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Adrian Kane
#1
Morpheus

"No other is more skilled than he in representing the gait, the features, and the speech of men; the clothing also and the accustomed words of each he represents.”
-Ovid

The son of sleep and the god of dreams, he is related to Nyx, the underworld goddess of night and Thanatos, the god of death. He is a fashioner and molder of dreams because he shaped and formed the dreams that appeared to the dreamer. He was the leader of the Oneiroi, the personified spirits (demons) of dreams, who directly served an important role in the court of Hades, to whom he was loyal.  

This talent made Morpheus a messenger of the gods, able to communicate divine messages to sleeping mortals, sometimes for nefarious purposes in alliance with the river of oblivion, Lethe. What set him apart from other gods of the dream was his powerful ability to influence the dreams of gods, heroes and kings, and could appear to them in any form. Though he could adopt any human form he desired, and was most talented in mimicking the voice, mood gait and words of anyone, Morpheus’s true appearance was that of a winged demon. He was so busy that he had little personal life, never marrying nor fathering children.

It was said that Morpheus slept on a bed of poppies and from his name is derived the drug morphine.


Adrian Kane



Knight in Shining Armor
Age 15


“But why?” he asked. As Adrian shoved his hair back sheepishly, lopsided curls fell around his eyes.

“Why I won’t go out with you? Because you’re a skinny, annoying dork,” Gemma said, arms crossed and smacking her gum with disdain. Giggling erupted from her friends, and Adrian felt his cheeks flush. It’d taken all his courage to approach her. Until recently, Gemma dated the most popular guy in class. Their breakup was huge, published in the most popular online groups. One of Adrians’ friends shared the feed, otherwise, he may never have known she was available again.

Heat rushed his cheeks, but it was anger that swirled behind his eyes. He’d prove Gemma otherwise. He fell asleep that night with a wallet propped on his chest, the video of the breakup on loop. Her shining hair and wide eyes were the last thing he saw when the dream began.

She wore a long white gown, glowing slightly in the way of dreams, and her brown hair flowed in ringlets as she ran through a meadow. A wild animal nipped her heels when her knight in shining armor appeared, galloping on a proud horse. Adrian leaned to one side, grabbed her arm and pulled her to the saddle behind him.
“Hold onto me!” he said, brandishing a sword just as the animal lunged. The blade hit true, and with a terrible scream, the animal died and disappeared. The horse trot to a halt with Gemma’s arms hugged tight about his waist.

They dismounted in a field of flowers, and Adrian assisted the lovely damsel down. She slid into his arms and tugged his helmet from his head. Recognition flashed her pretty eyes and her lips gasped his name,
“Adrian?” and he smiled bright. Her kiss set his heart a blaze. He woke with a victorious smile on his face.

The following day, he received a call. He dated Gemma for six months before she ended things with him for good.

Coming of age
Age 18


The wallet alert dinged, and Adrian crossed the waiting room to approach an intake desk. He uploaded his information into the kiosk, and a knot tied up inside while the information processed. He’d waited his whole life to find out the identity of his birth parents. His adopted family were fine enough but refused to share anything about his true genetic lineage. His mothers ‘claimed’ they were unaware of his parentage, but Adrian could tell they lied. Whatever they hid, he intended to uncover it once he was of legal age. Most kids didn’t spend their eighteenth birthdays hovering in government waiting rooms.

The screen switched to result mode, and Adrian nervously tapped the download cue, but he blinked in disbelief at what it showed. Access denied, it read. His jaw dropped, and he tracked down the room supervisor.
“What the hell is the meaning of this?” He showed the denial. The worker was confused.

“I’ve never seen that come up before. Let me ask my manager. Maybe there’s a bug in the system,” he said. The holoscreen of an older man powered into view. The manager wore a suit and tie and styled his beard short and neat.  Adrian reluctantly waited while they spoke on a private channel. Whatever was said, the worker nodded, tapped out a few commands, and eventually waved Adrian back.

“Well?” Adrian demanded.
“Sorry sir, there’s nothing we can do.”
“That doesn’t make sense. I have rights.”
The man shrugged, closed the access window and Adrian left stunned.

Somebody knew; somebody knew and they weren’t telling. Why? What did that mean? Over the following weeks, he obsessed over finding the truth: what was his right to know. He reinitiated demanding the truth from his adopted mothers, vowing to never speak with them again and uttering other outrageous claims if they didn’t tell. Their stress induced bad dreams, dreams that he visited in hopes of catching a glimpse of the forbidden. In his domain, he confronted them, of course they thought he was only a figment of their stressed subconscious. The effort was fruitless. It took some searching, but he eventually found the dream of that worker, and entered it out of sheer desperation.

The clerk walked the halls of an office building, checking over his shoulder for the presence he felt watching. In the way of dreams, he skipped entire sections with a single step, blurring from one place to another without knowing how he got there. The dreamy passage through the building where the clerk spent his days ended in an office. The presence watching him eventually manifested itself in the guise of the man’s boss.

There was an art to manipulating the dreams of another without their realizing it. Molding into the form of an already flowing narrative made the experience all the more potent.
“You’re fired,” he said, voice booming with an accent he guessed appropriate
The clerk began to cry, bumbling incoherently.
The disguised Adrian continued, calling him worthless and incompetent. Finally, he demanded the clerk prove himself. “Show me the file on Adrian Kane. Show me! Reveal what your own eyes saw. I must see for myself!” his voice cracked with desire.

The clerk scrambled around his dreamy workstation, but he did nothing but cry and proclaim ignorance. The force of Adrian’s will battered until the man clutched at his ears, but the dream was breaking apart. If he was still here when the man woke, he may disintegrate with it. He wrenched himself out just in time, but the effort was pointless.

There had to be another way.

Close but not close enough
Age 20


He checked the clock for the hundredth time in the last five minutes. Two more minutes waiting. The display screen on the wall counted down like a ticking bomb. Two minutes of torture. He tried to imagine what two minutes felt like. How far could he run in two minutes. He calculated the pace easily. He ran that morning. One minute left. He could hold his breath for a minute. How many push-ups could he do in one minute? He checked the time again. Seconds remained. His heart thud so anxious he almost held his breath for real.

At his side, his classmate, roommate, and competition Jason waited just as eager as everyone else. Three-two-one. The screen flickered. A list of names – ranked backward from first to twentieth – blazed to life. Immediately, shoulders pushed inward. Adrian was shoved a few steps forward. Only the top five names were awarded internships. As the news filtered, curses of disappointment erupted around him. Immediately in front of him, Jason roared with excitement, but when he turned to face Adrian (apparently they were friends), his expression fell to stillness.

The script came into focus, and Adrian’s heart sank to his gut.
6. Adrian Kane

“Sixth?” he asked himself, but he was already pushed out of the way for others to find their results.

Jason pat him on the shoulder. They’d talked about this internship for months. College juniors. Roommates. Both placed in prestigious CCD government internships. It was their dream even while Jason debated returning home to be with his father. The older man suffered from a disease even modern medicine couldn’t cure.

Sixth?

He left Jason to his celebration, but Adrian knew what he had to do. It would be better for both of them. Jason should be with his family. He wanted to be with his family. He just needed a push.

Weeks later, Adrian found himself the replacement for the candidate that declined.

He graduated from the city’s most renown law school, specializing in finance law. After the government internship during his college years, Adrian rocketed to the top of everything he attempted to conquer. His ambition seemed to know no end, and it was never enough. Even when he entered the offices of a top financial firm as their on-staff counsel, he was already contemplating the next rung on the ladder.

He was known for having the damndest luck, although he couldn’t replicate the streak in any of the city’s gambling clubs, he favored the nightlife anyway. It was in one such establishment that he was introduced to some less than reputable characters. He rented his lucky streak out to  others for a fee, and nobody questioned his methods. They’d not believe him if he explained anyway. Quickly, he became a multi-millionaire. He lived well, but in the city of billionaires, he flew under the radar. He invested primarily in himself, and by thirty, owned legitimate businesses around the city: from white-collar hotels and car dealerships to cleaning services and freight companies. Some were front organizations, but some were not. Deals were done in his hotels. When conflict got dirty, his companies cleaned the blood from the carpet. Money was good. Business was good. Nights were better.

There was just one problem. He was a shit channeler at his wits end.

It started years before, and years of practice produced nothing more than sparks. After watching the footage of the Ascendancy’s mighty reconstruction of the Archway, an idea came to mind.

The deal is done
Age 30


He floated in a pleasant ocean of darkness. There was a warmth buried in the deep that Adrian found soothing. The view was breathtaking. Or would be if there was breath to be stolen. The emptiness that enveloped was no thicker than the vacuum of space. Like the distant reach of the universe, starlight glittered in all directions. When Adrian first discovered this gap in the consciousness of all who dreamed, he wondered if a border existed out of sight. The endlessness called, but the farther into the darkness he journeyed, the horizon stretched farther beyond reach. There was another side. He knew it in his soul, but he had yet to find it. Someday, he would.

Exploration was not his purpose this night. Tonight, Adrian searched the stars. Their lights blurred as his form sped through the darkness. Some passed so near he thought to reach out and grasp them in his hand. Others were too dim to barely see. Finally, the twinkle he sought grew and grew until Adrian thought it may swallow him whole. He came close, and the light burned bright for one infinitesimal flash, and in the next moment, he was within its realm.

A tile floor rushed up to his feet. The walls were a plain gray. All colors were muted. Adrian walked along a hall, passing offices he assumed to be the scene of a business building. Although, given the identity of the person whose dream he walked, his surrounding was more likely to be that of a government building instead.

The dream shifted around him, but Adrian was smoothly swept along without resistance. He found himself standing alongside three other figures. Together they formed a line along an empty stage. A podium stood vacant, a sentry waiting before them all. Beyond, the seats were empty and the theatre house dark except for one seated in the very center of the front row. Shadows cloaked him since the stage lighting angled away from his silhouette, but Adrian knew who he was. It was he whom he came to find.

One by one, the three other shapes stepped to the podium, speaking in strings of sentences that made little sense. Like their disjointed speeches, their faces blurred and changed such that Adrian could identify none. Such was the way of dreams. Then it was Adrian’s turn. The man in the audience paid little attention. In fact, the dream began to dissolve around them as if it was about to shift, but with a force that radiated from within, Adrian lifted his arms, grit his teeth, and halted what might have melted away. Control of the dream shifted to him, and with the snap of his fingers, he erased the three other dream figures and forced the house lights to illuminate himself alone.

The dreamer jumped to attention. As he did, his clothing changed to those of black armor. A dark cloak swallowed his shoulders and a crown of silver and onyx flickered around his brow. It was a remnant of a subconscious: the self-assigned image of one’s ideal form. Adrian knew this particular dreamer to be arrogant, but the aura echoed in distant memory. The man’s presence was strong, and it tugged at Adrian with all the familiarity of an ally, but in this place, Adrian was master. Perhaps he could learn some of Adrian’s ways in time, but such were thoughts for another night.

“Who are you?” the dreamer said, but the demand held no sway over Adrian.

“As you can see, I have an impressive skill. I can serve you, but I desire something in return,” Adrian said.

The man turned. “You are not real,” he said defiantly, turning to depart.

Adrian interrupted. “When you wake, tomorrow at noon, I will stand on the top step of the Archway monument facing the walls of your Kremlin. Find me and you will know I am very real,” he said.

Upon Adrian’s exit, the dream was returned to the whim of its owner. The light rushed away, and in its place, the gap of infinite stars again filled his consciousness.  Before departing completely, Adrian watched the light fade as the dreamer awoke, considering the risky bargain one more time.

The next day, Adrian was escorted into the Kremlin exactly as he predicted. True to his word, he promised the Ascendancy his loyalty, and in exchange, the Ascendancy would send a teacher.

And finally, just finally, Adrian would discover where he came from.



Known past lives
The Second Age – Asristin, World Governor of the 9th Domain
The Third Age – Arikan, Dreadlord under the command of the Chosen, Demandred
The Fourth Age – Unknown
The Fifth Age – Unknown
The Sixth Age – Morpheus, leader of the Oneiroi of the court of Hades
The Seventh Age – Unknown


Psychological description
Arrogant but can be charming, particularly toward women, when he wants. He has a temper that flares hot when provoked or denied what he believes he is owed. He is a hard worker, disciplined, but will cheat the system when he can. He has a mind for strategy, and in this Age, applies it to management of money and business. He will avoid taking advantage of the innocent or helpless but can justify the means to an end if necessary. He doesn’t try too hard. His loyalty once pledged is held true, but any hint of betrayal will rot away any former ties that bind. For this, he is estranged from his adopted parents, whom he still believes will not tell him the truth of his origin. Deep down he lacks self-confidence, probably due to the rejection from his birth parents, and as such, compensates with a commitment to improving his appearance, wearing designer clothing, and purchasing other symbols of status.

Physical description
6”1” tall. He is of British nationality and raised in a relatively small coastal town and attended a private preparatory school several hours away from London. He has a strong, prominent jawline, curly brown hair, a deep voice and muscular physique. He is fluent in French, can casually converse in Italian and German, and can order a beer in Russian. He traditionally wears a signet "gentleman's" ring featuring his adopted family’s coat of arms on the small finger of his left hand as a reminder that he isn’t one of them.



*Ascendancy dialogue written in via PM
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