Brooklyn Taylor

Brooklyn Taylor is a character from The Spectacular Exhibition.

Weapons/Abilities
Brooklyn (or Brookie, to the two people she still talks with on a regular basis) is a ghost, accidentally but not unhappily bound to a rocket-propelled (scum-hunting) chainsaw she made herself. It’s a pretty stock-standard chainsaw that her poltergeisty levitation powers can lift about three feet off the ground (as well as provide enough co-ordination to facilitate carving messages into walls), but to give it a bit of extra pep there’s a honking great jet engine in the back which can get the whole contraption moving at a neat clip of up to 70km/h. It’s also got four smaller jets, arranged in a crosshair formation round the chainsaw’s chassis, which help with reorienting/stabilising it. I mentioned this under weapons, because sticking your hand near them while operating really isn’t recommended. Although she’s stuck in the chainsaw, Brooklyn had/has an affinity for machines, and can possess additional machines or bits of metal in general. There’s also a spot welder attached to the chainsaw’s undercarriage, for repairs on the go. Both the engines and the welder run on what Brooklyn jokingly refers to as “ghost juice.” Nobody’s quite sure what this is, exactly, but she still won’t say no to a decent mouthful of petrol/lighter fluid/other flammable substance. Being dead also granted Brooklyn a whole bunch of new senses she didn’t have while alive, which I’ll collectively and vaguely refer to as “ghost vision”. Objects and architecture visually “taste” different, if that even makes sense, depending on the memories associated with them. Living things, especially sentient ones, can’t hide from her – she’s convinced she’s got the powers to read their intentions, too, but her proficiency in that skill is debatable.

Description
Well, Brookie’s a home-made, clanking, smoky, roaring chainsaw. With rockets on the blunt end. A gruff exterior notwithstanding, she’s a rather amicable individual for someone who got brutally murdered three years ago. Being an atheist with strong agnostic-pagan tendencies in life and not being too hung up about life after death one way or another, becoming a ghost was an understandable surprise but not one she regrets all that much. She’s having too much fun these days. Death might’ve pushed the already rather eccentric Brooklyn round the bend or over the edge (they seem to lead to the same place, anyway) – though considering her strong mad scientist tendencies in life, chances were she’d have invented teleportation to get her there safely anyway. Brooklyn’s not above vigilantism, or, for that matter, property damage just for the hell of it. She’s nothing if not practical, but skips between pragmatism and rather ludicrous flights of fancy. Losing opposable thumbs did (luckily or unluckily, depending how you look at it) curb her appetite for making experimental and probably illegal inventions.

Mental Diagnosis
Mildly paranoid-delusional; frequent mood swings; irresponsibility and inability to understand consequences; violent/psychopathic tendencies. Erratic personality may be symptomatic of unresolved issues surrounding untimely death, and her role in the deaths of others.

Biography
Brooklyn was, when it comes down to it, the victim of her own inability to tell when people are lying. She’ll always hotly maintain it was that little bastard Christopher’s fault, but she forgives him because she got him good with that fireball curse. Kinda. She wouldn’t mind catching up with him again now that she built that chainsaw she was always joking about. But anyway. Emeritus Professor of Engineering Brooklyn Taylor was one of the eighteen victims of the Schmaltz Mansion fire, whose remains were never found. That’s according to the police reports, which Brookie knows are a load of bollocks - the ones truly responsible for the death of the 18 got away pretty much scot-free. Long story short, there was a party and a murder and a lynch mob and some rather poor decisions on Brooklyn’s part, but the net result was her old friend Abe Schmaltz’ manor razed to the ground (that was technically Brookie’s doing), Abe himself (or his ghost, anyway) taking up residence in a microwave oven (also Brookie’s doing), and Brooklyn’s also-ghost stuck inside a chainsaw with rockets she’d cobbled together herself the night before she was killed, in a (successful) attempt to exact a bit of justice upon the murderers (you guessed it). Like I mentioned earlier, the perps got away, but not without really nasty injuries they could never tell the truth about. That done, Brooklyn got a bit despondent for a while considering, y’know, that she was dead. At sixty-eight it was a little bit early to be thinking about shuffling off the mortal coil, especially for a healthy lady like herself. Then the cops showed up. Not too enamoured with the fact they hadn’t dragged the representatives of the Sanguine company back for her bloodstained entertainment, Brooklyn put on a great show, scared off the investigators, and made sure the rumours of Schmaltz Manor being haunted got around. She didn’t like indulging idiots, though, so whenever some paranormal investigator or another drove up to the estate she’d head off on a smoke-belching joyride across the misty moors surrounding Kettlesgate. Her excursions became well-documented amongst the townsfolk, who enjoyed a bit of fame for it. Appreciating the fact she was something of a tourist attraction, they avoided mentioning that Schmaltz Estate was her roost, and generally gave her much-appreciated privacy. Brooklyn spent about three years in this fashion before she was kidnapped; her sole conversants were Abe Schmaltz’ ghost and a twelve-year old girl called Jessie who’d visit the estate about once a month, bringing news from the wider world and a chance for the rocket-propelled chainsaw to practice her writing (which was still pretty untidy in words less than a foot tall carved onto a vertical surface. Brooklyn can’t talk, she’s a chainsaw). Then she was teleported to a battle to the death. I suspect she’s going to be annoyed, but more in a grouchy nearly-septuagenarian sense than because she’s got any moral quandaries with it.