Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds…. just don’t ask us about the Comte.
Attributes: The Deliverer takes possession of an object in one location, and places that object in the hands of another entity at another location. If something gets in The Deliverer’s way, the Deliverer goes around or, if neccesary, pushes through with sheer force of will and an iron determination that, above and beyond all things, the delivery must be made. The Deliverer doesn’t care about the contents of his delivery. He’s not required to. He just makes sure it gets where it’s going.
The Deliverer generally has reliable transportation of some sort, though it does not have to be a motor vehicle. Past avatars have been known to use horses, ships, trains, even their own feet when neccesary.
Taboos: Once the Deliverer has accepted a delivery, he must not give up on delivering it, however troublesome this may prove. In a pinch, deliveries for the recently deceased can generally just be given to next of kin or placed on gravesites, but anything else is stretching it. Failure to make his delivery within a mutually agreed-upon timeframe also weakens the connection to the avatar, as does any sort of purposeful, unneccesary delay in making his deliveries. Allowing the things he is meant to deliver to be stolen from him is right out.
Symbols: Any number of logos for various delivery services or pizza chains.
Masks: The Old West’s Pony Express riders, modern postal workers (to an extent), and the major pizza chains, as long as they deliver.
Suspected Avatars in History: In a sense, one could say the pilots of the Enola Gay were channeling The Deliverer when they “delivered” destruction to Hiroshima. Pony Express riders, known for their speed and determination, also had a connection with their contemporary version of The Deliverer.
Channels:
1% – 50%: When the Deliverer has a delivery to make, when he is focused on making that delivery, any obstacle is easier to overcome. When faced with an obstacle between him and the recipient of his delivery, the avatar of The Deliverer gets a +10 shift to rolls related to overcoming or avoiding that obstacle.
51% – 70%: With a successful check of the Avatar skill, the Deliverer can now tell precisely where his delivery’s intended recipient is at all times. Note that this doesn’t confer any information beyond a fairly precise location.
71% – 90%: The determined Deliverer is an almost unstoppable force of nature when making his deliveries. You may designate one skill you use to overcome obstacles, and substitute your Avatar: The Deliverer skill for that skill when attempting to overcome an obstacle. Like the Warrior channel of the same level, you may not change this skill once designated.
91+%: If the Deliverer has a reliable means of conveyance (his car, for example), it will not break down in the course of making a delivery. It may take any amount of damage, lose vital components, smash through otherwise solid barriers, and it just keeps moving, held together by The Deliverer’s own will and determination to get the job done. Once the delivery is made or the vehicle has been turned off is a different story. All the damage it was pretending it didn’t have comes back in a rush, sometimes culminating in a suitably dramatic explosion if it’s been pushed too far past its natural breaking point.
Alternately, if The Deliverer has no transportation, this channel allows the Deliverer to act even at zero wound points, until his delivery has been made. Note that any attempt to stall the delivery once this channel has been activated (say, by engaging in a firefight that could have been avoided) counts as giving up on the delivery, and cancels the channel almost immediately, killing the Avatar. This channel is intended to give you one last shot to make the delivery, not settle scores.
Basically, this is sort of a cross between The Pilgrim and The Messenger, taking the Pilgrim’s dedication to cause and mixing it up with the delivery aspect of the Messenger. More facetiously, I just didn’t like that the Messenger was fixated on messages and no one seemed to be on hand to deliver heavier packages for the Clergy.
Nice. Would have preferred the title of “Deliverator,” but that’s just me.
I will admit, in an early draft, I was calling him the Deliverator, too.
The Courier might be a more modern name for him. Bicycle couriers are a pretty odd and focused lot.
Ooh, tough choice. Deliverator, or Skateboard Kourier?
The third channel option, you may flipflop the choosen skill, and you choose for the current delivery only.
Well done.
I like the fourth channel (reminds me of the blues brother’s when the old car falls apart after they climb out).
One question though. Does this apply to only a single delivery or would delivering the paper to all the houses on your paper route count?
“Ooh, tough choice. Deliverator, or Skateboard Kourier?”
Deliverator.
Does this mean that the movie ‘The Transporter’ is official fodder for a UA adaptation?
*glee*
The Snow Crash references are getting a bit heavy around here, not that it isn’t UAable…
Kouriers are less about implacable determination and more about quick-witten parasitism.
The Deliverator is a cross between an idealized postman and a charging bull; Radiks is a cross between a Parkour club and a hive mind of disease-carrying ticks.
How do they feel about Silent Tristero?