Peter Gerlach

## General Information

### ☯**Personality**

Peter is perhaps one of the most carefree men you will ever meet anywhere. That is, once you actually get past the "untrustworthy" vibe he gives people. He is also a very crafty trader and dealer. In addition, he has gained a repertoire of numerous skills and street-smart knowledge from his travels. He is also very pragmatic in things that don't violate his sense of morals, distorted as they are from living for nearly three centuries. He believes that non-combatants and innocents should not be harmed, no matter who they are, and would take offense to any who do such transgressions in his sight. His philosophy in fights is, "The battle is won before the first clash began." If he's a perpetrator of an incident, he will happily tilt the scale to his side and if he isn't, well what's a bit of sand in one's eyes, right?

"Anya" is also one of the most carefree people in a different vein from Peter's. Whereas he's more a jovial carefree, Anya is more *sexually* carefree. She will freely tease others knowing full well that most find her actual identity very different from what she is. When things need to be serious though, one will find the counsel of Anya is as good as counsel from Peter.

### ☯**Appearance**

Peter is a 1.8 meter tall man with blonde hair and black eyes. His hair reaches below his ears and he sports a matching goatee. He usually wore heavy clothing prevalent in most magician who brought their research with them. Unlike most of those magicians, he wears a traveling trench coat with a red suit shirt and black suit pants. On his back, he has a cloth-wrapped staff slung over him that are covered with magical runes. When uncovered, the staff is a distinctly metallic one with a triangular mace-like protrusions on the top, one would also smell a distinct burning smell to it.

Anya however, is a rather petite female with around 1.6 meter tall with a distinct golden hair and vibrant green eyes. Her hair normally extends towards her waist but usually styled in a ponytail behind her back. Her clothes are much more simpler, a cloak with golden clasp on it, a plain white dress shirt and a skirt that reaches towards her knees. Like before, the staff is wrapped around her.

## Backstory

Born in the Netherlands, Peter is one of the lucky few merchantmen of the Dutch East India Company who can trade in Dejima, Japan. It can be said that Peter and his family have reaped many benefit from this, if only because the Japanese are willing to pay a large sum of gold for the good he plies. Sometimes, his trade caught him valuable goods that can't be found easily. One of them was a grimoire and magic staff. Intrigued, he studied such items, first by learning the language and then by autodidact method. Along the way, he began to hoard the gold that he had amassed in his work, putting them in caches across the world along the route of his travels from Europe to Japan. Eventually, his interest in the supernatural made him become noticed by other people and as a result, he became hunted by the church and was disowned by his family. Realizing the danger posed to him, he enacted the ritual that made him a full magician before fleeing from Europe.

Since then, he has traveled the world in earnest, sating his curiosity the world over. To help conceal his identity, he uses his magic to change his gender and turn to his "Anya" personality. In the end, his wanderlust has been sated and he decided to pay a visit to the place that allowed him to get where he is now, Japan and its sanctuary, Gensokyo.

## Relationships

### ☯**Alice Margatroid**

Is rather amiable with Alice due to their similarities, though he is leery of trying to meet her due to the high chance of meeting Marisa. Despite this, he's very interested in the grimoire that Alice holds.

### ☯**Marisa Kirisame**

He has fought Marisa twice… and lost both times. Resulting in the loss of all the gold bars he carried as the brute force of a Master Spark and a Final Spark in the respective first and second battle was unexpected in its entirety.

### ☯**Rinnosuke Morichika**

Visits Rinnosuke every now and then to see what the half-youkai has to offer in his shop or what he can sell to the man. Haggling battles are common for the two of them and Peter is pleased that there are actually people who can match a Dutchman's trading skills.

## Abilities

### ☯**Ability to Manipulate Gold**

From the grimoire in his possession, he has managed to unlock ways to manipulate materials…should he train in it that is. In his long life as a magician and merchant, he never strays from the Earth's more useful (in both mundane and magical sense) metal, gold.

His constant exposure to gold allows him to manipulate the material into complex shapes with the same ease as breathing. His range to manipulate gold is around a 500 meter radius.

Other metal-based materials are rather difficult to manipulate with ease, unless said materials have gold mixed in them. In which case, the material is *nearly* as malleable as gold itself.

However, for moral and safety reasons, his experience with manipulating organic materials is almost non-existent. He also can't manipulate gems with ease either, though not for the lack of trying, for gems themselves are heavily resistant to manipulation in the magical and mundane sense.

Due to his experience with manipulating tangible objects he has managed to [REDACTED]. However, the ramifications of said event has led him to use the ability only on himself. (If your hunch says it has something to do with his double identity, you'd be correct. Further elaboration will be made later)

Due to the hassle of carrying gold on his person, he decided to create a treasure chest automaton that walks during his incursion to sanctuaries and other magical communities. It is enchanted to be larger on the inside and protected from any attempt to steal it. The gold bars inside are similarly enchanted from getting picked up by those with the intent to steal and return to the chest once used.

During battles, Peter always transmutes a gold-titanium alloy bar into a saber with a cross guard grip. He has become proficient in the usage of such swords in his long life.

### ☯**Magical Staff**

In addition to this, he carries the staff that he got in his human years everywhere. It has the capability to create lightning from the top protrusions. This, combined with gold's excellent conducting ability makes for a deadly synergy to look out for.

## Danmaku

Semi-liquid "droplets" of gold about the size of a marble are the staple danmaku he uses. Other than that, he can elongate said danmaku into a javelin-needle hybrid of sorts that is a foot long and thrown independently. These gold danmaku can stay in their "thrown" form or dissipate into golden dust in the air should he deal with aerial combat. His lightning staff is another source of danmaku, either capable of raising electric spikes from the thrown danmaku or of creating orbs of slow-moving (relative to normal danmaku) lightning proximity mines.

## Spell Cards

 Investment Sign "The Ruination of Native Warfare"
 Wealth Sign "Volumen Aurum"
 Profligate Sign "Prowess of the Compagnie"
 Stimulus Sign "Lightning of Saint Elmo"
 Profligate Arcanum "Schweiz's Restricted Mercenaries"
 Last Word "Golden Ideal"

## Weaknesses

Like most magician whose name isn't Byakuren Hijiri, Peter isn't specialized to deal with close-range combatants. While he is better than average magician in melee, the supernatural factor of his usual opponents made this a somewhat moot point. His proficiency in sword fight mitigates this somewhat, but should his opponent be one of the oni-kind or a master of close-range weaponry, he is figuratively, and most likely literally, dead in the waters.

## Trivia

* No one exactly knows just how much money he made during his travels, or, for that matter, how many valuable artifacts he found around the world.