Name: Artephius Clovis
Gender: Male
Age: 36
Birthdate: 27th October
Sexuality: Bisexual, Male preference.
Country Affiliation: Magnostadt
Race: Magician
Class: Magician
Tier: Novice
Rukh Alignment: White.
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Grey
Height: 5' 10''
Weight: 62 Kilograms
Appearance: Artephius is what may immediately come to mind when one thinks of a Reim noble: impeccably well-dressed, handsome, with very little muscle definition due to a life spent studying rather than fighting like the true protectors of the Empire.
Holding himself with a great amount of pride, meeting the eyes of anyone who speaks to him and ensuring that he never shrinks or takes up too much space, Artephius looks every part the confident and knowledgeable scholar of Reim that he is. Even as a member of the lowest rank of Magnostadt at a far higher age than most, this has not changed. After all, if he is in a poor position all he has to do is earn a better one through proof of skill and determination.
The one factor that he doesn't share with many of his countrymen is his facial hair. Although its not rare for Reim citizens to have facial hair, his specific style is deliberately foreign and is instead modelled after a traditional style from Balbad. It is fortunate therefore that his country lacks the xenophobia of minor countries like Sasan.
Perhaps the most notable thing about Artephius, however, is just how untouched he is. Most people, across the course of a relatively busy life, wind up with at least a scar or a skin blemish or a tattoo. Artephius' body is a clean slate, the only proof of his advancing age being the tuft of grey hair at the base of his beard that he can't seem to get rid of no matter how much life magic he uses.
Personality
Artephius was raised, and indeed has lived his life, as the perfect Reim scholar. A man obsessed with knowledge, an endless pursuit where the journey itself is the important thing rather than a destination. A polymath with a talent in understanding the various facets of the world; Mathematics, chemistry, biology, physics, history, music, astronomy and far more besides. If at first he does not understand something, he is obsessed enough to not let that thing slip his mind until he understands it at least a base level.
It is this knowledge and this pursuit of information and awareness that is at once his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. He knows at least a little about almost everything, but knowing something on a conceptual level and knowing something on a physical level are fundamentally different things. He could list a hundred different fighting styles and explain the mechanics behind wrestling techniques, he could not do them even were he still young and fit.
As he himself once said "I find myself cursed - I know how to kill a man in two hundred separate ways, yet I wouldn't best a child."
As if to intensify the pain of this self-awareness, Artephius' life magic is failing to hold back the signs of aging fully. His beard is greying, and that is causing his mind to dwell on mortality. He lost his father, a talented mage in his own right, at a young age from a neurodegenerative disease and is aware that his family lack the same lifespan that other mages do. This is causing his mind to stray to some dark places, wanting to continue his family but finding it hard to do so considering his own disinterest in most women. Yet he doesn't want to become an old crone with no family to warm his hearth, catching him in a paradox.
That is what has fuelled his magic obsession as of late, although that is not to say he hasn't always had an interest. Being the son of a mage in his own right, Artephius has always known about such things. He has even written one of his treatises on the art, comparing and contrasting the eight fields and the many sub-schools that one could theoretically use. Yet this seems to have dimmed his enthusiasm little. No matter how much he knows, magic is the perfect art in that there is always something new to learn, something new to master, to interact with.
But more and more, this drive towards magic consumes him. Perhaps if he grows stronger, he can de-age himself akin to how jellyfish can rewind the clock to make themselves virtually immortal. If not, perhaps he can make homonculi to have a family without need for traditional means. Perhaps he could even create artificial life and transfer his consciousness, as such rumours have reached his ears from the West. He is aware that such things risk the creation of black rukh, but he does not wish to stop the flow of time. Time must always progress, he simply does not want to wither and stop contributing to the world.
Likes
Books - Perhaps it should be of no surprise to hear that a scholar likes books; after all, they are the main source of information outside of lectures. But what may be surprising is the fact that he likes ALL books. From the trashiest of romance fiction to the dryest of manuals, he loves them all and could be considered a true bibliophile. Had he not recently moved, it is likely that his room would already be ankle-deep in his ceaseless collection.
Magic - Of course Artephius loves magic, he recently moved to Magnostadt, nobody does that who doesn't love magic. Yet, he is the absolute embodiment of a magic enthusiast. He has spent much of his last few decades learning and studying about the mechanics of magic, and even still it is perhaps the greatest area that resists his novelty fixation. Even things he's done a thousand times seems to never lose interest to him, finding new variations or ways to perform menial tasks.
Novelty - The world is vast, almost absurdly so. And within that space there are hundreds of unique cultures, concepts, people, items, food and other such absurdities. From the moment that Artephius was a child, he's wanted to witness all of it, to catalogue it and spread the knowledge of such things to the masses. He wants to know everything there is to know and to see everything there is to see. So much so that its hard to keep his attention on one thing for long unless its magic related.
Dislikes
Himself - It should be said that Artephius is not what one would call self-hating, but he's very aware of his own limitations. He's getting older, life magic or no life magic, and that's causing many of the same habits to do more damage to himself than they once were. He can no longer drink as much or stay up as late without regretting it in the morning. This is something that's been especially hard to deal with, both on an emotional level and a physical one - His back hurts most of the time nowadays. Probably not a good sign.
Old people - Tied deeply into his thanatophobia, Art finds it difficult to spend a great deal of time around the elderly, even those who can give great insights. They are active, present reminders of the inevitability of death and they make him extremely uncomfortable. Every inch of sagging skin, every wrinkle, every missing tooth is a reminder that all is finite. All is but dust in the grand scheme, and old people do not help him forget that.
Xenophobia - Unsurprisingly, Artephius despises xenophobia. As someone who has spent most of his life wandering from place to place within the Reim Empire, researching various projects and learning from different people, he believes the most important thing is to learn from others with a different perspective. Xenophobia is the antithesis of that. Not just fearing people from a different country or culture but the deep rooted fear some people seem to have against anything that they're not familiar with - anyone who disagrees with their vision of the world.
Aspirations
Complete Understanding - Artephius is the embodiment of what a mage should be: eternally curious, with an endless thirst for knowledge and awareness. Although he's aware the entire idea is sisyphean, as long as there is something more to learn Artephius will continue to chase further understanding like a dog chasing its tail. A quest doesn't need to have an achievable ending to be worthwhile.
Establishing a lineage - Being in his late thirties now, Artephius has come to the point in his life where he's thinking about what happens after he's gone. He wants to have a family, to create a lineage, but this is complicated by his rather... difficult sexuality. As such, he has begun to experiment with artificial life, using life magic.
Becoming a Household Member - Perhaps its his innate curiosity with things that he can't understand, or perhaps its his desire to serve a greater purpose and contribute to a large scale project, but Artephius is enchanted with the idea of actively serving a king vessel. He feels he himself would make a poor vessel but to serve someone else? To become a vizier? Such would be the thing of dreams.
Fears
Athazagoraphobia - It is said that the Clovis family has a higher than average chance of falling victim to neurodegenerative diseases. As a child, Artephius watched his father succumb to one until he couldn't even remember his own name. Perhaps that's why he's been so absurdly diligent about writing down nearly everything he does that he considers "worthwhile", resulting in him having published nearly twenty volumes.
Jonah Complex - Artephius suffers from what psychologists may refer to as a variant of the Jonah Complex, or fear of destiny. Whilst its not that he fears achieving things, its more accurate to say he's afraid of how much he CAN accomplish. He's overtly aware of his mortality, of the little time on the earth, of how soon he could be dead if things went wrong. What if what he's already achieved is all that he's GOING to achieve? What if he can't go any further? What if he'll never achieve true greatness and disappear from history?
Thanatophobia - Tied into his Jonah Complex is his Thanatophobia: a fear of death. Its not paralysing, but its everpresent, a nagging feeling in the back of his head as if he's running out of time. Perhaps that's why he left Reim to go to Magnostadt, to ensure that he makes the most out of what little time he has left?
Special Features: Artephius' age is somewhat hard to place due to his active and frequent use of life magic to hide the signs of aging.
History
Artephius was born nearly forty years ago, the son of a magician and an apothecary within the outskirts of Remano. His father had been an active supporter of Magnostadt, donating heavily to its creation even if he could not spend time outside of the Empire with his duty to the people. He was a life magician and actively used life magic in order to heal anyone who came to him asking for help.
Because of this fact, the Clovis family were exceptionally popular. Not simply because his father was a nobleman who was well respected within the Empire's courts, but also because they helped anyone who came to them, rich or poor.
Watching his father work, Artephius was enthralled with the power of the rukh, able to see how they gathered around people and changed to affect the nature of the world. People who had lost limbs in wars were restored, people who had suffered life-long illnesses were cured in the matter of minutes.
Yet, despite the immense power his father held, he suffered from the Clovis family curse - a rare neurodegenerative disease that targetted one's memories. Over the course of several months, Artephius was forced to watch his father wither and decay, going from a proud and wise nobleman to a sickly, scrawny wretch who struggled to even get out of bed most days.
Desiring to be anywhere away from there at that time, Artephius left at an early age to apprentice under one of his mother's fellow apothecaries, training not only in magic but in general healing, botany, biology and general physiology. It was at this time that the seeds of his learning obsession were planted in him, and he began to work exceedingly hard to obtain greater and greater knowledge.
After a few years under that man's tutelage, he maintained this obsession by entering a Lyceum, one of a series of schools designed to spread knowledge among the wealthy elite. There he studied arts and sciences, becoming fluent in multiple languages and experiencing art from many different cultures. Reim was the perfect breeding ground for an intellectual elite, and Art's obsessions were willingly doted on during this time, turning him from an eager learner into a supremely intelligent figure in his own right.
It was about this time that he began to publish his own works, a series of treatises on various subjects around the sciences. Writing recipes for medicine and alchemic tinctures for healing, touching on the physiology of not just people but animals and even becoming relatively well known for his meticulous research into animals that other, less travel-happy scholars might have no cause to be near, such as squids and hyenas.
This pursuit of knowledge above all else was fine and resulted in a good amount of wealth and comfort, but it took about a decade and a half of this active exploration that he came to realise his own frailties. Upon narrowly avoiding being assaulted in a back alley in one of the smaller cities he visited, he came to realise his own failures. He was an intellectual giant but a physical joke. He had allowed his desire to know everything to eclipse his physical need, something that the Reim empire frowned on with their obsession about physical education.
What makes this self-awareness worse is the fact that despite actively using life magic, the years continued to take their toll on his body. He was in his mid thirties and yet he was already getting grey hairs, the tuft of his beard whitening every day like a billy goat's tuft. He cannot help but compare himself to the far younger and far fitter and find himself wanting. It was a loathsome experience to feel inferior to yourself but five years ago.
Deciding that enough was enough, that he wasn't going to allow himself to simply remain like this forever, he chased a dream that had been with him since his father had instilled it in him as a boy. He wanted to go to Magnostadt, a city made by and for magicians, the city his father had so generously supported and yet had died before seeing.
He spent most of his life wandering around the empire and so was used to not having a fixed residence for particularly long, feeling no ill will to the idea of sharing a room even at his age, instead simply fascinated with this abundance of magic. Reim was no stranger to the art but this new world was entirely different.
How much more would he see whilst he continued to reestablish himself? How great would his powers grow whilst working his way up the ranks of the kotor? He didn't know, yet it was truly not within him to refrain from finding out.
Role-Play Sample: N.B - This is an RP sample for a different character that I also play.
Victory... it was a word that sat ill upon Corydon's tongue.
He wasn't a pessimist, he had often been heard saying that Joy was everywhere if one was able to find the strength to look for it, but victory was a word that he disliked. Because unlike similar words like success it implied a level of finality. That this was it, that there was nothing else to overcome, and that finality was something that disagreed with the mage on a very deep level.
Having been raised as a Scientist, he had come to believe that succeeding in one place just meant that there were other things that one could be doing. It was like ticking a long list of things off of the ever-expanding task-sheet that was one's life. In his mind true victory would only come when he had lived his life to its finish, and even then it was something he would be unable to enjoy as he wouldn't be alive to. Living and dying well was the only finish line he would accept.
Yet, as he walked around the Antarctic base that he had called his home for the better part of two years, he found himself flummoxed for what to do now. Unlike Artoria who had never seen the base so peaceful, he had been one of the original Researchers who had helped construct the place. It had been a while since he had seen it like this but it was far from the first time and so it was of little importance to him.
No, what was of importance was the information that they had been given over the last few months. He might not have been in the field in Babylonia, but he had been behind the mic ready to give any and all help needed and so had been first hand to experience the warnings about the other Beasts. Acting under the assumption that they had safely put Beast II and Beast I in the ground for good, that meant there were at least another five out there, likely just as strong as Goetia was.
Considering they had only beaten the bastard with a miracle from God himself... it was a terrifying thought.
Yet, all was quiet on the western front. He had heard from his grandfather who had fought in the Great War that the silence before a big battle was somehow the worst part never knowing when the cannons were going to start firing again or when a stray bullet would come whizzing over their heads. It seemed that he was right.
Face-Claim: Viren - The Dragon Prince
