Ever since he saw Coldplay in concert when he was 12, Lance knew exactly what he was going to be when he grew up. He begged his parents for a guitar and lessons, he practised day after day, he bugged his friends until they made a band in his garage. None of the others stuck it out, but he did. He went to college and did his BA in Contemporary Music and tried to become a tutor, he hit up every open mic night in the city, he spent money and took time off from his bicycle courier job so that bars would let him play - he poured his heart and soul into it.
Lance is a terrible musician.
It’s not any one thing, it’s a lot of little things that are never consistent and all add up to him sucking. It’s not his fault he’s talentless, if he worked half as hard at something he had any ability for he’d be doing fine. Lance isn’t interested in doing fine.
So he kept at it, staring down 30 and working at the same bicycle courier job he’d had since he couldn’t find work with his degree after college. His friends had moved on: made careers, travelled, gotten married, settled down and built families (okay it isn’t all roses, two of them are in prison for a drug thing). Lance still kept struggling, kept working to keep his dream alive. Then he got hit by lightning.
That's what it felt like anyway. He was working at the time, his bike got totalled and he narrowly avoided serious injury when he slammed into a mailbox. He didn't think he was dying and really didn’t want to deal with what an uninsured hospital visit would cost so he limped home, put his feet up with some icepacks and tried not to think about how much everything sucked.
Lance didn’t get much rest, instead his life got real weird real fast. Over the course of three days: all his hair fell out, two of them disappeared in a three-way demonic possession pile up and a heap of dead cockroaches spelling out Arabic profanities appeared on his kitchen counter. Then it settled down just as quickly while he was having a nervous breakdown in the ER. Kelly Ogorman, a cloud-diviner and busybody, had worked out why everyone in the area’s magick had suddenly gone haywire and spread the news around. Lance was acting like a lodestone for all the mischief they were trying to sling at each other.
Lance has become something of an unwitting mascot and cause for peace in the local occult underground. Everyone likes having him around to catch whatever nasty business comes their way but no one wants to be the one who hurts him and robs everyone of their protection. He gets treated real friendly by some awfully strange strangers and he’s been receiving some very odd anonymous gifts. Someone carved a protective seal into the front door of his apartment.
Some of them feel sorry for him and a lot of them treat looking out for him like an inside joke but most of them genuinely like him. He’s a nice guy, a real underdog. The uptick in followers on his Soundcloud account has certainly buoyed his spirits.
STATS
Personality: Friendly and decent but not very self-assured, Lance is feeling a bit lost at this stage in his life.
Rage: Shitty drivers. Lance has to deal with them all day, every day.
Noble: Helping the homeless. Their problems are often a lot more complicated and less deserved than people make out, even if they weren’t is that any reason to leave them behind?
Fear: “I’ll never make it big” (Self).
Obsession: Music stardom.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Bicycle Courier 55% (Substitutes for Fitness, Substitutes for Pursuit, Provides Initiative)
Awful Musician 15%* (Substitutes for Status, Protects Helplessness, Protects Self)
Magickal Lightning Rod 50% (Specific Protection - kind of, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick. See below for more details)
Shock Gauges
Notches
|
Violence
|
Unnatural
|
Helplessness
|
Isolation
|
Self
|
Hardened
|
1
|
2
|
4
|
3
|
3
|
Failed
|
0
|
2
|
1
|
0
|
1
|
Supernatural Identity: Magickal Lightning Rod
Magickal Lightning Rod functions as Specific Protection against malignant magick (as described on pg.46 of Book 1: Play) except it protects everyone else and if it works you catch the hurt instead. It works automatically (whether you like it or not) and takes no action. Only effects that could reasonably target you can be diverted: if two adepts are throwing visual-range blasts at each other across an overturned poker table and you’re not there you don’t get your face melted. On the other hand, if someone casts a ritual to send a demon to their ex-boyfriend’s apartment to possess him and you live next door there’s a chance it gets lost along the way and you wind up doing something embarrassing instead.
The range isn’t infinite, unless the effect happens within the sum of a successful roll in miles you’ve got nothing to worry about.
Magickal Lightning Rod functions as Specific Protection against malignant magick (as described on pg.46 of Book 1: Play) except it protects everyone else and if it works you catch the hurt instead. It works automatically (whether you like it or not) and takes no action. Only effects that could reasonably target you can be diverted: if two adepts are throwing visual-range blasts at each other across an overturned poker table and you’re not there you don’t get your face melted. On the other hand, if someone casts a ritual to send a demon to their ex-boyfriend’s apartment to possess him and you live next door there’s a chance it gets lost along the way and you wind up doing something embarrassing instead.
The range isn’t infinite, unless the effect happens within the sum of a successful roll in miles you’ve got nothing to worry about.
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