Professor Petras Machzulias the retired botanist

Petras is a scientist more than anything. He loves them past the point of a hobby gardener. Petras’ home is where he works. His obsessing over it has lead to it being his work more than his home. A conservatory for all his rare discovaries, a personal library containing all the literature needed for the categorization and research into his field. A small collection of his own work into the morphology and form of plants can be found there too. Its hard to describe Petras without looking at his science. He is orderly and precise. Although getting into the last quarter of his life, he is still strong at heart and mind. One would compare him to an oak, stubborn and unmovable, but warm and sheltering. Being a teacher of Botany he works with many young scientists, allowing them into his life. He sees them like saplings; he sees most of the world like a plant. He feels the need to nourish and support them as they blossom and grow. He not only applies science to plants, but to his relationships as well. The people he knows well enough have their own text written about them in his library, and he watches society as if it were a colony of plants working in a single ecosystem.

Being of an older age he finds himself anchored to his home, like an oak. He’s very much a traditionalist and refuses to use modern technology to aid him in his work. Old technology was reliable, and allowed a feel of achievement to it. It took Petras many years to collect all his books, they were a strong goal in his life, and he sees each one as a trophy of his achievements.

Although some may see Petras as bland, he likes to think he has a small element of colour. Hidden out of public view is his laboratory, where many poisonous and strange concoctions are created. Just like his library, lining the walls are vials of dangerous extracts combinations. He doesn’t want anything malicious done with them, but he finds the hobby eccentric and fun, but also important, as he is working with the plants he has studied all his life.

Petras is short, but stocky, standing at 5ft. His hair has completely fallen out apart from his white bushy eyebrows that seem to sprout out from his dark rimmed glasses. The life of expeditions into forieign lands to find the rarest of plants has worn his face. Almost branch like wrinkles sprout out of the center of his face, and all collect on his wizened jaw. He regularly wears his custom made bright white lab coat, he hated the usual ones, and they dragged along the ground. An unusual site for a scientist, he wears a tool belt, a rather large leather one, with excessive amounts of tools and measuring devices, yet another collective habit he has delved into.