The Disappearance of Clara McKenzi pt 1, Mechanics and Meta: Let's talk about Amina

Alright, let’s talk about Amina! I didn’t want to get to this when I wrote about the session’s setup because it would have spoiled too much.

As I mentioned in Footnote 1, when I got “New Enemy,” I had to roll a new character. Using The Adventure Crafter, I learned that the character was an individual, not an organization or object (Trait), a scientist (Identity), and young (Descriptor.) That didn’t give me a whole lot to go on, so I turned to Mythic which gave me the Background, “War Place,” Identity, “Subverter Scholar,” and Motivations, “Free Adventure.”

Thanks to War Place, I knew there was a strong possibility the character was related to Rudy through his time in the Marines, so I asked Mythic. I also decided the character was female, so I asked if she was a romantic interest of Rudy’s.

Still, I was stumped. I almost gave up until I went back to the Descriptor… “Young.”

Rudy’s 43 years old. The Gulf War was over 20 years ago, at this point in the story, so for this person — who knew Rudy from his time in the military, and knew him well enough to come searching for him — to be “young,” there had to be something up. That got me looking at “Scientist” and “Subverter Scholar,” but specifically “Subverter,” which reminded me of “subterfuge,” and that reminded me of “hidden.” Well, “obfuscated,” but we can blame Vampire: the Masquerade for that.

So, she’s a scientist, but a scholar of hidden information. And she’s “young.” Putting all that together, I decided that she only -looks- young, because the hidden information she was researching was something related to immortality, and she achieved it. Or at least something like it.

I fed that to ChatGPT and it returned Dr. Amina Kahn.