CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Wilhelm
Age: 40s?
Canon: Borderlands
Canon Point: post-Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, pre-Borderlands 2
Character Information: Wilhelm the Enforcer, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, and Borderlands 2 for good measure

Personality: Wilhelm is a straightforward sort of man, very much "what you see is what you get". Said by an interviewer to come from a "broken home" (though it's never clear if this is true or embellishment/exaggeration) Wilhelm asserts that as a kid, he was good at one thing— fighting. In fact, Wilhelm was born with a condition called "bone waste" (supposedly the Borderlands version of brittle bone disease) and so is actually implied to have been especially fragile in his very early childhood. He had cybernetic implants grafted to his skeleton at an early age in order to combat this, which may be both the reason that he got into so many fights (because kids can be real assholes) and the reason he ended up being so good at them.

It almost certainly is the reason for his current addiction to cybernetics, along with the mechanical eye he had to get after he lost his real eye to an injury. Well, that and his apparent obsessive hero-worship of the Almighty Robot Policeman... Yeah, don't ask. He has various cybernetic implants and can gain even more depending on how a player chooses to upgrade him. He sees absolutely nothing wrong with chopping off perfectly functional limbs to replace them with robot parts. By his appearance as a boss in Borderlands 2, he is essentially half-Loader. Thankfully, this Wilhelm hasn't quite got that far, though his (apparently one and only) aim in life is to become a robot. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

In case it wasn't already painfully clear, Wilhelm is a little lacking as far as brains go. He's a simple kind of guy with a simple kind of attitude, always direct and no-nonsense if only because there's not a whole lot else going on in his head. Most questions and requests are answered with a firm, decisive "no", and even when asked to provide a quote for motivational posters, "no" is the best he can come up with (and that wasn't a refusal to make the posters, just to be clear... he did that part just fine). He expresses a distaste for books (or "word-holders", as he calls them) and classes any sort of literature that doesn't have a gun on the cover as "snooty". Also, apparently, thinking is hard— he'd far rather keep himself occupied with important stuff like killing people than spend any time thinking.

So yeah, it turns out that he's really good at killing people. Wilhelm is in fact the galaxy's most famous mercenary, with a kill count the size of the population of a small country. He was working security jobs on the inner worlds until he messed up an important job and failed to stop a president and/or orphanage (he corrects himself to the latter, but it's anyone's guess what actually happened) from being blown up. Which, when all's said and done, doesn't diminish his claim to being really good at killing people in the slightest. Now he kills people for Jack on the shitty backwater planet of Pandora and its moon, Elpis, because Jack offered him a couple million dollars to do it. Sold.

Money is perhaps Wilhelm's primary motivation; he'll do just about anything for a price (he is a mercenary, after all). While he can be stubborn if he doesn't want to do something, he'll always be easily swayed by the promise of payment. There's a good chance that his actual reason for wanting money is in order to afford more cybernetic upgrades, because that shit gets pretty expensive and all, though again this isn't something that's ever clarified— maybe he just really likes money. He probably wouldn't admit too much about it, when he considers something as inconsequential as liking steak to be his "personal emotions" and feels "violated" when it's made public... despite having admitted it in an interview. I told you he doesn't really think about stuff. On the other hand, he doesn't mind talking about how much he likes robots (a lot), not that he'd really be able to keep that secret if he wanted to. Most other things he's indifferent to, and he doesn't mind making it known. Wilhelm doesn't care about your problems or your suffering... unless you're planning on paying him to do something about it.

Interestingly, especially for a mercenary whose loyalty is primarily to himself and his next paycheck, he doesn't take betrayal too well, stating that if Jack wasn't already paying him to do it, he would happily kill their betrayer(s) for free. In fact, by this point Wilhelm seems to develop a certain loyalty to Jack, essentially becoming his right-hand man later on. Perhaps it's because Jack has a shitload of money, or was happy to hire him after his reputation had been damaged, or just because working for him gives him access to all the first-rate Hyperion cybernetic enhancements he could ever want. Or maybe he just really, genuinely likes Jack— he tells Timothy (Jack's body double) that he likes him even though he isn't the real Jack, which suggests that might actually be the case. Whatever the reason, the irony of the situation is painfully strong when unused audio in Borderlands 2 suggests that Jack actually betrays and poisons Wilhelm to ensure that the Vault Hunters can defeat him... but not too easily. Wilhelm had previously beaten the original four Vault Hunters single-handedly, after all. It wouldn't do to make them suspicious and ruin Jack's villainous heroic plan, now would it?

Maybe Wilhelm was a little too good at killing people.

5-10 Key Character Traits:

• simple/straightforward
• unintelligent
• blunt
• taciturn
• violent
• ruthless
• brutish
• callous
• unemotional
• mercenary (as in motivated primarily by money)

FITS, CONFLICTS, or EITHER? fits, please!
Opt-Outs:

• demon
• werewolf
• merperson
• naga
• troll

Roleplay Sample: here and here