________________________________________ Renault Allard
Male | 26 | Doumerc
Scion of Lightning _______________________________________________
"He doesn't smile right. I don't know. Like when a dog shows you its teeth, it's not happy—it's gonna bite."
________________________________________ | "It's so very good to be back."
Holy Sigil Location
On the palm of his right hand.
Appearance
Renault strikes a distinctive figure. He stands just over six feet, and has been described as ‘gangly’ by the less than generous, though they aren’t far off. An avalanche of red hair falls well down his back, and bright, almost lupine eyes sit behind a pair of sleek glasses. Most people, however, notice the smile first. He wears it often, even when it might be inappropriate, and to hear it said it makes him frustratingly difficult to read. Perhaps that's the point.
Though a sharp dresser, he doesn’t bother adapting to new trends. Renault has a small but trusty wardrobe of dress shirts, button-ups, vests and coats that he’s worn since he first stepped foot onto the aristocratic scene. He favors dark colors, and smart cuts that don't cross the line into flashy, but still command elegance on the right shoulders.
Personality
When it comes to appearing like your stereotypical aristocrat, Renault does his level best to fit the bill. Polite, well-spoken, and measured, he enjoys conversation and is always eager to meet new people. An avid reader with a taste for arcane academia, he isn’t a scholar but he has a passion for magic that’s stuck with him since childhood, and is always out to learn more than he knows, regardless of the subject.
Most see past the smile quickly, but coming from politics he’s used to distrust. Having supported Nadine Lucienne’s stances for most of his career, he makes no secret of his relative distaste for the Church’s conduct. He believes Incepta chose her Scions for a reason, seeing in them the potential to be more than pretty figureheads.
Biography
Renault never saw House Allard at its weakest, before Nadine Lucienne became Scion and rose it from the aristocratic squalor it wallowed in, but he has seen it at its most pathetic. When things were low, House Allard sprawled to survive; it sired bastards, it married down, it branched shallow, but wide. Falling out of relevance had the unique effect of liberating them from the expectations of a higher House, while simultaneously shaming them for it. In the distant reaches of the family, this shame turned inward, gnawing at each new generation that failed to rise above their station.
As a member of one of the House’s most far-flung branches, Renault’s prospects were meager. He and his sister Coralie grew up in a modest home in the Racine suburbs, unable to afford a place in the city’s heart. Coralie was a sickly girl who spent many of her early years bedridden, though she blossomed to be wildly sociable when she became a little healthier. Renault, however, was a bit of a recluse. He was magically gifted, but hopeless when it came to strangers. Often Coralie was his only company, and he spent many days in her room, reading and talking, and entertaining her with paltry spells when she couldn’t muster herself out of bed.
Eventually in their teenage years, the duty of their crumbling House fell upon them. Coralie, still withered but only in body, began to pursue a career in Doumercene politics. She was personable, diligent, and driven by an admiration for the savior of House Allard: Her Holiness Nadine Lucienne. She began to shadow the Scion of Lightning, and spent many high school summers interning with Nadine’s party. Even if her role was minor, it was a meaningful step to her.
Renault, for his part, was torn. His affinity for magic was growing, taking to the arcane like it was his mother tongue. He wrote runes as deftly as his own name, could speak spells with the linguistic precision of a scholar, and may very well have found himself with an early, full ride in one of Doumerc’s legendary universities. But, he didn’t want to abandon Coralie, who despite having grown popular by the time she graduated, was surrounded by people who manipulated and deceived for a living. It was too late for him to join her on the political stage, at least, not I the same capacity. He wanted to stay close.
At sixteen he found a low-level politician tangentially related to Madam Lucienne’s party in need of interns. Renault’s social skills had improved somewhat from his proximity to his sister, but he was still politically fresh, and he’d learned well that the Allard name, especially when it belonged to such an outlier, held little weight despite Nadine’s position. So he was surprised to be invited onboard so readily. Until he actually met the man.
He wasn’t a politician, more of a white collar grifter, and Renault had not been brought on because of his name, or initiative, but because of his magical aptitude. A good number of the interns were magically inclined, others weren’t kids at all, just adults who looked like they had no place in a noble’s court. Which made sense; none of them were going to be spending time there.
Renault learned his first lesson in politics: Dirt leaves stains—keep your hands clean.
Lobbying, bribery, blackmail and, occasionally, threats. Everything the grifter couldn’t do in the open, he delegated to the interns. Charms and illusions did wonders for minor-league espionage, and where backroom diplomacy failed, the more physically inclined of the bunch took charge. Renault broke more laws in a week than he had his whole life, which was not a high bar, but one that weighed on him nonetheless as those weeks turned to months.
Was this Coralie’s life, too? He couldn’t believe if it was; she was always smiling, always looking so eager towards tomorrow, and Renault hardly wanted to see the next moment. By happenstance, it turned out that one of the people his grifter had pressured was in opposition to Nadine. His folding made things easier on the whole party—and by extension, Coralie.
As can happen to anyone, the grifter’s luck eventually ran out. Whether he was outmaneuvered, or pushed the wrong person, or simply got sloppy, his crimes went public and his office collapsed. It was nothing short of divine luck that Renault wasn’t buried too, and had he been wiser, he might have taken the opportunity to start clean and refocus himself on his studies.
Not so.
He found another ambitious aristocrat, and this time when things went south he would make sure it wasn’t luck that spared him. Bringing along what remained of his former employer’s portfolio, Renault found himself a step above the other nameless, unpaid and unrecognized interns. When it came time to do his job, he remembered his lesson. He delegated, he used aliases, he kept his nose clean where he could and wore a mask where he couldn’t. Things moved slower, but he learned that was the proper way of things. Collapses like the grifter’s were rare, and were usually a sign that somewhere along the chain of diplomatic pressure, someone had failed to navigate gently enough. The people being blackmailed often wanted their secrets revealed as much as the people blackmailing them.
This went on for a few years more. Renault would flit between internships, proving himself both effective and discrete, and found the means to continue his arcane studies. When he graduated, there was no shortage of candidates eager to have him on their campaign teams. This moved him out of the shadows and onto the stage of political theater, where he was finally able to talk face to face with the sorts of people whose careers he had helped stabilized and unstabilize.
They were the worst.
It was all fake, which he’d known perfectly well already, but having to interact with them was different. They were all arrogant or obsequious, dishonest by default, and they all absolutely hated each other. Even people representing the same parties, the same teams, smiled and shook hands with daggers behind their backs.
Once again he couldn’t believe his sister thrived in a place like this. He searched, subtly, for dirt anyone might have had on her, anxious that she might have been as twisted as her company, but ultimately found nothing. In a way, that was worse. It would be devastating to learn she was never who he thought she was, but she was, and that made it all the more terrifying. Did she not know? Was Nadine’s party really some bastion of ethics? The Church certainly didn’t think so. How could someone like Coralie, who’d never worn a disingenuous smile in her life, survive in a place like this?
It turned out she couldn’t. After years of good health, her illness returned suddenly, fiercely, and in the end, fatally. She was gone in the day it took Renault to rush home. The fall was inexplicable—even the doctors were stunned. There’d been no warning, no symptoms, she had been happy and healthy one moment, and the next she’d collapsed in the middle of a donor social. There was a brief and half-hearted investigation that fizzled from disinterest as quickly as it started. She was chronic, after all, it was just nature. Who would want to waste their time?
Renault would.
Like Coralie’s death, Renault’s turn was sudden. His current employer’s campaign crumbled when it was revealed he’d been embezzling from his own charities for a decade. Tragic and disgusting, good riddance. Then the CEO of a premier magitech company was ousted when her affair with a competitor’s bookkeeper became public. A high-profile House was thrown into chaos when it came to light they’d bribed a judge to dismiss a lawsuit against one of their own. Scandal after scandal hit the public, and it didn’t stop at Doumerc. A Rodion general who poisoned his opponent before the duel that helped secured his position. A beloved Rosarian author who’d been using ghost writers his whole career. A Lorenzian art collector dealing in counterfeits. Every week, for months, someone had their skeletons thrown out of their closet and into the open daylight. When it did eventually end, a slew of once-public-faces had simply vanished, and Renault returned to the political stage with a smile on his face.
His involvement in the ordeal was an open secret; the result of his own efforts at finding the truth behind his sister’s death, culminating in a wanton divulgence of some of his portfolio. Some, he stressed giddily, but not all. He’d followed many threads, and found nothing, but was undeterred. Why rush?
Renault was now a campaign manager, freelance. Few sought out his services, wary or outright fearful, but as the years went by people learned to answer when he knocked. He came to enjoy the façades, the nervousness in their smiles, the clamminess in their handshakes. Everyone hated each other, yes, but it felt good to cut a swathe through the aristocracy’s tangled hierarchy. His name never made the nightly news, but when someone’s career imploded, the nobles' eyes turned to him, and he smiled back.
He kept clear of Nadine’s party, for the most part, though he did make efforts to cripple her opposition where he could. That they shared a family was already risk enough; she didn’t need someone with his reputation tied to her. Not when she so frequently butted heads with the Church.
Renault’s view of the High Cardinal and her ilk only soured over time. As his leads dried up, he found himself more and more believing the Church had been involved in Coralie’s death. He’d made no small number of enemies, but no one as powerful as the Mother’s eyes and hands. She was herself a small fish compared to Nadine, but she’d done a lot for the Scion’s party.
He was still undeterred, but knew that if he was going to take on the Church, he would need more than scandals. Sometimes there was no substitute for raw power. Renault was no soldier, he was a poor shot and had no talent for swordplay. What he did have was magic—but so did the Church, in much larger quantity and much stronger quality. So he turned his focus to the one thing they didn’t have. He went after the Curses.
It did not end well. He was caught attempting to unravel the arcane lock set by Duchess Flores, and was promptly thrown in prison with little process. The Doumercene aristocracy collectively exhaled, and life went on. For about a year.
Renault’s ascension to Scionhood was nothing less than divine comedy. How could the Mother choose someone like him? What purpose could he possibly serve in her designs? Renault didn’t know—he didn’t care. All that mattered to him was that he was free, and that now he had all the time, and power, he needed.
Weapon of Choice
Renault isn't much for weapons. He's hopeless with a gun and hasn't held a sword for anything more than ceremony. If a confrontation is unavoidable and magic isn't an option, he keeps an old pair of knuckle dusters handy, a memento from his earliest days in politics.
Misc.
- Theme tbd
- Renault is quite a talented dancer, especially with a partner.
- Has a passable singing voice but can't play an instrument to save his life.
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