(no subject)

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Alric
Contact: Mad_Alric
Other Characters: N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden
Age:40 (approximate)
Canon: The Dresden Files
Canon Point: Shortly after Cold Days
Character Information: Dresden Files Wiki | Wikipedia

Personality: Harry is first and foremost the quintessential good guy; he is driven, courageous, and has a predilection for sticking his neck out to help others that lands him in dangerous situations on practically a weekly basis. On the positive side, his nature meshes well with his chosen career as a private investigator/wizard for hire and it gives him the drive to keep moving forward in the face of the steadily growing list of dangerous entities that have it out for him. Harry’s biggest fear is that somewhere in the process of acquiring the power he needs to overcome his enemies, he will (or has) become corrupted by it, and destroy everything he cares about. Harry’s sense of humor is often goofy, sometimes self-effacing, and usually littered with late 70s to early 80s movie and comic references. He also has a sarcastic streak a mile wide. He’ll happily mouth off to anything and everything be it friend or foe, though foes are always a preferred target, with Harry’s snark ramping up in direct proportion to how dangerous they are. Harry's working attitude can vary greatly based on the situation, as observed by Karin Murphy. At the outset of a case he tends to favor careful and thorough analysis of a situation; as the clues fall into place and the clock continues to tick down, he tends to worry less about caution and becomes more prone to charging in head first, getting as far as he can with his preparations and playing the rest by ear. Similarly, when the fighting starts in earnest, Harry shifts gears from his usual quiet and somewhat awkward demeanor to a confident and aggressive font of raw power that can be terrifying to behold even for his allies.

While Harry’s talent for finding trouble is amazing on its own, he is particularly prone to rushing headlong into danger when something about the situation pings his weakness for women or his hatred for bullies. For all that Harry is one of the few progressive and forward-thinking members of the White Council, the organization under which all the wizards of the world are gathered, he possesses some extremely old-fashioned views regarding to the fairer sex. He has a bad habit of trying to leap to the rescue of anyone or anything that reads as a “damsel in distress” even if said damsel is part of a ploy intended to manipulate him. Even when he knows for sure a woman is his enemy, Harry has a tendency to pull his punches. One of the few humans successful in getting Harry to curb his “chauvinist pig” behavior is his friend Karin Murphy, who possesses a highly developed intolerance for chauvinism thanks to the difficulties she faced as a woman trying to rise through the ranks of the Chicago PD. As for his hatred of bullies, it started when he became a ward of the state after his father’s death, leaving him bouncing between foster homes for a number of years. Harry had many first-hand experiences with people who mistreated others simply because they had the power to do so, but it was not until after Harry had found what he believed to be a happy home that his hatred of power abuse crystalized into one of the core tenets of his moral code. Shortly after unlocking his magic potential, Harry was taken in by one Justin DuMorne. DuMorne trained Harry and his fellow adoptee Elaine in the magic arts, and though his methods were harsh to the point of being abusive, neither of the young teens had enough life experience to think of him as anything other than their savior. That changed abruptly one day when Harry discovered DuMorne had worked a mind-control spell on Elaine, intending to turn both of them into mindless weapons for his dark purposes. The terrified and angered harry fled, but later returned after defeating the Outsider (a powerful, eldritch existence who’s kin are for the most part locked outside the bounds of reality, desperately trying to claw their way in) summoned to chase him and cutting a deal with his godmother the Leanansidhe for power to defeat DuMorne. While killing his mentor meant Harry had broken one of the White Council’s seven laws and drawn their fury down on him, it proves to be the most fortunate turn of events in his life, as his estranged grandfather Ebenezar McCoy won the young Dresden a stay of execution on the condition that McCoy supervise his growth and magical training personally. Years of hard work and harder study on McCoy’s farm in the backwoods of Missouri hammered home the rest of Harry’s personal beliefs.

Harry has one more weakness, and it is at once his greatest flaw and the thing that makes him the most heroic. He is acutely aware of the desire to abuse power when one gets his hands on it, and fears nothing so much as to how giving in to that desire would change him. Among the lessons Ebenezar McCoy beat into the teenage Dresden, the one he held dearest was the belief that magic is by its very nature a power to be used for good and the improvement of the human condition. His faith in this ideal remains absolutely unshakable to the point that the silver pentacle necklace Harry wears, a memento of his mother and symbol of wizardry, has proven just as potent in repelling vampires as a cross in the hands of a devout Christian. This becomes a double-edged sword later in his life, as Harry’s regular interference in the agendas of cruel and powerful beings begins drawing more and more of his friends into the line of fire. Even though they follow and support him of their own volition, Harry blames himself whenever they get hurt. Unfortunately, when his mounting doubts lead Harry to try and keep his friends in the dark about his activities, he learns the hard way that this only makes it more difficult for them to protect themselves. With reality staring him in the face, Harry opens up for a time, but recent events have forced him into a partial relapse. When a shattered spine and the climax of a war between wizards and vampires force Harry’s hand, he accepts a deal with Mab, Queen of the Winter Court Sidhe and takes up the mantle of the Winter Knight. In doing so he gained the power to protect the world and the people precious to him, but in return he is forced to face his worst fear head on. While most power is merely a source of temptation, mantles such as the Winter Knight’s actively change their bearers over time. In Harry’s case, the hungry, feral strength of the Winter Court brings his most primal urges to a howling crescendo that he must constantly resist whenever faced with violence or temptation. Importantly though, while Harry’s self-doubt often creates a number of temporary hurdles that interfere with his work, at the end of the day his unshakable determination to hold to his ideals is precisely what keeps him from going over to the dark side. Moreover, in spite of everything Harry might fear about how his actions impact the world around him, it is an undeniable fact that he has saved countless innocent lives. Even his greatest “sin” left the world in a better state than it would be had he done nothing. In slaughtering every Red Court vampire with a single spell, Harry created a power vacuum that would prompt an ancient threat called the Fomor to emerge from the shadows, but had he not turned the bloodline curse against the Reds, it would have robbed the White Council of at least two of its most powerful wizards (himself and McCoy) and ensured a victory for the vampires that would leave humanity without its best and only defense against the predations of magical beings.

Harry’s operating methods tend to combine a strange mix of analytical thinking, careful preparation, pragmatism, and raw brute force. The first two items are both products of his training as a wizard. While most supernatural beings possess strength far beyond human capacity and/or magic that they can utilize as effortlessly as breathing a wizard’s magic must be cast through spells, and the more powerful the effect, the more complex and time-consuming the spell. Because of this, the key to victory for a wizard is preparation and planning; whether this involves magical tools to act as foci, setting up spells early and drawing the enemy to your chosen battlefield, or striking from half a world away is up to the wizard and the situation at hand. Further, all these methods are useless without a solid understanding of what you are up against; a staff used to focus fire magic would be useless against a salamander, drawing someone out exactly where you want them demands an understanding of how they think, and without somehow obtaining a “piece” of your target, a spell cast remotely would fizzle. In Harry’s case, the first two methods are his favorites. The right tools combined with his unparalleled raw magical strength mean that when push comes to shove, 90% of the time Harry can push harder, and while Harry’s intellect means he can usually get a good idea of how his opponent ticks, his predilection for needling his enemies can usually get them dancing to his tune even if he can’t find another opening. Where Harry really shines compared to his fellow wizards is that he never hinges everything entirely on his magic. For most of his career as a wizard PI, Harry made a habit of charging into battle with his staff in one hand and a trusty high-powered firearm in the other. Similarly, he will just as soon throw a sucker punch as a wind spell if he finds himself up close and personal with an opponent; he finds this particularly useful because even if the punch doesn’t cause any real damage, it’s unexpected enough to create other openings. Lastly, it’s important to explain the apparent dissonance between the highly cerebral impression a word like “wizard” gives to a person, and the often heavy-handed tactics that Harry prefers. As mentioned before, Harry can muster massive quantities of raw magical energy, but unlike some other wizards (his former apprentice Molly Carpenter in particular) finesse and subtlety, in spell-craft or otherwise, have never been his strong suits, so compared to weaving a complicated illusion to hide his presence from pursuers, a simple evocation such as a fireball perfectly leverages Harry’s strengths.

Harry’s intimidating appearance belies the fact that, when he’s not busy saving the world he has a very gentle and kind demeanor, though nobody is spared from his sarcasm or terrible jokes. Harry is good with children and animals, as seen with his relationship with his cat Mister and Tibetan mastiff, Mouse, as well as in his interactions with the current Archive (a living repository of all human knowledge), whom he nicknamed Ivy, and his brother Thomas Raith seems to be under the impression that Harry would be a good father to his daughter Maggie. Though he currently keeps his distance from Maggie for fear of putting her life at risk, Harry places a very high value on family- he loves both Thomas and Maggie dearly, and seems to care about his grandfather as well, though their relationship is strained. His hatred of bullies often translates to a less than respectful attitude towards authorities, though he doesn’t have any particular issues with authority figures as a general concept. When he’s not duking it out with spirits, demons, faeries and gods, Harry is something of a homebody. His favorite hobby is reading, in part because it is one of the few that don’t involve electronics that would be hexed into oblivion by proximity to a wizard. If the references he sprinkles into his banter are any indicator, Harry is a consummate fan of both Batman and Star Wars, though it’s unlikely he has had many opportunities to see George Lucas’s cinematic masterpieces since his magic awakened as a child.

His social life expanded significantly after becoming closer with Will Borden and the Alphas, a group of young werewolves he met early in his career. Before the final battle with the Red Court, Harry, the Alphas, and another friend, Waldo Butters had regular game nights for role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. When it comes to romantic relationships, Harry has had mixed luck in his life. For all his talents when it comes to reading people, he can be completely oblivious about someone having an interest in him. Unfortunately, so far the three relationships we know Harry has been in have all seen difficult ends. With his fellow apprentice Elaine, he believed her dead after falling under DuMorne’s mind-control spell and getting caught in the fire that consumed DuMorne’s home. Anastasia Luccio, a fellow Warden with the White Council, ended their relationship after discovering she had been under a subtle mind-control spell from a traitor within the Council for the duration of their relationship. And most recently, Harry had to use the mother of his child, Susan Rodriguez, as a blood sacrifice to turn the Red Court’s bloodline curse against them. Currently, he struggles with serious romantic tensions between himself and Karin Murphy, their relationship complicated by Harry’s betrayal of her trust and the changes he begins going through as the Winter Knight. His relationship with Molly Carpenter is similarly difficult, as her extended lifespan as a wizard (immortality now, as she has become the new Winter Lady) means like Harry, relationships with normal people will inevitably lead to watching their partners growing old and dying. Unfortunately, where Molly has harbored strong feelings for Harry for a number of years, He struggles seeing her as a potential partner due to the decade-plus age gap and having watched her grow up as a close friend and ally of her father.

5-10 Key Character Traits:
-intelligent and clever
-Better with brute force than finesse
-Smart aleck with a terrible sense of humor
-Weak to women
-Pragmatic
-Hates abuse of power
-Crippling fear of hurting or losing his loved ones
-Has trouble trusting his own judgment

Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, or EITHER? Fits with his personality
Opt-Outs: Wendigo, Naga, Arachne, Nymph, Faerie

Roleplay Sample: Ryslig May TDM