#discretionarycommentary

Name: Jake Talon Handle: discretionaryCommentary Native Classpect: Ward of Void Age: 25 Session Count: 11 Sylladex: Null-Terminated String Specibus: cankind Academics Skill: Good Sports Skill: Good Favorite Foods: carrot sticks, chips, spicy beef jerky Lifeplant: bromeliads

Current Arc: Mystic (Visionary) 1+

Basic quest: “Oh, hey.” (Red/Melodramatic): You take full advantage of your soundlessness by showing up in amusing poses right behind coplayers, inside cabinets, astride Ogres, and so on and so forth. Then you give the coplayer in question a casual wave and chew on your carrot stick while they freak out. Emote a casual greeting from an implausible or ridiculous position up to once every fifteen minutes for a bonus XP.

Bonus XP emotion: Putting My Faith In You, probably. Either that or a sort of dazed speechlessness at his antics (the latter is more likely in a Techno game).

Inherent

Skill: Shenanigans 3 (“How did you do that?” “Shenanigans.”)

Skill: Sburban Survival 2

Skill: Sburban Void Magic 2

Skill: Communication Through Gestures 1

Bond (2): [I know someone who knows that.]

Affliction (1): [Nothing I do makes any sound.]

Perks

(Superior) Vitality 2 (from Indomitable)

Bond (2): [I’m definitely a bit of a showoff. Maybe more than a bit.]

Sburban Light Magic 2

Arcs:

Indomitable 2

a reproduction of a Character-Building series

Jake Talon has (as any character on Indomitable) a “curse” (air quotes). Nothing he does makes any noise whatsoever. He is mute - or, rather, he can speak but the words will never leave his mouth. He does not play instruments because they don’t do any good. But he’s also a fantastic sneak, and computers and IM mean that he never needs to talk to be a perfectly good player.

(While in presessions, he uses his default-gear laptop as an assistive communication device. People don’t notice, or don’t comment on, the sound thing.)

Paralyzing Fear (Miraculous Action, +0MP/once/chapter, +1MP/2+/chapter): Jake’s ability to assert himself does not need sound. In fact, the soundlessness of it probably even helps. He has his principles, and he will stick to them, and anyone who gets in the way is going to be terrified out of their wits.

Keen Ears (Miraculous Action, 0MP): Living without a sound has sharpened Jake’s hearing far, far beyond normal. He can hear anyone in his dwelling spire even if they’re fifty floors apart, he can casually eavesdrop on about half of Derse’s moon from inside his dream tower, and he knows when the Reckoning’s beginning by the ultra-low-frequency sounds it makes. (Even with this, though, he still can’t hear himself.)

Vitality Bonus (Special): A perk of (Superior) Vitality at the Arc level. Because the Null loves him, it seems to have accidentally erased his Mangrit score. He is now absurdly strong.

Inhuman Strength (Miraculous Action + [Arc] strike): One of the consequences of an erased Mangrit score. The way that the Game attempts to fix an erased score is by replacing it with… something. (In Mangrit’s case, it is usually [SO STRONG]… yes, a string, in a variable that’s supposed to hold a float. Apparently at least this part of Sburb isn’t in a strongly typed language.) The effect is that [SO STRONG], when compared to anyone else’s mangrit, seems to mean “strength so far off the charts that he could punt a broken-prototype Black King, which has strength [3.4028e+38]”. Yeah, that happened.

Tribulation (Miraculous Action, Bleak[, XP Action]; 0MP/1-2x/book, 1MP/“tug”, 4MP/3+/book): Jake’s grasp of the Null is of a different caliber than the “Accursed”-type Void player. He specializes in nulling out specific stats in other Players and game constructs. This won’t work on anything that isn’t a game construct - essentially, it’s useless outside Sburb - but it’s pretty good.

But in any case… when you reach into the right place and null out a stat in someone (it doesn’t have to be mangrit - it could be something else entirely… but I’ve got a writeup coming that’ll have a selection of effects that come from other nulled stats), sometimes the Game tries to get it back. The “shiny regrowth” mechanism often restores nulled stats - sometimes sensibly, sometimes less so. You’ll have to figure out when you need to null it out again. It can turn into a tug-of-war if you’re not careful. Have fun.

Inconspicuous Form (Miraculous Action, 1MP): You don’t make noise on a regular basis anyway, but this means you’re actually trying at sneaking around, taking full advantage of your soundlessness.

Visionary 1

Sense Falsehood (Miraculous Action, 0MP, free strike=Arc): You know if something is a game construct. This is not terribly useful while playing Sburb because everything is a game construct inside the Game, but it does help with identifying important places, people, and objects in presessions.

Magic (Magical/Superior Skill): Jake has access to Sburban Void Magic even though he is not Awesometier. The Null just likes him that much, I guess.

Illusions of Emptiness (Miraculous Action, n/a): Jake can pull all sorts of Voidy shenanigans, occasionally even in presession, because he knows what game constructs are and knows that his paradoxbirth makes him, arguably, a game construct himself.