Enoch Ashwood
Here’s my original writeup of Enoch Ashwood. I think it’s pretty much the same, except for the approaches (use whichever you prefer), and his trouble (I think “Aristocratic pretensions” is better than whatever I wrote at the session; was it “Resentful”?).
He should also probably have a gun. Not a super-occultism gun; a regular pistol. He can pull it out in a confrontation, and we can figure out how the Don’t Shoot Kids rules work.
Enoch Ashwood
Decarian born in 1861 (so he's 51 in 1912). His family were slave-holders in Missouri; their lands were trashed and fortunes destroyed in the Civil War, which Enoch is just barely old enough to remember. Resentful, he has devoted his genius to occult endeavors with the eventual aim of restoring the old order of things. He has a gift for the occult, combining mystical lore with modern technology. His most recent device (which utilizes the key and kite from Ben Franklin's famous electrical experiment) is a lightning cannon; his test firing in 1911 destroyed the Missouri state capitol building in Jefferson City. (This really happened! Not a lightning gun, but the building was hit by fire and burned down.) He has refined the device with equipment stolen from Nikola Tesla's lab in Colorado City; the encounter so frightened Tesla that the inventor has withdrawn from public life into obsessive cleaning and doing everything in sets of three. (This also really happened; Tesla started psychologically deteriorating around 1912.)
Ashwood is in Arizona en route to Mexico, where he hopes to sell his services to the Zapatista rebels. He wants to make money, but he's also hoping that if the rebels take Mexico, American business interests will be disrupted. His long-term goal is wrecking American industry and restoring slave-based agriculture.
Aspects
- High Concept: Brilliant occultist
- Trouble: Aristocratic pretensions
- The South will rise again!
Approaches
- Careful: +2
- Clever: +1
- Flashy: +2
- Forceful: +1
- Quick: +0
- Sneaky: +3
Gear / Stunts / Whatever
- Pendant of Nacreous Visions: When I Carefully mesmerize people with my magical pearl (acquired in Innsmouth, Massachusetts), I get a +2 to create advantage representing a hypnotic command or hallucination. (Removing the aspect requires some appropriate action, with a difficulty equal to Ashwood's roll creating it.)
Roleplay tip for the pendant: Think of that Russian hypnotist guy from Agent Carter. He has to get someone alone, get them talking. This isn't really a combat move; he can't just whip the pearl out and go "Abracadabra!" It's something where Ashwood will first do some investigating to learn people's weaknesses [create advantage action, earning a free tag on an existing aspect], then maybe manipulate them into a position of vulnerability [another create advantage], and then use the pendant [third create advantage, with the stunt going for him, and the free tags from the earlier ones]. And this is from Innsmouth, so there should always be something creepy and disturbing about the hallucination, even if it's not immediately apparent.
- Lightning Cannon: The lightning cannon isn't a practical human-scale combat weapon. It's more like an artillery cannon, something you use in a battle to take out a ship or a building. It's ungainly, and takes a while to recharge after each use. For travel purposes, it folds up into a large travel trunk, but is unusually heavy for a trunk that size. It's more a background element than a weapon, in Fate terms, so I didn't bother to give it a stunt. Instead, if he's in a position to use it, give it some number of rounds before it can go off, and assume it can destroy something large like a building or a ship. Any human hit will be killed, but it's easy enough to get out of the way before it fires, so it's only really dangerous to people who are incapacitated, and could easily be killed any old way.
