This is your superhero on drugs.

In Victorian England around 1830, a colorful character began harrassing the populace in general and women in particular. Descriptions of him varied — according to some he had glowing eyes and horns, while others said he wore a strange helmet or had wings — but one quality which was constant was his amazing jumping abilities. According to certain accounts, he could jump up to thirty feet vertically. Combined with examinations of his alleged footprints, which suggested a mechanical device implanted in the heel to permit such great jumps, this resulted in his nickname, Spring-Heeled Jack.

Jack could allegedly spew blue flames at people, and was also said to be impervious to bullets. He was never apprehended; the man’s identity, if it was a man, has never been determined. Sightings of Jack occured right up to 1904. During his “reign of terror”, he attacked many women, even killing one by throwing her into the sewer, where she drowned. The cheap literature of the time, “penny dreadfuls,” alternately portrayed Jack as a villain and a hero.

Until recently, the subject of Spring-Heeled Jack seldom came up in the Occult Underground. The most common theory about Jack is that he was an avatar of some sort, possibly of the Savage, but with a few personal quirks. Another theory is that he was a mage of the day, tapping into the religious fears of the time as a source of power, not unlike an Iconomancer. Another theory is that Jack was actually a clockwork Automaton, and stopped appearing after 1904 because he ran down or was destroyed, possibly by the chaos immediately preceeding the first World War.

Nobody really knows the truth about Spring-Heeled Jack, but a lot of people have been thinking about it when somebody stumbled onto the scene with a mask, a costume, and some very cool boots.

Summary

Spring-Heeled Jake is the latest new face in the Occult Underground of the American Midwest. He might not have actually gotten involved in the Underground per se, if he hadn’t screwed with an Entropomancer’s plan to gain a major charge in a ritual involving a school bus, a few pounds of plastique explosive, and a random number generator. The bodybag — Sarah Porter — is cooling her own heels in juvenile hall, but she’s got plans for when they let her out… or when she breaks out, whichever comes first.

Her unusual enemy isn’t aware of her intentions, or that she’s a chaos mage, or even that magick exists. Jake himself is slightly less clued-in than Randy Douglas of the GLS, and doesn’t have lots of dangerous firearms to balance things out. What Jake does have is a lot of free time, a too-open mind, and some very useful boots.

When he’s not running around fighting the good fight, Spring-Heeled Jake is just Jake Miller, a High School Senior sliding towards dropping out. Jake is no genius, but he does have a vivid imagination and a knack for all things mechanical and electrical. For most of high school, his time was spent playing computer games and surfing the Internet for pictures of naked women, at least until a friend began extolling the many upsides of drug use as an escape from the world’s pressures.

Being the do-it-yourself type, Jake went onto the net and got some instructions for making LSD. Unlikely as it seemed, he found a recipe that was accurate in all the particulars, and even more unlikely, he was not caught when he tried to brew some up. However, he had unknowingly inhaled a great deal of the fumes made from the construction of the drug, and began to play a number of PC games in a very open-minded state.

By midnight that night, Jake was not anywhere near planet Earth. He had latched onto the idea of becoming a superhero, and was looking for inspiration. Nothing really caught his attention until he decided to look at villains instead; one of the hits was a report on Spring-Heeled Jack of the Victorian Era. A mental bomb went off in his head as Jake thought the phrase “Spring-Heeled Jake”.

Well, he had the name and the modus operandi, but how to pull off those amazing jumps? A few more searches and he found some information on a German project to create spring-loaded footwear. The German approach was disasterous, resulting in an 85% failure rate and a lot of broken ankles, but Jake (still high as the Hubble Telescope) looked at some more recent developments and slowly began to figure out a working method.

Even after the drug had worn off, Jake had a dream to chase and a crudely-drawn diagram to build. It took him a month to find all the parts (Part of a bungee cord, a lot of pulleys, and some scrap metal to hold it all together) and another month before he could attach everything together the way he wanted. The result was a pair of very strange “boots”. Not footwear in the normal sense, they were attached around normal boots by a number of belts, snaps, and connecting bolts. The result held the actual footwear in “stirrups” and were controlled by pivots around the same.

With his secret weapon and signature complete, Jake lacked only a costume and mask to start his superheroics. Some rollerblading pads and a helmet, combined with a ski mask, completed the picture. It took one nearly fatal fight with a pimp to make him realize he needed a cup, though.

The after-effects of his little acid trip still linger on Jake’s brain. His fighting style and strategy are unpredictable at best, and his behavior is erratic, both with and without the mask. As his grasp of the everyday world deteriorates, though, his supply of useful equipment and nifty gadgets — not to mention his reputation — grows steadily larger.

Vital Statistics

Name: “Spring-Heeled” Jake Miller

Personality: Jake’s worldview and interpersonal skills are permanently skewed; if he’s not careful, it may get him committed.

Obssession: Bucking the System. Jake gets a kick out of seeing people surprised or shocked at his behavior.

Wound Points: 40

Rage Passion: A lot of different little things can set off Jake, but his truly maddening rage is triggered by people who treat other people like objects or resources instead of living, thinking human beings.

Fear Passion: (Unnatural) The Evil Eye. Jake got a face-full of Bodybag mojo when fighting Porter. He doesn’t know what she did, or how she did it, but he doesn’t like it. Not a damn bit.

Noble Passion: Jake may be going crazy, but he’s still a nice guy at heart, and likes to make people smile. If he got the chance, he’d love to play the part of Spring-Heeled Santa, delivering toys to children and jokes to their parents.

Body 40 (Skinny Computer Nerd)
General Athletics 35%, Sucker-Punch (Struggle) 35%

Speed 70 (Mad Gamer Skillz)
Dodge 45%, Initiative 55%, Play Computer Games 30%

Mind 50 (Unhinged)
Nerd-Fu (General Education) 35%, Notice 35%, Gadgeteer 15%

Soul 60 (Can’t Help But Like Him)
Comedian (Charm) 30%, Lie 30%, Reputation: Vigilante 30%, Avatar: The Fool 20%

-Madness Meters-

Violence: 2 Hardened, 0 Failed
Unnatural: 1 Hardened, 4 Failed
Helplessness: 2 Hardened, 0 Failed
Isolation: 1 Hardened, 2 Failed
Self: 0 Hardened, 0 Failed

Possessions: Obsolete computer that’s been overclocked to hell and back, with state-of-the-art graphics card. Roughly 30 different computer games. Spring-Heeled Boots. Weird Costume. Binoculars. Home-made cattle prod.

Notes: Jake does not know he’s an Avatar of the Fool yet. To any reasonably knowledged duke in the Underground, it would be obvious after watching him for ten minutes.