Tier: D
Gender: Male
Sexuality: Straight
Age + Birthdate: 21 | 30/7
Nationality: Magnostadt
Race: Human
Specialization: Intelligence | Light Magic
To most people, Arik tries to act warm and amiable. In fact, he tries to be that way. He finds it easier to get along if he's calm and smiling. That said, he's not going to go out on a limb just to convince someone of his happiness, and he's not above letting irritation or sadness show when he's dealing with them. Earning his enmity involves him seeing you do something unacceptable, or overwhelming evidence of the same.
Arik's not the type to judge on hearsay; it's often wrong and there's no chance to examine the original source of the information. It's entirely possible, for instance, for a person to be so convinced of a lie that they believe it is the truth. Without talking to the original source of the information, Arik can't tell one way or the other.
His calm demeanor hides a very active and able intellect, a requirement for effectively learning magic. He's constantly thinking about something; whether it's important or pertinent to the situation at hand is irrelevant. He's been known to spend boring classes devising new spells, or simply musing on why clouds do what they do during the same. He's not really so easily distracted, but focusing his attention on one thing is a laborious task for him, and he prefers not to engage in that unless it's necessary. As a result, his thoughts have taken on a rather random, disjointed quality. If one were to somehow look into his mind, a fitting comparison to the pattern of his thoughts would be an insect darting from one flower to the next.
Likes:
Cooking: It's a simple task, but one that Arik enjoys immensely. It's not so much the action itself as the fact that he's creating something with his own hands that sustains life that gives him pleasure in it. That, and it's not an all-consuming activity, so his mind is free to wander in the moments he's not actively manipulating the food.
Magic: Arik likes working magic for the challenge and complexity it offers, and for its myriad applications. With a length of hawthorn in hand, he can work with light itself in ways that most people cannot, and he takes pride in doing so.
Dislikes:
Monotony: Arik doesn't like having nothing to do. Sitting and waiting and not being able to do something is akin to torture for him.
Oppression: The very idea of slavery repulses Arik, and he'll have nothing to do with its continued existence. Oppression of that sort has plagued the world far too long.
Phobias:
Enslavement: The chief among his fears, Arik only managed to escape this fate by chance. That fact haunts his dreams at night. He can't imagine a single thing worse than that; than not being the architect of so much as one's own thoughts and actions. He values his freedom immensely, and the thought that it might be taken from him both terrifies him and drives him to become better, to rise above the fear and the possibility of it coming true.
Aspirations:
Mastery: Partly because of his fears, Arik aspires to become a master of his art; Light Magic. He seeks to learn all he can of it, and to become renowned for his skills in it. It is to that end he joined the Academy and took on the name of the Magnostadt family that rescued him. It is to that end that he studies and that end that he will fight if he must. His ambition is to gain a level of strength and skill that few obtain, and use that to help the world advance towards becoming something better than it is now.
Weight: 160
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Hazel
Height: 6'0"
Rukh Alignment: White
Special Traits: There is an indistinct scarring on his right wrist, caused by a cuff he'd tried to escape from when he was a child.
Appearance: Arik dresses well, if not normally, for a 3rd Kodor student. Forgoing stereotypical robes and the like, he dresses in a light suit he made in the fashion of a visiting diplomat from Reim's capital city. The clothes themselves are fairly easy to have commissioned, and the cut simple enough for Arik to detail to a skilled tailor without much effort. He wears them because they look presentable enough, and because the stereotypical robes of a magician were never a good fit for him. He was always tripping over the things.
He walks with a smooth, practiced ease; something he forces on himself. Otherwise, all his motions would be jerky with the randomness of his thoughts. Sometimes some of the oddities of his thoughts influence his motions, particularly in times of stress, but he's become used to it enough that either state is comfortable to him. Still, it's a telling sign that Arik is stressed when he starts moving in short, quick motions rather than slow and deliberate ones.
Arik had little in the way of a life under the lord's estate. He was scarcely allowed to know his parents, for the man knew the value of depriving them of that bond and the lengths doing so would go toward keeping them in line. However, the man had no servants to trust with the child that he knew would not relent and allow his parents to see him. Instead, he was forced by his own cruelty to keep the infant with him on his travels downriver to conduct business, along with a slave who filled the role of wet nurse.
On one of these trips, a storm arose suddenly and tossed the ship about, such that Arik and the slave he had been given to were tossed overboard into the immense body of water. The man did not deign to recover his property from the tossing waves, to concerned was he for his own safety and that of his cargo.
Arik's nurse did not survive long after the woman managed to carry both to shore; she was already weak from captivity and the swim took too much out of her for her heart to continue to beat. By some miracle of fate, a pair of magicians, travelling to Magnostadt to escape some fate in Zou, passed by the infant mere minutes after, taking him in and giving him the name he bears now. They raised the child in Magnostadt, and were somewhat surprised and pleased when Arik displayed magical aptitude of his own.
Arik's skill wasn't great enough to gain entrance to the academy at first, but he was allowed to remain inside the city with his parents without incident, and they told him of how he'd been found. Curiosity seized him, and he left to the port town that the only ship his parents had seen had been headed to, using the skills he had to gain access to the records from that long ago. One estate in particular stood out. He learned all he could about its master, and was appalled by tales of the fate that he had, just by sheer chance and by the loss of a woman's life, been spared.
When Arik went to see the place, all he found were blasted ruins. Some unspecified catastrophe had struck the isolated locale, and the only thing that indicated the nature of it were a few stray Rukh that clung to the place from the intensity of whatever spell had been worked. The Rukh were stained black, something Arik had never seen before and which shook him to his core.
Arik returned home, disturbed by his findings. He redoubled his study of magic, determined to find what in the world could dye Rukh, the very embodiment of life, black as the void. Recently, he has entered the Academy to seek more knowledge. The hour of his Iktiyar Exam approaches, and he devotes himself to his craft with such intensity that the possibility of failing is unfathomable to him. Finally, he will progress towards mastering his craft in a meaningful manner. Finally, he will take steps towards the solution of the mystery that has plagued him for nigh on four years; for his entrance to the second Kodor will grant him some level of access to the Library of Merlin.
He should be scared, or anxious at least, but all he can feel is excitement.
Role-Play Sample:
Arik stood in his suit, polished hawthorn staff in hand, as he looked over the city of Magnostadt from the open air atop one of the spires of the city's academy. The area wasn't strictly a place where students were allowed, but neither were they strictly disallowed, either. Rather, it seemed to Arik, it was a place of solitude, one that served for whoever needed it as a place of contemplation. The view was breathtaking; it seemed to Arik that the city was small from up here, the surrounding landscape vanishing off past the horizon and seeming to go on forever in comparison.
The magician-in-training breathed the air, smelling drafts of the smell of a city intermingling with the sharp, clean air the altitude granted. It was a strange smell, seated on the precipice between city and sky as it was. Arik looked out over the city as the sun set and mentally marked off another day in his head. "The Iktiyar Exam approaches, and I'm not ready." He muttered to himself, voice somber. "But there is time, and I will be when it comes." Saying it allowed seemed significant to Arik; as though the words bound him where thought alone did not. Satisfied, he turned towards the stairs and opened the door that lead inside. Before he went, he spared a last glance after the fading light of dusk, reciting a line from a piece of poetry learned in his studies. "For I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep." Shaking his head at the nonsensical thought, he grinned and stepped inside, ready to collapse into his bed all the same.
