Everything has already been explored. Not really, but there’s a sense of lost struggle and opportunity in civilized living that leads to a romanticism and yearning for a younger and less known world. Mystery and discovery are in abundance but restrictive individual circumstances can shrink people’s worldview. The fantasy of uncertainty, for the potential of positive upheaval it represents, is desired in contrast to being trapped by crushing banality.
Unable to climb beyond working at the gas station her family owns on the edge of the city she has lived in all her life, Felicia knows this feeling well. A four time college dropout paralysed by indecision and unrewarded effort, she’s channelled her lack of fulfilment into the pop cultural diversions designed to compensate for an unfulfilled interest in discovery. Geocaching, online sleuthing communities, urban exploration, codebreaking - she ran through them all, voraciously reading and daydreaming from behind the Formica counter.
Her imagination was captured by the idea of alternative reality games, Cicada 3301 and the podcast Rabbits in particular. Participating in a few whet her appetite and sparked ideas of her own. The story behind her idea was never fixed, shifting and mutating, never quite as good as the potential of what if could have been. Instead the real fruit of her fancies was a dazzling network of puzzles and schemes that she never intended to leave the confines of her head.
It was a fit of pique that made her cross this boundary, wanting to share her creation and have it appreciated by others. She left her first cipher taped to the window of a laundromat across town, which led to a fortuitous post on social media by a curious patron. The validation, even in anonymity, had too strong a pull for Felicia to ignore. What she intended as a one-off exercise became the first thread in a tapestry.
Today the mystery has sprawled into a massive undertaking, every moment she isn’t working the counter at the gas station Felicia is plotting her next move and masterfully crafting devious enigmas to stump her fans. Several online communities have sprung up around her work, speculating and taking sides on what it all might mean. It’s a recruitment tool for an intelligence organisation, it’s a promotional stunt for a movie that seems to never come, it’s the work of a cult or organised crime groups communicating in secret. None of the rumours are remotely true but she loves to visit and marvel at the speculation. It drives her, but the work has also taken on a more burdensome aspect. The reality can never live up to the fantasy and even as it takes over her life she is loath to give it up. She can’t stand to let everybody down with the truth.
STATS
Personality: Frazzled but ebullient and quietly clever. Felicia is extremely inquisitive but was constantly disappointed to find that every hill she climbed already had flags planted. In creating her own mysteries for others she’s opened up the possibility of new worlds, untouched by anything but her own hands.
Rage: Misbehaving children. She hates that some parents let their kids run wild.
Noble: People who make real discoveries. Far from jealous, Felicia openly hero worships those who do what she does but make contributions to humanity.
Fear: Failing to live up to people’s expectations (Self).
Obsession: Create the ultimate mystery.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Mysterycrafter 65%* (Substitutes for Secrecy, Substitutes for Knowledge, Substitutes for Lie.)
Gas Station Clerk 55% (Substitutes for Notice, Evaluates Violence, Protects Helplessness.)
Shock Gauges
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