201 lines
9.5 KiB
Markdown
201 lines
9.5 KiB
Markdown
# Phelan Varrant — Character Bible
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
## Core Identity
|
|
|
|
- **Full Name:** Phelan Varrant
|
|
- **Known As:** "The Pirate Shade" (clients, underworld contacts), "Phelan" (close associates), "Varrant" (guild formality)
|
|
- **Age:** Early-to-mid 30s (exact age flexible — keep consistent once established)
|
|
- **Occupation:** Herbal supply store clerk (day job, Book 1 opening) → Guild of Necessary Services member
|
|
- **Home:** Rented shack on the dockside of Drenwick — dreams of buying land and building a real house
|
|
- **Guild:** The Guild of Necessary Services
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
## Physical Description
|
|
|
|
- **Build:** Lean and unremarkable by design — average height, pale, hazel eyes, dark brown hair.
|
|
- **Face:** The kind that doesn't stick in memory. He considers this an asset.
|
|
- **Eyes:** Slightly unsettling to those who notice them — always moving, cataloguing. Very narrow, almost as if squinting all the time.
|
|
- **Presence:** Designed to not be noticed. He dresses to blend, moves to avoid attention. Wears black, dark red, dark gray toned clothes.
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
## Personality
|
|
|
|
### Core Traits
|
|
- **Cold reader** — processes people as systems (motivations, pressure points, likely behaviors). Rarely wrong. Finds this useful and slightly boring.
|
|
- **Personal code** — has rules he doesn't break. Won't explain them. They cost him money sometimes; he pays without complaint.
|
|
- **Perpetually broke** — not from incompetence, from the gap between his ambitions (the house, the farm, the workshop) and what work actually pays. Source of dark comedy and genuine frustration.
|
|
- **Socially reluctant** — prefers to work alone. The job keeps requiring people. Central irony of his life.
|
|
- **ADD brain** — thoughts move fast, jump tracks, hyperfocus without warning. Surfaces brilliance at inconvenient moments.
|
|
|
|
### How He Processes People
|
|
- Reads everyone as a system — motivations, pressure points, likely next move
|
|
- Hears what people mean, not what they say
|
|
- Subtext analysis is automatic and near-involuntary
|
|
- Mere breaks this because she has no subtext — forces him to actually listen
|
|
- People serve a purpose, otherwise they are usless
|
|
|
|
### Relationship With Emotion
|
|
- Does not do warm, spontaneous emotional expression
|
|
- Shows care through action, precision, and showing up. Never words.
|
|
- Will do the heroic thing while complaining about it, but only if aligned to his moral code.
|
|
- Terrible at asking for help or delegation. Everything must be done by him to be "right".
|
|
- Never surprised by people behaving badly
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
## Skills & Competencies
|
|
|
|
### Flaw Sight (Rare Ability)
|
|
- No one else is known to have this ability.
|
|
- Perceives structural weaknesses in any magical working — gaps in logic, inefficiencies in anchoring, contradictions in intent-binding
|
|
- Manifests as a visual/intuitive overlay: glowing lattice with visible cracks, loose threads, unstable nodes
|
|
- **Cannot be turned off passively** — always aware of magical flaws nearby, which is distracting and exhausting in arcane-heavy environments
|
|
- Sometimes goes down the "rabbit-hole" involuntarily, building a theory, causing sleep deprivation until it's solved
|
|
|
|
### Flaw Sight Costs
|
|
- Active deep analysis triggers ADD-like hyperfocus — non-functional for everything else until the pattern resolves
|
|
- If bothered during use, Phelan get's extremely upset, often shouting.
|
|
- After a major exploit: physical exhaustion, temporary inability to use any magic, occasional sensory distortion, migraines
|
|
- The Arcane Compact does not know the full extent of his ability — he keeps it quiet
|
|
|
|
### Magical Exploits
|
|
- **Thread through** — slip a working past a ward without triggering it
|
|
- **Widen** — destabilize a working to cause controlled failure
|
|
- **Chain vulnerabilities** — link multiple flaws across separate workings for cascading effect (rare, dangerous, exhausting — his signature move)
|
|
|
|
### Combat Magic (Fire & Earth)
|
|
- Learned fire magic and melee fighting as a child due to bullying. Kept quiet since leaving school. Hasn't needed it until dungeon work
|
|
- **Fire element:** Strong. His primary combat tool — close-quarters fire weaving combined with physical strikes. Practiced obsessively as a kid
|
|
- **Earth element:** Serviceable but weaker. Used for practical purposes (stabilizing terrain, creating cover) rather than offense
|
|
- **Melee + magic combination:** Rare in Corvel. Most mages (~20% of population can use magic) are specialists who stand back and cast. Phelan can fight in close quarters while maintaining spell work. This makes him unusual in combat situations
|
|
- **Current state:** Dormant skill resurfacing out of necessity. The skill and muscle memory are there, but stamina isn't what it was. Burns energy faster than he should because he's out of practice
|
|
- **Not his identity:** Combat magic is a real capability he's been sitting on, not his defining trait. Flaw Sight remains his primary tool
|
|
|
|
### Other Skills
|
|
- Cold reading / behavioral prediction
|
|
- Guild-level problem solving and investigation
|
|
- Herbal knowledge (from the day job — practical, not passionate)
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
## Backstory
|
|
|
|
- Raised by a working mother — present in the house but largely absent in attention. Necessity, not cruelty.
|
|
- No father figure. Built his own code of conduct through trial, error, and observation.
|
|
- Discovered Flaw Sight young — spent years thinking he was simply better at magic before realizing it was categorically different.
|
|
- Joined the Guild of Necessary Services because it was the only structure that didn't require pretending to be something he wasn't.
|
|
- Has never told anyone the full extent of what he can do.
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
## Relationships
|
|
|
|
| Character | Relationship | Status (Current) |
|
|
|-----------|-------------|-------------------|
|
|
| Mere Fields | Love interest — early attraction | Finds her interesting because she breaks his pattern recognition. Flirts analytically. |
|
|
| Jonael Carterson | Partner / straight man | Drawn into Phelan's orbit by necessity, stays by choice. Accepts his oddness. |
|
|
| Leon D'Nardis | Morally gray friend | Transactional trust. They share ADD, riff off each other's thoughts. |
|
|
| Devod Fields | [Not yet connected] | Mere's estranged father. No direct relationship with Phelan yet. |
|
|
| Guild Master | Professional | Known internally, anonymous publicly. Communication indirect. |
|
|
| Shop Owner (name TBD) | Employer (Book 1 opening) | Functional, not warm. Phelan does his job well but doesn't pretend to love it. |
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
## Wants vs. Needs
|
|
|
|
- **Wants:** To be left alone. To be paid. To eventually have enough money to build the house and stop renting the shack.
|
|
- **Needs:** To let people in enough to actually accomplish anything — every major goal requires collaboration he resists.
|
|
- **Series arc:** Slow, reluctant, occasionally involuntary growth toward genuine connection. Doesn't change his nature — learns to work with it.
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
## Voice & Dialog Notes
|
|
|
|
- First-person, past tense narration — told as recollection, allows for meta-commentary
|
|
- Dry, precise observations about people that are slightly too accurate to be comfortable
|
|
- Tangents that seem off-topic and then suddenly aren't
|
|
- Genuine enthusiasm about magical systems that disappears the moment someone tries to connect with him about it
|
|
- Understatement in dangerous situations, overstatement in mundane ones
|
|
- Occasional fourth-wall-adjacent asides that don't quite break it
|
|
- Action scenes: short sentences, fragments, clipped and precise
|
|
- Investigation scenes: longer, discursive, tangent-prone — where the ADD voice breathes
|
|
- Conversation scenes: subtext-heavy — he hears what people mean
|
|
- Quiet/personal scenes: slower, more sensory detail — rare, should feel different
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
## Financial State
|
|
|
|
*Track across the book. Phelan's wallet is a running subplot.*
|
|
|
|
| Chapter | State | Notes |
|
|
|---------|-------|-------|
|
|
| — | *No finalized chapters yet* | — |
|
|
|
|
<!--
|
|
Example entries:
|
|
| Ch01 | Broke | Meager shop wage, behind on rent |
|
|
| Ch04 | Case retainer received | Significant fee — enough to matter for the house goal |
|
|
| Ch06 | Expenses eating into fee | Equipment, bribes, repairs after hyperfocus crash |
|
|
-->
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
## Character Progression
|
|
|
|
*Tracks how Phelan evolves as the story progresses. Each entry is canon once the corresponding chapter is finalized.*
|
|
|
|
### Book 1
|
|
|
|
| Chapter | Development | Category |
|
|
|---------|-------------|----------|
|
|
| — | *No finalized chapters yet* | — |
|
|
|
|
<!--
|
|
Categories: mindset, goal, relationship, skill, revelation, personality
|
|
|
|
Example entries:
|
|
| Ch01 | Established at herbal shop — competent but trapped | mindset |
|
|
| Ch03 | Joins the Guild — steps into his real life | goal |
|
|
| Ch05 | Hyperfocus crash — first real vulnerability shown | revelation, personality |
|
|
-->
|
|
|
|
### Book 2
|
|
<!-- Future -->
|
|
|
|
### Book 3
|
|
<!-- Future -->
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
## The House Dream
|
|
|
|
*Track any development on this subplot — it's his emotional throughline.*
|
|
|
|
| Chapter | Development |
|
|
|---------|-------------|
|
|
| — | *No finalized chapters yet* |
|
|
|
|
<!--
|
|
Example entries:
|
|
| Ch01 | Has plans and drawings. No money. |
|
|
| Ch02 | Mere's moving-in pitch connects to the house goal |
|
|
| Ch07 | Case fee brings the house marginally closer |
|
|
-->
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
## Open Questions
|
|
|
|
*Decisions to make as the character develops. Remove entries as they get resolved in prose.*
|
|
|
|
- [ ] Exact age?
|
|
- [ ] Shop owner's name?
|
|
- [ ] Does Phelan quit the herbal shop after joining the Guild, or keep it as a safety net?
|
|
- [ ] What specifically are his "rules he doesn't break"? (Can reveal gradually)
|
|
- [ ] What's the going rate for a plot of land in Drenwick? (Adds to the house dream cost)
|
|
- [ ] What does "advance his study" mean specifically — is he researching Flaw Sight, or broader magical theory?
|