With Shroom's okay, this will be in place of John the Traveller. Think of them as Chaotic Neutral versions of the Doctor and his companions from Doctor Who.
EDIT: Just added Rasa's section.
Name: Justinian
Nickname: Pockets
Age: Unknown. Complicated by the fact that his apparent physical age keeps changing every time he is seen.
Origins: No one knows exactly where Justinian came from. All people know is that he showed up at an orphanage in Crowtalon one day at an apparent age of around five and made himself home. When asked, his answers were, at best, cryptic. Mostly, he seems to have little memory of who or what he is. He doesn’t even know his real name since “Justinian” is only something he came up with himself since he liked how it sounded.
He was always a strange one, talking about seemingly random things and making enigmatic references about certain events in the past or presumably the future. It didn’t help that he tended to mix up his tenses, sometimes shifting in past present and future tenses all in the course of one sentence. His personality also seemed to be inordinately bright and cheerful, except for a few moments when he seems almost thoughtful or smug about knowing something other people don’t.
Then, of course, there’s his weird penchant for wearing a multi-pocketed vest (from which is derived the nickname most people know him as) and what appears to be a Red Army ushanka. Asking the boy about these things yields little other than the answer of “I’ve always had them.” There’s also that strange and out-of-place California quail that seems to be firmly perched on his head. The fact that it seems to never leave the boy’s head to eat, sleep, fly, or anything tends to be something people find more than a little strange.
However, this was Crowtalon. As strange as the boy was, all of that was par for the course really. For the most part, the caretakers in the orphanage didn’t really ask too many questions and tended to keep away from the boy. The other kids in the orphanage tended to avoid him too, mostly because you couldn’t really hold a conversation with him that would make sense. There were a few kids who tried to strong arm him, but they ended up disappearing. The mostly apathetic orphanage workers overlooked that too. Besides, kids ran away from the orphanage all the time. There’s was one kid named John Doe who he seemed to talk to sometimes, but no one really knew what they talked about if anything.
Lastly, random things also end up either disappearing or appearing around Justinian. His orphanage room was usually full of various odds and ends which seemed to vary from day to day. Some of those were things that a kid of his apparently age would have trouble carrying on his own (such as large, twisted stone idols or unidentified mechanical parts, to name a few). The mostly apathetic orphanage workers wisely overlooked those too, in the thought that perhaps some things were better left unknown.
Eventually, Justinian seemed to grow tired of staying in the orphanage. As suddenly as he had come, he disappeared.
Of course, that was just the beginning.
Current Status: Mostly alive and apparently well—or, at least, when anyone stumbles upon him, which tends to happen in the oddest times and the oddest places. Due to certain abilities, Justinian seems to pop up in different time periods and different places. He’s even been know to pop up on alternate dimensions. However, he seems to appear in Crowtalon with an almost regular frequency.
In such appearances, his apparent physical age seems to change drastically. One appearance, he may look like a child. In another, an adult. It’s not clear whether his age really shifts from one time-space jump to the next, or if his varied appearances are just at different points of his personal timeline. His inability to keep his tenses consistent doesn’t help.
As it is, most of his appearances are met with great wariness as disaster seems to follow him with a frequency of about 50-50. A look at historical records will reveal some references to someone that may be him. His presence has been suspected in the fall of many civilizations, such as Mu, Atlantis, or Sarnath. It is unclear, though, whether he is merely a spectator or whether he has some hand in such catastrophes.
On a less sinister note, stuff tends to disappear around him as well. Apparently, his penchant for collecting things never really changed. While it is mostly uncertain what historical artifacts have disappeared because of him, he has been suspected of swiping a few. The disappearance of the original copy of the Necronomicon, for example, has been linked back to him. Some people have linked him to the disappearance of more mundane things, such as socks in the dryer. Although, while possible, the few people who think that’s true may just be reaching.
On rare occasions, he has been known to help people. Although these seem mostly incidental, or because his whims just happened to make him inclined to help for some reason unknown to anyone except himself.
Powers, Abilities, and Weaknesses: Capable of sensing the presence of pockets of space-time, which are more accurately intersections of the space-time in his universe which constantly warps and folds around itself. Normally, most beings in his universe cannot see these transitory junctions. However, Justinian can see them as they come and go.
T these junctions usually appear for the briefest of moments. There are the rare few, though, that seem to last for quite a while. If Justinian makes it to one of them (which is hard, since such pockets seem to be often found in rather awkward or hard-to-reach places), he can make it physically manifest as a blue-hued tesseract. One this tesseract is unfolded to its net, it becomes a portal to another time and place within his own universe.
Justinian also has the secondary ability to create pockets of space for storage. These pockets of space appear as green-hued tesseracts. Justinian stores all manner of things in them. Given that he seems to collect tings that interest him wherever he finds himself, that’s a whole of things. When not in use, he makes a show of putting the tesseract in one of his many pockets wherein it disappears. When he needs it, he reverses the process and makes it look like his pulling it out of one of his pockets.
Despite these extraordinary abilities—as well as the fact that he doesn’t seem to need to sleep, eat, or drink—Justinian is about as fragile as any other regular human being. He also appears to be immortal, at least judging from his strange ability to apparently change ages at will, as well as to seemingly recover faster than most people when injured. However, he is still quite killable and depends on the ability of others to protect him.
Lastly, he also seems to be able to understand and speak any language he comes across. He can speak anyone’s native language fluently, even if he shouldn’t know how to speak it at all.
Relations: Due to his nature as a time-space hopping being, Justinian has not really been able to form any real long-term relationships with many people. What few relationships he has are… well… rather odd.
His oldest companion has been the strange male California quail, which Justinian refers to as Tribonian for some reason or another, that’s been perched atop his head for as long as anyone can remember. While the bird remains mostly quiet, many things indicate that he is not a normal quail. Tribonian seems to carry himself with some sort of intelligence, and often seems to regard people with a quiet, almost bored calculation. Justinian seems to engage him in conversation, but only the boys side of it can be heard which can make it seem like Justinian is talking to a plain old bird. It is more than likely, however, that the bird does reply to him telepathically. The bird apparently posses great psychokinetic ability, which has protected Justinian many times.
Another constant companion of Justinian is Rasa. Outwardly an extremely quiet Chinese girl/woman (her apparent age changes along with Justinian’s), she is rarely found apart from him. From this, one might get the impression that the two are lovers. One would be wrong. Justinian does show a great deal of affection for her—he considers her his pet. This is actually a step up from how he considers most people since he regards them as how many would regard insects—he barely notices they’re there, and only shows some mild interest when he does.
Justinian chanced upon the girl in LA’s Chinatown, the maddened result of a botched merging of her shadow and one of the minor Great Old Ones, Zul-Che-Quon. He bestowed he with three magical bells, which he happened to have in his extensive collection of odds and ends, allowing her to control the entity in her shadow and restoring some level of her sanity. She has since latched on to Justinian and remains jealously and loyally at his side.
He has managed to strike up something almost akin to friendship—except not quite, as Justinian doesn’t really have any idea what human friendship really is—with Sophie Windsor. He has know to appear quite a few times in Sophie’s room, always appearing as a 13-year-old boy, and chat animatedly with her for hours over things most people would not understand. The frequency of his appearances has caused the rest of Sophie’s team to grow used to his presence, and they mostly ignore him. Major Stirling does feel some fatherly qualms about the possibility that his little girl’s found herself a little boyfriend of sorts, but knows that Sophie can more than take care of herself in that area. Of course, given Justinian’s inability to comprehend human relationships, it is likely that their chats are purely platonic.
In fact, he has chatted up other beings of immense power as well. He has been seen striking a few conversations with Jurgen Baccara, but few have heard exactly what they talk about. He has been reported to have been seen talking to other ancient or powerful people as well, but most of these reports are unconfirmed. He does seem to get referenced a lot in some occult writings, with many linking him to Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, or whatever ancient entity they think he might be linked with.
His time-, space-, and dimension-hopping abilities have gotten the attention of both the Blacksuits and the Greycoats, but all their attempts to catch him have been fruitless. There have also been a few fringe groups who track his alleged appearances throughout history. Many of these groups have posted pictures, ancient text excepts, and other stuff they cite as proof on the Internet. Few really take them seriously.
Stated Name: Rasa Sceadwe
Real Name: Ann Ying
Nickname: Bells
Age: Unknown. Like Justinian, her apparent physical age keeps changing every time she is seen.
Origins: Young Ann Ying was born to an immigrant Chinese family in the city of Los Angeles’s Chinatown sometime during the late 1990s, well into the dark days of the city under he Crow’s ever-vigilant shadow. Despite this, along with the random acts of crime and violence that the city was so infamous for, little Ann actually grew up in a relatively peaceful environment. Well, aside from all of the beatings she took whenever her father had just a little too much to drink (which happened pretty much all the time), but we’ve all heard that story before. They also never really allowed her to leave too far beyond their restaurant, so she never went to school.
Naturally, things went downhill from there.
At the age of ten, she was abducted in the back alley of her parent’s home-style dimsum restaurant while taking out the trash. The perpetrator was a half-Native American pimp whose business dried up rather abruptly after the Crow paid a visit to all of his whores, slaughtering them wholesale. It turned out, however, that the pimp was actually a descendant of a shaman of the now-gone Mutsune cult, a not-so-well-known outcast cult from the Ohlone tribe in Northern California.
Being a descendant of shamans, the pimp had been taught some basic shamanic magic of the Mutsune cult. Seeking to let the Crow pay for ruining his business, bound Zul-che-quon, a mysterious shadow entity the Mutsune had worshipped as some sort of god, to the shadow of the kidnapped girl in the hopes of using her as the vessel for the god to unleash its wrath upon the insane vigilante who had massacred the pimp-shaman’s girls. Ironically, the first to feel its wrath was the pimp-shaman himself. Kidnapped kids apparently really don’t like their kidnappers, who knew?
The combination of angry, abused girl and entity of darkness went on a mindless rampage in the shadowy sewers and alley of L. A. for some time, becoming the cause of death for many a hapless person. Some self-styled street-level superheroes, evil spirit hunters, and the like tried to deal with the rampaging shadow thing from time to time, but most ended up dead. L. A. being L. A., the cops either never took much stock into the reports of the rampage, or never really cared since it was happening in the bad part of town anyway. However, despite the fact that said shadow girl was created to attack the Crow, the two strangely never managed to bump into each other.
Some time later, an apparently 13-year-old Justinian and his ever-present quail stumbled upon her when they tesseracted into an alleyway in the city. Tribonian managed to use its abilities to subdue the girl long enough for him to telepathically say something to Justinian. Upon hearing whatever the quail had said, the boy pulled out three bells from a green storage tesseract and rang them in a sequence instructed by Tribonian. The sequence somehow pushed the influence of Zul-che-quon out of the girl’s mind and limited the expression of its powers, allowing her to regain control of herself. Justinian gave her the three bells and, long story short, ended up with a new traveling companion.
Current Status: Ever since he gave her the means to control Zul-che-quon, the girl has been an ever-present companion of Justinian. She now goes by the name of Rasa Sceadwe, since Justinian gave her the name because he thought it fit her well—and because he never bothered to ask her for her real name.
Rasa, by virtue of her abuse, whatever lead to it, and consequent feral rampage under the influence of some shadow entity, has been left with barely enough of a mind to constitute a personality. She does have enough of a mind left however to speak and be functional to some level. Due to her experiences, she has latched onto the strange form of affection Justinian has shown her, developing a high dependency on the boy. She does nothing without asking him what to do first and seems content to be petted by him every now and then. Since he treats her like a pet, then like a loyal pet, she seems fiercely protective of the boy. Consequently, she is also very clingy, but not in a romantic way, as both seem to have no concept of it.
Despite being born and raised in the United States, Rasa can only speak in Mandarin Chinese because that was the only language her parents taught her to speak. This doesn’t hamper her communication with Justinian since the boy has the uncanny ability to speak any language fluently.
Powers, Abilities, and Weaknesses: With the three bells keeping Zul-che-quon in check, Rasa can draw a limited amount of its power through her shadow. Because of its presence, her shadow is always pitch black no matter the lighting. She can use this living shadow, which can change shape, as a weapon and a defensive shield. It’s abilities are rather limited in brighter areas. At night or in areas where there is more darkness, her abilities expand to allow her to merge into or move through shadows and pull people “inside” said shadow, essentially devouring them.
She can draw even more than this via a sequence of tones, allowing more of Zul-che-quon’s powers to manifest. Draw enough, and even bright light would not hinder the entity’s abilities in the slightest, although it would still be annoyed and enraged at the exposure to light. However, drawing upon too much of Zul-che-quon’s powers comes with the risk of it regaining control. Consequently, she draws only a bare minimum of the being’s immense powers out of fear of losing herself.
Like Justinian, she also appears to change apparent ages along with him of Zul-che-quon to her. Whether this is simply due to their appearances not occurring in the chronological order most are used to, or if Justinian can actively affect an apparently physical change on both of them remains unknown.
She likewise does not need to sleep, eat, or drink. However, without her shadow’s protection, he body is about as weak and killable as any humans.
Relations: Rasa’s entire world revolves around Justinian. She is completely devoted to the boy, and would do anything for him without question. So attached has she become that she thinks of no one else other than making sure they are not a threat to Justinian’s person. She is very adamant about having nothing happen to the boy, since he is the only source of warmth and affection she has ever had. Her acknowledgement of Tribonian’s existence is only because the quail seems to protect Justinian too.
Oh, there have been some in Saintly Concerns who have joked that she might be the illegitimate daughter of Seth Sahitan. These sprang up during Justinian's semi-regular visits to Sophie, since others have noted some similarities in Bells' apparently ability to move through shadows with Seth's own powers. However, these suggestions are mostly not serious and no one really thinks they're true.
Speaking of the shadow entity bound to her, but she prefers not to think of it. She remembers her time under its full influence as a timeless wandering, only vaguely aware of It killing person upon helpless person as It (as she refers to Zul-che-quon) dragged her along, rendered numb and mindless with what she calls Its song. She can’t explain her experiences then, since she doesn’t have the words to adequately do so. She only knows that the song had torn through her mind and forced her sing with It. She remembers that she had sung back with the only song she had known--despair, loneliness, anger, pain. And during their song, that was all It sang to her as well.
Then came Justinian. He'd made It stop singing, so she had stopped singing. Then he had given her his song. His song did not have words, and did not ring through and ravage her mind. Instead, Justinian's song is a strange song. There’s so much running, so much panic, so much energy. There was so many things that had tried to kill them, so many things they'd had to kill to prevent that, and so much more deaths between all those. Justinian’s song was a lot like Its song, except different. To her Justinian's song is warm. It isn’t angry. It isn't lonely. It isn't sad.
That’s enough for her.