Take a look and let me know what you think. I tried to keep things within acceptable limits. I admit I had more than a bit of fun explaining the physics behind her spells. The technobabble should be more or less correct.
Edited: Two spells changed as requested.
Edited: Two spells changed as requested.
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.
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.
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.
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.