Scarlet Hex

by **elephantlord** July 2nd 2023, 7:11 pm

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Scarlet Hex

Looks

At a glance, Scarlet isn't that imposing. Slender and pale, with fine features and a somewhat sleepy expression. However, her energy and vibrant personality make her seem larger than her 5'6 height. She has long, clever fingers and bright, intelligent eyes.

Bio

Original Name: Bessie Dwyerson
Age: 24
Gender: Female
Nationality: American (Iowa)
Hair: Black (Dyed)
Eyes: Blue
Height: 5'6
Weight: 54 KG

Personality

Perhaps the main thing people might take note of Scarlet is her eccentricity. She has a great love of the absurd and the unusual. As a person, she is a bit of a contradiction. Friendly, yet reserved. Outspoken, but often shy. Idealistic, but cynical. As a friend, she is caring but afraid of being discarded. Sometimes as frail as glass, sometimes stronger than steel.

Backstory

Bessie born to Steven and Rachel Dwyerson, an only child. Her parents, fearful of the world and holding certain unusual religious beliefs, abjured secular society and kept their daughter cloistered from the world's evils. This backfired spectacularly when, at 17, Bessie was able to successfully sued for emancipation from them.

Years of repressive rule by her parents had instilled a rebellious streak in Bessie seven miles wide. Earning a doctorate in the Creative Arts and Engineering by age 19, Bessie could have looked forward to a comfortable life in some corporate engineering firm.

Instead, she changed her name to Scarlet Hex, moved to Boston, and opened a niche furniture store specializing in the weird and the macabre. She discovered an aptitude for magic during this time, a talent that had been suppressed by her singular focus in her studies and the machinations of her parents.

Powers

From the Hedge
Hedge magic is often derided by more serious practitioners by being quaint, powerless, and effectively useless. Self-taught practitioners often can do little more than ward off pests and blight the occasional crop, they say, and are best leaving the higher mysteries to their betters.

Scarlet has never really liked being told what to do.

Her style is a composite of a number of techniques, heavily influenced by her religious upbringing and personal outlook. Chaotic, yet somehow formalized, Scarlet can put together rituals of surprising potency from strange and incongruous magical effects. In addition, she is gifted with the practice of creating magical items, imbuing spell effects into objects.

System: Magic of the Ritual Variety, See Grimoire; Flexible Magical Style, Growth Power

Scarlet Hex D23XfJnm

Hexcellence
Though she will deny it if pointed one, Scarlet is brilliant. Part of a group termed the 'twice exceptional' or '2e' by researchers, Scarlet is incredibly gifted mentally. This innate talent is combined with a minor metahuman ability to understand how disparate and sometimes unrelated things can 'fit' to become something else.

Her talent combined with an almost obsessive need to create has caused her to become masterful with a wide variety of crafts. Carpentry, metalsmithing, leatherworking... there are few things she has not turned her hand to and mastered at some point.

System: Heightened Intelligence, Intuitive Understanding, Master of All Crafts

Misfit Toys
After witnessing Scarlet in one of her creative fugues, one could very well imagine the world being made in six days. Her ability to create is next to the biblical, and this has resulted in a great deal of strange and wonderful objects littering her living space.

Of course, they might not seem immediately useful, but they are undoubtedly magical. And boy does Scarlet sure have a lot of them.

System: Container Power - See 'Toybox', May Change Out Item Powers

The Vibe
Through her blind fumbling into the world of the arcane, Scarlet has awakened within herself some odd senses. Though they came about in sometimes strange and not entirely understandable ways, Scar investigates them with an insatiable curiosity.

Rather than referring to them in some sort of pseudobabble nonsense, Scarlet refers to it simply as the 'Vibe'. She will sometimes be granted flashes of insight and understanding that she wouldn't otherwise be able to know. Whether this is actual psychic talent or something less understandable, it's best never to question the Vibe.

System: Magic-type Power; See Vibes; Superhuman Willpower and Resistance to Psychic Assault; Super-Intuition

The Ars Humanatis
When Boston changed, Scarlet was one of the people that stepped up. Though her time now is mostly spent helping to defend and organize those survivors she can gather, the wizard-craftswoman has little time to pursue magical knowledge or develop her art. Though she doesn't realize it, she has transformed the people around her with her kindness.

Though she doesn't realize it, Scarlet is beloved by her neighbors with the sort of fierce loyalty not often seen amongst strangers. By lifting them up when they were at their lowest, Scarlet has created a network of mutual aid and community. Even the smugglers and criminals she works with hold the quirky goth woman in high regard.

System: Local Popular Support, Community Ties, Friends in Low Places

Lore: Scarlet is afraid of strangers and large groups. Rather than shell up as some do, Scarlet does the inverse and attempts to get to know almost everyone she meets. Her non-judgmental attitude combined with a genuine interest in people makes her easy to talk to.

Weaknesses

Normie
There are downsides to not embracing the changes that swept over Boston. While everyone else was becoming trolls or heavily armed and armored badasses, Scarlet stubbornly refused to give up even a shred of who she was. This is not an uncommon refrain for her - being told for the majority of her life that she had to obey or change to meet other people's expectations gave her a nonconformist streak a mile wide.

Scarlet suffers from many of the problems a mundane would, even after applying no small amount of magic to them. She has severe glaucoma, type one diabetes, several behavioral disorders, heart problems, and post traumatic stress. In addition, she is a normal woman living in a world where powerful individuals clash on the daily.

System: Only Human, with Human Problems

Take the Power Back
One of the easiest ways to make Scarlet dislike a person is for them to assert authority over her. While not an anarchist, she takes a dim view of all individuals who do not exercise consent-based power. Having had to crawl on her fingernails for every scrap of freedom she enjoys, the gothic wonder witch is loath to seed any of it back.

While this typically would just be an inconvenient personality quirk, it has bled over into her magic. Scarlet is unable to exert magical force against a person unless they have violated the freedoms of another.

System: 'Don't Be a Dick' Magical System, Restricted Targets

Lore: Scarlet has been arrested no less than 27 times. She has committed crimes ranging from vandalism and disorderly conduct to assaulting a police officer during a protest with a carton of eggs.

Embedded Principles
Even if Scarlet could make the world quake with her power, it would not happen quickly. The disparate and ad hoc nature of Scarlet's power means that she cannot put the pieces together quickly. Whether it be a ritual or an object imbued with power, the faster she is forced to work the less likely the desired effect is to happen. Her magical style does not lend itself to throwing around fireballs or turning people into toads. Well, not swiftly anyway.

System: No Quick Spells

Lore: Scarlet's magical system works off concepts of thought forms and embedded principles. As ideas have power, physical representations of them create a resonance with universal concepts. Scarlet's great talent as a witch is easily seeing the places where these thoughtforms intersect with mundane objects.

Creative Hyperfocus
Though she is undeniably brilliant, Scarlet minor metahuman ability manifests periods of intense hyperfocus. While she does not view this as a flaw, it has caused complications in her life. Indeed, the transition to Boston happened while she was in one of these states, going unnoticed while she finished a project she was particularly absorbed with.

While this typically would only be a challenge to overcome in a personal life, it can happen in times of danger. When faced with a particularly engaging problem (be it mathematical or magical), Scarlet may 'check out' as she considers it.

System: Complex problems may cause character to become inactive or unaware of danger

Lore: Scarlet is on the spectrum, though autism is far more complicated than a numerical rating. Before her city went to hell, she was in a support group for people living with ASD and helping to organize the weekly meetings.

Pharmaceutical Dependence
Scarlet suffers from a number of medical disorders. In addition to being dependent on an insulin pump, Scar requires several expensive medications in order to control her glaucoma and heart disorder. She is also on several psychiatric medications in order to control her chronic depression and post traumatic stress.

In addition to leaving Scarlet perpetually broke, her current living situation makes it difficult for her to obtain her meds. Though she has begun to research magical solutions to stabilize herself with (see 'The Rose-Colored Glasses'), it's been slow going. Considering how debilitating her one success proved to be, Scarlet is hesitant to become dependent on something even worse.

Thus, she is forced to rely on a network of smugglers and other less than reputable individuals. Her supply chain is often disrupted by raids and crackdowns by the vampiric overlords who take a dim view of such practices.

System: Perpetually Strapped for Cash, Undependable Supply Chain (Boston)

Community Organizer
Before Boston took a turn for the Tolkeen, Scarlet was just that weird goth girl who was in way too many support groups and that remembered everyone's birthdays. After the transition, Scarlet was one of the few people that weren't transformed into something entirely different than they had been (and who still had a working internet connection).

Now, she's that weird goth girl that everyone depends on. She arranges food shipments and medical care for those that need it, and helps to set up the slowly expanding warding network pushing the monsters into certain parts of the city. She outfits adventuring groups with equipment in order to keep bandits and looters in check. Despite her rejection of authority, Scarlet knows how to take responsibility.

System: People are Counting on Her, Hard to Find Time for Self

Lore: Scarlet's obsession with birthdays stems from never having them as a child. Her parents adhered to a faith that regarded them as rooted in pagan worship, and forbade their observance. Any time Scarlet produces a piece of birthday themed paraphernalia is a defiance of that belief.

Custom-Fitted
Though Scarlet is capable of creating objects of great utility and power, it isn't as easy as some might believe. Each object she creates must be attuned to a certain individual, or re-tuned when another wishes to use it. This process takes time and effort, and Scarlet must be given fully over to her muse in order to create something (must invoke Hyperfocus at least once).

System: Bespoke artifact must be attuned to a person.

Lore: Scarlet is secretly grateful for this restriction. She is terrified of making something truly powerful only for that thing to be used to hurt an innocent. She has been trying to link this process to moral acts rather than identity, but has found that concept difficult to materially access.

Limited Inventory
Scarlet has a great number of interests, and her pursuit of them often results in vast hordes of half-started projects and 'fixer uppers'. While she has a great trove of magical objects at her disposal, she hasn't found a way to store all her projects in an easily accessible place. (Hyperdimensional tampering using arcane formulae has not yet caught her interest).

Thus, Scarlet has the ability to carry only so much at one time. She only has two hands, after all, and metaphysical interference is a big challenge for her.

System: May only carry (4) item powers at one time, unless noted otherwise. Obviously she is exempt if she is in her store.

Lore: While not literally a hoarder, Scarlet does have an obsession with strange magical objects, even if they are all but useless. She currently owns a fork that makes everything taste like pistachios, and a skillet that creates sheet music out of pancake batter.

Broken Toys
Despite her many gifts, Scarlet is untrained. Like many self-taught prodigies, there are a number of errors in her work that time and bitter experience have weeded out of trained professionals. The items she creates often have a major flaw, often having something to do with the desired effect.

System: Items must be bought with an intrinsic power and drawback of equal value.

Lore: While she could no doubt find a teacher, Scarlet refuses to suborn herself in a mentor-student relationship. Feeling largely failed by her educators and the authority figures in her life, Scarlet stubbornly refuses to seek out guidance.

Grimoire

Black Heart Banishment
There are horrible things in the world; things strange and occluded to normal people. In her studies, Scarlet has encountered more than one being or practitioner that has tried to seduce her into wickedness or snatch that which was not theirs. Scarlet reads out a long incantation (typically in Latin) requesting the person or entity to kindly fuck off.

Ritual Materials: Scarlet needs the traditional bell, book, and candle to perform the ritual. She tends to use a black birthday candle, a small pocket planner, and a bicycle bell to facilitate this.

System: (4) Target is Banished to their 'Home', wherever that is. For a mortal, that is the last place they slept. For a supernatural entity, this is their lair or home dimension. The incantation takes longer based on the strength of the target.

Spread the Love
While Scarlet is versed in some rune lore, her power tends to come from the items she enchants and creates. Using this technique, Scarlet can embed an enchantment of an object onto a space. She uses this technique primarily to 'ward' places against the reality warp of Eugenia, but has also been known to do more spectacular things with it.

System: (5) Object Enchantment is Copied into an Effect Targeting a Space; Larger Spaces Require More Time and Power; Effect May Change Slightly

Try Again
Scarlet has died over three dozen times. Luckily, none of them stuck. Using this ritual, the hedge witch can bind a moment of time as the beginning of her journey, stretching out like a rubber band from that moment. At the time of her death or triggering of the spell, Scarlet will snap back to the moment she completed the ritual.

System: (5) Time Loop (One Use)

Vibes

Feedback
Though she is still a novice when it comes to her own psychic potential, Scarlet has developed a few ways of defending herself. By reaching out and giving a sort of psionic feedback, she can disrupt the neural patterns of anyone she can perceive. For the moment, this effect is relatively weak, but she has used it numerous times to deter attackers.

System: (2) Weak Stun and Disorient Effect, Psychically Based

Resonance
Initially, Scarlet's psychic awakening manifested as intense hunches she received regarding certain people or things. Guided by this sensitivity, she receives insights into people or places she couldn't possibly know. By concentrating on this feeling, she can gain a deeper understanding of a situation. While it can't tell her who committed a crime or why that skull is glowing, she knows what people and objects are important.

System: (3) McGuffin & NPC Detector, Know Where to Start

Toybox

'Cry-Baby'
Hand tooled and carefully crafted by Scarlet in the throws of one of her episodes, the 'Cry-Baby' is a 1950's style leather motorcycle jacket with magical protections woven into the lining. Though it offers sublime protection to the wearer, the drawbacks are somewhat significant.

Additionally, the same property that protects the wearer from being struck also prevents them from striking. The protection extends both ways, causing all ranged attacks to fail.

System:
Positive - Immunity to Ranged Attacks
Negative - Immunity to Making Ranged Attacks

Lore: The jacket gets its name from the first time Scarlet wore it, on a date to the State Faire. Despite her general lack of physicality, she was a mean ring-tosser. That day, she missed every throw. When she told off the carnie claiming the game was rigged, he only snorted and replied, 'Why don't you cry about it?'

Scarlet Hex 4xDJAYRs

The Rose-Colored Glasses
Though she would never admit to it, Scarlet suffers from eye trouble. She has a form of glaucoma, and had trouble seeing more than a few feet away from herself. While the underlying disease is still present, Scarlet uses these to treat it when she cannot access her medication. Like, say, living in Eugenia.

These glasses allow for a strange form of regeneration. Any damage done to the eye or optic nerve is regenerated rapidly and vision is restored to a perfect 20/20. Additionally, while worn, nothing may obscure a person's vision other than a solid barrier.

However, these effects are not without their drawbacks. The regeneration effect is not painless, and causes a great deal of disorientation. The 'true-seeing' aspect of these glasses can be defeated by simple magical protections, rendering them useless.

System:
Positive - Immunity to Eye Issues, Eye Regeneration, 'True Sight', Vision Correction
Negative: Blocked by Magical Warding, Healing/Blindness causes Stun, Painful Healing

Lore: Scarlet scavenged the glass for these from old Coke bottles, melting them down and adding gold salts for color. The frames she made from the recast radio antenna from a 1978 Volkswagen Beetle.

Nine Queens, One Sovereign
Once upon a time, in reality's fold,
Nine queens, dazzling, were caught in silver's hold.
Their crowns gleaming, their power fierce and bold,
They endured in grace, their stories untold.

In the New Athens, they held their reign,
Nine Queens whose strength knew no wane.
Their presence commanded, their power untamed,
In silver they shimmered, forever acclaimed.

Nine queens caught in silver's eternal gleam,
A tapestry woven, a majestic dream.
Their work goes on, without esteem,
In silver they'll shimmer, forever it seems.

And amidst these nine queens, there stood one alone,
A sovereign in gold, with a heart fully grown,
Her mighty crown glowing, with wisdom untold,
She shimmered with power, that ages behold.

Scarlet doesn't just wear jewelry because she enjoys it. Etched with strange wards and bad poetry, each ring grants protection from a specific occurrence. A few of these are trivial and silly, others not so much. While some were crafted for trivial things like protection from parking tickets and awkward phone calls, she inadvertently created a ring that protected her from the warping of Boston into Eugenia.

Scarlet gets the immunity to reality manipulation from her ward against 'Bad Luck and Fuckery'. The item exerted enough protection to partially shield her from the initial transition, which she was able to enhance before she changed. The ring emits a stabilizing effect over local causality, preventing bad outcome

Though worn as 'protection', Scarlet's rings do not completely ward away life's ills. Rather, they make them more unlikely. And while they make her life simpler by removing trivial problems, they tend to compound it in strange ways. For instance, while she might not have to pay sales tax on that espresso, Scarlet failing to file her income taxes for six years resulted in a massive audit when the IRS finally noticed.

These are:
- Protection from Solicitors & Bill Collectors
- Protection from 'Female Issues'
- Protection from Taxes
- Protection from Hangovers & Bad Choices
- Protection from Loneliness
- Protection from Evil & Ill-Intent
- Protection from Personalized Data Collection Algorithms.
- Protection from Hunger
- Protection from Authority & Those Seeking It

The Gold One Is:
- Protection from Bad Luck & Fuckery

Scarlet gets her immunity to reality manipulation from her ward against 'Bad Luck and Fuckery'. The item exerted enough protection to partially shield her from the initial transition, which she then enhanced with every material she had available, giving it its golden hue. The ring emits a stabilizing effect over local causality, preventing bad outcome

Though worn as 'protection', Scarlet's rings do not completely ward away life's ills. Rather, they make them more unlikely. And while they make her life simpler by removing trivial problems, they tend to compound it in strange ways. For instance, while she might not have to pay sales tax on that espresso, Scarlet failing to file her income taxes for six years resulted in a massive audit when the IRS finally noticed.

Ultimately, while wearing her rings, Scarlet is protected from random, unlucky events. However, when fate does come to call, it is far more likely to bring a bigger stick.

System:
Positive: Uncannily Good Luck, Protection from Reality Manipulation, Protection from Minor Problems
Negative: Uncannily Bad Luck, Odd Circumstances, Never a Boring Life

Scarlet Hex FS5egi4

Schrodinger
A small statue of a black cat sits on Scarlet's desk. Cute, though still vaguely sinister, the figurine has the unnerving habit of disappearing at odd times and reappearing at different places and times. When held, the statue allows whoever holds it to disappear and reappear at will. However, like the cat it's modeled after, it will sometimes wander off and go do its own thing. It will come back, eventually... just don't count on it in a pinch.

System:
Positive: Teleportation
Negative: Chance that it will not be there when you need It

Lore: This is one of the many strange artifacts that was brought to Scarlet after Boston's transition. She often leaves it on her desk, only for the statuette to wander around the room. It even occasionally displaces other objects from their shelves, much like a cat batting at things in its path.

My Dear Diary
Another strange object Scarlet makes use of (if only to know where Schrodinger went) is a little girl's diary. The diary is blank until someone starts telling the diary about their day, only to find the pages filled in with accurate descriptions of everything that person did that day. The details are both exact and exacting, with exhaustive attention paid both to the number of occurrences and what happened.

While it will only work for the last 24 hours or so, and will only collect information the person was present for, it will record things that the user might not have directly witnessed. Passwords, Pin Numbers, and Vault Combinations are not out of reach of the strange journal.

That being said, it isn't exactly an... easy book to read. It is written as if the reader were six, and often makes moral judgments on their actions or motivations. It is also so exhaustive as to be difficult to pick out specific details. The writing is very stream of consciousness, and will only include the information if the user is interacting with what is being recorded.

System:
Positive: 'Perfect' Recording Device
Negative: Time Consuming to Use, Might Not Collect What You Need

Lore: Scarlet is a bit of a scatterbrain, so she finds it helpful to discover where she might have left something or someone. While she has used it for illicit dealings a handful of times, she tends to use it to organize her life.