Andrew Byrne

Engineer and magical inventor

Attributes:

Strength	3	Charisma	2	Perception	4 / Finding flaws
Dexterity	4 / Deft Hands	Manipulation	2	Intelligence	5 / From concept to execution
Stamina	3	Appearance	3	Wits	3

Abilities:

Alertness	2	Crafts / Machines	4	Academics	2
Athletics	1 / Dodge	Drive	1	Computer	4 / CAD/CAM
Awareness	4 / Enchants	Etiquette	1	Enigmas	4 / Occult mysteries
Brawl	1	Firearms	1	Esoterica	3
Empathy	1	Meditation	1	Finance	2
Streetwise	1	Research	4	Occult	3
Subterfuge	1	Technology / Inventions	4	Science	4 / Mech. Engineering

Paths:

Alchemy 3
Conveyance 2
Enchantment 3

Other:

Willpower 7
Banality 5

Languages:

German, Latin

Backgrounds:

Allies	3 / Anneliese (mage), Daisy, Deirdre
Armory	1
Contacts	5 (Miscellaneous technology industry contacts)
Dream	1
Fame	2 / As a wealthy inventor
Library	4
Mentor	2 / Order of Hermes contact Anneliese
Resources	5 / self-made man
Retainers	1 / Personal assistant Liliana
Sanctum	4 (includes workbench/lab)
Talisman	Sorcery items as needed

---

Merits and Flaws:

1	Ability Aptitude: Technology	-1	Criminal Past: forced to steal as a child for his family
1	Concentration	-2	Curiosity
3	Hands of Daedalus	-2	Otherworldly Taint: leaves behind an aura of brilliance that is often dismissed as a trick of the light.
1	Languages: German, Latin	-2	Phobia: Being controlled
4	Twin Souls
1	Unseen Servant

Sorcery Talismans

This is a sample of what he has; I didn’t list all of the gadgets he’s made.

●● Universal ID
This is a very generic looking form of identification that looks, to the viewer, like whatever form of ID they are expecting to see, with appropriate seals, markings, and so forth. It will allow the holder to pass ID checks without a second guess, though if they are using a false name with it, they need to prepare it accordingly with a short ritual that involves chanting the new name and information over it accurately three times to make it appear on the card. It can be made in different shapes to mimic different forms of ID (such as passports), but its usual form is a plastic card the size of a credit card.

●●● Got-it-Right-Here-Ring
Can conjure any of the user’s possessions to hand at will, including items of a size up to 10 lbs. Each item you wish to be able to conjure must be prepared specially with an Eldritch Mark.

Rituals: 

Alchemy 3 (Casting: Intelligence + Enigmas): All rituals in the book up to 3 plus custom:
● Groggy-B-Gone: Concentrated magical caffeine that wakes you RIGHT the hell up. (1 dose/success)
● Malleable Bandages: Small elastic bandages that reshape themselves to fit the exact configuration you need to cover a wound. (1 package of 10/success.)
●● The Pain Annihilator: This is simply a nonaddictive superior painkiller that has no side effects at all and does not interact with other medication. (1 dose per success.)

Conveyance 2 (Casting: Intelligence + Science)
●● Sprint (see book pg. 22)
●● Teleport Ward (see book pg. 22)

Enchantment 3 (Casting: Intelligence + Crafts): All rituals in the book up to 3 plus custom:
●●● Technology MasterCard: This card convinces a passcard device of any sort that the holder of this card has access to whatever door or secure location it guards. Note that it will only work in place of a passcard; if some place has a fingerprint or retina system, it won’t work. Permanent item.

Instruments, practice, paradigm, etc:

Paradigm:

A Mechanistic Cosmos
Creation is Innately Divine and Alive

Practice:

Alchemy
Craftwork
Occult / Hermetic and high magic
Weird Science

Instruments:

• 3D Printing
• Astrology (constellational as well as conventional astrology)
• CAD/CAM
• Computers and peripherals
• ** Craftwork: Personalized focus, -1 difficulty
• Engineering
• Geometry, especially sacred geometry
• ** Hand-made precision tools: Unique focus, -2 difficulty
• Latin
• Mathematics and numbers
• Mechanical crafting tools
• Occult symbols and diagrams, typical occult items like candles, knives, bowls, pure water, etc.
• Puzzles and ciphers
• Ritual

Resonance:

Dynamic: Inventive ●●●
Entropic: Unraveling ●
Static: Bright ●

History:

Andrew was born to a pair of farmers’ kids who married in their teens. He was the second child and second son. He has a younger sister, Daisy, as well. The first son/older brother is Keith, and he was the target of most of the early abuse. Andrew was the ‘favorite’ as a small child, until Keith was taken away by CPS at the age of 8. Once Keith was gone, Andrew wound up being the punching bag/blame target and Daisy was the favorite.

Andrew was made to work on the farm while theoretically being ‘homeschooled,’ and got very good at fixing things. He was also used in schemes to steal from stores in the nearby ‘big city’ of X, and his family wound up being trespassed from those stores over time.

He was taken from his family at 8 as well. He wound up in a strict but fair foster family with Frank and Gina Reyes, who got him into school and helped him learn, which was a blessing for him because he loved to read, learn, and build things. He has a gift for building and fixing things, and his new family did their best to get him into more classes, and took him to the library once a week. He was raised to be polite and correct; his new family treated him well but allowed no nonsense.

He was raised by the Reyeses and skipped grades more than once, resulting in him getting his high school diploma at 15. His Science Fair projects and Robotics team competitions were made from garbage and spare parts that he found at the dump and the recycling center, as well as appliances left by the side of the road. The family wound up letting him use the garage as his workspace.

His first patent was a simple item he created for his foster sister Liliana while he was still in high school. She had unsteady hands from a childhood illness and had trouble applying makeup correctly, so he designed a set of templates to allow her to simply fill in the lines and spaces so she could apply cosmetics properly.

He went to Stanford University on a full scholarship, and chose Mechanical Engineering as his major. He managed to win graduate scholarships as well, and spent six years at university, resulting in an M.S. degree magna cum laude. By the time he graduated at 21, he was already the owner of several patents of a variety of types, some simple solutions like his foster sister’s stencils, while others were complex solutions to technical problems.

During that time, he worked with a group of medical students on an innovative low-cost, environmentally-friendly set of casts for broken bones engineered from several kinds of crops. This patent alone gave him a huge income when a medical device firm purchased the rights to make prosthetics and assistance devices with his EarthCast technology.

Somewhere in his college days, he found the mystery of the occult in books buried in the special collections of the library, and wound up growing enamored of the mathematics, the sacred geometry, and the weird and wonderful mix of science and wonder. It was then that he was approached by Anneliese Müller, a post-graduate student whose specialty was Electrical Engineering.

Anneliese recruited Andrew into her circle of scientists and engineers, all of whom were somehow connected to the Order of Hermes’ House Verditius. His reading in those areas grew; he now had enough money to live off from the royalties from his inventions, so he spent time pursuing this knowledge and building himself a life and a workshop. As soon as he could afford it, he bought a house in Palo Alto that had a four-car garage that became his workshop.

As the money began to roll in, he worked with a former classmate at Stanford to found his own small firm, Byrne Innovation. The entire company consisted of said classmate, Deirdre Fahey, as the administrator/bargainer/salesperson/face of the company, while Andrew himself simply took on design jobs for other corporations in need of help. After time, he hired his foster sister, Liliana, as a personal assistant and administrator to allow Deirdre time to do what she does best, which is tell people how brilliant Andrew is.

Over the years, he showed his gratitude to the Reyes family by first paying off their mortgage, then helping their foster kids find jobs, get scholarships, and fund educations and apprenticeships. To this day he still calls them Mama Gina and Papa Frank, and credits them for his success.

He has some contact with his older brother, but Keith didn’t end up in as good a situation, and is more or less a drifter moving from job to job. Andrew tried to help, but his attempts were met with anger and resentment. Keith still thought of his brother as the family favorite. His little sister Daisy is currently at UC-Berkeley getting a Master’s degree in Finance on his dime. They get along well enough, but aren’t that close. His birth parents haven’t seen him since the day he was taken from their home, despite their attempts to get their hands on his money.

Andrew is something of a loner; he has friends among his former classmates, employees of similar firms, and people in the engineering field he’s met through work, but his favorite way to spend time is still in the workshop/lab, trying to make items of wonder that defy reality.

His mentor, Anneliese, has been quietly talking to him about what Awakening would entail, but Andrew is reluctant to try, because he feels that he still has so much to learn yet with Sorcery and doesn’t want to give it up.