Kaodi
Legend
This is my pretty cheesy background with extremely liberal references to my source material for this character, hehehe...
[sblock=Background]The first Randlay to join the Mendevian Crusades was Jack's grandmother, a fearsome and indomitable woman from Galt who helped hold the line against the demon army as the first ward stones were being constructed. After the Second Mendevian Crusade came to and end she returned home to find that the fiance she had left behind had waited for her for those long years and they settled down to start a family.
By the time the Third Crusade started, the Randlay elders had left Galt, sensing the coming political storm, and founded a new home in Eastern Mendev on the shores of the Lake of Mists and Veils. It was unfortunate that they had fled a figurative witch hunt only to wind up in the middle of an actual one, but the family endured.
Jack was born in the time between the Third and Fourth Crusades. When the latter finally was called it was Jack's father turn, as well as the rest of the second generation Randlays, to take up arms to beat back the demon hordes. His father was a brave warrior, but it cost him his life in the second year of the Crusade. A powerful demon by the name of "Zerg" slew Jack's father while he bought his company time to regroup. It was a noble sacrifice, but one that left a bitter taste in the mouth of the young Jack, fourteen years old at the time. That name stuck with him ever afterward, his hatred of it such that whenever he thinks of or sees any demon the name rages across his mind. All of the demons are his nemesis Zerg to him.
Jack's aunts and uncles, several of which even survived the Crusade, made sure that he was looked after. But without his fathers income, he did not have the same opportunities to train and arm himself that he might have had.
Some time after his father's death, the second most defining thing in Jack's life occurred. He had a dream. A dream of clashing armies, but not ones like those he knew. Men fought in bulky metal armour, and used some kind rapd fire projectile weapon he had never seen, yet perhaps reminiscent of stories he had heard about strange Numerian technology. The foes they fought were like demons, yet somehow they were not. Innumerable deaths were inflicted on both sides, but these warriors gave as good as they got: maybe even better, combing heavy armour with heavy artillery, a tactic rarely endorsed by any military teacher Jack had known. With this dream a feverish idea was implanted in the mind of Jack Randlay: he would pioneer a new style of fighting, one like that from his dream. It would not be cheap, so the young would-be Crusader had to learn the skills necessary to craft his own armour and weapons. The full-plate worn by knights would be his stand-in for the strange armour he had seen, and a repeating heavy crossbow was the best approximation of the weapons he could come up. A rare and special weapon, it was hear that the skils he had painstakingly learned might be of the most use.
The Fourth Crusade ended a couple of years before Jack was ready, though by then he was more than old enough to join. Eager to test his methods in real battles with the demons, Jack was in Kenabres on his last night before joining the cause. And what would you know: opportunity knocked. Hard.[/sblock]
[sblock=Background]The first Randlay to join the Mendevian Crusades was Jack's grandmother, a fearsome and indomitable woman from Galt who helped hold the line against the demon army as the first ward stones were being constructed. After the Second Mendevian Crusade came to and end she returned home to find that the fiance she had left behind had waited for her for those long years and they settled down to start a family.
By the time the Third Crusade started, the Randlay elders had left Galt, sensing the coming political storm, and founded a new home in Eastern Mendev on the shores of the Lake of Mists and Veils. It was unfortunate that they had fled a figurative witch hunt only to wind up in the middle of an actual one, but the family endured.
Jack was born in the time between the Third and Fourth Crusades. When the latter finally was called it was Jack's father turn, as well as the rest of the second generation Randlays, to take up arms to beat back the demon hordes. His father was a brave warrior, but it cost him his life in the second year of the Crusade. A powerful demon by the name of "Zerg" slew Jack's father while he bought his company time to regroup. It was a noble sacrifice, but one that left a bitter taste in the mouth of the young Jack, fourteen years old at the time. That name stuck with him ever afterward, his hatred of it such that whenever he thinks of or sees any demon the name rages across his mind. All of the demons are his nemesis Zerg to him.
Jack's aunts and uncles, several of which even survived the Crusade, made sure that he was looked after. But without his fathers income, he did not have the same opportunities to train and arm himself that he might have had.
Some time after his father's death, the second most defining thing in Jack's life occurred. He had a dream. A dream of clashing armies, but not ones like those he knew. Men fought in bulky metal armour, and used some kind rapd fire projectile weapon he had never seen, yet perhaps reminiscent of stories he had heard about strange Numerian technology. The foes they fought were like demons, yet somehow they were not. Innumerable deaths were inflicted on both sides, but these warriors gave as good as they got: maybe even better, combing heavy armour with heavy artillery, a tactic rarely endorsed by any military teacher Jack had known. With this dream a feverish idea was implanted in the mind of Jack Randlay: he would pioneer a new style of fighting, one like that from his dream. It would not be cheap, so the young would-be Crusader had to learn the skills necessary to craft his own armour and weapons. The full-plate worn by knights would be his stand-in for the strange armour he had seen, and a repeating heavy crossbow was the best approximation of the weapons he could come up. A rare and special weapon, it was hear that the skils he had painstakingly learned might be of the most use.
The Fourth Crusade ended a couple of years before Jack was ready, though by then he was more than old enough to join. Eager to test his methods in real battles with the demons, Jack was in Kenabres on his last night before joining the cause. And what would you know: opportunity knocked. Hard.[/sblock]
