CHARACTER INFORMATIONCharacter name: Bedwyr Bedrydant
Previous and/or Current Character(s) if applicable: Active: Bedwyr, Stormie, Lye
Previous profs: Bedwyr Bedrydant (divination), Orion Greenwood (Wandcraft)
Character age: Impossible to know (55. Born 1917)
Character education: No. Learned what he knew from informal lessons and traditions
Strength and weaknesses (details please):Seems to flip between easily distracted and eerily focussed. Deep understanding of esoteric forms of magic. Compassionate and strongly inclined toward the natural order of things.
Holds little appreciation for fine details. Completely illiterate. Almost completely ignorant of modern conveniences (and cultural norms). Dislikes children.
Physical description:Large, hairy, smelly. Possibly related to a bear. Possibly related to a skunk. His clothes, hair and beard are littered with plantstuff and other debris. Clothes are homespun and well worn. No shoes, ever. No wand.
Personality (nice, rude, funny etc. Paragraph please.):Bedwyr might easily be mistaken for a madman. While he might claim to 'go with the flow', his will in indominable when he determines the 'flow' is counter to the way things are. Occasionally jitters to himself. Rare moments of intense brilliance and lucidity. Harbors a deep sadness and will not talk about it.
Hopes and dreams. Why are you teaching at Hogwarts?:Bedwyr considers formal education to be a waste of time. A bunch of snooty, overwashed lowlanders all staring at writings so boring that noone thought to memorise them.
Does not have long-term goals, dreams or ambitions beyond comfort and the continuation of life as it is.
Bedwyr lost a war recently. He fought, his side lost. Not many survivors on his side. He's seeking access to some of the magical artefacts and sites that Hogwarts offers.
Biography: It was daybreak in Winter, though noone could tell the date or the year, when Bedwyr had his first brush with magic. Over the paddocks where his family kept their livelihood, a pair of young lovers fled silently through the air astride a beauteous carpet of the richest blue. Bedwyr was young, barely a pup by his pa's reckoning, and his stories were too fanciful to be believed. The boy's hair was tussled, his words were disregarded, and the instruction to watch the sheep firmly restated. It would be supper soon enough.
There was a letter, but neither Pa nor Ma could read it. The town priest, a man of many letters, burned the thing and called it sinful. Bedwyr had not written the letter, had only passed on what the owl had given to him, but he was to blame still. He kept the envelope, and treasured it, and never once connected it to the lovers on their wondrous carpet before he was a young man.
English folk showed up soon after the letter, and brought an invitation that did not require letters or numbers to understand. They wanted Bedwyr for a school of magickry where a boy would learn malediction and seerage and all manner of unnatural things. His parents, right and good folks, had good reason to refuse the offer on Bedwyr's behalf. They were humble folk and knew their lot and Bedwyr would follow in their humble, good ways. So it was, and Bedwyr did not meet another person who called themself warlock or witch for several decades had passed.
Yet a druid is not a witch.
In his eleventh summer, there came another visitor - a man of renown, who healed what English folk in their fancy hospitals could not and read the stars for harvest and kept flocks healthy and lived always by the will of the tides. This was a man that Bedwyr's parents would not dare refuse for, as they explained Bedwyr as he tearfully packed his scant possessions, druids served powers older by far than the land and sheep and the will of man. No proper celt would refuse the call of a druid and the Bedrydant line had long been proper celts.
There passed a time of tutelage. There was physical growth but physical growth exists in all things. A shadow can grow but never learn. So it was the lot of a druid, and a druid's apprentice, to learn and surpass the power of the shadows. Bedwyr did what he could.
In his twentieth summer, Bedwyr returned to his parents' home. All that stood was dust and mud and trees. The hovel in which he had been born was not destroyed - it was unmade through time. In due time, the people who had built the home would do so again. Such was the nature of time and untime, but not the fascination of druids.
Druidry is a slow magick. As a young river is weak and lacking in influence, a young druid means little to his circle. For long years, Bedwyr grew old and the circle grew smaller. And for all those years, the circle of Yr Wyddfa grew smaller. Old druids do not live forever and only the patient could be young druids.
In 1958, the circle were three. Bedwyr, the low druid, was tasked by the ancient high druid and deep druid to seek out new blood with which to replenish the circle and protect the natural flow of power across the isles.
In 1960, the war began. Sages and dreamwalkers from far corners of the world dashed against the cliffs of magical violence. Terrible prices were paid for terrible treasures.
It is 1972 and the ancient high druid and deep druid are dead or hiding. Five apprentices were found. Two are dead, two are broken, and one will be punished if ever Bedwyr finds them. Wars between druids are strange affairs, and the scars left behind on the old man are strange beyond reckoning. He has been stripped of dreams, both literal and figurative, and now walks the lowlands searching for a method to injure as he has been injured.
Bedwyr intends no harm to the staff or students of Hogwarts, but every victory comes with a cost.
SAMPLE ROLEPLAYIt was the largest office in Hogwarts and, perhaps to students and newcomers, the most intimidating. The shelves were filled with paperwork, and lots and lots of books. A few of the shelves had various odds and ends that had been saved from previous owners. The sorting hat had a place of honour, but less of one than before. The walls held all the portraits of past Headmasters and Headmistresses, as well as her Russian portraits. Anneka Ivanova's was closest to Karina's desk.
In the middle of the room sat a large desk. Everything was in order. Almost a ruthless order. Important papers were closest to her, with her favourite quill. Then other documents further away. And at the edge is her favourite Venus flytrap and a picture of Vlad.
A clock sat on the desk, which currently showed the time to be 2:05. The meeting was supposed to begin at 2:00 precisely.
Karina was not always punctual. Yes, she was aware of the time, she would just deliberately come late. She valued control. And what better method of control than making people wait for you. But she expected others to be punctual to the second. Or early. So naturally Karina Ivansko was not happy.
"You have five minutes to assure me that you'll never be late again." Karina said to the applicant gesturing to the ancient and uncomfortable chair across from her. Her fingernails drummed irritably on the desk. And she had a look on her face that imitated a Russian winter.
(Yes, she had learned well from the great Anneka Ivanova).
Roleplay Response:The stone smelled old and magical, like the smell of the first starling murmuration of the season. The faceless horde who prowled this warren like unbearable and ignorant hares walked through the halls as if it were not one of the most impressive magical site since Talesin had stalked about. Like hares, the witches and warlocks of the lowlands flocked about without a clue to their significance or their insignificance. A dash of sun wobbled through the window, and Bedwyr gazed out the window and over the sporadic delination between plain and woodland that might be called a forest's edge.
With something like guilt, Bedwyr acknowledged that he had missed this awful place.
He let his sausage-like fingers trail over the dusted windowsill anddragged himself back toward the meaningless interview. A meeting. An insult. Bedwyr had shaped young minds before. He knew what it was to sift through the chaff to find true and healthy grain. He would do so again, after he was finished being insulted.
Doors. Curtains. Passwords.
"You have five minutes to assure me that you'll never be late again."Threats.
He accepted the chair, the insult, and the command. They boded well. Karina would be a brutal and effective leader. The kind one might trust to work young, weak minds they way they ought.
"Never is a long time," he mused, basking in the harshness that seemed inherent to her gaze, "And I have no wish to lie to you. Should I begin instead with what your school stands to gain?"
