Victor Knight
Note that I make no guarantee the following is up to date.
Character: Victor Knight
Player: Nunzio Thron
Aspects:
- Archetype (super-normal): World’s Greatest Detective (note this is tongue-in-cheek: although Victor has the highest possible investigating skill a human can have, it pales in comparison to Strange investigation skills)
- Social Class (middle): Known to many, friend to few
- Conviction: I will illuminate everything
- Conviction: Strangeness doesn’t define a person
- Minor complication: Truth before tact
- Free aspect: Tutored by Bartholomew Ford
- Free aspect: UNDETERMINED
- Free aspect: No one can keep up with me (note this is intended more towards alienation than arrogance, although it can be tagged for both)
Skills:
- 1. Occultism, Contacting, First Aid
- 2. Presence, Athletics, Resources
- 3. Academics, Resolve, Steeped in Strangeness (Strange, superhuman)
- 4. It’s Obvious (unique, extraordinary), The World Stands Still (Strange, ascendant)
Tier benefits:
- Insight: weapon 1 [composure]
- Notice: defend normally even when surprised
- Dexterity: spend a fate point to use this trapping as a free action
- Move: move 3 zones as a free action
- Stress capacity [mental]: Armor 1 (mental)
Power Tiers/Gifts:
- Free gift: +5 skill points
- Extraordinary power tier: -1 refresh
- Ascendant power tier: -4 refresh
- Refresh: 5
Unique and Strange skills:
- (3) It’s Obvious: Examine, Information, Insight, Notice. Drawback of minor complication: I’m a genius.
- (12) The World Stands Still: Dexterity, Dodge, Examine, Initiative [physical] Notice, Move, Security, Skulk, Strike. Drawback of conviction: Strangeness doesn’t define a person.
- (6) Steeped in Strangeness: Information, Willpower, Stress Capacity [mental]
Appearance:
Tall and thin, almost emaciated. Fair skinned with light brown hair and eyes. Always clean-shaven, hair always trimmed very short. Clothes well-worn, and clearly for comfort and convenience instead of looks. No rings or other ornamentation. His eyes either dart around constantly, or focus on one thing for an extended period of time. He never meets another’s eyes for more than a moment. The observant will notice he sits with the stillness of a born fidgeter trained out of that habit at a very young age.
Equipment: (this may be beyond Victor’s means, but seems appropriate)
- Duster (many pockets: Victor just remembers what’s in each one. Money is spread around, so watching him pay for something is interesting, as he reaches unerringly into various pockets to pull out exact change)
- Lock picks
- Walking stick (made of a very hard wood, usable as a crude weapon, given to him by Bartholomew)
- Candles and matches
- Magnifying glass (because of course)
- Random sheets of paper (useful for collecting strange dirt at scene, wrapping things up, etc.) and charcoal to write with
- Measuring tape (Victor usually eyeballs it but occasionally needs the accuracy)
- Razor, mirror, soap (why he carriers these everywhere is just idiosyncratic)
- String
- Weights, and a small scale
- A ring (sized for a child) Victor never wears, given to him by his parents the day of the great social event he ruined. The only thing his parents gave him he kept, in order to remind himself.
- A few books, essays, and pamphlets on diverse topics
Humble Beginnings: Victor was born the son of a magnate, relatively well off, on the upper end of middle class. His parents desired more, however, and Victor received the best tutors from a young age, kept mostly at home away from the roughening influence of other children. He showed great intelligence, insight, and precociousness: he never really missed having playmates being able to enjoy his interactions with adults. He was prone to blurting out interesting tidbits (e.g. Did you know that our cat usually saves a few mice she kills under the stairs but sometimes she leaves one on the roof and the old tom from the street comes visiting?) which his tutors praised as showing a lively mind and his parents found precious.
Follies of Youth: When Victor was 8, his parents got their in to an upper class social event, and brought their precocious son along to show off. Unfortunately, Victor recognized a gentleman there and blurted out “That’s the man who sleeps with mum like dad does!” dashing his parent’s hopes of entering into higher society and leading quickly to their separation. With his parents apart and no longer treating him as the wonder they had found him before, Victor ran away and joined his favorite tutor, Bartholomew Ford. Of course his parents had let the tutors go as soon as they were no longer grooming their son for a better position.
First Awakenings: Bartholomew couldn’t really afford an assistant, but he felt Victor’s parents had done him harm by raising him as a set piece rather than a child, and so endeavored to take care of him. It should be noted that Victor’s parents made only the most perfunctory efforts to locate and retrieve him. A few months after taking Victor on Bartholomew was falsely accused of stealing from a family he was tutoring for. In despair he talked it over with Victor, who asked questions that led Bartholomew to the conclusion that his student had hidden the object himself in an attempt to get Bartholomew fired and free himself from hated schooling. Realizing the gift Victor had shown, Bartholomew, in between tutoring jobs, helped friends of his solve confusing problems by using Victor as a sounding board. As word of this spread, this became a sufficient alternate source of income that Bartholomew was no longer having to scramble to keep Victor fed and clothed. As Victor got older, he took over the investigation business directly. He had a few cases with strange goings on that he was able to explain, but left him with the niggling feeling that he’d missed something. When Victor was 18 (year open to editing), he investigated reports of a poltergeist and could not find a non-magical explanation for them. These events were because of Kristen’s character (replace with character name when available), and Victor almost stumbled upon her trial to enter Kerberos, but was brained by a brick that hit his head in a trajectory violating all known physics (probably the fault of Josh’s character). This brought him to the attention of the Kerberos club, but while Victor seemed very strange he was not in any way Strange.
Mysterious Origins: For some period of time (adjustable to best fit with other characters’ stories, defaulting to somewhere in the six months to two years range) the Kerberos Club watched Victor with some interest while he tried to figure out what was going on. He suspected he was being watched, but did not have the skills to catch the watchers in the act. He knew there were things beyond his knowledge, but not how to learn about them. This state of affairs continued until an enterprising Kerberosian (pick an NPC, or possibly a character) decided to use Victor in the trial for another Kerberos Club entrant (either an NPC or Chris’s character) as the annoyingly hard to shake investigator that you must keep the secrets of the Strange from. Due to various machinations things got out of hand, and Victor and the entrant found themselves in a deathtrap that only the sudden manifestation of Victor’s Strange skill saved them from. The Kerberos Club considered this sufficient to count as Victor’s challenge and admitted him.
Great Failing: Victor must show how brilliant he is, how much he sees. He cannot leave well enough alone. He cannot accept ignorance as a final resting place. It broke up his family and would have led to his death if his Strangeness had not manifested itself.
Notes: The World Stands Still: Victor’s Strangeness is that he can, with a conscious effort and some stress to himself (represented by the charges drawback), stop time. At least, that’s how it appears: Victor moves at a speed impossible to follow with normal senses for a short period of time. Despite moving so quickly, objects he interacts with react normally to Victor (thus he can open doors, disable traps, pick people’s pockets, etc. at high speed without worrying about ripping doors off their hinges or the like). Note that this means that the strike trapping works by striking over and over again in an incredibly short period of time, since each blow still hits with normal force. If Victor picked up an object and threw it while moving this quickly, it would appear to him to freeze in midair as soon as he stopped touching it, and in normal time would continue at normal speed for a throw. Note that conceptually this Strangeness could do things that aren’t represented mechanically (because I couldn’t afford them), so just presume Victor doesn’t have the mastery to do such things yet. For instance, one could imagine quickly building a simple wooden barrier to block a barrage of bullets.
Despite having an ascendant level Strangeness, what Victor values in himself is his investigative ability. Thus, he is slightly put out that the Kerberos Club admitted him on the strength of the former rather than the latter. Victor feels more alienated by his intellect than his Strangeness. As the game proceeds I plan to play him accepting this distinction more, and mechanically eventually removing the charges drawback from his Strange skill.
Lisa: I actually think leaving Lucius (spelling? psychic detective) in the Kerberos club could be interesting. Here is someone who is a better investigator than Victor, but something about how he does it just seems off to Victor. Obviously, whenever they’re together Lucius thinks of things at least as quickly as Victor does, but when Victor hears accounts of how Lucius solved cases when Victor wasn’t present they don’t sound quite right. I like how this undermines Victor’s sense of specialness for his investigative ability, and feeds the tension between valuing that and valuing his Strangeness.
In case it’s not obvious, Victor is arrogant and not socially adept. He needs to show off his intellect: these should be compels on “Admire my genius”.
