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Day 03: Arlene Ramsey (Hard City)

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Detroit, 1946. When people think of a woman assassin, they think of some Rita Hayworth-looking glamorpuss. That’s not Arlene. She has that kind of reassuring face you’d like to see in a doctor’s office or behind a lunch counter. Arlene is an assassin though, and has eleven confirmed kills to her name. Don’t hesitate, don’t stand out. That’s words to live by for a contract killer. Arlene made her first kill in the jailhouse. She was inside for knocking her (ex)husband down with a bottle, and stealing his wallet and car. While inside, she strangled an officious trustee who tried to blackmail her. Arlene got away with it, and the only other witness, Astrid Felton, knew to keep quiet, up to a point. When they got out, Astrid admitted that she’d told her boyfriend Eugene Farrugia, “a big man in the COMMISSION”. This turned out to be a half-truth at best. Gene was a go-between, and quite squeamish for a made man. Still, Arlene found that they could do business. She’d do the hits and Gene wou...
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Day 02: Casey Chlebek (Sigil & Shadow)

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Casey is a professor of mathematics. He has a fairly cushy tenured position at Morgan State University, but at this point in his career, the unassuming little man has taken up a second job as a monster hunter.  For many years Casey worked alongside psychologist (and almost Nobel Prize winner) Paul Höst. They collaborated on studies in consumer behavior, models for predicting suicide attempts and much more.  Neither of them had ever married, and behind their backs colleagues and students called them ‘the bromance’. They did have their disagreements though. Casey was frustrated by how poorly supported many psychological studies seemed to be, while Höst felt that Casey was too timid in his conclusions.  It all changed one Summer evening when Höst arrived late to one of their meetings with a young man, an assistant professor named Alex Hendry. Höst seemed inebriated or euphoric, while the young man was decidedly subdued. There were things, he said, that science had not even t...
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Day 01: Diane Carlsson for Whitehack

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Once again it's time for 31 Days Character Creation Challenge! We start with a modern day Whitehack character In Scarlet Town you fight your father’s foes Up on the hill a chilly wind blows You fight ‘em on high and you fight ‘em down in You fight ‘em with whisky, morphine and gin Diane Carlsson lives in Preston, Minnesota, the ‘trout capital of America’. If you’re not an outdoorsy type, there’s not much to do in Preston, but Diane is a girl with a calling of sorts. Diane’s a caver. She’s kinda had to become one, because of her father. When Diane was little, her father would tell her stories of Scarlet Town. It’d be mentioned in bedtime stories, sometimes just in passing. Sleeping Beauty’s castle was in Scarlet Town, and the Hundred Acre Wood was just outside of it. Diane was almost twelve before she realized that Scarlet Town did not figure in any of those stories. As she grew older, the stories changed too. Where they’d been fairy tales in her childhood, her father now talked abo...
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Towards a dictionary of words and phrases for the foreign traveler on German trains, and in German train stations

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  5 Minuten Verspätung: Time is an illusion. The truth is a chasm. Brezel: A large, misspelled pretzel. Vaguely nourishing. EinzelTicket: We pass this way but once. Essen Hauptbahnhof: A marvel of lights, commerce and humanity in motion. An elaborate mirage of Dunkin Donuts and Subways for which you will never have time. Fahrkarte: The straw to which you must cling. The road map to your destination. Also a document of dubious authority. Gleis: A raised horizontal surface on which to drink Lift (see: Lift) and feel ennui beating your psyche like an incontinent poodle. Hamburg Hauptbahnhof: An acoustic space where no sound is ever lost, thus no missive may be accurately understood. Lautsprecherdurchsage: Disembodied metallic voices. Their source or truthfulness is impossible to ascertain. Lift: The apples of Iðunn, tempered by a bit of fizzy water. Pünktlichkeit: The idea that things happen when they happen. Reservierung: The thought that, somewhere, there is a place for you. A frank...
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Rokap! (a Longshot City character)

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Rokap the Great. Rokap the Merciless. Rokap the Khan of Witches. Rokap the enormously frustrated. Rokap is a demonic sorcerer or vice versa. The old stories do not make a clear distinction, nor does he. Every year the Kudiani (witches) of Caucasus would gather at his command, feeding him with human hearts. Thus invigorated he would concoct curses, slanderous omens and cruel plots to unseat the gods themselves.  This went on for uncounted years, but finally even the patience of Heaven was tested beyond capacity, and Rokap was bound in unbreakable chains under a mountain in what is East Georgia today.  Every year Rokap sought to escape, but was foiled by the heroic, the rightly guided, or the plain lucky. Christians, Muslims, and pagans seemed willing to work together to thwart the old devil and his witch minions. The last time Rokap was genuinely active was during the Russo-Persian war. Some even credit him as the instigator, but this is most certainly a poor excuse. Humans nee...
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1st Urban Mages Character

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 Name: Maxwell Crenshaw Purview: Family Magic Body: 3 Agility: 3 Mind:.3 Presence: 4 Magic: 4 Luck: 2 Magic Points: 5 Basic Skills Heavy Attack, Constitution & Might – which are tied to Body. Precise Attack, Reflexes & Athletics – which are tied to Agility. Initiative, Willpower & Notice – which are tied to Mind. Charm, Deception & Bargain – which are tied to Presence Advanced Skills  Contacts Insight Intimidation Investigation Spells Curse: Max uses this spell to enforce agreements. He must make clear that failing to honor the agreement is suffering the curse. Max uses family magic, thus his curses fall within that theme. The curse might visit cruel misfortune upon a family member, make their family forget them entirely, or make a demanding and dangerous individual or group consider the cursed person kin.  Dark Side: The Dark Side is a meta-spell which lets a caster empower another spell at a painful cost. Dark Side Curse: Instead of cursing an opponent, ...
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Oh B.R.O.T.H.E.R.

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  The Agents from B.R.O.T.H.E.R.  B.R.O.T.H.E.R. (Bureau for Research on Occult Threats Harming or Endangering Reality) is a secret international institution with offices all over the world. Their purview is to investigate and understand all that is unearthly, esoteric and dismissed by the mainstream of science. Should a phenomenon prove dangerous, it is to be neutralized. Even its agents are unclear on who exactly it is they work for. Three main theories exist B.R.O.T.H.E.R. is an agency under the aegis of the United Nations. Due to the extremely sensitive nature of its purview, it is kept secret even from the member nations.  B.R.O.T.H.E.R. is the modern incarnation of the Brotherhood of Thoth-Hermes, a Hermetic society dedicated to breaking down any opposition between science and esoteric philosophy. According to this narrative, everybody and their mother was secretly an initiate (Benjamin Franklin, Sir Isaac Newton, Hildegard of Bingen, Abramelin the Mage etc. etc.) B...
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