitor. Thanks to his less than healthy lifestyle, Ajax is a mess to look at. He is scarred from head to toe, his eyes are sunken, his nose squashed and slightly deviated, he has cauliflower ears and his hands, forearms, elbows, knees, shins and feet are covered in extremely thick and rough calluses, giving them a leathery, bumpy look. Ajax's clothing is a loose white robe called a [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiton_%28costume%29] doric chiton[/URL], that he keeps strapped to his left shoulder with a pin and extends past his waist, ending just above the knees. Ajax also wears brown leather, hobnailed, sandal-like boots called [URL=http://imgur.com/a/a0yfp]caligae[/URL]. [b]Personality[/b]: Ajax is a fairly merry man, fond of living a life full of excitement and action and can be fairly easy to get along with as he is giving, loyal, honest and straightforward, seeing greed, deceit and treachery as marks of weakness. Conversely, he's also kind of nuts. He says what's on his mind no matter the situation, is knowingly offensive to others and enjoys fighting to a mind-boggling degree. Smashing things to bits seems to be his main solution to any problem, too, and he has no qualms in instigating fights or escalating them when a couple words would be enough to defuse a potentially dangerous situation. Ajax has a great distaste for magic and religion and will act rather condescending to anyone who relies overmuch on these, even worse if they try to lord these things over him or otherwise try to make him see their way. It’s not enough to bring him to violence but he sees over-reliance on magic or the intervention of higher forces as a queer path in life. Why credit the gods with your achievements, why rely on some mystic force you can barely comprehend when you could achieve this on the strength of your back? He feels much the same towards those who take their status as nobles as somehow making them intrinsically superior to others. Ajax has a fairly complex world view based on strength, self-reliance and personal growth. He feels the strong come to rule the weak, but that strength isn't limited to physical strength or martial power and that the weak should, in turn, grow strong and strive for greater things in life, never letting themselves be crushed underfoot. He relishes the freedom necessary for such a growth and will readily help others to attain it, just as long as they actually put the effort to grow themselves, though his efforts can come across as him just being rather mean. He is especially harsh towards those who could stand for themselves but don't and expect others to do it for them, believing that over-reliance on others is another path to subjugation. [b]Skills/Abilities[/b]: -Herculean: Ajax seems to have been gifted with superhuman physicality. Though his agility and manual dexterity aren’t much to speak of, he is freakishly strong and damn near tireless. His entire body is tremendously difficult to damage and eradicates poisons, toxins and disease with absurd ease. What makes this unique is that Ajax wasn't simply born powerful, but rather that his body adapted to extremely harsh circumstances much faster and better than anyone else. It's something everyone can do. Both muscle and bone adapt to the stresses they're placed under with time, you can exercise specifically to increase your lung capacity, you can get used to extremes of temperature if you live with them long enough, but the thing about Ajax is that his gift allows him to defy normal human limits. Of course, this gift requires a high degree of dedication to constantly test and push his own limits. If he had lived a quiet life, his gift would've gone by unnoticed. His gift also allows him to pit his body against things that should be unaffected by mere brute force, since his body has been cultivated in such an unnatural way. He can pit his might directly against magic such as hold spells and the like, though this doesn't make him immune to magic as a whole, and is resilient towards mind-altering effects from a mixture of sheer willpower and having experienced them previously in his travels. This also extends to attempts to invade his psyche, which meet with as heavy a resistance as if Ajax was fighting the person directly. -Pankration: Ajax is a skilled unarmed fighter, having trained to fight most of his life and having survived a number of ordeals through fighting skill alone. His fighting style is known in his homeland as Pankration, loosely translated as "all of might", and was originally a blend of boxing and wrestling with no rules beyond no biting or eye-gouging before more and more skills were added to its repertoire. Ajax is a particularly skilled grappler, adept at using his strength and size to his advantage, but knows how to supplement it with effective striking and has a proper grasp of the fundamentals of fighting beyond sheer strength. [b]Backstory[/b]: Ajax descends from a long line of athletes, from the faraway land of Erimai. His father, Diagoras, was an accomplished wrestler trained by his father as was tradition within the family and celebrated in his homeland for his many victories in legitimate sporting events. Diagoras, in turn, upheld the custom and trained Ajax from an early age, and the young man soon grew into a grappler of considerable skill himself. However before Ajax could make his debut in an official event, Diagoras was murdered, the killer managing to evade the law. With the aid of family friends, many of which held connections with the fighting underworld, Ajax eventually discovered that his father's death was orchestrated by Diagoras' supposed benefactor, Magistrate Cleon, because Diagoras had won a fight he was asked to throw. Enraged, Ajax sought Cleon out to murder him with his own two hands but was subsequently defeated, bested by foul sorceries and the attack of a demonically powerful fighter in Cleon's employ, known only as Hyperanthes. He was captured and his family subjected to great shame. Publicly tried for attempting to murder a magistrate, Ajax was to be sentenced to death by poisoning before Cleon intervened, demanding Ajax be sold to him as a slave as reparation, a demand that was granted. It was then that Ajax's fighting career truly began, as the magistrate entered him in brutal underground contests, rule-less deathmatches for the enjoyment of select crowds. Fighting for survival with neither weapons nor armor, Ajax overcame all odds with his continued survival and spectacular progress, eventually becoming the circuit's most celebrated champion. Only one thought kept him from despair: revenge. As time passed Ajax befriended a few of the other fighters and together they planned an escape. A hole in security, an opportune bribe carried out by acquaintances on the outside and superior combat skills were all that was needed, and soon the fighters were free. Knowing he'd be hunted down, Ajax decided to flee the country without involving anyone else, sneaking into a random merchant ship leaving the island which was first dragged around, then smashed to bits by a typhoon. The lone survivor, Ajax drifted aimlessly in a damaged raft until he arrived to a strange foreign land. So began his career as a travelling adventurer. Never settling in a single place for long, always moving, always fighting to become ever stronger, looking to return to his homeland. The only problem is, no ship seems to know how to get there and by this point he has boarded about a dozen random ships with no clue where exactly they were going, so he is well and truly lost in this regard. His homeland could be on the exact opposite of creation for all he knows. He has, however, come to find great enjoyment in his life and while he still seeks his home, he is content with facing life on a day to day basis, taking on new adventures as they come. It is not uncommon to find him as a strongman for hire, and tales are sometimes told of the strange, massive foreigner carrying neither weapons nor armor who clears out monster dens or bandit camps seemingly for the challenge of it. Enticing him to take part of a new adventure should be a simple matter. [b]Other[/b]: I always though it was pretty boring how the badass fisticuffs class is always some type of asian stereotype built to be dodgy rather than a frontline manly man so think of Ajax as a Fighter rather than a Monk, speaking in class terms, except with less reliance on being given decent gear and magical buffs. He's the guy that stands at the front of the line, gets the crap kicked out of him and keeps going, and can deal some good damage especially in one on one fights. He's actually a prior character of mine, a Fighter in Dungeon World which lets you use gauntlets as your weapon type thanks to its narrative focus.