219 - Lionella Onio, Uplifter of Beasts

GMC: Lionella Onio, Uplifter of Beasts

Human beings are no different to any other animal. We build cities as termites do. Primates and cetaceans transmit culture through teaching. Even corvids have mastered tool use. What they can’t do is use magick.

For Nella that sticks in her craw. The wildlife rehabilitation officer working with the national parks service is unusual in that she values animal life exactly as much as human life. She resents the otherness that separates humanity from the animal kingdom and would do anything to elevate these creatures to the status she and her fellow hairless monkeys enjoy by accident. To her, your pet dog deserves just as much chance to ascend as The Good Boy as you do your chosen archetype.

She doesn’t hate people but will not tolerate those she associates with breaching her standards of personal behaviour. For example, veganism is a minimum to get her on side. Ironically the sorcerous experimentation she indulges in trying to fuzz the boundary that keeps magick in the strictly human purview would violate her standards if it weren’t for the ends she has in sight. Intelligence boosting, transgenics, xenotransplantation, Nella is not shy about trying to end run nature’s limitations with either magick or science.

It won’t be a success by her own standards, but there’s a ritual which allows deceased persons to be rehomed in new bodies that she’s currently haring after. Effectively it creates demons or something enough like them as to make little difference. Lionella doesn’t really understand this but thinks that she’s found the key to her dilemma and cannot wait to start using it to experiment with exactly what the boundary between us and them is and finding a way past it. Breeding these new “hybrid consciousnesses” in their animal bodies is the first thing she has in mind.

STATS
Personality: Idealistically cynical and warm. Lionella is wistfully disappointed in humanity and romanticizes the base behaviours and urges of the animals she spends so much time around.
Rage: Violence towards the “lesser”.
Noble: Protecting and promoting the lives and wellbeing of animals.
Fear: UFOs and greys. The incomprehensible and alien made flesh (Unnatural).
Obsession: Elevate animals to the same metaphysical level as humanity.
Wound Threshold: 50.

Wildlife Rehabilitator 60% (Substitutes for Fitness, Substitutes for Dodge, Medical.)
Avatar: The Tamer 60%* (Avatar, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)

Shock Gauges

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

218 - Undine Blessing

Ritual: Undine Blessing

Cost: 6 significant charges (2 per month).

Ritual Action: For the three-month (a season, from start to end) period of the ritual consume only food and water that comes from the sea (you can distill the salt out of the water for drinking). Dress only in blues and light greens. Make a pilgrimage at the end of each month to the nearest ocean, spending at least six hours immersed up to your neck bookended with a brief incantation in Dutch.

Before each immersion break the bones in your feet and legs, starting with your feet on the first visit, your lower legs on the second, then both of your thighs before the last. You can treat the breaks yourself but you cannot seek medical treatment from others until after the ritual is complete.

At the end of the last immersion, submerge yourself completely and hold your breath for as long as possible. You’ll pass out, but if it works you’ll survive.

Effect: You can now breathe water as though it were air. You can still breathe air too but it takes constant active attention to do so, it's not hard but if you fall asleep you’ll suffocate. This can be avoided by submerging your head in water or having a machine breathe for you while you’re unconscious. You have no other adaptations to surviving underwater. Skin damage, decompression sickness and psychological issues are all still present dangers from long and poorly planned underwater living.

217 - Jake Lonnigan, Shadow

GMC: Jake Lonnigan, Shadow

Jake broke the cardinal rule of dealing with demons. Don’t trust them. Using a ritual one gives you is a bit like sticking a pistol in your mouth and pulling the trigger. Sure, it might not be loaded but why take that kind of insane risk?

Jake didn’t die, but he almost might as well have. The demon who duped him took off with his body permanently, and Jake? Jake is relegated to occupying his own severed shadow like a messed up version of Peter Pan. The once budding ritualist can now travel unseen and fit in small spaces, be almost invulnerable to most normal kinds of harm and spy on all but the most vigilant. He also can’t talk, can’t eat (kind of, he consumes the shadows of food somehow) or touch anybody. He’s been stripped of so many of the things that make us human and clings to the few he has left.

It’s Jake’s relationships that really keep him human. Vicarious enjoyment of what we take for granted through the people he cares about is as close as he can get in a lot of cases. The only ones he can really interact with are his cabalmates and a handful of other occult underground weirdos, so its not exactly ideal. It gets a little creepy at times, as much as he hates that. His regular family have long disowned him thanks to the actions of the guy living in his old body.

If that's what keeps him human then finding that dead asshole and turfing him back out into the abyss is what keeps Jake going, instead of merely surviving. He trades the benefits of his new form to buy the services he needs to keep track of the guy as he zig-zags back and forth across the country. Once he gets ahold of him Jake won’t just destroy him, he’ll make sure the object of his undying obsession is ground to dust in front of his eyes.

STATS
Personality: Animated, limitations on how he can express himself mean that Jake has adapted by emoting much harder to get his message across. Otherwise he’s prone to extreme emotions as a result of coping with his current circumstances or little response at all.
Rage: Being taunted with the corporeal indulgences he can no longer have.
Noble: Bringing those who go unnoticed into the spotlight - negatively or positively.
Fear: Living like this forever (Unnatural).
Obsession: Find a way to return to normal.
Wound Threshold: 50 (kind of invulnerable to most kinds of regular harm, Jake can still be harmed by magick and the shadows of objects that would normally hurt him).

Shadow 70% (Substitutes for Secrecy, Substitutes for Dodge, Provide Initiative.)
Slipping Through The Cracks 50%* (Substitutes for Notice, Protects Isolation, Evaluates Unnatural.)

Shock Gauges

Notches	Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
Hardened	3	7	6	6	5
Failed	0	3	5	5	3

Disorders: PTSD & Blackouts.

216 - Harry Huber, Solipsist Collector

GMC: Harry Huber, Solipsist Collector

People sometimes fixate on objects as a source of security and comfort. They are reminded of earlier, better times or the appeal of an era imagined. For Harry its a world that doesn't and never existed, by digging through the detritus of our culture he aims to find the hidden seams and portents that guard the way out. He's chasing ascension without even knowing what it is.

Harry is certain that the world we experience every day is an illusion. He interprets what he knows about the statosphere as an alien experiment only he is able to divine. The mania of discovery and acquisition drives an obsession as powerful as any adept’s. Burrowing into worlds of symbolism and faces in clouds he has managed to stumble on real magick.

As a result Harry is inclined to believe just about any supernatural theory so long as it doesn’t conflict with the core belief that he is a lone resistance against a jailor demiurge that no one else can see. Birds aren’t real? He’ll buy that while stuffing his garage with dissected examples looking for a maker’s mark. The Earth is flat? Clearly there’s got to be evidence of foul play by those trying to cover it up, he’ll dig through their trash to reassemble the hidden messages they place in their garbage for one another. It seems as though his collective urge changes every other week when in fact his collection is evidence that the world is not what it seems.

This gets him into everyone’s business and makes Harry an easy patsy for anyone looking to take advantage of his talents. Convince him that what you’re after is really the next puzzle piece he needs, wind him up and let him go. Nabbing it afterwards can be a little tricky and is an easy way to make enemies with a man who will ever after assume you are agents of the great enemy.

STATS
Personality: Like a compulsive gambler, Harry speculates that he just needs one big score and then he can finally escape. The more likely outcome is that he finds a reason to downplay his new treasure and the resulting failure to transcend so he can go off to chase new and greater highs.
Rage: Knock offs.
Noble: Craftsmanship.
Fear: Being trapped in the false world (Unnatural)
Obsession: Find the hidden keys to escape this false world.
Wound Threshold: 50.

Unhinged 45%* (Substitutes for Knowledge, Substitutes for Secrecy, Evaluates Unnatural.)
Avatar: Collector 75% (Avatar, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)

Shock Gauges

Notches	Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
Hardened	2	5	3	2	3
Failed	0	2	1	3	1

215 - Diana's Harp

Artifact: Diana’s Harp

Power: Major.

Description: A nightmarish instrument fashioned from bones, sinew and gristle, all carved, fitted and treated to slot together seamlessly in the form of a modern concert harp, about six feet high. The music played on it is beautiful but melancholy regardless of the composition. Played rapidly it produces a sound that could be mistaken for distant screaming if you weren’t just imagining things.

Effect: With a successful roll on an identity related to musical talent someone can ring a serviceable tune out of Diana’s Harp. After a little practice it becomes almost second nature, as though you’d been doing it all your life. In fact you can’t remember a time without it.

The music has the following effects:

• Anyone trying to commit an act of violence while in earshot of the playing harp must pass a rank 5 Violence check to go through with it. If they fail the check they may not pick the fight result.
• Playing the harp for someone can provide the benefits of long term therapy to a single individual regardless of the subject’s temperament and willingness. On a botch they don’t have to make stress checks ever again and lose the use of their passions. This feature is accessible once per week.
• Harmful magick, even if not directly offensive, cast while in earshot of the playing harp is reflected back on the source if the musician’s roll beats their casting roll.

Each of these effects drain the musician, depleting their musical identity by 1d10%.

214 - Existential Distillery

Artifact: Existential Distillery

Power: Significant

Description: A microdistillery in a poor state of repair, there’s rust and additional fittings have been attached haphazardly. One of the attachments is a gridly looking hand-powered mass of blades like a garbage disposal. It is stained by something you might naively hope is copper.

Effect: Make some alcohol and while adding the ingredients stick your hand into the thresher attachment and crank the handle. The wrenching, grinding sensation is more than just flesh being stripped away, like it’s hollowing your very soul. You’re giving up part of yourself.

Lose a number of percentiles from one of your identities, how much you lose is up to you (unless someone else is turning the handle). This loss is permanent so make sure you’re certain. Also make a Violence stress check, rank with a rank equal to the tens place of the percentiles given up and take damage equal to the sum of the percentiles as though it had been rolled as hand-to-hand damage. You cannot do this with adept or avatar identities and others may be excluded at GM discretion.

Make some alcohol with the mixture. Drinking said alcohol has an additional effect aside from getting you buzzed, it passes on wisdom and knowledge. While under the effects of the alcohol the imbiber gains access to the invested identity at a value equal to the points stripped away from it. This effect lasts until you sober up. It can be prolonged by drinking more alcohol (of any kind). Certain stress checks may be warranted depending upon the circumstances and nature of the appropriated identity.

213 - Astrid Osgood, Climate Accelerationist

GMC: Astrid Osgood, Climate Accelerationist

Astronomical events, weather, the change of seasons: all of these are vitally important parts of our environment. Our reliance on them to mark time and facilitate agriculture formed the basis for early society. They’re so important we tied our religious traditions to them, celebrations and rites tied to the ebb and flow of the earth.

But those events are finite. You get 2 equinoxes and 2 solstices a year and that’s it, if there’s a ritual that can only be performed in spring and you miss your window that’s 9 months minimum until you can try again (unless you’re willing to travel to the opposite hemisphere of the earth at least). Astrid - the heir to a lineage of ritualists spanning back centuries but ruined by the 20th century - thinks she’s discovered a way around that limitation. If the weather can be changed by human hands, then why not its symbolism and magickal influence.

The crux of this belief is a potent charging ritual - “Loki’s Teeth” - which allows her to reap a bevy of significant charges through the summer months. Except with this new belief came experimentation and with experimentation the realization that her window for using the ritual is expanding. Whether this is down to changing weather or a measure of her own arcane puissance is immaterial, she’s certain she knows the score.

So she wants to accelerate anthropic climate change while everyone else is either trying to thwart it or claim it isn’t real because they’re doing too well off the back of related industries (or would like to be). She fully believes in a coming collapse and wants it more than anything, with her powers she thinks she can rule her dream of a barren wasteland as a post-apocalyptic sorceror-queen. It’s a narrative with a terrible magnetism to it and because of that her woodland compound is staffed by a cadre of cultists and their families. They have faith in Astrid and believe they in turn will inherit power and authority by proximity.

Given humanities’ general laziness it seems like Astrid’s goals will be fulfilled if she just kicks back and takes a nap. For this reason the cult does not aim to promote climate change as a cause, instead they engage in action against anyone trying to stop it. Three people are dead because of this, twice as many have had their lives ruined and every year her hold over them grows stronger as her magick becomes more and more powerful.

STATS
Personality: Astrid is like a smug version of an apocalyptic street corner preacher because she’s being proved right. She knows she can’t meaningfully effect change on her own, but being on the “winning” side she just has to keep people who can at bay.
Rage: People who manipulate false narratives for personal gain (it’s okay when she does it).
Noble: Action before words, Astrid prizes doers over talkers.
Fear: Astrid fell down a well as a kid and wasn’t found for hours. Being trapped in a small, dark pit is her greatest fear (Helplessness).
Obsession: Destroy the world, become queen of the wreckage.
Wound Threshold: 50.

Apocalyptic Cult Leader 50%* (Substitutes for Lie, Substitutes for Status, Coerces Self.)
Survivalist 45% (Substitutes for Fitness, Provides Firearm Attacks, Protects Helplessness.)
Witch 60% (Substitutes for Secrecy, Cast Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)

Shock Gauges

Notches	Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
Hardened	5	3	2	2	5
Failed	1	0	1	0	2