[S-HIGHLIGHT][/S-HIGHLIGHT]
Age: 17
Gender:
Sexy hunk of man Male
Element:
Earth >
Metal
Spells:
Flash Armory: Jack creates any of a number of objects almost instantaneously. He can create just about any physical object with this spell, so long as there's a conceivable way to make it out of earthly materials. Otherwise the spell is only limited by his imagination and his energy. Flash Armory can also be used to modify objects into other objects on the fly, including things made from the spell itself.
Artificer's Will: Jack has even more finely-tuned control over his Geokinesis and Ferrokinesis than most mages do over their elements, to the point where he can rip minerals out of the ground or artificial constructs to create things with Flash Armory or enhance things he's already created, and can even manipulate objects not made solely out of earthly materials as long as they have a decent amount of said things in them. If he can concentrate hard enough he can even imbue inanimate objects smaller than a person with his will, although right now he can only do it with one thing at a time. This "posessed" object can act almost autonomously for a period of time such as a sword slashing at someone without Jack directly controlling it.
Sangroforge: Jack can extract iron from his own blood to make metal in excess. It requires an open wound to let the iron escape his body, and either more wounds or a larger wound the more he wants to generate at once, but he can produce it for usage indefinitely... as long as he doesn't pass out from loss of blood first. Thanks to the magical properties of Jack's blood objects created from it are faintly enchanted and are more resistant to magic as well as just plain stronger despite iron being the main mineral in blood. Sangroforge can also be used to infuse blood into an object that already exists to reinforce it with bloodmetal and/or enchant it.
Labyrinthian Onslaught: Probably Jack's most frustrating spell for most opponents. If given enough time to prepare he is able to sew his energy throughout whatever battlefield he is on as long as it's made of earthly elements. Once the metaphorical seeds have been planted manipulation of the ground and its contents becomes exponentially easier and more precise for Jack for the next few minutes. After the spell takes hold Jack begins to use the environment to constantly harass and unbalance his opponents, from shifting the ground under them slightly to raising walls and trapping them in a makeshift maze.
Esper's Sepulcher: Jack's most powerful spell, Esper's Sepulcher combines Flash Armory, Artificer's Will, and sometimes even Labyrinthian Onslaught on a much larger scale than average. He forcibly rips a large amount of metal, minerals, and stones out of his surroundings before using it all to make a large amount of weapons at once. All the weapons made during the spell are scattered about so Jack can pick them up or take control of them at any time, lending a huge amount of versatility and unpredictability to Jack's fighting style.
Appearance: Jack is a handsome individual but he's no Adonis , or jock for that matter. He is tall and wiry with light skin and deep green eyes that are somehow intense and kind at the same time. Jack is a healthy 6'2 despite having an average sized torso thanks to his disproportionately long legs. His hair is bright blond and curly, with bangs that curl down and stop right above his eyebrows. It goes to the bottom of his chin in the back and his side burns end just a few inches higher than the bottom of his ears. With a nose normal enough there's no point describing it, a well-shaped sort of angular face containing a complete lack of blemishes make for a pleasant visage. His arms are a bit more tan and have the only freckles on his body because he prefers to wear short-sleeved shirts even when it's cold. His arms and legs are strong and muscular from working at the smithy, but since he didn't do any real exercises he doesn't have 6 pack abs or anything.
Jack of course has more than one single set of clothes, but all of his pants are fairly plain blue jeans and he has a shirt he wears as often as possible to the point of practically being his trademark apparel. This shirt is covered in white blue and green (with more green than the other two) lines and squares forming a pattern known as "Plaid". Jack's plaid shirt is short sleeved with buttons that he usually leaves undone, as he almost always wears either a light blue or white T-shirt underneath it. His shoes are some sporty design of skater shoes incorporating mostly black and white, with little bits of red or goldish yellow trim here and there.
Personality: Jack can be described by many words, some of which conflict with each other yet somehow still fit. He is: kind, sarcastic, snarky, intelligent, lazy, clever, charismatic, and creative, but still prone to moments of extreme selfishness, absent-mindedness, and not being able to think of what to say or do. Jack's sense of humor is filled with a lot of sarcasm, but always has a playful tone to it, more friendly teasing than insults unless he has a damn good reason not to like someone. Sometimes he blurts out his thoughts before he realizes his words may be too accurate or rude and cuts right to someone's insecurities, but when he says something like that he always feels bad, he doesn't like to hurt people's feelings. However, he is likely to point out any mistakes he sees because he believes not telling someone they've screwed up leaves them more likely to do it again, and you don't have to be a jerk to inform someone of their failings.
He's very smart, often piecing things together in ways people wouldn't notice by looking right at them or thinking normally, but also has a great capacity for logic. Even with his intelligence though sometimes things go right over his head until they're spelled out for him, or he can't think of anything to say, and there seems to be no explanation for these lapses in thought processes. The most notable part of Jack's personality is his charisma, he's very good at talking whether it's for the sake of persuasion or simply conversation and often fits his twists of logic into his speech to be even more convincing. Anyone who knows him well is disappointed in how clueless he is about women being interested in him. Despite his decent looks and usual charm he's managed to stay single his whole life thanks to the sudden uncharacteristic obliviousness mentioned earlier. Jack would never know if anyone was romantically interested in him unless they made it as obvious as possible or clearly told him in no uncertain terms that they were.
He always tries to consider other people's feelings in any event but he doesn't care what somebody thinks of him unless they are someone important to him or they actually do a good job of pointing out one of his own character flaws he wasn't aware of before, in which place he's glad for the opportunity to work on it.
He is often reluctant to start on anything that could be called hard work unless he has a good reason to be excited about it, but once he starts something, whether or not he wanted to in the first place he becomes determined to see it through. He also isn't one to watch anybody suffer in front of him and do nothing, even if it's none of his business or they outright tell him to stay out of it.
History: The Marrick family is strangely enough one with little prior history of having mages, or really any involvement with magic at all. Daniel Marrick was very interested in traditional weapons growing up, loving stories of knights and adventurers but never paying too much attention to firearms. This interest never waned like so many childhood fancies do and led Daniel to read as many books on warriors and metallurgy as he could get a hold of, and once he felt knowledgeable he even got some basic metalworking tools. Perseverance payed off as it always does to anyone with a modicum of intelligence and after a couple years of pounding cheap iron into pleasing shapes and fixing nails and such for people in his basement for cheap Daniel was able to stop working boring regular jobs and get an apprenticeship under a professional blacksmith. Even though Blacksmiths nowadays usually just make simple metal tools and fixtures or at best knives for people thanks to more traditional weapons not being viable for every-day use Daniel's love of weapons that were aesthetically pleasing AND functional wouldn't allow him to stop thinking of them.
Daniel started to make his own custom knives and sell them on the side at some unknown point, both for extra pocket change and just to see if he could do it. At first his knives were functional, but nothing too pretty, not good for anything more than basic utility really but useful at least. Once he started to make a name and some money he could afford better materials and find better contacts to acquire such materials, and so as the quality of his knives grew so did his small amount of fame and his profit. After he became confident he could actually make a living as a Blacksmith Daniel thanked his teacher for all the help, resigned as his apprentice and offered to rent some of his tools and work stations every once in a while. He really enjoyed being around a good friend and already had a way to make tools and weapons for people, but his first and foremost goal was to get to a point where he could strike out on his own so he saved up to buy the exact tools and implements his teacher had piece by piece until he could furnish his own smithy.
Finally feeling he had the very minimum of what he needed to really be a blacksmith Daniel cleared out the first floor of the basement in the small house he'd inherited from his grandparents and set up his small smithy inside of it. Years went by and word spread that there was a blacksmith in a small town in Northern California who was not only talented but truly seemed passionate about his work, and even offered to make custom-ordered weapons for people who could afford it. It was slow going at first, and with most people who needed knives in his town already having come to him before Daniel still had to make his living off of common things like nails and regular tools, but every person that did order a weapon fed both his wallet and his skill.
Even later after Daniel had managed to get a hold of his own building so he could finally feel like his smithy was a real business someone quite important made their way to him. There was a man from England, sir Reginald Collifer was from a well known family and was a self-made business man, he never even accepted his inheritance until after his own company proved successful. He'd brought his daughter Carol who was the fencing champion at her school and was thinking of competing on higher levels, she wanted her own special foil and she had apparently asked to be taken to him. Marrick couldn't comprehend why on earth she'd chosen him, or how they had even heard of him. What better place to find someone to make a rapier or a foil than England, and especially why some only recently popular blacksmith in America?
The flustered young man certainly wasn't complaining though, besides the fact that he could expect good payment for such an endeavor Carol was the most beautiful women he'd ever seen, with an angelic face, full lips and perfect long legs that made her taller than he was at 6 feet. Daniel had an interesting idea, he of course not only made weapons but practiced with some of his own, he challenged her to a fencing match to get a feel for her movements so he could make a more fitting tool of victory for her. She agreed but despite his love of weapons he was a prodigy at making them, not using them, unlike Carol. In what seemed like an instant upon starting the match she had the end of her foil on the padding right in front of Daniel's heart, the second round was no different and just for good measure she swept his feet after the third and giggled at his failure. The moment the beautiful woman knocked him on his ass he knew she was "the one"
Courting is a long and difficult to describe process, so let's skip to the magic shall we? As you may have guessed by now Daniel and Carol ended up falling in love, and there's certainly a reason Daniel has the same last name as Jack does up there at the top. At some point Daniel discovered there was a reason everything he made, every piece of metal he shaped came out so perfect, so...exactly how he felt it should. One day when Daniel was making the guard on a particularly ornate and complicated cutlass somebody wanted for a pirate movie (why they wanted a real sword for a prop was beyond him, maybe for an extremely well-detailed model for a digitally added sword) He was scratching his beard (because as we all know all blacksmiths have awesome beards) and wondering how he was going to finish it. How could they ask for something so complex and expect him to finish it in only a few days? Obviously they didn't want it to be so authentic it could really kill people in a swashbuckling adventure but that just wasn't good enough for him, anything made by him absolutely had to be functional.
He was racking his mind trying to think how he would make such flowing and intricate bands of metal without them being as delicate as hot gold, he slammed his fist on the table next to the anvil and rubbed his temple. When he stopped gritting his teeth and opened his eyes he was astonished to see the guard shape itself exactly the way he thought it should be, all he had left to do was attach it to the hilt properly refine the whole sword in minute details. Daniel learned what he could about magic and found out that there were in fact people known to have magic abilities pertaining to minerals. He never really tried to learn any spells though, just went on as he always did, happy with the knowledge that some force was passively helping him put his heart and soul into his creations better than most craftsman could ever dream. At least the way he'd always seemed to feel what materials were right for specific things his whole life had a more concrete explanation now.
Now on to Jack, the star of this sign-up sheet but ironically, not really of his own history section. This has gone long enough without him after all. In time Carol became pregnant with and gave birth to a baby Jack, Daniel noticed right away that the baby had his mother's beautiful eyes. Of course when Jack grew older and started to really come into his own body Carol was quick to point out he had his father's masculine jaw and shoulders, to which Daniel countered he had Carol's beautiful golden locks and grace. Whether it was because of a natural affinity for it or because he revered his father so greatly Jack was always watching him and glad for every opportunity to learn everything about smithing he could. Jack proved to have his father's talent for crafting metal tools, but even better it became clear before he was more than 8 years old that far surpassed his father in magical prowess. He could feel all the minerals and metals around him, and manipulate the ground, and even metals after enough practice. In time, Jack didn't simply make especially high quality weapons, he could make them purely by imagining how they should be and concentrating intensely in the presence of the proper materials. He could even make the metals and minerals more dense, stronger and more flexible than any normal person ever could even with good materials and a lot of folding.
Jack's father tried to keep him making weapons the traditional way, good old fashioned hard work with one's own hands was the best way to make anything, and to really put one's own heart into it. But Jack no longer had any intention of simply hand-crafting weapons, he was obsessed with mastering his own craft, and his mother saw the rift it opened between them. The two needed space from each other before their kinship grew too strained. Fortuitously, a few weeks later Carol brought Jack a rather fancy looking letter and told him to open it himself, it was none other than a letter of invitation from the Vale Institute of Magic. Jack had no idea how they heard about him but he was ecstatic, finally a chance to refine his own special talent! He wasted no time in packing up and Daniel reluctantly brought him to the Institute, he was sad to see his son go and that he couldn't continue teaching him, but he wanted his only son to be happy more than anything else.
Other: You could say Jack has a little bonus talent you might call a "Smith's Eye" Thanks to the way he grew up he has a near encyclopedic knowledge of melee weaponry, and when he makes weapons with Flash Armory they are almost perfect representations of the weapons instead of crude but functional imitations or unique but strange designs one might expect from magically created weapons. They even seem to gain their proper colors, mimicking any paint they might have or the appearance of where a non-metal material would usually be.
