Executioner Knight - Gerhardt the Unwavering

A giant of a man, rumoured to bare Colossal lineage, Gerhardt is a stark sight and a symbol of the Duke’s authority in Canos. Whenever the hulking knight is seen with the Duke, a trail of death is sure to follow. For his status as an executioner is not just for the fanfare of the commoners who wish to witness a beheading, but also as an agent of destruction and retribution. Those who the Duke wishes to be destroyed, but cannot be captured first, are often set upon by Gerhardt who will deal out judgement and death to them and anyone who gets in the way of his goal. Thus is the role of all of the Duke’s Table.

Raised in the village of Etmen, Gerhardt’s stature even as a child earned him awe from adults and fear from his peers. By the time he was twelve winters he towered above all the other men of his village, despite only just entering manhood himself. Many thought this child to be a Colossal of yore, infused with the blood of Men’s rivals in the first era, and perhaps it was true, for Gerhardt’s birth was fatal for his mother, and his father was always unsure if the boy was his own child or not.

Owing to this, he was raised as a workhorse by his father more than a son, who mistreated the boy and took advantage of his towering stature and brutish strength until the boy was old enough and angry enough to simply strangle him to death. When the matter was called to a village tribunal, the Duke of Canos happened to be passing through the village with his envoy. Seeing the young towering boy standing on a gallow, he asked of his crimes. When told, the Duke pardoned Gerhardt, and invited him to join his entourage back to Canos. There the Duke treated Gerhardt kindly, but not with dignity. He was now a warhorse, rather than a draft horse, fitted with new armour every few months as he kept outgrowing his old, and trained to be a ruthless killing machine by the Duke and his bodyguard Roland.

Gerhardt soon became a symbol of the Duke’s power and wrath, and was set upon like a war dog against those who wronged the noble and his family. Rumours began of him employing a Colossal in his midst, who he sent like a vengeful spirit into the dens of lowlives, with one such tale involving Gerhardt being ambushed by a group of Rossa Cartel thugs, only for him to dismember and destroy all of them with his bare hands. Similarly many unsavoury dens of gangs in Canos have been uprooted and destroyed by Gerhardt, sent in as a one man army in most occasions, leaving with crimson stained armour and the heads of the lowlives he was set upon. He had become the Duke’s righteous tool and executioner, becoming one of his elite knights within the Duke’s Table.

When the south side of Canos was gripped by Dragonblight, and it became clear that Bastian the Everknowing was purporting the illness, the Duke sent a small task force consisting of his Table: Gerhardt, Johanna, Lydia and Roland. They were to find Bastian, rend his head from his body and bring it back, ensuring the rest of the fleet at bay could sail in and begin raining fire upon the infected districts from the safety of the water. Though quickly they were separated, and Gerhardt’s already fragile mind was overpowered by a force from beyond, and quickly it rotted away alongside his flesh. Now he listlessly walks through the prison blocks of Quadrata Heights, in search of vermin to crush beneath his boots.