Description

Personality

Like many who have seen the horrors that lurk at the edge of civilisation, Hermann is a subdued man, not prone to fits of excitement or sudden vocal outbursts. His words are measured and calm, as are his actions, though he will not hesitate to challenge the ideals of those around him, even those who would be considered his friends. His life is not one of complete sobreity, however. The order at least allows its knights the briefest pleasures, and in the few free hours he has a week, he can usually be found sharing a drink and a game of quoits with comrades, or belting out hymns, but only when wandering alone in the forests.

Equipment

Attached as he is to Sir Montagna's group of hunters, Hermann Ritter has come heavily armed. As he expects to be constantly on the move, he wears only a set of reduced plate armour, the breastplate, barbute helm and light gauntlets worn over a quilted gambeson, with leather britches and heavy boots. At his waist is a warhammer, with a two and a half foot haft and three pound head, the reverse of which is a lethal pick point. Inscribed on the flat of the hammer is the cross of Saul, and the weapon itself was thrice blessed before it was removed from the armoury.

From the flanks of his horse hang an arming sword and a steel rimmed heater shield.

Hermann is also a great believer in the use of fire as a weapon against the demons that stalk the land, and carries with him two flasks filled with a combination of pitch, sulfur and quicklime. The slightest spark sets the mixture ablaze, a fire that even the fiercest downpour cannot extinguish. He has no means to make more, even should he know the methods.

Around his neck is a heavy chain gifted to him on his departure, and from it hangs a reliquary, containing a finger bone supposedly from Gideon himself. Hermann has promised himself that, even if he should not return to the monstery, the relic will, and refuses to part with it, even as he sleeps.

History

Born the son of Walter Ritter, an Anorian noble, the boys life seemed to start in the brightest of circumstances, but Hermann was destined never to know his father. Within three weeks of his birth, the petty squabbles and infighting that still rage across the country enveloping his fathers lands, both his parents clapped in chains, the boy sneaked out, disguised as the child of one of the serving staff. A nearby village church provided sanctuary, the newborn living there with the old minister for two years, then sent to Dheren Abbey to be inducted into the ways of the faith.

For six years the boy trained as a friar, thought his temperament seemed ill suited to the cause. Following a particularly vicious fight between Ritter and several of the towns boys, the Bishop used his considerable pull and the boys lineage to push him forward as a possible inductee for the Knights of the Dawning Sun, a particularly iconoclastic and fervent order who believed in trial by sword above all things.

For the next eight years Hermann was schooled in the ways of war, squired to Michel Tomas, a veteran of more than forty years and a man who brooked no insubordination, with even the smallest phrase out of turn or expression deemed inappropriate punished heavily. At his eighteenth birthday, Tomas approached the masters, indicating he could teach the boy no more, and insinuating that it was perhaps time the boy knew of his heritage. They declined the second point, for reasons known only to themselves, and, despite ten years good service with the order, to this day Hermann Ritter still does not know even the name of his father.