Naril — Roleplayer Guild

Note: I checked with our GM before posting this. :3

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Name: Morgan Blackwood

Age: Apparently early-thirties

Appearance: 

By every measure, Morgan is striking. She is tall for a woman, with fair skin and rich, dark hair that tumbles to her shoulders. Her features are elegant and wicked, with large blue-green eyes and lips that always tilt into an expression of mischief, set against sharp cheekbones and a strong jaw that stops just at the border of femininity. Anything but frail, Morgan is built like a martial artist or professional dancer, her body one of long, lean lines and dangerous curves. She moves with the lazy confidence of an apex predator, something captivating but not always inviting. Her hands are long-fingered and strong, rarely manicured, and marked with several small scars.

Morgan's professional appearance is almost always one in a dark, close-tailored suit, subtly heeled boots, and a shirt that might have one more button open than propriety requires. She wears a small amount of jewelry, mostly studs in her ears and occasionally a pendant. Her shoulder holster is hard to see, but it's usually there. In her off-duty hours, Morgan is a jeans-and-t-shirt kind of person. She listens to a lot of records through studio headphones, on a couch in her apartment.

Concept: Hiding in plain sight / Celibate succubus

Powers and Skills: Morgan is possessed of a variety of tools to manipulate those around her, from psychic weaponry to pheromones and body language, virtually all of which she makes an active choice to suppress. A notable exception is a powerful psychometric talent, which she makes only careful and deliberate use of. Morgan makes a considerable effort to keep what she is hidden, but there are cracks in the mask. She's considerably harder to kill than a 'normal' human, and she can't entirely switch off the supernatural sexiness - heads turn, perhaps especially when she'd rather they didn't. There are also more than a few genuinely supernatural creatures, including others of her own kind, that can also reliably know what Morgan is.

On a purely mundane point of view, Morgan has spent the best part of a century working with various law enforcement divisions of the United States government, and has collected quite a number of useful skills. She is capable with firearms, comfortable with vehicles from horses and buggies to tuned-out drift racers, and speaks several languages. Morgan plays the guitar, and knows the words to everything Fleetwood Mac ever released.

Despite actually being a supernatural creature, Morgan is not extensively versed in the world she comes from - she's aware that the shadow world exists, and can tell a pixie from an ogre, but she is far from an encyclopaedic source of knowledge. Her life has been one that, until quite recently, only occasionally intersected with the things that go bump in the night. 

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"Do you know what you are?"

Morgan lifted her head, tried to blow away the strands of hair stuck to her face. Almost every part of her hurt and the crust of dried blood above one eye itched, but she managed to pull one corner of her mouth up in a wry grin.

"Special Agent Morgan Blackwood, FBI," she said, each word made sumptuous by her accent.

Another woman stood in the room, proud and glorious and terrifying. She let out a short huff, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, and turned away from Morgan, heels scraping on the floor. She began to circle the chair Morgan was cuffed to, her gait a smooth, even prowl, and reached into her jacket. Though her vision still hadn't entirely focused, Morgan appreciated the way every seam flattered the other woman, tracing her figure in dark cloth. Light gleamed from a metal case the woman withdrew, then folded open in perfect silence.
 
"You're better than this, Sister," her now to Morgan's left, "We are so much more than you know. You - we - were meant for such great things." She set something on the ground with a glassy clink, "And here you are, a pet monster. A nightmare on a leash. And happy to be there."

"And your way is better?" Morgan said, turning her head to follow the other woman, "Your dry cleaning bills alone would make me wonder."

"You really don't understand, do you?" The woman sighed, "We looked for you for so long, Sister. The storms, the summonings, everything went right. But when we came to find you, there were only bodies." Her eyes brightened, and with quick steps, she swarmed up to Morgan, putting her arms on the chair, leaning in so their faces were only inches away. Morgan smelled copper and salt.

"Were they your first?" The woman said, and she leaned further in, "Did you take them? Can you imagine that feeling, that thrill, whenever you-"

"No." Morgan interrupted, the word falling like a lead weight.

"Then-" The woman started, then stood. She looked over Morgan, and her face broke into the kind of smile that starts religions. "Ahh, it all makes sense now. The detective, the raid. Those bodies weren't your doing, but theirs. And then...of course. " An expression that was not a smile pulled at her lips, "The wrong person completed the ritual. You have a conscience." 

"They didn't know what they were doing," Morgan said, "Occult dabblers working out of books they found in an attic somewhere. They didn't know the Circle would actually work. It drove them mad, Connor said they were like animals when he broke down the door."

"Really?" The woman purred, pushing herself back to her feet and returning to her slow circle, "Then I'll ask you again, Morgan, and don't be cute - do you know what you are?"

Morgan looked at the other woman, swallowed. "A mistake. They wanted a...well. They got a predator."

"Oh, Sister, no." The woman said, chuckling, "That was no barely-literate secret society, luring members with promises of orgiastic rites. They were part of something so much grander than themselves, an intricate piece of a vast machine that even now coils across the world." She set something else down, and this time Morgan saw it - a small pewter cup  a tiny egg. Swirling memory finally resolved into recognition - ritual totems. She blinked her still-watering eyes, and saw something else - a pattern, white against the already white-painted floor.

"We are their weapons, Morgan," She said, "Their harbingers. We prepare the way for...well. What comes after." She set a small animal skull with care at her feet, then returned the case to her jacket. "The perfect point of the most subtle spear. What else motivates these creatures than their desires, their hunger, their lust? The entire race comes with their own bridle and saddle, and we only need steer them." She looked over at Morgan, then made her way to the chair.

She knelt, brought herself to eye level with Morgan. Her gaze roved over Morgan's face, and she brought one hand up to touch her cheek, where cool fingers left sticky trails across her face. She leaned in, quicker than Morgan could pull away, and shefelt the woman's lips press against her own for a moment that lingered like a dying breath. Then she stood, turned, took a pair of paces away.

"But none of that is for you, I can see that now. Losing you will be hard, Sister," she said, her back to Morgan, "But the arc of time is long. Another decade means little. And with-"

A small click pierced every other sound in the room. The noise cut off the woman's words like shears on thread, and time seemed to stop. The woman spun, their eyes met for the length of an indrawn breath. Then Morgan exploded from the chair, her hair a dark comet trail and she brought an arm dangling an open handcuff up, fingers clenched into a tight ball. Her fist connected with the other woman's temple and she went sprawling to the floor with a sharp gasp. Morgan spun, her shoes scuffing something on the floor,  turned to her left, eyes frantically scanning. There, in an arc of white powder - salt? - a dagger made of glittering black glass, the handle wound in rough twine. She lunged toward it, fingers wrapping around the handle in the skin of a second. 

When she touched the weapon, Morgan felt a pressure against her mind. The dagger pulsed with history, with fable, with emotion and the weight of time. It dragged at her soul, her vision swam, and she nearly lost herself in that current. With an effort of will, she shoved the sensation away from her mind - there was no time to allow that connection now. She stood,started to turn back, then white light blossomed behind her eyes from a blow to the back of her head. Her sister had recovered more quickly than Morgan had expected. 

Morgan stumbled forward, her hands almost nerveless from the blow. She gritted her teeth, tried to swallow down the sudden dizziness and nausea, and then she felt something else. Gasping, she managed to stand and turn back to the other woman, who stood with hand outstretched. Morgan could feel power flowing from her in what should have been a crashing wave, a dark, vicious pull at everything primal and carnal inside her. But she felt all of it split and flow around her, something she was aware of but was not affected by. Morgan shook her head, and she locked eyes with the other woman again.

"You really are one of us," she said, her voice tinted with pleasant surprise.

Morgan stalked toward her, brought the glass dagger up in a hard, sharp punch at her side. She felt the woman's silk jacket part around the tip, the fibrous tearing of the blade through her skin, the scrape of glass on bone. 

Their eyes met again, locked again, again so close their skin touched. Morgan felt the power sluicing over her mind flicker and back away, but the other woman's eyes didn't waver. They were deep, intelligent, wicked, and when the other woman fell, Morgan couldn't pull her own gaze away. Only when her eyes flickered closed did the world return, and Morgan realized she hadn't been breathing. She looked down at her hand, saw the blood dripping off her own fingers, and she swallowed against a hard lump in her throat.

A few more steps took her to the door, and she shoved it open. The hinges shrieked, the heavy metal banging against the wall. Her balance still shaky, she had to lean against the wall for support and she stopped, her breathing ragged. She swallowed in a few gulps of air, then she heard a voice from ahead - familiar, with a deep Southern twang.

"Morgan?" Came the voice, "'Zat you?"

"Jules!" Morgan shouted, "Jules, I...give me a minute, I'm just down by the..." Her voice trailed off.

She came into Morgan's view with her pistol at the ready. Her shirt was open farther than Morgan had ever known it to be, the buttons torn, threads dangling. Her eyes were wide, her green pupils dilated, spots of color on her cheeks.

"Best get back in there, Miss Blackwood," Jules said, raising her pistol, "She's got plans for ya."

Morgan felt her shoulders slump. "Oh no, Jules. Not you, too," she managed. Then she stood, straightened her back.

"I'm so sorry."

An hour later, Morgan pushed her way through another heavy steel door. She felt the oppressive humidity of a Georgian summer evening slap her in the face like a wet towel and in that moment, nothing had ever felt so wonderful. She pulled in one breath, then another, her throat ragged, her body protesting from every muscle and joint. Groaning, she propelled herself away from the wall, digging in her pocket for her keys. They would know what vehicle to track, but Morgan had ben suspecting a day like this would come. She didn't have many options, but she'd made sure she had more than none.

She fell into her car with a hard puff of breath, started the engine, felt the air conditioner struggle against the boiling darkness. She had warned them. There were memos and emails and texts and lunch dates and screaming, arm-waving fights. They knew there were other things like her - myths given life, ghosts, and monsters from folktales. She'd known that eventually, those forces would come for the Bureau, for the mortal world, but they hadn't cared. And now, this.

The air conditioner finally started to catch up with the outside temperature, and Morgan felt the cool, dry kiss across her skin. It was time for something new. She had always looked for answers to other people's questions because she'd already known all her own answers. In the space of an evening, all of that had changed. She wondered if they would look for her, and decided that she didn't care.

With another groan, Morgan straightened, reached up and put the car into drive. She drove into the rising sun, and didn't look back.
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