Charles Casey, Shadow Name: Duster
Bootlegger and Artifact Peddler
"If you want it, I can tell you it's from an Atlantean ruin. And you won't get a better price. I promise you that. Have a drink while you're at it, there's plenty to go around, and you're my customer, if you agree. That makes you a friend, doesn't it?"
Background: Born in a middle-class Canadian family, Charles Casey has recreated himself as a proud and even flamboyant bootlegger captain of Rum Row. Together with his cabal-mates, he has done incredibly well for himself in a very short time, despite being essentially an amatuer at the entire business, and a man who in fact doesn't particularly like alcohol, let alone the rum that makes up most of his cargo. He's polite, urbane if he needs to be, surprisingly salty and down to earth if that's what sets people at ease.
He's also an Awakened, a man who knows how other people's minds work, and understands just what people want. His awakening drove him from his family in some ways, but he still has access to their wealth, and early on in prohibition, it is a very, very promising venture. The money he makes helps finance his more profitable and important business.
He trades in secrets, rumors, grimoires, artifacts and other tools with Mages who are willing to journey by boat three miles beyond the shore, in international water (which is where he does his bootlegging business). He has very specific rules. He'll sell to anyone, as long as he can assuage his rather bruised conscious that it will not cause immediate harm. He's unlikely to hand a grimoire listing a rote that allows a Moros to devour souls to extend their lifespan, and if he suspects that the person involved plans something immediately 'bad' and not merely a little underhanded, he might refuse the trade.
But at the same time, the pretense matters as much as the reality, and some of the tools he has given away have wound up in the hands of Left-Handed Mages or even Seers, a fact that the unaligned Mercier doesn't seem to care that much about. It doesn't effect him, and it doesn't effect his Cabal, with whom he is quite close.
And for the moment, as of 1921, he's quite satisfied with his life.
Description: Mercier is a short, thin man with dark hair and darker eyes, his features a little rough. He is only saved from looking like a certain image of a jowly businessman by just how gaunt his face is. He seems to eat and drink very little. He's usually dressed in a manner that always perfectly fits the situation. With guests he dresses in a rather smart suit, but when working on one of the several crafts he owns, he dresses to work.
His manners are rather effortless, and as with his clothing, he is skilled at switching his tone and misdirecting people as to his motives. His nimbus is a distortion of space itself, in which small things seem larger and big things smaller, everything distorted and out of order.
Description:
Storytelling Hints: He doesn't take money, at least not usually, for the secrets and grimoires. Instead he prefers trades, things he can use as a Mage. Thus he's a repository of secrets and artifacts that might prove tempting to any number of people, meaning both good and ill. If approached by someone looking for information, he can be quite willing to deal, but he always drives a fair bargain, by his definition of the word.
He believes he exists outside of both the rules and the conflicts that engulf Mages, and his cabal-mates and the bribes he pays to port authorities and everyone else mean he has a lot of friends in places both low and high, but he might not be as immune from consequences as he would like to be, and if stolen from or otherwise crossed, he might turn out to be less harmless--he makes a point of not harming people, even if it requires rationalization and ignoring the results of his actions--then he first seems.
He is in his early twenties.
Scenarios:
--There is a distress message across several spectrums, both magical and otherwise, and when your Cabal reaches the boat, they find death. His four cabalmates, and the sleeper and sleepwalker crew, all horribly killed, burned by acid, violated. But he is nowhere to be seen and neither are the potent artifacts that he was about to sell. Could an enemy of the Consilium have them? Is he still alive? Tracking him down might yet yield results.
--Recently certain disreputable individuals have found themselves in possession of artifacts and tools that they should not have. Is Casey behind it? A visit to him might prove fruitful in furthering the search for and attempts to rein in these figures.
--Casey has been robbed, and he's on the war path. He's declared that he'll pay a mystic bounty to anyone who can help track down or capture those who stole from him, and the hunt is on. If you find them first, what will you do? Take the artifacts for yourself and face his wrath, or turn them in for a potentially less impressive reward.
Sheet--
Gnosis: 3
Wisdom: 6, he's done plenty of questionable things, but few of them quite push the right buttons for a Wisdom drop.
Virtue: Affable
Vice: Greedy
Dedicated Magical Tool: A delicately wrought brass goblet.
Path: Mastigos
Order: N/A
Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2
Presence 3, Manipulation 4, Composure 4
Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 2
Skills: Occult 2 (Artifact Lore, Atlantean Lore/Speculation), Weaponry 1, Seamanship 3 (Smuggling)*, Academics 1 (Law, Art), Crafts 1, Investigation 3 (Artifacts), Politics 2 (Bribery), Science 1, Athletics 2, Stealth 2, Larceny 2 (Concealing Stolen Goods), Empathy 2 (Motives), Persuasion 3 (Sales Pitches), Socialize 3, Streetwise 3 (Bootlegging 2), Subterfuge 3 (Misdirection)
Willpower: 6
Defense: 3
Speed: 10
Health: 7
Arcana: Space 3, Mind 3, Prime 3, Forces 1, Life 1, Matter 1
Rotes: He's a tricky one, because the secrets he's gotten include information that means that he has rotes comparable to an order mage. So, that said…
Forces--*Fording the River
Life--*Purge the Unbidden
Matter--*Mapping the Tomb, *Glimmer in the Shaodws
Mind--** Don the Inner Mask, ** A Face You Can Trust, ** Steel Trap,
Prime--** Claiming the Ancient Heritage, *** Forge of Power
Space--** Nothing Up My Sleeve, ** Twisting Threads, *** Escape Hatch
Merits: Here's where I get a bit reluctant to go searching for everything, so this will be an advice section. He has contacts with the local authorities, the wholesalers who sell his stuff to thirsty buyers on the East Coast, the distillers in Canada, and his fellow smugglers, and he'd close to his cabal mates, and he's rather rich, Resources 4 and even that obscures just how much he spends and uses on his other business, which has made him plenty of friends and enemies. Magically, this is where if you were using him as an ST you'd have the right to go hog-wild. He's a hoarder of bits and pieces of secrets. Does he have blackmail on a powerful local Mage that makes them look the other way? If you wish. Might he have a few somewhat potent Artifacts stashed here and there? Quite possibly. Useful grimoire? Certainly. Both as tools and as 'loot drops' he's one of the few people who can actually be justified to have such a thing. It all depends on what is needed for that particular game.
*It's basically Boat Drive+Other minor stuff
Afterlife: He is based loosely on a real person, who indeed was a Teetotaler himself, and Rum Row was a real place. In real life, the early days of easy commerce gave way to the threat of pirates hijacking the ship and stealing the money that the rum runners gained. In one notorious case, an entire boat of people were murdered, exactly as horribly as I hinted, and their money stolen. This, combined with the rise of cartels and professional operations, eventually shut out amateurs from Rum Row, and eventually the government actually managed to crack down on that particular form of smuggling, and focus was shifted to Detroit.
Charles Casey sticks in longer than most, but he's eventually forced off the water by the rise of professionals and the increased risks. If he gives up and returns home to Canada, he settles in and eventually joins the Mysterium, becoming a somewhat respectable member of his consilium, growing jowly and aged, and yet still with the well-bred manners.
Potential scenarios for Mage Noir or even somewhat later settings could include some of his information or some of the secrets he learned in the twenties becoming relevant. The return of an old enemy or information on an artifact thought loss might drive a cabal to his doorstep to pick his brain for old stories...at a price.
If he stays in the business, he manages to keep up, though the rise of the Great Depression and the fact that he's forced to go it overland creates difficulties, and getting a good supply of secrets to trade gets increasingly hard...and then the Seers of the Throne rip him off, murder three of his cabalmates, some of his best friends, and make the mistake of not killing him in the process.
This rather pushed him towards the side of 'The Seers must pay' and in a Mage Noir game he's a respected member of the Mysterium, but one who is startlingly close to the Arrows and other more aggressive factions, and who is devoted to destroying and rooting out Seers and their patsies. Whereas the first fate has him mature slowly like a fine wine, this one has him as a Triple Master of Mind, Space, and Prime, and skilled in other things besides. He's running hot even after all of these years, his amiable nature only occasionally peeking through his intensity, and where he runs hot, people are liable to get burned.
*****
A/N: So, some lessons. I really have trouble with rotes, the mechanics are still unfamiliar, and I'm not 100% sure about this. That said, I liked making the character and he does fit into a specific historical niche. Not sure about the politics and all, but his resistance to joining one of the Diamond Orders was pretty brief, relatively speaking.
