Cabal: Haskell P.D Witchcraft Squad
Haskell could be any small town, it’s distinguished less by what sets it apart than what makes it blend in with every other pocket of civilization that dots the country. Only three things stand out about it: the giant rocking horse tourist trap by the highway, the fact that it sits directly on a state border and the Haskell P.D Witchcraft Squad.
It’s not an official designation and is by no means beloved by the municipality’s frustrated administrators but there’s a certain inertia and town pride in having something that sets them apart from everyone else. It’s like a highly localised version of the Blue Line that half the town is in on but nobody talks about, a minor aberration in the otherwise incredibly mundane lifestyles of Haskell’s residents. Magick is a vanishingly minor fact of life that is accepted but shunned.
Witchcraft laws haven’t been on the books for years, generally using superstition to take advantage of people is considered fraud, and otherwise paganism and related practices are considered covered by freedom of religion. But the squad doesn’t exist to bust tarot readers, it’s there to keep the peace among the weirdos and entities drawn to the border-straddling town as a symbolic ingredient in their occult machinations. A storied secret history of people using it to contact the departed, access otherspaces and bridge other unthinkable gaps has worn furrows in the universal firmament that make it all the more appetizing. If someone checks in to the local motel driving a van with a bunch of annunaki propaganda spray-painted on the side then one of them will get a call.
They are currently without an objective, but have the following concerns on their plate:
- Keep people away from the ol’ Wydell place. The original owner disappeared back in the 80s and no one has lasted more than 6 months in residence since, all dead, missing or as far away as possible. This used to be pretty easy but a property trader from the nearest major city got ahold of it and is hellbent on renovating and reselling the dump.
- Mama Juno and her boys have been barely tolerated for years, in and out of prison for petty crime, assault and drug-related crimes like a revolving door. Practically impossible to dig out and resentful of their more well-off neighbours the current rumour is that they’ve turned to magick to get their way. It might not be true but if it is it could upset the town’s equilibrium.
Nancy Shoffner is a well-meaning manipulator. The youngest member of the Haskell P.D doesn’t see herself that way, having grown up as the middle child in an unstable family it seems normal to her that she should use any means necessary to keep the peace. Accordingly it was a natural transition to doing the same as police work and made her a solid fit for the finagling of the witchcraft squad's unofficial remit. Small and doe-eyed she looks younger than she is, it’s something she leans on but it’s also been a hassle she’s had to be fearsome to compensate for when it comes to being taken seriously.
She’s pretty sure Tony is up to something and acknowledges Eric as a confidant, he’s the only one who seems to see straight through the way she deals with people.
Tony Siebert is a recent transplant to the town. He moved here last year when his wife got pregnant to be closer with her family. Tony is lanky, broad shouldered and pale, strong despite looking as though his uniform is stretched across a wireframe. In manner he is studious, officious and ill-suited to the close knit realities of small town policing. He’s also fascinated by revelations of the occult despite playing the skeptic. Unbeknownst to his wife the back shed has become a secondary evidence locker for the things the witchcraft squad picks up as part of its unofficial duties. She does wonder what he’s doing out there all night though and the other officers would be dismayed to find out its contents hadn’t been burned after all.
Tony thinks Nancy is a bit too naive for police work, that she’s only survived because Haskell is an insulated community, and marvels at Eric’s career longevity but respects his experience.
Eric Richter should have retired years ago. The fossilized sergeant has outlived 2 mayors, 3 police chiefs and outsiders assume he must have some sort of pull to still be in a job. In truth it’s that no one local sees him as the rickety old man that he is and he knows the town better than the lines that criss-cross the back of his hand. Threatening to call on someone’s family can often be more compelling than any official punishment and the same connection is something he’s used to develop the communities' trust.
Not that it’s been all roses. It’s an open secret that Eric shot Mama Juno’s eldest in the back 15 years ago after some sordid business with Eric’s niece. No one outside her family blamed him after what the man did to Wanda Richter and the coroner quietly massaged the autopsy, so there was no official resolution. It’s a sore point that has been snowed over by the years and inertia but occasionally rises to the surface to draw blood. He thinks about it more and more as his time rolls to a close.
Eric thinks Nancy could be good police but wishes she didn’t think she knew what people needed better than they did, he likes Tony well enough but can see the boy going stir crazy in close confines of small town living. It might be time to take him aside for a talk.
Ritual: To Catch a Thief
Cost: 3 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Commit a copy-cat crime, taking care to incorporate elements that sympathetically link the act to both the previous victim and crime scene. Don't get caught. Take a trophy from the act. Sleep with it under your pillow and have someone exchange it for money while you're unconscious, like the tooth fairy. Keep the money on your person. Do not spend it.
Effect: You gain a temporary supernatural identity that allows you to divine details about the original perpetrator at the value of the ritual roll. It manifests as intrusive thoughts and perspectives which mirror their's and how they see the world. Every successful roll resets the value of this identity at the newly rolled value. At 01 it disappears. If you ever spend or lose the money used in the ritual anyone investigating your crime gains the same benefit toward catching you.
Unnatural Entity: McCallisters
Otherspace the Binge has proven impermeable to frustrated Videomancers since its discovery. Adepts aren't known for taking affronts to their worldview laying down so this has been more of a red flag to a bull than any disuasion. The efforts of one cabal of the dying school of magick have produced some success by vicariously studying viewers drugged into docility and subjected to 24/7 viewing.
By "reeling in" their subjects at the right time the cabal found that they could capture entities from the TV-based otherspace on VHS tapes. This process was deleterious to their subjects, but that was almost forgotten in the rush to extract favourable fictional characters from the popular imagination. A secondary breakthrough came up with another use for the mindless husks of their victims: they could use them as incubators to grow bodies for them.
The creatures the cabal spawned were downright horrific, which led to their eventual downfall and stories of an alien Xenomorph stalking the Canadian wilderness. Fortunately only one of the escapees has proven intelligent and wilful enough to reproduce in the wild: Home Alone protagonist Kevin McCallister. Living in secluded Lord of the Flies-style communes of a few dozen they desire more VHS tapes of their movies to digest, creating eggs, and living hosts to implant them inside. Thankfully they aren't limited to human hosts, the main factor is size so livestock are an appropriate substitute, and they have proven willing to negotiate with people for help.
That's not to say that the McCallisters should be considered benign. They are utterly amoral and consider human beings to be "flat" dull creatures, this place a drab low-contrast irreality in comparison to their home dimension. Anyone antagonising them will discover that the laws of physics have done nothing to curb their malicious inventiveness and flair for dangerous traps.
McCallisters, Parasitic Parthenogen TV-spawn
Wound Threshold: 35.
Maliciously Inventive 55%: Substitutes for Secrecy, Unique (making homemade traps).
GMC: Frida Bach, Dispatch for the Blue Line
It was a motorcycle accident, not a line of duty injury, that cost Frida the use of her legs. Before then she was a police detective who was disliked by her peers cutting corners and taking risks as much as they appreciated her natural talent for interrogation. It was this same haphazard attitude towards security and secrecy that kept her on the outskirts of the Blue Line. It wasn’t that her comrades didn’t trust her, they just didn’t trust her judgement.
Nonetheless Frida was as expert at getting into the heads of occult wackjobs and psychotic adepts as any recalcitrant suspect. After her experience with a flesh-warping serial-abductor brought her on board she was getting called to seedy hotel rooms and off-the-path self-storage facilities all over the state. Always there would be someone who knew something, or might know something, waiting for her to pinpoint their weaknesses and then go to work like an oscillating saw. Hacking through their defences with abandon to dig out anything underneath. She took pride in it.
Frida doesn't know whether her accident was a reprisal for any of the things she did (it wasn't), it's one of the things that keeps her awake at night. She's mostly come to terms with her condition, it's the loss of her vocation that really stings. For a while coworkers would stop by and check in on her, shoot the breeze and guardedly talk about work, but eventually that tapered into the occasional obligate visitation. Her Blue Line colleagues had fewer compunctions.
Frida's lack of other obligations, proven loyalty and eagerness to continue the fight in some capacity have made her a natural fit as support staff. She works as a cut-out, safehouse operator, analyst or handler as the situation dictates. Once or twice she's even taken an active role in emergencies, no one clocks the middle-aged woman in a wheelchair as a threat.
Recently she's been receiving letters. They claim to be from the maniac who started her occult police career. The man she thought was dead is claiming he'll give her the power to walk again, if she'll just give him the names of the people who dragged him out into the woods the last time she saw him. She's less interested in that than laying a trap for him.
STATS
Personality: Daredevilish but shrewd, Frida puts up a sassy front for everybody until she decides whether she likes them. She’s not above playing up her condition to get past people’s guard or under their skin. She’s absolutely loyal to the Line, they are doing something no one else can.
Rage: Frida doesn’t need help, thank you very much.
Noble: Keeping her people safe.
Fear: Magickal attacks. There's no way to defend against it (Unnatural.)
Obsession: Making her loss the last that the Blue Line suffers.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Security-minded Recluse 50% (Substitutes for Secrecy, Provides Firearm Attacks, Protects Isolation.)
Get Under Your Skin 55%* (Substitutes for Notice, Coerces Helplessness, Coerces Self.)
Occult Police Nerve Center 40% (Substitutes for Knowledge, Substitutes for Status, Evaluates Unnatural.)
Shock Gauges
Notches
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Violence
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Unnatural
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Helplessness
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Isolation
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Self
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Hardened
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3
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2
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3
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2
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3
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Failed
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1
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0
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2
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0
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1
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Artifact: Gateway to Apartment 3A
Power: Significant.
Description: A battered, four-panel external doorway with a corroded brass-plated doorknocker, peeled white paint, a mailslot and a peephole. Unattached and in a state of disrepair it was plainly better left on the scrap heap it was salvaged from.
Effect: The gateway maintains a connection to the renovated apartment building from which it was discarded, the result of its previous resident - a high powered pilgrim avatar - habitually using it for jaunts.
Looking through the peephole from either side gives an appropriate view into or out of the apartment. If someone were to hold open the mailslot at the right time they could also steal the current occupant's mail.
If the doorway is mounted in a frame and a pilgrim avatar attempts to use it to connect two spaces the output instead deposits anyone passing through into apartment 3A. The two premed college students currently living there are likely to be bemused by the intrusion.
GMC: Frank Mayes, Celebrity Ghost Collector
Celebrity-obsession has replaced religion for many, a one-sided devotion spurred by a multi-billion dollar industry providing diversions and illusions of people who are scarcely a reflection of their manufactured images. For those with little else to fill their lives this can grow from idle pastime to consuming obsession, creating creepy obsessives and dangerous stalkers.
Frank wasn’t like that (he was). I mean, he got better (a couple of times, actually). What he’ll mean to tell you when he’s explaining it (and, oh boy, he’ll never stop trying to explain it) is that he doesn’t need it anymore. He doesn’t need the cluttered house full of posters and knick-knacks and signed photos. He’s punched all the way through to the other side and come out his own man. Kinda.
It’s not true at all. Frank has traded misdemeanour stalking charges and a house full of junk for something less taxing but considerably darker. He’s started collecting ghosts. Having skirted the occult underground in the manner of many self-destructive obsessives, Frank’s journey had him taken advantage of by a rotating cast of chargers who found him a willing gopher in return for services they could trivially fulfill. It was a conflict between two of them that ended with him in possession of a ritual that allows him to seal ghosts of the recently deceased inside old mason jars.
The idea didn’t occur to him right away, it seemed almost profane when it did. Images of grief and messages of consolation on the six o’clock news at the revelation of a rockstar’s passing. Frank felt the same pang he always did when one of the pantheon left, his eye’s fell on the battered music book on his coffee table but disgust squashed the impulse. How could he? How could he dare to take something so sacred for himself? It took three days before he caved.
Frank’s collection is impressive considering he’s only been at it for a year. He’s performed the rite for more than a dozen celebrity figures but laments that he’s missed the opportunity to rescue just as many. They live in a collection of mason jars in his bathtub, he needs to keep running water passing over them or they won’t shut up. Not quite demons or the souls of the people they represent, the ghosts flit about their confinement in terror. To them the distinction of whether they actually are the people they were harvested from is academic. It bothers Frank that they don’t understand or appreciate what he’s done for them, the preservation of their special selves for all eternity. It’s ungrateful.
At least that’s how he’s justified terrorising his captives into compliance. Shaking them, making all kinds of dire threats. On one occasion he poured the smoky wisp of an irascible octogenarian veteran of the silver screen down the toilet in front of the others. He tells them it hurts him more than it hurts them.
STATS
Personality: Loudmouthed and eager to share. If he annoys or frightens people it takes Frank too long to notice, either that or he just doesn’t care. He’ll only get quiet when someone really lashes out at him. He won’t forget it either.
Rage: Being cut-off in conversation.
Noble: Preservation of aspirational ideals.
Fear: Starvation. The kind of terrible hunger where you ache constantly and feel yourself wasting away (Helplessness).
Obsession: Basking in celebrity ideal.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Obsessive Fan-Priest 75%* (Substitutes for Notice, Substitutes for Secrecy, Protects Isolation.)
Ghost Collector 45% (Specific Information: Ghost Interrogation, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick.)
Shock Gauges
Notches
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Violence
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Unnatural
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Helplessness
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Isolation
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Self
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Hardened
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2
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4
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3
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4
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3
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Failed
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1
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0
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1
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3
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1
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Artifact: Be Not Afraid
Power: Significant.
Description: Usually the product of industrious sociomancers, Be Not Afraids come in a variety of forms, all of them minor religious knick-knacks and related paraphernalia. Prayer beads, omamori, hamsa, pocket-sized religious texts, any talisman of faith that an adherent might instinctively reach for to affirm their belief and place in the world.
Effect: Be Not Afraids act like emotion heat sinks for Unnatural trauma. Brushing your fingers against one on taking an Unnatural stress check negates the consequences of that shock. No hardened or failed notch is gained and the trio of possible stress effects from failure are ignored. Instead each notch ignored increasingly binds the user to the articles of that belief system, stress checks for violating its tenets are increased by 1 per check result ignored. This applies to non-believers who use a Be Not Afraid also, their stress checks for defiance instead start at rank 1 and increase from there.
Discarding or losing a Be Not Afraid that has absorbed Unnatural trauma unleashes all the pent up damage at once.
