Your Nickname: Dave
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Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary

Full Character Name: Richard Morrigan
Character Birthday & Age: August 5, 1976 / 32
City & Country of Birth: Cardiff, Wales
Blood Purity: Halfblood
Alma Mater: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Job/Position: Holds one of the British Seats on the ICW

Wand: Richard wields an Ollivander Wand.  It is 10 3/4" made of Maple and Dragon Heartstring.

Physical Description: Other helpful information might include how the character feels about their appearance and how others around them tend to view them. What kind of clothes do they wear? Do they care about trends or purposefully veer away from them? Does their appearance reflect their income? How do they move (are they a slow lurcher or a power-walker, etc)? Do they have perfect posture or slump their shoulders? What does their voice sound like? How fast do they speak?

Richard Morrigan stands just under six feet tall, he is well built but not muscle-bound.  He wears his dark hair cut neat and relatively short so that it's easy to maintain and keep looking nice.  His blue eyes sparkle with good humor or anger depending on the situation.  He spends as much time as possible outside and keeps a healthy tan.

Through years of instruction he holds himself with near perfect posture and moves with an easy grace.  He tries to keep to the most current fashion and favors tailored suits and dress robes to anything less notable; he comes from a long line of moneyed individuals and while he doesn't try to rub it in peoples' faces he has been raised in an environment where that was just the way it was and it doesn't always occur to him that other people haven't had the same opportunities that he has.


Personality Description: Richard Morrigan was born and raised by a British Diplomat with the International Confederation of Wizards.  He has received lessons in etiquette, and manners for as long as he could remember.  He is unfailingly polite and, for the most part, kind even to people he hates.  After all, it's easier to get your revenge on somebody if they don't see the blow coming.  This has left him very stoic and reserved, though also good at presenting the face that he wants people to see.  He shows emotion frequently, but it is the emotion that he thinks would be most effective at the time not necessarily what he is actually feeling.

Richard is an extremely ambitious person and almost everything he does is done to advance those ambitions.  He is a very creative person and while this is helpful a lot of the time, it can occasionally cause him trouble as he fails to take the logical outcomes of his plans into account.

He is very personable and has a lot of people that he is friendly with, though there are not very many that he would truly call friends.  When somebody does rise to the level of a friend he treats them no differently than family and would be willing to do anything he could to help them.

The Morrigan family has been held back for centuries, by both the subtle and obvious bigotry of the people in the halls of power.  Richard holds the same respect for all beings capable of magic that has long been a hallmark of their family; though the other side of that coin is that he holds the same disdain for the non-magical parts of the world.  He is hopeful that with the defeat of Voldemort and the victory of the half-blood Potter, perhaps things will finally start changing in the Ministry and he will be able to truly come into his own.

Richard has dreams of rising to the leadership of the Wizarding World and serving as either Minister for Magic or as the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot.  He feels for the first time since he gained employment with the Ministry that he has a real chance of seeing this happen.

History: Richard was born and raised in the family ancestral home just outside of Cardiff, Wales by his parents David Morrigan and Sophie Morrigan, nee Hanover.  His father David was a member of the Ministry with the Department of International Magical Cooperation and spent a large amount of time traveling the world working out treaties with various other Ministries.  It was on one of these travels to France that he met Sophie Hanover, and after a whirlwind courtship the two were married.  The couple was ecstatic to welcome their son and heir into the world.  Sophie stayed at home in the ancestral manor and raised Richard with David's help when he was around.  They doted on their son and gave him everything he ever wanted.

Richard was raised with a respect, even reverence for magic.  The Morrigan family held a belief in the near sentience of magic; that it would help practitioners accomplish what they sought to accomplish, but that there was real reason that any one practitioner should be held in higher regard than any other.  Richard grew up alongside the children of the other Ministry employees and this belief tended to leave him at odds with what they had been taught.  As a result he had a multitude of acquaintances but no real friends in his youth.   This left him rather isolated in his pre-school years as his parents never managed to have another child.

David spared no expense to make sure that Richard received the best tutors money could buy before he attended school and he took to it like a fish to water.  He drank up all the knowledge that his tutors would give him and it made a real difference in his life.  His family celebrated with him when he received his invitation to Hogwarts on his eleventh birthday and cheered him as he was sorted into Slytherin.

He worked hard through school and achieved grades near the top of all of his classes, particularly excelling in charms and struggling horribly with Transfiguration.  He was a favorite of his teachers for the work he put into his classes.  The bigotry that Slytherin was known for had become more quiet and subtle with the first defeat of the Dark Lord, and while he was friendly with the students in his house the people who came closest to being his friends were the Ravenclaws.

After Graduation, Richard quickly got a job as an assistant to Roger McDonnell, who held one of the British seats with the International Confederation of Wizards and served faithfully until the murder of Rufus Scrimgeour and the rise of Pius Thickness, and vicariously Lord Voldemort.  Richard fled with his family to France where he stayed with his mother’s family.  Word reached Richard and his father from still friendly contacts in the Ministry about the attack on Hogwarts; and against his family’s wishes Richard returned and assisted in the Battle of Hogwarts; during which his old mentor and boss, Roger McDonnell, was found to be a faithful Death Eater and sentenced to a life sentence in Azkaban for sedition, treason and multiple counts of murder.
 
With the death of Voldemort the Pureblood factions lost a lot of their influence and power within the Ministry, allowing more neutral families like the Morrigans to step in and fill positions that had long been filled by the Pureblood bigots.  Richard was appointed to the seat in the ICW that had once been filled by his mentor and he immediately set off to do what he could to protect Britain's interest in the world at large. 

He spent far more time abroad than he did at home.  He joined in the celebration as Remembrance Day was named a national holiday; he couldn't help but think the nation needed a day to make sure it recognized more heroes than just Harry Potter - it needed to be reminded that it took the hard work and lives of good witches and wizards who didn't just wait around for a savior to stand for them.  He rejoiced as the Ministry seemed to gather itself into order with the world watching whether they knew it or not.  His joy turned to horror with the break out of Azkaban in 2004; and act that convinced a small but growing minority in the ICW that Britain would not be able to get its house back into order without outside intervention.

He fought valiantly to keep these groups from gaining any traction, but it was a fight that was made far more difficult with the Remembrance Day Murders, the destruction of the Infirmary of Hogwarts, the Werewolf Attack on Hogsmeade, the murder of the Head of the DMLE, the implication of the British Ministry of Magic in a Runespoor Smuggling Ring, and finally a widespread set of attacks by werewolves.  It took the calling in of all of his markers as well as the issuing of more than a few from the entire delegation to prevent the idea of the ICW interfering in British affairs directly from coming to a vote.

After a decade of near constant travel and watching from afar as his country crashed around him Richard decided he needed to take a little more time for himself and that he'd spend more time traveling to work but living at his townhouse in London.  He had passed his 30th birthday away from home and had slowly lost touch with his family.  He wanted to return and work on renewing some of those ties; as well as perhaps finding a nice witch to allow him to carry on the family name.  He was anxious to get back to work, but he could tell he needed to back off before he burned himself out completely.



Describe your job duties and how you go about them: Richard holds one of the British seats on the International Confederation of Wizards.  As such, it is his duty to have a firm understanding and cast an informed vote in favor of Britain’s interest on all matters that come before the body.  He is not the speaker, so it is not his place to actually bring items to the consideration of the body, but he can bring them to the notice of the British Speaker.  He has a handful of staff members that assist him in research and he makes frequent use of their talents.  He spends most of his time rubbing elbows with the employees of the ministry out of his office in the Department of International Cooperation when the Confederation is not in session.

Elaborate on your expertise in your field: Richard is uniquely qualified for his position being raised in a multinational family as well as the fact that both his father and mentor held similar positions and saw that he received the training that he would need to do well should he follow in their footsteps.

Writing Sample: A small cottage sat peacefully on a grassy hill in Wales, a small trail of smoke drifted lazily out of the chimney. In general it was the type of scene that could be found in millions of paintings hanging on millions of walls around the world. It was the type of idyllic scene that people told themselves was one of the best things of life. However, as is so often the case, this picture of serenity hid an equally horrifying scene of darkness and evil.

Hidden away inside this building was a being named Oliver Nettles. Oliver Nettles was at one time a bright young Wizard working his way through Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He was sorted into Hufflepuff House where he made several close friends. He was 13 when he was attacked by the werewolf that forever changed his life.

Oliver was savagely mauled by the creature, and stolen away from his previous life. He was raised to believe completely in the superiority of werewolves, and had joined the monster that made him in attempting to start a pack that would eventually be able to overthrow the Ministry and all the people who hated them and hunted them wherever they went.

Their pack had become a thorn in the side of the Aurors over the years. They had never risen to the level of a true threat, but they were an annoyance that never seemed to go away. There were six werewolves in the house and they were gleefully plotting their attack for the next full moon. They had managed to capture the family of a businessman on Diagon Alley and they would use his shop to enter the Alley unnoticed. When the time came to shift, they would cause as much damage and kill as many people as possible before they fled. The store owner would open the door for them, allowing them to escape into Muggle London.

The Ministry would then be too busy obliviating the muggles to give chase and they would be able to escape. They were going over the final details once again when Oliver sat up sniffing. There was somebody else nearby, and it wasn’t one of the pack. He motioned for them all to be quiet and stealthily made his way over to the window to look for the interloper. Whoever it was, would certainly be having a bad day now.

He was completely focused on looking around the countryside out the window when he heard Thomas, the youngest of his pack, start to hack and cough. He whirled around to tell him to be quite and he was shocked into silence when he noticed steam rising from out of his mouth with each cough. He could see the boy’s skin start to redden as though it were burning. He gaped for just a moment when the boy slumped to the table and the smell of cooked meat permeated the room.

Oliver and his four remaining pack mates leapt into action. They split up to search the ground and Oliver was further enraged when only three of his mates returned to report failure. He hesitated at this point; it would do them no good to fight a foe they could not see that was killing them one at a time. So he decided it was time to go. It was at this point they discovered that anti-apparition wards had been erected and panic began to set in.

A man in white robes stood calmly at the bottom of the hill. He could hear the shouting and crashing as the beasts inside the house came to decision about what to do next in the only way they could. He watched as the one his contacts had told him was Oliver Nettles killed one of the others for daring to suggest that his leadership was anything less than exemplary. Before long Oliver and the two remaining wolves came rocketing out of the house, apparently intent on escape.

Oliver led his remaining loyal pack members out of the house and skid to a halt as a wall of fire burst into being encircling the house. Tess, one of his remaining family members, decided to risk leaping through the fire to escape with perhaps burns. Instead she was burned to ash, Oliver was sure he would hear her agonized screams so abruptly cut off every night for the rest of his life.

He turned to tell Andrew that they would head back into the house and was instead greeted with the sight of a burned out husk that used to be Andrew and a man in white robes with a silver mask standing on the doorstep of his house. The man spoke in a deep, confident voice, “You are a monster Oliver Nettles. The time that your kind has been allowed to exist has come to an end. No longer will you be allowed to prey upon normal wizards.”

The man in white looked down on the creature that snarled back at him in rage. A noticeable glint of madness had appeared in his eyes over the course of the encounter. As the creature charged a blast of pure white light jetted from his wand and the creature fell to the ground writhing in agony. Pitiful yelps could be heard echoing across the countryside. The man watched with, anger and disgust burned out of his eyes. With a flick of his wand he disappeared and the circle of fire raced inward toward the house to leave a flaming pyre of the hill, and six dead werewolves for the Aurors to find.

Sum up your character in one paragraph: Richard is the quintessential politician.  He knows what he wants and he is good at showing people what they want if it will allow him to advance his goals.  He is polite and friendly when it suits his purpose; and is a dangerous enemy when he is crossed.