Wendell Harper
Harper is a huge, bear of a man, close to seven feet tall, but with a slumped posture that makes him seem to loom forward. He's got a wild, bushy beard and unruly, overlong hair, both black but just hinting towards grey. His eyes stare out from light laugh-lines and even when he's looking straight at you he seems to have the glazed, thousand-yard stare of a man who's seen a lot in his day. Whatever he's seen, though, he's still one of the more genial, friendly men a person is likely to meet, always ready with a laugh or a smile. In stark contrast to his wild, untamed hair and beard, Harper dresses well, in impeccably cut Viennese suits in brown or grey, probably custom-tailored to his size.
Wendell joined The Lazarus Trust just a few years before The Great War as a field investigator. There follow three reports in the Journals with his name attached; one from New England, one from Norway and one from outside of London. Once things had settled down after the war's end, Harper lobbied the head of the Trust's Paris office, S. Wilson Rosepere, for appointment as head of the Vienna office, where he's been happily ever since.
What he did, and how long he'd been alive, before joining the Trust is something of an open question. Harper makes no secret of the fact that he's older than he looks, though he declines to reveal his exact age. "Often I'm a soldier," he claims when pressed. "There's always work for soldiers." It was during one such stint, in 1731 Prussia, that Harper first met an ancestor of Doctor Joseph Dippel, or perhaps met Dippel himself. The Dippel who lived in Castle Frankenstein was trying to return life to the dead. He needed a ready supply of corpses for his experiments and the grave robbing that ensued roused suspicion. Harper's unit was tasked to investigate and soon became part of the mob that, with torches and pitchforks, stormed the castle and burnt it to the ground.
- In recent conversation with our Intrepid Explorers, Harper claimed that he knew of the relation between the two Dippels, that being part of the reason he called for an investigative team, but did not know or suspect that the two might be the same man having gained a form of immortality.
