[HoE] A New Saint: Charles Fort

["Kirt A. Dankmyer" <loki@triadntr.net>]

While reading my newly-aquired copy of _The Complete Books of Charles
Fort_, I realized that here was a real-life personality who fit really,
really well into the Deadlands universe.

Below is a writeup of Fort as a Saint for the Templars. I'm assuming
he's an "undiscovered" Saint, that no one has been visited him yet.
First is is biography, as Frederick Biletnikoff (the Templar Librarian)
might write him up, once he'd been discovered. (I'm leaving the "Deed"
part blank... Depends on how much the PCs figure out, neh?) Aside from
the Reckoner-specific/HOE-based commentary, the details of Fort's books
and life are real. Following that is his game-mechanical writeup. 

Comments are welcome.

Charles Fort, Saint of the Strange

Charles Fort was born in 1874, eleven years after the start of the
Reckoning. He was firmly a child of the new age, as it were, an age
when the supernatural was streaming back into the world.

He married young and lived in poverty, working as a journalist and
ficton-writer for quite some time. He must have seen many things during
this time, because when he came into a modest inheritance at the age of
forty-two, he set down to write his life's work, four books, gigantic
tomes that, in retrospect, exposed to the world the supernatural energy
brought back into the world by the Reckoners. 

Fort's specialty was the "damned", data that the science of the day
rejected, would not and could not accept. He spoke of rains of blood,
fish falling from the sky, the dead jumping out of the grave in
locations remote as Riobamba, and people enganging in witchcraft as late
as 1924. He worked from conventional sources, sitting at a table in the New
York Public Library or the British Museum every day for twenty-seven
years, reading and rereading the back issues of every available
scientific journal, magazine, and newspaper, looking for any datum that
did not fit the mainstream, the signs of the Reckoners that was hidden
right under the noses of the conventional scientific community. He made
a note of every one, and eventually he had thousands of such notes, on
tiny slips of paper, stored in shoeboxes.

Though he never saw the whole truth, his unrelenting compilation of the
strange and the unusual gave members of the Fortean Society (formed in
his honor) the ammunition to convince others that something strange was
going on, that there was more than what most would admit to operating in
the world. The sheer weight of Fort's data is enormous.  Together, all
his books make over a thousand pages of "damned" data, published for all
to see. His books recieved rave reviews in the "Tombstone Epitath", and
some of the data from the "Epitath" found their way into his later books.

And though he did not know the world was being sold to the Reckoners,
Charles Fort seemed to sense it, deep down in his bones. He wrote, in
his first book, _The Book of the Damned_:

  I think we're property.
  I should say we belong to something:
  That once upon a time, this earth was No-man's Land, that other
worlds explored and colonized here, and fought among themselves for
possession, but that now it's owned by something:
  That something owns this earth -- all others warned off.

Charles Fort died in 1932, under mysterious circumstances, having never
learned the full truth. Being something of a scientist himself, he tended to
attribute all of the "damned" to things extraterrestrial in origin, when the
"other worlds" he spoke of existed mainly in the Hunting Grounds.

Any Templar visited by Saint Fort can expect to see into the mysteries
of the universe, and with the help of the Saint, remain sane while
doing so.

Charles Fort, Saint of the Strange

Charles Fort was not an exciting man, yet the things he uncovered
inspired generations of people to examine what was going on around
them. Many of them ended up fighting the Reckoners, and though the
Agency worked to make sure his datum remained "damned", he was required
reading before the War.

Deed: Charles Fort appears to those Templars who have discovered
something truely strange and brought it to the attention of others.
Now, since the bombs have dropped, the bar for what's "strange" is
higher. In Fort's day, a rain of blood was strange. After the War,
that's a pretty mild weather pattern, and nearly everyone's at least
heard of the Reckoning. For something to catch the attention of the
Saint, a Templar has to find something no one's ever heard of, cannot
easily explain, and is unrelated to the Reckoners. Or, if it's related
to the Reckoners, it must be in some way that no one, not even someone
as paranoid as Grand Master Simon, would expect. But finding such things
out is not enough, one has to let others know about it, or set it down
for posterity. (Bringing the datum to Biletnikoff or directly to the
Library is a good way of doing so. Recording the event, either by
writing it down or using a palmcorder would work.)

White: Charles Fort, though he did not come directly into the contact with
the supernatural, was not easily distrubed. He brings his dry sense of
humor and his unflappable spirit to the Templars he favors. The Templar
may add +4 to any Guts check, even after the roll has been made.

Red: While performing research, the Templar can automatically find the
data he's looking for -- if it's there. Obviously, this power is more
useful in, say, the Library than it is

Blue: Saint Fort inspired many to fight the Reckoning, convincing others
of the truth that others ignored. For the Templar's Faith in minutes, as
long as he is telling the truth as he believes it to be, anyone who
hears him will know he is not lying, will know, beyond a shadow of a
doubt, that the Templar is telling the truth. Additionally, while this
power is in effect, if the Templar is urging those within his hearing to
investigate some strange phenomenon, anyone who hears him speak of it
must make Hard (9) Spirit check to avoid investigating, though what they
do next is up to them. The effect immediately ends, even if the time
limit is not up yet, if the Templar attempts to lie, and lying while
this power is in effect may annoy the Saint. 

Legend: A major unnatural event occurs that saves the PCs from a danger
that they're in, or points the Templar toward something he should be
investigating. Sometimes both will happen. Marshals are encouraged to be
creative, and if the Marshal is familiar with Fort's books, to use those
as inspiration. Don't be afraid to annoy the characters in the process
-- the Saint's blessings are kind but capricious. For example, if the
Templar is surrounded by Black Hats and he uses this power, dried fish
might fall from the sky, in large amounts and in a precise, circular
radius, burying all the Black Hats but not even so much as touching the
Templar or his companions, allowing them to escape. (The Black Hats may
come after them later, of course.) However, these fish cannot be eaten,
turning to blood when cooked or put in one's mouth, and the Templar and
his companions are plagued with rains of such fish until they start
moving in the direction of an ancient Abomination the group is unaware
of.

Vexations: Charles Fort has no patience for the dogmatic or those who
are not inquisitive. If the Templar refuses to investigate an unnatural
event, or dismisses anything, no matter how ridiculous, as "impossible"
or "unlikely", he will lose the blessing of this Saint. Also, destroying
knowlege will cause Saint Fort to abandon the Templar. He may be
regained, however, by bringing another strange datum to the light.
Lastly, Charles Fort did not believe in joining organizations, even
refusing to join the Charles Fort Society, which was formed during his
lifetime. Any person who joins an organization (the Templars do not
count, the Templar is already a member of that organization) loses the
Saint's blessing for a week.