SILHOUETTE

Melissa paused and squinted at the plant before her - it was hard to examine in the dim light of the stars that illuminated the sky above. She sighed wearily - it looked like another new species, which meant more hours slaving over it at the Lab. She gave thanks to the Earth Mother here for the new species she had found, then begged forgiveness for what she was about to do. She had to pick the flower and carry it back with the others, which was that part of the job she didn’t like - as a Verbena, she believed all Life was sacred, even if it did have blue leaves and stung you every time you touched it. She sighed again - the work here was tedious and upsetting, but had to be done - and plucked the plant from the cold ground.

Oh well. It would be sunrise soon - that at least she looked forward to even if it wasn’t the sun of her home, Gaia. Except that it was, in a way. Midgard WAS Earth... just a different one, that was all. Some things were the same - the sun, the air, the moon in the sky above - but something had changed early on in the history here. VERY early, in fact - no animal life had evolved here, but oh... the FLORA! The air was alive with the magickal smell of flowers, of pollen, of spores and seeds and LIFE! That was the only reason she remained here - she felt as alive as the land itself. If only the others here felt the same... but they were an odd bunch, pottering about in their labs and ready rooms, muttering about Virtuals and Labyrinths and Singularities and Corridors. She gathered they were called the Continuum - which didn’t sound very familiar to her at all - but they seemed a reasonable bunch. A bit too scientific for her liking though, very comfortable with, and she smiled as she remembered the night before...

Heads up - the sun rises soon. She put down her sack of samples and settled down on a small rise - a huge field of green and red and blue stretched out before her as far as she could see in the dim light. Behind her, about two hundred metres away, lay the red-brick sprawl of the Continuum Outpost. The Continuum always built red-brick buildings - it was apparently one of their few traditions. They didn’t look too bad, but she still thought they were a blot on an otherwise unblemished landscape.

She frowned. Something was... odd. The sun was supposed to rise any minute now, but there was no still sign of the dawn. She squinted, straining to see anything in the gloom - perhaps it was heavily overcast or something. No... the stars were clearly visible, low in the horizon where the sun should be rising.

All of a sudden Melissa felt very vulnerable and alone. The sun should have started to rise by now, she was sure of it. What was going on? The natural silence around her started to become oppressive - VERY oppressive. Something was building in the air, something hideous...

She was already running to the safety of the Base when the stars in the east began to go out one by one, devoured by a wave of oncoming Darkness...

The alarms had started as soon as the Darkness was sighted. Melissa burst through the gates, panic in her eyes. Daniel, she had to find Daniel! But there were people running everywhere - she’d be lost in seconds! The Control Room - that would be a good place to start. She fought her way through the crowds, and stepped into ordered chaos;

The Base Commander noticed her standing agape in the doorway.

An Operative rushed to take her outside; it was Joshua Hastings, one of her few friends among the Continuum. He took her aside in the corridor as the alarms sounded.

There was a loud thump, and the walls shook.

With that, Josh rushed back to his post in the Control Room, and Melissa was swept away in the tide of people.

The walls shook again, with more force this time. Melissa choked back her tears - Daniel was nowhere to be found, though another Verbena claimed to have seen him heading for the Portal earlier. He was still alive - she’d know if he wasn’t - but where was he? The ground shook, and this time the walls exploded inwards, showering the corridor with rubble. Some of the crowd were hit by masonry and fell bloodied to the floor; the throng panicked and then the screams started as unearthly wind howled through the remains of the wall. As she stopped to tend the injured, laying her healing hands on their wounds, she glanced at what lay beyond the ruined wall, and terror chilled her to the bone.

The verdant fields that she had been working in only an hour earlier were gone - all that was left was grey ash. The sky swirled with whorls of ultimate black - approaching was a huge gash in the sky, an inverted whirlpool whose maw was... indescribable. Beyond all colour, it wasn’t black - it was sheer nothingness, devouring all below it. Debris funneled up to the gaping maw and was dissolved within. Black lightning crackled between the ground and the sky, but most terrifying was the lone figure on the crest of rock in the foreground that had been thrust up during the chaos, back-lit by the negative anti-flashes of the lightning. There on the jagged outcrop stood the silhouette of a man, arms outstretched to the hole in the sky in exultant triumph, its clothing billowing around it in the howling winds. The maw passed him overhead and he moved, directing it on towards the Outpost. And even above the roar of destruction, she could hear his laughter...

Melissa saw this only for a brief instant, but the image was burned into her brain forever. She gasped and stumbled away from the terrible sight, pushing with renewed vigour through the surging crowds. There wasn’t much time left...

The pounding was relentless by the time she reached the Portal Room. Here, Continuum Agents had managed to calm the crowd enough to have them filing orderly through the shimmering gate suspended in the centre of the room. She felt Mind magicks at work here, but allowed them to affect her - after all, it was safer to not to panic here. She marveled at the calmness of the Agents that herded the evacuees through the Portal - they must know they were doomed now, but still they did their duty. This thought gave her something more to hold on to, though thoughts of Daniel were pressing through to the front of her mind. She couldn’t see him anywhere...

Suddenly there was a grating screech, and the ceiling gave way. The stability broke immediately as people were crushed in the rubble and the hideous noise from outside drowned out the ensuing screams. Melissa picked herself up - miraculously escaping with only cuts and bruises - and looked towards the Portal. It was beginning to flicker, and the roar of the Maw was deafening now. She made an agonising choice, as it seems did a few others who could still stand. To stay and help the wounded meant certain death for her. Her only chance was to dive through the Portal before it closed. She dashed for the unstable gateway and hurled herself through...

As the Portal slammed shut forever behind her, she found herself falling in the dark. Midgard lay suspended behind her, and she felt the realm itself scream as its lifeblood was devoured by the Darkness, raped by Oblivion. She screamed, and the sound of triumphant laughter from the Silhouette was the last thing she heard before she too was engulfed by the Darkness...

She was almost surprised to wake up, especially in a forest. It was daytime, and she could hear animals rustling in the undergrowth; she was definitely not on Midgard, and the blood and dust on her testified that it had been no nightmare. She remembered death and destruction, and the howling winds of annihilation... and that terrible laughter. There was no sign of anyone else from the Base - she was alive... but at what cost?

She cried for hours. Her friends were probably all dead, the lush reality that had been her home annihilated by a horrible force, and she was utterly alone. The reality she was in seemed like Earth, and the ambient life-force here seemed reassuringly familiar... yes, she had to be on Gaia again. But where? And was Daniel here too somewhere? She concentrated a while... yes. She could feel his presence somewhere... he was alive! The special bond they had forged as lovers still held, and it would be felt no matter where they were, as long as they lived. She picked herself up, charged with new-found hope; she would find him, and they would be together again. She knew they would. She also remembered the laughing silhouette that had doomed her world, and vowed that she would somehow avenge the destruction of her home...

CHARACTER STATS

Name: Melissa Stillbrook (‘Missy’ to her close friends ONLY)
Essence: Primordial
Nature: Caregiver
Demeanour: Survivor
Tradition: Verbena
Chantry: Continuum Outpost, Midgard (destroyed)

STR: 2	CHA: 4 (fiercely proud)	PER: 2
DEX: 2	MAN: 2	INT: 3
STA: 2	APP: 4 (captivating)	WITS: 3

Talents: Alertness 2, Athletics 2, Expression 1, Intuition 2
Skills: Etiquette 2, Meditation 2, Melee 1, Research 1, Survival 3
Knowledges: Cosmology 3, Culture 2, Enigmas 2, Lore (Kindred) 1, Medicine 3, Herbalism 2

BACKGROUNDS: Avatar 5, Destiny 5
SPHERES: Life 3, Prime 3

Arete 3
Willpower 9
Quintessence 9, Paradox 0

MERITS/FLAWS: Total: -1

STORYTELLER NOTES

GENERAL BACKGROUND: Melissa Stillbrook is a young Verbena who worked for a group called the Continuum, an organisation devoted to the defence of reality and all its alternate worlds (Virtuals) against The Darkness. The Continuum believe that the realms of Pattern are aberrations in the true fabric of the Metaverse - that represented by the non-existence of the Deep Umbra. The Darkness is the corrective force of the Metaverse, continually assaulting the Pattern Realms with alien non-Pattern entities (Manifestations) that defy description, though sometimes misguided individuals (Agents of Darkness) from within the Pattern Realms themselves serve the Darkness willingly and act to weaken or destroy realities themselves. More information can be found in The Darkness Manifest on the Continuum Hub.

Midgard was a Virtual - an Alternate Earth - where animal life never evolved. It was destroyed by a very powerful Agent of the Darkness known as a Dark Nomad. Nomads are strange beings that are unique throughout reality - no alternate copies exist of them in any Virtual or Indistinguishable. Many wander throughout the Labyrinth, picking up knowledge here, touching lives there, and generally forever wandering. Some however grow bitter with their fate, or go insane with loneliness - many kill themselves to end their torment, but some lash out against reality and deny it its right to exist by serving the Darkness - these are the Dark Nomads. More information on Nomads can be found in Appendix 2 of the Continuum Hub (Nomads).

Note that the Dark Nomad himself is not after Melissa - he cares not whether one or two survivors escaped from Midgard or any other Virtual he has helped to destroy - though some minor Manifestations locked onto her whilst she was momentarily adrift in the Darkness after she stepped through the Portal from Midgard. These followed her through when she arrived on Earth and are currently hunting for her there, though she does not yet realise this. They are NOT very powerful though [i.e. no Pure Forms here!].

Daniel IS alive somewhere, but Melissa doesn’t know where. It is possible that he is not even on Gaia, and that the Portal sent him through to another Virtual or Realm. Melissa suspects that in its last moments the alignment of the Portal from Midgard was skewed - the carrier beam for the Portal momentarily lost cohesion (explaining her brief and unexpected drift through the Darkness) but the signal to Earth was re-acquired and she eventually made it through.

While she is always searching for Daniel (and any Continuum Operatives, for that matter), she is presently recouping in this reality (which she strongly suspects is Main Corridor - the ‘Real’ Earth) and offering her assistance to those who need and deserve it.

PERSONALITY: Melissa is a classical English rose - beautiful, proud, headstrong, and absolutely pig-stubborn. She has very strong emotions, and (like any Verbena worth their salt) is not remotely afraid to show them. There are two things she cannot abide - one is being talked down to (she’ll bite the head off anyone who tries that), the other is being called ‘Missy’ by anyone who is not a very close friend. Her name is Melissa, and woe betide anyone who calls her anything else without her say so!

While this may make her sound like a prize bitch, she is actually very amiable. She is open, honest, loves to laugh and express her feelings openly and to LIVE. She is also a very sensitive young woman, and loves Life and passion. She is loathe to harm any living creature (save for food), and will certainly not kill anything living. She lives to heal, to soothe, and to ease the suffering of others, both physically and mentally - and she has been severely affected by the destruction of her home, probably to a greater extent that she accepts. She has nightmares and flashbacks quite often - usually of unnamable creatures of solid shadow chasing her, of darkness engulfing her, of standing helpless as those she knew and loved were all destroyed in an instant - but she really doesn’t want to admit to them or to let them overwhelm her. All she wants is to find Daniel so they can be together once again.

HISTORY: Melissa was born in August 1974 on Main Corridor Earth, an only child, to an aristocratic family - her father was a Lord who owned much of the parkland in southeast England. She spent her childhood in the family manor in Kent, being spoiled by her overprotective mother and generally being raised the old fashioned way, with nannies and tutors and the like. She was an intelligent child - highly precocious, and very adventurous - and was quickly stifled by the lifestyle at home. By the time she reached her teenage years, she had grown to be quite a handful for her exasperated parents, who packed her off to boarding school. Even there, the teachers found her extremely difficult to deal with as she would never do as she was told - the boys there didn’t have much better luck, as none of them could keep up with her zest for love and life.

However, she did attract the attention of the local Verbena coven, and it didn’t take long for her to find her true calling in the strange band of hippies that lived in makeshift huts hidden in the woods a few miles from the school. She learned about the Earth Mother and the living world around them, and was fully initiated to the Verbena very soon after.

After a few years though, she felt something tug at her. She felt she didn’t belong in the Coven anymore, that she was missing something elsewhere. Then the stranger knocked on their door and asked for assistants to help their research. While many of the Verbena didn’t trust him at all, Melissa knew that she was destined to go with him. Her companions didn’t quite see it the same way though, and they departed somewhat acrimoniously.

Despite this setback, Melissa came with the stranger to Midgard, where she was introduced to the Continuum, to her work, and to the other Verbena brought along to aid in the classification of the floral species on the Virtual. There she met Daniel, and both knew they had found their other halves. Their love for eachother was an inspiration for the rest of the Verbena in the otherwise sterile Outpost, and they were Joined in a glorious ceremony in a nearby forest under a perfect moon. Three months later, they were separated during the destruction of Midgard, and neither will rest till they are re-united.

AVATAR: Melissa’s avatar is The Healer. In fact, the Avatar is very similar to Melissa, but has a stronger, more confident personality. She appears to Melissa occasionally, as she would appear when she reaches her early/mid 30’s - more mature and more experienced - and guides her when she needs guidance and encourages her she has lost all hope. She shows the same kindness towards Melissa as she would show anyone else who needs help and healing. The interaction the Mortal and the Avatar have is very unusual among Mages - essentially a mother/daughter relationship.

OTHER NOTES: Melissa gets on pretty well with most people, even those who embrace more technological paradigms. Her experience with the Continuum opened her mind a little, and proved that technophiles were really not as bad as the Verbena she spent much of her formative years were telling her - she also does not feel quite so stifled by cities as they were, but would still rather be in the great outdoors. She will take people as she finds them, but cannot bear to see needless pain and suffering inflicted - she does not take kindly to violent people. She especially cannot stand Vampires, believing them to be abhorrent abominations in the face of true life and of Gaia, and will do her best to remove such blots from the land. She has encountered one or two on occasion and knows a little about Vampire behaviour and society, though much is hearsay and garbled rumour.

Verbena in the British Isles (especially the south) may not react to her very kindly - she has a somewhat tarnished reputation there after she abandoned her total naturalistic lifestyle to join the Continuum Scout. They generally see her as having sold out, and so may not appreciate her presence there again. She has not yet ventured over to England (she arrived from Midgard in a forest in the Cascades in the American Northwest, and managed to head down to California from there where she currently (temporarily) resides), and so is not aware of the extent of the bad feeling towards her there yet.