Kenneth Hunter

By the time he was chosen late in life to become the Reaper, Kenneth had already made a family for himself; after years of maintaining a double life, it all came crashing down when his wife and son were identified and murdered by Seraphs. His remaining years were spent in an unending quest for vengeance, quickly degenerating into near-insanity due to his overuse of his second form.

Personality

Before his eventual descent into madness, Kenneth was known for being fair, stern, and disciplined. While the mantle of Reaper came upon him unexpectedly, he didn't shy away from the new responsibilities and approached it with a seriousness and acceptance of duty that earned him the respect of the people of Genesis. In many ways he treated his new role in much the same way as his prior military service, where his home life provided a chance to be open and affectionate in contrast to the demands of being the Reaper.
The death of his family changed him drastically, leaving Kenneth harsh, solitary, and filled with deep-seated bitterness and hatred for the Seraphs. After this point he trusts only a handful of people and spends most of his time keeping to himself, not being seen for months or years at a time. The overlap between his thoughts and those of the feral spirit of the Hidewalker's Gift begins to blur, leaving him more aggressive, impulsive, and reducing his ability to plan or sympathize with others. It's only in his final year or two of life that he begins to feel some remorse for his whole-hearted slaughter of his enemies.

Abilities

Most of Kenneth's abilities stem from his role as Reaper, including the ability to see fate, a link to his god, magical talent, an instinctual proficiency for weapons, and several others. Notably, he felt a stronger affinity than most to the monstrous second form called the Hidewalker's Gift which allowed him to take on the form of a great wolflike creature; while his overuse of this form noticeably eroded his mental stability, it also let him use it with much more proficiency than most Reapers.
While all Reapers are blessed with potent fasthealing that lets them heal even major wounds in a matter of minutes, Kenneth's ability to heal was significantly hindered after he was poisoned by Darius Seraph. Over the next ten years his capacity for self-healing dwindled to almost nothing, leaving his far more vulnerable to injury than even a normal human.
Aside from his Reaper powers, Kenneth already had a number of skills that made him well-suited to his role. He was already in well-maintained physical shape, with combat experience from his time serving in the military leaving him relatively suited for the duties he'd take on. Clever and tactically-minded with good battle instincts, he brought a great deal of expertise from his previous life that served him well even once he started suffering a mental decline.

Backstory

Growing up in the American Midwest as the only child of a small family, Kenneth's early life was unremarkable. He lived in a relatively small town where military service was seen as the preferable option to the limited jobs available, and signed up for service after exiting high school. Serving in the military for several decades, including active duty in Desert Storm and the Gulf War, he eventually retired from military service and moved to the Pacific Northwest. He met Marion while working there, and the two started a long-lasting and happy relationship that quickly led to marriage and one son, Nathan, who they raised together while living a peaceful life; Marion worked an office job, and Kenneth worked as a contractor with various military adjacent projects that had him travelling semi-frequently. They had a happy, stable existence with little major conflicts or upheavals.
It was in his late forties that his life took an abrupt change. Kenneth unexpectedly came into the role of Reaper with no prior forewarning or guidance, coming into the sudden knowledge of the existence of Genesis, magic, and his connection to the god of Fate without anyone to explain it all to him. Reeling under the strain, he left on a 'business trip' and was guided by Fate to a local magical community where he was fortunate enough to find people with enough knowledge to help him begin to sort through the enormity of what he was now a part of.
Once he got his feet back under him, Kenneth took to his role of Reaper with surprising ease. His previous military background had helped prepare him for this sort of service, and the flexibility and travel of his contracting meant that it was easy enough to balance his secret life with his everyday one. In many ways he enjoyed being the Reaper and found it to help fill a certain lack of purpose he'd felt since leaving the armed forces; with his force of presence and efficient work, he quickly earned a great deal of respect as Reaper among the magical world.
Unfortunately, his time as Reaper happened to overlap with the growing strength of the Seraph family. Kenneth's human identity was discovered and led to the orchestration of the deaths of Marion and their then-grown son Nathan, leaving Kenneth devastated and swearing his revenge on the Seraphs. From that point onwards he abandoned any pretense of a human life entirely. His entire existence became devoted to his duties, but on a far more personal level devoted to hunting down and destroying as many of the Seraphs as he possibly could.
Though his anger was at the Seraphs as a whole, Kenneth particularly dedicated himself to destroying the family's Huntlord Joshua Seraph for his perceived role in ordering the deaths of his family. Though he succeeded in killing Joshua in a vicious confrontation, it also spelled the beginning of the end when he was stabbed with a degenerative poison by Joshua's young son Darius Seraph who had witnessed the killing.
The back-and-forth war of attrition continued for another decade, with Kenneth continuing to decimate the numbers of the Seraphs while slowly succumbing to the poison's breakdown of his ability to heal. By the end of his life he'd begun to grow tired of the violence, and reflected a great deal on his own perpetuation of the cycle that had claimed his family in the first place. He began to look onwards towards who would be Reaper after him and try to work towards preparing them for the task, taking time to make sure that his grandson, Artemis Hunter, would make a capable successor. After that, he sought out Darius one final time for a fight he was aware he couldn't win.

Important Relationships

MARION HUNTER
Kenneth's wife of many years, and the mother of their son Nathan. The two had a happy marriage and home, despite the complexity of Kenneth keeping his life as the Reaper secret; Marion was already used to Kenneth being a bit reclusive by nature, and wasn't overly concerned by his occasional absences. She was in many ways the guiding light that helped him stay stable, always giving him a place of safety and warmth to come home to no matter what terrible things he saw, and Marion's death at the hands of the Seraph family was the clear turning point in Kenneth's descent into an obsession with vengeance.
ASHIENN
A lone shapeshifter of a similar age to Kenneth, and one of the few people that Kenneth considered a friend and confidant. The two met during a yearlong conflict in Great Sky Shard, where a Cursed was waging a war of sorts on the local shapeshifters; they became allies and fought together, maintaining a friendship afterwards when they realized that their personalities and life experiences meshed well. In Ashienn's last few years of life he agreed to help watch over Kenneth's grandson Artemis Hunter to help keep him safe from Seraph retribution.
ARTEMIS HUNTER
Kenneth's grandson and successor as Reaper following his death. Though they had very little relationship in life out of Kenneth's desire to keep his only surviving family safe from any chance of discovery, the two bonded in the last few months of the old Reaper's life. Kenneth never told Artemis the truth about their relationship or what he was, instead taking the time to enjoy a measure of normalcy and assess the man that his grandson had grown up to be. He regretted placing such a heavy burden on Artemis's shoulders, but died confident that he would have the strength of character to bear it.
DARIUS SERAPH
For years Kenneth blamed Joshua Seraph for ordering the death of his family, and didn't realize until he'd already killed Joshua in front of his young son that the Huntlord hadn't been the one who planned the attack. As a result he grew to regret what he'd done, and came to view the killing as an awful mirror of his own loss; the Seraphs had taken his son, and he'd taken Darius's father. Though Kenneth never stopped viewing the demon-blooded family as his enemies and a source of evil in the world, he actively chose to seek out his death at Darius's handsin hopes that the killing might be enough to bring some form of closure to the whole matter.

Basic Information

Name: Kenneth Hunter, the Wolf Reaper

Race: Reaper, formerly human
Sex: male
Age: late seventies (deceased)
Storyline: Bloodlines