Unnatural Phenomenon: Leaper
People born on February the 29th, a date which only occurs on leap years, typically celebrate their birthday on either February 28th or March 1st in other years. Legally this varies by jurisdiction.
Magickally it’s another story, this fractional percentage of the population might not be as rare as seventh sons of seventh sons but they have a certain symbolic gravitas of their own. Their legal and biological ages keep track with everyone else’s but for the purposes of magick they age at a quarter of the normal rate, one year for every four when February 29th rolls around. Mostly this is inconsequential but in a few instances it makes them hot commodities when it comes to rituals that demand components or participation from someone of or below a certain age. Even among the debauchery of the occult underground people are less squeamish about harvesting and suborning adults than children.
It’s not all bad news for leapers though. Not only are they in a position to bargain with blood and organ-harvesting wizards that only a fraction of one percent of the population enjoys, but their status confers them one additional protection. Every leap year - on that day cobbled from the leftover parts of the previous four - they are completely immune to magick. Curses drop off, proxy enchantments wither, not even the powers of godwalkers can afflict them on the day that isn’t there.
There’s a cabal of former bank robbers including a pair of twins born on the 29th who have stumbled across this fact. It forms the crux of their plan to seek vengeance against the Demagogue who set them up to take the fall 12 years ago, but they’ll need to be swift and sure. If they miss their window they don’t just lose the element of surprise, it’ll be another four years before they can count on immunity to his charms and rituals again.
Saturday, 29 February 2020
Friday, 28 February 2020
304 - Sick Days
Ritual: Sick Days
Cost: 4 minor charges or 1 significant charge.
Ritual Action: You’ll need an accrued number of sick days from employment you are currently working at, a minimum of 10. You’ll also need to be ill.
Take a workplace calendar, the type doesn’t matter so long as it was displayed somewhere on the premises, and map out the expected prognosis. It needs to fit on the amount of time left or the ritual can’t be cast. Go into work sick, play it up as at least one person needs to remark on the fact you shouldn’t be there or should see a doctor. If they don’t, try again tomorrow.
After this happens, fold up the defaced calendar and put it into your employee file. Don’t get caught.
Alternative: Put it in another employee’s file. Don’t get caught. This version costs a significant charge.
Effect: The disease runs its course far more rapidly than usual. You get a positive shift (maximum +30%) to any Fitness rolls to overcome or ignore symptoms equal to the number of sick days you had accrued. You also lose those days, a glitch in the system erases them and magickal-bureaucratic inertia ensures they cannot be restored. You still need to come into work, if you miss a day, are tardy or slack off and leave early at any time in the period you would be ill during the disease comes roaring back with vengeance (the infection starts over from the beginning and you take a negative shift equal to the bonus the ritual provided you with). It’s probably not great if you get fired either.
Alternative Effect: With a successful opposed Fitness roll you dump your illness on the unsuspecting coworker. Both of you gain a positive shift on the roll equal to the number of any sick days you had accrued (maximum +30%) or a negative shift if either of you have taken more than your share. Nobody loses any sick days. As in the normal version, a successful transfer lasts as long as you continue to faultlessly show up for work and don’t get fired.
Cost: 4 minor charges or 1 significant charge.
Ritual Action: You’ll need an accrued number of sick days from employment you are currently working at, a minimum of 10. You’ll also need to be ill.
Take a workplace calendar, the type doesn’t matter so long as it was displayed somewhere on the premises, and map out the expected prognosis. It needs to fit on the amount of time left or the ritual can’t be cast. Go into work sick, play it up as at least one person needs to remark on the fact you shouldn’t be there or should see a doctor. If they don’t, try again tomorrow.
After this happens, fold up the defaced calendar and put it into your employee file. Don’t get caught.
Alternative: Put it in another employee’s file. Don’t get caught. This version costs a significant charge.
Effect: The disease runs its course far more rapidly than usual. You get a positive shift (maximum +30%) to any Fitness rolls to overcome or ignore symptoms equal to the number of sick days you had accrued. You also lose those days, a glitch in the system erases them and magickal-bureaucratic inertia ensures they cannot be restored. You still need to come into work, if you miss a day, are tardy or slack off and leave early at any time in the period you would be ill during the disease comes roaring back with vengeance (the infection starts over from the beginning and you take a negative shift equal to the bonus the ritual provided you with). It’s probably not great if you get fired either.
Alternative Effect: With a successful opposed Fitness roll you dump your illness on the unsuspecting coworker. Both of you gain a positive shift on the roll equal to the number of any sick days you had accrued (maximum +30%) or a negative shift if either of you have taken more than your share. Nobody loses any sick days. As in the normal version, a successful transfer lasts as long as you continue to faultlessly show up for work and don’t get fired.
Thursday, 27 February 2020
303 - Inversion
Ritual: Inversion
Cost: 1 significant charge.
Ritual Action: Make a effigy of the target out of beeswax and Hagamoro Fulltouch chalk. Dig a hole in front of a misprinted sign for a sizable location, no smaller than a city street. Bury it submerged in the vomit of a person or person's nauseated by an amusement park ride.
Effect: The target's sense of space proprioception is flipped, it feels like the ground is up and they'll instinctively reach behind themselves to manipulate objects in front of them. This disorientation provokes a rank 4 Unnatural check and gives a persistent -20% shift to physical actions after the initial shock has worn off. Over time acclimation will let them shed this penalty, but no faster than 10% per month of dedicated spatial therapy.
If they ever enter the location the effect immediately flips back while they're there. Depending on their condition this can create its own problems. Digging up the effigy ends the effect.
Cost: 1 significant charge.
Ritual Action: Make a effigy of the target out of beeswax and Hagamoro Fulltouch chalk. Dig a hole in front of a misprinted sign for a sizable location, no smaller than a city street. Bury it submerged in the vomit of a person or person's nauseated by an amusement park ride.
Effect: The target's sense of space proprioception is flipped, it feels like the ground is up and they'll instinctively reach behind themselves to manipulate objects in front of them. This disorientation provokes a rank 4 Unnatural check and gives a persistent -20% shift to physical actions after the initial shock has worn off. Over time acclimation will let them shed this penalty, but no faster than 10% per month of dedicated spatial therapy.
If they ever enter the location the effect immediately flips back while they're there. Depending on their condition this can create its own problems. Digging up the effigy ends the effect.
Wednesday, 26 February 2020
302 - Vampiric Keepsake
Unnatural Entity: Vampiric Keepsake
People invest themselves in objects: my lucky shirt, my grandmother’s ring, my first car. They take on special anthropomorphized roles in our personal narratives that make us attached to them and influence our behaviour. In cases of trauma it can be a crutch which allows someone to externalise their behaviour or circumstances, weathering and performing acts which their self-image and conception of the world cannot brook.
Someone who dies in the throes of a delusion based on totemic compulsion or externalised psychosis will occasionally channel their dying energies into one of these talismans as a revenant. Archaeological artifacts from the lost Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage were stolen by a cabal who suspected they must include these, their arrest and incarceration has left it the subject of speculation. Whatever they wanted with a bunch of trapped, shipwrecked cannibal spirits is anyone’s guess.
Vampiric keepsakes are disrupted equilibrium, they function as a dark parallel to Stains (page 83-84 of Book 3: Reveal) desiring only to externalise their suffering on the living and return to rest. Failing a stress check while in possession of one provokes behaviour as though the the holder had a disorder related to keepsake’s origin, over time this mentality cements itself and on the 5th failed notch in a gauge transfers itself permanently to the bearer at which point the keepsake becomes inert while they suffer in its place.
More powerful versions of the revenant are created by this process repeating itself. Multiple people all dying in the same way with the same delusions in a grand snowballing effect that lends gravitas and the crowded leftovers of wounded psyches buried within the object. Particularly potent instances have the ability to afflict multiple people simultaneously and across great distances. The possibility of a cult worshipping one such object is an occult underground boogeyman occasionally rumoured but never confirmed.
People invest themselves in objects: my lucky shirt, my grandmother’s ring, my first car. They take on special anthropomorphized roles in our personal narratives that make us attached to them and influence our behaviour. In cases of trauma it can be a crutch which allows someone to externalise their behaviour or circumstances, weathering and performing acts which their self-image and conception of the world cannot brook.
Someone who dies in the throes of a delusion based on totemic compulsion or externalised psychosis will occasionally channel their dying energies into one of these talismans as a revenant. Archaeological artifacts from the lost Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage were stolen by a cabal who suspected they must include these, their arrest and incarceration has left it the subject of speculation. Whatever they wanted with a bunch of trapped, shipwrecked cannibal spirits is anyone’s guess.
Vampiric keepsakes are disrupted equilibrium, they function as a dark parallel to Stains (page 83-84 of Book 3: Reveal) desiring only to externalise their suffering on the living and return to rest. Failing a stress check while in possession of one provokes behaviour as though the the holder had a disorder related to keepsake’s origin, over time this mentality cements itself and on the 5th failed notch in a gauge transfers itself permanently to the bearer at which point the keepsake becomes inert while they suffer in its place.
More powerful versions of the revenant are created by this process repeating itself. Multiple people all dying in the same way with the same delusions in a grand snowballing effect that lends gravitas and the crowded leftovers of wounded psyches buried within the object. Particularly potent instances have the ability to afflict multiple people simultaneously and across great distances. The possibility of a cult worshipping one such object is an occult underground boogeyman occasionally rumoured but never confirmed.
Tuesday, 25 February 2020
301 - The Lamp
Artifact: The Lamp
Power: Major.
Description: A grimy bedside touch-lamp. The power cord has been cut off at the corroded metal base and floral decorations on the pale ceramic lampshade have faded and peeled. Despite its modern electrical design (manufacturers markings on the base reveal it was made in 1976) it smells strongly of lamp oil and camphor.
Effect: The Lamp grants wishes. There's no puff of smoke or genie that appears, just caress the metal base, clearly state "I wish for…" and poof, your desires are fulfilled. For you, at least.
Any effect generated by the lamp is an utterly convincing illusion that only afflicts the wisher. There's no way for them to distinguish this or be convinced of it by others (all attempts by bystanders to falsify it are masked by the illusion) so they tend to appear quite mad. For example wishing someone dead strikes them down, but only for you. Everyone else can still see Carl walking around but he's concealed from your perception. You could wish him back to life, but why would you?
For some wishes this is all fine, sensory gratification like food, drugs, sex or sightseeing in far off vistas are as trivially and accurately fulfilled as if they really happening so long as you're not trying to share them with real people or expecting to derive sustenance from them. Rumours that the lamp is a monkey's paw, cursed to bring about the downfall of any owner, are less the fault of the artifact than the bottomless hedonic appetites they tend to develop.
Power: Major.
Description: A grimy bedside touch-lamp. The power cord has been cut off at the corroded metal base and floral decorations on the pale ceramic lampshade have faded and peeled. Despite its modern electrical design (manufacturers markings on the base reveal it was made in 1976) it smells strongly of lamp oil and camphor.
Effect: The Lamp grants wishes. There's no puff of smoke or genie that appears, just caress the metal base, clearly state "I wish for…" and poof, your desires are fulfilled. For you, at least.
Any effect generated by the lamp is an utterly convincing illusion that only afflicts the wisher. There's no way for them to distinguish this or be convinced of it by others (all attempts by bystanders to falsify it are masked by the illusion) so they tend to appear quite mad. For example wishing someone dead strikes them down, but only for you. Everyone else can still see Carl walking around but he's concealed from your perception. You could wish him back to life, but why would you?
For some wishes this is all fine, sensory gratification like food, drugs, sex or sightseeing in far off vistas are as trivially and accurately fulfilled as if they really happening so long as you're not trying to share them with real people or expecting to derive sustenance from them. Rumours that the lamp is a monkey's paw, cursed to bring about the downfall of any owner, are less the fault of the artifact than the bottomless hedonic appetites they tend to develop.
Monday, 24 February 2020
300 - En-caul Rebirth
Ritual: En-caul Rebirthing
Cost: 4 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Sew together amniotic sacs to produce a container large enough for the caster to climb inside. Take it to a named body of water recognised by at least 100 people. Ritualistically destroy any connection you have to your life before the age of 10 by fire, burn birth certificates, cauterize birthmarks and juvenile scar into unrecognizable wounds, destroy your relationship with any family from that part of your life. Culminating at dusk fill the sac with a transmutational mixture derived from the coded works of Nicholas Flamel, climb inside and submerge it in the water. Stay inside until dawn, oxygen will probably be a logistical problem. At daybreak pierce the sac and emerge from the water.
Effect: Gain a random (determined by the GM) supernatural identity at 15% (20% on a matched success or 30% on a crit). This replaces any existing supernatural identity including avatar and adept powers. The latter experience will come with some hefty stress checks as the caster adjusts, deliberately erasing something so profound is an earth-shattering experience to all adepts.
Cost: 4 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Sew together amniotic sacs to produce a container large enough for the caster to climb inside. Take it to a named body of water recognised by at least 100 people. Ritualistically destroy any connection you have to your life before the age of 10 by fire, burn birth certificates, cauterize birthmarks and juvenile scar into unrecognizable wounds, destroy your relationship with any family from that part of your life. Culminating at dusk fill the sac with a transmutational mixture derived from the coded works of Nicholas Flamel, climb inside and submerge it in the water. Stay inside until dawn, oxygen will probably be a logistical problem. At daybreak pierce the sac and emerge from the water.
Effect: Gain a random (determined by the GM) supernatural identity at 15% (20% on a matched success or 30% on a crit). This replaces any existing supernatural identity including avatar and adept powers. The latter experience will come with some hefty stress checks as the caster adjusts, deliberately erasing something so profound is an earth-shattering experience to all adepts.
Sunday, 23 February 2020
299 - Cassandra Zaveri, Lovelorn Psychic Vampire
GMC: Cassandra Zaveri, Lovelorn Psychic Vampire
Two aspects of Cassie’s childhood define her: the first is that she grew up on a diet of Disney princess films and romantic comedies, the second is that she supposedly comes from a fae lineage.
That’s what her mother insisted at least, Cassandra believed her at first out of juvenile awe and later repudiated her mother as a pseudo-spiritual crank in a fit of teenage rebellion. She wishes she’d listened more, before the elder Zaveri died of a stroke 6 years ago. Her inherited powers are a burden but uniquely motivate her play cupid: Cassandra literally feeds off affection, even vicariously, to the detriment of her victims.
This appetite and a stubborn commercially-romanticized view of human relationships has scuttled over a dozen chances at love but also given her the motivation to meddle in the affairs of others. She runs a professional matchmaking service after years of unofficially doing the same for friends (who all praised her insight before dropping out of her life, emotionally exhausted) and she’s brilliant at it. Whatever problems she has with parsing the realities of human interaction Cassandra is lethal at targeting the hopes and dreams of those motivated to seek out her services. Few of the relationships she sets up last but the honeymoon period is something that sticks with a lot of her clients, enough that she has repeat customers.
The reason for this is that Cassandra feeds off that early bloom, follow up contacts allow her to leech away client’s fresh emotions for herself and the dizzying rollercoaster is equally addicting to them. If only they could recapture that feeling they might not have to feel this horrible low ever again. Her own relationships fail for the same reasons but her beau’s tend to cut things off entirely, eventually.
Her belief is that if she can find just the right connection, a soul mate, that they will bond forever in a perfect feedback loop of transcendent connection. Cassandra believes her powers reflect her deeper ability to love than normal humans, that it gives her special insight and authority. She resents people who quit on her but she’s got a big enough stable that she hasn’t resorted to stalking the ones who finally leave. Yet.
STATS
Personality: Protean, usually upbeat but occasionally inconsolably depressed. Cassandra changes her behaviour and mannerisms to match what she thinks would appeal most to the people she’s interacting with. She’s good at it but someone with a keen social barometer can taste the undercurrent of well-founded insecurity. Cassandra tries to cover this up by being more interested in talking about you than herself.
Rage: Emotional manipulation.
Noble: No one deserves to be alone.
Fear: I’ll never find my other half (Isolation).
Obsession: Finding her perfect match.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Matchmaker 60%* (Substitutes for Connect, Evaluates Isolation, Protects Isolation.)
Psychic Vampire 60% (Vague Harm, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick. Cassandra has to spend time around her victim to hex them and gains an equal benefit to any harm she inflicts. It doesn’t happen automatically but she tells herself it does. She’s addicted to it.)
Shock Gauges
Two aspects of Cassie’s childhood define her: the first is that she grew up on a diet of Disney princess films and romantic comedies, the second is that she supposedly comes from a fae lineage.
That’s what her mother insisted at least, Cassandra believed her at first out of juvenile awe and later repudiated her mother as a pseudo-spiritual crank in a fit of teenage rebellion. She wishes she’d listened more, before the elder Zaveri died of a stroke 6 years ago. Her inherited powers are a burden but uniquely motivate her play cupid: Cassandra literally feeds off affection, even vicariously, to the detriment of her victims.
This appetite and a stubborn commercially-romanticized view of human relationships has scuttled over a dozen chances at love but also given her the motivation to meddle in the affairs of others. She runs a professional matchmaking service after years of unofficially doing the same for friends (who all praised her insight before dropping out of her life, emotionally exhausted) and she’s brilliant at it. Whatever problems she has with parsing the realities of human interaction Cassandra is lethal at targeting the hopes and dreams of those motivated to seek out her services. Few of the relationships she sets up last but the honeymoon period is something that sticks with a lot of her clients, enough that she has repeat customers.
The reason for this is that Cassandra feeds off that early bloom, follow up contacts allow her to leech away client’s fresh emotions for herself and the dizzying rollercoaster is equally addicting to them. If only they could recapture that feeling they might not have to feel this horrible low ever again. Her own relationships fail for the same reasons but her beau’s tend to cut things off entirely, eventually.
Her belief is that if she can find just the right connection, a soul mate, that they will bond forever in a perfect feedback loop of transcendent connection. Cassandra believes her powers reflect her deeper ability to love than normal humans, that it gives her special insight and authority. She resents people who quit on her but she’s got a big enough stable that she hasn’t resorted to stalking the ones who finally leave. Yet.
STATS
Personality: Protean, usually upbeat but occasionally inconsolably depressed. Cassandra changes her behaviour and mannerisms to match what she thinks would appeal most to the people she’s interacting with. She’s good at it but someone with a keen social barometer can taste the undercurrent of well-founded insecurity. Cassandra tries to cover this up by being more interested in talking about you than herself.
Rage: Emotional manipulation.
Noble: No one deserves to be alone.
Fear: I’ll never find my other half (Isolation).
Obsession: Finding her perfect match.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Matchmaker 60%* (Substitutes for Connect, Evaluates Isolation, Protects Isolation.)
Psychic Vampire 60% (Vague Harm, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick. Cassandra has to spend time around her victim to hex them and gains an equal benefit to any harm she inflicts. It doesn’t happen automatically but she tells herself it does. She’s addicted to it.)
Shock Gauges
Saturday, 22 February 2020
298 - Your Greatest Hits
Artifact: Your Greatest Hits
Power: Significant.
Description: You know that band you always wanted to go big with? Maybe you were serious about it or maybe it was just a fantasy of drunken camaraderie. Either way this is what could have been, if you’d put in the time and the effort and caught all the right breaks. A CD or vinyl record (it's never digital for some reason) with the best songs you ever could have made. You didn’t though.
Effect: The first person who listens hears themselves singing or playing, even without vocals something about the chords struck is intensely personal (rank 2 Unnatural check, if it matters). The songs are intensely personal revelations that describe key moments in their life. Listening to it might be cathartic or harrowing depending on how things actually shook out. Self checks are a likely outcome.
Power: Significant.
Description: You know that band you always wanted to go big with? Maybe you were serious about it or maybe it was just a fantasy of drunken camaraderie. Either way this is what could have been, if you’d put in the time and the effort and caught all the right breaks. A CD or vinyl record (it's never digital for some reason) with the best songs you ever could have made. You didn’t though.
Effect: The first person who listens hears themselves singing or playing, even without vocals something about the chords struck is intensely personal (rank 2 Unnatural check, if it matters). The songs are intensely personal revelations that describe key moments in their life. Listening to it might be cathartic or harrowing depending on how things actually shook out. Self checks are a likely outcome.
Once the album has imprinted on someone it's always about them. Other people listening will hear them and it'll be good, if a bit too uncomfortably personal. If possible the revelations of the album grant a +1d10% boost to objectives focused on altering the course of its subject's life for better or worse. It also grants a one-off 2 rank boost to any coercion attempts for at least one horribly personal hot-button, probably more.
Friday, 21 February 2020
297 - Haskell P.D Witchcraft Squad
Cabal: Haskell P.D Witchcraft Squad
Haskell could be any small town, it’s distinguished less by what sets it apart than what makes it blend in with every other pocket of civilization that dots the country. Only three things stand out about it: the giant rocking horse tourist trap by the highway, the fact that it sits directly on a state border and the Haskell P.D Witchcraft Squad.
It’s not an official designation and is by no means beloved by the municipality’s frustrated administrators but there’s a certain inertia and town pride in having something that sets them apart from everyone else. It’s like a highly localised version of the Blue Line that half the town is in on but nobody talks about, a minor aberration in the otherwise incredibly mundane lifestyles of Haskell’s residents. Magick is a vanishingly minor fact of life that is accepted but shunned.
Witchcraft laws haven’t been on the books for years, generally using superstition to take advantage of people is considered fraud, and otherwise paganism and related practices are considered covered by freedom of religion. But the squad doesn’t exist to bust tarot readers, it’s there to keep the peace among the weirdos and entities drawn to the border-straddling town as a symbolic ingredient in their occult machinations. A storied secret history of people using it to contact the departed, access otherspaces and bridge other unthinkable gaps has worn furrows in the universal firmament that make it all the more appetizing. If someone checks in to the local motel driving a van with a bunch of annunaki propaganda spray-painted on the side then one of them will get a call.
They are currently without an objective, but have the following concerns on their plate:
Nancy Shoffner is a well-meaning manipulator. The youngest member of the Haskell P.D doesn’t see herself that way, having grown up as the middle child in an unstable family it seems normal to her that she should use any means necessary to keep the peace. Accordingly it was a natural transition to doing the same as police work and made her a solid fit for the finagling of the witchcraft squad's unofficial remit. Small and doe-eyed she looks younger than she is, it’s something she leans on but it’s also been a hassle she’s had to be fearsome to compensate for when it comes to being taken seriously.
She’s pretty sure Tony is up to something and acknowledges Eric as a confidant, he’s the only one who seems to see straight through the way she deals with people.
Tony Siebert is a recent transplant to the town. He moved here last year when his wife got pregnant to be closer with her family. Tony is lanky, broad shouldered and pale, strong despite looking as though his uniform is stretched across a wireframe. In manner he is studious, officious and ill-suited to the close knit realities of small town policing. He’s also fascinated by revelations of the occult despite playing the skeptic. Unbeknownst to his wife the back shed has become a secondary evidence locker for the things the witchcraft squad picks up as part of its unofficial duties. She does wonder what he’s doing out there all night though and the other officers would be dismayed to find out its contents hadn’t been burned after all.
Tony thinks Nancy is a bit too naive for police work, that she’s only survived because Haskell is an insulated community, and marvels at Eric’s career longevity but respects his experience.
Eric Richter should have retired years ago. The fossilized sergeant has outlived 2 mayors, 3 police chiefs and outsiders assume he must have some sort of pull to still be in a job. In truth it’s that no one local sees him as the rickety old man that he is and he knows the town better than the lines that criss-cross the back of his hand. Threatening to call on someone’s family can often be more compelling than any official punishment and the same connection is something he’s used to develop the communities' trust.
Not that it’s been all roses. It’s an open secret that Eric shot Mama Juno’s eldest in the back 15 years ago after some sordid business with Eric’s niece. No one outside her family blamed him after what the man did to Wanda Richter and the coroner quietly massaged the autopsy, so there was no official resolution. It’s a sore point that has been snowed over by the years and inertia but occasionally rises to the surface to draw blood. He thinks about it more and more as his time rolls to a close.
Eric thinks Nancy could be good police but wishes she didn’t think she knew what people needed better than they did, he likes Tony well enough but can see the boy going stir crazy in close confines of small town living. It might be time to take him aside for a talk.
Haskell could be any small town, it’s distinguished less by what sets it apart than what makes it blend in with every other pocket of civilization that dots the country. Only three things stand out about it: the giant rocking horse tourist trap by the highway, the fact that it sits directly on a state border and the Haskell P.D Witchcraft Squad.
It’s not an official designation and is by no means beloved by the municipality’s frustrated administrators but there’s a certain inertia and town pride in having something that sets them apart from everyone else. It’s like a highly localised version of the Blue Line that half the town is in on but nobody talks about, a minor aberration in the otherwise incredibly mundane lifestyles of Haskell’s residents. Magick is a vanishingly minor fact of life that is accepted but shunned.
Witchcraft laws haven’t been on the books for years, generally using superstition to take advantage of people is considered fraud, and otherwise paganism and related practices are considered covered by freedom of religion. But the squad doesn’t exist to bust tarot readers, it’s there to keep the peace among the weirdos and entities drawn to the border-straddling town as a symbolic ingredient in their occult machinations. A storied secret history of people using it to contact the departed, access otherspaces and bridge other unthinkable gaps has worn furrows in the universal firmament that make it all the more appetizing. If someone checks in to the local motel driving a van with a bunch of annunaki propaganda spray-painted on the side then one of them will get a call.
They are currently without an objective, but have the following concerns on their plate:
- Keep people away from the ol’ Wydell place. The original owner disappeared back in the 80s and no one has lasted more than 6 months in residence since, all dead, missing or as far away as possible. This used to be pretty easy but a property trader from the nearest major city got ahold of it and is hellbent on renovating and reselling the dump.
- Mama Juno and her boys have been barely tolerated for years, in and out of prison for petty crime, assault and drug-related crimes like a revolving door. Practically impossible to dig out and resentful of their more well-off neighbours the current rumour is that they’ve turned to magick to get their way. It might not be true but if it is it could upset the town’s equilibrium.
Nancy Shoffner is a well-meaning manipulator. The youngest member of the Haskell P.D doesn’t see herself that way, having grown up as the middle child in an unstable family it seems normal to her that she should use any means necessary to keep the peace. Accordingly it was a natural transition to doing the same as police work and made her a solid fit for the finagling of the witchcraft squad's unofficial remit. Small and doe-eyed she looks younger than she is, it’s something she leans on but it’s also been a hassle she’s had to be fearsome to compensate for when it comes to being taken seriously.
She’s pretty sure Tony is up to something and acknowledges Eric as a confidant, he’s the only one who seems to see straight through the way she deals with people.
Tony Siebert is a recent transplant to the town. He moved here last year when his wife got pregnant to be closer with her family. Tony is lanky, broad shouldered and pale, strong despite looking as though his uniform is stretched across a wireframe. In manner he is studious, officious and ill-suited to the close knit realities of small town policing. He’s also fascinated by revelations of the occult despite playing the skeptic. Unbeknownst to his wife the back shed has become a secondary evidence locker for the things the witchcraft squad picks up as part of its unofficial duties. She does wonder what he’s doing out there all night though and the other officers would be dismayed to find out its contents hadn’t been burned after all.
Tony thinks Nancy is a bit too naive for police work, that she’s only survived because Haskell is an insulated community, and marvels at Eric’s career longevity but respects his experience.
Eric Richter should have retired years ago. The fossilized sergeant has outlived 2 mayors, 3 police chiefs and outsiders assume he must have some sort of pull to still be in a job. In truth it’s that no one local sees him as the rickety old man that he is and he knows the town better than the lines that criss-cross the back of his hand. Threatening to call on someone’s family can often be more compelling than any official punishment and the same connection is something he’s used to develop the communities' trust.
Not that it’s been all roses. It’s an open secret that Eric shot Mama Juno’s eldest in the back 15 years ago after some sordid business with Eric’s niece. No one outside her family blamed him after what the man did to Wanda Richter and the coroner quietly massaged the autopsy, so there was no official resolution. It’s a sore point that has been snowed over by the years and inertia but occasionally rises to the surface to draw blood. He thinks about it more and more as his time rolls to a close.
Eric thinks Nancy could be good police but wishes she didn’t think she knew what people needed better than they did, he likes Tony well enough but can see the boy going stir crazy in close confines of small town living. It might be time to take him aside for a talk.
Thursday, 20 February 2020
296 - To Catch a Thief
Ritual: To Catch a Thief
Cost: 3 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Commit a copy-cat crime, taking care to incorporate elements that sympathetically link the act to both the previous victim and crime scene. Don't get caught. Take a trophy from the act. Sleep with it under your pillow and have someone exchange it for money while you're unconscious, like the tooth fairy. Keep the money on your person. Do not spend it.
Effect: You gain a temporary supernatural identity that allows you to divine details about the original perpetrator at the value of the ritual roll. It manifests as intrusive thoughts and perspectives which mirror their's and how they see the world. Every successful roll resets the value of this identity at the newly rolled value. At 01 it disappears. If you ever spend or lose the money used in the ritual anyone investigating your crime gains the same benefit toward catching you.
Cost: 3 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Commit a copy-cat crime, taking care to incorporate elements that sympathetically link the act to both the previous victim and crime scene. Don't get caught. Take a trophy from the act. Sleep with it under your pillow and have someone exchange it for money while you're unconscious, like the tooth fairy. Keep the money on your person. Do not spend it.
Effect: You gain a temporary supernatural identity that allows you to divine details about the original perpetrator at the value of the ritual roll. It manifests as intrusive thoughts and perspectives which mirror their's and how they see the world. Every successful roll resets the value of this identity at the newly rolled value. At 01 it disappears. If you ever spend or lose the money used in the ritual anyone investigating your crime gains the same benefit toward catching you.
Wednesday, 19 February 2020
295 - McCallisters
Unnatural Entity: McCallisters
Otherspace the Binge has proven impermeable to frustrated Videomancers since its discovery. Adepts aren't known for taking affronts to their worldview laying down so this has been more of a red flag to a bull than any disuasion. The efforts of one cabal of the dying school of magick have produced some success by vicariously studying viewers drugged into docility and subjected to 24/7 viewing.
By "reeling in" their subjects at the right time the cabal found that they could capture entities from the TV-based otherspace on VHS tapes. This process was deleterious to their subjects, but that was almost forgotten in the rush to extract favourable fictional characters from the popular imagination. A secondary breakthrough came up with another use for the mindless husks of their victims: they could use them as incubators to grow bodies for them.
The creatures the cabal spawned were downright horrific, which led to their eventual downfall and stories of an alien Xenomorph stalking the Canadian wilderness. Fortunately only one of the escapees has proven intelligent and wilful enough to reproduce in the wild: Home Alone protagonist Kevin McCallister. Living in secluded Lord of the Flies-style communes of a few dozen they desire more VHS tapes of their movies to digest, creating eggs, and living hosts to implant them inside. Thankfully they aren't limited to human hosts, the main factor is size so livestock are an appropriate substitute, and they have proven willing to negotiate with people for help.
That's not to say that the McCallisters should be considered benign. They are utterly amoral and consider human beings to be "flat" dull creatures, this place a drab low-contrast irreality in comparison to their home dimension. Anyone antagonising them will discover that the laws of physics have done nothing to curb their malicious inventiveness and flair for dangerous traps.
McCallisters, Parasitic Parthenogen TV-spawn
Wound Threshold: 35.
Maliciously Inventive 55%: Substitutes for Secrecy, Unique (making homemade traps).
Otherspace the Binge has proven impermeable to frustrated Videomancers since its discovery. Adepts aren't known for taking affronts to their worldview laying down so this has been more of a red flag to a bull than any disuasion. The efforts of one cabal of the dying school of magick have produced some success by vicariously studying viewers drugged into docility and subjected to 24/7 viewing.
By "reeling in" their subjects at the right time the cabal found that they could capture entities from the TV-based otherspace on VHS tapes. This process was deleterious to their subjects, but that was almost forgotten in the rush to extract favourable fictional characters from the popular imagination. A secondary breakthrough came up with another use for the mindless husks of their victims: they could use them as incubators to grow bodies for them.
The creatures the cabal spawned were downright horrific, which led to their eventual downfall and stories of an alien Xenomorph stalking the Canadian wilderness. Fortunately only one of the escapees has proven intelligent and wilful enough to reproduce in the wild: Home Alone protagonist Kevin McCallister. Living in secluded Lord of the Flies-style communes of a few dozen they desire more VHS tapes of their movies to digest, creating eggs, and living hosts to implant them inside. Thankfully they aren't limited to human hosts, the main factor is size so livestock are an appropriate substitute, and they have proven willing to negotiate with people for help.
That's not to say that the McCallisters should be considered benign. They are utterly amoral and consider human beings to be "flat" dull creatures, this place a drab low-contrast irreality in comparison to their home dimension. Anyone antagonising them will discover that the laws of physics have done nothing to curb their malicious inventiveness and flair for dangerous traps.
McCallisters, Parasitic Parthenogen TV-spawn
Wound Threshold: 35.
Maliciously Inventive 55%: Substitutes for Secrecy, Unique (making homemade traps).
Tuesday, 18 February 2020
294 - Frida Bach, Dispatch for the Blue Line
GMC: Frida Bach, Dispatch for the Blue Line
It was a motorcycle accident, not a line of duty injury, that cost Frida the use of her legs. Before then she was a police detective who was disliked by her peers cutting corners and taking risks as much as they appreciated her natural talent for interrogation. It was this same haphazard attitude towards security and secrecy that kept her on the outskirts of the Blue Line. It wasn’t that her comrades didn’t trust her, they just didn’t trust her judgement.
Nonetheless Frida was as expert at getting into the heads of occult wackjobs and psychotic adepts as any recalcitrant suspect. After her experience with a flesh-warping serial-abductor brought her on board she was getting called to seedy hotel rooms and off-the-path self-storage facilities all over the state. Always there would be someone who knew something, or might know something, waiting for her to pinpoint their weaknesses and then go to work like an oscillating saw. Hacking through their defences with abandon to dig out anything underneath. She took pride in it.
Frida doesn't know whether her accident was a reprisal for any of the things she did (it wasn't), it's one of the things that keeps her awake at night. She's mostly come to terms with her condition, it's the loss of her vocation that really stings. For a while coworkers would stop by and check in on her, shoot the breeze and guardedly talk about work, but eventually that tapered into the occasional obligate visitation. Her Blue Line colleagues had fewer compunctions.
Frida's lack of other obligations, proven loyalty and eagerness to continue the fight in some capacity have made her a natural fit as support staff. She works as a cut-out, safehouse operator, analyst or handler as the situation dictates. Once or twice she's even taken an active role in emergencies, no one clocks the middle-aged woman in a wheelchair as a threat.
Recently she's been receiving letters. They claim to be from the maniac who started her occult police career. The man she thought was dead is claiming he'll give her the power to walk again, if she'll just give him the names of the people who dragged him out into the woods the last time she saw him. She's less interested in that than laying a trap for him.
STATS
Personality: Daredevilish but shrewd, Frida puts up a sassy front for everybody until she decides whether she likes them. She’s not above playing up her condition to get past people’s guard or under their skin. She’s absolutely loyal to the Line, they are doing something no one else can.
Rage: Frida doesn’t need help, thank you very much.
Noble: Keeping her people safe.
Fear: Magickal attacks. There's no way to defend against it (Unnatural.)
Obsession: Making her loss the last that the Blue Line suffers.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Security-minded Recluse 50% (Substitutes for Secrecy, Provides Firearm Attacks, Protects Isolation.)
Get Under Your Skin 55%* (Substitutes for Notice, Coerces Helplessness, Coerces Self.)
Occult Police Nerve Center 40% (Substitutes for Knowledge, Substitutes for Status, Evaluates Unnatural.)
Shock Gauges
It was a motorcycle accident, not a line of duty injury, that cost Frida the use of her legs. Before then she was a police detective who was disliked by her peers cutting corners and taking risks as much as they appreciated her natural talent for interrogation. It was this same haphazard attitude towards security and secrecy that kept her on the outskirts of the Blue Line. It wasn’t that her comrades didn’t trust her, they just didn’t trust her judgement.
Nonetheless Frida was as expert at getting into the heads of occult wackjobs and psychotic adepts as any recalcitrant suspect. After her experience with a flesh-warping serial-abductor brought her on board she was getting called to seedy hotel rooms and off-the-path self-storage facilities all over the state. Always there would be someone who knew something, or might know something, waiting for her to pinpoint their weaknesses and then go to work like an oscillating saw. Hacking through their defences with abandon to dig out anything underneath. She took pride in it.
Frida doesn't know whether her accident was a reprisal for any of the things she did (it wasn't), it's one of the things that keeps her awake at night. She's mostly come to terms with her condition, it's the loss of her vocation that really stings. For a while coworkers would stop by and check in on her, shoot the breeze and guardedly talk about work, but eventually that tapered into the occasional obligate visitation. Her Blue Line colleagues had fewer compunctions.
Frida's lack of other obligations, proven loyalty and eagerness to continue the fight in some capacity have made her a natural fit as support staff. She works as a cut-out, safehouse operator, analyst or handler as the situation dictates. Once or twice she's even taken an active role in emergencies, no one clocks the middle-aged woman in a wheelchair as a threat.
Recently she's been receiving letters. They claim to be from the maniac who started her occult police career. The man she thought was dead is claiming he'll give her the power to walk again, if she'll just give him the names of the people who dragged him out into the woods the last time she saw him. She's less interested in that than laying a trap for him.
STATS
Personality: Daredevilish but shrewd, Frida puts up a sassy front for everybody until she decides whether she likes them. She’s not above playing up her condition to get past people’s guard or under their skin. She’s absolutely loyal to the Line, they are doing something no one else can.
Rage: Frida doesn’t need help, thank you very much.
Noble: Keeping her people safe.
Fear: Magickal attacks. There's no way to defend against it (Unnatural.)
Obsession: Making her loss the last that the Blue Line suffers.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Security-minded Recluse 50% (Substitutes for Secrecy, Provides Firearm Attacks, Protects Isolation.)
Get Under Your Skin 55%* (Substitutes for Notice, Coerces Helplessness, Coerces Self.)
Occult Police Nerve Center 40% (Substitutes for Knowledge, Substitutes for Status, Evaluates Unnatural.)
Shock Gauges
Monday, 17 February 2020
293 - Gateway to Apartment 3A
Artifact: Gateway to Apartment 3A
Power: Significant.
Description: A battered, four-panel external doorway with a corroded brass-plated doorknocker, peeled white paint, a mailslot and a peephole. Unattached and in a state of disrepair it was plainly better left on the scrap heap it was salvaged from.
Effect: The gateway maintains a connection to the renovated apartment building from which it was discarded, the result of its previous resident - a high powered pilgrim avatar - habitually using it for jaunts.
Looking through the peephole from either side gives an appropriate view into or out of the apartment. If someone were to hold open the mailslot at the right time they could also steal the current occupant's mail.
If the doorway is mounted in a frame and a pilgrim avatar attempts to use it to connect two spaces the output instead deposits anyone passing through into apartment 3A. The two premed college students currently living there are likely to be bemused by the intrusion.
Power: Significant.
Description: A battered, four-panel external doorway with a corroded brass-plated doorknocker, peeled white paint, a mailslot and a peephole. Unattached and in a state of disrepair it was plainly better left on the scrap heap it was salvaged from.
Effect: The gateway maintains a connection to the renovated apartment building from which it was discarded, the result of its previous resident - a high powered pilgrim avatar - habitually using it for jaunts.
Looking through the peephole from either side gives an appropriate view into or out of the apartment. If someone were to hold open the mailslot at the right time they could also steal the current occupant's mail.
If the doorway is mounted in a frame and a pilgrim avatar attempts to use it to connect two spaces the output instead deposits anyone passing through into apartment 3A. The two premed college students currently living there are likely to be bemused by the intrusion.
Sunday, 16 February 2020
292 - Frank Mayes, Celebrity Ghost Collector
GMC: Frank Mayes, Celebrity Ghost Collector
Celebrity-obsession has replaced religion for many, a one-sided devotion spurred by a multi-billion dollar industry providing diversions and illusions of people who are scarcely a reflection of their manufactured images. For those with little else to fill their lives this can grow from idle pastime to consuming obsession, creating creepy obsessives and dangerous stalkers.
Frank wasn’t like that (he was). I mean, he got better (a couple of times, actually). What he’ll mean to tell you when he’s explaining it (and, oh boy, he’ll never stop trying to explain it) is that he doesn’t need it anymore. He doesn’t need the cluttered house full of posters and knick-knacks and signed photos. He’s punched all the way through to the other side and come out his own man. Kinda.
It’s not true at all. Frank has traded misdemeanour stalking charges and a house full of junk for something less taxing but considerably darker. He’s started collecting ghosts. Having skirted the occult underground in the manner of many self-destructive obsessives, Frank’s journey had him taken advantage of by a rotating cast of chargers who found him a willing gopher in return for services they could trivially fulfill. It was a conflict between two of them that ended with him in possession of a ritual that allows him to seal ghosts of the recently deceased inside old mason jars.
The idea didn’t occur to him right away, it seemed almost profane when it did. Images of grief and messages of consolation on the six o’clock news at the revelation of a rockstar’s passing. Frank felt the same pang he always did when one of the pantheon left, his eye’s fell on the battered music book on his coffee table but disgust squashed the impulse. How could he? How could he dare to take something so sacred for himself? It took three days before he caved.
Frank’s collection is impressive considering he’s only been at it for a year. He’s performed the rite for more than a dozen celebrity figures but laments that he’s missed the opportunity to rescue just as many. They live in a collection of mason jars in his bathtub, he needs to keep running water passing over them or they won’t shut up. Not quite demons or the souls of the people they represent, the ghosts flit about their confinement in terror. To them the distinction of whether they actually are the people they were harvested from is academic. It bothers Frank that they don’t understand or appreciate what he’s done for them, the preservation of their special selves for all eternity. It’s ungrateful.
At least that’s how he’s justified terrorising his captives into compliance. Shaking them, making all kinds of dire threats. On one occasion he poured the smoky wisp of an irascible octogenarian veteran of the silver screen down the toilet in front of the others. He tells them it hurts him more than it hurts them.
STATS
Personality: Loudmouthed and eager to share. If he annoys or frightens people it takes Frank too long to notice, either that or he just doesn’t care. He’ll only get quiet when someone really lashes out at him. He won’t forget it either.
Rage: Being cut-off in conversation.
Noble: Preservation of aspirational ideals.
Fear: Starvation. The kind of terrible hunger where you ache constantly and feel yourself wasting away (Helplessness).
Obsession: Basking in celebrity ideal.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Obsessive Fan-Priest 75%* (Substitutes for Notice, Substitutes for Secrecy, Protects Isolation.)
Ghost Collector 45% (Specific Information: Ghost Interrogation, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Shock Gauges
Celebrity-obsession has replaced religion for many, a one-sided devotion spurred by a multi-billion dollar industry providing diversions and illusions of people who are scarcely a reflection of their manufactured images. For those with little else to fill their lives this can grow from idle pastime to consuming obsession, creating creepy obsessives and dangerous stalkers.
Frank wasn’t like that (he was). I mean, he got better (a couple of times, actually). What he’ll mean to tell you when he’s explaining it (and, oh boy, he’ll never stop trying to explain it) is that he doesn’t need it anymore. He doesn’t need the cluttered house full of posters and knick-knacks and signed photos. He’s punched all the way through to the other side and come out his own man. Kinda.
It’s not true at all. Frank has traded misdemeanour stalking charges and a house full of junk for something less taxing but considerably darker. He’s started collecting ghosts. Having skirted the occult underground in the manner of many self-destructive obsessives, Frank’s journey had him taken advantage of by a rotating cast of chargers who found him a willing gopher in return for services they could trivially fulfill. It was a conflict between two of them that ended with him in possession of a ritual that allows him to seal ghosts of the recently deceased inside old mason jars.
The idea didn’t occur to him right away, it seemed almost profane when it did. Images of grief and messages of consolation on the six o’clock news at the revelation of a rockstar’s passing. Frank felt the same pang he always did when one of the pantheon left, his eye’s fell on the battered music book on his coffee table but disgust squashed the impulse. How could he? How could he dare to take something so sacred for himself? It took three days before he caved.
Frank’s collection is impressive considering he’s only been at it for a year. He’s performed the rite for more than a dozen celebrity figures but laments that he’s missed the opportunity to rescue just as many. They live in a collection of mason jars in his bathtub, he needs to keep running water passing over them or they won’t shut up. Not quite demons or the souls of the people they represent, the ghosts flit about their confinement in terror. To them the distinction of whether they actually are the people they were harvested from is academic. It bothers Frank that they don’t understand or appreciate what he’s done for them, the preservation of their special selves for all eternity. It’s ungrateful.
At least that’s how he’s justified terrorising his captives into compliance. Shaking them, making all kinds of dire threats. On one occasion he poured the smoky wisp of an irascible octogenarian veteran of the silver screen down the toilet in front of the others. He tells them it hurts him more than it hurts them.
STATS
Personality: Loudmouthed and eager to share. If he annoys or frightens people it takes Frank too long to notice, either that or he just doesn’t care. He’ll only get quiet when someone really lashes out at him. He won’t forget it either.
Rage: Being cut-off in conversation.
Noble: Preservation of aspirational ideals.
Fear: Starvation. The kind of terrible hunger where you ache constantly and feel yourself wasting away (Helplessness).
Obsession: Basking in celebrity ideal.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Obsessive Fan-Priest 75%* (Substitutes for Notice, Substitutes for Secrecy, Protects Isolation.)
Ghost Collector 45% (Specific Information: Ghost Interrogation, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Shock Gauges
Saturday, 15 February 2020
291 - Be Not Afraid
Artifact: Be Not Afraid
Power: Significant.
Description: Usually the product of industrious sociomancers, Be Not Afraids come in a variety of forms, all of them minor religious knick-knacks and related paraphernalia. Prayer beads, omamori, hamsa, pocket-sized religious texts, any talisman of faith that an adherent might instinctively reach for to affirm their belief and place in the world.
Effect: Be Not Afraids act like emotion heat sinks for Unnatural trauma. Brushing your fingers against one on taking an Unnatural stress check negates the consequences of that shock. No hardened or failed notch is gained and the trio of possible stress effects from failure are ignored. Instead each notch ignored increasingly binds the user to the articles of that belief system, stress checks for violating its tenets are increased by 1 per check result ignored. This applies to non-believers who use a Be Not Afraid also, their stress checks for defiance instead start at rank 1 and increase from there.
Discarding or losing a Be Not Afraid that has absorbed Unnatural trauma unleashes all the pent up damage at once.
Power: Significant.
Description: Usually the product of industrious sociomancers, Be Not Afraids come in a variety of forms, all of them minor religious knick-knacks and related paraphernalia. Prayer beads, omamori, hamsa, pocket-sized religious texts, any talisman of faith that an adherent might instinctively reach for to affirm their belief and place in the world.
Effect: Be Not Afraids act like emotion heat sinks for Unnatural trauma. Brushing your fingers against one on taking an Unnatural stress check negates the consequences of that shock. No hardened or failed notch is gained and the trio of possible stress effects from failure are ignored. Instead each notch ignored increasingly binds the user to the articles of that belief system, stress checks for violating its tenets are increased by 1 per check result ignored. This applies to non-believers who use a Be Not Afraid also, their stress checks for defiance instead start at rank 1 and increase from there.
Discarding or losing a Be Not Afraid that has absorbed Unnatural trauma unleashes all the pent up damage at once.
Friday, 14 February 2020
290 - Organ Bearer
Artifact: Organ Bearer
Power: Significant.
Description: A squat, rotten but incorruptible antique steamer trunk, sometimes it leaks a brown effluent fluid. The inside is lined with a muggy layer of heavily vascularized muscle and flesh. Sometimes there are other things lodged in the various pulsing folds, things like bristly, undulating tufts of hair, idiot-staring eyes and toothless, hooting mouths.
Effect: Place any bodily organ, from an animal, human or unnatural gribbly, into the trunk and give it a good shake. Allow six weeks for it to ferment and break down, after which a fresh version will begin to bud and grow inside. Gestation takes around four to eight weeks depending on the size and complexity of the organ. Harvest it quickly when it reaches maturity or the bearer will consume it again. The bearer will continue to produce copies until it is fed something new.
Once every six months feed the bearer a live black lamb, failure ruins and organs it is currently growing and causes it to begin to putrefy over the next week or so (the second can be restored by resuming feeding it). This resets its reproduction memory but it can be restored by refeeding an older copy of something if it's on hand.
Feeding the trunk bad organs, those ravaged by disease or tumours, permanently alters its output. All subsequent reproductions, regardless of type, bear the same defects. This does not apply to damage caused by physical harm or post-mortem rot and decay - you could get away with producing a fresh juicy version of the innards from canopic jars.
Power: Significant.
Description: A squat, rotten but incorruptible antique steamer trunk, sometimes it leaks a brown effluent fluid. The inside is lined with a muggy layer of heavily vascularized muscle and flesh. Sometimes there are other things lodged in the various pulsing folds, things like bristly, undulating tufts of hair, idiot-staring eyes and toothless, hooting mouths.
Effect: Place any bodily organ, from an animal, human or unnatural gribbly, into the trunk and give it a good shake. Allow six weeks for it to ferment and break down, after which a fresh version will begin to bud and grow inside. Gestation takes around four to eight weeks depending on the size and complexity of the organ. Harvest it quickly when it reaches maturity or the bearer will consume it again. The bearer will continue to produce copies until it is fed something new.
Once every six months feed the bearer a live black lamb, failure ruins and organs it is currently growing and causes it to begin to putrefy over the next week or so (the second can be restored by resuming feeding it). This resets its reproduction memory but it can be restored by refeeding an older copy of something if it's on hand.
Feeding the trunk bad organs, those ravaged by disease or tumours, permanently alters its output. All subsequent reproductions, regardless of type, bear the same defects. This does not apply to damage caused by physical harm or post-mortem rot and decay - you could get away with producing a fresh juicy version of the innards from canopic jars.
Thursday, 13 February 2020
289 - Paradise Lost
Cabal: Paradise Lost
The media called it Jonestown 2.0 but the mass suicide had more in common with the Heaven’s Gate tragedy. The only thing closer to its namesake’s character was scale, 316 people dead in a commune in the California desert, 9 were arrested or indefinitely hospitalized after the fact, and what is guessed to be somewhere shy of a dozen are still in the wind. For an event so intensely scrutinised and which touched and destroyed the lives of so many people very little is properly, publically understood about what went on in the final days of the 14th Enochian People’s Collective.
Three of the survivors know exactly what happened, cult guru Lincoln Barksdale promised them heaven and at the moment of their salvation they faltered and failed him. It’s still there, just barely out of reach with all of those who passed over waiting on the other side. The person-sized and -faced butterflies fluttering around an endless Greek agora that haunts the cabal’s shared dreams looks little like what was promised but still compels them to action. Incomplete as the result of the botched creation, what is actually a sacrifice-fuelled otherspace has less than a year until it collapses. The creature wearing Barksdale’s face understands this even though they don’t and has harassed them into action.
Paradise Lost is formed around the idea that with another 14 willing participants to make up the shortfall they can redeem their failed test of faith and survival. They have precious little time and added complication of scrutiny from all corners but are slavishly motivated by the possibility of redemption and eternal reward. Their objectives are:
Brian Digger was an accountant, not a very good one but he has a way of making people laugh that surprised and endeared him to clients. It's disarming in a way that meant that the embezzlement scheme he used to fund an obnoxious coke habit wasn't discovered for years. He did his time, got out, lamented job prospects that began and ended with manual labour and cooked up a scheme to get himself back to work.
As Brian saw it the 14th Enochian People's Collective was just another cult fleecing its believers. He'd be doing them a favour robbing the people who were robbing them. Using his characteristic easy going manner he wormed his way in and looted a bundle. Then things became very frightening very fast.
The trauma has led Brian to embrace asceticism, eschewing the material pleasures he once embraced and coveted. It's not easy, he's a lifelong cokehead but he's seen the light and believes this is his chance at salvation.
Tricia Kessler was a minor league investigative reporter with outsized ambitions, inserting herself into the cult as a believer was a harebrained scheme cooked up between jobs she resented for their lack of popular appeal. Intending to write a book about her experiences she got more than she bargained for when the cult's plans were revealed. Cut off from communication or escape to the outside world she found herself party to a horrifying nightmare.
She can't believe how wrong she had been. The "truth" that there is another world to go to has shattered her worldview and replaced it with guilty zeal. As the member of the cabal with the highest profile she has the most to worry about from outsiders like friends and family.
Brother Xanax (he refuses to discuss his real name or his current moniker's drug connotations) was a faithful adherent to the Enochian People's principles and beliefs, he only survived his ritual poisoning by misdosage. He believes he is in the company of sinners and apostates and isn't shy about letting the rest of the cabal know. Still, he needs their help if he is to succeed in their task and expediency is winning out over piety so far.
A veritable theological encyclopedia, the mystery of Xanax's background is a source of constant, quiet speculation between Brian and Tricia. Neither of them are close to the truth, his convictions are the result of an episode of drug-induced psychosis over the conflict between his strict Methodist upbringing and his former employment as the proprietor of an adult video rental store.
The media called it Jonestown 2.0 but the mass suicide had more in common with the Heaven’s Gate tragedy. The only thing closer to its namesake’s character was scale, 316 people dead in a commune in the California desert, 9 were arrested or indefinitely hospitalized after the fact, and what is guessed to be somewhere shy of a dozen are still in the wind. For an event so intensely scrutinised and which touched and destroyed the lives of so many people very little is properly, publically understood about what went on in the final days of the 14th Enochian People’s Collective.
Three of the survivors know exactly what happened, cult guru Lincoln Barksdale promised them heaven and at the moment of their salvation they faltered and failed him. It’s still there, just barely out of reach with all of those who passed over waiting on the other side. The person-sized and -faced butterflies fluttering around an endless Greek agora that haunts the cabal’s shared dreams looks little like what was promised but still compels them to action. Incomplete as the result of the botched creation, what is actually a sacrifice-fuelled otherspace has less than a year until it collapses. The creature wearing Barksdale’s face understands this even though they don’t and has harassed them into action.
Paradise Lost is formed around the idea that with another 14 willing participants to make up the shortfall they can redeem their failed test of faith and survival. They have precious little time and added complication of scrutiny from all corners but are slavishly motivated by the possibility of redemption and eternal reward. Their objectives are:
- Mulligan the otherspace creation objective to gain access to the weird paradise (current objective 26%).
- Avoid scrutiny by both the authorities and the media. Their participation a massive tragedy is terrible enough without people realising they're going for a redo.
- Find other survivors. If they're experiencing the same shared dreams and unnatural phenomenon they might be convinced to try again. Alternatively they may pose the biggest threat.
Brian Digger was an accountant, not a very good one but he has a way of making people laugh that surprised and endeared him to clients. It's disarming in a way that meant that the embezzlement scheme he used to fund an obnoxious coke habit wasn't discovered for years. He did his time, got out, lamented job prospects that began and ended with manual labour and cooked up a scheme to get himself back to work.
As Brian saw it the 14th Enochian People's Collective was just another cult fleecing its believers. He'd be doing them a favour robbing the people who were robbing them. Using his characteristic easy going manner he wormed his way in and looted a bundle. Then things became very frightening very fast.
The trauma has led Brian to embrace asceticism, eschewing the material pleasures he once embraced and coveted. It's not easy, he's a lifelong cokehead but he's seen the light and believes this is his chance at salvation.
Tricia Kessler was a minor league investigative reporter with outsized ambitions, inserting herself into the cult as a believer was a harebrained scheme cooked up between jobs she resented for their lack of popular appeal. Intending to write a book about her experiences she got more than she bargained for when the cult's plans were revealed. Cut off from communication or escape to the outside world she found herself party to a horrifying nightmare.
She can't believe how wrong she had been. The "truth" that there is another world to go to has shattered her worldview and replaced it with guilty zeal. As the member of the cabal with the highest profile she has the most to worry about from outsiders like friends and family.
Brother Xanax (he refuses to discuss his real name or his current moniker's drug connotations) was a faithful adherent to the Enochian People's principles and beliefs, he only survived his ritual poisoning by misdosage. He believes he is in the company of sinners and apostates and isn't shy about letting the rest of the cabal know. Still, he needs their help if he is to succeed in their task and expediency is winning out over piety so far.
A veritable theological encyclopedia, the mystery of Xanax's background is a source of constant, quiet speculation between Brian and Tricia. Neither of them are close to the truth, his convictions are the result of an episode of drug-induced psychosis over the conflict between his strict Methodist upbringing and his former employment as the proprietor of an adult video rental store.
Wednesday, 12 February 2020
288 - The Emperor's Old Clothes
Artifact: The Emperor’s Old Clothes
Power: Significant.
Description: The one-of-a-kind creation of a loathed vestimancer who disappeared after 9 months terrorising Portland, the Emperor’s Old Clothes are currently moldering away in a Seattle P.D. evidence locker. Despite their powers they failed to prevent the on-scene arrest of one city council candidate fatally stabbing another in broad daylight, an act now awaiting trial later this year.
A blood-stained, sable grey men’s suit, white dress shirt and sea green necktie, it is a tagless work of custom design and tailoring defined less by its damage than disturbing regal gravitas.
Effect: Respect the office, not the one who occupies it. The Emperor’s Old Clothes enable the wearer to usurp the authority of others by defeating them in the court of public opinion. A defeat acknowledged by the majority confers an ongoing +10%/-10% shift to status and authority-based coercion rolls of the respective parties so long as you don’t take it off. This power is cumulative up to +30%/-30%, however greater levels require exponentially greater acts of domination.
Defeat shatters the illusion and suppresses the powers of the suit for a lunar month. The sudden loss of authority is likely to prompt Helplessness checks with ranks scaling to the degree of power and the ensuing consequences.
Power: Significant.
Description: The one-of-a-kind creation of a loathed vestimancer who disappeared after 9 months terrorising Portland, the Emperor’s Old Clothes are currently moldering away in a Seattle P.D. evidence locker. Despite their powers they failed to prevent the on-scene arrest of one city council candidate fatally stabbing another in broad daylight, an act now awaiting trial later this year.
A blood-stained, sable grey men’s suit, white dress shirt and sea green necktie, it is a tagless work of custom design and tailoring defined less by its damage than disturbing regal gravitas.
Effect: Respect the office, not the one who occupies it. The Emperor’s Old Clothes enable the wearer to usurp the authority of others by defeating them in the court of public opinion. A defeat acknowledged by the majority confers an ongoing +10%/-10% shift to status and authority-based coercion rolls of the respective parties so long as you don’t take it off. This power is cumulative up to +30%/-30%, however greater levels require exponentially greater acts of domination.
Defeat shatters the illusion and suppresses the powers of the suit for a lunar month. The sudden loss of authority is likely to prompt Helplessness checks with ranks scaling to the degree of power and the ensuing consequences.
Tuesday, 11 February 2020
287 - Return to Sender
Ritual: Return to Sender
Cost: 2 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Steal a piece of mail sent by someone to a third party (with some digital trickery email counts too so long as you print it out, other forms of electronic communication do not). Encase it in clay or mud from the nearest natural body of water, etching in admonishments against delivery (‘Return to Sender’ and ‘Not at this Address’ work fine) and bake it in an oven. Cover the resulting object before you take it out of the oven, if anyone sees it the ritual fails. Place it in a legally compliant residential mailbox (not a mailslot) and leave it alone.
Effect: All mechanisms of indirect communication between the two parties fail. Phone calls drop out, messages and emails disappear into the digital ether, letters never arrive. This does not apply to face-to-face communication, they can talk just fine in person. Routing communications through a human intermediary is an acceptable workaround.
This goes on as long as the baked-clay-letter remains unseen and undisturbed and no mail is delivered or taken from the mailbox it is in. If someone pokes around in there or so much as a flyer ends up inside the ritual backfires and the caster is blocked from indirectly communicating with anybody for as long as the ritual was active. The sole exception is that the caster may remove the object by wrapping it in black satin cloth and, without looking at it, place it in a new mailbox immediately. Be careful, the clay/mud seal breaking also botches the ritual and it may not be placed in the same mailbox twice.
Cost: 2 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Steal a piece of mail sent by someone to a third party (with some digital trickery email counts too so long as you print it out, other forms of electronic communication do not). Encase it in clay or mud from the nearest natural body of water, etching in admonishments against delivery (‘Return to Sender’ and ‘Not at this Address’ work fine) and bake it in an oven. Cover the resulting object before you take it out of the oven, if anyone sees it the ritual fails. Place it in a legally compliant residential mailbox (not a mailslot) and leave it alone.
Effect: All mechanisms of indirect communication between the two parties fail. Phone calls drop out, messages and emails disappear into the digital ether, letters never arrive. This does not apply to face-to-face communication, they can talk just fine in person. Routing communications through a human intermediary is an acceptable workaround.
This goes on as long as the baked-clay-letter remains unseen and undisturbed and no mail is delivered or taken from the mailbox it is in. If someone pokes around in there or so much as a flyer ends up inside the ritual backfires and the caster is blocked from indirectly communicating with anybody for as long as the ritual was active. The sole exception is that the caster may remove the object by wrapping it in black satin cloth and, without looking at it, place it in a new mailbox immediately. Be careful, the clay/mud seal breaking also botches the ritual and it may not be placed in the same mailbox twice.
Monday, 10 February 2020
286 - Culinary Dowsing
Ritual: Culinary Dowsing
Cost: 2 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Make a tripod out of old wire coat hangers. Skewer fresh bread rolls from three different restaurants through the feet. Using string taken from someone who’ll miss it suspend an object belonging to the target from the center of the tripod. Slash an ‘X’ in the air at the contraption with a squeeze bottle of hot sauce and demand the target’s gastronomy reveal itself. If the ritual fails it cannot be attempted again until you have deliberately ruined something the target has cooked for someone else.
You can target yourself.
Effect: The suspended object will move within the confines of the tripod to hang where the last food the target cooked is relative to the three restaurants. It continues to move with the food until it is digested, spoils, moves outside of the area or the tripod is broken. Cooked means more than throwing a TV dinner in the microwave or spreading jam on toast, a good rule of thumb is at least five minutes of effort. If the bread rolls are stale, the food item has been digested or is outside of the triangle described by the three restaurants the ritual fails.
Cost: 2 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Make a tripod out of old wire coat hangers. Skewer fresh bread rolls from three different restaurants through the feet. Using string taken from someone who’ll miss it suspend an object belonging to the target from the center of the tripod. Slash an ‘X’ in the air at the contraption with a squeeze bottle of hot sauce and demand the target’s gastronomy reveal itself. If the ritual fails it cannot be attempted again until you have deliberately ruined something the target has cooked for someone else.
You can target yourself.
Effect: The suspended object will move within the confines of the tripod to hang where the last food the target cooked is relative to the three restaurants. It continues to move with the food until it is digested, spoils, moves outside of the area or the tripod is broken. Cooked means more than throwing a TV dinner in the microwave or spreading jam on toast, a good rule of thumb is at least five minutes of effort. If the bread rolls are stale, the food item has been digested or is outside of the triangle described by the three restaurants the ritual fails.
Sunday, 9 February 2020
285 - Sami Villegas, Momentary Archetype of the Collector
GMC: Sami Villegas, Momentary Archetype of the Collector
Almost no one has ever heard of Willux but at one time it was the social media platform, Sami Villegas had beaten everyone to the punch and built a repository of personal information that wasn’t excessive by modern standards but set people’s teeth on edge in its day. As the tech entrepreneur was buoyed down the path of the Collector by humanity’s collective desire for recognition and vanity his own desires changed. Caught up in the influx of statospheric power his business venture became less something he hoped would get bought out by a tech billionaire than an end unto itself. Sure, the money was there but it seemed paltry in comparison to the sudden sensation of spiritual ascent he wasn’t just willing to put down to cocaine.
You can’t make those kinds of meteoric waves without drawing attention from both the mundane world and the occult demimonde. With business rivals, wizards and politicians gunning for him, it was a combination of the cabal of privacy obsessed adepts and cyberattacks on crucial systems that brought him down. On the cusp of ascension as he delivered the keynote address at a dinner, persuading California legislators to integrate Willux’s databases with public services they struck simultaneously by happenstance. He tasted the light of the Invisible Clergy for a moment, then came crashing back to Earth.
The stuttering of Sami’s momentary ascension destroyed his collection and his connection to the archetype, Willux has never existed. No one but him can remember it. Other platforms sprung out of the ether to fill the void in reality, spawned from the suppressed intentions and work of their creators. People unconsciously refocused as the industry shifted gears and he was all that remained, alone.
He still had money but no one knew him. He had a big empty house but no company and no job. His history was as tattered a patchwork as his statosphere-addled mind. Half remembering the things he dreams of the nights he can sleep, Sami collects. He collects magazines, books, stolen mail and voter registration lists. Any piece of print information he can get his hands on ends up in teetering piles filling his McMansion. Sami is convinced that his mistake was that his collection lacked tangibility and that he can build a monument that will buy his way back into heaven’s embrace. A Tower of Babel that will convince them to take him with them when they go.
The damage Sami sustained in his failed ascension has cut him off from the statosphere, however his overwhelming obsession and knowledge has yielded some magick. His collection contains just about any information you might want: names of the people responsible for your brother’s death, rituals, lost episodes of Doctor Who. The catch is that you have to convince him to look for it. He’ll be happy to do it, so long as you’re respectful and will pay tribute with something of comparable value first.
STATS
Personality: A bit fried but smart, smart enough to tell that there’s major things missing from inside his head and be pissed off about it. He’ll be imperious when he can get away with it and petulant when brought low.
Rage: Thieves. Sami hates it when people take things from him, not just pieces of his collection: housekeys, money, ideas.
Noble: Great works. Any undertaking that occupies a person’s entire life is worthy to Sami.
Fear: Losing himself. Sami obsessively collects all the pieces of himself we leave behind, toenail clippings, hair, skin flakes. You don’t want to know what’s in that painstakingly curated collection of jars in the basement.
Obsession: Tending his collection.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Magickal Hoarder 50%* (Specific Information, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Failed Archetype 70% (Substitutes for Secrecy, Protects Unnatural, Protects Isolation.)
Shock Gauges
Almost no one has ever heard of Willux but at one time it was the social media platform, Sami Villegas had beaten everyone to the punch and built a repository of personal information that wasn’t excessive by modern standards but set people’s teeth on edge in its day. As the tech entrepreneur was buoyed down the path of the Collector by humanity’s collective desire for recognition and vanity his own desires changed. Caught up in the influx of statospheric power his business venture became less something he hoped would get bought out by a tech billionaire than an end unto itself. Sure, the money was there but it seemed paltry in comparison to the sudden sensation of spiritual ascent he wasn’t just willing to put down to cocaine.
You can’t make those kinds of meteoric waves without drawing attention from both the mundane world and the occult demimonde. With business rivals, wizards and politicians gunning for him, it was a combination of the cabal of privacy obsessed adepts and cyberattacks on crucial systems that brought him down. On the cusp of ascension as he delivered the keynote address at a dinner, persuading California legislators to integrate Willux’s databases with public services they struck simultaneously by happenstance. He tasted the light of the Invisible Clergy for a moment, then came crashing back to Earth.
The stuttering of Sami’s momentary ascension destroyed his collection and his connection to the archetype, Willux has never existed. No one but him can remember it. Other platforms sprung out of the ether to fill the void in reality, spawned from the suppressed intentions and work of their creators. People unconsciously refocused as the industry shifted gears and he was all that remained, alone.
He still had money but no one knew him. He had a big empty house but no company and no job. His history was as tattered a patchwork as his statosphere-addled mind. Half remembering the things he dreams of the nights he can sleep, Sami collects. He collects magazines, books, stolen mail and voter registration lists. Any piece of print information he can get his hands on ends up in teetering piles filling his McMansion. Sami is convinced that his mistake was that his collection lacked tangibility and that he can build a monument that will buy his way back into heaven’s embrace. A Tower of Babel that will convince them to take him with them when they go.
The damage Sami sustained in his failed ascension has cut him off from the statosphere, however his overwhelming obsession and knowledge has yielded some magick. His collection contains just about any information you might want: names of the people responsible for your brother’s death, rituals, lost episodes of Doctor Who. The catch is that you have to convince him to look for it. He’ll be happy to do it, so long as you’re respectful and will pay tribute with something of comparable value first.
STATS
Personality: A bit fried but smart, smart enough to tell that there’s major things missing from inside his head and be pissed off about it. He’ll be imperious when he can get away with it and petulant when brought low.
Rage: Thieves. Sami hates it when people take things from him, not just pieces of his collection: housekeys, money, ideas.
Noble: Great works. Any undertaking that occupies a person’s entire life is worthy to Sami.
Fear: Losing himself. Sami obsessively collects all the pieces of himself we leave behind, toenail clippings, hair, skin flakes. You don’t want to know what’s in that painstakingly curated collection of jars in the basement.
Obsession: Tending his collection.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Magickal Hoarder 50%* (Specific Information, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Failed Archetype 70% (Substitutes for Secrecy, Protects Unnatural, Protects Isolation.)
Shock Gauges
Disorder: Megalomania.
Saturday, 8 February 2020
284 - The Island of Independence
Room of Renunciation: The Island of Independence
“No man is an island”
- John Donne
Shipwrecked. Stranded alone on an island in the middle of the ocean with no warning or expectation of rescue. Worse, you’re completely unprepared for anything like this. You’re the kind of person who’s lucky if you know what end of a TV dinner is up. You’re hungry, tired and exhausted, at a complete loss. Wait, what was that noise over in the bushes?
Agenda
Plenty of people can’t do the things our ancestors needed to in order to survive. Most of them don’t have to. They don’t know how to hunt, they don’t know how to set broken bones or build a house. Some of them can’t even cook for themselves. In a modern society where narrow specialization is a fact of life this can be excused. You can always call a plumber or an ambulance or go to the grocery store. However for some this goes so far that they’re completely reliant on others for their most basic needs, the room targets these worst offenders.
The Island of Independence is a room that pits the unprepared and dependant against their own laziness in a fight for survival. It puts them in a position where they need to rapidly develop the skills needed to survive in an inhospitable environment. It gives them the tools to do it but won’t hold their hand through the trial.
Appearance
A small, rocky island in the middle of the ocean. It’s about 4 miles to walk around the entire edge, shaped like a shallow crescent oriented with the outer edge facing northwest. There’s an outcropping of coral about 300 yards away from the smaller, inner edge and the occasional piece of wreckage from a ship or a plane washes ashore. Vegetation is sparse at the shoreline but dense towards the centre, mostly prickly brownish bushes with a few spindly palm trees thrown in. At the southwestern tip there are the remains of an old camp destroyed by the elements, a handful of sparse supplies and a diary in a foreign language are all that remains. A handful of spindly grey crabs play in rock pools on the beach.
Renunciation
The room snatches up anyone who travels by some form of public transportation: plane, ship, bus, train, etc. If you only walk, never leave the house or drive your own car then congratulations, you’ve got one less thing to worry about in life. A moment nodding off and suddenly you’re awoken by the screech of twisting metal and people screaming, rudely swamped in turbulent brine and forced to swim for safety in the panicked frenzy. It’s especially harrowing if you weren’t anywhere near the ocean.
No one else from the crash makes it to the island, which makes sense as they weren’t actually in it. To everyone else they looked away for a moment and then you weren’t there anymore, maybe you went to the bathroom? Disappearing mid-flight has caused consternation in a couple of instances but since there’s nothing to prove it just ends up in the pile of unverifiable occurrences and forgotten about next news cycle except for a couple of clips on YouTube.
The Journal: In the wrecked camp on the island is the remains of a handwritten journal. If the stranded has limited command of a particular language that’s the one it’s written in. Otherwise it’s in Dutch unless they can read Dutch or Mandarin Chinese unless they can read that or something bizarre and geometric that looks like no Earthly language.
The journal documents a previous survivor’s successes and failures on the island, fending for themselves and staving off madness. It can be a great help and a comfort, if the stranded can translate it. There’s no help to begin with, so other than the sketches every few pages, but eventually somewhere in the wreckage a translation dictionary will wash up allowing them to painstakingly work their way through the unusual grammar and syntax of an unfamiliar language.
The Wreckage: Bits and pieces of whatever the stranded was travelling in wash up occasionally, providing tools and reminders of the outside world. Wheels and bits of fuselage along with luggage, food and first aid kits, the most compelling are the reminders: photographs and letters from their old life. Curios that never existed, in some cases that never could have existed, that dredge up memories that drive and harass the stranded to overcome their circumstances. Any successful stress check made as a result of examining one confers the result as a hunch roll.
The Trial: Often an heretofore unseen predator or a debilitating illness or injury, the Island demands the stranded overcome a major trial before it will let them go. Foreshadowed for days or weeks the final confrontation is life threatening and unless they can prove change by survival, ultimately fatal. None of the powers of the island or its agents work against the trial, it’s all on the stranded.
Unlike most rooms the island does not enforce change. Surviving the trial seems to satisfy whatever requirements it operates on. Rescue arrives, a ship or plane passing by close enough to notice a signal, and they’re spirited home. Only to wake aboard whatever transportation they disappeared from, ragged, sunburnt and traumatised despite the fact that no time has passed at all.
Agents
The stranded that live to see rescue but avoid it, maniacally obsessed with their newfound independence, become agents of the room. There is only ever one agent at a time. Most of them end up as avatars of The Survivor. They gain the following abilities.
Chekov’s Parable: Before you disappear to the island an agent might take a seat next to you and with little preamble start to tell you a story about something that happened to them, some time they overcame adversity. This plants a seed that the stranded can choose to harvest by performing a symbolic equivalent to that story on the island. Doing so allows them to roll on one of the agent’s identities, once.
Lost Again: Agents can visit the Island again at any time by stranding themselves deliberately. Drunken night time swimming, aimless wandering in the desert, all paths to nowhere lead back to the island so long as they’re doing it on purpose. Getting off it again is another story but at least this time they can come prepared.
“No man is an island”
- John Donne
Shipwrecked. Stranded alone on an island in the middle of the ocean with no warning or expectation of rescue. Worse, you’re completely unprepared for anything like this. You’re the kind of person who’s lucky if you know what end of a TV dinner is up. You’re hungry, tired and exhausted, at a complete loss. Wait, what was that noise over in the bushes?
Agenda
Plenty of people can’t do the things our ancestors needed to in order to survive. Most of them don’t have to. They don’t know how to hunt, they don’t know how to set broken bones or build a house. Some of them can’t even cook for themselves. In a modern society where narrow specialization is a fact of life this can be excused. You can always call a plumber or an ambulance or go to the grocery store. However for some this goes so far that they’re completely reliant on others for their most basic needs, the room targets these worst offenders.
The Island of Independence is a room that pits the unprepared and dependant against their own laziness in a fight for survival. It puts them in a position where they need to rapidly develop the skills needed to survive in an inhospitable environment. It gives them the tools to do it but won’t hold their hand through the trial.
Appearance
A small, rocky island in the middle of the ocean. It’s about 4 miles to walk around the entire edge, shaped like a shallow crescent oriented with the outer edge facing northwest. There’s an outcropping of coral about 300 yards away from the smaller, inner edge and the occasional piece of wreckage from a ship or a plane washes ashore. Vegetation is sparse at the shoreline but dense towards the centre, mostly prickly brownish bushes with a few spindly palm trees thrown in. At the southwestern tip there are the remains of an old camp destroyed by the elements, a handful of sparse supplies and a diary in a foreign language are all that remains. A handful of spindly grey crabs play in rock pools on the beach.
Renunciation
The room snatches up anyone who travels by some form of public transportation: plane, ship, bus, train, etc. If you only walk, never leave the house or drive your own car then congratulations, you’ve got one less thing to worry about in life. A moment nodding off and suddenly you’re awoken by the screech of twisting metal and people screaming, rudely swamped in turbulent brine and forced to swim for safety in the panicked frenzy. It’s especially harrowing if you weren’t anywhere near the ocean.
No one else from the crash makes it to the island, which makes sense as they weren’t actually in it. To everyone else they looked away for a moment and then you weren’t there anymore, maybe you went to the bathroom? Disappearing mid-flight has caused consternation in a couple of instances but since there’s nothing to prove it just ends up in the pile of unverifiable occurrences and forgotten about next news cycle except for a couple of clips on YouTube.
The Journal: In the wrecked camp on the island is the remains of a handwritten journal. If the stranded has limited command of a particular language that’s the one it’s written in. Otherwise it’s in Dutch unless they can read Dutch or Mandarin Chinese unless they can read that or something bizarre and geometric that looks like no Earthly language.
The journal documents a previous survivor’s successes and failures on the island, fending for themselves and staving off madness. It can be a great help and a comfort, if the stranded can translate it. There’s no help to begin with, so other than the sketches every few pages, but eventually somewhere in the wreckage a translation dictionary will wash up allowing them to painstakingly work their way through the unusual grammar and syntax of an unfamiliar language.
The Wreckage: Bits and pieces of whatever the stranded was travelling in wash up occasionally, providing tools and reminders of the outside world. Wheels and bits of fuselage along with luggage, food and first aid kits, the most compelling are the reminders: photographs and letters from their old life. Curios that never existed, in some cases that never could have existed, that dredge up memories that drive and harass the stranded to overcome their circumstances. Any successful stress check made as a result of examining one confers the result as a hunch roll.
The Trial: Often an heretofore unseen predator or a debilitating illness or injury, the Island demands the stranded overcome a major trial before it will let them go. Foreshadowed for days or weeks the final confrontation is life threatening and unless they can prove change by survival, ultimately fatal. None of the powers of the island or its agents work against the trial, it’s all on the stranded.
Unlike most rooms the island does not enforce change. Surviving the trial seems to satisfy whatever requirements it operates on. Rescue arrives, a ship or plane passing by close enough to notice a signal, and they’re spirited home. Only to wake aboard whatever transportation they disappeared from, ragged, sunburnt and traumatised despite the fact that no time has passed at all.
Agents
The stranded that live to see rescue but avoid it, maniacally obsessed with their newfound independence, become agents of the room. There is only ever one agent at a time. Most of them end up as avatars of The Survivor. They gain the following abilities.
Chekov’s Parable: Before you disappear to the island an agent might take a seat next to you and with little preamble start to tell you a story about something that happened to them, some time they overcame adversity. This plants a seed that the stranded can choose to harvest by performing a symbolic equivalent to that story on the island. Doing so allows them to roll on one of the agent’s identities, once.
Lost Again: Agents can visit the Island again at any time by stranding themselves deliberately. Drunken night time swimming, aimless wandering in the desert, all paths to nowhere lead back to the island so long as they’re doing it on purpose. Getting off it again is another story but at least this time they can come prepared.
Friday, 7 February 2020
283 - Dead Archetypes
Unnatural Phenomenon: Dead Archetypes
Not all archetypes are able to be deposed by new ones. The Mother, the Warrior, some symbols are too primal and universal to brook alteration. Others avoid removal not because they're intrinsic to the human condition but because there's no replacement for them, instead they end up culturally superseded and slowly fade from view. Arguably this is worse.
You can't kill an idea, but you can certainly kill a person and ultimately that's what archetypes were and can be again. The House of Renunciation serves as an outlet for the usurpee but nothing exists to clean up after the god that no one believes in anymore.
Left moldering in the crawlspace of reality these carcasses bear strange fruit. It is the confirmed source of at least one Otherspace (a surprisingly idyllic meatscape populated by extremely pious mosquito-person aesthetes) and the theoretical precursor to the Linguistic Void. As unnatural resources the idea of harnessing an archetype's pussiannce is too mouthwatering for many to maintain scruples for long.
One suspiciously well-funded parapsychology department owes its success to pragmatic metaphysical graverobbing. A team of careful anthropologists, psychologists, archaeologists and one former godwalker of the Magus have already dug up something and drained all the magical juice they could out of it with cold iron electrodes. Now they're hot on the trail of a second orphaned archetype, traipsing through the heart of South America after rumours that one of the old religions holds clues to where they might find it. Cat and mouse games with a militaristic rival cabal led by their original founder threaten to spill the beans to the Occult Underground at large. Both assume and hope that's where the interference they've run up against is coming from, the possibility that their quarry might be stirring is something neither wants to contemplate.
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