Music hath charms to sooth the savage universe.

The Past

“Headphone” Jack West is one of those weird guys. Almost every small town has one — they seem normal right up until they open their mouths. Whenever somebody talked to Jack, he somehow brought the subject, no matter what it was, to music. Song Lyrics, musical instruments, radio stations… it was obvious to anyone that Jack was obsessed with the subject. His friends were few and far between.

He barely graduated from High School, since more time was spent jamming on some instrument or another than doing the coursework. Budget cuts had all but removed the music and art programs, so there wasn’t even the hint of a silver lining on that cloud. Disgusted with the non-musical world, Jack left town and headed to the big city. He had no illusions about “making it big” or “finding his fortune”. He just wanted a place to play.

After a month or so, there was a huge storm. He tried to seek shelter in the basement of an old apartment house. He changed his mind pretty fast when things started scuttling in the darkest corners of the room. After being attacked by two bugs in the dark that felt like they might have been scorpions or even tarantulas, he ran like hell back into the downpour. That was when weird crap started happening to him all the time; people who seemed to be trailing him all the time, wind that sounded like bits of conversation, and finally, an invitation to come in out of the cold by some sweet old lady with three cats… who tried to use him as some sort of human sacrifice.

He stabbed her with a guitar pick. Not easy when drugged up and being attacked by animals, but Jack was VERY motivated.

After locking the animals into one of the apartment rooms, he started going through the old lady’s stuff — he’d already killed her, so she obviously wasn’t going to need anything. He found some really, really odd books with addresses and phone numbers and drawings of weird things, but at least they made sense compared to the scrapbook full of obituaries clipped from newspapers.

That was how Jack really discovered the Occult Underground.

The Present

Jack has become a serious player in the Occult Underground, with the emphasis on player. He knows the ritual “Plague of Hiccups” from the old woman’s notebooks, but he has no adept or avatar powers that anyone recognizes. On the other hand, he does have some sort of strange power in music. Any music.

There’s a video on the Internet about a motorcyclist who crashes in the middle of a race, and spastically tries to keep from being hit by the other racers. His motions, while purely reactive, resembled the “ScatMan” dance so much that somebody actually put the video footage of the event to the music. That’s just one of the peculiar effects that Jack has learned to reproduce while playing or even listening to music.

Since it’s not always convenient to have a guitar nearby to alter the universe somehow, Jack carries an MP3 Player and headphones with him at all times, so he can “get in tune” with the universe whenever or wherever. This is the source of his nickname.

The Future

After losing Quick Rick the Bodybag to some sort of crazy ritual, the Northern US/Southeast Canada cabal Firewall is looking for another mage. From what they’ve heard, Headphone Jack is a competent something-or-other, and isn’t a total prick; this fulfills both criteria for the cabal. There have been some phone conversations between Jack and Firewall’s leader, Ted Starr, but nothing has been settled on yet.

Vital Statistics

Name: Jack West

Personality: (Aries) Born to rock, for lack of a better term.

Obsession: Music, either making or hearing.

Wound Points: 50

Rage Passion: Animal Abuse.

Fear Passion: (Helplessness) Losing his sense of hearing.

Noble Passion: Animal Rights. Whenever he can spare the money (not often) he’ll send some sort of donation to the ASPCA.

Body 50 (Skinny)
General Athletics 35%, Struggle 45%

Speed 65 (Fast Fingers)
Dodge 35%, Drive 0%, Initiative 30%, Keyboards 45%, Guitar 50%

Mind 55 (High School Graduate)
General Education 15%, Notice 30%, Music Lyrics 40%

Soul 70 (“I’m a Sooooul Man, dat doo da doo…”)
Charm 20%, Lie 20%, Phonographic Ear 40%, Re-Tune Reality 45%

-Madness Meters-

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

Re-Tuning Reality

Jack’s ability to manipulate reality, or himself, using music is fairly limited, even at the best of times. It doesn’t appear to be a channel for any known archetype, or any school of magick, since the abilities don’t need charges and there doesn’t seem to be a taboo. It is similar in some ways to Paul Borrowski’s Rabbit Trick. The effects are always subtle. All require a succesful roll against the Re-Tune Reality skill to use, except for Soundtrack, which is working as long as Jack is listening to an MP3 player, radio, or other music source that is non-repetitive. Some of the more common effects include:

Scatman Dodge: While listening to or playing Scatman John’s “I’m the ScatMan”, all of Jack’s dodge rolls have a +10% shift.

Personal Jesus: While listening to Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus”, all attempts to influence Jack magickally are at a -10% shift. This covers direct influence by Amoromancer spells, Pornomancer spells, and channels like those of the Demagogue. It has no use against someone who has a perfectly mundane but very high Persuasion skill, or other non-magickal approaches.

Soundtrack: Jack hears a symbolically appropriate song whenever he meets a person or group of people who have any sort of paranormal, occult, or unnatural connection. This includes possessed humans and animals, people with unnatural problems, clockworks, and unnatural creatures. If the person is part of a cabal, then Jack may hear a song related to the cabal instead, unless that person is a powerful part of the cabal in his or her own right. So if Jack runs into a four man team of TNI operatives, he’ll hear the same song he would if he met Alex Abel himself. (Probably Stairway to Heaven.) If he meets Eponymous alone, however, he’ll hear somethiing else. Probably something fast paced and hectic, given that meeting Eponymous alone is not a recipe for a happy fun time.

The songs will sometimes start before he’s met anyone relevant, so that he meets the person while the song is playing. This can give him a heads up in case of trouble, but has also made him quite paranoid, trying to find the hidden message in every song that he hears. In any event, the Soundtrack effect only covers people; it might play “You Keep Me Hanging On” when Jack encounters someone trying to con or exploit him, but not when that somebody actually cheated on him or sold him out three hours earlier.

Possessions: MP3 Player, Laptop Computer, Three sets of Headphones, Secondhand Guitar, Secondhand Keyboard Synthesizer, Drum Set, really cruddy apartment, Salvation Army wardrobe.