Gareth Hughes [Gardens of Oneiromancy]

[morethanadream]

Gareth Hughes


Seeming: Darkling


Kith: Antiquarian


Court: Spring


Virtue: Charity (Gareth tries to help other people when there’s something he can do to spread a little bit of light in the world)


Vice: Sloth (But it’s all too easy for him to batten down the hatches and hope the storm blows over)


Attributes:


Intelligence 4


Wits 2


Resolve 2


Strength 1


Dexterity 3


Stamina 2


Presence 3


Manipulation 1


Composure 3


Skills:


Academics 3 (History, Mythology, Research)


Computer 1


Crafts 2 (Hedge Gardening)


Investigation 2


Medicine 1


Occult 2


Larceny 2


Stealth 2 (Moving in darkness)


Empathy 3 (Emotions)


Expression 2


Persuasion 3


Socialize 2


Subterfuge 2


Merits:


Harvest (Goblin Fruits) 2


Hollow 2


Faerie Healing (Tea) 2


New Identity 2


Encyclopaedic Knowledge 4


Language (Latin) 1


Mantle (Spring) 2


Court Goodwill (Autumn) 1


Contracts:


Dream 2


Eternal Spring 2


Fleeting Spring 1


Eternal Autumn 1


Shade and Spirit 1


Health: 7


Willpower: 5


Wyrd: 4


Glamour: 13/4


Clarity: 7


Size: 5


Defence: 2


Initiative Mod: 6


Speed: 9


Experience Points:

Spoiler

Skills:


Medicine 1 = 3xp


Occult 2 = 6xp


Crafts 1 = 3xp


Crafts 2 = 6xp


Crafts Specialty (Hedge Gardening) = 3xp


Academics Specialty (Research) = 3xp


24xp


Contracts:


Fleeting Spring 1 = 4xp


Shade and Spirit 1 = 4xp


8xp


Merits:


Harvest 1 = 2xp


Harvest 2 = 4xP


Court Goodwill (Autumn) 1 = 2xp


Hollow 1 = 2xp


Hollow 2 = 4xp


Mantle (Spring) 2 = 4xp


18xp

 

[morethanadream]

Here's the background I wrote up for Gareth. It's still quite long and needs a little pruning, but unfortunately I'm laid low with hayfever (I maintain I am in fact a Darkling reacting to the summer sun!) and can't do it tonight. Either way, I give you:


A young man found himself lost among the shelves of his university library one night, searching for a book in the early morning hours before an essay was due. As he wandered deeper into the archives, the lights grew darker and farther away, and a rhythmic - snickt, snickt, snickt - noise began to come from the shadows. Something followed his twisting path into the darkness, always staying a few steps behind him, always with the same strangely sharp sound punctuating the air. And as the human mind is want to do, he blocked out the growing unease by focussing on his task.


But soon he began to notice something was wrong. He couldn't remember the title of the book he was looking for. Snickt. Then he could barely recall what topic the book was about – it was on the tip of his tongue, he knew it was, and in a moment he'd remember. Bit by bit he forgot why he was where he was – snickt – he forgot where it was he was supposed to be (he had something important to do, somewhere to be, hadn't he?), and he began to panic and so he ran, the shelves towering above him and the last thing he remembered thinking was that the words and letters on the spines of the books and the signs on the aisles of the library no longer made any sense to him.


Lost in the library and in his head, he wandered in the darkness until he stepped on something on the ground and a memory began to stir. Underfoot lay a small piece of paper with a few words on it, the edges neatly clipped mid-sentence. Lifting it, something told him to bring it to his lips. The paper tasted dusty, old, foreign, but it made the darkness clouding his thoughts withdraw a little. He found another piece, and another, and as they dissolved on his tongue he found himself navigating his way back to the world he was starting to remember again. And when he finally emerged, stumbling out into a reading room in the New York library, he’d pieced enough of his life back to begin to realise just how much he’d lost.


Apprenticeship under a seer of the Autumn Court was an exclusive position, but with his – almost literal – taste for knowledge and with omens of great potential in his future, Ms Kitty Hughes of the New Amsterdam Freehold offered to take him under her wing, gave him a new name and identity as a nephew from overseas – Gareth Hughes, the only son of a sister who’d gone to trace her roots in Britain – if he’d study with her and work in the café-bookshop she owned.


Three months later she had given up on him joining the Court of the Leaden Mirror. Though he was intelligent, well-read and graced with an astounding breadth of knowledge – no doubt owed in part to gathering the thoughts of a hundred other scholars who had been taken – he didn’t have the academic focus she was looking for in a pupil, nor the hardness of heart required to make his way in the Court of Fear. He did however have a knack for growing the hedge plants she sold in her tea-shop, and a gift for conversing with customers, so rather than let a brilliant worker slip out from under her fingers, she let him follow his heart to joining the Spring Court, on the proviso he continued his shifts working in The Copper Kettle in the meantime.


Gareth’s talent for weaving dreams of healing and protection were a natural extension of his kind nature and the opportunity to peruse journals of dream crafting technique while on his breaks in the back room of the shop. Kitty discovered him plaiting a cord of ribbons to be used first as a dream vessel for a customer seeking a crash course in the history of aeronautics, then kept as a bookmark memento (or to be brought back to be reworked into storing a different dream, should his services require it). Recognising his promise as a skilled dream crafter as the glorious destiny she’d foreseen for him, she contacted someone she knew could make great use of his abilities, and so he began his first steps towards joining the Family of Silent Nights.