08-10-2013, 08:20 AM
Claire Novak
Age
Claire was born in 2025 in New York, and thus is now 20 years old.
Powers and supernatural powers
Claire is a channeler with the talent of Foretelling; she has only seen one vision of the future of which she has an abstract interpretation. She is also a fortune-teller, a form of a prophet, which is more specifically tied to describing the significance of treasured or important objects than it is of the person who owns them, though sometimes the two are entwined. This prophecy is not in her control as it manifests at times and in circumstances she cannot predict, however she does need to reserve focus, meditation and calm to heighten her fortune-telling. She has only ever had one full vision.
As she was taught to channel before ever touching the source unaided, she never developed the Sickness. However she attributes channeling to spells, charms and talisman, therefore her mastery of the power is limited to Adept.
Are you a reborn god?
Yes; the goddess, Atropos. In the Greek, Ατροπος, which means "She who cannot be turned."
The Moirai were three sister-goddesses of fate who personified the inescapable destiny of man whose individual lives were depicted as single threads in an overall web of destiny. It was these threads which the sisters could read, track and manipulate. They were among the oldest channelers to ever live, well over five-hundred years beyond their contemporaries, a magnitude which contributed to their fearsome legend and final depictions as ancient, wizened women. As such they were deemed Θεαι Αρχαιαι, or "Ancient goddesses."
The first was Klotho who spun (or predicted) the thread of a future life. She had the ability to foretell the birth of prominent figures of fate, be he man or deity. It was her which sourced the prophetic return of gods to the Atharim legend: and named one "Apollyon."
The second sister was Lakhesis. She measured the direction and length of an individual thread. Her foretelling was mixed with a pinch of fortune-telling. Her fortunes, when sought by mankind, could guide the course of that person's destiny, though she did not have the power to change or induce it. Yet all three of the sisters could distribute good and bad fortune to men and nations.
The final and eldest sister was Atropos, the goddess most associated with death, though she had no authority over it. She is most associated with a pair of scales, a sun-dial, or the cutting instrument by which it was said she ended the lives of men and gods in the cutting of their threads.
Together, the sisters' powers were independent of the will of the ruling gods. At the helm of necessity, they directed fate through sharp foretelling of the Pattern, and watched that the fate assigned to every being by eternal laws might take its course without obstruction. They were also revered as more than readers of destiny. They sat in attendance of the great Zeus in his very court. They directed the furia. They ordained heavenly marriages and witnessed the binding of eternal oaths. They blessed the birth of the new gods Apollo, Artemis, and Athena. Accounts describe their participation in the wars of the gods, titans, and giants.
Psychological description
Perhaps the best interpretation of her psychological description is depicted in the following quote from legend.
"There were men fighting in warlike harnesses, some defending their own town and parents from destruction, and others eager to sack it; many lay dead, but the greater number still strove and fought . . . and behind them the dusky Keres (Death-Spirits), gnashing their white fangs, lowering, grim, bloody, and unapproachable, the beasts struggled for those who were falling, for they all were longing to drink dark blood. So soon as they caught a man overthrown or falling newly wounded, one of them would clasp their great claws about him, and his soul would go to chilly Tartaros. And when they had satisfied their desire for human blood, they would cast the body behind them, and rush back again into the tumult and the fray.
The Moirai (Fates), Klotho and Lakhesis were over them and, finally, Atropos less tall than they, a goddess of no great frame, yet superior to the others and the eldest of them. And the Keres beasts all made a fierce fight over one poor wretch, glaring evilly at one another with furious eyes and fighting equally with claws and hands, the fates made no move to stop them, but rather watched on."
Physical description
Claire is small of stature, willowy as a reed, but unyielding to the storms of intimidation. She feels fear, yet defiantly forges on, fearing (and respecting) the finality of only death itself; though she is unsure if death is truly the end of all things.
She has pale skin and light-brown, dark blonde hair kept to an edgy, pixie style. She favors fashion and design, things of beauty and aesthetic and enjoys adorning herself in a personal style made of an array of the Boroughs' second-hand boutiques and designer sample-sales.
Biography
Claire was born into a long line of women gifted with extraordinary abilities: her mother, aunt, grandmother and great-grandmother, all the way back the long line of their family since before they immigrated from Poland after the first World War. Each one of them were touched with an inflection of the stars themselves. They were psychics; all of them.
And they were all frauds.
During the war, her family escaped to the highlands. Romani roots gave their wagons a quick speed, and the camps of their people hid them among wood and stone for the long dark season of war. They were gypsies, but less so of Hollywood's glamour and glitz and more filled with terror and starvation. Old grannie Babica, with her bright white hair brushed to a painfully bright sheen, her intricate earrings the sort to tangle a young child's fingers, nestled her captive great-child Claire close one afternoon. It was then that she relayed the full history of their family. Of the peace and prosperity they could bestow to a sad, gloomy world. Grannie Babica shared the stories of their past as they had been told by her grandmother. But the old and wizened frequently look to the past as they near the evening of their lives; perhaps the old lady really did believe she helped people. Maybe Claire did too.
It was Babica's daughter, Venetia which capitalized on Grannie's 'fortune telling.' The atmosphere of nineteen seventies America lent itself to a market desperate for meaning. The trinkets of her gypsy mother's fortune telling were transformed into heirlooms of profound meaning. The candles and prayers of her mother's religion were funneled into specific purposes. By 1980, Venetia's psychic shop had a long line of customers and clients.
Claire's mother, Mina joined the business in 1998, though she was raised in the shop's waiting room more than she was in the living room of their Brooklyn home. Mina had an eclectic gift for gab. Combined with an overwhelming interest in the magical realm, she was a natural.
Then it was Claire's turn. The fourth generation of fortune-tellers and psychics of the Novak women had a vivid imagination. Her mother always taught her to "listen to her inner voice," and embrace the center of this New Age. But Claire had something her mother didn't have: raw nerve. She embraced the Spiritualism religion: focus, meditation, communication and afterlife. She was a headstrong New Yorker, and in this city, its impossible to not find others who believe as you do.
It started as Claire's idea. Perhaps it was the shady atmosphere of her life, but more likely, she was drawn by a sense that the world hid something she could not quite grasp. She'd always had a knack for fortune telling. Old grannie Babica said Claire had the true gift, but the younger generation of Novak women would only smile and agree dismissively.
It was more than that. Claire was drawn to the things unseen she was certain was there, but her restless searching was attributed to the rebellious nonconformity of a teenager. While others tried to find acceptance in clubs and teams, Claire flit from one organized religion to another without satisfaction. Fearful she would turn to drugs, her mother fed this ravenous desire for knowledge to her daughter with whatever she could: the Hermetic Tarot held Claire's interest for a few months, paganism held the most promise until Claire one day ceased attending the circle which adopted her, and in despair she tried to live the life of an agnostic for an entire day.
That's when she met June, Deena, and Cameron; they came for a reading together. It was June, though who returned the next day, asking to buy Claire a cup of coffee. The rest was history.
At first Claire was sure their practices were innocent. After all, they went to yoga classes together. They swapped clothes as often as boyfriends. They celebrated New Years together. They love their annual pilgrimage to Atlantic City.
They were simply friends.
So what if they were a coven? Its not like they did anything illegal, technically.
Like all her other dabblings, Claire was open-minded at first. The coven started originally with June, the oldest, who met, and immediately identified with, Deena. Cameron was the third to join a year later, though Claire can sense that Cameron feels like an outsider, a third wheel even after finding Claire.
The answers Claire sought seemed to radiate from the mystic truths in witchcraft. She finally felt like a veil was uncovered, and while the answers to all her questions - about fate, destiny, life and death - they were still there, but she finally felt in control of her own fate. With the power to manipulate, to meditate, chant and read the signs, her fortunes became more precise, more tuned to the object occupying her attention.
They were little steps. Candles lighting and unlighting; the rational part of Claire's mind attributed the coincidence to being in a drafty house. Tissue lifting from the altar. Predicting the cards. The ringing of the bell when nobody was touching it. And so on.
It was their ritual Saturday night, hanging out in the shop until closing. At five till midnight, after Claire hadn't seen a client in two hours, she went ahead and told the girls to get things set up in back while she locked up the front.
She was thinking about the spell they were going to practice tonight. Levitation. If successful, the spell would be the most powerful Claire had ever cast, though June claimed to have been able to attempt it on her own in the past; Claire believed this claim: as the founder of their coven, it was clear June was the most powerful of the four witches. She eagerly plunged the bolts on the door at the front, locking it up, powered down their register, and hit the lights.
Finally, on the way out, she grabbed a pair of scissors from the front desk. To conduct the spell, the caster needed to snip a lock of hair from the one she were to levitate. Deena volunteered to have it done. Claire smiled softly to herself at that thought. Nobody would notice a few strands missing from Deena's long, luxurious hair, but Deena claimed she was going to get it all cut off anyway.
She wandered through the halls to the back where the reading room was going to be transformed to a safe circle, but no voices met her on the way. No sounds of setting up the altar. No scent of recently punk'd incense wafted through the halls; only the stale after smell still lingering from the shop's last client. As she came closer, Claire realized a bright light still glowed from around the frame of the door when candles should already be the sole source illumination.
Nervous, Claire moved the scissors to her other hand, touched the knob and gently pushed open the door.
The three girls were sprawled on the floor. Gunshot wounds bloodied their heads. They hadn't even started to set up the altar yet.
Claire panicked. She backed up and ran for the stairs when she ought to have run to their bodies, the phone, or out the front door. Instead, she ran to find her mom, who was asleep in the apartment above their shop.
She met a man walking out of her mother's bedroom. He was in a dark coat and wore a hat. His face and form were indiscernible by the shadows swathing the nighttime apartment. He held a gun.
He looked at Claire, startled. As though he hadn't expected to find her, then spoke in a gruff, but surprised voice: "I was told there were only three of you."
She knew exactly what to do. All she needed was the first word of the spell on her lips, and a river of fury, cold and merciless, gripped the killer's very bones, lifting him from his feet. He levitated, contorted into the shape of a stigmata by the spell continually uttered by Claire's lips, and her fists tightened. The edge of metal blades dug into her palm.
"My family's shop..." She said accusingly, then twisted the words of the incantation with sudden, sharp inflections. She snipped his vocal cords. The man gasped in soundless pain.
"My mother..." Claire took an empowered step forward, clenching the scissors, picturing Deena's bloodied hair. She repeated the incantation once more and snipped again, and his pants darkened an ominous streak. He struggled in his invisible bonds.
"My friends..." She stood beneath him now, peering up to meet his eyes. They were alight with pain, fright, fury, and defiance. Claire only felt the clarity of power in that moment. She held life and death in her hands; she spoke a final time and snipped again. His eyes bulged momentarily, then his head fell limply forward; neck severed from within.
She let him drop and stared at his broken, crumpled form, snarled with the venom of hate and grief, then turned to run to her mother's bedroom.
That's when the vision took her. She saw death. Not the hooded figure and not the demons of religion, but a man. He was cloaked with layers of identity such that she could not quite tell his exact appearance; yet she knew him nonetheless. She saw an eternity of power and darkness looming like a great schism before her. And she saw the future: the fate of mankind, solid and strong at first, then molded to a pack of dusty ash which blew away flake by flake until nothing remained. Death was on the Earth, and she knew where to find him.
An anonymous call summoned the police to the Brooklyn psychic shop the next morning, but by then everything was taken from her. Yet Claire was now transformed into someone with purpose. She knew the meaning in life was choked by the roots of death. She escaped the mourning of past, knowing her vengeance would only end with the gas chamber, compelled to look to the future. Grief came with her; baggage she could not discard or lose, yet one month later, she landed in Moscow.
Age
Claire was born in 2025 in New York, and thus is now 20 years old.
Powers and supernatural powers
Claire is a channeler with the talent of Foretelling; she has only seen one vision of the future of which she has an abstract interpretation. She is also a fortune-teller, a form of a prophet, which is more specifically tied to describing the significance of treasured or important objects than it is of the person who owns them, though sometimes the two are entwined. This prophecy is not in her control as it manifests at times and in circumstances she cannot predict, however she does need to reserve focus, meditation and calm to heighten her fortune-telling. She has only ever had one full vision.
As she was taught to channel before ever touching the source unaided, she never developed the Sickness. However she attributes channeling to spells, charms and talisman, therefore her mastery of the power is limited to Adept.
Are you a reborn god?
Yes; the goddess, Atropos. In the Greek, Ατροπος, which means "She who cannot be turned."
The Moirai were three sister-goddesses of fate who personified the inescapable destiny of man whose individual lives were depicted as single threads in an overall web of destiny. It was these threads which the sisters could read, track and manipulate. They were among the oldest channelers to ever live, well over five-hundred years beyond their contemporaries, a magnitude which contributed to their fearsome legend and final depictions as ancient, wizened women. As such they were deemed Θεαι Αρχαιαι, or "Ancient goddesses."
The first was Klotho who spun (or predicted) the thread of a future life. She had the ability to foretell the birth of prominent figures of fate, be he man or deity. It was her which sourced the prophetic return of gods to the Atharim legend: and named one "Apollyon."
The second sister was Lakhesis. She measured the direction and length of an individual thread. Her foretelling was mixed with a pinch of fortune-telling. Her fortunes, when sought by mankind, could guide the course of that person's destiny, though she did not have the power to change or induce it. Yet all three of the sisters could distribute good and bad fortune to men and nations.
The final and eldest sister was Atropos, the goddess most associated with death, though she had no authority over it. She is most associated with a pair of scales, a sun-dial, or the cutting instrument by which it was said she ended the lives of men and gods in the cutting of their threads.
Together, the sisters' powers were independent of the will of the ruling gods. At the helm of necessity, they directed fate through sharp foretelling of the Pattern, and watched that the fate assigned to every being by eternal laws might take its course without obstruction. They were also revered as more than readers of destiny. They sat in attendance of the great Zeus in his very court. They directed the furia. They ordained heavenly marriages and witnessed the binding of eternal oaths. They blessed the birth of the new gods Apollo, Artemis, and Athena. Accounts describe their participation in the wars of the gods, titans, and giants.
Psychological description
Perhaps the best interpretation of her psychological description is depicted in the following quote from legend.
"There were men fighting in warlike harnesses, some defending their own town and parents from destruction, and others eager to sack it; many lay dead, but the greater number still strove and fought . . . and behind them the dusky Keres (Death-Spirits), gnashing their white fangs, lowering, grim, bloody, and unapproachable, the beasts struggled for those who were falling, for they all were longing to drink dark blood. So soon as they caught a man overthrown or falling newly wounded, one of them would clasp their great claws about him, and his soul would go to chilly Tartaros. And when they had satisfied their desire for human blood, they would cast the body behind them, and rush back again into the tumult and the fray.
The Moirai (Fates), Klotho and Lakhesis were over them and, finally, Atropos less tall than they, a goddess of no great frame, yet superior to the others and the eldest of them. And the Keres beasts all made a fierce fight over one poor wretch, glaring evilly at one another with furious eyes and fighting equally with claws and hands, the fates made no move to stop them, but rather watched on."
Physical description
Claire is small of stature, willowy as a reed, but unyielding to the storms of intimidation. She feels fear, yet defiantly forges on, fearing (and respecting) the finality of only death itself; though she is unsure if death is truly the end of all things.
She has pale skin and light-brown, dark blonde hair kept to an edgy, pixie style. She favors fashion and design, things of beauty and aesthetic and enjoys adorning herself in a personal style made of an array of the Boroughs' second-hand boutiques and designer sample-sales.
Biography
Claire was born into a long line of women gifted with extraordinary abilities: her mother, aunt, grandmother and great-grandmother, all the way back the long line of their family since before they immigrated from Poland after the first World War. Each one of them were touched with an inflection of the stars themselves. They were psychics; all of them.
And they were all frauds.
During the war, her family escaped to the highlands. Romani roots gave their wagons a quick speed, and the camps of their people hid them among wood and stone for the long dark season of war. They were gypsies, but less so of Hollywood's glamour and glitz and more filled with terror and starvation. Old grannie Babica, with her bright white hair brushed to a painfully bright sheen, her intricate earrings the sort to tangle a young child's fingers, nestled her captive great-child Claire close one afternoon. It was then that she relayed the full history of their family. Of the peace and prosperity they could bestow to a sad, gloomy world. Grannie Babica shared the stories of their past as they had been told by her grandmother. But the old and wizened frequently look to the past as they near the evening of their lives; perhaps the old lady really did believe she helped people. Maybe Claire did too.
It was Babica's daughter, Venetia which capitalized on Grannie's 'fortune telling.' The atmosphere of nineteen seventies America lent itself to a market desperate for meaning. The trinkets of her gypsy mother's fortune telling were transformed into heirlooms of profound meaning. The candles and prayers of her mother's religion were funneled into specific purposes. By 1980, Venetia's psychic shop had a long line of customers and clients.
Claire's mother, Mina joined the business in 1998, though she was raised in the shop's waiting room more than she was in the living room of their Brooklyn home. Mina had an eclectic gift for gab. Combined with an overwhelming interest in the magical realm, she was a natural.
Then it was Claire's turn. The fourth generation of fortune-tellers and psychics of the Novak women had a vivid imagination. Her mother always taught her to "listen to her inner voice," and embrace the center of this New Age. But Claire had something her mother didn't have: raw nerve. She embraced the Spiritualism religion: focus, meditation, communication and afterlife. She was a headstrong New Yorker, and in this city, its impossible to not find others who believe as you do.
It started as Claire's idea. Perhaps it was the shady atmosphere of her life, but more likely, she was drawn by a sense that the world hid something she could not quite grasp. She'd always had a knack for fortune telling. Old grannie Babica said Claire had the true gift, but the younger generation of Novak women would only smile and agree dismissively.
It was more than that. Claire was drawn to the things unseen she was certain was there, but her restless searching was attributed to the rebellious nonconformity of a teenager. While others tried to find acceptance in clubs and teams, Claire flit from one organized religion to another without satisfaction. Fearful she would turn to drugs, her mother fed this ravenous desire for knowledge to her daughter with whatever she could: the Hermetic Tarot held Claire's interest for a few months, paganism held the most promise until Claire one day ceased attending the circle which adopted her, and in despair she tried to live the life of an agnostic for an entire day.
That's when she met June, Deena, and Cameron; they came for a reading together. It was June, though who returned the next day, asking to buy Claire a cup of coffee. The rest was history.
At first Claire was sure their practices were innocent. After all, they went to yoga classes together. They swapped clothes as often as boyfriends. They celebrated New Years together. They love their annual pilgrimage to Atlantic City.
They were simply friends.
So what if they were a coven? Its not like they did anything illegal, technically.
Like all her other dabblings, Claire was open-minded at first. The coven started originally with June, the oldest, who met, and immediately identified with, Deena. Cameron was the third to join a year later, though Claire can sense that Cameron feels like an outsider, a third wheel even after finding Claire.
The answers Claire sought seemed to radiate from the mystic truths in witchcraft. She finally felt like a veil was uncovered, and while the answers to all her questions - about fate, destiny, life and death - they were still there, but she finally felt in control of her own fate. With the power to manipulate, to meditate, chant and read the signs, her fortunes became more precise, more tuned to the object occupying her attention.
They were little steps. Candles lighting and unlighting; the rational part of Claire's mind attributed the coincidence to being in a drafty house. Tissue lifting from the altar. Predicting the cards. The ringing of the bell when nobody was touching it. And so on.
It was their ritual Saturday night, hanging out in the shop until closing. At five till midnight, after Claire hadn't seen a client in two hours, she went ahead and told the girls to get things set up in back while she locked up the front.
She was thinking about the spell they were going to practice tonight. Levitation. If successful, the spell would be the most powerful Claire had ever cast, though June claimed to have been able to attempt it on her own in the past; Claire believed this claim: as the founder of their coven, it was clear June was the most powerful of the four witches. She eagerly plunged the bolts on the door at the front, locking it up, powered down their register, and hit the lights.
Finally, on the way out, she grabbed a pair of scissors from the front desk. To conduct the spell, the caster needed to snip a lock of hair from the one she were to levitate. Deena volunteered to have it done. Claire smiled softly to herself at that thought. Nobody would notice a few strands missing from Deena's long, luxurious hair, but Deena claimed she was going to get it all cut off anyway.
She wandered through the halls to the back where the reading room was going to be transformed to a safe circle, but no voices met her on the way. No sounds of setting up the altar. No scent of recently punk'd incense wafted through the halls; only the stale after smell still lingering from the shop's last client. As she came closer, Claire realized a bright light still glowed from around the frame of the door when candles should already be the sole source illumination.
Nervous, Claire moved the scissors to her other hand, touched the knob and gently pushed open the door.
The three girls were sprawled on the floor. Gunshot wounds bloodied their heads. They hadn't even started to set up the altar yet.
Claire panicked. She backed up and ran for the stairs when she ought to have run to their bodies, the phone, or out the front door. Instead, she ran to find her mom, who was asleep in the apartment above their shop.
She met a man walking out of her mother's bedroom. He was in a dark coat and wore a hat. His face and form were indiscernible by the shadows swathing the nighttime apartment. He held a gun.
He looked at Claire, startled. As though he hadn't expected to find her, then spoke in a gruff, but surprised voice: "I was told there were only three of you."
She knew exactly what to do. All she needed was the first word of the spell on her lips, and a river of fury, cold and merciless, gripped the killer's very bones, lifting him from his feet. He levitated, contorted into the shape of a stigmata by the spell continually uttered by Claire's lips, and her fists tightened. The edge of metal blades dug into her palm.
"My family's shop..." She said accusingly, then twisted the words of the incantation with sudden, sharp inflections. She snipped his vocal cords. The man gasped in soundless pain.
"My mother..." Claire took an empowered step forward, clenching the scissors, picturing Deena's bloodied hair. She repeated the incantation once more and snipped again, and his pants darkened an ominous streak. He struggled in his invisible bonds.
"My friends..." She stood beneath him now, peering up to meet his eyes. They were alight with pain, fright, fury, and defiance. Claire only felt the clarity of power in that moment. She held life and death in her hands; she spoke a final time and snipped again. His eyes bulged momentarily, then his head fell limply forward; neck severed from within.
She let him drop and stared at his broken, crumpled form, snarled with the venom of hate and grief, then turned to run to her mother's bedroom.
That's when the vision took her. She saw death. Not the hooded figure and not the demons of religion, but a man. He was cloaked with layers of identity such that she could not quite tell his exact appearance; yet she knew him nonetheless. She saw an eternity of power and darkness looming like a great schism before her. And she saw the future: the fate of mankind, solid and strong at first, then molded to a pack of dusty ash which blew away flake by flake until nothing remained. Death was on the Earth, and she knew where to find him.
An anonymous call summoned the police to the Brooklyn psychic shop the next morning, but by then everything was taken from her. Yet Claire was now transformed into someone with purpose. She knew the meaning in life was choked by the roots of death. She escaped the mourning of past, knowing her vengeance would only end with the gas chamber, compelled to look to the future. Grief came with her; baggage she could not discard or lose, yet one month later, she landed in Moscow.