Quick Background
Jowan is the son of Elowen, a noted expert in poisons within House Helgram, and the eldest daughter of Daveth Helgram, younger brother of the old Grand Duke. Elowen hasn’t told him much about his father, except that she met him when she was being educated out in Shadow, and that they had a relationship which lasted about three years. However, when she fell pregnant, her father ordered her home, so the child could be brought up in the safety of the House.
Jowan was born in House Helgram on 22nd December. He was brought up within the House, and given the typical education of a nobleman of the Courts (magic, weapons, poisons, riding and dancing - along with actual academic stuff and Thari), although he was always a little different: the fluidity of the Courts seemed to confuse him, and he seemed to be physically unable to cope with it. His mother and grandfather put down to his Amber blood, but neglected to share the fact that he had mixed parentage with Jowan. He did have something of a flair for languages, and was given private lessons in something called English, and also proved to be a surprisingly talented musician.
When Jowan reached fourteen, his mother decided that perhaps he would do better in a more Euclidian-standard universe, and persuaded her father to let Jowan go to school somewhere on the Earth Line. He did four years at Eton, from the equivalent of 1979-83, and as his mother had suspected, he thrived far better there than in the Courts. He left with A-levels in Maths, English, Economics and Latin, and doing music (mainly guitar, some piano) and fencing out of school hours. He enrolled at Oxford University, where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and played guitar in a rock band. He graduated with a First, then stayed on to gain a Doctorate in Law. After he left University in 1988, he moved to London where he worked as a business legal counsel (and playing with a band of junior lawyers called the Legal Eagles in his spare time), and all in all, stayed on that world for about twelve years. He was considering studying for the Bar, when his mother came to him and told him that it was time he moved on.
The next phase of his external education involved toughening him up, making him spend period in the local military on another world, this one further back down the tech curve at Napoleonic levels. He resented this, given his comfortable lifestyle in London, but tried to make the best of it as once he was dumped there, he was stuck. He embedded with the British Army in the Peninsular, working with both Wellington’s army and the Spanish partisans, and learning the Spanish language. Things seemed to go reasonably well - surprisingly well, in fact, as he discovered something of a flair for command - and he even settled enough to take a pretty Spanish lass as a lover. He had been active in that theatre for a couple of years when he started running into more actual trouble than he should be on regular patrols. He quickly realised that someone was actually trying to kill him, which rather changed his attitude for the need for a military education.
He stayed lucky for a while, but after about six months, his luck ran out, and he was captured. However, rather than being taken to the enemy camp, he found himself tied up and slung over the back of a horse. The world changed around him as he bumped along, until he ended up somewhere further back up the curve and thrown in a jail cell. From his small amount of experience in Shadow, he figured out that where he ended up was somewhere in the 1920s. However, any intellectual study was curtailed when men in what he recognised as Red Army uniforms came in and dragged him off to be tortured.
The man supervising the torture spent most of the time in a hooded cloak, and while Jowan never saw his face, he came to loathe his laugh. He was used, abused (physically and sexually) and bled for almost three months, in what he later learned was ritual magic. In the end, what saved him was the fact that his previously inactive shapeshift finally overloaded and triggered, and he went into automatic flight form. The downside was that as he’d never shifted before, so the transformation screwed with his sense of self, and he lost track of who he was.
Working completely on instinct, he managed to find a way out, before his tormentor’s men could stop him. When he came around, he was naked in a back alley, with no idea who or where he was. Just that he was covered in scars which seemed to be half healed, and he was starving hungry. Still running on instinct, he stole some clothes off an unfortunate passer-by, then broke into a butcher’s shop and started gorging on raw meat. When the police tried to arrest him he broke free and ran for the hills, like a hunted animal - changing form into a fox so he could run faster.
He ended up outside of town, and eventually fell asleep in fox form, curled up under some bushes. By the time he woke up he was human again, had no idea who he was, and was surrounded by a group of heavily armed men. They were roughly dressed and spoke to him in a language he didn’t understand, then dragged him to his feet and took him off to their camp. He couldn’t tell them who he was, so they just called him Siniy Glaza - Blue Eyes - and soon he started answering to it as he didn’t have an alternative. However, somewhere in his brain he managed to trigger a translation spell, and finally started communicating with them. He learned that they were partisans, fighting against the Communist authorities, and after his experiences at the hands of the Hooded Man, he offered to help them.
They were sceptical, but were willing to give him a chance, and somewhere along the way, he started to actually speak Russian, rather than need the translation. They trained him with more modern firearms, and in the ins and outs of survival and living undetected in the woods; and in return, he shared his innate tactical knowledge with them, drawing on repressed memories of his work with the Spanish partisans. The arrangement worked well and they travelled around the country, causing a lot of trouble, driven in Jowan’s case by a hatred of the man who had victimised him.
As the months passed, he still didn’t remember who he was, having been seriously traumatised by his experience at the hands of the Hooded Man. His general health improved - although his scars only faded, rather than disappeared altogether, as the trauma had made them part of his psyche - but he still found himself subject to blinding headaches. He also began to dream that people he didn’t know were trying to communicate with him. He had been on that world for about two years, including his captivity, when one evening, when he and his people - as they’d known him, they’d become his people, rather than him being the waif they picked up - were sitting around a fire, they heard the crack as a twig was broken. They immediately went onto alert, and scattered, and as he hid, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He spun, but the other person hit him with a sleep spell before he could do anything, and knocked him out.
When he came around, he was in semi-familiar surroundings, and what struck him most was how fluid everything was. A beautiful, blond woman was sat beside him, and when he saw her, he realised that she was his mother. That was the trigger which helped him to finally remember who he really was. She helped him recover his identity, although the physical scars of his time with the Hooded Man - which horrified her - remained.
Once he was his old self once more, he learned that they’d lost track of him in the Peninsular and had been trying to reach him. The headaches had been attempts to Trump him, but the identity confusion which he’d experienced after his shifting triggered had meant that the cards didn’t reach him properly, and this had left them unsure if he was alive or dead. Eventually, against the wishes of her father, she’d physically gone into Shadow to look for him. She had found him on a fast time world run by someone she called “that bastard Caine”, and brought him home.
For the next couple of years, his mother wouldn’t let him leave Chaos. She was delighted that his shifting had finally triggered, and with her father’s help, hid her protectiveness by making sure that Jowan was properly taught both that and self-defence. It was only as he learned to shift that he finally ‘got’ the Courts of Chaos. His earlier awkwardness, from when he was growing up, faded away and he began to revel in the possibilities of non-Euclidian living. As far as his combat skills were concerned, he ended up being sent to House Hendrake for special training when the Helgram Master at Arms, Lennox, realised that Jowan had more natural ability in that area than most Helgrams. He caught Lennox mentioning something to his mother about it probably being because of his father, but when he queried them about that, they deflected the question.
Eventually, his teachers decided that he was probably as trained as he was going to be, and the old Duke Helgram started making noises about having spent all this time and resources on this boy, maybe they ought to get some use out of him. Being one of the less lazy members of the family, began to be sent out with various Helgram diplomatic and trade missions, to give him practical hands on experience in Chaos etiquette and politics, and in negotiating in Shadow for Helgram’s benefit. He took to this surprisingly well, and quickly proved that he was also a very keen observer and listener, with a knack for getting people to talk to him. This was noticed in certain circles, and he was recruited into the unofficial Helgram intelligence service. When he needed a break or a change of pace, he indulged in music, or flying on his own two wings, as well as enjoying a number of casual physical relationships both inside and outside the House.
After serving Helgram with distinction for about ten years, during which time he also learned the ins and outs of Chaos law and jurisprudence, his mother finally petitioned for him to be given the chance to walk the Logrus. Her wish was granted, and he was taken to the Logrus, presented to its Keeper, given instruction and kicked inside. However, it nearly went very wrong. The Logrus reacted to the Blood of Amber within him - and gave him a harder time than normal. He only just survived.
In his mind, as he wandered lost within the Logrus, a creature came to him, bonded with him and brought him home. He was raving about this as he came out, and his mother and the Keeper, who were waiting for him, assumed it was side effects of his walk. Until the hard-gold wrist guard he habitually wore for protection when training with blades, and hadn’t thought to take off when he went into the Logrus, burst off his wrist in the form of some kind of striking hunting hawk (with far too many angles, and not enough feathers) and tried to take their eyes out. The Keeper knocked it back with a spell, but as it subsided, it ended up back around Jowan’s wrist, occasionally hissing protectively.
His succeeding period of Logrus madness went on for rather longer than normal, despite his inherent strength of will, as his semi-Ordered nature came to terms with the sheer Chaos of the Logrus. More than once, the Keeper almost wrote him off as incurably insane - sad, but sometimes it just happens - but his mother wouldn’t give up on him. He slowly began to bring his life back into focus, helped by the creature around his wrist, which tried to protect and help him. On the way, he had a bout of serious paranoia, when he became convinced that everyone was trying to poison him. This led to a form of monomania where he became obsessed about poisons: finding them, tracking them, identifying them, preventing them, and finding antitoxins. However, one of the oddities about his monomania, was that the knowledge he gained a stuck with him after he came back to himself. Even his mother, who knew a lot about the subject, was impressed at just how much he’d taken in.
All in all, it was almost four years before he was functionally sane once more, and had actually learned to use the Power that had nearly killed him. Once he was capable of making a decision, he requested that he be allowed some time outside of the Courts, just to live in two dimensions for a while. His mother wasn’t happy about it, especially as she had arranged for him to be given a little sub-Ways of his own, now he was a qualified Logrus user, but his grandfather acknowledged that it might be sensible. This time, Jowan chose his own path, rather than accept being dumped somewhere, reaching out into the ether and pulling himself away.
The world he chose was late-1880s Earth-style, without the French Revolution and therefore with no Napoleonic Wars on the horizon. He found a place in Paris and immersed himself in music and discovered an affinity for moulding glass and creating art with it, which seemed to work by his tapping into his experiences in the Logrus. He made friends with the painters of the day, and lived the Bohemian lifestyle, enjoying both the physical and mental pleasures of that time, including a string of lovers of both sexes.
However, after a few years, the lack of excitement began getting to him, and he wandered off to find himself some trouble. He found a couple of minor wars - one a reasonably conventional Hundred Years War, where he stayed for about eighteen months, and another decidedly unconventional, not even human, three-dimensional conflict which kept him amused for almost two years. He also played at Reilly Ace of Spies on one of the more Earthlike worlds which was moving out of WWI and into the Roaring Twenties, anti-Communism having become instilled in his being after his experiences with “that bastard Caine”.
As the year there clicked around to 1925, he once again fell foul of his nemesis, who was continuing his love affair with Bolshevism and his hobby of butchering stupid Helgrams. However, this time, instead of being a naïve, powerless child, Jowan struck back, and while a mere great-grandspawn of Oberon wouldn’t normally have given Caine too many problems, a fully-trained Chaos Lord did. The fight was nasty, bloody and ended up in a clash of Powers. However, unlike Caine, Jowan could throw out a Logrus tentacle and get away.
Singed and hurting, he ended up back in Helgramways. He withdrew into Jowanways, to give himself a chance to heal - and mould the place to his liking, as he hadn’t had the time before. He returned to studying poisons, playing music, and producing his glass art and sculptures. As far as his art was concerned, he became good enough to exhibit and actually sell what he created.
However, as had happened in Paris, he could only stay inactive for so long - his non-Helgram genes kicking in after he’d been taking it easy for a couple of years - and after a while, he returned to his previous role as a member of Helgram’s diplomatic and trade organisation, specialising in Chaos law. Once more comfortably ensconced in that role, he began to be fascinated with the possibilities that the Black Zone might have to offer, although it was some time before he could convince his superiors of the merits of setting up some kind of Helgram presence in that benighted area.
With the death of the Old Duke Helgram, and the ascension of Bleys Clarissason to the Dukedom, things began to change in Helgram, and the House authorities finally accepted his proposal with regard to the Black Zone. They gave him a small force of troops, some basic resources, and told him to “go west young man”. He found himself a decent base with strategic possibilities, moulded himself a fortress for protection, and set to work.
At the point he entered game play, he had been there for about three years, most recently establishing the Zócalo trading base.