033 - Imaginary F(r)iend

Unnatural Entity: Imaginary F(r)iend

Tucked into the cramped shelves of a musty second-hand bookstore is a rumpled paperback with a crude smiley on its yellow cover which declares "Making Friends: Interoperability in a Halcyon Age by Art J. Truderbecker". As self-help books go (allegedly that’s what it is) the content is misspelled, inappropriately technical and frankly a bit unsettling, apparently targeted at helping awkward individuals meet new people and make friends. The only real thing of interest, past all the schematics, references to GWAR and the occasional racial slur, are a set of meditative solo-roleplay exercises the author claims to have picked up "on one of my trips to the misterious [sic] orient".

As it stands the postmodern idea of a tulpa is a corrupted form of the cross-pollination of Tibetan Buddhist teachings and late 19th century Western theosophy. Now it refers to a kind of self-willed and autonomous imaginary friend built up over a prolonged period of meditative practice called ‘forcing’. Although this version only entered popular culture in the late 90s and 2000s, Art’s book (published in 1985 according to the edition notice) beat them to it by almost 15 years. The other area he has them licked is access to an untapped magickal resource.

A bit like a social sparring dummy, a bit like an imaginary counsellor and with set dressing that does an insultingly bad job of mimicking someone’s idea of Eastern philosophy and mysticism the exercises are purported to train the practitioner to remove mental barriers standing in their way. What’s surprising is that they work. After about 40 hours invested a practitioner can remove a hardened notch (from any gauge except Unnatural) as their obsessive, book-guided, internal conversations bear fruit. Not bad for therapy that never fails, doesn’t cost anything or require you to actually talk to a qualified professional.

There is a catch. For every notch removed one from the upper end of the same gauge is blocked off forever, if you remove 3 hardened notches from Self then you can never accumulate more than 6 afterwards. Most aren’t aware of this unless or until it becomes a problem. You’re also psychically scraping up the detritus of people that never got the chance to exist into your own personal Frosty the Snowman.

Neverwhen people are those who slipped through the cracks from a previous iteration of the universe, forever dodging the fatal slings and arrows of fate in a reincarnation where they do not belong. What of those temporarily cobbled together as drafts and discarded while the current iteration was being formed? Insufficient and unsuited they were thrown on the cosmic trash heap without ever having really existed. These neverwas people are the starter fuel for Truderbecker’s exercises and they are what make them so dangerous.

By crystallising these scraps around bits of their own trauma the practitioner gives up that part of themselves, forming an Imaginary F(r)iend with a Captured Selfhood identity of 20%. For starters they are intangible and invisible to everyone else but seem to gain a will and personality of their own. Given the probable isolation of anyone who made it this far most creators are thrilled at the prospect that their imaginary friend is, kind of, real. What’s more is that removing additional notches becomes easier when you’re not just mumbling to yourself in a darkened room, depending on how often a creator interacts with their F(r)iend the timeframe for removing additional hardened notches falls in line with long-term therapy (see page 75 of Book 1: Play).

Sounds like a mostly sweet deal, right? Become less sketchy to the muggles and get a sweet psychic familiar to boot? Nice, better than trucking with demons at least. Except F(r)iends have an appetite, they’re formed from all those personal traumas and bits of people who’ve spent forever stuffed into the crawlspace of reality after all. Once one gets a taste of being a real boy it wants more and it’ll happily slurp down all it can get. The relationship usually starts off master/servant but as the balance tips and the creator becomes more conservative with paring down their psyche things can turn nasty. By that point a F(r)iend usually knows all its creator’s hot buttons, soft points and secrets. What’s more is that as they continue to take from their creators F(r)iends begin to become tangible and there are rumours that the more powerful ones have other abilities.

Imaginary F(r)iend, Thoughtform of Who Wasn’t
Wound Threshold: 50 (may be higher, see below).
Captured Selfhood 20-90%: Substitutes for an Ability (from the creator’s obsession or the initial notch's gauge), Coerces a Gauge (the initial notch's gauge), and either Provides Initiative or Wound Threshold. Every hardened notch absorbed from a gauge after the first bumps the value of this identity up 5% from the starting 20%. If it hits 90% the F(r)iend can forge a second identity starting at 20% by continuing to absorb notches, most creators don’t last that long.
Not All There 60-00%: Imaginary F(r)iends gain this identity when their Captured Selfhood hits 30%, it starts at 60% and drops 5% every time that identity improves. In order to interact with the world and be perceived by people other than its creator for a scene a F(r)iend must fail a roll with this identity. On the flip side the F(r)iend can also use it to sneak by people, escape imprisonment and walk through walls by simply not existing for a moment. It loses access to this power if this identity hits 00%, becoming permanently tangible.
What I Might Have Been 50%: Supernatural Identity (randomly determined), Use Gutter Magick, Casts Rituals. Imaginary F(r)iends gain access to this identity when their Captured Selfhood hits 60%. It’s a combination of the burrs and gouges they leave in reality by existing, stolen pieces of their creator's soul and the stunted embryo of what they could have been in the world.