Deep Dive Sneak Peek: Nele Rosenfeld (Patreon)

Today I'm sharing the sample Devoted for Parents of Psychic Children Network - a Standing 2 conspiracy I first previewed in February.

As with everything else I've shared from Deep Dive, this is still a first draft so there will be changes.

Nele Rosenfeld

Quote: “If you just do what they tell you to do they’ll take good care of you.”

Background: Nele Rosenfeld received her ESP diagnosis at the age of seven, although her parents suspected it for more than a year before that. The insomnia, daytime sleepiness, and sleepwalking were severe enough to make her moody and interfere with her schoolwork, but they weren’t nearly as alarming as her frequent seizures. At first, the doctors told her she had epilepsy, which was being exacerbated by her sleep disorder. But then Nele’s parents took her to a new doctor who had a different opinion: she had overdeveloped psychic powers.

Nele didn’t like Doctor Wetzel. She didn’t like the way he seemed to hate her for the things she could do and insisted that she shouldn’t do them. She liked him even less after he convinced her parents that he was right about her. Then came his treatments – the disgusting medicine that made her want to throw up, the regular confinement to her bedroom to keep her from having anyone to use her powers on, the additional punishments whenever anyone so much as forgot where they left their keys.

Gradually, though, Nele realized that all of it was necessary. They told her the stories of all the things she had done – all the ways she had hurt people without knowing what she was doing was wrong. Whenever she was tempted to secretly dump her medicine in the trash or to leave her body behind and never come back, she would remind herself of how she had made her brother Patrick forget all the time he spent with his friends for a whole summer, and that would stop her. She idolized her big brother, and it made her sad that she could never be normal like he was – with friends and family who liked being around her and weren’t scared of her. Nele still didn’t like Dr. Wetzel with all his aversion therapies and constant reminders about her ESP, her disease that had no cure. But it was better than growing up to be like the psychics he had told her about.

Appearance: Nele is a short, slender woman in her early 20s with short brown hair, green eyes, and colorful glasses.

Roleplaying Hints: Nele is a model psychic. She does whatever Dr. Wetzel and her parents tell her to do, says whatever they tell her to say. That’s why they let her be in all those videos – to show that even kids with ESP can grow up to be well-behaved if they’re given the right treatments. She isn’t perfect, though. Sometimes she sneaks into someone nearby when no one is watching or can’t resist taking a memory here and there. She knows that remembering the life of a normal person is the closest she’ll get to having one.

Origin: Genotypal

Clade: Cephalist

Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 2; Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Stamina 2; Presence 2, Manipulation 2, Composure 3

Mental Skills: Academics 2, Crafts 1, Investigation 1, Medicine 1, Occult (Psychics) 2, Politics 2, Science 2

Physical Skills: Athletics 1, Brawl 1, Drive 1, Larceny 2, Stealth 2

Social Skills: Expression 2 (Acting), Persuasion 1, Subterfuge 1 (Hiding Variation Use)

Merits: False Cope 3, Mastered Technique (Guilty Pleasure), Prized Experiment, Telltale Signs, Transformed Lore

Willpower: 5

Stability: 5

Conviction: 2

Loyalty: 3

Aspiration: Steal a happy memory from a Baseline

Initiative: 6

Defense: 3

Speed: 9

Health: 7

Size: 5

Acclimation: 0

Adaptations: Disciplined, Empath, Stubborn Resolve

Forms: Devoted

Form: Allayed (prescription medicine converts Sleepy 4 to Glitch 4; Gradual +1 dot, Equal Exchange +1 dot)

Persistent Scar: Sleepy (Body Snatcher, Memory Thief; Drowsy, Insomnia, Somnambulism; Mental) 4

Variations: Body Snatcher 3, Memory Thief (Scar-free Magnitude; Forgotten Milestone) 3

Techniques: Guilty Pleasure (Memory Thief; when Nele makes a memory her own she may choose not to erase her victim’s recollection of it by spending a point of Willpower)

Acquainted: +1 Intelligence, +1 Wits; +1 Empathy, +1 Expression, +1 Persuasion, +1 Socialize, +1 Subterfuge; Telepathy 2; Shame 2 (Telepathy; Mental)

Personal: +1 Resolve; +1 Empathy, +1 Socialize, +1 Subterfuge; Telepathy (Forceful) 4, Shame (Telepathy; Contrition, Purity; Mental) 4

Obsessive: +1 Intelligence; +1 Empathy, +2 Persuasion; Memory Thief (Formative Memory) 4, Telepathy 5; Shame (Telepathy; Mental) 5