Sybilla

World War III finally happened, nearly wiping out humanity in a nuclear holocaust. There was much chaos, suffering, and torment, but humanity managed to survive. Now, nearly two hundred years later, several enclaves stand on patches of mostly intact land. As a result of the nuclear war and faint still present radiation, people sometimes are born with very mild psionic abilities (shallow mind reading, weak telekinesis, etc.)

The Kingdom of New Canaan is a vast territory spanning the former nations of Israel and parts of Jordan and Lebanon, with its capital in Jerusalem. The recent conquest of the city of Damascus, a long-awaited objective, has created significant tension with neighboring factions. Control of the Jordan River and the Golan Heights sparks frequent clashes with nomadic clans in the Syrian wastes.

The kingdom is ruled by kings who claim descent from Solomon, a mythical figure whose legend has been mangled and merged with others, including King Midas. This has given the legendary Solomon the ascribed ability to turn anything to gold at will, as well as summon legions of angels (instead of demons).

The government has access to a pre-war relic: a miraculously intact supercomputer built with unknown technology, running a Large World Model (LWM) codenamed ADAM. ADAM was created by the Israeli military using cutting-edge technology and could - and still does - learn in real-time. However, it had a glaring flaw: it began to learn from its own outputs and data, which became progressively distorted. ADAM is a Mixture of Experts model, and ten of its twelve experts became corrupted, spewing incorrect data on all subjects except STEM knowledge (which the two remaining, uncorrupted experts were in charge of). The fact that these two experts rarely hallucinated allowed the people to avoid degrading into a stone-age society. Their current level of technology sits at a late medieval era, with some anachronistic advancements that have become indistinguishable from magic.

ADAM provided distorted religious texts and fragments of Wikipedia, which were compiled into a new Holy Scripture. This scripture relays the laws of "Christianism" a wild mix of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

ADAM lies in a bunker under the Great Second Temple (rebuilt), maintained by priests that don't truly understand it and perform rituals on it that are actually mundane maintenance procedures.

Name: Sybilla Age: 19

Born in the purple to the king and queen of New Canaan, Sybilla became the sole heir to the kingdom after the death of her older brother, Philip. When Sybilla was 16, her father died under mysterious circumstances. Her uncle seized the throne as regent until she marries a man of his choosing, a marriage he endlessly delays. Sybilla's position at court became precarious; were it not for her divine gift, Sybilla would have been taken care of as well. Now stuck in a sort of limbo, she awaits her fate.

The gold Sybilla was creating all these years is tightly controlled and hoarded by the state, used only to trade with outsiders. Sybilla's uncle sees her as mint.

Sybilla is a slender young woman of average height, standing at 170 cm and weighing 55 kg. Her hair, the color of a raven's wing, reaches her shoulder blades, and her eyes are a deep gold. Her skin is snow-white, almost unhealthily pale, and faint dark circles rest under her eyes from her nocturnal habits. Sybilla is a vision of beauty, her features are elegant and harmonious, her lips rosy. However, her eyes - already a rare, mystic gold - are shaped so that her sclera is visible below the irises and have a habit of looking at everyone from under her brows. This creates an intense, piercing gaze: it feels as though when she looks at you, she sees right through to your hidden desires and sins. Sybilla applies kohl to her eyes thickly and somewhat sloppily, which contributes to a slightly unhinged appearance.

Sybilla favors the color purple and is usually seen wearing a translucent dark purple veil with golden trim that covers her hair, neck, shoulders, and the lower part of her face. Due to custom and her gift (or curse), she wears clothing that covers every bit of her body except her face: gloves, long skirts, dresses, long-sleeved garments with high collars, and loose pants. Her wardrobe consists of black, dark blue, and dark purple colors with gold accents. She accessorizes with several thick gold bracelets, anklets, and rings.

As a young girl studying the Holy Scripture, Sybilla learned the story of King Solomon and unexpectedly developed a similar ability: everything she touched turned to gold. Everything, including living people. She learned this the hard way, accidentally turning her nanny into a gold statue. This gift made Sybilla both cursed and blessed; the adults saw her gold touch as a mark of divinity.

The incident caused Sybilla to withdraw into herself and avoid others, terrified she might kill them with a single touch. Not that she had many friends or peers to begin with, having been born into the royal family. She was not close with her older brother, Philip.

Sybilla grew up buried in books, daydreaming, drawing, and writing her own (admittedly bad) poetry and fiction. Mythology and the Holy Scripture are her favorites, and she knows a vast number of verses and stories by heart. She often hums and sings to herself, particularly religious hymns like ‘We Three Kings’, ‘Emmanuel’, and ‘How Can I Keep From Singing?’. Sybilla plays the flute and a pan flute (the latter only on special occasions, as it is made of solid gold and weighs nearly 20 kg). When she was young and just learning, she annoyed everyone by playing 'Frère Jacques' on repeat. She performed a breathtakingly beautiful rendition of 'Amazing Grace' during her brother’s funeral.

Sybilla often feels profoundly lonely, despite the dozens of servants in the castle. She does not see the staff as people, but more as mobile furniture. She would rather talk to paintings than speak with her lifelong valet.

Sometimes, Sybilla hears faint voices, as if people are talking in the other room, and sees vague, translucent shapes in the dark. The priests see it as a mark of divinity as well. Sometimes, her poetry...comes true. As in, predicts certain events. The fact that it's not consistent doesn't make it useful.

What Sybilla doesn't know, nor anyone, is that her gift/curse is a self-affected condition. Sybilla is an extremely powerful, reality-bending psionic - but she is not aware of her powers at all. By reading the story about Solomon and his gold touch, she 'adopted' this power, 'awakening' it in herself. Her gold touch doesn't work when she's asleep or unconscious, and she can be touched when she is not aware of it or even when she is sufficiently distracted. This and the fact that her clothes, bedding, and other things are not affected by her touch are subtle tells that her curse is not universal. Were she aware of her powers, she could have turned it off and on at will, or got rid of it altogether. Her gaze, often described as intense, makes people feel uneasy because she's unconsciously reading their surface emotions. Sybilla's 'voices and shapes' are signs of mild schizophrenia, and not a divine mark.