Starforged/background
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Contents |
Family History
February 1982 – Rose dies at the age of 44, weakening and fading in a matter of days like a flower cut from the vine. Hank finds himself far from any life he or his family could have envisioned for him, with an infant who has his wife’s moonlight hair and his daughter’s expressive gray eyes. He decides that as the world has turned from him, so shall he turn from the world, and that Harper will never be so foolish or weak.
5 Jan, 1981 – Harper born amidst a terrible blizzard, Laurel dying shortly thereafter of complications that Rose couldn’t touch – fated wounds can’t be headed off by a novice of Life, no matter how dedicated.
December 1980 – Laurel returns home
November 1980 – Thanksgiving, Geoff disappears for whatever reason
October 1980 – Laurel turns 19
November 1979 – Geoff turns 21
October 1979 – Laurel turns 18
August 1979 – Laurel brings Geoff home to Rose and Hank, Hank turns them away with choice words. Geoff is a smug, young city boy
May/June 1979 – Laurel is a flighty sweet darling of the town, though everyone knows she is not cut out for farm living. She constantly has her head in the clouds and collects whatever she can of city culture – music, posters, etc. After graduating high school she has a break with her parents and Laurel runs away to work in Helena. She finds a job waitressing and meets Geoff, falls head over heels for her prince and sets up housekeeping
October 1961 – Laurel Marie O’Connell is born on the farm, the result of a grotesque act of hubris on the part of Rose to guarantee a direct bloodline inheritance for the farm – Fate for Rose to see her first grandchild. Rose and Hank have been married for five springs. Hank proceeds to spoil the miracle child stupid.
May 1959 – Rose turns 22, (Jack Jr is 25 and hasn’t been heard from in over a year, Joan is 20 and has been married for two years, currently in Texas pregnant with her second, Ash is 15 and most of the town is hoping he’ll pick up and leave soon.) Illness strikes her mother and she moves back to the farm, hoping to be able to heal Ash and herself as well. By the following spring, Rose’s mother has died, her father committing suicide after Ash burnt down the doctor’s house and the fire took out half a street of prestigious residences, unable to face the shame alone. Rose refuses to leave the farm again, Hank figures out that he can have his career or his marriage and moves to Montana permanently, becoming a farmer and helping the town rebuild. His elder brother does not suffer the loss well and severs contact. (the words backwater witch are in here somewhere.)
February 1959 – Hank turns 25
November 1958 – Geoffrey Christian Mallory born
May 1956 - Rose turns 19 (Jack Jr. is 22 and a soldier stationed overseas, Joan is 17 and being courted by a nice local boy with prospects and an uncle in Texas, Laurel would have been 15, Ash is 12 and already the town’s wild child/black sheep) Rose does not do well in the city, between the buildings and the politics, she tries to keep her misery from affecting Hank, and for a while he is too wrapped up in his career to notice that what all the other wives want may not be what Rose wants.
Spring Equinox 1956 – Rose and Hank get married in a small Native American Ceremony, the following Saturday with a judge and hoopla in the Chicago political scene. Rose moves to Chicago where Hank joins a prestigious architecture firm and makes a name for himself as a rising star.
September 1952 – Prior to starting his sophomore year at Northwestern, Hank and his brother are invited to the hunting lodge belonging to one of the senior partners at his brother’s firm. Hank finds a delicately built, pale long haired blonde girl wandering barefoot in the woods and his life begins a drastic left turn. Rose carries that amazing intensity of all Thyrsus and the calm self assuredness of all people who grow up too quickly. She’s young, entirely uneducated and completely unacceptable to the political climate back east. Hank’s brother and Rose take an immediate disliking to each other that lays the groundwork for years of unpleasantness. Regardless, Hank and Rose maintain contact through letters and visits and Hank finds that every other woman he meets cannot measure up to the vision of the girl running through the trees with her hair a wild flowing ribbon behind her.
May 1952 – Rose turns 15
February 1952 – Hank turns 19
August 1951 – Laurel dies at the age of 10, Rose Awakens
May 1951 – Rose turns 14
1944 – Robert Ashley Baker is born (Ash)
1941 – Laurel Elizabeth Baker is born
1939 – Joan Margaret Baker is born
May 1937 – Rosemary Genevieve Baker is born (Rose)
1934 – Gerald Allen Baker III is born (Jack Jr.)
February 1933 – Henry Matthew O’Connell is born (Hank)
Harper's History
Harper never knew much of her parents. She has the vague idea that her mother had “gotten in trouble” at a young age and that her father had deserted her. Her mother returned to the Montana family farm in disgrace, dying in childbirth in the howling winter. Harper was raised by her traditional grandfather, an intelligent, strong man who remains fiercely independent of the outside world. She was technically homeschooled, or that was what she wrote on her college applications anyway. And in a way, her education was more integrated into her life than a more common course of study could ever be. Science and mythology, critical and creative thinking, were a part of every chore, every pastime. The kitchen was a chemistry lab, the small smithy her first materials lab. She loved working with metals and she took over most of the metal work required for the farm, whenever she was strong enough to manipulate the material, or could find a way to use a tool to allow her to accomplish what was needed to be done. A walk in the woods was a lesson in nature and history and legends relating to anything and everything. She grew up in a world of questions and symbols, each layered on one another, every experience examined for its meaning according to several systems of rules, physical and spiritual both.
She grew up in a world rich with examination and consideration. Where time and care were spent on every activity, with little use for frivolity. There is not a large margin for survival as a small independent farm to begin with, and Grandfather was determined that Harper would have the calm reason her mother had lacked, so discipline was strict and utility was praised. If someone explained to her the Confucian ideal of Ritual, where one does honor to the gods by respecting fully every banal activity of life, she would not recognize that dedication in her life, but she does embody it.
Visits to towns larger than Cut Bank were rare, loud, and exciting. Again, her grandfather wished her to learn to value what he felt to be the only good way to live before she got all confused by the trappings of modern society and city life. In her later teens, her grandfather insisted that she test and apply for colleges, demanding that she see more of the world. When she resisted he reminded her that only educated choices can be said to truly be made, all sides must be examined before you can say to understand a thing. She tested well, strong in math and science and acceptable in English. She entered a rural university, living on her own and focusing completely on her studies. Her knowledge of literature was poor, though her college classes in literary analysis were similar enough to her grandfather asking her to examine the oral traditions of her Irish heritage and the local Native American legends that she never did poorly in them. She was always happier with more hands on activities, and chose to major in material science, enjoying metallurgy. She excelled in laboratory classes, and achieved reasonable grades in theory classes through diligence and her practice of translating any new theory into its applications and understanding and visualizing those.
She continued her metal work, filling most of her electives with art classes, and falling in love with jewelry making, despite its vanity. It became her guilty pleasure. Her slender, quick fingers and fanciful mind allowed her to create amazingly intricate pieces, while her knowledge of metals meant she used materials beyond the usual silver and gold, creating wearable, expressive art from copper, titanium, and steels as well. Her signature, in all she does, is the demonstration of a high level of patience and perfected grace – in jewelry this is an impressive level of detail. For her graduation, her grandfather surprised her with a complete set of tools, small crucible, hammer and tongs for a moveable, miniature smithy specifically designed for jewelry, able to be fit into any corner with a workbench.
She returned to the farm whenever she could, always feeling a little off center, as if she’d been misplaced, when she was ‘outside’ as she thought of it. She never quite got comfortable with her classmates – she quickly found that she had little in common with most other teenagers, and since she didn’t care to change she found herself pleasantly isolated. She gradually made a few friends, a cohesive group that took care of the quiet pale girl. Mostly, if her classmates recalled her at all, they would remember her shy smile and quick fingers. To celebrate the spring break before graduation, her friends insisted that she join them on a trip to the big city – cross country in a plane, and four days in the crush of millions of people. She was unable to refuse politely and was so excited by the trip she had odd nightmares and insomnia for days before the trip.
Her mind had spent years learning to take in as much detail as possible – between the lack of sleep and the overwhelming new experiences, its not much of a surprise that her grip on reality began to slip, her point of view growing plastic. Two days of wandering the streets with her friends, the noise, the smell, the people, the beating pressure of a million minds layered on top of each other, the twilight haze of concrete that only saw the sun at noon. Still sleeping poorly, by the third day, anything was possible in her mind. And then she got lost. What had been confusing became downright frightening, to be alone in the dim stench of collected humanity rapidly became more than she could handle. Outwardly calm, shrinking into her usual unnoticeable mien, her mind worked furiously, trying to figure out how to find her friends.
The building blinded her – sunlight struck the glass and seemed to reflect directly onto her, a nearly physical force heating her skin. Squinting through the light she tried to reconcile what she saw – there couldn’t be a building that stretched into the sky, could there?
Her footsteps grew lighter, faster, the dimness slipping away as she headed for the beacon, fire in the air burning away anything that had held her to the shadows. Her bare feet whispered over the scorching concrete. Finally no dull buildings stood between her and the sky scraper – if flames could be made into glass and wrapped around lightning captured in steel, they would be the building materials of her monolith. Somehow she knew the light was getting brighter – her eyes had lost the ability to find variations in the power of the light anymore, even when she closed her eyes she was overwhelmed. It was too bright, too unstable, it exploded with a shimmer of raw power, broken glass raining on the street in terrible beauty, leaving steel exposed on the upper floors, the unbalanced hum enough to make eardrums bleed. Brushing glass off her skin Harper examined the street, sparkling with threat – four lanes of sharp edges. Looking up she felt something call to her, a promise that if she could just get up there, it would all make sense, she would never be lost again.
She allowed herself only a moment of wonder before setting out, carefully doing her best to clear a spot for her foot, one painstaking step at a time. Impatience was rewarded with heated shards slicing into her feet, but a sustained focus over time found her, finally, in front of the doors, muscles shaking from being held tense for so long. Without looking back to see her accomplishment she reached for the handle, her fingers not even touching it when she saw the lightning arc and she lost consciousness in the air. She woke up smelling ozone and her burned fingers. Back in the street.
Repeat the process, clearing a space for feet before standing, staying a still as possible while pulling shards from her skin where she fell. Or was tossed like a rag doll, if you wanted to be specific. She made her way to her first path through the glass – like footprints in the snow on a sunny day – tiny shadows in a deep brightness. Soon enough she faced the door again. She couldn’t see into the building, only her reflection in the shine.
The handle was no good. She should stay away from it altogether. But there was a way up, and it was through the door. Not a normal door. It was like a test, like talking with grandfather in the workshop, “What do we know about doors, Harper?”
“Not all doorways are square, fit the door to the doorway. Think about which way you want the door to open before you hang the hinges. Doors are points of transition in stories, the barrier between logic and magic. There are doors that only open every one hundred years and the fairies can steal you through them unless you have cold iron, or rowan and red thread.” The last would make her smile brightly, and her grandfather grumble, the teasing routine.
Except now she wanted through the door, so leave logic and enter magic. Her face stared back at her solemnly. She was already through the glass in a way, her image two feet into the room she couldn’t see, staring back at her. If she was inside, looking out, all she needed to do was turn around and walk further in. Leave her reflection in the glass covered street and take herself inside. She closed her eyes and focused on being her reflection. Finally she turned on the ball of one foot and set the other one down on cool hard floor. She stepped forward and into the building, smiling. “Call me Alice.”
The halls were quiet, cold floor soothing after the street. She tried to rub the electricity buzz out of her fingers. She took a moment to get the last of the glass off and out of her skin before beginning to explore. She was inside. It was at the top. She had to find a way up.
“There is no easy way up.” He was dressed in white – or was it silver? A sleek business suit and shoes so polished they could never have touched the ground. In fact, they weren’t touching the ground now. Harper felt keenly the tatters of her clothes and the dirt on her face. And he was right – this floor was one large empty room, no doors or stairs to be seen.
“Nice move with the door. Most break their way in. You’re a bit different, aren’t you?”
“You’re the one who can fly.”
Flames wreathed him in response.
“We should get on with this – any questions?”
He didn’t look like a fairy. “Is this a dream?”
“In a way. But if you have always Slept, everything is a dream. The question is what is not the dream?”
Harper toyed with her fingers, and the figure changed, wings and flames flickering into existence in the corners of her vision. Looking up, it was the same relaxed, teasing gentleman.
“Well? What isn’t the dream?”
“Ahh…so she wishes to know reality. Are you sure?”
“If you aren’t sure, you should turn back now.” Harper turned and saw the door into street – normal as it always was, taxis and cars fighting in the streets, secretaries in heels, business men with cell phones and the guys with purple hair and too many piercings on bicycles passed just beyond the flames. No broken glass, no lightning. But the light was fading, and things waited in the darkness. All of them were so lost, their eyes closed to the light, they didn’t see how beautiful, how powerful they were. Harper felt ill.
“You mostly forgot, when humanity fell, and the world fell with it. The darkness is called the Abyss. When it swallows all of you I will have no more visitors from your shabby little reality. They wouldn’t know what to do with light if they could stand to look at it.”
She could show them, but she needed the key, and the key was at the top.
“You just don’t look sure. There is no easy way.”
“How do I get up there?”
“Who are you to try?”
The air moved, a rustle of feathers, the hush as flame took in breath and became the sword and he was too close to avoid, and the flames took her. Her voice was almost lost in the fire, but it obeyed, wrapping her like armor, the sword passing through her like warm fog.
“I AM.”
“I AM, and that gives me dominion over all.” For one moment, or maybe she just imagined it, but for a moment she swore the room dimmed before her, and she outshone the winged lightning creature facing her.
And then he was the business man, and she was just Harper, dirty and tired. And he was smiling as infinite power and grace stretched before her, embracing her.
“What the hell- Kid! Get back from there!”
Rough hands grabbed her shoulders and for one sickening second her feet were over 40 stories of air before she was inside, concrete and steel holding her up. The construction worker started shaking her.
“What do you think you were doing? You some druggie, thinking you can fly?”
“Hey, its okay, that’s my niece, Jenny. She wanted to see the best view in the city, so I told her to go on up.”
She hadn’t even noticed the man in the black coverall, but he quickly got the other man to go back to work. Harper found her surroundings, her experiance still embedded in her mind, more real than the shadows of the fetal office building. She backed further away from the edge, the wind still whipping through her hair.
“H-hi.” She looked down, examining the boots of the man who had grabbed her elbow with an excess of familiarity.
“Did you have to completely destroy the elevator? I had to rewire the whole panel before one of them saw it, sloppy rushed work. What if I had been late? You could have walked right out of your realm and into mine in a stroke of fucking irony.”
“I’m sorry. I-I don’t know…” Her hands still tingled with flames she could barely see and her boots felt heavy.
“Don’t lie to me, it just wastes time. You know, I know, and if anyone else with a brain in their head was watching they’d know too, which is why you need to get out of here. Why do I always get the slow ones? Welcome to the real world. Don’t pull that crap again or I’ll have to put a non flaming sword through your very unarmored guts, got it?”
“Was he-?”
“Jenny, I don’t care what you saw, I don’t care how totally rad it was. We have work to do here and if your scintillating powers of comprehension so far are any indication, you need extra time to learn anything. You still have sleeper school, don’t you? Come back when you get done with that and we can begin your education.”
“My name’s not Jenny.” was all she could manage to choke out to his retreating back.
No one was more surprised than her, but after graduation, she chose not to pursue any of the office jobs available to her, or continue to grad school like many of her classmates. Instead she took up an apprenticeship with the man in the black coverall, and some of his… well, friends is not the best word, but serves. He made her choose a trade, one of the half dozen he practiced under various names in the Sleeper world. In letters home she was learning the trade of a locksmith, and for that she was quickly catching on to the basics of the trade and becoming quite proficient. She loved the work, as much as she is shy with people, she enjoys being around them, and delights in making things better for individuals. The relief and gratitude of someone who is let into a house, or has replaced their locks/gotten a new security system to be safe again, or can get into a closet they lost the key for is a high for her.
Her free time could be a completely different matter, with the acerbic man making her learn ever more legends, philosophies, ways of looking at the world. He would show her wonders, turning coal into diamonds, starting fires with a thought, and told her that when she had enough control over what was in front of her, she could do similar things. He grudgingly gave her time to sit in the woods with his painter friend, pouring over her books. He made her survive a few training sessions with a big guy who kept trying to show her how to control fire, but she didn’t pick up on it – he was too much to handle in small spaces. Most of her rotes were taught by his cabalmates, behind his back – or was it really? Could anything happen without him knowing about it, usually before you did? The day after he called her chosen Free Council to be full of ignorant techno babble she quietly packed up her few things and walked. He met her on the street corner with an envelope.
“If you’re determined to be a damned techno-tot, here’s not a bad place to start. You make a passable locksmith. Eh, you can copy keys if you think hard. Jenny, if you can’t keep another thought in your head, remember that all this…all of it is shit. The only value is in what you can make with your heart. Now go on, I have work to do.”
