Day 21: Robin Geary (Strange Endeavors)

Today I’m making the first character for Strange Endeavors, a hack of Cepheus and Enoch’s Wake I've made. Traveller(ish) life path but for horror/conspiracy games. I'll go into how character creation works with this system. 

For the first character I’m using the “Straight on into the Darkness” method, which is fast and gives you a young character with a solid hook. 

Step one is rolling 2d6 for each of the four stats.

Endurance: Your character's physical ability to continue despite injury and exhaustion. Serves as hit points in action scenes. I roll a 6. A bit low, but not tragically so.

Luck: Intuition and good fortune. I roll a whopping 11!

Resources: A combination of standing and cash-on-hand. I roll 10. I’m starting to see this character as a silver-spoony kind of person.
Willpower: Your self-possession, self-control, and your ability to control arcane energies. Certain psychic attacks or energies damage Willpower. A 6. 

Step two is picking a starting Boon. I choose background skills. Two skills starting at 1, rather than the usual 0. Looking over the list, I choose Carousing and Deception. I’m starting to see a young man with a love of partying and easy solutions.

The character starts at age 18, and I go for “Straight into the Darkness”. This gives me a choice of two further skills from a decent-sized list, as well as getting to increase an existing skill by 1. 
I choose Investigation (Call of Cthulhu has conditioned me) and Art. I add one to Deception. Maybe our guy is part of an art scene?

Then we roll to see if the character is a Golden Child or has learned from Hard Knocks. I roll an 8, so our guy’s golden. Of course. On the Golden Child table I roll a 4.

Weaving Spiders Come Not Here
You met the right people who introduced you to even more right people. There was an initiation and lots of partying.

Take Carousing and increase Resources by 2, Take another member as a Person You Owe. 

Boom. Our guy has the highest starting Resources possible, and he’s the life of the party. The party is lampshaded as some kind of Bohemian Grove situation. I’ll call them the Knights of Mirth. A society where the rich and powerful get to cut loose, have fun, and behave like the Übermenschen they know themselves to be. I decide that he owes another young man a big favor for making the introductions and sponsoring him. I want this sponsor to have a preppy name. I decide on Asher Barrett.

Our character needs a name too. I steal the last name Geary from a long-ass Clive Barker novel. His first name will be Robin. Like Puck. 

I roll 1D6 to add to the character’s age. I get a 4. Robin’s 22 and Bob's your uncle. 

Next time I’ll make a character the slow(er) way. 

Robin grew up an intelligent, materially spoiled child in Somerset County, New Jersey. He was an only child, and learned how to pander to adults. Adults, he discovered, wanted to lie to him to protect him and themselves from embarrassment. In return they expected the same. Robin was sensitive, artistic and witty, but not too much so. The few friends he had were really cherished rivals, but most adults loved him. Appreciated him anyway. 
Robin’s parents had money. Not crazy money, but enough to hire tutors and admissions specialists to get him into Andover, a prestigious New England prep school. 

Andover was a big change for Robin. His charm still worked, but not reliably. He had to work harder, and there were richer and more talented kids all around. He found his new angle when he met Asher Barrett. Barrett was popular, and his parents had enough pull that the school forgave him his many trespasses. Barrett turned out to love Robin’s (rather derivative) neo-expressionist paintings, and Robin faked an interest in psychedelic drugs until he did not have to fake it anymore.

When school ended, Barrett brought Robin along to a meeting in a secret society. The Knights of Mirth met in an opulent hunting lodge somewhere on the Maine-Vermont border.

It opened Robin’s eyes in so many ways. He had considered himself bisexual, but had never put it into practice before the Knights. He learned to drink cognac, and that he was fit to walk among the gods. He tried drugs he never knew the name of, shouted along with the others for “Amdusias” in a surge of collective frenzy. He kissed a halo of black smoke and it forced itself into his lungs, its throbbing lightning burning his brain…

Since then Robin’s life has been charmed. His paintings sell for increasingly exorbitant prices, and he has an enviable studio in Boston. He finds that he is detached in a new way, ready to debase himself and others with a muted curiosity. Sometimes he feels a sense of loss, but he dulls the feeling with money and esoteric commissions from fellow Knights. 

Robin Geary 

Age 22

Endurance 6

Luck 11

Resources 12

Willpower 6

Talent: none

Skills: Art 0, Carousing 2, Deception 2, Investigate 0. 

Contacts

I Owe Asher Barrett an enormous favor for making the introductions.