Doppelgänger

Those known as Doppelgänger walk into the lives of people and can take their place in life.

Abilities

These Others feed on a target's connections, Self and Identity, in some cases outright replacing them. For example a mannequin serving as a person's "good twin".<ref name=":1"/> Many Others might be described as "dopplegangers" in some sense, taking over human lives; from common things like Faerie to unique creatures like the Faceless Woman, even some Practitioners.<ref name=":3">

Roland mimes the Doppleganger, riding the fine line of identity and humanity to stalk and mirror individuals.  Feeding an insatiable hunger to replace an absent childhood, he mirrors young boys, stealing their faces, bodies, and memories, while they undergo a kind of warped puberty, adopting piecemeal qualities of a fifty year old man.  His Demesne is his sole place of residence for the latter stages of this process, allowing him to disconnect from the connections and realities of everyday life and better discard what remains.  The final stage of the process sees him take over the mind, shucking off much of his own awareness and memory, so he might be a boy in mind and heart as well.  As he leaves childhood behind and becomes a teenager, he regains his memories and awareness, rapidly ages to fifty, and begins anew.

[...]

Roland does face a difficulty with his practice, and it is one that plagued him in the first century of his routine; when he takes the boy’s place, the boy takes his, including his ability to practice and much of his experience, with only personality differences, traits, and facets of appearance carrying over.  His efforts to create deathtraps only he could escape, enlist help to murder the fifty year old practitioner, and negotiate with the targets all had their points of failure.  To these ends, he used the Demesne as a thing tied to his Self, impossible to transfer.  Carrying out the process, he migrated to the boy’s location, put the boy in the Demesne, and kept the doors locked.  The man that had been his target would be kept within, to be devoured by the darkness that swelled as the Demesne fell into its cycle of sleeping, waiting for its master to return so it could wake and resume its part as part of his engine of stolen childhoods.  A large part of it becomes this efficient devouring, keeping the target within. - from Demesnes, quoted in Bonus Material: Demesnes Text</ref> They can not usurp the Face easily having to create a facsimile of it.<ref name=":4"/>

Some are immune to their mimicry,<ref>“What comes next is relevant.  A man of unnatural beauty was spotted by Lis, having bystanders do the task of filling up his car and paying for his gas.  The beauty came from a place outside of Lis’s reach, impossible to emulate, so Lis went to Maricica for assistance, Maricica turned the man away.  I do not think this man is gone.” - Excerpt from False Moves 12.3</ref> while still more can tell what they're doing.<ref>Lis reached over, and Snowdrop startled awake.  Immediately, the opossum began to hiss, raising her paws and scratching at the air.

“Oh, wow,” Lis said.

The hissing continued.

“I’ve heard that opossums might hiss but they very rarely bite.”

“Snowdrop’s not your usual opossum,” Avery said.  “Might be best not to test it.”

“Yeah, okay,” Lis said, frowning.  She looked really down, in the aftermath, and Lucy had no idea how to read that.
[...]
“I think you just surprised her.  Right, Snowdrop?” Avery asked.

Snowdrop became human, dropping into a crouch.  She frowned.  “No, wasn’t surprised.”

“That’s a relief,” Lis said, her forehead creasing with concern.
[...]
“What was that?” Lucy asked Snowdrop.  “More than surprise.”

“Feels like Avery but isn’t.  Feels like you but isn’t.  Feels like Verona, but isn’t,” Snowdrop said, dropping her head closer to her shoulders.

“I think that’s just what she is, Snowdrop,” Verona said.

“Doesn’t feel off or anything.” - Excerpt from Shaking Hands 9.1</ref>

They can get a bad rep from both Others and Practitioners for their depredations.<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>

The book Quasi covers many such creatures.

Formation

Unknown but going by Lis it may come in when identity is trying to understood and processed. The challenging of Identity and more.

Can be compared to solid spirits like "anima".<ref> [Lis is] a solid spirit, like John, like Ken.
[...]
“Reading the emails about you guys back to back, it did feel like you guys were a bit similar in concept,” Verona said. - Excerpt from Summer Break 13.12</ref>

Variations

• Normal or Common Doppelgänger - presumably the most common type of doppelgänger that exists
• Mannequin Doppelganger<ref name=":1">

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> - unknown type can become a good counterpart of its target.

• Single White Female Doppelgänger<ref name=":2">

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=":4">“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>
• Practitioner variants<ref name=":3"/> - At least one practitioner emulates a Doppelgänger

Notable Doppelgängers

• McKay
• Lis
• Thorburn Bogeyman/Rose Thorburn Junior (erroneous)

Trivia

• While Doppeltgänger is a word that only existed since the 1820s the theme of doubles have existed in world culture in various fairy tales and horror stories and similar for millennia.
  • There are multiple creatures in European folklore that are also called 'walkers' such as the Gjenganger, these though are Revenants as covered by this wiki.

References

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