Name: Michael Lombard
Gender: Male
Age: 30
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown
General Appearance:  At 6’ and 175 lbs, Michael is tall and fit.  He has dark brown eyes which seem, like the cliché says, wiser than his years.  He wears his dark hair short enough not to need a lot of care, but usually dresses better than needed.  He tends to prefer black, even when baking, almost as a challenge to the flour and powdered sugar he surrounds himself with, simply rolling up his sleeves and putting on a clean white half-cut apron to dust off his hands.  He always has a soft smile when around others, but it rarely seemed to take over his face, as though he’s trying, but knows a shadow will fall the moment he’s left alone.  Even so, there’s something comforting about his presence, a confidence that seems to say everything is going to be OK.

He used to almost always wears a watch alongside a small, bone-white pendant like a curved horn that hangs from a bracelet on his wrist, a freshly carved wooden crucifix around his neck, and a simple silver ring on his right hand, but all three are currently missing, as are most of his clothes.

Personality:  Michael is a generally friendly and energetic person, the sort of person it’s good to visit in the morning for a cup of coffee and a sugared pastry.  He always has something good to say, even on the gloomiest day.  That’s not to say he’s all sunshine and unicorns.  He has a serious side though it’s most often reserved for private encounters, either ‘work’, where he serves as a patient and considerate ear and a wise guide, or ‘play’, where he can always be trusted to get his friends home safe and keep them from doing something they might really regret.  However, he’s not a stick in the mud and a guy who will usually say ‘yes’, whether that means getting out on a dance floor, standing up and embarrassing himself at karaoke, or downing another shot; he just knows his limits and tries to anticipate the limits of others.
Sexual Preferences: Heterosexual
Employment: Owner and Operator of Mara Bakery, an Italian bakery and café once noted in a respected travel magazine as having the best espresso on the east coast… the tiramisu isn’t bad either.  Michael also allows select patrons into a small back room where he performs divination and serves as a ‘Fattuccchiere’, a fixer, seeking ‘uncommon solutions’ to all too often and common problems.

About Your Character:  Families sometimes fight, there’s nothing unusual about that.  What is unusual in Michael’s case is that it’s a fight that has crossed generations and continues between the living and the dead.  That’s not to say he’s haunted, then again, it’s not to say he isn’t; after all, Michael comes from a long line of Maghi and Maghe, magic workers.

His family emigrated to America over 100 years ago in the early 1900s to pursue the American dream though he could trace his lineage back to Italian royalty from the small town of Benevento in the Lombard region near Naples over a thousand years prior.

Michael himself is the oldest of three though he lost his mother and his youngest sibling when he was only 10.  Still, he remembers her well and it was she who taught him how to bake and he carries her memory in the form of family recipes and the scent of cherry blossoms, a smell which permeates the back room of his shop, much like the smell of coffee, sugar, chocolate, and vanilla permeates the front.

He was raised by his Nonna, or grandmother, after his mother’s death.  Nonna was a hard woman, but strong.  She was a woman who put family above all else, sometimes to a fault.  She was also a Maghe, a magic woman who practiced the old ways and raised her grandchildren in the practice as well, though he was more like his mother with a talent for food and drink, flowers and herbs, music, and song.  Even so, Nonna was insistent and he learned to divine and speak with the dead, he learned to make Brevi, charm bags meant to bring good luck and he learned to carve Cornicello to ward off Malocchio or The Evil Eye.  Still, it had never been his calling, at least not until after she passed.

He moved to Stillwater a few years later to start anew, favoring his mother’s talents, but honoring his Nonna and relatives he’d never even met.  He had other reasons for coming to Stillwater as well, reasons that were his own and unknown to any but himself.  No one even knew his relation to the rumored Lo Duca family of the past, though it wasn’t a purposeful deception exactly, more a deception of omission.  Lo Duca might have been his blood, but it simply wasn’t his name, he was a Lombard, a male of a line that had never had a family name until American clerks at Ellis Island had forced one upon his namesake 5 generations prior.  Still, there was undoubtedly talk and perhaps a little suspicion, after all, more than a few people knew about his backroom.

---

It had taken him years to finally become a part of Stillwater.  He'd been the newcomer, the outsider, the Lombard until just this year.  And what a year it had been.  First, there was the Jubilee where he learned the truth about Yves and the Pure.  Then he'd learned the truth about himself.  Now he was ready to forget.

---

The Witches of Benevento and the King of the Lombards

Michael and his sister are descended from the last Begotten King of the Lombards, a king born of a witch himself, who bound the Witches of Benevento to his will in order to exact revenge against those who had killed his mother and scattered his family when he was still a babe.

After his death, the Witches swore to never again allow themselves to be bound to a man, and to assure this, they would never allow a son to be born.  To accomplish this they would cast a spell over any witch who became pregnant.  If the child was a boy, he would die in the womb, if it was a girl, she would be born, dedicated to The Lady of the Crook and Flail (Isis), The Daughter of the Moon (Diana), and The Mistress of the Spinning Wheel (Hecate).

From then on, no male was born of the line and though they moved in the shadows, the witches thrived and spread through the world.

Michael's family came to America some 150 years ago, carrying the bloodline with them.  In 1942, Margali, their great-grandmother conceived twins with Jakob Stillwater.  The spell which prevented males from being born led to complications and though her daughter survived (Michael and Mackenzie's Nonna), Margali died and her grandmother cursed the town.

When Michael was conceived some 40-odd years later, his mother resisted the spell that was meant to kill him, taking the curse upon herself, which would lead to her death some years later.  Michael was born, potentially disrupting everything the Witches of Benevento had been trying to avoid for 1300 years, but given they weren't part of any coven they were overlooked.

When Michael and his sister arrived in Stillwater, the power of the place triggered something and the Witches have become aware of their presence, but because they were also born of Stillwater, they've been protected while in town, and so the Witches have been watching, waiting, planning and preparing, just in case 'he' tried anything like his forefather once did.

---

The Beautiful Daughter and the Hideous Son

Long ago an enchantress lived beside a beautiful lake.  There she would be visited by poets and bards from all around the realm who had heard of her great beauty and brought her gifts so she might let them taste from her inspiration.  Many visited her and took from her that inspiration, but only one took her heart.  His name was Tegid Foel and he came to her, naked from the lake.  He told her he had watched her take poets and bards to her bed and though he had no gifts to give, he wished for her to do the same to him.  Thinking him different from the others, she did, but she was wrong and he was not different and he too left her gifts, a beautiful daughter with eyes as blue as a summer sky and a hideous son with the face of a stag.

She loved both of her children equally Llywy, her golden-haired daughter, and Afagddu, her raven-haired son, and as they grew it became clear that Llywy was as beautiful inside as she was on the outside, and Afagddu was as hideous within as he was without.  It was Llywy who suggested her mother bestow her brother with wisdom to counter the darkness within.  The potion needed to be stirred for a year and a day and the enchantress set her servants to the task, one to keep the fire burning, the other to stir.  This story is well-known, about the boy who spilled the potion, burned his finger, tasted three drops of wisdom, and became the most famous bard in all the world.  Less well-known is what became of Afagddu, how he became one of the Twenty Four Knights of King Arthur’s Court, one of the Three Irresistible Knights, one of the Three Slaughter-Blocks of Britain, and one of the Three Survivors of the Final Battle at Camlann.

Nothing more is written of the Stag-Headed Man, his beautiful sister, or his enchantress mother, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more story to tell.