Tachypsychia is the name for the sensation of time’s passage slowing in response to great danger. Bloodstream and brain awash with with adrenaline, objects appear to move in slow motion as fear, anger and anxiety take hold. Heartbeat quickens, blood pressure rises and bronchial passages dilate to prepare for the coming peril. It’s Leon’s holy grail.
He always was a daredevil of a kid, pushing two steps beyond the “how did I survive that?” of most people’s childhood recollections. A naturally high level of energy and addiction to the adrenaline rush were a ticket to constant scrapes, detentions and more than one visit from the police. Absentee parents who were too busy raising more kids than they’d planned for meant supervision was occasional and inconsistently applied, so he never grew out of it.
Applied to little else Leon’s mind fixated on the intense sensations and emotions he could wring out of it. He built a private mythology out of his experiments. Over time this matured into delusion which became the basis for his spontaneous development of entropomancy. By giving himself over to situations in which he has a total lack of control Leon feels as though he has learned to ride the waves, to stretch those moments out like taffy on command. He believes that if he can find just the right approach he might be able to use one of them to live forever. He hasn’t read it, but he would consider Jorge Borges’ The Secret Miracle a masterpiece (an admittedly low bar considering he hasn’t read anything since high school).
Irregularly employed, Leon gets by on the largess of a wide array of counterculture friends, the occasional bit of gig economy work and larceny. He’s been to jail a handful of times for petty infractions but never something heavy enough to warrant prison (and it’s unlikely he would survive long in that environment). He had a short-lived stint where he tried to sell his services to the occult underground as a type of risk-taking mercenary who would do any dangerous job but his impulsiveness put an end to that. He’ll still try it out on newcomers even though two of his old clients have made it clear they’ll break his legs if they catch him at it again. Most of the underground either think he’s hilarious or aggravating depending on their disposition and whether he’s pissed them off lately.
STATS
Personality: Impulsive, risk-seeking and very funny. Leon can’t help but constantly crack jokes, especially under stress. The worse things are the more incorrigibly wiseass he gets. It belies a certain loneliness that only a few pick up on that makes up the other half of his obsession.
Rage: Drugs. He’s experimented in the past but now Leon considers anything harder than caffeine to be bad juju.
Noble: Physical excellence.
Fear: No one really likes me (Isolation).
Obsession: Experiencing moments that will last forever.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Daredevil 70% (Substitutes for Dodge, Substitutes for Pursuit, Provides Initiative.)
Entropomancer 50%* (Adept, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Shock Gauges
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