Simon Laffey

Simon Laffey is an upper-class English wizard, and one of the new crop of Centurions that were recruited by Winston Churchill for the war effort as part of the Century Club Junior Squad initiative. A pupil of Master Theophilus - and a graduate of his wizarding school - he had previously participated in a battle against a nigromancer in Andalusia, acquiring valuable field experience for magic-vs.-magic conflict. Combined with his school's emphasis on team sports, and nepotism, this clearly recommended him as the leader of Unit 1 of the Junior Squad.

A polite, friendly, well-educated, tolerant and driven young man, Simon embodies the positive ideals of the British elite... if perhaps somewhat compromised by his obnoxious perkiness, occasional smugness and excessive optimism leaning into recklessness (compounded by the highly competitive tradition he was raised in). His Liberal politics - a product of his aristocratic family's centuries-long Whig traditions (though High Church Anglican - like Gladstone! - rather than Nonconformist) - have put him in something of a conflict with the similarly hereditary Tory Abigail Kirkbride. Other than that, however, he does not seem to have problems with anyone, least of all his other team-mates: Lin Tsao and Robert Elliott.

While his participation in the Dardanelles operation started out well enough, with him taking care of the intelligence-gathering and providing Lin with an astral map for his assassination of Mustafa Kemal, and then leading the rest of the unit on a diversion maneuver, things later suddenly went south when some sort of magical phenomenon (perhaps related to the monsters that soon flooded the battlefield) hit Simon, first making him rave insanely and then knocking him out entirely, leaving him barely alive for the next few months. Between this and Churchill's disgrace, Unit 1's operations had to be suspended. Simon survived, but would still be recovering from the experience as of mid-1917, being nowhere near ready for field duty again.

He is a master of air magic, which can be used for reconnaissance, astral projection, barriers and, of course, showing off. He also functioned as a general field expert on occult matters, like a significantly less creepy Dr. Solomon.

Probably not related to Morgana la Fey.