Inspired by the Storn Cook artwork on page 91 of M&M 2e.

Spellbinder (Carter Wainwright Jr.)
PL 10 (150 pp)

Abilities: Str 10/16, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 16, Wis 14, Cha 14 [20 pp]

Attack: Melee +4, Ranged +8, +12 to block, +10 with Snare, +12 with fire Blast, Drain (con) or Tranform to ice wand attacks [8 pp]
Defense: +18 (+2 flat-footed) [8 pp]
Initiative: +1
Damage +0 hand to hand, +3 wearing Girding Band, +8 Snare, +8 Trip, +8 Blast, +8 Drain (con), +5 Transform to Ice
Saves: Toughness +2 (+18 with Force Field active), Fort +2, Ref +1, Will +6 [4 pp]

Skills: Acrobatics 0 (+1), Bluff 5 (+7, +11 vs. those who might find him attractive), Climb 0 (+0/+3), Computers 0 (+3), Concentration 0 (+2), Craft (artistic) 5 (+8), Craft (chemical) 5 (+8), Craft (all others, untrained) 0 (+3), Diplomacy 5 (+7, +11 vs. those who might find him attractive), Disable Device 0 (+3), Disguise 0 (+2), Drive 0 (+1), Escape Artist 1 (+2), Gather Information 5 (+7), Handle Animal 2 (+4), Intimidate 2 (+8, includes +4 from Elder Glyph), Investigate 2 (+5), Knowledge (arcane lore) 10 (+13), Knowledge (all others, untrained) 0 (+3), Language (English, native), Language (Latin), Language (Atlantean), Medicine 0 (+2), Notice 4 (+6), Perform (all, untrained) 0 (+2), Pilot 0 (+1), Ride 0 (+1), Search 0 (+3), Sense Motive 4 (+6), Sleight of Hand 2 (+3), Stealth 2 (+3), Survival 0 (+2), Swim 0 (+0/+3)
[14 pp, 56 ranks in skills]

Feats: Animal Affinity, Artificer, Attack Focus (ranged) 4, Attack Specialization (wands) 1, Attractive 1, Connected, Contacts, Fascinate (diplomacy), Jack-of-All-Trades, Ritualist, Second Chance (mind control), Trance, Well-Informed
[16 pp]

Powers:
Super-Senses 1 (Mystic Awareness) [1]

Device 4 (impossible to lose, Magnetite Band (iron ring), Effect: Shield 14 (Power Feat: Extra Reach 1), Improved Block 4, Improved Defense) [20]

Device 3 (easy to lose, Mantle of the Sanguine Stars (cloak), Effect: Teleport 3, Obscure (visual) 3 (25’ radius field of cloying red energy, Power Feat: Alternate Power – Concealment (visual) 2), Flight 1 (Flaw: Levitation), Feature: Restricted (only usable by someone with Magic or the Ritualist feat)) [9]

Device 1 (hard to lose, Girding Band (armband), Effect: Super-Strength 1 (Heavy Load: 460 lbs, Flaw: Duration 1 (sustained)), Enhanced Strength 6 (Flaw: Duration 1 (sustained)), Feature: Restricted (only usable by someone with Magic or the Ritualist feat)) [4]

Device 2 (easy to lose, Elder Glyph (amulet), Effect: Dimensional Pocket 3 (500 lbs, Partial Extra: Area (cone) 1), Quick Change 1, +4 ranks of Intimidate) [6]

Device 7 (hard to lose, Heartroot of Yggdrasil (staff), Effect: Force Field 16 (Extra: Link +0 to Immovable, Flaws: Distracting, Limited (must stand in one place while in use and be on a solid surface)), Immovable 4 (Extra: Link +0 to Force Field 5, Flaws: Action 1 (free action), Duration 0 (sustained), Limited (must stand in one place while in use and be on a solid surface)), Environmental Control 4 (earthquakes in a 50’ radius, hamper movement ½, Flaw: Range 1 (touch), Power Feat: Immunity 1 (own powers)), Snare 8 (Flaw: Limited (target must be in contact with the ground, Power Feat: Accurate 1, Indirect 1), Trip 8 (Extra: Area (burst), Flaw: Range 1 (touch), Power Feats: Indirect 1, Improved Throw, Improved Trip, Feature: Restricted (only usable by someone with Magic or the Ritualist feat)) [28]

Device / Utility Belt 4 (easy to lose, Wands of Ash, Bone and Crystal, Effect: Blast 8 (fire, Power Feats: Accurate 1,
Alternate Power – Drain (strength) 8 (Extra: Range 1 (ranged)),
Alternate Power – Transform (living creature to rock-hard ice)) 5 (Power Feat: Slow Fade 1)), Feature: Restricted (only usable by someone with Magic or the Ritualist feat) [12]
[80 pp]

Abilities 20 + Combat 16 + Saves 4 + Skills 14 + Feats 16 + Powers 80 = 150 pp

Trade-offs: +12 Attack with wands, +8 Damage with wands, +18 Defense with Magnetite Band and a +2 Toughness save *or* +18 Toughness save with Force Field (from Yggradsil's Heartroot) and only +2 defense (since he is flat-footed, because of the Distracting Flaw)

Complications: Yellow Sign cultist attacks, rival magicians, tomb-robbing competitors, indigenous curses from cultures he's 'looted.' He's got it covered. :)

Carter Wainwright spent his childhood puttering around the family estate, wondering what his father was like, since he’d hardly ever seen the man. Carter Sr. spent his days, and much of his fortune, wandering the far corners of the earth on expeditions. He climbed Everest, planted a flag on the North Pole, and visited dozens of other far off and mysterious places, always bringing home trinkets and toys and bits of plunder that he technically shouldn’t have been stealing from the local peoples of the various cultures he passed through.

His death, in Mexico City, to a seemingly random bit of petty gang violence, hit his son hard, and Carter Jr. spent what was left of his fathers inheritance traveling to the many places his father had taken portraits of or described in his journals, in a futile attempt to find some trace of the father he never knew in these exotic places that his father seemed to love so much more than his own flesh and blood.

It was in a dive off of the coast of Sardinia that Carter found the first relic of true power, the Elder Glyph, and green jade and silver talisman strangely uncorrupted after possibly centuries under the sea. He had dreamt of it the night before, strange feverish dreams of kraken like tentacles and oily darkness enveloping him, only to find it seemingly by chance in the ancient ship-wreck. When his hand fell upon it, he felt a charge, and briefly imagined it reaching out and seizing him in turn. Drawing it from the murk, it shone with dark fire that his dive-companions did not seem to note, and repeating a strange guttural word he had heard in his dreams the previous night, he was shocked to see enormous tentacles of some monstrous greenish-black creature pour forth from the talisman to engulf the hapless Greek fisherman next to him and draw him bodily screaming into the talisman! Moments later, the fisherman seemed to burst free, coated in clear slime and babbling about the dark and the cold, with the slime boiling away in moments, leaving no trace of this mad occurrence, other than the madness in the man’s eyes and his insistence that the ‘cursed thing’ be thrown overboard.

Recognizing that the crew were on the verge of mutiny, Carter let them deliberate and slipped overboard in the emergency raft to strike out for shore on his own, unwilling to part with the talisman, but also unwilling to risk having his throat slit and be thrown overboard…

Returning to the worn-down ‘ancestral manse’ in Felixstowe, Carter dug through his fathers collection, finding several more items that now shown to his awakened eyes, including a trio of sleek wands of ash, bone and crystal. Researching furiously now, Carter expended so much of the dwindling family fortunes that he was forced to sell the family home, which he did without a second’s remorse, consumed by his new quest for secret lore and things best left unremembered.

Over the next decade, the soft spoiled teen of privilege became a man, lean from travel and weathered from explorations around the globe. In Egypt, he located the Girding Ward, an armband that gave his slender frame the strength of a weightlifter. From the finger-bones of an ages-dead Atlantean sorcerer, he wrested the Magnetite Band, a potent defensive talisman, able to shield it’s wearer from hand with but a gesture.

But it was hidden within an ice-cave in northern Norway that he found the most dramatic of his many discoveries, the Heartroot of Yggdrasil, a stone-hard twisted stave of wood, grown up to encompass a glistening red ‘stone,’ that upon closer examination, proved to be a slowly beating heart (too small to be human, but horrific in it’s implications nonetheless). With the staff in hand, Carter could connect with the earth itself, and send tremors through the ground, or cause fantastic oversized roots to thrust up and ensnare his targets. He could also call upon the strength of the earth to ward off danger, and while it takes much focus on his part, so much so that he cannot move a single step, or even raise his arms to fend off incoming blows, few attacks can penetrate the weight of the earth itself that seems to come between himself and harmful forces.

His latest acquisition, the Mantle of Sanguine Stars, is of uncertain provenance, and he has come to suspect may not be of terrestrial origin at all! It allows him to swallow himself in its shifting depths, to conceal his location, or even step across space itself. Spreading his arms wide, he can cause the cloak to bear him aloft, or gently lower him to the ground, or even call forth a strange cloying mist that smell faintly of curry and obscures the sight of all in its reach (including himself). He generally unleashes this sanguine shroud before levitating out of the area, using his wands to rain havoc down upon those who stumble out of the area of concealment.

Carter never actually intended to use his talismans or burgeoning mystical awareness towards heroic ends, and is still something of a mercenary at heart, convinced that any artifact he lays eyes upon ‘would be safer’ in his keeping. And yet he has foiled several cults, including one that seems to regard the Elder Glyph as a sacred conduit to their dark patron, and whom he has fended off on several occasions, bringing him into contact with more ethically minded practitioners of the arts, and helping him decide ‘which side’ he would rather call friend.