[UA] Avatar: the Lady

[Jeff Wikstrom]

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.