Character Base

• Character Name: Sarah King
• Age: 32
• Canon (Date/Year Released)/Canon Point: Blood Dahlia (a novel series; second book came out January 2015) post book-2
• Items Coming Along: A set of car keys, a pale pink silk-elastic headband, and a handgun that does not work.
• Content Warnings for Character: Murder, sexual assault, child abuse, alcoholism.

Character Background

• History:

Before she was four, nothing important happened to Sarah Helena King, a third child in an Amish family in Lancaster, PA.

When she was four, Sarah and her older brothers all got sick. The family didn't go to hospitals except when they absolutely had to, and this was just a fever, easy to control—until Sarah's became far too high far too fast. They gave her Tylenol, they put her in an ice bath, nothing stopped the illness ... and Sarah died in one of the ice baths. She definitely had no heartbeat, no breath, for long enough there couldn't possibly be any return.

But, surprise, she woke up screaming. She brought herself back, she told her family.

A thick lock of hair toward the front of her head had fallen out, and it grew back bright white. Since that moment, Sarah was different; she spent a lot of time outside at night and early morning, claiming she had friends in the forest. (She did -- they were ghosts.) As she grew other children were afraid of her and thought she was a freak at the same time, which she knew, because she could hear their thoughts, and so she stayed away. Despite being a very shy child, though, she was a good child, and her parents loved her even though she was odd. Even though she brought a dead kitten back to life, which many of them watched but didn't comment on—that made children more in awe of her and more afraid.

Twice, she solved mysteries as a little girl. The first time, the police didn't believe her until everything she said was confirmed by an outside source. The second time, the sheriff asked for her. That time was Nate Archer, who had been known as the Blood Dahlia. Sarah, age twelve, helped catch him and her involvement was covered up (who wants to talk about using a psychic, let alone an Amish child?) After that, everything went back to normal ... for a few years. She went through rumspringa, decided to stay home, and at nearly eighteen had a vision that destroyed her entire life. Confident that a local preacher was abusing a ten year old girl, Sarah spoke up, and her father told her to let it go, that she must have been making things up because the preacher was a good man.

So Sarah went to the police.

Unforgivable sin.

(She was right, of course, and he did end up confessing, but there was no saving Sarah, who was cast out permanently.)

After seven years of being out in the world, Nathan Archer's copycat came out of the woodwork, and the FBI tracked down the person who finally helped catch him; the 12 year old psychic, Sarah King, who was no longer twelve. After an awkward getting-to-know-you period, Sarah was essentially adopted by the little FBI team that took her in. But Archer's copycat turned out to be Archer's brother, and let's just gently say he was extremely mad that she came back into the scene.

That worked to the FBI's advantage, and more than once they were able to use Sarah as bait. Complications of this plan resulted in the deaths of her mother and younger sister, who were not even entirely sure Sarah was alive, but in the end she managed to survive, murderer apprehended. She'd flirted with a career in the FBI proper after that, starting to study at Quantico, but the guilt resulting from the deaths of her family and one of the agents she'd grown close to resulted in her stepping away and moving back to Philadelphia, where she got a job working at a bookstore she eventually ended up owning ... just in time for two of the agents she'd once been close with to pull her into a cold case.

At the end, one more person Sarah loved had died, but she'd learned a lot more about how to use her gifts for more than just being miserable.

• Core Relationships:
Isaac King: Sarah's father, and one of two named relatives. He loves her deep down but is incredibly harsh with her, not willing to let her back into the family despite his caring (so how deep does he really care?) - just as he considers opening up to her again her existence results in the death of two more people he loves.

Star King: Sarah's little sister who is murdered by Archer. She is sixteen at the time of her death, and her ghost sticks close to Sarah for the rest of that investigation. They are eight years apart in age but were at one point close, and the text implies that Star will stay close in her afterlife if she can.

Kyle Vidal: Grumpy senior FBI agent who becomes pushy mentor figure and dad friend. He's now the only loved one she has who actually cares about her who is not dead even though she is a complete jerk to him to get him to listen to her, using communication with his long-dead wife.

Arnold Rosen: FBI agent who became her friend ... and died, shattering her resolve but also determining her will to use herself as bait to catch the killer.

Giovanni Adami: The FBI agent who found out about her in the first place, tracked her down, and ended up dating her for a year. Unsurprising spoiler: after a long breakup due to depressingly different life values, Gio tracks Sarah down again for the second case, the spark returns and then he gets killed, but his ghost lingers with her for a time as well. They forgive each other and get a proper goodbye.

Character Personality Through Key Moments

(2+) Positive Experiences:

- Once you're actually Sarah's friend, she is intensely loyal, even sticking her neck out for you when it looks … weird, and no one is going to believe her. When witnessing the sexual assault of one of her co-workers, Sarah tried her best to warn her friend. When the friend ignored her, the vision came true, but Sarah visited her in the hospital and after an initial fight over how Sarah didn't try hard enough to protect her, Sarah went to the police with a witness report about what the man looked like, as well as the address she'd claimed to have photographically memorized from his ID at the bar they worked at. Technically, she was lying to the police, which she'd never done before, and Sarah considers lying to be a great sin … but she still did it, and it paid off.

- Sarah is generally a good person with good intentions, but she can close herself off enough to be emotionally distant and even manipulative; there is a scene where she hooks up with a nice guy and then tells him not to call her after kicking him out immediately in the morning, but even more notably when Rosen and Gio are trying to convince Kyle Vidal of her gift and he refuses to believe them – that would've been okay with Sarah, but Vidal belittles her, and she begins to snap at him about his wife.

“You don’t want to ask me about this job,” Sarah said to Kyle. “You want to ask me why your wife left you.”
“Excuse me?” he said. “How dare you—”
“She wants you to know that the drunk driving wasn’t your fault. That it was her fault, and she would have done it whether you two stayed together or not. She doesn’t want you to beat yourself up about it.” The pain made Sarah grimace, and she had to take a moment to attempt to push it back. Kyle was silent the entire time, his eyes wide and moist. “And,” she continued, “she wants you to marry Cynthia. She’s a good woman and will—”
Kyle jumped to his feet. “Get the hell outta my office!” Rosen said, “Kyle, calm down. This is what you wanted to see.” “Get out, now. All of you.”

Later, Kyle decides she has chutzpah, but the entire situation is both upsetting and rewarding to Sarah, who never really stood up for herself before that moment.

(2+) Negative Experiences:

- Sarah has a tendency to be harshly blunt with people, to the point where if she is pushed far enough (which is not very difficult) she doesn't care what of their mental reserve she might be ruining. The first time this is shown is in a meeting in a diner with the FBI team, where she attempts to convince them that her ability is not a 'gift,' and she calmly ruins Rosen's religion in one statement: “You see those shows on TV, and they show the dead as full of light and love. That they’re there to tell us things and let us know they love us.” She looked him in the eyes. “Do you know what the dead actually are? They’re angry. They’re angry, and they’re jealous that we’re still alive. And they take it out on anybody who can see them. Murder victims are terrified and lash out because they don’t know what else to do. This isn’t a gift. My life has been a nightmare since the day I was born. A walking nightmare, and I can't wake up."

Rosen forgave her but the others were unimpressed and her intensity set the group to arguing; Sarah stomped off, also proving her impetuousness at times when she feels she's being pushed. She'd forged connections to people and almost instantly ruined them because they got her back up.

- It is while being held captive and taunted by a murderer who has killed nearly everyone she has ever cared about that Sarah first shows her resiliency; she has spent an entire novel trying to get away from things, not fighting back unless she had to, showing weakness in the face of screaming ghosts and the anger of her father's voice on the phone. She only pushes forward because she's determined to avenge the death of Rosen, but her heart doesn't seem in it. But when Archer actually has her, she refuses to resign herself to the death she expects to have resigned herself to—she gains a second wind of utter tenacity and fights back despite having been knocked down over, and over, and over again. He stabs her, but she wins, lasting long enough to receive medical care.

Deer Country Attributes

• Canon Powers: Sarah has weird psychic and death-communication powers! Her powers beat the shit out of her physically most of the time: migraines, nosebleeds, simply being overwhelmed by feeling what people close to her are feeling. To those with the ability to see magic, she looks like a plasma ball in a human shape.

She is able to speak to ghosts of all sorts as well as every soul of the recently dead whether or not they become a ghost—and in fact attracts them; she's essentially a dead person magnet. They tend to come to her and complain about things (she is therefore also a dead person therapist, at this point). If someone alive she's interacting with thinks strongly enough about a dead person she tends to either see that person's death or hear from that person -- in Trench it will only be the first one, because those spirits aren't capable of getting here.
She can perform resurrections: Only young or small things now, though she may be capable of doing more with time. Human children (herself notably), small animals. (This is more a can than a will; I won't be trotting this one out unless it is immediately plot-relevant and requested by another player, especially since PCs can bounce back from death anyway!)

She has visions, which usually come from touching things. They are a train wreck in book one, but by the second book she has some control over them (though she can't force them to come, they simply don't knock her over as much).
Gut feelings sometimes just send her in the right direction of ... usually very bad things. Chaos magnet. The capacity to follow a hunch… into Danger.
Receptive empathy turns on and off. She may be feeling the emotions of anyone near her. If they're very strong (either the emotions or the empathic projection of the nearby person), she will always be affected and can be disabled by the volume.
In the second book Sarah learns how to project the pain that using her abilities causes her back outward, and then learns to do it with calm as well, so she can theoretically force emotions on others (this will not be used except with player permission, especially since she hates doing it).

• Blood Type: Paleblood
• Omen: A male fisher (Pekania pennanti); he either hasn't settled on a name or simply won't tell her what it is. They keep trying out new ones.
• Blessed Day: March 21
• Patron Pthumerian: Moss King
• Blood Power Manifestation: Complimenting canon—becoming Paleblood will give her better control over the visions, and she'll learn to turn her horrific prophetic nightmares into actual dreamwalking skills.

Writing Samples

these are old, but I totally had RL shit explode all over my entire attempt to TDM, so my apologies for the oldness!
One: a TFLN
Two: a PSL

The Player

• Player Name: Kit
• Player Age: 33
• Player Contact:

alexipharmaca
• Permissions: Here.

Other Characters

Link to Character 1 overall AC: Harrowhark Nonagesimus AC.

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