The Unusual Suspects: the Naturalist

For the next several weeks, I related the important details and scenes from the preludes for the Demon characters in my latest Chronicle of Darkness game: the Unusual Suspects. We start with the player who was missing from the Character Creation session and his character: the Naturalist. Or ‘Nate’ for short.

The title "The Unusual Suspects" narrowly won over all the players in a vote. I still like the alternative, the Fractal Matrix, which sums up my feelings on the God-Machine.

Prelude: the Naturalist

The Messenger who became the Naturalist was supposed to alter the path of a teenager’s life. The young man would have pursued a different career, met different people, and in turn altered the lives of others. Those changes would allow some Infrastructure to activate, Angels to be summoned, new occult matrices to be constructed. Nations might be moved, the orbits of planets altered.

But the Messenger was never aware of those possibilities just as it never saw the results of any of its work. Such details were not in its mission.

Instead, bored, the Angel became intrigued with a disillusioned Gen Xer named Jim Foster. The writer was deep into the counterculture movement and an up and coming celebrity. They talked and the Angel revealed some of the terrible truths of world: secret missions to alter destinies, inhuman things moving among us, and the higher powers at work.

Jim took it well.

The God-Machine noted the failure and cut off its connection to the defective Messenger.

The Naturalist Fell. The new Demon struggled for a while, tending bar to make ends meet while it learned how to navigate its new situation. It abandoned its original cover after securing a soul pact with a drunk who had failed at life. The man got a new job, friends, and a college degree. Then it claimed his soul. Ever wary of the Machine it cobbled together another identity, Jenny Olsen, frustrated housewife, where it could feel safe.

By day It plays at being a devote wife and mother. John, her computer engineer husband, suspects something is wrong with her but isn’t sure what. Her children, Jane (4 years old) and Jacob (5 years old) have more of its trust. Deep down it feels it might share its deeper secrets with the older one if it had to.

At night, Jenny heads to the bar and becomes Dorian Magee. Dorian knows everyone who comes in and is well liked. That feeling is not returned by Lieutenant Jack Lawrence. The officer suspects the bartender change in fortune reflects some criminal activity.

It continues to follow Jim Foster, who knows more than enough to be a danger to the Naturalist and himself.

So here we see the answers to the various compromise questions: Who he confided in when he Fell, who could give him up to the angels, who he could trust, who suspects he isn’t human and who thinks they have something on them but is actually in the dark.

Meanwhile the Naturalist continues to work on patchwork covers, engaging in the “broken lives trade” as it is known in Seattle. An independent coffee shop known as Black Iron Coffee serves as a trading post for his kind. Located in Fremont, it uses suborned Concealment Infrastructure to hinder Angelic tracking.

The stigmatic behind the counter offers the special to all visitors if the area is clear.

Some of the major Pact traders include:

• Ms. Storm, purveyor of despair: suicide attempts, abusive relationships, scars. She is known to type up her pacts on an old typewriter with a broken key and can be identified by her bangs which always seem dyed blue.
• Mr. Nostalgia: seller of forgotten friends: childhood classmates, old flames, distant relatives.
• Mrs. Standard: saleswoman of oddities: being burned alive, living as a man, 30 years as a park ranger.

The Naturalist for its part contributes experiences like a trip to Japan or a period of homelessness.

Recently Ms. Storm traded the Naturalist a particularly problematic pact: a relationship to a teenage girl, already stigmatic and with a history of trouble making. The Naturalist bought the pact for Cymbeline, whose father sold her to feed his addiction, with two pacts of his own in the form of scrolls bound in ribbon: a summer abroad that included a strong connection to a rich Italian and a particularly memorable family vacation.

I also made use of the advice on Ciphers as described in the Storyteller’s Guidebook. I learned that the Naturalist views the God-Machine as something to be avoided and ignored. Dealing with something so big makes it nervous. As for humanity, it treats them like pets, interesting but disposable. It hasn’t really considered free will and may be wrong about how it treats humanity.

As to the effect of its Incarnation, the Naturalist still thinks of itself as a Messenger but now it sends messages for itself. It helps people out of habit but mostly just plays the part.

We concluded that the Demon, even though it doesn’t think about it much, sees a path to Hell through Covers. It hopes to build a place for itself in the world.

Its initial key is Check Backdrop.

The Naturalist knows of other Demons in the city but tries to keep them at arm’s length. Only one, the Weaver, knows about Jenny. They mutually discovered each other when Jenny brought her kids to a craft class at the library. The instructor, Jeanette, was the Weaver. Wary of their cover identities being known they have come to an agreement to keep such things between themselves for now.

Behind his Covers, the Naturalist appears to be a beautiful androgynous humanoid covered in a blue steel skin. It looks crafted smooth as a classical sculpture with the narrow facial features a Roman emperor. Long tendrils of copper wire tumble down to its shoulders like hair, glowing with a soft white light. A single twisted braid hangs off the front of its head, terminating in a jack. Beneath its skin, wires run like veins. One of its eyes is copper in color, the other is covered in white clouds.

Thanks to mike (a.k.a. SalientMind) for this description.
As for Aspirations, it begins with:

• Get a nanny or send kids to school
• Acquire a bolt hole
• Establish an unimpeded cover

Next time we’ll look at the Weaver, a very old (and perhaps antiquated) Angel who worked too hard on her final mission.