Madman's informational essay of great importance
So this is going to be longish; sit tight and listen in! It is important for interacting with him.
Who is Madman?
Well, Madman used to be a genius NASA scientist (among other things, one of them being an acid sorcerer. um. . . don’t look at him like that! It was the 60s!) with tons of patents to his name. Then he decided that inner space was better than outer space and got big on mathematical description theory and mysticism. With those things combined he hoped to be able to break through the comfortable illusion of reality we all live in and See Reality as it really is. He spent years researching and tinkering to achieve this.
This was, of course, a Notoriously Bad Decision. When he succeeded he Saw Reality and it blew apart his itty bitty human mind. He went batshit, bugfuck insane and has been that way ever since.
He remembers nothing of his life before this and no one else knows anything more than what is described above. He has no name or identity because he kind of tore them apart when he went crazy. He is simply Madman. And boy, does he live up to his name.
He’s Seen Reality as it really is and is very aware that the reality people live in is an illusion our limited minds can accept. He believes everything around him is simply an illusion and pretty much chooses to live in them intentionally. He can now choose the illusions around him. Unfortunately they sometimes choose him.
Also he still Sees well beyond and through the bounds of what most people do and knows a lot of things he shouldn’t be able to at all.
What can Madman do?
Because of the reality thing reality becomes very weak and fluid around him. It destabilizes and changes according to his whims/fears/desires/etc. Sometimes it even changes according to his intentions but that almost never happens. Things shift a lot when he’s around. Down isn’t always down and angles and sizes and shapes aren’t always quite right. Colors can change too.
So, what exactly is he capable of?
Well, for one thing he is pretty damn powerful. His range can extend pretty far; it canonically can extend almost an entire floor of a modest hotel but usually is less. Within that range anything and everything is subject to change.
He is canonically able to change a person’s past and personality without them even realizing it. He can create a fountain of pure whiskey and cause flowers to spontaneously bloom. He can also make brickwork melt and turn into lava or turn a person into a 3-D cubist painting. . . and have that person still be horribly alive even all turned inside out and at a dozen viewpoints and angles at once and with pieces missing. He can tear reality apart and open cracks into other dimensions (bad ones, usually) and apparently mess with time itself a little bit. (He makes parts of a bar revert to past incarnations)
He can also do things like suddenly decide to be in a samurai movie and become an ass kicking samurai for a bit. (And it would seem, make other people go along with the script)
He can also do things like just get rid of mortal wounds like they never happened and strip very powerful people of their powers.
Also, because he doesn’t think they are real and therefore can’t affect him, attacks just can’t touch him. Punches and magic spells never hit and bullets aimed right for him just harmlessly bounce harmlessly off the wall behind him. Even powerful demons from Hell can’t touch him. He is very much a godmodder. He can even stand up to the big bad of his canon and come out alive which even gods can’t necessarily do.
Because of all this power and his inherent instability when he freaks out and loses control bad things can happen. Thankfully, he’s also equipped with a warning system!
Madman has a soundtrack. It is just that, a bunch of music that plays out of nowhere at almost all times. It reflects his moods and whims and the situations he’s in. It makes a very handy advance warning for trouble coming because Madman’s soundtrack, if not Madman himself, is aware of it before it gets in range. The soundtrack is very handy to those who pay attention to it.
Lastly, Madman does See a lot further and deeper into things than normal people. He is able to see the truth about uber-powerful Beings in disguises that fool everybody else for example. It’s strongly implied that he Sees a demon succubus for what she really is even though she appears as everyone else’s deepest, most secret desires. He Sees and Knows an awful lot because of this. Except in his very brief lucid moments.
So why isn’t he just an uberpowerful godmodder?
Well, the thing is, Madman is fucking insane. He almost never changes things with intent because he lacks the focus to do so. That happens exactly once in canon, up against the big bad. It won’t happen in camp unless she does show up.
Secondly, the changes that happen when he isn’t focused tend to be quite mild and transient. Being in camp, because of the changeable nature of camp, will increase the transient nature of the changes. As long as he’s calm he mostly just wanders around only half aware of his surroundings and freaks people out or parks in a single spot and broods. . . and freaks people out.
When he freaks out and loses control the changes do become a lot more violent and deep but it does take quite a bit to freak him out. I will warn anyone when it starts to happen in camp so we can discuss what would happen and have camp interfere as necessary.
Thirdly, I intend to be in close contact with those he interacts with and will always, always ask permission before any of Madman’s changes effect characters and/or camp staples like the hospital or mess hall.
So, how will Madman effect your characters?
If your character is psychic they may just get a big dose of his insanity. It will be up to you to decide how that will affect them. See the “Notes for Psychics” section of the stats and permissions meme for more details.
For those with the abilities to sense power levels and whatnot Madman will actually read as a normal human. Reality around him won’t read that way though.
It’s canon that being near Madman makes even mostly normal humans feel very uncomfortable. To quote canon:
I stopped outside the door. The number matched the one the clerk had given me, but I would have recognized it anyway. The room felt like the pain that wakes you in the middle of the night and makes you think awful words like tumour and poison. It felt like the death of a loved one, or the tone in your lover’s voice as she tells you she’s leaving you for someone else. The room felt like horror and tragedy, and the slow unraveling of everything you ever held true. Except it wasn’t the room. It was Madman.
And:
Everywhere I looked the details were all just that little bit off, subtly wrong. The angles between walls and floor didn’t add up, the ceiling seemed to recede in uncomfortable directions, and there was no obvious source for the painfully bright light. Objects seemed to change, slumping and transmuting when I wasn’t looking at them directly. The floor was solid beneath my feet, but it felt like I was standing over a precipice. Every sound in the room was dull and distant, as though I was underwater. I stood very still, concentrating on why I was there, because it felt as though I might alter and drift away if I lost my grip on who and what I was, even for a moment.
This was why people didn’t like being around Madman.
It will be up to players to decide how their characters would react to this but yes, Madman’s effect on reality is palpable, especially to people sensitive to such things.
Ok! So how will Madman react to your characters?
Madman is very unpredictable in his reactions. Sometimes he might not even realize people are there and talking to him. People might also randomly make him very uncomfortable.
He laughs in the faces of uber-powerful Beings and Powers and freaks out in front of a bunch of virtually powerless homeless people clamoring for his attention. He might See everything about you, or nothing at all. Sometimes he even does things like call an uber-powerful man who sits in judgment over everybody and has power over the most powerful angels and demons in both Heaven, Hell, and in between Daddy and tries to crawl into the man’s lap. This is when everybody around him is bowing at said man’s feet and fearing for their very existences. Because the judgment? So not pretty.
He Knows things and may make startling pronouncements in the middle of gibberish. Or he might not speak at all. He also canonically has trouble remembering people and things even though he might Know quite a bit about them.
This is what will make him both very fun and very difficult to play.
So, that’s everything important about Madman, now it’s your turns! Because of Madman’s ability to See things I do need to know about characters he’ll meet. Are they secretly an angel? A demon? An uber-powerful sorcerer? A god? Have some secret Madman might Know about? He may or may not react to that information at all but it would really help me out.
If you don’t want him revealing something just leave a note of that, as well.