Jockey

Is a broad term for those Others that specialize in forcing themselves into a Host, be they innocent, aware, or practitioner. They can have any number of origins and must be dealt with either an eye towards these origins though knowing one is dealing with a jockey is a helpful start.<ref>Pact Dice:Hosts</ref>

Creation

While arguably any Other, visceral or otherwise, can benefit from and enact a possession jockeys excel at it. Both Goblins and Fae can do it for example, as can Oni. It may be better to list those who can not do it but since there appear to be none this is fruitless.

As it is so freely given a label a Jockey could have any number of origins.

Appearance

Again a hard question because one has to describe what they look like in their 'inactive' natural form versus what they look like when 'active' i.e. possessing someone.

There is a noted tendency for them to pick up traits from their preferred prey, usually humans, after numerous possessions.<ref> Tend to acquire or accrue human features over multiple ‘rides’. Often some combination of human traits and a small, inoffensive package. - Pact Dice: Hosts</ref>

Behavior

Have been known to take advantage of Familiar relationships.<ref>Today, constants have taken hold, and the established structures of the relationship allow for easy application of the parallel, proportionate, casual, and the loose relationship. The division of assets, transfers of power, the dynamics when one is strong and the other weak, the nuances of the deal, and the protections afforded are secure in a ritual many families perform with gravity and significance. The bond cannot easily be broken, and when it can, it remains easier to simply slay both master and familiar.

The biggest danger one faces is the collapse of the relationship through the bond. Know that Others who spread or extend their influence may naturally extend their influence across the bond, corrupting or taking over the practitioner. Others that possess are much the same, and the bridge between master and familiar may easily become an elastic band, snapping possessing Other to practitioner, giving them the easiest of avenues. Indeed, some Dark Riders, Dark Passengers, or Jockeys specialize in tricking hosts and potential masters into establishing a connection or creating an avenue, only to seize firm and permanent control. Know what Other you are dealing with. - Excerpt from Famulus, quoted in Bonus Material: Famulus Text</ref><ref name=HJ/> A properly prepared practitioner can benefit from such a relationship however.<ref>Jockeys make for a tense gamble when it comes to seeking familiars. The same mechanisms that make them toxic when invited in as passengers make them dangerous in the master-familiar bond. Should a dynamic be established, however, there is something of a ying-yang duality, a closing of a circle. They provide a wide set of tools to the master, both through their general knowledge of how people are controlled, and through a general toolkit. Should a practitioner with a Jockey as a familiar be controlled by another, they can temporarily let the Jockey wrest control back through a combination of the Jockey’s talents and the Jockey’s familiarity with the master. On the flip side, the master can provide the openings that let the Jockey take over another and with some effort (and the very high risk, which cannot be overstated), can effectively have access to the abilities/presence of things or people who would usually be off-limits as familiars, such as other practitioners.

Non-Host practitioners play an even riskier game as they do not necessarily know what they toy with, but they can enjoy many of the benefits: the Jockey’s ability to seize control from another controlling force, only to abandon it a second later, the ability to take access to things normally off limits and effectively have those others as Familiars. - Pact Dice: Hosts</ref>

Jockeys are caught in the middle ground between both Others and Practitioner thanks to their abilities, the former resent them due to their ability to tap and use the magic of practitioners, while the latter fear them due to the idea of an Other taking over their body.<ref>“Others like us are the first to get thrown under the bus when we get inconvenient. Body thieves, life thieves. Practitioners don’t like that some of us can take over a practitioner and use some of their arts, and neither do a lot of Others, for that matter. And those Others who set up places like this will discard us if it’s a question between protecting us and making nice with those practitioners.” - Excerpt from Shaking Hands 9.5</ref>

Some Jockeys in fact posses Others and gain their abilities.

Variants

• Havour - echo predators that take to possessing people.
• Ragged - kluged leavings of Others that practitioners, usually Hosts, didn't want that found each other.<ref>Stigma / Ragged - One not-uncommon advanced rite when it comes to Hosts is to purify or alter more basic spirits and Others to make them more comfortable or specialized as passengers. As a side effect this creates the ragged things- the scraps that embody everything undesired. Often takes forms made up entirely of blemishes, ugly tattoos, scars, or other physical ugliness, drawn together into spidery or centipede-like shapes. More about price than about deals, they are less intelligent and more malicious. May be kept as weapons or curses in physical form that are summoned in a conflict - when found in the wild, they are the result of these summonings when unsuccessful or careless, or general carelessness when purifying a spirit and not cleaning up the impurities after. When they take control, there is a clear physical mark. They can be removed in the usual way, or by cutting out the impurity. - Pact Dice: Hosts</ref>
• Insinuation - more abstract Others caught in a feedback loop and collecting power.<ref>Insinuations - Where some Jockeys in the wild linger near the vulnerable members of the population, sometimes abstract Others who find themselves in the proximity of vulnerable people may enter into a feedback loop and become very Jockey-like. They may be ghosts that linger near a bereaving family member with zero defenses, or an imaginary friend vestige that is passed on from child to child at an orphanage where children are abused. They whisper, they are heard, and they worm their way in through the ears, waiting not for a moment of weakness, but a critical moment when something powerful happens, and they can seize that power and seize control. After a hundred times where the vulnerable one said ‘yes’, they’ve often forgotten how to say ‘no’. They are things of deals, more than things of price. - Pact Dice: Hosts</ref>
• Dark Riders - Can be a alternative term for Jockeys; Host jargon for jockeys that specifically focus on the dreams of vulnerable people.<ref>Dark Riders were Others, sometimes Fae, who found the displaced with a minimum of connections protecting them, like orphans and refugees, and ‘rode’ them while they were still asleep. The afflicted would have vivid nightmares and then wake in a strange place, hurt and exhausted. The Dark Rider would then take them further and further each night, unless the afflicted found connection or found the right superstition to scare them off. Given a chance, the Dark Rider or group of Riders would steer them from this world to another, to be sold or given to an Other. Only those without connections could be preyed on, because a secure and connected home would ‘tie them down’ for all of the Rider’s intents and purposes. - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.2</ref>

Notable Jockeys

• Jockey contacted by Matthew Moss <ref>Out on a Limb 3.7</ref>
• 'House' Jockey monster<ref name=HJ>“Possession class was a lot of what we already knew, but there were some good fundamentals,” Verona said. “Everything takes up space. Where it gets tricky is that there are a lot of things where Others will get their hooks into major parts of you. They can take your body, sometimes, but not your face. So their face will change over time.”
  
  “There’s that Single White Female doppleganger,” Avery noted.
  
  “I looked it up. That’s an old movie. Single white female seeks same,” Lucy said.
  
  “Yeahhh, like that. Taking over your life and then getting rid of you, but I don’t think their face and hair change,” Verona said. “Then you have the Jockeys, which we heard about before, from a person I won’t name…”
  
  “And in Famulus,” Lucy said. “It’s a danger you have to take into consideration if you’re going to tie yourself to Others or invite them in.”
  
  “I wonder if there’s a house jockey,” Verona mused. “A ‘failure to launch’ Other who moves in and doesn’t move out.”
  
  “There is,” Tymon said, walking behind them. “There’s a whole group of Others who invade human spaces like that. We’ve got a group of ’em at home, they’re a quote-unquote ‘family’ that finds ways into people’s houses and live in the walls, back of closets, and vents. Thin, twisted people, creep out at night and silently eat food, use toothbrushes, wash themselves at the sink. The Other kid would be awake under the bed while the house’s kid slept, creep out to play with the human kid’s toys in silence, then finish the night by urinating on the bed to make the kid think they’d done it. I won’t get into details, but we had to bind one that nearly killed an old guy by being really unhygenic about it, to protect people.”
  
  “Why?” Lucy asked. “Just… why?”
  
  “Because monsters reflect our anxieties. Anxiety creates vulnerability, and with all the varied, basic types of Other out there, something’s going to find it’s a near-enough fit for that point of weakness. Then they evolve to fit further.” - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.5</ref>
• Mr. Rudbeck<ref>As she paced, this time, the man in the fine suit with the snake and flowers instead of a neck and head turned to stay facing her, one hand casually behind his back, the other fiddling with a button on his suit. He was very still, but for the fact that he gave her his full and unerring attention, turning his body to keep her in his focus.
  [...]
  …Or facing possession by something like Mr. Rudbeck, a snake slithering into you, nestling into a part of you deeper than biology goes, and squeezing you out, because he can occupy the vessel of your body more easily than your Self and Soul can, just as his flowers and grasses will grow through every place and everything nearby, making it his. There is no mundane defense to this lightning, no easy recovery or being saved from the absorption, and no way to fend off the snake yourself. With a very quick friend, perhaps, but it could just as easily take them. What then?”
  [...]
  “Mr. Rudbeck is a Fancy, an old version of a Bugge or Buggane, or an old version of an Urban Legend, though I despise how imprecise that particular term is. In an era before the printing press, certain ideas or glyphs would take hold, recur in the public consciousness, and find something to latch onto or manifest within. The recurring story or idea feeds the Fancy, and the Fancy can, on rare occasion, become crafty enough to perpetuate the story that feeds it. Mr. Rudbeck is one such Fancy, and attained a level of influence approaching that of a lesser divinity.” - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.1</ref>
• Bridge - self-reports as a "living false accusation"<ref>“I am the embodiment of where trying to ‘talk’ gets you,” Bridge said, the babysitter’s voice soft and wary. “A living false accusation.” -Excerpt from Shaking Hands 9.12</ref>
• The menagerie of Florin Pesch

References

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