The Iron Chemist
Name: Artephius
Class: Caster
Alignment: Neutral Good
Parameters:
Strength: D
Endurance: D
Agility: D
Magic: B
Luck: C
Appearance
Hailing from the Moorish region of Al-Andalus, Caster looks like quite the scholar. Exceptionally tall and lean, he is clad in robes of multiple colors, with various triangular swatches of cloth layered and sewn together to create an almost sacred appearance reminiscent of high-ranked monks or holymen. He has a large hood that he can wear to shadow his dark-skinned face, but with it down his hair can be seen to be a very tightly-cropped fuzz of black hair, his ears studded with multiple earrings and his lobes stretched and long from heavy metallic bolts worn through them. He often wears rimless spectacles when he is stockpiling his senses for later use. His feet are bare save for simple sandals and hidden under the robes he wears nothing but a simple loincloth. Aside from the earrings, Caster also wears a great variety of other jewelry including several torcs, neckbands and many bracelets of varying design and fit, as well as rings on every digit of his hands. Further up his arms, hidden under his robes, are larger armlets. All of the jewelry worn by Caster is made from various metals, and serve a purpose beyond decoration as they are vital for his particular brand of metallochemistry.
Background
Caster was a child of fortune, born into a relatively average Moorish family in the Córdoba region sometime around the dawn of the twelfth century, a family of farmers posessing a fairly sizable herd of cattle and other livestock. His family was one secretly devoted to the study of Alchemy and at the time of his birth had been extant as a magus family for a great many generations, selectively breeding for magical circuits specialised for the family’s brand of alchemical magic for over a thousand years. Caster himself was born with an ordinary number of circuits, but they were of abnormal quality, having an as-yet unseen quality of metallic circuitry.
He studied under his family’s head magus for many years and eventually inherited the family’s Thaumaturgical Crest, but after a series of disagreeable encounters with other alchemists from within the family Caster decided to abandon the family and become an independent freelance alchemist. He researched whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, occasionally working for a patron lord who was in need of an alchemist or medical man, and it was during this freelance period that Caster first identified the unique nature of his magical circuits. His family’s brand of alchemy had always focused on imbuing metals with spiritual properties, but he discovered that his circuits, metalized through generations of focus on this speciality, allowed him to transmute consumed metals for other uses.
Though all that is known of Caster in the modern day lies in Latin translations of some of his alchemical books, what is not known to history is that after learning of his ability to burn metals for additional uses Caster became apprenticed to a wandering warrior, and began to train his body as well as his mind. He became a mercenary of conscience, working alongside his warrior mentor in combat and developing his metallochemistry into a suitable battle style, becoming a feared battlemage. His renown in the area of Al-Andalus by the time of his middle years was great, and his mystique even greater because of his ostensibly unique style of magic, creating a secret legend within the ranks of the magical community that have not leaked into common knowledge at this point thanks to the razing of much magical knowledge by the Inquisition that followed soon after his death.
As a person, Caster was an inquisitive man, always looking for more knowledge to record and investigate, as was common for alchemists of the era. His desire was not eternal life or the production of gold, contrary to many other alchemists, but rather simply to hone his unique craft and to further study his own metallic circuits and perhaps to pass his knowledge on to an apprentice. Whilst inquisitive and friendly for the most part, in battle Caster is a pragmatist and a quick thinker, doing exactly as necessary to achieve his goals.
Class Skills
Item Construction (D+): As a mage primarily focused on the use of metals for combat and other such avenues, Caster does not have a high level of skill in creation of magical items. However, his Alchemical knowledge is vast and so he receives a significant modifier to the creation of alchemical items, particularly in the realm of alchemically-altered metals.
Territory Creation (C): Caster is not a traditional magus in terms of being able to wave a hand, mutter some self-hypnotic words and alter reality around him. His focus is strictly on alchemical research and as such he is capable only through the Grail’s own contribution of being able to magic up a workshop for his studies through enhancement of an existing space. Metals within his workshop are self-generating, though they develop at different rates, allowing him a reliable place to stockpile the materials needed for his combat metallochemistry. Though Caster lacks many Personal skills naturally he is able to emulate a great variety of skills through keen application of his metallochemistry.
Personal Skills
Magecraft (B): Within the realm of alchemy, Caster’s knowledge of thaumaturgy is quite vast. He knows all the general principles of alchemy and has even written tomes regarding the creation of the Elixir of Life, as well as demonstrating a surprisingly advanced understanding of the nature of the body and soul which, with further investigation could well have led to acquiring the Third Magic. His true skill, however, lies in the art of metallochemistry, an alchemical subset where metals are alchemically altered to be used as storage units for spiritual or metaphysical concepts. This is the reason why he wears such a great assortment of accessories, as each individual item is a storehouse for some trait or another. Additionally, he has learned how to actually use the metals as alchemical fuels, burning away metal he has consumed to grant him enhanced physical and mental abilities, as well as generating magical effects that would be otherwise unobtainable by a normal person, such as remote manipulation of metal and the ability to see and react to immediate future events.
Enchant (C+): This is the skill of alteration, creating enhancements to items that Caster can obtain. It is a skill in the same vein as Reinforcement, but lasts far longer and can be done more delicately than most magi could perform Reinforcement because of its subtle alchemical basis. At this rank Caster is able to somewhat enhance others physically, but mainly excels in the enhancement of metallic items, as per his speciality, allowing him to transform regular swords into alchemical talismans on par with Noble Phantasms.
Galvanism (B): The unrestricted conversion of immaterial energies into other forms of energy. One of the central tenets of alchemy, the art of galvanism allows Caster to partially transform immaterial attacks against him, whether it be magical attacks, light beams, wind and so on, into electricity that is discharged into the environment around him, or else store it within one of his metallic storage items for use as a supplemental source of prana or for reconstitution as an attack.
Noble Phantasms
Caster does not bear any Noble Phantasms as the destruction of much of the information about him by the Inquisition means that any chance for any of his legends to become crystallised mysteries has been lost. Had the information not been wiped from the memory of humanity it is likely that some of the enhanced weapons he utilised as a battlemage would have become Phantasms, but alas that is not the case. It is fortunate then that his aggressively combative metallochemistry and his ability to enchant regular weapons effectively bridge the gap that would normally be left by a lack of Phantasms.
Metallochemistry
Significant enough a divergence from regular magecraft that it requires a section to describe it in detail. The art of metallochemistry revolves around storing bodily concepts within metal storage houses, quite simply. Each metallochemical metal can be attuned for a certain type of concept, but all of them share the standard alchemical law of equivalence. The process of storage is simple enough, as it is a matter of someone who knows metallochemistry simply touching a metallochemical metal and willing the transfer of concept from his body to the metal. Pewter, for example, stores strength. By transferring strength into a pewter ring, the metallochemist spends a period of time weaker and without that fraction of strength stored in the ring, and can then later draw out that same amount of strength on top of what he has at that point in time.
The advantage to this sort of metallochemistry is that it can be drawn upon as quickly or as slowly as needed, so an armlet containing a year’s worth of stored strength can be used to supplement natural strength for another year at an equivalent level, or compressed into a singular explosive burst of strength utilising it all within a single moment, or anywhere in between. There are eighteen known metals or metal alloys that can be used as metallochemical stores, and they must be pure or very precisely mixed to be able to be used as stores. Additionally, because bodily concepts vary ever so slightly from person to person a metallochemical store that hold’s a person’s concept within it can only be retrieved by that same magus. As a Servant Caster starts off with a few stores of basic concepts but not a very noticable amount. Someone summoning him is best served summoning him well in advance of the War and utilising the spare time to stock up his stores of metallochemical traits.
Caster’s unique style of combat metallochemistry operates in a similar manner, using equivalence of consumption by burning up the physical existence of metallochemical metals within his system through use of the alchemical furnace he's transformed his stomach into. To this end he must consume the metals before use and then can burn them at two varying rates to get the benefits from the metals. Some of them act similarly to the concepts they can store normally, such as pewter enhancing strength, but it also enhances durability, healing rates and speed and balance. Others operate entirely differently when burnt to when storing concepts, such as steel allowing Caster to detect metals in his area and push them away from himself, either using small pieces as projectiles or large metal sources as anchors to propel himself through the air. Other relatively easily achievable effects include the ability to mask his magical presence completely, or to detect magical presences at great range and with great detail, toy with mental states or even to be able to see a person’s immediate future actions, allowing him to react before they happen. This is all done by utilizing his metallised circuits as conduits for the metallic-tainted prana that is released from the metals as he burns them in the alchemical furnace, circumventing a need for self-hypnotic spells or extended prep-time, as everything is essentially hard coded into his circuits.
The advantage of this combat metallochemistry is that unlike regular metallochemistry he doesn’t need to store attributes beforehand and so as long as he has the metal he can burn it for its effects, but the downside is that unlike regular metallochemistry he is unable to draw upon the power at anything beyond the two rates of burn, so he cannot create such instantly explosive effects by this method. In either case however, it is foolish to judge Caster by his base parameters as at any moment he might be drawing upon the metallochemistry needed to enhance those parameters by a variable Rank Up.
Metallochemistry forms the core of Caster’s magical talents, but is supplemented to a reasonable degree by regular alchemical abilities, as well as a very small array of basic thaumaturgical spells that most regular magi might learn. The big thing about Caster is that because each type of resonant metal creates a distinct effect he has access to a far less varied pool of effects than a regular magus might, but this is compensated for by his ability to draw upon such effects effectively instantly as long as he has the metals to fuel him. Thus while he may not be able to create a Bounded Field of of Life Draining or summon dragon-bone golems whilst spamming light beams willy-nilly over his targets, Caster’s physical capability is more honed than most other Casters because of this, as most of his magic creates physical effects or reinforcements that he mixes with regular physical combat as a fluid and deadly style.
Originally Posted by Petrikow
