The Professor
Desires acceptance
Loyalty vs Ambition
The Adventurer
Desires respect
Safety vs Adventure
As the other characters took shape, The Professor seemed more essential than The Adventurer and I developed him more. During session 0 though there was a nagging feeling at the back of my mind. Subconsciously I was heading in the same direction as in previous campaigns, and the character felt more Victorian than 1930s.
My inspiration, Professor Challenger, was a beastly but bullied (so somewhat sympathetic) academic who recruited the other characters to join him on an expedition everyone else thought ludicrous. Being utterly boorish yet fiercely loyal, was a defining trait of Challenger but I'd played that part in The Great Game and even Hongzhillik in Star Wars had a strong dose of it.
I needed a subtle rethink. After session 0 the only linchpins of The Professor were that he was controversial either in his scientific views or how he expressed them, was English, the son of hoteliers and studied at Cambridge. The rest was malleable. Could I find a different source of inspiration that would mesh with these and take the character's personality in a vital new direction? What direction should that be?
Our line-up of characters could be summed up as:
- The Professor
- The White Hunter
- The Muscle
- The Countess
- The Reporter
- The Millionaire Playboy
Professor Withers
Withers is a buttoned-up English gentleman who doesn't suffer fools gladly and has unshakable faith in his academic dogma.
Born Albert Withers to the family-owners of a luxury hotel in Mayfair, London, he grew up fascinated by the historical antiques and art that decorated the hotel. Before the war he studied archaeology at the University of London and was comissioned in the Royal Engineers in 1915, losing an eye to infection during operations along the Scheldt.
Post-war Withers completed his doctorate in prehistoric archaeology at Cambridge University before joining the council of the Royal Archaeological Institute. He's now best known for his controversial published work, The Antediluvian Hypothesis, expounding his theory that the Cradle of Civilisation has yet to be discovered and likely predates the Sumerians by thousands of years.
To this day his argument remains that Academia has found "merely the toe-clippings of history and mistaken it for the body", and he's scathingly critical of many renowned archaeologists whose conclusions are mathematically improbable and unscientific. As much as archaeology's fixation with Mesopotamia vexes him, he's always coldly precise and calm in retort.
A man in his fifties, Withers is still eager to undertake any expedition that might prove the age of existing archaeological finds or seek out new ones.
He's a tall, lean man with hawkish features and thin, greying fair hair. Clean shaven but for a neat moustache he's always well-groomed and dressed appropriately. His glass eye is old and slightly discoloured but has sentimental value, being an anniversary gift from his wife, Connie, made in Wiesbaden with a miniature compass in the reverse.