Accepted! -- Sparky

Your Nickname: Zira
Have you read and do you agree to the Code of Conduct?: Yup.
How did you find us and decide to write with us? Via Mai, nearly two years ago.
If you have written other characters here: Yup.
If Yes, list them all:
Landis Morgan
Erin Harper
Hannah Harper
Michael Dark
Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary

Full Character Name: Darian Cadoc Octavius Morgan
Character Birthday & Age: August 17th, 1982; 28
City & Country of Birth: Newport, Wales
Blood Purity: Pureblood
Alma Mater: Hogwarts
Job/Position: Tailor and private business owner

9 inches, almond with a core of phoenix feather. It is nicely swishy, and the wood of the handle is carved rather ornately.


Darian is a man endowed with near-inappropriate amounts of seeming ease, his sharply-dressed and dandyish figure outfitted with suits of bold prints, lush velvets, shifting colors and rich brocades. It is not uncommon for him to have rings on each of his ten long fingers and cufflinks glinting at his sleeves; likewise scraps of bright fabric serve as hanker-chefs peeping jauntily out of his blazer pockets or are tied round his neck in soft folds. He favors boots and leather oxfords, occasionally wears gloves or smoked-glass eyepieces. Without all the dazzle he is of a long, lean build, with hair in shaggy red curls, dark blue eyes, an annoyingly pert nose, plush lips, and a square jaw. He hates his forehead, which is also square and wide, and hides it with his bangs. He is 6'.


Darian would be the first to label himself a scoundrel, a gossip, and a cad. He flirts like some people breathe, his charms and wit used on anyone regardless of age gender or inclination. This is not some shallow party act, as if to imply underneath his prettiness and charms there is a different, more serious man. Darian's interest in other people goes to the bone, and only the intent is debatable. He is the sort of rare person who is genuinely fascinated by other people, who wants to understand their dreams, their petty ambitions, their fears, their potential willingness to climb into bed. He is perceptive too, dangerously so, but he is so easy to talk to, so easy to confide, and he remembers everything people tell him. His attention is a fleeting but all-consuming thing, leaving those who have caught it with the feeling that someone has just turned on a spotlight and my isn't it a rather hot beam. But his attention, for all its intensity, is easily averted. He gets bored easily, with both people and situations, and is prone to wild infatuations rather than actual relationships. In fact, not a single serious relationship has ever worked out; Darian has a severe, knee-jerk aversion to commitment. Likewise, he is very difficult to stay friends with. Although he has a wide social circle, is that annoying sort of person who seems to know absolutely everyone, he has very few close friends. He is difficult to get along with in the long term, prone to testing other people, to pushing, to prying as a child might at the satisfying pain of a loose tooth, unable even if willing to stop. He is as slippery as a snake when it comes to the pinning down of emotions, and he does not repay loyalty well.

His grasp of basic morals is just as slippery. If he has any, he hasn't shown the slightest indication. Darian has no problem taking advantage of other people's stupidity, gullibility, or anything of the like. Simple lust is an easy quality to manipulate, and off-putting confusion even easier, which is at least a fourth of the reason he dresses and acts as he does (the entertainment value of making a straight man sputter makes up another whole fourth by itself). He is a very selfish man, and very self-serving. The only reason he doesn't fudge his own accounts is his (smart) belief that even his math skills are not up to the task of hiding such altercations. Despite this, he is not a criminal in any sense of the word, and in fact never ventures down Knockturn alley. He has a rich man's fear of being beaten or robbed, of running into some incident from which his clever tongue cannot talk him out. Darian is not an imposing-looking man, and his sense of power lies in his ability to manipulate other's reactions and words; he has an innate distrust and disgust for men who use physical intimidation instead and is not well at ease with the blue-collar sort. He possesses both this watered-down version of class prejudice as well as a weak and somewhat hypocritical version of typical pureblood prejudice. Darian maintains that he doesn't mind the dirty-blooded sort at all, that he likes to go out into Muggle London for fun. And he does - he'll often conceal his wand for the night and go to some Muggle nightclub, dance with the other children, do their drugs and drink their drinks. He'll follow them home and fall into bed, let them laugh over the strangeness of his clothing as they peel it away - and even, if he is particularly enamored of the color of their eyes, if they are particularly sweet and willing, leave them a gift of gold or a flower of fire which always disappears by morning. Yes, Darian quite likes Muggles, but by no means would he procreate with one.


Darian was born one unbearably hot August afternoon to Artur and Evie Morgan, the first son of a new generation of Morgans and therefore the new family heir. He was promptly given names from his grandfather and great-grandfather, inspected closely by the then-matriarch Grandmother Morgan, swaddled in his uncle's old clothes, and swept into a life of stiflingly heavy expectations.

The birth of his younger brother Rhys when Darian was five lightened the load somewhat, but even before that the dynamics of the family began to change. His father quietly wrested the position of head of the family from under his grandmother's shrewd eyes and aging hands, and his uncle disappeared - just gone, never found, and never spoken about - leaving Artur Morgan's children the only males who could carry the line. Darian's father was, and is, strict, traditional, and very domineering; these traits were not limited to the upraising of his children but directed towards Darian's aunts and cousins too. His twin aunts eventually had children - girls for Briallen, two boys and one girl for Brianna - and his other aunt Octavia sank into the tragedies of her new married family, but these things all happened after Darian graduated from school. Before, for all the years of his childhood, the only family close to his own age was Landis Harper, Brianna's first son. They were the only children in the family for several long years, with very little choice as to whether they liked each other or not. They were family, so they did. Darian grew.

He went to Hogwarts as a Slytherin, although he thinks he would have also done quite well in Ravenclaw. He enjoyed his school years immensely, thrived in an environment so full of people and change. They were, by and by large, uneventful, if one doesn't count that Voldemort mess his graduating year. He was young and unafraid, raised in a time when the Boy-Who-Lived was a modern-day legend; attending Hogwarts for a half a year under Death Eaters generous with their applications of Cruciatis blighted and twisted him a little into himself, but Darian was a smart, smart boy and, once he'd figured out the system, hardly ever did anything deserving of punishment. He survived the bright bloody victory which proceeded his class out into what felt like a new world, welcomed by the rest of wizarding society for undergoing such hardship, excused of all his pesky exams. Blessed. It's a luck he's never lost.

The family filled out in what seemed like great hurry. Suddenly there were a packful of baby cousins to remember the names of, and some of the pressure was off as his father and his aunts all turned their attention to the raising of the new additions. Darian had always been eccentric, too strange and too foppish, restless and chafing under his father's rule. With the new freedom of graduation, he began to roam. His interests and hobbies had never been what his parents considered honorable nor career-oriented, but threats from his father no longer served to make him buckle. Despite the fact that calm, good-natured Rhys would make a fantastic heir, Darian didn't and doesn't believe his father would ever really throw him out on his well-clad arse. He has committed, after all, no real acts against the family that has raised him; he likes to make things difficult, but it would take a great deal more than parties, an interest in fashion, and ambiguous sexuality to really cross that line.

The Morgan family, even at its main branch, does not have as much money as it once did. They are now middle class - financially secure, but nowhere near as decadent as Darian appears to be. This is deliberate, his illusion of wealth - for yes, Daddy's money backs his precious little store, but that doesn't mean if it went under he wouldn't feel the blow. His father and mother are not so wealthy as to let both sons lounge around careerless for the rest of their lives, and his father is just too harsh besides; Rhys Morgan has gone off for a mediwizard, but to Darian's disgruntlement he was expected to work too instead of spending his days being brought drinks with little umbrellas in them by lovely Welsh witches. Libertine Ltd. makes him self-sufficient, allows him the (fake) jeweled rings and the extravagant (homemade, but that's no longer a sin) clothing. And he is making money, oh yes, he is making it quite well, but originally his store was only a bit of smoke and mirrors that would at least allow him to clothe himself without draining the Morgan family bankrupt. Now his father acknowledges that such an idea may not be a disaster, and Darian found after the opening that he actually has quite the cutthroat head and heart for business. Well, he'd always known that if he really searched he'd find the Morgan in him somewhere.


Darian designs and creates clothing for the uppercrust in wizarding society. He is the sole proprietor of Libertine Ltd. with a focus on menswear, although he makes women's clothing by commission as well. His shop carries a variety of styles from main-stream to his personal designs, from muggle-style clothing to wizarding robes. He has a stock of ready-made clothing - basic robes, shirts, and trousers - but his specialty is clothing design. He also takes standard tailoring and repair jobs.

His approach to price is best described as whimsical. The rotating stock of basic menswear has set prices and is much cheaper than his custom designs and fittings, but Darian tends to sell according to the price each customer thinks they deserve. Some customers, inflated with their own self-importance and sense of wealth, want only the best of the best, and Darian is happy to sell them clothing at prices so exorbitant they would make your toes curl. Other wizards and witches who are less discerning, less arrogant, or (more usually) just more attractive may garner themselves a better price. It depends heavily in all cases on how they treat the proprietor, and even more heavily on how they treat Darian's help when he is not around. Darian may be an unpredictable and trying employer for his one harried assistant but he does not tolerate rudeness, and those who forget their place always lose in one way or another. An extra fee, trousers an inch too short, shirts a little too tight across the stomach and chest... he is an expert in the ways of passive-aggressive tailoring.

 
Darian excels in charmwork, which is good, as his entire business is based on it. Libertine Ltd boasts not just high-quality clothing but also suits and robes laden with a variety of spells to ensure their longevity. Each garment made by Darian or his assistant Misa is laced with anti-wrinkle and anti-stain charms, the seams reinforced with charms against unraveling, the knees of the trousers and the elbows of the suits spelled not to fray. They fold themselves when put on a flat surface, they boast temperature control. He also offers specialty charmwork - luck charms, love charms, charms to "boost one's attractiveness" or the like - spells which Darian considers more or less pointless but which sell very, very well. The orders and making of each garment would be impossible to manage without advanced charmwork; Darian has quick clever fingers, even weighted by rings, but he'd wear his digits bloody if he did not know how to direct four dozen enchanted needles to sew several projects simultaneously.

He is a shrewd businessman, albeit a very lazy one, whose large bank account allows him to be discerning of his customers and lackadaisical in the way he runs his shop. Most of the time his assistant handles the day-to-day workings as Darian keeps to his appointments but is not otherwise dependable in his working hours. Despite his seeming nonchalance about the proper way of running a business, Darian has an excellent head for sums: he is the one who handles all financial aspects of his business, and he never lets his shop go into the red. A month of slow business, the slightest inclination that they are falling behind on the bills, and Darian will come up with an attractive new robe design or will court his loyal clients himself until the coffers are filled.

In such a small business, one which is in many ways dependent on the willingness of its customers to pay a large amount of money for what they can otherwise get elsewhere for cheaper, a great deal of non-magical charm is required. Darian is the ultimate salesman, oozing charm, dripping with flattery, and with a good deal of flirting to sweeten his deals. Many of his client base are very rich (and have to be, to afford his designs), and he is both wise to the ways of old-money purebloods and flashy enough to attract new money too. As the heir of an old pureblood family, Darian is adroit at appealing to that prejudice that some purebloods have - he happily manipulates their distaste at buying from a disreputable shop, at buying anything not to their standards. The nouveau rich - the celebrities, the muggleborn - like his style, his modern, edgy name, the promise of flattery and finery that he sells. He can talk an old rag into appearing a piece of off-colored silk, and by keeping mostly to fittings by appointment he gives his clients the impression that his attention is solely and completely theirs. Clients of his pay just as much for the attention and the sense of exclusivity Darian provides as they do for the actual clothing, and because the name of the shop makes them feel they're being daring.

In terms of technical skill, Darian was apprenticed for three years at Twilfit & Tattings to learn both the tricks of the trade and how to woo the moneyed lot. He waffled around filling his time with travel and fashion design for another year before he opened his own business, and even now travels frequently to France, Italy, and the Americas to scrounge for ideas and to see the competition. 



Darian is the owner of the well-known Libertine Ltd., a charming man whose slow smile and engaging manner compliment his finely tailored selection of custom-made garments. He is perceptive, courtly, selling his idea of a modern-day libertine like a snake oil salesman. Darian has a need for people that does not stop him from eventually alienating them and, ultimately, he is a very unreliable and untrustworthy man. But he is also fun, handsome and witty, and isn't the entertainment worth a little trouble?