Naril — Roleplayer Guild

Ada Hawthorne - One of the founders of PHI. She is a handsome woman that appears middle-aged, red hair threaded with hard, bright silver. She is not in the office often, and what she does when she's not around is also not entirely clear. Many supernatural creatures in the area seem to know who she - and her Investigators - are, and mentioning her is something that will open some doors and close others violently. Her name is the one on your paychecks.

Samuel Priest - The other founder of PHI, a man with silver hair tied in a tail and a full beard, who wears a bowler hat and the kind of vest that went out of style in the late 1800s. He is in the office more than Hawthorne, but his direct appearances are fairly rare. He will occasionally call in with jobs for the rest of the cast. 

Shiloh Cooper - One of PHI's support staff, who is in charge of the company's archives. She organizes the various magical trinkets and artefacts Investigators have recovered, and files records of cases. The PHI Library is by far the largest room in the small office that PHI rents, and Shiloh is its mistress. Taking things without asking can be grounds for something far more serious than a dressing-down. She is approximately five feet tall with dark hair and bright blue eyes, and despite that gives a very strong impression that she is no-one to be trifled with.

Name: Morgan Silas Blackwood

Gender: Female (And female-presenting)

Race/Species: Succubus

Age (Real and apparent): Over 90 years old; appears early thirties

Appearance: 

By any measure, Morgan is a striking woman. She is tall, though not quite approaching six feet in heels, with fair skin and a tumble of blue-black hair that falls to her shoulders, tied with a piece of leather cord into a loose tail. Large, blue-green eyes set off the wicked, elegant lines of her face, with sharp cheekbones and a strong jawline that stops just short of masculinity. Her lips, full and inviting, often tilt into an expression of playful mischief, at least when she's not concentrating on something else. She is possessed of a lean, dangerous figure, unmistakably feminine, and she works for it. Morgan moves with a long lifetime's practiced grace, a kind of lazy confidence shared with apex predators.

In her professional capacity, Morgan prefers well-tailored suits in colors that flatter her with contrasting, button-down shirts and slightly heeled boots. What jewelry she wears is typically studs in her many-times-pierced ears, and she has a pendant around her neck on a leather cord. Her shoulder holster is carefully concealed by excellent tailoring and body language, but there is only so much you can do to hide a handgun. Outside of her official capacity, Morgan prefers jeans, old band t-shirts and a battered denim jacket. For reasons that Morgan has only occasionally been truthful about, she has a rich, plummy, London-private-school accent.

Personality: 

Playful, flirtatious, and apparently fearless, Morgan is a force of personality. She is gregarious without being boistrous, friendly but not overbearing, loyal, warm, and only occasionally viciously witty. She's kind of person you both love hearing stories from, and telling stories to - entirely without artifice, she is a perfect audience, gasping and all but applauding at exactly the right moments. She is, in general, collected under pressure, and responds to stress with humor and smart-assery. She is neither secretive nor open about the fact that she isn't human, but is careful with the specifics, depending on who's doing the asking. If pressed, she would probably identify as bisexual, but few enough bother to even wonder.

Powers, Traits, and Abilities: 

By her nature, Morgan is a manipulator, through psychic weaponry, pheromones, body language and even the timbre of her voice. However, since she believes, at her core, in the primacy of free will, there are lines she will not cross and things she will not do; active choices made consciously out of a sense of responsibility and foundational to her sense of identity. She's not above using her supernatural allure to get a guard to focus only on her if another member of the team has to sneak into a building or to get a better deal on her cell phone plan, but she will not grab someone by the psychic brainstem and dragoon them into her bidding. Though she reins in what she is consciously, it isn't something she can entirely turn off - heads turn, and other supernatural creatures know she's there, and some of them even know exactly what she is by nothing more than the way she smells.

Morgan also possesses a psychometric talent, by which she can make physical contact with an object and discern important events from its past. These do not appear in a linear, digestable narrative, but rather take the form of often-abstract, disjointed visions that express important moments in the object's past, where it received or created a psychic imprint. These images are seared indelibly into Morgan's mind, and she cannot forget them even if she wants to, rendering this a skill she uses carefully.

In the mortal world, Morgan is an FBI-trained investigator, though she no longer has any contacts with the Bureau. She has kept up on the world of modern technolgy in large degree, but she is not anything like a hacker or digital-forensics specialist. she can drive, call a Lyft, and order delivery with the best of any other mortal.

Outside of her position with Priest & Hawthorne, Morgan is a skilled belly dancer, an enthusiastic karaoke singer, and a vintage hi-fi enthusiast. She has a large collection of vinyl records (most bought at garage sales or thrift stores), and spends a lot of time on her couch, listening to music through a pair of very old, very nice headphones. She has a cat, who enjoys Morgan's music by sleeping on her stomach. She is not particularly good at Ski-Ball.

Background: 

"Do you know what you are?"

Morgan lifted her head, tried to blow away the strands of hair stuck to her face. Almost every part of her hurt and the crust of dried blood above her left eye itched and her fingers were almost numb, but she managed to pull one corner of her mouth up in a wry grin.

"Special Agent Morgan Blackwood, FBI," she said, each word made sumptuous by her accent.

Another woman stood in the room, proud and glorious and terrifying. She let out a short huff, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, and shook her head. Her long legs flashed, turning away from Morgan with the scrape of a polished heel on hard ceramic tile. She circled the chair Morgan was cuffed to, every movement a predatory stalk and dipped one long-nailed hand into her jacket. Though her vision was still blurry, Morgan couldn't help but appreciate the way every seam flattered the other woman, tracing and accenting her figure in smooth, dark cloth. The woman pulled something into the light, like a cigarette case. She opened it with a click, and the smell of spices filled the air.
 
"You're better than this, Sister," the woman said, now to Morgan's left, "We are so much greater than you know. You - we - were meant for such great things." She set something on the ground with a glassy clink, "And here you are, a pet monster. A nightmare on a leash. And happy to be there."

"And your way is better?" Morgan said, turning her head to keep her captor in view, "You're trying to sell me on Juliet's Path to Purpose and Happiness? I'll pass, thank you."

"You really don't understand, do you?" The woman, Juliet, sighed, "We looked for you for so long, Sister. You were the last piece of the puzzle, the checkmate play. But I suppose even we can't account for everything." She set something else down, a rustling noise, "I remember that night - the storms, the summoning, the ritual. But when we came to find you, there were nothing but bodies." 

Morgan heard her stand, a few quick steps, and a voice by her ear, "Were those your first, Sister? Did you take them? Can you imagine that feeling, that thrill, whenever you-"

"No," Morgan interrupted, her voice ragged and hard. This close to Juliet, she could smell copper and salt.

"No? Then..." Juliet started, then walked in front of Morgan again. She considered, and then her expression broke into the kind of smile that starts religions.

"Ah...I see. The detective, the raid. It was their doing, yes? And then...of course." The expression became something that was not a smile, "She didn't complete the ritual - but that detective did. You have a conscience." She spat the words.

"They were madmen," Morgan said, her voice quiet, "Working with power they didn't understand. Connor-"

"Is that what you think?" the woman said, incredulous, "Is that what they told you? After all these long years - oh, Morgan."

Her voice softened to a purr, an inch from Morgan's ear, "I'll ask you again, and don't be cute with me. Do you know what you are?"

Morgan looked into Juliet's eyes, the same eyes she saw in the mirror every morning. She saw a certainty there, a depth of understanding, and it called to her across almost a century. There are questions you never really give up on, no matter how distant they might be or how foolish the quest to answer them, and a desire unlike any she'd ever known flared in her chest. She spat the words at the air, hurled them across decades.

"A mistake," Morgan said, "An unintended consequence. A predator."

Juliet pulled away, her expression almost triumphant.

"Oh, Sister, no," she said, chuckling, "That was no barely-literate secret society, luring members with promises of orgiastic rites. They were part of something so much grander than themsleves, a piece of a vast and intricate machine that even now coils across the world." Juliet started walking again, and enough of Morgan's vision had come back that she could see what the other woman was doing.

There were lines drawn on the floor, circles and points and arcs, careful paths of white salt forming sigils and runes. At the edge, a final line that finished the design, containing a figure of five equidistant points. Four of those points already had objects placed there, things that could only be ritual totems. Even in her battered state, Morgan could feel the power thrumming off them, her skin prickling. With a start, she snapped her head to Juliet, standing from placing the final object, and she realized what she was seeing - a Practitioner of the Art, walking deisul around their sacred circle.

"We are their weapons, Morgan," Juliet said, "Their harbingers. We prepare the way for...well. What comes after." She took a long, slow breath, her eyes closed in concentration, "The perfect point of the most subtle spear. What else motivates these mortals but their desires, their hungers, their lusts? The entire race comes with their own bridle and saddle, we need only take the reins." She looked over at Morgan, and crossed the lines of salt with care.

Juliet knelt, brought herself ot eye level with Morgan. Her eyes roved over her sister's face, and she brought one hand up to touch her cheek, cool fingers rough with dried blood. She leaned in with viper-strike speed, and Morgan felt the woman's lips against her own for a moment that lingered like a dying breath. Then she stood, turned, and took two long, delicate steps.

"But none of that is for you, I can see that now. Losing you will be hard, Sister," Juliet said, her back to Morgan, "But the arc of time is long. Another decade will mean little. And with-""

A small sound pierced every other sound in the room - a metallic click, then a rattle. The noise cut off Juliet's words like shears on thread, and time seemed to stop. Juliet spun, and her eyes met Morgan's for the length of an indrawn breath. Then Morgan exploded from the chair, her hair a dark comet trail, and she brought an arm dangling an open handcuff up, fingers clenched into a tight ball. Her fist connected with Juliet's temple, sending her sprawling to the floor with a sharp gasp, the designs beneath her spraying away in a chaos of tumbling grains.

Morgan spun, her shoes further scuffing the careful runes, turned to her left, eyes scanning in a frantic search. There, surrounded by its own tangle of magic, a dagger made of glittering black glass, the handle wound in rough twine. She lunged for it, her hand tingling where she brushed away another magical working, fingers wrapping around the handle in the skin of a second. 

When she touched the weapon, Morgan felt a pressure against her mind. The dagger pulsed with history, with fable, with emotion and the weight of time. It dragged at her soul, her vision swam, and she nearly lost herself in that current. With an effort of will, she shoved the sensation away from her mind - there was no time to allow that connection now. She stood, started to turn back, then white light blossomed behind her eyes from a blow to the back of her head. It seemed her sister had recovered more quickly than Morgan had expected. 

Morgan stumbled forward, her hands almost nerveless from the blow. She gritted her teeth, tried to swallow down sudden dizziness and nausea, and then she felt something else. Gasping, she managed to stand and turn back to Juliet, who stood with hand outstretched. Morgan could feel power flowing from her, something that should have been a crashing wave; a dark, vicious pull at everything primal and carnal inside her. But she felt all of it split and flow around her, something she was aware of but was not affected by. Morgan shook her head, and she met the other woman's eyes again.

"You really are one of us," Juliet said, her voice tinted with pleasant surprise.

Morgan straightened, stalked toward her, brought the glass dagger up in a hard, sharp punch at Juliet's side. She felt the woman's silk jacket part around the tip, the fibrous tearing of the blade through her skin, the scrape of glass on bone. 

She watched her sister's eyes, found herself suddenly lost in those gemstone depths. She felt her lean into a sudden embrace, one arm around her shoulder, the other still wrapped around the dagger's handle. Morgan felt the power sluicing over her mind flicker and back away, but Juliet's eyes didn't waver. They were deep, intelligent, wicked, and when the other woman fell, Morgan found that try though she might, she couldn't pull her own gaze away. Only when Juliet's eyelids flickered closed did the world return, and Morgan realized she hadn't been breathing. She looked down at her hand, saw the blood dripping off her own fingers, and she swallowed against a hard lump in her throat.

A few more unsteady steps took her to the door, and she shoved it open. The hinges shrieked, the heavy metal banging against the wall. Her balance still shaky, she had to lean against the doorframe for support and she paused, her breatg ragged in her throat. She swallowed in a few gulps of air, then she heard a voice from ahead - familiar, with a deep Southern twang.

"Morgan?" Came the voice, "'Zat you?"

"Sam!" Morgan shouted, "Sam, I...give me a minute, I'm just down by the..." Her voice trailed off.

She came into Morgan's view with her pistol at the ready. Her shirt was open farther than Morgan had ever known it to be, the buttons torn, threads dangling. Her eyes were wide, her green pupils dilated, spots of color on her cheeks.

"Best get back in there, Miss Blackwood," Sam said, raising her weapon, "She's got plans for ya."

Morgan felt her shoulders slump. "Oh no, Sam. Not you, too," she managed. Then she stood, straightened, swallowed.

"I'm so sorry."

-----------

An hour later, Morgan pushed her way through another heavy steel door. She felt the oppressive humidity of a Georgian summer evening slap her in the face like a wet towel and in that moment, nothing had ever felt so wonderful. She pulled in first one breath, then another, her throat hot and sore, her body protesting from every muscle and joint. Groaning, she propelled herself away from the wall, digging in her pocket for her keys. They would know what vehicle to track, but Morgan had ben suspecting a day like this would come. She didn't have many options, but she'd made sure she had more than none.

She fell into her car with a hard puff of breath, started the engine, felt the air conditioner struggle against the boiling darkness. She had warned them. There were memos and emails and texts and lunch dates and screaming, arm-waving fights. They knew there were other things like her - myths given life, ghosts, and monsters from folktales. She'd known that eventually, those forces would come for the mortal world, for the Bureau, but they hadn't cared. And now, this.

The air conditioner finally started to catch up with the outside temperature, and Morgan felt the cool, dry kiss across her skin. It was time for something new. She had always looked for answers to other people's questions because she'd already known all her own answers. In the space of an evening, all of that had changed. She wondered if they would look for her, and decided that she didn't care.

With another groan, Morgan straightened, reached up and put the car into gear. She drove into the rising sun, and she didn't look back.
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