Inner
Kind, funny, violent, traumatized, do-er, not the brightest bulb, purposeful, gloomy.
Crake wouldn't be Crake if he wasn't kind. He thinks everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and that everyone has kindness instilled within them. It's the most important thing a person can be so he tries his hardest to set that example. Decency, patience, hospitality, helpfulness and patience are all traits he tries his best to keep and nurture.
Humor is one of Crake's favorite talents. If you hear a low, booming laugh anywhere, you can be sure it belongs to Crake. He likes to pull pranks, give sarcastic answers and make jokes and loves it when the favor is returned.
Sadly all of that goes a little to waste when he's drunk. He's an emotional drunk, traumatized by things in his past and hasn't really done the work to get help for that trauma. This results in Crake having terrible coping mechanisms, like alcoholism and violence. It works in three stages: first, he gets extroverted. Everyone is his friend and no one is boring. Second, he gets loud. He cracks a lot of jokes and shout-laughs at things that aren't that funny. And at last, he gets violent. Jokes that were funny a second ago are now insults and ''you are mocking me'' and ''you think that's funny, pal?'' and next thing you know, he's swinging fists around the place.
Luckily for others, and sadly for Tom, he's a terrible fighter. He learned to spar as a teen, and knows how to avoid punches when he's sober, but when he's drunk he misses more than he hits.
Back to the fun stuff. Crake is what you call a do-er, not a think-er. He's pretty smart, but he also thinks that ignorance is bliss sometimes. Especially when it comes to the weird shit that's happening in Greenstone lately. There may be many signs of supernatural beings around, but Crake doesn't see them or at least pretends like he doesn't notice them. He has enough going on, so tells himself to shift his focus on himself. Although he may do more than think, he isn't necessarily thoughtless. He isn't impulsive, there's just not a whole lot going on upstairs.
His history has turned him into a bit of a gloomy man too sometimes. He can close himself off, get sad and droopy and when that happens there's not a lot you can do with him. He'll always remain polite even when he thinks poorly of himself, because at the end of the day, he doesn't want to infect others with his negativity.
Outer
FC: Paul Bullion
Tom is a big man, equally vertically as horizontally. He stands tall at 1.86 m high and weighs over 100kg, but this also included a lot of muscle. The man has earned his muscular body after years of hunting and butchering, lifting heavy shipments and doing a lot of handiwork.
He's mostly recognizable due to his red locks. They reach just above his shoulders when dry and have a nice curl-pattern to them. However, due to the daily manual labor and his poor selfcare, his hair is often dirty so he tends to tie it away from his face.
Crake sports a longer-ish beard than he normally does these days, which makes his who demeanor look a bit shabby but he doesn't really mind it. He has a few lines and marks already settling in his face, mostly due to stress and his history rather than age.
History
Mother | Gwenllian Crake
Father| Onbekende handelaar
Wife | Delilah Crake
Daughter | Morwenna Crake
Childhood
Gwenllian Crake was a strong, hot-headed woman who prided herself into having made her own fortune. She grew up an orphan but taught herself a lucky hand at different card games. One day she got lucky and won a handsome sum of money, with which she bought her own little paradise: a rundown tavern/brothel. She pushed up her sleeved and build (or rather scammed her way to) a little empire.
But then came along someone she never expected: a mysterious trader who wanted none of her young and beautiful girls, but tried his best to seduce the whoremonger herself. And he succeeded. Nine months later a little boy was born, but the boy's father was nowhere to be seen.
Since his birth, Tom was raised sternly by his mother, who juggled her time raising her only (and unwanted) child and keeping her business alive. Crake was taught to earn his keep from a young age: sweeping the rooms, washing the laundry and even preparing food for himself and the girls. Along he way he picked up other skills: hunting and skinning, sparring, even a little bit of blacksmithing by other people in the village. They always seemed to take pity on the boy, even though he really wasn't that bad off financially. Emotionally though.
Crake had never blamed his mother for this loveless upbringing. It only taught him what kind of people he didn't want to be when he grew up. And even then, it wasn't his mother's fault she hated him. It was his dad. If the asshole hadn't left her all alone with a child and a full tavern, she would've had more time to appreciate him. It was the temporarily of their encounter, and the loneliness he left her with that was to blame;
As a teen, Crake made a name for himself as a hellion, causing mischief wherever he went. As he got older, he started chasing girls too, and then came the booze. The loneliness of having a hateful mother took over, and Crake barely remembers a sober night between the ages of 19 and 25. It wasn't until he was banned from nearly every tavern in the immediate surrounding that he realised he was addicted.
Meeting his wife
In the year of the 25th birthday, he met a young woman on the brothels doorstep. She was underweight and hypothermic, begging Gwenllian for a place to sleep for her and her unborn baby. Gwenllian offered the woman a place among the other girls, but the woman refused. Gwenllian told her that if she didn't want to work for her keep, she had no place here for her and closed the door.
Crake felt something at that moment. A jolt of recognition, maybe? A pang of... He knew he was destined to help her. If there was a God, and he wasn't sure, He had put this woman on his path for a reason, he knew it. Before his mother could close the door entirely, he jumped between it and offered his mother part of his earnings as a butcher for the woman. His mother laughed and mockingly asked why he bothered with an unmarried whore, but as he silently stood his ground, she agreed. There were a couple of conditions: she was to stay with Crake in is part of the house, she wasn't allowed to mingle with guests and she was to leave a month after her baby was born, at the latest.
To no-one's surprise, Crake and the woman, who introduced herself as Delilah, fell madly in love. It didn't take long for Crake to figure out she wasn't really pregnant. It was a ruse because she was hiding from her family who tried to marry her off to an old and cruel man. Because he knew what his mother was capable off, Crake decided to help Delilah with her lie and in secret began saving money and making plans to run away with her.
The ruse held up until the sixth month Delilah was supposed to be pregnant. Gwenllians had begun growing suspicious of Delilah, so she'd sent a servant to their room every day for a month to check the sheets. And surely, near the end of the sixth month, the servant brought blooded sheets to Gwenlllians bedroom and her rage was horrifying.
Delilah was pushed down the stairs in nothing but her underthings, her hair got pulled, her stomach kicked until she lay bleeding in the mud in the rain outside. Gwenllian called her every name in the book and shunned her for lying to her for that long ''after everything she'd done for her''. She closed the door not knowing that by that time Delilah was in fact truly pregnant - with Tom's child.
Delilah lay there for hours before Crake returned from his daily hunt and found her. He held her, weeping and shaking and vowed to kill his mother. Delilah dissuaded him from the idea and instead, he went inside and took all his savings, and a bundle of provisions he'd prepared for their journey. They were leaving today, no question.
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