Dewey was completely unexceptional growing up: younger-middle child of four, small, unathletic and not particularly smart or charismatic. Having to hustle for attention from exhausted parents and uninterested siblings growing up he discovered the one thing that he could use to make himself feel and seem important: tattling. If his siblings did wrong and he told on them or threatened to that gave him temporary power and importance. There was a point of diminishing returns that eventually inverted the dynamic as even his parents resented being used as an extension of his will but it didn’t matter. To young Dewey the ability to rat people out was his very own personal philosopher’s stone. He could do anything with it.
Predictably Dewey wasn’t well liked at school but instead of correcting his behaviour the shunning led him to double down as a way of acting out - negative attention is still attention. A lack of early socialization led him to the conclusion that all relationships are based on competitive power struggles which rooted his behaviour in a way that made it impossible for teachers, his parents and a cavalcade of school counsellors to dig out. Eventually everyone got tired of trying and, as much as it’s not something they’d admit to, wrote Dewey off as a lost cause.
For an ordinary obsession that would have been true, aside from an associate’s degree in mechanical engineering Dewey hasn’t really achieved anything of note. He’s worked in a tire repair and mechanic’s shop as a general hand since high school, keeps a small apartment full of electronics he often goes without eating to pay for and has no close relationships. Instead he is consumed by the practice of cryptomancy: the magick of revealing damaging secrets.
It took a few years for him to find his niche and for the bulk of it the rest of the occult underground treated him like the rented pony he was all too eager to be. The resulting list of grudges is long and convoluted but mollified by the fact that he’s hellbent on twisting his obsession into a high position on the local totem pole. He thinks he can be the information broker that everyone goes to and needs to find out what the real deal is.
Dewey’s impulse control isn’t good enough for that. He mostly gathers charges through installing surveillance equipment in cars at his job supplemented with schemes targeted against the other magi he holds secret grudges against. Given the difficulty he has holding onto charges a lot of them are invested into artifacts. His schemes backfire often enough that he gets his ass kicked and hexed at least a couple of time a year and yet, in spite of this, people still go to him when they need to know what’s going on. Nobody trusts Dewey but they can’t deny that he always has the inside line.
STATS
Personality: Earnest, eager and pathetic. Between his lank, blonde bowl cut, dark hooded eyes and stooped posture, the skinny Dewey comes across as obsequious and untrustworthy. Most people barely take him seriously as an information broker because it’s so easy to get him to spill the beans without coughing up yourself. It does piss him off if you take advantage though and he’ll take that personally.
Rage: Being told "no". Dewey feels like since he doesn’t ask for much he shouldn’t be refused the things he does ask for.
Noble: Telling the truth. Dewey will lie to get what he wants, but he’ll come clean about it afterwards.
Fear: Losing the scoop on dishing dirt he’s gathered before someone else can (Isolation).
Obsession: Be the font of gossip that controls the occult underground.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Cryptomancer 55%* (Adept, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Compulsive Tattletale 65% (Substitutes for Notice, Substitutes for Secrecy, Coerces Self.)
Shock Gauges
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