Yeager

[Yeager]

"Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was a business; now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war."

~ Christian Nevell Bovee (1820-1904)

Name: Yeager
Gender: Male
Age: 36
Height: 5'9
Weight: 148 lbs


Appearance: Yeager is of moderate height with a slim, lightly toned build. He has a smooth square-shaped face with high cheekbones and a pronounced jawline. His eyes are blue and his hair, which he keeps swept back in spikes aside from one long lock that hangs down the side of his face, is a dark indigo color. He always wears suits, typically in blue or black. Liking some of the fashions of the nobility, he'll now and then be seen with a cravat instead of a tie, and has a few tailcoats for formal occasions. He wears dressy pants and shoes, often has on gloves, and is never in guild territory without Leviathan's Claw's symbol on his upper arm, displayed on a piece of a fabric.

He has an air of friendly confidence about him and is almost always seen smiling. Most of his feelings come across through a range of smiles, from contented smirks to forced, livid grins. He's casually graceful and often supplements his speech with small gestures.

Like anyone who's anyone in Dahngrest, he has some knives and a pistol on him, but his favorite weapon was personally designed for him by his guildsmen: a swiss-army-knife sort of thing that can take the form of an aer-edged scythe, a rifle, and a crossbow. He triggers the transformations by holding down a button near its grip and pumping certain amounts of aer through the weapon, stimulating different hoplon blastia within it. He can also stimulate it to fold up into a compact form that he can carry across his back or strap to his leg.


Personality: Yeager is, in all appearances, an extremely nice person. He is the kind of man who can smile at strangers without seeming suspicious, who can coax the shyest of individuals into talking and listen to one's life story in rapt attention. He is kind, complimentary, always polite and tactful in company, good with kids and altogether pleasant to be around.

He's also the director of one of the largest arms dealing guilds in Dahngrest.

While his kindness is a true part of his personality, those that know him well know that he plays it up among those he seeks to do business with. His skill as a salesman lies in his ability to manipulate emotions--in charming others into agreeing with him. To him, his clients' personal lives are very much fair game when it comes to sealing a deal, and when appealing to their secure desires won't work, playing off of their guilt and weaknesses will. He is a master at determining what motivates others and exploiting small, hinted details, guessing and lying when need be, never quite revealing how much he actually knows and letting individuals' imaginations fill in the gaps. Unless he's going for sympathy, he always makes himself out to have the upper hand in an argument, even when he may be at a deep disadvantage.

It's a rare occasion for him to be truly angry or upset. On the one hand, he is naturally pretty laid-back, while on the other he has strong control over his emotions. Even if he is incredibly ticked off at a client, he won't show it beyond some subtle tightening of his smile. His skill in negotiating is, overall, a potent mix of natural talent and cultivated restraint, and he does take a lot of pride and enjoyment out of what he's been able to accomplish.

That said, his own motivation is more than a desire for money and possessions. Those are benefits he values, certainly, but his favorite part of his line of work is the challenge and the conquest that comes from landing contracts. He likes that sense of achievement and will play both legal and illegal markets to get it, even if utilizing the latter isn't necessary to ensure his business' success. He is constantly testing his limits and has a good enough sense of when to push and when to retreat to keep himself from landing in deep trouble.

When it comes to criminal actions, he justifies them simply as using his opportunities. In his eyes, it's a dog-eat-dog economy out there, and more often than not those who set out motivated by some grand ideal will get run over by their more pragmatic counterparts. So long as he knows his clients aren't going to use his products against him or anyone he particularly cares about, he'll sell to whoever will pay. He does, of course, tend to cater to larger guilds and wealthy people due to the higher potential profits, but he will happily turn his back to whatever atrocities his clients plan to commit with his products. It isn't as though he's directly endorsing their goals, after all, and they'd surely get weapons from another seller if he didn't step in first...

He does maintain a careful balance in terms of what his clients know of his business practices. Having one group know that he's selling to their enemies can make for a dangerous situation and having some of his client knights know of the tons of weapons he supplies to the guilds can sour negotiations. Thus, he keeps careful tabs on the flow of information through a complex network of friends and associates--some bribed, most gained through gentler persuasion--and upholds a healthy habit of watching his back. When he does find himself in a tight spot, he'll typically run circles around any accusations, denying what he can and leaving the rest up in the air while making the accuser out to be a fool for asking in the first place. In more dire situations, he'll send out one of his assassins to quietly take care of the problem. He's not fond of using force when talk will suffice, but if things get bad enough he won't hesitate to employ the former.

He also, even with his involvement in the day-to-day affairs of business, manages to maintain a balance between his work and his personal life. His adopted daughters know him to be a loving, affectionate parent with a deep interest in their education and self-defense training. As someone who values both tact and pragmatism, he doesn't let them know the full extent of what he's up to in his guild but makes sure they will have the skills to face adversity in whatever fields they end up working in. With his daughters in their teenage years now, he vacillates between his desire to shelter and protect and his want to make them more self-sufficient, still feeling that they might not be mature enough to grasp the justification behind some of his business practices.

All in all, he's very good at what he does. He is cautious enough to make viable long-term plans and charismatic enough to keep his guildsmen believing in them. While he does have a reputation for being a bit shady, he has many faithful clients and suppliers who consider him dependable. As much as he will stretch the truth at times about his own feelings and knowledge, he doesn't exaggerate his products' abilities and his wares are known for their quality. He is both a businessman and a father, a manipulative bastard and a genuinely compassionate person, a man that assists warfare and someone that will help old ladies cross the street if need be.

It's a wonder how he keeps it all in order.


Likes:

~Winning business deals
~Weapons (making, using and selling them--he'll often stop to admire well-manufactured ones in stores.)
~Being around people/social events
~Fine art and architecture
~Music (mostly classical and jazz. He was classically trained on cello.)
~Pastries and other sugary foods
~Fine wine
~Cooking (he's pretty good at it, actually.)
~Dressing formally/looking professional
~Playing with his daughters
~Travelling


Dislikes:

~Having run-ins with the law/otherwise having his plans compromised
~Rude/violent/unprofessional behavior
~Anyone that seriously threatens his guild or his family
~Having to fight (he normally likes to dispatch his mercenaries to fight instead.)
~Having to discuss his life before his death, or the circumstances surrounding that death in general.


Strengths:

~Yeager's a master manipulator that can easily play off of people's feelings in order to steer them into doing as he wishes.
~He's well-versed in etiquette and can move easily through both the world of guildsmen and the inner circles of nobility. He's the kind of guy that isn't afraid to have a conversation with anyone and who people often feel comfortable opening up to.
~He's very good at acting and thus can imitate other people well. Additionally, he's good at making up different personas for himself on the spot and behaving according to their personalities, something that's come in handy when he's been detained in the empire before.
~He's well-educated. He has extensive knowledge in business models and strategy and is good at making long-term plans. He has a degree in engineering, too, and thus can understand the workings of the weapons and blastia he sells.
~He's bilingual in German and English and knows a bit of French as well (or whatever the world's equivalents are.)
~He's trained in combat, especially in the usage of guns. He can pick up just about any gun and use it effectively and is quite the sharpshooter--something he likes to show off to his clients. He also has some skill in fighting with various bladed weapons, including swords, rapiers and knives, and knows basic martial arts.
~He's got a number of skills valued in high society that he's good at, including dancing and playing the cello.


Weaknesses:

~Yeager has little natural aeric ability. He can barely shield himself, much less cast artes, without the aid of a weapon.
~He can have a difficult time trusting others--understandable, considering the kind of business he runs. While he'll act as though he's speaking in complete honesty, he'll often be guarded with his true feelings and intentions until he knows someone very well.
~His moral myopia, of course. He's lived to regret some of his decisions before because even though he tries to keep the people he knows and likes safe, he can't always manage it. Additionally, he can't always predict people's actions as well as he would like, especially if they're based on notions of honor that don't necessarily correspond with logic or feelings (the Don, anyone?)
~His death and blastia heart are some of the few things he's actually insecure about. It would be quite a danger to his business if his clients found out he was technically dead, after all. For this reason, he's let very few individuals know about those subjects and avoids having to discuss them.


History: Yeager was born Jäger von Kunze to an old nobility family in a German-speaking region north of Aspio. His childhood was mostly spent between there and his family's mansion in Zaphias. His early schooling was completed through private tutoring and until his teenage years, he came in contact with few people his own age unless he expressly sought it. Between that and his parents being rather distant towards him, he was pretty lonely for many years. When he was at last old enough to be introduced into society, he took the opportunity to quickly make many friends and assumed an active social life.

As his family had a great fortune amassed through years of land ownership, money was of no concern and they wished for Jäger to enter into a traditionally respectable position like law or military service. He, on the other hand, was interested in business and pursued that course in his education. In order to appease his parents' wishes, he eventually agreed to take a short stint in the knights, earning himself a lieutenant's position from his nobility alone. He didn't enjoy it much, but it was there that he met Casey, a captain that he ended up actively courting in spite of the fact that her family was of a lower social rank than his. She was reluctant at first, fearing that a relationship would jeopardize her hard-won position and independence, but eventually agreed to date him. They were in a well-established relationship by the time they were shipped out to Temza.

Jäger died in battle from blunt chest trauma leading to aortic dissection. As the rest of his body was intact, Alexei chose him as one of the candidates for resurrection. His heart was removed and replaced by a blastia-powered pump and that, along with the application of high-frequency aeric radiation to his brain, helped bring him back to life. He spent months in therapy to re-learn certain motor functions, but his memory otherwise remained intact.

Afterwards, Alexei decided he needed contacts in the guilds, so he sent Jäger to Dahngrest to find work. As Casey had been killed in battle and Alexei had ensured Jäger's family believed him dead as well, Jäger welcomed the opportunity to start an entirely new life. Having no real connections and little money, he worked for a number of small blastia and weapons-selling guilds before ending up at Leviathan's Claw. There, he befriended the leader, a fiftysomething woman named Johanna, who took interest in his business knowledge and placed him in an advisory position. When she died at the hand of Blood Alliance (an assassination the Union was never quite able to convict Barbos for but that likely had to do with Johanna uncovering some evidence of fraud,) Jäger found that she had named him her successor.

Now at the helm of a relatively small, unprofitable guild, Jäger wasted little time in changing up the management structure, making it more like a corporation with departments and an advisory board. He bought up acres of blastia-rich land from Ruins' Gate, numerous warehouses and a new headquarters building for the guild. He also spent generously on luxuries like new uniforms and furnishings to make the guild's image a bit more respectable, plunging the guild deep into debt. During this time, a lot of his advisors and top staff left, anticipating bankruptcy. However, the guild soon started making record profits through Jäger's ruthless advertising and client-seeking, and within a few years had become a viable competitor to Fortune's Market in the weapons sector.

With his newfound riches, Jäger became well-known. He changed his name to Yeager to minimize pronunciation problems and began looking for other things to round off his life of luxury.

His manor--a welcome escape from the small apartment he'd been living in in town--was a noble's old summer house that had been abandoned once the guild presence in Dahngrest had gotten strong. Yeager had it carefully restored and took to living there on the weekends.

He also went looking for investment opportunities in the empire. Along with the clients and stocks he found, he took to donating to some charities and orphanages. At one of the orphanages he met two young twins, Gauche and Droite, and decided to adopt them, as he had always wanted children.

Currently, Yeager's business is going strong, he has a loving family, and he's otherwise settled into a relatively stable existence. Though that, of course, may very well change.


Did you read the rules? My badass scyflebow is manlier than your pow hammer.


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[Flynn//Gauche]

Ffff... Yeager-face~<3 I didn't get to know your Yeager very well behind some trolling with Lion, but we're gonna have fun here. ;D Accepted.

...Now to finish Gauche.