Ryan Jackson's official resume has him working in corporate biotech, working for several companies selling boring agricultural products around the world. Unofficially a deep background check into US government comes mostly redacted and might actually raise system flags about anyone searching the name.

These days he's retired from government work, having entered the far more lucrative business of corporate security. Four years ago he'd assumed a career that had taken him to global hot spots meant he'd seen it all and that his employment with MFF Industries would be a quiet retirement, mostly keeping tabs on foreign and strategic threat groups trying to steal sensitive MFF Industry secrets.

Holy shit was he wrong.

None, but may have access to minor artifacts

alejandra is a recent graduate of NCU, father is from southside but has lived in north Cloverfield all her life. She recently completed her masters in social work, but was pressured by family to take a more business oriented internship with the intent of doing community work southside.

Her internship with MFF Industries has recently taken a sudden and dramatic turn after CEO Ioan Foster decided he 'saw something' in her.

None

MAIN GOAL ⫻ Right now Nessa just wants to survive. The past year and a half she’s been in survival mode, and she doesn’t see herself getting out of that anytime soon. Pay rent, get food, don’t starve to death. The simple things. Beyond just survival, Nessa wants to get enough money to move away from Cloverfield. She wants to go somewhere that she can just be her rather than her father’s legacy.

Ultimately, that’s what she truly wants. Nessa wants to just be herself - and she wants someone who sees her and loves her for that. She desperately wants to be loved, and even as she’s struggling to survive she’s still trying to find that. She wants someone to see her.

PHILOSOPHY ⫻ Everyone leaves eventually. Nessa believes in always prioritising herself, and taking what she can from other people while she can. No one else will be there for her - it's been proven time and time again that she can only depend on herself. If you survive, it doesn’t matter how. Nessa believes that nothing comes free in life. Everyone wants something from you. For her, it’s always been her body or her magic. And everything is always conditional. What is given can, and will always, be taken away.

SECRETS ⫻ Nessa’s true identity is a secret. Vanessa Beaumont is the wanted daughter of a once millionaire criminal mastermind. Nessa Mendoza is a poor girl from the coast who moved to Cloverfield a couple of years ago for reasons she doesn’t want to share. It explains away the more neutral accent. Her magic is also a closely guarded secret. To the rare Paranormal she’s met since, she keeps it vague - trying to focus on the yellow and pink side. She keeps all of the spells her dad taught her a secret. That she has a spellbook filled with even worse spells is something she’ll never tell anyone. The only thing stopping her burning it is the part of her that still loves him. Then there’s her active participation in his human experimentation. That’s a secret that eats her alive, and has done for most of her life - only now there’s no curse to keep it trapped in her mind. Only a shoddily put together mental shield.

Outside of the secrets that would see her in a jail cell right next to her dad, there are Nessa’s more personal secrets. How much she fears being abandoned by every single person who comes into her life. How beneath her snappy, confident surface she’s incredibly fragile. How much she actually feels things. That she craves her father’s affection and pride, but at the same time she hates that she does. That she hates herself so much sometimes that she doesn’t think she even deserves to live, but at the same time she’d do anything to survive. Just what lengths she’d go to for someone to love her, but she doesn’t feel like she deserves to be loved at all. All things buried beneath the flirtatious, attitude filled surface that she never lets anyone past.

SEXUALITY ⫻ Whoever will give her shelter and safety. While Nessa considers herself bisexual, her actual preferences don’t matter to her anymore. The past year she’s been with mostly men - they fall much faster, even if it’s only a shallow, physical relationship that ends abruptly.

FEARS ⫻ Nessa has as many fears as she does secrets. She has a deep seated fear of abandonment. From a young age, both parents threatened it - and her mother eventually saw through with it. Forced isolation was her father’s punishment of choice. Because of this Nessa spends every moment she’s with someone fearing that they’ll leave her. Now her fear of abandonment is deeply entwined with her fear of not surviving the cruel reality she’s found herself in. She’s dependent on other people, and each person that drops her leaves her closer to the edge. Because she fears being abandoned, she also fears letting anyone in. It will only hurt more when they eventually leave her - which they will. That’s just reality, and she hates it. Being alone terrifies her, and this all pushes her to form incredibly unhealthy and borderline obsessive relationships.

On top of this, Nessa fears someone finding out who she actually is. There’s the surface level fear of being handed in and meeting a similar fate to her father for something she unwilling participated in. But beyond that, there’s the fear of people’s reactions. Disgust, hatred… All things she feels towards herself but can’t handle from others. But more than anything, she fears that things will never change. She’ll be stuck here forever. And she’ll always just be seen as Vanessa Beaumont, useful Blue-Pink Adept, rather than Nessa, and all the broken pieces that come with her.

WHAT DID THEY DO DURING THE CATACLYSM? ⫻ Nessa was hidden and protected by her dad’s magical protections and many, many mind controlled Paranormal.

FLAWS ⫻ A person of many contrasts, Nessa is a damaged individual. She pretends she’s strong - projecting an incredibly flirtatious, sharp spoken persona. And that is who she is, but she’s also someone who desperately wants to be loved. She jumps from person to person, coming on strong but at a physical, surface level. She tells herself every time it’s just for survival, and it’ll never go any further. But she’s also someone who gets attached incredibly quickly, to an unhealthy degree. When Nessa likes someone even just a little bit she can be aggressively obsessive. That person is the key to her surviving, but also a band-aid over all the insecurities she has within herself. There’s very little she wouldn’t do for a little affection. On the other hand, she holds everyone at a distance. She never lets them in beyond what she wants them to see, hiding all of her trust issues and insecurities. This leads to strange toxic relationships, where she’s both in too deep but it’s barely more than a physical just about exclusive deal. She picks the wrong people, and suffers through abuse she shouldn’t because there’s a chance they’ll end up loving her. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be honestly, truly loved - for her whole life she’s been chasing the love of an abusive father. So she continues to repeat the pattern of enduring for love. But then there’s a sign that they don’t care for her, or something that triggers her various issues, and she immediately lashes out. Explosive fights lead to breakups, which leads to a toxic cycle of dating, obsessing, and getting abandoned.

Nessa is unforgiving and resentful to the people who made her life this way. She’s constantly shifting between blaming everyone but herself, and thinking that it’s really her fault. Really, even though she tries to blame her father it always comes back to self-blame. She hates herself and everything she’s done. Her guilt constantly haunts her. There are days when she doesn’t feel she deserves to live because of this, and makes no effort to. With no healthy coping mechanisms, her many issues manifest in an incredibly snappy and scathing person. She hurts the people around her because of how much she’s hurting. Her love and hate for her father is perhaps one of the things she struggles with the most - and that relationship colours how she is with everyone. She always expects the worst. If someone is nice to her, she waits to see what they want, or goes on the attack before they can get something from her. Because why would anyone actually love her with how she is and after everything she’s done?

Vanessa Beaumont was born to Charles Beaumont and his wife, Malaya Mendoza, in Cloverfield. She’d fallen in love with Charles and put her own career, as an engineer specialising in military defences, on hold to marry and have a child with him. Charles was an incredibly successful business man, one of the richest and most well known in the city. He had his hands in many industries and the name Beaumont was known across the North Side of the city.

But behind his perfectly polished reputation as the rich tycoon who could save any struggling business was a more sinister man. Charles was a Blue-Pink Adept with great mastery over his craft, and a long spellbook he’d developed via human experimentation. His unique lux blend allowed him to breach Emotional Fields, using curses to manipulate the mind to the point of mind control without active casting. In his mid thirties he began small, with Blinds and weak Paranormal, but with each year he grew stronger. His lust for power meant he wanted to be able to control and change even the strongest Paranormal. So he found stronger and stronger ones, each one cracking under his curses until he morphed their brains into something unrecognisable while retaining their magic.

It was a cruel process. Blue lux used to breach Emotional Fields, allowing Charles access to his subjects' brains so that he could completely rewrite them. Intense pain was normal in the process, and the stronger the Paranormal the stronger they’d fight back. But they all succumbed to him as he grew his spellbook, fine tuning curses to cause pain at just the thought of disobedience and developing more unique and complicated mind altering on the fly curses. It was something he took great pleasure in - and something he could use to one day control not only the city, but perhaps the entirety of Dazzle.

It was this that Charles truly wanted an heir for. A child to inherit his Blue-Pink Lux, so that he could pass down his wealth of spells and have another hand in his bid for power. As he had what he wanted with Nessa’s birth, the marriage between him and Malaya quickly fell apart. They divorced when Nessa was only one.

Nessa was bounced between the two households - but her time was spent with Charles more than it was Malaya. He was the one that had really wanted a child, after all. Nessa’s early years were marked by neglect - pushed to a nanny who only cared about a paycheck with very little in the way of familial love. From a young age she was attached to both parents she barely saw, but never got that affection back. Still, she saw them both…

Then, when she was five her mom remarried. Less than a year later she was pregnant again. Nessa was distraught when her younger half-brother was born, shoved to the side in her second home. She had to watch as he got all the attention she never had. It made her start to act out - and that began to affect her time with her dad too.

So to placate her, he got her a pet cat. Something that actually loved her. Blossom was her best friend - and only friend, because little Nessa just couldn’t make any at school either. She lashed out too much, and very few people wanted to be around the sullen young Beaumont.

Those two years were the best she had. It was the only time she had consistent companionship - something that looked to her for food and safety, but didn’t have any other expectations. There was no need to read ahead of her age just to get a smile from them, or to not cry because it wasn’t ‘becoming of a Beaumont.’ Blossom loved her unconditionally, and Nessa loved Blossom.

Nessa kindled at eight. It wasn’t a natural kindling.

Charles didn’t plan to wait for Nessa to kindle naturally. It could be years - he’d kindled at ten thanks to his parents’ intervention, but Nessa would kindle earlier. After all, there was a lot for her to learn. As for how to cause a strong enough emotional reaction? That was easy.

Nessa’s eighth birthday was the first one her dad attended. Her mom didn’t, but that was fine! At least she had dad and Blossom with her for it. While Nessa was desperate for her mother’s attention and love, it was her dad’s that she craved the most. He only had her. She should have his full attention. And as she turned eight, it seemed she finally was getting that.

Unfortunately for her.

There were no presents. No happy birthdays sung around a cake as she blew out a candle and made a wish. Not even a birthday wish. Only a cat brutally slaughtered in front of her by the very man she’d been so excited to see.

Fear, sadness… and the want for her father’s love. The three emotions combined as she kindled into her three types of lux. There was no sympathy from her ancestors, knowledge that she could barely understand quickly pushed at her before she slipped out of the Kindling-Event recollection.

Nessa cried and shouted at Charles, and she tried to hate him. But she also wanted him to love her - and suddenly he was paying attention to her. He calmly explained why, which she didn’t understand, and apologised - even though it was barely an apology.

The next day he even got her a birthday present. A single earring, beautifully made from one of Blossom’s claws. It, and the subsequent appointment with a piercer, was the only gift she ever got from him. Strong sadness at the companion she’d lost, fear of what her dad could do to her, and that horrible love-hate she felt towards her made her emotional attachment to it stronger than one she’d had before - and it became her Channeler.

Unfortunately, Nessa was a disappointment from the start. Charles hadn’t known his ex-wife was an Adept too, and viewed Nessa’s Yellow Lux as a taint on the perfection of Blue-Pink. But he had to make do with what he had. So Nessa was told to ignore that part of herself - there was no need for protection and hiding with the power they both held.

Now Nessa went from barely seeing her dad to seeing him nearly every day. Mondays and Tuesdays were spent with her mom - watching her love her two other children unconditionally, while only paying enough attention to Nessa to tell her to study harder. But the rest of the week was with her dad. After school she had her ‘extracurricular’ classes with him, on Saturdays it was whole day learning and on Sunday it was special ‘mind sharing’ time.

Charles taught Nessa the basics of Pink Lux first. Reading surface thoughts, speaking to others through her mind, and similar. She practised on the household staff. It was easy with the Blind, though it took Nessa time to get perfect control. With three lux types to contend with, the pure Pink spells were often tinged with an addition of the other colour. An accidental curse as she read a maid’s thoughts had her in bed with a migraine for a day, her nanny’s voice dampened by yellow lux for thankfully only a few unnoticeable moments. Each mistake came with a punishment. Small, for small mistakes. A day spent locked in her room.

For someone so dependent on other people, who’s fear of abandonment was instilled in her from a young age with threats from both sides to leave her, just that was a nightmare.

But they always spent Sundays together, no matter what had happened. They were the days Nessa looked forward to the most… and would look back on with a horrible mixture of disgust and fondness.

Charles would spend the day inside Nessa’s head. Teaching her using his finely honed Pink Lux - correcting her where she’d gone wrong, and showing her the neural pathways to change. Subtle touches that Nessa didn’t even realise were being used on her even as they were demonstrated. From the day she kindled he’d put his curse on her - an infection on her Emotional Field that allowed him access to her mind whenever he wanted. The primary goal of his time in her mind wasn’t to teach her. It was to layer curse upon curse on her, ensuring his complete control of his daughter. These curses were his speciality - triggered by specific thoughts to cause debilitating pain. It ensured she couldn’t disobey him, couldn’t run away and, most importantly, couldn’t tell anyone.

By the time she was eleven Nessa had a basic list of both Pink and Blue spells - from the basics of telepathy to the more complicated mind control, one she naively had no problems with because ‘it didn’t hurt and the Blinds wouldn’t remember.’ Then there were basic curses - blisters that washed away with water, migraines from negative thoughts, making someone's appearance more monstrous. It had taken longer than her dad had hoped - something he made sure she knew.

With her mother, things had only gotten worse. Nessa’s half-siblings were now old enough to truly bother her, and her mom expected her to cater to their every whims. Nessa didn’t want to. She hated them. And eventually she snapped. It started with scathing words at her entitled half-brother, and ended with her blasting him with enough magic to leave him in a dazed, barely conscious state for days.

As an Adept herself, Nessa’s mother knew exactly what had happened. Not only was her young daughter a failure in the one thing she wanted her to succeed in - academics - bringing down her own reputation, but she was throwing around magic with little care for the consequences. Malaya didn’t want to handle it. Nessa wasn’t ‘punished’, in the traditional sense.

Instead her time at her mom’s was drastically reduced to a weekend every few months. Selfish, a failure, not my daughter, you never should have been born. Nessa internalised everything her mom told her as she was thrown away by her.

It was exactly what Charles needed. There was no comfort for having her already distant mother essentially abandon her. Instead, he took her training to the next stage - now there was little risk of her mother getting involved if she found out.

Only eleven, Nessa found herself learning things about her dad she never wanted to know. She was taken to the dark underbelly of his business, the laboratories filled with people he kept deep underground. Cells upon cells of things that could barely be called human anymore. They were Blinds and One-Eye-Opens he’d cursed to become monsters, painstakingly giving them Abstractions while turning them into mindless thralls. Even further through were the ones who were already Paranormal when captured. Mostly human in body, they were in varying states of mind control.

This was where the true lessons began.

“Human experimentation,” her dad explained, “is the only way to further the field of Adeptal studies. How else do you perfect curses and mind manipulation if not on human subjects?”

Nessa was horrified. While her upbringing had been isolated with almost no positive guidance she still knew right from wrong. This was wrong. It was kidnapping and it was torturing people. She didn’t want to participate in it. But if she didn’t he’d leave her just like her mom had… then she’d have no one.

So Nessa tried at first. It wasn’t so bad. She had to start with the most basic - the curse her dad had developed to crack an emotional field, allowing him to gain untethered access to Paranormals’ minds. She started with the weaker Paranormal he had, before moving on to stronger and stronger ones. At the same time she continued to practise the Pink Lux spells she’d learned before, just applying them to people who’s emotional fields she’d breached. It was almost a year before she’d learned the spell to the point that Charles was happy about it.

After that came the dreaded point - being forced to participate in the actual human experimentation. This was the first time Nessa truly rebelled against him. She outright refused. Just the thought made her feel sick.

The words ‘I won’t do it’ had barely left her lips before her mind exploded in pain. Her brain fired off pain signals to every part of her body until she was left curled up, sobbing and shaking. It was unbearable. Excruciating. All consuming. It felt like that moment, the pain, lasted forever.
“I didn’t raise a failure.”
Her dad didn’t say anything else to her. He didn’t have to. Over the year of learning a single curse he’d explained the basics of the rest to her - she’d seen his spellbook. He had cursed her too.

After that, Nessa was left alone for two days at their overly large, yet empty, house. Charles nowhere to be seen, and a nanny only appearing to take her to and from school. She was essentially locked in. Just her, her thoughts, and books that didn’t stand in for human company.

The next time Nessa didn’t refuse. It wasn’t just the memory of the pain, but it was the disdain in her dad’s eyes. She wanted him to be proud of her. She craved his affection more than she’d like to admit, even though he caused her so much pain. She loved him, but she hated him. It seemed worth it for the small compliments she got from him. It almost seemed like he loved her then, like a father should love his daughter.

She knew his love was conditional. It wasn’t even love. He wanted her magic, not her. But it didn’t really matter, did it?

Nessa went into her teens with this constant conflict inside of her. She learned spells that forced people to obey her or face the same agony she was afraid of, desperate for the love of a father she spent the rest of her time pushing the boundaries with. Each failed attempt resulted in that same pain, and the same punishment - isolation. She began to project an outward confidence she very much didn’t feel. All she felt was broken.

She was both a willing and unwilling participant in her father’s crimes. The guilt haunted her dreams, but was she really guilty? She couldn’t say no. But she still chose to do it. She just wanted to be loved.

It was incredibly isolating. Even as she grew and changed in a way that got her more attention outside of her family. She blossomed, becoming one of the most attractive girls in her small incredibly selective (in terms of financial status) school. She made some friends, and started having relationships with people. In a way that was also a way to rebel against her dad - more time spent out of the house, less time forced to experiment.

But it was all shallow. Nessa couldn’t really be herself. She wasn’t entirely sure who she was. As a result, both friendships and relationships rarely lasted. But just like with her dad, she found herself chasing the small glimpse of affection. It was unhealthy, and borderline obsessive, but it was the only thing that made her feel less alone. Less worthless.

Because she was barely more than that to Charles. She didn’t have the same affinity he did with the spells he tried to teach her. It was a slow and painful process. She learned spells to transform blinds into monsters, implanting commands triggered by certain events, manipulating the brain itself. But there was a disconnect that meant she wasn’t as gifted as he hoped. Compared to most her age she was a talented Adept, having kindled so young and learned for so long, but it wasn’t enough. It would only ever be enough if she was as skilled as Charles was - impossible for spells that didn’t quite click for her.

She continued to rebel more, even through the physical pain it caused her. Nights spent at partner’s rather than at home, skipping lessons with him, and barely trying to learn. She began to find herself - even though the person she found was still that messy, conflicted, argumentative failure.

Charles doubled down too. More curses on her, more rules, more isolation. It was a continuous cycle of abuse and pushing back against it that only left Nessa more resentful, and more resistant.

Still he got his goal. At sixteen Nessa began to learn the more important spells, beyond what he viewed as fundamentals. Firstly, the very same curses he had on her. Curses that forced obedience, a type of mind control that was far more sophisticated by the brute force method. Then fundamentally and permanently changing subjects’ brains. Finally, a spell that could cause a painfully slow death.

Spells that Nessa didn’t want to cast, even as she became more attuned to them. She couldn’t deny that some of them clicked. It was that want for people to love her - willingness to manipulate them to do so.

Because her dad never really would. He still viewed her as a failure, even as she learned everything he wanted her too. He’d gone out of his way to find alternatives… even if that failed. She wasn’t named the heir to his business. Her existence was hardly known, even though Charles was prominent.

She could lie to herself that it was to protect her, but really it was to protect his legacy.

She resented him. She wanted his love. She’d never get his love. Nessa went through the early years of adulthood much like she did her teens - dating around, rebelling, and experimenting at her dad’s side. Without school she spent even more time learning and improving her spells. There was no gained independence - she’d been independent from a young age in all things but her magic, and the curses implanted in her brain.

Then the cataclysm hit. Nessa was where she was the majority of the time - in her dad’s laboratories. Thanks to this she was kept safe. They’d been built with state of the art magical technology thanks to the many Adepts Charles had under his control, and there were a multitude of bodies to protect her. Bodies that were, of course, used to help end the Cataclysm.

But not for the right reasons. Charles saw this as an opportunity to finally enact a plan that could take many years - a city wide takeover. When Nyrah the Ravager was sealed he prepared to show his hand. An army of Paranormal under his command… it should be easy with the city in the state it was.

But he didn’t account for a betrayal from the inside. His business partner, a Green-Pink Adept who was the only other person outside of his daughter to know of his plans. She’d been there for as long as Nessa could remember, in the background - a person she barely noticed through her own pain and need for attention. Before Charles could go through with his plan prematurely she handed him over to the Paranormal authorities.

Charles was arrested and all of his assets frozen.

There was little warning. Just enough time for him to pass his spellbook to Nessa - forcing her to promise to protect it with her life - before the authorities took him. Nessa herself had to leave. Their house was a crime scene. She packed everything she could in a suitcase and ended up on the streets.

She was lucky to get away at all, only able to thanks to the finger only pointing at Charles. By the time his daughter’s involvement and his missing spellbook came to light she was gone.

Panicked, Nessa tried to reach out to her mom only to get the coldest response she could. Complete rejection. Malaya cut her daughter off without a second thought.

So Nessa was left alone with almost nothing. All of her cards were deactivated. All she had was what was in her suitcase. She couldn’t survive off that and she couldn’t survive in the Upper District. It was only a matter of time before her involvement came out. Her dad wouldn’t try too hard to protect her.

So she sold what she didn’t need - gold jewellery, her most expensive clothes. And she used some of the money to get a boat to the South Side. She went from having everything she could want in the material world, to having nothing.

Vanessa Beaumont all but vanished.

In the South Side, she went by Nessa Mendoza. Her past and family name were a closely guarded secret, and the case looking for her opened not long after she began her new, much rougher life.

Without any hireable skills, and knowing she couldn’t really work either, Nessa used what she had to survive - her looks and her magic. But she refused to use the spells her dad had taught her. He wasn’t around anymore to give her the attention and love she’d always wanted, so all she felt was disgust towards them. And if she started using them now she really would be guilty. Instead she began to develop her own spells - and finally began to tap into her Yellow Lux. She also began to excruciatingly tear down the curses Charles had put on her mind - breaking them curse by curse until she was finally completely free of them.

Nessa used other people to survive - primarily targeting men, who were much easier to seduce into giving her somewhere comfortable to sleep. Short lived, often incredibly toxic and abusive relationships were what sustained her. The time in between she managed to find somewhere with weekly rent - something she could just about afford with the money from selling her clothes. It was a shit life. But each time she got with someone new, there was that little bit of hope that it might become something permanent - and be a way to get out of the shit hole she’d ended up in.

It never was, and just left her with more scars.

Nessa’s been out of a relationship for almost three weeks. Money’s running out, and she’s starting to get desperate…

TYPE ⫻ Adept

ABSTRACTION ⫻ Blue, Pink & Yellow Lux. Channeler: A cat claw earring

ABSTRACTION DESCRIPTION ⫻ Nessa is an Adept of two extremes. One on hand, she has incredibly strong spells she was taught for many years that don’t align with her, and on the other a scant list of much weaker spells she’s finally started developing that are actually hers. From her father she learned a great many Pink & Blue lux spells - focused on control and cursed pain. Alone, she’s developed emotional manipulation curses and self protection spells.



LIMITS ⫻


WEAKNESSES ⫻ (DO NOT FILL THIS OUT, I WILL PROVIDE IT FOR YOU)

There is a complete lack of presence of Vanessa Beaumont online. Her dad banned her from using public social media accounts, and any images of her were wiped by Orange Adepts he had under his control. Whether this was to not have someone he viewed as a shame to his name or to protect his legacy is difficult to tell.

Nessa thinks she’s free of her dad’s influence. While she got rid of the active curses he had on her, she hasn’t gotten rid of the one on her emotional field - meaning he could easily get back in anytime he wanted to.

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