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The Marchand Academy of Sorcery

Sig

Full Name: Sigmund O'Welles

Nicknames/Aliases: Sig

Age: 16

Gender: Male

Primary: Necromancy

Secondaries of Interest/Secondaries: MWI, Levitation

Description:

Height: 5'8"
Weight: 120 Lbs
Build: Thin, willowy
A lean young man with angular features, Sig tends to favor heavier winter clothing, as though he is always a little cold. What he wears tends to be crooked and ill fitted, his hair normally unkempt and sticking up at odd angles. He gives the impression of a person who doesn't care about his appearance, likely not out of any stylistic choice but rather a complete disregard for social conventions.

Personality: At first brush, you might assume Sig is on something, or perhaps should be on something he has neglected to take. Ditzy, forgetful, and just a touch manic, he seems to approach problems from complicated and illogical angles. Whether the question is social or academic, he under and over thinks things seemingly at random. He seems to be in a perpetually good mood, though this is likely attributed to by his lack of self awareness.
A 'get along, go along' type of person, he's more inclined to make friends than enemies, though he makes no obvious effort in the pursuit of either. He has a flair for the dramatic and unconventional, but his strange and often complex plans frequently fall apart once he forgets what he was doing in the first place.

Crush:



Skills: A naturally gifted corporeal necromancer, Sigmund favors skeletons for their simple and highly modular qualities. Combined with specific enchantments, he cobbles bones together like abstract walking art projects, favoring aesthetic over practicality. Questions like "why" are generally pushed aside in favor of questions like "how" when building a necromantic construct.

Weaknesses: Aside from the other drawbacks of being a spacey oddball, his compulsion to over complicate every conceivable situation means that a focused and lateral thinker could easily run circles around him.

Brief History: For generations, the O'Welles clan has been content to keep to their own devices. Being a family of eccentric misanthropes has never been something worth raising an eyebrow over in the magical world at large. A nomadic people by nature, stories from the old days paint fantastical pictures of great roving caravans, pack animals and vehicles alike all constructed from ambulatory bone.

As the world grew and became more interconnected the family diluted out into greater society, forsaking their reclusive nature in favor of survival.

Sigmund himself hails from what his family consider "the last remnants of the old blood", though their lack of record keeping makes this a highly contentious claim. His immediate family runs the "Oddities Arcanum" in Denver, an avant garde art museum catering specially to the magic community.

The Marchand Academy of Sorcery

Layne Towerfall

Full Name:
Layne Aurelius Towerfall
Nicknames/Aliases:
Just Layne. That not good enough for you?
Age:
17

Gender:
Male

Primary:
Terramancy

Secondaries of Interest/Secondaries
-Magical Weapon Infusement
-Familiar Summoning

Description:
Height: 6’5”
Weight: 174 lbs
Build: Muscular, but not athletic.
Layne doesn’t care much for appearance, and his wardrobe reflects that: His typical outfits don’t stray far from t-shirts, sweatshirts, and jeans. It’s rare to see him wear anything that looks new. He tends to wear an article of clothing until it physically falls apart.
His knuckles are scarred from many brawls, and his nose his obviously been broken at least once.
Personality:
Layne isn’t a people person: A rough and tumble childhood shaped him into the kind of guy who lets his fists do the talking. He can frequently come across as mean-spirited, always quick with a disparaging remark for anyone he doesn’t view as respectable.
He isn’t one to think too hard about his next course of action either. He runs through the world like a wild horse, full of vim and nearly impossible to contain.
He puts on a false front of not caring what others think, but under his gruff and headstrong exterior he genuinely wants to be liked. Unfortunately, his upbringing has left him without the slightest idea how to handle relationships appropriately. Still, if one can make it past all his glaring faults, they’d find a stalwart and protective companion.
Ultimately, Layne behaves in this way because he feels he has something to prove. To the aristocrats who look down on his family, to his dead-beat dad, and to himself.

Crush:
TBD

Skills:
Layne has a decent grasp of his Terramancy, but everything he knows is either self-taught or imparted to him by his less that reliable father. His skills are rudimentary but surprisingly potent for one his age.

”Stone, like Water” At his touch, stone and earth become soft and yielding, responding to his thoughts to shape into nearly anything he can imagine. Unfortunately he is not a very imaginative person, so this ability only works with very small amounts of material and only as long as it is in contact with his skin. It’s useful as armor or weaponry, but more subtle work is beyond him. While his power works best with things like limestone and granite, it also functions with pure crystalline structures like diamond and obsidian.

"Improving the Natural" Layne has some natural skill for MWI, but has so far only been able to apply enchantments to weapons made by his own hand from stone or crystal. These charms tend to be strong, but rudimentary: Increases in sharpness or durability, for example.
Weaknesses:
His most glaring weakness has to do with his primary ability: While coating his body in stone makes him a formidable bruiser, it also slows him down nearly to the point of immobility.
More than this, Layne is not very clever. Like Alexander cutting the knot, he’s the type to smash straight through the walls of a maze because he simply isn’t capable of solving it. He can be very easy to mislead, deceive, and outwit.
Brief History:
There was a time, many generations back, when it would have been a mark of social status to employ a Towerfall mage. Known for their ruthlessness and shear brute strength, they were frequently sought out as guards and mercenaries by more patrician magical houses. Need a rival’s tower torn down? Does a peasant revolt need to be stopped? Towerfall would have been the first name to come to mind. A merchant caravan flying the family crest would have been safe from even the most cut-throat of highwaymen. Their house may not have been considered noble, but they were respected.
Of course, war can change many things. Their family name had been on the decline for years before the war even began, looked down upon as a relic of a more violent past. After a particularly crushing defeat during a key battle, their fate was sealed: All but one member of their house was dead, and the rest of magical community had their confirmation that the Towerfalls were the untrustworthy and inelegant brutes they always thought they were.
So Layne was raised by his father, Marton, a broken and disgraced war veteran with nothing left but his now tarnished name. Layne’s mother is a mystery to him, as she apparently fled into night not long after his birth, no doubt driven off by Marton’s love of the bottle. Now, Marton was not necessarily a bad man, but he had no idea how to raise a son on his own. Layne’s relationship with his father is tense at best, characterized by many a shouting match and beating.
Layne view his acceptance to Marchand as a chance for redemption: He hopes to at least soften what he knows are his very rough edges, and hopefully restore a touch of honor to his family name.

Other:
His most secret desire is to make magical jewelry. He makes small pieces at times, but he isn't suited for such delicate work and generally makes a mess of it.

Dr. Edgar Coyle

Professor of Runes and Healing

Full Name:
Edgar Morgan Coyle

Nicknames/Aliases:
“Doctor Coyle”
Age:
38

Gender:
Male

Primary:
Runic Casting

Secondaries of Interest/Secondaries
Healing, Blood Magic

Description:
Height: 5’10”
Weight: 133 lbs.
Build: Slender, just on the verge of looking unhealthy.
Hair: Chestnut brown, streaked with white. Thick and untidy. Keeps a (mostly) close cropped beard.
Eyes: Dark green, muddled with brown. Wears a pair of thick lensed glasses.

Coyle has a tendency to always look like he’s just leapt out of bed. He is every bit the image of the ‘absentminded researcher’, his hair often tousled and unkept, his clothes stained with… well, things that probably aren’t worth asking about. His skin is ghostly pale and he has dark bags under his eyes, indicative of a man who does not often see the sun.

Personality:
If you met him at a party, you might say Coyle is odd, but polite. Generally wearing a placid smile, he’s quick with a joke or a word of kindness. However, there is a sharp, predatory gleam ever present in his eyes. Like an owl eyeing a field mouse.

In truth, his primary focus is always the pursuit of knowledge above all else. Colleagues, students, or random innocents on the street: To him, they are only possible test subjects.
It would not even necessarily be fair to call him cruel. Coyle is not a malicious or sadistic man, he is merely indifferent to suffering he deems necessary.

Relationship:
His first and only love is his work

Skills:

A Well-Structured Theorem: With his sharp mind and lifelong devotion to the understanding of magical theory, given enough time Coyle is capable of monstrously complex feats of runic construction. During the war, he utilized these abilities to lay traps and defend perimeters. He can be credited with spells are gruesome as making an entire enemy unit vomit blood, as well as subtle lines that made a man who crossed them lose all sense of direction.

Medical Biology and You: As is common among his bloodline, Coyle has a powerful knack for healing magic. His specialization lies in complex works of surgery, and he is infamous for his ghoulish skill in keeping a body alive long after nature would have dictated it to end.

Weaknesses:
Due to the nature of his abilities if he does not have sufficient prep time and information he is utterly useless in physical confrontation. His Healing abilities are similarly hampered: Healing small injuries on the fly is enormously difficult, as he requires the sterile and ritualistic nature of an operating table to work.
On a personal note, Coyle has few friends due to his personality and the dark reputation of his family.

Brief History:
If one were to peruse the sections of Magical Theory and Medicine in the average library, a clear pattern would present itself. Namely, the common repetition of a single name: “Coyle”
Indeed, “The Coyle Institute of Theory and Physiological Understanding” has been an infamous name in the world arcane academia. Mainly only accepting their own blood relatives, fewer than one in six thousand outside aplicants are allowed to conduct their work inside it’s dark and haunted halls. Those that are allowed access to the institution are vowed to secrecy. Despite it's tightly cloistered nature, the outflow of knowledge is relatively vast. To quote one prominent scholar, “Without the work of the Coyle Institute, our understanding of the function of the human body and the method of it’s repair would be set back one hundred years.”

Rumors always abound. Nightmarish experiments, gruesome tortures, mass graves and disappearances, no story of the Coyle institute told in dark taprooms has a happy ending. Despite any of these legends, the institute still thrives. Multiple investigations have been conducted by Council officials, but the result has been the same each time: There was no substantial evidence present of unethical treatment of subjects, nor was there any indication anyone was being held their against their will.

It came as quite the surprise when Edgar Coyle, the family’s eldest heir, volunteered to fight the cults on the front lines instead of spending his life in the laboratory. One might have expected an anemic and nebbish boy like Edgar to be nervous at the prospect of war, but he practically danced with glee.
He proved his usefulness swiftly, nearly unmatched in his skill with complex runic formulae. He earned multiple commendations after several battles turned neatly on their ears by his well laid pitfalls and multiple night raids on Council camps thwarted.

Though it was odd…. Despite his reputation as a skilled healer, he abstained from any conventional field medic duties. If he was outside, he was working on runes, or carefully examining corpses. Otherwise, he spent every waking hour in his tightly sealed and heavily guarded research tents. It is mostly unknown what happened in those canvas pavilions, their exteriors heavily warded to prevent sound from escaping.

Other: