Bugge

A powerful but passive Bugge.<ref name = "bestiary4"/>

A Bugge, also known as a Storied Spirit, is an idea that has taken on life. They are among the Others that can be called Imaginary Friends or Urban Legends.<ref name="ccbeck">“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><ref name="bestiary1">BUGGE: Also Storied Spirit, ‘A Fancy’ (In a slightly different context), Imaginary Friend (not to be confused with some other interpretations or cases), Urban Legend (again, not to be confused) - Bestiary: Bugge</ref><ref name="bestiary5"/>

Nature

Abilities/Behavior

A Bugge's most distinctive trait is their ability to feed (usually passively) off a particular story or idea in the Innocent public consciousness.<ref name="ccbeck"/>

Their behavior is generally limited to the "script" assigned to them by the story they're based on, and they tend to be somewhat aimless or short-sighted outside of that.<ref name="bestiary5">Behavior: Bugges have no aim but what is assigned to them.  If nothing pertinent is assigned, they will wander, sometimes taking blind attempts at proliferation, even if this would otherwise lead to its downfall.  A drawn Bugge may start appearing in other drawings posted on a wall, prompt a fight between schoolchildren or siblings, and drive its creator to stop drawing and reinforcing it.

A Bugge told as a scary tale will scare, but generally won’t take its behavior beyond that point.  A Bugge fashioned as a friend may keep the company of a child.  They are low level spirits at this stage, unimaginative, loose in definition, and easily banished.  There is some debate as to whether going out of one’s way to banish children’s imaginary friends and ‘characters’ is a sound practice, or if it hurts the child.  [It should be noted that not all imaginary friends, Other or not, are Bugges - ed]- Bestiary: Bugge</ref> They are not usually self-aware enough to deliberately perpetuate the story that feeds them (although the rare few that do can become quite powerful.)<ref name="ccbeck"/> Bugges which have tapped into an external power source are the most likely to become sapient.<ref name="bestiary6">The more general danger is that a Bugge will tap into a power source, typically inadvertently, and become something more powerful.  This could be a creator or source (often a child) with great potential as a practitioner who doesn’t tap into that power, instead channeling it into the Bugge, it could be an accidental ritual or especially widespread urban legend, or the Bugge latching onto any disabled or discarded familiar, demesne, implement, or battery of power as its vessel. In these cases it may develop self awareness, the desire to preserve itself (by manipulating or controlling its creator or adjusting the terms of its own pattern), or a more complex agenda. On two textbook occasions, Bugges have proliferated to the point they had to be quarantined - the ‘paper bag head’ and ‘triangles’ cases. In bad cases, a regular citizen can rarely go a full day without running into a glyph or proliferate of the Bugge itself, but these cases were notable because they became omnipresent, a question of minutes, not hours or days.  Something would crop up at every ad break on televisions, on every piece of graffiti, or defacing any store window. Bugge can become bogeymen (in which case they tend to operate through the glyphs), haunts, or if any individual is stupid enough to try to usurp the legend of a powerful Bugge (as in the ‘paper bag head case’, an individual crafting a mask and outfit) then the Bugge can become a possessing spirit, and any of these courses can lead to a much more serious case. - Bestiary: Bugge</ref>

A Bugge may manifest as a symbol (glyph, message, drawing or similar) which appears repeatedly in an area. This may be instead of appearing as a physical, animate Other (in which case they are generally benign, at least until they find a physical focus); or it may be in addition to the conventional physical form.<ref name="ccbeck"/><ref name = "bestiary4"/><ref name="bestiary5"/> At the extreme end, this can lead to obviously supernatural things like replacing every ad on TV or on every wall.<ref name="bestiary6"/>

A Bugge may act as a possessing spirit, especially if a person tries to "take on the mantle" for some purpose.<ref name="bestiary6"/>

An area which has fallen under the sway of a powerful Bugge often seems "surreal", with natural laws being bent, and wear particularly hard on sober-minded and serious people.<ref name="bestiary7">When the Bugge takes hold in an area, there will be something of a surreal cast to everything it touches, such that it may appear timeless or painted with a certain palette.  A combination of noting any Bugge-glyphs and an area tilting in the direction of the surreal is generally the combination of factors that leads to investigation or searching.

In the ‘paper bag head’ case, the ‘glyph’ was key phrases that would appear written out wherever people might scrawl messages [editor’s note: image omitted for safety], and the eerily common sight of people standing in hard-to-reach locations, such as at the top of power poles or behind windows in abandoned buildings, disappearing by the time anyone made their way to them if they didn’t outright jump to their deaths and die.  Such people would always be seen wearing a paper bag over their head, with holes cut out for the eyes. The more surreal note was that the sunrises and sunsets seemed to take five times as long as they should, casting the neighborhood into almost perpetual sunset colors with exaggerated long shadows.  Practitioner observers reported that there wasn’t ever a blue sky, given weather conditions, and tended toward rain that left the ground covered in puddles, each puddle with an oily rainbow shimmer.

In the ‘triangles’ case, all colors that weren’t dark or ‘cold’ colors seemed to fade out, unless they were the namesake triangles  [editor’s note: diagrams and illustrations omitted] that were drawn nearly everywhere, typically around an eye or heart on nearly every advertisement, on any page of yearbook photos, or when the word ‘heart’ was written out. The town was cast into a long winter of grays, dark blues, dark greens, and blacks, with seemingly luminescent yellow, orange, and red glyphs painted, drawn, or etched into surfaces.  Both the inscribing of glyphs and the associated murders (with glyph-shaped sections cut or sawed out of victims, often heart and eye) were perpetrated by both Bugge and by the people who fell into the associated and assumed mythology. People who feared being next would paint glyphs under the assumption that this would deflect the unwanted and unsourced attention, get tattoos of the triangles, cut or burn glyphs into themselves, develop ever-more-arcane rules supporting the Bugge, and perform ritualized killings.

The infirm, wild, and the young are often empowered in these environments, while the stable and serious are worn down, often set to a course where they are focused wholly on getting through the days and ignoring the passing weirdness, devising whatever lies they need to convince themselves that all of this will pass. - - Bestiary: Bugge</ref>

Being mostly idea, Bugges may not suffer much from physical defeat, or even (around a quarter of the time) grow stronger from it.<ref>Strengths: Bugge are hard to permanently root out once they find traction, because they’re rooted in ideas, and ideas spread. In their most aggressive incarnations and summonings, they can be struck down and will rebound almost immediately; in a given defeat, they might disappear and be unable to re-emerge for a longer time, they might disappear for a short span of time, they can disappear for such a short time that they appear to be unharmed, or they can multiply, with roughly even odds of each of the four results.  This plays into a nature that is very chaotic and good at spreading chaos, where they can insert themselves as a motif in collective unconscious and creativity and adjust the ‘conversation’.  The Bugge who are established are good at establishing themselves in turn. - Bestiary: Bugge</ref><ref> Living words and scrawled images that had found footholds in the public unconscious and taken on a life of their own.  Amorphous, slippery, sometimes fragile, but easy to underestimate and very hard for many to even wrap their heads around.  How did one fight living graffiti?  Or a stylized figure of an old man listening to music who filled one’s head with deafening music that couldn’t actually render anyone deaf while he was looked at?

Most weren’t fighters.  He held back his best.
[...]
But Bugges were fragile, and the thing that came out wasn’t. - Excerpt from Fall Out 14.z</ref> They are too large and diffuse to bind conventionally, unless targeting a physical vessel/host or constructing a very large-scale binding around an entire area ceded to the Bugge.<ref name="bestiary9"/>

Weaknesses

Most Bugges only manifest once, usually for less than 10 minutes. Less than one in a hundred last for more than a day.<ref name = "bestiary4">Background: The insistent voice of an innocent can strike the same chords or guide the spirits in the same fashion that a practitioner might, and a story told enough times in enough voices can, if a vessel is available, lead to the formation of a Bugge.  Some loose example cases could include a child that regularly and consistently draws their imaginary friend for some time, with others joining in or adding to the mythology, or a graffiti artist might stop mid-word after hearing a car hit someone, running to the body, with photos capturing the scene and word in close association, the half-written word becoming a ‘remember her’ kind of motif.  Most Bugge are fleeting, and most will manifest as semi-corporeal spirits for a single event only, so briefly lived that it is hard to catalogue or track them to any degree of accuracy.

Because of this, though the word ‘Bugge’ comes from Middle-English, it can be used as a way of referring to spirit-specific, non-practitioner-derived ‘bugs’ in the metaphorical system, with some saying they append the ‘ge’ to the end of ‘bug’ to mark it as practitioner specific.  For every Bugge that becomes something more, at least one hundred last for less than a day, and the vast majority of those one hundred last for less than ten minutes.  Further, some Bugges do find traction, but do not exist as more than a repeating glyph with obscure origin and sometimes no human source for a given appearance, with the ‘super S stussy’ being a commonly cited example.  If such a glyph is ‘raised up’, such as by association with a murder, a greater conspiracy theory, or by a celebrity getting it tattooed on them, and if this raising is enough to elevate it beyond its casual use, it may become active.  Otherwise it is the equivalent of Spirit-world wildlife that encroaches on the real world, and is considered inactive.

Much of this text will focus on the active Bugge who lasts beyond twenty-four hours, as other Bugges aren’t of any consequence, nor do they require any attention or offer much use.  In the briefest summation, the Bugge arises as a story, imagination or symbol that finds something material to latch on to, then if given an excuse, the story feeds the Bugge, and the Bugge feeds the story, sometimes to disastrous effect. - Bestiary: Bugge</ref>

Even relatively developed Bugges are not usually great at either raw power or at strategy.<ref name="bestiary11"/>

Powerful Bugges will only have built up that power in a particular area; if summoned too far from their territory, they will be unable to appear for more than a moment, like a common Bugge.<ref name="bestiary11">Summoning: While difficult to bind, Bugge are fairly easy to summon.  The difficulty in summoning grows as one gets further from the Bugge’s environment, with a failed summoning ‘fizzling’, the Bugge acting like the most common Bugge that appears, then flickers out within moments. - Bestiary: Bugge</ref> Of course, once summoned, a Bugge may begin to take root and add this new location to their domain.<ref name="bestiary12"/> Bugges often waste their power on people who then leave it's sphere of influence, unless something is keeping a population isolated and easily influenced.<ref name="bestiary8">Weaknesses: Bugge are not spiritual powerhouses, and even the most aggressive cases like the ‘paper bag head’ or ‘triangles’ are spirits that linger and wait for the right moment to deliver the final blow.  They act through influence, and operate best on the easily influenced.  They are not strategic or clever with their own use or distribution, and may reach points where they are gaining power and frittering it away on people who will soon leave the area (and escape the proliferation’s reach) or on people where the Bugge cannot then take hold.  For this reason, they tend to work best in enclosed spaces, in towns or neighborhoods trapped by the grip of winter (see ‘Triangles’) in schools and in old folks homes.  This is not to say they work better, but to say that these situations see them being less self-defeating than elsewhere. - Bestiary: Bugge</ref>

Symbols of a more powerful idea (corporate brands, religions) are a good component for protective circles against a Bugge's power.<ref name="bestiary9">Binding: Bugge cannot be bound unless they find a host or a central vessel.  When closing in on this central vessel, it may be prudent or effective to use a greater ideology or symbology for warding and circles, though any circles will generally be for protecting oneself or specific things, because enclosing the Bugge itself is difficult.  Slogans and company logos may serve, as may bible verses. Failing this, the Bugge’s rules can be used against it (and these are often easily sought and found), but this is purely a short-term measure for getting out or getting to the power source and cutting it off. Each use of the ‘rules’ will strengthen the Bugge’s assault in the long run. [...] Quarantines may be enacted with the aforementioned symbology and slogans. This may add to the surreal nature of the landscape, where the perimeter of the area seems to be marked with billboards and signage at regular intervals. - Bestiary: Bugge</ref> Further they have a hard time getting a grip in places where symbols aren't what most people would recognize.<ref>“[Turtle Queen] takes over symbols and writing, things with meaning. They’re worse with untamed nature. We can run, and she won’t-” - Excerpt from Let Slip 20.e</ref>

Most Bugges will have built-in rules for warding them off, at the cost of strengthening their internal mythology.<ref name="bestiary9"/>

Bugges are vulnerable to Sympath magic aimed at manipulating and diverting people.<ref name="bestiary2"/>

Formation

Bugges form from repeated Patterns among Innocents being picked up by the Spirits.<ref name = "bestiary4"/>

Use By Practitioners

Scriveners specialize in these creatures. Outside of this bugges are most frequently encountered by Sympaths and other Deals-focused Practices. Shamans also interact with them, but with some risk.<ref name="bestiary2">Relevant Schools: Sympath, to a lesser degree any Deals school.  Shamanism, with caveats (runaway danger). [...] Sympathetic mages will have the best tools to dissuade and divert, as the same influences that allow them to manipulate people or those people’s relationships through objects are very effective at manipulating, discouraging or redirecting the Boggart.- Bestiary: Bugge</ref> Technomancers have their own terms and classifications for Technomancy-specific Bugges.<ref>Technomancy maintains a glossary of specific terms and roles for Technomancy-specific Bugge. - Bestiary: Bugge</ref>

They're hard to bind, but easy to summon.<ref name="bestiary11"/>

As creatures of pattern, it is considered wise to either formalize or sever any dealing with a Bugge on the third summoning.<ref name="bestiary12">Obviously, there is an element in play here where gathering the necessary information puts one in the way of the Bugge, and utilizing the Bugge does create the risk that it spreads through the area one is operating in. A Bugge should not be summoned three times, or if it is, a permanent decision should be made, to mark the relationship in perpetuity (see below) or permanently sever it.  If the latter is undertaken, the Bugge should not be mentioned, drawn, or clearly thought about at any point. - Bestiary: Bugge</ref>

As a Familiar, Bugges are especially likely to overtake and corrupt the Practitioner unless measures are taken. They may bring to the table an ability to claim territory where they can bend rules, and/or an ability to convert harm done to the Practitioner to symbols.<ref>As Familiars, Bugge have a tendency to leave their fingerprints all over their partner.  They aren’t balanced or ordered by any stretch of the imagination, and may overtake the host or their thoughts.  Strong individuality is required to maintain a sense of self in the face of what is a low level and persistent onslaught, and it is recommended that partners or masters thoroughly investigate themselves and their clothing, to ensure that the glyphs aren’t taking hold - something as minor as the logo of a jeans manufacturer on the inside pocket of their jeans or a birthmark could be turned into a glyph.  Tattoos help a great deal, but are obviously difficult to fix or discard due to their symbolic permanence, should the practitioner lose enough ground that the tattoos become glyphs.  As to the benefits, through the link to the Bugge, the practitioner may gain more effectiveness and a greater ability to break the rules or test the outer edges of reality in contained areas or areas they establish influence, and they may benefit from a durability wherein any critical harm is diffused out to the Bugge or is transformed into glyphs that spread out around the practitioner. - Bestiary: Bugge</ref>

Variants

Buggane

More "advanced" and powerful Bugges, typically centered around a narrative of impending doom, building up power and then acting decisively.<ref name=bestiary3">Buggane - Advanced Bugge, the Buggane tend to build around a narrative, such as impending doom or grim prophecy. It can represent an impending winter or disaster.  May serve a role as punishers, stand in contrast to Bugge as being very strong, even brutish.  Everything builds up to a conclusion where they act. - Bestiary: Bugge</ref><ref name=Baz>“For your talents.  As a scrivener, you work with fancies, mimeisthais, bugges, buggane, and a variety of Others who confound and poison information.”
[...]
If a Bugge was a bug in the system, in addition to its middle-English meaning, a glyph or little piece of story reinforced by a chorus of voices independently reinforcing it, then a Buggane was the advanced type.  Buggane latched onto independently reinforced stories, conspiracies, and warnings, and they came out bigger and fiercer, with more of an agenda, and very often a mounting deadline.

When a Bugge got strong, it could rewrite and capture an entire area.  A slice of city or a town that was painted in slightly off colors, where the sunsets lingered too long, or where it rained incessantly.  Reality warped, innocents warped with it, it had more of those innocents to spread the story of the Bugge, and the loop continued until broken.  Most Bugge were often dumb, distractable, or self-defeating, and the one in a thousand that wasn’t was a problem for someone like Basil or his family to deal with.  Or for Hugh Legendre, the sealer, who would do a worse job but probably manage something in the end.

When a Buggane got strong, it could create a self-fulfilling prophecy, which in turn validated everyone involved and brought others on board, and often led straight into a subsequent prophecy and a second impending doom.  They weren’t distractable or stupid.  They were focused and fierce. - Excerpt from Fall Out 14.z</ref>

Boggart

Bugges born of the fears of a specific individual and focused on them. May start out somewhat positive and sour over time.<ref name="boggart">Boggarts - Etymologically derived from the same ideas, Boggarts stem from very intense feelings and fears and are strictly focal, particularly those most innocent, such as the demented elderly and small children.  May be initially mischievous and then turn sour.  Bogles, related, tend to be more abstract and mischievous. - Bestiary: Bugge</ref>

Bogle

Similar to a Boggart, but more abstract and purely mischievous.<ref name="boggart"/>

Fancy

Bugges from before the western implementation of the printing press.<ref name="ccbeck"/>

Mimeisthai

A practice-relevant meme. An accidental ritual that concentrates all power and creates the supporting architecture to create something.<ref name=":0">What is it?” Lauren asked.  She looked at the Alabaster.

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“You look for the usual signifiers,” Reid said, his voice hoarse, his breath rasping.  “Monocolored like the Alabaster, Sable, and Aurum, unflinching demeanor… often incarnate, judge, something close to the fundamental workings of the universe.”

“He’s flesh colored.  But I don’t think that counts.”

“It doesn’t,” Reid said.  “But those are the standbys you look for.  Decay and death for the undead, usually hardened and locked in.  Spirits don’t seem to mesh with the environment around them, colors and shading don’t work.  Goblins are… goblins.  Fae are Fae.  Gets more complicated when you get to the goblin and Fae adjacent.  Brownies and such.”

Reid went on.  “Abyssal is easy to spot, there’s a staining, a darkness around the edges.  That staining sets in deep, can look like watercolor.”

Lauren laughed softly, before wincing.

Reid looked down at his hand.  Shoulders drew inward.  He’d forgotten in the moment.

The speculation between the two had halted.  Breastbiter, braced between the wall and the gnashing face, pulled a load of intestines and school supplies out of Faceful’s nostril.

Lauren picked things up again, “He’s not locked to one place.  He can appear and disappear.  My education was limited.  One-note, but the nonsensical part of it, he’s silly, dream-like.  Lost?  Or Anima something?”

“You might be thinking of Anima Hysteria or something like that.  But Mimeisthai would be my guess,” Reid rasped.  “Imitated thing.  Like a fancy, or an urban legend.  Humans draw a lot of stupid things, come up with random ideas.  Emergent rituals- do you know emergent rituals?”

“No.”

“Easiest to think of them as rituals innocents create by accident.  A large group of civilians repeat the same action or develop a pattern.  Urban legend takes hold and gets cemented in.  Innocents can’t practice but a million innocents doing the same thing can have meaning.  Usually has to be isolated.  City architecture can be that.  Schoolkids take to drawing the same thing, like some angular S, and it picks up steam, is niche enough and popular enough to start appearing in places it wasn’t drawn.  Some say that there’s hundreds that appear every day, but they’re all short-lived, too unintelligent to maintain or conserve power.  On occasion one finds a power source or gets associated with an event like a sensational murder, gets big enough to take over a town, occupy people’s thoughts, twist the aesthetic.  Practitioners like my family have to step in.”

In talking more, Reid was getting past the creak and hoarseness that captured the first and last words of most of his usual sentences.  He almost sounded normal in the midst of the explanation.

“You think a bunch of kids drew the same face over and over again?” Lauren asked.

“I don’t think he’s exactly that.  A Mimeisthai, a practice relevant meme, it’s like that, but focuses in on a singular point.  An accidental ritual that concentrates all power and creates the supporting architecture to create something like… well, that.” - Break 3</ref>

Other Variants

Bugges have also been known to become jockeys and Bogeymen.<ref name="bestiary6"/>

Notable Examples

• Mr. Rudbeck<ref name="ccbeck"/>
• Faceful<ref name=":0" />
• That Stylized S you see everywhere<ref name = "bestiary4"/>
• "Paper bag head" and "Triangles" cases<ref name="bestiary6"/><ref name="bestiary7"/><ref name="bestiary8"/>
• The Turtle Queen
• Countdown Cassandra
• The Typetap Kitty

References

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