[UA] Stalker Avatar - comments welcome

[Niall Sweby]

I don't know if anyone has come up with a Stalker archetype (if so,
where is it), but this is my take on one for the game I am about to run.
Any comments warmly received. 

Niall

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The Stalker

Attributes:
The stalker is the figure that haunts the edge of your vision, the
window you thought was closed, the envelope stuffed full of your
underwear you just received in the post. The Stalker wants to be close
to you, to know you, touch you, love you, become you. . . kill you.

The original Stalker started when societies began to split into the rich
and poor, the have and the have-nots. The haves walled themselves away,
hiding from prying eyes. Naturally some of those prying eyes wanted a
look. The emphasis of the archetype was on entering the lives of the
rich, to spy on them, to steal from them or to join them.

Then came printing, public statues and portraits and the rise of
celebrity. Slowly a new archetype developed, one that focused on prying
into the life of a particular person. No one knows whether this
archetype had ascended before television, but certainly television
cemented the archetype in popular consciousness. Never before had it
been so easy to visualise and follow the acts of individual people. Fan
Clubs, CCTV, video and the Internet have simply supported this trend,
making life even easier for the stalkers.

Although the archetype originated from stalking celebrities, in fact its
emphasis is on individuals. The Stalker can be violent or peaceful, can
hate the object of their obsession or love them, can believe their
obsession talks to them through dreams or that the stars have
predestined their meeting. They can observe from afar or try to get
close and act out their desires. What is important is that they choose
an individual as the target of their obsession and try to act out the
implications of that obsession.

Taboo: The Stalker cannot be distracted from their obsession. Whatever
they do must be focused on fulfilling their obsession. Stalkers can
continue to earn money and hold down jobs, providing that considerable
portions of their income are spent on reaching their obsession. Of
course most stalkers also spend most of their work time pursuing their
object of obsession and then getting fired, or spend all their time
talking about their object and so getting fired.

Additionally and obviously, the stalker can never accept that the target
does not want to fulfil the role in the obsession - whether that role is
as a subject of constant surveillance, as a lover or as the victim of
vicious rape and murder.

Symbols:
Dirty trenchcoat and hat, long range photolens. 'What the butler saw' is
an old symbol that has been restored through period television and film.


Masks: Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, tabloid journalist, in certain
countries secret policemen have become masks for the Stalker. The
Talented Mr Ripley is a book widely connected to this archetype.

Suspected Avatars in History: Mark David Chapman almost certainly tried
to ascend by shifting the archetype to using stalking as a means for the
stalker to actually achieve celebrity status themselves. Unfortunately
for him, the resultant media attention bound him too closely to reality
and his ascension failed.

Channels:
1% - 50%: Name an individual and devise an obsession about them that
relates to yourself. From then on, any rolls made in relation to
fulfilling that obsession can be flip-flopped.

51%-70%: The Stalker gains a mystical link to their obsession. This can
be used for tilts and proxies, but also simply for knowing where they
are. It is not an exact knowledge, more like a compass combined with a
sense of distance (very far, very close). 

71%-90%: The Stalker can reasonably pass themselves off as someone
connected with the obsession - cousin, gardener, head of fan club. This
power makes people assume the stalker is telling the truth without
showing ID "they would only be here if they were allowed to be".
Obviously large discrepancies - Comic Book Guy pretending to be a
13-year-old girl Brittany fan won't be accepted and any security
requirements, such as body searches, will still be undertaken unless
persuaded otherwise (GM could allow a shift in persuasion because
stalker's 'identity' has already been established and trusted).

91%+: The Stalker cannot be stopped from pursuing their target. Doors
will be left unlocked, security guards will look the other way, camerias
will glitch for a few seconds. The stalker will simply not be noticed.
However direct action against the target or anyone else will be noticed.
No one will stop you walking right up to your obsession with a loaded
gun but once you raise it to fire then people will try and stop you.  

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