(Redux) Character Sheet - Lottie, Richard & Gil

[THIS CONTAINS STORY SPOILERS UP TO THREAD 45, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK IF NOT CAUGHT UP!]



Charlotte "Lottie" Fawkins
Age: 23
Height: 5'1.5"
Max Identity: 15

You.

Heroine, heiress, detectivess, sorceress, heraldess. Spiteful, stubborn, sheltered, self-absorbed-- but energetic, idealistic, loyal, generous, and brave. Three years ago, you drowned yourself at the behest of a talking snake to find a long-lost family heirloom. Six months ago, you woke up without memory of two of those years. Three-and-a-half weeks ago, you finally located that heirloom, the Crown, only for your talking snake to tell you you can't go home-- not without charging up the Crown and becoming God. You ignored the second part and pursued the first, only for the Crown to be stolen, leaving you crippled and purposeless. Shortly afterward, you lost all memory of everything you'd ever done wrong in your life, which, since you were a real bitch, was quite a lot of things.

Whether you knew it or not at the time, this would prove a sea change for you. Abruptly dropping one set of affectations, you picked up another, declaring yourself a "heroine" and setting about with, um, heroing stuff. Was your sole precedent for this trashy fantasy novels? Yes? Did you care? Filled with determination and empowered by optimism, you didn't care one bit. In fact, as increasingly worrying omens began to crop up, you took them as signs of your destined herodom and forged onward full-speed. Blood? Death? Apocalypse? Apotheosis? Positive thinking!

This functioned well enough, until all fell apart, and by then it was too late: your destiny was fixed. You will, you must, do what Richard told you all along: you will become the Herald, the agents' mythic savior, and you will become the WYRM, or God. And you will then save the world, whether the world likes it or not. After all, you already have.

You are short (though you hate when this is pointed out) and full-figured, particularly in the chest (you would be appalled if this were pointed out). You have curly blonde hair, a mole on your left cheek, and a missing right eye-- it's been replaced with a spiral-engraved iron orb. (Your other eye is blue-green.) Strangely, you can still see out of your "bad eye," though its vision is blurry. You are modest, like a proper lady, and prefer classy, fashionable outfits that don't show skin. Daringly, though, you wear pants. Your favorite hobby is making miniature models out of clay, and your favorite drink is anything sweet (lemonade, hot chocolate, bright pink cocktails...).


[MODIFIERS]
Talents and otherwise.

Voyeur: You're an excellent eavesdropper and lip reader. +10 to eavesdropping; lip reading, if reasonable, is free.

Good With A Sword: You're good with a sword, for some reason. +10 to sword-related actions.

On Fire!: The Sword is now permanently on fire. +5 to all rolls involving it, set flammable things on fire as a free action.

Bad Liar: It's all over your face. -10 to lying.


[ALTERATIONS]
You are different from what you were.

The Bad Eye: Your right eye is solid iron. You can see out of it, poorly. Nobody else seems to notice. You can't remember how you got it, though you strongly suspect Richard was involved. As of recent, it has rotated to reveal a closed-spiral pattern; you can now see strings through it, allowing you to detect whether something is real or not.

Ambidexterity: You used to be right-handed, but now your left is just as good. Your fingers are flexible and preternaturally strong.

Earthsense: If you try, you can plunge your consciousness into the earth to sense what's under or around you. Unfortunately, you automatically gravitate toward the WYRM when you do, meaning Richard frequently needs to bail you out.

Nightvision: You can see in darkness as if it were dimly lit. You suffer in sudden bright light.

Sharp Teeth: All your teeth are pointed, just a little. Good for... biting.

Scales: White and flexible. They protect your stomach and left shoulder from piercing and slashing attacks.

Fangs: Your canine teeth are now razor-sharp, curved, and hollow. Even better for biting.

Paralytic Venom: You now have venom glands installed into the roof of your mouth. When you do bite somebody, you can inject venom through your fangs to non-fatally lock up a person's muscles. This also works on you, though you need a lot more venom to feel any effect.


[ABILITIES]
You prefer the term "powers." Richard does not.

Advanced Gaslighting: Convince someone of something untrue... but, like, /really/ convince them. In conversation, you may attempt to convince someone that they have a belief, opinion, viewpoint, emotion, or other intangible quality that they do not actually have. If they believe you, this becomes 'true', and they behave as though they do genuinely have this belief, opinion, viewpoint, emotion, or other quality for the duration of the conversation, or until otherwise appropriate. The plausibility of your gaslight determines the DC for the associated roll.

Advanced Advanced Gaslighting: As above, but you are now able to convince reality of something untrue-- i.e., enact physical change. As Advanced Gaslighting, the change must be sufficiently plausible, will revert at the end of a scene, and always requires a challenging roll.

Communion: You read other people like books. While physically touching a living creature, conscious or unconscious, you may spend 1 ID to access an abstracted, jumbled representation of their thoughts, feelings, experiences, or overall interiority. You may also opt to attempt communication or other actions, though depending on complexity these may require rolls or additional cost. If conscious, your target is aware of being intruded upon, and may react if capable of it.

Extracommunion: When communing with your target, you may choose to possess them, gaining access to their mind and body without any need for extra rolls. They are aware of this happening, and your actual body remains where you left it (and may degrade if abandoned). Your identity cannot be subsumed by remaining in possession of somebody too long, though you may face other, less serious side effects.

Narrative Convenience: You can spend ID to gain bonuses to rolls, regardless of whether Richard is there to help out.


[DETRIMENTS]
Oops.

Half-Paralyzed: Only affects your innate nature, luckily, but your motion is seriously impeded around areas of strong reality (eg wearing the Crown)

Red Stuff: You are now inhabited by the murderous blood of the Wyrm. This is great when you want to kill and/or subjugate people, and less great any other time. Your current levels of red stuff are tracked with the SV stat.

Sunstruck: Every time you drop to 0 SV, you lose 3 ID and regain 1 SV.


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Richard (aka "Correspondent #314")
Age: 10,000? (Mentally ~35)
Height: 5'10" (Human) / ??? (Agent)

The thing in your head. Claimed, for many years, to be a snake; claimed, for several weeks, to also be your dead father. Neither is true. In fact, Richard is an "agent," a member of an ancient sapient race created by the Wyrm and exiled millennia ago by the Eight. Though unable to access your dimension by normal means, agents use superior technology to project their consciousnesses into the bodies of snakes, which-- not being real-- can be installed in a person's mind like Richard was in yours.

According to Richard, this means that you've never really known him. "Snake Richard", cold, humorless and cruel, was a product of Richard's mind being compacted into utilitarian snake-form. "Person Richard" was under the influence of your subconscious, which projected your vision of your father onto him. You don't feel too bad about this, considering he murdered your father, but nevertheless.

From what you can tell, Richard is actually just some guy (provided "just some guy" can apply to a maybe-immortal alien-thing): he has no cosmic significance or even particular agentic importance. His job is to trick you into becoming the Wyrm, but even that's nothing special, since every Correspondent has that job. If there's anything that distinguishes him from his coworkers, it's his personality. Most agents are polite, if bland. The "real" Richard is irritable, misanthropic, opinionated, and utterly convinced he's smarter than everybody he knows. He might be right, but his willingness to say so has earned him zero friends and the nickname "Wingnut." These are probably deserved.

From your perspective, Richard is still a jerk, same as always. When he's not being a jerk, he's being an annoying pedant about things you don't care about, like metaphysics. And when he's not being either of those, you're disturbed by the sense that he actually cares about you. It doesn't help that he's disturbed, too. You'll still hate him forever, no matter what.

Richard used to look like your father-- a thin, aging, blue-eyed blond man. Now he looks more like himself: apparently shaggy-haired, scruffy-faced, paunchy, and exhausted-looking. He wears aviator-style eyeglasses. He claims this still isn't his actual form (after all, he isn't human), but you have yet to see it, so you can't describe it. When he isn't being influenced by your perception, he's a black-and-yellow sea snake, about two or three feet long. Richard's favorite hobby is lecturing you about boring facts, and his favorite drink is bourbon.


>[RICHARD'S SKILLSET]
Whether through agent technology, snake powers, or his own talents, Richard can do many things you can't.

[Open]ing: Richard is metaphysically a key, and thus has a special affinity for opening anything locked.

Vitals: Richard can take a look at your basic vital statistics whenever he wants.

Serpentfire: Richard can overstimulate your nervous system to produce painful "shocks" to your spine.

Endocrine System: Richard is able to induce your brain to produce various chemicals, typically either energizing or sedative.

Possession: Richard is able to hijack your body, in part or in full, and do with it what he pleases. He can choose whether to keep you conscious while he does this. If he hijacks part of your body, he is able to control it more precisely than you can,  improving any associated abilities to a peak-human level. If he hijacks your entire body, he can only stay in possession for a limited amount of time before he risks losing his identity.

Memory Eater: Richard can erase small portions of your memory, or large portions if he does it over a period of time.

Mind Reader: Richard has passive access to whatever thoughts you accidentally broadcast to him. If he digs around, he has access to the rest of them, plus your feelings and memories.

Vanishing Act: Richard doesn't physically exist in your dimension, so he can vanish anytime you're not looking and reappear anywhere within your line of sight, provided an object isn't in the way.

Legerdemain: Richard can produce small objects from thin air at will. He can produce large objects from thin air if he has time to prepare in advance.

Something With His Hands: Richard is able to manipulate strings to produce changes in reality, though he's largely prohibited from doing so...

Alterations: ...Except when doing so is part of his job. Richard is able to manipulate *your* strings to produce physical changes in your body, targeted mainly at bringing you closer in line with the Herald.


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Gilbert "Gil" Wallace
Age: 25
Height: 5'8"

Your loyal retainer. Once entirely human, an unlucky accident in a manse turned him into an imaginary swarm of beetles. He has largely come to terms with this. What he finds harder to accept, though, is his newfound crippling anxiety, not to mention the stutter-- both products of a stint in mind-numbing isolation. Never very assertive, post-beetling Gil has devolved, externally, into a mumbly, pliant doormat. Worse, he knows it. On the inside, Gil struggles with overwhelming bitterness, cynicism, and self-loathing: from his perspective, life is a series of kicks in the teeth, with his latest circumstances nothing but the biggest kick so far.

It's only through your unswerving optimism and selflessness that this attitude has begun to shift. Initially distant and distrustful, Gil has grown to become your closest and most reliable confidant, assistant, and fr... um... retainer. (You said that. Retainer.) You appreciate his carefulness, constancy, and commmon sense, though you dislike when he works up the nerve to talk back to you. Ever since you got him blessed by a pagan god, put him in a physical goo-body, and stuck the ghost of his distant ancestor, Teddy, in his brain, this has been happening more often. Gil claims he has no plans to leave your side, but you're keeping an eye on him, just in case.

Gil is slightly below average in height, which he's insecure about, and has a prominent nose and ears, which he's also insecure about. He also has a burn scar on his left cheek, plus rosacea all over his face. He's insecure about this too. He doesn't like how he looks in general, though he tries to take care of his appearance, gelling his blond hair and wearing tailored clothing. His hair is dirty blond, and his eyes are green. Gil's favorite hobby is either collecting matchbooks or playing darts, and his favorite drink is sugar water (though he'd really prefer a smoke, thank you).

>[GIL's SKILLSET]
Despite his doubts, Gil is capable of quite a bit.

Beetles: In his native state, Gil is a consciousness controlling a swarm of about 400 largeish beetles. This has a number of effects, some obvious, some less so:
- As beetles, Gil has 360-degree vision, though he's nearsighted and can't see the color red.
- As beetles, Gil can fly. He isn't particularly fast or agile, but can hover off the ground indefinitely. He can also cling vertically or upside-down to most surfaces.
- As beetles, Gil is nearly invulnerable to conventional weaponry, though he's very weak to fire or direct manipulation of his strings. If a beetle is destroyed, Gil feels it, but he would remain "himself" and conscious (if upset) unless fewer than eight beetles remained.
- As beetles, Gil can be in multiple places at once. If his swarm is divided into parts, each part retains a complete and independent sense of being "Gil," and will generate new memories exactly as if it were Gil as a whole. If these parts are then recombined, Gil will have full memories from each of them. This is mildly confusing for him, but not distressing.
- As beetles, Gil can enter somebody else's body to take partial or complete control of it. If the other person is alive and conscious, he'd have to fight them for control-- he doesn't like the sound of that, so he's only ever done it to bodies that are unconscious or dead.
- As beetles, Gil is made comatose by nicotine, for however long he's exposed to it. He frequently considers this desirable.
- As beetles or human, Gil has certain vestigial beetly instincts, like a craving for leaves or fear of anything "predatorial."

Unreal: After his beetlefication, Gil lost his connection to his original human body, leaving him purely a creature of thought. In theory, this means he operates under different metaphysical rules than you do, making it substantially easier for him to do strange and impossible things. In practice, he doesn't like to think about this too hard, and rarely makes use of it.

Mechanical Affinity: Gil grew up at his family's scrapyard and has a passion for tinkering. He can readily identify and operate tools and mechanical items, and given enough time he can build nearly anything, whether he knows how it works or not. (Perks of being unreal.)

Jacker: After he drowned, but before he was beetles, Gil was a criminal operative who broke into manses to siphon off ambient Law. He retains a higher-than-average knowledge of metaphysics, though it's mostly grounded in practical concerns, and is decent at burglary. He can also shoot a gun, and has good aim, if not much nerve to kill.

Divine Blessing: Gil was singled out by the dead god Quick Sea, who expressed admiration for Gil's "sacred transformation" and granted His blessing. This turned out to be literal: Gil now has a fragment of the divine power of one of the Eight, granting him the narrow ability to speed "sacred transformations," reverse or purge non-sacred ones, and in either case provide aid and comfort to the person involved. What is a sacred transformation? Gil has no idea, but it doesn't really matter, because the blessing manifests as blue light whenever it could be useful-- which Gil finds discomfiting, but mostly goes along with. After all, it makes him feel good to use it, too.

Goo Body: You've finally obtained a permanent physical body for Gil. Unfortunately, it's not exactly like his old one-- it's made of goo, a gelatinous shapeshifting substance. Like being beetles, this has a number of effects:
- As goo, Gil can can mimic the appearance of any person, clothing and all, if exposed to enough of their Law (usually in the form of blood). Gil is deeply uncomfortable at the thought of stealing someone's face, but has been using it to change outfits.
- As goo, Gil does not feel pain, and only weakly feels temperature and pressure. He also no longer receives physical signals of emotion, rendering his affect a little flatter than normal, but also curbing anxiety attacks. He is cold to the touch.
- As goo, Gil is solid and homogenous throughout, with no physical weak points. Parts of him can be cut off and reattached without issue, or else regenerated from the rest of him, though his goo isn't infinite (he might eventually need a refill).
- As goo, Gil is unusually flexible, and his body can be warped or flattened with little consequence-- though he wouldn't necessarily enjoy it.
- As goo, Gil can store smallish objects inside his body, which with enough time can be broken down, absorbed, and reconstituted as part of the body. Gil currently has a pistol stashed for emergencies.

Teddy: Gil currently has Teddy, his pre-Flood fisherman ancestor, inside his brain. Teddy has access to Gil's thoughts and memories, can see what he sees, can appear in his line of sight, and can (consensually) possess Gil's body-- kind of like Richard, or like Ellery's old eidolon That Guy. Teddy is so far content to sit back, watch, and occasionally offer advice and commentary, which is how Gil likes it.