Today I'm sharing the signature character for The Kindly Ones, a global alliance of Renegades bent on destroying the Web of Pain.
The usual caveats apply: This is a first draft, so there will be changes.
Ladislava “Alecto” Marciniak
Quote: “The name of the game is resource denial. A conspiracy is nothing without credulous Baselines willing to do its dirty work.”
Background: For most of her life, Ladislava considered herself a Godly woman – a loving wife and devoted mother of four sons. Her husband (Marty) came from a conservative household and carried a lot of those values into their marriage. He was hard-working but emotionally inaccessible, and after Ladislava discovered he was having an affair with an intern at his office, she divorced him. That was fifteen years ago.
Marty soon became involved in a right-wing militia, which was bad enough, but to Ladislava’s mounting horror, he initiated their sons into the militia, as well. A conspiracy drew the militia into its orbit, exploiting its members’ susceptibility to conspiracy theories and glorification of violence. At first, they served as security detail, then as extra firepower in conflicts with Renegades and rival conspiracies, and finally as test subjects for their paramilitary super-soldier program.
Marty’s transformation succeeded, but the attempts killed three of their sons outright. The fourth and youngest, Sam, survived long enough to escape the conspiracy and return to his mother to explain what had happened. He lived a week longer before succumbing to the infection of the cybernetic organ that had been implanted in him.
Furious, Ladislava found and confronted Marty. Instead of trying to make amends, he handed her over to the conspiracy as a potential test subject. Following her transformation, she escaped. When she returned to the facility that had implanted the mechanical organ inside her it was with a cohort of Renegades at her back.
Marty and two other Devoted were killed in the resulting confrontation, as were dozens of Baseline agents. However, Ladislava took a team of cybersurgeons prisoner and demanded that they implant the mechanical organs of the dead Devoted in her, which they did under the watchful gaze of the rest of her cohort. The additional organs granted her powers beyond the matter control and translocation abilities she had previously. Once she was satisfied that the operation was a success, she and her cohort killed the cybersurgeons and burned the facility to the ground.
This attracted the attention of the Kindly Ones, who offered her an opportunity to dismantle other militias before the Web of Pain could assimilate them. Although initially skeptical, Ladislava ultimately accepted. She soon developed an M.O. of disguising herself as an expensive weapon (sometimes an antique, sometimes a custom gun) to gain access to a militia and then turning members against one another so that they couldn’t maintain group cohesion. If a conspiracy agent approached the militia, she would turn sentiment against him or quietly kill him herself.
She is now an agent of Reform’s Praxis Node. Among those of the Eumenides who don’t know her well enough to overcome her occult anonymity, she is known as “Alecto”.
Appearance: Alecto is a matronly woman in her mid-50s. She dresses conservatively and is at home in baggy sweaters or Sunday dresses as she is in camo or camping gear.
Roleplaying Hints: Once, Alecto was a quiet person who never considered hurting anyone and couldn’t imagine herself as a killer, but that person died with her family. She has fully embraced violence as a weapon against the Web of Pain, and while she knows that manipulating her enemies into doing her dirty work for her is safer and far more efficient, when the smoke of the circular firing squad clears, she can’t quite resist finishing off any survivors.
Origin: Exomorph
Clade: Invasive
Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 2; Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Stamina 2; Presence 1, Manipulation 3, Composure 3
Mental Skills: Academics 1, Computer 2, Investigation 2, Occult 1, Politics (RWNJs) 1
Physical Skills: Firearms 1, Stealth 1, Survival 1, Weaponry (Machete) 1
Social Skills: Empathy 2, Expression 1, Persuasion 3, Socialize 2, Streetwise 1, Subterfuge (Feign Innocence) 2
Merits: Defensive Combat (Weaponry), Mastered Technique (Lucky Charm), Self-Limiter (Matter Control), Shadow Fingerprinting
Willpower: 5
Stability: 6
Conviction: 3
Loyalty: 2
Aspiration:
Initiative: 5
Defense: 2 (4)
Speed: 9
Health: 7
Size: 5
Acclimation: 1
Adaptations: Artisan, Overclock, Redundancy
Forms: Devoted
Controlled Scars: Tribulation (Conjuration; Mental), Tribulation (Emotion Amplification; Dependent Variation [Mechanical Transformation], Vampiric [Unwilling, Touch]; Mental) 4, Tribulation (Mechanical Transformation; Mental) 3, Unstable Variation (Scar-Free Magnitude; Mental)
Persistent Scars: Nameless (Anomalous Biology, Translocation; Social) 3
Variations: Anomalous Biology (Breathless, Hungerless) 2, Conjuration (Choosy, Scale) 3, Emotion Manipulation (Aura) 4, Matter Control (Command) 4, Mechanical Transformation (Humanized, Luxury) 3, Translocation (Blind) 2
Techniques: Cursed Weapon (Mechanical Transformation; may spend a point of Willpower to extend the duration of the Variation until the end of the next chapter), Lucky Charm (Emotion Amplification; if a target of this Variation was also the one whose Willpower fueled its activation, they won’t willingly destroy, discard, or abandon Alecto until she transforms again unless given a convincing reason to do so – and even then they must succeed on a Resolve + Composure roll contested by her Manipulation + Persuasion)
Acquainted: +1 Intelligence, +1 Wits; +1 Firearms, +1 Investigation, +1 Persuasion, +1 Subterfuge, +1 Weaponry; Anomalous Biology (Breathless, Hungerless, Tireless) 3, Translocation (Blind; Defensive) 3; Nameless (Shadow) 4
Personal: +1 Intelligence; +1 Expression, +1 Persuasion, +1 Survival; Sensor Array 2; Power Failure* (Sensor Array; Mental) 2
Obsessive: +1 Wits; +1 Investigation, +1 Stealth, +1 Weaponry; Sensor Array (Versatile) 4; Power Failure* 4
* Sensor Array fails if Alecto is not in skin-to-skin contact with another human being, whether Baseline or Remade.