Copernicus Gallows

### Affiliations

Keeper of the Cross of Van Helsing. Heir to the Hammer of Reeves. Former member of the White Hand. Harper’s former game-flame. Sworn enemy of Impunus. Copper's mother was a human of House Arturan. His father was a Reigan borog, a prince who abducted his mother to the pleasure city of Gornth.

### Weapons and Artifacts

Render. Stakes. Vorpal swords. Soulbright shards. Thanatos torch.

## Realworld Information

### Ethnicity

Homo Sapiens / Caucasian [Suspected Homo adaptis heritage due to Ripmorgan's disease]

### Family

Aloysius "Al" Prather Wayne (brother) [CEO of Wayne Entertainment], Elisabeth "Lizzy" Margolis Wayne (sister), mother, son of late Daedelus "Dade" Wayne [former CEO and founder of Wayne Entertainment]

Copper Gallows is a vampyre hunter chosen to be one of the Champions of Otherworld. Copper is the sworn enemy of Impunus, the self-proclaimed brat prince of vampyres. His on-going quest is to find all of the shards of the Soulbright amulet in order to turn Impunus mortal so he can kill him once and for all. He is one of the few players to ever master a render.

## Game History

Copper began the game as a generic adventurer. His game guide was Roger the Roadsign.

### Beginnings

#### Tahatan

He met one of the characters being played by what would become his realworld friend Tahatan when they teamed up to defeat Janitaar the Custodian, the mini-boss who guards the service entrance to the Evil Magician's Castle. The two continued to adventure together, although Tahatan went through several characters before he became his best-known minotaur shaman character, Richard Brokehorn.

#### Slayer

Copper's decision to specialize as a vampyre slayer and monster hunter came after the Bloody Barons slaughtered his family and turned his betrothed into a vampyre at his family estate in Dark Hollow.

#### Render

After defeating Azrael Exsanguis, the Bloody Baron who styled himself as Desperatus, he was forced to take control of the vampyre's render to keep the master-less weapon from slaughtering everything around it.

#### Impunus

Shortly afterward, Copper first encountered his nemesis, Impunus, an upstart vampyre who sought to rule the Bloody Barons and the Broken Lands. Their rivalry became the stuff of legend. Copper continually undermined Impunus' efforts but was unable to kill him. For his part, Impunus vowed to turn Copper or kill him, but was likewise unable to fulfill his vow.

### Soulbright

#### The first shard

Realizing that Impunus was more powerful than any of the other vampyres he'd faced this far, Copper sought out various means to dispatch his foe. After hearing about the Soulbright amulet from Grymm the goblin, Copper and his friends teamed up with a vampyress, Amy Absinthe, to try to find the first piece of the artifact. The shard was in the possession of a vampyre named Mordecai Mortis, who was staked during the adventure. Hearing of his quest, Impunus tried to stop him. Amy Absinthe abandoned him at a critical moment during the adventure, forcing Copper to fight his way out of a bad situation. Still, he was able to secure the first piece of the amulet. An this time, he was named a possible heir to the Hammer of Reeves.

#### The second shard

During his quest to find the second piece of the Soulbright artifact, Copper found himself in competition with both Harper Angelos and Magistera the Enchantress. He also found himself heavily impeded by Viscount Rinaldo Krov, a rather fat vampyre whom Copper nicknamed "Corpulus," and by the amorous advances of Ember Skyfire, a she-faun who would simply not take no for an answer. Magistera lost out when Harper decided to cast her lot in with Copper. At this point, the Church made him the keeper of the Cross of Van Helsing to acknowledge his supremacy as a vampyre slayer. His claim as heir to the Hammer of Reeves became basically uncontested.

### The White Hand

Copper joined the White Hand during a period of time where Tahatan was trying to level up his Richard Brokehorn character enough to survive the level of peril the Gamelords typically threw at veteran characters. During this time, Copper gave Jarrod Seventhborn the sticky nickname "Luckbane." In return, Jarrod gave Copper the nickname "Gloryhound Gallows." The White Hand split up after Luckbane and Copper had a particularly heated argument over their occasional game-flame Harper Angelos.

### Team Copper

Copper kept the White Hand brand, thanks to the legal wranglings of Wayne Entertainment, although it became unofficially known to fans as Team Copper. He assembled a team of adventurers, including his old friend Richard Brokehorn and Sevrin Warscream, who became his man-at-arms. He continued to battle against the Bloody Barons, Corpulus and Impunus as they tracked down monsters and vampyres across Obsidius in exchange for coin and clues to the whereabouts of the other shards of Soulbright.

#### Garden of Stone

When the Magewar ended and Wanjur was separated from the rest of Obsidius, the trail went cold. Desperation led Copper to seek out Alice Seventhborn, a medusan in the Garden of Stone, one of Impworld's most dangerous labyrinths. Copper lost nearly every member of his team during the adventure, but learned that the next piece of Soulbright was in Mot Hadrall, the City of Eternal Night, in the kingdom of Olden. He also had a run-in with Corpulus who warned him that there was more to Soulbright than he knew.

### Champion

Copper made the voyage to the kingdom of Olden via Cloud Tiger, a flying airship which also carried Briar Ring and Magistera the Enchantress. Sending his team on to Mot Hadrall, he sought out Menlo Krov, Corpulus' brother, in Cabon Gabrielle to uncover more information about Soulbright. He discovered that Soulbright could potentially transform into Darksoul if he assembled the pieces. After the Firelord sacked Cabon Gabrielle, Copper travelled with the other Champions to Mot Hadrall.

## Player

Copper is played by Marcus Wayne of AmeriCo's New York Megalopolis. Marcus is the older brother of Aloysius Prather Wayne, the current CEO of Wayne Entertainment. Marcus was passed over as head of the company by Dade Wayne, their father, because he has RipMorgan's disease. Marcus takes pains to keep his condition a secret because Wayne Entertainment's financial backers are Purists. The Freeman Paper strongly implies that RipMorgan's is caused by interbreeding between *Homo sapiens* and *Homo adaptis*. Because the question of mutant souls is still being debated, the Church denied Marcus as a member of the clergy due to his RipMorgan's. He began playing Impworld as a distraction after the latter rejection and it accidentally turned into a career.

Jarrod Adam and Marcus live in the same area, but they do not personally know each other outside the game. Marcus dated Sumara Ali in college, but she never let him know she played Harper Angelos.

## Appearances

Copper appears in Luckbane, Soulbright and Garden of Stone. His character interview also appears in Garden of Stone.