Siegmund Heissenrech

Appearance
Natural Hair/Eye Color: Black hair, brown eyes. His hair looks like he had a very nice haircut about two months ago but he hasn't bothered to get a trim since then.

Height: 5'6"

Body Type: Average

Noticeable Scars/Tattoos and Location: None

Clothing Style: Coats my friend. Siegmund wears a lot of coats. He is something of a coat connoisseur, you might say. He doesn't even care for a specific style or general appearance. He will go from a black leather duster to a women's coat with floral embroidery and not even understand why you think that is weird. They are both really neat looking coats okay!

Formerly he wore a lot of black under his coats and took great pains to look like the kind of person who doesn't give a fuck how they look. (Spoilers: he gives many fucks.) He spent lots of time cultivating an image of an untouchable enigmatic badass and his clothes were a reflection of that.

Now, however, the coats (a rather small collection at the moment, alas) are accompanied by dark leather armour and dark shades of simple fabric. It's really the sort of thing he wished he could wear on a daily basis back home: cool, mysterious, and dangerous.

History
Siegmund's life was boring with a capital BORING. He comes from an old money German family that maintains their wealth on a chain of funeral homes/crematoriums. He went to a prestigious Gymnasium that he hated, earning grades that were passable but not particularly noteworthy. He passed his Abitur with similar mediocrity, and when it came time to pick a university, he...well...didn't. His father, Hans Heissenrech, was pushing for him to get a business degree so he could take over the family business, but truth be told, he'd rather leave it to his younger sister, Katja. At least she was more business-minded. He had absolutely no interest in taking up his father's mantle.

In actuality, what he really wanted to do was attend rabbinical seminary school. It was something he'd been throwing around in his mind for years without ever saying as much out loud. The farthest he got was talking to his rabbi about where he'd gone and how he knew it was the right decision for him. Beyond that, it was a notion he entertained only in the very private darkness of his heart, held back by fear of ridicule and of fatherly disappointment. What kind of mysterious badass wants to be a rabbi anyway? Maybe it was just a phase based on curiosity, maybe his interest in halakhah wasn't faith driven at all, maybe he only wanted to do it because it'd get him out of the family business forever, and it wasn't like he wanted a congregation, he just wanted a deeper understanding of his religion--he could be getting a real degree at a real school, you know?

But these doubts and uncertainties were so strong that he didn't go to University despite his father's insistence. He's been out of school a year now, suffering his family's pushing in silence. At his father's insistence, he took a job at one of the funeral homes so he would be doing something his family considered productive while he decided what to do with his life. But he hated it and spent most of his spare time on Zen, talking to the friends he'd made in America (the game was excellent for his English!), and drawing fanart.

Recently he got fed up enough with his situation that he started discussing his thoughts with his rabbi. With his rabbi's encouragement, he began to research seminary behind his parents' backs. He was fretting over his first application when, well. He ended up in Zenderael with absolutely no warning.

Life takes those unexpected turns on you, sometimes.

Internet/Zen History
He went by Deathbringer online, and that was the name of his assassin in-game. Maxed out, a PVP badass, yeah, it was pretty sweet.

Deathbringer is actually quite popular in the Zen community. Probably because he's a wonderful artist--they always make a lot of friends. He never bragged about it, though. His art was just a thing he did, not something he considered particularly worthy of praise. He did commissions and was well-known for his Zen fanart, so if you have a favourite piece, chances are good it was done by him.

He never roleplayed on his assassin, but he did do it pretty casually on a Cleric named Wolfram. It was...kind of a shameful secret pleasure. He liked exploring the strength of faith and having somebody with no doubts whatsoever about what they believed in. He kept it on the down-low that Wolfram was played by Deathbringer, but his friends--the ones who got RP fanart--they knew.

Personality
Siegmund comes off as apathetic. He doesn't care about many things, except he cares an awful lot about looking like he doesn't care. There are things he does feel very passionately about, like art and faith, but he keeps these things very close to his heart. He feels like they're silly things to be passionate about and doesn't want to be shot down.

He tries very hard to present the image of an aloof, stone-cold, untouchable badass, but if you spend long enough around him, it's easy to see through the facade. He's easily frustrated and gets pissy when he's upset, and he bitches endlessly about his annoyances. Under the thin veneer of apathy, Siegmund is actually a very angry young man who feels like he has no outlets for that anger. He feels out of place and misunderstood and he has internalized it as rage.

The bottom line is that he doesn't know who he is or what he wants to do with himself. The person he's tried to be his whole life, this aloof guy who doesn't give a fuck, is not who he finds himself turning out to be. That guy wouldn't want to be a rabbi, and if he did, then he certainly wouldn't let his family's opinions stop him from pursuing it. Siegmund isn't living up to his own expectations and it's left him uncertain, insecure, and trying desperately to fit himself back into a mold he outgrew years ago because this amorphous self that he has to define on his own is frightening and uncomfortable.

Flaws
Siegmund often hurts others unintentionally through the facade he's trying to keep up. A badass doesn't care, right? Except he does care, and he feels bad, but he feels like he can't apologize without losing face, so he'll just keep up that apathetic wall and pretend the reactions don't bother him. I'd be lying if I said this never caused him trouble.

He's so desperate to shove himself back into a comfortable box that no longer fits, that he's essentially sabotaging his own personal growth. If he just accepted that he isn't a stupid teenager anymore and embraced all those things he worries are stupid or uncool, he'd be much better for it. But he won't. Because he doesn't want to be a dorky rabbi-in-training who pretends to be someone else on the internet for fun. He wants to be the kind of person he'd be intimidated and impressed to meet. This leads to him making decisions based on what he should want and not what he does want.

He isn't lazy, not exactly, but he cannot motivate himself for anything he doesn't want to do. This is why he got straight C's in school. He just could not force himself to care, so he underachieved like a pro even though he was smart enough to be an A student if he'd tried. It's why he'll drag himself to work and do the very bare minimum expected of him, and then come home and spend six hours on a digital painting that will take him a week to finish. It has occasionally gotten him a reputation as a flake, because if he agreed to do something and then decided later that he really didn't want to do it, he just wouldn't.

Etc.
He's not blind without his glasses, but he has a detail range of about one foot. Beyond that he can still see well enough to get around, but everything is fuzzy around the edges, like a picture out of focus, and the further out you go the more things just look like blotches of colour. He could survive without his glasses, but he'd rather not have to. He's had them so long he considers them a feature of his face and he thinks he looks odd without them.

English is his third language, behind German and Yiddish. He learned it in school (sort of, he took English classes for a couple years anyway), but didn't really take an interest in actually learning it until he began interacting with English speakers online. His written English is actually quite good because he learned it through immersion from native speakers over several years, but he had very few opportunities to practice his spoken English. He speaks with a heavy accent and frequently trips over prepositions and certain word choices that would make him sound German even without the accent. (He kicks himself every time he says "do you like" instead of "would you like" but he keeps doing it.)

His whole family shares a love for gallows humour and they're all incredibly morbid people. Siegmund is no different. He was known to be a bit of a troll online, especially because he'd learn what freaked people out and use that against them. He just liked seeing their reactions.

He has a terrible pollen allergy. Springtime is miserable for him, and don't ever think you're being sweet by giving him flowers. He managed to keep it under control back home, but that medication is not available in Zen whoops

Siegmund is asexual and he likes it that way. Anything to do with sex grosses him out. He's biromantic, but that's something he's never given any thought to and it's never had cause to come up before. If he's had crushes in the past, he didn't recognize them as such.

He wears a Star of David around his neck at all times. After landing in Zen, he doesn't even take it off to sleep anymore. His mother gave it to him right after his Bar Mitzvah and told him that it was a symbol of his place in the community and a reminder of where he came from. He'll never admit it, but he took her words to heart and the pendant means an awful lot to him.

Even in Zenderael, he's trying to keep kosher and observe shabbat as much as he possibly can. Being in a strange land is no reason to forget tradition. Of course it's not always possible, but Jewish law provides exceptions for breaking it if you need to in order to survive. But he hides behind that provision more than he should.

Class
Assassin.

Look, it just seemed like the natural choice. He couldn't very well be a cleric--Zen clerics don't follow G-d, you know? Truth be told, he could have picked something that suited him better. A spellsword, maybe. Or a hunter. Even a rogue. Assassin? He picked it because it was cool. Because it sounded like the kind of thing he should want to be.

He's trying to like it. Really, he is. But maybe he's not cut out for it.

There's an awful lot of rationalizing and justification and doublethink going on for him to reconcile his class with his faith. Somewhere deep down he realizes he is majorly fucking up, but it's a terrifying thing to acknowledge, so he'd like to put that off as long as possible if you don't mind.

Forum info

 * Username: Deathbringer
 * Avatar: Fanart he did of his assassin looking like a badass
 * Signature: Links to his art gallery and his commissions page, which has examples of previous commissions and price ranges. The sketches are cheap and the full paintings are pricy.

CR

 * Chisaki Andrews: A prickly hunter that he had to work with to escape a trap, she expressed disdain for religion and he's a little nervous around her which makes him be a jerk to her
 * Eileen Wallace: Evelyn's friend, kind of sanctimonious about him being an assassin
 * Evelyn Marks: Kind of annoying, but they've sort of become friends by inertia at this point
 * Harriet Webster: Met her as Nova, she agreed to help him out and then didn't warn him when Nova became real
 * Jamie Howard: Ferrus's player, casual acquaintances at best but Jamie considers them friends
 * Nova Kylethe: Whoops that wasn't Harriet, planning to pay him back by scaring/trolling him
 * Rhys Elena: His bro, they were friends before entering Zen and have continued that friendship now that they've found each other there; Siegmund has been assigned to keep tabs on him
 * Tristan: Punkass rogue who stole his Star of David (Rhys got it back)
 * Virelai the Nameless: If you leave these two in a room together she is going to walk out convinced that every ghost story and legend she ever heard was true and she needs to do something about it right now