Louis

A teacher of soul-based magics at the Gwyndinas Mage's Society — a dapper, animated scholar (waistcoat, tie, gold pocket watch) who no longer practices magic himself and has settled into teaching. One of the Society's two soul specialists (the other being researcher Ella Stray); the longest-tenured of the two. He has personally visited the underworld and the hells.

Session 15

• The party's first Mage's Society interview on the Smiling Sam case. Using two bottles of brown liquid as props, he explained the theory of the soul: at death something exits the body to an afterlife, and that moment is when a soul is most vulnerable to capture — but such capture would leave detectable magical traces lasting a week or so.
• Established two case-defining points: (1) Speak with Dead never contacts the soul, only a "printed moment" of residual animated spirit clinging to the empty body — and when a victim can only scream, the "bottle is shattered," with nothing cogent left to converse with; (2) because the resurrections succeeded (the victims simply refused to return), the souls must be free, not captured — you can pour the drink; they just won't drink it.
• Debunked the demon theory: having visited the hells, he says demons trade in coin and favors, not souls, and are not behind these killings — redirecting the party from soul-stealing toward the missing blood.