Friday, 31 January 2020

276 - Ophelia Visser, Ouroboric Parthenogen

GMC: Ophelia Visser, Ouroboric Parthenogen

Ophelia murdered her parents so she could live forever. Insane? Yes, but raising a child in isolated worship of a cuckoo clock (He Who Sees All Histories And To All Futures Belong) was probably asking for it to some degree. Her reasoning was that by untethering her past she would be able to rewrite it, with the power of a major mechanomancy clockwork and ritual parricide she succeeded in the first only to be overwhelmed by the second. In a fit of panic she tied her flailing history to the only thing that was handy, her future.

Each instance of Ophelia is fated to survive for just shy of 75 years, in total she has lived for over 200. Every 37th anniversary of her parents death the younger Ophelia falls spontaneously pregnant, growing the next iteration of herself inside clockwork laced guts. Around these times is the most difficult, they are prefaced with caring for an increasingly infirm elder and followed by raising a prenaturally intelligent infant clone. Within months of the new birth the elder dies, her mind and memories passed to the new child by an act of cerebral self-cannibalism starting the cycle again.

Ophelia is a creature of her time, not only is it difficult to adjust attitudes held for centuries but for most of her life she has been content to maintain relative isolation. Childhood stories of witches tortured and burned are enough to overcome even the curiousity of her younger incarnations. Her once-ancestor’s facility for clockworking has proven elusive but thanks to lifetimes of correspondence with Europe’s sorcerer dynasties and the help of an eerily in-sync research partner she is one of the most accomplished ritualists alive. However even living on the outskirts of a small dutch village, the modern world is encroaching and it is proving increasingly difficult to maintain the fiction of a lone woman perpetually raising a daughter or caring for an ailing grandmother.

Ophelia has reached out through channels maintained over lifetimes, passed down along familial lines from a time before her own. Many of the families are extinct or no longer practicing the old arts. The few that remain can only give her sparse leads towards what she wants, she’ll have to venture out into the world to get it. Ophelia has heard of alternate realms of existence - otherspaces - and wishes to escape into one permanently to avoid discovery. Doing so in secret would be wise, there’s no shortage of weirdos desperate enough to live forever that they would risk feeding their brains to the infant Ophelia and trying to take her place in the cycle.

STATS
Personality:
Ophelia is like an irascible grandparent whose incredibly dated attitudes and opinions barely even register today but have been reinforced by years of spending time with only other versions of herself for company. She tries to bull through any problems she comes up against with spooky obstinance.
Rage: Skepticism. Of course magick is real! If you don’t get out of my way I’ll prove it to you!
Noble: Potential. Whether it’s a person or an objective, Ophelia appreciates things pregnant with possibilities.
Fear: Fire. The idea of burning alive is something she has traumatised her younger selves with for hundreds of years.
Obsession: Life everlasting.
Wound Threshold: 50.

Reclusive Sorcerer 90% (Substitutes for Secrecy, Evaluates Unnatural, Coerces Unnatural.)
Eldritch Rebirth 80%* (Vague Information: Recalling lives past and fragments of the future, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Woodworker 45% (Substitutes for Notice, Unique - Can make intricate wooden crafts, Protects Isolation.)

Shock Gauges

Notches
Violence
Unnatural
Helplessness
Isolation
Self
Hardened
3
6
2
3
4
Failed
1
2
0
1
2

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