245 - Gabriel Doyle, Frustrated Ritualist & Catapsi

GMC: Garbriel Doyle, Frustrated Ritualist

Gabriel was desperately disappointed to find out magic wasn’t real. A lot of kids were, escapist fantasies of being spirited off to secret schools of witchcraft and wizardry are a multi-billion dollar staple of pop-culture for a reason. He took this obsession further than most, but the standard cure of childhood bullying for being a dork brought him around to socially acceptable conformity. It never quite left him though, became more of an undercurrent.

It’s why he majored in anthropology (later pulling a double doctorate in it alongside psychology), was involved in more than his share of youthful experimentation with ouija boards and poorly translated rituals and wrote his thesis on chaos magic’s roots in 19th century theosophy. The classes Professor Doyle teaches on the subject are exceedingly dry, he’s well respected by his peers as a thoughtful and skeptical mind and his wife and kids will be the first to tell you how little he cleaves to superstition.

You could be forgiven for thinking he’s completely sublimated his earlier passion into something more compatible with the mundane adult world of mortgages and dental bills. Unless you knew about the secret binder he keeps in a locked drawer of his university office. Each page filled with carefully researched and translated rituals from antiquity, a surprising number of them real but all of them tried and failed.

It turns out Gabriel’s childhood dream of being magickally special is true, just not in a way he realises. In the same fashion that minutely considering the individual actions that go into catching a ball thrown at you will cause you to fumble it he can’t get out of his own way long enough to wring some juice out of ‘eye of newt’. Years of frustration and disappointment grinding against undying hope and effort have built up around him like a cloud of chaff. Gabe cancels out magick that would happen where he can see it.

He’d have gone through life ignorant of magick if it hadn’t been for the late-night burglary of his office. No one believes him that there was a second man who disappeared in the moment Gabriel looked away from the door-window to fumble with his keys. This followed by the man’s accomplice jumping out of the window like he expected to step on to solid ground and then plunging six stories into an induced coma in the ICU. They all put it down to the strain of watching a man - clearly on drugs - do that to himself after being surprised by Gabriel’s unexpected return. He would too if it weren’t for the fact that his binder is missing. That he’s started noticing little signs of someone following and watching him.

Gabriel doesn’t understand what’s going on and knows he won’t be taken seriously by the authorities. On the other hand, he’s not sure he wants to involve them. He’s started going back over the research he did to put together his stolen tome, trying to figure out how anyone would know it even existed to steal it and what they might want with it. He’s not sure what he’ll do if he finds out but he’d sure like to know how the missing man escaped a locked room in a heartbeat for starters.

STATS
Personality: Secretive, but in a way that’s embarrassed rather than sly. This conceals a quiet kind of fervent faith in the supernatural that he’ll only admit to anything but an achingly dull professional interest in when he’s had a few.
Rage: Having his integrity questioned. Gabe’s worked hard to be taken seriously.
Noble: Freedom of belief. While he’s never publicly indulged himself he’s also never denigrated the religious or superstitious beliefs that other people hold.
Fear: Premature death. His father died of an early heart attack and Gabe is worried he won’t have enough time (Violence).
Obsession: Finding the secrets of the universe.
Wound Threshold: 50.

Occultist Academic 50%* (Substitutes for Knowledge, Substitutes for Secrecy, Evaluates Unnatural.)
Catapsi 70% (Unique, Casts RItuals, Use Gutter Magick. See below for more details.)

Shock Gauges

Notches	Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
Hardened	1	3	2	2	4
Failed	1	0	0	1	2

Supernatural Identity: Catapsi

Catapsi is the suppression of unnatural powers. In Gabriel’s case it occurs involuntarily within his field of perception: an ability that proves the very thing he is so eager to corner and gain control over but is stubbornly invisible to him. The more he wants it the harder he suppresses. A successful roll under the right conditions opposes the use of a supernatural identity, first-channel avatar power or minor charge-powered adept magick with a roll of equal or lower value. It also opposes gutter magick, minor rituals and minor artifact effects with a similar mechanism. Suppressed magick usually finds a way to divert itself into unnatural phenomenon outside of his perception.

Unnatural phenomenon and entities are impacted subject to GM discretion. Anything powered by significant charges or greater steamrolls Gabe’s powers. So long as it doesn’t outright kill him he’ll probably be delighted.

244 - Wisdom of Crowds

Artifact: Wisdom of Crowds

Power: Minor.

Description: An old, poorly tanned and worked sheepskin. Slits have been cut in the sides and a belt run through them so that it can be worn like a crude coat. It stinks of lanolin and feels slightly greasy to the touch no matter how much it is washed.

Effect: Wisdom of Crowds has a simple function despite its flowery name - it tells you what everyone is thinking while you're wearing it. This effect reaches about as far as you can see, you can take the temperature of the room at a town meeting but it won't tell you the outcome of an impending presidential election. It's also too broad an effect to get specifics like anyone's banking passwords and it won't function unless you're around a group of at least half a dozen people.

In effect it gives you vague indications about what the group is thinking. In appropriate circumstances the GM may go so far as to provide a hunch roll for related actions. The GM may flip-flop the results of this roll based on the crowd's disposition.

The downside is that wearing the sheepskin makes it hard to think for yourself. Coercion attempts are at a +20% shift against you and defying the group consensus is a rank 1-3 Isolation check depending on how actively you're opposing it.

243 - 419

Ritual: 419

Cost: 2 minor charges.

Ritual Action: Charging rituals are as rare as hen's teeth, sometimes it's easier to steal power from those too foolish to keep it.

Following a full night's sleep after staying awake for 3 whole days, write down a ritual of your own devising that makes a promise of ambiguous power. Use the gutter magick guidelines as a bare minimum for the inspiration your oscillating sleep state provides you with, but the more elaborate the better (the GM is encouraged to provide a positive shift if it's really good).

Send the ritual to your target via email. Include no fewer than 3 grammatical or spelling errors and one dubious promise of arcane provenance ("believe it or not, i am the comet the saint german and you are the only one who can help me escape the bind im in..."). Do not resend the ritual to them or anyone else or it will not function.

Effect: If the target performs the ritual they lose a significant charge, if they have it. If they don't have a significant charge they instead lose up to as many minor charges as you spent casting this ritual, plus one. If they have no charges they don't lose anything. You gain any charges lost by them. Only the first casting by a target steals charges.

There are rumours of several versions of this ritual floating around, some steal charges every time your fake ritual is cast by the target, some may effect any number of targets. Ironically some of them were created by casting this ritual themselves. Not this one though. Would I, the ghost of John Dee, lie to you?

242 - The Disguise Kit

Artifact: The Disguise Kit

Power: Significant.

Description: A child's toy disguise kit, it comes in a white plastic carry case with a yellow carry handle and clasps. Emblazoned on one side is a silhouette of the famous Groucho Marx moustache/glasses combo. Inside are a number of mostly gaudy disguise props: a small, synthetic wig that’s more yellow than blonde, some crumbly chin putty (it’s still alright if you add a little water), three pairs of obnoxious lensless spectacles, etc. There are also some terribly lifelike pieces, like rubber ears and glass eyes. A fake nose with burst veins and a gross amount of nostril hair.

The case has a number of grooves and depressions where items have been removed and not put back. There’s also a small mirror and, weirdly, a little wooden egg timer, the kind like an hourglass. It has its own groove in the case but no other explanation for it's intended use.

Effect: Everybody gets one shot with the kit, flip the egg-timer and you’ve got three minutes. Try it again and the sand refuses to budge, like it’s gotten wet and fused together in one end. No one's tried laying the timer on its side part way through so there's no telling if it pauses the clock, forfeits your turn or anything else. While it’s running you can pull your face apart, just like a Mr. Potato head. No one else’s, only yours.

Even for somebody prepared this is likely to cause Violence and/or Unnatural checks, anything from rank 2 for yanking off an eyebrow to rank 7 for removing both your eyes. It’s painless and requires very little force. You can also take any pieces someone has left in the kit (those eyeballs aren’t glass and the ears/nose aren’t rubber) and attach them by holding them in place and pressing firmly. Make sure it’s lined up right or you'll look like a Picasso. Anything you take off and place in the kit is preserved.

Once the timer runs out your new face is what you’ve got to live with, there’s no do overs. Scattered to the wind the individual parts of the kit are harmless and inert, it might be for the best if someone did that.

241 - Spare The Rod

Ritual: Spare The Rod

Cost: 2 minor charges.

Ritual Action: The target of the ritual must be someone who has committed wrongdoing and gotten away unpunished. Build a little shrine to this wrongdoing, including an object from its past, present and future as a triptych-like arrangement in the background. The centerpiece is a switch, a flexible wooden rod, that has been used to mete out corporal punishment.

For three days following a national holiday bring a person who has been harmed by the target into the shrine's presence each day and have them recount their experience. Express incredulity and ridicule, all of them should feel genuinely offended and at least one should make a stress check as a result. Slick the switch with lanolin before each recounting and at the conclusion destroy and burn one piece of the triptych.

Effect: Snapping the switch in half in front of the target activates the ritual, temporarily regressing their emotional character to that of a spoilt child. This could have one of several effects before dissipating: flip-flopping a stress check to the worst possible result, undermining progress on an objective milestone to the worse of two rolls, providing a -30% shift on their next Status or Connect roll, etc. depending on the circumstances. Otherwise it renders them moody and ungrateful for a period of up to 33 minutes.

240 - Marcy Arbuckle, Internet Detective

GMC: Marcy Arbuckle, Internet Detective

Marcy got her start in college, managing the public faces of a couple of minor brands off the back of some fortuitous connections. It was reliable and compelling enough that she declined to follow through with an MBA after finishing her undergrad and instead built a boutique online image management business which, while not flourishing, provided her with a small amount of independence.

This independence, the need to stay tethered to a screen for time-sensitive reactions and the sheer expansion in services and resources available online, together these things have warped Marcy’s worldview to the point that she can’t think of a future for humanity that doesn’t centrally involve the internet. The idea that you can order almost anything and have it appear at your house the next day makes it seem crazy to her to think any other way is possible.

It was an Amber Alert and some good fortune that really pushed her into it, the text across the screen of her phone twigged a connection in her brain. Out of sheer curiousity she pulled up a newly installed public webcam feed she’d briefly read about the city launching in the area and in seconds had found the vehicle. The vicarious thrill she felt crawling up her spine as she tipped off the police was her watershed moment. She’d found a use for her talents of weird internet knowledge and social media acumen that unmistakably proved her right.

Since then it’s only live, unfolding crises and tragedies that hold Marcy’s attention, cold cases don’t have the same kick. Rarely venturing forth from her apartment, she scours news feeds and emergency alert sites for fodder and then goes to work. Almost always it turns up nothing but the times it does produce results - however small and however late - she feels vindicated. Taking note of the occasions that online-mobs have spoiled her vocation’s image, she has framed printouts of disastrous crowdsourced investigation debacles on her home-office walls.

It’s hard to say whether she found GNOMON or GNOMON found her. In either case turning herself into a human peripheral trying to bridge the gap between investigatory legwork and digital spying has made her a prime candidate for its attention. In time it will also make her a stubbornly ubiquitous pony-adept to whichever occult underground it inflicts her upon.

STATS
Personality: Full of mischief. Clever and inquisitive there’s no dark alley spooky enough to deter Marcy once she’s got it into her head that there’s something interesting at the other end of it. She’s a creature of the internet and often oblivious to the dangers of the real world when she ventures into it.
Rage: Luddite attitudes about sous- and surveillance.
Noble: Sharing favours is how we function as a community.
Fear: Dogs. She got chewed up pretty badly once as a kid (Violence).
Obsession: You can do anything with the internet.
Wound Threshold: 50.

Amateur Sleuth 50% (Substitutes for Notice, Substitutes for Secrecy, Substitutes for Lie.)
Social Media Manager 50% (Substitutes for Connect, Substitutes for Status, Evaluates Isolation.)
GNOMON 30%* (Adept, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)

Shock Gauges

Notches	Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
Hardened	2	3	1	3	1
Failed	1	2	0	0	0

239 - Open City

Unnatural Phenomenon: Open City

In war, the concept of declaring an open city is an act of deliberately surrendering it to the enemy. Conspicuously abandoning a location’s defences in the hope that instead of destroying the location and its population in bombings and bloody fighting, that they will instead take it as reason to occupy it in relative peace. Symbolic prostration intended to preserve life and property at your enemies’ mercy. The brush wars of the occult underground are, if anything, less morally constrained than conventional warfare but at least there that symbolism carries real weight.

A tactic employed by beleaguered True Kings and Urbanomancers, declaration of their territory as an open city divorces them from their connection to it but compels others to honour their deference with magnanimity.

First of all, doing so takes effort. As an objective, the encroaching parties must be made properly aware of it and measures to concede that territory to them taken. Fly white flags from the rooftops of every building and weave gutter magick into formal letters of capitulation. For a relatively small territory or one contested by only one or two enemies this can be done as a local objective. For a major metropolitan city a weighty or even cosmic objective is required to magickally encumber a location with your conspicuous withdrawal. In either case a serious claim to it is a prerequisite, a True King or Urbanomancer identity of at least 40%.

As a result, you can no longer gain charges or access your avatar channels but you are not penalized for being outside of the city or tabooed for losing the territory. Instead for every day until you retake it your relevant identity declines by 1% (alternating if you’re one of the rare individuals with both). Retaking territory is its own objective. In return for as long as you are alive and have more than 0% left, any other True King, Urbanomancer or someone acting on their behalf may not damage the territory or its occupants unless directly threatened. If they do it undermines their own powers, tabooing their connection to the statosphere or charges. This includes them using magickal effects which cause incidental harm.

238 - Monique Lamb, Cursed Art Forger

GMC: Monique Lamb, Cursed Art Forger

Monique had a calling, she was going to be a famous artist. The problem was that skill doesn’t amount to artistic vision and even with both becoming successful in that world is a matter of luck and patronage. She doesn't have talent or luck or much in the way of connections, but she did have technical skill in spades. Finding her dreams stymied by this ugly reality she ended up using it to resentfully carve out a small niche for herself as an independent art appraiser.

Unwilling to let go of her dreams she keeps a small warehouse studio where she learned about the pieces she got her hands on by studying and reproducing them, trying to discover some secret aspect that made them special by piecemeal. Her first full "forgery" was an inadvertent mistake, it paved the way for Monique to finally take full advantage of her skills when she passed on her own version in error and didn't catch the mistake until much later. No one else caught on and eventually she was able to dispose of the original on the black market. For just over a year she flourished this way by siphoning off valuable works, a secret side business making her richer than she'd imagined possible.

It's a painting called Our Flower'd Majesty that caused her all her current troubles. Intended as the downstream component in a year long ritual, Monique ended up inadvertently spoiling its magickal resonance when she replaced the original with a duplicate as it passed through the hands of a colleague. The adept ritualist on the other end of the deal was not at all understanding about the exchange ruining months upon months of work, within weeks Monique found she could produce nothing but more copies of the purloined painting.

Whenever Monique puts brush to canvas, paper or any other surface the result is now always some variation of that stolen artwork. Her warehouse studio is full of them as she has experimented with every iteration she can conceive of like Francis Bacon's many, increasingly baroque studies of Pope Innocent X. In order to break this curse she must satisfy one condition, she must produce a flawless forgery, a perfect copy of her stolen prize that not even she can distinguish from the original. At this point she's so far off base it's unlikely she'll figure it out alone. If she ends up in the occult underground looking for answers it may lead her straight to the curse's originator without her even realizing.

STATS
Personality: Incorrigible deadpan sarcasm, if Monique can make it through three sentences without an eye-roll she’s probably been replaced by a doppelganger. She's otherwise sharp and knowledgeable and witty enough to easily play to people's sensibilities.
Rage: Don't call me lazy.
Noble: Preservation and conservation of art.
Fear: I'll never really paint again! (Unnatural)
Obsession: Self-actualization through art.
Wound Threshold: 50.

Art History Grad 50% (Substitutes for Knowledge, Evaluates Self, Protects Helplessness.)
Expert Art Forger 70%* (Substitutes for Notice, Substitutes for Secrecy, Unique: Can make art forgeries.)

Shock Gauges

Notches	Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
Hardened	1	3	5	1	4
Failed	0	2	2	0	1

237 - Shawn Trujillo, Angel Killer

GMC: Shawn Trujillo, Angel Killer

Shawn’s parents were Easter and Christmas religious but his grandmother was one of the fire-and-brimstone breed. The old testament stories she filled his head with on their twice yearly homeward pilgrimages during the holidays were both highlights and a source of childhood nightmares for him. Otherwise Shawn grew up comparatively normal.

Never aspiring to much and happy with his lot in life, Shawn batted around a series of dead-end jobs that lasted as long as they were reliable and not especially taxing. Through an ex-girlfriend he became peripherally acquainted with the occult underground, that’s where he discovered a hidden talent: Shawn can detect avatars, the chance result of a one-in-a-billion congenital condition that happens to have also rendered him colour blind. In the right hands it’s an ability that could be worth a fortune, in the hands of a schlub whose biggest concerns were what TV shows were coming out and whether he’d be able to get laid next weekend it probably would have amounted to nothing if he hadn’t also been witness to an ascension.

It didn’t help that the Confessor spoke to him before it happened, Shawn only remembers fragments of the conversation he had with the person who had that odd glow he noticed with people sometimes. The one that shows him colours he can’t usually see. He remembers a sheer and unequivocal unburdening as what he now thinks of as his sins were taken from him. He remembers being asked by them to come to public-access TV recording they were doing the next day, he remembers showing up late, he remembers the light and nothing else.

Shawn is convinced that what he spoke to is an angel. That its job was to secretly collect information on humanity until it could return to heaven and deliver it to divine scrutiny. Pulling from a hundred childhood horror stories he believes it is a sign of the impending time of judgement and looking around himself he’s come to one conclusion: we aren’t ready for it.

Shawn regrets that his first was someone he knew. He knows that if he is ever caught it will be because the Firebrand avatar he hit with a stolen van was a guy who that one ex-girlfriend - the one who led him into the occult underground in the first place - had briefly left him for years before. He had the same funny glow the Confessor had, the shade was a little different is all. Prevented from completing its vital task here on Earth, Shawn believes that by killing these “angels” that walk among us he’s pushing back the end times. He’s technically correct, but not for reasons he’d ever guess or believe.

He’s good at it too. The product of countless hours spent following crime stories in the media, watching police procedurals and making trips to the true crime section of the library, Shawn has discovered a very grisly calling. Without much more than a high school education he’s become a prolific autodidact of murder (not that he thinks of it as murder). Never using the same method twice, carefully covering his tracks and using his power to choose victims with no discernible pattern he’s gotten away with a stupefying amount of horrifying behaviour.

Sometimes Shawn fantasizes about being recruited by a secret society who do what he does so he doesn’t have to go it alone but mostly he thinks that’s stupid, people with co-conspirators get caught. Little does Shawn know that there is just such a group of people - loyal to someone they call Old Mother Apocalypse - who’re big fans of his work and would love to have him. They see the patterns in his killings that no one else has caught on to and when he slips up and they figure out who he is it’ll be them who want to have a chat.

STATS

Personality: Quietly grandiose in his obsession, Shawn sees himself as humanities' best chance for survival but part of that belief is the smug surety that he can never share that fact. In all other aspects of his life he’s humble and decent, he doesn’t need to show off or one up people when he’s the secret saviour of mankind. Besides he needs to encourage the best in people for all this sacrifice to be worth it.
Rage: People who underestimate the danger of the supernatural.
Noble: Bringing out the best in others.
Fear: Judgement (Helplessness).
Obsession: Prevent God’s judgement by keeping Earth free of his angel spies.
Wound Threshold: 50.

World-saving Serial Murderer 60%* (Substitutes for Struggle, Substitutes for Secrecy, Protects Violence.)
Superstitious Grocery Clerk 30% (Substitutes for Knowledge, Protects Unnatural, Coerces Unnatural.)
Angel Sight 60% (Specific Information: Identifying Avatars, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)

Shock Gauges

Notches	Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
Hardened	6	3	2	2	3
Failed	1	3	2	2	0

236 - Voodoo Regifting

Ritual: Voodoo Regifting

Cost: 4 minor charges.

Ritual Action: Take a gift given to you by someone close to you (so someone with whom you it one of the five relationships). The more emotionally important the gift the more powerful the effect, a secret Santa present given out of obligation would barely even qualify while an engagement ring is on the other end of the spectrum.

Three days before a full moon delete or otherwise destroy any photographs you have of you and the target together, replacing at least one of them with a photograph of you and the second target taken especially for the occasion. Soaking the gift overnight in one of your bodily fluids, give it to the secondary target, make it clear that it is being regifted and who it originally came from. Make them promise not to tell the target, get them to promise three times.

For the rest of the day spit on the ground before passing through any doorway.

Effect: Your relationship with the original gift giver is damaged. The extent of the damage depends upon the importance of the gift: the secret Santa example might only knock off 1% while the engagement ring would do damage to it with the ritual roll like a firearm attack. By default it knocks off percentiles like a melee attack with no damage bonus.

If the target and the secondary target have relationships it gains percentiles equal to half that value. If there’s an empty relationship slot for either or both of them it fills in with the same value. This doesn’t force them to do anything, like the Corsican Rings it’s a magickal transfer that they have to choose to embrace for it to last.

Cast more than once on the same person it nixes your relationship with them entirely and any attempts to take up a new relationship of that kind will flounder for 3 years, 3 months and 3 days. You just come across as disingenuous and tacky.

235 - Oscar Fonseca, Retired Otherspace Survival Expert & Maria Fonesca, Sleeper Plant

GMC: Oscar Fonseca, Retired Otherspace Survival Expert & Maria Fonesca, Sleeper Plant

None of the regulars to the convenience store he owns would peg Oscar as having once been paratrooper with the Mexican Army under another name. They certainly wouldn’t believe he left to join Alex Abel’s private occult mafia after he was discharged, following a disaster that left him the sole, sane survivor of his unit stumbling into a garish, casino-themed otherspace. They absolutely wouldn’t believe Maria, his coarsely adoring wife of 20 years, was a plant from yet another secret society (sent to secretly exploit him for access to the New Inquisition but who caught genuine feelings and kept it all hidden in the aftermath of the Whisper War). He just doesn’t seem like that kind of guy.

Oscar prefers it that way, as far as he is concerned he never really wanted to be that guy. Sure, youthful machismo dictated his choice of military career, but of everything that followed where he’s at now feels the most like home. His marriage, his store, his community, seeing the faces of his kids when he gets home, he’s grateful in a way he didn’t think he’d ever get to be. Especially not as his experience with “extra-dimensional environments” eventually led to him being Alex’s chief doorkicker when it came to dealing with otherspaces and related phenomenon. There were only four genuine incursions over his tenure, but dozens of false positives and sifting the wreckage of those that disappeared before TNI could arrive kept him busy and sharp. You can count the number of people with more otherspace experience who’re alive today on your fingers.

Maria was a cult-survivor picked up by the Sleepers in the aftermath of wiping it out. Impressionable but wary she was eventually won over by their rhetoric of sparing people the terrible things she had been through. Although she proved an adequate operative she tired of the uncertain and dangerous lifestyle, so when the opportunity to unofficially retire herself under the guise of getting close to a trusted member of a major rival organisation came up she took it. The Sleepers learned a few useful tidbits from her but she got her wish, they imploded before they could make any serious impositions on her new position.

When TNI fell apart at the same time Oscar picked himself up and walked away. He had a nest egg, a young family and a new identity unencumbered by most of his past. It was an chance to start fresh somewhere. His own little slice of the American Dream. Maria hadn't planned on actually falling in love with the man she was deceiving but when the opportunity to cut ties came around she realized she couldn't think of any place she'd rather be.

For a long while they got to live it, but it wasn’t to last. TNI’s reformation brought a lot of wayward souls back into the fold and when it was discovered that not only was Oscar unwilling to join them but had built himself a life with a new family they gave him an ultimatum. He gets to go on living under his assumed identity, the legal status of his citizenship goes unnoticed and he’ll get to live out a normal life with his family. In return TNI has expectations, his experience and expertise aren’t something they have a replacement for so occasionally he gets a call and has to make an excuse to disappear on a job for a few days.

Oscar is pretty sure he’s got his kids fooled but he knows Maria has caught on that something is going on, as far as he knows the extent of her knowledge about his past is that he was once involved with some bad people. He never elaborated, he’d rather she rationalize it as a previous life of crime than try to explain the truth and figures she suspects it’s come back to haunt them. Unbeknownst to him she’s been getting phone calls herself. Someone on the Committee is aware of her old assignment as well as Oscar’s reactivation and has decided to pull on a very old string. For now she’s just been tasked with keeping an eye on him.

Any number of developments could escalate the situation. Oscar could get hurt on an assignment, the Sleepers could start making serious demands of Maria or either one of them could be caught by or be caught catching the other. Old files looted from abandoned safehouses could put either of them in positions in jeopardy, someone from Oscar’s old unit could finally get out of hospital and come looking for him or the same for survivors of the cult Maria was recruited from. The real test of a marriage built on lies may very well be in how they see the sacrifices that the other is willing to make for it.

STATS - Oscar Fonesca
Personality: Oscar usually has the kind of middle-aged happiness that only comes from finally being able to get away from being trapped in a bad situation. Now that he’s back in it this is infected with shame and disappointment, he’s keeping a brave face for the sake of his family though.
Rage: Shoplifting. In the circumstances that someone needs something bad enough to steal it he’d rather give it to them. If it’s opportunistic they can get their ears boxed though.
Noble: Don’t leave anyone behind.
Fear: His kids finding out about his past (Isolation).
Obsession: Building a new life for his family.
Wound Threshold: 50.

Otherspace Survival Expert 60% (Substitutes for Notice, Substitutes for Dodge, Provides Firearm Attacks.)
Gregarious Store Owner 40%* (Substitutes for Connect, Substitutes for Status, Protects Isolation).
Living A Double Life 40% (Substitutes for Lie, Protects Self, Evaluates Self.)

Shock Gauges

Notches	Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
Hardened	6	5	2	1	3
Failed	2	3	2	1	1

STATS - Maria Fonesca

Personality: Maria knows she didn’t come into her arrangement with pure intentions but she divides her life into before she met Oscar and after she met him. She’s forthright and flinty-eyed but laughs heartily. Growing up in an unstable background she values her family more than anything and is not shy about letting people know how far she’s willing to go for them.
Rage: Presumptuous naivety. People who don’t know any better but think they’ve got it all worked out really get Maria’s goat.
Noble: Let people know what they mean to you.
Fear: That she doesn’t deserve her family or her life (Self).
Obsession: Trying to maintain the life her family has built.
Wound Threshold: 50.

Sleeper 60% (Substitutes for Notice, Coerces Unnatural, Use Gutter Magick.)
Cult Survivor 40% (Substitutes for Connect, Substitutes for Secrecy, Protects Helplessness.)
Living A Double Life 40%* (Substitutes for Lie, Protects Self, Evaluates Self.)

Shock Gauges

Notches	Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
Hardened	3	3	3	1	4
Failed	0	1	1	0	1

234 - Will To Ignorance

Ritual: Will To Ignorance

Cost: 3 minor charges.

Ritual Action: Deliberately “sacrifice” someone with a secret belief or characteristic by outing them in a public forum. The secret should be harmful for people to learn in some way, even if only by the victim’s embarrassment. It doesn’t otherwise matter how people feel about the revelation, hidden homosexuality or pregnancy works just as well as a concealed belief in anti-vaxxing or the flat Earth. Social media is generally the safest bet, but anywhere the information will spread to at least 333 people who know them in some capacity (however cursory) works. It also conceals the fact you need to be wearing hooded hemp robes, dyed black, with a sigil like an “allseeing eye” drawn over your right eye in lamb's blood (which must remain closed for the duration of casting).

Before casting, the victim must eat a pie you have made containing meat from at least two types of fowl and a piece of paper with your targeted information written on it.

Effect: The information written on the consumed piece of paper is difficult for people who have learned the victim’s secret to communicate about. Talking about it in some fashion is a rank 4 self check, it feels like a grotesque violation of social taboo everytime they put their fingers on the keyboard or open their mouth. This check drops by 1 rank for every passion someone has relevant to the targeted information. It drops by another rank when they see several people talking about it unimpeded (but only one rank and only once) and another when they see people affected by the ritual doing it (but again, only one rank and only once).

The effect lasts until the victim gets over what you did to them.

233 - Backdrop

Artifact: Backdrop

Power: Significant.

Description: A black canvas sheet, about 9 yards long and 3 yards high, used as the backdrop for some kind of cheap stage show or school play. A yellow crescent moon made out of felt has been sown into one corner and little cotton-balls have been glued into place as stars. When you aren’t looking some of them twinkle in and out of existence as though clouds were passing in front of them.

Effect: Set up in a place that matches it (so outdoors at night), the backdrop blends seamlessly with the environment. To anyone with 3 or less hardened notches in Unnatural the difference is imperceptible. You could hide anything behind it and they wouldn’t think to look because, well, that’s the night sky. How do you look behind the sky? People with 4 or more notches are immune to this effect.

For anyone with 4 or more failed notches in Unnatural the effect is partly real. Walking into a backdrop set up against the night sky exposes them briefly to the vacuum of space. This does damage as a significant blast before it expels them coughing their lungs up and bleeding from their eyes. Anyone killed by the effect is not expelled and disappears forever. The Backdrop harming someone this way renders it permanently inert afterwards. No one is presently aware of this secondary effect, the cabal who currently owns it uses it to hide their marijuana crop from the nighttime prowling of the county sheriff's department.

232 - Sea Shanty

Ritual: Sea Shanty

Cost: 2 minor charges.

Ritual Action: Sever a limb. Doesn’t matter which one but the minimum loss should be a hand or a foot. Replace the missing extremity with a crude wooden prosthetic. Daub a small glyph that looks like a bipedal pig on the stump of the missing body part in the blood of someone estranged from their entire immediate family (with at least one member still living).

To activate the ritual sing “A-Roving”, the oldest recorded capstan sea shanty, on a repetitive loop. So long as you keep singing the effect will be maintained.

This ritual can be cast multiple times but each casting requires a fresh mutilation. You may remove more of a limb provided the new cut goes to the next joint.

Effect: Foul weather will not impede you or any vehicle you crew. It won’t be all sunshine and rainbows, but your survival and journey is guaranteed. Flying an airliner through a hurricane is possible under the effect of this ritual, for example. This provides no more help with navigation than you would be able to accomplish in normal conditions, so it won’t help you if you’re lost.

While the effect is active any missing extremities with provide you with phantom sensations of what to do next, minor course adjustments and the like. In some circumstances this goes so far as to seem to temporarily grant use of the missing parts. Fail to heed these directions at your peril.

231 - Arlan the Gnawer

Unnatural Entity: Arlan the Gnawer

It's unclear to most just what fuels Arlan's strange fixation. As demons go most want to re-experience life on their own terms, he bargains for pieces of yours. Given access to your life he’ll do his best to live it normally while you ride along as a helpless passenger. All the while this is accompanied by a dull chewing sensation as he metaphysically removes pieces of what he’s experiencing. When he departs that troublesome relationship, chronic disorder or hard-earned skill goes with him.

Arlan can’t possess people without their permission. He’d love to, it’d make things so much easier, but his powers don’t seem to work that way. He claims to have once been ensorcelled as the familiar of a powerful adept who crippled that ability while granting him others. Regardless of whether this is true he needs to negotiate for possession and for whatever reason he’s true to his word.

He does this by offering to remove things: disorders, toxic relationships, bad memories. In return he wants access to the good stuff (and since he can’t force you to give it up he wants it first), your positive traits, skills and life experiences. Once agreed on, he’s in the driver’s seat and you’re looking over his shoulder, locked out of your own body. The rank 6 Unnatural check from this experience dissuades a lot of repeat custom from people who aren’t desperate. Arlan can hear you (but not talk back, except by speaking aloud) while this is going on but he can’t or won’t hand back control until the negotiated time is up. He does his best but for most the experience is like watching a hapless tourist clumsily navigate a foreign culture, except that culture is your life.

The reason for all of this is simple. Arlan doesn't belong in our universe, he's the demonic equivalent of a neverwhen person. A refugee from a universe where things worked differently and he’s building himself a scavenged spacesuit out of the scraps of other people’s lives, something that will let him survive in our alien environment. Something that will - he hopes - let him take on physical form.

Arlan’s personality is in flux. There’s an earnest core, full of stilted speech and frank admissions but around it the built up material of his conquests form aspects of his ever changing self. Pirated identities give him new personality traits, positive or otherwise, while the baggage he takes on form psychological cancerous cysts just waiting to be purged on to whoever crosses him.

Arlan the Gnawer, Hungry for Life
Wound Threshold: 50. Intangible for now, Arlan can only be harmed by the kinds of magick that harm demons. That might change when he’s built up enough to create a physical body.
Urge - Be You 50%: For every 24 hours of uninterrupted possession a roll on this identity does damage like a hand-to-hand attack against an identity or relationship, adding that same amount to Arlan’s stash. Other aspects like disorders and notches should have wound thresholds assigned to them by the GM and are only properly removed when that value is exceeded.
Toxic Baggage 40%: Arlan might not be able to possess people without permission, but he can still ruin their lives. With a successful roll he can dump one of the negative things he has collected on someone, this happens at the same 24-hours-per-roll rate as removal but does not require possession.

230 - The Umbrella of Defiance & The Baton of Solidarity

Artifact: The Umbrella of Defiance

Power: Major

Description: A dirty, mahogany coloured umbrella. The opening mechanism sticks in cold weather and the smell of smoke has woven its way into the fabric.

Effect: For starters, it's completely bullet-proof while someone is holding it. No other forms of harm are protected against - unfurling it at a knife-wielding attacker might be distracting but they'll still be able to slash it to pieces - and it's a little hard to find out by accident.

The second effect is that it is difficult to identify anyone holding it. You can chase after "the guy with the umbrella!" easily enough, but following him through CCTV feeds or getting a clear picture of his face is at a -30% shift. Any form of more complex electronic tracking, like an IMSI catcher, fails to function when it would sweep up the umbrella holder.

Lastly, any avatar identity being used to defy an authority, justly or otherwise, may be flip-flopped once per day. Twice if it is the Unsung Champion. Doing so within sight of other avatars alerts them to what is happening with a burst of statospheric hallucination.

Artifact: The Baton of Solidarity

Power: Major.

Description: A riot-control baton of an all-black, one-piece construction with a small raised ring hilt and a retention lanyard.

Effect: Firstly, it provides a +20% shift in Struggle rolls when directly fighting more than one individual. This goes up to +30% if you're outnumbered.

Secondly, anyone wounded by the baton is psychologically cowed against defying an authority whose name it was wielded in. Acting publically against it provokes a rank 5 Helplessness check. This lasts until that injury is fully healed.

Lastly, any avatar identity being used to uphold an authority, justly or otherwise, may be flip-flopped once per day. Twice if it is the Unsung Champion. Doing so within sight of other avatars alerts them to what is happening with a burst of statospheric hallucination.