dude…

Well. Here we are again. Project Purity and me. It's been close to twenty years since my last entry. Since I left all of this behind to make a life for my son. We've spent that time in Vault 101, tucked away from the rest of the world. It wasn't perfect, but it was safe, and that's all I could have hoped for. Now, my son is a grown man. Handsome, intelligent, confident. Just like his old man. Hmph. And as hard as it was to admit it, he doesn't need his daddy anymore.

Christopher felt his face flush, red hot with a mix of rage and embarrassment. Meeting Dr. Li, and now this. His entire life, a lie. The memory of his first talk with Moriarty sprang to mind, how the truth was laid out in front of him and he dismissed it with such an insufferable self-satisfaction.

“I’m such a fucking idiot.” He murmured, slamming his head against the desk and beating against it with his fists.

Was it all his fault? Was he just too easy to fool? Did he fall for the Tunnel Snakes “someone wrote gullible on the ceiling” trick too many times, that even his own father couldn’t resist pulling the wool over his eyes?

He scoffed while choking back tears at his father’s words. ‘Grown man now,’ ‘doesn’t need his daddy anymore.’ Some grown man he was, he only felt smaller than ever.

Anger continued to well up in his chest until he did the only thing he could think to: lash out. “Why am I such a fucking idiot?!” He swiftly grabbed the desk fan in front of him and thrust it into the ground, Jury-Rig sidestepping the projectile and hitting Christopher with that infamous side-eye before they both turned their attention to the ceiling.

Christopher’s breath caught in his throat at the thuds of heavy footsteps and gravelly voices came from above. Now was not a good time to lose his cool. He squeezed his hands into fists, his gloves the only thing stopping him from from drawing his own blood with his fingernails. He ran through his list of self regulation techniques, from breathing exercises to reciting Tom Lehrer’s ‘The Elements’ from beginning to end until he’d composed himself enough to push on through the pile of holotapes.

Since they appeared to be spread around the facility in no particular order, he popped the next one into his Pip-Boy without reading the label. Dad could be a bit scatterbrained sometimes, despite his fervent insistence that Christopher inherited that from his mother. He pressed play, greeted by the unexpected voice of a woman.

… that batch of tests was inconclusive, but Madison and I are convinced it’s a problem with the secondary filtration system. We’re going to re-calibrate the equipment and try again tomorrow, so that…

Christopher hovered his finger over the eject button, assuming Dad had gotten another scientist’s records mixed up with his own.

James, please, I’m trying to work. Now’s not the time…

He froze in place.

So that's the next step. Assuming we get the results we need, we'll move on to... James! Stop! I need to finish these notes… We'll move on to diagnosing the issues with the radiation dampeners. That should... Ow! James! Now? We really shouldn't…

The tape ended abruptly on her laughter. His mother’s laughter. For the first time, he had a voice to put to her face... but that’s still all she was, a face. An idea. Though, now she just felt like the first name on an ever-growing list of lives he’d taken.

Dad had always impressed upon him that his mother’s death wasn’t his fault, but if not his, then whose? He couldn’t accept that the taking of someone’s life could be brushed off as an unfortunate circumstance with no consequence. Someone needed to pay. Maybe that’s what he was doing now.

Jury-Rig laid his head on Christopher’s knee, the glimmer of something in his multicolored eyes breaking Christopher out of his trance. Maybe it was hope, or simple curiosity, or he just didn’t want Christopher to start spiraling again.

It is done (enough)!

I would hype it up more but this is really really simple. It randomly generates a set of symbols, colors, and a word, and then the expected thing to do with those is you draw some sort of character based off the result you get. So it's just an art challenge toy thingy.

There are also some practical features like you can lock parts of the result in place to rerandomize the rest, or hide parts of the generation you don't care about (like if you want to pick your own colors or hate the words being there)

You can try it out over on itch.io!

It should run in browser, but there's also a downloadable version for Windows if you want to use it offline. (No mac/linux versions for now, because I don't have appropriate computers to test those on and I...don't want to deal with mac's developer accounts or whatever their problem is...)

Here's something I made from one of the results I got for the sake of example:

(It's a bit of a rushed drawing sorry I just wanted to get the actual generator out there)

"my parents were killed by a (vampire/evil wizard/raging maniac/whatever)" but you're the one who killed someone's parents and now they're out to fucking Get You.

"my spouse/significant other died and I'm out to avenge them" but you're an undead or have the Reborn lineage or something and you're the dead spouse trying to find your revenge-obsessed lover before they do something they'll regret.

"my village was taken over by a tyrant" but you're the tyrant who's been chased out and fallen out of power and now you have to get Away From Here Fast.

"my noble family's manor burned down and I want to find the person who did it" but you're the housemaid who's been cast aside and put out of a job, and needs a quick way to make some money.

it sort of instantly gives the character more depth and makes the backstory feel more three-dimensional. Your character has done something wrong, whether by accident or on purpose, and that makes them feel more human. Not to mention the fact that many of these automatically create the easy-to-harness plot device of Someone Is After Me.

Generally you unbutton and re-button a suit coat when you sit down and stand up.

You’re supposed to hold wine or champagne glasses by the stem to avoid warming up the liquid inside. A character out of their depth might hold the glass around the sides instead.

When rich/important people forget your name and they’re drunk, they usually just tell you that they don’t remember or completely skip over any opportunity to use your name so they don’t look silly.

A good way to indicate you don’t want to shake someone’s hand at an event is to hold a drink in your right hand (and if you’re a woman, a purse in the other so you definitely can’t shift the glass to another hand and then shake)

Americans who still kiss cheeks as a welcome generally don’t press lips to cheeks, it’s more of a touch of cheek to cheek or even a hover (these days, mostly to avoid smudging a woman’s makeup)

The distinctions between dress codes (black tie, cocktail, etc) are very intricate but obvious to those who know how to look. If you wear a short skirt to a black tie event for example, people would clock that instantly even if the dress itself was very formal. Same thing goes for certain articles of men’s clothing.

Open bars / cash bars at events usually carry limited options. They’re meant to serve lots of people very quickly, so nobody is getting a cosmo or a Manhattan etc.

Bedtime Story.