OK, here's my first Dresden Files character who has acheived a level of near-completion. Do you guys see any problems with her powers or her flavor? Is she viable in a game? Also, I am considering the following power she'll occasionally use via her modular points. Is it OK?
Non-Eukleidian tentacle-like appendages extend from you to lash and rip nearby creatures. You may use fists to attack or grapple every creature in the zone except for yourself. You don't have enough control to distinguish between friends and allies.
Any bonuses and powers to using fists does apply to the tentacles.
Character: Lily Young Player: Belial
Template: Scion (modeled on changeling)
High Concept Aspect: Cute Eldritch Horror
Trouble Aspect: Unearthly yet Clueless
There are beings beyond this reality that few will name, even if they can. Luckily for us clueless mortals, the Outsiders are all locked beyond the Gates. Or are they? What if one could arrange for a living being to be born that could take a small piece of itself into the world at birth? And then, as said being grew, that piece would grow while the outsider waned until the two became one and free to act in the world.
But life is notoriously difficult to predict and easy to change at an early stage. What if a loving parent taught the child human values? What if she was kept away from the supernatural so the desire for power did not corrupt her? What if the child was cute and likable and had no plans of world domination? Free will is a wonderful and terrible thing.
So said child was born. She's a cute young woman now, always striving to be likable and help others, with a healthy dose of responsibility after growing up in a farm. Problem is, those people in the know sense something is wrong with her, something that makes them uneasy. That she has no clue whatsoever of how the supernatural works and she fails to be scared or respectful or understanding or just knowing when to shut her mouth tends to complicate things.
Appearance
Lily is tall, slim and good-looking, with long brown hair, green eyes, delicate nose and a heart-shaped face with dimples. While vigorous and healthy, she looks a bit pale and young for her age, still clinging to that girlish line of late sixteen and easily falling to the cute expressions common to children. Despite having worked in a farm, her hands look delicate and without caluses and she has no scars older than a year or two.
Her powers manifest physically as an aura of unease or subtle features like black eyes, long ears or muscles playing under her skin when it is something subtle as speed or sensory enhancement and rarely appear as anything monstrous... to human eyes. Those having the senses to pierce her human guise usually see something unnatural and terrible but still beautiful beneath.
ITEM OF POWER
Scion of Darkness
Lily's coat is a powerful item associated with powers from beyond this reality. When using the item she may employ sponsored magic from that source. Such magic is often alien and while it applies to spirit as well as normal magics, it works on the other elements subtractively; draining energy instead of light or fire, diminishing earth and its forces instead of shaping it, using void instead of air and lightning and so on. It functions especially well for subtractive spirit magic; reducing minds and energies to nothing.
Mechanically, treat as spirit for evocations. +1 power/control for spells that inflict stress or consequenses. For thaumaturgy, add disruption, conjuration, transportation.
Agenda
The coat, like all items of power, is tied to a powerful entity, a purpose if its own. Debt incurred when using magic from it compels that agenda... which is the weakening of the Veil between this world and others.
It is what it is
The coat is made of heavy fabrics, treated leather and metal thread; it functions just like protective clothing or light armor (armor 1)
Indestructible
The coat cannot be permanently damaged unless somehow used in a ritual to pervert its purpose.
Secrets
The origins of the coat have been kept secret for a reason, the same reason it is so relatively modern-looking compared to other items of power; it is tied to the same Outsider that arranged for Lily's birth not very long ago. What this might mean for its agenda concerning Lily none can say but speculation abounds. Most probably, it is a way to tempt Lily with powers she has not yet developed, give access to them before she develops control on her own...
(mechanically speaking, 1 more refresh and Lily could have sponsored magic without the need for an item of power. But suddenly reaching for that power before she is ready would force her nature over her free will. I.e. spending 1 more refresh on a Change before her refresh increases sends her to negative refresh and makes her a monster)
Focus and Enchanted items
Lily lacks formal training and her Lore skills are what she has gleaned from research or self-experimentation. Her focuses tend to be simplistic at best. She has one bracelet of +2 offensive spirit control and one bracelet of +2 offensive spirit power.
Evocation
Lily has evocation ability she can use like many mortal practicioners (even though she isn't one). Her elements are spirit, darkness (subtractive fire) and void (subtractive air). She specialises in spirit, getting +1 control.
ASPECTS
Cute Eldritch Horror: Lily is a cute young woman that also happens to be a still growing physical manifestation of some force beyond our world. (High Concept)
Invoke: Wheedling, summoning boys, getting people to like her, using or resisting dark or mental powers, including her own.
Compel: Being taken seriously, intimidating (not), avoiding boys, avoiding or resisting faith and warding magic.
Unearthly yet Clueless: Lily strikes anyone with some arcane sense as not-human. Dark powers might even treat her as demon. At the same time she is almost completely ignorant of the nature of the supernatural world and its workings.
Invoke: Ignoring intimidation, being buddies with dark creatures, asking forgiveness but not permission, making Sight users insane. (not always good things)
Compel: not knowing what (not) to do, trusting, lore, avoiding supernatural senses, making Sight users insane
Aunt's House in the Woods: Lily lived the majority of her admittedly short life in her aunt's house at the Great Smoky Mountains, Tenesee, well away from the "corruption" of modern life, learning the benefits of healthy living, hard work and little things in life. She's way more healthy physically and mentally than most city dwellers but does not go well with most modern appliances either. She still has said house to remember her aunt by.
Invoke: strength and endurance, determination, survival, resisting temptation
Compel: using modern appliances, urban navigation, fitting in, seizing the moment
Out of the Circle, Into the Fire: Lily registers as a demon to certain magics. She often attracts the attention of summoners and dark creatures, and they sometimes try to ask for favors or make pacts with her. And while her considerable abilities would allow her to fulfill many of these favors, Lily insists she is not a demon. Hilarity invaiably ensues.
Invoke: influencing or making deals with summoners, warlocks and creatures interested in demonic power.
Compel: spurned warlocks, curious 'real' demons and alarmed champions of faith causing trouble. They're funny like that.
Cloak of Trouble: Lily wears this cool-looking, occasionally glowing heavy black coat with the strange runes on the inside. Keeping it to remember her aunt by and prevent it from being used for evil purposes, she occasionally draws power from it while trying to help. It (allegedly) belongs to her after all.
Invoke: Using it as an item of power, protective clothing, looking cool.
Compel: Debts from its use, blending in.
Good Intentions, Paved Roads: Lily wants to help. She always wants to do the right thing. Unfortunately, she is often impulsive and doesn't think before she acts.
Invoke: convincing people she wants to help, resisting temptation
Compel: not thinking things through, convincing people she is competent
Not On My Watch!: After several altercations and a showdown with power-hungry wizards, she hates their power-grabbing guts. She will oppose their plans on sheer principle. She finds non-human supernaturals more honest (even when evil) and has some trouble trusting the good human wizards out there.
Invoke: fighting mortal black magic, seeing through wizard deception
Compel: not trusting the white council, believing supernaturals
Background: Where did you come from?
Genetics are overrated; biological ancestry might make you what you are but real parents will make you who you are. Or that is what Lily's aunt Amaya always said. A herbalist in her golden years that had retreated in the less civilized parts of Tenessee and taken up farming of all things, she raised up Lily to believe in hard work, healthy living and helping others. Lily's parents were never discussed; at an early age Lily realised that was a sore subject for her beloved Auntie A. and did not bring it up. After all, nobody had come looking for her in all those years and the old woman had the burden of raising her so late in life. Either her parents were dead -and if they were, reminding Auntie A of her lost sister was a no no- or worse, they did not care. And the old woman loved her; why mess up a good thing? Six years learning why people needed help at Auntie A's side as she dispensed herbs and advice to other country houses, ten years doing her best to make the burden of farm work lighter. All in all, sixteen years well spent. Who needed more?
Phase Aspect: Aunt's House in the Woods.
Rising Conflict: What shaped you?
The past catches up to you. Especially if it is ugly and you're running from it. Lily's quiet life in the woods ended only days short of her sixteenth birthday when one cold winter night she got out the front door to check the water pipes for freezing and somehow found herself standing in an even colder basement, in the middle of a circle of chalk and candles and with a crazy robed man claiming she were a demon and he had summoned her. The man was short, thin and hungry-looking under his robes and Lily felt pity for him, despite his maniacal demands to do his bidding and smite his enemies with the "nightmares from beyond". But things got infinitely worse when Auntie A. appeared, dressed in an even wierder, seamless black coat with long sleeves and a hood and a murderous expression on her face. Her aunt was an aging woman and until that night Lily would never describe her as scary. And just like that, the scrawny, pathetic man transformed upon seeing her, from someone Lily pitied to something terrible. Words were exchanged between them-they knew eachother. And when words did not suffice, bolts of flame and darkness right out of a nightmare or her aunt's horror stories told by the fire when she was a little girl. The cold basement was ruined, broken, but they still fought until part of the roof collapsed and fell on Auntie A. Lily's mind went numb. She ran out of the circle, not even registering the unseen pressure that tried but failed to bar her passage. She barely heard the man's chant and the second attempt to contain her. And she didn't see her clawed hands that tore the man apart and threw his pieces into the roaring fire.
When the shock had passed days later, she found herself in the woods, before a small mound of rocks and soil six feet long and half as wide, the charred remains of her clothing still clinging to her body. The only thing left of Auntie A was her strange coat, as unscathed by the ordeal as Lily's skin.
Phase Aspect: Out of the Circle, Into the Fire
The Story: What was your first adventure?
Her aunt's sacrifice so she could live shamed Lily but what really haunted her was her own transformation. And while her shame almost stopped her, in the end she had to know. Searching her aunt's things and diaries yielded some facts: her aunt became a farmer to escape something. The heavy coat was magic and it belonged to Lily's unknown mother and now to Lily herself. And Lily? Auntie A knew of her powers -though her diaries gave no details- and she had taken her along to "protect her soul". Following the scant clues, with several hard-to-read diaries in one hand and a magic coat on the other, Lily left the Great Smoky Mountains behind and headed for Virginia. On the way she experimented and learned to manipulate her innate abilities to enhance her physical self but it was not until she encountered yet another robed man that she learned what the coat did -besides keeping her warm and cosy- and why they wanted it; it offered magic, power. The man retreated then but days later she was assaulted in her motel room and for the first time drew from that power to defend herself. The warlock -for that's what he had been- she forced in retreat. The motel she did not manage to save as her frantic attempts drew far too much power for her to control; she learned of the price of power and what evil or ignorant people could do with it. Lily decided to keep it out of their hands and, if she could manage it, put it to good use.
Phase Aspect:Coat of Trouble
Guest Starring...
When a dark cabal sacrificing supernatural creatures to drain their power is uncovered in Virginia, Lily Young interferes and attempts to help the captives. But what happens when Lily plays right into a warlock's grasp and foils another rescuer's plans?
Phase Aspect: Good Intentions, Paved Roads
Guest Starring Redux
When Lily follows the tracks left by a powerful warlock back to the city of London, she stumbles into an entire cabal of dark mages... and the wizards that try to stop them. But will Lily cooperate with the White Council to put an end to that threat or will her mistrust of wizards give victory to the warlocks?
Phase Aspect: Not On My Watch!
SKILLS
Superb (+5) Conviction
Great (+4) Discipline, Fists, Athletics
Good (+3) Might, Endurance, Lore
Fair (+2) Rapport, Alertness, Empathy
Average (+1) Survival, Crafting, Resources
STUNS & POWERS
[-1] Item of Power (sponsored magic, one-time discount)
[+0] Unnatural Constitution (as per wizard's)
[-3] Evocation
[+1] Average Jane
[-6] Modular Ability (form follows function catch is wounds from holy objects, stacked with warding magic for immunity)
Total Refresh Adjustment: -9
