F1V3

*"You don't have to be alone anymore."*

## Backstory

### The Aeon

Preston Cogsworth was born in Austin, Texas in 2001 in a dimension entirely different from the world of Somerlow- the same world Meredith Thompson was born into. A world where magic was hidden, something to be deeply afraid of and persecuted. A world where corruption ran deep, and an organization called the Jailers captured magic users, called "anomalies," and imprisoned them or worse.

Preston's parents, Morgan and Elenore Cogsworth, were high members of the Cogwork Church, a religion that highly valued technology and worshipped a god called "The Broken One." The mission of the Cogwork was to cybernetically enhance themselves to be the closest to technology that they could be, and to find pieces of their "broken god" and put it back together again. As Preston's father was a Patriarch, a leader of the church, he was expected to follow in his father's footsteps one day.

### A Cog in the Machine

As Preston grew older, his parents began to include him in the process of becoming a cyborg. More and more he took on cybernetic enhancements, such as a completely mechanical arm, gears and metal plates in his face, and mechanicals cords in place of hair.

His parents preached to him about the virtue of following the Broken One with technology that had progressed no further than the Industrial Revolution, but Preston privately disagreed. He felt that a better way to honor his god was with more advanced technology then steampunk, and began to research a different sect of followers of the Broken One. The Maxwellists, as they were called, were a more modernized and connected group of followers more dedicated to connecting with each other then rebuilding the Broken One, who they called WAN.

### Release

When Preston was 15 years old, he was about to be coronated into the church as a fully mechanical member, and he had an operation to place a gear where his heart should be. The final steps of the procedure were to take place on the throne on the glowing throne of the Broken One, but Preston knew he couldn't go through with it. He couldn't truly follow the Broken One in the same way his parents did.

As his parents led him up to the throne, with the rest of the church watching, Preston ripped the mechanical heart out of his chest and decreed himself a Maxwellist and a follower of WAN.

Following medical attention to get his heart working properly without cybernetic enhancement again, Preston legally emancipated himself from his parents and changed his name to F1V3, in the style of the Maxwellists. A more technological name and a more anonymous name.

### Arriving At Alexylva

Alone but not lonely, F1V3 spent the next four years learning about the healing magic that he could perform by channeling WAN. When he gathered a much better grip on this power at 19 years old, now technically a magic user, he was sent an anonymous invitation to attend Alexylva University, a private and hidden institution for all "anomalies" that could perform magic. He accepted the invitation and, using a nearby computer center, uploaded his consciousness to the Sylvanus Forest and found that his body immediately traveled there as well.

He was put in a dorm house with three other students: Alice, Judge, and Blair, and the three quickly became friends.

## Alexylva: Freshman Year

### The Ritual of True Purpose

When F1V3 was assigned to the Healing Discipline on the first day of classes, Micah, a member of the school's Welcome Committee, told him that since he was a Maxwellist he should keep an artifact that the Welcome Committee had found in the Forest, and gave him an amulet called the Tear of WAN.

In the first week of classes, Alice received a magical book from her Discipline professor and found a ritual in the back pages called the "Ritual of True Purpose." She invited the others to join her, and F1V3, intrigued by knowing what his true purpose in service to WAN could be, joined the group. As they arranged themselves in a circle around the room, a woman named Allison appeared and warned the group against what they were about to do, saying that catastrophic consequences could come from casting this ritual. Dismissing her, F1V3 began the ritual by channeling the Tear of WAN and Blair, Alice, and Judge all joined in as Allison disappeared.

As the magic began to flow around the four of them, golden light enveloped the circle and F1V3 began to see a vision. A blurry picture of a person that looked like himself, but much more powerful. A vision of a girl with bright orange hair. A swirling haze of purple smoke and lightning.

Then the vision began to fizzle and glitch, becoming overwhelmed with bright blue energy and the buzzing of thousands upon thousands of cicadas.

### Lost Code

It took three weeks for F1V3 to fully recover, and to regain the memories he lost that night. When he first came to in the campus hospital, he had no memory of the events that had taken place. But with constant medical attention and time alone to think, he was able to remember.

The form of a man in a bright blue suit, covered head to two in cicadas, had emerged from the circle. The swarm had burst forth and enveloped the entire dorm within seconds, and had spread out across campus within minutes. This "man of the cicadas" had then turned to Alice, Blair, and Judge in turn, killing all three of them with bursts of necrotic magical energy. F1V3 had managed to escape within an inch of his life by uploading himself to just outside the hospital, but not without an incredibly damaging blow from the Man of Cicadas.

After being released from the hospital, F1V3 returned to his empty dorm house, spending his time praying to WAN at the school's Temple of the Broken One and throwing himself into his schoolwork. Eventually, the school moved him to another dorm house with three new students: Michael, a bard studying in the Illusion Discipline; Anya, a non-magical woman studying archery in the Combat Discipline; and Meredith, a sorcerer studying in the rare Reality Discipline.

### Making Connections

F1V3 tried to keep himself closed off from his new roommates at first, blaming himself for the death of his first few friends in the ritual gone wrong. However, he began to get closer to Meredith, first by studying together for a couple classes they shared, and eventually by fighting off the smaller forces of the Cicada Man together.

On Halloween night, he heard her cry out from her room and entered to find herself battling a nightmarish other Mere, belittling her for relying so much on herself and refusing to let others in. F1V3 rushed in to help her and together they beat the other Mere. He expected Meredith to close the door on him after that ordeal, but instead she turned to him with tears in her eyes and apologized that he had to deal with it, saying she should've beaten it alone. He caught her in a hug and let her cry, promising that she didn't have to be alone anymore. Their friendship quickly grew stronger, and they rescued each other from various kidnappings throughout the school year, investigated the closure of the Temple of the Broken God, and battled Cicada Man's lieutenants.

### Cicada Man's Master Plan

Two weeks before the end of the school year, the battle with Cicada Man commenced. Micah revealed Cicada Man's plans to the group using a file that he'd found, and F1V3 set off to the Clock Tower with Meredith, Michael, and Anya to finally fight the man that had caused him so much pain.

When they arrived, they had to fight their way through a series of his top lieutenants- the Stranger Thief and Puppet Man- and make their way to the top of the tower as reality began to disintegrate more and more around them, warping the architecture into a swirling cosmic purple void. Cicada Man revealed to the party that the origin of magic was pain- all the pain that the party had faced had granted them their magic. Michael's fraught childhood in the circus, the death of Anya's sister in a raging fire, whatever Meredith had gone through, all the pressure placed on F1V3 by his parents to lead a new generation of Cogwork cyborgs spiritually- all of that had contributed to unlocking the magic present in their souls. Cicada Man also revealed his final plan to the group: to destroy all the magic in the world, so it would no longer cause pain to the people who wielded it.

The battle was fierce, and F1V3 did everything he could to protect the party using the magic of WAN and his cybernetic enhancements. However, while his back was against the wall and he was grappled by Cicada Man, Meredith was hit by a fatal *Power World Kill* that he was unable to stop. Somehow, she appeared again in a shimmering mist of radiant light, and the battle raged again as if nothing had happened. The party defeated the Man of Cicadas, and life on campus seemed to return to normal.

### An Unknown Goodbye

F1V3 apologized to Meredith for being unable to protect her, and to his surprise, she apologized right back to him for causing him to worry. She also told him that she had one more battle to fight, and she might not come out of it alive, no matter what measures were taken. It was a battle she had to fight alone, and she told him to stay inside for the rest of the day. Before she left, she told him one more thing: that gods shouldn't be trusted, no matter how good and right they may seem. An odd thing to say, but he'd begun to lose faith in his broken god that had never helped him in any true way, so it resonated with him. He wished her luck with whatever she was trying to accomplish, and she gave him a rare smile.

That was the last time he saw Meredith Thompson.

A week later, F1V3 visited the Temple of the Broken One for a final time. It had recently been reopened after the chaos that Cicada Man had wrecked was fixed, but F1V3 picked a weekend night where nobody else was in the temple. He renounced the oath he had taken all those years ago, and left the Tear of WAN in the center of the room. The technology in his body felt heavier somehow, but he knew he had made the right decision.

## Alexylva: Sophomore Year

### Something something reality silliness

morning musing: f1v3 sitting alone in the cleared field where the clock tower used to be. clearly something big happened here, and he doesn’t know what. he hasn’t seen mere in weeks. life goes on at alexylva university, as if the atrocities that happened during their freshman year never existed. but he’ll come and sit in this field for hours at a time, ignoring michael’s questions, ignoring the classes that he should be going to because surely the university would’ve put out a statement about this, right? surely he can’t be the only one who remembers the giant purple tower in the middle of campus? all the closures and disappearances of last year? surely he can’t be the only one to remember mere? even allison, who knows everything, can’t seem to recall the girl that they all roomed with, the girl who help save their world from destruction. so he sits, alone, in a space permanently altered, the only one who seems to remember how it used to be. is he losing his mind? is his memory starting to fail him again? why does it feel like the end of the world when he just took part in saving it? *i'll make it more wiki-like and fitting the style of the rest of this page... later*

## Character Description

### Physical Description

F1V3 stands at 6'0 with patchwork skin, part fair human and part blue metal. There are various rectangular greyish-blue gears and plates on his face, and his eyes are a digital blue. His hair is naturally brown, seen as his eyebrows are brown, but the "hair" on his head is a collection of grey electrical cords coming off the top of his head and flowing down like hair would on a human body. He wears a blue hoodie, grey sweatpants, and plain grey shoes, hiding a robotic left arm and various mechanical enhancements around his face, neck, and arms. He always wears bright blue headphones, either on his ears or around his neck.

## Relationships

### Morgan and Elenore Cogsworth

F1V3 has complicated feelings about his parents. He knows that they were doing what they thought was right, but frequently wonders how different his life would look had he not followed the Broken One his whole life. Would he still even be a cyborg?

### Alice, Judge, and Blair

F1V3 blames himself for the deaths of his first roommates. He wishes he had stopped the ritual from happening somehow, listened to Allison.

### Anya

F1V3 trusts Anya and respects her ability to think through all the different ways a problem could be solved, not just the most direct way. He's happy for her and her decision to leave the school to live with her wife, Nicole.

### Michael

F1V3 would never tell him to his face, but he's a little envious of Michael's ability to strike up a conversation with any random stranger. He has a healthy respect for how sociable Michael is, and enjoys trying out new experiences like concerts with him and Meredith.

### Meredith

Meredith is the closest thing F1V3 has to a best friend. He saw that there was something inside her that made her wary of trusting others, and tried to be a person she could let herself trust. He loved their late-night cramming sessions between fighting the forces of evil- it almost felt like a normal college experience when they were just spending time together. He wishes that he was able to help her with whatever problem she was going through, save her from whatever battle she had to fight. F1V3 mourns his lost friend.

## Trivia

* F1V3 was originally an NPC in the Alexylva campaign that Meredith came from, and his backstory is a combination of what Katheryn could piece together from his canon backstory and her original ideas based on how his character was previously portrayed.
* trivia
* here

## Spotify Playlists

"don't blame yourself now" - F1V3's main playlist. Encompasses his character as he is now.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4kiFa8p63XfHIwZFmTR5oR?si=275ffa52aef44d07

"strength in numbers" - Encompasses F1V3's character as he was in Alexylva.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4S2nyYlxIhwDRYLcaoDpkI?si=e4a1bd5eacf647ab

"alumni." - For Meredith and F1V3. Friends forged in fire.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6EP5PN96m1ofQnxKUmxZCc?si=271a9ed122c34d17