What’s your greatest fear? (Inspired by “Batman Begins.”)

Attributes: In times past, the scarecrow was just something to make farming expedient–to keep the crows away. Over time, and aside from the occasional strawman looking for a brain, has slowly evolved into a symbol of all fear–a looming, humanoid thing under a broad-brimmed hat, crucified and left to scare off the birds, resembling a corpse or a mockery of the Christian Savior.

The Scarecrow, as an avatar, also encompasses freaks with attributes akin to a scarecrow–lanky and misshapen fellows uncomfortable in their own skin. (“Scarecrow” is slang for a freak or weirdo in Spanish.) Most Scarecrows resemble the slang-term version of “scarecrows.”

Taboos: A Scarecrow, as a symbol of fear, cannot alleviate the fears of others, or warn others of a coming dread or terrible thing. Any attempt to help someone become less afraid counts as a transgression; however, failed attempts, or subtle attempts at empowering fear are fine. Psychoanalysis or other skills are fine as long as they are used to further the cause of fear.

Symbols: The scarecrow, obviously; crows, cornfields, hay and burlap (especially the smell/feel), and ragged clothes and broad-brimmed hats are further symbols. The crucifixion pose is another symbol. Wolfsbain and spirit cairns are old symbols of the avatar.

Masks: Numerous backwoods gods have been masks of the Scarecrow, and the one from “Batman” certainly helped to cement this avatar’s place in human conciousness.

Suspected Avatars in History: Alestair Crowley and Rasputin, being implements of arcane fear (no matter how facetitious their powers may have really been). A more modern avatar may be Charles Manson.

Channels:

Note: The Scarecrow can “turn off” his area powers if need be, but doing so for more than five hours at a time is a violation of taboo, and it takes five minutes of “stretching” to reset the timer.

1-50% The Scarecrow is a powerful sower of fear. Any intimidation or similar skill can be flip-flopped if the result will be under the character’s Avatar: Scarecrow skill.

51-70%: The avatar begins to peer into his foes’ souls, and is able to force a target to acknowledge a deep-set fear. By making a successful Avatar: Scarecrow check, a victim who can clearly see you (either standing near you–roughly within 100 feet–or through binoculars or other scopes so you seem fairly close) must make a stress test against a fear in which he has a failed notch and fewer than 10 hardened notches. To that person, the avatar’s features shift subtly into something that brings back memories of whatever cracked his sanity.
This can only affect one person per combat round, and takes a combat round to execute. A Scarecrow must be aware that someone is looking at him before terrifying the looker.

71-90%: The Scarecrow Avatar can empower the fear around him. All rolls to resist a mental attack (such as a Plutomancer blast’s Self check, or an intimidation check) are at a -10% shift while the scarecrow is present and visible. Further, he may now attempt to terrify several people at once with his previous channel, though he must take a -15% shift for every extra person he wants to affect (beyond the first), and the shift is only -5% to resist the multi-pronged strike.

91%+: The Avatar is nearing the level of Godwalker. He may now terrify people who he is unaware of, though he himself is unaware of his attempt, as long as the person terrified is viewing him with malicious intent. No more than one person per 15% of his skill can be affected by this power at once.

Further, the Scarecrow can crucify himself (or get crucified by friends) to “ward off” an area as long as he remains up there. Simply being tied to a cross (just big enough to keep his feet a few inches off the ground) requires a Body check every hour to keep it up, or else fall over and ruin the effect; anyone who wants to enter the area, which is an area either 500 feet around him (if in the wild) or all a building (if indoors), whichever is bigger (so being in a skyscraper would ward the skyscraper; being in a shed would ward the area 500 feet around him), must make a stress test against something in which they have a failed notch and fewer than 10 hardened notches. A success allows that person to enter (with a hardened notch); failing results in the victim staying away (with a failed notch).

If the Scarecrow is crucified with nails, he suffers 5-10 damage per half hour on the cross, and any stress tests are made at a -20% shift (counting the one already in place from the Scarecrow).

Possible Godwalker Channels: It is rumored that the Godwalker of the Scarecrow spreads fear around him uncontrolled, and takes no more damage from being nailed up to the cross. It’s said that the Scarecrow Godwalker is nailed up to a place to keep people away from the Well of True Fear; a sip of its water will open the drinker’s mind to sanity-destroying levels of terror and truth and (it is said) arcane might.