Carter
Carter is a character from the series Fantasy Gear and is a character in the Sym-Tan X Fantasy Gear crossover. He appears as a side character, antagonist, and supporting character on the side of the protagonist in Fantasy Gear. He appears as one of the supporting cast on the side of Alice and Symbol in the crossover. He seeks to achieve greater heights for the Carter clan.
Bio
Appearance
Carter appears to be a middle-aged man with an aggressively average appearance, sporting brown hair and eyes. This is an assumed appearance, though one he has mostly worn for centuries.
He mainly dresses in a brown two-piece suit with a large overcoat and large top hat, adorned with several steampunk-style gears. He walks around carrying a thick book and a sturdy cane, and both double as a blunt object and spellcasting focus.
Personality
Carter is a very patient person, someone who has learned when to wait and when to seize the day after many years of action and inaction. Even in the face of great danger and little hope, he at the very least gives a seamless facade of calm and calculating.
He is a traditional-oriented person but is able to keep up with whatever changes society throws at him and adapt to what he sees as beneficial, which is only natural after living as long as he has. He deeply cares for those whom he views as family, even going out of his way to assist them, even if they don’t know it.
He prefers peaceful resolutions to conflicts but is not above stooping to violence to achieve his goals.
Backstory
Carter has been around for a very, very long time. No one really knows if Carter is his given or family name, but either way, it is what he calls himself.
He was born before the Plague Wars and studied at one of the Five Great Towers. After graduating, he continued his stay at the towers working as an assistant to the professors there, but he left shortly before the wars kicked off, being called back by his clan to prepare for the coming conflict.
He was a major player during the Plague Wars, becoming one of the most feared mages of his time due to his skill in magic. He was able to usurp control over the remnants of the great Plague Clans after the deaths of many of their leaders, reforming them into one group, the Carter Family, and was able to successfully sue for peace.
In the aftermath of the Plague Wars, he started to rebuild the Carter Family, its numbers far less than what it the clans used to be. In efforts to rebuild the reputation of Plaguecrafters, which had plummeted to Boogyman levels after the war, he sent envoys and representatives to major powers across the remaining kingdoms and sent students to the Great Towers. This was not to be, however, as eventually, Person E grew fearful and jealous of the new political power the Plaguecrafters where slowly gaining.
Person E gathered many like-minded people to his cause and made their first move at the Great Towers, where it was an open secret that Plaguecrafters studied there. This caused the Tower Wars, which saw the destruction of the Great Towers and the regression of magic as a whole, which has not even closely recovered to what it was in modern times.
Carter and Plaguecrafters were first featured as a background explanation of why magic was regressed and why society was steampunk instead of the fantasy world it once was.
Carter was later revealed to be the main antagonist of what was eventually dubbed the ‘Plague Arc’. He later turned over to the protagonist's side, playing a powerful supporting character in the later arcs.
Powers
- Mage: Carter is a mage who was taught before the fall, which makes him a cut above modern mages. He is proficient in High and Low magic to a great degree, allowing very powerful feats lost to the modern age even without Plaguecrafting.
- Plaguecrafter: Contrary to the name, plaguecrafting is not about the creation of plagues. While a Blood-based plaguecrafter could make deadly plagues, plaguecrafting itself is about the transmission of spells and magic in ways that resemble plagues. This is an inborn ability but can be a regressive trait, sometimes skipping several generations before it appears again. Carter is a master plaguecrafter, with most books on the subject being written by him.
- Gearcrafter: As a Great Tower Mage, Carter has the ability to Gearcraft through singing. He has many minor gears on his person, which augments his abilities to new levels.
- Observation Gear “Hippocrates”: This is Carter's personal gear, a sentient gear bonded with a Gearcrafter. Hippocrates allows Carter to augment his Plaguecrafting even further, letting him target specific things, such as traits and even concepts much faster than he normally would.
Trivia
- Carter has a large Bloodsun recipe collection and has funded many archeological expeditions explicitly to find more.
- It is revealed that all Paguecrafters take the family name Carter. While this can help narrow down a search for a Plaguecrafter, Carter is an extremely popular common family name to a frighteningly large degree. This is due to Carter attempting to hide plague crafters in plain sight.
- Wrote the Big Book of Plaguecrafting, a comprehensive guide to teach the next generation. He carries around the original copy, penning his thoughts and notes to add to each yearly edition.