Ian "Atrus" Pertwee

"We are the kolbitar, the coal-eaters; we sit by the fire in winter and tell stories of a younger world."

"The ending has not yet been written"

Twitter account: @ianpertwee

=Personality=

Ian is probably the poster boy for the introvert antisocial geek stereotype: he speaks in memes, reads a lot, is always online, and enjoys a nice evening at the pub or the movies over dancing or big parties. He doesn’t talk a lot but he values his friends and keeps them close. His interest in the Secret World veers primarily towards the tangible and quantifiable -lore, history, antiquities, contraptions- rather than the metaphysical or the political side. He’s quite strong headed in his research and this might sometimes make him a liability, as he will deviate from the group or directly go against it in order to follow a lead. When he’s not fighting darkness he likes fantasy and scifi, has an interest in art and photography and murders songs on his ukuelele.

=Skills and abilities=

Ian's pretty proficient with computers and their innards, networking and telecommunications. He is also very good at archiving, cataloguing and retrieving information, whether it is from libraries, the internet or... less available sources.

He speaks perfect Italian and English, with a smattering of French, German and Polish.

He had never used a weapon before joining the Templars and, while he can handle himself in combat, letting his Anima do most of the actual work, he prefers to work his way unseen and by stealth. When he has to fight, he favours swords and blood magic over other weapons, with assault rifle pistols as a backup.

=Background=

Public knowledge
Ian was born in a small town near Bologna, Italy, to a British father and Italian mother. He doesn’t like to get into details about his past, but he will tell you he has worked in the IT and archival departments of several historical and archaeological sites, including places in Italy, Argentina and New Mexico. Background checks will pass and, if you get hold of his old colleagues, they will confirm every story he told you - though they might remember details a little differently. Some of them will also tell you that there were some discoveries that excited him more than the others: ancient machinery, cave paintings, volcanic activities.

Towards the end of 2011 he moved to London on a research assignment for a writer, trying to find diaries and private journals from 1816, the so-called 'year without a summer'. It was in those days that the 'bee incident' happened, and his anima powers manifested themselves. It didn't take him long to notice that one of the antiquarian stores he used to visit, Mournival, was owned by a Templar family and wasvisited by other customers with anima powers. In the end Ian decided to side with the Templars because of their long history and their extensive archives, where he hopes to find some of the answers he is seeking. His partnership with the Mournival store, however, was short lived: coming back from a summer vacation in Crete, he found that the store had closed and its owner vanished.

Not letting himself be discouraged, he started searching for a new group that would help him in his quest. Some gentle nudging from Templar HQ sent him on his way to the Scarlet and Cross Institute headquarters. He was officially hired as digital archivist, dividing his time between Castle Hopewell and their London offices.

In January 2014 he left his job in SCI and took a position in the newly formed Warehouse Society Inc.

Known to friends


He is gay and has both British and Italian passports.

He has an orange tabby cat named Fitz that he rescued from Solomon Island after the business with the Cat God. Fitz is named after an old friend who had a striped tiger as his chat avatar.

His mother, Barbara, was a business consultant and moved a lot during his early years, flying from country to country every few months. His father, John, a scholar and columnist for a historical magazine, was willing to follow her and accommodate her lifestyle. This left Ian without a proper home until his late teens, when they finally settled back in Italy in the region where he was born. As a result, he is now wary about making close friendships or emotional attachments and, in spite of his friendly and jovial character, he keeps almost everyone at arm's length and out of his private life. What few real friends he has, however, he values over everything else.

He was stung by a bee when he was 12. Since that day, he started having recurring dreams and visions of places he had never seen before. The visions stopped after his anima powers awakened, but lately he has started having the dreams again.

Every six months he takes a few days of vacation and flies to an unspecified location in New Mexico. Since he discovered Agartha, this has become once every month or two.

In the summer of 2012 he visited Crete, ostensibly on vacation, to research lore related to the Minoan civilization and the events that destroyed it. While there he got back in touch with Marsyas Stathakis, an acquaintance from a previous job who, he discovered, had been recently inducted into the Illuminati. Atrus helped Marsyas retrieve an artifact that had been found in the Lassithi plateau, but kept for himself a second, smaller piece without which the artifact cannot be powered. The two kept in contact after the mission and rekindled their acquaintance.

Secret knowledge (OOC only)
(soon...)