Juri Como is a character I played in a first edition Scion campaign.
She is a daughter of Bentaizen and an Australian man....whose name I
sadly can't remember because he never actually showed up in game or
became relevant. Her early childhood was spent sheltered from enemies by
a clan of jurougumo before being delivered to her mortal father in Sydney. So, she has a bit of a friendly attitude toward spiders in general. Juri grew up to be a webcomic mangaka who became a popular success but she was always aware that she was special.As an archetype, Juri was about a couple of things: being unbelievably cute and adorable; spiders; pretending to be an complete airhead to screw with people, and turning her manga into literal magic.
During her time as a hero, Juri was gifted with her "Fire Rat Kimono" and that caused fire to become a part of her nature. She gained the service of a number of spider-yokai that were fire-spiders rather than the typical watery jurougumo or earth-dwelling tsuchigumo. Said yokai were the spirits of fans of hers that had died and been resurrected as yokai in her service.
I don't have a real inkling of her Origin adventures since we jumped right into Hero, because that's what you had in 1e.
As a note, her webcomic, which was getting an anime, was titled "Combat Hurricane" and I never really designed it much, dealt more with the fans and such than anything.
So, now it's time to build her directly as a 2e Scion.
The concept is easy, Spider-Friend Mangaka, so let's move on toward the Paths. Interestingly, some of her story aligns with one of the example Origin paths in the form of "Terra Incognita" being fairly equivalent to her "Sheltered by Spiders" story background. I guess it's not too interesting, the example paths are, after all, designed to be very broad so that they can be used to help guide new players who don't just jump into making their own the way I do. Likewise, "Charismatic Leader" from the example Role Paths is similar to a lot of what she did: directing her spiders and yokai, and twisting things this way and that, though I'm rephrasing that as "Beloved Webcomic Artist" to focus on her art. So that brings me to the Pantheon Path and how to describe her relationship to her mother and pantheon.I think, I'm going to focus on her kawaii nature and go with "Cunning and Kawaii Daughter of Fortune."
For skills, wow, I looked at this and lots of overlap. Culture seems to appear in all three. Persuasion appears in two. I'm taking Occult and Leadership to the Sheltered by Spiders because that's where she picked up her spider-wrangling skills. And I'll put Integrity into Cunning and Kawaii Daughter of Fortune and Empathy with Beloved Webcomic Artist.
For the priorities. Beloved Webcomic Artist will be primary. But the other two...it's hard to call one lesser than the other, but I have to choose one for mechanics purposes. I'm going to go with Sheltered by Spiders for secondary just to get higher points to start for Occult and Leadership. Regardless, there's a floating point going around because Culture is has gone over 5. That extra point will go to Integrity.
This makes her pretty hyper-specialized, but that fits her.
Next comes her attributes, and this is very easy. Social primary, Mental secondary, and Physical tertiary. And for her focus....oh definitely Finesse. I'm putting her Composure at 4 because she so rarely showed anything more than a friendly sort of smile. I put Manipulation at 4 and Presence at 3 at this point mostly because as charismatic as she was, she did a lot more in the way of coming at things sideways rather than use raw Presence. Her mental stuff I'm all setting at 3 because she is quite intelligent. For Physical, Might 1, Dexterity 3, and Stamina 3.
Next comes Callings and I discussed this with friends. Creator, Leader, Trickster, and Sage were all considered. Liminal was mentioned and then discarded. We settled on Creator because of how much her art was part of her magic and Leader because of how many followers and contacts she had. Then he vacillated between Sage and Trickster. I was wondering if her illusions and social trickery might be filled by Deception. So...my friend asked me if I could think of some of her deeds. I got through three before saying "Yeah, Trickster." She is going to get two dots each in Creator and Trickster and one in Leader. In the long run, Leader and Lover might vie for position.
And now, as I'm writing this, I'm thinking Lover might be better. Originally I dismissed it because Juri is pretty definitely Ace and Aro. But as I was writing this, I was realizing her relationship with her spiders, yokai, and other people was one more of mutual adoration and friendship than someone standing apart and directing things.
For Knacks, let's look here. For Creator, Flawless Platonic Ideal and Perfect Rendition, because again, she is the Great Mangaka. For Trickster, Blather and Skite and Rumor Miller definitely. Blather and Skite was Juri's stock in trade and she also abused the hell out of ye olde Rumor Mill. Now comes to Lover, I'm going with Not a Fighter because she literally had a knack that improved her defense based on how adorable she was. It was called "D'awwww".
Callings come with Keywords, so, for Creator, I've decided on "Mangaka" to point at both her drawing and the layered keyword of "Weaver" to represent her connection to spiders, ability to weave a tale, and the way she used the webs made by her spider-friends in her magic. For Trickster, I went with Deflection and Confusion because...that was a lot of how she operated. And for Lover, I am going with Kawaii. Part of switching from Leader to Lover was because I had trouble thinking of a keyword for the Leader.
At Legend 1 we also get one Title, for which I am going with "The Great Mangaka", which was the original descriptor I used for her concept when I first created her. This was originally going to be the name of her Role Path, and I suppose it could be both, but I decided to alter the Role Path to be a bit different so that it can be applied to differing situations, such as dealing with fans, and being more in line with the base idea of the "Charismatic Leader".
Next is Birthrights. So now we come to things. The 1e version had a lot of Birthrights. So, she had a relic artist's lapboard, a swarm of spiders, her agent, and an old convention pass her mother once used when attending the anime convention she met Juri's father at. Her agent in this edition could work better as a Path contact or fatebinding, so we can discount that. The pass rarely showed up narratively, but it had a pressed spider in it and served as the relic that provided her with her (1e) Animal purview. I've already looked at the purviews I want and there are a few, so let's start with the relics.
The drawing board is going to be Fortune, making it 2 points, then I'll give it a +2 Enhancement to drawing manga for another point. The Convention Pass is going to be Beasts (Spider) which puts it at 2 points. Now, to the Spiders, whether to make them Creatures or Followers? Given some of the way they acted in the story, I'm going to go Creature, because they often were doing things on their own initiative. At two dots, they're going to get 6 dice, 2 of which I will sacrifice in order to give them the Swarm quality.
Now we come to Purviews and Boons. For her Innate Purview, I'm going with Artistry(Manga) as inherent to her. I considered giving her Beauty but I figure her uses of her Beauty are covered by Lover, Trickster, and Artistry. She also gets Yaoyorozu-No-Kamigami just because she's Kami. Fire eventually was something she gained, but that came later. As for Boons, Leader of the Pack is certain, because she did a lot of talking to spiders. For the second, I'm going to go with Divination, because a lot of her magic was bent toward revealing what was real in her manga. She did a lot of divination style spells though she spread out into obfuscating things.
Edit: Replacing Divination with Heartfelt Expression as that is more appropriate to her earlier career. I'll put Divination in for Ephemera on the Hero career page and just assume her limited use of illusions was mostly Marvels.
And now, I'll go to the Finishing Touches, where we get 5 Skill points, 1 Attribute point, and a choice of 4 Birthright points or two extra Knacks. I am going for the extra birthrights and adding another dot to her Creature, and a custom knack to her convention pass with the laminated spider allowing it to basically be used as an icebreaker, then giving her a small cult. For the Skill Points, I'm going with 4 points to Subterfuge, because I'm just now realizing I missed that as a skill. And then I'm going to increase Integrity to 3. The Attribute point is being added to Presence to bring all her socials to 4.
And there we go, I'll work at building her up along the path of the past campaign later. It's getting late.
Concept: Spider-Friend Mangaka
Origin Path: Sheltered by Spiders
Path Skills: Culture, Occult, Leadership
Role Path: Beloved Webcomic Artist
Path Skills: Culture, Empathy, Persuasion
Pantheon Path: Cunning and Kawaii Daughter of Fortune
Path Skills: Culture, Persuasion, Integrity
Culture 5 (Manga)
Empathy 3 (Judging Expectations)
Integrity3 (Ever-Smiling)
Leadership 2
Occult 2
Persuasion 4 (Cuteness)
Subterfuge 4 (Obfuscating Stupidity)
Power
- Intellect ***
- Might *
- Presence ****
Finesse (Favored)
- Cunning ***
- Dexterity ***
- Manipulation ****
Resilience
- Resolve ***
- Stamina ***
- Composure ****
Legend: 1
Virtues: Sincerity, Right Action
Callings
- Creator **
- Flawless Platonic Ideal
- Perfect Rendition
- Keywords: Mangaka, Weaver
- Lover *
- Not a Fighter
- Keywords: Kawaii
- Trickster **
- Blather and Skite
- Rumor Miller
- Keywords: Deflection, Confusion
Title: The Great Mangaka
The Mangaka's Lapboard ***
- Motif: "Reality in the artist's hands"
- Purview: Artistry(Manga)
- Enhancement +2 to drawing manga
The Laminated Spider Convention Pass ***
- Motif: "Spider-Friend"
- Purview: Beasts (Spider)
- Custom Knack - Conversation Piece
- The spider laminated into the convention pass from 20 years ago catches the eye and allows Juri to treat negative attitudes as 2 points less for the purpose of initiating conversation with a person she has met the first time. Once the conversation has moved on to other topics, however, this benefit ends.
Spider-Friends ***
- 5 dice - (Scouting, Spooking, Web-Spinning)
- Quality - Swarm, Wall-Walker
Cult: Storm-Watchers (fans of Combat Hurricane) **
- Community
- Light: **
- Shadow: *
- Tags: Social Club
- Connections: Contacts (2 Light), Access (1 Shadow)
Purviews:
- Artistry (Manga)
- Beasts (Spiders)
- Fortune
- Yaoyoro-no-Kamigami
Boons: Leader of the Pack, Heartfelt Expression
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