MagnetBolt

Dawn of The Coming Storm (Co-GMed with Eklispe this time!)

It actually took a while to find Alison. She was so busy reading she didn't notice people calling out to her. She sits glumly in one of the chairs, her book having been confiscated. She still isn't sure how much trouble she's in. Absently she takes a cold drink and just holds it quietly, at a loss for what to do since she can't escape into a book.

Dawn of The Coming Storm (Co-GMed with Eklispe this time!)

Judith is probably going to have a lot of questions later about where Alison went. For now, though, Alison can distract herself with a book instead of worrying about that. It's a riveting thriller about a killer virus from space and frantic efforts to stop it, though the main character is betrayed by communist agents!

She's so into the story that someone is probably going to have to come and get her.

Dawn of The Coming Storm (Co-GMed with Eklispe this time!)

Alison screamed as the wolf ran past her, the construct hitting her legs and tipping her over. She froze in midair and steadied herself before releasing her spell, avoiding tripping only because of her magic, rather than any physical fitness.

"Maybe these woods aren't as safe as I thought." She muttered. "Maybe..."

Alison huddled down beside a tree, trying to hide. All she had to do was stay out of sight for a few minutes. As long as no one investigated her little scream it would be fine. Just fine.

In the meantime, she had something else to occupy herself. She looked around to make sure no one was watching and pulled out a worn paperback book, one of the dozen or so books she'd brought on the trip with her. She settled down and started to read.

Dawn of The Coming Storm (Co-GMed with Eklispe this time!)

Alison looks at the can she was given. It's not much of a weapon. If she had to guess - and she's good at guessing - she was given something this harmless so she wouldn't be a danger to herself or others. For a moment she lets her power flow around it, and she gets a sense of it being assembled in some workshop, filled and assembled by hand instead of on an assembly line. The contents were a myatery, a blind spot. Miss Lee had said it would disrupt magic.

"This is such a terrible idea," she sighs, talking to herself. "Maybe I should just find somewhere quiet to sit this out..."

With the trees she could probably find a safe spot to wait for the game to end. And Judith did tell her to flank then.

Alison carefully makes her way into the brush, watching her steps to avoid falling or making too much noise.

Dawn of The Coming Storm (Co-GMed with Eklispe this time!)

Alison stood up quietly, leaving the room worried and absorbed in her own thoughts. She wasn't the type to do anything more athletic than walk to the corner store, but she'd rather find somewhere else to be than try and make small talk.

Did Miss Lee make the teams like that on purpose? Maybe we're the least reliable and she wants to be there to watch us...

She stopped only a few steps outside the room, enough to get away fron the crowd, and leaned against a wall. Alison took out her notebook and considered the facts, making quick notes as she flipped through the last few pages she'd written.

It was clear everyone here was new, to Miss Lee if nothing else. With how much she had organized already, and the information under her control...

It's fair to assume Judith Lee is likely the strongest person here, and with her knowledge of the terrain, whatever training she has, and the dossiers she has on us, she is the only person with all the information on this scenario. With such an overwhelming advantage, she's probably acting as a ringer and will hold back to keep things fair.

She tapped her pen against the paper and underlined a few things.

She likely has a strategy already in place for this game, formed with more complete information than I have and with more time to consider the details.

Alison put the notebook away and took a deep breath.

"Why couldn't it be something like Trivial Pursuit instead?"

Dawn of The Coming Storm (Co-GMed with Eklispe this time!)

Alison cautiously puts up her slender hand. She's been sitting in the back of the room, largely silent save for the sound of pen scratching on paper as she tskes notes in a small leatherbound notebook. Her handwriting is, aside from being almost incomprehensibly messy, in a form of shorthand that she taught herself and quite indecyperable to anyone looking over her shoulder.

She looks nervous. With her plain, dull clothing (purchased at a secondhand store just for the trip - she didn't have clean laundry or time to go to the laundromat) she faded into the background as soon as anything more interesting appeared to be a more worthy focus of attention. It's likely more than one person forgot she was there entirely.

"Excuse me," she asks. Her voice comes out rough and scratchy. It's been a long time since she said anything. It could be the first time some have heard her speak at all, too nervous to make small talk with a room full of strangers. "We're not expected to-" she swallows, clearing her throat. "To do any fighting, are we? I thought this would just be research a-and analysis."

Dawn of The Coming Storm (Co-GMed with Eklispe this time!)

Plus it's the first post. I'm sure he wants to make it memorable and triple check that there aren't any mistakes. I eagerly await whatever is in store for us.

Dawn of The Coming Storm (Co-GMed with Eklispe this time!)

Alison Azif

Name: Alison Azif

Age: 32

Physical Description: Alison is an average-sized woman who tends to dress very sensibly, typically in sweaters and skirts with dark tights, though in warmer weather she'll wear a turtleneck or short-sleeve button-down shirt depending on just how warm it is. She doesn't show much of her pale skin and is the kind of person that just avoids attention. She fades into the background, her wardrobe of dark (but not black - black is too depressing, she says) clothing helping with that.

She's slightly below average height, with thin-rimmed glasses that she doesn't need to read but make it more comfortable. Her hair is mousy brown and she has hazel eyes that can look like anything from moss green to gray to brown depending on the lighting.

She is, in a word, harmless looking. She is not an enemy agent.

Important Items: Aside from the usual things one values for sentimental reasons (photo albums, knicknacks, and so on) her most valuable (to her) possession is a bracelet that belonged to her grandmother, who has since passed. It's a somewhat worn and beaten ring of gold-plated silver, with no real value and the silver showing through where the gold is wearing thin, but it's all she has to remember her favorite relative.

Alison also has an apartment, her furniture largely from the same estate sales that fuel her workplace. She spends quite a bit of time there, reading and painting, though she has sold very few of her paintings.

Short Bio: Alison is an underachieving woman who is happy to live a life without a lot of luxury as long as there's not a lot of surprise, either. Her mother was the black sheep of the family and she raised Alison as a single parent, with all the stress and doting and bonding that it implies. At this point in her life they're more like friends than family.

Alison doesn't talk about her distant family. They are probably European.

Alison works in a used book store, spending most of her day shelving books and helping people find things in the chaotic stacks. She does try and generally keep things organized but there's simply not enough time and she's not an obsessive enough person to empty the shelves and really sort things out.

She sells her paintings at the book store as well, as she has yet to get enough of a following even for a local art gallery. She sells few paintings, as most find the abstract works (largely gradients of dark colors and vague shapes) to be quietly distressing. There are no returns allowed.

Alison enjoys listening to numbers stations while at work as background noise.

You would think, working in a used book store, that it's obvious where a mysterious book of power would turn up, mixed in with the newest shipment from a library or estate sale. Nothing that exciting has ever happened in the store.

No, she ended up being given a Malakim Record. She was returning home when a strange, mumbling man, obviously homeless, tried to push the book into her hands. Alison gave him money just to get him to go away, more afraid of him than curious. She didn't even know what she had until she got home, and no one has been able to find the man she described.

Alison wants to lead a quiet life, and considers this whole thing to be trouble she doesn't need. She doesn't handle new situations well, getting stressed out by the unknown.

She has two pet fish. She hasn't named them. She doesn't want to get attached.

Alison has never been outside of the United States. This fact can be confirmed with any number of reliable witnesses. Investigating her activities is of course pointless as she is a normal woman.

---

Spell List:

All of Alison's spells are from the Timespace school. Her power is quite weak, according to her. She so rarely casts spells that most people believe that to be true.

Do not believe her.

Shantak Air-Anchor: Alison can fix her location in spacetime relative to a surface, effectively nailing her mass in place. For example, if Alison was falling down the stairs she could use this spell to stop herself in mid-air by fixing her location relative to the ground, giving her time to reposition herself and land safely. Her momentum is not conserved, but is set to that of the relative surface - if used in a car she won't go speeding out of the windshield when it slows or turns, for the same reason she doesn't fly off into space when using it relative to the surface of the Earth.

De Marigny's Clock: A mirror of the Shantak Air-Anchor, Alison can to a limited extent fix her location in time. She hasn't mastered the use of this yet, and mostly this serves to make her immune to outside influences on her passage through time. In theory, she could fix her time relative to something moving at a different rate through time, but in normal conditions this has no effect - unless one counts a few experiments done with her holding atomic clocks. As a consequence Alison experiences time (very slightly) faster than the rest of the Earth. This has made her insecure about her age. De Marigny's Clock allows Alison to cast spells almost instantly and in rapid succession, though this quickly expends her energy, much like sprinting drains endurance.

Scimitar of Barzai: This power creates a new (tiny) region of spacetime in the form of a plane. Typically this is bounded by an object, with the effect that a new, totally empty area where the object was previously contiguous. In simple terms, it neatly divides objects without cutting them - imagine teleporting something's left half a milimeter away from its right half. The created vacuum induces a distinct popping sound when this spell is used, and the larger the object cut, the more effort this spell takes to cast. Alison must touch the object to be cut with her fingertip, making a motion to describe the orientation of the plane. The material to be cut is totally irrelevant - tank armor separates as easily as a pillow. As usual this will not work on platinum, as she is unable to create the new region of spacetime within the material. Alison's fingernails glow with a near-ultraviolet light while using this power.

Atlantis Strike: The opposite of the Scimitar of Barzai, the Atlantis Strike eliminates space between two objects, allowing for nearly-instantaneous movement (though as no movement actually takes place describing it this way is wrong in almost every way except the practical) along a straight, short line. This 'movement' is a result of space warping, and does not produce or change momentum. If used repeatedly in the same area, this can create a navigational hazard - Alison used this to move around her shop and quickly found that her shop was becoming smaller on the inside. Used outside and sparingly, the effect is forgettable, though someone able to see distortions in spacetime could make use of the shortened paths. The eliminated spacetime 'heals' over the course of a day or two, and Alison is unable to eliminate space that contains anything solid - even liquid presents great difficulty.

Warped Passage: While concentrating, Alison can warp space in a plane. This warped space makes objects take exponentially more time to reach her, as they're trying to pass through significantly more distance. The warped space is visible as a significant blueshifting from Alison's side and a redshifting from the other side. She can only maintain a field roughly the size of a doorway for any significant length of time. People passing through the field aren't harmed in any way, and from Alison's side they're able to pass through normally. Trying to pass through to Alison presents significant difficulty - the subject will find that a distance of only a few meters becomes dozens or hundreds of times longer. This offers good protection against most firearms, though it becomes much less effective against anything not following a ballistic trajectory - a laser wouldn't be significantly effected at all (aside from being redshifted) and self-propelled projectiles like rockets, drones, or angry dogs can reach her, though it takes much more time and gives her a chance to react. Alison can only place this field somewhere she can see it, and can only maintain one at a time. Platinum, as usual, ignores the magical warping of space and simply passes through as if the field wasn't there.

Forbidden History: All objects contain within themselves their history. When holding an object Alison can get a sense of its past. Holding a bullet casing, she can determine when and where it was fired. Holding a book, which is more likely given her profession, she can accurately determine its age and place of publication, and something of where it has been. This does not give her a sense of events around the object - she could tell that a knife was used to stab someone, but she couldn't tell you who was holding it (though she could tell you if it was being held or thrown), what the argument was about, and so forth. Living things, being able to change their worldline on their own, are too 'squirmy' to get a reading from. This is probably the only spell Alison uses with any frequency, checking rare books for authenticity by confirming their own internal history.

Dawn of The Coming Storm (Co-GMed with Eklispe this time!)

@Letter Bee

I've changed out the troublesome spells for something that might be a little more friendly. Let me know if this meets with your approval.

Dawn of The Coming Storm (Co-GMed with Eklispe this time!)

@MagnetBolt, That last skill (Athleta Aethenarium) is a bit overpowered. Also, the 'false vacuum' think lies on the border of Timespace and World, but it is allowable.

@Letter Bee

Well you know what they say. Ask for the stars and be happy with the moon. I'll sleep on it and come up with something else interesting to replace it with.