Lukas Rhenardt
Portrayed by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
Artwork by Athena
Name: Lukas Rhenardt
(LOO-kəss Ren-ART)
AKA: Lord Graves
Gender: Male
Race: Worgen
Class: Warrior
Role: Damage
Professions: none
Homeland: Gilneas
Player: inkie
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RP Hooks

  • GILNEAN NATIONALS AND NOBILITY may know him. Those involved in Gilnean politics at home would know him as an ardent nationalist, supporter of the Greymanes and the wall. Those involved in aristocratic society would know him as the man in the stiff dark suit glowering from the edges of the ballroom, or from sporting events, where he was at the front of every crowd, watching with an intent, appraising eye.
  • Other NORTHERN NOBILITY may have been acquainted with him if they dealt particularly in military matters. They would also have known him as a Gilnean nationalist and an Alteraci apologist. His politics were not terribly in vogue in Lordaeron, and he is not the sort of man who cared.
  • Anyone with northern MILITARY CONNECTIONS OR ASPIRATIONS might be aware of him, from his distinguished career as an army officer to his keen eye for military talent and his skill as a recruiter and trainer. He left the Gilnean army with the rank of Captain after the Second War, and his militia, the Stormwatch Irregulars, had a formidable reputation throughout the kingdom.
  • Those in Stormwind involved in GILNEAN INTEGRATION — both politically and militarily — may be acquainted with him as the gruff leader of the formidable Gravehowl Pack, a voice for Gilnean rights within the Alliance, and a war hawk.

Appearance

HUMAN

Lukas Rhenardt, Lord Graves, is a man standing at the threshold of his fifties. He has grizzled blond hair, a stern, opaque dark-blue gaze, and looks a little bit like he was carved out of some particularly craggy granite. His facial expressions range the spectrum from None to Glowering. He has a generally unshaven look, but something about his manner suggests this isn't from carelessness or neglect but because he is a man with better and more urgent things to do than shaving and he has possibly been doing them for thirty-six hours straight and you are in his way. His stride, his curt movements and mannerisms, and every line of his lean frame all manage to convey a native impatience, a man in a hurry to get something done.

By contrast, there is a still, stilted reserve that can fall over him in certain social situations, a stonier-than-usual stoniness. One hesitates to suggest that Lord Graves is ever shy, but just because one hesitates to suggest it does not mean it isn't true. He is Mr. Darcy on an especially bad day.

WORGEN

In his worgen form, Lukas is transformed into a clawed terror of grizzled fur, maned hackles, and fierce, luminous golden eyes. He wears a litter of old scars across his muzzle and has one raggedly-torn ear, and possesses the same lean, intent look that he does in his human form; as a worgen, it looks more like hunger than simple impatience. There is nothing about him that suggests a mindful, potentially civilized creature; he looks every towering inch the feral beast that haunted the forests of Gilneas for seven years.

His particular brand of fanatic self-control means that, unlike many of his packmates and countrymen, he is far more often seen in his human form. He may be conscious that his own worgen form could be perhaps detrimental to the greater effort of the Gilnean publicity narrative. He may be enacting an uncomfortable penance for the actual harm he did in his feral years. It may be both.

Personality

SHREWD • STONY • PROTECTIVE • FANATICAL

Rhenardt is a man of iron allegiances and diamond-sharp ambitions. His ambitions are as much for those around him, those to whom he owes a duty — family, country, King — as for himself; he is not a man inclined to think of his own wants first. His manners can seem brusque, but they reflect his own brand of no-nonsense courtesy. He does not have any discernible sense of humor.

His hobbies are all of the vigorously physical variety: hunting, boxing, fencing, etc. He is the kind of guy who used to go for a daily swim in the rocky sea below the cliffs of his manor even in twenty-degree weather, because it's Good For You. He is abstemious in most things; though he will have a drink socially to be polite, he is not a drinker, nor does he smoke, and he has almost certainly never touched a drug in his life, including caffeine. He eats like a man who requires a certain number of calories to power through the day, not a man who enjoys or really notices what is on his plate.

Beneath the gruff exterior he is possessed of numerous secret sympathies and soft spots, and certain Gilnean charities — for orphans, war widows and veterans, literacy and education — could report steady annual donations in the name of Lord Graves. They were never large or spectacular donations (because the Graves coffers were never large nor spectacular) but they arrived like clockwork, year after year.

History

Lukas Rhenardt is the eldest child and only son of Gilnean noblewoman Lady Audra Graves and the Alteraci military officer she wed in her mid-30s, Captain Bern Rhenardt. Lukas and his two younger sisters were brought up in the Graves ancestral manor, Stormwatch, on the rocky eastern coast of Gilneas.

The Graves line was neither particularly powerful nor particularly wealthy — marrying a common military officer did little to remedy that situation for the spinsterish Lady Graves — and the children were raised in stern, ascetic surroundings. Young Lukas began training as a soldier from childhood, and his father drilled into him not just martial skill and tactics but an implacable sense of duty. His mother, perhaps in an effort to counterbalance their actual circumstances, instilled in all her children a cast-iron pride in their noble roots and heritage.

When both parents passed away — Lady Graves in childbed, and Captain Rhenardt less than a year later in combat — the only inheritance they left their sixteen-year-old son was his duty, his pride, and the black clifftop towers of Stormwatch.

Lukas stepped with grim acceptance into his new role as family patriarch. Within the decade, he had seen both his sisters married remarkably advantageously into old Gilnean lines, raised and trained a formidable militia — the Stormwatch Irregulars — to serve the surrounding settlements and noble lands as a security and defense force, made something of a name for himself as a strategist and commander, and restored the old family home to much of its former (gloomy) grandeur.

A staunch supporter of the Greymane line, when Gilneas joined the Alliance during the Second War, Lukas threw his support (and military service) into the Alliance efforts. When the Alliance subsequently dismantled Alterac for its "betrayal," however, Lukas was infuriated: King Perenolde had been placed in an impossible position by the Alliance, which had apparently intended his kingdom and people to serve as little more than a firebreak on the way to Lordaeron, and he'd made the choice he had for the sake of his people. The "Alliance" clearly meant "Lordaeron," and it had no intention of allowing its member nations to govern themselves as they saw fit.

He immediately joined the chorus of voices calling for Gilneas's withdrawal from the Alliance.

He was in full favor of the Gilnean Wall, and when the Northgate Rebellion broke out, he led his Irregulars in support of the royalists.

A year later, when the tenuous post-rebellion peace was rocked by a strange new threat and Gilneas City fell to chaos under the arrival of the worgen curse, Lukas rounded up a group of disparate but determined survivors and struck out north in a desperate race to escape the city and reach the Wall, to hold it against the curse's escape beyond Gilnean borders. Whether that effort was successful or not, he would not learn for several years; he had himself been bitten within hours, during the city's pandemonium, and turned before he ever left the city's outskirts.

His unrelenting sense of duty, however, meant that his drive to keep his little group of refugees together and "safe" did not vanish even with the mindlessness of the curse, and he spent the next several feral years hunting each of them down to bring them into his pack (a "protection" none of them probably appreciated at the time).

With the lifting of the curse, he threw the newly-named Gravehowl Pack ferociously into the defense of Gilneas from Forsaken invasion and, when they were defeated by the Banshee's forces, led them to the refuge of Darnassus. From there he traveled to Stormwind with those of his pack who were willing, and presented himself to the double causes of Gilnean integration and the Alliance war effort. He will never, ever forgive the Horde for the killing of his youngest packmate, Malcolm McPheerson.

Relationships

 Gabriella Thorne
A close friend and one of the few people Lukas trusts absolutely. They met during the SIB investigation that eventually resulted in his resignation from the army; the mutual respect that arose in the course of that investigation had already sealed their friendship.
Gellarn Rivere
Trained as a squire in Lordaeron, returned to Gilneas after the fall of Alterac. Despite his youth, he possessed sufficient determination, grit, and natural battlefield sense to impress Lukas and earn a position with the Irregulars.
Merelda Veyne
A neighboring Gilnean noblewoman who, as an architect, consulted on some of Lukas's renovations to Stormwatch. He once proposed marriage to her for the sake of, effectively, a real estate deal — the merger of their two coastal estates. She declined. No hard feelings.
Yseulde Pearson
Younger sister of Harlowe Pearson. Lukas was chiefly acquainted with her brother as a man who moved in the same political circles, but he was impressed by Yseulde's skill at the hunt and as a competitive shot.
Oslynn Boles
A young lady Lukas collected during the defense of Gilneas City from the worgen, and then later collected as a worgen. Scrappy and rough-edged but fiercely devoted to Lukas, she has earned his abiding affection. Not that anyone who has earned his affection can really tell.
Zeke Borden
A scrappy street youth who joined the original group during the defense, and was subsequently one of the first bitten when Lukas turned. His loyalty is unquestioned, his judgement doubtful; he's another who has his pack leader's deep but less-than-evident affection.
Thaniel Clay
A young healer whom Lukas initially collected with the group he led through the defense of Gilneas City. Almost Lukas' polar opposite in personality, but Lukas is more protective of the gentle young man than most, particularly after the death of Malcolm Mcpheerson.
Apricity Hearthleigh
The self-absorbed scion of a wealthy merchant family, he didn't move in the same circles as Lukas in their old lives and is something of an uncomfortable fit in their new one. Has a tendency to antagonize and stir trouble, apparently for his own amusement.
Ambrose Falston
A mage and member of the original pack that fought in the defense, he was another of the first-bitten. Peculiar.
Loyd Lowynn
Yet another member of the original pack gathered in Gilnean City. A capable hunter and… let's call him "scavenger" for courtesy's sake, he's a man of odd paranoias, susceptible to suggestion.
Kenelly Ashewood
An idealistic young noblewoman and harvest witch who came to Gravehowl Pack belatedly, after they had joined the Alliance. Lukas gruffly admires her openness, enthusiasm, and determination; he's less certain of her judgement. Admirably determined to better the lot of worgen in the Alliance, less admirably reluctant to take the advice she's sought when it doesn't comport with her ideas.
Malcolm Mcpheerson
A boy collected from prison in Gilneas City at Oslynn's insistence during the defense of Gilneas City, and immediately the scrappy "pup" who had Lukas' paternal devotion almost from the first; one of the trio of "children" together with Ozzy and Zeke. His death in the evacuation of Gilneas remains an agonizing, undiscussed wound for Lukas, and inflamed his hatred of the Horde to near-incandescent levels.

Writings

Title Summary
(2024-10-15) The Lighthouse Prism Siamus finally (finally!) wins over the reserved Lord Graves. It turns out Graves may have a second prize in mind.
(2024-08-02) Re: A Pack of Proposals Kenelly sends a reply to Rhenardt regarding the status of the worganization.
(2024-08-01) A Pack of Proposals Lukas Rhenardt, the alpha of Gravehowl Pack, responds to Lady Kenelly's proposal for her new worganization. Organization. Worgen organization. Dammit.
(2024-06-09) Men and Principles On the morning of the King's summit in Stormwind to discuss Gilneas and war with the Horde, Siamus Fallon is distracted from his troubles by a new friend.
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