Felix



Felix is an Acanthus mage of the Mysterium. He was a Fellow of The Consilium By The Bay, in the cabal The Rose, and remains such in The Consilium of the Stone Circle. Felix is part of the Tamer of Winds legacy.

Biography
Hailing from York, Andrew Balderson had a keen enthusiasm for two things as a boy. Photography, and sneaking into places he wasn't supposed to be. As such, the hobby that came most naturally to Andrew was Urban exploring. The thrill of sneaking (and sometimes breaking) into a rarely-seen location, documenting the visit by taking photos of the fascinating, and sometimes alarming things he found, appealed to every fiber of his being. Andrew became a reasonably well-regarded member of the UrbEx scene in his teenage years, but eventually found himself seeking a bigger thrill (and a better way of supporting his lifestyle). Before long, Andrew was swapping abandoned buildings for dark alleyways, offices after-hours, and anywhere else where he could find somebody doing something that they did not want to be seen doing. One corrupt police officer, and a political sex scandal exposed later, and Andrew had found his way into photojournalism.

By the time he was 20, Andrew had swapped slinking around town for slinking all over Europe and the Middle East. Anywhere where there was something big happening, Andrew was there. Often spending nights sleeping rough, or days hitchhiking to get where he needed to be on a shoestring budget, Andrew got his big break at the onset of the Arab spring uprisings, when he found himself with a dangerous but rare opportunity to capture some of the first major breakouts of violence on camera. Smart enough not to hang around in an emerging warzone, Andrew took his biggest paycheque to date, and treated himself to a flight to Moscow, for a little R&R in a city that had been on his UrbEx 'to-do' list for some time.

Confident that he had managed to research several promising sites, and having spent a few days scouting them out, Andrew delved into the first, and saw far more than he had bargained for. Soon after entering an abandoned metro station, Andrew found himself dazzled by strange sights. Ebbs and flows of light that were simultaneously present and not. Trying to photograph these phenomena proved fruitless, as the images Andrew took showed only normal, dilapidated rooms. Andrew assumed that there must have been some kind of substance leaking into the air of the building which was causing him to hallucinate. Nontheless, Andrew found himself compelled to follow the flow of the light he saw. Stepping into a large atrium, Andrew saw six people stood in a circle, watching two Mages in the middle engaging in a duel arcane.

Shaken by the impossibility of what he was seeing, whilst simultaneously realising how real it was, Andrew was torn into the realm of Arcadia, where he awakened as an Acanthus, and carved his true name into the Watchtower of the Lunargent Thorn. Felix reemerged a day later in the same Atrium, only to be greeted by a man who identified himself as Domovoi, Herald of the First Throne Consilium. Domovoi explained the nature of the supernal world to Felix, and offered to introduce him to what he described as the most civilised sect of mage society that Moscow had to offer.

Over the coming months, Felix was inducted as a guest of the First Throne Consilium (composed entirely of Mysterium and Silver Ladder magi). Having seen Felix's talent for breaking and entering first hand, Domovoi steered him towards the Consilium's loose conglomeration of aquisitionists and lone researchers, The Liminal. At this period, only three of the five members were present in Moscow. One member in particular, Iskatel, took particular interest in Felix. Iskatel shared his work as an Acquisitor with Felix, and concocted various tests of Felix's ability. Apparently pleased with what he saw, Iskatel arranged for Felix to be inducted into The Mysterium. Iskatel then set about persuading Felix to join him on a journey out of consilium boundaries in search of an important magical artifact. He promised to take the opportunity to teach Felix everything he knew, or, failing that, to at least help him to improve his terrible Russian.

Felix agreed, and so for almost two years Felix and Iskatel roamed around central Russia, breaking into (usually) abandoned sanctums and other sites of magical significance. They searched for items which needed to be put into safer hands and clues that would lead them to a lost Atlantean artefact. During this period, Iskatel introduced Felix to his Aeolian philosophies, and slowly inducted an unwitting Felix into his legacy, the Tamers of Winds.

Eventually the two returned to Moscow, to turn over what they had acquired to the Athenaeum. When Felix expressed disappointment that they had not uncovered the Atlantean artifact they had set out to recover, Iskatel laughed, and revealed his deception. There had been no artefact, they had simply been completing relatively routine duties. Iskatel had intended to use the trip to mould Felix into a fully fledged mage in his own right, something which Iskatel described as a 'true Atlantean artefact'.

With mixed feelings about Iskatel's good intentions and two year manipulation, Felix elected to move away, in order to be able to make some decisions for himself again. Something which he hadn't really done since being brought into the First Throne. And so Felix traveled to Lancaster, looking for a quiet slice of his home country where he could take some time to come to terms with everything that had happened, and to find a new direction for his life.

Personality
Felix has a personality. Probably.