'''Name:''' Umberto Nedwin Bassington-Smythe (Bert to some, Ned to his father, Bertie to his bothersome cousin, and Hats to just about everyone else)
'''Age:''' 25
'''Race:''' galdor
'''Place of Origin:''' Vienda and Brunhold both (traveled frequently between them when he was young)

!!!Backstory

The Bassington-Smythes were an old family. Not a particularly rich or distinguished family, certainly they were never great land owners nor had a Bassington-Smythe ever been known to cover his or herself in military glory, but an old one none the less. For centuries Bassington-Smythes of various kinds had been cluttering up the census records of Anaxas, taking up valuable space that might otherwise have been given over to some more interesting, though less respectable individual. As has been indicated, in addition to their modest antiquity, the other outstanding feature of the clan of the Bassington-Smythes is their solidly respectable though mildly eccentric reputation. Most of the members of the family had lived quiet lives of modest obscurity as lawyers, librarians, anonymous functionaries, or in the case of the more overtly eccentric members, enthusiastic entomology. Yet even the most respectable of family trees can be induced to bear strange fruit, and for the Bassington-Smythes this strange fruit went under the somewhat unlikely name of Umberto. Some degree of eccentricity was to be expected in the larval Umberto for he was the son of that celebrated entomologist Lawrence Stapleton Bassington-Smythe and the endlessly amusing and unreasonably good-natured Lucretia Galeazzo, a lady of Bastian extraction. With such parents it was perhaps not the greatest of shocks that he would turn out to be a bit odd, but the nature of that oddness was not entirely anticipated.

He might have been called a black sheep by a family of more severe and draconian temperament than that to which he belonged, for even as a small boy he was a very odd fish indeed. True, he never went in for the classic trio of gambling, drinking, and general lusty merrymaking that are the usual hallmarks of the classic black sheep, but his temperament and conduct where highly irregular. He would keep odd and often late hours, returning to wherever it was he might be living at dawn or some other uncivilized hour and in a tone of cheerful grogginess recount the tale of his wanderings through a park, statue garden, dry goods warehouse or similar. He would tell of the fascinating objects with whom he held conversation and of the unpardonable rudeness of strangers who looked askance at what Umberto considered perfectly ordinary behavior. On more than one occasion he would vanish for days at a time and return just as suddenly telling wildly amusing tales of patently impossible adventures with historical personages, of voyages to the moon in boats made of cobwebs, or of cities where men wore great thimbles upon their head and plotted to destroy their enemies by painting their houses unappealing shades of orange and blue. What actually occurred to Umberto durring these fugues he never discovered but as no officers of the law ever turned up looking for a man who answered to his description, no teary-eyed women ever produced themselves claiming he had fathered their litter of children, and, most importantly, no bar bills as long as a man is tall ever were presented for his inspection and eventual payment, he concluded he probably had done something quite boring indeed and simply fabricated the stories as a means of covering up what amounted to a very dull life indeed.

From his earliest days, Umberto showed the signs of the somewhat variable temperament that would become such a hallmark of his later character. As a small boy of five he was given a puzzle by his uncle Wilberforce that was, in all honestly, probably too complex for a child of ordinary attention span. Yet there Umberto sat for days and nights on end assembling the gigantic puzzle. Tiny pieces slowly accreted and, finally, at the end of a month the puzzle of many thousands of pieces was finished. The degree of focus displayed by the young Umberto was notable for while he often became frustrated, he never gave up on the puzzle and would be found at all hours of the day attempting to finish putting it together. This launched a period of intense interest in puzzles which persists even to the present day. Yet despite this display of focus and dedication in the matter of the puzzle, a similar amount of zeal was wholly absent from the rest of Umberto's character. Music, which looked to be something he might have some small talent for, was thrown over in favor of the equally soon-abandoned coin collecting. A thousand other pursuits were taken up, declared the finest activity the world could offer, and then promptly abandoned for some other interest.

His childhood was largely spent in the manner of a tennis ball, bouncing with great regularity and vivacity between the cities of Vienda, where he was born, and Brunhold, where, on account of his father being an academic, he spend much of his time. It was not uncommon for the young Umberto to accompany his father in the gathering of curious beetles or fantastical butterflies, though these excursions usually consisted of the boy standing in a field, festooned with specimen boxes, and waiting patiently for Lawrence to return from gallivanting amongst the arthropods. During these period of forced immobility ( a small boy becomes utterly incapable of motion with a dozen or so boxes, bags, and cages strapped about his person) he would cultivate his ability to hold conversation with various non-sapient objects, and by the time he was eight years old his powers of repartee with a butterfly net or a jar of ether were among the finest ever yet seen. Alas for him that such powers, potent though they may be, would prove to be of little practical use in later life save as a means of very effectively preventing boredom.

Like many galdori, when Umberto was ten he was tested for his magical potential and received the most excellent score of seven and a half, a number that would come to have great importance for him as it would be eventually be the size that his adult head would take in hats. A sign if ever there was one. Initially, his studies were along the lines of static magic and it seemed like he might actual devote himself to that particular field; then, quite by accident, he stumbled upon the far less magical though highly complex field of anthropology. A number of very ancient bones had been unearthed in some remote region and were being shipped back to Brunhold for further study. The scholars engaged in this project were quite astonished by the quantity of bones they had received and quietly despaired of ever sorting them out, let alone coming to some idea of to whom they might have once belonged. For some time they sat in morose silence until one academic, more enterprising then his fellows arrived at a solution. The word was sent out that these incurably lazy scholars would be very glad of the services of a few nimble fingered students to assist in this important work and that some species of compensation not to say prestige might be attached to this potentially fascinating project. Being fond of puzzles, quick with his hands, and frankly quite bored with bending objects with magic the then fourteen year old Umberto volunteered. The work was a revelation. Never in his life had he known that something as apparently uninteresting as bones could contain so much information. And so, be degrees, Umberto migrated towards anthropology, leaving his studies of the magical arts somewhat neglected.

It was at about this time that another vitally important event occurred in the life of Umberto Bassington-Smythe, an event which brought about his love of the making of hats. The harbinger of his impending haberdashery was innocuous enough, being a masquerade ball with all that such an event entails. Umberto had long enjoyed these affairs and was particularly fond of attending in highly elaborate costumes. For this particular masquerade he had somehow gotten it into his head to attend not an a person, nor a monster, nor an animal, but as a location such as one might see in a dream (and Umberto had always had vivid dreams), and so he alighted upon the idea of appearing in the character of a City of Escarpments. Images of a fantastical city began to fill his mind and he would often sketch ideas for this costume in the margins of his notes. More than one professor was confused to find, next to a diagram of the super-orbital crest of an ancient pre-Ronic skull for example, images of a strange and fantastical city. For weeks Umberto carefully assembled his costume but when it came to great hanging citadel that would grace his head he was at a loss for how to proceed. No hat that he could find in any of a dozen shops had quite the right shape or structure, and almost none would stand up to the affixation of the numerous tiny buildings. So he did the only thing that made any sense to a young man in the grip of an obsession; he bought a felt press, hat blocks, and great quantities of felt. With these Umberto began his experiments in the fine art of hat making and, after more than a few abortive attempts, managed to produce a strong, serviceable hat. It was not a hat of great beauty or of great skill, but it was strong and sturdy and could handle the weight of the miniature buildings. The hat complete, and looking like a some absurd model town, Umberto went to the masquerade. The actual event was sadly dull in the way that affairs long anticipated tend to be. The gathering was populated by the usual collection of moderately inebriated students and Umberto took a turn through what seemed like half a hundred desolate dances with females who all seemed to be dressed as various species of bird, male birds he noted in reference to their often splendid colors.

The masquerade may have been a tedious affair, but the hat, the hat was indeed the thing. So he made another, more daring hat, and sported it about the university. He made hats for several of his friends and they seemed to enjoy them. He made hats for strolling about, hats for particular classes, hats for leisure, and hats in which to go boating. These latter were among the most comical as they were more along the lines of wearable umbrellas than proper hats, but Umberto insisted that these were the perfect hats for messing about in boats. Boating, oddly, had become something of a passion with him, though less so than the making of hats, and when he was not to be found either among the felts or among the bones, he was to be seen sculling about in a long and curious boat or disentangling himself from a mass of reeds. Why such an exercise should appeal to him was anyone's guess for he had never shown the lightest interest in any sort of physical activity before. Yet as with first the puzzles, then the bones, and finally the hats, there seemed to be no shaking him from his aquatic pursuits.

His departure from the university was uneventful and while he had done well in his studies, he failed to achieve the magical distinguished status that both his parents believed him capable of. Still, they were not wholly displeased with their son, for he seemed happy and certainly knew far more about dusty old bones and the equally dusty old cultures from which they had come that most others could rightly say. Yet for all this highly erudite learning, it was not the path of the academic upon which the newly educated feet of Umberto were to tread, rather it was the far more prosaic path of the haberdasher. In a small shop in the Stacks, between a book seller and a tea and bun shop, Umberto currently plies is trade designing hats of every conceivable shape and size and a new obsession has begun to creep over him, the quest for the elusive perfect hat.

!!!Physical description

Although he is not particularly tall, he often gives the impression of height largely due to his narrow, lanky frame and absurdly heron-like legs. This resemblance to a wading bird is only furthered by his high and slightly narrow shoulders, his long neck which he thrusts forward in a most curious fashion, as though he were being carried along by the nose, and his habit of striding about with his hands clasped behind his back. The head which is perched at the end of that long and elegant neck is of notable size though not approaching in any way the grotesque. Decorating this cranium is a quantity of dark brown hair which hangs lankly down to the line of the jaw, the characteristically parrot-like nose of the Bassington-Smythes, and a pair of eyebrows of modest splendor.

As befits a man whose current life's work in the design and creation of hats, Umberto is never seen without some species of head covering. For daily wear he currently favors either a tall and somewhat narrow bell crowned affair, or a far more modest hat possessed of a conical crown and a wide brim. Other, more outlandish hats are occasionally worn by Umberto on an experimental basis.

In addition to the perpetual hats, Umberto sports a pair of oval spectacles and dresses in the height of what he considers fashion. This opinion is not shared by many, but it is hard to deny that few other men can carry off a claret colored coat, dove colored pants of many pleats, and an elaborate assemblage of sashes with quite the same air of oblivious nonchalance.

!!! Personality

Umberto is a cheerful, if some times maddeningly garrulous fellow and there are few who can match his ability in the endless flow of perfectly meaningless babble. Largely this font of good humor his genuine and is drawn from his deep understanding of the essential ridiculousness of life. Several friends and more than a few family members have stated that alone among their acquaintances, Umberto will go laughing, truly laughing, to his grave. Yet under the laughter and the wild and rambling remarks, there is an essential core of steely determination and endless patience in Umberto. How else could he have dedicated himself so completely to the task of finishing the puzzle, or the sorting of bones, or even the making of hats? The trouble is that Umberto seems to be wholly incapable of using this treasure trove of zeal in any directed way. It is the merest of whims, fickle as any butterfly, what his mind will seize on in it's vice-like grip but once seized there are few things in the world that can drive Umberto from his course.

He can be charming when it occurs to him, though he is more often clever than ingratiating. His ready wit, though lively, is seldom of a bitter or wounding kind. Deploring undue seriousness (he considered it to be something of an affront to the mad, marvelous, miraculous, and mercurial world) he will attempt to deflect most conversation into a more outlandish if not outright bizarre line of discourse. For it is in the bizarre and the absurd that Umberto finds comfort and familiarity and one can hardly blame a man for enjoying a few modest comforts.

!!!Career

The exact nature of the career of Umberto is not easy to ascertain, he himself has described it as "Either I am a haberdasher who dabbles quite seriously in anthropology, or I am an anthropologist harboring delusions of being a haberdasher. "

Haberdasher

* Haberdashery (felting, blocking, and other such hat-related skills)
* a keen if somewhat warped sense of fashion
* good manual dexterity
* a head for numbers
* tolerance for the smell of curing felt
* strong fingers

Amateur Anthropologist

* knowledge of comparative anatomy
* historical knowledge
* artifact preservation
* knowledge of the 'science' of phrenology
* interest in the latest theories concerning physiognomy


!!! Skills

* a good small boatman especially of single oared craft and rowing boats
* a more than competent draftsman with a particular fondness for pen and ink drawings of elaborate structures
* witty banter

!!! Goals

* Design the perfect Hat
* Possibly revisit and resume his sadly neglected training in magic

hey darl! sorry this has taken so long! i'll be in here sometime tonight to do your review!

RIGHT! Firstly darl, in future, huge sheets like this are hard to read. they are far far to long and wordy, which makes me have to wait till the weekend to even start reading it, and then, I have to bring some snacks just to get through it! I love that you write and i love that you love your words...but think of your audience dear.

that being said, there isnt anything wrong with it, its just very hard to sit down and read. eitherway, approved, have fun!

It did get just a wee bit long, yes. *mildly sheepish expression* Fun to write though. Anyway, thanks for the approval and so forth, I shall now go forth and make hats.