Ryci and Plecy mentioned I might be posting an app, so I hope you're still accepting. ^^;
Name: Marek Tesar
Race: Human
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Appearance: Marek has hard facial features, prominent cheekbones and forehead, a slightly crooked nose, and squared jaw. He has longer black hair, though more often than not it's swept back into a ponytail. His thick eyebrows stand above dark gray eyes. His skin is white, typical of someone from northern descent, slightly tanned, and is marked with burn scars, heavily on his arms, and lighter around his torso and legs. Interestingly enough, they're not entirely uniform, as some look more recent than others. While he claims to have a small birthmark shaped like a flame on his back, anyone who inspects it closely enough might notice it's just another scar from a burn, albeit made much more carefully and intentionally.
Marek stands at 5'11" and weighs about 145lbs. He could be called fit, if not skinny, mostly from weeks of travel of the road.
Clothing/Armor: Marek's preferred style of dress is a snug tunic, sleeveless, with pants that cut away at the knees. However, due to weeks of travel, he currently has a dirty. long-sleeved coat that reaches down to his shins and has a singed hole through the left hip, a green linen shirt with dark pants, and a sturdy pair of boots. He lugs around all of his worldly possessions on a backpack strapped to his torso with one-too-many belts. He a wears shiny, small rock around his neck, tied with his a leather thong, and can often be seen with dark spectacles.
Weapons: A single dagger is sheathed at his belt on his right hip, the blade about a hand's span in length. Aside from that, he totes a flintlock pistol in his coat on the right side as well. It's usually kept loaded, and fits into a leather "holster," inside the pocket that specifically keeps the barrel pointed away from himself. It's slower to draw because of this, but after almost shooting his own leg when he kept it in his left pocket, the extra moment is more than worth it. Because of the slow reload time (for him), he usually doesn't keep his smooth bore ammunition, extra flints, and primer is kept in an outside pocket on his backpack. The powder, patches, and ramrod are kept in a separate pocket.
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Skills/Abilities: Half-dead-shot: Hardly a marksman, Marek knows a bit more than anyone else might about aiming, shooting, and reloading, however the beauty of the gun is that it takes very little skill to operate. He can't reload as quickly as a professional soldier could, nor can he always guarantee the shot will be perfectly loaded...but he sure does know the basics.
Silver Tongued: Although Marek has always been a gifted story-teller, it’s only recently that he’s been forced to sharpen his skills as a liar. The stigma and pariah status that comes with his magecraft have made it a necessity.
Magic: Marek’s magic is an inborn talent, recognized by an elder when he was young, and has since been informally honed into two different types: The creation, and manipulation of fire. He may call different utilizations “spells,” but it amounts to the same thing, just with a small spin to it. Sometimes he needs more of one than another; if he can find a source, for example, he need only a small shower of sparks. If not, it’s a bit more taxing on him to maintain a fire without fuel. That isn’t to say he’s a novice. The various burn scars that cover his arms and body are testament to his years of practice, but in the world of magecraft, he is far from being a “master.” The source of his magic could be called, “mana,” though it’s tied much more intimately to his own energy than a separate pool. If he’s tired after a long day of manual labor, casting becomes much more difficult than if he’s well-rested and fed. If he creates a conflagration, he may become tired, hungry, and grouchy, much like if someone was physically exhausted.That doesn’t mean he’s immune to effects that drain, “mana,” or magic, quite the opposite. Because the pool that he draws from is tied to his own energy, it can sap him of his strength, physically and magically.
Backstory: Born in a small settlement on a river, opposite a marsh, to Havel and Emily Tesura, Marek was followed by two younger sisters. His father was a carpenter and served as alderman in the artisan guild for a few years, so was moderately successful in his endeavors. Marek never showed much aptitude for carpentry or woodwork, nor to any of the other trades in the guild his father introduced him to. In his early years, it wasn’t much of a concern, but around the time he turned 12, it became worrisome. In a final effort, his father arranged an apprenticeship to his brother, a locksmith, Marek’s uncle. For two years he assisted his uncle on minor jobs, and traveled with him when he needed to. Although he never showed much in way of “natural talent,” he learned a little, and enjoyed the time spent with his uncle and cousins.
It was at 14 that odd things began to occur, particularly in the kitchen or out at the campfires when they traveled. The flames flickered, the fires spewed showers of sparks or grew in height, even on still nights. Not too long after that, fires began starting where there had been no flames or sparks, though luckily they were always put out. The strange occurrences came to climax when his uncle’s house burned down, and nearly killed everyone, Marek included. The family sought help and contacted a specialist. At first, they thought it was ghosts that plagued the family, but the specialist, a mage, arrived, he quickly deduced what the issue was, and tested Marek and his cousins for any sort of magical inclination. He explained the to the family the issue, the risks, and made an offer to take Marek off their hands. While the boy thought it was a ridiculous offer, his aunt and uncle finally assented after weighing the pros and cons all night. The hurt that Marek felt at seemingly being sold to a complete stranger by his own family would stay with him for years until it was replaced by gratitude and the sense of superiority that the mages helped instill. But that wouldn’t be for sometime yet.
The mage’s name was Jean Perkins. His “specialty,” wasn’t in creating magic, but suppressing it. He made his living finding “unusual,” problems that plagued the common folk and ridding them of the issue, which, he explained, involved something magical, item or caster. He had very little need or want for a fire mage, but he did need extra help in getting around. He couldn’t offer the boy training, but he did promise that he could try and help arrange it if it came up. But he could offer minimal guidance, and even offered to suppress any magical bursts that proved to be too much for Marek to control. In everything else, he needed to train for himself. It wasn’t much, but at least he was able to learn to control, and rein in his magical abilities.
Marek soon discovered that, contrary to what Perkins has lead him to believe, “unusual,” problems weren’t as magical as implied. In the rare times magic users were at fault, it was usually for good reason; A magic item is found, bought, or stolen and the owner has no idea how to use said item, a caster feels wronged and plagues the person responsible, or, in Marek’s case, a magic user has no control over their own abilities.
Over the next six years, Marek and Perkins moved in and out of the mage and common communities. All the while, Marek explored his sorcery, and Perkins was always nearby incase things became too much for him to handle. Still, by the time he was 20, Marek had numerous, albeit small, burn scars along his arms and one on his leg. Even a fire mage wasn’t immune to his own fire when the blaze was big enough. Shortly after Marek’s 21st birthday, Perkins retired and the informal master/apprentice relationship ended. Marek couldn’t continue the old mage’s studies or business; the only way Marek knew how to suppress magic was to raze whatever was causing it to the ground. That didn’t seem like a very popular method for ridding people of troublesome magic, and so he was out on his own. Sure, he was confident enough in his fledgling skills to advance his training on his own, and he knew enough of his own limits to practice without Perkins as a safety net.
Despite being able to conjure fire, Marek found that he couldn’t conjure coin. His early jobs were limited to that of a laborer. His magic, while useful beyond measure, wasn’t so much a skill to him like carpentry or tailoring; anyone could light a fire. He was a young man without a profession, and probably would have stayed in that rut had he not been found once more by another mage.
Unlike Perkins, who actively tried to shy away from a majority of the mages, this one, Joseph Blackwell, fully indoctrinated him into the community. He too was a fire mage, so Marek supposed there might be some sort of kinship between them. Blackwell’s intentions, however, were far less pure, but by no means malicious. Blackwell was building an army. Again he received no formal training, but he did learn many useful tricks for starting, catching, and spreading his fire. He also met several others, also fire mages, under Blackwell’s command. It was not a formal “army,” in any shape, but a collaboration of half a dozen men and women who shared the same affinity for a specific type of magic. However, for the first time, he felt like he found where he belonged.
The mages trained together, but separate, and learned to work in unison. All the while, Blackwell had been instilling in them a sense of pride at being mages, and slowly groomed them over the next few years for combat because, “fire magic is purely an offensive form, so this is how we train.” For years the group acted as Blackwell’s personal guard, and were dispatched on several small missions with him. The first few, they were told, were “peacekeeping,” missions, and their presence was only to ensure that nothing happened.
In the next few missions, the team was put into pairs and split up. They were told the mage population in certain areas was being targeted, and they were dispatched to help protect them. On his first ship out, Marek and his partner were traveling in a passenger ship, told to lay low and not give away their position. This inevitably failed when they were attacked by pirates. The cannons on the pirate ship made quick work of their own, and at a distance, fire magic was next to useless. Marek and his partner escaped, but he did gain an appreciation for gunpowder.
As the war of the mages moved into full swing, Marek, as a fire mage, and his partner were dispatched to more and more places, often to help raze, pillage, and act as crowd control. He and the others had been convinced that what they were fighting for was equality of mages, and to end the oppression. Although Marek hadn’t seen much, working as a laborer had shown him that jobs requiring mages were often very limited.
As the tides turned and it was clear who the winner would be, Marek and his partner fled after a particularly bad incident in which his partner was shot in the leg with a crossbow bolt. Now a detriment, he was forced to leave him behind. Whether he lived or died, Marek never found out. He spent the end of the war and the years after laying low and hiding his magecraft. Then, out of the blue, he ran into his old employer, Blackwell, who informed him of recent rumors and odd happenings in the town of Waeldeshore. Allegedly, Jeltheor has resurfaced. As the pupil of Anjoel, who started and led the war. It was only natural that he should be found, secured, and protected until he can be retrieved and taken somewhere safe to plan out the next movements, and possibly restart the war.
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