Name: Skai
Age: >21
Contact: nanomachinesson
Character(s) in game: None
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Character Name: Marian Tenebris
Age: 54
Canon: Original
Canon point: Outside Observer (Original game-in-progress); most of the way through while aiming for a 'good' ending.
History:

A paragon of academic excellence from an early age, Marian devoted her life to her studies and research, progressing swiftly through several degrees and on through to finally achieving a tenured professor position. Naturally she wrote many publications, went to the occasional conference and had some scattered collaborations with other physicists once in a while, but in general she was largely a recluse, working in her lab for long hours into the night. Although her primary expertise was in other areas of physics, she had always thought that the key to accessing the 4th dimension, time, was so close with current theories being worked on. Who wouldn't like to be able to change the course of events... or just their own life. There was always room for improvement here and there, after all. And as Marian got older, in the wee hours of the morning, sometimes found herself what life would have been like if she hadn't been so focused on a single course of study, a single path through life.

But she stumbled upon a very different advancement (or so she thought) in the course of her late-night tinkering; a machine that generated cold with very little need for external power, running far more efficiently than any refrigeration technology on the market. The final design, while a little more complex, generated zero excess heat, in defiance of all known laws of physics. As for the question of where all that heat and energy went... Marian drew up multiple diagrams and possible explanations. Since the metallic vanes that catalyzed the reaction were intended to tap into quantum potential, perhaps the energy was going to a parallel universe, another dimension. But as much as she discussed this with colleagues, nobody was able to definitively prove it, especially when Marian remained secretive on the manufacturing process, refusing to share its secrets with anyone but the one colleague in engineering who helped her with the actual manufacture.

But it worked, and her secret (and successive patents based around application) were very lucrative. She stopped teaching completely and equipped her own lab even more fully, getting facilities to route in more power, even going so far as to build a Faraday cage into the walls. She tried multiple designs, but for years and years, nothing even came close to a true way to access time itself (although she did cause several cross-campus blackouts).

Until, of course, the day that it did. She reconfigured the vanes, and pressed the power switch... and the whole world went static and sideways, flashing before her. And in that instant she found herself still carrying the device itself, but on the other side of her lab door where the power supply was. The physical link was broken, but everything still seemed to work. There was one complication, though. She was locked out of her own lab. For whatever reason, the door simply refused to budge.

As she went to get her keys, more strange things started to appear. Black sluglike things travelling across the floor and walls. Looking out the windows, there was nothing, just utter blackness. And the doors to the outside world wouldn't open.

It turned out there were more complications as she went forward and slowly she began to figure out what had happened. All of her devices, now scattered across the world in commercial applications, had drawn her universe slowly towards another dimensional space, one past the heat-death of its own universe. The entities there craved light, heat, energy. With how closely these dimensions had become, the massive energy transfer from her first successful time travel device had cracked through and created an actual gateway inside her lab, and these alien entities began to siphon energy away from the world, disrupting the very fabric of space with their intrusion. After all, space and time are two facets of the same thing.

And there was lots of energy to be had -- the physics building was shielded from these initial intrusions thanks to Marian's investments, but everywhere else she went, almost everyone was dead, and although it was fall, the leaves were falling from the trees faster than they should. The force from that other side was what created the black sluglike things, decomposed matter in animate form, housing the essence of some alien intelligence. It even began inhabiting inorganic things, like ice and dust, acting as a hostile force of nature. But it wasn't long before the entities picked up on how to communicate with what was left of humanity, creating their own emissaries, one organic, built from the bodies of the dead, and one of shadow, creeping through the shadowed side of the planet away from the sun's harsh rays.

Able to flash back and forth in time, Marian did her best to try to find a way to get back into her lab, close the gate, and try to save as many of the people she found as she could along the way. As time passed, the world only became more and more fractured and distorted, and the encroaching cold continued to increase exponentially with each passing hour. She destroyed the two emissaries and their links to the Earth, but one final one taking a very humanlike form and calling itself the Emissary of Void, threw a wrench into the works, causing one of her fellow researchers to sabotage her plans. The Emissary of Void was unstoppable as far as Marian could tell, and well aware of her time-travelling powers by now. And it wanted them and access to more energy to completely break free of their dead dimension, to siphon away heat and light into that dark void.

She was caught deep in the throes of this chaotic period when pulled away elsewhere...

Personality:

* Intelligence: Marian's main readily-apparent strength is her intellect. She's very smart, quick to pick up new things, and easily makes intuitive leaps of logic. She has a long list of academic achievements and publications that she's proud of, and although she can be pretty cantankerous, discussing research and intellectual pursuits can actually coax a smile and pleasant discussion out of her, often even when it's not something directly related to her own field. Importantly and fortunately, navigating the mazes and complex logic puzzles inadvertently created by time travel are a hassle but certainly not beyond her abilities.

* Dedication: Marian is very dedicated (some might say downright obsessive) about her work. Of course, whether this is a good or bad trait depends... her struggle against and insistence on confrontation with her own universe's cosmic horrors has definitely chipped away at her sanity. But it can't be denied that she works hard and gets things done. She's not the sort to give up on a difficult problem, and actually enjoys (most) challenges. Even when it isn't something enjoyable - such as a matter of basic survival in the face of her universe's impending collapse - she's good at managing to pull through against the odds.

* Abrasive attitude: Unfortunately alongside that intelligence comes a hell of a personality. Marian will go out of her way to prove that she is Smarter Than You if she perceives a challenge, and in generally disdainful towards the unprepared or mediocre. She also likes things to be done in what she perceives to be the right way. For someone who often omits pleasantries such as basic greetings for the sake of brevity, she can really get hung up on the details of how work is done and exact wording. Cleanliness and organization are non-negotiable points with her and everything should be clearly and neatly laid out -- and she has no issues with lecturing or engaging weapons-grade sarcasm on any poor soul who doesn't toe her own personal line.

* Goodwill: Despite her sometimes unpleasant personality, Marian legitimately wants the best for people and will do what she can to help them. When it matters, she's able to put personal feelings aside and deal with a problem in a logical but just manner. While she might complain and give folks the stink-eye for any number of trivial reasons, or be fairly cold and stand-offish in mannerism, anyone who actually pays attention to what she does rather than just what she says will realize there's a good person hiding in there under the crusty exterior. Even in the face of dangerous conditions, she went out of her way to find a path to (relative) safety for the few folks she encountered after causing the fragmentation of her world.

* Guilt: In pursuit of making an abstract concept a reality (mixed with a little of her own selfish interests...) Marian accidentally created a rift that fractured spacetime in her world. Everything has come at her too fast to dwell on it -- at the time she arrives in-game, it's only been a couple hours of her own time since the fracturing happened -- but as the implication sinks in that likely millions if not billions died due to her actions, and her world is probably doomed to death and unending darkness, that guilt is going to weigh her down. Especially when, under the circumstances, it's sure not something she can risk getting off her chest. Marian isn't the type to feel self-doubt in general, but she will have a distinct weakness in play now, and be more susceptible to anything that touches upon those feelings.

Suitability:

After seeing the utter destruction and fragmentation wrought inadvertently on her own world, Marian has that guilty conscience and a vested interest in averting apocalypse anywhere else. She'll definitely turn to ADI's aid with gusto (and really, where else is she going to go, now...).

Powers/Abilities:

Though Marian has no real 'powers' herself other than an exceptionally eidetic memory, she did invent a device that allows one person to travel in time in a very limited form. This time travel is based loosely on principles of quantum mechanics, where nothing in the future is fixed until it is observed to have happened. Though based on scientific principles in her world, it makes sense for it to be tied to an Entity here (much as it was tied to the rupturing of space in her world) -- so with mod permission, since this is all pseudoscience-basically-magic, I'd like to have it come with her as a cursed item. The thing is pretty cursed to begin with, considering it's responsible for creating apocalyptic conditions in her world! (If this isn't kosher, I'm fine to have her come in as a good ol' original flavor human, too.)

Although wide-ranging time travel would definitely be a game breaking power, her version of it is extremely limited in scope -- and I mean extremely. In addition to only allowing her to jump within a 12-hour window (that moves forward with her experienced time) the firm rules regarding time travel can be summarized very briefly with:
* A time traveller must NEVER see themselves (the "Doppelganger Effect")
* A time traveller cannot create an unresolvable paradox. Resolvable paradoxes are allowed, but must be corrected before the window of her jumping ability passes.
Violating either of the above rules is certain doom -- in her own world, it would likely have finished ripping apart spacetime; at the very least it would result in Marian's death. Unfortunately, it's very easy to accidentally create unresolvable paradoxes with simple acts such as leaving footprints where there were none seen at a point in the immediate/near future. Attention to detail is important.
* Interacting with other people, 'observers' of reality, while out of synch with her original time can create something called 'Entanglement', where others may have had an interaction previously with her that she has not yet experienced herself. This creates a resolvable paradox, where Marian must use a little detective work to fill in the gaps in what their former conversation was, then go back in time to complete the interaction loop. Entanglement can be another extreme danger if it becomes more complex than the simple example given, since one needs to keep track of all information given and sort it out across a nonlinear timeline -- or fail and die due to creating unresolvable paradox.

With these oppressive limitations, what can she actually do with her device in a practical sense?
* "Teleport" by moving back or forward in time, walking a distance, then going back to the point just after the previous timeframe.
* Act in two places at once, as long as she isn't within line of sight of herself (nobody else is allowed to see her in two places at once either -- in an observer effect, it is OK to be captured on film in two places at once, but as soon as a person observes both pieces of evidence, paradox effects (ie, her death via the Doppelganger Effect) are triggered. So, quite dangerous.)
* Take objects from the past to the future and vice versa (though they often need to be returned in their original condition -- again, dangerous if the item is lost, destroyed, or changed in any way.).
* Use her own knowledge of various points in time to create favourable circumstances (making sure doors are unlocked in advance, knowing the outcome of random chance events), although relaying this information to anyone not herself almost always causes Entanglement effects as above, which are terrible to resolve.

Additional notes:
* In her universe, the vast majority of extradimensional entities do not count as 'observers' for purposes of creating paradox or the Doppelganger Effect. They are too alien, and understand reality in a different way than humanity does.
* She has a built-in safety on her device to prevent her from accidentally creating a paradox with her intended timeline destination. It also signals a warning when an active resolvable paradox is in her timeline. The details are frustratingly nonspecific (ie, "Paradox Exclusion Event", "High Local Decoherence"), but enough to know what type of problem exists.
* Self-imposed limitation: Because she's wary about anyone else getting their hands on the tech/knowledge, Marian will be extremely circumspect about using the device... which creates a very unfortunately obvious flash when used.

As far as curse goes: honestly this thing is bad already considering the omnipresent threat of doing something incorrectly. But considering Marian certainly won't make any mistakes, I could definitely come up with something new and bad to add.


Entity Affinity: The Eye.

Marian is a very knowledge-oriented character, and quoting directly from the entity overview, "People drawn to the Eye often have a drive to uncover knowledge even at cost to themselves or those they love" sure is a good fit. The side-effects of using time travel by the rules she is subject to are very dependant on observation... and fear of being 'seen' in a way that will damage things is very real, both in terms of negative effects on time travel, and negative effects on how she's viewed, in light of what happened to her world.


Inventory:
* Prototype time travel device -- bulky, and worn in a backpack-ish way when she arrives, but will probably be moved to a more 'normal' looking bag or large briefcase.
* Customized smartwatch (interfaces with the device, programmable -- this is where warnings and such show up, as well as coding in the time to jump to.)
* Flashlight
* Several keys and keycards for buildings on campus


Samples:

One.
Two.