Junkyard Encounters, Part 2
The Test of the Cleanser
The Cleanser has two potential problems to deal with at once: the PCs and the Ballards. Having identified the latter as thieves trying to steal back life already ended from death’s embrace it will instead ambush the PC cabal trying take one of them hostage. If it can achieve this it will interrogate the group from a position of relative safety, making its own politics clear and hoping it can get them to play along.
If they comply it will offer a compromise, a way for them to prove what they say, it knows where the Ballards are and where they are going to rescue those of them that have died in their games. If they are able to stop them the Cleanser will consider them allies and it will make intimations that it can provide them with safe passage and resources. Not being entirely sane it will begin to see this arrangement as genuine rather than a ruse, becoming a staunch and easily steered ally of convenience against the dangers of the Junkyard if the cabal complies. At least until they try to take someone home.
The Ballards are under prepared for what the Junkyard has thrown at them on this trip, currently held together only by the will of their leadership. Violence will scatter all but a handful of their pilgrims and those that remain will inexpertly defend themselves with pistols and a shotgun. The Cleanser will happily hunt and slaughter the lot of them.
Mother Dearest
Rebecca Mercer believed in the interconnectness of all life on Earth as a single organism. Where she differed from most gaians is that she believes in tooth-and-claw survival of the fittest. Strain on the environment is immaterial when other species would only do the same given the chance, in order for the whole to evolve organs must fight for supremacy. Humanities' shortsightedness is only a problem for those of them who fail to prepare. Nature is vicious scarcity and chaos, not harmony.
This perspective pushed her to find a way to live forever through her children, Greg and Wendy Mercer. Unfortunately for her she died before she could claim their bodies for herself. Their reunion in the Junkyard has stirred the mystic connection the three share and roused a figment of her as a demon. She will dog their steps, trying to possess one of them before they leave which would cause her to disintegrate again. Her Urge stat is equal to 20% plus any percentiles Wendy sheds from her favourite relationship. She will use unnatural phenomenon to cajole, threaten and beg before resorting to causing distractions at dangerous moments and leading enemies to the cabal.
If her children are ever in life-threatening danger she will try to intervene. She doesn’t care for them as people but sees them as wayward limbs to be reacquired.
Raider Nuke Trade
Freya’s Liberated have gotten the impression that Saturn’s Bulls are a bigger deal in the real world than they actually are, that's why they’re trying to sell nuclear weapons recovered from an old submarine to the small-time drug gang. Arturo is keen to maintain his hold on the Liberated and is playing up to this misconception but is inwardly distressed by the idea of having to dispose of something that will get him on every terror watchlist there is. Depending on prior interactions he may bring the PCs along as additional help or patsies if he intends to do something rash, in either case they are disposable to him.
The Liberated are encamped on the deck of a sunken oil tanker, it gives them a platform that they can easily survey their surroundings from and defend from attackers. The hull has been carved open to act as a garage for their salvaged vehicles. The edges of the deck have mounted guns and primitive siege weaponry welded and riveted in place and the raiders are similarly well armed. If roused in numbers their vehicle column - festooned in skull and nordic myth based imagery - is a sight to behold.
Slaver Dogpile
Screaming and pleading a lone, bedraggled person comes sprinting into view clutching a cheap, costume jewellery heart locket. Begging the players to fill the locket it hysterically latches on to them, shaking and refusing to let go. Before they can deal with this another appears, then another and then another.
There are no shortage of potential slaves in the Junkyard, so the slavers have perfected a technique for running off interlopers like a human wave attack. Giving a brutalised slave a life locket (see below) with just a few minutes charge they prod them into a panicked frenzy before pointing them in the direction of the players: “this is the only thing keeping you alive and those people can refill it, go convince them to save you”. Then they do it again and again and again, creating a panicked mob that trickles and then pours. All begging to be saved.
Recursion Joe
Joe Trebles is an aberration amongst the dead. He is locked in his final actions like the rest of them but cannot be freed by the touch of an outsider. He’s also keenly aware of his surroundings. Past madness, he regards this fate as a Sisyphean punishment for wrongs he committed in life although he can't provide evidence for any more than the most pedestrian sins. He is very keen to talk to people, it’s his only relief from the constant cycle of death and terror. Assigning them roles as psychopomps, spiritual judges and tormentors in his personal hell, any reception is down to how the moment and the person strikes him.
By some strange token this rubs off on people. If you spend enough time in Joe’s vicinity and play up to the role he assigns you it will briefly attune you to the statosphere. People looking at you see some of what he does, like a shimmering mirage. Give anyone charged up this way access to the first channel of an appropriate archetype at 35%, this power fades rapidly outside of Joe’s penumbra.
Artifact: Life Locket
Power: Minor.
Description: A chintzy, mass-produced heart-shaped locket on a faux-gold chain, one wouldn’t look out of place in a toy store or as a claw machine prize. Instead of a photograph inside is a small piece of twisted scrap metal, each salvaged from a unique Junkyard wreck.
Effect: The slavers use these as batteries and currency, the secret of their creation is a guarded secret and is one of the few reasons they are at all tolerated.
Life lockets are a microcosm of the Junkyard’s hunger and can be fed percentiles from a Favourite relationship at will. Each can hold up to 20 percentiles. If something damages the Favourite relationship of someone wearing a life locket (be it coercion, shedding percentiles to feed the Junkyard or a supernatural attack) the damage comes out of the locket’s percentiles first. If the locket runs dry it cracks and the chain breaks, rendering it useless.
They’re called life lockets because of their ability to sustain the dead. Each percentile point invested in a locket allows one of the dead to exist independently of physical contact with the person who woke them for a period of five minutes. If that runs out and they haven’t re-established contact then poof, they’re gone.
Life lockets are bound to the Junkyard and do not function outside of it.
Effect: The slavers use these as batteries and currency, the secret of their creation is a guarded secret and is one of the few reasons they are at all tolerated.
Life lockets are a microcosm of the Junkyard’s hunger and can be fed percentiles from a Favourite relationship at will. Each can hold up to 20 percentiles. If something damages the Favourite relationship of someone wearing a life locket (be it coercion, shedding percentiles to feed the Junkyard or a supernatural attack) the damage comes out of the locket’s percentiles first. If the locket runs dry it cracks and the chain breaks, rendering it useless.
They’re called life lockets because of their ability to sustain the dead. Each percentile point invested in a locket allows one of the dead to exist independently of physical contact with the person who woke them for a period of five minutes. If that runs out and they haven’t re-established contact then poof, they’re gone.
Life lockets are bound to the Junkyard and do not function outside of it.
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