Playing dominoes with the universe.

Ever thought about playing with dominoeS? You put them in a line , hit the first one, and the whole line collapses.Who cares? It’s just a game, isn’t it?
And besides, you probably got bored of it when you were 8.

Alexander Grand didn’t.

As a kid he really, really loved playing dominos. And Jenga. And building houses of cards.
He was fascinated by how he had to move just one piece to make the entire thing collapse.

He used to spend his lunchmoney on buying decks of cards, or sets of dominos.Just so he can spend hours painstakingly building bigger houses, or longer lines.Just so he can destroy the whole thing in a split second.

He first learned about chaos theory at Collage. His best frind and collage roommate,Peter Wilson told him about it. The other thing he taught him was magick. Peter was an Entropomancer you know.

And one night he saw a stoner dropping a blunt in some guys room.
And saw the guy and his girlfriend breaking up because she found it.
And he saw the guy getting really drunk cos he really loved her.
And he saw him accidentally bumping into Peter, who fell out a window and died.
Died, because some stoner dropped his joint. How could something so insignificant cause something so terrible?

And he got it. Domino Effect. Since then, it was more than a game. It was Cosmic.

Alexander Grand, AKA Mr. Domino

Personality: Childish. All he does is play, never takes anything seriously. For him, the universe is one big playground.

Obsession: Dominoes. (duh) He spends waaaaay too much time playing this game. If he hasn’t played it for more than 24 hours he gets nervous and his rage stimulus is triggered more easily.

Wound Points: 55

Rage stimulus: Spoilsports. He simply can’t stand people ruining other people’s fun. Needless to say, he HATES Annihilomancers.

Fear stimulus: (Helplessness) Accidents. He saw his friend, an Entropomancer, die beacause of an accident. What are the chances of that?

Noble stimulus: Helping children. If he sees a child crying he’ll try to cheer him up, if he sees a lost child he’ll help him look for his parents, etc.

Stats:

Body: 55 (man in his early 30’s )

General athletics: 30% Struggle: 30% Endurance: 50%

Speed: 70 (great with his fingers)

Games like dominoes/jenga/cards: 70% Magic (NOT magick!) tricks: 55% Drive: 15%

Mind: 50 (can’t decide to watch CNN or Cartoon Network)

General knowledge: 40% Practical uses of Chaos Theory: 15% History of games like dominoes/jenga/cards: 45%

Soul: 65 (overall nice guy)

Magick:Dominomancy: 65% Not losing hope: 35% Cheering others up: 30%

Madness Meters Hardened/Failed:

Violence: 0/1
Unnatural: 3/1
Helplessness: 0/2
Isolation: 0/0
Self: 1/0

Dominomancy

Symbolic tension: He has to work tirelessly to create something that’s purpose is to be destroyed.

Random magick domain: Domino Effects. About how insignificant things can have huge consequenses, via triggering effects that trigger other effects, etc.

Blast style: Alex starts a chain of events that usually lead to something falling on the target, or hitting it,or stuff like that.
Example: Alex is standing at a crosswalk and notices an Annihilomancer waiting on the other side. So he picks up a stone, throws it in a random direction and spends the charges.The stone hits a bird on a nearby tree. The bird falls to the road. A cat sees this and runs onto the road for the bird. A car coming by sees the cat and hits the brakes. The car hits the electric pole at the side of the road. The pole falls down and hits the targer on the head.

Generate a minor charge: Set up and trigger a minor Chain. (Alex calls a chain of events where the starting thing is smaller than the final thing simply “Chain”) You only get the charge if it worked as planned. No charge if he triggers the Chain and it doesn’t go as planned. (this goes for all charges)
What “minor” means: it didn’t need a lot of effort(work,planning,money), wasn’t difficult to set up, the preparations didn’t take longer than a day.
This Chain can be anything from arranging stuff like in “Home Alone” to (wouldn’t cha know it) a line of dominoes. He can’t get any help on this, he has to make all the preparations himself. (this goes for all charges)

/Note: As a kid Alex noticed that if the number of dominoes/cards in a line/house were more than a certain number, “strange things” happened after he triggered it. Now he knows this was because he gained a minor charge, and blasted it away unconciously. He even knows the exact number: 333. Apparently,setting up a line this long is the border between “minor effort” and “no effort”. He usually thinks of this when he wants to “measure” his efforts. /

Generate a significant charge: Set up and trigger a sig Chain.
“Sig” means Alex had to put a lot of effort into it, it was really difficult to organise, and the preparations took about a week. The final effect has to have some impact on at least one person’s life. (For example, someone getting fired from his job as the final effect of the Chain.)It also needs to have some complexity or creativity in it, some quirk that’s unexpected to outside observers.

Generate a major charge: Set up and trigger a major Chain. Alex only had one of these so far, but he really loved what he was capable of with it, so he’s really keen on getting another one.
He figures he has to put superhuman effort into it (more money most people spend their entire lives, work as much to be on the edge of exhaustion),and that these preparations should take at least a year. The effect has to be so spectacular that it has a worldwide effect, and even get in the history books. And it has to be incredibly complex too, so that it has completely unexpected and surprising twists at almost every step. Organising it has to be extremely difficult(like, getting into Fort Knox’s Vault with an I AM A TERRORIST T-shirt on). If he “gets a good chance” to make something big,he can’t take it, it will only work if done the hard way. (for example,if he wins on the lottery he can’t spend the “easy” money on his efforts) And keep in mind you can’t use mojo to get mojo, so he can’t even use his magick to help him out if he needs something. (like, he needs some world-famous jewel from a museum, then he has to steal it the hard way, like a normal human thief would- no magick or bye-bye to all the hard work!)

Taboo: Construction without destruction. Alex must never create anything permanent (anything that would out-last him), he must always destroy what he has made, even if it won’t gain him any charges. If he creates something permanent and doesn’t destroy it, he not only looses his charges, but can’t gain any charge at all until that thing is destroyed. This (sadly) means that if Alex wants something to remain after him in this world (for example,have children), then he has to say good-bye to his mojo forever. And he doesn’t want that. He’s having so much fun.

Minor formula spells:

Impossible construction
cost:1 minor charge

This was Alex’s first spell. He can use any non-magickal inanimate object for it, but he prefers to use at least vaguely brick-shaped things if possible. (bricks, dominos, lego, jenga blocks, cardboard boxes, books, computers or even cards ) With this spell he can arrange them in any form that would collapse if it obeyed the normal laws of physics. (an upside-down pyramid would be a pretty simple example). The total mass of it must be under 100 pounds. It collapses if Alex goes more than 10 ft away from it (20 ft if it contains only brick-like objects) or if he thinks about making it collapse. This is very handy if he wants to get to hard-to-reach places, or if he just wants to entertain himself.

Domino punch
cost:1 minor charge

This is Alex’s only real “combat spell”. After casting it the first hand-to-hand (no weapons!) strike Alex does gets a chain effect. If the target he hits is in body contact with someone else (and that guy is in body contact with someone else, and so forth) then all the people who are in this chain get the damage.He doesn’t fight much though, he just keeps this spell as “an ace up his sleeve” for such occasions.

What goes around,comes around
cost:1 minor charge

This is Alex’s minor blast. Effect is descibed above.

Reverse chaos
cost:2 minor charges

With this spell Alex can reverse something that was a result of a chain of events. It can’t be very important, and needs to be the result of some kind of side effect of something. (for example, a broken cup that was broken because someone threw it on the floor can’t be fixed, because that was an action aimed directly at the cup. But it can be fixed if it was broken because of an earthquake, because the earthquake’s wasn’t destroying the cup) It needn’t be something physical. If Alex knew this spell (in a significant form, which he didn’t quite manage to figure out yet) when Peter died he could have saved him with it.

Face the consequences
cost:4 minor charges

The next action the target of this spell takes will have a LOT bigger consequence than expected. This being good or bad depend on what kind of action triggers it. (If his next action was buying flowers for his girlfriend than the girl will think he’s the most romantic man in the world and totally fall in love with him. If it was attacking a little kid than the kid turns out to be a junior karate master and kick his ass.)

Significant formula spells:

Wasted life
cost: 1 significant charge

Everyone makes mistakes in their lives.
With this spell Alex makes the target remember one them, which reminds them of another, which reminds them of another, and so forth.It all comes crashing down on them, making them believe that their life was in vain, that they haven’t accomplished anything and that they’ve been totally wasting their precious time with something utterly pointless. This causes a rank-6 Self check.It doesn’t matter if he failed or passed the check,the effect lasts one day, after which the target regains his self-confidence. When under the effect of the spell the target can be very easily convinced to give up his profession, start something new, etc. by anyone who’s Soul is higher than his. (this spell is a missionary’s wet dream) BUT cannot be drawn into suicide or actions that harm other people! It’s not that tough. Also, there is no guarantee that he will like what he got convinced into on his crazy day. If the target was an avatar or an adept and failed the Self-check he looses 3% from his magick/avatar skill for the day the effect lasts.

Take that!
cost: 1 significant charge.

This is Alex’s sig blast. Effect is like the minor, only bigger. (duh)

Chain letter
cost: 3 significant charges

Did you ever get a chain letter? Well, I suppose you just threw it out the window, since everyone know it’s just superstition.Well, not all of them. At least, the ones started by Alex aren’t. They’re easy to recognise: they’re in blank envelopes,no stamps,no sender,no nothing. Alex puts these in the target’s mailboxes himself. The letter has nothing written on it either, just a drawing of a domino, with one dot on it. If you look at the drawing you have one day to pass it on (put it back in the envelope, seal it back,put it in someone else’s mailbox). The next person who gets the letter will find that the domino now has two dots. If he passes it on too the next person will see three, and so on. The domino can have a maximum of 18 dots, after which a new domino with one dot will appear next to the one that got filled. If you don’t pass it on…be prepared for “bad luck” for the number of days equal to the number of dots on the dominoes. By “bad luck” I mean the stuff most chain letters talk about: misfortune in love,losing friends, losing money,that sort of stuff. Each day gets a little worse than the day before. And after Day 18 minor unnatural phenomena start happening on a daily basis. As you can see, this spell is a waste of charges if it gets triggered after a few days, but if it gets to be around long enough…oh, you don’t want to see that.

Major effects: Hit a house and make the city collapse in a domino-like manner. Crash the stock market. Speed up global warming a bit. Destroy any clockwork with pulling one gear out. OR just trigger something that leads to something very, very ,VERY nasty. He hasn’t quite figured it out yet.

What you heard: Alex has a pretty bad reputation in the Occult Underground. Mostly because his magick can ruin a lot of adepts’ fun,which is pretty ironic. But he doesn’t realize that, he thinks his little games are hilarious. A few years ago he wanted to help the Fellowship of Bad Traffic in their fight against the Sternos, but he caused more harm than help, so they kicked him out.