098 - The Film Noir Out of Space

Unnatural Entity: The Film Noir Out of Space

More of an environmental hazard than a creature the film noir out of space is a living genre that manages to somehow infect a location no larger than a hundred yards in radius (at least to start out). Emanating from a hidden core of shiny, black celluloid it reaches out to people. Those in its sphere feel a growing compulsion to reorder and interpret their lives through a grainy, sepia-toned lens of seediness and cynicism. Initially the subtle changes come across as minor affectations, maybe a local cultural quirk or manner of speaking. They are so small that those afflicted don’t notice or interpret them as anything more than a passing fancy.

Alone this would amount to an unnatural phenomenon so minor it would scarcely be worth the name, except that people tend to reciprocate and mirror the behaviour they see in others. The film noir feeds off of this. It effectively gains charges as a cinemancer for people following appropriate genre conventions: each minor charge equivalent adds 1 point to its wound threshold, a significant adds 10 and a major jacks it all the way up to 100. This increases its area of effect and power, as it can spend wound threshold to reshape people’s perceptions and lives to draw them deeper into the genre. Affairs, embezzlement, secrets and double lives, it creates and encourages impulses and situations appropriate to itself, battening on the resulting fallout.

Given the damage these things do to ordinary people, many end up leaving. However usually a few remain, enchanted by the fictional caul and drawn ever deeper into personas that contribute to the entity. In return it fosters their dependence, preying on their vulnerability the same way a farmer grows crops. When it leaves they are devastated.

Cinemancers would do well to steer clear of an active film noir despite the connection to their form of magick. If one charges while in they are in area of effect the charge is stolen, if the behaviour was genre appropriate the charge is stolen and another is leeched from the adept. Given that the creature is more than capable of setting up situations that would cause taboo to a troper leaving as soon as possible would be advised. Of course the film noir will try to influence those under its control to force them to stay.

When its wound threshold hits 100 the film noir undergoes a transformation. Withdrawing into the shiny black ball hidden at its heart, it launches formlessly skyward in a torrent of energy and light. In one case a cabal deliberately subjected themselves to a living genre to quicken this departure. Some believe this cycle is a way for a particular type of egregore to enter the statosphere, others believe that allowing it to complete will inevitably create more as a grown film noir can seed new young.

There are rumours of other movie genres embodied the same way, none confirmed.

The Film Noir Out of Space, Living Movie Genre
Wound Threshold: 10-99, a film noir grows in wound threshold as it is fed and its influence becomes larger (its wound threshold multiplied by 10 as radius in yards, approximately). The rumpled, celluloid faux-meteorite at the core acts as an incubator with a wound threshold of 10, if it is destroyed before the living genre completes its transformation it is destroyed and unleashes its remaining charges into the environment.
Genre Savvy 60%: A film noir out of space can cause unnatural phenomenon in line with cinemancy random magick by spending wound threshold (equivalent to 1 for minor charges and 10 for significant). These effects may only match the film noir genre (“When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand”). It cannot directly feed off of what it creates but people acting in line after the fact is fair game.