Berrin Wickleset was born among the floating platforms and crystal-lit corridors of the city of Galca, raised beneath drifting gardens and enchanted walkways where magic hummed as constantly as wind. From an early age, he showed a talent for spatial reasoning and arcane pattern recognition, the sort of mind that noticed when things didn’t quite line up. While other students reveled in spectacle, Berrin gravitated toward structure: why enchantments held, how levitation matrices compensated for turbulence, why some magical effects drifted over time while others remained stubbornly fixed.

He eventually earned a teaching post at one of Galca’s arcane schools, lecturing on theoretical cartography and unstable spatial systems. His work focused on mapping places that resisted being mapped; floating districts, experimental spell zones, planar overlaps, and enchanted environments that refused to behave consistently. Among his peers, he was respected, if not beloved. His lectures were precise, demanding, and intolerant of sloppy thinking. He believed magic was beautiful because it worked, not because it surprised.

During a sanctioned research excursion to catalog a Fey-touched wood in the Vauxtara Woodland, Berrin encountered an Archfey, a being whose influence thrived not on awe or terror, but on irritation. It presented itself cheerfully, perched atop a stump, and told a knock-knock joke so catastrophically bad that it barely qualified as humor. Berrin did not laugh. Instead, he explained why the joke failed. He spoke at length. About rhythm. About expectation. About structure. About why humor depended on tension and release, and why the Archfey's punchline collapsed under its own inadequacy. To Berrin, this was not cruelty. It was pedagogy. To the Archfey, it was unforgivable.

The Archfey’s response was swift, theatrical, and devastatingly petty.

Rather than curse Berrin with death, madness, or ruin, he was cursed with inconvenience. The world would never quite cooperate with him again. Nature would mark him as though he were perpetually struggling. His sense of direction would betray him with absolute confidence. Mundane mechanisms would hesitate and twitch in his presence, not enough to destroy, but enough to erode patience and reputation.

Berrin returned to Galca changed.

At first, he tried to ignore the effects. Then he tried to compensate. Then he tried to explain them away. But the city noticed. Students whispered. Colleagues complained about malfunctioning equipment. His once immaculate appearance degraded into a constant state of weathered disarray. He arrived late, muddy, or inexplicably lost despite being escorted. Within a year, his name-Berrin Wickleset, once associated with rigorous scholarship-had become a quiet liability.

That was when he made a decision.

He began introducing himself as Alistair Wickleset.

It was not a false name, merely one he had never used before — a spare, human-leaning name he had once considered too theatrical for academic life. Now it served a purpose. “Berrin” belonged to the man he had been; the professor of Galca, the name attached to published papers, chalkboards, and lecture halls. “Alistair” could belong to the man who survived what came next. It was a way to protect his past from his present, to ensure that whatever embarrassment followed would not fully eclipse the work he had already done. Shortly after, he was quietly removed from his teaching post.

Rather than collapse, Alistair adapted.

Cut off from clean laboratories and institutional patience, he turned his theory outward. If the world insisted on interfering, he would engineer around it. He began building tools meant not for elegance, but for resilience. His most enduring creation was an arcane umbrella: part focus, part shield, part artillery. It seemed to be the only object that was able to resist both grime and Fey interference. Out of necessity rather than ambition, he became an Artillerist.

Eventually, Galca became too small for him. He left not in disgrace, but in resignation, drifting downward from the clouds into a wider world that was no more forgiving — but no more judgmental, either. Now he wanders under the name Alistair Wickleset, answering to “Ace” when spoken to kindly. He looks like a hardened survivor, though he insists he is not. He appears dangerous, though he would prefer tea and a quiet workspace. He gets lost constantly, accumulates dirt effortlessly, and carries an umbrella to help keep him clean.