Marcella has received more organ transplants than any other person, living or dead. It was never because she needed them, it was because she desperately wanted the money, wasn’t squeamish and was fortunate enough to have a broadly compatible blood type and genetics. Her job in the murky world of semi-illicit organ procurement was to transport selected organs to their end point, inside of her body. An incredibly dangerous and ill-conceived strategy that nonetheless allowed the people she worked for to evade detection and “store” organs for periods of time before allocating them to a recipient. While it was tough on her body, Marcella was exceptionally well compensated given the rarity of her capacity and hardiness.
She ended up carrying the kidney of an entropomancer who’d died holding a major charge.
Marcella already had a shaky relationship with the integrity of her body, between literally selling herself to overcome her families’ debts back in Manilla, juggling an ever-shifting rotation of anti-rejection drugs and painkillers and the treatment these circumstances inflicted on her. The leaking power of the charge and the flavour of the deceased adept was an intoxicating certainty by comparison. A fortuitous win on a magickally-malfunctioned slot machine gave her the money to buy the loyalty of some hard men to go back and force the doctor to give her the rest of the dead guy. She didn’t care that he was no longer viable, she wanted, needed, more.
It didn’t work well. She got a lung, the other kidney and a cornea, the rest absolutely had to be scrapped. Even then it was still a bad choice, the kidney and the lung failed spectacularly. The doctor had his neck wrung by the men looking for the rest of their money and her employers were extremely unhappy about the whole debacle. Her family caught their violent reprisal and she was comparatively fortunate to get away with quietly and anonymously dying in a local hospital. Except that major charge wouldn’t let her go.
Today Marcella is an entirely different person. She credits her experiences as an awakening to the ascendance of those who can craft the best of themselves from others. This takes the form of a semi-religious, semi-self-help cult with chapters in three countries. The outer ranks practice transformative meditation and actualization exercises which become increasingly baroque and isolating as they progress. Only the inner circle, her closest half dozen, fully understand and have received the full communion of taking on flesh from unwitting sacrifices. The dual hearts beating in her chest serve as a powerful image for them, elevating her example to divine status for this growing cabal.
STATS
Personality: Casually violent and disconnected from herself. Marcella treats her body the same way people treat their car, it’s a piece of machinery to be modified and cared for as needed. She no longer sees herself as the same person she started out as, like the Ship of Theseus she’s certain she’s not the same woman who ruined her family. She’s willing to commit to obscene gambles on the subconscious belief that she’s invincible and matters more than other people.
Rage: People digging into her past.
Noble: People who step up when it comes to family.
Fear: That the drugs and magick keeping her whole will fail, leading to total organ failure (Helplessness).
Obsession: Become more than human through organ transplantation.
Wound Threshold: 80.
Messianic Medical Cult Leader 40%* (Substitutes for Status, Medical, Coerces Self.)
One, Of Many 80% (Substitutes for Fitness, Provides Wound Threshold, Use Gutter Magick.)
Shock Gauges
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