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❧ OOC Information: All information is considered Out-Of-Character until you learn it through In-Character means. ☙
The Gale family tree is deeply entrenched in the history of Chicago. There is a record of a Mr. Galeston arriving in the city on September 23rd, 1833, a few months after the Town of Chicago had been officially incorporated with a mere population of 350. Some rumors of the time indicate that he came from European noblestock, supposedly the disgraced third son of a duke's house. He took a wife from among the Potawatomi tribe, and they had several children, two of which survived to adulthood. The family line continues on from there, aspen slim but steady in its place in the Chicago area. They walked the line between making do and comfortable wealth, and while having a reputation for fair appearance and keen minds they never took any big positions. They were just kind of there, in the background.
In reality of course, the original Galeston was a magic user, and his offspring all had the same potential and were raised given the same knowledge. They were not evil, nor were they necessarily good, but that changed with Gideon Gale, the grandfather of the modern times three sisters Gale. He wanted to live forever, and did not so much dabble in the dark arts as he dove headfirst into them. His son and only child Ralston, at first his father's obedient student, was eventually horrified and left the family estate after Gideon brutally murdered his mistress, her newborn child and several servants. Ralston travelled for many years, eventually he met a beautiful woman who went by the name Bubastis. They spent much interesting time together. He had at this point become a rather accomplished sorcerer in his own right, though avoiding his father's arts. Eventually things fell apart with Bubastis romantically, and while they remained friends he moved on to Los Angeles, finding the climate of Hollywood and all its strangeness just to his liking. It was there, in 1991, that he met Eleanor Rosemont, and fell madly in love. She was a gorgeous blue-eyed redhead, a struggling actress, and once he found out she also came from a family line with magical qualities he swept her off her feet. He did his best to tutor her in the ways of sorcery, though her talents in the field were different from his own. Then she became pregnant, they got married, and he started having nightmares of something happening to her and their child. He felt drawn back home. The newlywed couple returned to Chicago.
To his delighted surprise, it seemed like his father Gideon had turned a new leaf. He welcomed his son and daughter-in-law with open arms, and there were no traces of the old black magic to be found. He showed his son that the former mistress and her child were both alive, as were those servants -- it had just been a hallucination, a strange illusion. Rosemary was born in June 1995, and her grandfather doted on her. Everything carried on smoothly, and the arrivals of Lily in 1997 and Celandine in 2001 were both met with similar celebration. Then, one stormy night in 2003, old man Gale vanished without a trace. Ralston was very distraught, and took every effort to find out what happened to his father. At first supportive, Eleanor eventually became concerned, then afraid of her husband's growing obsession, and the changes she was seeing in his personality. He became unreliable, cold and distant one moment, then warm and devoted, cruel and spiteful, jealous and clinging. To the girls he remained mostly the same, a doting proud father, but the way he treated their mother scared them.
It was during this time that Eleanor shared what she knew of magic with her daughters, quietly in the hours when their father was away in one of his cold and distant moods. Hers were the arts of soothsaying and herbalism, healing arts, magics of fate and flower, how to read clouds and tea and cards and the lines in your hands for clues to fortune and destiny. They were young, only eight and six and the toddler at two, but she was gentle and steady, and they had magic in their blood that cried out for the knowledge.
This carried on for over a year.
Until Eleanor vanished on June 20th, 2004. While he at first seemed just as distressed as he had over his father, a month later Ralston produced a postcard he said he'd received. It was in his wife's handwriting, sent from Uruguay, with the claim that she had found a new love there and moved to be with him, and that she was giving all custody over to her husband. Attempts to make contact with her were unsuccessful, but there were a few witnesses in the country that confirmed the story. Ralston Gale and Eleanor Rosemont were officially divorced in 2006, 15 years after their first meeting. A few months before that, Bubastis Hex had moved to town with her son in tow, and the old flame was rekindled officially.
Ralston's treatment of his daughters stayed fairly constant, doting and proud and paternal, but especially the two older girls could remember when he was warmer, kinder, more open and playful. There was a growing feeling that he could no longer quite be reached, and he spent more and more time locked away with Bubastis or off doing who knows what. He also started tinkering more and more with the mansion they were living in. It was the old family estates that Ralston had run away from as a young man, and gradually the girls started to find themselves locked out from more and more parts of it. There were puzzles, small and large, familiar and alien, and sometimes there was nothing visible as to how you'd get back inside somewhere: blank walls, floor to ceiling artwork where once there had been none, or just a foreboding chill and sensation of pressure pushing you back and away from an empty seeming hallway. At night they could hear their father working, sometimes there was the sound of great wheels grinding, clockwork ticking like thunder, or strange things prowling away in the attic or basement or gardens outside.
Sometimes they would find him standing staring into mirrors, seemingly completely entranced, rooted to the spot and unresponsive to any outside stimuli (they even tried slapping him, though Rosemary stopped Celandine when she approached with a needle). Sometimes he'd return to life only to still ignore them, stepping up to the mirror to stare into his own eyes, forehead pressed against the glass, strange words spilling out of his mouth.
And sometimes he would try to teach them his magic, saying they should have at least some knowledge. But not too much. His was dark knowledge, the Warlock ways of mastering a world ruled by desire, perception and mental discipline, being a devil to others and tempering your own through pure iron will and brass, how to pluck secrets from inner voices and locked rooms. And, most importantly, how to be real fucking *subtle* about it all. Don't draw attention. Start small. Don't be dumb and kill people in the open. After being satisfied that his children had picked up at least the magical equivalent of a peashooter, he introduced them all into the Accords and gave them the Coins. He brought them to the All-Things and introduced them to some people, and then he introduced them into the cult he had started with Bubastis and a few others. But there was always this feeling that he was hiding more than telling, that there were more things they weren't allowed access to than ones they were. A slowly growing chill in the stomach that whispered "Dad doesn't want me around. Dad doesn't want to be bothered."
Followed up by one all three girls ignored, because it couldn't be true:
"Dad doesn't love me."
Years of this, of ignoring the warlock and infernal having wild, loud sex (sometimes mundane, sometimes magic, sometimes there were other people involved that were never seen again), of being taught small spells, of having to figure out yet another puzzle to be able to access the pantry, of seeing people and things strange, disturbing, terrifying within and without their home. Of mom never showing up again, never contacting them again. It's enough to make anyone grow a little strange.
Then in the beginning of 2022, Ralston Gale vanished.
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