Somewhere along the line, my character's probably going to have an ally spirit. Is it possible to give the ally spirit the option of having alternate forms and letting it choose them itself?

Also, I'd like to have its first form be a gauntlet, just because gauntlets rock. It will be heavy-looking and stuff, with spikes on it.

I'm thinking of adding a girl in Shen's past who momentarily "humanizes" him; when thinking about why he loves her and stuff, he'll meditate on how his whole life had been devoted to universal principles and she made him see the beauty of everyday life by "understanding" him. Either she'll die of old age Highlander-style or they'll grow to hate one another because of their utterly polarized personalities.

[Freddie=Mercury]Who waaaaaaants... to liiiiiiiiivee..... foreveeeeeerrr..... [/Freddie]

I was thinking of having his awakening occur when he's a child and a wandering "wise man" comes around to teach the children about Confucianism. He'll be all like "everything has its place." He'll also give off the very true impression that he's trying to make good with the naive son of the local nobilitiy when he asks "Where is the fish?" One of the kids would give the obvious Confucian answer that's totally in keeping with the thread of the lecture and say "in the water, for it is its place." My character will say "There is no fish; all creatures are different, and so are fish in this respect." The "wise man" will point at him, show a momentary bit of greedy opportunism, and my character will assense for the first time, seeing him for all his gleeful desire and self-subservience. He'll also unconsciously cast his first spell, manabolting him at Force 6, almost killing him.

"There is no fish?" What is he, some bald kid in the Matrix?

Basically, he was trying some bullshit answer to try to throw off the wandering master and make a departure from the more logical answers the other kids were giving; the fact that the master accepted the answer was pretty much proof that he was full of shit. Although he was sincere and everything, he was also very smart and tricky.

Just leave out the Force in the story and everything is fine.

Dude, in ever story about awakenings, somebody casts a random spell at a crucial moment at, like, force 6 before passing out. You'd think they'd make an exception for your first spell.

Every story? Really? Wow.

He'll pass out afterwards, if that's any consolation.

Also, even though you have to build up magic, you also have to build up logic, intuition, strength, etc. etc. etc. Yet I doubt that most people, at the age of 10, have all of those set at 1. So even though he didn't really practic magic until then, I'm sure he'd be able to start out higher than 1, especially since his awakening's supposed to be a big deal and everything.

Plus, manabolt's DV: f/2. Even if he was overcasting, he'd take at most 3p, and if he's strong-willed enough to bait the "wise man," I'm sure he could survive it.

But my dude's the fairy godfather! If he was picked up as a hitchhiker by a college kid with a crush, he'd secretly do random things with magic to help him get the girl, like Accident her into tripping into his arms, or sustain Charisma and Intuition health spells on him. You don't give the wise sage a diagnosis to find the source of his power!

What would be cool is if he tried to accident her into falling into the guy's arms and instead the spell made her concealed gun misfire, taking out the guy he was trying to help.

Can I take that to mean that you disapprove, or that Accident can't be controlled?

That accident can't be controlled. I could be wrong though, as I don't have a book handy. IIRC it just says that you cause a glitch or critical glitch, but doesn't specify that you have any control.

Okay the, Psychokinesis it is.

Cool. She'll wonder who just pushed her, but in the absence of visible evidence the human mind can set aside a lot of strange occurrences so she might not think about it for long.

Or she'll just mysteriously stub her toe on an invisible root.

In which case she'd wonder what the heck she just kicked.

If it's in a wooded area, she won't suspect that nearly as much as the invisible hand of plot.

True. But even in a flat featureless grass plain she's likely to set her wonder aside after a moment. Few people stub their toe and suspect invisible meddling coots who think they know what's best for the world and can trip you with the power of their magical uberness.

My dude is an elf, he is physically incapable of being a "coot," at least not until the Horrors finish their bridge.

And do you think my dude's self-righteous or something? He wouldn't treat this as a social engineering project; it's personal gratitude more than anything. And even his people-watching is more of a personal thing, a mental diary of what people do.

Speaking of which, I should update that sometime.

What's so wrong with having a character who is self-righteous? Perfect characters are boring. To me, half of the fun in playing characters with a strong moral code is watching them be hypocrites, or break one of their rules and try to rationalize it, or try to do the right thing and have it blow up in their faces.

Obviously he's self-righteous. He thinks that he knows what is best for other people. And you don't need old age to be a coot, just an old coot.

<self righteousness>
Glyph: there's nothing wrong at all with being self-righteous as a character. I just like to make sure that emo knows when the character is being self righteous. Fictional charcters can misconstrue motives all they want, but us real life folk should pay closer attention to the whys and wherefors fo the world around us.
</self righteousness>

He's just trying to be sweet...

In a self righteous way.

I'm thinking of having him summon an ally spirit down the line as sort of a way for him to have a kid; his lack of faith in human love is what caused him to leave China in the first place, and he's very much the "take care of other living things" type of person, hence his moonlighting as a fairy tale godfather and his taking care of hellhound puppies. He sees what's wrong with having a relationship just to have a kid. Between this and adoption, he'll definitely choose this, since in this case his companion child thing will be born directly of his life force and be really, really uber. Sound like he's becoming the boring dad type?

Once he gets the hellhound puppies, he'll shapeshift into one and beat down any puppies that get in his way with force 1 stunbolts. In this form, he'll befriend the smallest and weakest puppy and get it to be the most respected and feared of the litter.

Heh, beating down puppies.

Also, I just updated Shen's bl0g.

I have an idea for one of his shadow "therapy" habits. If his client is an emotional cripple and has a pet that he can't bear loving, he'll kidnap the pet and watch until the owner cries. When he does so, the pet will run back to the yard and jump into the owner's arms. I'm sure it would work.

He'll also use that shapeshift spell to take the form of some small animal, like a puppy or a kitten. He'll use mindlink to communicate in that form.

Wow, he sounds like a real humanitarian... beating on the very creatures he sets to take care of.. such a loving character....

No, see, puppies play-fight. This playfighting's cute and everything, but it can also cause psychological damage for the smallest ones. This is sort of like immersive therapy for puppies in which it's cared for by another ultra-puppy. And I DID remember saying "force 1..."

Dude, I was thinking, it would be fun to be a puppy. Shen would love being petted on the head by his client, and I'm sure his client would enjoy petting him on the head. It should be mutually therapeutic.

I think he'll cry a lot for other people, but won't mind because he could basically crush anyone who made fun of him. This'll be a theme throughout his life; while he was a child, he had a lot of friends he made by being a really nice kid, including among grown-ups. When he got his magic, this expanded to manaboltings and spirits. He always had a reputation for being just really nice and benevolent, and even though he's depressed and pissed-off now, he tries to be nice to his clients, many of whom he doesn't ask for money, just the ones whose pets he steals.

Also, how do I roleplay the end of his little occupation of the Barrens? It seems a little God-Mod-ey to just say "it turned out fine yay!!"

I thought I read about a global sin repository of some sort, if I'm remembering correctly...

His parents can't control his sin
His sin would be valid in any setting, but he would have to apply for immigration or get deported if he got caught

That's why one of his contacts is a NAN shaman who sponsored him for immigration. The man is also his landlord.

I think about any way that you resolve his "occupation" of the barrens would be god-modey. Ditto for a lot of the other stuff - unless another GM will be running any of this, you are basically just hand-waving and saying "This is what happens."

The problem is that you are kind of running him like an NPC now. A player can only say what his or her character does, and the GM handles the rest of it. If you want to at least make it less god-modey, then start having his actions result in complications, or even disasters.

For the cult, maybe he starts it as a joke and ends it, only to find out that another, less scrupulous magician has started it up again, and it is starting to turn into a really nasty one, too. Hey, maybe it could even be the magician that his parents hired who does it. I already talked about all of the ways that his counseling could result in complications. The hellhound puppies also sound like a disaster in the making. It sounds like someone, who has no active or knowledge skills in handling animals, is trying out his own untested conjectures on a group of dangerous paranimals.

If there is another GM, it might help to bounce some of this stuff off of that GM, to get an idea of what might or might not work out as the character has planned.

I'll do that.

I'm not going to have my dude run a cult, but if he did, I'd relish a plot development like that.

And as for hellhounds, they're supposed to be like normal dogs, except they breathe fire and are smarter.

They seem to have the same instincts, though. And there's a canon old lady from Awakenings who has a hellhound as a pet. I'm sure that if an old lady can keep one in her apartment, Shen could keep one on his High lifestyle home.

Yeah, because she must have trained it just like regular animal trainers do with normal dogs.

What about a puppy?

A puppy can be trained too.

Especially if my dude himself turned into a puppy.

If you teach a dog (or likely a hellhound also) to respect you while you're a puppy, it may not even associate your human and dog forms. Your smell is almost certainly going to be different. A hellhound might be smart enough to make the connection if you change in front of it.

Do you intend to mount them? Dogs sometimes do that as a sign of authority.

If my character does that, I'm sure he'd lose concentration before it gets too far.

That's so weird! But did I expect anything else?

No.

You've got to give the guy credit though, he's representing SR far more faithfully than Microsoft... Then again so could my cat

Puppy humpings are VERY SR.

Yep. didn't the burgeoning shaman in the Dragonheart trilogy get his mojo from Dog?

Hang on! Why do you have a character in your own campaign?

If I play him, it'll be when somebody else GMs and I have no prior knowledge of what he'll do. And if he comes into the game while I GM, it'll be as a contact, or somebody over a comlink.