[Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen] UCSD Krewe: The Harvest

Out of Character (OOC):

Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen

Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition

Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler

Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum

                  UCSD Krewe: The Harvest

from Geist: the Sin-Eaters

Symbol: 

A brightly colored leaf draped over a farmer’s scythe 

Territory:

San Diego, specifically UCSD campus

Size: 

The Harvest is a Tier 1 Krewe, with roughly 5-6 members at a time. As their membership is primarily from UCSD and other Sand Diego colleges, the number fluctuates from year to year as students cycle in and out of the system. Some choose to stay involved in the Krewe after graduating, but most go their own ways.

Duty: 

To guide and positively influence young Sin-Eaters.

Ban:

Harming living human beings without provocation.

Destiny: Unknown

Philosophy: 

Essentially, the krewe exists to answer a question. “What happened to us?” Every member has survived (or at least they think they have) circumstances that they shouldn’t have and emerged with new-found abilities and an extra passenger. It’s a matter of hot debate, and each member is encouraged to come up with their own interpretation of the matter. Their hope is that by bringing in a wide array of perspectives, they will one day arrive at the truth of the matter. It’s part of the reason that they don’t consider members cycling in and out of the Krewe a bad thing.

Leadership: 

The Krewe is more of a loose collection of associates and friends than a strict hierarchy, with one of its main principles being to guide new and confused Sin-Eaters and help them make the most out of their second chance at life. However, members do pay deference to the most experianced Sin-Eater of the bunch and their unofficial leader, Professor Sadler of UCSD.

Main Archtypes: 

The krewe’s philosophy encourages Celebrants, but members of all archtypes except Reapers are welcomed in. They’re not at all happy about deaths on campus, however “justified” the killings may be, and come down hard on any Reapers practicing their philosophy within campus grounds.

Operations: 

The Harvest presents itself as an innocuous, if highly exclusive multicampus student organization willing to recruit from various colleges in the San Diego region. The exact nature of what they do is unclear to outsiders, but officially its an academic club for gifted students. The group encourages its students to project a squeaky clean image to ward off any suspicion off them as some sort of bizarre cult (and simply because they encourage wholesome living in general), which has generally been successful. They meet once a week in Pr. Sadler’s office, with additional emergency or private meetings called for as necessary through the Twilight Network; a surprising amount of grafitti around San Diego campuses are encoded messages from members of the Harvest. 

At meetings, members talk about difficulties they’ve been having, practice controlling their abilities, share knowledge, and discuss any supernatural problems in the area that are within their purview to solve. The Krewe is effectively a support group for young Geists, but members are also called on to tend to the dead in the area and resolve any conflicts that occur between them and the living - it’s good practice, and (hopefully) encourages responsibility. They use the buddy system on these missions, generally pairing up a more experianced member with a less experianced one unless the situation is very dangerous.

Members are also encouraged to spend time together outside of official meetings to provide support and assistance to each other. As a result, they tend to be a tight-knit bunch.

Avernian Gate: 

The krewe knows of one, located near the mouth of the snake above. It is Pr. Sadler’s suspicion that the various pieces of art around campus have all been constructed around some form of occult phenomeon, but he has been unable to confirm this. Key: walking the snakeway 3 times while appealing to a Hopi death god and then the mouth opens permitting someone to go below

Current Members: 

Name: Ian Sadler (Professor of Psychology at UCSD)

Virtue: Kind          

Vice: Curious

Threshold: The Stricken – died of an undiagnosed heart condition in his early thirties, a few years after becoming a professor at UCSD.

Archtype: Celebrant          

Keys: Passion, Phantasmal          

Keystone: A silver pocket watch

Geist: 

A winding serpent with sludge black scales that alterantes between producing the tick of a clock and the sound of a heartbeat. It’s never comepletely still, nor silent.

Notes: 

Kind-hearted but absentminded and excitable. Well-liked and popular among students and faculty for his friendliness and eccentricity. Always well dressed, suit and glasses meticulously clean. He never swears, but is prone to talking very loudly when excited. Quite knowledgeable both in psychology and underworld lore. He’s in his late fifties, has been teaching at UCSD for about thirty years and running the krewe almost that long. Surprisingly observent. 

Theory: 

Over the years, the professor has had the perspectives of many Sin-Eaters to weigh against his own. As a result of that and his own open mindedness, he entertains a number of theories on the subject of becoming a Sin-Eater. His favorite however, is that facing up to their own mortalities flipped a switch in their brains, allowing them to obtain a sort of clarity and see things that others cannot. They could no longer see death as an “other” and so they were forced to integrate the concept into themselves. Their geists are not outside forces, but a part of their own psyches, a part that has perhaps always existed but was buried alongside their powers until the moment of their awakening. He believes that every human being has the capability to become a Sin-Eater, but that many can’t manage to find that final moment of clarity as they approach death.

Name: Amanda Stillwell

Virtue: Optimistic

Vice: Perfectionist

Threshold: The Forgotten – died in a car crash, pure chance. She wore a seatbelt, drove sober and was always a pretty cautious driver.

Archtype: Celebrant 

Keys: Industrial, Grave-Dirt

Keystone: A rust-red car key

Geist: 

A screaming metal thing, part broken machine and part emaciated man

Notes: 

Senior aiming for a Masters degree in Mathmatics and Physics, and general academic over-achiever. Fits the perky goth look to a T. Personality: think Death from Sandman. She’s been in the Krewe the longest of any of the current members save Pr. Sadler, and acts as a mentor to the younger Sin-Eaters.

Theory: 

She’s got a theory involving quantum physics that she thinks is pretty solid, but has been yet to get anyone else in the krewe to understand it. Amanda is also the only one to actively attempt to buddy up to her geist (as opposed to viewing it as an ally, an object of study, or something to be terrified of).

Name: James Tran

Virtue: Witty

Vice: Reckless

Threshold: The Prey – heatstroke

Archtype: Necromancer

Keys: Pyre-Flame, Primeval

Keystone: A lighter that emits a powerful and draining heat.

Geist: 

A mass of liquid formed from what looks like gasoline and blood. It constantly changes shape from humanoid, to animal, to entirely alien in appearance.

Notes: 

Sophmore Journalism major with a knack for the written word and smart-ass remarks. He’s by far the one most invested in collecting knowledge about the underworld and will go to great lengths for knowledge. Not very risk-conscious, and tends to push himself too far. 

Theory: 

He believes that they are the Neos of this story. Death is simply a part of the Martix, and they have managed to transcend it by perceiving the true reality behind it, accounting for their superhuman powers. Geists are the semi-physical representations of their enlightenment. The real question is: who’s the one running the Matrix?

Name: Chloe Rowland

Virtue: Contemplative

Vice: Timid

Threshold: The Silent – drowned in the bathtub as a toddler. She spent a lot of her life being confused and afraid of the strange phenomeons that kept manifesting around her.

Archtype: Mourner

Keys: Stillness, Tear-Stained

Keystone: A blue glass manacle

Geist: A writhing pile of chains made of sea blue glass

Notes: 

A freshman, English major and the most recent addition to the krewe. Although she’s been a Sin-Eater most of her life, she has always been afraid of her abilities and shied away from using them. Quiet, introverted, often deep in thought and very easily spooked. Very good at handling ghosts; despite trying to shut them and her powers out, she spent her formative years already experiencing them, making her a bit more skilled than even the older members Elias and James (Amanda still has her beat).

Theory: 

Chloe thinks their condition is a punishment of sorts for denying the natural order of death. Essentially she believes they are denied an afterlife but are instead trapped in a hell of their own making. Their geists are a reminder of their sin, being reflections of the deaths that they cheated. She’s not a very happy camper about this, but bears these ideas with quiet dignity. 

Name: Elias Rao

Virtue: Staunch

Vice: Hot-Tempered

Threshold: The Torn – while heavily intoxicated got into a drunken fist fight with a few strangers that went too far.

Archtype: Pilgrim

Keys: Stigmatic, Cold Wind

Keystone: A knife with no blade, only a sleek black hilt

Geist: 

A woman with broken glass for teeth and empty sockets where her eyes should be.

Notes: 

Sophmore, majoring in Mechanical Engineering. Guy who drew a bad hand – poor background, rough homelife, grew up in a bad neighborhood, and cursed with a not insignificant number of vices – and is genuinely trying to turn his life around. It took a lot of sheer stubbornness to get himself into college – he’s not blessed academically but makes up for it in persistance. He’s got a hair-trigger temper that he’s trying to reign in and is rather surly and taciturn even when in a good mood, but is the most invested in resolving the problems of mundanes.

Theory:

He has been known to loudly declare that he “doesn’t give a fuck” why they lived or where their powers come from. But really, to him it’s another second chance out of many. He doesn’t know who gave it to him and he’s afraid to ask. Elias views his geist as half guardian angel and half parol officer.