Erica lost her job in 2009 and like many others who did at that time struggled to ever recover from the career setback. Looking for work became a monotonous, never rewarded chore - instead she could only find piecemeal work in what would eventually become known as the “gig economy”. Flexible but limited pay, no security and next to no chance at advancing herself: Erica mentally disengaged, she batted around her apartment for a while but daytime TV and cheap novels soon lost their allure. Instead, in between jobs, she picked up an autodidactic obsession with the world’s first freely editable, ever expanding database of human knowledge: Wikipedia.
It started out as a quiet lark, a way to secretly thumb her nose at a system that didn’t recognize her work by shortcutting around the conventional education system. Okay she wasn’t getting any new qualifications but the ones she had weren’t helping her anyway, right? So this small act of rebellion, self-improvement for its own sake developed over time into a full blown obsession. Erica wasn’t just reading voraciously, she was editing, curating, and submitting her own articles. She was seeing a backstage part of the site that most people miss, not because it’s hidden or exclusive, but because they don’t care to look.
She saw strange things back there. Mostly standard inexplicable human weirdness, but also something else under the surface. Beyond all the additions of ceiling fan pictures to unrelated articles and editing titles to include the words "on wheels" there was a pattern to the weird. She could almost see it, it was maddening how close she was to it. Ignoring all other commitments she locked herself in her apartment for two weeks trying to figure it out: in other circumstances she might have emerged as an adept. Instead after a period of manic exploration and editing she came out with winning numbers for the state lottery.
Several others won too, so for Erica it was a life-changing amount but not live high on the hog forever money. Still she had something better, she's never reproduced a success as dramatic but now she could see the pattern. She could use Wikipedia the same way a fortune teller would a Tarot deck. Only her method worked for certain and she had the money to prove it.
Then the late night silent phone calls started, random appointments started getting cancelled, settled bills were flagged as unpaid, her Uber rides never showed up. A campaign of harassment so subtle you could scarcely see its shape, unless you have a way of seeing things ordinary people can't. When her central heating went haywire and flooded her apartment with gas she took as much of the money as she could liquidate into cash and ran.
Erica lives off the grid now. If you know who to ask you can meet her. It's an involved process, she'll vet you carefully and insists on a number of worryingly clandestine precautions. However if you need information no one else seems to have she's the one to see. She'll trade divined secrets for money to buy old laptops and VPN hookups to continue her activities in secret, but what she really wants are favours. She wants other people who will edit articles for her, engaging in prolonged bouts of carefully planned vandalism on her behalf. If you'll give her that you'll get access to the good stuff.
Erica thinks that with the right changes she can draw out whoever or whatever tried to ruin her life and kill her. She hates the idea of using people as canaries-in-the-coalmine but to her the situation is life and death and no one else can see it. If she doesn't orchestrate her campaign from the shadows who else will? Who else might get hurt if she doesn't stop it?
STATS
Personality: Paranoid and creepily knowledgeable. Erica can speak voluminously on just about any subject but doesn’t seem to realize when to shut up.
Rage: People who trample other’s autonomy for their own benefit.
Noble: Information should empower people.
Fear: That she might be crazy (Helplessness).
Noble: Information should empower people.
Fear: That she might be crazy (Helplessness).
Obsession: Who’s pulling the strings?
Wound Threshold: 50.
Paranoid Pattern Recognition Machine 50% (Vague Information: Wikipedia Divination, Use Gutter Magick, Casts Rituals)
Former IT Worker 40% (Substitutes for Knowledge, Protects Helplessness, Unique - Good with Computers)
On To Something 30%* (Substitutes for Notice, Substitutes for Secrecy, Protects Self)
Shock Gauges
Wound Threshold: 50.
Paranoid Pattern Recognition Machine 50% (Vague Information: Wikipedia Divination, Use Gutter Magick, Casts Rituals)
Former IT Worker 40% (Substitutes for Knowledge, Protects Helplessness, Unique - Good with Computers)
On To Something 30%* (Substitutes for Notice, Substitutes for Secrecy, Protects Self)
Shock Gauges
Notches
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Violence
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Unnatural
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Helplessness
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Isolation
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Self
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Hardened
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1
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4
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3
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2
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3
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Failed
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0
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0
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3
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1
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1
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