How do you portray a character or NPC that is simply "creepy"
A character that has Astral Hazing, as a GM and player how does this impact the environment, what kind of creeped out feel does it impart?
do you feel it out as just an icky feeling? or is there a sense of forboding does the NPC (or player character) feel an instinctive urge to leave, does an awakened person hear a demonic voice commanding them to "GEEeeeEEeeET OooooUUUuuuUT!"
when around someone with a Nasty Vibe do the hairs stand up on the back of your neck? do you know "that guy" is just wrong? or does he just look at you wrong ALL THE TIME!?
Critter spook is not creepy by itself..you just smell wrong to an animal, perhaps you smell dead, or your pheremones give off the predatory scent.
however... combine it with the other two. someone who exudes a nasty vibe, spooks critters AND has Astral Hazing...
if that guy was astrally assensed...how would he look? how would the assenssor feel? would he have twisting writhing shadows all around him? would they twist into distorted faces begging for an "end" would the assensor recognize these faces? would it look dark and misty? like dark steam/mist rising from the earth around him?

the qualities I've found that might have an effect on how you feel around someone are as follows. please feel free to suggest those that are not here:
Astral Hazing
Nasty Vibe
Critter spook

Like this.

LOL That's messed up

I fiddled around with a concept like that, and those were the three qualities I came up with, too. A character could theoretically look completely normal and still have those qualities. However, those qualities, by affecting how everyone reacts to the character, would shape that character's personality.

The character could wind up socially isolated, distant, kind of like Rei Ayanami, but even more extreme. A cold, distant, introvert. Or, the character could wind up using those reactions to his advantage, becoming good at intimidation and affecting a sinister manner. Or, the character could decide, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, to become the monster that everyone seems to think he is anyways - he would still radiate menace, but it would be more than a mere facade. Finally, the character might actually be relatively normal despite freaking everyone out. This is an affect of SURGE, so the character could have had a life before that, where he was socialized normally.

This sounds less than creepy, more terrifying. Animals are afraid. People think they're in the presence of evil. He taints the astral plane. People will think he's the goddamn devil.

Just.. think of all the things that guys who wear capes and smell like chips might do. Do that.

And so will he - after being infected with the Bruckner-Langer Strain and gaining the Delusion NQ.

1) Provide something mechanically supported. This is the easiest. Background count/astral hazing, willpower checks to avoid intimidation when you're around him, etc. Something solid, with numbers.

2) Provide something more ethereal and role-playing. Descriptions. His movements are jerky and out of synch. His breathing is loud and raspy, and whenever there's a pause in the conversation, it seems to reverberate through the room. He flinches when he sees a particular sort of object. He keeps staring at one character throughout the meet. He says nothing at all and when he walks around, he seems to look through everything. Whatever. Make it distinct, colorful, inexplicable and somehow dangerous.

3) Provide something unknown. He has a strange astral effect no one can identify. He has a power no one has ever seen before. Something they just can't explain or quite understand.

Describe the NPC as very creepy looking and calling for a Composure Test on the part of the PC's. No magic needed, unless you want the effect to be magical in nature. Not everything that's scary or unsettling has to be an Evil Magical Threat™. Granted, most veterans of the shadows are pretty cool customers, so I can understand wanting to have something with a bit more punch.

Hmmm... what are those three qualities from ? 3rd or 4th ? Cant seem to find them anywhere in my 4th edition books.

Edit : Found Astral Hazing and Critter Spook, but not Nasty vibe so far

presuming they still have a magic rating *the mage assences* gets a few hits - ask for his pool and roll it for him for him, whatever. I'd write a blurb allong these lines and give it to the player if they assence.

You see a darkness oozing out from them lashing out and touching anything alive near them, making astral space cold, hostile, as if the sun and earths warmth doesn't reach here, drinking their life oh so very little, no one near them is comfortable. Even from accross the room the effect is tangable, a slick oily coating in your mouth. In the darkness and engulfing him you can see... shapes? The word is wrong but there is some kind of pattern in the astral overlaying all of your sences at once, subtle and almost hypnotic and just as you think you are starting to understand he turns to you and grins. At least his astral aura does, in the physical world he seems quite unaware of your astral presence. You blink for a moment and his aura has stopped looking at you but the sence of him looking at you is stronger and the grin is now part of the pattern swirling around. You feel cold.

Freaking out the norms can be mechanically done easily with the system, getting the players on board can be a bit harder. As other suggest - give him a tick, something really odd and act it out subtly. Contantly referance it, a grin that just grates at you, his handshakes are like ice, leeching the warmth from your arm, everything he touchs comes away... cold, even the mission breifing materials.
Arrange an encounter with some animals (a guard dog or the like, named and characterised as a visious trained guard animal if you can manage it) who start hostile.. until he grins at them and they back away to the edge of their chains, whining.

I'd suggest giveing the Bland quality or something similar - he just doesn't stick out till you interact with him, or better yet describe it as a numbing of caring who he, or anyone in the area is. You'd never guess he was the source without assencing him. You have to concentrate just to get past the desire to go lie down and let the world pass by, drink yourself into a stupor or go shoot up just for a bit of a rush. Addiction tests for your various PC's sound like fun... I'm so writing this guy as a drug dealer later...

EDIT - while re-reading this I replaced all Cold references with "Moist" and modify the ajoining info in my head for less horror and more eww, also a laugh. Moist... it really is a funny word..

I was thinking you could also drop your essence down to 0.X levels for that extra warped presence, but the effects of astral hazing decreases in range as essence goes down...

nasty vibe is the same book, as the other two. its a "positive quality"

I like the description mr eagle I think I'm going to yoink it...oh too late I already did.

I like the Idea that the astral hazinf exudes off of him like mist. and kinda just clings to living things, I especially like his astral aura having a mind of its own XD. I'm thinking of making him mundane and have him blissfully unaware of his "situation" and have it turn out to be alive and "eating" him.

Disonant Technomancer. Combine it with a fomori or gnome and you've got one bad ass villain...

- J.

Can Technomancers take spirit pacts? Can't see why not, barring the tech/magic problems. One who has a constant pact with a spirit for a power would be.. interesting.

Especially if you could hammer out how to give him hidden life.

*technically* you have to be awakened in 4th edition to be able to take that quality (some exception seems to have been made for the friendship pact, however).

on the other hand, *technically* in my opinion that's a pointless, arbitrary, flavorless rule and i don't like it, so i would definitely allow non-awakened to choose those qualities (though obviously, they will need the appropriate background to go with it).

on the other other hand (apparently i've got shiva arms), i would also allow mundanes to take magical skills with the understanding that they will be limited in them (ex: can take assensing, but have to be in astral shallows, can take astral combat but can only defend from spirits if they somehow wind up in astral space, can take binding skills but only works on free spirits if they have the true name, can take banishing but only helps in attacks of will, etc). but that's just me; i believe some (or even most?) of these options were possible in former editions, and i can't really see why it would have to be completely unaccessible in 4th.

RH mentions mundanes learning Assensing in the Wuxing shallow.