Character sheet
Appearance
Age: Mid-thirties
Sex: Male
Physical Description: The first word that probably comes to mind for people that meet him is “lanky.” Six-foot-something and delicate, with limbs a little too long to be graceful with. Black hair with loose waves that goes just past his jaw. Green eyes, and an angular face that’s typically contorted in concern. Julien tends to hunch over a little and hold his hands together at his chest in hopes of making his stature less intimidating. He is a gentle giant with a shy, slightly crooked smile.
Attire: Julien prefers soft shirts with sleeves he can roll up to his elbow or down as needed--no short sleeves though (more on that later)--and rather likes to wear vests over them. It isn’t uncommon to see him with a flower or small leaves he found interesting pinned to the breast of his vests. He wants to dress like he thinks a scholar should, but stiff, formal shirts simply get in the way of his work. He often has little bandages around parts of his fingers from having pricked them on various flora or nicked himself on sharp tools. When working in an area with noxious or dangerous plants, he wears a surgeon’s mask, and (begrudgingly) dons a coat and leather gloves to avoid any accidental contact. He typically carries a cloth bag to keep emergency supplies on hand since he’s become a sort of makeshift paramedic—but also to collect anything interesting he might run into. He wears reading glasses with silver circular frames from time to time.
Biography
Quirks:
+ On guard: They may have taken a few years off his life, but at least his nerves give him an edge in dangerous situations. He will notice possible oncoming trouble nearly immediately (...even if sometimes it’s not really trouble after all).
+ Robust: A sickly childhood gave him quite the immune system. He may not be able to throw much of a punch, but he’ll be the last one in the party to succumb to disease.
- Curious: Far too much for his own good. His pursuit of knowledge has always had a tendency to land him in sticky situations, and he never quite learns from those mistakes.
- Fragile: He’s useful from the safety of the back lines, but a disaster on the front if he isn't transformed. Heavy hits will knock the wind out of him.
- Fear of eldritch: Julien has always been somewhat anxious, but after spending some time involved in occult activities, he gets shaken more easily by things that remind him of them. He suffers from occasional flashbacks and frequent nightmares. This quirk even extends to him avoiding those in the hamlet that take too serious an interest in the subject.
Full Backstory:
A scholar from the French Alps with little life experience beyond academia. Julien dedicated the majority of his life to the study of botany (and a little bit of medicine, but not enough to merit a degree) and has quite the list of certifications from a renowned university to show for it. Unfortunately, that very university had quite a bounty of questionable, archaic literature. It had been long forgotten in a former, decrepit wing of the university, one mysteriously locked away long before any of them had arrived to study there. Administration planned to demolish the wing entirely and rebuild it, though this didn’t happen before some of his more daring colleagues ventured inside at night to see what was left of it. When they stumbled upon it, the descent into frenzied madness was swift. The books were more interesting than their course studies. The desire to research their topics was stronger than the need to continue their academic careers properly. They began to disappear from classes, still around campus but simply choosing not to go to their courses, and eventually they reached out to Julien to reveal what they had uncovered. Once they had shown him excerpts of the textbooks, he understood why they had strayed from their work.
Julien was sucked in by their unnatural research for a while. However, his interest in the occult did not extend to the depths his colleagues’ did. Soon, he saw that the path ahead of his friends was impossibly dark. After finally being forced onto the ritual altar himself, Julien packed all of his belongings and fled the country. He wasn’t terribly intent on finishing a medical degree, anyway. Offers to be a botany professor be damned.
Julien spent some months in small towns doing odd jobs and spent most of his education on hobby work or simple favors--documenting local flora, patching up the scrapes of various townsfolk, cooking up some remedies for illnesses or salves for wounds--until he caught wind of the estate further to the west. The estate had sent out a call for medical personnel; they had an extreme shortage of doctors for reasons they did not disclose. It wasn’t hard to guess. He discovered the surrounding land was the root of countless rumors and urban legends of twisted forests and disease-ridden ruins, and he found the uneasy, familiar feeling of curiosity gnawing at him again. He had some medical knowledge, he supposed, and he wasn’t exactly swimming in job opportunities in any of these towns. At least if he answered the call there, he could get some more practice in on his surgical skills and document plant life outside of what he knew so thoroughly. He had no idea how heavily he would be expected to lean on those skills until he arrived--or that some of the people around here would speak in hushed tones about the very things he ran away from.
Misc. notes:
- Julien has a half sleeve of tattoos on his upper right arm. The tattoo is made up of excerpts of foreign text, images, and figures from occult literature--a sort of “quick reference” of important information from his time spent with his colleagues. He does his best to hide it from others for obvious reasons.
- His hands and forearms are littered with silvery scars of all shapes and sizes. Mostly from scrapes in gardens or forests. Some from a casual blood sacrifice or two.
- Julien suffers from PTSD, and tends to sleep very poorly due to nightmares. If under severe duress, there is a chance he will experience flashbacks and become inconsolably terrified for a period of time. The nurses at the sanitarium will probably get to know him well.
- Julien has a slight stammer.
Skills & Equipment
Gear: Half for work, half for pleasure, his crossbody apothecary bag carries both medical supplies and clipped handfuls of interesting local flora at any given time. He totes along black notebooks and pencils religiously should the sudden need for documentation come up.
Strengths: Friendly, intelligent, genuine, caring.
Weaknesses: Anxious, awkward, sometimes needs persuading to go out into the field rather than work for the other mercenaries in the hamlet, gets caught up in his own world easily.