In 1910, Antonio Monteiro, a wealthy entomologist and trader captivated by the occult built a spiritual refuge for himself in his native Portugal. Having long harboured an interest in the metaphysical it gave him the opportunity to realise his ambition to merge the magickal and the mundane. He succeeded. Mirroring the Statosphere through the lens of masonic and tarot inspired construction he built a way to descend both physically and symbolically into the sub-floors of humanities’ collective unconscious.
As fortune would have it there were other things down there in the dark. Eager to teach him how to breach the amnion of the soul and step wholesale into the bodies of others, they promised him the ability to conquer death. Whether he pursued this is lost to history.
Over a century later and on the other side of the world a collection of his coded works were stolen from a west coast university by a disgraced anthropologist turned self-taught thaumaturge and with the patronage of a wealthy Chicago heiress and the aid of a motley collection of weirdos they have reconstructed Antonio’s path and begun to unlock the mysteries that the boundary they call “the Well of Faces” holds.
So far they have managed to temporarily switch bodies between themselves by piggybacking on something akin to a proxy connection with various demons, an incredibly dangerous practice only made viable by one of the cabal’s unique talents. This has been useful in providing entertainment, minor power and information on how the effect works but each of them wants something more.
Their goals are:
Rene Ogorman is a cult survivor with a gift. She was deliberately raised in an experimental environment of extreme sensory deprivation punctuated by bombardment with specific stimuli. She managed this isolation by tesselating vast mental refuges from what few fragments of the outside world she retained, until one night she was given the opportunity to escape. The peculiarities her adaption to this trauma make her uniquely suited to hosting demons without suffering the ill effects of possession - something the Well of Faces would be far less useful without.
Rene is a teenage girl, about fifteen (she’s not certain since she’s undocumented) and small for her age. She has very little formal education or real socialisation but isn’t stupid. Mousy and pathologically shy, she sees more than the others think she does. Most of them are lowkey wary or creeped out by her except Neil and to a lesser extent Maria, who took her in off the street. Rene understands the leverage she has at the moment and the fact that it might not last, she hasn’t used it for anything yet - hasn’t had the nerve - but feels like she might have to for her own security, soon.
Supernatural Identity - Weaponised Mind Palace: Rene’s mental landscape is hazardous to invaders. She can lock them in the endless mazes she built to keep herself sane during her formative years. Once per scene she can psychically pound on a demon who is inside her head dealing damage to its Urge equal to the sum of the roll by running them ragged. It also allows her a second roll (on this identity) to oppose any possession attempts. Due to this she is used as the intermediary for body switches.
Jo Macias is a disgraced, 30-something anthropologist turned occultist. Kicked out of university for a theft that couldn’t be proven she then stole coded documents belonging to historical occultist Antonio Monteiro on her way out and fled across the country. Deciphering journal fragments about his experiences with the Well of Faces she decided she had two choices, travel to Portugal and try to set up shop at a historical site or find someone who would pay to replicate the necessary construction here. She regrets bringing the idea to Maria even though she understands it probably never would have happened without her. Jo has recently decoded a hidden sub-section which details the possibility of making the body-switching effect of the Well permanent.
A thorough misanthrope, Jo sees the rest of the cabal as tools to be used for her own purposes. She either pities (Toby and Neil) or resents (Maria and Rene) them for what they do or don’t have over her. The disdain is mutual. Right now she wants to find a way to get Maria out of the picture so she is no longer reliant on her support and is trying to figure out how to sabotage their experiments to get it done. What really interests Jo are the entities the effect summons: do any existing mythologies accurately describe them? Are they really infernal/the dead/egregores? What do they know? What else can they do? What can she do to learn these things?
Toby Coates is young, buff and gorgeous and therefore a favourite to be ‘ridden’ with the ritual or to sucker in ‘temps’. He’s Maria’s arm candy (the cabal’s most poorly kept secret). He’s also very sick. Pancreatic cancer sick. It’s one of the tough ones to detect so it’s hard to catch till it’s too late, the doctors give him a 20% chance of making it to the end of the year. He’s hiding the symptoms but the desperation has awoken ambition in him beyond being a cosseted bed-toy to the wealthy.
Toby wants a permanent new body pronto, but he’s afraid that revealing his status to the cabal will get him shunned. So he’s doing his best to encourage things along without being obvious. He’s wary of or creeped out by the rest of the cabal (except for Maria, who he is lavishly grateful towards), but tries not to let it show in the way he treats them. They know how he sees them anyway.
Maria Herron is an aging, old-money hedonist who fancies herself a modern day Aleister Crowley (over, say, the more temperate Blavatsky). She ostentatiously bankrolls the cabal, providing them with resources and a place to conduct their experiments and in return gets to play the part of the flamboyant leader. She and Ray are an item, which she vaguely tries to keep secret from the rest. In addition to the warehouse space in which a replica of the ‘Sintra initiation wells’ have been built for their experiments she owns a number of residences, a small fleet of vehicles and can lay her hands on just about any material good she desires.
Maria sees her dalliance with the cabal as a temporary stepping-stone on her way to future glory and the Well of Faces as the first step towards securing her own personal immortality. She intends to extend the cabal into a full-blown cult to furnish this desire. She just has to clear out the current membership (except for perhaps Rene, who she feels a pang of guilt about using this way), starting with Jo who she knows is gunning for her. Maria is completely self-assured in her impending victory, if she weren’t deserving of it then why was the Well of Faces brought to her in the first place?
Neil Greely is a burn-out but an effective fixer in the occult underground when he can pull his head out of the bottle. Scuzzy, but he can get you a half gallon of virgin blood or a lock of Steven Seagal’s hair on short notice, so people mostly trust him. Neil has been around the block enough times to be freaked out at the prospect of being possessed by a demon so he sticks to the periphery of the cabal's experiments. Despite his better judgement Maria’s money is good though to convince him to stay on with this ship of fools and as long as it keeps flowing he’ll stick around. Especially since she paid off his loan sharks and he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.
Plus he’s got a soft-spot for Rene - who he found for Maria - and while he’s got no illusions about being a hero he wouldn’t want to see her get hurt. As far as he is concerned the rest of them are naive idiots who are trying to unspool enough rope to hang themselves. He just isn’t sure if he’s the same.
As fortune would have it there were other things down there in the dark. Eager to teach him how to breach the amnion of the soul and step wholesale into the bodies of others, they promised him the ability to conquer death. Whether he pursued this is lost to history.
Over a century later and on the other side of the world a collection of his coded works were stolen from a west coast university by a disgraced anthropologist turned self-taught thaumaturge and with the patronage of a wealthy Chicago heiress and the aid of a motley collection of weirdos they have reconstructed Antonio’s path and begun to unlock the mysteries that the boundary they call “the Well of Faces” holds.
So far they have managed to temporarily switch bodies between themselves by piggybacking on something akin to a proxy connection with various demons, an incredibly dangerous practice only made viable by one of the cabal’s unique talents. This has been useful in providing entertainment, minor power and information on how the effect works but each of them wants something more.
Their goals are:
- Continue to experiment with the Well of Faces effect, learn its limitations and push them.
- Use the Well of Faces to advance their personal agendas.
- Find a demon they can work out an arrangement with so they don’t have to keep renegotiating.
- Find a way to make the effect permanent (their objective, now at 45%).
Rene Ogorman is a cult survivor with a gift. She was deliberately raised in an experimental environment of extreme sensory deprivation punctuated by bombardment with specific stimuli. She managed this isolation by tesselating vast mental refuges from what few fragments of the outside world she retained, until one night she was given the opportunity to escape. The peculiarities her adaption to this trauma make her uniquely suited to hosting demons without suffering the ill effects of possession - something the Well of Faces would be far less useful without.
Rene is a teenage girl, about fifteen (she’s not certain since she’s undocumented) and small for her age. She has very little formal education or real socialisation but isn’t stupid. Mousy and pathologically shy, she sees more than the others think she does. Most of them are lowkey wary or creeped out by her except Neil and to a lesser extent Maria, who took her in off the street. Rene understands the leverage she has at the moment and the fact that it might not last, she hasn’t used it for anything yet - hasn’t had the nerve - but feels like she might have to for her own security, soon.
Supernatural Identity - Weaponised Mind Palace: Rene’s mental landscape is hazardous to invaders. She can lock them in the endless mazes she built to keep herself sane during her formative years. Once per scene she can psychically pound on a demon who is inside her head dealing damage to its Urge equal to the sum of the roll by running them ragged. It also allows her a second roll (on this identity) to oppose any possession attempts. Due to this she is used as the intermediary for body switches.
Jo Macias is a disgraced, 30-something anthropologist turned occultist. Kicked out of university for a theft that couldn’t be proven she then stole coded documents belonging to historical occultist Antonio Monteiro on her way out and fled across the country. Deciphering journal fragments about his experiences with the Well of Faces she decided she had two choices, travel to Portugal and try to set up shop at a historical site or find someone who would pay to replicate the necessary construction here. She regrets bringing the idea to Maria even though she understands it probably never would have happened without her. Jo has recently decoded a hidden sub-section which details the possibility of making the body-switching effect of the Well permanent.
A thorough misanthrope, Jo sees the rest of the cabal as tools to be used for her own purposes. She either pities (Toby and Neil) or resents (Maria and Rene) them for what they do or don’t have over her. The disdain is mutual. Right now she wants to find a way to get Maria out of the picture so she is no longer reliant on her support and is trying to figure out how to sabotage their experiments to get it done. What really interests Jo are the entities the effect summons: do any existing mythologies accurately describe them? Are they really infernal/the dead/egregores? What do they know? What else can they do? What can she do to learn these things?
Toby Coates is young, buff and gorgeous and therefore a favourite to be ‘ridden’ with the ritual or to sucker in ‘temps’. He’s Maria’s arm candy (the cabal’s most poorly kept secret). He’s also very sick. Pancreatic cancer sick. It’s one of the tough ones to detect so it’s hard to catch till it’s too late, the doctors give him a 20% chance of making it to the end of the year. He’s hiding the symptoms but the desperation has awoken ambition in him beyond being a cosseted bed-toy to the wealthy.
Toby wants a permanent new body pronto, but he’s afraid that revealing his status to the cabal will get him shunned. So he’s doing his best to encourage things along without being obvious. He’s wary of or creeped out by the rest of the cabal (except for Maria, who he is lavishly grateful towards), but tries not to let it show in the way he treats them. They know how he sees them anyway.
Maria Herron is an aging, old-money hedonist who fancies herself a modern day Aleister Crowley (over, say, the more temperate Blavatsky). She ostentatiously bankrolls the cabal, providing them with resources and a place to conduct their experiments and in return gets to play the part of the flamboyant leader. She and Ray are an item, which she vaguely tries to keep secret from the rest. In addition to the warehouse space in which a replica of the ‘Sintra initiation wells’ have been built for their experiments she owns a number of residences, a small fleet of vehicles and can lay her hands on just about any material good she desires.
Maria sees her dalliance with the cabal as a temporary stepping-stone on her way to future glory and the Well of Faces as the first step towards securing her own personal immortality. She intends to extend the cabal into a full-blown cult to furnish this desire. She just has to clear out the current membership (except for perhaps Rene, who she feels a pang of guilt about using this way), starting with Jo who she knows is gunning for her. Maria is completely self-assured in her impending victory, if she weren’t deserving of it then why was the Well of Faces brought to her in the first place?
Neil Greely is a burn-out but an effective fixer in the occult underground when he can pull his head out of the bottle. Scuzzy, but he can get you a half gallon of virgin blood or a lock of Steven Seagal’s hair on short notice, so people mostly trust him. Neil has been around the block enough times to be freaked out at the prospect of being possessed by a demon so he sticks to the periphery of the cabal's experiments. Despite his better judgement Maria’s money is good though to convince him to stay on with this ship of fools and as long as it keeps flowing he’ll stick around. Especially since she paid off his loan sharks and he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.
Plus he’s got a soft-spot for Rene - who he found for Maria - and while he’s got no illusions about being a hero he wouldn’t want to see her get hurt. As far as he is concerned the rest of them are naive idiots who are trying to unspool enough rope to hang themselves. He just isn’t sure if he’s the same.
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