Humanity, where equipped, has despoiled its environment out of a bottomless collective appetite and little grasp of impact and responsibility on a global level. No matter how much we profess restraint and moral rectitude, the aspects that play for grasping self-interest take precedence every time. On species-wide scale, at least. That is what Savannah believes.
A fervent environmentalist in her college years, her enthusiasm was dulled by the repeated rebuffs of finding out that a plucky attitude wasn’t enough to stand up to entrenched, monied interests. Wounded pride pushed her toward the kind of groups that vandalise logging and mining equipment, but an experience with a wildlife conservation program in grad school put her on a different path.
Savannah won’t talk about it now, not even to the people that she trusts but she knows the thing that the thing she woke up to find rooting around her tent, the thing that was driven off by warning shots from the program head’s rifle, wasn’t a bear. Bears don’t have thumbs or flat, human faces. Bears can’t speak. Once it became clear that pressing that point was only going to invite ridicule she changed tact and feigned acceptance that she’d imagined it talking, weeping and begging for “little Macey and little William” in two different voices between thick, glottal sobs.
In reality she couldn’t let it go. Her eyes were opened to the possibility of a world full of the monsters that we cluck and titter over the non-existence of whenever the subject arises. Sasquatch, Nessie, El Chupacabra: some, perhaps most, are blatant falsehoods but Savannah now had her own proof that there was more than conventional wisdom would allow room for. Realizing this gave her hope. The WWF places the number of animal populations wiped out by humans since 1970 at 60%. There’s no room in our world for animals that don’t serve us and, worse, those that do are shackled to our needs. The existence of an entire class of fauna that conventional science won’t acknowledge is an end run around the entire system. So long as it can be kept quiet.
To this end she became a cryptozoologist and a flamboyant one. Playing to all the worst stereotypes of her vocation allows Savannah to poison public discourse with ridiculous behaviour even as she genuinely investigates sightings and reports of cryptid activity. Most of the time it’s nothing except too much beer or kids playing a prank but sometimes there’s something serious and she does her best to muddy the waters.
At a small ranch in the middle of nowhere Savannah keeps and tries to care for the two specimens forced into her hands by circumstance: a small, masterless Unspeakable Servant she caught wreaking havoc on an RV park and an escapee Freudian Chimera. They aren’t the only needles she’s dug out of haystacks, but contriving to hide them here was the only option for those two. If it ever does come down to needing to prove herself right to someone at least it means she has incontrovertible evidence.
STATS
Personality: A guarded optimist who’s been burnt before, Savannah goes right for the deep and meaningful when she’s gauging to anyone she’s just met. Small talk can come later,
Rage: Self-serving cynicism. Using it as a way to cloak ignoble actions as somehow mature and worldly really gets Savannah’s goat.
Noble: Environmentalism. Savannah knows she’s on a weird path, but the roots of her beliefs are still very much her heart.
Fear: Physical Violence. Injury is fine and so is accident but wilful, intentional harm terrifies Savannah (Violence).
Obsession: Hide and care for unnatural critters.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Charlatan 45%* (Substitutes for Lie, Coerces Unnatural, Evaluates Unnatural.)
Unnatural Conservationist 50% (Substitutes for Secrecy, Substitutes for Dodge, Casts Rituals.)
Trust Fund Kid 25% (Substitutes for Status, Protects Helplessness, Unique - A little money to throw around.)
Shock Gauges
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