[UA] Avatar: the Lady

[Aaron Harmon]

I f you feel the fourth channel is too nasty, make it have a limited
duration, perhaps a number of minutes equal to her avatar roll or her skill.
And the first channel is ok, less powerful than the merchant's "gotta pay me
to hurt me channel ". You could always apologize before shooting her.
Maybe you should try swapping the 1st and 3rd channels.
 
-------Original Message-------
 
From: jeffwik at 333.org; The Unknown Armies RPG Mailing List
Date: 02/05/04 15:30:51
To: ua at lists.unknown-armies.com
Subject: [UA] Avatar: the Lady
 
So IMUAC there's a player who wants to do an avatar of the Lady, and one of
the channels should be that men should open doors for her.  And she added in
some stuff about Tristam & Yseult that went over my head.  Anyway, I took
her ideas and fiddled with them a bit and came up with this.  Thoughts?
 
 
 
 
 
The Lady
 
“Well she's all you'd ever want,
She's the kind they'd like to flaunt and take to dinner.
Well she always knows her place.
She's got style, she's got grace, she's a winner.”
(“She’s a Lady,” Paul Anka by way of Tom Jones)
 
Attributes:  The Lady has no power of her own, but feeds on the men around
and under her.  She cloys and assists, manages and manipulates.  [fill in
later]
 
The Lady stands in stark opposition to the Flying Woman; while the latter
seeks power through independence from patriarchal society, the former
co-opts that society into dependence on her.  The Lady is also a weakened
archetype, as cultural shifts challenge traditional gender roles and the
exalted/subjugated synthesis of the Lady’s position becomes obsolete. 
Between Hilary Clinton’s Senate seat and Elizabeth Dole’s presidential
bid, there may soon come a significant revision of the Lady’s role as
eminence grise and counselor.
 
Like the Flying Woman and the Mother, men cannot channel the Lady.
 
Taboo:  The Lady cannot experience degradation; she is too good for this
world, and exposure to the harsher side of existence weakens her purity. 
She cannot open her own doors, ketchup bottles, pay for a meal, or fire a
gun when a man is present to perform the task for her.  The only exceptions
are the rigidly defined areas of “women’s work:” housecleaning,
gardening, teaching, sewing, and nursing.  Further, a Lady is sweet and
gentle:  she cannot express anger or experience frenzy (as a result of
failing a Madness check) without violating taboo.
 
Symbols:  Jewelry, particularly necklaces and collars, particularly pearls. 
Height – either literal pillars or high places such as Rapunzel’s tower.
 
Suspected Avatars in History:  Dante’s mistress Beatrice was one of the
best-known avatars of the Lady.  Eleanor of Aquitane and Jacqueline Onassis
may have channeled the Lady unknowingly.  The jury remains out on Lady Bird
Johnson.
 
Masks:  Parvati (Hindustani), Penelope (Greek), Guinevere (Arthurian),
Yseult.  The few occult mythologists who know (and care) enough argue about
how to classify Athena.  Cate Blanchett appeared as the Lady in a recent
fantasy blockbuster trilogy.
 
1-50%:  The Lady’s aura of propriety is palpable.  Men around her must
treat her with utmost courtesy: opening doors for her, buying her dinner,
refraining from expletives in her presence, et cetera.  It’s still
possible for a man to act against the Lady’s wishes; he can forcibly tie
her to a chair and steal her television set, but he must do so politely. 
Failure to comply with these limits causes a Self check at a rank equal to
the tens digit of the Lady’s avatar skill.
51-70%:  To the Lady, men are pliable, easily led creatures.  She may
flip-flop any failed Charm, Lie, or other social skill check, if the result
would be under her Avatar: the Lady skill.  The channel functions only if
the target of the skill check in question is male.
71-90%:  The Lady possesses a magnetic attraction.  Men unconsciously seek
to protect, serve, and impress the Lady and receive a positive shift when
doing so equal to the sum of the Lady’s avatar skill (so serving a Lady
with an avatar skill of 74% would give a +11% shift, and a skill of 89 a
+17% shift).  This shift applies only to skill checks made in the pursuit of
impressing or protecting the Lady, and only in her company.  Taking a bullet
for her certainly qualifies; shooting someone she dislikes counts only if
your primary motivation for the attack is to please her.
91+%:  The Lady manipulates men's minds.  Over the course of a conversation
lasting no less than half an hour, the Lady can (with a successful Avatar:
the Lady check) divine the schema of a man's Madness meter and toy with it
as it suits her, moving hardened and failed notches from one meter to
another.  The only restriction is that she cannot change the total number of
hardened notches, or failed notches, on the whole Meter.  So a Lady could
turn your five failed Unnatural notches into one failed notch of each scale,
but not erase them completely or turn them into hardened notches.
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