Stormyx

Vanguard: Calder City

<Snipped quote by Stormyx>

Love a Geordie.

I’ll shoot you a PM and we can brainstorm

@BrutalBx

whey aye man, gan on doon

Vanguard: Calder City

@StormyxAs a Cumbrian, I want my people represented! So I thought fuck it, let’s make a Cumbrian secret agent. Why the hell not?

@BrutalBx

"Geordie" here (technically County Durham!) but been living in Australia for 13 years now.

I would be keen to develop more of the crime boss end of things with you, Papa Sil is definitely involved in a lot of racketeering/extortion/money laundering etc. Doubt he's happy to see a hot new drug on the market in his areas.

Vanguard: Calder City

@StormyX I love the way you write Eve’s prose. That shit’s hypnotic.

@BrutalBx

Thank you so much, I've been enjoying writing her a lot. Wanted to just post here too that

Every muscle protested and like a seasoned politician, he simply ignored them.

made me lmao. Low key Bret being Cumbrian cracks me up a bit as well because that's far too close to home for me

Caught up entirely on the IC now, can't believe we've blitzed out a page and not only that, everyone has added some lore and depth to Calder City to help flesh it out.

Scott is trying to do his best as a hero and live up to his generational legacy. The save of Marth was really sweet and I hope the characters interact again!

Archie is so enjoyable to read as this origin story. Seeing where he is now in his life and knowing the jump we have to make to get him to becoming the Warlock... I CAN'T wait.

Dani, with Scott are the heart of the RP for me so far, really representing what I feel it means to be a Grey and want to do your best. I really like what Eddie is setting up with Dani in keeping her anonymity, but still needing to step in just because it feels right. I hope she gets her radio job!

Bret and The Pilgrim are doing some great lifting in adding a seedy underbelly to the City that's also making it feel so alive - with another crimelord alongside the Raciti Famiglia in the City, I would imagine they are rivals and might have plays for power which could give Eve an in with Bret at some point. (Thinking ahead)

Love Richard's powers, it's so needed in the City to be able to fix and mend things and I enjoyed the way that was writter, I'm looking forward to seeing more of him, and how he will interact with some of the other characters.

Another heart of this RP, is definitely Joanie - you can feel the love she has in that first post and the respect the other kids have for her. She's everyone's big sister, until she meets her own twisted sister in Eve (that was a fun collab so thank you for cameoing!) I love what Natty is building up there, and I'm rooting for Joanie. Also, we absolutely hate Caleb in this household!

The Lucie post was a fun read, and I kept having to wrap my head around what it would be like to live such a life (or 4 I suppose!) but it was really sharp, funny, and gave quite a few tells to the character(s). Keen to see the dynamic continue!

Absolutely love Rock and the way Doc wrote that first post, leading into a fantastic plot with Detective Dusk; Sep has been doing some great work to develop plot threads for the overarching story of the game. I really like that Dusk carries a tainted legacy with him, and is trying his best to do good things despite the pressures of his family and his name.

Qing Yuan too - absolutely cannot wait to see more of him and I'm just looking for any kind of excuse to have him and Eve meet, I don't know, RP intuition I think it might be an interesting meeting that they'd have, and I think Qing could really help Eve calm her mind and her spirit (and spirits lol)

So, that is all to say GREAT STUFF and I'm fully hooked and invested, and we still have more characters to go.

Please give me all the collabs, thank u.

Vanguard: Calder City

_{Eve feat Joanie, @Natty}

Death and all her Friends - II ʎɐp ʇɔǝɟɹǝd

---

"–Perfect day." Eve observed a single La Medusa leather slingback heel rest on its side in a puddle as the rain heaved down and she was pulled away. The golden face of the Gorgon emblem flecked with reflections of teal fur strands left floating about the surface too. The sensation of stormwater was clinging to her and every part of her felt cold and yet when she closed her eyes she was taken elsewhere. There was a beautiful room that overlooked the bay and an orange, hazing light filtering in, casting a glow out in long flakes that lit up the open space of the apartment with the colour of sunset in its slow passing.

Floor to ceiling windows, industrial aesthetic, and monsteras reaching high, high up to the ceiling. The leaves were big as blankets and made a canopy, outstretched and green and alive. A vinyl record crackled on a turntable and a deep, rich voice sang out. "I thought I was someone else."

The pull again and she returned to an alleyway. The deep quiet dark of the night and the dead girl just looked like she was sleeping. Propped up against a large and overflowing dumpster that didn’t deserve her and yet still managed to frame her in a certain kind of beauty anyway. She looked like a doll. A porcelain doll. Oh, but her hair had been shaved off and it reminded Eve of how she used to treat her own dolls sometimes – twisting their limbs unfortunately and cutting their hair down to the scalp just to see what was there.

Eve squatted down slowly, the death thread around this woman was positively humming. She stumbled backward just so, finding the heel of her shoe broken and snapped and there was something tight above her lip and when she brought her fingers to it and to her nose she found blood there. She had nothing beside her or with her other than herself and fragmentary layers stacking in her mind as images and moments. She'd had a bag earlier that night. Her bag, a phone, and the key to her apartment. Gone now, not dropped in the alleyway, gone. Only her coat clung wet to her ribs. She breathed in deep and her nose stung. ”Someone good.” She started to move again.

“Eve? Fuck, what the fuck happened?” A voice behind her - recogniseable. His name was just on the tip of her tongue as she turned around to look from the body and toward him but found herself elsewhere all over again with the rush of vertigo that swept her from her feet as the voice, her voice and someone else's sang again in unharmony. "Later when it gets dark we go home.”

Eve moved and dragged away from the alleyway somehow; bleeding through and back through her fragments and then to a bathroom, floating on her own smile that held itself up and an itch just beneath her nostril; familiar as anything. The reason she came to Harborlight in the first place. She knew the supply was clean. She knew the suppliers were Calder City Famiglia here. Nightclub. Real; late at night and midnight had not yet turned.

In her mind's eye she could picture tall trees; a wild and dense living jungle did the trick of quietening down her usual noise and the voices that walked with her. Now it was all clear skies without those clouds; an interplay of light that spackled through the holes of giant leaves that she looked up at on her high as she moved through the swaths of a sweaty crowd. People littered through this club and they had come for the same thing she had; an escape. Brief and fleeting connections that existed only here and only now. Eve knew the regulars of Harborlight; they were all each seeking to escape from something here and even if the faces changed, the desires did not and Eve liked to watch.

She was all aware and unaware of them; her skin prickling and glistening with a sheen and then her crisp fresh bill crossed hands at the bar and became transformed into a lurid coloured drink in a martini glass that looked like horror movie acid but tasted like sweet miracles. She was situating herself carefully so as not to let the hem of her barely-there dress lift too high, to make sure the pointed heel of her shoe linked against the leg of the stool when the floor vibrated beneath her and disturbed what mental clarity she’d found.

Beneath her the world trembled and something threatened to open but this had not been her. It had just been a girl. A girl at the bar. A very real girl. She wore a denim jacket and something sheer and chic.

^{A girl with red hair, long and beautiful and it obscured her face as she danced, danced, twirled and moved in slow motion to the sound of that droning song and the voice and the lyrics that were becoming an earworm that had started to make Eve feel nauseous. The woman wore a blue dress. And it twirled in the rays of the sun and then Eve could make out the shape of her long legs as a silhouette behind the fabric as she danced; fluid and free and as the woman’s hair fell again in that slow motion, television advertisement perfect bounce Eve could see her eyes and her cheekbones and she'd seen them before.}

“Nice trick,” Eve said to the girl in denim now and she wore her expression soft as traces of wonder swam in her eyes beyond the mydriasis that had turned her pupils to boba pearls with size enough blot out the stormgrey of them. The approaching woman was younger than Eve, but only in age; something about her spirit was older. This one was a creature of tectonic emotions and something had bristled them and had made Eve’s hands grip the edge of the bar and almost lose a spill of the chartreuse martini but was enough to hold her in the moment and seal it shut.

The girl in denim initially just blinked towards her in response to the comment, as if snapped out of a thought.

“What trick?” She speaks before catching herself, as if the memory of what had just returning to her. “Oh shit, sorry. Been a long night.”

She took the spot at the bar next to her, flashing Eve a quick smile, her eyes taking her in fully for a moment. Pulling a couple of bills from the back of her phone case, she offered them towards the nearest bar tender.

“Rum and coke, please.”

It was quickly taken. As she waited, she let out a quick sigh as her eyes moved back towards the room, glancing nervously between wherever she had come from and windowed room above.

“That wibble wobble,” Eve said with a giggle, demonstrating physically by swaying on the stool. “They water down the rum here,” she added, swinging one leg over the other, bouncing the heel of her other foot against the floor. “And if you look too much up there it will look back at you.” That was spoken quieter.

She exhaled a bit, as if caught in the act.

“You know him?” She asked, turning back to her and gesturing with a tilt of her head. She grimaced a bit as her drink was passed to her and discovered the truth of her warning after a sip.

Eve’s gaze hovered off into the middle distance beyond the girl and at nothing. “Does it make a difference either way?”. She quickly snapped away from whatever temporary daze clouded her answer and expression and laughed loudly. “Be careful little aftershock.”

She nodded as if considering her words. She tried to distract herself, taking another sip through the straw before rubbing her temple in annoyance.

“Be honest with me.” She began, taking in all of Eve once again. “If a guy you used to fuck ghosted you and then tried to rock back up like nothing happened, how pissed would you be on a scale from 1 to earthquaking his balls?”

Eve smirked at that. “Oh guys I fuck don’t do that. They wouldn’t dare.” she laughed, knocking back the last of her drink. “As for what I’d do though…. You ever see how they make ground beef?”

The girl let out a short laugh.

“I’ll keep that in mind, then.” A hint of flirtation. “Sounds like a solid plan. I’ll have to invest in a mincer.”

“A must have for any girls apartment,” Eve said with a smirk before she quietened again, quirking a brow. ”I think I’m supposed to be somewhere else,” she said nonchalantly, watching off into nothing again.”Ciao, bella terremoto. Enjoy your night.”

And then Eve left.

”You make me forget myself.” It was gone midnight now and the streets were darkened and stark in this part of the city. She took an easy breath and was pirouetting along the curbline as that song hummed low and she followed it's sound where it was building. Thick, teal faux fur sleeves kept her warm; a coat that she hadn’t fastened and the chain metal of her tiny dress sparkled under flickering streetlights as she danced across the concrete alone. A beaded clutch dangled at her wrist.

“Eve? Who is this? Did you do this?” A voice she heard, the familiar voice but far away and yet clear enough to pierce the veil.

"You just keep me hangin on" The song pulled her away from the voice that sought to reach her and dragged her into a room of concrete she did not recognise, this room did not belong to her. This had not happened, not to her. But night had set in and the red-haired girl was stood and her records were playing again. Something else this time but it crackled all the same and as it turned so too did the room as if the room itself sat upon the record as it moved through the story of the song. A gathering storm, he sang. Someone sang. Eve didn’t know. The girl was opening a birdcage but it remained empty until she climbed inside. “Are you supposed to go in there?” Eve asked, unsure why she did.

“Does it make a difference either way?” the girl answered and once she was inside of the cage, her hair had gone, and her long fingers wound the bars of the cage as it expanded in size to fit her and she sobbed against it and just stared out tearfully through Eve. “Where is he?” she cried out desperately through choked sobs, asking someone in the room who, to Eve, was only a presence. A crushing and oppressive weight that was inescapable.

The girl in denim flashed in front of Eve again, like a blink she couldn’t blink away. “You know him?” and then she was gone. Eve was sat in a chair; no longer watching the girl, but participating in her place as a looming figure approached that she didn’t recognise by sight, but only by the horrifying dread that started atop her head and bled all the way down like a cold, sharp chill before a hot brand touched her wrist and burned through her skin and Eve screamed–

”Oh such a perfect day..." A man held her wrist, and Eve screamed at him as suddenly her lengths of strange time as captive had passed and she staggered against the concrete curb of Calder City before falling against it with a smash. The streetlights blinking down at her, illuminating her back to lucidity. She was here.

"Jeez. You fucking bitch, I'm just trying to help you," spoke a man. A strange man, just a man that rubbed at his eyes and face. "You were just spinning in circles, weirdo. Fucking weirdo." Nobody of importance but her bag slipped and fell from her wrist and she bolted off. "Crazy cunt," the man said with disdain for her, but a shrug like the whole thing was just another night in Calder City.

The porcelain dead girl looked back in a flash and the earth moved under Eve yet again.

“You know him.”

"I'm glad I spent it with you."

"Goddamnit, Eve wake up!"

Recollection finally kicked in as she moved faster than her consciousness did through the slipstream and against the tugging of the death threads. Her eyes shifted from their pitch white to find their colour again and the ground had shape that she could feel beneath her outstretched hands. "Luca?"

"Yeah, it's me," he said in that way he did. With a sigh behind it, and his own brain working into action as he surveyed the scene himself. There was no window into his thoughts and he was a closed book, but there was concern in a microexpression; the way his eyes narrowed just a little and he flexed his hand instinctively as if he was on the attack.

Eve blinked. Once, twice, and again. "How did you find me? Why are you here?"

"You called your dad at some point," he thought to continue but watched as she frowned at that; like the notion of it meant nothing. He continued. "I was at Harborlight..." he said, glancing this way and that; for witnesses.

"I didn't call anyone, I lost my phone."

"Saw you leaving." Luca said, reaching into his own pocket to reveal that small beaded clutch and he held it out in front of her. "Followed your fucking trail of chaos– You practically scratched some guys eyes out back there!" He was already extending his free hand to help her. He looked at the body then and he didn't see beauty in it like Eve did, he saw the danger of the situation. "Eve did you do this?" he asked, and not for the first time since he'd found her, it just seemed to land for the first time now. Now that she'd come back from whatever had taken her over.

"I do not kill." Eve answered fast, the question had sobered her to an insulted anger that darkened her eyes and tensed her jaw.

Luca stopped and glanced between the two corpse and Eve. "Right," he said quietly, gaze scanning the alleyway again too, the danger loomed still. "What did you take? What happened? How did you get here?" He knew all of the answers, of course. He knew she was one of them; a grey. Silvio had spoken about her episodes and he'd even witnessed her peculiarities himself but never like this. He'd never seen her face twisted with such torment.

"I don't remember," Eve said. Still returning to herself. "There was a song, this song. It kept moving me. I don't remember."

Luca sighed again and took a sidelong glance down the darkness to the left of them that was their way out. “Come on, we’re getting out of here.” Luca lifted her up with little effort and she barely resisted, thrown over his shoulder as he set off out of the alleyway just at the moment the heavens seemed to open at last. That frail moment shattered. "Such a–"

Vanguard: Calder City

Oh so a lonely girl who is so oversaturated with all the death in the City that she barely experiences the world directly isn't edgy enough for you?

no storm, that's just melancholic

Vanguard: Calder City

First post is written! Just needs review, formatting, and -- most importantly -- a banner.

@Eddie Brock

Loved it!

I'm doing a full catch up this afternoon (you all really said you were posting while I was sleeping!)

Vanguard: Calder City

great first posts already @Captain Uni and @Natty

I love the differences in vibe on both, but the way they're each delivering some world building. I am certain Harborlight will be FINE and nothing will happen there :D

Vanguard: Calder City

_Eve

Death and all her Friends - I Sunday

^{_{_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

𝕄𝕖𝕕𝕒𝕘𝕝𝕚𝕒’𝕤 ℝ𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕦𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕥, ℂ𝕒𝕝𝕕𝕖𝕣 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪

Medaglia’s had never changed. A family owned restaurant in the Italian district of Calder City. They continued to cook with the meat from the Italian butcher two doors down, made their soffrito with vegetables bought from the Italian grocery, and served biscotti baked by the same Italian deli. The same furniture had been giving the same little Italy aesthetic for twenty-five years, at least. The same paintings, the same flags, the same collages of photographs of a homeland none of the family had been to created the authentic heritage vibe that every Italian family in Calder City coveted, and that’s how the money kept turning through it.

It wasn’t the food; the menu hadn’t changed - still the same dishes, still the same chefs, still the same waiters. Still the same Dean Martin record being flipped and flipped and flipped again until Volare was an ingredient to every dish, and to hear it played anywhere else would be jarring. 𝙸 𝚊𝚕𝚠𝚊𝚢𝚜 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚏𝚎𝚛𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝙱𝚞𝚘𝚗𝚊 𝚂𝚎𝚛𝚊 Always the same restaurant for family Sunday dinner. Always the same table. Always the same seats.

In attendance tonight, Joey and Ralph Raciti - Silvio’s biological sons from his late wife. Growing up, strangely, they’d never felt animosity towards Eve and her being there. Eve supposed it was because they were older than her, and the presence of a woman - even a young one, in their home was welcome after the death of their mother. Or, that the presence of someone even more fucked up than them made them feel secure, safe, normal.

Ralph always had a chicken piccata with a side of spaghetti; and Ralph always insisted on ordering olives but would maybe eat one or two. Next to Ralph, was his wife Cosima. Cosima and her extravagant acrylic made claws - blood red and pointed and inches long. Cosima and her quaffed honey blonde curls; if the phrase “the higher the hair the closer to God” needed a face, it would be Cosima’s perfect heart shaped face; the big brown eyes, and the bright splashing red of her plumped lips. She knew, and she played her part. She was having a caesar salad – a dish that was not on Medaglia’s menu, but they would make to order for Cosima.

Ralph’s son, Ralph Junior, sat in his high chair - two years old and already the weight of inheritance holding him down. A Ralph Lauren polo shirt, about to be bled through with spaghetti and meatballs, despite the bib around his neck.

Joey had not brought anyone, but Eve knew he had been seeing a girl for several months. It wasn’t time to introduce her to the shitshow even if this was the most serious he’d been about a girl in his life. Joey was predictably having himself a whole diavolo pizza and Eve knew that between the cheese, the nduja, and his beer of choice, he’d be making a close call with his bathroom later.

Then, there was "cousin" Luca – only he wasn’t a cousin by blood, no, he was sitting somewhere middle-high in Silvio’s hierarchy of made men. Eve had slept with him a summer earlier, and even now she could remember the strange noise he made when he finished. It was their secret of course; if anyone knew about it, he certainly wouldn’t have been sat at the table. He refused to look at her now. He didn’t always come to dinner, but when he did, he’d opt for a cream based pasta.

“I’m thinking of getting a job,” Eve said calmly, twirling spaghetti around the prongs of her fork.From the other side of the table, Silvio placed his fork down incredulously.

“Do I not do enough for you?” he asked. “Why would you want to go and do a thing like that?”

ᵒᶠ ᶜᵒᵘʳˢᵉ ʰᵉ'ᵈ ˢᵃʸ ᵗʰᵃᵗ, ᵒᶠ ᶜᵒᵘʳˢᵉ ʰᵉ ᵈᵒᵉˢⁿ'ᵗ ʷᵃⁿᵗ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒ ᵈᵒ ˢᵒᵐᵉᵗʰⁱⁿᵍ ᶠᵒʳ ʸᵒᵘʳˢᵉˡᶠ. 𝚐𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚚𝚞𝚎𝚜𝚝 𝙱𝚞𝚘𝚗𝚊 𝚂𝚎𝚛𝚊.

Eve paused, waiting for the quiet, her eye twitching only slightly. “You know, like a barista or something. Really get to meet some people like that,” Eve continued. Joey smirked from the side of the table, Silvio? Not so much. He blinked slowly.

𝙱𝚞𝚘𝚗𝚊 𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚊 𝚜𝚒𝚐𝚗𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚊 𝚔𝚒𝚜𝚜 𝚖𝚎 𝚐𝚘𝚘𝚍𝚗𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝

ʎpɐǝɹןɐ ʞuıɥʇ ןɹıƃ ǝɥʇ ʇǝן

“You need more allowance or something?” he asked.

“I’m just bored,” she said, biting at the corner of her lip, fingers rubbing against her silverware against the tide of her mind. She reached for her wine. A large mouthful to cleave off the edge.

“Then take a class!” Silvio exclaimed, red in the face about it too. “Go do an art class or whatever the fuck,” he added. “Saw something or other about dance classes.”

“Her paintings would be messed up Pa,” Ralph said with a chuckle. It was not a malicious comment, but a strange one, given that their very table at the restaurant was adorned by some large reprint of a Caravaggio on the wall; Judith Beheading Holofernes. Eve supposed that it was relevant, somewhat. The lines of blood from his neck surely did resemble spaghetti. She wondered then if Holofernes had any idea that one day his likeness would watch countless families eat chicken parms and stone baked pizza. Probably not. ƃuıʌoɯ ǝɹoɯ sɐʍ s,ıɥɔsǝןıʇuǝ⅁

Silvio softened somewhat, he always did for Eve. “Look,” he began, picking his fork back up. “I appreciate your…. Ambition, but, let’s not get too drastic. Let me… Let me talk to some guys.”

Eve’s mouth pulled to the side in a thoughtful pout as she drew her eyes away from the painting, grazing her gaze over Luca, who was still intently working through a fettuccine alfredo; avoiding every opportunity to have been pulled into the conversation at hand. Then she looked at Joey who had a raised brow at her. With a sigh she released the pucker of her mouth. “Sure… I’ll, look at some classes,” she relented.

“I’ll send you some more allowance,” Silvio added agreeably.

“What?” Joey said, “I bust my fuckin’ balls at the construction site–”

“Ayy, watch the language. I don’t want none of that vulgar shit at my table,” Silvio said before Joey could finish whatever he was trying to say. “Ladies are present." His eyes had darkened half with anger, and half with exasperation. "This family used to have class.”

Cosima, Cosima. Of course she’d reacted to it, a slight gasp; raising her hand to reach for pearls to clutch over it. “My god,” she’d uttered out in that nasal way she did, finding an entirely ill-fitting phonetic for the o in God, slamming down the d before the full stop of her quiet exclaim.

Would Silvio have found it classy if he knew about the way Eve had let Luca bend her over a table and grasp her neck just enough to dance on dangerous? She hadn’t exactly been a lady then. She thought of Luca’s strange little sound again and smirked, the slight motion went unnoticed as Joey attempted to blunder and bicker back some more before thinking better of himself and picking up another slice instead.

Ralph Junior gurgled and giggled, which seemed to simmer down the temperature of Silvio’s foul storm that had reared, and he laughed too - his fork then aggressively diving and digging back into his veal scallopini; clattering against the ceramic of his plate with a scrape. The conversation moved on at last; away from Eve and her corner of the table, and over to Ralph and his ventures and work and his money, and the renovation of his kitchen.

Eve's eyes drifted up to the ceiling of Medaglia's. To that gaudy painting of a bright blue sky upon it, faded with time into a faint mockery of the grandness of the Sistine Chapel. Mottled clouds had been painted on, likely with a sponge. Someone had once climbed a ladder to reach and blot paint against the ceiling, and someone had once thought this to be a chic idea. Someone still did; clear fresher paint strokes suggested the touch ups over the years and Eve sat and wondered how many more Sunday dinners she would sit through under this fake sky.

^{Mi dipingevo le mani e la faccia di blu
Poi d'improvviso venivo dal vento rapito
E incominciavo a volare nel cielo infinito}

She let her eyelids slowly close over the blue-green of her eyes. Charcoal shadow smudged across them from a hand with far less skill that Cosima who had shown up with a cut crease and fresh lash extensions. In her mind, fragments and images bombarded her again, and she imagined herself floating across that blue sky just as Dean Martin crooned out again.

Ralph Junior had thrown up on himself, Joey disguised a burp of indigestion, and Eve felt through the threads of Calder City that at least three people had died since this dinner had started.

Vanguard: Calder City

E V E
E V E

^{"please, forgive me, I've got demons in my head."}

C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T _________________________________________________________ (FC: Margaret Qualley; Dialogue: violet) _________________________________________________________ S U M M A R Y S U M M A R Y _________________________________________________________ Eve Raciti-Seeley _________________________________________________________ November 21 | 27 _________________________________________________________ S T A T S S T A T S _________________________________________________________ Height | 5'8 _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ Hometown | Calder City P O S T S P O S T S _________________________________________________________ Death and all her Friends Eve Raciti-Seeley Sunday Perfect Day - feat. Joanie Meet you for Coffee Jason's Song Fuse - feat. Qing Truth for a Truth - feat. Sienna Earl Grey - feat. Dusk Michael Volare Fair Trade - feat. Qing Marone Zoe Seeley Sugar Water Bea Adler Prodigal Daughter -

H I S T O R Y H I S T O R Y ___________________________________________________________________________________ An explosion. Another forgotten aftermath of the latest threat in Calder City, taken care of by the latest favourite superhero. The City moved on while a family collapsed under the collateral damage. Before that point, before Silvio, before her propensity for funeral attendance, Eve had been as unremarkable as anyone else who simply looked heavensward with awe to see superhumans flying by. A girl who lined up for the latest marketed superhuman likeness in doll form. The life of a child born into a modern age that was shaped by its adaptation of miracles. In Calder City, it was not unusual for people to manifest something subtle but young Eve showed no such promise. Until thirteen. The accident that killed her family did not simply break her life, but reconfigured the way she experienced reality and all of her boundaries. The immediate aftermath left her suspended between her own survival and death. Dancing against the veil, and in the moment it happened, Eve's perception broke in all the ways that were so unlike all she knew. What appeared to her did not resemble anything she'd known before. i̷ ̷w̷a̷s̷ ̷i̷n̷ ̷a̷n̷ ̷a̷c̷c̷i̷d̷e̷n̷t̷ ̷t̷o̷o The awakening of Eve’s miracle was not outward, but a flower bleeding inward to align itself with the oldest of olds, and the truest truth of all. Death. The inevitability. In those short and endless final moments she was dragged through the final memory residues of her family, one by one and all at once. A dark and uncontrolled telepathy, shaped like a beautiful wound. Every memory that replayed to them as their lives ended; the last wave of brain activity before their long night. She did not simply sense their dying or witness it, ʇɐɥʇ ǝǝs pןnoɥs ʎpoqou she entered it as real and easy as any room or place she had been in before; a door that opened to her alone and dragged her in. In full, and uncontrolled form, she walked for weeks, lost inside this lingering interface of death energy as it ceased to behave coherently or chronologically. It channelled through her and her through it until they were one and she awoke back to the b living only seconds later. Before she could even name what it was and what had happened, and by the time she was retrieved from the wreckage, reality around her was secondary to what she had touched, what had been left behind, and what she could now feel in everything. An orphan, an anomaly, screaming with night terrors of things she’d seen; her insistence she’d been left for weeks and weeks in rubble didn't go over well. Somehow, it was Silvio Raciti ʰᵉ ᵏⁱˡˡᵉᵈ ᵐᵉ who recognised her, heard of her... Discovered her. A thing too rare to leave unclaimed. It was Silvio who placed a name on her rather than a label on a file. A crime boss operating within the city's shady corporate and political underlayers. But to Eve, he became her protector. ᵃˢᵏ ʰⁱᵐ ʷʰʸ ʰᵉ ᵈⁱᵈ Her first fixed point after the collapse. ᵃˢᵏ ʰⁱᵐ ʰᵒʷ⁻⁻ He believed her, and over time within his orbit, Eve was stabilised, educated, and gradually integrated into his hidden economy beneath Calder's regulated superhuman society. Her ability matured into a controlled function. She was not only sheltered, but used. Her gift a quiet instrument of leverage; secrets extracted from the dead, truths carried beyond living witnesses. Every time Silvio ᵐᵃᶠⁱᵃ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ˢᵗᵒᵖ ʰⁱᵐ found a use for her, he bound her closer to his world through the continuity and through certainty there was nowhere else, and nobody else that could hold her. He is the closest thing she has to a father and to family. And he knows this. A B I L I T I E S A B I L I T I E S __________________________________________________________________________________ The Awareness- The ability to gain access to what she has termed "death replays" in a space between life and death she knows as the Awareness. Abstract lived subjective fragments of life that are experienced as immersive environments that she can move through and interact with. As time between dying passes, the threads and visions degrade and become fragmented and unstable, and in some instances, monstrous. Echo Permeation- Sometimes, the memories persist and are extracted and embedded within Eve's "mind vault". These retained echoes are not full consciousnesses, but partial continuations and loops of unresolved thoughts, wishes, wants, and needs that persisted beyond death. They manifest as intrusive perspectives and semi-coherent presences that occupy her cognitive space and influence her actions. Ghosts in her machine. Death Thread Sense- Eve can not completely reliably perceive death before it happens, but is drawn to it as it happens as if it is a spatial awareness and sense. P E R S O N A L I T Y P E R S O N A L I T Y __________________________________________________________________________________ Day by day, Eve battles with herself against her own memories and experiences, and memories that aren’t her own that belong to nobody now. p̷l̷e̷a̷s̷e̷ ̷t̷e̷l̷l̷ ̷m̷y̷ ̷w̷i̷f̷e̷ ̷i̷ ̷l̷o̷v̷e̷ ̷h̷e̷r̷ Somewhere in the ocean of all of that sound and silence, a girl is lost and drowning in a void. She does not hold back her words and is endlessly curious about the people she meets. She often enjoys making people uncomfortable, acting with a deliberate and antagonistic defiance at times. Being judged is a victory, and while she can be cruel in the power she holds upon affecting people, it is less to do with malice and more a refusal to be made small. She is playful, sexual, and has a strange kind of charisma -- she knows how she affects people. Eve is highly perceptive, and she constantly analyses others; she weaponises charm and chaos to maintain control. Eve loves things and goodies. Be it fancy jewellery, handbags, shoes. She moves through the world in colour, ǝɹǝɥ uı ʞɹɐp ʇı ƃuıʞɐɯ doʇs assembled from the luxury of eclectic shiny fabrics, expensive material things. Curated aesthetics that keep her anchored with something solid when her mind threatens to dissolve. M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S __________________________________________________________________________________ Stay where she is wanted. Stay where she is safe. Be the best daughter she can be to Silvio ʰᵉ ᵏⁱˡˡᵉᵈ ᵐᵉ, stay anchored to something real and something stable that didn't die in the wreck with her family. Underneath it all, the bond she has is the only place her existence feels singular after all. But it can't hold, can it? Eve notices the shape of what she is attached to, the ghosts whisper and scream and she can't ignore them; it's impossible in the long run. i̷m̷ ̷w̷a̷i̷t̷i̷n̷g̷ ̷o̷n̷ ̷t̷h̷e̷ ̷o̷t̷h̷e̷r̷ ̷s̷i̷d̷e̷ The increasing density of his violence can no longer go unquestioned. She still wants to be his, the favourite, the protected constant, the one person to him who can never be disposable. One the other hand, something quieter is forming. The growing realisation that she cannot keep absorbing his aftermath... ᵃˢᵏ ʸᵒᵘʳˢᵉˡᶠ ʷʰʸ ᵃˢᵏ ʸᵒᵘʳˢᵉˡᶠ ʷʰʸ ᵃˢᵏ ʸᵒᵘʳˢᵉˡᶠ ʷʰʸ ᵃˢᵏ ʸᵒᵘʳˢᵉˡᶠ ʷʰʸ She wants agency.

Vanguard: Calder City

My favourite part - waiting for the sheets to rain in so I can start plotting.