Robert

Robert sighted while closing the book he had been reading for the last few hours. The number one perk of been one of the disconnected librarian at Horizon was that he was allowed to read any book on magic theory and practice. The same permission did not extend to history of any kind, which was suspicious to say the least, but Robert was not the history revisionist type anyway.
Of course, they let them read any book on magic because they were completely and utterly unable to use magic - hence the "disconnected" part of the work description. That did was a problem for Robert, who tried once and again to get admitted in magic courses since he was a young kid with acne on his hairless face. To pull at the very fabric of reality had lighted his dreams and inflame his heart since he had memory, but after failing the access tests so many times, the university judges tested him for sensibility to magic instead, and the conclusion was that Robert was to magic as important as a feather to an octopus flying abilities. At least they had a bit of mercy (or maybe a pang of compassion) when they saw how Robert's face fell when hearing the results. That mercy was what got him his first post as librarian, and he just kept ascending due to his methodical approach to library work until he had no constraints as to what magic books he could touch or read.

Magic has been considered a way to act on the fabric of reality but it is often forgotten that reality includes minds and knowledge. The knowledge and spells written in books on magic affects the reality around it. The more potent the magic, the more potent the effect, and that is why powerful books are covered in protective symbols and why really powerful books need to be handled with care and by equally powerful wizards, who can avoid been affected by the magic inside.
Of course, no really powerful wizard would be ordering books in a library instead of studying and practicing even more powerful magic and there's where disconnected librarians are useful.
A person sensible to magic (mostly everyone, in one degree or another) is like a magnet and books on magic are another magnet. The magnetic field of both interact, but a disconnected person is like a bit of wood.

So that evening Robert was collecting the books and ordering them, and spend the next couple of hours getting each one to its place, just like any other day at work. But this particular day, when he went back to his post, he found a very old, very wrinkled and very upset wizard tapping with his foot and waiting next to Robert's desk. The same instant Robert thought he was in trouble, the old wizard turned his glare in his direction confirming that A, Robert was in trouble indeed, and B, he could be in even more severe trouble if he dared to run away. So Robert ran to his desk and asked, as humbly as he could manage without getting servile
- I am so sorry for your waiting. How can I be of help? -
- I am Verdantisinus Primus Kertian Malathen, I expect you to be a disconnected librarian or otherwise you are of no use and should better be able to call one. -
- I am a disconnected librarian, indeed. -
- Good. This is the book I want. - said the mage, giving Robert a piece of paper. The words on the paper were but a shorthand of the actual title, since even that was dangerous in that particular case. This wizard was asking for one of the most powerful books Robert had heard about, one of the few ones which he couldn't read, not because he was not allowed to, but for the security around them. Robert swallowed, divided between fear an excitement, and said
- Please, if you follow me -

The tall wizard walked in long strides just behind Robert's hurried steps, fairly shorter, corridor after stairs after corridor after stairs, until they were before a particular wall. It was a wall covered with lead, finely inscribed with all sorts of symbols of protection, both for containment and for preventing entrance. Robert walked slower while looking for a specific patch and, when found, he took his signet ring out of his pouch, putted it on, press it against a circle in one of the symbols and indicated another to the old wizard.
- If you be so kind to use your mark in that circle...
The wizard stared the circle while doing ever so minute movements with his right hand's fingers, and then, they both were in the other side of the wall, with it. Robert could barely hold his excitement as his eyes rested on the book. Inscribed chains bound the tome to a lectern and light with no apparent source bathed the room in a slightly golden shade. The wizard walked to the book and the chains opened themselves at this, allowing the old sage to peruse the pages.
And then, everything got unexpected. The wizard grab a handful of pages, with no care at all. Robert start walking towards him, startled. The wizard rips the pages from the book, which starts crackling red and purple. The light without source blinks in gold and black. A hand gesture, and the wizard throws Robert hard against the wall. A glass orb in the hand of the wizard. Robert feels maimed and bleeding. A sudden blue flash. Robert alone. The book's crackling lightning illuminates the room mixed with the golden blinking light. Robert getting to his feet. An explosion.
Black.
Unconsciousness.
Dying.

Breathing.
Bleeding. Hurt. Light. Orange light. A lantern's orange light. A lantern's orange light gets through the rubble and blocks of stone and lead over Robert.
Unconsciousness.
Sheets. A bed. People talking in whispers nearby. Warm sunlight. Free. Robert's back(cover) hurts. He tries to move, but his sheets hurt. No, his inside hurt. His cover is covered and the thought makes him laugh wearily. Face. Humans get near.
Some weeks pass until Robert has to declare at the trial. There, he realizes the old wizard is not and hopes the trial is not against Robert. He tells the judges what happened and then he's sent back to home but he's suspended for the duration of the trial and he's to present himself to the court every morning until the culprit is caught.
On the next months his savings disappear, he sells his possessions and his house, moves to a small rent room first and then to an alley. His hopes disappear as his savings, and in the cold rainy nights he thinks he could be no worse. He's trying to sleep despite the cold and the feeling that mold is getting in his insides when shouting wakes him up. A few young mages are shouting and laughing down the street. Somewhere he thinks it is probably celebration for the end of tests, and then the young, drunk wizards see him and point and laugh and get near. And then one of them thinks it'll be fun to poke the hobo with a little spark. Words and gestures and a little blue lightning orb flies from one student's hands to the half-awake Robert, who jumps with the shock. And then the pain mixes up with frustration and cold and rain and misery and energy breaks through Robert, blasts through his joints and reforms and purple and red lightning jump from Robert's hands to the students, who scream and fall and get up and ran away, still screaming.
Robert knows not what happened. Robert knows he's magic. Robert knows a world of possibilities but can not focus on any. Robert laughs while tears fall from his eyes to be clean by rain.

Robert is free.

---

Robert Smith
Human Chaos Mage 1
STR 10 CON 12 DEX 12 INT 16 WIS 10 CHA 18
HP 21 AC 12 PD 12 MD 15 Recoveries 8x(1d6+1)
Backgrounds: no-longer-frustrated librarian at Eldolan 4, Living spell 4
Relationships: Archmage (conflicted) 3
Unique: Nobody knows if he's still Robert or the spell that was in the book
Talents: Touch of Wizardry, Iconic Warp, Separate Existence (A)

Gear: dagger (1d4), hand crossbow (1d4)

Those two background were examples on 13 True Ways, and they were too good to pass.

Khazad

Khazad tripped on a loose stone and cursed in a whisper. Merchants had told him that most humans believed that Dwarves were able to see in the dark. They had laughed, but Khazad was an archaeologist and he understood that seeing in darkness would not only be useful, but something to be expected, since they had lived in profound systems of caves for millennia. Of course, a lot of cave animals were actually blind, so maybe there was a reason. It would still be useful, no doubt about that.
He kept walking but now paying more attention to the irregular floor, unevenly lighted by his lantern. Khazad was a bit known back in the districts because despite the interest in dwarven stories, not that many dwarves were interested in what actually happened, preferring to hear and believe the soul-rising stories told by priests.
Khazad knew that tradition was important for dwarves, and that stories are adorned so that they are actually soul-inspiring. They're useful to make people do what they should. But that did not mean they were true. Judging from what he had investigated, some were actually true, some were tru-ish, but most were big exaggerations when not downright inventions, and just to believe was not good enough for him. His tendencies to explain what really happened and to point inconsistencies and evidences of the more outrageous lies had never been met with pleasure.
Khazad was known, not loved.
Probably those sentiments were half the reason he was cleared to go how deep he wanted. Dwarves had had a really long history in the caves below Forge or the almost forgotten ones in The Frost Range, but a lot of them were now abandoned. Sometimes not empty. Khazad had had a few close calls encountering beasts, troglodytes and even once a tribe of barbaric, more than half-crazed Dwarves. Publicly, every Dwarf had to encourage "the relentless search for truth" that moved Khazad, but privately they, specially the ones using stories to get others to do what they had to, probably expected him to get lost or even dead in one of his expeditions. Khazad knew that, but despite all the 'teaching' he did and despite he not liking the simple mindedness of people believing "because it has always been told like that", he wanted to know more because he wanted to know that because he wanted others to know.
It hadn't been always told like that, anyway.

Khazad realized he was whispering under his breath and stopped. Too much time by himself, probably. Maybe people needed to talk, but now that he had quietened himself a faint humming was almost audible. Intrigued but alert, Khazad kept walking, trying to understand the way echoes worked that humming to his position. For the next few days he went down and down, trying to locate the source of the humming by how loud it sounded. He got lost once, got his way again, and became more and more worried the more he descended, since the humming was accompanied by a vibration and had became really loud and strong.

And then, squeezing his body through a crack in the stone, he found... the source.

Khazad had seen many wonders in his expeditions, but of the kind that marvels other scholars. This was different, so much different. He walked forward, raising his lantern to try to illuminate what he was seeing now, but it was so huge the light could not. Before him, thousands of cogwheels of every size imaginable, from a few inches wide to several yards, were rotating, transmitting the movement one to the next, though it was just impossible to know which was "one" and which "the next". The synchronized movement was hypnotic, and this near the humming revealed itself as thousands of hummings, singing together, in a way.

Khazad consciousness drifted through that enormous device, feeling that it was somehow part of the world's workings but in a way that seemed to be stored in a part just beyond his mind, as a word you know that you know, but that you just can't remember at the time. The cogs seemed to... no, they were spinning through time, the past modifying the present, the present modifying the future. Minute symbols were edged in the very cogs, eroded by time but still almost, almost there, hidden as rugged surfaces when looked from afar but clearly obvious now. Time, and space, were being weaved together, watched, or... or controlled by the device.

And then he woke up startled with the temblors of the cave. A cave-in! He looked around, his panicked mind trying to adjust to reality, when the whole device seemed to sink in short bursts of movement. Khazad ran to it, where it was leaving a hole, swallowing the device in an unfathomable depth.
He sat in the border, shocked by what he had seen and by the disappearance of the device that had shown him the inner workings of the world itself. When the light of the lantern went out he realized the time he had been there, and that there were tears in his face. Then his lips tightened and his expression was set. He changed the oil of the lantern and after staring the hole, he started the way to the surface. He didn't know how, but he would find the device again. He felt like an idea, an intuition gotten from the time through the cogwheels. It would require time to grasp it, but Khazad would.

He needed to understand.

---

Khazad ai Menu
Dwarf Occultist 1
STR 10 CON 12 DEX 10 INT 18 WIS 18 CHA 8
HP 21 AC 13 PD 11 MD 16 Recoveries 8x(1d6+1)
Backgrounds: Archaeologist of Dwarven Forgotten Past 4, History Profesor 3, Wandering Mystic 1
Relationships: Dwarf King (conflicted) 2, Elf Queen (conflicted) 1; the relationships are conflicted because every ruler wants part of their history publicly known and part of it downplayed, in the best case.
Unique: Discoverer of the "Reality Clockwork"
Talents: Brain-Melting Secrets, Stance of Necessity, Unwinding the Soul (A), Warp Flesh
Prepared Spells: Bitter Lessons, Brilliant Comeback, Moment of Karma, Timely Mistake

Gear: light armor, light pick and hammer (1d4), hand crossbow (1d4)