Hugo Travers

Hugo Travers (a.k.a. The Blackheart)

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Travers is a mercenary swordsman as well as a magic-user, and is in top physical and fighting shape. He is deaf in one ear, the result of overcharging a Charge: Snap spell and rupturing one of his eardrums in a way that healed improperly.

Special abilities

Hugo Travers is a battlemage specialized in hand to hand combat, with several spells of his devising in his arsenal. Though he has not contributed explicit spells to the Mage's Repertoire in the Association archives, his contributions about energy manipulation and the application of shearing force makes the spells he uses straightforward in nature - brutal applications of manipulative energy to tear apart or punch holes into flesh. His magical ability is quite strong, in the top tenth percentile of magic users, and even other combat-oriented wizards would not relish the chance to fight him.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Hugo Travers is an infamous wizard and mercenary of the Etoile Capital City. While in good standing in both the Wizard's Association of Etoile and the Mercenary's Guild, he is notable for several well-publicized incidents of sheer brutality, breathlessly reported on by the Journals as the true violent capability of a magic-user.
Born to common circumstance, Travers was a mercenary of the second second rank in the year 715, specializing in the arming sword, someone who was known to 'get the job done' and marked for rapid advancement in the organization. Upon the awakening of magic that year, he discovered his own talent for mage-casting, and joined the Association in its first incarnation specifically in order to research magic's application to the martial use. While he was not alone in this pursuit, he was the only person not formally affiliated with the Principality of Etoile - his battlemagic was entirely personal in nature, as opposed to the more military-oriented approach of some other wizards that came from the Principality Ground Forces and Navy.
His infamy was established in 720, with many considering his actions to have contributed to The Anti-Magic Riot of 721. Travers was contracted to guard a new research manufactory of the Arsenal Ward in Patino, the Machine City and keep the details of the prototype assembly line there secure and secret. Agents and contractors of The Midlers attempted to infiltrate the building overnight. Travers engaged the Midler contractor team, and in the morning the first guardsman on the scene discovered a scene of absolute destruction - Travers had brutally slain all of the Midlers in dramatic and obviously magical fashion, with one corpse described as 'being sheared six different ways at once'. Travers himself was nowhere to be found, though he announced his presence later in the day - he identified the Middle that had coordinated the attack and had murdered them, and proceeded to destroy the manufactory building of the Consortium that had originally commissioned the task, murdering the shift supervisor the Middle had fingered as the contract origin.
This was a massacre by any definition, with Travers killing eight and flattening a manufactory building before being arrested by the state - but subsequent investigation by the The Magistrates confirmed each party's involvement in the crime, and it was ultimately declared 'in the Principality's interest' to have Travers walk free.  
Travers himself maintains that his actions were only in extended self-defense and that he has no culpability for the anti-magic riots or magic's neutral-to-negative reception in Etoilean society, but he has kept a lower profile since 720. This is in large part due to his reputation attracting hostility - he has been assaulted several times by people looking to 'make their mark' by killing the Blackheart, with all attempts ending in the deaths of the assailants. Both the Mercenary's Guild and the Wizard's Association are trying to keep him somewhere out of the way, where he won't come under regular attack.

Education

Travers was a direct apprentice to the Mercenary's Guild out of his secondary education, and was trained in arms and small-unit tactics. His magical education was like anyone else's during the Discovery of Magic in 715 - experimental and haphazard, though over time he has contributed much to the knowledge of personal battlemagic.

Employment

Although a member in good standing of both the Wizard's Association of Etoile and the Mercenary's Guild, he is effectively unemployed - his reputation has meant that few contracts for mercenary protection or wizard's utility come his way, due to the complications involved (and the general unwillingness of people to work with him). His stipend from both organizations is enough to live on comfortably.

Accomplishments & Achievements

Other than the massacre at the Arsenal Ward, he has been involved in a number of similar though smaller-scale incidents. A robbery attempt in the Etoile Capital City resulted in five robbers being torn to shreds in a burst of violent magical energy, and a bandit attack on a travel caravan he happened to be on resulted in the slaughter of all of the bandits. His sobriquet of 'Blackheart' is earned; when given the choice, he does not leave survivors.

Morality & Philosophy

In the social upheaval regarding magic's appearance in the world, there came about a school of thought that establishes magic-users as pre-eminent by their nature, due to their enhanced abilities. Few wizards subscribe to this thought model (with the implications that modern Etoile would become tiered into the magic-users and the non-magical), but Travers himself has seemed to embrace the basic tenets. The lives of others simply seems to have no import or relevance to him, and he possesses a diffidence to the value of human life. Whether this is explicitly magical vs mundane or a manifestation of psychopathy is unknown.

Social

Contacts & Relations

While Travers is a member of a number of professional organizations such as the Wizard's Assocation and the Mercenaries, he has few actual friends - most are leery of his reputation.

Year of Birth

691 M 34 Years old

Gender

male

Eyes

Brown

Hair

Black

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Light brown

Height

5'10"

Weight

190lb

Aligned Organization

Wizard's Association of Etoile