Nortia

Name: Nortia (Etruscan goddess of fate and chance) Real name: Corinne Brennan Path: Acanthus Order: Mysterium Legacy: Daoine

ATTRIBUTES: Mental: Primary (5) Intelligence:000 Wits:000 Resolve:00

Physical: Tertiary (3) Strength:00 Dexterity:00 Stamina:00

Social: Secondary (4) Presence:0000 Manipulation:00 Composure:00 (1+1 from Acanthus)

SKILLS: Mental: Secondary (7) Academics:00(History) Computer:0 Craft:0 Investigation:0(Rotes) Occult:00 (Rotes)

Physical: Tertiary (4) Athletics:0 (Long-distance marching) Larceny:0 Survival:0 (Shelter, Rotes) Weaponry:0

Social: Primary (11) Animal Ken:0 Empathy:00 Expression:00 Persuasion:000 Socialize:000

MERITS: Contacts:0 High Speech:0

Spent XP on: Resources:0 Sanctum:00 Hallow:0 Library (Medieval Witchcraft):0 Language (Irish Gaelic):0 Mentor (Daoine Mentor):0 16 XP spent (2 XP per dot, 1+(1+2)+1+1+1+1=8 dots)

ARCANA: Fate 0000 Space 00 Time 0 24 XP spent (6 XP per dot in Ruling Arcana, 4 dots)

ROTES: Luck Coin (Fate 3): Wits + Occult + Fate (10 dice) Shifting the Odds (Fate 2): Wits + Occult + Fate (10 dice) Finder (Space 1): Intelligence + Investigation + Space (7 dice)

LEGACY ATTAINMENTS: Daoine 1: The Eye and the Fist Prerequisites: Gnosis 3, Fate 2 (primary), Space 1, Occult 2 Can use Correspondence (Space 1) at will; may use The Evil Eye (with Fate dots as successes) at will, though no more than once between two moonrises on the same person.

ADVANTAGES: Size: 5 Health: 7 Defense: 2 Initiative: 4 Speed: 9 Willpower: 4 Wisdom: 6 (sold back for 5 XP.) Virtue: Justice Vice: Envy Gnosis: 3 (6 Merit dots) Mana: 6

EQUIPMENT: Mace Knife (1L, Size 1, Cost 1) Attack pool: 4 (melee and ranged) Magical Tool: A bag of stones on which Nordic runes are inscribed.

One question on equipment which I couldn't find the answer to: I can purchase a lower-quality tool for a lesser cost, right? If so, add a pair of lock picks to this.

Childhood: Corinne Brennan was born as the child of Kelly Brennan and Anthony Kraikos on a summer day in 1981. The two weren't married, as Kelly wouldn't find herself tied up to any man, to Anthony's chagrin; and she received her mother's surname (though her father decided her name, Corinne, meaning maiden).

It was in her formative years that her interest for the fantastical and the past was created through the may fairy tales her mother told her at bedtime.

She was a playful child and had many friends, not to mention a mass of cousins in her age. She lived closer to nature then, and that was the way she loved it. She was a girl scout for most of her childhood, quitiing a few years after becoming a Cadette. As childhoods went, hers was quite normal and quite happy, despite her family's monetary problems and her far too strict, conservative father.

Teens: Looking back at her teenage years, Nortia can now say with certainty that yes, this was when the shit hit the fan. Hovering near the poverty line, Corinne's father decided to take on a job offer he hoped would make things better. Only problem was, it was two states away, in Chicago. Corinne had to leave the security of the quiet suburb she had lived in before and the friends she had known all her life, and carve out a new life for herself in the big city. It didn't work out so well.

The friends she made were, she discovered, not the best company. Normally, she would have left them for someone better. Only, she was in her rebellious years, and what better way to annoy her prick of a father than to hang with criminals and radicals? She learned from them how to steal, pickpocket, even breaking and entering. She started smoking (though she secretly hated it) and drinking. Her mission of pissing off her father went perfectly. Then she got caught. Trying to break into an empty house, someone called the police and she was the only one who was caught. She realised that it was serious this time, and she was commited to a youth detention center for a month by an overzealous judge.

It shaped her for years, instilling the opinion that she had gotten what she had deserved, that she was a no-good criminal under the surface. That it had been karma, fate, that only she had been caught. When she was released, she shaped up, worked hard in school and got a sholarship to a decent college, despite the nagging doubts she had over whether she was worty it or not.

Adulthood: Taking the oportunity to get away, Corinne moved away from home as soon as she could, renting a crappy appartment in a crappy neighbourhood in a crappy part of town, working at jobs she hated until she could take it no longer, dating guys who turned out to be assholes after a couple of months (and the women she tried were not any better, just bad in different ways) and worked hard to get a degree in History at Chicago State University, planning on becoming a historical researcher. Of course, that was laid on hiatus for a few years when she prioritized having something to eat over having course literature to read.

Awakening: Sitting on the porch to the house she lived in one day about three years ago, Corinne flipped a coin, trying to decide if she should go bar-hopping the second time in a week. She watched it spin in the air, and saw the possibilities inherent in it, the odds and what would happen if she followed the cointoss. She bordered on seeing the vast tapestry of Correspondance... and then some motherfucker snatched up her coin. Normally, this would have made her go back to Sleep, but to her eyes, the man became elfin and his hair shifted to a vibrant red and grew to his shoulders. "Young maiden-who-isn't-a-maiden, I'll take this as payment for my services. Follow me, for I have much to show.", he said while pocketing the coin (which now was larger, and golden).

She followed, and the landscape shifted, becoming a large hall, where a mother held her newborn child to her bosom. "Birth. Potential. This child... Is he to be hero, saviour, villain? His is the choice."

He walked on, the land shifing again, into a battlefield. "Death. Endings, beginnings, consequences. It all blurs together, if you look at it in a greater sense. These men, what will their deaths bring? Will they be forgotten, remembered in history books, in stories, in bard's songs, in fairy tales? If they do great things, maybe... If they're lucky, maybe..." He walked on, Corinne trailing after. Realising she was dressed in a chainmail bikini that would have been more appropriate on Xena than on a real battlefield, she blushed and tried to walk while covering herself.

The land shifted, became a hall of stone with bookshelves lined up on both sides. The redhaired man went to one of the shelves and grabbed a book and held it up to her. "You don't want to become forgotten, do you? That's what you feel, isn't it? That all your life has been meaningless, you've been uttely mundane, you've done nothing extraordinary. Isn't that it?" She nodded meekly. "Then, now you have the chance. Write yourself into the historybooks, like a true winner does." She held a quill now, and with quick strokes she signed the bottom of the tome's nearly-filled page, which became stone and then the wall of a great Tower.

And then she woke up out of her reverie, finding herself in a supermarket, holding a Twinkie she had carved her name into and seeing the man who had snatched her coin further down the aisle, looking back at her worriedly, probably thinking she was going to kill him when she had the chance. She snapped out of her confusion, ran to the exit, payed for the Twinkie and went out. And that's when a large man grabbed her shoulder and said: "Little neophyte, I am Agni... and we have a lot to talk about..."

Mystic Life: Agni, an Obrimos Arrow, took her back to his home, where he explained what had happened. She found it too amazing to believe at first, but she quickly took it in. After all, hadn't she always had a little nagging doubt in the back of her head, that this wasn't all there was to the world, that too many things couldn't be explained, that surely there must be something magical out there somewhere, right?

However, Agni said he couldn't teach her. He wasn't much of a mage himself, and he could see that he would just be a hindrance to her. He recalled a mage his own teacher had told him about, a Daoine mage called Veles living on the edge of town, that he thought would be better for her. If he had known what the Daoine was, maybe he wouldn't have sent her there.

Veles was not happy to see her when she came, and tried hard to send her away, but she stayed anyway, not knowing where else to go. Eventually, he took pity on her and let her in. What followed was nearly a year of menial tasks until she had proven her determination and learned some (but far from enough, in Veles' opinion) humility.

Then, he showed her what the Daoine did and why they did it, made her realise that Fate was not the powerful force she had thought it was, but fickle and in need of "a push here or there" to guide it towards the karmic balance and the path of justice. After letting her sort out her doubts (the Daoine are a fierce bunch, after all), she was accepted as his student and she was worked to the bone mastering the Arcana.

It worked...but ueasily. Veles thought she was too soft still, but didn't want his efforts in raising her go to waste, so he brought her up to the first attainment, and then said to her: "Go out, see the world or something. Just don't come back until you've grown a proper spine."

Having seen glimpses of the supernatural world with her teacher (she still had trouble believing there were werewolves in the city, though she hadn't been as surprised by the vampires she had met), she sought out the Mysterium, wanting to access their vast libraries, trying to learn all there was to know about it. She was annoyed by the attitudes of the Order, though, firmly believing that knowledge should be shared and not hoarded and locked away as they did, not to mention the hierarchical organisation. She wished it was more like the Free council she had heard about, but knew that the smatterings of knowledge she could get from the other mystagogues were better than nothing at all.

[Will add how she joined the cabal later]

[Will add personality later]

Appearance: Pretty much like this, usually clothed in bright turtlenecks: [1]