Galen Kane Vitali

Galen: Greek for “healer” or “tranquil”. This was the name of his deceased maternal grandfather. Also refers to a 2nd century AD Greek physician, Galenus, who was an authority in the fields of anatomy and medicine.

Kane: Welsh for “beautiful” or Irish Gaelic for “warrior’s son”. He rarely uses or mentions this middle name.

Vitali: Italian version of the Latin word “vitalis”, which means “of life, vital”

One combination of this name’s meanings is “Healer of a Beautiful Life”, or another combo is “Tranquil, Vital Warrior’s Son”. Mix and match as you will.

Angelic Identity:

Asiel, Angel of Healing. Be sure to have your health insurance card ready, because this boy can be heart-stopping.

Place in the Spheres:

Currently, Galen is a waiter, a babysitter, and an assistant at his mother's CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) clinic. His position in the world isn’t as important as his position in his family: right now he’s the glue keeping the family from collapsing from financial and time restraints, although at the expense of his own aspirations. He lives in a two-bedroom flat in the West End District with his mother, father, and three younger siblings (his parents have one room, the kids have another, and he has the leather couch in the common room).

Age:

19

Birthdate/Astrology:

September 12th, 1980

Sun Sign – Virgo: People with suns in Virgo are oriented towards practicality and service to others. This sign rules over health and doctors, although their care tends to be more clinical than emotional. They are industrious and practical but also hyper-critical and miserly.

Moon Sign – Scorpio: Scorpio is considered to be the most powerful sign in the zodiac, and people possessing a Moon in Scorpio are known for their great willpower. They are relentlessly dedicated to their passions, but they can also be absorbed in their jealously of others.

Ascendant – Virgo: The ascendant tends to serve as the mask we put out to the public, but Galen doesn’t have a mask because, save for the traits his Moon adds, the Virgo Sun shines through and he allows people to see him for who he is (an uptight, hypercritical bastard). Cheers.

Representative Tarot Card – The Hanged Man (XII): This is just a little extra section I like giving my characters. The Hanged Man card represents the stage of life Galen is in right now. THM represents his service and sacrifices to others, his calmness and serenity, and his frustration at being stuck in a rut. It also shows that he needs to learn how to see things through other people’s perspectives and that he needs to learn how to let go of the past if he hopes to continue growing as a person.

Likes:

TV, particularly rugby matches and dramas: Galen watches the news, soap operas, and any other programs that air in the evening almost religiously. The shows themselves aren’t necessarily what he likes, but the act of laying down in the living room and just chilling out it is what he looks forward to. He lies down for at least an hour a day in this mind-numbing ritual (he argues that this is his ‘meditation time’), and has done this steadily since he was a little kid, and grumpiness (!) will ensue if he is denied this time to relax.

Rugby is his sport of choice, and while he isn’t a fan of one team in particular (his favorites change from season to season), he keeps himself informed on the games, scores, and the fights that ensue. You will see him at his most energetic and opinionated around championship season, but also a bit angry, and this is because he wishes he could play himself. Galen is also more informed than most men on the happenings of soap operas, and this will only leak out if other people are talking about a show and are getting the facts wrong. He likes The Eastenders for how completely ridiculous it is (this show is the only thing that will regularly get a laugh out of him), even if he only manages to see it on his days off from the restaurant.

Public Markets: Getting lost in the market while in the never-ending search for the perfect bargains is one of Galen’s favorite pastimes. Oh no, he won’t call it ‘shopping’. He’s browsing. He’s exploring. He’s trying to find good deals in a town that overcharges for everything, he believes, and so this is quite a noble adventure. But even in the absence of good sales, Galen can’t walk from one end of a market to another without buying something.

Card Games: While he prefers solitaire and free cell, he doesn’t mind getting down to some poker or blackjack with other people. He’s better than average at gambling and a particularly sharp dealer, but his best asset towards winning is his poker face.

Journals/Magazines/Tabloids: Galen normally keeps some sort of periodical rolled up in his jacket pocket in case he gets bored, and it’s a better recreation than reading books because he’d rather have the news than some fluffy fiction. He ‘borrows’ the CAM journals that the clinic receives, and has his own subscriptions to sports and news magazines, and only reads tabloids when a magazine isn’t available, and even then he only likes them because they are so crazy and ridiculous.

Potatoes: A meat and potatoes sort of lad, except that he doesn’t eat red meat (fish and poultry are dandy though). So he’s just a potatoes sort of lad. He’s not picky concerning how he likes his potatoes: about anything a chef does with spuds he’ll try out.

Dislikes:

Pollution/filth: Okay, nobody likes dirt and grime, but most people can live with it. Galen can live with it too, but just barely. He will do his best to not think about how smoggy London is or not to see the litter in the street gutter or ignore that his little brother is wearing that stupid Pokemon shirt for the third day in a row, but he is containing the intense desire to scream his frustrations out at the top of his lungs. How can people TOLERATE such things? How can they live with trash in their streets or without washing their hands before eating or with picking their goddamn noses? Nothing gets him upset like seeing someone pick their nose. Galen’s careful about being as clean as he possibly can be, but he wishes other people could only be so enlightened.

Sweet stuff, especially soda pop: Can there possibly be a greater waste of time, money, and calories? You buy a chocolate bar and get absolutely nothing but brief gratification and long-term guilt, plus those 400 calories are good for nothing but becoming fat deposits. They don’t even have useful nutrients! And fizz is the worst: you are drinking sugar and sodium water! Think of the empty calories, for God’s sake! In addition to hating sweets based off practicalities, he just hates the aftertaste and dislikes any form of carbonation.

Pansy sports: Pansy sports = sports that don’t involve constant body against body collisions, no blood, and no roaring crowds, among other things. He loves football, rugby, American football (when there is nothing else to watch: it moves too slowly for his tastes), and hockey, but he labels most other sports as lacking and wussy compared to those four. Golf is lame, tennis is pathetic, baseball and cricket bore him immensely, and so on. Don’t even try to suggest that gymnastics or dancing are sports. He might just laugh at you.

Needy/lazy people: Galen’s a kind guy, but he doesn’t have the patience to be walked all over on. Legitimate reasons for him to help someone: they can’t do something for themselves, he owes them a favor, or he’s being paid to help them. If you don’t fall under those three, then asking ‘pretty please’ has only a 30% chance of working on him even if you are a decent person, and there's 0% chance if you have proven yourself to be lazy and unmotivated. He abhors clingy people because he doesn’t want to feel responsible for another person just because they are too weak to stand for themselves.

Clubbing/Dancing: Believe me, Galen has tried the clubbing scene, and it just doesn't work. The music doesn’t move him, he’s paranoid about the food and sanitation (and being so close to so many sweaty people), he can’t hold a decent conversation over all of the sound, he holds himself too rigidly to even try to dance, and he can’t even smoke or drink. When he ran with the punk group, he was a bitter wallflower talking to strangers while watching his friends have a good time.

Is Neutral On:

School: Just a means to an end. Sure, he wants to go back to college, but it’s not for the sake of pride or a great desire to learn. He wants his degree and then wants out.

Music: Doesn’t really do anything for him. It’s simply background noise, and he hasn’t been known for getting excited or upset over any bands or genres. Galen faked an interest in punk music in his mid-teens and even went to shows, but again, he didn’t really care for the music. Nowadays he’ll listen to the radio and if he’s in the mood for music he’ll turn on a classic rock station, but he can just as easily listen to the news radio station. Motorhead was the only band he ever particularly liked and bought albums for, but even then he’s not a consistent buyer of their CDs and never went to any of their concerts.

The Chillun’s: Yes, he watches over his young siblings, but don’t assume that he enjoys it. Most of the time he considers them a huge pain in the ass, actually. But he likes the sprouts enough to make the task bearable, plus there is no chance he’ll leave them unattended with all of those weird murders going on lately.

Hobbies:

Massaging: Sexy guy + massaging = OMG PLEASE take a number and wait in line for your turn to assault him, ladies and gentlemen. This is his shtick by the way, and will be tied to his supernatural abilities. Galen is proficient at deep tissue/muscle massage, trigger point therapy, and hot/cold stone therapy, and has knowledge of at least five other types, in addition to improvised massaging of the shoulders and other high-stress areas (like the casual massages a friend might give you). Because he’s only an assistant, Galen doesn’t deal with a lot of patients and certainly not with the ones with very serious problems, but he’s had a lot of practice in massage and quickly absorbs what his mother and her associates teach him and what he reads from journals and magazines. It’s hard to convince him to give a massage to someone who isn’t family or a client, mostly because of the (largely false) sexual stigma attached to it.

Studying Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (CAM): A practical guy like Galen would never, ever have decided to study alternative medicine if it weren’t for one thing: that it actually works, and in his experience, it works even better than traditional medicine. Galen certainly responds better to homeopathic medicines and acupressure than he does to chemical-based medicines and surgery. He’s interested in learning about the effects and limits of CAM and has a mental list of what he found works and what is complete bull (most of it doesn’t pass in his book...he can be hard to convince at times). He expresses this interest almost exclusively at the clinic job, but he’ll also read journals and talk to his mother about it when at home. He’s currently reading into and experimenting with chakras and Reiki channeling, which will play into his Gifts.

Yoga: Yes, I did say he hates pansy sports, but real, intense yoga (not the aerobic kind) is a workout that Galen believes is only for the strongest and most focused. So yoga’s not really pansy in his opinion, and he’ll defend its benefits to the death. Yoga helps him deal with his tension and prevents those tensions from building into physical disorders, plus he has learned how to regulate his breathing to keep himself composed and calm most of the time. He goes to yoga with his mother, and her friend runs the classes in a studio at the clinic office, so at least he isn’t dealing with total strangers. He takes Monday and Wednesday mid-day classes each week.

Weight-training: Now, yoga’s good and fine and all, but lifting is more his cup of tea. Galen was practically at war with his doctor for a year before he got permission to start lifting weights. He had to start slowly, with light weights and a low number of repetitions, but because his dedication to an hour a day workout and a gradual increase in weights, Galen has a body that he only dreamed of having as a sick boy. It’s still not perfect, in his opinion at least, and he is always trying to figure out what part of his body needs to be improved next. He keeps free weights at the office and at home.

Aspirations/Dreams:

Out of all things material, he wants his own flat and a motorcycle. He’d also like a dependable girlfriend and job at a hospital as an all-around CAM handyman and massage therapist. But that isn’t practical, isn’t it? His aspirations are more ‘shoulds’ than ‘wants’: he should go back to college before officially practicing, he should stay at home until his brothers and sister are older, he should wait on dating until he has his own flat, he should go from part-time to full-time work at the restaurant in case his mother’s business goes under, etc etc. Basically, he believes that what he wants doesn’t matter right now.

NPCs

Elizabeth Whitaker Vitali, 44, mother: If his hobbies are any indication, then you know that Galen is rather close to his mother. Aw, how precious. She specializes in massage therapy and herbal therapy, and is currently researching traditional Chinese medicine. Elizabeth is second-generation Welsh with light blonde hair, a thin figure, light green eyes, and a hippy-like wardrobe of all natural fabrics and light colors. She used to be a primary school teacher in English literature before she went gung-ho into the world of alternative medicine. Elizabeth is a likable woman, a bit wishy-washy and flighty but with a kind heart and with pouts that her husband and sons cannot refuse to react to. She currently co-owns a CAM clinic, the RW&V CAM Center, with her long-time friends Frances Richards and Maureen Watson, although business has been perilously slow lately.

Marcello ‘Mark’ Vitali, 46, father: Galen doesn’t love his father nearly as much as his mother; in fact, they don’t even seem to get along. Galen’s brother Carl is obviously Mark’s favorite, and attempts for Galen and Mark to bond seem forced and awkward. If it’s possible, Mark is even more practical and logic-minded than Galen is. Mark is an accountant and doesn’t interact with Galen much anymore. He is third generation Italian, tall but stocky and overweight with medium olive skin and a stuffy business wardrobe. He used to be a mechanic and carpenter, but for the past twenty years he has been working in the thrilling world of accounting. Interaction between the two rarely exceeds ten words a day.

Carl Vitali, 22, older brother: Carl is in college, doing pre-clinical medical training so he can be a sports medicine specialist. Like his brother, he loves rugby and other violent physical sports. Although he has dark brown hair, Carl looks predominately Welsh. He is tall with narrow features, gray eyes, and ivory skin. He is muscular as well, but in a lean way. He’s smart and athletic and popular, and there seems to be nothing Carl can’t do -except shutting up, that is. He is obnoxious and loud-mouthed, and makes jokes that are definitely not funny.

Galen looks up to him sometimes, but more often he is jealous and angry at Carl. The first thing that peeves Galen was how Carl’s interest in sports medicine came from Galen’s constant accidents and trips to the hospital, so Galen feels like a tool, even if this isn’t true. He also hates Carl because he gets to do everything that Galen wanted to but couldn’t: he could play sports and go to school like normal, and he seemed to even flaunt this, although Galen took the flaunting as a greater insult than Carl imagined. They are on decent terms nowadays and Carl seems to be making up to his little brother these days with small gifts or trips, but Galen would rather not associate with Carl at all.

Janet Vitali, 8, younger sister: Janet was born when Galen was about 12. She looks purely Italian: medium olive skin, long curly black hair, pretty black eyes, and slightly overweight. Her tastes in clothes are as businesslike and professional as a little girl’s clothes could be, and she carries herself like an important executive as well. She is highly opinionated, bossy, and craves attention and conflict, but also smart and attentive. Janet can often bend her parents, but Galen refuses to take crap from the brat.

Arthur ‘Artie’ Vitali, 7, younger brother: While Artie looks a lot like Galen when he was a boy, it’s obvious that personality-wise he is Carl 2.0. Artie is as thin as a rail, has short dark brown hair, green eyes, pale olive skin with a sprinkling of freckles, and he dresses in athletic clothing that has grass stains, dirt, and a variety of tears and rips caused by being so active. He never stops moving and never stops asking questions, and if he isn’t asking annoying questions he is being mocking and obnoxious. Unfortunately, the scamp is also brutally honest at times. He causes the most trouble for Galen, and out of the three Artie is the only one Galen would lay a disciplining hand on (not beating up the kid, but picking him up or shoving him or lightly smacking him upside the head).

He had and still has HCM, or hypertrophic cardiomyopathy . When you hear of young athletes that die in the middle of practice, HCM is what most likely killed them, and in more severe cases like Galen’s, dizziness, shortness of breath, irregular breathing, palpitations, and high blood pressure follows any strenuous activity. Sudden death, a very permanent symptom of the condition, was a huge danger when he was a young boy and even now as a young man, although the danger is somewhat lessened now. There were other complications found when he was born, including twisted kidneys and other relatively minor problems. Galen’s immune system also sucks. It has been weakened mostly through a combination of genetics, stress, and the effects of certain medicines he was on as a child. So, if a flu is going around, Galen probably has it or will get it before it goes away.

His parents were emotionally detached from Galen for his first four years in their fear of being devastated in case he just dropped dead one day. He was depressed and lonely as a child, and furthermore he was terrified and confused by all of the pain he was in. Galen craved attention but never got enough of it when he needed it the most. A few months after he turned four, his parents realized how much they were pushing him away and started to become more affectionate, and the contact and attention did a lot to improve his health, even if his personality never completely recovered.

Even then, he has tumbled through lots of different illnesses. He was barred from doing sports as a kid, not allowed to enjoy many other amusements and games, and kept home from school a lot.  Galen knew a lot of nurses at the hospital on a first name basis, and he came to learn a good deal about traditional medicine and therapy just by sheer experience of being in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals. As he got older, he even started sitting in on the first aid and CPR courses when he was stuck at the hospital with nothing better to do. St. Sebastian’s was the hospital he stayed in.

He didn’t develop steady friends because he was never at school reliably, but he did learn how to be satisfied with having short-term friends and acquaintances, such as the other kids who went in and out of the hospital. He developed diligence as he did his best to keep up with his homework. When he was around ten he started to realize how much of his family’s time and money his sicknesses was taking up, not to mention that his parents were afraid to have more children after him. The weight of guilt started to accumulate on his soul, and he started doing the small things he could to be useful to his parents, like try to fix things in the flat or make his own meals.

He was still as sick as ever by the time he was eleven, and his parents were getting frustrated with the hospital. Two of Elizabeth’s friends asked to see Galen at their new CAM clinic to see if a less traditional cure would work on him. The poor kid violently protested against all of the prissy medicines and stretches, but to the whole family’s surprise, they seemed to actually work. For the first time in his life he felt full of energy and life. His mother became so grateful and intrigued by alternative medicine that she quit her schoolteacher position came to work with her friends at the clinic. Galen, grateful himself that he could go to school regularly for the first time ever, became curious and eventually found himself spending a lot of time helping at the office. He still makes regular visits to a conventional doctor, but these tend to be just check-ups. When his health turned around for the better, Mark and Elizabeth started making the babies again.

Galen loved school when he started regularly attending, but he gradually lost his enthusiasm. The school work wasn’t interesting, but his peers were. He made friends with the athletic crowd and absorbed their ideas on masculinity, and started to nag his doctor about being able to weigh-train, since all forms of cardio was off-limits. Galen won, and he loved seeing himself turn from a noodle-like wuss to a strong young man. When he was 16, he got bored of his old jock crowd and jumped into the punk culture without warning. His parents freaked and assumed that he was going to become a delinquent, but he was the same old Galen in terms of his grades and home life. The only major problem was that he would sometimes be out for nights on end without calling. Oops. He had the punk look going on and tried to be more ‘independent’, although most of his attempts horribly failed. He tried: getting his ears pierced (his friend did it with a safety pin - infection galore!), bleaching his hair blond (his scalp burned for a week), smoking/drinking (hospitalized and screamed at by his doctors and parents over it), got slapped around by a few girlfriends, got into fistfights (and subsequently, a file in the police records) and similar misadventures. He quit after a year and a half and decided to focus more on work and his family instead of social exploits.

Galen did go to school for the 12th and 13th Years, but he lost his ambition to stay in halfway through his 13th Year. His mother and father managed to convince him to finish out the year, and he managed to pass his A levels with a decent score, but didn’t continue to an advanced college because of financial restraints. He has been out of school for over a year now, and doesn’t regularly talk to anyone he used to go to school with. The year off after college was hell on him because he didn’t know what to do with himself half the time, so he switched his schedule so he could work at the clinic during the day (mostly office work with some patient-work thrown in), and he also got himself a job as a busboy and later, a waiter at a nearby casual restaurant during the evenings. He escorts his siblings to school each morning and home in the afternoon, and watches over them until his father gets home, at which point Galen goes to the restaurant.

Positive: Highly reliable, generous, protective, calm, humble
Neutral: Industrious, prioritizing, no-nonsense, intuitive, curious
Negative: Stiff, hyper-critical, suspicious, resentful, inferiority (borderline martyr) complex

First, his negative qualities. He is not a huggy, joyful, emotional lad, and if you ever see him acting like that, immediately assume that the Lords of Hell have brainwashed him. Galen has dug himself so deep into the masculine archetype that he actively refuses to act or react to things emotionally, since they are not practical or logical. And his dedication to practicality is unrelenting, overflowing into extreme criticism of himself and other people, and he’s not tactful when it comes to pointing out the things that aren’t ‘right’. He’s terribly pessimistic because he’s always looking for the flaws in people and things instead of appreciating the nice things on occasion, and even worse is that he expects everyone to take responsibility for their flaws, even if they have no control over a given defect. It takes almost nothing for him to suspect people of hating him or opposing him, and he is not very good at seeing things through other people’s perspectives. He doesn’t let go of a grudge easily and a deep resentment can be incited by something as simple as his own jealousy. Galen is much more critical of himself than he is of other people and feels immense pressure to make himself successful and perfect, but it’s a losing battle because he only sees his own negative qualities and shortcomings, and he has a very low opinion of himself. He is constantly comparing his skills to the skills of other people, and is discouraged when his abilities don’t measure up, and he has given up on ever being able to do some things, such as playing rugby, and he gets so engaged in watching the sport because he wishes he could play too.

His positive qualities are a bit less obvious, but still very much present. First off, he is very reliable and you can hold him to any vows and promises he makes. He hates taking off from work or arriving late to appointments, and he holds his obligations to other people above his own needs. Galen’s also generous in that once he decides a person is worth his time, he will do anything for them (within reason, that is). He’s more likely to act in the service of other people instead of acting purely to his own interests. He also hates seeing good people in pain and doesn’t mind trying to help them or even putting himself in harm’s way, and he can be rather brave in the face of danger. Despite his anger and suspicion, he keeps his emotions separate from his actions, and the result is a profoundly calm individual. He thinks things through carefully before taking action, and in spite of his appearance, being brash and impulsive is foreign to his nature. Although he thinks very critical, often negative things about other people, he won’t voice them unless under considerable stress. The positive side effect of his inferiority complex is that Galen is humble and doesn’t presume himself to be perfect or all-knowing, so he is receptive to the opinions and suggestions to others on any subject.

Galen is industrious and has a keen mind for organization and prioritizing and can be ruthless when it comes to deciding what is most important and what isn’t. For example, the two teammates Thor McAsskicker and Pansy McSparkleflower both get hurt with the same intensity. Guess which one Asiel will heal first? Thor, and that’s even if Pansy is a girl and a friend of Galen’s. There’s no room for chivalry when under attack, and Asiel thinks it’s only logical to get the stronger ones back on their feet first. But if Thor has a paper cut and Pansy’s just been shot, Asiel will of course help Pansy. Pity and pleading won’t make a difference once he decides what the best plan of action is and only logical arguments can sway him. Beyond that stubbornness, he works wonderfully in team situations and will stay dedicated to his role in the group.

He doesn’t respond very well to teasing and joking and doesn’t like people who clown around, and he rarely laughs or jokes himself (if he is laughing, it’s normally at someone, not with them). Hasn’t anyone ever told him that laughter is the best medicine? Finally, he’s surprisingly intuitive and harmonized with his environments. He can make accurate hunches of what people are thinking or going to do next based off of what he knows of their temperaments, and his hunches also make him successful with massage therapy. It is also profoundly easy for him to become oriented with new location in a very short amount of time.

Galen’s biggest hang-up is the guilt he feels about ruining his family’s lives (so he thinks; remember how hyper-critical he is), and his desire to pay them back for all of the trouble he caused them. Paying them back both relieves and frustrates him because his obligations to them have prevented him from moving on with his own life. His frustration makes him constantly cranky and has strained his interactions with other people: if he’s not acting stiff and cold to them, then he’s snappy and rude, although you will almost never see him lose his cool. He pushes around Artie and has been in a few fist fights when he was in his punk phase, but beyond that, Galen is calm and he won’t raise his voice, start an argument, or attack someone unless you hurt him in a really outstanding manner. Even then he won’t go berserk, but don’t expect to walk away from the fight without getting battered up, if you walk away at all.

Just because he can be a downer and a jerk doesn’t immediately mean that he’s a loner. As much as he hates people and their habits at times, he likes being around them, otherwise he would have never even considered the waiter job. Galen is curious by nature and enjoys listening to people talk and to be around the energy and activity of busy places. Plus, you never know what you can learn by asking questions and listening to other people. While he was only an average student at school, he has picked up a good amount of random trivia and facts just by listening closely to other people. The only way he knows how to start a conversation is by asking a question, and he will not ask pointless questions like “What do you think of the weather?” He doesn’t care what you think about the weather, but if you happen to know how hail is formed, he’s all ears. At work, he is a quiet and agreeable employee, able to restrain his anger and irritation, although his face normally betrays a degree of frustration and weariness.

He can also care less about social drama or about what people think about him. At best, he finds gossip completely ridiculous and amusing. Tell Galen that people will hate him if he doesn’t act a certain way and he’ll just shrug. Catty behavior doesn’t faze him and threats won’t shake him, and he isn’t intimidated by people wealthier or higher on the social hierarchy. Really, what can a mouthy bitch say to him that would hurt worse than a violent fever or heart surgery? Words are just words. He’ll still hate someone for trying to push his buttons though. He used to be swayed by peer pressure, but he’s grown up from that and now the greatest pressure that affects him is the pressure he puts on himself to be a stronger, richer, better person. He doesn’t mind being judged by others, but he lets his judgments of others rule what he thinks of them, particularly their flaws. If you have a habit of cutting people off in conversations, he will expect you to always do that. If you have a pimple on your forehead, he’ll remember it weeks later. If Jesus Christ himself walked the Earth again and Galen caught him picking his nose, guess what? No matter what the savior does after that, when Galen hears the name ‘Jesus’, he’ll think ‘dirty nose-picker.’

Two thirds of the “sexy grumpy boy” criteria have been marked off already, so....

Galen looks like he should be smoking a cigarette and leaning against a motorcycle outside of a seedy looking club. He looks like he just got off of work, maybe as a bouncer, as his height and muscled frame would suggest. But he is handsome as well, and under the lone streetlight he appears positively alluring. He seems every bit as grim and critical as his personality suggests, but oddly not aggressive. Instead, he holds himself calmly and patiently, as if he’s waiting for you to be aggressive or obnoxious so he can get an excuse to kick the crap out of you. Galen looks to be as healthy as any other young man around, if not more so.

Sorry about the didactic part, but I wanted you to get the big picture before the tiny details. He stands at 1.7 meters tall (about 5’10) and 14 stones (about 200 pounds), and as indicated, is one buff puppy. For details, let’s go from the top down, starting with his hair. Galen’s hair is very dark, glossy black and grows in waves. It naturally parts itself over his right eye and he’s been growing it all out for the past year, and it currently reaches halfway down his neck and is tied back whenever possible. Random, shorter locks of hair fall on his forehead and need to be tucked behind his ears. His light olive-colored face is square shaped with a strong, stubble-covered jaw line, and his skin is smooth and blemish-free (finally; he dealt with acne all through secondary school). His Welsh side shows up in his eyes and nose: his eyes are dark green, and instead of having a wide, bumped nose like his father's, Galen’s is narrow and straight. His eyes are average sized and bordered by thick, dark eyebrows in which the ends tilt slightly upwards in a constantly dissatisfied expression. His ears are unremarkable save for a pair of closed-up earring holes, and his thin, straight lips are typically pressed together. His voice is low, deep, and husky, and he wears the British accent very well.

Next is a solid neck and broad, stiff shoulders. The shape of his upper body is like a V, with the wide shoulders and a narrow but very tone, defined torso (six pack? Yes!) His body shape is not of the obsessive bodybuilder or the super-lean karate types, but somewhere in the middle. He has thick muscles, the most obvious being his arms, but they look smooth and not strained or bulging with veins. Good luck trying to find a pinch of fat on this guy. Catch him with his shirt off and you find five major scars on his torso: two long ones over his heart, one where his appendix was removed and one from his kidney surgery, and another on his upper right chest from when he fell on some glass as a kid. His powerful arms can’t flatten themselves completely against his upper body but instead the elbows are always bent outwards slightly, reinforcing his strong, masculine appearance. Look at the insides of Galen’s elbows and on top of his hands and you can see the faded scars from all of the needles he’s tolerated in his life so far. His hands are thick and tough but his fingers are surprisingly gentle and responsive. His torso goes into straight hips and down into strong thighs and calves again. His feet are medium sized, if a bit swollen (and his arches are flat, needing special foot soles). When he is sick, he looks very pale, almost ashy, and he gets bags under his eyes. Being part Italian, he has also inherited a good amount of body hair on his arms and legs, but thankfully his chest and back avoided similar fates.

Denim jeans and tee-shirts are the standard, and the tee-shirts are typically solid colored and dark. His shirts and jeans are well-fitted to his body, especially his shirts. He wears black socks and square-toed black leather boots (dressy enough that he can wear them to work), has two beloved leather jackets (a black one from the punk era with chains and studs and a more conventional dark brown one) and around each of his wrists are simple copper magnetic bracelets meant to help his circulation. At yoga or home, he’ll get into a pair of sweatpants and an older tee-shirt. Galen’s not a hat person and doesn’t like wearing over clothing other than a leather jacket and occasionally a pair of fingerless black gloves also leftover from his punk stage. Galen needs to wear a white polo shirt when working at CAM clinic and a white shirt and black slacks for the restaurant job.

Abilities

Massaging: Although he has just taken basic certification courses, he has surpassed his mother, her associates, and although he has no clue of this, most massage therapists in London. He is so successful because he lets his intuition guide his treatment, he is very responsive to the client’s needs, and because of the air of calmness he has around him. But without a college degree he doesn’t think he can be taken seriously, and so he thinks everyone’s just being nice when he’s complimented for his work.

Card Shark: Mentioned in likes. He’s a fast, accurate dealer and has an excellent poker face. His only problem is that he’s too stubborn to give up on hands if he thinks he has just the slightest chance of winning, but some people will take his confidence to mean he has good cards and back down from the bluff.

Need a Fix?: Like his father, Galen is an all purpose handy-man. He knows the basics of carpentry, electric and pipe work, sewing, cooking, car repair, and some other random things. He definitely doesn’t know everything and for severe breaks he can really only do patch jobs until a professional comes by, but they are good patch jobs at least. If given a few minutes to tinker an unfamiliar object, he can get a good idea of how it works and what could be done to fix it. He can also become familiar with unknown systems and patterns if given some time.

Chill Out: Galen has an air of calm around him that will mellow you out as surely as a pint of lager would. Obligations and stresses suddenly don’t seem as frightening as they did before, and you will find yourself taking nice, slow breaths of air and thinking a bit more clearly. Healing, whether we're talking about the conventional or alternative kind, is said to best occur when the recipient is calm, so this is a rather important skill. After all, who wants to deal with a spazzy patient? The presence of caffeine and sugar easily neutralizes this ability though.

Color

They call it “dark wheat”; I call it “the color of Band-Aids”. Either way, the hex code is #E8C782.

Symbol

Asiel’s symbol starts with a slightly flattened oval with one line jutting out of the topside and two more lines tangent to that line and jutting out at 45 degree angles. Or, more simply, it’s an oval with a small ‘k’ sticking out of the top. By association, it means ‘healer’.

Key to the Kingdom

Ever seen one of those wooden massaging rollers? This is a mini-version of one of those, only about three inches long. The key is made of light, sanded wood, and it is cut in the shape of a ‘P’. At the handle of the roller is a bored out peg with a leather cord looped through it (he will wear the key on his wrist in this way) and on the other end the wood splits and one part juts to the side, and three small, wooden balls are fixed into that jutted part. It works for massaging too!

Voile

In a nutshell: if Johnson and Johnson decided to tackle the bondage market, this is what they may come up with.

There are two keywords with this outfit - leather and tight. With exception to the hard rubber bottoms of his boots and assorted silver studs and buckles, everything in his voile is made of soft, Band-Aid colored leather. Let’s start with his shoes, which are smooth leather boots. They are squarish-toed, the rubber is treaded for rain and bad weather conditions, the toes are very rigid (good for kicking), and they are laced up every tightly up along his calf and end at his knee. Next are the leather pants. Stay with me here, okay? They fit snugly around his hips and thighs, but at the knees and below they are little bit looser to accommodate for the boots underneath. The pants are attached to his shirt, which is a sleeveless top that covers his whole torso and upper body up to the neck and tightly around his shoulders, making his defined muscles and strong frame very obvious. Tight leather swatches of fabric run from his elbows to his wrists like a bracer would, and he has fingerless leather gloves.

To top off this rather simple voile are the buckles: belt-like strips of leather are buckled around various parts of his voile, not tight enough to be painful but they are certainly uncomfortable. The buckles are gleaming silver and are identical to normal belt buckles, and the leftover belt strap is buttoned down with a simple silver stud (so the end isn’t flapping around), and the buckles are always centered and clearly seen. Smaller buckles (two and a half inches wide) are clasped around his wrists, just below his elbows, and at his ankles; medium ones (four inches wide) are around his mid-thighs, just below the knees, and his neck (like a collar); and three large ones (five and a half inches wide) run down his chest and torso, the topmost one around the width of his chest, the second starting just below the ribs, and the third riding on his hips.

The buckled straps on his torso, arms, and legs aren’t just there for the prettiness either: they are actually relevant to his sphere! He can unbutton the silver stud and unlatch the belt buckle, freeing the belt from his voile. This relates to healing because he can use the belts to help injured teammate: if an angel has an intensely bleeding arm, then he can take one of his arm belts and clamp it over or above the injury to put pressure on the wound. Or if another teammate broke their leg, he can take two belts and some sticks (or whatever else is handy) and there’s a makeshift splint. In some unexplainable, magical way, he cannot detach the buckles unless there is an injury that calls for it, so this means he can’t take off a belt and start whipping it at bad guys.

Obviously, he can’t run easily in this or make quick movements, but he can’t run well anyway so it doesn’t matter. He has the spiffy golden halo and his symbol on his forehead, and his dark hair is loose and doing its sexy job. He has silver stud earrings in each ear as well. The voile represents all of the guilt and pressure that has traditionally bound Asiel’s incarnations.

Wings

These are standard white wings, proportioned accordingly to his size with two things of note. The first is that the tips of the feathers are light beige, and the second is that he flaps his wings in slow, powerful strokes and when he can, he avoids flying because it exhausts him. As time goes on, he’ll get better, but don’t imagine him darting around like the Red Baron or flying on marathon trips without breaks.

Weapon

Remember the key? This is the huge-ass club version of that, although shaped slightly different. The dense, pale wooden weapon is about two feet long and as thick as a baseball bat, although the width is not rounded but oval-shaped. The bottom part is where he grips it, and there is a hole in the end with a loop of leather rope through it, and Asiel can put his wrist through this so he can keep tabs on his weapon while using his hands for healing. The club then extends up until it branches into a D-shaped arch similar to the one on the key, except that instead of jutting to the side, the arch continues upwards. Like the key, three heavy wooden balls are fixed to the arch.

While this stick can be used for its real purpose (massaging), he will most likely use it to knock the crap out of anyone who dares to get too close. The club is hard to break physically but easily burnt or destroyed by magic.

Climbing The Sephiroth

“Crown!” He grasps his key in his palm and holds it high above him with both hands. “Wisdom!” His eyes are fixated on it, and he starts to lower both arms and the key ahead of him. “Understanding!” As his hands pass over his head, shoulders, chest, and torso lose their color and definition and are replaced by a shimmering light beige glow. “Mercy!” His folded hands rest right below his navel and his whole lower body is lost in that undefined glow, and his neck bends and head tilts downward. “Strength,” (his voice gets softer as the climb goes on), and his eyes close. “Beauty.” White athletic bandages seem to spring from his back and coil tightly around his whole body, except for his head. “Victory,” and you see his hair swaying as a deep golden glow swirls around the top of his head. “Splendor.” The bandages seem to loose their definition too, as if he was wrapped in a sheet of seamless white. The golden glow around his head turns into a halo, and studs of silver sparkle from his ears. “Foundation,” (nearly inaudible) and the white sheet starts becoming defined again, carving itself into thousands of feathers. His symbol appears on his forehead, and as soon as it is complete...”KINGDOM!” His wings snap backwards and his eyes open, and Asiel is standing there in a powerful pose, his feet shoulder width apart and his weapon brandished as if he’s out to kick ass.

Gifts

Humor Me: Asiel can manipulate the four humors in a person’s body (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm) to help heal them. The physician Galenus of Greek times believed that a balance of the four humors created good health, and this Galen/Asiel uses his healing power to balance the liquids in someone’s body to help slow disease and ease their pain. If a person is losing blood, for example, Galen's touch will stimulate the other three liquids to transform into blood and help sustain the person. Or if they are poisoned, this ability can take the poison welled in the person’s blood and bile and transfer it to phlegm they can cough up. He can stop body parts from swelling and reduce blisters without popping them, and I’ll get back to you if he can somehow cure acne or drunkenness with this. He needs to lay his hands on the person and maintain physical contact with the victim for this to be effective, and depending on how extreme the injury is he may need between ten seconds and five minutes to get the fullest effect. He can’t help you with afflictions as severe broken bones or cancer, sorry, although he’ll curb the symptoms and pain. Galen can access this ability at any time, although it profoundly more powerful when he is Asiel. This doesn’t require much energy on his part, but it requires him to concentrate. One thing to note: he cannot use this power on himself.

Calming Touch: Any form of healing works best when a person is calm and comfortable, and this Gift allows for Asiel to immediately pacify a person so the healing process can occur more smoothly (without just knocking them out with his weapon, that is). Like Humor Me, he needs to be touching a person in order to use this ability, and the deeper and more prolonged the contact, the more effective the calm is. The calmness manifests as a warm feeling at the middle of the spine and blooms from there to the arms, legs, and head. If someone is shaking or having spasms, they will stop, and with long contact it is possible that they can even fall asleep. This calms the physical body and allows for healing to be more effective, but to a stressed but otherwise healthy person this touch will help quiet their fears and allow them to think clearly. Mental diseases due to stress and paranoia can be drastically lessened while he is touching them and for a few minutes afterwards, and after a few sessions there may be some permanent improvement. Even if he just puts a hand on your shoulder, some of your fear and pressure will seem to fall away. Again, he can’t use this on himself and because this ability requires him to channel some of his power, so he can’t use it for more than thirty minutes total each day.

In both Humor Me and Calming Touch, he can use his weapon to concentrate his healing power and make the healing more effective and faster-working, although this is at the cost of extra energy. While Humor Me requires him to touch the injured area itself, Calming Touch focuses on the seven charka points along the spine, neck, and head, each part relating to a specific ailments and emotions. For example, if someone has a headache or a depression problem, he will focus on the blue charka, located on the neck.

Total Regeneration: All angels have some power of regeneration, but Asiel can access a much stronger version of the green field. If he gets injured as a transformed angel, then he goes back to his normal form it will be as if he wasn’t hurt at all. When Asiel climbs down the sephiroth (if that is the term for it), the leftover energy from his powered state will go completely towards healing himself. This includes cuts, broken bones, migraines, poisons, and about anything else that could go wrong. Really extreme injuries, like losing a limb or getting shot, will be harder to fix, but the wound will be reduced in intensity at least by half, pulling him from a critical to stable condition, for example, or fatal to cautious. Other injuries, like cuts and bruises, won’t even leave scars. Minor illnesses or injuries he had in his normal form will also be cured, so if he had a flu before transforming, it will be gone when he powers back down. A drawback to this ability is that he can’t detransform in the middle of battle and then hope to climb again to full strength: once Asiel powers down, he will not have enough power to transform for at least four hours. If he tries transforming again before then and is successful, then he’ll still be too weak to be a use to the team. Also, if he dies as an angel, this power isn’t going to bring him back to life.

He also has the option of transferring all of that leftover angel power to another person so they can have the high regeneration effect. If he has both hands on another person, angel or human, when he detransforms, the patient will glow beige momentarily and then they will be healed as radically as Asiel would normally be. When he gives his power to someone else, he’ll have no energy left to heal his own wounds.

Notes on Battle Strengths/Weaknesses: His magical attacks are strong, and his magical stamina is high as well, but this is tempered by the fact that he has almost no battle abilities. He is a healer before all else, and he needs to stay in the background so he can have enough time and concentration to work his magic without having to try to defend himself at the same time. Now, he does have physical power and a weapon, but as in his human form, his health conditions prevent him from doing much with that power. He can’t chase after baddies and clobber them mercilessly because that requires physical speed and stamina he does not have, even though it is slightly better when he is transformed. Asiel will get weak and dizzy if he pushes himself too hard physically. He will only resort to using his weapon when an enemy comes very close, at which point they will be dead meat. He just needs to be careful not to get carried away and overexert himself.

Attack

Healing Crisis

Okay, Asiel starts this attack by crossing his hands over his chest, with each hand grabbing the other elbow. His eyes are closed, and he seems to be in deep thought. He is; for this attack to work, he needs to remember who on the battlefield is injured and what kind of injuries they have (this will work on any external injury and some internal, like bruising and some internal bleeding). Hopefully this takes only a few seconds, because it’s risky for him to waste time just standing there in thought. Once he’s remembered all he can, Asiel warns “Don’t rub it in!” (as he says this, his hands start glowing golden) and then “Healing Crisis!” He unclasps his hands from his elbows and swings his arms outwards, palms up and filled with huge dollops of a mystery clear gel (the angelic answer to Neosporin, most likely) and once his arms swing back until they are parallel with his ears, then he starts tossing the gel like baseballs at the injuries he visualized earlier. His eyes still aren’t open, by the way, but unless the person moved a great distance since he last saw them (at least twenty feet), the gel will find them and splat completely over their injury. If he thought of the wrong injury on the wrong person, or misfires for any other reason (distracted, the person moves out of range, someone gets in the dollop’s path, etc), the gel will simply evaporate in midair. Once all of the injuries he visualized have been hit (up to six can be visualized), he opens his eyes and whatever gel is left over he can use on himself, although this batch will not work on other people. If there even is leftover gel, that is; if the injuries are huge, then he might not even have enough gel for those six people, so the sixth, fifth, and maybe the fourth at times will get jipped.

The phrase ‘healing crisis’ is a homeopathic term in which an injury or disease gets worse before it gets better. For the first three seconds the gel is on the wound, the pain will double in intensity, but after that the gel will feel cool and soothing and it will start healing immediately, although the ally should be careful not to rub the gel or it will start stinging again. After a minute, they can wipe away the gel and their injury should be completely healed. For villains, the effects work a bit differently. The gel will hit their injury, surge in pain, and then continue to burn like hell, as if salt and lemon are being ground into it. Trying to rub the gel out will only make the pain deeper and worse, and the existing injury will get even more inflamed and possibly infected. All they can do is wait for a minute until they can swipe away the gel. Asiel can use this power once a day.

Past Lives