In the beginning, being capable of caring for their charges made Fate's Children stronger and more passionate soldiers. They had a stake in the world's continued existence. They too wanted to thrive as society of their own. Moreover, they saw themselves as part of the same world as mankind, but in effect, they would evolve to become too human.

They'd eventually be driven to violence and tyranny through their new found independence.  After centuries of peace,  the tinder was already there. How many Irhandi believed that they could better aid mankind if they had greater control over them? Countless numbers. Who was it that man prayed to? Fate? Her attentions were already far away from earth. It'd more effective to scream at the sky. No, they were the Gods whom man sought.

Since before the time of Ancient Egypt's Golden Age, and even up to the early Christian years of the Roman Empire, the defiant ones would don the clothes of gods and claim rule over the earth. Figures like Coyote and Athena became flesh, as they slipped into roles imagined by humans. They believed that they could better serve them by giving them true gods to fear. However, this would all spiral into a senseless game, as they began pitting kingdom against kingdom, royal family against royal family, to see which would be the victor, as if the world was simply a betting table.

A civil war would inevitably arise between those faithful to Fate's original plan and the ones who wanted to be Gods. The faithful ones ultimately won, with the false gods losing out of carelessness and arrogance.

"For you were made to serve them, and as a subject lives for his lord, a servant his master, you too must remember, that it is only for them that you live."

For Fate's Children, the centuries that followed were maintained by repression and cruelty. They were sequestered from human society, but allowed none of their own. Art, literature and traditions of their golden age were scrubbed from the annals of history. They lost their personal realm and were grounded to the earth, isolating them from one other. Eventually, years of forced interbreeding would condemn to flesh.

It was a complete erasure of identity, as had been the intention of the victors, and so it would stay until the late 1800s when a poet led a revolution.

If you'd like to read the full summary of the story of Fate & Xia, please check it out here!

 

► FULL SUMMARY 

book 3. | amory, the selfish one.

"How do you think our visions work? That we just see into a convenient mirage of the future, some psychic echo of what could be? Impossible. There isn't such a thing as a future that could be, there is only a future that is.  Time is concurrent.  Sequentiality exists only in the human mind.

We're born, we live, we die-- all at the same time. When we dream, we're not seeing a vision of the future; we get a window into a future that already is, regardless of what we change in the present.  A kid dies in the future. Someone sees the future, saves him from dying. In the future? The kid's still dead.

Technically, that future doesn't really exist anymore. Like overwriting a file, except since time is concurrent, that deleted future has already-- is already playing out.In fact, we might not actually exist anymore,  but that's an existential problem. It doesn't change the fact that we're here now. "

Get it? "

- Amory Felix


HISTORY.
There are some boys who grow up reading about knights and sorcerers, who imagine living out some grandly absurd adventure of their own. Then there are men who seek a reality ordered by logic, and struggle when faced with the absurdity of the impossible—this was the case for Amory Felix.

Amory Felix was born to Jocelyn and Lucas Felix in the spring of 1986. His father had left the family when he was four years old, his mother under the impression that he’d return even as the years passed on. Still, they were lucky enough to live their life in privilege, making a home for themselves on the bluffs of San Francisco’s Sea Cliff district. It would’ve been the start of any normal story, had his life not been strange from the start.

His mother was one of Fate’s Children, born as the second daughter to a weak and pathetic man. However, she took after her great-grandfather—the rebel and poet who had rewritten their destiny. From the beginning she learned of Fate and their histories, of Xia and their time as false gods, their inevitable fall and the recent schism of the early 19th century. She would recount these stories to Amory as a child, but to him, they were  fairytales. And for most of his life, that was all they would be. 

For the most part, Amory Felix was a normal kid.  He had no abilities or traits that made him different than others.  His problems were human -- loneliness, neglect, loss, grief and fear.

 Early in his youth, his father, Lucas, was in and out of his life, always off on some trip. It would’ve been worse had Amory not had a mother who doted on him, and a family friend whom he could call brother.  His name was Christian Lefevre. He was an old friend of his father's, and a psychiatrist who practiced right in the heart of San Francisco. It was Christian who had taught him to swim and ride a bike, who had watched his school plays and took him to his soccer games.

But during the summer of 1992, Christian would travel to Myanmar on a relief mission. Not even a month had passed  when Jocely received the call:  Christian had been robbed and murdered for the sum total of $5.   His death had a pivotal effect on Amory, setting him on course for becoming the selfish brat he is today.

It was a terrible learning experience, made worse by Lucas’ return to the family only four months after his death.

Having hisfather come back after the death of the man who’d raised him? It felt like a slap in the face. His mother was more than happy to welcome him back. And sure, he tried. He wasn't a terrible father Just cold. Hard. Demanding. The next turbulent ten years would be rife with fighting, until his parents eventually separated, throwing him into the tug-and-pull of a custody battle.

The years spent divided between them were chaotic. Half a year with his father. The other half with his mother. His mother moved back to her family home of Hong Kong, while Lucas and his wanderlust meant that they never stayed put.  Amory lived in Hong Kong and San Francisco, and all across Europe those years, growing up in hotel rooms and temporary flats, with luggage for closets. Lucas pulled Amory out of school to homeschool him, further isolating him from the rest of his peers.

There was also an inherent disconnect between father and son. Just like the son, the father wasn't exactly normal.

Lucas Felix had known Amory's great-great-great-great grandfather. In other words, his father was old-- unnaturally so. The generation gap between a kid born in the 80s, and a man born during the golden age of the Roman Republic?
 

You see, in  Amory’s world, Fate’s great equation dictates when a person dies. To cheat death was an anomaly, and to cheat death again and again, your soul would eventually cease to pass on. You would be lost in the cogs of the system.  As such, Lucas Felix is one of the unlucky few condemned to eternity. It isn't immortality in the fictional sense. No super strength, no special powers, nothing that made him different, besides the assurance that no matter how his body died, he'd waked up revived.

It was an interesting childhood, at least.

Throughout this whole mess, the only truly stable aspect of his life was the time he spent with Elisa, his childhood friend and neighbor.  They had been friends for sixteen yeas when they  decided to follow each other to UC Berkeley.

Amory had always loved watching the stars ever since he could remember. Space was the impossible and fantastical determined by strict, invariable laws. And it didn’t matter that he knew the truth about Fate., for space was its own mystery. The coexistence of absurdity and logic in the universe gave him strange comfort.  

After a stellar undergrad career, internships at NASA and Fermilab, and a praised Master’s thesis, he was on track to getting his PHD.  It all seemed so goddamn perfect. His childhood friendship with Elisa had even developed relationship, and she’d gone on to dance for San Francisco’s ballet company.

It was too perfect..

During Amory’s junior year at Berkeley, his family suffered another tragedy.  Jocelyn’s brother had a psychotic break and set fire to his face, burning his family to ash. Amory couldn’t bring himself to feel too bad. He had never known his uncle’s family, and sure, maybe you’d expect some sadness, given that they were family.  But his brain just didn’t work that way.  Uncle was just a word. He didn't care about people he'd never known. 

Little did he know, their deaths would alter everything. With the death of her brother’s family, Jocelyn inherited the powers and responsibility of her line, and Amory would be next.

When she informed Amory of his eventual responsibility, he didn't think much of it.  It wasn't that he didn't believe her--he'd seen exactly what she was capable of-- but Amory didn't have room for this new development. He knew how he wanted his life to play out, and the pieces were already falling into place.  And so he pushed it away, rationalizing that it wouldn’t be years and years from now.

At 26, Amory was in his first year of his doctorate. He had plans to propose to Elisa after graduation, and was already thinking of becoming the  father he had always wanted. 

The last thing Amory  expected  was for his mother to die.

Jocelyn had simply disappeared. She had left in the morning and never came home. One day, two days, three days passed. Amory knew she was gone the very moment she died, as he felt her powers pass onto him.  The pain of receiving it was indescribable, but it was nothing compared to the loss of his mother. 

The mystery of her death plagued him, but it wasn’t what kept him up at night.

With his powers came  the visions that usurped his dream. Horror and pain pressed against his eyelids, and each dream carrying a directive. They saw the future to make sure everything went as planned -- to save those who were dying when they shouldn't, and to kill those who escaped Fate's plan.

When he was awake, his new powers frightened him. There was no reasoning to them, this magic, and no formula. And for a man so bound by logic, it was incomprehensible and understandably frightening.  He had no control whatsoever, as he’d never been taught.  Even if he didn’t want to use them, they were always there, like a cold, lead weight crushing against him.

Amory had also grown obsessed with finding out what happened to his mother, as is to be expected.  She hadn’t simply disappeared. She was killed, she had to be. But his obsession was curtailed early on by what Amory would consider his father’s betrayal.

Living for so long had taught Lucas a multitude of secrets—Jocelyn, his wife, was not the first of Fate’s Children he’d come to know. It was, in fact, Nicholas who had told him, so many decades before to please look after his family. Through him, he learned of the one trick that Xia had built into Fate's Children, when she endowed their kind with souls all those millenniums ago.  It was tradition for children of these families to be given two names: a private one, and a public one, and it was the only tradition that had been preserved all these years, and for good reason. By naming them by their private name, the speaker could gain temporary control over them.  Her safeguard in case her new rewritten creations decided to turn against her. And thus, when Amory made clear that he’d do anything to figure out what happened, Lucas uttered his private name and a single command—for who would know his true name better, than the one who named him?

“Don’t go after her.”

Why his father did that? He couldn’t guess. But like a backwards compulsion, he couldn’t from that point on. The act was physically prohibited, even as the desire stood strong in his mind. To say his was angry would be putting it lightly—he cut off ties from his father, even if that left him with little money or support.

His struggle to come to terms with his mother’s death coupled with his new visions and resulting insomnia, would drive his life into the side of a cliff.  He stopped going to school and was forced to take a leave of absence, though in his mind, Amory already considered himself a failure. He couldn’t come back, he wouldn’t be able to handle it with his visions, with how sick his abilities made him—he couldn’t face the disappointment. Depressed and erratic, he cut himself off from everyone. even Elisa, no matter how much she tried to reach out to him. He'd wind up chasing her away. And less than six months after Jocelyn’s death, he’d become a full-blown alcoholic.

Two weeks after his break-up with Elisa, he moved down to Los Angeles and into a shitty apartment.

Even if he could see the future, he tried not to care—tried to distance himself from his “responsibility,” because Amory believed he owed them nothing. With his own life falling apart, why should he care about risking his life saving others?

There were others of his kind that felt the same way.  After the false gods lost the first war, the ones who called themselves Irhandi were reduced to simply extensions of Fate.  Through oppression and tyranny, they were stripped of personhood and made tools.  This had occurred in the early 100s BCE. It was not until the late 1800s that Nicholas, the poet, and Amon, the warrior, would lead another revolution.  The younger generation of Irhandi—Fate’s Children, whatever they’d prefer to call themselves—were dissatisfied with their status as non-entities, who had no rights to something as simple as free will. 

When the older, traditional members of their kind sought to put a stop to it, they were prepared this time.   Years of oppression had withered their powers, while this new generation had explored their abilities freely.  This would have involve into civil strife, if  Nicholas had not interfered again.  Fighting would only reduce their already diminishing number, he argued. Even if they didn’t agree on their rights as people, both sides still sought to carry out their duty to mankind: foreseeing and preventing disasters via their abilities. They came to a tenuous agreement.

The truce was only a stopgap measure.

After the Nicholas’ death, the second generation of this conflict seemed to hunger for bloodshed. The ones who had once sought personhood, came to seek chaos for chaos’ sake. They were bitter. Angry. They only saw a future that promised destruction.

"No one can save the world, mankind will just kill find a way to kill themselves regardless."

The old guard had not taken well to this violent change and their shaky truce would spiral into the war that it was always meant to be. It was a terribly bloody conflict. The new generation butchered the oppressors, descendents of those who had won the first war.  Revenge millenniums in the making. For mankind, this conflict would’ve been of no concern to them.  No humans died—it was simply between these powerful beings. However, the war did serve as a distraction, and as both sides fought to win, they ignored their purpose and mankind was left to take care of themselves.

To us, this earth would seem like a strikingly peaceful world, though it was far from a utopia. This version of earth was once softer than ours. It’s people a bit kinder.

But with their Protectors distracted, the world ran its natural, chaotic course. Their history, once different, came to be synonymous with ours in the 20th century. As Fate’s Children fought, the humans had commenced their own war, one that would encompass the whole world.  Fate's Children were horrified by these events, but still they fought stubbornly on, consumed by their civil war.  Another human world war would pass before the two sides came to an agreement, and the terms of it were clear:  the two sides—the new generation and the old—were left forever fractured.  One would not involve themselves in the affairs of the others, and if they did, then all bets were off.  It was like their version of the Cold War.

By the 21st century, this new generation was not so new anymore. They had their society, free will, and all of that, and it was only natural that their motivations would shift with the passing of years.  Or rather, they had come to have no motivation whatsoever.  After the World Wars, they had begun to see humans as irredeemable.  They were like children, who broke their toys and got them fixed, only to break them again. A hopeless cause.

“The world’s going to burn anyway, but it won’t happen today, so why not have fun and watch the show?”

To do nothing and enjoy their powers was their motto.  (Hadn’t they forgotten that their ancestors had sacrificed their lives to be treated as humans?)

While the numbers of the new generation had grown greater, the old guard—the “Originalists”—were dying out.  When a neutral agent like Amory suddenly appeared, they were always quick to try and convert.  And truly, Amory was neutral. He didn't want anything to do with any of his kind. They could all fuck themselves with metal forks, that's how much he cared.  Unfortunately, they weren’t like door-to-door bible thumpers. You couldn’t just lock the door and wait until the men on bicycles left.

When you want to convince someone to join your club, you generally shouldn’t kidnap them. And that’s exactly what they did with Amory. The prick who took him once had a thing for his mother (if a ‘thing’ could be described as creepily observing her for years). He thought he was honoring her memory by “taking care” of her son.  Like most of them, he was woefully traditional in his thinking, believing that force and a firm hand would work as well as a persuasive conversation. Keeping Amory hostage, and trying to break them down with harsh, angry words?  That was as effective as placing a pissed off cat in a tiny crate. Amory grew increasingly enraged and ever more stubborn. And when the asshole moved to threatening someone he cared about, well…

Back in his last year of college, Elisa had gotten in a car accident.  Unbeknownst to Amory, it was far more serious than a broken hand.  She was meant to die that day. Except Jocelyn Felix, who would do anything for her son, had saved her life.  She was supposed to die, and it was their job to fix that. Why don’t you do it Amory, it’ll be good learning experience for you. In response to that, Amory nearly killed him.  He would’ve killed him, had the opposition not stopped him.  Alex, Moira, and Isaac, were their names, and they’d come to help him out by offering him an invitation to join the other party.

And thus explains how Amory came to be part of a society of “magical hipster Dadaists,” as his friend Erin would call them. They were the ones waiting to see the world burn. The ones that didn’t care.  And really,  that was all they needed to say to convince Amory to join them.. There was also the promise that he could protect Elisa all he wanted, for one. Most of all, he wanted to be left alone, and if was the closest to that then... sure, why not. tAnd they wanted him—not because he was any more powerful than the rest of them. In fact, he was pretty useless.  They wanted him as a symbol. He was  the great- great grandson of the one who’d started this all.

“They wouldn’t fuck with us unless they wanted a war. And no one wants a war.”

This particular branch made their home in a plush and swanky building in the not-so-nice Downtown of Los Angeles.  Discretion was key. Their members included movie moguls, doctors, lawyers and artists. In the private club that occupied the building’s first floor, they filled their lives nightly with parties dripping in champagne, sex and narcotics. The kind of extra-strength narcotics exclusively bred to mute their visions.  

It all got old for Amory quick. It also did wonders for his alcoholism.

Too bad that they weren’t simply hedonists. Beings with too much power and not a lot to do will always get themselves into trouble.  And the members of this particular group enjoyed fucking with humans.  They made Faustian-type deals with the rich clientele that frequented their bars.  Give us money—or how about your soul, and we’ll make sure you become a company chair man. It was all bullshit, of course. All they wanted was to see how their intervention would inevitably screw them over, as if the world was simply a puppet show.

Amory put up with it, even if never participated.  If being a part of their stupid club was the closest thing to throwing up his hands and sitting on the sidelines? He’d take it. To him, they were the lesser of two evils, and as much as he hated what he was, he needed to be with others of his kind, if only to learn more about his powers—so that he could protect Elisa, and perhaps, figure out what happened to his mother.

Of course, Alex has yet to inform Amory of their true agenda: creating their own universe by their own rules, and getting the hell out of the dodge.

PERSONALITY.
More negatives can be said about Amory Felix than positives. He’s arrogant, sarcastic and carelessly blunt. He has no problem saying what he exactly thinks. He’s selfish to a fault, even willing to admit that no one else matters to him besides himself and the few he cares about. “If I don’t know you, why should I care?” is the kind of thing he’d say.

At least, this is how Amory comes off superficially. And there are reasons for why he’s come to act the way he does. Not justifications, but reasons. The brutal, selfishness of Christian’s death had impressed upon him as a young child, in the sense that “if the world doesn’t care, so why should I?” There’s also just the rather pathetic fact that… he’s socially deficient. His father is selfish. Even beneath her kindness, his mother was selfish. He learned by example, you could say. And they’d both isolate him in their own ways—Jocelyn coddled and spoiled him. Lucas took him out of school and dragged him all across the world. He had little in the way of friends, and the interactions that he did have, had taught him that self-interest and manipulation were normal. Beneath all of that, however, there’s a guy who, frankly, doesn’t know how to deal with people. It’s a struggle for him to trust people. He doesn’t know how to make people like him. Ultimately, it’s easier to pretend that he’s entirely selfish, than to admit to himself that he doesn’t know how to properly connect with people. Sure, he’s good at faking it, putting up fronts that might convince people superficially, but eventually, it always crumbles.

He’s proud and invariably stubborn. He’ll build a rampart out of presumptions, if only to justify his dislike of something or someone, even if he knows he’s wrong. That is to say, he’s frustratingly stupid, for how smart he can be. Sure, he’s a brilliant scientist. He’s also well-read and quick witted. But he can also be so frustratingly close-minded. If he doesn’t care—it’s really hard for him to force himself to give a damn. This bleeds into how he deals with his problems. He runs away from his problems, avoids dealing with them or outright ignorethem even if they're hanging like a neon sign right in front of his face. Once again, stupidity.

His love for astrophysics—for space deserves a section of its own, really. It demonstrates how Amory tends to conceive of the world. He’s at his most comfortable state when he surrounds himself with logic. Everything has to make sense. Everything has to be in order. Contrarily, he’s always seeking more than the mundane. To him, space is Fate’s most brilliant creation, a mystery he’s eager to explore, as long as there’s a reason behind it all, a potential law or a theory. He doesn’t deal well with the absurd and the inexplicable, which explains why he’s so shitty at using his powers. Or how difficult it is for him to accept the simple fact that yeah, you aren’t human, deal with it. It’s just. His brain. It’s like someone built a barricade in there.

I’m sure it seems like this whole personality section is screaming, YEAH MY CHARACTER’S A HUGE DICK. And okay, he is a huge dick, but that’s only few chapters out of a novel. He’s got a sense of humor, and he’s pretty fun to talk with, as long as your character's down for sarcasm and bluntness. If Amory’s comfortable around someone, he can be warm and earnest. And if he comes to trust that person? He’d really do anything for them.

In his heart of hearts, the fact is that he wants to be a better person. He’s ashamed of who he is, and of how selfish and thoughtless he can be. I mean, he sees the future and lets them die, because he’s perfectly willing to convince himself that he doesn’t care. In truth, he wants people to like him. He wants to care. He just doesn’t know how to go about forming those kinds of relations. Insecurity, fear – that sort of thing.

 

ABILITIES.
The general rule is that they cannot create something from nothing. There at least has to be the molecular components around them. So he can't magic a tree, or a banana or a rabbit out of thin air, though if it were possible, Amory would probably find a way to fuck it up. You see, he's like a kindergartener fingerpainting a Picasso. What he can do is erratic and limited, and dangerous in the sense that it's hard for him to control.

Besides his visions, his abilities are as follows:

Firestarting - which is pretty self-explanatory. Each of them has an element they're most attuned to, and fire is Amory's. He's gotten good at lighting cigarettes and candles, but anything else... he has very little control over, so he avoids using it. Setting fire to the house instead of setting fire the fireplace? Yeah, kind of like that.

Healing - His best skill, really. He can do battle with surface wounds and more grievous ones, probably thanks to a compulsive fear of death. Though he could help with the common cold or flu, Amory can't do most viruses or diseases.

Mental Compulsion - This can subdivided into two categories:

Suggestion:
It's not mind control, so much as it's a suggestion. It's hit or miss every time he uses it. Mostly miss. Because with his skill? If he were to push any harder, it'd be like setting a butcher's knife to someone's brain. And for someone who risks going insane himself? It's not something he takes lightly, at all. He avoids using this ability at all costs. (I played him for over three years in my last game, and he only did this once. It was quickly fixed.)

Illusions:
Make people see things they don't exist. He's much better at this!

Teleportation:
Self-explanatory. He can appear and reappear across distances. He avoids this because he can't see where he's going. More than often crashes into something hard and painful. One time he appeared in the middle of a desk and.... and yeah, that was a learning experience.

As for weaknesses? All these powers are dependent on having the energy to perform them. Amory has little stamina, and doing too much will knock him out for awhile. He can also sense "magic", which endows him with a constant low-grade headache. His visions will more than likely drive him insane one day, as they do to most of them, but hey, live for the present? Shooting him in the head will easily kill him. Also stabbing him, etcetera...

He's also an alcoholic.

 

POSSESSIONS
Wallet with his ID cards, money, credit cards, receipts, family photos.
Car keys.
Gum.
(1) Iphone (w/ angry birds, fruit ninja, a library of his favorite ebooks, and music. SADLY... no electricity. 8()
(1) bag of magical weed. (Created specifically to mute their visions.)
(1) rolex.
(1) flask of whiskey.
(1) shadow stone. (A way of sending secret messages. You can write messages in shadows, essentially. Amory mostly carries it around 'cause he thinks it's neat. )
(1) His great-great grandfather's journal