Pewterfish/ArturoChesterfield

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Arturo is an alchemist, new in town, having recently departed the College of Alchemy in Brighthelm.

He can be identified by his distinctive floppy black velvet hat, the mark of a Master of the Brighthelm College.

Original background

Born to a librarian father from Buckinghamshire and a herbalist mother from Cymru, Arturo grew up in Buckinghamshire near the Wessex border. When it became clear that he followed in the family footsteps, he was despatched to the School of Alchemy in Brighthelm, Wessex (being far enough away that his failures would not lead back to them, for he was expected to fail, being of a somewhat gadfly nature). There, he ... in fact failed, but not for the reason anyone might have expected. His potions were stable. He did not blow the roof off any of the buildings. He turned noone orange, and sold no illicit love potions. He was, in fact, thrown out for stealing the Dean's signet ring and attempting to order chemicals and preparations in his name. The forgery was amateurish and the delivery instructions transparent, and when the School of Alchemy caught up with him, he was given the choice of resigning his place in the college or facing criminal charges. He felt it was time to move on.

Of course, this kind of crime doesn't come to one out of nowhere. Arturo had a problem. A year or two back, he'd developed a laudanum habit. The first hit's free, and the next few not too pricey, but once he had a taste for it, the prices just kept ... rising... Eventually, his supplier started asking things of him, and to keep his supply, he found he had little choice but to comply. Simple things. Shady things. Delivering parcels, meeting contacts, sneaking goods past customs inspections, working the books for the organisation and so on. As time went on, he got used to the back ways of the world, and came to enjoy it. Not enough to try and live the life full time, mind, but a little adventure keeps you awake. He had always been a little absent-minded and prone to cowardice, but when he was working for the organisation, he found the danger sharpened his mind. He found that if he played up the shy, nervous, forgetful academic, people believed it of him - one day he gave a false name when pressed by one of his contacts, and before long he was living two lives.

Background update at the start of Michelmas 2012

Brightholme was getting rather too hot, and when an opening came up in the underworld of Grantabrugge, Arturo/Tobias? decided to pack up and ship out. He arrived in Grantabrugge to find that his underworld contacts had mostly gone dead (in some cases literally), and that he was more or less back to square one. Oh well. New city, new start. He made friends with Ariane and Francis Tallis-McDee? by being handy with a bandage and willing to pitch in when things went wrong in the Wessex Arms, and was invited to join the Guild of Alchemists, talking his way out of needing to show any qualifications (because of course he doesn't have any). His hat is the hat of a master of the Brighthelm School, as he will point out to anyone who'll listen, but it's not granted, it's stolen. It's amazing what people will think if you say something that sounds a bit like something they want to hear.

Arturo got into the Addictive Alchemy plot quite deeply, but didn't really pick up much of the other threads. He was passingly involved in Cormorant's "attempt" to ritualise the Corpse God back to bed. Finally, when I stopped playing him, he was just starting to try and get into Smythson and Sons' organisation. Long-term he'd like to screw them over, because they're causing him trouble and making an awful mess. For now, he's happy to build favour and see what they'll tell him. If S&S have mysteriously disappeared over the summer, he's not exactly going to shed a tear.

Events of the year starting Michelmas 2012

Arturo remained moderately inoffensive and quietly effective for the rest of the year, and did some research into ancient Dwarven Alchemy. He developed a hair-conditioning tonic (christened "Slippery Rat Juice" by Gwen the Skaven), and from that a blade venom of DISARM, and also a potion of resisting REPEL for 30 seconds. He made Journeyman by the end of the year, but Grantabrugge was starting to get a bit hot and, while he seemed to be doing alright here, he decided to move on. He was last seen heading out to Jorvik, there to continue his research (retired so I could ref the next year's game).
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Last edited October 6, 2014 10:35 pm by Pewterfish (diff)
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