Kurio Kaufmann

PERSONAL

Gender: Male

Kit: Mental

Location: Port of Kings

AFFILIATION

Alignment: Hero

Team: KALI

VITAL STATS

Strength: standard (rank 1)

Agility: standard (rank 1)

Mind: standard (rank 1)

Body: standard (rank 1)

Spirit: standard (rank 1)

Charisma: standard (rank 1)

RECORD

Fame Points: 275

Personal Wins: 6

Personal Losses: 0

Team Wins: 0

Team Losses: 0

Tourney Wins: 0

Tourney Losses: 0

STATUS

Status: Active

Updatedude

My earliest memory was of being used as a human sacrifice.

I remember lying spread eagle on this huge stone slab while a man ran the ice cold edge of a dagger down my belly. All the while, my parents and their friends looked on in casual amusement.

The next thing I remember was everyone clearing the dining room to get ready for the ceremony, which doesn't make sense as happening after the ritual, but hey, I was what, 5 years old? Maybe 6? Memory's a sketchy thing at best. The point is that the occult has always been a part of my life. My parents were orthodox occultists.

I lived the life of someone firmly entrenched in the philosophies of Hastur, Mammon and Christ. It had absolutely no effect on an otherwise "normal" life of friends, games and girls. The only thing that it really did to steer my life, and admittedly it's a big one, is that I'm in the business I'm in. An entrepreneur of an eldritch bent.

I deal in things that are of the purely mythical in nature. Artifacts imbued with arcane might, demonic possessions, the boogey-men you can only see out the corner of your eye because they live in your tears, and so on and so forth. So the question is...

If I'm so firmly shackled by the fetters of mysticism, why the hell am I in a Mexican Standoff with a cyborg to my left and a genetically engineered mutant on my right? A decidedly sciency scenario as can be.

Well, funny story...

 

It all started in a cafe, not just any cafe mind you, but an all things considered, rather shitty cafe called Peccavi's Cafe. Run by a man by the name of Seryph Gibbons, who frankly, is gayer than a dentist office with a nitrous oxide leak. But I go there anyway because even in a garden overflowing with compost, there are occasional blooms of exquisite potential. And the cafe mocha's not bad.

And so it was that I got a tip from Seryph on something I've been meaning to do. After a little plying and implying, I got a phone number. And things just proceeded from there. A day later I found myself in the bedroom of a (sorta) half goddess where after some pretty hectic negotiations, we were in the middle of a business... merger, when said Mexican Standoff occurred.

It seems the cyborg and mutant were the (sorta) half goddess' sisters. In the usual sisterly dispute thing, they were there to kill her for her various infractions toward them. Violet the cyborg seemed embarrassed to have burst in on our little private moment and looked as if she'd rather just leave, but when you're in a Mexican Standoff, leaving isn't usually a viable option.

Now Scarlett the mutant on the other hand, she was livid. She had an antique musket trained on Violet and a modern RPG trained on me and Amber the (sorta) half goddess. She was probably more pissed off than usual on account that she's actually my girlfriend and I was still fucking Amber throughout the ordeal. I had a good reason though, but you know women, they like to hold on to one thing and ignore every other argument. Admittedly, Amber wasn't helping with her loud pleasured moans even as she was readying her knives at her sisters.

I sighed, there was only one way to resolve this dilemma. Reluctantly, I stopped cheating on Scarlett. A minute or two of fast talking after that was all I needed. I just had to delay the situation from reaching its inevitable violent end for that time before the Many-Faceted-Faceless-One emerged from beneath the bed. That bought me the time needed to make a clean getaway while my girlf... well, ex-girlfriend and her sisters dealt with the eldritch horror I unleashed.

All in all, I got what I wanted and that's what's important.

 

I win again, just like always!

     Empathy: ultimate (rank 4)

 

You see, I had surreptitiously summoned said eldritch horror to witness the consummation between mortal man and the (somewhat) divine. Had the ritual completed, I would have been rewarded for corrupting a divinity and putting on a show, but then Scarlett and Violet would have killed me. So I did the only sensible thing and let them deal with the fallout.

This was pretty much just an overly elaborate plan to break up with Scarlett though. You see, I know my ex. She has a sister-complex with Amber. Amber screwed her over so much that now she blames everything on Amber. By letting myself get caught cheating on her with her sister, I actually directed all the fault from me to Amber.

Hell, I'm on my way to the movies with her right now. Just as friends though. It's a Midnight Muppets Marathon at the local cinema. If that ain't coming out on top, I don't know what is.

 

Kurio's Collection

     Detective: ultimate (rank 4)

 

"Oh Mack, you do know me well." I said, while caressing the lens in my hand. I could feel it's "authenticity". Not that I couldn't tell through the usual methods, but some things just have the right "feel" to them. And this was one of them.

The lens of camera 3B-660plx. One of the cameras used to film Jason and the Argonauts. More specifically, the camera used for the "stop-motion" segments. Ray Harryhausen, bless his departed soul, was a man who liked to work alone. And for good reason. For one thing, not all the monsters he used were "fake".

The Cyclops for instance was totally real. While the Dragon was simply demon possessed. You want to know why those early stop-motion sequences were so clippy and choppy? It's not because of the limits of Harryhausen's techniques at the time. It's because the cameras couldn't capture the unnatural existence before them. It resulted in jerky movements.

And this, this was the lens from said camera 3B-660plx. If you know how to look, you can see the soulless souls imprinted within it. Fragmented echos of what shouldn't be, of what COULDN'T be, not trapped inside, but incapable of being forgotten.

I paid Mack for the other crap I got from him. Those would fetch me a nice profit. But this, this was going into my personal collection.

 

Cars That Eat People

     Sentient Vehicle: ultimate (rank 4)

 

You know I love a classic, even if it's a trite piece of trash, I love 'em. Take my '58 Plymouth Fury and '53 Buick Roadmaster for instance. Both lovingly restored, painted to perfectly match their movie counterparts and possessed by the exact same kind of malign forces as portrayed in their respective movies. That took a bit of finagling for the Buick, but it was worth it. Not that either movie was a trite piece of trash per se, but really, who drives a Buick nowadays? Dead people, that's who. Not that there's any evidence to that effect, I assure you.

Honestly though, I just own them because I love the classics, and by classics I mean the movies. I'm not into the new CGI stuff, it's all too "realistic" to be real. You want to know when what you're seeing up there is the real deal? If it looks fake, it might very well be real. Take Cabin in the Woods, yeah, it's all fake. But the Merman was real. Don't believe me? Ask yourself, where's the REAL Bradley Whitford these days?

And then ask yourself this: Who is Kurio Kaufmann? I mean really? What do you know about him outside of what he wants you to know? And what's that strange and interesting plant he's got over the-