Carter (The Secret Word)

Carter is one of the characters is the MMO The Secret World. She is an introverted teenager born with psychokinesis and trained as a mage through-out her life. She is currently a student at Innsmouth Academy under the caring hands of Annabel Usher and the watchful eye of Hayden Montag.
==Background==
Carter was psychokinetic at birth, her parents quickly learned there was something off about her. With no on to train her, her powers manifested at seemingly random times through-out her life. Matters only became worse when she started attending school. Once circulated through the public school system several parties became aware of her, including the anarchistic monks of The Dragon and the Orochi Corporation, however it was the Illuminati who beat all others to making introductions with Carter. Representatives from the Illuminati quickly offered to pay for Carter's education and appoint specially trained staff to keep her and those around her safe. Carter's parents realistically could not continue looking after her and had known so for some time and so after counseling with Carter over the proposal, Carter's parents agreed to go with the Illuminati. Towards her high-school years, Carter was sent to Solomon Island's famous prep-school, Innsmouth Academy. Innsmouth was the island's only school and, as it was private, most of the island's children had to commute inland just to get schooling. Carter being permitted into the illustrious and secretive academy served to single her out among the other children on the isle with the exception of a boy named Danny Dufresne, who had been suspicious about the academy for years and was open to new and different people.
Carter and Danny became friends quickly even though they did not go to the same schools and before long Danny uncovered Carter's secret. Apart from fearing Carter, Danny was excited to see the sort of things she could do, though by his accounts, she usually refuses to make a scene with her abilities if she could help it. Due to at least one unfortunate prom-night Carter learned to repress her powers. At the academy, she quickly learned there were many children who were magically imbued and Innsmouth had been set up to train them all in secret, though even there Carter was shown to naturally have the level of power far above the rest. Headmaster Montag in particular took Carter under his wing, as her unstable powers and thirst for knowledge had reminded Montag of his own difficulties growing-up, though in his case, with no one to teach him, he had accidentally killed several people, including his mother. While Carter came to appreciate Innsmouth greatly, she had always felt the pressure of what was expected of her combined with her need to keep her powers from getting out of her control.
==Solomon Island disaster==
While the Illuminati control Solomon island, and in-fact the entirety of the Americas from behind the scenes, publicly Solomon Island was primarily a fishing community. One day a fishing ship called The Lady Margret disappeared into the Atlantic, it would return much later but with the ship and crew in dire straight, half-mad with claims of an eldritch ships' graveyard. The first-mate Joe Slater had found a glowing golden sword in the grave yard and reached out for it, the crew had initially fought each-other over what do with it - thinking they could get money for it and some wanting to keep it to themselves, but Slater won-out over his increasingly fractious crew-mates and convinced them it was tearing them apart and should be turned in to the town officials to be dealt with. By the time The Lady Margret returned the crew had suffered severe physical and mental damage from being stuck out in the fog-chocked sea, what most did not notice at first was a fog had rolled in with the ship's return.
Danny noticed the fog though, and immediately began to investigate reports of older phenomenons, he would remain missing for a day to do some research. Over the course of that first day many things occurred. The crew of The Lady Margret sent the sword to town hall, who immediately sent it off to Innsmouth Academy for study. Joe Slater and his fellow fishermen were all sent off to receive psychiatric treatment for delusion, based on their tales of twisting red coral, a persistent malevolent fog and creeping voices calling to them, as being the result of extreme trauma from being lost at-sea. Danny quickly contacted Carter and officer Andy Gardener about the sword saying something bad was coming out of the fog. Andy had just been glad to find Danny after disappearing for a day and though he could tell Danny had real concerns his top priority was getting Danny back home. Carter, being a mage-in-training and having absorbed several rumors about a mysterious package being shipped in to the school on the same day The Lady Margret rolled in, took Danny's claims a little more seriously.
Shortly after Danny's warning an invasion came from the ocean, in the still persistent fog, The Draug. The Draug are the animate mutated corpses of sunken mariners that propagate by gestating in the corpses and hatch out of them after a day's time. The Draug had a siren-song which flowed through the fog and compelled most who heard it to walk out to the ocean in a trance-like state and drown. The dead would be raised by the Draug as zombies, zombies they used as foot-soldiers to kill more people and gather more corpses for their propagation process.
==Refuage at Innsmouth==
Carter fought off the zombies and Draug and ran to the safest place she knew, Innsmouth. The staff were all, like her magical and thus remained unaffected by the call of the Draug. Innsmouth had numerous wards, as-well as booby-traps around it against magical threats, this combined with the trained magi teachers saw to it the zombies never set foot on school grounds. The school would face two major issues however, The Familiars and later Freddy Beaumont. Familiars are artificially constructed humans, or rather bad knock-offs of them made of meat and magically animated by students. Familiars were used to train students to animate inanimate objects and control them. While the magics for Familiars were originally conceived to give ancient magi artificial creatures to be used as assistants, the school taught their children how to do it in order to grasp constructive use of their powers as little more than shop-class projects. The big problem with the Familiars after the fog came in was that with most of the students killed by zombies no one could control the them. With no purpose to their existence, the Familiars started misbehaving, eventually turning wild and then completely feral. Beaumont was an evil warlock who had been looking for the sword for years but was unable to find it while in the ships' graveyard and, infuriatingly for him, was completely blind to it while it was safely locked within Innsmouth's wards. He would find ancient texts indicating the existence of underground tunnels running through-out Solomon County with a storage room sized cloister under Innsmouth. Beaumont literally blew the gates off of the school to get inside and retrieve his prize. With the school's outer wards blown apart along with the gate and the Familiars running rabid, Carter would be left trapped inside Innsmouth - safe from the zombies but unable to leave. While many of the staff would make a break for the river after Beaumont arrived Ms. Usher and Headmaster Montag would stay on site, arguing they must not only protect Carter but the school itself. Carter agreed to stay and as a result survived where the rest of the staff would meet a cruel end while fleeing.
The player will be an agent from either the Templars, Illuminati or The Dragon, sent to investigate the zombie out-break for their various supernatural interest groups. Tracing the zombies to the Draug, the Draug to the fog, the fog to the sword and the blade to Innsmouth will eventually bring the player to the Academy grounds. Ms. Usher will state the blade is lost in a secret vault that even they don't know about, which prompts Carter to mention she saw it once in the school's old block. Carter further states that the seniors would go down there to smoke and test out their powers by daring each-other to try to break it open, none of the attempts ever working. At which point Headmaster Montag confirms in-fact the existence of the vault is true, revealing only the staff were unaware of it and savvy students and the Headmaster himself had full knowledge of the the Illuminati's secret cashe. While the Player's main goal will be going into the vault to track down the sword and confront Beaumont, Carter, Usher and Montag will all ask for aid with the figurative cavalry finally arriving. While Ms. Usher is concerned with taking care of the immediate dangers on campus such as the Familiars and whatever killed the other teachers out in the fog and Montag is concerned with reforging the broken wards and defusing the powder-keg of forbidden magics exposed by the disaster, Carter is focused on the reserve Familiars not yet awakened.
==Carter Unleashed==
Carter's mission Carter Unleashed has to do with putting down the Familiars in-storage. She says that because the school thought of the creatures as little more than shop-projects, there were racks of replacement Familiars in the school's basement and with the outer wards broken by Beaumont and the fog's magics affecting the area following the break, those replacements were starting to wake up. Carter though genuinely worried about the school also sees it as an opportunity. Rather than just sending the player to tend to the school's back-log of Familiars, Carter wants to join as-well to put her powers to use. Carter says her powers were always difficult to control and she had been made to feel sick by repressing them so she wants to help by finally unleashing them on things which can not feel anyway and need to be put down. Montag refused to allow Carter to go by herself and instead opted to hold-down the warded section of the school, however with the Player there to protect her, Carter finally has an excuse to help fight off the growing threats just outside. The Player will first need to research Montag's notes on Carter and reconstruct a personal ward before accompanying her to the basement. Montag's notes state the ward outline was constructed specifically to protect teachers from Carter's powers if they ever got out of control. With the ward in hand, the Player will head to the basement with Carter. Carter allows the Player to lead but will back them up with various magics when they are attacked. If Carter gets surrounded, she will unleash her powers and destroy everything in the room including the Player. To prevent being destroyed by Carter's power the Player needs to either fight off all the Familiars before they notice Carter or, use the ward to create a temporary force-field while Carter's powers are going off.
At the deepest levels of the basement in the main store room is a massive flesh-golem that the rest of the Familiars were farmed from. Carter will help fight it, though her unleashed powers will not automatically destroy it, she can still hurt it reasonably well and the Player's main concern becomes keeping Carter safe while she fights it. With the basement cleared, Carter is relieved, not only that the threat of the Familiars is at it's end, but that she finally got to release her full power without harming anyone. She does however ask to not let Montag or Ms. Usher know the details so she is not reprimanded for going off on her own.
==Personality==
Carter has a duality to her. She does not want to hurt anyone with her powers, humans, animals or even plants. Yet, Carter can't take being as repressed as she needs to be. Carter was picked on growing up and with her parents being somewhat afraid of her despite still loving her, Carter has several major self-esteem issues, supposedly manifesting in her junior prom night, however she refuses to go into the details of what happened there other than labeling it as the "Worst prom night ever". Carter is very, very fond of Danny Dufresne, as he is of her. It is unclear if Carter and Danny are in romantic relationship or a platonic one but both are extremely close. Ms. Usher wants to help Carter make peace with her powers so she is not consumed by them and as such the two get along very well. Mr. Montag is emotionally and socially stunted due a life of unstructured exposure to his powers and while he makes her exceptionally uncomfortable he also wants to see to it she has the care and structure he never did and as such despite Montag frequently making Carter sick to her stomach with his refusal to sugar-coat the darker aspects of the supernatural she cares for him deeply as an intellectual and mystical role-model.
Carter knows the Illuminati don't give anything away for free and knows they are going to want to have her shipped off to their controlled colleges to train for a career working for them. The Templars have reached out to her to train at the magical branch of Oxford and the Dragon have sent cryptic Chinese riddles for her to solve and intrigue her into working for them. While The Dragon say various events have been built around her, they are still unsure if she will ever join them. Richard Sonnac views Carter as a truly great prize to have if poached from the Illuminati. Kirsten Geary is ecstatic at the shear amount of damage Carter is going to be able to do for them once Montag finishes teaching her how to control her powers effortlessly. Carter does not want to think about having to work for anyone but still knows she will have to eventually.
==Skills & Abilities==
Carter is the only character in the game who can access three different focuses at once (with even highly trained magi like the Player only able to use up to two at a time). Carter's focuses are all three magic types, Blood Magic, Chaos Magic and Elementalism. Blood Magic can undo wounds and unleash dark powers on foes but at a cost of the user's health. Chaos Magic mostly manifests in forms of short-range telekinesis but creates random side-effects. Elementalism unleashes the fury of the natural world with fire, electricity and icy-blasts but it can strain the user's anima, requiring time to recharge. In addition to the formal magic training Carter also had been training with Montag to teleport laboratory animals into and out of pocket dimensions, however those lessons were put on hiatus after "a regrettable zoo outing" that occurred the previous year. Carter has had prophetic dreams, as Usher points out both she and Carter have had dreams about the deaths of the staff who fled the school-grounds after Beaumont arrived. Carter is an honor's student of Innsmouth and not only were her powers exceedingly strong even among other magi, but she was a quick study for more traditional school programs.
==Trivia==
*Based on the premise of a girl with in-born unnatural powers who literally explodes when stressed out trapped in a small town full of small minded people in addition to her "Worst prom night ever", Carter would appear to be inspired by the Carrie White of Stephen King's Carrie.
*Carter states she has had visions of a girl living on her own in a snowy mountain, with powers like her own. As well as a boy, in a prep-school with yellow rain-coats somewhere in Asia. Going to Romania and Tokyo will reveal that both children in-fact exist and both are also powerful psychics like her.
*While experimenting on Emma in Romania, Orochi can be heard referencing a secondary candidate for their study in New England.
*A simulation of Carter appears in the Council of Venice virtual training scenarios, as back-up for the Player during the scenarios' Cavalry-Has-Arrived phase.
Category:The Secret World Heroes
Category:Video Game Heroes
Category:Teenagers
Category:Magic
Category:Psychics
Category:Elementals
Category:Genius
Category:One-Man Army
Category:Scapegoat
Category:Soul Searchers
Category:Lethal
Category:Passionate Learners
Category:Female
Category:Neutral Good