Facilitation

Markus has always been a great conversationalist and a flexible, agreeable person to speak with. He is usually able to understand many different perspectives and can use this understandment to facilitate between opposing parties to reach agreements or compromises. While he acknowledges that he certainly can’t fix large, deep-rooted problems, he can settle minor disputes among friends and townspeople with only his fear of punishment or being hated, keeping him from trying to help settle more arguments.

Guitar

Markus took up playing the guitar when he was about nine years old. His mother was good friends with a local guitar teacher who was giving out lessons for free to her best friends and their kids, so she signed him up for lessons to see if he would like the instrument himself. If he didn’t, she could just take him off the lessons without much issue, but Markus ended up liking the guitar and avidly practiced with the teacher three times a week to improve his guitar skills. Nowadays, he’s been able to make a few original tunes himself and can play fairly well for a teenager who’s been practicing for several years. He likes to play his guitar a lot in his pastime between work shifts when he’s not delivering newspapers.

Engineer

A few of Markus’ friends who still reside in Tarrin own an appliance store and handcraft their own mechanical appliances to sell to the people of Tarrin. Markus visits them often and has helped them with building many of their creations from refrigerators to microwaves, to complex air conditioning units. From these few years of experience, Markus has developed a bit of an understanding as to how machines are built and can repair some more simply-designed appliances on his own.

Organization

Markus is a very organized person and likes to keep all of his things in order. He has plans for his week, a schedule for newspaper delivery that he abides by with strict devotion, and his belongings almost never get lost as a result of giving everything its own place. If Markus is in charge of holding onto certain objects or important items, he can be trusted to not lose them on accident. As a result, his friends rely on him for taking home group projects for school since they can always count on him to neither lose it nor forget to bring it.

Markus grew up and still lives in the eastern town of Tarrin with his parents and younger sister and brother. When he was a young child, he had gone off to explore the nearby forest and meadows since their home bordered the edge of the suburbs since he had heard other children around him talk about seeing ghosts. He decided to sneak off without telling anyone and found absolutely nothing out of the ordinary when he arrived at the destination of the scene the others described. However, as time went on, he began to feel like he was being watched, and managed to briefly glimpse the outline of a strange, bipedal creature watching him from the shadows under the trees. He was only seven years old and thought it was just another villager, but further inspection revealed the figure to have horns and a tail which scared him and made him run back home crying. Markus told his parents about what he’d seen but they told him that ghosts and magic didn’t exist and that he was only seeing illusions. While he decided to let go of the experience, he never went back to that place again, even when he was an older teenager who could take care of himself. The place gave him horrible memories and unbeknownst to younger Markus, but that would be his first encounter with the world of magic and spirits.

Aside from the rather inexplicable experience Markus had when he was seven, he went on to have a fairly normal childhood with the local kids in his small town. He made friends with many of the children his age on his street, including some who were planning to become engineers and start up their own shop, some who were aspiring artists, and even a one of the generally considered “class geniuses” eventually became Markus’ acquaintance. Markus was always a party over study person and preferred to get involved with clubs, scouts, and other outside-school programs rather than anything super academic, though this gave him less time to focus on his studies and lead him to have fairly low and miserable school grades. His parents would berate him about his C’s and D’s and take away a lot of favorite things like his guitar, stuffed bee, and his chance to see his friends as punishment until he was forced to do better. Even though it was fairly harsh at the time, Markus ultimately did as they said and knew they only had his best interests at heart and would bring up his grades to get his things back before everything inevitably slipped back down again. It was frustrating for both Markus and his parents, but Markus eventually began to keep fairly steady, albeit still fairly low, grades throughout his highschool years.

Opportunity & Eccentric Strangers

As time went on and Markus advanced through his school years and grew older, he was able to witness the world changing around him. Many of his favorite places to eat with his family closed in Tarrin and were replaced by other businesses that either didn’t offer the same service or were entirely inferior. He also saw a lot of his closest friends leave Tarrin, either because they wanted to pursue a job opportunity or because they got hooked up with someone and wanted to live a new life elsewhere. Markus had never been so great with pursuing love. He certainly had a few interests and crushes on other people, but he never had the guts or nerve to confess his feelings towards them even if he knew they were nice and understanding as people. On the other hand, he also was never sure if he was ready for relationships or if he would ever get a full-time job opportunity elsewhere and his indecisiveness about a future plan resulted in him being confined to the premises of Tarrin to live with his parents until he was able to figure out a path to pursue for himself. Markus has considered becoming a professional guitarist, but not only do his parents shame him for the idea and state it won’t earn him enough money for a living, but he also doesn’t know where to begin with that career path and doubts it will have much luck in the long run. Markus continues to look for opportunities that will guide him in the direction he wants to go, but until then, he remains working his two regular part-time jobs in Tarrin.

While Markus was out looking for new, interesting full-time job opportunities, he had noticed a group of odd-looking teenagers. It certainly wasn’t out of the ordinary for travelers to come by, but he noticed there was certainly something different about them. He had wondered to himself if he was just seeing things or if there was really something off about their expression, their walk, the way they looked cautiously around them more than a normal person...Markus initially went to his father and consulted him about the strangers, asking for his opinion of the newcomers. His father agreed that they were odd, but he saw a great opportunity to raise a little extra money for the slowly failing newspaper business and offered the strangers a chance to rest at Markus’ parent’s home if they didn’t mind paying a little. As he later learned, they were young nomads without a home and were on their way to another town not too far from Tarrin. It didn’t strike him as an odd thing until later that night when he realized the path they were going to go in led to the middle of nowhere where no towns were located. Markus grew suspicious of them, but equally as intrigued by their stories that seemed almost unreal and fake, like magic. The travelers didn’t get to stay long, but they had already made a lasting impression on Markus. They gave him the idea to travel to another city not for a planned job, but to get a new perspective and new ideas for a future...he wanted to meet those travelers again too and hoped to find them again. He swore he saw one of them holding wands, kind of like those mythical witches and warlocks from his childhood storybooks.

Splitting Axe [ Attack + 30, Wood Splitting + 30 ]

While he doesn’t normally walk around with his father’s wood splitting axe, Markus does keep it around for safety when venturing into the woods or whenever he helps out his family with collecting and splitting wood. It’s simple in design with a basic wooden handle and standard blade that gets sharpened on a weekly basis. Markus’ father prefers to use a different axe of higher quality, so Markus has taken the rejected axe and unofficially claimed it as his own.

Old Umbrella [ Attack + 5, Rain Coverage + 20 ]

Markus bought his old umbrella from a local flea market since he liked the pattern on it and thought it needed a good home. It once had a bright orange appearance with little white leaves and bare trees, but with time it has gotten holes and its pattern has faded to a dull peach and gray color. Markus has had the holes repaired several times with stitches and patches and refuses to give it up and replace it for a newer once, so he keeps the old thing around whenever it rains.

Messenger Bag [ Storage + 40 ]

The messenger bag Markus wears is used primarily for delivering newspapers and mail since he co-works at both the post office and at the newspaper business his father works at. However, he also likes to keep his umbrella, thermos, binoculars, and a few little note books in the bag as well, but they rest in separate compartments so that they don’t get mixed up with his work. He purchased the bag from the local flea market along with his umbrella and has managed to keep it in good condition ever since.

Small Notebooks [ Journalism + 15 ]

Markus isn’t much of a writer or a poet, nor is he very good at drawing, but he likes to document any important or memorable moments of his day in his little notebooks that he carries around with him. They serve as reminders of how he felt beyond just what he can remember in his mind, and he likes to think of the entries as little frozen moments in time. When he used them as a child, he would be prone to making lots of spelling errors and writing messily. This is something that he looks back on as a young adult as hilarious while he tries to decipher the scribbles of his younger self.

Family Photo [ Luck + 5 ]

Always wanting to be reminded of home even when he’s far away from them, Markus likes to carry around a little family photo that was taken of them back when he was twelve. It’s a little faded and frayed around the edges, but Markus finds it a wholesome memory that he wants to forever hold on it and stores it in one of his small notebooks he carries around. Whether he’s deep in a dark forest or out on the road outside town, feeling more alone than ever, he can always feel comfort knowing a piece of home is still with him.