Page 248 - Chronicles of Darkness

Mental Skills: Academics 2, Computer same eye for detail that helps her notice unusual activity also
(Hacking) 5, Investigation 4, Politics 1 serves her well in detecting fraud.
Physical Skills: Athletics (Running) 3, Drive 2, Description: Melissa Charles is a quiet introvert. She care-
Larceny 1, Stealth 2 fully observes the world around her, but largely does her best to
Social Skills: Empathy 1, Expression (Photoshop) live apart from it. She is in her late 30s and dresses in moderately
1, Streetwise 1, Subterfuge 2 expensive, but bland, clothing. She keeps her hair short and does
Merits: Contacts (Hackers), Fleet of Foot 2, her best to not draw attention to her appearance. Her voice is
Parkour 3, Resources 1 soft and she is shy in person. However, her shy reserve vanishes
if someone asks about her interests or she begins talking about
Health: 7 the oddities she is obsessed with. In such cases, her face comes
Willpower: 5 alive and she talks in a manner that is considerably faster and
Integrity: 6 more animated. However, she is awkward at making small talk,
Size: 5 flirting, or otherwise engaging in social pleasantries.
Storytelling Hints: Melissa Charles isn’t interested in
Speed: 13 opposing or working for the God-Machine or its operatives.
Defense: 6 She is interested in collecting relics and stories about the
Initiative: 6 world’s oddities, and attempting to make sense of these
seemingly-inexplicable events. Because of some of the horrors
she has witnessed, Melissa Charles has become moderately
MELISSA CHARLES paranoid, and refuses to talk about her collection or any of
the events she has witnessed in any detail, unless the person
she is talking to has made it clear that they have had similar
Obsessive collector of God-Machine artifacts. experiences. Behind the tasteful curtains in the windows of
Background: When she was 14, Melissa Charles was her house is an expensive security system; she also has wire
smoking a cigarette outside of a seemingly-abandoned ware- mesh embedded in the windows and behind the drywall to
house when she saw a group of semi-human creatures in tan render her house a Faraday cage. She is simultaneously eager
jumpsuits enter the warehouse via a trap door in the floor. to discuss her experiences and learn more, and afraid that she
Under the direction of a woman in an expensive business might be talking to agents of the God-Machine, or to people
suit, these creatures assembled a strange and complex device who might reveal her to them.
in the middle of the warehouse and activated it. Almost an If characters make it clear they have also witnessed inexpli-
hour later, as Melissa continued to watch in terrified silence, cable events, Melissa is likely to share information with them.
the creatures disassembled the device, and they and the young However, she will strongly attempt to dissuade anyone from
woman walked back down through the trap door. Shortly af- going to the authorities or attempting to make any of their
ter this event, the town had its first earthquake in more than discoveries public. She firmly tells characters that she’ll deny
a century. Melissa wondered about the relation between the knowing them if they try to draw attention to anything they
device and the earthquake. She also began looking into the have discovered. When talking about what she has witnessed,
strange places and events that most people refused to notice. it’s clear that Melissa is simultaneously fascinated, horrified,
Her life changed forever when she was 17. She would and most of all deeply interested in stories about the odd and
have fled from the precise and terrible human sacrifice hidden aspects of the world and what they mean. She is most
she witnessed inside a closed restaurant in a strip mall, but interested in the physical stuff of these incidents, but also
was afraid that moving would reveal her presence. Unable happily listens to reports or looks at photographs of strange
to either save the young man who was killed or to escape, incidents. She has no patience with individuals performing
afterwards she kept a bloodstained fragment of the victim’s hoaxes or people foolish enough to believe them; she has
sleeve as evidence for what she saw. seen true wonders and terrors, and wishes to learn more.
Since seeing that murder, finding, and in some way docu- Melissa can appear in any Tale, holding just the right relic
menting, various odd events became her driving obsession. or device to help the characters. Stories like Squares of the
Often, all the evidence she possesses is a grainy photograph City (p. 203; maybe she has a torch that can cut the tracks),
taken with her phone or a sketch. However, she periodically Urban Wandering (p. 235; Melissa found a pair of lenses
manages to obtain some fragment of physical evidence of the that focus a flashlight beam into a searing light that burns
odd phenomena she witnessed. the nightmare creatures), or Wellington School for Gifted
She’s seen people who looked wealthy and powerful at Children (p. 205; she is an alumna, and left behind notes and
several of the events she’s witnessed, and she’s also seen police trinkets for the characters to find) are especially appropriate.
officers at two of them. As a result, Ms. Charles has never con-
sidered attempting to make her collection public or to report Virtue: Patient
anything she has witnessed to any law enforcement agency. Vice: Cowardly
Today, Melissa Charles works as a forensic accountant. The

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NPCs