I clean messes. It’s what I do.

2003 was a shitty year for me. Up until that point, I was a man’s man. And a boy’s man. And, of course, a lady’s man. In fact, if you had hands and knew how to spill shit, I was your man. I was an icon, a mustachioed lumberjack-god with a heart full of determination and a body made of inky cellophane wrapped around puffibly soft paper towels wound around what a six-year-old and ten seconds of imagination would turn into a cardboard beat-stick.
I was the Brawny Paper Towel Man, and I was good at it, too.
Then the people of Brawny decided they had to part ways with me. Gave me a few tut-tuts and sent me packing in favor of some firefighting douchebag pretty-boy with a jaw as rugged as a ten-year-old boy’s quivering, undescended and prepubescently smooth scrotum. I’m not bitter, mind you. The Brawny Man doesn’t feel bitterness- he feels rage.
Now, I don’t quite know what happened next, though a few people have given me theories. Guy I know, amateur astronomer, spends so much time looking through a telescope he’s got stars in his eyeballs, he tells me I came into being because people are nostalgic for things. Scorned ex-husbands who want to be where their old wives new boytoys are, factory workers who’ve been replaced with machines, people like that. I’m the masculinity they’ve lost, the old days they want back before they were obsolete like me.
Another guy, real nerdy, probably the most practical guy I’ve ever met who carved his eye out for a squiggly friend no one can understand, thinks I’m just crazy. Threw out words like “personomancer”- that’s someone who gets power by pretending to be someone they’re not- and “iconomancer”- that’s someone who gets power by sucking up to famous dead people. His thinking is I was some dweeb with a hard-on for a paper towel mascot and decided to throw my old life away. This idea bothers me, so I don’t think about it.
Personally, I figure that when the paper towel company cut me loose, they really cut me loose. I don’t play by their rules anymore, because they changed the rules away from what they were supposed to be. It’s not about cleaning up messes over there, it’s about making it look like you want to clean up messes, and Brawny doesn’t play like that. I just need to figure out a way to make them quit using my name.
Haven’t had the time to make them stop yet, of course. Problems keep coming my way, and I’d be a damned jackass if I didn’t do what I could to help folks out. Old, dying loonies following old, dying schools of magic (what’s this “magick” bullshit, by the way? People forget how to spell?) either need me to help them out or have to be put down when they get out of hand. Good thing I’ve got my axe.
Name: Brawny
Personality: Gruff, dedicated individualist.
Obsession: Brawny’s not the type to let anything get in his craw so bad it makes it difficult for him to see himself in the mirror.

Wound Points: 65

Rage: Pretense. It’s damn fine if you’re an idiot, but don’t go to the trouble of being the kind of idiot that carries around books he can’t even read. And for the record, thinking you’re so damned spiffy you can just go ahead and shit on decent folks is the worst kind of pretense you can have.
Fear: There’s no one Brawny gets along with better than Brawny- but I don’t know where I came from, and I don’t know if Brawny is who I’ve always been, or who I’ll always be.
Noble: People in messy situations. I’m here to help, dammit.

Body: 65 (Well, Brawny)
Say timber to your torso (55%), Keep on choppin’ (45%) Ultra-Absorbent (35%)*
Speed: 55 (Why run fast when you can just keep going?)
Drive (25%), Dodge (20%), Me First (55%)
Mind: 55 (Common sense)
Lumberjack, not Strategic Arboreal Engineer (50%)**, Schooling (20%), Conceal (15%), Notice (35%)
Soul: 65 (Zen-lumberjack)
Avatar: Masterless Man (65%), Intimidate (35%), Commanding Presence (35%), Charm (25%), Lie (15%)

*On a successful roll, Ultra Absorbent allows Brawny to endure any sort of poison, inebriating chemical or similarly unusual damage.
**This paradigm skill represents Brawny’s refusal to accept or digest any sort of bullshit or pretension, and the subsequent inability to relate to others behind the fine veil of tact and subtle self-aggrandizement they live behind. Protected from self checks, but more prone to isolation checks.

Violence: 1f/5h
Unnatural: 1f/6h
Helplessness: 0f/6h
Isolation: 3f/7h
Self: 0f/6h

Possessions: well-maintained but often-used pickup truck, axe, peavey, plenty of cloth towels and more plaid than you can shake Nirvana at.

Notes: Thematically a bit similar to Nick Flamel in the fall-from-grace department, but I tried to differentiate the two as much as possible. Inspired by the fact that I’m fairly sure he (meaning Brawny) stopped by my house to fix our internet connection today. It was unexpected.