Professor Marcus Clarke

What’s in a {{ Name }}

A.K.A: “Marc,” “Professor,” and “That jerk”
Age: 29
D.O.B: April 24
Occupation: Professor
Powers/abilities: Marcus has the ability to make himself appear immensely attractive. His ability does not actually alter his appearance, but simply makes him seem more appealing. This is generally only used to attract members of the opposite sex, but it could also make Marcus appear more handsome to other men. It is extremely unlikely that Marcus would attempt to do this, however.

Along with Marcus’s ability to make himself seem more attractive, he also possesses a very low grade form of mind control. While he cannot completely control a mind, he is able to strongly influence those of weaker minds. With stronger minds his influence is greatly diminished, but can still be effective. He can make a bad idea seem like a better one, or attempt to manipulate someone’s emotions to make them angry at someone they wouldn’t normally be angry at.
Canon or Original: Canon


Face Claim: Jude Law
Description: Marcus sports medium length light brown hair. It is rather straight, and he works very hard to keep it that way. Very rarely will anyone get the chance to see Marcus’s hair in disarray, because he meticulously takes care of it every morning before going out into public. He keeps his face clean-shaven at all times as well. Marcus is happy enough with the hair on his head that he doesn’t need any additional hair on his face.

Just below his hair is a pair of matching brown glasses. Marcus picked them out twelve years ago, and has been happy with them every since. Behind their lenses are two piercing green eyes that are constantly looking at the world around them and calculating. Though Marcus is a master actor and can put any sort of facial expression on that he wants to, sometimes the warmth of his smiles doesn’t go all the way to his eyes. They occasionally show his true nature.

Whenever he can, Marcus tries to dress himself as neatly as possible. He has a knack for picking out the best outfit for an occasion, and will always be one of the most snappily dressed people in a room. However, he doesn’t try to out-dress the people around him too much. He doesn’t enjoy sticking out.


Marcus, at 5’11”, is not a very imposing person. He isn’t terribly tall, and isn’t very muscular either. He is lean from him hobby of running, and tries to keep in fairly good shape. More importantly, he carries himself confidently. In many ways, he moves through the room like a predator, not willing to show any insecurity to anyone.


Daemon’s Name: Nyradine
Maturity: Mature
Preferred Animal Form: Normally takes the form of a coyote
Explanation: Marcus’s daemon takes on the form of a coyote to show that he is a trickster. He enjoys playing jokes on people and generally messing with them, like the coyote of Native American myth. However, not all of his jokes are harmless. The coyote does have some pretty sharp teeth.

The black widow represents the cold, calculating aspect of Marcus. Like a spider, he sits back, weaves his webs, and watches as his plans come to fruition. The people around him tend to wind up caught in his web before they even realize that they are flies.
Personality: Nyradine is a bit of a flirt, just like Marcus. She greatly enjoys making the other daemons feel uncomfortable, and likes to slink right up in their faces. She is great at reading people, and will often help Marcus figure out what relationships he can exploit. She takes as much pleasure in watching a plan come to fruition as Marcus, often at the expense of other people.


General Personality: Marcus is driven by a strong sense of self interest above all other things. That doesn’t mean he cares absolutely nothing for others…it just means that he finds their needs to be considerably less important than his. Marcus will look carefully at any given situation to see if he can figure out a way to turn it to his own advantage. He is not averse to profiting at the expense of those around him, but he does not go out of his way to cause misery.

Not everything that Marcus does is calculated. A lot of the things he does he does purely for his own amusement. He’s quite a flirt, and takes great pleasure in attempting to woo over a new potential conquest. He tends to see his ‘partners’ more as trophies or notches on a hilt than as actual partners. Once he has won them over, the relationship rarely lasts long. He tells himself that this is because the thrill is in the chase, but it is also because he really has very little experience in maintaining a relationship. And, from his perspective, he sees little reason to want to. Being limited to just one woman sounds boring to him.

Along with women, Marcus places great value on material possessions like wealth, and on power. Above all, Marcus enjoys having power. Whatever position he’s thrown into, he’ll try to claw his way to the top. While in Berryn Falls, ‘the top’ equates to the position of Headmaster. If he sees an opening, Marcus intends to snatch it up…maybe it could help him get back to real civilization, and out of this tiny little town.

One of the things that Marcus excels at is being able to understand how a relationship works. Relationships are Marcus’s weapon of choice in almost any situation. He prides himself on being able to judge how people around him feel about each other, and how to exploit those feelings. Often his rise to success will leave behind a path of shattered friendships and broken hearts. He does not feel particularly guilty, though. After all, he hasn’t really done anything to these people, they’re fine. And if their relationships were really worth having, they would have been strong enough to resist his tampering.
Hobbies/Interests:

• Learning new languages
• Flirting
• Whittling
• Sketching
• Napping
• Running
• Painting his figurines

Likes:

• Flirting
• Quietness
• Classical music
• Italian food
• Being in charge
• Money
• Power
• Licorice

Strengths:

• Flirting
• Manipulating
• Acting
• Lying
• Psychology
• Languages
• Planning

Weaknesses:

• Sympathizing with others
• Keeping a long term relationship
• Knowing when to shut up
• Holding his temper
• Losing graciously
• Winning graciously
• Dealing with stress

Family: Patrick and Morgan Clarke (parents) and Nathan Clarke (older brother)
History: Unlike several of his colleagues in the Academy, Marcus was not born in Berryn Falls. His parents raised him and his older brother Nathan in Liverpool, so Marcus grew up used to life in the city. Coming to Berryn Falls was his first time living in any place more than ten miles away from a city. It was also a lot colder than he was used to, but he learned to adjust quickly.

As Marcus was growing up, he and his brother (who was two years older than him) shared a somewhat close, if not particularly affectionate, relationship. The two spent almost all of their time together. One of their best playmates during their childhood was a girl named Beth. The three played together often starting when Marcus was only seven, and they became the best of friends. By the age of ten, Marcus was quite infatuated with Beth, who was one year his senior. Their relationship went on as only a friendship for several years, though. When Marcus was thirteen, he finally made the decision to attempt to make Beth more than just his friend—only to discover that his older brother had begun to date her.

Marcus was shocked at first, but was then angry. Not only at Nathan, but at Beth for being ignorant enough to go with his idiot of a brother when he—Marcus—was clearly the better choice. The girl was stupid, Marcus had just been too blind to see it! With a gleeful sort of determination, he began to go about sabotaging his brother’s relationship with Beth. It was really all too easy—all he had to do was steal Beth’s diary and put it in Nathan’s pack, then go to Beth and tell her that Nathan had been telling the most funny stories about her...the small argument quickly escalated (thanks to farther prodding from Marcus), and soon the two were broken up. Marcus was there to swoop in and pick up the pieces. Namely, Beth.

However, Marcus found himself bored with Beth after only a few weeks, and soon he left her behind him. He couldn’t really bring himself to want someone who had been stupid enough to choose his brother over him. Beth was a fool. So were most of the other girls in his school, now that it came to it. Markus came to learn a few facts about life during his time in school. The first was that most of the girls were attracted to money, power, and looks. Thanks to his magical ability, Marcus never had to worry about looks, and his family had all the money he would ever need. Power, though….power was a bit harder to get. There were ways, though, and Marcus soon began to learn them. He learned the art of manipulation, and found that his favorite tool was relationships. He discovered a knack for manipulating the emotions of those around him. Someone on the cricket team annoyed him? He stole their girlfriend, broke the best players’ hearts, and got information to blackmail the rest with. The worst season his school had ever had. Of course, most of what he did was petty vengeance for previous wrongs. There were precious few chances to really test his ability. When he went to college to become a teacher, the ability was a bit more helpful. He managed to get enough information to blackmail a few of his professors and learned what would most impress the ones who were ‘untouchable.’ He rose quickly and graduated very close to the top of his class. Soon he was teaching Languages at one of the best schools in Liverpool.

His habit of using relationships as tools came back to bite Marcus early on in his career. The first girl that Marcus set his sights on during his tenure as a professor was the wife of the Headmaster. As he almost always did, he successfully wooed her over, only to be caught in the act by the Headmaster himself. None too patient or forgiving a man, the Headmaster gave him an ultimatum: leave Liverpool and go to teach somewhere far, far away, or the Headmaster would first beat the living daylights out of him, then ruin him professionally. Marcus saw little choice in the matter, and found his visions of a rise through the teaching hierarchy vanishing into the wind.

Soon, he found himself teaching Languages at Berryn Falls. It was hardly Liverpool, but it would do as a start. He would find his way to the top somehow, even if it was only the top of a molehill instead of the top of a mountain. He would find his way back to civilization eventually. After all, the Headmaster in Liverpool would hardly be in that position forever. In the meantime, there were plenty of things—and people—in Berryn Falls to keep Marcus occupied.


Extra Information: Currently involved in the Playing Games subplot with Sara, Isabel, and Matthew
Member Title: Pulling all the strings


Name: Silver
Age: 16
Contact Information: Just PM me
How you found this site: A friend referred me
Admin Feedback:This is great... I can't wait to see how you work with him! Welcome to the board!

This post has been edited by LN on Aug 16 2008, 05:46 PM