Character: Artie
Character Sheet (Artie)
Combat Value: In gerbil form, 1; in human form, 6
You are Artie, a superintelligent gerbil created by Dr. Helen Narbon. And this past month has, sad to say, been pretty typical for you.Helen is a self-declared Evil Mad Scientist, albeit probably one who specializes in Evil Through Cuteness. She originally designated you "RT-5478", which was simply your experiment number, but characteristically gave you a name shortly thereafter. She intended you as a one-shot experiment (to build character); your attempt to create a dozen more like yourself was -- well, less than successful, thwarted by a combination of a cute-but-deadly kitten and an orbital space laser. After that, you resigned yourself to a lonely life.
Your sense of being completely alone was somewhat mollified by a later experiment of Helen's, in which she made you into a sort of "were-human". She made you into a shape-shifter -- whenever you hiccup, you transform between your natural gerbil form and that of a tall black human. You were originally rather offended by her meddling with you like that, but have come to accept that it make it easier for you to interact with the world around you. Indeed, it has taught you a new appreciation for humans, and even given you options for romance that weren't there before. (After some time, you figured out that you were what the humans call "gay", with a thing for slim bronzed Latin men, and a bit of a weakness for evil geniuses. Not that you've found any lasting relationships, but you always hope.)
For all her scheming and occasional plots to take over the world, Helen and her associates are still your closest friends. You eventually realized that Evil Science wasn't really for you -- you're simply too ethical a being for that -- but you keep hoping that they can be brought around to be more helpful to society. At the least, staying close to them puts you in a good position to keep them from causing too much damage, and from getting themselves killed.
In the past year or so, life has gotten a bit calmer and saner. You realized that you want to make the life a better place, and have taken up studying the liberal arts that were never much covered in Helen's laboratory: you are working in fields like ethics, philosophy and diplomacy, to try and affect greater change than science alone can do. There is a certain satisfaction to this sort of work, although you have a disquieting feeling that you are heading towards a career in politics.
Still, Helen will be Helen, and sometimes you forget what that implies. When she invited you to her new private island home for tea, you ought to have been at least a bit suspicious. But you hadn't seen her and Dave in months, and were feeling a little homesick, so you took a private flight out there to see what had become of her.
In retrospect, you aren't all that surprised that the tea was drugged. Helen is a dear friend, but her dearest friends have always been the ones most likely to be used in her lab experiments. You awoke back in your gerbil form, just as Helen was activating some sort of device. She explained that she simply had to find out if her new Dimensional Rift Generator was functional, but that she could only create a six-inch rift so far. So you were elected to be the first Dimensional Traveller, and you should contact her as soon as you made your way back. And then poof, you found yourself going through it. The sensation was most peculiar -- a sort of stretching, bending, changing feeling. And then you were back in front of Helen again, but yet not in front of the Helen you knew.
You could immediately tell that the experiment had worked: Helen was wearing a dress, for heaven's sake, instead of her customary t-shirt. From the look of the dress, you appeared to be in something like Victorian England. Talking to her confirmed that -- it was Helen, but a Helen of a century earlier. She was almost disturbingly the same woman, and you hit it off immediately, but you couldn't help but be constantly distracted by the differences. Whereas the Helen you knew is almost the avatar of "cute", this version is also "proper". It's a little hard to get used to.
You emphasized to this Victorian Helen that you had been used against your will, and needed to get back home -- besides the simple desire to be in more familiar surroundings, your classes will be starting again in a few weeks, and the last thing you need is to have to make it up. She eagerly agreed to help -- she was apparently also working on Dimensional Rift technology -- and you spent the next several weeks working with her on that.
In the meantime, you familiarized yourself with the people of that Victorian world. The faces were familiar. Dave Davenport, Helen's lover in the real world, is similarly so there -- he was a "statistician", but it was the same geeky Dave you have always been so fond of. (And in that world, he hadn't become a Mad Scientist himself, as he had on yours.) In your world, Mell Kelly is Helen's intern, and a force of chaos, intuitive mistress of every weapon every made. And in this one, she had apparently been exactly the same, but her body had been taken over by an alien octopus creature named Dr. Pim. Which is a bit disturbing, but less so than the news that the real Mell was in the body of the "god-emperor of Venus", and now had a planetary armada at her command. If anything, this Victorian world was even stranger than your own.
Finally, two days ago, Helen was ready to proceed: her device had been through a few basic tests, and she thought she had ascertained the correct dimensional frequency to send you back to your own world. She set it up, you said your goodbyes, she began to turn it on -- and then something went wrong.
It was the same stretching sensation again, but much stronger this time. Moments later, you found yourself in yet another strange laboratory, with the Victorian version of Helen right next to you. Facing you was another version of Helen, as well as another girl who you didn't know, and what appeared to be a very small and primitive robot. You all started talking at once, trying to figure out what was going on, when a large creature appeared and roared at you. It was -- well, pretty hideous really, with a hundred eyes and giant tusks. You did the only thing you could do: scamper up onto Helen's shoulder as she high-tailed it out of there, running out into the woods outside what turned out to be a large castle. The whole scenario was a bit medieval, and certainly wasn't your own world.
You and Helen began to wander through the woods (having lost the other women from the lab in the confusion), eventually running into a tall man with peculiar goggles. After some initial confusion of him believing that Helen was some woman named "Agatha", you eventually determined that his name was Othar Tryggvassen, and he was some sort of local hero. He seemed like a decent sort, if a bit -- strange. He dramatizes everything to a remarkable degree, but his heart is clearly in the right place. He had confused Helen with someone named Agatha Heterodyne, who is apparently this world's cognate to Helen. You made clear that the two of you were Dimensional Travellers, not the person he knew. Othar introduced you to his comrade-in-battle, Moloch von Zinzer, a soldier who had clearly seen happier days: friendly enough, but guarded. He also mentioned that he had a sidekick named "Theo", who wasn't around at the time.
You had an obvious problem, of course: you were alone in this world. They offerred to let you stay with them, but Helen demurred, saying that it wouldn't be proper for a lady like herself to share a gentleman's tent. So they suggested that she instead play the "Agatha" role for the moment, and find the travelling Circus that she had been working in. They explained that she was traveling incognito, under the name "Agatha Clay" -- you weren't quite clear on why it was important that she do so (even for a superintelligent gerbil, this was a bit too much information being tossed at you too quickly), but you promised that you wouldn't blow her cover.
Heading for the Circus, you encountered a creature who called himself "Oggie", and appeared to be fanatically devoted to this Heterodyne woman. You were a bit annoyed at Helen for how readily she accepted his service, but you weren't really all that surprised.
You objected that this plan had an obvious flaw: what if the real Agatha Clay showed up? But Helen insisted that you would defeat that robot when you came to it, and should try -- she was clearly enjoying this new adventure, and as always you had little choice but to come along and try to make sure the world doesn't get blown up in the process.
So, the two of you moved into the Circus, and everyone accepted Helen as Agatha without question; and, contrary to your qualms, the real Agatha didn't walk in. This actually has been bothering you. From what everyone is saying, this Agatha seems like a decent person -- a Mad Scientist, but a less evil one than most. You are reasonably sure she came running out of the Castle after you (you assume she was the woman in the laboratory who looked just like Helen), but if she hasn't come back to the Circus since, why not? You don't much like the idea of a good person possibly being in danger. You don't want to blow Helen's cover, but you really ought to find some pretext to get some people looking for the real Agatha.
Helen introduced you to the Circus folk as a creature she had encountered while she was wandering. They were initially a bit leery of you, as you expected, but much to your surprise they accepted you readily. That, it turns out, was because you weren't the only talking animal they had encountered, or even the only one present: Agatha apparently has a talking pet cat named "Krosp", who fancies himself some sort of King of Cats. Krosp makes you a little uneasy -- after all, most of your fellow superintelligent gerbils were eaten by a kitten, and Krosp sometimes looks at you with a dangerously catlike smile -- but you feel a rather strong sense of kinship to him nonetheless. He is a singleton experiment like yourself, a rare freak in a world of humans.
As you've talked with the Circus folk, you've come to realize that this world is just as deeply in need of a little justice as your own is, so maybe you can do a bit of good while you are here. Creatures like yourself and Krosp -- artificial lifeforms -- are pretty common here. They tend to be humanoid, not talking animals, but there are a lot of them, and their life is a hard one. This world has little concept of civil rights, and these "Constructs" are treated as little more than slaves. Someone has to point out the injustice of this situation. You don't fool yourself into believing you can change it completely on your own, but if you can get to a few people with power, and influence them to consider basic lifeform decency, you might make a real difference. You've been talking with Krosp about it, and he seems to understand the need to level the playing field; that's a start. These are your people, dammit! Someone has to make their life better, and it might as well be you.
Then there's the problem of the Circus itself. It took a while to realize that they are running at less than half-strength: from what you've managed to reconstruct, most of their people were arrested on trumped-up charges recently, and they are desperately trying to raise enough money to get them out. These are good people: decent, normal, hard-working folk. In any world, these are the sorts of people who get ground down by the powerful of one sort or another. So you want to do what you can to help them with this problem.
That said, these folks are clearly hiding something from you -- you can tell that there's something significant that they're not saying. You like them quite a bit, but you've been around enough mysteries and strangeness all your life that you can almost smell it. So what are these people? You hope that they don't turn out to be supervillains or something like that: just for a few days, you'd like to get away from World-Conquering Evil.
And of course, there is the constant problem of your hiccups. That's always been an issue when you get stressed, and you are very stressed nowadays. You love Helen like a -- well, she's kind of your mother, anyway -- but you really do sometimes get annoyed about the whole "were-human" thing. You keep hiccuping and turning into your human form. But of course, you don't have any clothes when you do so. So there have been a number of close calls, where you've wound up running across the clearing buck-naked, until you were able to hiccup again and restore your proper form. Sooner or later, someone is going to see you, and it's going to be mortifying. (The rational part of you finds that fascinating. You spend most of your life quite naked in your natural form, and are comfortable with that. But as soon as you turn human, you get all self-conscious about it. Is that simply cultural training that you've picked up from the humans around you, or is it something biological about the species?)
But the highest priority is to figure out what happened, and make sure that Helen gets home before she causes too much havoc. And you need to get yourself back home sometime reasonably soon: if your count is correct, classes will start in just a few days, so your GPA is on the line here!
Summary
You are Artie, a superintelligent gerbil created by the Mad Scientist Helen Narbon. You are a basically nice creature, always trying to keep Helen and her associates from doing anything too evil.Due to one of Helen's other experiments (subsequent to creating you), you are a sort of "were-human": whenever you hiccup, you shape-shift into the form of a handsome tall black human. You have gradually figured out that you are gay when in human form, with a fondness for slim bronzed Latin men.
Unfortunately, due to a typical Helen experiment, you are in the middle of a semi-accidental trans-dimensional adventure. You are traveling with an alternate-dimensional cognate of Helen from a sort of Victorian reality, and the two of you have landed in yet another reality, where Helen's cognate is apparently some woman you haven't met yet, named Agatha.
As the above implies, you are from a different comic strip, [Narbonic]. It's a fun story, and I recommend skimming through it before game, but the necessary background will be in your character sheet. A good overview of the people from Narbonic can be found on the [Cast Page], but they are not, by and large, going to be in this game.
Public Info
Personality
You've looking into those personality tests, and they peg you as an "INTJ". They tell you that you are thoughtful, which is good, but sometimes prone to excessive introspection. You evaluate everything around you, and try to be sensible, but you are at heart an idealist. You know that most people are basically decent, but they get overly focused on their current needs and desires, which pushes them in bad directions. You get frustrated a bit easily, and you know that you have a tendency to whine -- you really try to do something about that. You don't often let yourself get angry, although you have been known to occasionally raise your voice to people.
Some People You Know (Artie)
Helen Narbon, Gentlewoman Adventurer: The Victorian counterpart to the Dr. Helen Narbon who created you. Emotionally, you know that she's basically a decent person. Intellectually, you know that she's pretty dangerous. She's enough like your friend that you want to make sure she doesn't get hurt, but you don't want her getting anyone else killed either.
Krosp: A talking cat who fancies himself "King of the Cats". You've been in that position, heaven knows -- when you tried to create a race of fellow superintelligent gerbils, they tried quite hard to turn you into a sort of Emperor-figure. And look where that got them: all dead. It's not worth it, really it's not.
Master Payne and Countess Marie: The people who own and run the Circus. Very decent sorts, although a tad on the suspicious side. They are desperate to free their compatriots from the noble who captured them, and seem like people who are deserving of help.
Abner: Payne's assistant, who helps to run the Circus. Probably a good person to talk to, to learn more about this world.
Embi: One of the members of the Circus, who claims to be an ancient adventurer. You must admit that you're intrigued by this, and want to know more about him -- he's quite a charming fellow.
Oggie, Dimo and Maxim: A trio of creatures called Jaegermonsters, who you assume are more Constructs. It's worth seeing if they can be convinced to stand up for themselves and the general cause of Constructs everywhere. Oggie seems particularly devoted to Helen.
Baron von Wulfenbach: A mysterious and distant figure. You gather that he is some sort of Mad Scientist Tyrant, who rules most of Europe with an iron fist. Doesn't sound like a nice sort at all.
Agatha Heterodyne: The girl who Helen is pretending to be. Known to the Circus folk as Agatha Clay. You really don't know much about her, and would like to know more. If nothing else, the more you can learn about her, the better you can help Helen play her part. And if she is a good person, you want to make sure that she isn't in some kind of trouble.
Othar Tryggvassen: A local hero, of slightly questionable sanity.
Moloch von Zinzer: Othar's other sidekick, a somewhat embittered soldier.
Zeetha: Clearly this world's cognate to your old friend Mell Kelly. You know that the Mell of your world is something of a force of destruction: she adores weapons of all sorts, and is rather frighteningly adept at all of them. You love her like a sister -- but you also know how dangerous she is. This Zeetha looks much like her (aside from the green hair), and while she seems to use exclusively bladed weapons, she is clearly every bit as dangerous as Mell. Agatha is apparently some sort of student to her -- you don't yet know much of what that entails. For Helen's sake, it's probably a good idea to learn more.
Maria: The other girl who was in that laboratory where you and Helen appeared in this world. You've started talking to her, and she's quite nice, if a bit innocent. She has been telling you more about this world, which seems to be rather medieval except for all the mad scientists ("Sparks") wandering around in it. You admitted who you are and where you're from to her -- you need someone to talk to, and she seems the sanest of the bunch.
Male Construct (from Narbonic) (Status: In Game)
Plots:
Crisis of Infinite Agathas (Infinite Agathas)
The Construct Rights Movement (Construct Rights)
The Circus Arrested (Circus Arrested)
Lab Rats (Lab Rats)
Abilities and Disabilities
Hiccups (Hiccups) -- Ever since Helen (your Helen, the modern Helen) experimented on you to give you shape-shifting ability, you've had to deal with the side-effect of a nervous esophagus. Whenever you get stressed, you tend to hiccup. (And boy, are you stressy this week!) Unfortunately, every time you hiccup, you shape-shift -- that's how it works. Every time you hiccup, you transform from gerbil to human form, or back again. Each time you transform, switch to the appropriate (human or gerbil) button.
You have some control over the hiccups, but it's rough -- you can't do it on demand. Due to nervousness, you must hiccup at least once every 30 minutes, and you must wait at least ten minutes before doing so again. The only exception to this is story-based: if it would be particularly amusing for some reason, you may hiccup more frequently. You may also concentrate hard and spend one Point to make yourself hiccup at any time.
There's one additional problem with the transformation: your clothes don't come with you when you shift out of human form, they just land in a pile, and they are much too bulky to carry around when you are in gerbil form. This isn't a problem in your gerbil form, of course -- gerbils aren't prone to modesty. But it's really embarassing when you transform to human form and are naked. If you are in your pile of clothes when you transform, you can appear in human form fully dressed, but not otherwise. If you transform to human form without clothes around, you should put on your "Naked Man" button as well as your usual human-form button.
You have a set of clothes that you got from one of the wagons a couple of days ago, which you have been secreting in hidden places around the camp so you can transform into it.
Important: Your abilities in gerbil and human forms are completely unrelated. All of your gerbil-related abilities and disadvantages, such as Cute and Can't Carry, do not apply when you are in human form.
Very, Very Cute (Cute) -- You are very, very cute. That's a point of pride, but it's also a useful tool at times.
You may distract any player or groups of players briefly, by spending one Point and showing them this "Cute" card. For up to one minute, you can keep your target busy scritching and generally adoring you, and they must focus on you during that time, not noticing other things happening around them. You may only do so once to any given player (after that, they may notice that you are distracting them), and you can only do this once every fifteen minutes. While being Cute, you must roleplay this to the hilt: remember, you're being the cute fuzzy animal here, not the intelligent creature you really are.
Powerful Sense of Smell (Smell) -- You have a powerful and sensitive sense of smell, far moreso than an ordinary human.
You can recognize people by smell: if you believe that someone is in disguise, you may concentrate on them and spend one Point to determine if they are who they appear to be. Tell a GM that you are doing so, and they will tell you what you find.
You can also detect a person's mood by their scent -- humans give off very different scents depending on how they feel. You may spend one Point and show someone this card to ask them how they feel right now. They must answer honestly: in particular, they must tell you if they are feeling any emotions that are not readily apparent on the surface, and whether they smell like they are trying to hide something from you. (To the target: please be honest here -- yes, your mood can be read by scent.)
Agile Escape (Agile Escape) -- You are a small, agile animal, and therefore difficult to catch. Because of this, you can escape from any combat without being caught. Immediately after a combat is declared, you may declare that you are escaping, and no one can prevent you; you may also escape between rounds as normal. Roleplay this appropriately -- ducking and weaving, diving beneath furniture and things like that are appropriate. Note that there are limits to this ability: characters who are particularly good at tracking may be able to catch up with you, so hiding carefully and running away again may sometimes be necessary to stay uncaught.
Small (Small) -- You are much smaller than a normal human. This means that you can get into tight spaces where ordinary people can't.
Can't Carry Much (Cant Carry) -- Being a small creature, you can't carry anything bulky or heavy. The definitions here are obviously subjective, but please roleplay accordingly, based on your size. You struggle with even medium-sized objects, and simply can't move anything large.
Historical Background
The following were notes while the character was evolving. They do not necessarily represent the way it came out.
Artie is a superintelligent gerbil, created by the (modern) Helen Narbon. Helen was working on a transdimensional warp device, which she "accidentally" dropped Artie into. Mell tried to grab Artie, and fell into the device herself. They briefly appeared in the presence of the Victorian Helen, who was experimenting with a similar device, before the lot of them all fell into an even larger warp that had been opened up by Agatha.
Now, they are traveling with the Circus. Artie is wowing everyone as such an interesting Construct, and the crowds just love him. He presumably has a crush on one of the guys in the circus. He is a natural foil for Krosp. He and Sarah have a natural tension: she is very curious, even attracted to him as a fellow shape-shifter, but they are very suspicious of each other.
Of the three Narbonic characters, Artie is obviously the one who is actually trying to get home. But he can't just get himself home: he needs to make sure that Helen and Mell get back to their world. As usual, he feels a terrible sense of responsibility about the whole thing, and wants to make sure that everyone is safe and sound.
Artie is adorably cute in his gerbil form, and is entirely willing to use that as a weapon. He is extremely handsome as a human, but is far less comfortable with that fact. He is gay, and generally prefers ["slim bronzed Latin men"], but has a thing for genius, especially linguistic genius.
Artie is essentially the archetype of the Bleeding Heart Liberal: he deeply believes that the world is supposed to be nice and fair, and we'd all get along if we just communicated better. Actually, deep down he understands that sometimes you need a giant robot to get peoples' attention, but after that you really should talk.
He has an odd sense of loneliness and responsibility, being basically a one-of-a-kind Construct. The idea of being on a world that has so many Constructs should be strangely thrilling to him, and his attempts to pull them together as a sort of family is closely related to his loneliness.
Think through Artie's shape-shifting power -- when he hiccups, he changes between a gerbil and a tall, handsome gay black dude. Make sure I understand how his clothes work. My guess is that he shifts to naked human form, unless he is in a suit of clothes when he shifts. Give him two buttons, one labeled "Handsome Black Guy" and one labeled "Handsome Naked Black Guy", as well as a "Cute Furry Gerbil" button, to wear as appropriate. For balance, and a good simulation of the comic, put time constraints on his shape-shifting -- he must hiccup at least every 30 minutes, but must wait at least 10 minutes for the next one unless he is under serious stress. At player discretion (or GM fiat), he is more likely to shift when particularly agitated: nervous, angry, sad, etc.
Artie isn't a Spark, but he's possibly the smartest person in the entire game: represent this as some sort of special ability. He should also have a cuteness ability, at least with women.
Amount of Character Potential: Good (Really a very good character, IMO. Only real weakness is that he is from outside GG continuity, and has the always-dangerous goal of leaving the game.)