236 - Voodoo Regifting

Ritual: Voodoo Regifting

Cost: 4 minor charges.

Ritual Action: Take a gift given to you by someone close to you (so someone with whom you it one of the five relationships). The more emotionally important the gift the more powerful the effect, a secret Santa present given out of obligation would barely even qualify while an engagement ring is on the other end of the spectrum.

Three days before a full moon delete or otherwise destroy any photographs you have of you and the target together, replacing at least one of them with a photograph of you and the second target taken especially for the occasion. Soaking the gift overnight in one of your bodily fluids, give it to the secondary target, make it clear that it is being regifted and who it originally came from. Make them promise not to tell the target, get them to promise three times.

For the rest of the day spit on the ground before passing through any doorway.

Effect: Your relationship with the original gift giver is damaged. The extent of the damage depends upon the importance of the gift: the secret Santa example might only knock off 1% while the engagement ring would do damage to it with the ritual roll like a firearm attack. By default it knocks off percentiles like a melee attack with no damage bonus.

If the target and the secondary target have relationships it gains percentiles equal to half that value. If there’s an empty relationship slot for either or both of them it fills in with the same value. This doesn’t force them to do anything, like the Corsican Rings it’s a magickal transfer that they have to choose to embrace for it to last.

Cast more than once on the same person it nixes your relationship with them entirely and any attempts to take up a new relationship of that kind will flounder for 3 years, 3 months and 3 days. You just come across as disingenuous and tacky.

235 - Oscar Fonseca, Retired Otherspace Survival Expert & Maria Fonesca, Sleeper Plant

GMC: Oscar Fonseca, Retired Otherspace Survival Expert & Maria Fonesca, Sleeper Plant

None of the regulars to the convenience store he owns would peg Oscar as having once been paratrooper with the Mexican Army under another name. They certainly wouldn’t believe he left to join Alex Abel’s private occult mafia after he was discharged, following a disaster that left him the sole, sane survivor of his unit stumbling into a garish, casino-themed otherspace. They absolutely wouldn’t believe Maria, his coarsely adoring wife of 20 years, was a plant from yet another secret society (sent to secretly exploit him for access to the New Inquisition but who caught genuine feelings and kept it all hidden in the aftermath of the Whisper War). He just doesn’t seem like that kind of guy.

Oscar prefers it that way, as far as he is concerned he never really wanted to be that guy. Sure, youthful machismo dictated his choice of military career, but of everything that followed where he’s at now feels the most like home. His marriage, his store, his community, seeing the faces of his kids when he gets home, he’s grateful in a way he didn’t think he’d ever get to be. Especially not as his experience with “extra-dimensional environments” eventually led to him being Alex’s chief doorkicker when it came to dealing with otherspaces and related phenomenon. There were only four genuine incursions over his tenure, but dozens of false positives and sifting the wreckage of those that disappeared before TNI could arrive kept him busy and sharp. You can count the number of people with more otherspace experience who’re alive today on your fingers.

Maria was a cult-survivor picked up by the Sleepers in the aftermath of wiping it out. Impressionable but wary she was eventually won over by their rhetoric of sparing people the terrible things she had been through. Although she proved an adequate operative she tired of the uncertain and dangerous lifestyle, so when the opportunity to unofficially retire herself under the guise of getting close to a trusted member of a major rival organisation came up she took it. The Sleepers learned a few useful tidbits from her but she got her wish, they imploded before they could make any serious impositions on her new position.

When TNI fell apart at the same time Oscar picked himself up and walked away. He had a nest egg, a young family and a new identity unencumbered by most of his past. It was an chance to start fresh somewhere. His own little slice of the American Dream. Maria hadn't planned on actually falling in love with the man she was deceiving but when the opportunity to cut ties came around she realized she couldn't think of any place she'd rather be.

For a long while they got to live it, but it wasn’t to last. TNI’s reformation brought a lot of wayward souls back into the fold and when it was discovered that not only was Oscar unwilling to join them but had built himself a life with a new family they gave him an ultimatum. He gets to go on living under his assumed identity, the legal status of his citizenship goes unnoticed and he’ll get to live out a normal life with his family. In return TNI has expectations, his experience and expertise aren’t something they have a replacement for so occasionally he gets a call and has to make an excuse to disappear on a job for a few days.

Oscar is pretty sure he’s got his kids fooled but he knows Maria has caught on that something is going on, as far as he knows the extent of her knowledge about his past is that he was once involved with some bad people. He never elaborated, he’d rather she rationalize it as a previous life of crime than try to explain the truth and figures she suspects it’s come back to haunt them. Unbeknownst to him she’s been getting phone calls herself. Someone on the Committee is aware of her old assignment as well as Oscar’s reactivation and has decided to pull on a very old string. For now she’s just been tasked with keeping an eye on him.

Any number of developments could escalate the situation. Oscar could get hurt on an assignment, the Sleepers could start making serious demands of Maria or either one of them could be caught by or be caught catching the other. Old files looted from abandoned safehouses could put either of them in positions in jeopardy, someone from Oscar’s old unit could finally get out of hospital and come looking for him or the same for survivors of the cult Maria was recruited from. The real test of a marriage built on lies may very well be in how they see the sacrifices that the other is willing to make for it.

STATS - Oscar Fonesca
Personality: Oscar usually has the kind of middle-aged happiness that only comes from finally being able to get away from being trapped in a bad situation. Now that he’s back in it this is infected with shame and disappointment, he’s keeping a brave face for the sake of his family though.
Rage: Shoplifting. In the circumstances that someone needs something bad enough to steal it he’d rather give it to them. If it’s opportunistic they can get their ears boxed though.
Noble: Don’t leave anyone behind.
Fear: His kids finding out about his past (Isolation).
Obsession: Building a new life for his family.
Wound Threshold: 50.

Otherspace Survival Expert 60% (Substitutes for Notice, Substitutes for Dodge, Provides Firearm Attacks.)
Gregarious Store Owner 40%* (Substitutes for Connect, Substitutes for Status, Protects Isolation).
Living A Double Life 40% (Substitutes for Lie, Protects Self, Evaluates Self.)

Shock Gauges

Notches	Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
Hardened	6	5	2	1	3
Failed	2	3	2	1	1

STATS - Maria Fonesca

Personality: Maria knows she didn’t come into her arrangement with pure intentions but she divides her life into before she met Oscar and after she met him. She’s forthright and flinty-eyed but laughs heartily. Growing up in an unstable background she values her family more than anything and is not shy about letting people know how far she’s willing to go for them.
Rage: Presumptuous naivety. People who don’t know any better but think they’ve got it all worked out really get Maria’s goat.
Noble: Let people know what they mean to you.
Fear: That she doesn’t deserve her family or her life (Self).
Obsession: Trying to maintain the life her family has built.
Wound Threshold: 50.

Sleeper 60% (Substitutes for Notice, Coerces Unnatural, Use Gutter Magick.)
Cult Survivor 40% (Substitutes for Connect, Substitutes for Secrecy, Protects Helplessness.)
Living A Double Life 40%* (Substitutes for Lie, Protects Self, Evaluates Self.)

Shock Gauges

Notches	Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
Hardened	3	3	3	1	4
Failed	0	1	1	0	1

234 - Will To Ignorance

Ritual: Will To Ignorance

Cost: 3 minor charges.

Ritual Action: Deliberately “sacrifice” someone with a secret belief or characteristic by outing them in a public forum. The secret should be harmful for people to learn in some way, even if only by the victim’s embarrassment. It doesn’t otherwise matter how people feel about the revelation, hidden homosexuality or pregnancy works just as well as a concealed belief in anti-vaxxing or the flat Earth. Social media is generally the safest bet, but anywhere the information will spread to at least 333 people who know them in some capacity (however cursory) works. It also conceals the fact you need to be wearing hooded hemp robes, dyed black, with a sigil like an “allseeing eye” drawn over your right eye in lamb's blood (which must remain closed for the duration of casting).

Before casting, the victim must eat a pie you have made containing meat from at least two types of fowl and a piece of paper with your targeted information written on it.

Effect: The information written on the consumed piece of paper is difficult for people who have learned the victim’s secret to communicate about. Talking about it in some fashion is a rank 4 self check, it feels like a grotesque violation of social taboo everytime they put their fingers on the keyboard or open their mouth. This check drops by 1 rank for every passion someone has relevant to the targeted information. It drops by another rank when they see several people talking about it unimpeded (but only one rank and only once) and another when they see people affected by the ritual doing it (but again, only one rank and only once).

The effect lasts until the victim gets over what you did to them.

233 - Backdrop

Artifact: Backdrop

Power: Significant.

Description: A black canvas sheet, about 9 yards long and 3 yards high, used as the backdrop for some kind of cheap stage show or school play. A yellow crescent moon made out of felt has been sown into one corner and little cotton-balls have been glued into place as stars. When you aren’t looking some of them twinkle in and out of existence as though clouds were passing in front of them.

Effect: Set up in a place that matches it (so outdoors at night), the backdrop blends seamlessly with the environment. To anyone with 3 or less hardened notches in Unnatural the difference is imperceptible. You could hide anything behind it and they wouldn’t think to look because, well, that’s the night sky. How do you look behind the sky? People with 4 or more notches are immune to this effect.

For anyone with 4 or more failed notches in Unnatural the effect is partly real. Walking into a backdrop set up against the night sky exposes them briefly to the vacuum of space. This does damage as a significant blast before it expels them coughing their lungs up and bleeding from their eyes. Anyone killed by the effect is not expelled and disappears forever. The Backdrop harming someone this way renders it permanently inert afterwards. No one is presently aware of this secondary effect, the cabal who currently owns it uses it to hide their marijuana crop from the nighttime prowling of the county sheriff's department.

232 - Sea Shanty

Ritual: Sea Shanty

Cost: 2 minor charges.

Ritual Action: Sever a limb. Doesn’t matter which one but the minimum loss should be a hand or a foot. Replace the missing extremity with a crude wooden prosthetic. Daub a small glyph that looks like a bipedal pig on the stump of the missing body part in the blood of someone estranged from their entire immediate family (with at least one member still living).

To activate the ritual sing “A-Roving”, the oldest recorded capstan sea shanty, on a repetitive loop. So long as you keep singing the effect will be maintained.

This ritual can be cast multiple times but each casting requires a fresh mutilation. You may remove more of a limb provided the new cut goes to the next joint.

Effect: Foul weather will not impede you or any vehicle you crew. It won’t be all sunshine and rainbows, but your survival and journey is guaranteed. Flying an airliner through a hurricane is possible under the effect of this ritual, for example. This provides no more help with navigation than you would be able to accomplish in normal conditions, so it won’t help you if you’re lost.

While the effect is active any missing extremities with provide you with phantom sensations of what to do next, minor course adjustments and the like. In some circumstances this goes so far as to seem to temporarily grant use of the missing parts. Fail to heed these directions at your peril.

231 - Arlan the Gnawer

Unnatural Entity: Arlan the Gnawer

It's unclear to most just what fuels Arlan's strange fixation. As demons go most want to re-experience life on their own terms, he bargains for pieces of yours. Given access to your life he’ll do his best to live it normally while you ride along as a helpless passenger. All the while this is accompanied by a dull chewing sensation as he metaphysically removes pieces of what he’s experiencing. When he departs that troublesome relationship, chronic disorder or hard-earned skill goes with him.

Arlan can’t possess people without their permission. He’d love to, it’d make things so much easier, but his powers don’t seem to work that way. He claims to have once been ensorcelled as the familiar of a powerful adept who crippled that ability while granting him others. Regardless of whether this is true he needs to negotiate for possession and for whatever reason he’s true to his word.

He does this by offering to remove things: disorders, toxic relationships, bad memories. In return he wants access to the good stuff (and since he can’t force you to give it up he wants it first), your positive traits, skills and life experiences. Once agreed on, he’s in the driver’s seat and you’re looking over his shoulder, locked out of your own body. The rank 6 Unnatural check from this experience dissuades a lot of repeat custom from people who aren’t desperate. Arlan can hear you (but not talk back, except by speaking aloud) while this is going on but he can’t or won’t hand back control until the negotiated time is up. He does his best but for most the experience is like watching a hapless tourist clumsily navigate a foreign culture, except that culture is your life.

The reason for all of this is simple. Arlan doesn't belong in our universe, he's the demonic equivalent of a neverwhen person. A refugee from a universe where things worked differently and he’s building himself a scavenged spacesuit out of the scraps of other people’s lives, something that will let him survive in our alien environment. Something that will - he hopes - let him take on physical form.

Arlan’s personality is in flux. There’s an earnest core, full of stilted speech and frank admissions but around it the built up material of his conquests form aspects of his ever changing self. Pirated identities give him new personality traits, positive or otherwise, while the baggage he takes on form psychological cancerous cysts just waiting to be purged on to whoever crosses him.

Arlan the Gnawer, Hungry for Life
Wound Threshold: 50. Intangible for now, Arlan can only be harmed by the kinds of magick that harm demons. That might change when he’s built up enough to create a physical body.
Urge - Be You 50%: For every 24 hours of uninterrupted possession a roll on this identity does damage like a hand-to-hand attack against an identity or relationship, adding that same amount to Arlan’s stash. Other aspects like disorders and notches should have wound thresholds assigned to them by the GM and are only properly removed when that value is exceeded.
Toxic Baggage 40%: Arlan might not be able to possess people without permission, but he can still ruin their lives. With a successful roll he can dump one of the negative things he has collected on someone, this happens at the same 24-hours-per-roll rate as removal but does not require possession.

230 - The Umbrella of Defiance & The Baton of Solidarity

Artifact: The Umbrella of Defiance

Power: Major

Description: A dirty, mahogany coloured umbrella. The opening mechanism sticks in cold weather and the smell of smoke has woven its way into the fabric.

Effect: For starters, it's completely bullet-proof while someone is holding it. No other forms of harm are protected against - unfurling it at a knife-wielding attacker might be distracting but they'll still be able to slash it to pieces - and it's a little hard to find out by accident.

The second effect is that it is difficult to identify anyone holding it. You can chase after "the guy with the umbrella!" easily enough, but following him through CCTV feeds or getting a clear picture of his face is at a -30% shift. Any form of more complex electronic tracking, like an IMSI catcher, fails to function when it would sweep up the umbrella holder.

Lastly, any avatar identity being used to defy an authority, justly or otherwise, may be flip-flopped once per day. Twice if it is the Unsung Champion. Doing so within sight of other avatars alerts them to what is happening with a burst of statospheric hallucination.

Artifact: The Baton of Solidarity

Power: Major.

Description: A riot-control baton of an all-black, one-piece construction with a small raised ring hilt and a retention lanyard.

Effect: Firstly, it provides a +20% shift in Struggle rolls when directly fighting more than one individual. This goes up to +30% if you're outnumbered.

Secondly, anyone wounded by the baton is psychologically cowed against defying an authority whose name it was wielded in. Acting publically against it provokes a rank 5 Helplessness check. This lasts until that injury is fully healed.

Lastly, any avatar identity being used to uphold an authority, justly or otherwise, may be flip-flopped once per day. Twice if it is the Unsung Champion. Doing so within sight of other avatars alerts them to what is happening with a burst of statospheric hallucination.