Tuesday Character: Perfect Elliot Refuel

Times have been tough for the Cathartic Church. Granted, not as tough as they've been in other timelines, in which the church was wiped out back when it was still the Albigensian Heresy, but there's a reason the phrase "better than being massacred by a Papal army and tortured by the Inquisition" never really caught on. The actions of a cadre of nobles who had converted, found the new faith a fascinating curio, or just wanted to tweak the Pope's nose convinced the King of France to intervene on behalf of Catharism, but the sect remains a tiny oddity one step up from a cult. While the church's doctrine of a world created by a spiteful divinity (Rex Mundi) that wants humanity to suffer rings true for many, and the Cathars' much more liberal stance on sexuality has kept them at the vanguard of religious reform, their doctrinal opposition to bringing children into this vale of tears has come perilously close to wiping them out. Only an extremely active recruitment program (bolstered by how evidence of Rex Mundi's dominance is always close to hand) keeps them from disappearing completely.

Perfect Elliot Refuel. the head of Cathars in the Edge (where the Demiurge's malevolence is most clearly visible) has kept the faith since he became a Credente at the age of 28 almost forty years ago. In that time, Refuel has found that the Cathartic goal of complete separation from the material is simply untenable. The endless fundraising needed to maintain the proselytization campaigns has ensnared him in the political machinations of the island, and he often finds himself at some monstrously tacky gala, haplessly nodding along as one or the other of the island's Kings of Wickedness explains how much respect they have for the Cathartic vision. The Cathars even occasionally participate in the Temple of the Divine Experience's broadly Christian Sunday service, rubbing elbows with other churches that would have  wiped their ancestors out (and, multichronically speaking, did).

The lines between divine and vulgar have grown blurry for Refuel, and his prayers to the True Godhead seem to be cast into a gulf even wider than the seven emanated universes of doctrine. He worries constantly about the state of his own soul and that of the church, and ruminates that perhaps it would have been better to let the church be annihilated than to let it become the bloated thing it was today. He mechanically accepts filthy lucre from the material world, justifying it as the only legitimate use for money but still terrified of the implications. Refuel worries so much about his interactions with the material that his shunning of material temptation has caused him to pass out from malnutrition at three separate social functions. He knows he will soon be replaced by one of his underling Perfects*, and it's fair enough - the promotion of Catharism is a young man's game, one for enthusiasm and ideology rather than acclimatization and exhaustion. But before he goes on to whatever awaits him (he fears it is simply another rebirth, despite (or because of) his rank and service), he wants to do something to awaken the faith of a new generation of Cathars and to save his own.

* Although the Cathar name "Perfect" is used to refer to all clerical members of the church as a nod to the church's egalitarian origins, it disguises a highly complex and stratified organization. Refuel worries about that as well.

Tuesday Character: Asim Nicostrato

"I have seen my God, millions of times. I have felt its presence every moment since my birth. It will follow me, everywhere, for the entirety of my life, for the lives of all its children now living, and it will know my death, and theirs, and go on. It is more powerful than I could ever imagine, and how is that not omnipotence? It is greater than I could ever imagine, and how is that not omnipresence? It knows more than I could ever imagine, and how is that not omniscience?"

Asim Nicostrato ("Nico" to his friends) is a well-built man with a neatly trimmed beard. He enjoys jazz, reads detective stories and is a zealous Corporatist. Corporatists worship the various megacorporations as deities, believing that the corporations have transcended whatever profit motives they may have begun with the way that humans transcended purely genetic drives, and are now guiding their human employees to greater things. Nico, a lifelong corporate citizen of TRI Interstellar, has reasonably enough chosen it as his patron, and is fervent in his belief that TRI has a plan for him.

Corporatists tend not to get promoted - their loyalty is unquestionable, but most psych evaluations mark the belief as a significant delusion, and irreligious corporate drone-types get uncomfortable around them. That Nico is the leader of a tactical squad is proof that his beliefs have in no way hindered his skills - If anything, his belief that he does the will of TRI drives him to excel. He's long since given up on trying to push his beliefs on his fellow troopers, choosing instead to lead by example. This has had mixed results - A few soldiers have taken interest in the source of Nico's calm, particularly considering the alien horrors that he regularly encounters, but the only genuine believer he managed to find died on the very next mission after his conversion. A lesser man might have had his faith shaken - the other potential converts certainly did. Nico considers it all part of TRI's plan, and soldiers on.

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Man, did I really say this was going to be a weekly series? Shows you shouldn't presume that inspiration is going to strike with any kind of regular frequency. Also, this was the result of reading far, far too many of Dark Horse's Aliens comics.

Tuesday Character: Tinman

In the interests of keeping my post count relatively steady, I've decided to start doing some regular features.This one involves detailing, in a few paragraphs, a character for a game, a story, both, or something else. Sometimes, as in this case, the characters will be ones from story fragments or settings I've already posted or will post to the blog. Other times they'll be self-contained things left here for future reference. 

Tinman is a handsome, lanky 20-year-old man with a bright blue mohawk, a remarkably elevated and unshakable self-esteem and a quick, nasty wit¹.  He makes a living as a concert promoter and minor pot dealer. Born Royce Benjamin Cloward, Tinman picked up his current moniker during one long fake-ID'd summer night three years ago. At one point, late in the night, an unattractive girl tried to dance with him. Royce proceeded to wittily point out every one of her physical flaws in rapid succession. Sputtering and stuttering for almost a minute, the girl finally simply shouted "You're heartless! You have no heart!" at him and fled the dancefloor in tears, to the delight of Royce's friends. Someone mentioned the Wizard of Oz² and the nickname (as well as could be drunkenly remembered) was coined.

Ironically³, the heart Tinman isn't supposed to have grew three sizes that day. He realized that he'd gone too far, but of course he couldn't apologize to the girl, and his pride wouldn't allow it even if he could have found her. The incident haunted him long after the hangover cleared the next morning; he never saw her again, and sometimes, late at night, he wonders about that. In the intervening years, he's tried to fight his natural instinct to be a prick, with mixed results - he's a bit nicer, sure, but there's still an element of solipsism to him where he forgets that other people matter. Nevertheless, the change led to him slowly gravitating away from his old social circle (who still consider him their friend, but mostly subconsciously understand and don't really question why they don't hang out any more) and into a different group. The name followed him, since everyone was already calling him that.

Among the new friends he's made is his girlfriend Ronnie, a fairly typical polka-dot-dress and Betty-Page-hair rockabilly girl with a voice that can be heard over club sound systems and a sense of humour similar to his old one, but much blunter. Tinman might be trying to help Ronnie be a better person (and thus help himself) by subtly passing on his epiphany, but this tends to take the form of carefully-aimed insults to which Ronnie simply returns fire. The basis of their relationship is more or less just tearing the shit out of each other, both rejoicing in the chance to abuse someone who never takes it personally. As yet, Tinman's primary effect on Ronnie has been making her a little bit funnier and a lot more effective at being cruel

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1. The pain in the ass of Tinman as a character is that I've got this mental image of him as being self-obsessed, funny in an exceptionally cruel way, and charismatic as hell, but I can't really write a character like that. You'll notice that both his role the original Kimota and his nickname origin story here commit a cardinal sin of writing by telling you what the gist of what he said rather than using actual dialogue. I need to hang around more charismatic assholes and take notes, I guess.
2. Funny how that keeps coming up on here. Especially since I've never actually read it.
3. Does anyone else just feel their whole body clench every time they use "irony" or a variant? The Internet's ruined it for all of us.