Baron Thomas Valentine

Thomas Valentine is an old aristocrat, one of the few who knew Jeremiah the red way before he was a king. He has the very particularity to have a lion's face and is a well known alcoholic. Even though, he is mostly respected for his very high sense of honor and his complete lack of fear.

His life is a sad story of courage, broken friendship, revenge/justice and lack of luck. He is often called "the bravest beastial of the wastes" and has arrested more than two hundred criminals. He's also the recruitment minister and has personnally trained several of the generals of the royal army.

He lived a lot and can't stop talking about it when he's drunk. It is virtually impossible to make him shut up when he starts talking about the past, but even though, even the most asocial people like Eula or Edgar de Tavey considerate him as a good enough friend to trust him with their lives.

ETYMOLOGY

The name Thomas means the twin in hebrew, suggesting that this man always has a rival of egal strenght somewhere. Valentine is the name of a saint who celebrated marriages under the roman empire, to make sure that the married men don't go to war. It suggests that Valentine may take actions against the king if he judges that his actions have no honor.

YOUTH

Vincent Valentine was a fresh new cop of New York City when the no-return occured. He was then a young man with high ideals who wanted to protect every citizen against all sorts of injustice. He then lived a life without alcohol, drugs or even tobacco and had already argued about the lack of discipline in the police department.

Left to himself after the no-return, Valentine gathered as much survivors as he could and found them a place to live. He then went out, again and again, always returning with a lot of people who needed a roof, a fire and food. He did so for a bit less than a week when the first raiders knocked at the door. Valentine defended his people all by himself but didn't manage to save them at the end.

He gathered enough strong men to create a team of rangers and he lead them to the general quarters of the raiders. He sent two of his men locate the slaves, but they came back, telling Valentine they weren't here anymore, probably taken to another camp. In reality, they were all here, in the underground of the building. The two rangers feared that Valentine, with his strict sense of honor, wouldn't kill the raiders if they let the slaves out. So they made it up to make sure there would be no more terror on the surroundings of New York City.

The raiders and the slaves were both burned alive. Valentine had his soul broken and went after the two raiders, mysteriously disappeared. Thomas and his men looked for them for years, only catching and killing one. The other, Bobby Cooper, was nowhere to be found. Hearing about a fast-growing gang called "the wolves of Jeremiah", Valentine and the rangers joined them and asked them some help to locate the prey.

In exchange, Jeremiah asked Valentine to bring him more men, either "kind of fat" or "kind of strong". He did so for quite a time until he realized he brought Jeremiah the people he was about to offer as meat in his very first cannibal market. He confronted the king and kicked his ass pretty well, as he did for his guards. Impressed, the young leader told him to calm down. He agreed that only criminals would be sold from now on and that Valentine's target was to be the first one on them. He insisted by saying that they would eat his heart together, as brothers of justice.

Valentine is so responsible for the morality system of the cannibal markets that still exists today.

Valentine finally found Bobby Cooper and brought him back. But has it happens, eating his heart didn't kill him, since he woke up, heartless, during Valentine and Jeremiah's meal and escaped right under their noses. They tried to catch him but stopped really soon : Jeremiah had a wolf's head growing on his belly and Valentine's face was turning into a lion's one, probably because of some Leto hidden in Bobby Cooper's heart.

The only way Valentine had to not suffer from his bones changing shape was to get drunk, as long as the transformation would be. He drank for a bit less than a month and even today, his face hurts like hell. When he was finally able to move normally again, he realized that his gang became a monarchy.

THE MONARCHIST

Engaged as a "prospector", Valentine travelled across the wastes, looking for criminals to bring back the the king's justice : the cannibal market. He soon became one of the best prospectors of the kingdom, even though he was more often drunk than sober when he catched "the bad guys".

He didn't hesitate to infiltrate some criminal cells to get closer to a target, which sometimes led him to be confronted to some temptations : a lots of money, lands, women, respect, booze... but he always stood still, even if he often had to "play the role" by taking drugs, beating up slaves etc. in front of the gangers. The money he received from them though, he kept it, trying to save it for a "personnal project".

In fact, Valentine always volunteered for the most dangerous missions, and if these ones had something with "infiltrate a gang of bank robbers" in it, he was the first to join. Until the king realized there was maybe a problem with his master prospector.

In fact, Valentine saved enough money to buy a small city outside the king's juridiction, where he had begun to gather all the people who normally would have to sell themselves to the cannibal market to erase their family's debt. This only town represented millions of teeth of debts due to the kingdom. Along these fugitives, there was the youngest brother of Valentine, he found back himself many years after their last meeting.

Jeremiah the red asked Valentine to train his army for a "massive assault", pretending that they were going to attack the city of Houston, Texas. Valentine agreed and Jeremiah looked at him, with "a little remorse" for their friendships, knowing that he asked his oldest friend to train people to burn his very dream.

Of course, Houston was never attacked but not any fugitive survived Jeremiah's men.

When Valentine learned it, he provoked the king in duel and asked for his own men to prepare his weapons. He probably overtrusted their loyalty to him, because Valentine's gun mysteriously had a problem with the aiming. Jeremiah won and Valentine received a bullet that stopped against his chest, just before the heart. The bullet has never been put out, it would be too dangerous. Valentine then thought that the princess could help him and help herself in their respective reasons to see the king killed.

He managed to help her acquire a knife inside the castle, gain access to the king's chamber and distract the guards. But the princess didn't success and was exiled. Valentine accepted his fate and, step by step, became the recruitment minister and one of the richest barons of the court.

One of the most cynical, drunk and obscene, also.

He proved back his loyalty during the first civil war, when the royal army was outnumbered and the crowd was at the gates of the poorly defensed castle. Valentine went alone to the swamps, a place known for never letting anybody out alive. Valentine went out alive, with an army of tribals, he used against the enemy, bringing victory to the kingdom.

Jeremiah then agreed to let him go and live his own life. The king never thanked the tribals though, simply telling them that they earned the right to go back home alive. Valentine was simply disgusted and often went to see the tribals to apologize for his former employer behaviour. Promising himself to never work for him again, Valentine did many things then : getting married, having children, opening a bar (accepting mutants and humans alike), get into the alcohol traffic a little bit, get divorced...

Then, Jeremiah II took power and called him back. He needed the best to escort Eula back home, and if Valentine wanted his daughter with him, he agreed to take her also in his official army. Valentine, knowing the son of the king enough to know that he was more honorable than his father, agreed.

Attacked by a Wendigo and Bobby Cooper on their road, they had a very difficult journey. Jeremiah II was moved to see the "old lion" coming back at the castle by foot, after he stood alone against a real horde just to give some time for his daughter and his princess to come back to the monarch's lands