[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

There will be some people at school that she knows and are concerned with her: Her advisor, certainly, especially if she's a graduate student.

Alice is a graduate student of anthropology, with a Bachelor's degree from Berkeley. She's in a PhD program at Rice, doing fieldwork among Jamaican immigrants, researching the influences on folklore in an immigrant society.

Ms. Talbot was already in a graduate program at Berkeley when she transferred and a year ago she finished an MA at Rice in what she had been studying there, which was 'The Concept of Evil in European Folklore'. And given that Alice has always been bookish and academically over-achieving to the point of ridiculousness, she's working on a degree in Library Science along with her PhD in Anthropology, just to keep from being bored.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

One or two librarians relevant to her research, and possibly the librarian/library tech who handles interlibrary loan.

That's a very good point. Alice does work as an assistant librarian and research assistant in a rather esoteric private library in her off time. She has Research -21 and Professional Skill (Librarian) -15, not to mention Connoisseur (Books)* -16 and Professional Skill (Bookbinder) -14. With IQ 15 and Eidetic Memory, she's very likely to be the smartest twenty-four-year-old that anyone at Rice has ever met.

And, well, in as much as any modern library has a section on forbidden manuscripts and occult lore, Alice would have been a frequent visitor and she'd have checked out enough esoteric tomes on inter-library loans to get her on every supernatural watchlist.

Alice reads medieval French and German, as well as Vulgate Latin and Koine Greek, a bit of Ancient Egyptian and a smattering of Aramaic and Hebrew. If there is any place within driving or sailing distance from Houston where she could read original manuscripts about occult matters, she has likely spent some time there if there was any way to justify it.

The librarians at Rice University are probably either extremely worried about her or they take a proprietorial interest. Possibly both.

*That is, she's a connoisseur of the physical media and can recognize rare books, first editions, etc. She also has Connoisseur (Literature), but that's an entirely separate skill.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Her roommate, if she has one; it's unusual not to have one as a college or grad student, but not too unusual.

Alice lives in a one bedroom graduate student housing apartment.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Classmates with whom she has taken multiple classes; study partners and group work partners.

Yes, likely there are some of those, but how much interaction she has with them sort of depends on how likely fellow graduate students are to pursue acquaintanceship when Alice is too shy to do so.

Alice is Attractive and Pitiable, but she doesn't have Charisma or any other trait which makes her popular or sought-after. Her most important Reaction modifier is probably the +4 that her Occultist 4 Talent gives her from students of the arcane, gullible college students and monster-hunters.

Which, now that I consider it, should probably lead to not only some librarians with occult leanings taking a proprietary interest in young Alice, but also some fellow students who've witnessed her encyclopedic knowledge about various beliefs related to magic and the supernatural and want her to teach them magic. Which, considering Alice's background in Berkeley, would probably terrify her.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

She might also hang out with other Californians or west coast (best coast!) people if she or they have a strong regional identity.

I suspect that Alice believes she has no accent or regional quirks, which, in turn, probably instantly identifies her as Californian to most people. As her life has mostly been lived inside books, Alice probably lacks a strong shared identity based on geography or any of the other usual regional markers, such as sport team allegiance.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Outside of college, if she's a regular at certain establishments - always picks up a bagel at the same coffee shop on the way to work, always has lunch at the same diner, etc. - then the staff there will know her name and regular orders, even if she's not entirely sure on their names... This is much more likely to occur at small local places instead of chain outlets.

Well, Alice is prone to keeping irregular hours and acting on sudden whims*, but I suspect her Shyness makes her prefer to visit the same establishments for food and coffee, to keep to a minimum the strangers she has to interact with. It's been established in play that she has been unofficially adopted by the Vietnamese family that runs her gym/dojo, regardless of her resistance, as the Dao family has a long-standing friendship with her Patron, J.R. Kessler, and apparently, he asked them to look after her.

*Granted, mostly whims related to staying up all night studying something recondite and esoteric or reading a manuscript that she knows well enough that she really, really shouldn't read.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Then there's the category of familiar strangers - the people she sees every day in passing, who ride the same bus or stop at the same coffee shop at the same time, etc. Odd behavior in those people is a good place to drop clues about supernatural weirdness or whatnot in her daily life, btw. ("Huh. That old guy who gets on at 50th and Stark every morning stopped reading the spy thrillers he always carries, and now he's reading a paperback Necronomicon...")

Alice Talbot will probably be looking very closely for any such signs, as two different cults have tried to sacrifice her over the past two years.