Toren

Appearance

Standing 5'5", bald, with grey eyes, Toren often wears the expression of staring into space as if in a daydream. He comes across as rather friendly though tends to get distracted easily. He rarely is surprised, but when he is it's often because he feels it's appropriate for the situation. Often he is focused on some mysterious design in the world around him.

Nimbus

The color of his skin and surroundings surroundings appear black and smooth reflecting brightly as the sounds of a creaking building and the clatter of stones.

New Developments

Once he revealed his existence to the Sacramento Consilium Toren became a regular at the Written in Water bookstore & cafe. He attended his first meeting of the Mysterium and volunteered for an important mission to rediscover the lost Athenaeum, their order's vault of knowledge. He his teamed with Noctina and Dark Eyes and they began their search in the Fillard Goldman Museum. Their search yielded fruit and after some supernal obstacles Dark Eyes & Toren reached the Athenaeum only to encounter John Dee, its keeper and apparently rogue hoarder of knowledge. Through quick thinking the pair dispatched Dee, sending him through his own portal before cutting his sympathetic connection. Dee is still at large, acting on his own agenda.

Toren had also been getting to know many of his fellow Awakened in his Order. He even joins a Cabal, whose members include Noctina & Aenigma. After his initial meeting with his Moroi Pathmembers he is awarded with the position of Provost and tasked with providing Wards for future meetings. The position was short lived, however, as the Consilium structure was later disbanded and the Councilor, Joshua Morris, went missing. And with Noctina's disappearance to Europe, he and Aenigma reformed their Cabal into The Keepers of Mimir's Well, recruiting new members, the Thyrsus Kiko, & the Obrimos Grimoire.

Biography

Wendel Schwarzenberg had what he considered a regular upbringing. Happily married mom and dad, sibling rivalries, and typical bullying at school with all the social pressures that entails. He grew up regularly, joined track and field, dated, made friends and grew apart from them. Once Wendel left for college he was sure what he wanted to do. That was the one unusual thing about Wendel. He liked buildings. Since he was a toddler he'd play with blocks and sandcastles, in grade school it was arts & crafts, high school stacking playing cards. He drew pictures of cityscapes and gazed at the curling stonework at Sunday church.

This fascination may have started in Wendel's youth because of his grandfather, Gyles Schwarzenberg. He was an architect and had a house that he had designed and built himself. The walls of this house were covered in framed pictures of buildings and cityscapes and the outside was laid in an intricate stonework that formed a beautiful pattern. There was something about those walls that called to Wendel. His grandfather nurtured these interests with stories of ancient construction methods and the secret society of the Freemasons and their exploits. Gyles himself was a Mason though the concept had vastly changed over the centuries to be little more than a club membership. Still it became fuel for Wendel's imagination and he was determined to become an architect like his grandfather. He worked part time on construction sites to pay his way through college at UC Berkely and realized he had a real talent for blueprints and design. He would stay up nights returning to class with bizarre concepts for impossible archetypes. And yet his brilliant mind could not be denied as he graduated with honors. Yet his success would be stunted at his first career internship with the Architectural Firm, Borgnine & Gable.

It was late one night. He had been given a lengthy deadline on this assignment since he was still young and had a lot to prove to the company. It was for a charity service to a church that was to be built in Sacramento. They asked for extravagent reverent designs akin to classic gothic architecture. Something to impress upon the worshipers whenever they gazed upon it. He had been working obsessively over the plans. Something had clicked in his mind and he found he couldn't sleep for days. A pattern began to emerge, a need that had to be fulfilled. He drafted blueprints that surprised himself, organic in a way that resembled a living entity, almost as though it pulsed with life on the page. Angles the would boggle a mathmatician. He scarcely could imagine any sane construction foreman being able to read the blueprints themselves. And then he finished, his mind becoming clear for the first time in his life. And then he realized he was standing before it, a great tower, pulsing with power.

The next day was when the blueprints were to be due. He had them rolled up in a professional leather tube. Yet he was rigid, knowing that he could never let anyone look upon them. He stood before his manager who asked to look over the documents, the client, the parishener, standing beside him. He stammered and even lied, saying they were not finished yet and that it was surprisingly difficult. But his manager would not have it and grabbed at the tube on his shoulder. Wendel panicked and struggled with him, finally kicking him over to wrench the plans away. That morning he was fired and lying dismally in his bed at his apartment flat not knowing what to do. His life had been changed forever and he didn't know how to fit into the normal mundane world any longer. What did he have left? He thought back to his grandfather and wondered if he would have been ashamed of him.

He went back to his grandfather's house and found a man standing outside of it scrutinizing the building. He was dressed in worn black clothing and had a wide-brimmed hat that obscured his face. He confronted Wendel, claiming he knew his true nature and invited him to learn under his order, The Mysterium. This man too was a Freemason and knew Wendel's grandfather from his past. He said it was fate that brought them together and handed him the deed to his grandfather's house, listed as an inheritance. He was told it would prove an asset in his development as a Mage as its construction allowed it to tap into unseen energies. The man, who called himself Obsidian, would come and go, teaching Wendel the basics and disappearing for a time while he would practice in his grandfather's house. He would reveal the society of the Mages and of his Order but little else. When he was ready, Wendel chose the shadow name, Toren, to conceal the power of his name and take part in the Mage society.