OOC Info

Handle/Name: Yon Fellow
Other Characters Played: N/A (Also apping Harry Dresden this cycle)
Contact Info: DM, Discord at #yonfellow, or plurk at yonfellow
Age: Plenty old enough. Pushin' 40.

Character Info

Character: Harry (Blackstone Copperfield) Dresden.
Series: The Dresden Files
Canon Point: Changes, right when the fire at his apartment is happening.

Appearance: Absurdly tall (Roughly 6'9") and lanky as hell. He's got an angular face that's rarely well-groomed (He just doesn't take the time,) is usually a month or three past time for a haircut (and not good at it,) and his face is generally described as dangerous-looking in the creepy rather than sexy way. He doesn't make eye contact with people if he can help it, though he's pretty good at looking at a spot just adjacent to their eyes when he talks to them. His left hand is a mess of horrible burn scars that make it resemble a grisly halloween decoration, and he usually wears a glove to cover it. He also usually wears a long black duster and a silver pentagram-shaped necklace.

History: Backstory and .The series so far (Up to Changes, of course.)

Personality:

• Superficially Harry tends to exist somewhere between 'goofy dork behavior' and 'flippant sarcasm' when dealing with people. Part of this is just that he generally doesn't take himself very seriously and really does embrace his love of ridiculous things, but part of it is also that he knows he can be sort of creepy-looking and his magic is scary to normal people, and he doesn't want to freak them out. Another part of him, of course, is just plain not good at people unless he's making an effort.


• Harry takes very little seriously and tends to deflect serious situations with smartassery. He mouths off to the White Council, he mouths off to supernatural monsters, he mouths off to friend and enemy alike. He also doesn't take himself seriously at all, and will level just as many wisecracks at himself as he will at anybody else. The only time he usually turns off the sass is when he's comforting people who are legitimately upset or hurt.


• One of the few things that Harry does take seriously is magic itself- he's not a religious person, but his belief in the power and purity of magic as a force of creation is about as close as he gets. Even as he's antisocial and belligerent with the White Council, he actually approaches magic and his interactions with it with the utmost respect. Seeing magic perverted to evil ends is a rage button of his, and he even treats much of his own magic with a solemnity that he doesn't apply to any other part of his life.


• Harry has a somewhat old-fashioned, even chivalrous, view of right and wrong; it's very heavy on duty and integrity. He's loyal, honest, and valorous in the face of wrongdoing, with an extremely pronounced sense of justice, and he refuses to give up on doing the right thing even when it winds up getting the shit kicked out of him (Which is often.) It also includes some old-fashioned inclinations to protect and overtrust women by default, though he's aware this is a flaw and he's spent a lot of time improving on it.


• Harry's default response to most negative emotions is to become confrontational. Injustice? Confrontation. Cruelty? Confrontation. Fear? Confrontation. Impossible odds? Go down being as annoying as possible. He's learned to keep a leash on it, he doesn't fly off the handle half-cocked unless you really tweak him off, but even when he's in control of it, the temper is still very real.

Powers & Abilities:

Harry's most dramatic/noteworthy powers come from being a wizard:

• Evocation Harry is a powerful, if admittedly not very skilled or delicate, wizard. Quick and dirty evocation, such as combat magic, is described as a 'specialty'- he's extremely good at throwing around firepower, and usually with literal fire. He also favors waves of raw force, though these tend to be even more clumsy and unfocused than the fire (they do, however, have the advantage of not igniting Harry's surroundings- a problem he's notorious for causing when he's not careful.) He's also capable of sophisticated combat shield magic, though it's far easier for him to do so using a focus such as his favored shield bracelet, which he will not have with him. He's also capable of more subtle forms of evocation, such as veilsHis knack for subtle magic improved while training his apprentice, Molly Carpenter, who favors such magic, but it's still not his strong suit.
• Ritual magic Wizards are capable of far more impressive effects using what's called 'ritual magic'- essentially, they create longer-lasting and more complicated spells by investing more time, more resources, more planning, and more ritual architecture into the spell. It enables him to get around many of the limits of his clumsy evocation, and even to tap into sources beyond his own will and the magical energies in the world around him. This flexibility makes it a handy fallback, but it's the sort of magic that Harry struggles with the most.
• Enchanting Similar to ritual magic, Harry is able to enchant items and imbue them with magical abilities. These can either be single-use items, such as potions, or more long-term/reusable devices, such as his blasting rod, his duster, or his shield bracelet. The single-use items tend to be more spectacular, since no effort or energy needs to be invested into sustaining them.
• The Sight An ability all wizards possess is the Second Sight, which they can open to perceive magical energies and the reality of the world. The result is seen in intuitive, symbolic language that the Wizard can interpret, though the sheer amount of information can be overwhelming- and once you've Seen something, the memory is always fresh in your mind, which means that if you See something particularly nasty it can take some real mental effort to handle the traumatic ever-fresh memory of it.
• Regeneration Wizards are extremely long-lived, with a normal lifespan counted in centuries. One reason for this is that they have an enhanced ability to heal wounds. It's nothing along the lines of a mutant healing factor- but a broken bone might take a few less weeks to heal, and when it does heal it will do so completely, with no lingering scarring or fractures on the bone. This also applies to damage that would normally be untreatable. Harry's left hand was scarred by heat exposure to the point of necrosis, and his doctor wanted to amputate it, but over the years since it has grown back to the point that the muscles and tendons reformed and it merely looks like a disgusting mess of burnt flesh.
• The Hex Wizards and other powerful magical beings interact oddly with the world around them, and this can be as much a curse as a blessing. Wizards and complex technology don't mix. Technology, particularly electronics and other complex post-50s technology, glitches and malfunctions in increasingly spectacular ways around him. Harry, as potent but undisciplined as he is, particularly struggles with this. He nukes hard drives from another room, sets off security devices at twenty paces, and even his old 60s VW Beetle has spent as much time in the shop due to 'inexplicable' malfunctions as it has due to the supernatural enemies he deals with. He can weaponize the Hex, however, to deliberately attack a sufficiently complex technological device, such as to shut off a security camera or make a high-end automatic weapon jam on purpose.
• Limits Magic is extremely powerful, but it does have some very demanding limits. The most obvious is that the energy for magic has to come from somewhere. Usually this is a combination of latent magic in the air around him and his own physical and emotional energy, particularly in evocations. However, even ritual magic still needs to tap into something to fuel it. One of the reasons rituals and enchantments take so long is because Harry has to pour his own magic into it as he's performing the ritual, over and over again, far more than he would for a simple evocation spell. Another limitation is the Seven Laws of Magic. These laws aren't just good policy regarding magic. Breaking these laws marks the practitioner, permanently corrupting their soul and making it far easier for them to surrender to such urges in the future. Harry was forced to kill his abusive mentor, Justin DuMorne, as a teenager, and it's implied that this violation of the First Law is the reason why magical violence comes so easily to him now.


• Other Skills Harry doesn't rely solely on his magic, since it can be dangerous to do so. He is a legitimately skilled private investigator, since it ties so heavily into his career in Chicago. He keeps himself well-practiced in shooting, hand-to-hand combat (particularly with his staff and his blasting rod, since they make perfectly adequate melee weapons), and above all else running, which he has to do a lot more often than he would like. He's adequately versed with lockpicking, he's been forced to pick up basic car mechanics to keep his car working around his magic, and he learned some basic mundane stage magic and sleight-of-hand from his father. He also knows basic ballroom dance, oddly.


Plans:
I haven't been in a game with Harry in over a decade, so partly this setting just sounded like a fantastic place to bring him out to play. He's got terminal White Knight Syndrome, so anything dark or spooky will get his dander up on principle, and he's sort of sinister and suspicious looking despite his best efforts anyway so him being a bit unwelcome among the locals would be fun to play off of. Also fun, him being surrounded by 50s attitudes while actively trying to unlearn some of his own outdated instincts will make for an extra challenge for him.
He's also just a character that thrives in an investigative mystery setting with supernatural overtones, since his native canon is literally an urban fantasy/noir detective fusion.

Suitcase Items: Aside from the starter essentials provided in their suitcase (clothing, hotel key, local device, cash, toiletries), list up to 3 personal items brought from home canon. (No animals, heavy weapons, or functioning modern tech unless essential to function). All items must be able to fit in a suitcase.
1. His duster, which contains multiple defensive enhancements that he created himself. It can absorb kinetic impact up to and including gunshots, though it's not 100% effective- just because a bullet won't penetrate it, doesn't mean it won't knock him on his ass and break ribs in the process.
2. His blasting rod. While he can perform magic without any specific magical implement, this rod was specifically crafted and enchanted to help him focus and control his evocations, particularly combat magic (and especially the fire he tends to favor)
3. A Smith and Wesson Model 29 Revolver. Unlike some wizards, Harry is a big believer in the power of modern weapons. He favors an old-school revolver because more complicated guns don't play nicely with his magic. (see the section about the Hex in his abilities section.)

Samples: HERE