Time-share Kelly has been through a lot and it shows in every line of his sad, exhausted face. He doesn’t talk about it but the rumours are rife: he was a long-haul trucker who lost his entire family in a murder-suicide by his wife while he was on the road, he was raised in a cult who abusively recreated fairytales, he’s a Buddhist monk who fell to nihilism, he has a brain condition that causes him to constantly forget himself and no family to take care of him. There might be a kernel of truth to that last one, at the very least it’s understandable why people think that way. Kelly can and does invite demons, and more interestingly people, to possess his body.
It’s not clear how he does it except that he’ll do it out of stress. Threaten or yell at him and his instinctive reaction will be to retreat inside himself. Don’t mistake this for zoning out, if you keep berating him he’ll perk up with a nasty look in his eyes and a mouthful of snarling bile as he tells you terrible things about your loved ones. One guy got half his ear bitten off in an attempted mugging. Courting demons has been less destructive for Kelly than any reasonable sorcerer would speculate. Among their demimonde there seems to be a consensus, “Kelly’s a good thing for all of us so anyone who might spoil that is getting chased off”. None of them seem to have killed or especially hurt anyone at least.
That he can also do it with people is something he sells to the occult underground. The demand to occupy the body of a worn out, middle-aged man isn’t especially high but it’s still enough of a curiosity to demand a solid four figure price tag. It’s certainly drawn the attention of an interstate cabal looking to develop their own mind swapping ritual. In his spare time he volunteers at a hospital a county over and has done his thing pro bono for a couple of people in the palliative care unit but he would never admit this to anyone in his regular life. If he thought that it might be discovered he would cut ties immediately.
Recently he’s taken a job with the local Mak Attax crew following an encounter with them at the local abandoned, haunted roller rink that went well. He’s unreliable in showing up to work and performs poorly at his but his insight into demonology has proved invaluable enough on three occasions that it gets to slide for the time being. This arrangement is probably doomed, Kelly hates the idea of anyone trying to pull a “fix the broken birdy” on him and is terrified of letting people get close. The expressed gratitude of his other Attaxers has run up against this barrier and they are currently bemusedly modulating how they treat the weird older guy at the fryer.
STATS
Personality: Incredibly awkward. Staring at his shoes and mumbling awkward. He’ll occasionally let loose of a piece of trivia or deep wisdom that leaves people speculating about the mystery of his background, but doing this where he can sense it makes him recoil in horror.
Rage: People who try to fix him. He’s got something that works for him, damn it. They need to leave him the hell alone.
Noble: Helping the terminally ill. He has a lot of sympathy for people who are trapped in their bodies, because it’s an accessible opposite to his own problem.
Fear: People getting close to him (Self).
Obsession: Coping by allowing others to take the wheel.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Nervous 50% (Substitutes for Pursuit, Evaluates Violence, Provides Initiative.)
Empty Vessel 40%* (Unique - Invite Possession, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick. See below for more details.)
Part-time Mak Attaxer 30% (Substitutes for Connect, Substitutes for Dodge, Substitutes for Status.)
Shock Gauges
Disorder: Addictive Behaviour - Escaping himself when stressed.
Supernatural Identity: Empty Vessel
Emptying your mind and dissolving your sense of self is one thing. Psychonauts and various meditative religions practice ego detachment and annihilation all the time. Doing it in such a way that creates a vacuum that sucks in outside consciousnesses is entirely another.
With a successful roll you can get yourself possessed by a demon. You’re inviting it in so possession goes down automatically, the roll determines how fine tuned your control over the outcome is. Succeed and you can shoot your “buddy” who just likes tacos too much to the head of the queue or fail and the one who likes going after homeless people with a claw hammer might just pretend to be him. There are two side-effects: the possession goes on for its entire duration regardless of exorcising or protective magick as though the demon were in its native body and when it departs a fragment of it gets stuck and left behind as a minor charge. Until your spend it this feels like the magickal equivalent of having a weird aftertaste rolling around in your mouth.
Gather enough charges (they can come from elsewhere too) and you can juice up the effect. Spend 10 minors and the pull becomes strong enough to drag in a willing human mind for a number of hours equal to the tens place of a successful roll. An additional hour can be added for every extra minor charge spent. You go under while they’re in control, this isn’t a Freaky Friday-type deal. It’s unclear if it can be done to someone unwillingly, with enough charges it’s certainly plausible.
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