More about Chrissie

We are two sessions in to the Aberrant game. This stage is a prologue of sorts, allowing us to inhabit our characters before they become all super and powerful. Here’s what I’ve learnt about Chrissie:

She works at King’s College Hospital, being offered a job before she’d finished her training. She is happy to work extra hours if she’s engrossed in a case or if the right person asks her – she tends to avoid Dr Williams who is often responsible for finding cover, but most other people will get a positive response from her. She fuels herself with strong black coffee (no sugar) and commutes from her flat in Croyden by bus.

When out clubbing, she might have a couple of cheap beers and maybe a social ciggie. She doesn’t usually drink heavily and even then only ever if she has at least a couple of days off to recover in afterwards. Her favourite club is The Styx, run by Bill Drakeford. It’s on 2 levels: a pub upstairs called Charon’s Skiff and the club has one small dance floor area at street level but is predominantly below ground. Bill might have been her brother’s friend at school, but he took her under his wing when he realised how unhappy she was as a teenage and now she’s closer to him than to her brother.

On which note, Chrissie is generally not close to her family. Her parents are materialistic and financially-driven. They want the best for their children but aren’t any good at demonstrating their love – Chrissie has some issues with intimacy and commitment as a result. Her brother went down the route they had intended, earning a lot of money and working a lot of hours. They would have preferred Chrissie to have become a doctor, if she insisted on medicine, but nonetheless funded her through her training.

Chrissie does not have to worry about money. Nursing pays fairly well and she does extra shifts. Her parents paid her way through training so she has no debts. Her flat is nice (nicer than if her parents hadn’t been involved not because she needed their help so much as that they insisted on her having some form of door entry system for security. Left to herself, she would have been happy enough in a bedsit). Her only major outgoing (besides rent) is the occasional adventure holiday with her friends: her general living costs are pretty low.

When she isn’t working or dancing, she either spends time exercising (par coeur is a hobby developed since the game began; she also enjoys climbing, swimming, jogging…) or reading and studying medical journals – her local library are helpful in this regard. She tends to spend most of her time outside, which probably explains why her flat is such a tip. There’s a kitchen filled with washing up waiting to be done. Her clothes are strewn across the lounge and main bedroom. The boxroom/second bedroom is the tidiest room: a set of shelves across one wall contains binders full of the notes she has made as a student nurse and as part of her CPD. There’s a desk in here, too, with a couple of cups and maybe a plate, but otherwise this room is uniquely clutter-free.

She’s pretty good with technology, although she chooses to use the PCs at her local library rather than owning her own. She now owns a mobile phone and is surprised she waited so long to get one.

Chrissie is short and slender. The amount and types of exercise she does has given her a muscular, wiry frame. Her skin has an uneven tan from being naturally pale and spending so much time outdoors. Her hair is dark brown, almost black, and straight. She wears it shoulder length, usually tied back into a ponytail.

PLOT! so far:

We might not be superpowered yet, but the plot that’s going on is interesting enough that it really doesn’t matter. It’s full of implied future problems and the feeling that there’s a much bigger picture than the players are aware of.

Briefly, we’ve been brought together in protective custody as key witnesses in a case against a violent gang – Adam, the other character, had fallen into the gang but got beaten up badly during a protection-racket collection gone wrong and was left behind by his boss. This is when Chrissie showed up, just in time to see the car race away and the teenage boy they’d left behind (as well as the thrashed people they’d been extorting). Once Adam was well enough (surprisingly quickly…) he was moved by his lawyer to an apartment in a block in Canary Wharf, where Chrissie joined him in the adjacent apartment shortly afterwards after a gang member broke into her flat (they tracked her down because she also rescued a young woman some other gang members were hassling, and they worked it out from there).

It’s been a lot more exciting than that, with partying and dancing and Jeff Biscuits and parkour and A&E and violence, but that sums up the key points J