The mage calling herself Avis spent her formative years in an asylum, plagued by flocks of nightmares. Once she had known a wonderful life; a quiet house to sleep in, a majestic garden to frolic in, and two loving parents eager to nurture and comfort for her. She knew the taste of joy and slept wrapped in a blanket of peace of love. Yet Destiny did not grant Avis such a blissful future. Shortly before her 11th birthday, under the glare of the full moon, men and women with murder in their hearts crept into Avis' childhood home. When the police finally arrived, after the mailman had seen something disturbing through the living room window, they discovered the remains of a brutal ritual killing. Even years later, the patrol officers who had first walked into the home would refuse to speak of it, the scene painfully fresh from their dreams. Needless to say, for Avis it was worse. Not only did she witness the aftermath, she saw every moment of how it happened and she herself didn't escape from physical harm though the cultists did leave her alive and with all of her appendages.
She was found almost a month later, wandering the streets of Baton-Rouge. She didn't talk and the distance from her hometown delayed her identification. For another month she lived as a Jane Doe in a foster home, but after several violent instances she was taken to the state mental hospital and the authorities finally managed to identify Avis, though they knew her by her birth name, Daisy Ashworth. Shortly thereafter Daisy was brought to the Bishopsgate Mental Hospital outisde of New Orleans. Eventually, after a year of treatment she was talking again and after another year, when her violent outbursts hadn't stopped, she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and several other disorders. Another year passed and she turned Fourteen. Her treatments were helping, and she grew less violent but as soon as she was transferred to a less secure wing, however, she escaped using the very few tricks her locksmith father had taught her. For months she survived on the streets, stealing food or depending on the kindness of her fellow homeless. Sometimes they weren't so kind, nor were drunken tourists or gang members. Her survival depended on how well she could defend herself just as much as it did on her ability to escape notice or secure food. Eventually she was caught and brought back to the asylum but two years later, under a full moon, she escaped again. For almost a year she lived on her own, avoiding shelters as they were the reason she had eventually been caught before. For part of that time Daisy actually fell in with a street gang where her ability to break into buildings made up for her alternating sanity. A violent quarrel with the gang brought her before the police and then back to Bishopsgate.
This time she was placed in a secure wing and as her violent tendancies surfaced she was placed under the care of psychiatrist with a penchant for unorthodox treatments. Later the psychiatrist was stripped of his license and jailed but for two years Daisy endured the doctor's orders. She tried to escape many times and through a drugged haze Daisy tried to observe and learn about the security of the wing and then would try to foil it however she could. For a time her existence became a constant struggle to escape broken up by sensory deprivation, water treatments, trans-cranial magnetic simulation, and a myriad of other 'experimental treatments'. When the doctor was finally removed Daisy was transfered to another wing and her dosage and treatments were changed as though to acknowledge her prognosis was possible, something which proved far more effective. Daisy's will had been broken during her time of mistreatment but under a nurturing program she began to improve. Her treatments began to include schooling and after two more years, at age 21 she was living in minum security. She had art therapy and did yoga in the asylum's gardens. At nights she would occasionally sneak out where she wasn't supposed to be but no longer did she try to escape. She was finally in a place where her psychoses were being managed and her psychiatrists were looking at the possibility of releasing her in a year.
Fate did not smile upon this plan, however, for Daisy began to hallucinate no matter what drugs she was put on. Fearing a relapse the staff moved her to a more secure wing, something that terrified Daisy. At the behest of an imp like creature, the young woman escaped for the last time, disappearing into New Orleans. The streets seemed to welcome her and for a time she existed well, though medication withdrawal made her less cautious than she should have been. She accepted food and a ride from a man with a paneled van and was abducted and brought out of the city to a house in the bayou. She was bound and kept in a barren room and on the second she realized she was sitting in the shadow of Hell. Visions of that fateful night beneath the full moon mixed with hallucinations of a labyrinthine estate populated with beautiful and terrible beings. Fulfilling a compulsion deep within her she scratched at the wall of her prison until her blood painted her name and then, when next she awoke, her mind felt clear. More than clear, for she could suddenly sense things she couldn't possibly know. The dimensions of the house she was in, the presence or absence of her captor no matter what room her was in, his mood when he stood before her. With these tools she managed to free herself from her bonds and flee, stealing the man's van. With her new clarity of thought she dumped the van after a fourteen hour drive up to Chicago and went to the streets once again.
While rambling around the city, trying to get by, she was assaulted by a voice in her head, one warning her to stay out of Jack Moon's turf, and after a moment of intense fright and a quick conversation, Jack Moon himself appeared. Declaring he didn't want to deal with a newly awakened idiot, he directed her to a bar in Greek Town and a name to ask after. Then, a feeling of fright blossomed within her and she ran until her lungs and legs made her stop. Later that evening, she found the far and asked after the name and was soon brought to a room where member of the Silver Ladder introduced her to her new life as a willworker. A cabal was chosen by the Consilium to foster her and an Acanthus within the Cabal revealed that Destiny was at work in her life. She had been born under a full moon and plagued by madness and she would one day oppose someone who would bring madness down upon a consilium and *insert bane here *. A month later she was introduced to the Orders and, with Destiny weighing on her mind she chose the Arrow. All her life she'd been trying to struggle and oppose that which held her back. True, her perception of her life had long been skewed but she felt resonance with the philosophy of the Order. She told a member of the Chicago Arrow about the demise of her parents and after some pulling of strings the Arrow told her that the New Orleans Consilium had looked into their deaths for Supernal runes had been found at the scene. With this in mind, Daisy pledged herself to the Arrow, determined to join their rank no matter what. She would gladly fight to protect her new world and society from the wolves at the door. She would exterminate the parasites that ate away at the Awakened world and she would defend those who needed it.
The Test the Arrow placed before Daisy, who'd recently chosen to be called Avis, was to guard an artifact. However, another Mastigos used hallucinations to prey upon her sense of sanity and then a thief tried to steal the artifact. However, when Avis tried to fight off the thief they proved her superior in combat and only after she proved that she was willing to kill the thief did he retreat. Not long after, other masked men and women broke in and, in a fight of desperation, Avis decided that the only way to keep the artifact out of the enemies hands was to destroy and she smashed the object. The masked figures soon took off their head coverings and revealed that they were members of the Arrow. They didn't tell her how she did, they just told her to wait for further instructions. Next they told her to train under an Arrow who mocked her cobbled together defensive abilities and who seemed contemptuous of her being a woman and with knowing a bit of yoga. He brought her to the woods and for two weeks she had to chop wood, carry water, train, and do whatever else he asked, and he proved to be a little cruel, brutal, and always contemptuous. Avis persevered, however, and refused to give into her anger or to quit. Lastly, they made Avis go back to her old home, which had never been bought, and bring back a memento. Reluctantly, she did this, and on her return she was given the gift of solace. The New Orleans Consilium had caught the perpetrator of the cult and brought the cult down, giving any sleeping pawns to the mortal authorities. Then, she was deemed worthy to join the order officially.
For the rest of that year she trained with the Arrow and worked to obtain a new identity. She spent used her new freedom to learn more about locks and security systems and spent a massive amount of time learning how to exist as an ordinary member of society. Finally, she heard about murders in Sacramento and of a decimated Arrow Caucus and decided that she was needed there...