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[lectorisalutem]

{ARTHEPHIUS GULLAVERE i made a little potion and then i capped it with my tooth
	THE BASICS! FULL NAME: Arthephius Gullavere NICKNAMES: None AGE: 22 BIRTHPLACE: Erispoe, a small village located in the comté of Ys
APPEARANCE! i would trade each forbidden fortune Arthephius is a small man, standing at roughly 5'5". In Ys, his height wasn't considered unusual, but in this new world, the people seem significantly larger than he's used to. His build is stocky but a quick clap on the back will reveal that he's just skin and bones. Arthephius is in relatively good health considering his former living accommodations, but there was never enough spare food to put on fat, let alone muscle. There is nothing particularly memorable about Arthephius' face. His cheeks are a bit on the full side for a man his age, his dishwater eyes a bit glassy, but on the whole, he's unremarkable. His hair is brown and curls around his face and trails unevenly down his neck. Since arriving at the house, he's taken to carrying a pair of scissors to snip off any strands that annoy him. While on PRI premises, he wears the cowl given to him by the Servants by the Shore. Brown (save for the various stains his potions have left behind), scratchy and more than a little ripe, it serves as a security blanket. Arthephius knows better than anyone how foul and uncomfortable it is, but it's a familiar kind of foul and uncomfortable. Whenever he has to dress like an Earth Primer, he looks like a cat who's just been bathed in ice water.
PERSONALITY! instead they'll fit me for a noose As he has spent his life either alone with his mother, under a vow of silence or in his hermitage, Arthephius can be a difficult person to read. Though generally demure when he does interact with others, if the conversation touches on something he feels strongly about he will refuse to back down. At times, his conviction can come across as fervor and lead people, quite rightly, to consider him unstable. Arthephius is ashamed by his outbursts not because of the things he says, which can be unintentionally hurtful, but because he's raised his voice. He has been educated to believe that his passivity and his acceptance are the greatest gifts he can give the world. The teachings of the Servants by the Shore go directly against what his mother preached and, Arthephius suspects, his own nature. Blessed or cursed with a curious streak, he wants desperately to understand the how and the why of everything. And, if he can improve upon it, isn't that a much greater gift than apathy? Arthephius does his best to remain humble, but he believes deep down that he could achieve so much if only he'd let himself. Anything new fascinates him. Anything new terrifies him as well, but he's grown to like the thrill that accompanies both feelings. For someone so cautious in his personal life, he can be quite reckless with his science- and make no mistake, he does consider the work he does with potions true science. He hasn't gone so far as to blind test new concoctions on himself, but if his housemates aren't amenable to gulping down strange brews, it may come to that. He has to keep furthering his work. Again, since he's lived in his own little world for quite a while, Arthephius can be a bit off-putting. He's cheerful enough. He's usually smiling, he laughs quietly at almost anything, he's eager to please. This is his way of trying to blend in rather than behavior born from a desire for companionship. He believes that if you are kind to others, they cannot help but be kind to you. In Ys, he lived alone, hardly spoke three words a week outside of the market, charged for his potions. And for his coldness he was nearly burned alive in his home. Arthephius will not make the same mistake twice. He's somewhat aware that his glassy-eyed smiles and hollow laughs mark him as odd, but it seems unreasonable that he should be punished for something so minimal as awkwardness. Personality Keywords: Curious, emotionally immature, naive, idealistic, quiet, gentle, self-sabotaging, easily excited, selfish.
HISTORY! and it's such a small fee for some sleep Arthephius was born just outside the city of Ys, the bastard son of a known witch. Though the common people counted on his mother for medical care, they only spoke well of her in private circles. Publicly, she was regarded as an outsider, a status that was passed on to her son. Verene Gullavere did what she could to protect Arthephius. She was no fool- she understood that she could not raise him properly running from village to village. Still, she was slow to give her boy up. She taught him to read, to write. And, most importantly, she tried to impress upon him how important it was to respect the untamed nature of all things. Verene, like most the people of Ys, knew little of the Servants by the Shore. They were a group of silent monks who offered up their possessions to the sea. A group of men so devoted to nature and chaos seemed like as good a cabal as any to raise her son. So, when Verene could no longer bring herself to drag her son around, she left him with the Servants by the Shore. She pressed a copy of her family's book, The Book of Stones, into his arms and kissed his forehead and was gone. Only six years old, it took Arthephius some time to understand and adapt to this new way of life. The Servants by the Shore built their camps only a few feet from the high tide line. They slept under tents of seal skin, ate thick seaweed slop stew and spent nearly all their waking moments either memorizing texts or copying them down. And they never spoke. On the whole, the monks were patient with Arthephius. If he was to be one of them, he would have to understand the teachings in his own time. Arthephius experienced his first Harvest when he was nine. The sea swept past the high tide line, taking most of the Servants' supplies with it. Two young boys, as well as one healer, were drowned in their sleep. Arthephius awoke in a panic, salt water stinging his eyes. He clutched his mother's book to his chest and ran for higher ground. He watched as all the remaining Servants wept to see their camp washed away. Still, they started rebuilding with the detritus of their old home. Once they had a good supply of vellum, they rewrote their books as best they could from memory. Arthephius didn't yet understand that this was what the Servants did over and over again: prepare, feed the sea, retreat, repeat. He did, however, have the good sense to keep the Book of Stones on his person when he left camp. Over the years, Arthephius was integrated into the Servants. He could fish and shell and beg for alms as well as any of the other brothers. And, though he knew his heart was never with his work, he was contented. With contentment came laziness. He'd only seen two Harvests in his time with the Servants, so in his teenage years if he was asked to fetch fresh water, he wouldn't lug his mother's bulky old book with him. Then, hauling water from a nearby well, he saw the Servants lined up on a dune, staring out at the sea. When Arthephius realized what was happening, he ran towards his tent. A Servant's job was to feed the sea. What the sea saw fit to take, a Servant had to relinquish. Attempting to salvage anything from a wrecked camp was unforgivable. And it was then that Arthephius showed his true colors. His mother's book mattered more to him than the men who had raised him, more than the sea they worshiped. He was chased out of the campsite. Though his mother had done all she could to provide him a stable life, Arthephius ended up following in his mother's nomadic footsteps. He studied the Book of Stones each night (what else was he supposed to read?) and took to making his own home remedies for profit. So long as he never stayed anywhere for too long, he was safe. Unfortunately, complacency got the better of him once again. It seemed the further north he got, the less people stigmatized magic and feared the sea. By the time Arthephius reached the village of Sidi, he felt relatively secure. On a small plot of land on the outskirts of a forest, Arthephius built himself a hermitage. It was beyond humble, but it was enough. Townspeople came to him asking for potions or medicines and offering food and materials in return. It seemed like a perfect arrangement. One year, the frosts came early. So early, in fact, that his neighbors refused to believe that nature was to blame. Only a witch could have brought such misfortune to the region. On a night when he was gathering nightshades, Arthephius' home was burnt to the ground. The perpetrators expected him to burn with it, he was certain. With only his necessities, he took off into the forest. He remembered hearing of some alleged other world reachable through a portal in the area. It took him several days, but he finally dowsed his way to the convergence.
miscellaneous! my neck for some sleep Skills: Identifying plants, basic hunting and dressing of animals, basic cooking (not in a modern kitchen), sewing, first aid as practiced in the Renaissance, reading and writing. He's also fairly quick on his feet and good at climbing. Powers: No innate powers, but if he has enough time to prepare, access to good ingredients and his book, he can pretty much brew a potion with any effect. However, the more concentrated the potion, the stronger the side-effects. E.G.: if he brews a potion that gives someone the strength of three men, when it wears off the user will probably be weak and bedridden for a few days. If he brews a potion that gives someone the strength of ten men, the user will probably suffer a massive heart attack. There's also always the chance that someone will react badly to one of the ingredients and drop dead on the spot. Important items: The Book of Stones, his journal, his medicine case.