Dorian Pavus (Dropped)

Dorian has experience with Inferno, Storm, Spirit, and Winter schools. The Inferno school, as the name suggests, focuses on controlling fire; with this Dorian can set enemies ablaze, cause large explosions, prime areas with explosive magical traps, and create walls of fire. Storm school focuses on calling down lightning on enemies as well as barrages of elemental blasts. Spirit school has in its offensive applications the ability to emit either radial or focused blasts of non-elemental psychic magical force that strike an enemy mentally. And finally, Winter school focuses on channeling the chilling forces of ice to damage enemies.

Scattered over a few schools of magic, Dorian's defensive abilities are the ability to cast barriers, dispel either negative enchantments on allies or positive enchantments on enemies, revive allies knocked out in battle, and heal injured allies. There are some caveats to this side of his magic however. His barriers can be either quickly cast or sustained; if not sustained they will decay within a few moments, and when sustained he can take no other actions. He can revive unconscious allies in battle as long as they're not dead or maimed too badly, but he cannot heal the actual damage while in a battle. This is just a rush of invigorating energy that temporarily revives an ally. He can heal the actual damage, but it requires too much focus to happen in the middle of a pitched battle.

Within the Winter school there is an ability called "Fade Step", which allows him to temporarily "dissolve" into icy blue-white smoke and zip a short distance in a direction. He can only carry another person like this if he's literally carrying them. This can be maintained, but it quickly drains his mana to do so, leaving him unable to cast spells until his magical strength regenerates. For this reason Dorian does not use this in a sustained manner unless he has no choice. EDGE: Additionally, when Dorian has accumulated enough focus -- when he has learned the "flow" of a battle -- he may temporarily speed up the movement of all allies in his immediate area, so that the rest of the world appears to move in slow-motion to them. This lasts for only a few seconds, and he cannot do this more than once or twice a battle (if the battle runs particularly long).

Necromancy in Thedas is the art of binding to dead bodies spirits attracted to death. This is not generally something that can be done in great detail in the thick of battle, though necromancy does have battle uses; he can send these corpses into battle, as well as direct spirits to violently explode at enemies in battle. Corpses raised in battle can be any kind of corpse nearby, animal or human, old corpses or the corpses of recently-killed enemies. They are little more than cannon fodder and distraction, dying quickly to enemy attack. However, they are physically strong, and generally attack whatever ways the corpse would have done if alive -- slapping, punching, beating, ripping, etc., as humanoid; biting, clawing, ripping, etc., as animals. These corpses fall quickly, even when not destroyed -- five minutes at most. However when not destroyed, he can re-raise them. When made out of battle they can be made more durable and smarter, instilling a specific set of directions into the corpse. These cannot be too complicated -- "take <item> to <place>/<person>", "guard <place>/<person>/<item>", etc. These zombies can be instilled with more stable magics, and last until he directs the spirit to leave the corpse. However he can only raise about five of these more stable zombies at a time before he can no longer control all of the spirits, and they'll just start wandering around aimlessly and the spirit will leave in about an hour if not directly controlled.

Some of Dorian's magic can have secondary effects. His fire magics can panic enemies set alight; his lightning magics can paralyze enemies, and there's actually a couple of these spells dedicated to locking down enemy movement; some of his spirit magics can confuse enemies; some of his ice magics can freeze enemies in place. Additionally, his necromancy has more immediate in-battle applications -- in battle Dorian can call forth spirits of fear and death to harass and panic enemies, attach life-draining spirits to them, give him strength when an enemy dies in the area, and directing spirits to briefly mimic those dead enemies. Dorian is even a danger when knocked out, since he can still direct a spirit to briefly mimic his OWN appearance and abilities.

Veilfire, at its most basic level, is a magical heatless fire that burns without fuel -- it will burn as long as there's mana. It allows creation of temporary runes or re-energizing of temporary or permanent runes (see +perks Dorian/Runes). Veilfire was also once used by ancient elves to create writing that could transmit sensations and emotions with the meaning of the words. Most of this art has been lost, and the mages of Thedas can only manage very small, minor examples of this, but Dorian can re-energize old versions of this writing so that the information can be disseminated.

Dorian can use Veilfire to enchant objects with a variety of effects, but only if the item is of sufficient quality to hold the magic. It cannot be used on technology; electricity is disruptive to magic. This is NOT permanent and must be re-energized eventually. Low-level (Novice) runes may last between a day and a week, mid-tier (Journeyman) runes may last between a week and a month, high-tier (Grandmaster) runes may last up to a year. Items may be enchanted with elemental effects ("spirit" is raw magical damage), status effects and resistance to them (slow, haste, poison, etc.), effectiveness against a specific type of enemy (demon-slaying, dragon-slaying, etc.; players' consent determines if their character or NPCs fall under those categories), or improvement of a specific aspect of the weapon (improved damage/damage resistance, improved capability to strike/defend from vital blows, make the weapon lighter so it can be swung faster, etc.). These runes cannot be applied in battle, it requires a reasonably long process.

Dorian is no squishy wizard. In addition to being a strong magical combatant, when necessary Dorian can use the same staff that he uses as a magical focus to, well, cave in some heads. He's capable of fighting up to five human combatants (or two demons) at once with little difficulty.

The most powerful Tevinter families have been intermarrying, trying to breed in the desired traits for a mage with a "perfect body" and "perfect mind". This is in an effort to create "the perfect leader" for Tevinter. He was not intended to be the end result of this, and had a bride picked out for him to continue the line, but he still benefits from it. This not only explains why his magical abilities are so strong, but it also means that his body is near human peak health and performance.

In Thedas, magic isn't just "say words, magic happens". Even if people think it is. There's a fair amount of science involved to maximize the impact of spells. Dorian's study into the theory and practice behind the magic has allowed him to learn and use a fair amount more schools of magic than a typical mage. It can also allow him to "figure out" effects from other magical systems, so long as those systems have concrete and well-defined rules. Additionally it gives him the ability to combine magical effects that one wouldn't think would be able to be combined. For instance, he can combine nullification enchantments with his own offensive spells to disrupt ambient magic so it won't interfere with his spell, however he can "warp" his magic enough to leave space between them so he doesn't nullify his own magic.

Dorian has a lot of positive qualities. He's handsome, he's intelligent, he has a good sense of style, he can think on his feet, he's an incredibly powerful mage, and he comes from a line of powerful, influential mages in one of the most powerful nations in the world. The unfortunate thing, however, is that he KNOWS ALL OF THIS, and tends to bang on about it to excess. It hardly needs to be said exactly how and why this is a bad thing...

The naive in Tevinter either quickly lose that naivety, or they die. It's not a place where one can show his or her feelings. Thus Dorian has learned to hide his true feelings with sarcasm and snark. It can make him seem disingenuous or uncaring when he gives flippant answers in response to honest questions. Worse, it can make him snap angrily at people he cares about when he's worried about them. Unfortunately, this is an automatic defense mechanism, and he can't really just "turn it off".

Given how likely one is to get utterly destroyed in Tevinter if one isn't VERY careful, maybe it's no wonder that Dorian's such a pessimist. Though outside of his world, his tendency to always think the worst of every situation he's in, and of every person he meets is just annoying -- "we're in a desert now, some buzzard's going to be picking my bones soon", "s/he is from Thedas, s/he's going to think I'm just a horrible evil magister on sight", etc. Needless to say, all this gloom and doomsaying tends to grate on the nerves if one has to listen to it for a protracted period of time.

Dorian's magical abilities, as do those of all mages in Thedas, come from the Fade. The Fade is a realm of spirits... and sometimes those spirits want out. While not every spirit is malevolent, they are at best alien to a mortal's way of thinking. And there ARE truly corrupted spirits in the Fade, and these generally seek any way out into the mortal world that they can find. Their only way out is generally by possessing a human. Mages are by nature more closely connected to the Fade, and so provide an easier "out" for these malevolent spirits. If one of them should slip out while Dorian is casting, he could find himself incapacitated as he fights the demon within his own mind. Or worse, possessed by the demon and turned into an Abomination -- a monster created when a demon possesses the body of a living mage. Due to the danger these creatures cause, it's not often that many choose to try to de-possess the person; usually it's just safer and quicker to kill the person attached to the demon. It's not just demons from his own world that he's in damger from, though -- due to a mage's "openness" to the spiritual power that they need to use their magic, other worlds' demons might be able to make the same sort of mental contact, and Dorian is just as susceptible to falling to that demon's influence. Though said demon would indeed still have to "fight" Dorian within his mind for full control.

When on ships, Dorian is predisposed to seasickness. Boats on lakes don't do it, it's only ships on large bodies of rolling water that triggers this -- he's likely to spend most of the trip being sick over the side. He just doesn't have "sea legs". It's probably a safe assumption that sudden movements in airplanes, airships, and other craft may trigger bouts of motion sickness as well. Though as long as it's not a constant rolling, churning motion, it shouldn't be nearly as bad.

Dorian actually does understand the need for rules, in life as well as magic. But for most of his life, the only thing rules and regulations have done is to make him more of an outcast, to outline just how "defective" he is -- at least in the eyes of his own people. Consequently, he has become known as someone who flouts rules and regulations gladly and gleefully. And he plays the role well too, wearing both his pariah status in Tevinter and his status as "evil Tevinter magister" as badges of pride (note, he is neither evil nor a magister; magisters are the people who rule in the magisterium, sort of like Tevinter's Congress, but only mages). Outside his world, this manifests as a dislike for enforcers of rules, since they tend to be very stern and inflexible (and consequently remind him of his father, which makes it even worse), and a disregard for rules that don't directly impact personal safety.