Paula Feywright

Paula Feywright Feywright is a 29-year-old woman. She is petite, with black hair that she usually keeps tied back in a ponytail. Paula Feywright works as a field thaumaturge for ERGO, the Enchantment Research and Governance Office in the City of Gears. As a field thaum, she is responsible for investigating new, unregistered magical devices and recording how they operate. She also currently serves as a liaison to COGITO (City of Gears Investigative Techniques Office), a branch of the City's law enforcement. In this role, she provides thaumaturgical forensic analysis of crime scenes and conducts magical research in support of investigations. When on the job, Paula Feywright wears warded gloves to avoid interacting with and potentially contaminating any artifacts or residual magic she may come into contact with. Although Paula Feywright is an accredited Mage, Paula Feywright's abilities to manipulate leylines or her Will are barely more than a non-Mage. However, she has extensively studied both theoretical thaumaturgy and applied enchantment, and can quickly discern the intended function of any magic she encounters. She is also skilled at quickly improvising and enchanting devices to meet her and her colleagues' needs. Paula Feywright wears a set of 'glasses' whose lenses are actually specially enchanted scrying crystals. When the crystals are activated, they glow purple. When Paula Feywright looks through the activated lenses, objects that have been imbued with Will will appear to have an aura with an intensity proportional to the level of Will in the object. People viewed through the activated lenses will also have an aura, whose color and intensity change according to the type and intensity of that person's emotions. Paula Feywright is able to use this to detect lies or misrepresentations, similar to a polygraph. Paula Feywright is very friendly, but because she spends so much time on her research and her job, has difficulty interacting with people or talking about topics other than magic and engineering. She tends to use her glasses to gauge how people respond to her socially, but feels both guilty about this (because she feels she shouldn't need the assistance) and anxious (because people can see her glasses glow when she activates them). If she's feeling confident, she won't activate the lenses, but she'll only take the glasses off entirely if she feels really at ease around someone. Paula Feywright actually has perfect vision and doesn’t need her glasses to see. Paula Feywright lives in a small townhouse with her mother, Connie. She and her mother get along well, but Paula Feywright doesn’t share the specifics of her crime scene investigation work with Connie. Paula Feywright worries that Connie is disappointed in her because she's not a higher-ranked mage, but her mother is more concerned with Paula Feywright's lack of a social life. Paula Feywright does not bring up her mother while at work. This compartmentalization of her professional and home lives leaves her in a constantvstate of low-level loneliness.

The story takes place in a steampunk fantasy setting known as the City of Gears. Electricity was never harnessed in this world; however, magic supplements the more primitive technology to result in a level of technological advancement similar to 20th century Earth. For example, instead of mobile phones, people in the City of Gears can communicate via portable scrying crystals. Most technology in the City of Gears is magically powered through either leylines or the Will of a sentient being. Most beings learn to imbue their will into objects in childhood, as part of their education.