So I may throw down a character here to balance things out. In order to keep him from being GM chaperone or unduly influencing the RP, I'm considering making him mute. Here is the WIP.
Slave Name: Clarence Smith
Name: Michael
Archetype: Runaway Field Slave
Race/Ethnicity: African American (unknown roots)
Appearance
Michael is tall and musclebound, a product of a life of backbreaking labor and resistance fighting and he bears the scars of both. His clothing varies based on what kind of slave he is trying to impersonate. Never without his chain, he often uses it to disguise himself as a shackled slave in order to get close to his targets without arousing suspicion. When not using it as a disguise he keeps it coiled tight around his arm or waist, often with a few links wrapped round his hand to serve as iron knuckles if the situation warrants. Michael usually shaves his head as he believes it is more befitting a warrior of God.
Background: Michael was born in bondage on a plantation in Northern Virginia. He never knew his parents as they were sold before he was four years of age. Raised by his Aunt, he grew up hard and strong under the hot sun, in cotton and tobacco fields. As a teenager he shifted to working in the smithy, mainly as a cold forger, striking iron and picked up the rudiments of the trade. Like many slaves he heard from his masters the words of the New Testament and Jesus Christ, praise for the meek and pity for the wicked, but they never rang true to him. How could turning the other cheek hope to free his people from an evil that did not know pity or remorse. Instead, like many Christianized slaves he turned instead to the words of the Old Testament, the fury of a righteous God and the hope of deliverance to a promise land. Then in 1864, all such hope seemed to go up in flames as word of the fall of New York and Confederate victory passed across everyone's lips. All hope was not lost however for there was talk amongst the slaves of a liberator, a woman who had freed hundreds singlehandedly, who continued to fight even in the face of overwhelming odds, and who was touched by the hand of the almighty himself receiving visions of that which had not yet come to pass. To the confederate authorities she was Harriet Tubman, the nations most wanted abolitionist and a leading figure of the Railsplitters. To the slaves she was the Oracle, a prophet of God sent to deliver his people. As word of her activities spread throughout the plantations, the Gentry grew nervous that her 'cult' could inspire a full fledged rebellion and they forbid the mentioning of even her name. Clarence, however, refused the order and would not forsake her. Part of him wanted the master to kill him because even he had started to doubt the benevolence of God, but his masters would never sacrifice so strong a specimen. Instead of whipping or maiming him as per the usual course, they cut out his tongue rendering him forever mute. It was at this time, at the deepest pit of his despair, that they came for him, the Railsplitters. They broke his chains, but he kept them, a symbolic weapon with which he would strike back at the oppressors of his people.
Through the late 1860's Clarence lived and worked as a soldier of the abolitionist movement. Now power forged by the cruel labor of plantation life was turned back against his masters. His weapon of choice, the chain, allowed him to easily pose as a shackled slave while remaining armed, a trick used countless times to slip into plantations to free others. Soon after his joining the resistance, the Oracle confessed to him that she'd seen his plight in a vision and it was on her order that the railsplitters came to emancipate him. It was Harriet who renamed Clarence, Michael, after the angelic protector of the Hebrews. By the early 1870s as the resistance has begun to weaken, Michael has become Tubman's strong right arm, often dispatched to chapters in the most immediate need. In 1874, her visions of the raid on the Philadelphia chapter came to late to save Fredrick Douglas, the Father of the movement. When she receives another vision of the statue of Lee and a rattling viper coiled about it, she interprets this as a warning that her brothers and sisters in Richmond might share the same fate. It is at this point that she sends Michael to their aid.
Skills: Brawling, Chain fighting, Acting (Body language), Urban survival, Smithing (basic knowledge, enough to forge simple iron tools and links)
Talent: Michael's talent with a chain is legendary and at close range he is a terror to behold.
Flaw: Michael is completely mute due to his mutilation as a teenager at the hands of his masters. He communicates through signs, body and eye language.
Motivation: Michael believes himself to be a protector of his people and, since he was chosen by the Oracle who he believes to be an emissary of God, he sees himself as being, at least indirectly, chosen by God as well. Although hate motivated him in the early years, he has grown past that and enters danger with an almost surgical control and stoicism. He does not hate the Gentry, but he will kill them without a moment's hesitation if they stand in the way of his divine mission.
