Humans

This page gives example characters for Lords of Being, to serve as ready-made characters for players, or to use as examples to base your own characters on.

Enid Littlesmith
Paranormal Investigator

Mrs. Enid Littlesmith is human, not a Lady of Order or Chaos. She was born Enid Dietrich, daughter of a mechanical engineer. Her father made a hobby of stage magic. From him, Enid learned about the world of the bizarre and occult, and how much flim-flam there is in it. She also learned how lots of the flim-flam works, and has since expanded her knowledge.

She married Edward Littlesmith and became his partner, running a business as estate auctioneers and antique dealers. Shortly after their twenty-fifth anniversary, though, he died. She found that the fun had gone out of her job, and, since she was wealthy enough, she retired early, in her mid-fifties.

Now, she travels. It's one of her main hobbies. She's not hugely wealthy, but she can always afford good clothes, good hotel rooms, good rental cars, etc. She takes a cruise ever year or so.

Her other hobby is investigating the paranormal. She often visits places where paranormal things are supposed to happen — staying at haunted houses, attending channeling sessions, talking to people who've seen a Bigfoot or a UFO. She has come to make a hobby of finding the natural or fraudulent causes behind most paranormal events. She has not always found a mundane cause, but that doesn't mean there wasn't one that she missed. She also sometimes assists other investigators, usually with money.

She may be perfectly pleasant to more arcane characters (not realizing what they are), but if they arouse her curiosity, she will investigate doggedly, and if she thinks they are frauds, she will become crisply hostile and really investigate doggedly. She will take some solid convincing, if anyone wants her to believe in the weird world of the Courts, but once convinced, she will not backslide or go to pieces over the sheer strangeness of it all.

Physically, Enid is a tall, lean woman with greying brown hair, worn short. She has a round, cheerful face and grey eyes. To start with, she is a complete rationalist, not believing in anything weird. She is cheerful, brisk, polite, and decent, with an unflapable, bullet-proof personality lacking in vices, phobias, or conspicuous bad habits.

Paranormal Investigator: 90% — Enid subscribes to the magazines of several skeptical and debunking organization, as well as some of the fringey publications on the pro side of the question. She knows some stage magic, though she doesn't perform. Her library has books on fringe topics, debunking, and stage magic. She knows the usual ways of faking psychic powers, phenomena mistaken for ghosts and UFOs, and similar debunker lore. Sign: Always carries a small video camera in her handbag.

Wealthy: 70% — Enid can't buy a house, or even a car at the drop of a hat, but she doesn't have to keep track of money for much smaller purchases. However, she does anyway. She got that money by being a good business woman. She knows sloppy or dishonest business practice when she sees it, and will often comment on it. Sign: Dresses a notch better than most of the people around her on any given occasion. Big tipper.

Prepared: 40% — As mentioned above, there are no major chinks in Enid's mental health. Nor does she offer a hold for blackmailers. On the physical side, she is in excellent health and quite willing to scramble over rough terrain or endure bad weather. Within sensible limits, she goes prepared and equipped for lots of life's little emergencies. Sign: Carries a large handbag, containing a small video camera, a cell phone, first aid stuff, a flashlight, or almost any mundane little item that could come in useful at a time like this ... whatever "time like this" it is.

Languages: English, French.

Str: 20% (80kg)   Psi: 20%
End: 30% Nrv: 50%
Act: 30% Prc: 50%

Hit Pts: 10__________________________________________
Nrv Pts: 17__________________________________________
Psi Pts: 7 __________________________________________

William Carrols
Fortean Investigator

Carrols's passion is investigating weird events, and his hero is Charles Fort. Fort was a journalist, active around 1900, with a great disdain for scientific authority. He loved to collect reports of inexplicable events, such as strange objects falling from the sky, or people vanishing mysteriously, along with the usual ghosts and UFOs. But he didn't believe the traditional folklore explanations either. "Like everybody else," Fort wrote, "I don't know what to think, but, rather uncommonly, I know that."

Like his hero, Carrols is a true skeptic. He neither believes nor disbelieves the standard scientific model of the world, or any of the religious or occult models. He is great at suspending belief, thinks very little is really important, but that lots of things are great fun.

However, investigating anomalies doesn't pay the bills. To do that, Carrols works on contract as an editor for several different magazines and book publishers, working in non-fiction. Besides providing income, this gives him access to a wide variety of libraries, databases, and news services, giving him leads for his investigations. He works about half the time and goes on investigative vacations the other half.

He is naturally very ascetic, which helps him save money. He lives in a bare, sunny little apartment, furnished with some patio furniture, a bed consisting of a sleeping bag on a mattress, and lots of book cases made of raw boards and cinder blocks. He makes his investigation trips in a beat-up, elderly station wagon, replaced whenever it wears out. He is perfectly happy to forego hotel bills by camping out, and to survive on water, bread, and raw vegetables.

He has a good camera and a few other measuring instruments, but his main tool of investigation is careful and meticulous observation, and persistence. He has learned to interview people, thoroughly and patiently, usually leaving them with the impression that he is a cheerful and pleasant scientist. (He's often rather evasive about who he's working for, since the answer is only "myself.")

He will be immensely surprised and pleased to discover something truly anomalous involving the Courts and the Breakdown, but, after a while, he may well decide the Courtiers are not necessarily any closer to the ultimate truth about things than anyone else. Carrols is a wiry, sun-browned man in his mid-thirties, with black hair and beard, cut short but rather shaggily by himself. He usually wears tough, outdoors clothing.

Fortean Investigator: 80% — Carrols is familiar with all the usual weird things that happen, so he will notice if new weird things begin happening, or if there is a sudden increase in the weirdness rate. He also knows the standard scientific explanations or evasions of most anomalies and has a good general grounding in science. Being a Fortean, he doesn't necessarily believe it, though, or disbelieve in it. Sign: Often makes off use of the phrase "the theory is," as in "the theory is that the sun will rise soon."

Ascetic: 70% — Carrols is very good at doing without. He is also good at scrounging, knowing where to find food or shelter where there might appear to be none. He can't use this ability to attack, but he can use it to resist hardship, including hardship inflicted by others. It also aids him in his persistence as an investigator. Sign: Weatherbeaten.

Editor: 50% — Carrols knows how newspapers, magazines, book publishers, and news services work. He has contacts in them, and can pass himself off as a journalist. He also knows how to use their resources to track stories or research recent history. Sign: Apartment and car are full of books and magazines.

Languages: English, Spanish

Str: 30% (100kg)   Psi: 10%
End: 50% Nrv: 40%
Act: 50% Prc: 40%

Hit Pts: 17__________________________________________
Nrv Pts: 13 _________________________________________
Psi Pts: 3 __________________________________________

Jacob Boniface
Semi-Clued Occultist

When Jacob was eight, his grandmother died, but that didn't end the relationship. He saw her four more times, in broad daylight, and spoke with her. Twice, it was clear that passers-by saw her too. She didn't look at all spectral. She looked happy and radiantly healthy. He wishes now that he could remember exactly what she said; all he recalls is that it was affectionate and encouraging.

As a result of those encounters, Jacob became very religious for a while, but found that ordinary church-going didn't seem to bring him any closer to the joy he felt on seeing his grandmother. He began investigating on his own and eventually shifted interest to occultism. He studied Theosophy, Spiritualism, Rosicrucianism, eastern religions, and so forth. Now, twenty years later, he feels that occultism was a blind alley, too, but he can't just drop it. It has become his profession.

Jacob owns and runs a small bookstore, selling New Age literature, along with more serious occult and spiritual media. It does all right, but even more important is the room in the back, where Jacob serves clients as fortune-teller and spiritual counsellor. He does quite well at this, because he is a genuine clairvoyant. Some people have acquired lots of money by listening to Jacob, or avoided lots of trouble, and they and their friends keep coming back, with useful amounts of money, because Jacob is honest and discrete. He has assisted the police a time or two, as well. And he's very good at handling his own investments.

Jacob is now aiming for mystical enlightenment, via meditation. His occult business is rather a distraction to him now. A bigger problem, he recognizes, is that his temperament is analytical, not basically mystical, so meditation doesn't come easily to him. But his biggest distraction of the moment is the Breakdown. As a clairvoyant, he noticed it. It happened while he was ringing up a sale for a customer. He experienced a really massive twinge of strangeness, but the customer picked up his book and left, noticing nothing. Jacob, though, immediately retired to his back office, tried meditating and some directed imagery, and came up with swirling images of the world breaking up and re-forming, with gulfs of dizzy blackness in between.

He now dreams these images most nights, and feels the dizzy blackness is always lurking in the background. He is making cautious inquiries among his occultist and second-sighted friends, but hasn't found out much, except that some of them felt the twinge, too. He does not know of the existence of the Courts.

Physically, Jacob is tall, lean, and unathletic, with pale skin, dark brown hair, and hazel eyes. He's in his early thirties. He favors plain, dark clothes, for a semi-Goth look.

Clairvoyant: 70% — Jacob's occult studies brought out a gift for second sight. After a spot of quiet meditation and the expenditure of 3 psi points, Jacob can glance into a crystal ball, a flame, a cup of water, or similar glittery object, and get 1d6 short views about the subject of inquiry. He prefers to use a flame. He has often seen people's auras. He has also occasionally seen auras without people, at occult ceremonies, near dying people or animals, or just wandering about — spirits, of course. Sign: Carries a lighter but doesn't smoke.

Occultist: 90% — Jacob has a B.A. in Anthropology, and belongs to a number of mystical orders. (Some of these orders would be upset if they discovered what other orders he belonged to.) He has often taken part in various forms of ceremonial magic and channeling sessions, though he has never successfully channeled anything himself. He's done a lot of divination. He could probably put several names to any angel, demon, fay, or elemental he encountered. But he has not heard of the Courts of Order and Chaos, and would dismiss them as literary inventions. Sign: Runs an occult bookstore.

Former Rent-A-Cop: 40% — While in college, Jacob often worked as a night watchman. It was a great way to get lots of quiet time for reading. And it was nothing like as scary as some of the things he was up to while studying the occult. He never did more than shoo off some would-be vandals, but he did learn how to move quietly and handle a gun. Sign: Owns a handgun.

Languages: English, French, Latin, bits of Hebrew and Greek and Sanskrit

Str: 20% (80kg)   Psi: 70%
End: 30% Nrv: 35%
Act: 30% Prc: 65%

Hit Pts: 10__________________________________________
Nrv Pts: 12__________________________________________
Psi Pts: 23 _________________________________________

Susan Criffield
Clued-In Scientist

Susan isn't a Courtier, but she used to date one. This was back when she was a college student. After several months' acquaintance, she accidentally caught him in the act of transforming back from being a cat. He subsequently told her about himself and the Courts. This ended the dating, though they remained good friends. It also spurred Susan to get more in touch with the basics of the world — meaning she became both more religious and more interested in science.

She has since become a physics professor at a small college. Besides her teaching duties, she is also involved in some research in solid-state physics; she is part of a team of scientists scattered over several colleges and universities, and contributes by designing and building much of the specialized electronic equipment needed for the project's experiments and measurements.

Susan now has a husband, Martin, who is a software engineer, and an eight-year-old son, Mark. She's told Martin about the Courts. He's sure she sincerely believes what she says, and something weird must have happened, but he can't imagine what; he tries not to think about it. So, frankly, does Susan. Her life is going fine, and it's not like she was supposed to do anything about the Courts.

Not until the Breakdown. Susan, along with the rest of humanity, was temporarily disembodied, then put back in place. She held no memory of the experience, but that night it troubled her dreams. She'd never have remembered those dreams except for her experiences with her old boyfriend. She woke, badly frightened, and roused Martin, who'd been having similar dreams. They carefully did not wake Mark, who is still blissfully oblivious to the Breakdown, at least during his waking hours.

The next day, Susan called her old boyfriend, asking if he could throw light on what happened. Oh, yes! Since then, Susan and Martin have begun watching for news stories about anomalous events, and wondering.

Her old boyfriend has been wondering, too. Now that the Courtiers are racing around, fixing anomalies, they can often use some scientific advice or some specialized equipment. Susan could be a useful contact.

Susan will not be happy about being such a contact. She certainly doesn't want to run off on an adventure, fixing anomalies. She has her family and career. On the other hand, she wants to do her bit to help keep the universe running...

Martin will need a little more convincing that all this weirdness is real, but once he's convinced, he and Susan will suffer the same mixed emotions. They will both be determined to keep Mark safe and uninvolved.

Electronic Design: 90% — Although she's never done so, Susan could design, install, or repair an electronic bug or wiretap, or repair most kinds of domestic, commerical, or military electronics, as long as she could get the parts and read the specs. Note that she does not have any skill at computer hacking; she works in hardware, not software. Sign: Electronics workshop at home and a layer of stray widgets in the back of her car.

Physical Science: 80% — Adjust this value up or down, adding to it if matters concern her specialty (solid state physics), subtracting as it gets into things like organic chemistry or geology. Susan has a Ph.D. in physics and is literate in science generally. This entails literacy in math and computers, too. Sign: House littered with science books and magazines. Uses words and phrases like "approximation" and "order of magnitude."

Clued-In: 30% — Susan knows, in a general way, of the existence of the Courts of Order and Chaos, the Courtiers, and the whole metaphysical world. She knows something about the Coutiers' powers and responsibilities. She knows the Courts have had a falling out and thus displeased the Higher Powers. She does not (yet) know about any details of politics or personalities in the Courts, or "blockages" and "paths," or the extent of Courtiers' powers. If she is called on to help, though, she will want to know, quickly. Sign: Keeps a notebook of anomalous news items, also containing contact information for her old boyfriend and maybe a couple of other Courtiers.

Languages: English, Spanish.

Str: 20% (80kg)   Psi: 20%
End: 30% Nrv: 50%
Act: 30% Prc: 50%

Hit Pts: 10__________________________________________
Nrv Pts: 17__________________________________________
Psi Pts: 7 __________________________________________