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CHARACTER NAME: Gideon Thraxios
CHARACTER SERIES: Doctrine of Labyrinths

[OOC]

Backtagging: Yes.
Threadhopping/threadjacking: Yes.
Fourthwalling: No.

[IC]

Hugging this character: He'd probably rather you didn't, but I don't mind.
Kissing this character: Talk to me first.
Flirting with this character: Go ahead, secure in the knowledge he probably won't answer in kind.
Fighting with this character: Sure. If we're talking physical rather than verbal, let's discuss.
Injuring this character: Let's discuss this.
Killing this character: No.

Warnings: Gideon comes from a canon that has the potential to be upsetting. Characters are imprisoned, raped, tortured, and murdered in some detail. Gideon has a history that includes implied rape, attempted suicide, political atrocities, torture, and murder.

These aren't subjects he brings up lightly--he doesn't even tell the main characters of the books about his religion until he's known them for over a year, and then primarily because he feels he has to. So I can promise that your character will not have them sprung on them without discussion beforehand.

However, I understand that these might be subjects you don't want in your RP experience in any way, shape, or form, and it's possible that they could come up in narration. If you would prefer not to interact with Gideon, or you have specific boundaries you'd like me to keep in mind, please let me know here. Comments are screened.

Telepathy: Gideon's tongue was cut out, so he generally communicates one of two ways:

• With non-magic-users (annemers in his world), he writes using a wax tablet and stylus, as well as using some pantomime and a lot of facial expressions.
• With magic-users, he can communicate telepathically. ::This is how his telepathic dialogue is written in canon.:: He can't read minds in this fashion, just speak to them.

If characters tell him not to communicate telepathically, he won't. However, if you'd like to skip that discussion, you can tell me here (again, comments are screened), and I'll have him default to writing around your character(s).

(no subject)

☽◯☾
• GIDEON THRAXIOS •
inquiries into the world's heart

✵ NAME. Gideon Thraxios AGE. 45 MARITAL STATUS. Felix Harrowgated FAMILY. Unknown FRIENDS. Felix Harrowgate Mildmay Foxe Mehitabel Parr Simon Barrister Rinaldo of Fiora OCCUPATION. Ex-military Refugee Scholar HOMETOWN. Thrax, Kekropia RESIDENCE. The Mirador, Mélusine, Marathat HAIR. Dark, curly, long EYES. Dark OTHER. Tongueless OOC NAME. Dove PLURK. prettydoes TIMEZONE. CST PB. Kunal Kapoor	PERSONALITY With friends, Gideon is a studious, placid man, gentle and intent on research and philosophy. He can be kind and thoughtful. For instance, he cares deeply for Mildmay and doesn't condescend to him despite their difference in education levels; to the contrary, he does his best to reassure Mildmay that he's a worthy person, and he genuinely enjoys spending time with him. They go places in the Lower City together and play Long Tiffany. And when Gideon needs to say something he can't get across in pantomime, he's always careful to write clearly and use small words that semi-literate Mildmay can easily understand. But that's not all he is. Mildmay says in The Mirador, "He grinned at me. It was a sharp, nasty grin. Mute or not, Gideon wasn’t somebody to fuck with. I had to remind myself of that every so often, because it was easy to be sorry for him and forget just how hard he could bite if somebody pissed him off. Him and Felix were well matched." Beneath the surface, there's a lot more going on than "nice, bookish, retiring man." You don't become a favored member of the Bastion (well, before you defect) by being nice. It's a position that requires ruthlessness and cruelty. The fact that Gideon was miserable in the Bastion and eventually defected is beside the point; whether he liked it or not, he was perfectly capable of such brutality. And even in his life in the Mirador, he was still somebody who could hold his own against others. Only his major blindspot--Felix--manages to get him killed. And more on that in a few paragraphs. In his everyday life, he's incredibly stubborn; at one point, Felix describes him as intransigent. Gideon's tenacity of will can be a good thing, as when he refuses to give up on Felix in Melusine; when everyone else has dismissed Felix as insane, Gideon is certain that there's more to the issue. But it also means that he'll take the bait when an argument is dangled before him, and he'll keep at it even when he should know better. He and Felix are infamous for their tiffs among the other denizens of the Mirador, especially their servants, in The Mirador. Going along with his stubbornness and willingness to argue, he can be catty and sarcastic when he wants to. He has a dry sense of humor and tends to be deeply ironic. His cattiness doesn't extend to teasing friends or otherwise insulting them outside an argument--he cares deeply about their welfare, as noted above--but he won't hesitate to knock someone he doesn't respect: “Maybe Robert was right.” :Robert of Hermione? I doubt it.: Gideon’s voice was dry again, dispassionate. Gideon is also an incredibly jealous man when it comes to his relationship with Felix. Let the record show that he's got reason to be pissed at his boyfriend--Felix cheats on him repeatedly with a variety of people--but he doesn't handle it all that well. It's the basis of most of their arguments: “Is that what this is about? You’re jealous of Isaac?” :Blessed saints, am I jealous?: His stare was incredulous as well as infuriated. :I’m forty-five, Felix, and apparently inadequate for your sexual sophistication. Why in the world would I be jealous?: Many of their issues are Felix's fault--he's the one who cheats, who knows Gideon wants him to be faithful, who dismisses Gideon's anger as dramatics--but as the saying goes, it takes two to tango. Ultimately, the two of them have very different priorities in their relationship, and each has difficulty communicating his desires and expectations in ways the other can understand and appreciate. Going hand in hand with his jealousy is the fact that he just can't hold a grudge against Felix. He's seen Felix at just about his absolute worst--and Felix has a variety of "worst"s. He's seen him furious, vulnerable, nearly helpless with misery and magically induced madness. The only person who's been unlucky enough to shepherd Felix through worse is Mildmay. And on some level, Gideon can't keep himself from forgiving the man over and over, in great part because he's seen him at those lowest points and loves him regardless. Gideon loves him to a painful extent, despite or even because of Felix's faults, and that love makes it possible for him to keep coming back even when he knows the same thing is probably going to happen. That willingness to take Felix back despite everything is ultimately the cause of his death; even after Gideon has dumped Felix, the slim possibility that Felix might come to some kind of "I'll stop fucking other people" compromise is enough to convince Gideon to go and hear him out. If Felix had actually written that fateful note, they might have gone back to their stormy relationship. But it was Isaac Garamond, and so Gideon died for his love of Felix. There's one other aspect to Gideon that bears mentioning, and that's his faith in the White-Eyed Lady. As noted above, worship of the White-Eyed Lady is the stuff of mystery cults--the cult isn't looked well on, especially at the Bastion (though they generally turn a blind eye to its adherents). Gideon is devotedly religious in a way that Felix isn't and can't understand; when Felix asks why he practices a faith that's so dangerous, Gideon gives him an "impatient [look]. Gideon said, :Because we must. Because that is what faith is.:" His faith is something extremely private for him; he only explains it to Felix and Mildmay when he has to, years after he first met the two of them. ✵
	ABILITIES&SKILLS Gideon is a magician, though he rarely does much active magic, and possesses an impressive knowledge of various aspects of magic and philosophy, especially thaumaturgical architecture. He's also described as being able to lie "like an angel." ✵ HISTORY Gideon Thraxios is, as his name indicates, from Thrax in Kekropia, a country to the west of Marathat (the country in which Felix Harrowgate and Mildmay the Fox grew up). Thrax is on the eastern end of the country, located closer to Marathat than the Kekropian coast, as indicated by Gideon's coloring ("the bronze tone to his skin that indicated he came from the eastern end of the Kekropian Empire"). He's a fairly average-looking man, described in the first book as follows: "His hair was dark and curly, escaping from his queue in wild tendrils; his eyes were dark and startlingly intelligent, shining like beacons out of an otherwise undistinguished, snub-nosed face. He was older than I, but I wasn’t sure by how much." By the time of his death, his appearance has aged significantly and looks every bit of his forty-five years. He had a presumably unpleasant childhood, the details of which are never revealed, and starting at the age of thirteen, was taught the Eusebian school of magic in the Bastion (Kekropia's fortresslike center of power). There, he was the catamite and "favorite minion" (according to another character who knew him at that time) of Kekropia's spymaster. Gideon hints darkly that the Eusebian wizards were horrible, cruel people, and his position among them drove him to the point of suicidal ideation when he was fifteen. The one thing that kept him from actually attempting to end his own life was the fear that he would be found and punished before he actually managed to die. The Bastion, which is a fairly fascist organization that demands blind obedience from its members, is not a kind place to depressed, half-grown men. A mystery cult saved him from that fate; he was given over to the White-eyed Lady, a goddess of death and, more specifically, suicide. Gideon describes her appeal: "Now, the White-Eyed Lady is the goddess of suicides. She takes them as her lovers, uses them, betrays them. It is their nature as much as hers that makes it so. In the days when she had a proper priesthood—or so the initiates of her mysteries tell each other—one of her priests’ duties was to mediate between the goddess and those who wished to come to her intemperately. It is said there was once a ritual, so that suicides could make of their deaths a proper gift, could find the peace the Lady promised. But that, like so much else, has been lost. Now we have only her mystery, and the ritual of initiation that imitates death." In undergoing that false death, Gideon found reason to live. He eventually defected to Marathat, coming to live in the Mirador but never swearing oaths to the Cabaline school of magic. He first encounters Felix Harrowgate when the latter is, to all appearances, mad, and manages to deduce that his problem is actually a sensitivity to magic. Over the course of the book Melusine, he grows so fond of Felix that he is willing to help him and his brother, Mildmay, escape the clutches of the higher-ups of the Mirador, though he quails at the thought of reentering Kekropia. And for good reason--while he's eventually threatened into doing so, he's captured in Kekropia and (in The Virtu) nearly burnt at the stake. Though Mildmay manages to rescue Gideon before he's executed, he sustains a number of injuries to his person. When Mildmay finds him, "his choirboy face gone to a skull and his hair hanging in dreadlocks around his shoulders," his tongue has been cut out, he's lost several teeth, and he's been imprisoned in a tiny, dank underground cell for a very long time. Once he's recovered, things look a little brighter for him. He enters into a relationship with Felix (of whom he says "I've wanted you quite desperately since the first time I saw you") and is fairly content with his investigations into thaumaturgical architecture and other such subjects. He's also become friends with both Mildmay and Mehitabel Parr, another of their party. By the events of The Mirador, however, things have gone downhill. Felix and Gideon fight frequently. While he's generally helpful to Mildmay, he occasionally snaps even at him. And various minor characters are insinuating that he is, in fact, a spy for the Bastion rather than a refugee. Perhaps most intolerable of all for him, Felix cheats on him constantly and often blatantly. Near the end of the book, he breaks up with Felix. And then he receives a note from his ex-lover, claiming that he wants to meet--and Gideon goes. The only problem is that the note is actually from Isaac Garamond, a man looking to get rid of Felix Harrowgate. Gideon walks right into his trap and is strangled with a garrote. He dies struggling and in pain and is found not long after by Mildmay. ✵

CODE BY WEARESTARDUST at SUPERSUITS