Henry was raised to be the ideal Sinnenodel mage, and he would like to think he’s very close to achieving it. Cold and ruthless, there are no lengths to which he won’t go—or levels he won’t stoop to—to accomplish his goals, be they simply following orders or tipping the scales of fate in his favour. It cannot be overstated that his interests begin and end with himself, and to that end, he is zealously ambitious—a passion that currently manifests in the enthusiastic service of his Lady. Make no mistake, though; his loyalty does not stem from love, or gratitude, tradition, or any supposedly higher calling. No, Henry’s fierce loyalty stems squarely from his own desire to succeed, and there can be no success higher in this world than earning the favour of the Empress herself.

Having learned from a young age that mortal emotions are nothing but an obstacle in his path, he’s learned to suppress them, smother them somewhere safe and out of the way to be dealt with later - or preferably, never. However, that isn’t to say that he doesn’t entertain the occasional human urge. Quite the contrary; Henry has come to see the game of words and daggers the Sinnenodels play as quite the pastime indeed, and finds great entertainment in all the myriad ways he can pull the strings of his social fabric. He likes to have fun; it just so happens that his idea of fun is invoking the misfortune of others.

Above all, though, it bears repeating that Henry’s sole purpose is his own self interest. He will do, take, and endure absolutely anything to secure his own future, and Fate help anything—or anyone—that stands in his way.

No matter one’s status, it is impossible to completely escape the clutches of war; Henry Starag was no exception. Born in the year 507, Henry was a toddler when Lycans attacked his childhood home, forcing his father Aaron, his mother Eloise, and their cadre of allies to pull out every possible stop to defend themselves. If not for his father’s Lycan breakthrough and Max Alderman’s sheer magical might, Henry’s life would have been a short one.

But the only thing that ended that night was Henry’s direct involvement in the war; on an agreement that it was best to keep him safe, three-year-old Henry was sent to none other than Sybil Sinnenodel’s household, where he’d be protected from any and every possible threat excepting the Empress herself. There, safely tucked away in the heart of Sinnenodel territory and far from the war, Henry grew to forget most of that night, and lived in relative normalcy.

Instead, Henry grew up under the harsh and exacting tutelage of Sybil Sinnenodel and her household, and there was molded into the very finest example of what a Sinnenodel mage - and a Starag, for that matter - should be. But it wasn’t just the Empress’ creative methods or the competence of the mages under her employ that were responsible for Henry’s success. On the contrary; even as a child, Henry proved the perfect receptacle for their teaching, driven to excel and eager to use any method, no matter how underhanded, to do so. By personality alone, there was nothing of his father in him. Where Aaron was kind, Henry was cunning; where Aaron was gentle, Henry was ruthless; where Aaron was duty-bound, Henry was motivated only by the prospect of his own achievement. Not that there was anyone around to recognize the difference - Aaron was long since a changed man by the time Henry was becoming his own person.

Growing up largely apart from his parents, who were usually busy with the war, Henry enjoyed every luxury and endured every hardship a proper Sinnenodel mage was expected to, as if there was no war at all - more or less. From a young age he learned to keep his ‘human’ side carefully concealed, to tolerate Sybil’s frequent invasions into his psyche, and even to keep his very thoughts in check, lest he attract his Mistress’ ire. As he grew and learned more about his family, the Sinnenodels, and his place between the two, Henry came to recognize the gravity of the same lofty Starag lineage that inspired such zealous awe in his father. However, Henry wasn’t struck by admiration; rather, he was taken by the sheer scale of the achievements he’d have to someday outpace in order to finally step out from under their shadow.

And his ancestors weren’t his only competition, either. Aside from his own father and the other handful of accomplished mages who joined him in the war, Henry had Lena. Lena, the insufferable pile of perfect looks and feminine curves and infuriating talent. Lena, the ice mage he’d been engaged to marry since before either of them could walk, who had been his chief competitor for Sybil’s good graces throughout their entire shared upbringing. Lena, who matched Henry for every accomplishment without fail, who he hated and loved, who was probably the closest thing to an equal he had in the world’s entire population of mages. Lena, who he’d strangle if he could and whose company he resented so much and yearned for so dearly the second she was gone.

Yeah, that bitch.

Let it never be said that Henry Starag didn’t enjoy a good challenge, because if ever there was one, Lena was it. However, as of late, Henry has gotten an edge. New intel has come in on some potential to stir up Dawn Rising, the foremost band of terrorists currently acting the thorn in the Empress’ side, and it just so happens, it’s finally time for Henry to show his Lady what he’s capable of. True, he has very big shoes to fill, and very long shadows to overtake if he wants to truly make a name for himself beyond his father’s reputation. Fortunately, single-handedly toppling Dawn Rising from the inside should prove an excellent start.

Roan is famously easy to get along with. Easygoing to a fault, Roan has always been perfectly happy to go with the flow, preferring to follow the leader rather than striking out himself. He’s very forgiving of slights against him, preferring to err on the side of grace, and usually assumes (for better or for worse) that people don’t mean to be as harsh as they sometimes come across. But everyone has their limits, and if someone does manage to get on his bad side, he can grow immature, stubborn, and snarky. Of course, getting Roan to the point of spitting back is a feat in itself; in his personal life as well as in battle, Roan would much rather flee than fight.

Growing up with two bickering older sisters taught Roan to be an effective mediator, and since tension drives him crazy, he will often be found trying to help people work out their differences - whether his efforts are welcome or not. Averse to conflict and discomforted by seriousness, Roan does his best to keep the mood light, usually trying to diffuse tense situations with a joke or a change of subject. His discomfort with silence, especially, is even more notable these days; the longer people are around him, the more they will notice that his constant attempts at levity may be less of a personality quirk and more of a protective measure.

This is most evident in his relatively new aversion to being alone, a discomfort so encompassing it’s probably better described as a fear. So Roan does his best to keep people around, keep them talking, and keep them smiling - after all, too much time alone with his thoughts is bad news when there’s so much in his head he’d rather not think about.

Hailing from an orbital Eve territory, Roan’s upbringing was pleasant enough. Born to a single mother with two older sisters, it’s true that they weren’t the model of the nuclear family, and without a second income, they also struggled financially for a while until his oldest sister started working. But they were happy; Roan’s house was always full, be it with the people who lived there or friends and loved ones who stopped in. Even after his oldest sister married and started a family of her own, she was always over with her husband and children, filling the house with the happy noise Roan grew so fond of. It was a happy childhood, the memories of which Roan still treasures to this day.

But he couldn’t stay a child forever, and that fact was underscored the year he turned eighteen, when his Awakening crystal lit up and changed his life forever. Truth be told, while he was sad to leave home, Roan was a little excited at the prospect of serving a vampire; it was a chance to step out of the modest means he was so accustomed to, to make something of himself he probably couldn’t have as a mundane man.

He considered himself pretty lucky, too. He ended up with a vampiress named Bellamira Deale, part of some distant branch of the Eve family on the low end of the social hierarchy - still plenty rich, but largely uninvolved with the political machine. On top of that, she was decently kind to him. A bit of a diva, she liked things a certain way, of course, but she took a particular interest in Roan, doting on him like an exotic pet and grooming him to become a show mage. She was a great fan of his talent for music, hiring magic tutors to teach him how to enhance his natural ability with Sound magic, and she loved showing him off to friends at parties. It wasn’t always the most comfortable thing to be poked and prodded by rich vampires and looked at like more of a toy than a person - especially when they got a little more handsy - but Roan counted his blessings, and he was more or less content.

He spent two reasonably good years with Bellamira, but the novelty wore off when she decided that it was time for the ‘training wheels’ to come off and to induct him into service as a proper show mage. See, in her eyes, becoming a “proper” show mage meant changes; she told him they were simple ‘enhancements’, meant to play on his existing features, highlight his best qualities and minimize the bad ones, and that he’d be happier for them. But it wasn’t until he finally awoke from a whole host of surgical and magical procedures that Roan realized just how dramatic of a change Bellamira wanted to make. He couldn’t deny that he looked “better”, in a way; his features were smoother, his flaws tucked away, his assets exaggerated, just as she said. But it went way beyond ‘enhancement’; his eyes were green instead of hazel, he had an entirely different nose, and all the other features he was used to - even the flaws he never expected to miss - were gone. He looked more like a sculpture freshly carved than a real person, lacking the story of his life he didn’t realize was written in his features until they were gone. He barely recognized himself in the mirror.

It was jarring, but for a while, Roan tried to convince himself that he was okay with it. After all, Bellamira was pleased, he was turning more heads than ever, and he seemed to be on his way to a promising ‘career’ as a show mage; he should have been happy, right? Moon only knew most mages weren’t nearly that lucky, especially these days. But something still didn’t sit right with him. Deny or distract all he wanted, the changes still ate away at him. He no longer had his mother’s nose or his sister’s eyes. His home wasn’t full of life or laughter, just schedules and meetings and glorified busywork to keep the mages looking busy. He barely recognized himself anymore, inside or out, and he didn’t realize until it was too late how much he’d miss those faint echoes of his mom and sisters in the mirror.

When he could no longer bear the feeling of separation, he went to his mistress, all but begging her to turn him back, or at least to let him dial back the changes to something more subtle. But to his surprise, Bellamira, who had always been more or less amicable with him, was not pleased. She denied him fervently, insulted by his brazen rejection of her ‘gift’ to him, and made it clear who made the decisions in her house and who he really belonged to. Crestfallen and hurt, Roan accepted her decision, but fell into a numbing sadness.

Apparently Bellamira noticed how her decision was weighing on him, and surprisingly, attempted to make things right. But a vampire’s interpretation of making amends was much different than a mage’s. She approached him late one morning, where he was moping in his room, and tried to comfort him - he didn’t need to be sad anymore, because now he didn’t need to compare himself to anybody. He could ‘be his own person’, free from the burden of some petty family resemblance weighing down on him, because she’d seen to it that everyone in his ‘old family’ was gone.

Roan doesn’t remember much about what happened next.

It must have been dramatic, though, because the result was an open curtain, a pile of ash on his floor, and him running for his life.

The next few weeks were a blur, but at some point he joined up with a small local rebellion cell that had merged into a distant limb of Dawn Rising, less than ten people in number. He spent about a year with his small band of comrades, conducting small-scale operations that ultimately didn’t accomplish much more than soothing Roan’s burning need to do something, anything to make sure what happened to him never happened to anyone ever again.

When they finally got to make a move that might actually have made a difference, Roan’s endeavours once more ended in tragedy. Finding unexpected resistance and succumbing to a crucial organizational breakdown, the entire cell was killed; Roan was the only survivor, and even then, only because for the second time, he ran.

And again, the next few weeks - or was it months? It was so hard to tell - went by in a blur, and now he’s once more searching for a chance to join up with the resistance in the hopes that this time, maybe he can actually make a difference.

Maya's field of magic is Cosmic, specializing in spells having to do with the manipulation of gravity.

• Kounia - Maya's most commonly used spell, Kounia is a spoken spell that allows her to change the direction of the gravity affecting a person or object.
• Opprimunt - A written spell that allows Maya to multiply the force of gravity in a designated area. Usually prepared in advance as a trap to impede enemies.
• Gravis - Similar in effect to Opprimunt, Gravis is a spoken spell that affects only one target.
• Duratus - A spoken spell which neutralizes gravity's effect on the target entirely. Maya is still working on this one; it'll take some tweaking of velocity as well as gravity to get it perfect, but the goal is to be able to use this spell to stop a fall. Currently only works on one target, but she's working on expanding it to multiple.

"Isn't that supposed to be rude to ask?

Whatever, I don't really care. It's a short and kind of bullshit story anyway. I was 22, your classic goody-two-shoes - came from a nice family, got good grades, didn't get pregnant before twenty, all that. Didn't really do much interesting; you know how it is, half of everyone you know tells you to get your crazy out before you're too old to party and the other half says that can all wait until you get your education and you're out on your two feet. I kinda split the difference; didn't party too hard but wasn't a loner or anything. Went away for school, joined a sorority. The usual.

Anyway. There I am, wasting my life studying for some bullshit physics degree, thinking I'll go have a real life once I'm done, and then - BAM! Meningitis. Like, are you fucking kidding me? What kind of bullshit is that? You french one guy at a party, go to bed the next week with a stiff neck and never wake up again? Give me a fucking break. But that's what got me, and then my dumb ass wakes up here, dead, and what, I'm supposed to just be cool with that and move on to the After just like that? Yeah, okay. Fuck that. I barely spent any time on Earth! I never got to live my life there, so I'm damn well gonna live it here until I'm good and ready.

I guess that's what brought me to this job. I spent like, I don't know, a year or so just hanging out in Decibitus at first. Really trying to let loose, you know? Live a little? Ha. But it didn't take long for that to get boring - I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a city full of dead people with mortality issues is kinda lame. So then I remember they told me I could be a Reaper (which at first I was like, no, I didn't die just so I could get a nine-to-five in limbo) and think hey, maybe slaying demons or whatever that entails will be more exciting than nightclubs full of reincarnated geriatrics.

Of course, now I've been on for about a year and a half and... yeah. No. I mean, sure, you get a little action every now and then when there's a wisp that got a little too mature or some especially uncooperative dead guy on Earth, but Jesus, who figured death would still have paperwork? And like, an HR department? You're telling me I still have to deal with payroll when I'm dead?

So yeah, turns out the afterlife isn't that much more impressive than normal life - although not being able to really die again is cool, I guess. And now with the train out of whack things are even more annoying. But hey, maybe whatever's holding up the train will be a bit more of a challenge."

An early introduction to the blessings and privileges of Dominant status shaped Jerrick from a young age. Patriotic Veldermarkens laud him as a just, outgoing, fierce, and courageous representative of Veldermarken pride and power; his detractors would call him arrogant, brash, reckless, and battle-hungry. What none can deny, however, is that the Warden of Thunder is absolutely fearless, ever eager to jump at the drums of war and charge ahead with the same might and vigour as the Levinbolts he wields.

Some, however, would call him overzealous in that pursuit. Indeed, Jerrick fancies himself immortal - not that he's thought about it that hard, but the prospect that he, Jerrick Fjaldersson, Dominant of Ramuh and Warden of Thunder, could ever fall in battle (or by any other means) has truly never crossed his mind.

Jerrick's earliest memories are of a storm. He was in a wooden boat, soaked to the skin, being tossed about by a raging sea eager to drag him and his father to hell for daring to intrude upon its territory. Jerrick vividly remembers wondering what it was going to feel like to drown.

He was no stranger to the water, even at the tender age of five; his father was a fisherman, and with his mother ill, he often took his boy out on the boat with him to drag in whatever the waters off the coast of Ash could offer. Rough waters weren't new to them, but a gale like this came hard and fast, and before they knew it they could do nothing but hold on for dear life - and their grip was slipping.

Jerrick had wedged himself into the bow of their little clinker as it bucked, his father scrambling to stabilize them - to no avail. Before them rose a wave that was bound to swallow them whole. Realizing their fate, Jerrick's father abandoned his pursuits and gathered his son in his arms, praying for God to spare them. Jerrick did not share his father's serenity; the boy was struck with terrible fear as a wave the size of Ravenwit bore down upon them.

In that moment, a great bolt of lightning struck, smashing the boat to splinters. Jerrick remembers very little of what happened after that.

Spear

Maya’s Holy Sigil is located on her throat.

should be obvious

Maya was born in one of Doumerc’s smaller cities, an ancient settlement called Rivière-des-Larmes located on one bank of a wide river forming part of Doumerc’s historically contested border with Kaudus. One of the last remaining border settlements in Doumerc (after the rest were gradually abandoned in a diplomatic effort to ease tensions with Kaudus), tensions in Rivière-des-Larmes often run high, and the settlement is closely monitored by the Doumercène military, a rare sight in the rest of the country. However, being situated on a vital trade route both out to sea and inland to Rodion, Doumerc has yet to concede the town to Kaudus’ posturing from across the river.

For Maya’s part, she was born into some privilege; while they had no claims to noble lineage, her family was fortunate as Rivière residents went. They owned a family business of some repute running cargo barges up and down the river, and while their contracts weren’t huge, they were consistent, and with hard work they made enough to live comfortably, a luxury not all in their town could afford.

Maya herself was a difficult child, prone to stubbornness and temper, but she performed well in school; so well, in fact, that by the time she finished high school, she had earned herself a scholarship studying physics at a university in the nearby city. It wasn’t ivy league - it was an open secret that one needed lofty connections to get into one of those - but a degree from any Doumerc university would all but guarantee Maya a life much easier than the one her parents had worked for, and they were elated.

Unfortunately, Maya’s scholarship worked more against her parents’ interests than in their favour. In her time away, Maya grew haughty, acquiring a taste for the sophistication and style of “big city” life and learning to look down upon the small-time border town and kitschy cargo business that raised her. Her summers home felt like prison, and even her advanced physics homework appealed to her more than helping out with the family business.

But books still needed balancing, and cargo still needed checking, so Maya was unable to escape helping her parents out on the barges. One interesting bonus of the business was that, as a cargo carrier, the Desrosiers company was one of very few civilian companies with authorization to cross the river into Kaudus. With foreign relations strained as they were, they never had Kaudian clients, but the passport was necessary to get through checkpoints and to secure some limited protection in case docking on Kaudian shores was necessary.

As it happened, one of the summer days that Maya’s father could drag her out to help with inventory was one such occasion, their barge suffering engine difficulties and a rudder failure that forced them to make landfall in Kaudus. An unscheduled landing in waters as well-traveled as the Larme would raise tensions anywhere, but a Doumercène ship in Kaudus doubly so; as such, tensions ran high as Maya, for once, stayed dutifully inside the bridge while her father attempted to explain the situation to the Kaudian authorities. However, while her father struggled to communicate in broken Kaudian, armed men from the shore boarded and began sweeping the ship.

Then physics rolled over, and they fell into the sky.

Things moved pretty quickly after that, and after narrowly avoiding several Kaudian attempts to kill her, Maya was secured by the Doumercène military and shortly thereafter, taken under the care of the Church. It was determined after a short investigation that she had become the new Scion of Gravity, after the widely published death of her predecessor two months prior. Maya was 22 years old at the time.

It was jointly decided by the Church and Maya’s family (albeit strenuously objected to by Parliament) that, for her safety, Maya would leave Doumerc and reside in Veradis, at least for the time being. Maya, who had never been strongly religious and was loath to be told what to do, chafed under the Church’s tutelage at first, and to this day has a talent for pushing the buttons of the clergy, but you will never hear her complain about the accommodations: The Holy City of Juniperus is as far a cry from backwater Rivière-des-Larmes as one can get. On top of that, there is nowhere in the world where a Scion enjoys as much doting attention, and in the few years since inheriting her gift, Maya has become a darling of the media - maybe a little too chummy with them, if you were to ask her bishop.

In circumstances where she's been approved for blatant uses of Gravity magic, Maya uses a blade-backed custom hammer. Otherwise, she carries a concealed handgun on her person at all times.

should be obvious

include where you were born, your former status (if you were a noble), your reason for becoming a Templar, how being a Templar has affected your life, and any current personal goals.

Irina's melee weapon of choice is a modified heavy cavalry sabre, which, due to her unique Blessing, is quite a bit heavier than most would wield. She is proficient with firearms, but when prudence does not demand she keeps her distance, she prefers to deal with problems up close.

Much to his chagrin, Jannick's minor sigil was placed over his heart.

It is outwardly apparent that Jannick does not want to be here. He held it together well enough to get through his Templar training, but every day that passes is a day that it gets a little bit harder to pretend that his Blessing is the greatest gift on earth. He rolls his eyes in interviews, he smokes inside, he even refers to his Scion as “Holiness” - and sometimes just uses her given name. His patience grows thinner by the day, and his charge’s escape artist tendencies do nothing to alleviate his recurring headaches. He is a man of many words once you get him talking, but these days, very few of them are likely to be good.

The one thing he doesn’t scrimp on, however, is vigilance. Jannick may not take the vaunted positions of Scion and Templar very seriously, but he does appreciate his duty: keeping people safe. Annoying or not, his charge is as worthy of protection as anyone, and his head is always on a swivel, always looking for the signs he was trained to watch out for to spot a dangerous situation before it occurs. But he just can’t wrap his head around prioritizing his Scion and nobody else - as such, he has a tendency to slip back into his old habits and stick his nose in brewing conflicts when he finds them, even if his Scion isn’t involved.

Faith is a staple of everyday life in Veradis, and nowhere more than Juniperus itself. As such, Jannick, the middle child of six, got all the fixings of the pious upbringing: he went to a religious school, he served as an altar boy, and his parents made sure the whole family was in the pews every Sunday. To him, it was as routine as it was rigorous, with one teaching drilled deepest of them all: the Goddess loves you.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t love the Church, but what captured his young mind was not the priest at the altar, but the guards at the door: the Church Knights in their gleaming armour, shining like angels in the sun. Juniperus was crawling with them; with no civilian authority in the Holy City, all matters of public order were handled by the Church. Church Knights patrolled the streets, directed traffic, put out fires, and of course, fought crime. To Jannick, it seemed like they were the very force that made the world go round. And he wanted to be one of them.

The year of his seventh birthday, he begged and pleaded with his parents for months to let him become a page. While they were apprehensive at first, his pitiable whining must have worn them down eventually, because when the day finally came, he was introduced to Sir Ulrich Gerhardt, a man not too long out of knighthood himself. The new year would see Jannick join Sir Ulrich at the Civitas Equitum, where he got the chance not only to learn the basics of knighthood, but to rub elbows with the scores of other Knights, pages and squires who called the city barracks home. It was a dream come true.

The instruction of an aspiring Church Knight is rigorous and demanding, but Jannick sucked up every drop of it, from the mounted swordplay lessons to the late-night toilet cleaning. But his very favourite part was the field work, when he got to accompany Sir Ulrich on his duties. Sir Ulrich wasn’t the Knight Jannick had always pictured when he played Knights and Monsters with his siblings: instead of a traveling monster slayer or the Templar to a Scion, he was an officer of the Juniperus Police Department. His duties were varied and unique, and during his time as a squire Jannick accompanied Sir Ulrich on mounted patrols, investigations of crime scenes, arrests of petty criminals, and more small-time court appearances than Jannick cared to remember.

It was a strange job for a Knight, Jannick initially thought. It had its share of action, no doubt, and the JPD took immense pride in keeping the streets of the Holy City safe from all manner of crime - but at the same time, the job possessed a level of intimacy with the people of Juniperus that had never before come to Jannick’s mind, but soon became to him the very essence of a Knight. In the stories of his youth, the Knights were always slaying monsters on behalf of faceless villagers or questing at the behest of nameless clergymen for the good of the all-encompassing Church. But in Sir Ulrich’s line of work, the villagers had faces, names, and children who got lost and needed finding; the clergy consoled people whose apartments were broken into and whose assailants needed to be held accountable for their crimes. After a while, police work became, to Jannick, the truest expression of knighthood.

When he was 21, the time for his own knighting finally came. It surprised no one, least of all Sir Ulrich, when Jannick traded his golden breastplate for a kevlar vest and joined the JPD.

No one would argue that it was the right choice for Jannick, but life came at him fast, and he learned soon after his knighting that the calls Sir Ulrich saw fit to bring his squire along on were not the only calls the JPD had to deal with. Juniperus had no more crime than any other city of comparable size - with its heavy Knight presence, it probably had less - but the police department was kept busy all the same. Crushing boredom on patrol could turn into a deadly encounter in an instant; every time the radio screeched, Jannick never knew what he would face next. At first, it was exhilarating. In time, it came to test his faith.

He grew up learning - knowing - one thing above all others: the Goddess loved her children. That was why she created them; that was why, when they called out to her in anguish, she gifted them her essence, creating the Scions. But he was no clergyman; despite his training as a Knight, he didn’t know or understand the deep mysteries of the faith Incepta had instilled into her Church. He didn’t know why, if she loved her children so much, they so frequently forgot her teachings and turned on each other. He didn’t know why the Mother was so content to let it happen.

As a police officer, Jannick saw firsthand the depths of human suffering and depravity. He unearthed the OD victims from their squalid apartments, nameless and known only to landlords complaining of the smell. He wrestled battered women as they begged him hysterically to let their boyfriends go free, only to respond to their house again the next weekend. He pulled the mangled bodies of children from twisted cars while the drunks who hit them walked away spotless.

When he looked up, Jannick saw the gleaming spires of the Cathedra Incepta, the points of the Sigil star embracing the city like the open, loving arms of the Goddess herself. But when he looked around, he wondered if he and his heavenly Mother were seeing the same thing.

The years passed, and he didn’t pray much anymore.

Jannick’s growing burnout must have been apparent, because unbeknownst to him, Sir Ulrich had taken it upon himself to give Jannick a chance at a different career: a Templar. But when news came that Sir Ulrich had recommended him for the position and he’d been accepted, Jannick was devastated; he couldn’t deny that the reality of police work weighed heavily on him, but the answer wasn’t to walk away. If there was so much evil in the world, and Incepta clearly wasn’t doing anything about it, then somebody had to act. He had been working ever more intently, foregoing leisure and taking on a daunting overtime regimen, because someone had to do something. He needed to be out in the streets, not guarding some vaunted magic brat.

But there was nothing he could do. Sir Ulrich meant well, but it doomed him: if Jannick refused such an honour, his reputation as a Church Knight serving the Holy City would be irreparably cratered. No citizen of Juniperus would trust a police officer who didn’t think guarding a Scion was worth his while, and even if the people didn’t care, his superiors certainly would. The best job he could hope for if he refused would be as a deputy in some backwater Rodion village shooting polar bears, if he wasn't stuck at a customs desk in some forsaken airport. If he wasn't stripped of his Knighthood altogether under suspicion of apostasy, that is.

The choice was made for him, made all the more painful by the fact that he had to accept it himself. And now he’s no longer Officer Weber, but Sir Jannick, Templar of Wind, in charge of a Scion who somehow takes the whole “blessed by the Goddess” schtick about as seriously as he does. Honestly, that’s probably even more insulting.

They took back his standard-issue handgun when he left the police department, so Jannick spent his stipend on a pair of his own, which he carries in his shoulder holster at all times. In addition to that, he'll suit up with a military-style carbine when he has time to prepare, and he's always been an advocate of the good old-fashioned baton.