Backstory: Daniel Renoir began his life in the small mountain town of East Hollow, made up almost entirely of Sentinels, an ancient class of warriors made to fight the monsters of the world. He grew up a normal child, save for the whole "training to be a professional warrior" thing. He made friends, got in trouble at school, started using daggers and a particular set of bladed gauntlets, and so life continued as normal until he reached the age of 14.
Deep in his training, Daniel was stationed at one of the upper guard posts on the wall of the fortified town when the tragedy struck. Chaotics, THOUSANDS of them, came rushing out of the surrounding wilderness and poured onto East Hollow like a tide of burning oil. The monsters crashed into, over, and through the wall on Daniel's side, where the poor teenager had been struck dumb by the sheer sight of the attack. By the time he was able to make even some semblance of an alarm the Chaotics had broken in and other, adult guards, including the others in the same station as Daniel, had already alerted the population. It was too late, however. The tidal wave had broken over the city and, even though nearly everyone there was trained to fight Chaotics, East Hollow fell under sheer numbers. Daniel didn't even bother fighting; he sped his way through the streets, caring only about getting to his house. He arrived to find it half broken down and his parents facing off against a Chaotic easily two stories tall. As he watched in horror it overpowered them, dove down with fanged mouth agape, cries mingled with the chaos around him.......
The next thing Daniel remembers clearly is sitting in a hastily created shelter, with other shaken citizens of East Hollow around him, and a blanket around his shoulders. The attack was over, but the town would never be the same. Two-thirds of the population was dead, and not a single soul had come out of the event unscarred, either physically or mentally. Once Daniel got over the initial numbness of waking up drained and sore, he staggered home. Or, what was left of it. Though the Chaotic had vanished upon defeat (as they do) and the bodies of his parents had been removed, the home itself was a gaping, mostly-destroyed shadow of its former self. Nevertheless, he spent several nights here, in a corner of the portion still standing.
Several of the other citizens reached out to the poor boy but he drifted through a listless depression, his only real activity going through the items in the house, deciding what should be kept and what was gone beyond recognition. One of the items he found was a photo album owned by his parents, one he'd never seen before. This held pictures of themselves in their younger days with many faces he didn't recognize and in the back pocket, a few folded sheets of paper. These proved to be a revelation for him: he was adopted. His former name had been Robin Kanegem, and by these records his adoptive parents had taken him in when he was only a year or so old. Though he didn't, couldn't, resent them for never telling him, finding out this fact lit the fire of ambition in him and he knew what he had to do and where he had to go. He had to find his birth parents. He had to go to the city listed on the records, even as far away as it was. He had to know.
What followed next were two solid years of being on the road. Daniel (tucking "Renoir" away into a corner of his heart and taking "Kanegem" as a new last name, to try and bind the two selves together) left East Hollow among others departing for their own other family members and other places of the world, telling no one and using the activity to sneak out unhindered. One quick visit to his parents' graves and then he left for good. His goal was a city called Cedar Springs, several hundred miles away, and being a broke teenager deadset on a mission he decided to hoof it there. He faced many dangers- Chaotics, illness, weather, nightmares and flashbacks to the tragedy -but managed to keep himself going, wanting nothing to get in his way. He tended to avoid cities for cost and because, by his word, he always got sick there, but would occasionally stop to get money for his trip by selling little trinkets and things he made on the road (leather, cloth, and stone keychains and the like).
This eventually brought him through Birchpointe, New Jersey, where one of his rare trips into a city also saw him making several friends. Birchpointe was only a few hours from Cedar Springs and so he rested a couple of days here before moving on again. Ultimately, however, he was doomed to failure. The agency that handled the adoption was no longer around, and there was no record of his birth parents. Dejected but not defeated, he returned to Birthpointe and the friends he had made, and was able to stay with some of them, an older teenager named Aureole (or Aura) and her girlfriend Sable, who lived in an apartment of their own.
Ultimately that decision wound up turning his life around for the better. A latenight talk with Aura would eventually help Daniel see just how much he was destroying himself. In his determination to find his parents, he had missed the damage it was doing to his body. He was short and too thin, so much that the 16 year old looked 12, and his frequent illnesses and fatigue spells were the result of irregular sleep and malnourishment rather than a fact of how he "was." A different conversation with Sable also put a name to something else: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The nightmares, the irritability, the flashbacks, the depression; he had known it had come from the fall of East Hollow but had never known it was something with a name.
With the home given to him by the couple, the warm bed and regular meals, and the help dealing with his disorder, Daniel's body began to recover. His growth caught up with himself and in the span of a year or so he went from 5'3" to 5'11" and filled out to match (which was also helped by further training by an adult Sentinel in Birchpointe). He also learned that completely by chance he had stumbled into family: Aura and her younger sister Kylie, daughters of Daniel's aunt, though he would never learn that Aura had found that out before he had (by snooping through his things, oops). He also made several more friends, including Bridge, who he would later join a band with, learning the bass.
There was one more hurdle to be had, however. An attack by a werewolf demon left him with the curse, transforming by force every night of the full moon. This was an extreme difficulty at first, leaving him in a berserk stage that was as much a danger to himself as others. Help from friends and family (and most crucially, an older werewolf he'd met before) have helped him learn to control it, which he has........ mostly managed. Despite the difficulties, Daniel has accepted it as part of his life now, and does what he can to keep himself from hurting others whenever the moon comes around again. Bit by bit it's become as much a part of him as everything else, and with it and the people he's met, he's learning to find a life of normalcy again, reasons to be without being so doggedly searching for his parents to the exclusion of everything else.
Daniel Kanegem | OC | 1/2
Player: Zumi
Contact:
Age: 32
Current Characters: Scrooge McDuck
Character: Daniel Kanegem
Age: 20
OC Type: Pure
Point Taken: After finding a few family members and joining Bridge's band
World Building: Demons.EXE World Info
Backstory: Daniel Renoir began his life in the small mountain town of East Hollow, made up almost entirely of Sentinels, an ancient class of warriors made to fight the monsters of the world. He grew up a normal child, save for the whole "training to be a professional warrior" thing. He made friends, got in trouble at school, started using daggers and a particular set of bladed gauntlets, and so life continued as normal until he reached the age of 14.
Deep in his training, Daniel was stationed at one of the upper guard posts on the wall of the fortified town when the tragedy struck. Chaotics, THOUSANDS of them, came rushing out of the surrounding wilderness and poured onto East Hollow like a tide of burning oil. The monsters crashed into, over, and through the wall on Daniel's side, where the poor teenager had been struck dumb by the sheer sight of the attack. By the time he was able to make even some semblance of an alarm the Chaotics had broken in and other, adult guards, including the others in the same station as Daniel, had already alerted the population. It was too late, however. The tidal wave had broken over the city and, even though nearly everyone there was trained to fight Chaotics, East Hollow fell under sheer numbers. Daniel didn't even bother fighting; he sped his way through the streets, caring only about getting to his house. He arrived to find it half broken down and his parents facing off against a Chaotic easily two stories tall. As he watched in horror it overpowered them, dove down with fanged mouth agape, cries mingled with the chaos around him.......
The next thing Daniel remembers clearly is sitting in a hastily created shelter, with other shaken citizens of East Hollow around him, and a blanket around his shoulders. The attack was over, but the town would never be the same. Two-thirds of the population was dead, and not a single soul had come out of the event unscarred, either physically or mentally. Once Daniel got over the initial numbness of waking up drained and sore, he staggered home. Or, what was left of it. Though the Chaotic had vanished upon defeat (as they do) and the bodies of his parents had been removed, the home itself was a gaping, mostly-destroyed shadow of its former self. Nevertheless, he spent several nights here, in a corner of the portion still standing.
Several of the other citizens reached out to the poor boy but he drifted through a listless depression, his only real activity going through the items in the house, deciding what should be kept and what was gone beyond recognition. One of the items he found was a photo album owned by his parents, one he'd never seen before. This held pictures of themselves in their younger days with many faces he didn't recognize and in the back pocket, a few folded sheets of paper. These proved to be a revelation for him: he was adopted. His former name had been Robin Kanegem, and by these records his adoptive parents had taken him in when he was only a year or so old. Though he didn't, couldn't, resent them for never telling him, finding out this fact lit the fire of ambition in him and he knew what he had to do and where he had to go. He had to find his birth parents. He had to go to the city listed on the records, even as far away as it was. He had to know.
What followed next were two solid years of being on the road. Daniel (tucking "Renoir" away into a corner of his heart and taking "Kanegem" as a new last name, to try and bind the two selves together) left East Hollow among others departing for their own other family members and other places of the world, telling no one and using the activity to sneak out unhindered. One quick visit to his parents' graves and then he left for good. His goal was a city called Cedar Springs, several hundred miles away, and being a broke teenager deadset on a mission he decided to hoof it there. He faced many dangers- Chaotics, illness, weather, nightmares and flashbacks to the tragedy -but managed to keep himself going, wanting nothing to get in his way. He tended to avoid cities for cost and because, by his word, he always got sick there, but would occasionally stop to get money for his trip by selling little trinkets and things he made on the road (leather, cloth, and stone keychains and the like).
This eventually brought him through Birchpointe, New Jersey, where one of his rare trips into a city also saw him making several friends. Birchpointe was only a few hours from Cedar Springs and so he rested a couple of days here before moving on again. Ultimately, however, he was doomed to failure. The agency that handled the adoption was no longer around, and there was no record of his birth parents. Dejected but not defeated, he returned to Birthpointe and the friends he had made, and was able to stay with some of them, an older teenager named Aureole (or Aura) and her girlfriend Sable, who lived in an apartment of their own.
Ultimately that decision wound up turning his life around for the better. A latenight talk with Aura would eventually help Daniel see just how much he was destroying himself. In his determination to find his parents, he had missed the damage it was doing to his body. He was short and too thin, so much that the 16 year old looked 12, and his frequent illnesses and fatigue spells were the result of irregular sleep and malnourishment rather than a fact of how he "was." A different conversation with Sable also put a name to something else: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The nightmares, the irritability, the flashbacks, the depression; he had known it had come from the fall of East Hollow but had never known it was something with a name.
With the home given to him by the couple, the warm bed and regular meals, and the help dealing with his disorder, Daniel's body began to recover. His growth caught up with himself and in the span of a year or so he went from 5'3" to 5'11" and filled out to match (which was also helped by further training by an adult Sentinel in Birchpointe). He also learned that completely by chance he had stumbled into family: Aura and her younger sister Kylie, daughters of Daniel's aunt, though he would never learn that Aura had found that out before he had (by snooping through his things, oops). He also made several more friends, including Bridge, who he would later join a band with, learning the bass.
There was one more hurdle to be had, however. An attack by a werewolf demon left him with the curse, transforming by force every night of the full moon. This was an extreme difficulty at first, leaving him in a berserk stage that was as much a danger to himself as others. Help from friends and family (and most crucially, an older werewolf he'd met before) have helped him learn to control it, which he has........ mostly managed. Despite the difficulties, Daniel has accepted it as part of his life now, and does what he can to keep himself from hurting others whenever the moon comes around again. Bit by bit it's become as much a part of him as everything else, and with it and the people he's met, he's learning to find a life of normalcy again, reasons to be without being so doggedly searching for his parents to the exclusion of everything else.