Owen King

[Owen King]

Name: Owen King
Player: Derin Edala
Age: 29
Race: Human
Physical Description: Owen is a short man with blond, abnormally thin hair for a man his age. He is pale-skinned and slightly overweight, with a tendency to wear light-coloured cotton clothing that’s about one size too large for him, cinched with a leather belt weighted with pouches. These pouches contain very little money; they tend to carry tools, small knives, needles and magnifying glasses. His blue eyes are so pale to give many the impression that he must have vision problems, but apart from a slight sensitivity to sunlight, his sight is keen. His hands are almost always stained with ink, but he carries a pair of white gloves in his belt to protect any valuable items that he might handle.

Possessions:
Owen owns a small apartmet in Marn and rents a shop in the merchant district. He owns various tools for appraising and restoring old metal, gems and glass items, as well as fresh paints and glues. He owns several old books and a few antiques (an old cabinet and some ornaments and jewellery) of moderate value; he frequently has antiques that he doesn’t own lying around his house, having been paid to restore them or having borrowed them for research. He has piles of personal diaries of no particular value to anybody except himself, having a habit of meticulously detailing his work and research. He also owns many random curios of low value, mostly trinkets made to sell to tourists or as cheap birthday gifts, which he sells in his shop.

Powers or Strengths:
Territory staking
Owen has three magical abilities that activate within his ‘territory’. To stake a territory, he must be physically present in the area for at least an hour, and the stake will vanish if he spends more than a year at a time away from the area. Staking does not require any physical action; it will automatically happen in any area he considers to be his “home” unless he consciously decides not to do this. Fortunately, this is not hard. He can also consciously decide to stake a territory, whether he considers it home or not, and remove the stake with a thought.
He can stake a territory of up to 300m2 of any shape. He cannot stake more than one territory at the same time, even small ones – staking a new territory automatically removes his stake from the previous territory. A staked territory is completely dormant, magically speaking, unless one of his three abilities activates. His three magical abilities within his territory include:

Alarm
Owen becomes aware when anybody enters or leaves his territory. This is irrespective of his distance from the territory. He cannot turn this ability off without removing his stake. The authorities in Marn are aware of this ability.

Warding
Owen can make people entering or inside his territory want to leave. They will normally rationalise this with their own reasons (wanting to get home before it starts raining, for instance), as one does with normal feelings. Owen cannot pick specific targets; the ability will work on everybody in the territory apart from himself when activated. This is not an inherent part of the staking ability; he can turn it on or off at will.

This ability does not come with mind control; if people become aware that they are being manipulated (or think that what they’re doing is more important), they can ignore or move on in spite of the feeling like any other feeling. The effectiveness thus relies largely on people not becoming aware that they are being artificially influenced, and as such, works best on the weak-minded, people easily distracted, or those not given to introspection. The ability can be activated whether Owen is within his territory or not, but it is most effective from inside the territory, and distance-dependent. It can be linked to automatically activate when somebody enters his territory as well. The authorities in Marn are aware of this ability.

Coercion
This ability only works if he is inside his territory. Again, he cannot specify a target; it works on everybody apart from himself that are inside his territory. Owen has a slight effect on the ability of people inside his territory to notice certain things; they may overlook a certain object while searching his house, for example, or forget to ask certain questions. This is his weakest ability and will only work to deflect attention from a small area or a minor topic that people haven’t been thinking about much. Any awareness of this influence on behalf of the victim draws attention to the thing in question and thus makes the ability useless. It tends to fail on things that are too flashy. Owen has tried to use this to make people unaware that they are being magically influenced to leave, but with little success; using both abilities at once is simply beyond his skills. As such he tends not to use this ability, or to use it only to supplement more mundane methods of manipulation, as it’s otherwise not very effective. The authorities in Marn are not aware of this ability.

Historical and artefact knowledge
Owen’s obsession is history and historical artefacts. He has a good knowledge of the history of Marn and can identify the origin of many old objects on sight. He has a basic knowledge of some old languages; enough to estimate the topic of most of the old books or notes he is likely to encounter, but not understand the details.

Weaknesses and Flaws:
Unfit
Owen doesn’t walk around town so much as potter. He gives the impression of being twenty years older than he actually is, and climbing a flight of stairs leaves him breathless. He has neither endurance nor strength, and doesn’t know how to fight.

Loner
Owen is not unfriendly, but his historical obsession makes many people think of him as boring and he has no particular interest in idle socialising. Most of the people he knows are strictly business associates.

Small knowledge base
Owen knows a lot about antiques, their historical value, and how to restore them. He knows next to nothing else. He has neither interest nor understanding in politics or any practical trade beyond the one he has chosen, and he doesn’t keep up with the news. He’s the sort of guy who would walk into a room full of battlemages searching for a magical murderer who assassinates princes and become interested in the origin of the salt shaker on the table.

History:
Owen was born in Shim. He was the only child of unassuming shopkeepers and had a relatively happy childhood, if one marred by a total lack of friends due to his historical obsessions that arose early in life. Owen quickly learned that his skill in restoration could be put to use to make him a comfortable living and, growing up with salespeople, fell naturally into a role of buying, selling and restoring curios. While it is not unusual for items of questionable origin to pass through his hands from suspiciously desperate sellers, he has never thought of himself as a criminal nor made any attempt to focus on fencing stolen items; as far as he knows, some sellers just like discretion and how they obtain their items is no concern of his. He has worked with law enforcement on occasion, using his ability to help apprehend criminals, but has neither the interest nor the physical fitness to join law enforcement himself. He also fancies himself a writer and has written some long-winded academic books on history and historical artefacts, none of which have gained popularity.

[Niabi]

I want to know how the authorities know of his powers and if they have given him permission to use these powers. Seeing as how his powers can't be used to hurt anybody or really do any harm to anything, I can see the Judges possibly granting him a permit to use his powers as long as he was forthcoming with his abilities and didn't wait until he was caught to claim his magical powers. I can even possibly see them commissioning him to work for them at times to help catch criminals coming and going from various locations.

[Owen King]

Right, sorry; I meant that he had registered such powers shortly after becoming aware of them, as legally required. He didn't report the last one because he thought it could be viewed as dangerous (give him a magical edge in criminal activities such as smuggling or fencing) and he didn't want to take that chance. I hadn't considered the use of the alarm in law enforcement but it could have a use there; he mostly uses his abilities to defend his shop from thieves.

[Niabi]

I can can really see the Judges trying to make some use out of his magical powers. The whole, "You do this for us and we will let you live" sort of thing.

[Owen King]

That could generate some interesting storylines.

[Metarie]

And us boring, stodgy, bookish elves might like a fanatical historian. And I'm sure the Marnian powers that be would, too. Providing, of course, that his historical findings did not dismiss any of the truths we hold to be self-evident.

[Owen King]

I'm confused. Is the character approved or not?

[Niabi]

Sorry, yes it's approved.