0dense

Phil's starting a new campaign next week! We're starting in an expy of the Republic, with the rival paradigm being a more papacy-style authoritarian system, because we're philosophy nerds like that. TBH I'm more than slightly worried about finals, but this'll be a good diversion, and I promise to keep my more Terrible habits in check and do my best!
I'm playing this guy:

Name: Sutelim Amades
- Official registry name: Sutelim
- Common name: Telim, weight on the second syllable
- Private name: Su
  - Used by: immediate family. And the emissary (whether the emissary knew or eventually figured out the significance is a question I do not have an answer to).

further notes under the cut!

Pronouns: he/him
Race: human
Alignment: LG tendencies by education, NG by temperament
Class: sorcerer
- Wild strain
Strengths: water affinity
Weaknesses: earth
- Not fire if I can help it; I may be pulling from Thales first but also Heraclitus for that balance
Adjectives: gay, curious,
Background:
- Position/job: Home guard reservist, fisher on the reg
- Title: none
- Family:
  - Specialization: producers: fishers
  - Older brother Gemara carrying on the family business. Neither brother is very impressed with the other.
  - Younger sister Temaya a junior disciple to the Pythia. Telim gets along better with her than the rest of their family.
    - To the tune of: holy one, / lord of Delos, / seeing all, and bringing light to our eyes, / golden-haired, laying pure oracles bare: / hear my prayer for humanity with a kind heart.
- Early life:
  - At a young age, Telim displayed various abilities as a sorcerer, and was taken to be raised as an auxiliary. However, before reaching majority, the trainers realised that his powers had not developed in a manner that would merit promotion in the central forces, and transferred him to the less magically-demanding home guard. Upon completing this training, instead of moving on in the military, he was sent back to live with his family, until any civic disturbance should merit his mobilizing.
  - True, Telim had been struggling to keep up with the rest of his more magically-adept cohort, and he doesn’t disagree with the decision to take him out of that unit, but still, he was raised to be a soldier, and returning to life as a producer is more than slightly awkward.
  - Downsides: Telim and his family hadn’t really known one another before then. They don’t particularly like being seen as the kind of authority he’s used to looking up to, but he means it as regarding them well. He’s quietly concerned (convinced) they’re disappointed that he was sent back; he’s quietly disappointed in himself, in any case.
    - Maya never knew second brother before he left, so they don’t have any particular expectations of one another. She’s somewhat distant from the family itself, as an acolyte in training, and they get along well when they do see each other.
  - Upsides: well, any ability with water is a help in the work of fishing, so that’s not a loss at least
  - By majority, had found a place in the crew of a small ship in the collective fishers. Has a knack for navigation.
  - Telim has kept up with his training, but also decided the system of promising children one life or another is pretty strange, and feels less loyalty to the local garrison than he did when he was younger.
- Recent developments:
  - For a handful of months, another month or so before the beginning of the campaign, Telim was in conversation with a visiting papal wizard attached to the neighboring larger city’s embassy. Telim and the wizard's discussions included but were not limited to the education and social roles they played according to their magical affinity/proficiency, including efforts to learn each other's methods, albeit to very limited success.
    - This opportunity let both of them start to recognize the flaws in their societies
  - As well, recently, Telim was in an incident which revealed a relatively latent spectrum of his powers:
    - A ship was trying to approach the port, but was not familiar with the local geography, and through the course of a dark night with two low new moons (O δαμασάνδρα!), was caught in a freak storm and ran aground on an shoal. The harbormaster heard the distress call when they started to flounder, and a number of local vessels decided to try to rescue passengers. Telim and his friends had just finished unloading the day’s work, and instantly turned around to go back out.
    - Between the charms laid on their hull to attract night fish and a Light cast on their bow, they managed to find and be found by a number of passengers. Just as they were trying to pull another person aboard, someone on the other side screamed, and the crew turned to see a massive wave rising towards them.
    - By instinct, Telim raised his arms in hydrokinesis, and let the wave’s momentum rise and pass over them entirely, letting their little ship pass through a calm channel, and completed the turn by lifting the last passenger onto the deck.
    - That felt to have been their last warning in the storm, and the confused crew turned back to land, having found about as many people as they could take on in any case. No-one was quite clear on just how he had done it, much less Telim himself, and everyone was quite distracted enough by bringing their passengers to dry land and coordinating them with the relief efforts, to neglect to bring it up then and there.
    - Soon after, Telim tried to replicate the action with any amount of water, without success. Even if it was a one-off act, he’s very curious as to what caused it at all, but he hasn’t reported any change in his abilities to the auxiliary ministry. Whether his motives for keeping this quiet are, in fact, that he isn’t sure he could bring the powers into play on request, or that he’s not sure he wants them to have this information about his life, isn’t clear.
  - About a month before the start of the game, [Wizard friend who needs a name] was invited to leave the republic, as the city was no longer willing to welcome a northern presence with offensive abilities. The closing of their local embassy was done very quietly, but those who knew what to look for watched as a number of auxiliaries in common dress followed the official escort out of the city limits.
    - Anyone who knew what to look for didn’t follow to see if the northern contingent was escorted further, not wanting to draw that attention to themselves.
  - Telim was surprised and upset when the embassy was closed and his friend dismissed. His parents and brother are less than interested in the rising tensions, but his sister and a number of his crew have quietly agreed that something is starting to slide out of balance.
Patron / primary cult: Itar for work, Iotz for his element. Ifri in a sci-fi au
Interests:
- Astronomy
  - Will Not like it when the stars change, if they go so far as that
Insp:
- Heraclitus:
  - To water, it is death to become earth
  - God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger, and it alters just as when it is mixed with incense is named according to the aroma of each. (DK22B67) - for the discussions with monotheism
- Thales:
  - Believes the world floats on water
    - Leading to earthquakes
  - The world is a sphere
- Waterbending
from “Storm Catechism,“ Kim Addonizio:
- The gods were here first, and they’re bigger. / They always were, and always will be / living it up in their father’s mansion. / You only crawled from the drain / a few millenia ago, / after inventing legs for yourself / so you could stand, inventing fists / in order to raise them and curse the heavens. / Do the gods see us? / Will the waters be rising soon? / The waters will be rising soon. / Find someone or something to cling to.

I can't figure out a good name for his wizard friend from the north. The language insp is supposed to be broadly germanic for the monotheists, but the only one that fits in my head is Gabriel and I'm still not sold on it. But he does need a name bc I like to have one PC and NPC as a set to offer a DM, so I'll have to finish his profile soon too.
also he needs a name bc he and Telim came This close to being boyfriends while he was stationed in the republic. Telim asked him to call him his private name on the docks one evening, this sort of thing is supposed to be a date if they weren't too dense!! But no, Telim spent all that time deciding to be patient with him, bc it's different in the north and he's not going to rush him into anything :))) And Gabriel (we'll call him that for now) spent the same time being sure ~~Telim~~ Su wasn't Really flirting with him, it's just that they do things differently here and he wouldn't want to make it awkward :))))
and I know they're both my own OCs but wow are they dumb!
Also, for the sake of my own backstory, I think they met first when Telim had gone up into the second city to visit Te - that's Maya to everyone else, thank you - because the teaching temples are illustrious enough to merit placement closer to the governance centers, so she'd be particularly frustrated by their reciprocal foolishness.

Also, I still need to figure out an audio aesthetic for him, bc it's so weird to have a char but not a playlist; usually I start with the musical style of a region (see: the baroque playlist for the Changeling campaign in Venice, or the filk selection for my exoplanet) and find songs with the right attitude within that genre. But this one's up to Phil and actually this is relatively little worldbuilding on my part, for once. Not an angry issue! But I need more than just Mykonos and Ho Hey because they remind me of the Eagle of the Ninth and that's all I've got to start on lol.