Booksmarts Rucroheimsprit
Species: Knowledge Spirit
Subspecies: N/A
Codename: N/A
Nicknames: Book, Booky, Knowledge
Elements: Knowledge
The immortal Spirit Of Knowledge, born to embody intelligence and learning. He is the longest-lasting Guardian of Bukrelm (The Realm Of Stories), and generally considered its best.
Untold eons ago, a young Booksmarts felt the urge to gather and share information, often rambling for hours without physically being able to stop himself. While he's gotten such urges under control nowadays, he is still known to be quite a chatterbox... Well, within his own realm, anyways; outside it his reputation is a little more complicated.
As both the Spirit Of Knowledge and Guardian Of The Realm Of Stories, he has near unlimited power within Bukrelm — but he's also trapped there, bound by his own powers to the place he's sworn himself to protecting and managing. He happily spent his life in his own Realm, unthinking to his technical imprisonment, until one day when he stumbled upon a window into another of the Realms.
Overcome by curiosity, as was his nature, he grew unsatisfied with what he could see through the window; he wanted to visit those other Realms, to experience them instead of simply watching. But he was bound to his Realm, unable to leave.
This was during a time of great peace in Bukrelm, as the Nightmare Queen was spending a few centuries holed up in her castle to attend her eggs and the other rulers were wisely not risking disturbing her by engaging in their usual petty squabbles. With very little duties to attend to as peacemaker and Guardian, Booksmarts was quite free to dive into his newest obsession, studying all he could about interrealm travel.
It was unheard of for a Guardian to leave the Bukrelm, that was the price they paid for their power, but Booksmarts found a way. He turned his power from an imaginary chain to an almost-real one, binding himself to his Realm in a rather counterintuitive bid for freedom. Leaving his power behind as an anchor, he managed to push his body through the window.
A window that turned out to be a Spellbook, nowadays known as Booksmarts' Book, The Book Of Knowledge, and The Book Of The Rucroes; this last is for who first owned the Spellbook, a witch by the name of Elena Rucroe.
Elena felt charmed by the clumsy, mute creature that had fallen out of her book, ignorant to the powerful chatterbox he normally was. In Bukrelm, Booksmarts could speak and write with his magic (and thus has no physical voicebox), abilities he lost when he came to Mênrelm.
More powerless than even the weakest Spirits, Booksmarts almost regretted his decision. This regret was deepened as he struggled to get around without his levitation and communicate without words spoken nor written (at least his status as Spirit Of Knowledge let him still read things, or he might've lost his mind). He nearly decided to go back and forget the whole thing when he discovered he had accidentally bound himself to the Spellbook, unable to go far from it while in Mênrelm and potentially able to be manipulated through it.
The reason he stayed, besides his unending curiosity, was Elena Rucroe. A polite and patient woman with a love of mysteries, it is said she quickly became the Spirit's closest friend in any world, helping him adjust and guarding his book whenever he went back to Bukrelm.
Elena and her Familiar — whose name has unfortunately been lost to history — were on a very important quest, one that Booksmarts proved invaluable in. They suspected that a series of powerful magical objects being sold by a group of Magi were actually being powered by enslaved Spirits imprisoned in the items, thousands of them.
But Spirits and Nisprit didn't interact much back then, and they had no way to prove it without knowing how to identify an imprisoned Spirit. Years of work between the three of them led to the Unbinding, when those bound Spirits were finally freed and their slavers captured.
The Spirits were not bitter towards Magi as a whole, however, growing fond of those that had unknowingly used their power for so long. This tragic enslavement and subsequent freeing was one of the things that brought about the beginning of the (more-or-less) easy relationship between Spirits and Nisprit nowadays. Gone were the days when most believed Spirits to be a myth, and mostly gone were the days when Spirits preferred it that way.
But Booksmarts' adventures in Mênrelm didn't end with Elena's quest. He journeyed far and wide with her, eventually finding a way to bring her to visit Bukrelm, watching as she went from a young woman to a someone a bit more mature.
He watched as she grew and had her first crush. He comforted her through her first breakup. He taught her spells from ancient times and far off places, pulling them from Knowledge itself. He watched her fall in love and get married. The first Magish child he'd ever seen, much less held, was hers. He helped her and her husband as they raised the small ones, delighting and panicking over each new mortal need he'd never known babies had. And he still did his duties as Guardian, stumbling a bit but managing to balance his two lives.
Elena never stopped chasing mysteries and secrets, never stopped bringing justice to those that needed it. The day came when a problem too big too ignore was also much too dangerous to risk — but Elena wouldn't turn away.
When she went off, unsure to her survival, Elena took with her an unexpected promise from her dear friend: no matter what happened, Booksmarts would guard her children every bit as fiercely as he guarded his Realm. Tears and hugs were had, between spouses and friends and other such people, before she left.
It took a while, but Elena returned to her overjoyed family and their protector. A protector who didn't consider his promise void, and maybe had a bit of a different definition of 'children' than most.
For generations, the family Rucroe, known far and wide as one of the most powerful families of Magi, has guarded the Book Of Knowledge. For generations, Booksmarts has cared for, taught, and protected the descendents of his dear friend. A magical bond has formed over time, marking Booksmarts as the Spirit Of House Rucroe, letting him channel bits of his power into them to fuel their spells and magic.
A Korazian Concept, a Realm Guardian, and a House Spirit — Booksmarts is unique among all three for being all three, his loyalty between his Realm and his family occasionally at odds, but never enough to make him give up either.
Outside his own Realm, Booksmarts' abilities are very limited. He can extend his limbs and neck to multiple times their normal length (his base height is 7ft), activate certain types of pre-set spells, spin his head, and control his Book. His book is capable of levitation, size expansion, and power absorption, making both a way to carry things and a way to deflect attacks (along with being his portal between Bukrelm and Mênrelm). Going too far from his book causes a white rope to appear around him, which is intangible to everyone but him. His book glows bright white, its contents changing and blanking at his or a Rucroe's whims.
Booksmarts doesn't need to breath or drink, and is flat-out incapable of eating. His brain will translate any language he hears or reads, and the magic of the Bukrelm allows anything he speaks or writes within it to be understood — hence his inability to write in most Realms, and his difficulty learning to do so, despite being the Spirit Of Knowledge.
He is gay but has had relatively few relationships in his long life. It's not that he has trouble getting with people, it's just that he usually doesn't have much interest in it, being more concerned with other things; his family, his friends, his Realm, his hobbies, etc.
Over the centuries, Booksmarts has become less clumsy, but still isn't exactly graceful. He has however become quite good at cooking, first aid, and sewing. He is somewhat obsessed with safety and proper sleep/nutrition, though obviously not in himself.
He has sensitive hands and feet, leading to him wearing soft shoes and gloves. His inability to communicate and original ignorance to the fact he could bring others to his realm led to him first being known to Elena as 'Book' and 'Booky', which are still sometimes used as nicknames for him.
He communicates through a rather unique form of sign language he's developed over time, involving everything from extreme facial expression to spinning his head at different speeds to pointing to hand puppets. The Rucroe family has developed an almost instinctual understanding of what he means. He thought it was really funny to not learn actual sign languages at first, but has recently caved in and started learning multiple.
He has imprisoned the two-headed Spirits Of War in his Realm multiple times in retaliation for attacks against his family, leading to a very antagonistic but familiar relationship between them. He gets along better with many other Concepts, even having a regular poker game with the most ancient of them (plus the young Spirit Of Tricks, whom he's a mentor figure to).
His biggest secret is that he's almost never lost a Rucroe. A rather forbidden and difficult spell has led Elena and her descendants to be reborn in the Realm Of Stories, trapped there but alive. The Rucroe family keep this secret close to their chests.
He has often been told that his 'silent laughter' is creepy. His second biggest secret is that he will just soundlessly laugh harder when he knows someone is freaked out by it, out of uncharacteristic spite (growing used to his situational muteness does not mean he necessarily likes it).
In a time lost to the mist of history, two children were good friends. The new Spirit Of Knowledge and little Merry Night. The Guardian Of The Realm Of Stories must remain impartial between the leaders of his realm, and The Nightmare Queen has no friends; but sometimes they are just Booksmarts and Mary, for a moment or two, when the world is just quiet enough to let them or so loud that they can't be anything else.
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