Lord Sullivan Syme [Deceased]

Name: Lord Sullivan Syme. ~ He always goes by his sir-name

Age: 26

Race: Human

Occupation: Grad-student/University Agent


Appearance: At 5'9" Syme is of average height, but sometimes seems a little taller due to his thin build. However, dispute a thin build, Syme is still good looking and a snappy dresser. His hair is neatly cut and golden blonde and he's managed to grow a trim beard, which adds some strength to his thin face and keeps him from looking too much like a kid. Syme's most noticeable features are his eyes. Bright and sky-blue, Symes eyes sparkle with vitality and energy. They're intelligent and sharp, taking in all his surroundings, but also quick to smile or laugh. They are the windows to an optimistic and intellectual soul, brimming with brisk life and and confidence.

Through thick and thin, from the Central City to the swamps at the end of the world, Syme is and always will be a nobleman and he dresses the part. He always wares a suit and waistcoat, with a silk cravat, handkerchief and silver pocket-watch. Usually he completes the outfit with a top hat and a silver-handled sword cane. He never wares black and most his suits tend to be blue, gray or something in between. All Syme's suits are made with the best materials and by the best tailors. He has not switched to factory clothing and has no intention of ever doing so. Mass production is fine and danny for the common man, but the nobility are a above such products.While not being completely vain, Syme does take pride in his class, culture and social standing and clothing is the most obvious outward statement of these things.

Over all Syme looks like what he is, an over-educated, over-confident, spoiled, young nobleman, brimming with new ideas and certain in the confidence that his class, race, sex, city, language, school, and politics are superior to all others. However, if you can get past all that, he's a pleasant looking, likable man, with a Coxish accent and a wholesome aura that draws attention and seems to shine with potential.


Personality: Syme brims with energy and his optimism. He's a young, smart, powerful wizard full of hopes and plans. He's always on his feet doing things and saying things. As both a know it all and a show off, he often comes across as arrogant, but he's also full of curiosity and excitement for others. He loves the spotlight, but doesn't mind sharing.

Driven by and eagerness to learn and a love of knowledge and truth, Syme asks a lot of questions and enjoys exploration and meeting new people. It's an age of discovery and advancement geographically, scientifically, magically and politically and Syme wants to be right on the cusp of it all. His professors often said he sucked into knowledge like sponge.

Like many students, Syme considers himself a very forward and liberal thinker. He claims to believe in the equality of all sentient creatures. He believes in rights, liberty, justice, freedom of speech and all that, but at the same time, he comes from an imperial and supremacist culture. Everyone is equal but, obviously wealthy, white, intellectual, male, Coxish, wizard, humans are a bit better than everyone else. Syme's especially proud of his intellect and while he can over look the fact that someone might not be human, or rich, or even male, he can't tolerate uneducated idiots with no appreciation for learning. He carries himself with intellectual pride, and often seems to care more about being right, and about ideals and "higher" causes, than he doesn't about actual people and friends.

However, while Syme may be arrogant, he does at least have the courage and backbone to uphold his principles. He is confident and brave, almost to the point of stupidity. His word is his honer and his principles are his religion. When he's sure he's right, Syme is inflexible and uncompromising. Though young and admittedly a bit naive, Syme sticks to his principles to the end.



History: Syme was born into a longstanding noble family, with lands and influence in both the The Central City and the Coxish country side. However, the family had been rapidly loosing money, since the dawn of the Industrial Age and a year before Syme was born his father faced deep debt and bankruptcy. Rather than loose everything, Lord Michael Syme left the Central City and became involved with some shady business in an attempt to remake the family fortune and pay off the debts. He disappeared for three years, before finally showing up at his bother's country estate in Coxland. He had the fortune he'd gone to seek and was able to restored the family wealth. He also had a two year old son, which he left in his brother's care. He didn't say who the boy's mother or where she was from. Whatever Michael had gotten himself into, he was in too deep to ever escape. The family fortune was saved and preserved but for his son not himself. After leaving his son to his brother, Michael disappeared again and hasn't been seen in civilized society since.

Syme doesn't remember his father. He was raised by his aunt and uncle in Coxland. Owen and Gwyniver Syme had seven children of their own and lived at a large country estate on Elon, the western isle of Coxland. They were good people and tried to love Syme as if he was their own son, but Syme was never very grateful. He didn't feel like he belonged and spent his time dreaming of cities and reading books, rather than playing with his cousins.

When he turned thirteen Syme was accepted into Shelby School for Boys. It was an expensive and exclusive prep school, which led to admission to the famous Shelby University. It was Syme's greatest dream. His uncle was rather reluctant to send his nephew away and even with the recovered fortune from Michael, it was difficult for him to afford Shelby. However, Owen made some sacrifices and Syme was able to attend the school. Syme left the Coxish estate and never looked back.

Syme loved school. Shelby quickly became his home and Syme did very well, in both magic and academics. He graduated at the top of his class and was received with honors into Shelby University, which claimed to offer the best wizardry degree in the world . Syme is unusually powerful when it comes to magic and combined with his high intelligence, he was one of those people whom seem to easily succeed at everything he tried. He received his first degree and has been working on his PhD for the last five years.

Shelby University Graduate program is a six year course. The first three years are spent taking classes and assisting professors, while they work on the initial research of their theses. After three years, grad students become University field agents and are send abroad. For the most part professors send them on errands to gather data and research, but they also will be given missions to investigate reports on illegal magic and they have the authority to slay monsters or arrest people for the unlawful use of magic against society. In the mists of all this, the students are also expected to continue their own research and finish writing their thesis. Syme only has a year left before he graduates and is currently scrambling to finish his thesis. In the last two years Syme has done a lot of traveling. He's been on a handful of missions investigating criminal magic and has been working on his thesis about using aura reading to uncover past events.


Abilities

The majority of Syme's accomplishments and abilities are academic. He can speak multiple languages, has a good understanding of magical theory, science, history, politics and literature and he has an excellent memory. Of course his intelligence extends beyond academics. He's a good problem solver and has shown himself to possess good deductive reasoning and investigative skills. Also, he is very good at communicating and explaining ideas, in speech as well as written work. He's got eloquence and charisma and people tend to pay attention to him. And of course, as a nobleman, Syme also as the advantage of having money and respectability in most places he goes. As far as combat, Syme has been trained in the use of both swords and pistols. He's not the best, but he's not bad either. He's a bit better with a sword than he is with a pistol and at the very least no one can criticize his fencing form. He probably wouldn't be able to fight an expert, but against the average swordsman, Syme has a very good chance of winning. With a pistol he can usually hit what he aims at, but he needs a fair amount of time to take aim, so he won't be winning any fast draw gun fights.

Being a wizard, Syme's obvious weapon of choice is magic and he is a very good combat wizard. Syme has an unusual amount of nateral magical power. Anyone can study to become a wizard, but some people are much more naturally gifted than others.

Syme studied magic using the Shelby Method, which is mostly exclusive to Shelby University. Though he still hasn't got his doctorate in magic, Syme's probably the most powerful student to come through Shelby University in the last hundred years. Even without using White Mercury, he can fling powerful spells around much faster than most other wizards and has less need for focuses. Syme almost always fights using very simple and pure forms of energy, such as light, heat, sound and electricity. He hits hard and fast and is very hard to withstand. However, if an opponent can hold out against Syme's first on slot, they have a good chance of winning, or at least getting away. Shelby wizards, have a limited amount of energy that they can use at one time. Energy can be drawn from surroundings, but, even with White Mercury and focuses, a certain proportion of the power will come from a wizard's own body. Doing too much magic at once, will exhaust a wizard and leave him/her weak and powerless.


White Mercury, also known as mage-silver, is the ore that the Shelby Method of magic uses. It's a magical form of mercury and at normal temperature is has a thick liquid form. It's color is a pearly white, with metallic flashes of blue and pink-opal flowing through it. It's very rare and was discovered by Shelby University less then two hundred years ago. On the other hand, only a little bit of White Murcury will last a very long time and it has a slow decay rate compared to other magical metals. A small vial of white mercury will last most wizards three years, before loosing it's white color and decaying into mundane mercury. White mercury allows wizards to draw much more power from their surroundings and so use up much less of their own energy. Before it's discovery, very few people had enough natural power to be effective wizards. White Mercury has caused a revolution of magical expansion and discovery, since with its help almost any human can learn to be a wizard. Syme is one of the few wizards who can preform powerful magic without White Mercury, but he still weakens much faster without it.

Pale-Sodium, archaically known as Witch's Bane, is the counter ore to White-Mercury and has the power to cut off a wizard's magic when it is exposed to his or her bare skin. Unfortunately for wizards, pale sodium is a fairly common magical ore and certain magical compounds such as charged gypsum and even to a much lesser degree pure salt can also have an adverse effect on their magic. Pale-sodium is a soft, pliable metal and starts off pure white then quickly fades to a dark gray as it decays and looses potency. Depending on how much magic it is exposed to, pale sodium it will last between three weeks and five months, before decaying into mundane sodium. Magical verity gypsum is a soft flakily stone and decays even faster than pale-sodium, darkening in only a few days. Both sodium and gypsum are too soft to make into any kind of armor or weapon, but they have be used to line shackles and can be formed into a pendant which can be worn around the neck. There have also been incidences where it as been dissolved or crushed into poisons to be drunk or eaten. Because he's a very powerful wizard, who relies on magic more than most people realize, Syme is effected more by the bane ore than many other wizards. Pale sodium will burn and agitate Syme's skin and he will get sick and exhausted if he is exposed for long.

Focuses, such as staffs, wands and amulets help wizards preserve energy and not waist it. Focuses will make spells cleaner and easier to control and by using a focus, a wizard can store power and keep from using energy too quickly. A focus isn't necessary to do magic, but most wizards will have a collection of useful focuses. Syme's sword-cane can be used as a focus and he has a number of amulets, which are mostly for defensive purposes.

Shelby wizardry is the study and practice of magic, but auras are the actual magical force and energy wizardry uses. Everything has aura and it's everywhere, but it's focused mainly around life. Auras are made up of several kinds of elemental energies, which are combined in different ways. Most humans have very evenly balance auras, combining all kinds of magic in almost even proportions. If a certain magic is more prominent, it usually means the human has been effected by supernatural entities, or else has descended from a family line which has been effected by the supernatural. These people are much more likely to have natural magical ability. Syme's aura has a strong influence of light magic, which is why he is very good at pure energy spells. However this sort of magic has his own bane ore, which is silver. Silver doesn't have negative effects on Syme like pale sodium, but silver will cut through his magic and spells like they aren't there. For example his shields are useless again silver weapons and silver can repel or deflect many of his spells. The opposite of light being dark, Syme has trouble working in darkness, even more so than most humans. It tends to disorient him and make him anxious. He's not afraid of the dark, but he doesn't like it and can't work very well without light.

Syme has chosen to focus his research on reading auras and while he doesn't have as much natural talent in this field as some others, long years of practice and study have made him very good at reading the auras of both people and places. Everyone has a unique aura, rather like a thumb-print. Syme's gotten good enough that he can usually identify people by their aura and tell what their general strengths and weaknesses are magically speaking. He can also use aura reading to track people, or tell who as recently been in a place or possessed an object. Places also have auras, usually built by events and people that have been there. Death, battle, magic, birth and strong emotions give places more powerful auras. Syme's thesis is on how wizards can read the auras around places and magically envision past events. This could be especially useful in solving crimes and other mysteries.

Reading Auras is a difficult field of study, and while most people can since a very powerful auras, it takes a lot of study and practices to be able to tell enough specifics to draw conclusions.

Welcome aboard! Syme looks like he's ready to change the world. Some of the information provided would do better in the Encyclopedia, but it's good here for now.