31 Days Character Creation Challenge Day 08: Vaesen (goes West)

Today we have our first non-Into the Odd character. I have created a Swedish character for the wonderful game Vaesen and transplanted him to Texas. 

Anders Sundwall was a bright young boy from Göteborg, the son of a schoolteacher and a writer of uplifting literature for young women. His parents paid through the nose to send him to study medicine at Karolinska in Stockholm. While ‘networking’ wasn’t in their vocabulary, that was their reason for sending Anders to the capital. And network he did.

Anders met Felix Stenbock-Oxenstiarna at Karolinska, and the two got on like a house on fire. Anders was by far the better student, but if Felix leant heavily on his friend at times, he paid it back by introducing Anders to the joys and privilege of being the third son of a friherre (baron). Wine, women, opium, and a certain leniency if one was found to be sleeping in class. Anders enjoyed it all as though he was born to it. Still, he managed to be a good, if not great student. 

"You, Sir, have the pulse of a gentleman!"

After the two had received their diplomas, Felix tabled a staggering suggestion. Instead of going back to dreary old poverty-stricken Göteborg, how would Anders like to set up shop in the new world? He, Felix, had an older cousin in a place called Laredo who’d help them get started. Anders liked the idea very much. Gout, tuberculosis and hypochondria are much the same one place as another, and this way he’d get to see the world.

After an arduous journey, the two started a practice in Laredo, under the name Sundwall. Felix was less than pleased, but it was clear that English-speakers had trouble pronouncing Stenbock-Oxenstiarna. The two men quickly became darlings of the society scene (or what passed for one) in Laredo. Anders was adept at reframing medical facts as amusing after-dinner anecdotes. In the practice he became adept at treating gunshot wounds, as well as performing the occasional secret abortion. 

Felix was stabbed to death by a patient who was later revealed to have a brain tumor (after he was hanged). Anders worked alone for many years. He had several affairs of the heart, but was too enamored with his work to marry. Reading up on the work of Campbell Greig De Morgan, he became fascinated with cancer, and he spent the better part of six years working to cure or arrest the spread of lung cancer in the wealthy horse trader Silas Lahey. 

One time Anders was out deer hunting, he came upon a startling scene. A Man dressed as a Catholic priest lay propped up against a tree, clearly dead from a number of bullet wounds. Next to him, still shallowly breathing, a fantastical creature lay on its side. It was fully three meters long and of a human outline. At first Anders thought it was some great African primate, but its upturned face was that of a human being. The eyes were amber, and in those eyes Anders saw visions reflected that he has never since forgotten or fully understood. 

A large man preparing a feast of fried food.

A young soldier waiting in the window of a derelict building, rifle at the ready.

A woman in garish clothes carrying a strange contraption through a cold city full of horseless carriages.

A gaunt boy using an old knife to carve sigils in his palm. The boy seemed to see Anders and smile.

A well-dressed man doing the bidding of a great beast hidden in dark waters.

That beast itself, like a great jawless fish, extruding tendrils through the world, unseen by all. 

The hominid breathed out a mist of blood, and with it the last words it would utter.

“¡Cuidado con el pulpo!”

Anders checked for any signs of life, but found none. When he returned with a posse of men, only the dead priest remained. 

Since then Anders has been distracted by thoughts of a creature which spreads its influence like a cancer through the world, and by the gentle-eyed hominid’s last words “beware the Octopus”. 

Name: Anders Sundwall

Age: 37

Class: Burgher

Profession: Doctor of Medicine

Motivation: To explore and understand the world

Dark Secret: Involved in illicit affairs

Trauma: Saw the future play out in the eyes of a dying hominid

Resources: 4

Attributes

PHYSIQUE 3

PRECISION 4

LOGIC 4

EMPATHY 4

SKILLS

· MEDICINE (Precision) 3

· RANGED COMBAT (Precision) 1

· STEALTH (Precision) 1

· LEARNING (Logic) 2

· VIGILANCE (Logic) 1

· MANIPULATION (Empathy) 1

· OBSERVATION (Empathy) 1

TALENT

Frontier Medic

Gain +2 to Fear tests when frightened by dead or damaged human bodies.