Alright. I am betraying Iceland in favour of Finland. For reasons. Reasons that may explain themselves in the future.
Now comes in Dream!form edition as well. Also now with expanded backstory.
(drawing is hard.)
Name........................ Voitto Seppanen (there should be umlauts in there. But my keyboard is not cooperating)
Age............................22
Nationality................ Finnish
Area of birth............. Kajaani
Gender......................Male
Immunity................... Yes
Profession................Mage, blacksmith, engineer, scholar
Languages (in order of proficiency)................ Finnish, Danish, Icelandic
Voitto began having dreams young. Very young. Him and his sister, in fact, had to be handled by the local temple's priest as it was judged that they had to be initiated to the ways of the spirits simply to keep them safe. Simple techniques were taught to them around the age of 8. By the age of 10, they could already do some spells. By 12 they were brought into the forest and taught the Paths and the Names. At 16, they joined the military as proper mages. Attached with a standard military unit, Voitto engaged in regular military campaigns for 3 years. He took a medical leave after receiving a rather grievious wound while engaging a giant with his unit. The wound healed up just fine, but the fight had a negative effect on his psyche and he found himself unable to continue fighting. During his leave he return to Kajaani and, like his father before him (that is, until he got himself a farm) he enrolled in the blacksmith apprenticeship at the Old Kajaani University of Applied Sciences, hoping to become a vital asset and be spared re-enrollement. He was eventually considered fit for service once more, but this time he enrolled as an army mechanic, based in Keuruu. Not particularly inclined for physical labour, he tried to obtain a government job through his mother, a skald in the justice department. This didn't pan out and instead he applied for a position as a naval engineer with the joint Finn-Danish Baltic Fleet and he found himself relocated to Ronne. The navy was not terribly active during his stay, so he found himself hanging out in the cafes (well if you could call what they served coffee) of Ronne with other Finnish ex-pats and learned the language of the place by getting himself a rather well learned old gentleman to tutor him. It is his through this man that he became acquainted with a considerable amount of lore and information – kept mostly in private libraries and collections, and therefore outside of government and religious regulation. He became particularly interested in biology and psychology and its intersection with his own knowledge of the spirits.
His particular angle, as a trained mage, was not very welcome among the Danish circle of intellectuals he frequented. Whenever he mentioned spirits or magic they would roll their eyes, exchanged glances and lecture him on the lack of proof and the impossibility of such a phenomena – though he was welcomed to try and show them, even if such a performance was to be seen as a mere spiritualist seance. Frustrated by their lack of faith (though to him this was not a matter of faith, but rather a matter of fact) in the old gods and spirits, he decided to apply for leave and to go study in Iceland – and hopefully get some support to begin research in Meta-Biology. He knew the Icelanders were pumping considerable amounts of money into trying to find a cure and increasing the immunity of humanity, and so he hoped he would receive a more favourable ear. Once in Reykjavik, he found little support for his ideas. There was, it turned out, a rather considerable distance between the mages of the Academy and the knowledge he had received during his training. The mages he met were not open at all to his ideas – and he eventually fell under suspicion for having consulted old world documents. Insularity and suspicion for outside ways and people prevailed. Frustrated, he left Reykjavik for Ronne once more, this time hoping to go to Sweden. The Swedes may be godless heathens, but at least, he heard, they were pragmatical godless heathens and perhaps they would see the usefulness of his ideas. Or at least, maybe give him some money. He was unable to gain passage to Sweden, ultimately, as he was recalled to Finland for the winter campaign. This was to be a major operation and he was re-enrolled as a mage – they would need all the firepower they could get as they planned to tackle a considerable amount of territory and hoping to recapture an old hydroelectric plant. This is year 90. Somewhere, out there, a bunch of losers just got funding to go treasure hunt in the Silent World. Meanwhile, Voitto is scribbling notes and thoughts as the Finns begin to muster. There is no set cannon of mage teaching in Finland, which makes it hard to generalize about his own observation and a lot of mages are taciturn and reluctant to discuss what they consider to be sacred knowledge. He begins to record his own experiences with magic and the spirit realm, but encountered considerable difficulties right off the bat. Frustrated by the growing amounts of hurdles, he put on hold his research and sent his notes to Kajaani from Keuruu as his unit sets out toward Eastern Finland.
