Third in a series of stories leading up to my Camp Nano Project – this one features Jennifer and is a practice at finding Raven’s First-person voice.

Jennifer made it first to the Thursday Fire this week, which was a first. She’d been coming to my gatherings – and other people’s – for almost a year, but this was the first time I’d actually been alone with her.

“I brought bitch beers.” She held up the six-packs: Mike’s Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice. “And a bunch of stuff.”

“Stuff?” I popped open the cooler for the beer, and tried, “You’re here early.”

“I know.” She flopped into a chair to my left and started unpacking a Wegman’s bag onto the ground. “But I had to hit the bakery before it closed, so I thought I’d just come here. Hope you don’t mind.” She glanced over at me, her hair falling into her face and making her look, for once, a little bit vulnerable.

“Not at all.” It wasn’t a lie, not really, even it it wasn’t the whole truth. “Just, ah, surprised me.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m not really good at the whole social thing, you know…”

“That’s the point, more or less.” I gave her a smile, one of the sort that at least mostly feels genuine. “None of us really are.”

“You started a social gathering for people who are bad at being social?”

“Well, technically, I started hanging out with Ess and ‘Nelle, and ‘Nelle collects people…”

“Looks to me like you collect people.” She popped open a bottle of the lemonade. “Want one?”

“Sure.” I couldn’t get drunk that easily, anyway. And Ess and everyone should be here soon… hopefully. “Nah. Anelle collects. I just.. hunh. Coordinate.”

I liked that. Coordinate.

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This is the twelfth 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.

Rebecca James, Political Science

Faith isn’t something that’s always come easily to Rebecca. Her family was always religious, although not often devout; the disparity between the show of faith required and the behaviors beyond that show of faith dispirited a teenage Rebecca and sent her away from the church for a while.

In her first year at R.I.T, finding herself surrounded by illegal and immoral – and, more importantly, non-conducive to studying – behaviors, Rebecca turned to her faith as a way to cope. She found the Interfaith Council, where she met Juan and Pauline, and found there what she’d been missing in her family’s religious practices.

She’s a senior now, and has ended up the de facto leader of the group – their nominal head rarely makes it to meetings, and it is assumed he has the position because his father is their staff adviser. It’s the same sort of thing that bothered Rebecca in her church back home – but her time in the Interfaith Council and her own renewed faith have allowed her to handle it much better; she works around other people’s lack of belief and does not expect them to be more pious than they are.

Rebecca is medium-height, 5’4″ tall, round in all the right places, with an easy smile that contrasts with her often-studious expression. She has warm brown skin and hair a couple shades darker; her hair falls in loose curls to mid-back when she wears it down, which is rarely. She moves like she belongs wherever she is, a trick she learned from her father.

She’s gotten into marathon running in the last two years, adding an amazing stamina and rock-hard muscles to her curvy frame. When she’s not studying – Dean’s List and a 3.98 GPA – she’s often finding new uses for discarded things – in a rich-student school like RIT, there’s no dearth of that. If she had the time, she’d probably minor in sculptural art.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/729572.html. You can comment here or there.

– first person or third person limited?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/729033.html. You can comment here or there.

Second in a series of stories leading up to my Camp Nano Project – this one stars Emmett and the mentioned Jo & Cadey.

“You.”

Emmett tried not to jump. People weren’t supposed to come up behind you and say you like that. Not even in a room full of nerds. Not even in a cafeteria full of gaming nerds.

“Me?” The rest of the players at the table were looking over his shoulder. He couldn’t tell much from their reactions – some annoyed, some amused, some confused, standard “someone is interrupting the game” faces. He was going to have to turn around – which struck him as a trap.

“Five minute piss break.” DK, the DM, stood up, pushing himself away from the table. “Come on people, smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.”

“You.” A second voice came from behind Emmett, and a hand landed on each of his shoulders. The second voice, more definitely female and slightly more firm, was almost in his ear. “Are you going to Anelle’s Samhain party?”

If he turned around, the nice hands on his shoulder were either going to vanish or turn into something terrifying. Schrodinger’s Girl: If he didn’t open the box, it was going to turn out okay.

“Who’s what now?”

The chairs to either side of him creaked. Don and Pony had abandoned him. “Anelle’s. She throws these awesome parties and her Samhain parties are the best. But you have to have an invite. Do you have an invite?”

That was the slightly-less-girly sounding voice. But it really was rude to talk to people and not look at them. Emmett turned first to the speaker and then to the other.

Two adorably hopeful smiles grinned back at him. The second speaker tapped his shoulder again, perkily. “You should come with us.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/727645.html. You can comment here or there.

This is the eleventh 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?

Douglas King
Game Design & Development

Douglas went to R.I.T. because it was one of the best, and because they offered impressive scholarships and a five-year combined Masters/Bachelor’s program. He got into Game Design because it was a good career move, and because the concepts of game design interested him.

He got into the Friday night Shadowrun game because game design didn’t stop at computers, and the Tuesday D&D game for the same reason – and because Aih played in the Tuesday game, and Aih had a smile that lit up the world.

He got into Anelle’s parties because he met Jordan in one of his classes & she invited him; he got into the parties because the people there seemed more laid-back than the guys on his floor and more intense than the stoners in the quad.

From Anelle’s parties it was a pretty easy jump to Oak & Rowan. It really wasn’t his thing, not to begin with, but Aih was there, and Aih not only had a lovely smile, but she saw the world in a way nobody else Douglas had ever met did.

And from there it was a skip and a hop to Raven’s Thursday night drinking in the swamp, and closing his eyes to the world and opening them to the other world.

Douglas is a wee bit on the short side – 5 foot seven – and a whole lot on the skinny side – barely over 100 lbs. He has dark skin, nearly ebony in shade, and eyes that shifted to a light blue-grey at puberty. His hands are almost clawlike, although that could be attributed to his thinness.

His hobby is 3D rendering; nearsighted AND farsighted, sometimes he feels like he can see space better in programming than he can in real life.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/726918.html. You can comment here or there.

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.

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