As requested, more details about Ceril.
Ceril was born in a poor village in a remote region of Russian in 1810.
There’s a hole in his backstory after this. I thought about having him be raised and trained as a cunning man (folk healer). He was taught that entropy, decay, and disease were actual beings that could be communed with.
The eldest of these entities were called the Pestis Parentis or the First Infections; ancient diseases from which all other pestilences descend. They are sentient and, though they may infect millions at a time, each is a single entity (ie, all malaria is Malaria).
These ancient forces understood that without humans to infect, they and their offspring would die off. So it was in their best interest to strike a balance with humanity. Ceril was brought up in the tradition of a plague shepherd to help maintain this balance because, while the Pestis Parentis understood this, their children were not as wise nor intelligent and would often make grabs for power or growth that would endanger humanity.
His powers are exclusively the domain of entropy and disease.
He can communicate with the more advanced pestilences. He can infuse base diseases with a fraction of his own self consciousness. Ceril is able to command and control individuals that are riddled with disease as well. And finally, he can invoke symptoms or even full blown infections. He seldom has cause to do this, as much of his efforts are used to combat pestilence.
He fought against the forces of famine and decay that threatened his village during the land shortages of 1880. While he staved off much of the blight, many left their dying community in favor of immigrating to the Univted States. It was only a matter of time before Ceril followed, taking up residence in Boston.
There he took up his role as a cancer mage once against. He used a combination of plague herding and folk cures to immunize immigrant communities against the typhoid outbreak of 1893. He soothed the urban blight that arched in the joints of tenement buildings which should have collapsed under their own weight.
I’m still working out a couple adventures his had prior to the modern age.