Basic Concept
The inspiration for this character hit me the second I laid my eyes of American McGee’s Alice. After seeing the twists and the turns he put into Lewis Carroll’s story, I simply had to create my own twisted version of Alice. I decided to create my own dark and demented version of Alice in Mage: the Ascension, because Carroll’s works and Mage: the Ascension both deal with exactly the same subjects – alternate realities and states of conscience, understanding them and traveling between them.
My Alice is a so-called normal sixteen year old girl, who like many other people that age feels like no one can understand her or what’s going on in her head. Her parents are too wrapped up in their everyday grownup world of work to do and bills to pay that they simply overlook their daughter. Slipping from one guidance council to another, no one is able to understand Alice’s private little world. That is of course no surprise. They are Sleepers. None of them can walk the paths the Awaken walks.
In the eyes of my mind, Alice is a Hollow One, struggling to understand the weird reality around her and her own powers. Thinking of her Avatar, I turn back to Carroll’s works and find the answer grinning at my face – The Cheshire Cat. This means that Alice’s Essence must be Dynamic. At first look Alice may seem like a deviant who lives only to break the rules imposed by society, she is in fact desperately searching for someone that would understand her. I’ll record her Nature to be a Child and her Demeanor to be a Deviant
Attributes
Now it’s time to select Alice’s Attributes. The way I see her, she is a charmer. A child so sweet she’d be irresistible, a bit like Claudia from Ann Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. So, I’ll pick Social to be her primary attribute group, Mental to be her secondary, and Physical to be her tertiary. I’ll give her the following attributes: Strength 1, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Charisma 3, Manipulation 4, Appearance 3, Perception 3, Intelligence 2 and Wits 3.
Abilities
On we go, and now it’s time to select Alice’s Abilities. Keeping in mind that Alice is just a sixteen year old Goth wannabe, I’ll assume that most of Abilities will be Talents (primary), a bit fewer Knowledges (secondary) and very little Skills (tertiary). Keeping this concepts in mind, I think her skills should be: Awareness 3, Expression 3, Intuition 3, Streetwise 1, Subterfuge 3, Etiquette 1, Research 2, Stealth 2, Computer 1, Cosmology 2, Culture 2, Enigmas 1, Law 1 and Occult 2.
Advantages
Alice’s Backgrounds are quite straight forward. She has spent her entire life being unnoticed, almost invisible, so I’ll give her Arcane 2. She also has an extremely potent connection to her Avatar, so I’ll give her that background with a value of 2, too. Her Mentor who may not look it, but is has some status in the Awakened society – only to the value of 1, but still some status. And of course, her Dreams she cannot explain, with the value of 2.
Alice’s Spheres come from her style of magic. Most of her magic revolves around odd visions she cannot explain, with just a tad of unconscious manipulation of reality. This will be represented by Correspondence 1, Entropy 2, Time 1 and Mind 2. Frankly. I’d really like to have Time 2 (for Past Sight and Future Sight) and Correspondence 2, but that will have to wait for the Freebie Points in the next section.
Finishing Touches
Being a very novice Mystic, I’ll leave Alice’s Arete at 1 and Willpower at 5. I’ll use her 15 Freebie Points to buy an extra dot in the Spheres Time and Correspondence that I wanted from the previous section. Having only one point left, I’ll use it to increase her Arcane Background to 3.
Looking over Alice’s character sheet, I see she has one Attribute of 4 – Manipulation. I decide to assign it with a specialty, and Devious just pops into mind.
That’s it. All we’ve got left is to write down her background and personality in an orderly fashion, and we’re done. Check out the final result here