Mercer

Real Name: Jason

Started Fighting: 1993

Realm: Dur-Demarion

Unit: None

God: Khorne, the Blood God

Fighting Style: Sword and Shield, Two Hander, Florentine

Favored Weapons: Swords, Axes

Battlecry: "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!"

History

The Chaos Wastes are inimical to human life. Cold, barren, teeming with threats to both body and mind. Further north than ever ventured by sane men, a race of tribal men battle each other for the meager resources of the frozen tundra and for the favor of the true masters of the Chaos Wastes: the Four Dark Gods of Chaos. Brothers all, they are known to men as Slaanesh, Tzeentch, Nurgle, and Khorne.

Youth

Mercer was not one of these proto-men, and knew nothing of the Chaos Gods; he came from the land known as the Empire, the son of a minor lord in the city of Altdorf. Raised in luxury, he lorded his father's wealth over the poor of the city. Mercer gave lip-service to the state faith of Sigmar, but felt no real belief. His father arranged for him to be trained as a knight, equipped with the finest plate armor and masterworked weapons. It was here that he discovered a love... no, a lust for war and bloodshed. He became an honored member of the local garrison, and behaved respectfully in the day; he rode forth with his compatriots to battle beastmen, orcs, and ogres that threatened the countryside, acquitting himself well in battle. At night, however, he slipped out of his father's house and slaked his bloodlust on the denizens of the city. At first, Mercer was satisfied with murdering the dregs of society: footpads, whores, beggars. Soon, though, he was driven to spill the blood of more affluent victims; he killed merchants and artisans, sometimes whole families. He began collecting their blood in bottles, and mixed it with his wine to savor it in public.

Finally, Mercer seduced a lord's daughter, drew her out into the night ostenisibly for a midnight tryst, brought her to his hidden lair, and slowly tortured her to death, exsanguinating her completely. The discovery of her drained corpse in the local river brought the full force of the Empire's justice and scores of witchhunters down on the city; the previous deaths had been a worry, but now someone important had died. Fortunately (in a way), it was not long after the alarm that the city's knights were summoned to face an invasion of Chaos adherents pushing through the northern ally-realm of Kislev, and threatening Middenheim and its surrounding areas. The captain who lead Mercer's regiment boasted that the knights of the Empire were invincible, that they would put paid to this "rabble of northern scum" in no time and return home to root out "the monster in our midst".

At War

It was not to be; the Imperial army was brutally smashed by the living wave of Chaos marauders, warriors, mutants, and daemons. The captain died horribly, his horse and legs consumed by a Chaos Spawn and the rest of him left to bleed to death and be eaten away by the monster's acidic saliva. All around him, Mercer's comrades fell one by one, their mounts slain beneath them, their armor pierced, their bodies torn to shreds. Only he remained, desperately laying about himself with the fine longsword his father had given him, the engraved blade and golden crosspiece covered in blood and ichor. Miraculously, he still sat his barded mount, its hooves crushing foes like twin warhammers. As Mercer fought, he felt both fear and excitement; the longer he fought, the more excited and berserk he became. In his mind, he was already dead; all that remained was to draw as much blood as he could before it actually happened.

Mercer crashed through a regiment of marauders, breaking and scattering them, running them down with a savage cry. Suddenly, he found himself facing an elegant warrior, naked except for fine armor sections; he was unsure whether his opponent was male or female. The warrior saluted Mercer with its sinuous sword, and licked across its lips with a freakishly long tongue. Mercer charged with a furious roar; he attacked not out of loyalty to his Empire, but because the enemy was there. His horse was cut from under him on the first pass, but he threw himself bodily onto his enemy, brutally beating the warrior with his free fist, the hilt of his sword, his knees and feet. Throughout the assault, the Chaos warrior never stopped smiling with its needle-sharp teeth. It spun away from him, and Mercer barely parried its sword. The next got past his defense, slicing into his left arm. Mercer's rage overtook him; his vision went red, and then next thing he knew, he was holding the limp body of the Chaos warrior, headbutting its ruined face over and over.

A True Calling

Suddenly, his mind was overwhelmed with an impulse, a presence: go north. He knew nothing but the imperative; he caught a loose horse, and rode it through the oncoming army, oblivious to the fact that the horde parted in front of him. He rode until the horse died under him, then continued on foot, trudging into the frozen north. Mercer pushed forward into the wastes until he reached his destination: a giant pyramid of skulls, humanoid and otherwise, rising up out of the tundra, surrounded by a moat of boiling blood and topped by a huge brass altar. Banners surrounded the altar, all marked with the same skull-like icon. Still mesmerized, Mercer mounted the pile, stepping from skull to skull to make his way to the top. Reaching the apex, he stepped up to the altar, and saw the source of the blood: a fissure in the top of the bronze slab. A voice, powerful and echoing, spoke in his mind: Drink of my bounty, and I will give you enough slaughter to slake even your thirst. Become my champion, and the blood of entire races will be yours to drink. Serve me, and worlds will be yours to murder.

Mercer hardly paused before cupping his frostbitten hands in the flow of blood and bringing them, brimming, to his lips. He drank it down like the finest wine, and licked his fingers clean. Suddenly, a burning sensation ran through his whole body, a fire racing along his arteries and veins that seemed ready to sear away flesh and bone. As it went, it wrought changes; his flesh hardened like leather armor, the hair on his body coarsened and thickened like the pelt of some beast, and the muscles stood out like cables. Even the tatters of his armor and the gore-soaked weapon in his hand transformed. When the process finished, Mercer was garbed in ornate, blackened plate, marked with the eight-pointed star of Chaos and the skull icon of his new lord and master, Khorne. His hand grasped a massive, brutal axe in the shape of the Skull of Khorne, crackling with dark power.

Mercer opened his eyes, now blood red, and spoke for the first time in months in a rusty, rasping voice: "Blood... for the Blood god..."

Fighting History

Mercer wasn't always Mercer; he's been several other "people" over the years. First, he was a half-dwarf were-badger wanna-be paladin of Tyr... the less said of that, the better. Next came Episte Racheson, ostensibly related to Rache of the Elite Blood Falcons. After that, he was briefly Duncan Wallace, an actual ancestor, before settling on Mercer. But, change is part of the nature of Chaos.

Mercer started fighting in Spring of 1993, along with Izareth (then called Torquil), Nanga (known as Fenris), Narlagg, and a few other friends who have since stopped fighting. He learned to fight the hard way, beaten down by Hammer, Thirander, Ivan Darkspear, and Grim Felltooth. He attempted to create a new realm in Connecticut while living there, but was thwarted by the Great Split. He has joined a number of units on a temporary basis; former units include the pre-Triad Brotherhood of the Falcon, the Get of Fenris, and the Uruk-hai.

Events Attended

Ragnarok IX, X, XII, XVI
Equinox most of them
Beltain most of them
Armageddon V

Real Life

Mercer's real name is Jason Francis. He has lived in Middle Tennessee, specificly Nashville and Murfreesboro, for most of his life, with a brief year-and-a-half stint in Connecticut. He is currently a liberal studies student at Middle Tennessee State University, and lives in a nice little house with his way-too-many cats.

Activities

Things Mercer Likes to Do When He's Not Bathing In The Blood Of His Enemies:

• Read
  • Tolkien, David Weber, Dan Abnett, and Harry Turtledove top the reading list.
• Write
  • Working on 1st novel (if he can ever keep from revising and reworking stuff he's already written)
• Skiing
• Play World of Warcraft
• Play Warhammer Fantasy and 40K

Contact Mercer

E-mail: mercer_the_black@yahoo.com