Freaks

Many of the Negative Metagenic Qualities provide serious social issues for characters since they look so strange. In a world of cookie-cutter corporate employees and ever-present surveillance, being different makes you stick out like a pink mohawk at a black trench coat convention. That, and everybody looks at you like you have two heads—which may well be one of the things you have.

Getting down to chrome tacks, what this means is every time you take a quality that mentions this sidebar, you face a –1 dice pool modifier for all Social based tests, and for every three qualities, your Social limit decreases by 1. That’s the straight rules mechanic, but what does it mean to a character? Well, the character is going to be treated like an outsider or an eyesore, no matter where they go. Staring will be expected, whispers and pointing will occur, and frequent jeers are par for the course.

Certain aspects of a characters freakish appearance may draw violent attention to them from more than just Humanis schmucks. Many changelings who ended up with insectoid or draconic features have suffered from the bug spirit attention (since the bugs often assume them to be rivals) and attacks from dragon-haters during the dragon civil war, pushing them to go into hiding. Some who hid poorly ended up being killed for their appearance alone.