DRYH: Damaged Souls - Bastion Graves
High Concept
MY NAME IS... Bastion Graves
AND I AM... A professional gambler
Five Questions
WHAT'S BEEN KEEPING YOU AWAKE? The sound of rolling dice, the exquisite clinking of stacked chips. The ruffled shuffling of cards and the clatter of the roulette ball. I just can't stop. I have to win. I'm on a lucky streak and if I pause for even a second I know everything will go straight to Hell.
WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO YOU? I got angry. This sleazy gangster was this close to stealing away the blackjack pot -- I knew he was counting cards! -- and I just couldn't take it anymore. But as I gave him a death glare when the final cards came up, my jaw unconsciously working like I was mentally chewing on his soul, he just disappeared completely! Vanished into thin air. Strangest thing was that nobody really noticed, as if he'd never been there to begin with. I won the pot of course, but I can't help but be creeped out.
WHAT'S ON THE SURFACE? Well-kept red hair and beard. A toned body with pale skin kept smooth and soft by frequent massages and spa treatments. A matchless white toothy grin. Rings on his fingers and jewels on his cufflinks. A pair of dice in one hand and a spread of cards in the other. Even his comfort clothes are brand-name and worth thousands. A sleek new Maserati that gets all the ladies. He's a man who's got it all.
WHAT LIES BENEATH? A man in his mid-thirties who's so tired of life that even the thrill of winning is beginning to grow stale and boring. He's badly depressed and he knows it, but his apathy has gotten so bad he can't do anything about it. He's got nothing left in this world besides winning, and once his luck runs out, he knows his life will too.
WHAT IS YOUR PATH? Bastion has to find something to give his life meaning again, or he's going to meet a bad end. To that front he desperately indulges in his gambling, risking everything for the thrill of possible ruin while beautiful but shallow women hang off his arms and most of his meals involve an unhealthy dose of liquor. But it isn't enough. In his spare time he's been trying some new age spiritual techniques, but the results have been less than satisfactory.
Sixth Question
WHO ARE YOU DESCENDED FROM, AND WHAT WERE THEIR TALENTS? My ancestor was a very notorious Awake known only as the Necromancer. True to his name; he stole life, brought death, and raised unholy abominations from the grave to work his indomitable will. Every enemy he destroyed his powers only grew stronger, using his superb medical skill and knowledge to craft even more deadly servants from their corpses. Then he went down into the Catacombs of the Mad City to confront the old hell monk Ao, and was never seen again.
(Exhaustion Talent: Physician's Hands, Madness Talent: Necromancy)
Responses
- TOTAL FLIGHT RESPONSES 1
- TOTAL FIGHT RESPONSES 2
Talents
- EXHAUSTION TALENT
The Devil's Own Luck: I'm lucky, always have been. Things show up right when I need them, and I often know the right thing to say, whether I'm consciously aware of it or not. Things tend to work out in my favor, and games of chance are usually an easy victory. Sure I might have a little overreliance on good fortune, and sometimes I might take needless risks, but them's the breaks!
- MADNESS TALENT
E is for Erase
A terrifying power
Just wipe it away
With reality scoured
What Can I Do?
You can make things - and people - vanish, by just focusing your mind on doing so. Obliterated, as if they were never there. You completely remove them from the fabric of existence, and so reality works to fill in the gaps, changing things so that a person never existed or a place never was. But be careful - erase something too powerful or critical, and history itself might alter. Reality abhors a vacuum, after all.
(1 - 2) Perform a mild erasure, like a dent in your car, a stain from your shirt, or a bad grade on a paper. Erase the information on a sign, and cause people to ignore whatever it represented since that sign never existed.
(3 - 4) You can erase larger things now: people, places, Locals, even low-level Nightmares. Erase a hospital and all of its works are undone (and perhaps some of its patients too). Erase a murderer and his murders never happened, the victims return to life (always a bit... off though). Erase a Paper Boy and watch the headlines change.
(5 - 6): Erase something - or someone - monumental. Erase Mother When and have the door that was pried open during the 13th Hour never touched, and the High School never founded. Remove an entire city block from existence and have everything and everyone associated with it lose their impact on the world. Things can also get metaphorical at this level: erase someone's debts, or worries, or fears, or memories.
How Does It Break Me?
Fight When you get angry, it's so tempting to just viciously erase someone who's causing you a problem. You don't even have to erase the person in question, just something they'll miss: an eye, an arm, maybe one of their organs. Or get cruel and wipe out one of their loved ones for revenge. It's just so easy to make them go away.
Flight Fleeing is extremely simple when you erase anything in your path towards your destination. Just run as fast as your feet can carry you, and obliterate anything and anyone in the way until you can find a safe place to hide.
How Do I Change?
Erasing things begins to become instinctive, sometimes you'll just offhandedly consider erasing something and it's gone. You erase things you don't mean to, like ex-lovers, or the boss breathing down your neck, or the asshole that cuts you off in traffic. It's so quick and easy, and all of your problems just... disappear.
What Am I Becoming...
Soon you find that you just can't stop, that erasing anything that bothers you has become an obsession, until you begin erasing even the parts of yourself that you don't like. You remove memories and emotions, blemishes, even that bone that sticks out of place at just the wrong angle. Your body becomes unstable and begins to melt, sloshing along as a sort of walking puddle. But you can't stop - erasing and correcting what's wrong has become your driving purpose. And as you do it more and more, you begin seeing the flaws and attributes in others that you don't like, and you seek to remove them as well, correcting the problem until they're completely perfect in your eyes before leaving the ruined husk behind and moving on to the next.
You've become the Correction Fluid.
