CeeDee

“People love a safe scare. A little incense, a spooky voice, some cards on a table—they walk away feeling brave. The trick is making sure the only thing that was fake… was the show.”

Early Life in Tirawa’s Shadows

Clara Dexis Wardyn was born on Rhea, in the shadowed galleries and needle-spired cloisters of Tirawa City. Saturnites tend to run pretty, but CeeDee is striking even by local standards: straight espresso-brown hair, bright hazel eyes full of mischief, long dancer’s limbs and a smile that always looks like she knows something you don’t. Her parents were quiet, intense people with “odd books” and “odd friends,” the sort that other families whispered about but never confronted. They never called themselves kthonikers, never said “Redspace” or “subspace contamination”—to CeeDee it was all spirits and signs and “old family practices.”

Then one day, they were gone.

As a teenager she bounced between Mercy Houses, always the trouble file. Too much talking back. Too much sneaking out. Too much influence on the other kids. She taught sleight-of-hand, read fortunes for candy, and gave the other orphans “protective charms” she’d cobbled together from scraps and half-remembered sigils. The Sisters wrote “corruptive behavior” in her file more than once. CeeDee wrote “hypocrites” in her diary and kept going.

From Fake Witch to Real One

As an adult, she dug into the only inheritance she had: her parents’ hidden trunk of grimoires, notes, and something that wasn’t quite a doll and wasn’t quite just a doll.

She started with the grift.

CeeDee set up as a street mystic and “folk practitioner”: tarot and palm readings under a cheap awning, little bottles of “spirit tonic” and “hexbreaker oil,” staged “ghost hunts” for her Solarnet channel that were half improv theatre, half parkour in abandoned industrial stacks. To the authorities and rival kthonikers, she was obviously a fake. To the credulous, she was fun. To the very small number of people who actually knew what to listen for… she was sending a signal.

The show is camouflage. The real work happens in the gaps. Certain “potions” contain trace reagents that her Familiar can track psychically. Certain patterns in her spiel are actually warding phrases or pings to see who flinches when she mentions “things behind the red.” Her Solarnet presence pays bills, sure—but it also pulls in exactly the kind of desperate, greedy, or broken people who make prime subspace bait.

Zixie the Poppet

Her closest companion—and biggest liability—is Zixie: an Imp bound into the childhood Doll her parents left behind.

To everyone else, Zixie is a Tandem Nexus Homunculus: a doll running a ghost-mind backup, the kind of expensive cybernetic toy only a very certain kind of eccentric would own. CeeDee never actually claims to have a Nexus installed—she just talks around it, drops enough techno-arcana that people fill in the blanks themselves. Nobody wants to be rude enough to demand a cranial scan.

In truth, Zixie is a full Imp Familiar in a Poppet body—sycophant, spy, saboteur, and emergency knife in the dark. Zixie puffs up CeeDee’s ego, flatters her brilliance, and nudges her toward risk—the same way Imps do with any master. CeeDee is fully aware of the dynamic and leans into it: she treats Zixie’s endless flattery as a kind of ironic safety valve. If the Doll is still calling her great and invincible, then CeeDee knows she hasn’t actually gone that far yet.

The bond runs deep. She feeds it blood and vice, and in return it guards her mind and whispers what it hears in Redspace. She jokes that Zixie is her “producer,” “Agent,” and “conscience,” in that order.

Potions, Bizgon, and the Signal Under the Noise

CeeDee’s “snake oil” is the second layer of her mask.

Most of what she sells to tourists and locals is harmless: mild stimulants, herbal relaxants, placebos with good branding. But mixed in with that are real subspace reagents and low-grade psychovoric tinctures—recipes passed down Dubhan-style, and refined through her grudging partnership with Bizgon, a Chemwight who despises her nearly as much as she despises it.

Bizgon trades her recipes and rare synthesis components from subspace; CeeDee sends back reagents that are hard to acquire in Redspace. Neither trusts the other. Both need the arrangement. Her “miracle cures” that actually do something are always carefully mislabelled and under-sold, hiding in plain sight among the frauds.

Her current personal circle of known entities is small but dangerous:

• Zixie, her Imp-Poppet Familiar.
• Nixm, a Glare Vermin she uses for distraction and intimidation.
• Rizrn, a Snarl Vermin she uses as a last-resort attack dog in subspace.
• Bizgon, the Chemwight contact feeding her chemistry with a steady, unsettling drip of better recipes.

It’s not much, compared to the great Kthoniker dynasties or House-sponsored warlocks—but it’s enough to stay alive in the cracks.

The Dubhan Legacy and the Rat-Thing

CeeDee believes—fiercely—that she’s a direct descendant of Sephiran Dubhan, one of the earliest and most notorious kthonikers of the Reformed Solar Commonwealth. It’s not proven. There’s no public gene record. But there are whispers in her parents’ notes and a few distinct stylistic fingerprints in their workings that match what scholars attribute to Dubhan’s school.

Her entire life strategy is built around this belief.

The huckster persona isn’t just to stay off the Seeker Templars’ radar—it’s also a way to draw out remnants of Dubhan’s work. Old subspace contacts, forgotten caches, half-burned grimoires, obscure references in the comments of ancient occult forums—CeeDee tracks them all, mapping a ghost network of Dubhan’s influence across the system.

The moldy jar containing Sephiran Dubhan’s Rat-Thing isn’t just a big score to her. It’s an inheritance. Proof. A direct line of transmission from the old master to her. Handing it over to some client would never be on the table, no matter what she says aloud.

Meeting Crenshaw Mack

When Crenshaw Mack, professional cynic and subspace-denier, realizes his latest job has something to do with “demons” and “cursed junk,” he does the sensible thing: he looks for the loudest fraud in arm’s reach.

CeeDee’s name pops to the top of the local search results. Clips from her streams show her reading cards, bantering with chat, staging obviously fake hauntings in abandoned stack-cities. From Mack’s perspective, that’s exactly the sort of “nonsense expert” he needs—somebody who can translate the weird into usable angles and con language.

From CeeDee’s perspective, when a Morossan PI with a synth samurai and a bad drinking habit comes waving Chits and asking about old cursed objects… that’s providence.

She doesn’t intend to let him—or his client—get anywhere near “her” Rat-Thing. But she does intend to ride this job straight into the heart of whatever occult mess they’ve stumbled onto, smiling all the way, Zixie on her shoulder and a holdout laser up her sleeve.

Active Calling List

The Dubhan-Halfborn Working Grimoire

“Never throw away a dropped name. Might be a demon listening on the other end.”

— CeeDee, when pretending she isn’t dead serious

I. NIXM, THE GLARE

Verminous Scrutiny, Sightless Eye of Redspace
Nixm is CeeDee’s most valued tool—her spy, her spotlight, her prybar for cracks in minds. With Bizgon’s enhancement, she has something extremely unusual: a working subspace surveillance technique disguised as holistic medicine.

Anyone who drinks her “eyebright tincture” becomes a potential remote camera.

Glare of Attention

Regular; Resisted by Will (Quirk-level Paranoia only)

Effect: You summon a Glare and name a target. The Glare binds to their subspace shadow for months without maintenance. The host gains a Quirk:

“Someone is watching me.”

They cannot shake the feeling unless:

They suffer a total moral collapse (Vice spiral)

They undergo true cleansing (rare)

They crit a Will roll during unusual lucidity

Duration: Months (GM discretion)
Casting Cost: 5 (no maintenance)
Prereq: Aura or Mind Reading

Side Effect (GM hook): Extended use causes Nixm to pick up its own interest in the target. Glares can become… opinionated.

Glare of Scrutiny

Regular

Effect: If Nixm is already attached, you may “lean in” and project your senses through it. You see through the target’s eyes and hear their surroundings.

Duration: 30 seconds
Cost: 4 to activate, 3 to maintain
Prereq: Glare of Attention

Side Effects:

Mild subspace feedback: after each minute, roll HT or take -1 on IQ-based rolls for 10 minutes.

On a critical failure maintaining: The target sees you back. (momentarily)

II. RIZRN, THE SNARL

Verminous Fury, Redspace’s Rabid Bite

Rizrn is CeeDee’s “cleanup tool.” She rarely uses him, but when she does, it’s to pre-empt someone who might discover something inconvenient. Unlike Nixm, Rizrn is violent, crude, and startlingly easy to provoke.

Snarl Bite

Regular; Resisted by Dodge

Effect: You manifest Rizrn’s jaw into realspace long enough for a single bite.
Damage: 2d cutting + 1d Stress (Sanity)
Yes, that’s lethal.
CeeDee only uses this when she is convinced Nixm’s intel points to real danger.

Duration: Instant
Cost: 4

Side Effect:
A bite always leaves behind a subspace wound signature detectable by scanning or by Wights. (CeeDee sometimes forgets this.)

Snarl Curse

Regular; Resisted by Will

Effect: Rizrn attaches to the target’s shadow but cannot manifest physically. It torments them psychically:

-2 to all self-control rolls

1 SP damage per minute

Duration: 1 hour (maintainable)
Cost: 6 to cast, 3 to maintain

Side Effect:
If the target fails a Will roll by 5+, Rizrn bites anyway (1d cutting + 1d Stress).

III. ZIXIE, THE POPPET

Impish Whisper, Ego-Mangler, Syco-Surgeon

Zixie is always with her—part bodyguard, part assistant, part conscience-eater. The Poppet provides hands, eyes, and venom; its Calling is verbal, a projection of its mockery.

Impish Catechism

Regular; Resisted by Will

Effect: A spectral projection of Zixie’s voice erupts beside (or inside) the target’s psyche. It taunts with knife-precise psychological insight.

On failed Will: 1d SP loss

On crit fail: 2d SP, as Zixie strikes a deep-seated insecurity

Duration: Instant
Cost: 4
Prereq: Sense Emotion or Dread

Side Note:
When Zixie herself physically attacks, the body delivers an additional 1d toxic from Imp venom essence.

IV. BIZGON, THE CHEMWIGHT

Alchemical Parasite, Subspace Addict, Noxious Mentor

Bizgon is not a Calling patron so much as an occult chemistry supplier. CeeDee’s ongoing arrangement gives her:

A rotating list of volatile recipes

Access to exotic subspace reagents

The occasional experimental substance Bizgon can’t test safely

Mechanically, Bizgon grants her a limited-use Gizmo (Alchemy) ability.

Chemwight’s Grasp (Gizmo Variant)

Passive, usable once per session (or GM’s judgment)

Effect: When CeeDee desperately needs an unusual chemical, reaction, powder, solvent, smoke, or tincture, she may declare:

“I might have a potion for that…”

and she produces a small vial or packet fitting the scene.

Examples include:

A gluebomb that hardens in vacuum

A fast-evaporating solvent that destroys locks

A psychedelic miasma for escape

A toxic dust dangerous to subspace entities

A stabilizer for ritual reagents

A smoke ampoule that glows blue around kthonikers

A potion that lets her see subspace flicker for one minute

Side Effect:
Every use shifts Bizgon’s expectations. The next exchange will be costly, disgusting, or dangerous.