Charles Abrams

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   <default>Charles Abrams</default>
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Charles is a Forsworn Summoner living in Kennet.

Personality

Being made Forsworn has left him bitter and angry at the universe.

Relationships

His mother had a mixture of depression, chronic fatigue and addiction problems, his father divorced her and got sent to prison multiple times for not paying child support, eventually abandoning Charles and his former wife.<ref>“I didn’t have the support of family. My father worked, my mother didn’t get out of bed.”

“Depression?” Verona asked.

“It was a long time ago, and I think there were many versions of the story even back then. Depression, she had chronic fatigue, alcoholism or drugs, all of the above, or none of the above. They divorced,” Charles said. “My dad went to prison for not paying child support, I stayed with my mother. He was in prison for six months, got out, got his second chance, never even tried to find work, went back in for nonpayment. My mother would go weeks or months, mostly catatonic, then get out of bed just long enough to get my hopes up, back to bed she went. Most of my parenting was in the form of advice from my dad when I went to visit him in prison. Then, fourth or fifth time he got out, he decided it was easier to disappear. He said goodbye, said he was sorry, left me to take far, far too long to realize he wasn’t coming back.”- Excerpt from False Moves 12.6</ref>

He used to be friends with the founding members of the Blue Heron Institute but now considers his association with them a mistake.<ref>“I’m-” Charles started. He shook his head. “I don’t think I can be better. That opportunity is gone now. Third strike. The dealers, the Blue Heron group, and then inviting Alexander into my place.”- Excerpt from False Moves 12.6</ref>

Appearance

Balding and unkempt. Salt-and-pepper hair. Skinny.<ref name=":0">He looked homeless, with the condition of his skin and hair, but his clothes weren’t that bad. His hair was thinning on top, wispy, and his beard uneven, with wiry black and gray hairs. Maybe an addict? Something like that? He didn’t look like he weighed much more than Verona or her friends. [...] “Who’s he?” Verona asked, abrupt, pointing at the man with the hair so thin he looked almost bald.- excerpt from Lost for Words 1.1</ref>

His clothes are in reasonable condition, belying the rest of his appearance.<ref name=":0" />

Abilities and Art

He was a Summoner, skilled at creating new Others, with his own Demesne. All that was lost when he was Forsworn.

History

After leaving home he meet a group of kids that would break into houses and throw parties in them, one of these houses contained books on the Practice and he used that to learn how to become a summoner.<ref>“No. I got to my mid-teens, my mother never changed, I got fed up paying for her and me, I left too. Met some kids who would find isolated houses where the families were going away, break in, and throw big parties with a small entry fee, trash everything, three hundred people who’d steal everything that wasn’t bolted down. One of the houses had books on practice. I took as many as I could load into the car. They stopped throwing the big break-in parties after we had too many burglar alarms in a row, used the money they had to start selling drugs instead. We amicably parted ways. Then I started summoning Others to help them out for a cut of profits. I’d tell them I knew someone scary that’d deal with any problems they had. That ended badly.”.- Excerpt from False Moves 12.6</ref>

This evolved into him working as a fixer for organised crime groups, summoning Others for various jobs for them. This continued until he ended up getting arrested and imprisoned for two years.<ref>“Prison,” Lucy said. She looked at Snowdrop.

“We knew that,” Snowdrop said.

“What did he do?” she asked.

“Theft, some violent crime. He dealt with some criminal groups as a youth, only a few years older than you are now. To them, he was a lucky charm, a ‘fixer’. He did very well for himself, until he didn’t. It caught up with him. He went to prison for two years, turned eighteen, and had his record wiped clean. They didn’t let him stay on the straight and narrow. They maintained the expectations and no longer treated him as unabashedly ‘lucky’.” - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.4</ref> A gang in Toronto he was working with was attacked by a Revenant, she killed the top three gang members and left Charles handcuffed in a warehouse fill of evidence.<ref>“Mine were human,” Charles said. “Well… technically, it was a revenant. She came after us, licked with flame like she’d just been set on fire. This was… I was barely over sixteen, I think. A gang in Toronto was on the rise, and whenever they got stumped or ran into something strange, they’d come to me. I’d tell them, hm, you know, I’m thinking of one particular asshole, he’s a real monster. If you want to leave an indelible mark in their minds and hearts, this would be just the bastard.”

“Bogeyman?”

“Or a vestige with a bit of elemental nestled inside. Or a ghoul, if I want the crime scene cleaned up.”

“You’re a scary man, Charles.”

“I was scarier then, even if I didn’t realize it. Revenant came tearing through. Horror movie stuff, custom endings for each of us, starting with the lowest rank guys, then moving up. Attacked our business, our alliances, stock, money, revealed secrets. Crucified one guy with rebar she’d hooked up to a heat source, took the bones out of a woman’s arms and legs and left her in a shallow hole in the rain, to drown. She had a vendetta in the way only the vengeful undead can. And the thing that got me was… we had no idea who it was.”

“Each death is a hint,” Alexander said. “But you know that.”

“Yeah. The revenants need to stay anchored in this world. They do it with keepsakes, which means you’ve got to look for the places they hit before they start coming after people. Reach the start of the trail before they get to the last of you. And we couldn’t. The guys I was working with cooperated, I told them to investigate and they did. We contacted police, we were everywhere. We narrowed it down to a certain neighborhood, a select few people, and couldn’t get any further than that.”

“How’d you get out of it?” Raymond asked.

“I didn’t. She got the third, second, and the top guy. I pulled out all of my tricks. A few of my monsters, and she still got me. Decided I wasn’t directly involved enough to die, so she’d leave it up to fate. Handcuffed me in the electrical room of an abandoned warehouse with a lot of the evidence. Cops eventually came, and I got my first stint in prison.” - Excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.x</ref> Him summoning Others damaged their innocence and made the gang more vunerable.<ref>Me summoning Others opened the door for a revenant to rise up to get revenge against them, I think. It hurt their innocence, left them vulnerable.- Excerpt from False Moves 12.6</ref>

He served as Kennet's sole Practitioner for a decade.<ref>“There have been some arguable cases like Edith and Matthew here, but Charles was the sole practitioner of

Kennet for a good decade.  But for him, you three girls, and the

natural things one might expect to find in forest clearings, those here are best described as Others. Beings that naturally exist beyond the realms and ken of man. Charles would… manage us. Keep people safe from us, keep us safe from people, and handle problems.” - excerpt from Lost for Words 1.1</ref> His knowledge in creating Others helped Matthew stablize the Girl by Candlelight.<ref>This was their fourth visit with Charles. He had told Matthew what to do to help her smooth over the gaps, and to bring things closer into alignment. - Excerpt from One After Another 10.z</ref>

He strongly disapproved of the idea of awakening the Kennet Trio, arguing they were too young.<ref>“Children?” the man with the thinning hair asked, again. He sounded kind of outraged.
“It made sense,” Miss said. “Everyone agreed. You included.”
“I didn’t- I wouldn’t have… not if I knew it was children.”

[...]

“Do not,” Charles growled. “I’m telling you three. Walk away now.”

- excerpt from Lost for Words 1.1 </ref>

Fall of the Perimeter

He warned both Clementine and Melissa about the dangers and consequence of becoming enmeshed in the Practice.<ref>“You, Melissa,” he told the girl. “You stand at the beginning. You want to be where she is.”

He indicated Clementine.

“Nobody should want to be where I am,” Clementine said.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice rougher, his tone biting, like he was calling her stupid. “And you, Clementine. You want the answers?”

“Please.”

“Then take a long, close look. The answers don’t give you better. If anything, it’s all worse. You know what’s about to happen to you, and you’re caught up in it. I had the answers. I paid the price. I would give anything, not that I have much, but I would give anything to be where she stands, again.” - Excerpt from Back Away 5.c</ref>

References