Alistair Hamilton

Born in 1941, during the height of the Second World War, in a small town in Jamaica's Blue Mountains, Earth's youngest archmage came from humble beginnings. He lived in near-poverty for most of his childhood, his father a farmworker, and his mother an Obeahwoman, a practitioner of the arts of Obeah. Her specialty was necromancy, sending the spirits of the dead to rest and protecting graveyards from those who would defile them. Alister was the youngest of three sons, and while usually that was seen as a boon, to his mother, it was a disappointment that she would not have a daughter to pass on her family's skills to--not that men were forbidden from practising the art, just that in his mother's family, the talent manifested most strongly in the women. Indeed, Alister seemed just like his brothers, rather magically ungifted... until during his thirteenth year, when he saw his eldest brother being attacked by some drug runners.

Desperate to help his brother, he tried to emulate his mother's magic--what little he had been able to pick up--and ended up draining the life force out of everything within nearly a hundred yards of himself, creating a field of black ash and withered trees at the edge of his village. The drug runners didn't survive, but neither did his brother--or dozens of other people.

His family moved soon afterwards, to escape the gaze of those whose families they destroyed, and Alister began his instruction. First they settled in Kingston, but one of Alister's maternal uncles offered a new opportunity: a job for his father in Toronto. Alister left the tropical island of his birth, and didn't return for twenty years.

And when he did, he was a changed man. He had attended schools of magic in Montreal and London, been educated in the hermetic and ritual arts, visited three of the supernal realms, and even apprenticed at the feet of Aleister Crowley's ghost. But there was still something he needed to do: he needed to make amends for his first use of the art, so long ago. So he returned to Jamaica not as a skilled mage, but as an apprentice seeking a master. He spent years learning Obeah at the feet of elders and healers, seers and dancers. He found Obeah to be difficult, unnatural to him--his talent lay with other forms of magic. But this was his heritage, his legacy, and he refused to give up. It took him nearly a decade, and in that time he married, and had children of his own.

After twelve years, he returned to the village where he was born--long since abandoned because of the dark magic that still blighted the land--and healed the wound.

And in so doing became Earth's youngest Archmage, and a Master of Obeah.

He lived for a while longer in Jamaica, and became something of a local cause celebre among the Caribbean supernatural community--one of their own had ascended to the position of an archmage. He was almost immediately drawn into the region's supernatural politics, and eventually he became the Chairman of the Kingston Veil Council, the head of Jamaica's supernatural community. There were calls for him to make a go at the Chairmanship of the Port-au-Prince council, the titular head of the Caribbean supernatural community, but he surprised many by instead making a go at the Montreal Council instead, becoming head of Canada's Veil Treaty in a closely fought election in 1991. After over a decade in that position, the New York Veil Council asked him to throw his hat into the ring, and he obliged. Alister lead the New York veil council until December 2012, when he stepped down and announced he was retiring from supernatural politics.

Since then, the Archmage of New York's movements have been unknown--but archmages don't retire from anything for long. It's inevitable that Alister is up to something, and when he reveals it, the entire supernatural world will shake.

Alister is one of the most skilled mages in the world, but his magic lies on the darker end of the scale: curses, hexes, and bad luck charms, as well as summoning darkness and draining life from others to empower his own spells. He's not fond of those. His status as a master of Obeah has also given him spiritual healing powers, powerful wards against evil and dark spirits, and, most miraculously, the power bring the recently deceased back to life, should he be able to heal their bodies of ill. He has some other powers as well, and knows perhaps hundreds of spells, but he much prefers to deal in wards, jinxes, and healing instead of outright blasting and destruction--best to leave that to flashier fellows like Merlin and Baba Yaga.