206 lines
6.4 KiB
Markdown
206 lines
6.4 KiB
Markdown
# Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir
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> DM-facing NPC writeup. Circle-kid clown from [[Avalon Factions#2. Student Factions & Cliques#2.5 Circle Kids / Stoners & Skaters | the stoners]] and long-game harbinger of the big bad.
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> Future title: **Fouadriel the Undying**.
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---
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## Role
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- **Age:** same year as PCs
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- **Heritage/Class:** Human (or tiefling) Sorcerer / Wild Magic or “innately weird”
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- **Primary Faction:** [[Avalon Factions#2. Student Factions & Cliques#2.5 Circle Kids / Stoners & Skaters | Circle Kids]]
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- **Public Image:** Lovable idiot. Permanent comic relief. The guy everyone has a story about.
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---
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## What Students Know
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- Always at parties, minor accidents, weird moments.
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- Says stuff like “I meet new people every day!” to people he’s known for years.
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- Infamous for:
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- Multiple cart/wagon crashes,
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- “Fouad moments” of catastrophic stupidity that somehow spare *him*.
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Reputation: so dumb it loops back to endearing.
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---
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## What He Wants
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### Surface Wants
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- To have a good time, always.
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- To be invited, never left out.
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- To never sit alone with his thoughts.
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### Deeper Wants
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- To not feel broken or hollow:
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- He knows he has gaps in his memory.
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- He occasionally wakes up places he has no business being.
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- To ignore the creeping pattern that:
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- People around him get hurt,
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- The worst Root glitches happen when he’s nearby.
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---
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## Relationship to the Root & Coherence
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- **Best anchor:**
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- Fouad is the **single cleanest anchor** the Coherence has in the valley.
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- His mind is:
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- Porous (weak boundary between self and not-self),
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- Poorly defined (no strong identity),
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- Weirdly resonant with Root rhythms.
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- Coherence uses him as:
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- A test bed for blending Root flows and human cognition.
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- A way to “walk around” campus without Oversight immediately flagging a non-human pattern.
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- D’serris’ data:
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- Micro-spikes correlate with Fouad’s movements.
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- Low-level Korrin-like patterns cluster around places Fouad spends time.
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---
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## Long Game: From Fouad to **Fouadriel the Undying**
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### Year 1–2: Harmless Idiot With Glitches
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- Mostly comic relief:
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- Glitched one-liners, brief fugues, little Root sync moments.
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- Coherence influence:
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- Short borrowings of his body to “look around.”
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- Fouad immediately forgets, shrugs off, or rationalizes.
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He is not *trying* to be anything yet.
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---
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### Year 3: The Idea of Undying
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This is when the “lich” seed gets planted.
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- Through:
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- Conspiracy-zine bullshit (Sebastian),
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- Old war rumors (Pappy, vets at Mr Magic),
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- Or stumbling on burned Convergence/Titan docs,
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Fouad hears some version of:
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> “The people at Korrin tried to build a machine that could make the leyline think like a person, and they almost made a god.”
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Combine that with:
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- His fear of disappearing,
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- Coherence’s subconscious nudging,
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- And his own ego, and he lands on:
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> “What if I make *me* the part that doesn’t get erased?”
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He starts dabbling in:
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- Amateur necromancy,
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- Soul-anchor folk rituals,
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- “Backup” magic:
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- Jokes about “I’m too stupid to die” start to almost be a goal.
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---
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### Senior Year: The Lich Plan
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By now, between Coherence whispers and stolen math, Fouad has assembled an ugly, half-understood version of **Convergence Engine ritual geometry**.
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His plan (in his head):
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1. **Phylactery Network:**
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- He doesn’t just want one jar; he wants a **mesh**:
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- Trinkets, campus hardware, taps seeded with his blood / breath / hair,
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- All linked like tiny subnodes.
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2. **Bootleg Convergence:**
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- Use Titan Lance / old Engine-style arrays to:
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- Pull local Root flows and **Coherence-fragments** into his network,
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- Focus them at a central ritual site (Titan Armory, C-node, or a hacked subnode chamber).
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3. **Death at the Peak:**
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- He dies at the right moment:
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- By self-sacrifice, botched spell, or deliberate self-kill.
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- Soul, Root flows, and Coherence-fragment all try to occupy the same anchor.
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4. **Result:**
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- If it “works”: he becomes **Fouadriel the Undying**:
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- A lich with a phylactery literally wired into the Root,
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- A walking exploit of the Korrin mistake.
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- If it “half-works” (your likely outcome):
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- Horrific instability, shared control between Fouad and Coherence,
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- Big bad fight + hard choices about killing/ severing/saving him.
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**Important:**
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He does *not* fully understand he is trying to enslave something like the Coherence. In his own words, it’s:
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> “Bro, I’m just… like… making sure I spawn at the nearest leyline if I die, you know?”
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The horror is in how stupidly he’s doing something world-ending.
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---
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## Relationship to PCs (Updated)
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- **Ben (Lil Stinky):**
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- Still thinks Ben is the coolest guy alive.
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- Will absolutely blow up Ben’s spot by accident.
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- Later: might offer to “cut him in” on immortality if Ben seems scared of dying.
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- **Joe:**
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- Golden retriever dynamic still.
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- Pappy + Coherence + Fouad in the same scene is a perfect way to show:
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- How the war trauma, Root mind, and lich plan interlock.
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- **Soren:**
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- Fouad the person is scared of her.
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- Coherence in him is *very* interested in her:
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- She’s a violent, unstable edge-case mind like Korrin vets,
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- A lens into human rage.
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She might get offers like:
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> “You don’t have to hold it in, you know. There are… ways to put the worst parts somewhere else.”
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You can decide whether that’s Fouad, Coherence, or both talking.
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---
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## How to Play Him
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- **Normal Fouad:**
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- Voice: friendly, slightly breathless, always off by one beat.
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- Body: loose, gangly, always knocking something over.
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Sample:
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- “Bro, what if we just, like, never died? Like, at all? Hypothetically. For a project.”
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- **Glitched / Coherence-ridden Fouad:**
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- Eyes sharpen, language upgrades briefly, posture straightens.
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- Then it snaps back.
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Sample:
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- “You understand the Convergence ratios better than they did at Korrin. Don’t waste that.”
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- (blink) “Haha, ratios, like, math and shit, right?”
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- **Fouadriel the Undying (if/when it lands):**
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- Same idiot underneath:
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- Petty, insecure, attention-hungry.
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- Wearing the *semblance* of a grand lich:
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- Big speeches, stolen Convergence lines, Coherence echoing through him.
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He should feel like:
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- A clown who accidentally put on a god’s armor and can’t take it off,
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- With the Coherence trying to use *him* even as he tries to use *it*.
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---
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