Christmas, part 2: Dr. Rodolfo René, working member of the Workshop of the Manger Beneath the Tree of Knowledge, LLC (Mage: the Ascension)

The Christmas cabal continues now, with the resident toymaker!  My patrons, of course, are my wondermakers (or at least my Pieter Lyndon Kurois).  Keeper, Jaina Bee, Ferny, Casey, Dave, and Darius are how I can keep doing this.  To give me a lovely Christmas present, become my patron for however much you can give.  Trust me, you may not think a dollar a month is much (only $12 a year) but it means a lot to me!

Doctor René Awakened late in life.  Not even a scientist or professor, he'd spent an entire adulthood managing a junkyard tucked away in an obscure part of the city.  Endlessly sifting through the forgotten waste of the city, he did what he could to feed the homeless around them and to get food and odd jobs to them.  Life was quiet and small, cozy if not rich, and the TV always had good reception, thanks to the ready supply of parts to jury-rig onto it.  

It wasn't obvious the moment everything changed for Rodolfo, because Emmanuelle (no last names, 'kay?) is very good at seeming like something other than what she is.  Appearing as just a scrappy young child, this prodigy travels the world striking the fear of Science in the hearts of Nephandi wherever they rust the machinery of society.  Talks like that, too, only it's cuter when she does it, cuz she's ten.  She's still ten, thanks to her very own barriene/rackhame treatment.

Emmanuelle's quixotic wanderings had washed her ashore in the economically depressed neighborhood where Rudolfo's junkyard collected the things no one wanted.  Well, no one but Emmanuelle who needed supplies for her latest Oblivion-opposing device.  She made frequent use of junkyards, which could always be relied upon to possess enough potentiality to allow for any number of inventions.  Nosy proprietors occasionally followed her through the heaps of stuff, concerned for her safety or with unpleasant plans for the young homeless girl with no ties.  They always kept up a steady stream of irritating blather when she was trying to concentrate (and get away from Sleepers).

The old Black man at this junkyard didn't, however.  Sure, Rodolfo talked with her, but he chose his moments well, let her lead the conversation for the most part, and his questions were sincerely interested.  He impressed her, and even made a suggestion or two that proved helpful.  When Emmanuelle left to track her quarry, she left behind her copy of Kitab al-Alacir and a tiny wonder of a cellphone that could contact her, regardless of her place in space, time, or other etheric and noetic dimensions.

A year passed without word, leading Emmanuelle to write it off as yet another casualty of the Avatar Storm, another mage who could've been but was denied access to those etheric and noetic dimensions beyond the normal by the disturbance extending into those dimensions.  But then a text came through on her special cellphone: I SHOULDA CALLED HALF A DOZEN MONTHS AGO BUT CHARLIE SAID NOT TO; THIS IS A GOOD BOOK.  She rushed back to Rodolfo's junkyard, where he had built himself a veritable paradise of junk engineering like something out of a Disney movie or park.  He had a cup of hot chocolate waiting, just finishing the automated pour as Emmanuelle arrived.

The Nephandi-hunter spent a week there, chatting and asking questions about both his reasons for the occupation and life he'd chosen and testing the boundaries of logic in the usual Etherite way.  It wasn't hard to get the romantic old man to admit that logic was a narrow and limited plank above a vast sea of potentiality, that Science had more to do with the heart than the mind.  Emmanuelle, seemingly a sixth of his age, accepted him as her student eagerly.

In truth, Rodolfo proved a rather frustrating student, less out of a rebelliousness or obtuseness, but more because his Avatar urged slowness while talking to him in startles and surprises.  He never did really understand when Emmanuelle explained that she wasn't mad at him, but at the deeper him.  Nonetheless, his training proceeded apace, with Emmanuelle in constant pedagogical pride and enjoyment as Rodolfo built toy after toy after toy, throwing out whimsical theories almost without effort or notice.

While Emmanuelle and most other Etherites tended to emphasize the Science! in the phrase "the wonder of Science!", Rodolfo instead found greater depths in the other noun.  Wonder was what he sought to experience himself and to spread to the world, his goal both as a feeling and as a virtue.  In fact, that was the argument he was making at a roundtable organized by the Celestial Chorus's Sons of Mithras and the Etherites' very own Council for the Enforcement of Scientific Ethics.  Entitled "Virtue Ethics as Paradigmatic Weapons After Defeat in the Ascension War", it was where Rodolfo met his future wife.

Pale and wan, thin and ethereal, she lurked on the edges of the gathering, seemingly content to to listen to the louder mages debate whether compassion was still useful in this post-bellum age, or if mages should be striving to embody solidarity instead.  Her eyes in their motion revealed that she had thoughts about the Council's strategic goals going forward and how virtues might be employed to further them, but her voice remained still and silent.  At dinner afterwards, he asked her her thoughts, and learned that his defense of wonder was the highlight of her day, the one thing anyone said that she thought had any value.

Placida was her name, she mentioned in her Italian accent as a quick aside before utterly devastating his entire argument with her critique.

Rodolfo laughed, and ordered another brandied eggnog for the two of them.  For the rest of the night, they interspersed free and relaxed laughter with increasingly intimate ethical debate.  

They were married within a week of their respective graduations into full mages in their own right.  Barely nine months into their domestic life together, the roar of a fancy engine and the crunching of gravel brought Peter Lyndon Kuroi to their door.  The former Syndicate apprentice had an idea for a Venture he wanted to talk about with Doctor René.

Peter offered to fun Rodolfo's experiments and work, if he pursued them with a goal he thought might be amenable to the older man.  He suspected that the Ascension War wasn't as finished as everyone thought, and the stories of that roundtable that had come to him as he was nestled among the Chakravanti told him that Rodolfo might just agree.  The toymaker did, and in that moment the Workshop of the Manger Beneath the Tree of Knowledge, LLC, was born.

Peter would find leverage points in his hypereconomic models, moments when an individual's Desires and their fulfillment would have the greatest effects on the system as a whole, and then work with Rodolfo to plan a device embodying that fulfillment.  Once the device was built, Peter would send it through his delivery channels as a corporate heir to get it to the people who needed it.  By working on these sort of weak points in the Primal Utility Field, the two would work together to increase investment and wonder in the world, re-enchanting everything in the eyes of the Sleepers and bringing the power of magic exploding back into the Bottom Line.

Doctor Rodolfo René, toymaker & paterfamilias

Researcher of Etheric Chemistry and Engineering & Noetic Science, Apprentice of Etheric and Memetic Dimensions

Tutor: Emmanuelle the Forever Genius of Childhood  /  Avatar:  A Charlie-in-the-box

Tradition:  Society of Ether  /  Faction: Utopian
Essence: Primordial / Arete ❇❇❇▢▢▢▢▢▢▢ / Nature/Demeanor:  Architect/Caregiver

Paradigm: Tech holds all the answers, since all the world's a stage when everything's a prison

A prison is just a stage, in which the captive audience are also the performers.  More than that, a sense of joy and wonder is vital to a prisoner, for the wardens of the jail stupefy their inmates with boredom, deprivation, and grayness to make them easier to control, to kill the curious heart that is the beating heart of freedom.  Pixee Gost says that the Hermetics of her House call the keyholder of our prison universe "Grayface"; Rodolfo might not know about all that, but it certainly does seem clear that some forces in both society and the cosmos ~ probably aligned ~ have declared themselves the enemies of wonder and the allies of rulership.  Problem is, these archontes tou kosmou have their hands in every mechanism of the world, so a raw, improvisational rebelliousness is required to resist their efforts to dull our souls.  Humor helps, too, of course, with the efforts to turn the wardens' tools against them, to reclaim the control they seek to steal.  But turning the prison into a stage ~ even this sheer act of revolution ~ can be turned to Grayface's benefit.  Entertainment is a powerful tool to convince the inmates to accept their lot, after all.  No, all these efforts must be aimed at communal escape.  Technology, here, holds the answer when approached with that same raw, improvisational rebelliousness.  The Enlightened inmate first hones their skills providing low-budget special effects to the shows that keep the inmates free, and then turns those skills to the quest for the walls' tumbling down.  More importantly, by revealing the mechanism of the special effects, they inspire others to join in the quest, sparking ever more numerous ideas, until one day, the wardens shall be no more.

Practices: Craftwork, hypertech

Long used to tinkering away in the humble home he nestled among the heaps of garbage, Rodolfo works his Arts by marrying fancy, complex practices with humble methods (and often even humbler materials.)  Like most Etherites, he develops theories (drawing them from wide-eyed heart to poetic brain, not the other way around) and makes endless blueprints of devices to take advantage of or enact those theories.  He then cobbles those devices together, re-purposing discarded scraps of mundane devices to form the hand-made (moreso even than most Etherites) basic components of a new and liberatory device rising from the rubbish of the prison bars like a phoenix from the flames.  Or Jesus Christ Himself, as Rodolfo's wife Placida keeps reminding him.

Instruments: Artwork, devices and machines, gadgets and inventions (personal for Mind, unique for Spirit), labs and gear, mass media, music, toys (personal for Mind)

As has been stated repeatedly, Rodolfo primarily performs magick by means of toys that he's designed and built himself.  He often ends up playing with the toys himself, too, if we're being honest.  Of course, the distinction between toys and tools can be quite academic at times, leading to any number of devices, machines, or just plain gear proving useful vehicles for his Will.  Though he enjoys his personal workshop in the junkyard he used to (and still does, technically) run, he has been known to settle into any junkyard in his path to tinker and cobble together these mechanisms and electronics.  Of course, as any child could tell you, a toy isn't merely the sum or action of its parts.  Joy can be sparked by plain, silent, blocky shapes without color or decoration that nonetheless do cool things, but it is so much more powerful and delicious when spiced with delightful artwork in a mess of primary colors and catchy tunes in a minor key.  To this end, Rodolfo has studied and mastered the uses of these two spices to maximize the might of his magick, and even occasionally been able to muster them in isolation to work certain effects: eliciting emotion, suggesting thought patterns, and depicting extra-normal entities and locations.  Even before Peter approached Rodolfo, he had developed a significant following on YouTube, TikTok, BoardGameGeek, and other such websites as he shared video of his toys, blogged his thoughts about design for play, and even occasionally shared a blueprint or two.  Now, with an entire marketing department behind him, this instrument has been supercharged.  His posts are getting promoted, the network of social media influencers are viralizing his posts, and there are TV, radio, Internet, and print advertisements for the Workshop of the Manger Beneath the Tree of Knowledge's products.  Peter has even floated the possibility of a product tie-in Netflix show!  Bass is still alive; maybe Placida could help with Rankin?

Strength ❇❇  /  Charisma ❇❇❇  /  Intelligence ❇❇❇❇❇ Creative

Dexterity ❇❇  /  Manipulation ❇❇❇  /  Perception ❇❇

Stamina ❇❇  /  Appearance ❇❇  /  Wits ❇❇❇

Willpower ❇❇❇❇❇▢▢▢▢▢

Alertness ❇   /  Crafts ❇❇ Toys  /  Academics 

Art ❇❇❇ Pleasing Children   /  Drive  /  Computer ❇❇

Athletics   /  Etiquette  /  Cosmology 
Awareness ❇❇   /  Firearms   /  Enigmas

Brawl   /  Martial Arts   /  Esoterica
Empathy ❇❇❇   /  Meditation   /  Investigation

Expression ❇❇   /  Melee  /  Law

Intimidation   /  Research ❇   /  Medicine

Leadership   /  Stealth   /  Occult

Streetwise ❇  /  Survival   /  Politics

Subterfuge   /  Technology ❇❇❇   /  Science ❇❇❇ Engineering

Blatancy ❇   /  Hypertech ❇❇   /  Jury-Rigging ❇

Quintessence ❇▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢ / ▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢ Paradox

Resonance:  Excited ❇  /  Synergy:  Entropic ~ Forgotten ❇

Etheric Chemistry & Engineering (Matter) ❇❇❇ 

Etheric chemistry & engineering are a means to an end for Rodolfo, used to create wonderful devices or improve normal ones to demonstrate the incredible possibility of the world. The traditional tools of chemistry and engineering perform beautifully in his hands. Although he can use strange chemicals and advanced forges, he prefers to use this Sphere through relatively innocuous tools, the gentle wisdom of age guiding normal lathes, saws and screwdrivers to perform with superior precision in an Etherite’s hands. A junkyard is all he needs to work wonders. An added benefit: no one ever notices the dirty pots, hot Bunsen burners, beakers, grease, and general detritus left in his wake.

Noetic Science (Mind) ❇❇❇

Psychology, sociology and psychic research all contribute to the Etherite understanding of the mind, but so do art, metaphysics and political theory.  Reichian psychology, existentialist philosophy, and quantum psychic theory all have something to tell Rodolfo about thaumatopoiesis ("creation of a sense of wonder", the central function in Rodolfo's pet theory of Mind) and this guides his design philosophy.  Of course, sometimes simple carnivalesque hypnotic effects are useful, such as spinning wheels painted with spirals.

Etheric & Memetic Dimensions (Spirit) ❇❇

There is little more useful in thaumatopoiesis than the idea of going to a new and unknown place. Despite the power the promise of travel among the stars or magical lands gripped in an eternal winter at the back of the closet has, however, Rodolfo is intrigued by the effect that large number of conscious, independent observers has on the quantum waveform underlying reality, increasing its intensity and loosening the restrictions imposed by a regularly rhythmic frequency. With enough observers, the waveform can only be modeled in far more dimensions than the archontic four. In those models, memetic dimensions spring from humanity’s massed psychic capabilities. Two types of dimensions appear to arise from the math, sidereal space and the entropic dimensions Rodolfo generally leaves to his wife. The psychic remnants of the dead seem to react well to her prayers and hymns; perhaps it has something to do with the vibration of space and its strings. Rodolfo is far more interested, anyway, in sidereal aliens, the psychic manifestations of living consciousnesses. He studies them to gain insight into minds of Sleepers.

Avatar ❇

Backup ❇❇❇ Subordinates, lab techs, and laborers employed by the Workshop of the Mange Beneath the Tree of Knowledge, LLC

Familiar ❇❇ Moonracer (robot cobbled together from broken toys in the shape of a crowned, winged lion)

Resources ❇

Absent-Minded (3 pt. Flaw)

Impediment: reduced vision (1 pt. Flaw)

Uncanny (2 pt. Flaw)

Whimsy (1 pt. Flaw)

Christmas, Part 1: Pieter Lyndon Kuroi, instigating member of the Workshop of the Manger Beneath the Tree of Knowledge, LLC (Mage: the Ascension 20th anniversary edition)

As always, all of my gratitude goes to my intrepid Patreons.  Thank you so very much, Keeper, Jaina Bee, Ferny, Casey, Dave, and Darius.  If you're reading this and wanna give me a swell Christmas present, please consider becoming my patron for a dollar a month, or even more!  It will go a long way to supporting my D&D writing and streaming.

In years past, I've written up Christmas in a couple different game systems ~ Santa Claus as a memeweapon against pseudo-Catholic fascism in the moons of Jupiter in Eclipse Phase and a superhero team known as the Flurry in Mutants & Masterminds.  This year, I bring you a Mage: the Ascension cabal inspired by, but not limited to, Christmas!  I'll be posting it in a tight series of posts, one after the other each day.

Pieter Lyndon Kuroi was born into privilege.  His father a wealthy and powerful Japanese businessman and his mother had deep and old roots in the United States political overclass.  The Kennedys consider him a distant cousin, but a recognizable cousin nonetheless.  This privilege opened the doors of Yale to him, and those doors then opened the doors of the Yale School of Management after he graduated.

More important than either of those sets of doors, however, turned out to be the doors in between them.  In his senior year of his undergrad, Pieter was tapped to join the Skull and Bones secret society.  He turned out to be rather a perfect Skullsman, buried in a web of connections that shaped the economy of more than one nation, schmoozing and negotiating and wheeling and dealing and drinking.  Lots of drinking, and also drugs, and business decisions lubricated by their influence.  And always the imagery of death spicing the parties.

That spice became nourishing, the garnish traking the place of the main dish, when a heady cocktail of dozens of drugs, half of which lacked street names and a couple of which lacked any sort of name, pulled the luridly woven rug of reality out from Poeter's feet near the end of his second gradschool term.  The divisions ~ no, the distinctions ~ between other people and himself faded into the background.  Abstract math overflowed from a brain that had lost track of the physical world before settling into a web of desires met and unmet, stated and unstated, all negotiating themselves in a web, the nexuses of which were called "people".  The silver diaphany of the threads began to bulge as urge and want and joyous hunger moved within, causing Pieter to sweep his eyes down their length to one side.  Pumping a pounding beat that sounded suspiciously like the song that had been playing as Pieter OD'd, the Karmic Engine there pushed desire through the hoses and pipes the web had now become.  Black smoke seeped from the engine's exhaust, making Pieter cough.  

This polluting soot gathered and formed into the shape of a woman, indistinct and gaseous at first but becoming more solid and real as Pieter watched.  She was beautiful and Japanese and wore the skirt and jacket of the most expensive sort of business suit, though she wore only these and Pieter could see much that was usually hidden by such things as a blouse. She reached out a hand; he took it.  She spoke in his father's tongue, though with a wealthy Bostonian accent, and asked if he wanted to go inside again.  Pieter could feel his brow, which was caught in a state between ectoplasm and orgone, furrowing in confusion before she clarified with an elegant motion of her hand.  She meant the Karmic Engine.

Pieter approached it with the strange non-motion of a dream.  He looked across its automotive bulk to the silvery web, noticing something he hadn't before.  Scattered here and there throughout the web of silvery hoses, holes had worn themselves into the expanse.  Those that appeared at the nexuses, under which dangled the bodies of people he recognized, were the worst holes of all, but from every one of these tears streamed Desire, Want, Lust, Hunger, Need.  Liquid Technicolor, they settled in the sky above as the blurry image of the Skull and Bones party he dimly realized he was still at.  The image's blur lessened as he watched.  Observing the process, Pieter began to notice patterns of color and shape and number and movement.  His mind raced, correlating these patterns with the parts of the image they made clearer, unlocking the secret desires of his friends and other partygoers.

An urgency filled his breast, so he looked back at the Engine and found an intake.  Interposing his hand, he blocked the flow of fuel in, redirecting that Desire into the sky to hasten the sharpening of the real world. The Engine, trying to run without fuel, exploded and the sudden burst of light revealed a horrid form to replace the beautiful and graceful one of the woman who had asked him whether he wanted to stay or go.  That sentiment was echoed in the sound of an old song playing over the Skull and Bones's speakers. She was now a rotting form of flesh with maggots and foul creatures running over her ravaged body.

Pieter's first breath as the hunky Yale School of Medicine student brought him back to life was for this reason a scream.  Waving off further medical help and especially an ambulance, he sat up and looked in the eyes of the muscular man who'd saved him.  For a moment, it seemed like tubes and hoses extended from the man's head, and colors streamed from a tear above it.  He spoke the colors, his body shaping its posture to fit, and miraculously the man offered to pay his hospital bills.  "I don't want to go to the hospital, though," Pieter said.

"I'll give you the money anyway," the med student replied, a gleeful glint in his eye meeting a confused muddle in Pieter's.

Not long thereafter, an Ivy League Headhunter for the Syndicate found the newly Awakened MBA student.  Promising a clear, logical, and scientific explanation for the strange things happening around Pieter, the man began a series of interviews dressed up as morning-after coffeeshop soberings.  After a couple of months, Pieter was a Provider being groomed by Syndicate bosses while maintaining his collegiate life.  Both his real life partying and the half-hearted show of schoolwork that enabled the parties.  The combination of a seemingly psychicly perfect knowledge of other's desires and a mastery of the whims of luck gave the cruel man more than one opportunity to turn the massive amounts of money flowing through him to settle a score or two.  He was soon promoted to the head division, and the Syndicate-NWO amalgam pushing its weight on the Ivy League as a lever to affect the Consensus began to teach him hypereconomics and other Enlightened Sciences.

Everything went well for the rest of the year.  Pieter had finally found a subject of study as exciting as partying, and he delved into it.  On the anniversary of his Epiphany, however, a cabal of Tradition mages found Pieter at one of the constant parties he graced with his presence, clued in by allies within the Ivy League Greek system.  A Cultist of Ecstasy among their number approached the nascent Syndicate member on his level.  Talk of drugs became trying new (magickal) drugs became philosophical talking.  The Cultist used these moments both to milk Pieter for information about his amalgam, but also to offer him bits of the Klubwerks way.

It mostly worked.  One of the Tradition mages of the cabal, a Lhaksmist member of the Pomegranate Deme by the name of Rupert Knight, struck from the shadows at the mage who was mentoring Pieter.  After all, all Euthantoi receive some combat and assassination training.  This one had perhaps not received enough.  Pieter was given the old Arnie line ~ "Come with me, if you want to live!" ~ and his defection from the Technocracy in the midst of his training was a fait accompli.

Pieter began studying with the Ecstatic mage who'd first approached him.  As is common enough, Diksham (the mentor/student relationship) led to sexual connection, burning his new lessons into Pieter's mind with the luminescent force of every orgasm.  Intimacy and trust are fertile soil for love, especially in the cycle of fear, opening, focusing, and attuning that is Ecstatic education, and Pieter felt the pangs of that hideous joy for the first time in his life.  It was, as Beltznickle confessed, his first time, too.

One of the key lessons of this new stage of Pieter's education was how to approach and hear his Avatar.  The Technocracy had buried it under managerial psychological doublespeak, reducing the splendid image of a porn-fantasy Izanami to a daily journaling practice.  Now Beltznickle taught him ways to get back to that place, that complicated web of hoses through which the Karmic Engine pumped Desire, how to talk with her.  Every time, the conversation ended with an explosion of light and the revelation of his Avatar's dual form.

Beltznickle's explanations about the use of mental and symbolic shock in Tantra were unsatisfying.  This had to be more than just a jump scare, surely.  It was Rupert who pointed Pieter in the direction of answers, speaking of Diksha as a literal death and rebirth, Pieter's overdose bringing him both momentary death and eyes opened to the true nature of Reality.  

Beltznickle's heart broke when Pieter followed those answers.  To be fair, he had shit timing.  He and Beltznickle were only days Stateside after visiting the K'an Lu in China when Pieter unceremoniously killed his heart into the Euthanatos.  Broke the cabal, too, which doesn't exist anymore.  Pieter's third and final apprenticeship was short (by Thanatoic standards, anyway,) as he built upon his earlier studies to understand the Niyama and the Entropic Arts.  He spent some years acting the very stereotype of the Thanatoic action hero, sliding over the hood of his expensive car at every opportunity.

Still young, the muscular mage has grown quiet over time.  His favorite pose is to lean against that pricey car, arms crossed and smugly smiling.  Colder and crueler than many of his fellows would prefer, with that edge of jockish mockery still sharpening his personality, Pieter has started to make more political moves within the Traditions, trying to advance his position.  Rumors that Pieter is touched by Jhor notwithstanding, his newest plan is born of a hope he doesn't show the world.  Everyone says the Technocracy won the Ascension War, that it's over and done, but Pieter sees his own position as putting the lie to that.  If he can find the truth of the Traditional path, then why can't the world itself.

He only needed to find a face, someone more likable than he who could be the enactor of the plan.  Someone who inspired the wonder Pieter felt in other people.  And, of course, that Syndicate foundation to Pieter's thinking insisted that it be someone whose need would allow Pieter to control them with his vast oceans of money.  The Afro-Caribbean Etherite Doctor Rodolfo René seemed perfect for the job.

Pieter Lyndon Kuroi, wealthy former frat boy & almost Technocrat

Manager of the Karmic Cycle, Shravaka of Primal Utility & the Illusion of Fixed Time, Provider of Manas

Acarya:  Henry C. C. Livingston (Syndicate), Beltznickle (Sahajiya), Rupert Knight (Euthanatos) /  Muse:  Izanami as a sexy businesswoman

Tradition:  Cult of Ecstasy/Euthanatos syncretist with Syndicate influences  /  Faction: Joybringers (philosophically), K'an Lu (philosophically), Lhaksmists, and the Financiers (might-have-been)
Eidolon: Dynamic / Enlightenment ❇❇❇▢▢▢▢▢▢▢ / Nature/Demeanor:  Tycoon/Bon Vivant

Paradigm: Might makes right in this divine order that creates an illusion that you only think makes sense of this earthly chaos

The world is governed by interpersonal, cosmic processes by which karma moves Desire through an interconnected world, and these processes can be understood and mapped with the peoper mathematics. Desire is the seed of ideation, as it brings with it daydreams of the future and plans to achieve the object of one's Desires; these ideas originate not from the system as a whole but from individual nodes therein. As such, they do not intermesh smoothly, but battle to become real in a chaotic marketplace of ideas. Desire moves people, then, to impose meaning upon this teeming mass of incomprehensibility and then to infuse this meaning with belief and Will.  This is what transmutes the potential into the actual, which is to say the false into the real.  The superior person sees through this con game and recognizes that it is fueled by Desire, that the meaningless and incoherent illusion is what drives all the dynamics of the system.  It's an amateurishly designed feedback loop, easily hacked if you blow open the doors of inhibition and fear.  Anyone who doesn't realize this is essentially volunteering as pawns and servants of those who do.  Truth is just a way to manipulate Desire, and morality is for weaker beings who see no way to force or trick their ideas into existence.  Time and inhibitions only block Desire, and are shed by the elite as they enter flux states.

Pieter smoothly blends elements of and vocabulary from the three paradigms that shaped him, discussing the ways in which kundalini (the potential for siddhi, or magic) reaches out to make adjustments (coincidental magick) to the Bottom Line (reality.)  The Bottom Line isn't stable but pulses with the Lakashim, the constant ebb and flow of the Nine Passions of Karma (Joy/Wonder, Empathy/Sympathy, Lust/Ambition, Grief/Sadness, Fear, Jealousy/Envy, Hate, and Rage) which can be measured by the hypermath of Primal Utility (the union of desire and reality physics).  Primal Utility predicts moments of perfect sync between an individual's dharma and the Lakashim; these moments of ananda (bliss) are the steps on the path to Ascension.  Sadly, sometimes Chakradharma (duty to the Lakashim) requires us to default (assassinate) people who disturb the smoothness of the rhythm and causes the math to incohere.  Hopefully, the market of ideas that undergirds seemingly physical reality doesn't correct itself (Paradox).

Practices: Chaos magick, hypereconomics, reality hacking  

The sociomathematics of desire undergirds all of Pieter's magick.  Carefully calculating the interaction of want and value, karma and dharma, he can choose how unpredictable potentials manifest into reality.  In less fancy terms, he bends people and existence to his own Will by turning people's wants and needs to his own advantage.  Few ever realize that their lives are being changed by these subtle calculations.  Pieter's relentless pursuit of self-perfection in every realm marshals both social influence and economic wizardry to his service in a chaotic, high-octane magickal practice.  Thumbing his nose at traditional practices that serve only to convince the Will to accept the illusion of the world, he relies instead on his own powers of intuition, a dedication to extreme experiences, a refusal to be limited by any system, and the subversion of pop-culture symbols.  Action movies and other forms of performative masculinity are his favorite, but any vessel for Desire is up for grabs as Pieter remixes and re-contextualizes reality to serve his Will.

Instruments: Drugs and poison, eye contact, sex and sensuality, social domination, thought forms, vehicles (personal for Primal Utility, significant, unique for the Karmic Cycle), weapons

Pieter makes use of a broad and eclectically individual set of instruments to reify his Desire.  One of his favorites, his pride and joy, is his car.  A white-trimmed cherry-red 1957 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud souped-up as far as Pieter could, it's a significant personal unique instrument attuned to Primal Utility and the Karmic Cycle, but he has been known to cast all sorts of spells through it.  It's flashy and showy in all the best ways, inspiring the tiniest of microexpressions in those who see Pieter leaning against it, as but one example.  Reading these tiniest scraps of physicalized emotion gives Pieter insight into the contents of their minds.  In fact, leaning against his car is one of Pieter's favorite poses, as the cruel curve of his slight grin while does so emphasizes his place as a superior man.  He was originally trained by the Syndicate, don't forget, and so is well-practiced at establishing dominance and control in any situation.  Leveraging this control allows him to push the Karmic Cycle ahead, guide the Manas of others, and maximize the Primal Utility of every venture in which he engages.  Pieter looms over any social situation, though he often places himself as a secondary focus, as if to emphasize that he is the power behind the throne.  He also makes a habit of moving as little as possible, underscoring his hegemonic lack of a need to do things for himself; in this stillness, he has trained his eyes to be expressive beyond understanding.  Much of his magick requires merely a tiny glance to enact as he projects his Muse through his gaze to affect the world.  The Rolls Royce was also central to Pieter's brief foray into high-octane Euthanatos action, often in conjunction with his gun.  In those days, his favorite pose was sliding across the hood of the Rolls Royce, gun (or any of a wide variety of other weapons, honestly) in the air, the Karmic Cycle spinning and Manas witnessing that spin better than ever.  And then there are the drugs.  Well, drugs and poisons, really, the difference being a simple matter of dosage.  Pieter likes to have fun, and he likes to invite those around him to have fun, too.  If those people are working on some venture of his, well, a different set of drugs come out to maximize their efficiency so they can get to the fun bit.  Drugs, in all their many manifestations and effects, wipe the Manas clean so the Karmic Cycle can be perceived without reflection or interpretation (or the Illusion of Fixed Time).  He is careful which his matching of drug to effect, using the substance to call forth the divine attributes he wishes himself or his subject to possess.  If someone needs to be defaulted, that's easy enough to accomplish by the same means.  Pieter makes it a habit to ingest sublethal doses of many poisons, not to acclimate himself to their effects, but to give himself a visceral reminder that everything is dying at the same time everything is living.  It should be noted that Pieter's wealth and history often gives him access to boutique intoxicants that might count as significant instruments.  Sex and related experiences loom large in Pieter's work, leveraging a contradiction in how the mage views them.  On the one hand, sex shows the lie of separation and identity, laying bare that all the world is dharma and utility; on the other, all the world is simply the creation of value by means of one person giving another person what that person Desires and getting what they Desire in exchange.  Sex is one of the greatest Desires, and can easily be traded to others for almost any return.  Pieter often uses it to maximize the Primal Utility of his ventures, lead Manas to see what it must see, and, of course, reveal that Fixed Time is as much an Illusion as separation.  Underlying all of this is Pieter's extensive use of thought forms, as he draws upon visualization of Desire, the sigil workings of chaos magick, skillful manipulations and uses of pop-culture imagery, and the extensive library of meditative imagery he inherited from both of the Traditions which trained him.

Strength ❇❇❇  /  Charisma ❇❇❇  /  Intelligence ❇❇

Dexterity ❇❇  /  Manipulation ❇❇❇  /  Perception ❇

Stamina ❇❇❇  /  Appearance ❇❇❇❇ Movie Star Looks  /  Wits ❇❇❇

Willpower ❇❇❇❇❇▢▢▢▢▢

Alertness    /  Crafts   /  Academics 

Art    /  Drive ❇❇  /  Computer ❇

Athletics ❇❇ Football  /  Etiquette   /  Subdimensions 

Awareness    /  Firearms ❇ Handguns  /  Enigmas 

Brawl ❇❇  /  Martial Arts   /  Esoterica 

Empathy    /  Meditation   /  Investigation

Expression    /  Melee  /  Law

Intimidation ❇  /  Research    /  Medicine 

Leadership   /  Stealth   /  Occult 

Streetwise   /  Survival   /  Politics

Subterfuge   /  Technology    /  Science 

Carousing ❇❇❇   /  Seduction ❇   /  Negotiation ❇❇

Style ❇❇  /  Gambling ❇  /  Networking ❇

Finance ❇❇❇  /  Media ❇  /  Power-Brokering ❇❇

Vice ❇❇

Quintessence ❇▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢ / ▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢ Paradox

Resonance:  Jolly ❇  /  Synergy:  Entropic ~ Privileged ❇

Karmic Cycle (Entropy) ❇❇❇

Karma demands that all things break down and eventually die and return as fuel for the endlessly cycling engine of creation, captive by mortality.  Yet that dissolution paves the way for innovation.  This eternal breakdown of creation can be accelerated or restricted, can be used either to liberate people and objects from their karmic prisons or to weigh them down and cause them to return to the cycle prematurely, but it can never be cheated.  The machinery of the universe runs on, its gears crushing everything between them.

Manas (Mind) ❇

Manas is the part of divine nature that interacts with the Bottom Line, making sense of the Karmic Cycle, learning its lessons and taking them along to new births.  It is the organ that distills self from the all-encompassing, unitary flow of Desire. Without consciousness, the Muse is truly Asleep, unable to understand the obligations to which it must adhere as an emergent property of Desire.  Then, the illusion of the self is seen as the tool that it is, and the cosmic punchline is revealed.  Because the mage is a part of everyone, he has power over everyone. 

Primal Utility ❇❇

Hypereconomic theories model an energy field generated by Homo economicus: the ambitiously conscious human being who acts to further his or her self-interest.  This Ojas energy rises from human interest and activity and is the building block of the universe.  It exists in all things in varying degrees of utility and abundance.  People literally invest themselves in such ventures, and although they might not see the energy they create through such transactions, they can feel it, hence the sensations involved in feeling valued or worthless.  Pulsing, dancing, changing, and retaining power within the universe, Primal Utility flows through investing and withdrawing energetic currency through Ventures that manipulate the metaphysical economies of human value.  These concentrations of power can be found in everything.  Every object has centers of concentration.  The human body has them.  The earth has them.  The universe itself has them.  These Ventures are places of power, of untapped potential.  By accessing Creation’s credit rating by means of kundalini (the coiled serpent), the hypereconomist controls that currency, investing it where it does the most good for him.  Like Lakashim, it is tension, rhythm and pulse.  Perhaps the greatest edge granted to those who understand Primal Utility comes from the aforementioned Ventures, where where the illusion breaks down and pure possibility breaks through.  By investing in a Venture, the hypereconomist can draw Ojas from a mundane business.  Attuned to the effects of market correction and the perpetual exchange of energies conducted through human intercourse (sexual and otherwise), he can spot value – or the lack of it – in the least obvious situations, and he knows how to get the most for his investments in whatever form they might manifest.

The Illusion of Fixed Time (Time) ❇❇

Magic is a series of barriers that must be broken.  Space, properties of matter, probability: these are all variables that can be manipulated by breaking barriers.  Time, though, that is the secret to break all barriers.  Consider that, given infinite time, anything is possible.  All things are dynamic, and all things change.  This is not a property of the Karmic Cycle; this is a property of Time.  Without Time, there could be no Karmic Cycle.  Without Time, there is total stasis.  No change.  No flux.  No chance to surpass what has gone before, because nothing has gone before.  Nothing improves.  Nothing is gained or lost.  Time is, therefore, the key to the Bottom Line itself and its secrets.  Even the gods are subject to Time.  Durga defeats the Asuras through countless Kalpas; the Maruts destroy all impediments to the Final Days again and again.  This having been said, how to use Time to further one's goals?  The most obvious way to used is for divination.  Interestingly enough, Time is a very dangerous art that requires subtle use, relying on the still, perfect nature of one's Muse to provide an anchor.  

Genius ❇

Resources ❇❇❇❇❇❇

Conniver (1 pt. Flaw)

Probationary Member (Traditions) (4 pt. Flaw)

Sect Enmity (Klubwerks in the Cult of Ecstasy) (1 pt. Flaw)

(Technocracy) Sympathizer (1 pt. Flaw)

Nomia, beautiful Nomia (Traveller)

Thank you, as always, to my patrons Darius, Ferny, Jaina Bee, Dave, Casey, and Keeper.  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)

C000271-E

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 (described in this post) 
• Scimeca III 0.7 AU (outer zone):  The Planetary Barony of Hausu (E64523L-3, population 381, Sexist, Barbaric)
• 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:  160 kilometers (0.02511 Earth)
Approximate Surface Area:  3.22x10⁵ square kilometers (0.0006313 Earth)
Planet Density:  3.7495 g/cm³ (0.68 standard; rocky body)
World Mass:  1.7135x10²¹ kg (0.0002869 standard)
World Gravity:  0.5001 m/s² (0.051 g)
Orbital Period:  125 days 22 hours 29 minutes 13.7397 seconds
Rotational Period:  54 days 20 hours 50 minutes 41.1959 seconds
Axial Tilt:  28 degrees
Orbital Eccentricity:  0.000
Seismic Stress Factor:  1.344
Atmospheric Composition:  None
Surface Atmospheric Pressure:  0 kPa (0 atm)
Mean Surface Temperature:  -13.8314 degrees Celsius (7.1034 degrees Faherenheit; 259.1686 Kelvins)
Hydrographic Percentage:  0% (0 km²)
Hydrographic Composition:  None
Tectonic Plates:  1
Oceans:  0

Volcanoes:  Mount Lauren, GC376, WKCI-101.3, Pajanimal Pile, the Anthill, Media Agua Peak

Terraforming:  Greenhouse (+10% greenhouse effect), terrain
Weather Control?  No
Native Life?  No
Satellites:  None

Population: 710 Nomian sophonts
Approximate Population Density: 0.0022 sophonts per km²; 453.5211 km² per sophont
Exports:  Artforms, manufactured durables, processed metals
Cities

• Melanderi Station, population 710, C-class starport

Social Outlook:

• Progressiveness:  Conservative attitude, stagnant action
• Aggressiveness:  Competitive attitude, militant action
• Extensiveness:  Fragmented globally, friendly interstellarly

Cultural Differences:  Unusual Customs: Conspiracy

Local Customs:  Men have minimal quarters

Government:  Balkanization into 5 nations

• The Armășescul Collective, a participating democracy
• Population:  212
• Representative Authority:  Ad-hoc volunteers among the populace agree by means of widespread networking to take charge of interpreting and executing the directives and laws outlined by the current and former Frater Superior(s).  The population as a whole elects and advises the Frater Superior.  The same software also randomly compiles anonymized juries of citizens chosen at random to preside whenever there is a question of legality or civil harm.  As an error-proofing measure, every such case must be tried repeatedly, until five juries come to similar judgments.
• Law Level:
• Overall:  2 (low)
• Weapons:  0 (none)
• Trade:  6 (moderate)
• Criminal Law:  0 (none)
• Civil Law:  2 (low)
• Personal Freedom:  2 (low)
• Uniformity of Law:  Personal
• Le Magasin des Suicides, a medical manufacturing company/corporation
• Population:  166
• Representative Authority:  The marquesal knight des Suicides, shop steward and corporate representative on Nomia, holds all authority when it comes to the Nomian factory.
• Law Level:
• Overall:  1.4 (low)
• Weapons:  1 (low)
• Trade:  4 (moderate)
• Criminal Law:  1 (low)
• Civil Law:  0 (none)
• Personal Freedom:  1 (low)
• Uniformity of Law:  Personal
• Where the Air is Still, an anarchic platform
• Population:  108
• Representative Authority:  none
• Law Level:
• Overall:  1 (low)
• Weapons:  0 (none)
• Trade:  2 (low)
• Criminal Law:  0 (none)
• Civil Law:  0 (none)
• Personal Freedom:  3 (low)
• Uniformity of Law:  Territorial
• Willie's Pad, an anarchic platform
• Population:  82
• Representative Authority:  none
• Law Level:
• Overall:  1.8 (low)
• Weapons:  4 (moderate)
• Trade:  3 (low)
• Criminal Law:  0 (none)
• Civil Law:  2 (low)
• Personal Freedom:  0 (none)
• Uniformity of Law:  Undivided
• Shrimpton-in-Space, a metal-refining company/corporation
• Population:  142
• Representative Authority:  The Council of Elder Workers determines the path of the refinery, which a handful of supervisory workshops then enact.  The mayor-owner's job is mostly to ensure that everything runs smoothly and correct it when necessary.
• Law Level:
• Overall:  3 (low)
• Weapons:  2 (low)
• Trade:  4 (moderate)
• Criminal Law:  5 (moderate)
• Civil Law:  0 (none)
• Personal Freedom:  4 (moderate)
• Uniformity of Law:  Territorial

Known Factions or Revolutionary Groups:  

• Hitit, a well-known anarchic faction of anti-marquesal conspiratorial hackers with significant support
• The Neo-Hungarians, a well-known anarchic go-gang with significant support

Technology Level:

• High Common:  E (high stellar; Geneering Age)
• Low Common:  E
• Energy:  E (fusion plants)
• Computer/Robotics:  E (computer/brain implants, model/8 robots)
• Communications:  E (early meson communicators)
• Medical:  E (genetic engineering, memory erasure)
• Environment:  G (high stellar; Hopdrive/Artificial Persons Age; global terraforming, hostile worlds)
• Land Transport:  D (average stellar; Wafer Age; grav vehicles merge with orbital spacecraft, jump-4)
• Water Transport:  D
• Air Transport:  D
• Space Transport:  F (imperial maximum; Maker Age; jump-6)
• Personal Military:  F (man-portable fusion gun-15, battle dress)
• Heavy Military:  E (x-ray lasers, bonded superdense armor)

Trade Codes:  Asteroid, High Technology, Low Gravity, Low Population, Vacuum

It might surprise many that the Scimecan system's primary manufacturing center is both near-post-scarcity and originally an artist's colony.  Founded by the Marquis Robenhymer as an ostensible haven for the surging counterculture of a century and a half ago, Nomia's explosion of arisanal-technology exports and rapid pace of advancement soon attracted corporate interest.  The rush this precipitated was halted by quick political maneuvering and organization on the part of the artists, but two of the corporations were nonetheless able to get a foothold among them.  

Le Magasin des Suicides adapted by adopting the avant-garde and cavalier attitude of the planet, while Shrimpton-in-Space has merely retreated into a relatively isolationist provincialism.  All the while, the Armășescul Collective works to protect Nomia's fierce independence and pioneering culture.  The various hackers of Hitit, each of whom uses the name of an ancient Hittite deity in their hacks, pranks, and communiques, insist that all of these, corporate lapdogs and artist protectionists alike, are nothing more than the contract nobility's conspiracy to repress the Nomian people.  Meanwhile, a go-gang called the neo-Hungarians unites a fractious criminal underground to meet the less savory demands of the artisanal engineers of Willie's Pad and the freewheeling hard partiers of Where the Air is Still, or just rob anyone they can.

They're not wrong, of course.  The marquis of Scimeca did, in fact, subsidize Nomia's establishment as a way of sidelining and undermining a popular movement wherein secret societies and revolutionary sentiment was just as trendy as technological advancement and artistic sensibilities.  By appearing to accept the artists and support them, the marquis hoped to situate them far from the courts of Robenhymer, Morgan-Beavis, and Goat's Rue and the outposts of Hatfield, Wrecking Ball, and the Sprinters' Commonwealth.  From such a distance, any effect they had on the larger system could be minimized.

This has led to an even more Wild-West feel to the world (thankfully, minus the genocide of natives) than the Most Prized Republic of Hatfield, which is a much more peaceful homesteader vibe.  Embedded within a context of near-singularity levels of tech, rollicking adventures on Nomia can get pretty wild.

The basic unit of social organization in all five pads is the workshop, a co-working space around which a handful of artisans working in related fields or on intertwined projects live.  The wealthier Nomians maintain sleeping quarters budding off of and generally surrounding the main workspace, or even a supplementary room like a kitchen; poorer Nomians just meet all of their life needs within the one workroom.  Nomian custom heavily prefers men using as little space as possible for their life needs.  If a workshop with a three-bedroom living space consists of a woman, a nullo, a genderqueer, and a male, the male will almost always be the only one sleeping in the workspace.  This perspective extends to food storage use and every other aspect of life.  Every once in a while, projects or relationships band multiple workshops into a single neighborhood collective, which replicates the workshop dynamic across multiple workshops.

Nonetheless, an overdose of future shock spiced with shock of a more cultural kind has led to a populace that tends to resist change.  Paradigms have shuffled past the people of Nomia so fast that it has numbed out their sense of wonder, leaving only a calcifyingly practical recognition of the bother and work of overhauling one's system to accommodate the work of some hotshot inventor.  Pride plays some part in this wooden resistance, as well; every Nomian is convinced to their core that their inventions and their ideas represent the truest and most important breakthrough in their field, if only they could figure out how to make them work.  Fistfights (or fights with more dangerous weaponry) frequently bloom throughout Melanderi Station, fertilized by this perspective and most often with an obscure piece of theory at their core.

Over the course of the last human generation or so, a technocratic sentiment has begun to swell among the Nomians.  A counterculture to the founding counterculture of the colony has begun to wonder why the assembled artistic, engineering, and scientific geniuses of the planet haven't applied their individual and collective brainpower to finally solving the problem of governance.  A volunteer and ragtag military force has begun to form around this core meme, and the rest of the system has quite definitively noticed its rise.

The most restrictive of the pads is Shrimpton-in-Space, a cliquish, almost eremitic metal refinery composed of a pad in the north of Melanderi Station.  Only reluctantly engaged in trade negotiations with other Nomians and offworlders alike, they enforce a series of communal rules determined by their corporate charter with a dourness otherwise unseen on Nomia.  In fact, their legal code entirely lacks any provisions to seek redress for wrongs done by one worker to another, in favor of a more extensive criminal code than found elsewhere on the planet.  Despite the propensity for these restrictions to intrude upon the freedom of those walking around the pad's streets, they do work to ensure that commerce proceeds with a fairness and a restraint exceeded only by the Armășescul Collective's trade law.

Said Collective operates the spaceport around which Melanderi is built, and their trade law is the strictest law around.  Almost as if they felt the need to apologetically compensate for this, the Collective is far more relaxed about most other matters.  They make no attempt to speak of to prevent the ownership and trade in weapons, for example, and have not a scrap of criminal code anywhere in their annals.  Willie's Pad follows suit when it comes to a refusal to name any behaviors as wrong or to be repressed.  However, as the pad most likely to produce ever-more-efficient tools for mass death, they have recognized the danger such things being widely available and carried could cause to productivity.  The other two pads have only scraps of legal code between them.

Nobility is scattered sparsely throughout Melanderi Station, as marquesal or baronial knighthood contracts are offered to individual artisans or the higher-ups in either company with a presence on the planet.  Rule of the planet itself has not been subcontracted to any baron by the marquis, who thus governs (as much as they are able) directly.

Amidst all of this chaos, the small Company base in the county no longer rely on isolation and secrecy to hide them, but nestle their operations invisibly among the population here.  The base is too small to train agents, but there is the requisite Continuity Directorate operational hub, as well as a Science Directorate lab and a Technology Directorate workshop.

Vrazhan bim Sgolv, Tellarite/Romulan United Federation of Planets diplomat and child of an asylum-seeker (Star Trek Adventures)

Thank you ever so much, Darius, Keeper, Ferny, Jaina Bee, and Dave.  Your support enables me to keep writing, and I <3 you so much for it.  They saw this post a week earlier than everyone else, and if others would like to do so as well ~ or just support my RPG writing and streaming ~ please go to my Patreon and become a patron of mine.  Tiers begin at $1 a month and go all the way up to $500, so no matter what your financial situation might be, you can still give.  Thank you!

Vrazhan's mother Airokal served the Romulan Star Empire as an aide to Vice-Proconsul M'ret.  Her family was so proud that she served someone only two steps below Praetor Narviat, but that pride quickly evaporated as it became clear that she supported M'ret's efforts to end repression in the Empire.  Increasingly ostracized and pressured by her parents, aunts, grandparents, and siblings to officially disavow M'ret, Airokal chose instead to defect with him and a fellow aide.  In fact, it was Airokal whom M'ret tasked with contacting the underground reunification movement.  She often told Vrazhan when e was a child about having met Ambassador Spock in the process; her beaming face telling this story is one of Vrazhan's most prized memories.

Entering stasis and trusting their fate into the movement's operative aboard the IRW Khazara, one Sub-Commander N'Vek, the three left their home forever.  Thanks to N'Vek's abduction of Starfleet Lieutenant Commander Deanna Troi of the USS Enterprise-D (and said Betazoid's quick thinking,) the defection succeeded despite being betrayed by the Corvallens who were meant to facilitate it.  Settling into the Starfleet base Draken IV after being interrogated by Starfleet Intelligence, Airokal found companionship and love with a Tellarite engineer on the base, one Petty Officer, First Class Dvoriv bim Sgolv.  M'ret went on to become deeply involved in Starfleet-Romulan operations, and her fellow aide also ended up finding love with an alien.  He flew to Betazed out of a desire to personally thank the Troi clan for Deanna's efforts, only to end up married to one of her cousins.

Vrazhan has long called his half-Betazoid daughter Lwabir eir cousin.  Lwabir is now an agent with the Department of Temporal Investigations. 

As a child, Vrazhan's parents stressed that the Romulans could send agents in any number of disguises and elaborate schemes.  Vigilance was the cost of their freedom, which drove Vrazhan to hours spent behind the wheel of small shuttlecraft acquired by any number of means (begging, borrowing, stealing, various school assignments and field trips, etc.) and getting away from others.  Though e just wanted to get away from everything, e still needed a destination, and so ended up exploring any number of ancient Romulan ruins across Draken IV's surface.

Vrazhan grew up uneasy about the role of the military and scornful of the idea that e might serve in Starfleet.  Dvoriv was, of course, saddened by the idea; the sprawling, deafeningly loud arguments about Vrazhan's future bonded the two together in a fashion only possible for Tellarites.  In the end, faced with his wife's history and the Dominion War breaking out when Vrazhan was all of 3 years old, Dvoriv had to concede that his child's future did not lie with Starfleet.  Airokal urged Vrazhan to still find a way to serve the Federation, as a way of honoring the risk she took in defecting and its reasoning. 

Romulus was consumed by the supernova of its sun when Vrazhan was 17 years old; e left Draken IV the very next year to attend university.  The University of Bajor gave Vrazhan a degree cum laude in interstellar activism, with a minor in security diplomacy in 2392 at the age of 22, and e joined the Federation Diplomatic Corps immediately upon graduating.  Both parents attended eir induction ceremony, beaming with pride.  Vrazhan's graduating thesis had been about the need for involvement by outside polities in sapient rights movements, arguing that it was impossible for change to occur from within a system defined by and defining its elements.

Vrazhan requested that eir first placement be far from eir mother's people.  Eir feelings about the remnants and successors of the Romulan Star Empire were simply much too complicated; it is hard to get onto one's feet in a tumultuous storm like that.  Accordingly, the attache was sent on a civilian mission following the Starfleet Operation Full Circle.  They were tasked with establishing and normalizing relationships with the various civilizations and species being re-contacted by the Full Circle Fleet and originally contacted by the USS Voyager.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was there that the USS Quauitlicac made first contact with a species called the Yusocch whose language was marked by an interlocking grammar, wherein one person's utterance was inflected and marked by their communication partner's.  A sentence was meaningless unless considered in relationship with what else was being said at the same time.

For eir work in discovering this phenomenon, translating the Yus(ird)occh language, and modifying diplomatic protocols in order to enable productive interaction, Vrazhan was called back to the Beta Quadrant.  Relations between the United Federation of Planets, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulan Star Empire had begun to deteriorate after the USS Kelso's destruction in 2395 revealed Starfleet's experiments with cloaking technology, and so Starfleet Intelligence reached out to Vrazhan in hopes that the half-Romulan could be of some use in preserving the peace.  Despite SI being all too similar to the Tal Shiar in Vrazhan's eyes ~ all military intelligence being suspect ~ e felt secure enough now in eir diplomatic capabilities to engage once more with eir mother's people.

And so e did, making numerous trips into the Romulan Star Empire and various successor states, begrudgingly pursuing Starfleet Intelligence's goals while assiduously working through normal diplomatic channels to ensure that whatever rebuilt itself from the destruction of Romulus proved less repressive than its forebears had.  For the most part, this exhausting double life involved supporting and empowering the faction known as the Romulan Republic.  As stated, ambassadorial work by day followed by infiltrating any number of underground movements by night leaves not a lot of time for rest.  Recently, however, reports have come across eir desk about infiltration of the Gorn Hegemony by Species 8472.  

It's a good thing Romulan ale is so strong, as Vrazhan fears that eir workload will soon be increasing yet again.

The Bonnano Gigantino (I Meccanici di La Cosa Nostra; GURPS Classic)

My patrons Keeper, Jaina Bee, Ferny, Casey, Dave, and Darius are the lifeblood of all the worlds that make up my heart!  Without y'all, I couldn't do this, so thank you.  If you are not among those listed and thanked right now and want to be (many patrons see my posts a week before anyone else!), you can become a patron at https://www.patreon.com/queermythopoeia

Technically the founding member of the Commission, the Bonnani have a roller-coaster history with that organizing organization.  After the capo di tutti capi was killed, 26-year-old Joe Bananas re-forged the family.  He even changed the name of the family, from Maranzano to Bonnano, but that was probably just good PR.  A failed attempt at a coup in the Commission after Joe Bananas' long-time ally Joe Profaci died (and the ensuing Banana War between Joe's heir and Profaci's son-in-law Bill and the Commission's pick, Gasparino DiGregorio) cost them the most powerful family status they'd enjoyed from the Thirties to the Sixties.  It was also the origin of the Colombo family, a reward to an opportunistic hitman all too happy to turn on his boss.  

Donnie Brasco, that rat, further cemented the family's fall, as the FBI agent infiltrated the family as it chewed through several capi in the Seventies and got them kicked off the Commission Salvatore Maranzano had founded.  Fuckin' Brasco wasn't even investigating the Bonnani at first, but the Colombi. They came back hard in the Nineties under the so-called Last Don, Big Joe Massino, whose focus on secrecy re-earned their seat, their supreme power, and their reputation as the most brutal of the Five Families.  Gotti helped, too, I guess.  The century changed, and capo Frank Coppa became the first made Bonnano since the Castellamarese War to turn informant or witness.  Of course, Big Joe, the only Mafia don to not be serving prison at the time, himself turned rat in the face of being the first mob boss to face the death penalty since '44.  A cavalcade of arrests and some warfare have plagued the family to this day, greatly weakening it once more.

The Gigantino was designed in the Nineties, a hulking intimidation piece composed mostly of a giant gun and armor.  Later models haven't changed this very simple design much, honestly, merely upgrading technology where possible.  The biggest boost was improvements in firearms construction, allowing a brutal 60mm gun to come standard with newer models.  Its name, which means "Little Giant", refers to its status as the heaviest meccanico commonly found among the families by a good three tons.  They are one of the more commonly seen meccanici outside of the States, as the Bonnano family ferries them to allies in Canada and especially to the Sicilian Mafia in Castellamare del Golfo, led by a boss named Tempesta with his own famous inclinations to violence.  Other families do keep a slow market going for these metal musclemen ~ what organization doesn't need to put the scare into someone sometimes? ~ and some say that this is the only thing keeping the Bonnano family alive.  Not around any Bonnano, of course, else a Gigantino show up at your door.

However, Gigantini actually see use fairly rarely.  They are tall and slow and oh so very visible, which puts any Gigantino pilot or their family at risk of attracting unwanted attention from other families or Johnny Law.  This has led to the question of who owns how many Gigantino meccanici being a matter of public knowledge.  If you purchase one, you have to be very careful about its use, so you make sure everyone knows you could use it against them if they forced your hand.  The decans of Agchoniôn, Arôtosael, Axiôphêth, and Methiax often empower these meccanici, their corresponding colors, images, and sigils starkly arranged to maximize the visual effect of the meccanici.  It can be astounding how similar the magics of invisibility and silence can be to those that make things scarier than they already are.

Subassemblies:  Two legs, two striker arms, limited-rotation turret.
Drivetrain:  100 kW motive power leg drivetrain, one in each leg.
Arm Motors:  Cheap ST 1000 arm motors in each arm.
Cockpit:  Basic, with computer downgrade (Complexity 2), in body.  No additional programs pre-installed.
Built-In Weapons:  TL8 60mm Gatling gun in body facing forward with 50 shots.
Sensors:  5-mile range PESA in turret facing forward. 2-mile range AESA in turret facing forward.
Comsuite:  Mini, in turret.
Power Plant:  133.4 kW ceramic engine in body.
Fuel:  Two 31.5-gallon self-sealing tanks, one in each leg, and a 20-gallon self-sealing tank in turret, provide 9.995 hours fuel.
Volumes:  Turret 3.595 cf, arms 4 cf each, legs 23.605 cf each, body 70.8295 cf.
Structure and Hit Points:  Extra heavy frame strength, cheap materials.  Human-compatible.  Turret 84 HP, arms 192 HP each, legs 300 HP each, body 750 HP.
Surface Features:  Sealed.
Armor:  PD 4, DR 465 laminate.
Statistics:  Loaded weight 20,566.05 lbs.  Empty weight 19,403.05 lbs.  Loaded mass 10.283 tons. Mecha volume 129.6345 cf.  Size Modifier +3, arms 0, turret -2, legs +1. Price $1,701,863.50.  HT 12.
ST and Reach:  Body ST 1500.  Arm ST 768/1000, arm (with reach 2, damage thrust 77d, swing 79d).  
Dimensions:  19 feet 4.5131 inches tall, 6 feet 5.5044 inches wide and long.
Ground Performance:  Ground speed 25 mph, gMR 2.5, gSR 1, ground Move 12.

Demetrius "Drainpipe" Parker (Shadowrun 5th edition)

Growing up, Demetrius was always small (for an ork) and weak (for an ork), earning the weedy boy no end of teasing as he grew up.  He was young when the bomb dropped and Chicago changed, but he remembers the chaos of the day well, everyone running everywhere and his worst nightmare buzzing down from the sky to snatch people away.  The children of the neighborhood banded together as they lost their parents to these and to people taking advantage of the panic to let loose their vices, snatch up what they’d always coveted, and release repressed (or not so) bigotry upon their neighbors.  Thus was the Southside Devil’s Playground born.

Demetrius went by his initials for a long time, until the jokes started up about what exactly “DP” could mean.  Of course, the jokes started just as puberty infected everything with an awkwardness that teamed up with the teasing to silence the young Demetrius.  A fellow gangmember by the name of 4-Deer saw what was happening, and pity struck a developing heart.  The human Aztlaner quickly began to tell everyone that “DP” stood for “Drainpipe”, which had its own awkward interpretations.  Those were easier to handle, however, even if Demetrius got squirrely when asked how he got the name.

Until he was 15, however.  A rumble with a neighboring gang got interrupted as a swarm of wasp fleshforms swarmed out from the apartment building at whose feet the gangs killed each other.  Everyone scattered like, well, like humans in Chicago.  Demetrius stumbled just a wee bit too fast into an alley, slick with what he hoped was rainwater, and bumped into an unexpected overturned dumpster.  Spinning on the vertical axis, he fell to the ground with a grunt that left him breathless.  As his eyes focused and the disorientation cleared, he saw something gleaming in, well, in a drainpipe across the way from him.  It was, amazingly, a pair of high-end cybereyes cupped in the bowl of equally fancy cyberears.  Even without expertise in the buying and selling of such things, Demetrius could tell that the obviously used and strangely clean cyberware was worth more than he’d dreamed of seeing in one place.

The loud buzzing of wings echoed down the alley from the street, prompting Demetrius to scramble up, grab the conveniently hand-sized treasure, and run.  Agreeing to work off the cost of the surgery, Drainpipe managed to find a body ripper willing to install his find.  In the years since, he has served his fellows primarily as a lookout and a gatherer of information.  A year or two back, he took up in the bunraku trap house operated by the Playground.  An easy division of labor developed, with Raul negotiating the sale with the johns and Neal keeping the product (the sex workers) in good condition while Drainpipe haunts the hallway.  If he hears a scene gone wrong, a john trying to break one of the bunraku, he raises the alarm and bursts in.  If any of the girls get hired for a job outside of the house, Drainpipe is usually the one to follow and watch and make sure the bunraku returns to the house.

The fallen popera star Pera Veneziano washed ashore at the trap house a while back, abandoned by the current of her BTL addiction.  At first, Drainpipe struggled to keep his cool, faced with a (minor) celebrity in his life, and moreover, one in his (well, the Playground’s) control.  The starstruck feeling quickly faded.  It took Drainpipe some time to realize what the residue left in its wake was, but figure it out he did.  It was love.  He’d somehow begun to fall in love with the zaftig elf, without ever having realized.

Pera, of course, sees through the boy’s facade, but she hasn’t said anything yet.  Demetrius, at least, understands the dangers his heart presents, the lines he would be crossing if he did anything it wants him to do.

Appearance:  As always, I have few to no visual arts skills >.< So here's three pictures that, if combined, can give you an idea of what he looks like:

Priorities (street-level rules): 
A ~ Resources (75,000 nuyen)
B ~ Attributes (20)
C ~ Metatype (Ork/0)
D ~ Skills (22/0)
E ~ Magic (--)

BOD  5  AGI  3  REA  5  STR  5
CHA  3  INT  6  LOG  3  WIL  3
ESS  4.75  MAG  0  EDG  1  INIT  11+1D6
Mental Limit  5  Physical Limit  7  Social Limit  5
Physical Boxes  10  Stun Boxes  9  Overflow Boxes 5

Active Skills: Blades 2, Con 1, Cybertechnology 1, Etiquette (Street) 1 (+2), Intimidation 2, Perception 4, Pistols 2, Palming 2, Running 2, Sneaking 2, Unarmed Combat 3
Knowledge Skills: Business 2, Seattle Street Gangs (Southside Devil’s Playground) 5 (+2), Sprawl Life 4, Street BTLs 3
Languages: English (City Speak) N, Or’zet 3 

Qualities:  Asthma (8 pt., negative), Distinctive Style (gang tattoos, 5 pt., negative), Quick Healer (3 pt., positive), Restricted Gear (10 pt. positive)

Cyberware:  Used cybereyes 4 with flare compensation, low-light vision, microscopic lenses, smartlink, thermographic vision, vision enhancement 3, vision magnification; used cyberears 4 with audio analyzer, audio enhancement 3, increased spectrum, select sound filter 3, spatial recognizer, translate-ear 3
Weapons:  Colt America L36 with concealed holster, 2 spare clips, 110 rounds of regular ammo; knife; Ruger Super Warhawk with 2 speed loaders, 60 rounds regular ammo; Streetline Special with concealed holster, 30 rounds regular ammo
Personal Protective Equipment:  Armored jacket with nonconductivity 6; respirator 1 (50 nY=83,510)
Electronics:  Renraku Sensei commlink; medkit 3
Contracts and Such:  2 months Low Lifestyle
Other Gear:  10 plastic restraints; cybertechnology kit

Contacts:  Diatomaceous, a fixer (Connection 3/Loyalty 1); 4-Deer, a fellow member of the Southside Devil's Playground (Connection 2/Loyalty 3)

Vittles browser spirit (Deadlands: Hell on Earth Classic)

My patrons Darius, Jaina Bee, Dave, Ferny, Keeper, and Casey are truly amazing people and I heart them hella.  Should you desire me to also heart you hella, you can support my streaming and writing efforts (and see all my posts a week earlier than everyone else) by donating at my Patreon.  Most of my patrons pitch in a dollar a month, and their generosity is simply intoxicating. Of course, if you can give more than that, please do!  I have a vast array of benefit packages, all the way up to $500 a month.

This post continues my additions to the browser spirits listed in The Junkman Cometh for Deadlands: Hell on Earth, introducing vittles browsers, the spirits of industrialized food.  I've become rather enamored of the idea of Junkyard spawning junker-focused tiny-ass new religious movements with the browsers in the place of various groupings, such as the Tephrists (Hellenists who see the browsers as a new Olympian pantheon), junker astrologists (recasting the constellations as the browsers), or the Junker Church of Jesus Christ of Saints After the End (Jesus Christ as the only junker to have attracted all of the types of browser spirits, until one betrayed him).  Only problem is, I'm only up to 11 browser spirits so far!  Waah!  Do you have an idea for a 12th?

Associated Powers:  Healing, Life Support, Temperature

Vittles spirits are probably the least known of all the tech spirits.  For one thing, a lot of junkers look in the wrong place.  Not everything edible has a vittles spirit. These spirits do not inhabit food harvested from living beings and shaped directly by human hands into a meal, any more than a hand-crafted bow holds a gun spirit within; an appliance spirit must be consulted if a junker wishes to engage with such things.  Twinkies, famously, have been delivered from the usual cycle of rot and decomposition, eternal life gifted by the factory's automated chefs and genetically engineered ingredients, while other foods are built by other robots from petrochemicals.  These are the homes of vittles spirits, and even then they often find their purpose discharged, their life ended between violent teeth.

Vittles browsers nurture and sustain people.  Unlike appliance browsers, they don't overly much care whether those people's lives are comfortable or pleasant, simply that it is long.  Some might find this strange, considering the reputation industrialized food has for damaging its eaters' health.  Indeed, rumors persist that some vittles spirits have turned to maleficent ends, whether by being damaged goods, interacting with a few too many Tainted junkers, or the machinations of Famine itself.  However, it should be remembered that many vittles spirits were born of the desire for ethical cuisine, such as meat that had never been part of an animal, or health concerns, accounting for olives genetically engineered to be lower in fat or Wonderbread's revitalization as a carrier for vitamins in World War II.

White:  By spending a white chip while creating a device, the junker can replace all of the necessary components for the powers in the device with chemical components, resulting in an edible device.  This is an all or nothin' deal, no partial trades!  For example, a tiny little AT-AT walker built with the locomotion power would normally require 1 chemical component, 1 electronic, 3 mechanical, and 2 structural; a junker with a vittles browser could build the same thing out of French fries and a mango for 7 chemical components.  Since many chemical components are liquids (and a few gases), this can occasionally result in some strange-looking devices!
Red:  Any substance which could be used as a chemical component can be made edible with a vittles browser's help.  By spending a red chip, one chemical component can be consumed by the junker or one of their friends to fulfill that person's need for food or water that day, but not both.  Nothing says you can't just spend another red chip to live on a diet of paint thinner and Silly Putty for a day!
Blue:  By infusing something edible with their power, the vittles spirit can help someone who eats that thing push beyond their usual limits.  That person gains an amount of Wind equal to the sum of their Spirit and Vigor die types.  Until their Wind drops below their usual maximum Wind, they cannot regain Wind by any means (they don't need to, after all!).  Unless you pitch in a white chip, too, any dangers present in the eaten substance such as rot, disease, poison, or radiation are still present and affect the eater.
Legend:  The vittles spirit can, with a major effort, kickstart the derailed food cycle.  An area of apocalypse-ravaged land no larger than 50 feet on a side becomes permanently arable and fertile.  Moreover, the influx of energy needed to accomplish this supercharges the land's fertility, producing twice as much food in its first harvest than it normally would.  Later harvests will produce a more typical amount of crops.  It's not just plants, either, as food animals kept in the affected area find themselves benefiting from the magic as well.

Empty Calories: Powers for Less Savory Junkers
White:  By spending a white chip while creating a device, the junker can replace all of the necessary components for the powers in the device with chemical components, resulting in an edible device.  This is an all or nothin' deal, no partial trades!  For example, a tiny little AT-AT walker built with the locomotion power would normally require 1 chemical component, 1 electronic, 3 mechanical, and 2 structural; a junker with a vittles browser could build the same thing out of French fries and a mango for 7 chemical components.  Since many chemical components are liquids (and a few gases), this can occasionally result in some strange-looking devices!
Red:  An amount of food suitable to feed five people loses all nutritional value.  It can be eaten, and will fill the stomach, but does nothing to prevent starvation or dehydration.  Extra chips can be spent in the same way as for the standard red chip power.
Blue:  This power wracks someone with all the ravages of starvation.  Just immediately do 2d4 Wind damage to them and give them the mean as a rattler hindrance until they have eaten a large meal to get rid of that hangry feelin'.
Legend:  When used while producing food, the corrupted vittles browser makes whatever is being produced incredibly addictive.  Anyone who consumes the food will immediately gain a 3-point hankerin' for the browser's junker friend's food.  Though the hankerin' is for anything the junker makes, the new addict will be particularly desirous of the specific food cooked with the legend chip.

Queer Spirits:  The line between vittles spirits and drug spirits is famously unclear, with 5-hour energy shots, garlic pills, and artificial sweeteners straddling it.  Beyond this strong connection, however, queer vittles spirits can be the rarest of the rare.  Edible lingerie stands at the intersection of clothing, vittles, and sex aid spirits, while many forms of candy engage their consumers in more kinesthetic ways that blend traits of vittles and toys.  Biodiesel, made from human food into food for cars, holds the most powerful hybrids of vittles and car spirits, though all fuels can be seen as such, honestly.  Goat milk is a foodstuff, and cabling is a tool; animals exist which were developed to produce something which is both.  Efforts to design buildings with ecological sustainability in mind led to the use of constructed ecosystems for temperature regulation, water reclamation, maintenance of air quality, and the like.  Food from the plants therein can queer the line between vittles and appliance spirits.  From time to time before the bombs fell and the Reckoners scoured the earth, corporations and wealthy folk would find some way to build life-size gingerbread houses and the like; what few still stand might be vittles/buildings spirits.  DNA computers verged on revolutionizing the information technology just before the War, and some of these computers were edible, if unappetizing and gooey.  And, finally, of course, there is the classic case of corporations selling shitty food to the poor, knowing that it will kill them but knowing that they have little financial choice.  The spirits of these are vittles or gun spirits, depending on the angle with which one looks at them.