The Awakened are complicated people. The ones who aren’t trying to bring dragons into the Consensus or steer popular belief toward instant cloning would usually mis­ place their own brooms if someone wasn’t nearby to store those tools where they belong. Hence, mages often have handlers: personal Retainers (as in the Background Trait of that name, detailed in Mage 20, p. 323) who take care of those little details mages are too busy, scattered or proud to handle themselves.

Handler consors are the receptionists, personal assistants, office managers, lawyers, librarians, agents, housekeepers, nurses, butlers, advisors, head mechanics, chiefs of staff, and other logistical personnel whose job demands organi­ zational skills and attention to detail. These folks tend the sanctum, run the Chantry, make sure the office doesn’t fall apart around the mage’s ears, and otherwise keep the gears humming smoothly in a mage’s life. And because her position involves duties that are important, perhaps invaluable, to the mage she works with, a handler enjoys a certain amount of autonomous authority.

In many regards, this sort of companion is a hired Professional, a trusted Servant, or both. Her compensation involves status as well as income, and might involve a degree of affection, too. In service to that job, of course, a handler needs valuable skills and must be unusually proficient at what she does. Game-wise, these are characters with four or five dots in their most vital Abilities, with a high Willpower and respectable Mental or Social Attributes. Such companions might have a bit of combat training in case of emergencies, but that’s not their primary focus. As shown by the list of potential vocations above, handlers excel at intellectual Knowledges and social acumen. They’re cool under pressure and confident in their roles. A mere servant moves through the shadow of his Awakened master, but the handler is capable and respected enough to give that same mage a hard time on general principle. (“I don’t care where that portal opened to, don’t track your muddy boots on my freshly cleaned rug!”)

By definition, a handler has an attitude; it’s her job to handle things, and by all that’s holy and unholy alike, that is what she’ll do. She tends to keep a tight rein on her field of expertise, and probably knows more about it than the

mage who hired her… which, of course, is why he hired her in the first place. Under most circumstances, she lives on the property where she works, probably has an office all to herself, and exerts authority over other servants, employees, and so forth if that place has them. If that property exists in some Otherworldly realm or Construct, then the handler might not even be a human per se; cybernetic, mutated, Bygone, or otherwise paranormal handlers are unusual but not exceptional in the Awakened world, especially in those places that differ considerably from what passes for the everyday world.

Suggested Traits: As always, a handler’s Traits depend upon the role she fulfills. A librarian would have formidable levels of Academics, Investigation, and Research, while a housekeeper specializes in Crafts (for maintenance), Etiquette, Search, and appropriate specialties in Academics, Technology, and the like. As noted earlier, handlers possess high Trait rat­ ings in their specialized fields, with commensurate Attributes like Intelligence, Manipulation, and Perception reaching rather heroic degrees. Regardless of the other specific Traits, a handler is organized, assertive, and capable enough to hold at least one dot in Leadership, and possibly a dot or two in Intimidation as well.

Suggested Templates: Although they’re skilled Human Resources, handler characters hew closer to the Power Player template in terms of the skills and resources they command.

Ethan “Romeo” Berg

Those who know him have a saying: “If you need sand sold in the Middle East, call Romeo.” The guy’s a hardcore charmer and the kind of salesman who makes this world’s Willy Lowmans blow their brains out on a Sunday night. In the parlance of Alec Baldwin’s motivational speech, Romeo’s a closer. It’s not real estate he sells, though: it’s reality — specifically the reality you see on TV news and internet channels. You’ll never see him do it, though. That’s not Romeo’s style. Nope, he’s a seller of impressions in human form, personalities who determine what’s real in the eyes and ears of viewers across the world. Romeo’s an agent of elite clientele: broadcast celebrities from across the political spectrum, whose arguments define what is and is not “real” in our 21st century.

He’s always been good at this sort of thing. Ethan’s mother works in insurance, and she’s good enough at it that Ethan and his family grew up in one of the nicer parts of town. Cute, charismatic, and schooled in salesmanship from a very early age, Ethan learned how to ingratiate himself with total strangers within seconds of meeting them. By way of a girlfriend in the theatre department, he discovered the joys of talent representation by helping her score a modeling con­ tract. Their relationship didn’t last long, but the friendship behind it remains solid to this day. She introduced him to some friends… and they introduced him to some friends… and so on. By the time he’d graduated, near the top of his class,

Ethan had established a reputation for connecting Party A with Party B to the benefit of both parties and Ethan’s bank account. That’s been his gig ever since.

During college, with help from mom, Ethan opened Clairon Media Talent Unlimited, an agency for models, actors, and internet celebrities. Clarion was doing so well by the time Ethan graduated that he was contracted by a Technocratic subsidiary to represent several of their then-new MODES personalities (see Chapter Three). That was five years ago, and CMTU has since become one of the rising stars of 21st-century celebrity management, in large part thanks to Romeo’s unflagging energy and the personal touch he employs with everyone on his client list.

A rakish bro in his late 20s, Ethan is stylish if not per­ sonally handsome. His everyman-in-Tagliatore casual fashion sense, dazzling charisma, and smooth social moves make up for his rather ordinary features. Freckled with tousled red hair, Romeo earns his name because everything he says seems to be hopelessly devoted to whomever he’s speaking to at the time. That charming intimacy feels natural, not skeevy, and so folks are inclined to trust him. Ethan plays the game as fairly and squarely as a high-end talent agent can possibly be, and so his reputation remains golden among clients and rivals alike. At least to all appearances, he’s a sincerely nice guy whose agency excels at teaming the right performer with the venue that suits them best. The fact that he’s secretly bankrolled by Halcyon Holdings (a Syndicate media firm) just makes Ethan’s pockets deeper and his clients richer.

Despite his extraordinary clients, Ethan is not himself an extraordinary citizen. Really, Romeo doesn’t know much at all about his benefactors. He’s got no ties to the Ascension Conflict as it stands, and he’d be deeply confused if some weirdo showed up and started trying to convince him that his agency serves a shadow-war agenda. (He’d also call security on the offending weirdo and have that conspiracy-theory whackjob escorted from his offices posthaste.) Sure, he un­ derstands that he’s got a lot of uncannily convincing clients working all ends of the socio-political spectrum, but keeping them employed and popular is all Ethan gets paid to care about. If confronted with the truth behind his agency and its investor Halcyon, Romeo might just crack. Then, again, he’s not really opposed to the idea of a stable, prosperous world governed by a powerful elite, either, especially not if he gets to be one of the folks on top when the smoke finally clears.