Claire "Silver" Avis
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Claire is a young human man and a noetic of the Mysterium, the order of psions who manage the Tower of Mystery in Palask. He was born with latent psionic talents which quickly attracted the attention of the Academy, where he was asked to enroll once he’d reached the age of twelve. He spent the next six years learning the basics of rhetoric, letters, and mathematics from the instructors of the Academy, while his psionic powers were fostered slowly but surely by a personal tutor, an urkou named Umazza.
By the time he was ready to graduate from the basic classes to the more advanced studies of the tower’s Third Revelation, he had already shown a tremendous aptitude for psychokinetic magics specifically, and so Umazza did her best to help him develop those gifts alongside his studies. Eventually Claire seemed to lose all interest in the mundane inquiries of engineering, medicine, ethics, and philosophy being discussed by his peers. He was wholly devoted to seeking out the mysteries of the mind, and lost himself for hours poring over the manuscripts, journals, and meditations of the psions who had come before him.
One day, after weeks of pestering from Claire, Umazza took a risk and got the young man clearance to take a brief tour of the Forbidden Archives, the section of the Tower of Mysteries’ library containing the scrolls and tablets they normally keep away from the Academy’s students. They were looking for something which could help Claire branch out into other disciplines of psionic power, but what they found instead was a scroll called the Coil of Strings & Shadows.
The scroll seemed to call to Claire, something about it seeming so familiar despite him never having laid eyes upon it before. While Umazza and the head archivist of the Forbidden Archive were busy reviewing what was available for them to share with the young man, Claire had slipped their notice and sat down to study the Coil of Strings & Shadows. The manuscript had been written by Grelvoron, a monk of the Mysterium from more than two centuries past, whose skill with psychokinesis and fine manipulation of telekinetic forces outstripped all his peers. It detailed the mental methods by which one could attain his mastery, which Claire immediately began pursuing - subconsciously at first, but then more and more as a conscious effort.
The more he read, the more his mind and nervous system began to remap themselves according to Grelvoron’s teachings. He realized, distantly that he could no longer feel his legs. He kept reading. Then an arm lost feeling, and he could no longer move his legs at all. He kept reading. At last, he realized he’d lost control of all his limbs, and even moving his neck and back became a struggle of immense difficulty. Before Umazza and the head archivist could even realize what the young man was doing, Claire had entirely remapped his nerves and psyche according to Grelvoron’s manuscript.
This transformation granted the already talented psychokinetic even more tremendous power in the discipline, as all his mental pathways were now open to the movement of these energies. But as a result, he realized the only way to move his body would be to puppeteer his own limbs on thin strings of psychokinesis.
Once again proving the horrific dangers of the accumulated texts in the Forbidden Archive, the archivist tried to take the scroll from Claire and expel him from the floor, but they quickly discovered that when not in possession of the Coil, he could no longer finely control his powers as he’d been doing. Something about the way he’d remapped his essence necessitated the scroll to be on his person, and so he was allowed to keep it with him under the understanding that no one else was allowed to see or read its contents.
In the decade since this incident, Claire has become so gifted with fine telekinetic manipulation that he can puppeteer his body with all the grace and fluidity of a person with more usual methods of mobility. There are still times when his concentration might waver, causing him to collapse to the ground like a marionette whose strings have been unexpectedly snipped, but such incidents are much rarer now than they were in the days following his transformation.
An Unseen Hand
Claire serves the Mysterium under the name Silver, so called for the strange silvery sheen those with psionic ability see surrounding Claire as he puppeteers his muscles with precise telekinesis. He is a noetic of the order now, meaning he is a journeyman past his novice years. He takes on various assignments for the order, particularly those that involve psionic threats, or protecting latent psionics destined to join the Academy. Due to his immense skill with psychokinesis, his skill set tends to lend him better to violence and the prevention or execution thereof.