Timothy Hunter (New Earth)

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Timothy "Tim" Hunter is a young mage, destined to one day become Earth's most powerful magic user.

History

Origins

Tim was born as a conduit for the raw magic that shared the name of the most famous magician to serve it; "The Merlin". In order to increase his power and his legend, the Merlin arranged for Tim to have multiple, contradictory stories about his birth that nonetheless were each equally true. He was at one and the same time the illegitimate son of Tamlin the Falconer and Titania the Queen of Faerie, the son of Tamlin and a beautiful human girl called Mary and any number of other possible origins. At some point, these multiple origins converged and Tim ended up being raised in the Mundane World by William Hunter and Mary - although he later discovered that his mother Mary wore a glamour stone hiding her true nature and appearance, possibly as the brownie Bridie who smuggled him to Earth at Queen Titania's request or possibly another as yet undiscovered origin for the young magician.

As an infant, Tim still had access to his powers as an Opener, for example bringing imaginary friends like Awn the Blink or the Wobbly to life - and claiming and reshaping Tanger and Crimple, who had already served numerous Openers in numerous forms throughout history. He also unconsciously created thousands of alternate worlds with thousands of alternate Tim's. Each of these Tims was a portion of the original, the part that felt particular feelings or suffered particular pain that the original could cope with, and in separating them Tim loses the ability to feel those feelings again, leaving him disconnected from his world and his feelings for most of his childhood and teenage years. One particular early trauma was the death of his mother in a car accident: his father was the driver of the vehicle, losing an arm in the accident and retreating into his grief so far that he spent most of Tim's life sitting in his armchair drinking and watching old films.

Choices

As he started to grow up, Tim started to attract the attention of mystic groups such as the Cult of the Cold Flame, who wanted to seduce him into becoming a force for evil. Indeed, at this point Tim's destiny was at a crossroads: he could become the greatest magician of his age for good or for evil, or indeed never learn of the world of magic at all. In order to resolve this ambiguity - and hopefully prevent his turning to evil - a group of mystics jokingly called The Trenchcoat Brigade set out to offer Tim the chance to learn all about magic. Tim agrees to be taught, and then make his decision about whether to let magic into his life or not. The Phantom Stranger is his guide to the past of the DC Universe, where he meets with many important figures of the past including an Atlantean sorcerer who warns him away from magic, a young Merlin and Jason Blood prior to being bonded to Etrigan, Zatara (father of modern day hero Zatanna) and Sargon the Sorcerer before being returned to the present.^[12] Tim is then passed over to John Constantine, who shows him the present world of magic, traveling to America to meet Madame Xanadu, the Spectre and his (then) host Jim Corrigan, Baron Winters and an adult Jason Blood. When the Trenchcoat Brigade discover that Tim is in imminent danger from the Cult of the Cold Flame, Constantine leaves the boy in the care of Zatanna whilst they face the cult in Calcutta. The female magician makes quite an impression on the young boy, and comes to play an important role in his later life.^[13]

With the cult seemingly destroyed, Doctor Occult takes Tim to the plains of existence that border the Mundane World, such as The Dreaming and Faerie. Whilst there, Queen Titania lays a number of subtle snares to try to trap Tim with her - snares which he manages to impress her by almost accidentally avoiding. ^[14] Mister E then shows Tim several possible futures - including the coming magical war that Tim will play such an important role in - and attempts to kill him at the end of time. Tim is saved by the intervention of Death of the Endless, who sends him home before she turns the lights out on the universe. His journey complete, Tim is offered the choice of whether to accept magic in his life or not: he declines, immediately regretting his choice. However, he has been duped: his choice was made when he agreed to learn about magic, and his future destiny is now assured.^[15]

Coming to terms

Left back in his old life, Tim becomes disillusioned with a magic that seemed to have deserted him - until he is kidnapped and tested by the falconer Tamlin. Tim is taken to a dying corner of Faerie and left to find his own way home. He finds his way home only to find a girl called Marya waiting for him. She tells Tim of Free Country, a magical realm where abused and mistreated children can go to escape their troubles and never grow old. She has been tasked by the ruling counsel of Free Country to bring Tim there. At first, Tim is reluctant, but soon she convinces him, and they go Free Country. Once there, it is revealed that the children of Free Country want Tim to use his magic to fuel the realm so it can contain all the world's children. However, Tim's magic proves too powerful and would kill realm, so he refuses. The council of Free Country eventually realize that the realm was never meant to contain all the world’s children. Tim and other magical children who have been brought there escape with the mundane children.^[16]

Once Tim returns he has a brief reunion with Tamlin. After the falconer is dragged to Faerie to face Titania, Tim discovers that the man may be his father. In trying to follow Tamlin, Tim ends up trapped in a corner of the realm walled off by the Manticore. Tim defeats the creature, but is injured in the process. The blood from Tim's wound contains such power that it restores Faerie. However, Tim's Manticore wound is poisoned and he is dying from it. As Tim lies dying, he meets Death again. Tamlin is forced to sacrifice his own life in order to save Tim from the effects of the Manticore's venom. After Tim is save, Death manages to make him see that whoever his parents are, he is still the same boy.^[17]

Normal Life

After his encounter in the The Fair Lands, Tim tried to get on with his normal life, slowly realizing that his neighbor Molly O'Reilly had feelings for him when she grew jealous of a new girl at school, Leah, who also showed interest in Tim.^[18] Unbeknownst to Tim, Leah was a succubus and her purported father, Martyn, was the last survivor of the Cult of the Cold Flame. Martyn was forcing her to pursue Tim. Later, Martyn used magic to badly burn Tim’s adoptive father.^[19] When Martyn was mysteriously murdered and Tim became Leah’s master, Tim set her free.^[20]

Soon, Molly learned that Tim was a mage. While she was scared at first, she accepted it and became his girlfriend.^[21]

Around this time, Auberon, the King of The Fair Lands and husband to Queen Titania, travelled to the human world and was tricked into losing his soul, which left his body a shell that would respond to any order. Tim and Molly found Auberon and helped him get his soul back. When Titania appeared to collect Auberon, she revealed that Tim was her son. However, Auberon doubted this because Tim had no fairy blood. Auberon and Titania returned to the Fair Lands, with Tim once more unsure of his true origins. Unbeknownst to Auberon, Titania was actually born a human. Thus, it was true that she was Tim’s mother, and that Tamlin was his father.^[22] However, Tim’s origins will forever remain a mystery because Merlin seemingly arranged for Tim to have multiple, contradictory birth stories that were all each equally true.

Also around this time, a future version of Tim who called himself Sir Timothy Hunter took an interest in Tim. In fact, he was the one who killed Martyn. In Sir Timothy’s possible future, he became evil after making a deal with the demon Barbatos to sell his memories. Sir Timothy learned that all other timelines that could possibly lead to his possible future had been extinguished and that if Tim made the wrong choices, Sir Timothy would be extinguished with his possible future. Further, Sir Timothy had lost his Molly and was constantly attempting to recreate their love with alternate versions of Molly. However, he continually failed.

After Tim and Molly saved Auberon, Molly ended up in Hell due to the machinations of Barbatos, who was attempting to escape Hell. Tim travelled to Hell and found Molly. When they were reunited, Tim filled the realm with red roses. Soon, however, they were again and separated. Sir Timothy found Molly and told her his origins. He begged Molly to keep Tim from ending up like him and to make sure Tim never dealt with demons. Later, Molly was again placed in danger, but Sir Timothy sacrificed himself to save her. When Tim again found Molly and returned her to earth, she made him promise to never deal with demons and he agreed. Barbatos remained in Hell. ^[23]

Desperate not to hurt Molly, Tim later allowed the amoral Circe to tattoo him with two magical tattoos, purportedly designed to protect his girlfriend: a scorpion (meant to keep him from practicing ill-advised magic and being disrespectful by stinging him) and a butterfly (which keeps him emotionally distant and unable to form relationships).^[24] Tim was able to remove the scorpion tattoo, but the moth tattoo stays with him for some time.^[25]

Mentor

Deciding that he needs a mentor to teach him magic, Tim remembers Zatanna and sets out on a road trip across America to find her. Along the way, he meets Leah again and the two begin the journey together.^[26] On their journey, they are at first unable to find Zatanna and head into the dessert on a camping trip. There, they share a night kissing under the stars before magic intervenes. They encounter a mermaid which traps Tim and Leah is forced to agree to be transformed into a mermaid to save Tim. Perhaps because of the influence of the moth tattoo, or because of the loss of so many of his other selves to alternate worlds, Tim doesn't even search for her when he wakes, simply continuing his journey to Zatanna.^[27] Because of his innate bond with the realm, Tim wanders into the Fair Lands and is reunited with Molly, who had also been transported there, before they leave together and eventually find Zatanna. ^[28] The magician tries to teach Tim to pay attention to what's going on around him, rather than waste his life chasing magic, but she ultimately fails: when Molly - already disappointed with Tim for not caring how her own adventures in Faerie have affected her - discovers that he didn't trust her enough to tell her about his night with Leah, she breaks up with him and returns home to her family.^[29]

Tim and Molly’s break-up sends Tim into a downward spiral, but does ultimately result in the removal of the moth tattoo.^[30] More connected with the world again, Tim realizes that he doesn't need his magic and releases it.^[31] Unfortunately, this only causes more problems when the angels and the demons - both being manipulated by Shivering Jemmy of the Shallow Brigade of Chaos - go to war over who will possess the freed power. The battles disrupt Tim's father's second marriage to a woman called Holly. Also, the war between the angels and the demons leads to the death of Tim’s guardian angel, Araquel. Eventually, Tim is able to stop the war by giving Jemmy the thing for which she was truly looking, which is, absurdly, ice cream.^[32]

Back to Normal

Tim's new family - including a step-brother called Cyril - try to settle back to normality, while Tim enjoys his new freedom from magic. Then he finds the box that Leah used to live in: picking it up, he finds himself sucked inside it and trapped inside a small square of ground in a vast forest. He spends a lifetime there, talking to a tree that grew from a seed that fell inside his patch of ground. When a fire starts to destroy the forest, Tim's anger puts him back in touch with his magic as he tries desperately to save his one tree... and then finds himself returned outside the box, not a second older than the moment he was first trapped inside it. Waiting for him is Leah, who trapped him in the box in the hope of teaching him an important lesson about his magic. But the lesson hasn't been learnt in the way that she hoped, because of Tim's focus on the small scale: it wasn't the destruction of the forest that prompted him to reconnect with his magic, but the threat to the single tree. Exasperatingly, Leah cannot even decide if Tim is wholly wrong in thinking that way. Instead, she leaves Tim with the important reminder that he might try to throw away his magic, but he will never wholly succeed: it is a part of him, and always will be.^[33]

Perhaps a little wiser, Tim begins school at Bardsley boarding school - Cyril's school - where he forms a strong bond with their newest teacher, Thomas Currie.^[34]

Currie teaches Tim about more than most teachers, however: he is the creation of one of the alternate Tim's created in Tim's childhood, and teaches about the thousands of alternate worlds and how they were created - and how they are being slowly destroyed by Tim's Other, an alternate version of the boy who wants to kill him and take his place as the true Tim Hunter. Currie hopes that he will have years to teach Tim the magic he will need to defeat his Other, but the Other arrives shortly after him and ruins any chance of a reconciliation with Molly before causing the deaths of Tim's step-mother, and his father. Thomas Currie manipulates Tim into creating another alternate Tim. Currie’s plan is that he and the false Tim can confront the Other, and, in doing so, die thus convincing the Other that the true Tim is dead. The Other kills Currie and the false Tim, thinking himself finally free to take Tim’s place. ^[35]

With his magic now truly gone - syphoned off and hidden away by Currie until Tim has the mastery to reclaim it - Tim sets off to follow the instructions left by his teacher in where to go to learn magic. However, he is blackmailed into taking Cyril with him: when Cyril gets his foot stuck in a train track, Tim makes no attempt to save him - and when he saves himself, Cyril makes off with all of Tim's instructions. With nowhere to go, Tim wanders aimlessly through the gateways between the worlds that the Other had forced open with his usurped power before ending up at the Inn Between the Worlds, using his mother's glamour stone to disguise himself as a girl called Mary.^[36]

Return to Magic

Living as Mary and working at the Inn, Tim becomes best friends with a girl called Joh - a relationship complicated when she sees him as Tim and falls in love with him, forcing Tim to admit the truth. The two are forced to flee, however, when the Wild Hunt - a god-killing band of hunters trapped for two-thousand years by a compact of rulers from Heaven, Faerie, Hell and other realms - are manipulated by a disguised Auberon into hunting Tim and destroying the Inn. Scared and alone, Joh and Tim find some comfort from each other, with Tim losing his virginity to his friend - thinking that he had always assumed his first time would be with someone else.^[37]

Tim manages to avoid his fate at the hands of the Hunt only by challenging and defeating their leader and taking up his position, having to learn to kill a living creature so that he can lead them. He then returns to Earth to reclaim his magic and defeat the Other to reverse the damage done in opening all the gates between the worlds, giving up his leadership of the hunt by allowing another member to challenge and defeat him in non-mortal combat.^[38]

Reclaiming His Destiny

In order to defeat the Other, Tim needs the help of the demon Barbatos - help which he can only obtain by selling a memory and sealing his fate as discovered by Molly. Tim faces up to his responsibilities, and sacrifices his future: Barbatos takes the memory of Tim's creation of his Other, making it impossible for the Other to exist separately from Tim and the many separate pieces of Tim are reunited for the first time in his life. Tim's soul is immediately forfeit to Barbatos, and he becomes his slave, spending his life living in a cardboard box torturing alternate versions of Molly while Barbatos uses his power for his own ends. Tim, now known as Sir Timothy Hunter, is eventually killed when Barbatos forces him to travel back in time to ensure that the young Tim grows up to be the demon's slave: the older Tim is killed by an outburst of the younger Tim's anger, and the demon is defeated and trapped in the Dreaming.

Forty years later, Barbatos is released and allowed to return to hell. Once free, the demon discovers the true nature of Tim's apparent defeat: the boy had hidden his soul inside the memory Barbatos took and once inside the demon it slept, slowly taking complete control of Barbatos' body until Tim owned it completely, remodeling it with his magic to resemble his own at the age of fourteen. As he took complete control, Tim looked out on the Other's ruined home finally grown-up and ready to face whatever challenges the future held with "no more whining."^[39]

The White School

Tim soon became the target of various groups seeking to kill him, and in his panic called out to the Trenchcoat Brigade for help. They advised him to enroll at the White School, where he would not only be safe but would be taught about magic. All he needed to do was speak his true name, and the gates would open and allow him in: unfortunately, when he tried "Timothy Hunter" they stayed firmly shut. Tim set off to try and discover his true name, learning from Titania that she had named her child Tamar, son of Tamlin, before he ended up in Merlin's ice caves and learned about his unique origins. Together, they defeated Tim's enemies and the young magician spoke his collection of true names to open the gates to the White School.^[40]

Tim studied at the school for many years, meeting and becoming involved with a Lakelander girl called Kalesh after saving her from being killed by mercenaries on Gemworld.

Powers and Abilities

Powers

• Sorcery: Although he still has much to learn, one of the futures seen by Mister E indicates that Tim has the mystical potential to become the most powerful sorcerer on Earth.^[41] Tim is a kind of magician known as an Opener, a being of great magical potential and near infinite possibility, who is the host of The Myrddin, the same power that was originally accessed by Merlin. Tim describes being an Opener as: "I'm a door to the source of magic. To the place where it all comes from. I'm the only person in the world who can touch magic that's still alive and fresh and strong. Everyone else is waiting for miracles. But I am one."^{[citation needed]} Timothy Magical power is near endless, so much that even with a small source of his power he was able to open the gates to create a reality storm that not even the combined powers of Heaven, Hell, Dreaming, and every other magical real was unable to accomplish. As Timothy himself states he is magic.
  • Magical Awareness: Timothy can sense things through magical means, such when he sensed when a demon was nearby him, and while not being anywhere close to death was able to see her.^[42]
  • Reality Alteration: As a opener, Tim subconsciously can create new universes that was somehow inspired by his emotions. Timothy reality warping however spans farther than that.
    • Chronokinesis: Tim can freeze time and start it again
    • Dimensional Travel: Using his powers, Tim can create rifts in reality which allow him to pass through different dimensions.
      • Teleportation
  • Shadow Construct: Tim can create a magical shadow-self.
  • Energy Negation
  • Summoning: Tim can summon a giant cloud of butterflies.
  • Metamorphosis: Tim can turn himself into a cat.
  • Telekinesis: Tim can levitate objects with his mind, like firearms.
  • Clairvoyance
  • Mind Control: Tim can take control of others mind.

Abilities

• Occultism: While still having many things to learn, Timothy is a magical prodigy in terms of knowledge, and has been taught and learned under various magic users such as Zatanna Zatara, John Constantine and Phantom Stranger.
  

Paraphernalia

Equipment

• Stone of Opening (Formerly)
• Key to Worlds (Formerly)
• Mundane Egg (Formerly)
• Lord of the Hunt's Helmet (Formerly)
• Glamour Stone (Formerly)

Related

• 129 Appearances of Timothy Hunter (New Earth)
• 40 Images featuring Timothy Hunter (New Earth)
• 75 Quotations by or about Timothy Hunter (New Earth)
• Character Gallery: Timothy Hunter (New Earth)

Footnotes

Vertigo Character
This character exists under the Vertigo Imprint which is intended for Mature Readers.Their continuity takes place within the context of Vertigo titles although they may cross over into regular DC continuity.

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