Post by Lepa on Aug 29, 2016 1:51:33 GMT -8
Name: Cardinal Blackmoore
Gender: Male
Age: ~50+
Race: Human
Home: Aster City
Alliances: Blackmoore Family; Aegis Wing, Adventurer Guild
Alignment: Neutral
Family: Strix Blackmoore (Father), Rose Blackmoore (Wife), Raven Blackmoore (Son), Crow Blackmoore (Son), Echo Blackmoore (Son)
Friends: Chris Engle, Izzack O'Connor?
Enemies: N/A
Likes: Tea, reading
Dislikes: Being alone, his father
Relationship: He's always had a strained relationship with his father, Strix. He also has strained relationships with his sons; Raven refuses to speak to him, Crow tends to be immature towards him, while Echo can be civil but distant towards him. He shows a degree of concern for Izzack.
Personality:
Cardinal is an older, pensive man with an air of sadness to him. He's generally a reserved person that often needs his own space, but he grows depressed when left alone too long with his thoughts. He seems wary from the things life has thrown at him, but he carries himself with poise and speaks politely to others when he can. As an instructor, he's surprisingly patient with students, though even he has his limit: he can't tolerate arrogance or brashness in a learning environment. He might come across as a bit overly cautious at times, but this is from seeing the consequences of irresponsible magic first hand.
Powers:
Innate Magical Bloodline of the Ancient Crow
From his father Strix's side, Cardinal inherited a magical bloodline believed to be descended from an ancient, magical crow. Said crow was the familiar of a powerful sorcerer. When the sorcerer was killed, the crow took over his work and used his magic to become human. All of his descendants must bear the name of a bird to utilize the bloodline's innate magic.
Cardinal was trained in magic since childhood, so he has decades of experience. He has a well rounded variety of spells and can be incredibly powerful, but he's past his prime and finds its tiresome to fully exert himself for combat. His family specializes in dark magic in particular, though Cardinal is averse to it due to it overtaking his father Strix and his son Raven.
Magic sensing
Cardinal can detect and identify magic, but he must focus in order to do so. He has many years of experience with magic, so he's able to identify most types, such as magical objects, curses, attack spells and the like. However, in order to give detailed information, he'll have to study for a bit of time and observe the magic. Otherwise, if in a situation like combat, he'll likely give smaller nuggets of information from what he can immediately notice.
Utility Magic
Cardinal possesses a variety of spells he uses for everyday living. Examples include levitating himself or some objects, small transformation spells (such as fixing objects) or dematerializing items such as stains on clothes or leftover trash. He can also teleport, with short range being quick and easy to cast, while long range requires much more mental energy and thus comes with a long cool down period.
Combat Magic
Cardinal is capable of casting combat spells, most of which are elemental in nature. The major types he uses are lightning, fire, ice, water and wind. Cardinal doesn't fight because of his old age, but he tries to maintain his proficiency in these spells in case of emergency. If forced to fight, he's more likely to use wind and water spells (and maybe ice) due to fire and electricity having a higher potential to be more destructive.
Dark Magic
Cardinal was primarily trained in dark magic, the Blackmoore's innate specialty. Most of his dark magic he uses concerns deception.
Illusionary Disguise - Cardinal can use magic to entirely transform his clothes or full on appearance. For a time, it's passive, but the longer he maintains the illusion, the more he'll eventually have to concentrate on keeping it up until he can't anymore.
Dancing Shadows - Cardinal distorts the shadows around him, which move around in erratic ways to confuse the opponent. This is primarily to intimidate foes, as well as lower their accuracy when trying to hit Cardinal.
Scrying - Cardinal can pick a magical point, though it has to be a place that Cardinal is familiar with or has a line of sight to. From this magical point, he can look around in every direction without limitation, save for the lighting. If it's dark, he won't be able to see anything.
Cardinal is also capable of dark magic that concerns the dead or creatures from other planes, but avoids using it all together due to the dangers it holds. He instead uses his knowledge of this as a means of protecting himself and others from the undead/otherworldly creatures, as well as understanding and exploiting their weaknesses. The same goes for hexes, curses and the like, which he primarily tries to dispel.
Spellbook
Cardinal tends to keep a tome on him filled with spells outside of his expertise. He can use this tome to cast these other spells, but he'll need to take some time to read up on how to cast the spell. The amount of time he needs to read depends on the complexity of the spell.
Weaknesses:
Though Cardinal is a powerful magic user, he's an older man no longer in his prime. He is not fit to partake in combat regularly, as using powerful magic or simply too much magic will take a mental toll on him. Even if he finds a way to mentally withstand using a high amount of magic in a short amount of time, Cardinal can risk magical overload and harm himself with magical backfire. He's also not physically fit and can easily be taken down or knocked out if one gets close to him and attacks him.
History:
Cardinal's father Strix trained him in magic from a young age. As time went on, Cardinal noticed a gradual deterioration in his father, but did his best to ignore it. He only truly realized it was a problem after he'd gotten married and had three sons. Cardinal's eldest son, Raven, was the first to undergo magical training. As Raven progressed and delved deeper into the dark arts than Cardinal ever did, Cardinal noticed Strix was obsessed with Raven's progress. Strix by that point had been corrupted by his practices in dark magic and fell into an unsettling madness, seeking only to further perpetuate the family's magic. Knowing that Raven also had an astounding aptitude for dark magic, Cardinal feared that he too would eventually be consumed by darkness.
Much to Cardinal's relief (and Strix's disappointment), his second son Crow had no interest in learning magic. The youngest son Echo, on the other hand, had an incredibly high potential for magic. Seeing that Raven had started to fall into Strix's tendencies, Cardinal deliberately withheld the family's magical teachings from Echo, hoping it would give him a normal life.
Sadly, this wasn't to be. Sometime after Cardinal's adventurous wife, Rose, went missing on an expedition, his son Crow suddenly entered a coma. Following this, Raven showed signs of being consumed by darkness and eventually vanished, and Echo was taken away because Cardinal was deemed unfit to raise his children. To Cardinal’s horror, Echo was placed to live with his father Strix, but Cardinal managed to convince Strix that Echo was unable to use their bloodline's magic, sparing Echo from Strix's machinations.
Cardinal was now left with only his unconscious son, Crow. He didn't hear from Echo or Raven for nearly a decade, and it was only after 13 years that Crow woke up again. During this time, Cardinal moved to Aster City and took up a job at the Adventurer Guild to help him continue paying for Crow's specialty care. Cardinal eventually learned in a letter from Echo that Raven had been sent to jail, though the details of why had been left out. Some time after that, Cardinal nearly had a heart attack when he learned Crow was transported to another facility across the world, but was surprised to learn that his son had finally woken up. After much difficulty, Cardinal finally managed to reunite Crow and returned home with him to Aster City.
Cardinal still lives in Aster City, continuing his work at the Adventurer Guild. He's dabbled in performing show magic in the park and assisting Aegis Wing in hunting bounties, but he's primarily an archivist and magic instructor for the Guild. He was surprised to see that Echo had one day shown up at the guild as well, though Cardinal's a bit sad that Echo remains standoffish towards him...
Anything else:
- The Blackmoore name isn’t an infamous household name, but it’s possibly recognizable to a few people who've obsessively researched magic...
- Portraits of his children, from youngest to oldest: Echo, Crow and Raven
