Occultist

Every kid disappoints their parents. Oliver just happened to do it a lot more than most. The Ainsworths were avid social climbers in their tight-knit, traditionalist Colorado town, so their son’s obsession with weird, macabre, and paranormal phenomenon wasn’t exactly a ‘good look’ for the family. See, Oliver? He was always more at home in a world of wonder instead of mundane reality. He had the analytical mind of a scientist and the imagination of a sorcerer. Day after day he transformed his bedroom into a mad pseudoscience lab where he’d enact rituals and alchemical experiments he read about in dusty old tomes. And while everyone around him called him crazy, Oliver discovered the hidden forces at work in our world. The arcane, the extradimensional – magic, baby!

As study turned to practice, however, his quirky little hobby became something far more dangerous. On numerous occasions his ‘spells’ blew off the roof of the house. Then there was the time his astral projection training unleashed a poltergeist on his middle school. He dutifully cleaned that mess up, but not before the principal gazed upon the visage of an ancient spirit and had his hair scared stark white – a look he totally did not pull off. The final straw came when Oliver reanimated his long-dead grandfather’s corpse for Thanksgiving dinner. Even he had to admit that was kind of in poor taste. The apology was too little too late, unfortunately. His parents saw no end to their son’s ‘madness,’ and in a fit of rage, they threw him out – cursing all he had done to them and their community. They wished he wasn’t their son, and with magic at his disposal, Oliver found a way to grant them that wish. He weaved a large 'modify memory' spell that wiped every trace of him from their minds – and from the minds of everyone else in the sleepy Colorado town he grew up in. Now truly on his own, Oliver turned to the one place he felt he could continue his off-beat intellectual pursuits in peace: higher education!



For a time, Oliver felt truly accepted. His natural gift for schoolwork and borderline genius test results secured him a spot in a prestigious Ivy League institution. As professors found themselves struggling to keep up with their new brilliant student, he was fast-tracked to earning a PhD – provided he presented a proper thesis project. Oliver foolishly thought such a project would be the perfect opportunity to show his university what he was really interested in working on. So, in front of every department head, the prodigy presented a primordial-ooze powered extradimensional gateway – and summoned forth a rampaging cockatrice onto campus. It clawed apart the auditorium and turned a TA to stone with its breath, but eventually Oliver was able to pacify the monster (or cryptid, as he called it).

After un-petrifying the TA, Oliver thought he would be applauded for his academic (albeit arcane) achievement, but instead he was blacklisted – labelled an unhinged crackpot by his college and had all records of his attendance there expunged. But just before they handed him over to the police to assess ‘damages,’ he was whisked away by a mysterious cloaked figure using a temporary ‘time stop’ spell. The person revealed themselves as a member of the Hermetic Order of Runic Scholars, a secret society of would-be mages, and explained the extradimensional event Oliver caused alerted their cabal to his abilities. Oliver was offered sanctuary with the Runic Scholars. Finally, he had found some like-minded colleagues.

Only a couple months into his tenure with the Runic Scholars, Oliver was brought before the Council of Really Old Ones, who told him what he was doing was “super not okay.” Just as there were rules and norms with his family and in college, the Runic Scholars had their own laws that needed to be followed. Magic and its secrets needed to remain hidden from normal people so as not to scare them, and no Runic Scholar was permitted to delve into the ‘dark arts’ connected with sinister entities and dimensions of malice. No, a proper Runic Scholar was only supposed to stay in their chambers and make piddly light shows with prestidigitation. You know, ‘safe’ stuff like that. Oliver disregarded the Runic Scholars’ laws almost instantly, stating if they were not pushing into the unknown, what was their purpose? Even if the Council of Really Old Ones saw merit in what Oliver was saying, their hands were pretty much tied. By continuing to meddle with dark and experimental magic, Oliver had ‘corrupted’ himself in their eyes. They cast him out of their refuge, an underground ruin known as the Gateway Temple, and into the cold, unforgiving surface-world.

Oliver was aimless and had run out of places to turn. With the traditionalist magical community now squarely against him, he was banned from any other scattered sects across the globe. Being on his own never stopped Oliver's pursuit of the occult before, however, and it surely wasn't going to stop it now. Unexplained supernatural happenings occurred semi-frequently in the United States -- stuff that the waking world was always quick to ignore or brush off in favor of familiar normalcy. Oliver became a freelance 'investigator-for-hire' of these events. For the low, low rate of, well, whatever someone could spare, he'd venture into haunted landmarks, hunt displaced cryptids, and much more. Really, he was available to solve any problem with an otherworldly cause. His trail of cases eventually led him to a beacon for the bizarre: Paragon City. There his fledgling magic detective business really began to take off. Case after case and conundrum after conundrum was cracked by Oliver, but now everyone knew him by a different name: the Occultist.



The creation of Oliver's alter-ego put him into contact with many of Paragon's other costumed characters, most of whom were left baffled by arcane threats the world faced. He took on duty as a sort of mystic adviser for magically inept supers. The stakes soon raised considerably as his personal casework expanded into preventing full-fledged supernatural catastrophe. Though never a marketable mainstream hero, the Occultist became a cult legend in his own right. Dark comics and spooky stories about Paragon's hidden paranormal protector were disseminated among conspiracy theorists and true believers everywhere. It was through this notoriety that Oliver was first introduced to the Enclave, a small, loose affiliation of magic-users that operated independent of traditional sects and covens. The group's leader, Vestige, provided him with the resources he needed to reach his true potential as an arch-wizard. In one of their final meetings before she departed on a long, personal mission, she informed Oliver that he might fill a role that had long been vacant.

During the Age of Wonder, before belief in magic and spiritualism gave way to technology and rationalism, the world looked to powerful sorcerers for guidance. It took a certain kind of mind to gaze into the paradoxical chaos of the multiverse and remain unchanged. Mastery over magic was never enough to safeguard reality, it required strength of character as well. Those two attributes didn't often come together, but in Oliver, they were both present. The Occultist would be the next great sorcerer, but unlike those who existed generations before, he would not be thanked for his work. He spent his formative years hated not only by modern society, but also by the fragmented remaining arcanists who refused to push any boundaries. Oliver was the perennial outsider, never truly accepted -- the bad boy of magic -- and yet, the scorn never deterred him before. Sure, he was disillusioned with the world, but he would still do everything in his power to make sure it kept on spinning.



Oliver is a jack-of-all-trades wizard and wields master spells from every school of thought on magic (and a few schools he invented himself). These are some excerpts from his one-of-a-kind spellpedia, The Occultist's Cookbook:

Everflame: Purple, burning magic that curses a target and inflicts pain unto them until they surrender, or the hex is broken.

Spell Crystals: Oliver used alchemy to create a formula substitute for source magic, or the raw, unaltered power of creation that fuels spells and built reality. His 'synthessence' (synthetic quintessence) can be solidified into crystalline structures that are attuned to hold any magical charge. When broken, these crystals then release the spell instantly. The crystal’s color depends on the magic within:

Red: Summons a fireball spell.
Orange: Blows up.
Yellow: Shoots a lightning bolt.
Green: Unleashes soothing, restorative magic.
Cyan: Creates a programmed illusory display.
Blue: Emits a flash-freezing mist.
Pink: Establishes telepathic communication.
Purple: Curses someone.
Brown: Manipulates landscape via geomancy.
Black: Expands into shadowy tendrils.
Multicolored: Opens a dimensional wormhole.
Clear: Casts a cloak of invisibility.
Polka Dotted: Transmutation.

Shadow Magic: Magic pulled from shadow dimensions, twisted reflections of material planes. These shadow spells are used to ensnare and frighten foes.

Re-Engineered Necromancy: Necromantic energy that has been repurposed to rejuvenate the living, but not reanimate the dead. Oliver has found that usually doesn’t work out very well.

Levitation/Flight: Many practitioners prefer to float because it makes them feel ‘above’ everyone else. Oliver’s kinda short so it mostly just puts him at people’s eye-height.

Conjuration: A prepared caster can conjure just what he needs at a moment’s notice. Of course, most don’t mention they’re totally stealing that stuff from another dimension.

Illusory Magic: Arcane forces can be used to manufacture an image to trick the untrained eye. Getting your illusion called out, however, is typically quite embarrassing.

True Polymorph: Who, at times, hasn’t wanted to be someone – or something – else?

Stupidification: Taken from an artifact known as the Brain Drain, stupidification is a spell that absorbs knowledge itself. It often leaves the victim a vacuous, primitive husk.

Plane Shift: Infinite dimensions, realms, and planes of existence await those with the means to access them.

Elemental Magic: Being able to manipulate of the primal forces of nature makes a sorcerer powerful no matter their surroundings. The broad and basic schools of elemental magic are pyromancy, cryomancy, geomancy, and aeromancy.

Oliver is known for his downright bizarre and arguably unethical magical experiments and enchantments. Here are some of his ‘greatest hits’ of weirdo concoctions, creations, and summons:

Behind every great wizard is an arcane sanctum where they can conduct their rituals in peace. Some built lavish temples in the mountains, others constructed floating hideaways in far-flung dimensions. Oliver has a crappy one-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Croatoa. The 'sanctum' has been retrofitted (illegally) by Oliver to also include an abandoned Church in a nearby graveyard. The two properties are connected via a secret tunnel that cuts through a crypt or two. The entire space is littered haphazardly with Oliver's magical baubles and half-baked pseudo-scientific experiments.

For a long time, Oliver was the sole resident of his sanctum (and he very much enjoyed it that way), but it has recently expanded to include others. Limbo now sleeps in the sanctum's sofa, which had an empty void-like pocket dimension sewn between its cushions by Oliver. Limbo considers himself a co-head of the household even though he doesn't pay rent. Signal stays in a spare bedroom that was previously used to store Stabigail's coffin. She has slowly upgraded the sanctum with cosmic technologies she picked up while spacefaring. Oliver considers her his only 'true' roommate as she actually contributes rent. Finally, Osiris moved into the sanctum uninvited after a spat with his previous landlord left him temporarily homeless. He slept on the roof of the sanctum for a while before moving into a back room full of alchemy supplies. He brought with him copious amounts of sand and Egyptian pottery, but, predictably, no actual money to pay rent with.

THE VANQUISHERS: A team-up of titanic heroes initially started by Ace, a crime-fighter with so much enthusiasm, idealism, and eagerness that Oliver has classified it as a 'virulent and contagious pathogen.' As a Vanquisher, Oliver has met and adventured alongside a variety of different characters.

THE ENCLAVE: As far as secret societies of mages go, this one is pretty benevolent. The Enclave is a loose coalition of varied arcane specialists in Paragon City that consult for the 'paranormally-inept' populace. The group's leader, Vestige, thinks very highly of Oliver. Well, as highly as she can think of anyone -- which, as it turns out, is not very.

APPRENTICES: Most would-be casters would consider tutelage under the Occultist to be a dream come true, but it's actually more like a nightmare. Oliver is a reluctant mentor and trying to keep up with his dangerous and insane magical example can lead to deadly consequences for impressionable minds. But nothing ventured, nothing gained! Maybe he just hasn't met the right student yet.