"Plaid is Rad haven't you heard?"
Name: Jack Marrick (Marr, like in mars - Ick)
Nickname: Spades
Age: 17
Gender:
Sexy hunk of man Male
Element: 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 completely out of metal and he in fact has enough metal to create it. Otherwise the spell is only limited by his imagination and his energy. Flash Armory can also be used to modify objects already made out of metal into other objects on the fly, including things made from the spell itself.
- Ferrokinesis: Fairly self explanatory, a basic control over metal. Jack can manipulate the movement of just about any object made mostly of metal or moved by metal. From making folding chairs float or...fold, to swinging an aluminum baseball bat without touching it, to remotely controlling any humanoid constructions made with his Flash Armory. It is as with just about any variant of telekinesis limited directly by Jack's power, he can only lift so much mass at once, current;y he can lift roughly three times what he could lift with his own body while at his best. Also if he uses it to control some sort of humanoid construct he can only manipulate one at a time because he has to use his whole body to control the object, making it mirror his own movements.
- Generation: Jack can produce iron from his own blood 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.
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 lot's of sarcasm and innuendos, 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 can blurt out his thoughts bluntly before he realizes his words may be too accurate or rude and cut 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 would 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 greatest 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 fit's his twists of logic into his speech to be even more convincing. Anyone who knows him well wonders why he doesn't walk everywhere with a girl on each arm, or at least why he's been single his whole life, and he doesn't really have an answer to the quandary. 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 too 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 people 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 mancers, 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 deadly 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 of 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 utility knives but useful at least. Once he started to get 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 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 she was 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 definitely a reason Daniel has the same last name as Jack. At some point Daniel realized 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 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 was shaped 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 specifically to metal, and they were called "Ferromancers" 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 make the best weapons he could hope to.
Now on to Jack, the star of this Sign-up sheet but not really of his own history section. This has gone long enough without him after all. In time Carol grew pregnant with and gave birth to little 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. Whether it was because of a natural affinity for it or because he revered his father so greatly Jack was always watching him and constantly so glad to learn everything about smithing he could. Jack proved to have his father's talent for crafting metal tools, but even better he seemed to far surpass his father's magical prowess. 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 metals. He could even make the metals denser, 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 way he had, good old fashioned hard work with one's own hands was the best way to make a weapon, and really put one's own heart into it. But Jack no longer had any intention of 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.
Code: Challenge Me!
Other: You could say Jack has a little bonus ability called "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.