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Jonus as a child:

They were philosophers when they arrived, dreaming a society without kings or servants, without the mighty or the fallen. They were scholars, and as such they designed elegant cities of sky kissing towers and sweet smelling gardens, and set their machines to making them. They sat in flowering courtyards and talked in dreams and theory of truth and the meaning of the real.

It was a kind world they'd chosen, a world of semi-tropical loveliness, of trusting animals, easily caught, and fresh strange fruits to be picked from the trees. But even kind worlds do not run on dreaming, and in a land without the rulers or the ruled, there was little work done after the initial settlement. These were artists and authors, not farmers, not road construction crews. In their beautiful new world, where berries hung fresh and ripe on bushes, waiting to be picked, they knew hunger. And had the world not been so soft, so kind, perhaps they would have fell to labor. But it was enough, what they had, to keep them going if not thriving, and they ate the fruit from the trees instead.

They spoke of the real, of the reality of the the individual in regards to the reality of the whole. They came to believe, these scholars, these wise men and women, that reality was subjective, was dependent on the individual viewing it. It was easy then, to come to the conclusion that by changing what they believed, they could change reality itself. It did not work for them, but they they taught it to their children, they drilled the idea into those fresh, innocent minds.

And those children had children, a generation born into cities no longer tall and beautiful, cities that had begun to crumble with neglect. A generation brought up hungry and threadbare, and taught that by belief alone they could fill their stomachs and rebuild the ruined towers.

They believed it. Believed it until the fields were golden oceans of wheat and the buildings gleamed ivory in the sunlight. For generations, it worked, this determined rewrite of the real, but each generation was stronger than the last, and less desperate to maintain a clear vision of the now seemingly stable whole. They began to fall into independent visions, slender splinters of truth as each followed the seductive promise of an individual reality.

The society, of course, suffered. But the individuals didn't, at least not physically. They could provide for their own basic needs merely by believing in the fact of sustenance. The buildings crumbled, but the buildings that existed for them were whole, were more lovely than simple architecture could create. The birthrate dropped rapidly, no one wanted the distraction of children. People had stopped interacting with those who had not been pulled from their own mind. The schools, luckily, were computerized, so those children who were born were still educated, still trained in how to make the world their own. But they knew little affection from those they did not make for that purpose, drawing doting parents on empty air, when their true parents wouldn't see them. Others lost themselves in nightmare realities, dying at the hands of fears made powerful, and well out of their childlike control. They knew they made the world, and the boogie men they dreamed were all to prone of stepping out of the closet, dark and blood-eyed and hungry.

And so it goes on...

Victor's life has been one of sheltered opulence. The child of affectionate, overprotective, wealthy parents, primarily home schooled, he's had little experience with the world outside the doors of his mansion. One would expect him to be a spoiled rich kid, and he is. But he's also been raised to be kind, compassionate, and generous. It confuses him, sometimes, that his generosity is so rarely returned in kind, as he doesn't understand that others have suffered through a life without his advantages. Painfully naive, he reacts with a sort of mild bemusement when treated with anything but the same kindness that he offers others.

Despite being wealthy, Victor has little time for himself. With his parents passed on, he's busy with both his own magical studies and the business end of running a popular restaurant chain. Both are proceeding well, but despite the work load, Victor has become, simply put, lonely of late. It's two years since he lost his parents, and at 27, he's finding a reason to interact with the world for the first time. He has no strong friendships, no one to turn to for companionship, only his parents business contacts, and his own peers in the arcane arts. Unfortunately, he's not sure exactly how to go about making friends. They're more difficult to purchase than one might expect, and for someone who shows his affection through gifts, he's not sure how to get people beyond the 'here, have this shiny thing' phase.

Jonus's Friends

12

Two characters is plenty! And now I need to go get dressed, and start my day. At... 3 in the afternoon. Yeah.

Last one, yes?