The story so far:
Wanda Magnatova arrived at Exhampton Academy and discovered that it wasn't
like other prestigious boarding schools: several of her classmates were in
the exclusive "Magnat Program," working on beam weaponry, dimensional warps
and sentient robots. One such robot, possessed by a 1500-year-old barbarian
(long story), severely injured her roommate Josie, who left school. Wanda
was then assigned a new roommate, Robin.
Later that day, Robin was possessed by a demon. This demon menaced several
people, then ran off to pay homage to a robot possessed by the 1500-year-old
warlock Loki (longer story). But immediately upon finding him, the demon was
fried by a bolt from above, the work of a self-proclaimed angel named Alibeca
Juarez. Alibeca tried to convince those who had fought the demon to help her
in her struggle against Pandemonio, master of these dark creatures. Some said
no, but a few said yes, and accompanied her on her next battle. Now Pandemonio
has had enough. "You will find Loki," he has commanded the demons, "and you
will bring him to me..."
The cast:
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Pandemonio possesses an amulet that allows him to summon demons
and to teleport. Centuries old, by his own account, he has recently
been testily fending off attacks by...
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...Alibeca Juarez, who claims to have been transformed into an angel
after touching a Zia sun symbol she found in the sacristry of the church in
New Mexico where she worked. This symbol, now imprinted upon her right palm,
has given her the ability to fly, to produce bursts of light, and to turn
demons to ash. She appears to find the use of these powers quite pleasurable,
but also hard to remember.
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Dave is a robot currently possessed by the warlock Loki. Having
conquered a big chunk of Europe back in the Dark Ages before being sent
to a hell dimension for 1500 years, he aims to repeat his success in the
present. And getting his hands on the Zia weapon Alibeca wears, known
to Dave as the Sun Talisman, seems like the most promising path to world
domination.
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Wanda Magnatova was born in the Balkans but was very early on
placed in the care of a strict governess in the Czech Republic. As a
foreign student with a cloistered upbringing, Wanda is a bit of an outsider
but has still made a number of friends at Exhampton. She was raised to be
a telekinetic, but it didn't quite take: instead, she has the power to
destroy small objects with a thought.
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Cynthia Maxon is Wanda's new roommate and another member of the
Magnat Program, specializing in psychology. Like Wanda, she's a bit of
a world traveler, though her command of central European languages is
less impressive.
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Simon Fisher was Cynthia's tour guide her first day at the Academy,
just as he was Wanda's a semester earlier. He loves to go on about the
Magnat Program and the prodigies who populate it, though he himself is
only a middling student and is not involved with the program at all.
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Tony Fujikawa is a genius inventor who hails from Seattle and
works on advanced weaponry. He has a number of projects going, the most
successful of which so far is an arm-mounted "concussive cannon" that can
forcefully repel objects without destroying them. He has agreed to lend
his engineering prowess to the fight against the demons.
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Natalie Rome became interested in Tony after he saved her from a
Viking rampage. They are now quite the item, much to the bemusement of
the Exhampton student body.
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Jim Rose is Tony's roommate. A running back from South Carolina
who is at Exhampton on an athletic scholarship, he and Tony would seem
to have little in common but are actually pretty good friends.
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Pieter Pimm is an Exhampton student who spent over a year working
on a robot he called Ultramax. Ultramax served as a host body for Loki
before the warlock moved on to the body of a more advanced robot created
by Pieter's faculty advisor; consequently, Pieter and Loki (now Dave the
Robot) have developed something of a partnership.
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Claire Vanderline is the only child of billionaire Ted Vanderline,
owner of the Vanderline chain of luxury hotels. Her friends agree that she
acts much less spoiled nowadays than she did when she first arrived at
Exhampton, though that may not be saying much.
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John Cater is an irascible chemist doing postdoctoral work at
Exhampton.
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Daniel Saint appeared in Vietnam in 2003, claiming he had arrived
to stop the Vietnam War. His announcement at the American consulate in Ho
Chi Minh City that he was "the lost member of the Stevens II project"
caught the attention of...
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...Office 98, a mysterious government agency headquartered in Salt
Lake City, Utah, who apparently sent...
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...Nicki Remorse, cat-suited assassin, to knock him off. Her attempt
failed as the bullet bounced right off her quarry.
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Mr. Awky is Dave's parrot, recently acquired from an Exhampton
pet shop and undoubtedly severely traumatized by subsequent events.
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