Guardian Enchanter
3rd Degree Adept of Fate, Time and Mind, 3rd Degree Apprentice of Life, Death and Space, Initiate of Prime
Path: Acanthus
Order: Guardians of the Veil
Position: Famulus
Legacy: Bearers of the Eternal Voice/Reality Stalkers
Cabal: Eye of the Storm
Cabal Role: Farseeker
Dynasty: Tuatha de Danann
Familiar: Shen Zhou
Soundtrack: I'm not the man you think I am - Bryan Adams
Age: 31
Hair: Brown. Currently rather short.
Eyes: Blue
Height: 182 cm.
Nickname: John
Real Name: Tim Campbell (Junior)
Known Aliases: John Marbory, currently lives as Timothy Brown
Political beliefs: Seems to be some kind of philosophical anarchist, with possible anarcho-individualist and/or anarcho-capitalist leanings.
Bane: Trinities
Signature rotes: Incognito Presence (almost constantly on among sleepers), Bestow Exceptional Luck
Magical tools
Fate: A rather worn deck of cards
Mind: Notebook used for taking notes for main journal
Time: Wrist-watch
Path: The Coin (''medallion'' / ''disc'')
Order: Long coat (The kind used with a suit jacket)
Praxis
Hermes' Praxis is divided into two very different categories: Private and public.
In public, he uses the most subtle methods possible, relying on the subtleness of Guardian mudras and his rather mundane-seeming tools. His magic in public is pretty mainstream Guardian stuff.
In private, he is a fair bit more theatrical. His rituals frequently involve building patterns out of minor elements, such as card decks, or taking a clock apart and building ritual symbols out of the parts.
Amusingly, he has a less dramatic approach to arcana other than Time and Fate. He has a special view of those two arcana, believing Fate to be an almost sentient force, and Time to be a related force, but non-sentient. Fate is the controller, and Time is the terrain in which Fate controls what happens.
Other arcana, like Mind, he looks upon as more mundane. Where time and fate requires you to give up a measure of control, working with the arcana instead of using them only as tools, other arcana are "simpler". With his Mind magic, he simply aims for an effect, exerts the required force, and if he is precise enough, it happens.
Character history
Hermes does not generally speak much about himself. He takes great pleasure in not being American, it seems He seems to speak English as his mother tongue, which does narrow it down. He's spoken a smattering of Spanish previously, though.
However, what is entirely sure, is that he is a con-man. He has no problems with deceit, but that he does not see that as immoral. Deceiving people who do not have the wits to understand that they should not be giving him money is no big problem, especially as they think they are cheating him half the time, however, theft, murder and suchlike is wrong. Telling the truth is not a virtue, but making the world a better place is. The rich fools he bothers generally don't notice the loss anyway.
After becoming a mage, though, he tends to be more careful and keep himself to smaller cons, mostly to keep himself out of the public eye now that he is staying in one place. He gets the satisfaction he once used to get from big cons from conspiracies in the magical world instead. In many ways he has grown a fair bit, no longer living just for triumphing over a mark, but he now has more of a purpose.
His experiences with the supernatural after meeting the group has left him more open about the existence of the supernatural than before. He has even got some faith back.
All they have been through, from the ghosts and the kidney loss to their later being cabalmates has bit by bit brought him closer to the rest of the group. He now considers them friends, especially Pliskin for some odd reason, and would (and has) go far in helping them. He generally tries to be the voice of caution.
He has a tendency to be skeptical of vulgar magic use, especially among the cabal. The reason is two-fold: Both due to Guardian doctrine, but also for them to stay safe. He has never admitted as much, but the reason for much of his badgering and complaining about cabalmates is an attempt to make them keep themselves safer.
He is quite proud of the fact that he has managed to stabilize dying cabalmates no less than three times so far, but knows full well that he has been saved on similar occasions by cabalmates who are far better than him in combat. He has so far shown an odd knack of getting out of combat without the greatest of injuries.
He has become a loyal Guardian since being initiated, placing their interests second only to the cabal's (and perhaps his own, but they tend to intersect). It is yet to be seen how far he is willing to go for the Guardians. However, his tasks for the Guardians so far seem to consist mostly of investigation, not surprisingly.
He sees himself as a guard protecting against more abstract things, not necessarily of magical nature, but things such as political manouvring that involves the cabal, discovery, rashness, and other somewhat mundane things, much as Rui Shi is the cabal's guard against violence.
This somewhat amusingly despite him being an Acanthus, but there is a schism between his mundane methods and his magical ones. He tends to plan things as well as possibly beforehand, but once in the moment, he has a tendency to do what seems right at right then, at least magically.
Within the Guardians, due to him choosing Low-Key as mentor, it has been more or less assumed that he has joined his faction, something Hermes (once he was past the veils) showed to be correct. He is loyal to Low-Key, and though he knows that his mentor is manipulative, has seen no reason to distrust him so far (Manipulative? In the Guardians?).
On the more practical side, upon joining the Guardians, he has set up some dead drops, as instructed. Some of them are presented here:
In Moth park, if you go to a certain tree and put in a document or envelope, it will be picked up at some time later. To signal that there is a drop there, you take some of the nuts from the tree and spread them around the base of a different (non nut-bearing tree).
Likewise, if you pull out a brick from a wall in a back alley off of Masonic Avenue, you can fit a small parcel in it, and it will be picked up. Of course, if you want it picked up, you have to move some of the trash that is there over to the left side of the alley, unlike normally, when it is piled on the right.
In addition, he has set up one-time pads with a few guardians, like Loki and Jane. He will be setting up more bit by bit when he works with other guardians more. Due to the Guardian memory techniques he has learned, he keeps his copy of these one time pads in his memory, though about a third of these have back-ups hidden in his office. Each of those holding a set of one-time pads from Hermes know which are backed up and which are not.
Lately, he has started being able to somewhat imitate the San Fran accent, which he normally uses, but he's not quite got it completely.