Leonard Holloway

Character Image

Ability Scores

Personality

Traits: (To be developed through play)

Ideal: (To be developed)

Bond: (To be developed)

Flaw: Deep down, Leonard fears that if the paranormal is real — truly real — then so is everything else. And that terrifies him.

Backstory

Leonard Holloway grew up in Dorchester — raised by his mother, Marianne Holloway, a practical woman who worked long hours and believed in paying bills on time, not asking questions you couldn't afford the answers to. His father left when he was young. Not dramatically. Just quietly. A slow absence that settled in and never lifted.

What Leonard had was time, curiosity, and a mind that refused to stop turning.

From an early age, he took things apart. Radios. Alarm clocks. Toasters. Sometimes he fixed them. Sometimes he made them worse. His mother learned to sigh, set aside broken appliances, and tell him to put everything back before dinner.

Boston fed his imagination. Old buildings, crooked streets, basements older than the foundations above them. Teachers called the city historic. Leonard suspected it was unfinished.

He grew up on library books, public access television, and late-night radio shows that treated the paranormal with just enough seriousness to sound plausible. When Ghostbusters hit theaters in 1984, it landed on Leonard like a revelation — not because of the ghosts, but because of the gear. Scientists. Nerds. Engineers. People who treated the impossible as a technical problem.

After high school, Leonard drifted through community college, night classes, part-time repair work. Too scientific for mystics. Too speculative for academics. Eventually, through a classified ad or a flyer or a conversation overheard in the wrong bar, he found his way to the Paranormal Society — and became their gadget man.

He tells himself this is all theoretical. That if ghosts existed, he would know.

Deep down, he fears the opposite. Because if the paranormal is real, then so is everything else — the history that bleeds, the bargains made in shadows, the idea that Boston is awake and watching.

The Night at Long Wharf:

Leonard had read that ghosts like water. Not sentimentality — physics. Water holds temperature differently. Carries sound. Reflects electromagnetic interference in ways that urban environments amplify.

He went to Long Wharf with his homemade gear: a modified EM detector built from scavenged radio parts, a rewired tape recorder, a Polaroid camera fitted with a cheap infrared filter.

The EM detector spiked so hard the needle slammed its housing. Cold rolled across the pier. Something manifested — a smear of distortion, a pressure behind the eyes. Leonard snapped a photo on instinct. Then he yelled at it. Not magic. Just defiant. The ghost recoiled, fractured, and dissipated.

Across the pier stood a man in a worn coat. Older. Sharp eyes. Notebook in hand. Chandler T. Harrow. Neither spoke.

Then the harbor flared — green and blue light rising from Spectacle Island, reflecting across the black water like a bruise forming under the skin of the world. Leonard's equipment screamed. His EM meter shattered.

Whatever he had been looking for at the harbor, it had just looked back.

Class Features & Spells

Specialist: Inventor
Infusions: Enhanced Weapon, Repeating Shot, Enhanced Defense

Spells: Absorb Elements, Alarm, Catapult, Cure Wounds, Disguise Self, Expeditious Retreat, False Life, Feather Fall, Guidance, Longstrider

Equipment

• The Newtonian Countermeasure (signature paranormal detection/combat device)
• Boy Scout Jacket
• Switchblade
• Slingshot & Sling Bullets
• Clothes, Nerdy
• Tinker's Tools

Connections

Session Notes

Session 01 - The Convergence

• Attended BPS meeting with Diane; Gary Phelps was drunk about Buckner; Margaret warned them: "If the water speaks to you, try not to answer."
• Walked to Long Wharf with Diane to investigate three days of off-the-charts EM readings
• Watched The Ghost Captain pass through Diane; caught her before she hit the water; she said "Leonard, are you getting the—" and went down
• Chandler arrived, recognized the ghost, dissolved it
• Got in a stolen skiff with Chandler; crossed to Spectacle Island; described by Jacques as "an old man with his grandson"
• Assessed Trudy: "What sort of mechanisms did they put in here to be able to control it remotely?" Chandler: "Is that the strangest thing you've seen tonight?"
• Under his breath on the walk to Blount Fisheries: "Oh my god, it's just like the Goonies."
• In combat: Faerie Fire missed (creature saved DEX); successfully summoned Eldritch Cannon (Force Ballista); cannon hit and blasted the creature out of the Moonbeam, triggering Moonbeam damage on exit (11 radiant, saved)
• Lingering injury: Right ring finger permanently under a minor illusion — shifts in color, size, and shape based on emotional state. This is permanent.

Session 02 - Telephone

• Named "Boy Scout," "Venkman," and "Baby Face" by Detective O'Malley throughout the session
• Repaired Chandler's .38 Special on a mechanical check — despite never having held a gun before ("he's read manuals"). Chandler: "I'll be damned." Pierre: "You're more cool than I think you were."
• Confirmed Pierre's gun is structurally unrepairable — whole barrel assembly and frame both cracked, still draining seawater
• At Blount Fisheries: both he and Bo simultaneously recognized the Fae circle on the concrete — "Fae" — Leonard said it like a nerd, Bo said it like generational memory
• On the tugboat: cast Guidance on Chandler in the form of what appeared to be an EpiPen; stabbed Chandler mid-negotiation with Captain Madiera
• Downtime (10 days):
  • Visited Diane at Mass General Room 372 every day; no change
  • Talked the Boston Paranormal Society's ears off about Spectacle Island; Gary Phelps is especially angry at him for getting Diane nearly killed; none of the Society believes the ghost story; some members have stopped returning his calls
  • Pored over library books on the Fae — earned advantage on Fae-related history checks until next long rest
• Revealed his Bag of Holding ("a bag that has no bottom") at the apartment meeting — reached in up to the shoulder, pulled out a quarter Lee threw in
• Payday: $20 weekly allowance from his mother
• Paged at Mass General as "Harold" (misheard by the desk nurse) while Chandler was trying to reach him
• Handed out homemade business cards for the Boston Paranormal Society — Jacques: "Ah, you're very cool, Leonard."