Character Creation / Interrogation

Makes sense, given that Eliza and Vega are both likely long-time residents of Haven.

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Now, for my own set of questions that need answering:

Go around again for Hx. On your turn, ask either or both:

• Which of you is the most strange?
For those characters, write Hx+1.
• Which one of you is the biggest potential problem?
For that character, write Hx+2.

For everyone else, write Hx-1. You’ve got other stuff to do and other stuff to learn.

I feel like Vega is not the strangest. Potentially she is the biggest problem though, as she is constantly sending stuff tot he shop to be fixed, perhaps she is asking too uch and taxing your resources?

Yeah, Vega seems pretty normal (as far as any AW PC is normal, anyway) to me. Biggest potential problem is a definite possibility, 'cause any problems Vega has are going to affect the whole city. And, if I recall correctly, Haven has "lucrative raiding" as a gig, which could easily lead to full-blown open warfare if it goes wrong. Which would be a pretty big problem.

Where do you get food/water?

Ghost gets by on Advent, literally. The manufactory penetrates deeper into the mountain than most know. Defunct steam pipes go everywhere, small things that a child or dog could scuttle through, but not much else. In some of these hidden bowels, there is a fungus that grows on corrosion and mountain stone. It doesn't taste good, and it gives her a stomach ache, but Ghost can eat it when there's nothing else.

Similarly, when it's just too cold or dangerous to cut ice and there's no one to trade with, there is condensation that forms on some old, forgotten machine in one of the abandoned rooms. It is heavy with mountain minerals and washes old lubricants from the machinery when it drips. It's been there long enough to create a mesmerizing, multi-hued deposit rock that seems to flow across the floor like lava. Ghost has put down a bucket to collect the drippings. If she skims off the oil, she can drink the water underneath, blissfully unaware that it would kill other people and ignorant of why it doesn't kill her. The machine's wirework connecting it with parts of the manufactory still used acts as a conductor of sorts, the liquid a "sweat" of all the people that work there, laden with the dreams and worries that fill their minds while their bodies are toiling - as per the Child-Thing special move, drinking from this fountain has given her a connection with the workers; neither she nor they really understand or register that some effect of the Maelstrom pulls them to see her as a child of the community....

What's it like where you live?

The playbook's "Den: secret(ish), secure(ish) place to live and hide, with:
--crooked, labyrinthine, interconnected tunnels and boltways;
--ways into basically everyone's spaces, even if they've taken pains to close them off
---a radio that speaks only to you"

She likes haunting the bowels of the manufactory. Via the purple circuit steam pipes, she has access to catwalks and rooms and subbasements across Advent. She has no love for the work shop cum brothel that was her old enslavement, but the familiarity of machines and the scent of solvents and rust put her at ease. There is one room in particular where she nests, an old subpanel room for servicing Advent's long forgotten geothermal heat exchangers, plodding along with their service like reliable mules who don't know there masters neglect them. It's almost uncomfortably warm there, but she likes it, sleeps in a little hammock above a valve she calls, "The Big Wheel." A control panel has little dials and lights that seem to tell her stories with their wobbling needles and flashing coruscation. While the readouts for the PA mic have long since died, she sometimes sings into it, dancing with the cord and sending haunting tuneless sing-song echoes into address system of the manufactory. Sometimes the speaker, hooked up to Maelstrom knows what receiver, squawks just for her, when there are no other playmates to be had.

What sort gigs do you work for cash, and who pays you? (Playbooks should have a list)

--scavenge and sneak-rob from a wealthy population
--serve a wealthy NPC as a messenger
--serve a wealthy NPC as a lookout, spy, and peeper
--others, as you negotiate them

She's probably done little messenger jobs for Vega, and spied on new comers or traders for her as well; given the depths of the manufactory, she's probably scavenged parts that she traded to Eliza a time or five as well. They know her as a grubby but eager kid. They've never seen her seduce and then kill and eat a pedophile - the one or two times it has happened, people have always been glad the skeevy bastard decided to move on in the night without bothering anyone. She particularly careful about trading away those scavenged goods.

What are some characteristics of Advent and the surrounding area?

See the Den.

Beyond that, there is the glade. A culvert sluice gate for manufactory runoff is home to various forest creatures at different times of the year, but she has a key to open the grill. The pond there is perpetually frozen, even in the spring, and the pines, fir, and spruce around the clearing wall it off like a hedge row from prying eyes. She used to go there because she could watch the front gate, see the traders coming in, see if her old life might be stealing up on her. She liked the creatures of the glade, even the ferocious ones. But once, she heard Wolves, saw their button eyes gleaming, the plastic on metal squeak of their limbs, their howling outside the trees. She locked the gate, and hasn't been back. But she misses it.

What is something you heard about in the 'Golden Age', the time before the apocalypse?

Kids used to be shipped away from their families to a place where they were fed, and told stories. They were made to do work, but it was mostly play work, and they were sent back to their families each evening, happy and fed and complaining of the play work they would have to do before the next day. Kids might fight with each other, but no adult could harm them while they were there. But, as a herald of the end times, lone Wolves began to creep into these places, bringing death and fear and bullets.

How do you stay warm in the cold winter nights?

See description of the Den.

Okay, cool. Um, hmm. How about this. Your little six pack, you and your lieutenants, used to be a septet. Aldus was like a father to you all. Each of you has a story where you owe him your life, and one where he earned your love. He was observant, and one of the first who noticed Ghost when she moved into Advent. He may have even mentioned her to you as he went about trying to figure out who this new child was.

Ghost was still scared, had no friends, still suffered from nightmares and ptsd from her previous life. She had no capacity to understand that the man who approached her was concerned for her well being, as well as determining if she posed some sort of threat to the community. Not knowing that side of human interaction, she fell back on what she knew. She seduced him. And as he slept afterward, she killed him. And she ate his fingers.

That was her turning point, his genuine heart suddenly laid bare in her consumption. Though Ghost did not know Vega, she knew how Aldus felt about her. She fled, horrified. And then, later, terrified, because she saw him the next day, up and about and plastic limbs creaking against a metal body, buttons sewed over his eye holes and howling for her blood.

Vega never understood the change that came over her friend and mentor. But people do go crazy. For his own good, after he attacked someone, he had been restrained. He somehow got free, and in the end, despite best efforts, the group had to kill him to stop him. Few things bring bile to your throat like that memory, like wondering what calamity had happened to his mind.

But shortly thereafter, the newcomer child came to you, seeking to do you all manner of favors, presumably not wanting to be thrown out of the community, this Ghost who seems to disappear and reappear. You assume she has no family any more. It's a little hard to break through her defenses, but you give her work, and slowly try to unravel her puzzle. HX+3

Is that too gruesome or too intrusive on your backstory? I don't really know or understand what the Wolves of the Maelstrom are... does this fit?
I think Ghost could be the strangest. She just doesn't behave like a normal little kid. Instead, she swings, from toddler like joy and silliness to teenage angst and insight to full adult suspicion and anger. She is good at coming up with the part you need when no one else has one, though. Which is itself weird, as she has no real technical aptitude....

And finally her HX...
Go around again for Hx. On your turn, ask
each other character in turn:
• Are you a wolf of the maelstrom?
If they say yes, tell them what they look
like under their disguise, and write Hx-2.
If they say no, write Hx-1.
If they say anything else—that they don’t
know, that they’d rather not say, anything
—write Hx+1 and keep your eye on them.

I feel like I shouldn't write the results part because your response shouldn't be swayed by the desired outcome, but then again, I feel like PbtA games do a lot of separation of player knowledge and PC knowledge....