Tower of Animus Application

[fifthtimearound]

Player Information

Name: Catie
Personal Journal: darkjewel79 on LJ
Age: 33 *sob*
Contact Info: Plurk and AIM: Catie79
Other Characters Played: Nope

Character Information

Character Name: Caroline Martinez
Character Age: 22
Character Gender: Female

World Description: In the reality that Caroline is from, Earth is exactly as anyone would recognize it. The year is 2010, people worry about the price of gas, global warming, and international terrorism. Modern Earth has little patience for magic or the supernatural, but that does not mean that it doesn’t exist. It means that the supernatural has simply gotten better at hiding. Magic is real.

Magic is controlling and moving natural energy. That’s it. In the case of a mage, they are born with an innate ability to move and control the energy associated with the universe in general. A trained mage can pull energy from the planet they are standing on, since that energy has a relationship with mass. The relationship is not completely understood, but the best source of free power is the closest planet (usually the one right under their feet). All mage techniques are based on the basic concept of collecting, changing, and using energy. Most species ‘see’ this energy with shades of color, but some species will ‘hear’ or even ‘smell’ energy instead.

Wizards do not have this natural ability. Instead, they use training and power of will to collect, change, and use energy. Training gives them the sensitivity required to feel energy and manipulate it. They cannot pull energy from the planet, reducing the amount of power at their control. However, their training results in very tight control over their own energy and allows them to perform delicate, complicated techniques.

A blood wizard or blood mage will kill another magic user for the boost of energy that provides. A blood mage can collect that energy and keep it, a blood wizard must use it right away. Killing a magic user for this reason is usually a messy, painful business for the victim.

Mages are able to build portals between locations (called ‘porting), including other planets if they’re strong enough. Both mages and wizards can communicate across great distances via telepathy. On most planets, mages are the power behind interplanetary travel and trade. Magic users in general are considered a normal part of society on any planet aside from Earth. Beings can even have jobs based on their abilities, providing skills the same way a technician or artist would be employed on Earth. There are dozens of planets that know of each other and have political relationships, whether good or bad.

Earth is left out due to the human fear of the supernatural and the unknown. Mages and wizards are underground. There is structure and training, but much of it is focused on keeping the magic users out of sight and safe. Like all other planets, Earth has a Master Mage responsible for the overall protection of the planet and dealing with the magic user population, and he is supported by six regional mages or wizards (one for each populated continent). For those magic users with the ability, the reasons, or the funding to hire a mage at a ‘port station, they can visit other planets and meet other species. There are several planets that are friendly to their ‘primitive’ neighbors and allow humans to play tourist. Friendships are easily maintained through telepathy, even across light years.

The deities have not been particularly active on Earth, which also helps to keep the magic users out of sight. Other planets are not so lucky and have had direct interference from the deities. Between the meddling and research from various species, most magic users around the universe are aware that reincarnation is a fact, though only one mortal in existence (the Guardian) can remember past lives, and that there are other planes of existence where souls can be found. The Material Plane is where the mortals live out their lives, the Astral plane is where souls can be found between lives and where the deities can be found. It’s not somewhere mortals can go while alive.

Character Background: In this reality, there is a twenty-two year old college student in Boston, Massachusetts that has just been accepted to law school and enjoys the local bar scene when she gets the opportunity.

Caroline graduated from high school with honors in El Paso, Texas and moved to Boston for a scholarship. She has three brothers (two older, one younger) and her house in El Paso also bustles with her mother, father, paternal grandmother, her aunt, and her niece. She is the picture of normalcy, if just a bit over-achieving. Her favorite drink is a chocolate milkshake and she has an unhealthy addiction to cheeseburgers with hot sauce and onion rings. She blames her mother’s cooking for her obsession with hot sauce. She enjoys it on eggs, french fries, and just about anything else. When at home, she loves helping her mom cook up carnitas with homemade corn tortillas. Her grandmother taught her how to make tortillas from scratch when she was young, but she still thinks her grandmother does a better job with them.

She enjoys running and participated in track through high school and into college. Her specialty was the 100 meter dash and she made it to the state finals in Texas. In college she participated on the track team, but quit during her junior year when her studies became too demanding. She works as a tutor for high school students to support herself and her little studio apartment just two blocks from campus. The entire apartment isn’t much bigger than her bedroom back home, but it’s all hers and she can make it to class in about five minutes if she’s in a hurry.

Caroline’s completely boring and normal life was up-ended when she saw a house on fire while out jogging on an early Saturday morning. She called 911, but also went to investigate. She made the reckless decision to go into the house when she heard a child crying. While she was inside, the roof burned through and collapsed. Her memories of the event are a blur that make no sense, but she woke up in the woods with a strange man watching over her. Her body was covered in cuts, like her skin had tried to split open. The man opened what appeared to be a dark tear in the empty air and carried her through it.

Lying on the couch in the strange man’s perfectly normal apartment in Illinois, the situation was explained to her. Caroline was a mage, and unless she learned to manage the abilities that had been forcefully woken up, she could tear herself apart. Her abilities were powerful and her body couldn’t handle the out of control surges. The strange man that had found her, James Gardener, knew her from a previous life and was there to keep her safe and alive. He was called the Guardian. She stayed the night so he could be sure she was under control, then he sent her back to Boston to continue on with her life but with some new drains on her time.

In order to protect Caroline from herself, James started to train her to control her abilities. Power without training made her dangerous to others and also made her a target for anyone looking for a power boost. Blood mages or blood wizards could torture and kill her to boost their own abilities. He could talk to her via telepathy to keep tabs on her, and also ‘ported to her apartment to check on her and train in person. After a small incident where she accidentally blew out a wall at her college, she was removed from classes and sent to the planet Masola for emergency training with a wyvern, Nova, and his apprentice, Jade. After two weeks of intensive work, she was allowed to return to her regular life and her college classes.

It’s been three months since her stay on Masola. She’s now a part of mage society, both on Earth and on other planets. She’s been cleared to ‘port on planet on her own (so long as she’s careful and warns James she’s going to make an attempt) and just recently had to ‘port to Dallas to help sort out a situation with a blood mage. This dual life is starting to wear on her relationship with her boyfriend, Brad. ‘Porting to Dallas cost her lunch with him, and after a fiasco involving him finding three men in her bedroom (long story), it appears the relationship is over.

She is also catching up with classes so that she can graduate on time and enter law school as planned. Being a mage certainly will not pay the bills. Once she graduates, she’s agreed to spend a year in Chicago with James in order to pursue her training.

Her current training is limited and she does not have much in the way of skills. Her potential far outstrips her control, so she keeps things throttled way back for the safety of herself and others. She’s also terrible at formal magic, which is a great weakness for her. There are legends about her previous lives, but like any other mortal (aside from James), she can’t remember them. All she knows is what she can read in a history book. She has the title Archmage, making her the ranking mage on Earth, but she doesn’t like it and will typically not use it.

Considering the situation on Earth, Caroline will be very quiet about her abilities, at least at first. Once she notices that some others have unusual abilities, she may relax enough to let others see what she can do, but she will always prefer to keep the cards very close to her chest.

Personality: Caroline is, in many ways, a completely typical American college kid. She has the bad habit of skipping 8am classes, stays up late to finish papers she should have started a week ago, and has shown up to class hung over. She’s prone to procrastination for projects that she doesn’t want to do, but if a project is interesting, she will focus on it to the exclusion of everything else.

At the same time, she is very driven. She has managed a 3.85 GPA despite her high credit load and the difficult classes she selects. Her family is far from wealthy, and with her eldest brother currently residing in jail and her next oldest brother in the army due to lack of other options, she is determined to show her younger brother that anything is possible. A Hispanic girl from the wrong side of town can become a lawyer if she wants it badly enough, and the same goes for whatever he might want to be. Her drive keeps her organized. She has something to prove, and she is determined to be successful. She does have a chip on her shoulder about her background and how some people see her. Her accent and appearance stand out in New England and it can be a sore subject with her.

Growing up in a crowded house with three brothers turned Caroline into a bull headed tomboy. If there is something she wants, she simply puts her head down and marches straight toward it until she gets there. It’s a strength for a future lawyer, but also a liability. Once she’s on track, it’s very difficult to get her to change her mind. She is also something of a bull in a china shop when it comes to politically charged or delicate issues. People dropping hints or using a passive-aggressive technique will quickly discover that she does not play along with those games. She’s not uncouth and she understands the place of discretion, but she sees no reason to dance around a topic just because it’s uncomfortable.

Her stubbornness and her defensiveness about her background are her greatest vices. Caroline can get caught up in trying to prove herself to the point that she will do things that she does not have any actual interest in doing just to prove she can. Her self-image is solid, she values herself, but she is hyper-aware of socio-economic differences. She has also been known to drink in excess when the stress in her life gets to be too much.

She enjoys being with people. She thinks of home as being a place bustling with people and activity, and that’s how she loves it. She is very close to her family, particularly her mother and grandmother. With friends and family, she is protective and loyal. Her younger brother is frequently subjected to her protective tendencies, leading him to joke that he has two mothers. She was involved with a fellow student named Brad, but the relationship was strained due to the fact she has had to lie and lead a double life since her abilities as a mage awakened. She hated lying to him, but her family would be at great risk if her other skills were revealed, so she chose to protect her family at all costs.

Caroline is generally cheerful with a dry sense of humor. The more overwhelmed she feels, the more flippant she can become. She is not an optimist specifically, she considers herself a realist, but in her eyes, reality is not that bad. Becoming a mage has added considerable strain to her life, but she focuses on the positives. She has seen other planets, met other species, and now has the ability (and duty) to protect those that can’t protect themselves. It almost reminds her of why she decided to get into law. When the pressure gets to be too much, she will go outside, look up at the stars, and think about the positives as a way of coping. She sees setbacks and hardships as the price that must be paid for future opportunities.

When threatened or pushed she can get angry, but she has yet to ever experience being in a rage. Confrontations don’t bother her, she got into scuffles with her brothers and learned to stand her ground at a young age. She’ll even throw a punch or tackle someone. Anything beyond that, though, and she will baulk. In a recent confrontation she didn’t pull an attack and burned a blood mage’s shoulder clear to the bone. It was a misjudgement on her part, and the man was attempting to kill someone, but it made her sick to cause that kind of damage. Her anger is cold but short lived. She’s not prone to carrying a grudge. The only exception to this is a threat to her family or her closest friends. She is completely capable of using lethal force to protect her kin, though she will hate herself afterward. That is probably the only thing in existence that could cause her to truly lose control of her anger or her abilities.

Abilities: Caroline is a mage, which is a person born with the innate ability to manipulate natural energy. Her potential is massive though untapped. She has had limited training and her skin will split and bleed if she uses a lot of power, so she does not do much. She is currently capable of:

- Energy manipulation: She can manipulate energy. Most techniques are just variations on this. With concentration and formal work, she’s learned to lay down things like an alarm line that will warn her if it’s crossed or a weak illusion.
- Shielding: A shield formed of energy that blocks energy or physical attack. This is her strongest technique. The ability is invisible unless the observer can sense energy manipulation, and then it is basically a hazy blue ball around herself, sinking into the ground. She can handle a solid bit of damage before she starts to get exhausted and her control wavers. Shields can be made larger to protect others, but that decreases the strength. A collapsing shield backlashes on the mage, so she will drop it if she thinks she will be overpowered.
- Basic energy attack: Basically, a ball of energy that can knock someone over or, if the intent is serious, burn through flesh to the bone on impact. A small attack would be invisible unless the observer could sense energy manipulation, a serious attack would be faintly visible as a blue haze.
- Telepathy: Only with others capable of telepathy for whatever reason (mage, wizard, psychic, etc.). She can mask her thoughts and her telepathy somewhat, but that is a weak point for her.
- ‘Porting: She was just cleared for teleportation on planet with supervision (this is limited to places she has been to before or seen). It’s a technique that needs to be smoothed out some more, but she’s about 90% accurate and hasn’t had a ‘port collapse in over a month. A collapsed ‘port backlashes and will knock her out cold for an hour or two, so she’s very careful.

Sample Entries:
1. Third person entry

Caroline woke up in a room she’d never seen before and that reminded her an awful lot of the dorms from her freshman year. Once her body finally listened to her orders to get up and move, she staggered to her feet to look around the room. She didn’t remember any keggers . . . or any reason she’d be stuck in a white unitard. She found two letters waiting for her, but they had to be a joke. Right? Earth hadn’t been destroyed. This wasn’t the way that kind of thing worked! If Earth was going to be destroyed, she would have been the first to know. Possibly the second. At least in the top five.

The first order of business was to change into her jeans and a tee shirt, found in a trunk at the foot of her bed. It was unnerving that her belongings were there. That hinted at something more than just a prank. Even more unnerving was the fact that she couldn’t reach James. There was no reply to her attempts to contact him telepathically. That had never happened, it wasn’t supposed to be possible. She went out of the room, determined to discover where she was and just what was going on.

Instead of an elaborate joke or a dormitory, she found the tower. Level after level, each one different from the last and none of them familiar. If this was a joke, it was the most elaborate joke in history. Fear was starting to drag up her spine. The letters hastily shoved in her pocket started to carry more weight. Was it possible? Was her home gone? Was that why she couldn’t reach James or anyone else? But if she couldn’t reach Nova, did that mean that Masola and other planets were gone? Her entire universe?

When she found a terminal, there was a leap of hope. Terminals meant connectivity and possibly a way to get help. But again, she was disappointed.

2. First person entry

[The video feed kicks in, showing a slightly irritated young woman with black hair, dark eyes, and an exasperated expression.]

- some sort of internal network. I can’t even get to Google. Is this thing a video chat?

Of course it is. Great.

So who else is on this thing? Are these - [She holds up the crumpled letters from her room.] -- serious? At least tell me there’s somewhere I can get some chocolate. I was already having one of the worst days of my life before I woke up in this place.