Post by Headmaster James Argyle on Mar 3, 2012 2:47:05 GMT -5
Player: 0173
Contact: (PM me)
Intentions: Hero
Background
Name: James Argyle
Race: High Fey
Species: Pooka
Age: 300
Tier: 5
Social
Place of Birth: Greenwich
Allegiances: Camford School of Magic
Aspirations: See another batch of students grow into their power as mages, keep the flame of magic burning in Greenwich
Nicknames: Jimmy
Titles: Headmaster Argyle of the Camford School of Magic
Relatives: -
Significant Other: -
Mental
Personality: Those who don't know James Argyle say he is well into his second or third childhood. Those who do understand him are quick to correct them; he never outgrew his first childhood to begin with. James is playful, infectiously manic at times, and always possessed of a bright new idea to help his students get in closer touch with their magical side. Not a conventional believer in the power of the textbook, he advocates an outside-the-box approach to learning, even at the risk of life and limb. Scholars, scientists, and even many other magicians look at their spheres of study and ask "Why?"; James smiles upon the universe, reaches out to change it with a magic-infused handshake and asks, "Why not?"
Likes: Fun, games, learning, flying, the bouncing charm, children's laughter, nonsensical words, harmless mischief, students willing to get creative when exploring magic, potions that explode, being asked for advice, jelly babies
Dislikes: Crabby people, castor oil, education ministers, Parent-Teacher conferences, textbooks, lima beans
Strengths: James' supply of friendly optimism is virtually inexhaustible, and has brought him and Camford through some trying moments in the recent years. Coupled with his inventive streak, it adds up to a constant stream of ideas and the confidence to try them out and hope for the best. In every zany escapade he perpetrates, James begins with a constructive end in mind, and never loses sight of it in the organized chaos that follows. His intelligence runs highest when left to act spontaneously; he specializes in spur-of-the-moment improvisations that can radically alter the momentum of any occasion.
Weaknesses: James is constantly cheerful and excited. Few others have the energy to keep up with him. To many adults and the more studious, book-smart students in his school, an hour in his presence can quickly transform him from an eccentric child-man into a grating irritant. Not all his ideas are good; some have put students and staff into the infirmary en masse, if but for a few hours until the healing potions and wards took effect. The other teachers at Camford have learned, often painfully, to tread with caution when he's got that look in his eye, and to be prepared for trouble the moment he opens his grinning mouth to speak.
Physical
Major Details: James has bright blue eyes, messy brown hair, horn-rimmed glasses with cracked lenses and slightly pointed ears.
Appearance: Just into his third century, James still resembles a child of ten years. He stands at four and a half feet and has a lean, wiry build, but retains some 'baby fat' on his cheeks. He prefers to dress in robes - of any kind, from the formal scholar's robes (complete with mortarboard hat) to embroidered druid's robes to plain first-year student's ceremonial robes, and during one memorable Parent-Teacher conference, a bathrobe. His most striking trait is his smile - wide, hopeful, with just a bare spark of mischief shining about his gleaming white teeth, a little too cheerful for any self-respecting child, far too innocent to belong on an adult, a sure indicator that he must be Something Else - something probably friendly, if not quite human.
Natural Abilities: James has the speed and agility of a fit, pre-adolescent child, and a fine motor precision honed from centuries of practice.
Natural Traits: James has a small size, and slightly pointed teeth and ears which allude to his Pooka heritage.
Strengths: James is quick on his feet, able to dash and dodge around obstacles with little difficulty. Having a child's low mass and height lets him turn on a dime and squeeze through small openings, good for sneaking or making a hasty exit. He's also exceptionally nimble with his fingers, able to assemble small machines within seconds, grab objects, or draw his wand for some fast spellwork.
Weaknesses: Having the body of a lean ten-year-old means James is no heavyweight. He won't be throwing any megaton punches or standing as an immovable object before any unstoppable forces; in fact, he can be quite fragile if he doesn't have the time to put up a protection spell. He doesn't like physical violence, in any case; even in the position to launch a good fisticuff, he's more likely to dislocate his own knuckles than break his opponent's jaw.
Magical
Specializations:
- Tier 1: Physical (Transmutation), Proficiency 6. - James can use his movements to alter physical matter with atomic level precision.
- Tier 2: Mental (Psychic), Proficiency 6. - James can focus his will to perform mental feats such as telekinesis, telepathy and levitation.
- Tier 3: Written (Runes), Proficiency 6.
- Tier 4: Spoken (Latin), Proficiency 6.
- Tier 5: Material (Camford school grounds), Proficiency 6.
Visual Display: James' eyes radiate a solid orange light when he uses Psychic magic. The same orange light shines from his runes when they form a complete spell.
Special Abilities: Psychometry, Alternative Sense (Magic), Empathy, Enhanced Speed, Familiar (Partial, Item: Ash Wand), Insight
Bonus Special Abilities: Animal Shapeshifting 1, Animal Shapeshifting 2, Foresight, Teleportation
Unique Abilities: James can understand how any single machine works by maintaining physical contact with it.
Strengths: Having agile fingers gives James a significant edge when it comes to his transmutation magic and wand work. This spreads over into his rune magic, which he performs by carving on surfaces with his wand - he can put up a decent barrier or engulf a small room in a low-gravity field within a matter of seconds. Centuries of finding new ways to make things explode have made him quite a formidable Material mage, particularly in the realm of pyrotechnics.
Weaknesses: When it comes to Insight and Psychometry, a single, cursory scan is enough for him - James rarely goes back for a second examination, instead relying on his Psychic abilities to suss out the relevant details from that one memory. His grasp of Latin isn't the best around - he often mispronounces words if he's in a hurry, and the only incantation he can always get right is the Bouncing Charm.
Inventory
Mundane:
-Assorted flavor jelly babies
-Notebook
Magical:
-Ash Wand - Material (Perpetual). A slim wand of ash wood, seven inches in length, light and flexible, with a Firebird's feather at the core. Along with the half-tier increase in strength provided by its function as a familiar, the wand grants an additional half-tier boost to Fire magic cast through it.
-True-sight Glasses - Written (Perpetual). A pair of ordinary horn-rimmed spectacles with runes scratched into the crystal lenses. They allow the wearer to see through illusions and stealth magic of a tier equal to or lower than their own.
-Jelly baby - Draught of Greater Healing (3) - Material (Consumed). A magical potion, distilled and concentrated into the center of a jelly baby, that confers a single level of Enhanced Recovery on the consumer until they are restored to full health.
History
Pookas are an uncommon subspecies of goblin - spirits of joy in mortal flesh and blood, blessed and cursed at once with beaming hearts that demand their cheer be shared. James Argyle was no exception - born with a smile he never outgrew, laughing to live and living to laugh.
James was born in the year 1277, halfway through the transformation of Greenwich into its modern-day land of clockwork and steam. Factories were rising across the country, magic was beginning its slow descent from grace, and the seeds of discontent were taking root among the Wildfey of Greenwich as they saw their forest homes cut down and paved over with concrete and metal.
None of this, at the time, was of any consequence to the smiling child and his family, warm and safe in their burrow at the edge of a cornfield in Northern Greenwich. The landlord knew them well, and wholeheartedly approved of their presence; the farmers' children made little distinction between human and fey playmates, and the adults of both races tilled the land together. He was born smiling and remained as such for the length of his idyllic childhood, when there was enough to eat and every face around belonged to a friend.
Disaster was practically begging for a chance to strike.
The rampaging Blight Elemental, guided down from the wilds of Caledonia by a disgruntled fey mage, put swift work to half their year's labor. The rest of the cornfield had to be torched to destroy the creature.
Their emergency stores tided them over for the winter. But the elemental's mark had sunk into the soil and spread its roots through the season's turn, leaving it fetid as the new spring began, and the apothecary who came to cleanse the land charged a hefty price for the two weeks of painstaking labor that exhausted his inventory and leeched the soil barren in his bid to scour it clean. The landlord's wealth and the remnants of their stores kept them alive, but they barely broke even. The months passed, their resources thinned, and the inner cities continued to rise, seemingly out of disaster's reach...
Progress was the watchword of that day and age - progress and profit, with little in the way of scruples to keep either down. Not many eyebrows were raised at the sight of another flock of village children coming in on the next train to work in the factories over the summer.
Surrounded by clanking metal, sweltering heat and steam, one of many standing in an assembly line with little clockwork parts to shape into a toy, James found a reason for smiling in the face of this strange, alien world.
He wasn't just another child worker in a toy farm. He was James Argyle, creator of little creatures and people that moved to the turn of a key, and his in-born Goblin heritage saw every machine at his fingertips whispering its secrets into his ears. Within his first month in the city, he had an understanding of mechanical physics enjoyed by only the top Oxbridge scholars at the time. The next clockwork mouse to meet his fingers was as familiar to him, inside and out, as the prototype gyrocopter that made an emergency landing in the street right outside the factory. He knew how the ratchets and cogs turned about each other; where defective, he knew why they didn't... and as he would discover only weeks later, his fingers could move magic to right what was wrong, shrink a wheel too large or straighten a bent axle...
If there was one smiling child amid the hordes of tired faces, no one seemed to point that out. If that factory never saw an incident of machine breakdown on the level where the smiling child worked, and if one assembly line never turned out defective toys, no one said a word. But some who had been around longer than most, who had sharper eyes to observe the thin, unkempt urchin of eight years who never aged over five years and beyond... they didn't say a word either. But they took notice.
Fey were a rare sight in the city, outside of newspapers bearing tales of Wildfey attacks upon outlying factories and towns. Magic, at its zenith of interest during James' birth and on the wane ever since, was now little more than a weapon to be feared in fey hands, or a mysterious utility mastered only by Oxbridge's top eggheads. Now twenty years old and with the body of a smiling child of nine, James knew he had to keep his head down, or trouble would be sure to follow.
He knew with his head, certainly; he hadn't grown up without a measure of common sense. His heart had other ideas. But if anyone noticed the careful, creative subversion he embarked on - the clockwork mice that could jump and fly, the toys with original, lurid color schemes that defied the lack of cyan and fuchsia paint, the suspiciously musical rhythm to which the boilers whistled and gears rattled... once again, no one said a word. The 'defective' novelties were set aside and sold for a tidy profit. Repairmen were called in on three occasions, and all reported that the machinery was in prime condition, as it had been for years, each part practically fresh off its own assembly line. Gossip was bandied, often in jest and hardly believed, about a playful spirit that haunted the factory.
Greenwich evolved, and society changed with it. The children of old grew up. Some remained, now adults in their blue-collar jobs, but fewer came in to replace them. Blending in became less easy, even as anti-Wildfey paranoia continued to rise across the country. All it would take was one spark in a powder keg...
Industrial accidents are only partly the fault of the machinery in question. James did his best to keep the mechanical side of things blameless, but the mortal tendency for being accident-prone has an indomitable spirit and always has a better fool to counter the most foolproof plan...
The foreman fell off a walkway. A mechanical trolley, trundling on below with its payload of pressurized steam tanks, was set to break his fall. Disaster was imminent.
Then, it wasn't.
The foreman floated up to the walkway, back to James' side. A nearby security guard, new to the job, quick on the draw and itchy with his trigger fingers, had seen the strange boy's eyes glow moments before the foreman was lifted clear from harm's way. He charged in, loaded gun coming free from its holster. James saw him, and tossed up his hands, and magic flew...
The foreman managed to break up the fight. James was very apologetic, but enough witnesses were present to provide a strong case for the man's gun becoming a squeaky green rubber duck.
The following morning, the factory manager was waiting for him.
No amount of frantic pleading would help. The manager, was of course, very apologetic about it himself. The idea of Wildfey presence at a factory in the inner cities of Greenwich was enough to set a lot of teeth on edge. Word would spread, and paranoid rioting mobs were the last thing he, or James, needed on their hands. And paranoid, rioting mobs wouldn't listen to reason. If he'd been working here for years without a peep of malice, if he was the engineering genius behind the flying clockwork mice that he'd never taken credit for, if he was the reason that particular factory hadn't needed to call in a repairman in years... they wouldn't listen.
James Argyle had to go.
The factory workers saw him leave. They saw him board the train out. They didn't see him switch trains, or take the railway up into Caledonia, or disembark at the Camford School of Magic where an education awaited him, fully paid for out of the manager's own pocket...
In his third home, James found his calling. Magic whispered to him. It danced laughing around him. It transformed him, and through it he saw the power to transform the world. Like science, it brought the world's secrets to his fingertips and unravelled them before his eyes. Unlike science, as far as he understood... it was limitless. So many different ways to make the world better, to make people smile, to simply have fun...
He graduated with flying colors, and he asked to stay, even offering to work for the school board for meager wages. He received payment enough, just being near to so much fun and magic, and generation after generation of schoolchildren to share this dual gift with.
He began as their handyman. He rose to become a professor's assistant, and then a professor himself, when the former one retired and nominated him in her place. And years later still, when the headmistress abdicated...
The board of governors was divided in the matter. Professor Argyle was quite a mixed bag - all that knowledge crammed into the jarring stature of a ten-year-old with a manic grin and a dangerous sparkle of genius in his eyes, loved by his students despite his habit of regularly inspiring them to end up in the infirmary, if he didn't put them there himself in some magical adventure gone awry, terrifying and fascinating to the parents who received worrisome letters of their children's injury, only to rush to the school to find them well on the mend with a freshly kindled zeal for learning the magical arts...
What the school needed, one governor argued, was mad genius. None of his students had been fatally wounded yet, though it was often the result of quick thinking on the part of his peers, or the school nurses. All under his tutelage had graduated successfully, and remained successful plying the magical trade, even decades after leaving Camford. Magic was well on the decline, furthermore; it needed to be relevant and interesting if Camford was to survive, and James, or "Jimmy" to his students, was all about interesting, with relevancy often struggling to keep up with his dust.
A hundred and thirty years after they made their decision, Camford still stands, its student population thin but slowly growing in number again under the twinkling eye of Headmaster James Argyle.
He'd never take the credit for it, of course. He attributes his success to magic wanting to be fun, or his students being willing to learn. Or, if still pushed to accept the honor, he'll launch into a lengthy discussion of his convoluted theory that the Shorgantharenosaurs of the Sinister Realm of Glubb-Glubby were behind his success, and he's just as caught up in their web as everyone else is.
At this point, most people stop insisting.
Contact: (PM me)
Intentions: Hero
Background
Name: James Argyle
Race: High Fey
Species: Pooka
Age: 300
Tier: 5
Social
Place of Birth: Greenwich
Allegiances: Camford School of Magic
Aspirations: See another batch of students grow into their power as mages, keep the flame of magic burning in Greenwich
Nicknames: Jimmy
Titles: Headmaster Argyle of the Camford School of Magic
Relatives: -
Significant Other: -
Mental
Personality: Those who don't know James Argyle say he is well into his second or third childhood. Those who do understand him are quick to correct them; he never outgrew his first childhood to begin with. James is playful, infectiously manic at times, and always possessed of a bright new idea to help his students get in closer touch with their magical side. Not a conventional believer in the power of the textbook, he advocates an outside-the-box approach to learning, even at the risk of life and limb. Scholars, scientists, and even many other magicians look at their spheres of study and ask "Why?"; James smiles upon the universe, reaches out to change it with a magic-infused handshake and asks, "Why not?"
Likes: Fun, games, learning, flying, the bouncing charm, children's laughter, nonsensical words, harmless mischief, students willing to get creative when exploring magic, potions that explode, being asked for advice, jelly babies
Dislikes: Crabby people, castor oil, education ministers, Parent-Teacher conferences, textbooks, lima beans
Strengths: James' supply of friendly optimism is virtually inexhaustible, and has brought him and Camford through some trying moments in the recent years. Coupled with his inventive streak, it adds up to a constant stream of ideas and the confidence to try them out and hope for the best. In every zany escapade he perpetrates, James begins with a constructive end in mind, and never loses sight of it in the organized chaos that follows. His intelligence runs highest when left to act spontaneously; he specializes in spur-of-the-moment improvisations that can radically alter the momentum of any occasion.
Weaknesses: James is constantly cheerful and excited. Few others have the energy to keep up with him. To many adults and the more studious, book-smart students in his school, an hour in his presence can quickly transform him from an eccentric child-man into a grating irritant. Not all his ideas are good; some have put students and staff into the infirmary en masse, if but for a few hours until the healing potions and wards took effect. The other teachers at Camford have learned, often painfully, to tread with caution when he's got that look in his eye, and to be prepared for trouble the moment he opens his grinning mouth to speak.
Physical
Major Details: James has bright blue eyes, messy brown hair, horn-rimmed glasses with cracked lenses and slightly pointed ears.
Appearance: Just into his third century, James still resembles a child of ten years. He stands at four and a half feet and has a lean, wiry build, but retains some 'baby fat' on his cheeks. He prefers to dress in robes - of any kind, from the formal scholar's robes (complete with mortarboard hat) to embroidered druid's robes to plain first-year student's ceremonial robes, and during one memorable Parent-Teacher conference, a bathrobe. His most striking trait is his smile - wide, hopeful, with just a bare spark of mischief shining about his gleaming white teeth, a little too cheerful for any self-respecting child, far too innocent to belong on an adult, a sure indicator that he must be Something Else - something probably friendly, if not quite human.
Natural Abilities: James has the speed and agility of a fit, pre-adolescent child, and a fine motor precision honed from centuries of practice.
Natural Traits: James has a small size, and slightly pointed teeth and ears which allude to his Pooka heritage.
Strengths: James is quick on his feet, able to dash and dodge around obstacles with little difficulty. Having a child's low mass and height lets him turn on a dime and squeeze through small openings, good for sneaking or making a hasty exit. He's also exceptionally nimble with his fingers, able to assemble small machines within seconds, grab objects, or draw his wand for some fast spellwork.
Weaknesses: Having the body of a lean ten-year-old means James is no heavyweight. He won't be throwing any megaton punches or standing as an immovable object before any unstoppable forces; in fact, he can be quite fragile if he doesn't have the time to put up a protection spell. He doesn't like physical violence, in any case; even in the position to launch a good fisticuff, he's more likely to dislocate his own knuckles than break his opponent's jaw.
Magical
Specializations:
- Tier 1: Physical (Transmutation), Proficiency 6. - James can use his movements to alter physical matter with atomic level precision.
- Tier 2: Mental (Psychic), Proficiency 6. - James can focus his will to perform mental feats such as telekinesis, telepathy and levitation.
- Tier 3: Written (Runes), Proficiency 6.
- Tier 4: Spoken (Latin), Proficiency 6.
- Tier 5: Material (Camford school grounds), Proficiency 6.
Visual Display: James' eyes radiate a solid orange light when he uses Psychic magic. The same orange light shines from his runes when they form a complete spell.
Special Abilities: Psychometry, Alternative Sense (Magic), Empathy, Enhanced Speed, Familiar (Partial, Item: Ash Wand), Insight
Bonus Special Abilities: Animal Shapeshifting 1, Animal Shapeshifting 2, Foresight, Teleportation
Unique Abilities: James can understand how any single machine works by maintaining physical contact with it.
Strengths: Having agile fingers gives James a significant edge when it comes to his transmutation magic and wand work. This spreads over into his rune magic, which he performs by carving on surfaces with his wand - he can put up a decent barrier or engulf a small room in a low-gravity field within a matter of seconds. Centuries of finding new ways to make things explode have made him quite a formidable Material mage, particularly in the realm of pyrotechnics.
Weaknesses: When it comes to Insight and Psychometry, a single, cursory scan is enough for him - James rarely goes back for a second examination, instead relying on his Psychic abilities to suss out the relevant details from that one memory. His grasp of Latin isn't the best around - he often mispronounces words if he's in a hurry, and the only incantation he can always get right is the Bouncing Charm.
Inventory
Mundane:
-Assorted flavor jelly babies
-Notebook
Magical:
-Ash Wand - Material (Perpetual). A slim wand of ash wood, seven inches in length, light and flexible, with a Firebird's feather at the core. Along with the half-tier increase in strength provided by its function as a familiar, the wand grants an additional half-tier boost to Fire magic cast through it.
-True-sight Glasses - Written (Perpetual). A pair of ordinary horn-rimmed spectacles with runes scratched into the crystal lenses. They allow the wearer to see through illusions and stealth magic of a tier equal to or lower than their own.
-Jelly baby - Draught of Greater Healing (3) - Material (Consumed). A magical potion, distilled and concentrated into the center of a jelly baby, that confers a single level of Enhanced Recovery on the consumer until they are restored to full health.
History
Pookas are an uncommon subspecies of goblin - spirits of joy in mortal flesh and blood, blessed and cursed at once with beaming hearts that demand their cheer be shared. James Argyle was no exception - born with a smile he never outgrew, laughing to live and living to laugh.
James was born in the year 1277, halfway through the transformation of Greenwich into its modern-day land of clockwork and steam. Factories were rising across the country, magic was beginning its slow descent from grace, and the seeds of discontent were taking root among the Wildfey of Greenwich as they saw their forest homes cut down and paved over with concrete and metal.
None of this, at the time, was of any consequence to the smiling child and his family, warm and safe in their burrow at the edge of a cornfield in Northern Greenwich. The landlord knew them well, and wholeheartedly approved of their presence; the farmers' children made little distinction between human and fey playmates, and the adults of both races tilled the land together. He was born smiling and remained as such for the length of his idyllic childhood, when there was enough to eat and every face around belonged to a friend.
Disaster was practically begging for a chance to strike.
The rampaging Blight Elemental, guided down from the wilds of Caledonia by a disgruntled fey mage, put swift work to half their year's labor. The rest of the cornfield had to be torched to destroy the creature.
Their emergency stores tided them over for the winter. But the elemental's mark had sunk into the soil and spread its roots through the season's turn, leaving it fetid as the new spring began, and the apothecary who came to cleanse the land charged a hefty price for the two weeks of painstaking labor that exhausted his inventory and leeched the soil barren in his bid to scour it clean. The landlord's wealth and the remnants of their stores kept them alive, but they barely broke even. The months passed, their resources thinned, and the inner cities continued to rise, seemingly out of disaster's reach...
Progress was the watchword of that day and age - progress and profit, with little in the way of scruples to keep either down. Not many eyebrows were raised at the sight of another flock of village children coming in on the next train to work in the factories over the summer.
Surrounded by clanking metal, sweltering heat and steam, one of many standing in an assembly line with little clockwork parts to shape into a toy, James found a reason for smiling in the face of this strange, alien world.
He wasn't just another child worker in a toy farm. He was James Argyle, creator of little creatures and people that moved to the turn of a key, and his in-born Goblin heritage saw every machine at his fingertips whispering its secrets into his ears. Within his first month in the city, he had an understanding of mechanical physics enjoyed by only the top Oxbridge scholars at the time. The next clockwork mouse to meet his fingers was as familiar to him, inside and out, as the prototype gyrocopter that made an emergency landing in the street right outside the factory. He knew how the ratchets and cogs turned about each other; where defective, he knew why they didn't... and as he would discover only weeks later, his fingers could move magic to right what was wrong, shrink a wheel too large or straighten a bent axle...
If there was one smiling child amid the hordes of tired faces, no one seemed to point that out. If that factory never saw an incident of machine breakdown on the level where the smiling child worked, and if one assembly line never turned out defective toys, no one said a word. But some who had been around longer than most, who had sharper eyes to observe the thin, unkempt urchin of eight years who never aged over five years and beyond... they didn't say a word either. But they took notice.
Fey were a rare sight in the city, outside of newspapers bearing tales of Wildfey attacks upon outlying factories and towns. Magic, at its zenith of interest during James' birth and on the wane ever since, was now little more than a weapon to be feared in fey hands, or a mysterious utility mastered only by Oxbridge's top eggheads. Now twenty years old and with the body of a smiling child of nine, James knew he had to keep his head down, or trouble would be sure to follow.
He knew with his head, certainly; he hadn't grown up without a measure of common sense. His heart had other ideas. But if anyone noticed the careful, creative subversion he embarked on - the clockwork mice that could jump and fly, the toys with original, lurid color schemes that defied the lack of cyan and fuchsia paint, the suspiciously musical rhythm to which the boilers whistled and gears rattled... once again, no one said a word. The 'defective' novelties were set aside and sold for a tidy profit. Repairmen were called in on three occasions, and all reported that the machinery was in prime condition, as it had been for years, each part practically fresh off its own assembly line. Gossip was bandied, often in jest and hardly believed, about a playful spirit that haunted the factory.
Greenwich evolved, and society changed with it. The children of old grew up. Some remained, now adults in their blue-collar jobs, but fewer came in to replace them. Blending in became less easy, even as anti-Wildfey paranoia continued to rise across the country. All it would take was one spark in a powder keg...
Industrial accidents are only partly the fault of the machinery in question. James did his best to keep the mechanical side of things blameless, but the mortal tendency for being accident-prone has an indomitable spirit and always has a better fool to counter the most foolproof plan...
The foreman fell off a walkway. A mechanical trolley, trundling on below with its payload of pressurized steam tanks, was set to break his fall. Disaster was imminent.
Then, it wasn't.
The foreman floated up to the walkway, back to James' side. A nearby security guard, new to the job, quick on the draw and itchy with his trigger fingers, had seen the strange boy's eyes glow moments before the foreman was lifted clear from harm's way. He charged in, loaded gun coming free from its holster. James saw him, and tossed up his hands, and magic flew...
The foreman managed to break up the fight. James was very apologetic, but enough witnesses were present to provide a strong case for the man's gun becoming a squeaky green rubber duck.
The following morning, the factory manager was waiting for him.
No amount of frantic pleading would help. The manager, was of course, very apologetic about it himself. The idea of Wildfey presence at a factory in the inner cities of Greenwich was enough to set a lot of teeth on edge. Word would spread, and paranoid rioting mobs were the last thing he, or James, needed on their hands. And paranoid, rioting mobs wouldn't listen to reason. If he'd been working here for years without a peep of malice, if he was the engineering genius behind the flying clockwork mice that he'd never taken credit for, if he was the reason that particular factory hadn't needed to call in a repairman in years... they wouldn't listen.
James Argyle had to go.
The factory workers saw him leave. They saw him board the train out. They didn't see him switch trains, or take the railway up into Caledonia, or disembark at the Camford School of Magic where an education awaited him, fully paid for out of the manager's own pocket...
In his third home, James found his calling. Magic whispered to him. It danced laughing around him. It transformed him, and through it he saw the power to transform the world. Like science, it brought the world's secrets to his fingertips and unravelled them before his eyes. Unlike science, as far as he understood... it was limitless. So many different ways to make the world better, to make people smile, to simply have fun...
He graduated with flying colors, and he asked to stay, even offering to work for the school board for meager wages. He received payment enough, just being near to so much fun and magic, and generation after generation of schoolchildren to share this dual gift with.
He began as their handyman. He rose to become a professor's assistant, and then a professor himself, when the former one retired and nominated him in her place. And years later still, when the headmistress abdicated...
The board of governors was divided in the matter. Professor Argyle was quite a mixed bag - all that knowledge crammed into the jarring stature of a ten-year-old with a manic grin and a dangerous sparkle of genius in his eyes, loved by his students despite his habit of regularly inspiring them to end up in the infirmary, if he didn't put them there himself in some magical adventure gone awry, terrifying and fascinating to the parents who received worrisome letters of their children's injury, only to rush to the school to find them well on the mend with a freshly kindled zeal for learning the magical arts...
What the school needed, one governor argued, was mad genius. None of his students had been fatally wounded yet, though it was often the result of quick thinking on the part of his peers, or the school nurses. All under his tutelage had graduated successfully, and remained successful plying the magical trade, even decades after leaving Camford. Magic was well on the decline, furthermore; it needed to be relevant and interesting if Camford was to survive, and James, or "Jimmy" to his students, was all about interesting, with relevancy often struggling to keep up with his dust.
A hundred and thirty years after they made their decision, Camford still stands, its student population thin but slowly growing in number again under the twinkling eye of Headmaster James Argyle.
He'd never take the credit for it, of course. He attributes his success to magic wanting to be fun, or his students being willing to learn. Or, if still pushed to accept the honor, he'll launch into a lengthy discussion of his convoluted theory that the Shorgantharenosaurs of the Sinister Realm of Glubb-Glubby were behind his success, and he's just as caught up in their web as everyone else is.
At this point, most people stop insisting.