 |
| Matthew McConaughey as Lamont Cranston |
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| Name: |
Lamont Cranston |
| Birthdate: |
{$birthdate} |
| Faction: |
Avengers |
| Codename: |
The Shadow |
| Position: |
Wealthy recluse |
| Hometown: |
London |
| Partner(s): |
NA |
Height: |
{$height} |
| Father: |
NA |
Weight: |
{$weight} |
| Mother: |
NA |
Hair Color: |
brown |
| Siblings: |
NA |
Eye Color: |
gray |
| Children: |
NA |
|
|
Quote
"Above all remember this: that magic belongs as much to the heart as to the head and everything which is done, should be done from love or joy or righteous anger.
And if we honour this principle we shall discover that our magic is much greater than all the sum of all the spells that were ever taught. Then magic is to us as flight is to the birds, because then our magic comes from the dark and dreaming heart, just as the flight of a bird comes from the heart. And we will feel the same joy in performing that magic that the bird feels as it casts itself into the void and we will know that magic is part of what a man is, just as flight is part of what a bird is.
This understanding is a gift to us from the Raven King, the dear king of all magicians, who stands between England and the Other Lands, between all wild creatures and the world of men."
From The Book of the Lady Catherine of Winchester (1209-67), translated from the Latin by Jane Tobias (1775-1819)
Background
His real name is Kent Allard, and he was born the third son of a minor member of British nobility. Happily, not a lineage that had dwindled into an ancient name and no money. He grew up in wealth and privilege….and his first dream was always flight. He was a civilian pilot nearly as soon as such things were possible….and when the first world war broke out, became a military aviator, ending the war with some renown as a dogfighter. Kent proved to have a talent for spycraft, and ended up on certain clandestine missions for the British and their allies.
Rather than return home after the war, he travelled, slowly falling into lower and lower company, and yielding to the dark impulses. The Lost Generation, they were named later….and he was certainly about as Lost as they come. After ending up in the far East, he fell in with a drug and gun runner named Lamont Cranston, who bore an odd resemblance to Cranston himself.
While flying in a shipment of guns as part of the Chinese civil war, they crashed in the high Himalayas. Allard woke to find himself in the care of a monastery at the edge of a high valley called Shambhala, with Cranston nowhere to be found. He had died in the wreck, Kent was told. Listless and ill-disposed to resume his old life, he ended up the student of one of the old holy men of the abbey….and slowly learned the various occult arts, and a form of magic, albeit one encrusted with centuries of particularly Tibetan tantra.
Eventually that life palled….and towards the end of the twenties, he found himself in New York, having renounced his old life as Kent, and wholly entered in to life as the Shadow. New York was full of its own forms of corruption….and rather than sit idly by, he built a secret identity as the Shadow, and a network of operatives to help him ferret out those hidden evils. He was the scourge of the darker streets of New York until the second World War. He ended up as an intelligence officer, working with the various Resistance factions. But by war's end, he was thoroughly sick of humanity - what use removing individual king pins and crime lords when even ordinary people were capable of such atrocities?
Back in New York, he threw himself into occult studies, rather than resuming his identity as the Shadow….and they eventually drew him to go wandering other worlds than Earth. He's spent the past several years abroad….very far abroad indeed. Only know has he sickened to the scent of the air of Earth, and returned to take up residence in New York again.
IC Events
Traits
- *NOTE: All of the mental powers are basically assumed to work more or less wholly on NPCs, unless a given PC consents. ICly being too damn stubborn to be affected is entirely a reasonable excuse.*
- Magic sense- He's got a version of the Sight. Limited, short range, but if he concentrates, he can see auras, wards, and spells left in place. It's impressionistic and not precise. If he's got time to focus and meditate, he can divine more deeply and see more clearly.
- Near Immortality- He's not invulnerable….but as a result of some of the occult training and experiments he's conducted, left alone on his own, he ages at a miniscule fraction of human normal. Barring the kind of accidents and incidents that are almost inevitable in the life of an occultist, he may see several centuries. Odds are, something will get him first.
- Memory Wipe- He can remove memories from the weaker-willed mortals (PCs' consent only, clearly). The older the memory, the harder it is….and it's a vague scouring away, like erasing part of a painting, rather than something surgically precise. The hypnotic qualities of the Girasol Ring help, as does any other aid to hypnosis - think the old swinging pendant trick - but he can do it without those, if need be. He can not alter and replace, however.
- Psychic invisibility- His powers of mental domination allow him to cloud the sight of others. He can erase himself from their vision, or make them see him as somewhere other than he's physically present. He can not, however, fool mechanical eyes or traps. Cameras see him just fine, pressure plates react to his step, and light beams are cut by his passage.
- Psychic illusion- He can also create mild illusions in nearly any sense - make a victim see a monster that isn't there, hear someone calling desperately who's nowhere near, smell the smoke of burning. Again, this does not apply to any physical means of surveillance. It's also relatively short range - he has to be close enough to have a fair idea of what they're seeing from their own perspective.
- Mental domination- It's a brutally direct technique and one he very much prefers not to revert to unless he must, but he can simply turn or bend the minds of those weak enough. Everything from 'Not the droids you're looking for' on up. It only works on one at a time, though. He can't coerce a crowd.
- Wards- He can, given time and effort, and helped by various occult implements, create wards. His, however, are only purely systems of either alarm or misdirection. He can create wards that alert him when various kinds of creatures are approaching or present….or some that will hide by misdirection. Nothing like a force field or defensive shield - he can't repel or damage an invader with them.
- Telepathy- He can skim surface thoughts by concentration. Strictly one person at a time, and he's incapable of digging very deeply without first scratching up the relevant subject by one of his other techniques. He can also communicate mind to mind - it's easier if there's physical contact.
- Moral Discernment- Evil that lurks in the hearts of men. We all know it. And it's true - he's been a very bad man himself, in his own time. And he's learned to recognize the stains and scars the various forms of human corruption leave, in both psyche and aura. Takes one to know one.
- SKILLS
- Occult Lore- He started out as a student of occult arts that were intended mostly offensively: mental manipulation and coercion, illusion. But as time and experience have mellowed him, he's gone further and further into the more theoretical and knowledgeable realms and become something of a scholar. His focus is on the darker realms, the cthonic and alien threats….other than that, he's got a broad but not incredibly deep general knowledge, especially of the occult lore of Earth.
- Stealth- Even aside from the powers that let him cloud mens' minds, he's naturally stealthy…and that's been refined by the kind of training one gets as a spy and commando. He's not anything like supernaturally good if his powers are negated, but they're impressive, nonetheless.
- Marksmanship- Between his intelligence training in the first World War, his vigilantism in between the wars, and subsequent combat and adventures both during and after the second, he's careful to keep his marksmanship skills at the cutting edge. He prefers dual pistols, but is skilled with nearly anything that fires a projectile, from dartgun to machine gun.
- Piloting/Drive- It's his first love, and his long time vocation. From the moment he heard of the Wright Brothers' success at Kitty Hawk, he was determined to fly. So while he's a skilled driver and capable of piloting watercraft up to a large yacht, he's an absolutely deadly pilot. He was one of the more famed aviators of the first World War, under his original name, Kent Allard. And he's made a point of keeping up with the cutting edge of aviation technology.
- Knife- While he doesn't favor it as he does pistols, Lamont's skilled with blades. He's had training in various schools of fencing, but it's the short knife, both thrown and wielded, he's most proficient with.
- Disguise- Even without the mental powers that lets him bend the perceptions of the weaker-willed, he's good at disguise in the perfectly physical sense: makeup, prosthetics, wigs, and body language.
- Linguistics- He's wandered all over Earth and some of the more earth-like worlds beyond. He speaks a myriad of tongues: the main languages of western Europe, a few from northern Africa and the Middle East, and an assortment both living and dead of the Far East. And of course a number of the languages needed by the very model of a modern esotericist: Enochian, for instance.
- ADVANTAGES
- Force of Will- Partially it's his sheer stubborn nature, partially it's honed by his years of studies in the magical mentalist arts, but Lamont's got a damn near iron will. It's the kind that takes the real psychic big guns to overwhelm.
- Multiple Identities- He's living life under an assumed name, having taken the name of the original Cranston, a man who made his fortune somewhat from inheritance but mostly from drug and gun running.
- Wealth- Between legitimate businesses and investments, as well as the old ill-gotten gains from gun and drug running, Lamont is stupid rich. Filthy rich, if not quite 'Use Hundred Dollar Bills To Light Your Cigars' rich.
- The Ring- A strange and bitter keepsake, the Girasol Ring is an opal and gold ring given to him by one of the last of the Russian royals, as a gift for a sensitive mission completed on their behalf. Its main value lies in its abilities to seriously boost the force of will he can exert in his various occult endeavors.
- Phurba- A relic bequeathed to him - a Tibetan ritual tool in the shape of a three-edged dart or dagger, made of old bronze. The Phurba, however, is more than a mere artifact; it's both a battery of occult power that can be called upon or recharged with ritual, and a weapon of magical last resort, being specifically designed to subdue and slay demons.
- Spellbooks- He possesses three spellbooks with several specific protection spells of minor to moderate strength. Casting these spells from the book reduce the cost to Lamont's energy. Object wards last up to a fortnight before expiring, whereas personal ones last no longer than a scene. The spells include an alarm spell and a ward for objects smaller than a house; a personal ward; personal invisibility; a 'look past me' illusion for objects or himself; and a blessing against damage or harassment.
- FLAWS
- Enemies- He's made plenty of enemies in his career, both occult and mundane. Remnants of criminal organizations he's helped bring down, occultists he's defeated, collectors he's stolen from. Any one of them would be glad to see him burn - some literally.
- Phurba's Regard- The Phurba isn't merely a relic in his collection or a source of power for his wards. It's figuratively double-edged, even if literally three-sided, for the Tulku bequeathed it to him has also made it the guardian of his conscience. If Lamont should ever truly fall to the Dark Side, as it were, the Phurba will seek him out and destroy him.
- Otherworldly- While he's been walking in other worlds than Earth for a relatively few years, to the knowing eye they've left their mark. He's rather visibly a man out of time and place. And his fellow magicians will spot the traces, pretty easily.
- Dark Heart- He may be trying to use his powers for good and not evil, these days. But the bad man he used to be is not gone….and he's especially vulnerable to the temptation to yield to violence or to dominate the weak. Gazing into the abyss, etc.
Gallery
Logs
