Bryson Import/Export

The way it works is like this:

Let’s say, and why not, that you’re a businessman. Further, let’s say you’re the sort of businessman who might need a certain amount of regular tension release in order to keep this mental process nice and lush and capable of all that big picture thinking.

   And maybe you’re the sort of fellow who’s favored form of tension release requires discretion of the highest sort.

With me so far?

   So, There’s a B2B affair named Bryson import/export, They don’t really advertise. strictly word of mouth on this one. Tidy little office downtown.  You might call them, talk to Mindy, let them know that you have some “Cargo” that needs to be unloaded.

   Mindy is very eager to help. She’ll send round one of their “Executive assistants” to straighten out some “Paperwork” They’ll even show up to your hotel in the evening because they are dedicated to being a top flight full-service organization. The Executive Assistant will show up in full business regalia, have business cards and everything. And when "business" has been concluded, their driver will whisk them away to their next important appointment.

   Most hotel desk clerks never suspect a thing. Most accountants see something bland like “Bryson E/I Inc.-Consulting” on an expense account and think nothing of it.  Most cops don’t know a thing about this operation. And on the rare occasion when a meeting has gone south and badly, the young lady in question was able to threaten to press charges and the businessman in question was able to realize in time, that because she didn’t dress or act like a whore, no one was necessarily going to BELIEVE she was a whore.

    The mastermind behind this operation is a young woman named Esmerelda Duchene. Esme is a mixed race woman. Her mother was Puerto Rican. Her father was a Frenchman who disappeared not long after Esme was born.  And so she and her mother lived in one of the rougher parts of town.  Esme is very smart and realized very young that a whore has to save her money if she wants any freedom at all. She stayed away from drugs and drink. Made sure that Tino never knew exactly how much money she had, and when the time was right to strike out on her own, made sure that Tino fell down 4 flights of stairs and broke every damn bone in his body.

She took Pablo (His best friend) and about half of his girls and set up her own situation. No one at Bryson is hooked on anything. They all liked the idea of stepping up from “Street whore” to “Call girl” and they’ve worked hard to maintain an image that allows them to make their moves with impunity. They’ve gotten pretty good at spotting horndogs at business conferences and job fairs and laying off their business cards on them. It’s all very slick. Esme has even encouraged a couple of the girls to take some courses in business and marketing.  It enables them to talk a good game and has paid unexpected dividends, insofar as Twyla discovered she had a talent for accounting. Hell, Esme is thinking very seriously about instituting a profit sharing scheme.

Which is not say that life is all beer and skittles at Bryson. They have to work hard to stay off the cop radar. Cop bribery usually becomes serious overhead. Also, not all girls who join up are particularly suited to the import/export business. Women who find they have no talent for the biz tend to get bent out of shape and threaten to go to the cops. Usually, that’s when Pablo steps in, and for one reason or another, the problem goes away. Esme is a big believer in messing an enemy over so thoroughly that they are never capable of coming back at you.  The last girl who opened her mouth like she was going to say something got loaded up with Horse and turned over to some psycho, who now has her pulling trains of methed-up skinheads.

Esme has even begun to create dossiers on her repeat customers, Not that she’s looking to blackmail them at all. She recognizes that would require a LOT more work and discretion than she currently wants to deal with. But a little bit of influence in the right places could open so many doors, and would it hurt anything if she had the wife’s name and number on her phone? No. A light touch here and there could make all the difference.

All in all, Bryson Import/Export is a piece of low hanging fruit for the supernatural creature that can (A) find out about it, and (B) figure out a way to put Esmerelda in their pocket.  But you’d better move quick. Esme is thinking about upping her security complement.

Lillian Penobscot

Concept: Art Gallery Owner/Occult Fence

Desc: A slim caucasian female in her late 50’s (Although she doesn’t look a day over 35.) She does yoga, is a strict vegetarian, rarely drinks to excess, and has had a small amount of “work” done.  She’s not ready for botox...yet. She is however in fantastic shape and is likely to destroy you at Tennis or Golf. She favors light colors to go along with blonde/silvering hair and favors linen over silk. She can wear heels but hates them.

History: Captain Tremlett haunted the old Penobscot ancestral manse, and a chance encounter with the old dead man wandering around the attic solidified an interest in the occult for young Lillian at the tender age of 10.  It was always something she’d piddled and dabbed at. She read books. tried spells. Danced naked a time or two. (Naturally, there was more of this away at college.)  She was interested in a degree in Art History but took courses in parapsychology when her course schedule permitted. It was a flirtation with a largely invisible world that never really left her. But by that same token, it was a world that never really took her fully into its grasp. Eventually, she married a rich man she’d known since pre-school and more or less forgot about it all.

   And that would have been that if Leonard hadn’t had a heart attack while shtupping his personal secretary. Lillian didn’t blame Maria at all. Didn’t even blame Leonard all that much.  Her taste in sex had always been a little too vanilla for Leonard and they hadn’t really been all that active in a while...They were like friends who used to fuck, who settled back into being friends again. She missed him some of course, but to a degree, it was also a bit of a relief.

    Over the years, Lillian had acquired the necessary wherewithal to run a gallery of her own. Very upscale. Very exclusive. So exclusive, many people don’t even know about it at all. The few artists who do know about it, consider it to be like the great white whale.

   One evening, a man came to the gallery,  giving his name as “Therion Laveau” he made an impassioned pitch to allow his art to exhibited at the gallery, as the security man was getting ready to throw him out, Lillian stopped him momentarily to ask him about his name.

“Names have power.” He said. 

“I know that. You’ve chosen to crib the names of two very powerful people. Aren’t you worried that there will be consequences?”

He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. “Not particularly. I hope to honor their spirits...May I challenge you with a work that I have created?”

Intrigued, she had him show his wares.  When he returned from his pick-up truck, he was holding what could only be a Hand of Glory.

“ I see that you’ve seen something like this before.”

“Yes.” She said, “But never...never in the flesh.”

“Do you know what it does?”

“I...It enhances the ability to study.”

He smiled. “Something like that. It enhances experiences, for those who are awake enough to appreciate them.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes. Would you like to see?”

And with her assent, he lit the fingers of the grotesque candle. It’s powerful vibration filling the gallery,  The suspicious security guard slipped into a deep sleep right in front of her. Therion laughed musically next to her. as he took her delicate wrist in his thick strong hand.  “They’ll all be asleep by now. All of them. None of them are as awake as you and I.”  He looked at her with a look of naked hunger, and Lillian felt something stirring in her that hadn’t stirred in years. 

Hunger for knowledge.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, she screwed him too. But it was more about finding out what he knew and it was just kinky enough...but not TOO kinky.  Ya know? 

Within six months, Therion was off in Europe doing a tour, and Lillian had made the acquaintance of a goodly portion of the occult underground in town and the surrounding environs.  Fencing the occasional stolen article has become something of an interesting side business for her and while she doesn’t have the kind of research capability that Goodlow and Haversham might possess, she is at least a talented amateur.  And she learns fast.

Attitude: 

“Ugh. Dearie, these grimoires of yours are sadly bog-standard stuff, Although, If you’re willing to part with Crowley’s hookah.  Well, then you and I can talk seriously.  Mario, will you be a dear and fetch us another round of mimosas and finger sandwiches? Look. We can talk hard numbers all afternoon, but I think you know what I’m really after.  Introduce me to that tall, dark, dead friend of yours, and I’ll see if I can’t make this happen for you.”

Skills: Lillian has a pretty good head for business and family money to back it all up. She’s got a wide circle of friends and hangers-on, and she’s a known quantity for the most part in any group that would consider itself part of high society. She’ll have Occult as part of her range of Contacts and Allies.  She’s also usually got some mook on the string as Mentor for at least a few months at a time. When they start to get demanding she usually finds a way to get rid of them.  Money is pretty effective for that as many serious practicing magi don’t have a lot of dough.  Also: Lillian has a few connections in the Art-Mafia world. Yeah, that’s a real thing...and some of those dudes are serious.  She knows at least one large Serbian metal-worker who is more than willing to tune people up with his monkey wrench if it will get his work shown.

Story Uses:

“That? Oh, that’s perfectly harmless...”

Lillian, is well-read, does her homework, has enthusiasm, and is careful to a fault. She’s also in WAY over her head to the point of not knowing how far in over her head she is. So far, she’s been able to succeed on sheer bravado and learning fast, but it’s likely that she’s going to run up against the hard limit of how much she actually knows. Imagine she’s got a dozen occult specialties but only 2 dots of actual Occult to work with, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of where she is.  She’s not overly furnished with a lot of direct experience.  Moreover, she hasn’t really dealt with anyone in the occult world who wasn’t sane, or overly excitable. (She’s not met a werewolf yet. nor seen a vampire frenzy.)  

“Yes...I think I could spend eternity with HIM...”

Lillian...How to put this delicately...Lillian is a ghoul wannabe. To quote RHPS, She’s tasted blood and she wants more. Not because the blood itself has its hooks into her yet, But because she has a slightly romanticized idea of vampirism, She’s looking for some likely vampire to attach herself to.  They must be awfully lonely she thinks. And she has read that the blood of vampires is supposed to be slightly addictive, but as long as she’s not asked to do anything TOO degrading, that will probably be just fine.

Yeah. Those of you who play vampires are rolling your eyes at Lillian’s naivete.  It’s one of her few blind spots. Otherwise, she’s a sharp operator and you won’t do well to cross her.

"Teflon" Johnny Galloway

Concept: Entrepeneur/Ne’re-do-well.

Desc: Male Caucasian Mid thirties. Long dark hair, often pony-tailed in the back. Leanish build but with a slight paunch that seems to be getting larger as time goes on. Bright eyes, piratical smile. Dimples to kill for. Jeans and a T-shirt are the standard uniform. anything more formal than that requires a wedding, a funeral or an appearance before a judge.

History: John Galloway has always had something of checkered past. But for the most part, he’s always had the damn luck of the Irish when it comes to skating on real consequences.  He’ll fuck anything warm and concave, and how that doesn’t ROUTINELY come around to bite him on the ass I will never know..... He has a fucking gift. If you bring him to a party with a decent number of women, in five minutes, he’ll be talking to the girl with the clear heels, and in 15 minutes, both of them will be mysteriously missing. Yeah. He’s THAT guy. Aside from his current gig, he’s never held a job longer than six months. Even his own mother fired him and he’s just lucky she missed him with the frying pan she threw at his head. He’s managed to hold down a job as a clerk at an all-night gas-n-go for the last couple of years. Mainly because his paranoid manager realized that he has exactly no ambition whatsoever.  Of course, it’s not where he makes his real money. He makes his real money off of the fact that he has a particular idiot savant genius for growing pot. The Gas-n-go just makes it handy for his customers. they can come in, buy smoke, blunts, snacks and beers all in one spot.

    He’s got some place up-country somewhere. It’s a sinkhole that he’s converted into a grow space. He’s got grow lights on a timer connected to some car batteries, and he’s come up with a fairly cunning aqueduct for the water that’s slowly growing the sinkhole in size. The plants get fairly large and are covered with these strange little purple hairs. But the pot itself is monstrously potent. Apparently, the limestone does something amazing to the water and the product is sought after by weed smokers all over the area.

Naturally, there are a few booby traps and John lives in a little trailer not far from the sinkhole itself.  Personally, he’d like for Pot to become legal to sell in this state. But he’s not sure he’d be able to take the cut in pay.

If Johnny has a saving grace at all, it is that he’s not greedy, sometimes, generous to a fault. He never takes you being angry at him personal, and he rarely ever seems to recognize that occasionally he causes people troubles. It’s never in his mind to cause problems.  Life’s a party for him. He’s insufferable, but it’s really hard to stay mad at him.

Attitude: “Dude...I’m sorry, what was I saying?

Skills: Johnny Galloway has had a lot of practice at dodging. He has a defense of 4. Also, enough athletics and maybe some Fleet of foot Merit to outrun a lot of troubles. He’s also conversant with the use of a shotgun, but that's nothing, everybody in his rather large family knows how to use one.  Socially, dealing with John Galloway is a bit like trying to nail Jell-o to a tree.  He’s a very very skillful liar and always seems to have a good grasp on what people want to hear. But he can turn on the charm like a searchlight when he is so moved.  He’s got loads of allies and quite a bit of contacts, and he’s not shy about getting them to help him on those occasions when he really does have his tit in the wringer.  

Story Uses:

“Dude my girl mary-jane is in town. You wanna come by and see her?”

John’s  cottage industry has gotten to the point where it’s on the radar a bit more than he’d like. There have been dudes trying to sweat him for a piece of his action, but he’s been too fast for them up till now. Maybe you could help a brother out, you know?

“You can start the party now. I have arrived.”

John Galloway is the original good time charlie. He’s fun to be around. Has more than couple dots of socialize. He can hold his liquor. He plays guitar and piano.  Has the best stories and can tell even a dumb joke well. He’s not afraid to bring his “Special Brownies” and/or the rest of his kit.   He’s friendly and at times, can even be a good friend.  

Of course, he’s liable to sleep with your woman...But hey. Who’s perfect?

Lewis Flowers

Concept: Serial Killer

AKA: Lewis doesn't really have another name, but he has on occasion, introduced himself as Lance Powers.

Desc: Mid 40’s. Male Caucasian. Watery eyes from allergies. Kind of soft in the middle. Surprisingly strong grip.  Losing hair on top. looks entirely defenseless...until he doesn’t. May have additional distinguishing marks. (see below)

History: He had all the signs of a potential psychopath growing up. It’s just, that no one knew anything about that sort of stuff back in the day. Lewis grew up like most people. He was smart but something of an under-achiever. He was repressed and awkward in social situations. And never had much luck with intimacy.  He worked a thankless job in some office, shuffling papers around and going over someone else’s numbers or whatever. He had settled into a comfortable haze of routine of Work-TV-Bed that enabled him to ignore and keep down his unnatural urges.  Things would have probably gone on like that until the day he died...

 A couple of years ago there was an incident at the office Christmas party. One of Lewis’s co-workers got liquored up and tried to go down on him in the copy room. Lewis was, to put it mildly completely unprepared for this and when his penis was unable to respond, the co-worker became aggressive. Then for weeks afterward, it had become clear that the co-worker had shared the details of the unsuccessful tryst with the rest of the office. Lewis tried lodging a complaint with HR, but he learned that the co-worker in question was actually the niece of the big boss...

The stress of this and his eventual dismissal caused something to come unglued in Lewis’s mind. Lewis stayed on unemployment and became something of a recluse.  He watched a lot of TV. One night while half-dozing, he had a kind of seizure and awoke on the floor of his efficiency apartment.  He doesn’t speak much about what occurred that night...But from that night on he went on a buying binge of every occult book and bit of occult paraphernalia he could get his hands on.  He began writing a diary about his impending apotheosis and soon, as these things go. He decided that he’d need to make a sacrifice.

Did the powers beyond listen? Did they give him some kind of gift? It would be hard to say. But so far, he has made 13 kills and the police aren’t anywhere close to catching him.  Part of this is due to the fact that Lewis has always been a fan of police procedurals. (NCIS is his fave)  but there may be an additional factor as certain supernatural persons have bent some effort to discovering who is behind these ritual killings, and have come up completely dry.

Attitude: “Someday. Soon I think, I shall break out of this larval shell and take to the sky in a way that will shock and amaze all the people dwelling down here in the mud-caked filth-pit we call a “world”  But there is so much work yet to be done and the sacraments can hardly offer themselves can they?

Want to know more?  You might use Lewis in conjunction with the series "Path Notes from the Edge of Forever" if you are so inclined.

Skills: Never one to be all that effective in the interpersonal arena, Lewis has, in a short span of months, learned to completely mask his true self and become essentially that which he wants the world to see. He's developed a sort of prescience about things and this helps him to stay ahead of the curve socially. (He's a natural introvert.)  He’s got a couple of dots of investigation and he’s learning a couple of dots of medicine too.  In a short span of 2or 3 years, he’s read every single occult book he can get his mitts on and has become quite conversant in all forms of occultism.  He is slowly re-inventing himself as a sort of svengali-like figure so that he can be more attractive to his victims. In combat, he’s no great shakes unless he’s right up on you when the fight starts, then he’s pretty good with a knife.  But at that point, you wouldn’t have to be all THAT adept. Many times his knife is treated with a paralytic agent.  

Gear: In addition to his paralytic treated knife, He's also got a mail order stun gun and keeps zip ties and duct tape on his person. Knowing that cell phones can be tracked, He does not carry one. He sticks with his land line and if he has to make an anonymous call he goes to a close by gas station which still has an actual pay phone. He'll take a baby wipe dispenser with him to wipe down. He carries a small satchel with him which has occult tchotchkes and such on his person for the rituals he does, (in case he has to perform his ritual in situ.)  Some of these things may have actual power depending on whatever you suspect he might actually be.
Lewis has a thing for wintergreen life savers. and some of the wrappers have been found at crime scenes.

Home: Lewis lives in a small studio apartment. It sits on the back section of the apartment complex. This is by design. It enables him to walk around the far side of the apartment complex from the back parking lot. He can come and go as he pleases and few of his neighbors ever see him. He has also been able to hustle a likely woman in, via this route, without being seen. Lewis has become something of a shut-in. No one is really sure exactly how he's paying his rent.

Circle: Obviously, he's not much of a social beast away from his hunting. He has a   small presence in a very paranoid little group of serial killers and wannabe's on the dark web. They trade stories and tips on law enforcement professionals.

Story Uses:

“Don’t worry, I promise you, that your soul won’t go to waste. It shall be part of my magnum opus.”

If you’re supernatural at all, You already know that a serial killer stirs up people in your town in ways that are largely detrimental to you and your affairs. You might try to go after him yourself only to find him weirdly prescient about your moves and able to stay a few steps ahead of you somehow. Sure. If you manage to get your hands on him or catch him flat-footed, you’d make short work of him. But Lewis is very careful and someone, or something, seems to be watching his back...and egging him on.

“You and I could rule this paltry place. But if you won’t join me, then you’ll be bread for the teeth of my desire.”

Lewis wants power.  Especially any power he can TAKE from someone else.  Vampirism would certainly be interesting, but it has obvious pitfalls.  No. Lewis will want to make himself into something unique.  He’s already begun by articulating a series of alchemical symbols onto knuckles of his hands. He’s burned them in and rubbed salt in them like a tribal scarification ritual. It might be his only distinguishing feature, and anyone who manages to escape his clutches will likely remember what they saw even if they don’t understand their significance.  Anything that can enhance the power that he’s already achieved will be something he’ll drive for.

Options:  Lewis works in a number of ways.  You can apply a number of templates to him.  He could be a Hedge Magi, a useful Exarch pawn, a Slasher, or a Primordial Beast. (Most likely.)

Connections:
Don and Trudy Claymore "I so look up to them. Next time they get through here I've promised to cook for them. "
The Persoff Building "While I was working there, I didn't really see the place for what it was. Now I do.  it is darkly majestic. I can feel its tides."
William Lee Travis "I respect what he did. He and I aren't exactly alike...But we've corresponded through cut-outs. He's a genius."
The Grimoire " I don't go in there. I buy all my books through Amazon now. They can sense my aura I think. Especially the older woman. Although, the younger woman...I would give much to slake my unnatural hungers in her flesh.

From the Diary of Emile Belasco(11)

One of the things that turn off young seekers after truth is the tendency of magick to be subtle. Once again, Hollywood lies to us, portraying Magi as powerful to the point of being able to huck around lightning with impunity.

I am so very sorry to pop your bubble, but just because something is magick, doesn't exempt it from the thermodynamics. Why should spiritual energy be any different from any other kind of energy? Magick is almost always subtle, mainly because it doesn't require flash in order to work, and having the flash there only makes the energy requirements that much greater. This is not to say that you can't or won't see some serious shit in the course of your career, but very often, it's simply not going to break wide like it does in the movies. The most energy I have ever personally handled opened up all my chakras, but unless you know how to see auras, you wouldn't even perceive that. Granted, from the inside, it felt unbelievably good, almost felt like someone cracked open the top of my head and poured light inside. I had a number of unplanned erections for about a week afterward and my senses were razor keen for about as long.

Which sort of begs the question: If spiritual energy follows the same rules as regular energy, do souls count as electromagnetic weak force? When we expire and lose the rumored twenty-one grams of mass from our bodies, where does the energy go? Do we return to the world as ambient energy? Is "heaven" or "hell" merely a lesser concentration of energy that we are drawn to? Or are they the batteries from which we leaked into THIS world? Is the lightning in the sky made of souls? Are the hearts of stars made up of our dying energy? Thermodynamics states the energy is neither created nor destroyed.

Are human souls part of a constant chain of changes? I, personally, like to think so. It also tends to point up the reason why certain places have an energy of their own, and why certain places tend to be haunted and others are not.

We rub off on the world in a myriad of ways. We leave traces behind us in our everyday lives. And some places witness the loss of life by violence. Emotions and power rips open the usual run of things and you see a soul, stuck in its transition, imprinted on the surroundings. Sometimes they stay stimulated for a long time. Other times, they fade away. And if it's right on a ley line, well, all bets are off.

I wonder if there is a monograph in trying to create a unified field theory of spiritual energy...

Tyronne "Tiberius" Glover

Concept: Shot Caller of one of the local sets.

AKA: Almost no one uses his full name. Even a few of his boy in his set don't know his last name. Mostly they just call him "T" Sometimes, "Capital T"

Desc: He’s not huge or crazy muscled up. He’s about average height. He’s on the lean side with his musculature tending to be pretty wiry. He’s got some prison ink. A dusting of tear-drops on his cheekbones. He’s got eyes that will bore straight through your bullshit. He keeps his hair short so no one can grab it in a fight. He’s got some bullet and knife wounds. Scars from where his father beat him. He has a presence that stage actors would kill for. He moves slowly because people get the fuck out of his way. He talks little. His boys say much of what he needs them to say. 

History: Tyronne was an accident and it was compounded by the fact that his momma died from giving birth to him. His father never cared much for him and took it out on him until Uncle Joe made him stop. Tyronne wasn’t good in school, (He’s a bit dyslexic) and his home life was a shambles.

    But from adversity can spring greatness.  Tyronne joined up with the gang down his block. He started like any kid as a runner and a lookout. But he found his ability to read people had him moving up in the crew, Soon he was the head of the crew, (And one night his old man just disappeared, least, that’s what I heard...) and as he moved up in the organization, his boys recognized that he was level-headed, smart, and apparently made of pure fucking iron inside and out. Some people speculate that he might be a "Principled Psychopath" That may be, but it's certainly also true, that Ty figured out early, if he was going to survive, that he was going to have to get hard and go hard every day of his life. So far...It hasn't failed him yet.

Attitude: “Yo. I’m only going to say this once. We can be friends. We can even be a family of a sort. But this life...It’s not about family. It’s not about friends. It’s not about respect. It’s not about anarchy or any other bullshit like that.  It’s about business. You act like a professional. You goin to get treated like one. You act like a dumbass...Well. You better hope the cops get you first.”

Skills: Tyronne Is ridiculous in at least facet of his life. He has 5 dots of resolve and 4 dots of composure. He's also likely to have Indomitable and Iron Will as merits. For a man who doesn’t say much, he also has a decent spread of social dots, Mostly to intimidate, or to sniff out bullshit.  Tyronne is a natural lie detector and has scarily accurate people radar.  He’s not eloquent or anything like that. He’ll say exactly just enough and nothing more.  
On the mental side, aside from his crazy high Resolve, he's nothing special. He isn't well educated and he doesn't think particularly fast. (Although THOROUGH is another story entirely.) He may have a dot of Occult, and some dots in Streetwise of course.  He'll know his local area like the back of his hand.
Physically, He a little better than average, but not a beast in any one realm. and He'll be a good all-around combatant, but not specced out to be dangerous in any one thing particularly. He might have dots of Ethics of the Professional. He doesn't believe in killing someone by going off half-cocked.

Gear: He’s likely to have 2 Mac10’s on his person so that he can hose an assailant down with bullets and then bail. He carries two phones, One for business. One for personal things. Both are set to vibrate. He has an ugly looking, but razor keen knife. He uses it almost exclusively for intimidating people.  It's only been used for real once. On his Father...Which he'll likely tell you if he feels the need to show it to you for any reason.

Home: He moves around a bit as you might imagine but he's usually in and around the Washington Heights area. He's got a couple of little boltholes and usually one place that he thinks of as his "Pad" He likes that to be above a regular business that he and his boys don't regularly patronize. That way if he sees Cops or other gangs in the vicinity they might miss his spot.

Circle: He's going to have some solid retainer dots for the boys closest to him. He'll have allies with other criminal gangs if they've got some sort of business thing going. and he'll have dots of staff for the dealers and runners that answer to him and his set.

Story Uses:

“See. the way I look at it, disorganized crime is the natural enemy of organized crime. So if I see those bitches down here again. It’s goin to get red.”

Tyronne’s organization runs like a top. crank and crack production and distribution, A string of hoes, some guns on the side, but nothing major...some sports book. Protection rackets even.  Don’t even have to threaten people. If folks know that Ty is keeping an eye on a place...that place is as good as insured. Most other people are scared of him.  And that’s because he NEVER EVER goes off half-cocked.  He assesses. He makes a plan. and then, when the time is right, the hammer comes down on the asshole in question, and no one is able to do a thing to stop it.  He’s even taken a page from the Mob’s playbook by offering Contract Enforcement.  The basic idea is, Two groups of criminal make a contract and if either side welshes on their end of it, biblical vengeance comes down on the welsher.  Now, Mafia history is rife with the contract enforcer getting paid off by the welshing side...but Tyronne don’t play that. He knows that if word got out that he took a side for money, no one would trust his word again...

And Tyronne is a man of his word.

Don’t mistake it for a virtue.

“I don’t know who those dudes are...But it is ON.”

Tyronne knows about the supernatural. He’s seen a lot on the street. Learned a lot from other people. Paid off a few people with more book learning than him to tell him stuff.  Even dated that girl Aja from down the club who said she was studying the voodou.

Tyronne keeps his eyes open and his mouth shut. He never meets new people alone and he’s got signals worked out with his boys in case something goes wrong. For the most part, his gang, and to a degree, his legend keeps him pretty well insulated from ending up in someone’s pocket. But you never know when someone is going to get froggy and succeed, or get froggy and fail spectacularly. It is known that at least one vampire tried to put the whammy on Tyronne only to have Tyronne go, "Nah dawg I ain't gonna do that...Yo, Percy. Grease this fool!" One thing is for sure, anybody trying to roll into Tyronne’s hood is going to have to be super stealthy, or he’ll be called 3 times before they get there.

Connections:
* Charlie "Pay attention to what the old man tells you.And thank him..."
* Ezekiel Stubbs "One of the few dudes that I don't ever want to fuck with. That white boy's crazy."
* Jamal Cooper "You see him. You tell him I'm coming. Then you call me. dig?"
* Marcus Williams " I would rather have him on the inside of the tent pissing out, than on the outside pissing in. I'm told he's pretty slick, but ain't nobody can't be got.
* Santos Martinez "Dude has balls so big, he needs a wheelbarrow. I admire his brains."

From the Diary of Emile Belasco (10)

Transformation is important.

Human beings are creatures of patterns. Spirits are even more so. But, humans are what I'm talking about. We fall into ruts. We get caught up in the day-to-day routine of things, until twenty years gets by us and we look around and say, "This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife." Or, something very like it. We change more between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six than at any other time in our lives. We are quite literally at our most dynamic in those young adult years, and yet even then the sort of changes in our own lives come on slow. Human beings hate and fear change. It's usually traumatic, even if it brings good things in its wake. But it is in changes, the breaks from stasis, that we are most malleable, that we are most able to create changes within ourselves. 

Think about it. Isn't it usually easier to reinvent ourselves on the first day of a new school, or after the house has burned down, or after a huge loss in the stock market? What if you could literally change something within you as easily as willing it? What would you turn yourself into? Would you teach yourself to be more physically active? Would you teach yourself to concentrate better or meditate? Would you re-order your mind to make it more efficient? Sadly, it doesn't work like that. At least, I've never been able to make it work like that. There are a few tricks, but they rarely last long. 

So we come back to transformation. It is a path that is as old as Magick. There is a theory that Lazarus's resurrection was part of an Eleusinian mystery initiation. Supposedly, he and Mary Magdalene served as a bridge between Essenes Judaica and the much older mystical paths. It is interesting because, in the story, Lazarus, who is supposedly Jesus's best friend "dies" while Christ is on his ministry. Hearing the news of his "Death", Christ then does not hasten to his grave. "These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." (John 11, 11)

Of course, when Jesus arrive he calls to Lazarus to come forth from his tomb, he does. And, this is the interesting bit: After Lazarus returns from "death", this remarkable man, Jesus' best friend, completely disappears from the Bible. A man named, or perhaps re-named, John seems to take his place.

I believe that Shamanic practice has a great deal of wisdom wrapped up in it. They have a concept called "Recapitulation", the basic idea, as near as I understand it, is that our past binds us and it binds our energy. The practice then is to erase our past, both good things and bad things, to free up our energy. What is it Tyler Durden says? "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything." He's echoing shamanic ideas in this. I've only known two people who I felt had good reasons for having tattoos. One was a shamanic practitioner. Each time he had reached a new level in his practice, he would take on a new mark to signify his new understanding. The other was a stripper who would get a new mark each time she would get shut of a love affair that wasn't working as a visual reminder of what NOT to do next time. 

Both of these things made sense to me. Indeed, taking on a tattoo is a sort of self-transformation. It's not quite irrevocable, at least not anymore, but one must make a decision about the sort of mark one takes for oneself, as removal is neither easy nor cheap. It is to my mind the highest sort of folly to mark one's body without deeper spiritual meaning. I confess, I will never understand the "tramp stamp" that some young ladies are so enamored of.

The spiritual Death and Resurrection cycle is an oft-used method of self-transformation and is the means of John's transformation. You'll note he took a new name, a not-uncommon practice. However, it is far from the only way that one can create meaningful change in the psyche. There is usually only one criterion for that sort of transformation.

It has to be hard to come back from.

Take the vision-quest for example. A brave, reaching the age of his majority goes out into the wilderness to wait until he's half starved enough to start hallucinating, and once he's received his "Vision" he returns. Some don't make it of course, but those who do return changed. And, that is the whole point. It is only through fire that we can be re-forged.

Optional Mechanic: Haven: Mobility

Disclaimer: Please, talk to your GM before putting this or any other optional mechanic offered on this blog, onto your sheet.  GM’s have a long history of being approached by exuberant players with some damn thing or other offered on the internet, and we, as a whole, have a right and a duty to be suspicious about such things.  Many times these things are weirdly structured, or bend game balance over the coffee table and have their nasty way with it.  You will find that your GM is more likely to respond well to suggestion and negotiation rather than pleading and crocodile tears.  As always YMMV.

Haven: Mobility (* to *****)  (Note: Useful for nearly any other type of supernatural housing situation as well.)

At times, you might get the bright idea to have a place for yourself that can move around a bit, making you more of a moving target.  This facet of your haven is bought like any other, but details where and how your haven can travel.   Havens with any dots of Mobility cannot also possess Location. The ability to move around cancels the mechanical benefit of having a specific place where your feeding is easier.   Unless otherwise indicated by your ST, haven mobility must be bought up to the level desired at initial purchase, and cannot be changed thereafter. Additionally, there may also be Resource pre-requisites for a mobile haven.

* Any mobile haven that can move about in a set specific area or can be made mobile with the work of an hour or so.  This models any place like a double-wide mobile home or an underground train car/Sepulcher.

** Any Haven that can go anywhere an ordinary motor vehicle can go. (Stretch limo, tour bus, winnebago, Old car with enormous trunk, etc...)

*** Any vehicle capable of traveling off-road as well as on, OR any vehicle that is capable of traveling on the water. (Yacht, houseboat, any vehicle with tank treads,  Large ATV,  This also covers amphibious vehicles.)

**** Any vehicle that can travel in a standard medium (A submarine, any aircraft from a single engine prop plane to a zeppelin)

***** A vehicle that can travel in non-standard mediums (Only with ST approval of course, Any vehicle that can travel THROUGH the earth, into space, or inter-dimensionally. Obviously this sort of vehicle is normally only common for Mages.

From the Diary of Emile Belasco (9)

Magick is lonely. 

It just is. 

The work of a Magus is of a type that by necessity inculcates one with a sense of Secrecy. Serious practitioners know that the Burning Times aren't as a far off as they'd like to think. Reading Tarot makes you a bit exotic, casting spells and summoning Demons can get your house burnt down by aggrieved townsfolk. As a result, a discursive nature is a positive boon for the practicing magus.

There is also a tendency to bookishness and not the sort one discusses at the coffee klatch...Or wherever it is that they discuss books now. Enneagrammatically, I would have to say that I am a Five. On the rare occasions that I am invited to parties, I usually take a book. It's not that I don't enjoy the occasional social discourse, but I’m not really wired for it. Also, in my circles, the people who are most social are either cult leaders or charlatans.

I look on with naked envy whenever I am present at a gathering of those who pursue the arts, and I see people who have paired off. Moreover, I am filled with even greater envy at those who have relationships that seem strong at all. My particular niche is not necessarily peopled with human beings known for their emotional stability.

A

nd the hell of it is, finding what you desire is a great deal more complicated when you know what you WANT out of a relationship. It's much easier to do these things as a young person. To dive into relationships with particularly reckless abandon, trusting to your own youth-derived invincibility. It's easier to get hurt and shrug it all off when you are young. It's easier to believe someone when they say that they love you. It's far easier to lie to yourself.

Look, if all I wanted was a quick roll in the sack, I could have that. There are spells for that. But, that sort of thing is more trouble than it's worth. And it creates subtle bonds between you and whomever you're humping. I personally don't believe in casual sex as a result of this alone. But for the most part what I want is much more difficult.

Love is Alchemy. It is not a thing in and of itself. Not some grail to be fruitlessly chased after. It is a compound that you and your intended must make. It requires three things, passion, trust, and obligation. You may have two elements, and you may have a good and lasting relationship on the basis of that. But you do not have love. More's the tragedy. And sadly, this has become my quandary, for I cannot seem to find this combination with anyone remotely suitable and Magi my age rarely do. I suspect that I shall die alone. I don't see me finding someone who can understand me at this late date, via some Internet dating service or through speed dating.

"So. What do you do for a living?"

"I study the occult and ponder the eternal mysteries of existence."

"OKAY!. We're done here, I think."

It's also a problem of not being an average person. I am a person who seeks truth in an increasingly truth-free world, looking to peel back the skin of the world for a just a glimpse of the metaphysical gears underneath. What in the nine hopping hells would I have to say to someone who works in an office, or is a soccer mom?

In truth, it's a bit like a subtle knife in the heart. For the most part, I am fine to be alone. I have my books. I have my Internet, which, as much I rail against it, is an effective window on the world. On occasion, I can meet with colleagues and compare notes.

But, there are nights when I feel that knife and I'll feel it so keenly that it will make me want to howl at the thrice-blessed moon. I look back at the few relationships I've had and wonder what made it so easy for them to dispose of me. My arrogance? Was I aloof or cold? Did I smother them? Was I an ass? I turn these failures over in my mind, and of course, sleep eludes me. At least I have the "Low Self Esteem Follies" to keep me entertained each time I shut my eyes.

Don't be deceived. Your own mind is more capable of tormenting you than any demon or devil you can conjure.

Darla Grumman

Concept: Freelance Fabricator

Desc: “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” is an apt descriptor for Darla. She tops out at 5’1” and that’s with straight black hair that sticks up a bit. She is muscular without being broad or unflexible. She has a ready smile and a hearty laugh. Green eyes that have seen a lot. a storm of tattoos with a repeating motif of flowers and barbed wire mixed together. Also, she has a number of interesting piercings. Body modification is kind of a thing with her. Tribal scarification fascinates her, but it’s still a bridge too far for her. Her hands are small, deft, and her grip is freakishly strong.

History: In the wee small hours of the night when she has trouble sleeping, Darla often wonders if her life might have been different if certain things had gone different ways. I mean, she knew her parents were strict and conservative, but she wonders if they would have thrown her out of the house if she’d simply come out to them in a more controlled manner, rather than being caught going down on another girl from her bible study group.

So. Homeless at the age of 14 and on the streets, Darla turned her hand to the one thing that her father had actually encouraged her to learn, and that was auto repair. It saved her life really. She’d had to do some sketchy things in those nights and was glad for honest work. She couch-surfed with friends until she got on her feet, and never looked back.

    Now she has a pretty decent gig working in a machine shop. She’s got the knowledge, if not the actual vo-tech degree and is seriously saving up money to take some engineering courses at the local community college. Her boss, Axle has become like an adoptive father to her and allows her to use shop machines for the various side projects she has going on. He’s the one who’s been encouraging her to take the classes.  She’s also seeing a fairly high-strung sous chef named Stacy and they fight...a lot.  Axle can’t stand that bitch.

Attitude: “I test off the scale for math and spatial relationships. So I think I’m pretty much where I am supposed to be. You get me? Everybody’s got their own flavor of smart, and this is mine.  I can visualize things in my head and make them happen out here in the world. Some people call that a gift.  To me, that’s just the water this fish swims in.  Now, the ability to make a relationship work...That would be a gift. You get me?

Skills:  Yes.  Serious dots in Crafts, Science, and a few dots in Computer with a specialization in working with AutoCAD. Dots in Mentor (Axle, of course.)  She’s not a combat wombat by any stretch, but she can throw a punch, and if someone was foolish enough to attack her while she was in the machine shop, they would find her more than capable of defending herself on her home ground. Vampires and welding torches do not mix. Just saying.   A few dots of streetwise and a few dots of allies in various little groups that have benefitted from her expertise. (The theater groups love her to pieces when she’s available.)

Gear: Darla has a large steel tool box in the trunk of her Dodge Duster. (You laugh, but that fucker has a V8 and a blower on it.)  There's a lot she can accomplish with just that, but she also has access to a full machine shop and can machine parts and custom tools from scratch if she wants to.  She's been talking with Axle about 3d printers for months now. Axle, for his part, is intrigued, but the expense is keeping him at bay for now.

Home: Stacy's overly fussy apartment. Darla is still weird about her living arrangement, She's not one to really get comfortable in any one place to the point where she couldn't leave in an hour if she had to. Considering how often she and Stacy fight, this might not be a bad thing.

Circle: Darla is slow to warm up to people. But when she does, it's a good chance that it will be for life.  She's got good friends in the lesbian community. a few token straight friends, and her theater/dance friends, who may or may not fit into either category.

Story Uses:

“Is this to scale?”

Every once in a while it’s good for a PC to have someone around who is skilled in the art of simply making things. Maybe you need to forge a sword or put a blower on a 65 Shelby. or modify an SMG to full auto-fire.  Darla can do all of that, and if you’ve got the right amount of money, you don’t even need to be an ally. Darla is also conversant in enough carpentry and plumbing arcana to build an outbuilding or shed. She knows a guy or two who’s up on the electrical stuff so that won’t even slow her down for interesting modifications to buildings or projects of a like size.

“We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.”

Darla’s relationship woes are beginning to be a thing of legend in the lesbian community in her town. She has a talent for getting emotionally entangled with the sort of women who are dead wrong for her. It’s gotten so bad lately that her friends, who love and adore her, have taken to threatening her prospective bedmates with biblical retribution if they break her heart.  Not that this has a huge impact...It may be that Darla is one of your character’s ex’s   Or it may be that your character is connected in some way to Darla parents. (She’s had no contact with them since being thrown out. It may be that they miss her and would like to re-connect with her.  And they certainly would do so as soon as she’s willing to undergo reparative therapy for her “illness”.  The interesting thing is that Darla has changed so much in a few short years that her parents could pass her on the street now and not recognize her.

"Nope. I don't remember building anything like that. I'm pretty sure I'd remember."

Darla's had a brush or two with the shadowy realm. Mostly she's completely oblivious. But if someone made the right approach and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she'd made things for some creature of the night, she's likely to throw in with hunters and already knows a few members of the Union.

Imagine that...What a coincidence.

Connections:
*Is in the contractor Rolodex at Caligari's  Knows her way around a trap-door and has mended a few spring-loaded contraptions.
* Knows a couple of the girls at The Caboose. "It's not like I go in there a LOT." 
* Got picked up once by Illyana Baker of Holmes, Gillis, Baker, Savage, North, and Dean She was gone when Darla woke up. Haven't seen her since.
* Reads Lara X avidly.

Big Dan Tarleton

Concept: Fight club “Promoter”

Desc: a big meaty man with sandy blond hair where he still has it. Nose broken twice. Calloused fists, and not from working on engines or anything like that. a 70’s style pornstache and eyes that indicate that he might be a bit smarter than you think he is. Perfectly at home in a red velour track suit or a stylish black suit on fight nights. His accent places him solidly, growing up on the east end of London. Has taken to wearing finger armor made of silver.

History: Dan got bullied.  He was a bookish little boy and probably would have grown up entirely differently if he’d not grown up on a council block with a roving band of punks making his young life miserable.  His mum tried her best , but Danny’s father had fucked off as soon as the wind changed. Went out for a pack of fags, and never came back.

   Now, this would normally be the sort of story that every single geek could relate to. But fate played a cruel trick...On everyone that had ever picked on him.  Dan caught a serious growth spurt and soon, he was the one handing out the beatings.  Now maybe if he’d just stopped at paying back the people who’d made him miserable, then that would have been okay. But he didn’t.

Dan formed his own little mob of creeps and degenerates.  Went into business for himself.

   And in truth, He did pretty well for himself.  He read. He thought. He ruled the block with a carefully calculated mixture of psychology and brutal violence.  He made money from protection rackets and occasional violence-for-hire.

He’s not an UTTER arsehole. He takes care of his mum. He stays on the windy side of the Law, barely.  He even takes pretty good care of his people. But if he thinks you’re in his way or giving him lip, he locks on target, and he hasn’t really lost a fight since he was 12.

    There was only one problem. Every big bad man runs into someone who they are fundamentally not ready for. Dan ran headlong into that guy...Although, when he turned into a thrice-be-fucked werewolf...well that was something else entirely. Dan got off light, only a half dozen broken ribs and some scars on his torso. When he got out of hospital, he kissed his mum, handed her a fat wad of cash, and got on a plane.

   He fetched up here, in this town. Something about the place appealed to him. Grimy and downtrodden... like home, I suppose. Watching his store of cash dwindling, he walked into a movie theater and was inspired to go into a new line of business.

    Now he runs a very smart and well funded little bare-knuckle boxing concern. He stays ahead of the American police and is practically rolling in money from rich people who enjoy watching poor people beat the fuck out of one another.

Attitude: “Let me tell ya summat my friend. Adversity is the whetstone that sharpens us all. Think it through mate. Man would never evolve if our world was cushy and comfortable, an everyone bloody well got along.  So. I tell you this so you understand that when I and the boys beat the ever-loving shit out of you, We’re doing it to help you.  Suffering doesn’t bring you wisdom or any bollocks like that. Unless you get wise enough to learn how to stop suffering.  That German fella said it right when he said, “Whatevah doesn’t kill ya, makes ya stronger.”  Course, you gotta not get killed. Right?

Skills: He is a positive savant when it comes to extracting crap via beating. Dan is the sort of person who is likely to appropriate moves from Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu, Savate, and Sambo and shmeld them together into some kind of mongrel composite art. He also knows his way around a shotgun. 

Gear: His smartphone is complicated. It's all in English but is so full of rhyming slang as to be nearly incomprehensible to anyone not from Dan's old neighborhood. Dan carries a butterfly knife. not for killing people with, but as something to do with his hands. He prefers to carry cash but also has a black Amex card. Keeps a shotgun with silver shot in the boot of his car.

Home: Keeps a high-dollar apartment that has virtually none of his personality in it. He rarely goes there except to sleep,shower, and fuck. He spends most of his time at The Caboose  and considers it his office.  The Caboose happens to be just a parking lot away from Dan's actual fight operations

Circle: On the social side,  He’s got a few backers with money in the operation and about a dozen Retainers who think that he’s genius brilliant  and want to be just like him.  All these guys fancy themselves as Alpha Wolf bare-knuckled philosopher kings.  Not one of those guys has the juice for any of that...and alone, they aren’t anything special, but there’s strength in numbers. Know what I mean?

Story Uses:

“Student becomes the master eh? Well...As you can see. I am still on me feet.”

If your character is a combatant of some sort, you could do worse to have Dan be the one who is teaching you the finer points of fisticuffs. He’s pretty sadistic, but never without a specific purpose, and he’ll help you through the healing process too. It does him no good to break you and then not build you back up stronger.  Of course, This process might get interrupted if your character becomes supernatural in any way.

“Fucking WOLVES. Get me shotgun.”

It would be fair to say that not only does Dan know about the supernatural, but he’s had his face rubbed in it. He keeps a weather eye on his fighters and on his own backers to make sure no one is pulling their strings. Heaven help the poor bastard that gets dominated or pressured into tanking a fight. Dan will come after them full bore.  As for the supernatural in question, He’ll avoid them...unless they have power that he thinks he can take from them...Then...it will be ON like barbecue sauce.

“Those are the words from on high. Anybody feels different can take it up with me.”

Of course, a guy like Dan might draw supernatural attention all by himself.  And if they play it right can end up with the big man, and his whole operation in their pocket.  The only downside is that he’s got his antenna up and scanning for that. If that happens, then Dan becomes the second string crunchy villain before the big boss fight...and of course, you’ll have to whip all his little creeps too.

Connections:
Tyronne "Tiberius" Glover isn't a friend exactly, but they have a nodding acquaintance and mutual respect. Glover is thinking that it might not be a bad idea to see if Dan will take on some of his boys and teach them something.

Detective Bela Janofski "Yeh. I'm pretty sure if he came round, I could take the little shit."

Dr. Ronnette Franklin "She's a good girl, she is. Best at what she does really. Doesn't think much of me, though."

Bryson Import/Export  Every once in a while, when things are good and the boys have been particularly adept at their jobs, Bryson gets a call for one of their B2B services which include "Team Building Exercises"