Alicia 'Mad Alice' Napier

There are different ways that people handle stress, and personal trauma. It just so happens that Alicia Napier broke mentally, created an elaborate delusional reality of her own, and just happens to thrive in it. Most people would see a shrink, get on medication, go to a therapy group, or when the chips hit the table, blow their brains out. Alicia went mad. Not One Flew Over the CooCoo's Nest, but Clockwork Orange mad.

Its takes a special sort of woman to run with the clowns gang

Appearance:

Before joining the Clowns, Alicia Napier was an aspiring model with a face that leapt out of the bombshell pin-ups from the 40s and 50s, and a figure that would shame Marilyn Monroe. She had the deliciously wavy curled blonde hair, the pursed red lips, and the wink that would send a preacher running for the condoms and the champagne. Her career was based entirely around her looks and Napier made quite a name for herself as a swimsuit model, and posing in the boy magazines like Maxim and FHM but never anything more revealing than a hint of nipple or the whispered promise of an exposed hip.

But Napier had a number of weaknesses. First and foremost was that her appearance was the fundamental underpinning of her psyche. I am beautiful, therefore I am. This isn't the strongest pillar for self worth, so between bad boy boyfriends and failed auditions, Napier had a habit for alcohol and recreational pharmaceuticals. More so the latter, as pills seldom contribute to weight gain.

We're all mad, here

The Bad Boys

Alicia had as mentioned, a preference for bad boys. While publicly she dated well known rebels, dilantettes and other social mavericks and renegades, this was for show and publicity. In private, she preferred her men to come from darker backgrounds. She didn't want to spend her private time in the company of men as shallow and vain as herself, and certainly not good looking men. Good looking men hogged her attention, and didn't prostrate themselves at her feet. When she disrobed for one of those men with the mean eyes and the rough hands they looked at her like she was Aphrodite, stepped down from Olympus to grace them with her perfect, flawless body.

It was just a matter of time before Venus fell into the waiting arms of a truly bad man. He was a criminal boss, and underworld noble, and he was a remorseless killer. He looked at her like a goddess, and when they screwed like animals he would choke her and hit her the way she liked, but never in such a manner to leave a blemish on her perfect body. He had money as well, and lavished her with expensive things, like cars and all the drugs she could possibly want. It didn't matter that her career was starting to slide, and her reputation was becoming tarnished. Alicia Napier was slowly but surely turning into the drug crazed diva that didn't warrant the special attention she demanded.

Yay! We're all going to Hell

The Fall

There was an explosion, there was glass and burning plastic, and a lot of it ended up on Napier. Her face was ruined, the burns were extensive and severe. The right side of her face was melted down to the bone and she lost her right eye. More burns scarred her chest, right arm and both of her legs. She would spend close to six months in the hospital before being released.

Her world was destroyed. Her criminal kingpin had been killed in a car bombing, and she had barely survived the blast herself. If not for the expensive handbag and heavy coat she was wearing she would have very likely died from the blast and subsequent fire. But for the first few months she wished she had died. Her face was monstrous, the way the entire side drooped, and the whorled scarred flesh. The artificial eye ended up just making it seem worse. Her figure was gone, her face was ruined, and the only thing in her life that merited its value was completely and totally ruined.

No one ever said Alicia Napier was anything but shallow.

Back on the streets she still had the ache for the drugs. Morphine and other painkillers had tided her addictions over during her hospital stay, but she needed the escape again. It was during this time that she thought she hit rock bottom. She had no work, no job offers, and no appreciable job skills. Somewhere in this time in the wilderness Napier lost everything, her car, her possessions, her home, and eventually her mind. She had been among the worst of the mean girls in the industry, so no one really cared when she fell. Most were just disappointed that it took so long.

Send in the Clowns

Alicia eventually rolled down the gutters until she came to a rest near Piccadilly Circus. She became one of the kept women of the gang, in exchange for food, shelter, protection and most importantly drugs, Alicia offered herself to anyone who had a need. Sometimes she cooked, sometimes she cleaned, sometimes she got on her knees. One of the up and comers in the gang saw something in the broken woman and gave her a filthy plastic doll mask and started juicing her up on the harder hallucinogenic stuff.

Between her already broken mental state and the effects of mind altering drugs, Alicia Napier died and Mad Alice was born. Mad Alice wore the dirty mask, and she was strung, brutal, and utterly unforgiving, where Napier had been a pathetic thing that had fallen from grace. Angels fell from grace and became demons, as did Alicia. Mad Alice adopted only the most minimal gang attire, the dirty mask and usually a colorful dress of some sort. Where once she had seduced with the flash of flesh, she had learned to adjust her technique. Instead of baring skin, Mad Alice had the uncanny ability to speak directly to the libido, to see into the core of a human being and instinctively pulling out their darkest fantasies, deepest desires, and also, their worst fears and closest kept secrets.

You actually believed that all it would take is a few chemicals, a couple of days in drug-induced isolation and a cheap little nervous breakdown and you'd have me all figured out? Like there was some rabbit hole you could follow me down to understanding?

Notable Skills and Abilities

Innuendo and Seduction: Mad Alice, after years of being a debutante in Hollywood, knows what makes men's hearts go pitter-patter and their blood boil. While it is more difficult for her now (strong negative modifier based on appearance) she can still work magic through phone calls, or using a body double through internet communications. She can also very easily puppeteer a more physically attractive woman and feed her lines as she needs them.

Interrogation: Hollywood is full of secrets and the criminal world is too. Once some of these secrets are learned (plus watching a few mafia enhanced interrogation sessions) getting information out of victims willing and otherwise becomes a good deal easier. Alicia Napier seduces, Mad Alice has knives.

Acting: despite her mediocre and forgettable career, Alicia/Alice is a very good actress. She can assemble herself and pass herself off convincingly as a variety of roles. This makes her very difficult for profilers and people trying to get a read on her difficult.

Drugs and Drug Manufacturing: while not able to oversee a drug lab, Mad Alice knows how they work, and can do some support. And once you learn how to cook meth, making improvised explosives isn't that much of a big deal more.

The Girl with the Dirty Face

Mad Alice is dominant now, there isn't much of Alicia Napier left. To the clowns she has risen from the gutter to become something of a reverend mother to them. When she dons the mask, she is a warleader. While not one to build tactics or strategy, she is well liked and respected by the gang as a whole. Her appearing at a fight is sure to give the Clowns present a boost in morale and often swing the tide of a battle in their favor (Leadership).

Mad Alice isn't happy. She vents her rage through the sort of violence and drugs the clowns usually indulge in, but has a darker hobby. Mad Alice likes to pick pretty women and girls out of the victims that are brought down to Piccadilly Circus. She will groom them for a short time before killing them and cutting their faces off.

I'm afraid I can't explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?

Mad Alice is the shoot on sight kind of crazy.

Off with their heads!

Residence

Mad Alice keeps a basement level apartment near Piccadilly, and its known as the Rabbithole. Most people avoid the Rabbithole because most people who fall down it don't come back, or when they come back, they aren't the same. The apartment is an abattoir of death. There is a furnace room full of dead and decomposing bodies that have been heat desiccated by the natural gas fueled furnace. The walls are decorated with a mixture of magazine clippings, glamour and fashion magazines and the madness fueled 'art' of a woman who was once near the edge of becoming a global name in modeling and acting reduced to a feral animal at times fueled by exotic drugs and powered by broken hatred and self loathing.

The most disturbing area is the trophy case, where she keeps the skin masks she has made from the faces of the women she has killed. Her vanity has in no way subsided, instead it has been badly warped by now years of drug abuse and continued psychological trauma. Mad Alice has whispered conversations with her masks, and flirts with more fragmented personalities when she wears them. This collection has become her inner council of advisors and only a few members of the Clowns gang knows about it, and they are torn between keeping Mad Alice around for her leadership and morale for the gang, and putting her down like the rabid animal she has become.

Plot Hooks:

Another Pretty Girl: a VIP's daughter has been abducted in a fairly straight forward Clown gang abduction, typically they bash and grab, send a ransom letter and then deliver the cargo. Mad Alice has taken a shine to the new hostage in the Circus and has decided to claim her for her collection. The PCs have to rescue the girl before Mad Alice flays her face off.

Or after she's done it, because nothing says she has to kill the girl to do it.

Down the Rabbithole: There is a serial killer who is abducting and murdering pretty girls, and while Mad Alice isn't the one doing it, she knows who is. The PCs have to play Silence of the Lambs with Alicia/Alice with the Queen of the Clowns sitting in an asylum cell, playing them as fools against each other. While attempting to solve the case, the Clowns stage a break out attempt and the Queen is freed. She remains in touch with the PCs, maybe because she thought one of them was . . . pretty.

Author's Notes

Alicia Napier is based off of the Joker's girlfriend in the 1989 Batman movie. Her visuals were creepy, with the mask, and she ran with the Joker and his gang a short time before 'throwing herself off a building'. This puts her in the category of unrealized characters. Unrealized characters are visually interesting, or otherwise draw you in, but before they can do anything, they are either out of the production, or are shafted by the production. Darth Maul is perhaps the best example I can think of. Visually involving, everything designed to make him look badass, but he gets all of three lines, some grunts, and then gets killed like a punk. Viper from Doomsday also fits, the barbarian girl with the Maori face tattoos. 30 minutes into the movie, she's decapitated and ends up as a prop until her boyfriend, the antagonist, gets killed.