Part I: Player Information

• Your Name: I'm the Laris. ^^ Duh.
  
• Email Address: larismage@yahoo.com. Give it some wuv.
  
• Web Page: You're soaking in it!
  

Part II: Character Information

• Character Name: Mahsati Seddena, also answers to Sati for short.
  
• Name Meaning: Mahsati is a name of Arabic origins usually used by dancers that means, a-duh, "moon". Seddena, however, is taken from the Bedouin phrase "May we be done with girls!" as in, dear GOD we have too many children already. XD Yet another moon daughter, I suppose would be the combined meaning.
  
• Character Position: Sailorsin, senshi of EVIL! I mean, um.
  
• Birthdate and Age / Zodiacal Sign: Twenty years of age. Born on May 26, smack-dab in the middle of Gemini, the duplicitous, social sign. It's not ruled by das moon, unfortunately, but surprise surprise - Mahsati's moon is in Cancer. So that's a quick-witted cleverness, communicative and charming, though lacking in self-restraints and the more self-sacrificing virtues, but always versatile and eager in that abundant gemini energy. The emotional moon aspect brings in that ever changing mood, but also a nurturing, caregiving quality that tones down some of gemini's unwitting harshness, but in return, the cancer-moon individual wants this nurturting love and attention in return. Gemini sun + Cancer moon = ATTENTION WHORE. Also according to some sources these signs are in conflicting elements, which explains the ISSUES.
  
• Physical Details:
  
  Hair: A dull, unimpressive lavender-grey, so pale it appears to have been through the wash several times, but definitely not passable for white. Dishwater purple, in other words. XD Mahsati's normal-textured, woefully straight hair is long, falling down somewhere well past her shoulders, though it's almost never seen thus - she keeps it in two pigtails low on her head, with the ends looped back up into their respective hair ties, which gives her two little circular pigtails with ends sticking spikily out on either side. A bit on the childish side for a young lady, but functional.
  
  Eyes: Dark, dark slate grey, so much so that her pupils are nearly indistinguishable from her irises. The shape is somewhat elongated but definitely not angular, in fact, she has a heavy-lidded look that is only deepened by her bouts with sleep deprivation.
  
  Build: Not too waifish, by any means. Mahsati stands at slightly less than average height, with a fair amount of feminine curve to her form and nary a harsh line brought on by musculature. She's a desk-bound wage-slave, what else did you expect? She has a nice waistline and curvy legs, and though she lacks impressive girly endowments has a pleasingly girly shape, and can be considered above average pretty. Her complexion is unusually dark for an Atlantean due to some distant heritage and resurgance of genes, although her own attempts to stay indoors have kept it from going into the realm of sun-drenched barbarian.
  
  Carriage: Whatever I said in build, you can generally dismiss a lot of that, because Mahsati tends to slouch her looks right out of view. She hunches tensely away from scrutiny, and whatever her clothing doesn't hide is obscured by her timid little walk with her head tipped down, whatever she's holding clutched firmly to her front.
  
  Face: A round (dare I say, moonlike?) face with a slight point to the chin, and absolutely no cheekbones of which to speak - it almost looks like the last shred of baby fat forgot to pack up and leave her features. Her nose is somewhat flat against this face, in keeping with her rounded features, and slightly broad, but she has nice full lips that most often are drawn into a sober, thoughtful expression.
  
  Dress: The other half of the Hide My Body conspiracy Mahsati undertakes every day, she dresses somewhat mousily, occasionally trying to look trendily academic, but always head to toe. Long sleeved tunics, sashes, medium sleeved overcoats and usually a *third* overlayer around the collar are her favorite ensembles for work, with either trousers or long sacklike skirts. She favors strappy footwear, sandals that wrap all the way up to the knee, but ALWAYS these are accompanied by sock or stocking fare. Because, you see, that fashion taboo has yet to be written. X3 What she has perpetually, though, are her oval reading glasses, a simple affair sans earpieces, which she perches just below the bridge of her nose so she can look over them. Poor girl is a bit farsighted due to reading eyestrain, and she lacks the magical consistiency to master vision spells for hours on end, and lacks the funds for a more permanent solution.
  
  Voice: Her usual mode is soft and sort of mumbly, so it's often hard to tell, but when she uses the full quality of her voice it's a rich alto. She can't sing, but she has a smooth and pleasant speaking voice when she chooses to speak up above the usual mutter.
  
  Misc: A "wheat grain" patterned tattoo up the backs of both legs in a sort of henna red-brown, a few shades darker than her skin. The origins of said tattoo work are probably the source of an amusing anecdote of some kind. ^^;
  
• Bloodtype: Let's say, red! I mean, A. I mean... yeah.
  
• Gemstone: Mahsati has a fondness for lapis lazuli, the practically-neon color standing out well against her complexion (Lapis was described as Sin/Nanna's accessory color du choice, hence symbolism ^^).
  
• Likes: Unfortunately Mahsati's preferences tend to be highly mutable along with the time of month (and boy doesn't THAT sound wrong) but because she is always the same person throughout, there are a few true constants.
  
  • Novels - In her milder moments, Mahsati enjoys pulp novels, cheap fiction, whatever you want to call it, covering a broad range of genres. Basically anything that is a light read, she'll pick up, which tends to stun some people who assume her meek, bespectacled appearance means she enjoys reading hefty intellectual books thick with technical words and dry, dry, dry.
  • The night life - That's right, whether or not she has the nerve to actually live it up, Mahsati desperately desires wild and crazy parties. Lavish affairs are her favorite, obviously, but anything exciting will do.
  • The bad crowd - Mahsati has a romantic notion of badness, and it's not the Brotherhood. XD It's rebellious young noblemen living dangerously, that sort of rot. When she has the nerve to run, she wants it to be with a fast crowd, JUST like in all those 1950's cautionary films. Most of the time, though, she is left longing for this kind of edgy lifestyle, because unlike her counterparts, she has to be back at work, at her desk, at the buttcrack of dawn. SIGH.
  • Little noisemakers - Mahsati prefers anything to working, living, or sleeping in silence, and favors things like windchimes, bells, rattles, even a tick-tick metronome type trinket wouldn't bother her. If she has none of these, then she resorts to sly attempts to drum fingers or shuffle feet.
  • Fruit - Though she is hardly lean, she manages to keep her figure under control simply by the fact that she rarely eats meat, and in fact loves fruits both exotic and common enough to snack on them throughout the day in lieu of real meals. Vegetables, they're a little less favorite, but still preferable to a great slab of animal carcass.
• Dislikes:
  
  • The sun - Not only is it the worst part of level five, it's the daystar, and it BURNS. Nothing jolts a party-hard girl back to sad reality faster than the sun coming in, not to mention its effect on a wicked hangover. Mahsati is also needlessly self-conscious about her dark complexion getting darker, she sometimes worries it makes her look like an earthbound throwback. Stupid sun.
  • Getting caught in her own fibs - Leading a furtive double-life can be hard, and sometimes you have to really keep track of how you portray yourself to who, and when. XD This sometimes leads to some real headaches, and it makes her appear erratic or just peculiar to bystanders. Prime examples include Cinderella syndrome around midnight (CRAP, I have work tomorrow) and ducking into random alleyways mid-walk (CRAP, that man completely recognizes me from the tavern incident last night.)
  • Informative lectures - Though she is quick-witted enough to be interested in intellectual topics, Mahsati's attention span is completely ill suited for long talks on any subject. She has a better time reading it herself, even, but the steady droning of a human voice is enough to send her into outer space, or more likely, right off into sleepytime.
  • Solitude - People, who need people.. o/~ You get the idea. She doesn't fancy alone time, and really gets sick of it rather quickly. Her humble abode is full of distractions for the single girl living solo, including cheap novels, little jingly decorations, and a series of rather low-maintenance, short-lived pets.
  • Lengthy tasks/puzzles - She bites her thumb at your thousand piece jigsaw puzzle. If it requires hour upon hour of focused attention to get any results, then it's not a hobby that can hold her interest, and in that case you might as well be doing work.
  Love/Hate Relationship with:
  • Attention - Mahsati is desperately torn over her need to be a complete attention whore. See personality notes for details, but basically she spends her time vascillating between brazenly striving for attention/affection by being a charismatic thrillseeker, and slouching away from prying eyes, her utter lack of confidence in her everyday self making her absolutely certain that whatever she's done to make you pay attention, it isn't good. Cringe cringe, slouch slouch, blush blush.
• Hobbies:
  
  • Social events - Self explanatory. She likes going TO parties, and everything fancy that entails from chatter to drinking to occasional costumes and games. She likes mingling, basically, and works her humdrum schedule around investing as much time as possible in cutting loose.
  • Board/card/tabletop games - I realize that looks like D&D, but hahaha, NO. Girl wouldn't know a Player's Handbook if it bit her on the ass, sadly. Mahsati enjoys mental puzzles that are short, and involve a lot of friendly interaction, maybe some competition. While she doesn't gamble (usually XD) she favors the Atlantean equivalents of checkers, chess, poker, mancala, guessing games and the like. This is one of her favorite pasttimes with her numerous siblings, and whenever a new variety of some game is on sale in Atlantean shops she's there to buy it.
  • Manjira - One of Mahsati's only real long term hobbies, this is the art of those wee little finger-chimes. Part music, part dance, though it only takes as much skill as playing triangle in the school band. XD Though it can be performed solo in the form of a dance, it is best as accompanyment for a real musician.
• Personality:
  

  There are many things that can be said in describing Mahsati, so we'll start with the simple ones.

  She has a good eye for the finer things in life, valuing material possessions in quality over quantity, though she tries not to let the need for stuff overwhelm her longing for some of life's other offerings. You can look at her and easily determine that she is not 100% serious about being materialistic, she blatantly lacks the initiative to be truly ambitious about gaining wealth or power. When she uses what initiative she *does* have, however, she has some decently practical skills - organization and decision-making, though like any normal youngster she has a really rough time holding a cool temper in a crisis. Where the initiative lacks, however, is in things like, say, staying power. Mahsati has a terrible time seeing long tasks through to completion, or suffering some short term unpleasantries for a long term benefit. She can be fickle about where her energies are directed, dropping one pet project for another when the newness of it tickles her fancy.

  Mahsati's personality changes, as I'm sure you've gathered, but no matter what aspect she's in, her core persona is always the same. In her typical mode, the face that everyone sees, she is the good-natured, somewhat bumbling milquetoast type, with a gentle smile and a general demeanor I can best describe as "loveably dorky". She's eloquent and funny, but quiet, too afraid to really stick her neck out with people, preferring only to be social when coaxed. This means lured out of her fearfulness by either by a long-term acquaintance or someone more outgoing actively drawing her out. With your average joe, she always has that little air of discomfort, walking on eggshells out of some deeply planted fear of looking foolish. Invariably she ends up doing so anyway, turning red, and trying to melt into the floor to escape scrutinous eyes.

  The core issue is, of course, that she's an okay girl, but she lacks confidence in her own abilities, both social and magical. This is the aspect of her personality that slides as the moon waxes and wanes, the vital piece that makes the difference between the slightly mumbling girl behind the desk at the Archives, trying to hand you your book without looking you in the eye -- and the laughing socialite kicking off her slippers after she's tripped on a bump in the carpet, managing to look charming all the time while she makes some wry comment about just wanting to admire the weaving up close. They're the same person, but one is willing to take the risk and the other is not. In her everyday life this is what causes her to falter in her ability to say, be in charge of someone else, or to even show much initiative in her work or home life, unconsciously she feels her drive to do something will be met with failure.

  As Mahsati matures, one hopes, she will be able to calm the problem that's plagued her all her life: she thinks she needs to be someone else to be liked or respected. She doesn't even WANT, deep down, nearly as many of the things she thinks she does, things like luxurious wealth, thrills, and prestige -- because frankly she's suffering under a strong delusion that the grass is perpetually greener on the side of the fence where The Other Half lives, something she's carried since childhood. She wants a lot of these things because she thinks she SHOULD want them, that there's something wrong with her if she doesn't, and on some level, she wants people to view her as the sort of person who wants (or already) has all life's flashy goodies. And is she ever distracted by flashy goodies.

  But apart from what's become a sort of essay hilighting her various neuroses, there is still plenty that is positive about her. When she manages to focus, she is both magically and mentally perceptive, able to work well by intuition. Despite some of her shallow misgivings she is by no means a spiteful person, rather she has a gentle demeanor and a positive outlook (of others, anyway XD) that enables her to be both playful and genuinely encouraging to those around her. Where she is fickle about things, and ideas, she is much less so about people, and is versatile in personal relationships. She just has a hard time getting them started, is all. ^^; She laughs and jokes easily, and is extremely mentally agile even if her attention span has no staying power. She has an inner charisma and even an ability to be nurturing in her demeanor (though again, she lacks the patience of the truly maternal) that makes her fun to be around, when she can handle the attentions, and while she may not be the most honest person to come along, it is almost assuredly not deliberate when she flakes out or steps on toes. One good thing about being fickle, it means you can shrug off a grudge like nobody's business.

  Whether or not Mahsati is play-acting for her friends and acquaintances, she does have a genuine love of the people she associates with. Well, most of them anyway. And if she could see past her own nose for a second (see above) she'd see that she's just as happy amongst the oddballs, the wallflowers and the normals as she is among the rich and famous. In fact, though she is only vaguely aware of it, she has a special knack for sympathy with hard-luck individuals, other Mages with Issues, as it were, as she's been there and knows what it's like. She makes a wonderfully nonjudgemental friend, just not a particularly reliable or possessive friend. Her attitudes lean towards "live and let live", and she has never been compelled to fierce protectiveness of others, seeing it as condescending or smothering. Just as with the Sea Turtles, let us see what young Squirt does, before we go charging in to save him. She wants to help people, preferably when they ask for it, not do things for them and then expect thanks. Barring any life-threatening emergencies, of course, she's not THAT mellow. XD

  Her unresolved maturity issues and quick movements can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, she is hardly bogged down in worries, preferring to throw herself into the moment and enjoy a convivial, social life. This makes it fun for her and even more fun for those around her, provided they do not live for the job. On the other, this means she likes to push any pressing or difficult issues to the wayside, forever putting them off until the next day, and then the next. This is probably a major reason for her lack of introspection into her own problems, as it makes her uncomfortable she simply chooses to ignore it in favor of, say, reading a book. Or window shopping.

  So yeah. She has issues. But they're BENIGN issues, really. And nothing a good slap upside the head delivered by Reality wouldn't cure.

  • Pros: Witty, gentle, friendly, perceptive, humorous, quick-witted, versatile, affectionate, stylish, and certainly lacking ego inflation.
  • Cons: Vascillating, fickle, impatient, dazzled by shallow concerns, secretive, subversive, zero confidence in herself, immature.
• History:
  
  

  Once upon a time, there was a man in Atlantis named Nasim. He met a woman whose name was Yusria. They fell in love, and shockingly enough, they were wed not long after. Then they had a daughter. ...and another. And another. In fact, well, by the time everything was said and done, they'd had SIX of them. For some unfathomable reason, unbeknownst to the happy couple, all of their children were born on the precise day of a new moon. All that is, except for that third child, but that won't become important til later. Neither parent was particularly talented in magical arts, but both worked hard at their middle-of-the-road jobs. Nasim was a skilled worker specializing in restoring wands and various enchanted doo-hickeys that had lost their effects; Yusria, when she could work, helped part-time at a stonemason's place of business.

  Why they have so many children is a story for another time, needless to say, it made life hectic. In the middle of the children, five years away from the elders and six away from the youngers, was Mahsati. As you can imagine, being roughly in the middle of six girls gave her extreme middle-child syndrome -- she was too young to grow up right alongside her elder sisters, but too old to be interested in the same things as the babies. She wasn't a particularly outgoing child, which just made the problem worse, because between her vivacious teenaged elders and the needs of the babies (with *another* baby on the way around the time Mahsati was eighteen), she kind of got overlooked more than normal. Not to say it wasn't partially her own fault, she knew darn well she had to holler to get her share of her folks' time, and recognition from others, but her rather introverted nature made it hard for her to follow through. Apart from this, though, her life was certainly not a hard one, and she was well cared for. She was just... also lumped into "those Seddena girls", is all. XD And she pulled a lot of babysitting duty.

  In her younger years, Mahsati was a quiet, bookish girl, though she didn't weigh herself down with any intensively educational reading. She was amiable to those who would make the effort to approach her, not being very inclined to go out and greet people herself; she was so used to being ignored, in a way, it had ingrained itself into her already introverted personality. She had a sort of easygoing nature and joking use of wit that allowed her to befriend many sorts of her fellow weesters, however she had sort of a running difficulty in relating to the upper-crust, even through her adolescence.

  Mahsati, it turned out, was actually not a very good student when it came to performing magical tasks, and this remedial-magician label tended to keep the kids riding high on the magical hog at a distance. She had decent comprehension on lectures, but her natural ability was sub-par. It wasn't too surprising, really, her parents hadn't been powerful mages either, but up until she was thirteen, Mahsati had problems bordering on overwhelming, the baby spells introducted in primary school proving to be beyond her grasp. For a time her parents were fearful that she would need to be removed from school, and struggled to find time for extra tutoring sessions with her. In the end, it was Adyn who ended up staying extra hours with Mahsati, trying to coach the meek schoolgirl through the simplest fire spells. She would have been removed from school entirely, had not Adyn discovered one saving grace - Mahsati could, although only feebly at first, perform telepathy and other mental magics. She could even glimpse, blurrily, into the astral plane, an innate skill found most infrequently in mages. It was not uncommon for certain mages to have spheres they naturally excelled in, and they figured it was her naturally weak skills being channeled into only one or two areas of expertise that made her so resistant to things like fire and ice spells in their entirety. She continued scraping by in a new cirriculum, though her family, and she herself, tried not to get her hopes up about ever catching up.

  Imagine her surprise when, not long after she turned thirteen, she caught up and then some. In what seemed like weeks, her spellcasting careened forward at an incredible rate, so much so that she was picking up enchantments she had barely been able to invoke before, and her telepathy threatened the ears of anyone in range until she could reign in the effects with a hasty barrier -- something she'd NEVER had to even consider before (she also, upon learning half the neighborhood block could hear her screaming thoughts, turned beet red and locked herself in her room out of utter mortified embarassment, but that's neither here nor there). Though she was still at a loss on some spells, she was rejoicing at the knowledge that she was a differently-abled late bloomer, finally able to face her peers with some sense of pride.

  ...imagine her surprise AGAIN when it went away. XD

  And it came back. And it went away. And it came back AGAIN. Though she strengthened her abilities with age, Mahsati cycled through times of weak, sputtery spells and robust, powerful magic from the onset of puberty and onward. On the one hand she was able to stay in a proper school, but her grades were rather humdrum, being averaged between acing some tests and flunking others. She had a reputation as being hit or miss. She had very little academic interest in mathematics or astronomy (she was an idle skygazer at best), and it wasn't until someone who DID began taking classes alongside her towards the end of secondary school that anyone began to suspect she had a sort of magical affliction, a peculiar inborn property, if you will -- her innate abilities were entirely moon-based. Tests confirmed this fact, the strange bouts of moodiness that had originally been written off as extreme girlishness sealing the deal, but there was naught anyone could do about it. Mahsati accepted her moderate grades and her vascillating lifestyle with relative grace, choosing not to make her condition public knowledge and attempting to just live her life as normally as possible. Though as she got older, little nagging loose ends of her life began to come together into something truly peculiar.

  It all started when, through her passable academic record and occasional power to wow somebody, she got a job with a nice, semi-prestigious title and absolutely no real power whatsoever. XD The esteemed Royal Atlantean Archives for the Preservation of Magical Innovation and Higher Learning (which of course nobody called it) hired her on as an Apprentice Archive Researcher, from which she would eventually be promoted and drop the "apprentice" bit and add some word like "venerable". What this meant was that she sat at a desk all day, sorting papers and stacks of stuff, occasionally signing something out for some academic sort. The point is that it was -- and is -- EXCRUCIATINGLY BORING ninety-eight percent of the time. So after a long day of boring work, Mahsati went home to her boring life, in her boring little apartment with her mousey little habits and her handful of equally mousey friends. What had begun to grate upon her in childhood began to grate heavily, now. She had spent years imagining how the other half lived, vividly dreaming of how much better life had to be for the pretty, the powerful and the rich, whether or not this had any basis in reality. Somewhere along the way she never abandoned the consuming desire to be someone better and brighter than she was. Adding into the mix her waxing-moon influence, and the combination became highly volatile.

  So one night on the full moon, her confidence and powers at their peak, instead of going home to a book and a blanket and dinner-for-one, she went out.

  Mahsati Seddena was somebody who wouldn't be on a single guest list, or in anybody's elite clique, or even a striking face in the crowd of nobodies. Fatima Chandrakant, Exotic Spirit of the Night, however, had no such problems, and going from one identity to the other was only a glamour spell away. XD She donned a few improvements, softened up her color and fancified her wardrobe and then mustered every shred of moon-induced courage she could, and traipsed right into the night life among the rich and famous. The age old saying about 90% is how you sound and 10% is what you actually SAY is true, and it went more splendidly than she ever could have imagined. People were drawn in by her confident, outgoing manner, the same wit she'd always possessed, and her magical aptitude didn't hurt matters either. Before long her faux-persona was being invited all kinds of places, doing all kinds of things (eh heh), and she was craving the attention like a drug. At first she was careful never to break the law by claiming to be true nobility, but as she went on and her confidence in her farce increased, she occasionally hinted, drunkenly, about the splendor of the nonexistient Chandrakant family, their lands safely hidden away in a place conveniently far from the Capitol.

  This double-life schtick began to take its toll on her day life, admittedly, though hardly a soul noticed what went on deep in the bowels of the Archives' stacks. She began sleeping through a good chunk of the morning, and as if there was some karmic balance going on within her, the wilder she got playing out her jet set fantasy, the meeker she became in her normal life, even into the half-moon phase as her powers and confidence began to return. She did, and does, view herself as the sort of person who gets stepped on as soon as looked at, and has come to expect it so often that she's sort of stopped *trying* to be good at being herself, so comfortable is the protection of the pretend name and life story. Not the best idea.

  So that's how it stands at present. On the one hand, Mahsati is choice material for taking on secret roles and playing games of subterfuge, but on the other, she really needs to work out those attention-whoring issues and think about relying on Mahsati, for once, instead of Fatima. Having a hefty responsibility to her land and to her world, in that sense, might do her some serious good.

• NPCs:
  Adyn (25), Dua(1.5), Ghazal (26), Johara(14), Yaminah(9): Not individual NPCs, but rather the collective entity that is The Sisters. Ghazal and Adyn are on Mahsati's older side, while Johara and Yaminah are on the younger, and Dua is the baby. The age spread had more to do with Mahsati's awkward spot than the sheer size of her family, and generally the composition can be broken down quickly as: Ghazal, the ever-patient grownup, is generally secure in her life and waiting for good husband material to come her way, Adyn is the typical bad girl, Johara is in her moody, Nobody Understands Me phase, and Yaminah is a surprisingly well-adjusted weester, if a bit of a sarcastic wit for a nine year old. Dua drools a lot and continues to be the marvel of those who see the ages of the other Seddena daughters. Eh heh.
  Yusria and Nasim: Mom and Dad, respectively. They come as a unit, too, because they aren't terribly prevalent NPC's, and they have a bad habit of not being able to remember their middle child's name when they address her. Oh sure, they know which one she is, but the details get a little fuzzy, and though they love her as much as the others, her longtime tendency to meld into the chaos that is the Seddena household made her most likely candidate to be forgotten on the family vacations. XD
  Iyad (Arabic, "Pigeon"): Mahsati's ever-present coworker in the Land of the Stacks. He's only a bit older than her, though not by much, and there is a comfortable comraderie in their age similarities in an office populated overwhelmingly by fossils. He's a meek, fearful man, all too happy to hide in the obscure mess of files and reports and strange catalogues, and though he lacks imagination and any kind of outward shows of enthusiasm, he is genuinely a nice and considerate fellow. He and Mahsati enjoy one another's company on lunch breaks and outings to run errands, although he frets greatly over her bouts of spacing out and daydreaming and/or actually dreaming when she falls asleep at her desk. And unlike his officemate, Iyad is bookish because he actually LOVES intellectual fodder, and he reads the most dry and complex magical treatises imagineable. It's quite possible that he is actually brilliant, but nobody will find out because he is both too shy to say anything and lacking in the magical talent to really show it off. The sort of fellow that's been working on the same amazing invention for about a decade, you know the kind.
  Hadya: The boss, an even tempered, no-nonsense, middle-aged mage in charge of overseeing the grunt workers at the Archives. She realizes that it's a job filled with woeful tediousness (interspersed with rare moments of insanity), and though she's long since given up on trying to make her underlings behave in a way befitting a royally decreed institution, she has no idea why they're all so listless about it. Yes, she spends a lot of time polishing and repolishing the engraved nameplate on her desk. Gods bless the bureaucracy, because without it, well, who's going to employ all the form-makers and filing clerks and... it would just be HYSTERIA, all right? Hadya has long since realized this, and so should you, she'll be happy to letcha know.
  

Part III: Senshi Information

• Special Skills:
  
  
  • Lunatic - Mahsati (and therefore Sin) is a true lunatic, meaning her personality and powers are heavily affected by the movements of the moon. Her temperament is most mellow and her powers are at their weakest at new moon, but as it waxes she becomes more moody, agitated, and her magic increases noticeably in its power and erratic behavior (the magic, that is, though she's not so reserved herself XD). This tends to be why she flings herself into jet-set party situations, her manic time of month makes her wilder, as does it make it easier for her to mask herself with illusions.
  • Astral Vision - Though it is not very crisp or clear in her normal human mode, Mahsati does have the powers of Astral Sight (aka magesight deluxe), meaning she can "see" entities on the astral plane such as out-of-body travellers, ley-lines of magic, elemental/magical entities, spells - regardless of how they look in the physical world - and so on. Whereas most Atlanteans can sense magic being used, or the inherent power in a mage, this becomes an immediately processed visual for her, which she can try to ignore or focus, though it tends to come when she wants it the least. She does not have the experience or education to identify everything she sees, and she knows nobody who can assist in this, so she tends to see a lot of "huh?" she can't make heads or tails of. In Sin form, she has better control over this power, able to toggle the view into magicland like a pro. This is one of the powers negligibly affected by her moon phase affiliation.
  • Astral Travel - Technically, Mahsati can leave her body to travel through the plane to which she has a visual view, however she finds it extremely difficult to do so. It takes patience, it takes skill, it takes.. more patience. When out of body, there is a thin silver line connecting her to her mind's home, that is, the bod. If it is severed by meddlesome astral creatures or other travellers, it would strand her, helplessly, and leave her body open for attack. Very bad juju. On the other hand this allows her to astrally view things far far away, so it could be useful if she could make it work. Takes about 10 minutes of attempts on a good day to function, hours on a troublesome day. Most days are troublesome for her. This is actually easier in waning moon phases because it requires mellow relaxation and focus.
  • Organization - Being an archivist, Mahsati has impeccable alphebetizing, categorizing, numbering and filing powers. Surely you are AMAZED. She sure as hell isn't.
  • Sleep Deprivation - She can run on 2-3 hours of sleep, as she leads an exciting super seekrit double life at times. It will catch up after about 2 weeks though, wherein she will simply pass out face first at her desk. Not that anyone would notice. ... and not that the other archivists don't sleep all day.
  • Party Games - Self-explanatory in both scope and nature. Yeah, yeah, charades +5, and others I'm sure aren't proper to mention. This is Atlantean idle rich we're talking about. XD
  Spell List - in addition to a full (but not uber) Atlantean education Mahsati can perform the following spells. NOTE: Because of her peculiar nature, Mahsati has almost zero success performing elemental spells of any kind. This means, unaided, she cannot ignite flame, conjure wind, move earth, freeze water, or any of the other advanced forms of these "nature oriented" spells. To compensate, however, she is reasonably skilled in a few other, often rarer spellcasting circles:
  • Hold Thought - Perhaps the most commonly used and least impressive spell in Mahsati's repetoire for everyday life. This is simply a "stored" spell she can cast at the beginning of the day, and invoke later without having to concentrate using a hand gesture. It takes whatever thought process or focus on a task she was working on, and simply holds it. When she's ready to come back to it, she gestures again to pick it up. Huzzah. It could, perhaps, be used on someone else, but the effects would be erratic and mostly ineffectual, making them lose track of a thought but also make them able to recall it consciously. Heh.
  • Glamour - A subset of illusion that has become Mahsati's new forte. Only able to be used on herself, this is a series of eye, hair, skin and clothing affecting illusion spells to enhance and disguise her natural appearance. Generally she only uses it to shift into her nighttime party animal persona, with perfectly fair skin, an impeccable hairdo in wine-purplish-red, softer eyes, and of course, dresses she could not possibly afford. Odds are, she's trimming the fat off her figure when she does this, too, because, well, that's what magic is FOR.
  • Chaos Diffuse - Totally D&Desque power of mind-muddling within a 10 foot radius. Useful on the weaker-minded.
  • Lighten Object - Makes one medium object or stack of objects lighter for roughly five minutes, good for hauling books and papers around.
  • Dictation - Sick of splurging the gold for self-writing quills, the Royal Archives taught many of its archivists to perform the small spell which allows a pen to take down spoken words for upwards of half an hour. Tends to foul up on words not found in the common lexicons, or difficultly spelled words with tricky phonetics.
  • Ray - Mahsati's only direct attack spell, nonelemental, pretty middle of the road in terms of offensive spells. This narrow beam of whitish energy fires on a straight line from her hand, and isn't particularly flashy, but nice for handling minor threats, scaring the primals, and attacking something that may have elemental protection or alignment. Also easy to perform stealthily as it has a brief 'charge time'. ^^
  • Telepathy - Mahsati is reasonably skilled in noninvasive telepathy, meaning she can articulate thoughts and even emotional subtext fairly well. This, too, becomes clumsier during the new moon and grows to a very well executed spell by the time the moon is full. It will also make her a decent senshi-spy in conjunction with her nonoffensive powers.
  • Rebound Stone - Mahsati's most useful attack spell, self-contructed over many months of careful research. Using any small object, typically a pebble or coin, she can create a magically-charged, piercing projectile that go careening through anything less solid than a wall to do some sharp ouchie damage. When the projectile hits a hard enough surface, it will rebound at an angle and continue to bounce around, until it loses momentum, either by running out of time or hitting enough things to slow it down. Typically lasts 20 seconds or so.
  • Lunar Ritual - (Available ONLY at night, when the moon is at or near-full and unobscured) Though she has had no reason to use this yet, through her various inquiries into magic affiliated with the moon she has learned of a complex spell ritual that can be performed during the strongest lunar phases. Using material components, a circle, and much concentration, Mahsati can, in theory, draw down moon energies that will cause magic spells to become both stronger and undeniably HAYWIRE in a wide radius. On earth this would also affect tides in the local region, up in Atlantis, these effects are pretty much nil. Note, not only has she never tried this to confirm its effectiveness, there is a chance she may foul it up and cause badness, BECAUSE she's never done it.
• Henshin Item: A calcite crystal cut into a slightly fatter version of the typical, new agey "point" cut. Encased in the crystal is a dull silver shape of Sin's symbol, woo and yay. Mahsati had this unusual crystal made into a charm which hangs from a thin silver wire-bracelet around her left wrist.
  
• Transformation: Sin Astral Power, Maaaake Up!
  A large disc of silver energy appears beneath Mahsati's feet as she calls out her henshin, and she steps into it with her eyes closed. The light flares up around her in thin, spikey strands, until it is illuminating her form to the point of shrouding it. Her clothing glows, fragments and then flakes away as though carried off by the antigravity of henshin, leaving her brilliant blue silhouette as the flare dies down. Her eyes open again, glowing as well, and she raises both hands, palms upturned. Out of thin henshinspace, she clasps something unseen with the fingers of both hands, drawing it down until it is visible as two rippling waves of energy, which then envelop her to form the bodysuit, skirt, and collar of her uniform. The sequence is complete as her eyes and body return to normal, and she makes a small gesture, touching the fingertips of her right hand to her forehead.
  
  ...I suck at henshins. ^^;
• Colors: Primary - Silver, secondary - bright lapis blue.
  
• Symbol: As her powers are strongly associated with the moon in its full aspects, Sin's symbol is a circle with the crescent shape transcribed, points facing up. Otherwise her symbol would just be the spaghetti-o, and no one wants that.
• Fuku/Costume: The standard Astral fuku modified in several areas, but nonetheless quite recognizeable. White bodysuit, nothing special. Her silver collar is typical, and the short gauzy caps over the shoulders are double-layered in lapis and silver. Instead of the standard bow on the front, however, her henshin stone is set in a lapis-blue ribbony decoration that simply loops once, before leaving two tails that end at her waist. Her butt-bow is a larger version of this same motif, with the ends lightly weighted by two small silver hoops each. Instead of gloves, she has small bracelets that hold translucent-blue veils over her hands. She has no shoes, which may very well assist her or come back to bite her in the butt. XD Disc-patterned armbands and anklets adorn her upper arms and ankles, respectively, which thankfully do NOT contain bells or clank together too much, being widely spaced on their chains. The most noticeable alteration to the template is her lack of a droplet-jewel tiara, instead she has a free-floating "lens" that is situated over her metaphorical third eye, being a cross between a human-eye shape and a teardrop, lapis blue where the "white" of the eye should be and white around the pupil. If you've ever seen those glass evil-eye charms sold in places like Turkey (and new age shops) it's a lot like that.
  
• Powers/Attacks:
  
  Transcendental Moon Gate
  

  Stock Footage: Closing her eyes, the teardrop-eye ornament on Sin's forehead illuminates in a silver flare of light. She spreads her arms wide as she speaks the word "Transcendental", her hands draped as though cradling something large, and between her arms a ring of light appears, followed by a series of cryptic glyphs around the edges, as though she held an inscribed seal of some kind. As she completes the phrase, "Moon Gate", the attackspace behind her becomes ominously dark, a low hum emanating from the forming portal in her hands. It seems to solidify into reality, then, a metallic disc that then slides open either entirely or in part, forming a circle or crescent-shaped hole into the chaotic astral plane. A sort of sickly-white blast emanates from the gate, striking anything roughly in front of Sin as she performs the attack.

  Explanation: Using the moon as her focal point, Sin opens a gate into the raw magics on the other side of the divide, so to speak, beyond the physical world, the energy many mages channel in the form of specific spells according to their wills. This is, however, a raw bundle of energy, unrefined, being forced out in one general direction. It has the potential to be a devastating attack, possible to dodge, as it cannot be channeled into a convenient shape, but almost impossible to block. The limitation, however, is that the size of the gate porting this energy into the physical world waxes and wanes with the visible portion of the moon. It doesn't have to be nighttime, but whichever phase the moon is determines the percentage of full power she can attain. On a new moon, this power becomes almost negligible, and she's better off sticking to using her nonoffensive power and her spells.

  Lunar Shadow Obfuscation
  

  Stock Footage: Sin gets caught up in Convenient Shoujo Breeze, which sends her ribbons aflutter, as well as her hair. She lifts one hand skyward, calling out in a clear but monotonous voice, "Lunar Shadow Ofuscation," and the backdrop suddenly fades behind her. Looking up, the illusory moon overhead draws in the eye of onlookers, around to the side still covered in darkness, and this darkness expands to take up the whole view. Sin seems to melt into the shadows with a leap backwards, and she's gone. Poof.

  Explanation: LSO, aka the Invisibility Special. This power, when invoked, allows Sin to channel the powers of the Moon's mysterious far side (in this superstitious time believed to be the permanently "dark side") into her Astral influence. For the duration of the effects, usually 5 to 10 minutes per cast, Sin is invisible. Not just plain old "you can't see me", but in magesight and astral sight as well, meaning that to observers she seems to cease to exist. She DOES exist, however, and will take hits just the same if someone manages to find her. Area effect spells will still affect her if she is in range, but only if the spell has some lasting effect that will "tag" her in magesight, she remains unseen. Or, you know, if she yelps or something. It requires a lot of teeth-gritted sucking up of pain to keep stealthy with this power, but it is nonetheless incredibly handy. She can cast outward-directed spells from this stance, as well, again as long as nothing tags her person with the magic. A clever opponent with magesight may estimate where the spell comes from, so she's definitely not safe from harm.

• Weapons: n to the slash to the a, baby. <3
  

Part IV: Miscellaneous Information

• Why you: Because I think this sphere has been denied props for far too long. And if this isn't what you're looking for, then I'd be happy to revise or for someone else to get it, so long as it is given wuv. <3
  
  
• Miscellaneous:

  Fun fact restated: Because of her heavy lunar influence, Mahsati has no inherent elemental alignment. She is utterly incompetent at fire/ice/lightning spells, and all her spells have that "neutral" flavor. Because of the lunar and astral combination, this is intended to portray her alignment as "otherworldly". Interesting factoid for magic nerds. X3

  More fun facts: Mahsati's personality shift is not nearly so great as she would like to believe. The full moon does make her personality more intense, but in many ways she's fooled by the "placebo" effects of believing she's somehow a more awesome person during one time of the month than another, and thus she acts accordingly, doing things she thinks she's "not good enough" to handle any other time. Fatima IS her, without as much fear of retribution or looking dumb, and the sooner she figures this out the sooner she can skip the therapy bills and we can all go home.

  About the Archives: Though it's been touched upon, the Royal Archives is a pet project of one of the King's children, who are notorious for having nothing *difficult* to work on. XD It is intended to be a preservation of knowledge and innovation, some kind of monument to the brainpower of the Magical Kingdom, though it doesn't have nearly the functionality of a normal library or museum. It ended up being more of a warehouse for the things that don't belong anyplace else, mostly documents: copies of important writings, treaties, statistics, but mostly a wide variety of special-interest flotsam like "A history of the newt eye in early potionmaking" and "Scarves worn by Great Kings - a pictoral essay". It also houses a great deal of invention sampling, specifically those things that nobody will ever use but SOMEONE MIGHT NEED A COPY OF someday, which means anything that does ANYthing, intended or no, can suitably be stored there. Sort of like having a shrine devoted to all those wacky pre-Wright flying machines. Useful objects can be found many more accessible Atlantean venues, but if you need something that no other scholar in their right mind would bother to collect, seek ye the Royal Archives.

Iyad teetered dangerously under the pile of boxes in his spindly arms, the tiny package perched on the top sliding ominously towards the brink of falling. He hadn't intended to construct a tower out of the month's new arrivals, but not only was the lobby strictly off limits for unseemly messes, but the delivery boy had seemed to think foisting them all upon him at once was the ideal method of handing off the goods. He had been too wary of the delivery boy's biceps -- and their power to separate his head from his body -- to disagree.

He had managed to get all the way back to the offices, despite having to crane his neck around one side to see, and he breathed a sigh of relief. "Mahsati, could you, um, that is if you're not terribly busy right now, I could use some assistance with the.. um... I've got these boxes, so... if you could just point me towards the door, uh, Miss... Mahsati?" he blinked owlishly as he turned to one side so he could get a better look at her.

Mahsati was face down at her desk, the tiny scrap of chalk she'd been dictating to still hovering expectantly over the square slate upon which she'd been doing a tally. Even from his less than perfect angle, he could see where inventory items had a few extra vowels scrawled out amidst her yawns. The slow rise and fall of her shoulders meant she'd already gotten comfortable, goodness only knows how long she'd been thus.

Iyad bit his lip and glanced back and forth anxiously, looking for their supervisor. "Heeey," he muttered, though he realized he had no free hands to tap her or otherwise rouse her from the coma she seemed to have slipped into for the umpteenth time. "Mahsati, I could really quite possibly, um, use your help with the--"

He had to cut short, as he had leaned too far over her desk and put himself off-balance. The whole thing started to slide to one side, and he let out a yelp as he felt himself careening floorward in slow motion, his staggerings only delaying the inevitable.

He must have cried out in alarm, because his snoozing officemate awoke with a start, snapping upright and glancing about through bleary eyes. "Mn, Iyad, were you calling m-- what the!" She stumbled out of her chair, eyes travelling up the veritable spire of junk. Just as Iyad braced for impact, she threw out her hand, the imperceptible charm that flew from her fingertips striking the parcels just in time to save them from crashing, instead forcing them unsteadily back into their places atop one another, resting safely on the floor.

They looked at one another and breathed a sigh of relief. In doing so, however, Iyad noticed something and began fidgeting awkwardly. "Y-you've got a little chalk, right there," he said, pointing to his cheek. In reality it had streaked half her face like a primitive jungle warrior, but far be it from him to be the one to tell her.

"Huh? Oh, right, sorry," she said, grinning as she wiped her face on her sleeve. "...counting the volumes in The Comprehensive World Guide to Floor Tiles must have been so exciting, I passed out from the shock." She gave him a sheepish look as she went over to help him with the new arrivals.

He peered at her curiously over the wooden crate he struggled to lift. "Really?" He was met with a brief but intensely sarcastic look from his coworker. "Oh, r-right, sorry."

"There," Mahsati continued with a yawn, rearranging the packages and loose papers with almost subconscious effort. "everything heavy on the bottom." Iyad hastily reached out to gather up almost everything he'd struggled with the first place, and she raised an eyebrow. "Iyad.. are you certain you don't want me to help you with more of that? I could take at least half."

"Oh no, no, I wouldn't want to," he mumbled, doing his best to remain chivalrous in the face of heavy lifting. "I've got it, you see, nothing to it!"

The moment the words left his mouth, Iyad stood up a trifle too quickly, slamming his head against a low-sitting bookshelf next to Mahsati's desk. He immediately sank back down to the floor, though this time there was nothing either of them could do - the mishmash of objects slid to the floor, nearly on top of the poor man's head, with a resounding clatter. For a moment everything was silent, and then the two archivists' eyes locked on one another in a horrified stare at the telltale plink of breaking glass somewhere in the mess. The next moment, everything was chaos, a raging cyclone drawing up every small object in the room and flinging it carelessly about, papers spiralling up towards the ceiling. For a good five minutes everything was drowned out by the roar, as Mahsati and Iyad took refuge under the large wooden desk to avoid death by paperweight concussion.

When at last the din subsided, Mahsati wriggled out from beneath her own desk with a groan. Iyad followed suit, though he looked a tad weak in the knees when he saw what a mess they were going to have to explain to their boss.

"What in the name of creation was THAT?" he asked, wringing his hands anxiously. "Are we being assaulted by thieves?"

Mahsati put a hand to her forehead, brushing aside her now matted hair. "...no, I doubt it, look." Beneath her foot was a piece of the broken decanter, with a small paper label pasted to its surface. It said in slightly yellowed script, 'Archmage Rusam Deyra, circa 230 A.E., Portable Tornado'.

She sighed, her shoulders sagging floorward. It was going to be a long week.