Nimbus

Iliad City: A Magical RP in an Original World (Resuming)

Nika Pešek

Name: Nika Pešek

Age: 18

Bio

Nika Pešek was born an ordinary girl, or as ordinary a girl as one might find in Iliad City, where the rhythms of the Epic of Making echo as though it had been sung only minutes before. She found her start in life as the daughter of Pavel Pešek, a stoic, methodical crafter of armour, tools and weapons for the city’s elite – after all, no amount of industrial precision can improve upon the technical mastery, or ability to produce custom orders, of a mage-smith – and Atanasija Pešek, herself daughter of Pavel’s major supplier of raw materials with a finely honed business sense and a wicked sense of humour. Though a match primarily made for commercial reasons, the two found that they were not only a capable team but also emotionally complementary and quickly became a mutually reliant, perhaps some might even say loving, couple. Nika was thus born into a moderately wealthy household with two capable and affectionate parents. Things seemed to be looking up for her.

For the first years, they were. Nika learned to take in information, manipulate it and communicate it quickly, picking up reading and writing earlier than most children and extrapolating concepts that she hadn’t learned elsewhere from her previous knowledge; indeed, one of her earliest memories is Atanasija’s delight (and Pavel’s horror) at her having figured out the basic premise behind foreign exchange trading. As such, when her parents announced that they were having a second child, she took quite a bit of reassuring that she wouldn’t lose out on affection as a result.

In the end, though they did manage to convince her, it wouldn’t matter. For all the magic of the healers at the hospital and the advancements of modern medicine, Atanasija and her son died in childbirth when Nika was six.

Life carried on. Pavel’s work continued, even if he couldn’t negotiate such good prices for his pieces as his wife used to be able to and often found himself waking to a pillow wet with tears. Nika still did relatively well in school, even if her mind, whose keenness let her understand what had happened better than many of her age, became clouded. Forward they marched. That cloud, however brewed lightning. Nika’s grief quickly became determination. Her mother was gone – and thus she had to make up for her loss through effort; so went her child’s reasoning. For all her father saw this and first tried to quell this feigned strength born of pain, then to channel it safely by having her help him in the forge, it only grew more powerful and all-consuming within her as she aged.

Seeing that he had to do something, and also noticing her burgeoning magical ability, Pavel decided that it would be best to send Nika to one of Iliad City’s famous magical academies; there she might be able to find a place for herself, out of her mother’s shadow, he reasoned. Of the two, he decided to send her to Marduk; he had always liked the idea of the place more than Ishtar and, moreover, he felt that the sense of order there might be stabilising. Nika, of course, passed the entrance exam with flying colours and was thus enrolled at the Marduk Academy for the Mystic Arts at the age of twelve.

Unfortunately, two things stood in the way of Marduk being a good place for Nika. Firstly, though Nika’s style of thinking was primarily logical and systematic, like the one that Marduk espoused, that logic was incisive rather than constructive or stabilising. Where Marduk sought to impose rules for its students to follow, Nika tried to prove them flawed or circumvent them as she believed right; where Marduk laid out a system of magic for its students to rely upon, Nika sought to tweak and customise it for her own ends. She quickly became known as a maverick to the staff and a smart-alec to her peers, though she was at worst a bit prickly to those who actually got to know her.

Indeed, as a result of the second factor keeping her from aligning fully with Marduk, she didn’t have much focus left over to hurt anyone or engage in the school’s social landscape. Over the last few years, Nika’s goal had gradually shifted from filling the void that her mother had left in her and her father’s lives herself to simply bringing her mother back. She was a strong mage, after all, and stories abounded in this most storied of cities of strong mages challenging the dictates of fate and the natural order; why could she not do the same? Once she arrived at Marduk, she dived into the academy’s library, searching for ways in which that might be done. Necromancy Nika quickly dismissed; its abilities, she found, tended to be unpredictable, bringing about a facsimile of life as often as real life from beyond death. She would not risk her mother for that; she needed something predictable and consistent. Thus Nika turned to chronomancy; she borrowed some books on the subject, read them cover to cover and began to practice.

Now, chronomancy is a stable magic, bound to some of the simplest rules of the universe, but it is also a highly dangerous one. Nearly every book Nika borrowed was filled with warnings and cautionary tales of mages freezing themselves in time only to be unable to think and thereby loose the spell or people pushed into the wall of a slowed zone and shredded into chunks as individual parts of their body sped up going through to the other side. For this reason, Marduk itself only typically teaches chronomancy as a subject in students’ final years and only then to those who have excelled elsewhere and are of a cautious, considered disposition, for they, in the staff’s opinion, are most able to approach it successfully.

Nika? If it was dangerous for her to use it on people, she reasoned, she’d just do so with objects instead. That’s what she’d been doing for most of her life, after all.

Taking a dozen books on chronomancy out of the school library over the course of a term would have obviously raised some alarm bells with the librarians anyway but the school really took notice when Nika began using her new magic in her practical Elemental Magic classes, hastening the velocity of her projectiles to a degree that became suspicious to her teacher in the subject. Of course, when he asked her, she told him exactly what she was doing; there wasn’t any sense in hiding what wasn’t wrong in her eyes. This gave him sufficient cause to raise it with the remainder of the staff and, before long, Nika found herself embroiled in something that wasn’t quite a disciplinary process, given that this wasn’t against the rules, per se. The school, meanwhile, was left with the problem that Nika had apparently been skilful enough to use chronomancy on her own and would undoubtedly carry on using it, potentially endangering herself and others, but to let her do so publicly might be seen as condoning it generally and cause the rest of the student body to plunge headfirst into the discipline.

The solution that they came up with was to prohibit Nika from using her chronomantic spells in her regular school life until she was able to take chronomancy as a regular class but to assign her private tutoring with the specialist teacher who taught it as a subject, one Doctor Hannah Baumann, up to that point alongside it. Irritated but with little choice in the matter, Nika complied – at school; when she was at home she continued her practice – and started attending the sessions. These became the major reason that she stayed at Marduk. For all that she chafed at the school’s more structuralist tendencies, Dr Baumann, a patient, analytical and empathetic soul, in line with the archetype of most chronomancers, had a disposition that was perfect for focussing Nika’s passion. It was she who, deconstructing Nika’s understanding of chronomancy, tailored their private lessons to expanding that ability to its fullest; she, alongside Nika herself, is responsible for guiding her to alter her frame of reference to move objects in space by moving them backwards and forwards in time. The two have developed a close bond over the years, one that they retained even after Nika joined her class properly a few years later; from the outside looking in, one might even regard her as a mother figure.

Nika would be horrified at this perception. She hasn’t forgotten her original goal, not in the slightest, and, even as darkness begins to suffuse Iliad City, it remains her foremost objective. Now eighteen, only a few months from graduating, she believes that she has all the power and prowess that she needs to return Atanasija Pešek to her life. The long wait, years of lost connection, could be over, if only she can end them.

It’s time to see if she’s up to the task.

Mundane Skills

- Forge Adept: Nika spent much of her life with her father, watching him ply his trade as well as helping out in various places and, increasingly, moulding the iron herself. Though she was around his forge less and less as she grew up and attended the academy, she’s still a capable mage-smith with the understanding necessary to craft tools and weapons, though, unlike her father, she is less capable of producing high-quality armour.

- Chase-Cutting Mind: Nika rarely takes the difficult path, not because it is difficult but because it tends to be slow. This sometimes means following in others’ footsteps and putting in little effort of her own but, as a dynamic thinker, if she feels that current solutions aren’t superior to what she can come up with herself, she’ll take the latter and damn the consequences. This combination of apparent laziness and maverick puts her somewhat at odds with the traditionalist factions of the Marduk Academy but gets her the results she wants quickly and occasionally in places that others could not.

Magic

Chronomancy

- Revert: Nika is capable of moving an object, objects that once were an object or several objects conceptualised either as one or a collection of objects, other than herself, backwards or forwards in time up to the first or last point that she interacted with it/them. She may not do so to other sapient beings unless they are willing or unconscious. Once this process begins, she may not chronomantically influence anything else until she halts it and lets time resume for the objects in question.

- Recall: By changing the frame of reference within with she uses her reversion, Nika can cause something to move backwards or forwards in time spatially relative to other things, effectively allowing her limited control over their spatial position, with all the limitations of her usual reversion. Nika’s signature ability, this allows her to do such things as summon things of importance to her person and perform tricks not dissimilar to those of a telekinetic.

Enhancement/Enchantment

- Magic Infusion: Nika has an excellent grasp of basic enhancement magic to change a material’s properties like weight and strength, as might be expected from a mage-smith’s daughter, and is fairly skilled at transmutation, changing an object’s fundamental nature. She is far more capable in altering inanimate objects in these ways as opposed to living matter; moreover, doing so takes more energy, focus and time the more complex the alteration or larger or more complex the object being altered is.

- Disintegrate: By lowering a material’s ability to resist stress to close to nothing, Nika is able to cause a small object to crumble to a powder, an ability she learned from her father as a necessity for creating alloys. Doing so takes more energy, focus and time the larger or more chemically complex the object is.

- Spell Infusion: Nika is able to place spells into objects, either for one-time use or indefinite reactivation (with more energy, focus and time) by either herself alone or anyone. She can do this with her own spells or, with their help, can infuse objects with the spells of someone else according to her own design. Should the spell have a cost in energy, this is drawn from the original caster of the spell upon the item’s activation.

Elemental Magic

- Temperature Manipulation: Nika has been able to magically heat and cool materials from an early age – taught it by her father, given its crucial role for a mage-smith – and, like her father, is particularly good at raising small and mid-sized objects to very hot temperatures. Naturally, Nika was a little smug at being already adept with this in her early years at Marduk while her classmates were still studying the less advanced pyromantic magics.

- Metal Manipulation: Nika is able to telekinetically move and reshape small amounts of metal with a heightened level of precision, again taught by her father as a vital aspect of mage-smithing. Given that she was taught to do so with heated metal and rarely uses the skill outside the forge, she finds reshaping non-molten metals more difficult than a mage of her ability otherwise would.

- Elemental Generalism: Though she prefers the versatility of channelling and refocussing the magic of others into objects to supplement her own spellcasting ability, Nika did go through the basic Elemental Magic courses at Marduk and is thus able to summon and project small amounts of fire, summon and manipulate small amounts of water, manipulate small amounts of air, manipulate small amounts of rock or earth and summon small amounts of light.

Infused Items

Nika has infused several items with magic and spells and stored them in the basement of her house. By recalling them through time with herself (or her gauntlet) as the frame of reference, she can summon them to her person, use them as she wishes, then return them to storage.

- Receptor Gauntlet: A somewhat crude gauntlet, made largely of steel enchanted for lightness and strength and padded with linen, with four midsized tubes built into the outer structure; each has an lip attached to an end that unscrews from its tube. Internally, a chain connects each finger to a lever within each tube, enabling the activation of non-magical mechanisms. Nika has forged this to act as a framework for use of several of her infused items; by placing them within the tubes, storing them and then moving them backwards through time using the gauntlet as the frame of reference, she can summon them for immediate use without having to worry about accidentally getting them stuck inside an errant limb.

- Blasting Pipes: Steel tubes enchanted for lightness and strength, each containing a unique firing mechanism activated by its internal lever, pre-loaded with a single round/material and rifled where it is useful. After activation, Nika may revert the pipe and round to their original state, ready to fire again.

-Wax Rounds (4): Shoots small arms bullets made of wax; intended to subdue.

- Standard Rounds (4): Shoots regular small arms bullets secretly acquired from her father’s stock; for potential future lethal engagements.

- Fire Siphon (1): Uses an infused water spell to displace a naptha-based fuel through a nozzle. A small flame is generated in front of the nozzle when Nika activates the non-magical trigger, allowing her to use it as a flamethrower; if not, she may simply spray the fuel and ignite it with her fire magic.

- Switch-Sword (1): Takes up the two central tubes for purposes of stability and consists of a thin box of steel, infused for lightness and strength, mounted above them. An infused water spell may generate water to extend what is effectively a shortened estoc blade, infused for lightness and strength and used primarily for stabbing.

- Regenerating Shield (1): This takes up the two central tubes for purposes of stability and is mid-sized, flat and circular. Made of a single sheet of steel, it would likely be too heavy for Nika to use effectively were it not infused for lightness, as well as for strength; it is also infused with a chronomantic spell that slowly reverts damage done to it upon activation by its user.

- Manipulator Arms (4): A simple arm-like construct with a claw at the end, made of steel infused for lightness and strength. Nika uses these to help her work on her various projects, as well as to practice either her fine chronomancy or non-molten metal manipulation.

- Self-Repairing Truncheon: A simple cudgel made of oak infused for strength, infused with a chronomantic spell that automatically reverts damage done to it.

- Chronomagnetic Generator: A fist-sized mechanism that uses a combination of a solenoid, a magnet and infused chronomantic magic to generate electricity at a rate desired by the user. Nika created this as a project for her practical chronomancy class and, though it isn’t especially better than just using a battery, she has kept it for sentimental reasons.

Potential Future Infused Items

- Blasting Pipes:

- Stun-Strike Wire (1): Launches a wire infused with electromantic magic provided by another mage; used to stun.

- Lifeguard Amulet: An amulet worn on the body. Should its wearer be close to death, the amulet drains the remaining energy from them. After a few minutes, it generates a protective layer of water, lifts them into the air so as to get them clear of obstacles and then reverts them to a few minutes prior to their death. The amulet at this point breaks from the strain, which also alerts the wearer to what has happened.

- Self-Repairing Armour: Armour infused with a chronomantic spell that slowly reverts damage done to it upon activation by its user.

Personality: Nika never quite got over her grief for her mother’s passing; somewhere in her heart it still burns, flaring up every so often to remind her of the absence. This she treats as motivation; for this reason she is a profoundly determined young woman, used to self-sacrifice and putting off immediate pleasures for longer-term goals. She is also perhaps a little conceited and overly trusting in her own capabilities. These factors mean that she has few friends; to those she trusts, however, she is loyal and demands their loyalty in return. Most of all, though, she is quick-minded, never failing to take an option that others would consider ‘easy’ if she believes it wouldn’t be a detriment to herself and then squeezing it dry for every single benefit she possibly can (though Dr Baumann has managed to ease her towards rating long-term gains and forward planning a little more highly) and, in the same vein, cutting through pre-existing thought if she believes that she’s found a better way. She’ll make it work. She always has.

Faction: Marduk by schooling, though her philosophy is far less one of structure for order’s sake than structure (imposed by others or herself) for convenience’s sake.

Are you a Descendant of the Illuminated Poet?: No

Character Themes: Purposeful (non-combat), Reclaimant (combat)

Iliad City: A Magical RP in an Original World (Resuming)

Nika Pešek

Name: Nika Pešek

Age: 18

Bio

Nika Pešek was born an ordinary girl, or as ordinary a girl as one might find in Iliad City, where the rhythms of the Epic of Making echo as though it had been sung only minutes before. She found her start in life as the daughter of Pavel Pešek, a stoic, methodical crafter of armour, tools and weapons for the city’s elite – after all, no amount of industrial precision can improve upon the technical mastery, or ability to produce custom orders, of a mage-smith – and Atanasija Pešek, herself daughter of Pavel’s major supplier of raw materials with a finely honed business sense and a wicked sense of humour. Though a match primarily made for commercial reasons, the two found that they were not only a capable team but also emotionally complementary and quickly became a mutually reliant, perhaps some might even say loving, couple. Nika was thus born into a moderately wealthy household with two capable and affectionate parents. Things seemed to be looking up for her.

For the first years, they were. Nika learned to take in information, manipulate it and communicate it quickly, picking up reading and writing earlier than most children and extrapolating concepts that she hadn’t learned elsewhere from her previous knowledge; indeed, one of her earliest memories is Atanasija’s delight (and Pavel’s horror) at her having figured out the basic premise behind foreign exchange trading. As such, when her parents announced that they were having a second child, she took quite a bit of reassuring that she wouldn’t lose out on affection as a result.

In the end, though they did manage to convince her, it wouldn’t matter. For all the magic of the healers at the hospital and the advancements of modern medicine, Atanasija and her son died in childbirth when Nika was six.

Life carried on. Pavel’s work continued, even if he couldn’t negotiate such good prices for his pieces as his wife used to be able to and often found himself waking to a pillow wet with tears. Nika still did relatively well in school, even if her mind, whose keenness let her understand what had happened better than many of her age, became clouded. Forward they marched. That cloud, however brewed lightning. Nika’s grief quickly became determination. Her mother was gone – and thus she had to make up for her loss through effort; so went her child’s reasoning. For all her father saw this and first tried to quell this feigned strength born of pain, then to channel it safely by having her help him in the forge, it only grew more powerful and all-consuming within her as she aged.

Seeing that he had to do something, and also noticing her burgeoning magical ability, Pavel decided that it would be best to send Nika to one of Iliad City’s famous magical academies; there she might be able to find a place for herself, out of her mother’s shadow, he reasoned. Of the two, he decided to send her to Marduk; he had always liked the idea of the place more than Ishtar and, moreover, he felt that the sense of order there might be stabilising. Nika, of course, passed the entrance exam with flying colours and was thus enrolled at the Marduk Academy for the Mystic Arts at the age of twelve.

Unfortunately, two things stood in the way of Marduk being a good place for Nika. Firstly, though Nika’s style of thinking was primarily logical and systematic, like the one that Marduk espoused, that logic was incisive rather than constructive or stabilising. Where Marduk sought to impose rules for its students to follow, Nika tried to prove them flawed or circumvent them as she believed right; where Marduk laid out a system of magic for its students to rely upon, Nika sought to tweak and customise it for her own ends. She quickly became known as a maverick to the staff and a smart-alec to her peers, though she was at worst a bit prickly to those who actually got to know her.

Indeed, as a result of the second factor keeping her from aligning fully with Marduk, she didn’t have much focus left over to hurt anyone or engage in the school’s social landscape. Over the last few years, Nika’s goal had gradually shifted from filling the void that her mother had left in her and her father’s lives herself to simply bringing her mother back. She was a strong mage, after all, and stories abounded in this most storied of cities of strong mages challenging the dictates of fate and the natural order; why could she not do the same? Once she arrived at Marduk, she dived into the academy’s library, searching for ways in which that might be done. Necromancy Nika quickly dismissed; its abilities, she found, tended to be unpredictable, bringing about a facsimile of life as often as real life from beyond death. She would not risk her mother for that; she needed something predictable and consistent. Thus Nika turned to chronomancy; she borrowed some books on the subject, read them cover to cover and began to practice.

Now, chronomancy is a stable magic, bound to some of the simplest rules of the universe, but it is also a highly dangerous one. Nearly every book Nika borrowed was filled with warnings and cautionary tales of mages freezing themselves in time only to be unable to think and thereby loose the spell or people being pushed into the wall of a slowed zone and being shredded into chunks as individual parts of their body sped up going through to the other side. For this reason, Marduk itself only typically teaches chronomancy as a subject in students’ final years and only then to those who have excelled elsewhere and are of a cautious, considered disposition, for they, in the staff’s opinion, are most able to approach it successfully.

Nika? If it was dangerous for her to use it on people, she reasoned, she’d just do so with objects instead. That’s what she’d been doing for most of her life, after all.

Taking a dozen books on chronomancy out of the school library over the course of a term would have obviously raised some alarm bells with the librarians anyway but the school really took notice when Nika began using her new magic in her practical Elemental Magic classes, hastening the velocity of her projectiles to a degree that became suspicious to her teacher in the subject. Of course, when he asked her, she told him exactly what she was doing; there wasn’t any sense in hiding what wasn’t wrong in her eyes. This gave him sufficient cause to raise it with the remainder of the staff and, before long, Nika found herself embroiled in something that wasn’t quite a disciplinary process, given that this wasn’t against the rules, per se. The school, meanwhile, was left with the problem that Nika had apparently been skilful enough to use chronomancy on her own and would undoubtedly carry on using it, potentially endangering herself and others, but to let her do so publicly might be seen as condoning it generally and cause the rest of the student body to plunge headfirst into the discipline.

The solution that they came up with was to prohibit Nika from using her chronomantic spells in her regular school life until she was able to take chronomancy as a regular class but to assign her private tutoring with the specialist teacher who taught it as a subject, one Doctor Hannah Baumann, up to that point alongside it. Irritated but with little choice in the matter, Nika complied – at school; when she was at home she continued her practice – and started attending the sessions. These became the major reason that she stayed at Marduk. For all that she chafed at the school’s more structuralist tendencies, Dr Baumann, a patient, analytical and empathetic soul, in line with the archetype of most chronomancers, had a disposition that was perfect for focussing Nika’s passion. It was she who, deconstructing Nika’s understanding of chronomancy, tailored their private lessons to expanding that ability to its fullest; she, alongside Nika herself, is responsible for guiding her to alter her frame of reference to move objects in space by moving them backwards and forwards in time. The two have developed a close bond over the years, one that they retained even after Nika joined her class properly a few years later; from the outside looking in, one might even regard her as a mother figure.

Nika would be horrified at this perception. She hasn’t forgotten her original goal, not in the slightest, and, even as darkness begins to suffuse Iliad City, it remains her foremost objective. Now eighteen, only a few months from graduating, she believes that she has all the power and prowess that she needs to return Atanasija Pešek to her life. The long wait, years of lost connection, could be over, if only she can end them.

It’s time to see if she’s up to the task.

Mundane Skills

- Forge Adept: Nika spent much of her life with her father, watching him ply his trade as well as helping out in various places and, increasingly, moulding the iron herself. Though she was around his forge less and less as she grew up and attended the academy, she’s still a capable mage-smith with the understanding necessary to craft tools and weapons, though, unlike her father, she is less capable of producing high-quality armour.

- Chase-Cutting Mind: Nika rarely takes the difficult path, not because it is difficult but because it tends to be slow. This sometimes means following in others’ footsteps and putting in little effort of her own but, as a dynamic thinker, if she feels that current solutions aren’t superior to what she can come up with herself, she’ll take the latter and damn the consequences. This combination of apparent laziness and maverick puts her somewhat at odds with the traditionalist factions of the Marduk Academy but gets her the results she wants quickly and occasionally in places that others could not.

Magic

Chronomancy

- Revert: Nika is capable of moving an object, objects that once were an object or several objects conceptualised either as one or a collection of objects, other than herself, backwards or forwards in time up to the first or last point that she interacted with it/them. She may not do so to other sapient beings unless they are willing or unconscious. Once this process begins, she may not chronomantically influence anything else until she halts it and lets time resume for the objects in question.

- Recall: By changing the frame of reference within with she uses her reversion, Nika can cause something to move backwards or forwards in time spatially relative to other things, effectively allowing her limited control over their spatial position, with all the limitations of her usual reversion. Nika’s signature ability, this allows her to do such things as summon things of importance to her person and perform tricks not dissimilar to those of a telekinetic.

Enhancement/Enchantment

- Magic Infusion: Nika has an excellent grasp of basic enhancement magic to change a material’s properties like weight and strength, as might be expected from a mage-smith’s daughter, and is fairly skilled at transmutation, changing an object’s fundamental nature. She is far more capable in altering inanimate objects in these ways as opposed to living matter; moreover, doing so takes more energy, focus and time the more complex the alteration or larger or more complex the object being altered is.

- Disintegrate: By lowering a material’s ability to resist stress to close to nothing, Nika is able to cause a small object to crumble to a powder, an ability she learned from her father as a necessity for creating alloys. Doing so takes more energy, focus and time the larger or more chemically complex the object is.

- Spell Infusion: Nika is able to place spells into objects, either for one-time use or indefinite reactivation (with more energy, focus and time) by either herself alone or anyone. She can do this with her own spells or, with their help, can infuse objects with the spells of someone else according to her own design. Should the spell have a cost in energy, this is drawn from the original caster of the spell upon the item’s activation.

Elemental Magic

- Temperature Manipulation: Nika has been able to magically heat and cool materials from an early age – taught it by her father, given its crucial role for a mage-smith – and, like her father, is particularly good at raising small and mid-sized objects to very hot temperatures. Naturally, Nika was a little smug at being already adept with this in her early years at Marduk while her classmates were still studying the less advanced pyromantic magics.

- Metal Manipulation: Nika is able to telekinetically move and reshape small amounts of metal with a heightened level of precision, again taught by her father as a vital aspect of mage-smithing. Given that she was taught to do so with heated metal and rarely uses the skill outside the forge, she finds reshaping non-molten metals more difficult than a mage of her ability otherwise would.

- Elemental Generalism: Though she prefers the versatility of channelling and refocussing the magic of others into objects to supplement her own spellcasting ability, Nika did go through the basic Elemental Magic courses at Marduk and is thus able to summon and project small amounts of fire, summon and manipulate small amounts of water, manipulate small amounts of air, manipulate small amounts of rock or earth and summon small amounts of light.

Infused Items

Nika has infused several items with magic and spells and stored them in the basement of her house. By recalling them through time with herself (or her gauntlet) as the frame of reference, she can summon them to her person, use them as she wishes, then return them to storage.

- Receptor Gauntlet: A somewhat crude gauntlet, made largely of steel enchanted for lightness and strength and padded with linen, with four midsized tubes built into the outer structure; each has an lip attached to an end that unscrews from its tube. Internally, a chain connects each finger to a lever within each tube, enabling the activation of non-magical mechanisms. Nika has forged this to act as a framework for use of several of her infused items; by placing them within the tubes, storing them and then moving them backwards through time using the gauntlet as the frame of reference, she can summon them for immediate use without having to worry about accidentally getting them stuck inside an errant limb.

- Blasting Pipes: Steel tubes enchanted for lightness and strength, each containing a unique firing mechanism activated by its internal lever, pre-loaded with a single round/material and rifled where it is useful. After activation, Nika may revert the pipe and round to their original state, ready to fire again.

-Wax Rounds (4): Shoots small arms bullets made of wax; intended to subdue.

- Standard Rounds (4): Shoots regular small arms bullets secretly acquired from her father’s stock; for potential future lethal engagements.

- Fire Siphon (1): Uses an infused water spell to displace a naptha-based fuel through a nozzle. A small flame is generated in front of the nozzle when Nika activates the non-magical trigger, allowing her to use it as a flamethrower; if not, she may simply spray the fuel and ignite it with her fire magic.

- Switch-Sword (1): Takes up the two central tubes for purposes of stability and consists of a thin box of steel, infused for lightness and strength, mounted above them. An infused water spell may generate water to extend what is effectively a shortened estoc blade, infused for lightness and strength and used primarily for stabbing.

- Regenerating Shield (1): This takes up the two central tubes for purposes of stability and is mid-sized, flat and circular. Made of a single sheet of steel, it would likely be too heavy for Nika to use effectively were it not infused for lightness, as well as for strength; it is also infused with a chronomantic spell that slowly reverts damage done to it upon activation by its user.

- Manipulator Arms (4): A simple arm-like construct with a claw at the end, made of steel infused for lightness and strength. Nika uses these to help her work on her various projects, as well as to practice either her fine chronomancy or non-molten metal manipulation.

- Self-Repairing Truncheon: A simple cudgel made of oak infused for strength, infused with a chronomantic spell that automatically reverts damage done to it.

- Chronomagnetic Generator: A fist-sized mechanism that uses a combination of a solenoid, a magnet and infused chronomantic magic to generate electricity at a rate desired by the user. Nika created this as a project for her practical chronomancy class and, though it isn’t especially better than just using a battery, she has kept it for sentimental reasons.

Potential Future Infused Items

- Blasting Pipes:

- Stun-Strike Wire (1): Launches a wire infused with electromantic magic provided by another mage; used to stun.

- Lifeguard Amulet: An amulet worn on the body. Should its wearer be close to death, the amulet drains the remaining energy from them. After a few minutes, it generates a protective layer of water, lifts them into the air so as to get them clear of obstacles and then reverts them to a few minutes prior to their death. The amulet at this point breaks from the strain, which also alerts the wearer to what has happened.

- Self-Repairing Armour: Armour infused with a chronomantic spell that slowly reverts damage done to it upon activation by its user.

Personality: Nika never quite got over her grief for her mother’s passing; somewhere in her heart it still burns, flaring up every so often to remind her of the absence. This she treats as motivation; for this reason she is a profoundly determined young woman, used to self-sacrifice and putting off immediate pleasures for longer-term goals. She is also perhaps a little conceited and overly trusting in her own capabilities. These factors mean that she has few friends; to those she trusts, however, she is loyal and demands their loyalty in return. Most of all, though, she is quick-minded, never failing to take an option that others would consider ‘easy’ if she believes it wouldn’t be a detriment to herself and then squeezing it dry for every single benefit she possibly can (though Dr Baumann has managed to ease her towards rating long-term gains and forward planning a little more highly) and, in the same vein, cutting through pre-existing thought if she believes that she’s found a better way. She’ll make it work. She always has.

Faction: Marduk by schooling, though her philosophy is far less one of structure for order’s sake than structure (imposed by others or herself) for convenience’s sake.

Are you a Descendant of the Illuminated Poet?: No

~ Phantom Thieves of London: The Calling ~

Alistair is taken aback a touch at Tyler’s comment. Of course, his thoughts immediately turn to the dark: If only they knew why… All that and I remain stuck. And then darker: Perhaps this is impassable. Perhaps the world is just… Irredeemable chaos by complexity, all cause and effect with no trace between them.

Hume. Ha.

Alistair sighs, closes his eyes, and then looks up again. For a moment, he clenches his fist, his eyes smouldering. No. The surface is barely scratched. Give up and…

You can’t. You can’t give up. You can’t.

It is in this state of mind that he listens to Tyler carefully step around discussing Mikhail – around his latent anger, his fragile self-control, his – his past… That… That could be useful. Shaking his head idly at Tyler’s question, his mind’s mechanisms suddenly slot into place, forging and throwing off ideas as a tempest throws off lightning: That implies broken processes, unintended consequences. Analysed structures alone to now, lacking context – focus on a specific case could be useful for clarity, to create and test theories, to break established patterns of thought. He raises a hand to the side of his head, fiddling with a strand of hair. Even beyond, another event akin to today would be best avoided. The ability to avoid or diffuse – could be gained through knowledge.

And thus, Alistair begins to entertain an almost heretical thought.

He looks at Tyler again, eyes flashing with worry. Do I know… Can I risk it? Do I have the right? He winces. Gah. Balancing long-term harm for short-term – but it wouldn’t be short-term, would it? Not potentially… Agh, this is dangerous! The fingers on his hand twitch, just a little.

Alistair shuts his eyes. No. No, you’re overreacting. This would be a tiny, tiny aspect of his life. It is time he is evidently spending anyway, you do not necessarily have to provide any input at all, he is even able to talk about something that concerns him. Which could also backfi- no. This will be fine. This will be fine.

Alistair breathes. Then he offers that same half-smile to Tyler.

“I’m currently walking up to Richmond Park… You can join me and talk on the way, if you’d like.”

Noble Arms: Restoring Hope - With Gratitude to TheHangedMan

Callie Lidmann

Appearance:

Name: Caroline ‘Callie’ Lidmann
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Bisexual, as far as she is able to tell.
Height: 165 cm
Weight: 63 kg
Age: 23

Nationality: British

Noble Arm Name & Appearance:

‘Charter’

Noble Arm Abilities:
Leaguespanner: Wielding Charter allows Callie to realign the fabric of the universe to join one space to another, effectively creating a two-way portal. She may only do this between places that she is able to visualise. Whenever she does so, Callie must anchor each end of the portal to an object in space in relation to which they will remain static; she frequently uses the ground, the Earth as a whole or some part of her body for this purpose. Creating a connection takes no energy but keeping it open does; the larger the portal is the more energy it will consume from Callie until she releases it. Distance, on the other hand, has no bearing on the energy required.
Sight Unbounded: Charter is far more capable than a spyglass of its apparent age or, indeed, any spyglass at all has any right to be: it has the potential for near-infinite magnification. Whereas Callie can by now manage this intuitively, anyone else attempting to do so would find the spyglass insanely sensitive to any adjustment. She also sometimes finds herself drawn to things are pertinent to her and her goals when seeing them through Charter, whether she knows how they are important or not.

Personality: Callie is determined and unrelenting by nature. Unlike many of this archetype, however, she doesn’t naturally chafe against authority to any great extent; she instead demands that she be accomplishing something in every waking moment, set by others or, if they do not, by herself. If that is achieved, she is an invaluable asset to any team – focussed, personable, unfailingly, effortlessly energetic and downright inspiring. If not, she can be impersonal, quick to anger and generally utterly horrible to be around. She is, needless to say, a little polarising.
Likes: Achieving short-term goals, feeling capable, learning, using her Noble Arm, dogs, Ribena.
Dislikes: Vagueness, duplicity and secrets among friends and teammates, purely utilitarian goods, cats, alcohol.
Fears: Being powerless, causing harm to those she cares about.

Bio:

Callie Lidmann never knew her mother, who died in a terrorist attack caused by an Arms Master under the banner of a splinter faction of the IRA only a month after her birth, and instead grew up with her father, a designer of cameras used for aerial archaeology, and her stepmother, a military veteran, who married when she had just turned two. Her early life was uncomplicated and carefree and she, like most children, developed a profound curiosity about the world around her. Unlike most children, that curiosity never really went away; she dove into books and the internet, ran her own science experiments in the garden and begged her parents to take her to museums and art galleries where most of her peers wanted to go to theme parks and the cinema.

By her teenage years, Callie’s path seemed to be set; she was receiving ‘A*’s and ‘A’s across the board in school and had her heart set on going into academia, even if she wasn’t entirely sure where yet. For many people in that situation, receiving a Noble Arm would change that entirely – and yet for Callie, summoning Charter for the first time while on a walk in the hills outside her home only kicked her plans into high gear. Perceiving the Arm’s abilities as obvious symbolism for her identity, she invested days in theory-crafting and experimenting to see just what she could do with it. Only a few weeks after she first manifested it, she was in contact with a major energy company to use her portal to generate electricity through perpetual motion; that, she thought with significant glee, would make her more than enough money to pursue education for as long as she wanted while simultaneously providing clean power for thousands. With this as her goal, Callie pressed on with school and, with her A-levels under her belt, began her preparations for university.

Unfortunately, this was the moment at which the energy company she’d been in contact with cancelled the deal. Despite having had extensive talks and already done a small interest piece for the BBC, the company in question was informed late by its lawyers that any accident resulting from Callie’s powers would leave it open to severe legal ramifications. The only way to alleviate this would be to have Callie herself in the building with the portal for every second that it was active, watching for anything to go wrong so she could dismiss it; that not being an option for somebody in full time education, the project was canned. Her dad and stepmum stepped in to fill the gap that this and the lack of a student loan had created – and ultimately succeeded – but the psychological damage was already done; Callie, having never really failed at anything on this scale before, was thrown totally off balance, her once-unshakeable motivation declining and her work’s quality fading with it.

To this difficulty her stepmother offered an unconventional solution: join the military, the one place where you weren’t allowed to be demotivated. She’d honestly been a little concerned about Callie’s mental fortitude for several years and, knowing and exceedingly grateful for what service had done for her, she thought that her stepdaughter might benefit from something similar. There was extensive back and forth in the Lidmann household over that year’s course but, in the end, Callie was becoming more and more frustrated with herself and her lack of success and it became clear that, even if she could probably pull herself through university, she likely wasn’t going to enjoy or gain much from doing it.

As such, Callie found herself dropping out at the end of her first year at university and instead signing on as a sapper in the Corps of Royal Engineers, taking communications as her trade. She expected that she’d complete her four years of service and, her mind fortified, return to civilian life. Instead, she found herself far more fulfilled than anyone close to her could have predicted. Her choice of heading into the Engineers was in part based on her quickness of mind, in part because it had developed a strong Arms Masters community, and both of those certainly panned out well; more than that, though, with her actions planned out for her, she could commit to doing in a way that she never really had before while still being able to bring her mind to bear within that and possessing enough free time for unstructured thought when she needed a break from the relentlessness of it all.

It was thrilling – thrilling to the extent that, after spending time with the ISAF in Afghanistan, Callie decided to stay on with the military. She was in the middle of debating whether to try for a leadership position or apply for the Special Reconnaissance Regiment when she was offered a place in Operation: Symbiosis. She took it. Quickly.

Current Goal: Aid the cause of and ingratiate herself with the members of Operation: Symbiosis.

Military Rank: Formerly Sapper, as of now undetermined.

Theme:
Calm: youtube.com/watch?v=wzvV-ezvyu4
Battle: youtube.com/watch?v=wmdnpbmM4pc

~ Phantom Thieves of London: The Calling ~

The Sociology Corridor, Evergreen Grammar School
Friday Morning

Motion all around. A boy approaches from the right – Isn’t that that person who – and says something about him “spacing out,” tone gentle. Then another, portside, darting through in a flurry of words – “himbeinglikethathavea –” that he can hardly catch. Alistair’s head swivels back and forth, mind snatching up everything it can as it strains to analyse and assimilate everything while still reverberating from the events of moments before.

For a moment, he halts, putting a hand to his temple and rubbing it in firm, circular motions. Alistair breathes, compartmentalising.

He gives a nod and a half-smile to the blue-haired boy alongside him. Then he turns forward once more – and flees.

Wimbledon Park Tube Station, Arthur Road, Wimbledon
Friday Afternoon

Alistair emerges into an irregularly breeze from behind the station’s threshold, the clouds parted to let the golden glow of the Sun pass, shining from its home low in the sky. He lets the corners of his mouth rise, a fine mist glazing his vision as he turns down the relatively quiet street. He holds onto some level of awareness, just enough to let him perceive the lack of traffic and step quickly across the road, but lets it go thereafter.

He needs peace and contemplation, after this morning’s events. No sense in concentrating a part of his mind away from that.

His gaze wanders down the track whence he came, his feet carrying him over the bridge above it, before a line of not-quite-regular houses in reds and whites occupies it as he turns onto the helpfully marked Home Park Road. He smiles idly at that. Appropriate… Joins of the few places of this city where I can feel like it.

A few people pass him by as he ambles down the lane – someone walking their dog, a small, wiry, bouncy creature that wags more intensely as he passes by; a group of kids that rush through on scooters, far too focussed on their own games to pay him attention – and in doing so are noted by Alistair, somewhere in his subconscious. They stir his mind, its currents now melding, now separating. The same, too, can be said of the iron-spiked gates to his right as they glint in the sunshine; the wave of the trees to his left, all increasingly bare aside from the resilient pines; the slight irregularities of the pavement beneath his feet. From his subconscious, like the motions of the Earth’s ferrous core, they energise the layer above.

And as he enters Wimbledon Park, with its playground filled with eager children running this way and that, its rustling oaks, ashes and willows and the paths weaving between them, its glassy lake populated with geese, its golfers and (of course) its tennis players, there is more than enough to provide all the mental stimulation for a good couple of hours of thought.

Wimbledon Suburbs, Wimbledon
About half an hour later

…right – you’re going to have to make rules to keep those people’s preferences in check. “That means a group of people making rules…” Alistair frowns, letting out a sustained puff of air through his nostrils. And those people are obviously going to be those charismatic ones. There isn’t a stable system here.

He sighs, that train of thought coming to an end alongside the crunch of shoes on gravel, replaced now by the low slap of those shoes against tarmac. The roads here are much like the ones on the other side of the park, a little shabby but well-built and serviceable, though the homes and driveways are larger and the pavements smaller and less frequent – like the people, in that last regard at least.

That’s the core problem with Utilitarianism… No account for human imperfections. If you try to apply it to a society you inevitably fail because the system can’t deal with the complexity. If you try to apply it to yourself, then you can’t deal with that complexity. Just too much unpredictability. He purses his lips. Though I suppose it’s more me trying to force it into doing something that the people working on it weren’t…

Huh… Case in point.

From the other side of the pavement corner comes striding a boy – the boy, the one with silver-white hair whose speech he’d barely caught in the earlier tumult at school, having apparently sighted him a few seconds before. Caught more than a little off guard, Alistair slows, then halts mid-step, seemingly frozen. There he waits.

Thus, it is the other boy who speaks first. “…Umm, hello there. You’re a student from Evergreen, yes? …My name is Tyler Blackmore, an upper sixth at Evergreen as well. I…umm, I’m sorry for coming up to you out of the blue like this, but that boy who ran into you a while ago was a friend of mine. I wanted to apologize about that incident in his stead. …I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive him. He… he wasn't always like that.”

Alistair blinks once, twice, mind unprepared and therefore sluggish to adjust to the new topic. “I… I hadn’t thought much about it yet,” he answers honestly. Finally, old channels open, long-forgotten social protocol clicking into place. “I’m Alistair, Parton – Lower Sixth. Thanks…” He considers, new knowledge melding with old knowledge and ideas, then nods. “You don’t need to apologise, though. If I judged someone for things happening to them that they didn’t see coming or doing something with results they didn’t intend…” He smiles weakly. “Well, if you work out how to predict them, I’d love to know. Otherwise, you don’t need to worry – I can carry on.”

~ Phantom Thieves of London: The Calling ~

The Sociology Corridor, Evergreen Grammar School
Friday Morning

Of course, he’s still standing stock-still in the middle of a corridor in the minutes between lessons; said corridor is very busy. It is perhaps inevitable that, at that moment, one element of that business takes the form of an unstoppable force.

At this moment, Alistair is distinctly not an immovable object.

Sent sprawling, he’s barely in time with his arms to stop his head from hitting the polished stone floor; no sooner has that happened than he freezes, his eyes widening as some great thing – a fist – stops centimetres before his face. Said fist withdraws, opening to become an up-helping hand. “Oi, babyface, I nearly socked you for a moment for bumping into me, so watch where you're going!”

Now, Alistair these days is not a person frequently found in the moment, always casting his thoughts backwards to mine the past for ideas or extrapolating towards the future to test them. What time he spends in the present is, in general, in service to these, listlessness conserving energy for his higher functions. This, though? The potent combination of reaction to perceived danger and utter confusion as to both the chain of events that has brought him to this point and what exactly this person is doing now throws him rudely out of listlessness and back towards currency.

Even so, his head is still a touch hazy, instinctually accepting the hand up. Things did happen rather quickly. Alistair shakes it, working to clear his mind, before examining the person standing before him. A little shorter but looks about my age, mid-length sand-blond hair… The boy’s appearance is tinged with familiarity but nothing more than that. Probably a year above or below.

For a moment, he grapples with what to say next; the other participant in the conversation, however, examining him curiously, jumps in first. “Why weren't you paying attention anyway? Something weighing down your mind?”

Oh, no, just grappling with how to avoid potentially triggering a societal backlash against any efforts meant to advance a given socio-political cause! Nothing major! “Sorry, just… Just working through something.” Perhaps realising that the person in front of him – who, he notes, seems unusually highly strung (if the fist didn’t support that conclusion already) – won’t accept this as a complete answer, he continues: “I’ve been stuck with something of a… An ideological dilemma over the past few years.” He breathes, offering a sad, quiet smile. “Sorry it got in your way.” Also, please don’t almost punch me again…

Wait, no. That would mean –

He’s already talking. “Anyway, my name is Mikhail. Mikhail Chekhov. If you want to make it up to me, go buy me some... Pie. Not rubharb, that sh - stuff is gross.”

That’s ‘rhubarb’, right? That accent sounds eastern European… And haven’t I heard the name ‘Mikhail Chekhov’ before – wasn’t there a rumour or something… Alistair considers for a moment, then dismisses the idea. Don’t know. Probably just passed someone in the hall talking – subconscious. “Alistair – Parton. I, ah…” He bites his lip, edging away as it gradually dawns on him that he’s talking to a complete stranger who nearly punched him in the face. “I don’t really know any good bakeries. Walk mostly in parks.” Alistair glances behind him. “And I need to – sorry, I think I’m already late – ah – bye.”

Away he skitters.

~ Phantom Thieves of London: The Calling ~

Just before the corner joining the Psychology Corridor to the Sociology Corridor, Evergreen Grammar School
Friday Morning

It does seem to fit… Alistair wanders through the bustling corridor to his next lesson, head resting on the unsupported pillar of his arm and hand as he does his best to keep himself from falling totally asleep. The cloud-covered sky doesn’t exactly help matters; the daylight that might supply him a touch of extra vigour is, at best, much reduced. With the world now… Feminism, populism, all the… ‘isms’. All fighting power gaps. Some more than others.

He sighs, mind too exhausted even for indignation. It… I can’t believe it. Conflict Theory’s Marx’s. He saw society having an end state – that’s not right, and if it’s not right… People can’t spread their work across humanity; they help people they care about. Enough people with good ideas, there’s a new power gap, new conflict. No room for growth past it.

On Alistair pushes; a few rays of sunlight splash in through the window. I suppose… Communications? Get the world joined up, throw those ideas arou-

And then he feels a weight.

Alistair lets go of his forehead – and then lets his hand drop to one side, falling into a slightly more regular walking position even as he shrinks, shoulders subconsciously hunching, head bowing. Along the corridor powerful, shuddering steps ring out, beating a drum of submission and order. Mr Ashcroft, Vice-Principal of Evergreen Grammar School, marches forth; his eyes flick over his charges, trapping and dissecting students caught in their burning gaze. As he strides past, Alistair feels the imprint of his aura, authoritative and judging, undeniable, unbreakable and imposing. He shrinks further, the force crushing him downwards, unresisted and irresistable.

From within his deep recesses of his mind, the tolling returns – and his conscious mind misses it, not even processing it enough to dismiss it as imagination.

Ashcroft passes. Behind him, Alistair slows, dampened.

What was I…

He comes to a standstill, expression near-blank. People shove around him; a couple grumble irritably.

He misses them, too.

~ Phantom Thieves of London: The Calling ~

The Parton Residence, Cricklewood
Thursday Evening

“Hi, Dad, I’m back.”

Alistair’s voice drifts out into the hallway of his parents’ flat. The dwelling is mid-sized, humble for someone of his father’s means (even for London) but cosy, furnished with soft carpet in an inoffensive cream that gives way to a kitchen floor of varnished floor of warm wood and adorned with bits and bobs that the Partons have collected over the years – a little clock with flowers on the face here, a plush cat from the eponymous Belgian festival (attended on a holiday a few years ago) on the mantlepiece there, a wedding photo hanging on the wall over yonder. It’s all very nice.

Alistair sighs. Looking up, he traces his hand over a framed drawing in coloured pencil. One, small, black-haired stick figure stands in a line with one taller individual and several others standing at somewhere between the two. All wear pronounced smiles.

‘back’ still works.

“Hi, Alistair!” He draws his hand away as his dad’s voice echoes, warm, comforting and, as ever, imbued with that little bit of hope, from beyond the study door as it clicks open. Out Henry steps, expression reflecting his tone, the wiry man’s movements never firm, always a little hesitant and conscientious but still revealing latent purposefulness. Approaching, he extends his arms for a hug; Alistair, smiling a little, goes to meet him. “How was your day?”

“Fine,” is the answer Alistair gives. “We looked at different household structures in Sociology, which was interesting.” Slowly, still smiling, he disentangles himself.

“Oh, good!” Henry beams. “That’s wonderful to hear… Any clubs today or anything like that?”

The smile fades; Alistair shakes his head, pressing his lips together. “No… Did some reading in the library over lunch, though.”

Henry’s own smile turns sympathetic. “Well, as long as you’re happy.”

Slowly, Alistair nods.

There is a moment’s pause.

“I’m going to get on with my homework,” he finally says, breaking the silence. He offers that same, weak smile again. “Thanks, Dad.”

“You’re more than welcome.” Henry’s mouth opens a touch, then closes again. Alistair sees little else before his bedroom door closes.

––– ⛉ –––

“…worry about him, Steven.”

The muffled voices of his parents filter through the door, intelligible even amidst the evening traffic. Alistair, pausing in his typing, swipes at his laptop’s trackpad towards the volume control for his studying music to block them out.

I need to know.

His face takes on a pained expression. But it’s a betrayal of trust – but if it can help me – I – Alistair screws his eyes shut, focussing his mind towards the obliteration of his internal debate.

Of course, that means that he doesn’t turn the volume up.

“I get that but – Henry, he’s growing up. It’s around this time that you need to be doing this sort of thinking. We can’t solve this for him – he has to figure out who he is.” There’s a pause. “Or maybe it’s just that I can’t solve it and I’m projecting. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be hard on yourself, love… I just think that – yes, he does need to be doing that but he can’t do it if he doesn’t have any support. I remember how happy Alistair was with everyone else at the club and now… That’s not your fault – that’s not your fault, I’m sure there are lovely people at Evergreen for him to be friends with. He just seems so much more withdrawn now…”

“Could it be that he just needs a push?”

“I’ve tried… I… I don’t know, Ste-”

Alistair turns the music up.

I can’t.

I’m sorry.

––– ⛉ –––

That night, Alistair dreams – dreams of a shadowy bird on the wing, of beings half-formed and ethereal, of a tolling bell.

His eyes flash open, breath stolen from him; for a moment, he is grasped by terror’s claws. Then, slowly, he takes in his surroundings: an empty room, dim lights playing above the curtain, all silent but for the traffic outside. His body untenses and, as he fades back to sleep, he forgets.

After all, they are only dreams.

~ Phantom Thieves of London: The Calling ~

Room P3, Evergreen Grammar School
Monday Afternoon

“Yesterday we looked at Jeremy Bentham and Act Utilitarianism and discussed its advantages and disadvantages – I think most of us concluded that it was well-intentioned but had some fundamental problems to it. Yes, Farina, I know you think differently – you’ll get the chance to debate later, don’t worry! So, today we’re going to go over Bentham’s successor, John Stuart Mill, and his attempt to fix some of those problems.”

Evergreen Grammar School’s Lower Sixth Monday afternoon Philosophy class is fundamentally divided. Among the students there, about half of them are slouching, elbows on desks, eyes half-lidded – waiting for the first day of the week to be over so they can reclaim what semblance of weekend remained back at home. These are those who took Philosophy under the impression that it would be an easy, if slightly boring, subject. Working on Natural Law at the start of the year put paid to that idea.

The other half, on the other hand, listen closely, some nodding and many taking notes.

Alistair Parton is a part of the latter group.

Dr Brower walks to the side, tapping at his spacebar to advance to the new black-text-on-yellow-background-with-accompanying-photo slide. “Mill was born not far from here in Middlesex. His father was a friend of Bentham’s and agreed with his views on Utilitarianism, so he decided to raise Mill as a genius who’d be able to think his way through the Hedonic Calculus as Bentham set out.” Dr Brower grimaces. “Basically, Mill was hot-housed – he learned Greek and Latin before his teens and his father actually had him teach his older siblings himself, among other things. This brought him close to suicide before he was twenty.”

Brower’s face takes on a more open expression, looking out across the room. “It was this experience that made Mill realise that a person just can’t figure out the right and wrong thing to do in every circumstance – or, well, I suppose that they could, with enough work, but it wouldn’t be practical or desirable to make everyone go through that work.”

Alistair purses his lips, considering. That’s basically… He presses his pen to his notepad a little more firmly.

Dr Brower steps back towards his computer, smiling. “Mill put forward his own version of Bentham’s principle of utility, which modern philosophers see as the first form of ‘Rule Utilitarianism’.” With a flourish, he presses the spacebar again. “Instead of taking actions that maximise pleasure and minimise pain, he argued that people should follow the set of rules that maximise pleasure and minimise pain; that way, they have a guide to make those decisions. The mental burden is laid on coming up with the rules beforehand and tweaking them every so often, not on working out every action in the moment, meaning that a Rule Utilitarian won’t get overwhelmed like an Act Utilitarian would. Mill compared it to the idea of a ship’s captain taking an almanac with him, which held information about the night sky that allowed him to navigate, rather than trying to work out all of those details in the middle of a storm.” He looks up. “Yes, Jeremy?”

Okay, good start, but… That’s not enough, right?

A tallish, boy with blond hair and glasses speaks from the middle of the class. “Sir, wouldn’t that just become Act Utilitarianism again after a while? A set of rules that really maximised utility would be so… So huge and complicated that someone wouldn’t be able to follow it, right?”

Brower nods. “You could argue that, yes. Alternatively, you could make the case that that set of rules wouldn’t maximise utility for that reason – that a system of rules would have to be useable to do so in the first place.” He grins. “Keep thinking that way, though; it’ll be useful in the debate.” He glances around the class again. “Alistair?”

Alistair lowers his hand – then brushes his hair out of his steely eyes, his earlier headshaking ineffectual. Need to get that sorted soon… Where was – right. “Did Mill set out the rules he thought would maximise utility?”

Dr Brower frowns; he walks forward, then leans against his desk. “I don’t think he ever sat down and wrote out a list like Aquinas did, not really… He was an MP and a political thinker, though, and a lot of his thinking in that area is in a book called On Liberty. A lot of people don’t think it’s fully consistent with his views on Utilitarianism but it’s still a good place to look.”

Alistair nods, his gaze turning resolute even as he angles it back towards his notes.

“Now, Mill differed from Bentham in another important way: what pleasure actually was. If you remember, Bentham…”

King Henry’s Mound, Richmond Park
Monday Evening

‘…the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.’

What’s ‘harm’, though?

Alistair sighs. He swings his legs from atop the metal lattice, planting his solidly-shod feet on the ground and resting his head on the pillar of his hand and arm. Down at the book he gazes. “It’s… It’s like the pleasure machine. What’s to stop someone locking people up to prevent them from getting hurt – in the most specific sense?” He growls. “Or, in the other direction, to convince people to trust no-one in academia because they think they’re part of some nonsensical conspiracy?”

He shakes his head, lying back against the metal post. It’s just too vague. You could use this to justify anything. Then he closes his fist – the one not holding the book – and shakes his head again, leaning down to drop the text into his bag and standing, picking the whole thing up in a single, fluid motion. “Need to keep reading. Probably explains later.” Still…

His thoughts trail to a halt as he looks behind him, confirming the appearance of an elderly couple waiting patiently and a little nervously off to the side. Alistair opens his mouth slightly, then shuts it, hunching over a little in guilt and walking away to allow them to use the telescope. As he does so, he looks up slightly to take in the view of London, then back to the hole through the hedges to where he knows by now St Paul’s Cathedral is, crowning the City. And it doesn’t solve the main issue, either. No matter how much thought I put into rules, or how much I think I might be protecting people…

I could still just be hurting them.

Courtyard, Evergreen Grammar School
Tuesday Morning

Alistair heads through Evergreen’s main quad towards the school library, his stride neither long nor short, energised nor trudging. His head is down, his lips pressed firmly together.

A burst of noise catches his attention; he looks over. Apparently, somebody – likely Upper Sixth, since he doesn’t recognise him (not that that’s a hugely reliable indicator these days) – has taken it upon himself to climb into the boughs of one of the school’s many trees. He’s not the only one who’s noticed, either; a small group of onlookers is gathering beneath him. Frowning incredulously, Alistair stops. Then he turns to walk over…

And an expression of sorrowful, painful conflict manifests on his face. He glances down, away.

Then he sighs and, shaking his head, walks on.

Noble Arms: Restoring Hope - With Gratitude to TheHangedMan

Callie nods in agreement at Ishaq’s words, a minor smile crossing her face at the first and a firm, solemn expression appearing at the last ones. Following on, she looks to the officer. “If you have the minehunting drones fan out in front of the ship, Ma’am, I’ll report to the Operations Room after this meeting and clear them as we find them.” She grins at the other two. “Don’t worry; somehow, I think I’ll be in position before the landing.”