-Application- [voidtreckerexpress]

[katzenpfote]

Player Information

Name: Matt
Age: 31
Contact details: atrypical, Discord: Matt#6266
Other characters: Yosuke Otoha, Ken Amada (AU), Casper LeBlanc Jr. (CRAU)

Character Information

Name: Caleb Widogast (born Bren Aldric Ermendrud)
Canon: Critical Role (Campaign 2)
Canon Point: Mid-episode break of 2x111
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OU
Age: 33


World Information: Exandria, Wildemount, Dwendalian Empire

Personal History: Personal wiki page

Personality:

The primary trait of Caleb is curiosity at his core. He is a brilliant wizard and has made four different spells (and modified several more) because he is intensely curious and doesn't give up looking into an answer unless he's given an extremely compelling reason to give it up. He would have basically lived in the Cobalt Soul's libraries or weeks if he'd been allowed to, and his friendship with Essek Thelyss has allowed him to pursue an entirely new and foreign school of magic that he never even thought was possible. Early on his curiosity and hunger for knowledge got the group in trouble, causing several incidents of being thrown out of places by guards or in one case nearly getting himself killed escaping a house they were in the middle of sneaking into for the sake of a few scrolls.

In interactions with others however Caleb is generally fairly reserved, not talking to people he doesn't have to or that don't interest him. The only ones he opened up to initially were the Mighty Nein, and that was an extremely slow process. His general pattern of speech tends to be slow as well, each word carefully chosen in order to communicate exactly what he means - or at least try to - while keeping others at a distance. His skills are not in intimidation, but precision - a necessity in spellcasting. It's also a side effect of his awful past - his teacher does not seem to have been a man prone to liking idle chatter, and his years in isolation didn't leave him with much practice speaking to people. However, when he’s flustered, he tends to babble quite a lot, especially about topics that interest him. This is partly a distraction method to get the topic off of himself and partly because he sometimes just can’t think of a ‘normal person’ conversation topic.

Caleb is extremely self-hating, though his actions are "glancing off towards good" (according to Liam). His brain is more of a 'math brain' - he counts things methodically and his relationships are emotional transactions in his mind. Others notice this, too - Fjord asked him to be the one to take him out if he became a danger to the group due to chasing his warlock patron’s visions, since he is the most likely to weigh the cost-benefits in a way that means the group survives. He is calculating and can be quite cruel, and somewhere in his brain has many ways of torturing people and breaking them if need be from his history. He’s also quite capable of verbal manipulation, though he doesn’t do that very much anymore other than flat out lying and a history of scamming people with Veth. Some of the more violent bits are muddled due to his breakdown, but some of it does shine through in moments.

However, he does tend to cling to people more quickly than he would like to admit. He and Veth escaped jail together and they stuck together for a long while after that, and after an initial period of being suspicious of the other Nein and wanting to run away with Veth, he never really took actual action rather than talking about the possibility. He expects judgement, expects harshness towards him because he feels that he deserves it for his past actions, and when people are kind to him he doesn’t... quite know how to respond. He’s a bit better about it, having spent time with the Nein, but he’s still quite naturally awkward.

The time with the Nein has been very good for him, however. He now thinks of them as his new family, taking great care to hold them together as a group as much as possible. He cared enough to not only research a way to give them a home they can take with them, but also one that's highly personalized to each member of the Nein while paying tribute to their past as a group. He can be shy and awkward, but is much more comfortable taking the lead when it comes to a topic that falls into his wheelhouse.The group is a team, and no matter what threat they face, they are really the only people Caleb feels that he has left. He'll do anything to protect his family (and their families) so that they don't end up like the last one, up to and including sacrificing his health, safety, and sanity. He's ready to move forward where he wasn't previously - focusing on the future than going back to change the past.

Key themes: Changing the future vs changing the past, the benefits and dangers of the pursuit of knowledge and power, found family.

Main Motivation: To keep the Mighty Nein safe and happy above all else. Whether that means being willing to face his old mentor over and over again or running off to the frozen north of the world to try to stop a world-ending event, it doesn't matter.

Skills:

- Spellcasting. He has a spellbook with spells he knows, though the majority of them require material components to cast that he'll have to purchase or otherwise acquire in order to use them. Several of the spells are ones he's created or modified. He is a transmutation wizard, though his previous specialty was evocation magic. He is also able to use a short rest to recover a few spell slots.

- He has the Keen Mind feat, giving him an innate ability to find north, know what time it is (though good luck with that in the Void), and perfectly recall information for several months. Additionally he has a keen mind in the more general sense, having cracked difficult ciphers with little to go on, solved puzzles, and is able to catch on to things like new magic he's never seen before with only a little training.

- Volstrucker training. While his emotional state has kept him from practicing most of the skills (thankfully) he still has maintained the training in combat adaptability, information gathering, and willingness to use other methods if needed. (Said methods have implied things up to and including sleeping with the enemy to get information, but the one instance we see of Caleb getting tender with someone like that outside the party was with someone he's actually interested in.)

- He speaks Common, Sylvan (fey language basically), Celestial (angelic language), and Zemnian, which is his native languge. (... German. Zemnian is literally just German.)

Item: His spellbook. I'm happy to discuss any nerfs to them with the mods.

Sample: TDM.

Notes: I'm sorry for this disaster.