Guillermo "Billy"

## Early Life

Guillermo was born to the lowest classes of Venetian society, from a fatherless home and a destitute mother. As his mother died on an early age, he soon found himself homeless and part of an urchin gang. Though he was never the strongest or the fastest, his sharp wit helped him to make himself useful, outsmarting the local Guarda on more than one occassion to bring home the bacon to his gang. Though completely without education, Guillermo always remained an intellectually curious boy at heart. Often times he'd stand outside school gates, watching in envy how richer kids could attend and learn to read, write, and who-knows-what-else. It is this curiosity (and of course their soup kitchen) that drove little Guillermo to often visit the Franciscan monks in the poor part of town. Besides bread and soup, they often read from books, telling tales of the goodness of the Angels, and the duties of man. Guillermo was always keen to learn and always remembered last week's lecture, something that made the monks well disposed toward him. This would in time prove very much to his benefit.

Sometimes, not very often, nobles engage in charity works, for whatever reason, and sometimes the poor can see their lives improved through these patriarchal acts of public condescension. The Winterfeast charity event, organised by Les Enfants would forever change little Guillermo's life. The nobles had decided to sponsor a few 'highly gifted' poor children's educations and organised an exam contest in which a few lucky (and smart) youngsters got to participate. Consisting of non-written intelligence tests and cunning puzzles, this exam was designed to filter out either the smartest or the shrewdest. There were many poor kids in town, far too much for all to participate but this is where Billy's loyal attendance of the Franciscan preaching hall paid off. The Franciscan monks sent a letter of recommendation for the young man, making sure he could at least try out. Not only did he enter the exams, he won the whole damn thing, and his life was about to change in a major fashion.

## Education

At this point, Professor Khilkov was being 'motivated' to engage in more wizardly undertakings and decided to take on a personal apprentice, a very wizard-like thing to do. Now being clothed in 'rich kid' style and showered with all the normalities of upperclass life (like eating several times a day and living in rooms as large as normal-people houses) , Guillermo was utterly overawed and turned quite shy amidst all of this. Seeing that his new professor didn't speak Italian at this point, he decided to rename the boy 'Billy' (which is after all the same) and set out his curriculum. During his first years, however, Billy didn't see the professor much. He and the other selected benificiary of the Enfants Education Project (Fleur) first needed to learn to read, write and do basic mathematics. Here he attended classes with maestro Fausius, who at the time was also teaching Chevalier Schultz pretty much the same.

As the boy grew older, his lessons were amended by Religion lessons by Soeur Innocence and finally, the long expected wizarding lessons awaited. These, however, turned out to be very hard on the boy. The professor was a very strict and demanding teacher and could be quite depreciative of the young boy's 'lack of manliness'. He was given great workloads of tasks, papers and duties, who rarely harvested praise. And yet, though certainly not very motivational, this period was very formative for young Billy. Seeing that most tasks were 'do-it-yourself-research-papers' he started developping quite decent research skills and though his immediate spellcasting prowess somewhat lagged behind, he built a solid theoretical basis, a very rewarding thing for the patient wizard in time. Socially, however, Billy has lagged somewhat behind. Where Fleur by now has great social confidence, Billy remains shy and demure. He hestitates to speak in the presence of 'his betters' and often feels most at ease at the servant table in the kitchen, where he spent many an hour doing his homework.

## Abandonment

Slowly but certainly, Billy slogged on through his massive workload, often amended by doing the boring work for his master, as a scribe, as his master did not much like wielding a pen himself. Billy didn't mind though, because he knew one thing : when he finished his big research project, and the professor approved it, he would finally learn a specialization and move on to the 'really real' (lvl 3+) spellcasting. Billy, however, was not prepared for the crushing disappointment that would follow. Just as he made his final reviews, working though the small hours of night, disaster struck. With a mixture of pride and apprehension, he awaited the return of his master from a grand debate only to never see him return. Billy still has his homework, but no one has read it. He currently hangs around the house, small and afraid, staying as close to the servant quarters as he can, quite unsure of what to do now.