Project Nemesis is a fan driven website for games that use the One-Roll Engine (like Nemesis, Wild Talents, Reign and Monsters) or Chaosium's Basic Roleplay System (BRP) (like Call of Cthulhu) and the Delta Green setting.
In the year 1926, Ralph Carter, a semi successful stockbroker and full
time bohemian underwent a personality change at a party. He passed out
for an hour and woke up as someone else. No one at the party really
noticed. They assumed he was resting and brought him right back into
the party.
A year later carter reverted back to his original personality and found
that he had not changed his habits much during the time between.
Although he had neglected his business and was broke. He was one of the
stockbrokers to jump to his death after the crash and the year he spent
acting differently more or less went un noticed by everyone. But that
year drove a Yithian insane.
The Yithian was already one of the better mind swappers of his
race. He had taken Carter’s body to acquire a few books, the books were
to be stored in a safe in a building in St. Paul Minnesota where no one
would look for them until agents came in the year 2000 to collect them.
The Yithian got the books and put them in the safe like a good little
mind from the past but then he stayed an extra nine months. He had gone
native.
Basically he is a constant tourist of humanity now. He is a full
hedonist and jumps from era to era for the purpose of entertainment and
physical pleasure. By the standards of the Great Race he is a pervert
and madman. But he is also useful and plays by the rules on not
altering history. The others tolerate his actions because he is an
expert on humans. Also he is omni-present through out human history,
often using several bodies taken in different mind swaps to deal with
problems as well as helping out other Great Race historians.
He has no attachment to humanity and there are only a few humans he
cares about, if anything he is like a man who can step into his
favorite storybook for a scene or two. With the added benefit of not
having to worry too much about his body, he has left hosts in debt,
with syphilis, falling off of buildings and facing trial for crimes
ranging from drug use to murder.
Sometimes he’ll take a liking to a host and see to it that they
don’t suffer for his borrowing of their bodies, leaving some gold or a
useful bit of information behind or accomplishing something in their
body. These are hosts he plans to use again though.
While he isn’t concerned with humanity, he loves what they create.
Living in a cyclopean city has nothing on German chocolate or Victorian
parties or raceing motorcycles or Roman orgies or 200 year old scotch
or three hour massages or full orchestras or the myriad of chemicals
people use to alter their minds or the thrill of showing off a minor
scientific trick to astound the best minds of their day or… Well you
get the idea.
By now he speaks most languages, knows most skills and most of human
history and has met nearly everyone to be remembered in a history book.
He also collects DNA samples from historical figures and sometimes has
a signature book, both carefully left throughout time for him to pick
up next time he needs them.
He has dealt with the mi-go often, though they don’t know it’s the
same Yithian, and double crossed them a time or two. He knows of
Nyarlathotep but avoids him, although he thinks that Nyarlathotep might
approve of what he’s doing.
He also acts as a guide for other Great Race minds, he enjoys
exposing them to new things but hates dealing with them too long, so
far he hasn’t managed to drive any others to join him.
His preferred bodies are rich and in good shape, while he
associates more with male, he has taken plenty of female hosts as well.
He protects his body by sending himself to the same era more then once
if need be. As an example, were he to be chased down an alley in LA in
1992, he might take over the body of someone who lives over the alley,
a week before, and toss himself a gas mask right before flooding the
alley with CS gas. Or he might arrive at an airport suddenly needing to
go to Hong Kong, when he reaches the check out counter a minute or
twenty after deciding this, he picks up the first class tickets
reserved a few months ago.
He isn’t untrustworthy by nature but he will break deals without a
hesitation if there’s something better for him in it. He loves to talk
to people who believe his stories about time travel. People who are
good to him may wind up the beneficiaries of random gifts or warnings
about the future as well. He is mostly an irreverent observer and
hedonist.
Game Notes
I used him in
a game a while back (he's taken a liking to to body of one of the PCs
who misses games a lot.) And he was pretty fun to use. The PCs didn't
know how to deal with him at all. They know he's a Yithian but they
don't know what that means beyond time travel. Oddly enough they put up
with him, most NPCs get some kind of beating/abuse pretty quick but he
kept them off balance.
In this game, he gave them a warning about going on an
investigation (they ignored it as I and he knew they would), burried a
few things in their backyard a few years ago and told them to dig the
things up and bring them to him. Then he made fun of them, drank their
booz and left before everything went to hell.
About the darker uses, I thought about it but I just don't feel
like making him too sinister, I think he's more memorable this way as
opposed to another malovelent -entity- with- more- power- than- any-human.
As for the rest of the Great Race and his time shenanigans, he
survives by being useful, he's likely one of the formost human experts
they have, and by keeping a low profile as far as altering time goes.
Also he lives by the idea that whatever he does has already happened in
the future anyway.