Bismarck

Bismarck is the son of Eurybia by Huitachtl, not that it matters in any way. Both were bounty hunters - Eurybia a ranger and guardian of the wilds, and Huitachtl a hunter of men. Bismarck was technically a mistake, a result of a stressful hunt and a few bottles of drink. Eurybia dumped Bismarck on Huitachtl to raise, and the pale Tolka accepted that she would not stay or help him. She soon vanished, caught up in another whirlwind affair, another grand adventure, another dangerous mark. Though not expecting a son, Huitachtl was of the belief that children are to be cherished, no matter the circumstances of their birth. And he was not truly bitter over Eurybia, as he knew the moment he met her that she would never remain by his side. Raising Bismarck had Huitachtl pausing in his work, dropping off the face of the underworld for ten years as he prioritized his son's safety above all else.

Huitachtl raised Bismarck in the swamps near Ynoch's tree, for the swamps are quieter and few of his enemies would be willing to trapise out into the mud to find him. As such, Bismarck grew half in and half out of water, much to Huitachtl's amusement. With very little else to do in the wilderness, Bismarck spent most of his time swaddled up in camp or nestled in the crook of Huitachtl's arm. Unlike most children, Bismarck didn't speak much until he was five years of age, and since then he hasn't stopped. Huitachtl was responsible for all of Bismarck's early schooling, which consisted of basic survival skills and the ability to use a knife. Not conventional, but Huitachtl found it worked just as well as any other schooling that a child could receive - after all, one would help them when the going got the tough and the other was academics.

Bismarck's teenage years saw to his reintroduction to society at large. Huitachtl reentered the bounty hunting scene, this time with Bismarck at his side. Sticking to small jobs at first to keep Bismarck off any radars, Huitachtl then taught Bismarck how to sneak, how to steal, and how to kill. Maybe he shouldn't have, but Bismarck took to hunting quite easily, and often joked to his father that it was "the family business". As Bismarck got older and more experienced, the difficulty of their jobs increased as Huitachtl saw that Bismarck could hold his own. They started rising in infamy, Huitachtl and Bismarck ua Huitachtl making a pair - and therefore able to accept the offers that a single mercenary would have to turn down. But working as a pair comes with its downsides as well. A well-planned trap, jammed communications, and Huitachtl's need to see Bismarck safe resulted in the Tolka's death at the hands of a group of mercenaries.

Most people would swear revenge. Instead, Bismarck got older. And five years down the line, he ran into the same minds behind his father's killing. Neither party had forgotten, and despite his best efforts, Bismarck wound up in an abandoned building, tied to a chair. There, inbetween the torture of burning his gills shut and cutting open his face, they regaled him with the story of how he and Huitachtl ran the job that resulted in half of the mercenaries dead - their friends and brothers - and their leader's child killed. They wanted revenge, they said, and Bismarck knew that revenge made people sloppy. It certainly made him sloppy the first few years before he got his head out of the sand. The scars from the rope burns he accrued from tearing his bonds would remain on his skin forever, but the glee that Bismarck felt, seeing fear in the gang's eyes as he lit the gasoline they were drenched in? Priceless.

That was his first show, and Bismarck upholds it as being for the general audience and free of charge. He would go on to continue gaining infamy, primarily for his brutality over all else. Bismarck is fond of putting his murders on display, often in ironic ways. He stages the bodies in order to create gruesome works of art, and in fact takes pride in it. He charges extra for a show, but it always conveys the message.

"You do such a disservice to the wounded, saying my trauma makes me do these terrible things~ I've always been this way."