World of Darkness World of Darkness: Attrition - [Mortal] James Tiernan Wright

[Gary B]

Name: James Tiernan Wright

Age: 28

Concept: Spirit Influenced Researcher

Faction: Non

Group Name: Non

Virtue: Compassion

Vice: Pride

Attributes

Mental:

Intelligence - ooo, Wits - ooo, Resolve - oo

Physical:

Strength - oo, Dexterity - oo, Stamina - oo

Social:

Presence - oo, Manipulation - oo, Composure - ooo

Skills

Mental Skills (-3): Acedemics 3 (Research), Computer 1, Crafts 1, Medicine 1, Occult 3 (Magic, Spirits), Science 2 (11)

Physical Skills (-1): Drive 1, Larceny 1, Brawl 1 (4), Stealth 1

Social Skills (-1): Empathy 1, Persuasion 3, Socialize 1, Subterfuge 1, Streetwise 1 (7)

Other Traits

Merits: (7) (Includes source book name)

Resources ooo

Spirit Ear oo (Book of Spirits)

Libary oo (Spirits, Thaumaturgy) (Second Sight)

A Little Knowledge o (2xp) (Reliquary)

Unseen Sense (Spirits) o (2xp) (Book of Spirits, WoD)

Visionary Trances oo (4xp) (Second Sight)

Warding ooo (6xp) (Second Sight)

Shadow Contacts ooo (6xp) (Book of Spirits)

Willpower: 5

Morality: 7

Health: 7

Initiative: +5

Defense: 2

Speed: 9

It was one of those nights. Maybe you know them. If you don't, then let me explain the quizzical case of James Tiernan Wright and the night he was born. This of course happened at the Good Samaritan Hospital where his mother lay in arduous labor for ten hours. Complications you might say. At this point in Los Angeles there was an outbreak of meningitis caused by an unknown virus flying around. Spreading rapidly. Probably a bit more rapidly than it should if you are aware of such goings on in the undercurrents of the world. As such, everyone was stretched a little too thin.

That thing fed. Oh did it feed. A spirit of diseases. It poked enough of its influence across the fabric, breaching the gauntlet to spread its filth among us. Its own name, Speaks With Plagues rode the current and found its way to Karen Wright. She was a vessel, something to be ridden like a horse. But Speaks With Plagues grasp was loose. His gorging had made him loose sight of dangerous things to beings like himself. For reasons unknown he couldn't hold on tight. Karen Wright may have been an excellent looking vessel, but she possessed a mien that Speaks With Plagues had never thought to look for. By the time he began shoving himself inside her, it was too late for the ill-begotten spirit. At the time, doctors expressed their urgency as she became pale and weak. The spirit growled and muttered unheard curses in a language no one should have to understand. Karen Wright may have had some sort of natural ward or soul that could destroy a spirit, but it was destroying her as well.

With its last bit of essence, it whispered a curse at the frail woman. She was exhausted just to hear the utterances being spoken. And back it went to the shadows where it would lay dormant for years. James Tiernan Wright was born and Karen Wright passed on.

His father, George Wright was a simple fellow. A tall handsome man, upright in every way. A community man. Would have made mayor or councilman if he really tried. Instead, he was the face of the Cober Youth Group which had several ties to the local government and other lower-middle class folks like George. This life wouldn't have been such an issue if he didn't have to hide his problem child Jimmy away from the public.

Oh how James wanted to play sports with the street kids. Dancing on the asphalt with the beat up basketballs, barely keeping the air. It didn't matter to him that things were just run down. He just wanted to be normal. But the voices, well..mostly noises he heard said otherwise.

“Tic Toc Tic Toc”, went on and on the wind up clock. It's little whistling koo-koo bird arriving at the hour, every hour. The clock was pristine. It was said to have traversed six generations of Wrights before James. But to James, it was the scariest thing imaginable. To James the clock said, “Slurp Chunk Slurp Chunk”. Rather loudly, at all possible times. The bird didn't whistle, it called. Something horrible to James. When it was gurgling and giggling it wanted to be wound. And so George Wright, an obedient slave wound the clock on time.

Other things never sounded right to James. Too many things made talking noises when they had no right to. How could a boy be normal, or even sleep when he really had a monster in his closet. At least sometimes. How James would scream. Or how about those times at school when things would whisper around the halls when no one else was present. Sometimes in the quiet of the class, taking a math test.

George could not abide by his son's psychotic imagination. He would not have it. His public face was too much. Add the fact that he began blaming James for the death of sweet sweet Karen. All too soon, George was becoming a complicated fellow. Secretly he brought James from one doctor to the next. Fix my kid.

The years following were dark times indeed for James. When one drug would fail, the next was explored. Sometimes they even thought the meds were working. Other times, his mind was just somewhere else. Quietly now he would drool to the sounds of babbling things nearby. His body and mind were a mess at the age of ten, and there was no cure for what ailed him.

George on the other hand was doing fine. He would wind his clock, make pretty for the money people and his neighbors. But the twisted thing that he had become on the inside was about to take James to a very dark place.

It happened all too quickly for James. He sat in his room listening to the Mews and Chitters of songbirds. Rather the things near the songbirds. George had arrived home, riding a dark cloud. Some promise made to him fell through and the money he was supposed to get for the youth center dried up. It was to be closed.

James could only try to sympathize with his father, not having much experience. But the darkness in the man spilled over into his hand as it swung. There were no screams, just a bit of blood and many bruises.

Things had begun orbiting around James at this point. The anti-depressants and experimental anti-psychotics had poisoned him. Things in the shadow prodded at him. Sometimes they would ride him. Sometimes they would use him. Other times they dragged him in to do dark things with him in the shadow.

George was arrested months later on child abuse charges. At the age of twelve, James was taken into foster care. For a while things looked brighter for James. The dark things and their twisted wants faded away for the time being. It took twelve years for James to break out; he smiled in the sun. He was now just James. He went to school. We was able to perform well. The mumbles and burbles he once heard were somehow muted.

He didn't make many friends. By most standards he was that odd kid. He was brought in to the household of Ricardo and Rose Decarlo, a mix mutt sort of family who had problems having children. They had taken care of approximately six teenage foster children in the last ten years. James would be the youngest they had ever brought in. They accepted him as he was and didn't force him to do anything or be anything. They just let him resolve his own internal storm, gave him enough TLC to break his shell.

James Tiernan Wright was reborn.

High School is when things really took a turn for James. The clouds had cleared years ago, he was now fifteen. In the years between, not once did James visit his father, speak of him or even think of him. Not once did he go home to that crooked koo-koo clock. Happiness seemed to be a recipe made from one part forgetting, two parts of no remorse about the past. Here in the land of teenagers, James became a young man of business.

He wasn't the strongest, but he was fairly smart and quite good at bargaining. He took up the nefarious business of writing reports and the honest hand at tutoring. Both earning him a bit of money. Thankfully he could get along with most folks without coming off weird. Even though he knew many people, he didn't really make any good connections. That just wasn't part of his world.

His attachment to his foster parents was pretty tight. They gave him that warm happy feeling as he was guided along onto a path of well-being and prosperity. That was until his Foster father Ricardo, suffered a sudden illness, eventually dying a week later to the effects of meningitis. His wife Rose Decarlo became sullen and withdrawn after the fall of Ricardo Decarlo. The care this couple gave to James was no longer available. All too soon the whispers crept back up, one of them laughing weakly.

Due to good grades, and a little help from others in the community he was able to get a scholarship and grants to attend UCLA. There were no things babbling at that time. Happiness made it go away.

College went well. He excelled at his business and finance classes. Once in a while he would hear from Rose Decarlo who move on to live with one of her foster kids who had gotten married and was having kids of their own. He was excited to move on and up, perhaps one of those normal lives he'd seen on TV or read in books. His social life had picked up. He had girlfriends, but nothing he treasured enough to keep. Lucy Tember was his latest interest, making him happy. She was able to make the titters and totters of that other place go away while she was around.

Seems that while paths are being traveled in ones college years, often the routes are chaotic. Relationships are never what they seem at this point. Maybe they are more than they seem. And it was the very chaos that caused George Wright to begin writing a letter.

The first was to find James. The second was to James directly.

Even as the letter was opened, before one neat hand-written letter was read; the world seemed to darken and the sounds of that other place began seeping in. He read it regardless. It only contained a few words. “I'm coming for you son. Love Dad”. As if something had known his feelings, a rain storm complete with thunder raged on outside. He tried to show police the letter, but it was like a fever induced hallucination. The letters were not the same. “Do not contact me son. Love Dad” they read for the police.

It was found out that after eight years in prison, James Wright had been processed and deemed worthy enough through the merits of good behavior to earn parole. Of course, under the stipulation that he would make no contact with his son. That was part of the plan for George Wright, who immediately dodged patrol and started walking west through the desert towards Los Angeles. By the time he reached the University Grounds he was a quivering shambling thing, barely resembling a human being. But the face of that man, once George Wright stayed intact along with his original plastic smile that he fed to the public while his son suffered emotional neglect.

On the night George arrived on campus, kids started dying. It was in one of the western quads that it found James and began tearing through small gatherings of college students to lunge for him. James hadn't had much time to react. If not for the screams, he would have had no warning. But the thing coming down the lawn of the quad was too impatient.

James ran. Not being an athlete, there was no chance of getting away from the creature that seemed to be on his heals at every corner. After a few minutes of running, he manged to bump into Lucy. Before he could even explain what was going on, she was gone. The thing impaled her with one of its appendages. It stood tall, looming over James with its face beaming out of the smile of George Wright. The gurgled laugh came from the oozing pores. Blood and green ichor ran along the sidewalk as James backed up and the creature followed, still holding the impaled corpse of Lucy.

What happened next was too quick for James to really process. The creature glowed as it stepped into a circle of chalk that had been drawn in the asphalt of the sidewalk. A couple of persons seemed to step sideways out from behind an invisible barrier as if cutting reality. James was stricken by all the mutated reality. They did some sort of battle with the monster. Vaguely James remembered a thing with teeth bit into the creature with his father's face and slew it in the end. Vaguely James remembered being brought by strong arms to the clinic down the street. Vaguely he remembered hearing frantic doctors talking about another virus outbreak, people dying from meningitis again. At this point the voices would never stop.

His major switched. He changed over to history, religion and things esoteric. The night of George Wright had altered him along a new chaotic path. They didn't see the horror James had saw, the others; police and campus people saw only the smiling face of George Wright. They didn't hear the creature's breathing or its laughter. It was that laughter from the other place. James wasn't alone. Those who survived not only being impaled by the thing, and the plague that followed remember mostly about seeing something they had never seen before. They did not see George Wright either. Not on that night.

He was warned several times, anonymously to stop what he was doing. To stop looking for the information he was looking for. James did not listen. The voices and noises from the other place continued.

James had never been much of a sentimental person in his life. Yes, he did join Rose Decarlo from time to time to go see the grave of Ricardo and place flowers before the stone. Yes, he eventually went to the grave of his mother with his father; apparently a tool just used to keep up appearances. James did feel a need though to cry for Lucy Tember. On the ground where she was slain, he cried on bent knees. And then on his hands. Her stain still remained a year later, and the tears James cried now would remain as dots on that surface forever. It was hear that another thing spoke.

You want? James wanted to know what it was that was here. The thing had a price. The price seemed alien to James. Bring it sadness and confusion, and it would talk. Bring it things that have caused such things too, and it would talk. Cause sadness and confusion here and it would talk. Maybe. It might have wanted even more than that. For now it talked. Because James was just those things. A being filled with sadness. A being torn by confusion.

This was his start. The lift he needed to direct his life. From that point, James would find the things he needed from time to time. He had a place, a thing that could point him in the right direction if he needed it. He tried not to use it. It was a disgusting feeling to be near that spot.

After he graduated, he had acquired some jobs. Apparently he also had an infusion of cash waiting for him after graduation from the sale of his dad's possessions. Apparently one koo-koo clock was sold for more money than James would ever think it was worth. All of this wrapped around the fact that Rose Decarlo gave him money as well to start his own business.

He opened up shop in a store front that had opened up near the UCLA campus. It might be new age trinkets and junk, but Californians and confused college students often looked towards spiritual things. He began collecting curious oddities, old books with odd texts and so on. While the true nature of the world wasn't an open book to James. He was beginning to see a larger picture. He was able to surmise that his father, perhaps even his mother were destroyed by a spirit; perhaps a demon or ghost type creature but he'd never be absolutely sure.

What lay ahead was a new frontier for James, and all those whispers and talking things.

Code:

***XP LOG*** 
Date          Trait/Exp. Type            Rank    Gain/Cost  Balance
01 Apr 2010   Creation Points              -        50        50
01 Apr 2010   Merit: A Little Knowledge    1        -2        48
01 Apr 2010   Merit: Unseen Sense (Sprits) 1        -2        46
01 Apr 2010   Merit: Visionary Trances     2        -4        42
01 Apr 2010   Merit: Warding               3        -6        36
01 Apr 2010   Merit: Shadow Contracts      3        -6        30
03 May 2010   Month of April               -        +4        34