Hoarder separated from her hoard

During yesterday's session our Hoarder, Wembley, had to leave her hoard (a library and museum, conscious and meticulous) behind her as she fled the hardhold, but not without bringing some stuff with her. The end result was that her hoard sits unguarded with Hunger+4 in the middle of a riot, while Wembley is on the road. Anyone have any ideas for some fun custom moves to symbolize the wrath of an abandoned hoard?

Maybe have it pick someone else to look after it now that she's run off? Someone difficult to displace, preferably. If there's a riot going on, obviously people are going to steal some of the stuff, and the hoard could easily "capture" someone to be it's new hoarder.

Are you looking for moves that represent the Hoard's wrath -- like a move to use when the Hoarder eventually returns -- or moves that represent the Hoarder's psychological difficulty in being separated from their stuff?

I could definitely see some +cool or +weird moves to deal with intense separation anxiety, or to cope with the crazy-freak-out-beams the Hoard is broadcasting to Wembley on all frequencies of the psychic maelstrom.

But really, given that it is conscious, I think we kind of need to know more about the Hoard's personality up to this point, to give really useful suggestions. The Hoarder's personality too, for that matter.

Mike Sands: The previous hardholder's second in command would be perfect for that. Do you think I should add a possibility of accepting the loss after some time, losing access to all the hoard-related moves but also shaking that -1 forward from the hoard's Hunger+4?

Daniel Wood: This is the second session, and there hasn't been that much interaction with the hoard yet, so the personality is kind of blank right now. Wembley herself is very interested in the past, and her hoarding is mostly a way of gathering information and artifacts related to the apocalypse in order to find out what happened. The hoard's personality should probably be some sort of reflection of that. The hoard has been established as being able to communicate with Wembley at a distance, and even giving her prophetic dreams, so having it broadcast crazy freakout beams doesn't seem out of the line.

Mike Sands: The previous hardholder's second in command would be perfect for that. Do you think I should add a possibility of accepting the loss after some time, losing access to all the hoard-related moves but also shaking that -1 forward from the hoard's Hunger+4?

Maybe. I'd probably play it so Wembley needed to either make a new hoard, or change playbooks, for that to happen. But it might be more fun to play out a bit of trying to get it back first.

Oh, absolutely. It's just that a flat -1 forward is such a boring penalty when there are more interesting ways to fuck with a character.

That -1 is just the mechanics.  If you lead with the fiction -- always distracting Wembley with the psychic assault, it doesn't strike me as boring. 

Is Wembley going back to the hoard or moving on?  I like the idea that the hoard can divide, but only if it fits the game.  So now there are two, Wembley's little hoard that escaped the chaos and the one left behind who adopted a new keeper.  Maybe they talk.  Maybe they hate each other.

Yeah it seems like the second (or third) session is probably a bit early to have a PC changing playbooks -- unless it turns out the player isn't enjoying being a Hoarder, mind you -- so presumably the options are mostly: a) recover the previous Hoard or b) start a new Hoard from the seed of what was taken from the old. But b) will presumably require a lot of time before the new hoard can actually provide all the auto-magical stuff that the mechanics allow.

In any case, given that it's relatively early in the campaign, I don't think that a custom move is really the answer -- instead, as Christopher suggests, this seems like more of an opportunity to lead with/develop more fiction around the Hoard's personality and its interaction with the Hoarder. This forced separation is fertile ground for asking questions -- have you ever been separated from your Hoard before? for how long? What would you do if someone broke into your Hoard while you were gone? What do you want to happen to your Hoard when you die? What one thing from your Hoard did you really want to take with you, but it was too heavy to carry? WHY DIDN'T YOU STAY AND PROTECT ME? etc. -- and dressing up that (extremely shitty) ongoing -1 in personality-specific barfing forth of apocalyptica.

It sucks to have -1 to all your rolls, but if you also get to focus on neat things about your character (like their psychic connection to their conscious pile of historical-artifacts) then that can at least make things interesting.

And as my questions suggest, I think you might consider whether 'wrath' is the right emotion for this particular Hoard, upon being abandoned. Maybe it is desperate and sad, maybe it is paranoid and morbid, maybe it's confused and afraid, maybe all of the above -- it all depends to what degree you imagine the Hoard as a projection of the Hoarder, I guess, but I think you need to ask lots of questions rather than decide in advance that the Hoard is angry.

As for the Hoard's personality, random thoughts:

* If it's made up of a mostly-incoherent mass of 'historical artifacts' then maybe it has a kind of pre-apocalyptic pop-culture schizophrenia going on, full of movie quotes and advertising slogans and bizarre novelty gifts.

* Maybe it pretends to already know everything about what happened, but won't tell -- a kind of superior/narcissistic know-it-all.

* Maybe it has a conspiracy-theorist vibe where it is constantly suggesting bizarre apocalyptic possibilities, all quite vivid but none more likely than the other. Think: Surreal Apocalypse CSI, with those absurd little conjectural cgi cutscenes constantly popping up all over.

* Maybe the Hoard is totally unconcerned about the past, and so is operating partially at cross-purposes with the Hoarder. Or maybe the Hoard is deeply concerned about the past, but from within the past's own context -- maybe it cares deeply about matching IKEA furniture sets and GQ Fashion Advice and how everyone should be eating organic vegetables and voting against gay marriage amendments. Maybe the Hoard doesn't realise there's been an apocalypse.

* I mean it's just stuff, right? Stuff doesn't tend to have much historical perspective.