lunatic engineer
Nick is crazy and brilliant: selectively.
his madness can go anywhere between "thoughts that invoke a double take" to "the mad hatter without his meds"
Nick prefers to go unarmed though as a 19th century engineer: he does often curry a tool-kit in a black shoulder-bag.
Nicholas uses a very unique form of magic called "Aura". It would take over an hour to explain it in detail, but just try to remember this: A=Nicholas' power P=his maximum mana without crystles or anything. M=ammount of energy being used by the living things around him. A=1/2M+P
math aside, that means that his potential has a base starting at him, but goes up proportionally depending on the energy being used by life around him.
Nicholas grew up in a poor family who tried wasted away all their money to send him to boarding-school while they themselves died of the plague when he was ten. He grew up among boy his age who like to play rough and talk rougher. He failed at most fields of academics, but he took a quick shining to the shop. His skills in steam pressure and metal-working quickly surpassed all the rest. He did however, fell that their was some other potential locked away inside him.
One must know beforehand that His father was a master of dark arts, and his mother of light, so it can be assumed that he would have magic in his blood. One teacher, and old woman with deathly sharp eyes, noticed quickly that Nicholas had a very unique ability to redirect energy. He had more than once had to take the shots of angered magicians who tried to bully him, and had redirected all their spells like a prism redirects sunlight. After Nicholas had become a master at all forms of pipe-working, this teacher sought him out and tried her best to teach him the ways of what she would only call "aura".
When he had learned all she could teach him, he decided to go after his goal of designing and building an airship, and with his new-found magic, he did it in half the time. His first design was so magnificent infarct that he was entered three years young into a contest being held to design a new flagship for the Royal Guard. It was his designs that the Diamond was crafted on, and it was him personally who single-handily built the main boiler by combining magic and technology.