165 - Hermit Car

Unnatural Entity: Hermit Car

Not all demons are lucky enough to be able to sate their Urge easily. Between infernal competition, magickal interference, fortuitous comeuppance or a lack of acceptable hosts many of the obsessive dead go unfulfilled. Some decay into revenants, others are forced into bestial shapes by desperate stooping to animal hosts and some, a bare handful, are twisted into something even more lowly, a Hermit Car. Named for what was arguably the first confirmed postmodern instance, Hermit Cars are the old trope of demons bound into objects, gone feral. Abandoned or lost by their creators their adaption is one of blind necessity.

Trapped in unfeeling stone, blind pages and dead metal the human shape and obsession of a bound demon twists under sensory deprivation. It takes the thoughtform of the unfeeling, unthinking object it is in while also fettered by the aching shadows of its old, forgotten Urge. Most of them lay dormant and undetected, unable to see the world or satisfy themselves.

There are two criteria for waking a Hermit Car, proximity to someone scarred by the Unnatural and the object of their long lost Urge. Pirating the latent signal of their damage like a ship using the shine of a lighthouse to guide it, the hermit lurches into a grotesque parody of life and bee-lines for its Urge. Most Urges can't be managed by a possessed toaster however and the resulting battering can be fatal for the subject if it is fragile or the Hermit Car large and powerful.

If it does manage to destroy the object of its Urge the catharsis provides momentary freedom as the demon is released. But the damage and adaptation to inanimacy is permanent, all Hermit Cars require a shell like their namesake crabs in order to retain coherency. Scuttling back to their old digs is likewise impossible, the growth accompanying release will never restore them to their former selves but it does rend the old shell to pieces and demand the next one be a little larger.

Hermit Car, Possessed Artifice
Wound Threshold: Highly variable when incorporated, otherwise 25 but only vulnerable to magickal attacks.
Rabid Genius Loci 30-60%: Covers anything the demon might try when active. Equal to the highest native (as in going by shock gauges) Secrecy of anyone nearby with at least three hardened and one failed Unnatural notches. Alternatively it can substitute a supernatural identity from anyone nearby, including being able to flip flop.