Barbell Boys (A Lost Girls Contact)

08 Jun, 2026

For use in Lost Girls as a contact for a gang.

This post is part of the Girly Bandwagon and dedicated to my widely beloved and adored non-binary wife. "But Nathe," you say, "this is a post about boys!"

Boys don't exist outside the orbit of girls, who were here first anyway, and this post meets the challenge of "being earnest above all else."

There are those boys in this city who still wear red Chuck Taylors on their feet like American Dreams, and really believe that one day they will be able to spread their lats, catch a hot wind, and fly away. For them life is a process of sculpting their own bodies in an image that mirrors boyhood ideals; of justice, of an inexorable will to fight against Evil, of a body beautiful composed of hard lines and soft curves. This is not the tortured discipline of the business man. It is unmistakably joyful, and when they proselytize about the pump it is with the zest of a true believer. Bright eyed barbell boys see the skies of Saint Tenebrae as one shade lighter. Lost girls are changed into strange and murky forms in their gaze, which never sees the world as it is.

At night, barbell boys can be found in pool halls drinking a strict allotment of beer depending on their training cycle. They will gladly help Lost Girls with the following:

• Provide a temporary boost to Athletics through downtime training.
• Help score drugs that enlarge and tauten the muscles, though they will warn that these are a corruption of the sacred art of muscle building.
• Help in a mission, but only if it helps fight against injustice or is otherwise non-violent.

They love to help with training and moving people out of apartments most of all.

If providing aid in a mission, a barbell boy has an Athletics of 4 and no abilities other than his strength. If he is affected by or sees someone affected by the supernatural, then his dreamlike world is shattered: he either dies immediately or becomes a nihilist. He can fight as well as any self respecting sportsman, but will be killed immediately by guns, chainsaws, and other weapons of this class.

Ordinarily, he is uninterested in romance.¹ If ever asked to hang out he will say something like "sorry, I've gotta go home and do meal prep." Flirting turns him red and makes him flee, even mid-mission. However, if he survives a life and death situation with a lost girl then he must roll against her Charisma or fall in love. The relationship will mostly be unchanged, except that he will stutter sometimes and rub the back of his head while talking to her; in private he will pine after her, clutching a poorly done drawing of her, one he drew himself, while curled up in bed and crying over an imagined wedding day.

If a barbell boy's crush is ever in truly mortal danger then he will appear, perhaps busting through a window, and do everything in his power to save her. This usually means bearhugging a monster and being torn to shreds. A hand reaching to his crush he says, dying, "Ha... I never noticed how beautiful you really are."

If a lost girl and a barbell boy begin to date it is a disaster for all involved. He will try to save her, believing that through regimentation and better hydration she can be integrated into his understanding of normal society. Until the relationship is dissolved the lost girl will spend all downtime suffering tandem bike rides with her well meaning barbell boy, or else break his heart by spending more time with the gang than him. If his heart is broken too badly he will turn himself into a monster. This can be undone only with the assistance of his mentor.

A barbell boy will not appear if a lost girl he is currently dating is in mortal danger, but will do so if it his ex-girlfriend, even if the break up was very messy.

This guy is basically an oafish well-meaning friend, a normal guy caught up in supernatural shenanigans beyond his ken. In magical girl shows it is pretty common to have this type of character in some form or another. Design wise, it's important for a "boy" character to be marginal in the world of Saint Tenebrae. It's also important that it's not a "man" character, which denotes a different relationship to the lost girls.

The barbell boy is also meant to be a sort of sacred virgin, as implied by the religious language above. Contact with the Real—whether sexual or violent—threatens immediately to destroy him. He is something to be cherished and protected.