Post by Rayleigh Mayler on Sept 22, 2013 17:56:25 GMT -5
Name: Rayleigh Mayler
Alias: Doctor Mayler, Technist Mayler
Class: Gadgeteer
Race: Human
Age: 37
Occupation: 'Legitimate' 'Professional' Scientist
Residence: Zaun, Low Town
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Abilities
Technist Training - While Mayler may be one of the least 'respectable' Scientists working the land, he is a Techmaturge at heart and classically trained as such. His specialty is essentially human mechanics, trained to be able to repair and modify the human form when it has been damaged and as such Mayler has an understanding of human anatomy and it's various forms and functions. This mainly manifests as being able to operate his procedures without killing someone or damaging them further.
On the other side of it, he also possesses a fair degree of skill in making basic Hextech and even basic technology that he uses in unison with it. He is not incredibly experienced and without a magical background lacks the power to make more sophisticated devices, but he is quite adept.
Adaptive Tech - The science Mayler uses is, at it's core, the science of frugality; Utilizing low cost materials to reproduce the effects, if not results, of higher grade tech. It's easy to dismiss the things Mayler makes as junk, but look deeper and you find a surprising science at work that, when he cares to prove it, can be quite unique and quite potent but only to the levels of Mayler's skill and dedication. Utilizing available materials Mayler can make temporary, effective and sometimes incredibly unstable devices and tools that can serve a variety of purposes.
Equipment: The Eye - One of the only devices Mayler has that is modestly stable and effective, The Eye is a headband mounted ocular enhancer that allows Mayler to perform a variety of functions. Twisting it one way magnifies what Mayler is looking at up to 10x, while twisting it another allows Mayler to visually check heat by using the crystalline center's color spectrum. While a useful piece of technology, it is also very basic and very fragile, leaving Mayler to take good care of it.
The Bag - Looking like a much larger version of a leather doctor's bag, Mayler's work bag is exactly what you'd expect it to be; Pristine outside, full of junk inside. The outside of the bag is covered in small pouches which hold wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers and a variety of other basic tools while strangely also holding scalpels and a bonesaw, clamps and syringe-like devices.
Inside the bag is a roughly organized cornucopia of useless junk and half-baked medical equipment. Wooden planks, metal binders, scrap pieces of metal, wires and soft tin housings mixed with things such as lumps of leather from old boots, shoelaces and even the metal clasps off of coats and pants. It also includes several medical implements but unlike the legitimate tools outside, many of them have highly speculative uses such as the bottle labeled 'anesthetic' which is actually imported Bilgewater rum, which incidentally also fills the similarly marked 'sanitizer' bottle.
Relationships: Mayler is not precisely the kind of man who forms long attachments, save to law enforcement and those who hold grudges. He has a mostly homely attitude towards Zaun, proud of the city of his birth, but this does not preclude him from fleeing it in the night with a packed suitcase should it be necessary.
As a Techmaturge, he is somewhat familiar with the works of various important figures in Hextech and Mechanics such as Viktor, Jayce, Heimerdinger and particularly Rumble who's unassuming titan Mayler finds comfortably similar to his own tech enough to find a common mind.
Description: Mayler is fantastic gentleman, a ruggedly handsome scientist and doctor all in one with a flair for the dramatic and a sweet coat. Affectionately described as 'aging', with waved black hair streaked with gray throughout, he has a rough shaven face with numerous scars and a strong, flat jaw with manly chin and stubble where said chin refuses to grow a full beard. Strangely, he has rather expressive, clear blue eyes that and well groomed eyebrows suggesting he has some measure of self-concern for his appearance.
One of the things that Mayler takes pride in his wardrobe, which starts with a single garment; His coat. The Coat, as it were. A shin-long combination of leather, belts and deep green fabric that not only looks good and is well maintained, but holds a variety of his tools when he's actively working on something. It also has covers for the upper part of his lower arms worked into it's sleeves, held onto him by leather straps for the unique combination of showing off his numerous tattoos and keeping his arms covered. Underneath his coat he tends to wear simple attire, black shirts and thick trousers of some variety unless otherwise noted. The final pieces of the puzzle are a green flannel pattern scarf that hangs off his neck and a pair of thick, specially made boots that are charcoal black and designed to stay on through thick, thin and probably life or death.
Mayler's most unique feature is the endless series of tattoos that adorn his arms and hands, symbolized monsters and fearsome creatures patterned in with symbols derived from various manuals and textbooks. These tattoos seem nonsensical to anyone but Mayler. To him, they're something of his life's work summed up in wordless art and he tends to be proud of them without boasting of them.
Biography: Born to a Techmaturge father and a housewife mother, the Mayler family was filled with skilled Techmaturges and their son was slated to follow his father, Albert Mayler, in the footsteps of scientific benefit for all of Runeterra. Albert was an inherently altruistic man who outwardly preached the good of all mankind and had joined a group of likeminded scientists to form the Technist group, a techmaturge circle dedicated to profitless improvement of the Zaunite community. This attitude, however, strained Albert's home life as the family struggled to survive off the grants the Technists would receive from the Techmaturge College and interested individuals. The distribution of such funds was allocated internally, meaning only the best and most promising research and activities got funded. Albert talked big and threw theories around, but in practice he was at best above-average and his work suffered for it. Soon he was promising advancements he could not deliver on and claiming progress he could not show, which soon dried up his funding. Resorting to surviving off using inferior materials and performing Technist work for more and more shady Zaunite elements, his son grew up living in a constant state of uncertain poverty and mediocrity. Some days they feasted, others they starved and soon Albert's wife Maria left her son and husband behind, leaving Zaun completely in the process.
Meanwhile however Rayleigh had been enrolled in the School of Techmaturgy and given his father's teaching of him prior had been doing well for his age, especially when it came to the more methodical courses. He had patience and a knack for practical solutions which seemed to result from a slightly out of the box mind. He was only enrolled in very basic classes due to his relatively young age, but he did well enough at them to stay in the College for quite a few months.
Soon after Rayleigh's first full year, Albert met with an unfortunate accident thanks to a faulty gear system in the leg of a Zaunite criminal named Gessler. The fading scientist's body was never completely found and soon after, Rayleigh Mayler was the last of his name. Taken at the young age of ten to a family friend by the name of Ezikel, also a Technist and a skilled Techmaturge, Rayleigh soon began studying his father's craft under the senior scientist and began to display similar talent for the work, perhaps above his father. Rayleigh however had not escaped his life without a few scars in his mind.
Watching his father slave away on gadgets, heal criminals for money and struggle to scrape enough money together to feed just one mouth, let alone three, had changed the boy. A greedy seed had been planted in his heart and nurtured by the abandonment he'd felt from his mother, the untimely end of his father's life and now stuck in the home of another man, told about the glory of the charity that the Technist's stood for, the hope for all of Runeterra they wished to see, Mayler grew a bit bitter. To speak of charity when the same group had seen his father starve and done nothing seemed, at best, ironic. At worst it drove Mayler into a different path, one motivated not by the betterment of mankind, but personal betterment.
True to his talent Mayler made a fine assistant, but Ezikiel would find the young man working on projects that seemed hobby pieces at best when he was not assisting; Springboxes and gears made from inferior materials, sometimes even completely unrelated mechanical devices that had no purpose in the lab. Spring loaders for switchblades, grappling devices and odd devices fitted into shoes, weapons, even clothing. Suspicious of the young man by virture of his less than legitimate father, Ezikiel followed Mayler on what was supposed to be a routine trip to a partner's lab for materials, the young technist walked right into the Black Market and immediately deposited a bag of such things in the hand of a favored contact.
Furious and outraged at the misuse of his talents, which Ezikiel had specifically groomed to follow in his own footsteps to benefit Zaun and Runeterra, Ezikiel dragged Mayler back to their home and berated him endlessly as disgracing his name, just like his father. It was then that Ezikiel made the fatal mistake of declaring that Mayler should die in a gutter, just as his father. Already sixteen and more than built up for what came next, Mayler simply smiled and Ezikiel was shocked when Mayler grabbed the scientist's work bench, then in a great show of contempt simply ripped it from the floor. Months of work crashed and broke before his caretaker's eyes and Mayler left with simply the clothes on his back and a handful of his tinkered creations into Zaun, never to return to this day.
Life wasn't easy but, then, Mayler knew that. Already a foot in the door of the criminal element of Zaun, the young scientist spent the better part of his life between Low Town and the Black Market, always on hand to make or fix whatever was needed. At times it was tools for the criminal element, at other times it was using his skills to patch up the injured, sick or simply give some criminal idiot a shiny metal plate screwed into their skull for looks and kicks. Much like his childhood it was never easy and it took all his luck and skill to survive, but it also bred the unique science he uses today. Back-alleys don't have composite metals and regulated gear housings, kitchens and nurseries don't have alchemical battery components and core threads. It not only took skill but a keen, adaptive mind to function in the lower quarters of Zaun.
Mayler thrived, however, despite it. There were setbacks, of course, including accidents and angry customers that Mayler either survived through tenacity or, often enough, talking down his angry victims until escape or peaceful solutions were found. He grew up quick, he shed the quiet and angsty teenage coat quickly; He had no choice, the young man who threw a fit and stormed out of his mentor's house wouldn't have survived in Zaun long and almost didn't at times, but each close call adapted Mayler more and more. He changed tactics, adapted his materials, moved bases of operations and found places to scavenge for salvage tech, he made contacts and worked sources until, soon enough, Mayler was cemented in Zaun permanently.
Wherever the money came from he wasn't picky, but the scientist in him never stopped working even in such a lifestyle.
From his father he inherited the greed, but from Ezikiel he had unwillingly been given the gift of zeal. He was no simple tinkerer and no hackjob doctor, he combined the best and worst of his mentors into one strange profile and the evolution from quiet inventor to charismatic scientist has taken years of life and living, but Mayler has survived and thrived despite it. Settled into Low Town, Mayler has done his best to make a profit even along the city that spawns such minds as him daily. Too old to apprentice himself to a more successful inventor, Mayler instead has begun to try and grow an enterprise and use the funds to begin his own research and experiments, finding himself drawn more and more to the lifestyle he abandoned all those years ago.
