Alec Troven (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
element_wizard) wrote2012-03-30 11:29 pm
element_wizard) wrote2012-03-30 11:29 pm
Entry tags:
Library App
Original Canon Character Application
Out Of Character
Name: Kippur
Age: 33
Journal:kippurbird or [Bad username or site: kippurbird @ ”livejournal.com”]
Contact: E-mail/AIM/Plurk/Yahoo!/etc. kippur@mad.scientist.com/ Aim: Kippurbirdy
In Character
Name: Alexander “Alec” Raven Troven
Canon: Original -called currently the Elemental Wizard Chronicles.
Canon Point: A few days after he’d returned to the wizard’s city after traveling with his grandfather just before he runs into Jono again.
Sex/Gender: Male
Actual Age/Apparent Age: 19/17ish.
Belongings: some honey candy in his pocket, a pendent with a phoenix on it, some coins, string, a rock with a hole in it, some scraps of paper.
Skills and Powers: He has some minor singing abilities and is able to play the flute and guitar moderately well. He’s not really that skilled in a lot of areas. He was raised as nobleman’s son and while he was getting a university education he wasn’t a great student because of his dyslexia. Now if social niceties were needed, Alec’s got those down pretty well. He knows which fancy forks to use and for what.
Magically speaking, on the other hand, Alec makes up for it in spades and a half. He is an elemental wizard. That means that he’s capable of manipulating all four of the traditional western elements: fire, earth, air and water. He’s really good at using fire, being one of the strongest fire wizards of his generation. His raw power in the other three elements are near the same but his control is lacking in them, because of this and a few other reasons he doesn’t tend to use them. Mostly because he’s paranoid that if he uses them, the council will find out and have him killed. He’s learned enough to control them so he doesn’t use them accidentally, but his main element is fire. He’s strong enough to cause a good size firestorm if he wanted to. Unfortunately to do such a thing would probably near kill him. He has to use his own personal energy to create and control the elements. Small things like creating fire for lights or heating up a cup of tea is easy and done without thought. But when you get to combative kinds of magic or bigger workings it takes up more energy. Obviously such abilities would be severely restricted in the Library, probably down to smaller works. A fireball or two, being able to cleanse small quantities of water, maybe dust with air or get earth good for planting. Things like that.
Alec also has a smaller set of abilities that he inherited from his fey ancestor, as well as a mild iron allergy and pointy ears. The iron allergy consists of getting blisters when touching iron for long periods of time. He never gets lost, he’s got some mild foresight and empathy. All three of those would be straight out inside the library. The iron allergy, of course, would stay. Can’t really get rid of that, now can you?
Physical Description:
Alec is in that awkward phase of puberty of all gangely limbs where bits and pieces haven’t quite caught up with the rest of him. He’s got a few more inches left to shoot up before he’s got his full height. Currently he’s about five feet eight, when he’s done growing he’ll be about five foot eleven. His hair is messy, black and down to his shoulder, his eyes are mud brown. Alec is rather fey looking, or perhaps more half elf looking. When it comes to clothing they’re very finely made, and in near Victorian era style, as opposed to something out of Medieval times.
He tries to carry himself in a confident manner, but there’s a nervous edge about him around strangers. He doesn’t know what they’re going to do or how they’re going to react to him being able to control all four elements. He knows that he has to be absolutely careful not to slip up and mention it or he could DIE and that would be bad. That being said there’s also a bit of an sort of innate superiority snobbery about him. He is noble bred and he was brought up with the idea that Wizards are better than everyone else. He’s not intentionally prejudice, it’s just something that is considered a fact of life among everyone and he’s never had anyone show him that it should be otherwise.
b>Book Description: Alec’s book is covered in light gray leather. A phoenix is emblazoned on the front on a black diamond. On the back is a multi pointed star like this. The pages are gilded gold on the edges, very fine, though it looks barely used. Rather like it’s there to be admired but not actually read. The bookmark is brown with a dragon encircling a sword on it, probably chewed on the edges.
What does your character’s Book and Bookmark look like? This is not anything we will judge on, but it is important to how the game will be played. Make sure to talk with castmates about whether you want any similarities here.
History and Personality:
A good part of Alec’s history and personality is the fault of something that happened 1,000 years before he was born (and because of time loops partially his fault). One thousand years ago there were five kinds of wizards, elemental, fire, water, earth and air. Then the elemental wizard known as Lorac (later Lorac the Destroyer) blew up the city of wizards and then killed off every living elemental wizard before vanishing, probably dead. The surviving wizards decreed that no other elemental wizards, should they be born, be allowed to live least something like that happened again. Admittedly it was a harsh measure, but a good amount of people had died in those times and people were scared. The remaining leaders did something drastic that maybe they would regret later. It didn’t matter however, there weren’t any other elemental wizards born. Until Alec.
Born into the Troven family, one of the founding fire wizard families, Alec is the youngest of three children, and the younger of a pair of twins. His twin being a girl, Laruna (a water wizard) and his elder brother is Greywolf ( an air wizard). His father, Raven is a fire wizard, like a proper Troven and his mother was an Earth wizard. Admittedly they weren’t a very proper fire wizarding family, but the Trovens were always a bit weird being fey touched. As soon as Alec’s elemental abilities were discovered his parents did the only logical thing you do when your youngest child is slated for possible death.
They hushed it up.
They told their children to Never Ever Mention it. And they impress upon Alec that if he did ever happen to mention it or even show that he could use all four elements he could be killed. That is a lot to put on a five year old. He found himself constantly worried that maybe someone might find out and tended to keep mostly to himself and his family. His parents decided that he should focus his attention on fire because that was a proper Troven ability and he was good with fire.
He does have one great friend, Jono, who he met on his first day of school. Jono asked what was wrong with his ears and they ended up getting into a fight. This caused Jono to latch onto Alec because no one ever did something like that to him. They have a strange friendship that was filled with fights and one upmanship. Both of them were are very strong fire wizards, the strongest of their generation, but Jono is stronger than Alec. Not by a lot, but still stronger.
It was with Jono that he did all sorts of little boy things, helped him with his school work because Alec’s dyslexia made it exceptionally hard for him to read and write, and then later it was with Jono that he had his first kiss. Which was horribly awkward. They never did anything after that with each other, because they were afraid of what it would do their friendship, also because Alec had to leave the city.
When Alec was thirteen his mother died in a tragic accident: she fell down the stairs and broke her neck. There was nothing that could be done except bury her. His father didn’t take it so well and a few days after she was buried he up and vanished without a note or a good-bye. Though Greywolf was eighteen, he was still considered a minor under wizarding law until he was twenty five. A message was sent out to their grandfather and eventually came to pick the three of them up. During those weeks after his mother died and their father left was horribly agonizing for Alec - for all three of them - as he wondered what did he do wrong to make his father leave. He was suddenly alone without a parent and completely at a loss of what to do. He wanted to lash out and take out his frustration and fear at everyone but was too scared to do it.
What if in his lashing out he accidentally lost control? What if in lashing out he used his other abilities and killed someone? What if it was something like this that drove Lorac insane? So he withdrew more into himself trying to tightly keep control over everything he did. He even refused to use his fire abilities unless he absolutely had to.
Things got better after his grandparents arrived. The Troven family, despite being one of the twelve remaining families, didn’t actually live in the wizarding city, Quarim, except for Alec and his family. Instead they traveled around the roads and the continent almost like gypsies. In this capacity they were able to gain information about the doings in other cities and towns where wizards didn’t rule and act as a judge or arbitrator for those wizards living abroad who wanted to have a wizardly authority control their affairs as opposed to a human one. (What did humans know about wizardly affairs? Honestly.)
Seeing the state of his youngest grandchild, Alec’s grandfather handed him off to Alec’s uncle Cricket. Cricket is a bard and Alec became his apprentice. As Alec showed very little interest in music before it was almost the perfect thing for him. It was new. It had nothing to do with his past and so there wasn’t any bad emotions to stain it. Alec wasn’t a great musician, he didn’t have a talent for it, but he could make pleasant music that wouldn’t send cats howling in harmony. He was even good enough to be registered in the bardic guild as an apprentice. He never made it out of his apprenticeship, even though he worked with his uncle for five years and his uncle is a fantastic bard. Alec was okay with that. The music gave him something to do and think about besides what happened, which was exactly what his grandfather wanted.
It was during this time that he learned a bit on how to use his other elemental abilities. His grandfather decided that if he had them and they weren’t going to go away he best learn how to use them a little so he wouldn’t have to worry so much about things going bad when he got upset. This helped somewhat, but he still had that fear of the Lorac Boogy man hiding in the back of his mind. Using his powers seemed to be one step closer to that eventual doom, but he didn’t want to disappoint his grandparents and rest of the family so he did as they asked.
Little by little he did get more confident in who he was just by being away from the people who would likely try to kill him - the council - and being surrounded by those who would never let it happen to him. It also helped that he was mingling among the lesser races - witches and humans. It’s not an intentional thing he thinks, it’s just to him and his family and society the Way Things Are. After all if you can create mighty storms or call up fire and everyone around you can’t clearly you must be better than them. It’s obvious.
A modicum of self confidence gained, he and his siblings returned to Quarim so that Greywolf could finish up his final years at university. Their grandfather gave Greywolf the right to act as his younger siblings guardians under the guidance of Alec’s godfather, Kratz.
Kratz is the other great influence in Alec’s life. Alec adores Kratz from here to the moon. He loved listening to stories he told of the world outside the city as a child. He would go to him for advice that he didn’t want to talk about with his parents and sometimes would talk about how he really wanted to try and use his elemental abilities, but didn’t want to get executed. Kratz told him that there wasn’t anything wrong with his abilities and he should try and use them, but the fear of going completely insane and killing everyone he loved like Lorac the Destroyer kept Alec from believing Kratz.
While he has a great destiny in store for him, he will be plucked right before that entire ball gets rolling. Within a few days even. So the confidence and skills that he would have gained from those experiences are totally non-existent. He will be an antsy -not angsty - teenage boy who’s afraid of his own abilities and going utterly batshit. This place will not help matters.
World Description:
Many thousands of years ago on Alec's world the fey and dragons pretty much ruled. However their world was invaded by some unknown military force through dimensional portals intent on colonizing and taking over. The fey and dragons, of course, objected to this and fought back. They soon discovered that the army had tanks and anti-aircraft missiles which could take out the dragons and weapons made of iron which could hurt the fey. So, the two races came up with a plan. The grabbed a fledgling human colony and took them into Fairy where they, for lack of a better term, genetically modified them so that they could be used as cannon fodder. They gave the humans the ability to manipulate the elements or life energies and then sent them out to be merrily slaughtered instead of the fey or dragons. It worked. It cost them a moon (Actually the enemy had launched a satellite to try and spy on the enemy. The wizard Granter, first bearer of the Dragon Sword, managed to pull it down from orbit and crashed it onto the enemy's portal. This lead to the beginning of the end of the war.)
That done the Fey just mostly abandoned the modified humans to their fate with the caveat of "we're watching you. We made you. We can unmake you". Of the humans who could manipulate the elements - wizards- fifteen families got together and formed a city. They became known as the First Families and they created Pentarch a city of wonders and the pinnacle of civilization for the entire continent. They didn't get much in the way of technology for whenever anyone started working too much with iron the fey would arrange a rather large and messy accident as a point. Also to keep their hand in things they chose five wizards to be the bearers of magical weapons and act as their minions emissaries to the rest of the world.
About a thousand years before Alec was born there was an element wizard (one who could control all four elements as opposed to just one) called Lorac who decided to go a bit batshit. The result of this batshittiness was that Pentarch was completely destroyed - like near nuked destroyed - and he went off and killed every single living element wizard he could find. Everyone. Babes, old people, women, children, all around the continent. All killed. He decimated the wizarding population, killing over a fifth of it before vanishing. He is presumed dead.
The remaining wizards, in a moment of panic, decided that element wizards were too dangerous and any who were born would be put to death if found out, least there be a repeat of the Lorac the Destroyer incident. They then picked themselves back up and built a new city high in a mountain valley. The new city was named Quarim. They were never able to rebuilt to the same glory as before as the loss of the element wizard population made sure some things could never be recreated.
Most of the Troven family, one of the first fire families, and Alec's, willing left the city of Pentarch about sixty years before its destruction and took to traveling like gypsies or Traveling folk. They used it as an opportunity to gather information on the non-wizard populations and to act as law arbitrators for wizards scattered about the continent who wanted their own people to settle disputes and not the humans they lived among. It was around this time that one of their members had a child with a fey and another had a child with one of the fey champions - the element wizard one, though their child was just an ordinary fire wizard. This was important.
The universe at Alec's time.
There are three major racial settlements on the Lancoon continent. Humans have the majority of them. There are three huge city states on the coast of Tarnet's Ocean and Selzun Sea. Lancoon is the oldest of them, and where the original wizards were taken from. There are smaller settlements in the larger plains, but not many. The lanscape is rather harsh and filled with large predators such as griffins, Terror Birds and wolves. They're also close to the easy way to get into the fey lands, which is never a good thing. Still there are major trade roads that go around the edges of the plains to the major cities and up into the Dragonridge mountains. It is in the Dragonridge mountains were Quarim, the city of wizards is located. Built in a valley that used to be filled with water, but purposely drained to build the city, Quarim is The Home for the wizards and most of them live there. There are smaller populations of wizards that live in the human cities and smaller settlements. This is why the Trovens travel around, to bring news from home and arbitrate justice if needed. Being one of the First Families they have the authority to do so. Witches on the other hand, those who can manipulate life energy - they can heal, effect the plant and animal life and other things that deal with the living - don't have any major settlements of their own. Instead they live in human cities making a fairly good living. Witches and wizards don't get along very well, both looking down up on the other.
There is a fourth known race in the world, though they live across Tarnet's ocean. They are known as angels. The only two known angels reside in Lancoon City, one as the general of the king's army and the other as his servant.
Pentarch is usually avoided, especially by wizards and witches. There is nothing there and it is considered a cursed area. Of course, what would you expect in a place where so many died in such a horrid manner. A few treasure seekers will try their luck, but often leave very quickly.
Quarim
This is the city where Alec grew up in and he's most familiar with. It’s “hidden” in the Dragonridge Mountains and divided up into several sections.
There’s the market place which is where most of the commerce happens. Shops and inns for travelers and things like that are located here. The wizards generally dislike allowing non wizards into the rest of the city so they try to keep the outsiders happy in the Market District. There’s an open market as well as permanent shops where people can buy and sell nearly anything and everything. This is where wizards go to get goods that they can’t get outside the city.
The residential district is where most of the wizards live. This is where you’d find the restaurants and theatres and shops and things like that which cater mostly to their tastes. The council building, the Oracle’s Temple and the Great Library are located in this district. Alec’s home is also here, of course. His home is located in the row of the first families. It’s a set of twelve homes, each one belonging to one of the twelve first families. The head of the families generally live there and the others are spread out through the rest of the residential district.
There’s an industrial district up next to the mountains. Here most of the stuff is made; from pots and pans to saddles to weapons, to wagons. It’s the smallest of the districts and located right off the Market District.
The most unusual of the districts, in a sense, is the University. The wizards don’t have multiple schools to send their children to, but instead one large school. There they go to school from age five to twenty five. It’s then that they learn how to control their powers and get an education. The last five years are dedicated to learning a trade, or some sort of career like thing. As part of their education is learning how to control their powers there are four large sections, each one devoted to a particular element where they can practice without fear of hurting anyone.
Deeper in the valley behind the city is farms and smaller villages that provide some food for the city. A lot of it has to be imported, but they get enough from the farms out there that the can at least semi-sustain themselves.
Society wise, the wizards resemble near Victorian era life and technology. If technology was replaced with magic. The rest of the societies out beyond the city are a bit behind them technologically speaking. Iron isn’t used much at all because the fey tend to frown on things and when they frown on things those things tend to have horrible endings.
Samples
First Person/Action brackets:
[Hey look who’s using a bookmark to communicate with. :O ]
Um. So... there’s another gate open. It’s to a world with um... I think they’re giant mushrooms... but I’ve never seen a mushroom that was such a pink color. Also um... there’s a bug who is um... smoking on top of one.
[He glances in the direction of the gate clearly not happy with the world on the other side.]
Anyone want to deal with this? Cause I’m not going in there alone.
Third Person/Prose:
The first thing Alec did when he woke up in the library was scream. It had to have been some sort of nightmare to wake up in an endless library. He still felt like screaming, but he didn’t do it out loud any more.
The air here was so still at times, it was unnerving. He could hear it as one sustained note in his mind, stirring only when someone moved through the area. He was in one of the marketplaces and had found a pool of water. It was scummy and slimy, but there was water in it. He was fairly certain that he could get the water out of the pool and into some buckets he’d found. They needed clean water. That was important.
Flexing his fingers, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he spread his hands out over the pool and drew the water toward him. He tried only for water, clean, clear water. It resisted him, so caught up in the drudgery and clogs of the scum. Frowning he pulled more, scrabbling at the music that sounded so muffled. It was so easy back home.
“Gah!” He snapped after a minutes try and only getting the water stirred up . “Stupid... stupid.. stupid.”
Out Of Character
Name: Kippur
Age: 33
Journal:
kippurbird or [Bad username or site: kippurbird @ ”livejournal.com”]Contact: E-mail/AIM/Plurk/Yahoo!/etc. kippur@mad.scientist.com/ Aim: Kippurbirdy
In Character
Name: Alexander “Alec” Raven Troven
Canon: Original -called currently the Elemental Wizard Chronicles.
Canon Point: A few days after he’d returned to the wizard’s city after traveling with his grandfather just before he runs into Jono again.
Sex/Gender: Male
Actual Age/Apparent Age: 19/17ish.
Belongings: some honey candy in his pocket, a pendent with a phoenix on it, some coins, string, a rock with a hole in it, some scraps of paper.
Skills and Powers: He has some minor singing abilities and is able to play the flute and guitar moderately well. He’s not really that skilled in a lot of areas. He was raised as nobleman’s son and while he was getting a university education he wasn’t a great student because of his dyslexia. Now if social niceties were needed, Alec’s got those down pretty well. He knows which fancy forks to use and for what.
Magically speaking, on the other hand, Alec makes up for it in spades and a half. He is an elemental wizard. That means that he’s capable of manipulating all four of the traditional western elements: fire, earth, air and water. He’s really good at using fire, being one of the strongest fire wizards of his generation. His raw power in the other three elements are near the same but his control is lacking in them, because of this and a few other reasons he doesn’t tend to use them. Mostly because he’s paranoid that if he uses them, the council will find out and have him killed. He’s learned enough to control them so he doesn’t use them accidentally, but his main element is fire. He’s strong enough to cause a good size firestorm if he wanted to. Unfortunately to do such a thing would probably near kill him. He has to use his own personal energy to create and control the elements. Small things like creating fire for lights or heating up a cup of tea is easy and done without thought. But when you get to combative kinds of magic or bigger workings it takes up more energy. Obviously such abilities would be severely restricted in the Library, probably down to smaller works. A fireball or two, being able to cleanse small quantities of water, maybe dust with air or get earth good for planting. Things like that.
Alec also has a smaller set of abilities that he inherited from his fey ancestor, as well as a mild iron allergy and pointy ears. The iron allergy consists of getting blisters when touching iron for long periods of time. He never gets lost, he’s got some mild foresight and empathy. All three of those would be straight out inside the library. The iron allergy, of course, would stay. Can’t really get rid of that, now can you?
Physical Description:
Alec is in that awkward phase of puberty of all gangely limbs where bits and pieces haven’t quite caught up with the rest of him. He’s got a few more inches left to shoot up before he’s got his full height. Currently he’s about five feet eight, when he’s done growing he’ll be about five foot eleven. His hair is messy, black and down to his shoulder, his eyes are mud brown. Alec is rather fey looking, or perhaps more half elf looking. When it comes to clothing they’re very finely made, and in near Victorian era style, as opposed to something out of Medieval times.
He tries to carry himself in a confident manner, but there’s a nervous edge about him around strangers. He doesn’t know what they’re going to do or how they’re going to react to him being able to control all four elements. He knows that he has to be absolutely careful not to slip up and mention it or he could DIE and that would be bad. That being said there’s also a bit of an sort of innate superiority snobbery about him. He is noble bred and he was brought up with the idea that Wizards are better than everyone else. He’s not intentionally prejudice, it’s just something that is considered a fact of life among everyone and he’s never had anyone show him that it should be otherwise.
b>Book Description: Alec’s book is covered in light gray leather. A phoenix is emblazoned on the front on a black diamond. On the back is a multi pointed star like this. The pages are gilded gold on the edges, very fine, though it looks barely used. Rather like it’s there to be admired but not actually read. The bookmark is brown with a dragon encircling a sword on it, probably chewed on the edges.
What does your character’s Book and Bookmark look like? This is not anything we will judge on, but it is important to how the game will be played. Make sure to talk with castmates about whether you want any similarities here.
History and Personality:
A good part of Alec’s history and personality is the fault of something that happened 1,000 years before he was born (and because of time loops partially his fault). One thousand years ago there were five kinds of wizards, elemental, fire, water, earth and air. Then the elemental wizard known as Lorac (later Lorac the Destroyer) blew up the city of wizards and then killed off every living elemental wizard before vanishing, probably dead. The surviving wizards decreed that no other elemental wizards, should they be born, be allowed to live least something like that happened again. Admittedly it was a harsh measure, but a good amount of people had died in those times and people were scared. The remaining leaders did something drastic that maybe they would regret later. It didn’t matter however, there weren’t any other elemental wizards born. Until Alec.
Born into the Troven family, one of the founding fire wizard families, Alec is the youngest of three children, and the younger of a pair of twins. His twin being a girl, Laruna (a water wizard) and his elder brother is Greywolf ( an air wizard). His father, Raven is a fire wizard, like a proper Troven and his mother was an Earth wizard. Admittedly they weren’t a very proper fire wizarding family, but the Trovens were always a bit weird being fey touched. As soon as Alec’s elemental abilities were discovered his parents did the only logical thing you do when your youngest child is slated for possible death.
They hushed it up.
They told their children to Never Ever Mention it. And they impress upon Alec that if he did ever happen to mention it or even show that he could use all four elements he could be killed. That is a lot to put on a five year old. He found himself constantly worried that maybe someone might find out and tended to keep mostly to himself and his family. His parents decided that he should focus his attention on fire because that was a proper Troven ability and he was good with fire.
He does have one great friend, Jono, who he met on his first day of school. Jono asked what was wrong with his ears and they ended up getting into a fight. This caused Jono to latch onto Alec because no one ever did something like that to him. They have a strange friendship that was filled with fights and one upmanship. Both of them were are very strong fire wizards, the strongest of their generation, but Jono is stronger than Alec. Not by a lot, but still stronger.
It was with Jono that he did all sorts of little boy things, helped him with his school work because Alec’s dyslexia made it exceptionally hard for him to read and write, and then later it was with Jono that he had his first kiss. Which was horribly awkward. They never did anything after that with each other, because they were afraid of what it would do their friendship, also because Alec had to leave the city.
When Alec was thirteen his mother died in a tragic accident: she fell down the stairs and broke her neck. There was nothing that could be done except bury her. His father didn’t take it so well and a few days after she was buried he up and vanished without a note or a good-bye. Though Greywolf was eighteen, he was still considered a minor under wizarding law until he was twenty five. A message was sent out to their grandfather and eventually came to pick the three of them up. During those weeks after his mother died and their father left was horribly agonizing for Alec - for all three of them - as he wondered what did he do wrong to make his father leave. He was suddenly alone without a parent and completely at a loss of what to do. He wanted to lash out and take out his frustration and fear at everyone but was too scared to do it.
What if in his lashing out he accidentally lost control? What if in lashing out he used his other abilities and killed someone? What if it was something like this that drove Lorac insane? So he withdrew more into himself trying to tightly keep control over everything he did. He even refused to use his fire abilities unless he absolutely had to.
Things got better after his grandparents arrived. The Troven family, despite being one of the twelve remaining families, didn’t actually live in the wizarding city, Quarim, except for Alec and his family. Instead they traveled around the roads and the continent almost like gypsies. In this capacity they were able to gain information about the doings in other cities and towns where wizards didn’t rule and act as a judge or arbitrator for those wizards living abroad who wanted to have a wizardly authority control their affairs as opposed to a human one. (What did humans know about wizardly affairs? Honestly.)
Seeing the state of his youngest grandchild, Alec’s grandfather handed him off to Alec’s uncle Cricket. Cricket is a bard and Alec became his apprentice. As Alec showed very little interest in music before it was almost the perfect thing for him. It was new. It had nothing to do with his past and so there wasn’t any bad emotions to stain it. Alec wasn’t a great musician, he didn’t have a talent for it, but he could make pleasant music that wouldn’t send cats howling in harmony. He was even good enough to be registered in the bardic guild as an apprentice. He never made it out of his apprenticeship, even though he worked with his uncle for five years and his uncle is a fantastic bard. Alec was okay with that. The music gave him something to do and think about besides what happened, which was exactly what his grandfather wanted.
It was during this time that he learned a bit on how to use his other elemental abilities. His grandfather decided that if he had them and they weren’t going to go away he best learn how to use them a little so he wouldn’t have to worry so much about things going bad when he got upset. This helped somewhat, but he still had that fear of the Lorac Boogy man hiding in the back of his mind. Using his powers seemed to be one step closer to that eventual doom, but he didn’t want to disappoint his grandparents and rest of the family so he did as they asked.
Little by little he did get more confident in who he was just by being away from the people who would likely try to kill him - the council - and being surrounded by those who would never let it happen to him. It also helped that he was mingling among the lesser races - witches and humans. It’s not an intentional thing he thinks, it’s just to him and his family and society the Way Things Are. After all if you can create mighty storms or call up fire and everyone around you can’t clearly you must be better than them. It’s obvious.
A modicum of self confidence gained, he and his siblings returned to Quarim so that Greywolf could finish up his final years at university. Their grandfather gave Greywolf the right to act as his younger siblings guardians under the guidance of Alec’s godfather, Kratz.
Kratz is the other great influence in Alec’s life. Alec adores Kratz from here to the moon. He loved listening to stories he told of the world outside the city as a child. He would go to him for advice that he didn’t want to talk about with his parents and sometimes would talk about how he really wanted to try and use his elemental abilities, but didn’t want to get executed. Kratz told him that there wasn’t anything wrong with his abilities and he should try and use them, but the fear of going completely insane and killing everyone he loved like Lorac the Destroyer kept Alec from believing Kratz.
While he has a great destiny in store for him, he will be plucked right before that entire ball gets rolling. Within a few days even. So the confidence and skills that he would have gained from those experiences are totally non-existent. He will be an antsy -not angsty - teenage boy who’s afraid of his own abilities and going utterly batshit. This place will not help matters.
World Description:
Many thousands of years ago on Alec's world the fey and dragons pretty much ruled. However their world was invaded by some unknown military force through dimensional portals intent on colonizing and taking over. The fey and dragons, of course, objected to this and fought back. They soon discovered that the army had tanks and anti-aircraft missiles which could take out the dragons and weapons made of iron which could hurt the fey. So, the two races came up with a plan. The grabbed a fledgling human colony and took them into Fairy where they, for lack of a better term, genetically modified them so that they could be used as cannon fodder. They gave the humans the ability to manipulate the elements or life energies and then sent them out to be merrily slaughtered instead of the fey or dragons. It worked. It cost them a moon (Actually the enemy had launched a satellite to try and spy on the enemy. The wizard Granter, first bearer of the Dragon Sword, managed to pull it down from orbit and crashed it onto the enemy's portal. This lead to the beginning of the end of the war.)
That done the Fey just mostly abandoned the modified humans to their fate with the caveat of "we're watching you. We made you. We can unmake you". Of the humans who could manipulate the elements - wizards- fifteen families got together and formed a city. They became known as the First Families and they created Pentarch a city of wonders and the pinnacle of civilization for the entire continent. They didn't get much in the way of technology for whenever anyone started working too much with iron the fey would arrange a rather large and messy accident as a point. Also to keep their hand in things they chose five wizards to be the bearers of magical weapons and act as their minions emissaries to the rest of the world.
About a thousand years before Alec was born there was an element wizard (one who could control all four elements as opposed to just one) called Lorac who decided to go a bit batshit. The result of this batshittiness was that Pentarch was completely destroyed - like near nuked destroyed - and he went off and killed every single living element wizard he could find. Everyone. Babes, old people, women, children, all around the continent. All killed. He decimated the wizarding population, killing over a fifth of it before vanishing. He is presumed dead.
The remaining wizards, in a moment of panic, decided that element wizards were too dangerous and any who were born would be put to death if found out, least there be a repeat of the Lorac the Destroyer incident. They then picked themselves back up and built a new city high in a mountain valley. The new city was named Quarim. They were never able to rebuilt to the same glory as before as the loss of the element wizard population made sure some things could never be recreated.
Most of the Troven family, one of the first fire families, and Alec's, willing left the city of Pentarch about sixty years before its destruction and took to traveling like gypsies or Traveling folk. They used it as an opportunity to gather information on the non-wizard populations and to act as law arbitrators for wizards scattered about the continent who wanted their own people to settle disputes and not the humans they lived among. It was around this time that one of their members had a child with a fey and another had a child with one of the fey champions - the element wizard one, though their child was just an ordinary fire wizard. This was important.
The universe at Alec's time.
There are three major racial settlements on the Lancoon continent. Humans have the majority of them. There are three huge city states on the coast of Tarnet's Ocean and Selzun Sea. Lancoon is the oldest of them, and where the original wizards were taken from. There are smaller settlements in the larger plains, but not many. The lanscape is rather harsh and filled with large predators such as griffins, Terror Birds and wolves. They're also close to the easy way to get into the fey lands, which is never a good thing. Still there are major trade roads that go around the edges of the plains to the major cities and up into the Dragonridge mountains. It is in the Dragonridge mountains were Quarim, the city of wizards is located. Built in a valley that used to be filled with water, but purposely drained to build the city, Quarim is The Home for the wizards and most of them live there. There are smaller populations of wizards that live in the human cities and smaller settlements. This is why the Trovens travel around, to bring news from home and arbitrate justice if needed. Being one of the First Families they have the authority to do so. Witches on the other hand, those who can manipulate life energy - they can heal, effect the plant and animal life and other things that deal with the living - don't have any major settlements of their own. Instead they live in human cities making a fairly good living. Witches and wizards don't get along very well, both looking down up on the other.
There is a fourth known race in the world, though they live across Tarnet's ocean. They are known as angels. The only two known angels reside in Lancoon City, one as the general of the king's army and the other as his servant.
Pentarch is usually avoided, especially by wizards and witches. There is nothing there and it is considered a cursed area. Of course, what would you expect in a place where so many died in such a horrid manner. A few treasure seekers will try their luck, but often leave very quickly.
Quarim
This is the city where Alec grew up in and he's most familiar with. It’s “hidden” in the Dragonridge Mountains and divided up into several sections.
There’s the market place which is where most of the commerce happens. Shops and inns for travelers and things like that are located here. The wizards generally dislike allowing non wizards into the rest of the city so they try to keep the outsiders happy in the Market District. There’s an open market as well as permanent shops where people can buy and sell nearly anything and everything. This is where wizards go to get goods that they can’t get outside the city.
The residential district is where most of the wizards live. This is where you’d find the restaurants and theatres and shops and things like that which cater mostly to their tastes. The council building, the Oracle’s Temple and the Great Library are located in this district. Alec’s home is also here, of course. His home is located in the row of the first families. It’s a set of twelve homes, each one belonging to one of the twelve first families. The head of the families generally live there and the others are spread out through the rest of the residential district.
There’s an industrial district up next to the mountains. Here most of the stuff is made; from pots and pans to saddles to weapons, to wagons. It’s the smallest of the districts and located right off the Market District.
The most unusual of the districts, in a sense, is the University. The wizards don’t have multiple schools to send their children to, but instead one large school. There they go to school from age five to twenty five. It’s then that they learn how to control their powers and get an education. The last five years are dedicated to learning a trade, or some sort of career like thing. As part of their education is learning how to control their powers there are four large sections, each one devoted to a particular element where they can practice without fear of hurting anyone.
Deeper in the valley behind the city is farms and smaller villages that provide some food for the city. A lot of it has to be imported, but they get enough from the farms out there that the can at least semi-sustain themselves.
Society wise, the wizards resemble near Victorian era life and technology. If technology was replaced with magic. The rest of the societies out beyond the city are a bit behind them technologically speaking. Iron isn’t used much at all because the fey tend to frown on things and when they frown on things those things tend to have horrible endings.
Samples
First Person/Action brackets:
[Hey look who’s using a bookmark to communicate with. :O ]
Um. So... there’s another gate open. It’s to a world with um... I think they’re giant mushrooms... but I’ve never seen a mushroom that was such a pink color. Also um... there’s a bug who is um... smoking on top of one.
[He glances in the direction of the gate clearly not happy with the world on the other side.]
Anyone want to deal with this? Cause I’m not going in there alone.
Third Person/Prose:
The first thing Alec did when he woke up in the library was scream. It had to have been some sort of nightmare to wake up in an endless library. He still felt like screaming, but he didn’t do it out loud any more.
The air here was so still at times, it was unnerving. He could hear it as one sustained note in his mind, stirring only when someone moved through the area. He was in one of the marketplaces and had found a pool of water. It was scummy and slimy, but there was water in it. He was fairly certain that he could get the water out of the pool and into some buckets he’d found. They needed clean water. That was important.
Flexing his fingers, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he spread his hands out over the pool and drew the water toward him. He tried only for water, clean, clear water. It resisted him, so caught up in the drudgery and clogs of the scum. Frowning he pulled more, scrabbling at the music that sounded so muffled. It was so easy back home.
“Gah!” He snapped after a minutes try and only getting the water stirred up . “Stupid... stupid.. stupid.”