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[FallacyofUrist]

Your life is unsatisfying in a deep way. You feel like something's lacking, though you do not know what it is. No matter what you try, that lack of satisfaction lingers, burning at your mind. Every day you wake, your body feels refreshed, but your mind only barely seems less tired than you were when you fell into slumber the night before. No matter your life circumstance, you cannot seem to find satisfaction or true rest. On the worst days, you hallucinate. Shadows stretch, clocks turn back, moths scream. You desperately try to tell yourself you're not crazy.

When your exhaustion reaches its limit, and your despair grows into a torrent of ashen grey within your mind, and the only thing keeping you from screaming is the fact that you're too tired to do so, you bury yourself under your bedsheets and try your hardest to reach slumber. Just so you don't have to be aware of the world any longer. You accidentally accomplish something much more tremendous - or was it by design, you wonder in hindsight.

That night, you dream a dream that is not a nightmare, for once. Your footsteps fall upon stony stairs, and you follow the path that takes you to a star incarnate, a gleaming orb several times your size. It shines with an amber light, and seems to be crafted of some immense crystal. You can barely look at it. The eyes of your soul only glimpse a hint of its true nature, but even that glimpse is enough to sear the light into your memory. You immediately awaken, feeling rested for once. The memory of the dream refuses to fade. You head to the bathroom to freshen up, where you see your eyes have taken on an amber glow, reflecting the echo of the amber light. The impossible has become possible, for a measure of power is within you, you somehow know.

You cancel your prior engagements and head to Praxis City's central library, drawn there by an instinct within you. The three others arrive at the same time you do. The eye-light has faded from view by the eyes of the flesh, but the eyes of the soul do not lie. Whatever this is, you won't have to face it alone. You feel a sense of hope.

Best four applications delivered will get in. Take the time to make your backstory a thing of quality. You'll want to be able to RP it, after all.

Spoiler: Character Sheet (click to show/hide)

Name: (While the game is set in the modern era, this is not Earth. As such your name doesn't have to be 'realistic', just reasonable.)

Backstory: (Keep in mind what's already been established - you're only somewhat psychologically stable, and you're not happy with the life you've had before now.)

Aspect: (A conceptual wellspring. Broader is more viable than more specific. Light or cold would be accepted, lasers or liquid nitrogen would not. You only get one for now.)

Spoiler: A Few Details (click to show/hide)

You live in Praxis City, a city within the nation of Artelia. Artelia is one of the Four Great Empires, the superpowers of this world. Government is a mix between democratic election and voting and appointment by the emperor, Rex Artanus.

Magic has existed for longer than this world has had people. Belief that magic exists is widespread, and magic has been proven to exist by Scholariums that study it, but without a catalyst (for example, the Amber Dream) it is rare for it to be accessible. Your average household would not be involved in magic in any way.

The year is 419 A.F. (after the fall of the fifth Great Empire, Vegelis). The Industrial Revolution of this world began about 200 years ago. Computing technology began development 40 years or so ago, and the earliest version of the Internet came into existence 11 years ago. It has not yet reached the levels of prevalence seen in our world.

[Glass]

Name: Varius DeLain

Backstory: An engineering student at the Artanus Imperial University, Varius' days and nights have long been plagued by endless work and study; he may sleep, but rarely at normal hours, never as long as one needs. The lectures stretch endlessly, eternal droning that sets him to a half-slumber until the shrill clock bells ring once more. The papers pile up, the words rearrange, the symbols - supposed to elucidate - only ever evade around meanings, never being pinned down. The only thing that ever caught Varius' attention, that he could understand, was a text on the theory of applied magic, of the potential uses it could have, of how it may be integrated with technology. But what use is that, when so few can touch it, and he could not count himself among them?
Ah, but what if he could?

Aspect: Metal

[Rockeater]

PTW

[TricMagic]

Name: Tim Nomed

Backstory: An average looking schoolgirl going to Amberlight High, she drifts beneath the cliques, goes to boring classes, turns in boring homework, goes home to a boring household with accountant parents, go to cram school, go to bed, and start all over again., Expected to go to a university, get a degree and job, and.. Everything seems grey, dull, monochrome flashes that make one question if you are even moving, if time did not stop. Other times, you just wish everything would stop.
Day in and day out is a drag that seems to go on for longer and longer. Until today, where you decided to skip school and go to the library. No one will expect a library. The dream of that energy enlightens and makes your passion alight. The burning of everything in sight, no longer bound in unseen chains and old pictures, expectations and routine. The old burned away for the new, revolution of life against the system. The gentle flame which burns away impurity and warms the soul.

Aspect: Fire

[KittyTac]

Name: Gene Barger

Description: Gene is a seemingly hard-working, tough miner, working in the Artelian Imperial Coal Mine. However deep down he long grew to hate his job and is wondering why he didn't try hard enough in school and in college. The stale air, the claustrophobic, sooty, dark tunnels, the deafening drilling of jackhammers... it all wore out on him. He has a grudge on the entire industry by now but has no other opportunities. On his breaks he often frequents the library and being led there by the phere cerainly in't his first time...

Aspect: Earth (as in dirt and rocks)

[Glass]

...KT, it's multiplayer, not an SG. :p No longer applicable.

[Remalle]

Name: Ena Puljaga

Backstory: A lonely basement-dwelling NEET who has been drifting from one hacktivist cause to another for years, trying to find a sense of purpose. She has recently fallen into alcoholism as the ennui presses in ever harder. As a child Ena wanted nothing more than to travel the world and right wrongs, but when her parents were laid off those dreams faded, and she never even finished high school. Now, she wants nothing more than to get out of "this place", whatever "this place" means to her at the moment. She just feels trapped.

Aspect: Movement

[Shadowclaw777]

Name: Dimitri Diamonds 

Backstory: Dimitri as always been a street kid, living his nearly his whole life through barely enough welfare and the only proper necessities with his parents working multiple minimum-wage jobs to maintain his large extended family in the slums, being pushed off from his family at the age of fourteen and joining a clique and trying to make ends meets with odd jobs and gigs, illegal or not, at his own rusty studio apartment and without no chance at higher education. Dimitri feels wronged and against the world and especially on the government and fools leading Artelia, not understanding the difficulties of poor class citizens and no social security in place had led to him developing passion and full fermented anger towards those that benefit from the ignorance and apathy of others, and can’t hold back his emotions anymore.   

Aspect: Emotion

[Kilojoule Proton]

Name: Luke Chandler

Backstory: An exhausted grocery store cashier by day and frustrated conspiracy theorist by night, Luke Chandler knows¹ that They are out there on every coin and bill, that They are out to get him whenever a customer argues with him², that They are locked in a millennia-long battle against the Atlantean magicians, and a thousand other important and completely plausible things. Fired after the third altercation with a customer in a week, Luke thought that They had finally caught on to him and fled for his life with a van full of liberated³ canned food.

The next few months were the most dreadful months Luke had ever had the misfortune of experiencing. It didn't take long before Luke grew bored of canned beans and canned soup, but neither the rain nor his fear of Their retribution subsided. His mood gradually deteriorated, and he began contemplating self-inflicted martyrdom rather than letting Them catch him. It was on one particularly dreary, muddy night that Luke dreamt an amber-colored dream and felt strangely reinvigorated and even empowered. Even his eyes, he noticed after he got up, glowed bright amber in the stream from which he drank. Convinced that his monastic and rainy trial finally overcame Their suppression of Atlantean magic, Luke abandoned his camp and made for Praxis City's central library in search of answers.

Aspect: Light


¹ Or believes; he's always been fuzzy on the difference between the two.
² A rather frequent occurrence possibly related to his aggressive attempts to enlighten customers.
³ Viz. stolen.

[FallacyofUrist]

For the record, I plan on selecting characters once I have 8-10 submissions. Currently I believe we're at 6.

[Glass]

Fal, if we don't reach that by this time tomorrow, just choose people.

[FallacyofUrist]

Praxis City's central library is open to all, unlike the richer and more well endowed libraries of the universities and the specialized and restricted libraries of the Scholariums. His Majesty Rex Excelis, called the Great, was a strong believer in the power of widely available education. He unified the Scholariums and universities scattered across Artelia into a cohesive whole, established a lesser network of schools for youth and those seeking to learn trades, and issued edicts demanding the allocation of government funding to research programs, educational initiatives, and scholarships. His time is long past - his death was centuries ago, but of the monarchs of Artelia that have not been dis-named, most of them continued in his memory.

Today, four people enter said library. One of them tracks in dried mud, and while the library-keepers are disapproving, the dirty individual is fully clothed and his face and name are not on any of the exclusion lists. They must, legally speaking, extend to him the benefit of the doubt, so the tap of the key unlocks the doors to the internals of the library. The next is much better received, and the keeper operating the door extends to him a smile. Though she does wonder, what is a student of a renowned university doing at a public library? The third, she recognizes immediately. She doesn't see the need to check his name and simply waves him in. His refined musculature and deep cough are immediately noticeable. While he only shows up a few times each week to read the novels published by authors approved by the Artelia Department of Media, he's attended the library for long enough that whether he shows up morning or night, he's always recognized. The fourth in the group looks angry, his clothes torn in several places. He seems almost spiteful as he gives his name to be checked, and moves with haste as soon as he's allowed access.

Eyes crafted of flesh would not see a connection between these people. The eyes of the mind might recognize a pattern in the way they quickly head to one of the library's secluded study nooks. Someone with the eyes of the soul opened, however, could look beyond the flesh of the four individuals to see the reflected amber light glowing within them. Fortunately for the newly formed group, however, nobody with opened soul-eyes beyond themselves was present within the non-arcane library.

Of course, their own soul-eyes were barely open at all, but the amber light they had inherited made it possible to widen their gaze with time and practice, as they would soon discover. Varius DeLain, Luke Chandler, Gene Barger, and Dimitri Diamonds took their first steps to becoming magic-users that day.

Spoiler: Stats (click to show/hide)

I'm willing to answer questions about the bodily attributes, (Strength, Perception, Swiftness, and Vitality), but the spiritual attributes (Attunement, Soulsight, Intuition, and Intellect) you'll have to learn about on your own. You are free to make guesses.

According to your character, assign 4 points between Strength, Perception, Swiftness, and Vitality. Minimum 0, maximum 3. The maximum of what is normally humanly possible is 6, trained soldiers and athletes typically have between 3 and 5 points in relevant statistics.

According to your character, assign 4 points between Attunement, Soulsight, Intuition and Intellect. Minimum 0, maximum 3.

Your Will is set to 3 points out of 3.

[Glass]

Is there any RP to be done here, or still just doing character creation?

Anyway, Varius would have Strength 1, Perception 2, Swiftness 1, Vitality 0, and Attunement 1, Soulsight 0, Intuition 0, Intellect 3.

[FallacyofUrist]

(Both, absolutely. This is your first time meeting the other amber-touched individuals, so have fun with that RP. Feel free to use this to help elaborate on your backstories and character personalities.)

[Glass]

(Both, absolutely. This is your first time meeting the other amber-touched individuals, so have fun with that RP. Feel free to use this to help elaborate on your backstories and character personalities.)

Cool.


Varius seemed rather... droopy, perhaps. Certainly unenergetic, maybe a bit grey. His eyes had rather noticeably dark circles under them.

He was making his way toward the library's section on magic when he saw Gene. He made eye contact, nodded at him briefly, and made his way to that out-of-the-way corner, with a bit more surety in his step.