Name: Apollo Richtofen

Alias: The Lieutenant; The Quincy of the Double Quivers

Age: 27

Visual Age: 27

Gender: Male

Quincy Epithet: Stern Ritter [A]: The Archer
Apollo’s Epithet, the Archer, is a reference to his name. In Greco-Roman mythology, Apollo is the god of light and the sun, prophecy and truth, and healing and plague; and is depicted with his twin sister, the huntress Artemis, as a young athletic boy clutching a bow and arrow. The Epithet is also indicative of Apollo’s fighting style, which is unique among the Quincy.

Rank: Stern Ritter A

Appearance: In all things, Apollo lives up to his name, appearance included. He is a young man in his mid-twenties, obviously at the peak of physical fitness and with the confident, steady looks of a man used to command. If you were to dress him in a suit and tie and place him in an advertising firm in the 1960’s, he would look right at home amongst men of money, power, and sex. Everything about Apollo exudes that one singular aura of confidence, from his walk to his gaze; from how he shakes your hand to how he dances with the most beautiful woman in the room. Looking at him, you would be hard pressed to believe there was anything this man could not do. His is the look of a man who does not have mountains moved for him, but rather moves them himself.

Apollo has dark brown hair, cut short and neatly parted to the right, and, though he uses no gel or other products to style his hair, it always appears to be perfectly placed exactly how he wants it. A few stray bangs escape to hang slyly over his right eye, but rather than appearing unkempt they add a sense of roguishness to Apollo’s features. Those bangs, by way of their errant positioning, tell you that this is man gives orders, but also that he rolls his sleeves up and works as well, perhaps better than all his employees combined. Many a woman has wondered what it would be like to brush those bangs out his eyes, and many a father has wondered how satisfying it would be to cut them off with a knife while screaming at him about the chastity of their daughter.

Moving down a short way, we come to Apollo’s eyes themselves. They are his most striking feature, and would be unsettling if it were not for the rest of his demeanor. Apollo’s eyes are a beautiful light brown, almost golden; the color of copper. They shine and seem to shimmer in the light. Apollo’s eyes seem to take in everything; a single glance from them and you feel as if he has taken you in completely, from your clothes to your chin stubble, and then in his mind weighed and measured you to determine your true value as a human being. His eyes do not simply pierce through you; rather, they consume you, analyze you, deconstruct you, and put you back together again. This would be disconcerting, if those eyes were not also kind and jovial as well. Looking into Apollo’s eyes, you understand that, though you may never know them, he is a man with sorrows and joys all his own. He is not simply a commander or soldier. He is as much a person as you, and that is comforting to the soul in a singularly unique way.

His skin, contrary to the Northern European standard, is deeply tanned, mostly due to his time in Southeast Asia. Apollo sports a few tan lines, most notably in that his chest is a few shades lighter than his arms, face, or legs, though his chest is by no means pale. His hands are soft like well-worn leather; much like the man himself they have seen and done many things, but they have not become callous or rough because of it. Overall, Apollo has the appearance of anyone else who has spent a length of time near the Equator, though others probably where not hunting down and killing spiritual vampires and soul-eating monsters. No needle has ever touched Apollo’s skin, though it is more due to an irrational fear of needles than of the pain of getting a tattoo. Similarly, Apollo has few identifying scars; the ones he does have are faded to the point of being invisible.

Apollo is in the peak physical condition possible. He stands at an impressive, but not freakish, 6’2 and weighs in at 196lbs. With his broad shoulders, deep chest, and impressive physical regime (which mostly consists of fighting monsters to death), Apollo is built like a top athlete, probably soccer or lacrosse. Though he does not have the perfectly sculpted physique of a dedicated bodybuilder, nor the ridiculous muscle mass, Apollo does have clearly defined muscle groups and one can tell simply from his movement and center of gravity that, beneath a business-like exterior, there lurks enough power to beat a man to death.

As far as clothing is concerned, Apollo is most usually seen by his fellow Vandenreich in the standard uniform. He does not believe in personal modification to the standard dress code, and as such has nothing unique about his Vandenreich clothing. However, when not in uniform, Apollo is often seen in some variation of blue jeans, tennis shoes or boots, and a short-sleeved t-shirt with some obscure band’s name on it. For more formal occasions, he has been known to wear one of several Giorgio Armani suits (which he makes look better than the best models ever could), and was on one occasion spotted in a tuxedo. Overall, one gets the impression that in the case of Apollo, the saying, “The clothes make the man” is more aptly “The Man makes the clothes”. Not the capitalization.

Personality: Apollo has been raised to assert a calm, relaxed disposition on all things. He is the consummate business man. Always punctual. Always up to date on the latest developments. Always aware of everything going on around him. He believes that one should never break one’s stride, no matter what. He remains levelheaded in all situations, calmly inspecting his surroundings and the beings that inhabit them.

However, one should never take this to mean that Apollo is cold. Rather to the contrary, Apollo is a very jovial and fun person to be around. He enjoys a good joke, a night on the town, and the occasional fuck. His subordinates and fellow Stern Ritter love him. Apollo is easy to talk to. He listens. He gives good advice and knows how to take a joke. He inspires the troop’s morale and they know their trust in him is well placed. His men trust him completely, knowing that Apollo’s chief concern is to see the mission done and his men back home.

That being said, part of being the perfect commanding officer is knowing how to make the hard calls. Apollo is not afraid to sacrifice men to achieve the objective, though he dreads doing it and each dead soldier weighs heavily on his heart (even though he would never let anyone see it). As a commanding officer of the Quincy, Apollo knows that people have to die for wars to be won. But he doesn’t have to like it.

Apollo, for all his discipline, enjoys cutting loose when off duty. He can drink with the best of them, and is often found with a group of Soldat playing drinking games or shooting the shit. He is also a bit of a womanizer when off duty, and has been known to flirt outrageously with any and all forms of feminine beauty. There was also an incident several years back involving an aerosol can of hairspray and lighter that got a little out of control.

There is a bit of Blood Knight in Apollo. Though he hates to admit it, he enjoys a good fight, and he enjoys a fight where he stands a good chance of dying even more. Apollo therefore volunteers for a large majority of what the rest of the Vandenreich considers ‘suicide’ missions. To the rest of his fellow Quincy, this just appears to be Apollo’s devotion to the organization, and his way of keeping his men safe. In actuality, Apollo does it because he enjoys fighting against the most powerful of the Vandenreich’s enemies, and the thrill he gets from knowing that his safe homecoming is not guaranteed.

As for what motivates him, Apollo disagrees with the Vandenreich’s view of the Shinigami, and their desire to wage war against them. Rather, Apollo is motivated by a desire to protect humanity at large. Having seen all the horrors and dangers lurking in the shadows of the world, Apollo believes that the Vandenreich is one of the few chances humanity has at survival. His ultimate goal, therefore, is to eventually reform the Vandenreich into an organization to protect humanity, much like the original Quincy order. Where Apollo to have his way, this would lead to a restoration of the old world order, in which the Quincy protected humanity from Hollows and demons and the like without the assistance of Shinigami, regardless of The Balance.

He also disagrees with the generalization of the Vandenreich as a bunch of Magic Nazis, and the broader generalization of all things German as Nazi. Apollo is proud of his foster upbringing, both Quincy and German, and considers the Vandenreich a little too S.S. for its own good (the uniforms are a little too similar to something out of the Hugo Boss catalogue). In fact, making Nazi jokes about either Apollo, the Vandenreich, or Germany itself is the closest thing to a berserk button Apollo has.

This does beg the question, though, as to why exactly Apollo remains with the Vandenreich. If he disagrees so much with its stated purpose, why is he a member, much less a high ranking one? The answer is simple. Apollo believes that instead of trying to create his own organization from the ground up, or destroying and rebuilding the Vandenreich, the correct choice of action is to become the Vandenreich’s leader and begin a reform from the inside out (think Suzaku in Code Geass). To this end, Apollo has done his best to distinguish himself and rise through the ranks.


History: Apollo was born to a single mother in a lower middle-class neighborhood who died in a tragic accident that he neither remembers nor knows about. His earliest memories are of a boys’ home somewhere in Western Europe. At the age of 8, though Apollo thinks it was more like 6 or 7, he was discovered by German industrialist and Quincy King von Richtofen. King, recognizing in young Apollo the makings of a fine Quincy warrior, immediately began the process of adopting the young orphan. Though Apollo to this day does not know what brought the eccentric German into his life, the universe and yours truly know it was a sudden downpouring of rain while the German was out of a morning jog while visiting the city to finalize the purchase of a large coal mining operation run by a family of Irish scoundrels who were drinking the operation into the very ground the coal was coming out of.

Needless to say, Apollo was very much fond of his German savior and foster father. King, though crazily eccentric and prone to forgetting he could fire laser beam arrows from his hand at inopportune times, was a loving and proud father. Unable to have children of his own, King saw in Apollo the potential to realize all his fatherly aspirations and dreams. So, when young Apollo could not remember the name his birth mother gave him, King named him after one of the greatest Gods in Greek legend; a sign of King’s hopes for the boy.

Apollo spent the next few years learning all there was to know about the Quincy and running a multinational business from King, and he was a hell of a student. King had trained students over the years, some of them quite powerful, but never had he had pupil so quick to learn. In just a few short years, Apollo was ready for his first mission for the Vandenreich.

At the age of fourteen, Apollo spent his summer not basking on a beach in Italy, but hunting a pack of Bount through the sewers of Berlin. It was his first mission as a Quincy, and he saw it through to completion. After a series of brutal fights and an absurd amount of property damage (which King’s construction companies picked up the contracts to repair), Apollo emerged into the daylight almost two months later, shirtless and covered in horrible wounds, but with the heads of eight Bount clutched in his hand by the hair. By all accounts, he thoroughly enjoyed his summer.

From that point on, Apollo was a soldier of the Vandenreich. Though he attended school during the school year and eventually got into a highly respected university, Apollo always spent his summers doing missions for the Vandenreich, most of them requiring him to travel to remote parts of Europe to eradicate some ancient, hidden clan of Bount or kill a Hollow that was terrorizing a backwater village.

Apollo quickly gained a reputation for being quick, efficient, and successful in these missions, and he quickly advanced through the ranks of the Vandenreich. Along with his rank, Apollo’s powers and skill grew as well, setting him well above the level of his peers. He would come back from every mission stronger and with new abilities.

King watched Apollo’s success with great pride and joy. Though he was growing older and weaker, King remained vigilant of his foster son’s activities. Apollo always returned to his father’s estate after a successful mission for a warm shower and a hot meal…and the Swedish maid who’d taken his virginity the years previous. However, King’s aging did not go unnoticed by Apollo, who watched his beloved foster father grow weaker and sicklier every time he returned from a mission or school.

Eventually, Apollo was given a mission to journey to Cambodia to hunt down an ancient Hollow that had long eluded the Vandenreich. For Apollo, this mission marked two significant events in his life.

The first, and most evident, was that when Apollo finally got to the Cambodian jungle and tracked the Hollow down, which is an epic on the scale of Gilgamesh in and of itself, he found that it was not, actually, a Hollow. What Apollo found was a full blown Arrancar.

Now, it was a weak Arrancar, but a weak Arrancar can still wipe the floor with the vast majority of Vandenreich and Shinigami forces.

What ensued was an epic battle between Apollo and the Arrancar. Amidst a forest fire, Apollo was forced to use every ounce of his strength to defeat his opponent. Tapping into reserves of strength the young Quincy didn’t know he had, Apollo managed to defeat the Arrancar. It was the first time he would ever wield the double bows that would eventually lead to his epithet of The Archer. Apollo returned from the mission with four broken ribs, a chunk missing out of his thigh, a broken arm, and severe internal bleeding. He also returned with a cool gaze in his eye and power in his step. Apollo, at the age of 19, had faced down his first Arrancar and won. He returned to the Vandenreich and received his promotion with dignity.

Unbeknownst to Apollo, King passed away in the night while Apollo was recovering from his wounds. He attended his father’s funeral in full Vandenreich dress uniform, a cast, and on crutches.

After King’s passing, Apollo was set to inherit the von Richtofen empire. However, Apollo was at this point fully dedicated to the Vandenreich and his mission to ensure humanity’s survival, and quietly passed on the management of the empire to the next in line. He kept only a modest trust fund for himself (and by modest I mean absolutely massive. Bruce Wayne scale, here).

The next few years saw Apollo finish university, graduating with a double major in philosophy and engineering, as well as advance further into the ranks of the Vandenreich. He continued to perfect the art of using two Quincy bows at once, and his powers continued to grow. Apollo continued to be given high ranking and dangerous missions, and he continued to succeed where no others had.

At the age of 25, Apollo made a discovery in the Vandenreich archives that would change all his motivations. While researching Hollows and the Arrancar in preparation for a mission into the Siberian wilderness, Apollo stumbled across the legend of the Four Gods: Terra, Soul King, Lilith, and Achreios. Upon learning of the Gods, their creations, and their warring, Apollo was deeply troubled. If such beings existed, and he had every reason to believe they did, then at least 3 of the 4 were potential threats to humanity. Achreios in particular seemed like something that Apollo needed to look into.

From that point on, Apollo had the goal of reforming the Vandenreich into an organization to protect humanity from all threats, even Gods. For two years, he has trained and worked his way through the ranks, earning the loyalty and trust of his soldiers. And now, Apollo is the Stern Ritter A, and he stands ready for whatever trials may face the world.