RPGaDay2022 - 22 - Who is your current character?

      

Who is your current character?

That's a pretty limited question, in that it assumes that I'm only playing in one game at the moment.

In Eternal Lies (Trail of Cthulhu), my character is Lotte Rädler-Jones, a journalist and German expatriate who fled the rising Nazi repression. A liberal with socialist leanings, Lotte fled Germany in 1931 hoping to start again in the United States, as she realised that her past would not be tolerated by the growing right-wing. A scientist by training, she found it difficult to find work in the field when she arrived in New York, ending up working in pharmacy having been unable to find work in research. She started writing again, and her work introduced her to her husband, Jack Jones, who works as an editor in one of the Dailies. He has encouraged her to focus on her writing for the liberal press and contributing articles on science and culture. She does feel some pressure from his family about when she’s going to start a family, and this creates tension in their relationship.

In The Yellow King, we are playing the wars phase, and my character is Lieutenant Algernon Henry Jackson-Taylor (absolutely, definitely not ‘Algy’). The character is the grandson of the character I played in the Paris phase. His grandfather told him tales of his time in Paris as an art student yet there was something obviously missing. In correspondence he sorted after Harry’s death, he’s found references to the artist James Walton, his lover Musetta and Joao, a poet. All of them disappeared some time during Paris, and there is something that Henry didn’t - or wouldn't - say. Algernon joined the army despite his grandfather’s disapproval and the old man passed away before they reconciled. Early in the fighting, Algernon’s unit came under fire. They took refuge in a church in the woods, with a strange octagonal design. Somehow, he became lost in it and caught shouts and glimpses of his colleagues. It seemed to go on forever. He eventually stumbled out (having thought he was only there for perhaps 30 minutes) to find that dark had fallen and what was left of his unit was preparing to leave. Not everyone was there. When they returned to their lines, a number of the soldier’s minds were broken and the Lieutenant in charge shot himself (although that was recorded as an accidental discharge). Algernon dreams of that church most nights, except those when the moon is dark or hidden. He wakes with night terrors, seeing his colleagues being hunted, perhaps by four figures that resemble his grandfather’s friends and Henry himself.

22 August 22