Name: Reese Warwick
Age: 31 [Born Autumn, 1765]
Occupation: Pickpocket; cat burglar; extortionist
Magic: Reese's magic is focused in illusion -- not in creation but in hiding, in changing peoples' perception. In a crowd, he can become faceless; if he stands still, he can be easily overlooked, ignored. It is not perfect. He cannot disappear in a puff of smoke, or fade away into a shadow. He just makes it easier for people to forget he's there.
Appearance
Slightly shorter than average, stocky and square-jawed, Reese looks nothing like his brother, aside from similar eye and skin colors: pale blue, and roughly-tanned. His hair is a dark brown, kept short and mostly pushed back out of his face. His features are somewhat bland, somewhat square, with very serious, narrowed eyes. Clothing-wise, usually he prefers dark greys, close-fitting and unexciting.
Personality
Reese is serious, self-reliant, and proud to a fault, frequently getting angry or frustrated when he can't do something or doesn't know an answer. Insults to his character might be shrugged off, but insults to his abilities, to his self-sufficiency, those are taken entirely too much to heart.
In general, he just can't take things lightly; can't laugh things off, doesn't often laugh at all, and his own sense of humor is usually at other peoples' expense.
His morality is flexible, generally focused on the concept of "me first". Anything goes, in the pursuit of your own happiness. Even stepping on other people along the way.
This used to cover his brother, as well. Less so, now...
History
Reese grew up believing, down to his very core, that Hedge witches were entirely full of s**t. This was not because, like most people, he had so little exposure to those who claimed to be practitioners — to the contrary.
The problem is that he had too much exposure to a complete and utter charlatan.
Mirela [nee' Miriam] Warwick, his mother and 'roving gypsy', always had a cart full of charms and spells. Having watched their creation, Reese was only too-aware, even as a child, that they were primarily made of straw and string and lies. The only true magic he could find associate with them was the fact that people could be convinced to buy them, his mother's silver tongue coaxing many a wealthy young man to throw coins at them for the tacky creations. They sold not because they worked, but because his mother had such a talent for storytelling, for atmosphere, and for playing the part they expected to see.
She called herself a caregiver, but while she created new charms, new shows, new stories, and wormed her way into many a bed for coin enough to keep them alive, Reese managed the hard parts: cooking and cleaning, managing their finances, budgeting as much as he could, and raising his brother.
Not hard to understand why he had so little faith in the possibility of magic. Not when, at eight years old, he was changing diapers and making sure an unwanted little bundle of joy was kept decently fed.
If he'd known his father, perhaps he would have felt differently.
As it was, he didn't give witches so much a second glance as he aged. Raising his brother turned to grooming his brother for escape, and once Les was good enough, the pair of them slipped their mother's grasp to set up their own wandering show.
He had learned from Mirela, well, however. Performances were supplemented by quick thefts from distracted crowds, by absent minded scams, progressing all the way to forays out with new friends [his brother unknowing] to rob empty town houses while rich merchants were out of town on business. And slowly it went from the robbery supplementing their income to the robbery being the main force behind it, Reese creeping away most nights and coming back with more coin than even the largest crowds provided.
He had a talent for it, and a talent that was more than natural. His face was forgettable to a degree that was strange, sometimes, people fumbling with hair and eye color, struggling to remember the man they'd run into, or who had run into them. He would break into homes and find families still at home — but, standing still, they wouldn't even notice his presence in the corner much of the time, and he was able to neatly slip back out before he was caught.
Reese's cohorts were the ones who suggested it was more than luck, who witnessed the way he faded into the background in these moments, who found even their own memories of him blurring or fading, and who pronounced that it was a gift, as opposed to mere coincidence.
It has been more than five years since Reese's focus turned from tumbling and performance and wandering caravans to theft and robbery — and in the year since his brother left, it is even progressing into the realm of extortion, exploring new partners and possibilities. His unnatural ability to be overlooked, to fade into the background, to change peoples' perception of him, he has begun to accept as something supernatural, hunting for someone who might be able to explain its origins. As of yet, however, he has had little success, other than rumors and old stories and more charlatans.
Much of what he's heard has, however, centered around one thing: finding a familiar...
