Danny Ramierez | #FFD700
Name:Luka Matthias Bolea
Nickname(s):- Lighthouse
- Weatherman
- Third-Rate Giant
27 || August 4th || Leo
Gender:Male
Sexual Orientation:Heterosexual
Ethnicity:Hispanic
Years at Camp Jupiter // New Rome:16 || 1 || Currently Serving at Camp Jupiter
Place of Birth:Ensenada, Mexico
Key Relationships:- Significant Other: N/A
- Friends:
Rauni RäikkönenFormer subordinate, mentee, and a sign to Luka of his own failings. He places a good deal of blame for Felix’s death on the reliance on the augurs, and himself for his ready agreement with the augur, and believes he could have done more to help Rauni in the grieving process. Checks in every other month at least to see how they’re doing.
- Enemies:
- Crushes:
Noah HayesClose mentor in smithing, friend, confidant, prior romantic engagement. No hard feelings, though, and more than likely some future feelings if Luka ever has the time.
- Family: Diana Bolea, Mother
Appearance:- Height: 6’ 9”
- Hair: Black, curly
- Eyes: Brown
- Body Type:
Commonly referred to as endomorph, Luka’s height is not to be confused with a slenderness or litheness. Thick as a tree trunk around, with a soldierly padding of fat, his is the physique of a classic Greek wrestler of pankration. The man is fairly well-tanned, too, on account of long hours at the siegeworks.
- Clothing Style:
Wearing the issued purple t-shirt in a slightly loose, near-tunic fashion primarily for the joys of airflow, as well as a pair of drawstring trousers, Luka has a fairly simple wardrobe that seems to rarely change save for his outings outside of Camp Jupiter’s grounds. On such outings, drab t-shirts, blue jeans, and sneakers are his go-to’s, with seldom few jackets for their many, many pockets, and for the most part all of these are mended several times over.
- Body Markings:
♌︎ Legion Tattoo with Lion and sixteen lines
♌︎ Burn scar, 4”x1”, left shoulder
♌︎ Blade scar, 2”x0.3”, right hand
♌︎ Blade scar, 4”x0.3”, right forearm
Disciplined ♌︎ Demanding ♌︎ Adreneline Seeker
Luka works to embody the soldier, the warrior, the hero, a constant work. His is the instant, the first decision oft the best because the second-guess is the dregs of regret in the mind, though that's not to call Luka pig-headed or stubborn. Heeding the advice of other veterans and the more experienced of his comrades is the true of a capable soldier in Luka’s mind, though he does often need to be told such things than ask first.
To his subordinates, the Centurion tries to keep the voice level, the concerns heard, and the orders absolutely and utterly clear. If they are afraid of him and his opinions, they will never lay out their own, their own issues, their own problems, and such problems of the severity requiring the Luka’s intervention fester against the Cohort and against himself if left untreated. Plans must be laid out in as full a way as possible, with the reasoning present, for the soldier to understand the importance of the plan and their role in that plan. Luka tries to foster this understanding within his Cohort and veterans, and in exchange for that loyalty is more than willing to stand against any outside the Cohort - even those also of the Legion - who threaten one of his. Such isn’t to say that he wouldn’t punish one of his own, but Luka is loathe to allow another to plague one of his. To his equals and indeed superiors, Luka keeps his views to himself, his operations to himself, guarded in nearly all things. Professionalism above all, the Third’s Centurion rejects most venues for relaxation among the other Centurions.
On the battlefield, he is the bullhorn of the Third, the beacon. A man of momentum, Luka holds great preference to the attack, to the closing of that distance, often making a point to pressure his foe with infantry formations while moving skorpios to punch through their shield lines at close range, inviting the enemy charge or shift. Luka does enjoy the closer aspects of combat, though, and is no willow towards involving himself directly in the fight.
Off the battlefield, Luka is a notable taskmaster towards his Cohort. A believer that all
legionarii should know the siegeworks, that such would make the work faster when it really counted, he involves every member in the trenchworks, as well as the construction of bridges, pitfalls, and siege engines. He keeps himself distant compared to most other Centurions, as well as taking several trips to the encamped fauns nearby simply to interact with those outside the Legion, to try to work with such for any future gains, to try and just be.
Born in Ensenada, Mexico, Luka Matthias Bolea would stay with his mother for his earliest years. He never met his father as a young boy, knowing him only from the stories told that made out such a man as a figure of wonder, of a different sort altogether, an agent not of the government, not from America, not of the cartels, but a hero whose journey took him near and far. He would complain, of course, that he never had met the man, that he could be here instead of there, that it would be better, and she would shush him on such ideas. They received letters, every now and again, written in a strange hand with a strange cant, but letters all the same from his father Alkaios. Luka read them again and again, imagined himself along his father, imagined himself as his father. These were daring dreams, a mixture of James Bond and Zorro, but dreams all the same.
As a kid, going through school and the rest, Luka stood out enough. He would do well in athletics classes, do well at soccer and seemed to excel at dodgeball. He was stronger than every other boy, sometimes faster, and seemed to get engaged with the idea of sport in a way that simply wasn’t possible with academics, with writing or math or science. Teachers would say he was destined to be a soccer player, sometimes, and the idea of a stadium watching was exciting to the boy.
At age ten, though, he received a different letter from his father, one that was true enough. There was no name, no real explanation, but it did say that as he grew older, there would be more danger, more eyes on him. Luka’s mother treated it seriously enough though, and that was good enough for him to treat it seriously. It said to travel north, north to Tijuana, to a certain address, to a certain man named Jose who would help him across that border. She gave him a knife, gave him fare for a bus, and off the kid went. It was strange in a way, strange to Luka, strange to his mother, strange that both seemed to step in the moment to accept it as simply the way things had to be, but that’s as what happened. Off the boy went to Tijuana, off on a bus where no one seemed to take great notice of him, and off through the streets of the city he went to find the address.
The city was strange, too, and he saw things in the distance which flew like bats and yet had the legs of people. He heard gunshots in that same distance, and the ambulance sirens, and the screams, but on Luka walked to the address. He knocked, was dragged inside by a man who was neither rich nor poor, not at all very remarkable, and told that the way forward would require a little job done. Jose asked the boy to go to another address, work for another for the day, and come back in the evening once it was all said and done. He found that odd, too, and was wary of not only one who he had never met, but yet another third party who he had never met, but Luka looked back on the letter, on what his father had said, and steeled himself to the idea. If his father trusted Jose, well, then he had no real other choice than to trust Jose, and besides that Luka had no bus fare for the way back to Ensenada.
He agreed, went to the address given, and found three giants of men at a scrap yard, working away to melt down the various bits and pieces for their own purposes. The three bid him work a bellows, and continued on for hours away to feed bits of scrap into the fire. After the second hour, Luka began to tire away, begin to slip and falter in the pace, and after another thirty minutes the three men began to complain. Through the heat and exhaustion, the boy started to see dog’s heads and clawed hands, and he paused again to ask them what they were. They laughed at the ignorance, told him to continue working and then they would answer. He had but an hour to go, after all, they chuckled out. And so, on Luka went, straining and heaving and working away because it seemed pretty well evident that there was little other choice. An hour passed like a day, and by the end the boy felt like jello.
They laughed again, called him a distant relation - after a fashion, of course, and handed him an arrow they had forged with the blackest fletching. The three found the whole to be a joke, a grand moment not to be ruined by the slaughter of a fool, the angering of two gods however minor, and sped Luka to the door. He trundled to Jose, slow as molasses, knocked on the door there. He found the whole of it to be funny as well, on seeing the arrow, and knew that a choice had indeed been made. The boy slept for the rest of the night, woke up to the man presenting a sheaf of documents from a birth certificate from Fresno to a US passport - complete with his leaving the country a month prior - this, that, and the other. They crossed the border quietly, easily, as though something even more had smoothed the way along.
And up they traveled, on a Greyhound bus that creaked fiercely, to San Francisco. When Luka finally arrived, a great building of wooden beams and a great black wolf stood before him. She named him as a son of Hercules, a descendent of Lugh, a story Luka had heard before and a name he had never encountered, and that he would be trained for the future, for the Legion, for something Luka had never heard of before as well. He would be trained by Lupa for five weeks, left away in the wilderness to find the lodge away, hunt away in the forest for rabbits, trained as his body began to embrace the gifts of his lineage with the knowledge of its existence. Luka grew stronger by it all, as well as receiving a letter from his father explaining the whole of it.
When Luka came to Camp Jupiter, he would be placed in the Fifth Cohort as a probatio, a sign of disfavor by his lineage to Lugh. In most ways, he had no idea who the god was save for what Lupa had said, nor did he have any real way to reach out to the far-off Celtic deity. No, instead Luka buckled down for the long haul, for the year of work. He would dig the trenches, clean the aqueducts, unclog the sewers, week after week after week, all along with the training of Latin, of learning Roman history, of things that Luka could grasp yet found painful in a way. A year came and went, a year of very little happening at Camp Jupiter, a year where very little happened for Luka save for the making of just a few friends here, there. He would attain that rank of legionarius, a full member of the Twelfth Legion, and stay with the Fifth.
Six years came and went, as Luka grew to the role of healer at age thirteen, a task he felt worked best as during many a war game the young camper was among those who dragged the injured away from the front lines. His gaining strength made this a far easier task than many of the others, and as time passed despite all the jokes and issues and faults one could make with the Fifth Cohort, Luka was proud enough to call himself a legionary of them. He would learn how to handle - how to truly handle - the unicorns with respect and care, how to shave their horns, how to make the various treatments. The quiet to it was good for him, in a way, and he made friends with the other healers. Luka, at the age of fifteen, would go with several others on a quest to Gila Claw, to hunt down an automaton which had continued its operation. The journey was not as hard as the fight in the end, the legionnaires using road flares and smoke to disorient the metal dragon, forcing it to land in a crash before sons of Vulcan used thermal lances to cut away at the head of the creature. It attempted to fly again, to breath fire, and succeeded in setting itself on fire. Aside from a great many burns, Luka didn’t have much to do with the event, and they went back to Camp Jupiter with its salvaged hulk to melt down and repurpose as needed.
At the age of seventeen, Luka would volunteer for the position of Centurion - the previous had found himself at the end of his service, felt that he could do more good in New Rome than anywhere else - and through the aid of the Praetor found himself in that role. As Centurion Luka took care to distance himself socially from the rest of the Cohort, finding it an abuse of power should he actually find any relation there which might cause some accusation of favoritism even if there should be none, and through this grew to be known as a hard-charging, but fair leader. Luka pushed his Cohort to do better, be better, pushed them so that every member dug the trenches, every member capable and ready. Though the Fifth would not flourish as much as the Centurion hoped, they did notably better than before.
After four years, though, Luka’s time in the Legion was up and he was given a choice to go to New Rome as a veteran, as a citizen. He took it, and spent a year trying to find something there that truly gave him as much joy and interaction, as much satisfaction, as his time in the Legion. Luka tried his hand at being an apprentice for a smith, learning how to work various metals, and found he had a good mind to it. Yet there was something always missing. After a year, Luka returned to the Legion, asked to serve again.
Since then, for the past five years he has served as Centurion of the Third Cohort, continuing that tradition of his in attempting to raise the entirety of the Cohort, in trying to inspire the rest of the Cohort. Luka has taken up a habit of visiting the faun encampments, halfway to enlist some of their help in the aspects of healing, halfway to verify his own belief that fauns are far more useful than those of the Legion think, halfway to find someone he could simply talk to.
Godly Parent:Hercules - God of Strength and Bravery, Heroes and Protection, Sports and Labors, Fertility and Health, Agriculture and Harvest
Relationship to Godly Parent:Regularly distant, often on account of Hercules being somewhat busy as far as gods go, they maintain semi-regular contact every month or so with a good degree of awkwardness from both as one is still wary of his own skills on account of Jupiter and the other always preoccupied with his own strifes. Hercules has taken some degree of interest in helping Luka in his martial skills, though, with a few ‘lessons’, more akin to tests, scattered throughout the year.
Abilities Pertaining to Godly Parent:- Massive Strength:
A head above the normal demigod’s capacities for pure strength, Luka takes some pride in his natural capabilities, even greater care to enable that ability to cave shields, heave pilum, and throw his foes. Honed by his own training, he is able to generally among the more notable in the Legion in that realm.
- Fighting Skills:
A descendent of the God of Heroes, Luka skill with blade, bow, and body is as natural as breath, honed further under the Legion’s gaze with discipline, repetition of training, and use on the field. He has however taken a far more individualistic approach with his work in these fields, focusing not necessarily on his bladework in the formation, sword and shield, but on the distinct discovery and elimination of enemy commanders, champions, and otherwise notable soldiers. Adopting a number of European guards and combining such with his work in pankration, it’s not uncommon for Luka to be bashing the head of another with the inside of their own shield.
- Vitakinesis:
Luka is able to heal his own battle-wounds following a battle, albeit with the scars still present. Such things would be akin to cuts closing away within ten minutes or broken bones mending into painful utility within the hour. Such wounds, however, must not be life-threatening save for injuries whose secondary effects, such as bleeding, would cause death over time. For the healing to take effect, the battle must be ended, with the energy and adrenaline normally used towards the battle going instead towards healing. Due to the severity of internal bleeding, hemorrhaging, and poisons which generally find their use on the battlefield, Luka is not protected against these.
- Mental Fortitude:
Like his father, Luka is difficult to mentally influence by means of charmspeak due to a stronger than usual willpower.
Lugh - God of Justice, War, Kingship, Craftsmen, Skills, Trade. Harvests
Legacy Abilities:- Keep The Oath:
Those who take oaths do not forget them around Luka. Through the distant God of Justice, he can produce an aura which subconsciously urges those within his immediate vicinity to not break their oaths, promises, and other such contracts.
- Metalwork:
Luka is able to fairly intuitively work metal, both in the practical sense and in developing more artisanal pieces from it, though such a skill is rarely put to use save for his brief year in New Rome.
Third
Position in the Legion:Centurion of the Third
Fatal Flaw:Distant is the Leader
Isolated in his belief that impartiality and justice can only be gained throughout a lack of the deeper friendships, that friendships cloud the mind of the leader in the moments when such is the most deadly, Luka lacks the framework of rooted friends and comrades one can truly open to about the stressors which might plague him.
- Gladius & Scutum/Plumbatae
Armed as standard with the Imperial Gold Gladius and an oval shaped Scutum, Luka often clips Plumbatae to the inside of the latter for that final surprise. Otherwise, these are practically indistinguishable from any other among the Legion for quality.
- Composite Bow & Arrows
While the art of archery is in the panoply of Hercules, and Luka is quite good at it, he rarely employs the weapon save for getting the direct attention of singular opponents. He does practice quite often, though, seeing as the bow is very useful on the quest.
- Vitis
Carved in a similar style to the vinewood staffs symbolizing the Centurion's station, this particular 3’ long example is instead made of ironwood, polished to a lacquer-like hue, with the length being lead-loaded and the mushroom head being capped by a 2” thick piece of Imperial Gold. Luka has not been shy to carry such onto the battlefield, nor use it to employ discipline directly onto the enemy.
- Luka is fluent in Spanish, Latin, and English.
- He always removes cover or helmet indoors, and treats those who do not as though they have slighted him in some small way. It’s only polite.
- Luka prefers his coffee with half the mug full of creamer. As such, he buys all of the creamer for the Third Cohort.
- The Centurion possesses a tin mug for coffee that is seldom washed. To do so is bad luck.
- Definitely an immense fan of cane sugar Coca Cola and hot horchata with cinnamon, Luka will take most opportunities to drink them.
- House of the Dying Sun OST - Kill the Traitors
- The Magician (I), Rider–Waite
- Metis
Member
Theyra
FourtyTwo
Bingelly
Moon Child
Ezekiel
Gunther
Scrawl Banditta
Not a Sayan
Vec
Stanifly
