Name: Derek Axel Whitman AKA “Alexander Valery”
Age: 61
Affiliation: Assassin
Appearance: Alex is a shorter man; at 5’ 9’’ he was never much considered a tall man. He has short white hair and a beard; his green eyes appear stunningly youthful compared to the rest of him. He works to keep capable for any missions, though in his age he hardly strays from his group’s base. He also bares a scar caused by shrapnel during an ambush during the Vietnam war on his right arm, and another scar right below his armpit from a knife fight in Afghanistan.
Personality: Alex is a calm man, his personal fights long since settled in the days of the Cold War. He serves as a mentor and leader among the groups he serves within the order, offering experience and wisdom to capable operators, who still always have much to learn.
Favorite Weapons: Hidden Blades, Firearms, and Explosives
Strengths: Marksmanship, Recon&Intelligence, Interrogation, Leadership, and Demolitions experience.
Weaknesses: Free running and Melee combat.
Background/Biography: Born in 1953 to World War II assassin Andrew Whitman, Derek was actually raised with intent not to join the order. After experiencing the horrors of heartache of war, and the futility and further horror of the struggle with the Templars, Andrew decided to give up arms, resigning from the order, and thus.. the only family he ever knew.
Derek had an easy life as a post War child, the middle class having wealth that wasn’t known before the great stock market crash that occurred only a few decades before. Inheriting his father’s quick grip for learning, he finished high school with above average grades, with plans of going to school to become a doctor.
The medical field was not what fate had in store for Derek, however. Just like his father, Derek found himself drafted in the US Army in the summer just after graduation. Not being raised as an assassin and no unit in the military akin to World War II’s 72nd, he had no choice but to live the life of a grunt for the next few years.
After a few months of basic training, Derek and his unit were quickly pushed into deployment in the spring of 1971. Assigned to patrols behind the front lines at the North and South Vietnamese border, the start of Derek’s deployment was a rather quiet one, though there was gathering unrest among his unit.
Besides a few encounters with pro-communist Viet Cong insurgents, Derek’s unit saw little to no combat. This did not sit well with some of the junior members of the platoon, seeing their deployment as unimportant compared to those who were fighting in the war only a few years before. It started as comments and general unrest, but found itself escalating to fistfights and dangerous disobedience to orders, such as firing ammo into the air and countryside during patrols. This unrest culminated one fateful day when the platoon was resting at a Forward Operating base, when one of the unit’s members threw a live grenade into the Platoon Commander’s quarters, killing him and the Platoon Sergeant.
Not wanting to be a part of the dysfunctional unit any longer, Derek decided to desert that night. When his time came to pull late night sentry, he loaded his gear, some extra food and ammo supplies, and a bedroll into the back of his squad’s Willys jeep, driving off base and following one of the nearby roads to the west. His plan was to drive west through Cambodia, hoping to find his way to a US Embassy in the non warring country of Thailand.
Derek would make it barely past Prey Veng before his plans were derailed. Informants sympathetic to the Communist cause tracked his movements along a road heading west, allowing the VC to set up an ambush point around three am the next morning. He drove down a dirt road after filling his jeep’s tank up in town, an RPG overturned his vehicle and threw Derek into a ditch. As he ran back onto the road to retrieve his weapon, Derek became subjected to voluptuous gunfire, the Viet Cong’s poor accuracy with their run down weapons the only thing saving him in that moment. Unable to retrieve his rifle, Derek took cover behind his overturned jeep until the attackers closed in to grab him.
Derek would spend the next month subject to malnourishment and minor torture under his captors, who held him in a makeshift cage as they awaited NVA forces to meet them and transfer him to the dreaded Hoa Lo prison camp. The Hanoi Hilton was not what fate had in mind for Derek, however.
Derek was eventually picked up by a small group of North Vietnamese soldiers as well as their Soviet Spetsnaz advisors. Derek rode in the back seat of a UAZ jeep with the Russian special forces group, interrogated by one Alexei Kirill. After a few hours of questioning Derek broke, giving up not only US positions of which he knew, but also unrelated personal information, such as his test scores in high school, his dog’s breed, and the names of his parents, which prompted a pause in Alexei.. After confirming with Derek the identity of his father, Alexei killed the driver and passenger of the UAZ, taking the wheel, breaking from and escaping the convoy.
After making it in to Soviet territory, Alexei managed to arrange transport for him and Derek to Moscow, where Alexei revealed himself as an assassin, his father having known Derek’s. Alexei spent the next year helping train Derek with the brothers in Moscow, and alas, Derek became a member of the assassin order, just as his father.
Along with Alexei, Derek spent the majority of the Cold War serving the order, in countries all over the world, Germany, China, and Afghanistan just to name a few. He would often operate under the guise of a KGB operative, still officially listed as MIA by US records. Even on his return to his home country in the late nineties, it was as a Russian Immigrant, under the assumed name Alexander Valery.
Upon arrival and after acquiring a US Citizenship under his alias, “Alex” returned to find his father, who he learned had passed in 1988, never having known what had happened to Derek. Failing to live the life his father wanted for him, Alex abandoned his birth name and returned to the brotherhood.
As of late Alex serves the assassin order as a mentor and team leader, his roles usually include keeping communications running and general maintenance of safe houses, though he joins his team on occasion on more important operations, where the most experience and skill possible is a necessity.
Calendar
though.. I may not for a while... I had an idea on a character for the High Middle Ages section but suffice to say... it'd be no use xD
