SILENT MOBIUS ZETA
CHARACTER TYPES
When developing a character for a Silent Möbius campaign, there are a wide variety of ideas to choose from. The original cast of Silent Möbius includes a human-Lucifer Folk crossbreed, a cyborg, a Shinto priestess, a Buddhist sorceress an esper, a magician and a visonaire (someone who can access cyberspace). The actual character descriptions (from such sources as The Art of Silent Möbius the Movie I) are rather amusing, and betray an obvious D&D influence: Katsumi - Magic User, Kiddy - Fighter, Lebia - Visonaire, Nami - Cleric, Yuki - Ylper (Esper).
Cyborgs:
The only Silent Möbius example of this sort of character is Kiddy. She is typical of many anime cyborgs in that she is very strong and capable of leaping immense distances. For a complete examination of the powers and abilities of an anime cyborg, I recommend you read the Cybernetics and Cyborgs chapter of the Silent Möbius Zeta page or the Cyborgs Chapter of the Kazei 5 Worldbook. When designing cyborgs for the Silent Möbius universe, I recommend using the powers listed for Full Soft Shell and Partial Hard Shell conversions. The following character sheets are all representative of Silent Möbius cyborgs:
Espers (Ylpers):
There are a number of Esper characters shown in Silent Möbius. They include Yuki and Rally Cheyenne, as well as Annie the Esper Weapon, Doug and Hiroko Suzuki. Anime Espers have a number of very specific power modifiers that set them apart from the Egoists and Mentalists found in other genres. The Psychokinetics chapter of my Kazei 5 Worldbook and the Ylpers section of the Silent Möbius Zeta Worldbook both explore the subject of anime espers/psychokinetics in detail. The following character sheets are representative of Silent Möbius Espers:
Magicians
One of the main elements of the Silent Möbius universe is the existence of magic. There are a large number of characters with magical powers in the series, including Katsumi Liqueur and her parents Gigelf and Fuyuka Liqueur. Rally and Rosa Cheyenne both exhibit mystical abilities, while Nami uses enchanted artifacts (including her robes, holy water, ofuda [talismans], dagger and sword). Then there are characters from later in the series, including Mana Isozaki and Ganossa Maximilian, both of whom command impressive magical powers. Finally, several of the Entities seem to have an understanding of Earth magic (such as Mouba Dudooz Badina who knew Katsumi's spells based on her incantations). The nature of magic in the Silent Möbius universe is discussed in the article on Magic. As it stands, the following character sheets are excellent examples of Silent Möbius magicians or users of magical artifacts.
Other Characters
There are a wide range of other character types possible for a Silent Möbius campaign. The various Osaka officers were designed to approximate the 'feel' for the original series without duplicating any one character in particular. Additional characters types could include:
- Normal People: As a rule, it seems that all members of the AMP have to have some form of unique power. The character of Angela Ellis was created as a 'normal' human, with no mystical or paranormal powers. She is simply a cop with a great deal of experience. The only problem with characters like this is that they probably won't be able to take the damage that your average Entity can dish out. Not a problem in a manga, where everything happens according to the script, but certainly less than optimal for an ongoing campaign.
- Hardsuits: Towards the end of Side 3, we see a sequence where Roy deVice's police squad is air-dropped into a building to deal with an Entity. The squad is dressed in what look like suits of powered armor, slightly similar (but far more 'chunky') to the hardsuits from Bubblegum Crisis. The suits Roy's squad used looked to offer strength enhancement, reasonable armor, shields built onto one arm to block attacks and a rapid fire sidearm. A suit like this (adapted for use by the AMP) would allow an otherwise 'fragile' character to fight Entities directly.
- Replicants: The idea of a replicant, or megadyne, character seems a bit questionable. Wire seemed to possess little self will, instead, he committed his murders because "...that's my purpose. I was made to kill.". Granted, it might be possible for some form of replicant to be assigned to the AMP for testing, especially if the replicant was meant to operate as some form of SWAT team member. Game Masters wanting to use this sort of character may want to take a look at Appleseed, where bioroids (artificial people) make up 80% of the population of the city-state of Olympus, for ideas on how to handle such a replicant.
- Super Martial Artists: Well... not quite. With all the magic powers being used in Silent Möbius, I decided that there was room to allow characters based on the old tried and true concept of 'chi mastery'. Thus, one could introduce characters with powers and abilities similar to certain video fighting game characters, or to many of the martial artists seen in certain Hong Kong action movies. Fei Chan (the demon queller), introduced in the Silent Möbius Zeta story And by Opposing, End Them, is just such a character. Such characters can have a wide variety of almost mystical powers, including great strength, leaping great distances, projecting chi 'blasts' (fireballs, or bolts of energy), great resistance to harm and so on.
- Half-Entity: As far as I can tell, there are only two people in the Silent Möbius with direct Entity parentage. But, there is nothing stopping a Game Master from having more... In my own game, Ganossa is descended from just such a union between a human and a Lucifer Folk. Such a character would require serious Game Master supervision, since if Rally and Rosa are any indication, their power level would be far beyond that of most other characters. On the other hand, the character doesn't have to be built this way. The character's powers may still not be fully explored or that particular character may be weaker than average. In any case, such a character should be built along the lines of an Esper, with heightened physical characteristics (both Rally and Rosa seem to be very hard to hurt).
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