Khalidah Rahal

[Khalidah Rahal]

Khalidah Rahal

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Full Name- She has undergone several name changes over the centuries. Her present name (for this lifetime, at least) is Khalidah Rahal.
Gender- Female
Age- Unknown, but appears to be in her mid to late forties.
Date of Birth- Her precise year of birth is unknown, though she has chosen the 18th of December as her birthday.
Sexual Orientation- Bisexual
Location- TBD
Celebrity Claim- Forbes, Michelle
What should we call you?- BG or Momo and sometimes Cake, goddammit.
Play anyone else?- Adele Couteau, Conall Saint Albans, Roxie-Lee Thornton
Have You Read the Rules?- Haters gonna BRRRRRRM!

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Personality-

Adaptable

“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”
- Samuel Langhorne Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain), American author and humourist, 1835-1910

It is impossible to live through several æons without knowing how to properly mould one’s personality to suit the times. Over the years, she has played several parts quite well, from royalty to poverty and everything in between. She has had to walk the thin line between truth and deception in order to keep herself safe. In times of great abundance, she knows how to live within her means so that in times of famine she isn’t forced to go hungry, so to speak. She is an expert at reading others; she interprets body language as she would interpret the words on a page and can react accordingly. Khalidah knows that sometimes the safest thing to do—considering the borderline herd mentality of humans—is to follow the herd, which she does remarkably well in order to blend in.

Deceptive

“All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things.”

- Robert Southey, English poet, 1774-1843

Her deceptiveness is always intentional. While honesty might be the best policy for some, there’s a good chance that honesty will get you killed. Khalidah is only out for her own preservation. This represents a dichotomy between how she wishes to be treated by others and how she views the integrity of her own personal relationships. She has never willingly sold out a friend or an associate over petty issues; rather her deceptiveness centers around herself. She lies about her identity (she’s had so many of them over the years), she lies about her past, and she will continue to lie and deceive others as long as it ultimately benefits her in some way.

Her deceptiveness has cost her several relationships in the past, but it has also made her quite adept at espionage, as she is able to con people with ease.

Destructive

“To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”

- Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, British politician and statesman, 1874-1965

Destruction is part of the cycle of life. Fire destroys forests so that seed pods may be opened by the heat in order to create new growth. The human body destroys its own cells everyday to make room for new, healthier cells. Khalidah has an unorthodox worldview; she genuinely enjoys destroying things to accommodate new and better ideas. She believes that destroying part of a person’s will and breaking them down will force them to evolve or fight back. There are times when she will actively undermine and sabotage the ideas of another, especially if she thinks that they are impractical. She has no qualms about burning bridges that were poorly constructed to begin with if it means that a second stronger bridge will be built in its wake.

Focused

“We will stomp to the top with the wind in our teeth.”
- George Mallory on climbing Mount Everest, 1924

When faced with an insurmountable task, Khalidah will stop at nothing until the task has been completed. Whether it is something as simple as whipping up a quick dish of macaroni and cheese or something as complex as sketching out the history of a long-dead civilisation, she has a focus and drive to succeed that is bar-none. She can always be trusted to thoroughly see a task through to its conclusion, even if it is a task that others have deemed to be impossible. The driving force behind her mentality is that nothing is ever impossible: after all, getting to the top of Mount Everest starts with the first step.

Guarded

“Let the wise guard their thoughts, which are difficult to perceive, extremely subtle, and wander at will. Thought which is well guarded is the bearer of happiness.”

- Gautama Siddhartha

It is sometimes difficult for Khalidah to connect with others due to her guarded nature. Those with whom she has shared her secrets are now long since dead, and until she gauges someone thoroughly enough to determine whether or not they can be trusted, she may come off as aloof or self-absorbed. People often mistake her reluctance for being withdrawn and anti-social, when in reality she is calculating their fidelity. This saves her from having to deal with future upsets which might hinder her goals; anyone who is unable to tolerate her hesitance to expose her thoughts and feelings isn’t worth her effort.

Impulsive

“I am the very slave of circumstance
And impulse - borne away with every breath!”

- George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (a.k.a. Lord Byron), English poet, 1788-1824

In spite of her wisdom, Khalidah is an impulsive and sometimes impatient soul. It is rare for her to speak without first considering her words and how they might affect those listening to her. She strongly believes that sometimes it is wisest to act preemptively and start a battle rather than wait for the battle to come to her doorstep. Her impulsiveness has led to her death several times over the centuries, and it makes her actions incredibly unpredictable. Though she spends most of her time warning others not to repeat the mistakes of their pasts, it is quite obvious that the same logic does not apply to her personally. If she believes that her course of action will be the most successful means of ending a problem, she will follow it through and damn the consequences.

Lover of Knowledge

“And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.”

- Plato

Knowledge is an integral part of her existence. She has lived to see even the strongest of civilisations start with humble beginnings, rise to power, and suffer the fate of enduring untimely and tragic ends. Her memory for historical facts and mythologies is like a bottomless well. She likes to learn things so that she may teach others how to avoid the mistakes so often made in the past. Conversely, she is wise enough to know that not all knowledge is good, and it can always be used as a weapon. Thus she is exceedingly careful with those whom she seeks to teach, lest they turn against her.

She is an avid pursuer of wisdom, and is well-versed in several different philosophies and alternative, metaphysical notions of life within the universe. As Socrates once put it, she is wise enough to know that she knows nothing.

Manipulative

“The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.”

- Thornton Niven Wilder, American playwright and novelist, 1897-1975

It is second nature for her to persuade others to do what she wants done. Her age and expertise have made her a master manipulator, and she can influence just about anyone whether by greasing palms, or putting her silver tongue to good use. The scope of her scheming powers knows no bounds; she has cut her teeth on pitting fathers against sons against one another just for the sake of witnessing the fallout. She truly enjoys raining chaos upon her adversaries through carefully calculated acts of sabotage, and knows quite well how to hide her motives by using a second party as a go-between. Khalidah has often hid behind the façade of another by cultivating a sense of trust with her intended target of manipulation before planting the seeds of destruction within their mind. She makes her ideas their own and empowers them to see her ideas through to their culmination.

Protective

“Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.”

- Jonathan Swift

Khalidah is fiercely protective of the people whom she holds dear, but she also understands that if she is unable to protect herself first and foremost, she will be unable to protect anyone else. If she feels that she is being threatened, she will react accordingly whether with a verbal remark, or by stabbing someone in the gut. She is certainly not a woman to be crossed. Those who have threatened her in the past have often not lived long enough to tell the tale. She has no qualms about self-preservation or preserving the lives of others in exchange for blood.

Resourceful

“Wolves are very resourceful. All they need to survive is for people not to shoot them.”

- Bob Ferris, former Major League baseball pitcher

Give her a rubber band, a toothpick, and a can of WD-40 and she’ll be able to build you a house. Khalidah has learned over the years to make do with what she is given, or what she acquires. When in tumultuous situations, she always tries to find the easiest way out given the circumstances. She can stretch ten dollars a mile wide, and she’s ingenious enough to know how to work her way out of potentially hazardous circumstances. She’s had to survive for long periods of time on her own, and would most definitely classify herself as a survivalist. If she were stranded on a deserted island, she would be more than capable of fending for herself, building her own shelter, and providing her own food. Preparing for the worst while hoping for the best is something that she does on an everyday basis.

Likes-

• History. She’s lived through so many different eras that history is an impossible subject for her not to enjoy.
  
• Books. Everything from children’s stories and colouring books to something as involved as War and Peace.
  
• Mythology. It’s her life. She’s lived through several of history’s so-called “golden ages” and knows quite well the origins of various world myths. She may have even started some of her own.
  
• Learning foreign languages. It would be shorted to list the languages that she doesn’t know.
  
• Alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol, especially beer of the red persuasion (Rodenbach Grand Cru, Trade Winds Paniolo Amber, Árainn Mhór Rua, etc.)
  
• Tchotchkes (little knick-knacks like Swarovski figurines, porcelain Lladro figures, Mexican worry dolls, that sort of thing).
  
• Schadenfreude. Because it’s funny to watch someone fall down a flight of stairs as long as it’s not happening to you.
  
• Internet culture (memes, Failblog, 4chan, lolcats, etc.) How quickly internet culture has evolved since its inception fascinates her. She enjoys seeing rumours take on a life of their own and spread like wildfire on Facebook and Twitter.
  
• Technology. Since the Industrial Revolution, she’s observed the world progressing by leaps and bounds into the cosmos.
  
• Chaos, because it’s fun to watch people scurry around while their lives are collapsing around them.
  

Dislikes-

• Pop up ads. Seriously. They just need to go away.
  
• Junk mail. She doesn’t need to know about what credit card offers she’s automatically approved for, nor does she really care to change her car insurance or her cable provider.
  
• Micro-managers. They usually wind up dead. Fast.
  
• Tourists, especially the ones who come to a city on a whim and think that a guide book to tourist destinations makes them an expert on the area. Also, they cause traffic, and she can’t get away with running them over without getting sent to jail.
  
• Ignorance. When one has a world of information at their fingertips (quite literally), there is no excuse for ignorance.
  
• Yappy dogs (i.e. anything smaller than a German Shepherd).
  
• Twilight. Lighting a bag of dog feces on fire and setting it on Stephenie Meyers’ doorstep is one of the top things on her To-Do List.
  
• Papercuts. She swears that some of them hurt as much as childbirth.
  
• Standing out in a crowd. She does what she can to blend in and be innocuous, though sometimes it’s difficult.
  
• The Jonas Brothers. She’s heard some pretty awful music in her time, but this just makes her suicidal.
  

Strengths-

• Great memory. She has to be able to remember all of her historical facts (and fiction) somehow. This would be impossible if she didn’t have a good memory.
  
• Articulation. Khalidah is incredibly articulate, and is able to flesh out even the barest skeleton of an idea into a fully-realised design.
  
• Easygoing. Once someone has earned her respect and her attention, she is very easygoing and generous. She would go to the ends of the earth to serve and protect her friends and confidantes. Her carefree nature provides a mellow and grounding atmosphere when involved in a situation where teamwork is necessary.
  
• Patience. In spite of her sometimes impulsivity, she is a patient guide and instructor who understands that everyone learns things at their own speed, and a person’s learning process is truly unique unto themselves.
  
• Intelligence. Nature tends to cull the weakest from the herd, whether they are weak in body or in mind. Her intelligence and cunning more than make up for what she lacks in physical strength.
  

Weaknesses-

• Defiant. She likes to be in a position of leadership, not taking orders from someone else. While she would make a great leader, she would make a horrible follower. She would question everything, because as she understands things, her way of accomplishing something is usually the best and most efficient way to get things done. This makes her potentially difficult to work with if her team members do not share her ideals.
  
• Deceptive and fraudulent. Honesty might be the best policy, but not when you want to survive. Even animals are deceptive in nature, using camouflage to mask themselves as something else in order to continue leaving and not risk being preyed upon, such as owl butterflies chameleons, and cuttlefish. She knows how to defraud people very well and is intelligent enough to pull it off. Due in part to her deceptive, self-centred nature, it is difficult for others to trust her. This creates an interesting dichotomy; she has issues with allowing herself to trust other people with her secrets, and yet she expects people to trust her so implicitly that she is able to deceive them.
  
• Tactless and impulsive. Never expect her to hold back and be nice to you. Even if saying what she believes to be true comes at great expense to her, she’ll still say it. Her impulsiveness sometimes leads to avoidable mistakes.
  
• Distant and aloof. To those who aren’t in her inner circle, she keeps herself at a safe distance until she has gauged their trustworthiness. It is safest to judge first and be proven wrong later than not to judge at all and be proven right. Her detachment allows her to watch people without becoming directly involved with them.
  
• Has little faith in others. She believes that people act best when they are being led, and that they are incapable of doing things on their own. She refuses to rely on other people to complete what she knows that she can complete and often believes that the best way to accomplish something is to do it yourself.
  

Skills-

• Polyglot: She is fluent in several languages including, but not limited to, Arabic, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, and Yiddish.
  
• Stealth: It isn’t all just about being able to move around quietly in the shadows. Stealth means being deceptive and being able to alter your appearance at will. It also means getting on the inside and understanding your enemy from the inside out. An enemy would never expect to be taken down by a trusted friend. She knows very well how to move within different social circles without being seen, and she is incredibly adept at keeping herself hidden.
  
• Architecture: Her knowledge of architecture was honed during the Ayyubid dynasty, where she helped supervise the construction of a handful of notable madrasas in Aleppo, Syria, including the Al-Firdaws madrasa funded by Dayfa Khatun.
  
• Survival: Khalidah is able to adapt to roughly any environment and find a way to survive—or even thrive—in her new surroundings. Because of her resourceful nature, she is able to build shelters and traps seemingly out of thin air. She’s had several thousand years to learn how to live off the land on various continents, whether by choice or by circumstance. She has no “formal” survival training such as that which they teach in the military; she feels that her own knowledge is far greater than anything that could be taught in a course. Even in the bleakest of circumstances, she is able to push through and outlast the odds. She has a great deal of cunning, and always leaves herself an “out” (or several) in any given situation.
  

Flaws-

• Indifference. Where some people might see something egregious (such as the violent death of a loved one), she sees life carrying on. The wars of man have little meaning to her, because she knows that she will live through them, and humanity will have learned nothing. Some mistake her indifference as callousness, which makes her even less approachable. While she doesn’t suffer from a complete lack of compassion, she is jaded and feels that the problems of mortals aren’t worth her time or attention.
  
• Ligyrophobia: Fear of loud noises. Khalidah is absolutely petrified of loud noises, or of objects which can potentially be used to make loud noises (guns, balloons, firecrackers, or a long range acoustic device). As with some fears, this fear is completely irrational. It is also completely debilitating. Even being in the presence of a gun or in the same vicinity as a group of balloons is sufficient to jumpstart a panic attack. If she even so much as hears the familiar hissing sound made by a helium tank, it makes her stomach lurch and her skin crawl.
  
• Rebellious and unpredictable: Because she often thinks that her ideas are the best ideas, she tends to actively rebel against ideas which are contrary to her own. Rebelliousness sometimes causes her to act out of a place of anger or immorality until she gets her way like a spoiled child, or someone stops her. She has an unpredictable nature and tends to find order in chaos.
  
• Ruthlessness: Once she gets set on a task, she becomes so focused and driven that she will quite literally stop at nothing until the task is complete—even if it means decimating others in the process. She is borderline-obsessive about following through with orders given to her, or ideas that she gets fixated upon. She walks a very thin line between being considered rigorous and exacting, cruel and brutal.
  

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Abilities/Powers/Skills-

Quintessence:

noun. 1. The pure and concentrated essence of a substance. 2. (In ancient and medieval philosophy) The fifth essence or element, ether, supposed to be the constituent matter of the heavenly bodies, the others being air, fire, earth, and water.

Quintessence is the energy or power which binds the universe together. Commonly referred to as the æther, it is an energy that is invisible to the human eye. Metaphysical scholars would argue that quintessence is not only the energy of life itself; it is also the energy of the human soul and the heartbeat of the world. While matter cannot be generated out of nothing, energy is everywhere in different forms.

This ability can be used in many ways. The user can call upon any of the different types of energy surrounding them and can then convert that energy into something else, or cause it to dissipate entirely. For example, they would be able to convert the kinetic energy of a ball being thrown into metabolic energy within their own body, or they could elect to hold the energy within them and save it for use later (i.e. if they were to walk into a dark room, they would be able to call upon their energy stores to generate light energy). They could alter light energy into kinetic energy for use against a target, or they could even transmute the energy in such a way to heal wounds.

It is an ability of opposites. With it, its user may bathe a world in light, or plunge it into darkness. Energy drawn from the earth can be used to grow food from once barren land, or it can be used to turn the most fecund of forests into a desert. It can heal or kill, depending upon how it is directed. She can take the energy and redirect its use towards something else. She could channel electricity and use it to heal someone who has been wounded, or she could absorb the energy and release it later in an energy wave.

She can utilise the energy that she gathers to enhance her own physical prowess (usually manifested by brief bouts heightened stamina, strength, and speed). She can also shunt the energy into someone else and augment their physical capabilities. Quintessence may also be used to reverse or accelerate the aging process in much the same way that it can be used to pull energy out of an object or force an object into motion. Aging is simply a process by which the body’s cells become conduits for energy until the body expires.

Resurrection:

Death is simply an altered state of energy. Her body has died several times. She enters an altered state of consciousness and is able to use her astral energy to reverse the effects of death. She is also able to bring others back from the brink of death (or even from death itself, depending on how far gone they are), though it always comes with a price.

With resurrection comes healing. If she has suffered some sort of grievous injury that resulted in her death, the injury will reverse itself once again leaving her body in a state fit for habitation by a soul. The same thing applies to the bodies and souls of those whom she resurrects; if they died because they bled out internally, the internal bleeding would be undone by the act of resurrection. A body needs to be restored to its former state of wholeness before its energy can return to it.

Resurrection works on other organic objects as well. She is capable of bringing dead plants and animals back to life (depending upon their state of decomposition). Reviving non-sentient entities requires less energy depletion on her behalf.

Limits-

Quintessence:

Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be transformed from one state to another.

- Law of conservation of energy

While all matter is composed of energy (such as the bonds between the atoms forming the complex structure of a wooden table), she cannot create matter out of thin air, nor is she capable of destroying it completely. If she were to obliterate a table with a blast of energy, it would disintegrate into ash or its component molecules, but it would never truly vanish.

Different types of energy require different amounts of concentration, and she is incapable of “holding onto” certain types of energy for extended periods of time such as atomic energy or radiation. Channeling light energy or electromagnetic energy is relatively simple, as it is usually found in great abundance. The same thing goes for draining or enhancing an individual’s vital energy. Altering kinetic energy is a bit more complex and would require more concentration. If faced with a burst of radioactive energy, it would be necessary for her to release the energy as soon as possible (usually within a few seconds to minutes) in order to avoid injury.

She is susceptible to power negators. Being in the presence of a negator leaves her feeling weary and worn out—the same sort of feeling most people experience after not having slept for several days. It also leaves her vulnerable to attack without any real means to defend herself.

In spite of quintessence having somewhat alchemical leanings, she cannot transmute elements and turn lead into gold or what have you. She is incapable of altering the chemical composition of substances with this ability; it is purely energy-based.

Resurrection:

Resurrection only works on the recently deceased (read: people who have not decomposed beyond recognition, embalming notwithstanding). She cannot bring back mummies, skeletons, or ashes left in an urn.

Though resurrection enables her to overcome death, she is not immortal. Separate her head from her neck or destroy her brain beyond repair, and she will not be able to recover. Just to be on the safe side, it would probably be advisable to burn her body as well—just in case.

The process of resurrection may take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to a few days, depending upon the extent of the injuries at the time of death. If someone died from a minor injury or illness (complications from the flu, or a punctured lung, for example), reversing those maladies will take far less time than it would take to resurrect someone who’s nearly had their head cleaved off, or who’s suffered dismemberment and has consequently bled out. During this time, she is completely defenseless (whether she is attempting to resurrect herself or someone else) and open for attack.

In the event that she is resurrecting someone else, she will need to draw the excess energy from somewhere (light, electricity, other forms of life, etc.) If she is put in a place that is completely devoid of energy or has a small amount of energy from which to draw (a candle as opposed to the sun, for example), she will be unable to begin the process.

If she is in the presence of a power negator when she is attempting to resurrect herself or someone else, she will be unable to complete the task. The longer she is denied entry back into her own body, the more difficult it will be for her kickstart herself and return to the land of the living.

She can only bring back things that were once living. For example, if an inanimate object were damaged beyond all repair, she would not be able to reconstruct it and return it to its former workable state.

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Appearance-

Khalidah is a classic beauty. Her hair is a natural chestnut colour and falls past her shoulders in a wavy cascade. Most of the time she wears it down, though when she does have some extra time on her hands, she might braid it into plaits or braid it into a bun to keep it out of her face. She has thick eyebrows and hazel eyes which always have a thoughtful gleam to them. Her complexion varies in colour during different times of the year, ranging from an alabaster white in the fall and winter months to a burnished natural tan during the spring and summer when she spends more time outside. Her facial structure is soft and feminine, though her nose has a bit of a harsh slant from the bridge to the tip. It is rare for her to wear makeup, but on the odd occasion that calls for it, she tends to keep to earth tones and other neutral shades which enhance the beauty that is already there.

She is physically fit, and take great personal care and enjoyment in her appearance. Her muscles are well-toned, and she has been known to take part in marathons every now and again. Exercising is an important aspect of her life, and she makes a habit of keeping herself in peak physical condition. She isn’t particularly busty or curvaceous, but she also isn’t flat as a board either. She is of medium height, standing at roughly 5’8” and weighing 140 pounds.

The clothing that she wears is usually simple and non-descript. Though she often favours clothes on the more conservative side of the fashion spectrum so as not to stand apart from the crowd, she does have a few outfits that she keeps around and wears for fun. She is particularly fond of wearing airy-looking sundresses and sandals when the weather is nice and warm fur coats when the climate calls for it.

Faction- Jung Facility
Birthplace- Unknown, possibly somewhere in the Middle East
Mother- Unknown
Father- Unknown
Siblings- Unknown

History-

It has often been rumoured that most myths have at least somewhat of a basis in reality. Hercules may have been a man with strength that bordered on the impossible. Osiris may have been a man with an ability that would have enabled him to survive dismemberment. Athena may very well have been a military-savvy woman with an exceptional ability that bestowed upon her the gift of supreme intellect.

Then there were those who could both heal and destroy.

She doesn’t remember the day of her birth, nor does she remember the lives of any of her family members who have long since passed. She isn’t even certain if she was born; she considers herself to be an enlightened being with more godlike tendencies than any mere mortal.

The one thing she does remember about her former life was when she became fully awakened. Fully realised. Humanity had recently retreated from being simple hunter-gatherers to establishing small societies on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. From there, they passed into the Nile River Valley where they flourished for generations and became the ancient world’s first superpower.

It was there that she first began to make a name for herself that would follow her throughout the ages. Although she is unable (or unwilling) to remember the many lives of her past, there are some that she is more than eager to recall. Back then, she went by the name of Sa’at Nebti (roughly translated, Daughter of Nebti). Civilisation was still in its nascent stages, and new world empires were slowly starting to take hold. There were those who like her were quite literally gods on earth and who would have stories of their trials and tribulations passed on from generation to generation. Wards and prayers would be spoken in their names, and they would ultimately be feared and called upon during times of great distress.

She remembers a time several thousand years ago when she laid to waste hundreds of people with her own hands. Her rampage was one borne out of anger; she had overheard a handful of individuals plotting against the man whom she considered to be her father, a high-ranking official of the clannish settlement. The words smacked of such severe hubris that she would have been a fool not to punish them and all whom they had tainted with their vitriolic thoughts. Their words sent her into a blood-filled rage which lasted for seven days and seven nights and encompassed several hundred square miles. Word spread like the wind that she was coming, and the only successful way for people to avoid her insatiable wrath was to vacate their homes, leaving behind all non-essential items including food and beer. When she came upon the empty domiciles, she ransacked them in her search for any viable life to sate her unquenchable bloodlust. More often than not, the further she travelled with her rage as her guide, the more she encountered homesteads which had been evacuated. In these vacated homes, she happened across several flagons of beer which had been abandoned in the occupants’ haste to leave. Rather than allow the beer to go to waste, she drank it all until her rage subsided and she passed out underneath a tree.

When she eventually came to and witnessed the carnage she’d wrought, she retraced her steps and reversed the damage that she had done, resurrecting those who had died, or healing those who had been severely injured in her fury. Over the generations, the story of her massacre took on a life of its own. Instead of having killed hundreds of people in a relatively enclosed radius, the story told of how she had singlehandedly wiped out nearly all of humanity.

Sa sekhem sahu, or so the saying went. These words became a mantra to Khalidah when humanity was first beginning to find its niche in the world. Though the words have no literal translation into any modern language, they were spoken as words of empowerment or wards against evil. Khalidah remembers the words being spoken to her several thousand if not millions of times as people gravitated towards her and tried to finagle their way into her good graces.

She travelled from continent to continent as the centuries wore on, finding work in Roman brothels until she grew tired of living within the confines of the central Roman Empire. During the Byzantine Empire, she lived under the assumed name of Anna Dallasena and gave birth to eight children, some of whom ascended to positions of great power. Until her “death” in the year 1100, she remained an active part of her children’s lives, even going so far as to undermine the ruling Ducas family whom she felt had robbed her husband of his throne. She arranged several marriages between her family and the Ducas family and through careful manipulation became the family’s downfall.

For the next century, she returned to being a non-entity, instead melding in with the population wherever she chose to live. With each successive death, she learned to force herself to regress in age and slowly but surely manipulate her way into new families across each continent. Eventually she found herself living in Syria during the Ayyubid dynasty where she was raised by the well-known architectural patron, Dayfa Khatun. The Ayyubids were known for introducing public education into the populace, and leaving education open for everyone, including young women, some of whom later turned out to be great architects of the era. Under the tutelage of Dayfa Khatun, Khalidah directed the construction of the Al-Firdaws madrasa in Aleppo, Syria.

She escaped persecution during the Crusades by maintaining a low profile and moving often. During the last several decades of the Crusades, she travelled through the realm of the Ottoman Empire, and crossed the Bosporus Strait into Greece and continued to travel westward until she reached the city of Thessalonica. As the Byzantine Empire drew to a close in the mid-14th century, she’d long since grown jaded by the aristocracy and joined forces with the Zealots. For nearly a decade, she helped to confiscate the possessions of the aristocracy in an attempt to redistribute wealth. She also participated in the killing of nearly one hundred aristocrats in June of 1345.

When the Black Death swept across Europe, Khalidah was once again on the move, this time finding comfort in Florence, Italy. It was there that she spent her days convalescing those who had been affected by the disease, covering up their sudden miraculous recoveries under the guise of prayer and the divine intervention of God’s hand. The stories of her ability to bring the weak and sick back from the brink of death caught the attention and inspiration of Giovanni Boccaccio who was then inspired to compose one of the fictional tales in The Decameron.

For the following century, she journeyed across Europe, living among the peasants and minor nobles in France, Germany, and Poland. In Poland, she met a man named Mikhail whom she persuaded to attempt to steal the Russian throne from the then ruler—Boris Gudonov—by claiming that he was the son of Ivan IV and was therefore the rightful heir to the Russian throne. It was often thought that the real Dimitri was exiled with his mother to Ulgich by Boris Gudonov and was later murdered, though his death was never proven.

Together, she and Mikhail moved to Moscow where he began to perpetuate the fabrication and convinced almost everyone of his credibility. He entered Russia with a small army and encountered a bout of good fortune when Boris suddenly died in April of 1605, and his widow and son were murdered soon after. Mikhail came into Moscow and proclaimed himself to be the rightful czar. But his falsehood was short-lived; once Khalidah grew tired of him, she convinced the remaining Russian hierarchy (which had then been loyal to Boris Gudonov prior to his death), that Mikhail was an impostor. He was assassinated in 1606 along with two thousand foreigners on the streets of Moscow who had gathered to congratulate him on his return to claim the throne.

After his death, she fled to Voronezh where she cut her hair short and disguised herself as a man in order to better blend in with the labourers and ship builders who made their livings on the banks of the river Don. In the late 17th century, she bore witness from afar to the rise of the Romanovs and of Peter the Great, who would later augur in a time of great prosperity and expansion. During the beginning of his reign when he was seeking to gain access to the Black Sea, Peter the Great travelled to Voronezh to oversee the building of several wartime vessels which would be used to conquer the city of Azov and thereby gain access to the Black Sea. With her knowledge of carpentry and architecture, she was able to assist in the construction of the frigates. These same ships were also used later during the twenty-one year Northern War.

From Russia, she trekked through Denmark and Sweden at the beginning of the Romantic era and established a niche for herself in France in the mid 18th century. She would regularly attend Madame Geoffrin’s salon in Paris where she would spend her time educating both herself and others about the different philosophies of the world. Living during the gray period between the Enlightenment era and the era of Romanticism was fascinating to her, as humans began to delve into issues of the psyche and discussions of true human potential.

For the next few decades, she ventured further west into Europe and boarded a vessel bound for the United States in 1825. En route to the states, she shed her years and rose like a phoenix from the ashes, stepping foot onto American soil as a then seven year old girl with the knowledge of centuries. She was quickly taken in by the Mitchell family of Nantucket, where she was passed off as being the daughter of a relative who had passed away. As she grew with the family, she was encouraged to study the cosmos and made several contributions to the field of astronomy. She became an honoured member of the faculty at Vassar College and pioneered the university’s astronomy program. After her “death” in 1889, her name returned to being relatively unknown, though some of her observations still hold true to this day.

Turning back the clock yet again, she was keen on crossing the country as an eighteen year old until she settled in Deadwood, Oregon in 1965. She grew to enjoy the climate of the northwest with its vast wilderness and the changing of the seasons. She lived briefly on the Alpha Farm commune in the 1970s to the early 1980s where she worked at Alpha-Bit, the commune’s local cafe and gift shop where they would sell their organically-grown and artistically-created wares. She grew accustomed to living off the grid, but began to long for the hotter climates with which she’d been familiar a long time ago.

She left the commune on good terms and moved to Las Vegas in 1984, adopting the more college appropriate age of twenty-five. Khalidah began to pursue a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in computer science, attempting to stay on top of the technological trends of the times. She became quite interested in the science of biometrics and how it could be applied to modern life. After she graduated with her Master’s in 1992 with a special emphasis in biometric technology, she founded a small business by the name of IntelliTouch Biometrics which established a revenue base in Las Vegas and has steadily been gaining momentum across the country in the wake of terrorist threats from both abroad and within. IntelliTouch Biometrics has also founded a program to track the movements of those with abilities, though this program is still in its nascent stages.

With some of the profits she has made from her business, she has built herself a retreat roughly fifty miles northwest of Las Vegas in the small town of Cactus Springs. It is a place where she can go to withdraw from the world of technology and materialism when she is feeling overwhelmed, though it is also open to individuals who are seeking spiritual guidance. She feels that in spite of all of the sociological and scientific advances being made in the world on a daily basis that progress means nothing without spirituality and remaining true to one’s roots.

Anything else?- Sources:

Nebti was the combined form of the goddesses Nekhbet and Wadjet. Both of these goddesses were also closely related to Sekhmet in Egyptian cosmology.

Al-Firdaws madrasa and Dayfa Khatun
Alpha Farm commune
Anna Dalassena
Cactus Springs, Nevada
The Decameron
The False Dimitris of Russia
Madame Geoffrin’s Salon
Maria Mitchell
The Northern War
History of the UNLV Engineering and Sciences Department
Zealots of Thessalonica

---

Sample RP-

. . . Logging in . . .

Connecting to server . . .

Downloading data . . .

-----===== Location: Ru’Lude Gardens =====-----

She adjusted the headset and microphone so that the device hung comfortably over her skull and fit snugly against her face. An unopened litre bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red and a half-consumed bag of chicharrones lay next to the massive cube of water cooled goodness aptly named Asimo v. The supercomputer was literally a work of art that she’d had hand-crafted by the geniuses at the computer boutique Falcon Northwest. It was a technological masterpiece, handcrafted and personalised from the finest materials Silicon Valley had to offer. Complete with a Rampage III Extreme motherboard and an Intel Core i7 980X 3.33 Ghz, its processor and other important components were kept at a constant level of near-frostiness thanks to the internal Asetek liquid cooling unit.

It had set her back nearly $15,000 in total, but it had been money well-spent.

They’d gathered a full alliance of sixty-four people over four different linkshells and seven different timezones to make the Dynamis run. It was finally her chance after two years of waiting to lot her Shard of Necropsyche and Tenebrous Fragment to put the finishing touches on the relic scythe she’d spent nearly a year and a half trying to attain. All of their other Dynamis-Xarcabard missions had gone off without a hitch; it would finally be nice to have something to show for it.

Of course with the newly-raised level cap, her Apocalypse would be obsolete, but without it she would be unable to begin her Trial of the Magians to earn her Redemption scythe. Still, it was a task that she was willing to undertake; playing this game was very similar to playing chess in that it was something that you never truly mastered. In the time it had taken her to play this game, she’d already maxed out three characters on World of Warcraft and wanted more of a challenge.

Having Ventrilo was great as it allowed for easy communication between the leaders of each of the eleven parties. Once they’d all assembled in Ru’Lude Gardens, they were teleported to Xarcabard.

In relative silence they gathered and headed for the trail markings that would transport them into the Dynamis world.

“The fifteen notorious monsters need to be taken down first. Don’t start fighting any of the animated weapons until the NMs have been defeated, or else they won’t drop anything.” If they screwed up this run, she was going to be really pissed.

“Don’t forget Reraise. The White Mages will be too busy doing other things than rezzing your dumb ass if your sac pull goes bad.” Lupopo was the sackholder for the Gryphons of San d’Oria, a U.S.-based HNM and endgame linkshell. Khalidah had always found his choice in character amusing, seeing as how he’d chosen to play the smallest female Tarutaru template. No one hit on Tarutarus, regardless of gender.

He’d amassed a nearly full set of Orison armour and had received his Gambanteinn just a few days prior. He’d been playing the game for far longer than she had, and he only selected the best of the best to join his static shell. It was with his shell that she’d managed to work her way through and get a full set of Ares armour in a matter of weeks. They all worked together like a well-oiled machine.

She already had the necessary 10,000 currency bill needed to complete the final stage of her relic weapon. She’d already gotten her Attestation of Vigor from Dynamis-Beaucedine; that had been a fun fight.

The groups splintered off once they’d entered the realm of Dynamis, quickly heading through the snowy locale to where the kindreds were located.

“Kill the bards and mages first.” Cheesedoodle was a Galka Paladin known for his ability to maintain enmity. He was also known for doing stupid things like calling for help while fighting Absolute Virtue. It was amazing that he hadn’t been run off the server for that. But other than that, he was good at what he did.

The fights went off without a hitch. It was a melee orgy of gargantuan proportions and all of the strength-boosting gear she was wearing was paying off. She was closing skillchains with magic bursts averaging over 2,000 points of damage. When they were down to the last three mobs, it was her turn to take charge.

“Save your TP to 300%. Do not WS—if you WS, so help me God, I will drag you into Ballista and kill you.” She unscrewed the cap of the Code Red sitting next to her and drank it straight from the bottle. She’d set her character on follow on their shell’s Ninja, a Hume named Gaiden. Tanking a Dark Knight mob for a Ninja was a relatively simple task; a Dark Knight’s weapons were notoriously slow. It left plenty of time for the tank to recast Utsusemi. Coupled with the fact that he was also sporting a pair of Iga Kyahan +2, he could easily tank the mob without taking any damage.

The only thing they needed were a party of Thieves to kite the Satellite Scythes away from the main melee. She checked her map as they were en route to the spawn point. All seven of their thieves were heading towards them from behind. “When the mob spawns, it’ll spawn five additional scythes. Kite them away towards the other groups.”

“All right.”

“Got it.”

“BRB AFK.”

BRB AFK? Now? Really?

“Kaya, I swear to God and everything holy, if you bail on me now, I’m locking you in a hotel room full of WoW players when we go to Comic Con.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“If you don’t think I’m dead ass serious, go ahead and try me.” She’d been waiting for nearly two years to get to this point; no one was going AFK. Even if they were dying, she didn’t care. No one. Was going. AFK.

“But I have to pee!”

“I don’t care.” Bodily functions were so inconvenient, but they could always wait. Khalidah paused long enough to take another sip of the Code Red. “The Satellite Scythes hit hard; keep kiting them around if you can. They’ll depop once the main weapon is defeated.”

“I love sac pulls. Losing XP is so much fun.”

“Shut the fuck up, Jared. Do you have any idea how many thousands of merit points I’ve lost and how many times I’ve deleveled in Salvage because of your dumb ass? Cry me a fucking river and do your fucking job.” No, she was not going to have any patience for idiocy today. Even if he wasn’t being serious, she really didn’t care. He needed to get serious; if he didn’t, she was going to log into his account and “accidentally” drop his Mandau. “And you’re not doing a sac-pull. You’re kiting. You should know the difference after eighty fucking levels of this shit.”

The crackle of Jared’s laughter could be heard on the other end of the connection. “You do have a point.”

Once they were within aggro range of the animated weapon five other identical scythes spawned behind it. Each Thief grabbed hate from one of the spawns and pulled it back to a larger group while the main melee focused on beating down the Animated Scythe before them. Twenty weapon skills soon rained down upon the mob, followed by at least a dozen Stun spells as it attempted to warp away. It was hit in quick succession with a number of weapon bashes to prevent it from being able to use its two-hour ability. By the grace of Altana, Gaedin had managed to maintain hate on the weapon, even as its HP were decimated to hell and back.

With less than one-quarter of its hit points left, she gave the order for half of the group to head towards the Vanguard Dragon. Six sets of weapon skills later, and the Animated Scythe was defeated with almost minimal injury to the rest of the party.

You have found a Tenebrous Fragment on the Animated Scythe.

“Everyone pass so I can lot, please.” Waiting on the other sixty-three members of the alliance to pass on the item was a test of her patience.

“I’m gonna lot.”

“You don’t even have Dark leveled, Cheese. Fuck off.” She held her breath as the names of the other participants in her alliance were grayed out as they passed on the item until she lotted and it passed into her inventory.

Abraxis has obtained a Tenebrous Fragment.

With that deed done, she followed the rest of the group to fight one of the Vanguard Dragons. There were ten of them; if nothing dropped on the first one, they’d fight the others until something did drop. Considering the number of Thieves in the party with maxed out Treasure Hunter effects, hopefully something would drop.

When she arrived at the next site, half of the alliance had already engaged the dark dragon in battle and she joined in. Hate was bounced from Ninja to Paladin to Warrior and back again. If they wiped, she was going to be absolutely furious; Dynamis could only be attempted once every three days, and the Necropsyche only had a thirty-three percent drop rate. It was amazing how much time, effort, and gil went into obtaining the rare endgame items. True, she could have just .dat modded them in as she’d done in the past, but there was just something about being able to have her character wear an actual Apocalypse or Ragnarok that was so much more satisfying.

“Follow your Break order.” They had three parties of mages and bards. Of the Black Mages, four of them had already reached the Level 85 cap and had access to the spell. With all of the Bards and Red Mages in the party, she didn’t have to remind any of them to cast Refresh or Mage’s Ballad to keep everyone’s MP above average as the fight wore on.

Every time the gargantuan wyvern would prepare to do a Body Slam or the paralysis-inducing Heavy Stomp, she’d hit it with a Stun spell if one of the Black Mages hadn’t already done so. They all seemed to have nearly endless MP.

Her heart pounded with excitement as she watched the HP bar of the dragon gradually eke down towards zero. In just a few seconds, she’d be rewarded (hopefully) with a shard of Necropsyche. Then they could go on to fight the Dynamis Lord in relative peace. But right as they were about to land the killing blow . . .

Cheesedoodle calls for help!

“ . . . ” Oh, he hadn’t.









Kaya hits the Vanguard Dragon for 96 points of damage.

Kaya defeats the Vanguard Dragon.

No experience points were gained.

No items were found on the Vanguard Dragon.







“ . . . the shit??!!”

“Ohhhh, so wrong.”

“What the fuck, dude?”

“Ha! Cheese, you fucking noob!”

“No drops if you call for help, numbnuts.”

“What the fuck just happened?”

“Cheese called for help like a fucking dumbass!”

“I just did it for the lulz. There are still nine more left!”

“Yes, and now you’re going to solo one of them for me because you, sir, are a douchebag.” As much as she wanted to laugh it off, she kind of wanted to kill him. Two years she’d been working for this, and he had to go and be a jackass now?

If he screwed up again, she was going to kick him into next week. But such was a day in the life of a citizen of Vana’diel.