Game: Aberrant (White Wolf Publishing, 1999)
My Experience: I was never a huge superhero aficionado, so I kinda slept on writing opportunities for Aberrant (and, if memory serves, I was busy with Vampire work at the time anyway). However, the WWGS freelance community at the time was smaller than it is today and somewhat well-coordinated, so I did get to do some playtest work, and ran a couple of pre-release demo games at the infamous Origins ’99.
Bánoy (Manuel Kidlat Salazar), Stormwhisperer
Manuel was just a kid in 1998, when, in the wake of the Galatea orbital laboratory’s explosion, people around the world began expressing inexplicable superpowers. He didn’t know about it at the time – his family was so poor it took a week for the news to get to them. Even after it did, life on the dirty fringe of Cebu City didn’t change much. These “novas” were astronomically far away, geographically and socially, and while they were an overnight sensation, people still needed food, medicine, a roof that didn’t leak too much, and church on Sunday.
When Manuel came of age, he went to sea, like so many Filipino youths before him. When he was young, he’d dreamed of being a sailor, but he could never afford tuition to one of the island nation’s maritime schools. Instead, he took everything he’d learned about knife, flame, and customer service from working at his family’s three street food stands, and just barely parleyed that into the most junior kitchen job on a run-down cruise liner.
The ship was seaworthy only in the most technical sense. The owners spent what money they could on the passenger-facing decks. For the mechanical problems, it was cheaper to pay off the inspectors and replace any crewman who complained. Artifice and evasion had gotten them through several years of marginal operations, but in the end, the sea ran out of patience.
Everyone knew the typhoon was coming, but the owners didn’t want to lose money on refunds for a shortened cruise. Instead, they ordered the captain to skirt the storm and put in at a couple of alternate ports of call. When the typhoon suddenly changed course to match, it was far too late to outrun it. Sometime in the wave-tossed darkness, Manuel felt the ship groan and shudder, and he knew the next surge would twist it beyond repair. Beneath his fear and despair and betrayal, something outraged and defiant pushed up from within him. The next thing he knew, he was standing on the deck, clinging to the railing with both hands, blinded by salt spray – but he could feel the storm. And then, in a way he’s never been able to explain to anyone else who can’t see wind and ride currents and taste lightning, he reached out and seized hold of the storm and quelled it.
Some novas maintain secret identities. Manuel’s eruption had far too many witnesses, too many recordings, for him to ever burrow back into anonymity. He wasn’t the first Filipino nova, but only a scant few preceded him. Overnight, he was a celebrity in the Philippines – and globally. Some well-oiled commentator in the Filipino media labeled him Bánoy, the Tagalog name of the Philippine eagle, and that stuck.
In the year since Manuel erupted, he’s been uncertain what to do with himself. He tried to go home, but home… wasn’t, any more. Half his family looked at him with eyes glowing with adoration, half gazed on him with poorly-veiled fear, and half turned away and muttered that he was damned for seizing a shard of God’s power – and all three of those halves fought over him. The closest he was able to come to normalcy was when he testified at the trials of the ship’s owners and senior officers, and as soon as the courts were done with him, they turned him loose from the structure they’d imposed.
Manuel could be wealthy, powerful, connected – but he doesn’t know how to do any of those things. That’s not who he was, and becoming a nova didn’t give him any sudden insight into how to conduct himself in a society that had no use for him before his eruption. He’s taken to living on the most isolated beaches he can find and trying to master the powers that something beyond his comprehension thrust upon him. When he needs money, he’ll take a cash job at a beachside restaurant until someone recognizes him, then move on before anyone can try to make him do or be something for them. Several upscale cruise lines would love to hire him, and the Philippine Navy is keeping tabs on him while trying to figure out what kind of offer would bring him into the national defense fold, but he’s as oblivious to these opportunities as he is to the darker suggestions he’s received from nondescript figures in dockworker bars.
Traits
Nature: Martyr (Manuel regains Willpower whenever he sacrifices himself or something of his for a higher goal)
Allegiance: none (though the other PCs will likely steer Manuel toward something)
Attributes and Abilities
Strength ••••: Might •
Dexterity ••••: Athletics ••, Martial Arts (arnis) ••, Melee (baston) ••, Pilot (small boat) •, Stealth •
Stamina •••••: Endurance •••, Resistance •••
Perception ••••: Awareness ••
Intelligence ••: Linguistics (English, Greek, Japanese) •••, Science (meteorology) •, Survival (coastal) •
Wits ••••: Arts (cooking) •••••, Rapport ••
Appearance ••
Manipulation •: Streetwise •••
Charisma ••••: Perform (culinary) •••••
Advantages
Backgrounds: Cipher •• (grew up off the grid), Contacts •• (Philippine Navy liaison officer, newspaper reporter), Dormancy •••, Node ••
Willpower ••••
Quantum •••• (2nd through 4th dots bought as tainted)
Taint ••• (no outward manifestations… yet)
Mega-Stamina • + Adaptability: Manuel automatically gains Endurance and Resistance •••, reduces injury penalties by 1, heals at triple normal speed, receives 1 extra soak die against bashing and lethal damage, and can go weeks without sleep. Additionally, as long as he has at least one quantum point in his pool, he does not need to eat, sleep, or breathe; can survive indefinitely in any environmental extreme on the planet or in outer space; and is immune to most poisons, toxic chemicals, and diseases. His theoretical lifespan is several centuries, if not longer…
Weather Manipulation ••• (Level 3 Quantum power): Manuel can freely use the Fog, Weather Alteration, and Windriding techniques, and can attempt the Alter Temperature and Lightning Bolt techniques at double cost and a 1-point difficulty penalty.
Equipment
fishing gear
knife roll and set of high-end chef’s knives
two rattan sticks
Notes and Afterthoughts
In a four-color supers game with an undercurrent of all of the horror and political conspiracy that White Wolf was known for, I guess it’s somehow an anti-grimdark lone-wolf problem player who writes a character who wants none of those things. In my defense, though, Manuel is kind of positioned to be recruited by the first group of novas (like the other PCs) that just comes along and treats him as normally as possible. He’s a decent guy struggling to make sense of crazy powers he doesn’t want in a world in which everyone wants something from him.
I’ve always had a fondness for weather control powers in games that allow access to them. The cost in this case is rather steep. Manuel isn’t quite a one-trick pony, but he’s close.
Manuel doesn’t actually know that his eruption also tapped him into the collective unconscious for a moment and made him a world-class chef. He thinks he’s still running at Arts and Performance around •• to ••• each. He also keeps eating because he doesn’t know he doesn’t need to.