THE BASICS

Name: Bernard (BER-nerd) Hill

Titles: Master/Magister

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PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

Gender: Male

Age: 25

Hair: Short black hair

Eyes: Dark brown

Distinguishing Marks 

Bernard has a light scar on his cheek that was gifted to him during a duel with another student at Kingsbridge. Also, the pad of his right thumb is permanently darkened from black ink, from turning pages of the well-illustrated books of the Kingsbridge Library.

General Appearance 

Bernard is young for a Magister, and the truth is, he has carried that degree for less than a year now.  As a senior student, he meticulously maintained the strict short-razored grooming standards of Kingsbridge.  However, now that he has fled Breiton and is half a world away from Kingsbridge, he doesn't maintain those standards as strictly as he used to, falling back to his young-student habit of infrequent razoring.

Bernard dresses in the typical style of the urban rakes of most urban centers of Breiton, except to the discerning eye, his clothing is perhaps a bit higher quality than average, though he does also possess the formal robes of a man of his profession, and he wears them at formal occasions, or when acting professionally as a tutor or instructor.

He possesses many tools, and can be seen with one or two of them most times.  A portable telescope, a box containing rolls of paper and charcoal for sketching, a rock hammer and sample boxes, or a dueling sword are frequent elements of his kit.

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HISTORY

Personality

Bernard is still very much the youthful teen hellraiser he was when he first became a student at Kingsbridge.  However, that edge has been dulled by the realization that there is absolutely no future in that sort of life.  And so, he has reluctantly thrown himself onto the professional path set before him, and moderates his former excesses with an air of respectability when appropriate.  Still, he is a thrill-seeker, attracted to dangerous situations and dangerous people beneath everything, even when he's dressed in his professorial robes of office, instructing a student in the trivium (rhetoric, logic, and grammar).  At times, especially during a particularly inspiring bout of discovery or invention, he finds thrills in the higher studies -- the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, a passionate thrill of pure knowledge whose pursuit at the highest levels somehow also sates his reckless urges.

The key to understanding this conflict within his personality is his genius.  He excels at the arts and sciences, producing paintings and sculptures that appeal not only to the eye, but also to the mind -- studies of the geometry of form and motion, and exemplars of design.  And while, by nature, he desires more epicurean pleasures, his genius can never be satisfied with anything less than the more platonic ideals.  This leaves him characteristically unfulfilled and unpredictable, swinging from intense irresponsibility to a focused creative/inventiveness that is the closest thing to a religious experience anyone could imagine.

Family

The Hills are a large family that is headed up by Willem Hill, the grandson of a landed knight, who, unfortunately, has inherited no titles, but has inherited a sizable chunk of land in ... the hills, called Hillsend.  Bordering the more colorful northern reaches of Breiton, the Hills have a touch of the trademark accent.  In Bernard's case, he has learned how to speak with the far more proper accent of the King's Court.

Bernard is Willem's grandson, and the family has grown so large that, if it ends up being split by the heirs, It would become a Greater, Lesser, North, South, East, West, and Central Hillsend within one generation.  And being that Bernard is a third son in the even larger next generation after that, the inheritance prospects are bleak.

Bernard has always felt like a man on the fringes of class and social structure -- as non-titled gentry, the Hills have lived with a level of comfort and autonomy that would be envied by the peasant class, but in the eyes of those of the noble houses, the Hills have always been seen as little more than admirably successful commoners.   Now that Bernard has recently achieved his degree, and the honorific of Master, it has emphasized his outsider social status, a state which he has come not only to accept, but to value, as it enables him a social freedom, even as it separates him.

Sexual Preferences

While not philosophically opposed to intimacy between same-sexed mentor and student, what some call the Aulitean Method -- having tried it briefly in his more adventurous youth, it did not suit him - he finds far more pleasure with women than with men.  Over his adult years, he has struggled to balance his desire for rough and reckless celebration of beauties of the flesh, with the entirely different attraction toward those who are beautiful of spirit and mind.  The easy pleasure of the former typically wins out over the cultivation of the latter.

About Your character

He grew up working on his family farm in Hillsend, but he found the work boring.  Thankfully, his family had enough money to hire a tutor to take advantage of young Bernard's genius, and he learned how to read and write, at a very young age, and soon mastered the basics of education.  But what use was a well educated boy whose prospects increasingly appeared to be the inheritance of a modest plot of farmland, and a village full of cousins?

When the opportunity to run away and move to the city came, he seized it.  He took whatever money he could gather up from his father, grandfather, and his uncles, and then he made the trip to the city.  He spent a small amount of time as an apprentice in a foundry, which produced bells, including huge church bells.  He quickly improved upon the tradition-bound methods used in the alloying and casting process that not only produced a superior cast, but also saved the foundry money.  Not only that, in the handful of years at the foundry, young Bernard personally carved several casts for church bells throughout Breiton and its colonies, including the one that now rests in the tower of the Church in Cape Fortuna.  His relief work on the surface of the casts was quite sought after, as well as the superior tone of the ring.

But as he grew from a boy into a young man, he found himself wanting more, and he left his apprenticeship to become a student at Kingsbridge University.  His early years were spent sketching and painting nudes of the prettiest girls he could trick into modeling for "anatomical studies", drinking profusely at the local taverns, and conning coins out of foreigners who needed translators and guides -- a few of whom were loathsome enough to be lured into robberies, or gotten drunk and rolled over while they were passed out.

In other words, as a student, Bernard was quite the rake.

Academic studies were almost effortless for Bernard, and he half-assed his way through his early studies.  This gave him more free time, and allowed him more focus on, the things that he enjoyed.  The epicurean pleasures of fine dining, loose women, and plenty of drink.

But there was only so much trouble a young student could get into.  The Kingsbridge University, founded generations ago under a monasterial charter, was technically part of the Faith, and as such, the students were granted some protections from the city guardsmen.  In exchange for that, the university was expected to discipline its own.  And eventually, all the youthful indiscretions caught up to Bernard.  He was placed on probation, and he realized that this life wasn't his oyster.  That if he didn't do his part, he would be sent back to his old life.  At Hillsend.

Bernard shifted his focus from trouble-making to his studies.  He needed to impress the faculty, the Masters of the School, and that meant hard work.  If he could secure his status through his talents and skills, then, and only then, would he be able to indulge in his personal interests.  This was a lesson well-learned, and quickly, he was seen by nearly everyone in the faculty as the most promising student.  He was given permission to earn coin by tutoring non-students in the trivium, the lowest of the liberal arts:  Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic, and he realized for the first time that this life could pay, and pay well.  Nobles could afford to pay quite a bit to have their children instructed, far more than he made as a simple apprentice in a foundry, or that he could make farming beets in Hillsend.

Bernard finally finished his education, passing his examinations, and earning the degree of Magister Scholae, which of course came along with an invitation to join the faculty of Kingsbridge, an invitation that no one had ever turned down.  And Bernard accepted of course, he was no fool.  However, literally the next day, Kingsbridge shut its doors indefinitely -- the Faith had claimed Kingsbridge as its property, and the Masters voted to close the University rather than give up their semi-autonomy that it had enjoyed since its founding, and possibly get involved in a civil war between the Faith, which patronized its fine arts; and the nobles who supported the university's science and educational services.

Bernard was faced with a unique quandary.  He was without the network of patronage and personal support that most of the Masters had, and without the associated opportunities.  He was forced to scramble, and quickly, for support, or else he would be forced to return home to Hillsend, which was a fate worse than death to the now-urbane Magister.

How, you ask, did newly-minted Master Bernard end up fleeing from the royal city and the brewing conflict and to a remote Breitonian colony half way around the world?

That's a long tale that involves a failed expedition, a menagerie of exotic animals, a handful of mysterious artifacts, and a monkey named Will.

Well, sort of.  There's more to it than that!