Something is broken in his life and he can’t talk to anyone about it. He’s tried but when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out. He doesn’t see anything, doesn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, but he feels it. Some things are wrong. He can look at one orange on the pile in the store and be repulsed, while the others around it leave him unmoved. It’s the same with people. It’s the same with pencils. It’s the same with Post-It notes, he can tell you which pad in the pile of Post-It notepads has a sheet in it that’s just bad, and he can tell you which sheet on the pad is the bad one.
Maybe it’s all in his head. Or maybe if your PCs tested it, he’d be able to tell you which envelope had that bad Post-It in it. Maybe if they put the bad orange in a box and scattered identical boxes around it, he’d be able to point to the one box with the orange in it every goddamn time even without touching them or examining them closely.
So far, he’s kept his life from unraveling. The Bads haven’t shown up any more frequently—he’s been sensing one or two a week for the past nine months—but he can’t escape a feeling that they’re just the first stage of something. Maybe he’s going to develop full-blown schizophrenia soon. Or maybe he’s in the first stages of becoming an Adept.
Two versions of the I Have Scary Problems Identity are included. One’s mystic. One’s just the outcome of living a life of incipient terror.
I Have Scary Problems.
Supernatural: Specific Inform (for whatever those oranges and pencils and people in
crowds have in common).
Feature: Use Gutter Magick.
Feature: Casts Rituals.
I Have Scary Problems, of course I can maintain a poker face, be ready to flee at all times, awaken at the slightest noise.
Substitutes for: Pursuit.
Feature: Substitutes for Dodge.
Feature: Substitutes for Notice.