Characters Name: Lysander DeWitte
Gender: Male
Race: White
Age: 34

Reputation: Tries to keep under the radar, so to speak, but is infamous along the Texas-Mexico border for causing the implosion of several outlaw and revolutionary enclaves. Known to always complete his jobs, but also known to be surly and sometimes deviate from the conditions of agreements.

Physical Description: Lysander has the face and build of the classic Lothario, and many mistake him for a man ten years younger. With the face chiseled of his gentleman ancestors and with a slim yet muscular build, Lysander is man aware of himself, and carries himself with poise and dignity. His eyes are a stormy grey, and his hair is as black as an oil slick, which hangs chin-length, and parts on the right, strands falling in front of his face. He used to cultivate a handlebar moustache but is usually clean-shaven, in order to make himself look younger. His skin is deeply tanned from a life under the sun, and has several scars from bayonet- and bullet-wounds on his chest and right leg. He commonly wears officer's dress, usually his black officer's coat with golden brocade and epaulletes, along with riding boots and military trousers. He does not usually wear a hat but instead often a wet rag tied around his head. Weaknesses & Strengths: Lysander can survive for extended periods in the desert heat, is an excellent and careful shot. He is learned in the ways of the Fakir, holy men of the Punjab: he can extract truth from almost anyone with his hypnotic stare, and while he is not a particularly quick draw, he has the ability to put others in a trance by extended eye-contact. He is also a skilled knife-thrower. Lysander is a survivor, through and through, and exceedingly difficult to kill.

He is prone to bouts of depression and has a thoroughly misanthropic worldview. His spiritual confusion often makes him conflict with his own interests or better judgement. He is torn between the morally-righteous man he wishes to be and his shame for deserting his brothers-at-arms. He has a strange, ghostly aura that causes people to keep their distance, and he does not make relationships easily. He also has a slight limp that is hard to notice when he walks but keeps him from feats of agility. Terrible with money and a terrible gambler. Is an alcoholic, but who isn't?

Gear & Weapons: A 1847 Walker Colt with paisley silver inlays and an ivory handle with the Om carved into it, in the holster on his right. A Schofield Model 3 resides in a holster behind his back, and a Derringer hides in his left sleeve, and two 50-round boxes for the pistols, as well as a set of spare bullets for the Derringer. He has a skinning knife in his right boot, modified by Lysander to have excellent balance and to reduce its weight. He has a dappled grey horse and still has his field-pack from his Legion days. He has a black officers' coat from the French Foreign Legion, dyed black by Lysander ostensibly to hide his identity but also from shame. Under his double breasted shirt is a gold chain with both the cross and an icon of Shiva. What Type of Character:
Drifter, gun-for-hire, fugitive

Assets:
Seesaws between rich (after a good job) and absolutely penniless (three days later) every two weeks or so.

Background:
Lysander grew up in a wealthy Georgian landowning family, with four sisters and a younger brother, but left to England for schooling when he was 16. He became an apprentice to Dr. James Esdaile, following him to Calcutta and assisting on his forays into hypnotism. After Dr. Esdaile passed on, Lysander travelled to the Punjab to learn from the men from whom hypnotism is said to have originated, the Fakir of India. He had felt Esdaile's use of hypnotism as an anesthetic was terribly short-sighted and ignored its greater application due to the stuffiness of Western scientists. While he lived in hermitage with them, the Civil War broke out. When he returned to England he found that his entire family estate had been destroyed by General Sherman. Lysander, effectively homeless, joined the French Foreign Legion, and was made an officer due to his education and ability to lead others. He was promptly shipped back to North America during the Maximilian Affair, an invasion of Mexico by the army of the Second French Empire. He came in at the end of the war, and his regiment was obliterated by the Republican armies. Lysander himself feigned death by entering into a trance, thus seeming dead to all, and impervious to bayonets. He stole a horse (which turned out to be one of President Benito Juárez's own,) escaped badly wounded, and somehow clung to life until he crossed the border. He is wanted by the Mexican government as an enemy of the state. Benito Juárez has called for his head on many occasions, but thus far Lysander has avoided or killed the hired guns that have come after him.

Write a short scenario: Lysander sat at the bar, drinking his scotch. Water had been added for appearances, but since when had he cared one whit about appearance? He sat there, looking like some bizarre amalgam of military and vagabond, making no apologies for his heathen habits, but he worried now about not looking like a drunk? Even now he couldn't remove all of the man he once was, the breeding of the landed gentry still surfaced from time to time in his thoughts. As much as he wanted to tear out that part of him that once lived in the fields of Georgia, as disgusted as he was by the life he had lived on the backs of slaves, as much as it hurt to think that his globe-trotting had saved him from the fate of his family and, in his own mind, left his family defenseless, he could never bury it completely. As he mused, a bearded Mexican entered the saloon. His smell had proceeded him, the smell of a man who cultivates his own repulsiveness to enhance his outlaw persona. In spite of an empty bar the man sidled up next to Lysander, on his right. "So," the man said, his breath curling around Lysander's throat like a snake, "Joo are the man everyone's lookeen for, huh?"

His voice had that Mexican lilt in it Lysander had once found so charming, but this voice also had a peculiar Central American lisp to it. Panama perhaps? Lysander mused. He continued nursing the scotch and didn't look up. "Sah, most people come to a bah with th' hopes of consumin' alcohol. Allow me to enjoy mah prize in peace, and you yourself may drink, and we shall both be happy."

"Jus tryeen to be friendly, hombre. Dat a crime, eh?" Lysander looked up at him now, and the man's face was plastered into a merry grin. His eyes though, his brown bloodshot eyes, showed fear. The fear that he wouldn't be able to pay for his next meal, the fear that comes from knowing the moment that will decide one's life has arrived. Lysander heard a click. He looked at his own gut and saw the hammer cocked on the scuzzy little imp's six-shooter. The smile turned genuine. "Joo are worth 500,000 pesos to El Presidente. Joo musta done somfeen real stupid, hombre." Lysander went back to drinking his drink. Anger showed on this horrid little man's dirt-caked face. "Did joo hear me?! I can kill joo now and get half!" At this outburst many of the patrons prudently decided to leave. Th bartender suddenly had to check stock in the basement.

"Do you think," Lysander resumed eyecontace, this time his eyes wide open, "That you are, ah, the first to come aftuh me? You are not going to shoot me, we both know that." He saw the man's face tighten, while his expression began to change to a neutral, grim expression. "You, sah, are either going to put that thing away and rahd on home to live anothuh day, or you are goin' t'die sittin' here at this bar." he saw fear return as the man felt his hand uncock the hammer and pull back to his holster. "And without even orderin' a drink. Whatta tragedy." But the man grit his teeth and fought the trance, his hand moving again to cock the hammer. "Your choice sah. You chose poorly." At this he slipped his Model 3 from his back, cocked the hammer, lay it over his right arm, and fired. He had done it in a single, relaxed, almost casual movement. As he got up he fired once more to finish the job on his would-be bounty hunter, stepping over him calmly walking out to his horse. He rarely stayed in a town where he had killed, and so his hopped on his horse and set out for Hell Town, only a few dozen miles north of here.