[sblock=wall of text]Mage Character Concept
Life On Hold
Twenty six year old Sandra Dean had a good start on a career in the corporate offices of a successful New England restaurant chain as a junior accountant. There was not much remarkable about the budding young pencil pusher. She did her work up to performance standards, she filled up a cup of decaf coffee each morning, and she left at 5 pm on the dot. There was no apparent reason for anyone to suspect that over the course of three years, Sandra's hatred for her job simmered slowly over a low flame.
She had nowhere left to go in that career. She had risen up from being a waitress to an assistant manager. Her talent with keeping the books landed her a job in the regional office. But without a degree or a certification, which cost money, she was stuck.
Sandra crunched figures every hour of every day. She tallied up the bottom line for various branches and delivered her reports to her supervisor who signed his name at the bottom of her work. She fretted over misplaced receipts or accounts that didn't balance out. But what truly wore her down was that she tried so hard to care, but couldn't. She didn't care about unearned revenue or depreciated assets. No matter how much effort she gave to the company, her check was still the same every two weeks. She was crossing off her life, one calendar day at a time, like a prisoner counting the days she has been in jail with tick marks on the wall.
Doubts And Rediscovery
Sandra's anguish truly came with a faith crisis when the weight of her mortality hit her like a freight train. The concept of oblivion, nothingness after death terrified her to the core of her being. She was twenty five years into her life. A quarter of it was already over, assuming she was lucky enough to reach a hundred. Her work performance, already starting to suffer, plunged dramatically. At the advice of one of her eclectic friends, she found comfort in the new age sections of bookstores.
Sandra eventually lost her job by quitting and being fired at pretty much the same time. By that time, she was forming a new circle of friends and accumulating a personal library of new age spirituality books. Though she felt a stronger, comforting connection to her idea of a soul, she was still wandering. She was lost in a sea of doubt and haunting questions. They weren't anything new. Who was she? Where did she come from? Where was she going? She drifted between jobs and residences as she searched for answers within herself and in her readings. She dabbled in Cabala, Wicca, Astral Projection, and other hedge wizardry, constantly trying to find something that would satisfy her curiosity and give her soul a sense of peace.
Awakening
A year passed. Sandra was barely recognizable from the blouse, skirt and heels wearing cubicle dweller she was before. She was back to waitressing and living with roommates to pay the rent and was still trying to find some sort of truth out of her existence. Sandra knew that there had to be more to reality than science could ever measure, no matter how far it advanced.
It happened without warning. It was a beautiful summer forest with warm sunlight washing through a swaying canopy of leaves that caressed the sky. The sound of the breeze was dull and muted, distant. The grass and dirt tickled her bare feet as she wandered naked for years through the woods. She never encountered anything else. Not a bird or insect nor rain or snow. Her worries and cares were gone.
As suddenly as Sandra found herself in the tranquil forest, she came upon a lake in a clearing. It drew her in with a siren song. She waded into the water that was neither hot, nor cold, nor wet. It devoured her and surrounded her in a vast and impenetrable void. It was a starless night of perfect silence. She screamed, thrashed, tore at her body. Breath and speech left her. She was smothered out of existence.
Then she woke, on her 4:30 bus to work that she must have boarded a lifetime ago. She was in her uniform, carrying her purse, and she had something else. A sixth sense that was totally new.
Sandra stepped off of that bus several stops after hers, a mage.
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