Power: Significant.
Description: A 48 page comic printed and illustrated in the silver age style and dated September 1959, published by the apparently non-existent company Imagoes Comics. Prior and subsequent issues are unknown on the public market (and the few copies of #27 are prohibitively expensive) and the subject of rumour in specialist collector and occult underground circles.
The implied ongoing plot centers around the African nation of Basutoland (a genuine location, now named the Kingdom of Lesotho in the real world), geopolitically empowered and then exploited due to the discovery of a rare mineral that can be refined into lighter than air materials. The development of naturally buoyant aircraft and sky-cities creates a stratified society in which the ground-bound citizenry are forced to work for the benefit of those in the sky under the threat of bombardment.
The Sky Pirates are a freedom-fighter/terrorist organisation that prey on the sky cities in a Robin Hood style of supporting the local populace. Despite the pulp nature of the subject matter very little action occurs, at least in this issue. Instead there is a lengthy gunpoint debate between protagonist Lemoha Dube and his opposing number Captain Desmond Bakkes. They cover subjects such as social mobility, alternative economic systems (communism is described but conspicuously unmentioned by name), existentialism and naval warfare. There is reference to the fictional assassination of U.S president Dwight Eisenhower in the exact same manner as JFK, which leads most to assume the publication date was deliberately falsified. The issue ends with the destruction of Captain Bakkes' flagship by an explosively secretly planted while Lemoha bought time for the saboteur with their exchange.
Effect: For most people it’s just a comic, weirdly dry where it should be entertaining and light on detail where it should be informative. Those people aren’t the target audience. For people sensitive to the message, the comic is a garbled hotline to the statosphere.
Essentially it opens someone up to whichever archetype depicted in the story is the best fit for their personality. This is compelling, they gain an automatic 10% in the relevant avatar identity and a minor compulsion to flamboyantly act on it in the style of a silver age pulp comic in opportune circumstances. Previously expressed archetypes are: the Captain, the Firebrand, the Healer, the Martyr, the Opportunist, and the Warrior but others may be possible. The compulsion lasts for a week, flaring up in dramatically appropriate circumstances (which can be avoided by isolating yourself) as a rank 4 Self check. If acted upon 3 times the avatar identity becomes permanent, otherwise it fades at the end of the week.
For those with an existing avatar identity reading the comic is the statospheric equivalent of grabbing a live wire. For starters automatic taboo right off the bat. Second you gain the week-long minor compulsion to act out as though you were suited to one of the other archetypes. Acting on these compulsions allows your to substitute your existing avatar identity for the channels of the new archetype up to three times before the effect ends. Each foreign channeling causes taboo though.
These effects only happen once per person.
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