Collette Reeves

Concept: The little girl who keeps trying

AKA: Chose the name “Scheherazade” as her craft name. That’s a bit of a mouthful so most people in occult circles know her as  Collete or “Scher”

Desc: Mid 20’s On the short side and curvy. Well proportioned. glossy black hair and dark blue eyes. Tan’s well. Slight tilt to her eyelids is the only thing that betrays her Amerasian extraction. Big smile. Musical laugh. Smokes too much, but she’s trying to lay off of actual cigarettes in favor of a clove/vapor regimen, with mixed results. Needs to start exercising more before her metabolism turns on her. If they made colors darker than black, she’d wear them instead.  Leans a little towards a look reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s “Death” but she’s not pale enough to completely pull it off...Not that the boys are complaining.

She has a few bits of occult inflected ink on her body and a few piercings too.

History: Collette has seen some shit.  Before the demons got him, her father was a hedge wizard. Her mother was a sensitive before her stroke.  Her sister could channel the voices of the dead before she got arrested and then sent to a state home. Collette was the only witness when her uncle Mike had to stand off the vampires. So you’d think that Collette would be fairly grim and some kind of supernatural...natural.

But neither thing is true. Collette is about as psychic as a rock. In fact, her aura tends to fuck up psychic ability. Ouija boards and pendulums are useless when she participates.  She can do Tarot, but she tends to use it as a means of reading the psychology of the person she’s reading...Which isn’t magical at all.  And she’s careful to say so. While Collette reads every single occult books she can get her hands on, she’s proven to be a total duffer at hedge magic and true magic of any sort.

Her mentor, in fact, believes that she may, in fact, be potently ANTI-Psychic.  Which frankly stymies him, as he has no idea exactly to go about helping her control or enhance her gift, if, in fact, that is what’s going on.

Which is not to say she’s not gifted in other ways. She has a sense of humor which has seen her through countless horrific family tragedies, She’s very smart and her knowledge of the occult is deep and pervasive. She’s not eidetic but she HAS trained her memory to a frightening degree.  It’s just that real occult power has eluded her and it doesn’t look as if that’s going to change anytime soon.

The only thing in her life that is truly undeniably supernatural is that the ghost of her uncle Mike keeps a watchful eye on her. But because of her unique situation she herself can barely perceive him. She’s gotten better about it, and there is something to be said for the bond of blood between them that allows him to speak to her at all. It is instructive to note that her uncle Mike was an Army ranger. So when he does recon...it’s pretty thorough.

Collette has knocked around in supernatural circles since her late teens. She met her current mentor, a ceremonial magician named Emile Belasco, just before entering college and he encouraged her to pursue a degree in psychology.  He’s also encouraged her to join various occult groups that aren’t run by sociopaths, narcissists, or con artists.  As a result, Collette claims membership in about 8 separate groups. Emile thinks that maybe her inability to tap into the occult ability that she surely possesses may be psychological and that maybe some group will have a means to sidestep that mental block. Collette also earns a small amount of money as a tattoo artist. Between this job, her schoolwork, her extracurriculars with the various occult groups, and her fairly active sex life, she’s been leaning a little too much on gas station trucker’s speed to keep up with things.  Her housemates almost never see her

Attitude:  “Look. you guys...Unless we’re dealing with some kind of free-standing infrasonic phenomenon here, it’s not really safe for anyone to go into the house except maybe me. So...What say uncle Mike and I go take a look around and you guys keep watch out here until I get back or start screaming...Deal?”

Skills: Heavy dots in mentals, especially Resolve. She’s going to finish her degree early. Whether she means to press on and get a masters or a doctorate is still very much up in the air. She’s got good dots in Empathy and Expression, and as mentioned she has a very well trained memory and 4+ dots in Occult with plentiful specialties.  She’s got some science to back up some of her thinking. Her mentor is kind of a stickler for intellectual rigor.  She will likely develop trained observer (from the “Dogs of War” book). 

Gear: Her book bag is a morass of notebooks, small texts, witch supplies of varying efficiency, and the occasional can of pepper spray.  When on a “field trip” she also tend to take along a taser. Because you never know. She has a tiny Fiat which has been seen a lot of work over the years but still runs like a top and is still super-cute.

Home: Shares a four-plex with 3 girlfriends. She’s rarely there except to sleep, She does most of her studying at her Mentor’s place, or when he’s being a jerk, at Miss Virgie’s place.  (Miss Virgie keeps the sofa sleeper available for the girl and Collette has her own key to the garage door.)  She tries to make sure she stops into her four-plex at least once a day.  The other girls are terrified of Lawrence, her iguana.  None of them will feed him for her.  Lawrence, for his part, is a bit of an evil shit, so unless Collette is the one feeding him, he tends to act up.

Collette doesn’t actually have to work terribly hard to keep her head above water financially. Her wizard father put aside a fairly large trust fund for her when she was still an infant. She gains access to the rest of it when she gets her degree.

Circle: Collette is a known name in occult circles. She has friends in more traditional ends of psychological study and she also has a fairly wide circle of friends of the “Just Regular” college friends type.

Story Uses:

“Look. I could be way off base here but look at the wildflowers blooming in the backyard.  Red carnations... There is an aching heart at the center of this haunting.”

Collette knows that details matter and she knows it's better to have those details right in her head. She studies hard and can be an invaluable resource for players if they can get her to sit still long enough to hear the premise.

“It’s just another occult initiation rite. I’ll be fine. I’ve had dozens.”

Collette is a useful resource. and someone other than the players might figure that out too. They might decide that they want her on their payroll...exclusively.  And while Collette isn’t exactly easy to fool, she CAN get blind-sided. If some vampire gets his fangs into her, it might be all over.

Connections:

* As previously noted, is a member of the Paraphysical Research Society and a friend of Miss Virgie Hawkins. Miss Virgie is like the grandmother Collette never had and she loves that old woman unreservedly. Virgie feels much the same, although she occasionally has trouble with how open the young woman is about her sex life. She just wishes Collette was a little pickier about her men... Weirdly, Virgie can slightly sense Mike, and Mike seems to feel the same way about all that.

* On rare evenings off, she goes to The Witness. She doesn't much care who's playing, she's there to dance and maybe pick up some boy. She doesn't drink a lot, though. It might screw with her " I'll sleep tomorrow...maybe" drugs.

*Has bumped uglies with Schuyler Lavey. He's not all that and a side of fries, in her opinion. And he's certainly not worth her trust fund. Thanks, but no thanks.

*Took a class or two from Clarinda Hale. Linguistics is one of those few things that Collette really has to work at, so she's a tiny bit jealous of the woman's seemingly easy facility with ALL the FUCKING LANGUAGES.  Although, if Collette had a linguistics question about something, she'd go to Clarinda first.

* is a regular at The Grimoire. Likes making Bear laugh when she beats him at puns.

*One of her housemates works at The Caboose. Swears that Collette could make a mint there. It's likely true, but for the fact that while Collette has a fairly healthy libido, she doesn't really have an exhibitionistic streak AT ALL. Taking off her clothes for strangers is just a bridge too far for her.