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they're intrinsic to the human condition but because there's no replacement for them, instead they end up culturally superseded and slowly fade from view.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.

282 - A New You In 90 Days!

Ritual: A New You In 90 Days!

Cost: 2 minor charges.

Ritual Action: The ritual is a series of guided meditation and self-actualization exercises on a pair of audio cassettes tapes intended to be performed repeatedly over multiple sessions. Sold by the Hamarati Infomatics corporation, Burt Hamarati (missing, presumed dead since 2006) leads the listener through some standard psychological exercises interspersed with gibberish invocations he calls "prelingual affirmations" and meditation to rapidly shifting tones. Perceptive listeners can make out the word 'camazotz' in the invocations, the name of the Mayan bat-god of death, night and sacrifice.

Effect: Burt Hamarati was a horrifying bat-human hybrid disguised as a man, who could only subsist on specially prepared human brains. The tapes are a disguised preparatory ritual which he propagated through a self-help organisation (a front for the cult he built around himself) that was moderately popular in the new-age rush of the 1990s. Spreading it around ensured he had both an abundant food source and a bevy of brain-damaged obsessives he could craft into an inner circle. Although he is gone now the tapes still do a brisk trade through the occult underground, if only because no one has thought to digitise and share them electronically yet.

Side effects of the ritual include an elevated sense of well-being bordering on euphoria from the intense metabolic demands that altering the brain places on the caster, it's akin to oxygen deprivation. Another is that the changes made by the ritual act as a beacon to unnatural entities. There is a cumulative 5% chance per week of consistent exercises that an entity in the local area is drawn to present itself to the caster. The entity will not be immediately hostile, any actions it takes depend on the caster's actions and its disposition. More than one would-be monster summoner has died mistaking temporary sedation for protection or control.

Several former devotees of Hamarati use the ritual regularly in an attempt to call back their missing master with occasional terrifying results but no success. A schism among them opposes this misuse on the grounds that Burt has "ascended to the profane stars" as he often claimed he would and that his stellar vigil should not be disturbed. They've killed two other cult members and one monster hunter who'd only heard of the ritual's secondary effects.

Long term users can be distinguished by telltale neurological quirks, sensitivity to high pitched noises, problems with pronouncing sibilants and a lazy right eye. Growths in the brain show up clearly on an MRI scan and any doctor would be quick to label them as tumours.

281 - Hollow Earther

Unnatural Entity: Hollow Earther

The Invisible Clergy don't always get them all when the universe resets, that's where Neverwhen People and Hollow Earthers come from. Unlike Neverwhen People, Hollow Earthers know exactly what they're doing. They're old hands at surviving the apocalypse even as the new worlds become stranger and less hospitable. Holdouts who have learned to sequester themselves beyond the Clergy's reach that make the basis of myth: kobolds and gnomes, the strange, stubborn precursors to humanity that live beneath the surface of the Earth.

They no longer have physical form, instead persisting as underground psychic entities in a world where the air and the gravity and the number of subatomic particles are poison to their odd bodies. If you know where to look and have the right sensitivity they're eager to talk, caverns with high concentrations of silicates are generally a good place to start.

They're curious. Hollow Earthers want to see the world, they need you to do it and are eager to share their secrets. It's nothing like demonic possession, they just ride around in your head like a passenger looking over your shoulder. A strong aversion to direct sunlight complicates the arrangement but having a creature with a natural affinity for rituals attached to you is sometimes worth dressing like a vampire braving high noon. Not only are they dab hands at seeing the cracks in the universe but once per week someone playing host to a Hollow Earther gets a 1 significant charge discount on casting a ritual of their choosing. For some this is the only way they can try the big stuff.

The cost of this power is severe. The longer a Hollow Earther is attached to someone the more intertwined they become. The aversion to sunlight becomes a shared condition, skin blistering and cracking under UV rays. Extra toes and digits sprout along with coarse, wiry hair as limbs and faces become short and gnarled. In wearing us they press us into their shapes. Removing one is a matter of exorcism, they won't let go willingly. It's not cheap or easy and it won't restore your appearance or let you develop a tan again. The alternative is to retreat back beneath the Earth, shedding material form and becoming as they are, waiting out the next incarnation of the universe in crystalline lifeboats.

280 - Spitting Venom

Ritual: Spitting Venom

Cost: 4 minor charges.

Ritual Action: Raise a snake by hand from an egg. Never allow it to interact with or see other snakes. Let it bite you once a month, you can take precautions like milking all it's venom first if you like. When it dies dry out the meat and turn it into jerky.

Eat some, bite the tip of your thumb hard enough to draw blood and suck it into your mouth.

Effect: The blood in your mouth turns into snake venom. This imparts no special ability to attack people with it and spitting it at someone won't do anything unless you get it in their eyes, requiring a matched success or crit on a Struggle roll. It won't hurt you either unless you've got open cuts inside your mouth, if it gets into your bloodstream that might be bad so watch what you do with your thumb afterwards.

The exact effects of the venom depend on the snake, some just cause pain and others paralysis and necrosis. If your snake was non-venomous the liquid is a weird, inert serum.

279 - Mail-order Enlightenment

Unnatural Phenomenon: Mail-order Enlightenment

Word is that they kept getting targeted by the FDA in sweeps of shutting down those illegal websites that sell opioids and boner pills through the mail. They had their best run by labeling it as an alternative medicine but even then rumours that what they were selling was poisonous had all manner of law enforcement sniffing around. There was a big month-long sale last April and then the last site went offline after a week and never came back up. It’s all underground these days, best bet is if you can get someone who stocked up during the gold rush to hook you up.

Fourteen little yellow capsules in some cheap, numbered blister packaging like birth control. You can tell the real stuff from the fake by a strong artificial cheese-like odour that makes your nose sting. The knock offs haven’t managed to replicate that part yet. Take one a day and after about a week you’ll feel it start to kick in. The few old-school psychonaut subcultures on it (plenty won’t touch them) sit around dreaming up conspiracy theories about how the authorities are trying to clamp down on fast track, consumer-grade enlightenment. The truth is the cops and the politicians probably don’t know much, they certainly aren’t in any hurry to schedule the stuff. At least the kids and the nootropic huffing yuppies are willing to admit they’re mostly in it for the “cool powers”.

Basically it’s a pharmacological fast track to what you’d get out of five to ten years practicing meditation. You’ll feel better, think more clearly, even your immune system will thank you. You’ll be more in sync with the universe. The two week course of pills is enough to get you there and then back down gradually over the week after you stop taking them. Some people treat it like a mini-vacation for their brain, but you can chain them together to stay up there.

The really interesting thing is the side effects. Eventually people start to have visions, see things like auras around people or get premonitions of the future. One guy claimed he could see the whole lower end of the electromagnetic spectrum. What you get is luck of the draw and it’s inconsistent but the longer you keep taking your pills the stronger and more reliable it becomes.

I guess inviting an interdimensional entity to take up residence in your head will do that. What? You thought these people were “unlocking their potential”? No way, psychic powers are a crock of shit. What they’re seeing is what the entity sees when it’s looking at the world through their eyes. The pills are a gateway. I mean, who knows what they’re really even made out of?

Anyway, I need your help. I tried feeding them to my cat but it didn’t work. I want to negotiate with this thing, open a dialogue and find out what it really wants, but I can’t do that if I’m the one taking them. I’d be its hostage. That’s why you’re tied up. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. I just need to keep you down here for a couple of weeks while we work together on this.

Please don’t be mad, it’s going to be really cool.

278 - Magickal Entropy

Unnatural Phenomenon: Magickal Entropy

As time ravages the things left behind and the tenebrae devour those who die isolated and unloved, so too does magick left unattended become strange and warped. Without human intercession the holes in reality spoil and shift. Rituals become inert or spring from the ether in response to need, charges let loose refocus themselves into unnatural phenomenon. Artifacts are made of sterner stuff but susceptible to eventual eldritch entropies and mutation all the same. It's possible someone might learn to exploit this.

There's an automated money changing machine (the kind of device that charges an extortionate amount for something you can do at a bank) with a habit of creating very minor artifacts, the third quarter it spits out every Sunday will almost always come up heads. Over time this phenomenon might poison the country's entire supply of coinage if it weren't for the actions of a brave plutomancer who harvests and buries them in secret to keep this tiny apocalypse from happening.

The oldest clusters of buried currency, left unattended for years, have sprouted. Small, ugly bushes that look like weeds with one interesting property. Any home one is potted and kept in will suffer financial misfortune until the following Sunday. No one has discovered the fruits of this plutomancer's labour yet (he would be dismayed but intrigued), but it offers the best chance at studying and understanding the nature of magickal decay to the first person who does.

They'll probably just try to curse their enemies by using them as ugly housewarming gifts instead.

277 - Faded Glory

Artifact: Faded Glory

Power: Minor.

Description: The bitter power of dreams unfulfilled made more potent by the promise they once held, Faded Glory are the embers of what could have been. The vast majority were once sports equipment, high school and college team jerseys were the most common form for a long time. Other types include university degrees, award sashes and wedding bands.

Effect: Pirate the past to feed the future, it's not like you were using it anyway.

Once per day Faded Glory allow a +30% shift or flip-flop (chose before rolling) on an ability or identity relevant to their origin by wearing or otherwise using it during the attempt. Doing so robs the history of the item, make a rank 3 Helplessness check afterwards as it reawakens memories of what might have been. Failure is compounded by a rank 4 Self check for those with no connection to the item's origin.

For those with 3 or more hardened notches in Helplessness the benefits of Faded Glory stop working, giving up on old dreams nixes the magick. 

Faded Glory are poison to avatars of the MVP, touching one causes taboo with an additional 1d10% loss if they attempt to use its power.