Maxwell Chase
Freelance Paranormal Investigator / Magical Researcher Extraordinaire

Ever since he was a child, Max has always been obsessed with the question "Why?" Why do we live? Why do we die? Why is the world the way it is? Raised in a family with a Jewish father, a Buddhist mother, a set of Catholic grandparents, and even a Wiccan baby sister (she started practicing when she was five), the household offered many different answers to Max's burning question, but none of them satisfied him. He knew that there was something more to it, something greater, a universal explanation so intricately woven into the fabric of existence that it could not be uncovered by the time-honored mysticisms of religion nor the methodical deductions of modern science. When his latent magical talent manifested during the final stretch of his pre-adolescent years, Max became convinced that the answers he sought were contained within the mysterious and still yet undeciphered domain of magic. Having finally found his calling, he quickly plunged into his magical training with fierce dedication.

Max proved to possess a natural knack for his chosen craft. He was 16 when he enrolled in MIT&T with a major in Applied Hermetic Studies; however, he was expelled two years later when he broke school regulations by conjuring a powerful fire spirit in his dorm room. The spirit wrested free from his control and rampaged through the campus, injuring five students before it was banished by the faculty. After getting kicked out of school, Max drifted through the states, earning his keep by doing various oddjobs for people he encountered, some of which were less than legal. A year later, his travels led him to a man working for the Draco Foundation who eventually recruited Max to work as a research agent for the organization.

Max's years at the Foundation shaped the man that he was to become; during his time there, he pushed and very often broke the boundaries of known magic in his research. He flew around the globe investigating different types of occult phenomena and published many highly regarded essays about his finding. When Crash 2.0 struck and brought the world to its knees, Max decided that it was in his best interest to lie low for awhile until the storm passed. Taking a leave of indefinite absence at the Foundation, he emptied his bank accounts and disappeared without a trace. After a few years without turning back up, some of his colleagues have speculated that his predilection for dangerous adventures had finally betrayed him. Unbeknownst to them, Max was actually very much still alive and had spent the past few years coasting through the plains of the Australian outback, drinking beer, hunting bug spirits, investigating astral curiosities, and having the time of his life.

Alas, all good things must eventually come to an end, and so had Max's stay in Australia when he cheesed off the local drug baron by sleeping with the man's nubile young daughter. His plane left the country at approximately the same time the apartment he left behind blew up in a fiery blaze of fire and shrapnel. After returning to the UCAS, Max discovered that everything has changed. The world that he had taken for granted for so long before the second Crash no longer existed. All the people he knew were gone, all the things he learned were obsolete, and all the places he frequented had been reformed into some unrecognizable caricatures of their former selves. Everything was sadder, more hopeless, more afraid.

In this strange new land that he has returned to, Max knew that the only thing he can do is begin again and work his way back up from the very bottom, walking within the shades and shadows of the city that had once upon a time taken him to the skies.