A more playable version of the WECHBY Avatar for use in Unknown Armies games. My first submission so feedback is would be nice.
The Woman Everyone Can Have But You
AKA The Naked Goddess
Attributes: Every two bit duke in the Underground has heard the story, she was a no name porn star (and if she did have a name it got erased from reality) who Ascended to the most exclusive party in existance, and now is thought to exist as one of the Ultimate Rulers of All Reality. And she did it on tape during a porn shoot while going down on two jocks.
She is called the Naked Goddess, and is thought to embody the concept of the Woman that Everyone Can Have but You. She is the mistress of desire. The unattainable woman that everyone secretly wants, and you can’t have. A goddess if there ever was one.
Taboo: Any form of emotional commitment to another person is taboo, as is using your real name (aliases are common among the few avatars of the Naked Goddess). Also engaging in intimate relations with those who desire you weakens your connection to the Archetype even if in doing so you inspire even more people to desire you.
Masks: The Woman Every One Can Have but You is too new for many Masks to have developed but perhaps the Porn Star counts, possibly Stacies Mom, and of course the Girl Next Door.
Symbols: Sexy or provacative clothing, nudity, anymonity, sexual allure, apparent promiscuity, unrequited lovers, exotic dancing, sex toys, the Holy Grail, lingerie, pornography of any kind especially Pagan Video tapes, and any generation of the Naked Goddess Tape. The most powerful symbol is considered to be the Master Tape, the original record of Her Ascension.
Channels:
1-50%
At this level avatars of the Naked Goddess can get a feeling for emotional bonds between people, with a successful roll she could sense if someone was falling in love, and with a second roll sense who the target of their affection was. They gain a rough ability to sense emotional states such as love/hate, jelousy/envy, etc. Note the channel doesn’t reveal the name of who someone is in love with or who they hate but if the Avatar can sense the general direction that they lie, and if in the presence of both persons could tell accurately who loved who, who desired who, and other strong emotional bonds. Its more of a Statospherically enhanced ability to read body language than a detect evil spell.
51-70%
The avatar becomes incredibly sexy during, or after a sex act in the presence of a witness. She gains the ability to flip-flop any soul or body based skill having to do with sexuality, charm, or appearance such as distracting physique or her charm skill if the result of the skill roll is below her Avatar the Naked Goddess rating. Once she has performed some kind of sexual activity, she may use this channel for a number of hours equal to her Avatar skill.
71-90%
With a successful check the avatar can create desire in those around her but not in those she has sex with. She may attempt to this channel a number of times per day equal to the tens place of her avatar the Naked Goddess skill. Additionally anytime she engages in a sex act with another human being she can attempt to plant a desire in the minds of onlookers that they are at penality equal to half her avatar skill to resist. Onlookers for the purpose of this channel are defined as beings (natural or otherwise) that are present, and she is aware of.
91+
It becomes nearly impossible to harm the avatar as an attacker is overcome with feelings of intense sexual desire unless he or she can succeed at a rank-9 self and possibly helplessness check under their mind stat but above the avatar’s skill roll. Failed checks usually result in at most open drooling (Freeze), or dropping everything as they run toward her and clumsily attempt to entreat the avatar to have sex with them (Flight?) or possibly try to force themselves on her (Frenzy).
So what needs work? Besides the obvious screwed up bold tags at the begining.
Ooops I forgot to mention that only women can channel the Avatar. Darn.
Is the final channel just too offensive?
Nahhh… Reminds me of those old cartoons, actually–when the wolf spots Red Hot Riding Hood and procedes to make an ass of himself trying to get some interspecies action. Thumbs up!
You should check out the Create Desire ability PCs can get watching the Naked Goddess tape.
I think the whole theme behind the WECHBY is unrequited lust, not necessarily just sexual. The WECHBY is a modern equivalent of the Holy Grail, the perceived cure to all ills.
C.
I’m kind of against the whole idea of a Wechby avatar, that the very idea that you cannot, possibly be like her (as in avatar) but only imitate her (as in pornomancy) is what makes her neat.
KriegsaffeNo9: Hey thanks.
Insect King: I gave the Avatar a Create Desire channel, only its not as flexible or restricted as the one granted by the Tape, meaning that the tape would still be really useful to an Avatar and not just as a powerful symbol
Your right unrequited love is the theme, I just couldn’t get away from her being a porn star, and stuff. Its a role to play, and its a tough role too. I liked the idea that you could still be a pornomancer and an Avatar it just isn’t terribly easy, I need to work on that obviously.
Mattias: All Archetypes need Avatars, they are their weapons, their soldiers, and their servants in the world. She’d be a piss poor Goddess if she couldn’t have Avatars, or a Godwalker (I mean that’s how the system works, look at To Go).
As for pornomancy what is and what it isn’t was all Daphne Lee’s doing, since its her school. She could have easily made it something different but she didn’t.
I disagree, but not vehemently. Being an avatar of something has (for me) a clear ring of “having” something of it, and that just won’t do in this case. Besides, having one archetype work very, very differently… I like that! Break the rules, raise the slut to a goddess, pass the rich man by, you can not follow her, only imitate her.
In my MUAC, of course.
I like the Avatar as a destabilizing force withing the Sect of the Naked Godess. A schsim between the Pornomancers that brought her to the attention of the underground and the Avatars that are now walking a path apparently blessed by Her….
Or, to put it in allegory, the fans of a band now that their album has gone double platinum vs. those that liked the band when it was playing small clubs…..
Yeah, that would be cool. The schism between them. You know their was something in the books about a group of NG cultists who were more focused on Synchronisty than anything else. Add to that actual Avatars of the Naked Goddess and you’ve got a full blown schism going. Daphne wouldn’t be pleased if you ask me.
Which works better a Pornomancer who can channel the goddess or a Pornomancer who can’t? Thematically, I mean, not just in terms of schisms and stuff…
…and what happens when an avatar of wechby sees the ascension tape?
She gets a Create Desire skill. Or maybe it violates her taboo, permanently.
C.
I would gess the latter, mainly because that’s one thing (the first-generation tape) that she very, very much wants, but in all probablilty can’t have. Ever.
Ooo, totally cool idea.
I just figured it would be a powerful symbol, something that all the Avatars would be after… I don’t get why it would violate their taboo unless you changed their taboo to something like they can’t have what they most want, but even then that wouldn’t make a lot of sense for this sort of thing, because if you most want to become the godwalker it would seriously hamper you.
I don’t see why everyone thinks the Ascended Archetype would want to punish her power base. Sure its nice to not get ursurped but its also cool to have the power to counter/influence other Archetypes.
i would agree that it would be interesting to have an archetype that works very differently from the rest… but if the WECHBY can’t have avatars… that means that she can never possibly be overthrown… and the idea of having an unassailable, permanent archetype (besides the First and Last Man, anyway) kind of bugs me…
Yeah it goes against the whole theme of the game. Unassaible archetypes means the world is not one shaped by our desires, but one shaped by someone elses.
That is a very good point. Though, Alex Able has been doing some serious attempts of overthrowing her, maybe there’s another way?
Maybe modify how the 71-90 percent channel works so that desires can be resisted only by succeeding on a soul roll that is above the higher of the Avatar’s Charm, Distracting Physique, or Sexual Allure skill. If the desire takes root, it can cause them to suffer from Self, Helplessness, or Isolation checks with a rank equal to the tens digit of the Avatar skill.
And make the 51-70 percent channel work for a number of minutes equal to the Avatar skill after the witnesses see the Avatar perform a sexual activity such as masturbation, a strip tease, oral or actual sex.
Finally the 91+ percent channel should probably be more powerful…
As the archetype is supposed to be something wanted yet impossible to attain it seems to me that it would weaken an avater of the archetype to channel consciously, as the intentional invocation of the power of the archetype is most certianly in a way both desiring and attaining the archetype, which violates the meaning of it. I believe that the archetype could have avatars, just not conscious ones. Those who channel would simply have to be unaware they did so, representing the archetype by the pure power of their closeness to the idea.
Mechanically the pre-90 channels seem at best marginally useful, while the 91+ channel is just busted.
Metaphysically I like the concept of having the avatar, but feel like it should be more different from Pornomancy.
I like the desire angle better than the sex angle, being the Holy Grail, the Golden Apple, the Final Frontier. The life of a WECHBY would be a frustrating and lonely one. People don’t want to be her friend, they just want to possess her. Also, channelling unattainable desire would make it difficult for her to get what she wants too.