As a child he experienced some natural psychic abilities, able to get vague sense of the feelings of others, this made him a bit reclusive, and became very tied to his family. One night his family home in England caught on fire, his room was the furthest from the fire and he awoke to the screams of his family as they burned. He fled in fear and escaped the flames his body burned badly in places. The screams didn't stop for days, only when the last ashes of his home cooled did they stop. That is how he awoke. He was 6.
Taken in by his fathers brothers family, he was raised by them. Eventually they discovered his abilities and they began to exploit them, making him a minor star as a Child Medium, who could read people and objects. It was these actions that began his development as a mage, as he learned about the occult, about ghosts and spirits, about the mind and how to interact with it.
As he grew he began to interact with spirits more, learning from them, he tried to help them where he could but was often scared by them. The minds of people also scared him, especially those of his new family, who began to see him in both a freakish light and wanting to take advantage of him.
Eventually he ran away, asking spirits to help him do so, this led to his first possession, at only 14 he blacked out for a month until he awoke, in the Romanian forests, to a shaman banishing the now wild spiridus and his body badly injured and suffering from signs of malnutrition and smell of rotting blood and meat.
He stayed with the shaman, Achachak, a native American dream speaker, who wanders the world in service to the spirits, and learned from him. As years passed he learnt a lot, from basic survival, interacting with various cultures and how to interact with spirits. He even took on tasks himself, aiding restless ghosts and spirits of the land. He learnt of meditation, dreaming, the use of medicinal herbs and even the right way to use blood and sacrifice, the sacrifice of livestock, of the hunt, of names.
By his mid 20's his powers grew and he learned of the real reason his Master raised him. Not out of kindness, compassion or love, but out of service. To prepare a body for those spirits that he so cared for. He learnt from the spirits himself, of the beings that lived deep in the Umbra, of the things that all things know and fear instinctively. From the most common nature spirit, the ghost of a young woman, even the raised mind of a simple farmers hoe they all know and they all fear those that live deep in the Umbra. And that was to be Marcus's fate, either form or feed for on eof these beings.
With time he prepared himself, learning more from his master, slowly weaving webs of illusion, thought and feeling with him until he was prepared. Under moonlight and the aid of spirits of his own he weakened what ties he held with his master and fled, unable to bring himself to do what it would take to truly end the connection.
Returned to society, he tried to make a space for himself, using his abilities to create a personality, M, the great Medium Marcus. For some small time he was satisfied with this, but as always more spirits came to call on him, and i his own desires or tugging of threads he desired to know more.
He learnt about the magnitude of the Umbra, the gauntlet that separates our world from it and of the beings that lie in its depths. He learnt some truths about the bigger and badder things, of how they hunger, how they would love to enter this world, how they will one day return to this world. Dead things, things that are neither alive nor dead but that have always existed, of how the mortal world is just a small bead in an endless ocean of chaos and imagination. His previous experience with the small elementals, spirits of trees and bugs and small creatures nothing in comparison to the gods and monsters that exist within it.
This truth scared and enthralled him, he desired to know more but to also stay away from them. He began to use his powers for more, not just reading but impressing some of his will on others, he made his fans love him even more, so easy when they were already searching for something in their grief. He gained wealth, fandom, an almost cult like following. He gathered secrets, lies, black mail, hidden information pulled from minds and gathered by spirits.
He began to explore his own mind. Organising his thoughts he found connection between the mind, spirit, dreams and the umbra. He moulded his own dreams, strengthening his own mind and connection to his familiar.
He bargained with ghosts and spirits, lending his own memories, emotions to them, needing more he became more hedonistic; drugs, alcohol, adrenaline he used them all to feed the ghosts around him and lost some of himself.
It was then his blackouts began. What he thought were memories traded away, were actually moments of possession. The ghosts around him fed and fuelled by growing desire as they lost part of themselves, the taste of life driving them to take his body. It was after one such blackout as he laid in bed, blood pooling from her body as she lay beneath him that the ecstasy snapped, addiction muffled under terror. The hours of cleaning, the trips to the port, the memories of her he buried in the minds of her family. The ghosts now obvious desire dripping like saliva in the mouths of jackals, their words too like their demented laughter. He could not avoid them. And then the words, cruel whispers from something behind the gauntlet, the ones he had been told of, warned of. He had been found interesting and now was watched.
He fled, town to town, into small villages and dark woods, oceans and small islands, he found solace for only short times before he was found, drawing the ghosts and spirits, that fed off his fear.
It was Monaco that he found this attraction supressed. Now almost destitute and influence fading, he returned back into the spotlight. From Casinos to the back rooms of manors, shadows of crypts and the silent glass like ocean shore he worked, he built back his influence. Sleepers, Mages, Old creatures and even some of the high table he worked for. Talking to loved ones, finding secrets, truth's, creating lies, he did it all. Years he has spent, rebuilding his will, fighting his trauma, creating determination where there was none.
And that is now he lives his life, working to develop his skills, to gain control of his self and of the spirits and beings he knows exist. To supress or overcome the fear of the things that whisper to him.