Simon Ashlock (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silverhands) wrote2019-09-05 08:00 am
silverhands) wrote2019-09-05 08:00 am
Extended History
Simon was born in the small fishing-and-farming town of Lakeshire, in the medieval-ish kingdom of Stormwind, on the war-torn planet of Azeroth. Not wanting to follow in his father's footsteps as a blacksmith, and having always been a bit more devoutly religious than the rest of his family, he left home at the age of thirteen to train as a paladin. The Church of the Holy Light--to which his particular paladin tradition belongs--is a faith with largely Catholic-esque traditions and sacraments, and Simon has taken strict vows of honesty and compassion and somewhat more lax vows of chastity. (He's pretty adept by now at finding loopholes in the first two while still following the letter of them, and equally practiced at pretty much just disregarding the last. The more conservative paladins in his order have sneeringly nicknamed him 'Sir Marcus,' after the paladin protagonist of an infamous series of erotic novels.)
Despite his reputation now for being a little too relaxed with the paladin code, he'd begun his career as a fiery zealot, unwavering in his dedication to evangelism and committed to eradicating every trace of the undead from the face of Azeroth. To that end, he sought to join a notoriously dangerous and violent cult called the Scarlet Crusade, believing them the only force truly capable of fighting the enemies of the Light. Unbeknownst to him, the Scarlets' policies included a monthlong quarantine period for all aspiring members, to ensure that they weren't carrying the undead plague themselves and attempting to infiltrate the order. Thirty days of starvation and mistreatment in a miserable dungeon was more than enough time for Simon to reflect on the error of his ways and come out of the ordeal a changed man, and when the quarantine was up, he ran for the hills and swore to be more moderate in his political views from then on.
He has a long military service record, having worked his way up through the ranks of the Stormwind army throughout the various conflicts, catastrophes and alien invasions that have besieged Azeroth in the past decade, and he usually works as a mercenary when he's not in active service to his king or his knightly order. (He prefers the term "adventurer." It's the same thing.) His father and brother were veterans of the smaller, ongoing conflicts between Stormwind and its allies (known fittingly as "the Alliance") and the amalgamation of orcs, trolls, goblins and other such peoples known as "the Horde," but those battles were fought much closer to home than Simon always preferred to be. Lakeshire was a stifling and unpleasant place even before Simon's fiancee decided to marry his brother instead while Simon was out of town, but that cemented his desire to be as far away from his entire family as humanly possible. The universe eventually obliged him with an opportunity to sign up for a tour of duty on another planet entirely. As a young sergeant of 23, his duties in Outland never took him very far from the hold to which he was assigned, but the ceaseless bombardment of said hold by huge flaming demons gave him more than enough opportunity to prove his valor.
Soon thereafter, when Azeroth was threatened again by the massive undead armies of the Lich King, Simon traveled to the continent of Northrend as a representative of the paladin order of the Silver Hand, where he offered his services in defense of the holy ground of another order, the Argent Dawn. The ensuing battle resulted in the Argent Dawn's leader, Highlord Tirion Fordring, merging his order with Simon's to form a new one, the Argent Crusade, which would ally with some of the Lich King's newly-freed undead thralls to take him down for good.
Simon wasn't at the battle where that happened, but despite his initial resentment at having his paladin order unilaterally disbanded by a guy who wasn't even in charge of it, he remained from there on out a faithful Argent Crusader and a devoted servant of the Highlord he quickly came to hero-worship. The next few years were spent assisting his fellow Argent knights in cleaning up areas of the world that had been devastated by the undead rampage, and his skills were then put to a great deal of further use in cleaning up the mess left behind after an angry dragon stomped half the planet into rubble. Simon made something of a name for himself as part of the war effort against the dragon's minions, and distinguished himself further when the Alliance-Horde conflict came to a brutal and protracted head in the newly-discovered territory of Pandaria. The armies of Azeroth, Alliance and Horde alike, had been hemorrhaging soldiers and experienced officers since the devastating Northrend campaign six years before, and by the time a new threat surfaced--the invasion of the Iron Horde, a massive wave of orcish conquerors from an alternate universe--the Alliance thought Simon as good a person as any to promote to commander and assign to a garrison on the orcs' home planet while everyone Azeroth could spare worked to stop them.
With Azeroth considerably weakened by years of constant battering from all sides, its old extraterrestrial enemies, the demonic Burning Legion, thought it an opportune time to strike and conquer the planet once and for all. Its first invasion was an unmitigated disaster for the Azerothian defenders, wiping out the leadership of both Alliance and Horde and the Highlord of the Argent Crusade in one fell swoop. Devastated by the loss of his beloved king, his paladin idol, and an entire squadron of his comrades-in-arms, Simon returned from the Broken Shore vowing bloody revenge on all demonkind.
After another drawn-out war that ended up as more of a space opera than anything, the demons were duly vanquished. Unfortunately, in the course of the vanquishing, Azeroth got stabbed through its core with a planet-sized sword and started bleeding Magic Blood. The Horde and the Alliance immediately started another war over the ownership of the magic blood, as one does, and Simon was shipped off once again to battle orcs and secure new allies as a member of an elite squad known as theSpecial Victims Unit 7th Legion. He's getting tired of it at this point, but what can you do.
Despite his reputation now for being a little too relaxed with the paladin code, he'd begun his career as a fiery zealot, unwavering in his dedication to evangelism and committed to eradicating every trace of the undead from the face of Azeroth. To that end, he sought to join a notoriously dangerous and violent cult called the Scarlet Crusade, believing them the only force truly capable of fighting the enemies of the Light. Unbeknownst to him, the Scarlets' policies included a monthlong quarantine period for all aspiring members, to ensure that they weren't carrying the undead plague themselves and attempting to infiltrate the order. Thirty days of starvation and mistreatment in a miserable dungeon was more than enough time for Simon to reflect on the error of his ways and come out of the ordeal a changed man, and when the quarantine was up, he ran for the hills and swore to be more moderate in his political views from then on.
He has a long military service record, having worked his way up through the ranks of the Stormwind army throughout the various conflicts, catastrophes and alien invasions that have besieged Azeroth in the past decade, and he usually works as a mercenary when he's not in active service to his king or his knightly order. (He prefers the term "adventurer." It's the same thing.) His father and brother were veterans of the smaller, ongoing conflicts between Stormwind and its allies (known fittingly as "the Alliance") and the amalgamation of orcs, trolls, goblins and other such peoples known as "the Horde," but those battles were fought much closer to home than Simon always preferred to be. Lakeshire was a stifling and unpleasant place even before Simon's fiancee decided to marry his brother instead while Simon was out of town, but that cemented his desire to be as far away from his entire family as humanly possible. The universe eventually obliged him with an opportunity to sign up for a tour of duty on another planet entirely. As a young sergeant of 23, his duties in Outland never took him very far from the hold to which he was assigned, but the ceaseless bombardment of said hold by huge flaming demons gave him more than enough opportunity to prove his valor.
Soon thereafter, when Azeroth was threatened again by the massive undead armies of the Lich King, Simon traveled to the continent of Northrend as a representative of the paladin order of the Silver Hand, where he offered his services in defense of the holy ground of another order, the Argent Dawn. The ensuing battle resulted in the Argent Dawn's leader, Highlord Tirion Fordring, merging his order with Simon's to form a new one, the Argent Crusade, which would ally with some of the Lich King's newly-freed undead thralls to take him down for good.
Simon wasn't at the battle where that happened, but despite his initial resentment at having his paladin order unilaterally disbanded by a guy who wasn't even in charge of it, he remained from there on out a faithful Argent Crusader and a devoted servant of the Highlord he quickly came to hero-worship. The next few years were spent assisting his fellow Argent knights in cleaning up areas of the world that had been devastated by the undead rampage, and his skills were then put to a great deal of further use in cleaning up the mess left behind after an angry dragon stomped half the planet into rubble. Simon made something of a name for himself as part of the war effort against the dragon's minions, and distinguished himself further when the Alliance-Horde conflict came to a brutal and protracted head in the newly-discovered territory of Pandaria. The armies of Azeroth, Alliance and Horde alike, had been hemorrhaging soldiers and experienced officers since the devastating Northrend campaign six years before, and by the time a new threat surfaced--the invasion of the Iron Horde, a massive wave of orcish conquerors from an alternate universe--the Alliance thought Simon as good a person as any to promote to commander and assign to a garrison on the orcs' home planet while everyone Azeroth could spare worked to stop them.
With Azeroth considerably weakened by years of constant battering from all sides, its old extraterrestrial enemies, the demonic Burning Legion, thought it an opportune time to strike and conquer the planet once and for all. Its first invasion was an unmitigated disaster for the Azerothian defenders, wiping out the leadership of both Alliance and Horde and the Highlord of the Argent Crusade in one fell swoop. Devastated by the loss of his beloved king, his paladin idol, and an entire squadron of his comrades-in-arms, Simon returned from the Broken Shore vowing bloody revenge on all demonkind.
After another drawn-out war that ended up as more of a space opera than anything, the demons were duly vanquished. Unfortunately, in the course of the vanquishing, Azeroth got stabbed through its core with a planet-sized sword and started bleeding Magic Blood. The Horde and the Alliance immediately started another war over the ownership of the magic blood, as one does, and Simon was shipped off once again to battle orcs and secure new allies as a member of an elite squad known as the