(no subject)

[etherics]

CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Stephen Day
CANON: Charm of Magpies series by KJ Charles
CANON POINT: beginning of book 4, Jackdaw, except he did some stupid shit and had his memories suppressed all the way back to immediately pre-series
CHARACTER AGE: 29 28
HISTORY:

Ah, Victorian London. Where the aristocrats look down on the merchant class, and the merchant class look down on the working class, and everybody looks down on the poor. Stephen Day was the only son of Allan Day, a solicitor of modest means, born small, skinny, and unimpressive. From that disadvantaged beginning he was forced to watch a rich and powerful aristocrat ruin his father's career over a grudge when he was twelve, and eventually lost both his parents when his mother became ill and his father's tattered career could not support the medical expenses. Allan soon followed his wife to the grave "over a broken heart."

Rather than being left to the dubious mercy of an orphanage, however, Stephen started manifesting magical ability and was given over to the care of the justiciary, the secret police that enforce laws over England's underground magical community. Magic-users, or practitioners, are under strict orders to keep themselves a secret from the rest of society, and justiciars are tasked with the thankless jobs of investigating magical crimes alongside the regular police force, identifying and subduing new talents before they hurt themselves (or are burned at the stake), and also executing warlocks, practitioners that use outlawed blood magic. To "turn warlock" is a practitioner going bad, victimizing ordinary people for their energy or just generally going crazy and evil. Magic itself is apparently quite the double edged sword, as those with lesser or mediocre power deal with the hunger for more all their lives while watching stronger practitioners throw their weight around.

For a child without money, high breeding or great magical ancestors to his bloodline (none of which are specifically necessary to produce a powerful magician, but are seen by practitioner society as qualities of a better class of person), Stephen proved unusually strong and was quickly snapped up for training as a junior justiciar, inspired by the idea that he might be able to continue his father's quest for justice even if he could never go back to an ordinary life. He was also inspired by the tale of the Magpie Lord, an exceptionally powerful practitioner from the Jacobean era who used his wealth and influence to establish the laws of modern practice as well as the justiciary itself and the Council that governs them. In the Magpie Lord, both lawgiver and sorcerer, Stephen found a personal hero and an intersection between his old life and his new.

In the course of his duties he assisted the Metropolitan Police with unusual crimes, hunted down and executed warlocks, banished ghosts, broke curses, made enemies of some of the highborn members of the Council with his Radical political views, annoyed his aunt, partnered a female Jewish practitioner for five years, and kept his own inclinations towards men thoroughly stamped down. While his partner Esther is the most senior of his four person justiciar team, Stephen is their brute force, often sent alone (or taking it upon himself to go alone) after powerful warlocks and garnering a certain reputation for getting the job done, no matter the cost.

As a senior justiciar Stephen now has a student of his own, a young woman named Jenny Saint from an even poorer background than Stephen's, and his entire team seems to be made up of outcasts and social misfits. While all of them are quite talented none have a very respectable social status, making it extra difficult for all of them to perform their jobs and protect innocent lives while being sneered at. Stephen's last case involved an extremely powerful warlock who managed to evade suspicion and capture several times simply because he was rich and born the third son of a duke, until Stephen ran him to ground and defeated him in a one-on-one magical duel. Stephen barely won and at present time is still recovering from the effects of that battle.


PERSONALITY:

Stubborn, dedicated, and serious, Stephen is very much the son of a lawyer and very much a born detective, hounding in on mysteries and liars instinctively with the fierce need to make things right. He has a strong sense of justice and is thoroughly disgusted by the common acceptance that money and breeding somehow make one a better person, and because of his own experiences with prejudice he believes fiercely that magic-users are no better or different from ordinary people, and that the law needs to apply to everyone. He's a believer in reform, preferring to teach rather than punish when at all possible, but when punishment is required he can be merciless. Since there are only a handful of justiciars to police a city like London, he's been regularly required to make split second judgments in the field and is very well acquainted with being judge, jury, and implacable executioner. He holds himself to very high standards of professionalism in his duties and in his personal life, preferring proper courtesy and conduct even when his day job pretty much consists of killing people. Warlocks are not so much considered criminals as they are madmen, with their crimes of stripping other lives for power being described as on par with cannibalism. Performing cruelty via magic is considered habit forming, and justiciars themselves are kept under close suspicion by their own teams and peers due to the violent requirements of their jobs.

In his personal life, Stephen is a poorly concealed wreck. Without family or friends outside his profession, the job is his entire world. He has a terrible saving people complex and constantly blames himself for unsolved crimes, escaped suspects, or being just a second too late to save some innocent victim. Adding to his stress is the fact that he's queer and hasn't breathed a word of it to anyone, ever, instead finding a random stranger in an alley every now and then and constantly terrified of being arrested and exposed to all his colleagues. While the justiciary doesn't uphold the same laws that regular police do (for example, allowing women into a dangerous job like policework), they also wouldn't lift a finger to help him if he were caught and it would utterly ruin his reputation, which he has been trying to build back up since his father's death. For this reason Stephen's never had an actual romantic relationship in his life and constantly denies himself, craving the attention of a dominant partner who might take the choice-- and the guilt-- out of his hands. Not that he isn't picky, as he's more than capable of defending himself from even the strongest of ordinary men, but for him half the thrill is toying with the idea of being vulnerable. He wants desperately to be vulnerable, to feel ordinary instead of like a loaded weapon, to be able to trust and surrender to someone, but he's also convinced himself that the very thought is a fantasy. He's short, poor, over-worked, has a scandalous past, barely hangs on to lower class respectability, can't touch someone's bare skin without giving them an unpleasant electrical shock, and he can stop someone's heart with a touch. The only thing that stands between him in a killing fury and a whole city of innocent people is his own sense of discipline. Trusting himself to another person is simply too much to ask.

In contrast to his usual professional fairness, he holds a grudge like a motherfucker over personal insults. Insulting his partner or his student is a quick and easy road to ensuring that he'll have it out for you. As the quote goes: his good opinion once lost, is lost forever.


ABILITIES:

- etheric manipulation. Essentially telekinesis, the ability to move objects or create solid force out of nothing. Stephen can hold a grown man down against his will but for the sake of scaling, he will only be able to use this power sparingly before becoming too exhausted to sustain it. For example, he might be able to lift a car off the ground, but the effort would knock him unconscious after a few minutes. It's more sustainable for him to use small measures, for example holding someone by their wrists rather than pressing their entire body into paralysis. He's also able to use this ability to add force to punches or shoves.

- etheric sense. He's sensitive to energy currents of the natural world as well as spellwork and strong human energies, like the site of a violent murder. If a powerful energy user walked into the room he might be able to sense it, although his best focus is through his hands and he gets his clearest impressions when he touches bare skin.

- speaking of, Stephen's hands are the most powerful focus of his magic and their touch is described as prickling and electric. In canon he is capable of killing with a touch, although he won't be able to in game, but his hands produce energy that can feel like a mild fizzing up to uncomfortable jolts. The sensation increases the more excited he is. For this reason, he wears gloves in company and tries not touch people's bare skin if at all possible, since it gives him away as a practitioner and also humiliatingly reveals when he's aroused by something. On the plus side, his hands glow in the dark sometimes.

- element manipulation. So far this seems to be limited to lighting candles, lamps, and fireplaces (he seems to have an affinity for fire), and he can turn lesser metals like tin into taffy. He's not strong enough to manipulate cold iron and putting iron cuffs, chains, or a collar on him would prevent him from using or sensing magic at all. He can also conjure lubricant. Yes, really.

- wards and dowsing. Given the correct materials (candles, instruments, miscellaneous objects he probably won't have access to) he can create a protective anti-energy shield around someone, or a magical motion sensor, or trace the origin of something. None of these are absolutes, so for example even if he set up an anti-spell ward around someone it wouldn't be out of the question for it to fail or simply not be strong enough.

- fluence. Mental suggestions that lead someone's thoughts in the direction he wants them to go in. Think Jedi mind trick, but Stephen has to be touching them with bare skin and has to physically say the words to them. For example, if he wanted to convince someone that his name was Harry Potter instead of Stephen, he would have to touch them and say the words "Listen to me, my name is blah blah, you thought it was something else but it's not blah blah etc." The suggestion works better the more plausible it is, so Stephen would have an easy time convincing someone he'd just met that his name was different and a very difficult time convincing someone who'd known him for a while. In game, I will always ask OOCly if it's okay for him to fluence someone. Players are welcome to decide how well the fluence works on their character or how long it takes to wear off or it wears off at all. Fluence doesn't actually replace or wipe memories, the real memory of the event will always be there, but the character is basically hypnotically persuaded to believe that something else happened and if it's plausible enough to them, they may or may not stick the fake version of events.

In general, within the Magpie universe all magic is drawn from the outside environment or from specific sources, like a magical object or even other people. Stephen is only powerful in the sense that he can easily draw in energy from his surroundings, but put him in any kind of situation where there's no ambient energy and he's immediately weakened. He's also very affected by the type of energy he takes in, and is susceptible to emotional manipulation if the energy source is sexual, or violent, or what have you. Burning up one's own energy for spell-casting is incredibly dangerous and increases metabolism. For a tiny little twig of a man Stephen is noted to eat like a starving vulture and alcohol has very little effect on him, because his abilities burn it all up so quickly.


SINS & VIRTUES: Lust/Chastity, Pride/Humility

SAMPLES

http://voicetest.dreamwidth.org/14085.html

http://graveyardshift.dreamwidth.org/1070.html?thread=1753134#cmt1753134