*is totally on time*

Name: Iskander Ingram

Age: 18

Gender: Male

Patron God: Odin

Appearance: The first word that comes anyone’s mind when seeing Iskander is the word “bear.” Iskander towers over most at about two and quarter meters high, with broad shoulders and a square face. His skin is mostly fair, with some tanning, and his bright blue eye is alight with good humor and intelligence. His other eye is usually covered with an eyepatch, but when he removes it, it reveals that his eye and eyelid are completely gone, and the part of the socket covered by the patch is covered with burn scars. It is not uncommon for people seeing under his eyepatch for the first time to faint.

Personality: Iskander looks far more intimidating than he acts. His voice is low in pitch and volume, and whenever he speaks to anyone, he is almost always gentle and paternal. He is quietly charismatic, and he tends to be looked at as a figure of quiet authority. He is reserved about his role most of the time, preferring to gently guide others down the path of doing the right thing; however, he has been known to give sharp remarks.

However, Iskander’s appearance and gentle demeanor mask an absolute genius. Iskander is perceptive, resourceful, and highly capable at long range planning. He doesn’t explicitly show off his intelligence, which means that while no one thinks he’s an idiot, only the perceptive are aware of how much information he can put together. He is skilled at reading at people, and he can grasp abstract concepts with ease and apply them very well.

Even though Iskander is generally a good person, he is far from being all freesias and roses. He seems to be highly in tune with his godly patron, which, while an advantage in gaining Odin’s strength, his god also made enemies. This in turn strains Iskander’s relationships with children of opposed godly patronage. More seriously, Iskander is highly objective oriented: he will see a goal in front of him and achieve it, and while it might be a worthy goal to achieve, he is not above using deception or other less savory tactics to achieve his aims.

History: Iskander does not know much about his early life. All he knows is that one of his adoptive fathers, Dr. Richard Ingram, worked as a Child Protective Services agent. When the good doctor found that a one year old Iskander was living with his single abusive father, he took his then boyfriend, Dr. Daniel Ingram, to help him investigate.

What they found was shocking to the core.

The two were anticipating that the child would be bruised and scarred to some extent. However, they did not anticipate the sheer magnitude of it all. The child was not merely “scarred”, his eye was recently burned out of his skull. Iskander’s birth father was placed under arrest and the Ingrams adopted Iskander.

It took time and help from Daniel Ingram (a renowned psychiatrist), but Iskander grew up to be a mostly normal child. With several doctors on call in the community, Iskander’s missing eye wasn’t too much of a big deal, healthwise, and Daniel helped prevent major psychological damage before it started.

Iskander, however, grew up very intelligent and suspicious. He quickly gathered an intuition for reading people and had a general instinct to play things close to the chest. It did not take him long to start thinking that there was something strange about the community, a suspicion that he only shared with his closest friends. He did not, however, have any hard evidence to substantiate it until two things occurred.

One, Beau Sanders lifted a part of a building, only to vanish the next day.

Two, Iskander injured himself on a nearby nail, only to throw it hard enough and with enough precision that the nail embedded itself entirely into a nearby wall.

The latter wasn’t proof enough to Iskander about any potential abilities he might have had, but it was highly suspicious given that it occurred in conjunction with the former. He tried to summon his abilities again in private, trying every single possible combination of what his abilities could potentially be with very little fruit. In fact, he got so frustrated he ended up punching a wall, skinning his knuckles.

Only for his next attempt at magic, throwing a book from a distance into a wall, to succeed perfectly.

Over the next few weeks, Iskander began to retreat from his friends in his attempt to decipher the intricacies of his pain based abilities. He began to carry a lighter with him at all times, burning himself with it at the top of his arm (where it would be hidden by his shirt) so he could perform tests on demand. He’s at the point where he has a reasonable grasp of his abilities by now, but he’s trying to figure out how to tell someone who cares enough that they are not going to make him disappear that he has an ability dependent on causing himself pain. As of right now, he considers this conversation to be somewhat awkward

Abilities:
(anything in italics is something he has the potential to gain but has not yet)
Seidr: Magic. Iskander is capable of using a broad range of magic, from (theoretically) pyrokinesis to kinetic manipulation to even enthrallment of others, theoretically limited only by his imagination. However, to use his abilities, Iskander must “sacrifice himself to himself”, causing himself some measure pain for a one to one energy output. Iskander technically has no upper limit to his magical prowess: he could, for instance, burn his arm entirely off with lye and be able to cast magic on scale with plate tectonics. However, he clearly has reason to avoid going that far. As he grows to his full potential, his energy output to pain ratio will increase, but he will never be able to shake off the requirement.
Runes: Iskander has the capacity to learn The Runes to help structure his magic, which will reduce the pain requirement for certain spell classes (e.g. the Rune for fire magic will allow him to cast fire more easily but will have no effect on his ability to manipulate wind). However, Iskander will only be able to begin having The Runes reveal themselves to him after he sustains a personal injury large enough to change him forever.
Huginn and Munin: Iskander will eventually draw to him a pair of ravens and unintentionally imbue them with the abilities of Huginn and Muninn. They will be more or less loyal scouts who can spy for him and inform of events they see. He will not be able to accidentally reincarnate Huginn and Muninn until after he gains access to The Runes, however.

Other: (Anything we need to know that hasn't been covered yet? That goes here.)