Personality

Thomson is a very serious man - well, that's notexactly true, but it is a word that works. Maybe "serene" is a little bit better, at least for the front he tries to put on? Thomson enjoys the fine things in life, including never having to think about money. He has strong opinions, but would rather gossip about you than correct you. He appears very even tempered - his magic tags onto his own emotions - but instead he's frequently stomping his foot because someone was slow or thoughtless or didn't understand that magic wasn't real. It's rare that he gets truly upset, and even more seldom that he holds a grudge - give him five minutes to gossip (he doesn't even need to rant) and he's slick as a pickle. Spends most of his life at his tea shop as he simply doesn't understand that work and life can have a balance (but work isn't needed for money, so it probably doesn't matter as much. Right?).

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History

Born to a merchants' guild - no one remembers who his parents are, or if he wasn't just abandoned on the front steps, and he's never cared enough to ask - Thomson never had a lack of anything. True, the guild was about "helping" people to make more money, and money is a large center of Who They Are, but that side of them was never really shown to Thomson. As a child, he would get bored with talks of sums and dividends, of ebb and flow. Honestly, asking a child to devote their life to a singular thing that interests few children was likely to fail, but there were many people raising him and a consensus had to be reached somehow. So they backed off (probably the proper idea) and just decided it was something he didn't need at all (perhaps less proper). Even now, Thomson understands very little about money, and the ledgers of his tea shop would make any accountant cry. Luckily, it's a hobby farm - or, well, restaurant - and his parents front him any money he seems to need, and he never goes without. Now, this could make any child selfish and stuck up, but no one else didn't care about money or treated him like he was better, so he didn't. He was told he had "other talents", and could "find purpose elsewhere." It was the Guild's cook that noticed him sneaking into the kitchen to experiment with soups, so his culinary skills were cultivated. Or, well, a valiant attempt was made. He just couldn't understand how different flavors go - and, more importantly, do not go - together. Not wanting to see the disappointed look on his face, the cook instead taught him how to prepare tea. It was fairly straight forward, with few extra steps, and he caught on quickly. He learned even faster when he figured out he had a bit of a green thumb for herbs and mushrooms, and his flavor palette improved significantly.

One day, while the boy was a teen, someone stopped by to settle a debt with some crystals that had been recently mined. He called them "crystals," but they were little more than shiny rocks. Thomson was enraptured, especially as the other man began explaining the different properties (such as the crystalline structures) of the crystals in his bag. The man, enjoying the raptness of his student, traded two crystals for a hot cup of tea. Thomson studied them himself, and came to the conclusion that there were more properties than the man had let on - after all, he felt happier when they were around, so they must have some force of their own. After all, magic wasn't real - the Guild Master was quick to say that, as mages were not looked at fondly and anyone finding out the Master had magic could have been cause for alarm - so it must be the crystals themselves.

Thomson left when he turned eighteen, opened up a tea shop in Mead, and that's really all that's happened to him. He did meet a boy, but... don't want to curse it.

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Tea