Infinity, at our fingertips... Isn't it exhilarating?
Age 18
Gender Male
Appearance Apollo stands with good posture at a slightly above average 5'10". With the paler complexion common among the northerners of Tythrae and silver hair atop his head, the bright blue in his eyes offers a colorful contrast to his face, which often wears an equally amicable smile. While not very physicsally inclined, he is healthy enough from a life of proper diet and minimal exercise, with similarly minimal tone of his musculature.
The school uniform he wears remains mostly unaltered, but adorned over it is a second, smaller capelet of a midnight color. Around his neck he wears a turquoise opal gem affixed as a pendant and strung by a golden necklace.
Personality Apollo is a curious mixture of well-learned and naive. Most of his early life involved heavy schooling, leading him to develop not only a strong repertoire of academic knowledge but a hunger to keep learning. However, that life of relative ease and safety also kept him unprepared for the wakeup call that the war would bring. Despite growing with the lesson of mortality, Apollo never lost his youthful wanderlust, always letting his mind drift with dreams of the worlds beyond his own.
Interacting with him will often lead to a sense of his genuine nature, as he's quick to show his true colors and to trust others. This usually leads to him coming off as friendly if not a bit too eccentric, but those who keep him company will find themselves an unbreakably reliable ally.
Background Born an only child to a somewhat wealthy pair of mages in the frigid northern metropolis of Tythrae, Apollo Sophos lived a comfortable childhood under the love and care of his parents. His
father- from whom his namesake was derived- worked as a architect for the city. The geo-pyromancer led research and development of the most up-to-date archanoconductive technologies responsible for both powering and protecting the city and her people. Across the table, his mother Freyalise was a professor of alchemy and fundamentalism within the Tythrae Academy of Arcane Arts, helping aspiring mages find their unique form of magic. They were not so interconnected with the upper echelon as the politicians and most successful merchants were, but being only the next tier down was nothing to complain about from the child's perspective. His parents all but assumed he would show his true colors as a mage in due time, and so they sought to give him a head start on such an arcane education. While still too young to fully enroll in any magical institutions, his mundane education was still of high quality and Freya would use her own educational expertise to enhance his learning at home in the evenings. For ten years, Apollo enjoyed the upper class lifestyle his family could afford for him. Unfortunately, the youthful and starry-eyed boy would have his world shatter around him not long after his tenth birthday.
As tensions rose between the distant Magisterium and the very local supporters of Belworth and Anedor, the Sophos family began to fear for their safety and security. While not strictly loyal to either side on principle regarding the Belworth trial, the connections they did keep primarily threaded back to the Magisterium. There was simply no way they would be viewed as anything other than loyalists, and as suddenly as news about the rebellion began to spread, they awoke to find themselves in enemy territory. As subtlety as a couple of somewhat well-known mages could, Apollo Sr. and Freyalise fled the City of Spires with their son in hopes of finding refuge in the Cresvald capital of Pontaion. The closest thing to refuge amidst a war was found among one such friend of the family, an old and accomplished arcanist and historian within Pontaion by the name of Ezeras Ekkenhart, who not only took the Sophos family in, but took a liking to the young Apollo. Through the guidance of both Ezeras and Freyalise, Apollo was as mentally prepared for his noesis as a child could be, something his parents anticipated now more than ever.
It was the dusk of his twelfth birthday when it came to him. Wracked and bedridden with fever and nausea for a week prior, he awoke on the day of importance feeling much better, just in time for a gathering of the immediate Sophos and Ekkenhart families. The dinner might have been a more opulent celebration, if only the worry of revolutionaries storming the city at any time wasn't looming over the hearts and minds of everyone involved. Modest catering and music were hired for the night as the two families gathered in the gardens that stretched across the land owned by the arcanist.
The young Apollo looked to the sky as the setting sun gave way to the first motes of light, twinkling in the vast heavens above. A sight not new to him but one that always overflowed his heart with amazement and wanderlust, an infinite expanse with infinite possibilities. He reached up to the stars with his hand in childish hopes to grasp even a morsel of such elegant and ethereal magnificence, and for the first time in his life, the inky void beyond responded in kind. A sensation equally prickling, tingling, and burning ignited like a tiny spark in his palm, and as he withdrew his hand to look upon it, his fingers unfurled to reveal one of the motes he'd always aspired to had coalesced in his grasp. It started with only one, but after a moment, a second winked into existence just beyond his fingertips. Then a third, a fourth. He was stuck silent by awe, and it wouldn't be until the wandering eye of their host looked up from his own meal that anyone else would notice the event transpiring.
"Wh- Hey, hey! Freya!" Ezeras stammered, quickly standing and setting his plate on the table beside himself as he turned to the emerging mage's mother. "Freya, go get your husband, quickly!" Equally startled by Ezeras's sudden outburst, Freyalise gazed upon her son. Her face became alight with joy and surprise, she nodded to the historian and rushed inside to inform Apollo's father of the good news.
By the time his parents had both returned to the courtyard, a field of stars sparkled like a nebula around him, the painful and euphoric surge of mana coursed through every inch of his body as he finally managed some kind of vocalization. Pouring from his throat as he turned to see his parents was a truly bittersweet cry of actualization for his calling in life, as his body seared both within and throughout a cosmic radiance that gleamed with greater and greater intensity every second. Just as it seemed like the mana flowing through him would begin to burn and explode outward, both his noesis and his body crumpled inward with a surge of space-pulling energy, shunting nearby lightweight and unaffixed objects toward him. Flowers and the nearby tree's branches bent inward, cups and silverware on the table clattered to the floor, and even Ezeras's now empty chair slid across the stone patio an inch or two. As suddenly as the moment came, it went, and the new mage collapsed onto the floor with an onset of exhaustion. Apollo studied under his mother and their host in more practical ways going forward, both of them ensuring he would become familiar with the general principles of spellcraft in addition to helping him discover his individual style of magic to get him ready for formal schooling. For the rest of his teen years, he attended institutions of remarkable quality within the Cresvald capital, funded by the savings his parents had brought with them since departing Tythrae. In his spare time, he took on part-time work in the library owned by the Ekkenhart family, using his magic to aid both minor tasks at hand and to share his arcane knowledge with those who would give him the time of day outside of the quiet reading areas.
Despite the difficult times across the land, things looked to be on the bright side for Apollo.
Unfortunately, the war that his parents had tried to flee from eight years prior finally caught up to him in a second shattering of what Apollo thought he new about the world. Pontaion had come under siege, and despite the warnings of both him and his mother, his father elected to take up arms to protect the two most important people in his life. Both powerful mages in their own right, Apollo's father and Ezeras allied with the city to push back against the rebellion, weaving storms of flame and lightning to sunder waves of magi that sought to take the city. Two men left that night, but only one returned, Ezeras barely managed to cling onto his life as he fell in the doorway of his own home. The pain he felt across his manaburned flesh as he delivered the devastating news was simply incomparable to the pain that struck Freyalise and her son that night.
Even with the shadow of such loss looming over Apollo, life continues to move on. In the wake of the war, the peace talks, and settling the wreckage, he awoke one day to find his things packed and a sealed letter thrust unto him by the man that had watched his father burn his own soul away to save his son. Written in fine penmanship on the front of the envelope simply read:
To:
Glynwood Institute for Thaumaturgical Studies
Office of Admissions
Attunement Ouranian
Aura Apollo's aura manifests as a prismatic nebula of stars and cosmic dust particles, tiny motes that twinkle in the space around him, gleaming with iridescent light. As he channels stronger and stronger magics, the stars shine more brightly, and thin rays of radiance connect them together in constellations.
Magic Photomancy Along with graviturgy, photomancy is one of the schools of magic with which Apollo is most proficient. He naturally picked up the skill and art of conjuring, focusing, and manipulating light in its many forms to create a plethora of desired effects both as cantrips and as low magic, the simplest and most abundant of his spells involve evoking twinkling motes of starlight either around him or at a distance, projecting their radiance to illuminate surroundings in just about any color. More in depth channeling of his photomancy can allow him to bestow the gift of illumination to other objects, project light around him or in more concentrated patterns such as cones and rays, and even unleash blinding flashes. The most complex spells he has yet learned combine with his space-warping graviturgy to instead control the way light moves. Such spells can bend light in ways limited only by the imagination, such as around objects to obscure them from view or back on itself to "snuff out" a source of light.
Graviturgy Along with photomancy, graviturgy is one of the the school of magic with which Apollo is most proficient. Using mana to manipulate the fabric of space itself came to him intuitively, manipulating the paths of moving objects, pinching the gaps between two points in space, and creating wells of gravitational attraction to pull on and distort the areas around them. Inventive use of graviturgy has also allowed him to to set objects into orbit around points in space or other objects, launch things at high speeds using such orbits, and even pull himself up off of the ground to mimic a semblance of flight.
Kinetikinesis Not to be confused with its intrinsically psychic sister-school telekinesis, kinetikinesis manipulates not the tangible with the mind, but instead manipulates forces with mana. To a similar effect, kinetikinesis can be used to push objects, lift them, and manipulate things in any way a simple directional kinetic force of varying magnitude could. For this reason, it's colloquially known as "force magic." Apollo is practiced with this school of magic a bit more than the fundamentals, but is far from proficient, and has much to learn in how to finely control the forces projected.
Chronomancy The realm of time manipulating chronomancy is a deeply complex school, where most of the practical application requires equally complicated high magic to properly cast. For Apollo, the theory behind such magic is understandable enough, but even to this day his skill in this school is only a fleeting smidgen beyond the very basics of gently increasing or decreasing the rate in which the subject of the spell experiences time. To master the art of chronomancy is to master time itself, and while mages certainly have the time to work towards this, Apollo is still an infant by comparison to the knowledge and experience of true chronomancers.
Other / Miscelaneous Due to his academic and arcane focused upbringing, Apollo was able to grasp the concepts behind spellcasting as a whole rather quickly. His inherent inclinations lean him towards metaphysical magics, but he knows enough about other general forms to cast very simple elemental and cognitive spells. He has never had the desire or opportunity to learn dark magics of any kind.
Arcane Items Mage's Staff Given to him as a final parting gift from his family friend Ezeras, Apollo carries with him a staff of dark oak wood, topped with a bright blue crystal. The staff itself has seen plenty of use, as powerful magics invoked by the elecromancer who gave it to him have burn-etched shapes of cracking lightning into the wood across the entire length of the staff. Black leather wraps around the base of the crystal and again at the midsection of the staff, both supporting the structure and giving the user a comfortable place to hold it.
Tome of Dictation Apollo purchased this compact leather-bound book of blank pages using some spare coin from his part-time job. By opening the book to a blank page and speaking a command word, it becomes able to hear audible sounds nearby, and transcribes any clear speech it hears into words on the page. Continuous speech can fill multiple pages, so long as the page is turned at the right moment. The book becomes inert if the command word is spoken again, if the book is closed, or if the opened page is full of text.
Pendant of Protection When the architect Apollo Sophos I learned he would have a son, he knew he would inherit not only his name, but this golden pendant adorned with a sparkling turquoise opal. The gem has been something the young Apollo would carry with him for as long as he could remember, wearing it at the request of his father without truly understanding its purpose. Once he had grown old enough to begin learning to use magic himself, the adults in his life explained to him the abjurative nature of the stone. Just as the body of a trained mage passively protects itself in a veil of arcane armor, so to does the pendant, acting as an additional layer of protection to whomever wears it.
Other - Apollo is left handed
- His favorite color is blue
- His hair is dyed silver. His natural hair color is black.
- He likes both coffee and tea. Crazy, I know.
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