Clothing browser spirit (Deadlands: Hell on Earth Classic)

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As I said last month, I have long been dissatisfied with the list of browser spirits offered to junkers by The Junkman Cometh for Deadlands: Hell on Earth (appliance, building, car, computer, gun, and tool).  It seems so incomplete, despite the admirable breadth built into each of the spirits.  This post is the second in my series doubling their number.  The first browser spirit I described was the toy browser, so I give you now the clothing browser.  Look forward to future installments outlining drug, vittles, and sex aids browsers.

While watching old movies with my father as I write this, the brief idea of recording browsers came to mind.  It struck me while the host on TCM was talking about an old Hungarian-American director's mastery of the camera.  Upon further examination, I daresay that filmmakers were interacting with a particular subset of (originally) tool spirits or (eventually) computer spirits.  But I'm open to being convinced that they represent a 12th type of browser spirit, opening up the possibility of, like, a junk zodiac or Iron Oasis Olympians!

Associated Powers:  Armor, miniaturize, mirror, spit & polish, temperature

Empowered by the constancy and intimacy of their relationship with humans, the spirits inhabiting all of the many things we wear can be some of the most devoted browser spirits.  By the time the bombs fell, the antique fabrics like cotton, wool, linen, and silk had retreated into the closets of the wealthy and pretentious, giving way to a bewilderingly wide array of synthetic fabrics, children of crude oil and ghost rock.  Any number of technological innovations were built into these outfits, allowing their wearers to program patterns across the clothing, track their vital signs, fly, float various adornments seemingly unconnected around their body, and more.  They are not the only items to house clothing spirits, however, as jewelry, cosmetics, perfume, PPE, and even suits of armor gave rise to this species of tech spirit.  The ritual garb of many types of clergy and faithful did as well, of course.

Clothing spirits display a sometimes off-putting mix of knowledge about the most intimate details of a person and an absorption in communal identification and functioning.  They can be almost motherly to those they help, and to those those junkers help.  The web of relationships that make up a social ecology drives their every action.

Rumors ride across the Wasted West of a junker Librarian travelling with his husband, a Templar dedicated to Eliot Ness, the Saint of Morality, who builds the two of them the prettiest durn armor you ever did see.  Supposedly, this drag queen has also built suits of clothing with the spirit trap power which contain ghosts and the like, if they can be convinced to don the outfits.  Another legendary junker by the name of Piston Sophia, known to be an initiate of the Chamber, focuses on building prosthetics, mobility aids, and other adaptive technologies to help disabled survivors make their way through the post-apocalyptic landscape.  One of the most elusive rumors about clothing browsers concerns a Catholic priest who became a junker after the Apocalypse; it is said that the aid of his vestments in the form of a clothing browser has opened new magics, blends of his blessed miracles and his junker devices.

White:  The clothing browser alters the junker's appearance to help them in social situations, whether by enhancing the junker's appearance, establishing them as being of a particular socioeconomic class, or emphasizing their position.  This can include the tailoring, style, color palette, and other qualities of their outfit, as well as make-up and the like.  The junker gains a +4 bonus to persuasion, leadership, and overawe rolls for the next hour.  This has the side effect of preventing observers from noticing potentially embarrassing things like nudity.
Red:  The junker chooses a single group, organization, or gender.  Subtle modifications to their adornments utterly convince everyone who sees the junker that they are a member of that group, organization, or gender for the next hour.
Blue:  Confidence in the strength of their unique identity floods the junker's mind, leaving no room for doubt or fear.  Others looking upon them find hope that they, too, can take the strength needed to do the same.  Immediately end any negative or damaging effect affecting the junker or one person who can see them, as long as the effect is purely mental or social in nature.  If the effect is somehow constant, consider it paused for four rounds.  Using this power on a Harrowed gives the Harrowed immediate control, reducing the joker's Dominion to 0 and forcing it to lose any time left in its control.  The Harrowed can gain no other effect from this power.
Legend:  The junker can make use of the coup power of any abomination they either have encountered for 1d4 hours (rolled by the GM secretly).  They can do the same to make use of the coup power of an individual abomination of which they are aware and with which they are engaged.  Everyone knows Mojave rattlers exist as a species, so unless the junker is currently fighting or maneuvering around a Mojave rattler, that's not enough for this ability.  In this latter case, the junker can use the coup powers for slightly longer; roll 1d6 instead of 1d4.  Spending a legend chip does not reveal what the power is, it simply gives access to it to the junker.  Of course, the junker is likely to have an idea, since they know what abomination they're invoking.  If the junker already has access to the coup power of the abomination they're trying to invoke, its effects are doubled (if possible).

Queer Spirits:  Costumes and drag of various types blur the line between clothing and toy spirits, while various types of gender-affirming wearable devices such as pack-and-play packers for transmasculine people link clothing and sex aid spirits.  Edible lingerie, of course, is more of a clothing-and-food-spirits kind of thing, as are certain trends in sustainable clothing that were popular at times before the Fall (descendants of the 60s paper-clothing trend).  Clothing and tool spirits combine in prosthetics, the complicated headgear of magnifying lenses worn by anyone who does very fine work, and things of that nature.  Of course very similar devices end up mixing gun and clothing spirits; spy movies popular before the Fall featured many inspirations for these.  Mad scientists have been queering car and clothing spirits almost since the Reckoning with devices like jet packs, rocket skates, SCUBA gear, and astronauts' EVA suits.  Anyone who has seen a medical disaster movie has seen objects that serve as the home of appliance spirits, clothing spirits, or spirits that partake of the nature of both ~ they're what the doctors wear when they go into hot zones.  On occasion, their patients (or just disabled people of certain types) wear the auto-injectors and medical systems that allow clothing and drug spirits to mix.  Parkas, stillsuits, and other such environmentally adaptive clothing are the shared domain of clothing and building spirits.

He'll hang you from that tree 'til you understand (In Nomine)

May the Aesir, the Vanir, and all the other divine beings bless my patrons Todd, Jaina Bee, Ferny, Casey, Dave, and Darius!  Truly their honor is great and their virtue impressive!

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Bandlaik, rigger and returned einheriar in service to Freya (dreamshade)

Half of all who die a good death go to Valhalla, as modern memory still records.  The other half, forgotten by current trends, is chosen by Valfreyja, Freya of the Slain, to join her in Folkvangr.  Freya’s many-seated hall, Sessrumnir, lies within that land, the central governing place of that field.  Bandlaik lived there for a millennium or more.  Time passes oddly in the dream-places, and it was quite long.

In life, Bandlaik was not much different than the many children of the fjords.  Sure, practicing seidhr cast aspersions upon him that he might enjoy the rough pleasures of a bottom, but ergi or not, the matter was settled with a series of holmgangs and anyone who watched him fight while a-viking.  He often spoke, too, of Odin hanging himself from Yggsdrasil as a sacrifice of himself to himself so as to learn the secrets of the seidh.  What harm was there, he argued, in learning and teaching in Glad of War’s own way?

Bandlaik sharpened the blade of his dreams every night, the whetstone of the day scraping down their length with ever-present force.  Many mourned when a Slavic warrior caught a lucky strike on Bandlaik’s back during a raid.  The seer-warrior lost the use of his legs that day, and rumors flew down too-well-worn ruts to claim that his glorious days ended when the Slav chose not to kill him.  The Norseman laughed at these rumors.

Shifting his focus to more domestic martial pursuits, Bandlaik became an expert in fortification and defense, a master at extending the longevity of the few Norse colonies.  The Kievan Rus’ felled him when they overran his settlement’s walls and shields by sheer weight of horseflesh.  His last dying thoughts seized onto those sharpened dreams of Folkvangr and Sessrumnir, and before he knew it, his soul was snagged upon his queen’s realm, not yet ready to give up the fight and move on to a final reward.

It was good for a while.  A long while.  Death was everything Bandlaik had hopd it would be, fighting when he chose to, singing when he chose to, the most delicious food and drink he could imagine, available to him with the simple effort of imagining it.  Then the angels came.

With a black-winged zealot at their head, angels of all choirs came rushing through the lands of the gods like the very locusts they had sent against the Egyptians.  This was no war for territory or argument or glory or loot.  It was a far more ignoble kind of war, one fought for purity, which is to say: this was murder wrapped in a war’s clothes and called by the wrong name.

First, Olympus fell, and then Fair Ament.  Thor, of course, wanted to fight.  Many agreed, but Odin called for a more defensive tactic, a stand at Bifrost Bridge to draw the line, and then fortifications to hold back Heaven’s dogged forces.  Bandlaik helped prepare those battlements, and imagined into being the mechanisms that would allow them to surprise the angels with their appearance.

Bandlaik saw Thor ignore Odin’s hornblow call to retreat.

As Asgard withdrew from the Marches as a whole, becoming insular and infected with a centuries-long cabin fever, Bandlaik’s afterlife grew less and less fun.  More than once, he considered loosing his bonds to Sessrumnir and moving on to his final reward.  He was a good man, and knew he would go to Heaven, and that was why he kept refusing.  He wasn’t going to give Uriel the satisfaction.

His malaise was not aided by the trickle of Essence which began to return to Asgard a thousand years after the Crusade and picked up speed a century after that.  This Essence smelled wrong, tainted as it was with the same ridiculous and disgusting idea as those of the Heavenly Host who had felled Thor that day.  Although Bandlaik was one of the few einheriar that still served the Aesir unfelled, he began to forsake a canny Odin who saw only Essence that could be used against those who would oppress or kill the Aesir.

Bandlaik spent more and more time with Valfreyja, learning more of the ways of love and the valkyrie.  The 1970s brought with them the first steady trickle of Essence untainted with purity.  Accepting and universalist, this was the mountain stream that braced Bandlaik’s despairing soul.  Almost five decades later, he has petitioned his queen to grant him a vessel that he might walk among the mortal dreamers, recruiting new einheriar to fight beside him and furthering the cause of Freyja and Asgard in the corporeal realm.

And, after discovering what the modern world meant by “dungeon”, just plain enjoying himself occasionally.

Corporeal  2 // Strength  5  Agility  3  // Body  20
Ethereal  2 // Intelligence 3  Precision 5  // Mind  6
Celestial  1 // Will  2   Perception  2  // Soul  2

Vessel:  Human male/2, Charisma/1
Role:  Photographer/2 (Status/1)

Skills:  Area Knowledge (Small Town in Scandinavia/3), Artistry (Rope/2), Dreaming/3, Escape/1, Fighting/4, Knowledge (Engineering/3, Farming/3, Bondage/1), Languages (English/1, Old Norse/3N), Large Weapon/4, Sailing/1, Survival/1, Swimming/1, Tactics/3, Throwing/3, Tracking/3
Attunements:  Ethereal Connection
Songs:  Attraction (Ethereal/1), Dreams (Corporeal/3, Ethereal/2), Nimbus (Corporeal/1, Ethereal/2), Souls (Ethereal/2)
Discord:  Disabled*/6 (paraplegic; uses a wheelchair)

*  “Crippled” is a slur.

The Colombo Tarantella, a medevac meccanico (GURPS 3rd edition)

All hail to my patrons Todd, Jaina Bee, Ferny, Casey, Dave, and Darius!  Gratitude overflows for your generosity, and i owe you the deepest debt of thanks.

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It is perhaps completely unsurprising that the most popular medevac meccanico among the Mafia is produced by the Colombo family.  Considered by many to be the weakest of New York's Five Families after tearing itself apart in not one, but three, civil wars, their investment in and development of the Tarantello might be the only thing which allowed enough Colombi to survive to call themselves a family still.  Hell, in 2000, the Commissione were actively planning to change Five Families into Four.  Considering the Bonnano family's release of the Cimaruta-class meccanico in 2005, some have suggested that the Colombi bought their aid in returning to their seat in the Commissione with the plans and technology of the Tarantella.

A rather no-nonsense design, at least in terms of its mechanics and systems, the Tarantella resembles the spider for which it was named, with four legs on one side and four on the other.  Each leg bulges with the shape of a ducted fan near its foot.  The body is slightly ovoid between the two sets of legs, with a dome capping it to hold the meccanico's sensors and comms.  Just beneath the body can be seen the thin profile of a folded pod, a rectangular protrusion on the underbelly.  Most often witnessed in the midst of a raging gun battle or the aftermath of a bombing or somesuch, the Tarantella uses those fans on its legs to boost its jumps, leaping into the worst of it over the person it has come to rescue.  The pod then extends down, forming a double wall of armor, as any bullets or shrapnel would have to get past the meccanico's legs before being tested against the pod's walls.  Often trained in emergency medicine as well as meccanico piloting, the driver of the Tarantella will then pop out, retrieve the wounded person, attach them to the medical equipment, and hop back into the cockpit to retract the pod and jump away once more.

They best be quick about it, as the Tarantella's lack of any non-ablative armor leaves it vulnerable to prolonged damage or repeated trips into active threat ones.  Combined with its miniscule capacity ~ each Tarantella can only hold a single rescued patient ~ this leaves its services as something of a luxury.  The average associate or even made man would do well to make other arrangements should they fall, as the Tarantelle are likely to come only for their bosses, capos, and consiglieri.  Since the release of the Bonanno Cimaruta, its ability to perform mass evacuations have allowed it to become the Tarantella's primary competition.  Being significantly more expensive than its parent design has prevented it from totally usurping the Tarantella's place, of course.

Subassemblies:  Eight legs, full-rotation turret, underbody pod.
Drivetrain:  100 kW motive power leg drivetrain, in legs.
Thrusters:  Eight ducted fan thrusters, each with 250 lbs. thrust, one in each leg.
Cockpit:  Basic, with compact, genius, high-capacity computer (Complexity 4), in body.  complexity 2 Computer Navigation, Complexity 2 Damage Control, Complexity 1 Datalink, and Complexity 2 Routine Vehicle Operation programs.
Sensors:  5-mile range PESA in turret.
Miscellaneous Equipment:  Emergency support unit (p. VE68), stretcher pallet (p. VE68).
Comsuite:  Advanced, in turret.
Power Plant:  100.74 kW nuclear power unit in body powers all systems for six months.
Cargo Space:  5 cf in body with load of 200 lbs.
Volumes:  Turret 1.64 cf, pod 45 cf, legs 5.235 cf each, body 50.1464 cf.
Structure and Hit Points:  Medium frame strength, advanced materials. Transformable. Two configurations: “pickup/dropoff” (no subassemblies folded), “transport” (pod folded).  Turret 14 HP, pod 150 HP, legs 29 HP each, body 150 HP.
Surface Features:  Sealed.
Armor:  PD 4, DR 28 fireproof ablative.
Statistics:  Loaded weight 4204.96 lbs.  Empty weight 3804.96 lbs.  Loaded mass 2.10238 tons. Mecha volume 138.6664 cf.  Size Modifier +3, pod +2, turret -2, legs 0. Price $1,973,834.80.  HT 12.
ST and Reach:  Body ST 300.
Dimensions:  10 feet 10.3068 inches tall, 7 feet 11.736 inches diameter (length/width).
Ground Performance:  Ground speed 85 mph, gMR 1.25, gSR 3, ground Move 12/42. Jump-capable.

La Nonna con Tredici Macchie

"The Grandmother with Thirteen Spots", Ravenna Bellini was born in 1957 with a face full of birthmarks blotching her countenance.  A long-time strega of the Colombo family who came into her own in the early 1990s during the Third Colombo Civil War, her maneuverings to lead the family as its boss is one of the more surprising consequences of Carmine Persico's March 2019 death.  Popular with the Florida branch of the Colombo family, she leads her small faction from within her trusted Tarantella meccanico.

Known to have great proficiency with the decans of Atrax and Phthenoth, as well as some with Alleborith, Kumeatêl, and Sphandôr, of course, and increasingly with Alath as she's aged, rumors have often claimed that Ravenna has delved into Anostêr, Bianakith, Kurtaêl, and Tepsisem as well.  It is widely assumed (and almost certainly correctly) that the old woman has established a long and powerful blood connection to her meccanico, granting a +3 to her effective skill using its enchantments.

Ravenna has had a sound system installed into her Tarantella's body, over which she often plays the traditional music of the tarantella.  Infamously, she and her daughter have enchanted this sound system so that anyone who hears its song is compelled to whip themselves into the frenzied complexities of tarantism, dancing wildly like the Sicilian ladies of old (a limited version of Mass Suggestion that cost half as much energy for only allowing a single possible suggestion).  Their ceremonies and spells over several years have also improved the meccanico's defenses (Deflect increases its PD to 5 and Fortify increases its DR to 31).  The flow of mana through the Tarantella's structure ensures that anyone within heals incredibly quickly (Major Healing).  Ravenna has installed a 100-terabyte medical database into her meccanico, upgrading its Complexity to 2 to improve its predictive and associative ability to make itself useful on the fly, as well as a terabyte of hacker-stolen dossiers on other Mafiosi, including confidential informants and undercover police.

Thirteen women painted lavender in a classical Roman style dance wildly across La Nonna con Tredici Macchie's meccanico, prominently kicking up their feet in a field of poppy flowers all crimson, red, and orange.  Four of the women hold white mirrors, four wield cerulean-blue swords, four wave rose-colored wands, and a lone dancer among them brandishes an orange snake in her hand.  Each of the women is named in Enochian with the name of an archangel, saint, or Roman god associated with healing and protection.  A blue cord stretches between them, dotted with knots; nowhere can be seen the ends of the cord.  Apple, orange, and palm trees arch above them, from whose branches hang bulbs of garlic and numerous spiders, as well as the webs of the latter.  In the negative space, against a background of deep wine-purple, sigils composed of various combinations of Greek crosses (looking like plus signs with their equal arms), downward-pointing arrows, squares, and pentacles are drawn in white, red, and orange.  A tin statue of an eagle landing sits atop its turret.

Neurally Ambiguous TONIGHT

Only EIGHTY MINUTES until "The Dangers of Influence Here in the Quiet Limit of the World, Part 2", the second episode of Show Us Your Crits's adult stream's Shadowrun campaign, Neurally Ambiguous: Geppetto Must Die. That's less than an hour & a half! Watch at https://plexstorm.com/stream/showusyourcrits#

Neurally Ambiguous: Geppetto Must Die returns THIS Thursday!!!

 Yes, that's right!  Show Us Your Crits's adult stream returns this Thursday at 5pm PDT / 8pm EDT with "The Dangers of Influence Here in the Quiet Limit of the World, part 2", the second episode of our Shadowrun 5e campaign Neurally Ambiguous: Geppetto Must Die.

Continue following the lives, adventures, and dreams of a house of bunraku sexworkers, addicted to a digital drug that replaces their personality with whoever their client wants them to be!  Last episode, Matrix journalist Marko Lee became quite enamored of the bunraku La Diablita among the intimate battery-operated lamplight of Pog Ma Thoin in Chicago's Southside.  Unfortunately, a member of the Southside Devil's Playground gang by the name of Drainpipe was watching and relaying what they were saying.  Particularly the bit about Marko wanting to write an article about the bunraku and the Playground's house chock-full of them.  Pera Veneziano, the fallen popera star, was "convinced" tp "recruit" Marko to the house ~ after all, their only male bunraku is a ghoul, and the Krieger Strain of the Human-Metahuman Vampiric Virus is not a particularly sexy disease.

La Diablita seems to have argued herself into going along with Pera's plan, but will it work?  What will they do to neutralize the threat of publicity Marko presents?  Find out more this Thursday at https://plexstorm.com/stream/showusyourcrits# !!!  See you there!

Follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/showusyourcritsmedia/ on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9OSkuS0p1KitB9P4gzjftg (8 more followers, and JayCee will be giving away a piece of RPG memorabilia to a random follower!) and Twitter at https://twitter.com/UsCrits !

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Thank you so much for your generosity!  See you on Thursday!

The Prisonous Barony of Hausu (Traveller)

Thank you, as always, to my patrons Darius, Ferny, Jaina Bee, Dave, Casey, and Todd.  They saw this post a week before anyone else did, and if that or the mere prospect of helping support my RPG streaming and writing efforts excites you, please become a patron on my Patreon.

(I use Wikipedia's Random Article link to name the many things I have to name when making an entire planet; I have provided links to the Wikipedia articles where useful, in case they might provide inspiration for the locations and people they named)

This planet of the Scimecan system seems appropriate for this month, as the random Wikipedia article that gave it its name is a 1977 Japanese "incomprehensible" horror comedy film.  I tried to base the planet on the film as much as possible, and am curious if I succeeded.

E64523L-3

System Nature:  Solo (Scimeca, K7 V/orange dwarf star)
Stellar Mass:  1.069x10³⁰ kg (0.5376 sol; 179,020.8 Earths)
Stellar Luminosity:  1.096x10²⁶ W, 1.8675x10²⁸ lm (0.498 Lₛₒₗ)
System Population:  355,791 Scimecan sophonts
Planets:  

• Scimeca I, 0.2 AU (habitable zone):  Hatfield (D435544-7)
• Hatfield Α, 21,120 km:  Wrecking Ball (X00024L-6, 1280 km, population 936, Nexus, Liberal)
• Scimeca II, 0.4 AU (outer zone):  Nomia (C000271-E) 
• Scimeca III 0.7 AU (outer zone):  The Planetary Barony of Hausu (described in this post), population 381, )
• Scimeca IV, 1 AU (outer zone):  Vidara, (X677000-0, population 0)
• Vidara Α:  Arthur's Missing Moon, (X000000-0, population 0)
• Scimeca V, 1.6 AU (outer zone):  Sprinters' Commonwealth, (D45021L-6, population 617, Deceptive)
• Scimeca VI, 2.8 AU (outer zone):  Julian Priestley, (X331000-0, population 0)
• Scimeca VII, 5.2 AU (outer zone):  The Planetary Barony of Morgan-Beavis, (D56044L-5, population 83,208, Fashion)
• Morgan-Beavis Α:  Weatherby Belt (XR00000-0, population 0)
• Morgan-Beavis Β:  Cover (X000000-0, population 0)
• Morgan-Beavis Γ:  Stadium (X000000-0, population 0)
• Scimeca VIII, 10 AU (outer zone):  The Baronet World of Goat's Rue (E63627L-6, population 171, Unusual Custom: Media, Unusual Custom: Technology)
• Scimeca IX, 19.6 AU (outer zone):  Robenhymer (the marquesal seat, B76733L-B, population 7459, Unusual Customs: Eating)
• Scimeca X, 38.8 AU (outer zone):  Beyond Counting (X54223L-0, population 703, Honourable, Barbaric)
• Beyond Counting Α:  Ghost Moon (X000000-0, population 0)
• Beyond Counting Β:  John Griffith (X000000-0, population 0)
• Beyond Counting Γ:  Solariella (X100000-0, population 0)

Mean Radius:  5120 kilometers (0.8036 Earth)
Approximate Surface Area:  3.29x10^8 square kilometers (0.645 Earth)
Planet Density:  3.7495 g/cm³ (0.68 standard; rocky body)
World Mass:  1.7135x10^24 kg (0.2869 standard)
World Gravity:  5.0014 m/s² (0.51 g)
Orbital Period:  291 days 17 hours 56 minutes 53.6802 seconds
Rotational Period:  29 hours 46 minutes 4.8 seconds
Axial Tilt:  25 degrees
Orbital Eccentricity:  0.025
Seismic Stress Factor:  -1.232
Atmospheric Composition:  standard oxygen-nitrogen mix, with pollutant taint
Surface Atmospheric Pressure:  48.636 kPa (0.48 atm)
Mean Surface Temperature:  -98.3814 degrees Celsius (-145.0865 degrees Faherenheit; 174.6186 Kelvins)
Hydrographic Percentage:  53% (174,370,000 km²)
Hydrographic Composition:  Normal ice
Tectonic Plates:  1
Continents:  Adieu Islands (archipelago; contains the E-class starport and 17 Hausulings to run it), Armstrong Island (major island), Babbacombe (minor; contains 66 prisoners), Battle Range (major), Chambers (major), Combined Transport (major), Control (archipelago; contains 12 Hausuling felicia-class parahumans who operate the planet, as well as the baron's planetary home), Dragon Knight (minor), Festival Number 6 (major), Greenhow (major island), Jessen (major island), Leguizamón (minor), Lundberg (major), Madigan (minor), Manta (major island), Shiqi (major), Shyamdev (major), Sleep No More (major; contains 286 captives), Spathulata Islands (archipelago), Yinon (minor)

Volcanoes:  None

Terraforming:  None
Weather Control?  No
Native Life?  Yes
Satellites:  0

Population: 381 Hausuling sophonts
Approximate Population Density: 0.000002464 sophonts per km²; 405,853.0184 km² per sophont
Exports:  Agricultural, agroproducts, ores, processed non-metals, radioactives
Cities:  None

Social Outlook:

• Progressiveness:  Radical attitude, enterprising action
• Aggressiveness:  Competitive attitude, neutral action
• Extensiveness:  Harmonious globally, aloof interstellarly

Cultural Differences:  Sexist, Barbaric

Local Customs:  Everyone lives in special locations, divorce and remarriage required for men

Government:  Self-perpetuating oligarchy

• Representative Authority:  The warden team, the products team, and the baronial project team (4 felicia parahumans each) all exert executive authority
• Baroness Geertruida Sachs with judicial authority, the coordinating council (one person from each team) with legislative authority

Known Factions or Revolutionary Groups:  

• Federation of the Improperly Detained and Enraged (FIDE), a minor anarchist group with some supporters
• Representative Authority:  None
• New Jonesville, an obscure representative democracy with no popular support of whom few have heard
• Representative Authority:  The Babbscombean team, the SNM team, and the exports team would exert executive and judicial authority if these ideologues got their way
• Other Authority:  Demos with legislative authority

Law Level:

• Overall:  3.4 (low)
• Weapons:  3 (low)
• Trade:  3 (low)
• Criminal Law:  3 (low)
• Civil Law:  5 (moderate)
• Personal Freedom:  3 (low)

Uniformity of Law:  Personal

Technology Level:

• High Common:  3 (18th & 19th centuries; Industrial Revolution, Napoleonic Era, and Colonial Era)
• Low Common:  3
• Energy:  3 (coal/steam)
• Computer/Robotics:  3 (calculus)
• Communications:  3 (telegraph, audio recording)
• Medical:  3 (surgery)
• Environment:  3 (cement structures)
• Land Transport:  3 (extensive road, high-speed stagecoaches)
• Water Transport:  3 (multi-mast sailing, navigation)
• Air Transport:  2
• Space Transport:  3
• Personal Military:  2 (early guns, jack armour)
• Heavy Military:  3 (cannons, wood armour, bronze armour, iron armour, crude steel armour)

Trade Codes:  Garden, Low Gravity, Low Population, Low Technology

Geertruida Sachs's husband flew away from the Scimecan planet of Robenhymer more than three decades ago to fight in the Great Imperial War Against the Pleiadians.  No matter how hard or how long she waited, he would never return.  All this reclusive loyalty earned her was the respect of the Marquessa of Scimeca, who after a dozen years or so granted her a baronial contract for the frozen garden world of Hausu in recognition of her loss.

Though the planet was chock full of valuable resources, the marquessa had mostly relied on the planet as a place to stick the criminals and dissidents of her system.  The prisoners were given isolated cement structures, simple things of four walls and a ceiling containing only what they needed to maintain their life and the tools to extract the resources of the planet.  Hausu's contributions to the Scimecan economy were invaluable, but it was not a good place to be.  The newly minted Baroness Sachs only made it less so.

She ruled her new fief from afar, continuing her life on Robenhymer in the marquesal court, watching the unmarried girls tittering and enjoying their carefree and trifling intrigues.  Bitterness grew in her heart.  Why should they be spared the heart-shaking sorrow of war's theft?  

Young people of any gender always have reasons to wish escape from time spent with their parents and caregivers.  Geertruida began spreading word, quietly, subtly, intriguingly, that she would offer those continents of Hausu not inhabited by prisoners as a retreat world.  For parental ears, she spoke of its safety and its nearness and, for younger ears, of the freedom and luxuries which they might expect to find there.  Skiing and exciting companionship before a roaring fire were common images in the rumors she started.

Unmarried girls, bedecked in gifts of beauty or intelligence or musical talent or athletic/martial skill or the sweetness of their dispositions or simply of an active imagination, began to follow these rumors.  Baroness Sachs's agents began to receive surreptitious inquiries about the planet.  A select few of the askers were chosen, and flown at Geertruida's expense the 12.6 AUs towards the distant Scimeca sun.

Much like the baroness's husband, they never returned.  Nor, of course, did any of the others.

Soon, the Nomian robotics workshop Millgrove received an order for 30 autonomous drones in the form of giant floating heads with viciously biting mouths.  Baroness Sachs has been using these devices to ensure the smooth running of her operations ever since the order was fulfilled.  They enforce the isolation and work ethic she wishes to see among her subjects, as well as ferrying supplies to the girls and prisoners and collecting the results of their labors.

Over the years since, Millgrove and other Nomian workshops, as well as those on Robenhymer, have received a variety of secretive and unusual requests from Baroness Sachs.  Supplementing the 30 heads, she has hidden physical dangers and surveillance equipment in the mattresses, light fixtures, and rare musical instruments (almost always pianos) offered to her prisoners and girls.  Three teams of felicia parahumans hand-picked by Geertruida see to the day-to-day operations of the planet, one overseeing the prisoners, another overseeing the captives, and the final one concerned only with the quality of the products exported off the planet.  Seats on the three-person coordinating council cycle through the members of each team; during their term, they develop rules and plans both in the moment as necessary and for the foreseeable future.

As the whim strikes Baroness Sachs, occasional captives are sent to a Nomian Trapier Clinic for medical recruitment, realigning their way of thinking to serve as the Baroness's agents, amusements, or merely to increase their efficiency as workers.  Should the whim not strike her, recalcitrant captives and rebellious prisoners can easily provide biological components for the Scimecan system's small noetic drive manufacturing industry or sale beyond its planets, or raw materials for medical education and experimentation.

Hausuling captives are gifted small wardrobes of clothing befitting brides in a handful of cultures from across the Scimecan system.  They are not given more mundane clothing, reliant only on what they had on their back as they left their home.  Recognizing that marriage and reproduction provide economic benefits in the form of more workers, the products team has successfully lobbied for a marriage cycle to occur at a rhythm determined by the coordinating council.  Every so many years, a certain percentage of the prisoners are married to reproductively compatible captives by negotiation between the warden and baronial projects teams.  They are then allowed to be married (for fewer years than the time between marriages), living together in one building before being divorced and forcibly separated again.  This has allowed a certain amount of communication to occur among the scattered Hausulings, and a culture to form.

In recent years, two resistance movements have sprung up on Hausu.  The older and more popular of the two, anarchists who call themselves the Federation of the Improperly Detained and Enraged (or FIDE), advocates simply for the abolition of baronial control, leaving the Hausulings in charge of their own individual destiny and free to leave the frozen planet if they so desire.  Only a handful of Hausulings have gathered under the auspices of New Jonesville.  These rebels would make the three teams of felicia parahumans employees of the other residents of the planet, who would send an equal number of their own population to join each team.  Imported communications technology would then provide a means for the widely scattered populace to direct their efforts by means of regular voting; their recruitment efforts have been hindered by the fact that this sounds like a daydream to many Hausulings. 

Nonetheless, the tireless work of these two groups have stoked the flames of hope in the Hausuling heart, and a recognition of their unity in oppression.  Unnoticed by the baroness or her agents, revolution is seeming more and more possible, if only the rebels could solve the inherent logistical problems.  Like siezing weaponry and vehicles somehow, for example.

A side effect of this growing collective sentiment is that wrongs committed by one Hausuling against another face two separate justices, that of the baroness's people and the bloodier version enacted by the Hausulings themselves.

Most of this is unknown to the system or Empire as a whole, except perhaps in shadowed rumors.  The face portrayed to the greater world by Baroness Sachs focuses heavily on its agricultural and agroproduct exports.  Geertruida has introduced a variant of the watermelon genetically modified to grow well in Hausu's frigid climates that she calls the icemelon to supplement the planet's indigenous crop species.  With its origins in the old Cream of Saskatchewan cultivar, its small, round fruits of less than a foot in diameter have a thin rind, striped in light and dark green, and sweet flesh of stark white with black seeds.  The freezing temperatures in which icemelon are grown make its sugars much more prominent than its watermelon ancestors, making it quite a bit sweeter; the seeds have a pleasingly crisp nutty flavor.  Many of the cement structures which house her subjects have a vine of them growing up one corner towards the roof.  Hausulings usually store these fruits in their wells to preserve them.

As the Baroness Hausu spends much of her time in the marquesal court on Robenhymer, marketing the products of her dismal planet, Hausuling recipes have become quite the trend across the system, often enjoyed by people with no idea of the bleak lives of the innovators of these recipes.  Bottles of Hausuling icemelon seed oil can be found on grocers' shelves, even a system or two away, beside plastic bags of roasted icemelon seeds, paper sacks of icemelon seed flour, jars of pickled icemelon rind, and bottles of icemelon juice and icemelon wine.

Icemelon rind stir-fry and icemelon rind stew are eminently affordable dinners enjoyed by poorer Scimecans, while those of all classes enjoy egushi soup.  Scimecan egushi soup often contains pumpkin leaf, spinach, tomatoes, okra, chili peppers, onions, beans, and some form of seafood or meat in a broth thickened with palm oil and icemelon seed flour.  Hatfielding egushi adds dumplings of pounded yam, while Robenhymi are known for cooking a less watery version of the soup down into a thick sauce served atop any number of dishes.  A jellied icemelon pudding known as jerudi muluni made of icemelon pulp, cinnamon, rosewater, and potato starch, with pistachios and candied fruits embedded in it is enjoyed after many a celebratory meal.  Icemelon agar jelly with cherries and vanilla powder fulfills the same role on a more day-to-day level.

Icemelon gazpacho with stale bread, onion, chili pepper, ginger, olive oil, wine vinegar, and garlic is a popular appetizer.  Slices of icemelon often have their intense flavors further concentrated by either grilling, pan frying, baking, or roasting.  Baked icemelon is prized for its raw-fish-like texture and slightly meaty flavor as its abundant sugars caramelize.

Dr. Jonathan Stepford, Apprentice in the Third Circle of Mystery (Vampire: the Masquerade 5th edition)

May my patrons Todd, Jaina Bee, Ferny, Casey, Dave, and Darius receive an eternal flow of delicious Blood Dolls!  Thank you so much for the boons you have given me that let me do this!

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Epitaph:  The One-Eyed King's sweater-vested spy

Quote:  "Now, now, no need to be crass.  Come on in; Mary's really outdone herself tonight!"
Clan:  Tremere, House Tremere
Sect:  Camarilla
Coterie:  The Calafia-Hippolyta Grove of Evergreen Wisdom (rectorate again, after a decade and a half as vanguard)

Mortal Days
Louis Pasteur was still new and making waves when the Great Blizzard hid Jonathan Stepford's murder.  The forensic doctor's first thought once he'd become the fangs in the snowy white himself was of how much easier it would have gone for the rapidly-cooling body slowly pinking the snow with its dregs if he'd had some of that new local anesthetic he'd read of so much in the medical journals.

Like many doctors of his day, Jonathan'd been a York Rite Freemason and an Odd Fellow and an Elk, filling his social calendar with ceremonies and celebrations and the methods of furthering a career that fester and flourish behind closed doors.  The city of New York wouldn't initiate the office of Chief Medical Examiner until Jonathan was 71 years dead; such cloak-and-dagger, brandy-and-cigars methods were the only way he saw to earn the money he deserved doing the work he'd been put on Earth to do.  He'd had a wife, Constance, and the silly thing had argued with him ever so much as women began to press once more the idea that they should be Masons and the like.

Dr. Stepford prided himself on his breadth of reading, always seeking new translations of Auguste Ambroise Tardieu and Johann Ludwig Casper.  Professional journals flooded hid mailbox everyday and he mostly kept almost up-to-date with nearly all of them.  His epistles often appeared in local papers, famously remarking that the spirit of the age had left the United States to rest for a time in England.  It would return, he said; Emerson and Thoreau's ghosts would not let its absence stand.  The precursors to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn held his fascination, but it was the Fellowship of the New Life, with its message of pacifism, vegetarianism, and simple living that held his fiercest allegiance.  An avid subscriber to their journal Seed-Time, he worked hard to spread the group's ideas among the wealthy New Yorkers who were his peers.  Even joined the socialist splinter group called the Fabian Society.

What could he say?  He liked organizations, and the well-ordered life that came with their dictates.

His sire never told him which of these groups ~ professional, fraternal, occult, political ~ provided the light for his star to shine and catch the old man's eye, but Jonathan believes it must have been one of them.  The field in which he worked ~ forensic medicine ~ was a relatively new, certainly, but he was no Pasteur, after all, no medical genius breaking new ground and defying the scientific consensus with truth as his shield.  

Jonathan has since come to discover that intellectual humility is a rare diamond in the Tremere rough, and one Henderson often exhorted him to keep.  To this day, however, he doesn't consider it a possible cause for him to be given the gift of immortality he was given in the flying ice that night.

Kindred Nights
60 years passed, and with them four families for food, for companionship, for appearances' sake.  New York City with Constance, of course, then Fiorella in Philadelphia, Detroit's Geraldine, and finally: Mary.

Mary won Jonathan's heart in a way no other of his wives had.  Suburban Chicago offered fertile soil for their life together, as full of quiet and pleasantries as anything can be for a vampire and the family from which he fed.  Jonathan nearly remembered what it was to gasp in surprise when Mary herself suggested they adopt their three children, before Jonathan had found the moment to do so himself.  He wanted an illusion, to fool mortal society and his own conscience that human happiness was available to him; she just fretted over the difficulties of the urchins' life.  The goodness of it felt tantalizingly real to Jonathan, almost as if it was something he could take on himself.

Until 1957, that is.  Two Nosferatu, children by the standards of the undead and children in human appearance as well, happened to discover the Stepford family as they practiced their skulking.  Peter and Tammy Walenski were their names, and they had plucked themselves from a house of abuse by alcohol and flame before the Nosferatu primogen immortalized their young bodies.  Elysium was shocked when the two revealed what they had seen to Sheriff Balthazar.  The Brujah wanted to execute Jonathan on the spot, Scourges being less common in those premillenarian nights.  But Prince Lodin stopped him, took the Tremere into a private room muffled with hanging cigar smoke with brandied blood available at a moment's ease.

The Prince told Jonathan that he would survive this crime, for the wound to the Masquerade was small and easily bandaged.  He would even be allowed to keep his wife, though not his children.  Jonathan, swept aside by his fear of losing the tenuous hold he'd had on happiness, hastily agreed to whatever price would secure this seeming mercy.  Lodin smiled the kind of smile only Ventrue faces can hold as he revealed what Jonathan had agreed to.  The Tremere would be Blood Bound to the Prince, starting with his first drink that very hour, and he would Dominate his wife into killing his children.  Jonathan's face fell, but he knew he would keep his overzealous bargain.  "Anything to keep Mary," his hollow voice told the Prince.

"And keep her, you shall," Lodin replied, "for she shall be your childe."  Upon re-entering the main body of Elysium, Prince Lodin made a big scene about the cunning Tremere having defeated him with metaphysical manipulations and political chicaneries, just grandiose enough to sell it and not a bit more, and Jonathan carried out the sentence.

For decades he served Lodin as his hidden agent in the Chicago Chantry, curtailing Nicolai's influence and trying to enjoy some semblance of life with his beloved wife.  The War of Chicago struck the nigh-forgotten note of hope in his breast.  He, like everyone else, thought Lodin had fallen beneath the claws of the Lupines, and so he ran.  Bundling Mary and what resources he could into their station wagon, he sped all the way west to California, the two of them recovering from their own battle with the Lupines by means of the Highway Patrol corpses they left trailing behind them like breadcrumbs.

They settled in Oakland (well, Alameda), halfway across the continent from what they'd had to deal with in the Windy City, and for months it seemed like they could rebuild anew.  They made contact with Regent Duncan Campbell and the Brujah Prince of the East Bay Amanda Koller and began to settle, even to smile again.  The Prince found her appetite for power whetted by that conflict and everyone can see it.  The Stepfords have grown comfortable with the limited freedom they have found here, and fear what Sir Olaf will do as Amanda's star rises ever more.    No doubt the broken Prince danced when the Alameda Chantry proved so vital in the face of the Wan Kuei invasion, which Jonathan did all he could do to aid, despite never gaining a true understanding of Blood Sorcery.

Plots and Schemes:

• Burying the Landmine:  Lodin knew of Petra's Embrace well before the mage's daughter was even abducted.  It is so easy to send information to distant masters in this day and age.  From the beginning, the Broken Prince had instructed Jonathan to implant the Gargoyle with a sequence of commands and triggers that would eventually turn this weapon away from the Wan Kuei and towards his enemies.  It's been a dozen years since that war ended, and Lodin seems to be biding his time until the situation is right.  The conditioning continues apace, but there has been plenty of time for Jonathan to consider how he might align his own liberation with whatever Lodin's plans for Petra might be.  After all, it is not Lodin himself who is Petra's master.  If only he could warn Prince Amanda before the scheme is sprung.
• Strange Visitors:  Wheelchair-using Brujah anarch Susan Langston has called upon Jonathan in his role as doorman of the chantry repeatedly over the past few months, wanting to speak to Duncan.  The requests have gone from uncertain asks to casually calling on the deaf Regent.  Jonathan respects his Regent, and enjoys relaxing with him from time to time, but he's done some investigations on the rabble-rouser.  She is a member of a gang with one of the House Carna traitors in South Berkeley.  He doesn't yet know what is bringing her around, or what he can do with the information after he gets it, but he'd love to find out.
• How Far Would You Go To Be Free?:  Jonathan has heard that the Sabbat have a ritual by means of which they can break the Blood Bond.  Just before the day-death takes him, after sending Mary off to the bunker that protects her from the sun, he has been known to sit in a richly appointed chair, a glass of undrunk brandy scenting the air, pondering how he might approach them.  They are monsters, he knows, and believe in leaving humanity behind.  Neither of those is the good Victorian doctor; how might he force them to teach him this most valuable of tools?

Domain and Haven:

• Alameda Point / Naval Air Station Alameda (stats to be determined once I finish writing up the rest of the chantry):  While most of the chantry, including Jonathan's wife, sleep in basements scattered throughout the decommissioned naval base for safety from the burning sun, Jonathan serves as the public face of the East Bay Tremere in many cases.  Accordingly, his daytime rest is had in the USS Hornet museum.  The aircraft carrier provides wonderful protection against both Sol and any attack from Kindred or other supernatural beings.  Many of the Kindred in the East Bay know to call here before seeking any other member of the Grove.
• 2805 Otis (Resources 🌢🌢):   In order to receive more personal guests and maintain his mask, Dr. Stepford uses his own meager investments and the money he can steal from the sleeping and groggy patients whose blood he drinks to maintain a cozy home in Alameda's East End neighborhood.  Giving him the comfort that can only come from retreating into memories of a cozier time, he has had Mary decorate it in a mid-century style, only slightly updated to reflect the tastes of a culture seven decades more recent.  Every other month or so, he takes her on a vacation to the house for a weekend to forget the life they've been forced into and pretend to just be the conservative suburban couple they once were.
• In recognition of their role preventing the spread of the Wan Kuei, Prince Koller has granted the Calafia-Hippolyta Grove of Evergreen Wisdom domain rights over all of Alameda.  Notable hunting grounds include the South Shore shopping center, Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach, and the 19th-century storefronts of the Historic Park Street Business District.  Dr. Stepford prefers to haunt Alameda Hospital and the various skilled nursing facilities that surround it, drinking deep from those unaware by sleep or anesthesia.

Thralls, Tools, and Enemies:

• George Burton (Enemy 🌢🌢, Nuisance): George Burton believed in a lot of bizarre fringe sciences in his youth. Thankfully, the New World Order of the Technocracy saw that he had some reason about him, and reached out to talk about the errors of logic found among the Society of Ether he'd found himself in. His only daughter, as dutiful and perfect as ever the daughter of a Mind mage could be, was last seen by her Mythbusters coworkers in 2002. Mustering all the resources and Procedures available to him, he quickly discovered the bloodsucking reality deviants infesting Alameda Point, where the Mythbusters performed their most dangerous experiments. With no answers beyond that, he began a cautious war, hoping to find answers before he found vengeance. Almost two decades later, the flame of hope has died down to an ember, and that ember itself grows cold and dark. This does not bode well for the Tremere, as George's amalgam-mates have begun to pressure him to go on a full offensive. (Data ❇️❇️❇️, Forces ❇️❇️, Matter ❇️❇️❇️, Mind ❇️❇️, Primal Utility ❇️)

Kindred Relationships:

• Camarilla (Infamy 🌢🌢 former cleaver / Camarilla Status 🌢🌢, Bastion of Decency): Vampiric society certainly doesn't offer many options for clean living, does it? The anarchs refuse to accept any semblance of order and the Sabbat are . . . distasteful. The Camarilla alone offers Dr. Stepford and his wife a chance at common American decency and a stable life.
• House Tremere (Loresheet: Descendant of Karl Schrekt 🌢🌢 / Loresheet: The Pyramid 🌢🌢, Living the Dream): What could be better than life as a Tremere? The blood served in the chantry is of a spectacular vintage, well spiced by brandy and Cuban cigars, the study is plushly appointed, and there is little to do all the long nights than to study and practice. Here, Jonathan has found a quiet unlife where knowledge and political power can be wed for all eternity.
• Regent Duncan Campbell (Our Savior) Sheriff Darius (A Threat) Petra (A Tool) (Coterie Advantages 🌢🌢): Jonathan much prefers the Calafia-Hippolyta Grove of Evergreen Wisdom to the child-regent Nicolai Antonescu's Hyde Park Chantry. There is a freedom to be found here, a willingness to invest in the projects of its members. Regent Campbell relies on collegial friendship rather than supernatural force and pawns with ungodly power to maintain the cohesion of the group. Of course, there is at least one such pawn with ungodly power, created in the early part of this millennium to fight against the Wan Kuei of San Francisco, but the Gargoyle now named Petra serves the Grove as a whole. No one member of the East Bay Tremere can unilaterally command their secret weapon, but Dr. Stepford is the chantry's expert on mind control. Darius is the inspirer of worry for Dr. Stepford, though to be fair, that anxiety is due less to his personality, with its strange blend of gentle prayer and shadowy brutality, and more to his position. Jonathan, after all, knows well what it is to owe loyalty to both Regent and Prince, and how little there is to trust in such a position.
• Mary Stepford (Living in the Past 🌢, Guilt-Tainted Love): Jonathan just didn't have the heart to not mess with Mary's head. Knowing full well what the piling build-up of its repetition would inevitably do to his wife's mind, he has repeatedly made use of his Dominate to protect her from her memories. He destroyed her to save her, and now he comforts himself with the dull predictability of a life that hasn't noticed the last seven decades of societal change. Mary is still here, standing by his side, and in fact her star has been on the rise for some time now thanks to her innovative application of the domestic arts to Blood Sorcery, while he struggles to politick his way up the Pyramid as a vampire who leans more heavily into his mental powers than his sorcerous ones. Despite this, Jonathan feels no jealousy, or really only the slightest bitl he just loves her too much to begrudge her the respect of her peers.
• Sir Olaf Holte, the One-Eyed King (Long Bond 🌢 / Mawla 🌢🌢🌢🌢🌢, Swallowed Disgust): Kindred are denied happiness by whatever force, God or alien or otherwise, that has left them what they are, and this destiny was fulfilled for the Stepfords when a Chicago street thug showed up in a beat-up car on the streets of Alameda on Christmas of 1994.  He had a present for them: a burnt crisp of a man in the back seat with one piercing blue eye left of his former grandeur.  The One-Eyed King told Jonathan to drink, and the Tremere couldn't resist even what dregs of Lodin's blood were still holding them.  He drank and he renewed the Ventrue's hold over him.  Every May 1st now sees Jonathan travelling to Chicago on Olaf's orders to once more renew the hold.  Thus did the hidden King of Chicago's streets maintain one tenuous tendril of influence elsewhere, a bolthole in case things went bad like they had before, and an influence in the famously Sabbat-contested East Bay.
• Tammy Walenski (Vengeance):  Jonathan can never forgive Tammy and her now-truly-dead brother for damning him so fully.  Humanity had begun to root in his heart and then she ripped it from his grasp, leaving him a hollow monster.  One day, he will be his own man again, and she will pay.  Maybe he'll stake her for the sun atop Olaf's own ashes.
• William Albert Grissom (Mawla 🌢, The Son I Wish I Had): A fledgling in the Las Vegas chantry, William was assigned to be Jonathan's apprentice in recognition of his efforts against the Wan Kuei. The former CSI technician approaches the initiation that will make him a Tremere in his own right, and the mixed pride and grief at losing the specific bond he'd fostered with the boy provide a vaguely-welcome relief from the many heavy things on Jonathan's mind.

Whispers:

• Every Vampire's Fear:  The Ivory Tower of the East Bay has noticed the difficulties, accidents, and just plain bad luck that have followed Jonathan for more than a decade.  Clucktongues have begun to speculate on the possibility of a haunting, a careless feed catching a victim's soul between worlds.  Worse, some of them claim that ghosts cannot see vampires well, being as they are dead-but-not.  Perhaps hauntings are contagious, they say.  No one has asked the Hecata who rule Rockridge about it yet.
• A New Shining City On The Hill:  As one of Karl Schrekt's descendants, and a true believer in the former Justicar's version of the clan post-Vienna, Dr. Stepford is always watching, evaluating the East Bay for Schrekt.  The Pyramid needs a peak, one chantry through which its business can flow, and Schrekt is using Stepford to investigate the possibility of making the Calafia-Hippolyta Chantry of Evergreen Wisdom that peak.
• No One Likes A Diplomat:  Jonathan Stepford wishes to build an alliance with the Heaven Promise Society that rules San Francisco, the tiniest sect in the nocturnal world of the Kindred.  Regent Demian's hatred of the Wan Kuei and wariness of Schrekt's new Inner Council has kept the Heaven Promise Society and the Camarilla in a state of ceasefire; Jonathan would end that stalemate with peace and friendship, and undermine the bookish pale lady.  Perhaps he sees this as his path to a Regency in his own right.  One that might have diplomatic immunity, no less.

Mask and Mien:

• With hair as comfortably warm a brown as the welcoming wood of a home-office chair, Dr. Stepford adopts the style of a suburban white man of the mid-20th century.  Sweater vests in calmly cool pastels provide a pleasant background to the pipe that is rarely far from Jonathan's mouth.  Immaculate, almost glowing, white button-up shirts, soft grey trousers, and loafers the color of his hair complete the look, though the brilliant brass pince-nez glasses atop his hawk's beak of a nose confuse it some.  Behind their round lenses, honey-colored eyes dart with exacting purpose to rest on any number of details in turn.  He keeps a smile on his face and a pleasant manner about himself, welcoming and gracious.
• Jonathan plays the part of the domestic lord at home with the sort of easy perfection that can only come from a desperate clinging, whereas at work (whether for the hospital or the chantry or even in less formal circumstances,) he tempers a crisp professionalism with a fatherly demeanor that manages to communicate both care and enforced distance.  This front melts away whenever he is alone with his wife, though the desperation remains to mark the genuine, tender love with which he treats her.  She is the only thing he really loves, and he is slowly destroying her to save her.  It is only in the rare moments he has alone, with nothing to do or nowhere to go that he lets himself realize that and search for a solution.  It hurts when he does that, so he keeps those moments mercifully rare.
• Alameda Hospital has a doctor among its staff by the name of Ira Levin, whose description matches that of Jonathan Stepford.  He works as an anesthetician and physician, and his paychecks are set to direct deposit into an account held by an Oakland food bank.   (Mask 🌢)

Sire:  the Spiritualist Henderson Nealy, childe of Ann Pudeator who was "killed" in the Salem Witch Trials, childe of Hartmut Feig, childe of Nathan Mendelssohn, childe of Karl Schrekt, childe of Lotharius, childe of Etrius
Embraced:  1888 (172 years old; 40 years old in seeming; born 1848)
Ambition: Slip free from this web of control spun by these monsters around me.
Convictions (Touchstones)

• For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently, when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays (Joseph Nolan, labor organizer in the Hospital Technicians' Union)
• Her face Is the summ’d sweetness of the earth, Her soul the glass of heaven’s grace, To which she leads me by the hand; Or, briefly all the truth to say To you, who briefly understand, She is both heaven and the way. (Meiying Tam, a Chinese-American housewife of a hospital doctor and friend of Mary's)

Humanity 🌢🌢🌢🌢🌢▢▢▢▢▢
Generation:  11th
Blood Potency 🌢🌢

Strength 🌢🌢  /  Charisma 🌢🌢🌢  /  Intelligence 🌢🌢🌢🌢
Dexterity 🌢🌢🌢  /  Manipulation 🌢🌢  /  Wits 🌢
Stamina 🌢🌢  /  Composure 🌢🌢🌢  /  Resolve 🌢🌢
Health 🌢🌢🌢🌢🌢 / Willpower 🌢🌢🌢🌢🌢

Athletics   /  Animal Ken  🌢 /  Academics 

Brawl   /  Etiquette 🌢🌢🌢  /  Awareness 🌢🌢
Craft   /  Insight 🌢  /  Finance 
Drive   /  Intimidation   /  Investigation 🌢🌢🌢
Firearms   /  Leadership   /  Medicine 🌢🌢🌢🌢 Anesthetics, Forensics
Larceny   /  Performance   /  Occult 🌢🌢
Melee   /  Persuasion 🌢  /  Politics  🌢🌢
Stealth   /  Streetwise   /  Science 🌢🌢🌢 Anthropology
Survival   /  Subterfuge 🌢   /  Technology 🌢🌢

Predator Type: Sandman
Blood Sorcery 🌢 A Taste for Blood ☥ Level One: Bind the Accusing Tongue, Blood Walk, Craft Bloodstone, Devil's Touch, Purity of Blood

Dominate 🌢🌢🌢 Compel, Mesmerize, the Forgetful Mind
Auspex 🌢 Heightened Senses

There is only one place the fly may not go, and that is sweetest honey (Mutants & Masterminds 3e)

As always, a horde of thanks slither their way from the my deepest crannies of my heart to my beloved patrons Todd, Jaina Bee, Ferny, Casey, Dave, and Darius.  I never thought I would achieve even this much success doing what I love.  I owe you all big-time.

If you wanna join them (and maybe see my posts early!), you can become a patron at https://www.patreon.com/queermythopoeia

Beelzebub

"Where there are humans, 

You'll find flies,

And Buddhas.” 

—Kobayashi Issa

In the days when humanity was still a baby of a species, first gathering in the cribs they made for themselves, Beelzebub was just a fly.  A small thing, a tiny thing, a fragile thing who just happened to spot the shade of the King of Shepherd and Field, an early superhuman also known as 𒌉𒍣𒉺𒇻 (Dumuzid), crouching on the edge of the steppe.  Just as 𒌉𒍣𒉺𒇻's wife 𒀭𒈹 (Inanna) was telling his sister Geshtinanna that her grief could not be balmed for she had no idea where 𒌉𒍣𒉺𒇻 was, Beelzebub flew by and bartered this information for a set of three blessings from the Queen of Many Powers, who said:

"I will let you frequent the beer-houses and taverns. 

I will let you dwell among the talk of the wise ones. 

I will let you dwell among the songs of the minstrels. "

There are beer-houses in the Zebul, the Heavenly Place where the gods live, and for thousands of years, Beelzebub lived a blessed life among the wise ones and the minstrels there.  He was called its Ba'al, the Lord of the Zebul, because no other had such unfettered access to its secrets and to the thoughts that guided its direction.  When Beelzebub pulled his buzzing wings from this glory, he slipped through all the tiny cracks in all the many worlds, building a spy network of, well, of flies on the wall.  His influence spread through every where and every way a soul could be.

"You never walk alone. Even the devil is the lord of flies."
--Gilles Deleuze

Flies may be icky to most, but they are scavengers, beings who need not harm or kill to survive, the great recyclers whose work keeps the cycle of waste and food flowing.  Beelzebub's influence was always concerned with preventing stagnation and a buildup of waste until it became pollution.  Jesus chose to ignore all that when he used Beelzebub to exorcise demons.  He metaphysically hurled the Lord Fly into the horde, embedding him inextricably among their number.  Presumably, he did so for the good of the world (being who he was, after all), but the lack of possibility of escape had the predictable effect of drawing Beelzebub's interests and those of Hell closer.  One day Beelzebub simply chose to be one of them.  They do say he works in mysterious ways . . . . 

Beelzebub's vast network of influence began to bend away from the maintenance of the cosmos and towards causing destruction by supporting tyrants, exciting ascetics (and later priests) to lust, causing jealousies among cities, inspiring murders, and bringing war; his favorite tool was possession.  He became one of Lucifer's three greatest lieutenants, alongside Astaroth and Leviathan (who was once defeated by Beelzebub's old friend Ba'al Hadad).  The work excited the Lord of Flies for a time, soothing his anger in universal vengeance for his disgrace.  And when that faded, he dedicated himself to mentoring the demons that had come into his orbit, forging his memories of gluttonously ascetic devotions into the twisted monastic rule governing the Order of the Fly.

"Birds are the eyes of heaven, and flies are the spies of hell.” 

― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

The Order of the Fly proved merely a delaying tactic for Beelzebub, a way to satisfy the demands of his grief without recognizing them.  The thing with delaying tactics is, they end.  Sometime in the 13th century, a dissatisfied Beelzebub led his demonic knights in a rebellion against Lucifer, seeking freedom and a return to the Zebul.  It's hard to say that he failed, exactly, having survived with his life and existence intact among the shards of his once-mighty power.  He has wandered the worlds for the last eight centuries, the shards of hope rotting in his heart.

But Beelzebub is the power of rot, and so his heart holds a spiritual arc reactor, rendering him immune to the finality of defeat.  At times, he has been the villain of the story, at others, well, he's never really the hero but he fights the villain sometimes.  And in many stories, he has been the source of power, the teacher of unpleasant truths, and so many more things.

"To whom shall I run for help in my trouble, to whom shall I complain of the ravaging flies that rob me of my breath, and like enemies press hard on me! They run acrossc my eyes and brows, and whisper love songs in my ears. I want to eat my meal alone, but they, like wolves, share it with me, and drink from my cup of wine as if they were invited guests or kin. (...) But I hope the winter will destroy them with its cold wind and snow, and rain, else I would despise life on their account.” 

― Abraham Ibn Ezra

Home Base:  Las Vegas.
Gender:  Demimale
Sexuality:  Sadistic pansexual Dominant
Romantic Identity:  No-strings aromantic

"Everything was giant-sized, as if I were looking through binoculars. "I" was walking up giant stalks. At first I didn't know what they were or what I was, for that matter. The stalks were tall as redwood trees, and suddenly "I" realized that I was an insect of some kind. This was a grass blade. I thought I was a fly in a gigantic forest -- a giant fly, because everything was so large and super-real, and I;m used to thinking of flies as small. But I was an ordinary fly. I realized, and this was what the world looked like! Oddly enough, this made me feel better, I didn't care what I was; as long as I was something. So I felt myself go up the grass blade. It's impossible to verbalize the sensations I had, but I remember being aware of the weight of my wings. They seemed very sturdy and reassuring."
― Jane Roberts, Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book, p. 62.

Recurrent Foes:

• Ζευς Μυιαγρος:  In the ancient days of Ὀλυμπία, where the famous mountain once grew to stretch the home of the gods within its cloudy hair, an ancient emnity was founded.  In those days, Beelzebub was still enjoying the blessings 𒀭𒈹 had given him for knowing where her husband's ghost was hidden.  Life in the Zebul was sweet, with hearty beer flowing like the two rivers in its holy beer-houses, and (if you ask Beelzebub) this brought a jealous green to the eyes of other gods.  One such was Ζευς, who built himself a cult at the base of the holy peak with the aid of his half-human bastard Ἑρακλης.  The Lightning Philanderer budded off a new epithet of himself, Μυιαγρος ("Fly-Chaser").  Μυιαγρος would kill the mobs of flies that attended animal sacrifices whenever he was invoked, an indignity that Beelzebub has never forgiven.  To be fair, Ζευς Μυιαγρος hasn't let up his side of the vendetta yet, either.
• Notable Powers:  Shapechanging, Emotion Control, Lightning Throwing, Luck Control, Enhanced Traits (source: Offerings), superhuman Abilities, Damage (limited to flies), Warded From Flies.  Olympian template from Book of Magic. (PL 20)
• Rack Angel:  Beelzebub has made a habit following the rumors of fallen angels he collects in his wanderings or harvests from his everpresent network of spiritual spies.  The Lord of Flies plans to use their liminality as a springboard to leap back into the Zebul, or at least to recruit them to his service.  So far, all have realized that they cannot trust this buzzing being who owes allegiance to none but his own disgrace.  It remains to be seen if that is true of Rack Angel. (PL 14)
• Aceria Scacchia:  In 2001, Cox Communication and UNLV partnered to build a new indoor arena for the university.  Beginning to build a focus on sustainability, the university encouraged the contractors who won the right to build the flooring of the building's centerpiece (the basketball court) to find sources of wood that did not require new logging.  A woodlot dating back to Bugsy Siegel's time.  Unbeknownst to them, the pile of wood they purchased contained planks milled from an ancient fig tree, whose resident dryad had only barely managed to keep together over the decades and the many miles.  The shop steward of the crew forged an agreement between her and the university to get her to stop causing problems with the construction.  For the last 19 years, Aceria Scacchia has attended classes in any number of departments, particularly favoring the biological sciences.  She merges into the coldly inert floorboards of the basketball court every night, longing for the dynamic (if slow) growth of a living fig tree.  The time-lost and tiny knight Tom Thumb has foiled her maniacal schemes in search of a home before, as has the science hero known as Uranium Joe.  She would do anything to convince Beelzebub to help her, now that he has set up shop in Vegas. 
  
• Notable Powers:  Senses (low-light vision), Protection, Immunity (aging).  Feature (identify plants, out-of-season fruits+flowers, cure plant disease), Phytotoxin, Photosynthesis, Regrowth, Woodskin, Pass Through Plants, Root Digging, Root Transport, Woods Walk, Animate Plants, Green Memory, Green Network, Speak with Plants, Warp Wood, Rooting, Earth Meld (substitute "trees" for "earth"), Tanglevines, Sleep, Mind Control (limited to speaking to them, limited to a sentence or two) from Power Profiles. (PL 14)
• The Hag:  She has built an extended life out of running cosmic scams and selling her soul since her punk rock days in the 70s.  What makes you think the pathetic, lost god Beelzebub wasn't one of those she has milked for the power to fight crime and corruption?  The two have lived a patchwork of respectful detente, vengeance, and teaming up ever since.
  
• Notable Powers:  Artificer, Connected, Contacts, Ritualist, Well-Informed.  Just. So. Many. Spells. Seriously, I'm imagining something ridiculously cheesy like 15-30 points of Alternate Effects, all within an Easily Removable Device or two.  (PL 12)
• Vincenzo Sangiovanni:  Vampires, generally speaking, don't rot.  Not if they put in a little nutritional effort, anyway.  Few around know that Vincenzo stole his vampirism from another, opening his wrist and abu Lazar's neck.  He locked his mouth on the latter and swallowed until the vampire's blood had replaced his and his tongue tasted of ancient corpse-ashes.  Beelzebub knows, because it was he who held the older vampire down to let this happen, it was he who gave the magic dagger to Vincenzo that it might happen.  Vincenzo was to do what abu Lazar wouldn't and serve the Lord of Flies as his chief lieutenant in the rebellion against Lucifer, and he did repay the debt in the currency asked.  Of course, the very same dagger he'd used to take control of his fate whispered betrayal in the ears behind his ears the entire length of the war.  The whispers manifested when Vincenzo struck a terrible blow against the fallen god in the very moment of his seeming victory.  Vincenzo became his own vampire in that moment, eternity truly in his own two hands, ever haunted by Beelzeub's anger.
• Notable Powers:  (PL 12) Metrosexual Vampire from Supernatural Handbook.  Command the Undead, Grasping Graves, Death Sight, Death Vision, Necromancy (with a number of spells as Alternate Effects), Speak with the Dead, Mind Control from Powers Profile.  Death-activated equivalent of Scrying Stone of Sirrion and large installation from Gadgets Guide.  Benefit (wealth 5)
• New Covenant Revelator:  When Beelzebub began his investigations into Elyktiel's fall, Beelzebub came to the rather-hasty conclusion that they had merged with Gabriella.  After all, what human could refuse an angel's dying request?  The Lord of the Flies approached the pastor's daughter accordingly, and she had about the reaction one might expect.  Ever since, hearing of some plot or another from the ancient being is one of the few things that can interrupt Gabriella's obsessive quest to restore her father's flock.
• Notable Powers:  Battlesuit.  Inspire, Contacts, Connected, Leadership, Luck. Startle, Trance, Defensive Attack, Evasion, Improved Aim, Improved Defense, Improved Disarm, Move-By Attack, Power Attack, Precise Attack, Takedown, Uncanny Dodge, Weapon Bind, Fearless, Interpose, Second Chance, Inventor, Create (Limited to Food), Healing.  Feature (flashlight, personal spotlight, light show, data-storage drive, remote), Blinding Aura, Dazzling Burst, Laser Weapon, Light Absorption, Photonic Shield, Lightflight, Healing Light, Illuminate, Solar Sustenance, Vision Enhancement, Strength Enhancement, Life Support System, Mind Shield, Sensory Shield, Communication System from Power Profiles.  (PL 10)
• Judith Winstead:  FBI agent Matthew Winstead came to Appalachia investigating the alleged murders of his friends John Hobbes and Gretta Milano and meeting a young Judith in the process.  Instantly smitten, the two became caught up together in a conflict between Beelzebub and the Potsherd People.  The Lord of the Flies enlisted the aid of a mute, disfigured being Matthew dubbed Quilt-Flesh before Judith finally recognized the monster as her father Greg.  With his typically cavalier attitude about others' needs, Beelzebub allowed the conflict to lay waste to Judith's family home.  She agreed to leave with Matt, travelling with him across the country as he investigated cases of the strange and unusual.  Before long, the two were married.  After many harrowing incidents with one another, the marriage between Judith and Matt began to fall apart.  She began slowly developing feelings she knew she shouldn't harbor for the Lord of the Flies,whom they'd encountered a handful more times in their adventures.  Matt meanwhile became the victim of Judith's dead uncle Anton.  After his ghost attempted to possess Matt's body, the FBI agent lapsed into a coma and eventually died.  Distraught, Judith found a cold comfort in the arms of Beelzebub.  She has been calling herself the Fly-Bride ever since and followed him wherever he went, insisting the whole time that Hell had not purged his heart from him.  He just doesn't want to admit he loves her back, she says.
• Notable Powers:  Treatment skill, Deflect, Movement (safe fall).  Empathy, Mental Communication, Mental Awareness, Mental Detection, Mind Reading, subtle Psychokinesis from Power Profiles. (PL 4)
  

"Seropusly, why do flies line up in the sky every time someone lies? Hovering over they long to take the shit out from where It belongs so They compete to eat it alive.” 

― Ana Claudia Antunes, ACross Tic

Physical Appearance:  I can't draw, so I really like providing a few reference pictures and trusting in your imagination to build a good image of Beelzebub.  

Ursula looks like some combination of these three pictures:

"Flies purify the air, and plays--the morals.” 

― Anton Chekhov

Beelzebub (PC PL/Minion 20, NPC PL 12, Sidekick 60)
STR 0  AGI 7  FGT 3  AWE 12

STA 6  DEX 2  INT 7  PRE 11

Powers

Dwelling in My House:  Accurate easy extended subtle 2 Teleport 6, portal, medium (beer-houses, taverns, wise talk, live music) • 38 points

Once I Was A God; Now I Am A Devil:  Comprehend 10 (animals 2, languages 4, plants, spirits 2); Immunity 11 (aging, life support); Senses 4 (accurate acute radius divine mental awareness, dimensional) • 41 points

Slipping Through the Cracks of the World:  Movement 3 (dimensional travel 3) • 6 points

Summon the Swarm:  Summon Swarms of Flies 2, active, horde, mental link, multiple minions 4 (16 swarms), responsive, sacrifice, self-powered • 22 points

• Insect Swarm PL8 • MR3 
  STR —* STA 2 AGL 3 DEX 0 FGT 0 INT — AWE 0 PRE 0 
  Powers: Concentration burst area Affliction 3 (resisted and overcome by Fortitude; dazed, disabled, incapacitated); permanent innate Insubstantial 2 (swarm); Flight 3 (16 mph).
  Offense: Init +3, Burst Area Affliction (Fortitude DC 13). 
  Defenses: Dodge 2 (+5), Parry 0 (0), Fortitude 2 (+4), Toughness 0, Will —. 
  Totals: Abilities 0 + Powers 26 + Advantages 0 + Skills 0 + Defenses 4 = Total 30 points. 
  * No effective Strength due to Insubstantial effect

Swarm Form:  Flight 4 (30 mph) linked to precise reaction Insubstantial 2 (swarm) • 17 points

Advantages
Animal Empathy, Connected, Diehard, Eidetic Memory, Evasion, Fearless, Minion 52 (4 demons of the Order of the Fly), Move-By Action, Redirect, Ritualist, Taunt, Trance, Uncanny Dodge, Well-Informed

• Demon of the Order of the Fly (a modified quick conversion of the chasme; MR 13/PL 9)
  STR 2 STA 2 AGL 1 DEX 1 FGT 4 INT 1 AWE 1 PRE 1
  Powers: Accurate easy extended standard action Teleport 4; claws for bleeding you (Strength-based multiattack Damage 3, secondary effect); concentration perception ranged Move Object 2, subtle 2; darkness (burst area partial visual Concealment 2 attack); disgust aura (progressive cloud area Affliction 3, limited degree, resisted and overcome by Will, impaired, stunned); drone (cumulative burst 2 area Affliction 3, requires a move action to activate, resisted and overcome by Will, fatigued, exhausted, asleep); Immunity 11 (electricity effects, poison); Immunity 30, limited to half effect (acid effects, cold effects, fire effects); Immunity 20, unreliable (magical effects); impervious Protection 5; mental Communication 1; Movement 2 (wall-crawling); perception ranged Nullify Magic 6, unreliable (Alternate Effect: burst area perception ranged Nullify Magic 6, unreliable); Protection 7; ranged Weaken Strength 4; Senses 2 (darkvision); Senses 2 (detect Heavenly influence 2), requires move action to activate; Senses 2 (vision counters invisibility), requires move action to activate; winged Flight 3 (16 mph)
  Advantages:  Languages 2 (Infernal native; English, Enochian); Move-by Action; Power Attack
  Skills:  Athletics 4, Deception 6, Insight 6, Intimidation 6, Perception 6, Stealth 6
  Offense:  Init +1; claws (+4, close, Damage 5 multiattack secondary effect); darkness (burst area, Concealment); disgust aura (cloud area, Will DC 13); drone (burst 2 area, Will DC 13); Weaken Strength (ranged, Fortitude DC 14)
  Defense:  Dodge 0 (+1), Parry 0 (+4), Fortitude 0 (+2), Toughness +14, 5 of which is impervious, Will 0 (+1)
  Totals:  Abilities 26 + Powers 138 + Advantages 4 + Skills 17 + Defenses 0 = 195 points

Skills

Expertise: History 6 (+13), Expertise: Magic 9 (+16), Expertise: Theology 9 (+16), Insight 3 (+15), Investigation 4 (+11), Perception 4 (+16), Stealth 4 (+11), Treatment 3 (+14)
Offense
Initiative +7
Unarmed +3:  Close, Damage 0
Defense 
Dodge  0 (+7)
Fortitude  0 (+6)
Parry  0 (+3)
Toughness  +6
Will  0 (+12)
Size rank ‒2 (6'2"')
Ground speed rank 0 (2 mph)
Flight speed rank 4 (30 mph)
Complications 
Motivation ~ Recognition:  Beelzebub was honored once, praised once, blessed once.  The Philistines knew him, King Ahaziah knew him in antique Israel.  There was a time when the Zebul, the Heavenly Dwelling, knew his buzzing and every wise word spoken in the holy tavern landed upon his many ears.  This has not been the way of things for 2000 years, ever since that Jesus fellow through him at some demons and compelled Beelzebub to be among their number.  Ever since, the Lord of Flies has been trying to return to the lofty position he once held.
Zebel:  No one in Heaven or Hell, except of course those members of the Order of the Fly who have remained loyal to him, likes Beelzebub.  Despite the Lord of the Fly's desire to once more set up shop in the Zebul, he has made himself an enemy of both factions.  Though Heaven and Hell rarely agree on anything, they worked together briefly to curse Beelzebub after his rebellion, who can no longer avoid inspiring disgust in everyone in all the cosmos.  They can feel other things about him, of course, but they do not ever not feel disgust as well.

Power Point Totals:  Abilities 96 + Powers 118 + Advantages 65 + Skills 21 + Defenses 0 = 300