Abireo Malistorth Caspar
Class: Mage
Race: Human
Personality:
If you boiled him down to his bits and pieces, at heart Albireo is two parts nice guy and one part loser.
But he's an
awfully good liar.
More than anything, Albireo wants to be a hero. A proper one, the kind you see while scrolling through the Arcanotube vids. Swordplay and sorcery, blasting demons with one hand with the princess he just saved in the other... If he was anything like that it might be a little easier on him, but he's sure he'll get there eventually. With a bit of help. And a bit of gnomish vodka, cut with some fruit juice or something because that stuff is pretty rough. And enough luck to choke the last sorcerer who got kicked out of Chainmail Panties, which (though he
totally wouldn't know...) is saying something. A fast talker even when caught in the act, he hasn't yet learned that honesty—if not the best policy—at least doesn't get him in quite as much trouble as the tall tales he spins as a nervous habit are like to do.
But trouble is where heroes get their hudspah, right?
Physical Description:
Albireo is 'awkwardly tall', standing at just over six feet of lanky build. Not bad looking but prettier than he is handsome, his dark hair is more often than not in a shoulder-length shag because he has absolutely no idea how to request it cut. He favors the robes and trappings of magedom because they make him feel mage-y, but his minimal budget and lack of personal style tend to mean that he's draped in something resembling burlap more often than not. When he's feeling clever he calls it 'poverty chic', but he's usually more interested in drawing attention away from the generally shabby manner of his clothing.
Despite that it gives him a bit more 'hero cred', he is intensely embarrassed about the sharp scar that slides down the side of his nose and under his left eye, and provides increasingly grandiose lies about how he received it when asked.
Background:
Some adventurers are born. Others are made.
Some of them google it and give it a go.
Albireo was born Thomas Casper, son of a fortune teller and one of her clients she took a fancy too and convinced that his 'true love' was sitting right across the room from her. Nine months later she had him by the baby and the two were happily, if grudgingly, married. Little Thomas was a surprisingly easy child to work with if you discounted the fact that he didn't sleep much at all—he walked and talked early (because he had so much
goddamn time to practice) and growing up was certain that he would become an archaeologist, digging up dragon bones and finding rare and exotic new monsters that had long ago been slain by warriors of old. All of this changed, however, when his father finally sprung for aethernet in the house to provide a bit more stimulation than his enthusiastic but aging witch of a wife could provide. If his father used it for less wholesome purposes, it was during his own meandering with the seventy-two inch crystal ball they'd gotten on layaway that Thomas found his true calling:
He was going to be a hero.
Staying up for hours watching the Arcanotube videos of warriors, wizards and badass knights cleaving their way through their latest adversaries, Thomas was absolutely certain that this was how he was going to wind up. The only real question was how—his mother flat laughed at the thought of putting him through sword lessons and his father, a thief who'd had the good sense (assisted by 'glimpses from the beyond') to retire and live off his life's big score rather than keep at it, quickly found that his bumbling boy just didn't have the knack for it. He possessed no rhythm whatsoever when he tried to apprentice himself to one of the bard's on the street that took his allowance for ale-money, and when he took a punch from a local tomboy who'd been making fun of him he bruised so spectacularly he could tell that taking a beating wasn't in his future. He had, however, managed to knack his way through a few aetherweb lessons on basic sorcery and was getting to be a competent enough hedge-mage—but everyone wanted titles and degrees from a recognized school of magic. And if he'd had the money to go to one, maybe he would have.
But he
did learn the spell the dean of Alatross' Institute or Arcana used to validate a student's diploma in an informational coup he's still quite proud of.
“Albireo Caspar” graduated less than a year ago, Magician Cum Laude. Given even a drizzle of luck, Chain Mail Panties will be his first gig and his big break.
Talents:
Al's a pretty boss mage if you give him half a chance. Having never really had anyone to compare himself to he never bothered to limit himself, and he's proven an amazingly intuitive caster for how little exposure he's had to magical theory. The aethernet showed him things that his teachers would never have dared to, and so he's got a few tricks in his repertoire of significantly higher caliber than a student his age would dream of casting.
He's also an excellent liar, as mentioned, and an excellent gambler when he's drunk.
Flaws:
Al writes checks his ass can't cash, and that always comes back to bite him in the end. He's also really just a guy who geeked out on the 'net—he doesn't have the fundamentals that come from classic schooling, or the control and breadth of knowledge that go with them. There are plenty of spells he doesn't know—even basic ones—because nobody bothered to throw it into the aether or he was too bored by it to look. He's also a generally uncoordinated young man, and everything that implies.
Quote “When in doubt, lie through your teeth.”
Treasure:
Albireo's really just starting out, he doesn't have much by way of treasure. He has a few items of worth, however:
+MgkP3 Player
A small brick of an .mp3 player, when activated it plays appropriate theme music for whatever happens to be going on at the time. As it doesn't exactly have speakers of its own one would think this would be of relatively limited utility, but the knackery in it is surprisingly sophisticated—the kind of music it plays, the tempo, the lyrics, all are surprisingly insightful when it comes to the world around it. When
Jaws rolls on, for instance, Albireo knows that he should probably take a hike. He won it off a card game at one of the local hedge-bars before they realized what a shark he was while sloshed and kicked him out.
+The Little Black Cell Phone
A small, old-style flip phone, the jet-black little brick is a perfect example of why some vids get pulled from the aethernet. Nobody wants someone running around with a cell-phone that, so long as you plug a copper into the charging slot, you can use it to dial any phone. Anywhere. Plugged in, working, broken, blocked... if it's got a number and you can think of how to define the phone, you can ring it. Albireo only half-remembers how to make it, and the vid mysteriously vanished from the Well of History in his spyglass, but it's come in surprisingly handy. Even if it does cost a copper to use each time because some jackass thought it would be funny.
Magic:
Albireo's magic is really limited to the kinds of things a twenty-two year old guy would find awesome or handy. He can do some of the standard magely things, shoot Magic Missles and Fireballs and Albireo's Apeshit Assault and the like, and even some really impressive tricks like slowing down time for a spell or co-locating a pair of locations to allow for seamless transportation, but there are such gaps in his knowledge as 'being able to make a light that isn't pink' or 'how to fly' that it's more than occasionally embarrassing. Nobody likes having to flash-freeze a room when all you wanted was some ice-water.
Weirdly, his spells never seem to take much out of him. Odd, that.
Relationships: To be announced.
Allies: Something of a local celebrity in the hedge-community, Albireo's got contacts here and there. People whose videos he's commented or postulated on, people who've seen his own reproductions of their sorceries and wanted to compare notes...plenty of flamers, too, but sometimes they make the best allies of all. More than once he's worked out a spell because he bet SmokeyDragon717 she couldn't do it. Costs him an eyebrow, but well worth it.
