Selphie

Character Concept

Selphie is based on Selphie from Final Fantasy VIII and Kingdom Hearts.

She wears yellow overalls, brown work boots, a silver pendant, and a blue armband. She has green eyes and unruly brown hair which insists on curling in the wrong direction. She carries a skipping-rope which transforms into oversized nunchaku for battle.

I imagine she is beset by people who look askance at her unusual name "Selphie", assuming it to be short for "selfish" the same way "jelly" is short for "jealous".

Aspirations

1. She aspires to become a train Guard, figuring out who genuinely forgot their ticket and who's been evading fares for kicks; defending the homeless from hasslers and students from gangs.
2. As an orphan, she seeks stability and a role in which she can excel, helping others and being appreciated. She aspires to never get pregnant herself, and to defend bystanders from becoming collateral damage. Nobody must become an orphan at her hands.
3. She thinks it might be nice to set up a community garden to bring people together in a common goal of nurturing. They could even have a website!
4. Vocation: to be developed in play.

Breaking Points

• Guilt
• Defeat
• Disenchantment
• Idyll: justice for the guilty; mercy for the penitent
• Inspiration: criticism from perfectionists
• Juncture: given the option to rebel but stayed loyal
• Insecurity: "I never made promises lightly, and there have been some that I've broken."
• Priorities: travel and cultural recognition

Anchors

Virtue: Just. Selphie defends those who are being exploited, cheated, tricked, etc. even if it would be to her advantage to keep her head down and join in.

Vice: Adrenaline junkie. If there's a way she can be thrilled by speed, a close shave, etc. rather than thinking about something confrontational or uncomfortable, she'll take the opportunity.

Attributes

Skills

Skill specialities:

1. Investigation (Troubleshooting)
2. Drive (Piloting)
3. Weaponry (Nunchaku)

Merits

Advantages

Calling

Troubadour

• Transformed Attribute: Dexterity ◦
• Affinity: Appear, Inspire, Shape

Queen

Hearts

Practical Magic: Jewel on a mission gets an exceptional success at 3 (not 5) successes. Dice pool increased by (Belief - 7).

Invocations

Charms

Usage

1. roll Initiative: 1d10 + 7 (Initiative, above) - 0 (weapon modifier)
2. Transform: 8d8 (Belief + Inner Light - Shadows)
3. roll Attack: (Strength + Weaponry + Speciality - Defence)d8 is (5-D)d8
4. damage issued: #successes (≥8) + 1 (base damage for Kensai Regalia)
5. damage applied: reduce the issued damage by the number infront of the virgule in the Armour (usually 1/3 for Kevlar Vest p270) or after it for firearms (not spearguns or crossbows though). If this reduces it below 1, apply 1 Bashing; otherwise apply # Lethal.
6. consequences: characters have a number of hitpoints (6: Size + Stamina); each level of damage in the final three hitpoints imposes a penalty of -1 dice on the pools available to all subsequent rolls.
7. The 3 damage types are bashing, lethal, and aggravated, and Ballistic armour converts a number of lethal damages into bashing damages equal to the number after the virgule. You're dead when your rightmost box is full of aggravated damage.
8. Defence is all about avoiding an attack landing, and Armour is all about reducing the damage of an already-successful attack

Equipment

[2017-12-30 01:22:45] <mainstreet> Capn's ruling was you Need X-1 dots in resources to buy something with availability X
[2017-12-30 01:23:03] <mainstreet> So really 5 dots in resources is pretty much guaranteed overkill in this game
[2017-12-30 02:00:26] <mainstreet> Nenni: X-2 = at will, X-1 or X = once per "chapter", X+1 = once per month/reduces X by 1 for a month
[2017-12-30 02:07:42] <mainstreet> Right, but at 4 dots you *get Airship 5 once every 2 months*
[2017-12-30 02:07:52] <mainstreet> and at chargen you *have plenty of time before start*
[2017-12-30 02:08:11] <mainstreet> So as long as you don't have to replace the Airship twice in 2 months, you're not going to have a problem there
[2017-12-30 02:09:26] <BLusk> By that logic, buy an airship every two months for the preceeding 5 years.  That's 6 a year, for 30 standing airships.

So Selphie pretty much has access to all equipment on-demand. Clearly she cannot carry everything on her person, but keeps her stockpiles onboard the Airship Ragnarok where drones can be dispatched to deliver equipment when needed. At the start of any ground-based incursion she'll be equipped with whatever armour and weaponry seems optimal, after consulting the tactical battle simulation.

Airship: "Ragnarok"

5-dot Merit + 4-dot Skill + Skill Specialty

This is the Final Fantasy VIII airship Ragnarok which Selphie pilots for the team.

Vehicles are on CoD p98. They support 2×Crafts modification slots: it is equipped with a Cloaking Device; hatches, zip lines and winches for personnel deployment and retrieval; an electrical and engineering workshop; drone hives; tactical situational battle simulation computer; voice-activated autonomous autopilot and guidance system.

As the daughter of transport tycoon and military manufacturer Sir Rich Brandon, she has been able to purchase several discontinued prototype airships over the years just out of her pocket money. She has tinkered with them and incentivised technicians to send equipment her way when it's "surplus to requirements". They're willing to indulge their heir-to-the-chairman to foster loyalty with her as insurance for the future. As a result, she has amassed a private hangar of hobby aircraft she takes for a spin whenever the fancy strikes. Lately, she has been taking advantage of the Ragnarok's cloak for trysts with Durian who she might one day have to elope with since nobody is good enough for my daughter. Sometimes being an unknown nobody is the most valuable treasure... even when you've got to deploy military-grade tech to get there.

2017-12-16 05:03:44<Nenni>	If I made "The Naked City" (p107) a Practical charm, would that get around the issue of how to conceal an airship? In Men In Black, there was that fully functional UFO mounted in a park like an art sculpture, and the MIBs fought the cockroach trying to leave in it. If the FF airship has no cloaking / Somebody Else's Problem Field -generator, maybe it could similarly be parked somewhere (perhaps a derelict theme park) and The Naked City would ensure we could use
2017-12-16 05:03:44<Nenni>	it without the authorities noticing anything had changed.
2017-12-16 05:09:19<Capn_Ascii>	First, what does Naked City do? I'm assuming it doesn't vaporize clothes or anything like that. :p
2017-12-16 05:10:08<Capn_Ascii>	Second, it's not the parking that presents a problem. If this takes place in modern times, then all air traffic is strictly monitored and regulated.
2017-12-16 05:10:22<Capn_Ascii>	You'd never be able to fly around and remain hidden.
2017-12-16 05:10:30<Capn_Ascii>	You'd need an actual cloak of some sort.
2017-12-16 05:15:39<Nenni>	Capn: The Naked City would get around the air traffic control problem, I think, because it says, "she easily evades the nets and snares laid by the authorities"
2017-12-16 05:18:19<Capn_Ascii>	Also, this Naked City thing doesn't sound anywhere near what you seem to think it is, Nenni. This is more of a 'I have connections' perk. You can't use this to hide an airship.
2017-12-16 05:19:06<Capn_Ascii>	Well, I guess the first question is: IS this taking place in modern times?
2017-12-16 05:19:43<Capn_Ascii>	We could go with modern, high fantasy, or even a Final Fantasy setup that blends magic and technology.
2017-12-16 05:19:45<mainstreet>	I think CoD sort of needs to be. It can be more or less overt with the magical aspects though.
2017-12-16 05:19:50<Capn_Ascii>	Actually, I kind of like that last one myself.
2017-12-16 05:21:23<Capn_Ascii>	Hmm. Well, the short version is, it's not unlike Shadowrun or d20 Modern, in that it's basically present day but with fantasy and magic elements co-existing as part of that world.
2017-12-16 05:21:44<Iethloc>	Although in this case, the magic is supposed to be hidden
2017-12-16 05:22:40<Nenni>	Given the "Princess" setting, it seemed to me a bit like some anime where there is 90% real world, 5% super high tech, and 5% weird magic going on but most people never notice it.
2017-12-16 05:22:44<firtree>	Yeah, the modern + magic sounds good to me.
2017-12-16 05:22:50<Capn_Ascii>	Yeah, again, that's the problem with basically all 'masquerade' games. Personally I don't care for that.
2017-12-16 05:23:04<mainstreet>	Nenni: That seems reasonable to me.
2017-12-16 05:23:23<mainstreet>	Yeah, I can understand the problem with that.
2017-12-16 05:23:33<Capn_Ascii>	We could ultimately just slap a cloaking device on there ship and call it a day.
2017-12-16 05:23:36<mainstreet>	I could see an anime type setting.
2017-12-16 05:23:51<mainstreet>	True. It's not like Miss Five Dots of Resources can't afford a cloaking device.
2017-12-16 05:23:58<Iethloc>	Heh
2017-12-16 05:24:00<firtree>	^
2017-12-16 05:24:07<Nenni>	I'm also totally willing to ditch the airship if someone has a different cool idea for a vehicle which would help the party.
2017-12-16 05:24:38<Nenni>	It's just that in FF8 Selphie is the pilot of the Ragnarok, so I put it down in the character sheet as a concept, but it's definitely flexible.

2018-01-27 03:19:02<Capn_Ascii>	Speaking of which, would you guys mind giving me the rundown on your characters' various backstories? I need to figure out how you all are going to meet at an inn. :p
2018-01-27 03:20:20<Capn_Ascii>	The main thing I need to figure out is how the airship thing works.
2018-01-27 03:24:48<Nenni>	For my character's background: Selphie is the daughter of a military manufacturing transport tycoon so she has plenty of financial freedom and NO social freedom from her very strict father. So she has bought cast-offs from the prototype assembly lines, cobbled together her own Stealth Airship, and sneaks off in it to have a REAL LIFE, living down and dirty with the Common People ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_People_%28song%29 )
2018-01-27 03:24:48<Nenni>	such as Durian, her Hateful Boyfriend. More on this story, after the break! https://jackpoint.neocities.org/cod/selphie.htm
2018-01-27 03:27:46<Capn_Ascii>	Anywho. Rich girl rebelling by driving around an airship? I can totally go for that. You guys can fly around in it, solving mysteries.
2018-01-27 03:28:15<Capn_Ascii>	How big is it?
2018-01-27 03:30:20<Nenni>	I expect it would need more than one tennis court to park on, for example, so no just zipping in and out of shopping centre carparks.
2018-01-27 03:30:35<Nenni>	(That might make things too easy!)
2018-01-27 03:36:55<Capn_Ascii>	And, at any rate, the airship will have to be parked at an airport under most circumstances.
2018-01-27 03:37:01<Capn_Ascii>	How exactly does the 'stealth' work?
2018-01-27 03:37:54<Nenni>	It just has a cloaking device.
2018-01-27 03:38:04<mainstreet>	The airship isn't a standard item
2018-01-27 03:38:10<mainstreet>	so things like a cloaking device
2018-01-27 03:38:16<mainstreet>	work however you, as the DM, want them to :P
2018-01-27 03:39:19<Capn_Ascii>	Nenni: this is the real world, so 'turn the ship invisible to the naked eye' devices don't actually exist. It either needs to be some kind of super-top-secret military stuff, or magic.
2018-01-27 03:40:32<Nenni>	Capn: well, her father is a military manufacturer and research facility manager, so Selphie has access to offcuts and prototype military hardware.
2018-01-27 03:40:46<Capn_Ascii>	That works.

Hateful Boyfriend: "Durian"

1-dot Merit (boosting a 2/3-dot Merit)

Durian is Selphie's main social contact. He's eight years her senior and runs a car-washing business. Although he loves Selphie, he hates pigeons and the mess they make of his hard work. Conceptually, he comes from a really weird game and his hair is spikey.

Selphie isn't really thrilled about him, but it's socially encouraged to date years before you're ready to marry, and associating with someone so well-established keeps the wannabes in her peer-group off her case. He's a staunch alibi of her Alternative Identity and a big part of her class slumming. She doesn't dislike him — he's a nice enough dude — she'd just much rather be playing around with trains.

Anthem: "Common People"

Rent a flat above a shop,
Cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool,
Pretend you never went to school.

But still you'll never get it right
'Cause when you're laid in bed at night
Watching 'roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all.

You'll never live like common people
You'll never do whatever common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view,
And dance and drink and spew
Because there's nothing else to do.

Sing along with the common people,
Sing along and it might just get you through
Laugh along with the common people
Laugh along even though they're laughing at you
And the stupid things that you do.
Because you think that poor is cool.

Be that as it may, Selphie doesn't see herself as a slum tourist. She sees herself more as... a missionary.

Durian's Anthem: "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park"

All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park!
Every Sunday you'll see
My sweetheart and me
As we poison the pigeons in the park.

When they see us coming
The birdies all try an' hide -
But they still go for peanuts
When coated with cyanide!
The sun's shining bright
Everything seems all right
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

We'll murder them all
Amid laughter and merriment
(Except for the few
We take home to experiment).
My pulse will be quickenin'
With each drop of strychnine
We feed to a pigeon;
It just takes a smidgen
To poison a pigeon in the park.