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.