Name: Markiel Rovalnski. Mark.

Gender: Male

Race/Species: Human (Warlock)

Age: Twenty six. Clearly in his mid twenties.

Appearance: Mark has dark brown hair kept a little shaggy above the collar and out of his eyes. He has an average complexion. His features are sharp in that they are well defined rather than soft and rounded. His eyes are sunk back with a clear darkness around them. The most visually distinct feature is his amber irises the same color as his mother and his grandfather.

Mark stands six foot three and is muscular but lean. His body distinctly lacks a lot of body fat. This does cause Mark to get a colder a bit faster than other people. He prefers to wear simple clothes like jeans and T-shirts. For footwear he’d stick to his favorite pair of hiking boots even in less reasonable situations like urban areas. He has a number of other clothes: coats, vests, and such which are worn when the situation calls for it. His preference is efficiency over elegance in his fashion choices.

Personality: Mark is hungry for knowledge. New information is what he lives for. Being taught by his grandfather in traditional witchcraft Mark was exposed to the paranormal very early. Knowing there was more than just what he was learning in school made him want to know more since he had only been given this little window into the “real” world. He wants to learn more about his family and about this world he’s apparently a part of. He knows very well the danger of knowledge, and has the self control to not go too far.

Mark is not a leader. He’d much prefer to let someone else lead and take charge of everything. He has a good tactical mind and is wonderful with puzzles, but would rather be consulted rather than the end all be all. Mark likes to be prepared even if that requires getting someone else to scout ahead.

Mark does have a bit of a temper. Usually leading to a physically aggressive outcome. This can vary from a punch in the face to freezing all the saliva in your mouth. Mostly this goes back to his need to fight back against bullies from his middle school and early high school years. Words tended not to work, so a fist became his main option. He’s normally logical and reasonable, but he has his moments where he has to stand up for himself with some force.

Powers, Traits, and Abilities:

Mark as a semi-trained warlock has access to a variety of spells. The majority are simple charms and cantrips to handle menial labor meant for the modern warlock to make life simpler. Things like: telekinesis, floating lights, sparks for lighting a fire. He did complete the first manuscript on divining and enhanced senses a collection passed down through the family. The collection of spells enhance his five natural senses as well as letting him act as a divining rod. He can only have one active at a time and casting and dispelling them takes him about two minutes.

Later on he discovered a polish manuscript on cryomancy which he has begun studying from. He has learned how to draw heat out of things rather handily. This allows him to freeze a gallon of water instantly with it taking around thirty more seconds for each added gallon. He also can condense the water in the air to make a sphere of ice about the size of a baseball.

As his grandfather was a true Pole he learned Polish very early on and is now fluent in it. He also has learned an ancient Polish dialect used by his ancestry. The only sport he ever got into was Archery, and has become an awarded archer over the years. He still maintains his skills though mostly for recreation. He did hunt, but never had enough need for it to justify letting an entire animal go to waste.

Mark is a lover of reading preferring informative books rather than stories. He is a speed reader able to pick out words of importance very fast and carry on. His research into the paranormal helps him understand the logic of it how it doesn’t just come out of no where.

Mark’s greatest skill is not his magic nor his library of knowledge, but his innovation. Experimentation has let Mark turn his small arsenal into a swiss army knife of abilities. For example his ability to condense water in the air has been used to to make shapes besides just a sphere. He has cast it into the cracks of a door to pop a lock open, and used his water freezing ability to solidify the water in someones mouth making an efficient temporary muzzle. He always is working to come up with a new use to his old tricks.

Background:

Markiel Rolvanski is the grandson of warlock Gravin Rolvanski, and son of witch Lurena Rolvanski. Gravin was an immigrant from Poland leaving a few years before WWII moving to the U.S. and staying in Maine. Lurena was born not too long after. As first born she inherited the magical blood of her family tree as would Mark when he was born.His mortal father has mostly been irrelevant providing a connection to the mundane world. He was a good and simple man, but did at least made sure Mark realized that humanity was still a worthy part of the world. A tether to his own humanity.

Every saturday night since he was five Markiel would spend time with his grandfather being trained in magics. He learned the simplest charms first as modern warlocks rarely needed to use the darker arts as well as the risks that came with using such powers in this modern world. Around the age of thirteen his grandfather began teaching Markiel the family manuscripts on divining and sensory enhancement. Markiel studied these spells intensely some of the spells dating back to before the creation of english.

At eighteen he headed off to college pursuing a degree in archaeology hoping to use this as a means to fund searches for more magic in his homeland of Poland. While at a dig site of a supposed religious structure Markiel discovered a magically preserved manuscript on cryomancy. As well he was able to deduce the site was an ancient summoning circle and has kept many notes on it curious if he will ever need them again possibly for his own use.

Upon returning home he was told that his grandfather had passed from a brain aneurysm. When Mark left Gravin was in near perfect health. He was very healthy for being late ninties. Mark felt something was wrong. He knew something was wrong. He went to his grandfather’s house. He lived alone now his grandmother having passed some time ago sad, but she was simply old. Mark used his family’s magic to inspect the entire house and discovered this was not just an aneurysm it was a murder, an execution. Someone had carefully unlocked the front door and gotten inside way nary a trace mark’s enhanced senses let him find a trail of footsteps that were too large for his grandfathers and were too shallow for the MTs who came after he was found dead. this man was clearly sneaking around. In his grandfather’s bedroom he sensed a strong magical aura, but he knew that his grandfather kept all of his magic to his workshop as he was an enchanter in his youth. This magic was too strong for a cantrip. Clearly someone with a knowledge of magic was there the night mark’s grandfather died.

Mark explained all of this to his mother who hadn’t even thought to look into the matter as she was too overcome with grief. She reminded him of a phone number he was only to use in the most dire of emergencies, magical emergencies. He made the call, and soon two men of arrived. They began their own investigation of the crime, and mentioned a couple of leads. One that seemed very likely to them was a witch hunter with some sort of magic device or even an advanced piece of technology. Mark did his best to provide information disgusted to see that someone had killed his grandfather a good man simply because he was different. Before they left sadly unable to find enough to pursue anything Mark insisted they explain why his family knew about this group. As it turned out his grandfather’s enchanting was typically of devices for PHI. It was how he was able to come over to America in the first place. Mark had one question left at that point. Where could he sign up?

Mark needed answers, but also this organization had gotten his grandfather out of Poland right before the biggest war in human history likely saving his life. Even if his grandfather had paid off his work Mark felt it was time for him to put his skills to a better use. Do something to honor his grandfather’s memory.

Name: Amanda Staten, but it’s likely that anyone she becomes friendly with at PHI would call her Mandy.

Gender: There is, in fact, a girl buried somewhere beneath all those sweaters.

Race/Species: Half-breed, poor thing. Amanda’s mother was a cait sidhe, a race of faerie cats with both human and feline forms. Mom had a fling with a human man, and a few months later, Amanda was born, the runt of the litter. Her human half is most definitely dominant. (More details in the traits and background sections.)

Age (Real and apparent, if applicable): Amanda is recently turned twenty-five, but is often mistaken for younger. As faeries go, even as a half-blood, she’s still considered an adolescent by most standards.

Appearance: Lean and angular, Mandy clocks in at about five-five—neither terribly short nor terribly tall. Narrow wrists, a fondness for oversized clothing, and an absolute refusal to take up space conspire to give her a diminutive appearance, despite her middling height. Her long brown hair is very fine and easily mussed, falling in indecisive waves down to her waist. Her fair skin shows everything easily, from blushes to bruises, and her battle with under-eye circles is constant. Her eyes and ears—golden-green and subtly pointed, respectively—are the only real hints of her heritage, and they’re both things that even her limited grasp on glamour can usually hide.

Her aesthetic can best be described as “starving college student,” and she likes to be comfortable above all else, so dressing professionally can be a challenge. As in everything else, she tries. She does at least have a good eye for color and a fondness for cashmere, so if she could just be convinced to buy a sweater in something resembling her own size, she’d be in pretty good shape.

Personality: If there’s an ounce of the stereotypical feline standoffishness in her DNA, Mandy doesn’t know it—think less hardened alley cat and more that friendly stray that hangs around your back door until, somehow, you now have a cat. She can be skittish when presented with strangers or conflict, but she wants to like people, and once her affection’s been won, it’s hard to shake. The only time she’s the least bit grumpy is when she’s just been woken up; living on a human schedule takes its toll, and sleep deprivation leaves her disoriented and disgruntled.

Amanda is generally surrounded by an aura of comfortable chaos. She tends to be scatterbrained, though not specifically forgetful. Her files may be all over her desk, but she knows what’s in each one. She tries very hard to be organized for the sake of her teammates, but sometimes, she just works best when left to her own devices, as seen below.

Powers, Traits, and Abilities: Amanda is good at making connections, in more than one sense. Dump a pile of information in front of her, and Mandy will scatter it, rearranging things until “like” items are together, creating pairings that other people might not have thought of. Whether or not on the matter at hand, her mind is always working on something—and she has been known to dream up the answer to a problem during one of her midday naps.

With her open personality, it’s no surprise that Mandy is also good at making connections with people. She occasionally sticks her foot in her mouth, and her methods may grate on more linear thinkers, but she is always trying—her mixed reception in both the fey and human communities has made her eager to please. She puts people at their ease, largely because she is the least intimidating person you are likely to meet, especially in the world of the supernatural.

As far as “powers” go, Amanda’s are limited. Her night vision is not as good as that of her feline counterparts, but it’s better than a human’s. She doesn’t shift easily anymore; partial transformations are easier than full ones. Glamours are almost completely beyond her, but she has a knack for sensing ones that have been cast by someone else.

Just like mundane cats, cait sidhe are crepuscular, most active at twilight and dawn and sleeping sporadically in between. Amanda is no different, but she’s determined not to let this interfere with her work, and so can sometimes be found napping in empty offices in the middle of the day, rather than going home.

Background: Just as with “real” cats, the kittens in cait sidhe litters can have different fathers. Amanda was the only one in her litter with human blood. Her faerie blood was dominant in her infancy, but her human side asserted itself as soon as she stopped being dependent on her mother for nutrition. The cait sidhe aren’t kind to runts or outliers, and Amanda’s mother was quickly faced with a dilemma: what to do with a child that could no longer reliably shift or keep up with her stronger siblings, and how to protect that child in a community where she would never be completely welcome.

Then came that gold-embossed card. Amanda was too young at the time to understand everything, but she remembers being passed off to a social worker that didn’t think it at all strange to be picking up a child in an alley, and she remembers the long car ride to an orphanage full of children of all shapes, sizes, and colors. And she remembers the look on her mother’s face as she gave her away—one of affection, yes, but also of guilty relief.

Amanda has not been home since her mother gave her up. She doesn’t know who her father was. She passed her time at the oddball orphanage in relative comfort and grew up with the chance to make friends that were at least a little like her, but she never felt truly rooted. So, when she’d done her time trying to make the college thing work and graduated without any better idea of what she wanted to do with her life, she went looking for the first place that ever wanted her. And it took a while, but eventually, it showed up: that little, gold-embossed card...