The Sleepers have it all wrong, trying to keep magick from the public is like trying to hold back the tide. Eventually something’s going to pop the seal and then there’s no putting all that toothpaste back in the tube. Mak Attax is equally delirious, they’ve got the packaging right but ‘magick for the people’ isn’t going to come from some hand-me-down mojo. Capitalism has harnessed naked self-interest to achieve some impressive stuff but thinking you can subvert that with good intentions and a can-do attitude is getting it backwards. The cabal calling themselves Satanic Panic base their credo off these two beliefs: everyone is going to find out eventually and if you’re going to hijack an existing social structure to promote your cause you need to work with it or you’ll get steamrollered.
They learned it the hard way. As a passel of aging punks and hipsters they saw exactly what was to “sell out” in their youth and how the subcultures they belonged to were gutted and stuffed for public consumption. What was theirs turned into something else before their eyes and scattered them to the wind. Sure, there were holdouts that held true to their principles, but do they matter to the collective unconscious that gobbles up whatever eroded image of the original is most palatable to the public? No and you can’t steer the ship if you aren’t on it. On the other hand aren’t sellouts just opportunists being enslaved by forces greater than themselves? Sure, there’s a rich history detailing the misery that being caged by celebrity can bring to back that up.
On both sides of the divide and feeling regret for their life choices, the cabal’s formation after a chance reunion put something else on the table: magick. They’d all discovered it in the interim, driven either by a need to rekindle feelings of youthful rebellion or make up for the encroaching impotence of clinging to beliefs that don’t pay the bills. Now it offers them a second bite at the apple. They’re going to build a brand for magick and when they unleash it on the world it’ll feed off all the banality needed to make an impact instead of being crushed by it. This time they’ll be at the helm.
Their plans have the current components:
- Build an attractively transgressive local subculture around magick (that can then be easily packaged for them to sell once it goes mainstream as their follow up objective). It’s their current, weighty objective at 23% completion.
- Keep a finger on the pulse, tweak it when necessary. Trends can change overnight and the cabal needs to be ahead of them, especially since they’re a little out of touch. They’ve got a number of plugged in people they’re setting up as cultural barometers to keep themselves calibrated in the occult demimonde.
- Corral a local Tagger swarm (see pages 85-86 of Book 3: Reveal for more details) to help the cabal on a semi-permanent basis. It’ll be worth the standard 2d10+5% boost but if they can somehow come to an arrangement it could also be a source of ongoing benefit.
- Have the members of the local occult underground who don’t fit the cabal’s vision run out of town or ostracized. They don’t need their message diffused when ponies start rolling in.
- Avoid the Sleepers until it’s too late to be stopped.
Carlos Sackett was a trust-fund poseur who never really meant the things he said or did. He played at being a graffiti artist but it was really just a way for him to feel rebellious and disaffected. He always had a future waiting for him beyond his expensive art school degree and, more importantly, family connections. At most his experience influenced his choice to pivot the section of the large advertising agency he was put in charge of towards guerilla marketing stunts.
Then along came a mid-life crisis and he found himself trying to relive and find meaning in the lost patterns of his youth, his desperation giving him an understanding that juvenile indolence never could. He’s a logomancer by night, tagging his way across the city and trying to unravel its symbols in greater and greater acts of daring, and a mid-level advertising executive by day. Neither fits him but he doesn’t know how to be anything else, his personal take on the cabal’s objective is trying to reconcile the two.
Carlos is too politic to admit he finds Katie’s vocation revolting since they have a minor professional relationship but far less restrained about expressing disdain for Adam clinging to his youth. Part of him is envious of the man’s willingness to put his whole life under a bus for what he believes in, the other part feels sorry for him. He doesn’t like exploiting Cassie but seeing how she lights up when they come to get her warms him enough to put his scruples to bed.
Katie Myrick could have gotten into any kind of group, she was in it for the atmosphere not the principles. Her budding sociomancy is second nature to the outwardly happy-go-lucky coolhunter who can seamlessly fit in wherever she goes. The only reason she didn’t take to it sooner is that before she only really cared about looking cool. An inveterate social climber with no actual gauge for trends, she maintains a number of codependent relationships with talented people purely to use them as measuring sticks for her current pursuits. She is secretly as envious of her dependencies as she is loath to lose them, using magick as a crutch to salve her insecurities.
Today Kate works for a record label, suckering young musicians with predatory deals that leave them indentured in return for a pittance and a bunch of empty promises. She feels a little bad about it but not enough to stop. In the cabal’s objective she sees both a way out of her current line of work and a way for her to get ahead and define the zeitgeist rather than letting it define her.
To her the rest of the cabal are mostly just useful, if there’s an exception it’s admiration of Carlos’s professional success. She hides this cynicism behind an upbeat facade but they’re savvy enough to see partway through it. It was her idea to pull Cassandra out of retirement and put her to work and she ruthlessly manipulated the others to make it happen.
Adam Turner hates this. He hates this hollow, nothing, front of an enterprise. He’s pretending he doesn’t since it’s the only way to make sure it fails. The others see this but they think he’s making concessions because he’s disillusioned with what a lifetime of ruthlessly holding on to punk ideals has bought him. What he sees is a final chance to make it work.
A mid-level avatar of The Rebel whose body can’t really hack the lifestyle anymore, Adam has essentially become a petty criminal and drug peddler with a small band of no-hoper cronies who occasionally lash out at the status quo in between benders. It’s a far cry from his original ideal and the one thing he’s openly sensitive about, attacking anyone who tries to take him to task over it. Redemption is Adam’s game, if he can give the thing they’re building enough momentum the others might see that they don’t have to turn it into garbage. Fuck ‘em if they don’t.
Adam thinks Carlos and Katie are sell outs trying to buy their souls back and he’s acerbic enough to sting them with it when he’s angry, which is often. Carlos he kind of understands since he never really ‘got it’ but Katie’s ethos gives him the creeps since he knows some people she screwed over. He has a protective sympathy for Cassandra muddled by a lifetime of desensitization, they were close in their old lives.
Cassandra Crum is a burnout who used to follow raves around. Until recently she lived a forgotten life in an assisted living facility given her severe problems with drug-related brain damage - trouble with things like leaving the stove on and remembering what year it is - before the rest of the cabal convinced the staff they were relatives and started taking her out on day trips. A little street chemistry courtesy of Adam gets her most of the way to lucid when they do, but there’s no telling what further damage that’s causing.
The reason they do this is a very particular talent, Cassie is incredibly, supernaturally persuasive. A narco-alchemical drug trip 15 years ago that never really ended has left her mind smeared across a connection with all things. Share a drink from the same container and you’ll find yourself caught up in what she's experiencing, fearfully clinging to her more experienced psyche for safety. In that moment she could make you think or believe just about anything. Pleasant and spacey, Cassandra’s too out of it to appreciate how malicious she could be with this ability. She thinks the cabal’s objective is cool even though she can’t always remember it, mostly she’s just grateful to be getting outside and feeling a little like her old self again.
Cassandra likes the whole cabal, it upsets her when they fight. She doesn’t always understand that it isn’t the old days and sometimes tries to get affectionate with Adam who she had a fling with, forcing him to gently rebuff her advances. He’s a dirtbag but he’s not comfortable taking advantage like that.
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