Springfield Fated Circle - Patricia Wilson

Originally, I had conceived of this character as really stuck in the Skinlands and all of her Arcanoi revolving around that as a Proctor, or a Wraith particularly skilled with Embody. When I was looking over my notes and rereading some of the Guildbook: Spooks, I realized that the Bully inside Patricia may be better suited to Outrage. She isn’t particularly tied into the Renegades or the Legion or the Guild but could end up going in any direction. Or perhaps has a Mentor who is pushing her in a direction she hasn’t realized yet.

I found the form fillable page Sheet, and linked to them below, but I will be including some information in the write up that didn’t fit on the single page design of the sheet.

Design Notes

Patricia Wilson is going to tie some things together first as a contemporary of Linda’s daughter, actually a bully, but also as someone who is still focused very much on the Skinlands and the Quick. She, even more so than Declyn, has not yet turned her attention to the Shadowlands. Pushing into a death in the 1980s, I decided to go with a failed Savings & Loan Investment peddler but one that was nearly a stereotype of 1980s excess – shoulder pads, big hair, and all. Patricia has benefitted from her privilege, and her inner Nature is that of a Follower – she isn’t very good at leading and honestly doesn’t want to. Similarly, she protects herself with a Demeanor of Traditionalist relying on how things have always been done to insulate herself from being responsible. For her Death, I choose suicide in the wake of the S & L Failures. She needed to fail before she got to the Necropolis so that she can realize she should try again.

Despite being a white collar financial services or real estate professional in life, Patricia has Primary (7) Physical Attributes and Secondary (5) Social Attributes. Her Mental Attributes are Tertiary(3). She spent a decade failing upward until she got caught too deep. I think Patricia has an older established sort of feel – hence the derivative name from Patrician – so she was heavily involved in Crew when alive resulting in her 4 Strength, 2 Dexterity, and 4 Stamina. Similarly, her 3 Appearance and 3 Manipulation let her get away with a lot of things that her 2 Charisma wouldn’t have supported. She isn’t dumb, so a 3 Intelligence provides enough insight to support her background, but the 1 Perception shows her myopic tendencies and a 2 Wits is unremarkable.

Patricia will have Talents as Primary (13) Ability selection with Knowledges as Secondary (9) leaving Skills as Tertiary (5). Patricia is very much someone who was a bully but also someone who got to the top in less than honorable way.s She starts out with 3 Ranks in Brawl and Subterfuge backed up by 2 Ranks each in Athletics and Intimidation. A token amount of Alertness, Dodge, and Streetwise round out her Talents. While Declyn had 3 Ranks of Computer, Patricia has 3 Ranks of Bureaucracy because she was better at greasing wheels and knowing who could make something happen than actually doing it herself. Her 2 Ranks of Investigation and passing familiarity with Computers, Enigmas, Politics, and Linguistics (Japanese) are all that’s left for her Knowledges. A single rank for Drive, Etiquette, Firearms, Leadership, and Performance finish out the Ability choices reflecting her broad but often shallow way she skated by life.

In Backgrounds, we begin to really identify and differentiate our Wraiths. This one of the harder parts for Patricia but I start with a single Rank of Status to give her something like her Privilege from life, but not enough to really lord it over any Wraith. Similarly, a single Rank of Legacy, Memoriam, and Haunt also marks her as a Wraith that doesn’t have anything truly special about her. I think, however, that 3 Ranks of Mentor begins to give us something interesting. This is a Wraith who will provide leadership, guidance, and even a little bit of their own influence in Patricia’s favor but does this Mentor want for her?

Patricia is a dilettante in many ways where she is spread thin rather than focused. Here, I know that I want to focus on Arcanoi that have an effect on the Skinlands. Declyn also showed similar tendencies, but his Inhabit focus limits him somewhat We’ve mentioned Outrage before, but this is focusing the wraithly powers to impact, literally, the Skinlands and sometimes Wraithly targets as well. The Guild that used it the most, Spooks, were known for threatening, or bullying Wraiths over their Fetters. Patricia can fully and effectively move things across the Shroud more than a mere whisper actually picking up heavy objects to drop when needed. She may not be an artist, but her desire to get back across the Shroud means that Phantasm is the second Arcanos to select with two Ranks here as well allowing her to not only see but alter the dreams of the Quick. Since Declyn was already showing an inclination for Puppetry, to do to the Quick what he can do to devices, I am going to go with Embody – what I had originally thought of for Patricia. Embody is literally forcing your Wraithly form into the world of the living. A single Rank only means that she can whisper across the Shroud, but it is a start.

We now turn to Passions and Fetters for our Wraith. After she took her own life, Patricia realized how angry she was. One of her two main fetters if Crash the Mortgage Bubble (Revenge). She sees the existing mortgage bubble and speculation as a reflection of her own failures and wants to see the banks take the same hit S & Ls did. Her daughter, Kathryn deserves protection as well but Patricia has this at it’s core as Protect Kathryn (Pride). She sees her daughter as a way to build on her future in the Quick and showing that she did accomplish something. Her emotions are not straightforward because Save the Springfield Mission Center (Guilt) would look to be about protecting the less fortunate and those who lost their homes, but it isn’t for Compassion or Love, but for Guilt for causing some of the problems that underlie the Mission’s existence. As I kept Patricia to three Passions, I will also keep her to three Fetters with the most important one being a Rank 4 Fetter to the actual S & L Building where she worked, she lived, she ignored Kathryn, and eventually she died. Despite not showing Kathryn enough love in life, she is a Rank 3 Fetter but as Kathryn heads towards middle age, she won’t be around forever. Finally, Patricia is one of those people who never left her youth behind and still clings to her identity as a college athlete – a Macon blade from Crew that still hangs in the college from when they won also still draws her to the Quick as a Rank 3 Fetter.

For the Virtues, Corpus is Health and all Wraiths Start with a full 10 Ranks. Willpower and Pathos both start at 5 each reflecting a sense of control and emotional fulfillment respectively. The Rank of Memoriam provides an additional starting Pathos for Patricia. Finally, we get to Freebie Points, Merits, and Flaws. Freebie Points let you customize your character beyond what we’ve done already. Merits are other bonuses or traits that don’t fit elsewhere and cost Freebie points while Flaws are the inverse providing a handful more Freebie points to spend. I like to use Freebie points to make a real impact on Arcanoi,especially because they are only 5 points compared to the supernatural advantages of other games where they were 7. I will take Outrage to 3 Ranks to to let Patricia use the violent expression of Stonehand Fist to damage the Quick and the Dead alike. Since she is a violent character, I take her Brawl to 4 Ranks, but leave her Dodge at 2. She is going to need Linda Mary’s help quite often. There are 8 points left, and the potential for Flaws to increase that. Patricia didn’t learn her lesson in life, so the Overconfident (2pt) flaw seems apt. Similarly, her strong emotions make me think the Bright (4pt) Merit is a good one which provides for a stronger Skinlands presence making it harder for her to avoid ghost hunters. I’ll finish spending the Freebie points by making Patricia quite stubborn – buying 3 more Ranks of Willpower.

Shadow Notes

Now we look to designing the Shadow, a sort of mini character creation session where in the classic instructions, the Shadowguide would take over with input from the regular player. A shadow will have an Archetype that guides the actions, Angst, 7 points of Dark Passions that subvert the Psyche’s Passions, and then 10 Freebie points to spend on these or additional powers called Thorns.

The Bully is the obvious choice for Patricia’s Shadow. She was a bully and deserves the same to come from Oblivion after her. This is an archetype that could be misused in play and often served as an example of being careful about not letting a player who was abusive have control of a Shadow in play. We will move forward with that note in mind for future players – it is a game; abuse is not acceptable even if you are playing a Shadow in Wraith. Patricia’s Bully has to show that she is better, or stronger, than the other Wraiths around and that she isn’t going to back down. This Bully will remind Patricia when she isn’t acting, when she isn’t being forceful, when she hasn’t taken control.

Angst is determined by rolling the Psyche’s Willpower rating against a difficulty of 6 to determine starting Angst, so it can never be more than the starting Willpower. Here, I rolled the dice and Patricia was very unlucky because of the 6 dice that I rolled, it resulted in 4 Permanent Angst to start.

Mirroring the Guilt in Patricia’s Psyche, the Shadow Passion of Destroy the Wilson Home (Guilt) is significant because her family kept their home when so many others lost theirs. It’s been even worse in the last few years as she saw the foreclosures again push people to the brink while Kathryn remained safe. Her Anger also manifests in knowing the executives who didn’t die deserve to be brought over … and Moliated into Oboli or otherwise face themselves the same way she did. It isn’t revenge, but Anger that is motivating this Shadow.

That leaves 10 Freebie Points to spend. First, I want to give her Shadow Infamy, which is the dark reflection of Memoriam. There are still being who remember her name and her role in their family’s tragedies so 3 Ranks of it is a good start. For one Freebie Point, I even up the Dark Passions so they are 4 each and then spend 2 points on Shadow Trait so the Shadow can buy a 5 Rank of Strength to bolster its use of Outrage.

Character Notes

The numbers didn’t lie. Patricia was responsible for for a lot of families losing everything they had. The Savings & Loans system was on the way out – everybody knew that in the 1980s but until the legislation passed, a lot of people made a lot of money taking advantage of the loose oversight and limited capitalization of these Thrift Institutions. They didn’t have the will to do anything. You just showed them what you could do.

It started as a kid for Patricia – little Becky Johnson was her target. Pulling her hair and pushing her down. It didn’t matter if she cried, Patricia liked that rush and feeling of power she got. I’ve been with you the whole time. Without her Mom to answer her crying, Patricia just laughed at the poor girl. In college, she didn’t get any better. Tall, strong, and with an athletic disposition, Patricia could bully men as well as women and her professors sometimes just let her pass so her temper, and her family’s money, wouldn’t cause problems. The world of Finance seemed like a fun time in the late 1970s, and the rise of the “Me” Generation suited Patricia just fine.

She married, had a daughter, and went to work in banking and finance. The cracks in the Savings & Loan Institutions were showing and Federal regulation was being discussed. That didn’t stop Patricia from forging ahead and convincing S & Ls besides her own to invest in speculative land deals. To put the money of hard working blue collar members into what can only be called a developers pipe dream. Raked in the money hand over fist! You showed all those boys laughing at you! Time spent at the office making money was time not spent with Kathryn. Time not spent with life.

Until it crashed. A lot of people lost their way. A lot of people lost their houses. A lot of families lost everything.

Patricia found her conscience that day. And her shame. She jumped. She landed. Her caul was ripped off and Stygia was her new home. A normal Reaper hadn’t found her, but instead she was Reaped by Cynthia, just Cynthia. Known as one of the older wraiths in the Necropolis, few understood why she was regarded well by the Hierarchy. Because she is a BOSS like you. But she took Patricia under her wings and led her to the Hierarchy.

Quietly working in the Legion, a clerk pushing the equivalent of paper; a nobody who blends in with the rest of the corpus of ghosts. Away from them, though, Patricia reaches across the Shroud to see her daughter. She speaks to her in her dreams. She dreams of holding her one more time. And sees Kathryn doing the same things she did. See’s the Granddaughter she never held bullied at school. She needs to toughen up if she wants to get ahead.

This Circle she has been pulled into, almost pushed by Cynthia, is like nothing she has seen before. Here broad shoulders, not needing the shoulderpads from her blazer and teased hair set her apart from the less concerned members. Zebediah already stood out as a hero, much as there are any in Death, while Linda Mary is Pardoner – everybody needs a Pardoner but does she know what Patricia did? It’s time for Frank perhaps to help Patricia but is that what Fate had in store for them all?

Patricia Wilson – Forlorn Spook Character Sheet

Wraith: The Oblivion and the Springfield Fated Circle Overview Here.

Character Sheet from Mr. Gone’s Character Sheets. https://mrgone.rocksolidshells.com/