Grandmaster Merlin Iscariot, Ruler of Castle of Iscariot

[Merlin Iscariot]

Name:
Grandmaster Merlin Iscariot

Age:
42, but he generally makes himself to look like he's in his early thirties.

Gender:
Male

Birth date:
October 8th, 1969

Occupation:
Ruler of Castle of Iscariot (and a badass wizard)

Kingdom:
Castle of Iscariot

Kingdom ranking:
Grandmaster

Ethnicity:
Irish

Hometown/Region:
Lacunosa Town, Unova Region

Favorite Pokemon:
Alakazam

Sexuality:
Heterosexual

Hair length/color:
Blonde and cropped fairly short, with some of it in the middle sticking up. Without an anti-aging spell, it's got streaks of grey in it.

Eye color:
Blue

Skin color:
White, but he's quite tanned.

Family members:
His mother and father probably still live in Canalave City, if they're still alive. Merlin really does not know.

Basic appearance:
RIPPEDnotrlysortof. Actually, Merlin is relatively muscular, something you wouldn't necessarily expect from a magic user. He exercises his body almost as much as his mind. He stands at a good 6'4" and has a tattoo on the side of his face by his left eye.

Wardrobe:
Merlin's pretty chill with what he wears. He's always wearing his black, fingerless gloves with (removable) steel knuckles and a gold chain necklace with a small gold rectangle attached to it. He likes his jean capris and black boots, and usually wears a dark-coloured tank top and short-sleeved jacket over that (which doesn't even reach to the bottom of his ribcage, but whatever).

Personality:
Merlin is, in general, a pretty laid-back guy. He likes to have a good time and isn't a big fan of work that involves a lot of writing. Actually, he has a tendency to shirk work whenever he can, unless it concerns to the well-being of the citizens of his kingdom. Then he'll do whatever needs to be done to keep them safe, even if it angers some of them. He actually cares deeply for his people, and he's willing to sit still and listen to their complaints at the same time each day. It's difficult to really anger him, and he rarely enjoys raising his voice (save in laughter), so when he gets pissed, it's for a pretty damn good reason. Merlin's pretty fickle in his interests and he tends to flit from one hobby to another. The only things he really sticks with are magic and wrestling with Mackenzie, his Infernape. Unfortunately, he tends to be the same with people: he easily tires of one person's personality, and before he gets to know them very well, he moves onto a different friend. This doesn't always hold true, but most of the time, it does. He's not anti-social by any stretch of the imagination.

Unusual habits:
For one, he always sleeps on his left side. He doesn't even toss and turn while sleeping. For another, he raps on door frames as he passes through them.

Background/history:
Merlin was born in Lacunosa Town of the Unova Region, but his parents did not stay there long, as there was little to entertain a child there. Instead, they moved right away from the Unova Region and instead went to the Sinnoh Region, where they decided to settle in Canalave City because it had boats. Yeah. The big library there was just a perk, and when Merlin was old enough to read, they sent him to study there every. Bloody. Day. At first Merlin minded very much, wanting to run around and swim in the canal and try and beg a free boat ride to Iron Island with his friends. However, when he picked up a book that mentioned magic and the various ways it could be utilized, he became a little interested and looked up another book on the topic. Then another, then another. There weren't very many books that even seriously mentioned magic, real magic, let alone explain how to use it, which was frustrating for Merlin. However, he couldn't very well go to his parents to ask: they were somewhat close-minded and would have scoffed at such an idea as magic. So, Merlin was silently frustrated, but he carefully combed every and any book he could find that might give even a clue as to how to go about learning how to actually do it.

Some years passed in this fashion. Then, suddenly, out of the blue, when he was about twelve, his parents presented him with a Chimchar they had asked Professor Rowan for and sent him off on his own adventure, something Merlin sort of wanted, but only because then he could look elsewhere for information about magic. Still, he'd picked up stuff about battling from the books he'd read, so he was alright with it. Not that he really got a choice. So Merlin, a skinny little blonde kid who didn't get enough sun, was chucked out into the real world to go battle his Pokémon with other peoples' Pokémon.

Nice parents.

Moving on. Merlin was pretty average at battling, mainly because he didn't try hard enough to be more than just decent. In fact, once Mackenzie evolved into a Monferno and Merlin noticed that he started up a new training regiment for himself, the skinny little blonde kid decided to mimic the Pokémon and work out himself. To his surprise, he found he enjoyed this quite a lot, and would have wrestled with the Monferno had he not been so SMALL. This drove the two to train even harder (and catch an Abra somewhere along the line, who assured Merlin that he would be a lot more useful when he evolved, since all the Abra would do for the two weeks after Merlin caught him was sleep), and by the time they hit Veilstone City, both Mackenzie and Ronan had evolved. Merlin actually earned the gym badge by wrestling the Gym Leader herself.

Anyway, lots of stuff happened, but even the vaguely interesting stuff isn't really worth putting down, so we'll fast-forward a few regions. Somehow or another, Merlin ended up in the Fiore Region, land of the place where people don't actually catch Pokémon. Hoping to find some clues pertaining to magic, he combed the place, but nope, nothing. Getting more and more frustrated with every week that passed with no clues, Merlin decided to finally ditch the regions that people knew of and travel to places that people around here weren't even aware of. Since he wasn't about to walk the whole way, he went off and caught a Pidgeotto, then had it carry him north (as he wouldn't it on its back, because that totally makes sense. At least it wasn't a Pidgey). ANYWAY, having gone in a totally random direction, and after a week or so of flying without seeing anything, they were all ready to turn back when some guy on the back of a Dodrio (LOL) abruptly approached him in midair and informed him that he was flying in Alternian lands and would have to land and be searched to enter, leave, or simply be blasted from the sky. To show how serious he was about this last threat, the man abruptly created a sphere of crackling blue energy in his palm.

Needless to say, Merlin was overcome with excitement, so of course he immediately landed. He was searched, given some slightly weird looks, then was permitted to enter the small kingdom and was given directions to a bitty little place called Magic Town.

We are not going to go through absolutely every year of Merlin's life. Just know that he was nineteen when he finally discovered magic and began to practice it immediately. He became the apprentice of an old man who was terribly picky about who he taught, but when he sensed the power inside of Merlin, he took the boy on immediately. Yeeeears passed. The old man died, naturally, and Merlin picked up pretty much where he left off: creating minor spells and potions to sell to the general public. He stuck around Magic Town and watched it grow before his very eyes, until it was nearly unrecognizable. A castle was eventually erected in the center, since the town had become pretty much the capital of the kingdom, and the then-current Grandmaster moved into it. The Grandmaster wasn't exactly the best ruler for the kingdom: they wanted to expand Alternia's borders to the extent of not really caring much about the citizens of that land. Annoyed with this, Merlin, who had been practicing magic whenever he wasn't wrestling with Mackenzie, managed to get himself a job in the castle as a scribe. When one of the masters also living in the castle noticed that he simply cast a spell on the parchment and quill and let them be, not even needing to speak aloud the words the quill needed to write, he became intrigued and offered to make the young man his apprentice. Merlin seized the opportunity, naturally, and in this fashion began to work his way up through the castle.

Then, shortly after Merlin was appointed a magus and made an advisor to an advisor (INCEPTION), the Grandmaster was abruptly assassinated. No one knew who had done the deed, and few could even hazard a guess. Although people were careful not to say it in public, they were kind of glad the Grandmaster was gone. He had imposed strict taxes on them and would never listen to their "petty worries". Unfortunately, the man who took over for the Grandmaster shared the previous one's ideals, so their lives changed very little.

Merlin was thirty-nine years of age when he earned the title of Master. He had spent only a few months as one before he suddenly challenged the Grandmaster to a duel for his title. Confident, the Grandmaster accepted. The ensuing battle of the magicians dragged on for nearly three hours until, at last, Merlin was defeated. That, however, was not the end of the Grandmaster's problems: the townspeople watching (which was pretty much all of them) suddenly rose up and demanded that Merlin be appointed Grandmaster. As he was an advisor at that time and was often in the public eye, they had seen him arguing in their favour and believed he would be a better ruler. They simply had not known him to be as powerful as he was until this battle, and so were confident in him even though he had been defeated. At first, the Grandmaster scoffed and left the topic behind in the dust alongside Merlin, but within days the entire town was rioting, demanding change. Again, to start, the Grandmaster did nothing and ignored the people until he realized that those people were, in fact, the ones who supplied his table with food. Outraged, he demanded the townsfolk return to work, but they were having none of it. They would not budge even when faced with death. As the castle's food supply dwindled--it was early spring and the winter larder was nearly empty already. Finally, the Grandmaster grudgingly admitted defeat, relinquishing his title and handing it over to Merlin.

A new age had begun, one that began with the renaming of the kingdom: Castle of Iscariot. He named it as such because, as he truthfully told his people, they were all under his protection, and he would be responsible for the walls. He would stand by them through the good times and the bad.

Perhaps the worst thing Merlin did for his lands was outlaw dragons and begin slaying them. This was not entirely his fault, but that absolves him of none of the blame. Not long after being titled Grandmaster, Merlin became aware of the threat of a small group of Dragon-type Pokémon who were terrorizing farmers mainly. At first, he simply sent some magicians to protect the farms being attacked, but when the dragons targeted the citizens in his very town, he immediately ordered the dragons destroyed. At the prodding of some of the citizens and his advisors, Merlin ordered all of the dragons in his kingdom to be wiped out, so a tragedy like this never occurred again--for the dragons had killed a number of people. No one was allowed to capture or train a dragon, and none but the magicians were to approach them--and then that would only be to kill.

Present-day:
Now, Merlin spends much of his time in his castle, going about his usual Grandmaster duties and whatnot. Lately, however, he has been considering a brief vacation for himself and his Pokémon, wherein he would temporarily leave the Grandmaster duties to one of the masters--one of the few friends Merlin had actually managed to keep.

Current Pokemon team:



Name: Ronan
Gender: Male
Nature: Modest
Ability: Synchronize
Moveset: Psychic, Recover, Psyshock, Signal Beam




Name: Ely
Gender: Female
Nature: Quiet
Ability: Magic Guard
Moveset: Psychic, Future Sight, Reflect, Shadow Ball





Name: Mackenzie
Gender: Male
Nature: Naughty
Ability: Blaze
Moveset: Flare Blitz, Close Combat, Flamethrower, Dig




Name: Violet
Gender: Female
Nature: Serious
Ability: Keen Eye
Moveset: Hurricane, Air Slash, Agility, Giga Impact


Miscellaneous information:
THIS TOOK SO LONG. I'M SORRY ABOUT THE BIO.

Code word:
NOOOOOOOOOOPE.

[Red]

Accepted.