⁂ Third on a match. Meaning: bad luck.
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Autumn
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Touched
Brooke
She/Her
January 3
Exchange Junior Agent
Newton
Cooks Road, Lower Fens
25 years old
5'4"
Brown
Brown
Florence Pugh
Brooke grew up with her great grandmother's stories. The tales of high adventure, secret cabals, devilish intrigue, and gunfights in the streets amazed her. The woman at the heart of it all was long dead now, but her daughter, Brooke's grandmother, kept the stories alive. Brooke's mother's scowl as the tales were told made them all the more fascinating, forbidden fruit.
Each visit to grandmother's house started with the same question: have you dreamt well? Each time Brooke's grandmother asked, her mother would tense as if expecting a blow. The question, like the stories, added to the mystique. Brooke answered with a laugh each time; she had good dreams.
Then one day she dreamt of a cavern far beneath the earth and of a thing in the darkness with a snake's eyes, a thing waiting for her. Her grandmother aged twenty years when Brooke shared her dream, and her mother wept. The bad blood past them both. It was then her grandmother told her a story she'd never heard before. Brooke would not have a normal life.
Seasons passed and little changed, at least for a while. The thing in the darkness with the snake's eyes visited her dreams more often. Grandmother's stories took on a new meaning. No longer flights of fancy spun for her amusement. It was a blood-soaked biography.
The changes came next. Perhaps brought about by the nasty fall from her bike, or simply an opportunity to shine, her broken wrist was all but stiff and bruised by the time she pushed her bike home. That was far from the worst of it. The men came then, at the insistence of a letter; a safeguard in place for over a hundred years if the bad blood were to show in her family line.
The men brought two stories for Brooke. One had an ending, the other did not. The men left a business card with a number to call when they said their goodbyes. Brooke's parents debated their daughter's future. They argued and fought, but the choice before them was simple. They chose the story without an ending. A week later, Brooke was halfway across the country and settling into a boarding house.
Here Brooke learnt to harness the bad blood. She learnt more of the woman who was her great grandmother. The stories from her childhood held more meaning with this context. Brooke had heritage, and maybe even a purpose. University followed, and Brooke went home on breaks. She got fucked up at parties and made bad decisions, all while experiencing life through an eldritch lens.
Deciding to follow in great grandmother's footsteps dawned slowly, but later, Brooke realized her whole life led to this. When she was a child, she wanted to be the woman in grandmother's stories. Their shared blood sparked more kinship with the woman. Shortly, the Exchange added an arcane curriculum to her undergrad classes. Brooke drilled and trained and studied, and soon she graduated to receive her first posting: Easthaven.
5D6
6D6
5
3
Brooke's blood is tainted by Ayi'ig, the Serpent Goddess. Born of Yig, the Father of Serpents, and the Outer Goddess Yidhra, the Dream Witch, Ayi'ig is a cephalopodan-like horror with serpentine eyes and detachable tentacles, which move independently.
Her ancestry allows Brooke to detach parts of her body and maintain locomotive control over the appendage. She can make her unattached hand skitter across the floor like Thing from the Addams Family. A thoughtfully placed eye can act as sentry. These disassembled parts maintain an unbreakable bond and can be easily reattached. Her body craves to be whole, and any attempt to alter that paradigm is violently opposed. Ayi'ig's blessing made Brooke resilient to injury and death. Autotomy (self-severing) takes focus and concentration to do cleanly, but a heavy cleaver is just as effective.
Brooke suffers for these gifts. Her joints ache, especially in the cold. It takes time for her body to rejoin the bone and meat and nerves. Pins and needles accompany the loss in dexterity while her body reacquaints itself. Careful self-amputation is always quicker than traumatic autotomy to put back together. Brooke can regenerate, but it's slow and makes her ravenous for red meat; fresher the better.
Although her body craves to be whole, Ayi'ig's blessing stresses the fabric of her being. She is pulled taut. Illness, fatigue, and anxiety can unravel her. It's uncommon, but not unknown, for Brooke to lose bits of herself in these moments.
| Item Name | Description | Effect |
| Mari Lwyd Marble | Toothpaste | Heal |
| Mari Lwyd Marble | Lutz | Distraction |
| Light Jacket | Description | The jacket has Luck 1 versus Strike and can take a hit in place of the wearer's Luck once per thread. It does not activate if the wearer is hit by Cinder. |
| Bracing Pumpkin Liqueur | Description | On consuming this potion the drinker immediately regains 1 Luck, but also feels incredibly, staggeringly drunk |
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