A close friend of mine who has played Mage for as long as I have contacted me the other day with an idea for a character. His concept was solid, and the amount of detail provided in building the backstory into this character was something that should be more regularly seen among players. With his permission (and yours), I'd like to tell you about it. No objections? Great.
So, this character would be a Euthanatos, a defense lawyer who uses his magic to determine the innocence or guilt of his clients. He would represent the guilty for a large fee, but would represent the innocent for free. Furthermore, he would offer his services to prominent supernatural creatures at a premium rate, ensuring that they have an airtight alibi if they messed up; ensuring that they are offered bail instead of locked away until their trial; maybe handling property contracts for more prominent night folk, overseeing the things that would keep them safe and hidden from the public at large; perhaps even helping a tribe of werewolves legally protect the land by getting it recognized as a state park or some other recognized piece of protected land. The character would be morally gray (almost a necessity for lawyers), and would have to ensure that he was successful enough in his career to develop a reputation, which would allow him to convince these night folk to employ his services. He would use Entropy to find clientele (as well as doing it the old fashioned way), with Time, Mind, and Entropy employed in the court room (when necessary) to help him win trials.
Most of his Effects would be channeled through a blood-stained Mexican peso, one of those coins that has silver on the outside and a brass center. He got this coin from an incident on one of his early cases when he first started out as a lawyer. He wasn't representing the man, but his law firm was, and the Mexican cartel put a hit on this man, himself a Mexican national. When the hit went down, the mage was with the target, and got to see the full effect of his execution. One of the hit men decided not to kill this young lawyer (the mage), so he pulled a peso from the dead man's pocket, stuck it in the lawyer's hand, and said "Here's some advice: skip town." He did so, because even though he was a young, idealistic mage and lawyer, he wasn't not about to take on the cartels. But he's always held onto that coin, a constant reminder of his brush with death, and the consequences of his actions and failures.
When I heard about this character, my first thought was that he sounded like a World of Darkness version of Matthew Murdock (Daredevil), and while that inspiration is definitely there, he's less SJW. He's not a superhero, defending other superheroes; he's a lawyer, and his job is to defend whoever he's chosen as his client; sometimes that's gonna be murderers and thieves, but as long as they can pay his rate, he's fine to do it. What really made me want to share this character concept with all of you was not just that he's an interesting one, with lots of opportunities to tie him into various games (Vampire, Changeling, Werewolf, etc). The amount of work that my friend put into designing his backstory for his focus was inspiring for me. This character was created with deliberate care and thoughtfulness, designing his quirks and failings as readily as his paradigm and ethical worldview. Take note; you should be having more players like this in your games.