Nathaniel Perry

The King

Nathaniel is the sort of quiet, studious type who always looks as if he's never even been called "Nathan" in his life, much less "Nate" or "Nate-dog".

His golden-brown hair is kept tidy and short, combed neatly to the side. His grey eyes are generally thoughtful. His long face ends in a solemn mouth and a slightly pointed chin. His slightly freckled skin is the sort of pale that speaks of either long hours indoors (in spite of the freckles) or an Irish heritage. He's a little shy of 6 feet tall, on the thin side of average, and has a tiny bit of a pooch going on (which is no wonder, as he's almost 35 and doesn't get much exercise).

He wears glasses, though they don't appear to be a strong prescription, and wears slacks, dress shirts, and vests. He doesn't quite look like a nerd - but he looks like what he is:  a librarian.

The thought of dressing up in a costume has not yet occurred to him.

Four words to describe him:  Quiet. Thoughtful. Reserved. Stubborn.

When he was a child, his parents decided Nathaniel was going to be a chess prodigy, simply because he kept gravitating towards the family chess set (which they'd likely left within his reach in the hopes he'd do just that). He literally teethed on chess pieces. Their high hopes for him, however, were dashed. While quite intelligent (especially for his age), Nathaniel was never a prodigy of anything, much less chess. He didn't have either the temperament or the drive. At nine, he flat refused to continue participating in tournaments and rather than make a scene, his parents reluctantly agreed. Instead, they pushed him into other academic areas, where he was content enough to stay.

This set the tone for his life. He never quite had the drive to fight upstream battles, but he would more go with the flow and only swim around obstacles he objected to - and to do that strenuously with the sort of steely-eyed glare and jaw-clench that would be all the more intimidating to those who knew him well enough to know how unusual it was.

Nathaniel lives only a few blocks from the library he works at as an archivist (a job his parents snidely refer to as a "glorified librarian"), so he rides a prim grey-and-grey moped to and from any destinations he has, or takes public transportation for anywhere not sensible to take a moped.

He has a thorough education in document restoration, a good background in history, and a general university education to fall back on. If he's in the mood - and he very rarely is - he can play a decent game of chess.

Power 1: Promotion
He knows instinctively that he has the power to make certain people more powerful. For obvious reasons, he's not yet had the opportunity to test these abilities.

Power 2: Stasis
Through touch, he can essentially "pause" an object or person with no ill-effects for a limited amount of time - unless something else interacts with the "paused" item/person, of course. So far, he's been too cautious to test this beyond a few seconds.

As mentioned before - his parents decided from when he was a toddler that he would be a chess prodigy. He had no aptitude for it, so by the time he reached nine, he was fed up with it and put his foot down: He wouldn't play chess anymore. His parents saw how serious he was about it, so they simply gave in, though they funneled him through academic challenges regardless. Nathaniel graduated high school as Valedictorian and then went on to work on a university degree in history. His parents fondly imagined him becoming a professor himself, or even a notable archaeologist, perhaps. Instead, he became fascinated by the science and art of restoring documents and changed his major without telling them. Upon graduation, he took a job at the Historical Library in High Tower, bid his parents a crisp, but polite good-bye, and did the most exciting thing he'd ever done in his life:  struck out on his own.

On a more personal note, Nathaniel hasn't done much else but study his whole life. He's been so sheltered, he's not associated much on a personal level, aside from one or two girls who were bold enough to be direct with him (and who eventually gave up in disgust when they realized he wouldn't lead in their relationship) and a few similarly scholarly guys who were friendly enough with him that they called each other "friends" while very seldom doing anything outside of classes.

So his life was not much to speak of until he got his powers...

Connections with other characters:

Currently he has these strange ideas that there's someone out there he's supposed to find. Several someones, really, but one in particular he's meant to act as a mentor to. Every once in awhile he gets these flashes of emotions he knows are not his own, which he finds terribly confusing and sometimes upsetting.