Joey Nichol
( Request only ; Original Character ; MAGE: the Ascension )
( Request only ; Original Character ; MAGE: the Ascension )
Bookstore owner & reclusive shut in. A mage whose abilities come from somewhere beyond the veil. From Those That Dwell Beyond the Stars. They are from the Void, a Void that the one called Joey longs to return to.
Joey is short, with a permanent slouch making them even more diminutive in stature. Long, unkempt brown hair falls wildly down their back and sticks out ever so slightly, giving them the appearance of one who has had their head rubbed against a balloon. Large, round coke bottle glasses sit on a round bulb of a nose, making their wide, unblinking dark brown eyes unsettling to stare at. Joey blinks less than the average human being, but is seemingly unaware of the disturbing effect this can have on others, often carrying entire conversations without blinking once. Their facial expressions are quite limited, displaying dissociative disinterest most of the time. Their skin is pale from a lifetime of being a shut in, with dark circles and wrinkles showing from underneath their glasses. Their physical form is scrawny and skinny, with only enough muscle to barely hold itself upright.
Unsettling. Their stuttered yet elongated speech pattern is immediately off putting, with little emotional variation, as if they learned how to speak from listening to text-to-speech. Joey does not understand the need for “beating around the bush” so to speak, and is either unwilling or unable to hold a normal conversation with someone. They seem unaware of their unsettling nature, which is made even worse by their habit of muttering to themselves and their dermatillomania, which manifests in picking at their arms and the cuticles of their fingers, which are in a sorry shape. This is just one way in which their obsessive compulsive disorder shows itself, though it is also obvious in their magic, which consists of repetitive words and actions.
The whole memory thing is very confusing for one who remembers their past lives (mostly). Joey is Joey right now, but in the past they were… others. Different people, different histories, different allies and enemies, but largely the same goal. The same knowledge, really, that Something Else – Something Old, and Something Unknowable – is out there. And that Something Old hungers for the destruction of this world. Even if other people refuse to acknowledge the existence of these Old Ones, Joey (or whatever their name is) knows the truth. It only takes one, after all, to give the Old Ones what they want, what they need and deserve.
This time, though, this one was born on an island. To their knowledge, they have never left this island. It is small, and contained, and it keeps them protected. Or perhaps it protects the rest of the world from them. It’s hard to say. This one, like the ones before, is linked to the library, where they found their Grimoire. To anyone else, the book, seemingly bound in black scaly leather, is empty, blank pages refusing to give the uninitiated any information. Joey is not uninitiated. These pages are filled with knowledge, with words in a language that causes any who hear it to be overcome with nausea and dread. Joey speaks this language as if they were born knowing it, and maybe they were, or maybe it was One of the Other Ones. Those Ones knew many things, and Joey knows those things too, even if they can’t place that knowledge quite yet.
The presence of these past memories has created a person with a fractured psyche, someone who is puppeteered by compulsions and obsessions, a “person” in the vaguest sense of the word. Joey is driven forward by the past, unsure of how– or if– they can become somehow “different” than The Ones who came before.