Character Spotlight: Joaquim Cruz, a TL6 professor of Anthropology

If you read some Call of Cthulhu, it's only natural to want to create an investigator! In a bit of a divergence from the classic New England chaps usually associated with the genre, Joaquim Cruz is a Brazilian anthropologist, interested in regional folklore and more obscure knowledge...

Note: Characters in Character Spotlight are created with the "coolness factor" in mind, not min-maxing.

Professor Cruz, nowadays employed at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, was born to a wealthy Rio family in the 1880s. Receiving education as a good as his family could provide, he demonstrated interest in linguistic and human sciences through his growing years. These were pushed aside by his family, which demanded a career in Law or Medicine. He choose the former, being accepted into a prestigious Medicine school north of the country.

While in his third year of study, he went on a mission to the Amazon jungle. There he soon found himself more interested in the indigenous tribes and their myths (Curupira, Botos and Headless Mules, for example) than on Medicine related matters. In particular, he was fascinated the tale of the Gaping Maw, an ancient creature so evil that the mere sight of it could drive a person insane. On the final part of this journey, he went astray from his group and witnessed a strange and violent ritual, in which the natives claimed to be summoning the Old Ones, beings older than the gods themselves.

Upon returning to college he quickly dropped Medicine in favor of Anthropology, falling out with his family somewhat. Along the years, he worked his way to Professor and mostly uses his money to fund expeditions to the Amazonian basin, with a few under his belt already. Though he has not proved the existence of the Old Ones, deep in his mind he knows they are real...

DESIGN NOTES

This was the first time I designed a "cerebral" character. Aside the usual compliment of high IQ, mostly IQ skills and one or two "social awkwardness" Disadvantages, three things were the the most fun for me on his sheet:

• The Dabbler perk: found in Power Ups 2, this allow a character to have better defaults at a group of skills. I used it to represent his partial training in Medicine (Physician, Diagnosis and First Aid)
• The Permit perk: also found in Power Ups 2, this is simply a permit that allows him to own a handgun. 
• The Abstract Wealth rules from Pyramid #3-44. This does away with tracking money, and instead assigns a numerical value to wealth. To purchase something, you just roll under this value (with modifiers for the item cost) and that's it. Seems to fit the genre quite well.

To reflect his connections with the Amazonian natives, I gave him Cultural Familiarity and Languages related to their culture.

Also, since we're talking about Cthulhu here, applying some concepts from GURPS - Horror would very much make sense (I'm thinking Stress and Derangement).

And now to his character sheet!

Cheers