Low Light Tolerance (-4 Awareness flaw)

Any light brighter than an overcast sky hurts. Hell, an overcast sky smarts. Even with sunglasses, on a bright day you’re down two traits on any challenge--the pain and loss of eye focus is distracting. If you lose your shades in these circumstances you’re effectively blind.

Intense, sudden light--an explosion, a camera flash, an ill-swung halogen lamp, and so on--will stun you. Make a Simple Test each turn--until you succeed, you will be unable to take any action except to defend yourself, except perhaps complain a little. This flaw puts you at a disadvantage in Garou society (so many conflicts are resolved by staredowns), and driving with this flaw is hazardous at best--who knows when somebody will crest the hill with their brights on!

This "always active" fetish replaces the Garou’s fur with metal, giving him a chromed appearance. As long as the metal spirit is bound to the Garou and he has fur, he gains a health level. This fetish fills two of the Garou's "Talisman Dedication" slots.

Cujo can activate this fetish to secrete a thin phosphorescent green dye from his paws. He can use it to mark objects, leave a glowing trail, signal or read in a really dark room. He can only use this ability in glabro-lupus forms. The dye "burns up" in two scenes, but can be removed with soap and water or elbow grease. Once activated, the dye may be turned on and off for the duration of the scene. This fetish fills one "talisman dedication" slot. It looks like a fine wire mesh covering Cujo's palms and footpads in Glabro-Lupus forms.

Cujo uses this Fetish most often to do bothersome stuff like leaving a glowing stain on someone’s face, or tracking glowing footprints all over the Caern. If he got really weird, which is possible, he could also give himself glow-in-the-dark warpaint. He can't "bottle" the stuff--the dye clings to his hands like ink on a stamp pad.

Equipment:

First aid kit:

Contains two doses of local anaesthetic, stitches/surgical staples, bandages, a few sharp pointy things, disinfectant, and some of that extra-strength codine-laced Tylenol)

Portable Phone:

Fetish Cost: 1, Gnosis: 4
Spirit Affinity: Weaver

This creepy item is a weak fetish. It's a miniaturized cellular phone surgically grafted into Cujo's larynx and mastoid process, cutting-edge Glass Walker Cyberdog technology. It has a minor Daemon bound into it to recognize dialing commands. Once activated, the phone runs for a scene as per normal fetishes, though buildings and underground constructs may impede its signal--it's just a normal cel-phone in function. Note: I'm willing to "bend" on this item. I'm not certain I've achieved game balance with the version I've written up here--it's still only a cellular phone and isn't gonna hurt the Get of Fenris with Huge Size, but any ability that allows instant communication has the potential to unbalance a scene. If need be, I’m willing to work with STs here. Doesn’t function underground, may be affected by some buildings or weird astronomical shit. If the item was somehow undedicated--if it lost its ability to shapeshift along with Cujo--the Glass Walker would be in some serious hurt.

Glock 9mm pistol (not usually carried)
Notepad (don't leave home without one)
Talisman-dedicated clothing

Obvious problems:

This character, as you can see, has a lot of non-standard spiritware that will have to go through approval--his basic character concept is "gadget-freak." I can’t argue away this fact. I can’t change it without screwing up his concept. However, none of his toys are terribly game-crippling, and the character’s unable to significantly affect others with them--"Steel Fur" is basically an odd variant of "Huge Size," and unlike Huge Size it’s possible for Cujo to lose this power (Exorcism or similar) and it only works in Crinos-Lupus forms. As for the "portable phone," I could just as easily have a cel-phone in my back pocket--but from a Cyberdog’s mindset, "why would you do that if you could have one surgically installed?"

All of Cujo’s toys eat into his ability to dedicate objects--at this point, he has enough gnosis for his cyberfetishes and his clothes, and that’s it. And as soon as he gets more Gnosis…he’s gonna buy a new cyberfetish. As well, there’s a certain social stigma to plating yourself in metal and putting wires in your head.

Notes on Cujo’s Camp: The Cyberdogs are written up in the Werewolf Player’s Guide, Second Edition. They’re very keen on "enhancing" themselves, and the Camp has on eight out of fifteen occasions "enhanced" a lupus from another tribe to death--and three of the survivors went insane. I personally feel justified in playing the Cyberdogs as an underground camp.

History:

Timeline:

1980: Birth

1985: Adopted by CyberDogs

1992: Rite of Passage

Note: This history is somewhat tentative, and assumes the existence of another character, "Cathode Ray," a television-obsessed metis Theurge who would be Cujo’s older half-brother. If this character isn’t brought into play, a few minor changes to the background should repair the problem.

Born: ?? 1980? Need Cujo’s information.

Cujo was born around the time his older brother, Cathode Ray, first picked up the remote control. The Sept of (Fictitious Garou caern somewhere in Texas) never figured out who little "Cujo’s" parents were, and by this time, the harried sept didn’t care--one more doorstep metis. It was enough for them that the two pups had been dropped off in the same way, and their markings were similar (at least until Cujo got himself electroplated). The little whelp was given to the care of the Sept’s den mo ther and his brother, Ray.

At any rate, Ray proved to be a hellishly absent-minded caretaker, watching the ‘tube instead of playing baby-sitter. Like all kids Cujo thought the television set was pretty cool, but not the be-all, end-all of existence, so he started finding diversions for himself. When he got into the ritesmaster’s cache of talens and burned through a wyrm-sign ("neat!") and a pint of Fianna Brew ("ooooh…thump") he was kindly escorted to the nearest Glass Walker enclave.

Cujo fell in with the Cyberdogs pretty quickly--after a month, actually. There were two members of the underground camp at the Walkers’ sept, Dr. Moe and Cold Fusion. That year, after the 1985 destruction of the Alpha’s personal computer, the bundle of metis and energy was shipped off with the pair. For some reason, the Cyberdogs seemed happy. They carted their new friend to New York, and over the next few years Cujo got to play medical assistant to his hyper little heart’s content. Moe and Fusion ran a shady clinic where they patched up city wolves. Lots of people to meet.

Rite of Passage:

March 16, 1992: Cujo had been playing lab assistant for the ‘dogs for about two years. This is not safe. Neither are the Cyberdogs. Anyway, after the ‘dogs ran out of "volunteers" for the operating table, the two-man pack looked at their young gofer, grinned, and said "Do you wanna join the camp?"

The latest advance the ‘dogs were trying that week was a sort of spiritually-awakened laser caratotomy (sp?). The results were promising--Cujo’s vision was enhanced, but when they took off his bandages, the bright overhead operating table lamp made the metis scream in pain--this, by Cyberdog standards, was a success. Cujo’s vision has been screwed ever since, although he, being at this point of the Cyberdog mindset and a convert to the Technolutionary cause, saw the operation as a success, as well.

1992-1998: Cujo quickly learns his ethically ambiguous craft. He trains beside Dr. Moe, working about 30 hours a week, almost all of it hands-on training in the noble art of cybernetic enhancement--early on Moe took care of most of the actual operations, and Cujo just played nurse--but by 1994 the fast-learning metis was performing minor repairwork, first aid and patch-up jobs. By ’95, Cujo was performing "enhancement" operations himself, and by ’97 the Cyberdogs trusted him to do all but the most complex surgeries by 1997.

Cujo’s personally performed about seven enhancement operations, and assisted in at least twenty more. Some of the more memorable events: Cujo’s first operation in ’95 was a fairly simple augmentation of a Glass Walker Ragabash’s leg muscles, a "run further, jump longer" sort of thing, with Dr. Moe looking over his shoulder at every second. It went off without a hitch. He lost his first Garou in April of ’97: Theurge Joe "Third Rail" Stanton had acquired partial paralysis as a result of a battle scar, and he tracked down Moe’s clinic to get his central nervous system repaired. Complications during surgery claimed the garou. He "lost" another Warrior of Gaia less than a month later, when David Wynn Talks-too-Much, the Ragabash Cujo had worked on in ’95, died in combat against fomor: his biomechanical augmentations failed at a horribly inconvenient moment. The two deaths in succession put him in a deep depression, which he worked his way from in November while designing the telephone system he currently has installed in his throat.

In June of 1998, the Cyberdogs royally screwed up. The trio was experimenting with a new technology, one that the CyberPunk literary movement had predicted years before: the cranial computer uplink. A member of the camp from California--an Athro Metis called Digits--brought plans for a functional version of the previously fictional gadget to the New York clinic. The idea was that he would get a big chunk of renown in the camp for having the first functional cranial jack.

It didn’t work. There were no obvious side effects, and the Galliard was able to get up and walk and remember his name after the operation, but two weeks later when he tried to plug himself into the Infobahn he suffered a short circuit, or possibly invited a hostile spirit into his mind. Reguardless, Digits left two days later. That night, the pack of Red Talons lurking north of New York City, 11 wolves and their allies, broke through the thick Gauntlet of the Cyberdog’s lab and destroyed whatever they could find. Cujo’s still not sure if that included his mentors, he hasn’t been able to contact them.

Cujo escaped by the old-fashioned method of running like hell and covering himself with spirit-gifts. He made it to the local Glass Walker Don’s office, and there they held off the Talons for the night--Cujo was sent out the door the next day. He eventually collected some of his property and worked his way South slowly--Septs required some substantial chiminage to let a walking manifestation of the Weaver use their caern-- he eventually located his big brother in Texas.

"Cathode Ray" had set himself up real nice; he had a nightclub Cujo’s whacked vision could tolerate, and enough spare cash to support a prodigal half-brother. Ray seems to be on another planet, but Cujo’s willing to play along. Family’s family, after all.

Cujo makes his sparse living leeching off his older brother, though he occasionally works Cathode Ray’s club. Most of his "allowance" comes from complicated black-budget juggling between tips, registers, and what the patrons think they’re paying. He has a small trickle of money from a few investments in New York--the ‘Dogs didn’t pay him much. Minimum wage applies neither to apprentices nor metis.

Despite Cathode Ray’s faults, Cujo has an instinctive "hero complex" for the Theurge, respects his council and will generally act like Ray’s the pack alpha.

Goals: Cujo wants what everybody wants: money and biotech enhancements. Cujo idolizes the Simpson’s Dr. Nick Riviera, and dreams of being an unlicenced medical practitioner. Right now he’s too irresponsible to work even the shadiest clinic.

Would also like to learn Rite of the Fetish.

Appearance, Homid: About average height, on the thin side. Brown hair, pale skin, usually smiling, eyes blue but obscured behind a pair of narrow sunglasses--wraparounds would offer more protection, but they just don’t look good. Battered T-shirt, battered baseball cap, battered jeans, battered jacket--would fit in just as well with the ‘Gnawers.

Appearance, Crinos: Weird. Cujo’s fur is metallic, like every strand was formed from chrome or steel--his fur markings are just visible. He still wears sunglasses. The pads on his hands and feet are covered in a fine chrome mesh. Thin and lightly muscled.

Appearance, Lupus: Not at all natural. He can’t pretend to be a wolf, much less a dog, though he could pretend to be modern art. He’s still chromed and still has the wire mesh on his paws, though he loses the sunglasses, and in bright light he loses his vision, too.

Notes on "Tone:" The Wyrm isn’t the only enemy. The Weaver is just as dangerous, and may be more subtle. I’ve written Cujo up to be a basically Gaian Garou, but he’s close to the edge of corruption by the Weaver.