Chesterfield Act Registry of the Expressive Database
File #20 Mar 2018 10:46
|
 Victoria Pendleton |
The first few months of 2011 saw Ygraine paranormally imprisoned (and firebombed, shot, and otherwise traumatised), then - deliberately, she believes - pushed into a mental collapse, before being abandoned by her lover, tangling with Sylar, and hiding from the Federal government in a derelict tenement.
At this lowest point of her life she became an analyst and operative for the future-killers of Endgame. This provided desperately-needed purpose, and a surrogate family to whom she found herself clinging with intense gratitude, but was perhaps less helpful in other ways: signing up to murder timelines (and to kill an alternate version of at least one of your colleagues) is not exactly good for one’s grasp on conventional reality. The fact that her other primary source of hope was the existence of an alternate-future foster-daughter did not help her connection to mundanity.
Having her head in the clouds of possibility while being driven to change the world helped her to cling determinedly to her ideals, pursuing the creation of the Liberty music album even while on the run - and managing to secure its release as the world slid into violent chaos.
The horrors of November brought the Siege of Pollepel Island and then the War in their wake. Ygraine threw herself into each set of terrible events in turn, her commitment to desperate world-saving efforts made all the stronger by the loss of Elisabeth and the mangling of some of the handful of people she still felt able to trust.
At the start of the War in January 2012, Ygraine concluded that fighting was bloody stupid and frankly horrible, but that the alternatives were even worse. Starting with Graeme, Remi, and Rue, she formed a small strike-team operating out of Jaiden’s base at Kabetogama in rural Minnesota. A joking suggestion, based on Endgame’s old codenames, saw her accidentally provide the unit with its lasting moniker: the Chessmen henceforth remained highly active throughout the War.
It was Ygraine who pushed the Chessmen to make documenting the War a key element of their role throughout the conflict: she sought a crash-course in photojournalism from Jaiden (a former professional war photographer) to supplement her academic skills in conflict analysis, and encouraged others (including Rue and Sable) to do likewise. Heavy emphasis was placed on saving lives being more important than shooting people, and interviewing survivors was seen as not just an exercise in gathering military intelligence but a way of building up information to help create a long-term peace after the war.
That focus on distant idealism was not a perfect match for everyone, and both Devon and Rue left the Chessmen in August 2012 to join Hana’s proto-Wolfhound group (though Rue in particular continued to provide intermittent batches of fresh evidence). While some left, others helped in the field and behind the lines: Jaiden and Alia each provided their own version of a heavy-hitting presence when needed and were continually active behind the frontlines, while (mostly helpful) Raytech kit periodically happened to fall off the back of a truck in their vicinity. But it was Sable who - from the Spring of 2012 - gave Ygraine her most unexpected dose of hope: for the little firebrand (with whom she had so often clashed) to spend most of the war helping to chase the Briton’s high-falutin’ dreams provided Ygraine with a powerful sense of validation, for both herself and her aspirations.
In some key ways this was one of the most fulfilling periods of Ygraine’s life. She got to defeat rampaging genocidaires, gather information to help build a better future, reunite survivors with family and friends, help the Lighthouse Initiative to gather in lost children…. And Jennifer, after graduating from university that Summer, made her way via Canada to the West Coast to provide her own form of logistical assistance in the comparative safety of Portland. Reunited with her wife in their shared cause, though usually separated by distance, Ygraine could not help but feel that amidst the mayhem and horror her life was actually back on track.
Remi’s pregnancy in 2013 deprived the field unit of one of its original line-up, but they had by then become an expert little special-forces team: superpowered, well-equipped, trained by an SAS veteran, and with exceptional intelligence support thanks to their physical, telepathic, and technopathic surveillance and investigation options. They collaborated with both Ryans’ Special Activities Ferrymen and Hana’s operatives, though the Chessmen often passed up purely military targets in favour of rescuing civilians or acquiring supplies for refugees. Still, they saw a lot of combat, and Ygraine - as the her team’s primary sniper and close-combat specialist - racked up the highest tally of ghosts to haunt her dreams.
General Moritz’s nuclear counter-attack largely failed - but the one missile that got through hit Portland. Abruptly, Jennifer was among the millions ‘missing, presumed dead’. From the last week of November 2013, Ygraine rapidly transitioned from disbelief to despair, before embracing the ‘darkness’ in her mind. Fuelled by a mixture of fury and self-loathing, she pushed hard for victory - and she and Jaiden teamed up to assist in the assault on Raven Rock. Though still a bit-part player compared to some of the Evolved powerhouses out there, she could take a whole squad of people into any opening cracked in the facility’s defences, and could hustle such a group along routes others couldn’t even attempt. Like Jaiden, she was determined to document as much as possible of what lay within Raven Rock - with the added interest of ensuring that prisoners were taken to serve as witnesses, so that the real decision-makers could be made to answer for their crimes.
After the War, the Chessmen increasingly went their separate ways: Ygraine spent much of 2014 frenetically touring the United States and refugee camps in Canada and Mexico, trying to gather information and restore broken connections… while torturing herself with the faint hope that she might possibly find someone to tell her that Jennifer had been sent out of Portland on a mission of mercy, and was in fact still alive. This was a dangerous and often depressing existence, but the bursts of hope and joy when she succeeded in reuniting family and friends confirmed to her that Liberty could continue to play a meaningful role.
By the start of the Albany Trials, Ygraine had all but given up on ever knowing quite what happened to Jennifer, and had calmed down sufficiently to throw herself - with a great deal of aid from Jared Harrison - into preparing and presenting the most damningly relevant parts of Liberty’s great mass of information. Indeed, its persistent role throughout the Trials ensured that it came to ever more people’s attention, allowing its databases to continue improving their reach and detail… while also adding to Ygraine and the organisation’s list of enemies. Tangentially, close collaboration with the University of Toronto’s Department of Ethics and School of Public Policy led to the chance to pursue a (part-time) doctorate examining the impact and abuse of aid efforts during the War.
In spite of the personal fulfilment provided by chasing her peace-building dreams, by the end of the Albany process a great deal of whitewashing had taken place: precious few of those responsible for directing policy were being held to account, while there seemed to be no desire to provide impartial and universal justice. After all, Ygraine knew that Evolved were entirely capable of perpetrating crimes against humanity. The lack of any sort of Truth and Reconciliation Commission or any evident hope of even-handed justice being pursued simultaneously depressed her, confirmed her profoundly cynical view of the propensity for large organisations to harm public interests, and affirmed her determination to pursue peace and justice for all.
A highlight of 2015 had been the celebration of Remi and Jaiden’s wedding, uniting two of the (very few) people Ygraine felt able to trust, but after Albany she turned her own focus back to making Liberty a source of hope and truth for as many victims of the War as possible. Travelling a great deal in the course of chasing leads, distributing aid, and gathering ever more interviews, she periodically crossed paths with Sable, sometimes joining her friend on-stage as a supporting musician or backing singer.
Following the creation of the New York Safe Zone, Ygraine made enquiries about sites to which she had personal connections - and duly chose to invest some of Liberty’s operating budget in the acquisition of the old Endgame safehouse at the Skinny Brickfront. A symbolic purchase, it was both the last place she had felt at home and a toehold in the strangest city of the Evolved world. It also offered opportunities to put her altruism to work in building something both tangible and hopeful.
As it happens, Jackson Heights is the most crime-ridden and least comfortable of the inhabited parts of the Safe Zone. But in the bitterly angry funk that had threatened to overwhelm her after Albany, Ygraine frankly welcomed the chance to face down some demons. Not only has she refused to be run out of the neighbourhood, she’s formally registered interest in a neighbouring building, with the hope of acquiring it for conversion into a training and community centre. At present, local civilians wanting to learn parkour, self-defence, or serious martial arts are given lessons as best can be managed with the space available. Evolved are also offered ability tuition, while Ygraine uses Liberty to funnel her beloved unconventional tech (crank-powered lamps, stoves, rechargers, radios, and similar items) into the hands of those in need.
More destructively, she’s prone to vigilante action (especially to stake out the Liberty site as an untouchable safe haven), and has been giving serious consideration to signing up for one or more of the city’s illicit fight clubs: she desperately wants to focus upon building a hopeful future for all, and knows that such activities are unwise, but she often struggles to restrain the darkness in her mind.
Ygraine might sometimes be recognised as the optimist who arrived in New York in 2006 to work for the United Nations and dream of Olympic glory; more often, she might be seen as the woman who returned in 2008 to battle her demons and search for herself. But the events of early 2011 (not least having a supposed friend push her into a mental collapse when already profoundly traumatised, before being abandoned by her lover and used by the Federal government to lure allies into a deadly trap) loosened the restraints she had managed to place upon the darkness that has been with her since the first Bomb. Though her unexpected surrogate family in Endgame and the revelation of her future foster-daughter in Lene gave her the strength to find new ways to corral it, the bleakly furious loathing dwelling in her mind has gained new power and prominence.
As was the case in 2011, on a Myers-Briggs personality assessment Ygraine emerges as one of the vanishingly rare female INTJs: introversion preferred to extroversion; intuition and abstraction preferred to concrete sensory data; thinking being more comfortable than feeling; and judgement winning out over perception as she seeks to plan her future and organise the world. One simple summary is that an INTJ ‘Mastermind’ is “driven by her own original ideas to achieve improvements”.
Though she longs for personal connections, she tends to find it very hard to repress her urge to analyse in detail and hunt for flaws: something only reinforced by the events of 2011 and the scars of the war. The handful of people to have won past her defences tend to be trusted implicitly, which can sometimes make her extremely easy to manipulate. More commonly, when the darkness stirs she can find herself staring at the world in a fractured mirror, unable to decide which fragment of an image might represent the reality other people perceive.
In large part thanks to the war, she has learned to put the darkness to active use: she can (sometimes) now channel the fury and loathing within to grant an additional impulse to her efforts. Though it is rather more useful for close combat than social interactions, it has helped to provide some memorably sarcastic moments in testimony and interview. But it is also the motive force behind some deciedly dangerous behaviour. She knows she needs to get a firmer grip on the balance she preaches to others, but she’s not at all sure how to manage it.
Ygraine redefines ‘down’ for objects (and people) affected by her power. This takes the form of a bond between her target and whatever is chosen as its new ‘down’, towards which gravity pulls it for as long as a ‘charge’ created by her power lasts. It is often used to allow her and companions to wall-walk, though it is somewhat more versatile than that.
This is not telekinesis by another name. Ygraine redirects gravity for her targets, but only within a bond, and cannot add to or reduce its force. She does not throw around bolts of unseen power, make things hover, create barriers, or manipulate weight. Strictly speaking, it’s even possible that she doesn’t manipulate gravity itself, but instead alters some inherent property of physical matter. Virtually everything likely to be shown as a ‘gravity power’ in a comic book is beyond her scope. What she actually does is superficially simpler, while being rather nuanced in its effects.
Bad stuff - stress, fatigue and harm: In broad terms, Ygraine is subject to the usual range of strain, headaches, migraines, and dramatic nosebleeds from over-use of her Evolved ability - though with a few oddities peculiar to herself. More specifically, particular uses tax her in different ways:
Charges and their manipulation: Creating a charge always requires at least momentary attention and a small degree of energy; nearing the upper limit of her ability requires active focus and effort. Replenishing or redirecting an existing charge requires less effort than making a wholly-new one of the same scale; Ygraine prefers to keep charges running and repurpose them where possible, rather than create a succession of entirely separate ones.
Mass & range: the farther within her limits a target is, the easier it tends to be to affect - in terms of both the concentration and the energy required. Though affecting a book is not several hundred times easier than affecting a 300lb man there is a marked difference between the two, with the latter requiring a noticable effort to charge. Similarly, affecting herself is easier than using her power on anyone else; and working via touch is appreciably easier than affecting something out of reach. Such drains stack: affecting a sumo wrestler 10’ away will take significant effort, thanks to the combination of mass and distance.
Speed and focus: As with most things in life, the more Ygraine forces something to happen in a hurry, the more taxing it is. Taking her time over creating a charge can ease the burden, while snatching at fleeting opportunities will add additional strain - placing a charge on that 10’-distant sumo wrestler while sprinting past him is likely to move the task from ‘taxing’ into ‘painful’.
Overdoing it: Pushing the limits of individual charges will tire Ygraine more and more. This can lead to headaches, migraines and the infamous Evolved nosebleed. As this strain builds up, her finesse and capacity to focus diminish - just as would be expected for more physical forms of fatigue. Pushing the limits with regard to number of charges and the frequency of their creation also applies a drain, even if the charges are individually well within her compass: this can lead to her temporarily losing access to one or more of her charges, with her maximum cap of 6 diminishing as she loses the ability to maintain her full array of connections. Pushing both sets of limits at once can result in suffering from both drawbacks as well as growing physical fatigue of a ‘mundane’ kind, as her body struggles to keep up with the stress of her efforts.
More frequently, there can be a trade-off between the conventional physical fatigue of pushing herself to keep moving in order to make best use of her charges, and the Evolved fatigue of taxing her ability more if she takes time out to rest her body and thereafter has to recreate her effects from scratch.
Charges: Ygraine creates a bond between her target and a specific physical destination that thereafter serves as its new ‘down’ until the charge runs out of energy or its range restriction is broken: as soon as the charge dissipates, gravity’s normal orientation resumes. Other sources and forms of energy are unaffected by the bond: charged objects retain their prior momentum and inertia, and can be pushed, picked up, or otherwise moved after being charged.
In effect, creating a charge is akin to placing a directional resistor into an electrical circuit: gravity - from any source - affecting such a charged item can thereafter only pull it to its new ‘down’. The amount of gravity in the system is entirely outside her control: barring the intervention of a gravitokinetic, on Earth this will be the natural total of ~1.006G of gravity affecting mass near the surface of the planet. A book charged and set upon a wall can be picked up and walked off with just as easily as if it were sitting on a table.
Ygraine can charge as many as three separate targets in the same instant, but all simultaneously-created charges must link to the same destination as their new ‘down’, and each must fall within her range and mass limits. Any that don’t meet those requirements will simply fail to form, even if others are successfully created at the same moment.
A maximum of six charges can be in existence at any given time: they provide a finite pool, from which Ygraine must create effects capable of lasting for her desired duration(s) while also having enough power to affect the target masses. Severely taxing her ability can result in losing access to some of her charges; other than a single incident of irradiation combined with extreme stress, she is yet to find a way of exceeding the limit of six simultaneous effects.
Her mass and duration limits can be extended by investing extra time and energy on ‘stacking’ charges into an object: additional effort (depleting her limited supply of potential charges) can be invested in a single object, with each additional charge either extending the duration or increasing the mass that the charge can affect. Until the process of charging mass is complete, no gravity is redirected: a 400kg object with 300kg of charges on it remains wholly unaffected by her power.
For as long as a charge exists, it retains a link to her - drawing upon her ability for sustenance. As part of this, she can tell how close to destabilising and collapsing each charge might be: she can feel the steadiness (or otherwise) of its link to her, and has a rather vague impression of what direction her energy is being drawn in. This connection can be terminated at will, by stopping the support at source.
Refreshing a charge is less taxing than creating a new one of the same magnitude, as is tweaking a charge to alter its destination: when using her ability for movement Ygraine likes to cover distance quickly, so that she can get maximum use out of a single charge.
Duration: Standardly, one of Ygraine’s charges lasts for about a quarter of an hour - or until the permissible range between it and its destination is broken, at which point it will instantly dissolve. It is possible for her to provide a limited ‘refresh’ for an existing charge: this is less taxing than creating a wholly new one, so she prefers to conduct her three-dimensional excursions without lengthy interruptions that would necessitate creating new charges from scratch.
Similarly, it is possible for her to extend the duration of a charge when she first creates it: but whether an extension is added to a charge at the start or a refresh is provided later the process grants diminishing returns - the first additional charge invested in duration adds 10 minutes; a second adds a further five. To extend duration beyond that point (a potential total of 30 minutes), she needs to dissolve the existing charge (or let it expire) and create a new one in its place.
Range: For Ygraine’s ability, range comes in two parts: firstly, the distance between herself and the object she ‘charges’; and secondly, the distance between it and whatever will serve as its new orientation. During her breakthrough in the Ark, she demonstrated a range of nearly twenty yards: she can reliably call upon no more than a fifth of that nowadays, consistently able to affect a target about ten feet from her and link it to something ten feet from it in turn. Should something wind up more than 10’ from its new ‘down’, the charge will immediately dissipate. E.g. she might connect herself to a passing car, but unless it were travelling slowly the acceleration provided by gravity would not let her catch the vehicle before it moved out of range: the charge would only hold for the moment that the two were within 10’ of each other, and she might well be yanked off her feet into the road rather than starting to car-surf.
Sense:: Though it is normally as thoroughly suppressed as is the feeling of wearing clothes, Ygraine has the capacity to sense physical objects within the two stages of her range. Dramatic changes (e.g. someone teleporting into her sensory range) will grab her attention (much as a heavy weight being dropped close by will be noticed even when otherwise thoroughly distracted), and she can consciously focus her ability to identify individual things - rather as one might choose to focus upon the array of detailed but usually-imperceptible sensations provided by one’s breathing.
As with mundane perception, focusing upon something is most easily and accurately done when objects are clearly evident rather than near the limit of perceptibility - spotting the looming bulk of a cliff or a skyscraper is effortless, but the lower the mass of an item the closer it will need to be to impinge on her awareness. As with mundane perception, matters are eased when multiple senses can provide simultaneous data: targeting by ability alone is challenging, and without the aid of a clear view of an object (or the connection provided by a pre-existing charge upon it), even intense concentration cannot let her charge objects of less than 1kg of mass at 10’ range. The smallest items - pens, brushes, coins, and the like - require physical contact to create an initial charge; employing her ability for petty theft and similar acts of subterfuge is very rarely an option.
The outer half of her sensory range does not open up ‘active’ uses of her power: it primarily allows her to identify potential targets that might serve as a charge’s new ‘down’. Detail continues to decline, until her ability working in isolation could only distinguish individual items of 10kg or more at the 20’ limit.
With effort, Ygraine can induce her ability to reach things that she can neither see nor hear (in this way, she once misaligned the firing mechanism of a tank’s main gun). This requires an intensification of the focus already needed to achieve any degree of fine perception with her ability; in the case of the tank, she had to perch atop the vehicle, with her hand pressed to the armour directly over the mechanism while she focused her full attention upon it. Checking whether there’s someone lurking on the other side of a closed door is rather easier, but still requires active concentration - and at least a little time, if she is to start discerning any degree of detail regarding their stance or burdens.
Targets: There are always two elements to initiating an active use of Ygraine’s ability: selecting what will receive a charge, and specifying what will serve as the charge’s new ‘down’. If she’s unable to select one or the other, she cannot create a charge.
The definition of an ‘object’ that might be charged by Ygraine’s ability is somewhat loose: it tends to encompass the whole of an identifiable system of close-relatedly items, rather than (for example) charging a paint-can but not its contents. Thus, while Ygraine moves around on walls, she doesn’t have her clothing fall over her eyes or her hair drag on the floor; nor can she empty someone’s pockets by attaching them to the ceiling. She can put effort into narrowing her focus, but always works in discrete items when choosing a narrow target: “that soldier’s helmet” is quite possible, but “his face” would not be.
As the terminus of her ability’s effects rather than something directly touched by her power, destinations - things designated as ‘down’ - are not limited by her ability’s restrictions on mass, and can be as much as 10’ beyond the charged item. “That wall”, “that cliff-face”, and “that redwood” are all quite acceptable as things to which a charge is oriented, though they’d be wholly impossible to charge themselves.
Weight/Mass: Gravity affects mass to create weight. Ygraine’s capacity to generate a charge is limited by mass (about 150kg per charge, and no more than 900kg among all charges combined) but it is often the weight generated that matters, in terms of impact and pressure (and commonly-used US measurements). A 150kg object will standardly weigh about 330lb, while a full use of all her charges would let her affect something weighing about 2000lb: this is sufficient to let her affect a Harley Davidson with a couple of charges; however, even putting all six charges into so small a car as a Mini Cooper would be insufficient to affect it.
Active Uses: What Ygraine can actually do with all this ranges from the simple to the complex: at the most basic level, she can (gently) stick one object to another; it will be held in place by its own normal weight, just as if it were resting upon a table. Indeed, her original Registration admitted to ‘Object Adhesion’. This can, however, extend to allowing her and a group of others to move on walls and ceilings, flipping orientation at her direction: treating vertical shafts as flat ground and belly-crawling on the roof of flooded tunnels are quite possible, amid other options for unconventional movement. She’s developed an unique form of three-dimensional Parkour to exploit this.
More dangerously, she can make opponents drop (unable to either dodge or brace for a block) onto her blows; have them fall onto nearby walls, ceilings, or objects; disrupt their vestibular system with shifts of orientation; immobilise someone by reorienting their gravity to fix upon their belt rather than the ground; use her mundane skills to damage a limb then set an attached glove or boot as the whole body’s new ‘down’ so that the subject’s weight comes to rest on the injury; set an enemy’s helmet as the focus of gravity for his squad-mates; plant tracking devices (or nastier things) on a nearby vehicle from ten feet away…
She absolutely cannot fly, but at times it might momentarily look like it through orienting her gravity to nearby objects. At best, this is either short-range or crude; at worst, it’s functionally useless. But there are situations (especially in urban or forested environments) in which she might be able to redirect or slow a fall - much as she can leap into the air, charge herself, and drop onto a suitable target (such as a branch or fire-escape) that’s within 10’ of the high-point of her arc.
Reserved for Approved Plot Use: The last use of her power is one proposed by Conrad but never tested: the inverse mass driver would entail creating a closed loop in which one object is linked to another, which is then linked back to the first item. All gravity would thus work solely to hold them against each other: contrary to a frequently-voiced misconception, ‘freeing’ them from Earth’s pull would not make them float gently above the ground. Instead, nothing would link them to the planet, while they would (as ever for Ygraine’s power) retain their full momentum and prior vector: it would be analagous to whirling a sling around one’s head, then letting go; but in this case, the orbital mechanics of the solar system would provide the impetus. Depending on the precise orientation of the Earth to the sun (i.e. the time of day), effects would range from being carried along in front of the planet if it happened to be at just the right orientation to do so, to being fired into the atmosphere at more than twelve miles per second (beyond Mach 60; two and a half times the re-entry speed of the Space Shuttle). Far below that speed, objects ignite the air in front of them: not due to friction, but due to pressure, as the gas molecules cannot get out of the way fast enough. Unless something she did this to hit a solid object it would simultaneously be crushed and immolated while lighting a column of fire in the atmosphere; if it were to hit something before disintegrating then it would serve as a mass driver impact. Ygraine has never dared find out what would actually happen if she were to try this: ‘success’ would instantly have earned her the old ‘Tier 3’ classification, and is morally repugnant to her. Still, it remains in reserve lest she ever need to dispose of a case of one of the Vanguard’s viruses or have a nuclear bomb counting down in front of her. Naturally, unleashing this on something (let alone someone) is entirely restricted to pre-approved plot use.
When everyone lies, telling the truth isn't just rebellion. It's an act of revolution. So think carefully when you speak it, because the truth is a weapon.
~ Richard K. Morgan ~
As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.
~ Christopher Dawson ~
Appendices
Hooks
Known To Most
- The face of Liberty in Albany and New York, who will try to help with almost any problem encountered by survivors in the Safe Zone. Hands out technological gadgets (water-purifying buckets, hand-powered battery-chargers, and more) that she imports via her charity, helps try to reconnect families, and arranges legal advice.
- Still gathering information: she testified throughout the Albany war crime trials, using the photojournalism of the Chessmen (and some allies) and the mass of survivors' testimonies they acquired during and after the War. She has consistently argued for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (so that all involved could share what happened, for good and bad), and for more to be done to bring to book the decision-makers as well as the trigger-pullers. She's still collecting accounts and accepting information that might help to build a fuller picture of what happened, not least so that she can reconnect more survivors amidst the post-War chaos.
- Gay, British, educated, and outspoken: though nowhere near as widely memed as Eve, to many she's the embodiment of unwelcome foreign meddling – a posh, perverted imperialist trying to tell honest Americans how to live their lives.
Known To Some
- With Liz gone, Cardinal retired from active service, and Jaiden in recovery, Ygraine found herself the tactician for a small combat unit of Endgamers and allies – accidentally dubbed 'the Chessmen', in an off-hand comment she made. Her greatest military achievement is probably that she managed to keep her team alive throughout the conflict. Though the Chessmen collaborated with Ryans' Special Activities Division and Hana's proto-Wolfhound, they were consistently more interested in rescuing people and documenting events than in taking on hardened military targets. Still, they saw a good bit of action – and Ygraine was personally involved throughout the War.
- Ygraine's wife, Jennifer, had returned to the US to assist in aid efforts behind the lines. She is believed to have been in Portland when the nuke fell in November '13. After this, Ygraine took more risks, culminating in using her abilities to guide a team into Raven Rock once the presidential fortress had been breached.
- She offers tuition on a "pay if you can afford to" basis, in the Liberty HQ. This includes martial arts and self defence, but also encompasses an INST-certified tutor's aid with Evolved abilities. The service is chiefly known about in the local area, and access is withdrawn should she learn of a student engaging in activities of which she disapproves.
Known To Few
- Greatly assisted by Scrabble, she has reached a modus vivendi with the Sunnyside Serpents gang of Jackson Heights: the neighbourhood defenders recognise her as a well-intentioned outsider and an ally against more predatory elements.
- She's resumed her subterranean explorations: having spent a great deal of time as a troglodyte before the War, she is now learning what remains and what has changed under the portions of the city open to her.
- Ygraine doesn't believe that the world's safe or that the conflict's over. There are Vanguard and Institute survivors out there, as well as more overt threats such as the remnants of Mitchell's supporters. And some of the 'good' factions have given some decidedly dubious people a lot of power. To Ygraine, it's evident that failsafes need to be in place for when it all goes wrong again.
Relationships
See Ygraine's original page for entries and links to logs from Book I of String Theory.
Lighting the way
Graeme: ~ Best friend
Jaiden: ~ Rock and mentor
Lene: ~ Hope personified
Remi: ~ Safe haven
Sable: ~ Unexpected inspiration
Tamara: ~ Mirror-guide
The ones to protect
Adel:
Alia:
Brynn:
Devon:
Ray:
Rue:
Scrabble:
Mysteries to be resolved
Robyn - Special Agent Grim
In her pre-War life, Agent Quinn was once the person whom Ygraine felt honoured to call 'Robyn'. Eventually, she discovered that Quinn lived down to some of the stereotypes of a rocker, including a string of covert liaisons; broken commitments to both Ygraine and to Liberty; and a secret girlfriend acquired just after their first date, maintained throughout their relationship, and for whom she finally left when Ygraine was mid-meltdown. It took a long time for fantasy to be separated from what Ygraine now thought might be reality, but she has concluded that while Quinn was a colossal bitch, Ygraine herself must have been a veritable nightmare brought to life - a madwoman trying to reshape an unfortunate victim into her imaginary ideal partner. Until Spring of 2018, their sole contact entailed Ygraine informing Quinn of her mother's demise: not exactly the most comfortable of reunions, and one that Ygraine fears saw her spur Quinn onto a dark path. Who Agent Quinn actually is and what on Earth she might think of Ygraine are presently complete mysteries - but ones that she might get to explore, since it seems that Quinn desires a renewal of contact, and a fresh start.
By blood and bond
Anthony: Ygraine's elder brother, who was originally responsible for getting her hooked on cycling. Now a specialist in international markets, working at the London Stock Exchange. His skills and economic value have helped to protect him from overt government hostility thus far, in spite of his sister's activities.
Dominic: Ygraine's father is a senior lecturer in linguistics at Edinburgh University: the world of academia provides him with a degree of shelter, though his department have been encouraged to consider his retirement plans.
Mariot: Her solicitor mother works part-time, taking occasional legal consultancy jobs. She lives with her husband in Edinburgh.
Mark and Rachel Galloway: The in-laws. Laid back, open-minded, artistically-inclined and once again resident in the comparative quiet of upstate New York. Ygraine counts herself distinctly blessed in her family-by-marriage. Now, they look after her beloved motorcycle, Alfred, and many of her possessions.
The lost and the longed-for
Charlotte Roux - She also saw Robyn
Back in the day, Quinn's mother was the only person who shared Ygraine's habit of addressing the rocker as 'Robyn'. They seemed to view the musician with similar stars in their eyes, and Ygraine was glad to befriend her fellow Francophone; the bond was strong enough that she later sought to ensure Charlotte's safety during the War. Though relocated to Canada, in time Roux signed up with a refugee charity, and sadly died in 2013 while accompanying an aid convoy over the border. Ygraine pays her respects whenever she visits Toronto: her dead friend serves as a link to all those who suffered in the war, and more personally to a time of happy optimism.
Elisabeth - Heart-sister
Ygraine believes that Elisabeth was primarily responsible for bringing her into Endgame, without whom she fears she would have had neither purpose nor surrogate family to carry her through the world-shattering chaos of the past few years. Above and beyond such priceless gifts, Liz was creative, brave, kind, honest, and remarkably inclined to put her faith in Ygraine. That she sacrificed herself to save the world was wholly in-character. That Ygraine could not take her place in Alaska is still a source of regret. She is missed every day.
Jennifer - Fiery and faithful
Gorgeous, talented, and fiercely passionate. Ygraine never did figure out quite how she won the devotion of the beautiful actress, but thinks that doing so was the greatest honour of her life. She tries to convince herself that Jennifer died doing what she wanted, and that her death would have been too swift to have been felt. Though Ygraine has never been able to match Jennifer's fire - and thinks that it sometimes burned rather indiscriminately - she does try to use the memory of it as a spur to action.
Robyn - My dream of light
Once upon a time, an ever-frightened wanderer thought she had found a soulmate: a gentle and beautiful songstress to serve as an anchor for her heart and a ward against her fears, to whom she could in turn act as mentor and even muse. Unfortunately, the wanderer was batshit crazy. In time, what she had thought was her world fell apart, and the wanderer was forced to conclude that her beloved was quite unreal. But for a long time thereafter, that imaginary soulmate remained a beacon of light in the swirling darkness of the wanderer's terrors. There's a bitterness to concluding that she was a phantasm; but for as long as Ygraine could believe in her Robyn, she was her dearest friend. Even now, the memory of the vanished dream can inspire flashes of hope as well as wistful tearfulness.
The evolving roster (as currently pieced together)
Field unit: combat service, with particular focus upon rescuing survivors, acquiring supplies, and securing evidence.
Kabetogama: fishing and camping resort in rural Montana close to the Canadian border; home base for the Chessmen; becomes a refugee way-station.
(+) denotes additional photojournalistic efforts to document events
- January to March 2012
Field unit:
Graeme
Remi
Rue (+)
Ygraine (+)
Kabetogama:
Jaiden (+) (recuperating from Mount Natazhat)
~ Devon (begins training in February)
- March to May 2012
Field Unit:
Graeme
Remi
Rue (+)
Sable (+)
Ygraine (+)
Kabetogama (with field role when needed):
Alia
Jaiden (+)
~ Devon (in training until 18th birthday)
- June to August 2012
Field Unit:
Devon
Graeme
Remi
Rue (+)
Sable (+)
Ygraine (+)
Kabetogama (with field role when needed):
Alia
Jaiden (+)
- August 2012 to February 2013
Field Unit:
Graeme
Remi
Sable (+)
Ygraine (+)
Kabetogama (with field role when needed):
Alia
Jaiden (+)
- March 2013 to January 2014:
Field Unit:
Graeme
Sable (+)
Ygraine (+)
Kabetogama (with field role when needed):
Alia
Jaiden (+)
Remi (pregnant, then new mother)
- 18th January 2014:
Assault on Raven Rock:
Jaiden (+)
Ygraine (+)
- Possible additions (uncertain dates; most likely in Kabetogama?):
Niles
Tamara
Logs
Older Logs: Original Ygraine
| Log Icons | Plot Icons |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Aftermath | Virus |
| Book One Icons | Book One Plot Icons | |
|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
| Hopeful | Grim | Sound of Thunder |
Miscellaneous
Wholly altless, save for alternate-timeline Ygraine.
Availability variable, thanks to chronic illness. But resident in the UK, so highly unlikely to be around for EST (let alone PST) evenings.
 |
Ceiling Cat (Liette)
Debater (Cat)
Ender (Lene)
Henchwoman (Colette)
Sudden Ceiling Woman (Doyle)
Yg (general use)
Yggy Pop (Rue)
Adherent of an Eschatonic Conspiracy: Some people commit themselves to Company, Bureau, or Agency and duly receive focused training for their role. Ygraine pledged herself to a secret organisation devoted to preventing unwanted futures, and spent 31 weeks living as a fugitive with little to do but obsessively train with the former head of FRONTLINE New York and an SAS veteran. Among other things, she's a competent mid-range sniper (specialising in the use of unconventional vantage-points) and has some experience in circumventing and disarming improvised explosives and other traps.
Analysis & Observation: A borderline paranoiac and hyper-vigilant who has gathered and analysed information for Endgame, the Chessmen, and Liberty, she was initially recruited by Endgame specifically to serve as an intelligence analyst. She has experience in presenting conclusions as an academic, journalist, paramilitary planner, and trial witness.
Civil Rights Champion: Creator of both Survivors and Liberty; heavily involved in documenting the War then in using that data to reconnect families and assemble evidence to lay before the UN and others; responsible for developing Liberty into its current form. Given time to prepare herself, she can (usually) hobnob at grand parties without having a panic attack; deliver speeches; present facts; and talk passionately to a camera, a group of scared survivors, or a unit about to go into battle. She’s high-profile, intermittently eloquent, and as hated in some circles as would only be possible for a gay British intellectual Evo freak telling Americans how to live their lives.
Creative Dilettante: Continued practice and development have elevated Ygraine to the ‘possibly able to scrape a living’ level of skill with her art, specialising in portrait sketches and landscapes - including depictions of scenes from the War. She’s a competent amateur vocally and on the piano, with a few snippets on others’ recordings and one song (a duet with Sable, which she wrote) on the 2011 Liberty album. She’s spent a little time on-stage with Sable, and has some experience of recording performers in professional studios.
Defence of Others: Building on her former competence, since her 2008 return to New York Ygraine took up the more combative (and eccentric, featuring use of items such as canes and overcoats) Savate Defense form of her favoured martial art. She started regular training with an ex-SAS veteran in 2010, working particularly on combining her Evolved ability with mundane skills. The long months spent preparing to avert the end of the world in 2011 markedly honed her competence. The War then gave her practical experience, and even now martial arts practice remains the most reliable outlet for her addiction to exercise. She is most effective against groups of opponents and in confined spaces, due to her ability to use people and terrain as weaponry and transit points. When acting purely mundanely, she’s less dangerous - but with an exceptionally strong kick and a racer’s reflexes, her skills are sufficient to handle most threats in a fair fight.
Famous Freedom Fighter: From Phoenix to the Ferrymen to Endgame and on to the Chessmen, it’s now a matter of public record that Ygraine was involved in high-profile events from the destruction of Consolidated Edison to the fall of Raven Rock. A side-effect of its members’ documentary efforts is that (even when they weren’t overly significant) the Chessmen’s experiences were particularly well-attested; Ygraine then spent the whole duration of the Albany Trials using this and related evidence to pursue justice. She also has appreciable experience of ‘expedient’ approaches to field-medicine: a number of refugees and rescued prisoners still bear signs of her approach to patching up wounds often being more effective than elegant.
Instructor: Ygraine has taught women’s self-defence and martial arts; coached cycling; and helped a number of neophyte Evolved to explore their abilities. INST certification was secured as part of her Registration: her favoured style focuses on balance, fine control, and in-depth understanding.
Linguist: Raised fully bilingual in English and French; there has been a marginal improvement in her (still poor) Latin thanks to her legal efforts; she acquired as much as she could of Remi’s somewhat shaky Russian; learned SAS and US Army hand signals; developed modified trail-signs for use on her unconventional scouting routes; and has picked up limited Spanish (focused on getting life-saving information to and from refugees) and moderate ASL.
Parkour Plus: Ygraine started dabbling in Parkour in 2006; from 2008, she actively combined free-running with her Evolved ability: a decade of practice over and under New York City (and elsewhere) has helped her to develop a unique three-dimensional form of free-running. Her time as a Ferry courier evading military surveillance in Midtown, and especially the long months in hiding when subterranean transit was the only safe way to move around the city, have made her particularly adept at working underground and inside buildings.
Resilient Survivor: As an elite athlete, Ygraine learned to live with frequent pain and to consistently exert herself beyond normal limits. Since moving to New York, she has been irradiated (twice), severely concussed (twice), fried with electricity, shot at close range with an assault rifle, had her through-and-through wound power-washed by a hydrokinetic, and fought through two years of a war. Though no Eagle Scout, she’s extended her basic survival skills to help herself and others to cope (with heavy use of crank-powered tech and similar unconventional items) without access to civilised utilities in the countryside as well as a city. Complementing her physical skills, from 2012 she has worked with Remi to develop techniques of resisting mental intrusion and duress.
Speed Freak: Ygraine was an elite international cyclist even before her ability let her have a lower centre of gravity and more downforce than any other rider on the road: though her skills aren’t as finely-honed as they were when she rode as a full-time job, she remains inhumanly fast on any bike (powered or pedalled), and is broadly competent with a range of vehicles. She also acquired practical experience of defensive driving, evasion and pursuit during the War.
| Name | Artist | Location | Description | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harmony | Xiulan | Full-back | Red and white dragons - sinuous Celtic and Anglo-Saxon designs - are twined around each other, each with its head part-turned to offer the viewer a sardonically challenging look. The colours are impossibly bright, entirely lacking the muted tones of most tattoos, while the detailing is breath-taking. | A 2010 celebration of optimism, and an attempt to bind it in place. |
| Katharsis | Brynn | Left biceps | The masks of drama: comedy on the outer side of her arm; tragedy on the inner, next to her heart. Black line-art, with slight silver highlighting. | In commemoration of Jennifer, and what she brought to Ygraine's life. |
| Lessons | Brynn | Right biceps | A wrap-around tattoo of an elaborate (rather steampunk) heart-shaped lock. Covers the entry and exit wounds from being shot in the Dome. Black and silver. | In memory of what was lost and learned, in the opening months of 2011. |
| Queened | Brynn | Inside right wrist | A chess pawn in front of a queen, in simple black outline. | Commemorating Elisabeth, both directly and for what she tried to do for Ygraine. |