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I'd apply but I just about killed the last game I rolled up a character for  will definitely keep my finger on the pulse here, tho
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Jul 30, 2014 09:56
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 11:37 |
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Judah “Jude” Simmons, once known as The Hidebehind  (artist’s rendering) Before the coming of the Adversary, man and our wilderness lived in agreement. If you just came upon us you wouldn’t really think it perfect, but it was. Man had his village, and we our forest, but they were never separate, not really, and that was fine, it was perfect. They came out from their village every day and they knew where they could hunt and fell the trees, they knew where they shouldn’t go. The wolves knew where they could roam and they knew that the young of man were not to be hunted in their own places. They understood these things. They all understood the rules, but some of them didn’t respect them, and that was fine, believe it or not. Such things were taken care of, it was tacitly agreed. Such was our détente that the disruptions and crimes and trespasses all folded into the natural order of things. A babe-stealing wolf would be hunted into the depths of the forest, a fool wandering aimlessly into the wood would be swallowed up, never seen again. These occurrences served as lessons to underline the importance of the rule. What you were provided should be enough. The peace was maintained. I was of the wilderness in those days. My purpose was to mind the men in the forest, for there was always idle talk among them, of great golden pines and magnificent stags deep within the places their mothers had warned them never to go. I stood watch over them and when a prideful man’s hubris overtook him, I followed behind, obscured by even the thinnest of trees and squattest of rocks, and when they realized their hubris, I ate them. They never saw me coming. Their fellows never came for them. They knew I wouldn’t come for them if they stayed where they were supposed to. I had one weakness, though the men knew not of it. I was not always the fearsome critter of the forest. My mother taught me the ways of hiding when I was just a cub. I would watch from a safe distance as she stalked the brave men, as their steps grew with caution and they realized their fate. When her last hunt came she knew, and she bade me closer to her as we crept behind the man, a great red-haired lumberjack, who boasted of the riches that awaited him on the far side of the forest as he walked, deeper and deeper into the dark woods, farther than any man before him, without fear. My mother finally lost her patience and pounced, and as she tore at his belly he mustered his axe with great strength and brought it down upon her shoulders. As I bit into the wounded man’s throat, I smelled upon the dying man’s breath the pungent scent of rotted berries, sharp and stinging to the nostrils. To this day I cannot bring myself with greatest force upon the lushes of the world. When they staggered into the woods I was compelled to wait for their sobriety to return (and more often than not, the deadfalls and hungry beasts of the wood did my work for me). When the Adversary and his legion encroached upon our land, their taint was evidenced before their full force was felt. On the edges of the forest, witches and trolls appeared, and the land changed to suit their arrival – no more did the man’s lands endlessly provide the lumber and game they needed, no more did the bushes grow thick with fruit every morning, the hares and pheasants of the great forest dwindled as they were hunted down. The old understandings were disregarded on all sides. And on the breath of the men, the foulest scent of potatoes and grains sapped of all but poison. So I left before I could see the land truly laid to waste. The river to the far south saw boats from faraway lands, promising passage to a place where the essential evils that had invaded my home could not follow. So I came aboard, and hid in the shadows until Ellis Island took us in. New York was rough, initially, but it was rough for everyone. Not being human, or human-like, put me in a jam, as they say, but my skills were valuable enough to keep me out of the Farm. The Fable upper crust tends toward the covetous, and the most covetous had dire need of a guard dog and bloodhound like myself. My masters gave me provisional glamour when moving about the city was necessary. I made enough for an apartment in Alphabet City. It wasn’t more than a few years into my new life as professional henchman when I found, for the first time in many years, a mark giving me the slip. I probably should have recognized her, at least by the reek of whisky about her, but I had done my best to forget my days in the Homelands. I turned that alley corner in Chinatown, and finding it empty, turned around to see Calamity, with a smirk on her face and a gloved hand confidently resting on her hip holster. Calamity and I weren’t enemies in the olden days, not exactly. When she started I was nothing more than a challenge to her, a fearsome pelt for the rodeo collection. Back in the Homelands we would play the cat and mouse game, stalking one another, laying traps and disarming them, taunting and boasting. Her skill as an outdoorsman and hunter against mine as elusive prey. She never got my coat and I never ate her. After awhile I think we both just went through the paces to amuse ourselves. Or maybe she had entered such a state of perpetual drunkenness that she started forgetting to poison the snares. Regardless, when Calamity and I met in the Mundy world, The Fabletown Compact (the whole change in scenery, really) nullified whatever we were to each other before. And knowing what I was capable of, she made her pitch right then and there. We went into the PI business. She played the shitkicker and interrogator, I was the silent threat and spy. We made a good team. I even paid off my debts and got a glamour of my own, a good one. Warm moments between us were few and far between but I think she became my first real friend. We helped each other, at least – she wasn’t possessed of abundant social graces but she was the one who taught me most how to live among the man animal. And were it not for my teetotalism I think she would have expired in the gutter sooner rather than later. We moved closer to Fabletown proper together, her and I and her daughter, Janey. Sweet girl, and firey like her mother. The better to keep Calamity on the straight and narrow. Then Calamity disappeared. It was after we’d broken a particularly horrific case of familial abuse among some of the German fables. She seemed different then, I don’t know if it was that case or the next one she had taken on. Real personal, she said. Wanted me to sit it out, and she had finally seemed to knock off the bottle so I relented. The last night I saw her, she made me promise to keep after Janey would anything happen to her. Maybe I should have insisted on accompanying her. But then, Maybe I never would have come back too. With my business partner gone, I was out of a job, now with something like a family to feed. Luckily for me, the profile of our last case had caught the attention of the mayor’s office, and I was offered a position in the sheriff’s employ, with a special emphasis on what Mundys would call “vice”. So I took it. I thought I could do some good for other fables seized by the bottle, at least. That was near 20 years ago. Things have been mostly quiet, until now. I found a new companion – Lydia. In the Homelands she was the queen of Lydia (her real name is Omphale, but she does not answer to it). The legends say she was seduced by the peasant Gyges and his invisible ring, but in truth it was she who found the ring, murdered her husband, and took the throne for herself. Exposure to the ring over the years has had an effect on her – I think she appreciates being with someone who knows what it’s like to hate being seen. But we have something, unusual as it is, and she’s taken to Janey. She allows the girl something of a normal life while I’m out on the streets. It took me some time to get used to my human skin. It took me longer still to become used to the feeling of human eyes upon me. They still carry a discomfort. But I’ve made use of myself in Fabletown, and I take my duties as an officer of the law seriously. And honestly? It feels comfortable in a way few other things do to me. I was meant to observe boundaries, and punish those who cross them. It’s good to be doing so again, in a roundabout way. I'm here to remind the criminals of this town that they should know better. ---- - Under glamour, Judah appears as a tall and paunchy, slightly disheveled older man in cheap suits of coarse fiber, looking like an adjunct professor, or a civil servant, or an office drone on the way to a bar. He appears weary and humorless. The glamour is designed to reflect the sort of image of a person one might naturally ignore. - When in Hidebehind form, Judah resembles a tall, thin black bear. - There aren't a ton of fables who are readily familiar with the Hidebehind as he was in the Homelands. He's not typically hated by those who are - he was not a rampaging monster, more of a fearsome animal - but some might resent him for not being particularly interested in fighting the Adversary as he encroached upon the Homelands. He's rather impassive about the whole thing. In a lot of ways he is, essentially, a sentient animal. He thinks in terms of function, and warring is not his function. Abilities - Judah can instantly change his shape to fit perfectly behind any object of his size or one increment smaller at will, so long as no one is looking directly at him while doing so. He has padded feet allowing him to move with some degree of silence and a predator's sense of smell. - If he is stalking a person in a place they are not supposed to be (for any reason), he gains supernatural speed and strength. - Judah's Hidebehind form has a powerful aversion to the smell of alcohol, and suffers scaling penalties to rolls made against opponents who have been drinking, depending on when they last imbibed. Direct exposure to alcohol can cause frenzy or fear reactions while in Hidebehind form, or anger and belligerence in human form. ---- It was a tossup between a Hidebehind or a Black Dog for my character, but I decided to go with the more obscure American folktale. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 11:23 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 1, 2014 23:47
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I actually just played through The Wolf Among Us for the first time (a good quasi-noir, fun stuff) and I think I have a better understanding of the setting now, and what's more I feel like Judah maybe parallels Bigsby a little closely just by virtue of their devouring animal nature. I'll probably build some more backstory and flesh him out a bit.
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Aug 3, 2014 11:45
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I updated / revised my character to reflect a little bit of a better understanding of the setting (such as fables not really interacting in meaningful ways with mundys unless absolutely necessary). I was interested, after so many games of WoD and other RPGs, in playing a character who was not a loner, even when all stat reflections indicate he might be. Judah has people he cares about and who depend on him (Lydia and Janey, and Calamity, if she's still alive out there somewhere), and while I don't expect or demand that they be brought into the game in any meaningful sense, it makes sense for the character I have in my head, and it provides a little bit extra beyond the barebones "go out and push the plot forward / come home and crash on the bare mattress / repeat" pattern of your typical game.
Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 10:29 on Aug 4, 2014 |
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Aug 4, 2014 10:16
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I'm bored and away from home so I wrote a little light "found media" lore myself. Alls I have is Word, tho, so it ain't fancy or nothin I also added a standard nWoD character sheet to my original character post. You can also find it here. I've never applied a template to an nwod character before so you might be a better judge of how to put it together than I would. I was thinking of a few dots in the "Detective / Stalker" calling from here, I don't know if that's something that's kosher. _________ (transcription of writings found on a grape leaf retrieved after a raid on a potion stash house, dated March 1971) quote:---s I was telling lambkin, we need our boys in distro to exercise more caution now that simmons is sniffing around. cross the Ts and dot the Is, understand? thing about simmons you have to recognize is that he’s got you dead to rights if you’re somewhere you ain’t allowed, and that includes technicalities. take strongman, for example. rear end in a top hat didn’t put himself on payroll for the joint he was using as a front, now he’s laid up in some clinic cot on the boss’ dime. that’s all it takes. nixie had to jump from her penthouse when the fucker pulled a fire alarm – a month’s shipment gone right there. at the very least you gotta make sure your muscle is on a piece of paper somewhere as a janitor or something, with hours listed. and for gently caress’s sake, put their backs to the wall when they’re on shift and if the goods are good enough to really protect, get a few of them them properly soused before and during shift. Furth--- (“Invisible ink” letter to unknown recipient, successfully delivered by courier to Hell's Kitchen dead drop, August 1970) quote:“Since she asked, here’s everything I’ve been able to find out – Excerpt from interview with subject "Beauty", recorded for use in Gunnar / Siegfried trial, December 1948. quote:Recorder: Let's start with how you came to be approached. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 11:37 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 10:22
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