Lysander Orin

Magic

• The thick and thin of it

  Lysander's a rather powerful mage. As a matter of fact, he's an incredibly powerful mage, made so by a combination of natural talent, an incredible force of personality, and a rather cunning inventiveness that makes his spell-casting unpredictable and devastating.
  
  An extraordinarily gifted enchanter and illusionist, Lysander's not your flashy evocation spellcaster, bringing down rain of fire to destroy his enemies, or summoning great beasts from the abyss to tear his opponents limb from limb. Instead, Lysander's power resides in the mind- his talent lies in finding purchase in others' thoughts, and tearing them apart bit by vulnerable bit.
  
  Note, Lysander's magic is mostly defined in terms of the D&D 3.5 paradigm, but it can easily be ported to free-form encounters, through minor adjustments.

• Schools

  Abjuration		Conjuration		Divination
  Enchantment		Evocation		Illusion
  Necromancy		Transmutation

• On the schools

  Since Lysander's spell focus is so limited, a necessity for achieving the heights of the art (sheer power in exchange for versatility), his build as a spellcaster is a little skewed.
  
  Instead of having one favored school and one forbidden one, Lysander possesses two of each, closing off conjuration and evocation in exchange for unrivaled mastery of the enchantment and illusion schools.
  
  This means, in effect, that Lysander is thoroughly incapable of actually -creating- anything through magic. At best, he can change the properties of a thing, to some small degree, though it's more likely he'd simply use glamers to change its apparent qualities, making use of one of his favored schools.
  
  Ordinarily considered a weakness in battle-mages, Lysander's lack of 'battle magic' is made up for through his mastery of illusion. Illusion, in fact, does allow him to compete with more flashy mages by conjuring shadow-versions of evocation spells, and giving them power by weakening his enemies' ability to disbelieve their effects, thus letting their own minds tear them apart, in those rare cases where force proves necessary.

• Divination

  Scrying
  Clairaudience
  Clairvoyance
  Seeing

• Divination

  Lysander's talents in the field of Divination, one of the few schools not barred to him by his choice of specialties, are rather diverse.
  
  While his ability to perceive at distance, and sense the location of objects and people simply through magic are passable, but not great, his ability to pierce opponents' illusions and trickery is peerless. This, combined with his own rather sharp intellect, renders him fairly difficult to hoodwink, whether the method be mundane or magical.

• Enchantment

  Charm
  Compulsion
  Dominion
  Repression

• Enchantment

  Lysander's talents in enchantment are, perhaps, the most lethal part of his arsenal, and certainly the single most pressing reason not to fetch up against him as an adversary.
  
  Following that ever-present dictum of war first put to ink by Sun Tzu, Lysander's a great believer that all warfare is based on deception. If one follows this line of thought, the inevitable conclusion will come that the best way to defeat an enemy, then, is to make sure he does not consider you an enemy, and this is precisely where Lysander's talents lie.
  
  Whether it's altering a subject's state of mind to make them perceive Lysander as a friend, or pressing on their insecurities and vulnerabilities until the enemy simply cannot resist anymore, Lysander is a master of breaking into people's minds and doing damage, often irreparable and undetectable. This is one dangerous elf to tamper with, if his hands are not bound, and his mouth is not covered.

• Illusion

  Figment
  Glamer
  Pattern
  Phantasm
  Shadow

• Illusion

  Lysander's natural talent for illusion-work certainly comes to shine in his spellcasting, and it's this, more than any other school, that he uses as the workhorse for his day-to-day exploits.
  
  Particularly talented with shadow conjurations, Lysander's able to replicate and conjure a variety of effects, substances, and spells of a shadow variant, giving him a wide array of options in combat, or out of it, for overcoming obstacles. Since he cannot create or summon things, and his ability to transform them is so limited, he'll instead take advantage of shadow magic's replicating properties to create versions of the things and spells he needs, in order to overcome a challenge.
  
  Apart from that, Lysander's a talented illusionist in general, able to hoodwink even the sharpest minds and senses (oftentimes pairing illusions with silent, insidious enchantments intended to help break down a subject's ability to disbelieve without the subject noticing) and mask the properties of items and creatures through an instinctive propensity for glamer and figment work.
  
  In fact, the only relative weakness he has is in creating patterns to enchant multiple creatures at once- the specialty of breaking into minds and taking advantage of individual weaknesses and predispositions hindering him somewhat in dealing with crowds through universal patterning.