Alester Siddons

1. Player Information
Name: Sheena
Username: squeakygeeky squeakygeeky
Current characters in ToS: None
Reserve: Link

3. Original Character Information
If your character is a canon character, skip this and move on to the fourth section.
Name: Alester Siddons
PB: Gaspard Ulliel
Journal: treadingwater
Age: 22
Appearance: Brown hair, hazel eyes, pale skin, a bit skinny. He puts a lot of effort into his appearance even when he's trying to look like he didn't put in a lot of effort. He's left handed. He has excellent posture until the moment he decides to slump against the nearest available surface.
Home World: The people there call it Earth, but it's not our Earth, and while similar, it does not have any shared history/geography, plus there's magic. Alester's native country is Charterre--it's vaguely 18th century European. It's a bit rococo-punk if that means anything to you.
History: Alester was raised in city called Leona in a country called Charterre by a single mother, Caladia Siddons, who happened to be one of the most famous actresses on the continent. He did not have a very conventional childhood and appeared on stage several times, which he loved. He was generally allowed to do whatever he wanted, though being part of theatrical productions did instill a little bit of discipline into him. He was exceptionally bright and imaginative, and for a long time those around him thought the strange things he claimed to hear and see were simply his imagination at work. Eventually, when Alester was about seven, his mother became worried that it might be more serious, and she was relieved to find out that he was gifted with magic, enough to qualify for mage training.

At age eight he was fostered with a noble mage family, the Grenmonts, both due to pressure exerted by the mages on his mother since mage children from lower class families are traditionally fostered with mage families as well as the fact that Caladia was sick (many illnesses, cancers in particular, tend to be resistant to magical cures). She eventually left Charterre for good, not wanting to burden her son with a long illness and death. Alester viewed this as a complete abandonment and never really forgave her for it. The Grenmonts had three children but none close in age to Alester so he would have been lonely if the Grenmonts hadn't taken in another magically gifted foster son: Malvyn Chandler, the son of a rural family who farmed and made candles. Alester made Malvyn into his sidekick from the first and grew up as close as real brothers.

At age eleven they went to a private boarding school called Troake, the best in Charterre, where nearly all mages-to-be went for secondary school. Alester had maintained as close a correspondence with his mother as he could manage, despite his lingering anger, and it was at this time she finally told him of his father, now a watchmaker in the neighboring country of Starska with a new family of his own. She died shortly after this and Alester received a letter from his father shortly after. He responded eventually and they would write each other about once every year thereafter.

At Troake, Alester was very popular and often at the forefront of mischief, including sneaking over to the girl's school, Pelter, where Alester and Malvyn met Bethany and Ireen, also mages-to-be. Alester had an enormous crush on Bethany by the time he was thirteen, but she was two years older than him and in love with Jonas, a mage in his first year of collegiate magical training. Alester developed several other crushes on other girls and boys too--he wasn't too bothered about being bisexual as long as his relationships with other boys were relatively discreet. Bethany left school at the age of sixteen so she could marry Jonas, which upset Alester but also gave him a household he could visit when things got particularly tense between him and the Grenmonts.

At eighteen Alester and Malvyn started at the College of Magic and arranged to room together. Fighting broke out at the border of Charterre that year and many of the full Mages went off to protect the country--Jonas was one of the few to die in battle. Bethany, Alester, and a few other students, including a slightly older ringleader, had begun exploring forbidden magic--not terribly uncommon, but Bethany was obsessed with her loss and threw herself into things such as attempting to contact spirits of the dead.

Alester went along partly through curiosity, partly because the rituals appealed to his sense of the dramatic, and partly because he himself wanted to see his mother one last time. However, he didn't take it too seriously--he could tell most of the rituals were nonsense and much of the magic wasn't what it claimed to be. He was secretly hoping one of these spells open a portal to another world--in a parallel universe, not the world of spirits. This sort of thing was generally accepted as possible in Alester's world but hadn't been done in over two hundred years.

The spell was a disaster. While failing to accomplish anything useful, it took as its power source a student who was in the wrong place and the wrong time--Malvyn and it began draining the life out of him. Alester didn't figure out what had happened immediately, but he eventually became suspicious about the source of Malvyn's mysterious ailment. Confessing what they had done meant risking expulsion from both the College and the Circle of Mages. There was even a chance they'd be Severed--have their ability to sense and use magic blocked. This process was likely to send the Severed insane or just outright kill them, and had only been successfully reversed in a few cases. If it had only been Alester, he'd have gone to the authorities in a second, considering Malvyn was like a brother to him, but there was Bethany to think of.

After some agonizing decision-making, he turned himself in. While expulsion from the circle was was their actual punishment for attempting dangerous magics, Bethany and Alester were Severed more as a way to save Malvyn's life than as a punishment. Alester went willingly but was begging them to stop by the end--it's not an event he's likely to talk about. Bethany went mad from it. Alester survived but was going to kill himself when Malvyn, barely recovered himself, found him and made him swear that he would go on living. This is the most solemn promise Alester ever made, and it's much of what keeps him going.

Alester ended up going to Starska and essentially throwing himself at his father's family with whom he stayed while trying to put the pieces of himself back together. He was about twenty at the time. While he got along well with his half-sister and decently with the others he was very much a fish out of water--his family was, on the whole, rather quiet and respectable. He was mostly supported by his father, but did earn a little money teaching the sons of the richer shopkeeper class a bit of the Imperial tongue, considered the mark of an educated man. After about a year he moved to the capital city of Starska where he earned a modest living as a tutor in Imperial grammar, geometry, penmanship, etc.

It was there he met Nadya, also a teacher. She was kind, sensible, and smart and they got along surprisingly well. After a few months of friendship and a few more of increasing closeness, Alester decided to propose. He had it all planned out, they would live above their bookshop and raise a few children, living simple but highly intellectual lives. She turned him down.

He couldn't bear to stay in Starska, and was tired of the climate anyway, so he ended up traveling to the port city of Adras, where his mother spent the last few years of her life. He fell in with a group of artists, writers, and musicians and has been attempting to write a play. His closest friend, Henrik, is an artist. About the last thing that happened to him is that Malvyn found him, somewhat by accident.

Powers/Talents: He used to have magic, but it's currently blocked. His magic is specifically what is referred to as mage magic (as opposed to hedge wizardry it requires intensive training). It includes wide variety of abilities, including a strong gift for the Sight--being able to perceive magic/perceiving other things using magic. Less strongly--telekinesis, energy manipulation, telepathy (enough to be heard by a strong psychic or receive messages from a strong psychic, not enough to broadcast thoughts or read minds), healing. His specific type magery is strongly cooperative so things will be particularly wonky for him if he's not in Charterre/around other active Charterrean mages. Spells might not work 100% correctly on him because of his deeply buried defensive capabilities. Other characters who can sense that sort of thing should be able to tell that he has magical powers but also that they're screwed up.

As far as talents go, he's a good writer and a decent actor.

Personality: Alester is a bit showy and dramatic, enough so that people can miss how serious he is when it comes to magic (and a very few other things). When working on an exciting new project, Alester can be very focused, even obsessive. He generates ideas at a fast rate and follows up on the ones that seem most interesting. He rarely trusts accepted opinion of what's true over his own conclusions, but he's also not quite as much of an intellectual revolutionary as he thinks. He may joke around a little on the job but always took being a mage seriously.

The easiest way to get Alester to do something is to tell him that it is in fact physically impossible. If you don't want Alester to do something you can try telling him it's really boring but he'll probably see through that and do it anyway. When things come down to deciding on a course of action or voting a certain way, people are often surprised by his choices since he treats almost any argument or discussion as a hypothetical game. In general, he's much more extreme in his arguments than his choices.

Alester likes trashy novels and great literature and tragic plays and silly comedy sketches and dirty drinking songs. His closest companions tend to be introverts because they'll listen to him and because they're harder to get to know, which makes them more interesting. He can be incredibly loyal to his friends and also very caring, though sometimes he'll upset them without realizing or neglect them a bit in favor of new acquaintances. When Alester has a crush on someone it's usually pretty obvious. He doesn't really try to hide it since he doesn't mind that much if the other person doesn't want to pursue it--being in love is fun. And if the other person knows about it then it makes things so much less complicated if they do actually like you. He also flirts just as a matter of course but he's not exactly a casanova and enjoys being pursued to a certain degree, not that he can manage to play hard to get for long. When relationships end he'll sulk for a bit and then move until the next thing without any real hard feelings--but the few that were more serious he's had a hard time getting over.

Since losing his magic, he's changed, due to both the physical effects (he has much less energy and gets frequent headaches) and the emotional ones--he suffered from depression for over six months afterwards, and hasn't entirely recovered. So he's far quieter and less manic, and is a bit less likely to interact with people, though he still prefers to spend time in the company of others. He's become more disciplined out of the sheer necessity of fending for himself. He's also more inclined to follow rules. He's gone from being a member of the elite to being nobody in particular and is trying to pretend he doesn't really care. He's less open to romantic relationships, or even to new friendships. He's generally pretty apathetic which makes him seem almost calm, but has fits of bitter anger--because that's a little better than despair. He turns it more inwards than outwards. He's carrying an enormous amount of guilt and self-loathing, and mostly keeps going because he swore to live.

Personality weaknesses include a tendency to overlook other people's feelings and treat everyone but his enemies and closest friends as an audience. He is fairly good at getting a read on people when he actually tries, and will sometimes use this to devastating advantage. Words are what he uses to wound, and he never fights fair when he's serious about it--though he also loves to just argue for the fun of it. He has trouble finishing what he started if it gets at all boring. He also has a tendency to think the rules don't apply to him, though at the moment he's more likely to keep his head down and obey whatever stupid rules there are, just because it's easier. He'll use people for his own advantage, but not those closest to him, so he's generally oblivious when those people use him for their advantage.

Why would your character be chosen? He's clever and charming.
How much does your character know about nonhumans? He knows that there are other worlds but sentient non-humans don't exist on his planet and are largely a subject of speculation.
Why this character: He's the only OC I've had in a game (two games, I think?) and he actually likes to introduce himself and talk to new characters and ask questions about everything, which is a plus.

4. Samples
Please either include a first-person entry that could be your character's first post on The Network, or a third-person prose or action spam sample that could be your character's reaction to arriving in Dagaz. For the other two samples, links to previous character examples are fine.
First-Person: I don’t know why I’m here. That is, I had the quick summary and it sounds as though everything is pretty well in a mess. I suppose my curiosity is more cosmic in nature, not that I expect an answer, where was I? Oh, hello. Let me introduce myself. My name is Alester Siddons. I’m from, well, I’m not quite sure how to answer the question. I’m...a playwright and tutor. I have extensive theoretical knowledge of magical subjects, and I think that may be completely useless in this situation. I mean, I suppose if there were...no nevermind. Definitely completely useless.

So we’re stuck. I suppose I should feel worse about that. I mean, I’d rather be home, even if this is an adventure, but I guess there isn’t...wait, is there a way to edit? I don’t think this is really the most effective form of mass communication, although the translation is absolutely fas--anyway, how do I--oh.

Third-Person: Alester was already regretting the way he'd acted by the time he was a block and a half from the cafe, and he knew he could have simply turned around and gone back and apologized for acting like a cranky bastard. Instead, he turned and walked to where the city kissed the sea. He'd taken the nearly-full bottle of wine that had been meant for the whole table, but if any of the others objected, they could come out here and fight him for it. By which he meant that he would have to apologize with a shrug and rakish smile and treat next time they all went out--yeah, with what money? He jumped and whirled mid-swallow at a noise behind him. For a moment he thought Malvyn had followed him, but it was only Henrik, and he was surprised to find himself disappointed rather than relieved.

"Where the hell did you come from?"

"I've been behind you for a quarter of an hour," said Henrik, sounding mildly hurt.

Alester and sighed and offered him the bottle, which he took after a moment's hesitation, grimacing at the sour taste. He didn't hand it back, but didn't resist when Alester took it back and sat down with his legs dangling off the pier. Henrik joined him, red hair shining in the lantern light, and they sat together in silence for a while.

"So…I guess you have a long history with all of those people," said Henrik, finally, and Alester could tell even as he said it that he wished he he'd stayed silent.

A long history…he'd known most of the mages since he was eleven, and Malvyn longer, and if he hadn't been such an idiot, he'd still be one of them. One of the group of laughing travelers staring across the cafe watching a group of bohemians getting kicked out to make way for them. As it was, he'd been the cause of disturbingly loud repetitions of his name and some expressions of shock. Malvyn had come over to him right away and that's when the things Alester regretted began, because he'd said, "Mage Chandler, I hope you've been keeping well," as if Malvyn was an old acquaintance and not the main reason he was alive today.

Things had devolved from there, but confusingly, in a way that involved cursing in three languages and somehow ended in a hug that Alester had stepped away from. And unable to cope, he'd been a coward and gone for the back door--he didn't deserve Malvyn's forgiveness and especially not the way he acted as if there was nothing to forgive.

So, there he was, sitting by the water in the dark with a man he'd known for all of three months, who'd only just learned he was an ex-mage and not simply a supposed playwright that everyone kept around because his mother had been famous, because he had a charming smile, because he made witty and cutting comments, and certainly not because he'd shown any evidences of actually producing an artistic work.

"I do not want to talk about it," he said, over-enunciating, because he hadn't been exactly sober when he'd left the cafe, and he definitely wasn't now.

Henrik licked his lips as if preparing to say something else, but Alester didn't give him the chance, leaning in for a kiss. Henrik twisted away at the last moment, and Alester, hating himself, pulled away.

"Alester, I don't…"

"What?" He said, more harshly than he'd intended, and Henrik flinched. "I see the way you look at me. Half the group thinks we're already lovers."

Alester would have kicked himself if he could have--Henrik was obviously more comfortable as an observer of life than a participant, and he couldn't exactly afford to scare off the one true friend he'd somehow managed to make since coming to Adras. It was like he was physically incapable tonight of doing things he wouldn't regret. He rose to his feet, clumsily, determined to leave before he made a worse fool of himself. Henrik put out a hand and grabbed at his coat.

"Don't go. It's late and you're drunk and I don't think you can make it home without help. And besides, I don't want you to."

Alester slid back down and reached for the bottle again. "Someday we'll be able to afford something that doesn't taste like the tortured afterlife of grapes who were very naughty."

Henrik laughed. "Someday."

"Henrik?"

"Yes?"

"How do you feel about helping me track down some mages tomorrow?"

"I would love to."

Third Sample: Link