# Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir

> DM-facing NPC writeup. Circle-kid clown from [[Avalon Factions#2. Student Factions & Cliques#2.5 Circle Kids / Stoners & Skaters | the stoners]] and long-game harbinger of the big bad.

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## Role

- **Age:** same year as PCs  
- **Heritage/Class:** Human (or tiefling) Sorcerer / Wild Magic or just “innately weird”  
- **Primary Faction:** [[Avalon Factions#2. Student Factions & Cliques#2.5 Circle Kids / Stoners & Skaters | Circle Kids]]  
- **Public Image:** Lovable idiot. Permanent comic relief. The guy everyone has a story about.

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## What Students Know

- Fouad is:
  - The guy who somehow manages to be at *every* party and *every* minor accident.  
  - The one who says stuff like “I meet new people every day!” to people he went to the gym with for two years.  
  - Known for:
    - Crashing *two* wagons/cars post-graduation in the “real” story → here, maybe two arcane carts / scooters / enchanted beaters.  
    - Showing up late, confused, smiling, but never quite in trouble.

- Reputation:
  - So dumb it loops back around to endearing.
  - The safest person to tell secrets to because he’ll forget them or misremember them so badly they’re useless… or so everyone assumes.

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## What He Wants

### Surface Wants

- To have a good time, always.  
- To be included:
  - Invited to hangouts, parties, Mageball tailgates, etc.  
- To never think too hard about anything.

### Deeper Wants

- To not feel broken:
  - There are gaps in his memory he can’t explain.  
  - Sometimes he wakes up in weird places with no idea how he got there.
- To avoid the creeping dread that:
  - People around him get hurt more often than seems random.

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## Methods & Tactics

- Social lubricant:
  - Will talk to anyone, anywhere.
  - Makes friends by sheer persistence.
- Accident prone:
  - Trips rituals,
  - Knocks over important items,
  - Walks into places marked “RESTRICTED” without noticing.

- People excuse it because:
  - “That’s just Fouad.”
  - “He didn’t mean it.”

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## Relationship to [[Leyline Root System | Root]] & [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] (DM Focus)

- Unbeknownst to anyone (including himself):
  - Fouadriel is the **single cleanest anchor** the Coherence has in the valley.
  - Something about his soul / mind structure:
    - Makes him easy to ride,
    - Hard to detect directly.

- D’serris’s data:
  - Shows **weird correlations**:
    - Minor spikes whenever Fouad is near stressed taps,
    - Small anomalies following his movement through campus and town.
  - He is quietly convinced that:
    - Fouad is a problem.
    - No one will believe him if he says “the dumbest kid on campus is the threat.”

- Long-term arc:
  - Freshman–Junior: pure comic relief with subtle weirdness.  
  - Senior: reveal that the entity behind the [[Leyline Crisis|Korrin Crisis]] / Coherence has been **wearing** Fouadriel as a glove, slowly pushing through.

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## Relationship to the PCs

- **Ben:**
  - Fouad thinks Ben is the coolest person alive.
  - Will 100% blow up Ben’s spot unintentionally (“Oh yeah, Stinky sells *great* weed!”).
- **Joe:**
  - Treats him like a golden retriever:
    - High-fives him, praises his plays, forgets he exists five minutes later.
- **Soren:**
  - Soren terrifies him, but the Coherence in him is fascinated by her.
  - In quiet moments, he might say things that cut uncomfortably close to her secrets, then forget he said them.

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## Secrets & Pressure Points (DM Only)

- Manifestation signs you can sprinkle in:
  - He sometimes stands perfectly still, staring at nothing, humming in exact sync with faint Root vibrations.  
  - Animals occasionally avoid him or stare at him with hackles raised.  
  - He “dreams in graphs” some nights—Root telemetry knocking at his subconscious.

- When the Root / Coherence pushes through:
  - His vocabulary spikes for a sentence, then crashes.
  - His eyes focus *too much*; posture straightens; voice gets cold for one line.
  - Then he’s back to “duhhh so anyway.”

- PCs could:
  - Misread D’serris’s obsession with him as pure paranoia.
  - Be forced, later, to decide whether they’re saving Fouadriel *from* the thing or killing both.

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## How to Play Fouadriel

- **Voice:** Friendly, slightly breathless, always one thought behind the conversation.  
- **Body language:** Loose, floppy, easily distracted, constantly knocking stuff over or fidgeting.  
- **Sample “Normal” Lines:**
  - “Brooo, I meet new people every day! …Wait, we had class together?”  
  - “I crashed my cart twice, but, like, the third one’s probably fine.”  
- **Sample “Glitched” Lines (when Coherence peeks through):**
  - (voice drops, eyes sharpen) “You shouldn’t have cut that branch. It remembers.”  
  - (then immediate reset) “Haha, branch! Like, trees and shit, right?”
- Keep him funny and harmless-feeling… until you’re ready to flip the table.