Fornax of the Many Fingers

Half-Elf / Wizard

Submitted character story

Fornax was originally a 12-year-old's attempt at a Thief/Illusionist designed for capers and grand thefts in an urban game setting. Over 45 years later real-time, this is how he might ideally have gone.

A half-elf born with six fingers on each hand, a young and self-conscious Fornax Marn ran away to the circus, or rather decided to broaden his experience and see the world by joining a traveling troupe of entertainers. There he crafted an identity and performance skill as the stage magician Dodec the Many Fingered - a bearded, robed, freak of a "wizard" entertaining with feats of purely non-magical prestidigitation and, occasionally, engaging in a little minor thievery. A coin purse here, a bauble there, skimmed from an audience attending to and distracted by the movements of his too-many fingers.

And then, in one show out of countless, in one city out of many, lifting a pretty, jeweled trinket from another faceless mark, his obfuscating gestures and diversionary show produced a real illusion. Real magic. It shocked him so much he almost fumbled the act. Everyone thought it part of the show, naturally, but to Fornax, it was a revelation- a suddenly opening door. That night, diving into examination of his pilfered prize, he realized it was itself an item of magic. It was a small, not particularly powerful charm, but nevertheless it was a focus, or a magnifier of power, and *his* power had tapped into it to shape an image and illusion of his will. Through that first long night, holding, feeling, manipulating, noting, he began to understand how it had worked. Even more, he understood that he could do it again, and determined how. Even without the help of the charm. He knew then and there he had to understand more, learn more, and grow this ability.

By time in his career, Fornax had stolen (and pawned, or used up, or given away), many things, but that charm was the first thing he ever simply (albeit secretly) returned to its owner.  From that point on, however, he slowly and diligently taught himself the arts of magic. 

He never studied another mage's spellbook, never bought a scroll, never entered a mage library or college, or sought a mentor to guide him. Instead, for the next eeveral years, Fornax stayed with the company and invented magic. Or reinvented, sometimes.  He'd glimpse a spell, or merely hear one described in a tall tale, then go to his tent or wagon and build his own version from first principles, reverse-engineering true magic out of observation, intuition, and stagecraft. At first he did it to protect the fiction the that he was not a real magician, only a very good faker. That was an illusion he effectively cast on himself for years. Later, once he could no longer deny the knack, it evolved into a point of pride: if the magic was going to be his, it would be *all* his. He didn't have to borrow or learn from or owe anyone else to do what he did. Though a magical academy would likely file him under the School of Illusion, Fornax has never set foot in one.

True to Dodec's flamboyance, his signature stage illusions were ghostly hands, one or many, that plucked cards from the air or tipped hats or built delicate towers of coins. Fornax made those tricks real. The force-hand series; Interposing, Forceful, Grasping, Clenched Fist, Crushing [the classic and extended Greyhawk spell-set of Bigby's] are his stage-tricks made manifest. [In Fornax's world there is no Bigby, and the spells, if anyone else learned them, would bear *his* name.]

Fornax left the troupe only comparatively recently and settled in the great city of Velenza, trading the wagon for an affluent townhouse, and trading his stage name for a purchased title. Decades of quiet accumulationbought him a seat near the top of high society. Fornax Miravale is old money, or the flawless appearance of it, which he would argue is a distinction without a difference. With a name and life on the right side of the tracks, he's a former impresario and a current patron and benefactor of the arts who has made his fortune and done good for others with it, and who still travels often (old habits, and old scores). 

Fornax doesn't need to steal, and really never has. He steals anyway; rarely now, but exquisitely, for the love of the game. Impossible vaults cracked, guarded wonders pilfered from under noses, scores that cannot be done, done. Money is never the point, was never. Rather the performance, with the only applause he has ever truly played for being his own.

[Fornax is probably the most ironic character I've ever made. Not the least of which is that his six fingered hands - part of his original concept - turns one of image generating ai's great flaws to advantage for making a temporary/working image of him.