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rekindleme
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phoenixasheOOC Information
Player Name: Becca
Player Age: Never see thirty again
Player Contact: AIM=doctressamnesia plurk=anakimwriter
Player/Character HMD: here
Other characters in game: none
IC Information
Character Name: Ashe Wilson
Character Age/Gender: 35/female
Canon Point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mage:_The_Ascension In Ashe's campaigns she operated as a Mage from 1995-2005 without 3rd Edition rules kicking in (largely because the later GM hated them).
Character History
Ashe was born Erin Capurro, a third-generation firefighter from San Francisco, California. Big, athletic and tomboyish, she played substitute son for her widower dad, growing up around firefighters, paramedics, rescue workers, and their support staff. Her upbringing was eccentric, with big emphasis on courage, self-sufficiency and high ideals but also a lot of humor, warmth and mild hedonism. She grew up healthy, tough and confident, with a save-the-world attitude her father was careful to temper with pragmatic knowledge of how much the world and people can suck. When asked what she wanted to be when she graduated high school, she couldn’t decide between a firefighter and a superhero. She was ready to join the station straightaway when she turned eighteen, but Dad and all her “aunts and uncles” insisted on college for her. She rose to the challenge, graduating pre-med and eventually moving on to become a Nurse Practitioner even as she worked at the station. Her Dad lived long enough to see her earn her degree when she was twenty-four. But he was aging, and not as quick or strong as he used to be. One day out on a job that same year a rookie firefighter forgot to check a door for heat and bashed it in looking for survivors. The resulting backdraft ignited a gas leak, and that was that. Half the crew died that day, including Erin’s Dad.
She was heartbroken, and went a little crazy as a result. She sold her condo and almost all of her belongings, drew out all her savings, refurbished her Dad's old Jeep to run on cooking oil and said her goodbyes to the baffled but supportive fire crew. Then she just…started driving. She wandered the roads of America, Mexico and Canada for two years straight, living very simply as she took the time to clear her head. Those who tried to rob her of her considerable stash of cash soon learned that she always carried concealed, regardless of the law. But she occasionally gave some of it away to a needy family. More often, however, her stopovers involved providing poor locals with free medical care, using what gear and materials she could buy, scrounge or steal. She spent a lot of time talking to these people, which included working poor, undocumented immigrants, drifters, artists, political activists, environmentalists, street kids, and alt-culture types such as surf bums and Burners. She also spent a lot of time in nature, reconnecting with the Pagan spirituality she had developed in college, and helped with cleanups, tree plantings and the occasional act of eco-guerrilla sabotage. She was angry and driven, but never let herself fall into zealotry, remembering Dad’s lessons about balancing her ideals with pragmatism.
Two years after leaving San Francisco, she found herself wintering in Asheville, North Carolina, where she rented a small cabin and took cash quietly in return for her medical help. Her activities attracted the attention of a local philanthropist who was actually a very high Humanity (and rebellious) local Kindred. Anton took her under wing, breaking the masquerade in the process, as he wished to Embrace her. But a local Seeress warned him that she had a different destiny, and he swore to protect her instead. He began instructing her in the ways of the real world, explaining the basics of the different races, the cosmology of the world and warning signs of people to avoid. The latter of which she didn't always use as a warning, but rather as food for her curiosity.
A chance meeting in the parklands led to her falling in love with Isaac, a less than prestigious Garou who was intrigued by her fearlessness. He kept trying to keep her at arm's length, but she was smitten and kept trying to get him to open up to her. But political turmoil both among and within the various races led to Isaac dying at the claws of his own packmate. She was crushed, and Anton had to Dominate her to prevent her from becoming self-destructive. This led to her becoming somewhat emotionally dependent on him.
A local Chantry took an interest in her, believing that she and a few others whom Anton was sheltering where close to Awakening. Unfortunately, one of her new Chantry classmates had a big mouth, and ignorantly let slip to the Prince herself about her friendship with "that weird vampire guy Anton". The Prince called a Blood Hunt on Anton, his childer, and all three of the Mage candidates. The head of the Chantry decided that protecting three potentialMages was not worth having to go to war with the Kindred, and banished them from the premises. One of the stunned candidates was murdered within a day; the other ran for her life and was never heard from again. Erin, who witnessed Anton and one of his childer taken down by their blood-hungry fellows, chose to fight back.
She knew enough about arson from her old job to rig an abandoned barn on the edge of town with firebombs, though she had to sacrifice Dad's jeep in the process for parts. Then, using herself as bait, she lured some of the Prince's hunters out there and blew them all to pieces.
Except that Erin did not end up blown to pieces. Her Avatar, which had been close to Awakening for several months, did so violently, shielding her from the worst of the blast and then healing back her body in a burst of wild magic. The resulting Paradox was so strong that her Pattern was altered permanently, giving her not only physical traits similar to her Avatar, but a set of bizarre side effects such as her appetite. Her Aura also changed, and for several months after her Awakening she was afflicted with amnesia which might well have been as much from trauma as from wild magic.
Fortunately her Awakening had attracted the interest of a host of friendly spirits, who guided her to the Chantry. Neither she nor the Chantry leaders realized that she was the same candidate they had kicked to the curb; most importantly, neither did their "ally", the Prince. As the Chantry lacked any Dreamspeakers, Ashe was left in the care of a Verbena who constantly tried to convert her and refused to teach her Spirit Magic. She was forced to learn to work with spirits from Boss Rat and the rest of her host, which she did successfully--angering her "mentor" so much that she tried to force Ashe to remain with the spirit-warded Chantry at all times. Enraged, Ashe determined to gain as much knowledge as she could from the place and then take off. The Verbena turned up the pressure for conversion, and the strain caused Ashe to start to break down. Perhaps because of this, she began to regain her old memories, and eventually realized just who these people were that were "helping" her. Faced with the knowledge that her Chantry had once sold her out, and that they deferred to the Prince who had killed her best friend, and knowing she could do nothing about any of it, Ashe left her hometown of six years without saying goodbye.
Now 32, Ashe wandered the roads for a while before ending up in Tucson, Arizona running a little crafts store situated over a tiny Node. The local Chantry, which was run by Hermetic formalists, attempted to strongly encourage her to join them in order to acquire her Node, but she refused, preferring to remain alone. As her basement Sanctum and business both grew, however, strays kept showing up on her doorstep--two Orphans, a Cultist of Ecstasy, a very young and uptight Celestial Chorister and an almost suicidally reckless Virtual Adept. All were either refugees from the local Chantry bullies or had been ignored by them entirely. They banded together for mutual protection, fending off problems such as marauding Men In Black, evil spirits, the Chantry trying to steal their Node via Prime magic, and the HIT Mark the VA managed to accidentally draw to the shop. By the time Ashe realized that she had ended up running a small Chantry, a year had passed.
Ashe tried to be the leader she had never seen in a Chantry setting: humble, fair, supportive, and nonpolitical. But even among relatively liberal Mages there were always problems. The Cultist saw nothing wrong with letting his Wraith buddies skinride into the Chantry to spy on private meetings, and collapsed completely when Ashe called him on it. The Chorister became so sexually obsessed with Ashe within a week of meeting her that he went into Quiet. The Virtual Adept enjoyed nothing better than to hack deep into Technocracy databases while sitting in unshielded areas of Ashe's shop, and threw tantrums when called on it. Only the two Orphans showed any level of maturity or sanity, or listened to her when she tried to teach them. They eventually left when the others became too insufferable, however, and the brainless VA got herself killed. After discovering that the Cultist and Chorister had conspired against her with the Hermetic chantry (as revenge for her "breaking their hearts" by having no interest in them sexually), Ashe decided to throw in the towel. So she packed up the few things she wanted to keep, and sold her shop, land and the Node to a friend she knew was secretly a Glasswalker. The Node became the focus of a small but very well-armed urban Sept, and the Chorister and two Hermetics died when they tried to take it for the Chantry. Ashe walked away through the Umbra mourning the folly of her fellow Mages, and swearing to avoid Chantry membership ever after.
For the last two years since then Ashe has moved from town to town, living in a well-appointed conversion van and getting by from selling jewelry and occasionally pulling from her decent-sized nest egg of cash. She tries to spread hope, healing and education wherever she goes, but has been constantly frustrated by the lack of enlightenment that many people of all races display. She spent seven months settled in Denver, Colorado for her third Seeking and to develop her fetish-making abilities. However, the local Chantry attempted to retain her to make fetishes for their war against the local Technocrats, and kept harassing her in spite of her refusals. They alerted the local Technocrats to her existence in order to force her into their arms for safety's sake. But those Technocrats were Void Engineers who had little real interest in the Ascension War and were mostly wanting to set up their radio telescopes and be left alone. The Verbena running the Chantry were actually antagonizing them, and they had no interest in checking out some random mage that was giving them no trouble. Ashe ended up having a long, enlightening conversation with a guy who reminded her of Igon Spengler. He promised not to report her existence to his superiors if she did not help the Chantry. She did him one better, and got the Hell out of town.
In the month or two since she has been driving up and down the West Coast of America, trying to clear her head before she settles down again.
Character World: Ashe comes from the 2nd Edition era of Mage: the Ascension, before the Spirit World went completely to Hell. Her universe is essentially a doomed world wherein two of the three primal forces have gone insane, the Earth is dying, and humans and supernatural beings alike are reaping the rewards of being at each other's throats for many centuries. Because of this, she will be fascinated and relieved to learn about the larger Multiverse.
Character Personality
Ashe has a big, friendly, sometimes boisterous manner that is honest to the point of bluntness, compassionate and warm. She doesn't need to be the center of attention, but she likes people--of all races--and is willing to give anyone a chance provided that they are not hostile or genuinely evil. She is a former firefighter and trained as a paramedic; she tends to default to rescue-worker thinking in a crisis and will use subtle magics to enhance her lifesaving efforts. Ashe has compassion for humanity, but also kind of wants to kick their collective ass. Nothing personal. She has ended up feeling that same ambivalent way about every society she has run across, including that of Tradition Mages.
Like many Dreamspeakers, she embraces Gaian spirituality--but instead of reacting to the violation of the Earth with further violence, she prefers to turn to healing and bolstering what is good in the world--in individuals, communities and environmental regions. She tends to become a quiet custodian of any city she stays in, providing underground medical care (for any race) and psychological and spiritual support, heading clean-up and reclamation efforts, purifying both physically and spiritually polluted areas, and tagging in as combat healer when the local "concerned citizens" band together against a supernatural threat. She takes full advantage of her high Arcane to give her more wiggle room when it comes to pursuing her calling, although eventually any city in which she operates will start to develop a circle of vague but similar rumors.
Ashe is very eccentric, and cares little for human convention or normalcy, though she toes the line whenever she might get caught. Half of her friends are not "normal" in any sense; because she is a natural medium who works with spirits on a daily basis, perhaps a quarter of her friends don't even have bodies. She can sometimes be caught talking to "herself" as she walks down the street. She is very open about being an environmental and health activist, and often organizes or takes part in grassroots efforts like planting community gardens or refurbishing a poor person's house.
She maintains a continent-wide network of friends and allies, mostly over the Internet. Some are rather unusual, including the odd Void Engineer and an Umbral Underground Marauder. She does not discriminate against any Tradition, but is not an active member of any Chantries either, instead quietly offering assistance and doing business where she can, usually trading in Tass, instruction, information, Awakened herbs, healing services or small charms. She usually learns new Rotes or expands on her skills through such trades.
Ashe is a bit of a hedonist, enjoying beer, pot, a good meal and a good laugh. She's not very flirtatious, preferring to just decide whether she likes a guy and just asking him out. Life's too short. She thinks these things should be out in the open, but on the other hand tries never to use her sexuality to manipulate others. Unfortunately, due to quirks of her Avatar, she tends to wield a somewhat painful Clue Bat--even when she does not mean to. She has a deep hatred of truly evil people and will not hesitate to kill them if the situation warrants it.
Character Abilities
Spirit 4: Ashe can speak with spirits, summon them, banish them, ward them from an area, cause them actual harm, make them sleep or imprison them, help them temporarily manifest in the physical world, and ask or trade with them for favors such as boosting a spell, inhabiting an amulet to power it or perpetually hiding some asshole's car keys. She is capable of summoning and controlling pretty powerful spirits, but she almost never does so save in absolute life-or-death necessity. She can also cross into the spirit world herself, but this may never come up in game. She can technically use her spirit powers without singing or another source of music, but it helps her focus.
Life 3: Ashe can heal even severe wounds with enough time and effort, including those that actually remove flesh like fire or acid. She is better at healing her own body, but can do it for anyone (except the Undead, who require an entirely different course of treatment). They have to be in sight range, and it is best if she is close to or touching them. Ashe cannot bring the dead back to life beyond the capabilities of a talented ER doctor, but she can do things that they can't such as regrowing limbs or regenerating nerve or brain tissue. She can also do horrible damage to a body with the same power, but prefers nonlethal solutions such as forcing someone to fall asleep. She can also make small modifications to living things, from giving herself claws or gills to making a carrot nutritionally complete--or full of knockout juice. Complimentary abilities include her ability to perceive any living thing's structure, physical state, and any illnesses, injuries or deficiencies. Ashe does not require herbs or herb products in order to use this power set, but it helps her focus.
Entropy 2: Ashe can sense entropic forces and manipulate them to tiny degrees, allowing her to do things like sense weaknesses in a structure, living thing or person, sense their level of corruption (true evil, basically) and sense tainted or polluted substances or areas. She can also understand the various patterns underlying seemingly random events, and tweak them slightly to improve her or another's good fortune. She does not use this power very often, and requires bones (usually set into her jewelry) to do so.
Prime 2: This power allows her to sense and manipulate raw magical energy, allowing her to infuse it into objects, draw it from them, temporarily disrupt or gradually unweave enchantments, "pay" spirits with it, or sense whether a person is using magic or if an object or substance is magical. She does not use this power very often, and requires quartz crystals (usually set into her jewelry) to do so.
Forces 2: This power allows Ashe to sense different energies, from the electricity running through a circuit to all spectra of light energy. She can also influence them, for example putting out a fire, short circuiting a machine, or making beams of light bend around a corner. Ashe does not require an open flame to manipulate Forces, but it helps her to concentrate.
Arcane 4: Ashe is very good at hiding from people and going unnoticed when she really wants to. This does not make her invisible, but rather provides opportune hiding places, convenient distractions when she walks past, or sudden attacks of derp when trying to recall details about her. Unless she is actively choosing to conceal herself from a PC this power won't generally come into play.
Spark of Life: Ashe has an unusual talent for healing, heals significantly more quickly than a normal human (bruises vanish in an hour and broken bones heal in a week), and has blood that is twice as nourishing as normal to vampires.
Spirit Magnet: Ashe is surrounded by friendly, mostly low-power spirits. (A list of her "regulars" is attached below). These spirits warn her of dangers in the spirit world, offer advice and help to keep her from falling off a moral cliff despite her stress level. They cannot be seen unless a person can detect spirits or magic or see into the spirit world, and cannot affect this plane with their limited powers unless Ashe helps them out with magic.
Higher Purpose: Ashe, like all Gaians, is out to save her world by cleansing it of its demonic infestations and restoring it to balance. As a result, she has a really strong will when it comes to anything that would shake her from that purpose. This doesn't make her fanatical, but getting her to betray Gaia or abandon the quest to save her world will be well nigh impossible.
Dream: She can temporarily develop a low-level, seat-of-the-pants knack for one skill, area of knowledge or language once every 24 hours, provided that she sleeps. This does not make her more than passingly competent at it. She also tends to butcher the accents of any languages she temp-acquires this way.
Awareness: Ashe has a lot of occult knowledge and a fairly strong talent for picking out supernatural individuals, occurrences, areas and effects. This is a learned skill, not an intrinsic ability, and she sometimes makes mistakes.
Medical Training: Ashe is a licensed Nurse Practitioner with rescue and EMT training. She is also a licensed massage therapist.
Herbalism: Ashe is a certified expert in Western herbalism, and can prepare a variety of concoctions depending on what she has available. She often gives her teas, creams, oils and mixes a boost with Life, Prime or Spirit magic.
Occult and Spirit Lore: Ashe has basic knowledge of most supernatural races in her world, including Kindred, Garou and Fae. She has extensive knowledge of spirits and the spirit world.
Character Inventory: Medical bag with assorted herbs, seeds and extracts, medicine pouch with various crystals and bones, two good lighters, box of matches, crystal and bone jewelry, hunting knife, assorted snacks for her and Boss Rat, Dog's tennis ball, massage oil, good walking shoes, leather bomber jacket, jeans and t-shirt, multi-tool, wallet full of cash, older cell phone (which is now useless unless Beep-Beep wants to talk to her), at least some pot, probably a beer if it's after three in the afternoon.
Magical Items: Ashe has two low-powered fetishes (spirit-powered magical items) which she has created and had on her at the time. The first is a magical smoking-pipe with a Cannabis spirit inside of it, which she uses as an entheogen and to relax. The second is a unicorn beanie baby with a bitty Dream spirit that protects whoever sleeps within ten feet of it from nightmares.
Spirit Companions: Unless I get a specific OK from staff, these spirits will be the only ones that Ashe can summon during her stay. They act like Hammerspace mascots and follow her around invisibly at all times. They were drawn to her by her being a Spirit Magnet and are mostly completely benevolent and very low-powered. They serve as company, warning of spiritual danger, and encouragement for Ashe to remain a relatively good person. She can summon them using her powers. Each one has a specific appearance, personality, and ability.
Boss Rat: A constant companion and sometime mentor since her Awakening, Boss Rat is a cat-sized Rat spirit who appears somewhat cartoonishly; he's semi-bipedal, wears a bowler hat and vest, speaks with a thick Brooklyn accent, and occasionally smokes a cigar. He knows many occult secrets, and has the power to find his way into or out of anywhere. However, he demands snacks as payment, swears like a sailor, has questionable personal habits and combat tactics, and will run away from battle if seriously wounded.
VW Bun: He's a giant bunny. She usually uses him for travel in the spirit world (this looks as ridiculous as you might think). He actually can fight, but as he's mostly summoned for cuddling purposes he must be severely provoked. Likes offerings of bunny-appropriate foods. When angered, he starts flinging things around in a typical bunny tantrum--except that he is strong enough to do it to your average couch. Has also been known to get excited and start making a mess thanks to giant-sized binkying. His power is basically being a giant bunny.
Beep-Beep: A Net Spider, basically a free-roaming AI who usually communicates through her phone. He looks like a basketball-sized white metal spider with a small ambulance for a body, headlights for eyes, a red cross on his back and a tiny car horn and siren to communicate with. His power is to manipulate machines in simple ways, though the more complicated or alien the technology, the less he can do to them. He's cooperative and friendly, but gets lonely easily and will often bug her in chatspeak.
Cannabis: Cannabis appears as an eight-inch-tall, tie-dye-wearing hippie dude with red hair, bloodshot eyes and wings that look like pot leaves. He speaks like an aging Santa Cruz hippie and is very wise and kind, but also has severe short-term what. He has a sweet tooth, but his main offering is secondhand pot smoke. When he manifests around someone smoking, their exhalations will gather around him in a gradually thickening cloud about a foot wide. Cannabis has all the medicinal and euphoria-inducing abilities of his plant. None can be used offensively, though he has been known to calm rampaging animals (and sometimes people) by suddenly getting them very high.
Bitch: This is a tiny rage spirit, and the darkest one in Ashe's regular host. It is a small red-black ball of pure anger that mutters obsessively to itself in Ashe's voice about the things in her life that enrage and frustrate her. Bitch has no positive use except to kick Ashe into fighting back against threats instead of freezing in fear. However, it is also partly to blame for her temper.
The Fireys: Three tiny, firefly-sized fire elementals that buzz around excitedly squeaking to each other. They generally follow instructions but may get overexcited and land on the wrong flammable item. They each roughly have the same abilities as a flying lit match.
Dog: Dog appears as a Golden Retrieverlike animal the size and mass of a St. Bernard. He is patient and gentle unless someone attacks Ashe or someone else who befriends him. His special gift is to track people by scent. She makes him peanut butter dog cookies as an offering.
Otter, Ferret and Raven: Very low-level spirits that appear as tiny versions of themselves. Otter can find fresh water within a mile range. Raven can find small shiny items such as lost car keys or jewelry. Ferret...is a tag-along pain in the ass who constantly tries to slip off and steal whatever he can before she catches him and stuffs him back into the spirit world. She only summons him because he's really good at distracting enemies.
Samples
Ashe looks around for help sorting out opening a home business, and meets a friendly alien she mistakes for a Fae. Hitting-it-off and ice cream ensue.
Ashe stood on the balcony of her new apartment, hair wet from the shower, staring out at the dawn. This city was more beautiful, this world more kind, than she was used to, the steady drain of specific sorts of Life energy notwithstanding. She could train here, grow strong, make allies...maybe even take an apprentice. Find help for her own dying world-spirit and all the people who depended on her to live. If she helped this world's spirit enough--made contact with it and worked with it--surely it would be willing to help her own.
But contacting it would be difficult. She had no idea yet what local spirituality was like, and what the proper forms and offerings were. It was important to know these things when dealing with spirits. She would have to make sure that she met the right people, got the right information. It might take time. The locals seemed friendly but she could hardly expect them to trust an outsider straight off.
Meanwhile, however, she had her heart set on capitalizing on the local need for physical contact. As a bodyworker, she could provide that with a minimum of awkwardness, and make a bit of cash while she was at it. All she had to do was set up her front room as a home office and go from there. Hopefully the locals, with their strange energetic emergency, would encourage any occupation that would encourage more.
Player Name: Becca
Player Age: Never see thirty again
Player Contact: AIM=doctressamnesia plurk=anakimwriter
Player/Character HMD: here
Other characters in game: none
IC Information
Character Name: Ashe Wilson
Character Age/Gender: 35/female
Canon Point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mage:_The_Ascension In Ashe's campaigns she operated as a Mage from 1995-2005 without 3rd Edition rules kicking in (largely because the later GM hated them).
Character History
Ashe was born Erin Capurro, a third-generation firefighter from San Francisco, California. Big, athletic and tomboyish, she played substitute son for her widower dad, growing up around firefighters, paramedics, rescue workers, and their support staff. Her upbringing was eccentric, with big emphasis on courage, self-sufficiency and high ideals but also a lot of humor, warmth and mild hedonism. She grew up healthy, tough and confident, with a save-the-world attitude her father was careful to temper with pragmatic knowledge of how much the world and people can suck. When asked what she wanted to be when she graduated high school, she couldn’t decide between a firefighter and a superhero. She was ready to join the station straightaway when she turned eighteen, but Dad and all her “aunts and uncles” insisted on college for her. She rose to the challenge, graduating pre-med and eventually moving on to become a Nurse Practitioner even as she worked at the station. Her Dad lived long enough to see her earn her degree when she was twenty-four. But he was aging, and not as quick or strong as he used to be. One day out on a job that same year a rookie firefighter forgot to check a door for heat and bashed it in looking for survivors. The resulting backdraft ignited a gas leak, and that was that. Half the crew died that day, including Erin’s Dad.
She was heartbroken, and went a little crazy as a result. She sold her condo and almost all of her belongings, drew out all her savings, refurbished her Dad's old Jeep to run on cooking oil and said her goodbyes to the baffled but supportive fire crew. Then she just…started driving. She wandered the roads of America, Mexico and Canada for two years straight, living very simply as she took the time to clear her head. Those who tried to rob her of her considerable stash of cash soon learned that she always carried concealed, regardless of the law. But she occasionally gave some of it away to a needy family. More often, however, her stopovers involved providing poor locals with free medical care, using what gear and materials she could buy, scrounge or steal. She spent a lot of time talking to these people, which included working poor, undocumented immigrants, drifters, artists, political activists, environmentalists, street kids, and alt-culture types such as surf bums and Burners. She also spent a lot of time in nature, reconnecting with the Pagan spirituality she had developed in college, and helped with cleanups, tree plantings and the occasional act of eco-guerrilla sabotage. She was angry and driven, but never let herself fall into zealotry, remembering Dad’s lessons about balancing her ideals with pragmatism.
Two years after leaving San Francisco, she found herself wintering in Asheville, North Carolina, where she rented a small cabin and took cash quietly in return for her medical help. Her activities attracted the attention of a local philanthropist who was actually a very high Humanity (and rebellious) local Kindred. Anton took her under wing, breaking the masquerade in the process, as he wished to Embrace her. But a local Seeress warned him that she had a different destiny, and he swore to protect her instead. He began instructing her in the ways of the real world, explaining the basics of the different races, the cosmology of the world and warning signs of people to avoid. The latter of which she didn't always use as a warning, but rather as food for her curiosity.
A chance meeting in the parklands led to her falling in love with Isaac, a less than prestigious Garou who was intrigued by her fearlessness. He kept trying to keep her at arm's length, but she was smitten and kept trying to get him to open up to her. But political turmoil both among and within the various races led to Isaac dying at the claws of his own packmate. She was crushed, and Anton had to Dominate her to prevent her from becoming self-destructive. This led to her becoming somewhat emotionally dependent on him.
A local Chantry took an interest in her, believing that she and a few others whom Anton was sheltering where close to Awakening. Unfortunately, one of her new Chantry classmates had a big mouth, and ignorantly let slip to the Prince herself about her friendship with "that weird vampire guy Anton". The Prince called a Blood Hunt on Anton, his childer, and all three of the Mage candidates. The head of the Chantry decided that protecting three potentialMages was not worth having to go to war with the Kindred, and banished them from the premises. One of the stunned candidates was murdered within a day; the other ran for her life and was never heard from again. Erin, who witnessed Anton and one of his childer taken down by their blood-hungry fellows, chose to fight back.
She knew enough about arson from her old job to rig an abandoned barn on the edge of town with firebombs, though she had to sacrifice Dad's jeep in the process for parts. Then, using herself as bait, she lured some of the Prince's hunters out there and blew them all to pieces.
Except that Erin did not end up blown to pieces. Her Avatar, which had been close to Awakening for several months, did so violently, shielding her from the worst of the blast and then healing back her body in a burst of wild magic. The resulting Paradox was so strong that her Pattern was altered permanently, giving her not only physical traits similar to her Avatar, but a set of bizarre side effects such as her appetite. Her Aura also changed, and for several months after her Awakening she was afflicted with amnesia which might well have been as much from trauma as from wild magic.
Fortunately her Awakening had attracted the interest of a host of friendly spirits, who guided her to the Chantry. Neither she nor the Chantry leaders realized that she was the same candidate they had kicked to the curb; most importantly, neither did their "ally", the Prince. As the Chantry lacked any Dreamspeakers, Ashe was left in the care of a Verbena who constantly tried to convert her and refused to teach her Spirit Magic. She was forced to learn to work with spirits from Boss Rat and the rest of her host, which she did successfully--angering her "mentor" so much that she tried to force Ashe to remain with the spirit-warded Chantry at all times. Enraged, Ashe determined to gain as much knowledge as she could from the place and then take off. The Verbena turned up the pressure for conversion, and the strain caused Ashe to start to break down. Perhaps because of this, she began to regain her old memories, and eventually realized just who these people were that were "helping" her. Faced with the knowledge that her Chantry had once sold her out, and that they deferred to the Prince who had killed her best friend, and knowing she could do nothing about any of it, Ashe left her hometown of six years without saying goodbye.
Now 32, Ashe wandered the roads for a while before ending up in Tucson, Arizona running a little crafts store situated over a tiny Node. The local Chantry, which was run by Hermetic formalists, attempted to strongly encourage her to join them in order to acquire her Node, but she refused, preferring to remain alone. As her basement Sanctum and business both grew, however, strays kept showing up on her doorstep--two Orphans, a Cultist of Ecstasy, a very young and uptight Celestial Chorister and an almost suicidally reckless Virtual Adept. All were either refugees from the local Chantry bullies or had been ignored by them entirely. They banded together for mutual protection, fending off problems such as marauding Men In Black, evil spirits, the Chantry trying to steal their Node via Prime magic, and the HIT Mark the VA managed to accidentally draw to the shop. By the time Ashe realized that she had ended up running a small Chantry, a year had passed.
Ashe tried to be the leader she had never seen in a Chantry setting: humble, fair, supportive, and nonpolitical. But even among relatively liberal Mages there were always problems. The Cultist saw nothing wrong with letting his Wraith buddies skinride into the Chantry to spy on private meetings, and collapsed completely when Ashe called him on it. The Chorister became so sexually obsessed with Ashe within a week of meeting her that he went into Quiet. The Virtual Adept enjoyed nothing better than to hack deep into Technocracy databases while sitting in unshielded areas of Ashe's shop, and threw tantrums when called on it. Only the two Orphans showed any level of maturity or sanity, or listened to her when she tried to teach them. They eventually left when the others became too insufferable, however, and the brainless VA got herself killed. After discovering that the Cultist and Chorister had conspired against her with the Hermetic chantry (as revenge for her "breaking their hearts" by having no interest in them sexually), Ashe decided to throw in the towel. So she packed up the few things she wanted to keep, and sold her shop, land and the Node to a friend she knew was secretly a Glasswalker. The Node became the focus of a small but very well-armed urban Sept, and the Chorister and two Hermetics died when they tried to take it for the Chantry. Ashe walked away through the Umbra mourning the folly of her fellow Mages, and swearing to avoid Chantry membership ever after.
For the last two years since then Ashe has moved from town to town, living in a well-appointed conversion van and getting by from selling jewelry and occasionally pulling from her decent-sized nest egg of cash. She tries to spread hope, healing and education wherever she goes, but has been constantly frustrated by the lack of enlightenment that many people of all races display. She spent seven months settled in Denver, Colorado for her third Seeking and to develop her fetish-making abilities. However, the local Chantry attempted to retain her to make fetishes for their war against the local Technocrats, and kept harassing her in spite of her refusals. They alerted the local Technocrats to her existence in order to force her into their arms for safety's sake. But those Technocrats were Void Engineers who had little real interest in the Ascension War and were mostly wanting to set up their radio telescopes and be left alone. The Verbena running the Chantry were actually antagonizing them, and they had no interest in checking out some random mage that was giving them no trouble. Ashe ended up having a long, enlightening conversation with a guy who reminded her of Igon Spengler. He promised not to report her existence to his superiors if she did not help the Chantry. She did him one better, and got the Hell out of town.
In the month or two since she has been driving up and down the West Coast of America, trying to clear her head before she settles down again.
Character World: Ashe comes from the 2nd Edition era of Mage: the Ascension, before the Spirit World went completely to Hell. Her universe is essentially a doomed world wherein two of the three primal forces have gone insane, the Earth is dying, and humans and supernatural beings alike are reaping the rewards of being at each other's throats for many centuries. Because of this, she will be fascinated and relieved to learn about the larger Multiverse.
Character Personality
Ashe has a big, friendly, sometimes boisterous manner that is honest to the point of bluntness, compassionate and warm. She doesn't need to be the center of attention, but she likes people--of all races--and is willing to give anyone a chance provided that they are not hostile or genuinely evil. She is a former firefighter and trained as a paramedic; she tends to default to rescue-worker thinking in a crisis and will use subtle magics to enhance her lifesaving efforts. Ashe has compassion for humanity, but also kind of wants to kick their collective ass. Nothing personal. She has ended up feeling that same ambivalent way about every society she has run across, including that of Tradition Mages.
Like many Dreamspeakers, she embraces Gaian spirituality--but instead of reacting to the violation of the Earth with further violence, she prefers to turn to healing and bolstering what is good in the world--in individuals, communities and environmental regions. She tends to become a quiet custodian of any city she stays in, providing underground medical care (for any race) and psychological and spiritual support, heading clean-up and reclamation efforts, purifying both physically and spiritually polluted areas, and tagging in as combat healer when the local "concerned citizens" band together against a supernatural threat. She takes full advantage of her high Arcane to give her more wiggle room when it comes to pursuing her calling, although eventually any city in which she operates will start to develop a circle of vague but similar rumors.
Ashe is very eccentric, and cares little for human convention or normalcy, though she toes the line whenever she might get caught. Half of her friends are not "normal" in any sense; because she is a natural medium who works with spirits on a daily basis, perhaps a quarter of her friends don't even have bodies. She can sometimes be caught talking to "herself" as she walks down the street. She is very open about being an environmental and health activist, and often organizes or takes part in grassroots efforts like planting community gardens or refurbishing a poor person's house.
She maintains a continent-wide network of friends and allies, mostly over the Internet. Some are rather unusual, including the odd Void Engineer and an Umbral Underground Marauder. She does not discriminate against any Tradition, but is not an active member of any Chantries either, instead quietly offering assistance and doing business where she can, usually trading in Tass, instruction, information, Awakened herbs, healing services or small charms. She usually learns new Rotes or expands on her skills through such trades.
Ashe is a bit of a hedonist, enjoying beer, pot, a good meal and a good laugh. She's not very flirtatious, preferring to just decide whether she likes a guy and just asking him out. Life's too short. She thinks these things should be out in the open, but on the other hand tries never to use her sexuality to manipulate others. Unfortunately, due to quirks of her Avatar, she tends to wield a somewhat painful Clue Bat--even when she does not mean to. She has a deep hatred of truly evil people and will not hesitate to kill them if the situation warrants it.
Character Abilities
Spirit 4: Ashe can speak with spirits, summon them, banish them, ward them from an area, cause them actual harm, make them sleep or imprison them, help them temporarily manifest in the physical world, and ask or trade with them for favors such as boosting a spell, inhabiting an amulet to power it or perpetually hiding some asshole's car keys. She is capable of summoning and controlling pretty powerful spirits, but she almost never does so save in absolute life-or-death necessity. She can also cross into the spirit world herself, but this may never come up in game. She can technically use her spirit powers without singing or another source of music, but it helps her focus.
Life 3: Ashe can heal even severe wounds with enough time and effort, including those that actually remove flesh like fire or acid. She is better at healing her own body, but can do it for anyone (except the Undead, who require an entirely different course of treatment). They have to be in sight range, and it is best if she is close to or touching them. Ashe cannot bring the dead back to life beyond the capabilities of a talented ER doctor, but she can do things that they can't such as regrowing limbs or regenerating nerve or brain tissue. She can also do horrible damage to a body with the same power, but prefers nonlethal solutions such as forcing someone to fall asleep. She can also make small modifications to living things, from giving herself claws or gills to making a carrot nutritionally complete--or full of knockout juice. Complimentary abilities include her ability to perceive any living thing's structure, physical state, and any illnesses, injuries or deficiencies. Ashe does not require herbs or herb products in order to use this power set, but it helps her focus.
Entropy 2: Ashe can sense entropic forces and manipulate them to tiny degrees, allowing her to do things like sense weaknesses in a structure, living thing or person, sense their level of corruption (true evil, basically) and sense tainted or polluted substances or areas. She can also understand the various patterns underlying seemingly random events, and tweak them slightly to improve her or another's good fortune. She does not use this power very often, and requires bones (usually set into her jewelry) to do so.
Prime 2: This power allows her to sense and manipulate raw magical energy, allowing her to infuse it into objects, draw it from them, temporarily disrupt or gradually unweave enchantments, "pay" spirits with it, or sense whether a person is using magic or if an object or substance is magical. She does not use this power very often, and requires quartz crystals (usually set into her jewelry) to do so.
Forces 2: This power allows Ashe to sense different energies, from the electricity running through a circuit to all spectra of light energy. She can also influence them, for example putting out a fire, short circuiting a machine, or making beams of light bend around a corner. Ashe does not require an open flame to manipulate Forces, but it helps her to concentrate.
Arcane 4: Ashe is very good at hiding from people and going unnoticed when she really wants to. This does not make her invisible, but rather provides opportune hiding places, convenient distractions when she walks past, or sudden attacks of derp when trying to recall details about her. Unless she is actively choosing to conceal herself from a PC this power won't generally come into play.
Spark of Life: Ashe has an unusual talent for healing, heals significantly more quickly than a normal human (bruises vanish in an hour and broken bones heal in a week), and has blood that is twice as nourishing as normal to vampires.
Spirit Magnet: Ashe is surrounded by friendly, mostly low-power spirits. (A list of her "regulars" is attached below). These spirits warn her of dangers in the spirit world, offer advice and help to keep her from falling off a moral cliff despite her stress level. They cannot be seen unless a person can detect spirits or magic or see into the spirit world, and cannot affect this plane with their limited powers unless Ashe helps them out with magic.
Higher Purpose: Ashe, like all Gaians, is out to save her world by cleansing it of its demonic infestations and restoring it to balance. As a result, she has a really strong will when it comes to anything that would shake her from that purpose. This doesn't make her fanatical, but getting her to betray Gaia or abandon the quest to save her world will be well nigh impossible.
Dream: She can temporarily develop a low-level, seat-of-the-pants knack for one skill, area of knowledge or language once every 24 hours, provided that she sleeps. This does not make her more than passingly competent at it. She also tends to butcher the accents of any languages she temp-acquires this way.
Awareness: Ashe has a lot of occult knowledge and a fairly strong talent for picking out supernatural individuals, occurrences, areas and effects. This is a learned skill, not an intrinsic ability, and she sometimes makes mistakes.
Medical Training: Ashe is a licensed Nurse Practitioner with rescue and EMT training. She is also a licensed massage therapist.
Herbalism: Ashe is a certified expert in Western herbalism, and can prepare a variety of concoctions depending on what she has available. She often gives her teas, creams, oils and mixes a boost with Life, Prime or Spirit magic.
Occult and Spirit Lore: Ashe has basic knowledge of most supernatural races in her world, including Kindred, Garou and Fae. She has extensive knowledge of spirits and the spirit world.
Character Inventory: Medical bag with assorted herbs, seeds and extracts, medicine pouch with various crystals and bones, two good lighters, box of matches, crystal and bone jewelry, hunting knife, assorted snacks for her and Boss Rat, Dog's tennis ball, massage oil, good walking shoes, leather bomber jacket, jeans and t-shirt, multi-tool, wallet full of cash, older cell phone (which is now useless unless Beep-Beep wants to talk to her), at least some pot, probably a beer if it's after three in the afternoon.
Magical Items: Ashe has two low-powered fetishes (spirit-powered magical items) which she has created and had on her at the time. The first is a magical smoking-pipe with a Cannabis spirit inside of it, which she uses as an entheogen and to relax. The second is a unicorn beanie baby with a bitty Dream spirit that protects whoever sleeps within ten feet of it from nightmares.
Spirit Companions: Unless I get a specific OK from staff, these spirits will be the only ones that Ashe can summon during her stay. They act like Hammerspace mascots and follow her around invisibly at all times. They were drawn to her by her being a Spirit Magnet and are mostly completely benevolent and very low-powered. They serve as company, warning of spiritual danger, and encouragement for Ashe to remain a relatively good person. She can summon them using her powers. Each one has a specific appearance, personality, and ability.
Boss Rat: A constant companion and sometime mentor since her Awakening, Boss Rat is a cat-sized Rat spirit who appears somewhat cartoonishly; he's semi-bipedal, wears a bowler hat and vest, speaks with a thick Brooklyn accent, and occasionally smokes a cigar. He knows many occult secrets, and has the power to find his way into or out of anywhere. However, he demands snacks as payment, swears like a sailor, has questionable personal habits and combat tactics, and will run away from battle if seriously wounded.
VW Bun: He's a giant bunny. She usually uses him for travel in the spirit world (this looks as ridiculous as you might think). He actually can fight, but as he's mostly summoned for cuddling purposes he must be severely provoked. Likes offerings of bunny-appropriate foods. When angered, he starts flinging things around in a typical bunny tantrum--except that he is strong enough to do it to your average couch. Has also been known to get excited and start making a mess thanks to giant-sized binkying. His power is basically being a giant bunny.
Beep-Beep: A Net Spider, basically a free-roaming AI who usually communicates through her phone. He looks like a basketball-sized white metal spider with a small ambulance for a body, headlights for eyes, a red cross on his back and a tiny car horn and siren to communicate with. His power is to manipulate machines in simple ways, though the more complicated or alien the technology, the less he can do to them. He's cooperative and friendly, but gets lonely easily and will often bug her in chatspeak.
Cannabis: Cannabis appears as an eight-inch-tall, tie-dye-wearing hippie dude with red hair, bloodshot eyes and wings that look like pot leaves. He speaks like an aging Santa Cruz hippie and is very wise and kind, but also has severe short-term what. He has a sweet tooth, but his main offering is secondhand pot smoke. When he manifests around someone smoking, their exhalations will gather around him in a gradually thickening cloud about a foot wide. Cannabis has all the medicinal and euphoria-inducing abilities of his plant. None can be used offensively, though he has been known to calm rampaging animals (and sometimes people) by suddenly getting them very high.
Bitch: This is a tiny rage spirit, and the darkest one in Ashe's regular host. It is a small red-black ball of pure anger that mutters obsessively to itself in Ashe's voice about the things in her life that enrage and frustrate her. Bitch has no positive use except to kick Ashe into fighting back against threats instead of freezing in fear. However, it is also partly to blame for her temper.
The Fireys: Three tiny, firefly-sized fire elementals that buzz around excitedly squeaking to each other. They generally follow instructions but may get overexcited and land on the wrong flammable item. They each roughly have the same abilities as a flying lit match.
Dog: Dog appears as a Golden Retrieverlike animal the size and mass of a St. Bernard. He is patient and gentle unless someone attacks Ashe or someone else who befriends him. His special gift is to track people by scent. She makes him peanut butter dog cookies as an offering.
Otter, Ferret and Raven: Very low-level spirits that appear as tiny versions of themselves. Otter can find fresh water within a mile range. Raven can find small shiny items such as lost car keys or jewelry. Ferret...is a tag-along pain in the ass who constantly tries to slip off and steal whatever he can before she catches him and stuffs him back into the spirit world. She only summons him because he's really good at distracting enemies.
Samples
Ashe looks around for help sorting out opening a home business, and meets a friendly alien she mistakes for a Fae. Hitting-it-off and ice cream ensue.
Ashe stood on the balcony of her new apartment, hair wet from the shower, staring out at the dawn. This city was more beautiful, this world more kind, than she was used to, the steady drain of specific sorts of Life energy notwithstanding. She could train here, grow strong, make allies...maybe even take an apprentice. Find help for her own dying world-spirit and all the people who depended on her to live. If she helped this world's spirit enough--made contact with it and worked with it--surely it would be willing to help her own.
But contacting it would be difficult. She had no idea yet what local spirituality was like, and what the proper forms and offerings were. It was important to know these things when dealing with spirits. She would have to make sure that she met the right people, got the right information. It might take time. The locals seemed friendly but she could hardly expect them to trust an outsider straight off.
Meanwhile, however, she had her heart set on capitalizing on the local need for physical contact. As a bodyworker, she could provide that with a minimum of awkwardness, and make a bit of cash while she was at it. All she had to do was set up her front room as a home office and go from there. Hopefully the locals, with their strange energetic emergency, would encourage any occupation that would encourage more.
