[@Halvtand]
I understand the reasoning you've got for worrying about the curse. I figured it would only be removed if the narrative eventually demanded that we need our mage to be capable of using his more powerful spells consecutively, since as he is right now a toll will be taken on him anytime he uses his higher arcane arts. If the RP never actually develops to the point where an appropriately powerful antagonistic force demands he become more powerful to balance out both sides, we simply don't need to ever let him find a way to break it.

On a side note, the main thing that would've been different if I went with the old man version is that he would've been the mentor character I mentioned, rather than the student/adopted son of that mentor. That's really the only difference, but I honestly think this version is more interesting as a character.

I'll post the character in the other area now.

Also, I should mention that this curse is something of a double-edged sword. While it's true that removing the curse would allow him to become an exceedingly powerful mage with very little in the way of limitations, if the curse actually got worse, or if he lost the protection of the tome or his willpower weakened, it actually could end up destroying his soul or rendering him without magic at all.

The characters in my actual story project have a lot of incredibly broken powers and are really beyond virtually anything else out there in other fictional works, but in the context of my own setting they're usually well-balanced because they cancel each other out and I spend a lot of time writing various concepts to limit certain things from getting too out of hand at the wrong times, so I'm quite proficient at balancing and power-scaling highly "overpowered" characters. I've spent a bit of time running simulations between characters with different sorts of abilities, and I used to take part in battle-orientated role-playing on my old forums and IM role-plays.

Edit: I figured it would be a good idea to include a picture of his illusion-based appearance as well, so I've looked around for one and edited it into both the registration and official profiles.