Adept

## Origins

Some are born into greatness, others have greatness thrust upon them. The latter was true for Justine Chou, an unassuming young British Korean girl who grew up interested in computers and machines, but had a far greater cause thrust upon her by destiny.

Justine’s parents **Daniel** and **Lisa Chou** were wealthy but absent for large portions of her childhood, and she was left with her nanny during her formative years. From an early age she showed an interest in and aptitude for computers and other technology, fond of taking things apart to see how they worked and putting them back together in ways that made more sense to her. This developed into a skill in software coding, and she took as many classes in the subject as possible during her time at school to improve her natural talents. By the time she was moving into high school, she was confident in developing software based solutions to her problems and those of her friends and family.

Few children go through school knowing exactly what they want to do, but all Justine ever wanted was to be a software engineer, and upon graduating from high school that’s exactly what she did: taking an internship at a local developer, she worked her way up through the ranks and was a full-fledged engineer by the time she turned 18.

It was at this point, however, that her parents decided to drop a bomb on her: their absences when she was young were due to their membership of **The Merlinine Council**, and in truth they were both powerful sorcerers and part of a lineage stretching back centuries. It was Justine’s destiny to follow in her parents’ footsteps, and upon turning 18 they revealed the world of magic to a largely uninterested Justine. She had found her passion and had no desire to abandon it just to follow in her parents’ footsteps, and it caused ructions in both the family and certain sections of the Council.

In a move that they felt would ultimately benefit her, Justine's parents sent her to study at **The Ethereal Academy for the Unseen Arts**, Britain's premier higher magical education institute, forcing her to give up her software engineering job and attend classes full time. Justine was resentful of the whole situation, electing to stay on campus rather than speaking to her parents, and blew off most of her classes to instead lock herself in her dormitory and do what she loved, spending hours writing code on her laptop with the school's surprisingly effective WiFi connection.

### Magical Discovery

One fateful day, however, the entire school experienced a freak power outage, and with her laptop battery at 0% she was left at a loose end. Bored out of her mind, she began leafing through one of the large tomes that she had been given when she enrolled in the school, and after an hour of reading she decided to try this magic stuff out.

She soon discovered that there were no rules about how magic should be accessed, that it was a force that permeated the world in the same way gravity did, and it was up to the individual user how they chose to access and use it. With some testing and trial and error, Justine gradually discovered that just as she did with machines and technology, there was a way to take magic apart and put it back together in a way that made sense to her, namely in seeing each element of a spell as a piece of 'code' which she could string together to create something more than the sum of its parts.

Having reached this epiphany, Justine became more confident and happy in her magic use and started attending classes again, quickly excelling and rising to the top of many of her classes. She also mended her relationship with her parents, who were happy that she was happy, although still showed regret for forcing her into a life she didn't have the opportunity to choose.

Upon graduating from the Academy, she started attending meetings of the Merlinine Council with her parents and was well on her way to becoming a full-fledged Council member, dedicating herself to using her magic for the good of both her family and mankind.

## Personality

Sardonic and sarcastic with a dry wit and little patience for people who can't keep up with her, Justine can come across as a rather abrasive personality which often puts people off getting to know her better. But underneath the biting sarcasm is a young woman who is genuinely passionate and fiercely loyal to the people and things she cares about.

With her friends and family the sarcastic exterior falls away and she is warm, kind and funny, albeit often in a slightly sassy and occasionally borderline mean way. However, they stick with her because she is protective and has no time for people who come after the people she loves, attacking them with a combination of biting wit and now, magical powers.

She is highly intelligent and has an innate intuition for figuring out how things work, which is what made her such a good software engineer and also what makes her such a powerful sorcerer. She is able to systematically take things apart, whether physically or mentally, and put them back together in new and innovative ways to make them work more effectively.

## Superhuman Abilities

Justine is a powerful magic user and part of a long lineage that has been part of the Merlinine Council going back centuries. As such, she has the skill and the training to access the innate magical energy that permeates the world and shape it to her will for a variety of purposes.

Justine's specialty lies in the opposing forces of creation and destruction. Namely, she is highly capable in crafting spells which pull things apart, and others which put them back together again, and can use these both in isolation and in conjunction with each other. She is less skilled with defensive spells, and although she can summon a relatively effective shield, she often relies on other magic users around her to help out with this.

As each magic user manifests their energies in a different way, Justine has found a method which fits her non-magical skillset. Namely, when crafting a spell she conjures a glowing green 'mandala' shape around each hand, and then uses her fingers to touch and access different runes within the mandala to build up a spell, almost as though she is typing out lines of code which string together to build a piece of software. It is a unique method of accessing magical energies and often surprises other magic users, but Justine finds it simple and effective to use what she knows.

## Weapons and Equipment

Justine doesn't carry any weapons, although a number of other magic users have advised her to in the past. She does, however, carry a variety of protective charms on her person, including a silver pendant in the shape of an eight-pointed star that her mother gave to her and she has imbued with a spell known as an 'anti-hex', which dispels the effects of any hexes cast upon her.