"Whiskey Jack shook his head. 'I'm a culture
hero,' he said. 'We do the same shit gods do, we just screw up more and nobody
worships us. They tell stories about
us, but they tell the ones that make us look bad along with the ones where we
came out fairly okay.'"
- Neil Gaiman, American Gods, page 400
Corporeal Forces: 4 Strength:
6 Agility: 10
Ethereal Forces: 5 Intelligence:
6 Precision: 12
Celestial Forces: 5 Will:
12 Perception: 8
Elements: Classical Elements: Air (Primary);
Information: Imagination (Secondary)
Affinities: Artifice (primal [ACME]); Deception
(primal); Animals (Moderate); Divination (moderate); Luck (Moderate); Weather
(Moderate)
Skills: Chemistry/1, Dodge/6, Dream-Shaping/6,
Emote/6, Enchant/4, Electronics/1, Engineering/1, Fighting/4, Lying/6,
Savior-Faire/1, Seduction/1, Tracking/1
Songs: Artifice (All/2), Healing (All/6), Machines
(All/3), Shields (All/4)
Dread: Giving up on a course of action before the
bitter end/5
Image: [deleted in a vain attempt to cover the
author's buttocks]
Attunements: Songmaster
Attunements Granted: Ethereal Connection,
Live-Action Toon, Stance of the Coyote
Live-Action Toon (10 pt)
Coyote does not often give out this Attunement, but
it has been known to happen. By
spending 1 Essence, the user gains the ability to trade dignity for
survival. All rolls made by the
character while this Attunement is active have a maximum target number of 6:
nothing will be able to raise the target number any higher. However, the user becomes immune to
accidental damage done during this time: the only way that he will be able to
suffer any sort of Body, Mind or Soul hits would be if he chooses to engage in
combat (Dodging does not count as engaging in combat). Note that this does not give any sort of
protection to one's companions, clothes, equipment, reputation, dignity,
etc....
(With apologies to Terry Pratchett)
Those with this Attunement can effectively run over
lava, on water, on thin air, and so forth (normal movement speed: Running
explicitly cannot be used to increase said speed). However, if at the end of any round the
character is on any substance that cannot support her weight, she will fall...
and cannot use this Attunement to mitigate any adverse effects. If the substance is of the sort that would
cause damage, the character takes none until one full combat round has passed
of continuous contact with the damaging substance.
Dignity is overrated.
No, really.
Can you eat it? Can you make
things from it? Can you wear it...
well, yes, in some parts of the Marches you actually can, but even there it's
damned thin and raggedy. Dignity
doesn't put Essence in your pockets or food on your table, and it certainly
isn't worth dying for. Hell, dignity
isn't even worth getting seriously hot and bothered over. So, if you can set it free - then gut-shoot
it, just to make sure that it won't come back to you - well, all sorts of
things are possible then.
Try telling that to the gods, though. Now there's a trap that Coyote never
had to gnaw off one leg to escape: sure, having your ethereal ass kissed
because you're some shit-hot power-monkey sounds great, but get tapped out for
juice at just the wrong time and place and suddenly you're a trivia question
for archaeologists. And don't go crying
to Coyote when it happens. You
were the one who puffed yourself up and let your ego write checks that your
Image couldn't cash. You were
the one whose eyes were too big for your belly. You were the one left holding the bag when the whole
Purity Crusade came crashing down around your ears. Stop whining, stop chewing dry bones and just goddamn well deal
with the way things are, rather than what you conned yourself into thinking was
the way things were.
So, yeah, Coyote does the cartoon thing. Ashamed?
Hell, he's goddamn well proud of the way he finangled it. He's the star of a thousand animated shorts
where the follies of overenthusiastic technology are blatantly revealed,
usually with his Image's as the canvas.
If you don't think that the Host likes that (or that Nybbas minds
keeping a check on Vapula), think again - especially since he always gets
bested by either a smart-aleck rabbit (coughcoughElicoughcough) or an even more
cheerfully-obnoxious speedster bird (coughcoughJanuscoughcough). Coyote gets sliced, diced, flattened, blown
up, run over, fried, pulverized, vaporized and generally smacked around every
single Saturday morning... and comes right back, none the worse for wear. Millions of kids think that he's immortal -
and, thanks to them, he's got a pretty good suspicion that he just may be.
The best part is, this didn't even require much in
the way of changing behavior patterns.
Coyote's always been a screw-up - it's been his shtick since day one -
so all it took was a bit of judicious updating and he was good to go. A shame that all those whiners out there
couldn't get it through their heads that the world's moved on, huh?
Well, not really.