Felix Harrowgate

## Personality

*Enfant terrible.*

Felix is beautiful, brilliant, and charming when he wants to be. Worst of all, he knows it. He can be enthralling or scathing as his mood suits him, and his mood is ever-changing. Most of the time he is outgoing, erudite, and exceedingly talkative. Most of the time. An unstable life has given him an unstable temper, and Felix might decide to lash out with a searing insult or with subtle cruelty whenever his anger flares. He loves to shock and dismay others as much as he loves to lure people in with his strangeness and charm.

This kind of spiked, glittering emotional armor protects a very different, much more fragile, Felix. His past has hurt him deeply, and those wounds have never healed. Nearly everything Felix says or does is in order to protect himself. His heart is little more than determination and scar tissue, held together only by the fierce facade that he shows the world. Glimpses of those scars come through in the boundaries he puts on the rest of the world: Felix hates to be touched casually, refuses to let anyone see him shirtless, and will not go near bodies of water.

Sometimes, when his magic is overtaxed, Felix enters a kind of fugue state where he speaks very oddly and seems to see things that aren’t there. While this has only happened once after Malkar’s unknown ritual burnt out Felix’s mind, in this state the damaged child underneath the facade comes out.

## Powers

Spellcasting. Felix thinks of his mutant ability as magic. Whether it is really magic or a form of reality-altering remains to be seen. Felix’s magic works on symbolism, so he must create some symbolic gesture in order to cast: a pantomime, a word, or a sigil. For some small spells he has developed mental shortcuts and he can cast them without using a symbol: calling his small witch-lights, creating flame or electricity in his hand, lighting candles or lightbulbs, locking and unlocking locks.

## Talents

Felix is very good at remembering everything he has read, and is extremely intelligent. He is a creative thinker, excellent at studying, researching, and synthesizing information. He was trained in a number of ways to become part of a certain echelon of society: he reads and writes Latin and Greek, understands etiquette and fashion (even if he chooses to break those rules), and can dance. However, aside from being smart, witty, and charming, Felix has very few actual practical skills.

## Interests

Books, books, and books. Felix reads voraciously, anything he can get his hands on. He’s had little time to develop other interests, but he will become very interested in fashion, socializing, and technology over time.

## History

This is what Felix remembers.

He had a mother with red hair like his, who loved him until she needed money more than she wanted him.

He ran through the streets of Yorkland for a man he only knew as Keeper, stealing or begging or bringing information. He lived in a tenement with other children who did the same. When Keeper was angry, he would bring out the whip; Felix still has those scars on his back. When Keeper was *very* angry, he took them all to the river, and held one of them underneath it. Felix has the scars from that, too.

A fire killed Keeper and the other children. The darkest corners of Yorkland found him, and did its best to destroy the odd boy with the strange eyes and fragile beauty. The men who bought him were nameless and cruel; the drug that kept him complacent and numb was nameless and kind.

Then there was Malkar, who found him in the brothel and saved him, and opened Felix’s mind to the power he’d never seen inside himself. Malkar called it magic, and Felix knew no other word for what he could do. For the first time in his life, Felix was allowed to learn and use his mind, and given access to books, which became the new love of his life. Desperately loyal to the man who had rescued him, Felix submitted to the rituals that Malkar said would bind them together. He learned what Malkar taught him, even as teaching turned into training turned into torture. Felix learned not only magic, but language and sciences, manners and wit. Never before had Felix known that he was intelligent, or powerful, or anything other than a body to be used. Even under Malkar’s abusive methods, he learned to understand and value his own mind. He was transformed over the course of three years from a fragile, neglected addict into a beautiful and brilliantly cruel echo of his soulless tutor. At first, Felix learned in order to please Malkar. Then, he learned in order to escape him.

Whatever Malkar had intended for Felix was lost on the final day of Yorkland’s existence. Felix was bound in chains and spells in a ritual he didn’t understand, while Malkar took possession of him in order to Felix’s immense magical power as a weapon. Why, or against whom, Felix never learned. The ritual broke him, and he lost himself.

Dream-like moments of wandering in an unfamiliar world. Machines he didn’t comprehend, structures he had never seen. People with the heads of dogs and bears, and people who floated, transparent, in an out of his vision. Nothing seemed real in the weeks that Felix was lost between Yorkland and the real world.

That is what Felix remembers. Of course, it can’t possibly be true. Yorkland was only real for a few short days, not seventeen years.

When he awoke, Felix was in the infirmary of a place called Xavier’s, with no memory of any life but the one he knew in Yorkland. A man who called himself Professor explained that Felix was a mutant, that this was a school, and he could stay there as long as he liked. At first, Felix fought his welcome with frozen silences and biting words, but soon he realized that no one was trying to touch him, and no one was trying to hurt him. And there was so very much more to learn.