Cishi, The Confused Prisoner
History: Cishi was a young man of high aspirations, though always a little bit hapless in some ways. Born in a time where his people were excluded from most rights, this Chinese-American (as later generations would call themselves) student was propelled into college, and there he began to find his groove… and then his life changed.
His maternal grandfather, a Gold Mountain man, died, and left him a number of objects from the old country. One night he dug through the box holding them, digging deeper and deeper, until he realized that these pieces of matter were a link to the dead man not merely in a figurative sense, but literally.
He Awakened as a Moros, and called himself Cishi, Lodestone, for he saw himself as one such being, drawn towards his ancestry and home, pointing to the true way. He grew in confidence and experience, though he still had much to learn, and initiated as a Mystagogue, while being rather close to a number of Silver Ladder visionaries whose goal was to extend scholarships to promising students in order to inculcate a mindset they thought would aid Awakening. In this, they had the support of the academic Mysterium, at least in a general sense.
He had a future. But it was not to be. For a powerful Guardian Suspector had a dream-vision. In it, she saw that he would grow to become a powerful and dangerously evil Left-Handed Mage, who would tear down entire Consilium with the might of his fell sorcery. She ignored it at first, for her Time and Fate magic both spoke far less telling volumes about his potential, yet the dreams kept on happening.
But she could not convince, in subtle ways, any of her fellows that he was a threat, for he had been tested early in his Awakened life and found True, and was not yet ready for another such test.
But she had to avert it.
So she kidnapped him, and to hide the deed, dragged him into the Astral, a place that was only a word to him, then.
And she killed him.
He's still confused about his death, stuck forever in the larval stage between a new Mage and a true and a True Mystagogue initiated into the first real Mystery, the Mysterium Arche.
Those who have looked into the matter of this confused and not all that powerful Mage find that the Guardian soon enough led her entire Cabal into a Seer trap, guided by her visions. None of them survived.
Description: Cishi is young, around twenty, and dressed in pale blue robes, with a pockmarked face and dark hair. He isn't much to look at, thin and retiring even when he was alive, and yet there is curiosity and even compassion in his mindset. He believed in education as the way for his race, and for that matter all people and all the world, to move forward, and under different circumstances he could have joined the Silver Ladder.
He is an Apprentice of Matter, and an Initiate of Fate, and unlike mosts such astral Prisoners, he not only doesn't have an Ordeal, he doesn't, by and large, have any special understanding of the Astral. He's read about it once in a book that described a few major landmarks, but it was not his area of interest, and thus he is somewhat clueless.
Out of the way, he has little to offer visitors other than stories of his family and life, and perhaps details of a San Francisco Consilium in the 1910s.
His Garden is a prison cell, for that is what the Guardian made of it by her thoughts, though the cell door is always open, and he cannot prevent anyone from entering and leaving. He sits, he reads the same books again and again, given to him by compassionate Mages, and waits out eternity.
Magic:
Matter (2): He can see what matter is composed of and, like his name, he can make himself magically attractive to other items, which shift towards him, or move if they are able. Balls roll off desks, his books head towards him… useless, but a decent way to pass the time. As well, he can touch or even breath in any substance without being harmed, and can manipulate solids, liquids, and gases, changing their shape, though not composition.
Death (1): He can examine ghosts for their cause of death, and see ghosts. He can speak to the dead and see souls.
*******
A/N: Not all Prisoners are powerful or even dangerous. Some are hapless and hopeless. A PC meeting him would probably wonder what he might know, but might also be moved to pity, or decide, if they're less than pleasant, that killing him might count as an Ordeal, if they're impatient (and a dick).
Also, I used a bit of my knowledge of Chinese-American history. Not much, but a bit.
