”You exist in a world of gods and monsters, yet you waste your time with mortal struggles? One in your situation must come to realize- you are more than a man.”-The Man in the Golden Suit
Name: Matthew Bishop
Gender: Male
Age: 36
Height: 6” 3’
Weight: 220 Lbs.
Appearance:
Bishop is a physically imposing man, standing at the impressive height of 6” 3’, towering above an average male. He maintains a muscular physique that is ready for action, with somewhat lean yet strong muscles that allow from fast movement and hard punches if need be. He is often seen wearing a long coat and a desperado hat with a hand resting on his holster, as though he were some kind of cowboy. He has short, closely cut brown hair and a badly trimmed rough beard. he usually has one of many different kinds of serious expressions on his face, though he’ll sometimes smile if he hears a joke that tickles his sense of humor. When he smiles it seems like his whole face crinkles up, his dark eyes almost shrinking somewhat. When he frowns however, his oval shaped face and expression remains monotone, his eyes staring ahead.
With the way he moves, he gives off a sort of gentle giant vibe. His moves when not in combat tend to be slow and deliberate, as though living in a world made of glass, ready to shatter at any given second.
Notable Markings:
-A large, bad scar going from his left temple to his scalp, from when his head was cracked open and crudely stitched back up.
-Tiny scars all over his knuckles and fingers.
-His fingers are extremely calloused; an archer's hands.
-He has a tattoo of a sun on the back of his right hand.
Personality:
To say Bishop is hard boiled would be to sell him short. He’s an extremely serious man with a sense of humor so dry it makes the Sahara look like a rain forest. He’s a quiet and personal man, he tends to spend a lot of time in his own head, trying to think over situations very carefully. His slow and deliberate movements are an extension of his train of thought, he is very careful to control himself to ensure he doesn’t make any sudden or careless moves. He tries very hard to repress his criminal past, and control his own strength. Furthermore, he dislikes using his powers unless against an enemy which has equal or greater strength, as it would not make for a fair fight. He is an honorable man, and arguably one of his most important principles is honor. He will try to make any fights he’s involved in as fair as possible, and if he makes a promise he’s damned certain to keep it. if someone he knows ever breaches their own honor, his opinion of them declines greatly. One of his many personal mottos is “death before dishonor”. He is extremely conscious of how powerful he is and is quick to gage how powerful those he surrounds himself with are. He is happy filling most any role in a group, but has taken a liking to archery and the use of his firearms most prominently.
He is a live and let live type of person, preferring not to bother anyone unless they actively seek him out first. He won’t go out of his way to track someone down or do something unless he has a very good reason for it. That said, he has a very strong belief in prophecy, even prophecy coming from the lips of a fortune teller who’s probably a charlatan, because he believes everything happens for a reason, and he must have encountered this shoddy, two-bit fortune teller for some purpose or other.
Towards people he’s altogether friendly but will not actively seek to form friendships, oftentimes preferring to travel on his lonesome. He’s traveled in groups before to varying degrees of success.
He’s very wise and has a lot of wisdom to impart onto others, as was imparted onto him by the man who trained him.
Morally he falls into a grey area, this is not because he doesn’t fight for the side of good, he certainly does, but his stances on punishment of those who have done wrong is quite extreme. For even the smallest offense to the law or what Bishop views as cosmically right a bone shattering blow that might as well be criminal is in store for the wrongdoer from Bishop’s hands. This sense of morality he holds is often called hypocritical as Bishop used to be a criminal himself.
Equipment:
-Two Twin Two Shot Flintlock Pistols. He demonstrates exceptional skill with them and it careful to make his shots count. He had previously expressed interest in getting revolvers. However once getting those revolvers he discovered that they were wildly inaccurate and quickly went back to his trust flintlock. The only real problem with his guns is that they are a bother to reload.
-One Xiphos Short Sword. Bishop uses a slightly modernized version of the Xiphos shortsword with improved material and blade quality as a secondary weapon. ((Fun fact, ‘Xiphos’ apparently means ‘Penetrating Light’. Ancient Greeks and their fancy names for swords, eh?))
-A Double Concave Bow. Arguably his main weapon once his pistols run out of ammunition, he shows deadly accuracy with his bow and arrow. His feats include firing multiple arrows simultaneously, very fast and accurate shooting, and once he shot an opponent's arrows out of the air.
-A Lyre. Bishop keeps a finely made wooden Lyre with him when in need of his musically inclined talents.
Abilities: Bishop is often called a ‘Warrior of Utility’, because he very rarely finds himself squeezed into merely one combat role. He has performed duties similar to a combat medic, he’s been an archer, and has strummed a lyre in such furious desperation that at the time he must have been a bard.
His powers are reasonably expansive, due to the wide variety of subject’s Apollos godship covers. He has spent a significant portion of his life training, making him adept in his abilities. But, as his Master once said to him, “you have not realized the full power of your abilities, and until you unite with others like you, I doubt you ever will.”
Blinding Light- Bishop, as his ancestor is god of the sun, has access to a extremely useful light based attacks and utilities. He can cause his hand to glow very brightly, almost as though a flashlight or a torch. he can configure this light in many ways, making it shine like a flashlight, lantern, or even the ability to make shadow puppets with it, sort of like someone could do with a flashlight and their hands. Combat wise it has two applications, firstly if he can manage to put his hands over someone's eyes he can deliver an intense amount of brightness very suddenly, blinding them for a period of up to a half hour. His other combat option is to fire a beam of light, causing physical damage to an opponent, but this drains his energy severely
Musical Magic- Using any instrument, Bishop can play a variety of tunes that will empower those he is traveling with, though these effects are the most potent when using a lyre. He has a variety of songs, one which can slightly increase the strength of his team-mates, one that can make his enemies slightly weaker, calming songs, and a variety of others. ((In RP, if I want to use a song not mentioned in the sheet I’ll run it by the GM first.))
Healing Magic- Bishop has somewhat potent healing magic, which he calls his ‘healing hands’. If he passes close to someone he can sense if they have some kind of wound. By laying his hands on the wound, he can accelerate the healing process to a degree. paper cuts and little bruises would fade in a matter of seconds, but the length of time needed to fully mend something increase exponentially as the wound gets worse. Fixing something broken would take an entire day, but attempting to regrow a limb that was lost could take a year.
God Burst- Arrows of Revealing Light- His God Burst is a power he calls ‘The Arrows of Revealing Light’. It creates six golden arrows in his quiver and bathes him in a golden light. The first effect is that he is slightly stronger, faster, more accurate, and all his abilities are a bit more ffective. Additionally, he has the arrows, with which he can do many things. Can can absorb them to make himself further slightly stronger, he can shoot them at a friend to heal them massively, or he can shoot them at an enemy for either an instant kill or a massive amount of damage.
Ancestor/Patron: Apollo; God of Prophecy, Music, Archery, Medicine, The Sun, and basically anything that the other gods didn’t claim already.
Background:
Bishop has a storied past for a man of only 36. He was born in a small, backwater town in the country of Wandenzech. He was born into a very poor household that might as well have been little more than a dirt shack held up with nothing more than spit, sticks, and a whole lot of prayers. The only way to get by in the tiny town was criminal activity- Traders would pass through all the time, attempting to barter spice or coin or weapons to villagers who barely had enough money to pay for leaves to wipe their own asses with. The Bishop family got the idea to start taking from the traders. Nothing big, no fighting, no intimidation, just making small talk with the trader while their boy went around the back and nicked a sword or two. It was a good system- The merchant went on their merry way no worse for wear with only the slightest lightening of the load, and the Bishops had enough money.
But eventually, people began catching on. People were starting to realize the Bishop’s house was getting nicer and nicer- and that they had a bit more stuff than they used to. People started demanding cuts, threatening to bring the police down on the Bishops. They had to give away their profits, and they had to steal more and more to survive. Soon, they started holding up traders and trade caravans. Generally, it was fine, no one ever got hurt, and the Bishops and their village got what they wanted. until one day, when Matthew Bishop had just turned seventeen. There was a trade caravan that put up a fight- a bad one. Bishop pulled his most valuable possession, a gun, stolen when he was ten, and he fired. The fighting stopped, one of the traders was dead. Bishops parents forced him to turn himself in, and so he did, sentenced to six years in prison, five for murder, one for theft. retrospectively it was an extremely lax sentence for a second degree murder and multiple counts of grand theft, but at the time it seemed like a hell of a long sentence to Bishop.
It was in prison that he truly developed who he was. He was quick to adjust to a no-crime lifestyle; the prison supplied him will everything he needed. The only bad thing he probably did in there was beating the shit out of someone who tried to fuck with him in his first few days. After that, no one messed with The Bishop, as they started to call him. At that time, Bishop started to become enamored with religion, he felt as though it gave him a purpose. In his prison years he became a preacher of Apollo, lord of the sun, medicine, music, archery, and in some cases, knowledge. he got a tattoo of the sun on his hand to signify this. It made him feel like he was doing in prison. That he was in there for a reason.
That feeling went away when he got out, six years later. He was in a town he didn’t recognize with people who particularly hated ex-cons, at a dead-end, with no job, no prospects, and what he felt was his true purpose in life locked back inside the prison walls.
At this time, Bishop made a new friend- Alcohol. He spent what must have been a year of his life drinking, kicking back in dive bars and cheap pubs looking for good booze to drown his sorrows in. Sometime shortly after his twenty fourth birthday, something odd happened in the bar.
Bishop was just about to walk out the door, when a curious looking man in a beautiful golden suit walked in. He was dressed perfectly and seemed to radiate light. Bishop was the first one to speak to him, asking him what someone like him was doing in a place like this. The man responded, “To buy you a drink, Mr.Bishop.”
Bishop wasn’t one to turn down a free drink, so he accepted. As the two drank, they talked. The man revealing he knew a lot about Bishop- His past, his time in prison, his favorite drink for chrissakes. Instead of asking how the man knew all this, Bishop merely remarked he was no one special and got up to leave, saying he needed to get to bed for the never ending hunt for some kind of job that would accept him.
The man said, “You exist in a world of gods and monsters, yet you waste your time with mortal struggles? One in your situation must come to realize- you are more than a man. Mr.Bishop, encourage you to stay here for just five minutes. it is your destiny. You shall be set on a path of heroism, honor, and glory, for whatever hardship it may be fraught with. But if you walk out of that door, right now, you embark on a darker path than I could ever foresee.” With that the man in the suit paid and left, leaving Bishop to make his choice.
Bishop stayed in that bar for another half an hour, and in that time a man older than he was walked in, only to be assaulted by a group of bar assholes. He stood there and took it, before Bishop walked up to them and told them to piss off. After the ensuing fight, the older gentleman told Bishop to pursue him at his dojo.
Bishop ventured to the dojo and trained there for a great many years, until he was thirty, learning everything his new master has to teach him, and even learning of his godly ancestry. He eventually began deducing that the man he’d met, the one with the golden suit, was Apollo, his ancestor.
After completing his training, he traveled for many years, being a part of many adventurer’s groups and seeing places all around the world.
Name: Matthew Bishop
Gender: Male
Age: 36
Height: 6” 3’
Weight: 220 Lbs.
Appearance:
Bishop is a physically imposing man, standing at the impressive height of 6” 3’, towering above an average male. He maintains a muscular physique that is ready for action, with somewhat lean yet strong muscles that allow from fast movement and hard punches if need be. He is often seen wearing a long coat and a desperado hat with a hand resting on his holster, as though he were some kind of cowboy. He has short, closely cut brown hair and a badly trimmed rough beard. he usually has one of many different kinds of serious expressions on his face, though he’ll sometimes smile if he hears a joke that tickles his sense of humor. When he smiles it seems like his whole face crinkles up, his dark eyes almost shrinking somewhat. When he frowns however, his oval shaped face and expression remains monotone, his eyes staring ahead.
With the way he moves, he gives off a sort of gentle giant vibe. His moves when not in combat tend to be slow and deliberate, as though living in a world made of glass, ready to shatter at any given second.
Notable Markings:
-A large, bad scar going from his left temple to his scalp, from when his head was cracked open and crudely stitched back up.
-Tiny scars all over his knuckles and fingers.
-His fingers are extremely calloused; an archer's hands.
-He has a tattoo of a sun on the back of his right hand.
Personality:
To say Bishop is hard boiled would be to sell him short. He’s an extremely serious man with a sense of humor so dry it makes the Sahara look like a rain forest. He’s a quiet and personal man, he tends to spend a lot of time in his own head, trying to think over situations very carefully. His slow and deliberate movements are an extension of his train of thought, he is very careful to control himself to ensure he doesn’t make any sudden or careless moves. He tries very hard to repress his criminal past, and control his own strength. Furthermore, he dislikes using his powers unless against an enemy which has equal or greater strength, as it would not make for a fair fight. He is an honorable man, and arguably one of his most important principles is honor. He will try to make any fights he’s involved in as fair as possible, and if he makes a promise he’s damned certain to keep it. if someone he knows ever breaches their own honor, his opinion of them declines greatly. One of his many personal mottos is “death before dishonor”. He is extremely conscious of how powerful he is and is quick to gage how powerful those he surrounds himself with are. He is happy filling most any role in a group, but has taken a liking to archery and the use of his firearms most prominently.
He is a live and let live type of person, preferring not to bother anyone unless they actively seek him out first. He won’t go out of his way to track someone down or do something unless he has a very good reason for it. That said, he has a very strong belief in prophecy, even prophecy coming from the lips of a fortune teller who’s probably a charlatan, because he believes everything happens for a reason, and he must have encountered this shoddy, two-bit fortune teller for some purpose or other.
Towards people he’s altogether friendly but will not actively seek to form friendships, oftentimes preferring to travel on his lonesome. He’s traveled in groups before to varying degrees of success.
He’s very wise and has a lot of wisdom to impart onto others, as was imparted onto him by the man who trained him.
Morally he falls into a grey area, this is not because he doesn’t fight for the side of good, he certainly does, but his stances on punishment of those who have done wrong is quite extreme. For even the smallest offense to the law or what Bishop views as cosmically right a bone shattering blow that might as well be criminal is in store for the wrongdoer from Bishop’s hands. This sense of morality he holds is often called hypocritical as Bishop used to be a criminal himself.
Equipment:
-Two Twin Two Shot Flintlock Pistols. He demonstrates exceptional skill with them and it careful to make his shots count. He had previously expressed interest in getting revolvers. However once getting those revolvers he discovered that they were wildly inaccurate and quickly went back to his trust flintlock. The only real problem with his guns is that they are a bother to reload.
-One Xiphos Short Sword. Bishop uses a slightly modernized version of the Xiphos shortsword with improved material and blade quality as a secondary weapon. ((Fun fact, ‘Xiphos’ apparently means ‘Penetrating Light’. Ancient Greeks and their fancy names for swords, eh?))
-A Double Concave Bow. Arguably his main weapon once his pistols run out of ammunition, he shows deadly accuracy with his bow and arrow. His feats include firing multiple arrows simultaneously, very fast and accurate shooting, and once he shot an opponent's arrows out of the air.
-A Lyre. Bishop keeps a finely made wooden Lyre with him when in need of his musically inclined talents.
Abilities: Bishop is often called a ‘Warrior of Utility’, because he very rarely finds himself squeezed into merely one combat role. He has performed duties similar to a combat medic, he’s been an archer, and has strummed a lyre in such furious desperation that at the time he must have been a bard.
His powers are reasonably expansive, due to the wide variety of subject’s Apollos godship covers. He has spent a significant portion of his life training, making him adept in his abilities. But, as his Master once said to him, “you have not realized the full power of your abilities, and until you unite with others like you, I doubt you ever will.”
Blinding Light- Bishop, as his ancestor is god of the sun, has access to a extremely useful light based attacks and utilities. He can cause his hand to glow very brightly, almost as though a flashlight or a torch. he can configure this light in many ways, making it shine like a flashlight, lantern, or even the ability to make shadow puppets with it, sort of like someone could do with a flashlight and their hands. Combat wise it has two applications, firstly if he can manage to put his hands over someone's eyes he can deliver an intense amount of brightness very suddenly, blinding them for a period of up to a half hour. His other combat option is to fire a beam of light, causing physical damage to an opponent, but this drains his energy severely
Musical Magic- Using any instrument, Bishop can play a variety of tunes that will empower those he is traveling with, though these effects are the most potent when using a lyre. He has a variety of songs, one which can slightly increase the strength of his team-mates, one that can make his enemies slightly weaker, calming songs, and a variety of others. ((In RP, if I want to use a song not mentioned in the sheet I’ll run it by the GM first.))
Healing Magic- Bishop has somewhat potent healing magic, which he calls his ‘healing hands’. If he passes close to someone he can sense if they have some kind of wound. By laying his hands on the wound, he can accelerate the healing process to a degree. paper cuts and little bruises would fade in a matter of seconds, but the length of time needed to fully mend something increase exponentially as the wound gets worse. Fixing something broken would take an entire day, but attempting to regrow a limb that was lost could take a year.
God Burst- Arrows of Revealing Light- His God Burst is a power he calls ‘The Arrows of Revealing Light’. It creates six golden arrows in his quiver and bathes him in a golden light. The first effect is that he is slightly stronger, faster, more accurate, and all his abilities are a bit more ffective. Additionally, he has the arrows, with which he can do many things. Can can absorb them to make himself further slightly stronger, he can shoot them at a friend to heal them massively, or he can shoot them at an enemy for either an instant kill or a massive amount of damage.
Ancestor/Patron: Apollo; God of Prophecy, Music, Archery, Medicine, The Sun, and basically anything that the other gods didn’t claim already.
Background:
Bishop has a storied past for a man of only 36. He was born in a small, backwater town in the country of Wandenzech. He was born into a very poor household that might as well have been little more than a dirt shack held up with nothing more than spit, sticks, and a whole lot of prayers. The only way to get by in the tiny town was criminal activity- Traders would pass through all the time, attempting to barter spice or coin or weapons to villagers who barely had enough money to pay for leaves to wipe their own asses with. The Bishop family got the idea to start taking from the traders. Nothing big, no fighting, no intimidation, just making small talk with the trader while their boy went around the back and nicked a sword or two. It was a good system- The merchant went on their merry way no worse for wear with only the slightest lightening of the load, and the Bishops had enough money.
But eventually, people began catching on. People were starting to realize the Bishop’s house was getting nicer and nicer- and that they had a bit more stuff than they used to. People started demanding cuts, threatening to bring the police down on the Bishops. They had to give away their profits, and they had to steal more and more to survive. Soon, they started holding up traders and trade caravans. Generally, it was fine, no one ever got hurt, and the Bishops and their village got what they wanted. until one day, when Matthew Bishop had just turned seventeen. There was a trade caravan that put up a fight- a bad one. Bishop pulled his most valuable possession, a gun, stolen when he was ten, and he fired. The fighting stopped, one of the traders was dead. Bishops parents forced him to turn himself in, and so he did, sentenced to six years in prison, five for murder, one for theft. retrospectively it was an extremely lax sentence for a second degree murder and multiple counts of grand theft, but at the time it seemed like a hell of a long sentence to Bishop.
It was in prison that he truly developed who he was. He was quick to adjust to a no-crime lifestyle; the prison supplied him will everything he needed. The only bad thing he probably did in there was beating the shit out of someone who tried to fuck with him in his first few days. After that, no one messed with The Bishop, as they started to call him. At that time, Bishop started to become enamored with religion, he felt as though it gave him a purpose. In his prison years he became a preacher of Apollo, lord of the sun, medicine, music, archery, and in some cases, knowledge. he got a tattoo of the sun on his hand to signify this. It made him feel like he was doing in prison. That he was in there for a reason.
That feeling went away when he got out, six years later. He was in a town he didn’t recognize with people who particularly hated ex-cons, at a dead-end, with no job, no prospects, and what he felt was his true purpose in life locked back inside the prison walls.
At this time, Bishop made a new friend- Alcohol. He spent what must have been a year of his life drinking, kicking back in dive bars and cheap pubs looking for good booze to drown his sorrows in. Sometime shortly after his twenty fourth birthday, something odd happened in the bar.
Bishop was just about to walk out the door, when a curious looking man in a beautiful golden suit walked in. He was dressed perfectly and seemed to radiate light. Bishop was the first one to speak to him, asking him what someone like him was doing in a place like this. The man responded, “To buy you a drink, Mr.Bishop.”
Bishop wasn’t one to turn down a free drink, so he accepted. As the two drank, they talked. The man revealing he knew a lot about Bishop- His past, his time in prison, his favorite drink for chrissakes. Instead of asking how the man knew all this, Bishop merely remarked he was no one special and got up to leave, saying he needed to get to bed for the never ending hunt for some kind of job that would accept him.
The man said, “You exist in a world of gods and monsters, yet you waste your time with mortal struggles? One in your situation must come to realize- you are more than a man. Mr.Bishop, encourage you to stay here for just five minutes. it is your destiny. You shall be set on a path of heroism, honor, and glory, for whatever hardship it may be fraught with. But if you walk out of that door, right now, you embark on a darker path than I could ever foresee.” With that the man in the suit paid and left, leaving Bishop to make his choice.
Bishop stayed in that bar for another half an hour, and in that time a man older than he was walked in, only to be assaulted by a group of bar assholes. He stood there and took it, before Bishop walked up to them and told them to piss off. After the ensuing fight, the older gentleman told Bishop to pursue him at his dojo.
Bishop ventured to the dojo and trained there for a great many years, until he was thirty, learning everything his new master has to teach him, and even learning of his godly ancestry. He eventually began deducing that the man he’d met, the one with the golden suit, was Apollo, his ancestor.
After completing his training, he traveled for many years, being a part of many adventurer’s groups and seeing places all around the world.
