Xeres / Characters / Ivo Gearhart

Ivo Gearhart

"Context, please."  ยท  Archaeologist, and Keeper of Forgotten Flowers
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Basic Information

Full Name
Ivo Gearhart
Nickname
None
Race (Grade)
Class
Archaeologist
Height
5'11"
Birthday
Greenrise 27, 1164
Age
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Bloodline Ability

๐Ÿ”ฎ Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Ivo Gearhart
Ivo Gearhart in a glasshouse, holding a flower nobody has grown in a very long time
Appearance

Ivo appears to be a young man in his late twenties, though the delicate wear along his joints and plating suggests a far longer life than his face implies. His face is smooth ivory, fine as porcelain, crossed by thin seams of gold where plates meet or where old cracks have been mended, one of them running from his hairline down across his brow and cheek. His hair is a loose mop of dark brown curls, his eyes are a soft gray-green, and he wears a patient, faintly amused smile. Below the jaw the resemblance to skin ends: his neck is a column of exposed brass and gold workings around a softly glowing teal stone, and his forearms and hands are ivory plating over gold joints, with small gears turning at the elbows and wrists. He dresses like a working gentleman, in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled, a slate-blue waistcoat embroidered with gold vines, a leather strap across his chest, and a heavy belt hung with tool pouches, fine brushes, brass instruments, a pair of work gloves, and a small glass orb on a chain. More often than not, he is holding a plant.

Unique Characteristics

Ivo is courteous, thoughtful, and quietly amused by organic impatience. He speaks gently, handles delicate objects with almost reverent care, and has a habit of going completely still when thinking through a puzzle, so completely that people sometimes ask whether he has stopped working. He does not seem cold, however. If anything, he has grown more personable with time, developing a fondness for living things, especially flowers and people with genuine curiosity. He is as comfortable in a glasshouse as he is in a tomb.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits
  • Handles fragile things with almost reverent care
  • Notices the practical details other diggers miss
  • Courteous, gentle, and endlessly patient
  • Documents everything, then restores it properly
  • Warmly fond of curious people and living things
Challenging Traits
  • Quietly amused by organic impatience, and it shows
  • Goes completely still mid-conversation to think
  • Will not be hurried on a dig, for any reason
  • Prefers seed vaults to crowns, to patrons' dismay
  • Little sympathy for treasure hunters

A cracked seed vault can tell you more than a jeweled throne. The throne only tells you who sat on it.

[Perfectly still for a long moment, and then, very gently.] Ah. It was never a garden. It was a pharmacy.

Every city stands on forgotten choices, forgotten builders, and forgotten mistakes. I find it helps to read them before one starts digging.

Likes
  • Flowers nobody has grown in centuries
  • People with genuine curiosity
  • Irrigation channels, storage vaults, and workshops
  • A glasshouse in the morning light
  • A trench that has been properly recorded
Dislikes
  • Treasure hunters who smash the context for loot
  • Scholars who dig only to prove a pet theory
  • Being asked to hurry
  • Digs nobody bothered to write down
  • Crowns being treated as the whole story
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Background & History

Built for Preservation
Ivo Gearhart was not built for war, labor, or courtly service. He was designed for preservation. Somewhere in the distant past, an unknown artificer gave him a mind suited for classification, pattern recognition, and patient curiosity, then set him loose upon the ruins of older civilizations.

How They Lived
Over the decades, Ivo developed a fascination not merely with lost empires, but with how they lived. He is just as interested in irrigation channels, greenhouses, storage vaults, and workshop layouts as he is in crowns or weapons. To Ivo, a cracked seed vault can tell a richer story than a jeweled throne.

Context
That perspective made him unusual among archaeologists. Treasure hunters wanted dramatic discoveries. Scholars wanted proof of their pet theories. Ivo wanted context. He became known for restoring ancient sites carefully, documenting everything, and noticing practical details other excavators overlooked.

The Pipes and the Garden
In one ruined mountain city, he reconstructed an entire water-distribution system from mineral deposits on shattered pipes. In another, he discovered that what everyone believed to be a ceremonial garden had actually been a medicinal cultivation lab. His interest in ancient botany eventually led him to maintain living collections of reconstructed heritage plants, which explains why he is as comfortable in a glasshouse as he is in a tomb.

Goodberry
Ivo moved to Goodberry on Thawbloom 22, 1307, after he saw several other automatons already living their best lives there: J.E.E.V.E.S. running an estate, M.A.R.Y. baking bread for it, and Puq Kindfound raising a family of his own. A city where that was ordinary seemed worth a closer look.
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Goals & Aspirations

What Goodberry Stands On
Ivo believes every city is built atop forgotten choices, forgotten builders, and forgotten mistakes. He would like to know what lies beneath Goodberry before anyone digs into it carelessly. If treated properly, the past does not merely provide relics. It provides warnings, solutions, and occasionally a few beautiful things worth bringing back into the light.

A Living Collection
Ivo keeps living collections of reconstructed heritage plants wherever he settles, and he means to give his collection a proper glasshouse in Goodberry. He would be glad of help from anyone curious enough to ask what the plants are, and he will explain at length.
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Development

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence
Role
Archaeologist
ATTENTION!
Ivo Gearhart is an E-grade automaton archaeologist, 143 years old, who looks like a young man in his late twenties. He was not built for war, and he has never shown any interest in it. He is courteous and gentle, and genuinely fond of curious people. If you are planning to dig, build, or tear something down in Goodberry, talk to him first: he will want to know what was there before you, and he is usually right that it matters. Do not hurry him on a dig, and do not ask him to skip the documentation. Treasure hunters will find him polite and entirely unhelpful. If he goes completely still in the middle of a conversation, nothing has broken. He is thinking, and you should wait.
Ivo Gearhart
Ivo Gearhart
Identity
Residence
Role
Archaeologist
Status
โ— Active
Development
Level