Introduction
Nathaniel Blackwood
Appearance
Notable Features
✥ Immense hight✥ Thick dark eyebrows
✥ Deep voice
✥ Imposing air
Personal Style
One can argue that people who just want their relatives to be buried have no concern for how their funeral arranger looks. But the truth is, everybody cares: people want someone neat and organised to put their troubled minds at a little bit of ease. And because of that — but mostly because his nature dictates so — Nathaniel dresses well. The fabric of his clothes is good and often expensive, colours professionally dark when his office hours dictate so; he is neat, perfumed/cologned, and eagerly takes advantage of all personal hygiene developments.With that, at home he dresses little. Well, but little.
Circumstances
Currently
Most days Nathaniel Blackwood, a furnishing undertaker in Central London, is the face and legs of his family business Blackwood and son. By virtue of their long professional history, strong connections and work ethics, the company is doing very well, with the whole family contributing to its success.Health & Capabilities
Although overall healthy, Blackwood’s specific body parts, such as his back and neck, and oftentimes his head, suffer from a common affliction: standing at 6′ 5″, Nathaniel is at least head and shoulders higher than the majority of the London crowd. In fact, had it not been for his family alignment, he might have ended up with a successful career as a professional freak due to his weirdly enormous height.Because of that he often slouches his shoulders, trying and failing to become a little smaller (and also to be closer to people talking, for he sometimes does not hear them too well from up there); but, for better or for worse, this is not permanent, and he is more than able to perfectly straighten his shoulders when he wants to be noticed by a prospect business mark (or when his back starts practically begging for it.)
He also hits his head against door frames more often than it’s decent to admit.
In general, everything about his body is quite big, large, or wide. It is next to impossible for him to find a suitable horse, and his clothes and bed cost more due to the sheer volume of needed materials.
Weirdly, Nathaniel is not particularly worried about his height, not anymore, at least, but he still remembers the summer-of-growth, when he thought his lungs were going to explode and all of his bones hurt like furnaces of hell, seemingly attempting to escape their own designated body.
Socioeconomics
Blackwoods’ funeral business is doing quite well in its field. Therefore, Nathaniel possesses a stable income and, thankfully, surplus funds to fuel his and his lover’s free time with a variety of nice pastimes.Skills & Talents
✥ Cambridge graduate✥ Strong due to the sheer nature of his build (and some university sports)
✥ Reaching the highest of shelves
Present Relationships
✥ Mr William Blackwood, father✥ Mrs Eleanor Blackwood, mother
✥ Mrs Althea Wright, younger sister, married
✥ Ms Evelyn Blackwood, the youngest sister, unmarried
✥ Jacob Smith, lover and business associate of sorts
Identity
Hobbies
✥ Literature; ✥ Arts; ✥ Theatre in particular, since his lover is a great theater enthusiastPersonality
Nathaniel carries himself as a man of good composure. He can be charming if — and when — need be, can hold a conversation he deems important for business, or simply interesting, and knows a thing or ten about proper manners. He is also polite with almost all the staff he encounters.Although he does think about new ways to earn money quite a lot, he is not dead set on becoming one of those poor business-obsessed souls and operates mostly on his family’s guidelines.
Nathaniel is trying to be wise with finances, but he is certainly not stingy and can be quite generous with people he finds important.
He, and his whole family in general, are punctual and honest in the occupation; any client can sleep free from worries that the coffin handles of their beloved relative are to be screwed off and reused.
Nathaniel’s downtime is his downtime; and while if he sees a good opportunity, he grabs it, he does like to get his relative rest from family ventures where and when he can.
That being said, Nathaniel Blackwood is not devoid of his own vices. He can be impatient at times. His anger resembles violent storms with the rumble of thunder of that voice of his; and although he is not prone to much physical violence, his body knows how to throw a punch.
He can be passively jealous when it comes to good ideas that are not his, or a nice horse he cannot ride. He can be tactless in the presence of people he knows (or thinks) are not convenient to him. In business (but sometimes in life, too) Nathaniel can be too persistent, too stubborn, to the point of obnoxiousness even.
Nathaniel can also be cynical and fall into wells of sarcasm, although he desperately tries to keep it in his thoughts only.
In the privacy of his home, Nathaniel can show passion hidden from the eyes in the drawing rooms of the rest of society. And it is only for his private acquaintances to decide whether they like it or not.
Background
History
It all started with a cabinet.It was a particularly good cabinet, solid and sturdy, almost good enough to become a coffin in its next furniture life. (If pieces of furniture had future lives apart from serving in several different houses, that is, which is up for serious debate; but we digress.) Or so thought Mr Algernon Blackwood, who also carried a strong belief that his surname was somewhat of a providence, and so he practised his carpentry business with gratitude and vigour of a man unashamedly passionate about his job.
When that fateful night he pitched his coffin idea to his family, the person who became most convinced with the goodness of it was Algernon himself, and so started the Blackwood undertaking dynasty.
With how simple it sounds, we are of course omitting the story of trial and error(s) on the road to a more serious undertaking; for quite some time Algernon Blackwood practised his coffin-carving venture combined with making those cabinet’s siblings and cousins, as well as wardrobes, tables, and chairs, but by the time his son William took over, the business got the name Blackwood and son and became strictly a matter of aid for somebody’s passing of various degrees of tragedy. Whether it's your beloved wife or unbelievably wealthy grandfather, eager in his cold state to (finally!) part with his greedily kept riches — you could always be sure their last trip would make your neighbours silently nod in sombre approval of the beauty of the procession. A proper, well-crafted procession.
By the time Nathaniel Blackwood was born, the business name had already become an established name for everything funerals; you want those hearse velvets, pompous cloths, mourning coaches, silks, black ostrich feathers, best bearers with top-tier top… hats and armbands? Blackwood and son is the place to go. Mrs Blackwood, unbeknownst to most clients, was an avid decor and entourage planner, while the men took care of the rest.
They catered mostly to the middle class but did not turn away from an occasional poorer client, all the while keeping a small side of the furniture-making trade as well.
And all of that was grand and good, had it not been for the fact that all undertakers at the time of Nathaniel’s childhood had a bad name and a preceding reputation that was hard to fight in one’s own favour.
Nathaniel was born into the business, and for that matter alone, and not knowing anything else in his life, did not particularly give a second, or sometimes even a first thought to other people’s opinions on the topic. Contrary to possible expectations, he grew up pretty normal, with no grim hobbies or particular perversions, and learned to view undertaking simply as a business venture, and a profitable one at that.
Although fellow children tried their best not to let him forget about their parents’ views on this family-run enterprise, he quickly found out that they could be bought by made-up scary stories about the family house the very same business has been run from. Oh, and not “bought”, of course, but “persuaded”. Persuaded in a very similar manner he would later be persuading some grieving relatives to throw a posh funeral for their favourite aunt. No unnecessary plainness, please. If one could afford avoiding it, of course — the Blackwoods were no monsters.
Nathaniel was an elder and only son of the Blackwoods, and thus, being in such a position of responsibility and privilege, had a chance and an opportunity to graduate from Cambridge, where he proved to be a decent student, and if anything, he managed to acquire a few useful connections.
Somewhere around 1886, William Blackwood became tired and “too old” (his words) to run the company full-time, making Nathaniel take over the speaking representative role, while the whole family runs the funeral machine behind the scenes (and sometimes, of course, on the scene as well.)
And so, right now Nathaniel Blackwood, with his professional position as a furnishing undertaker, is preserving and improving their business reputation in old circles and new. Blackwood and son is your one-stop shop for everything funerals: coffins and attire, high-class embalmings, mourning parlours, transportation, and most decent cemetery spots one could only ask for.
Oh, and those mummy-unwrapping parties people still love throwing? You can ask him for the main dried guest. And he’ll most likely deliver. All those university connections had not been for nothing, after all.
