Name: Tobias (Toby) Schippers
Primary: Runes
Secondaries of Interest: Healing, Familiar Summoning
Description: Tall, but stick-skinny, with the lanky look of someone who used to be tiny but obviously went through a rapid growth spurt. A few weeks shy of 18 years old. Cute, but the way an injured puppy is cute. Wavy mouse-brown hair, big eyes, perpetually concerned eyebrows, and dimples. Wears rectangle-rim glasses when he has to read something far away, and a lot of argyle sweatervests.
Personality: Mild-mannered and polite. Loves literature. His notable block-stutter often makes him seem nervous and unsure--and at any given moment, let's be honest, he probably is nervous and unsure. Between his personality and his appearance, Toby isn't exactly an imposing human being.
Skills: Already somewhat proficient in his self-taught memorization and application of runes. If he lacks depth in certain combative uses, he makes up for with a formidable breadth of knowledge.
He has managed to use one of his secondaries in a limited way, able to summon an utterly harmless Familiar that looks a little like a sugarglider in the face, a little like a duckling, and a lot like it could star in a children's cartoon. Toby has, however, managed a few other summonings. And not all of them are cute or harmless. He enjoys shooting, and is not a bad shot...in a calm, controlled shooting range with stationary targets.
Weaknesses: Toby has no real combat experience, or much social experience in the magical world, for that matter. As mentioned, he's scrawny and his speech impediment is a hinder to his communication. He has no knowledge of healing, merely interest.
Brief History: Toby's mother was grafted in from the powerful terramancy family, the Fox family, which used to be something to be proud of, before Matthew and Morgana Fox had to go become well-known cultists. His father's line, the Schippers family, is known to be a bit of a mixed bag. A few outstandingly gifted rune-casting sorcerers dot an otherwise underwhelming and dilluted family tree. And for as many bright lights, there are black marks--it seems no generation of Schippers can avoid at a criminal lowlife or two.
Toby's father didn't do much to nullify that point of view, as he skipped out on them when Toby was five. His mother later developed an aggressive cancer that even magic could not fix. Four years ago, when Toby was fourteen, she passed away, and Spire, Toby's much older brother, became Toby's legal guardian.
Note on Spire Schippers: Toby will have to navigate school with a considerable shadow hanging over him. The most recent Schippers scandal involved Spire, who was a member of an expert team of operatives during the war. About 15 years ago, near the end of the war, Spire was arrested for murdering three innocents while attacking a den of cultists. (He claimed that the cultists had already cut the victims' throats when he shot up the room, but some members of Spire's unit claimed that Spire himself did the throat cutting, after the shooting occurred, to cover up the fact that he had shot one of the innocents.) Since the gunshot wounds and the fatal exsanguinating cuts were all perimortem, the physical evidence was indeterminate, and the key witness, Ren Norrevinter, was conveniently killed in the war shortly before the trial.
The charges didn't stick. Spire was exonerated, but the Schippers family name took another blow. Much of the magical community knows the name Spire Schippers, most have seen his picture. Rumors float about that he has killed since the war, and he has been seen to mingle with some of the more unsavory sorts in the magical community. Most people who haven't met Spire believe him to be a sociopathic murderer. Most people who have met Spire...still believe him to be a sociopathic murderer. Toby's earliest memories of his older brother are through bars and in tribunals. In spite of all that, Spire has shown himself to be protective and surprisingly close with his little brother. Other:
For a few years, Toby had foster siblings, his cousins: Cyrus and Dinah Fox, but they were passed along when his mother became ill.
Toby is familiar with Maeve Byrne, one of a few members of Spire's old team who didn't renounce his association, and whom Toby views in a capacity not unlike a crazy aunt.
Toby and Spire have more or less kept away from the magical community as a whole for the last few years, with Toby attending an ordinary high school and studying his gifts in private.
