Name: Jack Alder
Age: 49
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Origin: Denius
Descriptors: Brown eyes, dark brown hair (greying), tanned/craggy Caucasian skin tone, short greying black beard. 5ft 10” in height, 80kg in weight when fully dressed, 85kg with full equipment. He has one sharp scar across his left cheek, though many more may be found beneath his clothing. His build is athletic, edging towards muscled.
Character Tier: Low
Character Type: Critical Character- Active Multiverse Participant
Physical Description: Jack tends to wear a long well-made dark brown hooded cloak; underneath which he wears a simple black tunic and on its front is a foot diameter insignia of a sword with a long curved hilt and a blade made of gold. He also wears tough brown trousers and tough black hiking boots, overall his clothing is designed to be practical, and survive wear and tear. He carries a long deceptively well maintained wooden stave, which masquerades as a walking stick.
Personality Description: Jack is a priest of an order devoted to destroying the unholy and evil and protecting the innocent. He therefore has the mentality of a priest, but with fewer of the restrictions, completely devout in his faith but willing to kill without mercy with little question in regards to those he ‘deems’ evil. However, unlike many, this power has not corrupted him, he genuinely does strive to do good, he just has no time for excuses such as ‘I’m a good little vampire, really, I am!’ Other than those parts of his profession, Jack is a generally cheerful man, though he is prone to quickly jumping into a serious and stern mood when the situation demands it.
(Low)Physical Abilities: Jack is strengthened beyond what should be humanly possible by his induction into the Order, a long and arduous process which is linked intrinsically with faith. Even with this advantage he is still outclasses physically by most creatures he fights.
Strength: Bench 400kg Curl 150kg
Speed: Sprint 25mph (ten minutes)
Reflex: Twice human maximum
Stamina: Maximum energy capacity would comparatively allow him to run two marathons consecutively before he is completely drained.
Endurance: Can sustain wounds up to double what is necessary to kill a particularly robust human, including amount of blood loss necessary to pass out, amount of force to knock out, and damage required to cut or pierce or bruise or break skin and bone.
Senses: Most of Jack’s senses are well honed, to human peak, his hearing is particularly acute, and he can see particularly well in low light levels, enough to fight in darkness (an obviously useful skill in his profession.) However, his training has also taught him to ignore pain, which is a lot more difficult to do than say, he is able to sustain a lot of pain which though uncomfortable is rarely incapacitating for him.
(Low)Skills: Jack is a particularly skilled warrior, as is required when fighting supernatural creatures that are otherwise easily able to overpower mortals. He can adapt to situations and environments quickly and is adept with hand to hand combat as well as with his staff, his preferred weapon. He also has a limited ability with most other medieval weaponry, at least capable of the basics with weapons he has seen used in the past. He’s a passable shot with the crossbow as well, though he doesn’t use one. He has trained extensively with both hands, leaving him practically ambidextrous.
Jack can pick locks, which seems like a dodgy skill for a priest to have, but his work is just as often investigative as pious or violent.
Investigative and analytical skills are finely honed, as well as the ability to track, because more often than not he finds himself pursuing vampires and werewolves back to their dens, or discovering the evil hearts under peaceful exteriors.
Jack has a wide knowledge of the weaknesses of supernatural creatures.
He has had religious training from a young age, allowing him access to a wide range of useful prayers, for defence from dark arts and magic. (Elaborated on below.)
He’s lived for a long time in the wilderness and without a home, his survival skills have been developed to an advanced level. Despite his age he is adept at a number of physical pursuits, such as swimming, climbing, jumping, running and other extreme activities which come in handy when pursuing foes, or when moving around the battlefield. He also has a decent knowledge of herbs, and can recognise some basic properties of unknown herbs and plants, as well as poisons. He also has a decent knowledge of healing, which he uses when he decides prayer is not required.
Powers: Jack is not magical. He does not have superpowers. His only ‘supernatural’ weapon is his faith, and his knowledge of prayers which can protect, heal, and scourge the wicked. However, he does have a variety of priest-skills beyond this which aren’t so combat applicable, like blessing water. The main effects of prayers are those three schools and are as followed.
Protection:
(Intermediate)Eloiiuma: The Prayer of Personal Protection, the Eloiiuma must be chanted continuously to sustain the effects of a powerful magic and evil retardant shield around the user’s mind and body. As the Almighty disproves of magical beings as well as those evil of heart, the shield can actually harm them should they be within the very close proximity it forms. Due to the nature of someone shooting at those using this shield, it also goes some of the way to protecting them from firearms and projectiles, though it’s not perfect.
(Low)Eliraom: The Prayer of Passive Protection, the Eliraom is more of a blessing than a combat effective shield, it’s used to provide relatively effective protection for an individual from misfortune and evil, though its effects do not last that long. Jack tends to bless himself and his fellows with this at the beginning of every day, to provide them something along the lines of a shield from ambushes from unseen foes. It also has the effect of providing those blessed with a resistance to unhealthy atmospheres, which is incredibly useful when pursuing monsters in their lairs. It reduces the effectiveness of gas and other afflictions, and allows those effected to survive fairly comfortably in locales of poor oxygen levels. (Useful for pursuing harpies up mountains.)
(Intermediate)Eoliraka, The Prayer of Aegis, the most powerful shielding prayer, it may only be used by the most devout on another person, and requires the user to kneel and remain completely stationary, chanting continuously. The person effected grows physically stronger, bolstered by the chanters own strength, restoring their energy while also protecting them from harm with even more effectiveness than Eloiiuma.
Healing:
(Low)Liaor, The Prayer of Cleansing, perhaps surprisingly the most used healing prayer, Liaor does exactly what it suggests, purges someone of malignant effects. It’s used to treat those suffering from corrupting afflictions, such as the bite of a Werewolf or Vampire. It is also particularly useful against magic and poisons which have a prolonged effect on the body. Its limitations are that it takes about half a minute to complete, even when chanted by an expert such as Jack. It also requires physical contact with the person afflicted, unless used on yourself (which requires a few less lines of chanting.) It does not immediately wipe out any adverse effects, but it reduces the effect and breaks it down.
(Intermediate)Lorani, The Prayer of Repair, Lorani is the prayer few priests want to have to use, but it’s essentially the bog standard wound treatment prayer. It does not require physical contact, yet it does speed up the process. It can take Jack up to a minute to heal a serious wound, like being cut or stabbed with a sword.
(Low)Lores, The Prayer of Soothing, Lores is useful for repairing damaged minds, which become all too common when dealing with those scourged by monsters.
Scourging:
(Low)Divinus, the Prayer of Seeking, Divinus is used to detect the presence of those of darker alignment, though when it comes to the supernatural only the classification of creatures on his planet has any effect. So don’t expect your argument that your demon or werewolf or werepoof or vampwolf is good hearted to hold any weight. It’s by no means perfect, but it becomes increasingly harder to avoid detection the closer you get to Jack physically, or the closer you come to trying to harm anyone around him (including him.) Requires constant chanting, which although quiet does also give his position away.
(Low)Directus: The Prayer of Purging, a more powerful variant of Liaor, but used directly on monsters and those of evil alignment of action. It is a sustained chant which causes discomfort for those afflicted from a distance, especially vampires who feel the burning effect on their bodies to a much greater extent. On contact, the feeling intensifies and actually causes physical damage, searing through flesh and bone like Jack’s hand is as hot as a camp fire, without any actual fire being involved. It can be transmitted through to anything he is holding, but with half the effect. He can also use the technique to create sunlight, often from his staff, injuring those effected by sunlight and providing him with light in the darkest locales, it also allows him to seriously debilitate ranged opponents, provided they don’t have light protection (such as sunglasses.) because it’s incredibly difficult to hit anything with a ranged weapon when the sun is directly in one’s eyes.
(Intermediate)Dilairus: The Prayer of The Order, arguably Jack’s most powerful technique, Dilairus is a powerful prayer which requires at least two minutes of sustained chanting to complete. On completion, a powerful holy nimbus surrounds the user, which can then be either passed into a foe through contact to severely paralyse and burn them, leaving them with very little strength left to fight, or even obliterating weaker foes. Or, it can be passed into the ground itself or a construct/structure , to purge any corruption upon it. This is often used to destroy vampire dens and the like, or to re-consecrate ground to make it unbearable to monsters.
Character Equipment:
(Low)Jack’s Staff: Jack carries a staff as tall as him, made of a wood like Oak it looks deceptively decrepit, nothing more than a twisted walking stick. However, at the base is a mechanism which John can activate with a flick of his wrist, causing a ten inch blade to protrude from the bottom. The wood itself is enchanted to be more durable than it looks, more than capable of turning away a sledgehammer or even a cut from a steel sword swung by vampires with thrice his strength with not a scratch. It resists fire, and magic in general, but it’s not indestructible despite all these things. The blade is made of a composite of silver, iron and salt extract, along with other stranger materials. The end result is a blade not only unnaturally sharp (on par with obsidian at least.) but also half again stronger than steel of a comparative density, and with the additional effect of being lethal to an abundance of different supernatural creatures.
(Low)The Book of the Order: His secret religion’s prayer book, it contains the stories and legends around his faith, and the prayers he already knows off by heart. Relatively small, he keeps it in an inside pocket in his cloak, where it’s most safe.
(Low)Warding Cloak: The Cloak of the Order is more than awesomely cool, it serves a combat purpose, it’s enchanted to turn away blades and evil magic. It’s resistant to all the elements, especially fire, and can even reduce the impact of a bullet to a degree. It’s about on par with a full suit of steel plate, but without that pesky encumbrance.
(Low)Salt and Iron: Kept in two pockets on either side of his cloak, when combined in the air and thrown at a foe they are especially effective for both blinding, but also sapping the strength of evil foes. (They’re enchanted, so any creature can be equally susceptible, though an intermediate character wouldn’t be overly encumbered, and would rather feel like they had used up maybe a tenth of their energy before the effects wore off.)
(Low)The Sword of the Lord: He carries a fairly large cross-like golden (painted, actually steel) sword on a metal chain around his neck, it has varied effects on the supernatural, and the blade is sharpened, though it’s mostly decorative and indicative of his faith, as well as an insignia of his office. It burns to touch those of evil heart.
(Low) Throwing knives: Jack carries six throwing knives, one in each boot one in each heel and one in each sleeve. They’re made of fine steel, incredibly sharp, blessed with holy water, deadly to the undead and those dark of heart.
Character History: Jack is a priest of the Necessarius, a secret order within the Church of Denius or the Almighty to the common folk. Existing only to hunt and destroy the dark forces abound in the world, Jack lives with the knowledge that he will not enter heaven with a clean heart, and accepts this sacrifice willingly.
He was born as the fourth son to a noble lord, and sent away to the priest hood at an incredibly young age. He served there for a long time, until the small church he worked within was actually attacked and destroyed by some of the darker forces lurking in the world. He was found by the Necessarius surrounded by ashes, a desperate look in his young eyes as he clutched a small ornamental golden sword, the symbol of the church. Finding their work done for them, the ‘priests’ of the Necessarius took him in willingly, and trained him to be the best. If they succeeded is not certain, but Jack hunted and destroyed as many of the undead and monsters as he could find, and he’s found more than anyone else thus far. Uniquely suited for his line of work, he rose quickly through the ranks until he was granted the right to form his own hunting squad. He refused, realising that few were capable of maintaining his desired pace, and so he walked the land alone for a long time.
Four years ago, all of that changed. A girl named Mercedes had managed to escape one of the more stupid aspects of his people’s culture, that of an armed mob. Though Jack did not particularly disagree with their actions, for he was beyond reasoning with that there was such a thing as ‘good’ vampires, he was still impressed that someone untrained was able to survive in such circumstances. That was what caught his attention, a story similar to his own, and so after he had concluded his investigation he went to Mercedes, ousted from her village and with nowhere left to go. He offered her induction into the Order, into Necessarius. When she accepted, he took her as his apprentice, and ensured her training in whatever she was best suited to. Now, they hunt together, though Jack does despair sometimes, he’s fiercely proud of the young warrior priest, even if she doesn’t quite embody the qualities of the Order in all respects.
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