Danny Desoto

Beneath

• Basic Info

  • Name: Danny Desoto
  • Gender: Male
  • Race: Human
  • Age: 32
  • Body Type: Mesomorph
  • Height: 6'
  • Weight: 178lbs
  • Complexion: Medium, tans more than burns
  • Hair: Golden Blond, tendency to form loose coils
  • Eyes: Dark Brown
  • Scars: He appears to have been worked over quite thoroughly
  • Clothing: Loose tunic, black trousers and boots
  • Master (NPC): Quan-Ye

• Biography

  A bit of a heartbreaker, definitely a lawbreaker, Danny grew up in the mid eighteen hundreds, the fourth of seven children. Out of all of them, he alone bore the golden curls of his outlaw father, his siblings following more closely along his mothers side of the family with ruddy brown hair that was more wavy than curly. His mother did her best to bring her children up right, but Danny and the second youngest sibling, a girl with a similar penchant for trouble, just couldn't seem to help straying off the beaten path. As the two of them made it through their teen years, they continued to run afoul of the law, and soon found it better to wander rather than stick around.
  
  Danny's mother ultimately blamed him for leading his sister astray, but truth be told, the sister was the stronger personality and as the mischief turned to outright thievery, she began to gather more ner-do-wells about herself until the two of them had become the leaders of a not unimpressive pack of outlaws. Things stayed pretty good for several years, though they gathered a decent bounty between them their fame never quite got the same headlines as some more familiar names. One reason was they tended to leave their victims alive.
  
  Celebrating one evening after successfully robbing a train, things took a dark turn. One malcontent in a group can turn the mood of even a loyal following, and in the aftermath of the powerstruggle, Danny's sister lay dead. The normally good natured man became sullen and withdrawn, taking to heavy drinking between starting trouble with anyone and everyone. The gang scattered even further, leaving Danny alone most of the time, and he began falling in with truly nasty people.
  
  The eventual culmination of events was a desperate shootout with the law one summer evening. Taken alive, Danny was tried and convicted of plenty of crimes, but there was some issue with what to do with him since his crimes were lesser compared to his peers, stretching the trial out for several days. Looking for a scapegoat for their anger and frustration, a group of local men broke into the jail-house and took Danny and two other men who had been arrested with him and dragged them through the streets to the edge of town where there was a small copse of trees. This copse had seen murder before, one large tree in the center having been quite popular for hangings in the past. Before they were strung up though, the group of locals beat the men severely, hurling curses and insults. It was likely one of the men was dead before the rope went about his neck, but Danny retained enough consciousness to struggle as the noose tightened about his throat, the townsmen hoisting each prisoner bodily until they hung from the branches, the ends of the ropes tied off. It was a slower death than if a horse had been run out from beneath them or a chair kicked out from under, which usually had the effect of breaking the neck. Instead each of the prisoners were left to slowly strangle to death, their wrists bound behind them to prevent escape.
  
  The last thing Danny saw before his vision blacked out was a man standing very still as the rest of the townsfolk milled about or retreated. Where most were looking grim, even uncomfortable, this man was grinning in a disturbing manner, picking at his teeth with a splinter of wood as he stared at each of the men hanging in turn, his eyes locking with Danny's as vision failed, the widening grin the last thing he saw.
  
  When he woke up Danny found himself in a pen, no idea where he was, how he got there. He was wearing coarse clothing, a pair of trousers and a shirt in a non-descript brown. He recalled a disturbing dream from just before he awoke, he was in some horrible place deep underground, like a cave, with trenches filled with fire along the perimeter. He had been naked, surrounded by people who had passed him around like a party favor, except somehow he knew they weren't human, their features subtly wrong, their eyes black with a red undertone. Some cut him, licked the blood that flowed across his skin or outright sucked on the wounds, some struck him, with hands or foreign objects, seeming to get something from the pain they caused, still others did worse things that didn't bear thinking about.
  It was a horrid dream, but he had shaken it off. He was in the bowls of the Tether, though he did not know that at the time, the leering man finishing a transaction with a stranger, gilded bars between Danny and the men. The grinning man had turned before leaving, giving the blond one more sinister smile and tapping his throat.
  Danny felt like liquid flame had wrapped about his neck, had thrashed about in a brief panic before the sensation faded away, his searching fingers finding first smooth metal and polished beads, could find no injury beneath. He looked towards the stairs again, but the man had vanished, Danny would not see him again for some time, if at all.
  
  Danny quickly learned the rules of the slave establishment, he was given lessons in basic servitude, a bit of a headache on both sides since he dug his heels in at first until threatened with being given to the gladiators as a diversion between matches. After that he accepted the lessons and showed proper behavior, he was put out with the rest of the partially trained slaves in a group pen.
  
  Danny's collar, made of gold and pearls, had no clasp. There was a small disc at the front that bridged the two ends of the choker, a single thumb-print in the center. To most there would be little remarkable about the collar or the slave, but to those of demonic heritage, or associated with such, the thumb-print was a calling card, indicating not only he who owned the man, but letting it be known he was specially altered to cater to a variety of demonic appetites. Of course Danny had no clue at first, he was only starting to get his head around the idea he was no longer in his own time, that humans were only a small part of the populace on Guilderheim.
  He learned soon enough.