Cymothoa Sanguinaria
"The Greatest Enemy Lies within the Self"This shit is body horror.
Truth
Of all the horrors and monsters, beasts of nightmare,
bloody-lipped demons, and creeping specters haunting
this dark world, sometimes the dumb engines of evolution
grind out creatures to rival the worst of the secret occult
horrors. C. Sanguinaria is just such a creature.
Parasites. Let us consider parasites.
Some recent studies suggest that in complex ecosystems,
the total biomass of parasites exceeds that of predators.
The parasitoid wasp Glyptapanteles lays its eggs upon
hapless caterpillars, and when they hatch, the larvae burrow
in and eat. When they’re ready to pupate into adult
wasps, they hijack the behavior of the caterpillar, and it
climbs up a shaft of grass to allow the larvae to wriggle
from within its flesh and attach themselves to the grass,
forming chrysalis. But Glyptapanteles is not finished with
its poor host, no indeed, for a few of the larvae remain
within, burrowing about in its nervous system and secreting
chemicals. The cored-out caterpillar remains living,
after a fashion, and serves to guard the metamorphosing
wasps, thrashing about madly at any insect hazarding too
close to the creatures feeding upon it. The wasps emerge,
and the caterpillar dies.
This power of parasites to hijack host behavior isn’t
limited to caterpillars. The protozoa Toxoplasma gondii is
commonly found in the feces of the housecat, and benignly
infects upwards of one third of the human population of
the planet. With a healthy immune system arrayed against
it, it is quiescent, but with the body’s defenses compromised
by immune deficiency disease, it can ravage nerves
and brain. In Rattus rattus and his rodent cousins, the
Toxoplasma organism alters behavior, giving the creatures
an affection for the smell of domestic cats and cat urine.
Infected mice trend to cat-infested areas, increasing the
chances that they’ll end up as meals, and permitting the
newly introduced organism to reproduce with the cat’s
native population.
And might the protozoa have a similar effect upon humans?
Well, it could explain why we’d open our homes
to furniture-destroying aloof little sociopaths.
And then there’s Cymothoa Exigua, a tiny monster popular
on the Internet. Exigua enters the gills of the spotted
rose snapper fish and attaches itself to the base of the fish’s
tongue, absorbing blood and nutrients until the tongue
withers away. C. Exigua grafts itself to the tongue stump,
and functionally replaces it. This relationship is almost a
symbiosis, except the fish only just breaks even, and he’s
got a segmented isopod instead of a tongue.
And Cymothoa Sanguinaria is so much worse than all
of these.
Parasites get inside us, use us to propagate, hijack our
reproductive energies to fuel their own life cycles, and
perhaps even control our minds. They remind us that
fundamentally, we’re flesh, and all the airy realms of spirit
matter not at all when the body anchoring it to Earth
is eaten away from within, and the core of thought and
identity corrupted by the mindless invader.
Pray to God to save your soul, because your body and
mind belong to Cymothoa Sanguinaria.
C. Sanguinaria is superficially similar to its cousin species C.
Exigua, but much, much rarer. Conditions allowing C. Sanguinaria
to prosper are uncommon. Although exceptionally rare, it
has a lifecycle dependent upon natural hot springs, and evidence
suggests Sanguinaria or a nearly identical species has propagated
in Iceland, Japan and the American West, in regions of natural
geothermal heating. Humans parasitized by Sanguinaria have
been fairly rare, though several historical outbreaks in Japanese
onsen are suspected, and the Japanese snow monkey (Macaca
Fuscata) may play a more regular host to the organism.
The course of infection is similar in humans and other
large mammals, though the behavioral changes imposed
upon human hosts are more complex than those seen in
wolves, bears, moose and deer.
C. Sanguinaria larvae enter a host through the nasal
cavity or mouth. A common vector for infection is mammals
bending to drink from warm springs which remain
unfrozen during winter. Among humans, recreational
bathing provides the most common opportunity for the
tiny larvae to invade the sinuses.
The parasite secretes a complex stew of antiseptic and anesthetic
chemicals during the first days of stage 1. Its creeping
progress into the host’s throat goes unnoticed. While the host
sleeps, it creeps into the mouth. It begins to hollow out a pocket
in the soft tissues under the tongue, and latches onto the host
and begins consuming blood. When so attached, C. Sanguinaria
secretes a cocktail of chemicals that alter brain chemistry in
subtle ways, creating a sense of mild euphoria and elevated
mood, with manic episodes. This serves to distract the host until
the larva has burrowed into a sub-lingual pocket, and begun
metamorphosis into an adult C. Sanguinaria specimen.
When the parasite matures, it fully grafts to the host’s body,
and extends its tail through a channel under the tongue into
the host’s upper esophagus in preparation for the egg laying
coming at the end of stage-1 infection. The subject’s olfactory
centers are suborned to serve C. Sanguinaria as well, and others
infected with a parasite begin to smell extremely attractive.
In the wild, infected animals will approach one another even
if normal predator-prey relationships would forbid this, and
engage in close grooming activity, culminating in the hosts
lying so their hermaphroditic parasites can emerge partially
from the mouth, and fertilize each other.
Among human hosts, this fertilization more frequently
results in spontaneous and (to the hosts) inexplicable
sexual arousal and relations. During a kiss,
the parasites copulate.
Once fertilized, C. Sanguinaria influences host behavior
to make it extremely territorial, so the scent of other
infected hosts becomes repellent, and induces anxiety
and aggression. The parasite deposits its eggs encased in
a thick layer of mucous into the host’s esophagus, and
they migrate downward and attached variously to the
stomach and intestinal lining where they slowly mature
and hatch larvae that themselves parasitize the host for
nutrients. The parasites then drive the host to find a
secure (and exclusive) brooding area to eventually deposit
the larval parasites.
The host passes through increasingly common periods
of fugue—a loss of conscious volition during which complex
actions and interactions can take place of which the
host will have no memory when returning to sentience.
The host will also be driven to seek out sexual partners
in order to feed C. Sanguinaria the blood meals its eggs
require to mature, and its larvae to grow. This vampiric
exsanguination explains the parasite’s name (“blooddrinker”).
The host might bleed as few as one or as many
as a dozen victims, depending upon the parasite’s rate
of maturation.
By the end of stage 2 (see below), most hosts enter
a permanent fugue state, becoming in effect cognitive
zombies. A host’s brain still operates at a degree
of sophistication (though, mostly to enact behaviors
beneficial to the parasite), but the parasite has wholly
suppressed the host’s consciousness. Horrific as this
is, the telepathic observation by a group of vampires
of a stage-3 host revealed that his conscious mind remained
alive and aware, forced to watch and endure
the actions of his body without any ability to control
or override them.
Patterns of brain damage caused by the parasite’s
chemical excretions suggest certain brain regions cut
off, physically, from others: the mind of the victim,
walled off in an oubliette of neurons, and shown
atrocities without even the power to close the eyes, or
flinch away.
As stage 3 progresses to its inevitable and grotesque
conclusion, the host becomes more and more feral,
and aggressively territorial, meeting perceived threats
with violence.
The blood meals have done their work, and when
the larval parasites have reached a stage of maturity
permitting them to survive as free swimmers in the
brooding pool, they release chemicals that cause in the
host severe abdominal cramping and contractions of
the intestinal muscles not unlike mammalian labor. The
creature compels the host to immerse himself in the
prepared brooding pool, and then experiences a violent
distention of intestinal tissues. Larvae burst out into
the pool (taking with them large portions of the host’s
decaying intestinal tract). The host, emptied, experiences
a surge of energy (caused by still more chemical
secretions of its primary parasite), and returns to his
territorial protection of the brooding area, allowing the
larvae to grow and establish themselves in the pool. If
suitable hosts (large mammals) venture into the host’s
territory now, rather than attack with violence, the
host will sometimes incapacitate them and place them
by the brooding pool, providing the larvae with ready
access to a new host.
Without the ability to absorb nutrients, the late stage-3
host is doomed to die in a short time, taking with it the
parasite that was the engineer of this doom.
But Darwin smiles upon the beast. Its evolutionary
duty is discharged with success, and the selfish genes
that drive all life are propagated further—dumb replication
underpinning the sublime birth of a child as much
as the piratical organism that might one day steal that
child’s blood, will and humanity. In the end, the lesson
we learn from parasites is that we’re all flesh, we eat, and
we are eaten.
Everything else is just meat, singing to itself in
the dark.
Stories
Body horror, flesh terror—stories featuring C. Sanguinaria
revolve around revulsion. The body in rebellion,
the flesh invaded. They also hedge into stories
about the terror of the familiar becoming alien—when
a friend or lover begins to act oddly in small ways,
then big ways, and finally horrific ways. Themes of
consciousness and free will are also relevant—stripped
of conscious direction, the body of a stage-2 host can
convincingly appear human sometimes, even to loved
ones, all while the cutoff sentience of the victim’s
brain uselessly screams. What’s consciousness even
for if the flesh can get along quite well without it? C.
Sanguinaria isn’t even evil—it’s as morally neutral as
a thunderstorm or a mountain lion eating an incautious
jogger. Even when you realize what it is and rise
with anger and hate, and you smash it, burn it with
fire, poison its brooding pools, execute its hosts…
so what? What’s your anger worth? Even in death,
Cymothoa Sanguinaria doesn’t hate you back. It just
doesn’t care about you.
Trapped in my head
It’s the kind of thing that isn’t really suited for
long-term play, but some players might—for want of
a better word—enjoy the horror of playing C. Sanguinaria’s
victim.
The character dies at the end, of course. Maybe you’d
play it as a one-shot. Maybe it’s a way to end the story
of a long-running and beloved character. (It’s a horror
game! Who says the protagonists of such stories get
happy endings?)
For a short term, descend into the essence of personal
horror. Play through the course of a host’s infection
with the parasite, her fall into fugue states and missing
time, and then the evidence of cannibalism, madness.
Finally, locked into a prison of flesh, a witness trapped
in her own skull, forced to watch the death and the
spawning, to feel the bursting surge of the parasite
larvae emerging, and the pain of it and yet… wholly
unable to act, even to will an eye to twitch or a finger
to move. This is going to be intense. All the horror of
being a vampire without any of the dark romance or
cool powers to take the sting out of it, plus a horrible
death a certainty from the start, with redemption at
best an existential thing.
Sartre said, “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done
to you.”
How do you get right with this kind of horror?
In the context of a storytelling game, you have the
advantage of not being bound by linear time—mixing
the horrific present with the comparatively idyllic past
gives you dramatic contrast, and allows you and your
storyteller to frame issues your character is trying to
work through, and then reach an internal and personal
redemption even as the parasite completely takes
over the flesh. In a strange way, complete surrender
to the parasite is freedom. The mind, so completely
divorced from the concerns of the body, is free to
consider things from a unique perspective. If you’re
zen about the whole thing, it’s almost nice until you
have to watch the parasite eviscerate a pair of earnest
Mormons who were unfortunate enough to knock
on your door.
And what of the other characters? Do they have to put
down their friend? Or have they been infected, too?
This is a delicate sort of game, and not one every
troupe will want to play. Talk it through with the
rest of the troupe, be clear about the boundaries
you’ll set in the course of the game, and, if everyone’s
willing and ready, scare the daylights out of
each other.
Plague watch
An outbreak of C. Sanguinaria provides fodder for
red herrings complicating larger plots—exsanguinated
corpses being such a classic clue—or for mysteries in
themselves. Tracking an outbreak can be handled
like a medical investigation (perhaps even casting the
mortal protagonists as a CDC field team, or a group
of vampire hunters trying to get there before the CDC
team), or one by concerned citizens of the darkness,
fearful one of their own might have slipped the leash
and gone feral.
For instance: a friend of the characters’ starts acting
strangely. Ideally, use an established storyteller character
for this hook, because this will have the greatest impact.
She picked up a parasite while vacationing somewhere
with hot springs, and between air travel and whatever
other bad habits she has, it’s developing slowly. She feels
as if she’s cold all the time, and runs the heat too high.
She has brief moments when she seems to tune out, but
doesn’t lose track of conversations. A little like absence
seizures. Eventually, the characters witness their friend
engaging in some uncharacteristic flirting and hookups,
though she’ll be vague on the outcome. When they finally
catch their friend in the act—ideally in the brooding area
she’s prepared—the horror hits. If they try to cover for their
murdering friend, they may be looking at Humanity or
Morality rolls. If they execute her, they’re definitely going
to. This story could play out parallel to other action in
your chronicle, and can serve as an introduction to a larger
story arc involving the parasite, or as a small standalone
story or brief diversion.
The evidence collected by the Kindred playing at nighttime
naturalism suggests another story, and another
form of terror. Seeking insight into this elusive species,
or dispatched by a patron and thus seeking, the characters
follow the signs, and finally confront the reality of a
thing previously known only in theory—and the terror of
actualization, when theory is swept aside and replaced by
truth, lands a hammer blow.
For instance: A Kindred naturalist acquires the services
of the characters via influence or obligation—the
proverbial offer you can’t refuse. She dispatches them
to an old medical resort and spa, closed since the mid
1980’s. The building was built in the 1950s on the
site of a wildly evangelical Pentecostal revival from the
nineteenth century where preachers preached and sold
the “healing waters” to the curious and converted. The
spa’s steady decline saw it used as a bathhouse catering
to the swinger community in the 1970s before the
vogue passed, and efforts to market the place as a family
health spa failed to revive it. The decaying tiled interior
combines the worst creepy elements of an abandoned
hospital with a drained swimming pool. The waters
still flow, though, and the place’s caretakers guard
it with unusual fervor. Stranger, a small tent city has
grown up around the spa, and someone is preaching
here again, though this time the sacraments of bread
and wine are truly becoming flesh and blood. The
cult has accepted parasitism by C. Sanguinaria as some
form of mystical transcendence, and in addition to
the dangers posed by large numbers of stage-1 and -2
hosts, the cult leaders may possess more esoteric abilities.
They don’t simply want to protect the parasite;
they want to propagate it.
Or what if a ghoul gets the parasite. Or a host gets
made a ghoul. No ghoul should have been able to
throw a Gangrel riding his beast quite so hard through
a plate glass window and that far into the street. No
ghoul should have been able to outrun the Daeva, or
ignore her emotional hammer blows. No ghoul should
have seen the Nosferatu standing there and shot him
in the legs like that. If the characters get lucky and take
one down, they’ll find the fat parasite having wholly
replaced the ghoul’s tongue, waving eyelessly to bite
their unwary hands if they stray too close. If they have
no experience of C. Sanguinaria, this whole thing might
seem to be a supernatural parasite or something, but
information available through contacts or obscure
knowledge reveals something possibly worse—one of
their own has found a way to transform parasite and
host into a ghoul, stopping the parasite’s reproductive
cycle (and killing its larvae), and placing them both
into thrall. The ghoul has all the “advantages” of a
stage-3 host, plus those of an ordinary ghoul. The
ghoul is intelligent and interactive, but the conscious
mind is absent, showing nearly no aura activity, and
no mind or emotions to influence or Dominate. Nor
are its perceptions clouded by Obfuscate. Finding a
horrorshow where someone is breeding parasites and
providing select clients with access to these creatures
as thralls will mean dealing with some of the nastiest
areas of a city’s political landscape—nobody wants to
be associated with this, but everyone who knows wants
one of his own.
Regardless of the approach, Cymothoa Sanguinaria is
a thing of flesh and fleshy realities. In its own way, it’s
beautiful, but in a more specifically human way, it’s utterly
revolting.
Within the bounds of good taste and the tone of
your chronicle, and most importantly, what’s acceptable
in your group, it’s a great way to really push the
body horror.
If you’ve got a troupe where such can happen, get
one of the characters into a passionate clinch with
a C. Sanguinaria host, and let her feel the probing
leech-mouthed parasite exploring her mouth. Moments
like this demand rolls (Resolve + Composure
or Stamina + Composure) to resist violent physical or
mental reactions—emphasize the flesh acting on its
own, flinching back from the invasion. In a sense, this
revulsion and reflexive reaction confirm the themes
the parasite embodies. Characters subject to Frenzy
may also need to resist their own inner monsters rising
up to bear them away in fear, or to lash out in
terrified anger.
You’re looking for cringe here—the ape pulls his lips
back from his teeth, and leans away from the source of
his disgust. It’s an expression that clenches muscles used
to suppress the gag reflex.
The butcher’s smile is not a sign he’s jolly, but that he’s
trying not to vomit on the meat.
Unlike fear, which is difficult to genuinely inspire
in players, a certain measure of disgust is easier to
invoke with a few well chosen details—the emergence
of the parasite from under a lover’s tongue, the
ragged and rotting prolapsed intestines, the way the
distended skin of a late stage-2 host’s abdomen pulses
and bulges, a gross parody of the human mother
swollen and gravid, the unborn child’s foot or hand
pressing outward. The host gets thinner and thinner,
and it gets easier and easier to see the larvae move
in his guts.
This shit is gross. Use it.
Cymothoa Sanguinaria
Description: The parasite itself is a segmented crustacean
(an isopod if you want to be pedantic) resembling
a flesh-colored king prawn or jumbo shrimp. Fully
grown, it’s the size of a large sausage, but by this stage
it cannot survive outside its host. The larvae are small,
pale and soft-bodied, hardening only in their adult
stage. They can easily slip inside the nose and into the
sinuses, feeling like a splash of warm water more than
a parasite looking for a host. Eventually, the parasite
devours the tongue of a host, and grafts in its place.
It licks constantly around the host’s desiccated lips,
tasting the air.
The host’s description varies by stage of infection:
• Stage 1 – No obvious outward signs of the parasite,
though a careful oral examination will reveal the
parasite in its flesh pocket under the tongue. The
parasite secretes psychoactive chemicals, which begin
to alter the host’s behavior in subtle ways. It compels
the host to seek warmer conditions—ideally, warm
and wet. In the wild, an animal would seek out hot
springs, but humans often create their own hot wet
areas. As Stage 1 progresses, hosts experience an
increase in confidence and aggression, a week to a
month of vigorous energy and increased strength,
and sexual prowess. They’ll find themselves overcoming
lifelong fears and hang-ups like they just don’t
matter anymore, and acting uncharacteristically
brazen in social situations.
• Stage 2 – As the parasite grows, the brain damage and
neurological changes in the host become more exaggerated,
and the behavioral shifts emerging in stage 1
become extreme. The aggression increases from the
social to the physical plane, and the host begins to
stake out a brooding area, as well as sniffing around
for a mate for his parasite. If sexual reproduction isn’t
possible for the parasite, it can reproduce asexually, but
there’s a behavioral bias for seeking other hosts with
which to exchange DNA. Once fertilized, the egg laying
begins, and with the implantation of the eggs into the
host’s intestinal lining, the behavioral changes become
even more dramatic.
The host begins to experience dissociation episodes
during which he feels as if his body acts on its own
while he watches helplessly. Most hosts rationalize
this when they return to control, and the paranoia induced
by the parasite’s secretions makes seeking help
a terrifying prospect—it feels as if when others know
about the odd episodes, they’ll lock the host away and
kill him. The host also begins to seek victims—donors
to bleed for the maturing eggs.
They employ social tactics at first, but as the eggs mature
and hatch, they usually transition to stalking and
kidnapping. The strength and vigor of stage 1 rise to the
superhuman, and the body feels no pain. The parasite is
as thick as a finger, and twice as long—it can gouge and
stab a victim quite badly, easily severing major arteries (a
tactic it uses when bleeding a victim). By the end of stage
2, the host has transitioned from conscious with brief
periods of fugue state, to almost completely dissociated
with only increasingly brief moments of sentience.
• Stage 3 – The transition into stage 3 is violent and
bloody. The brooding process ravages the host internally,
but somehow the host survives, hollowed out
in body and mind. The brain damage is so severe that
the conscious mind never returns to control, and the
host’s behavior disintegrates into a territorial defense
of the larvae. Stage-3 hosts feel no pain, and can
exert themselves to physical destruction. They can’t
live more than a couple of weeks, but many destroy
themselves before then. For all intents and purposes,
they’re the living dead.
Background: The Cymothoa Sanguinaria parasite is, despite
its horrific lifecycle, completely mundane, a creature
evolved to fill a niche. Or so one hopes—if God created
C. Sanguinaria perfect and complete in its present form,
God really hates us.
Those infected with a C. Sanguinaria can come from
any walk of life, any background—most become hosts
by dumb luck alone, a dip in the wrong spring at the
wrong time of year, or drinking from a tainted water
source, as might happen in a developing world slum
with frightening regularity. A few might even be victims
of stage-3 hosts who abduct them and force them to
accept a larva.
Storytelling Hints: Stage-1 hosts would seem perfectly
ordinary to those who have never met them, but to
friends and family they’ll seem more confident and aggressive,
quicker witted and oddly more charming. The
honeymoon period doesn’t last long. When Stage 2 is
reached, even strangers begin to get a strange vibe from
hosts—the intensity and confidence begin to merge on
the manic and intimidating.
Lean too close to the players when portraying a stage-2
host, speak a little too loudly, take offense easily. Occasionally
seem to blank out for a moment, and then return
to the conversation as if unaware of the interruption.
Stage-3 hosts are non-vocal, so convey their predatory
territorial drives with body language. Lean in, glower,
show your teeth.
Attributes: The host’s attribute scores are modified as
follows. Each stage is cumulative with previous stages.
Stage 1 – +1 Wits, +1 Resolve, +1 Strength, +1 Stamina,
+1 Presence, +1 Composure
Stage 2 – +1 Wits, +1 Strength, +1 Stamina, +1 Presence,
–2 Composure
Stage 3 – –2 Intelligence, +1 Strength, +1 Stamina, –3
Presence, –1 Composure
Morality: Morality begins at its normal level for a given
subject. Each time the host loses Morality due to her actions
or the parasite’s goading, she experiences a period
in a fugue state as her consciousness slips beneath the
surface, and her body runs on parasite-hacked autopilot.
These periods last longer and longer as Morality declines,
until finally becoming permanent.
Virtue
Stage 1 – Becomes Hope
Stage 2 – Becomes Faith
Stage 3 – Becomes Fortitude
Vice
Stage 1 – Becomes Lust
Stage 2 – Becomes Gluttony
Stage 3 – Becomes Wrath
Initiative (additional to changes from altered Traits)
Stage 1 – +2
Stage 2 – –2
Stage 3 – –1
Speed (additional to changes from altered Traits)
Stage 1 – +1
Stage 2 – +1
Stage 3 – +1
Dread Powers
• Stage-2 parasites can strike for +1 Lethal damage,
while stage-3 parasites can inflict +2 Lethal
damage after successfully grappling an opponent
(not unlike a vampire’s bite). A victim caught unaware
(such as during a kiss) may be attacked with
the benefit of the 8-Again rule, and the damage
increases to +3.
• At stage 1, the host experiences a broad sense
of wellbeing and expanded awareness. Without
knowing how, a host can sense other hosts, and
some supernatural creatures, vampires, emit a confusing
scent, and the parasite sometimes mistake
them for C. Sanguinaria hosts, leading to comedy
and horror in equal measure.
• By stage 2 this has become a +1 bonus to all
Wits-based perception dice pools.
• During periods of fugue, while the host’s conscious
mind is absent, the host is immune to the
effects of mind and emotion controlling powers,
and can see through most illusions, including
Obfuscate up to the third level, without needing
to make any rolls.
• Stage-2 and stage-3 hosts suffer no Wound
Penalties at all.
Infected Custodian: Gary Georges
Quotes: Oh God, oh Jesus, not again, not again!
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…
Background: Gary Georges rode the rails of
mediocrity right out of high school and into a
job cleaning up after hours in the same school
from which he failed to graduate. Gary is one of
the gray ranks, the unseen faceless non-people
who make civilized life possible for everyone else.
He’d have kept on chugging away until one day
losing his job when the school system instituted
random drug screening, and his regular indulgence in
Humboldt County’s finest agricultural exports. Alas,
this wholly mundane misfortune was not to be.
While attempting some ill-advised bonding with
his estranged father via the manly outdoors pleasure
of camping, Gary happened upon a buck deer in the
final throes of stage-3 Cymothoa Sanguinaria infection
while looking for a place to take a semi-private piss.
The buck charged him, goring him badly with its
antlers, and spattering him with the stinking discharge
emerging from its anus, alive and wriggling
with C. Sanguinaria larvae.
If only Gary had elected to take the P.P.O. rather than
the H.M.O. health plan. His treatment at the emergency
room completely failed to notice the parasite working its
way into his sinuses, and then it was a week before he
could see his GP. At that point, he decided he felt too
damned good to see the doctor.
Gary rode the first stage of infection hard. He quit
smoking up, and started hitting the bars. He was amazed
as his brazen courage in approaching women, and how
often being direct worked. He told an edited version of
the buck deer story, ending with him wrestling the beast
to the ground until a veterinarian could be found to help
it, and completely failing to mention the giant deuce he’d
dropped in his trousers during the attack.
Back at work, he even found himself flirting with teachers
he’d long lusted after, and some of the more mature
students. Dear Penthouse, I never thought this would happen
to me until…
It was all his fantasies of courage and sex and respect
made manifest, and it continued right up until he had
his tongue in the assistant librarian’s mouth as they tore
at each other in the janitor’s closet, and a shock of pain
cut through his jaw and throat. Mrs. Salia made a coughing
gurgle, and then his mouth was full of coppery hot
blood, and something was wriggling out from under his tongue.
Welcome to stage 2.
He cleaned up somehow, and got the body down into
the basement where he sealed it in a drum of US Government
H2O from the school’s elderly fallout shelter.
He continued his sexual conquests, but they become
increasingly predatory and intense, his interest in his
conquests less and less about sexual gratification, and
more about control and domination. And he claimed
the boiler room as his own domain. Somehow, it just
felt right—the hot darkness. He began fiddling with the
school’s boiler, eventually figuring out how to lower the
temperature of the hot water—the hot water pumped to
the school’s bathrooms and its showers—from scalding
to merely hot.
Description: Gary Georges is a washed out thirtysomething,
going pudgy and running on automatic
pilot most of the time. Pale from working nights, dark
hair, light eyes. His face forgotten the moment it’s
out of sight. The sort of person about whom people
say, “He was so quiet, you know?” when the cops find
the bodies. As the parasite works its magic, his back
straightens, his eyes focus, and he develops this aura
of slightly dangerous intensity. As it progresses further,
this intensity gets scary, and he becomes more and
more impulsive.
Storytelling Hints: Gary is clinging hard to his delusion
that everything is all right, even as he has more
blackouts, and finds himself splattered with the blood
of more victims. When his brazen charm fails, he falls
back on his old pathetic persona, begging for help or
forgiveness. He doesn’t know it, but he’s preparing
the boiler room at the high school to be a brooding
chamber. He’s going to birth his larvae into the cooleddown
boiler, and the tiny baby parasites are going to
be piped all over the school, to splash onto the faces
of showering cheerleaders, and into the football team’s
post-game whirlpool.
Mental Attributes: Intelligence 1, Wits 5, Resolve 3
Physical Attributes: Strength 4, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3
Social Attributes: Presence 4, Manipulation 3,
Composure 1
Mental Skills: Craft 3 (DIY), Medicine 1
Physical Skills: Brawl +3 (Grappling), Drive 2, Firearms 2,
Stealth 2, Weaponry 2
Social Skills: Intimidate 2, Persuasion 3, Socialize 2
Merits: Contacts 2 (Pot Dealers), Iron Stomach 2, Unseen
Sense (Ghosts)
Health: 8
Willpower: 4
Morality: 5
Virtue: Faith. An irrational optimism has taken root in
Gary, a belief that somehow, despite all evidence to the
contrary, it’ll all be OK in the end. It’s not the parasite—
it’s pure human self-delusion.
Vice: Gluttony. Now this, on the other hand, is
the parasite working on his neurochemistry. Gary’s
whole internal reward system is completely screwed
up. He’s always been a nervous eater. Now, he’s a
nervous gorger.
Speed: 12
Defense: 3
Initiative: 4
Notes: Gary has all the advantages of a stage-2 host.
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