Two of the full player character write-ups for my Dresden Files RPG adventure, The Mark of Madness. I ran this adventure at GenCon 2014. In this post, Malcolm Baird (Male, Nain Rouge Changeling, Wyldfae) and Bijou Cowles (Female, Wererat).
Malcolm Baird
Malcolm Baird (image sourced from The Returned TV show promo material)
Age: 30 (looks ~12)
Template: Changeling
High Concept: Wyldfae Child of the Nain Rouge
Trouble: Barely Hanging on to Humanity
Background
The Nain Rouge has been one of Detroit’s inhabitants since the 1700’s; in some centuries he’s seen as a protector, in others he’s a harbinger of doom. This partially is due in part to the fact that every century he has a child who acts in his name and every child has their own personality and manifestation of powers. His most recent progeny is Malcolm Baird. Of the powers that Malcolm has gained, one of the oddest is that around the age of eleven his physical body just stopped aging.
Aspect: I’m Not As Young As I Look
Example Invoke: Gain the trust of supervisors, adults with caring natures
Example Consequence: Have authority figures usher the “child” away or question where parents are
Rising Conflict
While the lack of physical growth has allowed Malcolm the ability to sneak into places most adults could not go, the impact on his psyche has been much greater. He’s never gone through puberty, so he’s not sexual–he’s simply bitter. It’s made it that much more difficult to hold on to his humanity. That the Nain Rouge and the Erkling have taken direct notice and often intervene in his life just makes him feel so… small.
Aspect: Child-Sized
Example Invoke: Dodge, squeeze through small spaces and otherwise take advantage of your small size
Example Consequence: Make it harder for you to run, jump or reach things on high shelves
First Story: Flushed
The lack of physical development had already made Malcolm put a shell around his psyche; that wildfae are often “requesting” he kill someone or something for them–and that Malcolm would eventually follow through with the deed–has completely hardened his shell. They never ask him to kill innocent humans, fortunately, it’s usually some servant or another.
Aspect: Cold And Composed
Example Invoke: Retain your wits in a crisis
Example Consequence: Raise suspicions from others due to your demeanor
Initial Team-Up: Cardinal Rules
Guest Star: Jada Taft
When Malcolm was tasked with killing a pixie (before it became Summerfae and took important secrets with it), Malcolm decided to hire a bodyguard. After all, when there’s one dew drop, there’s usually a flood–and why take too many chances? He had enough squirreled away to hire someone from Monoc Securities and was quite pleased that he was assigned a Valkyrie. She went by the name of Jada Taft and was very good at her job; good enough that Malcolm was able to pause in his mission to loot some fairy-gold while Jada dealt with the attacking dew drops. After all, it was her job to protect him, and Malcolm’s funds were sorely depleted. The changeling did eventually dispatch his target pixie and Jada completed her contract.
Aspect: Selfish
Example Invoke: Advance your own interests, especially at the expense of others
Example Consequence: Face a dilemma over your own interests and helping friends or allies
Secondary Team-Up: Sanguine Situation
Guest Star: Taylor Warner
Help can arrive in the strangest ways. And for Malcolm to be the help is probably one of the strangest ways of all. The changeling stumbled onto a trail of blood; following it, he found a bleeding biker holed up in a warehouse. In what was becoming an increasingly rare moment of empathy, Malcolm dug the bullets out of the biker’s flesh and patched him up to the best of his abilities. Malcolm was impressed that the human, named Taylor Warner, barely flinched at all despite the lack of anesthesia or tenderness on Malcolm’s part.
Aspect: This Might Hurt A Bit…
Example Invoke: Cause someone a world of hurt; Patch up a wounded ally; Scare a prisoner silly with the threat of pain
Example Consequence: Have serious pain inflicted on you!
Malcolm’s Detroit
Forever in the body of a child, but with great power. Beyond the laws of man, but subject to the desires of the Erkling and the Nain Rouge. Yearning for more abilities, but hanging on to humanity. …Malcolm’s Detroit is his own shell; everything else is just a place and one place is like another. The changeling has no specific home in the city, he has small holds (and stashes of jewels and money) in various neighborhoods throughout the city. The only thing that Malcolm always has on his person is a small collection of kitchen knives (which he doesn’t use for cooking).
For the most part, he ignores the wererat gangs, the so-called “Dark Carnival” of thugs and clowns, and the feuds between the White Court and Black Court vampires as they vie over the city (especially with the Red Court gone and their properties up for grabs). Oh, Malcolm stays aware of these things, but they do not affect him. What he also doesn’t care much about? This rumored rash of people who have lost their grip on reality–including one of the vampiric leaders of the White Court. Whether or not he cares, though, he has been tasked with representing the wildfae of Detroit and assisting in the investigation of the cause as some sort of proof that they have not broken the Accords. And, if whatever’s causing this lack of sanity could be of use to the Nain Rouge, then at least make sure it’s not destroyed–don’t steal it outright, though; that would go against the contract that has been drawn.
Base Refresh: 8
Total Refresh: 2
Skills
Superb:
Great: Alertness, Athletics, Weapons
Good: Scholarship, Stealth, Survival
Fair: Intimidation, Might, Resources
Average: Conviction, Deceit, Lore
Powers & Stunts [-6]
-0 Unaging
-2 Inhuman Speed
+4 Alertness for Initiative
+1 Athletics
+2 Athletics when sprinting
Difficulty factors due to moving reduced by two when rolling Stealth
-4 Mythic Recovery
Catch: Iron [+2]
Can recover from any physical consequence (excluding extreme ones) with just time; out of combat you many recover from physical consequences as if they were one level lower in severity; consequences reduced below mild are always removed by the beginning of a subsequent scene
Endurance never restricts other skills due to a lack of rest
Three times per scene, in combat, you may clear away a mild physical consequence as a supplemental action
Stress Tracks
Physical 00
Mental 000
Social 00
Bijou Cowles
Bijou Cowles (image source lost)
Age: 23
Template: Were-Form
High Concept: Alt-Girl Wererat
Trouble: Rat-Family Ties
Background
Bijou was a street rat before she was a were-rat. She bounced from foster home to foster home all around Detroit. The only reason to go to school was to get a meal. After school, Bijou helped make a living as a courier for illicit dealers and gangs, making friends in the strangest of places for a child.
Aspect: Grew Up In A Rough Neighborhood
Example Invoke: Know people who have gone on to all sorts of colorful careers
Example Consequence: Make it harder to speak fancy or put on airs
Rising Conflict
As she entered her teens, Bijou’s tastes in fashion and music moved from hip-hop and rap to thrash metal and industrial. At a warehouse club she met a group of like-minded teens and twenty-somethings who would become part of her first real family; a family of were-rats.
Aspect: Not The “Girl Next Door”
Example Invoke: Easily ingratiate yourself with punk, hardcore, goth, or other alt groups
Example Consequence: You don’t fit in well in “formal” or “traditional” gatherings
First Story: Pack Rat
The wererats of Detroit are constantly battling to defend their domain and acquire new turf. Bijou’s role was often that of advanced scout and surveillance, so she didn’t have to do too much fighting. At least, not until the night a local gang had a troll (a literal troll!) backing them up. The troll caught Bijou and her co-scout (and at the time boyfriend) Kevin “Rags” Cooper. The two were beaten pretty badly and just managed to get away. If Rags hadn’t known about a nearby back-door medic, they may not have survived the night. Bijou made it a point to always know where she could get patched up or pharmaceutically “enhanced.”
Aspect: I Buy The Drugs
Example Invoke: Acquire legal or illegal pharmaceuticals, know underground medics
Example Consequence: Authority figures find you carrying or find one of your stashes; a dealer gives up your name
Initial Team-Up: Same Old Rat Race
Guest Star: Yolanda “Hexbait” Nieves
When corrupt cops start cracking down on the neighborhood and “arresting” youth (who never returned) Bijou and her crew ran into some Dark Carnival gangers and found themselves in the like-minded positions of defending the kids of Detroit. Bijou used her stealth and wiles to pull a strange scrap of parchment from the boot of one of the officers, but it was the sorceress called “Hexbait” who translated it. It turned out that a Rakshasa (some Indian tiger-looking monster) had the cops under its thumb (paw?) and was collecting the youths for its meals. Together, the two women (with some help from other Dark Carnival members and a few wererats) defeated the Rakshasa; and a strange alliance between the two was born.
Aspect: Sly
Example Invoke: Attempt to carry out any action without attracting attention (e.g. hide, sneak, pick pocket, stab someone in the back).
Example Consequence: Fail to be honest when it actually is the sensible thing.
Secondary Team-Up: I Smell a Rat
Guest Star: Antonio “Tony” Tuzzolino
Bijou got word of some crazy P.I. who was passing out twenties (with the promise of more) to various kids and homeless in the neighborhood. Seems the guy was trying to track someone down and using the street to get some info. Money pays the bills and a semi-legit job only came around every so often, so Bijou decided to help the P.I. out. She got her $20, the pried all the info she could get from P.I. Tony Tuzzolino on his quarry. It was Bijou’s keen sense of smell that helped the pair track down the bail jumper. Tony was so impressed he gave her 10% of the collection fee and the wererat gave him a number in case she could collect some cash again.
Aspect: Keen Nose
Example Invoke: Pick out and discern scents in the air or on items
Example Consequence: Be distracted or overcome by an odor
Bijou’s Detroit
Nearly all the wererats in Detroit belong to one big family, and a wererate will usually address another as a sibling or cousin–depending on how close they are with the wererat in question. While outsiders call the leader of their family the “Rat King,” most of the wererats just call him “Grandpa.” The wererats run the sewers and a good portion of Detroit’s inner-city slums. Grandpa allows for drug dealing, gun running, and bootlegging, so long as it’s with the intention of easing the minds or burdens of the inhabitants or aiding in their defense. This altruism is still profitable enough to keep the rats well-fed.
Bijou lives with 20 of her “siblings” in one of Highland Park’s many abandoned apartment buildings. Highland Park is a city in the middle of Detroit. A city that marks Detroit’s “bulls-eye” and, it’s often a target for the White Court vampires in the Detroit area, those that feed on despair. The wererats aren’t there to rebuild Detroit, but enough of it has to survive to give them a place to live and eat; to Bijou, the White Court is the biggest supernatural threat against wererat survival… Though that threat fall far behind arsonists and indiscriminate killings by drive-by.
Bijou’s life and livelihood is closely linked to her wererat family. So, when Grandpa asked that she represent the wererats in an investigation that threatened all factions, she accepted the chore (or honor, depending on how you looked at it). All Bijou knows is that there’s some sort of thing out there causing folks to not be right in the head. Grandpa wants to make sure the thing (whatever it is) is destroyed, and especially that it doesn’t fall in to vampire hands.
Base Refresh: 8
Total Refresh: 2
Skills
Superb:
Great: Alertness, Athletics, Stealth
Good: Deceit, Investigation, Survival
Fair: Burglary, Contacts, Rapport
Average: Driving, Fists, Guns
Powers & Stunts [-6]
-1 Beast Change (Rat)
Allows transformation into Rat form -1 Echoes of the Beast (Rat)
+1 when using smell for Alertness or Investigation [+3 total if invoking Keen Nose aspect]
+1 to Stealth when barefoot
Have instinctual understanding of rodent actions/motives
+1 Human Form
Loss of Diminutive Size, Inhuman Speed, and Claws while in human form
+2 Refresh when in human form
-1 Diminutive Size (in Rat form only)
+4 to Stealth attempts
+2 to any perception (Alertness, Investigation)
-2 to Might, can only inflict 1 physical stress per attack
+1 to Athletics when dodging
-2 Inhuman Speed (in Rat form only)
+4 Alertness for Initiative
+1 Athletics
+2 Athletics when sprinting
Difficulty factors due to moving reduced by two when rolling Stealth
-1 Claws [Bite] (in Rat form only)
Acts as Weapon: 2
-1 Pack Instincts
+1 Alertness when near another member of your pack
Can communicate with simple, single-word concepts wordlessly to nearby pack members
When any nearby packmates succeed at Alertness roll vs ambush, all packmates are alerted
Stress Tracks
Physical 00
Mental 00
Social 00
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