Manifest, The Maker Mage's page

Burn
When you charge up your powers, roll + conditions you currently have marked. On a hit, hold 3 burn. On a 7-9, mark a condition. On a miss, hold 2 burn and mark three conditions.

Spend your burn on your flares. You lose all burn at the end of the scene.

Constructs
Spend 1 burn to create any object with your powers, up to the size of a person. Spend an additional burn to animate it independently of yourself. The construct dissolves at the end of the scene.

Moat
Spend 1 burn to create a barrier that will hold back threats as long as you keep your attention on it. The GM may call for you to spend another burn if the barrier is threatened by particularly powerful enemies.

Move
Spend 1 burn to move to any place you choose within the scene, breaking through or slipping past any barriers or restraints in your way. Spend a second burn to move to any place you’ve previously been.

Snatch
Spend 1 burn to use your powers to seize any one object up to the size of a person from someone within view.

Belong in Two Worlds
You have the resources that come with your station. Whenever you contact your people, roll + Superior. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7-9, hold 2. On a miss, hold 1, but your people make an uncomfortable demand of you. Spend your hold 1 for 1 to:
- receive an artefact or gift of power that will allow you to use any ability from another playbook once (choose the ability when you spend the hold)
- consult your people’s knowledge to ask the GM a question about the current situation
- clear a condition through the comforts of the other planes

You hang out all the time with The Kilt to blow off steam.

You once hurt Miss Moxie when you lost control of your powers.

I've been meaning to make a proper record of what I've been doing for a while now. Guess this is where it starts.
Who knows? Maybe I'll get hit with an amnesia blast and have to rely on this to fill my memory back in again.
...f&#! was that a bad month. I scared Sis s!~+less.

I'm getting distracted.

Most people in Panurgic know me as Manifest, that one guy who brings summons giant metal walls out of nowhere and has a host of angels and demons at his beck and call - and only Manifest. I'm glad I picked up a mask, because there are some real problems in having your face known in a place full of g+~%+&n media crazies.
My real name is Siegfried Tilmitt, and I still have no g+$##@n idea how I'm doing any of this.

• When did you first use your powers?
I still remember how this all started. At the time, I was 10. My parents were inordinately obsessed with hiking, the outdoors, and all that good stuff. They take me and my sister up into the mountains of god knows where for a trip. See the sights, breathe clean air, all that good stuff. Might have been nice and all too, if Gigaton and Terranova hadn't kicked up a fight nearby while we were heading up a cliffside.

Seriously, what were the f$!%ing odds?

The fight kicks up a serious earthquake. The ground shakes, and me and Sis lose our balance and fall off. I can still remember the way Dad had to stop Mum from jumping after us as she called our names, me and Sis clinging to each other for dear life and bawling our f+*@ing eyes out. The ground was closing in, and it was terrifying. All I wanted was for someone to save us, to be safe at home with Mum and Dad.

Then, we were home, in my bedroom. Me and Sis bawled away in each other's arms on my bed, as Mum and Dad both found themselves relieved and wondered what happened. The room was apparently covered in feathers. I still have three of them.
I went to sleep like that, huddled in my sister's arms after the most terrifying day I'd ever had. When I woke up the next day with my sister, Mum and Dad were showering us with love and care, and I had a profound fear of heights I hold to this day.

• Who was the first person you accidentally hurt with your powers?
It's not like that's the point I became aware of what I could do though. We should have questioned it, but all we wanted was to forget that awful day. It hurt so much to consider what could have happened, that we never thought about why it didn't. Maybe if we had, the next incident would have never happened.

I was thirteen, this time. Happened during school. The nightmares were seriously bad back then, and I slept like s**%. I was tired, and kinda antisocial. Things could have been bad for me, but I had Sis looking out for me - and most kids don't mess with the girl who discovered she was an airbender. Didn't exactly have many friends then either, but there was always James. We were...pretty close. Always smiling and energetic, he was always one of the better parts of my day. I still don't know how he put up with my miserable ass.

...James kept my spirits up. He was good at it. He looked after me. Sis was fond of him as well.
He always looked so happy, that we never thought to look out for him. So when I found him being beat up by one of the older kids, I was pretty shocked. He was on the floor, getting the s&*# kicked out of him, and the worst part is...he looked used to it.

I tried to stop it. I tried so hard. But he was powered, you know? The guy beating him could make barriers, and I couldn't get past the one he threw up. I hammered away unable to help, wishing that I could just stop him. That I could help my only friend. I wanted it so bad.

This time, I felt something. I focused so, so hard, and something rose up from the ground, behind the barrier. A slithering, writhing mass of muscle, six armed, and...mawed. I literally cannot come up a description that would adequately describe the horror that was that thing's head.

The bully stopped to see why I wasn't banging on his barrier any more, and stared into the face of terror. It grabbed his arms with two of its, and with a what looked like a mild tug, dislocated them and sent him screeching with pain. He ditched the barrier keeping me away to make one to cover himself, but the thing punched straight through it with ease, driving its free fists into his body with an inhumane speed and force. I swear I saw blood...he couldn't even cry out.
It finishes its act by lifting James's bully up high, and throwing him through the school's walls at a rate I couldn't even see.

Several sections of the school building came down. People got trapped by the rubble, injured and pained by chunks of building collapsing onto their frames. Sis, and whoever else was able, did their best to avert tragedy and help who they could.

I just continued to stand where I was, stock still as James was buried under the rubble and the thing I had called into existence remained, staring at the carnage it had left.
As I stared, it looked to me. I stared into the maw, terrified and sick to my core.
It nodded at me. And then, it sank into the floor again, back to whence it came.

If my first accident was cruel, then this was sadistic. So many people got hurt. James couldn't use his legs any more, and...I don't even know what happened to the guy that thing pummelled. He was never found...though I heard that several cities over, there was a sudden spray of blood and gore the same day.
It was a month before I left my room. I cried myself to sleep at night, and I screamed at reflections in the window. It took Sis literally dragging me out to get a straight answer and a start on working through this to get me out, and a lot longer for me to cope with normal life.

...I miss James. I'd meet up with him, he's been trying to get a hold of me for years, but...
I can't look him in the eye. I'm...I'm too afraid of what I'll see. Like when Mom found out I was the cause of all of that.

• Who, outside the team, helps you control your powers?
Through it all, Sis stood by me. Sis always stood by me. Without her, I'd be a f~~&ing mess right now. She keeps me calm, she gives me advice, she helps me figure out how you're meant to build a cage and what you have to do to call up a specific being. I owe so much to her, and there's no way I can ever repay that.

Though...I guess that's because we're family. We look out for each other. And we love each other to bits. It's just the way things are, and I am so thankful for it.

• Why do you continue to use your powers?
It's because of her I keep doing this. She's always so worried about me. Scared, that I'll go back to that boy that sealed himself away.

So, I go out there. I be a hero. I use my powers to help people, to try to be the hero that people need in their lives, not the a%+&%@* that uses them for self-gratification or the person too busy with the superpowered threats to save a kid from the mundane ones that surround them.

I do that so Sis can see me out there doing my best to do her proud, to not let anything that happens to me hold me back.
Maybe then, she can stop worrying about me the way she always does.

• Why do you care about the team?
The team helps with that. They call me out when I'm going off the deep end, and beat some sense into me when I'm full of nonsense. They pick me up when I hit the ground, and they give me reasons to leave the house when I'm not doing the hero thing.
They give me friends. Up until them, I hadn't had friends in ages. And I'd forgotten how much I love having them.

Today was a s*!%ty day.

On my first patrol of the day, things were a f!$%ing mess. A fight broke out on the streets between a couple of a!%!$@+s and a group of homeless people that decided they'd had enough of being tormented. A couple of them revealed they had powers, and ice and stone started flying everywhere, hitting people not even involved in the fight.
As soon as I stepped in though, all of them started panicking and focusing on me, hitting even more people in the background before I set a wall up. I got Uramidt supporting me, and called in a few hounds, but that still didn't stop me being pelted with rocks, getting my leg frozen over, and finding out that the hounds had bitten chunks out of a couple of them when I was checking over them after the fight.
Thank f&%+ing god for passive enhancement, or I'd have had most of my bones shattered and a bad case of frostbite.

On my second patrol, a bunch of religious zealots find me while I'm in the middle of my route. They yelled at me about whatever the f~@* they liked. How I was a heathen, how what I did was sacrilege, that the lord would smite me down for consorting with demons and corrupting his angels for my own 'sinister' purposes.
Where do these people get ideas like this? I dread to think what kind of s*!+ people like them do to other people in the name of whichever god, goddess, hero, or whatever other figure of worship or respect whose message they've perverted.
I mean...they blocked up a street, they massed their numbers and inconvenienced everyone trying to go about their day...just because they heard I was nearby and wanted to scream at me. Just...I can't get it. What kind of blind hatred leads to this?

And at the end of that same patrol? I found out someone had just left a little girl alone in the park. Probably not even 8. No parental figure nearby, no older sibling keeping an eye out, and not even anyone playing with her. Just...left. Looking like she expected someone to be there.
So, I kept her company. Couple of hours even. I talked to her a little about what she liked to do, summoned up some of the nicer stuff for her to play with, and I made sure nobody tried to ruin her day.
Still, those couple of hours later, her mother wasn't back. She didn't know anyone I could find, and the whole time she just got more and more upset...it was heartbreaking.
I ended up having to take her to the police.
...I really hope that things worked out for that girl. I...don't know if it would be worth if something happened to her mom, or if she just abandoned her altogether.
Hopefully she's got family to stay with who'll take good care of her. If she's just...alone, now...s*#%.

And then, top it all off? DaemoKnight and Mad Moxie attack Salvo's while I'm eating there. Siphon comes along with them and starts draining Henry, and the whole thing's looking bad. After that happens, Siphon starts looking panicked, and DaemoKnight looks like he's about to escalate the situation.
Uramidt decides now's the moment to sucker punch the guy, and s&@+ starts going down.
Those two? Those two were strong. Moxie and DaemoKnight were this close to beating the ever loving s!&% out of me, and while I was already cutting loose way too much and wrecking the place around me,
I was still badly outmatched. I might have been able to keep up, but not without going to a point where I would kill lots and lots of people.
Then, people started showing up. A sand-bender started backing me up, and that eased the pressure off. The past version of Moxie showed up to keep the place together long enough to get people out, and a madman covered in paint with a sword joined us. Twitch turned up and started helping, and even Siphon turned on the people she came in with to help us.
And that still wasn't enough. We were holding on, but they were kicking our s*+~ in. I started wondering if I'd make it home to Sis a murderer, or at all.
And then, a bunch of men in black show up. They help us. We drive off the villains. They tell us they know everything about us. They prove it to us. And they tell us that they'll be calling in some shady favour later, no doubt on threat of bad stuff happening to us or the things we care about.
On top of it all, Salvo's is destroyed, tons of people are badly injured, and I found out that Siphon's basically got no place to go.

...I'm pretty sure she actually saved my life, then. So, I've given her the benefit of the doubt and let her stay with me and Sis.
Rozzy was curious when I came in with her, I'll say that. I'm just glad she didn't act like I'd come home with a new girlfriend or something.
Siphon's sleeping in my room now, I think...I don't know if she's actually asleep yet. I'm sure she expected to have to take the couch or something, but I insisted she take the bed. She'd get much more benefit out of it than I would, anyway. I'd get s*&@ty sleep bed or no bed, so one of us might as well be comfortable.
Sure, having to sleep on the couch might be rough on someone else. But I'm pretty sure I'm at rock bottom where sleeping's concerned already.

...I'm probably going to have today added to the list of days I have nightmares about.
I hope letting Siphon stay here won't be the source of more.