088 - Survivors of Nobody

Cabal: Survivors of Nobody

In a city with limited municipal budgets and endemic violent crime (it’s actually low historically, but concentrated in the urban environment) things fall through the cracks. Many violations go unreported because of perceptions that nothing will or can be done to help, exacerbated by low clearance rates and media frenzy. For a group of people who have been subjected to a rash of violence and robberies this has pressed them to find a solution outside of the system. Alienated and terrorised they pull together in their isolation, united by the common thread that keeps them outside the system: none of them can describe their attacker or explain why.

Right now it looks like any support group. Community centre. Folding chairs in a circle. Coffee urn. Although the group is ostensibly open to the public it’s unadvertised, people come by referral. That’s enough to get you access to the outer group, where people share the stories of what they can’t explain. They number about a dozen, give or take depending on the night (there would be more but the experience of being a victim or witness of violent crime leads most to rationalize their lack of recall, only the most egregious examples of memory erasure end up here). Within this exists the cabal, four people intent on doing more than providing support for each other. If they can’t rely on the system for protection, then they’ll have to go beyond it.

Their (local) objective is to discover Nobody’s identity (at 45% right now, there have been some good leads), after that it’s down to their means and consciences.

Rosie Abott, security guard, used to be a cop. It’s not something she advertises, the larger support group have had pretty negative experiences with law enforcement and she uses a fake name anyhow. It makes sense given her history, how she accidentally shot a woman. The way it was handled - excused and downplayed - ate at her as much as the death. The brass and the city wanted it to go away so they jammed her up. To her shame, she capitulated and the family didn’t get justice. It’s a depressingly common outcome. So she quit the job she couldn’t stand anymore and moved away.

Rosie’s experience involved witnessing Nobody savagely beating a man with a pipe at her job, by the time she made it to the bottom of the stairwell Nobody was gone and she was left bewildered at the fact she couldn’t describe them. Hearing other stories it was her who formed the original group but she doesn’t take center stage if she can help it. A nascent and unusual avatar of the masterless man, she eskews the typical violence-as-first-resort of the archetype for a more considered and careful approach to vigilantism.

A heavily-muscled and hard-bitten woman of mediteranean heritage in her early 30s, Rosie cuts an imposing figure. This is at odds with her soft voice and desire to stay out of the spotlight (while paradoxically trying to make sure things steer the way she likes). She’s a reluctant leader who secretly wants to make up for her past by stopping Nobody before someone is killed. The others are getting a bit tired of her sitting half-way in the driver’s seat and it’ll come to a head if one of them tries to challenge her for it.

Lee Meng is here because of his brother. Both of them were international students and now it seems that not only can’t he recall the face of the person who kidnapped Guo from a shopping mall carpark, no one else can remember Guo at all. It’s as though his brother never existed.

Distraught, Lee has latched on to the group like a life raft since they’re the only ones who take him seriously. Highly motivated, he was the first to jump on board with Rosie’s idea that they three (Timothy obnoxiously nosed his way in later) do something more, at odds with his typically reserved and scholarly nature.

Meticulously organised and prone to careful analysis Lee has created the only existing database on Nobody’s activities, trying to find patterns in timing, location and intent. It’s actually thanks to these insights that the cabal have made most of their progress. A tall, skinny Chinese man in his mid 20s, Lee’s now has reason to always look as worried as everyone always said he does. He’s not interested in any sort of vengeance, he just wants his brother back.

Jane T. Waymire is a Sleeper who ended up here by mistake. She was new in town (recent work transfer, she works for a cosmetics distributor as her day-job), called the Hotline and was given the wrong address. It didn’t register right away that she’d come to the wrong place, given the stories people were telling.

She comes across as grounded and coping better than most others (easy to do when the story you’re telling is something you made up to fit in), so people naturally look to her for support. She’s reluctant to stick out but sees herself as custodian of the support group, she thinks it’d make too tempting a target for the occult underground’s predators. Any of them might try to whack a steering wheel on a group of suggestible victims to point them at their personal enemies. To avoid this problem she’s keeping them a secret from the Sleeper community for now.

A short and clean-cut blonde woman in her late 20s, Jane manages to strike a balance between sharply professional and approachably friendly. Few outside of the Sleepers would guess at the collection of firearms and spy gear she keeps in a trunk in her crawlspace or her experience burying something most people would think of as a werebat on vacant land outside of town. She wants to keep it that way. While she’s interested in stopping this “Nobody” she’s more interested in keeping these amateurs out of trouble.

Timothy Cardone is not a mentally well man, some of the others in the cabal - and the broader group - suspect he shouldn’t be here but either lack or have too much compassion to call him on it. It’s not as though they can claim any kind of high ground given their own strange stories. They’re wrong about him anyway.

He was a high-school math teacher, until he had a psychotic breakdown and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. There is nothing unnatural or occult about Tim’s illness, it’s a genetic condition that expressed itself at an inopportune time. He manages it as best he can with medication and metacognitive training and therapy. He isn’t violent or dangerous but it has made him withdrawn. This made him especially vulnerable when Nobody staged a home invasion which culminated with a bound Timothy being quizzed on the theory of de Rahm cohomology - a specialist mathematics field he has no significant knowledge on. He was discovered still tied up several hours later by his girlfriend.

A prematurely grey and slightly overweight caucasian man in his late 30s, Tim’s a bearded, coke-bottle glasses and plaid wearing man who is often mistaken for a hipster. He’s not, he just has little concern for his appearance or dress these days. Right now he’s trying to balance managing his condition with a part-time bookkeeping job and his work with the cabal (which definitely doesn’t help his stability). Frustrated at being marginalised and disempowered by his illness and current circumstances, he’s the most likely to advocate for a violent solution to stopping Nobody (although he has neither the skills or temperament to carry it out personally).