Amory Felix

permissions.

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 23:34:42 GMT

Ams here has this nifty ability of mental compulsion, which can be divided 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 level of skill? It would be akin to setting a butcher's knife to someone's brain; never mind that the mind is something Amory doesn't take lightly. Generally he avoids using it at all costs. For instance, I played him for over three years in my last game, and he only use suggestion only once-- made someone forget who he was -- but it was only temporary.

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

Since he has poor control of his powers in general, Amory shies away from using them. And when he does use them, it's more than often by accident.

A walking trainwreck, really. Either way, Amory won't be using either ability unless we plot it out beforehand, but I'd appreciate it muchly if you could fill out the following permissions form!

comments

inbox.

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 22:59:40 GMT

☎
→ ✆ CALL
→ ✉ MESSAGE
→ ✉ TEXT
→ ❊DIAF

comments

revisions

Sun, 12 Jan 2014 23:21:22 GMT

THIRD PERSON SAMPLE.

Close your eyes, you sleep. Awake, and you open them. In that space between, your mind has traveled distances, running unheeded and rampant in every direction. They had come to Amory like this before, a journey through space, skirting across planets—and oh, all the stars, scattered illimitable in the gaping darkness of his dream, nearly swallowing him up.

But Amory doesn’t dream anymore.

What is then? Where could he possibly be? Cool and smooth to the touch, his fingers drag along the metal shell of a shuttle. This spacecraft and hundreds of others docked, row by row, extending far enough that he needs to squint to see. The end of the shuttle bay is far away, and he wouldn’t be surprised if it only grew farther. Like one of those absurd dreams, where no matter how fast you run, the hallway stretches farther and farther beyond. His feet carry him faster still, as he crosses the room, quicker and quicker as if this could all disappear in a second’s passing.

Amory knows what lies outside those windows-- everything that he has dreamed of ever since he was a kid wanting to touch the stars. Whatever excitement he feels, builds swiftly, only to be locked up and crushed in an instant, settling heavy in his chest. This isn’t real. It’s a trick, a taunt, an illusion. Impossible for the very reason why he no longer dreams

Nowadays, sleep takes him to neither peace nor darkness, just nothing. Nothing was better than seeing those images pressed against his eyelids. Shutting his eyes to lives that are not his own, lives that are to be, or that are happening now. Future events of death and terror as if nightmares weren’t enough. So he quiets them. Drugs himself up into a place of quiet suffocation, where neither visions nor dreams can reach him.

So you see-- this couldn’t be a dream. Reality? Impossible. They had only reached the moon.

Approaching the window now, Amory sees the spread of stars beyond the glass, closer than he’s ever been before. Closer than even the clearest nights out in the Russian River Valley with his telescope pointed at the heavens. He places a palm against the glass. It’s there. Solid. Cold against his fingers.

“Going insane ahead of schedule, aren’t you?” He laughs, anger simmering beneath a bitter sound. “Shit only gets worse.”

For a childhood desires fulfilled, there should be excitement Amory feels nothing besides his anger. Impotent and pointless, he wants to be angry at someone—wants blame someone—punch someone in the goddamn face-- for this illusion because all it does is remind him of what could never be. And it fucking hurts, more than his pride will ever allow him to admit.

All Amory does is slide forward, pressing his forehead against the glass. A silent defeat. “If you’re doing this Alex, I swear, I will make you swallow your own teeth,” he threatens, weakly.

Is this what happens to a mind when not allowed to dream? Fingers curl into his palms until his nails break the skin. Blood beneath his fingernails, pain sharp and distinct. This was real. This was insanity.

If only he could wake up.

COMM SAMPLE.

When you’re a kid, maybe you say to yourself: “I wish that I’ll get my cock sucked by fifteen. Hopefully, by sixteen, I’ll lose my virginity.”

Or maybe, you wish to yourself: “One day, I’ll get into Harvard business school, so can become a brown-nosing WASP making bonuses bigger than my insecurity complex. I’ll get married even. Have a kid, maybe two. A dog. And if I'm really lucky, I won’t be miserable.”

Those are the sort of wishes that come true. The mundane ones.

You don’t say: “Well, one day I’d really like to go up into space. Maybe spend a night or two in a space ship. A journey through space? Oh boy, I wish.”

Life doesn’t work like this. You don’t get what you want, and when you do, it shouldn’t be this fantastic. So. My question is— What’s the catch?

comments

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 05:36:27 GMT

P L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Your Name: Audrey
OOC Journal: ignipotent
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: 23
Email + IM: ofthenightsea[at]gmail.com
Characters Played at Ataraxion: None at the moment.

C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N

               Name: Amory Felix
               Canon: Original Character
              Canon Point: First chapter, prior to the beginning of his story.
           Number: Random

world info
Omniscient, all-powerful, and ubiquitous, Fate is an imperfect force whose singular intent is to order the raw, chaotic energy of the universe into creation, and ultimately, to achieve perfection. Think of her as a principle, an invariable law of the universe, a manipulator who gave the universe a skeleton, while the flesh was already there.

Fate's earth is kinder than most.

Ask the most learned man from his world about The Black Death, the Taiping Rebellion, or the Thirty Year World, and all you'd get out of that is a look of a confusion.

Many disasters, human and natural, that have defined our history has simply never occurred in this world. Rampant plagues, great wars... many have been avoided or truncated thanks to Fate's original failure.

There was an earth before this one; an ordered, peaceful utopia of simple men and women, that eventually met ruinous ends. Everything and everyone were automatons, existing only to fulfill Fate's aim of creating a perfect world, and all would have remained perfect, had Fate not given man souls.

Creating life is an understandably delicate undertaking. To give something form color, taste, and shape is reasonably simple, but to allow them a mind of their own adds uncountable variables. It's the difference between a rock and a human. A stone will always fall and the sun will always rise, but man… who knows where their minds will take them. Gradually, humans discovered free will, but not accustomed to it, they acted as children discovering a new toy, devolving into cruel, impulsive savages. The humans would destroy themselves unto extinction, and in turn, ruin the world. The natural state of the universe being chaos, every death resulted in ordered creations reverting back into this raw energy. Death upon death, chaos grew rampant, rampant enough to rent the world apart. From the earth and sea, chaos gave rise to natural disasters. From life, chaos birthed disease. The world unmade itself.

After the First End, the earth was. Capricious, destructive energy seethed through the world, rendering it a place so hostile that nothing could survive. She should've snuffed the world out of creation, and yet, Fate did not. Whatever the reason, she gave mankind and the world another chance. To ensure they survived, she could've simply stripped them of their souls, but a human lacking a soul wouldn’t be human in the first place. A paradox. Instead, Fate would recreate humanity in their most basic state. They would have to evolve and earn their knowledge and humanity.

To make the world habitable, Fate took a portion of this chaos, dividing and reforming it into separate parts, then shoving it into a realm beside our own. But even then, chaos still ran rampant. These new humans could now survive on this harsh earth, but they would have to contend with the unpredictability of their hostile environment, but the second humans were better for it, becoming smarter and even more resourceful than their former models. But no matter how smart they were, things would always be precarious, constantly teetering between safety and a downward chain toward destruction, and thus she created her Children.

Irhandi, Protectors, Fate's Children, Auxiliaries.

They were beings made of spirit. Extensions of Herself, capable of traversing the earth in any form. Created without souls, these spirits wanted for nothing, free from the agency and emotion that flawed humanity. Blessed with her power, they were to protect the world from destruction by watching over and intervening in earthly affairs. With foresight and the power to manipulate creation, natural disasters, even war, could be averted through their puppet-string manipulation of the world. However, their job wasn’t limited to saving mankind. Each life is part of Fate's heartless system, coordinated as strictly as a reliable train schedule, with death and birth passing each other in the night. It was also their job to set the quota right again and kill the one who got away.

However, they had a second, more important purpose. As chaos was the source their powers like rechargeable batteries, they attracted and sopped up the rampant and raw energy that plagued the ruined world. Fate would disperse her extensions across the world, and for millenniums, they'd carry out their role out as unwavering soldiers.

Though their powers had their limits, the world would flourish for millenniums. They were the reason for this earth's kinder face.

book 1. | xia, the great mother

Perfection never remains untainted.

A child of Fate would accidentally gave birth to a girl with a soul. That girl would grow powerful and bold, and lead a war against her kind. She'd rewrite their very existence, bestowing upon her followers free will, and death unto those who resisted her. She tore them apart and raised them up anew.

Xia the great mother, she was called.

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 envisage living out a 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. These were the stories she would recount to Amory as a child, but to him, they all seemed like fairytales. And for most of his life, that was all they would be. There was little worry about the harsh reality beneath those stories. For his uncle had a family of four children, and the chance that his power would pass down to Jocelyn was very slim. His father—well, that was entirely different brand of strangeness, one that he wouldn’t have to deal with until his teenage years.

In spite of all this, Amory Felix was a normal kid. He had no abilities or traits that made him different than others. Indeed, the problems he dealt with were very human.

Early in his youth, he dealt with feelings of rejection and insecurity due to his father’s abandonment. It would’ve been worse had Amory not had someone to fill in that paternal role. His name was Christian Lefevre, an old friend of Jocelyn’s. As a psychiatrist who practiced right in the heart of San Francisco, it put him at an arm's length from Jocelyn and her son. It was Christian who had taught him to swim and ride a bike, who had watched his school plays, and first took him stargazing. Together, they mimicked a family, though Christian stand-in father would never admit to loving a married woman.

During the summer of 1992, Christian would travel to Myanmar on a relief mission. It hadn’t even been a month when Jocelyn had gotten 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. As for Jocelyn, his death would tear her apart, and so would the struggle to get back his body. All and all, it was a terrible learning experience, made worse by Lucas’ return to the family only four months after his death.

Having his real father 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 five years would be a pale replication of his time with Christian and that made it all the worse. It would taken just those five years for his parents to separate again, officially this time, forcing him into that horrid tug-and-pull of a custody battle. The father who’d left him for ten years, would take him away from his mother for half of the year, every year.

The years spent divided between them were chaotic. 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. Sure, it wasn’t a terrible situation, but for a boy struggling with divorce and a loved one’s death? He needed stability and there was little of it.

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

It was Lucas' aid that led to Nicholas accidentally ensuring a better future. And it was Nicholas who asked Lucas to watch after his family, which led him to watch and fall in love with his granddaughter Jocelyn. In other words, his father was old-- unnaturally so, and the generation gap for a kid born in the 80s, and a man born during the golden age of the Roman Republic?

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 cease to pass on. You would be lost in the cogs of the system. In other words, Lucas Felix had been one of the unlucky few condemned to eternity. It wasn'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 and continually miserable.

Lucas bore the scars of many deaths. They couldn’t dream, and they struggled to sleep. They had no special super powers. The only thing Lucas had developed was an eidetic memory, grown out of a mind trained to store a lifetime worth of recollections that it was never meant to hold. Therefore, Lucas Felix could remember everything perfectly—every person, every great emotion he experienced, all the different civilizations he watched rise and fall. The only way he could avoid going insane, he found, was to detach himself from the world. Therefore, he was cold, severe, and seemingly apathetic at times, often ignoring struggled to be the sort of father Amory needed.

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 were close enough that it was no surprise to anyone when Amory decided to follow her to Berkeley for college.

Christian had passed on his love for space to Amory. He’d been an amateur astronomer throughout his childhood, a hobby that led him to study Astrophysics, focusing on Cosmology. It didn’t matter that he knew the truth about Fate and how she made the world. Space was its own mystery. It was the impossible and fantastical determined by strict, invariable laws, and for a kid who grew up the way he did, the coexistence of absurdity and logic in space gave him strange comfort. Amory was a sharp guy with blinding passion when it came to things he cared about (there wasn’t much he cared about). After a stellar undergrad career, internships at NASA and Fermilab, and a praised Master’s thesis, he seemed 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, and the warning signs were there all along.

During Amory’s junior year at Berkeley, his family suffered another tragedy. Jocelyn’s brother had “gone insane,” though that was putting it lightly. He’d put a bullet in the head of each of his children, before using the last on himself. The only survivor as his wife, who’d been out of town when he’d gone on his rampage, but the shock of it all had led to her being institutionalized.

All in all, it was a horrific event, and another difficult time for his mother. Meanwhile, Amory couldn’t bring himself to feel all too bad. He’d never known his uncle’s family, thanks to his mother’s resolution to give him a normal life. Sure, maybe you’d expect some sadness, given that they were family, but his brain just didn’t work that way. He hadn't really known them, so why should he care? Their death would’ve had little effect on him, had he truly been normal.

With the death of her brother’s family, his powers and responsibility passed onto his mother. Amory was now next in line, whether he liked it or not. Jocelyn had trained for the possibility since she was a child, but to Amory, they were had always been stories. And the only way to come to terms with that reality? He pushed it out of his mind, rationalizing that it wouldn’t be years, years from now. Most of the time he just ignored it, and his mother was more than happy to oblige him.

At 26, Amory was in his first year of his doctorate and things were perfect. He even considered proposing to Elisa. And he would have, if his mother hadn't disappeared abruptly—ushering in a change that’d subvert his entire life. One day, Jocelyn had simply disappeared, but Amory knew she was gone the very moment she died. The knowledge had come to him with her powers—his powers now. The sheer pain of inheriting her powers may have kept him from the immediate emotional fallout, but his mother's death truly changed him. The mystery of it plagued him, but it wasn’t what kept him up at night.

What kept him up were the visions that began to usurp his dreams; horror and pain pressed against his eyelids. 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? Rémy would surely be disappointed in him, but why try in a careless world?

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/ small library of his favorite ebooks and music.)
(1) bag of magical weed. Basically super strength 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. )

Appearance: When he forgets to shave.
Age: 26

S A M P L E S
Log Sample: If accepted, I suspect he will enjoy the pot in the garden...

Comms Sample: A sample from an old game. A more recent sample.

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permissions post

Fri, 21 Jun 2013 04:26:32 GMT

Amory has the ability of mental compulsion, and by ability, I mean he utterly stinks at it. It's not mind control, so much as it's a suggestion. But it's hit or miss every time he uses it. Because with his skill? Pushing any harder would 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.)

Nonetheless, here's a permission post so please fill it out when you have the time!

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titanic plot info;;

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:38:06 GMT

AMORY FELIX{

Say hello once again to upper crust Amory, the son of a tycoon with his teeth deep into America's oil business even after the Sherman Act. He's grown up indulged and spoiled, having made his rounds at all the renowned (and seedy) entertainment establishments of New York, Boston and Paris. His teenage years have made him known for being a callous playboy… and pretty much a dick all around. But when it came to pay his dues and start learning his father's business, he’s resisted and completely underperformed. You see, Amory feels an utter disillusionment with American society, big business, and the competitive aggression that ties them all together.

In truth, Amory Felix has always wanted to become a physicist, intrigued by the early explorations of Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers and the upcoming Albert Einstein. It was enough to inspire him to attend the University of Chicago for two years, until pressure from his family forced him to drop out and switch to a proper business course of study at Harvard. Cosmology? Astronomy? To Lucas Felix, that field of study might as well be pointless mysticism. Amory has graduated with stellar grades, but without the enthusiasm or desire to do anything but play robot at his father's office, drink far too much, spend weekends in opium dens, and enjoy his women and men. I mean, he’s probably had an illegitimate child or two at this point.

… And then one night, Lucas Felix, unable to sleep, had gone Uptown to catch up on work. At 2 o' clock in the morning, he opened the door of his office to see his son barebacking it on his desk with the Erin Crane, Amory’s childhood friend and the butcher’s son. Having sex on his desk was already shocking enough, having sex with another man, well--

It would have been easy to cut the boy off if he wasn’t his only son. God knows he deserves it for all his trouble—do you know all the rumors swirling around about Lucas Felix and his miscreant son? (‘Rumor has it, he’s a fairy.) If you’re high-society, you probably do. But instead, Amory’s been punished in the form of an arranged marriage. He was sent to Europe to meet and marry his betrothed, and is now aboard the titanic on his journey back with his new wife home. She's some countess who's exchanged her title for the wealth of America’s new rich, now that her centuries-old coffers have run out. And trust me, Amory detests her. She's old-fashioned, stuffy and old. And boring

However, he's not planning on ditching this ship and running away once it docks! Except, you know, it’s gonna hit an iceberg. And he's probably gonna die.

I WANT ALL THE PREFABRICATED CR.

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