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| Full Name | Nicolau Benedit de Pui Laurens |
| Avatar | Mat Devine |
| Sex | Male |
| Birthdate | April 11, 1981 |
| Blood Status | Pureblood |
| Occupation | Bar Owner and Information Dealer |
| Wand | 12 1/2" Birch, Veela hair core |
| Alumni | N/A |
| Affiliation | York |
| Player | Cass |
| Journal | fashioninruins |
Some men just want to watch the world burn.
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Table of Contents
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Home Life
Mother: Alazais de Pui Laurens (nee Cabrespinas)
Father: Danis de Pui Laurens
Siblings: Saissa (sister).
Other Family Members: Nicolau's maternal grandparents (Guilabertz and Miquela Cabrespinas) and paternal grandmother (Raisende de Pui Laurens) reside at the family home; he is close to all three of them, and knew his paternal grandfather, Exuperi, who was killed in 1991, during an ETA attack in Barcelona.
Relationships with each: Nicolau is technically related to approximately half the Occitan wizarding population, through labyrinthine trees. He holds family both high in his esteem, therefore, and assumes that in Occitania he was related to whoever was speaking. His immediate family was close-knit; neither he nor his sister had moved out of the family home, nor did they expect to any time soon. Though legally adults, there is none of the need to rush about that characterises, to Nicolau's way of thinking, the English - one part of Occitania is located in Italy, which has similar expectations about children not moving out of the home for quite a long time after legal adulthood. In addition, being wizards who had not faced the population stress that Voldemort's rise placed on the English, there was no pressure, overt or otherwise, for Occitanian young adults to marry, have children, and join the war effort. Life was expected to follow the pattern set up by generations preceeding them, of a slower race to milestones. The late thirties is early for people in Nicolau's family and class to begin raising families.
Background: Occitanian, with touches of French, Italian, and Spanish, with a record of the family in the region all the way back to the Albigensian crusade of the early 1200s, where a chanson d'geste mentions the name of de Pui Laurens. Additionally, an ancestor was a signatory to the charter, signed in Nuremburg, that established the diamond polishers' Guild in the 1370s. Nic mentions some of the family history here.
Home: Originally from Carcassonne, France, Nicolau is currently resident in York, and is the owner of a pub, the White Boar, located just off the High Street. He does not live above the shop, however, finding it safer, since events in Sierra Leone, to avoid places people might assume him to live. It is, in his experience, dangerous for an Oneiromant to have a known place that they sleep. Instead, the flat above is available for rental to travelers who need a place to stay for a night, and for meetings that Nic wishes to keep relatively private.
His flat is in Long Close Lane in Inner York, near Paragon Street.
Finances: Nicolau is too well-bred to have concern for money. In the context of the bar, he tends to take less money than he would were things normal; at the same time, some of his expenditures are disproportionately high. But money is only a means to an end, and when you have both a bar and information, you rarely need to worry about having that means.
Personal Life
Personality: Nic is a seeming contradiction. His overt personality - demeanour - is that of a comedian who does not take life seriously at all; Nic can be found at the centre of every joke, every prank, every good time. The White Boar is his stage, and he uses it ruthlessly. He is gregarious and extroverted, enjoying the company of people and playing to some of the stereotypes about pub owners; he serves bar with flash and panache, and enjoys visibly impressing people.
Away from that stage, his nature asserts itself. Nic is an observant man who watches people, sorting his observations into several categories - salable, useful, and weaknesses are broad definitions - and tends to gently prod people into revealing more than they may want to. He does not overtly attack people unless he feels that there is no point in attempting a more subtle approach, as when the situation has turned hostile.
Many of Nic's decisions are made on the fly - he may, for example, enter a dream without intending to reveal himself, but that may change based on anything, up to and including whim. A thrill-seeker with his own morality, Nic tends to work for the active break of order, but he does not want to see any situation disintegrate into true anarchy, because there's no thrill in an unpredictable world, nor profit in a world that broken.
Nic is best described as an agent of chaos.
Marital status: Unmarried
Strengths: The ability to listen. Total disregard for what "everyone knows" about people. Genius-level IQ. Maintains surface-level calm at almost all times. Rarely visibly ruffled. Different culture of origin. Gifted at long-term strategy. Some desire to protect those weaker than him. Able to lie. Excellent sense of humour; can take a joke as well as give them. Extremely observant. Ferociously loyal to family (blood). Ruthless in pursuit of control. Can keep secrets. Highly adaptive to situations and people. Gregarious flirt.
Weaknesses: Ruthless in pursuit of goals. Gregarious flirt. Strong tendency to push others' buttons for the sake of pushing buttons. Tends to verbally and emotionally play with people. Little to no desire to stop inside "safe" limits. Seeks the last word. Tends not to think strategically about people he finds psychologically fun. Easily bored. Ruthlessly manipulative of people and situations. Tendency to use Oneiromancy to entertain himself. Tendency for his understanding of others to come in the form of non-physical dissection. Rebellious. Domineering when confronted with reistance. Hedonist. Is definitely not a utilitarianist.
Quirks: Tends to play up the foreigner aspect, frequently by tacking on unnecessary phrases such as "do you see?" at the end of sentences. Has a very rhythmic speech pattern. Makes even formal clothing look casual-chic. Bitingly sarcastic in confrontations; tends to keep sarcasm under control when people are doing what he wants them to. Often tells the truth in a deadpan manner that people mistake for sarcasm and believe to be lies. Thrill-seeker personality. Dislikes laws; equally dislikes true anarchy. Likes to be the centre of attention, and will non-verbally demand it if he can't command it. Has an expressive face and the control to make it say one thing while he thinks another, but usually doesn't bother. Gestures a great deal, and expansively.
Fears: Boredom. Mundanity. Involuntary isolation. The institution of an authoritarian order; Nic fears the total rule of law. Total anarchy. Extremists. Being outgamed. Certain species of magical creatures, particularly those African in origin.
Philias: Emotional, intellectual, and physical disorder - in others. Disorder allows Nic to wedge himself into someone else's life and start poking buttons. Likes doorways and the rooms beyond, particularly unexplored rooms. Operating beyond the limits, because he doesn't know what's going to happen next. Being in control of surprise. Control in general.
Magical Errata
Boggart: A helhest.
Patronus: A wolverine.
Mirror of Erised: Himself as he is now.
Amortentia Potion: Seagrass and salt air, clean skin, silk.
Oneiromancy: Born an oneiromant, Nic has long trained in the discipline, which is essentially useless at the present time. He is an invasive oneiromant who walks dreams for entertainment.
Aesthetics
Appearance: Olive-skinned, with a direct gaze, Nicolau stands out in most situations in any event, but particularly in York, where even now, with the population as muddled as it is, he looks like a foreigner. He is the sort of person who subtly demands attention through his bearing, dress, and general air of confidence. He moves with ease and grace, and does not reflect stress through his movements or gestures; Nic is, if not exactly calm, very, very rarely rattled, and never so much that his gait shows it.
His clothing is highly fashionable. He manages to make looking like a hobo look good. A lot of the pieces are well-cared-for designer originals, and he tends to add to his wardrobe with pieces that will add to the derelicte-chic look he wears.
He has several tattoos, most notably the word "Courage" tattooed on the underside of his left arm.
His build is wiry rather than slender, and he tends to style his hair somewhat long, and frequently in spikes. He has very competent hands, easy in their gestures and suggestive of a lot of physical control.
Height: 5'11"
Hair: Dark brown, tending to natural highlights
Eyes: Hazel
History
Carcassonne, on the south coast of France, is far more renowned for its role in history than its small but significant magical population. As with the rest of the wizarding world, Carcassone, and the rest of Occitania, was some years behind mundane events when Nicolau was born; the wizards were not, because of their invisibility, subject to the same oppression as the mundane Occitans. The wizarding tradition at that time was one of prestige - Gaul and Occitan were different countries, as far as the Occitanians were concerned, and if the Gauls felt it necessary to pretend they were one, they could, but the Occitanians did not agree.
Perhaps the greatest commonality between Gallic and Occitanian wizards is both groups' overweening nationalist arrogance.
As a result of the differences between the two communities, Occitan children do not, by and large, attend Beauxbatons, nor another similar school. Instead, they are instructed through something very like a traditional apprenticeship, in magic or another skill, with their day split between lessons in a magical curriculum and apprenticeship work. In large part, the choice for which to do depends on the aptitude and desires of the child involved.
Nicolau grew up in a family that had been diamantaires since the beginning of such skill in Europe; a member of his family was among the founders of the diamond polishers' Guild, set up in Nuremberg in 1375. Prior to the lifting of that taboo (derived from India) the family had been primarily stonecutters, who helped to construct the fortress of Carcassonne, both at that time and during Eugene Viollet-le-Duc's restoration in the mid 1800s, though by then stonecutting was the province of only a few of the family members. When the time came for him to choose what he would do, there was no question that he would follow in the family's footsteps.
He did well at his lessons, though they were very different from what a scholarly-magic student would expect. Charms and Transfigurations were one class, Potions was almost nonexistent, History was not merely Of Magic but was also heavily mundane, and Muggle Studies did not exist at all. Unlike their counterparts in other parts of the world, Occitania's wizards did not particularly ghettoise themselves. Though they were not openly magical, they also did not hide away from the Muggle world; it was even odds that a de Pui Laurens customer would be mundane. In consequence, wizards had relative flexibility in their knowledge - to be honest about it, it was a remnant of the long fight between Gaul and Occitan, but everyone sneered and said that their way was better regardless; the world was full of Muggles, and it behooved wizards to know how to deal with them.
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