Summary

Content warnings for this page include: cults and cult tactics, drug addiction, self-harm, attempted suicide, poisoning

Astral leads the Connection toward their bright future. He's a narcissist in his late 30s and possesses the soul of an alien. He started out as a philosophy doctoral candidate but was expelled for his innovative research techniques (plagiarism). Now, he has a commune in the woods of Pasadena filled with a polycule of magicians who he's hypnotized into forming a cult. He has a gap between his front teeth, and one of his favorite hobbies is doing heroin.

Astral and his wife, Teresa, will combine their alien souls and human bodies to usher forth the new fate of his alien species. Unfortunately, he has fertility issues, and his first chance at a baby with Teresa is stolen by his acolyte Georgie. Luckily he still maintains the loyalty of his flock, including his most recent adoption, Mac.

Personality

He projects a laid-back hedonistic hippie persona, fully accepting of all the delicious consequences of New Age spirituality—free love and sex magic—but he's also a mega control freak, emotionally volatile, and vain.

Likes

• Sex
• Heroin
• LSD
• Adoration
• Writing memoir

Dislikes

• Labor
• Embarrassment
• Falling in love

Savvies

• Sex
• Showing off
• Lying
• Lovebombing
• In the 90s, webmastering and blogging

Ineptitudes

• Emotional intelligence
• Interacting with animals

Magic Powers

Astral's alien soul bestowed the ability to use alien magic, which is especially good at pyrokinesis and self-healing. He's been doing that stuff since he was a baby. It took years of study for him to master terran magic to do more general wizard-like things, like telekinesis, but he's since become an expert. He spends a lot of time with other Connection members to learn the secrets of their own powers to make them his own.

Appearance

Body Features

He is broad and tall with tan skin. He wears his receding gray hair shoulder length with a middle part unless it's tied back into a ponytail. Gray eyes match his hair. He also has light facial freckling and a gap between his two upper front teeth.

Over the years, Astral has accumulated ritual scars slashed across his wrists, thighs, arms, and chest. He could have healed them all the way, but he likes the aesthetic.

Clothing and Dress

He prefers loose clothing, including robes and kimonos. Georgie showers him with affection in the form of hand-sewn sweaters and other items, which he wears until they've gone to pieces.

History

The current year is 1969.

On January 18th, 1931, Theodore Parsons was born to Mr. and Mrs. Parsons, joining three sisters Tracey, Tammy, and Tess in a beautiful house in Los Angeles.

Astral was a prodigy in most things he tried. He started reading when he was two, but his family was more preoccupied by his propensity for spontaneously bursting into flame. It was horrible to hear him cry from the pain, but when the flames died it'd only be a few moments before he was completely healed. His sisters were afraid of him, and Tracey and Tammy never really liked him. Tess had some fondness for him, but even she was scared of the unpredictability of his tantrums.

As he grew up, he gained better control over his magic and found himself capable of generic wizard spells, like pulling something from across the room or making colored sparks fly. He discovered that the fundamental building block of terran magic spells was sound. He sought out learning how to make as many different kinds of sounds as possible, from whistling, snapping, and drumming on himself, to musical instruments, to foreign languages. He picked up the most common languages used for philosophy, his pet subject: German, Latin, and German. His Greek was okay.

Graduating high school early, Astral let Tess, an army colonel, pay for him to get a Master's in Philosophy. For his thesis, he employed the very bold strategy of plagiarizing and trying to hide it forever. A few weeks into his first semester as a doctoral candidate, Astral was expelled.

Annoyed by the expulsion, he tried to kill himself by driving his truck into a river. Instead, he hit a lamp post, which almost killed him. While he was knocked out, he had a vision of himself for the first time as the alien he is: weird, mantid-like, with large curved horns that erupted out of the sides of his head. Finally, the answer now to why he has always been so gifted: he isn't human.

Astral scoured newspapers for a local story about a woman who'd been abducted by aliens, Nancy Miller. He tracked her down and together they started the Connection. Now, they are preparing. Astral is a busy man with a lot of responsibility, but he often shrugs it off in favor of interacting with his polycule (cult members). Between adopting new members and dealing with rival magicians, he's constantly adding to his body count.

Relationships

Teresa: wife

Teresa and Astral are the ultimate alien power couple. He even lets her dominate him sometimes. She poisons him when he's bad, and he can accept it because if she's that upset with him, then he might actually need course correction. A day of lying around in bed is usually enough to cool her temper and re-stabilize their cult.

Georgie: supplicant

Astral is intensely protective and possessive of Georgie. He freaks out if he senses anything than her undying loyalty and devotion. He knows that she doesn't like him the same way he likes her, and he hates it. As punishment, he routinely forces her to undergo tests of magical skill and endurance, which has the side benefit of helping to trick her into thinking she's incapable of anything without his guidance. Because she is a human, he only ever imagined her capable of "terran" magic, but when they discover her necromancy... things change.

Mac: supplicant

In the original story, Mac is recruited to the Connection by Georgie. Immediately, Astral identifies Mac as a loyal dog who can be trained as Georgie was trained. He's fascinated by his loyalty to Georgie and, when her preference for Mac over Astral becomes more obvious, he is increasingly jealous. Regardless, Mac is a loyal supplicant and follower now that he has no way to escape.

Meta

Character Inspiration

• Aleister Crowley and Thelema
• Jack Whiteside Parsons
• Starseeds and Otherkin (Silver Elves)

Origin of Name

He's named after Jack Whiteside Parsons, but we named him Theodore because it means "gift of God." He sure does think he is. Then, because his family must have regretted giving him such a name, they started calling him Teddy, like the bear, to try and soften his persona.

For the name "Astral," we thought of the most hippie name we could think of for a cult leader character.