Talents and Characters

Harold Allison (Chaos)
Desc: He is a bearded young man with messy hair and clothes that probably belong in the 80's. A red and pink sweater worn inside-out over his body and a torn pair of black windbreakers with neon stripes around the hips. He smells like he hasn't bathed in a few weeks.
Notes: Has a talent for 'seeing things as they are' that includes discerning truth from falsehood. Left Argleton to go out into the world, got his heart broken and came back.

Hollie Keys (kentari)
Desc: She is a woman whose well-kept dark brown hair falls in ever-so-curled waves with all the liveliness of a coiled spring -- or viper -- to frame a forgettably statuesque face. She wears crisp greys and lacks much adornment, but what she does carry has a certain refined air about it suggesting either time or money involved in the acquisition. In not so many words, she's a dangerously benign blend of beauty and bland.
Notes: Can make doors lead from one place to another; is apparently in the Brigade on loan from some other organization.

Sophia Ransom (Caltak)
Desc: A young girl in her early teens with medium-length dark brown hair wearing a nondescript hoodie, jeans, and sneakers and with a backpack.
Notes: She is studying at the college and has the talent to enter the bodies of others and control them.

Citizen Brigade NPCs

Emma Tompkinson
Notes: Unmet thus far, has a Talent for keeping her cool in any and all situations.

Jamie, 'ghost'
Desc: he's albino-pale, tall and thin, wearing jeans and a t-shirt that are ripped and torn: though, unlike Harold, his clothing is expensive rather than style. He's also transparent.
Notes: A 15 year old kid who has only been in Argleton a week, Jamie is the only volunteer for this program and is as friendly and cheerful as one can be when permanently intangible to the world. On the plus side, he can become close to invisible if he needs to.

Lance Christensen, police officer
Desc: Lanc is a tall, ex-football player kind of guy, all blond hair, blue eyes and an attitude that just screams 'police officer'.
Notes: He can tell if other people have a Talent and what it is at a glance.

Treyvan Donison, mayor's grandson
Desc: A shorter, bland looking guy of about 20 is sitting on one of the chairs, looking bored. He can best be described as doughy
Notes: Can regenerate, reportedly to absurd degrees, though he still feels pain. Seems to prefer watching to participating at the moment.

Veronica Lake, activist
Desc: a stern-looking woman in her late 20s who looks flat-out furious to be in the room, let alone sitting in one of the chairs. She is favouring the world with a scowl that seems to say the world had better back off or she's going to rip it a new one
Notes: She is 100% pure human, a martial arts expert and harbours a serious grudge against Talents for ruining human achievement. She used to want all Talents dead but seems to have mellowed a little over the years.  A little.

Other People


Martin & Suzie Gaylord: Brother and sister who are robbing small stores together. He gives people bad luck, she paralyses with a touch.

Anna-Jean: old bag lady who doesn't like to be touched; she claims she kills anyone she touches, and at least believes this to be true though no one has seen it happen.
Barry: a homeless man who can set his own body on fire. It only hurts if he loses control.
Carlos: regular homeless guy.
Dieter: 'leader' of the small homeless contingent in Argleton, Dieter is a binder who can make people do what he wants when sober. As such, his friends keep him at least buzzed pretty much all the time.

Axis Mundi: GM Summary

UA SESSIONS TO DATE:

What has gone before ....

Hugh has been hired by one Amylin Hart to find out what happened to her mom, Laura. It transpired that Laura visited her mom at work (Grandma's Learning Centre) and had glowing reviews by customers. Apparently her mom raised her hand to hit Laura for driving drunk and then stated, "It's gone. It's all gone," and became irresponsive.

she was taken to Ravenshead Correctional Facility and placed under the care of one Dr. Jeremy Munroe (who transferred her to their country estate, Smithy Acres (aka Shitty Acres) and has refused to let Amylin see her mother at all. The walmart cashier has paid Hugh what she can to try and figure out what is going on, but his one trip to Shitty Acres just reveals what looks like, for a moment, an angel wrapped in chains in one of the windows of the walled house. The staff inform Hugh over the intercom that he has to make arrangements with Dr. Munroe for a visit.

According to Hugh's acquaintance, Dennis (who maintains his website) someone spent two hours trying to hack into it that evening; the why remains unknown, and Hugh decides Dr. Munroe in the morning.

Meanwhile, Jackson has finished a shift at work. Gustavo the butcher has left early and Vera and he close up, though Vera cutting up meat makes Jackson feel uneasy, as though she's listening to the echoes of some distant song. He leaves work and spots one spanish kid spraypainting garbage bins (with 'No babies!!!') and arrives at his apartment building to learn some ex-military man (Isiaha) has moved in and Sean -- across the hall -- has finished a counselling session with a thin 20-something named Snake. Snake takes one look at Jackon and runs off down the hall for reasons unknown.

Inside the apartment Thalia has been in her wheelchair watching PBS. They talk for a time and the girl next door, Mary-Anne Throckmorton, comes over with her autistic son Stanley. As usual, Stanley latches onto Thalia and watched her curiuously as the adults talk and eat; Stanley is =having a good spell though Mary-anne misses the nice lady at the one Learning Centre she takes Stanley to who seems to have retired. Stanley reluctantly goes home later.

The next day Hugh goes to visit Dr. Munroe, who produces a raw egg from his desk and breaks it with a hammer to demonstrate the frailty of the human psyche and why it would be dangerous for Laura Hart to see her daughter. Hugh asks about second opinions only to be told by Jeremy Munroe that:
"I am afraid I cannot release any case files due to confidentiality; I could release them to another doctor if Amylin requested such, but said doctor would be operating under the same penumbra of what is best for the patient," with an emphasis on patient. "I know it must be hard for Amylin to have no idea when her mother will get better." He offers up a washed-out smile. "It is rather difficult to try to explain to someone that their mother may well be cured when she stops being her mother."

Jackson head to work and feels himself being watched when he finished, ducking into the local Waffle House to find it was Snake, the boy he somehow spooked earlier. Snake claims to be in the business of buying and selling information and offers up, for food and coffee, that Jackson has a very weird aura and he thinks he knows what Thalia really is. He once saw someone to an exorcism in reverse, their heasd filled with fire, calling something foul into the world and he things that whatever happened to Thalia is like that.

Hugh has dinner with Tiff, his sometime-gf, which turns out nice and normal.

The next day is a Friday and ... a new session! Dr. Munroe is supposed to contact Hugh about meeting Laura Hart and Jackson is hoping Snake doesn't sell informatio about him and Thalia to the highest bidder.

A Time of Talent and Terror ....

(Updated May 7th)

100 years ago something Happened in the town of Argleton. To this day, no one knows what. All that is known for sure is that Argleton no longer shows up on most maps and no longer seems located in the county it used to be in: and no one can even agree where that was either. It is a town people find due to need and desperation and one very few of them ever leave.

Because being in Argleton changes you, if you let it. And in some cases, no matter what we wish or let, things happen. Some call if the Curse or the Blessing. Most call it the Talent and become capable of strange tricks and skills that are seldom normal at all: a few even have the same trick in varying degrees of strength (this is especially true of siblings) and some people are never even aware they have a Talent at all.

The flip side of all this is that there are those who are dividing the town into the Talented and the untalented, some trying to make use of Talents for nefarious ends and rumours of talents being taken out into the World for experiments or that certain drugs can boost Talents and so forth. Over the years, the minor curiosity of a few people with tricks has blossomed into over 10% of the entire town and the only thing that seems to be holding things together is the mayor, who seems to be immortal, and the chief of police – who is, as far as anyone can determine, immune to Talents.

But even they are hard-pressed to keep a lid on the simmering pot of resentments and ideologies and have/nots that threatens to boil over. As such, a Citizen's Brigade has formed,a semi-official group to straddle the line between law enforcement and by-law enforcement for the town, and the PCs have been selected to be part of this. Perhaps by choice, or for community service, orders of parents or to impress someone: you're reasons aren't important to the mayor, who just wants the town  to hold together.

Important Notes: Argleton is outside the modern world. Radio's work, local tvs work, but anything requires satellites won't, ditto with internet access. Pop culture does drift into it, via people coming into Argleton with items and there are some mysterious traders who seem able to enter and leave and will, often bringing newspapers and DVDs, but knowledge of the outside world is sketchy at best and some of the papers and DVDs seem to come from other earth's entirely.

ARGLETON

Argleton is a large town surrounded by farms, hills and a thick forest. The hill-folk tend to be quiet and insular, whereas the farm folk come in daily with food and supplies. Without the farms, Argleton would be a ghost town and the people on it are hard and tough, able to take what the land deals out and deal it right back when they need to.

Almost all the farmwork is done by hand but even if it wasn't, a town needs more than food and drink to survive. The hillfolk mine deep and sell what they find, but it is the grey-clad Traders who come into town with goods and items from the world that keep the town as part of the modern world, or at least try to do so.

SYSTEM

Risus!

12 dice, no one trait can have over 4-5 dice in it. PCs are expected to have , Life/Job, hobbies and such. While comedic use of cliches won't be allowed (say, pitting 'draw funny faces' against 'martial arts master via the back of a comic book' won't win via drawing a silly moustache on the enemy), the GM may allow PCs to buy double-pump if it fits a specific Talent. 

PCs must have a minimum of 3 cliches at 2 dice each.

Optional rule: Talent dice can be divided further into Power and Skill. So if you have 'burn shit down' at 4 dice, but want it to be more "I get mad and can't control it", you make it Power 5 and skill 3, for example. So any use of just fire comes in at 5 dice, any attempt to actually control the Talent is 3 dice.

Experience: This will be given out infrequently at best and is liable to be 'turn d6s into d8s' more than getting new cliches, unless PCs teach each other ones they know.

Notes

A Talent is pretty much a single trick that defies conventional reality. Some are terrifying, some are rather mundane, and many make no sense to anyone at all. The use of any Talent burns off energy, so how one loses and replenishes that energy is up to each pc. Generally, weaker talents burn les energy, and this holds true for a talent like 'fly in the air' vs. 'manipulate gravity': the more specific a Talent is, the less energy it will burn even if it is quite powerful.

What is known is that Talents develop sometime after puberty and often under stress. Existing skills can become Talents as well, so guy who used to be a Computer Genius is now a Tech Wizard and the like.

KNOWN TALENTS

Brute: Any talent involving one's own body. Toughness, strength, claws and such fall under this very broad rubric.
Elementalist: anyone with a talent for control over one or more elements. This is by far the most common Talent.
Finder: A knack for finding people and things.
Gearhead: Anyone whose talent involves tech and making things. Most forms of genius get lobbed under here.
Green Thumb: A talent generally held by at least one member of any farming family: stuff they plant grows very, very well.
Healer: Healers are uncommon and most end up working at the small hospital that services Argleton.
Lucky Duck: anyone with a talent over luck or possibility.
Mender: The common name for regeneration, but also applies to people who can fix items or stop them from breaking down.
Minder: Anyone whose talent involves the minds of others. Telepaths, naturally, are painted as bigger boogeymen than they really are.
'Porter: Teleporting, phasing and so forth. This is a pretty dangerous talent to the user, but does exist.
Transmuter: Aka a changer: Turn one thing into another. Limited by mass, volume, and a host of other things.

Many minor talents that  are just improved normal ones exist as well and likely increase the amount of people with Talents far beyond the 10% of the town with impressive/visible ones.

Note: The Talent 'lottery' seems set to random. Few people end up with a talent that magically cures or fixes some existing issue in their lives. (For these people, The Witch can be a godsend if they can make a deal for a talent they'd like instead.) There are also very few cases of a Talent physically changing someone, though temporary changes [due to Pumping] may happen at times.

RUMOURED TALENTS

Binder: Someone whose words can bind others to a geas.
Booster: Someone whose sole Talent is to improve the talents of others.
Creator: A person whose talent is to create things from nothing. (Transmuting is confused with this at times.)
Death-touch: Or glare, or anti-healing. The ability to kill with a touch. Considered to be anti-Talent propaganda.
Destroyer: Someone who can will things out of existence.
Phoenix: Someone who can die and come back.
Phoenix, flawed: you die, and you come back with some very minor Talent each time. Rinse, repeat.
Trickster: Shape-shifting. All reported cases have turned out to be Minders making illusions in people's heads.
Vampiric: Talents that involve sucking energy out of others and so forth.

TALENTS THAT DON'T EXIST

Anti-Talent: Someone who can shut down the talents of others; if this exists, logic states it would have been used against the mayor by now.
Medium: If anyone can actually speak to the dead, they are keeping mum about it. (This doesn't mean there aren't charlatans who claim they can, naturally.)
Multiple Talents: Aside from what the Witch can do, no recorded person with more than one Talent exists.
Mimic Talents: Also never recorded, believed impossible as an actual talent.
Seers: Any talent involving the future and time aren't known. Anyone who has claimed post- or pre-cognitive talents has been shown to be lying.
Time Travel: Many would want it, no one has it

MAGIC

Magic is a tricky one: a lot of things a gearhead makes can qualify, and might, but in general magic is known to exist -- at least in Argleton -- and allow practitioners to learn specific spells with limited effects. The use of magic requires time, rituals, will and is exhausting physically, mentally and spiritually. All miracles fall under the classification of magic as well, as much as it angers some of the devout.
Unlike Talents, anti-magical spells do exist and magical charms and talismans of dubious provenance are sold in sketchy shops. Further, no one with a Talent is capable of working magic though they can assist in magical workings.  Most Talents somehow provide an inate resistance to magic. Lastly, magic has never been observed to work outside of Argleton while some few strong Talents have.

PEOPLE:

Mayor:

Rudolph Donison: the nayor of Argleton, he has held the post for over 90 years and still appears to be 32 decades later. His only surviving son, Victor, is now in his 50s and rather bitter that he is getting old and dying. Rudolph has been known to deal with problems first-hand and thus far nothing -- in this world or of any other -- seems able to harm him. If need be, he is simply not where it lands but his body is also impervious to harm. He is quite willing to find and stop monsters to protect the town and his people. No one has even bothered with elections in the last 10 years.

Victor Donison: The mayor's last surviving son, Victor is a cold and bitter man who ran against his father three times for mayor until people decided having elections was rather silly. He has forgiven no one for that and runs a small pawn shop on the outskirts of town, selling weird things and information. Everyone is aware that his father disowned him 10 years ago owing to the horrible things Victor was doing to his son, but the details of those are unknown.
He is also one of the few openly practising magicians in the town.

Treyvan Donison: His grandson, now 18. While he does age, Victor possesses a regenerative talent that borders on the miraculous and allows him to heal from anything he's faced in his life thus far. On the flip side, he does feel pain so he's not exactly eager to test the limits of his talent. He is quiet by nature and tries not to use his family name for anything, but has finished school and is at loose ends.

The police:

Carmichael Jones: The Chief of Police. Carmichael Jones is a tough, grim man who has seen man's inhumanity to man and is known to be extremely hard on talents who abuse their powers against humans. He is human but considered by many to be the meanest and toughest man in the town when he has to be.

Wayland Chashi: The only flat-out Talent in the police department, Wayland is inhumanly strong and deals with rogue talents by hitting them until they don't get up again. It is widely believed that he sold his soul for his talent and that only Jones keeps him narrowly on the side of good.

Lance Christensen: Lance is a new hire for the department, since Jones was told he needed more talents. Lance's talent is to be able to spot the Talent in others and he is very, very good at it but also damn good at his job, much to Jones' chagrin.

The other four police officers work rotating shifts; all are male, which has been causing some fuss of late so the Citizen's Brigade has been ordered to incorporate more women.

The Policed:

Peter Spalding: Peter is a thin, balding man in his 50s who has the record for most time in jail in the entire town owing to a talent for telepathy, the fact that using talents on others is illegal, and lastly that his control has never been all that great. He spends most of his time very much alone and more than a little mad.

Mad Jack Jacks: Jack doesn't have a Talent, while the rest of his family does. Or did, until he dissected them all and attempted to figure out how Talents work. He's known to be somewhere among the hillfolk but beyond that no one is sure what he's doing or why, only that he is Argleton's Most Wanted and has somehow managed to hide from everyone and everything seeking him out for a damn long time.

Lenny Yu: A bright and fearfully ambitious man, Lenny is in his early 40s and convinced War Is Coming and builds things. Often weapons, and then he tests them, though seldom on people. Hence often being in jail and let out because he has a weapon or plan the town can use. He doesn't hate talents, like some people claim, but he hates the fact that they can do stuff that tales him years to learn and work out in mere moments.

Other People:

Mad Madeline: An old woman who is also a finder, though her talent manifests in finding things via seeing through the eyes of animals.

Trader Joe: One of the best-known traders, Joe has phenomenal luck and, for the right price, can find anything for anyone. He is also the only Trader to reveal his appearance, which is that of an albino man. He doesn't reveal how traders leave or return to Argleton and attempts at pushing him lead to finding out just how many people own him favours.

The witch: She goes by many names, none of them real, and moves about. Sometimes in Argleton, sometimes in the world, and currently goes by 'The Dealer', running a casino where you can trade anything for anything, because that is her Talent. If you want to trade something, she can make it happen. Talents, free will, skills, memories, limbs, even one's own life can be traded if both parties are willing. If she was ever human at all, she isn't anymore.