Name: Benjamin Franklin Kenobi Grey
(His mother was a bit of a fan of the Founding Father.  And M*A*S*H.  And Star Wars)

Nickname: Ben

Age: 22

Year: 1

Discipline: Psychic Magic

Specialty: TBD

Physical Description: tall, slim, dark haired, grey eyed.  Wears black t-shirts with Celtic (more often “Celtic”) designs, jeans (often black) and not-expensive trainers.

Distinguishing Features: Wears a polished acorn on a leather thing around his neck
(Actually a charm to dampen the “voices” in his head)

Personality: more than a bit of a nerd.  Intellectual, introverted, he likes to have some time alone to read or listen to music.  At parties he tends to be a bit of a wallflower and is liable to leave early if the party is too big or too crowded.  He doesn’t drink much and has not sampled any recreational drugs.  He even prefers to  avoid medicines unless they are actually needed (no painkillers for a mild headache,  for instance)

Personal Goals:  learn magic, have enough to do with girls that his mother doesn’t start nagging.  (She’s broad-minded, a boy would do but that’s not to Ben’s taste :-)

Likes: reading (fantasy, sf, history, science, philosophy), thinking, board games, the idea of being a Magician

Dislikes: getting nagged by his mother, sports (at least participating in them), crowds

History: Ben’s father, Edward “Gandalf” Grey,  is a Dream Magician, who spends most of his times in dreams these days.  His mother, Galadriel (no surname)  is a Natural Magician with an interest in sex magic (she may well have a former lover among the current staff at Brakebills - helpful for getting reports on her offspring.  she’s told him (too often) that he was conceived during a ritual and Is going to be special.  More frequently after his elder brother Thomas Jefferson Solo Grey failed to get in.  She has given Ben instructions on a few rituals, including one that is supposed to help with passing exams.

The family moved to Glastonbury, England before Thomas was born, where they supply and finance various occult or folklore or New Age shops and businesses.

Life at home was the sort of weirdness that children take for normal until they get out more and find out it isn’t.  It was never too clear what his parents did for a living - but they always had enough and there were sometimes quite extravagant presents at Christmas and birthdays.  The sky lad dancing got a bit weird and embarrassing when puberty hit (the area has enough of that sort of thing that it wasn’t as bad as it might have been in earlier years although some of the other kids at school thought it weird or even witchy in a black magic sort of way).

Relations with Tom were sometimes strained - Tom often went on about how Ben was their mother’s favourite - often with some cause.  In the end they’d stand up for each other, but they aren’t really friends.

Ben made it into college in Bristol (one of the top Universities) managing to comfortably get a 2.1 in Mathematics.