Okay, nobody else volunteered, and I had an interesting idea, so here's a character for you, Rufia!
Player Name: Rufia
Character Name: Kain Lysander
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Age: 28
Appearance: Kain is a tall, strong, impressive man, even without his armor. He has blond hair, usually chopped short with a sword when it gets too long and otherwise unattended, and his facial hair is equally unkempt. His eyes are dark and narrow, and he wears light plainclothes most of the time. His armor, which he frequently wears (and always while traveling), covers his body and face and makes him still more imposing. It is light chainmail inside, and outside full plate mail, complete with a helm that covers all of his head and face save for a capital-T-shaped area allowing his eyes to see and his mouth to be heard unmuffled. The armor looks like shining steel when it's clean, and although it hasn't been fully clean in quite some time it still hasn't rusted. He carries something like a quiver, but larger and sturdier and full of javelins instead of arrows, on his back, and a greatsword across the other side.
Class: Knight Errant
Strengths: Simply put, Kain is strong. Strong enough to move relatively quickly even in his heavy armor, wield his blade one-handed (although two hands certainly make it easier and faster to maneuver it), and lift heavy things. A single punch from his gauntleted fist would be enough to knock most men unconscious. Even without his armor, he can take a lot of punishment himself before going down; with it, he can take still more. His personal, particular armor is very important, because it is not merely steel. It is enchanted, not to be lighter, but to be a bit tougher to break, and in particular, somewhat resistant to magical attack. Generally this applies to projectile-based attacks, and it will not completely dissipate any but the weakest of these; the purpose of the enchantment is to soften the blow rather than try to block all of it, which would probably not be possible. The armor itself is particularly difficult to damage with such things as spells intended to rust or rot metal, and as a side-effect of this, it will not naturally rust, and normal weaponry will be more successful at harming Kain through the armor than at harming the armor itself.
Also, he is not stupid. In fact, Kain is actually a fairly intelligent man, decently educated and able to work out things like strategy; he isn't very easy to fool most of the time, unless he is intentionally deceiving himself about something. He knows how to use his stock of javelins both as direct assault and throwing weapons, and in fact is trained in several other forms of weaponry he does not carry on his person, such as axes, halberds and shields. Obviously, his typical choice of weaponry lends itself to a rather wide reach, making him difficult for users of smaller, shorter weapons to approach in battle.
Weaknesses: Kain has no magical aptitude, in attack, defense, or really anything else. Armorless, he has no particular resistance to magic, and again, the protection his armor offers only goes so far. He is not particularly quick; his strength mitigates the cost of speed his heavy armor incurs, but does not remove it entirely, and even armorless he could easily be outrun or outmaneuvered by a speedy opponent. He's a good aim with the javelin, sure, but can't quite foil quick and well-devised evasive maneuvers. Also, ranged attacks such as arrows that are aimed properly can get in between the cracks in his armor and do some real damage.
And then there is the big one, if relatively tricky to exploit: If he does not kill a sapient being within a month of the last time he did so, Kain dies. This is not something any protection, medical knowledge, healing magic or prayer to the gods could prevent; he will just suddenly die. He is well aware of this, always aware of how long it's been since the last time he killed someone, and will prioritize finding someone who deserves to die over almost anything else when he starts running out of time. He doesn't enjoy this in the least, and is exceedingly reluctant to talk about it, even with a person he has come to trust with his very life. This will be explained more fully in history.
More: Kain does his best to live up to a relatively knightly code of honor. This can be a problem when he has to do lawfully ambiguous things, although of course his need to kill supersedes this when it becomes urgent, and he can be reasoned with on what action would serve the greater good. This can also be a good thing if he is tempted by an enemy to do something dishonorable. He is pretty level-headed and slow to anger most of the time, but once he is angry it's hard to calm him down until whatever he's mad at is dead, and there are a few buttons anyone who knows too much about him can push to drive him into this rage.
Personality: Kain is a very serious sort of man. He isn't incapable of cracking a smile or a dry joke now and then, but he isn't usually the sort to laugh out loud, for sure. He is generally a very firm, directed sort of man, always desiring to be quite clear on what exactly he is trying to do and why.
Morals: As a knightly sort, Kain tends to see the world in pure black and white. To him, gray areas only occur when one hasn't fully figured out the world yet, but he isn't foolish enough to assume that he has figured it all out. He generally views laws and kings as things designed to uphold morality, although clearly evil laws such as those demanding villagers be sacrificed to some dark god he would steadfastly oppose. He is not tempted by fame or fortune, preferring to stay the path of honor and goodness as well as he can, but the one place where he draws the line is the sacrifice of his own life. He will not in general allow himself into a situation where he must actually sacrifice himself in order to save someone else; he will always try to think of another way to keep them both alive, and when push truly comes to shove (a situation he fears above all), he is likely to abandon the person he is protecting to save himself. He is ashamed of this aspect of himself, and will go out of his way to hide it from others, and this is the major crack in his honor, as it opens him up to the use of deception and other unpleasant things for the sake of hiding this fault.
History: Kain Lysander was once the son of a prominent nobleman in a certain kingdom, but its name is hardly important because he would never mention it, nor go anywhere near that place if he can help it. He grew up and became a knight of the kingdom, one of highest honor--so high, in fact, that this kingdom's chief deity appointed him personally, by name, for an extremely important mission. He was supposed to escort a priest of said deity on a mission to recover an important artifact, which had been stolen by a rival god and was heavily guarded by his followers. Of course they did not go on this mission alone; a contingent of the kingdom's army went with them, with Kain as its leader. For a while the mission went well--that is, all along the way they were quite successful and ran into little trouble; few of the soldiers even got seriously hurt. Once they reached the shrine where the artifact was held, however, everything began to go downhill. The battle was joined, and the soldiers began to die. The enemy used subversive tactics, terrible curses and deception, but Kain, no fool, managed to push through all the same. They were still badly outnumbered by the time they reached the artifact, but the priest was alive and able to take it, and Kain and the few remaining soldiers, left with no other option, tried to escort the priest in an escape.
The escape went relatively well, but not so well that the soldiers did not continue to die. Kain saw them fall, one by one, guarding him and the priest on their way out of the shrine. They came upon the exit, just the two of them left, weary, battered and torn, and there were simply too many of the enemy. Kain knew that one of them would not make it out alive, if either of them did, but the priest seemed not to realize this. He cast his spells, prayed to his goddess, and prepared to charge through them. In a moment of weakness, fearing his own death, the knight took the artifact, claiming he had a plan, and managed to use the priest as a distraction sufficient for him to make it out alive with the thing.
He returned home alone, half-dead, and hoped for a hero's welcome, but did not receive one. The goddess had specifically intended for the priest to survive, for anyone not trained in the proper way to handle the artifact would defile it (and he had); and she knew very well how Kain had abandoned the priest at a critical moment. Furious, she ordered Kain exiled, and personally cursed him. Since he valued his own life above those of others, she told him that he had a month until he was to die, unless he could sacrifice someone else in his own place. The sacrifice required was not complicated: He just had to kill any old person. And when he did that, the thirty-day timer would start over, and another such sacrifice would be required.
Kain reasoned that if he could find someone who was a wrongdoer, especially someone like a murderer clearly worthy of death, and kill them, he would fulfill this requirement without becoming a murderer himself. So he went and did that, again and again and again, and he's still doing that. He has acquired some small amount of fame for his work, although he cares little for it. This life has a downside, however, as a certain area can only have such people around for so long once they start getting killed. This means that he is completely unable to survive remaining in one place for too long, and as such has adopted the life of a constant traveler, wandering the world in search of another wrong to right...especially if it requires killing someone. He feels guilty about the people who died in that mission long ago, but he isn't quite able to convince himself that he is atoning for that.
Let me know if you like him or not, please!
