Celebrity-obsession has replaced religion for many, a one-sided devotion spurred by a multi-billion dollar industry providing diversions and illusions of people who are scarcely a reflection of their manufactured images. For those with little else to fill their lives this can grow from idle pastime to consuming obsession, creating creepy obsessives and dangerous stalkers.
Frank wasn’t like that (he was). I mean, he got better (a couple of times, actually). What he’ll mean to tell you when he’s explaining it (and, oh boy, he’ll never stop trying to explain it) is that he doesn’t need it anymore. He doesn’t need the cluttered house full of posters and knick-knacks and signed photos. He’s punched all the way through to the other side and come out his own man. Kinda.
It’s not true at all. Frank has traded misdemeanour stalking charges and a house full of junk for something less taxing but considerably darker. He’s started collecting ghosts. Having skirted the occult underground in the manner of many self-destructive obsessives, Frank’s journey had him taken advantage of by a rotating cast of chargers who found him a willing gopher in return for services they could trivially fulfill. It was a conflict between two of them that ended with him in possession of a ritual that allows him to seal ghosts of the recently deceased inside old mason jars.
The idea didn’t occur to him right away, it seemed almost profane when it did. Images of grief and messages of consolation on the six o’clock news at the revelation of a rockstar’s passing. Frank felt the same pang he always did when one of the pantheon left, his eye’s fell on the battered music book on his coffee table but disgust squashed the impulse. How could he? How could he dare to take something so sacred for himself? It took three days before he caved.
Frank’s collection is impressive considering he’s only been at it for a year. He’s performed the rite for more than a dozen celebrity figures but laments that he’s missed the opportunity to rescue just as many. They live in a collection of mason jars in his bathtub, he needs to keep running water passing over them or they won’t shut up. Not quite demons or the souls of the people they represent, the ghosts flit about their confinement in terror. To them the distinction of whether they actually are the people they were harvested from is academic. It bothers Frank that they don’t understand or appreciate what he’s done for them, the preservation of their special selves for all eternity. It’s ungrateful.
At least that’s how he’s justified terrorising his captives into compliance. Shaking them, making all kinds of dire threats. On one occasion he poured the smoky wisp of an irascible octogenarian veteran of the silver screen down the toilet in front of the others. He tells them it hurts him more than it hurts them.
STATS
Personality: Loudmouthed and eager to share. If he annoys or frightens people it takes Frank too long to notice, either that or he just doesn’t care. He’ll only get quiet when someone really lashes out at him. He won’t forget it either.
Rage: Being cut-off in conversation.
Noble: Preservation of aspirational ideals.
Fear: Starvation. The kind of terrible hunger where you ache constantly and feel yourself wasting away (Helplessness).
Obsession: Basking in celebrity ideal.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Obsessive Fan-Priest 75%* (Substitutes for Notice, Substitutes for Secrecy, Protects Isolation.)
Ghost Collector 45% (Specific Information: Ghost Interrogation, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Shock Gauges
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