Gwendoline Harding

Gwendoline Harding
Information
Affiliation	Arcanum Investigation Team
Known Associates	Kord Von Einzberg, Isobel Buchanan, Leon Elias Malachi
Title	Professor
Magic & Affinity
Hermetic Sigilist, Sorceror, & Conjuror
Played By	Jessi

Gwendoline Harding is a practicing and teaching Hermetic sorceress from Earth-1834 assigned to the Arcanum investigation. She is a Professor of Antiquities at Oxford University, where she curates the University's artifacts. She teaches Hermetic magic as well as archaeology.

Personality & Appearance

Gwendoline is a sweet and tender-hearted young woman with heavily Victorian values of etiquette and courtesy, though sometimes she overlooks them due to her excitable nature. Despite all she has seen in her practice, she remains a true lover of adventure, and delights in wonder at any new thing she can see or learn. A true academic, Gwendoline is devoted constantly to expanding her knowledge and repertoire. She possesses a great love for antiquity and preserving it. She usually carries a sketchbook in which she practices drawing places and people of interest. Such practice was recommended to her early in her study, as a fine hand is required for properly documenting archaeological artifacts in detailed images, as well as ensuring accuracy in her sigil work.

The Professor's appearance is quite startling, and more than one of her colleagues has wondered if she didn't use some magic to create the effect. She appears lithe and willowy with moon-white skin on a sweet face, deep black hair, dark eyes, and flushed lips, as if Snow White herself had sprung off the page and come to call.

Despite her mild outward nature, Gwendoline is a powerful and opinionated woman. She balances her sweetness with daring, especially in her work. Her fragile sparrow's heart is accompanied by a will like steel, her gentle tongue by a mind whirling with possibilities. She is the creator of controversy who sails over the troubled waters like a swan. These traits have helped her success at the tradition-bound Oxford, where success can be prevented by a perceived lack of feminine ideals. Behind her dreaming face is a formidable and determined magician, opponent, and ally.

Skillset

Gwendoline is a skilled Hermetic specializing in magical seals and conjuration. Her knowledge of Hermetic seals is (arguably considered) unparalleled, both due to her intense study and her seemingly photographic memory of them. These seals allow her to create a variety of magical effects, from healing to harm to summoning, binding, and commanding spirits under and above the firmament. Every day of the week she inscribes seals to ensure she has additional ones to replace any she has that are damaged, as some must be applied to parchment. They are written on cloth, vellum, parchment, and thin metal sheets, depending on the requirement of each spell. As the original seals were first created centuries prior, Gwendoline has updated several of them for the current age and level of technology, earning her acclaim (and criticism) in her field.

Gwendoline keeps on her person a Master Vessel to which she binds every spirit she summons and intends to keep in her service. This vessel is inscribed with multiple Holy Pentacles associated with each of the planets to ensure that all spirits bound to it are forced to obey her command and cannot cause her harm. Some of the spirits she keeps are purely useful spirits, while some others are far more sinister.

She has a thorough and, frankly, sometimes annoying knowledge of things ancient, antiquated, and esoteric, rarely sparing listeners from a relevant fact. She is also a Latinist, having studied the language since childhood, making her adept at incantations, inscriptions, translations, and language-based spells. While she would enjoy expanding her teaching practice to Latin and incantations, one can only do so much and still sleep.

Life & Career

Gwendoline Harding was born into magic and moderate privilege, her father a Rosicrucian and her mother a Traditional Witch. Her early years were spent in home education, where she received fine tutelage from her parents and teachers. She began to learn Latin before she began proper penmanship lessons. She had an insatiable appetite for knowledge as well as power, which was well encouraged but also tempered by her parents.

By the time she entered school, Gwendoline had developed a healthy pursuit of knowledge balanced by the need for reasonable caution. Her early successes in simple magic made her fearless and big-headed, which, despite her moderate caution, resulted in several school mishaps and strong discipline. One teacher, a Hermetic, saw both potential and danger in her daring, and took her under his special tutelage (as is the custom for favorite students). He kept her growing skill from causing wild magic dangers from misuse, and the lessons Gwendoline's parents had imparted upon her became clearer and more important to her than ever.

Thanks to her passion and the attention of her teacher, Gwendoline entered the illustrious Hermetic Bastion, a place of higher learning for the subject mentioned. There she devoted herself to the study of sigils and arcano-archaeology, graduating laureate in both.

It wasn't until her employment at Oxford that Gwendoline began openly displaying her more controversial innovations. The young woman knew that in school, it could adversely affect her marks and thus her graduation rank, and she knew that as a woman (and intending to radically expand and reform the field) that her schooltime magical alterations would have to be limited to just more advanced than those of her peers. Her employment at Oxford properly secured by her qualifications, Harding began the thrilling task of opening her grimoire to her students, her peers, and boards both national and international.

Awards & Certifications

• Certified Adept, The Pan-European Board of Magicians
• Hermetic Bastion Laureate
• Laureate Speaker, 200th Annual Conference on Hermetic Arts
• Laureate Speaker, 26th Annual Conference on Arcano-Archaeology
• British Magical Innovation Award
• Repeated Contributor to peer reviewed journals:
  • Hermetic Yearly Review
  • Advances in Magical Theory
  • Arcano-Archaeology
  • Trismegistus
  • Les Arts Hermétiques Magiques

Acclaim & Controversy

Harding's work has earned her both laurels and severe criticism. She is a controversial author with controversial work, which is precisely how she likes it. In her mind there is no purpose to publishing at all should she fail to expand upon or change current knowledge or introduce new theories. Many of her peers agree, but just as many, if not more, find her work detrimental to the practice of magic.

While her work has provided revolutionary results, many still refuse to see their benefit. It is the nature of well-established magic to go unchanged, and most magicians seem unwilling to change it or to change their own practice. To Gwendoline, the people around her are aping what their forebears have aped since the original masters. To them, Gwendoline is a wild, dangerous upstart who could potentially tear down the structure and safety that Hermetic practice has so long provided to its practitioners.

Still, many in her field have praised and promoted her work, and begun teaching based on her modifications. Magicians have suggested that the young woman may, one day, completely transform Hermeticism, and possibly earn a seat on the Council of Thorns--if she can overcome traditionalist resistance.

Her fluctuating level of support has resulted in dearly-won professional awards and many more she never received. It is primarily due to controversy that she has yet to attain the certified rank of Master from the Pan-European Board of Magicians, though her supporters have vehemently insisted her merit. She remains optimistic that over time her work will be properly recognized.

Publications

• A Modern Revision of The Solomon Seals
• Deconstruction of the Perceived Necessity of Religion & Piety in Magics
• Unconventional and Effective Summoning Circles
• Expansion of the Work of Dr. John Dee
• Critique of Agrippa: Occult Philosophy for the Modern Age
• On Angelic Manners & Expectations
• Spirits, Not Slaves: On Beneficial Relationships with Conjured Beings
• Mannerly Interaction with Demonic Spirits
• On the Proper Use of the Enochian Elemental Tablets
• The Absurdity of Accepted Preparatory Necessities in Conjuring
• On the Need of the Establishment to Reexamine the Understanding of the Works of Hermes Trismegistus
• On Avoiding Detrimental Contracts with Demons, Fae, & Other Spirits
• The Fearful Warnings of Dee & Faust

The Investigation of Imminent Threat

Invitations sent by Heinrich Stratton were answered by Gwendoline, Kord Von Einzberg, Isobel Buchanan, and Leon Elias Malachi. After a brief test of their skill and ability, Heinrich explained that they were hand-selected by the Arcanum to investigate a threat detected within the Nexus. The Nexus forms a crucial axis point between other worlds and a threat detected within it has the potential to spread across the entire Multiverse. To that end, their group was selected to investigate and report back.

Departing from Zbraslav Chateau in the Czech Republic by way of Zeppelin, the group travelled to Warsaw, Poland for their entry into the Nexus.