Cities are living things the same as people. Both are made of a panoply of systems and organs all working in unison to create something greater than their parts. The heart pumps blood as the industry of urban living pumps traffick. We are the cells that make up the organs that give it life and like the cells that make up our own organs we are entirely fungible as individuals.
Bailey learned that the hard way as a kid, his mom (he’s never known his dad) was hit by a subway train when she accidentally slipped from the platform. It happens dozens of times a year. What really struck Bailey was the thoughtless outrage from people who’d been inconvenienced by the delay. Didn’t they realise the world had just ended? It didn’t take him long time to internalise just how disposable the mass of humanity is to each other. To the city at large.
Raised by his childless aunt, Bailey never caused any trouble. He barely seemed troubled by what had happened. Internally he was building a story about the city as an animal and the way that the parts of it operated unconsciously and ignorantly of their ability to be summarily replaced. His grief was sublimated in trying to understand, trying to find a lever or yoke for the beast and put himself above its casual violence. He wandered the city for hours, precociously read Hans Reichow and Jean-Marie Pelt, scoured city plans and crime statistics. It never came to resolution but he couldn’t stop trying.
In the second year of a political science degree he started having fainting spells. Diagnosis: an aggressive brain cancer, life expectancy: about two years. Treatment was expensive and knocked him from his path. If something so random could take it all away then what was the point? He spent months in a depressed haze, until he slipped in front of a train.
Looking back, Bailey isn’t sure it was unintentional, he’s still not really sure of anything. All recollections of the event are eclipsed by the epiphany. The train screeching to a halt less than a foot away and the adrenaline pounding through his system. A single damaged cell could cause a cascade that would, untreated, destroy an entire system. Reaching into the beating heart of the city and placing the illness of himself at its crux, Bailey could harness its resilience for himself. Sprinting away down the tunnel unseen he felt better than he had in years. The next time it happened it was definitely on purpose.
Bailey tells himself he’s not really in danger and that he’s not really hurting anyone. That he’ll always be able to time it right so that his faux-sacrifice hits the right sympathy and he gets to live longer by siphoning it off. He’s almost got himself fooled.
There’s a dedicated police detail after him, getting away with this kind of disruption a dozen times was bound to draw that response. He’s careful and his ability to read and sway the city, to blend invisibly with the crowds, has frustrated them so far but the noose is inexorably tightening and he can feel it. Complicating his problem is the backlash of having the immune system of the city clean up his illness, his face magickally appearing on bus stop advertisements and structural defects wreaking havoc as architectural elements malignantly duplicate themselves. What happens when a city gets cancer?
STATS
Personality: Bailey is insightful but has trouble openly articulating his thoughts, which makes him seem stupid. Having discovered what he thinks is the way the world works he’s willing to stake everything on using it to take control of his life. He’s meticulous and dangerously obsessed.
Rage: Tacit assumptions of safety and security. The world’s a far more dangerous place than most people give it credit.
Noble: The people worst off in the city. He thinks their position is a necessary one but Bailey wishes it didn’t have to be and uses his powers to cut them a break when he’s flush with charges.
Fear: Being cut off from his magick (Unnatural).
Obsession: Give me an egregore big enough, and a place to stand, and I can move the world.
Wound Threshold: 50 (sometimes lower depending on how he’s doing healthwise and injuries from his ...vocation).
Urbanomancer 70%* (Adept, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Subway Jumper 50% (Substitutes for Dodge, Substitutes for Secrecy, Protects Violence.)
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
|
Hardened
|
4
|
3
|
5
|
2
|
3
|
Failed
|
2
|
0
|
2
|
0
|
2
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