Username: Bifflechump.
Character Name: Jan van Boschterp.
Race/Species: Human.
Gender: Boy (but insists on being seen as a “man”).
Age: 18.
Career (former) Student. Skills: painting, poetry, rhetoric, fencing, accounting, law, pistols, disguises.
Weapons: Rapier, parrying dagger, repeater pistol, six reserve daggers hidden in his clothing.
Attire: Broad-brim hat decorated with a blue and yellow feather, a blue coat, black hoses (and a pair of white trousers in reserve), gloves, tall and excessively polished boots.
A ragged jacket is used for disguises, along with a pair of worn boots.
Equipment/Other: painting colours, a journal, a pack of gunpowder and obsessively hoarded jerky, a set of cosmetics for use in disguises.
Physical Description: tall, slim, and somewhat lanky. A narrow bloodless face with a somewhat beaky nose, light blue eyes and shoulder-length curly blond hair.
Mental Description/Personality: Artistic, ambitious and outwardly rather merry. Being raised with good manners makes him used to knowing what polite society expects of him, though he inwardly rankles at it. He is somewhat unstable, easily bored, and given to extremes. He is fond of indulging in the good things in life. He is troubled by strange dreams, but has not entrusted them to anyone.
Background/History: Jan van Boschterp is a callow youth of much ambition and a smidgeon of wit, but little foresight.
He was born in Marienburg, the least of many siblings, to a minor family of bureaucrats in service to the great merchant houses of the city.
His early years were concerned with learning the manners and culture of a well-off middle class, and while he was not directly abused, he was rather often overlooked in favour of his older siblings, and he was haunted – for a time – by strange and dark visions.
When Jan came of age, he was sent to the Empire to study in the great University of Nuln. Now that he has (mostly successfully) graduated, he is expected to return to serve his family’s interests, but he chose otherwise. He finds the old life with his family much too stifling, and could not envision himself to a calm and settled life – at least not until he has increased with earthly fame and possession a hundredfold and left a legacy to proud of.
His plan is to find excitement and adventure, composing paintings and poetic epics when possible, and use his university-granted power over the spoken word to justify his actions to the authorities - when he has to.
He is schooled in rhetoric and law (all the better to exploit loopholes in laws), and has some skill in fencing, painting, and composing poetry. He has just enough skill at riding to stay in the saddle as long his horse does not hasten beyond a steady trot.
Recently, his strange visions have returned. He has not been able to decode any rhyme or reason from them, but they worry him, and they have grown in intensity over the past year. Some of these dreams are pleasant, but most are not.
Jan is not even sure himself of whether he could call himself a romantic. He has some ambitions and believes on some level that fortune favours the bold and that only by great deeds can one aspire to heroism - though his motivations are less than “heroic”, at least according to standards of more well-adjusted people.
Red Hood