Tolliver Pritchard

From Gothpoodle

Description

A 5’11”, broadly built blonde man with deep-set blue eyes. He favors English cut bespoke suits in understated, patterned fabrics when dressed formally or understated sportswear, when not. He always wears a rose-gold Rolex and a thick gold, class-style ring.

Aspects

AMBITIOUS YUPPIE GEOMANCER (High Concept)
IF YOU'RE NOT THE LEAD DOG, THE VIEW NEVER CHANGES (Trouble)
CEO OF AURELIAN EXPLORATION, LTD.
GREY SHEEP OF MAGICAL DYNASTY
WHITE COUNCIL PATRIOT
THERE'S A HOLE IN MY AURA
PILLAR OF THE COMMUNITY

Relationships

Business rival of Martin.
Magical rival of Gideon.
Hunted by Diana Lagina.
Nephew of Julia Pritchard.
Employer of Perry Reynolds.

Junior Wardens

Daniel Fuller (26) Good (+3) NAIVE IDEALIST (Poor)
Linda Dickson (31) Superb (+5) EVOCATION PRODIGY (Poor)
Mark Greer (32) Fair (+2) LAZY OPPORTUNIST (Rich Family)
Katie Sharpe (32) Great (+4) AMBITIOUS BUT HONEST (Middle Class)
Ronald Pacheco (36) Great (+4) VIKING'S FATALISM (Middle Class)

Notes

Tolliver Ulysses Pritchard III is the 38 year old CEO of Aurelian Exploration, Ltd. and an accomplished Geomancer. He is descended from one of several European families which have regularly produced full blooded wizards over the centuries, though he has been estranged from most of his family for some years.

Tolliver made his fortune using geomancy to locate valuable mineral deposits. For the past decade or so, he has been consolidating magical and temporal power in the Bay Area and working towards making himself an indispensable voice in New World White Counsel politics.

Residence

Tolliver’s primary residence is a three story house on Telegraph Hill. Most of the house is decorated in a tasteful modernist style. The top floor is given over to his laboratory. Sensitive correspondence, including anything that implicates the existence of the White Counsel, is kept in a safe in his library. Books made from delicate materials, incunabula and otherwise irreplaceable materials are kept in a temperature-controlled, fireproof vault in the basement.

The house is very much his home and enjoys a strong threshold. It is, however, in an area that sees heavy, casual foot traffic, and thus is easy to stake out. Tolliver has a convincing mockup of an ultra-modern security system installed, as a deterrent and to keep up appearances, but the system is non-functional due to hexing issues.

Tolliver also owns a Sonoma County vineyard at a geomanticly significant site, where he has a bare-bones, spare lab. This, obviously, lacks a threshold.

Vehicle

Tolliver drives the 1953 Rolls-Royce Phantom IV originally owned by Faisal II of Iraq, a gift from his great-great-grandfather in honor of his 21st birthday.

Day to Day Life

Tolliver’s corporate work demands about ten hours per week, dealing mostly with personnel issues and resource allocation decisions, but he’s comfortable in his office and will often spend time there working on other projects. A good deal of each week is spent on magical study and practice, which he regards as his primary vocation.

He’s active in Bay Area upper class life, serving on the board of SF MOMA and acting as a member in good standing at the SF Olympic Club. Aurelian is a closed club and fairly secretive. Most society members only know that he’s “in commodities” and a good many assume that he’s an heir.

While the clued-in aspects of the SF magical community are aware that he’s White Counsel, he never evinces much public interest in the occult, and tends to come off as a hard headed realist to outsiders, in keeping with family tradition. He makes sizeable, anonymous yearly donations to CSICOP. He would be furious and appalled at anyone taking out a “Wizard” ad in the yellow pages.

When purchasing materials from unknown sources, he generally uses a go-between, both to avoid making the fact that he’s a wizard overly public and to avoid being soaked by sellers who are aware of the extent of his means.

Tolliver frequently entertains out of town guests, and will usually extend an invitation to vacation at his vineyard and discuss matters with any White Counsel member who circulates a monograph on magical topics, inviting other Bay Area Wizards to join the talk.

While he’s certainly not vocal about it, he was raised to regard people without at least some measure of talent as an inferior form of human being, and the attitude very much remains with him. He casually dates among the well-born and makes use of prostitutes, but he can’t conceive of the notion of marrying or having children with a non-wizard.

Aurelian Exploration, Ltd.

Aurelian Exploration Ltd. is a privately held mineral exploration corporation. When it was formed, Tolliver held 33 1/3% of the stock, as did Roland Greenfield, an Oxford classmate of Tolliver’s and Randal Gray, a friend of Greenfield’s. Since Greenfield’s conversion to the Red Court and apparent death, Tolliver now holds 66% of the stock, while Gray largely acts as a silent partner.

Aurelian derives most of its income from gold extraction at three South American sites and one Chinese site. It also provides capital to other exploration businesses, with Tolliver sometimes using geomantic divination to appraise the apparent soundness of their land holdings.

Aurelian maintains its primary office on the 40th floor of the Transamerica pyramid. It has three support staff, three full time traders, one corporate counsel and four field geologists. It also maintains a satellite office in Rio de Janeiro.

It is doing extremely well in the current economic climate.

Aurelian Exploration Ltd., a privately held corporation, with the backing of Roland Greenfield, an Oxford classmate and minor talent from one of the old wizarding families, and a third, magically unaware backer that Greenfield brings in. Tolliver and the two investors each old 33% of the stock, with an agreement that the remaining partners have right of first refusal to purchase any member’s shares in the event that a partner decides to cash out or dies.

The Pritchard Family

The Pritchard Family (formally “The House Valerius”, but usually called after its current living patriarch’s surname) is one of a handful of Old World Wizarding families that generally produce several talented members per generation and usually produce a wizard or two, as well.

It can trace its ancestry back before the founding of the White Counsel, and has a number of members who are renowned for their significance to the history of magic. Two of Tolliver’s ancestors have served as Merlins, and it is rare that there isn’t at least one member of the family on the Inner Counsel. The bulk of the family is supportive of the Counsel and its laws to a patriotic extent, seeing it as their nation. Among younger wizards and some of the other Old Families, however, they suffer from a somewhat sinister reputation for unsavory habits. That its current patriarch is something of an eccentric Arabist and has spent time as the honored guest of a ghoul king does nothing to help this reputation.

The family structure is gerontocratic, with decisions regarding the family’s wealth being made by the three eldest living members. Wizard members typically “kill off” their public identity at some point in their eighth or ninth decade, and a plausibly young member serves as the public face of the family for purposes of dealing with the mortal world.

Pritchard children are raised in awareness of the Laws and of the White Counsel, and are generally expected to marry someone with talent, often a cousin, or a member of another European family with an established magical lineage. The majority of the family work as servants and functionaries managing the day to day financial and legal needs of members of the White Counsel.

Notable members

Robert C. Pritchard (ibn Sulayman) (B. 1806): The current patriarch of the family, Tolliver’s great-great-grandfather. Robert spent much of his youth traveling in the Middle East and has had strong ties to the practitioners of that region for over 100 years. He’s notable for having written several important monographs on ley lines and the definitive treatise on ghoul anthropology, as well as for having negotiated the integration of a large and well established faction of Arabic sorcerers into the White Counsel around the time of the First World War. He has a somewhat unsavory reputation for dual loyalties among some of the European members of the counsel, in part because of his nominal conversion to Islam in the 1942, and declined his place on the Senior Counsel under political pressure because of this, but his diplomatic ties to the region have been key in keeping the laws of the White Counsel in effect through the Middle East and North Africa.

Col. Andrew C. Pritchard (1850-1940): A minor talent with a distinguished military career in India and South Africa. Tolliver’s great-grandfather.

Lady Margaret Pritchard (B. 1855): Col. Andrew’s widow and current grand dame of the family. She is a former warden and Langtry style traditionalist who puts family standing first. Of the family elders, she is the most hands on.

Tolliver Ulysses Pritchard I (B. 1900): Tolliver’s grandfather and a full wizard of the counsel. Extremely disappointed in Tolliver and his sister.

Tolliver Ulysses Pritchard II (1925-2000): Tolliver’s father and a minor talent who worked as a private banker in London. The last time Tolliver saw most of the family was at the funeral.

Julia Pritchard (B. 1945): Aunt. A retired Warden, currently living in Germany. She and Tolliver exchange occasional letters about inconsequential things. Her desire that Tolliver apologize to his grandfather in whatever terms necessary and return to England to serve as a Warden are conversationally off limits.

Grace Pritchard (B. 1977): Tolliver’s younger, more magically competent sister. Though she is technically a member of the White Counsel and is not in the habit of violating any of the Laws, she has spent the last several years studying Tantric yoga with a group of non-counsel sorcerers in India, and has come to hold the Wrong Views about “the imperialism of Western Magic”. She was Tolliver’s closest family member growing up and her current antics prevent him from claiming the title of Blackest Sheep. He fully expects her to outgrow this “phase” and come help him conquer the world some day.

Timeline

1973: Tolliver is born.

1985-1990(?): Attends Eaton. His initial apprenticeship is conducted under the tutelage of Master Fredrick Long during this period, when his talents begin to manifest. (Since the mid-1850s, a member of the Counsel has traditionally resided in Windsor, specifically to see to the education of young talents at Eton, along with teens from less well off backgrounds who are sent to him).

1990-1994: Studies Geography at Mansfield College, Oxford.

1994-1995: Travels extensively, staying with various wizards and beginning to amass a library. Returns to England, intending to complete a doctorate and cultivate his geomancy interests. That November, he has a violent falling out with his grandfather and is disowned and cut off from his allowance. He relocates to San Francisco and lives with a former schoolmate, working on his geomantic thaumaturgy.

1996: Forms Aurelian Exploration Ltd., a privately held corporation, with the backing of Roland Greenfield, an Oxford classmate and minor talent from one of the old wizarding families, and a third, magically unaware backer that Greenfield brings in. Tolliver and the two investors each old 33% of the stock, with an agreement that the remaining partners have right of first refusal to purchase any member’s shares in the event that a partner decides to cash out or dies.

Tolliver spends several months in Brazil, using Thaumaturgy to locate an undeveloped gold rich area, and arranges for Aurelian to purchase the land.

1997-present: Aurelian enjoys considerable success, expands its South American holdings and makes its partners very wealthy. Tolliver uses his newfound wealth to high quality research materials and invest in geomanticly significant real estate in the Bay Area. His primary goal is to become a significant power player in the White Counsel at the national level (something someone his age could not accomplish in the old world) and, ultimately, to acquire enough prestige that his family is compelled to welcome him back as heir apparent.

2007: Red Court operatives, both desirous of wealth and hostile toward the White Counsel having interests in South America, move against the Aurelian, enslaving much of the South American staff, converting Roland Greenfield, and attempting to murder Tolliver, which would enable Greenfield to purchase his shares. He overcomes the assassination attempt with the help of Daisy Mae and resolves the labor difficulties by using Dierdre’s connections to make a pact to employ Seelie miners. In the course of it, Greenfield is injured in a building fire in such a fashion that it is possible to declare him dead, enabling Tolliver to purchase his shares and retain control of the company. Tolliver firmly believes that Martin Larios is responsible, has never been able to prove it, and is incapable of attempting to kill the man without proof of the wrong for diplomatic reasons.

2008: Aids Eva in hunting down a shapechanging predator that killed his great-aunt in London during the late 1800s.

2009: Provides financial and social help in Dierdre’s investigation of the Rainbow Prince.