Xenophon

Category:Alliance
Category:Night Elf
Category:Rogue
Category:Enchanter (A)
Category:Engineer (A)
==Vital Statistics==
Name: "Generalissimo" Xenophon Claire Alejandro Frostwhisper LeBlanc
A.K.A.: Xeno, The 'phon, Xenodoodle (only Ellaria gets away with that one), "Somebody stop that elf"
Race: Night Elf.
Class: Rogue
Occupation: Enchanter and Goblin Engineer
Birthplace: Nordrassil, on Mount Hyjal 
Age: 343 (official). Gives it as varying things whenever asked, most commonly shaving off three hundred years.
Height: 6'9".
Weight: 240 lbs.
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Affiliations: Loosely affiliated with the Order of Tirisfal. On excellent terms with the Steamwheedle Cartel, and rumored to associate with a certain cabal of dragons in his younger years.
==Appearance==
If you can see Xeno LeBlanc, he can see you. If you can't see him, you are most likely seconds away from a knife between the shoulder blades. When he moves out in the open, usually to go about his daily business, his appearance is not entirely typical of most Kaldorei. Refusing to let his long, turquoise hair flow free, Xenophon generally braids it up and drapes it over his shoulders (occasionally drawing looks of curiosity, which he dismisses with the explanation "it gives the ladies something to hold onto"), causing the braids to whip around wildly in combat. Adding to the unorthodoxy of his looks is, should he be disrobed from the waist up (hide your daughters if this happens), an impressively arm-spanning tattoo of a wingless dragon that begins with the tail at his fingertip, coils up his arm, and actually circumnavigates one shoulder to rest its head against his chest.
The right side of his face bears the remains of a scar given to him by a black drake in the Burning Steppes, which initially cost him his eye. Fortunately, the eye and the skin were mostly restored by a druid, and now only a faint trace of the scar remains. At one time, during his delve into experimental cybernetics, Xeno augmented the eye with a telescopic scanning lens built with rare alloys from the now-defunct Gurubashi Empire, which was extremely successful, as was his toying around with dragon guns built into his gauntlets. The mechanical enhancements to his physical form are gone with his retirement from soldiering; regardless, he is rarely, if ever, seen unarmed or unarmored, and frequently strikes those he talks to as alternatingly paranoid and simply alert.
Recently, in a bit of a "screw the rules, I'm filthy rich" move, Xeno had a massive ram from the Stormpike forces in Alterac Valley imported for his personal use. He has taken to riding the giant creature instead of the Night Elves' traditional nightsabers, citing the ram's superior sturdiness as one of the upgrades.
Xenophon speaks Common, Darnassian, conversational Orcish (with a very heavy goblin accent), and a smattering of Dark Iron (mostly curse words).
==Personality==
Time ostensibly heals all wounds; if so, this elf is going to need a lot of time. Years and years of paranoia and ceaseless killing have left him a bit unhinged in certain areas. Xeno is rough around the edges, to say the least: he drinks heavily, chainsmokes almost constantly, and can swear in ways that would make a bishop of the Light have a coronary. Xeno's eyes are continually glancing around him, and he claims to sleep with an arcanite heartseeker under his pillow (there is minimal reason to doubt this claim, although heaven knows if he and Shieke roll over in a fit of passion somebody's gonna get an unpleasant surprise). He looks at most things in terms of asset and liability, weighing values over potential risks before going ahead with an action, and is rather miserly with his almost-mythically-huge hoarde of cash. If engaged in conversation, he quickly proves to be abrasive and short-spoken, though there are exceptions: he tends to get into long conversations about his hobbies (knives and dimensional physics), and treats his friends with considerable more respect (Saix), indulgence (Goldark), or in the special case of Orimm, outright bewilderment.
He refuses to admit it, or even talk about it, but for around a year or so Xeno has been attempting to deal with a fairly expectable case of post-traumatic stress disorder. He frequently has flashbacks, usually while he's asleep, and rarely talks about "the business", partially to avoid any negative mental effects and partially because of the omerta that comes with certain aspects of his former job.
==Background==
The definitive background. He obscures, dodges, and outright lies around most of it, but this is, in fact, the real deal.
===Nordrassil===
Xeno's father, Tiberius Frostwhisper, was a bit of a "big fish" in the Kal'dorei's druidic circles; he was particularly close with Fandral Staghelm, having come up through the ranks and fought in the War of the Shifting Sands together, and was considered (along with the aforementioned Staghelm) to be a very possible successor to Malfurion Stormrage someday. As such, his devotion to the order was extreme, and any possibilities other than his son becoming just as great a druid as he was were not at all present in his mind. With that mindset going strong, the young Xenophon was placed into the Order at a young age, and spent his first few decades learning to transform into a cat, which he never quite figured out. Seeking other means of recreation, he began experimenting with sneaking around in the woods at night, as well as toying with different fighting techniques using a pair of old daggers he'd managed to acquire. It was only a matter of finding a few kindred spirits before he was pretty much set on the path of the rogue. Said spirits came in the form of an equally young elven girl who would eventually become "Deathweed", the Ravenholdt assassin, whom Xeno encountered in the woods one night (doing the exact same thing he was) and who agreed to a tentative "learning partnership" from which both of them could benefit.
It wasn't terribly long before it became fairly common knowledge that Xeno wasn't showing up for Turn Into A Cat Class, and Tiberius was furious. He was, after all, one of the most powerful druids on the World Tree; disobedience from his son would not be brooked. This resulted in strife to the nth degree around the Frostwhisper household, and Tiberius's "favored son and heir" was soon at constant odds with his father, often loudly and to the occasional extent of violence. His sister, Lunavera Frostwhisper, saw her chance to gain favored status, and zealously threw herself into her druidic studies, but, being female, she failed to win Tiberius's attention from his wayward son, leading to severe resentment between the siblings (to this day, Xeno rarely admits he has a sister at all, let alone talks about her). The last party in the equation, his mother, had been a sentinel for most of her life and served in several major conflicts; as such, she was secretly rather sympathetic to Xeno's position, but stayed quiet for obvious reasons.
Eventually, at some point before the outbreak of the Third War, Xeno decided he'd had it and left the World Tree in the dead of night to see the outside world.
===The Rogue And The Dragon===
Winterspring was the obvious first place that Xeno found his way to after climbing down from Nordrassil. It was, as he found, a mostly-unfriendly place, with a climate he was anything but used to. Several months went by as he adjusted to his new surroundings, finding a chance to hone his rogue skills in a "real-life" environment, and eventually he began to grow comfortable enough to explore around a bit, and the first place he found was Everlook. The goblins were not something Xeno was at all familiar with; he stayed out of their sight until one day, as fate would have it, the Winterfall furbolgs mounted a raid on the town. These were not the Winterfall of today, twisted by fel corruption, but rather the shamanistic Winterfall, determined to protect their land from the invading machines of the Steamwheedle Cartel. Not particularly caring about the furbolgs' motivation, Xeno decided to show himself and help the goblins fend off the attack, which they did while incurring minimal losses. The magistrates took him for an unusually healthy-colored Quel'dorei and offered him a place to stay, which he declined in favor of a zeppelin to somewhere a bit less cold. "Somewhere a bit less cold" turned out to be Ratchet in the Barrens, which was, to say the least, blazing hot. Xeno headed south, trying to shade himself from the scorching heat of the sun, and, in the curious way that destiny seems to operate, took the wrong fork at the road between the Barrens and the Thousand Needles and ended up in Dustwallow Marsh. 
The (pre-Theramore and generally uncivilized) marsh was humid, but not dangerously hot or cold, and Xeno wandered across it for a day or two, developing a taste for silversage and crocolisk meat along the way, until he came across a tremendous cave in the midst of a smoldering bog. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but the cat couldn't turn invisible and stab things with knives, so he ventured in and made it about twenty feet before being accosted by a creature he'd only heard of in elven legend: a dragonspawn, black as coal and clearly itching for a fight with the intruder. The two brawled, and he narrowly managed to kill the creature, more through sheer attrition than any particular critical wound. 
As it collapsed on the floor, he turned, very pleased with himself, and came face to face with twenty metric tons of freshly-roused elder black dragon.
Despite his life flashing before his eyes, Xeno didn't bother running (he correctly assumed that he'd only die tired if he did) and stood his ground as his captor lowered her head to peer at him . To his great and pleasant surprise, instead of a blazing holocaust of fiery death, what he got was a job offer; the dragon was impressed with the fact that Xeno had overcome the guard and, never one to pass up a chance for agents in the "civilized" world, offered him a simple decision: swear an oath, or become lunch. He wisely chose the former, and swore on the spot (the traditional oathstone was not used, as that would imply a pledge of allegiance to the entire Black Dragonflight, and as Xeno was later to find, his new master was not at all fond of her older brother's schemes of ascension), receiving the tattoo on his arm and chest that he bears to this day. It was to be the beginning of a long, fruitful, unlikely, and very clandestine working relationship, the likes of which few night elves can claim to have had.
===Down By The Bay===
A diamond in the rough is a diamond, certainly, but it needs a certain measure of refinement before it's actually worth anything. As such, while his newfound ally was off playing the politics game (in the guise of the heir to a nobleman who'd been "murdered and replaced" by a certain angry dragon aspect), our wide-eyed, mostly-unblooded hero was sent to the place where he'd be most likely to develop both the mindset and skills necessary to the kind of niche he was meant to fulfill. That place turned out to be "the house that Sam Steamwheedle built", Booty Bay (as opposed to "the house that Sam Steamwheedle forcibly bought from the Venture Company", which was Ratchet) in the Stranglethorn Vale. The Bay was an absolute cesspool in terms of ethics, rather like the American Old West in terms of its lawlessness (though in the Old West, if you crossed the wrong people, you would simply be shot rather than stabbed in the throat and hung on display for the town to see before the authorities mopped up your guts). Within his first week there, Xeno (who had by now mostly dropped casual usage of the "phon" and switched his surname) beheld all kinds of larceny, homicide, drug trafficking, gambling, prostitution, and jaywalking.
Fortunately, he beheld it from the right side of things; the Baron Revilgaz, with a little "monetary incentive" from Xeno's sponsor, picked him up almost the hour he entered Booty Bay, and swiftly made him an enforcer for the Blackwater Raiders. The pay was not terribly good at first, which was to be expected, but Xeno didn't have much to pay for anyway (as a member of the Baron's entourage, lodging was provided) and it was more than made up for by the numerous lessons he learned. Not only were the obvious skills (combat, tactics, infiltration, sabotage, etc.) honed, he studied (either through observation or outright tutelage) such things as business administration, money laundering, goblin engineering, and exploitation of the banking system, all of which would serve him well. Regardless of the benefits, not all of his learning experience was fun and games; the harsh realities of being a hired thug (because he certainly wasn't allowed to call himself a merc yet) made themselves known over and over as Xeno witnessed just how depraved intelligent creatures can be when money or ideology is at stake. As fast as he established friendships, he'd lose them, either to death in the line of duty or betrayal on the part of some other organization. Still being rather impressionable meant these experiences took an immediate effect, for he quickly adopted the "trust no one" mindset that prevailed in this side of the world...along with an addiction to dreamfoil powder, a smoking habit, and an insatiable appetite for women.
Three years passed.
By the time the war was in full swing, Xeno LeBlanc was a household name in Booty Bay, and practically the Baron's left hand (the right hand, or hoof rather, being the ever-reliable Fleetmaster Seahorn). He was known for saying he'd "killed more people than the Plague" at this point, though the validity of that statement was, of course, questionable due to the cockiness he'd developed. Xeno had been honed into an effective, detached killing machine; granted, it was a machine that spat amusing one-liners, but a machine nonetheless. In fact, he was the inventor of the now-widely-used technique known as the "Goblin Necktie", which entailed the slicing of the victim's throat, the severing of the tongue's anchoring tissues, and (via some quick digging around) hanging the victim's tongue out the middle of their throat like some kind of macabre necktie, a practice generally used to make an example out of some unfortunate soul. He was beginning to accumulate the beginnings of a respectable nest egg, stowed safely away with the inscrutable bankers of the Cartel, and appeared set for a future of "the same ol', same ol'" when something Xeno hadn't expected happened: the dragon came calling.
===Changes===
It was off to Stormwind in the blink of an eye, and now things took a turn for the more cloak-and-daggeresque. Xeno's patron sent him on a variety of deep cover assignments in an even greater variety of locations, some of which bordered on outrageous. On one occasion, he was sent to a gathering of the Silver Hand to assassinate a Twilight's Hammer spy posing as an abbot and ran into the man who would one day become Scarlet Inquisitor Joaquim Malegoris, with whom his path would cross numerous times in the future. Another time, two local "big fish" were gaining on his sponsor's heels in the Stormwind electoral races, and Xeno was sent to quietly "encourage" them to knock it off (which he did, in typical fashion, by burning down one's house and hanging a gutted murloc on the other's front door). His skill in thinking through situations, rather than simply going in with guns blazing, was honed during this period due to being faced with odds that were usually insurmountable with traditional tactics.
So, logically enough, was his now-legendary sadistic streak. The most well-known incident he was connected with during the era was the Weylon Murders, the victims of which were Lord Weylon of Lakeshire and most of his immediate family. Lord Weylon was the primary opposition in the House of Lords to the Horde Pre-Emption Law, introduced by Xeno's sponsor as a means of pre-emptively attempting to take and hold onto as much territory as possible during the fight against the Scourge and the Burning Legion, in order to keep an advantage over the Horde once the primary threat was defeated. Voting on the law was all but deadlocked, however; Lord Weylon's determination to "fight the real enemy", as he put it, rallied enough nobles to prevent the necessary 2/3 majority. The obvious solution, at least for the dragon, was to deal with this under the table, and Xeno was instructed to "make a statement".
There are approximately five liters of blood in the human body, and yet somehow when the guards finally arrived at the house Lord Weylon shared with his wife, three children, and five servants, they found around ninety-five liters worth of blood splattered all over the place, along with ten corpses (well, parts of them; they had to identify the Lord himself by his teeth) and a whole lot of carnage. Several knives were found at the scene, mostly the ones used to crucify the Lady Weylon to a portrait of Anduin Lothar, but all were of indeterminate Blackrock origin, and there were no fingerprints, as the assassin was clearly wearing gloves because of their inherent stat bonus. As such, there were no clues as to the identity of the assassin. And yet everybody knew who had done it. It was so obvious who'd ordered this man knocked off and why, and furthermore when one considered the number of associates this individual had, and the number of said associates who were cold-blooded, ruthless murderers, there was absolutely no question. The number of people asking Xeno for ten silver so they could train to use swords dropped. Drastically.
Roughly a month later, while he was pondering whether he could get away with operating a casino on the side, Xeno's associates from the Bay tracked him down. They had some major news for him: Nordrassil wasn't the only thing gone, because Tiberius Frostwhisper, having sacrificed himself to hold back a dreadlord during Archimonde's ascent, was dead. The former Archdruid had vanished into the Emerald Dream, much to Xeno's dismay (he'd rather liked Malfurion, despite the whole druid thing), leaving "Uncle Fandral" in charge. Plans were already in place to grow a new World Tree off the northwest coast of Kalimdor. It was a lot for him to take in. On the one hand, the man who'd loomed over him his entire life, like a tyrannical cumulonimbus cloud, was finally out of sight and out of mind for good. On the other hand...what about the rest of his family? His mother, though they hadn't always agreed, had loved Tiberius dearly, and she couldn't possibly be taking this well. Xeno decided he'd do something he hadn't ever planned on doing, and returned to the night elf lands to locate the woman.
It didn't take long to find her; he merely had to search in Darkshore for a few days. However, Xeno's mother had by this time lost all she loved: her immortality, her home, her husband, both her children (Luna had, for reasons unknown, continued down the druidic path, and was sleeping in the Dream), and with it the will to continue. She was somewhat brightened by his return, his obvious concern for her, and the fact that he'd "made something" of himself (he was an "executive assistant" to a prominent Stormwind noble, he told her), but it was mostly just delaying the inevitable. His mother's last wish was for him to take her to Teldrassil when the new World Tree had been completed; two years later, he did this, and she died there the next day and was buried.
Except for a dragon and a few money-grubbing goblins, Xeno LeBlanc was now very much alone in the world.
===Falling In Love Is Hard On The Knees===
===Hanging Up The Knives===