Hobbled Nicholas
From Changeling Venue
| Seeming | Elemental Snowskin |
|---|---|
| Court | Autumn Court •••• |
| Freehold | Liberty Freehold, Philadelphia, PA |
| Player | Cliff Hebner |
Contents |
“But if it had to perish twice”
“I think I know enough of hate”
“To know that for destruction ice”
“Is also great”
“And would suffice.—Robert Frost
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to organize its contents.—H.P. Lovecraft”
“A Swirl of Fallen Leaves”
Alias(es): Nicholas Corvis, Nick Hob, ‘That Crippled Asshole’
Real Name: Nicholas Robert Fornais
Age: Somewhere between 17 and 23
Concept: Embittered Occultist, A New Understanding of Fear
Entitlement: None
Seeming: Elemental
Kith: Snowskin
Virtue: Fortitude
Vice: Pride
“A Weeping Angel”
Mask: Nicholas is tall and pale, of an indeterminate age- somewhere between his late teens and early twenties, depending on the light and who’s looking. His dark blue eyes, thin features, and raven black hair collectively echo the starved good looks of an Eastern Orthodox saint, something Nicholas himself seems entirely unaware of. His attire varies greatly- from jeans and t-shirts to formal wear without any seeming rhyme or reason- but he maintains two sartorial constants: Nicholas always wears the colors of the Autumn Court somewhere on him, and he’s never seen without his overlong trench coat, which is usually drawn tightly around his body, as if for warmth, or protection from the world.
Mein: Nick is even paler in his fae mein, with undertones of icy blue highlighting his skin. His dark blue eyes seem lit from within, and the suggestions of frostbite darken his fingertips, as well as making his eye sockets seem deeper and more shadowed. Snowflakes fill his black hair, and the air around him takes on a decided chill.
Mantle: Nicholas is perpetually surrounded by a faint chill, which carries the suggestion of the scent of burning leaves with it. When he reaches for his Contracts, the chill deepens, and ghostly white candles flicker into life in a circle around his feet, burning with brightly colored flames. When he’s angry, or exerting a great deal of Glamour, the candles seem to solidify, with the suggestion of cool golden lines along the ground, linking the candles together in an intricate, arcane pattern.
Born Down in a Dead Man’s Town
Basic Timeline:
Nicholas was always a precocious, too-bright child, reading before he was three and asking uncomfortably perceptive questions of his parents by the time he was five. Far from a perfect child, his extremely high native intelligence and general quick-witted nature led him into trouble more than once, and an early fascination with the macabre intensified as he approached puberty, culminating in a collection of homemade jewelry crafted from the bones and skulls of small animals. By the time he was thirteen, the starved, angelic beauty that would mark his adult form could be seen in Nick’s face and figure, which understandably attracted the attention of his classmates; Nicholas, despite- or perhaps because of- his intelligence found himself socially awkward and unpopular for most of his childhood, and he greeted this new interest on the part of his peers with the hostile suspicion and fear of emotional hurt that would become a trademark part of his personality later in life.
Despite his thorny demeanor, a few fellow outcasts managed to brave their way past Nick’s barbs to find the quiet, lonely child that lived within. These became his few friends and companions, and the small knot was virtually inseparable during the turbulent years of junior high and into the first few years of high school. Of special interest to young Nicholas was Laura Osgood, a coltish sophomore only a few months older than Nick himself. A faltering, cautious courtship brought the two damaged children together, and what started as a relationship of mutual comfort was quickly transformed by need and hormones into a passionate and earnest, if sometimes clumsy, relationship.
Nicholas was taken when he was fifteen, only a few hours after he and Laura lost their virginities to each other, and the taste of her salt was still on his mouth when he detoured off the main road to shortcut through a large local graveyard. As he walked, snow started to fall, and as he walked through the shadow of a sepulcher and beneath the granite archway that led to a small family plot, he passed out of this world and into the Hedge, where the flush of his first sexual encounter (along with his intellectual brilliance and physical beauty) filled the Hedge with the smell of fresh prey, a siren song for predators. Nick wandered deeper into the Hedge, pridefully pushing forward, refusing to believe that he could be lost or that anything supernatural could be happening (despite his burgeoning paganism and fascination with the occult). By the time he was willing to admit that he had made a mistake and turn around, he had become hopelessly lost in the maze of thorns, wandering the Hedge almost at random, growing steadily more unnerved and afraid with every misstep and sight of alien flora and fauna.
Despair and the realization that he was hopelessly lost settled in for Nicholas almost simultaneously, and it was when he was at his lowest that the Hedge began to prey on his mind. Nicholas heard Laura’s voice coming from deeper and deeper in the wood, first calling his name playfully, then shouting for him in terror. The last thing Nick heard before falling headlong into a covered pit was the sound of Laura screaming in pain.
From there, Nicholas’ usually perfect memory grows mercifully spotty. He has some memories of being dragged in chains through the Hedge, and a horrific kaleidoscope view of what may have been Arcadia’s dreaded Stockyards. His durance is more firmly burned into his brain, but still remains a jumbled toybox of images- sleeping naked and shivering in snow banks, denied even the dubious comfort of cold stone beneath him; cleaning the enormous, ornate doors to his Lady’s library, forbidden from going inside, denied, in fact, the pleasure of reading or gaining new knowledge at all; his blood cooling on icy white marble, until he grew cold enough that his breath never steamed and his blood never boiled, and the smile on his Keeper’s bloody mouth when she realized that he had survived being frozen and tortured, that he had been made into something both more and less than the frozen dead that adorned her castle. The exact details of his escape are likewise spotty, but when pressed, Nick has said that he remembers breaking into the Lady’s library during the darkest stretch of perpetual night, and that he found his memories of his human life locked in a leather tome, hidden deep in the library; from there, the book guided him to a secret passage into the Hedge, and once in the thorns, his Keeper’s horrific mistreatments kept him moving forward, even as the thorns tried to shred his flesh and sanity both to ribbons. He crawled from the Hedge, naked and bleeding, to find a more fearful and awe-inspiring world than he had ever believed.
Since he returned from the Hedge, Nicholas has found a world that had almost no place left for him. He emerged from the thorns with a right leg that can hardly bear his weight, and in fact may have crawled a good deal of the way back through the Hedge; although speculation has been rampant, he’s consistently refused to explain what happened to his leg, or why it seems to pain him so. The rest of his “normal” life, he found, was as useless as his ruined limb: his fetch had slipped smoothly into his place with both friends and family, graduating with honors and starting college. Laura, whose voice he followed into captivity, had broken things off with the fetch, sensing something different about it, but her own rocky road left her hardly emotionally prepared for the real Nick to return with fantastic, horrific stories of Arcadia. Nick’s small band of outcasts broke apart under the social pressures of high school, leaving him, at least initially, without a reference point with which to begin his life again. Slowly, with the help of Philadelphia’s other Lost, Nick learned to rebuild his life- first a new identity, then a GED, college classes, a job at the Swarthmore College library. Piece by piece, he was able to build the shell of a life around the gaping wounds in his heart and psyche- and then hardened that shell into thick walls of anger and resentment reinforced with a constant arsenal of insults and cutting humor.
His time in Arcadia changed Nick, nearly burning out his capacity for empathy or compassion. He can still grasp the concepts, and almost remember what they felt like before he was taken, but the dark deep water of memory that hides his Durance also discourages Nicholas from diving too deep into his own mind or recollections. Events in Philadelphia have recently forced Nick to confront the fact that he needs his fellow Lost, arguably far more than they need him, and that uncomfortable truth may well shatter the hard lattice of ice and insults that he’s built around himself- or it may drive him back within himself, and slow his relearning of empathy and human interaction to a glacier’s crawl.
Current Activities:
Nicholas lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, a few blocks from the college where he works. He is not, formally, a part of any Motley, although he can usually be found with Philadelphia’s other Autumn Courtiers, or providing occult advice to the Summer Queen. Although being surrounded by books reminds him of his Durance, the memories of his Lady’s library are comforting, in a way- they remind him that he found a way out. He’s all but abandoned the idea of getting his old life back, and has instead started focusing on a new and better understanding of fear- with the events of September 11th, 2001, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the constantly alarmist media, Nick feels that the modern age belongs to Autumn, if only his fellow Ashen would realize it and begin harvesting from the goldmine of fear that America has become. He serves the Liberty Freehold as the Autumn King’s Left Hand, a combination second in command and enforcer, although recent public arguments between Nicholas and Tradewind Tony have led to some speculation that the Left Hand is no longer happy playing a secondary role.
Merit Details:
Striking Looks X4
Lame
Themes:
Bitter cripple’s anger, the fear of the modern world, doing the right thing just to spite the bad guys.
No One Dances Entirely Alone
Edwin, Grand Historian of Philadelphia
Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: No More Shall We Part
Gutter Glitter: Switchblade Symphony
Orbital: The Box (uncut version)
Metallica: One
Metallica: Ecstasy of Gold
Danzig: How the Gods Kill
Gnarls Barkley: I'm Going On
Nothing Lies Like Black Ice
Open For Editing
"I've had enough of this bullshit. Graveyards? Black cats? Spooky voices and clanking chains? All cliche. Worse than cliche- predictable. Those aren't the fears of the modern world. Two foreign wars, a recession, people losing their homes in record numbers, and over four hundred murders a year in Philadelphia? Those are the fears of the here and now. That's all the proof I need: no matter what the season, this is the time of the Ashen Court. Here and now belongs to us, no matter what the weather claims."
"Nobody twists a curse quite like Nicholas. Of course, it helps that he's one of the most bitter, spite-filled, hateful kids I've ever met." - Harry of Harry's Occult Shop, Philadelphia (NPC)
"A fine scholar, one I would proudly share research with. Perhaps the only flaw in his logic, was his choice of a Court. Perhaps when he is done dancing in fallen leaves he will come to his senses." – Edwin, Grand Historian of Philadelphia
"Nicholas and I have a lot in common. We generally despise everyone else. Difference is, I just try to ignore them. He makes it a daily ritual to drill it into their head how much he loathes them. All the time. Whenever he sees them. Sometimes he even calls them just to say how much he hates them." – Tradewind Tony, Autumn King of Philadelphia
Whispered in the Darkness Between the Walls
Open For Editing
1. While the entire Liberty Freehold was trapped in a dream, Nicholas made a deal with the King of Prussia to free them- only to find that another onieromancer had already rescued them all.
2. Nicholas knows the meanings of the prophecies of war that have been swirling around Philadelphia lately- he just chooses not to explain, preferring to leave his fellow Lost to their comeuppance.
3. Nicholas believes, perhaps too strongly, in the old tales about Faerie, and has set himself in service to Lucifer.
4. Nicholas cannot stand to be touched, and will lose his usually icy calm and fly into a rage if anyone does so.
5. Nicholas has survived two attempts on his life by the Summer Court, one of them carried out by the Summer Queen herself. No one's sure why the Crimson Court has targeted Nicholas- or how he's managed to survive this long.
Character Inspirations
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson;
20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill;
House, M.D.;
John Constantine: Hellblazer (comic book; various authors and artists);
"A Study In Emerald" by Neil Gaiman.
