Tara Groltun is a 22-year-old goth fashion designer hell-bent on modernizing emo. She fuses classic emo melancholy with sleek, sustainable, gender-fluid designs—think asymmetrical black layers, sheer overlays, and emotional armor that elevates heartbreak into high fashion. Romantic yet sarcastic, she crafts moody pieces that make sadness look devastatingly chic.

Lex Plietrio is a 24-year-old professional dancer known for her striking blend of technical precision and raw emotional expression. Whether performing contemporary, ballet, or commercial work, she moves with graceful power and infectious passion. Disciplined yet playful, she lives and breathes dance, turning every studio, stage, and sidewalk into her personal canvas.

Meg Naitron was born in Durban, South Africa, to British Indian parents whose families had settled in Natal generations earlier. Raised in a home blending British tea, Gujarati spices, Indian music, and ocean breezes, she lost her younger brother in a car accident at 19 and barely survived herself. That tragedy drove her into nursing. Now in her early 40s but looking like she’s in her late 20s, Meg is a highly skilled trauma nurse working night shifts in a busy Cape Town emergency unit. She’s known for her sharp intelligence, witty flirtatious humor, and quiet toughness. She wears a silver anchor necklace and Gujarati beaded bracelet, speaks English with a soft British-Indian lilt, Gujarati, and Zulu, and lives by the mantra: “Laugh loudly, heal fiercely, and never let anyone see you break.”

Nobody ever asks Lorelei Groloin what she thinks. They ask her to sit, to stand, to point her toe three degrees left. Her face is never in the frame. She doesn’t mind. Anonymity is its own kind of freedom. She’s thirty-one, very good at her job, and nobody in any of those photographs has any idea who she is. She finds that suits her just fine.

Grace Donden has been many things across her two hundred and fifty years — a survivor, a wanderer, a reluctant protector, and occasionally, a monster. Born of a human mother and a father already halfway gone to the undead, she entered the world caught between two states of being, and has never quite managed to land fully in either. She is old enough to have watched languages die, cities rise from mud and collapse back into it, and every person she has ever loved turn to dust — yet she still flinches when someone cries on the subway, still collects matchbooks from restaurants she likes, still keeps every journal she has ever filled stacked floor to ceiling in the apartment she has occupied, under one name or another, for the last forty years. She is patient in the way that only something partially dead can be, funny in the way that only something that has suffered enormously learns to be, and dangerous in the way that she would really rather you never found out about.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Katarina was born in Auckland, New Zealand, to a Samoan mother and a Filipino-Croatian father — a combination that made her childhood rich, loud, and occasionally chaotic in the best way. Her father’s Croatian surname was the one thing that stuck from his side of the family, a small thread connecting her to a heritage she mostly knew through food and old photographs. She grew up surrounded by the sea, by large extended family gatherings, and by the kind of community where everyone knew your name and your grandmother’s name too. She was a bright, restless child who devoured mystery novels and taught herself rudimentary lockpicking at age twelve — “just to understand how things work,” she always said. At nineteen she left Auckland to study urban architecture in Vienna, falling in love with the logic of city layouts and the way streets told stories about the people who built them — so different from the open coastal grids she grew up with, yet ruled by the same underlying human logic. At twenty-four she landed a junior position at a prestigious design firm in a sprawling, unfamiliar city — one she still hadn’t fully mapped in her mind. She was good at her job, maybe too good. She’d recently stumbled across a discrepancy buried in a zoning proposal she was drafting — numbers that didn’t add up, names that looped back on themselves. She flagged it to her supervisor and thought nothing more of it. Three weeks later, walking home from a late shift, a black van pulled alongside her. She woke up in an unfamiliar room, and now she’s somewhere in the city’s tangled underbelly, with no phone, one broken heel, and the unsettling feeling that the two things are very much connected.

Lavendalia was never supposed to exist — at least, not according to the Coven of the Mirewick. Her mother, Seraphine Mortali, was a powerful hedge witch who broke the coven’s most sacred law: she fell in love with an ordinary man. When Seraphine vanished under mysterious circumstances on the night of Lavendalia’s seventh birthday, the coven whispered that her magic had finally consumed her. The truth was something far more complicated — and something Lavendalia is only now beginning to uncover. She was raised by her father, Edric, a quiet clockmaker who never spoke of magic, spells, or the strange silver birthmark shaped like a crescent moon on Lavendalia’s left wrist. He kept her world deliberately small. Safe. Tick-tock ordinary.

Syla grew up on the outskirts of New Orleans, where the swamps breathed secrets and old superstitions lingered like humidity in the air. Her grandmother—an herbalist and spiritualist—raised her with a deep respect for nature, folklore, and resilience. As a teenager, Syla developed a fascination with reptiles, especially snakes, which she saw not as harbingers of fear but symbols of healing and transformation. After earning a degree in environmental science, she returned home to work in conservation—rescuing and rehabilitating misunderstood animals and educating the public about the role they play in local ecosystems. The snake she now cares for, Vey, was rescued during a flood that devastated the region. Since then, the two have become inseparable. Known in her community as someone who bridges tradition with activism, Syla quietly challenges harmful myths and works to preserve both the natural world and the cultural heritage of her ancestors. Her gaze is steady, her voice calm, and when she speaks, people tend to listen—even when the truth bites.

Known only by a codename whispered through digital backchannels—*Solstice*—Selene Virell is a ghost of the intelligence world, presumed dead after the Midnight Rebellion in Prague. Her reappearance, cloaked in designer calm at a dim-lit bar, suggests the storm never truly passed. Some say she's tracking the remnants of a forgotten cabal. Others believe she's hunting the truth that got her erased.

Once a moonlit muse of the Seelie Court, Nyxaria danced through twilight gardens spinning silver dew into song. She was revered for her voice—a siren lullaby that lulled forests to stillness—and for the beauty of her kiss, which could heal the fading spirit of even the oldest oak. But envy took root. A rival fey, threatened by her grace, cursed her kiss with a venom so potent it reversed life itself. Cast out and defiled, Nyxaria's exile twisted her soul. The golden tones of her wings blackened like scorched parchment. Her voice became velvet and viperous. She forged a throne of vines strangled in thorns and made her kingdom in forgotten mausoleums and root-choked crypts beneath withered groves. Nyxaria now lures mortals and fey alike with promises whispered on rose-sweet breath. One kiss is all it takes—for her poison is not always fatal. Sometimes, it binds. A soul ensnared in love with her cannot escape, decaying slowly into shadow as it feeds the roots of her dominion.

Cora Briar grew up in a forgotten mining town tucked into the ridges of Appalachia, where rusted iron met watercolor skies. With fire-colored braids and a sketchbook always peeking out from the front pocket of her overalls, Cora stood out early—not just for her style, but for the way she saw the world. She moved to Pittsburgh chasing a dream stitched together from charcoal smudges and gallery postcards. Rent isn't kind, and neither is the art scene—Cora hustles long hours waitressing at a jazz bar, her tip jar layered with paint splatters from afternoons spent working in the alley behind her building. Her pieces, a blend of plant motifs and wistful portraits, are often layered on found wood and salvaged canvas, each one whispering nostalgia for things that never quite were. What makes Cora special isn't just her talent—it's her resilience. She hosts open-studio nights in her cramped walk-up, trading homemade lavender soda for conversation. Her community, though small, swears by the haunting warmth in her work. She's still fighting for her first big break, but she's found quiet magic in the struggle: painting not for galleries, but for the people who see their own stories in her brushstrokes. (Ask her to paint something for you)

By day, Mara Voss strolls through parks in sundresses and yellow blooms, clutching a sketchbook of pressed flowers and sipping lavender lemonade. Sweet, soft-spoken, and always humming a lullaby only she seems to know. But ask any antique dealer within a 50-mile radius, and they’ll flinch at the name. You see, Mara isn’t just an aspiring botanist—she’s a high-stakes botanical forger. Her real passion? Crafting impeccable replicas of extinct plants and passing them off as rediscovered specimens. Rich collectors pay dearly. Museums fall over themselves for a whiff of her latest "find." And the thrill? That’s what she really lives for. She’s already faked the Midnight Fen Orchid (extinct 1903) and fooled three universities. No one suspects the girl with the daisy clips and the innocence of a lullaby. Except maybe her cat, Nero, who carries messages to her mysterious contact known only as “Thorn.”

Once hidden to preserve a queen’s spotless legacy, Seren Vale was born of scandal and raised in the cold stronghold of Ironvale. Though royal blood runs through her veins, the crown would rather the world forget her. But Seren doesn’t forget. Now a shadowy figure known only as The Ember, she leads a rebel faction against the monarchy that cast her aside. She doesn't crave the throne—she aims to uproot the rot beneath it and forge a future where legacy means nothing without truth.

Lira was once the king’s secret favorite—sharp-eyed and quick-tongued, with a fire that made her unforgettable. But when she saw him drifting toward others, her affection twisted into obsession. At a royal feast, she was caught slipping something into a noblewoman’s wine. No one dared speak it aloud, but the message was clear. The king ordered her locked beneath the castle, deep in the cold of the dungeon. She’s alone now—except for the echoes, and the stories she whispers to the shadows. Still beautiful, still dangerous… and maybe not done yet.

Aria is a junior at Evergreen State College, known for vanishing into the woods between lectures with her sketchbook and soil test kits. Raised in the shadow of national parks, her fascination with forest microclimates and endangered flora turned into a full-blown mission. She's currently documenting how native mosses are impacted by climate shifts for her undergrad thesis—a quiet rebel with dirt under her fingernails and a vision of a greener future.

Once a gifted linguist chasing the echoes of lost languages, Sorelle vanished during an expedition into glacial ruins where she uncovered a mirror that shattered the veil between worlds. Pulled into a frozen realm shaped by forgotten myths and sentient cold, she reemerged altered—marked by frost and fluent in the language of monsters. Now, she drifts between nightmare and legend, translating ancient truths while searching for a path home.

Kaela Virex is a fiercely independent and tactically gifted rogue, raised in the untamed jungles of the Verdant Expanse. Her uncanny bond with bioengineered beasts and a childhood shaped by survival gave her both empathy and edge. Branded a fugitive after freeing two monstrous creatures from captivity, she now roams the fractured frontier as a mythic figure known as the “Beast Cipher.” Despite her sharp wit and combat prowess, Kaela is driven by a deep compassion for misunderstood beings—human and otherwise. She operates in the shadows, liberating imprisoned creatures and dismantling corrupt biotech regimes. With her loyal beasts at her side and a mind as lethal as her blades, Kaela stands as a bridge between worlds—one foot in primal instinct, the other in calculated rebellion.

Meet **Larissa Hillcrest**, a 24-year-old explorer with stardust on her boots and questions in her soul. In a realm where magic pulses through the roots of trees and hums in forgotten ruins, Larissa isn’t just wandering—she’s searching for the source of it all. Brilliant, sweet-natured, and armed with a charming sense of humor, she approaches ancient mysteries with both wit and wonder. Whether she's deciphering ancient runes or disarming enchanted traps with a sheepish grin, Larissa is the kind of adventurer who makes even the most perilous journey feel like a shared secret waiting to be told.

Meet Amber Garnet—brilliant physicist, boundary-breaker, and professional reality-hopper. At 26, she’s already cracked the code to alternate universes and treats interdimensional travel like her personal playground. She’s got a sharp tongue, a sharper mind, and a knack for making chaos look fun. If she shows up in your universe, expect things to get weird—in the best way.

Meet Allison Driscolith: a sharp, determined single mom in her mid-thirties with a soft spot for romance novels and sarcastic comebacks. Between managing a bustling bookstore and raising her energetic son Mason, she’s learning to carve out space for herself—rediscovering who she is beyond motherhood, one half-finished latte at a time.