Helen Magnus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
teratologist) wrote2012-07-01 05:17 pm
teratologist) wrote2012-07-01 05:17 pm
Dr. Helen Magnus; Paradisa app
PERSONAL
NAME: Batty
PERSONAL JOURNAL:ms_batty
EMAIL: singularlygifted@aol.com
AIM: singularlygifted
WIKI NAME: N/A
CURRENT CHARACTERS: N/A
CHARACTER
CHARACTER NAME: Dr. Helen Magnus
SERIES: Sanctuary
CANON POINT: End of Season 3, when Helen arrives in 1898.
LOSS: Helen has lost the moment of the vision of her deceased daughter. Ashley had come to Helen to forgive her and allow her mother to move on from grief and no longer hold on to the torturing hope that there was a way to save her. Without this brief moment Helen’s life cannot truly move on. She would continue her work to save abnormals and work with her friends, but she will never be entirely herself. Helen’s bright optimism will be dimmed and her personality slightly off to those who knew her well, internally she will be haunted by the idea that her daughter lingers in the inbetween of life and death and she has failed to bring her back.
Personality Helen Magnus is a rich and deeply complex woman, that is what naturally comes of spending over a century and a half in constant learning. In her youth, Helen learned the manners and poise of lady of her time; she had carried much of that with her over the rest of her years. Helen deplores crass language and thought and will only break down to profanity if the situation is dire.
Years of dealing with abnormals have opened Helen’s mind as well as her heart to acceptance of all life and culture. This openmindeness has been what has allowed Helen to lead the Sanctuary Network with an air of complete confidence and ease. There is rarely an event or situation to which Helen cannot manage to fit in. She is a woman of grace and refinement who is not above kicking a bit of ass when necessary.
Helen has an open heart for friends and often adopts others, primarily those of her Sanctuary team, as family. When it comes to romantic liaisons she is a bit more withdrawn, at least for the past few decades. She has loved and been betrayed or suffered loss, and that makes her gun shy to emotional attachment of that degree. The loss of John Druitt as she knew him, James Watson, her own daughter, all of this has given her good reason to remain distant and would require a great deal of work to get her to be otherwise.
Part of the grand Britannia that Helen keeps alive is her love of tea. She makes a point of having it every day, unless absolutely impossible. Don’t even think of offering her coffee, she takes that as an insult to personally as well as her culture. Helen has a fondness for multicultural food and wine. Her well stocked cellar, or the depletion there of, has been an ongoing point of banter between herself and Nikola Tesla.
ABOUT THE CHARACTER:
The warmth of summer was just breathing its last when Helen Magnus came into the world; the date was August 27, 1850. Her father, Gregory Magnus could not have been more pleased or proud than he was of his fair haired, round faced baby girl. Her mother Patricia was just as pleased and both were honored when Gregory’s good friend Louis Pastuer agreed to be godfather to the child.
It was a time of unlimited promise for Helen as she grew. Her father was thrilled at her aptitude and often allowed her to read at his knee. She learned and studied all her father would let her and soon she was as knowledgeable in the ways of known science and medicine as he. Sadly, even a brilliant mind such as her’s was found unfit to practice medicine so long as it was attached to the rest of a female body. The concepts of gender roles did not deter her from enrolling in Oxford and earning her degree, be it useful or not.
Early in her studies; when her father had come to accept that she would not be allowed to rise to the greatness she was capable of by conventional means, he took her under his wing for his other studies. Gregory Magnus was a researcher in that which was abnormal. Creatures and indeed some near humans with unusual qualities both benevolent and fearsome. Helen took to this new field of study with a hunger and soon it became the secondary focus of her life.
While at Oxford she met a young man with a mind that instantly captivated her. Montague John Druitt was exceptional, he had the mind of a scholar and the heart of a poet, if often swings of dark mood and temper that came from nowhere. The two could hardly be separated and often found themselves together at all hours discussing a theory or working on a project.
It was this intensity that drew other like minded people to them. Nigel Griffin, a chemist of extraordinary imagination, his theories on how the human body worked with, not just in its environment, made Helen rethink some of the basic principles of science. James Watson the sheer amount of knowledge his mind contained was startling, he was a reference guide with no pages and always willing to lend a hand to anyone in need. Rounding out the group was a man with a spark for up and coming sciences, a creator, inventor extraordinaire. Nikola Telsa could see more in the simple cogs and wheels of a watch than others could ever dream, he was fascinating to watch at work, a ceaseless, tireless demon until he had achieved his purpose.
This group became known as “The Five” and spent days turning over old standards of science. Each had their own specialty, each their own strength and together there was no intellectual collective more imposing. Given the rare nature of this collection, Helen dared to tell them about her other studies. She hoped that their scientific leanings would at least make them curious enough to hear her out. As it turned out there was a slight more than that. They were thrilled, each of them, to know something so hidden from the rest of the world and something of such a compelling challenge that it could change the established lines of history.
It was this reception that allowed Helen to broach the subject of personal experimentation. She had long since come to believe that certain abnormals could affect humans on a cellular level. She, and her father, had in fact managed to obtain something she thought could do just that; pure Vampire blood, the last of its kind in existence. Not knowing what the effects might be Helen insisted on being the first test subject.
After her initial injection of the blood little seemed to change for Magnus, she seemed almost crestfallen, but the others were still determined to test on themselves. John Druitt took the next injection, shortly after he began to manifest strange lapses in memory of how he had come to be places. Soon it was discovered that he was simply vanishing from one place and appearing at another he knew from memory. Druitt was a functioning teleporter.
After the success of Druitt the rest of the five were also treated and each bestowed a gift which enabled or complemented their natural talents. James Watson’s brilliance was multiplied to infinity, the man could unravel mathematics with the blink of an eye, discover the answer to any problem and inspire the character of the world's most famous detective. Nigel’s theory about bodily adaptation proved true when he manifested the ability to turn invisible at will by making his body react to the wavelengths of light hitting his skin. For Tesla the change was most profound, unknown to any he had long dormant Vampire genes in his DNA, the pure blood unlocked these and gifted him with Vampiric qualities as well as control over the power of electricity which he so dearly loved to play with.
Thus The Five took their powers and made their ways throughout history. Some to greater effect than others. John Druitt became enmeshed with an entity during an early teleport and it took his already somewhat unstable personality to the edge. Darkness overwhelmed him and in 1888 he slaughtered prostitutes in the area known as White Chapel, becoming known as Jack the Ripper. Helen tried to help him, the man she had agreed to marry, but John was too far gone to save, and she ended their relationship. Shortly after Helen was shocked to find she was pregnant, she went to her father to plead with him, she could not have Druitt’s baby, but neither could she abandon the life she had created. Gregory devised a means of cryostasis for the embryo, and the tiny life was held frozen in time, until Helen would want, if she did ever, to give it life once more.
In 1898 Helen and The Five were brought together to stop a man named Adam Worth from causing harm to the world as they knew it in an attempt to save his daughter's life. The group did this and received in exchange pardons for any crimes committed and funding to set up a place to assist and keep safe the abnormals Helen was still intent to work with. Magnus established The Sanctuary in London and began to reach out to help the creatures and the world.
Helen had a number of adventures throughout the decades after, once sailing on the Titanic, saved by Molly Brown as the ship sank. Helen worked with, and indeed sat on the right hand of Warren G Harding as adviser, more so to the fact that he was the first abnormal to hold office than her political leanings.
Over the intervening years Helen devoted her work to helping abnormals and found herself spending a great deal of time with James Watson. The two became lovers and enjoyed the companionship others couldn’t really fathom, decades of love is a long time to work through. By 1943 they were deep in the movement to stop the Nazi takeover of Europe. Once again the majority of The Five would come to the aid of freedom as they tried to stop the party from unleashing a weather device on the world.
The device was, as it turned out, a ploy, the true weapon was a trapped fire elemental that could wreak untold devastation if released. The time was grim and only sunk lower when it was revealed that John Druitt was working with the Nazis. Helen and Watson were captured but managed to escape and find a way to stop the elemental from being used, forcing it into the earth. The unpleasant reunion with Druitt ended as he took the step the others were loath to and killed a Nazi in cold blood to end this mission and allow the invasion of Normandy to continue.
Helen was on hand to witness the surrender of the Nazis in 1945 and, after she’d decided that she’d seen enough mass bloodshed and loss of life, she stepped out of the world and retreated to her work. Helen had established the Sanctuary in Old town and in 1951 took in a badly wounded abnormal, commonly referred to as Big Foot after a local priest had called her about him. The creature was riddled with bullets and terrified of humans, Helen took him in, treated his wounds and soothed him. She treated him with respect and kindness and in return he decided to stay and work at the Sanctuary, looking after the human who had looked after him.
Helen had sequestered herself off from all but the necessary functions of the Sanctuary Network, now active on nearly every continent. She had no lover for decades, few friends she could speak freely with. She felt the pangs of loneliness, her family was long since gone, her friends ..it was at times too painful to thrust herself back into their lives. It was in 1985 she recalled the embryo she’d put into stasis so long ago. Helen reactivated the cryotube and set about becoming a mother. The following year her daughter Ashley was born, sometimes she would notice a look or feature that reminded her of Druitt, but Helen never mentioned to her daughter who her father was.
While Ashley was still a child, and under the unamused care of “Big guy” as the resident abnormal had come to be known, Helen intervened to save a young boy's life. She was unable to stop the abnormal which attacked the boy’s mother, but she was able to save the youngster and vowed that for her failure at this point in his life she would be his silent guardian throughout the rest of it. She could never replace his mother, but felt no child should grow up devoid of someone looking after them.
Helen raised Ashley in her own footsteps, there was no part of her life that she didn’t teach the girl about and Ashley took to it with the same vigor Helen had shown in her childhood. Well, almost. Whereas Helen was more of an intellectual, Ashley was definitely more physical. They made for an excellent team despite the typical mother daughter rebellion that is part and parcel of life.
Over time the Old Town Sanctuary acquired a technical genius in one Henry Foss who worked with the rest of the Sanctuary Network to upgrade their technology and keep things running in an orderly fashion. The crew of the Sanctuary was almost fully fleshed out, until the young man Helen had saved so long ago was in the right position to be added to their ranks. William Zimmerman became part of their family and assisted Helen as protege and friend, the young man had a surprising ability to stand up to others and defend what he knew to be right.
Much to everyone’s shock, while helping a friend of Wil’s the Sanctuary crew stumbled onto a fighting ring using artificially created abnormals as fighters. During the investigation Wil is taken and turned into one of these fighters, also a man Helen is convinced is her father is taken back to the Sanctuary. The man denied being Gregory Magnus and has no memories of Helen or the life she tells him is his own. Helen manages to restore her father and save Will as well as his friend from their abnormalities. Helen had a brief reunion with her father before her left her, the Cabal had him under mind control and rather than risk putting them in danger he just walked away.
With her ideal team in place Helen became far more active in the Sanctuary Network, a move which may have sparked the renewed interest of an ancient society known as The Cabal. This group had sought to reap the gifts and benefits of abnormals and use them for their own bds of conquest and power throughout the centuries of their existence. With that attention came another, John Druitt returned for both Helen and his daughter.
Helen now had to fight the Cabal, protect her work and her family and somehow manage to keep all of this off the radar of the general public. The Cabal unleashed a powerful virus that drove abnormals to rage and attacks humans. Helen had to find a way to stop it and the only means was the Source Blood. Gregory had secured it long ago after the initial experiments and only the collected Five could find it again. Given the run ins Helen had with both Tesla and Druitt she was not enthused, but James Watson assisted and with the granddaughter of Nigel Griffin they were able to get the sample. After retrieving the blood Watson’s life support device seemed to malfunction and he aged his true years in a matter of minutes, he died after his last act of courage.
At the same time Ashley and Henry had been taken by the Cabal. They managed to escape but later Ashley revealed she had been brainwashed and now served the Cabal and took the Source Blood the them. The Cabal used Ashley and a select few others to create Super Abnormals and sent them to destroy the Sanctuary Network. When Helen had to face down Ashley she begged her not to harm anyone and appealed to the daughter she loved. Ashley managed to break her mental conditioning long enough to destroy the remaining Super Abnormals and herself and save the Sanctuary Network.
Helen suffered massive survivors guilt and dove into her work. But the pressure and stress was getting to her. So great was the stress on Helen that another in the Sanctuary Network usurped her position and tried to destroy a creature that was so tied to the Earth itself and in retaliation the creature almost destroyed every major coastal city in the world. Will allowed himself to die to make spiritual contact with the creature and stop the destruction. In so doing he received a message from Gregory Magnus, he was alive and he had something for Helen, a code.
Helen used the code and various presents her father had given her to unlock a map of a place called Hollow Earth. With Nikola Tesla aiding her they discover the city where she believed her father to be. Before they could unravel all the secrets of the map, Helen was trapped by an old adversary, Adam Worth. The man she and The Five were supposed to have killed over a hundred years earlier. Adam was alive and well and very, very angry. Adam tricked Helen into using his own rift field travel which exposed her to terminal levels of radiation. Neither would have long to live, and we both taken back to the Sanctuary.
Helen was not about to sit quietly and wait for death to take her. Druitt and Tesla had become part of the team since the Cabal took Ashley and helped again. Though Tesla was angry to be left behind at the end, Druitt was equally displeased to be sent away.. Helen and the others went to Hollow Earth to find her father and a cure. They were almost immediately captured and put to death. Druitt worried for Helen and took Worth back to Hollow Earth and Adam claimed he had been there. Adam tricked Druitt though and intended to let his monstrous friends eat him. Adam left them too it as he hunted for the true reason he wanted them all to come in the first place.
Helen and the others were revived and told that the execution was for show. One of the huge abnormals that lived beneath Hollow Earth was ill and needed medical attention, if Helen could help them, perhaps the leader could help her in return. Helen did assist and saved the creature and the leader helped her find a cure for herself. The Magnus's were reunited briefly before Helen returned to the world above and Gregory stayed behind to learn all the advanced city could teach him. When the group was ready to leave they found a note in blood that Adam was dead and all debts were paid, signed John Druitt. The team returned to the surface feeling as though things had never been more confusing.
Helen and Nikola investigate a Praxian stronghold searching for more history of abnormals and possibly Vampires. Nikola was petulant over the loss of both his electrical abilities and his vampiric qualities when he ‘de-vamped’ some unfortunate recipients of his gifts the year before. Tesla had gained the use of magnetic abilities in the absence of his others but still bemoaned the loss of the great Vampire race. To humor him Helen took him along and they found not only evidence of Vampires but the queen of the race still locked in a stasis. Tesla was mortally wounded by security measures around the tomb and was close to death before Helen managed to get a sample of the Vampire Queen’s blood. Tesla was revived, restored and re-vamped to his old self, sans the electrical talents.
The Vampire queen was not as thrilled to meet the latest of the line and cast Tesla away as a mongrel; she intended to keep Helen around for a never ending supply of fresh blood. The ever resourceful Tesla escaped but it was Helen who finished off the Queen and the rest of her court as she was reviving them. Tesla, once more a Vampire, returned with Helen to the Sanctuary where he was becoming a part of the team.
Things were briefly normal before they took a turn for the galactically bad. Hordes of abnormals erupted from Hollow Earth, a coup was taking place and everything was in shambles. Worried for her father Helen, with the assistance of Druitt went off to find Gregory; but all they found was a broken walking stick. Helen put the nagging idea in her mind together and realized this was all the doing of Adam Worth, twice allowed to escape by Druitt. Worth had built a machine to go back in time and allow him to save his daughter’s life. As the portal opened, Druitt absorbed all the power to it and Helen chased Worth into the past. The portal closed behind her leaving Helen once again in 1898 and not knowing if John was alive or dead.
ABILITIES: Helen Magnus has longevity, to put it very mildly. She was born August 27 1850, and looks no older than her late 30’s now. Helen was raised by a brilliant father, if controversial, medical researcher. She followed in her father's footsteps and attended Yale, one of only a handful of women to do so at the time, specializing in medical science. While obtaining her degree and furthering her own interests in abnormal species, Helen befriended a small group of likeminded individuals who came to be known as “The Five.” All members of this exclusive Victorian think tank took part in a radical experiment involving pure vampire blood.
Each member of The Five took on individual and particular traits gifted from the blood, Helen was granted the most simple and possibly most devious of the gifts; extreme longevity. Helen stopped aging at that moment, and barring the change of her hair color, she remained physically as before for decades. Helen can of course be harmed, she could even possibly be killed by normal means, but she may well never die of age.
THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE: Helen had been keeping fingers against the wall as she walked, rough brick guiding her along through the unnatural fog. The thick white mist be concealing anything, including the very abnormal she was here to find.
Of course that could be the source of the fog in the first place. Charles Dodgson had gotten that one wrong entirely, Jabberwocky indeed. Sometimes the only way to hide an abnormal was to let them been written about, who ever would believe it after reading the rest of his tale?
Sadly it had ruined his credibility, but at least he'd taken her advice and used a pseudonym to publish under. That had taken care of any initial sightings in 1864, hysteria due to the book, now however the creature had found a way out of it's enclosure and made it's way into a populated area, who knew what it might do? This was precisely the reason the Sanctuary Network needed constant monitoring and why she was spending more and more of her time recapturing abnormals than preserving the undocumented, uncaptured ones.
The town had been evacuated, easy to spook the right people when you had the sort of strings to pull that the Sanctuary Network had. The hard part, crowd control was done through deception; gas leaks were horribly good incentives to leave, so all she had to do now was bring the beastie in.
Or, at least that was the plan until she heard another voice. A decidedly accented voice. "...Hello?" Was it in front of her or behind? In the blighted fog she couldn't tell, but she did know this, the Jabberwocky didn't speak. So who then was out there with her?
FIRST-PERSON JOURNAL SAMPLE: Journal of Helen Magnus, Twenty fifth June, two thousand and twelve.
Keeping a formal record has always helped me in the past so I suppose it is just as good and useful now. I’ve come to a place, rather lovely actually, a castle known as Paradisa. I’ve made rounds and it is a true castle with courtyard and grounds and a variety of inhabitants that makes me feel rather at home. That is to say it is a wild here as any of the Sanctuary Network stations.
I have heard there is some purpose for being here, give that I feel I’ve otherwise lost my purpose at times this may be a good thing. Nothing like Hollow Earth, so there is a level of guard I do not have to maintain. I feel more at home here than I should I think, but it is a new place and it does not have memories around every corner or reminders of my failure. It isn’t home, but it is at least not hell, yet.
INTENT: I am fascinated by Helen because she has what many of us would want, immortality. The idea of living so long, if not infinitely, is thrilling, yet at the same time every mortal friend, lover, even enemy would one day grow old and die leaving you behind. What I want to see is how Helen, with the loss of closure over her daughter's death, react to others. It will be a vastly internal issue but it will be profound and, I think anyway, very interesting for story purposes.
NAME: Batty
PERSONAL JOURNAL:
ms_battyEMAIL: singularlygifted@aol.com
AIM: singularlygifted
WIKI NAME: N/A
CURRENT CHARACTERS: N/A
CHARACTER
CHARACTER NAME: Dr. Helen Magnus
SERIES: Sanctuary
CANON POINT: End of Season 3, when Helen arrives in 1898.
LOSS: Helen has lost the moment of the vision of her deceased daughter. Ashley had come to Helen to forgive her and allow her mother to move on from grief and no longer hold on to the torturing hope that there was a way to save her. Without this brief moment Helen’s life cannot truly move on. She would continue her work to save abnormals and work with her friends, but she will never be entirely herself. Helen’s bright optimism will be dimmed and her personality slightly off to those who knew her well, internally she will be haunted by the idea that her daughter lingers in the inbetween of life and death and she has failed to bring her back.
Personality Helen Magnus is a rich and deeply complex woman, that is what naturally comes of spending over a century and a half in constant learning. In her youth, Helen learned the manners and poise of lady of her time; she had carried much of that with her over the rest of her years. Helen deplores crass language and thought and will only break down to profanity if the situation is dire.
Years of dealing with abnormals have opened Helen’s mind as well as her heart to acceptance of all life and culture. This openmindeness has been what has allowed Helen to lead the Sanctuary Network with an air of complete confidence and ease. There is rarely an event or situation to which Helen cannot manage to fit in. She is a woman of grace and refinement who is not above kicking a bit of ass when necessary.
Helen has an open heart for friends and often adopts others, primarily those of her Sanctuary team, as family. When it comes to romantic liaisons she is a bit more withdrawn, at least for the past few decades. She has loved and been betrayed or suffered loss, and that makes her gun shy to emotional attachment of that degree. The loss of John Druitt as she knew him, James Watson, her own daughter, all of this has given her good reason to remain distant and would require a great deal of work to get her to be otherwise.
Part of the grand Britannia that Helen keeps alive is her love of tea. She makes a point of having it every day, unless absolutely impossible. Don’t even think of offering her coffee, she takes that as an insult to personally as well as her culture. Helen has a fondness for multicultural food and wine. Her well stocked cellar, or the depletion there of, has been an ongoing point of banter between herself and Nikola Tesla.
ABOUT THE CHARACTER:
The warmth of summer was just breathing its last when Helen Magnus came into the world; the date was August 27, 1850. Her father, Gregory Magnus could not have been more pleased or proud than he was of his fair haired, round faced baby girl. Her mother Patricia was just as pleased and both were honored when Gregory’s good friend Louis Pastuer agreed to be godfather to the child.
It was a time of unlimited promise for Helen as she grew. Her father was thrilled at her aptitude and often allowed her to read at his knee. She learned and studied all her father would let her and soon she was as knowledgeable in the ways of known science and medicine as he. Sadly, even a brilliant mind such as her’s was found unfit to practice medicine so long as it was attached to the rest of a female body. The concepts of gender roles did not deter her from enrolling in Oxford and earning her degree, be it useful or not.
Early in her studies; when her father had come to accept that she would not be allowed to rise to the greatness she was capable of by conventional means, he took her under his wing for his other studies. Gregory Magnus was a researcher in that which was abnormal. Creatures and indeed some near humans with unusual qualities both benevolent and fearsome. Helen took to this new field of study with a hunger and soon it became the secondary focus of her life.
While at Oxford she met a young man with a mind that instantly captivated her. Montague John Druitt was exceptional, he had the mind of a scholar and the heart of a poet, if often swings of dark mood and temper that came from nowhere. The two could hardly be separated and often found themselves together at all hours discussing a theory or working on a project.
It was this intensity that drew other like minded people to them. Nigel Griffin, a chemist of extraordinary imagination, his theories on how the human body worked with, not just in its environment, made Helen rethink some of the basic principles of science. James Watson the sheer amount of knowledge his mind contained was startling, he was a reference guide with no pages and always willing to lend a hand to anyone in need. Rounding out the group was a man with a spark for up and coming sciences, a creator, inventor extraordinaire. Nikola Telsa could see more in the simple cogs and wheels of a watch than others could ever dream, he was fascinating to watch at work, a ceaseless, tireless demon until he had achieved his purpose.
This group became known as “The Five” and spent days turning over old standards of science. Each had their own specialty, each their own strength and together there was no intellectual collective more imposing. Given the rare nature of this collection, Helen dared to tell them about her other studies. She hoped that their scientific leanings would at least make them curious enough to hear her out. As it turned out there was a slight more than that. They were thrilled, each of them, to know something so hidden from the rest of the world and something of such a compelling challenge that it could change the established lines of history.
It was this reception that allowed Helen to broach the subject of personal experimentation. She had long since come to believe that certain abnormals could affect humans on a cellular level. She, and her father, had in fact managed to obtain something she thought could do just that; pure Vampire blood, the last of its kind in existence. Not knowing what the effects might be Helen insisted on being the first test subject.
After her initial injection of the blood little seemed to change for Magnus, she seemed almost crestfallen, but the others were still determined to test on themselves. John Druitt took the next injection, shortly after he began to manifest strange lapses in memory of how he had come to be places. Soon it was discovered that he was simply vanishing from one place and appearing at another he knew from memory. Druitt was a functioning teleporter.
After the success of Druitt the rest of the five were also treated and each bestowed a gift which enabled or complemented their natural talents. James Watson’s brilliance was multiplied to infinity, the man could unravel mathematics with the blink of an eye, discover the answer to any problem and inspire the character of the world's most famous detective. Nigel’s theory about bodily adaptation proved true when he manifested the ability to turn invisible at will by making his body react to the wavelengths of light hitting his skin. For Tesla the change was most profound, unknown to any he had long dormant Vampire genes in his DNA, the pure blood unlocked these and gifted him with Vampiric qualities as well as control over the power of electricity which he so dearly loved to play with.
Thus The Five took their powers and made their ways throughout history. Some to greater effect than others. John Druitt became enmeshed with an entity during an early teleport and it took his already somewhat unstable personality to the edge. Darkness overwhelmed him and in 1888 he slaughtered prostitutes in the area known as White Chapel, becoming known as Jack the Ripper. Helen tried to help him, the man she had agreed to marry, but John was too far gone to save, and she ended their relationship. Shortly after Helen was shocked to find she was pregnant, she went to her father to plead with him, she could not have Druitt’s baby, but neither could she abandon the life she had created. Gregory devised a means of cryostasis for the embryo, and the tiny life was held frozen in time, until Helen would want, if she did ever, to give it life once more.
In 1898 Helen and The Five were brought together to stop a man named Adam Worth from causing harm to the world as they knew it in an attempt to save his daughter's life. The group did this and received in exchange pardons for any crimes committed and funding to set up a place to assist and keep safe the abnormals Helen was still intent to work with. Magnus established The Sanctuary in London and began to reach out to help the creatures and the world.
Helen had a number of adventures throughout the decades after, once sailing on the Titanic, saved by Molly Brown as the ship sank. Helen worked with, and indeed sat on the right hand of Warren G Harding as adviser, more so to the fact that he was the first abnormal to hold office than her political leanings.
Over the intervening years Helen devoted her work to helping abnormals and found herself spending a great deal of time with James Watson. The two became lovers and enjoyed the companionship others couldn’t really fathom, decades of love is a long time to work through. By 1943 they were deep in the movement to stop the Nazi takeover of Europe. Once again the majority of The Five would come to the aid of freedom as they tried to stop the party from unleashing a weather device on the world.
The device was, as it turned out, a ploy, the true weapon was a trapped fire elemental that could wreak untold devastation if released. The time was grim and only sunk lower when it was revealed that John Druitt was working with the Nazis. Helen and Watson were captured but managed to escape and find a way to stop the elemental from being used, forcing it into the earth. The unpleasant reunion with Druitt ended as he took the step the others were loath to and killed a Nazi in cold blood to end this mission and allow the invasion of Normandy to continue.
Helen was on hand to witness the surrender of the Nazis in 1945 and, after she’d decided that she’d seen enough mass bloodshed and loss of life, she stepped out of the world and retreated to her work. Helen had established the Sanctuary in Old town and in 1951 took in a badly wounded abnormal, commonly referred to as Big Foot after a local priest had called her about him. The creature was riddled with bullets and terrified of humans, Helen took him in, treated his wounds and soothed him. She treated him with respect and kindness and in return he decided to stay and work at the Sanctuary, looking after the human who had looked after him.
Helen had sequestered herself off from all but the necessary functions of the Sanctuary Network, now active on nearly every continent. She had no lover for decades, few friends she could speak freely with. She felt the pangs of loneliness, her family was long since gone, her friends ..it was at times too painful to thrust herself back into their lives. It was in 1985 she recalled the embryo she’d put into stasis so long ago. Helen reactivated the cryotube and set about becoming a mother. The following year her daughter Ashley was born, sometimes she would notice a look or feature that reminded her of Druitt, but Helen never mentioned to her daughter who her father was.
While Ashley was still a child, and under the unamused care of “Big guy” as the resident abnormal had come to be known, Helen intervened to save a young boy's life. She was unable to stop the abnormal which attacked the boy’s mother, but she was able to save the youngster and vowed that for her failure at this point in his life she would be his silent guardian throughout the rest of it. She could never replace his mother, but felt no child should grow up devoid of someone looking after them.
Helen raised Ashley in her own footsteps, there was no part of her life that she didn’t teach the girl about and Ashley took to it with the same vigor Helen had shown in her childhood. Well, almost. Whereas Helen was more of an intellectual, Ashley was definitely more physical. They made for an excellent team despite the typical mother daughter rebellion that is part and parcel of life.
Over time the Old Town Sanctuary acquired a technical genius in one Henry Foss who worked with the rest of the Sanctuary Network to upgrade their technology and keep things running in an orderly fashion. The crew of the Sanctuary was almost fully fleshed out, until the young man Helen had saved so long ago was in the right position to be added to their ranks. William Zimmerman became part of their family and assisted Helen as protege and friend, the young man had a surprising ability to stand up to others and defend what he knew to be right.
Much to everyone’s shock, while helping a friend of Wil’s the Sanctuary crew stumbled onto a fighting ring using artificially created abnormals as fighters. During the investigation Wil is taken and turned into one of these fighters, also a man Helen is convinced is her father is taken back to the Sanctuary. The man denied being Gregory Magnus and has no memories of Helen or the life she tells him is his own. Helen manages to restore her father and save Will as well as his friend from their abnormalities. Helen had a brief reunion with her father before her left her, the Cabal had him under mind control and rather than risk putting them in danger he just walked away.
With her ideal team in place Helen became far more active in the Sanctuary Network, a move which may have sparked the renewed interest of an ancient society known as The Cabal. This group had sought to reap the gifts and benefits of abnormals and use them for their own bds of conquest and power throughout the centuries of their existence. With that attention came another, John Druitt returned for both Helen and his daughter.
Helen now had to fight the Cabal, protect her work and her family and somehow manage to keep all of this off the radar of the general public. The Cabal unleashed a powerful virus that drove abnormals to rage and attacks humans. Helen had to find a way to stop it and the only means was the Source Blood. Gregory had secured it long ago after the initial experiments and only the collected Five could find it again. Given the run ins Helen had with both Tesla and Druitt she was not enthused, but James Watson assisted and with the granddaughter of Nigel Griffin they were able to get the sample. After retrieving the blood Watson’s life support device seemed to malfunction and he aged his true years in a matter of minutes, he died after his last act of courage.
At the same time Ashley and Henry had been taken by the Cabal. They managed to escape but later Ashley revealed she had been brainwashed and now served the Cabal and took the Source Blood the them. The Cabal used Ashley and a select few others to create Super Abnormals and sent them to destroy the Sanctuary Network. When Helen had to face down Ashley she begged her not to harm anyone and appealed to the daughter she loved. Ashley managed to break her mental conditioning long enough to destroy the remaining Super Abnormals and herself and save the Sanctuary Network.
Helen suffered massive survivors guilt and dove into her work. But the pressure and stress was getting to her. So great was the stress on Helen that another in the Sanctuary Network usurped her position and tried to destroy a creature that was so tied to the Earth itself and in retaliation the creature almost destroyed every major coastal city in the world. Will allowed himself to die to make spiritual contact with the creature and stop the destruction. In so doing he received a message from Gregory Magnus, he was alive and he had something for Helen, a code.
Helen used the code and various presents her father had given her to unlock a map of a place called Hollow Earth. With Nikola Tesla aiding her they discover the city where she believed her father to be. Before they could unravel all the secrets of the map, Helen was trapped by an old adversary, Adam Worth. The man she and The Five were supposed to have killed over a hundred years earlier. Adam was alive and well and very, very angry. Adam tricked Helen into using his own rift field travel which exposed her to terminal levels of radiation. Neither would have long to live, and we both taken back to the Sanctuary.
Helen was not about to sit quietly and wait for death to take her. Druitt and Tesla had become part of the team since the Cabal took Ashley and helped again. Though Tesla was angry to be left behind at the end, Druitt was equally displeased to be sent away.. Helen and the others went to Hollow Earth to find her father and a cure. They were almost immediately captured and put to death. Druitt worried for Helen and took Worth back to Hollow Earth and Adam claimed he had been there. Adam tricked Druitt though and intended to let his monstrous friends eat him. Adam left them too it as he hunted for the true reason he wanted them all to come in the first place.
Helen and the others were revived and told that the execution was for show. One of the huge abnormals that lived beneath Hollow Earth was ill and needed medical attention, if Helen could help them, perhaps the leader could help her in return. Helen did assist and saved the creature and the leader helped her find a cure for herself. The Magnus's were reunited briefly before Helen returned to the world above and Gregory stayed behind to learn all the advanced city could teach him. When the group was ready to leave they found a note in blood that Adam was dead and all debts were paid, signed John Druitt. The team returned to the surface feeling as though things had never been more confusing.
Helen and Nikola investigate a Praxian stronghold searching for more history of abnormals and possibly Vampires. Nikola was petulant over the loss of both his electrical abilities and his vampiric qualities when he ‘de-vamped’ some unfortunate recipients of his gifts the year before. Tesla had gained the use of magnetic abilities in the absence of his others but still bemoaned the loss of the great Vampire race. To humor him Helen took him along and they found not only evidence of Vampires but the queen of the race still locked in a stasis. Tesla was mortally wounded by security measures around the tomb and was close to death before Helen managed to get a sample of the Vampire Queen’s blood. Tesla was revived, restored and re-vamped to his old self, sans the electrical talents.
The Vampire queen was not as thrilled to meet the latest of the line and cast Tesla away as a mongrel; she intended to keep Helen around for a never ending supply of fresh blood. The ever resourceful Tesla escaped but it was Helen who finished off the Queen and the rest of her court as she was reviving them. Tesla, once more a Vampire, returned with Helen to the Sanctuary where he was becoming a part of the team.
Things were briefly normal before they took a turn for the galactically bad. Hordes of abnormals erupted from Hollow Earth, a coup was taking place and everything was in shambles. Worried for her father Helen, with the assistance of Druitt went off to find Gregory; but all they found was a broken walking stick. Helen put the nagging idea in her mind together and realized this was all the doing of Adam Worth, twice allowed to escape by Druitt. Worth had built a machine to go back in time and allow him to save his daughter’s life. As the portal opened, Druitt absorbed all the power to it and Helen chased Worth into the past. The portal closed behind her leaving Helen once again in 1898 and not knowing if John was alive or dead.
ABILITIES: Helen Magnus has longevity, to put it very mildly. She was born August 27 1850, and looks no older than her late 30’s now. Helen was raised by a brilliant father, if controversial, medical researcher. She followed in her father's footsteps and attended Yale, one of only a handful of women to do so at the time, specializing in medical science. While obtaining her degree and furthering her own interests in abnormal species, Helen befriended a small group of likeminded individuals who came to be known as “The Five.” All members of this exclusive Victorian think tank took part in a radical experiment involving pure vampire blood.
Each member of The Five took on individual and particular traits gifted from the blood, Helen was granted the most simple and possibly most devious of the gifts; extreme longevity. Helen stopped aging at that moment, and barring the change of her hair color, she remained physically as before for decades. Helen can of course be harmed, she could even possibly be killed by normal means, but she may well never die of age.
THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE: Helen had been keeping fingers against the wall as she walked, rough brick guiding her along through the unnatural fog. The thick white mist be concealing anything, including the very abnormal she was here to find.
Of course that could be the source of the fog in the first place. Charles Dodgson had gotten that one wrong entirely, Jabberwocky indeed. Sometimes the only way to hide an abnormal was to let them been written about, who ever would believe it after reading the rest of his tale?
Sadly it had ruined his credibility, but at least he'd taken her advice and used a pseudonym to publish under. That had taken care of any initial sightings in 1864, hysteria due to the book, now however the creature had found a way out of it's enclosure and made it's way into a populated area, who knew what it might do? This was precisely the reason the Sanctuary Network needed constant monitoring and why she was spending more and more of her time recapturing abnormals than preserving the undocumented, uncaptured ones.
The town had been evacuated, easy to spook the right people when you had the sort of strings to pull that the Sanctuary Network had. The hard part, crowd control was done through deception; gas leaks were horribly good incentives to leave, so all she had to do now was bring the beastie in.
Or, at least that was the plan until she heard another voice. A decidedly accented voice. "...Hello?" Was it in front of her or behind? In the blighted fog she couldn't tell, but she did know this, the Jabberwocky didn't speak. So who then was out there with her?
FIRST-PERSON JOURNAL SAMPLE: Journal of Helen Magnus, Twenty fifth June, two thousand and twelve.
Keeping a formal record has always helped me in the past so I suppose it is just as good and useful now. I’ve come to a place, rather lovely actually, a castle known as Paradisa. I’ve made rounds and it is a true castle with courtyard and grounds and a variety of inhabitants that makes me feel rather at home. That is to say it is a wild here as any of the Sanctuary Network stations.
I have heard there is some purpose for being here, give that I feel I’ve otherwise lost my purpose at times this may be a good thing. Nothing like Hollow Earth, so there is a level of guard I do not have to maintain. I feel more at home here than I should I think, but it is a new place and it does not have memories around every corner or reminders of my failure. It isn’t home, but it is at least not hell, yet.
INTENT: I am fascinated by Helen because she has what many of us would want, immortality. The idea of living so long, if not infinitely, is thrilling, yet at the same time every mortal friend, lover, even enemy would one day grow old and die leaving you behind. What I want to see is how Helen, with the loss of closure over her daughter's death, react to others. It will be a vastly internal issue but it will be profound and, I think anyway, very interesting for story purposes.
Additional information,returning character application.
Helen arrived in Paradisa on the heels of Adam Worth, she was expecting to emerge in the past and yet she found herself in a magical castle. There were faces familiar and others new to her. James Watson was in seclusion and communicated to her only through a disguised voice in her journal. Nikola was also in hiding though Helen was able to meet Maladict, the woman with whom Tesla was involved.
Eventually James decided to make his presence known and met with Helen, he explained any of the remaining mysteries of Paradisa that he knew himself. James and Helen discussed the previous expeditions and the coming one to explore the history of Paradisa and what might lay outside the known borders.
Helen came to make friends with River Song and Galadriel, the former becoming like a sister and the latter being a source of contestant wisdom, counsel and comfort. The women had known the previous versions of herself that had come to the castle and helped Helen find her feet as well as ease into the life of a magical castle.
A Family Event took over the land, in which people all believed they were related one way or another. Helen and River were sisters in a literal way while Helen was married to James. James family, the Holmes’ and Watsons’ were civil if constantly picking on each other in the way only men of their intellect could. The damper on the week was their daughter, Maladict and her husband, Nikola. Tensions among the in-laws and newlyweds triggered more than a few moments of near fighting. But they all managed to get through things and after the event passed, life returned to its relative normalcy.
Helen grew alarmed when a vampire seemed to be on the loose in the castle, soon her friend River came to her to tell her it was a loss she had no control over. Not wanting people to attacker her or for River to attack others Helen offered the secured room of the partial Sanctuary in her own quarters. River was held in the SHU, special housing unit, which had been designed to withstand even the strongest and most monstrous of beasts. While River was suffering, Helen brought her blood from the clinic and experimented with her own as a serum, the source blood and her own having done miraculous things in the past. Unfortunately the only cure was time, and once the loss had ended River was once more a nonvampire.
Shortly after the family event, which possibly triggered the memories, Helen had begun to have glimpses and feelings of her daughter Ashley. The young woman had died before Helen came to Paradisa, but for some reason she could not explain Helen was convinced she had somehow ended up there. After all James was there, others had stated they were dead in their own time and world. It was not farfetched to think she might be there and confused. Perhaps lost and wandering due to the manner in which she had died.
The certainty of Ashley being at Paradisa wore on Helen’s mental state; she began to have delusions that in turn strengthened her belief of her daughter’s presence. Helen broke down to make a public plea to the residents to be on the lookout for her daughter. Her state alarmed James so much that he came to talk with her, eventually making her agree not to set out in search of Ashley until the conditions were safe to do so. With his concern and Galadriel’s counsel Helen was finally able to regain some control over her emotional state.
James began to spend more time with Helen and, eventually, the two finally came to the realization that they were indeed ready to try a relationship. Their decision was not yet made public but they have kissed and were planning more.
WHAT THEY ORIGINALLY LOST: The moment of closure Helen had with Ashley that allowed her to move on with her life.
SECOND LOSS: All memories that Montague John Druitt was the Ripper or evil in any way .