alter locus application

2011-05-14T20:37:18Z

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER NAME: Ana
AIM & EMAIL: Analise83 and anaili {at} gmail {dot} com
TIME ZONE: EST
AVAILABILITY: Most weekday evenings usually after 6PM until 10PM, weekends
RP EXPERIENCE: Wow, I've been RPing for almost half my life now. So...nearly 14 years. Holy crap, I feel old.

CHARACTER INFORMATION

GOD(DESS): Nike
RESOURCES: http://www.theoi.com/Daimon/Nike.html
http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/greek-mythology.php?deity=NIKE
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/n/nike.html

DOMAINS OF POWER: Victory in competition (peaceful and otherwise)

FULL POWERS:
Nike was the literal personification of Victory (hey, it's possible the war with the Titans could have turned out completely differently if she hadn't gone along with her mother (Styx) to throw in on Zeus' side...). It was she who had the power to decide the victor of both battles and peaceful competition (particularly athletics).

She also had wings and the power of flight but, alas, lost them in the fall.

ITEMS OF POWER: She had no particular items of power, though she was often depicted with items symbolizing victory (crowns and sashes, palm branches etc).

CURRENT STATE OF POWERS:
Currently, she can often tell who may win the outcome of a particular competition, game, or battle. She has little direct influence over these things anymore, though from time to time she might give her blessing to a mortal friend. Of course...she typically would only lay her blessing on one who is worthy and would thus have had a good chance of winning on their own anyway. It's more of a nudge at the right time than anything else. She has a strict "no helping gamblers" policy, though, nor will she use her powers to help herself (she could make a killing betting on football games!).

SKILLS & ABILITIES:
She's always been very athletic and it still shows. If she'd ever been in elementary school, she'd be the one of the first kids picked for teams, every time. Along with her athleticism, she's very graceful and moves more like a dancer than your average person. Nike is also very good at giving inspirational speeches, especially right before a big game.

MORTAL ALIAS: Natalie Keenan (yes, that makes her initials NK)
MORTAL AGE: 28
RESIDENCE: Blackwood Apartments
OCCUPATION: High school sports coach/gym teacher for one of the Chicago prep schools

PLAYED BY: Jewel Staite
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
Medium-length brown hair, straight. Brown eyes. A little shorter than average for your typical modern woman. She's slender and remarkably fit in a way that seems effortless but is really due to the amount of exercising she does and the fact that she doesn't really have a sweet tooth.

Her current job means she gets away with wearing a lot of sneakers and comfortable 'working out' kinds of clothes or blue jeans. She's most often seen in cute t-shirts or tanks and yoga pants with her hair pulled up. Nike only really seems to dress up if going out on the weekends.

HOW HAS LIVING AMONG MORTALS AFFECTED YOUR CHARACTER?:
Nike was always rather fond of mortals, possibly since so much of her duties once revolved around watching their doings. She was never a heavily worshiped goddess since she was so often conflated with Athena or seen as a servant of Zeus, anyway, so in quite a few respects she lost little in the fall.

Out of everything, what she misses most is being able to fly. It was very difficult for her to adjust to being earthbound since she had essentially lost a pair of appendages she relied greatly upon. Even now, she still feels the loss. Especially during rush hour!

PERSONALITY:
Cheerful and friendly, Nike gets along with just about everyone she meets and rarely has a bad word to say for anyone.

Nike has managed to be something of an inspirational icon to the kids she teaches and made it her calling to do what she can to enable them to reach for greater things. Despite being a goddess, she's rather fond of her mortal charges.

While she's friendly and she has a wide circle of acquaintances, Nike has managed to acquire very few true friends. She really reserves that status for family of which; her siblings, her mother, Zeus, and Athena she would do almost anything for. And no, not necessarily in that order.

PERSONAL HISTORY:
Nike's personal history before the Fall is pretty consistent: there isn't much of it. At the time when Zeus was preparing to make war with the Titans, it was her mother Styx who went to him first along with Nike and her siblings (Zelos, Kratos, and Bia) to side with the Olympians. For this, they were given honor and a place with the gods. Nike served as Zeus' charioteer as well as one of the sentinels that stood by his throne. She also came to be the friend and companion of Athena.

After the Fall, Nike found herself at loose ends. It was something of a shock to be the embodiment of Victory and yet...in this case, they were not victorious, they were simply forgotten. She spent several hundred years simply wandering around on her own, coming to terms with her new position in life. From time to time, she would meet up with old friends and family but she generally kept to herself.

She figured, after all, if she would have to live like a mortal, it would be easier to do so without constant reminders of what had come before.

Nike spent a great deal of time traveling throughout Eastern Europe after the Fall, eventually making her way to Russia and continuing East. Periodically, she would settle down in an area for a while but most people tended to give her a wide berth, being that she was a woman traveling alone, fearless. In time, she came to a town on the sea and spent several years there.

While in this town, she met a young sailor and it was he who promised to carry her away to the country on the other side of the sea so they could make a life together. She didn’t truly believe they would have that idyllic life together, but the idea of a new country was appealing and so she sailed away with him to California.

Nike loved this new land in ways she had never loved the old and if there was no one there who knew her or called her true-name anymore, well...she’d grown used to that. Again, she resumed her old routine of staying in one area for several years, then picking up and moving when questions started arising about her ageless appearance or her the unnatural luck in gambling (okay, so she didn’t always have a strict prohibition against helping gamblers...) those around her seemed to have.

Eventually, she stopped associating with gamblers and started more being involved with athletics once again. This was a country who had a love affair with sports and there always seemed to be a game for her to find. Small town games, big league games, children’s games, she’d watch them all. It was during this time, in the early twentieth century, that she began her work as a teacher. Mostly in girls’ schools, sometimes as a private instructor, she found she did well teaching athletics to youngsters and she enjoyed inspiring girls to do more than embroidery.

By the end of the twentieth century, she was teaching almost anywhere she ended up for there was always a need for teachers and always a team needing a coach. And well into the first decade of the twenty-first century, she found herself living in Chicago, acting as a coach in one of its prep schools for her ‘day job’. On the side, periodically, she also acts as a personal trainer, typically for someone she sees promise in who just needs a little ‘push’ in the right direction.

Oh yes, and she was rather pleased when a particular athletic shoe company named itself after her, what a nice ‘boost’ that turned out to be!

WRITING SAMPLE:
The day was sunny, for the moment, but she could see clouds on the horizon. For the moment, though, it hardly mattered. It was a beautiful Saturday morning and she was out running. There was a simple pleasure for her in physical movement, in her feet hitting the pavement and her arms swinging at her sides. This simple joy led her to smiling at everyone she passed and her smile was infectious.

At one street corner, she was joined by another runner who matched step with her and grinned. “Morning, Natalie.”

She smiled in return , “morning, David, the usual route?”

“Oh sure,” he said, “but let’s make it interesting.”

“Interesting?”

He nodded and the grin was back, “a race? Loser buys lunch.”

Her eyes sparkled, “are you asking me on a date, David?”

David managed to look supremely innocent as he ran beside her, “oh no...I just don’t have the cash for lunch.”

She laughed, “right...you might be paying on credit then, my friend. Ready?”

“...Set...” he added.

“Go!” they both said at the same time as they picked up the pace, racing along their customary route. He had longer legs but she had discipline on her side...fitness didn’t just come naturally to her, it was something she strove for. She had power on her side too...that he didn’t know of but...Nike might have used it and for the moment she was just Natalie and Natalie was only human.

The race ended close but long legs won the day as David pulled away from her in the last few strides before the end of the block. Natalie smiled and kept jogging past him, calling over her shoulder.”Guess I’ll owe you lunch after all...you should probably shower first.”

David let out a bark of laughter as he worked at catching his breath, “the diner, noon?”

“I wouldn’t miss it!” Just her and the sound of her feet on pavement once more...at least until she got back to her apartment and a shower of her own. Lunch and company, she thought. It really was a nice day.

PLOT IDEAS: Discovering she isn’t so alone in the world as she’s used to being. Wacky hi-jinks with her brother (Zelos)? Zeus trying to convince her to use her power for [his] material gain? :)
HOW DID YOU FIND US?:
EJ sent me. Or, well, she mentioned playing Hermes in a new game and I couldn’t resist checking it out. :)

still victorious

alter locus application