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Saturday, January 13, 2024

New Salem Character #13: Aces O'rEights

Aces O'rEights (Anastasia Jane Orestes)

Pyramid Tier: 2    Experience level: 4

Affect/Gimmick: Western gunslinger by way of the Buffalo Bill Cody Wild West Show. If you just assume she's a visual expy of DC Comics Cinnamon you'll have the right idea but the only consistent parts are the hat and the tooled leather gunbelt, which she makes work even with an evening dress. 

Gang?: Kinda. The 'pit bosses' in her illegal casino are all combat capable, but they aren't flashy or uniformly dressed. She's not that sort of independently acting villain.  

Status: Aces the most glamourous face of the Syndicate, and as such she's also the most protected. While she oversees gambling in West Covenant and the Spires she doesn't have any other criminal enterprises reporting into her. But she's also a prized occasional assassin. 

Powers: 2

  1. Power Blast: This is re-tooled as her supernatural accuracy. Any firearm or thrown object in her hands attacks as Power Blast in 30" and does 1d20 damage. Just ignore whatever the normal weapon stats are, but these attacks do 1/2 normal knockback. PR 1 per use. With a saved action she can get the Power Blast defense type by shooting incoming attacks out of the air. 
  2. Heightened Agility A: +15.
  3. Physical Handicap: The injury to her knee that ended her basketball career means that she lost 3 points of Agility, and her Heightened Agility doesn't count for her movement. 
Weight: 185 (6'4")     Basic Hits: 4    Agi Mod: +0
S: 14        E: 15         HP: 24
A: 26        I: 13          Pow:  53         
C: 15                        Move: 40"
Accuracy: +4
Damage Mod: +3
Reactions Mod: +2
Carrying Cap: 318    HTH: 1d6
Inventions: She has through extensive training developed a Fan That Smokewagon defense, where with one action she can give power blast defense to up to 6 people in 30" of her, lasting until her next action.

Background/Origin: Did you ever want something so much you'd sell your soul for it? Jane Orestes did, and she did, one night at a rain-lashed crossroads in rural nowhere she gave her soul for the ability to make any shot. At least, that's what she thinks. The police found her shivering with pneumonia in her broken down car weeks before she was to start college on a basketball scholarship. Her coaches were amazed that the girl they had taken a chance on based on her High School play was so much more confident now... and accurate! 

She carried her school team through two near perfect seasons in her junior and senior years. 35 and 0 the first, 34 and 1 the second. No one will ever, ever be able to prove that she threw that last game. The images of her frustration when every shot... including the one at the buzzer that would have won her final championship... went just awry. "Calamity Jane", already a star, became America's sweetheart in a way that winning wouldn't have done. And her father got an incredible new job opportunity in New Salem right after, working for a company that you would have to dig deep to know was owned by the Syndicate. 

After being on the winning team in the Olympics she spent five years playing ball for the New Salem Witches before a bad hit messed up her knee. And then amazingly she went back to the Olympics, taking gold for Skeet and 25m Pistol. When asked how she managed such a transition in sports, she jokes she sold her soul at the crossroads, and then laughs and talks about accuracy and focus and discipline. Using her winnings she opened a high end restaurant "Calamity" serving 'western' food, stealing executive chefs from the National Museum of the American Indian and letting them play fusion with Tex-Mex food in fancy, white tablecloth setting. Reservations are months in advance.

Behind Calamity is 'the Deadwood' a secret 'saloon' an illegal casino that Jane, as "Aces O'rEights", oversees. Yes it's illegal, but when the head of the local FBI office is playing poker with the mayor over there... well there's illegal and then there's illegal. There's never any  trouble in the Deadwood, not just because it's protected but because Aces has a nice open carry license and no one wants to draw down on her. No one sane, anyway. 

That sometimes the Syndicate calls on her to make an impossible shot that makes a problem go away? Well, she thinks she's already lost her soul. What does that matter? [Please note there are no Weaknesses on her sheet that would indicate a loss of her soul, but what we think often becomes true....]

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