CAST: Rakeis Traska

DESCRIPTION:

Rakeis is of average height, slim but athletically built. He has long black hair, and is clean shaven and good looking. He is wearing knee-high black boots over his black leggings and a short-sleeved black tunic with a black, long-sleeved, tight fitting top underneath. The words "Let's make some magic" are written on the front of the tunic in silver letters, and "P.T.O." is written on the back; but no-one can see the back, because he's wearing a full-length black leather trench coat.
He wears a black, wide-brimmed, standard wizard's hat and whenever this hat is removed it will usually reveal Rakeis's pet hamster Hawkwind sitting on his head.
He carries a five-foot long, black, straight, slender and rather shiny staff with some strange letters and devices written on it in silver.

Rakeis was sent to the wizards' academy when he was five years old. Wizardry is the family trade: everyone in the Traska family has been a wizard or witch or sage or mage or something similar as far back as anyone can remember (except for Great Uncle Mergo, who sells ornaments and furniture made from straw).
Rakeis was a good pupil with a lot of talent. He studied hard, but there's not much else to do in an isolated academy that is mainly populated by old wizards and lore-masters who are only interested in learning about or teaching magic and wizardry. When he was thirteen, he was clearing out an old cupboard when he found a strange object that was about the size of a well-filled sandwich and was made of a hard, heavy material with strange shapes carved into it. None of his teachers knew what it was, but they worked out that there was no dangerous magic in it and told Rakeis he could keep it.
After a couple of months of research Rakeis found out the object was some sort of music box that reproduces music by shining light onto strange circular objects. He then spent most of his spare time reading all the books and scrolls he could find about music and musical magic. Over the next few years he learnt how the object worked, how to create the shiny discs and even how to conjure music from other realms, times and dimensions and focus it onto the discs so that he could play it again and again on his music box.
By the time Rakeis was eighteen he'd developed a taste for rock and and heavy metal music and started talking in a slightly odd way, using new words he'd learnt from songs he'd conjured and the old books he'd read. He also developed a habit of producing music by making strange movements with his hands whenever he felt particularly happy, which was an ancient art called 'air guitar'.
Partly because the songs he'd heard made him more curious about the world outside the academy, and partly because other wizards and apprentices were nervous about spending time with a young wizard who seemed to be going mad at an unusually early age, Rakeis started spending more and more time hanging around a local fishing village, mostly in the inn. There he learnt about alcohol, women and how bad fishermen can smell.
He started missing more and more lessons. His teachers didn't mind too much because he spent lots of the time teaching himself musical magic and had become quite an authority on the subject. However, he also spent more and more time at the fishing village and started to get into trouble when drunk. He accidently got himself into a few fights, and cast spells wrongly on many drunken occasions.
As well as geting into trouble a lot, many wizards were annoyed at Rakeis's increasingly strange behaviour, including taking his hamster everywhere and letting it live in his hat. When he was caught making dirty limericks about senior wizards, including one about the Headwizard and a sheep called Fred, the head wizard literally kicked Rakeis out of the academy and told him to take his insanity and his hamster to some other far away land or be turned into a fish and thrown towards the nearest fishing boat.
Knowing how bad fishing boats smell, Rakeis decided to find somewhere less bogus to live where he can chill out and listen to some excellent tunes.

HISTORY:

No-one has yet discovered how Rakeis ended up in the library of Castle Hare, least of all Rakeis, but since he's rather mellow guy he's taken it pretty much in his stride. Wandering in and standing round in mild confusion for some time, he happily tagged along when some of the party appeared to be doing something, and found himself outside the library. After following Paganini et al to the kitchens, Rakeis ended up in the throne room, still only vaguely worried about how and why he got here. His equilibrium only slightly dented by the full-scale battle that ensued, Rakeis discovered a way out of the throne room via a secret passage, into which he, Sir Confused-a-lot, Warren and Morgil Pimeestara proceeded. Rakeis and the others fought a running battle with some very aggressive mushrooms, which was ended by Warren's noble sacrifice at the bridge. Introduced to Morwen, and subsequently to Leila, Rakeis thought he had died and gone to heaven. He has since departed with Morwen, the Count, Warren, Karlingalas and Lord Adam to regions unknown.

ATTRIBUTES:

SKILLS:

DESCRIPTORS:

• Very laid-back
• Calm in a crisis
• Sometimes oblivious to a crisis...
• Calls most people 'dude', 'babe' or 'dudette'

WEAPONS:

None

EQUIPMENT:

• Black wizard's staff
• Flask of whisky
• Packet of hamster treats
• Waterproof CD player
• Two infinite-length CDs: one of rock, one of heavy metal
• The 'swimsuit edition' of Magic Monthly