Ritual: Last Train Out
Cost: 4 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Select a mode of public transport and use it and only it to get around for a month (walking is fine otherwise, to get to and from stations and stops, but nothing else). Keep and collect tickets and receipts from every trip you make. Bind them in a bundle with string made from the hair of bus drivers and train conductors and mark the topmost with an image of winged sandals in the blood of a ferret. Go to a bus stop or train station or equivalent after last service has run and stand at the stop or platform. Wait half an hour, if someone bothers you leave and try again some other night. If no one bothers you take out the ticket-bundle and toss it on the ground with the cry “Bathin, your debt is due you son of a bitch!”.
Effect: If the ritual is successful a bus or train or whatever is appropriate will pull up within 3 minutes. It will have no passengers, driver or conductor. Board as if nothing is wrong and take a seat, you can bring as many friends as tickets in the bundle. It will run as normal, except off hours and no one else will board. This is because they can’t see it. While aboard the last train out you are invisible to any outside scrutiny, including magickal scrying and divination. This invisibility lasts as long as the trip. For this reason it’s a favourite of cabals wanting to conduct meetings and deals free of outside interference or surveillance.
Don’t fall asleep on the last train out.
Thursday, 7 November 2019
Wednesday, 6 November 2019
190 - Dewey Carpenter, Blabbermouth
GMC: Dewey Carpenter, Blabbermouth
Dewey was completely unexceptional growing up: younger-middle child of four, small, unathletic and not particularly smart or charismatic. Having to hustle for attention from exhausted parents and uninterested siblings growing up he discovered the one thing that he could use to make himself feel and seem important: tattling. If his siblings did wrong and he told on them or threatened to that gave him temporary power and importance. There was a point of diminishing returns that eventually inverted the dynamic as even his parents resented being used as an extension of his will but it didn’t matter. To young Dewey the ability to rat people out was his very own personal philosopher’s stone. He could do anything with it.
Predictably Dewey wasn’t well liked at school but instead of correcting his behaviour the shunning led him to double down as a way of acting out - negative attention is still attention. A lack of early socialization led him to the conclusion that all relationships are based on competitive power struggles which rooted his behaviour in a way that made it impossible for teachers, his parents and a cavalcade of school counsellors to dig out. Eventually everyone got tired of trying and, as much as it’s not something they’d admit to, wrote Dewey off as a lost cause.
For an ordinary obsession that would have been true, aside from an associate’s degree in mechanical engineering Dewey hasn’t really achieved anything of note. He’s worked in a tire repair and mechanic’s shop as a general hand since high school, keeps a small apartment full of electronics he often goes without eating to pay for and has no close relationships. Instead he is consumed by the practice of cryptomancy: the magick of revealing damaging secrets.
It took a few years for him to find his niche and for the bulk of it the rest of the occult underground treated him like the rented pony he was all too eager to be. The resulting list of grudges is long and convoluted but mollified by the fact that he’s hellbent on twisting his obsession into a high position on the local totem pole. He thinks he can be the information broker that everyone goes to and needs to find out what the real deal is.
Dewey’s impulse control isn’t good enough for that. He mostly gathers charges through installing surveillance equipment in cars at his job supplemented with schemes targeted against the other magi he holds secret grudges against. Given the difficulty he has holding onto charges a lot of them are invested into artifacts. His schemes backfire often enough that he gets his ass kicked and hexed at least a couple of time a year and yet, in spite of this, people still go to him when they need to know what’s going on. Nobody trusts Dewey but they can’t deny that he always has the inside line.
STATS
Personality: Earnest, eager and pathetic. Between his lank, blonde bowl cut, dark hooded eyes and stooped posture, the skinny Dewey comes across as obsequious and untrustworthy. Most people barely take him seriously as an information broker because it’s so easy to get him to spill the beans without coughing up yourself. It does piss him off if you take advantage though and he’ll take that personally.
Rage: Being told "no". Dewey feels like since he doesn’t ask for much he shouldn’t be refused the things he does ask for.
Noble: Telling the truth. Dewey will lie to get what he wants, but he’ll come clean about it afterwards.
Fear: Losing the scoop on dishing dirt he’s gathered before someone else can (Isolation).
Obsession: Be the font of gossip that controls the occult underground.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Cryptomancer 55%* (Adept, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Compulsive Tattletale 65% (Substitutes for Notice, Substitutes for Secrecy, Coerces Self.)
Shock Gauges
Dewey was completely unexceptional growing up: younger-middle child of four, small, unathletic and not particularly smart or charismatic. Having to hustle for attention from exhausted parents and uninterested siblings growing up he discovered the one thing that he could use to make himself feel and seem important: tattling. If his siblings did wrong and he told on them or threatened to that gave him temporary power and importance. There was a point of diminishing returns that eventually inverted the dynamic as even his parents resented being used as an extension of his will but it didn’t matter. To young Dewey the ability to rat people out was his very own personal philosopher’s stone. He could do anything with it.
Predictably Dewey wasn’t well liked at school but instead of correcting his behaviour the shunning led him to double down as a way of acting out - negative attention is still attention. A lack of early socialization led him to the conclusion that all relationships are based on competitive power struggles which rooted his behaviour in a way that made it impossible for teachers, his parents and a cavalcade of school counsellors to dig out. Eventually everyone got tired of trying and, as much as it’s not something they’d admit to, wrote Dewey off as a lost cause.
For an ordinary obsession that would have been true, aside from an associate’s degree in mechanical engineering Dewey hasn’t really achieved anything of note. He’s worked in a tire repair and mechanic’s shop as a general hand since high school, keeps a small apartment full of electronics he often goes without eating to pay for and has no close relationships. Instead he is consumed by the practice of cryptomancy: the magick of revealing damaging secrets.
It took a few years for him to find his niche and for the bulk of it the rest of the occult underground treated him like the rented pony he was all too eager to be. The resulting list of grudges is long and convoluted but mollified by the fact that he’s hellbent on twisting his obsession into a high position on the local totem pole. He thinks he can be the information broker that everyone goes to and needs to find out what the real deal is.
Dewey’s impulse control isn’t good enough for that. He mostly gathers charges through installing surveillance equipment in cars at his job supplemented with schemes targeted against the other magi he holds secret grudges against. Given the difficulty he has holding onto charges a lot of them are invested into artifacts. His schemes backfire often enough that he gets his ass kicked and hexed at least a couple of time a year and yet, in spite of this, people still go to him when they need to know what’s going on. Nobody trusts Dewey but they can’t deny that he always has the inside line.
STATS
Personality: Earnest, eager and pathetic. Between his lank, blonde bowl cut, dark hooded eyes and stooped posture, the skinny Dewey comes across as obsequious and untrustworthy. Most people barely take him seriously as an information broker because it’s so easy to get him to spill the beans without coughing up yourself. It does piss him off if you take advantage though and he’ll take that personally.
Rage: Being told "no". Dewey feels like since he doesn’t ask for much he shouldn’t be refused the things he does ask for.
Noble: Telling the truth. Dewey will lie to get what he wants, but he’ll come clean about it afterwards.
Fear: Losing the scoop on dishing dirt he’s gathered before someone else can (Isolation).
Obsession: Be the font of gossip that controls the occult underground.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Cryptomancer 55%* (Adept, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Compulsive Tattletale 65% (Substitutes for Notice, Substitutes for Secrecy, Coerces Self.)
Shock Gauges
Tuesday, 5 November 2019
189 - Grave Robber
Artifact: Grave Robber
Power: Significant.
Power: Significant.
Description: An antique ventriloquist’s dummy wearing an old fashioned black and white striped convict outfit. The head has been removed and replaced with a real human skull, old and crumbling (with magick - or access to DNA analysis and the right archaeological databases - someone could discover that it is the lost skull of the Marquis de Sade, a potentially potent occult symbol in its own right). The right arm sits crooked at the elbow, pulling on it activates an internal lever that opens its mouth.
Effect: The grave robber eats teeth, specifically the eye-teeth (or upper canines), of the dead. Actuating the lever with them in its mouth causes will cause a pair to vanish. Doing this before the deceased person’s estate has been settled retroactively alters their last will and testament to include the artifact’s owner based on a Secrecy roll. A crit makes you the sole beneficiary, matched success gives you an equivalent to the largest current share and a success gets you a degree of benefit relative to the number of the roll. As a side effect if the estate includes any unnatural objects or artifacts the result prioritises them. The other beneficiaries might take exception, but short of a legal challenge it’s binding.
On a matched failure or a fumble the result is a poisoned chalice: an inheritance encumbered by debt and bad history or ghoulish vultures taking the opportunity to try to secure what they coveted but could never have while the original owner was alive.
Effect: The grave robber eats teeth, specifically the eye-teeth (or upper canines), of the dead. Actuating the lever with them in its mouth causes will cause a pair to vanish. Doing this before the deceased person’s estate has been settled retroactively alters their last will and testament to include the artifact’s owner based on a Secrecy roll. A crit makes you the sole beneficiary, matched success gives you an equivalent to the largest current share and a success gets you a degree of benefit relative to the number of the roll. As a side effect if the estate includes any unnatural objects or artifacts the result prioritises them. The other beneficiaries might take exception, but short of a legal challenge it’s binding.
On a matched failure or a fumble the result is a poisoned chalice: an inheritance encumbered by debt and bad history or ghoulish vultures taking the opportunity to try to secure what they coveted but could never have while the original owner was alive.
Monday, 4 November 2019
188 - Downtime
Optional Rules: Downtime
It’s over. Maybe you got what you wanted: the villain was defeated, the day saved and you and your friends victorious. Or maybe not, life’s not fair and often someone getting what they want is at another’s expense like it or not. Regardless of the outcome, it’s time to move on and build towards your next objective.
But not all of life is highs and lows and adventure, between the drama you’ll need some time to destress and put yourselves back together. A broken leg won’t heal if you insist on going out crime-fighting every night. Downtime rules cover what characters get up to during extended off-screen moments - if you’ve finished an objective or stalled out on one they can be used to sum up some productive things a cabal gets up to in the weeks or months when it isn’t changing the world. And provide consequences for those choices when play resumes.
Pursuits
Pursuits are the things you focus on during downtime. You’re assumed to take care of the incidentals of day to day living, but it wouldn’t be Unknown Armies if you couldn’t neglect your health or your loved ones in the pursuit of personal gain. By default you get a single pursuit per downtime but can take up to two additional pursuits in return for risking greater complications due to spreading yourself too thin (which are covered in the next section).
Physical Recuperation: Use the medicine rules on page 74 of Book 1: Play to assess the rate of recovery based on whatever method you choose: be it kicking your feet up at home with some ice packs or wheeling your leaky carcass into an ER and crying “hit and run”. Recovery that takes up to half the period covered by your downtime counts as one pursuit, anything higher counts as two (but only if you decide to do anything else). Another PC can provide medical assistance with one of their identities as a pursuit if desired (the effort counts as Continuing Education for them).
Therapy: As above, use the therapy rules on page 75 of Book 1: Play provided you’re willing to subject yourself to some kind of mental health support. Each pursuit is good for one roll under the Helping The Disturbed category at a level determined by your therapist. Another PC can use a pursuit to provide this therapy with one of their identities if desired (the effort counts as Continuing Education for them).
Quality Time: Put in the hours with your nearest and dearest to show them how much you care, social connection is good for you too. For each pursuit spent developing your connection with another person add 5% to that relationship with a successful roll on an ability or identity relevant to what you do together.
Continuing Education: Whether going to night school or obsessively practicing in your garage, working on your skills pays off in terms of competency. Gain 1-5% (1d10 divided by 2, rounded up) in an identity per pursuit spent on it with a failed roll on that identity (or a successful roll for avatars). The penalty for pursuing multiple pursuits doesn’t make this easier for non-avatar identities, if the roll wouldn’t fail without the penalty you don’t get the benefit (but you still risk complications).
Charge Gathering: Outside of charging rituals or weird artifacts (which should be handled as a Unique pursuit) this is an option only available to adepts. Roll your adept identity, gaining the sum of the roll plus your school’s omega (assume it’s zero if you don’t know it) in minor charges. If you manage to scrounge up more than 10 you can trade that many up to a significant charge (now and only now) since this activity is abstracted.
Treading Water: One thing that’s off limits during downtime is pursuing objective milestones, that’s strictly on-screen business. However you can work to keep progress you have, each pursuit spent treading water protects against 1d10% of deterioration to the percentiles of a standing objective or the carry over to a new one with a successful roll on an ability or identity relevant to how you do maintenance on it.
Unique: This covers everything else that idle magi might get up to when they aren’t busy changing the world. Casting rituals, figuring out how artifacts work, setting up a new cabal clubhouse after the old one got burned down. Exact details of how this category works are up to the GM on an individual basis, but should involve some sort of roll, at least for the purposes of determining whether there are complications.
Complications
Unknown Armies is all about actions having consequences and downtime is no different. Given that downtime pursuits are a metaphorical barrel on a street corner labelled “FREE STUFF” it’s not surprising that there might be some dirty needles at the bottom. By default a matched failure or fumble on a pursuit roll lets the GM pick a complication from the following list. If the player is greedy things get worse. If they’re juggling two pursuits their rolls are at a -20% shift and if they’re ballsy enough to go for three then in addition to that penalty any failure triggers a complication.
The exact nature of a complication should narratively play off the pursuits chosen by a player. At the GMs discretion the player may use this to highlight what they’re most willing to risk.
Injury: Physical and mental trauma, the past can come back to bite you or pushing too hard can mean risking your bodily or psychological integrity. Take 1d10 wounds or a stress check (of a high enough rank you need to roll dice, no freebies) on a gauge determined by the GM. Bad screw ups during treatment for these things are covered under their individual sections in Book 1, use those where acceptable.
Gaffe: Whether it’s neglect or familiarity breeding contempt not all relationships are happy ones. Maybe you screwed up, maybe it was completely beyond your control. Regardless, lose 1d10% from one of your relationships as it sours.
Rust: Not keeping up with a passion or career risks dulling your skills. If you’re too busy burning the midnight oil trying to summon grandma's ghost for a chat about your inheritance your suffering work ethic might mean demotion at work. Lose 1-5% (1d10 divided by 2, rounded up) off of one of your identities.
Taboo: For adepts and avatars there’s a fine line to walk on the path to power. Screwing up costs all your charges for the former or 1-5% (1d10 divided by 2, rounded up) off your identity for the latter.
Objective Decay: If you have an incomplete objective that you’re taking time off from or are planning to build on your previous success then leaving it alone risks your work turning fallow. Knock 1d10% off of those objective percentiles as you lose momentum or your opposition screws around unopposed. Ideally the GM should only go for this if the players intend to keep going with what they have, but it’s understandable if cutting into their work sours them on it after the fact.
Unique: Whether it’s their chickens coming home to roost or foreboding omens on the horizon, the GM can use this miscellaneous category to resolve unfinished business or seed new complications and hooks to be dealt with when play resumes. Or just mess with the players in general.
It’s over. Maybe you got what you wanted: the villain was defeated, the day saved and you and your friends victorious. Or maybe not, life’s not fair and often someone getting what they want is at another’s expense like it or not. Regardless of the outcome, it’s time to move on and build towards your next objective.
But not all of life is highs and lows and adventure, between the drama you’ll need some time to destress and put yourselves back together. A broken leg won’t heal if you insist on going out crime-fighting every night. Downtime rules cover what characters get up to during extended off-screen moments - if you’ve finished an objective or stalled out on one they can be used to sum up some productive things a cabal gets up to in the weeks or months when it isn’t changing the world. And provide consequences for those choices when play resumes.
Pursuits
Pursuits are the things you focus on during downtime. You’re assumed to take care of the incidentals of day to day living, but it wouldn’t be Unknown Armies if you couldn’t neglect your health or your loved ones in the pursuit of personal gain. By default you get a single pursuit per downtime but can take up to two additional pursuits in return for risking greater complications due to spreading yourself too thin (which are covered in the next section).
Physical Recuperation: Use the medicine rules on page 74 of Book 1: Play to assess the rate of recovery based on whatever method you choose: be it kicking your feet up at home with some ice packs or wheeling your leaky carcass into an ER and crying “hit and run”. Recovery that takes up to half the period covered by your downtime counts as one pursuit, anything higher counts as two (but only if you decide to do anything else). Another PC can provide medical assistance with one of their identities as a pursuit if desired (the effort counts as Continuing Education for them).
Therapy: As above, use the therapy rules on page 75 of Book 1: Play provided you’re willing to subject yourself to some kind of mental health support. Each pursuit is good for one roll under the Helping The Disturbed category at a level determined by your therapist. Another PC can use a pursuit to provide this therapy with one of their identities if desired (the effort counts as Continuing Education for them).
Quality Time: Put in the hours with your nearest and dearest to show them how much you care, social connection is good for you too. For each pursuit spent developing your connection with another person add 5% to that relationship with a successful roll on an ability or identity relevant to what you do together.
Continuing Education: Whether going to night school or obsessively practicing in your garage, working on your skills pays off in terms of competency. Gain 1-5% (1d10 divided by 2, rounded up) in an identity per pursuit spent on it with a failed roll on that identity (or a successful roll for avatars). The penalty for pursuing multiple pursuits doesn’t make this easier for non-avatar identities, if the roll wouldn’t fail without the penalty you don’t get the benefit (but you still risk complications).
Charge Gathering: Outside of charging rituals or weird artifacts (which should be handled as a Unique pursuit) this is an option only available to adepts. Roll your adept identity, gaining the sum of the roll plus your school’s omega (assume it’s zero if you don’t know it) in minor charges. If you manage to scrounge up more than 10 you can trade that many up to a significant charge (now and only now) since this activity is abstracted.
Treading Water: One thing that’s off limits during downtime is pursuing objective milestones, that’s strictly on-screen business. However you can work to keep progress you have, each pursuit spent treading water protects against 1d10% of deterioration to the percentiles of a standing objective or the carry over to a new one with a successful roll on an ability or identity relevant to how you do maintenance on it.
Unique: This covers everything else that idle magi might get up to when they aren’t busy changing the world. Casting rituals, figuring out how artifacts work, setting up a new cabal clubhouse after the old one got burned down. Exact details of how this category works are up to the GM on an individual basis, but should involve some sort of roll, at least for the purposes of determining whether there are complications.
Complications
Unknown Armies is all about actions having consequences and downtime is no different. Given that downtime pursuits are a metaphorical barrel on a street corner labelled “FREE STUFF” it’s not surprising that there might be some dirty needles at the bottom. By default a matched failure or fumble on a pursuit roll lets the GM pick a complication from the following list. If the player is greedy things get worse. If they’re juggling two pursuits their rolls are at a -20% shift and if they’re ballsy enough to go for three then in addition to that penalty any failure triggers a complication.
The exact nature of a complication should narratively play off the pursuits chosen by a player. At the GMs discretion the player may use this to highlight what they’re most willing to risk.
Injury: Physical and mental trauma, the past can come back to bite you or pushing too hard can mean risking your bodily or psychological integrity. Take 1d10 wounds or a stress check (of a high enough rank you need to roll dice, no freebies) on a gauge determined by the GM. Bad screw ups during treatment for these things are covered under their individual sections in Book 1, use those where acceptable.
Gaffe: Whether it’s neglect or familiarity breeding contempt not all relationships are happy ones. Maybe you screwed up, maybe it was completely beyond your control. Regardless, lose 1d10% from one of your relationships as it sours.
Rust: Not keeping up with a passion or career risks dulling your skills. If you’re too busy burning the midnight oil trying to summon grandma's ghost for a chat about your inheritance your suffering work ethic might mean demotion at work. Lose 1-5% (1d10 divided by 2, rounded up) off of one of your identities.
Taboo: For adepts and avatars there’s a fine line to walk on the path to power. Screwing up costs all your charges for the former or 1-5% (1d10 divided by 2, rounded up) off your identity for the latter.
Objective Decay: If you have an incomplete objective that you’re taking time off from or are planning to build on your previous success then leaving it alone risks your work turning fallow. Knock 1d10% off of those objective percentiles as you lose momentum or your opposition screws around unopposed. Ideally the GM should only go for this if the players intend to keep going with what they have, but it’s understandable if cutting into their work sours them on it after the fact.
Unique: Whether it’s their chickens coming home to roost or foreboding omens on the horizon, the GM can use this miscellaneous category to resolve unfinished business or seed new complications and hooks to be dealt with when play resumes. Or just mess with the players in general.
Sunday, 3 November 2019
187 - Demon Gauge & Kelpie
Ritual: Demon Gauge
Cost: 2 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Smash a number of Ouija boards to pieces (it has to be smashing, carefully cutting them up doesn’t work), the more you destroy the more detailed the answer the ritual gives you can be. Take a lock of hair from a victim that has been possessed by the target demon, hair which they had while possessed. Place all the Ouija board pieces in a garbage bag and climb to the top of the tallest building you can walk to in a day (you can drive there, it just needs to be within walking distance). Burn and breathe in the smoke from the lock of hair. Give the bag a good shake and tear it open, hurling the contents from the north side of the building.
Effect: If successful the ritual will give you information about the demon in question. In order: its Urge (although this won’t be couched in game terms), current and previous hosts and the actions they’ve taken, its real name, it’s history when it was alive. All of these things will be spelled out in the arrangement of Ouija board pieces on the ground. The only limitation is the available letters on the Ouija board pieces, if there aren’t enough some information will be left out. The ritual is obliging though, when necessary it will substitute misspellings and text speak when letters are missing or multiple letters on a single piece are the only options.
Ritual: Kelpie
Cost: 2 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Take the bones of a beloved horse and dump them unseen in a body of water. Spread a fictional story of a tragic drowning associated with that body of water as though it were real (you don’t have to actually assert this, implication is fine). The story should spread far enough that everyone in the immediate region should have heard it. They don’t all have to believe it, but the majority of people who know it should (the locals might all know it’s bullshit and the ritual can still work if it’s a pervasive enough urban myth). After 33 days go to the body of water and recover the horse’s skull. If you were not the horse’s owner then return it to them.
Effect: The body of water becomes fatally dangerous around the point that you dumped the horse bones. All checks involving swimming around that spot are flip-flopped to the worst result. This effect lasts until it causes a number of deaths equal to the number of people who loved the horse.
Cost: 2 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Smash a number of Ouija boards to pieces (it has to be smashing, carefully cutting them up doesn’t work), the more you destroy the more detailed the answer the ritual gives you can be. Take a lock of hair from a victim that has been possessed by the target demon, hair which they had while possessed. Place all the Ouija board pieces in a garbage bag and climb to the top of the tallest building you can walk to in a day (you can drive there, it just needs to be within walking distance). Burn and breathe in the smoke from the lock of hair. Give the bag a good shake and tear it open, hurling the contents from the north side of the building.
Effect: If successful the ritual will give you information about the demon in question. In order: its Urge (although this won’t be couched in game terms), current and previous hosts and the actions they’ve taken, its real name, it’s history when it was alive. All of these things will be spelled out in the arrangement of Ouija board pieces on the ground. The only limitation is the available letters on the Ouija board pieces, if there aren’t enough some information will be left out. The ritual is obliging though, when necessary it will substitute misspellings and text speak when letters are missing or multiple letters on a single piece are the only options.
Ritual: Kelpie
Cost: 2 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Take the bones of a beloved horse and dump them unseen in a body of water. Spread a fictional story of a tragic drowning associated with that body of water as though it were real (you don’t have to actually assert this, implication is fine). The story should spread far enough that everyone in the immediate region should have heard it. They don’t all have to believe it, but the majority of people who know it should (the locals might all know it’s bullshit and the ritual can still work if it’s a pervasive enough urban myth). After 33 days go to the body of water and recover the horse’s skull. If you were not the horse’s owner then return it to them.
Effect: The body of water becomes fatally dangerous around the point that you dumped the horse bones. All checks involving swimming around that spot are flip-flopped to the worst result. This effect lasts until it causes a number of deaths equal to the number of people who loved the horse.
Saturday, 2 November 2019
186 - The Sky Pirates of Basutoland #27
Artifact: The Sky Pirates of Basutoland #27
Power: Significant.
Description: A 48 page comic printed and illustrated in the silver age style and dated September 1959, published by the apparently non-existent company Imagoes Comics. Prior and subsequent issues are unknown on the public market (and the few copies of #27 are prohibitively expensive) and the subject of rumour in specialist collector and occult underground circles.
The implied ongoing plot centers around the African nation of Basutoland (a genuine location, now named the Kingdom of Lesotho in the real world), geopolitically empowered and then exploited due to the discovery of a rare mineral that can be refined into lighter than air materials. The development of naturally buoyant aircraft and sky-cities creates a stratified society in which the ground-bound citizenry are forced to work for the benefit of those in the sky under the threat of bombardment.
The Sky Pirates are a freedom-fighter/terrorist organisation that prey on the sky cities in a Robin Hood style of supporting the local populace. Despite the pulp nature of the subject matter very little action occurs, at least in this issue. Instead there is a lengthy gunpoint debate between protagonist Lemoha Dube and his opposing number Captain Desmond Bakkes. They cover subjects such as social mobility, alternative economic systems (communism is described but conspicuously unmentioned by name), existentialism and naval warfare. There is reference to the fictional assassination of U.S president Dwight Eisenhower in the exact same manner as JFK, which leads most to assume the publication date was deliberately falsified. The issue ends with the destruction of Captain Bakkes' flagship by an explosively secretly planted while Lemoha bought time for the saboteur with their exchange.
Effect: For most people it’s just a comic, weirdly dry where it should be entertaining and light on detail where it should be informative. Those people aren’t the target audience. For people sensitive to the message, the comic is a garbled hotline to the statosphere.
Essentially it opens someone up to whichever archetype depicted in the story is the best fit for their personality. This is compelling, they gain an automatic 10% in the relevant avatar identity and a minor compulsion to flamboyantly act on it in the style of a silver age pulp comic in opportune circumstances. Previously expressed archetypes are: the Captain, the Firebrand, the Healer, the Martyr, the Opportunist, and the Warrior but others may be possible. The compulsion lasts for a week, flaring up in dramatically appropriate circumstances (which can be avoided by isolating yourself) as a rank 4 Self check. If acted upon 3 times the avatar identity becomes permanent, otherwise it fades at the end of the week.
For those with an existing avatar identity reading the comic is the statospheric equivalent of grabbing a live wire. For starters automatic taboo right off the bat. Second you gain the week-long minor compulsion to act out as though you were suited to one of the other archetypes. Acting on these compulsions allows your to substitute your existing avatar identity for the channels of the new archetype up to three times before the effect ends. Each foreign channeling causes taboo though.
Power: Significant.
Description: A 48 page comic printed and illustrated in the silver age style and dated September 1959, published by the apparently non-existent company Imagoes Comics. Prior and subsequent issues are unknown on the public market (and the few copies of #27 are prohibitively expensive) and the subject of rumour in specialist collector and occult underground circles.
The implied ongoing plot centers around the African nation of Basutoland (a genuine location, now named the Kingdom of Lesotho in the real world), geopolitically empowered and then exploited due to the discovery of a rare mineral that can be refined into lighter than air materials. The development of naturally buoyant aircraft and sky-cities creates a stratified society in which the ground-bound citizenry are forced to work for the benefit of those in the sky under the threat of bombardment.
The Sky Pirates are a freedom-fighter/terrorist organisation that prey on the sky cities in a Robin Hood style of supporting the local populace. Despite the pulp nature of the subject matter very little action occurs, at least in this issue. Instead there is a lengthy gunpoint debate between protagonist Lemoha Dube and his opposing number Captain Desmond Bakkes. They cover subjects such as social mobility, alternative economic systems (communism is described but conspicuously unmentioned by name), existentialism and naval warfare. There is reference to the fictional assassination of U.S president Dwight Eisenhower in the exact same manner as JFK, which leads most to assume the publication date was deliberately falsified. The issue ends with the destruction of Captain Bakkes' flagship by an explosively secretly planted while Lemoha bought time for the saboteur with their exchange.
Effect: For most people it’s just a comic, weirdly dry where it should be entertaining and light on detail where it should be informative. Those people aren’t the target audience. For people sensitive to the message, the comic is a garbled hotline to the statosphere.
Essentially it opens someone up to whichever archetype depicted in the story is the best fit for their personality. This is compelling, they gain an automatic 10% in the relevant avatar identity and a minor compulsion to flamboyantly act on it in the style of a silver age pulp comic in opportune circumstances. Previously expressed archetypes are: the Captain, the Firebrand, the Healer, the Martyr, the Opportunist, and the Warrior but others may be possible. The compulsion lasts for a week, flaring up in dramatically appropriate circumstances (which can be avoided by isolating yourself) as a rank 4 Self check. If acted upon 3 times the avatar identity becomes permanent, otherwise it fades at the end of the week.
For those with an existing avatar identity reading the comic is the statospheric equivalent of grabbing a live wire. For starters automatic taboo right off the bat. Second you gain the week-long minor compulsion to act out as though you were suited to one of the other archetypes. Acting on these compulsions allows your to substitute your existing avatar identity for the channels of the new archetype up to three times before the effect ends. Each foreign channeling causes taboo though.
These effects only happen once per person.
Friday, 1 November 2019
185 - Death's Carnation
Ritual: Death’s Carnation
Cost: 4 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Take white roses to the gravesite of someone you hate every day for a month, skipping the fifth Sunday of any month and those that fall on a weekend in which a full moon occurs. Unburden yourself when leaving the flowers by verbally telling them one new thing or recalling one new incident on each visit. Every fifth visit chalk a specific blue and yellow symbol on the grave marker, if it is ever not washed away by rain on your next visit leave immediately and postpone further visits for three days (which extends the timetable, if it’s still there three days later you’ll have to wash it off yourself).
Effect: If the ritual works at the end of the month you will find a single red carnation sprouting from the grave on your last visit. It will grow in and through any medium: dirt, gravel, concrete, steel. The petals feel thick and surprisingly fibrous, examination or taste indicates they’re made out of meat (specifically the flesh of the departed grave owner). Once picked the flower lasts about 3 or 4 days, this can be extended out to a couple of weeks by placing the stem in a container of blood (any kind, it isn’t picky).
Anyone wearing death’s carnation as a corsage or in their hair or pinned to a lapel is inured to violence and may flip-flop any stress checks experienced on that gauge. However the flower also acts as a magnet for injury and death, people gain a +20% shift on all physical attacks against a wearer who also gets -20% on other rolls to avoid harm. If charges were spent in performing the ritual it does offer limited protection from Thanatomancy, each charge can absorb 1d10 damage from an effect from that school spent at the discretion of the wearer.
Cost: 4 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Take white roses to the gravesite of someone you hate every day for a month, skipping the fifth Sunday of any month and those that fall on a weekend in which a full moon occurs. Unburden yourself when leaving the flowers by verbally telling them one new thing or recalling one new incident on each visit. Every fifth visit chalk a specific blue and yellow symbol on the grave marker, if it is ever not washed away by rain on your next visit leave immediately and postpone further visits for three days (which extends the timetable, if it’s still there three days later you’ll have to wash it off yourself).
Effect: If the ritual works at the end of the month you will find a single red carnation sprouting from the grave on your last visit. It will grow in and through any medium: dirt, gravel, concrete, steel. The petals feel thick and surprisingly fibrous, examination or taste indicates they’re made out of meat (specifically the flesh of the departed grave owner). Once picked the flower lasts about 3 or 4 days, this can be extended out to a couple of weeks by placing the stem in a container of blood (any kind, it isn’t picky).
Anyone wearing death’s carnation as a corsage or in their hair or pinned to a lapel is inured to violence and may flip-flop any stress checks experienced on that gauge. However the flower also acts as a magnet for injury and death, people gain a +20% shift on all physical attacks against a wearer who also gets -20% on other rolls to avoid harm. If charges were spent in performing the ritual it does offer limited protection from Thanatomancy, each charge can absorb 1d10 damage from an effect from that school spent at the discretion of the wearer.
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