A Merchant-Clockworker of apocalyptic power

Inspiration
The inspiration for this character came from a number of sources, not the least of which was trying to create the closest approximation of a traditional D20 necromancer / liche in UA, which soon cross-fertilized with The Enemy from Bill Willingham’s Fables. He then took on his own particular character quirks as I became fascinated with the potential for limitless major charges and positive feedback loops implicit in the Merchant / Mechanomancy combination but struggled to understand how such a being would come about. This is a Cosmic level antagonist who will powerfully change any world in which he participates. Or perhaps not, given certain flaws in his psychological makeup.

Backstory
The clockworker known to the occult underground as Mr. Stepford is easily the most potent non-Godwalker duke to emerge onto the occult underground within the last five years. His rumoured accomplishments beggar those of any extant clockworker; more conservative estimates still believe him to have created no fewer than five Automations between 2004 and the present, an achievement impressive for a lifetime accomplished in a few short years. On the bleeding edge of a field of magic whose luminaries are generally aging recluses of dubious sanity, Stepford seems to be everything his school is not; relatively young, vital, ferociously active, gregarious, and sane. Many (alright, few, but a large portion of those clued in about such things) wonder whether he has found a way to return his craft to its former prestige and glory, a New Way for the oldest of modern magicks to remain relevant to a Postmodern World.

He has not. He is simply the first Merchant Mechanomancer, and the confluence of these mystical paths has taken him from being a wannabee Bad Man and flesh peddler to an occult powerhouse to rival (and in all likelihood exceed) the Freak. If the potency of a magus is determined by the number of major charges they reap in their lives, then Stepford is the most potent wielder of magick since Dugan Forsythe, and he’s been in the adept game less than a decade.

From the mid-80s until 2002, the duke now known as Stepford was LA’s pretender to the title of The Bad Man. Courtesy of a youth misspent as a pimp and then running an escort service, the lean and attractive half-Filipino Merchant’s particular specialty was providing exotic sexual favors, surgery-free sex changes, and body-swapping sex; perhaps not the most imaginative use of the Merchant’s unlimited power over transactions, but it aligned him very closely with the Archetype (the meme “Sex Sells” has become central to the Archetype over the last 30 years ) and appeasing obsessive sexual hungers allowed him to purchase things that would never be sold for any amount of money (as well as providing him with large amounts of money for use with his less wealthy clientele). He would likely have continued along the path of a metaphysical purveyor of smut indefinitely, except for his relationship with Yuri Teichmann, an aging clockworker residing in Eagle Rock who was obsessed with the preservation of Mechanomancy.

Teichmann and Stepford met in the early 90’s, during the formative stages of Thompson’s Hentai-themed brothel, La Blue Room. The clockworker provided the “attractions” which would make the Little Tokyo club infamous among moneyed jades from both sides of the Pacific. Following the great success of that venture, the two first became loose allies of a sort, then cautious friends; each provided the other with a unique ace-in-the-hole to deploy against any challengers, insight across the avatar/adept divide, abilities of value (clockworks for Stepford, staving off the weaknesses of age for Teichmann to allow him to keep practicing his craft well into his 70s), and ultimately the appreciation of an equal without the danger of direct competition in their arenas of choice. The fact that Stepford had a vast network of comely young people bound to his will (whose gratis use Teichmann was granted under the “incentive” clause of the Merchant taboo) probably also helped create a partnership lasting a decade.

In early 2002, Teichmann prepared to finish his life’s work, the Teaching House – a Cube-meets-Saw integrated complex of automatons disguised as a residence that would inculcate the mindset and skills for Mechanomancy in its victims… or kill them trying. Teichmann knew that perfecting the House would require a sufficiently large portion of his memory that his identity would be all but destroyed in the process. While the elderly clockworker saw this as an unfortunate but necessary step for the long-term preservation of his school, the idea that his decades of Mechanomancy experience would pass away with him was intolerable. Just before the final barrage of major charges were passed into the project, Stepford and Teichmann made their last transaction; the avatar would acquire Teichmann’s Mechanomancy skill, education, and obsession as a part of their final deal, in return for mystical ownership of all of Teichmann’s minor and significant clockworks, any remaining non-magickal skills or memories that Teichmann possessed, and total and utter ownership of Teichmann’s body. The deal would provide Stepford with continued access to the Mechanomancy edge that he had come to rely on – this gave him all the justification he needed for the deal in the eyes of the Merchant. The fact that this deal was also effectively the dying wish of his closest friend also helped suppress Stepford’s doubts about the possible side effects of disrupting his entire world view. (Although Stepford at one point suggested that Yuri could transfer his mystic prowess and obsession into one of Stepford’s thralls. Yuri refused, near tears, and then insisted that the bargain must include a provision preventing Stepford from ever relinquishing the path; his skills were both his legacy and his last gift to his friend, and he would not have them “passed around like one of your whores.” Stepford now suspects that accepting this provision was a mistake, although he has not noticed a weakening of his connection to his Archetype.)

A week later, the Teaching House was complete and the abandoned shell of Teichmann’s body had perished under the combined weight of a thousand diseases, addictions, and physical traumas drawn off of Stepford’s old client list. For his part, Stepford had stopped impersonating the Bad Man, fully delegated all management of his sex working operations, and went into isolation. His brain was on fire with insights that he and Teichmann had never been able to reach through the guarded trust of a decade of mystical speculation.

Broadly: Teichmann had been forced to ultimately choose between his Art and his mind, sacrificing in his memories (and thus the core of his being) in order to create a final device of great mystic power, his past burned as fuel for his bid to change the world’s future. Stepford’s avatar channels allowed him to liberate the art from his own personal loss; his second channel (and potentially, third, although he’s extremely cautious about working with demons) gives him access to a pool of memory as broad and deep as the total of human experience. Not Stepford’s past alone, but the past of the world, could drive the engine of arcane progress.

Stepford saw two paths opening out before him. In one, Merchant and Mechanomancer found a cooperative balance under the rubric of the Merchant of Dreams; he would acquire memories from his clients, burn their pasts to sell them the futures that they yearn for in their deepest hearts. Who wouldn’t trade the memories of a first failed marriage for a new, beautiful, utterly obedient spouse designed to their specifications? And what else might he take in payment for this service (especially as the removal of bad memories could likely be spun as an added incentive to many clients, rather than a cost)? What wouldn’t a client give up to transfer their soul into an ageless, undying Automation? With a reasonable cut of his own from every client’s collective past, whose will would the world’s future adhere to? Whose demands would be most fully met through the development and commodification of the limitless supplies of human memory?

Down the other path, Stepford would follow more fully the path of his one-time idol, the Bad Man, and endlessly attempt to trick the majority of his clients into deals which gave Stepford unlimited authority to plunder their memories. A single individual might yield anywhere from 5-10 major charges, as well as dozens of significant charges, before being tapped dry. Already Stepford had significant numbers of individuals in thrall to his will, and relentless plunder of unprotected natural resources has strong resonance with the Merchant.

Stepford has decided for the time being to primarily pursue the former path; reducing one’s entire client pool to drooling, brain-dead zombies is likely to destroy one’s reputation, and therefore one’s livelihood (not to mention risking retaliation from countless dukes in the Underground who draw the line somewhere short of “consuming other’s minds for magickal power”). Making new deals whenever possible keeps him vitally engaged on the path of the Merchant, and for now trying to maintain both his Adept and Avatar standing together is his number one priority. He has created 7 Automaton wives for wealthy patrons, widowers or divorcees all; from each he has received in payment the memories required to create them, $10,000,000, and a single favor of his choosing (all of which have some limits, such as “not my soul, life, or more than an additional $5 million”, but otherwise must be granted without exception).

His choice to trade, rather than pillage, for his charges is not to say that Stepford hasn’t sacrificed one or two of his “Abusive John” thralls, extracting every last drop of their personalities in the creation of over a dozen Automatons whose only loyalty lies with him and dumping the remaining cognitive dissonance back into their shattered minds. It is his right to do as he wishes with those he owns; he’s just not taking to mind-pillaging as his primary time source of Mechanomantic power.

Besides practicing his dual trades and quietly kacking a few members of the Church of Death Triumphant who got too close to the source of LA’s Faustian bargains, Stepford hasn’t really done much with the power he’s acquired; he knows he needs to do something to ensure that Mechanomancy will outlive him, but he’s caught in the gear-shift between facilitating other’s visions and realizing his own. Lately, Stepford has begun to dream of a race of self-replicating, miniaturized, free-willed clockworks; he’s been reading all the Terrence McKenna he can get his hands on (which is quite a lot of unpublished works, scribblings, and manuscripts, on top of Amazon’s selection) to try to make sense of his dreams, and wondering whether this is, at last, his destiny, or just another opportunity to trick himself into living out another man’s passions.

Character Sheet
Personality: The slick salesman of dreams, looking for a dream of his own; the hollow man playing God.
Obsession: (Mechanomancy) Embodying the point of transition between the memory of yesterday and the technology of tomorrow. (Formerly, the art of the deal as a means to harness the desire of others towards his own enrichment.)
Rage: (Helplessness) Stepford has inherited Teichmann’s rage against the near-total erosion of Mechanomancy in the face of postmodern thought. (Previously, Stepford’s hot-button had been racial slurs – as a half-Filipino, Stepford’s youth was filled with enough misplaced anti-Latino racism to give him a very short fuse around the topic.)
Fear: (Self) Stepford is afraid that he has no real vision of his own, and that all his power will buy him is an eternity spent impersonating better men.
Noble: (Self) His word of honor; Stepford will lie, cheat, and steal your very soul out from under you, but if he says “I promise” or “I give you my word” then it’s as good as done. Obviously, he is very careful not to make these commitments frivolously.
Stats
Body 90 (Cut like Bruce Lee)
Kali (Struggle) 80%, Iron Man Tri-Athlete 70%, Climb 60%, Bounce Back 50%, Best Damn Lay You’ll Ever Have 60%
Speed 90 (Lightning Fast, Stone Steady)
Dodge 90%, Drive like Jason Bourne 70%, Initiative 80%, Shoot like Chun-Yow Fat 80%, Sneak 50%, Sleight of Hand 50%, Club Dancing 60%
Mind 90 (Human Calculator)
General Education 80%, Notice 80%, Higher Education 60%, Business Law 60%, Mechanical Tinkering 80%, Polyglot 80%, Criminal Savvy 60%, Computer Use and Misuse 50%, Run Sex-related Businesses 70%
Soul 90 (Enlightened )
Lie 90%, Charm 90%, Seduce 90%, Avatar – Merchant 75%, Mechanomancy 80%, LA Criminal Underworld Contacts 60%, LA Business Contacts 60%, LA Government Contacts 60%, Hunches 60%, Statosphere Lore 25%
Wound Points: 180

Note: Yes, I know. He’s an avatar of the Merchant who has been aggressively forging Faustian bargains for over a quarter-century. His Mechanomancy and Tinkering skills skill were 60% when he received them from Teichmann, but he bargained for 5% of each from his first four Automatons.

Protections:
In addition to the above stats, Stepford has numerous layers of additional protection purchased through his channels. He is immune to disease, poison, drugs, and mind-affecting magicks that target him directly – or, more precisely, any of these assaults he experiences are transferred immediately to particularly durable and well-protected Automatic (Pax), who by his nature is immune to all of them (see PoMoMa, p 126). He also takes only 10% of all physical damage he would otherwise take, the remainder of which is transferred to the same Automaton; they were going to make it 100% transfer, but being absolutely impervious to damage makes it difficult to keep a low profile. Pax, for his part, has a Marker on all Stepford’s Abusive Johns (see below) – if a blow would result in Pax’s destruction, the damage is transferred to the least healthy Abusive John. This system provides the maximum protection to Stepford while not troubling the Sleeping Tiger with publically visible cases of spontaneous combustion or explosive hemorrhage every time Stepford gets injured.

Stepford is always accompanied by at least 3 bodyguards – 2 Automatics with profound combat aptitudes (one, a beautiful blonde woman named Ariel, also satisfies other physical needs; the other, a Doberman pinscher named Rex, provides intimidation) and a significant combat mechanical (“Fluffy”) shaped like a Papillion and carried as a purse-dog by Ariel.

Belongings
Pretty much anything mundane he wants: he runs a very successful escort service and owns several sex clubs, and has been accepting money for brokering Faustian deals for years. He probably had somewhere just shy of $30 million in total assets before he began selling Automata at $10 million apiece; wealth is now more of a function of his desire for it than any difficulty acquiring it.

In terms of arcane belongings besides clockworks, he is relatively poor. A small library of permanent Cross-References on local LA power-players are the crowning glory of his magical collection; this includes one on himself, from shortly after he acquired Yuri’s adept skills and memories, which serves as a backup in case he gets confused after absorbing a client’s memories. The text of his Cross-reference requires a powerful magnifying glass to read, as it contains a LOT of contracts from the preceding two decades; Stepford has a minor clockwork whose only job is to read it aloud to him. The book is protected by a variety of nasty minor mechanicals, as well as one which can destroy it as a last line of defense.
Of course, his arsenal of clockworks is another story.

The Mechanical Horde
In addition to Pax, Ariel, and Fluffy as mentioned above, Stepford can access countless minor combat, tinkering, or Automaton-rewinding mechanicals (about a dozen originally inherited from Teichmann, plus at least one 3-5 minor charge model per week, every week, created by the 2 Automatics he has had on full-time Mechanomancy detail for the past 2 years), several dozen significant combat mechanicals (primarily canine and avian in appearance, although there are a few humans), and 13 Major Automatons at his beck and call (including one who functions as his hypnotherapist/confidante, a couple MIB looking fellows who serve as backup bodyguards when he’s expecting trouble and needs an overt display of force, a group of five Automatics with various combat specialties who he has impersonating a TNI Hit Squad, and a pair of flawlessly beautiful escorts that he uses as spies). If he had to, Stepford could create massive armies of clockworks by depleting his pool of thralls (who would yield thousands of significant charges and hundreds of major charges), but he hasn’t done so yet, at least in part because he hasn’t decided what to do with that much power. But it’s there, waiting for him, if he decides he needs it enough.

He also has a dozen or more significant sexual clockworks from La Blue Room, evenly split between “tentacle demons” and “incredibly hot hermaphrodite” varieties, several lockpicking and car-hotwiring varieties of minor clockworks, and an assortment of idle curiosities.
Stepford also has a significant version of the Lonesome Lunchbox which he inherited from Yuri, which the old clockworker punningly named the Loathsome Lunchbox – it’s slightly larger (having had an extra sig spent on it to make it ¼ human sized) but otherwise appears similar. However, this model has Body 35, Speed 20, Struggle 35%, and Find Metal and Reproduce 50%, and will attack anyone (with firearm level damage) interfering with or damaging any Lunchbox within its visual range; once activated, it cannot be turned off. The presence of this creation, and the danger of it being unleashed, has earned him a permanent cease-fire from the Sleepers, as it did Yuri before him.

The Usual Programming for Purchased Automata
Most of his Automation creations are created with certain rules hardwired into their personality – his own assault models will necessarily have different programming, but those are almost never sold.

1. Under no circumstances can the Automatons harm Stepford or, by inaction, allow Stepford to come to harm (thanks, Asimov), nor can they share any information on Stepford, the Merchant Avatar path, or Mechanomancy (including allowing their internal workings to be examined). This law contains a further requirement to contact Stepford (by means of an anonymous e-mail account exclusively used for this purpose) with details of any plans which might directly threaten him, or any attempt to gain forbidden information from the Automaton.
2. The Automatons must conceal the fact that they are not human from everyone save their owner and those designated by Stepford, using any and all means necessary as long as they do not break rule #1. Save for combat models, there is a “start small” provision in this – that is, it’s better to conceal than persuade, persuade than threaten, better to threaten than kill. Note that, since severe damage to an Automatic will likely reveal its true nature, there is an implicit self-defense clause in this law.
3. As long as they do not break rules 1 and 2, they should obey their owners to the best of their ability and protect them from harm. Note that rule #2’s overriding value means that defending their owners will be done within appropriate human limits – no lifting cars off them, etc, unless privacy is guaranteed.
4. Human lives are generally valued, and unless required by rules 1-3 human beings should not be killed or tortured. This is not included out of altruism so much as avoiding conflict to keep a low profile.
5. Within the stipulations of previous rules, they should seek self-satisfaction in whatever way appeals to them.
6. When possible, they should better themselves – learning of all kinds is equally prized.
7. Ownership of the automation is non-transferrable – at the death of the original owner, they revert to Stepford’s ownership.

The Herd(s) of Thralls

The term thrall is generally used in the above as a shorthand for “people who have chosen their deals with Stepford poorly and have forfeited their free will to him.” The types of individuals that Stepford has as thralls largely break down into four major groups, although exceptions exist. At any given time Stepford will have about a hundred thralls under his thumb, although most of them are not particularly skilled or valuable.

Escorts: The overwhelming majority of Stepford’s thralls (70% or more)are involved in the sale of sex; his current pool of escorts were mostly rescued from much worse positions within the sex trade, with the deal “I’ll get you out of here and take care of you for the rest of your life if you do exactly as I say.” He then cleans them up, takes them under his wing, and steals any non-sex related talents they may have for use by his clients, his Automatons, or his entertainment ventures (see below). He also tends to steal a few percentage points of skills around beauty and sexual performance off each of his “run of the mill” escorts to create a small sub-group of astonishingly beautiful women who make up the crème-de-la-crème of his service (known as “the Perfect 10”, two of whom are actually Automatons).

There are, of course, also escorts in Stepford’s employ who are not under his thrall; they’re just young men and women of good looks and expensive taste.

Entertainment Up-and-comers: Many of the sex workers in LA did not originally come to LA with dreams of selling their bodies (shocking, I know). This means that a Merchant has a pretty good opportunity to consolidate dozens of never-quite-made-it entertainers into a handful of phenomenally talented actors, singers, and musicians. Stepford has among his thralls 3 nationally known pop-tarts, an edgy alternative rock band, and a quartet of Hollywood’s up-and-coming actresses in his thrall; he does not manage them or involve himself overmuch in their affairs except to go to their parties and encourage them to make art he enjoys, but he owns them, body and soul.

Abusive Johns: While there are many clients of his escort services who have never met Stepford, if he is going to allow a client access to one of the Perfect 10 he makes sure to interview them personally. As part of the contract established in that meeting, the 10’s clients foreswear any violence towards their escort and must protect her from harm or exploitation by others as well during her term of employment; failure to do so will invoke “an appropriate forfeit, as determined by the management.” Rich pricks being as they are, Stepford always has at least one under his control, and usually has between three and seven.

Note also that abusing his regular escorts isn’t tolerated either, as Stepford usually promises to take care of his escorts as part of their agreement; he just doesn’t have the time or inclination to meet with every client. Depending on the nature of their offense, abusing his escorts merits anything from leg-breaking to castration to a slow, painful death.

Automatons: All 15 of the Automatons created by Stepford for his own use are in full thrall to him; while he created them with free will (a required prerequisite of Merchant trades), as their creator and the first contact with the world Stepford was in a position of incredible leverage to provide answers and purpose in exchange for servitude.