Do you have any prior experience with Requiem? If so, please detail when (and what characters, if desired) you previously played:
No, I have no former experience playing Requiem.
Briefly summarize your prior role-playing experience in a sentence or two:
I have been active within the UO RP community since 2002.
Why do you wish to play on Requiem, and what do you expect from the shard?
Because Ultima Online is mostly dead as shit and it is the only remaining UO server in the english-speaking world that is worth the investment of time that it takes to actually play a UO RP server.
What will your character’s name be?:
Dietrich Strauss
Please briefly describe the physical attributes of your character, including age, looks, height, weight and any notable features:
Dietrich is an older man, 62 years of age. He stands at approximately 180cm tall, with a gaunt, slender, starving looking frame. His eyes are blue and show the cloudy luminescence of early cataracts. Dietrich appears to have a large number of burn scars spread across his body, leaving him heavily disfigured and with patchy, ruined hair. Dietrich typically keeps his head clean shaven so as to be able to cover his disfigurement without his sensitive, destroyed skin becoming too irritated.
Briefly state your character’s intentions or motivations for entering the First Province:
Dietrich is the Scion of a prelacy parish, and the sole successor of his father’s estate. Dietrich has spent the last several years of his life working in vain to keep the family enterprises above water. Extensive seaborne trade, and mineral development operations under the Parish of Strauss now lie in ruin. With debt mounting, and increasingly fewer options to turn to, Dietrich has been forced to sell the family vessel and any other meager offerings that can be scraped together from the estate. Dietrich once saw his place among the courts of the eastern baronies, but now finds himself a middling princeling fast approaching total insignificance as the world changes around him.
Beset with the stress of his increasingly precarious situation, Dietrich would begin spending increasing amounts of time in his basement laboratory; losing himself to the madness, or genius of obsession. Naturally a bookish and inquiring mind, he began to chase the fantasy that he was only one experiment, one discovery, or one stroke of luck away from the kind of breakthrough that would turn everything around. Perhaps a line of explosive charges to increase productivity in the mines, an acid etch for increasingly advanced metallurgical procedures – anything.
This would all come crashing down when, perhaps by the jealousy of prying eyes, or the insecurity of a business rival, the authorities came knocking intending to investigate rumors of strange experiments taking place in the basement of Strauss manor. Hematological projects, and an index of unscrupulous resolvist suppliers left Dietrich with few options. A gunfight, several dead investigators, and the smoldering ruins of the Strauss estate being the final legacy of Dietrich's stewardship. Dietrich now finds himself on a ship bound for the First Coast, treasuring what notebooks he could salvage from his lab, and nursing his extensive burns; his final parting gift from the home that he now has to abandon.
Briefly provide a pertinent detail or notable quality of your character’s history (this does not have to be exhaustive nor revealing of any information you wish to keep secret):
Dietrich boarded the ferry vessel Mildred, heading up coast to a no-name dock wherefrom he would start the treacherous overland journey to the Rumbling Pass. A perilous transit whereby many would surely die of disease, and other seaborne maladies. During this voyage, in the company of outcasts, criminals, the downtrodden, and the sick, Dietrich made good friends with a man known as Jahandar Hassanzadeh whom fate should happen to bring into his company. They spake at length on the state of the world and found a rare friendship in one another. Dietrich, having few allies left and a waning sense of purpose, felt that Jahandar may yet provide him with an opportunity to forge the legacy that has since eluded him.
Briefly write an in-character response to the following scenario (Omitted for space):
The echoing voices and sounds of Dietrich's daydream slowly receded, giving way to the droning patter of the rain on the hood of his coat intermittently broken by the sharp screaming of the scavenging crows perched on the rooftops.
“NEXT!” a voice somewhere near the front of the line called out, the beleaguered travelers all shuffling forward one person’s length.
Dietrich had traveled so far from home, both literally and figuratively. Home was now a place in his mind haunted by memories. It was the smoldering ruin of the Strauss estate somewhere back in the baronies. Looking around himself, Dietrich felt a twinge of dread. Here in this alien place, he could not help but to feel as if he was in the belly of a great beast; a horrible place that only consumes and destroys. He thought to himself: is this home?
“NEXT!” the voice called out again. The distant wails of the denied cried out as they were dragged away from the assembly.
Before long, Dietrich found himself standing at the helm of the assembly before a wooden table. The officiant glared up at Dietrich and spake in frank words “State your business”.
Dietrich responded, peering at him from beneath his hood: “My name is Dietrich Strauss. Laborer. I am here without a wife, nor child. I’ve come to pay the price that one must pay for a new home.”
Dietrich placed a small bag of coins on the table before the Officiant, hidden between the cage of his extended fingers, and said low under his breath: “Though it be no fortune, surely this will accommodate you for your troubles in reviewing my candidacy for passage.”
