Paragon Place: No Man’s Land
Not all paragon places are actively generated by human choice and action, some are defined by unconscious reflection on natural occurrences and reputation. For example, a house might gain a reputation as haunted after a couple of unfortuitous deaths and regardless of whether it actually is this reputation will haunt the place on its own. The Bermuda Triangle is the product of scandalous press, confirmation bias and bad weather more than anything unnatural. No Man’s Land is inhospitable environment empowered by reputation.
The adjuncts for no man’s land are dangerous rather than helpful. This is deliberate, it doesn’t follow the conventional rules for paragon places. Unnatural phenomenon and objective juicing are the same but adjuncts activate automatically when people intrude, associated and resonant avatars may reroll any results at normal frequencies. Beyond the usual occult uses the dangerous nature of no man’s land lends it to being exploited for security or used as a trap.
Taboo: Occupation and development. No man’s land is defined by active resistance to human influence and safety, yoking it to civilized purposes undermines its uncontrolled danger and “otherness” even if it is manmade.
Associated Avatars: The Outsider, the Shaman, the Tamer.
Resonant Avatars: The Explorer, the Survivor.
Symbols: Long falls onto sharp rocks or through collapsed floors, bad weather, isolation from civilization, urban legends and true stories of grisly fates.
Adjuncts
1%-50%: Foreboding. Once per person per week, a successful roll acts like a negative cousin to a hunch. The value rolled opposes a single stress check or roll to avoid injury, rolling equal to or below it inflicts a normal failed result (except on a crit).
51%-70%: Stranded. There’s no help coming, cellular coverage is dead, the roads are out and no one knows where you are and there’s so little you can do alone. Identities with the Therapeutic or Medical features either lose the ability to be flip-flopped or suffer a -20% shift from sheer unnaturally powered hopelessness in no man’s land.
71%-90%: Part of no man’s land’s danger is its unpredictability. One of these channels can apply to each visitor at a time (for ease of use I’d stick to using the same one for everyone, but you do you). If someone survives a dangerous encounter in no man’s land and later returns the same one cannot apply twice in a row.
- Better: The earlier foreboding now ceaselessly dogs their steps. The effects of the first channel apply to all relevant rolls of an odd number until they leave. This place wants them dead.
- Faster: Things can turn foul unexpectedly and without warning and with this adjunct they’ll do so far more frequently. Inflict damage equivalent to a minor blast or a rank 5 stress check relevant to the danger of the environment apropos of nothing.
- Cheaper: Preparation and technology are how we overcome our environment. Here they fail, at some point a piece of equipment is automatically destroyed or malfunctions in the face of dire peril.
91%+: Even magick can’t protect you. All rolls on avatar channels, adept spells and gutter magick rituals intended to guard against the danger of no man’s land are at a -20% shift. Worse, protective magicks put in place before you enter are automatically rerolled for with the penalty.
99%: No man’s land only maintains a reputation if it has victims. Once every so often it can dangle a lure to draw people in, the archetypal haunted house drawing in victims every seven years. A side effect is that this can pay off if you manipulate the symbolism correctly, horror tropes like final girl and hereditary curse inform the way this channel interacts with people. Overcoming it in a symbolically appropriate way is good for an extra +10% to an identity or objective on top of any regular benefits of survival.
Paragon Place: The Secret Treehouse
The world is a huge and mysterious place to children, most of it is already mapped and claimed by adults. Some thrive in that environment, it has a place for them and celebrates their talents and achievements. Others are not so lucky and have to carve out niches of their own, they stake claim to hidden and forgotten areas and use them as space to forge their own identities and private sub-cultures. These liminal, transformative boltholes are fragile, remaining secret is what gives them power. Intrusion risks the personal bonds and shared history of the people who grew up together there.
The Barrens from IT is a good example of a secret treehouse, it’s free of adult influence in a way a normal treehouse isn’t, but the spot down by the reservoir a band of teenagers go to smoke and drink could be just as applicable if it's special to them.
Taboo: Losing its exclusiveness. People can come and go from the secret treehouse but if it’s colonised by a large group of outsiders it loses gravitas as a crucible for bonding and transformation. Outsiders can know about it, they just can't make use of it. Excessive use by adults does it too, you might visit briefly to regain a whiff of the nostalgic magick that defined you growing up but squatting there is unhealthy and damaging.
Associated Avatars: The Explorer, The Shaman, The True King.
Resonant Avatars: The Child, The Fool, The Outsider.
Symbols: Small, ramshackle buildings, junk food wrappers and cigarette butts, graffiti and tree carvings, isolation and freedom from a stifling community.
Adjuncts
1%-50%: Kids come to the secret treehouse to get away from their problems and stake a claim to themselves. Sharing this with your buddies creates a syncretic experience that lets you lean on each other and work as a group. It’s limited to one relevant hunch roll at a time but everyone can roll and pick the single best result. The caveat is that any matched roll or fumble takes automatic precedence, the worse the better. Kids are well-known for doing stupid shit, often it’s their mistakes that create the more memorable stories.
51%-70%: On the other hand, some problems aren’t so easily solved and sometimes you just need to get away from them. Play can be a cathartic escape and a reminder that there is a world outside of what might be waiting at home or at school, however small. Engaging in this kind of escapism can be good for the soul, gain the Therapeutic feature or can flip-flop on an identity that already has it while in the secret treehouse.
71%-90%: The secret treehouse is a redoubt and a community. It offers safety, bonding, development and discovery:
- Better: “Crap, I’m sorry! It’s fine, you’re fine! Please don’t tell mom!” +20% to Medical rolls to fix the injuries caused by roughhousing, accidents and childhood misadventure (even without an appropriate identity you can roll at 20%). Most of the time the result indicates it wasn’t really as bad as everyone dreaded and the ice pack definitely helps. The caveat to this power is that if an adult/authority figure cops wise to Kyle’s broken leg then the healing evaporates as it turns out to be exactly as bad as originally thought.
- Faster: Kids make fast friends easily and for those in the secret treehouse it’s them against the world. Any bonding experiences at the secret treehouse count for double the benefit (+10%) to relationships. Unfortunately the inverse is true, damaging and coercing relationships knocks off 10%. It’s a special place and spoiling that seems especially shitty.
- Cheaper: Weird shit turns up in weird places and the kind of spaces that secret treehouses occupy epitomize this. Usually it’s dirty magazines, beer bottles and hubcaps but with a successful roll something that fits a current need might show up. More likely it'll be something that acts as a unique catalyst, either in conjunction with current events or on its own.
91+%: The borders of reality seem more porous here. Even though the real world might be 90 feet away where the hillside crests to abut a busy highway, the secret treehouse can seem as isolated as the most secretive grotto. A successful roll keeps non-members out, they can stumble around the area for hours and not come across the clearing where you’re hiding out. If there’s any contention over whether someone has membership they probably don’t.
99%: Eventually you have to leave leave childhood behind, whether it comes out of a climactic and traumatic event or you just age past it. The secret treehouse rewards the former and marking a rite of passage that separates you from it is powerful. Completing a relevant objective is a good benchmark for what qualifies. Doing so at the secret treehouse grants an one-time 10% increase to one of your identities. The downside is that using the secret treehouse after this invokes taboo for you.
Paragon Place: The Truck Stop
Everybody who’s made their life on the highways winds up there eventually. It’s the kind of middle-of-nowhere, beacon of respite that truckers, roadtrippers and holidaymakers all come to associate with the open road and long journeys. It’s the modern oasis, making impossible journeys into something probable. That place of safety and comfort far from the fruits of civilization. And yet, unlike civilization no one settles there. It’s a place with people, but not for people. Somewhere to be visited, but not a destination.
Taboo: Nobody lives at the truck stop (I mean, I guess you could but that’s not what it’s for). Staying longer than overnight is taboo. So is making it a destination, always be passing through on your way to someplace else. Employees occupy a weird liminal space, they’re excluded from a lot of the benefits even as caretakers.
Associated Avatars: The Masterless Man, the Outsider, the Salesman, the Solid Citizen.
Resonant Avatars: The Charioteer, the Explorer, the Guide, the Loyal Labourer, the Pilgrim, the Unsung Champion.
Symbols: The squeegee for wiping windshields (and you know some prick has wrecked one by wiping down their entire filthy vehicle), air fresheners and the stink of spilled gas and oil, food that’s either been sitting under a heat lamp all day or really good.
Adjuncts
1%-50%: Need to plot out the next leg of your journey? Gain a hunch roll to figure out where you’re going while drawing on a road atlas with a marker or fiddling with google maps in between scarfing down questionable sandwiches. Alternatively use it to pick up information about where you’re going by eavesdropping on conversations, noticing discarded tourist brochures or hearing voices from that inexplicable concrete dinosaur sculpture by the roadside.
51%-70%: Gain your choice of the Medical feature for performing first aid or the ability to flip-flop a roll to make temporary repairs to a vehicle at the truck stop. Temporary being the operative word, any benefits only last until you get to where you’re going. Go to the friggin’ hospital for your snakebite already.
71%-90%: The truck stop is a place to rest, wool-gather and marshal your resources before plowing on. It’s a bulwark against the long distances people have to travel and comforts them like a watering hole in the desert.
- Better: Truck stops offer more facilities and travel-oriented products to smooth out the stresses of the road than ever these days. By taking advantage of them gain a hunch roll for your next stress check, if it winds up passing you can use it while you’re still travelling. Otherwise disregard it and roll normally.
- Faster: Just a little shut-eye and then back on the road. A 15-minute kip counts as a full night’s sleep, once per journey. Pushing the envelope again unravels the effect without you realizing it, as many have fatally learned.
- Cheaper: On your last legs, broke and your vehicle won’t run? This one’s good for one freebie that will get you out of here but only if you’re truly desperate, there’s no guarantee it’ll get you where you’re going but finding a discarded half-full fuel can in the bushes is better than a kick in the teeth.
91%+: Everyone’s passing through on their way to something. If you’re stuck or lost you can stick your wagon wheels into these universal ruts and let the cosmos take you where you need to go. Go through the motions of purposeful travel: gas up, eat, play at having a destination and then drive on out with a careless, automatic-writing sort of vibe. If you have an objective it’ll put your on a synchronous path to whatever the GM thinks is the most convenient petty milestone. You just won’t know it until you get there.
99%: Whatever their differences all truck stops look the same in certain ways: that flickering fluorescent tube in the overhead lights outside, the one wrecked bathroom stall that you don’t want to know what happened to, the food, the graffiti, the people. Part of this is a frequency illusion, you see and remember the things that you expect. Part of it is that they’re all the same place. Make a roll, cutting the length of your journey by the resulting percentage. It only happens when you’re not paying attention, go into the bathroom or sleep in your cab and come out or wake up in a different stop. It’ll be obvious later, like when you drive someplace and suddenly realize you have no memory of how you did it.
