Page 247 - Chronicles of Darkness

Mental Skills: Academics (Law) 3, Computer 2, and large corporate websites. Often, Mark was instructed to
Investigation 3, Occult 1, Politics 2 embed new information on websites, but leave them wholly
Physical Skills: Athletics 1, Drive 2, Stealth 1 intact otherwise. This is his job as Truth, to change the lies on
Social Skills: Empathy (Delivering Bad News) these websites to the truth for the public to see. The things his
2, Intimidation (Veiled Threats) 2, Persuasion 2, friends have asked him to do have been increasingly strange
Subterfuge 3 and esoteric, but Mark doesn’t want to lose the only friends
Merits: Contacts 2 (Corporate, Legal), Good he has, so he does what is asked of him.
Time Management, Resources 3, Retainers Mark is an unwitting pawn. He knows it on some level,
(Security) 5, Staff (Investigation, Computer) 2 but he won’t admit it to himself. He can recognize that
something isn’t right with what he is being asked to do. He
Health: 7 knows that his friends have become hard to understand, or
Willpower: 4 completely cold and unfeeling.
Integrity: 3 Mark’s friends are no longer a community of other hackers.
Size: 5 Those that were real are now dead, and instead he has been
given instructions from the God-Machine for nearly two years.
Speed: 9 Description: Mark Wilson is a scrawny, greasy, smelly
Defense: 3 teenage boy. His skin is pasty white due to lack of exposure
Initiative: 4 to the sun, and his hair is a slick, mousey, brown mop. His
Armor: None voice cracks, but it seems to be settling on a low baritone.
He doesn’t care much about personal hygiene and often his
clothes are rumpled and stained. He is tall and lanky, but has
MARK WILSON, “TRUTH” a wiry frame and defined muscle tone. He exercises when he
isn’t hacking. His exercise habits revolve around his escape
plan in case he is ever raided by the Feds. He can run for a
A young hacker intent on saving the world. long time, and has learned how to jump out of his bedroom
Background: Hacking a system is an art. Hacking a window without hurting himself.
secured government website and replacing the content with Storytelling Hints: Mark is cocky and sure of himself. His
nude pictures of Paris Hilton is comedy gold. Mark Wilson is goals in life are to hack, and to pass high school calculus. Mark
a typical teenage boy with an atypical hobby. He grew up with is at a delicate point in his life. He has never had real friends
the internet and has taught himself the ins and outs of using other than the ones on the internet, and those are now dead.
it for his own purposes. When he first started hacking, it was The truth of that loss would be devastating to him. Stopping
in attempts to play online games for free. He had moderate him from acting might be easy, but convincing him to stop
success and joined several forums filled with fellow hackers. listening to his hacker friends will take perseverance. Mark is
Mark’s online presence was larger than life. Though he an unwitting antagonist. He is helping the God-Machine on
had a hard time associating with people on a face-to-face the thin faith that he is helping to make the world a better
basis, he could interact through his computer with great place. He holds on to that faith in the face of most rebuttals
finesse. He was forced to read and understand what was be- without hard proof to the contrary. Mark will not fight for
ing said first, and was easily able to compose intelligent and his beliefs, though; he would rather run.
well-thought-out responses given enough time. Without that Truth makes for a good online contact, someone who can
kind of time, Mark was pretty horrible at communication. provide information for the characters (and avoid tedious rolls
He quickly made friends with people much older and much to hack into computer systems). He’s working for the God-
more experienced than he. These friends taught him about Machine, though, which means that even if he doesn’t plan
internet security and how to bypass almost any system. to share information, the God-Machine knows everything
Most of his friends were concerned with the political cli- he types or receives. He would be a good character to help
mate of internet censorship and loss of privacy. They formed analyze weird computer- or mechanism-related strangeness in
communities of likeminded individuals and organized pro- Tales like Ghost Machine (p. 207), A Glimpse of Mesmerizing
tests of government actions through hacking websites and Complexity (p. 216), or Moon Window (p. 212).
leaking classified government information. Mark joined in
all of these activities with zeal. Though he didn’t understand Virtue: Thorough
the implications of most of what he was doing, it was good Vice: Lazy
to be recognized and his head was filled with propaganda Mental Attributes: Intelligence 4, Wits 3,
about loss of freedoms. Resolve 2
Mark adopted the handle “Truth” to represent his desire
to lay open government conspiracies to take away personal Physical Attributes: Strength 3, Dexterity 3,
freedoms. It was one of the few political agendas that Mark Stamina 2
understood completely and could get behind. Soon, his Social Attributes: Presence 1, Manipulation 4,
friends began organizing collective attacks on government Composure 3
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cogs in the machine-characters