A rare, well-adjusted mage.

When in the Occult Underground, typical adept behavior can be divided into three easy categories: Paranoia, Posturing, and Violence. When an adept is behaving more like a normal person, that means he’s trying to fit in with the normal people.

There are, of course, exceptions.

Summary: Cliff Borman wasn’t part of any of the normal cliques in high school, or even college. He was the class clown, a prankster and comedian who could interact with Jocks, Nerds, Preps, the Cheerleaders, and the Goths fairly well, and had a sort of “you’re one of us” thing going on with the Stoners and Punks, since he kept getting in trouble for his behavior. He got in a few fights and got stuffed in a few lockers, but mostly he was a popular guy.

Then he got hit by a car during his Senior year. His left leg was broken in two places, and the medical treatment he received was a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing. In the hospital, he was given two very psychoactive painkillers. Instead of making him hallucinate spiders or think he was a potato, it got him in a very “Wow… cats have ears” mentality. For the next five hours, Cliff followed one strange train of thought after another, and came to many astounding conclusions, such as “If the water comes out of the faucet when the handle is open, it will stop when the handle is closed.” As he started to come out of it, he began to try to follow the chain of events that lead up to his leg being broken. He eventually determined that the odds of the event were close to one chance in seven hundred twenty thousand, three hundred sixty-six possible occurences.

Whether his math was correct or not, it certainly affected him psychologically. The abysmal odds seemed to imply that it shouldn’t have happened, while his broken leg was proof that it did. This dichotomy led to Cliff obsessing over odds, and the possibility that extremely unlikely events could happen any time and probably would. When he came out of the hospital, he was a different guy. Very cautious, not very outgoing, quiet and nonconfrontational. Almost the opposite of who he was before the accident. Most of his friends suspected he was just on some serious drugs, which was half true.

He came out of the hospital with a nice consolation prize, though. He had developed an astounding head for mathematics and probabilities. His only difficulty in his math classes was when the teacher would get on his case about not showing his work. And about a week after he got the cast off, he was sitting at the Nerd’s table in the cafeteria, when one geek asked another who would win in a fight: Spiderman or Batman.

He analyzed the situation using everything he knew about each comic book hero, and came to an interesting conclusion; the winner depended largely on what each man did during the fight, and how, not on their abilities, equipment, or personalities. No matter how many numbers he crunched, he couldn’t remove the niggling uncertainty that centered around each character’s free will… inasmuch as a ficticious character can have free will.

It set off a fire in his brain, and he came to some even more bizarre conlusions regarding free will, chaos, order, and probability… nothing that could be expressed in terms normal folk would understand, but things that went without saying for people called Entropomancers.

In a matter of hours, the old Cliff was back with a vengeance.

Four years later, Cliff is a college graduate who handles the morning show at the local Top 40 radio station, well known in the community for his hilarious on air talk and publicity stunts for the station. He’s also well known in the OU for putting down the Mean Streak, a nudist Irascimancer annoying the bejeezus out of people in Southern Colorado. In both the Occult and normal worlds, he behaves exactly the same, joking around and behaving strangely to make people laugh. Or to get them angry enough to try to beat the crap out of him, which is his favorite way to charge up.

To Cliff, all of life is a game, the goal of which is to have as much fun in-the-moment as possible. He’s a firm beleiver in reincarnation and if he knew about the Invisible Clergy, it would make perfect sense to him. He doesn’t, though. He knows a few avatars, but sees their abilities as low level magick that could stand some improvement.

Name: Cliff Isaac Borman

Personality: Sagitarius, but a very enthusiastic one.

Obsession: (Entropomancy) The process by which one conscious decision can change an entire system almost instantly.

Wound Points: 55

Rage Passion: Microsoft. The radio station he works at is automated during the night hours, and the software that plays the music runs under Windows, which crashes three times or more in a month.

Fear Passion: (Unnatural) Soul Destruction. He’s heard stories about Dipsomancers consuming souls, and demons taking total control, and all sorts of freaky-deaky stuff that keeps him up at night.

Noble Passion: Laughter is the Best Medicine. Cliff always tries to make people’s days brighter.

Body 55 (Disk Jockey)
General Athletics 30%, College Wrestler 45%, Live on Cola 15%

Speed 60 (Biker)
Dodge 35%, Drive Motorcycle 50%, Initiative 30%, Target Shooting 35%

Mind 65 (Nobody’s Fool)
Super-Mathematics 50%, Notice 25%, Music Knowledge 35%

Soul 60 (Freakishly Optimistic)
Make em Laugh (Charm) 40%, Lie 25%, Magick: Entropomancy 50%

Madness Meters

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

Possessions: A heavily modified motorcycle manufactured originally by Honda, an extensive library of music CDs and a decent secondhand stereo. Also, a limited-use artifact made from a hamster cage, that casts Cage For The Dead — it’s been used once, and can be used three more times.

Notes: Cliff lives in a slightly rundown house out on the edge of the suburbs. He splits the rent with three other friends from college. None of them have any connection to the Occult Underground. They know Cliff is a chronic risk-taker and sometimes ridiculously lucky, but they all just pass it off as “one of those things.”

Cliff knows all the typical spells from his school. He typically has five minor charges and a significant charge.