Celescoix Marcetoix

Celescoix was raised in the marble cradle of Old Sharlayan, having been born to a member of the Forum and an expert botanist. He was provided for with everything he could’ve wanted and more—for while the parents were inattentive to the growing boy, they spared him love in the form of elaborate expenses. He had access to the finest clothes, the newest books, and the best magical foci an illustrious young scholar could hope to ask for. Perhaps it was that inattentiveness that first drew Celescoix to the realm of the arcane, for what began as a childhood interest born from boredom became an overwhelming obsession that stalked him into his adulthood.

Celescoix graduated with nearly every honor available at the Studium. He was diligent, clever, and ambitious to a fault—yet he was notably overlooked by the Circle of Knowing. Celescoix’s motivations for success were fueled entirely by a sense of selfish grandeur, and his cutthroat ruthlessness earned him a reputation as a bit of a prick. Everyone, including Celescoix himself, knew that heroism was not in his cards.

Celescoix’s arcane interest led him to pursue a career in academia: he became a professor at the Studium, teaching classes with a focus on astromancy. Celescoix was drawn to the stars and the stories they told—he had a fascination with the divine, especially with the Twelve and the various primals in Eorzean legend. To Celescoix, they represented ultimate potential and ultimate power. He wrote many theses about their nature, especially in regard to the stories behind different cultures’ constellations.

Yet, as time marched on for Celescoix, he began to feel the pressing weight of the years growing heavy on his shoulders. He feared death, and thus came to fear aging. He had so much left to research, so much left to explore—and, using his expertise in astromancy, Celescoix turned to the stars for a solution. He knew well enough that the apparent control of “fate” that the manipulation of extraterrestrial aether seemed to grant did not truly alter the flow of time, but rather bent it in relation to perceived mortality. He began to postulate a theory that, if he could draw on deeper power from the benefic—further power from further stars, beyond the constellations above Eorzea—the stretch of time would thin and loop back on itself, and in so doing, “rewind” the aether of the caster while keeping the imprinted memory of the body. Chronomancy, he called it. He sought immortality, and he would do anything to see its possibility proven.

Drawing too much power from the stars (and playing with time) was forbidden in Sharlayan, but Celescoix—ever confident in himself—ignored the warnings of his peers. Foolishly so, for during one of Celescoix’s experiments, his concentration on the spell broke, and in so doing caused a concentrated swirl of gravity to rend asunder in his classroom. A sizable section of the Studium was swallowed by the rift and destroyed, and several students were critically injured. As a consequence, Celescoix was fired from his professorship. His mother, still serving on the Forum, disowned him for his crimes, and Celescoix was likely to face a prison sentence. Of course, Celescoix felt it was an unjust punishment—seeking knowledge was never a crime, he thought. Before the Forum could arrest him, Celescoix flagged down a boat, paid them handsomely for their silence, and chartered passage to Limsa Lominsa.

Getting run out of that “musty old town” might have been the best thing that ever happened to him, as for the past three years, Celescoix Marcetoix (keeping his given name) has used the opportunity to travel Eorzea and catalog every legend he can uncover firsthand. Still, time marches onward, and his interest in chronomancy is ever-pressing, though he lacks the conduits and the tomes with which to attempt his experiments. He is always scouring for knowledge, forbidden or forthright, in his quest to match the infinity of the stars and live, eternal. Stars never die—only the men who shackle them do.

Hooks

In the Name of Science. Celescoix is always looking for a helping hand to assist with his benefic experiments. He occasionally puts out dubiously vague advertisements asking for interested parties to help him with his “studies”. He’ll offer a handsome reward.

Seeker of Stories. Celescoix enjoys hearing about people’s adventures. He will often seek out people he has heard stories about and ask them to recount their tales for his own personal records. He has a special fascination with primals, the Twelve, the Void, or anything extraterrestrial.

On the Run. Sharlayan is on the hunt for Celescoix. A mercenary might have caught wind of a handsome reward being paid out by a mysterious contractor in Limsa Lominsa upon the delivery of a tall, gangly, suspicious-looking prude of a Duskwight….

Missing Home. From the way Celescoix talks (as well as the way he occasionally dresses), it is obvious that he is from Old Sharlayan. He is always curious to hear any news from the motherland. He hopes, one day, to be able to return—hopefully after proving his naysayers wrong.

What’s Your Sign? While Celescoix’s interest in astromancy relates more to the science of warping time rather than reading fate, he remains skilled in fortune telling. For a price, he would happily scry the stars and the Deck of Sixty to satiate any hungry curiosities—though his readings may be more pessimistic than most.

Rarefied Taste. In an effort not to draw too much attention to himself or his research, Celescoix’s primary means of making gil since landing himself in Eorzea doesn’t relate to the arcane: he works as a novelist. He publishes out of a small press in Ul’dah under the name Ceciloxes Cartimex. He enjoys writing speculative and fantasy fiction, but he makes most of his gil writing smutty romance novels. Celescoix is a connoisseur of the written word: he would love to discuss literature (especially his own).

Personality

Celescoix’s flaws tend to outweigh his merits. While he is an ambitious and driven man, he is characterized by his obsessiveness and perfectionism: he must be the best at everything he sets out to do, and he will never leave anything half-finished. When presented with an insurmountable obstacle, Celescoix will drive himself mad in fruitless efforts to overcome it. He does not believe in failure: every mistake on his part is but a step on the path to success. He is extraordinarily arrogant, and he is unlikely to ever admit that he is in the wrong.

While Celescoix comes from privilege, he has been forced to live a simpler life in Eorzea. He has the habit of making frank, often rude observations about people due to his haughty upbringing, and despite his encyclopedic knowledge of history, he lacks the context of many current socio-political issues and can make the accidental tone-deaf comment. Even though his hauteur is insufferable, he is inarguably charismatic: he has a gift for words and a handsome face to accompany it. He can lift people’s spirits with elegant praise just as well as he can crush pride with veiled insults and well-culled cruelties.

Celescoix’s relation to himself and others teeters on a knife’s edge. At times, he needs to be the center of attention, and he seeks out situations wherein he’ll be lavished with praise. At other times, he goes weeks without speaking to anyone at all, too ashamed with himself and his lack of progress to allow himself to be judged. He will, when asked, always speak highly of himself, but he is haunted by a deep-seated doubt. He has never felt genuine connection with another person, only glimpsing relationships through the looking-glass of legends, of fiction, and he has a warped perception of what it means to live and to love. He knows this about himself, and an unseemly part of him longs to understand what it is like to feel wanted. That is why he tries so desperately to prove himself, and why he is obsessed with delaying the inevitability of time—for, as the moons march ever onward, Celescoix feels his one chance at love slipping further and further from his grasp.

Trivia

Celescoix is only half-Duskwight. His mother comes from a family of Wildwood Elezen that have been in Old Sharlayan for generations, while his father is a Duskwight immigrant from Gridania (sponsored by a traveling professor who noticed his talent for botany).

Celescoix’s metabolism is wicked fast. Being so tall, he has to eat a ridiculous amount of food to work at maximum efficiency (he gets real grumpy when he’s hungry). He is always munching on a snack while working. His favorite is oranges, though being a typical Sharlayan, he lacks a refined palate.

Cartimex’s best-selling novels are the Altar Ego Chronicles—a trashy romance series about various priests of the Twelve courting their gods of choice. Mythologically accurate and romantic!

While traditionally an astrologian, Celescoix also fights by manifesting legends as a summoner, as well as mastering elemental magicks as a black mage. They also dabble in pictomancer, flavored as writing rather than drawing.

Celescoix taught the Leveilleur twins during their time at the Studium. Unfortunately for both of them, he never had a student whom he actually liked.

Although he is in his mid-late fifties, he will tell everyone he is in his forties. Aside from his graying hair, he looks young enough for this not to rouse suspicion.

He keeps his nails long and well-manicured.

Celescoix is divorced. His family arranged a traditional marriage for him when he was around 20 (an uncommon practice, though it still occurs in older Sharlayan families). His spouse was an incredibly smart, beautiful, Roegadyn woman by the name of Ganzgeim. They both resented each other: Celescoix for Ganzgeim’s success over him in every area, and Ganzgeim for Celescoix’s general unpleasant attitude. The marriage lasted only a month, whereupon Ganzgeim decided she couldn’t take Celescoix’s ego and decided that marriage wasn’t for her. Celescoix doesn’t regret the divorce, though he does regret that he was not the one to initiate it. These days, he looks back on the marriage with a bit of ennui, and though he remembers being miserable in it, he finds himself missing what could’ve been.

He is classically trained in harp, piano, and violin.

His nameday is the 32nd Sun of the 2nd Astral Moon (March 31st). He has no preference of patron deity, though if he was to be asked his favorite, he would say Oschon. His elemental alignment is variable, but gravitates towards lightning.