ARMA - Alistair Greene

- PRESUMED DEAD -

GENDER:  Male

PLAY-BY: Ryan Reynolds

RACE: Human Magus (Stormcaller)

JOB: Commander of ARMA

LOCATION: New York

APPEARANCE

Alistair is a bit above average height, coming in at 6’2”, and is in excellent shape. What softness there had been in his figure before the Event is long gone now, burned away by daily training and frequent fights for his life. His figure now is lean and athletic, a warrior's build beneath casual attire. More than anything though, he is most often recognized by the long black coat he wears nearly all the time - particularly when he expects to end up in combat. Under the coat, he usually wears a comfortable button down shirt of some kind, and either khakis or jeans, depending on the situation. He does have nicer clothes, but generally prefers to keep it to business casual or less, not being a terribly formal person.

He has light brown hair that is kept short, and his eyes are a very pale blue, gray enough to be called silver by most. Under the clothes he has a number of scars, most faint, but a few significant ones that were never healed by magic, souvenirs of seven years spent as a combat magus.

PERSONALITY

Alistair is not always an easy person to get along with – he can be harsh with his criticism, extremely confident in his own correctness, and somewhat abrasive. This is unintentional, however, the result of an intense personality, not a hard or cruel one. Should he hurt feelings on accident, he is quick and sincere with his apology, when it is possible, and values honesty highly – he wants people to tell him if there is something wrong, and can be irritable when they don’t. He is at his worst, though, when there is an important problem to be solved – he is intensely focused when working, and often forgets his manners. Both a blessing and a curse, he gets things done, but is not afraid to step on toes in so doing.

That aside, he is generally kind person, and does his best to help people whenever he can. That, however, is dependent on their willingness to help themselves, since he refuses to fight with someone to help them. He rarely takes things personally, however, and one of his mottos is “never attribute to malice what you can more easily attribute to ignorance or stupidity”. He cares what other people thing, but only to a certain degree – if someone is being unreasonable in his opinion, he has no problem at all dismissing them completely.

Alistair started out somewhat ambivalent, however, where his power is concerned. The Event caused a great deal of disruption in his life, as with everyone’s, and life – which had finally been going well after graduating college and securing a great job – has typically gone downhill, with zombie attacks, vampire attacks, and generally having to fear for your life the majority of the time. Like many Magi, he suffers from headaches after extensive use of his powers, which can lead to his being somewhat withdrawn on a bad day. Seeing so much death also damaged him somewhat, and he has been trying for a long time to do something about it. He has the power to, with his magic, and has been practicing with it for some time. Not to quote the bit from Spider Man, but considering he CAN do something, he tends to believe that he SHOULD. Especially where so many people are hurt in the balance.

In the more recent years, Alistair has worked out the majority of his problems with his power and his place in the world, embracing the job of protecting New York and its people. He has established a great many friendships within the Order and the other groups in the city, and has adapted well to the position of being - for lack of a better word - one of the city's heroes. His nickname at the Order, Dresden (for a legendarily unlucky, wisecracking detective-wizard and unrelenting white knight who also happens to be fond of long black coats) is also something that he's come to embrace - he always shared much of the character's sense of gallows-humor where dangerous situations were concerned, and this has only grown more pronounced as time has passed.

The fact that he isn't far worse off, given the circumstances that caused him to rebel against the Order, forming the group ARMA to fight against his former faction while serving their purpose to protect the EAA, is almost a miracle. Added to the personal tragedy he suffered with the loss of his fiancee Adeline and the special tortures inflicted by the Inquisition arm of the Order on him, Alistair would be the first to admit that he should probably be stark raving mad - and maybe in some ways he is.

Despite everything, Alistair has become a rock for ARMA and for many others, standing against the tide of chaos wherever he can. He is fiercely protective of his friends and his adopted family at the faction, and years of combat against supernatural forces have changed him from a rookie into one of the most dangerously competent mages in the world. He knows it - but tries not to let it go to his head. Instead, he tends to take the approach of the character he was nicknamed for - just mouth off, and see if the enemy screws up.

PERSONAL BELONGINGS

Alistair favors an enchanted M1911A3 pistol, which he carries often for protection, both to avoid having to use magic and as a ‘noisemaker’ for some of his sonic abilities. He also carries a small tactical folding knife, and is rarely without his cell phone. Occasionally, if the situation calls for heavier weaponry, his current 'heavy' weapon is a modified and enchanted AA-12 combat shotgun, along with an assortment of specially-produced shells.

Since shortly after the Event, inspired by a favorite book series, he has been wearing a long black, heavily reinforced and enchanted duster coat made primarily of M5 ballistic fabric, to protect him from attacks - which has saved his life more than once. He also wears a silver focus wrapped around his left forearm to channel his shield spells, and other spells requiring a sonic component. In addition, he can almost always be seen carrying a number of small canisters - some are capacitors, carrying a heavy electrical charge for his spells, while others are filled with powdered magnesium or other inventions or chemicals he can use to his advantage in a fight. His sole piece of ‘jewelry’ is an exquisite Tag Heuer Link chronograph, silver with a deep blue face, which he always wears - and which he sometimes uses as a focus for his more powerful spells, being his most prized possession.

In the past two years, he has trained hard with the blade, given ARMA'ss frequent encounters with situations where ammo becomes an issue, and as such he carries a thirty-inch, single-edged sword reminiscent of a slender wakizashi (though without the curve). The blade is enchanted to reinforce it and prevent it from deforming under extreme heat - key, since he often uses his electrical power to superheat the blade and allow it to cut through things a simple edge wouldn't be able to manage.

APPROVED ABILITIES

Alistair is a former Archmagus of the Order of First Light, and thus among the world's most skilled and powerful magi. He is capable of using his low level abilities with very little effort, and even mid level spells can be used several times in an hour without incapacitating him. His highest level spells however, are still restricted to a handful a day - his Spell of Legend, of course, is a one-off.

His electrical powers are rooted in the physics of electricity he once used as an engineer - as such, Alistair is a meticulous and precise spellcaster, one of the Magi who apply a sort of science to their magic. He's used these methods to augment his raw magical power, which started out requiring external sources of power to function. His electrical powers require a reservoir of potential energy to draw on, one he either carries with him prepared (in the form of capacitors, or more recently, sunk into a capacitive aura that can store far more power), or draws from his surroundings. As such, these spells are always easier for him when he has a source of electrical potential to draw on, be it nearby power lines or the wiring of a building.

As well, he is susceptible to burns from the more thermally-intense spells, and he has been prone to debilitating migraines ever since the Event gave him magic - particularly after an over-use of said magic. This is the primary weakness to his otherwise devastating array of spells - deprived of a nearby source to draw upon, his powers become far more difficult to use.
--------------
Innate Abilities
--------------
Mage's Sight - Like most Magi, Alistair is possessed of a mage's sensitivity to auras and sources of supernatural and Nevus energy. He has focused this talent primarily on his vision, allowing him with a small amount of focus to visualize even invisible magic energy. This lets him see things for what they truly are - particularly mages trying to hide their talent, or magic traps lying in wait for the unwary.

Runecrafting - An inventor and engineer before Resonance, Alistair has learned to produce magical items and imbue them with power from his spells. This takes significant time and focus, but he is capable of producing items that some might consider powerful relics - his sword and coat among them. Unlike 'naturally occurring' artifacts however, these eventually expend their power and must be charged - as such, they are not always useful to non-magi.

Charge Collection - Seeing as the majority of Alistair's spells work best with a reservoir of electric potential, one of Alistair's basic abilities is to absorb and magnify this energy. Given even a small source of current, he can gradually build up to shocking (pun intended) amounts of energy, which is stored via a technique of using his own magical aura almost like a battery. Even without a source of power, he can charge at a slower rate by reaching out wider and tapping into the Earth's electromagnetic field.

--------------

Low-Level Spells
--------------
Cantrips - Like any magus with a significant degree of experience, Alistair is capable of casting minor spells known as cantrips, for the Dungeons and Dragons category. Like the cantrips in that setting, they have little to no combat application, but can be useful for small distractions, lighting candles, or perhaps finding the remote.

Surge Hex - By careful application of small amounts of his power, Alistair can manipulate certain electronics. This is a manual process, so he can't hack a microprocessor or anything like that, but he can drive power to a coil and open a door lock without the password, or other more direct actions. He can also, with considerably less focus, twist the laws of electromagnetics enough to fry and destroy electronics (especially sensitive ones). The nature of his power makes this something he must sometimes focus to avoid - suffice that he goes through a lot of cell phones. This spell can also be used to deliver electric shocks at touch range only - effectively making Alistair something of a human Taser.

Pressure System - Originally a shockwave or forceful push, Alistair has refined this ability from a storm type spell like a thunderclap into wind magic. With a gesture, and usually accompanied by a snap of his fingers, Alistair can create momentary blasts of tornado-force winds at fairly short range (ten or maybe twenty yards). At ranges under five yards, he can focus the aeromancy into extremely tight blasts of pressure, producing impacts hard enough to send assailants flying or do minor damage to a nearby wall.

Living Lightning - An ability that crosses over somewhat into the realm of the physical adepts, Alistair has learned to use his stored charge and energy to augment his physical strength and speed. He has to keep this to a moderate level - enough to take him just a shade past what his body should be capable of and leave it there, with truly superhuman acts limited to extremely short bursts. Any overuse of this spell could result in currents running through his body that would cook and do serious damage to his muscles. It also does nothing to reinforce his bones or anything of the sort - no punching through walls without supplementing spells.

Field Sense - Alistair can use his heightened sense for electromagnetic fields to sense living creatures around him in a way similar to an electric eel. Coupled with his mana senses, when alert, he can be exceptionally difficult to sneak up on, and this also enhances his situational awareness in a fight.

--------------
Mid-Level Spells
--------------
Potential Gradient - A combination of offensive and defensive magic, this spell draws the stored charge out of his aura, where it has no impact on the world, and surrounds him in a cloak of dense electromagnetic fields. The energy can then be expended in sharp pulses at need, discharging short-range arcs for attacks or to blunt the effect of an incoming attack. He generally uses this in concert with Living Lightning to greatly enhance his combat skills at short range - it could be fairly said that this combination is one of the reasons he was able to survive for so long doing battle with vampires and other creatures far faster and stronger than a human. At its highest output levels, this power can make Alistair a terrifying opponent, and lethal to engage at short range until it has dissipated. Each arc discharge lessens the charge, the field is generally limited to about a dozen pulses before fading and needing to be recharged.

Thunderclap - A much more powerful and focused control of air pressure, Alistair amplifies a pressure wave in the air (generally by clapping his hands or firing a pistol) into a tremendous shockwave, capable of knocking over large vehicles across the width of a street, or blasting holes wide enough to walk through in brick walls. In recent years, he has learned to change the focus of the blast, from a weaker version that emits from his body in every direction to throw back nearby foes, to an even more finely focused attack that creates a blade of air powerful enough to cut through steel at short ranges. Like many of his other abilities, Alistair has adapted this attack defensively to block larger incoming threats - like flying boulders or jets of flame.

Gale - While at first Alistair's powers were more limited to electricity and sharp blasts of air, he later learned to temper his adjustment of air pressure to produce spells of powerful wind. Using this power, Alistair can produce heavy buffeting winds sufficient to knock back a number of enemies, though he more commonly uses the wind to amplify his mobility. With this power, Alistair can make jumps of nearly ten meters, or survive falls from a great height by using the wind to help support his body.

Discharge – By omitting portions of his charging spells, Alistair can cause a powerful electric charge to jump directly from a source to a target – this can be likened to creating a small bolt of lightning capable of moderate damage. Rounds from his .45 are sometimes used to deliver the region of suppressed potential region required for doing this at long-range. It is important to note that Alistair uses this power by lowering the resistance of the air and producing an artificial channel along which the power can travel, which is why he can produce lengthy arcs of electricity without generating temperatures that would outright kill a person - that is the domain of another of his spells. His range without assistance from tools is approximately 45 feet currently.

Arc Flash - Drawing on a far more focused version of the above spell, Alistair produces a tremendous pulse of electrical power, creating a phenomenon known in the power industry as an arc-flash or arc-blast. By generating enough power to force dielectric breakdown of the air without his normal spell-induced channel, the arc is forced to expend huge amounts of energy heating the air, producing blasts of true plasma hot enough to easily burn through metal and armor. Because of the tremendous heat and power required, Alistair must be cautious with arc blasts - the special gloves he is often seen wearing are made to protect him to some degree from this heat. Even these would do him little good however, if he did not maintain the focus required to force the plasma away from him and maintain a tight electromagnetic field to keep it from his skin. Naturally, this is spell that requires him to take considerable caution.

Pressure Barrier – A sustained variant of the above spell, Alistair maintains the initial region of compression and expands it, creating a partial-dome barrier of intense pressure and high air speeds around him, sufficient to deflect most firearm rounds, flame, and most other elements. This spell can be increased in power with improved focus and effort, and has the ability to provide temporary protection against many threats – while useful, sustaining the barrier is quickly draining. Because of its nature, the shield is of far less utility against larger, heavier objects. The barrier is not entirely physical, either – Alistair has learned to infuse the barrier with a powerful ward using his pure mana, allowing it to provide protection from many magical attacks and ethereal creatures as well. Without the focus Alistair typically carries on his left arm, this spell is even more difficult to sustain, and Alistair can rarely do so for more than a few seconds.

Storm Call - Impossible to use in battle, this spell is used primarily through meditation, and can require hours to work properly. Alistair also requires a point of high elevation (preferably the highest within at least a mile) and must devote his entire focus for the duration. The weather patterns must also at least offer the possibility for such an event - he cannot summon a rainstorm in the desert, for instance. The time required varies between half an hour to three hours, depending on how close the weather is to a storm when he begins. If given the time, however, Alistair can summon a heavy rainstorm, complete with lightning, that lasts for roughly one hour before beginning to dissipate. He has no control over it except that granted by his other spells, it is merely used to enhance those abilites of his which are improved during such a storm... or because a heavy rainstorm might be for some reason useful. While casting this spell, Alistair's abilities are focused entirely on the sky - if interrupted, it will take several minutes for them to recover.

-------------
High-Level Spells
-------------

Squall - Alistair summons a massive blast of wind, starting at his hands and moving outward in a cone from that point, producing winds of up to 200mph in that region, able to produce devastating damage for more than a hundred yards out in the direction of the blast. The winds are sustained for no more than thirty seconds, any longer would push his reserve of mana to its limit.

Arc Web - Alistair produces a series of potential gradients in the air, producing dozens of conductive paths between multiple enemies. This attack allows Alistair to chain arcs of miniature lightning between several targets within a range of about fifty feet, though the objects after the first must be closer together, around fifteen feet. The arcs are not as immediately devastating as his short-duration spells; he can use this to incapacitate multiple targets, or sustain the arcs for several seconds to kill, or melt his way through machines or constructs. The wide arcing requires him to relinquish some control, so the lightning is rougher, and can be avoided by seeking electrical grounds - staying very low, or using conductive shields, at least until the shield melts. After triggering the spell, Alistair can throw arcs in this way for about a minute.

Plasma Lance - A combination of his two mid-level electrical attacks, this ability couples his power to channel with the tremendous power of arc flash to create what is, in essence, a genuine bolt of lightning delivering megawatt levels of power. Brief and intense, this power is useless for 'shocking' or delivering electrical charge. Instead, like with its natural counterpart, the incredible amount of electrical current superheats the air and produces plasma, allowing Alistair to deal devastating amounts of thermal damage at substantial range. Because the current path is focused and artificially produced, it does not fork like natural lightning, instead following a narrow path about six inches in diameter, resembling a blue-white lance. He can project a single, fleeting blast up to 100 feet, or sweep a 20ft lance over about a 45 degree arc before it extinguishes.

-------------
Legendary Spell

-------------
Avatar of Storms - Alistair's Spell of Legend has only been seen used in public once, during a major demon attack on the city, and then in an immature state - as such, even others in ARMA do not know what the final version of the spell is. He is hardly alone in keeping his strongest spell a secret, however, especially since the rift opened between OFL and ARMA.

In reality, this spell draws a spectacular amount of electric potential into Alistair's aura, granting him a period of about ten minutes of throwing arcs and his other electric powers without damaging his stamina, and wrapping him in a powerful barrier of magic and electrical energy. As the spell progresses, it begins to affect the weather - a thunderstorm can form on a clear day after the first five minutes, and as the lightning strikes begin, Alistair can bring them down from the sky on targets of his choosing, doing tremendous damage even to large opponents, or focusing the energy into his own aura to form a length of plasma that he can wield like a sword to cut through even hardened armor.

Avatar of Storms requires Alistair to spill his own blood to activate, and renders him effectively powerless after it has expired for at least a day.

APPROVED SKILLS

Apart from his magic, Alistair is an incredibly talented electrical engineer, considered a genius in his field, who was extremely successful at the Atlas corporation for several years preceding the Event. He has an intuitive grasp of electronics technology especially, but is skilled enough in other facets of engineering that he makes an excellent project engineer – he is more than capable of envisioning a complete design from start to finish, including mechanical fabrication and other techniques. Of course, ever since the Event, he has had great difficulty not destroying electronic devices by accident, and has had a great deal of success in using electrical principles (while modified) to channel mana and other supernatural powers. In this fashion, he has become very valuable as an enchanter, even able to determine the function and use of a number of artifacts, and reverse-engineering a very few. By and large, however, he has built a great many devices, and is one of the most skilled creators of foci (or fetishes) in the world.

Thanks to his training at school, Alistair is a competent hand to hand fighter, with years of casual training in Muay Thai and Brazilian Ju-Jitsu, which he practices by himself and often enough with his partner Jocelyn, one of the most skilled combatants in the world. Because of this, he is above average in close combat, and experience has given him the ingrained reflexes to combat many creatures faster and stronger than himself – or at least avoid them long enough to bring his magic to bear. He is a skilled shot with a wide array of firearms as well, having come from a family with a tradition of hunting, he has turned that skill to his work now, and is especially dangerous with the modified, enchanted 1911 Colt he favors.

More recently, Alistair has trained extensively with a short sword, and has worked closely with Tock on creation of golems and enchanted weaponry for the Order - of course, as the leader of ARMA these days, he rarely has the time to tinker as he is so fond of doing, instead having to devote his time to leading and being where his people need him most.

APPROVED HISTORY

After Alistair was born, in Antioch California, his parents decided to get married, to avoid having a child out of wedlock. The marriage, as is often the case in these situations, did not last long – his parents were divorced by the time he was two, after having moved to northern Michigan to raise the boy. He spent his childhood in joint custody, bouncing back and forth between homes every week or every few days for years, one reason that he never quite got a sense of any one place being home. He showed great aptitude for math and science, and stayed in the accelerated programs for his entire career in school, making it into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology straight out of high school, where he specialized initially in robotic systems.

He graduated MIT near the top of his class, and got a job immediately after graduating with a massive corporation called Atlas, where he was stationed in New York. Once there, Alistair quickly gained a reputation for innovation and sheer brilliance when it came to engineering total systems, especially weapons, which the company specialized in. Alistair quickly secured more than a dozen patents for new technologies, including a powerful automation system for weapons targeting and a special array-type capacitor capable of storing vast amounts of energy. Things were going well – the firm was about to release a brand new set of heavily armed UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), slated for release at the end of 2011. Thanks to the events of may 2010, it never happened.

Alistair’s entire well-planned-out world shattered around him in the months which followed, with the company he worked for destroyed, his prospects lost, and a strange power he began to grow into as a result, all in the middle of everything else. His first months with his power were catastrophic – occasional accidents with electrical components shorting out, nearly out of control fires and one occasion where a passing ambulance suddenly found its siren loud enough to shatter every window in the vicinity.

Resonance did not kill Alistair, nor would it. Instead he found himself gifted with the tremendous power of a magus. He found that what he had lost in his ability to work with electronics could instead be turned to magic, and slowly he learned how to channel mana the way he had once built machines to channel electricity. It was only a few days later that he was approached by the Order of the First Light, by a wind magus named Lydia, who offered him a place at her side, and the chance to do something real with the power he now possessed. Whether that would be the best or worst decision of his life, Alistair jumped in headfirst. The world needs its heroes now more than ever... and maybe he could be one.

Prior to the Shift, Alistair Greene was a promising young engineer, working for the Atlas corporation in their advanced weapons division. He was the pioneer of a new energy storage technology known as the HIgh Density Crystalline Capacitance System (HiDeCCS or "Hidex") that was expected to be a revolution in magnetic and laser based weapons systems. The devices were just being prototyped when the Event hit.

Alistair was one of the first New Yorkers inducted into the Order of Light following the Resonance Event in 2010. Unbeknownst to him, he had been marked by the Order as someone with a high genetic potential, someone expected to develop powers when the Event did hit. As predicted, Alistair became a magus that night, and was approached by the Lydia Sylva, another old-family member, though of a family that had not broken away from the Order years back as Alistair's had. He was taken to Europe as his first assignment, to train with Lydia and others, and made a name for himself as his powers developed.

His tour in Europe ended when, though he did not know it at the time, the Order set Lydia up for a fall by sending her and Alistair on a mission against a number of shifted humans and rouge magi - through circumstances that have had their records sealed (and that Alistair and Lydia do not speak of), Lydia killed nearly three dozen of them. She was brought up on charges, and Alistair testified against her, ending what had been a growing relationship.

Through all of this however, Alistair had a goal aside from his work with the Order - finding his younger sister Cassandra, who had been flying back to New York from Africa when the Event hit. While she was legally declared dead, Alistair was never entirely convinced, and he would occasionally find some evidence that she might yet live - a picture that looked like her from New York prompted him to return to the city, requesting a transfer that seemed appropriate now that Lydia was in prison. He returned to New York in February of 2014, where he established himself in the Order branch there. He also met his partner, Jocelyn Rose, alongside whom he would become one of the top Inspectors in the division.

Alistair made a number of friends in the Order - but there were several others, particularly someone he met by accident, a lady faun by the name of Adeline Reese. Adeline was an agent for Pharos, and she and Alistair became liasons between their two agencies, working on a number of missions together where the groups goals coincided. Theirs would be a fast friendship - and that would develop soon into a growing love, one that would not be without major drama. Not long after they began dating, Alistair was used by the Order as a bargaining chip to secure an alliance with the dragon Alexandra, pulling him and Adeline apart. It was to be a doomed arrangement however - Alistair never got past his guilt, or Alexandra's jealousy. By the time he broke it off however, Adeline had moved on - Alistair never quite did.

He threw himself back into his work, and into searching for his sister. He was promoted within the Order, and became a public figure in New York thanks to his very public defeat of the monster Leviathan that attacked the harbor during the war that broke out between the 'angels' and 'demons' in the city, which caused the opening of several gates through the Veil. His thunder and lightning style of magic was distinctive, and earned him notoriety in the media, as did his almost foolhardy determination to save everyone he could, earning him a reputation (halfway ironically) as the White Knight of New York.

Alistair found Cass early in 2015, working as a mercenary. She had been possessed by a demon named Nyxeris, and was far from the sister he had known. Their relationship was strained, but he refused to let her pull away - though it would be almost a year before the opportunity came for him (with Jocelyn aiding him) to free her from the demon. It was during that time that he learned how she had come to be possessed - the Order itself had experimented on her, wanting to discover a method for creating soldiers out of those with magical talent who would not be able to question the orders given to them.

He had been suspicious of the High Archmagi who ran the Order before, but only now did he truly realize what they were.

Alistair and Adeline, who had a slightly strained but devoted friendship through all this, confessed their love for one another and began a new relationship in early 2016, Alistair was able to free Cass. Things seemed to be looking up for the magus, who had very nearly fallen into alcoholism in the wake of discovering what had been done to his sister. Adeline brought him out of that hole, and as much as he could have been content with his life now, he could not ignore the truth he had learned. For Alistair, that made it all the worse when she was lost to him less than half a year later, nearly killed in battle, forced to either die or ascend... he knows not where she went when the light took her, but she was ever the best person he had known. Religious or not, he is sure it could only be one place...

The Order's soldiers might have meant well, but they would never be able to protect the world the way they had been promised when the High Archmagi meant to have it for themselves, no matter how many died in the process. And so it was that in October of 2016, the New York division of the Order of Light broke away from the international group. Now calling themselves ARMA (originally intended as an acronym but more the Latin for 'shield'), they became independent guardians of their city - and the primary opposition for the plans of the Overseers who work out of Rome. Alistair and his allies now fight a war on two fronts: One, to protect the city as they swore originally, and the other to defend not just the city but the planet from being subjugated by the grand mages who first gave them the training and the will to stand against the darkness that Resonance unleashed on the world.

Not an easy task... but some people are just stubborn enough.