Jeffrey is great at plots and themes and incredible details, good tools for an aspiring writer, but he sucks at writing characters. They function as plot devices and tools which are completely subservient to the other facets of what he tries to write. This would be an excusable flaw if he weren’t so hellbent on writing the type of stories that require it.
Profoundly self-centred, Jeff’s deficiency springs from a concrete inability to see things from other people’s perspectives. He’s not a bad person per se, he minds his manners and has learned to be consciously mindful of people most of the time. However he can often be thoughtlessly blunt and selfish as a result. The other students in his MFA writing class find him exasperating or amusing.
The worst part for him is that he can see the blindspot in his finished work. Comparing it to that of others he can see the areas that he lacks in, but how to solve it in process and bridge the persistent cognitive gap was always an exercise in frustration. Until recently.
Jeffrey is an exhaustive researcher when it comes to his work, playing his strengths. Trawling libraries and the recesses of the internet at all hours is his way of compensating for a predictable lack of social contact and his insecurities about his work. It was through this that he discovered the art of umwelt scrying, described in a pamphlet wedged between a book on goetic demons and issues of defunct magazine The Amateur Astronomer.
Part ritual, part cold reading, part exercised psychic ability, umwelt scrying is a sledgehammer solution to Jeff’s problem. Give him a photograph of someone, some hashish (not strictly necessary, but he likes it), an hour of contemplation and he can tell you all about the cornerstones that make up that person’s psyche. It’s a crude and roughshod way to understand a person but it’s exactly what he needed. His writing is vastly improved as a result.
This would be the end of it if he weren’t in the habit of basing his characters on people he regularly sees. Having accidentally targeted a TNI goon who makes regular visits to the same coffee shop, Jeffrey has learned things he doesn’t want to know but can’t shy away from. He intends to follow her and find out more about the horrible, violent impulses he felt the shape of next time he sees her there. It won’t end well.
STATS
Personality: Naive and wooden, but direct and well-spoken. Jeffrey doesn’t lack self-confidence despite the fact that most people find him off-putting but privately resents his own flaws.
Rage: Indefatigable limitations.
Noble: Art that does new things. Jeffrey wants to use his work to explore and share untouched ideas.
Fear: Being labelled as different (Isolation).
Obsession: Become a widely recognised fiction writer and use it to inspire and share ideas with others.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Aspiring Writer 60%* (Substitutes for Knowledge, Evaluates Self, Protects Helplessness.)
Umwelt Scrying 60% (Specific Information - Passions and Obsessions, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick. See below for more details.)
Shock Gauges
Notches
|
Violence
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Unnatural
|
Helplessness
|
Isolation
|
Self
|
Hardened
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1
|
3
|
2
|
4
|
5
|
Failed
|
0
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
2
|
Supernatural Identity: Umwelt Scrying
Contemplating someone’s image for about an hour can tell you things their closest friends and family might not know about them. It can be done in person rather than with a photo or video, but usually people get creeped out by extended scrutiny. A successful roll gives your choice of one of their passions or obsession, a matched success gives their obsession and one passion and a crit gives all the sordid details of their drives.
Failure provides no information or penalties but a matched failure or fumble scrambles your sense of self. The perception of these cornerstones risks eclipsing your own. Make a Self check with a rank equal to the tens place of the failed check, on a failure the breakdown manifests as an overwhelming impulse to act on one of the target’s passions or obsession (GM’s choice).
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