CWC - Alaric de Winter

Name: Alaric de Winter

Age: 22

Gender: Male

Species: Human

Place of Origin: Bruges, Belgium, Europe

Physical Description:

As a young man, Alaric has inherited his mother's sharp looks. His face is angular and seems constantly plagued by a frown, regardless of whether he is actually discontent or not. Some people have postulated that this is because Alaric merely experiences a higher passive level of disapproval of the world around him than most others, rather than it being a simple feature of his facial structure. His sky-blue eyes are by far his most attractive feature, wide and bright, serving to offset his general look of worry by their own apparent openness, and by the way they truly light up when he smiles.

His hair is a sandy, straw blonde and is generally unkempt - he spends little time tending to it. Of middling length, it falls to just past his ears, with a prominent fringe coming down to a short distance above his eyes. His build is lean, and he is of slightly below average height at five foot eight inches.

Alaric's style of dress varies widely depending on the situation. On most days, he dresses plainly as any normal man would - fond of jeans and boots, and preferring t-shirts and pullovers to shirts and jackets. Formally, however, his manner of dress befits his station as a Guild Mage. He owns several sets of formal robes for varying occasions, from standard black-and-gold for everyday guild interactions to the elegant silvers and blues of his ceremonial robes - the colours that his mother wore.

His posture and body language can largely be summed up as 'tense'. Though far from hunched, he usually walks with the reserved and withdrawn manner of someone not entirely certain whether they aren't about to be set upon by god only knows what at any given moment. Not particularly expressive in his motions, you will seldom find him making the sweeping gestures many of his fellows make when they speak their minds.

Personality Description:

From a young age, Alaric's mother made sure that he was a boy who was well aware of the dangers of the world, and the ways in which harm could come about him. As a result, it takes a lot for him to open up, and the person who most speak with is one of reserved mannerisms and a lack of expressiveness. He speaks shortly and to the point, loathing to mince words and those who make a habit of it. Trust comes slowly, but before trust comes friendliness. Alaric is far from an entirely withdrawn and uncommunicative man despite his rough exterior, and those who spend a fair amount of time with him can vouch for his amusingly dry sense of humour and fondness for scathing wit, in particular. He behaves warmly to those he considers his friends - albeit being still far from chatty, preferring to let others take the lead in conversation.

Even amongst friends, though, his trust is far from absolute. There are precious few who know Alaric who can count themselves as his confidants in all things. With the conflict that comes upon the Guild, however, he is finding that trust is becoming more and more necessary. Wariness is useful only to a point, for without trust, cooperation is nigh on impossible.

No one sorcerer, wizard, witch or mage can fight this war alone. Alaric is struggling with the fact that he must make concessions he would otherwise consider unwise, before he can possibly expect others to do the same to achieve unity in the face of peril.

History:

The room was quiet, now. Silence reigned oppressively over the atmosphere, thick like soup that drowned the little things that might otherwise have disturbed it in its indomitable weight. No birdsong penetrated the quiet, there was no scrabbling of rats or other vermin in the dark spaces in the corner of your eye. The space was dead, no other word for it. Every surface was grey with a thick layer of dust; the once-cheerful, now-faded rug's rainbow of colours were almost indeterminable beneath the dull carpet of neglect. The floorboards creaked when he took a step forwards, the thick sole of his boots kicking up a cloud of dancing dust particles that flitted in and out of vision as they crossed the rays of light that shone through the room's single window, set in the angular ceiling. They made their merry way up and into his face, eliciting a brief coughing fit in their eagerness to greet the room's first visitor in over a decade.

A small smirk crossed his face at the thought. It was not so long ago when he might have truly believed that even the dust in this place could be so filled with mystery and vague, inexplicable magic that it became sentient, and rose in joyous greeting for him. But then, that was understandable, he thought. The last time he was here, he still saw through the eyes of a child filled to the brim with wonder. Everything was possible, if this room was possible. All the stories, all the wild fantasies whispered by the fire on cold winter evenings of fantastical beings and places could be true. It had been the most wonderful feeling.

Even now, after all these years, just being in this place calmed him. For the first time in a long, long time, he felt safe. He wasn't expecting a cloaked figure with hollow eyes to rise out of the nearest shadow to greet him at any moment. No, he was confident that they could not touch him here. The room's odd, angular structure was a keen reminder of that fact.

He traced the outline of the room with his eyes, following the strange and seemingly architecturally impossible curves and corners of the walls, the bizarre slopes of the ceiling and the deeply carved ruts in the wooden floor. A hamsa, his mother had called it. The hand of protection, of warding. It seemed that everything in this place bore its mark. The colourful rug on the floor was emblazoned with it, the window-frame formed its shape and even the golden frame of the painting behind him bore it, engraved repeatedly around the edge of the canvas.

The painting was, at a glance, one of simple oil. It was far from the work of one of the great artists of their time, but it was a pretty piece all the same. It depicted a street in fair Paris, the Eiffel tower visible towering over the buildings in the distance. The golden glow of a sunrise gave the scene picture a warmth to it, accompanied by the clear blue sky populated only by sparse fluffy white clouds. Examining the painting beyond a glance, however, revealed something of a strange property to it.

Every few seconds, it changed. The clouds drifted by, following the wind's currents, and the pedestrians and vehicles in the street moved along their way. The motions were jerky, fading fluidly from one still scene to the next ponderously slowly, but it was clear that time was passing at a regular pace beyond the canvas itself.

"This place is safety, Alaric." He could almost hear his mother's voice now, in the unflinching silence of the chamber, from when she had brought him here the first time. He had been but a boy of five, then, and had barely understood what he was being told. "The hamsa is a symbol of protection, to ward off evil. Never underestimate the power of symbols like it. Though alone, they may not have much power, combined with enough magic to unlock their spiritual natures... Well, why do you think we use pentagrams and such things? Symbolism has power, Alaric. More power than either you or I can truly fathom the full extent of."

His hand subconsciously rose to touch the sapphire blue hamsa that hung on a silver chain around his neck. The amulet thrummed with magic, protective wards that he carried with him. A sorcerer without wards was like a warrior without armour or shield. He would be felled by his enemy's arrows long before he even knew the battle was upon him. He had seen it happen too many times to let his guard down. Friends who, like him, had grown complacent. Peace had been the standard for so long now that it seemed the Guild had forgotten how to survive a war.

His mother hadn't. Not once. Not through all her fruitless speeches to her peers, warnings of the folly of complacency, that trouble stirred on the horizon. Never had she let down her guard. It hadn't been enough to save her, no, her activism had made her too much of a target, but the lessons she had taught, they lived on in him. Alaric was sure that she had known that she was going to die. Things had been strange those last few weeks, ten years ago today. She had seemed more distant, more disconnected than normal. She had told him that she loved him several times a day.

In hindsight, he should have realised what was happening. He had been but a boy of twelve, but it had been hard to miss the signs.

He continued forwards, kicking up more dust as he paced across the room towards the bed and the night-stand beside it. They were simple, far from luxurious. Sadie had never been a woman for opulence despite her wealth. The baby blue flower-patterned bedspread had faded with time, and was more of an off-white now. Alaric's eyes dropped to the framed photograph sitting upon the night-stand. The frame was silver, shaped in a simple design of vines and roses. Again, like the painting's frame, the hand-symbol of the hamsa was engraved repeatedly around it.

This photograph did not move, unlike the painting. His mother's smiling face looked out at him from it, with her arm placed over the shoulders of a young blonde boy with sky blue eyes. It was almost hard to see himself in that naive smile. Alaric raised a hand to brush against his mussed locks of straw-blonde hair, letting the mid-length strands fall through his fingers. He lifted the picture, staring into it as though expecting it to reveal some astounding secret in its depths, but none came.

Eventually, he set the photograph back down. The dust upon the night-stand drifted away from it as it touched down, clearing a small circle of cleaner mahogany around it. Alaric knew that he shouldn't linger. This place might still have be safe from the Hollow Men, but hiding here would achieve nothing. It wasn't what his mother would wanted. The Guild were floundering, and they needed his knowledge - his mother's knowledge, he supposed, passed on through him.

But it was good to know that this haven was still here. He was sure that in the days to come safe places would be increasingly hard to come by.

Turning from the bed, Alaric crossed the room back towards the painting. The room had no obvious exits - even the window's light was obviously artificial upon closer inspection. It existed entirely isolated from any outside influences, other than Alaric himself, who had taken it upon himself to disturb its slumber after so long. But soon he too would be gone. He approached the painting, lifting a hand to brush against its frame.

With a muttered phrase, he braced himself and clenched his eyes shut as he was wrenched from the floor and pulled bodily into the canvas. It rippled as he made contact with it like it were water, and after a moment of utter darkness, the bright light of a sunrise flourished in his view. He dropped out of the painting of an odd little room that sat in the front room of an empty store filled with oddities, landing softly on his feet. The shimmering light around his form faded while he regained his bearings.

The low hubbub of a city waking up was audible through the windows that gave a clear view of the street outside, the Eiffel tower visible towering over the buildings in the distance. A few short strides took him from the shop and out onto the streets of Paris. Out, and back to war.

You'd got a nicely written character here, that's for sure. The integration of the objects of the contest was also quite impressive-- both in the case of integrating the hamsa as not so much a specific object as a symbol of safety, and in the case of the painting as a portal. The vocabulary's rich and varied, the language and structure well-put together, if a little distant-- it makes it difficult to really get a feel for Alaric, and though that makes sense given his aloof nature, the reader sees none of the scathing wit or dry humour that is said to be characteristic of Alaric.

Other than that, the way you wrote the history is unique, but it sacrifices its ability to tell Alaric's tale as a result. Though by no doubt a pleasure to read, it doesn't work so well as a history, as the reader get vague, tantalising memories of Alaric's life and nothing more. That could work if they were to be expounded on later, but as a stand-alone profile, it doesn't offer up much on Alaric, or the Guild, or the war he's involved in. I want to know more, but given that the contest operates purely on what's given in the profile, there's nothing more to know.

There's the infrequent grammar oversight, but nothing that majorly impedes the writing's ability to get the meaning across. All in all, this profile is, to use the formal terminology, pretty damn kick-ass.

On the first hand I agree with Comrade - the history doesn't entirely qualify as history, and since I was quite taken by the idea of Alaric, it's a shame that we don't get to actually understand who he is and where he comes from.

That being said, I am more than willing to 'forgive' that since, despite and maybe because the lack of information, Alaric becomes just that much more interesting. Obviously I still don't know enough about him, his mother or the Guild, but everything about this profile was written in a great sense of mystery, like I was watching his life through a thick mist, and considering the nature of this character I have to say it quite suits it and sets the reader on a very specific mood. I find it entirely agreeable with the Guild and Alaric himself that we only get small glimpses into them and only halfway understand what's going on - because I assume that is how most people within Alaric's world would see it.
I hope that was understandable because I'm having a hard time putting my thoughts into words at the moment. To sum it up: though it's a shame we don't get to read more of this story, I find it suiting that it's surrounded by mystery. Overall I get the feeling that even if we don't know the whole story, Alaric is very well put together as a character.

Otherwise, I really enjoyed the writing itself. I don't usually go for 'fancy descriptions', if you want to call it that, but yours were very carefully written and are not overbearing in the slightest. Overall, I see this as the prologue for a story I'd want to go on reading.