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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shayuri" data-source="post: 5018826" data-attributes="member: 4936">Name: SilhouetteVirtue: PrudenceVice: Lust (dreams)Seeming: DarklingCourt: None yetKith: MirrorskinExperience 0Appearance: Silhouette is nervous about using what she thinks of as her 'real' form; that is, the face she was born with, and therefore changes appearances fairly often and freely. She's something of a connoisseur of faces and bodies, and what they reveal of the person underneath. In her true natural form...if natural applies...she is little more than a wraithlike shadow; a featureless humanoid outline in black like a hole in the world shaped like a person. She avoids taking this form whenever possible, though it has the advantage of total anonymity.Personality: Silhouette has two great motivators since her escape from Arcadia. Fear of recapture, and a yearning desire to experience dreams. Since she no longer has dreams of her own, she dreams vicariously through others. As an extension of this perhaps is her love of immersing herself in the inner lives of others. There are few moments she treasures more than when someone opens up to her and describes how they think, how they feel, how they see the world around them. At those moments Silhouette feels as if she not only briefly touches that person's soul, but her own as well. Mental Attributes:Intelligence - 3, Wits - 3, Resolve - 2Physical Attributes:Strength - 1, Dexterity - 4, Stamina - 2Social Attributes:Presence - 2, Manipulation - 2, Composure - 2Physical Skills: 4Athletics *Stealth ***Social Skills: 11Empathy ***Expression (Acting) ***Subterfuge (Lying) ***Socialize **Mental Skills: 7Academics ***Investigation *Science (Psychology) ***Merits:Wyrd +1 ***New Identity **Resources **ContractsDream ***- Pathfinder ***** Learn about local Hedge. (Pick Thorn, shed blood, within last day)- Forging ***** Edit dream. (Touch dreamer and own temple for duration.)- Bastion No Roll, Conjure dream weapons/armor. (Carry favor from enemy, family, or love)Darkness **- Creeping Dread **** (- Resolve)- Night's Subtle Distractions *****Willpower: 4Clarity: 7Health: 7Initiative: 6Defense: 3Speed: 11Wyrd: 2Glamour: 5/11Glamour per Turn: 2Experience Spendy: Possessions:Background: Rachel Collins was fresh out of college with a Master's degree, a wad of bills, and a fierce commitment to her chosen field of psychology when she took her first steps on the road to ruin. Making ends meet while going for a doctorate was hard going, and in addition to her job as a graduate student teacher, she did some moonlighting for a staff professor who ran the campus sleep lab. Research into sleep disorders and therapy techniques was the order of the day, and Rachel often found herself covering lonely graveyard shifts with slumbering subjects and a binder full of homework to keep her company.And, of course, Tenebrae; The Lady of Unheard Screams...but she did not know that then. All she knew was that there was a curious 'glitch' on the scan results for one of the patients. A man who suffered terrible recurring nightmares that made his sleep all but worthless and who estimated that he hadn't had a full night's rest in years. His EEG showed a peculiar tendency to have a second set of tracks, though they were ghostly and faint, and other researchers dismissed it as equipment glitch. Rachel, with her hours to burn, decided to look more closely. What she saw was both unnerving and confusing. The second track wasn't just random squiggles. It seemed related to the man's, but not as a reflection or anything obviously suggesting a false reading. Rather, whenever the subject's track showed the frantic, jagged activity that suggested a nightmare in progress, the second track assumed a slow, smooth wave that Rachel thought would be appropriate for a person in a very relaxed state of enjoyment. As the nightmare squiggles smoothed out somewhat, the second track started getting progressively more and more jerky and scribbly...until the next nightmare started.Rachel thought that kind of complex interaction didn't make sense for a glitch. And it was reliable. She checked back through older sheets and saw the same pattern...at least in the cases where it hadn't been redacted out. What made it unnerving was that it sort of made sense...but only if you thought of it as two people. One of them had nightmares, while the other one watched them happily, like someone watching a movie. Once the nightmare ended, the other one got slowly more and more restless and bored, until finally the next one began. But the only source for these signals was the subject's head. Two people...one head?Ambitious, Rachel thought she smelled a thesis subject. Multiple personalities influencing each other during sleep? It was pure gold! But she needed more evidence. Something conclusive. Something like...a CAT scan taken while he was asleep. Her idea was that actually watching the brain activity would validate the EEG results. Getting the permissions was difficult, but she managed to make a good case. And so she was watching the shifting blobs of color of the scan late that night when the unthinkable happened.The CAT scan started, finally, to show signs of that strange dual activity...and then the colors on the screen bled into each other to show what looked like the impression of a face staring out of the subject's brain. Rachel was trying to figure out what that meant when the face opened its eyes...and its eyes looked like real ones; not the vague whorls of color of a CAT scan, but real eyes staring out of the monitor directly at Rachel. As she stared back, completely flabbergasted, a snippet of Nietzche flitted through her brain...about Abysses and staring, and what they do back. Then there was a loud CLACK of emergency breakers, and the lights went out. A moment later the backups came on. Rachel turned around to get a flashlight...and the darkness in the room behind her grabbed her.She was not seen again. Oddly, the man suffering nightmares reported that he'd slept well that night, and he continued sleeping well thereafter; as if the disappeared graduate student was a price paid for that one small comfort...</blockquote>

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