❝ Master of the machine, or by the machine mastered? ❞
Master Mervyn the Magnificent and his awe-inspiring, automatic Atelier!
❝ The newest and eldest: daydreamer & starry-eyed. ❞
❝ The youngest: wild, whimsical, wilful. Maybe a bit girl-crazy. ❞
❝ The most experienced: gatekeep, gaslight, girl-mage. ❞
Mervyn the Magnificent…
Master Magus of the Atelier
| Gender | cis male |
| Ethnicity | uncertain |
| Orientation | attention |
| Played By | tatterhood (soft npc) |
The Automatic Atelier
This is a small role-play project centred around the hijinks of a vain, eccentric wizard, his long-suffering apprentices, and the old circus wagon whose door connects to the demiplane of his atelier. It will follow them from town-to-town as they help out the locals and gather the many strange items and ingredients needed to hone their craft, sate their curiosity, and… nurse the master’s ego for spectacle on the thrill of the crowd.Tone & atmosphere. Predominantly: a light-hearted workplace comedy filled with quirky magical mischief occasionally interspersed with the careful application of gothic horror.
The Master Himself
Smug, pompous, and self-important; unapologetically theatrical; loves to dress up in loud, lurid, and outlandish livery; helped a little in the wars as an outside contractor but wore the kind of thing you’d classify as “balenciaga soldier chic”; when he’s not wining and dining with lords and ladies eager to hear his wild exploits, he’s lounging in dive bars, opium dens, and brothels; is very outgoing but exceedingly private about his personal life and past; will deflect and laugh off most probing; never speaks of his family and is mervyn even his real name or is it just a stage name; “well, whatever his surname is, it ought to be 'vainglory'.”
…or Mervyn-Most-Mad?
By the Atelier, Mastered
Of course, Mervyn tends to attract all kinds of tall-tales and rumour-mongering about the strange and dark and fantastic stories that circle around him. Some of these are undeniably false, some true, some half-and-half.
Muckraker Mysteries of the Magus
The Life-like Teamster. The figure that drives Mervyn's atelier-wagon is believed to be either an exceedingly life-like mammet, golem, or host of some otherworldly entity bent to his service. He says his name is Bennett... and that he's just a guy from Barsham.
The Under-Theatre. Beneath the atelier's ground floor is a grand velvet theatre, supposedly, where Mervyn stages impossible performances for beings that are neither mortal or even of this plane. On some nights, music is said to be heard through the pipes.
The Revolving Doors. "The wards are stable," the magus has insisted countless times, "they don't 'change doors' and no one 'stumbles in' without invitation - or out into somewhere strange!"
The Duke of Red Lantern Vale. Mervyn insists he is close personal friends with a duke from a nation no historian can identify. He references the man constantly, receives letters signed by him, and keeps a reserved chair in the café for his title. Although the chair is never occupied, it is occasionally warm.
The Embarrassment at Oldcross. There’s an exclusive theological society in Ishgard that Mervyn belongs to, and allegedly if you go there and speak his name, most… roll their eyes. “We don’t talk about Monsieur the ‘Magnificent.’
The Faetouched Wunderkind. The specifics of Dashu’li's orphaning has always been kept quite hush-hush by both Mervyn and Fran, and when one considers his natural knack for illusion and enchantment magic...
The Sins of Foxhollow Hills. The town was in Werlyt, but that's just the operative word, isn't it? Was. There's nothing there anymore, not after Mervyn helped in the war. All gone, soldiers and civilians alike. According to the rumours, at least.
The Apprentice Graveyard. Crueller rumours suggest that there’s a cemetery somewhere inside the atelier reserved exclusively for former students. Regardless of its truth, smart money is on Dashu starting it.
Mouth of the Machine. Some have suggested that Mervyn is not in control of the atelier, but instead a piece of its whole.
Atelier Gateways
Although the exact history of Master Mervyn is left shrouded in mystery, his 'travelling' atelier demiplane is nothing short of bombastic, in-your-face, and quite sensational. Apparently, the many 'gateway-doors' he's littered across Eorzea connect to a coffee house within his atelier ran by his apprentices, and allegedly the coffee isn't even all that bad.
The Wagon (Mobile)
Connected to a door opening up at the back of a circus wagon, this is the gateway that gives the atelier it's 'automatic (moving)' epithet, and is probably the one Mervyn and his apprentices consider the 'main entrance' since it tends to be the one they use the most often. The coach-driver is bean exceedingly life-like mammet.
Quicksand (Ul'dah)
There's a trapdoor hidden in the planter above the Quicksand well along with a bundled-up rope-ladder. The apprentices have been known to emerge from the trapdoor, throw the rope-ladder over the edge, and scurry down to the floor below.
Clockmaker's Shop (Ishgard)
A door in the Pillars belonging to a narrow, little clockmaker's shop wedged tightly between boutiques. Apparently, though, if you knock the right way and say the correct words of power before opening it, it'll lead to the atelier. Mervyn pays the clockmaker a monthly stipend to use it in this way.
Tree? (Gridania)
As payment for a service rendered to the Padjali years ago, Mervyn requested the sole right to a single tree near Mih Khetto's Amphitheatre. A door to the atelier is carved into its trunk.
Abandoned House (Limsa Lominsa)
There's an abandoned house in one of the Limsan seastacks. The door no longer opens up into the house, but the atelier. Someone still pays the land tax.
Apprentice Equipment
Long-suffering and overworked, Mervyn's throng of apprentices have had to grow up fast (and stunted) from spending just as much time, if not more, running interference and crisis management for his outlandish pursuits (when not simply being decorative and making him look good) as they do learning magic. They can usually be distinguished by their shared pieces of equipment.
Mervyn's Sigil-Seal Capstone
The bronze-cast seal on his sagely phrygian cap bears the sigils that mark them a student of Master Mervyn, a well-known wizard with a wide-reaching reputation in Eorzea for being a theatrical and flashily-mainstream (but decidedly “quite good at his craft”) ham.
Spellbook & Holster
Each apprentice wears a specialised purse on their shoulder for carrying both their scrolls and the intricately-clasped spellbook of a wizard-arcanist.
Cressida Nook
| Nicknames | cressy |
| Gender | cis female |
| Ethnicity | vylbrandian hyur |
| Orientation | straight |
| Background | peasants (parents) |
| Played By | mossycoats |
At a Glance
Mender's Chatelaine. Hung from her belt containing all manner of haberdashery: small reticles filled with buttons, ribbons and threads; a miniature pair of scissors; a poppet stuffed with needles for safe keeping; and so forth.
Mousily Mundane. She has the simple, ineffectual bearing of a peasant more than the ostentatiousness of a wizard - or, at the very least, of her master.
A Familiar...? It's a mutt, which seems a little funny for a wizard's familiar. Scraggly and smells like cooking grease, too. Growls and bears its teeth quite a lot and seems rather territorial of its owner.
Personality & Themes
Daydreamer & starry-eyed; enthusiastic but a bit of a klutz; talks like a peasant because she is one; can’t read that well but makes up for it by studying real hard; mom-friend; cleans up after everyone and is the only one who actually seems to be able to cook worth a damn (Mervyn is hopeless); the real magic is in the pies, honestly; it's probably a compelling reason for why she was made an apprentice in the first place; bickers with and fusses over Shushu a lot; and gets verbally (and sometimes physically) shoved around by Fran; soft-spoken girl, very loud dog; she says his name is Waif.Daughter of a La Noscean innkeeper; stepmother became her boss after her father passed away; had spent a lot of her youth gazing at adventurers passing through and wishing to be whisked away; and then she got her wish and went from milking cows in the pre-dawn dark to being whipped up in the whirlwind of magic, the atelier, and Mervyn; most of her stipend still ends up sent home; one of her brothers had a fever last month and but by the skin of his teeth stayed in this world; peasants are born half-dead anyways; it nursed a great hunger in her; for knowledge and food; will eat any chance she gets and is often munching on something.
Dashu’li Resh
| Nicknames | shushu, shuli |
| Gender | cis male |
| Ethnicity | twelveswood keeper |
| Orientation | girls, girls, girls |
| Background | trappers (orphaned) |
| Played By | tatterhood |
At a Glance
Rune-etched Half-blinder. When he’s not wearing a full Twelveswood ash-mask, he’s stitched a makeshift leather blinder to his hat that hangs over half his face. It’s covered in rudimentary runic wards of protection (that are far too basic to protect from much of anything).
Posture of Imposed Importance. The effort he puts into puffing out his chest and keeping his shoulders straight is charmingly obvious.
A Poppet. Tacked to the other hip is a 'well-loved,' stuffed, mandragora queen doll; it's missing an eye.
Personality & Themes
Orphaned at a young age and taken in by a wizard who had never really “grown up” himself, so what hope did he ever have; wild, whimsical, and wilful; enjoys games and will race you whether you want to or not; has a habit of speaking rather directly and honestly; probably comes off as rude but it's unintentional and he's working on it; mostly carefree but doesn't understand why people don’t wear ash masks; do they want to catch Greenwrath; are you sure it can’t happen outside of the Twelveswood?Sometimes tries to act very important on account of working for that very important wizard of his; puffs his chest out all official-like; puts on a voice; thinks he ought to lead his peers, but he’s the youngest of the apprentices so he ends up getting used like a chess piece in their rivalries instead; wishes everyone would just get along, though, then they could all do a mischief on others for once; curious to a fault, which often gets him into trouble; will stalk people when bored, and sees nothing wrong with this; has a bad habit of wandering off but is so used to a collectivist family unit that he gets stressed out if left alone for too long; will make a total mess of the place, perform risky magic, and potentially break things.Daydreams a lot; unabashedly girl crazy; in a cute earnest way, mostly; just thinks they’re cooler; keeps drawing them into the margins of his spellbook no matter how many times his sister-apprentices scold him or strike his fingers with rulers over it; sometimes, if he thinks you're really cute, he might even... terrorise you a bit, whoops!
Francine Calderwood
| Nicknames | fran |
| Gender | cis female |
| Ethnicity | coerthan hyur |
| Orientation | dubious |
| Background | bailiff (father) |
| Played By | tatterhood |
At a Glance
Coerthan Accent. Her speech places her into distinctly Coerthan territory and sounds well-to-do and learned if not a little... tightly put-on, too; it's the kind of accent that peasantry who deal closely with the nobility often have.
Signet Ring. She has a signet ring hanging from a leather cord around her neck bearing the seal of Master Mervyn. It most likely indicates a kind of senior authority among her peers.
Calderwood Brooch. A brooch is often used to bind the bow of her robes together. The icon is permitted to be used by trusted families to the lord of Calderwood, such as the one belonging to its bailiff, Goodman Thomas.
Personality & Themes
Reserved, diligent, and conscientious to a fault; doesn't like to cut corners; pretends to loathe laziness but mostly because it's a luxury she feels she's never been afforded; likes being listened to, respected, and obeyed; can be quite stern and firm; or no-nonsense and direct; one of those student class president types with the unintentionally sharp stares; occasionally comes off as harsh, opinionated, and rude (because she is); doesn’t like losing or being told no.Is way more responsible than her master; tends to be one of the few people who can talk sense into him with his spending habits; and yet still refuses to countenance any disrespect towards him; has a soft spot for Dashu; not that you could tell with how harsh he is to him; used to be a lot less patient with him, though, before they got “beset on all sides by the undesirably uninitiated”; like Cressida; oh, Cressida; refuses to even call her her rival since that would imply they’re in any way comparable; after all, she hasn’t had to watch any of Mervyn’s apprentices die yet…
behind every door, an opportunity
the atelier coffeehouse
and at the bottom of every cup, inspiration
crystal ✧ mateus
goblet ✧ ward 8 ✧ plot 42
fortnightly saturday ✧ 8pm-12am est
A coffeehouse for scholars, academics, and adventurers located in the atelier demiplane of a vain, eccentric wizard. Apparently, Mervyn had originally planned to turn this corner of the space into a public house, but after a couple months in Dalmasca, he got hooked on this stuff and promptly realised he hated alcohol.
Info & Miscellany
An 1800's, Viennese-styled coffeehouse (so think: writers, political dissidents, and the no. 14 chair) mixed with an adventurer's guild, and managed by a theatrical wizard's apprentices.
Accessible via several arcane gateways magically connected to the doors of various shopfronts in cities across the three great continents.
Historically-minded: the writers behind the venue do not view the leaves in the second coffee option (see entry below) as an illegal or controlled substance; please refrain from role-playing it in the establishment as such!
Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident.
Sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt.
Mollit anim id est laborum.
coffee
The establishment's bread-and-butter (without bread or butter, though the apprentices will fetch some from the baker 'down the road' if you ask nicely).It's coffee. No 'estate-grown' this or 'blue mountain' that. Sure, all of its standard accoutrements are still available (cream, sugar, and so forth) but at the end of the day, that's exactly what it is: coffee, just a pretty decent (and decidedly strong) cup of coffee.
coffee ('with benefits')
Coffee with a bit extra. Not alcohol, but some say it's better: leaves that give the whole thing a real good 'kick' - you might end up with a serious case of the jitters, though (it's a cocaine / coca leaf analog).
nerve-weed
It doesn't have to come in a cup, either. They sell the leaf cud for those who prefer to just chew and chat.
biedermeier kaffee
Notably, the only alcoholic drink available (and, yes, at all hours): a strong black coffee with a dash of apricot liquer and finished with a layer of lightly-whipped cream.The apprentices play pretty fast and loose with 'strong' and 'dash,' and don't provide reliable ratios; patrons might end up with more caffeine or alcohol than expected.
something small
An assortment of cakes, pastries, and similarly-light fare such as:
apfelstrudel
gugelhupf
millirahmstrudel
sachertorte
linzer torte
kaiserschmarrn