A Continent of Banalities

Casey is a professor of mathematics. He has a fairly cushy tenured position at Morgan State University, but at this point in his career, the unassuming little man has taken up a second job as a monster hunter.  For many years Casey worked alongside psychologist (and almost Nobel Prize winner) Paul Höst. They collaborated on studies in consumer behavior, models for predicting suicide attempts and much more.  Neither of them had ever married, and behind their backs colleagues and students called them ‘the bromance’. They did have their disagreements though. Casey was frustrated by how poorly supported many psychological studies seemed to be, while Höst felt that Casey was too timid in his conclusions.  It all changed one Summer evening when Höst arrived late to one of their meetings with a young man, an assistant professor named Alex Hendry. Höst seemed inebriated or euphoric, while the young man was decidedly subdued. There were things, he said, that science had not even t...

 A cursed gangster and the last day of Sigil & Shadow. This character has a power that's really more of a curse, but one that could be quite useful. (The Labaki and the Gaffigans are two major crime outfits in the campaign city that bears some resemblance to Baltimore). Elijah “Crunch” Stevens Crunch is a low-level Labaki soldier with ambition. So far he has risen from being a kid slinging to overseeing a couple of kids slinging. Middle management, in a sense. He gets his nickname from the fact that he always seems to be working. His mother always told him that working hard and wearing nice clothes could get him far. Crunch works like a horse and favors Tommy Hilfiger. He looks more like a college student than (people’s idea of) a gangster. Mrs. Stevens might not approve of her son’s line of work, but she does not object to him paying her rent. One thing has really ruined things for Crunch: a curse. One day Crunch and his boys beat up a fiend who had tried to make off with thei...

Deanna Emmerys, M.D. (for Sigil & Shadow) Deanna always had the gift of Sight. She was a fast learner, and after confiding in her mom at age 6, and netting herself a talk with a child psychologist, she kept shtumm. Sure, it was a bit lonely at night, when spectral moths with children’s voices circled over her bed. But when a tall woman with a hollow back drowned little Jason Becker in the park pond, and everyone said it was a tragic accident, she decided that most people were weak. And the weak need protection.  At Johns Hopkins she studied neurology, but branched out voraciously into ophthalmology and psychiatry, in order to understand why some people can sense a world that others are entirely shut off from. Her personal life was a series of short relationships, ended by Deanna when they became inconvenient or by the other party, when they discovered that she viewed them with some measure of pity and condescension.  All doors were open to Deanna when she graduated, but sh...

 A sorcerous character for Sigil & Shadow Abel started getting interested in magic as a child. Deedee, the lady next door, read tarot cards and helped the unhappy with folk medicine and rituals. It was very interesting, and a little scary. In the end it was all done in service to compassion.  Abel encountered magic again when he went to university. Hoary old sociologists like Durkheim,  Mauss and Malinowski covered magic as a societal and psychological tool, a crossroads of faith, performance and pragmatism. Yet they always treated it from the outside looking in. Abel’s roommate called it “colonialist sociology”.  Abel started attending seances, masses, and esoteric retreats. Most were underwhelming, until he met the Tired Man. His skin was yellow like old newspapers, his teeth were lead-gray, and his eyes were a sky with drifting storm clouds. The Tired Man always dragged his feet to the gatherings, but always left with a kick in his stride.   Once Abe...

Today's character is made with Sigil & Shadow, one of the best games I bought in 2021. In 1982 Frankie Collingwood had a brilliant idea. The slasher movie had proved that it was here to stay. It was easy to replicate the thrill of pretty young people falling prey to ultraviolence, but what if the KILLER was a pretty young person? Thus the idea of Katie Karnage came about. A sexy rock chick with a meat cleaver and endless bloodthirst.  Katie was meant to be a bad girl, apart from the whole spree killer aspect. In interviews, people around Collingwood have variously cited Joan Jett, Pat Benatar, Marlene Dietrich, and even Lady McBeth as inspiration for Katie. The actress portraying her, 20 year old Lindsey Bakirtzis, has said that she pretty much channeled Betty Rizzo from Grease , “just more homicidal”.  Frankie ain’t talking, of course. Funding came via Frankie’s producer acquaintance Glenn Pearson. The story goes that Pearson introduced Frankie to a mystery backer in a gr...