Antimicrobial resistance is rated as one of the biggest threats to global human health, the adaptation and evolution of microbes outstripping the ability of our medicine to fight them. Life is much faster at the microscopic level: bacteria can reproduce almost 100,000 times in the span it takes to bring a human baby to term, over 9 million generations of them over the course of a human life. With every division they are shaped by their environment into increasingly perfect biological machines at unthinkable speed. Sebastian grinds his teeth with envy.
A single lifespan trapped inside a body shackled by limited preset potential with the only hope of escape in the metaphorical legacy of offspring. It was an existential insult to the collegiate premed that he could not stomach, to be a conscious mind trapped by that fate. That’s what he tells himself when thinking about why he dropped out. Armed with mail-order DIY gene-editing kits and stolen medical equipment over the past several years the biohacker has transformed himself.
Sebastian would not call what he does magick. He’d be offended at the suggestion. That said there’s very little scientific about cultivating superbugs and shooting them into your body with the expectation that they will ultimately make you stronger, like a cannibal eating someone’s heart. Despite the holes in his methodology Sebastian has an impressive set of rationalizations for why it does work and reams of data supporting genuine results.
Sebastian no longer spends any time in the one-story ranch house he grew up in. Instead he lives, hermetically sealed, in the laboratory he built in the backyard. Constant tinkering has altered his immune system radically and he is aware of the infection risk he poses to others outside of a specially built pressurized suit. Some of the fruits of his labours are impressive enough from a scientific point of view that he has gained fraudulent access to academic and medical circles by misrepresenting himself as the owner of a genuine research lab to further his experiments. His attachment to the occult underground is incidental, the services of those twisted enough to desire his expertise and willing to enable this deception has a significant overlap with that kind of character and he isn’t shy about exploiting it.
STATS
Personality: Unnaturally vain in ways that defy most people’s conception of the term. Sebastian idolises forms and capabilities far outside of most people’s aesthetic and performative ideals. Outside of this limitation he is sharply intelligent and personable, so long as he doesn’t consider you a threat.
Rage: Injury. Sebastian’s body is his temple and he needs it to be in perfect shape to weather his experiments.
Noble: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Fear: Losing his ability to keep adapting (Unnatural).
Obsession: Becoming the perfect organism through infection.
Wound Threshold: 100 (magickally boosted, it may be lower depending on what strain of the sniffles Sebastian currently has running through him).
Epideromancer 70%* (Adept, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Backyard Microbiologist 50% (Substitutes for Knowledge, Medical, Unique - Access to biohazardous materials and lab equipment.)
Shock Gauges
Note: Through obsessive use of the formula spell Preternatural Prowess Sebastian has boosted his Fitness, Dodge, Pursuit and Struggle to 65%.
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