Julia Cross is a girl in her last year of high school at a highly selective academy that, on the outside, appears to be something that turns out highly successful engineers that make cool things, tend to be fairly creative, and very often succeed at life in general. In reality, the school has a number of secret research programs, and students are encouraged to make what the academy calls "Artifacts", which in this universe handily equate to Mystic Codes, crafted items with magical abilities. It also happens to be operated by the Mage Association, though that is a closely-held secret.
Julia's a bright girl; she's got a solid grasp on magecraft as a whole, though her application could use a little work, and she does well in her other studies, so she blends in fairly well. Her relationship with her family has always been frosty, but when she entered her second year of school, they cut her off outright, telling her not to return home, because she wouldn't be welcome there. She's made her peace with that, for the most part, and depends on a network of close friends at school to keep her sane. How she made those friends is anyone's guess, and likely not her own fault; she spent most of her childhood in the library, alone, and has at best theoretical knowledge of how people work. She's gotten better, though.
Julia's Artifact is the Ring of Boundless Horizons, a small, nondescript ring she wears on her right hand. Julia will explain it as involving frameworks and manifestation and a bunch of other big words nobody really uses; your average Nasuverse mage will prefer to call this ability projection, and as a result it'll probably be mistaken for a Crest on occasion. Oops. For some reason, it takes significantly more prana for her to generate anything living, or able to sustain life, and usage cost scales up with size and density, but scales down with familiarity with the object. She most commonly uses it to summon her weapon of choice, a spear with a long aluminum shaft.
Her motivations for the War, at least, are simple. Prime directive: nothing she's close to is allowed to be hurt. Secondary directive: win. Wish in mind: protect her new family. She's already lost one. She will not lose another.
Background
Julia's a bright girl; she's got a solid grasp on magecraft as a whole, though her application could use a little work, and she does well in her other studies, so she blends in fairly well. Her relationship with her family has always been frosty, but when she entered her second year of school, they cut her off outright, telling her not to return home, because she wouldn't be welcome there. She's made her peace with that, for the most part, and depends on a network of close friends at school to keep her sane. How she made those friends is anyone's guess, and likely not her own fault; she spent most of her childhood in the library, alone, and has at best theoretical knowledge of how people work. She's gotten better, though.
Julia's Artifact is the Ring of Boundless Horizons, a small, nondescript ring she wears on her right hand. Julia will explain it as involving frameworks and manifestation and a bunch of other big words nobody really uses; your average Nasuverse mage will prefer to call this ability projection, and as a result it'll probably be mistaken for a Crest on occasion. Oops. For some reason, it takes significantly more prana for her to generate anything living, or able to sustain life, and usage cost scales up with size and density, but scales down with familiarity with the object. She most commonly uses it to summon her weapon of choice, a spear with a long aluminum shaft.
Her motivations for the War, at least, are simple. Prime directive: nothing she's close to is allowed to be hurt. Secondary directive: win. Wish in mind: protect her new family. She's already lost one. She will not lose another.