[OOC] The Marchand School of Sorcery

[EchoicChamber]

@Gelatinous Cube Approved!

[Trinais]

Question: Does this RP have room for a dedicated staff member who may or may not be a magical security agent who moonlights as a Substitute Teacher or kind of Magical IT guy for enchanted items on campus?

[EchoicChamber]

@Trinais Most definitely. :D

[Trinais]

My main concern while I write this is that this character would be reactive in nature- responding to threats and problems as they arise. Is anyone looking for someone who may or may not have been a shady spy during the war being part of their character's story/background?

[EchoicChamber]

@Trinais Well, there’s a good number of us who are writing war vet professors, if you’d like to work on some backstory on that front?
Also, out of curiosity, what’s the character’s primary going to be?

[Trinais]

@Trinais Well, there’s a good number of us who are writing war vet professors, if you’d like to work on some backstory on that front?
Also, out of curiosity, what’s the character’s primary going to be?

@EchoicChamber

Trickery with a side of Familiar, drawing on my Polish Heritage. I do not ever intend to use the Dievai power spoken of in the post- it's more for flavor.

Marek Stanislaw Draft

Full Name: Marek Stanislaw

Nicknames/Aliases: Mark. Mister Stan.

Age: 38/98* (See Backstory)

Gender: Male

Primary: Trickery

Position: Mechanical Technician (Security)

Secondaries: Familiar Conjuration, Tracking

Description: Miklos stands a little over six feet tall, and his top hat obscures most of his aqua-colored hair- a change from his chocolate-brown hair color caused by his time in the realm of the Dievai. His clothing adheres to the staff requirements on principle- formal slacks, jacket, and a long red scarf. Though the more hoity-toity of the magical families complain that his attire is so stained and patched as to look positively garish.

Personality: Miklos holds himself as borderline misanthrope and magothrope- to a stranger, it seems he hates you before he has met you. He believes you to be an incompetent unless he knows you to be an expert. The source of his seething anger is a mystery to the students. Many assume it's because he is the one dispatched to rescue them from mortal prison when their nights of partying go seriously awry.

But if there were ever a situation where his life and a student's were in the balance, then the student would most definitely live.

Skills:
- A man of light feet and unassuming presence; his use of trickery and experience as a partisan fighter allows him to shift by mundane and even magical scrutiny with little difficulty. He cannot change his whole body, but minor things like hair, eye color, scarring and prominent features can be molded like clay when he needs to do so. More powerful than this, his magic thrives on the contrived coincidence. Murphy's Law is the way the professors have explained his spellcasting to one another. If it is possible for your tire to suddenly spring a leak after hitting a pothole, it is a relatively simple thing for Marek to make it so.

- A man of mundane knowledge, he learned the art of machine and automobile repair from his mother, and the value of mortal connections with his father. Why use magic to solve a problem when a word in the police sergeant's ear will do? Why throw a fireball when you can rig a man's car to explode?

- A Dievai bound to him. The creature Parael shifts in form from a common barn owl to a bouncing, spectral light, to a ghastly skull wreathed in smoke. The Dievai is his servant, and so long as his requests to it do not require the use of magic, the creature must obey him.

Weaknesses:
- No one would think to lift a finger to help "the miserable man". Miklos' demeanor means he has few real friends outside those who know his real position as chief of security.

- Reliance on trickery and manipulation gets him through many difficulties, but as a famous mortal actor once said, "it only works on the weak minded." When the bluff is called, he has to resort to the more mundane art of ass-kicking to get out of a scrape.

- A Man Out of Time. While summoning his Familiar took him into the realm of Arcadia from 1944 to 2004 and he has had some time to re-adjust to this new world, he still cannot grasp most of the changes that have happened during his absence.

Brief History: Marek Stanislaw was born in 1921 in the city of Warsaw to a small, tight-knit magical family. He was educated in the art of summoning the dievai, trickster familiars capable of granting great power at terrible cost- bargaining with these creatures who wish to roam free on the Earth. The trick to mastering these beings was careful word games, sly social maneuvering, and an awareness of their behaviors- something he never felt confident he could master. Rather than being rebuked for weakness, his mother and father claimed this was a sign of wisdom- only the foolhardy boast of being able to bargain with the Dievai. Marek also learning the art of concealment and observation, of the Waxen Mask and the Upturned Die. Tricks of chance that could make magical and mundane onlookers seem completely inept, willing to attribute natural causes to supernatural occurrences. Judicious use of such magic could go a long way to getting a man out of a difficult situation, even among the mundane world.

The Stanislaw family was caught off guard by the Nazi invasion of Poland but managed to stay together in the city of Warsaw for most of the war. They even fought alongside the Polish underground- until the uprising of '44. When Germany began the complete demolition of neighborhoods to crush the Poles, Marek was caught between a rock and a hard place. With his family's apartment collapsing under the artillery barrage, he opened a portal to the Dievai realm and summoned his familiar- a being calling itself Parael. He had no time for finesse or word games with the creature and quickly accepted its offer of safety in exchange for the time he claimed not to have.

Which was how Marek found himself in the land of the Dievai for 60 years. He emerged in the modern world not a day older than when he left, completely confused by everything he saw and learned. Gradual re-integration with the magical community brought him up to speed on some things, but the Cult War made him set that on the sidelines. Marek went "off the grid" as they say today, during the fighting. Curiously, during this time, occasional cult members found themselves running afoul of bizarre "accidents"- for what else can it be when an archmage's washing machine falls through the floor and crushes him in his own basement?

Marek returned to public life after the conflict ended, taking on odd jobs in

Other:
The Stanislaw family of Magi were a long and storied bloodline in Old Poland, spoken of as boogey men in the night that could consume their enemies through a command of shadows and terramancy. This was a lie fed by the superstitious mortals and the few other magi that passed through Eastern Europe. The truth, like the Stanislaws, was always in plain sight. Polish folklore enshrines the idea of the clever hero, the man or woman who meets the devil on the road, wagers their soul for power, and outwits the demon to keep both the reward and the soul.

The Stanislaws were not masters of arcane, but master bargainers with eldritch spirits, demons, unseelie- whatever they might be called around the world. Their family's power began to wane during the rebirth of Poland in the 1920s, and it took the mundane world to do what the magical could not. Those family members not killed during the German occupation were seized by the Soviets, dying in gulags before they could escape to the other side of the Iron Curtain.

So far as he knows, Marek is the last of his family line.

-------------------------------

On the Dievai - The Dievai (singular, Dievas) are capricious spirits from another wild plane. They enjoy making bargains in exchange for permission to unleash their power. Popular folklore says they grant three "wishes" in exchange for their freedom; if the bargainer cannot guess their True Name after the Third Wish, the Dievai fulfills the wish and is free to wreak havoc on the material plane. Marek has used two wishes- the first to escape Warsaw during the Uprising, the second to escape the realm of the Dievai. He intends to die before making the third and freeing this inscrutable creature to enact its will upon the world.

[EchoicChamber]

@Trinais Ooooh. That's a really unique character concept, imo. I dig it a lot.
You can give him a Second Secondary, if you'd like! Most people have two, cause not taking a second one doesn't make the first stronger or anything like that. Approved regardless!

[Trinais]

@EchoicChamber Thank you! I have done so and shifted the character over to the CS page! Any interest in a brief interaction/argument for funsies between Marek and Professor Madison?

[EchoicChamber]

@Trinais I'm down for them to have a discussion. Wanna have a PM conversation about what their relationship might be, by any chance?

[Trinais]

@EchoicChamber Sure! One second!

[Silent Whispers]

@LorelleQuips Approved!

@Hushed Whispers Since Lorelle has already made a professor of Terramancy page, would you be willing to swap out Terramancy for another class, by any chance? You can still have a professor, of course. Sorry!

@EchoicChamber

Thanks for letting me know. What other ability can I make a Professor for? Is trickery available? >.>

[EchoicChamber]

@Hushed Whispers Trickery is indeed available for a Professor to teach!

[Silent Whispers]

@Hushed Whispers Trickery is indeed available for a Professor to teach!

@EchoicChamber

I'll take that one then. NO ONE TOUCH!!! :D

[EchoicChamber]

@Sailorsadie Approved!

[Prosaic]

I think I might get in on this, I'll have a sheet up sometime today!

[EchoicChamber]

@Prosaic Awesome! :D Glad to have you on board, dude!

[Prosaic]

@EchoicChamber

Nolan Nicholas Santora

☆ Nolan Santora ☆

N I C K N A M E S

Nol.

A G E

17.

G E N D E R

Male.

P R I M A R Y

Incorporeal Necromancy.

S E C O N D A R I E S

Of interest: Blood Magic, Familiar Conjuration.

D E S C R I P T I O N

Nolan stands out around 5"10 with a very slim build, he doesn't seem to maintain much muscle. He has naturally wide-set shoulders and fairly long legs. His hips are rather narrow, making him seem slightly delicate. The boy is very pale, though not to an extent that one might find him sickly. His skin is nearly flawless, maintaining very few freckles and very few scars. Though, there is one prominent, large scar that marks the flesh on the left side of his neck, disappearing behind his ear.

He's conventionally attractive with a pretty proportional face, a hard jaw and full mouth. His eyes are set beneath low, thin brows and they're a cornflower blue in color. His hair is a glossy wheat blond and usually appears very ruffled, he tends to slick it back at times.

He most often wears very fashionable clothing, preferring to follow trends with a good eye. He doesn't stand out when it comes to clothing but he can almost always be found in a pair of old, worn, converse. He has a necklace with an old red amulet that he wears constantly as well, though he tends to keep it tucked beneath his shirt.

P E R S O N A L I T Y

This boy could be considered something of an oxymoron, he's mostly friendly. He seems to have a natural love of life, often embracing the world with arms wide open. He can be a bit of a class clown at times, cracking jokes to make things less awkward and being generally disruptive. This friendly persona is what the majority of people see of him, just a happy-go-lucky type guy that lives to impress.

There is another part of him that can come off as downright rude. He seems to have almost no filter, saying things that can be belittling under the guise of it just being a joke. This slightly nasty edge to his personality often drives people away from him, though that's not to say that he's unpopular. People seem to like him, most of the time.

He's not very good with emotions, he doesn't seem to understand other people. It's hard for him to connect with them, he also doesn't open up very easily. He can't seem to talk about his own problems, if he's put on the spot, he'll always bow out of the conversation. It makes it hard to really know much about him.

C R U S H

Nothing currently, though it's not hard to catch his eye.

S K I L L S

- He's very skilled at incorporeal necromancy, he was raised to appreciate his talent and fine tune it as much as possible.

- Taxidermy, though this is a skill that he's picked up over the years, it's one that he's unlikely to boast about.

- Photography, he loves to use a camera and he's quite good at it.

W E A K N E S S

- Corporeal Necromancy, try as he may, he just can't seem to learn it.

- Fighting, he's particularly bad in a fist fight or any fight.

- Team work, when told to work in teams, he's heavily reluctant. Even if the matter were life and death, he would find himself not wanting to work in a team.

- Selective hearing, he tends to tune out things that aren't important to him and it can often end in him missing important details and being overall weaker for it.

H I S T O R Y

The Santora's were a very old and proud bloodline, they went back to ancient Rome with their necromancy. This bloodline was powerful and they raised their own to learn as much as they could about their powers. Though over years, the bloodline started to die out and the name became somewhat faded in time. They were nothing more than a name that nobody could seem to properly remember.

Though, the death of this bloodline was somewhat intentional. They had accidentally bred a bit of a monster around the 1400s, his name was Niklaus Santora. Niklaus was estranged from his family, seeming to constantly struggle with the art of corporeal necromancy. This didn't discourage him however, Niklaus was obsessed with his incorporeal necromancy, misusing it greatly and bringing unnecessary attention to their family.

He seemed to be driven by some extremely negative force, he began to commit senseless slaughter and experiment with any dark force that he could. He even began to become engaged in ritualistic sacrifice. This opened him up to more and more negative energy. He even gathered a small cult-like following over the years.

The Santora family became targeted as a result of this and Niklaus, along with many of his relatives and followers, were eventually killed. After that, the Santora's began to keep themselves out of the public eye. The tradition didn't die, and was passed around by the few remaining relatives, kept alive by the hope of making a better name for themselves.

Nolan was born into a family that highly encouraged perfecting their art. He had two older sisters who were extremely good at necromancy and he wanted to be just like them. He was quick to learn but there was small issue, he couldn't seem to grasp corporeal necromancy. The young boy tried all he could and couldn't ever seem to get it, though incorporeal necromancy came very easily to him.

This was part of why he came to Marchand, practically pushed there by a superstitious father. Nobody wanted to see another Niklaus.
O T H E R

- He hates any mention of his family's history and thinks that it's tedious to bring the past up. Though this is mostly him being extremely defensive.

- It's a rarity in his family to not be able to eventually learn both forms of necromancy.

- The amulet is an heirloom, believed to date back to the 1400s.

EDIT: Let me know if the history is bad or anything, because I can abolish it or edit it. I didn't know if it came off as too dramatic or not.

[EchoicChamber]

@Prosaic Approved! There's also a Discord server on the front page that's good to join for updates and stuff, but it ain't mandatory or anything. c:

[Prosaic]

@EchoicChamber Awesome! I'm not sure if I can join the Discord, I'm kind of stuck on mobile and 4G for the time being, so things are shifty connection-wise. Thank you for accepting me though. =)

[EchoicChamber]

@Prosaic That's fine! We've been mostly using Discord for messaging over calling or anything, but I know that it can be real fickle regardless when it comes to connection and the like under that set of circumstances. You're welcome to hop in whenever things get less shifty for you, though, and it's no problem!