
Tessa Metz - our hero
    Starts: 5'4", blond, 32B-28-34

Gareth Harding - Dominator from the unorthodox clan.
    5'9", brown hair, weak, grey eyes which he
    uses as a focus. First person narrator.
Kaz Harding - Gareth's uncle
Fiona Harding - Gareth's mom


Premise: psychics have been vulnerable ever since the
breaking. The mantel of madness hangs over the world
and drives them insane if they are not strong enough.
No psychic is yet strong enough when they awaken around
18 to resist the mantel, so their elders group them up
in pods and launch Sojourns, folding up a pocket of space
and pushing them directly into the mantel itself. The pockets take three
years to return, their walls weakening at a rate determined by
the strength of the passengers to temper the children as quickly as
possible. 20% of Sojourns don't get strong enough
fast enough and all the children die.

Tessa is a Healer, a rare type of psychic combining the
abilities of a Fleshdancer and a Dominator with much
less strength, but much more control. Few Healers make
it due to their lack of strength, but Tessa has an
unusually strong will. As her Sojourn enters more intense
layers of madness, some people's souls in her pod begin
to get corrupted, and she is able to purge the madness
from them in addition to herself. She can only do this
when touching them, and only while she is awake. She
decides to see if blood healing will work. Blood healing
allows her to maintain weaker contact with people who
drink her blood even without directly touching them.
This works, but she soon becomes anemic even with her
faster healing speed. She doesn't want to lose anyone,
so she decides to try milk healing. The connection is
even weaker, but it works. Tessa is running herself ragged
keeping everyone alive, and one of the people who can't
keep up on their own tells her to let him die. She refuses,
so he says she should used a forbidden soul stealing technique
to take his power. He comes from a Dominator clan with a dark reputation
and his parents taught him the technique for stealing another's
powers before sending him off, but he couldn't bring himself to use
it. Tessa also doesn't want to use it, and doesn't have the strength
required anyway, but he says he wants to try to help the technique
along from his end. She relents and it works.

More and more of her fellow sojourners willing give her their power.
There is a loss, but much less than expected since she had better
control than a Dominator. She grows herself physically to be able to
keep up with the demand for her milk.

The madness is increasing faster than expected, and they realize that
the rate increases every time Tessa completely drains someone of their
powers. They figure it is because the sojourn no longer counts them
as a psycic. At the same time, Tessa is continually getting stronger,
so the average level of the bubble gets increased.

The last one of her podmates gives in to the madness and has to start
getting purified by Tessa. By this point she has completely drained
75% of the pod.

The pod emerges, it's walls barely there at all. Tessa has been keeping
herself and all the others safe the whole time, but they all emerge
powerless.
