You have an instinctive revulsion towards actual violence. It’s stressful to hurt others, to
watch others get hurt, and to get hurt. This stress also covers the fear of death that
everyone suffers from in varying degrees.
Sample Violence Checks
| 1 |
Be attacked with a weapon—shot at or slashed.
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| 2 |
Witness an act of torture.
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| 3 |
Get shot at random. Be tortured briefly.
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| 4 |
Kill someone in a fight.
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| 5 |
Be present at a massive battle, with hundreds of deaths on both sides.
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| 6 |
Perform an act of torture.
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| 7 |
Deliberately kill a helpless target.
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| 8 |
Get tortured for an hour or longer.
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| 9 |
Witness a brutal mass execution.
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| 10 |
Watch as someone you love is tortured to death.
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Failed Violence Notches
| 1 |
At this level, you’re superficially fine. Perhaps you’re a little edgy whenever a knife in the room happens to be pointing your direction.
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| 2 |
You are very aware of violence, both as it exists and as it is depicted. It strikes you as somewhat odd that so many people don’t realize that movie violence is very different from real violence.
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| 3 |
You get alert or uneasy every time you see blood, even badly faked blood in a horror flick or when someone cuts a rare steak. Sometimes you have nightmares about violence you’ve witnessed.
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| 4 |
You instinctively take a defensive posture whenever there’s a loud noise or raised voice nearby. Your nightmares are frequent, and you have a hard time looking at anyone without imagining (if briefly) what you would do at that moment if they attacked you.
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Hardened Violence Notches
| 1-3 |
Superficially, you’re much like everyone else.
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| 4-5 |
Your attitude towards violence shows on your face when the subject comes up in conversation, unless you work to keep it hidden. It might be intensity, or nervousness, or just a grim silence, depending on how you cope.
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| 6-7 |
Violence is a common feature of your mental landscape. Unlike less-hardened people, you show little reaction at all when it is discussed or depicted in fiction.
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| 8-9 |
Your callousness shows in your every word and expression unless you make a continuous effort to suppress it. Again, the exact tone is up to you: it could be bitter and harsh, feverish and vehement, or icy cold.
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| 10 |
It’s not hard for people to realize that the deepest horrors of torture and brutality have become commonplace to you, unless you work very, very hard to keep it hidden—which means you’ll come off as tense and guarded all the time. The death of others, or yourself, has no intrinsic significance. You might prefer to stay alive, but it’s only a matter of personal taste. Life, in the abstract, doesn’t mean anything.
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