Cuff Bronzepage

*“My magicka is my power. No one else can do what I can do. At least. No one I know. Not until I met Winnow.*
*Growing up, all Gnoma know of magicka to some degree. Touching it, feeling it’s warmth? Not so. But Gnoma…and the world around us knows of it. Now that I have it, I’ll grow that power. I’ll use it to protect those around me, and eventually - everyone.*
*Some might protest, but with this immense power at my fingertips, I will surely know the best way to use it. All I’ll have to do is find those missing pieces…”*

Cuff Bronzepage is a gnome wizard and a member of the Knights Mavarine. He is played by Morgan.

When he was young, Cuff led a simple life as the child of merchants, working himself as an apprentice to a blacksmith to Makhad, a local smith of Tenshed, within Dol’mir. Eventually, within the basement of his childhood home, he discovered a book of genealogy, told through stories. It became the source of how he learned to use magicka.

As his power grew, so did his desire to find a way to use it. After a fateful meeting with Winnow, he offered himself to the Knights Mavarine, enduring the training and pain that it took to be admitted to this order as a Witch-Knight.

## Appearance

Cuff is a 24 year old gnome, being very fair-skinned with a hint of gray in his skin tone. He has gray/green eyes with a soft, but scrutinizing gaze and dark circles underneath from a significant lack of sleep. He has dark, brownish/black shoulder length hair. It is swept back and largely unkempt, save for a meticulous series of knots tucked behind his right ear. This is done in the fashion of those in Vakasi-ya who are typically asexual. He weighs about 41 pounds and stands at 3 feet, 5 inches tall. Following the events of the mountain, his eyelids were burned with gnomish spirals.

From his time as an apprentice blacksmith, he earned a couple of small scars on his left cheek and chin that many like himself could earn blacksmithing. He has soft, downward-turned lips and a small, slightly upturned nose where the tip projects upward. Other gnomes often describe him as a relatively handsome and beautiful gnome, but without the attitude to make it worthwhile. He has a sharp jawline that comes down to a small, squared chin.

He typically wears a light blue shirt (resembling a scottish jacobite ghillie shirt) and dark trousers and dark leather boots. For outerwear, he normally wears a brown woolen jacket to his waistline to let the long sleeves of his shirt hang out, the jacket having a hood that could be pulled to obscure his face from the elements for a short time. Beyond that, he wears a black mantle that reaches almost the length of his jacket to help provide some small modicum of additional warmth. Upon his back, he wears a large pack, rectangular in shape that is waterproofed and heavily buckled and secured. It is over half of his height and just as thick as he is. Inside, the bronze pages of his historical spellbook await its fated reader's hands.

## Personality

Cuff is largely described as the smartest person in the room - and he knows it. Cuff is, in large part - a pacifist, which could be described as an oddity among the Knights Mavarine. He finds himself bored by the world immediately around him, often searching internally for greater questions and greater answers to be discovered from them. He largely doesn’t wish to take risks - unless it is a direct path to attaining greater power for himself.

Cuff’s magicka reflects his personality, and most of it centers around protecting himself and others, and de-escalating conflict around him. This is at odds with what many other witches do within the world.

He has found himself incredibly attached to his Cohort, directing many of his protective capabilities towards keeping themselves safe. He follows the religion of Makel.

## Early Life

Cuff, born 24 years ago. A gnome who at birth, was smaller than most like him. A child who had no midwife to help his pained mother during his exodus of her mortal coil, he was born to the blackened hands of a blacksmith, a human named Makhad. Named Cuff from the first comment of a stern smith, "Why, the wee little lad is no bigger 'an the cuff on me arm. Take care of this one, he'll need more than a chance to make it." His parents, modest merchants in the province of Dol'Mir, centered in the largest city Tenshed, held a very humble trade of fungi grown in their spiraled basement. Most of their home was one, after all. They weren't rich, but they made enough to get by. Cuff never particularly excelled at anything, lacking the strength of the smith next door, and the business minds and silvered tongues of his parents.

As time went on, his parents, Cap and Ocoe found some small degree of success until Cuff was 16. With business flourishing, they left their son in the care of Makhad, who apprenticed Cuff in his smithy. Cuff learned some basics of the trade, but his curiosity abounded one day, he began exploring the depths of the basement below. Until he found it. The book held a light sheen of bronze, and the tome rose nearly a foot from the ground, its height a third of Cuff himself. He felt called to open it. Something, for the first time in his life, was his, and it was special. It had to be. As he delved into the tome, he found it was truly special. A book of his ancestors! Why would his parents hide this from him? It seemed to recount all the stories and lives of everyone in his family - most of whom he did not recall or know but a bit about. His father's name resided on the final page, the entry reading only a day of birth, and no death. It described his father's name in full, with but a couple lines describing his father had married and had one son, Cuff Bronzepage, and that his father managed a well to do fungi farm and business. More curiously, pages are missing from the middle of the book. A great many, though the book retained its shape. These pages looked to be ripped from the binding, the tearing inexact and furious. Yet the remains of the pages felt complete. As though they were meant to be that way.

## The Pursuit of Knowledge

*"Wait...perhaps father hid this book away because it is witched..." he muttered, dropping it towards his feet.*

Cuff left the book in the cold, dark cellar for a great many days before returning to see if it had deteriorated. Yet it had not! The book lay before him, as pristine as he had left it, the bronze sheen glittering off in a modicum of torchlight. He was drawn to it, and began reading aloud a fable of an ancestor - Nava, from only a couple of generations prior. As he read, his head swelled with warmth. It was frightening, but peaceful. He soon felt this same warmth cloud his body - his soul. As he read, it erupted before him. A shower of sparks. "Gah!" he roared, dropping the book once more. The sparks flew around him, and as they touched him - he felt nothing. They weren't there, only passing through him. "Bloody hell, I'm a witch. No no no no no. Can't be! I'm just me. Cuff!" he exclaimed in the bleak beneath. But he was compelled. And again he read, and again he felt the warmth. It was delightful.

For the next 8 years, he found some small flecks of magic he learned well. And Makhad put him to work, no longer a true apprentice to the smith, but something different. Cuff was set to many trivial tasks for magic, but laborious ventures for normal folk. Cuff single-handedly ensured that every item that came from this smith was pristine and beautiful, cleaned and polished by magicka, which reached the nooks that were seldom reached. In his spare time, he researched the book, and came to understand it - the stories - they gave him power. Every story, every ancestor - showed him a different piece of magicka. But the missing pages tore at him - clawed at his sleep. "Makhad, I must go to Throne. I must answer this summons. For myself. For answers. For the nation. If I can just learn how to control this magicka better - think of all I could do! For you! For my family! I would be better this way, do you not think so?" And so, Cuff struck a deal. He would exchange himself to the Knights Mavarine for the opportunity of knowledge, power, and a change to learn about the pages that are missing from his book and how to understand what was already there. A Knight he would be, for thee and for the family tree.