Terribly Tenebrous Tots

Characters for The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor

Abbey

Name: Abigail ("Abbey") St. Rickety-Mumbler (image)

Goes to pieces.

Age: 12-and-one-quarter

Image: A gangling girl with large, sad eyes and dark, straight hair. She is a bit clumsy (due to forgetting to compensate for her limbs being attached, on top of accelerating pre-teenage awkwardness). She exudes an indefinite sense of wrongness. Perhaps it is something a bit off-kilter about her proportions ... or the way one hand seems to have been rotated ever-so-slightly too far at the wrist.

Personality: Polite, personable and well-behaved in the company of adults; Abbey is a sterling example of a young lady. Out from under watchful eyes, she's a little less formal, though still polite and well-meaning.

If not for the air of melancholy that hovers around her like a swarm of gnats, and the fact that she makes most people's eyes water, she'd have been adopted long ago. Of course, most prospective parents would be somewhat less than calm after finding their new daughter's limbless torso lying about (or just as bad, her torso-less limbs wandering around unattended).

Stats and Skills

Feet 1 (P.E. +0, Kicking +1, Dodging +1)

Guts 3 (Wind +0, Courage +2, Wrestling +1)

Hands 4 (Shop +0, Punching +0, Block +1, Loose-limbed +3)

Brains 3 (Out-think +0, Remember +1, Notice +2)

Face 4 (Charm +3, Putdown +0, Connive +0)

Creepy Skill

Loose-limbed 3d (Defends, Useful: Detachable Parts, Useful: Reconfigure body)

Abbey's limbs and/or head can detach from her body at any joint and operate remotely, which looks for all the world as though she has been dismembered violently, except for the lack of blood spilling from the apparently severed arteries and veins. Her appendages can even assemble themselves seamlessly into other permutations (such as her arms serving as bipedal locomotion for her detached head, or her arms and legs re-attaching to her torso in a more comfortable quadrupedal posture for running).

The main drawback is that if all of her limbs are detached, then her torso is left helpless and largely immobile on its own, and if her head is detached, she is blind and deaf to what goes on with it (though she still has a sense of touch and can attempt to wiggle her torso or use whatever limbs remain).

Her disembodied head can speak and breathe normally. Oddly though, consuming food and drink (or more precisely, swallowing it) is utterly pointless, as well as a bit messy.

When disembodied, her limbs have quasi-independent intelligence and an eerie perceptiveness; this mostly allows them to navigate to wherever Abbey wants them and helps avoid discovery (rather like they were small animals that possessed eyes and ears), without Abbey's conscious direction or much awareness. It's roughly like walking in a crowded room while trying to carry on a conversation with someone else; you mostly just aim in the direction you want to go and let your body handle the details of getting there. Works great until you trip over a foot that was placed in your path by "accident".

However, more specific or complex actions require Abbey's conscious attention, and she can't actually see or hear what is going on in a remote location unless her head is there too.

Sometimes Abbey wakes up at night, unsure whether she REALLY just felt one of her limbs reattach itself, or if she merely dreamed it (again). But that's not as bad as the time she accidentally put her hands on the wrong arms. Oh, how they laughed at her.

Echoes

• The taste of copper - 1d
• The word "Nacht"- 1d
• A scrap of silk - 2d
• Freezing water - 3d
• Being rocked to sleep - 3d

Pip

Name: Garnet ("Pip") Novella Steckelshaw

Age: 5

Image: Shy ragamuffin with a very creepy shadow, often seen peeking out from behind a larger orphan. She usually carries her prized (and only) possession -- a stuffed bear that has seen much better days. It is named Mr. Charmonte.

Personality: Doesn't speak, ever. Communicates by tugging on the clothes of older orphans and pointing, nodding, etc.

Stats and Skills

Feet 2 (P.E. +0, Kicking +0, Dodging +2, The Child Who Walked Through Walls +1)

Guts 2 (Wind +0, Courage +3, Wrestling +0)

Hands 3 (Shop +1, Punching +0, Block +0, Hungry Shadow +2)

Brains 4 (Out-think +0, Remember +0, Notice +3)

Face 4 (Charm +3, Putdown +0, Connive +0)

Creepy Skill

The Child Who Walked Through Walls +1 (Useful: Get in or out of anywhere, if nobody is looking)

Pip manages to end up in the strangest places, including places that seem impossible to reach (like a locked room). Nobody is quite sure whether she simply is very good at finding some way in, or if she literally walks through the walls, because this skill only seems to operate when nobody is watching her. She needs to be able to see the destination (or at least the obstacle) before she can get there.

Hungry Shadow +2 (Attacks, Defends, Useful: Grab things)

The shadow of the tiniest orphan is not quite so cute as its owner. It moves. It leers. It gibbers. It has sharp claws and a disturbing habit of eating other shadows. It can physically affect the world if it wants to.

Echoes

• Mr. Charmonte - 1d
• Scent of cedar - 2d
• Harmonica music - 2d
• Pile of leaves - 2d
• Rotten Meat - 3d

Penelope

Sees you

Name: Penelope Wanweird (Original inspiration)

Age: 10

Image: Pale, red-headed, with a frail disposition and shadowed, unseeing eyes. She is a mere slip of a girl, seeming at least three years younger than she really is. Her blazer jacket sleeves extend nearly to her fingertips, and she constantly has to pull up her socks in spite of their elasticity.

Personality: Were she not so fragile, she would be a spunky and playful whirlwind of energy. Alas, she fatigues far too quickly for most exertions (though she often is allowed to visit the shore on the theory that the salt air will do her some good). What few activities she can enjoy, she obsessively puts in her secret scrapbooks to remember forever. Oddly, nobody else can actually remember the events in question, except those that she marks with her blood.

Stats and Skills

Feet 2 (P.E. +0, Kicking +0, Dodging +0)

Guts 2 (Wind +0, Courage +3, Wrestling +0)

Hands 4 (Shop +1, Punching +0, Block +0)

Brains 3 (Out-think +0, Remember +3, Notice +3, Cornucopia of Bloody Eyes +1, Scrapbook of Memories +2)

Face 4 (Charm +2, Putdown +0, Connive +0)

Creepy Skills

Cornucopia of Bloody Eyes +1 (Useful: See in Darkness, Sharing)

Any shadowed space into which Penelope has spilled some of her blood can sprout dozens of glittering human eyes (which can be used as long as the area remains shadowed, and the blood has not completely dried.). These eyes act as a sort of compound lens and allow Penelope to perceive events at that location through a bloody red filter to which darkness is no obstacle.

Penelope can also allow other orphans to participate in her vision by marking their closed eyes with a vertical line of blood across the lid. As long as their eyes remain closed and the mark unbroken, they can see what she sees.

Because Penelope is blind, she is constantly depositing blood in various locations to enable her eyesight, which perhaps explains why she is always so pale and sickly.

Is it truly Penelope's blood that holds the power, or will just anybody's blood do? Hmm...

Scrapbook of Memories +2 (Attacks, Useful: Trap Memories)

When Penelope decides to scrapbook something that she has experienced, that thing is forgotten by the rest of the world and trapped in the bloodstained pages of her books, like a cruelly pinned butterfly. It might as well never have happened, as far as anyone else is concerned, and they rationalize away or don't seem to notice the obvious inconsistencies this can cause.

Only those that Penelope deliberately and willingly marks with her blood (followed by marking the specific pages) can recall the events in question as they truly occurred. For the rest of the world, the books contain little more than the hopeful fictions of a pathetically lonely little girl isolated from the joys of childhood by her own fragile body. And blood. The blood is worrisome.

More astute readers might wonder exactly who is helping the blind girl with such visually-oriented crafts, and what exactly she gets out of making them, since the books are not written in braille.

Echoes

• Covered in pieces of cello-tape +2
• A scrapbook entry that Penelope herself remembers neither making nor experiencing +3
• Squeaking playground carousel +2
• A most tragic souffle +2
• A sewing machine +1

Hubert

Name: Hubert Bletch Ginglyform (Original inspiration)

Age: 9

Quote: I hate the water.

Image: A bespectacled boy peeking out from some unusual hiding place.

Personality: Shy and reclusive, he can usually be found inside closets, cabinets, trunks, etc. He armors himself literally against the world, whether that armor be thick, concealing clothing, a robotic body, or a simple cardboard box. He exhibits an acute phobia towards any body of water deeper than a shallow puddle, yet is morbidly fascinated by such stygian depths. His best friend is Penelope Wanweird.

Stats and Skills

Feet 4 (P.E. +1, Kicking +0, Dodging +2)

Guts 2 (Wind +0, Courage +0, Wrestling +0)

Hands 5 (Shop +3, Punching +0, Block +0, Ghost in the Machine +3)

Brains 3 (Out-think +2, Remember +0, Notice +0)

Face 1 (Charm +1, Putdown +1, Connive +0, Hide +2)

Creepy Skill

Ghost in the Machine 3D (Attacks, Defends, Useful: Control any machine on touch)

Echoes

• The smell of grease-cleaner - 1d
• An electric shock - 1d
• A music box that plays backwards - 2d
• A dead fish - 2d
• Sunlight seen from beneath the waves - 2d
• Diesel smoke - 2d