Some of the most dangerous people out there wouldn’t hurt a fly….
Sometimes armed resistance will only get you crushed. Someone has all the bases covered and all the exits sealed. That individual has all the capital and you just work in the factory for pennies. You want to fix that guy really good. You want to get back, but resistance is futile.
So how does one exact payback? Do exactly what you’re told, exactly, to the letter. Sometimes the literal interpretation of an order is a wee bit different than how the command giver intended things to work. You know that, but you do it anyway….With a smile!
The passive-aggressive always pretends to have the best intentions. They want to help you out. Out the window and down about thirty-five stories until you come to a sudden, painful stop. When done effectively, the target of a passive-aggressive attack, never quite figures out what hit them.
Show the utmost respect for authority while you make their lives impossible. This avatar is conscious and highly sought after. Who wouldn’t want to be the next Ghandi or Martin Luther King, Jr?
Anywhere that there is a passive resistance that totally throws an authority figure off their track, the passive-aggressive may be involved. It’s the avatar for the little guy who’s sick of getting shoved and has no other means of shoving back.
Nicknames: Monkey-Wrenchers, Saboteurs
Symbols: Sand in the gears, protestors blocking Main Street.
Masks: Possible Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway characters. People who never took up arms against the system, but lived their lives as a form of castigation thereof.
Suspected avatars in history: Ghandi, MLK, Thomas Beckett
Taboo: Passive-Aggressives have two taboos. They cannot deliberately disrespect the law and they cannot willingly abuse any authority they acquire. They can disobey the law, but only in a manner which displays the utmost commitment to the moral underpinnings of what the laws are supposed to strive for.
Channels
01-50%: Cross the I’s; Dot the T’s: Using this channel allows a character to totally ensnare some person’s schemes in bureaucratic miasma. Licenses get snarled in technicalities. Mail doesn’t get sent. Phone calls never reach the right person. A successful check will delay whatever the avatar wants put off by up to 48 hours, provided it requires the assistance of any authority.
51-70%: Takin’ It To The Streets: This makes the target of the avatar’s malice lose 10% on all reaction checks with others and makes other people gossip about the target in a very negative fashion. It lasts for a week and requires the avatar to publish some minor written or spoken statement demeaning the actions or beliefs of that target.
71-90%: Join The Cause: Once per week, the avatar can convince another person to automatically take an action provided that that action does not directly endanger or decrement the doer.
91-98%: Stick It To The Man: Once per week, the avatar can actually convince others to do violence against an authority figure, provided they do not directly suggest to that person that they do so. Also, the avatar may not participate and has to pretend to be very upset over the whole thing.
I like it. The fourth channel is interesting — eventually even the ostensible perfect law-abiders cause vioence.
Does “Join the Cause” make the target agree with the avatar, or just compel her to do something? Perhaps a strong shift to a persuasion test would be more appropriate, and also more in line with UA’s strong Free Will bent.
Incidentally, the name’s a bit inappropriate. Maybe “Passive Resister”?
Thanks for your thoughts. I was sort of thinking of this guy as an NPC. Someone who is initially appearing to be the villain until the PCs learn more….
Hmmmmm, I think that there is room for a little interesting UA history here. The original passive resistance as a way of life really belongs to the European Jews who were regularly attacked in any number of ways (debts owed them were arbitrarily cancelled, often involving armed mobs moving in and killing the money-lenders). Being a minority they could never afford to fight back, for if they did then they would have been wiped out. Thus they survived with a doctrine of passive resistence, emphasis on the passive.
With the arrival of the Nazis suddenly keeping one’s head down and obeying all the rules not only lead to individuals dying (as it had always done), but it threatened the survival of the whole. This is one reason why modern Israel reacts to any perceived threat immediately and without compromise.
The thing is that the traditional holders of the archetype of passive resistance abandoned it and yet within three years a new and different brand of passive resistance (with more emphasis on the resistance) has freed India from the British and soon after that its main proponant is assassainated.
Personally I see a weakened archetype after the Jews abandoned it ripe for reinterpretation and the death of Ghandi (the ultimate pacifist) dying by violent means a suitably symbolic “death” for a possible ascension…
Well some crackpot in the occult underground must think this at least.
Interesting thought, all those dukes “passively” competing for the power to channel Ghandi or MLK.
Well, I’m a big fan of passive aggression in my own life. On that nifty fourth channel, might it be possible to inspire someone else to desicive and immediate action, rather than just plain violence? Many people translate a desire for immediate action into violence, but if a savvy passive-aggressive avatar was there with a timely suggestion, like a street protest or, more in the lines of Fight Club, weird pranks, that would fit the avatar, wouldn’t it?
Incidentally, many “apologies” are, in fact, passive-aggressive attacks on the system that demanded them. Socrates is a prime example, here.