Lucas ex Jerbiton Backstory - Ars-Archange/ars-pbp GitHub Wiki

Lucas was born into a family of travelling players. While many aspects of the songs, poems and stories had an impact, it was the tales of ancient heroes which made the greatest impresssion. They made his heart race like nothing else until he discovered magic and girls. Fortunately, his hermetic parens understood performance magic, although he was more a musician than a spinner of tales. Lucas lost his wife and baby to raiders. Since that day a shadow of memory often clouds his days. However, his focus remains spreading joy and inspiration, and this is reflected in his sigil. Unfortunately, he has some tendency towards melancholy if he fails or dwells on his losses, and this is sufficiently tied to his Gift that it weakens his magic resistance. Lucas has a vision that his stories and sung epics will somehow not only restore House Diedne but also increase mundane society’s acceptance of wizards generally. Spreading them across the land to achieve this is what drives him forward. His willingness to spend time entertaining peasants as well as nobles has not increased his standing among those few Jerbiton who have actually heard of him. On the other hand, it means he has an unusual awareness of and interest in mundane goings-on, but since these are often comparatively trivial they seldom enhance his reputation either. Lucas is in many respects similar to his parens, the little-regarded Melodio ex Jerbiton, at least in magical areas of interest. The difference lay in their personalities. Melodio revelled in the abilities he had to impress and bewitch the mundane mind, and indulged himself in the carnal pleasures this afforded. He delayed taking his longevity potion, wishing instead to father many potentially Gifted children, which he saw as his way of helping to rebuild the covenant and the House. He was certainly prolific, and conscientiously kept a record of his progeny. He also gathered mundane contacts, but because of his primary goal and the collateral damage of his transient relationships, he struggled to maintain these, so took to gathering intelligence by magical means so as to have fewer mundane connections through which he might be traced. Only his ability with Imagonem prevented his poor mundane reputation from becoming even worse, and there were incidents of outraged families trying to track him down; angry nobles had been known to post a bounty, and Cantus Arborum could not afford a Quaesitorial investigation. Finally, after an aging crisis the elders insisted that they would provide him with a longevity potion only once he trained an apprentice. Melodio buckled down in an uncharacteristic way and did as he was bidden. Lucas was the result, and Melodio became quite fond of his adoptive child. However, by the time he could take Lucas back out on the road as a performer in his own right, his age was catching up with him fast, and he did not long survive Lucas’ gauntlet.