Unnatural Entity: The Worm That Eats
"Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head."
- H.P Lovecraft, The Festival
Gluttony is excessive consumption that deprives another of life-giving necessity. It is malignant primacy of personal pleasure and greed that starves those in its wake, like a cancer. It says "my hunger has dominion over you" as it snuffs them out before turning on its owner. That's the criteria for creation of a worm that eats: someone's excessive appetites, appetites which defined them, must have killed or destroyed others before devouring them in turn. While food is the first thing that usually comes to mind when gluttony is mentioned it isn't limited to the gastronomic, drugs, sex, gambling or any other voracious esurience equally qualifies.
Unlike demons, worms aren't the product of unfulfilled obsession, they are the obsession filled past bursting. Buoyed by the death it has caused and darkly reflected in the decay and consumption of its vessel, the hunger refuses to rest. It twists the graveworms, bacteria and carrion feeders (one bizarre example was made mostly out of vultures) who feast on the dead glutton into a rough, bipedal approximation of their image and sends it out to eat again.
Vestigial elements of the original personality persist but worms aren't their parent. They only want to consume in ways that are harmful to others and batten on the resulting suffering. All else is deception. When fat and sleek with other's deprivation they are intelligent and crafty, even charming in the limited ways they have to communicate. They disguise their inhuman nature with heavy clothing and masks, manifesting their power to draw in the vulnerable (once per day an uninjured worm can broadcast a compulsion over 3 miles to someone that shares its appetites, rank 4 stress check on an appropriate gauge if they choose to resist). Only when heavily damaged do these personality vestiges come to the fore. Trying to remember how to fill the yawning abyss inside itself, a wounded worm will idiotically retread the old haunts and habits of its progenitor, starving and barely bothering to hide its nature.
Ultimately bottomless, the hunger will eventually consume itself. The question is how many others will it eat first.
The Worm That Eats, Dead Hunger Walking
Wound Threshold: 50+. Worms start out with normal human wound threshold, but this increases over time as it eats. A byproduct of this means that a worm requires more to sustain itself the greater it becomes and eventually this is unsustainable. Every day a worm takes damage equal to 1/10th of its maximum wounds out of autocannibalism, although this can be mitigated by feeding. Firearms usually do hand-to-hand damage since it doesn't have vital organs, but the GM may allow exceptions.
Feed 100%: Roll this identity when a worm's indulgence seriously harms somebody (mentally or physically), adding the sum of a successful roll to its wound threshold. If they died add 10 points. If this takes it above its maximum then the maximum increases to accommodate. For every point of damage a worm has sustained, this identity takes an equal negative shift. Eventually, unable to feed itself enough, a worm will inevitably collapse.
Echo 25+3d10%: Something of their original life, usually ignored.
Carrionform 60%: This identity covers abilities unique to the make up of a given worm. One made out of maggots could use it to slide under a door or the aforementioned vulture-worm could use it to fly - clumsily. Capped at wound threshold.
Thursday, 22 August 2019
Wednesday, 21 August 2019
113 - Contagious Memory
Unnatural Phenomenon: Contagious Memory
Our internal worlds are walled gardens of history and experience stored as conditioning and memory. Memory isn’t accurate recall, it bends and twists to serve purpose. Stories at odds with self-image are recontextualised to sooth the ego, social influence breeds false consensus and trauma looms large. Even innocent intention doesn’t escape its slippery nature, every time you think back on an event you change it by adding facets of your current state to its retrieval and gradually transforming it into the eroded artifact of a lifelong game of telephone. Nonetheless we rely on memory to tell us who we are by what we’ve done and in understanding that conceptualise the self. In smaller doses we learn from past experiences and in even smaller doses share it with others.
Phenomenon that breach the private amnion of this experience and cause our memories to spill over into others or others into us are fundamentally disorienting.
Shared narco-alchemical drug trips, demons hellbent on equalizing the internal states of several people and cabals deliberately marching toward hiveminded bliss: there are no shortage of magickal vectors for the experience. It can come on as hallucinatory vision of other’s experiences, a sourceless implant of a foreign internalised view or temporary dissolution of the self combined with a spiritual spin cycle. One person might share with a group, a group might share with just one person or everyone present could end up in the reminiscence gumbo.
Occasionally a single memory will ricochet or spread through a population over an extended period, along a specific method of contagion. Relational triggers from actions or the environment can provide some small degree of control over exactly what is shared (and give GMs and players a thematic rudder to exploit when using or subjected to it), but the outcome could just as easily be dictated by the source of the phenomenon or subject to so many factors as to seem completely random.
The effect can be unifying and alienating, it can be damaging, it can be therapeutic. What it is never, even in its most mundane incarnation, is ordinary. Although you might not remember it that way.
Our internal worlds are walled gardens of history and experience stored as conditioning and memory. Memory isn’t accurate recall, it bends and twists to serve purpose. Stories at odds with self-image are recontextualised to sooth the ego, social influence breeds false consensus and trauma looms large. Even innocent intention doesn’t escape its slippery nature, every time you think back on an event you change it by adding facets of your current state to its retrieval and gradually transforming it into the eroded artifact of a lifelong game of telephone. Nonetheless we rely on memory to tell us who we are by what we’ve done and in understanding that conceptualise the self. In smaller doses we learn from past experiences and in even smaller doses share it with others.
Phenomenon that breach the private amnion of this experience and cause our memories to spill over into others or others into us are fundamentally disorienting.
Shared narco-alchemical drug trips, demons hellbent on equalizing the internal states of several people and cabals deliberately marching toward hiveminded bliss: there are no shortage of magickal vectors for the experience. It can come on as hallucinatory vision of other’s experiences, a sourceless implant of a foreign internalised view or temporary dissolution of the self combined with a spiritual spin cycle. One person might share with a group, a group might share with just one person or everyone present could end up in the reminiscence gumbo.
Occasionally a single memory will ricochet or spread through a population over an extended period, along a specific method of contagion. Relational triggers from actions or the environment can provide some small degree of control over exactly what is shared (and give GMs and players a thematic rudder to exploit when using or subjected to it), but the outcome could just as easily be dictated by the source of the phenomenon or subject to so many factors as to seem completely random.
The effect can be unifying and alienating, it can be damaging, it can be therapeutic. What it is never, even in its most mundane incarnation, is ordinary. Although you might not remember it that way.
Tuesday, 20 August 2019
112 - Ghost Car
Ritual: Ghost Car
Cost: 4 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Take two functional cars involved in “phantom vehicle” incidents (one that causes injury, damage or fatality without physical contact) and wreck one half of each of them. Rebuild the remains of the vehicles into a cut and shut car (one that is jigsawed together from the undamaged halves of both). Cancel any registration, official records of both original vehicles need to be at least a year out of date.
Once these conditions are met the ritual can be cast: mount the hood ornament from a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost that has been urinated on by a defrocked priest and bled upon by a viaturge onto the car and spend the charges. The hood ornament can be reused in future castings but must be rebaptised first. Don’t roll for the ritual until its effects activate.
Effect: The trigger for activating the ritual is crashing the car the next time it is driven. A successful roll causes it and its contents to become temporarily intangible long enough to avoid the collision, but only for a number of feet equal to the roll (an 01 gives you 100 feet, if the distance is greater than that the ritual automatically fails). The car blinks out of existence and continues along the same plane at the same speed before reappearing. To anyone inside the car the transition seems instantaneous.
If the ritual roll isn’t high enough to clear the obstacle then the crash happens as normal, there’s no rematerializing stuck in the middle of a wall or an oncoming semi. You also don't get to mulligan a second crash, even if the ritual put you in that position.
Cost: 4 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Take two functional cars involved in “phantom vehicle” incidents (one that causes injury, damage or fatality without physical contact) and wreck one half of each of them. Rebuild the remains of the vehicles into a cut and shut car (one that is jigsawed together from the undamaged halves of both). Cancel any registration, official records of both original vehicles need to be at least a year out of date.
Once these conditions are met the ritual can be cast: mount the hood ornament from a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost that has been urinated on by a defrocked priest and bled upon by a viaturge onto the car and spend the charges. The hood ornament can be reused in future castings but must be rebaptised first. Don’t roll for the ritual until its effects activate.
Effect: The trigger for activating the ritual is crashing the car the next time it is driven. A successful roll causes it and its contents to become temporarily intangible long enough to avoid the collision, but only for a number of feet equal to the roll (an 01 gives you 100 feet, if the distance is greater than that the ritual automatically fails). The car blinks out of existence and continues along the same plane at the same speed before reappearing. To anyone inside the car the transition seems instantaneous.
If the ritual roll isn’t high enough to clear the obstacle then the crash happens as normal, there’s no rematerializing stuck in the middle of a wall or an oncoming semi. You also don't get to mulligan a second crash, even if the ritual put you in that position.
Monday, 19 August 2019
111 - Sciamachy
Supernatural Identity: Sciamachy
Professional fighting is a rough game, economically speaking. Sure you’ve got megastar athletes earning millions of dollars on high-end fights but as with most lucrative careers there’s a vast number of people just getting by. Average yearly earnings for a professional boxer are around $35K and expenses like travel, training and management fees come out of that. Most have a second job while trying to make it big. Most, by the competitive nature of the sport, do not make it big.
Superstition in boxing is about as common as it is in sailors and gamblers. Sports are already a motley of arcane rules around pursuit of a goal, so adding a little psychic grist to placebo an athlete into a better mental state isn’t just tolerated, it’s celebrated. Lucky charms, pre-fight rituals, omens: they’re all part of the pageant.
These two factors set the stage for David Sousa to fall ass backwards into magick through a combination of desperation to succeed and receptiveness to superstition. A hard luck case who had once been the archetypal up-and-comer it was a personal problems and poor judgement that led to his inability to get off the ground. His no-good scam artist of a brother constantly dragging him into trouble and his sister’s bad taste in men creating the same, he struggled to balance familial responsibility, his own ambitions and his vices. Ultimately it soured his career with a string of losses and some resulting trouble with the law put him away for a while.
Of all the things to come back out with, a thorough schooling in magick courtesy of his entropomancer cellmate is probably the last thing anyone expected. While not a chaos mage himself, Sousa has developed an arcane practice that many attribute to unimpeded training while he was inside. David has taken his inner demons and harnessed his futile battles against them to psychically dominate his opponents. He’s finally making some headway and people are starting to pay attention. Hopefully not the wrong kind of people.
Sciamachy, shadow boxing, is a Specific Harm supernatural identity with the following caveats. David makes a roll on this identity before a match (he could theoretically do it in a real fight too, but he’d need a moment or two to psyche himself up first): if he has more total hardened and total failed notches on his gauges than his opponent he gets a +20% shift, if he only beats them in one category the roll is at base value. On the other hand if his opponent is carrying more damage than he is then the results of his roll are automatically downgraded a step, matched success becomes success, success becomes failure, etc. Any results play out during the fight.
The effects are subtle but telling, sudden fatigue and critical missteps by his opponents as they are overwhelmed by his projected problems and discontent. Of course, unfortunately, being able to psyche out your opponent by being more messed up than they are doesn’t exactly incentivise taking good care of yourself.
Professional fighting is a rough game, economically speaking. Sure you’ve got megastar athletes earning millions of dollars on high-end fights but as with most lucrative careers there’s a vast number of people just getting by. Average yearly earnings for a professional boxer are around $35K and expenses like travel, training and management fees come out of that. Most have a second job while trying to make it big. Most, by the competitive nature of the sport, do not make it big.
Superstition in boxing is about as common as it is in sailors and gamblers. Sports are already a motley of arcane rules around pursuit of a goal, so adding a little psychic grist to placebo an athlete into a better mental state isn’t just tolerated, it’s celebrated. Lucky charms, pre-fight rituals, omens: they’re all part of the pageant.
These two factors set the stage for David Sousa to fall ass backwards into magick through a combination of desperation to succeed and receptiveness to superstition. A hard luck case who had once been the archetypal up-and-comer it was a personal problems and poor judgement that led to his inability to get off the ground. His no-good scam artist of a brother constantly dragging him into trouble and his sister’s bad taste in men creating the same, he struggled to balance familial responsibility, his own ambitions and his vices. Ultimately it soured his career with a string of losses and some resulting trouble with the law put him away for a while.
Of all the things to come back out with, a thorough schooling in magick courtesy of his entropomancer cellmate is probably the last thing anyone expected. While not a chaos mage himself, Sousa has developed an arcane practice that many attribute to unimpeded training while he was inside. David has taken his inner demons and harnessed his futile battles against them to psychically dominate his opponents. He’s finally making some headway and people are starting to pay attention. Hopefully not the wrong kind of people.
Sciamachy, shadow boxing, is a Specific Harm supernatural identity with the following caveats. David makes a roll on this identity before a match (he could theoretically do it in a real fight too, but he’d need a moment or two to psyche himself up first): if he has more total hardened and total failed notches on his gauges than his opponent he gets a +20% shift, if he only beats them in one category the roll is at base value. On the other hand if his opponent is carrying more damage than he is then the results of his roll are automatically downgraded a step, matched success becomes success, success becomes failure, etc. Any results play out during the fight.
The effects are subtle but telling, sudden fatigue and critical missteps by his opponents as they are overwhelmed by his projected problems and discontent. Of course, unfortunately, being able to psyche out your opponent by being more messed up than they are doesn’t exactly incentivise taking good care of yourself.
Sunday, 18 August 2019
110 - Mindwrite Protype 7
Artifact: Mindwrite Protype 7
Power: Significant.
Description: A vintage 1993 Playskool Sing-A-Long child’s tape player/recorder. Its brightly coloured plastic facade has been modified, an embossing label maker has been used to name it and one of the microphones has been cut away so a crude, homemade EEG cap could be wired in place. Inside the circuitry is a mess, it shouldn’t even function. Instead the haphazard pattern of solder, transistors and foreign microchips is arranged in symbols found in kabbalah, raëlism and goetia. It does function just fine though, in most circumstances it acts as a normal tape recorder.
Included are 4 compact cassette tapes with a playtime of 33 minutes per side, which themselves have been modified with a green material along the magnetic strip and sides with “RECORD!!” and “PLAY” written in permanent marker. If they are used appropriately in the recorder then it performs its intended function. They are one-use objects and if you screw up with a partial recording that particular tape is rendered useless.
Effect: By attaching the EEG cap to a subject and recording for a full side on one of the tapes you can create a limited duplicate of their mind. It’s like a ghost, a recording of emotional and mental energies, an image instead of a full person. Flip it over, press play and you have a 33 minute window to interact with it via the microphone and the speakers.
Going from having a weird rubber hat on their head while hooked up to a tape recorder to suddenly finding themselves trapped in a pitch dark space with no bodily senses except a directionless voice speaking to them is predictably hard on the recording’s mental health. Try to keep them calm, if they push against it too hard the tape won’t be able to handle the stress and the whole thing will come to pieces.
Stressors reduce the fidelity of the recording (this includes anything that would cause a stress check to the original and especially coercion attempts). If it starts out at 100% then the first shock drops it to 66%, the second to 33% and a third shreds the tape's contents in a brief storm of magnetic static. If it’s necessary to determine whether a recording is able to recall things or act like the original use these percentages as either a guideline or straight chance on a dice roll.
Recorded minds have several other limitations:
Power: Significant.
Description: A vintage 1993 Playskool Sing-A-Long child’s tape player/recorder. Its brightly coloured plastic facade has been modified, an embossing label maker has been used to name it and one of the microphones has been cut away so a crude, homemade EEG cap could be wired in place. Inside the circuitry is a mess, it shouldn’t even function. Instead the haphazard pattern of solder, transistors and foreign microchips is arranged in symbols found in kabbalah, raëlism and goetia. It does function just fine though, in most circumstances it acts as a normal tape recorder.
Included are 4 compact cassette tapes with a playtime of 33 minutes per side, which themselves have been modified with a green material along the magnetic strip and sides with “RECORD!!” and “PLAY” written in permanent marker. If they are used appropriately in the recorder then it performs its intended function. They are one-use objects and if you screw up with a partial recording that particular tape is rendered useless.
Effect: By attaching the EEG cap to a subject and recording for a full side on one of the tapes you can create a limited duplicate of their mind. It’s like a ghost, a recording of emotional and mental energies, an image instead of a full person. Flip it over, press play and you have a 33 minute window to interact with it via the microphone and the speakers.
Going from having a weird rubber hat on their head while hooked up to a tape recorder to suddenly finding themselves trapped in a pitch dark space with no bodily senses except a directionless voice speaking to them is predictably hard on the recording’s mental health. Try to keep them calm, if they push against it too hard the tape won’t be able to handle the stress and the whole thing will come to pieces.
Stressors reduce the fidelity of the recording (this includes anything that would cause a stress check to the original and especially coercion attempts). If it starts out at 100% then the first shock drops it to 66%, the second to 33% and a third shreds the tape's contents in a brief storm of magnetic static. If it’s necessary to determine whether a recording is able to recall things or act like the original use these percentages as either a guideline or straight chance on a dice roll.
Recorded minds have several other limitations:
- Identities possessed by the original can be accessed (with a cap of 40%) but only in ways that can be performed by a voice on a cassette player. This only applies to mundane identities: supernatural powers, adept magick or avatar channels are strictly verboten.
- While they will still act in line with them, they can not flip-flop or reroll with passions or an obsession.
- Factual recall is limited to just over 3 days prior to making the recording. Drawing attention to this probably counts as a stressor. The only exceptions are subjects and memories specifically thought about by the original during the recording process.
- You may pause playback of the recording at any time, however once a recording is started the recorded mind’s sense of the passage of time is continuous. The results of leaving them alone in what is essentially a state of total sensory deprivation for extended periods are predictably horrible.
Saturday, 17 August 2019
109 - Rorschaching
Supernatural Identity: Rorschaching
People see the things they have been conditioned to see. Like a Skinner box the world shapes belief along neurological paths of least resistance. Creating, shattering and reinforcing schema as tectonic forces and weather influence strata. Broad strokes are the necessities for biological life, things like food, sex and shelter but as you hone in variation emerges. You get culture as shared experiences and beliefs. Below that are the individual eccentricities, the things we celebrate or hide. The aspects that separate and make us unique and are ultimately, inalienably personal. As social animals we can communicate them, to an extent that’s what culture is, but no one can really know another person’s mind.
Rorschaching is a type of mental hacking that broaches the gap. Conventional psychotherapy is the cultural equivalent, attempting to inculcate pro-social conformity and acceptance while maintaining its own integrity. Rorschaching piggybacks on it, lensing someone’s issues through a heavily personalized perspective to achieve the same ends. In doing so it also subsumes their passions for yours, temporarily. The primary Unique feature of the Rorschaching identity works as the Therapeutic and Alter Passion features, sharing the capabilities and downsides of both.
For example: after a long period of explaining to your buddy that his poisonous relationship with his mother is really a reflective issue of personal hygiene it suddenly clicks and everything makes sense. A successful roll means he can let go of a hardened notch on his Isolation gauge if he wants, it also means he inherits your fear passion "germs are everywhere" for a number of hours equal to the tens place of the roll.
Alternatively, maybe you blow it. You get too far up your own ass expounding and he realises how fucked up it is to be making serious comparisons between his family and bacteria and how he was so into it. Fumble the roll and it’s the GMs choice of a rank 3-5 Self or Unnatural check (or both if they’re feeling mean about it) for your friend. You probably won’t be hearing from him again for a while.
Naturally this doesn’t always fit the mold of therapy. It can (there are some weird alternative medicines out there), but Rorschaching has more in common with running a cult than a psychiatrist's practice. Given the risks to the target’s sense of self in a lot of cases you’re just trading one type of damage for another and patting yourself on the back because it fits your worldview. It can be abusive and in some cases the user may not even realise they are doing harm. In the worst cases that’s why they’re doing it.
People see the things they have been conditioned to see. Like a Skinner box the world shapes belief along neurological paths of least resistance. Creating, shattering and reinforcing schema as tectonic forces and weather influence strata. Broad strokes are the necessities for biological life, things like food, sex and shelter but as you hone in variation emerges. You get culture as shared experiences and beliefs. Below that are the individual eccentricities, the things we celebrate or hide. The aspects that separate and make us unique and are ultimately, inalienably personal. As social animals we can communicate them, to an extent that’s what culture is, but no one can really know another person’s mind.
Rorschaching is a type of mental hacking that broaches the gap. Conventional psychotherapy is the cultural equivalent, attempting to inculcate pro-social conformity and acceptance while maintaining its own integrity. Rorschaching piggybacks on it, lensing someone’s issues through a heavily personalized perspective to achieve the same ends. In doing so it also subsumes their passions for yours, temporarily. The primary Unique feature of the Rorschaching identity works as the Therapeutic and Alter Passion features, sharing the capabilities and downsides of both.
For example: after a long period of explaining to your buddy that his poisonous relationship with his mother is really a reflective issue of personal hygiene it suddenly clicks and everything makes sense. A successful roll means he can let go of a hardened notch on his Isolation gauge if he wants, it also means he inherits your fear passion "germs are everywhere" for a number of hours equal to the tens place of the roll.
Alternatively, maybe you blow it. You get too far up your own ass expounding and he realises how fucked up it is to be making serious comparisons between his family and bacteria and how he was so into it. Fumble the roll and it’s the GMs choice of a rank 3-5 Self or Unnatural check (or both if they’re feeling mean about it) for your friend. You probably won’t be hearing from him again for a while.
Naturally this doesn’t always fit the mold of therapy. It can (there are some weird alternative medicines out there), but Rorschaching has more in common with running a cult than a psychiatrist's practice. Given the risks to the target’s sense of self in a lot of cases you’re just trading one type of damage for another and patting yourself on the back because it fits your worldview. It can be abusive and in some cases the user may not even realise they are doing harm. In the worst cases that’s why they’re doing it.
Friday, 16 August 2019
108 - Adrienne Gingras, Truant Fashionista & Alice Gingras, Grim Vizier
GMC: Adrienne Gingras, Truant Fashionista & Alice Gingras, Grim Vizier
Urbane. Charming. Scatterbrained Daydreamer. Adrienne is a darling of the fashion world, her eccentricities tolerated and celebrated for her pedigree as the daughter of a centuries old garment-making dynasty and her occasional splashes of outright genius. She flouts her responsibility to the Gingras name, choosing to neglect the multinational brand to the care of her younger sister, Alice, for a more introspective journey to spiritual wealth. Unfettered access to money and a private jet certainly don’t hurt though.
Both women grew up understanding that they were part of a tradition that would provide them with the best life had to offer, but that it came with certain costs. They would be expected to perform in roles that had been established generations ago and sacrifice any other ambitions. Adrienne, being the eldest, was indoctrinated in the practice of Vestimancy by their father and took to it with verve. She just didn’t take the message that it was her job to sit in an office and callously dictate the flow of vogue to the world, she craved her own vision of seeking fashion’s highest purpose.
Alice’s jealousy at being excluded boiled. Her attempts to sneak access to the secrets being taught to her sister were repeatedly discovered and punished. It was the sole right of the eldest to the secret knowledge of magick. It wouldn’t have mattered, her obsessional rivalry clouded headway she could have made with the arcane and her aptitudes were ultimately in the prosaic elements of running a business.
Which is what she does now, excellently. While Adrienne is out gallivanting across the globe in search of fashion’s own version of the holy grail her long suffering sister administrates the company, an arrangement set up by their father before he was strangled by a cravat (a grim coincidence honestly). He foresaw conflict between them and Adrienne’s inability to take her duties seriously gravely concerned him. Instead of cutting his losses and allowing Alice as an understudy he divided responsibilities between them. It was his limited way of showing that he loved them both.
Adrienne misses him horribly and wishes she could have made him understand. The old ways were a chain to what clothing could be: civilization isn’t dictated by expression, it is an expression unto itself. She takes delight in the sprawling cornucopia of global culture as proof of this, immersing herself in it while enjoying a privileged existence very few can manage. One week investigating new textiles in Istanbul and visiting archaeological sites in Greenland the next, she stays ahead of the curve while dropping the paltry crumbs of her genius in her sisters lap as an afterthought. The results have been breathtaking.
Alice’s resentment is spurred by jealousy. She cannot and doesn’t dare to cut her sister off, it would destroy their business. She does try to bring Adrienne to heel through whatever legal and financial wrangling she can muster and Adrienne gleefully keeps her distance. This cat-and-mouse game has been going on between the two of them for years, Adrienne taunting Alice and threatening to stray into the hands of a rival if she is cut off and Alice doing anything she can to keep Adrienne in line and limit her excesses. Ironically it’s drawn them closer together than ever.
STATS - Adrienne Gingras
Personality: Maniacal whimsy and scattered spirituality cosseted by piles of cash. It would be easy to dismiss Adrienne as a hack were it not for the fact that she can work literal miracles and has the weight of her inherited legacy behind her. She would do well to remember where it comes from but that would cramp her style. She loves Alice but is wary of her.
Rage: Being controlled by her stuffy younger sister.
Noble: Freedom. Caged birds sing the saddest songs.
Fear: Having to fend for herself and how it would limit her work (Helplessness).
Obsession: Find the highest spiritual truth of civilization mirrored in fashion.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Footloose Fashion Genius 70% (Substitutes for Status, Protects Isolation, Unique - Fashion industry connections.)
Vestimancer 50%* (Adept, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Shock Gauges
Rage: Her way or the highway.
Noble: Equal chances. Alice’s standards are ruthless but everyone gets an opportunity to prove themselves, regardless of station or origin.
Fear: That she wasn’t taught magick because she isn’t good enough (Self).
Obsession: Dominate the family business.
Wound Threshold: 60.
CEO 60%* (Substitutes for Status, Protects Helplessness, Unique - Control of a multinational fashion icon.)
Ruthless 60% (Substitutes for Fitness, Coerces Helplessness, Provides Wound Threshold.)
Shock Gauges
Urbane. Charming. Scatterbrained Daydreamer. Adrienne is a darling of the fashion world, her eccentricities tolerated and celebrated for her pedigree as the daughter of a centuries old garment-making dynasty and her occasional splashes of outright genius. She flouts her responsibility to the Gingras name, choosing to neglect the multinational brand to the care of her younger sister, Alice, for a more introspective journey to spiritual wealth. Unfettered access to money and a private jet certainly don’t hurt though.
Both women grew up understanding that they were part of a tradition that would provide them with the best life had to offer, but that it came with certain costs. They would be expected to perform in roles that had been established generations ago and sacrifice any other ambitions. Adrienne, being the eldest, was indoctrinated in the practice of Vestimancy by their father and took to it with verve. She just didn’t take the message that it was her job to sit in an office and callously dictate the flow of vogue to the world, she craved her own vision of seeking fashion’s highest purpose.
Alice’s jealousy at being excluded boiled. Her attempts to sneak access to the secrets being taught to her sister were repeatedly discovered and punished. It was the sole right of the eldest to the secret knowledge of magick. It wouldn’t have mattered, her obsessional rivalry clouded headway she could have made with the arcane and her aptitudes were ultimately in the prosaic elements of running a business.
Which is what she does now, excellently. While Adrienne is out gallivanting across the globe in search of fashion’s own version of the holy grail her long suffering sister administrates the company, an arrangement set up by their father before he was strangled by a cravat (a grim coincidence honestly). He foresaw conflict between them and Adrienne’s inability to take her duties seriously gravely concerned him. Instead of cutting his losses and allowing Alice as an understudy he divided responsibilities between them. It was his limited way of showing that he loved them both.
Adrienne misses him horribly and wishes she could have made him understand. The old ways were a chain to what clothing could be: civilization isn’t dictated by expression, it is an expression unto itself. She takes delight in the sprawling cornucopia of global culture as proof of this, immersing herself in it while enjoying a privileged existence very few can manage. One week investigating new textiles in Istanbul and visiting archaeological sites in Greenland the next, she stays ahead of the curve while dropping the paltry crumbs of her genius in her sisters lap as an afterthought. The results have been breathtaking.
Alice’s resentment is spurred by jealousy. She cannot and doesn’t dare to cut her sister off, it would destroy their business. She does try to bring Adrienne to heel through whatever legal and financial wrangling she can muster and Adrienne gleefully keeps her distance. This cat-and-mouse game has been going on between the two of them for years, Adrienne taunting Alice and threatening to stray into the hands of a rival if she is cut off and Alice doing anything she can to keep Adrienne in line and limit her excesses. Ironically it’s drawn them closer together than ever.
STATS - Adrienne Gingras
Personality: Maniacal whimsy and scattered spirituality cosseted by piles of cash. It would be easy to dismiss Adrienne as a hack were it not for the fact that she can work literal miracles and has the weight of her inherited legacy behind her. She would do well to remember where it comes from but that would cramp her style. She loves Alice but is wary of her.
Rage: Being controlled by her stuffy younger sister.
Noble: Freedom. Caged birds sing the saddest songs.
Fear: Having to fend for herself and how it would limit her work (Helplessness).
Obsession: Find the highest spiritual truth of civilization mirrored in fashion.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Footloose Fashion Genius 70% (Substitutes for Status, Protects Isolation, Unique - Fashion industry connections.)
Vestimancer 50%* (Adept, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Shock Gauges
STATS - Alice Gingras
Personality: Shrewd, calculating and a neurotic control-freak. Alice takes grim pleasure in taking out her frustrations on her professional rivals and errant underlings. Any perception of sororal affection is either calculated on her part or wishful thinking on the observer’s, she truly loathes her sister.Rage: Her way or the highway.
Noble: Equal chances. Alice’s standards are ruthless but everyone gets an opportunity to prove themselves, regardless of station or origin.
Fear: That she wasn’t taught magick because she isn’t good enough (Self).
Obsession: Dominate the family business.
Wound Threshold: 60.
CEO 60%* (Substitutes for Status, Protects Helplessness, Unique - Control of a multinational fashion icon.)
Ruthless 60% (Substitutes for Fitness, Coerces Helplessness, Provides Wound Threshold.)
Shock Gauges
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)