Percival von Lorrell

Percival’s father immigrated to America at a young age during the second great German migration period in the 1830’s. He started a great banking firm.

Born in 1871, Percival grew up in a wealthy family who were raising him up to be the heir to the growing banking firm.

Percival at age 12, one day when shopping in the downtown market streets, saw a magic kit through the window of an Oddities Shoppe. Here begins his obsession with magical showmanship.

When he is 17, Percival is set up to be engaged to an heiress to a famously wealthy steel manufacturing fortune (arranged by his family) who he is to marry after he graduates college. While Percival is very fond of her, but he isn’t in love with her.

Being the son of an immigrant, Percival tries desperately to assimilate with American culture. He wears the latest garments of New York and picks up the newly fashionable Mid-Atlantic way of speaking. Despite his best efforts to fit in, many people still find him somewhat odd or overly excited most of the time. This doesn’t stop him from making friends or acquaintances with most of the boys at his all-boys school, however. In his later teens and early college life he is even a star member of the school’s swim team

At the age of 21 Percy drops out of college (where his father sent him to study business & finances) to pursue his dreams of becoming a world-renown magician. Upon hearing this, Percival’s father goes into a rage - disowning Percival in the process and barring him from the family business and any of the family fortune he was going to inherit. Percival heads out on his own, without a word to anyone, to pursue his dreams.

From the ages of 20 to 27, Percival tries and fails to turn his show into a career. Often his shows perform poorly monetarily; performed in shoddy theatres run by even shoddier proprietors who take a large chunk of the profit. He is forced to supplement his incomes by other means - pinching pockets.

Using his deceptive magic tricks, he fools people with his sleight of hand. By entertaining wealthy city-goers with his card games, he’s able to swipe their pockets clean of money or other expensive trinkets. Not everyone is fooled by his tricks however, the more West he travels, the more likely people tend to find him unusually gregarious and eclectic in nature.