Chesslin Camere

[Chesslin]

Player Name: Everscale

Name: Chesslin Camere

Age: 19

Race: Human

Height: 5 feet 5 inches

Weight: 130 pounds

Physical Description: Chesslin has never stood on equal level with other boys his age. With a petite frame and a tendency towards physical and mental dexterity rather than strength, he has never competed well in the fighting games and has little of the stamina required for running and jumping and climbing alongside his would-be friends. Even his features are delicate and thin, his nose sharp, his eyes angled viciously over high, distinct cheekbones. He wears his soft brown hair in long curls around his neck and shoulders, tying it back when it gets in the way with a short length of brown twine that he keeps bound around his wrist. His eyes are bright blue and always moving. Chesslin rarely smiles or laughs, his expression perpetually serious. Dirt always seems to be smudged on his face, from his garden, and his simple farm boy's clothes are covered in it.

Possessions: Chesslin does not own much, and he never has. What he does consider precious, he carries in a hand-tooled leather pouch given to him by his elder brother. His most well-loved item is the plain silver band of his late mother's wedding ring. Aside from that, the pouch contains the various herbal remedies Chess has gathered from his garden, and a smoothly polished river rock meant for throwing in an emergency. Alongside the pouch, Chess keeps an old dagger with him, wrapped up in a cleaning rag so it will not tear his coat. All but useless for protection, he uses the small, blunt weapon to cut his herbs.
The most, and arguably only, remarkable item Chess carries is not an item at all. A couple of months ago, Chesslin came across a juvenile mouse in his kitchen, and rather than kill it he took it as a pet, and a tool for his magic.

Powers or Strengths:

Magic: Chess has an innate magical talent, and though he has no one to learn from he has managed to reason his way through a couple of spells. Most of these spells involve the mice he finds around his house, as they have been his most accessible tool.

See Through Eyes - Chess can see through the eyes of an animal. He has only ever tested this on small animals, namely mice and birds. The larger the animal, the more strength and energy it takes for him to use the spell.
Control Being - Chess can control the movements of another creature by planting his own mind in that of the being. The spell leaves his own body vulnerable and unaware, and is a massive drain on strength. This spell, as well, Chess has been unable to use on anything larger than a hare.
Speak to Animal – By bending his mind to the creature's, Chesslin has learned to speak and understand the language of the animals around him. He must focus on one animal at a time to be able to understand. The ability is difficult to use in a noisy space.
Hand of Fire – After a great deal of practice, Chess has learned how to twist his own body heat until it scalds to the touch. The ability is mainly a defensive magic, as there is no real fire involved and the ability can not be extended past his skin. He is working on being able to heat his knife, as well.
Light – One of the first things that Chesslin learned to do was conjure his own light source. The ability has been useful, to him, lengthening his study hours deep into the pitch black of the night.

Basic Medicine: Chesslin studied herbalism, gardening, and basic medicine with his friend, the local apothecary. He can set a broken bone, stitch a cut, and create various healing poultices and potions. The ability is the only reason he has been able to feed himself as long as he has.

Stealth: The ability to go unnoticed has proved invaluable to Chesslin in his endeavor to develop his talent for magic. Though he is far from Marn and the City Guard, he still prefers to avoid curious eyes when practicing. His small stature and naturally quiet demeanor make it a relatively simple task for Chesslin to sneak around behind someone's back and get where he needs to be.

Weaknesses:

Overly Ambitious: Struck with a bit of an inferiority complex, Chesslin has what could almost be called an addiction to the power given to him by strengthening his magic. His greatest focus in life is becoming powerful enough that no one will ever be able to push him down or overcome him, unrealistic though that goal may be. He is so attached to this vision of his future that he has started to question whether he cares what methods he has to use to get there. Even his loyalty to friends and family may not be enough to overcome his desire for power, if faced with a difficult choice.

Physically Inadequate: Chesslin has always put greater stake in mental ability than physical ability. Combined with this inattention, his naturally small, frail build leaves him thoroughly and visibly weak when it comes to sport and combat. He must rely on others to defend him in an emergency.

Fear of Fire: Though rarely coming into play in his daily life, Chess harbors a deep terror of fire that leaves him nervous even sitting comfortably around a well contained campfire. Were he ever again to find himself on the interior of a burning building, he might not be able to contain himself.

Animals: Chesslin could never, no matter how hard he tried, bring intentional harm to an animal.

Restless Sleeper: Since the fire that killed his mother, Chesslin has never been able to sleep well. The slightest noise will wake him. He never gets enough sleep to stay healthy, leaving him vulnerable to any epidemic that might happen to plague Shim.

History: Chesslin Camere was born and raised on the small streets of the town of Shim. He never knew his father, Larkin, who had died in a farming accident before Chesslin was born, and his mother worked so hard that she was rarely seen around the house. The family was poor even for a farming family, and with only Chess's mother Simora to provide they struggled to keep themselves fed.

The youngest of two, Chess looked to his elder brother Ulvir for guidance in all things. Bold and strong, with an easy smile and a booming laugh, Ulvir took the task of raising little Chesslin eagerly. He taught Chesslin right from wrong, raised him a puradyne, taught him that magic is corruption, played games with him, and took him out to the fields to see what their father had done for a living. Ulvir was Chesslin's idol and parent until the age of five.

In the spring of Chesslin's fifth year, Ulvir celebrated his fourteenth birthday, and moved out to work the fields in his late father's stead. Ulvir could not have been more excited at the opportunity, for he had once looked to his father as his hero, but Chesslin hated it. Suddenly, he was alone, with no one in the house to talk to. Chesslin, unable to keep up physically with the other children, had few friends, and those who had tolerated his presence at Ulvir's insistence now abandoned Chesslin in Ulvir's absence.

After several months of loneliness, Chess found sanctuary with the local apothecary. An old widow, Morylin was as thankful for the company as Chess. He spent his days sitting beside her at the herbalist's table, watching and talking while she worked. Chesslin said nothing of the new friendship to his family.

Over the years, his fascination with what Morylin did grew. His chatter died. He did more watching, trying to memorize the different shapes and combinations of the planets, and the various tools Morylin used to cut them. Behind Morylin's back, Chesslin stole a few small seedpods. He took them home and planted them in a patch of untouched dirt behind his house. Chesslin devoted his time and attention to tending the tiny garden, and Morylin, more observant than Chess believed, took notice.

In the early days of summer, three years after Chesslin first started visiting Morylin, the aging apothecary paid an unexpected visit to the Camere family. Chesslin had always been slated for the farming life, in spite of his small size and lack of muscle. That day, Morylin presented Simora with another option. She invited Chesslin to become her apprentice.

Since the death of her husband, Simora was always afraid that her sons would meet the same end in an accident on the farm. Though she had been unable to afford an apprenticeship for Ulvir, Morylin's request came with no price, and even the promise of a small allowance for Chesslin. It took little convincing for Simora to allow her son's career change.

Eight years old, Chesslin finally found himself somewhere he felt he fit in. He studied hard, throwing himself into the life of a young apothecary. By the time he was nearing the age of ten, and Ulvir was turning nineteen, Chesslin had become a very adept and attentive healer, with a large herb garden behind his house. He dared to believe that everything was going to work out.

On the eve of his tenth birthday, Chesslin changed something. He did not mean to do it. Chess did not even realize that he could. Around midnight, he woke up in a cold sweat, with the feeling that thin tendrils, like spiderwebs, were stroking everywhere across his skin. Chesslin looked, and there was nothing there, but he could feel the low charge through his nerves with every delicate touch. Chesslin, still half asleep, reached out to try and brush the cobwebs away from him. In doing so, he tangled two threads together.

To this day, Chesslin does not know exactly what he did. He has reasoned that he touched the Astral plane, that he accessed an innate magical ability within himself. To him, working with the Astral plane is like weaving, spinning pieces of thread together to create the desired effect in his own plane of existence. Since that day, Chesslin has still not been able to find the threads he tangled to create the spark that burned his house down. By the time Chesslin woke up the rest of the way and realized what had happened, his bedroom was a blazing inferno. Ulvir barely got his little brother out in time. Simora was not so lucky. Chesslin never told anyone what had happened.

The brothers mourned their mother for months. Ulvir could hardly work, Chesslin could do nothing but, giving himself over to the herb garden which was all that remained beside the charred wreck of their childhood home. Morylin took them into her care and did her best to help them, but only Ulvir could ever fully abandon his grief.

A few months after Simora was buried, Chesslin became obsessed with discovering how he had started that fire. Though he continued his work for Morylin, he spent all his free time in quiet contemplation or reading the Tomes of the First Pilgrims in search of the slightest hint as to what those strings had been. It took Chesslin three years to finally break through and make contact with the Astral plane again. He could not find the threads that had started the fire, but now he could access the magic.
Chesslin kept working. He reached out to those invisible strings whenever he could, twisting them, combining them in different ways. For a long time he was unable to produce even a small effect on reality. It was not until he was sixteen that Chess finally managed the simplest of his spells, achieving communication with one of the mice in the back of Morylin's home.

Learning more about this new connection with the Astral plane has come to rule Chesslin's life. He finds himself finally able to match up to his powerful brother and his brother's more normally sized friends, though none of them are aware of this secret power of his. Ulvir suspects Chess is up to something dangerous, and he has tried to warn his brother away, but Chesslin is beyond listening. He desires independence, the ability to stand and protect himself without his brother. He only wants to be stronger, so that someday he will be able to stop something like his mother's death.

The desire for strength has changed Chesslin's plans. Once, he believed he was going to spend the rest of his life working around the tiny town of Shim, but that no longer fits into his agenda. Chesslin will do anything and everything in his power to escape the small town life, to get to Marn and hunt out the underground guilds of mages he knows he must join if he wants to really learn.

[Saruna]

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