Monique had a calling, she was going to be a famous artist. The problem was that skill doesn’t amount to artistic vision and even with both becoming successful in that world is a matter of luck and patronage. She doesn't have talent or luck or much in the way of connections, but she did have technical skill in spades. Finding her dreams stymied by this ugly reality she ended up using it to resentfully carve out a small niche for herself as an independent art appraiser.
Unwilling to let go of her dreams she keeps a small warehouse studio where she learned about the pieces she got her hands on by studying and reproducing them, trying to discover some secret aspect that made them special by piecemeal. Her first full "forgery" was an inadvertent mistake, it paved the way for Monique to finally take full advantage of her skills when she passed on her own version in error and didn't catch the mistake until much later. No one else caught on and eventually she was able to dispose of the original on the black market. For just over a year she flourished this way by siphoning off valuable works, a secret side business making her richer than she'd imagined possible.
It's a painting called Our Flower'd Majesty that caused her all her current troubles. Intended as the downstream component in a year long ritual, Monique ended up inadvertently spoiling its magickal resonance when she replaced the original with a duplicate as it passed through the hands of a colleague. The adept ritualist on the other end of the deal was not at all understanding about the exchange ruining months upon months of work, within weeks Monique found she could produce nothing but more copies of the purloined painting.
Whenever Monique puts brush to canvas, paper or any other surface the result is now always some variation of that stolen artwork. Her warehouse studio is full of them as she has experimented with every iteration she can conceive of like Francis Bacon's many, increasingly baroque studies of Pope Innocent X. In order to break this curse she must satisfy one condition, she must produce a flawless forgery, a perfect copy of her stolen prize that not even she can distinguish from the original. At this point she's so far off base it's unlikely she'll figure it out alone. If she ends up in the occult underground looking for answers it may lead her straight to the curse's originator without her even realizing.
STATS
Personality: Incorrigible deadpan sarcasm, if Monique can make it through three sentences without an eye-roll she’s probably been replaced by a doppelganger. She's otherwise sharp and knowledgeable and witty enough to easily play to people's sensibilities.
Rage: Don't call me lazy.
Noble: Preservation and conservation of art.
Fear: I'll never really paint again! (Unnatural)
Obsession: Self-actualization through art.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Art History Grad 50% (Substitutes for Knowledge, Evaluates Self, Protects Helplessness.)
Expert Art Forger 70%* (Substitutes for Notice, Substitutes for Secrecy, Unique: Can make art forgeries.)
Shock Gauges
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