Doppelgänger

Abilities

They deal in Self and Identity how they access and work with changes over time.<ref>

Examples: Narcissist, snob, ‘princess’, two-faced.  She kept on hearing it from others, and as far as she was concerned, it showed she was on the right track... which made it a surprise when she started getting praise for and hearing stories about nice things she’d said and done.  Weirdly, it was happening in her real life and school and in her practitioner life and the small academy classes she attended on weekends.  This other her was quiet, polite, subdued, but charming, doing nice things without getting anything in return.  How did that make sense? The Other her turned out to be a doppelganger, a mannequin that operated as an alternate, ‘better’ her that was usurping connections while severing hers, until she would fade away.  Something a rival sicced on her.  She found and confronted it, and after a bit of consideration, she seduced it.  She did love herself, after all.  To ensure the balance and keep this delightful her from fading away, she made a hallow within herself and formed a partnership.  Now she’s even better at being two faced, adopting a different  personality on the fly.  She can draw on her familiar to briefly become others, leeching at their Self so long as she does it, or use its mannequin nature to turn a hand into something more solid, a joint into a hinge. - Pact Dice:Hosts</ref>

though there are even identities that even they can'access.

Formation

Unknown but going by Lis it may well be

Variations

• Single White Female Doppelgänger<ref name=fam>

The Single White Female type doppleganger seeks to mirror somebody in dress, behavior, and key facets of their lives, stealing romantic interests and even families.  She thrives through the established connection until ending her hunt in a climactic event where she destroys her target’s ego and body before stepping into her shoes, sometimes literally.  Most become restless or degrade over time without a ‘mirror’ to copy, becoming drab, neurotic, and detached, eventually pulling away to hunt a new victim.

Such a doppleganger is in an ‘incomplete’ state without her mirror.  Elevated, she fills in the blanks using the Familiar connection.  Depending on the terms of the deal, she could copy the practitioner, or fill in the blanks to complement them as an individual, becoming a perfect fit to them.

Elevated Others can include vestiges, dull echoes, creatures from the dreaming places, and the varied Hounds of War.  Some like the echo are stable in how unfinished they are, while others like the Hounds of War or dopplegangers will gain faces and names as they take lives. - from Famulus, quoted in Bonus Material: Famulus Text</ref> has a hunting phase where its copying someone and then a sessile phase where having succeeded in taking a place it slowly burns through the identity. Obviously all examples are not bound to the same ethnicity.<ref name":3">“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. - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.5</ref>

• Wallflower Doppelgänger<ref>Lis is a Wallflower Doppelganger.  Dopplegangers often copy an individual and some may mirror someone and then remove that someone to take over their life or steal boyfriends (among other things).  Lis doesn’t match herself to a single individual and instead will match to a group.  She averages out the traits of the group for physical features & mannerisms & can act seamlessly as a member of that group.  The bigger the crowd the better the effect.
  [...]
  She has the disguise ability with its limitations: she can pick what crowd she uses to blend herself in even if that crowd is ‘everyone on this side of the room’ or ‘all men in the immediate area’.  Structure throws her for a loop so schools and things are tougher.  She doesn’t control or edit anyone’s thoughts and her ability to infiltrate is limited mostly to never being the face that stands out of the crowd.  A big benefit is she can pick up sentiment so if someone comes looking for trouble and they are a part of a group she is mimicking & averaging out then she can feel that little desire for trouble & narrow down the sources by sorting through the groups she absorbs. - [8.7 Spoilers] New Other Correspondence #2</ref> take their identity from groups rather from specific individuals
• Digital Doppelgänger (speculative)<ref>“Had enough of me and my life to emulate anything and everything it wanted.  Passwords, security, contact information for everyone I cared enough about to keep in touch with.  It knew my history, the music I liked… and I’d been careful.  A lot of that was air-gapped, or obfuscated.  Didn’t matter.  What it didn’t get or decipher in those forty-five seconds, it got in the next few days, through agents it hired or unwitting people who answered a voice that sounded like mine on the phone.  It started to materialize physically.”
  
  “Doppleganger?” Charles asked.
  
  “No, not exactly.  Data vampire, more like.  Started applying for name changes, creating new bank accounts and moving funds, using my reputation and my word to create the image of a new person with a new name.  If what it was doing wasn’t enough, the time I had to spend in there, chasing after it, looking for digital fingerprints, seeing if it had laid groundwork to pop back up again in the future… that did damage of its own.  Hector was an infant.” - Excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.x</ref>

Known inidviduals

• McKay
• Lis

References

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