Download

Download is a Mastigos mage (or, according to some rumours, archmage) of the Free Council. She is the unofficial but accepted head of her Cabal, the Alexandrians, was the unofficial but accepted head of the Free Council in the Consilium by the Bay, and is one of two candidates to occupy that position in the expanded Consilium. She is a member of the Imagineers Legacy.

History
In her late thirties now, Download was part of the quiet computer revolution among UK children in the 70s and 80s, pioneered by magazines supplying games you had to enter the source code for yourself. She spent much of her childhood and adolescence pushing the limits of what could be done with her technology, and actually reached the point where her devotion and affection kindled the spirit of her computer before she Awakened herself.

Her Awakening came in her first year at Cambridge, where she pushed herself on one project sufficiently hard to enter Pandemonium. Download is not her first Shadow Name, nor does she expect it to be her last; she abandoned Motherboard and expects to continue to evolve her Shadow Name as her greatest love continues to evolve.

Download's understanding of computers is rivalled only by other Magi with a technological bent; she's used her Mind magic extensively to reframe and visualise information as if a computer in order to better comprehend what program code will do, but her real advantage is the way she works with the spirits of her machines, in a symbiotic relationship which augments one another greatly.

She came to the Consilium by the Bay in 2000, and immediately made an impact; she'd done her homework in advance and knew startling amounts about where the bodies were buried and who knew who. Demdike immediately hired her for a crash course in information security, but Download and Hagstone sized each other up earliest.

She was initially courted to join the Gregson Five, but refused, leading to a short-lived reputation as a woman who 'didn't understand politics'. However, the reverse proved to be true - Download was already an ardent Freak and revitalised the flagging Alexandrians. She claims that politics is just like computing, and smiles as people misunderstand - when you deal with your computing partly through the spirits of the machines, your understanding is not the same as that of a simple coder.

She has left the Consilium on short trips frequently; she spent 2002 in Silicon Glen, during which time she became an Imagineer, and has taken up to six-week sabbaticals at least twice a year since, travelling all over the world and networking.

She runs her own business, acting as a remote consultant to companies and private individuals with networking problems to solve, operating out of an office rented from the university. She is known to be terrible at making relationships last, and greatly enjoys Tex-Mex food "except it doesn't taste right if you go to Texas. Better, but not right."

Download was appointed as the first Castellan of The Consilium Of The Stone Circle. She was re-elected to the position six months later.