Welcome Meridian Porter

Hello Meridian Porter welcome to the forum. Just let me know if you have any questions. I hope you will like it here.

Welcome!

Willkommen, bienvenu, welcome!

Hello! Hope Character Creation is going well for you!

They have not made any posts yet.

They said they've sent you a PM, Great One.

Oh! Many apologies, I completely missed this and was just keeping an eye on my outbox.

Thank you for the warm welcomes everyone!

I have a few concepts in my head but have completed one character. Happy to change or dump them if they're not appropriate or step on any toes.

Just a warning, I mostly come from an Ars Magica/MtA(Awakening) background, so some things might take slight adjustments. I've done my reading up though (like I've read 4 whole pdfs just during character creation) and should be able to get into the swing of things without too much stumbling.


SO, I thought, just because I'm not exactly going to be able to recall particular facts and because you guys seem to be deep into a chronicle... It might be fitting if I were to play an Orphan without much connection to established factions?

I'll save the full character for their own thread since that seems to be how you guys do things here. But yeah, would that fit at all?

Well, you wouldn't be the only Orphan in the group, then...

We just arrived in Concordia, on Horizon, and I guess it'd be a bit much to ask you to read the *whole* chronicle to date.

So whacha got?

Well, me and Serge joined mid-chronicle and did okay, so don't need to worry on that front.

Hello,

Don't feel too bad about missing the welcome thread. I've missed a couple of threads here myself.

Take your time picking a character you want to play. And don't worry about missing out on the chronicle. Like Nicole said, joining up mid game is no problem at all.

If you run into any trouble or confusion with the Mage the Ascension rules feel free to ask. We'd all be happy to help. Those rules are a little bit tricky grasp at times.

I'll fire what I sent to Anja, just in case it's not gone through somehow too.

This is just a primer on the character, I have a lot more sketched out for her which I intend to throw in the character thread if she's fitting!

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Meet Meridian Porter, the Abandoned Vagabond. In her heart, she is a Survivor, exploiting anything any anyone to get a foot up. She still has some of her youth about her though, and most will never look much deeper than the Kid in front of them.

She is an Orphan in every sense of sense of the word, having had little support network growing up and finding even less support after awakening. Her name was taken from the intersection she was left on.

Meridian's early childhood was spent mostly on the streets, often in and out of foster homes or police stations, rarely in school. Her experiences left her with a keen eye for danger and sharpened her survival instincts. In particular, Meridian always seemed to have a talent for seeing things that others might not on the surface, usually a bit of extra food to keep her full for the week. Other times, darker things.

Her awakening wasn't announced by a flare of flame or a meeting with a powerful spirit. Instead, she was set upon by strokes of ramping misfortune. Over the course of a day, Meridian was powerless to stop the life she had begun building for herself from burning away, sending her deeper and deeper into the cracks she had always lived between.

Despite her raw talent, no local group reached out to refine her after the veil was lifted from her eyes. After her Avatar had finished with her, there seemed to be no solid ground to stand on.

Since then, she has been struggling to find her place, meticulously honing her craft in the hopes that somebody, anybody, would finally give her a chance to shine.

Her primary magical focus is entropy, with some ability to work with both correspondence and prime.

Her main competencies lie in her potential to avoid danger and notice, complemented by a high Arcane and skills that allow her to observe from the shadows.

Her biggest weakness is in her lack of capability to face most threats head-on, preferring to slip away or simply avoid situations altogether. She knows how to fire a gun from her youth with some unscrupulous groups, but is by no means a master marksman. At this moment in time, she feels uncomfortable just carrying.

Meridian's paradigm relies roughly on the simple fact that Everything Is Always Falling Apart. She believes fundamentally that the world is already deeply broken and only breaking further. To her, Magick is what happens when you find the cracks in something and start to chip away.

Naturally, her primary focus is on Entropy as this is pretty much the keystone of her philosophy. She also has an understanding of Prime and Correspondence. She is very into coincidental magic, preferring to avoid vulgar magic. A desire stirs within her to be seen though, represented by her ability to sometimes blatantly cast magic and pass it off as completely natural. This is made much easier by her focus on more metaphysical workings.

Meridian's practice is what she dsecribes as Acumen. This is the ability to see clearly what others might miss at a glance, looking past the obvious to where the cracks begin to emerge. The practice of Acumen involves a variety of observational skills: Eye Contact (Seeing Others), Meditation (Seeing the Self), Crossroads & Crossing Days (Seeing Where Things Meet), Ordeals & Suffering (Surpassing Flaws), Tricks & Illusions (Seeing what others do not, or concealing flaws), Blessings & Curses (Describing Flaws to Others.)

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Also, once again, really appreciate you all being so welcoming! Sorry if this is a bit clumsy at all. I'll absolutely refine it and elaborate on pretty much everything.

Oh, wow, Meridian's gonna have a serious culture shock with some of the group... and less with other parts.

I suppose her awakening is still somewhat better than military rocketry to the face, though.

That said, you might want to set up a character sheet post in the Characters and NPCs folder.

Is that aimed at any particular character, Warp?

Oh, and you can use the 'view posts since last visit' button on the mainpage to pinpoint the threads which... well, kinda self-explanatory.

I love the character concept! You'll be a very good addition to the group.

Colin wrote:Oh, wow, Meridian's gonna have a serious culture shock with some of the group

I'm probably the culture shock. I feel like Meridian wouldn't be very appreciative of my character's outlook on life compared to hers lol.

Nicole Bouchard wrote:Is that aimed at any particular character, Warp?

I neither confirm nor deny any such allegations.

May have been self-referential, too.

Heh! If it's "Everything Is Perfect" she's probably going to bristle a little bit.

If it's "I like attention!" then she'd be quite appreciative of that, since it means she can stay out of the spotlight.

I'll make a start on the sheet now!

Nah, I don't think "Everything Is Perfect" is going to happen, but there's something of a "We Can Fix This Shit" attitude present in a few of the Cabal members.

With highly varying degrees of optimism and enthusiasm.

Serge has these in abundance, Nicole's probably got a few tools labeled "I wasn't asking"...

I had to change a few things about Meridian because I built the character wrong and I've slightly shifted some of my concepts mentally so... Just going to completely rewrite her background accordingly!

Might be an idea. Don't want Nicole to nickname Meridian 'Mini-Me', do you?

Yeah, no concept survives contact with the ST. Can't be helped; they know what will work or not better.

That is a interesting character.

Have you give some thought to her reason for joining with the other characters, and are they perhaps going to meet her on Horizon?

Oh, as a small suggestion - https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/ is a very useful free site for setting up a functional character sheet, like I did for Colin. Using the Markdown system to make the columns and such is easy enough, and if you want any help with things like getting the dots and such to work, let me know.

Purely with my ST hat on for a moment, I would say Meridian would be very easy to slot into this chronicle... if the party had been in Boston. [such as the fact it's likely Nick and Meridian would know someone or two in common]. The fact they are in Horizon and won't be for some time RL-wise makes this angle impossible.

Therefore, I am thinking that perhaps Meridian was picked up by another Chantry, it really 'didn't work out' and they were carted off to Horizon [by force, if needed] to basically, try to find someone/anyone to palm her off to? The only fly in this concept is that it this means Meridian hails from another city - [for if she'd been picked up by a Boston chantry I am sure one of the SH crew would have heard about it earlier]. This also has the advantage in that making backstory fit the 'game city' can involve more work.

I took a vary quick look at the sheet, and have four thoughts.

- Child flaw. I've done a PC of that age before, and I used the 'Youthful Appearance' one intstead from Hunter. Mechanically the same as the one-dot variant picked, but sounds a bit cooler.
- Street Ties merit. I didn't think we were using those ones, that the 'ties' instead are being shown in Backgrounds [Contacts etc].
- Arcane 5. At that level, Meridian shall only 'show up' when they really desire to. That might make her backstory kinda difficult to write [as she will need to want to join up].
- We're using 'Larceny' as a Secondary Ability. Perhaps a good pick for Meridian?

Good points!

Meridian could probably be from another city, honestly might make some things easier and absolutely aligns with her themings. I might have to change her name though!

Youthful Appearance definitely works better than Child. I think Meridian was probably one or two years younger when I first thought of her but I didn't really feel comfortable how it was aligning with some of her kinda darker vibes.

Street Ties, I had the idea of playing off as a "Meridian used to run with people who don't necessarily remember her" rather than a set list of people she is tied down to. One of Meridian's big hangups is having very few people she can rely on or trust. In this specific case though, contacts would likely be better, I'll definitely look at it when I'm going over things. I might end up shifting that specific bit of budget elsewhere entirely to explore some other aspects of her personality since she is pretty set when it comes to streetwise already.

For the time being, Meridian is absolutely torpedoing her own Arcane in order to be noticed by anyone, even at risk to herself. It's honestly a battle. She's being loud, making ripples, whipping up entropy magic just short of vulgar and hoping she doesn't just end up supressing herself. I could drop her down to 4 though as 5 is a lot, probably more than is really ever necessary. (For these purposes, I'm imagining her using some sort of "Come What May" working that just funnels action towards herself using a combination of Entropy + Correspondence.)

In terms of Larceny, I do see Meridian as more of an "opportunistic" scavenger than a more active thief with skills but... I'll be shuffling my abilities around possibly though, so definitely a good call and something I'll look into!

There are some ideas in the other thread. What is Nicole do know Meridian, and the Meridian ahve been brought to Horizon under suspicion of wrongdoing due to her Echos. When her name is cleared Nicole could be asked if she could help the Orphan get home since she know her and Steelhaven have a shuttle.

Nicole knows her already? Or knows of her? Or an idea on how to slot her into the game?

EDIT [and from above]

Well, it's quite possible Meridian's renamed herself, perhaps repeatedly. And the burb for 'Youthful Appearance' is this;

"You look like you're still in high school. You always get carded at bars and often have to produce identification even to buy cigarettes. In order to gain entry to concerts, clubs or bars, or to purchase alcohol, you need to present a valid-looking ID."

It's only a one-point flaw, and mainly social and situational in scope. For example, the ST might hit you with penalties in social rolls with some adult NPCs etc.

On the Ties issue, well we've been playing Contacts to be 'one named major person and a host of minors' [I think], so the latter could easily be the 'people she used to hang with but don't really recall her' type.

With the Arcane... it's possible she's already got a Rote which uses Entropy [ie luck] to shift her 'visibility' either way when desired. And throw in Stealth, No Reflection [does it include electronic devices?] and 'Not Online' it's gonna be hard to track her anyway. [May I suggest you consider 'Undocumented' flaw, perhaps representing the fact the character has little to no paper-trail, ID etc?] As ever, simply thinking aloud here.

As for the last bit... may I recommend the 'Scrounging' Secondary? However, if you're sure this is going to be your character, we're gonna need a little chat to make sure Meridian and Nick don't overlap their skills too much.