Unknown Armies: The Birchman

"Hey, guys, you remember we found that deer a few months back? All torn up and shit? Police caught the guy who did it - some raggedy junkie motherfucker, all covered in shit and blood. He'd been living in the woods for years, man!"

Samuel Hardman had started life as your average college dropout.

He studied Buisness Management for two years. Of that time, around one month was spent earnestly studying - then he started droppping classes. He drifted through the rest of the year on failing grades and pot-smoke, slowly becoming more and more withdrawn from the world as the internet and video games provided more and more of his entertainment. By the end of his second year, he barely left his tiny apartment - food was delivered, entertainment kept pouring in, and he even sorted out a wonderful drug delivery service.

However, what started with weed had taken a somewhat harder turn - to keep up with his competitors online, he would drop a few lines of coke every now and then. This turned into some wild experimentation, on his own, with anything he could lay his hands on. It was during a massively isolated acid trip that his mind finally fractured under the pressure, the stress of isolation, and his mounting debts, and left him somewhat... damaged. The drugs had taken hold, and he knew that drugs had broke him - and so they would fix him. But they had to be just right... nothing he took made him feel any better. He had to make them himself - some primal creative urge had held him, and he began mixing drugs with strange components and new cocktails. He splurged out on a chemistry set, downloaded all the Anarchist's Cookbooks he could, and began creating.

When he took his own stuff, he felt more... alive. He was charged with purpose, something... more. However, he felt that the drugs needed new ingredients, to help him fully heal himself - a walking alchemical laboratory, mixing and measuring to finally piece himself back to a coherent whole. He ended up selling off everything he owned, and bought himself a caravan, enough chemical supplies to start a terrorist attack, and tools. He set up shop in the woods, clad in rags and protective gear, and went finding.

He started small - unusual flowers and mushrooms, odd bits and end he found, all added, mixed, and snorted, smoked, injected - anything to fix himself. Slowly but surely, he's been adding in things to improve himself as well - a bear's heart, the light bones of a bird, to try and make himself better than he was before. Whether or not these work is anybody's guess, but he sure does creep around those woods quitely, and he's a tough son of a bitch too...

To supplement his meagre income selling drugs, he also hunts out burls - knots and shapes that appear in older trees, unique to the stresses and strains each tree has went through. Carpenters and artists will pay a pretty penny for these burls, and each and every pretty penny goes right back to buying and producing drugs, which in turn fuel him to find more burls, and so, the cycle continues.

Now, people who go into the woods are wary of "The Birchman" - a ragged figure, eyes burning like fire, who kills and snorts his victims. They say you don't hear him till the roar of his chainsaw is right behind you...

"The Birchman"
Minor Narco-Alchemist Weirdo

Body 55
Lumberjacking 40%, Struggle 40%, Shrug Off Pain 20%

Speed 55
Sneaking 45%, Video gaming 30%

Mind 30
Notice 25%, Botany 30%
Soul 60
Narco-Alchemy 60%*, Lying 30%

*As with all Adepts, Narco-Alchemy is The Birchamn's Obsession Skill, and can flip-flop his rolls when using the skill.

He knows all the Minor Narqui formulae, and might even know a few unique ones if the GM decides they would make him more interesting. He prefers ones which enhance his physical prowess, however.

Possessions: Chainsaw (+3 big, +3 heavy, +3 sharp), protective gear for lumbering, caravan with a full Alchemist's Kit in the back, a couple of home-made pipe bombs.