Meet Atlas Moore (they/them)! My Call of Cthulu campaign character from this past year. We played a campaign that was thematically more Gravity Falls/Twin Peaks than it was classic Cthulu, so when I learned that there was going to be cryptids.... well, of course my player character had to be one. It was a secret to the players up until our second to last session and the reveal was GREAT.
You can read more about them under the cut ;]
Atlas came to live in Lane's End (a small town just outside of Portland, Oregon) in their mid 20s, around 1984 or just after. They originally had planned to set up an arcade in Portland since the Intel factory moved nearby, but something drew them to Lane's End and they decided to set up shop here instead. They currently runs Luna Games as well as do routine tune ups and repairs on all the machines inside.
They love games and collect just about anything they can get their hands on. They also keep spare electronics parts in their shop to run repairs, but also do fixes for the local kids' home consoles as well.
Atlas' gender is a mystery - nobody can decide what they were assigned at birth. Whenever directly asked, Atlas just shrugs and moves the conversation along. They are unbothered by any pronouns that people use for them.
They are beloved by the community for bringing an arcade to the town. Atlas regularly puts on events at the arcade for the kids, and doesn't mind if they hang out in the space (during normal business hours, of course). One of their favorite events to put on is the "First day of Summer Play Day" where the day after school ends, they hand out tokens for free so people can play as much as they want.
The only people who seem to not like Atlas are the parents of the kid who disappeared in Luna Games - understandably, but Atlas insists they had nothing to do with it. (This child was absorbed cursed and absorbed into a cursed intel chip that was unknowningly in one of their arcade cabinets, and Atlas has been working to get the kid out ever since)
Atlas is a friendly, but sort of reserved personality. While they mostly keep to themselves, they do not mind company at all, and are welcoming of people into their space. Their favorite animals are moths, and have patch that they wear on their denim jacket that says "Looking for my Mothmate."
Atlas is, in reality, a mothfolk. They are able to hide most traits of their monstrous form (Lilo & Stitch style) so that they can pass for a normal human. They don't often associate with other cryptids, preferring to live a "normal human life." Humans are fun, and they like them.
Atlas grew up in West Virginia with a small group of 4-5 other mothfolk - all hatched from strange eggs wrapped in a snake-skin like cocoon, and none of them knew where it originated from. At some point they all felt the pull, almost like a flickering light, to go to places of power - most flying out eastwardly to Europe (one particularly determined to find out why they are and where they came from), one to the Middle East or India, and only a few more moving into areas of the United States. Atlas, being the last one to leave, felt that they could integrate better with humans if they went to college and gained some skills. They went to college for electronics, and finally felt the pull was strong enough to merit moving out west.
