“Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.”
- Charles Bukowski
“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”
“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”
- Stephen King, The Gunslinger
At 119 years old Leland figures he’s earned his peace. A liver riddled with cirrhosis, an addled brain full of memories that don’t match the real world and a lifetime of aches and pains aren’t much to stick around for even with his surprising spryness and strength. Except Leland can’t seem to die.
He remembers dying well enough, fighting with the 369th Infantry in the French summer of 1918 brought the worst of it. A dozen instances where he should have fallen to rifle fire or shrapnel are embedded in Leland's memory, instead each time he would open his eyes and it would be as though it never happened. Sometimes he’d taken a lesser injury. Sometimes others had taken the fall. It seemed like he was invincible until a leg full of artillery shrapnel sent him home, he’d just turned 19.
Home wasn’t there when Leland got back. The streets of St. Louis looked and felt alien in a way that didn’t truly dawn on Leland until he came to the house he’d grown up in: now a weather-beaten and peeling green instead of white and full of strangers who insisted they’d lived there for decades instead of family. As an injured soldier returning home for relief from an environment of harrowing violence and uncertainty he took this badly. Leland spent some time in prison afterwards, wondering if he was crazy.
There he met Daryl Somers. Short, stocky, bald and covered in poorly-inked sailor’s tattoos the oddball glued himself to Leland. He claimed to be a magician who could see the eddies and flows of fate and that through this power he could see Leland was special. Leland demurred from the lunatic’s attention so Daryl stuck a shiv through his heart to prove it.
Waking uninjured in his cell Leland beat the crap out of a gleeful Daryl, which earned him some time in solitary, and then he listened. For a guy with an 8th grade education Daryl did an impressive job of describing the concept of quantum immortality 70 years ahead of its time.
For most people they go through life and eventually something kills them and that’s it, they go to heaven, return to the karmic wheel, dissolve into a chemical soup after their brain shuts off or whatever. Leland, Daryl explained, ‘took up more room’. He had multiple futures and pasts budding off an ever shifting present and when something happened that would shut him down in one instead of passing on his soul shuffled sideways into the next nearest alternative.
When it came to why Leland’s family had disappeared Daryl had to mull it over for a while: eventually he suggested that the changes had been retroactively necessary at some point to ensure Leland’s survival. A cosmic path of least resistance where the details aren’t completely hashed out until Leland hops across at which point history does it’s best to oblige a man who should be dead several times over. Daryl couldn’t explain why Leland has this condition but he was excited by the possibilities.
Whatever Daryl’s plans were they didn’t come to fruition, the obnoxious magus got himself strangled by another convict while expecting Leland to protect him.
Eventually Leland got out. It seemed like the world had changed while he was away but he’d already gotten used to that. He built himself a new life and was happy for a while but it fell apart for reasons he pretends he can’t remember. There’s an inkling of having had a wife and children buried deep inside of him that he hates to think about. Aimless and standing on the threshold of the Great Depression, he drifted and drank. Moving from place to place and working where he could before blowing out with the wind. He froze and starved more times than he has fingers but none of it slowed him down.
While working as a line cook in Arkansas Leland brushed up against magick again, making friends with a woman who turned out to be two people who could exchange bodies. Through her he met others and Leland ended up latching on to the discovery of the occult underground for the possible promise of an escape from his condition. The escape never came though many were eager to ply him for the secret to an immortality he didn’t want or understand. He's spent the rest of his life chasing this goal, Leland has lost more over the years but the idea that among the strange things lurking out there is a cure has rekindled a sense of purpose that reawakened the man he had once been.
At 119 years old Leland figures he’s earned his peace. A liver riddled with cirrhosis, an addled brain full of memories that don’t match the real world and a lifetime of aches and pains aren’t much to stick around for even with his surprising spryness and strength. Except Leland can’t seem to die.
He remembers dying well enough, fighting with the 369th Infantry in the French summer of 1918 brought the worst of it. A dozen instances where he should have fallen to rifle fire or shrapnel are embedded in Leland's memory, instead each time he would open his eyes and it would be as though it never happened. Sometimes he’d taken a lesser injury. Sometimes others had taken the fall. It seemed like he was invincible until a leg full of artillery shrapnel sent him home, he’d just turned 19.
Home wasn’t there when Leland got back. The streets of St. Louis looked and felt alien in a way that didn’t truly dawn on Leland until he came to the house he’d grown up in: now a weather-beaten and peeling green instead of white and full of strangers who insisted they’d lived there for decades instead of family. As an injured soldier returning home for relief from an environment of harrowing violence and uncertainty he took this badly. Leland spent some time in prison afterwards, wondering if he was crazy.
There he met Daryl Somers. Short, stocky, bald and covered in poorly-inked sailor’s tattoos the oddball glued himself to Leland. He claimed to be a magician who could see the eddies and flows of fate and that through this power he could see Leland was special. Leland demurred from the lunatic’s attention so Daryl stuck a shiv through his heart to prove it.
Waking uninjured in his cell Leland beat the crap out of a gleeful Daryl, which earned him some time in solitary, and then he listened. For a guy with an 8th grade education Daryl did an impressive job of describing the concept of quantum immortality 70 years ahead of its time.
For most people they go through life and eventually something kills them and that’s it, they go to heaven, return to the karmic wheel, dissolve into a chemical soup after their brain shuts off or whatever. Leland, Daryl explained, ‘took up more room’. He had multiple futures and pasts budding off an ever shifting present and when something happened that would shut him down in one instead of passing on his soul shuffled sideways into the next nearest alternative.
When it came to why Leland’s family had disappeared Daryl had to mull it over for a while: eventually he suggested that the changes had been retroactively necessary at some point to ensure Leland’s survival. A cosmic path of least resistance where the details aren’t completely hashed out until Leland hops across at which point history does it’s best to oblige a man who should be dead several times over. Daryl couldn’t explain why Leland has this condition but he was excited by the possibilities.
Whatever Daryl’s plans were they didn’t come to fruition, the obnoxious magus got himself strangled by another convict while expecting Leland to protect him.
Eventually Leland got out. It seemed like the world had changed while he was away but he’d already gotten used to that. He built himself a new life and was happy for a while but it fell apart for reasons he pretends he can’t remember. There’s an inkling of having had a wife and children buried deep inside of him that he hates to think about. Aimless and standing on the threshold of the Great Depression, he drifted and drank. Moving from place to place and working where he could before blowing out with the wind. He froze and starved more times than he has fingers but none of it slowed him down.
While working as a line cook in Arkansas Leland brushed up against magick again, making friends with a woman who turned out to be two people who could exchange bodies. Through her he met others and Leland ended up latching on to the discovery of the occult underground for the possible promise of an escape from his condition. The escape never came though many were eager to ply him for the secret to an immortality he didn’t want or understand. He's spent the rest of his life chasing this goal, Leland has lost more over the years but the idea that among the strange things lurking out there is a cure has rekindled a sense of purpose that reawakened the man he had once been.
Currently Leland owns a second-hand bookstore, ran day-to-day by a couple of college kids, which he uses as a front for keeping his finger on the pulse of the occult underground. He's built a considerable cache of arcane knowledge, gewgaws and owed favours over his lifetime and leverages these things to get people to search on his behalf. If you need something and he doesn't have it he can probably get it, just don't make the mistake of trying to rip off a man who can't be killed.
STATS
Personality: Leland’s personality is like his face, hard and wooden. He’s endured several lifetimes of loss and for him there seems to be no end in sight. Behind this smoulders a ferocious resolve to live and die on his own terms tempered by over a century of experience.
Rage: Folks who don’t realise how good they have it. Leland has repeatedly had his whole world stripped away, people who can’t find gratitude in having stability make him irate.
Noble: Recovering alcoholics. Leland has been in and out of the bottle his whole life and sees a dedication to change as life affirming.
Fear: Being trapped inside his deteriorating body forever (Unnatural).
Obsession: Find a way to shed his immortality.
Wound Threshold: 50.
The Last of the Harlem Hellfighters 35% (Substitutes for Dodge, Provides Firearm Attacks, Protects Violence)
Self-Taught Occultist 65%* (Substitutes for Secrecy, Evaluates Unnatural, Coerces Unnatural)
Centenarian 70% (Substitutes for Knowledge, Protects Self, Protects Unnatural)
Quantum Immortality 99% (Unique: Quantum Immortality, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick. See below for more details)
Shock Gauges
Disorder: Addictive behaviour - Alcoholism.
Supernatural Identity: Quantum Immortality
Self-Taught Occultist 65%* (Substitutes for Secrecy, Evaluates Unnatural, Coerces Unnatural)
Centenarian 70% (Substitutes for Knowledge, Protects Self, Protects Unnatural)
Quantum Immortality 99% (Unique: Quantum Immortality, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick. See below for more details)
Shock Gauges
Notches
|
Violence
|
Unnatural
|
Helplessness
|
Isolation
|
Self
|
Hardened
|
6
|
4
|
6
|
6
|
2
|
Failed
|
1
|
2
|
5
|
3
|
0
|
Supernatural Identity: Quantum Immortality
Suppose there’s a room with a person sitting in front of a button, if they press this button they die. By some interpretations of the way the universe works every action constantly creates a web of offshoots to account for quantum uncertainty. In some versions the button goes unpressed, in others it is pressed. The idea behind quantum immortality is that because you can only experience realities in which you are alive from your perspective you will only ever experience those in which the button goes unpressed (or is pressed but malfunctions, or you survive it trying to kill you, etc.). From your point of view you are effectively immortal.
Criticisms against the viability of quantum immortality usually involve quibbling over particulars of quantum mechanics and the fact that what we call ‘dying’ is not a discrete event. Magick tells those arguments to take a hike.
In practice quantum immortality is a tricky thing, magick is an imperfect tool for reshaping the universe and there is always a cost. Roughshod reality editing leaves scraps and burrs on the shop floor, especially when hyper-focused on something as fundamental as life and death. The cost of changing the world to ensure your own survival is that you might not recognise it when it’s done.
In a similar fashion to the capstone channel of the Survivor archetype, when something would increase your wounds to over your wound threshold roll Quantum Immortality and consult the following:
Fumble, Matched Failure & Failure: Ack! What?! This can’t happen! You’re dead. At least as far as everyone around you is concerned. There might be some para-reality in which you still live but the people here can’t tell the difference.
Success: Take half the wounds you otherwise would, stopping 1 point short of your wound threshold. You still remember dying so take a Violence or Helplessness check appropriate to the circumstances. The GM can retroactively change one major aspect of your character’s history (removing or adding a relationship, changing a feature or shuffling 20% around on your identities, or modifying, expunging or manufacturing an important event) without their knowledge. No one other than your character recognises these changes, nothing changes for others since it was always like this for them. Make stress checks as appropriate when realisation dawns.
Matched Success: As Success except take no wounds.
Crit: As Success except take no wounds and the GM does not change a major aspect of your character’s history. The alternative history is so close to the one you remember it’s incredibly unlikely you’ll ever notice.
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