Scarecrow

            This is the character that had the other players worried. He was played by my friend, Carlos, who had a reputation for nastiness in games. The guy liked to mess with your head. And so did the Scarecrow.

            Dr. Jonathan Crane was the head psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum. Arkham was his personal fiefdom. No one questioned what he did there, as long as nothing got out to the papers. Dr. Crane liked to experiment with Fear-based therapies. One of his star patients was The Joker. Dr. Crane twisted young Jack’s mind beyond reason long before he became a Malkavian.

           

            What Carlos, and everyone else knew, was that Dr. Jonathan Crane had a built-in expiration date. Dr. Crane was going to die. And he was going to come back.

            We built the Scarecrow using the Wraith: The Oblivion rules. Scarecrow was going to be a Spectre, a ghost who has totally succumbed to its dark side. Wraiths feed off of the emotional energy of the living. Scarecrow, naturally, fed off of fear. He had big plans for the city of Gotham…

Fun Fact: My Joker player, Eric, was distraught by the knowledge that he would most likely be the one to kill Crane and create The Scarecrow. “How do you fight a ghost?”

Mad Hatter

            This was a character concept that never really got beyond the planning stage. Jervis Tetch was going to be another Changeling, in this case a Nocker. His hats would have been Forged Chimera.

            I was never really sure where I was going with this one…

Killer Croc

            Killer Croc was one of my ‘big stick’ characters. When one of the players was getting too big for their britches, I would send in Croc. Croc was a Mokolé, a were-crocodile, naturally. The fun thing about making a Mokolé character is that you get to ‘build’ them.  I designed Croc to be bipedal, with a huge tail, and super-thick skin. Croc was a tank. He was always going to be an NPC, mostly because he would have just shredded the other player characters.

            The major difference between my Croc and comic book character is that he could change. When not in Archid, his war-form, he could choose to be a normal looking human, or a full crocodile. It didn’t come up in the game, but essentially, if Croc didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t.

            Waylon Jennings never wanted to come to the big city. He was happy out in the Bayou, running moonshine and chasing off strangers that come on his land. Then word came to him that someone had stolen a clutch of five eggs from his family. A Follower of Set had stolen them and was planning on breeding daytime servants for their temple in Gotham City.

            Waylon traveled to Gotham, but was unable to find the Setite’s hidden temple. But they found him. They made him an offer. They had been trying to track down some ancient relics that were in the city. For each one that Killer Croc could track down, they would return one of the eggs. The relics were the fabled Chalices of Anubis.

            Croc never bothered asking why the vampires wanted the cups. They understood things like Croc did. If there was one thing in this life that was worth fighting, and maybe killing for…

            …it was Blood.

Poison Ivy

            Ivy is an interesting case. When I was first planning this game, in early 1995, I knew that I wanted Poison Ivy in it, and that I wanted her to be a Changeling. Only problem was, they hadn’t actually published the game yet. As soon as Changeling:The Dreaming hit the shelves, I picked up a copy and burned through it. It didn’t take too long to see what I wanted to do with her…

            Pamela Isley was the human persona of Duchess Ivy of House Fiona. A beautiful Sidhe with shimmering green hair, Ivy was a Master of the Art of Primal. She ruled a vast duchy that included Gotham City. Her personal Freehold was located in the woods outside the city. Something happened to Pamela and she was lost in the Deep Dreaming for a number of years. When she returned, she found that her beautiful meadow home was now a set of tract houses, courtesy of Schreck Enterprises.

            Ivy swore vengeance on Max Schreck, promising to bring him down.

            Fun Fact: I found a rule in a book that stated that Malkavians can ‘naturally’ perceive Changelings and their Chimera. It was a great moment in the game the first time Joker saw Ivy crossing the room at a party on campus at Gotham U, accompanied by her last loyal subject, a nine-foot tall, blue, Troll knight.

The Penguin

            The visual of my version of The Penguin was completely ripped off from Danny DeVito’s portrayal in Time Burton’s Batman Returns.

However, my Oswald Cobblepot wasn’t born a freak. He was turned into one.

            Oswald was a two-bit hood who ran with the Red Triangle gang in the slums of Gotham City. The gang mostly specialized in Breaking and Entering and low-level extortion. Then one fateful evening, Oswald, on his own, broke into the wrong building. What appeared to Oswald as a storage warehouse was in fact a Progenitor Laboratory.

            The security on such a stronghold should have halted and baffled any thief, but Oswald always had a knack for crime. As the agents of the Technocracy viewed his progress on their hidden camera, Oswald defeated every security device they had installed. The head of the installation’s amusement soon turned to anger. How could a lowly Sleeper gain access to their secrets?

            Oswald soon found his progress through the labyrinth growing easier. Almost as if they wanted him to reach the good stuff. There was a blinding light and Oswald was out cold.

            The next few days were a nightmare for Oswald. The Progenitors used him as guinea pig for every experiment they could think of. He should have died, a dozen times over, but his will was stronger than they ever imagined. Strong enough for him to Awaken.

            When Oswald finally gained true awakening, he found his body twisted and warped into that of a human penguin. He broke free of the bonds holding him and made his escape. But, on the way out, he found something…

            Nine umbrellas.

            Each umbrella had the power to allow Oswald, now The Penguin, control of each of one of the Spheres of Reality. Correspondence. Entropy. Forces. Life. Mind. Matter. Prime. Spirit. Time.

            With his new prizes, Penguin began to enact his revenge on the Technocracy the only way he knew how. Crime.