Doctor Houx
From Changeling Venue
| Seeming | Fairest Artist |
|---|---|
| Court | Autumn Court • |
| Freehold | The Freehold of Bloom Town |
| Player | Fancy Dan |
"The holly and the ivy
Now both are full well grown,
Of all the trees that are in the wood,
The holly bears the crown."
Contents |
Overview
Alias(es): The Good Doctor, Holly, The Red Wizard, The Fetchsmith
Real Name: Doctor Alberich Houx (rhymes with "Who")
Location: Bloom Town (Bloomington, Indiana)
Age: 76.
Seeming: Fairest
Kith: Artist
Court: Autumn Court
Concept: Potion-brewing, magic ring-smithing, computer-hacking, robot-building, adorable old wizard.
Physical description:
- Mien:
- In the deep green darkness of the Hedge, the large orange-blue eyes of a wizened old man open. His closed but still laughing mouth breaks into a broad smile, a radiant childlike innocence flowing vitally and hotly underneath his papery skin, luminous and bristling with heat. He chuckles quietly as his time-gnarled hands secure his pointed hat to his head, disheveled red hair poking out from beneath its wide, floppy brim like crimson straw. Every muscle of his extraordinarily gentle face moves expressively as he adjusts the silver clasp of his heavy red cloak with unnaturally long, elegant, pale fingers covered in multicolored stains. Laughing merrily at a secret joke, he gives an impish wave to a nearby shrubbery and darts off once more into the shadows in search of forgotten secrets...
- In the deep green darkness of the Hedge, the large orange-blue eyes of a wizened old man open. His closed but still laughing mouth breaks into a broad smile, a radiant childlike innocence flowing vitally and hotly underneath his papery skin, luminous and bristling with heat. He chuckles quietly as his time-gnarled hands secure his pointed hat to his head, disheveled red hair poking out from beneath its wide, floppy brim like crimson straw. Every muscle of his extraordinarily gentle face moves expressively as he adjusts the silver clasp of his heavy red cloak with unnaturally long, elegant, pale fingers covered in multicolored stains. Laughing merrily at a secret joke, he gives an impish wave to a nearby shrubbery and darts off once more into the shadows in search of forgotten secrets...
- Mask:
- A tall, thin old man, handsome if hunched-over, sits quietly at a small oaken table, elegantly dressed in a suit of fine red and black wool. Swirling the tea in his teacup and gazing into it questioningly, he hums quietly over the dull buzz of conversation across the street from the bustling cafe. The professorial figure dreamily sips his tea and gazes absent-mindedly at the cafe window, occasionally drawing an overlong finger through his hopelessly messy, fine hair and beard. His left hand, however, dexterously manipulates several bottles of brightly colored liquids, peculiar herbs, and metal shavings, pouring them masterfully and precisely into a large tea press. Inside and outside, no one takes notice of the eccentric old fellow at the table across the street, sitting there, toying with bottles and rings.
- A tall, thin old man, handsome if hunched-over, sits quietly at a small oaken table, elegantly dressed in a suit of fine red and black wool. Swirling the tea in his teacup and gazing into it questioningly, he hums quietly over the dull buzz of conversation across the street from the bustling cafe. The professorial figure dreamily sips his tea and gazes absent-mindedly at the cafe window, occasionally drawing an overlong finger through his hopelessly messy, fine hair and beard. His left hand, however, dexterously manipulates several bottles of brightly colored liquids, peculiar herbs, and metal shavings, pouring them masterfully and precisely into a large tea press. Inside and outside, no one takes notice of the eccentric old fellow at the table across the street, sitting there, toying with bottles and rings.
Character Information
Known History
Basic Life Timeline:
September 26, 1931 - In Edinburgh, Scotland, Alberich is born to Alderric and Esmé Houx, both third-generation immigrants from Normandy, France.
May 4th, 1948 - Alderric and Esmé Houx die in a horrific car crash on the A19 near York, along with over twenty others.
June 1st, 1956 - Alberich completes the last of his several advanced study degrees at the University of Oxford, a PhD in the Life Sciences.
July 1956-September 1973 - Having carefully cultivated an extraordinary academic career, Alberich is employed in various positions at Oxford, also working with the UK military on several research projects, primarily artificial intelligence programming, robotics, and cybernetics.
September 1, 1973 - Travelling abroad to acquire research samples, Alberich is abducted by The Headmaster and taken to the Arcadian version of the Discworld's school of wizardry, Unseen University. He serves variedly as Chair of Simulacric Machinations, Lecturer in Hexemetric Calculatry, Reader in Inadvisable Potioneering, Lecturer in Applied Thaumatolographitronics, and Professor of Ephemeral Smithings for several decades. In the service of his Keeper during these years, the Doctor creates potions, weapons, and fetches.
October 27, 2007 - Alberich returns from Arcadia, finding himself temporally and spatially displaced in Bloom Town (Bloomington, Indiana). For reasons he keeps to himself, Alberich decides to stay.
University of Oxford Degrees
1949 - BA (Life Sciences and Physics Tripos. Class I)
1952 - MB and MSc (Distinction in Pharmacology and Genetics)
1953 - PhD (Mechanical Engineering. Class I)
1954 - MSc (Distinction in Physics)
1956 - PhD (Life Sciences)
Professional Qualifications & Membership of Professional Bodies
1948 - MRC Path
1950 - MRCP
1950 - FRS
1953 - FRC Path.
1955 - F.Med Sci
Posts Held
1949-1956 - Demonstrator and lecturer, Dept. of Life Sciences
1952-1958 - Research Fellow, King's College, Oxford
1953-1958 - Side Tutor, King's College
1953-1959 - Oxford University Lecturer, Dept of Life Sciences and Dept of Pathology
1956-1973 - Class I Researcher, several military research projects concerning artificial intelligence programming, robotics, and cybernetics.
1958-1959 - House Officer, Dept of Medicine, Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London
1959-1962 - Reader in Therapeutic Immunology, Therapeutic Genetics Cambridge
1960-1963 - Fellow, King's College, Oxford
1963-1970 - Kay Kendall Professor of Therapeutic Immunology, Dept of Pathology
1966 - Fellow of the Royal Society
1967-1973 - Professor of Genetics, Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford.
1973-2007 - Chair of Simulacric Machinations, Lecturer in Hexemetric Calculatry, Reader in Inadvisable Potioneering, Lecturer in Applied Thaumatolographitronics, and Professor of Ephemeral Smithings.
Research:
Officially: His research interests are connected with links between experimental robotics and the theoretics of molecular population genetics and evolution. In particular, he is interested in evolution of sex chromosomes, mating systems, molecular adaptation and in speciation process. His research concentrates on the use of molecular markers in evolutionary and conservation biology, especially hybridisation, polyploidy, the evolutionary consequences of human-mediated plant movement and the conservation genetics of widespread species. The experimental systems used in his laboratory range from plants to humans, with current main focus in plants. He uses dioecious Silene latifolia to study sex chromosome evolution, population genetics of speciation and quantitative genetics of sexual dimorphism. He also uses endemic Hawaiian plant genus Schiedea (Caryophyllaceae), that undergone recent ‘explosive’ adaptive radiation, to study molecular adaptation and population genetics of speciation. Recently he also started to study adaptation and speciation in Senecio and sex chromosome evolution in Silene fungus Microbotryum violaceum.
Reality: While the above is quite true, the Doctor is actually primarily concerned with the study of exotic goblin fruits, the affects of the Hedge on living systems, and Fae-crafted human simulacra. He is known throughout the region to be an enormously skilled potioneer and smith, as well as an ingenious breeder of goblin fruits, able to enhance the fruits' properties and even create new species. As a well-known wizard, he specializes in studies Hedge magic and the enchantments of the Fae, working to increase the Freehold's supernatural defenses against Fae incursion. In addition to his studies of magical biologies and the occult, the Doctor is also widely and surprisingly known to be a respected computer engineer.
Abduction and Return Background
The Forest of Jewels and Parchment
As the blazing disk of the sun rises to its apex on this uncommonly hot and humid day in early September, sizzling noontime rays pierce the delicate ripples of high-flying clouds, wispy-thin against the sapphirine sky. The thick canopy of the trees in the forest is infused with dazzling hues of soft topaz-yellow and emerald-green, pouring like a fiery rain of jewels on the ground, the soil and dust burnt red-orange, umber, and viridine-brown by the heat. Over the buzzing drone of cicadas and the song of far-off birds, a strange sound echoes off the trunks of the fragrant trees in this forest: crunching grasses, snapping twigs, soft footsteps on dust.
A tall, muscular, middle-aged man attired in light, loose-fitting hiking clothing strolls into the clearing, planting his long walking stick in the rich brown dirt of the forest floor. Sniffing the air and peering carefully at the foliage, the man's eyes open wide as he spots a creeping tendril of a strange-leaved red-purple ivy. Approaching it reverently, the man kneels, adjusting the canvas satchel hanging to his left side. The man reaches into the bag, pulls out a pack of meticulously-organized colored pencils and a large pad of hand-made paper, and carefully sketches every subtle shade of the specimen's hue before collecting a small sample.
And then, a strange sound over the buzz of cicadas: crunching grass, snapping twigs, soft footsteps on dust...
The Tower of Bronze, Stone, and Glass
Abducted by The Headmaster and taken to the Arcadian version of the Discworld's school of wizardry, Unseen University, Alberich was immediately thrust into service. Forced to commit ghastly crimes of pedagogy, Alberich necessarily worked towards intellectual perfection in order to survive the Headmaster's monstrous perfectionism; he also cultivated a healthy paranoia, surviving the predations of his students and fellow wizards through cunning, ingenuity, and overcomplicated booby traps. Although his body grew weak, his mind and hands grew strong in his hard work as Chair of Simulacric Machinations, Lecturer in Hexemetric Calculatry, Reader in Inadvisable Potioneering, Lecturer in Applied Thaumatolographitronics, and Professor of Ephemeral Smithings for several decades.
While his Durance is still highly occluded both in dreams and in waking life, Alberich does clearly remember three things: the smell of fear, and of solder; the sound of creaking machinery and the whirring of robotic children; and the hideous Tower of Art, a decaying 800-foot tower of bronze, stone, and glass with precisely 8,888 steps...
The Ring of Bone
Alberich does not clearly recall how he escaped, neither precisely nor vaguely. He may have wandered off in a potion-induced haze. He may have finally killed the Headmaster in a glorious final uprising of students, faculty and staff. These are his dreams, but as he learned during his time at Unseen University, just because something is in your head, that does not mean it isn't real.
Alberich does remember enormous iron gates, a dark forest, and a black swamp. A pale horse, a ring of bone carried by two small children with electric eyes, a mountain of fire, a desert of water, a long night of soft black stars... There was a skeletal sculpture of luminous rainbow coral, with two great pearls for eyes... wasn't there?
A Feather on the Breath
Dreams rush before my eyes like ripples on the turgid skin of a boiling ocean. I drift this way and that, a mere feather on the breath of God. Absorbing illusions, the whispers of phantom voices. Sometimes the voices are glacial and deadly, sometimes volcanic, sometimes dripping with wet—and they sing. Here, in this deepest dream, only music moves. Heat and ice, throat and eye, and madness for a thousand years, frozen blood boiling in my threadlike veins. I cannot open my eyes. Or if I can, everything is distant snow, blur.
There is nothing else, neither night nor day, here—when suddenly all the hot and all the cold congeals into a single incandescent drop. I see the drop swell and burst into flame, the very same fire of divine substance that burns in the sun, the moon, and the stars, unfathomable, inextinguishable, insatiable. The great press of the universe takes form, slithering grey lava, a mane in ash. The sound grows primordial, an old world’s lonely music congealing and plunging. Shapes of canyons, mountains, stone, bone, gold, blood.
There’s a country spread out in a new, moonlit sky, far-off, soaring out of a thickening, blackening cloud: I see two trees entwined, rising from a knotted, crepuscular carpet of light and stone. To harden the earth is a stone’s function, but this stone has become winged and learned to fly!
I move toward it, I see it more clearly now: past a far-off hill, two towering trunks, forged from steel and gold, electric, surging, their limbs arched upward and then down towards me: soft, warm metal leaves and berries and acorns falling like whispers from the branches.
The air is now thick with the hushed falling of leaves through the blackening clouds, churning with lightning and stirring rain.
I hear music in that dark blue night calling me to the two tower-trees. It is music filled with visions, memories, echoes of thundering hammers, lovingly kindled fires, and the laughter of a thousand crystalline voices among cascading stars.
I want to go on. This music melts my dreams. I have slept dreams of dreamless stones, have heard songs of ignited blood, but never have I slept a dream such as this. I step lightly on cool gold, all barriers give way one by one, all black gates are reduced to dust one by one. My eyelids of my eyelids that were kept closed are opened. Lighter than air, than water, than lips, than light...
Motley
The Gilded Ring, a motley dedicated with supplying Changelings worldwide with the finest goods at the best prices.
Associates
The Dragon Lady
The White Rabbit
Jameson Cooper
Zahn
Hedwidge
The Sleeping Beauty
Enemies
Character Inspirations
Claviskín, Magister Major of the Order of the Farseers, from Embracing the Muse, a Bloomington, Indiana OldWoD Changeling chronicle.
Gandalf the Grey and Radagast the Brown, from the Lord of the Rings.
Saint Francis of Assisi
Rincewind, the Bursar, and Mustrum Ridcully
Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape
Doctor Who
Martin Buber
Every high school science teacher ever
The poetry of William Butler Yeats, Dante Alighieri, JRR Tolkien, John Milton, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, William Shakespeare, Hermann Hesse, and Hildegard of Bingen, and the music of Gustav Holst, Thomas Newman, Claude Debussy, Loreena McKennitt, and Eric Whitacre. These artists were profoundly influential particularly on my writing in the "Feather on the Breath" section of Alberich's return.
Soundtrack
Quotes
"Darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time... The stars wheeled overhead, and every day was as long as a life age of the earth... But it was not the end. I felt life in me again. I've been sent back until my task is done."
"Oh... you would not part an old man from his walking stick?"
"Your fingers would remember their old strength better if they grasped a sword."
"Hold them back! Do not give in to fear! Stand to your posts! Fight!"
"Run away!"
"Might you care for some tea? I find there is nothing quite like a superheated infusion of tannins and antioxidants to set one's synapses a-sparking."
"Don't be hasty..."
"Never tickle a sleeping dragon."
"I assure you, there is no cat in my hunch. I cannot begin to fathom why you would suggest such a thing." *meowing from hunch continues, louder than before*
"Very well, Mr. Cooper, let's delve. But not too greedily and deep, eh?"
"Upon closer examination, you will find that I am not in your Motley. To illustrate the proper grammar in this equal partnership situation, I direct your attention once more to the chart of English personal pronouns. Please note that I have happily circled in red the first person plural pronouns we, us and ours."
"Now, now, dragons, play nicely."
Rumors
The Doctor's "hump" is actually a portable miniature universe filled with an infinite supply of cats, green tea, and single-malt whiskey.
The Doctor is a robot.
The Doctor is psychically controlled by the tiny red bird nesting on his staff.
The Doctor is addicted to cheese danish.
The "tea" the Doctor constantly drinks is a tranquilizing mixture of whiskey, puréed cat, and artichokes.
The Doctor uses his homemade laptop computer for more than "Science!"
The Doctor isn't as senile as he seems.
