"To live life in a world of light and shifting colors— it's chilling prospect, but it's a joy, isn't it?"
Name
Calais Lochley
Age
He doesn't have birth records, but he's pretty sure he's a bit older than twenty.
Gender
Male
Role
Pyrotechnician and mechanic.
Blood Type
B-
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Eye Color
Green
Hair Color
Rusty brown
Style of Dress
Casual and completely random— usually found in whatever fits, which usually means thirdhand, ill-fitting shirts and pants that are always too long. He's never without his black overcoat, though it's worn beyond belief. Whatever the state of his overall dress, he does always make sure to wear nice boots, even if he does have to change them all too often due to the nature of his work. He's long past caring about his clothes, as they're often burned within months.
Weight
135lbs
Height
Just under 5'9''
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Likes
+ Color +
+ Fire +
+ Bright lights +
+ People who know how to put on a show +
+ Costumes +
+ Intricacy +
+ Finding pattern in disorder +
+ Astronomy +
+ Chemistry +
+ Cherries +
Dislikes
- Being told, 'no' -
- People who can't be subtle -
- Stutters -
- People who are picky about order -
- Having to dress up -
- Being forced to do anything -
- Getting woken up -
- Salt -
- Intimate conversation -
- The dark -
Habits
Calais is always tinkering with something, never without a handful of gears, a tin soldier, and his trusty toolkit somewhere on him. His hands always need something to do, and he's liable to just start touching people if he can't mess with something in the environment. He gets antsy easily and can't sit still even though he hardly seems energetic— rather, he comes off as just the opposite, often being found sleeping in dangerous places at what are arguably the worst times imaginable. If he isn't sleeping or taking things apart, he's setting things on fire or blowing them up. Granted, this is his job, so it's hard to tell him to stop.
Calais is also a talented artist, and, if he feels as though he's close enough to someone, he'll ask the person to model for him, as he's always looking for ways to improve his skills. He never lets anyone see his drawings and hides them among his belongings (meaning that they're well-impossible to find).
Crush
None, yet. He's not really the most forward of guys.
Personality
While Calais is certainly full of life, he's prone to keep his energy to himself and his toys, wandering his way around the carnival day and night when he isn't sleeping to fix, pick apart, or burn whatever he can get his hands on. Calais is never not busy, but he can fill his busy days with more business if he feels as though he doesn't have enough. Calais is bored easily and liable to get into trouble, but reprimand has never stopped him from doing what he wants. In his self-separation from his coworkers, he's obstinate and can't stand being told what to do. He has a bit of an inferiority complex and never feels as though he's proven himself.
Having always been the strange child in search of trouble, Calais is unfazed by most anything: blades, explosions, staggering heights, and the like. He's a very agile person and can slip through the background unnoticed, a skill honed to a fine point over years of serving as a stagehand for the circus. He has no problem with talking to other people, but he doesn't generally approach them unless he needs something for one of his 'jobs.' He's actually quite the conversationalist and enjoys the company of others.
Calais is ever-curious, with what would have been a striking scientific mind had he ever been educated. Being illiterate, his inquisitive mind is confined to the messy confines of his brain. He can never seem to recall things when he wants to and is always plagued by the strangest memories when he least expects them. As such, he's not much of a deep sleeper, being prone to strange strange dreams ranging to haunting memories to outright nightmares. Sleep is a valuable commodity, and his fuse is short if he's woken up when he doesn't plan on doing so.
Neatness is not something Calais values. He finds it oppressive and dull, and it shows in the way he handles himself. His life is an ironically routine cycle of disarray and collapse following the path of the circus. His trunks are arranged in a pattern decipherable only to him. With his love for colors, bits of paper and any number of dyed, painted, and scrawled-on trinkets are scattered about anywhere he frequents— he's a bit of a pack rat, really, hating to let even the strangest of things go if he thinks it's pretty enough. Calais actually has quite the keen aesthetic eye even if he doesn't much care for order.
Calais occupies his time with stage mechanics ranging from pyrotechnics, using oil and gunpowder and heavy paper, to gel lighting to to actual mechanical work. Despite his lack of a formal education, he has a knack for patterns and systems, being a very tactile and a very kinetic person. He has no trouble grasping abstract concepts if he can tie them into a system, but anything arbitrary will exit his mind within minutes. Schedules he classifies as such, so one should never expect Calais to ever pay any mind to what time of the middle of the night it is if he's called for.
It's important to note that Calais has a massive fear of the dark, feeding a deeper fear of the unknown. He doesn't like it when people keep secrets from him and tends to ask questions to the point those who talk to him regularly might think him nosy. Those people, however, are few, and he mostly comes across as a distant, spacey yet moderately bright individual who doesn't own a comb. He's fascinated by colors and owns a good many prisms, though he can't really ever find one when he wants one. He always wears a well-cut glass crystal around his neck, which he probably nicked from a store on his many trips into town for chemicals and supplies.
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Skills
Pyrotechnics/Tactile chemistry
Mechanics
Knows the circus inside and out
Problem-solving
Family
Frances Lochley (Father)
Helen Lochley (Mother)
Alexander Lochley (Uncle) (deceased - suicide)
Colette Surléon (Birth mother - estranged)
James Lochley (Half-brother)
Richard Lochley (Half-brother)
Michael Lochley (Half-brother)
Annabelle Lochley (Half-sister) (deceased - fever)
Francesca Lochley (Half-sister)
History
Calais was a bastard child taken in by his father at the behest of his kind-hearted uncle after the affair between his father and his birth mother blew up through his small farming town. Though he was too young to understand it as it happened, the demons of his father's past haunted him well into his formative years. The woman he called 'Ma' neither looked like him nor treated him properly, and he'd learned to take a verbal beating before he could speak. He never attended school, always working on the farm and helping his uncle maintain the locals' machinery while he was at it.
As neither parent much cared for the child that 'wasn't really theirs,' Calais was practically adopted by his uncle, a man who had always strived to leave town for the city but could never seem to put together the money to do so. Alexander Lochley was an inquisitive man who taught Calais to never stop looking for his next great adventure and to always strive beyond what he was told he amounted to. Even as his uncle fell into depression and eventually drank himself to a tearful death, he always supported the boy, having never had a family of his own to care for.
Shaken by his uncle's death, Calais was unsure what to do with himself afterwards and ended up running off to the circus after a fight with his father devolved into something worse. Calais was never built to take a beating, always having been the somewhat underfed runt of the bunch, and, at thirteen, arrived as a bloody rag in one of the back tents. He's spent the rest of his time traveling with the circus, never once looking back— after all, each day holds the possibility of holding his next great adventure, so who is he to relinquish that chance?
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Gallery
