231 - Arlan the Gnawer

Unnatural Entity: Arlan the Gnawer

It's unclear to most just what fuels Arlan's strange fixation. As demons go most want to re-experience life on their own terms, he bargains for pieces of yours. Given access to your life he’ll do his best to live it normally while you ride along as a helpless passenger. All the while this is accompanied by a dull chewing sensation as he metaphysically removes pieces of what he’s experiencing. When he departs that troublesome relationship, chronic disorder or hard-earned skill goes with him.

Arlan can’t possess people without their permission. He’d love to, it’d make things so much easier, but his powers don’t seem to work that way. He claims to have once been ensorcelled as the familiar of a powerful adept who crippled that ability while granting him others. Regardless of whether this is true he needs to negotiate for possession and for whatever reason he’s true to his word.

He does this by offering to remove things: disorders, toxic relationships, bad memories. In return he wants access to the good stuff (and since he can’t force you to give it up he wants it first), your positive traits, skills and life experiences. Once agreed on, he’s in the driver’s seat and you’re looking over his shoulder, locked out of your own body. The rank 6 Unnatural check from this experience dissuades a lot of repeat custom from people who aren’t desperate. Arlan can hear you (but not talk back, except by speaking aloud) while this is going on but he can’t or won’t hand back control until the negotiated time is up. He does his best but for most the experience is like watching a hapless tourist clumsily navigate a foreign culture, except that culture is your life.

The reason for all of this is simple. Arlan doesn't belong in our universe, he's the demonic equivalent of a neverwhen person. A refugee from a universe where things worked differently and he’s building himself a scavenged spacesuit out of the scraps of other people’s lives, something that will let him survive in our alien environment. Something that will - he hopes - let him take on physical form.

Arlan’s personality is in flux. There’s an earnest core, full of stilted speech and frank admissions but around it the built up material of his conquests form aspects of his ever changing self. Pirated identities give him new personality traits, positive or otherwise, while the baggage he takes on form psychological cancerous cysts just waiting to be purged on to whoever crosses him.

Arlan the Gnawer, Hungry for Life
Wound Threshold: 50. Intangible for now, Arlan can only be harmed by the kinds of magick that harm demons. That might change when he’s built up enough to create a physical body.
Urge - Be You 50%: For every 24 hours of uninterrupted possession a roll on this identity does damage like a hand-to-hand attack against an identity or relationship, adding that same amount to Arlan’s stash. Other aspects like disorders and notches should have wound thresholds assigned to them by the GM and are only properly removed when that value is exceeded.
Toxic Baggage 40%: Arlan might not be able to possess people without permission, but he can still ruin their lives. With a successful roll he can dump one of the negative things he has collected on someone, this happens at the same 24-hours-per-roll rate as removal but does not require possession.