Vance Serket

17 - Male - Sorcerer - Necromancy

"I see dead people."

-Cole Sear, The Sixth Sense

PERSONALITY

● Vance is a very loyal friend. He's not a social butterfly; It's unlikely he'll have a lot of friends. But if he thinks he can trust someone, he'll follow them to the ends of the earth.
● He can be nice. It's not often, but he can be.
● While Vance does like to go thrill-seeking, and he has a dangerous mind, he's actually very cautious. He often carefully plans any schemes he has, and prefers to think things through whenever possible.
● There's very little that frightens Vance. Most things that scare normal people just fascinate him. He considers the threat of death to be a thrill.
● Vance is very playful. He likes games like chess a lot.

● Vance is a bit difficult to get close to. He's had very few people be legitimately nice to him, so the idea that someone might actually want to be friends is a bit hard to swallow for him.
● He's also a bit on the amoral side. Maybe it's being a slave for a long time. Maybe being able to see dead people just gives him a skewed perspective. But the point is, he doesn't care about what's "right" so much as what's most beneficial to himself and those he cares for.
● For now, Vance is at the academy to become stronger. He's very power hungry, and that can cloud his judgement.
● Also, having lived most of his life with a group of thieves, he's got very little regard for rules, and is often suspicious of authority figures.
● And even with all his anti-social behaviors, he wishes he didn't push people away so much.

LIKES & DISLIKES

● Games
● Puzzles. Stuff like riddles or puzzle boxes.
● Magical power.
● Danger.
● Exploring.

● Being bothered by ghosts.
● People telling him what to do.
● His spellbook watching him while he tries to sleep.
● Being interrupted while studying.
● Pushing people away.

HISTORY

Vance comes from a small kingdom just on the border between Mystere and Fantasia. A desert country, nobles are buried in elaborate tombs, with corpses being prepared through ritualistic mummification. The process was highly spiritual, and practitioners were considered members of nobility. Vance's father was one of them, and Vance was his apprentice. From the age of four to twelve, he was taught how to prepare bodies for burial, preserving them. It wasn't the cleanest job, but it was considered a great honor in his culture. He looked forward to when he turned 14, and he'd be in charge of the rites himself.

That never happened. Vance's town had a rigid caste-based system. The peasants were beneath the noble class, and they began a rebellion. Most of the ruling class was executed, and lesser nobles, such as Vance, were sold into slavery. He was purchased by a man named Balthazar, who was the leader of a band of thieves. They mostly robbed tombs, and Vance had some knowledge of their build. That, and they needed someone to walk in front in case of traps.

Vance managed to survive for a little under five years. Balthazar would beat him when he screwed up, so he stopped screwing up. He learned how to disarm traps and find secret passageways and sneak past the undead that guarded them. He let his boss think that he was loyal. All the while, he was waiting for the perfect chance to escape.

He was 16 when he decided to act on his plan. They were robbing a great mausoleum. Balthazar had complete confidence in Vance, though he still beat him occasionally for good measure. Maybe if he had been nice, Vance wouldn't have pretended to have disabled the mechanism that caused the ceiling to fall on him and his entire gang.

Vance regretted it a little bit, honestly. He had traveled with Balthazar and his band for four years. In spite of his poor treatment, it was hard not to get at least a little attached to them. Mostly because he had failed to realize that he had blocked off his own escape from the tomb.

He travelled deeper into the mausoleum. It wasn't one from his kingdom, he had noticed. It was older. It was the tomb of an anctient necromancer, who controlled a kingdom of the dead. But the corpses that guarded his coffin had decayed, and all that was left was the man's spellbook. It looked like it was bound in human skin. It had seven eyes on the spine which were staring at him. But Vance was desperate. He opened the book, and he could read it. It was in a language that he had never seen before, but as his eyes scanned the text, it was as if the book was speaking in his mind.

It detailed rituals for corpse preparation, many of which were familiar to him. Many of the spells were beyond his comprehension, but he could understand a couple of them. With his newfound power, he reset the trap that had shut him in the tomb. He had heard of a school for magic-users called Avalon, and decided that would be his destination.

POWER

Vance is a sorcerer. He specializes in necromancy, mostly because the former owner of his spellbook did too. It has a few spells of other types in it as well.

Lesser Necromancy
Vance uses his magic to raise a corpse as an undead minion. A relatively fresh corpse with most of the flesh still on it creates a zombie. These beings are fairly slow moving, but they're difficult to kill: They need to be decapitated. A corpse which is mostly skeletal will shed its flesh and animate. These skeletal undead are about as fast as a normal human, but one good hit will cause them to fall apart. As it stands, Vance can control two undead. They're roughly as intelligent as insects right now, though more powerful necromancers can create more intelligent undead. Casting this spell requires that he write the word "Shem" somewhere on the corpse using human blood.

Mage Hand
Vance animates an object, and it performs whatever function it would normally perform. Just without being touched. For example, casting this spell on a shovel would cause it to dig a hole. He could cast it on a pair of scissors to make it cut someone's hair. He could animate a quill to make it copy text.

However, any task performed will be decidedly mediocre. The haircut would be just okay, for example. Animated objects lack creativity; They can only copy. So he could animate a pen and make it draw a picture that he has himself seen, but if he wanted to draw something from scratch, he'd have to do it himself. Further, it tires him out. Only half as much as the task itself, but if he tries to make a pickhammer tunnel a hole through a mountain, he'd probably just faint. Finally, an object will only perform a task that it's made to do. Vance could animate a crowbar to pry open a door, but he couldn't make it break a window, since that's not what the object was created for.

Medium
After stealing his spellbook, Vance was cursed. He sees dead people. And they know he does. It's a gigantic pain in the butt. They normally can't hurt him, but if he doesn't fix their problems, they can yell at him while he's trying to sleep, distract him while he's trying to read, and just generally make a nuisance of themselves. Vance considers it very annoying. It also comes with markings on his forearms: 54 small circles. Each time he helps a spirit, one of them fills. He's not sure what they do yet.

OOC

Ben

[b]ANI/MANGA NAME (if you're using a fc)[/b], [i]claimed face[/i]