[hider=Stumps] Name: Joseph Nicholas Chester Nickname: Stumps “Whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.” Age: 23 [u][b]Appearance [/b][/u] Every scar on Stumps can be traced back to the handiwork of a lynch-mob. Raw-red imprints of flaxen ropes and chains around his neck during a stay in Missouri. Burns on his hands and feet from Georgia. Healed cuts from Louisiana. He sometimes jibes that he’s the only Negro alive to have gotten scarred in all 50 states in America, which is heavily subjective to claim. Perhaps the most defining physical characteristic of Stumps isn’t the heavy amount of bruises and past scars that appear to be on his black skin nor is it his small frame that belies his stout strength, it’s his left arm or rather, what remains of his left arm. Stumps left arm has been completely amputated from the elbow up, leaving only a bare grotesque stump as a grim reminder of the incident that crippled him. His former background as an amateur boxer have conditioned his body for the many trials and tribulations of working as a stablebuck in the Tackett Farmstead. His paunchy face remains solemn and stoic as always, only cracking up with a crinkled smile in the presence of the farm’s horses. His soft brown eyes conceal a maelstrom of anger and fury that he has resolved to keep locked inside him, until he gets back to the stable to practice boxing as the blistered knuckles on his fist can testify. [b][u]Personality[/u][/b] Like everyone in the farm, Stumps works hard without complaint in order to maintain his usefulness and position of stable-hand to the Tackett Family, no matter how unfair the conditions are or how low his pay is. Due to his position as one of the only Negroes working in the farm, he is perpetually stuck in a quagmire of loneliness and solitude, only having the horses to converse with. His desperation for social interaction is buried underneath the fear of being kicked out of the Tackett Farmstead or attracting too much attention to himself. Stumps wants nothing more than a relatively safe and somewhat secure life in order to avoid the possibility of being lynched. Thus, he acts completely subservient to the demands of farmhands, no matter how absurd their requests are. However, Stumps is an ardent pacifist at heart who is sometimes too kind for people who are prejudiced to Negroes to bear conversing with, sometimes frustratingly so. Despite his frustrations with the current status of Negroes in the USA, he remains indifferent and stoic towards the disparaging and demeaning comments of the other farmhands, only replying back with tacit comments. He never bites back. He never retorts. He never punches back. Above all, he never kills another person, no matter the race or background of the individual. This pacifism has stemmed from observing the horrors of lynching on fellow African-Americans such as him along with bearing the grief of being responsible for the lynching and death of his entire family in the first place. Furthermore, Stumps privately believes that the recurrent periods of agonising pain within his amputated arm are a punishment from God himself for his own sins and that working in Cypress Hollow is atonement for his supposed sin. Stumps has been willing to bend the rules of his pacifism though, as observed with his love of boxing, admiring both white and black fighters alike such as Jack Dempsey and John Johnson. Stumps mainly uses his passion for boxing as a means of releasing his anger and stress from the world that he lives in and as the only aspect of his life in which he has some tangible sense of control and choice in. [u][b]History[/b][/u] Stumps, before he was granted his present nickname by farmers of the Tackett Farmstead, was born as Joseph Nicholas Chester in 1911,March 16th, in the urban environment of Houston, Texas in a family of former slaves who formerly worked as cotton pickers in Mississippi. His father was an amateur heavyweight boxer who regularly fought matches to feed the hungry crowd of boxing spectators and his mother, a worker in a dairy factory. Their family struggled to live a comfortable life in a hostile neighbourhood that seemed to outright reject their presence with young Stumps constantly wondering why he had to use a different bathroom compared to all the other kids in school. Beginning at the age of 16, Stumps grew up in an African-American segregated boxing ring, aspiring to become an amateur boxer just like his father and was his only source of pride in a neighbourhood where black kids like him were picked on every day in the playground by other white kids. Stumps eventually rose to the ranks of one of a proper boxer for the African American crowd in Houston. Stumps eventually earned the nickname ‘The Rifle’ for his ability to deliver lightning quick jabs in the blink of an eye. In 1932, after critically injuring a white boxer, Billy Barnes, in response to a racist jibe, Stumps and his entire family were lynched by supporters of Barnes as a means of revenge for beating the boxer, breaking his left arm in the process and the entirety of his family including him being hanged under the shade of an oak tree. By some miraculous chance, Stumps managed to escape from the noose, running and hopping onto a train that was leaving Houston by the skin of his teeth, adopting a stalwart pacifism in order to never repeat the same order of events again. Stumps eventually amputated his mangled left arm with the help of a black physician in Louisiana before being ran out of the state as well. No boxing ring accepted his offers of fighting in their ring, a Negro, much less a crippled Negro, and Stumps continued his country wide trek of searching for viable employment. After travelling from state to state in search of a job that would offer employment for a Negro, Stumps eventually found himself in the town of Cypress Hollow, securing a job as a stable-hand in the Tackett Farmstead amongst the dozens of Negroes that had been employed in the barn. He eventually grew into the role of being a stablebuck, being tutored by the one of the eldest Negro stable-bucks, Lewis Barrett, before his untimely passing. Nowadays, Joseph endures the conditions of working as a Negro on the Tackett Farmhouse whilst hoping for a better future. [u][b]Traits[/b][/u] [u]Positive[/u] Pugilist (+2) [i]" Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." [/i] Prize-Fighter (+3) [i]" Only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone and hospitalized a brick" [/i] Hardy (+1) [i]" It's about hard you can get hit and keep moving forward" [/i] Agile (+1) [i]" You can't touch what you can't see." [/i] Rider (+1) [i]" Ride the horse in the direction it's going" [/i] [u]Negative[/u] Church-Going (-2) [i]"I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear." [/i] Maimed (-4) [i]"Disability is a matter of perception. If you can do just one thing well, you're needed by someone."[/i] Unlucky (-2) [i]" I'm the luckiest unluckiest person in the world"[/i] Sickly (-2) [i] " It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality"[/i] Skill Value: -2 Speech Color:[color=800000]Maroon[/color] [u]Inventory [/u] - Roll of Boxing Tape - Horse-Brush - Personal Comb - Lucky Horseshoe Necklace - Bag of Sugar-Cubes [/hider]