Character Creation: Changeling: The Lost

And now, tonight's installment of Matt making a character. Just so happens I'm making one for the game I just played.

The Game: Changeling: The Lost
The publisher: White Wolf Game Studio
Degree of familiarity: High. I wrote a good chunk of the core book and have worked on a couple of the sourcebooks. I've been playing in a chronicle for several months, and I'm three sessions into running my own.
Books required: Changeling: The Lost and the World of Darkness Rulebook

 

Well, much like Mage, this is an eight-step process. I've got some ideas already, so let's just jump right in.

Step One: Concept

I play a Spring Court character in Time and Tide, and Summer and Autumn are well-represented. I want to make a Winter Court character. The Winter Court, while it's called the Court of Sorrow, is really more about going unnoticed. I decide that my brief concept is "Lonely Everyman." Actually, "lonely" doesn't do it for me. "Hollow" is better. My character is hard to see, easy to miss, and doesn't feel like there's much to him, anyway.

Man, there's a lot of angst in my characters lately, isn't there? Tomorrow's will be happier.

Anyway, my character is named August Boykos. His family is Ukrainian, but he's fourth generation and his parents (rather, his father; his mother was an American mutt) doesn't really know much about their heritage. He was drinking a toast to his cousin at a wedding, leaning against the railing at a riverside restaurant, when the Others took him. He fell into the river, and his friends pulled him - or what they thought was him - out a few minutes later. August, though, was already gone.

August was taken as a young man. He'd graduated from college with an English degree (look, play what you know), but hadn't figured out what to do with it yet. He was working at some meaningless office job that he doesn't even remember. He was pretty much an everyman even before the Others grabbed him.

Step Two: Select Attributes

August is average, and mighty average at that. He's easy to miss, so Social's definitely tertiary. I could go either way for the other two, so let's make Mental primary. He's smarter than he lets on.

To wit: Intelligence and Wits both get 2 dots, Resolve gets the other one. Presence stays at one, Manipulation gets one dot, and Composure gets the other two. His Physical Attributes get one each.. He's not the kind of guy you notice.

EDIT: Can't count. He has a third dot in Dexterity.

Step Three: Select Skills

For the kind of guy that he is, Mental Skills might be primary, but I don't think his durance required him being smart. I make Physical primary because I've got an idea about where I want to take this guy. Mental Skills are secondary. That leaves Social as tertiary.

Mental Skills: He has a degree, and he paid attention in class, so he gets two dots in Academics and Computer. His time as a changeling have given him some idea about the weirdness of the world, so I give him a dot of Occult. The other two dots go into that catch-all Skill, Crafts.

Physical Skills: First up: Drive. Three dots. I put two each into Athletics, Stealth and Survival, and one each into Weaponry and Larceny.

Social Skills: August is a lot better with beasts than people, so I give him two dots of Animal Ken. The other two go into Streetwise. August isn't a jerk, he's just not very impressive, and very soft-spoken (yes, I can play soft-spoken characters).

Step Four: Select Skill Specialties

I already know what I'm doing here. I put a Specialty in Drive (Motorcycle), in Stealth (Unnoticed) and in Crafts (Auto Repair). I figure that August really loved his bike back before he got pulled into the Hedge. It was the memory of that bike - of riding, free, unable to be caught, that led him back through the Thorns.

Step Five: Add Changeling Template

OK, now I need to think a little more about August's durance. I already know he's Winter Court, so I note that on the sheet, but what about seeming?

I like the notion of being a "hollow man," and I ponder how best to implement that. I don't want to get too gory with his durance - he wasn't scooped out or anything. I think that the hollowing out was more emotional and spiritual. August was kept in a larder, and his Keepers - a swarm of horrible, bat/bird creatures, would swoop in and peck at him, sucking out the pain and fear until he was exhausted, and then left him. He escaped by "dying" - becoming so spiritually dead that they didn't bother with him anymore.

With that in mind, I look at the seemings. Fairest is out. Darkling makes sense, but I play one already. Wizened doesn't ring true, nor does Beast. That leaves Ogre or Elemental. I think about August stuck in a larder. He supposedly fell into a river, but actually, I think one of the common stories that gets told about that night is that no one heard a splash. That's because he wasn't pulled into the water. The Keepers pulled him off the railing into the air, and then hung up him with spikes made of bone and metal. Over time, he grew impossibly thin, until you could hear the air ringing through his bones. He's an Airtouched Elemental. I note his kith and seeming bonuses and weaknesses on his sheet, and move on.

I get a free Specialty in Brawl, Athletics or Stealth. I have no Brawl, so I think I'll take "Tumbling" as my Athletics Specialty. August knows how to take a fall.

I note one free dot of Wyrd, but given the Elemental and Airtouched powers, I might think about raising that later.

Contracts - whee! I get five dots, at least two have to be spent on Court or seeming Contracts. Let's consider the options. Fleeting Winter isn't really in keeping with August. Eternal Winter is better, but the dice pools would be crappy. Contract of Elements is always fun, but because I have Winter Masques handy, I look up Contracts of Communion...and damn. Sensing air (the first dot) lets me do a kind of "radar" thing where I sense what the air is surrounding. That's pretty cool, and I think appropriate for the quiet, careful August. Gimme. Elements is still cool, so I'll take two dots, letting August surround himself with a damaging sheath of air (if he's riding fast on his bike, he can even do it for free).

I also want to be able to fix my bike, so I buy the first dot of Contracts of Artifice. Finally, I grab Rites of Spring and flip through the Contracts there. I decide to buy the first dot of Contracts of Omen, which lets me see the most traumatic thing that's happen to someone. The dice pool will be shit, but I figure it's what August will use to regain Glamour, so he'll spend Willpower when he uses it and will try to avoid invoking it unless he has to (it's kind of a shit thing to do; learning someone's most painful secret and then "casually" bringing it up in conversation, but ya gotta get Glamour somehow).

Step Six: Merits

Seven dots is never enough. Sigh.

OK, as much as I hate to do it, I'm going to dump three points into raising Wyrd. It's just too dumb not to.

Now, for the other four points, I already know I want some driving Merits. I could take Stunt Driver, but I decide to continue my theme of using stuff from sourcebooks and take the Wheelman Merit from Midnight Roads (it's also cheaper). I get 9 again on Drive rolls, which is pretty cool. I'll be want Stunt Driver at some point, too, but that'd be something I'd pick up in play.

The other two dots...hmm. August's fetch moved smoothly into his life, so he's got nothing, not even his name, from that. I don't take New Identity because I want August to be as faceless as possible. I decide he's got a Mantle of Winter, but just one dot. Finally, I take the Direction Sense Merit - August always knows where he's going.

EDIT: Eric pointed out that you get a dot of Mantle for free, so I have one more Merit dot to play with. I did want to take Perfect Stillness from Rites of Spring, so I think we'll add that in.

Step Seven: Determine Advantages

Just some math. Willpower: 5. Health: 7. Defense: 2. Initiative modifier: 5. Clarity: 7. Glamour: Max is 11, starts at 7. And then the fun stuff.

August's Virtue needs to be inward-focused, so not Hope, for once. I think that it's very Winter Court to choose Prudence, and it'd be fun to get Willpower back for doing something smart. But I don't think that's August's defining point. I think he's careful, measured and, if not dispassionate, then at least detached. I take Temperance as his Virtue.

Now: Vice. The hollow man cannot be filled up. I take Gluttony as his Vice; he never turns down free food, free drink, free room and board, and he never feels compelled to work for it. He's suffered enough to earn a little charity, he thinks.

Step Eight: Spark of Life

Looking over what I've got for August, I see one big problem he's going to have in a group: He's not really a team player. He's quiet, he's sullen, and he's self-sufficient. Why would he ever agree to a motley oath?

Some of that is up to the Storyteller, but if I'm a good and considerate player (which I am), I'll build something that the ST can use. I'll state that August is completely unfocused. He sees himself as weightless, blown from place to place like a piece of paper in the breeze. That means he's not altogether reliable, but he's also not hard to pin down. It doesn't take much "weight" to get him to hang around. All it takes is someone to ask, to notice him, and he's happy to hang around for a while. He just needs someplace to fix his bike, and he's good to go.

As for his backstory, I've got most of it, but let's consider it further. He escaped by fixating on his old Harley softail and found it in his parents' garage, gone to rust. He stole it and moved it to a junkyard, made friends with the dogs, and fixed it up while stealing food and supplies from the owner. And then he left, leaving a note that he'd pay the guy back when he could, and signed it "August."

Unfortunately, there aren't many Augusts in that area, so the guy tracks him down (really, his fetch) and demands payment. The fetch pays the dude off, but then decides that August is out there hunting him, and fixates on killing him. I decide that August's fetch is cool, cunning and lethal. He's much more socially functional than August is, he's built that meaningless office job up into a successful dotcom, and that means he can work from the road as he hunts August down. August, in typical Winter Court fashion, doesn't want to be found by anything Fae-related, fetch included, but his fetch doesn't leave him much choice.

August is terrified of his fetch, because he knows that if his fetch dies, he might have to step back into his life, at least temporarily. He doesn't feel equipped to do that. The only remnant of the man August Boykos used to be is the joy August feels, riding his bike down the highway.

Because describing changelings is fun, I think that August is rail-thin, but not emaciated. Remember, it's his soul that was hollowed out, not his body. He's delicate, but untouchable - you can't hit a breeze. His eyes are endless and empty, like a highway at night, and if he stands near you, you hear the rushing of wind, as though you were driving with the window down.

I think that'll do it. He's a character I'd play, and I think he'd be fun, given the right group. I also think his fetch would make a superb Big Bad for a chronicle.