Story:Clouds of Judgment/Characters/James Valharen

James Valharen is a main character in Clouds of Judgment. After receiving an illegal right hand from an illegal surgery orchestrated by his cheap father, James found himself at the mercy of a Deus that takes control of his body and attacks his comrades. Now unable to trust his friends and family alike, he fled everything he once knew and now lives as a black market informer, moving between cities with no real purpose.

Appearance and Personality
A tall, semi-muscular young man, James has rough brown hair that drapes over his face in a few strands. It is longer in the back of his neck. He wears a ragged, modified Arreglaser Special Police uniform beneath a dark brown trench coat. The uniform consists of white boots, khaki pants, and a white long-sleeve tunic fixed by a black belt and blue sleeve. On James, the boots are stained a permanent mud brown, and the patch on his tunic that represents his unit is ripped out to expose his black undershirt. He usually keeps his tonfa strapped to the belts on the back of his coat.

Initially a proud, happy person, James has since degraded into a paranoid, solitary figure. Raised as an Arreglasserian noble, but kept from true success because of his status as the second son, he eternally sought to surpass his personal limits and accomplish that which his birth had apparently kept from him. His father paid little attention to him regardless of what he did, even when James achieved surprising success in the police force, and cared so little for him that he purposely bought James a prosthetic arm that didn't meet medical regulations instead of bothering with actual medical treatment.

When he came to realize this, along with the fact that he was suddenly alienated from all those he cared about, James became a different man - one relinquishing all hopes of a peaceful, successful life. Now he openly renounces any form of righteousness and justice.

Backstory
James was born into a relatively wealthy family in the heart of Arreglaser. In their social standing, a son would either inherit the family business or become a high-ranking government officer. James was the second son of his family, and so was thrust into a bureaucratic position from birth. He led a mostly normal life, save for the fact that he received almost no recognition or attention from his family; in order to rectify this, he sought the most success that was possible, and usually achieved it. In college, because of his stellar physical abilities and intelligence, he was recruited by Arreglaser to go to a peacekeeper academy. He passed with flying colors and became a member of the top-secret special forces at 20 years old.

After two years of success in his missions, James was injured during contact with a particularly dangerous target. His entire right hand was blown clean off with no hope of repair or regeneration. His career plummeted with his crippling, and he spent six months in a spiraling depression. His aging father felt sorry for his son, and secretly arranged for him to get an illegal, untested prosthetic arm from the black market. The hand had been taken from a prisoner of war from another small country. James' father had it painted and modified to look like a normal, less useful prosthetic.

After two months of therapy with his new hand, James went back into his force with renewed enthusiasm. All of his teammates were elated to see him back in action. During his very first mission after his hiatus, however, James and his team were assigned an assassination mission against a nationally wanted kidnapper, rapist, and murderer. James and his team attempted assault, but the killer got away, leaving them to examine his newest crime scene. James was horrified to find the gruesome scene played out before him - it was like nothing he had seen before in all his time at the job. At their next attempt, the criminal had backup - a dozen hired guns against the seven members of James' squad.

Enraged and panicking at his lethal, out-gunned situation, James suddenly felt an intense stinging in his prosthetic arm. Just as he bent over in agony, he let down his guard and was shot in the lower abdomen. Bleeding out and in increasing pain, his arm suddenly stopped throbbing. From there, James lost consciousness. The next time he woke up, a good while later, he found his wound healed and everybody - his teammates, nearby innocent bystanders, and the hired muscle - to be horribly slaughtered. Horrified and covered in blood, he fled the scene. Ever since then, he has been haunted by visions of his dead friends and all the innocent people he killed, along with the government hounding him for his crimes.

After the incident, Arreglasser swords hounded him without mercy, despite how often he professed his innocence. Truthfully, even James didn't believe himself to be entirely innocent, so he never gave himself up and instead fought back against attempts to overpower him, raising his bounty even higher. The very force he joined with now against him, he found himself jaded and without a purpose in life. Using his fighting skills as the only way to keep himself afloat, James entangles himself in black market intelligence and becomes a mercenary-for-hire, helping others below the law and disregarding any judicial morals he had.