Name: Avery Ming
Title: None
Species and Gender: Human, Male
Home: Born in Ionia, currently residing at the Institute of War.
Profession: Enchanter
Affiliations: Primarily Ionian, hesitant ties to Piltover. Current hesitant alliance with Freljord for the course of Arc XIII.
Personality:[]
Avery is quiet and practical. Rarely found in the midst of any kind of action, he is more the type to lurk on the outskirts of a discussion and listen than actively participate and press his case. When asked about his profession, though, he becomes animated and alive with the passion he has for enchanting.
Appearance:[]
Avery has short dark hair and high cheekbones, a small scar on his ear from an accident with a fishhook back in his fishing days. He is prone to wearing dark jeans and flannel overshirts when the weather is nice, with a tattoo of a stylized wind spirit on his right shoulder. A set of sparkling amethyst rings adorn his right hand, all of them enchanted to help him with his enchanting work through increasing his mana pool, regeneration, and other traits.
Background:[]
When the wandering merchant Daryn Dumont stopped for the night in a quiet, unnamed fishing village on the southwestern coast of Ionia and stayed the night at the inn of Charla Ming, the neighbors averted their eyes and kept their murmurs quiet. Surely nothing good would come of this Noxian merchant in their town, with his sparkling gold eyes and eerie tendency to get his way when haggling. Something was bound to go horribly wrong.
When he left in the morning and nothing appeared to be missing, the village people thanked the gods they prayed to and were glad to be rid of his presence. Instead, nine months after his stay at the inn of Charla Ming, Charla's niece Janet gave birth to a child with sparkling golden eyes, and the peasants realized that they had been wrong when they assumed that the Noxian had left without trouble. Janet named him Avery and never brought up the subject of the Noxian merchant, choosing to pass the child her own surname instead.
The child also had an odd way about him. He was bizarrely quiet, never making unnecessary noise or motion. As he grew up, he tended to lurk around the other boys instead of joining in on their games and activity. When his mother returned from a difficult day on the sea with little to no catch, he would only blink those enormous, gorgeous golden eyes at her and tell her everything would be alright.
These words brought peace to Janet, for when the currents were bad and the fish elusive, she and her child spent nights without dinner. She did what she could to make a living from fishing, and her family supported her, and as Avery grew older he began to help her at work out on the water. Though he was young and relatively inexperienced compared to his mother, his pole always seemed to attract more fish than hers. Indeed, one night Janet took him out past moonset and handed him a fishing pole, and marked the glow in his eyes as the hook sank into the water. Less than two minutes later, a fat grayfish sat on the boat next to them, Avery panting from how hard he had wrangled with the fish to bring it aboard.
In October of 20 CLE, when Avery was 14 years old, word of the monk burning in Ionia's Lotus Gardens reached the unnamed fishing town. While most of the villagers were shocked and murmured about the news for a time, none of them were concerned past the day's harvest, and returned to their work.
Janet Ming, however, feared the worst. This outcry would surely lead to a revolution, and her village was relatively unprotected and not far west from the province of Navori. Should a Noxian raiding party come through as retribution for the rebellion, she did not want her nor her son to be in the village at the time. Together, mother and son moved northeast to the capital of Ionia, and watched with bated breath as Ionia faced down and defeated Noxus in the rematch of the Trial for the Isle.
Through some degree of luck, a branch of the Ming family in the capital of Ionia offered to take in Avery and teach him the art of magic, where Avery discovered his natural skill for enchanting. No wonder his fishing pole always lured more fish, he discovered-- he had unintentionally enchanted his fishing rod to be more enticing to his prey. As the years passed, Avery grew to be a respectable enchanter, if a tad young and prone to drumming his fingers awkwardly when he had nothing to do with them.
On vacation to visit family in the southeastern quarter of Ionia, Janet Ming fell during the Shon-Xan conflict, leaving Avery alone in the world. Uncomfortable with the prospects of living with his extended family, he closed the small shop he and his mother had worked together and found passage to the mainland, specifically Piltover. For a little less than a year he wandered the mainland of Valoran until by chance he heard of the vast armories of enchanted items in the possession of the League of Legends. Attracted by the concept of such a hoard to examine, he left his apartment in the city proper of Piltover and ventured to the League of Legends, establishing himself as an Ionian Summoner, specializing in enchanted items.
Lines in the Sand:[]
A chance meeting with Ezreal and Jayce of Piltover on the grounds of the Institute of War and a short discussion of the reasons Piltover became involved with Lines in the Sand brought Avery to side with the Piltovians in the hopes of examining some of the recovered relics of Shurima in the year CLE 25. He is noted most often for summoning the champions Jayce and Ezreal during official matches.