Jon Amraphel

From The Heretic Knowledge Vault

Latest revision as of 13:43, 20 March 2012

Jon Amraphel
Race:	Humans
Gender:	Male
Introduction:	2003/01/24
Appearances
See Jon Amraphel/Appearances
Mentions
2003/11/03, 2006/06/14, 2007/03/19, 2007/03/21, 2007/04/18, 2007/04/20, 2007/09/26, 2007/09/28, 2008/08/27, 2009/05/13, 2009/05/27, 2009/11/23

Jon is an assassin, a member of the Gewehr Wraiths and very good at what he does. He tends to angst a lot, has a thing for poor, helpless women, tries to act meaner than he is, and likes to shoot things. In short, he's the typical anti-hero. He is friends with Mandi, is the brother of Sara, and has had casual (and forgettable) sex with Sarine, although it's fair to say there's more to the story than that.

Jon's father was, ironically, killed by assassins.

Sara was put up for adoption after their mother died and since she kicked him out for joining the guild it took him over a year to hear about this. By then it was too late for him to help Sara, as she was already 'adopted' by the Ensigerum. The guilt he feels over this may explain why he goes out of the way to help out other young girls like Meji. According to Mandi, this isn't the first time it's happened.

He's proficient with firearms, reasonably enough. His preferred weapon seems to be a pistol, which he has used on humans, elves, Ellis (with messy but not permanently fatal results), Nookie (who seems to be just as indestructible as Ellis), and a bunch of leaves he blasts for target practice. However, he has also hauled out a rifle (magically silenced at that, although he's suspicious of it) to try to take out Winston Maurel. He is also proficient with hand-to-hand combat, as Ian discovered the hard way, but again not fatally -- just one of those male-bonding things. There are no indications that he actually uses magic, but he knows enough about it to have detected that Sarine had caused some magical amnesia in him the morning after the night before, even without her fessing up.

He reports, or at least reported before Anita's vendetta against the Wraiths, to a senior Gewehr guy named Gabriel, who's unhappy with the fact that he botched an assassination by getting identified (by Polly) after making the hit. Gabriel's instructions to him to lay low for a while were instrumental in getting him hooked up with Meji. Once he came back into the business, he was assigned the Winston Maurel gig, which turned out to be a trap. When that gig didn't end with the expected dead cardinal, he once again took off on the lam, this time accompanied by his sister (unwillingly from her point of view) and Sarine (unwillingly from his). At the very least, that got him out of the way of the ensuing massacre of the Wraiths ordered by Anita and Paul.

He had the rare privilege of visiting Praenubilus Astu with Sarine and Sara, as they tried to extract Meji from the clutches of the elves. In the process, he and his sis became the first humans to address the Elven Council in an incredibly long time. He overacted the hick-from-the-sticks role in so doing, but hey, it worked. He also got to help Sarine scandalize an elven spectator generally believed to be Sarine's Mom, although we don't know that for sure.

Final act

As with all humans, he eventually joins the sad ranks of the Living Impaired, as we learn in the Epilogue. However, rather atypically for Wraiths, he apparently dies of natural causes at a reasonably old age, after 35 years of marriage to Sarine. From her point of view, of course, that isn't nearly enough. However, they have made sure that the Amraphel blood line will be continued after he's gone, which probably provides Sarine with some consolation, although she's pretty well fated for Aetern Desiderium any way you cut it. Jon's views on the matter are not recorded.

Gallery

Being a major character, Jon has an unusually fine series of images in the strip that help show his complicated personality to good effect. Check out his photo gallery for a sampling.

The funny thing is Proto-Jon and Proto-Sara both started life as basically the same character. I just could never decide if I wanted the main character to be a smart ass guy in his late twenties, or a sullen, nearly emotionless girl... beside gender/personality, they were nearly identical, same outfit, (okay, almost, the female version didn't have pants) same background, etc.