Harry Dresden

*Harry Dresden, Wizard*

* Overview
* Sheet
* Background
* Logs

 Home is where when you go there and tell people to get out, they have to leave.

— Harry Dresden

Among normal folks, Harry Dresden is that weirdo who actually has flyers, business cards, and an entry in the Yellow Pages (does anyone still read that?) putting him down as a magical investigator and professional wizard-for-hire. Among the supernatural, he's known as a serious pain in the ass. Among wizards affiliated with the White Council, he's suspected as a potential evil sorceror but respected for his skill and talent and for that of his mentor, Ebenezar McCoy. He's a good guy, a decent teacher, and a devoted friend -- trouble just follows wherever he goes.

## Personality

Harry's a stubborn bastard but a principled one. He will absolutely be the one to throw himself in front of a bullet to save a life, though he's generally prepared enough to have a few better tricks up his sleeve. He'll tell off a dangerous ganglord to his face, he'll walk straight into a vampire's den to interrogate its mistress, and he'll keep more or less on the sunny side of the line (if not a white wizard, at least light grey) as he does his work. He's a man to bluff with no cards, to swim out as far as he can without reserving his strength for the trip back, and to gamble everything on one roll of the dice -- particularly if he had enough foresight to stack the deck. He's also horribly proud, even arrogant, and believes he knows best. He keeps important knowledge away from his friends and colleagues in an effort to keep them safe that generally ends instead in distrust, danger, and even death. He's a good man and a pretty good friend, but he's damned dangerous to know.

## SKILLS

Few people these days really know how to /listen/. Or to observe in general. Harry's actually trained in that laser-focus that allows him to pick up even very faint sounds; admittedly, sometimes this does prevent him from noticing anything /else/ that's going on.

Even when all the world around him is an insane mess, Harry can summon the concentration and the strength of will to do what needs doing, from completing a ritual to getting a summoned demon's name right (well, right enough). He's pretty darn cool in a crisis.

The fact is that Harry isn't an amazing detective, per se. He's not bad. He's peerless when it comes to magical research. But when it comes to actually being a detective, he's... certainly capable, just not great. But he can spot a tail, stake out a scene, and find forensic clues with reasonable skill. He's also good at making himself unseen and unheard -- a fair trick for a man his size.

Harry's been shot in the shoulder before. Kept running. Not without complaining or without pain, but he DID keep running. He can take a licking that would knock most normal mortals out long since.

Harry knows how to fight, but it isn't pretty. He knows how to throw a punch or a kick, but physical fisticuffs are not usually his 'go to' when he finds himself in a jam.

Harry knows how to shoot a gun, and he has had a lot of practice. He is no marksman by any means, but he is able to hit a target more often than not, even in stressful situations.

Six feet nine inches of wizard means that Harry Dresden is good at looming. He's also good at letting people know that wizards are quick to anger. Not always subtle, but definitely quick to anger, and very capable of unleashing holy hell. He's also good enough to bluff with no damn cards in his hand.

With the help of Bob, an ancient spirit of the air, Harry can do amazing magical research. He can get the recipes for potions from super-coffee to becoming the wind, and he can get true and accurate information on the history, advantages, and fatal flaws of just about any kind of supernatural creature. Granted, he can't always afford the ingredients for the potions or put the knowledge he gets into good use, but there's not much he can't track down.

Harry's stubbornness levels border on the epic. When he's decided on a course of action, he's not likely to be turned by anything. He fights through mortal wounds, he uses the last of his strength barely considering how he's going to get himself out of whatever mess he's gotten himself into, and stays on the sunny side of wizardry no matter how much force tries to push him into the shadows.

## ABILITIES

Harry can (with the help of Bob when it comes to recipe ingredients) brew up some truly impressive potions. From weight loss to love to actually turning into the wind, there's not much Harry can't do with a potion. Two potential downsides: potion ingredients are /expensive/, and having more than one potion in one's system at any given time can make them very sick.

Most of the day-to-day charms Harry uses are pretty simple. He has cleaning spells, he can light a candle with a wave of his hand, and he can zap technology -- the more complicated, the better -- with great ease.

Most of Harry's enchantments consist of creating foci and wards (and sometimes foci to create and empower wards). Enchanting items is pretty expensive and time-consuming, and a really skilled wizard doesn't need more than some chalk and some table salt. Nevertheless, Harry is good enough at enchantment to pen in a loup-garou -- one of the nastiest and most powerful werewolf species -- with some runes scratched in the dirt with a stick. He can also create powerful force fields to protect himself and others, though they certainly don't last forever.

Harry's naturally gifted with this type of magic, and though he's skilled, he's not as accurate or as powerful as some. He generally doesn't really let himself loose; when he does, he can easily set a room or even a building ablaze. More recently, he has learned to tap deeper wells of power within himself and to channel greater measures of power. While he still lacks finesse compared to more controlled practitioners, he's increasingly good at making things go "boom."

Due to the copy of a fallen angel living in his head, Harry has access to Hellfire, a force of pure destruction and havoc increasing the potency and damage his spells can do when added to his offensive spells. Closely linked to his emotions when feeling anger or rage it can at times leak out in his magical foci causing them to glow a sullen and baleful red color and exude the scent of brimstone.

Using Hellfire doesn't add any additional taxation to his use of magic, but with all magic there is a cost, and with Hellfire it could be his very soul.. AS such Harry tries not to use Hellfire, but sometimes it can't be helped.

Though he is not a particularly powerful psychic -- and it's actually against the White Council's rules to mentally dominate someone -- Harry is well-versed with the techniques involved, capable of recognizing them and protecting against them.

A Soulgaze occurs when a wizard meets the eyes of someone for more than a few seconds. It gives the other a window into their soul. It doesn't relay specific information (you can't use it to interrogate someone), but it does give one a vague impression on whether they're trustworthy or not, or if they've been psychically harmed, etc. Much like the third eye, what is seen can never be forgotten, and this can only happen once per person. Only creatures with a soul can be soulgazed.

Harry is quite skilled in the use of thaumaturgy. While in theory he could use this power to cause great harm to others, such as via the classic "voodoo doll," he usually uses it for tracking spells or other more subtle effects. This area of magic is where he exerts the greatest measure of fine control.

Harry has the wizard ability to open his third eye. This takes a moment of concentration, but once opened he can see the world as it really is without obfuscation or magic involved. People can be viewed as a manifestation of their being (good/beautiful, evil/ugly, etc.). Building, surroundings and everything else also take on manifestations. Such as a house where death has happened can have skulls around it, or a building that might have had a fire can be shown shrouded in flames. Whatever is seen, can never be forgotten as it will leave a psychic imprint of that particular moment in the mind of the wizard.

## ADVANTAGES

A rod used for channeling fire spells. Made of wood and carved with intricate runes. When being used, the runes glow red and wisps of wood smoke emit from them. Tends to be lashed to the inside of his duster with a long leather cord.

A spirit of the air and of knowledge inhabiting a skull, Bob serves Harry as he once served his former teacher and master. He has fantastic piles of knowledge at his fingertips -- well, at whatever skulls have -- and is generally willing to impart that knowledge to Harry in a useful format. He's a bit temperamental, though, and more than a bit of a lech.

Not carried very often, Harry owns a can that is able to channel earth-based magic. The cane is Victorian and has a slender thirty-inch steel blade inside.

Harry tends to carry around a lump of chalk in the pocket of his duster, used for creating quick magical circles.

One of his signature pieces of gear, a long leather coat enchanted to work as armor against various attacks. The enchantments are strong enough to stop a round from a high caliber rifle.

Across the three middle fingers of his right arm are three rings of braided silver, each line of silver enchanted to steal and store a little bit of Kinetic force every time Harry's arm moves. This can be recharged with a little bit of time spent hitting a punching bag as well. Each individual thread of silver can hold enough force to equal twice the punching power of a world heavyweight boxing champion, and can be activated individually, or together allowing one, to all nine strands to release their stored potential.

In Harry's head is the psychic copy of a fallen angel. A cosmic being that was around when reality was born. Her only job is to turn Harry and to get him to pick up the blackened denari that entraps her, allowing her to bond with him and work with (read possess and take over) him to their mutual (read Armageddon) goals.

Currently Harry has very little trust with his hitchhiker but she's along for the ride and at times of immense need has been able to provide an eternity's worth of knowledge, be it how to speak ancient Sumerian, or to read German, or to even have total recall of what he saw in an earlier meeting. Either way Lash is a double edged sword.

Harry has a decent collection of tools and ingredients for creating potions and the like--bottled moonbeams, eye of newt, and so on. There's a pretty good chance that he has a few of just about anything at the bottom of a jar, at least as long as they aren't actually worth anything. Powdered diamonds, not so much.

A bracelet with tiny medieval shield charms on it. Used for creating force fields. The bracelet is a simple silver construction, the shields copper. With the focus Harry is able to create shields strong enough to stop armor piercing .50 caliber anti-material rounds, lightning bolts, and other powerful blasts of mundane and magical source though the strength of the attack will cause the charms on the bracelet to heat up. It is large enough to cover him and about two feet on either side of his body. He has been able to expand the shield to cover his car once but such efforts will weaken the shield and what it can withstand the further away it expands.

A pendant Harry inherited from his mother. Used as a focus for various spells, most notably to cast a warm ambient light.

A long staff used for channeling magic. Also works well as a bludgeoning weapon. Made from a part of an old oak tree that was struck by lightning.

Harry has an old VW bug, named the Blue Beetle. Once, it was all blue. Now, it sports one green door, one red door, a primer white hood with claw marks. It runs... most the time. Harry keeps supplies he may need in the storage space within the hood.

## WEAKNESSES

And then there's his views on women. Harry likes to think he's a chivalrous, honorable man, and this is broadly true. This doesn't mean that his default for thinking of women is to assume a certain level of weakness and need to be protected. Even fellow magical practitioners get a degree of this--he's refused to tell his students the whole truth, believing he knows what's best for them. Given his own track record, it's possible he shouldn't be judging what's best for anyone, including himself.

Harry was under the Doom of Damocles -- basically serious magic probation -- for the magical murder of his mentor. Admittedly, it was in self-defense and his mentor was a dark wizard, but it's a situation that makes Harry Dresden the prime suspect for anything rotten that happens. He's also under frequent scrutiny, so if he's even investigating anything unsavory he might be under suspicion.

For all Harry's personal flaws, it's probably no wonder that he has a broad spectrum of enemies. Demons, creatures of the NeverNever, various vampires and beasties that go bump in the night, the White Council's own enforcer... Harry isn't all that discerning about the enemies he makes.

Harry also has a guilt complex, and can get very depressed if he feels he has hurt innocents or failed to protect people.

In Harry's head is the psychic copy of a fallen angel. A cosmic being that was around when reality was born. Her only job is to turn Harry and to get him to pick up the blackened denari that entraps her, allowing her to bond with him and work with (read possess and take over) him to their mutual (read Armageddon) goals.

To this extent, she can give Harry realistic hallucinations, cold water will feel warm, she can make him think he's on fire, or hear/not hear what she wants him to miss. Thankfully she doesn't pull this shit very often, but she's always a whisper in the back of his head a temptation of power. He ignores her, but apparently his ID is a lot more receptive to her talking in his subconscious.

Currently Lashiel's coin is buried in a lead box in Harry's basement, her touch might be detected on him and it's something he's got to keep secret having what amounts to a demonic stowaway could get him catching a whole lot of death.

His magic is subject to the nature of the environment he is in, so he has to keep in mind the laws of physics, and while he can bend them he cannot break them entirely.

Using magic drains him, and like any muscle if he pushes it too hard he can hurt himself.

Harry's a principled guy. He stands on what he believes, and firmly -- he likes to think -- on the right side of the line. He doesn't deal with gangsters or demons. He avoids doing anything that could hurt others. He's also, despite being a secretive bastard, very honest. He won't lie to Johnny Marcone and agree to work for him; he won't even politely decline in a way that would allow the gangster to save face. He's lippy and aggressive and this gets him into piles and piles of trouble. He's been in countless fistfights because he just can't shut up.

If a wizard swears a sacred Oath, which is done by swearing on their own magic or their own power, then they are bound to keep it. If they break such an Oath, then their magic will be severely crippled, reduced to Basic power level at most, and will remain so for months or years afterward. Breaking an Oath sworn on one's power breaks that power, to an extent, and it takes a very long time and hard work to heal such a break.

There's being secretive and then there's Harry Dresden. Harry has this terrible habit of giving people just enough rope to hang themselves with, just enough information to get into trouble. It's gotten people killed before. It'll happen again. It's certainly helped him lose the trust of valued friends.

One of the nice things about being a wizard is the ability to short out electronics. One of the annoying things about being a wizard is the inability to turn this off. Harry doesn't even use a traditional refrigerator; he makes use of an actual icebox instead. Candles, old-fashioned telephone; anything before about 1945 is okay, but anything from after tends to need repairs more often than it's useful.

Harry Dresden is the son of Margaret LeFay, a magical practitioner herself, and Malcolm Dresden, a stage magician. His mother died in childbirth, and his father died of an aneurysm when Harry was only about six. He became a ward of the state, having no known family who could take him in.

At ten years old, Harry first manifested his magical abilities. Two weeks later, he was taken in by Justin DuMorne, who began training him as an apprentice. Harry wasn't his only apprentice, though: he took in a young woman named Elaine Mallory, with whom Harry eventually became involved. She was his first girlfriend, but things ended tragically when Harry was sixteen. Justin, their mentor, attempted to induct them both with rites of dark magic. Elaine had apparently accepted, but Harry refused. In the ensuing fight, he killed his former mentor and Elaine was apparently lost in the flames.

This was the act that put the Doom of Damocles over Harry's head. He carried on with a new mentor, Ebenezar McCoy, for several years until joining the Council and striking out on his own. He finally settled in Chicago, teaching ballroom dancing until he joined Nicholas Christian at Ragged Angel Investigations, earning his license as a private investigator and starting his own business.

Harry advertises himself as a professional wizard and private investigator, occasionally working for the police force as a contractor. It was here that he met Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, a sometime ally and a source of work.

The strange shifts in magic have pushed Dresden out of Chicago and out west. He's settled in San Francisco, where he's been lucky enough to scrape together a living and keep himself under a roof that hardly ever leaks. He's actually staying in the basement of an elderly lady who rents out rooms to keep herself in tea; given that she isn't all that fond of electronics, either, it's an almost perfect spot. Just so long as nothing else finds him.

Logs featuring Harry Dresden:

*Coming soon!*