Willem Chalice - A Knightly Nothing

[Mister Doctor]

 

Sir Willem 'William Shallot' Chalice
 

Class: Operative (Heavyweight Skirmisher, Bully) Archetype: Augmented Ancestry: Human Background: Mine Collapse Gender: Male Age: 25-30...ish Combat Role: Melee Striker Ship Roles: Chief Mate, secondary captain Skill Roles: Physical, wisdom-based, secondary social A strong hand, an even temper, true honor, such things need never fear obsolescence.

Backstory

"We got another one! Bring the temporal agitator over!"

"Easy... easy, keep the power low."

"'E's a big bastard, Too bad all that plate didn't do shit against magic."

Light, warmth. Willem vaguely became aware, drawing a mind scattered by untold centuries of stillness into a coherent point. Light became colors, colors became shapes, shapes became figures with strange, alien faces. Bugging eyes that glowed with some sort of infernal inner light, strange complex mouthparts with gatelike teeth and hanging ribbed tubes, ugly rubbery hides. Willem must have been dragged to Hell by the witch's fell magics! He tried to struggle, to pull free of the hands hauling him from his resting place but his muscles were sluggish and feeble.

"Nethys' nickers, get that damn sword out of his hand!"

"I'm tryin'. He's got a grip like a vise."

The sword! He could not let them take the sword. It was all he had left of his lady after the witch had turned her to ash. He clutched it fiercely, clutched it like a drowning man to the sole spar of wood in leagues of open water. He tried to hold on, to stay awake, but he could feel himself fading yet again, consciousness ebbing back to darkness. No! He could not drift off again. He had to rally! To get back! He had to find the others, gather forces anew. He had to... had to...

---

"William...Shallot?"

"'Chalice', it's 'Chalice'," Willem muttered to himself as he stepped up to the counter, arms full of the papers, cards, glossy tablet, toiletries, and plastic wrapped taupe jumpsuits he had been issued. Each one had been another few credits upon the staggering debt he owed to the Lazarine Corporation, drops in an ocean. Willem had not even been aware that numbers went that high. The only thing he had that was truly his was the sword, and it was locked inside a clear plastic case. Even retaining that much had been an additional cost. The counter was too small for him to lay his burdens down and the disinterested insect person behind it looked like they might disintegrate him with a glare if he dared to even try.

"Let's see, William Shall-"

"Willem Chalice."

"Hmm, quite. Recovered from the... witch Iteleth's hoard at archeological site 55-413-D? Your debt has been sold to the Evgeniya-Jaimisson Corporation." The clerk printed off yet another stack of papers and placed them atop the messy collection of items in Willem's arms. "You're expected to report to their local office within twenty-four hours. We have a complementary bus service to their offices that leaves in... five minutes."

---

"Shallot! Get yer ass back on the ship!" Hands were gripping the front of Willem's hardsuit. He was vaguely aware that they belonged to his supervisor, the man's face was a mask of fury through the smoke billowing out from deeper in the mine. "They set off a godsdamn thasteron vein! The whole place is liable to collapse!"

Willem was not so noble as to deny he got a certain amount of satisfaction from simply shoving the other man away and sending him ass over teakettle onto the ruddy red stone of Akiton. Thus unimpeded, Willem reached down to grab the case of emergency oxygen tanks, he turned into the tide of bodies trying to escape the disaster. "Be'st they the fires of Hell or the dread winds of Abaddon, I am sworn to stand."

"Shallot! You sonuvabitch! You're a stevedore, a walking forklift! What the Hell do you think you can do!?" Willem paid the shouting man no heed as he sprinted into the mine. He would have thought the answer was patently obvious. He was going to do whatever he could. A burning mine was no great dragon or cruel winter witch but danger was danger all the same.

Personality

A man out of time, of the many fates Sir Willem Chalice had once imagined for himself as a squire, this was certainly not one of them. To say he has had to adapt to the new circumstances of being frozen in some witch's extraplanar keep, getting thawed out untold centuries later and ending up as all but an indentured servant to a system-spanning corporation would be an incredible understatement. It is a tall order, to be certain, and only Willem's bloody-minded persistence has kept him from fully cracking under the pressure.

Given time to come to terms with his new reality, Willem is stubbornly old fashioned in some ways but, thankfully, not others. While he might never really get good at using a computer terminal, he has tried to keep an open mind and take the universe as it comes. Largely, he has been rewarded for this outlook. There is so much in the Pact Worlds and beyond that seem frustratingly mundane to everyone else but would have been nothing less than a miracle back in his own time. Beyond a miracle even. Someday the shine of spaceflight or meeting new aliens or incredible stories told as full sensory experiences might wear thin for him, but that is a distant day indeed.

Then there are the times when a bit of old-fashioned sensibilities would be useful. The universe might be a more cynical place, but honor and virtue stand the test of time, even if they are now unfashionable.

Appearance

Willem is not built for a soft life. He may have had a modicum of status in his old life but he was not highly ranked enough to truly enjoy those privileges. His build is that of a soldier, used to hauling heavy armor and taking blows before repaying them in kind. He lived in a time before cosmetic treatments for scars or even commonly available rapid healing and his hard living has left a tapestry of scars on his body from countless little wounds.

He has taken to the improved hygiene standards of the modern day with vigor, relishing the feeling of frequently being clean and not hating the taste of his own mouth. His sense of personal style can be charitably described as 'functional' as he usually settles for simply shaving himself clean once his hair and beard reach a certain length and he typically wears either his crew uniform or the functional and cheap jumpsuits that are commonplace in most fuel stations and shipping depots.

 

Edited November 19, 2023 by Mister Doctor (see edit history)

[Mister Doctor]

Reserved

[Mister Doctor]

Reserved

[Mister Doctor]

I think we're ready here.

Also, to be clear, all his paperwork lists him as 'William Shallot'

Edited November 19, 2023 by Mister Doctor (see edit history)

[Maester1216]

Very interesting app! Reminds me of Faye Valentine with a dash of Don Quixote.

Everything looks fine from a numbers standpoint.

[Mister Doctor]

Yeah! That's kind of my goal. The core concept is something I figure is actually surprisingly common for the Starfinder setting given the sheer number of morally questionable high powered mages that had to exist throughout Golarion's history before the Gap. Common enough that there is an even more morally questionable industry around extracting people frozen in time through various means and then selling the massive debt this incurs for profit.