…And this would be the Platonic Ideal of the character that I inevitably end up playing. I’ve never used him in a game, though. Mad Jack Wheelie, truthfully, is probably mostly just for looking at.
Mad Jack Wheelie – Google Docs
Mad Jack Wheelie
Ofanite Master of Valor
Lunatic
Corporeal Forces: 4 Strength: 6 Agility: 10
Ethereal Forces: 6 Intelligence: 12 Precision: 12
Celestial Forces: 6 Will: 12 Perception: 12
Vessel: Human Male/6, Charisma +2
Skills: Area Knowledge (Everywhere Interesting/6), Chemistry/6, Dodge/6, Driving/6*, Fighting/6, Knowledge (How To Walk a Thin Line/6, Strategy/6), Large Weapon (Hutriel/6**, Sword/6, Truck/6), Move Silently/6, Musical Instrument/-10 (Bagpipes)***, Ranged Weapon (Bagpipes/6, Machine gun/6, Pistol/6, Rifle/6, Shotgun/6), Singing/-10****, Small Weapon (Ducks/6, Knife/6) Tactics/6
*Including such unusual vehicles as horses, unicycles, V-2 rockets, beer barrels and Halley’s Comet.
**It’s a long story, and not a particularly relevant one.
***Yup. That’s a target number of 2 on 2d6. It literally takes almost a Divine Intervention to get Mad Jack Wheelie to play the bagpipes properly.
****Ditto.
Songs: Battle (All/6), Blades (All/6), Light (Celestial/6), Motion (All/6), NC (All/6), Shields (All/6)
Attunements: Seraph of War, Ofanite of War, Malakite of War, Ofanite of Destiny, Ofanite of Divine Fire, Ofanite of the Wind, Howl*, One on One, Proficiency (Machine Guns), Proficiency (Sword), Proficiency (Unarmed), Proficiency (Truck)**, Proficiency (Duck)***, Proficiency (Tactical Nuke)****, Scabbard*****, Sure-Footed, Incarnate Law, Master of Valor, ‘Mad Jack Wheelie’
*This is a literal Howl: actually, it’s more like a bark.
**Yes, this means that he adds the CD of a successful Precision roll to Power whenever he runs over somebody with a truck.
***Ditto with attacks utilizing a duck.
****Guess.
*****Rumors that Laurence was cajoled into gifting him with a Scabbard Attunement with a rather increased upper weight limit have not been confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt. After all, Mad Jack Wheelie could just have been given a Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine with the Summonable Feature.
‘Mad Jack Wheelie’
This is not an Attunement: it’s more of an explicit enumeration of just how obnoxious his tactical skills are. As it stands, Mad Jack Wheelie has a target number of 24 in Tactics and Strategy, before his… unique… artifact is taken into account. That works out to an auto-success with a minimum CD of 13, just in case it needs to be spelled out.
Relics: The Bathtub of Blessed Winston
Look, if anybody ever figures out just why Mad Jack Wheelie is allowed to get away with one-tenth — heck, one-millionth — of the stuff he gets away with, it’s reasonably certain that he, she, or it will reveal it. Too many people are too interested to let anybody who isn’t a Superior publicly keep it a secret. Heck, given sufficient preparation time, enough entities might decide that finding out would be worth dog-piling one of the smaller Archangels.
Fortunately for certain Superior’s wardrobes, it’s commonly accepted that only Michael, Laurence, Dominic and Yves are aware of the reasons that permit Mad Jack Wheelie to do pretty much whatever Mad Jack Wheelie thinks is a good idea at the time. The above list does not include Mad Jack Wheelie himself: he’ll cheerfully admit that by any rational standard (and quite a few irrational ones) he should be a pile of loose Forces by now. Unlike everybody else in the dark, he simply chooses to neither worry nor complain about it.
Calling Mad Jack Wheelie a loose cannon would be a deadly insult to out-of-control artillery pieces. He has his Bathtub, his group of mad, mad, mad followers (although they look quite sane, compared to him), and an apparent blank check when it comes to resources and permission slips. That’s apparently all he really wants out of life, so in exchange for such favoritism he is more than happy to fight on the side of Truth and Justice. This does not reassure the Host, for some odd reason.
Not much of Mad Jack Wheelie is reassuring, come to think about it. He’d be a nice guy even if he weren’t a barking madman — but people duck for cover whenever he shows up, as he has much the same effect on local power structures, informal understandings, solemn agreements and modus operandi as a vigorous shake has on an Etch-a-Sketch. It wouldn’t be so bad if he were a Windy — that way you’d be sure that he’d be leaving soon — but, no, he serves War, which means he never retreats from a conflict. If there’s one in your bailiwick, he’ll settle down with his friends and help you with it, for as long as it takes — and whether you like it or not.
After one of Mad Jack Wheelie’s visits, hardened Servitors of Divine Fire have been known to break down and weep at the sight of a Dominican Triad — because they know that such an appearance means that the Ofanite has gone away. For the record, Mad Jack Wheelie doesn’t run from Triads, nor do they don’t hide when he’s around: let’s just say that some creative scheduling is made to keep contact between the parties involved to a bare minimum (defining ‘bare minimum’ as ‘never if either can help it’). Oddly, Dominic never comments on this.
Now, this would normally be the place where the Sleazy Rationalization That Torturously Justifies This Particular Bad Idea would go — but, hey, guess what? There isn’t one. There is no excuse for the Ofanite. At all. He is a living, breathing refutation of the idea that celestials are supposed to keep the War secret and hidden — Mad Jack Wheelie goes to his battles in a jet-powered and winged armored bathtub packing twin machine guns, for the love of God — and nobody knows why he exists in anything except the past tense. Maybe he’s a mask for an Archangel who needs to hide in plain sight. Maybe he’s a personification of the chaotic nature of the Symphony itself. Maybe he’s God’s Player-Character From The Last Campaign — no, wait, that’s the Archangel Michael: OK, so then maybe he’s God’s Girlfriend’s Player-Character From The Last Campaign. Maybe he’s just a garden variety munchkin (admittedly, by now he’d be the Platonic Ideal of same) who found the exact metaphorical blind spot to operate in, and hasn’t budged from there since. I certainly don’t know, and neither do you.
But that’s good, because if you don’t know, then your players won’t either, and watching them try to figure it out should be interesting as all get out.
Mad Jack Wheelie is a balanced starting character.