Bazmund

Dawn of a New Age - The Return of Magic v3

---

Mike Stafford

---

I am the night.
I am Silence.
I am one of billions, lost in billions.
No man can hear me, for I do not speak.
No man can see me, for I live in the shadow.
No man can smell me, for my mind is clean.
No man can touch me, for I am not real.

---

That was the precise kind of thing that Mike was not repeating to himself, mentally or verbally. That was the precise kind of thing that made you obvious to anyone who wanted to see you, the kind of mantra that had echoes an experienced opposing agent could hear. It was not in his mind, being nobody. Because he wasn't nobody, and you could never be nobody.

He was Mike, instead. Mike was an electrician's apprentice a few years ago, who had taken a shining to his job but simply hated the man teaching him. The big fat oaf had enjoyed making Mike do the pointless, shitty jobs, for no good reason - and it's not like he wasn't aware that the apprentice is the guy who gets those jobs, it was just especially malicious in this case. Ever since then he'd decided to skip town and see if he could make any money from the skills he'd already learnt... without telling the IRS. Mike was a nice enough guy, reasonably bright, with a decent heart - but he hadn't gotten any work at all, and he'd ended up pawning his car for money to keep him fed.

Eventually his old boss had called the cops on him. Something about stealing valuable tradesman's tools.

Never happened. But hey.

It had been a couple months now, going from hostel to hostel, bussing it cross-country. He'd been through five states, Illinois being the latest, just doing the odd job here and there, hiking when he couldn't afford the bus any more. It was lonely, and cold, and poor - but he was free. Mike held freedom pretty high up as an ideal, honestly; he wasn't political, but the whole 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' thing really struck a chord with him.

Oh, speaking of striking chords, Mike also played guitar. He wasn't superb, but he had the right kinds of hands for it. Shame he'd had to sell that too.

Mike wasn't really thinking about this either, of course - not repeating it at the very least. He didn't need to. You don't think about your life's history every day, now do you?

He'd been hiking it - like, properly hiking it, camping and shit at night, crossing the country and avoiding roads - for the last... well, couple weeks probably. He'd slept rough the first few nights before he eventually bit the bullet and bought a tent, something small and collapsible that fit discreetly into his backpack rather than being obvious outside of it, no big poles or anything - just a flexed wire frame and a couple short pegs; and before he'd been doing his woodsman thing, he'd been hitchhiking it once his bus fare ran out. He'd met some interesting characters doing that.

There was a little girl he'd been seeing around, recently. A scruffy, unwell little thing, pale and sick. She kept her cigarettes in a redbull can and had a thing for duct tape. Couldn't be more than 15.

Mike had been quite careful not to be seen by her more than once - though he'd considered giving her some of his cash. It looked like she'd been doing this for a lot longer than he had, and he had the skills for it more than she did. Poor kid.

---

Mike sighed. He was searching the chocolate in the gas station for something halfway decent - after all, it was time for his one treat of the week - with a bacon sandwich and a coke tucked into the crook of his arm. He hadn't intended to be in here when that kid he'd been unintentionally following arrived, but he'd managed to always be in the other aisle to her and he didn't reckon she'd noticed him - at least not as if he were a person. To be totally honest he also hadn't really intended to 'follow' her this far, or at all - but then he also didn't know why he was still walking.

If he'd been acting normally, he'd have gone to ground in a medium sized town a little while ago. He had enough to keep him right for a little while, by which time he'd probably know more about who - if anybody - was following him. But he wasn't. Instead he'd made the trip all the way from Langley, Virginia, to Brightwell, Illinois. He hadn't known he was going to Brightwell in particular until half a month ago either - he'd just known there was a direction he needed to go in, even if sometimes it meant not seeing people for a while. It was a curious kind of pull, like little hands grabbing at your heart.

Mike was very tired. Sleep never came easy to him. He'd tried to see his doctor about it but didn't have the insurance to cover the costs - and that was while he was still an apprentice.

As he paid up - in cash - and left the gas station, tucking his things back into his backpack, he turned and gave a glance to the kid. She was talking to some tall motherfucker in a coat, who'd been there when Mike went into the gas station in the first place, backed up by a sedan's worth of creepy addict-looking punks. He was surprisingly unworried about the kid, mostly because human traffickers are usually better at blending in, but he definitely still made a quick mental note of the man's features as he turned away, placing a hand on a pocket inside his parka where he was keeping some loose cash.

It was a curious thing, feeling something cease to exist. Ten dollars left his palm and arrived without incident in the kid's back pocket, crumpled up like she'd just forgotten it. It was probably enough for a cheap hot meal and maybe a shower - though Mike knew he'd skip the shower and see if he could get a beer instead, in her position. She'd find it eventually, probably in a couple hours or whenever she next sat down and felt the disturbance. Just a way to remind himself he was still human, and not something he'd done for her before.

Well.

Maybe a couple times. Only a couple. Just enough that she felt a little lucky sometimes. Not enough that she'd notice.

Mike still had enough left for himself, which was all that really mattered. His plan was to go find wherever this little niggling feeling was leading him, and find the person who'd been resourceful enough to get his cell number and kind enough to not turn him in.

Just another tuesday for Mike Stafford.

Dawn of a New Age - The Return of Magic v3

It's always annoyed me how you can never find pictures of faceclaims looking like normal goddamn people. Miles is meant to be the ultimate everyman, almost totally indistinguishable from every other faceless idiot on the street without special effort - but the guy his face is based on?

Every fuckin' photo he has of himself, he's trying his hardest to look hot in.

Goddamn.

Dawn of a New Age - The Return of Magic v3

Miles Honeywell

---

---

Miles Honeywell // Michael Stafford

33 Years Old

---

---

Physical Description: Miles Honeywell stands at 5"10, lithely and powerfully built, with shoulders of average width. His skin is fair and largely unblemished apart from the occasional freckle and some minor acne scars on the left side of his jaw. His eyes are blue and unintricate, without deformity nor unusual beauty. His hair is brown, neither dark enough to be remarkable nor light enough to be blonde. His smile is pleasant, but not stunning. His teeth are straight, but not perfect. There is little about him that is particularly memorable - he is no more than another face among billions.
Important items: He carries very little of personal importance with him - but for professional purposes; a fake ID (Michael Stafford) with matching 'pocket litter', a Glock 18 chambered in 9mm with a detachable short suppressor, three cheap Bic branded lighters, a pair of glasses with dark wire frames.

---

---

Short Bio:

Longer Than I Intended

Miles Honeywell was born in Hackney, London, to a single mother in a year of strife. His family was poor, his community was poor, and the country was fucked. The homeless were on the verge of having a population size that could legitimately give them a member of Parliament, there were fires destroying urban housing blocks in the City with all their inhabitants trapped inside, and a group of especially indecisive traitors were governing it all.

Miles hated them. He hated them so much.

In his childhood he was no fan nor friend of the government, and by extension he *loathed* their grunts and enforcers in blue. They would come into his neighbourhood and drag adults and kids alike off, packing them into their vans and disappearing them. Some of them came back, beaten and broken and traumatised - but many didn’t at all. He was stopped and searched for no reason so regularly that he could practically tell the time by it, and his little sister - two years his junior - got it worse.

Gangs started entering his life when he was 13. Properly entering his life, I mean. They weren’t just a set piece any more, a group of shady folk you learned to recognise and avoid, but with whom you had no interaction. Instead they put him to work running cash and messages between one and the other, like a miniature courier with a burner phone. Honestly, the work paid decently - especially for a kid - and he was smart enough to not get caught more than once with anything important on him. The one time he did was unpleasant, but hey, they didn’t break any bones.

Eventually the gangs started to evolve, though. When they were mostly just pitted against eachother they had a tendency to be small and insignificant organisations - but when the premier selection pressure evolved from competition with other gangs for territory and resources to pressure directly from riot police, then the gangs themselves started to adapt in response. The smaller gangs either joined larger ones, disbanded, or were crushed, and the larger gangs either formed alliances or were encircled and absorbed by ones that did. Things were gearing up for all out war in the community when Miles was 15, and he wisely chose to avoid it. He couldn’t quite remain impartial, and he still had to be friendly enough with everyone that they’d leave his little sister alone, but he didn’t want to get stabbed over this shit.

But then he got stabbed anyway. The whole process of trying to remain out of the conflict failed him utterly, and it was only because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He was walking home from hanging out with a couple of mates - nobodies who weren’t going anywhere - when two guys threw eachother out of a pub and onto Miles. They were members of the same gang who both suspected the other of being an undercover cop, and they’d tried to settle it with a pint before one of them drew a knife. That knife ended up about two centimetres from the biggest artery in the human body, inside Miles, purely by bad luck. He got lucky enough that he didn’t pass out from shock, and was able to phone for an ambulance - it was a similar matter of luck that nobody decided to mug the paramedics when they picked him up. The two men responsible continued their fight elsewhere, not even realising how close they’d come to killing a kid.

That was the moment it became clear that no matter how bad the situation was with the state, and no matter how bad the cops were to people like him, he wasn’t better off by isolating himself like this. His mum and sister came to visit him in the hospital and he told them plainly that they needed to move.

“We don’t have enough money.” His mum’s reply came.

“I don’t care, we have to.” He said in turn.

But then, from the recesses of that dark conversation, there came a sort of light - and an unexpected visitor.

Detective Sergeant Jonathan Hayes, specifically. He was a tall, proud looking man, with hair that was clearly going grey long before it was due to, and a wry smile that made it clear he knew more than you wanted him to. DS Hayes was exactly the kind of cop that liked putting young men like Miles in positions where they felt powerless, for the exact reason that it made him feel powerful in turn. He was by no means an admirable man - and indeed, Miles did not mourn him when he died five years later, even if he owed him that much - but for once DS Hayes was coming with good news, and a deal.

The law had been changed recently, and the changes made could make both of the gangers who’d gotten Miles stabbed equally culpable for his wound - which in turn, under new, liberal interpretations of ‘attempted’, could be called attempted murder. If Miles was willing to testify, he could put two of the local firm’s biggest hitters away for life, and start a cascade inside the gang that would lead to their collapse when the police moved in; and in return, DS Hayes would see about turning over some witness protection funding so that the family could rent a new place in a better neighbourhood, where their faces weren’t known and the local lowlifes knew better than to do things high-profile.

It was so perfect, it could have been a set up. Hell, it might have been a set up.

Didn’t matter. Getting stabbed and turning snitch once isn’t that bad of a price to pay, all things considered.

When the government he hated so much was taken down in the general election the year after that, things got even better. Some of the benefits they’d had taken away before were restored, and back-payments were made. His family were in a more stable situation than they’d ever been in his life, and out of both a newfound patriotism and a lack of other options for education or training, Miles made the admittedly questionable decision to join the army when he turned 16.

After two years of training - with deployment still being unlawful for the underaged - with the Royal Anglian Regiment, he was eventually deployed overseas to a peacekeeping operation in the Middle East. He served one tour with distinction, rising to the rank of Lance Corporal quickly in recognition of intelligence and calm under fire from insurgent forces, before being called home.

He met his mother and his little sister in the airport. They went for a burger king. It was nice - it was really nice to see them again.

He was in the toilets at the burger king, washing his hands, when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

“Lance Corporal Honeywell.”

There’s a strange kind of feeling on the back of your neck that you get when you think you might be in danger, but aren’t quite sure about it yet. This man’s voice was like warm steel, not awful to hear, but with the kind of authority that you don’t simply ignore.

“Yeah?” He turned. The man in front of his was about two inches shorter than he was, with blonde hair, brown eyes, and a clean shaved square jawed face. He was wearing jeans and a plain green hoodie, and looked a little overweight. Not like a spy.

“My name is Jacob Barter. I work for Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. Your actions on tour have been noted as exemplary, and based on some of your personal history, we would be interested in speaking to you about employment in the national interest.”

“I- I’m sorry mate, I beg your pardon?”

“I work for the SIS. I’m offering you training - and a job - as an Intelligence Officer.”

It was the start of a long and proud career. He was a natural, picking up the skills and the characteristics of an Intelligence Officer - and in turn, whoever that Intelligence Officer needed to become - quickly. They have him a new name, Michael Stafford, with which he was referenced both in official documentation and in person. They reshaped him, rebuilt him, remade him into the eyes, ears, and hands of the State. In some ways Miles Honeywell vanished completely, disappearing beneath the waves of ink and red tape as he learnt to become other people, transforming into the Grey Little Man. When he wanted to be, he was invisible. When he needed to be, he was attractive. When he was ordered to be, he was lethal.

With his new colleagues, he built and functioned within a colossal spider’s web. Michael Stafford was more than a pair of eyes in one place, he was the synapse between a single mind and a thousand eyes.

As far as his family knew, he was doing well as an infantryman. He just had an irregular schedule of tours.

Then they sent him to America. He was a liaison agent working with the CIA when the New World dawned on them and his own abilities awoke, and his own Angel (of sorts) appeared to him as just another, if palpably different intelligence officer in a conservative suit. No flowing robes, no big lights or golden halo. It had been just as the orders came in to start rounding up suspected Mages, literally as he'd been reading them out to the rest of his team. The Angel had given him some quite specific instructions on how to leave the building without arousing suspicion; it probably bought him a whole hour before they started looking, and another couple hours before they figured it out.

Good thing both Michael and Miles have experience in running from the government.

---

---

Skills/Flaws:

• Skills
  
  • A Focused Mind - Miles is an intelligent, insightful, perceptive man. He picks up on the fine details both in his environment and in other people, and learns very quickly, being highly adaptive and attentive at all times.
  • The Changing Face - Miles is an expert in dealing with people, both when they're aware of him and talking to him, and when they have yet to realise he even exists. His understanding of psychology and emotional cues is acutely tuned and extremely adept, his use of verbal and physical language is so trained it is genuinely natural, and his ability to manipulate, lie, charm, and more in order to disguise himself or achieve an end is truly remarkable.
• Flaws
  
  • The Unperson - Miles is one of these unfortunate individuals who, having become so used to changing his act and being more act than not, finds it disproportionately hard to actually change as a person. He's a fantastic learner, but actually changing himself for the better and becoming a better person simply doesn't come to him any more - after all, why bother really changing when you could just lie? Worse still, he does it subconsciously. It's in doubt whether or not he could learn from his personal mistakes if he even tried.
  • Sleepless Nights - It's a spy's job to be paranoid. You have to think sixteen steps ahead of eight different players, some of whom are your friends and don't want you dead, some of whom aren't your friends and do. You hear about your colleague, whose home was broken into the other night. You hear about people's families being followed home by foreign agents, kidnapped, and exorted for information. You hear about people watching your relatives and you can't be sure whose people they really are. Eventually it gets to you. You start sticking cameras up in your home, putting another lock in your door, hiding discreet weapons where you might need them, and losing sleep. It's the sleep loss that really gets him. He can't get more than three solid hours a night.

---

---

Spell List:

[Mind] [ Alter Memory ] - This ability allows the user to explore and re-narrate parts of their subject(s)'s memories, stripping the old ones and absorbing them, reworking them into new material, and painting over the top of the new space.

[Mind] [ Alter Perception ] - This ability allows the user to either dial down the other peoples' perceptions of them until they are functionally invisible, or increase their perceptions until more and more attention is drawn towards them. Whilst 'invisible' others around the user will still make attempts to find paths around the user if they're in their way. It affects the other peoples' entire perceptions, not simply sight, and can be used for illusory purposes as well as stealth purposes.

[Timespace] [ Quantum Leap ] - The User - or a particular object roughly their size or less - exists twice at once for a brief moment, and is thus teleported to either a location within reasonable line of sight, or to a place they can recall from memory in detail. This effect does not entail a somatic component or any trail between the two places jumped between, nor is there any disruption in those things that lie in their path.

[Change] [ Reshape Flesh ] - At its most basic this spell is normally used to heal yourself, or to heal your teammates, commanding the flesh to take upon its natural shape once more, this spell does have other uses - in especially discreet murder for example. It also has the potential to reshape the body in more beneficial ways - but this requires a specific knowledge of what you're doing, beyond simply 'restore' or 'destroy'.

[World] [ Lightwarp ] - For when a simple illusion won't do. This spell involves the transferal of photons from one side of the body directly to the other, without hindrance. This renders the body protected by the spell totally invisible. This one *will* affect cameras. In theory, this can also be used to manipulate light on a larger scale, blocking, altering, or magnifying its passage at the user's command.

[World] - [ Mindspark ] - Involving the conscious manipulation of the natural charges and currents of the world, this power allows the user active control over the flow and charge of electrical currents and potential differences. At its most basic level this involves the conductance, direction, and creation of bolts of electricity, as well as permitting absorption and redirection of current directed at the caster - for instance from a taser or electric fence. When combined with the bizarre quirks of Timespace magic - such as the effects of Quantum Leap - this allows for a greater degree of control when it comes to the domain of electronically stored information.

---

---

Dawn of a New Age - The Return of Magic v3

Aaaand we're finally done! Sorry that took a little while, guys, I had some issues with the formatting, and it would have been up last night if my sleeping meds hadn't hit me really hard for no good reason.

Miles Honeywell

---

---

Miles Honeywell // Michael Stafford

33 Years Old

---

---

Physical Description: Miles Honeywell stands at 5"10, lithely and powerfully built, with shoulders of average width. His skin is fair and largely unblemished apart from the occasional freckle and some minor acne scars on the left side of his jaw. His eyes are blue and unintricate, without deformity nor unusual beauty. His hair is brown, neither dark enough to be remarkable nor light enough to be blonde. His smile is pleasant, but not stunning. His teeth are straight, but not perfect. There is little about him that is particularly memorable - he is no more than another face among billions.
Important items: He carries very little of personal importance with him - but for professional purposes; a fake ID (Michael Stafford) with matching 'pocket litter', a Glock 18 chambered in 9mm with a detachable short suppressor, three cheap Bic branded lighters, a pair of glasses with dark wire frames.

---

---

Short Bio:

Longer Than I Intended

Miles Honeywell was born in Hackney, London, to a single mother in a year of strife. His family was poor, his community was poor, and the country was fucked. The homeless were on the verge of having a population size that could legitimately give them a member of Parliament, there were fires destroying urban housing blocks in the City with all their inhabitants trapped inside, and a group of especially indecisive traitors were governing it all.

Miles hated them. He hated them so much.

In his childhood he was no fan nor friend of the government, and by extension he *loathed* their grunts and enforcers in blue. They would come into his neighbourhood and drag adults and kids alike off, packing them into their vans and disappearing them. Some of them came back, beaten and broken and traumatised - but many didn’t at all. He was stopped and searched for no reason so regularly that he could practically tell the time by it, and his little sister - two years his junior - got it worse.

Gangs started entering his life when he was 13. Properly entering his life, I mean. They weren’t just a set piece any more, a group of shady folk you learned to recognise and avoid, but with whom you had no interaction. Instead they put him to work running cash and messages between one and the other, like a miniature courier with a burner phone. Honestly, the work paid decently - especially for a kid - and he was smart enough to not get caught more than once with anything important on him. The one time he did was unpleasant, but hey, they didn’t break any bones.

Eventually the gangs started to evolve, though. When they were mostly just pitted against eachother they had a tendency to be small and insignificant organisations - but when the premier selection pressure evolved from competition with other gangs for territory and resources to pressure directly from riot police, then the gangs themselves started to adapt in response. The smaller gangs either joined larger ones, disbanded, or were crushed, and the larger gangs either formed alliances or were encircled and absorbed by ones that did. Things were gearing up for all out war in the community when Miles was 15, and he wisely chose to avoid it. He couldn’t quite remain impartial, and he still had to be friendly enough with everyone that they’d leave his little sister alone, but he didn’t want to get stabbed over this shit.

But then he got stabbed anyway. The whole process of trying to remain out of the conflict failed him utterly, and it was only because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He was walking home from hanging out with a couple of mates - nobodies who weren’t going anywhere - when two guys threw eachother out of a pub and onto Miles. They were members of the same gang who both suspected the other of being an undercover cop, and they’d tried to settle it with a pint before one of them drew a knife. That knife ended up about two centimetres from the biggest artery in the human body, inside Miles, purely by bad luck. He got lucky enough that he didn’t pass out from shock, and was able to phone for an ambulance - it was a similar matter of luck that nobody decided to mug the paramedics when they picked him up. The two men responsible continued their fight elsewhere, not even realising how close they’d come to killing a kid.

That was the moment it became clear that no matter how bad the situation was with the state, and no matter how bad the cops were to people like him, he wasn’t better off by isolating himself like this. His mum and sister came to visit him in the hospital and he told them plainly that they needed to move.

“We don’t have enough money.” His mum’s reply came.

“I don’t care, we have to.” He said in turn.

But then, from the recesses of that dark conversation, there came a sort of light - and an unexpected visitor.

Detective Sergeant Jonathan Hayes, specifically. He was a tall, proud looking man, with hair that was clearly going grey long before it was due to, and a wry smile that made it clear he knew more than you wanted him to. DS Hayes was exactly the kind of cop that liked putting young men like Miles in positions where they felt powerless, for the exact reason that it made him feel powerful in turn. He was by no means an admirable man - and indeed, Miles did not mourn him when he died five years later, even if he owed him that much - but for once DS Hayes was coming with good news, and a deal.

The law had been changed recently, and the changes made could make both of the gangers who’d gotten Miles stabbed equally culpable for his wound - which in turn, under new, liberal interpretations of ‘attempted’, could be called attempted murder. If Miles was willing to testify, he could put two of the local firm’s biggest hitters away for life, and start a cascade inside the gang that would lead to their collapse when the police moved in; and in return, DS Hayes would see about turning over some witness protection funding so that the family could rent a new place in a better neighbourhood, where their faces weren’t known and the local lowlifes knew better than to do things high-profile.

It was so perfect, it could have been a set up. Hell, it might have been a set up.

Didn’t matter. Getting stabbed and turning snitch once isn’t that bad of a price to pay, all things considered.

When the government he hated so much was taken down in the general election the year after that, things got even better. Some of the benefits they’d had taken away before were restored, and back-payments were made. His family were in a more stable situation than they’d ever been in his life, and out of both a newfound patriotism and a lack of other options for education or training, Miles made the admittedly questionable decision to join the army when he turned 16.

After two years of training - with deployment still being unlawful for the underaged - with the Royal Anglian Regiment, he was eventually deployed overseas to a peacekeeping operation in the Middle East. He served one tour with distinction, rising to the rank of Lance Corporal quickly in recognition of intelligence and calm under fire from insurgent forces, before being called home.

He met his mother and his little sister in the airport. They went for a burger king. It was nice - it was really nice to see them again.

He was in the toilets at the burger king, washing his hands, when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

“Lance Corporal Honeywell.”

There’s a strange kind of feeling on the back of your neck that you get when you think you might be in danger, but aren’t quite sure about it yet. This man’s voice was like warm steel, not awful to hear, but with the kind of authority that you don’t simply ignore.

“Yeah?” He turned. The man in front of his was about two inches shorter than he was, with blonde hair, brown eyes, and a clean shaved square jawed face. He was wearing jeans and a plain green hoodie, and looked a little overweight. Not like a spy.

“My name is Jacob Barter. I work for Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. Your actions on tour have been noted as exemplary, and based on some of your personal history, we would be interested in speaking to you about employment in the national interest.”

“I- I’m sorry mate, I beg your pardon?”

“I work for the SIS. I’m offering you training - and a job - as an Intelligence Officer.”

It was the start of a long and proud career. He was a natural, picking up the skills and the characteristics of an Intelligence Officer - and in turn, whoever that Intelligence Officer needed to become - quickly. They have him a new name, Michael Stafford, with which he was referenced both in official documentation and in person. They reshaped him, rebuilt him, remade him into the eyes, ears, and hands of the State. In some ways Miles Honeywell vanished completely, disappearing beneath the waves of ink and red tape as he learnt to become other people, transforming into the Grey Little Man. When he wanted to be, he was invisible. When he needed to be, he was attractive. When he was ordered to be, he was lethal.

With his new colleagues, he built and functioned within a colossal spider’s web. Michael Stafford was more than a pair of eyes in one place, he was the synapse between a single mind and a thousand eyes.

As far as his family knew, he was doing well as an infantryman. He just had an irregular schedule of tours.

Then they sent him to America. He was a liaison agent working with the CIA when the New World dawned on them and his own abilities awoke, and his own Angel (of sorts) appeared to him as just another, if palpably different intelligence officer in a conservative suit. No flowing robes, no big lights or golden halo. It had been just as the orders came in to start rounding up suspected Mages, literally as he'd been reading them out to the rest of his team. The Angel had given him some quite specific instructions on how to leave the building without arousing suspicion; it probably bought him a whole hour before they started looking, and another couple hours before they figured it out.

Good thing both Michael and Miles have experience in running from the government.

---

---

Skills/Flaws:

• Skills
  
  • A Focused Mind - Miles is an intelligent, insightful, perceptive man. He picks up on the fine details both in his environment and in other people, and learns very quickly, being highly adaptive and attentive at all times.
  • The Changing Face - Miles is an expert in dealing with people, both when they're aware of him and talking to him, and when they have yet to realise he even exists. His understanding of psychology and emotional cues is acutely tuned and extremely adept, his use of verbal and physical language is so trained it is genuinely natural, and his ability to manipulate, lie, charm, and more in order to disguise himself or achieve an end is truly remarkable.
• Flaws
  
  • The Unperson - Miles is one of these unfortunate individuals who, having become so used to changing his act and being more act than not, finds it disproportionately hard to actually change as a person. He's a fantastic learner, but actually changing himself for the better and becoming a better person simply doesn't come to him any more - after all, why bother really changing when you could just lie? Worse still, he does it subconsciously. It's in doubt whether or not he could learn from his personal mistakes if he even tried.
  • Sleepless Nights - It's a spy's job to be paranoid. You have to think sixteen steps ahead of eight different players, some of whom are your friends and don't want you dead, some of whom aren't your friends and do. You hear about your colleague, whose home was broken into the other night. You hear about people's families being followed home by foreign agents, kidnapped, and exorted for information. You hear about people watching your relatives and you can't be sure whose people they really are. Eventually it gets to you. You start sticking cameras up in your home, putting another lock in your door, hiding discreet weapons where you might need them, and losing sleep. It's the sleep loss that really gets him. He can't get more than three solid hours a night.

---

---

Spell List:

[Mind] [ Alter Memory ] - This ability allows the user to explore and re-narrate parts of their subject(s)'s memories, stripping the old ones and absorbing them, reworking them into new material, and painting over the top of the new space.

[Mind] [ Alter Perception ] - This ability allows the user to either dial down the other peoples' perceptions of them until they are functionally invisible, or increase their perceptions until more and more attention is drawn towards them. Whilst 'invisible' others around the user will still make attempts to find paths around the user if they're in their way. It affects the other peoples' entire perceptions, not simply sight, and can be used for illusory purposes as well as stealth purposes.

[Timespace] [ Quantum Leap ] - The User - or a particular object roughly their size or less - exists twice at once for a brief moment, and is thus teleported to either a location within reasonable line of sight, or to a place they can recall from memory in detail. This effect does not entail a somatic component or any trail between the two places jumped between, nor is there any disruption in those things that lie in their path.

[Change] [ Reshape Flesh ] - At its most basic this spell is normally used to heal yourself, or to heal your teammates, commanding the flesh to take upon its natural shape once more, this spell does have other uses - in especially discreet murder for example. It also has the potential to reshape the body in more beneficial ways - but this requires a specific knowledge of what you're doing, beyond simply 'restore' or 'destroy'.

[World] [ Lightwarp ] - For when a simple illusion won't do. This spell involves the transferal of photons from one side of the body directly to the other, without hindrance. This renders the body protected by the spell totally invisible. This one *will* affect cameras. In theory, this can also be used to manipulate light on a larger scale, blocking, altering, or magnifying its passage at the user's command.

[World] - [ Mindspark ] - Involving the conscious manipulation of the natural charges and currents of the world, this power allows the user active control over the flow and charge of electrical currents and potential differences. At its most basic level this involves the conductance, direction, and creation of bolts of electricity, as well as permitting absorption and redirection of current directed at the caster - for instance from a taser or electric fence. When combined with the bizarre quirks of Timespace magic - such as the effects of Quantum Leap - this allows for a greater degree of control when it comes to the domain of electronically stored information.

---

---

Dawn of a New Age - The Return of Magic v3

work in progress

Name: Miles Honeywell // Michael Stafford

Age: 33

Physical Description: Miles Honeywell stands at 5"10, lithely and powerfully built, with shoulders of average width. His skin is fair and largely unblemished apart from the occasional freckle and some minor acne scars on the left side of his jaw. His eyes are blue and unintricate, without deformity nor unusual beauty. His hair is brown, neither dark enough to be remarkable nor light enough to be blonde. His smile is pleasant, but not stunning. His teeth are straight, but not perfect. There is little about him that is particularly memorable - he is no more than another face among billions.



Important items: He carries very little of personal importance with him - but for professional purposes; a fake ID (Michael Stafford) with matching 'pocket litter', a Glock 18 chambered in 9mm with a detachable short suppressor, three cheap Bic branded lighters, a pair of glasses with dark wire frames.

---

Short Bio:

Longer Than I Intended

Miles Honeywell was born in Hackney, London, to a single mother in a year of strife. His family was poor, his community was poor, and the country was fucked. The homeless were on the verge of having a population size that could legitimately give them a member of Parliament, there were fires destroying urban housing blocks in the City with all their inhabitants trapped inside, and a group of especially indecisive traitors were governing it all.

Miles hated them. He hated them so much.

In his childhood he was no fan nor friend of the government, and by extension he *loathed* their grunts and enforcers in blue. They would come into his neighbourhood and drag adults and kids alike off, packing them into their vans and disappearing them. Some of them came back, beaten and broken and traumatised - but many didn’t at all. He was stopped and searched for no reason so regularly that he could practically tell the time by it, and his little sister - two years his junior - got it worse.

Gangs started entering his life when he was 13. Properly entering his life, I mean. They weren’t just a set piece any more, a group of shady folk you learned to recognise and avoid, but with whom you had no interaction. Instead they put him to work running cash and messages between one and the other, like a miniature courier with a burner phone. Honestly, the work paid decently - especially for a kid - and he was smart enough to not get caught more than once with anything important on him. The one time he did was unpleasant, but hey, they didn’t break any bones.

Eventually the gangs started to evolve, though. When they were mostly just pitted against eachother they had a tendency to be small and insignificant organisations - but when the premier selection pressure evolved from competition with other gangs for territory and resources to pressure directly from riot police, then the gangs themselves started to adapt in response. The smaller gangs either joined larger ones, disbanded, or were crushed, and the larger gangs either formed alliances or were encircled and absorbed by ones that did. Things were gearing up for all out war in the community when Miles was 15, and he wisely chose to avoid it. He couldn’t quite remain impartial, and he still had to be friendly enough with everyone that they’d leave his little sister alone, but he didn’t want to get stabbed over this shit.

But then he got stabbed anyway. The whole process of trying to remain out of the conflict failed him utterly, and it was only because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He was walking home from hanging out with a couple of mates - nobodies who weren’t going anywhere - when two guys threw eachother out of a pub and onto Miles. They were members of the same gang who both suspected the other of being an undercover cop, and they’d tried to settle it with a pint before one of them drew a knife. That knife ended up about two centimetres from the biggest artery in the human body, inside Miles, purely by bad luck. He got lucky enough that he didn’t pass out from shock, and was able to phone for an ambulance - it was a similar matter of luck that nobody decided to mug the paramedics when they picked him up. The two men responsible continued their fight elsewhere, not even realising how close they’d come to killing a kid.

That was the moment it became clear that no matter how bad the situation was with the state, and no matter how bad the cops were to people like him, he wasn’t better off by isolating himself like this. His mum and sister came to visit him in the hospital and he told them plainly that they needed to move.

“We don’t have enough money.” His mum’s reply came.

“I don’t care, we have to.” He said in turn.

But then, from the recesses of that dark conversation, there came a sort of light - and an unexpected visitor.

Detective Sergeant Jonathan Hayes, specifically. He was a tall, proud looking man, with hair that was clearly going grey long before it was due to, and a wry smile that made it clear he knew more than you wanted him to. DS Hayes was exactly the kind of cop that liked putting young men like Miles in positions where they felt powerless, for the exact reason that it made him feel powerful in turn. He was by no means an admirable man - and indeed, Miles did not mourn him when he died five years later, even if he owed him that much - but for once DS Hayes was coming with good news, and a deal.

The law had been changed recently, and the changes made could make both of the gangers who’d gotten Miles stabbed equally culpable for his wound - which in turn, under new, liberal interpretations of ‘attempted’, could be called attempted murder. If Miles was willing to testify, he could put two of the local firm’s biggest hitters away for life, and start a cascade inside the gang that would lead to their collapse when the police moved in; and in return, DS Hayes would see about turning over some witness protection funding so that the family could rent a new place in a better neighbourhood, where their faces weren’t known and the local lowlifes knew better than to do things high-profile.

It was so perfect, it could have been a set up. Hell, it might have been a set up.

Didn’t matter. Getting stabbed and turning snitch once isn’t that bad of a price to pay, all things considered.

When the government he hated so much was taken down in the general election the year after that, things got even better. Some of the benefits they’d had taken away before were restored, and back-payments were made. His family were in a more stable situation than they’d ever been in his life, and out of both a newfound patriotism and a lack of other options for education or training, Miles made the admittedly questionable decision to join the army when he turned 16.

After two years of training - with deployment still being unlawful for the underaged - with the Royal Anglian Regiment, he was eventually deployed overseas to a peacekeeping operation in the Middle East. He served one tour with distinction, rising to the rank of Lance Corporal quickly in recognition of intelligence and calm under fire from insurgent forces, before being called home.

He met his mother and his little sister in the airport. They went for a burger king. It was nice - it was really nice to see them again.

He was in the toilets at the burger king, washing his hands, when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

“Lance Corporal Honeywell.”

There’s a strange kind of feeling on the back of your neck that you get when you think you might be in danger, but aren’t quite sure about it yet. This man’s voice was like warm steel, not awful to hear, but with the kind of authority that you don’t simply ignore.

“Yeah?” He turned. The man in front of his was about two inches shorter than he was, with blonde hair, brown eyes, and a clean shaved square jawed face. He was wearing jeans and a plain green hoodie, and looked a little overweight. Not like a spy.

“My name is Jacob Barter. I work for Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. Your actions on tour have been noted as exemplary, and based on some of your personal history, we would be interested in speaking to you about employment in the national interest.”

“I- I’m sorry mate, I beg your pardon?”

“I work for the SIS. I’m offering you training - and a job - as an Intelligence Officer.”

It was the start of a long and proud career. He was a natural, picking up the skills and the characteristics of an Intelligence Officer - and in turn, whoever that Intelligence Officer needed to become - quickly. They have him a new name, Michael Stafford, with which he was referenced both in official documentation and in person. They reshaped him, rebuilt him, remade him into the eyes, ears, and hands of the State. In some ways Miles Honeywell vanished completely, disappearing beneath the waves of ink and red tape as he learnt to become other people, transforming into the Grey Little Man. When he wanted to be, he was invisible. When he needed to be, he was attractive. When he was ordered to be, he was lethal.

With his new colleagues, he built and functioned within a colossal spider’s web. Michael Stafford was more than a pair of eyes in one place, he was the synapse between a single mind and a thousand eyes.

As far as his family knew, he was doing well as an infantryman. He just had an irregular schedule of tours.

Then they sent him to America. He was a liaison agent working with the CIA when the New World dawned on them and his own abilities awoke, and his own Angel (of sorts) appeared to him as just another, if palpably different intelligence officer in a conservative suit. No flowing robes, no big lights or golden halo. It had been just as the orders came in to start rounding up suspected Mages, literally as he'd been reading them out to the rest of his team. The Angel had given him some quite specific instructions on how to leave the building without arousing suspicion; it probably bought him a whole hour before they started looking, and another couple hours before they figured it out.

Good thing both Michael and Miles have experience in running from the government.

---

Skills/Flaws:

• Skills
  
  • A Focused Mind - Miles is an intelligent, insightful, perceptive man. He picks up on the fine details both in his environment and in other people, and learns very quickly, being highly adaptive and attentive at all times.
  • The Changing Face - Miles is an expert in dealing with people, both when they're aware of him and talking to him, and when they have yet to realise he even exists. His understanding of psychology and emotional cues is acutely tuned and extremely adept, his use of verbal and physical language is so trained it is genuinely natural, and his ability to manipulate, lie, charm, and more in order to disguise himself or achieve an end is truly remarkable.
• Flaws
  
  • The Man, Malleable - Miles is one of these unfortunate individuals who, having become so used to changing his act and being more act than not, finds it disproportionately hard to actually change as a person. He's a fantastic learner, but actually changing himself for the better and becoming a better person simply doesn't come to him any more - after all, why bother really changing when you could just lie? Worse still, he does it subconsciously. It's in doubt whether or not he could learn from his personal mistakes if he even tried.
  • Sleepless Nights - It's a spy's job to be paranoid. You have to think sixteen steps ahead of eight different players, some of whom are your friends and don't want you dead, some of whom aren't your friends and do. You hear about your colleague, whose home was broken into the other night. You hear about people's families being followed home by foreign agents, kidnapped, and exorted for information. You hear about people watching your relatives and you can't be sure whose people they really are. Eventually it gets to you. You start sticking cameras up in your home, putting another lock in your door, hiding discreet weapons where you might need them, and losing sleep. It's the sleep loss that really gets him. He can't get more than three solid hours a night.

Spell List:

[Mind] [ Alter Memory ] - This ability allows the user to re-narrate part of their subject(s)'s memories, stripping the old ones and absorbing them, reworking them into new material, and painting over the top of the new space.

[Mind] [ Perception Filter ] - This ability allows the user to either dial down the other peoples' perceptions of them until they are functionally invisible, or increase their perceptions until more and more attention is drawn towards them. Whilst 'invisible' others around the user will still make attempts to find paths around the user if they're in their way. It affects the other peoples' entire perceptions, not simply sight.

[Timespace] [ The Quantum Leap ] - The User exists twice at once for a brief moment, and is teleported to either a location within reasonable line of sight, or to a place they can recall from memory in detail. This effect does not entail a somatic component or any trail between the two places jumped between, nor is there any disruption in those things that lie in their path.

[Change] [ Reshape Flesh ] - Normally to heal yourself, or to heal your teammates, commanding the flesh to take upon its natural shape once more, this spell does have other uses, in discreet murder for example.

[World] [ True Invisibility ] - For when a simple illusion won't do. This spell involves the transferal of photons from one side of the body directly to the other, without hindrance. This renders the body protected by the spell totally invisible. This one *will* affect cameras.

[Change] - Work in progress

Dawn of a New Age - The Return of Magic v3

I'm close to finishing my CS folks. I'll be eager to join in real soon, just got a bit of stuff I need to do IRL tonight before I can finish it up, give it a proof read, and click submit.

The House Which Has No Walls

The Wood grows around the walls of the Mansus. As any student of the Histories knows, the Mansus has no walls, and it is folly to enter alone.

Dawn of a New Age - The Return of Magic

I'll hopefully be making a character either later tonight, or at some point tomorrow - but if you're willing to have me please reserve a spot for me. Thanks.

The House Which Has No Walls

I have yet to actually achieve a victory, but the storytelling inspired by the RNG is so awesome. I was playing Lantern and seeking knowledge, and although I was new to the game I was doing quite well all things considered.

I had heard that the initial detective you get is the easiest to deal with, and that as long as he remains on the board newer and more dangerous ones will generally not appear, so I left him for quite a long time just sort of doing his thing. He would occasionally produce tentative evidence against my society and person, but rarely would it last for more than a few seconds against the power of Moth and Unreason - and even when it did, it usually just expired. I was managing notoriety quite well you see, even if I was a Painter.

But eventually I have enough of him. I figure that I would rather he be an ally than an enemy, especially as my Moths do sometimes get injured burning evidence, and there’s just too much notoriety to keep burying it in paintings eventually - so I go and speak to him with my highest rated piece of Lantern lore, hoping to convince him that my way of doing things, my society alone and not his fetid institution, can be trusted with this knowledge and this power, for the betterment of all mankind.

I didn’t expect him to spit in my face and tell me that I’m exactly the reason he does his job. He gains the Grim aspect.

My character dislikes this turn of events intensely. I speak to him again, and tell him of the despair that awaits him without the guidance of the Watchman, in whose steps we follow. Using the despair card, to which grim Detectives are meant to be vulnerable, fails too. He reports that the grim realities of the world are why he will be a light to people in his own right, and he becomes an idealist too.

I subsequently dispense with these charades and send my Disciple Victor to kill him. Twice Victor fails, and on the second time he becomes Tenacious and highly resistant to Edge.

In fear my actions become rash, despite having made it to the final step of ascension. I summon a Hint and send it after him.

The result is that he survives and becomes a Mystic.

This no name, no rep, no talent nobody just became statistically one of the biggest threats in the game - and the worst thing? In my panic I had forgotten all about controlling notoriety, but had still been producing paintings to meet my living costs. I fail to notice as he’s grabbed by the season card, and produced damning evidence of my activities.

I am tried and imprisoned in a most permanent way.

But the best thing is that in my next play through, I simply played as *him*. I read the file on my old character, who I imagined sitting in his cell and smiling softly as the Great Work continued, and I began on an entirely new journey.

Gosh damn I love this game.

The House Which Has No Walls

I honestly saw the title and thought 'no, it can't be, it can't be real!". I love cultist simulator, one of my favourite games. Count me very *very* *very* interested. I'm on sleep meds at the moment so I can't stay up to chat, but I love that game. I'll be down for some IC action.