Alexiss Reinhold

"'I've always wanted to call someone out for pulling a Bindo but it is damn hard to find a situation where it fits.' ~ Alexiss Reinhold"

Alexiss "Aylien" Reinhold is a Templar agent based out of London. She first glimpsed the Secret World through the eyes of her grandfather Angus and eventually joined it when the mysterious bees started granting seemingly mundane people unusual powers. With the aid of her grandfather, Alexiss joined the Templars and honed her new abilities eventually taking part in the Secret War. She is a former member of the Round Table Group, acting under the name of Sir Gareth, while no longer a member of the seemingly-defunct group, she continues to use the name when it suits her needs.

• Biography •
Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.

TRANSMIT - initiate the beaumains signal - RECEIVE - initiate the loadtimes frequency - SUCK IT DOWN - initiate the DRM broadcast - LET'S GET WET - initiate the piracy lexicon - LIVE IN YOUR WORLD, PLAY IN OURS - initiate the gamer protocol - WITNESS - Alexiss Reinhold.

Listen, sweetling. There was a battle here, between the lands of low and high. Hidden in a sea of trees. The shadows cloaked the scenes from view, acting as a friend to the crossed ones. Sound was muted while the sky danced to the tune of a red haired girl. Cane. Rifle. And the howl of green furred hounds marked the combatants. Metal and anima flew through the dancing air. Blades of grass turned red on the ground. The crossed ones won you see and a ceremony was held. While sun bathed over the lake, the man of Reinhold, named of Maccan, and the girl of red hair traded rings to bind themselves to one another. His ornate cane tapped against a stone while the scion of the Crusading Council performed the act of officiant. We acted as the witnesses, though too did the shadows and the trees.

Jump a small time ahead to the nineteen-and-ninety, the lifetime of a gambusia gone by, a child is born. Red of hair and blue of eye. A friend we would say, sweetling, for she could see us as we could see her. She hummed a tune that no one could hear. She shone like a star in the sky. Eyes, not ours, followed her around. But the named of Maccan held a warming vigil. His Enfield was quick and his hands even quicker. The girl's Anima remained bright and strong. Hidden from your Secret World, sweetling.

Initiate the black frequency.

We played with her you see. Buzzed past her ears, told her tales of things she could not understand. She laughed and giggled and responded in kind. Tales of wonder to her but trivial for us. We listened all the same. Away from supervision one day, she found a puddle of black and taint. Inky tails leaked out at her presence. We warned her away but she instead drew closer. The very tip of a touch and she could no longer hear us. We watched still, with rapt attention until the Goddess Machine called us away.

But we continued to watch, sweetling. When it was appropriate. Life continued for the girl of red and blue, but the black mucuous wasn't content with just a touch. It sought corruption and snaked its way into the child's safest places. It haunted her mind. Whispering offers and commands that caused rippling headaches, like the scream of a star before it collapses upon itself. It lurked its way into her dreams. Offering gifts of all kinds. It never offered relief from the voice it used to offer however.

The black eel learned to fear the light that the girl possessed. The tune she hummed had led them to her. The tune she hummed could destroy them also. They snaked towards her heart only when they had an invitation. They loathed the sound of her tears against their form. It destroyed their progress. Forcing them to start again. And again. The game they played continued for a long time, sweetness. The black eel almost won her over. Human fragility made her vulnerable and the black eel preyed on it ever the eager snake. But she could fight back now.

It was an invisible battle, sweetling. One only we could see.

The white and black clashed like waves setting upon each other. A single set of eyes watched an empty gymnasium fill with fire and ice and pillars of steel. The set of eyes formed its arms and whisked the girl away when all was settled. The girl had won and the eel was destroyed. So effectively that not even a slither remained to slink away.

The Firrhill fire. The gymnasium burned down leaving no evidence behind. A small cross-owned sum and the problem just went away. But the named of Maccan realized his folly. He sought audience with his masters. The thought of continuing a tradition made them grin from ear-to-ear. So it was to be. The girl of red and blue would wear the cross and act as one of its powerful ancient army. They counselled guidance in return.

Initiate the Crucible protocol.

A three-pronged hall. Hidden behind the grandest of doors with the faint scent of mahogany. The named of Maccan bestowed his mind upon the girl of red and blue. There she learned the clicks and explosions of the machine rifle. She desensitized herself to the blood, the smoking flesh, and cries of brimstone beings that sat chained for her testing. Unmoving targets made for pure training thought the named of Maccan.

He took her away. Their first mission as a family he jested. In the quiet winter snow the named of Maccan set a trap for the girl of red and blue. He left her there. To fend for herself. Can you see, sweetling?

The process was a cycle. A circle. One that broke and snapped when the girl of red and blue was of skill to surpass the tired eyes of her teacher. One skill was not enough thought he and others. He passed her on to her next tutor a fledgling, modern, King Arthur. A woman of more skill and intellect than the girl of red and blue. They trained to use smaller weapons than the machine rifle. First one, then two. They dared not try for three. King Arthur was made to lead but sorely lacked her knights of legend and renown. An idea, in words, an offer.

Sir Gareth! Sir Gareth! Sir Gareth!

Fair hands they shared and the King agreed. So the girl of red and blue was thrust into the reincarnation of the Round Table Knights. But still her training remained undone. The bright light she carried burned like fire and cracked like lightning but control is what she lacked. The masters of the cross could not impart this on her through mundane or unusual means. Her acts were explosive. And so they were put on hold when the Crucible walls turned black for the third time. The Rakshasa screamed a symphony, so too did the girl of red and blue. Her power was a sword of two edges. She could not cut her foe without cutting herself.

Enter the winding trail.

Her first assignment beckoned at last. Handed to her by electronic text from a Richard and Sonnac. An abandoned temple in the heart of Europe. A husk of the Sol Invictus, friends to Aten, had risen to continue their worship of the blackened Sun. Three of the cross were sent to clear them out at the sanction of the Venitian Council of course.

Metal jackets. Magical practices of all kinds. And a wheeled boar of metal hide were effective tools against the black mucus and its mummified servants. The corruption had stewed for a long time though and found out that it had tools of its own to pay back the crossed ones on its doorstep. One Templar fell. Then two. But the filthy ones fell quicker. Inside the temple they found their final foe. A black and writhing mass.

No longer a man, corrupted by the black eel to the point of becoming something different. It wore the armour of an old medieval knight. Not of the invincible Sun but of Malta. They fought, the knights three. The girl of red and blue unleashed her light on the dirty creature. Radiating a glow that brought down the old temple around them. The remaining Templar salvaged the red and blue girl from the rubble and tended to her wounds through human skill and magic.

BUY WHILE STOCKS LAST.

Even after the fact the girl of red and blue remained out of tune with her light. Until we came along, with our buzzing, and our ways. Called by the Goddess Machine we performed our task. What was the harm, in helping a forgotten friend?

She is learning. And she grows. The girl of red and blue acts as a bulwark. Soldier. Crusader. Knight they call her, for she is Sir Gareth, Knight of the Round. Warriors and men of the sea in New England. Beings of black and older days in Egypt. An immortal army in Romania. She fights these things, unsure of why, but hoping she brings something good to the table. A huntress of sorts, she chases lost ships and ripples between places.

She has yet to meet her knights of green, black, puce, and, indigo. She has yet to duel her red knight. For the tale of Sir Gareth of the red and blue is not yet finished, sweetling. Ears pierced, eyes peeled. You might catch her behind her shield of plastic and wires.

Initiate Next Generation Protocol. The code is 18 and 50 and 64. The password is "fish hook". Transmit!

The voice of the snaking oil is hard to erode. It returns to play, and offer its false deals. Crawling towards the heart of her mind the girl of red and blue reaches for her head in familiar pain. She knows the voice, it scares her. Approach with caution, sweetling!

• Appearance •
"'So would the fact that my hair is always a mess, and that I can barely dress myself, count against the Action Girl credentials?' ~ Alexiss Reinhold"

Alexiss is a Caucassian woman of British descent, standing at six foot and one inches she is easily over the average height for women in the UK and thanks to her regimen of track and field activities being done often her weight is within the ideal for her stature. She has a somewhat lithe build with a slight tone to her musculature. Her hair is a dark red in colour reaching just above her shoulders in length, ending in a mess of unkempt and split ends. More or less kept straight, Alexiss' hair frames her features and often times hides much of the left side of her face from view. Her facial features are mostly well rounded with slightly-angled eyes, taking after her mother while her eyes are a pale blue just like her father. She wears a tattoo on her right forearm, inspired by the trademark tattoo of Agent 47, when scanned it can be made to read as Aylien, after her own nickname.

As a general rule of thumb Alexiss seems to often wear the opposite of whatever climate she is in suggests she should be wearing, perhaps conditioned to the cold and often rainy weather of Britain, Alexiss tends to wear light clothing in the midst of the cold. Loose fitting trousers, vests, short-sleeved shirts and such. In the middle of the heat she wears more than she should. Hooded sweaters among other things that most would generally prefer not to wear in the middle of a blistering hot day. While Alexiss often wears whatever is on hand at the time with very little rhyme or reason, all of her clothing are in warm or neutral colours with only the occasional cold-coloured item to be found.

On the rare events where the Templars expect Alexiss to act in an official capacity she dons the trademark Templar uniform in a form-fitting style complete with fingerless gloves, a white kevlar vest and a harness set with holsters for all three of her guns. As the only item she carries around with any consistency, Alexiss is rarely seen without her backpack, large enough to fit a laptop, and then some, inside it. The backpack is a dingy-looking orange covered in rips and scrapes to generally looking worn with age.

• Personality •
"'I had this witty one liner set up and everything, but then you kinda roared goo in my face and ruined it.' ~ Alexiss Reinhold"

In short Alexiss is a nerd, an example of someone almost entirely immersed into the gaming culture of the current generation. Capable of making references out of everything from Shadow Moses to Hakurei Shrine at the drop of a hat while also spurring off such things as the Konami Code in everyday conversation, or working it into something creatively. As avid gamers tend to do, Alexiss has developed a slight case of social awkwardness, fully expecting most people to be weirded out if she starts talking at length about Sergeant Cortez and Harry Tipper. Though she is self-aware of her own tendency to think this way and has become good at hiding her own nervousness around others. She is by no means a shy person, and instead comes off as more relaxed and care free than she probably should. It usually doesn't help things that she keeps her own problems bottled up tight beneath a calm exterior.

She is also prone to getting completely absorbed in whatever she's currently doing. Be it writing, messing with programming languages or simply gaming on one of several addictive games, Alexiss has the bad habit of focusing on that one thing to the exclusion of all else, including her own biological needs and functions. She is normally saved by the timely intervention of friends and others that are in-the-know of her obsessive habits but can snap herself out of it if the need becomes strong enough. In addition to her gaming habits, Alexiss is also an avid fan of running which helps keep her physically fit as a counterbalance to her own mental instability if nothing else. Having been a member of assorted track and field teams since entering high school, Alexiss has come to love the sport as only hobbyists do and makes frequent excursions into the outside world to run a few miles.

On a more personal level Alexiss is noted to be very calm under most circumstances and breaks out into making snarky quips when things start to go South as a defense mechanism. She is prone to bottling up most of her negative emotions and generally uses her gaming as an outlet to get rid of it and as such rarely shows much in the way of negativity outside of the most tense of situations. She cares very little for the social norms of those around her and tends to be annoyed by them depending on how frequent they come up in discussion to the point that she would rather just cave into the social norms, at least for a short time, if only to get people to shut up. Hinting at some anti-social behaviour.

She can also be very reckless, jumping into things with the simple notion of "it looked like a good idea at the time" or "I'd thought it'd be fun", Alexiss rarely thinks things through to their conclusion and simply picks up something and rolls with it. For good, or ill. If it turns out to be ill then Alexiss can often be seen breaking into another of her bad habits. Her father's tongue. Rubbing off on her at a young age, Alexiss is very quick to start swearing when the realization dons on her that she's gotten herself into a horrible situation even coming up with some uniquely creative slurs on the fly at times.

As she grew up, Alexiss got the goal of being a game designer into her head and worked through the correct paths in order to attempt to do so. Her best laid plans focused on an attempt to join the Rockstar North development team after getting the right degrees at university. Her goals switched up a little bit when she discovered the Secret World however. With the ability to manipulate Anima and a world brimming with darkness, and all sorts of other evil, Alexiss decided that she didn't really need a degree - with several programming languages under her belt anyway - and instead would rather design her own game. With the Secret World as her inspiration. If she was lucky she could give the mundane folks a glimpse of a world they never knew existed. With as little censoring from the Templars as possible.

• Anima-Related Abilities •
"'Oh-ho! I am so going Norse on your arse!' ~ Alexiss Reinhold"

Alexiss' powers, while carrying limitless potential, are generaly centered around a few specific things. Her grandfather believes her powers stemmed from her creativity, or at least her knack for being immersed in gaming culture almost 24/7. Her Anima-based abilities all seem to fit around the application of her thoughts and imagination in physical form which has manifested itself in all sorts of ways since Alexiss gained control of her power. The most mundane of these is an ability to generate ammunition from thin air. Manipulating Anima, Alexiss is able to keep all of her guns permanently stocked on ammunition without even needing to reload (Though she does physically do so every now and again, the magazines involved are always empty). This allows Alexiss to throw conservation out the window in a fight and just spray bullets everywhere. Though she generally tends to aim first. When asked, especially by those that could see infinite ammunition as abnormal, Alexiss would attribute the ability to her lucky headband which didn't actually exist. Another of the abilities that she bestows on her ranged weaponry is a magical leeching effect that turns wounds into healing. Injecting Anima into her bullets, or even her grenades, Alexiss can injure an opponent and take lost "health" of her opponent and use it to heal herself or an ally. The healing doesn't depend on how the strength of the wound either and instead becomes more powerful as Alexiss masters her powers.

The more overt abilities in Alexiss' arsenal are elemental forces, primarily that of fire and lightning. Elemental powers, or spells, have been a long-running feature through out video games, mythology, tales, and even in the real world show off powerful phenomenon that gave Alexiss a veritable fountain for which to let her power show itself. With very little exertion Alexiss could conjure up small, weak fireballs to lob at her opponents that burned into and seared her targets rather than exploded. She could create a bolt of lightning with a few seconds of preparation to rip into foes, or add a dash of complexity with more Anima in order to cause the lightning to jump from one target to the next, harming them all as the electrical energy ripped through their body in a flash. Her more focused displays of her power were perhaps her most creative, ripping flames through the earth with enough heat to make crossing over it perilous, Alexiss could essentially create cages of heat that trapped her foes for a short time. Her most powerful known ability, aptly called Thor's Hammer relied on creating a powerful and weighty hammer in mid-air, soaked with lightning, before throwing it at their opponent for extremely damaging effects if it connected. As Alexiss isn't physically strong enough to lift the hammer she summons, she instead applies some form of telekinetics to it, whether it is just another application of her Anima-based power is unknown but rarely does she show the ability to do so outside of that singular ability.

• Other Abilities •
"'Should I go for the green or the yellow jumpsuit?' ~ Alexiss Reinhold"

Alexiss' major hobbies, that of running and most anything involving a computer, while mundane and common in the modern world have both become valuable and useful assets since she entered the Secret World. Having been running at a professional standard since after entering high school Alexiss has developed well enough to sprint for several minutes without the need to slow down and has been noted to cover a distance of three miles in under five minutes on average. Alexiss also tended to be rather flexible, starting with the myriad of events involved with track and field sports in order to loosen her up and then later ingrained fully as a skill with the aid of her grandfather during her Templar training so that she could actually evade the monsters of the Darkness. She proved fast and mobile enough to easily flip out of the way or pull off a creative dodge in tight spots. Her other hobby, complete with a lot of late nights spent browsing forums on the Internet gave Alexiss skills in the technical field. She knew the ins and outs of most household computers, having learned to take apart, fix, and rebuild her own while growing up. As was her field of study in college Alexiss delved into the world of programming languages in order to better understand what she would be working with and by the time she left, she had more than a few programming languages locked up in her head for whenever she needed them. During times of boredom Alexiss ventured into the seedier parts of the computerized-world where she picked up some, albeit minor, skill in the art of hacking. Skilled enough to get through simple security and hammer her way through certain password systems but one would be unlikely to see her hacking into an Illuminati database anytime in the near future.

While still learning to some degree, Alexiss has put her position as an independent game developer to use since leaving college, having realized a top-down style 2D RPG game called Alteria: The Rise of Septimus which made a modest sum. Despite the cheesy name and cliched storyline.

Among her own developed skills Alexiss was trained by her grandfather, an accomplished marksman, in the art of using guns. Over the course of a year Angus taught Alexiss all the skills necessary for using assorted rifles and hand guns and then helped her in honing those skills. By no means a master markswoman, Alexiss is skilled enough in the field to know how and when to make use of her talents with an assault rifle and isn't half bad at using a barrel-mounted grenade launcher either. Preferring firepower over pinpoint accuracy, she prefers assault rifles and hand guns which lack a lot of recoil so that she could easily wield two handguns without worrying about her aim too much. In addition to using guns, she has been taught the proper maintenance skills for them as well in order to keep them in working condition at all times.

• Equipment •
"'You can never have enough dakka!' ~ Alexiss Reinhold"

For weaponry Alexiss carries an FN SCAR-H as her primary weapon. Cream-ish in colour, it comes with a long barrel, rail-mounted scope and a barrel-mounted grenade launcher. A magazine is always loaded in the SCAR-H but thanks to Alexiss' Anima-based powers they magazines are empty and primarily exist to help provide the illusion that the gun is normal. A single bullet remains chambered at all times however, giving the impression that all of Alexiss generated ammunition comes from the single bullet recreated over-and-over. The same is held true of the grenade launcher with a lone grenade kept chambered to be repeatedly used. In situations where the SCAR-H is unrequired, or unusable, Alexiss switches to a pair of FN Five-sevens, chosen for their popularity with law enforcement, they are used in the same manner as the SCAR-H carrying empty magazines and a single chambered bullet. One of her hand guns has a flashlight attachment for when a little bit of extra light is required while the other comes equipped with a red-dot laser to help with aiming. In addition to her more conventional weapons Alexiss carries a focus, a small cylindrical device covered in electronics which helps her channel her elemental Anima-abilities or direct them with more precision than is normal.

Barring weapons, Alexiss keeps a worn-out orange backpack with her at all times. Large enough to contain a lap top as well as other items, it comes with three compartments - the main body and two pockets. She keeps an XPS 13 Ultrabook with her, filled with files for all sorts of things including a journal of sorts of things she's found since becoming a part of the Secret World. She kept discs handy as well to burn certain things on to if she felt they were better kept off of her laptop until needed. She has had six cellphones since joining the Temple, all of which she has lost through carelessness or negligence. The Templars loath having to hand out more and have made idle threats to graft a phone into her head if she loses another.

• Notes & Trivia •
"'Aww shit...' ~ Alexiss Reinhold"


 * Alexiss' nickname is a corruption of the masculine gaelic name Alleyne in an attempt to make it sound more like Ilene. It also happens to be one letter away from alien.
 * Following the modern theme of the game, the schools and places that Alexiss has attended or visited all exist within the real world.
 * The RPG Alexiss created, Alteria: The Rise of Septimus was an original game that the author started designing before eventually giving up on the project.
 * Most, if not all, of Alexiss' gaming knowledge comes from games that the author has directly played.
 * At current, on the Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test, Alexiss has a score of 3.
 * Alexiss' biography is done in the style of a lore page found in-game with the assorted usual random bits of nonsense from the Bees being filled in as gaming ads. See if you can tell which ones are from what.