The Cinderella Man
03-26-06, 06:08 PM
((I had 100 EXP and 200 GP))
Basic Information:
Name: Victor “Padre” Callahan
Age: 26
Hair: Dark brown, nearly black, shortly trimmed
Eyes: Brown
Height: 6 feet and 1 inch
Weight: 200 lbs
Race: Human
Occupation: Prizefighter
Appearance:
Though he considers himself a rather unsightly unattractive man, Victor actually has no distinguishable marks that would sway his appearance towards either good or bad looking. A rather plain face is nowadays mostly locked in an indifferent phlegmatic look of a man who lost all his hopes when nobody is looking, or a thick dark frown when dealt with most people, especially if they are in the ring with him. There is a cheerful side to the man as well, the wide smile that once existed when Delilah was a part of his life, but nowadays the most he can produce is a sarcastic grin.
His body is quite athletic and slightly bulky (especially the torso and arms) which comes as no surprise since he is a trained hand-to-hand fighter. His muscles are not oversized as some fighters tend to make them, but rather the optimal size that allows him to move fast enough and pack a rather mean punch with his right.
His fighting outfit is the only outfit he really cares about. The scarlet shorts that bear the azure mark of the lily are always perfectly clean and fit perfectly with his dark brown light fighting boots made out of leather. His boxing gloves are scarlet as well and have a single word written on each of them. The right one bears the word “Destruction” and the left one bears the word “Architect”. Most fighters don’t see the right one with enough time to read it.
Out of the ring, Victor is a bum. His monk robes are faded gray and tattered, his dark blue denim pants so worn they are almost thin to the point of tearing and his heavy canvas/denim shirt missing a few buttons here and there and has a torn pocket.
Personality:
Victor is not the most communicative person ever. In fact, he rarely socializes with people other then Atalanta, the girl who sets up most of his fights nowadays. Always a bit on the introverted side, his personality slumped to the shut tight one with Delilah telling him the two of them are done with. He is silent, keeps to himself most of the time and just tries to live from one day to the next. Suicidal thoughts are not rare in his head, but most of the time he can push them away, mostly saying to himself that he is too gutless to actually do it.
Deep down below, his only desire is to find a reason to live for... fight for once again. His dream is a happy family, a modest house and a quiet life. Heroes and adventurers, those are the stuff stories and myths were made of. Victor is merely a simple man, trying to find his way through the bustle of life and doing a pathetic job at that. He often catches himself in self-pitying, bombarding himself with underachieving thoughts and really just stabbing himself in the back, saying he’s not good enough for a normal happy life. Behind all of that though, he is quite wise and well-spoken person, but those are the traits few hang around long enough to find out.
Weapons and Accessories:
A pair of boxing gloves – Nothing really fascinating about this item, the scarlet gloves made out of leather with words “Destruction” and “Architect” written on them
A pair of fingerless gloves – This pair is plated with heavy iron, and Victor uses him for his fights outside the ring. They are made out of black and red leather below which there are iron plates that go over his knuckles and down his forearms as an armguard.
Burlap sack o’ stuff – Following the well-known saying: “I wear everything I own”, this sack is more or less his home/dresser/everything else. He has his fighting shorts and his gloves inside the sack when he’s not fighting or his usual attire when he is fighting. On top of the clothes, he has a water flask, about ten paces of rope, some extra rags that used to be clothes and a small velvety bag with a lock of light brown hair in it and a small torn armlet made out of blue, white and black string weaved together. There are also a needle and thread in there, a small pocket knife made out of steel and a pack of matches.
Skills:
Hand-to-hand combat – a couple of years ago, when he was within the Coalition and on his way to become the Champion of Scara Brae, Victor was the master of this. Within the ropes of the ring he was unbeatable, wreaking havoc with his devastating right hand. He was light on his feet despite his weight, slipping and sliding, bouncy and with catlike reflexes. However, back then he fought with his heart, he fought for Delilah and her heart and once she turned her back on him, his ability slowly faded away with her departure. More and more he started to fight like a bum, with not real reason to keep him going forward, so nowadays he’s about on a level of an average hand-to-hand fighter. He makes a good three punch combo, but he’s lacking style and tactic so he basically became a mere slugger. He still pack quite a punch with his right, but more and more his hand are becoming equal in strength because of the heavy labor work he had to take just to make a living.
Bludgeon resistance – with all the hits he took over the years, Victor developed a minor resistance to the bludgeon damage. He can take twice the amount of bludgeon damage when compared to a normal human.
Firm feet – his style being to land more hits then he takes, Victor is not big on dodging the strikes. Because of that he developed a style that allows him to amortize the hits better then an average fighter, making him difficult to knock down. It usually takes twice as much hits to knock him out in a ring, but that depends on the might of his foe.
Attributes:
Strength and stamina are the main two attributes Victor focused on during his fighting years. All the training and the battles in the ring made his right arm two time stronger then that of an usual fighter, but his left remained of the same might. His stamina is also slightly elevated when compared to an average fighter, but this only refers to the stamina within the ring.
History:
The times of youth
Born as a second child into the Callahan family, Victor was on route to a rather ordinary life in a middle layer family in Scara Brae. With his mother being a housewife (and a damn good cook, Victor would always say) and his father an architect working for the local government (and being a preacher during his free time, giving all his Sundays to the Lord) the life ahead of Victor was wide open. His two sisters were Amayla (the older one) and Yavannha (the younger one) and together with his mother Veerah they made a perfect little family. Sundays at the church, abundant Sunday lunches, monotonous days that captivated with their simplicity and sweetness slowly drifted away the first years of Victor’s life, raising him into a person that admired his father and wanted to follow his steps. He was on a good way of doing that, but Fate rarely had her paths coincide with that of a mortal.
When he was fourteen years old his father Hector succumbed to cancer. The incurable sickness overtook his body slowly, making the just stern man fade away little by little every day and even though he fought with the sickness valiantly after all healers gave up on him, all the fate in his Lord couldn’t save him from the inevitable. That morning a terrifying scream awoke Victor from his slumber, his mother’s scream as his father exhaled his last breath and went to his Lord. It was to be a crossroad on the path of the young Victor.
His mother, being a mere housewife, barely managed to hold the family together, working long and hard just to earn enough money for them to survive. And yet somehow they managed to be happy, even though they barely had enough to live by. Victor dropped out of the university, straying away from the path of his father and leaving the dream to become an architect, and instead he started to work so his family could get by. It was a tough life and it took it’s toll on Victor Callahan that started to doubt the teachings of his father until there was nothing but hatred for the Lord.
Times of Romance
It was on one day, when Victor was strolling around with the usual set of dark thoughts flying through his head and his face lifted to the sky above, that he walked straight into the garden filled with yellow lily flowers. The garden belonged to the local Baron, Cornelius Da Lesius, and was currently tended by his daughter Delilah. On that sunny day Victor met a goddess, with her light brown hair smooth as silk, cascading down around her cherubic visage and shifting to a blonde hue under the powerful sun. She had the most beautiful azure eyes he had ever seen, and a smile that managed to melt the ice walls that he’s been lifting around his heart.
However, the romance between the two was not to be because life was seldom a bedtime story. Their communication was decimated to a bunch of written messages, Cornelius making certain that his daughter doesn’t meddle with the commoners. Atalanta, the servant girl of some fourteen years of age, served as an intermediate between Victor and Delilah, taking their messages that slowly grew in length and emotions until one day Delilah sent a message to Victor that made his heart thump powerfully and his hand shiver as he wrote the answer.
<in a beautiful handwriting, carrying the scent of sweet jasmine and perfume, stood a question> Victor, are you falling in love with me?
He was, helplessly and without any doubt. He was so deep in love with her that he could see nothing else but her, breathe and live for nothing else but for another message from her and that faint concealed scent. After his admission the letters grew in length substantially, each one of them falling more and more in love over a bunch of letters and the words written with love and affection. She sent him a kiss on every message by then, a faint trace of her perfect lips on each piece of paper. He treasured these kisses as if they were placed on gold, picking them up each time with is own lips. But letter could only go so far and both of them yearned for more.
It hurts, Victor. It hurts to be away from you, away from your arms that would hug me, make me safe. I want to scream and cry and fall asleep in your embrace, to kiss the night away, to hold you as lovers hold each other. Love shouldn’t hurt. But I believe, I believe that we will find a way and you should too. I need you to let go of your pessimism and believe with me. Speak your limitations and they are yours, Victor, and if we don’t speak of them we can achieve a miracle.
And he did. He believed and he decided to make the sky his limit. He managed to catch a falling star one day and he made a wish that day; he wished that she would be happy. In addition he said that he wanted her to be happy with him. The wishing stars didn’t take additions though.
The Fighting Days
The Coalition. The Coalition was his only ticket to his Lily (that is what he called her now. His Lily, his little lark, his wildcat and he was her oak, her beast). The Coalition was the gathering of wealthy men that were getting even more wealthy by selling the kind of entertainment the people always asked for. The bloody kind. They had all kinds of prizefighting events under their wings, making sure it is a fair and relatively safe battle, but still bloody enough for people to pay for. The fighters of the Coalition were known throughout Althanas, attending the high class parties in tuxes and with beautiful women at their sides. Cornelius Da Lesius was the president of this association. The Coalition was the only way for him to get to her. So he entered the fray.
All beginnings are hard, but some are a real pain in the ass, that was what his sister Yavannha always liked to say and she was damn right. His coach, the elderly looking scrawny chap with a blind left eyes and a wicked left hook, was a harsh trainer. Victor remembers his first day quite well. He told Arslan that he doesn’t need no fancy training, but rather just that he puts him into the ring. Arslan did. He put him into a ring with an inept youngling that only started to train and he whooped Victor’s ass in every way possible. But Arslan saw something then, this uncanny determination in Victor that kept lifting him up, that kept him on his feet even when his face looked as if it survived a World War and end up losing it. So after that Arslan ordered and Victor listened and soon enough he was on his way to the top.
6(5 by K.O.)-0-0
Six battles undefeated, Victor was a star on the rise. Most people knew of him now, “Padre” they used to call him because of the heritage of his father. Some even dubbed him “The Architect of Destruction” again because of his father and because of the fact that he could plot out the entire battle, draw it out until his opponent fell onto his wicked right handed piledriver. Arslan tried to train his left but gave up after seeing that Victor was and always will be pure right hander. It was somewhere at this time, when his battle with Garth Mastricth that another letter came to Victor.
<the handwriting, though still graceful, is somewhat sloppy> Victor, I... I met someone. His name is William and he’s a very sweet man. I... I don’t know what to do. I love you, you know I do, and there will always be a part of me that will belong to you, but I feel like I owe William a chance at least.
It was a shot though the gut, but it went clean through. The following words were the hardest thing Victor ever wrote:
There’s not much to ponder about, Lily. You should go for it. He is after all, real, and I’m not. Go and be happy with him.
But it wasn’t that simple. Neither of them was ready to let go and they were caught in between of letting each other go and clinging to each other tightly.
12(10 by K.O.)-0-0
One match to go. One match and he would have the title. Only Wayne Arenas to beat and he would be crowned the champion of Scara Brae. And he could have his Lily.
<there are smudges on the usually neat paper, and after reading the letter, Victor knew it was the tears of his beloved> It’s over, Victor. I... I can’t go on like this anymore. It hurts too damn much. On top of that, my father found your letters. Victor, I think he’s going to set you up in the final battle. I’m going to go away for a while now. I don’t know when I’ll be able to write again. I still love you, Victor, I always will... It’s just...
After that, no matter how many letters Atalanta carried from Victor, no responses came back. Letters of love, letters of friendship, it didn’t matter, they never came back and each time Atalanta (a gawky little thirteen year old lass with pigtails and hair as black as the night) came back empty-handed, a piece of Victor died. He tried to reassure himself that maybe this was for the best, but that was not what his heart was telling him. His heart was all about her... and it always would be.
The final battle was a goddamn letdown. Victor just didn’t have the flare anymore, and his every attempt just lacked the power it used to have in previous 12 battles. Arslan never saw something like that in his entire training career. It’s like something within Victor simply died and he was running on fumes... Like he was drunk whole last week and couldn’t fight even if his life depended on it. Wayne beaten him and Victor didn’t even wait for the judge’s decision. He walked away from the ring and never returned to Scara Brae again. Delilah was everything to him and without her there was nothing for him there anymore.
Basic Information:
Name: Victor “Padre” Callahan
Age: 26
Hair: Dark brown, nearly black, shortly trimmed
Eyes: Brown
Height: 6 feet and 1 inch
Weight: 200 lbs
Race: Human
Occupation: Prizefighter
Appearance:
Though he considers himself a rather unsightly unattractive man, Victor actually has no distinguishable marks that would sway his appearance towards either good or bad looking. A rather plain face is nowadays mostly locked in an indifferent phlegmatic look of a man who lost all his hopes when nobody is looking, or a thick dark frown when dealt with most people, especially if they are in the ring with him. There is a cheerful side to the man as well, the wide smile that once existed when Delilah was a part of his life, but nowadays the most he can produce is a sarcastic grin.
His body is quite athletic and slightly bulky (especially the torso and arms) which comes as no surprise since he is a trained hand-to-hand fighter. His muscles are not oversized as some fighters tend to make them, but rather the optimal size that allows him to move fast enough and pack a rather mean punch with his right.
His fighting outfit is the only outfit he really cares about. The scarlet shorts that bear the azure mark of the lily are always perfectly clean and fit perfectly with his dark brown light fighting boots made out of leather. His boxing gloves are scarlet as well and have a single word written on each of them. The right one bears the word “Destruction” and the left one bears the word “Architect”. Most fighters don’t see the right one with enough time to read it.
Out of the ring, Victor is a bum. His monk robes are faded gray and tattered, his dark blue denim pants so worn they are almost thin to the point of tearing and his heavy canvas/denim shirt missing a few buttons here and there and has a torn pocket.
Personality:
Victor is not the most communicative person ever. In fact, he rarely socializes with people other then Atalanta, the girl who sets up most of his fights nowadays. Always a bit on the introverted side, his personality slumped to the shut tight one with Delilah telling him the two of them are done with. He is silent, keeps to himself most of the time and just tries to live from one day to the next. Suicidal thoughts are not rare in his head, but most of the time he can push them away, mostly saying to himself that he is too gutless to actually do it.
Deep down below, his only desire is to find a reason to live for... fight for once again. His dream is a happy family, a modest house and a quiet life. Heroes and adventurers, those are the stuff stories and myths were made of. Victor is merely a simple man, trying to find his way through the bustle of life and doing a pathetic job at that. He often catches himself in self-pitying, bombarding himself with underachieving thoughts and really just stabbing himself in the back, saying he’s not good enough for a normal happy life. Behind all of that though, he is quite wise and well-spoken person, but those are the traits few hang around long enough to find out.
Weapons and Accessories:
A pair of boxing gloves – Nothing really fascinating about this item, the scarlet gloves made out of leather with words “Destruction” and “Architect” written on them
A pair of fingerless gloves – This pair is plated with heavy iron, and Victor uses him for his fights outside the ring. They are made out of black and red leather below which there are iron plates that go over his knuckles and down his forearms as an armguard.
Burlap sack o’ stuff – Following the well-known saying: “I wear everything I own”, this sack is more or less his home/dresser/everything else. He has his fighting shorts and his gloves inside the sack when he’s not fighting or his usual attire when he is fighting. On top of the clothes, he has a water flask, about ten paces of rope, some extra rags that used to be clothes and a small velvety bag with a lock of light brown hair in it and a small torn armlet made out of blue, white and black string weaved together. There are also a needle and thread in there, a small pocket knife made out of steel and a pack of matches.
Skills:
Hand-to-hand combat – a couple of years ago, when he was within the Coalition and on his way to become the Champion of Scara Brae, Victor was the master of this. Within the ropes of the ring he was unbeatable, wreaking havoc with his devastating right hand. He was light on his feet despite his weight, slipping and sliding, bouncy and with catlike reflexes. However, back then he fought with his heart, he fought for Delilah and her heart and once she turned her back on him, his ability slowly faded away with her departure. More and more he started to fight like a bum, with not real reason to keep him going forward, so nowadays he’s about on a level of an average hand-to-hand fighter. He makes a good three punch combo, but he’s lacking style and tactic so he basically became a mere slugger. He still pack quite a punch with his right, but more and more his hand are becoming equal in strength because of the heavy labor work he had to take just to make a living.
Bludgeon resistance – with all the hits he took over the years, Victor developed a minor resistance to the bludgeon damage. He can take twice the amount of bludgeon damage when compared to a normal human.
Firm feet – his style being to land more hits then he takes, Victor is not big on dodging the strikes. Because of that he developed a style that allows him to amortize the hits better then an average fighter, making him difficult to knock down. It usually takes twice as much hits to knock him out in a ring, but that depends on the might of his foe.
Attributes:
Strength and stamina are the main two attributes Victor focused on during his fighting years. All the training and the battles in the ring made his right arm two time stronger then that of an usual fighter, but his left remained of the same might. His stamina is also slightly elevated when compared to an average fighter, but this only refers to the stamina within the ring.
History:
The times of youth
Born as a second child into the Callahan family, Victor was on route to a rather ordinary life in a middle layer family in Scara Brae. With his mother being a housewife (and a damn good cook, Victor would always say) and his father an architect working for the local government (and being a preacher during his free time, giving all his Sundays to the Lord) the life ahead of Victor was wide open. His two sisters were Amayla (the older one) and Yavannha (the younger one) and together with his mother Veerah they made a perfect little family. Sundays at the church, abundant Sunday lunches, monotonous days that captivated with their simplicity and sweetness slowly drifted away the first years of Victor’s life, raising him into a person that admired his father and wanted to follow his steps. He was on a good way of doing that, but Fate rarely had her paths coincide with that of a mortal.
When he was fourteen years old his father Hector succumbed to cancer. The incurable sickness overtook his body slowly, making the just stern man fade away little by little every day and even though he fought with the sickness valiantly after all healers gave up on him, all the fate in his Lord couldn’t save him from the inevitable. That morning a terrifying scream awoke Victor from his slumber, his mother’s scream as his father exhaled his last breath and went to his Lord. It was to be a crossroad on the path of the young Victor.
His mother, being a mere housewife, barely managed to hold the family together, working long and hard just to earn enough money for them to survive. And yet somehow they managed to be happy, even though they barely had enough to live by. Victor dropped out of the university, straying away from the path of his father and leaving the dream to become an architect, and instead he started to work so his family could get by. It was a tough life and it took it’s toll on Victor Callahan that started to doubt the teachings of his father until there was nothing but hatred for the Lord.
Times of Romance
It was on one day, when Victor was strolling around with the usual set of dark thoughts flying through his head and his face lifted to the sky above, that he walked straight into the garden filled with yellow lily flowers. The garden belonged to the local Baron, Cornelius Da Lesius, and was currently tended by his daughter Delilah. On that sunny day Victor met a goddess, with her light brown hair smooth as silk, cascading down around her cherubic visage and shifting to a blonde hue under the powerful sun. She had the most beautiful azure eyes he had ever seen, and a smile that managed to melt the ice walls that he’s been lifting around his heart.
However, the romance between the two was not to be because life was seldom a bedtime story. Their communication was decimated to a bunch of written messages, Cornelius making certain that his daughter doesn’t meddle with the commoners. Atalanta, the servant girl of some fourteen years of age, served as an intermediate between Victor and Delilah, taking their messages that slowly grew in length and emotions until one day Delilah sent a message to Victor that made his heart thump powerfully and his hand shiver as he wrote the answer.
<in a beautiful handwriting, carrying the scent of sweet jasmine and perfume, stood a question> Victor, are you falling in love with me?
He was, helplessly and without any doubt. He was so deep in love with her that he could see nothing else but her, breathe and live for nothing else but for another message from her and that faint concealed scent. After his admission the letters grew in length substantially, each one of them falling more and more in love over a bunch of letters and the words written with love and affection. She sent him a kiss on every message by then, a faint trace of her perfect lips on each piece of paper. He treasured these kisses as if they were placed on gold, picking them up each time with is own lips. But letter could only go so far and both of them yearned for more.
It hurts, Victor. It hurts to be away from you, away from your arms that would hug me, make me safe. I want to scream and cry and fall asleep in your embrace, to kiss the night away, to hold you as lovers hold each other. Love shouldn’t hurt. But I believe, I believe that we will find a way and you should too. I need you to let go of your pessimism and believe with me. Speak your limitations and they are yours, Victor, and if we don’t speak of them we can achieve a miracle.
And he did. He believed and he decided to make the sky his limit. He managed to catch a falling star one day and he made a wish that day; he wished that she would be happy. In addition he said that he wanted her to be happy with him. The wishing stars didn’t take additions though.
The Fighting Days
The Coalition. The Coalition was his only ticket to his Lily (that is what he called her now. His Lily, his little lark, his wildcat and he was her oak, her beast). The Coalition was the gathering of wealthy men that were getting even more wealthy by selling the kind of entertainment the people always asked for. The bloody kind. They had all kinds of prizefighting events under their wings, making sure it is a fair and relatively safe battle, but still bloody enough for people to pay for. The fighters of the Coalition were known throughout Althanas, attending the high class parties in tuxes and with beautiful women at their sides. Cornelius Da Lesius was the president of this association. The Coalition was the only way for him to get to her. So he entered the fray.
All beginnings are hard, but some are a real pain in the ass, that was what his sister Yavannha always liked to say and she was damn right. His coach, the elderly looking scrawny chap with a blind left eyes and a wicked left hook, was a harsh trainer. Victor remembers his first day quite well. He told Arslan that he doesn’t need no fancy training, but rather just that he puts him into the ring. Arslan did. He put him into a ring with an inept youngling that only started to train and he whooped Victor’s ass in every way possible. But Arslan saw something then, this uncanny determination in Victor that kept lifting him up, that kept him on his feet even when his face looked as if it survived a World War and end up losing it. So after that Arslan ordered and Victor listened and soon enough he was on his way to the top.
6(5 by K.O.)-0-0
Six battles undefeated, Victor was a star on the rise. Most people knew of him now, “Padre” they used to call him because of the heritage of his father. Some even dubbed him “The Architect of Destruction” again because of his father and because of the fact that he could plot out the entire battle, draw it out until his opponent fell onto his wicked right handed piledriver. Arslan tried to train his left but gave up after seeing that Victor was and always will be pure right hander. It was somewhere at this time, when his battle with Garth Mastricth that another letter came to Victor.
<the handwriting, though still graceful, is somewhat sloppy> Victor, I... I met someone. His name is William and he’s a very sweet man. I... I don’t know what to do. I love you, you know I do, and there will always be a part of me that will belong to you, but I feel like I owe William a chance at least.
It was a shot though the gut, but it went clean through. The following words were the hardest thing Victor ever wrote:
There’s not much to ponder about, Lily. You should go for it. He is after all, real, and I’m not. Go and be happy with him.
But it wasn’t that simple. Neither of them was ready to let go and they were caught in between of letting each other go and clinging to each other tightly.
12(10 by K.O.)-0-0
One match to go. One match and he would have the title. Only Wayne Arenas to beat and he would be crowned the champion of Scara Brae. And he could have his Lily.
<there are smudges on the usually neat paper, and after reading the letter, Victor knew it was the tears of his beloved> It’s over, Victor. I... I can’t go on like this anymore. It hurts too damn much. On top of that, my father found your letters. Victor, I think he’s going to set you up in the final battle. I’m going to go away for a while now. I don’t know when I’ll be able to write again. I still love you, Victor, I always will... It’s just...
After that, no matter how many letters Atalanta carried from Victor, no responses came back. Letters of love, letters of friendship, it didn’t matter, they never came back and each time Atalanta (a gawky little thirteen year old lass with pigtails and hair as black as the night) came back empty-handed, a piece of Victor died. He tried to reassure himself that maybe this was for the best, but that was not what his heart was telling him. His heart was all about her... and it always would be.
The final battle was a goddamn letdown. Victor just didn’t have the flare anymore, and his every attempt just lacked the power it used to have in previous 12 battles. Arslan never saw something like that in his entire training career. It’s like something within Victor simply died and he was running on fumes... Like he was drunk whole last week and couldn’t fight even if his life depended on it. Wayne beaten him and Victor didn’t even wait for the judge’s decision. He walked away from the ring and never returned to Scara Brae again. Delilah was everything to him and without her there was nothing for him there anymore.