Ellen just can’t stop beating herself up. It’s the only thing that gives her any relief from the constant anxiety and the constant crushing guilt over the horrible things for which she's responsible. Ordinarily this would manifest as alcohol and substance abuse and other normal kinds of self-destructive behaviour. It has but in Ellen’s case, being who she is, she also has the tools to wreak a special kind of havoc on her life.
She was always worrisome and clingy: with family, with friends, with boyfriends. Ellen needed the direction of others to take any kind of initiative. Coming from an overbearing Catholic home the influence of her parents certainly didn’t do her any favours. Entering adulthood she’d repudiated their religious beliefs in an act of rebellion, but the things we’re raised with never really leave us.
This renunciation was down to the influence of Ada Alvarez, thaumaturge and boogeyman of the local occult underground. No one ever pinned down exactly what Ada’s deal was: adept, avatar, unholy entity given flesh? She staked a claim to all magickal occurrences in her neighbourhood and faced down any dissidents with a ruthless violence and power that meant her reputation was enough to ward off all but the craziest. For a weak personality like Ellen looking to attach itself to someone she was catnip. Part lover, part gofer, part protege she gave herself heart and soul to Ada.
On Ada’s part the relationship was calculatedly abusive. She would give and take, pushing boundaries and demanding more and more from her apprentice, revelling in the transgressions she could force her to commit. There were so many. They were so awful. People died and lives were ruined. To Ellen the harm she did to herself and to others was an ever growing proof of devotion to the monument that Ada had become in her mind. When her object of devotion's head blew apart under demonic possession by a dead congressmen there was suddenly no more idol for her to sacrifice her soul to.
She had nowhere to turn. Ellen was reviled by the occult underground, cut-off from her parents and former friends and felt unwelcome in any church. She spiralled downward and out of control. Drugs, alcohol, anything that would numb the pain and guilt but bounded by the backlash that she could never accept what she had done. She attempted suicide, several times. In between this she found a terrible respite in her dead abuser’s belongings. Ada had been a prolific ritualist and collected dozens of magickal formula, a large number of which were functional. Before the crows could descend to pick over her cooling carcass for mystical gewgaws Ellen did one thing right: she hid them away where they can't hurt anyone. If only she could have resisted temptation herself.
The same people who would have looted Ada’s estate while the ink on her death certificate was still wet find themselves in a pickle when it comes to trying to wring anything out of Ellen. Not only is she pathologically opposed to spreading any of it around and armed with god knows what leftover hellfire, she’s worked up a magickal ward over herself that ensures hardly any of them can stand to contemplate her. Charging up with 'Neptune’s Awakening' (pg. 174 of Book 1: Play, she vaguely hopes it’ll kill her one day) she has systematically worked her way through jamming up every subculture she can think of with 'This Is A Bad Idea?' (pg. 88 of Book 3: Reveal). She has deliberately made herself a magickally unthinkable pariah to almost everyone. The result acts as both a shield and cross for her to bear. It’s the only thing that gives her any relief.
STATS
Personality: Neurotically remorseful and apologetic, but also willing to masochistically commit horrible trespasses just so people will be angry at her and reinforce her self-hatred. She desperately wants to be saved but refuses to believe she deserves it.
Rage: People who carelessly handle magick.
Noble: Giving emotional relief to those who deserve it.
Fear: “I’ll never be clean, I deserve this.” (Self).
Obsession: Making up for things she can’t make up for.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Wretched 50%* (Substitutes for Lie, Evaluates Helplessness, Evaluates Isolation.)
Ex-Apprentice 45% (Substitutes for Secrecy, Casts Rituals, Evaluates Unnatural.)
Empathetic 25% (Substitutes for Connect, Evaluates Self, Protects Self.)
Shock Gauges
Notches
|
Violence
|
Unnatural
|
Helplessness
|
Isolation
|
Self
|
Hardened
|
3
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
5
|
Failed
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
3
|
5
|
Disorder: Obsession - Her Guilt.
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