[b]Character Name:[/b] Captain Phoebus deMartan, aka Sun God (as known by a few men and women who are easily impressed by such things) and Captain Hardass (as known by the guards under his command, who will regret it later)

[b]Player:[/b] Obi (System/Frenezajxo)

[b]Movie of Origin:[/b] Hunchback of Notre Dame

[b]Additional Sources:[/b] Hunchback of Notre Dame stage musical

[b]Age:[/b] 32

[b]Reference:[/b]
[url=https://i.pinimg.com/originals/78/0d/12/780d12eea9c39c97a32cf0d70b60f8b3.jpg]Soldier!Phoebus[/url]
[url=http://66.media.tumblr.com/345a098bd200fd2e7f47f2a3883abaf7/tumblr_nbwxb9mv7g1tkxerzo2_500.gif]Flirty!Phoebus[/url]

[b]Quotes:[/b]
“A good soldier follows orders, without question. A better soldier knows when to ask questions about their orders. The best know when and how to defy orders, such that their commanding officer looks good in the process.”

“I like beauty, and men can be just as pretty as the women, when they want to. Or are paid to.”

[b]Personality:[/b] Lawful Good, Phoebus cares about justice and believes that the law and those who enforce it are both the most capable of and most responsible for ensuring that justice is carried out. While he believes that the law should ideally maintain order for the good of the people, he recognizes that it does sometimes fail to do so. He tries to choose his battles carefully, not openly calling out his superior officers in minor breaches of justice and only breaking the rules when he's sure he can get away with it, because he knows he can do more good in his current position of authority than he would be able to do if he were dismissed or executed for insubordination. He does have his limits, though, and will defy any orders and break any laws he considers necessary to prevent severe destruction of justice. 

As a commander, he expects those under his authority to carry out the law with as much fairness and equality as possible, and during the training process, he avoids the standard penalties of lashings and so forth in favor of more creative punishments designed to teach specific lessons. He is patient with those under his command who legitimately struggle, but has no time for stubborn sons-of-nobles who refuse to follow orders or give him a bad attitude. He can get ludicrously strict with men who fail to learn that arguing with him only makes things worse.

In his private life, Phoebus is… significantly less stringent. He still cares about justice, and does what he can to carry it out. But he tends to use less organized methods to do it, and when out of uniform he is not above harrowing soldiers whom he believes to overstep their bounds as law enforcers (whether or not they’re doing so at that moment). He gives alms to beggars and pays dancing gypsies, despite their technically illegal presence in the city. He believes in the Christian god, but only follows the general gist of the religious rules that he sees to be particularly applicable. He doesn’t publically and blatantly break the rest if he can help it, but he won’t go to any real lengths to seem like he follows them, either. He shrugs off the inquiries of the judgemental, simply telling them, “I’m a soldier, not a priest; so long as I go to confession, none of the things I do will damn me. Now please excuse me while I go enjoy some of the pleasures that God put into this world.” 

Speaking of which, the Madame of his favorite brothel knows him well and is fully aware that he’ll readily bed whomever she has available, regardless of what they have between their legs. Bisexuality doesn’t have a name in this time period, but he accepts it and feels absolutely no shame over his behavior with other men. He’s been kicked out of a few taverns for [s]badly[/s] boldly flirting with other patrons and the servers. Specifically, because of the results of said flirting. Law enforcer or not, he enjoys a bit of trouble every now and again, and he is happy whether his come-ons end with a tumble in the sheets or just a good old fashioned brawl.

[b]Abilities:[/b] Master of skills such as swordplay, unarmed combat, etc. He can ride and train horses (yes, he named his steed Achilles and learned how to teach him dog commands just because it was funny). He’s pretty sure he’s almost equally skilled in bed, but seeing as Esmeralda’s determined to make him wait until their wedding night and prostitutes are expected to compliment even the most limp and useless customers, he can’t be sure if he’s ever had an honest review from a bedmate. Or at least from a bedmate who was experienced enough to know the difference between a good tumble and a bad one… He has a fair amount of charisma that assists him well in both getting up someone’s skirt and/or trousers and spurring on a crowd to do what they might otherwise be too timid to do without encouragement. It also helps when soldiers need to be reminded of his rank relative to theirs.

[b]Flaws:[/b] Don’t put him in a room full of pretty people if you want him to stay focused, or keep whatever group he’s in under the radar. He will hit on almost anyone, regardless of whether he has a reason to believe they are interested, and happily accept whatever comes of it (including someone getting thrown off a tavern balcony). His general avoidance of threatening his job security can also be considered a flaw; though he will break rank in a grand manner after certain lines have been crossed, his readiness to follow questionable orders may leave him technically complicit in any number of “lesser” cruelties and injustices.

[b]Companion(s):[/b] His horse, Achilles. Achilles is loyal to him, and trained to respond to dog commands. He is also a bit of a silent snarker.

[b]Brief History:[/b] Born the fourth son of a family of lesser nobles, the relatively little weath his family had was inherited mostly by his older brothers. While he was given the respect and education of an upperclassman, Phoebus knew from an early age that he would not grow up to dwell in a large house full of lavish furnishings and many servants. He noted that it was unfair that his eldest brother would receive half of their parents’ fortune and a large portion of the family lands, and that each successive son would inherit increasingly little, simply on the merit of who happened to be born first. As a child, he got into many fights with his brothers, especially the firstborn Thomas, over the disparities in their treatment and training. Thomas was given the first and best of many things, and as he grew, his tutors began including lessons on the logistics of running an estate. Meanwhile, Phoebus was given more general training that would prepare him to take on a trade. He was given lessons in etiquette, mathematics, philosophy, and the like as well, of course, but his tutors tended to find his papers filled with fantastical drawings and puns about various bodily functions rather than the information they were trying to coax into his stubborn little skull.

When he was nine years old and his parents began looking for someone to take him on as an apprentice, he chose to forego all of their suggestions, and instead began training himself to fight. That is, most noble men carried and could wield swords to a reasonable extent, but Phoebus sought to go beyond that level of skill. He watched his father’s few household guards practice in the mornings and evenings, and imitated them until he was allowed to formally join them in the training fields. Without a need to spend hours working for money, and refusing to spend that time studying under a tradesman, he had a great deal of free time which he devoted to strength training, riding lessons, and sword drills. When he wasn’t doing that, he was pulling tricks on his brothers or being chased off by the cook for stealing pastries.

At thirteen, after a particularly shameful display by Thomas of his arrogance and privilege, Phoebus became aware of the much more severe disparity of equality between himself and the lower classes. He reduced his physical training to allow room to study from books on subjects such as history and law. His tutors were surprised at his voracity for learning (once he decided a particular subject was worth his time, of course) and guided him through complicated vocabulary and concepts. Soon they found that the best way to get him to do his normal lessons was to tie them in to what he wanted to study. Greek literature became a source of logic puzzles and battle strategy, lists of monarchs and lineage were connected to wars fought and laws passed, etc. They were annoyed, but drily unsurprised, when he asked if he could name one of his father’s hunting hounds Achilles; he was told no.

Believing he would be unable to find work which was acceptable for his station, his parents began trying to set him up for a series of arranged marriages to young women of nearly equal status and at least as much money. These inevitably all fell through, as the teenage Phoebus saw no reason to pretend to be something he wasn’t just to avoid social recourse, and flirted with both the sisters and brothers of his prospective brides with reckless abandon. This resulted in more brawls than beddings, but he was pleasantly surprised at the number of young men who accepted his offers of... extracurricular activities. His father introduced him to a local brothel with various exotic offerings, hoping his time there would wear him out and curb Phoebus’ behaviors when social propriety deemed it necessary. It did not.

When he came of age, Phoebus could no longer ignore his fate as a poor man with a noble name, and took a job. He initially signed on with a small group of guards tasked with keeping order in the city, but his skill was quickly noticed as surpassing those of the other guards, and soon he found himself being shipped off as a proper soldier to a war somewhere that he vaguely recalled being told about by his tutors. 

Life on the frontline was gruelling and morally exhausting. His chosen method of coping was to inflate an attitude which embodied both sides of the dichotomy between discipline and carefree merrimaking. The first mount he properly owned himself, he named Achilles, and took it upon himself to train that horse to follow dog commands simply because he found it amusing. He followed most of his orders with a stony face and impressed his commanders with the rigidity of his personal maintenance routine, but when his superiors weren’t looking, he was wont to flirt with anyone who was low enough rank to not be a professional threat should they not take it well. He got into plenty of brawls, bedded a few of his fellow footsoldiers, and bedded well more than a few of the local women who lived near the army camps.

Eventually, his skill as a swordsman and strategic mind gained him notice once again, and he rose through the ranks quickly as his battle tactics and charisma greatly affected several key battles. Soon after receiving the rank of captain, a letter came to the front describing a “great and violent unrest” in Paris, the recent “loss” of the captain of one of the most prominent companies of the city guard, and a “nearly desperate” request for a fresh commander who could bring order to the chaos. Given the urgency of the mission, it was decided that the assignment would go to Phoebus.

When he arrived in the city, Phoebus was nonplussed to learn that the “violent unrest” Minister Frollo had referred to was merely the presence of “fortune tellers and palm readers”. Still, he continued his pattern of following orders and enforcing a higher degree of discipline on his new company while in uniform, and having a bit of fun chaos outside of it. Under his command, the local guards became more skilled in combat and more stringent on process, resulting in more criminals (and “criminals”) being successfully arrested and brought to court. Since Frollo was the judge and there was no jury, convictions and sentences shot upward in the weeks following his appointment. 

As Frollo descended further into madness, however, Phoebus found it increasingly difficult to stand by while justice was blatantly being denied to civilians whose only proven crime was being born to Gypsy parents. His old hatred for inequality and unfairness rose up inside him again. When the judge ordered Phoebus to execute a whole family, including the children, without a trial and by way of simply burning their house down around them, the captain finally reached his breaking point. He refused to obey a direct order which hadn’t even a shadow of justice in its giving. The punishment for this display of insubordination would have been execution, and though he was not happy about this, he had the guts to tell Frollo he considered it “[his] highest honor” to throw away his promising career rather than follow a completely immoral order.

Esmeralda stepped up to defend him, and in the chaos that ensued, he managed to break free of the other soldiers and escape on Frollo’s horse. Perhaps Phoebus hadn’t gotten around to training his men on archery with moving targets yet, or perhaps he had earned their respect and they were hesitant to kill him for sparing the lives of innocents, but regardless of the reason, Frollo was surprised to find that nearly all of their arrows fell far behind, ahead, or to the side of their target. Most of them weren’t even close enough to startle the horse. But one arrow did find its mark, and Phoebus fell wounded into the river, presumed dead.

Esmeralda fished him out and hid him away in the belltower with Quasimodo, but he was captured again the next evening when Frollo used the two men to find and trap the Gypsies in their hideout, the Court of Miracles.

During the Siege of Notre Dame which followed the attempted execution of Esmeralda, Phoebus broke out of his cage and rallied the citizens to fight against the tyranny of Frollo and his unjust obsessions. Some of the men continued to fight the battle they had been told, but many surrendered to the civilians.

After everything had settled, Phoebus was royally pardoned and Frollo’s actions posthumously  condemned. Phoebus was once again made captain of the city guard, and in the year following, his company continued to make great strides in both skill and discipline, and application of the law. The new magistrate took the soldiers’ testimony into account when criminals were on trial, and the soldiers gave more warnings than they made arrests. There would still be a long ways to go, but it was finally beginning to look like the civilians and the soldiers would be able to have a mutual respect for each other, and Phoebus looked forward to the day when the woman he loved would be seen as more than simply a Gypsy, in the eyes of the law if not the general public.

[b]Important Relationships:[/b] Esmeralda has captured Phoebus’s heart and stirred his loins. While she loves him back, she has applied limitations to the physicality of their relationship. The frustration from this has resulted in a slight increase of his trips to local brothels; she not only is fully aware of this, she sometimes enjoys teasing him about it. They sometimes get into arguments about his job and methodology, as she is very much Chaotic to his Lawful, but as they both care deeply about justice, they can usually come to an understanding.

Phoebus has a tertiary relationship to Pierre which is primarily based on Esmeralda using one to troll the other, such as being much more touchy and sultry toward the soldier when the poet is watching. They both have a rather lighthearted resignment to this dynamic and don’t harbour any particular animosity or jealous toward each other.

Quasimodo views Phoebus as one of his closest friends, and the feeling is mutual. They playfully argue over Esmeralda’s time and attentions rather often, though on occasion said discussions may actually be serious. They aren’t particularly jealous about her, but Quasimodo has a rather short list of people he can confide in and does not enjoy what he feels to be a return to solitude. 

Put either Phoebus, Esmeralda, or Quasimodo in danger, and the other two will drop everything, forget all past disagreements (serious or otherwise), and become a dream team of badassery in the name of saving their endangered friend. Also, sometimes Pierre is there too.