Harry Dresden - Wizard

OOC Information:
Name: Scott
Age: 19
AIM: Scott Mechler. I don't have a fancy username or anything... Hopefully that's enough for you guys to find me. Brand new account, so I'll learn as I go!
MSN: Don't have this one.
Y!M: Never heard of this one.
E-MAIL: scott_mechler@yahoo.com (notice how creative all my usernames are.)

IC Information:
Name: Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden
Fandom: The Dresden Files
Timeline:Just after the events of the latest book, Changes
Age: 30 (which is the general consensus of the fandom. Doesn't actually have an official birthdate)

Appearance: Harry is tall and lanky, with a runner's lean build. His hair is dark, and usually short, cropped close or scorched, as often happens. His eyes are brown, and always open, roving over his surroundings with the air of one who's used to knowing what's going on, and his place in all of it. His left hand appears badly burned, a mass of scar tissue with very limited functionality. He is always wearing a battered silver pentacle amulet, the only thing left to him by his mother. The clothes he awoke in are tattered and wet, as well as badly stained with blood, mud and other fluids not generally found soaked in fabric, though some of this has been washed off by all the foul-smelling lake water. There is a hole in his shirt, just above his heart, to match the one in his chest.

Abilities: Harry Dresden is a wizard, and he is the only wizard who you'll find listed in the yellow pages. He finds lost people, lost things, in ways that a normal human would find impossible. Harry is, in his own universe, powerful enough to be considered a full fledged member of the white council, the underground group of human wizards which has been in place for centuries, or longer. His abilities center around control of the classical elements, specializing in fire and air. This is greatly aided by the use of his magical foci (which he will not have), a staff and short "blasting rod". Harry is best at magic that makes a whole lot happen at once, without a whole lot of control, reflecting his general "leap first look later" approach to life.

While explosions and blazes are commonplace, Harry does know some fiddlier, more complex workings of magic, centered around rituals, such as veils, tracking spells, etc. He can make his amulet shine with a blue light, which will pierce even magical darkness and lift his spirits.

A side effect of magic that pops up often is the predisposition of magic towards technology, that of blatant opposition. Harry, at the height of his power, can't operate anything more complex than a rotary phone or an extremely old car. Anything else tends to malfunction, short circuit, or explode, depending on proximity and the amount of magic he's actively using.

Personality: Harry is a sarcastic wiseass with his heart in the right place. Harry will always pepper his conversations with witty (in his opinion) comments and quips. He is, however, a friendly person at heart, and is extremely loyal to those who he trusts. Harry has many old fashioned chivalrous mannerisms, generally around women, and finds it extremely difficult to refuse something that a person of the female persuasion asks him, a trait which generally does nothing but get him in trouble.

Harry is protective if bewildered by children, and generally reacts in an unnerved head-patty way around them. Harry does not abide evil, and his moral compass is very strong. Harry has committed many things that are technically criminal, but if he sees something as wrong, he will not partake. Finally, and possibly most importantly, Harry is a detective. He finds things out, he thinks, he assembles clues, and put into a situation he does not understand, he will do just this.

History: Harry was named after Harry Houdini, a remnant of his stage magician father. Both his parents are dead, and he only remembers his father, a friendly if distant man who didn't really know what to do with a young child. The only thing he has of his mother are a silver pentacle amulet, and every predisposition towards true magic that he has. His only living relative is Thomas Raith, a white court vampire (easily thought of as a "twilight vampire".), his half-brother (mother's side).

At the age of 13, his magical talents were discovered by Justin Dumorne, an outlaw wizard, who took him in for training, along with another apprentice, Elaine. Elaine was the same age as Harry, and they hit puberty together... Hard. Elaine was Harry's first... Well. First something. At the age of 16, Harry's moral compass got the better of him, and when Justin's less than moral activities came to his knowledge, the two clashed, and Harry killed Justin, setting his entire mansion ablaze in the process. Elaine disappeared, and Harry believed that Justin had killed her.

Harry was brought before the white council for murder, but before he was to be executed, he was taken as an apprentice by one of the senior members, Ebenezar Mccoy. The council punished Harry with the metaphorical Sword of Damocles, a kind of probation for magic users. Any breaking of the council's laws, no matter how minor, would result in summary execution. The Sword was rescinded years later.

For five more years Harry was apprentice to McCoy, until he was declared a fully-fledged wizard, and he wound up in the closest city, Chicago, with little money, and no job. Harry set up a detective agency, advertizing as a wizard. That did tend to attract the crazier clients, but for every delusional nut he had to convince that they were dealing with nothing, there was a legitimate, often paranormal, problem that would not have been dealt with otherwise.

Shortly after setting up in Chicago, he was contacted by Karrin Murphy, a member of the Chicago police force Special Investigations. SI got the weird, cold, and unpopular cases, and Harry was called in to consult on one of the former, a murder case. Two people, their hearts destroyed in their chests, resulting from black magic. Harry solved the case, bringing down a dangerous dark wizard, and thoroughly amazed Murphy and the SI department, though they didn't quite buy into the whole magical scene. It was on this case that Harry met another of his closest friends, Michael Carpenter, a Knight of the Cross, dedicated to service of the Almighty, wielder of one of three sacred blades. From then on, Harry's reputation grew, and so did his power. He fought a dangerous, out of control werewolf, befriending a group of teenaged wolf-shapeshifters along the way who became one of his go-to people for help in his cases.

He met Susan, an investigative reporter for a tabloid magazine. Her plying him for stories became plying for... other things, and they fell into a kind of sputtering romance. Harry brought her too close to the world of magic, and eventually, she fell into a trap he couldn't get her out of, and she was bitten by one of the red court, vampires who impart a terrible addiction to blood in their victims. A victim does not become a true vampire until they feed, killing their first victim, so Susan remained herself, living in withdrawal, but things could never be the same between them.

As the months passed, he made friends and a lot of enemies, notably the winter court of faerie, the red court of vampires, and the white council. He started a war between the council and the red court, and the conflict escalated, bringing people he was far, far too close to into a war too big for him. His home was destroyed, people close to him put in harm's way, and everything Harry had built for himself in Chicago began to fall apart. He was given an opportunity to end the war, once and for all, by exactly the wrong people. Queen Mab, of the white court of faerie, offered to give Harry the power he needed, in exchange for a devil's contract: service until death as a knight of the winter court. Obeying any command, forsaking all humanity.

Harry had no choice but to accept, and along with his friends, attacked the red court at the center of their power. The red court was preparing a curse that would send deadly waves of power down Harry's family line, starting with him, and exterminating anyone with a blood link to him, including the entirety of the white court of wizardry, because of their entry rituals involving blood. Susan returned, still resisting the vampires' curse, but having learned to use some of the power granted to her by the curse. She went to battle alongside Harry, but atop the altar where the ritual was to take place, she succumbed to her hunger, tearing into the throat of a guard of the vampire lord. Harry found himself with the ritual knife in his hand for an instant, the youngest member of the red court in front of him.
He ended a war. He utterly destroyed every trace of an ancient evil. He went against everything he believed in. He used the knife.

Just hours later, staying on his half-brother's boat, Harry stood on the deck, looking out over the lake. He pulled off his coat, beginning to change out of his clothes, filthy from the battle. A massive force hit him in the chest, and the world spun. Blood spattered on the wall behind him, and spilled out into the water. Harry hit the water, and blackness enveloped him.


Roleplay Sample - Log: Harry stared at the clean white wall, uncomprehending. His fingers toyed with the hole in his shirt again, sliding gingerly over the flesh beneath, impossibly smooth and new. What had happened, he couldn't say, but he knew one thing. He would find out.

The well worn circle he'd scratched into the floor stared back up at him, like a mouth gaping in confusion or terror. He got up, for the umpteenth time, and carefully threaded a single hair he'd picked up from a table in the cafeteria into his pentacle amulet. A simple tracking spell, something he'd done a thousand times before.

He didn't know who he was tracking, nor did he care. He just wanted something measurable, some hint. He sat down in the circle, and struggled to draw energy inward. He could almost feel the collar sapping at him, like trying to fill a bucket of water using a bucket with a hole in the bottom. He grimaced and fought through it, struggling to overpower whatever it was in that damned collar, pouring his focus into the hair, and the person it was attached to. Now, if this was any other tracking spell, on any other day, the amulet would swing towards the person, like a magnet.

Of course, just like it had the last dozen or so times, it spun wildly, gyrating like a top until Harry's concentration was broken by the goddamn machine. A strident voice, slightly muffled by the two pillows he'd piled on top of the thing shouted something about being covered in snow.

"Hells bells." growled Harry as the pentacle dangled, limp.

He took out the hair, and tucked it into his pocket. Never know when that'll come in handy. He put the necklace back on, and scowled at the piled up pillows for a few seconds before withdrawing the hated communicator.

Not hours earlier, if he'd dared to touch something this expensive, sleek and technological looking, it would have sparked and exploded without a second thought. Harry thought the machine seemed smug about its resilience to magical energies, and he already hated the thing's annoying habit of cutting to unrelated videos of the bewildering range of inhabitants of this weird place. A blond man was flailing about, yelling about snow on all his mountains, whatever that meant. "Alfred F. Jones" the screen read at the bottom.

"You know how you could be improved?" Harry said to the machine, "An off switch. A manual. Batteries."

He looked around. Still no gleaming white hammer that had escaped his attention.
He poked his head out the door of his room. The other people in the hallway seemed entirely occupied in their own conversations. He checked the corners of the room for cameras again. Still none he could see. He could only assume that any kind of hidden camera wouldn't explode, just like the funny little gadget/communicator thing. Harry wished fervently that his experiences with technology weren't limited to a rotary phone in his apartment and the extremely simple controls of his late VW bug (RIP, blue beetle, he added sadly in his head.) and that he knew some way to control this thing.

Harry narrowed his eyes, gathered as much energy as he could muster, and directed it at the technology in a wave of mojo that would have caused the customers of an entire apple store to burst into tears as their precious devices exploded into sparks. The little machine fizzled a little bit.

"Ha! Avaunt, beast!" harry smiled grimly.

It cut to another segment of video footage.

"No, silly. You stack up the sand like this. See? You try it!" A different teenager with an extremely improbable haircut was apparently running an instructional course on remedial sandcastles.

Back to the pillows, then.

Harry supposed it was time for a breath of fresh air. And a shower, if one was to be had. For the first time in hours, he ducked out of the low doorway to his room, blinking his eyes again at the harsh light on the white walls.

Roleplay Sample - Journal: Hey. Alright, I made the little keys work. This thing is way too small.

So.

Stardate 40100, location unknown.

I am still an incredible nerd. Can other people read this? I can see other people's stuff, so... Yep. Star Quest references are great first impressions.

Well, if you can read this, where the heck do I start? How about "where?" that's a good place, yeah? Where the heck is this? How did I get here? Is there some kind of madman barber running around who gets your hair to do that, or is that a side effect of this place?

Oh. So I should introduce myself, I guess, running with the assumption that all you people can work this wonderful piece of technology without getting frustrated every three seconds. Is there an extended warranty on this thing? cause it's got a dent. I "dropped" it. Against my wall.

Introductions, before I get distracted again. I'm Harry Dresden. I have middle names, but you might all be faeries or demons or something, so don't expect any of that. I'm a professional wizard. Missing persons, things, problems solved, paranormal investigations investigated, no endless purses, love potions, or other entertainment. I don't do parties. It's all in the yellow pages, if you can find them. If there's anything here that isn't white, that is.

I'm kind of a detective, back home, which is Chicago. I guess I don't really know anyone here, too well, so I'm kind of... assuming you know about what I'm talking about. If not, it's a big city. I like it, but it can be rough. I'm there to help people out with that rough part, especially when it comes from places people don't usually expect it, or believe in.

I guess I'm here, for the time being, because there doesn't seem to be any exits, or swirling portals, or anything, and I can't get a clean fix on this place. If anyone's got answers, hunches, or a working shower, I'd appreciate it.
Harry

This game includes horrible mental and physical torture of your character. After reading the rules/faq for clarification, how do you expect your character to handle this and continue to function? Harry's been in and around the station for two and a half years. Besides being far tougher physically than he was when he left home because of it, he's collected a group of people around him that he cares for more than many people care for their family. As long as his friends are out there....Harry will cope. He's made that promise and he intends to keep it-he's not going anywhere.

Questions? Comments? Crazed statements? Those go here

....

I promise not to post OOC stuff in the main comm forget to title my post put two posts one right after another and misunderstand how the userpic system works this time around?