Lucius Jan van Niel

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## Personality

There aren’t many men that will wax on remotely as sentimentally as Lucius van Niel does.

A lifetime of various disappointments has colored this older man something of a fool for the more quieter moments of cordial joy and mirth. Once upon a time he was a more harsh, serious person, and echoes of that time line the wrinkles on his face around his eyes and forehead, but these days such cynicism has become but a dull knife. Not that his sentiment should ever be confused with warmth outright, however; the affection he shows others is subtle, cool, and often in small gestures rather than words.  A tight handshake, a stern look of concern, or a warm blanket cast over the shoulders are all tools he may use to show his care.

Lucius then, overall, is a quiet and tired man that has tried to change his life’s perspective on its head. He can’t exactly shake off the sharp tongue that he’s honed, nor can he ever embody the empathetic natured people he so desperately tries to emulate. All he can do is try, and *try* he will, endlessly, his willingness to thrive despite everything practically his most striking trait. This too, however, could get on the nerves of someone who might butt heads with his ideals, and Lucius is not unfamiliar with getting into a fight or two because of it. “A fight or two isn’t unexpected,” he might say, “If you walk a path you are unyielding on.”

He is not in the field of fishing to make friends, but Lucius is a man that can be relied upon, and perhaps even trusted. He’s well meaning, even if he isn’t perfect at it, and if you listen through his thick wall of words you might even find a nugget or two of wisdom.

## Biography

The position of councilmen in Javerfer (in Ordene) for the Council of Ascension is something of an elected position, decided by those involved within the deeper faith of the Horizon in town. This is an undeniable truth: and yet the truth also persists that the van Niel family has produced countless councilmen for years. The position is by no means guaranteed to the family, but it’s no surprise to see them and their kin ushered into it time and time again. With the family’s history of substantial mental fortitude scores, pious tithings, and just general notoriety, a formula of prestige has become deeply entwined with many van Neil heirs. A formula that, unwittingly, broke with the birth of Lucius.

He was born to his parents already as a minor disappointment. An otherwise perfectly healthy kid, a birth defect in the womb caused his arm to form unconventionally. He was born ultimately with just a stub for his left arm, an unobtrusive birth defect in all honesty but something that gave Lucius a feeling of ‘otherness’ since even before he can remember. He was then raised a largely unremarkable and studious child, albeit one with a complex about what set him apart. “The bad arm” is what he’d call his limb, and while it did very little to get in the way of his day to day life or change his relationships with his peers *that* much, it defined how he saw himself in his early years.

“Because I was born like this, I will never be respected.” “I am an eyesore.” “I am difficult to look at.” Thoughts like these plagued him as a young man, shaping his youth as something of an angry cynic of the way people saw him. He was unable to grow a connection with his parents both because of their inability to handle his brattish behavior and due to their physical distance-- the latter a common problem as his mother needed to perform duties as a councilman. Without that connection formed, there was no way Lucius would get the mentoring he’d need to follow in his parent’s footsteps. So, he didn’t.

It wasn’t difficult for him to find his own path in life going into secondary school, his anger issues dwindling as hormones settled and he began seeing professional help. There was a sense of camaraderie he found in studies of people who had gotten problems from exposure to the memory sea: in becoming “others” of society with their new problems, he found a certain kinship. Nursing was a respectable profession and one he felt a sense of fulfillment in pursuing. Even without the glory and prestige of the position his mother carried, the sense of duty that he found in his new studies made for a strong vocation. One that, perhaps, he could see himself devoting the rest of his life to, with no deviations.

Well, perhaps just one.

Catching his eye while he was traveling, Lucius would meet Andre Dufour. Their sly smile and their electrifying countenance drew him in, and despite his cool-headed nature, he couldn’t help but be caught in their web.

They were married forthwith. This came at the cost of vocal protests from his parents: Andre was a fisher of no notoriety, with neither fortune or fame to their name. Lucius himself did not care for either of these things. He was fascinated by them, and they were entertained by his bullheaded sincerity. It cared little to either of them how young they were, nor how vastly different their lifestyles were, nor even how distant their professions drew them apart. No matter where in the world work brought Andre, they could always return home to Lucius in Javerfer. Such was their life: Lucius now in stable full time work as a nurse, building the home on his downtime for Andre to return to when they were in the area. A cycle, to them, as consistent as the rotation of the sun and the moon. Neither of them could expect that even the moon could be thrown off kilter.

> *“No one could’ve seen it coming. It was a tragic accident, Mr. Dufour.”*
>
>

A fault in the mask Andre wore in their journeys in the memory sea was what did it. The crew they had journeyed with were able to return to land just fine, but Andre had to deal with brain hypoxia. His Andre had returned to him, but now mentally unsound, a condition Lucius was *intimately* familiar with. Never again would they be the same-- the days left of their marriage were now spent completely together, but within the confines of a facility. Lucius could only struggle to keep his heart steeled as he was forced to witness his lover’s slow but inevitable decline, dreading the day where he wouldn’t be able to protect them from themself.

When they were gone, Lucius could no longer bear to stay in his profession. It was easy to be objective and caring when the patients of your work were distant enough from you. After Andre’s passing, however, every patient became a haunted memory of them. Rapidly it became imperative for him to change something, *anything* in his life to get him away from it all. The most natural and easy excuse to get away from it all was to become a fisher himself. Could anyone blame him for taking up his dead lover’s old profession? All he had to do was pass the exam, and he’d get a one way ticket away from it all, an excuse to run away that not even his stickler parents could deny him.

So he ran. He ran as far from Javerfer as he could, knowing that he’ll have to come back eventually, but taking levity in the foreign and bustling world of airships and dockyards that his lover knew quite well. It’s been a decade since then, and Lucius has been fishing in the memory sea all the while. The danger of it all always lingers on the forefront of his mind, but high in the clouds, above the mortal plane, Lucius van Neil can continue to run. Faster, faster, away from the chains of duty, responsibility, love... all of it.

## Trivia

* His mechanical arm is both a complex but simple machine, where the intricate parts that cause its function are delicate and nuanced in nature, but the actions it can ultimately perform are very simple. It can basically only twist and grab.
	+ The base of the arm is grafted to his bone, a procedure he got when he was seventeen.
	+ The arm he has can be removed and worked on separately from him. It can also be replaced.

* He has about a 15 pound hard limit lifting with his mechanical arm, although typically he will only pick things up far under that limit.
* Octavian Englle is his childhood friend. As he is someone who shared memories of Lucius from a time where he was less personable, Lucius can be more than a little testy with him.
* Pawned off his wedding ring.
	+ He changed his last name from “Dufour” back to “van Neil” after Andre’s death.
* Wears shirt garters, sometimes sock garters. Almost exclusively wears collared clothing.
* His parents are retired now. He comes to visit them from time to time, but they tend to keep to themselves, and don’t often share more than pleasantries with Lucius.
* He can cut potatoes and boil water, but refrains from cooking whenever possible. He typically sustains himself on ready made meals or dining in. While away on a mission, he will typically eat just jerky and crackers.
* Typically travels with a backpack and a cloak. He doesn’t keep too much on his person these days, as he’s essentially a wanderer.
* He’s fairly well read, but he has a bad habit of always returning to a select few favorite books. The sort of person who will promptly reread a good book the second he finishes it.
* Supposedly, he’s been taking progressively riskier jobs over his course of time as a fisher. He’s a recognized face enough from becoming crew in a significant number of various ships.