Name: Tarah el-Jaziri (Goes by "Teajay" to most people, spelled all the way out, or "Jazz" to people she likes. She has another name, but she's said it maybe three times.)

Concept: Malfunctioning Advocate Angel

Background:

Teajay has few of the answers you might expect of a member of the Host. She hasn't met the Highest, despite her certainty that there is at least one, and despite everything, she's not actually certain what happens after you pass from this world. Or, at least, what happens after the part that she's concerned with. If she's met anyone else like her, she hasn't known it, and nobody seems to be looking for her, either to tell her what to do or to tell her to stop. So, since the summer of 1949, she's walked the Earth, tasting its joys and sorrows, richness and poverty, and tending to the souls that cross her path on their way to whatever comes after.

You see, for some - not all, and not even most - when that good night comes, Tarah will be there, and she will speak on their behalf in that half-light of the spirit. To whom, she doesn't know, all that she's really certain of is that the words are important. She will tell the tale of love, of compassion, of desperation or well-meaning, circumstance and loss, and she knows something listens. She believes that while she speaks, there is an opposite that whispers a very different tale, but one she cannot hear or alter. And once the tale is told, her part is over. There is no acknowledgement, praise, or censure, only a sense that now it's time to move on.

You could call her a psychopomp, a kind hand through transition; but like so many things, Teajay isn't certain about that. She can step outside time, commune with her charge, and speak to whatever's listening, but per place in that liminality is all too brief. There is no authority instructing her where to be or who to speak with - for her time on Earth, each soul seems to have crossed her path by accident. If there is a design or a plan, Teajay doesn't understand it.

Despite all of this uncertainty, Teajay maintains an elaborate, corkscrewey kind of faith - though not so much in any kind of ineffability or even that there is a plan at all. Rather, her belief is that she is something of a happy accident, the cosmic equivalent of a dropped screw. She believes in her own purpose, and she believes she is doing good, or at least her own version of good. If she never gets her answers, she's long since come to terms with that.

Outside of her own misfit place, Tarah is passionately interested in the world, in people, and in their stories. She has known the full, vibrant tapestries of the lives she's touched, their joys and dreams, their struggles and triumphs and tragedies. The withertos and whyfores of a life fascinate her, each a puzzle or a new story. Though she may be an aspect of Death, Teajay is more than a little of a bon vivant, happy and grateful to have the life she does, and more than happy to partake in the world, from candies to lovers, along the way.

About a decade ago, Teajay's crossing with the Sunday Group happened in a way that nobody involved really could have expected. Mediums, psychics, and ghost-talkers of all kinds tend find their way to the Group, and on one fateful evening, a newer recruit saw something nobody else had ever witnessed before. She saw not only the shade of the dead man, but at his left, a figure bathed in light, and at his right, an opposite, cloaked in shadow. This would be the first advocacy that Teajay didn't finish; the psychic's power tore through that pocket world and scattered her words, and her connection to everything within, to the wind. The next six months were...complex, to say the least, but a careful recruitment campaign brought Teajay into the fold - where she's been happily drawing a paycheck since. Though, in the time since she joined the Group, she can't help but notice that she runs across a lot more people who seem to need her - a mystery she has no idea where to start unraveling.

Appearance

Athletic and of short stature, Teajay is the kind of playful tomboy you might see at the roller derby rink. While she's clearly not young, neither is she old - a few strands of silver in her dark hair are matched by the slight crinkles at the edge of her eyes, but her complexion is smooth and clear. Her skin is the rich olive color of people who live in the desert, an occasional freckle across the bridge of her nose and down one side of her face. Large, blue-green eyes sparkle like cut gemstones, with inviting lips that smile often. Her hands are quick and strong, but nothing about her suggests holding a flaming sword to smite the unworthy. She instead gives the impression of the kind of person who might be at a concert, throwing up the horns and losing herself in the music.

Accordingly, her fashion choice tends to be along the lines of jeans and thrifted tops, with more band shirts than might be healthy for her. She has a number of tattoos, many abstract, that trace from her shoulders and down her arms, her chest, and back. She likes showing them off.

Powers & Skills

This Is Your Life - When called to speak for someone, Tarah's mind is filled with a full accounting, without judgement, of that person's life; their story, their reasons, their pains and joys. That information falls into her mind like it was always there, and never goes away. Outside of that very specific circumstance, Teajay still does feel the threads of lives spinning together with hers, and in some cases can reach out and touch that information on her own. Most specifically, there are times where she can touch a person, a place, or a thing, and experience at least some of its history - a valuable tool if the stars align and she's holding an occult ritual dagger, and needs to know where the cultists might be going next. On the other hand, that feeling can be genuinely unsettling when you're on a date.

You Know, Like Caine in Kung Fu - Teajay has been to a lot of places, met a lot of people, and done a lot of living. She has a broader lived experience than you might expect given her impish smile. There's a decent chance she might know someone to call and ask about the pre-Christian runes inscribed on a rib bone that popped up somewhere that you don't usually find rib bones. Or at least, that look like that.

I Can Do This All Day - Teajay seems to have a nearly bottomless well of physical stamina and mental fortitude, which are both useful when the stories she has to tell are complicated. In the mortal world, it means she enjoys biking and running, and that when the Group has to go on a road trip, that she often gets the longest shifts at the wheel, so everyone else can try to sleep in the back of the rented Hyundai.

Notes

Ageless, But Not Immortal - I don't think Tarah is physically immortal in any particular way. She doesn't seem to age, but her continued existence isn't due to resilience or a mutant healing factor; it's by dint of "having not been shot or stabbed enough yet." If she's hurt enough to die, I think she would.

The Sound of Her Wings - Teajay doesn't have a flaming sword, a halo, or a crown of multifarious eyes, but I think she might possess a pair of wings, manifested at her own choice. They have no particular physical benefit; they don't allow her to fly and they aren't bulletproof. Instead, I think they'd be more of a mark of station - her 'proof' that she is what she says she is. Since that question never really comes up - her simple presence at a soul's side is more than enough - there might be maybe one other person in the world who has seen them.

Stepping Outside - When speaking for the dead, Teajay steps into what feels very much like another dimension or plane of existence. This place appears to be outside of time and away from the concerns of the mortal plane, but, crucially, it is not a place that Tarah can enter at will. She cannot go there to avoid bullets, tentacled monsters, or an ex. Importantly, she can't bring anyone else there with her, even if she wanted to. It is not a way to save someone or give them more time.

Character Name: Blythe Cordova

Concept: Possessed Librarian

Background:

All her life, Blythe was a practical woman. She had a practical job at a practical institution, complete with organization and research. She loved her wife despite her proliclivities for more occult hobbies, but then, no one was without some fault. Her job, her wife, and their life together was as perfect as two very different people in love could make it.

And then, Blythe Cordova's wife was murdered in a string of attacks against women who practiced witchcraft.

Revenge is not a practical thing. It does not improve the life of the avenger nor does it bring back the dead. And yet, for all Blythe’s unflabable practicality, revenge consumed her after her wife’s death. When local law enforcement failed, she turned to a string of unsuccessful private detectives, then her own frustrating investigation. Nothing turned up a more than a whisper of her wife’s killers, and the news was rife with the bodies of new victims. Her reason for turning to the occult was logical: it was the only thing left.

Her wife’s herbal remedies and household charms held nothing for her but the ache of tender memory. Blythe needed something darker to suit her purpose. She searched for it in strange, old books and stranger internet forums, sifting through improbable, baseless claims with all the skill of a research librarian. Eventually, she did find power, and it's name was Kolratheth. The process of summoning and entering a contract with the demon was not difficult. A little blood, an invitation to house it in her mind and keep it regularly fed, and she had what she needed to find and destroy her wife’s killers.

Blythe keeps a secret hope tucked in the corners of her mind where Kolratheth will not see: that the Sunday Group will one day help rid her of her dark passenger. For now, though revenge keeps them both content.

Physical Description:

A curvy woman in her mid-thirties of Latin American and causcasian decent. She has long, black hair and wide brown eyes so dark they appear black. Blythe is careful and immaculate in her dress and appearance, and appears most often in stylish business wear. She is middling in height with high cheekbones, an aristocratic nose, and pouting lips.

Powers and Skills:

Curses and Contracts: the basics of any self-respecting demon’s repertoire. Binding, limited only by the caster’s imagination, and ranging wildly from deadly to painful to irascibly irritating. They stick best when you really mean it.

SinAmp™: like volume nobs, only for sinful desires and negative emotions. The less guarded the mind, the easier to toy with.

Oops! My Demon is Showing: It happens to all of us now and again. Your anger gets the better of you or adrenaline sweeps you away in a tense moment, and next thing you know, your fingernails look like claws and your mouth has gone too wide and too full of needle teeth.

Character Name: Alcander Mires

Concept: Scarred Paranormal Detective

Background: Alcander's upbringing was atypical, though notably not paranormal. His parents, Nestor and Candice, were both Greek, having moved to the United States for business, finding a home in western Florida. Alcander was taught both English and Greek by his father, and his mother gave him a love of the ancient classics. Not only of Greek origin, but the myths of many cultures, most notably Near Eastern and Norse. He was encouraged to pursue a career in law by his father, and Alcander notably excelled in school. By age 16 he had graduated highschool, and was sent to live with his cousins in Athens, pursuing an undegraduate in law. Unfortunately for his parent's expectations, the locale and historical sites rekindled his love of myth and history, and soon he changed his vocation to archaeology and the classics.

He found he wanted to remain in Greece, and even went so far as to advocate for his inclusion in the HAF for the compulsory military service, spending a full 12 months in the Hellenic Army. There he met his closest friends, Castor, Irakles, and Petros. All four were discharged by age 19, and they all went to university together. Alcander would never forget those three years he spent with them, laughing until they cried and even getting into a few fights downtown with rowdy louts on drunken nights.

Once they each graduated, the four went on several digs together. Six months later, they took a dig with a team a few miles outside of Argos.

The site was closed a day later, and save for a few locals swearing they heard a keening, animal wail in the wind, no one ever found out what exactly happened to the team.

Alcander still won't speak on that day. He emerged out of the ground bloodied and covered in dust, his friends gone. Even when he gets particularly drunk, one can only get the words 'Tartarus' and 'Hydra' out of him. Alcander spent a few weeks settling his affairs, and then he left Greece without a word on where he was going. Every now and then he would call his family, speaking in brief sentences on his whereabouts. Istanbul, Edinburgh, Stockholm, the Song Mountains, San Paulo... Five years off the map, only to return to the states, quieter and world weary, but otherwise healthy.

Physical Description: Alcander cuts a wiry but not unpleasant figure. His mane of wavy and unremarkable hair, along with his earthy brown eyes give him an unintimidating and approachable look, particularly before his travels. He has a fine nose that accentuates his youthful face nicely, and a cut chin to match. His eyes are cold or distant, however. The bags under them betray his frequent, invasive dreams.

He used to wear casual, but fashionable clothes. Button downs he would keep open and khakis or shorts, frequently going to the beach. Now, his shirts are wrinkled and his trousers are functional but unremarkable. He's almost never seen without a long duster-like coat, though he still wears the Greek orthodox bronze medallion his father gave him, hanging against his skin from a sturdy sterling silver necklace.

Powers and Skills:

Descendant of Apollo: The years lie lightly on him, and his ability to survive and endure harsh injuries are due to his lineage. One might call him a 'hero' in the Greek tradition, but he certainly would not.

Knowledge: A nymph claimed he was closer to Hermes than Apollo in spirit, and it was due to his knowledge of both mythology, language, and forensics.

Pacts: Has a number of otherworldly contacts, acquaintances, and bound entities to call upon when in need.

Minor Sorcery: Has no real talent for it, but has learned some occult arts to help him in his pursuits.

Military Training: Knows basic combat and has limited firearms training.