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Saturday, August 29, 2015

Special Agent Owen Maccready


Concept: Occult Crimes Task force specialist/Forensic Psychologist

AKA: None

Desc: Starting half-back at his old school. African-American. Keeps his head shaved, because when his hair grows out it is a kinky mess. Also, someone can grab it in a fight. Still, has pretty good knees and can sprint like the wind. Has sourly begun to admit to himself that he does require glasses for reading. Gets to the gym regularly enough to combat the sedentary lifestyle, because he never knows when he’ll have to go out into the field.

History: Owen is a pretty smart guy. His folks were upper middle class.  His mother was a teacher and his father was a dentist. So, Owen had certain advantages growing up that other young black kids did not.  But his parents were always very stern about making sure that he understood that not everyone was the same and that because people weren’t the same, they didn’t always THINK the same.

While Owen isn’t exactly an academic dynamo, He tends to excel at the subjects that interest him.  Never big on English or Math, but his grades in Science and history tended to make up for it.  It wasn’t till his sophomore year in high school that he found something that interested him.
He had an opportunity to take some electives for the first time, and he decided to try out Comparative Theology and Psychology.   And maybe it was just the combination or the particular time in his life when he was taking it...But he discovered a certain synergy between those subjects and the history and science he already liked.
Scoring an athletic scholarship, he surprised the little methodist school he decided to go to by being a capable student as well. He majored in psychology.

The original plan was to get a job as a clinical psychologist somewhere and maybe get another degree in education so he could teach. But that was scrapped when his mother got murdered in a school shooting.
   Some kid. Some poor dumb brainless kid with a head full of bad wiring or bad chemicals came in waving a pistol around...And Owen’s mom, without a second thought, tackled him to protect her other students. 

Owen’s dad...Well. He eventually went back to work. He drinks a little bit more at family gatherings than he should, and he’s gotten a little hateful and mean-spirited. He won’t set foot in church anymore. This is perhaps understandable.
   But Owen decided that clinical psychology was not for him. His mother’s sacrifice, in a bizarre way, inspired him. (It kind of helped that the field is a bit flooded)  Owen decided to take his degree and put it to some actual use. He went to the FBI
   Graduating near the top of his class at Quantico,  He spent a few years with the Behavioral Studies Unit, but decided he wanted to be out in the field more than behind a desk reading too many reports.  BSU was sorry to see him go, and have left the door open for him, but he got himself posted back here in his old home town.

And these days, he sits at a desk and reads too many reports. Ain’t THAT a bitch?
Owens interest in psychology is deep and pervasive and it means that often he’s pressed into certain types of situations in law enforcement. (Hostage negotiation, profiling, talking down the occasional jumper...stuff like that.) But his interest in psychology also has put him in the position of  trying to make sense out of crimes with murky motivations like serial killings and anything occult-flavored.  

What you should understand about Owen is that he is an expert on occult crimes, without having had a single occult experience. That’s certainly not impossible. Not even in the World of Darkness.  A man can get to be a certain age and think to himself. “You know I’m about as psychic as a rock and I can do as well as people who purport to have god-given gifts. I’ve never seen an angel, a demon, a faerie, a vampire, a werewolf, or a dragon, that wasn’t on a movie screen. And frankly, most of the weird shit I HAVE seen in my life is totally explainable by hypnosis, psychosis, or stage magic.  The shadowy world is just that... It’s just a lens that some people see the world through.”

Most of the time, he’s right. But occasionally, he’s in for a rude shock.

Attitude: “Look. It doesn’t matter what I believe. What matters here is what THEY believe. If I can understand what they believe. I can maybe predict what they are going to do and why they are going to do it. I don’t have to believe in a loving god, or magic, or saints, or any of that.  All I have to do is be able to put myself in THEIR shoes and understand what they see and why they see it that way.  If that can stop a crime, or save a life it’s worth every damn bit of effort.

Skills: I should point out for regular readers of Painted Corners that Plain Vanilla Human Characters have one advantage over EVERY single type of supernatural creature out there: They have a great deal LESS stuff to spend points on. Which is why a guy like Owen can HAVE 3+ in all of his mental and physical attributes without it being particularly freakish.   Owen is also likely to have following things: Science Specialty: Psychology
Academics Specialty: Theology (Can exorcise a ghost or a demon in a pinch.)  a pile of dots in occult with specialties in: Voodoun, Santeria, and Symbology.   He’s also a capable physical combatant with 3+ dots in athletics, brawl, and firearms.  He’s likely to have dots in fighting styles, (combat marksmanship, police tactics, and kung-fu)  and he further possesses the Merits: strong back, fleet of foot, and brawling dodge. 

Gear: Sig Sauer P226 9mm under his right armpit and a 22 revolver with Glaser slugs on his left ankle. (Owen is Left Handed) A top of the line smartphone loaded with useful law enforcement apps and seriously high res camera with an attachment for higher resolution lenses. Reading glasses.  A slim field notebook which also holds his credentials,  a scalpel, a set of tweezers and an extremely minimal set of picks. Keeps a Bianchi recoil-less bull-pup shotgun in the trunk of his car under lock and key.  Has a kindle with many of the same apps as his phone with an enormous occult library loaded onto it. He keeps that in the glove box.

Home: Although he has an apartment, and a nice one, he tends to think of Dad’s house as his home. But he and his father don’t talk much anymore. And it’s not as if he sees much of his apartment either. He’s actually taken to only purchasing groceries he’s going to eat that night or can safely sit in the fridge or the cupboard for months.  He’s usually only home to sleep or shower.

Circle: While Owen’s job tend to bring him into contact with a pretty big swath of humanity, he doesn’t have the effortless human touch that some of the other Agents have.  He doesn’t have any friends outside of law enforcement and he hasn’t dated anyone outside of law enforcement in years.
(It looked as if that thing with Special Agent Marguiles was going to go the distance, but then she got transferred to Spokane and they sort of fell out of touch.) This is slightly compounded by the fact that if you’re around him for any length of time, he’ll turn his highly trained psychologist mind on you and start trying to see if he can figure out how you tick. When this happens, he is usually not very nice about it. He and Marguiles tended to fight a lot. 
 If anything, Owen does tend to keep his ear to the ground when it comes to movements in occult subcultures and he’ll hear about things in Law enforcement circles too.

Story Uses:
“Well, I USED to believe it was bullshit!”
Owen, in any WOD game (or indeed any other urban fantasy game you care to use him in,) is going to bump up against something his rational mind is going to be unable to untangle. That’s just going to happen.  How well he rolls with it or cracks is entirely up to you.

“Don’t you worry. We’re GOING to catch whomever is responsible for this.”
There is of course always the possibility that Special Agent Maccready is going to become your own personal Inspector Javert.  Granted, You’re supernatural, and he’s not, but his badge and gun are going to make up for it in many ways.  While his lack of direct experience of the occult will hamstring him some, it won’t stop him.  This is the point where I have to remind you that Law enforcement can make a million mistakes, but you, the perpetrator, can only make one.

"Me? I thought you guys were just a myth?"
As it's been pointed out. Owen considers himself as psychic as a rock. But if you want, he might just be mistaken.  If that's the case. V.A.S.C.U from the "Slasher" book might come calling and you could throw an interesting amount of Tele-informatics onto his sheet.

Connections:
*The Vermillion House is aware of Special Agent Maccready and have 4 plans to deal with him should he ever become close to exposing their activities.
*Officer Honus Brightwater once pulled Owen over and was all ready to give him a hard time, until Owen showed him his ID and invited him to go fuck himself. As you can imagine, this didn't endear him to Honus.
*Detective Bela Janofski have met, but don't really travel in the same circles, or at least, don't know that there IS some overlap in the things they've seen on the street.
*Owen has shopped at The Grimoire Bear's attitudes toward members of the law enforcement community are a matter of public record, but Penny says he's got an interesting aura and is always nice to him, where Bear is gruff and grumbly.
*Owen and Norman Cayce have met and collaborated on some things. They get along and seem to have some similar attitudes. Norman is thinking about entrusting some of his more unusual case-files to Owen for help with solving Arlene's murder.
* The body of a prostitute was pulled out of a reservoir several months ago. The prostitute's body was covered in carved-out alchemical symbols. This makes the third unsolved murder with the same M.O. in the last year. The Media is keeping it quiet right now, but this officially classes it as a serial killing. The case has been handed over to occult crimes, While this might end up with Detective Janofski and Agent Maccready butting heads or joining forces, it does mean that at some point they are likely to end up running headlong into Lewis Flowers.
* Owen dated Dr. Ronnette Franklin in high school. He has no idea she's still in  town and he hasn't thought of her in a long time.

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