Sam/Background
The following information is Sam's background, is to be used for OOC or staff purposes only.
What role does your character play in mortal society? How does your character pay the bills, where do they live (needn't be specific, but describe its characteristics)? How do they get around the city?
Sam lives outside of mortal society – sort of. He’s better suited to watching it for weakness, or his targets of choice: animal abusers. Aside from “punishing” them by freeing their “pets,” he often takes small things of value, which he later pawns. He’s been doing it ever since his Chrysalis, and that was a long time ago.
Unless someone drives him, Sam walks everywhere at night. He’s best kept out of sight.
How does your character view authority: Mortal civil authority (City Hall, Congress, etc), Mortal Legal Authority (The Courts, The Police), Mortal social authority (societal norms and mores, religions, any particular cliques or social groups your character interacts with regularly)? What about faerie authority (the nobility, the feudal system), and faerie social authority (the seelie and unseelie courts)?
Mortal Government: No opinion. It does good, it does bad; its results depends upon perspective. It can be a pulpit for visionaries and bullies alike.
Mortal Law Enforcement: No opinion. It does good, it does bad; its results depends upon perspective. It can be a pulpit for visionaries and bullies alike.
Mortal Society: For the most part, Sam dislike and disrespects mortal social norms, systems, and philosophies. He finds them to be too uncertain, subjective, or ethereal to be worthy of consideration. He is a retributionist, and has some respect for absolute extremism, although he finds that mortal men and women haven’t the heart to follow such beliefs.
Faerie Authority: Pointless. His understanding of feudalism is largely a superficial one. In his opinion, it is a Sidhe construct: good for the Sidhe and their perspective of Dreams, but largely irrelevant to the other Kithain. Sam believes the Kithain should act as they were created and intended. Authority should derive from the Kiths themselves.
Faerie Courts: To Sam, the Codes are the lie. Whether one is Seelie or Unseelie, the only thing that matters is whether a Kithain acts does as they are intended. Of course, Sam’s opinion on what each Kith should do or represent is subjective, and held close to his heart. Sam’s course of conduct follows closer to the Unseelie Court than the Seelie, though he does honor a few of the Seelie Code’s tenets.
How does your character keep themselves in Glamour, generally? What is their musing threshold? (Even if Unseelie.) What is their ravaging threshold? (Even if Seelie.) What on earth are they doing in such a Glamour-starved, Banality-ridden hell-hole like Detroit, anyway?
He is the “who” when you say “who’s there?” He is the wind whispering in your hair. He is a Sluagh, and he only aspires to be a Sluagh. To be anything more than that, in his mind, is lying to oneself. And to be a Sluagh is to be everything the dark inspires: fear; terror; and, in some cases, hope.
Musing Threshold – Helping Those in Need: Sam is the self-appointed savior of animals. During his nightly escapades, he also comes upon other abused things: children; the elderly; those who cannot protect themselves. For them, he is happy to visit their abusers, who are hopefully inspired by his brand of “motivational speaking” to straighten their lives – and those of the abused.
Ravaging Threshold – Break Trust: Everyone will end up like Sam, and he is alone. In the darkness, you can only sense yourself, and can only trust yourself.
Why Detroit? Sam followed Zoe. Actually, Zoe asked him to come along: told him that it was his duty as a Sluagh to not limit his terrorizing to one location. The people of Detroit are equally as deserving of his means and capabilities. So, he came along quite willingly.
What are your character's strengths? Discuss your character's merits, but also their personality and skills/abilities. What do you offer to a Faerie County when you live there? What about a motley?
Sam fancies himself the embodiment of what it means to be a Sluagh. First, he can defy the laws of nature by becoming a puddle of shadow. Second, he is vast and immense, like darkness. Finally, he can see where there is no light. There can be no one better-suited (in his mind).
Consequently, he excels on the skills necessary to inspire terror. He is physical, and is skilled at that form of Intimidation (Athletics 2, Brawl 3, Intimidation 2). He can break into places, move undetected, and, when needed, create his own instruments of fear (Crafts 2, Security 2, Stealth 3). Worse, he has the knowledge to not only hurt people, but also do things to a captive that would make a Redcap squeamish (Medicine 2, Science 2). Were this D&D, he would be a rogue.
Every county needs its Sluagh, but they often need more than someone that just watches, listens, and trades information. Sam’s ability allows him to perform the sort of espionage and counter-punching that Redcaps and Trolls cannot perform. He can get into a secure building, scout out its interior, and then unlock the doors from the inside to allow the shock troops to invade. If needed, he can even assassinate by crushing a target in his arms (Strength 4, Brawl 3). So, he’s a half-orc rogue.
For a motley, Sam is an intimidating friend to have. He doesn’t say much, but he doesn’t have to: a 7-foot-plus Sluagh cloaked in black is something no one wants to tangle with. That the Sluagh may be eager and able to tangle makes the situation worse.
Personality-wise, Sam is taciturn, but zealous. His zeal lies in his unwavering belief that all Kithain were made for a specific purpose, and that they should excel and devote their existences to perfecting that purpose. He respects those that follow his belief system, even unwittingly.
What are your character's weaknesses? Discuss your flaws, but also your character's personality. What specific things is your character incapable of that they wish they were better at, and why haven't they become better at them in the past?
Inasmuch as he respects Kithain that do as intended, so does he have little tolerance for those who vacillate. A Sluagh that blanches or becomes uncomfortable with inflicting fear and terror is especially hated. As Sam has been a Kithain for some time, he has a large capacity for hate in him, and he unleashes that hate ferociously against those that would let their “mortal sensibilities” cloud their purpose. His rigid view of the Kithain world is his first weakness.
A Sluagh’s weaknesses are amplified with Sam. He cannot function as a normal mortal, and his Slipped Seeming makes it nigh impossible to interact with mortals without being heavily-cloaked. Under that clothing, he cannot effectively even whisper a command, so he relies on sign language, which is very useless in the dark that Sam often stays in. Thus, communication is his second weakness.
How much of your Character's birth family is alive and where do they live? How close is your character to these people? What has your character's past friendships and romantic relationships been like? What is your character's view of romantic love, sex, lust, and related concepts?
Sam does not remember his family from before, and keeps no connection to them. Whether they are dead or disinterested in finding him may come up in a future plot, but there’s no current plans to have his family in the picture.
Romantic relationships are a near-impossibility with Sam’s mindset. For him, his purpose is all that matters, and it’s difficult to maintain any sort of loving relationship when one has devoted oneself to the promotion of fear and terror. While those emotions are worthwhile to have, they are not for him. Sam therefore eschews them, does not think on them much, and does not see himself able to comment on them.
What specific items, equipment, material resources does your character have access to? What level of comfort are they accustomed to? What, if any, material things really matter to them?
Sam has limited financial resources, which he has appropriated from those he believes deserves to be relieved of them. The scant money he has does not matter to him, however; what he needs, he takes, and few people have the stomach to object. Sam’s belief is to only take what he needs, and what he needs is something that others would rather not want to know.
The only “material” possession is a smart-talking black chimerical cat that sits on his shoulders. Sam’s companion, “Maxine,” can talk to others for Sam, but he prefers to communicate only when he has to. Maxine isn’t particularly powerful, but can serve as a messenger to those Sam chooses to remain in contact with.
Who fostered your character after their Chrysalis? What about mortal education, how far along did your character get, there? What, coming in, does your character think is wrong with Detroit (if anything)?
Sam has no mortal education, and was raised as a fostered orphan among the Sluagh of San Francisco. He cannot remember who he was before his Chrysalis. His unique skills and affinity for shadow made him a favored pet among the Sluagh mavens, around whose skirts he grew into who he was.
What’s wrong with Detroit? It’s not the general level of fear: it’s what the fear has twisted people into. Terror without purpose is ugly and stagnating. Sam hopes to turn the tide of fear into something more productive, although he is not one to divulge that desire.
Give me a (brief) timeline of the most important events in your character's past. Does your character believe in destiny?
It is difficult to pinpoint an important moment in an amnesiac’s development, but Sam’s embrace of the Slaugh stereotype likely counts as the most important. Sam does believe in destiny, insofar as it relates to the purpose for which one is created. For him, everyone was meant to do something – mundane or not – and that something brings them joy. Any deviation from that purpose is wasteful and must be corrected. Mothers must raise their children; soldiers must fight; and leaders must lead. In a way, destiny is the focal point of Sam’s core beliefs.
Add to your app anything else, a poem, a youtube link, a picture of a cat, whatever you feel helps convey - in a format other than typed-up words - what your character's essence is about.
Sam is an amalgam between the Babadook and the Qunari from Dragon Age. The kitten on his wiki page is intended to be a distraction from how horrifying that combination may be.
