WORLD

INFORMATION | THE HISTORY OF BCR | BONUS DEETS

( write ups by world creator manual )

cw: drug use, addiction, questionable parenting decisions, brief reference to a past abusive relationship

Nicholas Ó Broin is born in a town near Brooks Range in Alaska on March 29, 2003, and for the most part his life is really, really normal. Normal by the standards within his family, at least, which include eight children, largely absent and very hands off parents - and to add to all that, they’re all witches. Running in both sides of the family - natural magic from his mother and spectral from his father- their name is fairly well-known amongst the members of the magical community who care about things like bloodlines, but for the most part the Ó Broin family lives their lives separate from the politics. They'll be present for the social aspects that come with a family as old as theirs – society is unavoidable – but as far as they’re concerned, the only part they want to be involved with is the education. The crowning jewel of a town tucked away and kept off of any map, warded to repel almost all non-magical folk, the hidden gem of the North American magical community is the school held within its borders, Barrett-Crowley Reformery.

For the most part, it’s a very uneventful life that Nick leads. The two older sisters and three older brothers go on to magical colleges and the kids left behind have a little more space within the house. Nicholas's powers begin to manifest early at age eight with a rather sudden bout of spontaneous combustion one evening (that ruins dinner, incase anyone is wondering) and his parents are both very proud of the fact that they have another special little witch within the family. After all they may not be entirely traditionalists, but no one really enjoys the shame of producing a dud in as prestigious families as these ones, and with his magic presenting years before the typical age, they are certain that they have (another) prodigy on their hands. The intention is, of course, for him to follow in his brothers' footsteps, if not at BCR then certainly another institution similar, but even as a child Nicholas has different ideas. He's far more interested in messing around than discipline, and despite his mother and father’s best efforts that changes very little as he grows up. Who wants to sit in class when you can make worms wriggle out of the dirt in the middle of sport and freak your classmates out, right?

His teen years bring a slight amount more focus, but for all the wrong reasons. He doesn't spiral immediately, but after an ill-advised fling with a handsome friend of his older brother's with an affinity for recreational drug use he finds himself curious, and that starts the slippery slope into drug-induced laziness. For a while it actually boosts his powers, if only because he works tirelessly until he can grow perfect weed plants with minimal effort, but he stops improving academically not long after his sixteenth birthday. Quickly the ill-advised relationship that everyone around him proclaims a bad idea turns toxic, but Nicholas is too busy being head over heels to see the red flags until they are (literally) hitting him in the face. Heartbroken, he resolves to be done with dating for life, and promptly drops out of school. He finds himself fascinated by different herbs and spices, how new combinations can affect magic users, and soon becomes something of a savant for magically-inclined highs. It’s an art form, each poultice, potion and joint tailored specifically to the user's class - and at last his special brand of magic comes in handy, because he doesn’t even have to ask what a person is, he just knows. As if a little dossier of information just drops itself onto the table of his mind (what a metaphor) Nicholas can tell instantly if someone is a demonic or heavenly, natural or mechanic. On good days he can even see their specialities, their weaknesses, but that’s only on good ( read: sober ) days.

At a loss, Nicholas’s parents largely give up on trying to motivate him into doing something with his life, and once he's out of school and no longer housed in the dormitories he's living in an apartment of his own - paid for in full by his parents, of course, they might disapprove but they hardly want a child on the streets. The benefits of coming from old money.

His own apartment gives Nicholas the freedom to basically do what he wants, and while he'd been involved with the party scene - curiously large, given the size of the town - before, this gives him the chance to completely let loose. With no job beyond his dealing and no direction, Nicholas embodies the ‘live life in the moment’ attitude. Even after he drops out he is on campus arguably almost as much as while he attended, hanging out near the boundaries to catch up with everyone, and once his interests shift to drugs they become some of his best customers - or worst, really, depending on how it’s looked at. The boys use a lot of his goods, but the cash flow coming back in is minimal. He's a generous dealer. And he forgets to charge.

This year's class of graduates prove to be an exhausting few months for Nicholas. Most of his tight knit group of friends graduate in the same year, and though none of his blood relatives are graduating at that time his stress levels are still through the roof, so much so that he ends up tearing into the woods when he feels the life force of one of his friend's flickering. Connected, charmed tattoos for the whole group had seemed like such a fun idea earlier in the year, a cute little friendship mark for everyone, but on the night of exams it sees Nicholas delving into an unsafe situation with hardly any training. It's a miracle that no one dies — it's a miracle that Nicholas doesn't die. A nasty run-in with a demon and some risky dabbling in blood magic later, he makes it out of the woods with a permanent scar on his left palm but alive despite the odds. A win is a win, and he doesn't spend very much of the next month sober. Partying, he says, and nothing to do with the shadowy threat that lurks his nightmares now.

The following year passes a little quieter than the last. There's only a handful of his friends left in town now, most of them jumping ship on Alaska after the events of graduation, and he toys with the idea of leaving too. There are finishing schools, even options for those like him who irked all responsibility in their teenage years. In the end he stays though, the idea far nicer than any work it requires to actually get there and work for something.

Nicholas is still dealing, less than he used to, still partying just as much as ever, and amongst it all he still finds time to pester every one of the Barrett-Crowley boys that have left. Everyone is spread across the globe at this point, facing their own troubles, and Nicholas is in something of a standstill. They pass through occasionally, comment on how much they love that he hasn’t changed, and he never takes it as an insult. After all, why would he? It’s a good life he leads, a little meaningless but fun at least.

His brother enters his final year of school, exams draw near, but Nicholas isn’t worried. Luck is, apparently, on his side.

The first thing to understand about Nicholas Ó Broin is that he is incredibly lazy. In stark contrast to most of his family, overachievers in their individual fields, he is content simply to exist in mediocrity with no drive to reach for anything more. He's incredibly content with his lot in life - granted his lot in life is pretty cushy - and anything that requires too much effort promptly gets taken off of the to-do list before he can start to feel bad about not doing it. The one notable exception to this has been his drug manufacturing and dealing, which somehow managed to capture his interest enough that he actually works to find interesting and potent combinations. Ironically enough the only thing that he finds motivation enough to get off his ass and work is indirectly responsible for his blasé attitude towards life, and it's a bit of a vicious cycle that continues throughout all of Nic's teenage years (and some of the adult ones too). It's not just that he doesn't complete magical schooling, that lack of motivation is present in almost every aspect of his life. Despite living alone he never learns to cook, an embarrassing amount of the cleaning in his apartment is done by his visiting friends, and despite the fact that his parents covering the cost of rent and bills means that he could literally do anything he wants, Nicholas is still content to spend his days wandering up to the school and hanging with the friends he made through dealing, stick his head into a club to keep his social life active, and wander home - alone or not, it doesn't really matter. He's been in stasis for years now, never quite collapsing but never progressing either, and honestly he's perfectly comfortable with that.

The "Lets All Get High And Touch Each Other" crew have had a massive influence on Nicholas's make up as a person. Though he was never attention-starved or neglected as a child, far from it, Nick has always been a bit too big for the space given in his family tree. Even the best parents in the world would struggle with seven kids, and while Nicholas doesn't hold even an ounce of resentment or animosity towards his parents, there's no denying that he flourished once his friendship group expanded to include the kind of people that would gladly make out with a friend just because they were good buddies. While he is a very sexual person it isn't purely about being sexual, it's intimacy he craves and this is his particular brand of expressing it. He has admitted on several counts that he struggles to navigate a friendship with someone without expressing his affection physically, whether by sleeping with them or just holding their hand. He's an incredibly physical person, the first one to pull someone in for a hug or squeeze a shoulder, and since being surrounded by a group of friends that not only reciprocate that behaviour and encourage it, but actively enjoy it in kind, he has become a far more open person because of it. He could never have been considered 'closed off' or shy, but in the six or so years that Nicholas has had this now tight knit pseudo-family, he's become a far warmer and touchier person.

While he's warmer and friendlier, to say that Nick is in touch with his emotions is a gross exaggeration. His default state is happy, he spends almost all of his time either blissed out with pleasant company and lazy days or through his extensive drug use, and all in all his spectrum of emotions that he knows how to process is severely limited. It happens incredibly rarely, but when overwhelmed - whether through anger, sadness, or just feelings that aren't happiness in general - he has the tendency to shut down completely. If it's a developing relationship - as seen with his brief college sweetheart grant cooper - he'll pull the brakes before he has the chance to get more invested. In his case, it was right after the near-death experience of fourth year halloween exams, and the realisation that he was actually developing something akin to strong feelings for him made Nicholas hit the emergency escape button faster than anyone could say "he broke up with him on the phone?". Because that was the other thing that he did. When in the process of a bail out he's not very sensitive to other people's feelings at all - only semi-intentionally, part of it is to push people away but mostly it's just because he doesn't think his actions through enough. If he experiences grief, he goes completely overboard with denial. He'll either pretend that nothing has changed, or spiral off the deep end with terrible life choices. There is no grey area, not with him. He lives his life in black and white, and if anything falls out of the limited spectrum that he is equipped to deal with, all hell can possibly break loose.

His impulsive nature will one day be his downfall. As it stands, aged 21, he's on a rollercoaster that only goes down - and up, and down, and up, depending on what time of day it is. He's incredibly easy to persuade into trying just about anything at least once, if only for the story, and the natural inclination towards self preservation just isn't present in Nic. Most of his life is a series of questionable life choices strung up in a chronological order, from taking every dare presented to him as a child to taking unknown substances from strangers in clubs because they say it'll be fun. He's not too trusting, or naive, it just doesn't occur to him that something bad might happen to him. Up until this point in his life, Nick has been blessed by extraordinarily good luck, and despite multiple relatives and dear friends being thrown into potentially lethal situations over and over again, he's never lost anyone close to him.

( Incidentally it is when that changes and he loses his brother during his graduation that a lot of these behaviours shift, but he's not there just yet. Give it time. )

Ultimately, despite being a Literal Hot Mess of a human being, Nicholas is a good hearted person. He lacks a lot of common sense, and when it comes to situations he doesn't feel capable of dealing with he can be incredibly blunt and selfish, but he lacks the capacity to be genuinely mean or darkly motivated. He is the epitome of the saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", because he almost always has those good intentions, and if he could predict the outcome of a lot of his decisions he wouldn't make them, but unfortunately his divination skills are absolutely terrible - and even if they weren't, he's got a phobia of fortune telling that is near-paralysing. His intentions are almost always good, if a little self-centred at times, and it's only the execution that sees collateral damage. He's a train wreck, that much everyone is certain of, but damnit at least he's a train wreck with a heart of gold. Mostly. Like 10 carat, probably.