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.
Friday, 14 February 2020
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.
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