Name: Maxwell Tethir
Titles: The Gentle Stranger, The Healer
Role: Warden
Moral Alignment: Chaotic Good
Affiliations: Himself
Hometown: New Eden
Race: Half-Elf
Age: 67 (late Twenties)
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Homosexual
Relationships:
Citali (Mother)
Maxwell’s relationship with his mother had been complex since the very beginning. Citali came to New Eden from the wilds of Oblitus wounded, pregnant, and no sign of the father. It was a rocky beginning, but Citali recovered from her wounds and settled safely in one of New Eden’s more modest, but safe districts thanks to the kindness of an old blacksmith whom Maxwell is named after.
Even after she settled into her new life, Citali never quite fit in with the people of New Eden. She thought the city’s citizens fools for losing their survival knowledge and in turn they found her odd and called her a witch for the wild garden she kept and the potions she brewed. Because of this, and Maxwell’s mixed blood, both Citali and Maxwell faced seclusion from the community. They never starved, nor did they go without a roof, but they would always be outsiders in New Eden. Maxwell would grow up in the city, but every time he stepped into his home, Citali would always ensure he had a taste of Oblitus on his tongue. He learned from her how to brew potions and twist wild magic and call to the enchanted creatures of the forest. Citali raised her son in the safety of the city, but she never seemed to have forgotten her own wild roots.
When Maxwell was fourteen, the ache of the wilder lands finally grew too much for his mother. Citali left Maxwell and their modest home behind, leaving only a letter with a few short words:
‘My lovely child, I cannot stand the stone any longer. Do not look for me, you will not find me.’
Maxwell did search, but her letter rang true. He never found her, and he never got the chance to ask her why she left him behind.
Uriel (Friend)
The Ethereal angel has been both Maxwell’s unusual friend and mentor through most of his life. Where many of New Eden’s populace simply tolerated the wildling half-elf, Uriel had taken to Maxwell from the very beginning.
Initially, they met quite by accident when a ten year old Maxwell took refuge in a one of the many cathedrals of New Eden proper while running from a group of cruel peers. Uriel found him tucked behind a column, furiously suppressing tears while trying to heal his own bloody nose. The angel offered to help him and Maxwell told him to ‘mind his own damn business’.
When things had calmed down and Maxwell’s eyes had dried, Uriel took him into the cathedral’s library and retrieved for him a book on basic first aid spells, offering then to help Maxwell train his budding abilities. Though the angel was not strong in healing magic, he knew the basics well and offered to help Maxwell get started. Young Maxwell was understandably suspicious, but time and patience revealed Uriel’s honest and friendly nature.
Though half a century has passed since then, the two have remained friends and allies and often coming to each other’s aid when necessary. Uriel saw Maxwell’s potential early, and Maxwell has let Uriel become a trusted friend. He often seeks Uriel for advice when he is troubled, even when their viewpoints don’t always align.
Appearance:
It is difficult, upon first glance, to identify Maxwell as a half-breed - he looks relatively human, aside from the pointed ears. His bone structure is only marginally thinner, but he only stands at 5’10, certainly not like the tall, lithe elves out in Oblivion and his muscle structure reflects his human nature more than elvish.
His hair is a dark brown, much like his mother’s. In his youth he use to grow his hair long to hide the ears he once hated, but now he has let go of that childish wish to hide and usually keeps his hair pulled back for convenience. Along with his long hair, Maxwell has strong, defining eyebrows and a full beard, and he is fastidious about keeping it all well groomed, near to the point of vanity.
Unlike his dark hair, his eyes certainly came from his father. The soft blue hue, it has been said, is an open window into his soul, and Maxwell often finds it difficult to mask his own feeling from showing on his face - not that he finds the need to mask them often.
While some wardens may trounce around in shiny armor or fine coats, Maxwell prefers the simpler, practical clothes of a working man. Being a healer, Maxwell spends a large portion around sick or injured citizens. Because of the high demand of his job and his need to remain clean, his clothes are rarely ornamental or detailed - usually consisting of a simple undershirt, a vest, trousers, boots, robes, and some sort of item that identifies himself as a doctor - usually a white and red band that sits on his upper arm. He often carries with him a satchel of herbs and spices, spell components, and enchanted tools that he has found necessary during his long career.
On the occasions when he is training, or outside of the city limits on a hunt, Maxwell dresses with a bit more weight and protectability, usually dressing in leathers with bracers and gloves, and a cloak when he is hunting. He rarely goes anywhere without his satchel, though; he has had far too many surprise visits to make the mistake of forgetting it.
Equipment:
Maxwell is, above all, a healer, and as such, often carries around items that help amplify or aid his magic in some way.
- Healer’s Staff: A simple staff that somewhat amplifies his magical abilities. He can use it as a weapon if necessary, or a focus item during spell casting.
- Spell component pouch: A simple leather pouch warded with a protection spell. The components inside are simple items that may help strengthen or cast his small collection of spells.
- Some items include: incense, amber, crystal shard, rabbit skull, charcoal, blank ash carvings, eggshells, owl feathers painted with runes, honey, ivory beads, salt, and other odds and ends
- Herb pouch: This pouch is also a simple leather, but has no need for warding. It is coated with a wax to keep the herbs inside from seeping their smells into the air. These herbs are usually mixed and given to patients ailing with a sickness neither his healing touch nor a spell can relieve.
- Waterskin: Contains water. Maxwell can use herbs and spells to alter the water into various potions. Such potions could provide:
- Fever / Pain relief
- Drowsiness / Alertness
- Stamina invigoration
- Defense against infection
- Bandages and Splints: While Maxwell’s magic can usually mend any wound requiring such objects, Maxwell still carries a small array of such items in the event he finds someone in need who is resistant to magic, or if he ever comes upon a time when his magic has exhausted itself.
While Maxwell will always be known as a healer to the people of New Eden, the half-elf is also a well-trained fighter and a fastidious planner. He packs for whatever job needs doing and for the unexpected as well. Perhaps a bit much for a warden in a city who’s had hundreds upon hundreds of years of peace, but maybe Maxwell simply hopes that one day his preparedness will pay off.
- Dream Catcher: A strong recurve bow brought to the city by Citali, Maxwell’s mother, when she first stepped into it’s walls. She claims it belonged to Maxwell’s father and if that is true it is the only thing Maxwell has from the unknown elf.
- Eternal Harmony: A cursed sword Maxwell came across in his time as a warden. It’s blade is viciously sharp, and will cut inanimate objects with ease, but it is incapable of cutting the flesh of living creatures. He carries it around because it looks threatening, and in dire situation he could use it as a bludgeoning weapon.
- Light stone: A simple stone about the size of an average man’s palm. It is enchanted with a light spell and gives off the same amount of light as a lantern and lasts thrice as long. It will, however, fade if used continuously without the opportunity to recharge in the sun. This trinket was a gift from Uriel.
- Journal: An occasional piece of equipment when Maxwell is not working. The journal is filled with various entries ranging from a spell ingredient list, musings on the different types of wounds and diseases, and the sketchings of whatever he might fancy to in the moment.
- Quill: Only accompanies the journal. A simple hawk feather quill enchanted to draw ink from it’s partner inkwell without having to keep the well physically near. The well is kept in Maxwell’s desk drawer. On more than one occasion Maxwell forgets to refill the well and is left with a half finished thought and an empty quill.
Combat Prowess:
Maxwell had dabbled in many forms of combat. When he was young he used it for defense against those who felt the need to fight someone different. Since then, however, Maxwell has found that training often quiets his mind and helps him focus, but he has trouble keeping his interest in a single style of fighting, and he is known for hopping from style to style at his own whim, but there are a few that really stand that he revisits more than any other.
- Archery: Maxwell’s archery ability comes from a lifetime of practice. He even has a range set up in his garden where he goes to practice when he needs to think. He is a fine marksman, but has never had to strike anything more than targets and hunted game.
- Bowstaff: This skill came upon him later in life, but he took to it after he started carrying around his healer’s staff. He’s better at defensive motions than offensive, though.
- Swordsmanship: This skill he practices solely for the enjoyment of the work. He does carry around a sword, but he would be quicker to reach for his staff or his bow.
Spells/Powers:
Maxwell’s most defining characteristic is his ability to heal. The trait rose from Maxwell at a young age, though his mother did not hold such magical power and claimed that his absent father did not either. Regardless of where it came from, however, Maxwell shows a strong favoring towards the ability and quickly rose into a master class few ever reach. His abilities to help the people of New Eden, despite the failings of his mixed blood, has made him a rather famous figure among the people of the city, especially those who live in his Warden District.
- Heal Wounds: Both the strongest and most basic of Maxwell’s abilities. Any physical wound from open gashes to broken bones, he can drive the body to mend the injuries in a matter of seconds. The larger the wound the larger the strain and longer it would take for Maxwell to recover again. A two inch cut on the hand would hardly affect him. Mending a severed leg would be a marathon run.
- Detect Sickness: While Maxwell can’t directly cure sickness, he has many tricks up his sleeves to combat them. One trick is that he can touch a living being and sense where the body is focusing its attention. If a person has a cold, Maxwell can sense the body working to fight the virus in the throat, sinuses, and lungs. Often times, if Maxwell has met such sicknesses before, he can identify what exactly is attacking the body, as well as where.
- Fortify: Maxwell can boost a person’s immune system. This spell is often passively active, and will affect those within fifteen feet of him, and will linger after leaving his presence.
- Calm: Maxwell can influence a mind in panic or delirium and lay a calming sense of safety upon them. The weaker the mind the more Maxwell can influence.
- Mend Organic: This spell Maxwell doesn’t use as often, as it is relatively useless compared to the rest of his magic. This ability allows him to restore organic material to prime condition. This means that he can turn a rotten apple fresh again, or restore a wilting rose to its full glory. It tends to offer some help if his herbs have withered before use.
Although he excels so easily with magic, Maxwell seems doomed to fail at any other class of magic he attempts. Even the most basic of spells seem to sputter and die at his attempts. To compensate, Maxwell uses a wide array of spells constructed through quick chants, hand gestures, or enchanted items. These spells help fill the gap in abilities he requires for his work. Most spells are a variety of aid spells, but a few are larger, more time consuming, and very difficult to pull off.
- Dispel Curse: Due to his popularity, Maxwell often will be approached not only for healing, but to help remove bad luck and curses. Most of the time it’s only paranoia, and Maxwell will put on a small show to ease their minds, but sometimes he finds a true curse, and will draw it into a carving made of ash wood. He usually keeps the resulting cursed carvings back at his district headquarters.
- Rain clouds: A spell that summons a small rainstorm in a concentrated area. Maxwell uses this spell to tend to his garden. It requires a sounding rod
- Warding Shield: This spell requires a careful ritual and a circle of specific runes painted in the circular area where the shield will be place. The spell is time consuming and impractical to use as a passing fancy. Maxwell has commissioned stones carved with the runes and placed them at key locations surrounding his warden’s headquarter. Using them and a ritual circle in the center of the building, Maxwell can strengthen the spell weekly with a well practiced ritual. The spell itself creates a bubble shield that wards against illness, curses, and damaging magic.
Weaknesses:
While Maxwell has expanded his spells and magic to encompass almost any sort of ailment a person may have, but he has left himself open in every other regard. He has very little in ways of defensive or offensive magic, and even if he is trained in a sword and bow, he very rarely carries the bow around and his sword is as useful as a bat.
Another large problem that Maxwell has kept under tight secrecy: he can not heal himself efficiently. The energy he gives others does not loop back well. While he can heal, it takes longer by a factor of ten.
In New Eden, he doesn’t have much to worry about in ways of fighting. The worst he can expect is a thief with a knife or a delirious patient, but Maxwell almost seems to leave himself open on purpose. As if he’s asking for a fight.
Maxwell is also not exactly a friendly person. He is pleasant, at most, but he has trust issues. A lot of them. The Warden’s are his allies, but even among them few would call the man a friend.
Personality:
Maxwell is fastidious, focused, and well prepared. He keeps his district headquarters run like a well oiled machine and his room practical and tidy. He is a great healer, he is a good fighter, but he isn’t exactly well fit as a citizen of New Eden.
Ever since he was a child, he always held himself different than the rest and that, as much as everything else, has kept him closed off and distant from the people of the city. While pleasant to the ailing citizens who come to him for help, he will tend to them, and then he will forget them without a second thought, refusing kind gestures or attempts at befriending. Instead of visiting friends for dinner, he would rather shoot arrows at targets or tend to the wild garden surrounding his district headquarters.
There are few that he has let into his shell. Uriel being one of the few and even then they both seemed to have agreed to keep each other at mutual arms length. To his friends he shows a side of him conflicted, and a little bitter, that he wouldn’t dare show normally. He is frustrated, and he wonders more and more whether he had fought so hard, gotten so high, for the right reason. He thought being a Warden meant he was a part of something grand, part of a fight to protect the city.
Really, it was all the same trudge.
Maxwell is bored, utterly and completely bored. He’s sick and tired of all the sick and tired and sometimes he thinks it would be more fun if a plague hit the city, or a war.. But he knows those are childish thoughts and he buries them deep. Right next to his growing curiosity of the wilds outside of the city limits.
Skills:
Maxwell has few hobbies outside of his work and even the few he does have he tends to set aside except for the rare occasion he feels the need to spoil himself.
- Drawing: Maxwell dabbles in sketching, and his journal is filled with little studies of his day to day life, but it is only an idle fancy to occupy his focus.
- Hunting: Maxwell is a fine tracker and hunter. A few times a year, when the flu season has passed and the ailing give him a break, he’ll take his bow and flee the city to the hunting forests around the city and spend a few weeks among the trees.
- Gardening: This skill is a little more practical to his work. The herbs and seeds he needs are grown on his own grounds and he tends to take the delicate work on his own.
Bio/History:
Maxwell is the son of a wild, Oblitus woman and an unknown elf man. While he was born within the walls of New Eden, he often wondered if that was what really should have happened. His mother never quite got along with the city and abandoned him at fourteen to return to the wild lands and leaving him behind to make his way on his own.
While he dreamed of one day following his mother, Maxwell never managed to follow through with leaving the city. Instead he turned his focus inward. He ignored those who thought him different or weird and he focused on improving himself. His healing magic was special, and he threw himself into the study of how to amplify and grow his abilities.
He grew up in libraries and cathedrals, his nose buried in books, or in the presence of trainers and masters. He found ways to pay if he had to, and he never took what he couldn’t give back. He hated to owe anyone. He still does.
Despite his healing abilities, the thought of using it to help others in large numbers hadn’t occurred to him until he turned his attention towards the Warden’s. All the texts he could find on them praised them for their abilities and their role as the city protectors. Something about those faceless heroes in all those books stirred him with a purpose he had never felt before. He realized he could be a part of that and had spent decades training to prepare. He even went out and made a name for himself as a healer, working tirelessly for the people of the city.
He got his first foot in the door when he was called on to heal an old warden with a rattling cough. It took days of uncertainty, but the warden pulled through and Maxwell was able to convince him to request entry for him.
Despite this, however, he was almost rejected. He was not a warrior in the usual sense, and he was also not known for being very friendly. It was Uriel who ultimately swayed the Wardens to bring Maxwell into the folds. It is a dept Maxwell cannot repay.
That was ten years ago. Now he is well established in his own district. His Warden headquarters turned hospital has been his home ever since.
He wishes he could say he was happy now.