- " I vow to urge caution when I see recklessness, regardless of what position giving such warnings may put me in."
- —Danior Ackerle
Danior Ackerle Garridan[1] is a former member of the Order of the Templar and a founding member of the Keepers of Knowledge.
Biography[]
Hailing from Gilneas, Danior comes from a barely upper-class family suffering from heavy delusions about their supposed status, infamous among nobles and commoners alike for their haughty attitude and occasionally bizarre behavior. While he didn't have a mean bone in his body to get into any real trouble, he still cavorted about as a teenager and managed to make himself a bright embarrassment for the rest of the family. He dreamed of travel, and even talked his sister into running away with him--
But giant walls sometimes show up and ruin one's plans.
While his sister got a job waiting tables and got on with her life, he couldn't hold down a job for long, and bounced from city to town to alley to gutter for a few years, eventually finding himself penniless in the Capitol. When the Worgen infested even there, he found himself in the position of a cowardly defender who'd never held a gun in his life. He busied himself with evacuations and barricade construction, and it was while nailing a half-ruined door to some scrap wood in an attempt to slow the ravaging beasts that he got bitten.
His memory of his time feral is clear, but he doesn't talk about it. Even then, he was a fear-driven creature rather than rage-driven, but a fear-bite can be worse than one driven by bloodlust. His hands were no longer clean of blood.
He had little to do with the Forsaken invasion, being restored to some semblance of sanity and tossed on an ship to evacuate just in time to see the smoke wafting up from the horizon. It would have done him well to stay in Darnassus and learn from the Druids for a time, and had he, he might be wandering around in bear form right now, but the first thing he wanted to see after all that time in the wilds was some human civilization, and almost immediately after arriving on the Teldrassil docks, he hopped a boat to Stormwind.
He spent months in the city trying to learn how to use the Light from a priestess he'd taken up following around, but her travels took him to more dangerous lands than he was willing to go to, and he was a wandering homeless man in stained apprentice's blue robes and a tattered tophat (because if he wasn't going to hold up stereotypes, -who would?-) when the Golden Law picked him up.
With proper training, he picked up the use of the Light fairly quickly. The actual fighting, he took more time to adjust to, especially back when he was reluctant to take on his worgen form, but he grew more and more comfortable as a caster, and more and more accustomed to the strict life of the holy order. The Law was the first responsibility he didn't run away from--For a while, at least. It was during his time in the Law that he met his wife, adopted a child, and settled down.
But the Law had, and still has, a knack for making enemies. At home or on the field, there were a lot of wolves at their heels, and one regiment fraught with bad luck, Dan fell into the hands of one such group. He was retrieved, more mangled than before, but found his mental and emotional health in a sharp decline for months after the incident. Between that and the troubles at home it sparked, he eventually caved and resorted to his old go-to solution: He ran. Not from his home, but from his responsibilities with the Law. He handed in his tabard one morning, and was gone.
Still-- With a household to keep afloat, he couldn't go back to drifting. He needed a job, and an old friend from the Law provided one-- For a time. After a brief stint of working for an archaeology group with loose affiliations with the Explorer's League under Noragnir's leadership, he found himself back in the city, and spent a few months working for the White Sigil. Tensions arose between them and their old allies in the Law, however, and shortly after the official alliance between them was dissolved, Danior came back to the Law as a recent widower, desperate for some way to be of value to those around him. (Another turn-in of a tabard in the wee hours of the morning, another note, another reptition of a pattern.)
He was offered back his position as Confessor, and took it with the hopes of making some dent in the building problems he saw in the Law, but quickly found himself and those around him swept up by change. Changes in leadership, in methods, in faces. Finally, in name, with the Order's break -away from the Church.
With the invasion of the Iron Horde, he found himself with a decision to make-- One that took no time at all. With a home again with Annahira, and an unexpected child on the way, a suicide mission like that isn't one he can, in good conscience, undertake.
There's been a change in him, recently. The marked exhaustion, the forced jovial tone, they're still there, but without as much of the frantic energy. Without the crying, or shaking, or running. There's something entirely resigned about him at this point as he watches almost every member of the Order he'd come to see as family leave for another world on a suicide mission.
The break from the Church has allowed him to continue his halted studies of Shadow magic-- Something he intends to throw himself into so as to better protect those around him, and seek a personal sense of balance.
With a hood up to hide the fear in his eyes, and a world again in violent flux around him, the only things left on Dan's mind are being there for those who are left, and trying to help keep them bound together-- Because with the whole of the Order's regiments pulled for a war, he can't shake the feeling that they've left themselves open for terrors on a lot of fronts, back at home...
Physical appearance[]
As a shaggy, black-furred worgen, or a scraggly, black-haired human with a hook nose, Danior does not cut a very intimidating figure. Average height, getting doughy around the middle from a more leisurely life as of late... The kind of person you'd expect to get by on luck and occasional adrenaline-fueled bursts of speed more than strength-- Though from the looks of him, that strategy hasn't worked very well. His left arm is gone from the elbow, and his trimmed beard only partially covers one of three similar scars on his face, thick, angry red lines with vein-like patterns branching off of them.
He's got the look of a sleepless worrier, mouth usually twitched into a faint, concerned frown, posture typically betraying a fair level of discomfort with just about anything going on around him. Sometimes his face will crack into a grin with a nervous laugh, but even when he seems to be enjoying himself, his eyes never lose that tired and wary look.
His accent betrays his birthplace, and the smell of tobacco following him betrays his bad habits.
Personality and traits[]
Well-meaning, a little too optimistic (less so these days, but it's still there), and eager to assume the best in people, Danior likes to think of himself as a likeable guy. More than a little on the jittery side, forgetful, unshakably naive, and prone to worsening situations with the best of intentions at heart the whole time. He's protective, but hesitant to act on his own, and seeks validation and leadership from those around him. He hates being alone for extended periods of time, and tends to surround himself with people even on the days where he's too lost in his own darker thoughts to get any meaningful interaction out of it. Even sitting quietly at a table, uninvolved in any of the bustle in the room at large, is a huge comfort to him. He's plagued by self-doubt, but is nothing if not persistent. Not one to give up easily, he'll keep trying to right mistakes and help others out even to the point where everyone around him thinks it's a better idea for him to sit down and let the level-headed adults handle things.