birthday | 2695 Vortas 30
age | twenty-one
face claim | Greg Nawrat
place of origin | Anaxis
current location | Brunnhold
occupation | junior living professor
hair | dirty blonde
eyes | clear blue
complexion | fair
build | slim
demeanor | preoccupied
amiable
proud
inquisitive
proper
equitable
pragmatic
articulate
driven
irenic
keen
dependable
Passives: Unfortunate recipients of family foolishness. While it isn't the most wide-spread idea, he was raised to believe that passives were the mona's punishment for families who use magic for their own personal gain or - worse - copulate with humans and wicks. He pities passives, though only to an extent, as while they aren't directly responsible for their misfortune, they're still part of a family that brought it upon themselves. By far, he places the lives of passives above any of the other races, but they are still lesser - an ugly mar on the galdor name.
Humans: Useful, but in the sense of livestock. He places the lives of the flowers and bees that he studies above the lives of humans - where humans can be replaced, some of the plants and insects he tends to are one of a kind, experimental breeds. While he sees no point in killing humans, it's more a matter of waste not want not, not so much an extension of the same ethics and morals he holds himself and others to when it comes to galdor. He doesn't recognise nor understand why they would want anything but to be ruled over by galdor - and he has little patience for revolutionaries.
Wicks: They're problematic. He views them with both disdain and a heavy helping of disgust - similar to what one might expect from learning another was seriously engaged in copulation with animals. That they can use magic is just as concerning, if not more so. It's proof alone that mona aren't perfect beings and should be dealt with carefully. As for the Wicks, he wouldn't bat an eye if one were to be killed. They're a waste, an accident, a mistake. They're not useful like humans nor are they powerful like galdor - they're merely bags of flesh with a clockwork soul waiting to disappear forever.
Raen: Unnatural and creepy. Wendell isn't outright afraid of many things, but Raen are an exception. He doesn't even like walking past phasmonias. While he would much rather head a tactical retreat from any encounter with one of the body snatching spirits, his fear is not incapacitating. If he were to wake up one day and find every last Raen had been exterminated, he would rest easy.
Human Sympathizers: He doesn't understand why any galdor would be concerned with humans beyond keeping them happy and healthy enough to perform their jobs well. Though he is much more open to allowing sympathizers their place to speak, he has yet to come across a convincing argument. Mostly, he pities galdor who have the time and desire to allocate their efforts into humans over magic, research, or literally anything else.
The Boy: To be a Honeycutt is to be synonymous with talent, greatness, power, and wealth. To be a Honeycutt is to no only pursue perfection but achieve it as well. To be a Honeycutt is to be much, much more than the family's seventh son of the new generation.
He was born in much the same fashion as his cousins and brothers. He grew in much the same fashion as his cousins and brothers. He laughed and played and studied and listened and passed the years in much the same fashion as his cousins and brothers. His life was a careful copy - right down to the choices in his little outfits, the other children he was allowed to play with, the food he was given to eat, the books he was handed to read - of his brothers' and cousins'. To say he was happy would not have been wholly inaccurate - he wasn't unhappy - but when one had never been exposed to sadness beyond the soft tears of a stern reprimand, it was difficult to gauge. He did, truly, enjoy the attentions given to him by his elder brothers, his elder cousins, his aunts and uncles and mother and father when they had the mind for it.
But his delicate, glass-like life shattered the moment he stepped out of the evaluator's office.
Throughout the entirety of the Honeycutts' well documented history, there was never a single child who's potential was below a seven.
Wendell had been given a "one".
Everything changed after that. Whatever expectations the family had held for him before were exchanged for silence - disdainful and removed. His cousins were no longer allowed to speak with him. His aunts and uncles avoided him on the off chance they ran into him on the streets of Brunnhold. His brothers - those closer to his own age - impressed upon him the importance of applying himself - though some chose to simply ignore him. His parents sent a single letter, one that expressed their inexpressible disappointment and ultimatum that if he failed to impress peers and professors a like, if he failed to meet each and every expectation set before him, if he failed to live up to the Honeycutt name, it would be taken from him as quickly and as easily as one might clip a tarnished rose.
What he chose to do surprised his brothers, surprised his cousins, surprised everyone. He threw himself into his studies - perhaps out of fear, perhaps anger, perhaps because there was nothing else for him to do. What others might accomplish in hours took him days, but he continued to persevere. While his peers played games and made friends, he studied diagrams and memorized words in multiple languages. While others slept, he lurked quietly in moonlit corners of the dormitory's commons, perusing book after book. Learning wasn't something that came easily to him - it was an endless battle, a war of desire to know and natural inclination to forget.
He wasn't entirely on his own, that first year as a student branded with the quiet, embarrassing secret of a "one". His two elder brothers, those who had been closest to him and remained loyal in their blood and growing admiration for his efforts, assisted him where they could. They had their own lives, their own friends and family expectations, yet they devoted time to help him, to guide him - as well as they could. For the most part, however, he was alone. He was frightened and anxious and, in his young mind, imagined if he could simply become perfect - truly and undeniably so - he might regain what it was he had lost.
He didn't once stop to consider there might be something even better until he met her.
The Student: He continued to apply himself - for every step forward Filomena lackadaisically wandered forward, Wendell forced five or six of his own. His life was a flurry of pages and letters and inks and frustration, but as the years progressed, he began to come into his own. Through an unyielding determination, he memorized spells and counter-spells; he devoured books and scrolls of all subjects, taking copious notes, reviewing, reciting, rereading; his talent was never in magic or academia itself, but in his relentless and obsessive pursuit of a perfection, deep down, he knew he'd never be able to attain. It didn't stop him from trying.
Though she was always his better in magic, he began to catch up to her on the more mundane subjects. A Honeycutt through and through, he spent most of his free time - that which was not carefully allocated to the necessary subjects - buried in books and journals and academic reports that revolved around plants and insects. Though he had no natural knack for comprehending such things, the sheer amount of time he invested in bettering himself paid off.
By his second year, he was moved into Filomena's class.
By his third, he was one of the top students.
By his forth, he seemed to lack only in magical aptitude.
By his fifth, he chose living magic as his major, botany as his minor, and entomology as his second minor - a heavy workload to be certain, but one he'd already chosen to burden himself with long before.
By his sixth, he and Filomena had infiltrated both the dueling and sports clubs on campus, and while he was physically inferior when it came to both, his knowledge of rules, technicalities, and meticulous keeping of notes, logs, and paperwork, made him an invaluable member to both.
By his seventh, he had earned himself a surprising place among the few students who had participated in the deadly, highest levels of magical dueling.
By his eighth, he was a well known name - both by his inherited Honeycutt and his seemingly prodigious track record - yet very few attributed any of his success to anything but breeding and natural talent.
By his ninth, many professors had come to rely on his assistance in marking, leading reviews, and the occasional creation of tests and essay questions for the more mundane courses.
By his tenth and final year, Wendell was the epitome of a model galdor, give or take his proficiency and readiness to duel out disputes as often as a classical debate and discussion.
He worked the hardest at living magic - though he fervently applied himself to the others with mixed results - and over time and sheer willpower he developed into a worthy practitioner. While he was unable to best Filomena in any other school of magic, he was able to hold his own in the traditional school of his ancestry. Yet, he was never content - never pleased with himself. She was always ahead of him, always a step or three or ten. The other students of their year might as well have not existed; they were no challenge for him, not in the way she was. Not in the way he needed them to be.
He graduated top of his class - much to his own frustrations, feeling cheated by Filomena's apparent lack of concerted effort in her second place. He was offered a position a position as a junior professor with a focus in the practical applications of living magic through botany and entomology, which he readily accepted alongside side Filomena who had her own focus. Most of his time outside of classes was spent either in foil to Filomena's various deeds or wandering the vast halls of his mind in search of new and interesting ways he might develop the various plants and insects he kept at home.
Mental | Physical | Social |
Good | Poor | Average |