[[div style="height: 35em; overflow: auto; padding: 0 1em 0 0;"]] Brianna is a Jinx. Her ability is less under control than manifesting when she gets angry or anxious. This is because Brianna has refused to admit, even to herself, even after testing that she is "Evolved" because of her prejudiced about the Evolved. She is NOT registered though rumors may abound that she should be registered as she left her old company voluntarily after the test.
Her ability in the mildest form may cause someone else to knock over paperwork or run into the corner of a desk. Banana peels just shouldn't be left on the floor when she's about to walk by. She is not deliberately or maliciously broadcasting this power. It has caused her to gain confidence but at the cost of causing these problems to happen to other people. Generally, her ability can't affect things which she can't see or in some way perceive directly with her own senses. By and large, that limits the immediate observable effects to short range, line of sight (or hearing depending on what might be appropriate - IE, she hears a news report on the radio that isn't something she'd like to hear, someone's likely to accidentally bump the knob to switch to a different station) type of effects.
She has not at this time explored the full scope of her abilities and she may never be able to engage in fully conscious control of those abilities. She can, under extreme duress cause 'jinx' effects to take place in her direct observable environment which might appear to be 'gremlins' in machines. This is not necessarily a reflection of the computers or machines themselves malfunctioning but somehow the wrong button gets pressed, the wrong gear gets kicked, someone somewhere re-routes power to cause a power surge to a piece of equipment, there's an unfortunate backhoe incident that causes a power outage—human intervention must play some part in the 'jinx'. The more upset she is, the greater range where that human intervention might be applicable - IE, under normal circumstances, someone might have to be working in the building to be within the range of 'human intervention' (although the net result is still very localized and within her range of perception). Under extreme duress, that range might spread to a small handful of city blocks of where that human intervention might have to occur, in order to produce a localized effect.
This ability results in most people being somewhat uneasy around her even when her power has no directly observable manifestation. This means that her gain in confidence and ability to interact with people, is offset by the unease she places on other people.
Her power does not directly affect her confidence except that: all of her life she was a victim to accidents and she shut herself away from people and tried to eliminate the source of the accidents. She developed a psychological fear of the accidents happening to her. After the manifestation of the 'power', she was almost entirely accident free although other people started having accidents around her. Her human 'error' ability took the worst of the fears out of her and misplaced them to other people. However, this eerie non-emphatic lack of ability to interact with people has left her somewhat shark-like. She has modeled her behavior off of other business models. Being a jinx leaves it difficult to interact with people still but this time from the other side. In play, I expect this may be something that is more telling to NPCs. She may have to teleconference into major board meetings but she would still be 'invited'. PCs should determine how they feel through rp and events.
ABILITY2 [#20]:
Under extreme circumstances or with more refinement and reason to use her power, Brianna MIGHT be able to cause an accident that would take a life. At the same time, she might just be blamed for one considering the scope of her power and have to go on the run. This accident would probably involve human error and machinery—an automobile accident, possibly a subway or train accident, or even a plane (though most of these with her localized effect could be just as dangerous to her). Her power can certainly cause the type of accidents that happen in movies: guns jamming, people tripping or stumbling over doors, the severity of the 'error' is likely to correspond to her emotional level and how much danger she feels that she may be in at the time.
If her ability does escalate to the point where she has to run, I'm willing and interested in anyplace the story might take her.
ABILITY3 [#20]: In the strictest of senses, Brianna's ability might be considered form of 'probability manipulation'. With the caveat, she does not pick the bad things that happen although with refinement she may learn to direct the bad luck toward specific people. A severe enough 'accident' through human error could harm more than one person at once.
However, she cannot manipulate 'good luck' in the same way she can cause bad things to happen. At best, the 'jinx wave' she creates keeps the bad luck from settling on her. If something bad were about to happen to her or to someone close enough to her that it might affect her, there MIGHT be an unconscious use of her power (*for storytelling reasons-I am not trying to create an unreasonable amount of 'bad luck' for others. A sniper at a distance may not be close enough to trigger her ability and hence taker her down from the distance-or could she could be just close enough (in this I'm thinking more 50 or less feet than say 1000+ (say a person that hides around the corner with the stun or dart gun))that Brianna leans over to pick something up in the knick of time.) that could shift the bad luck to the most unlikely direction possible or even act inadvertently as good luck directed at her (again, she has no control of the circumstances-merely that something happens that affects the way the scene might have gone negatively to impact her less harshly). This is in no way an attempt to avoid ICC for ICA. There are any number of ways to get around that by planning ahead and taking her out from a distance, negating her power, etc. Or just overcoming an abundance of bad luck to get the girl.
In this way, her power also ties into her confidence. This evolved ability has taken years of hapless victim of unknown forces, and pushed all that fate toward someone else. For that reason, she feels very much that if the power were somehow lost she would return to the state of freak in the closet. So while she does not wish to acknowledge the "jinx" ability as a true power or a dangerous power, it does have the potential to harm other people through trained direct or the current indirect actions on her part. I am very much focused on building a 'story building' ability rather than a standard one and I fully expect to work with gms and PCs to create story not force one on anyone. I was also looking for something a little different that might not be entirely overdone.
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