This is the tenth in a series of character profiles for my upcoming July Camp Nano Project.

As the gods attack Rochester, a group of R.I.T. students and their friends must get out of the city, before it’s too late.

Kim Cooper – Environmental Science

Kim won’t say that she helped form Oak and Rowan, or that she helped shape it, or anything of the sort – but all of these things are true. Oak and Rowan started when she was a freshman, in part because of a conversation she had with Raven and a few others in a drunken post-gaming-session hangout.

Kim has always been in the background of the sessions – she prefers to listen rather than talk, to suggest rather than demand, to be led rather than to lead – but she has always been there, often ignored but never far from sight.

And the truth is that, while many of the members of Oak and Rowan do have small psychic powers, Kim needed the group far more than others. Her powers woke at puberty, and, while she’s never had a proper Change, neither has she ever had anyone explain any of this to her.

Kim does, as mentioned, play D&D, and – as she’s been friends with Raven since freshman year – she does spend a lot of time hanging out with the Thursday Night Swamp Drink, although she tends to blend into the background – just one of the guys – as she does most places she chooses to be.

She’s average height, just about 5’6″ tall, and slim; her hair hangs perfectly straight down to her shoulders in a line of chestnut brown; most of her is brown – hair, eyes, skin – and she tends to either hunch or, in moments of stress, stand in a very “guard” position: feed shoulder-width apart, shoulders thrown back.

She has never mentioned the feeling of wings that aren’t quite there, but they are always with her; she’s never Changed, but she can flip time back in 30-second intervals in a very small radius.

She’s more comfortable outdoors than in, more comfortable alone than in groups, more comfortable protecting than being protected.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/725416.html. You can comment here or there.

First in a series of stories leading up to my Camp Nano Project – this one stars Lewis.

For information on the events they’re discussing, see faeapoclive and faeapoclive

“I know a guy on one of the research teams.” Blake had claimed the best seat, the way Blake did, his back to the biggest tree and his left hand next to the cooler.

Lewis had considered doing his usual new-guy-takes-bitch-seat, on the far side with his back to the path, but something about Blake just irritated him, so he sat with the cooler to his right hand and fed sticks into the fire. Technically, they weren’t supposed to have fires out here without staff supervision. Technically, most of them weren’t old enough to drink yet.

Technicalities didn’t seem to matter much with this group… and, unlike other groups he’d hung out with, the real world didn’t seem to bother the group much with those technical issues, either. Not once in his first year here had they been interrupted by campus safety.

“Yeah, they’re digging into those strange ‘shapes’ up in Wales.” As far as Lewis could tell, nobody had asked Blake anything, but that didn’t stop the guy from talking. “Not sure what they think they’ll find.”

“Do you think it’s an ooofo?” Joanne had been drinking when she got here, and was now draped across Lewis’ and Rob’s feet, with one hand splayed over Blake’s. Lewis was spending at least a quarter of his attention keeping her out of the fire, which was probably, if he was being honest with himself, at least part of her intent. “Making the weirdnesses?”

“Well, inasmuch as anyone belives in You. Efff. Ohs…” Blake was going to go off again…

“Carley!” Joanne popped to her feet as if she didn’t have a drop of beer in her. “Carley you came!“

Lewis leaned back against his camp chair and watched them. He had beer, and it was good beer. The fire needed another log, and he added it. Blake started to talk, and Lewis ignored him.

All in all, it was a decent Thursday.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/724272.html. You can comment here or there.

This is the ninth in a series of character profiles for my upcoming July Camp Nano Project.

As the gods attack Rochester, a group of R.I.T. students and their friends must get out of the city, before it’s too late.

Byron Aguilar – Biomedical Sciences

Byron doesn’t actually know Raven, the Oak and Rowan group, or the gaming group – he has a class with Dorian, and thinks she’s cute, but that’s the closest he comes.

He’s in his third year at R.I.T., studying Biomed and aiming to go to med school when he’s done here. He’s always had a knack for first aid – he was a Boy Scout and everything – and considers medicine to be a good growth career as well.

He’s been noting the strange things on the news all summer – but only in that “passing by his Twitter Feed” sort of way, and so not all that commonly. Byron, taking classes four quarters/year as is common for R.I.T., doesn’t really have time to do a whole lot of delving into the news. What free time he has that isn’t spent in schoolwork, he likes to spend watching football and basketball, cooking, and engaging in lapidary and occasional rock-hounding.

Byron isn’t all that tall – 5 foot seven – and he’s stocky, wide for his height. He’s got eyes that are almost red, skin that is a ruddy brown, and short-cropped straight black hair.

His rock-collecting and jewelry-setting is a hobby he learned from his maternal grandfather, who made jewelry professionally until arthritis made it impossible.

He grew up in Burlington, Vermont, and chose R.I.T. not only for the location – not-home but close enough to drive if he wanted – but for its academics. The potential of gods laying claim to the city obviously never made its way into his calculations.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/724026.html. You can comment here or there.

This is the eighth in a series of character profiles for my upcoming July Camp Nano Project.

The story follows the flight of a group – students and their friends – from Rochester, NY; as the world crumbles around them, where can they possibly go for safety?

Sophia Kennedy
Education Major (Theatre Minor), Nazareth College

Nazareth is a good college. It’s good for education, it’s got a solid reputation… and it’s really not the place you go if you want to play Shadowrun. Which is how Sophia ended up spending Tuesday nights – and then Friday nights and then Thursday nights – hanging out at R.I.T.

She didn’t expect it to be her crowd at first – too techy, too male, too numbers-crunchy when she wanted story – but after a bit, she found that if she talked to the right people, she could end up in games she enjoyed.

And then someone mentioned Oak & Rowan, and Soph, who had always been just a little interested in the supernatural, found herself Very Interested. She met Craig there, and Jason, Ess and Galen – and that’s how she found herself settling into lotus at one of Raven’s special gatherings.

Sophia is short, five foot nothing, and looks younger than her calendar age. Her blonde hair falls into chin-length sausage curls – the length an attempt to get it to behave which failed miserably – and her eyes are cornflower blue; people who should know better sometimes call her Little Shirley Temple.

She’s always been an outdoors sort and hopes to teach ecology when she gets out of school; she’s been taking classes for that at University of Rochester during the summer. She has a particular knack for animals that some call uncanny.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/723897.html. You can comment here or there.

This is the seventh in a series of character profiles for my upcoming July Camp Nano Project.

The story follows a large-and-growing group’s flight from Rochester, NY in search of safety from
the monsters and the war.

Galen Strauss

Galen isn’t even a student at R.I.T.

He met Emmett and a group of his friends at a bar – he was hustling pool, and he ended up almost losing, which impressed him.

The third night of pool led to him being invited to one of Anelle’s famous parties, which led to The Girl Called Candy inviting him to come to another party. And that, in its turn, led to several things:

For one, he found that Emmett and The Girl Called Candy regularly played pool at another downtown bar on Thursday nights. For another, he found that they had a Friday night poker game – and managed to win himself an invitation.

For a sideline, he and The Girl Called Candy ended up having a bit of a fling here and there.

And, while he was playing pool on Thursdays and thus couldn’t ever make it to Raven’s swamp-drinking parties, he did end up meeting Ess, who had pretty much been declared Raven’s second-in-command (whatever there was to “command”) at those poker nights, and started spending Sunday nights with Ess’s friends playing Vampire Tag in the local playground.

Galen is a nice even 6 foot tall; he’s slim and athletic looking and, when he’s not hustling either pool or poker, likes to jog and makes a decent living fixing cars. His eyes are greenish hazel, he keeps his chestnut hair cut very short to avoid the curl, and his skin is a dark burnished tan. His hands are long-fingered, and he’s missing the last joint of his left pinkie finger; there are three long scars along his right hand.

People at his current job call him the Truck Whisperer, although, they say, it oughta be the Truck Yeller.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/723495.html. You can comment here or there.