All of this is original material with inspiration, please don't rip. Posting this up for anyone interested in the depth behind my original character Kasch.

Art by myself:

: Kasch : Full Body Reference
: Kasch Aesir : Reference Sheet

: Kasch : Corner
: Kasch : Bust
: Kasch : Relax
: Kasch : Repose
: Kasch : Youth
: Kasch : Closed
: Kasch : Back
: Kasch : Militia Gryphon
: Kasch x Chris : Pistol Concept
: Kasch : Gryphon Sketch

Drawings by other artists: [UPDATED]

- Kasch
- Kasch Portrait, Kasch doodle I and Kasch doodles II
- Could it be worse?, Kasch, Kasch doodle
- Kasch
- Kookoo

Fanart is welcome and loved.

Basics

Character Name: Kasch Aesir ( KASH, E-sear ) ( German: ‘like a blackbird’, Norse: ‘of the gods’ )
Gender: Male
Age: 29
Race: Pureblood Gryphon
Nationality: German
Member Group: Paris Guard
Living Situation: Paris Guard Barracks/Small personal office


In-Depth

Character Appearance:

In the army, Kasch was given the nickname “QuickEmerald” early on, due entirely to the nature of the Gryphon’s strange moving style. He is never at rest, and rookies often joked that he slept with his patched eye open. This combines with the fact that he moves with an extremely fluid grace, general body suited to a sweeping stride while his tail constantly lashes and feathers never cease to ruffle. He is generally silent to a fault, able to maneuver his expansive limbs and accoutrements soundlessly and his voice doesn’t rise without due cause.

Kasch stands at six feet, seven inches and his body is relatively limber and wiry, all lean muscle on a small, long frame. His fur is medium length and plush, growing in length luxuriously at the tail, elbows and hocks. His mane is shaggy and falls unevenly, growing over scar tissue. Despite having raptor wings that more closely resemble a sharp hawk’s, their seven foot wingspan (fourteen feet collectively) is fletched with owl-like muffled feathers. Kasch’s ears can swivel with ease but tend to stay close to his head and hung low, with sharp funneled hearing. His tail is flexible but not prehensile, structured like a snow leopard’s. Kasch has flat teeth with slightly accented canines and sharp incisors that are quite capable of cracking a walnut. His tongue is pointed, something he employs in taunting enemies.

Kasch has a general disdain for human clothing yet his plumage is so striking that he chooses to cover it in order to conceal himself. He wears a black leather eye patch on his right eye and a long black trench coat or jacket, though anything else he cannot do, therefore the coat stays buttoned past his mane in public. Kasch has thick, heavy paw pads and darker feet than the rest of his fur with heavy ‘feathering’ that often trails in the dust, something he has to clean thoroughly every night that he can. His hind claws are retractable and well-groomed, therefore sharpened. The talons on his hands are heavy and dulled with use. Past his elbows that end in heavy ruffs are ashen black arms, the only naturally dark part of his body, mottled in heavy scaled plating. His avian fingers are rough and leathery with dry, smooth palms.

Kasch is an alcoholic and starts drinking when he wakes, often carrying a silver hip flask. Due to his drinking habits he always has at least trace amounts of alcohol in his blood. His poison of choice is Wild Turkey bourbon whiskey, but he'll drink import beer like water. He also smokes and often disregards indoor rules against the habit, being rather elitist and only smoking Lucky Strikes—one of only two cigarette brands that aren’t animal tested.

A leather strap fitted around each upper thigh holsters an array of obsidian throwing knives that Kasch is absolutely deadly with. He employs his wings to give them an extra kick after release, even changing their trajectory like homing needles with his wind stirring.


Personality:

Kasch is something of a tiger, solitary and exact with expressions kept to a bridled level that he only unleashes in calculated amounts. He is calm and collected, something that heavily belies his extremely cruel and unsettled nature beneath. It is not uncommon for him to drop comments that are highly out of line, if only because he can get away with it, something of a leftover personality tick from when he was youthful and livelier. He has a wicked perverseness and is prone to treating his lovers more like prey, hunting them down, taunting them cat-and-mouse-style and throwing them away.

Kasch is actually very irritable and liable to snap at the most unexpected moments, sometimes at the smallest provocation. He has been issued several warnings within the system and dealt with in military court where his outbreaks have been waived and covered up due to his prestige, though he walks a very fine line. A fine like he likes to traipse. Kasch, like most non-humans, never fought with guns and has killed others with his bare claws and has no remorse for tearing up another during a simple bar fight.

Due to his vast array of strange looks and behaviors he has inspired countless rumors and barrack urban legends. Among them are the assumptions that he doesn’t really sleep, that he flies around especially at night to eavesdrop, that he’s taken part in cannibalism and countless tall tales about why he wears an eyepatch.


History:

To understand anything about Kasch, one must first take into consideration the race he was borne from. Upper-tier Gryphons were once a proud people, a group of beings struck of such natural regality and fierceness that they commanded respect with their existence alone, something which afforded them a comfortable lifestyle in the harsh, cliff side regions of Germany.

That all changed with the fall. Gryphons fought tooth and claw in their own war away from humans, uninterested in the concerns of others. To say their race was decimated would be kind, for they were strong yet thought far too highly of themselves. Now the remaining Gryphons live as a force of missionaries and expensive bodyguards, lending their muscles and claws to the highest bidder. What pride they have they reserve for their own function. Much like Greek gods they may aid humans in battles on whichever side they fancy, little passions attached. In fact, their nature is easily compared to Spartan civilisation.

Without much in the way of family ties, Kasch grew up on his own in a lifestyle akin to an extremely pampered pit bull. As a fledgling he merely approached a manor and was drafted in to constantly keep within his sights the household child. A relatively effortless job, as not many were keen on picking on a boy who had such a wild looking beast tailing him at every turn, yet it embittered the boy who began to try and evade Kasch.

It was when one night Kasch alighted on the back lawn during a dinner party with the half-clothed runaway boy in his claws, thoroughly riddled in precise scratches, that he was discharged. Kasch learned humbleness; Kasch learned that no matter how good a job he did he was still liable to be shot in the head like a cur if he acted ‘strangely’ in the eyes of humans. After that, then seventeen, Kasch discovered a small group of demi-humans, offspring of creatures like himself with fleshborns. At first disgusted, Kasch finally befriended a large houndish boy called Kaiser and went on to have his services rented out.

After four years of odd jobs, regular nights out drinking with the boys and learning to fuck other demi-humans (never humans—especially not the kind that employed you or the daughters of the sort) a conflict arose. Then a draft. Kaiser volunteered, and so Kasch followed his trusted friend and comrade.

The Germans came out on top, and Kasch was awarded with high honors for his bravado and injury in the field. Kaiser breathed his last in the cradle of his wing, and Kasch went into a blind rage that tore an opening in the left flank of the opposing forces.

He remembers nothing past Kaiser convulsing and pulling out his mane in trying to speak his last. The sentence never got out, and it haunts Kasch to this day. No one in his ranks really knows who inflicted the most damage on the Gryphon, whose large mantle has only grown over great tears at his jugular and eye was quickly hidden in the nursing station. One very young human girl attempted to save his sight but could only manage to suture the broad scarring severing the entire right side of his face. The keloid scars still rise in two vertical lines from upper eyelid to cheek apple.

Kasch’s other friends soon stopped attempting to patch things with him for his personality had completely shifted. He’d gone from an extremely playful, lewd and lively youth to stoic and irritable adult without transition. Alienating himself to his work, he scaled the branches of the military until he felt safe and people stopped questioning him.

Three months after his twenty-ninth birthday and a dry spell in the shaky German forces, Kasch’s presence was requested in Paris. With nothing to lose or leave behind, Kasch accepted, assuming a position as colonel of a small Parisian Guard. Kasch was used to the front lines, after all, and the French military offered him far more solitude and freedom.

Room for him to stretch his wings.


Miscellaneous:

- Is extremely touchy about his wings, especially due to the conflict they’ve spurred in his life. He tends to keep them very close to his body.

- Doesn’t like to be touched. Often prey to children and strangers petting him or pulling his tail, something which he reacts very severely to.

- Is actually very ribald, only in a wry manner.

- Is a boomingly loud drunk.

- His alcohol tolerance is high due to his almost constant intake, and his blood alcohol level is usually already intoxicated when he wakes up from the night prior.

- When his anger is incited, his pain tolerance skyrockets. He doesn’t think twice about personal injury when it comes to taking down an opponent, much like a Berserker.

- Despite his best friend of four years being a demi-human (and very much so more human in appearance), Kasch is highly prejudiced. He tolerates humans and demi-humans but regards them as a different level, not particularly lower, simply separate. Their appearance isn’t pleasing to him.

- Lived his life naked until about thirteen, when the boy he watched started to become unnerved by being around a nude male despite Kasch’s reproductive organs being hidden by long fur. He received his first jacket at that time, which had a ruff around the neck and made his mane appear larger.

- Always carries his knives, a hip flask, a metal cigarette case and a flip top lighter.

- Has never been in love or appreciated a woman, though he has vague memories of one that made him feel at ease.

- Will put his life on the line for that of a stranger without second thought or question but is by no means a humanitarian. After comments were made on his being a ‘hero’ he waved it off as Gryphon instinct.

- Employs his wings and tails as extra limbs and is notorious for purposely knocking things down with them, such as sweeping items off his desk to emphasize a point.

- Enjoys strategy games, dislikes gambling.

- Is really rather useless in social situations where he isn’t in charge.

- Does not recall his parents first names, yet Aesir is a high caste in Gryphon lineage.