Description: Klaus is easily recognized by his shock of white hair, undoubtedly the result of some magical experiment gone awry. The rest of him is unremarkable. The image above is a portrait of Klaus during his university days. He's clearly aged since then, but is unable to sit still long enough for another portrait.
Name: Klaus Banning
Age: 26
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Pansexual
Occupation: Assistant Professor of Elemental Magic at the University of Ironwood
Weaponry: A heavily modified crossbow that definitely has more features than needed in battle (cup-holder? Really?), none of which seem to have improved Klaus's melee ability. It's uncertain whether Klaus is aware that crossbows are suppose to be used to vanquish enemies and not to capture interesting insect specimens. Ah, well, academia.
Apparel: Klaus wears a simple brown traveling cloak and boots. He'll occasionally don faculty robes when he's feeling up to it, but those days are getting rarer and rarer.
Equipment: Scrolls, quills, and a butter knife. Various knick knacks stowed away in the infinite pockets of his cloak.
Skills: Klaus is an exceptionally talented at his specific branch of elemental magic and exceptionally clumsy at almost every other activity, including walking.
Magical abilities: Klaus is trained in elemental magic and has a particular affinity for summoning lightning, although he's only ever done it to study electric charges. Despite the obvious offensive potential, he has yet to display any talent for fighting. Years in the ivory tower will do that to you.
Personality: For someone with a history of manic outbursts, Klaus is remarkably stable. He's affable enough, albeit mildly autistic. He's a little too quick to laugh, a little too slow to appreciate the gravity of a situation, and prone to spouting irrelevant trivia at inopportune moments. For the most part he's chatty, funny in an off-kilter way, and enthusiastically curious about everything. Has an uncomfortable tendency to treat acquaintances like interesting specimens. He's unfortunately prone to arrogance when it comes to academics, but that's to be expected.
Backstory:Nine years ago, the future looked bright for a young Klaus Banning. He'd just graduated from the University of Highmont with a degree in elemental magic at the precocious age of seventeen. The university had offered him a job as a teaching assistant, which he'd accepted. He could continue his magical research with the university's vast resources at his disposal. He was going to publish groundbreaking tomes on the nature of elemental magic. He was going to get tenure.
The first few years went well. Klaus became assistant professor, then professor, then chair of his department. He was young, brilliant, and respected. He was a prodigy, damnit.
Then the trouble started. Klaus had always been interested in the bizarre and unexplainable, but the university became worried that his research was crossing the line into Black magic. He was summoned before the board more and more often, reprimanded for unacceptable experiments.
It's unclear what happened next. By some reports, he had a manic episode in the lab and went on some kind of magical acid trip, destroying half the basement floor and costing the university thousands in damages. A more sympathetic story holds that government officials approached him about developing his electrical magic for military purposes, and did not react favorably when he refused.
Others held that Klaus had been driven mad by his own research. Professor Banning had looked into the abyss, and the abyss had broken him.
In any case, Klaus was denied tenure, stripped of his position and research resources, and kicked out of Highmont to boot.
The details of the next two years are equally murky. Some former students believed that he'd set about traveling the kingdom. Some thought he'd taken up refuge in the Truesh Peaks. Others were convinced he'd been committed to a mental institution.
And then he was back, with no explanation as to where he'd gone. Highmont refused to allow him back onto the faculty, but the smaller institution at Ironwood eagerly offered him an assistant teaching position. This title is generous, as Klaus does very little teaching and very much jumping out at students from random corners on campus for fun.
