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Pendra
Stats:
Age: early thirties
Sex: female
Strengths: near-limitless endurance; skilled manipulator of people; extensive magic ability; able fighter
Weaknesses: occasional over-reliance on magical abilities; detached, world-weary outlook; tends not to get involved in larger-scale problems anymore
Race: human
World Setting: Earth-like, transitional period from pre-modern to early modern, low-magic

About your character:

We were running out of time, and nobody had any answers; not the priests, not the scholars, not even the mages. Harsh winters were nothing new to us, but spring had never failed to follow. It had been five years late and counting when we finally had a plan. If there was nothing to be done for this world, we were going to find refuge in another.

Not everyone is able to endure the stresses of crossing planes. Those of us who could were taught everything we needed to know: how to travel, what to look for in each place we visited, how to keep in contact with each other and, most importantly, how to survive under any circumstances. We'd have to learn the rest on our own, but we weren't chosen for being slow-witted.

The last thing they asked was for volunteers; anyone who didn't want to go wouldn't be forced to. There were four of us in the end. I said my last goodbyes to my friends, my family, and my sister, then stepped out into the cold.

Death:

Death is just another way of travelling between planes, albeit one of the less-desirable options. As unpleasant as the actual dying part can be, it means a little less each time you wake up in some place you don't recognize, with a pounding headache and aching all over. After ten years' worth of accidents, mistakes, and just plain bad luck, you learn to take it in stride.

There are places in every plane where it is easier to travel through to another, but getting to these places can be dangerous. This last one happened to be high in some yeti-infested mountains. You had to be quick on your feet, which is not so easy when you're bundled up in fur and leather, covering treacherous, unfamiliar ground. One of the nasty things caught sight of me as I passed and gave chase. In hindsight, it would have been better to stand my ground and keep taking it slow, because one crumbling foothold later, there was nowhere left to stand at all.

Fate:

I've seen enough to know that it doesn't matter. Until we find another home, or somebody gives word for us to come back, we have to keep looking. I have to keep looking.

Dave McCarthy

Stats: 28/Male
Occupation: Translator
Strengths: Linguistic Skills, Mathematics and Logic Puzzles, Running and other Outdoor Activities
Weaknesses: Expressing Emotions, Controlling Impulses, Practical Life Skills, Being on Time
Race: human, ethnicity: Irish/Israeli
World Setting: Present-Day Earth, United States, Los Angeles, CA


About your character

My relevant life starts at 19, when I dropped out of college. I had received a scholarship to Stanford to study biochemistry. So I did. And on a weekly basis, I drank enough liquor to kill a bear, and I felt nothing.

That summer I backpacked and biked across eastern Europe and parts of Asia with mere change in my pocket. By the time I was sitting on the ship back home, I had brushed with death so many times I could feel the reaper over my shoulder. I discovered a knack for language (I can speak thirteen and counting), but I also picked up a few vices along the way, which eventually lead to my employment with one of the larger drug cartels in Los Angeles.

For the past three years, I've worked as a translator to negotiate the sale and transport of drugs (and far worse things) into Los Angeles. I travel around the world with people who do terrible things, and I help them do terrible things in any language they like.

I would have stopped being able to live with myself a long time ago if she hadn't wandered in my life. I always thought love was as simple as finding someone so amazing that, even though she accepts you as you are, her overwhelming amazingness forces you to look inside and change every ugly part of yourself. For once, I was right. Too bad I never got around to it.

Death:
I had thought before of the ways I might die. It even occurred to me that I could be killed by my own employers. It probably would have been foolish to not entertain the possibility. But I didn't think it would be like this.

I never saw doubt, fear, anxiety or anger on the face of my employer as I sat in the car with him. Not one emotion that ever told me I was about to die. I only started to wonder when I stepped out of the car, into that empty field, and no one followed me. The car drove away, leaving me alone with the telephone lines and the dry grasses that grew up to my waist. A slight breeze. The smell of dirt after rain.

Then a blow to the back of my head. I never saw the faces of my assailants, not that it would matter. I remember wondering if the coolness on my neck was my blood, and if she'd ever learn the truth.



Fate
I've never really been one to believe in anything without tangible evidence, least of all an afterlife. Heaven, Hell, Hades, Nirvana, God...whatever. It just never made sense to me. I never felt the presence of something bigger than myself.

I saw people, with their unwavering conviction to something they never saw, felt or heard, and it did nothing but confuse me. I never had that much conviction about anything, even indisputable facts. For a long time, I resented their certainty. I resented the way they failed to doubt. But, I let it go a long time ago.

That I've wound up here poses some questions. I've been wrong my entire life about the persistence of consciousness after death. How wrong, though, remains to be seen. Will I be punished for never believing while I was alive? Will I be reborn? What am I now? A “soul”?

Still, I'm not afraid. Not really. The idea of ending up in the ground and ceasing to exist made me feel nothing. Being conscious lets me feel something, at least...the lingering hope of seeing her again...