First one.

[hider=Taylor Hiss][b]Name:[/b] Taylor Richard Hiss
[b]Appearance:[/b] Taylor is a tall, fair-skinned man bearing short, dark brown hair and the cliché perpetual five-o-clock shadow of the investigator. Wears a rough gray suit jacket over a white button-up shirt (no tie unless invited to formal events) with slacks that match the jacket and black worker's boots.
[b]Age:[/b] 36
[b]Bio:[/b] Originally from the Republic of Olympia across the sea, Taylor formally migrated to Iliad about 18 years ago, meeting his future wife Celeste, settling down and opening a private investigator's office, and siring a son, Conrad, and daughter, Julia.

What he doesn't want you to know, is that he spent the four years before he settled in Iliad, as an Olympian spy.

Sure, fourteen would sound an improbable age to be involved in international espionage; but despite its friendly outward appearance, the Republic of Olympia is not a particularly nice place.
Orphaned at an early age, he was taken in as a ward of the state, educated with an onslaught of Olypmian propaganda, and subjected to a battery of aptitude tests to determine his fate in the Republic's apparatus.
Ultimately, he was sent to the Foreign Corps and learned the crafts of his assigned trade; when he was finally deployed abroad, though, he was actually little more than a glorified courier, picking up missives brought to the border by agents in the Hermannreich, and bringing them to his handlers at the Republic's embassy in Iliad.

One near miss with the local color on such a run led into his first meeting with his future wife. While he was being chased by members one gang for taking a shortcut through their turf, he stumbled upon brutes from another gang hired to make a vulnerable Descendant "disappear." Luckily for both of them, the gangs were bitter rivals, and considered their rivalry more important than whatever an "outsider" had paid them to do, allowing Taylor and Celeste to cleanly escape their peril.
Eventually, they got to know each other, became friends, fell in love, Taylor quit the courier job and naturalized, and they got married.
Between raising their son and starting his private investigation firm, Snake Eyes, he enrolled in a few classes at Marduk to supplement his compressed Olympian education.

Now, he's an established investigator and family man and all-around concerned citizen, although he's well short of being a shining pillar of the Iliad community. And he wouldn't have it any other way.
[b]Mundane Skills:[/b] On the fighting side, Taylor's an excellent marksman, and a fair street fighter. Mentally, he's got a strong memory, and can generally maintain his composure in high-pressure situations.
[b]Magic:[/b] Taylor is mostly comfortable using fire and gravity magic in a variety of applications, both in combat and out. In combat, he usually channels fire magic to add a bit of sizzle to his brawling style, or infusing a conjured fireball with a touch of gravity magic to use as a sort of grenade or mine. Gravity alone, he uses more sparingly, forcing minor fluctuations on the spot to literally send his foes off their balance.
Outside of fights, fire magic's use is much more situational, mostly being used as an obvious but readily available source of light or heat when he needs it. Conversely, he can use gravity magic outside of combat to get from "Point A" to "Point B" a lot more conveniently.
[b]Personality:[/b] Taylor's a man of more action than words. He's generally quiet, projecting a calm, confident aura for his family, friends, and community in general. He tends to be quick to raise his voice or act belligerent when threatened, frustrated, or annoyed, but that's part of how he tries to take control of the situation. Ultimately, his controlling attitude results from his own past, in which he lived at the whim of the Olympian state; and fear for his newfound family, whose overall safety is his main priority. Threaten him, he'll throw it back in your face; threaten his wife or children, he will [i]hurt[/i] you for it.
[b]Faction:[/b] Primarily affiliated with his own investigation agency "Snake Eyes Investigations", but leans towards Marduk's position on foreign policy.
[b]Are you a Descendant of the Illuminated Poet?:[/b] No.[/hider]