I'm not much of a roleplayer, so I figured I'd start with some storytelling, by way of blog. I'll post it here, too, since Aidan Temple is my DJ's persona.
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I used to believe in magic.
'Solitary practitioner' was the term, back in the day. Back before the Internet, you were pretty much by yourself, if you didn't have a mentor, or a bunch of like-minded friends. The old adage of a mentor arriving when you are ready for them is true enough, but I didn't need one for very long. Once I had a firm grounding in the fundamentals, I moved on and made do by myself. Too much dogma for my taste, and far too controlling. But she did give me a solid base upon which to build, and for that I should be grateful. She taught me to breathe, and through breath, to focus. To meditate. Through breath, she taught me to draw power, and in the drawing, learn to sense it. And beyond sensing, to control. To shape.
Four years later, I had enough skill to get by. And I did pretty well for myself. With a magician's cultivated good fortune, I had more than enough money to get by. Events conspired naturally in my favour, both the result of my disciplined attitude - for a disciplined mind attracts the circumstances it allows itself to dwell upon - and from the workings I performed from time to time. And with time, I needed to rely on those workings less and less often, as is normal for a magical practitioner. I understood that magic is a thing of subtle influence, and I utilised those influences to get me what I wanted out of life. Better grades at school than I had earned, for example. A string of relationships - both long-term and short - with girls and women who found themselves attracted to me in a way they weren't attracted to other men. An edge over other job applicants. Stuff like that. By the age of thirty-two, I had what I wanted out of life, including a career that balanced ease and lack of responsibility with the kind of wage I wanted, and a wife and a baby daughter who I loved with all my heart.
And then a bug crawled in my mouth while I slept, next to my wife. While our baby girl slept between us.
You know some of what happened next. The onset of the power. The loss - and then learning - of the rudiments of control. I left at the first sign, and I stayed away until I could consciously control the raw power that my newly-transformed body wicked from the very fabric of the universe. Then I focused on learning to control it unconsciously, until I knew that control wouldn't slip from my grasp when I got distracted or angry, or when I was asleep. Being a magician helped with that. I already understood the fundamentals of control and intention, and I had a handle on how to shape energy to my will, albeit on a far smaller scale. But the mechanism is the same - it starts and ends with the control of one's own thoughts, until they are as reliable and dexterous as the fingers on your hand. With my head start, it only took a week, and throughout that time I stayed in touch with Christine. Christine, who already knew about and believed in magic. Christine, who trusted me, as always, to do what was right for our family. Christine, my love.
But on my way home, I got clipped by a car, and knocked into the path of a truck. For us, that first death is often the product of violence, but for me, it was just bad luck. The worst luck, for the man everyone praised for having only good luck. For the man who cultivated luck like a gardener cultivates a garden, with skill and patience and a little finesse. That first death. Terrifying for a moment, and then exhilerating, the pain over and done with so fast it's as though it was never there at all. Retaining consciousness the whole while, and suddenly finding yourself in the drowned world. That magnetic, overwhelming pull from the nearest anima well. The colours flashing back into existence. Clothing yourself with new flesh as easily as thinking, almost without any effort at all. And then you know. You don't believe, you know. You are immortal. You did not just cheat death, or somehow avoid it. Physical death is now impossible, because you are no longer a being dependant on a physical body. Your spiritual self has been so empowered that your physical self is just no longer relevant. It is only a means through which you access the physical realm, and unlike your former self, if your body dies, you create another in an eyeblink. There is no second death now. There is only death, and inevitable resurrection.
For my Christine, that was the limit. Magical influences were just a part of life. Dangerous, physical manifestations of power were a new part of that life, but a part nonetheless, and she could live with those. As long as they weren't a danger to our baby girl. But not this. Not immortality.
To her, the body that was destroyed at the moment of my resurrection was an essential part of me. When I got home,sShe cringed away from me, and started to cry. I told her what happened, and then she told me not to touch her. Not ever again. Her husband was dead, and I was something else. This was not the body she'd made love to so many times. These weren't the hands that had held hers on our wedding day.
And I wasn't the father of her daughter. All the biological material that made me, me, and that I shared with our beautiful little Mia, was gone. I was just shaped like him.
She'll be turning four soon.
-Aidan