Carcosa, NJ
[comments:(3), views:(5601), rating:(4.0)]

Author: Gareth Hanrahan
Homepage: http://www.irishgaming.com
System: Unknown Armies
Type: Scenario
Category: Horror
Requirements:

“Anybody knows you can conjure anything by the dark of the moon, boy,
And if you keep your silencer on you’ll talk yourself right into a job, out of a hole,
Into my bayou” - Tori Amos, Suede

Introduction:

Death isn’t so much capricious as flighty and incompetent. Most of those who die do go onwards, through the Veil to dissolution or eternity or Hell or whatever’s on the far side. A rare few are hungry or twisted or angry enough to hang on, to grab onto something on this side and refuse to move onwards, or come back later, filled with spectral bile and ethereal fury, and become demons. Then there are the lost, the souls who Death dropped on the way to the afterlife. Spirits who have no connections left in the mortal world, but who got left here in some cosmic mistake.

Thin, amnesiac ghosts.

They are all around us. The forgotten, forgetful dead. Wisps of cold, disorganised thought, attracted to shiny things and bright novelties.

They are weak and harmless things, the plankton of the Occult Underground. Some patient sorcerers harvest the ghosts, trapping them and distilling them. It is a low-return scheme, for it takes thousands of thin ghosts to amount to any sort of power source. It’s low-risk, too, though…usually.

Backstory:

Atlantic City, New Jersey. A squalid grey city, a pathetic mimic of Las Vegas. If Vegas were a beautiful exotic dancer, Atlantic City would be her older, uglier sister, a diseased white trash hooker. It’s not a nice place…but it is a novelty. The great casinos climb out of the miles of flesh-covered beaches and endless parade of dull small towns that make up the Jersey shore. Each casino is a strange wonderland, each one has a theme. One casino is built around a Roman theme, with marble porticoes guarded by gladiators. Another is a bizarre building, the Taj Mahal mated with a temple of greed. They’re all shiny, happy novelties, which attract gamblers from all over the East Coast.

These shiny, noisy casinos full of novelties attract something else too. Ghosts, ghosts by the thousand. James Shaxson knows that. He’s been eating ghosts for eighty years. His casino is a gigantic ghost trap. From the flashing neon signs on the roof to the glittering scanty dresses of the girls on the door, his entire casino is designed to catch the nebulous attention of the dead. Once inside, magickal ghost-traps suck the spectres into the central heating system. Caught in the water, the ghosts are piped down into a hidden distillery, where Shaxson brews the ghosts into an elixir of youth. It’s worked for him for years. He came up with the process with a partner of his, a mage called Silas Green. Shaxson had Green killed, and convinced Shaxson’s young son, who was also a mage, to work for him. Green’s daughter was adopted.

Once every few decades, enough “essences” have collected to warrant harvesting. It takes several years worth of trapped ghosts to amount to anything, and it takes decades for enough spectral forces too accumulate for Shaxson’s immortality drink. The last time he renewed his youth was in the early 70s. Back then, American ghosts were easy to come by. Vietnam threw a lot of spirits into the smog. Since then, though, pickings have been thin. Shaxson was a driving force behind Atlantic City’s legalisation of gambling in 1978. He knew games of chance and excitement pull in the spirits.

So - Shaxson’s got his casino bringing in both the bucks and the ghosts. He’s got enough spirits running around the pipes for a nice big youth potion. He’s got it all - except for one thing. He’s about to be held hostage in his own casino. The old sorcerer has been severely suckered by a gang of well-dressed crooks, the Brothers Benedict.. The Brothers were hired by a rival of Shaxson’s, a sorcerer called the Buddha of Margate. The Buddha wants the immortality brew, and intends for the Brothers Benedict to occupy Shaxson and steal the brew. Trouble is, Shaxson hasn’t brewed it yet. What the Buddha hasn’t thought of is the effect of all those spirits, collecting in one place. The pressure in the ghost collection pipes is near bursting point…

Hiding in those pipes is one ghost who know who it is. It’s the ghost of Silas Green. It’s hiding from Shaxson, a single dead face in the midst of thousands of faceless ghosts. Silas wants revenge, and the characters are his tool to get it…

Characters:

They’re a gang of small-time thugs and occultists, a mercenary group on the fringes of organised crime and organised magick, foot-soldiers in the Occult Underground.

Mr. Dante: The brains of the outfit, Dante fancies himself to be a player. He might be, one day, but he lacks the ruthlessness he pretends to have.

Pieternel Van Merne: A former Dutch drug smuggler, she ran afoul of a cabal of sorcerers in England and moved to America. She’s become fascinated by magick, and wants in on the Underground.

Cohen: A modern ronin, a killer-for-hire. Cohen tries to stay out of the Underground, but he keeps getting drawn back in. He’s on the border of psychosis, and has a particular paranoia about Mages.

Darla Greenback: A white-trash Plutomancer from Atlantic city, Darla is actually Silas Green’s daughter, although she doesn’t know it.

Josh Coleman: A low-rent thug from New York, Coleman is in this for the money. He’s attracted to Darla, but doesn’t like to mix business with pleasure.

Franklin Ades: Ades is a sensitive, with the innate ability to astrally project. He’s also neurotic…

Dante’s in debt to a New York-based Duke called the Bad Man. A few days ago, Dante got a phone call from someone called “Silas” offering to clear Dante’s debt if Dante found some guy called Static Harvey. Trouble is, when Dante tracked Harvey down, he found Harvey had been kidnapped by someone. The Bad Man kindly gave Dante the name of a contact of his in Atlantic City.

The characters are in Atlantic City to track down Static Harvey. Static Harvey is a natural “anti-psychic” - he dampens and cancels magick and psychic abilities around him. As such, he’s a great counter against scrying and tracking magicks.

The characters have a pair of second-hand cars, and whatever equipment is mentioned on their character sheets.

The Tail End of the Occult Tourist Season

“While the casino industry has created 45,000 jobs and experienced record profits since 1993, little of this money has benefited the town, despite the promises of prosperity made 20 years ago. Unemployment still stands at 15%, homelessness is still a big problem and the four block stretch of town from the end of the Atlantic City expressway to the beachfront casinos is still a depressing collection of empty lots, rough looking bars and abandoned warehouses. The boardwalk itself is an odd collection of fortress-like casinos punctuated by the odd T-shirt and gyro stand…The bottom line is that for non-gamblers, there is no reason to visit Atlantic City...”
- Lonely Planet tourist guide to New Jersey.

It’s October, the tail end of the hot tourist season. Atlantic rain and mist cloaks the city in a damp aura of hissing neon. Most of the boardwalk (beach district) shops and fast-food places are closed and shuttered, and those that remain seem even more desperate and tawdry in the dull grey autumn afternoon light. The only gamblers who stay in the city are those with no-where else to go.

According to the Bad Man, the characters are supposed to meet a contact of his in a bar on Texas Avenue. It’s only a few blocks from the Expressway - easy driving distance. The bar - “Luck o’ the Irish” - is as twee as it sounds, but it’s also fairly run-down. The patrons of the bar include the usual barflys, a retired couple from the Midwest who took the wrong exit on the Expressway and are now arguing about the best route to Margate - and the Bad Man’s contact, a minor occultist called Eckles.

Eckles looks like a Man In Black who got laid off after government cutbacks, but kept the suit and sunglasses. The bar is fairly dim, though, so he spends much of his time squinting through the mirrorshades. He’s rail-thin, with thin wispy hair and pale, blotchy skin. He picks his words carefully, but still stammers slightly. He’s sitting at a corner table, in view of the door. If anybody’s paying close attention, they’ll notice he’s spilled salt (from McDonald’s salt packets) all around the table, and drawn a line around himself in the salt.

Eckles won’t approach the characters, or attract their attention. He’ll wait and observe them, and wait until they come to him. Once the usual paranoid introductions have been made, Eckles will inform the characters that he saw “the guy the Bad Man was looking for” in the Atlantic Towers casino yesterday evening, and he’d seen him get off a bus from Margate along with a “big guy with a sports bag” earlier in the week. The Atlantic Towers is one of the older casinos in Atlantic City, sited on the Boardwalk. The gaudy neon signs atop the towers can be seen for miles. Eckles does mention if asked that the casino is rumoured to be haunted, but he dismisses it as a rumour spread to get a few more tourists in.

2. Dead Street Life in Atlantic City

The Boardwalk and the streets near it and the casinos form the tourist district of the city. Everything seems to lead back there. Assuming the characters follow Eckles’ tip and head towards the Atlantic Towers, they’ll have little difficulty finding their way.

The streets do seem to have something of a mystic charge on this evening. The fading light reflects off beer bottles in liquor stores and posters promoting peep shows with a strange brightness. Tumbling pieces of discarded newspaper in the sea breeze seem to form sentences as they blow past. It’s as though the whole beachfront area was slightly electrified or something. As the characters pass a metal fence in front of an empty lot, the links of the chain fence clink off each other in an odd rhythm, and the characters notice a dim outline of a human-sized figure standing in the fence, as if the fence were a lens or filter. This figure is one of the thin ghosts attracted by the city, but one which hasn’t yet been trapped by Shaxson.

Anyone touching the fence will get a very mild static electric shock, and the ghost will vanish. The spirit doesn’t retain enough intelligence to communicate with anyone, but it does react to the characters if they try and talk to it. Play the ghost like a very senile person. The purpose of this scene is to foreshadow all the ghosts who turn up in the casino later.

If any of the characters try using magick or other supernatural abilities, they may attract the attention of Shaxson’s occult defences. He employs a mage, Ian Green, who uses the iconic power of the Secret Name of the NSA to detect magick use close to Shaxson’s casino. Ian’s an Entropomancer, and he will keep tabs on the characters while they’re in Atlantic City. He has a 10% chance per minor charge spent of detecting spell-casting on his turf.

Atlantic Towers

Shaxson’s casino is a strange mish-mash of images and motifs. While most of the casinos in Atlantic City at least attempt to use a single theme, the Atlantic Towers casino looks like someone attempted to hold a costume party and a fairground inside a vaguely old-fashioned hotel. It’s a mess, yet it’s strangely fascinating. There are lots of strange little knick-knacks and odd bits of décor (old, out-of-place photos, curios, mirrors etc).

Despite this being the tail end of the tourist season, the hotel is still fairly crowded. There are several angry American tourists at the front desk, arguing with hotel staff. Apparently, several floors of the casino have been closed for renovations, and the rooms booked by the tour group aren’t available. The tourists are wrathful as only a tired and righteous tourist can be, and legal action is being threatened. The desk staff seem quite stunned by the whole thing. (Shaxson’s had most floors of the casino closed to prepare for his ghost-brewing).

If the characters think of ringing the traced phone number that Dante has, it rings a payphone in the lobby. There’s a leaking radiator next to it. Above the radiator is an old and peeling sign warning of damp floors. The sign’s at least fifteen years old. Silas’ ghost was able to sneak out of the ghost pipes and use the phone at night.

4. Structure of the Casino:

The casino is shaped like a small stepped pyramid. The base is four stories high. Five joined towers rise out of the base. Four of the towers goes up another four stories, while the central tower rises another two stories. The basement of the casino is a massive two-storey parking garage. The four ground stories contain the various casinos, amusement centres, restaurants etc. The four smaller towers contain the hotel rooms. The main tower has offices, more hotel rooms, a conference centre - and Shaxson’s own apartments.

Some of the corridors are decorated with ghost-tricks and other things to guide the spirits. These corridors tend to be the least travelled ones. The more important corridors are carefully kept bland and unpleasant for thin ghosts. Scattered throughout the building are ghost traps - these look like odd brass pumps hooked up to the central heating system, with an open pipe facing out into the corridor. Careful examination of the trap shows carved symbols around the mouth of the pipe. Any spirit or astral entity going near the pipe gets sucked in and held in the circulating, running water of the central heating ducts.

How the next section goes is up to the players. If they just walk in and start asking questions, they’ll attract the attention of Shaxson’s staff, the Brothers Benedict, or both. If they do something like pretend to be FBI or police officers, they’ll do the same, but Shaxson will be a lot more cautious about tackling them.

The desk staff have seen Harvey. He’s staying in a room on the fifth floor, 540. (Obviously, they’ll only volunteer this information if tricked or coerced).

Dead PCs/ghosts: If any PC gets killed while in the casino, or if Franklin uses his Astral Projection too close to a ghost pipe duct, the spirit will be sucked into the central heating system and suspended in the flowing water. Describe the whole experience as being like flying down a water-slide in pitch-black darkness while wrapped in hot, cloying flannel cloth. There are thousands of other things sluicing around the pipes, too.

Eventually, the character will encounter the ghost of Silas Green (see below).

The Brothers Benedict:

The Brothers Benedict consist of four people. They style themselves as occult hitmen, but only two of the four have any connection at all to the Underground. These two, Columbanus and Francis (they were named after monks) are really brothers, and Columbanus is an Avatar of the Executioner. The other two are criminals, who are referred to as Dominic and Paul.

The Brothers arrived in two groups. Firstly, all except Columbanus checked in about a week ago. They’ve been scouting the hotel, and are staying in a suite on the fourth floor. Two days ago, Columbanus and Harvey came south from New York and checked into a twin room on the fifth floor. Columbanus brought all the team’s weapons with him, and was the only one who knew the nature of the mission given to them by the Buddha of Margate. By arriving with Harvey, he avoided the attention of Shaxson’s mystical bodyguards and defences.

6. The Plan:

Shaxson is a recluse - he lives in his private apartments in the central tower. While his apartments are guarded by casino security, the staff don’t enter unless he tells them too (the staff are used to Shaxson being eccentric). Getting into Shaxson’s apartments through the casino would be tricky, but there is an external fire escape. Two of the Brothers and Harvey plan to go out on the fire escape during the night. Harvey’s powers will shield Columbanus while he uses the Second Channel of his Avatar (Death’s Head stare) to zap the guards. Once the guards are incapacitated, they’ll kill the Entropomancer, then break into Shaxson’s private apartments and beat the shit out of him until he gives them the Elixir.

The trouble with this plan is, they’re putting Shaxson in a no-win situation. If he gives them the Elixir, he’ll die of old age pretty soon. If he doesn’t give them the Elixir, they’ll kill him. Shaxson’s enough of a bastard to prefer to screw his enemies over and die rather than give in. The Brothers aren’t going to go back to the Buddha without the Elixir, though,

What it all comes down to is that the Brothers will be stuck with Shaxson until the old man dies, or something interrupts them.

A Weird Time In The Old Town Tonight

So, Shaxson’s sitting up in his apartments, the Brothers are going up to layeth the smackdown on Shaxson, and two decade’s worth of thin ghosts are sluicing around the pipes. The central heating/ghost store is near overflowing.

Ok. The next bit of the scenario gets complicated. The Brothers are making their move, but at the same time, the ghosts reach a sort of critical mass. The timeline looks like this:

9.30pm Characters arrive at the casino.
10.00pm+ Characters wander around looking for clues and/or Harvey
1.30 am The Brothers make their move on Shaxson’s apartment.
2.00 am Ian Green is killed. His death sends a magickal shockwave through the casino.

Looking For Harvey In All The Wrong Places

Once the characters have booked into the casino, they’ll probably go off looking for Harvey. The desk clerk might have told the characters that Harvey’s in room 540. While Harvey and Columbanus did book into that room, they’re not staying there. The Brothers Benedict have a suite of rooms two floors up.

Room 540 is a twin room. The door is locked from the outside. The beds have not been slept in, but the pillows have been taken from both beds. Inside the bathroom is a corpse of a young man in his underwear, shot through the face. Four bloody pillows with a single bullet hole through them lie on top of the body. The body is that of a bellboy. Columbanus called him into the room, then shot him and stole his uniform and room service cart. Another of the Brothers, Paul, is going to use the cart and uniform to get the Brothers’ Big Bag of Guns up to the central tower without being noticed.

If anyone examines the corpse carefully, they’ll notice that the blood is slightly…streaky. As if someone or something had brushed over the blood while crawling over the corpse’s face. The streaks head towards an old-fashioned radiator set into the bathroom wall.

The characters can wander the casino looking for Harvey, or for the missing bellboy uniform, but Harvey’s safe upstairs until the Plan gets moving. If the casino staff are alerted to the dead bellboy, the police will get called and the characters will get questioned. This is probably a very bad thing, ‘cos the characters are all armed and dangerous felons.

It All Goes To Hell

At 1.30am, Columbanus, Dominic and Harvey climb out of their window and go up a fire escape to the roof of their tower. They cross the roof underneath the sizzling neon signs, and manage to get into the private areas. Meanwhile, Paul and Francis wearing bellboy uniforms take a cart filled with hidden guns through the casino. If any of the characters are looking out a window overlooking the roof, or wandering the corridors, they might encounter the gang.

However, if they don’t, the Plan goes into operation. Ian Green gets kacked, and Shaxson is held hostage in his own room.

When Green dies, the death of such a powerful mage sends a shockwave through the astral plane. Green’s soul is sucked into the ghost pipes, putting a vast amount of pressure on the system. Green’s sister, the PC Darla, catches a psychic glimpse of her brother’s death. In the vision, she’s lying in a darkened room, half-asleep. The tv is on in the background. The screen fills with static…then the static seems to push itself around her. The door is kicked open. She catches a glimpse of a tall guy in a black suit pointing a gun. Behind him is a short, nervous guy who’s the centre of the static field. She throws herself out of bed, trying to get into cover. Blam. Everything goes red, then black, then shades of grey as Ian gets shot, dies, and his ghost leaves his body. Then the vision is sucked into a waiting ghost trap in the wall.

Meanwhile, the ghost pipes begin to burst. All over the casino, the radiators begin to steam and leak. The ghosts escape. The combined power of the escaping ghosts warps reality. The hotel and the surrounding streets are now adrift. Anyone trying to leave find the streets turning back on themselves. As the night goes on, the ghosts will become stronger and stronger, and begin to possess the living hosts. As they get stronger, they'll become more like demons, using the living to indulge all the desires and longings they had in life. The guests and staff of the casino will be forced into acts of vice and depravity and indulgence. Furthermore, the physical structure of the casino will get warped, and time and space will be fucked with. Basically, the whole place is going to turn into a horrific, surreal madhouse, and it will get worse and worse until the ghost pipes blow (which is one possible ending for the scenario.)

If the characters aren’t out exploring the casino yet, events propel them to investigate. In Unknown Armies, lycanthropes (were-creatures) are the result of a demon becoming fused with an animal spirit and then possessing a human. One of the escaped ghosts explodes from a leaking pipe and possesses a rat. The rat’s fragile body is destroyed, but the fused rat/ghost leaps into the body of a sleeping person in a room adjoining the PCs’ current location. The possessed person shapeshifts into a rat, crawls into the drywall (making soft scratching noises), then turns back into a human form. The unfortunate materialises half-inside the wall. It’s a bit messy as the bits slide down the wall on top of any sleeping or relaxing PCs.

Having a corpse materialise in the wall should alert even the most unobservant players that something weird is going on.

So What The Fuck Are We Supposed To Do About It?

So the characters are in the casino, a few thousand dead people are steaming out of the central heating system, and they’ve been hired by a Mysterious Person to find Harvey. And knowing the characters, they’re probably arguing like hell and backstabbing each other. The one major clue is Darla’s psychic glimpse of Harvey when her brother was shot - the décor suggested it was upstairs in the casino.

Once the characters reach the central tower which contains the offices and private apartments, they discover the bodies of two security staff, who were shot by Paul and Francis. The brothers are currently breaking into Shaxson’s private room to hold him hostage. There are fewer ghosts in this section - Harvey’s only a few floors up, and his powers can keep the ghosts at bay. These upper floors are better decorated than the public areas of the casino. The furniture is fairly old-fashioned, dating back to the ‘30s. There are several black and white photos of Shaxson standing next to another man who resembles Darla (Silas Green).

One door is noticeable by any of the mystically aware characters because it’s hinged on the opposite side to all the other doors, and has a mirror instead of a nameplate. It’s Shaxson’s office. The old man keeps little of importance here - it’s mostly mundane stuff about the casino. There is quite a bit of money in one of the drawers ($50,000), but more importantly, there’s a diary (see handout). This room is one of most heavily shielded rooms in the casino, second only to the basement room and Shaxson’s bedroom.

There’s something of a trail of carnage, marking where the Brothers shot their way past Shaxson’s bodyguards. The trail ends at the penthouse, where a pair of ornate double doors stand closed. The doors have several bullet holes in them, and there’s a big red stain against one of them. The lock has been shot, but the doors are closed and barricaded with several sofas on the far side.

Chez Shaxson

On the far side of the doors is Shaxson’s apartment. Currently, the old man is tied to a chair and being manhandled by Paul. Columbanus is asking Shaxson about the “brew”, but Shaxson isn’t talking. If the characters want to try negotiating with the Brothers they can. The Brothers will (obviously) be suspicious, and will react in a hostile (i.e. guns blazing) manner to any attacks or attempts to force the doors. If the characters admit they’ve been sent to retrieve Harvey, Columbanus will be surprised, and offer to make a deal. The characters help the Brothers get out once they’ve got what they want, and the characters get Harvey.

If the characters want to be more adventurous, they can try getting into the penthouse through a different route. The windows are all thick, bullet-proof glass, and there’s no balcony. There is a skylight, though. Enterprising characters can find a fire escape, climb up the sheer walls of the building as the storm winds whip by, and jump through the skylight to get shot at by the Brothers if they want to.

The Brothers are in something of a situation. They’re stuck trying to get information

out of old Shaxson, but he’s not going to talk. They also know that things are quite literally going to hell downstairs.

Things can go in several directions here. If the characters burst in and start a firefight, it’s going to be messy. While they do outnumber the Brothers (and Cohen’s Avatar powers will help a lot), the Brothers have a lot more firepower, and are dug-in, expecting more of Shaxson’s security people to show up. If the PCs manage to wipe out the Brothers, then they’ll have to deal with Shaxson themselves. Skip onto Shaxson, below.

If the characters hang around or try to make a deal, they’re interrupted by the arrival of the Buddha.

The Buddha of Margate shows up about an hour and a half after the initial psychic explosion. He’s a middle-aged, chubby, greasy-faced man wearing a loud shirt and a cheap plastic raincoat. He’s carrying two expensive black umbrellas connected by a copper wire. The tip of one umbrella is always touching the ground, while he makes dramatic and sweeping gestures with the other (the umbrellas keep his magickal field grounded, forcing a -20% penalty on any occult attacks on him).

The Buddha has spent the last few years hiding inside Lucy the Elephant, a giant statue and tourist attraction in the town of Margate, just south of Atlantic City. Hiding inside the Elephant prevented Ian Green or any of Shaxson’s goons from finding the Buddha. The Buddha intends to take Shaxson’s position as Big Magickal Cheese of the Jersey Shore region. He’s an Avatar of the Sage, and a bit of a geek. Hiring the Brothers took the majority of his resources, so he’s more desperate than he seems.

The Buddha will approach the characters in a conciliatory fashion. He recognises them as agents of skill and determination, and would prefer not to anger them. If they tell him what they want, he’ll offer much the same deal the Brothers did: help him get Shaxson’s immortality potion, and he’ll give them Harvey, who’s served his purpose anyway.

Shaxson is tied to a chair. He’s dressed in a vivid yellow silk dressing gown, and is wearing a single slipper. He’s been beaten up by Paul, but is still conscious and fairly coherent. He’s a paranoid old git, and doesn’t know which of his many enemies sent the Brothers Benedict until the Buddha actually turns up. Shaxson knows he’s in a no-win situation here - if he gives up the potion, he’ll die of old age pretty soon. He plans to wait until the ghost situation has gotten critical, then offer to save everyone by brewing the potion - he’s got one more surprise defence. See demon in a bottle, below.

Shaxson’s got a key around his neck. This key fits into a lock in any of the elevators, and allows access to the ghost brewing room in the sub-basement.

Trapping Shaxson’s spirit: If the characters are willing to talk and deal with the Brothers Benedict, the Buddha will ask if the characters have any occult techniques that might be useful. If Darla and Franklin volunteer their abilities, the Buddha comes up with a plan. If Franklin can psychically restrain Shaxson’s ghost, the Buddha and Darla can magickally force answers out of Shaxson. If the characters agree, the Buddha nods to Columbanus, who shoots Shaxson in the heart.

The Buddha doesn’t know how the ghost pipes work. If the characters have worked it out, and mention it to him, he seals off the pipes in this room before killing Shaxson. If this isn’t done, then Shaxson’s spirit is likely to get sucked into his own pipes. Franklin can try to catch the ghost - this is a simple Astral Projection roll when the pipes are closed. If the pipes are open, Franklin’s got to roll over 30 and under his Astral Projection to trap Shaxson. If he rolls under 30, Shaxson gets sucked in. If he fails the roll, both spirits get sucked in.

If they do manage to trap Shaxson’s ghost, then it’s a fairly simple use of Random Magick (2 minor charges) to force Shaxson to describe the ghost pipes and brewing technique.

Silas Green

The ghost who brought the characters into this whole mess has been sluicing around the ghost pipes for twenty years, ever since Shaxson shot him and stole his infant children. Silas wants two things more than anything else - revenge and a new body. He’s powerful enough to pop out of a leaking pipe and possess some fat tourist, but he’d be spotted by Ian Green or Shaxson before he got out the door of the casino. So, his plan was to get a suitable host (Darla or Franklin) together with a psychic mask (Static Harvey) to the casino.

The Buddha and the Brothers Benedict screwed the Harvey bit of that plan up, but the night’s events seem to be heading towards Shaxson’s messy death, so Silas is fairly happy.

If any of the characters get trapped in the ghost pipes, Silas will snag them as they go past and pull them into a private little spiritual sump tank he included in the system when he built it. Take the PC aside. All he can hear is this throaty, whispering voice in the wet lapping darkness. Silas will explain who and what he is, and what he wants (without mentioning the bit where he intends to possess his daughter or Franklin). He knows how to work the brewing machine, and knows the casino as well as any living person. All he can do without a body, though, is float around and make the occasionally phone call thanks to the leaky pipe in the lobby.

13. Stumbling Towards The Light

By this point, the lower floors of the casino are in utter chaos. The escaping ghosts are pouring in and out of the ghost pipes, and the entire casino is shifting in and out of reality. Pretty soon, the pressure on the pipes will break them, and the resulting psychic explosion will be…messy. The whole casino is now like a ghost pressure cooker, with gouts of screaming steam escaping from the radiators.

The PCs could be in any one of several situations at the moment. They’re possibly allied with the Buddha and/or the Brothers. They could have thrown their lot in with Shaxson, or be guided by Silas. Or they could be entirely on their own, or just lost and wandering the haunted halls.

Getting out of the casino is nigh-impossible. The lobby is full of panicked tourists and ghosts, and the main doors have sealed themselves shut (a good few blasts from a shotgun could open them). The fire escapes and windows look out onto a fierce Atlantic storm, and the fire escapes are carrying a pretty nasty static charge.

To stop the rampaging ghosts, someone will have to switch on the ghost brewing machinery in the basement. Doing this while Silas Green is bodiless will kill him and any other ghosts. If the characters have encountered Silas or worked out who he is, they might not want to have him die.

Silas wants a body. Ideally, he’d take Static Harvey, Darla, or Franklin, but he’s not hugely picky. He’ll do his damnedest to stop the brewing if he’s still bodiless, but will offer his help if he’s given a body. He’s a bit of bastard, really.

14. The Basement Room

This room in the basement of the casino is next to the boiler which powers the central heating system. A lift goes directly to the room, but the lift can only be used with a key that Shaxson keeps on his person at all times. There’s a heavy reinforced door connecting the basement room to the rest of the basement, but opening this door would take explosives or some fairly nifty engineering.

If the characters have wandered down here on their own, or you want to slow the game down or give the Buddha an added reason for working with the characters, then the room is guarded by an spiritual creation of Shaxson. He created it by trapping animal spirits in a smaller version of the ghost pipe device, and mixed in flesh and bone meal. The resulting creation looks like Cereberus after the hound of hell had been through a blender, a misshapen, lumpy, fleshy beast with too many mouths. He feeds it on occasion, but it’s undead and doesn’t actually need to eat much. It’s always hungry. Of course, if you’re running short on time, then just skip the beast.

The actual ghost brewing device is a large piece of machinery and piping. The ghost-water flows through a series of large lead pipes. If a valve is opened, the water is diverted into a brewing tank. Four electrodes are lowered into the tank. These electrodes are tipped with infinity symbols, and when charged, they glow red-hot. The water begins to boil, panicking the ghosts. The hot water rises, but the ghosts are unable to get past the field of the electrodes. They’re forced out another, glass pipe (utter darkness destroys naked ghosts) into a dry copper pot. A fifth electrode is inside this pot. The ghosts are forced through the walls of the pot. In their passage through the treated copper, they’re homogenised and confused. The little droplets of spiritual energy condense on the cold walls of a glass tube surrounding the copper pot, and drip down into a plastic flask.

To perform the brewing correctly:
-The valve must be opened
-The electrodes activated by flicking a switch
-The electrodes lowered only when the brewing tank is full
-The fifth electrode activated only when the copper pot is full of ghost-essences.

Instructions for performing the ritual can be found in Shaxson’s diary, or provided by the Buddha or Silas Green. If the ritual isn’t performed correctly, the result is a massive psychic explosion. This is a Bad Thing.

The result of a proper brewing is a small flask full of a silty grey liquid which smells of regret and cinnamon. Anyone drinking this liquid within a few minutes of brewing gains the benefits of the brew - an extra century or three of life, at least, plus considerable Soul increases. If the liquid is left stand, or put into an opaque container, it goes sour and will likely drive the imbiber insane.

Hidden behind the copper pot is an old wine bottle containing a demon Shaxson trapped in the mid-80s. If Shaxson’s being forced to perform the ritual, he’ll uncork the bottle and loose the demon as a distraction and try to grab the elixir and escape.

15. How To Get Out Of Carcosa With Your Ass Intact

Ok. If the characters never work out what’s going on, or never encounter a character who does, they’re all dead. The ghosts tear the casino apart before dawn breaks. When the sun comes up, the world re-knits itself, and the casino probably vanishes like a big ghost, along with everyone inside.

If the characters rescue Shaxson from the Brothers, Shaxson will perform the ritual and save his casino. This will probably result in Silas Green getting drunk. Shaxson will promise to settle any reasonable debts that the characters have incurred, and will even offer Darla a place as his in-house Mage (seeing as both her father and brother have died in this post, it’s possibly not the best choice for her).

If the characters keep working for their mysterious benefactor - Silas Green - they’ll have to get him a body and get out of the casino alive. This probably means killing the Brothers Benedict and the Buddha. Green has a stash of money hidden in Atlantic City, which he’ll use to pay the characters if they force him too.

As for the unfortunate guests and staff of the casino - the brewing process destroys all the ghosts. Shaxson (if he’s still alive) tries to cover up the disaster, but fails. The Sleepers end up torching the hotel and killing Shaxson before the case comes to the attention of competent authorities.

Appendix 1: Non-player characters

James Shaxson: Shaxson takes a rather pragmatic approach to the occult. He doesn’t especially like messing with it, but he quite likes living, and magick’s still the best way of staying alive when you’re well past your sell-by date. He sees himself as a businessman first and occultist second. Despite this, he’s fairly knowledgeable and competent about spiritual matters. He’s sympathetic to the Sleepers, but that’s more out of his own fear of the Tiger than anything else.

After years of dealing with ghosts as food, commodities and fuel, he’s fairly blasé about death - well, other people’s death anyway. He’s fairly sure there’s no afterlife or karmic judgement. He’s terrified of dying himself though.

Personality: An arrogant man, who’s trampled a lot of people to keep himself alive.
Obsession: Immortality
Wound Points: 30
PASSIONS:
Rage: Disobedience. Shaxson’s used to dealing with underlings
Fear: His own mortality.
Noble: Immortality. Shaxson is active in local politics, and wishes to be remembered as a positive influence on his city.
STATS:
Body: 30 (Monty Burns withered)
Mind: 65 (A century’s worth of plotting)
Speed: 45 (Unsteady) Soul: 80 (monstrous)
Body: Feeble struggle 10%
Speed: Make a break for safety 30%, Dodge 20%, Shoot You Like A Dog 30%
Mind: Casino Management 50%, Atlantic City Politics 45%, Occult Lore 50%
Soul: Lie 45%, Commanding Glare 30%, Ghost Brewing 45%

Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
4 Hardened	8 Hardened	1 Hardened	4 Hardened	5 Hardened
3 Failed	2 Failed	2 Failed	0 Failed	2 Failed

The Buddha of Margate:
In the late 60s, a young Hippie made the trip to India. He wandered around the Indian subcontinent for about five years, before returning to the States. He’d gone looking for enlightenment, but found nothing. However, many fellow spirits had heard he’d gone to India, and assumed he was one with the universe or something, and started asking him spiritual questions. Their perception of him forced him onto the Path of the Sage.
Once he became an Avatar, he threw himself into the search for true wisdom. He’s been looking for things like hard facts about the Clergy and the Naked Goddess tape. Shaxson ratted on the Buddha to the Sleepers, and the Buddha was forced to go into hiding. The Buddha doesn’t hate Shaxson - he hates no-one - but believes that it’s time for Shaxson to move along the wheel of reincarnation. (Oh - and with Shaxson dead, the Buddha will be act more openly along the Shore).
Personality: A fairly gentle, vaguely distracted ex-hippy.
Obsession: Cosmic Wisdom
Wound Points: 50
PASSIONS:
Rage: Those who hurt those who are different from them
Fear: Police. The Buddha really dislikes people in uniforms.
Noble: Ultimately, the Buddha believes that the Occult has a lot to offer society.
STATS:
Body: 50 (Chubby) Mind: 60 (Smart enough)
Speed: 40 (Steady) Soul: 65 (Enlightened)
Body: Umbrella swipe 30%, Remarkably resilient 40%
Speed: Indomitable Waddle 30%, Dodge 25%, Yoga 40%
Mind: Eastern Religions 40%, Philosophy 40%, Notice 45%
Soul: Lie 25%, Charm 30%, Meditation 50%, Avatar: Sage 55%

Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
2 Hardened	5 Hardened	0 Hardened	4 Hardened	1 Hardened
2 Failed	1 Failed	0 Failed	1 Failed	2 Failed

Silas Green: A sorcerer of no mean power, Silas was one of the first American Cliomancers. He coupled his potent magick with an even stronger force of will. Silas could bend ghosts to his service, and was a terror in the Occult Underground for years. Then, he made the mistake of falling in love and wanted to settle down. Shaxson offered Green shelter and a place of safety. The two perfected the ghost pipes system and the brewing techniques. Eventually, the two had a falling out, and Shaxson shot Green. Green’s ghost was caught in the ghost pipes. One of Green’s kid was put up for adoption, the other was cared for until his own talent for magery had developed.
In life, Silas was a scary, freakishly determined and vicious mage who screwed half the Occult Underground over. He could be charming enough when he wanted to be, but he was basically John Constantine with anger management issues. Now, he wants revenge and a body…
Static Harvey: Guys like Harvey are a fairly common type in the Underground. He’s not that bright, and his magickal talents have warped his fragile little mind still further. He’s a natural source of magickal static, and it sort of messes up his own thoughts too. Only a fraction of Harvey’s own thoughts actually make it through the static, so he’s distracted all the time. He’s got a functional IQ in the mid-80s, and is easily led.
Personality: Wobbles between happy empty-headedness and near-autism. Speaks in a disjointed, staccato fashion.
Obsession: None
Wound Points: 55
PASSIONS:
Rage: Being chained or physically restrained.
Fear: Electricity. Harvey spent time in a mental institution undergoing shock therapy.
Noble: He’s a nice guy, and will help anyone who seems to be in trouble.
STATS:
Body: 55 (Thin and wiry) Mind: 25 (Not all there at all)
Speed: 55 (Jumpy) Soul: 70 (Zoned Out)
Body: Struggle 30%, General Athletics 30%
Speed: Panicked dodge 25%
Soul: Magickal Static 70% (counters any detection or scrying nearby)

Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
1 Hardened	3 Hardened	0 Hardened	4 Hardened	0 Hardened
4 Failed	2 Failed	4 Failed	3 Failed	0 Failed

Columbanus: Columbanus and his brother Francis were raised in a religious boarding school. They’ve always been steeped in ritual and ceremony. Columbanus became obsessed with the Angel of Death, with the apocalypse, and soon began channelling the Executioner. Being the Avatar of a supernatural killer really didn’t gel with being a nice Catholic kid. The two ended up doing minor hits for money. Soon, they amassed quite a reputation as hired guns.
Personality: Columbanus is your average cold-blooded psycho. He thinks he’s the angel of death, so he’s not exactly well-balanced or stable. Nice guy really, though. Calls his mother regularly.
Obsession: Killing.
Wound Points: 60
PASSIONS:
Rage: Columbanus rarely feels anger. The only thing that pisses him off is his brother being hurt.
Fear: Sometimes, his own Avatar-hood scares him. He hates it when the path of the Avatar compels himt to something he doesn’t want to do.
Noble: Outside his Avatar, Columbanus is a morally upright Catholic.
STATS:
Body: 60 (Fit) Mind: 55 (Well Taught)
Speed: 65 (Fast) Soul: 55 (Spiritual)
Body: Punish the Unrighteous 30%, General Athletics 40%
Speed: Dodge 30%, Execution-style killing 60%
Mind: Theology 30%, Underground contacts 25%, Notice 40%
Soul: Lie 10%, Avatar: The Executioner 55%

Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
7 Hardened	3 Hardened	0 Hardened	4 Hardened	5 Hardened
0 Failed	0 Failed	0 Failed	0 Failed	1 Failed

Francis: He’s always lived in his brother’s shadow. Francis adores his elder sibling, and this has become near-worship with Columbanus’ assumption of the role of the Executioner. Francis seems to add an aura of ceremony and ritual to every action he takes. He’s probably the least skilled of the Brothers, though, and tends to stay in the background when the bullets start flying.
Personality: Quiet and gentle - but Columbanus’s word is the word of God, and will be obeyed.
Obsession: Divinity
Wound Points: 55
PASSIONS:
Rage: Magick use. Francis really distrusts mages.
Fear: Dying without making a confession.
Noble: If it weren’t for his brother’s influence, Francis would be working in a homeless shelter or something.
STATS:
Body: 55 (Fit) Mind: 60 (Widely read)
Speed: 55 (Fast) Soul: 55 (Spiritual)
Body: Football 30%, Boxing 40%
Speed: Dodge 30%, Firearms 45%
Mind: Theology 60%, General Education 40%, Notice 50%
Soul: Charm 30%, Lie 20%

Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
5 Hardened	3 Hardened	0 Hardened	3 Hardened	3 Hardened
2 Failed	2 Failed	0 Failed	1 Failed	2 Failed

Dominic: Dominic’s a fairly simple guy. He’s got a severe coke habit, so he needs lots of money. He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty, and isn’t squeamish. Blowing holes in people isn’t an issue with him. He’s permanently jumpy, nearly always wired on something.
Personality: Manic spurts of activity and/or brutality
Obsession: Being faster than the other guy
Wound Points: 60
PASSIONS:
Rage: People betraying him.
Fear: Losing. Dominic’s self-image is staked on being the fastest, baddest mofo out there.
Noble: He’s a bit of a shit really. The closest thing to a noble impulse in Dominic is that he hates seeing kids getting hurt.
STATS:
Body: 60 (abused but tough) Mind: 45 (Reactions, not thoughts)
Speed: 70 (Amphetamines) Soul: 45 (Psychically inert)
Body: Hurt people 40%, Sprinting 30%
Speed: Dodge 40%, Firearms 60%
Mind: Streetwise 30%, Drug contacts 25%
Soul: Charm 25%, Lie 20%

Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
8 Hardened	2 Hardened	0 Hardened	0 Hardened	5 Hardened
0 Failed	0 Failed	0 Failed	0 Failed	0 Failed

Paul: Although Columbanus is the real driving force behind the Brothers, Paul is the guy who keeps their little outfit together. He organises most of the jobs, he’s got the contacts, makes the deals. He’s the one who made contact with the Buddha of Margate. Of all the Brothers, Paul’s the one who’s most likely to sell them out - but only if the price was right.
Personality: Calculating..
Obsession: Making the right deal.
Wound Points: 60
PASSIONS:
Rage: Betrayal. Paul’s got no problem backstabbing others, but he hates it when it happens to himself.
Fear: Being outsmarted by someone.
Noble: Paul does quite like making deals that everyone wins at. He’s a people person.
STATS:
Body: 60 (toned) Mind: 60 (smart)
Speed: 50 (mediocre) Soul: 50 (shallow)
Body: General Athletics 30%, Sleazy Sex Appeal 40%
Speed: Run Away 30%, Firearms 45%
Mind: Friends at the end of a mobile phone 45%, Spot Trouble 50%
Soul: Charm 40%, Lie 50%

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

HOW TO RUN Carcosa, NJ IN FIVE MINUTES

Right. Unknown Armies is a game of transcendant horror and furious action set in the modern day. The characters are a gang of two-bit thugs and occultists working for a guy called Mr. Dante. They’ve been hired by a Mysterious Person to find this guy called Static Harvey. Harvey was last seen in Atlantic City, NJ.

In Atlantic City lives a sorcerer called James Shaxson. He owns a casino, which is actually a giant ghost collection device. Ghosts are attracted to the shiny things, and sucked into the central heating system, where they slosh around the pipes. Every few decades, Shaxson brews all the accumulated ghosts in an immortality potion. Shaxson came up with this device in conjunction with another sorcerer, Silas Green. Shaxson killed Green, and put his daughter up for adoption. His daughter, Darla, is one of the pcs, and Silas’ ghost (who’s stuck hiding in the ghost pipes too) is the Mysterious Voice. Silas wants Static Harvey in order to escape without being detected by Shaxson (Harvey’s a natural anti-magickal detection generator).

Here’s where things get complicated. A third guy, The Buddha of Margate, wants the immortality potion - and he’s hired four hitmen, the Brothers Benedict, to get the potion off Shaxson. Shaxson hasn’t brewed the potion yet, and he’s not going to brew it for the Brothers or anyone - he’s so old, if he doesn’t get the potion himself, he’ll die.

The Brothers kidnapped Static Harvey from New York, for pretty much the same reasons Silas wants Harvey - to get into the casino undetected.

Appendix 2: Diary

Open Valve.
Close Circuit for Electrodes.
Electrolyse essences when copper vessel is brimming.
Close second circuit only when smaller vessel is full of essences.
-S. G, ‘75

September, 1979:

I realise it’s something of a cliché to keep a diary, but my memory is not what it used to be. Too many lives sifting their ash through me memories, my mind wanders. I’m tired - it’s four in the morning as I write this. Silas’ damn brat is keeping me awake. The boy is old enough to keep his trap shut, but I’ll have to get rid of the other one. They’re his blood, though, and have something of his power. Certainly worth cultivating.

January, 1981:

The ghost pipes are rattling and bubbling. Ah, sweet mystery of life. I can see the thin ghosts wandering around the rooftops and drifting down the halls. This place is a shining beacon ten miles high for them. There just aren’t as many as there used to be, though. We need another Vietnam.

August, 1984:

The brewing equipment needs replacing. I checked it this morning, and the whole assemblage was smashed beyond repair! I’ve still got Silas’ notes, so rebuilding it will be easy enough. The door to the basement room was locked and sealed, so it must have been an otherworldly agent. Demon, poltergeist or projector? Or did someone send a Pilgrim in to trash the place? No, the wards would have stopped one. There’s no choice now, I’ll have to set that guardian spirit on the door. More troubles, more troubles.

July, 1996:

It’s been a long time since I’ve needed to write in this. Twelve years of collecting, and still nowhere near enough to warrant a brewing. My flesh withers and my bones poke through. I feel older than over. Damn them! In the old days, I’d have swallowed them all down in a breath and be done with it, but my body’s too old for that to work. If I were lucky, the shock would kill me - but it’s more likely I’d be trapped on the Bony Express.

At current rates, it’ll be another decade at least before I’ve enough essence to brew. I need to up the collection. How? More traps? Or more ghosts?

December, 1996:

And the best Christmas present. More games of chance, and Ian’s improved on his father’s ghost trap design. The summer will draw the spirits in with the tourists. Ah. It’ll be a good season. It’s still not enough though - too many are getting smoked or drunk or witched away. I’ll need to take steps, put a hush out. Ian can find any chaos mages on the Shore. I’ll put a watch on liquor stores, and see if I can’t clamp down on the dead heads. We’ll have to be careful about this one. Step too loduly, wake the Tiger - and I’m tied to the ghost pipes. Step too softly, and the Dukes will just pop up again and I’ll die of old age before the brewing. More troubles.

COHEN

You come from a long line of soldiers. When North fought South, your ancestors were on the front lines. Your grandfather died in France. When you were a kid, your father balanced you on the stumps of his legs after he came back from Vietnam. You always knew you’d join up, do your duty.

You were sent to the Gulf, but never got a chance to fight. Your CO was involved in a scam, selling equipment on the black market. You were the only member of the unit who wasn’t in on it, and you weren’t able to prove your innocence. You got a DD and were spat back onto America’s streets.

Something caught you then, caught your rejected soul and twisted around you. The world made a different kind of sense. As you wandered around the country, living in bus shelters and YMCAs, you started having dreams. Ronin in Japan, mercenaries in a thousand little wars, every western you ever saw - they all haunted you. You looked in all the cracked, grimy bathroom mirrors, and every time, the Man With No Name stared back at you.

You drifted into organised crime, not for the money, but because you need something to believe in, someone to tell you which direction to go in. You can’t stay with any one outfit, though, any one boss. You keep drifting, rudderless, masterless.

The latest guy who’s hired you is called Dante. You don’t like him, but the money’s good. Dante contacted you through a bunch of wierdoes who call you an “Avatar”. Whatever. You don’t go in for that mystic crap, although you keep running into it. You just hope Dante and his team aren’t into it.

Character: You’re fairly sure you were supposed to die in the Gulf as a soldier. Now you’re out of the army, and looking for a new one….new army or new death, doesn’t matter. You’re unshaven, unwashed, irritable and mean.

Sometime, you come close to realising that there’s something…big out there, something that you’re a part of. It’s like you’re on the same wavelength as every wandering gunslinger and nomadic warrior.

The Others:

Dante: Your boss, while he pays you at least.

Pieternel: Dutch woman. Cute. Cold. Bad news.

Darla Greenback: She’s got a smell about her. Mystic crap. If she gets in your way…

Josh Coleman: Black guy. Good with a gun. Quiet.

Franklin Ades: Another freak. He’d better not get in your way either…

DARLA GREENBACK

You want to be rich so bad you can taste it. Wealth is something you need, money pulls on you like gravity.

You’re not sure why, though. Sure, you started out with nothing - you grew up in an orphanage, and never knew anything about your family - but you were able to get an ok education and an ok job. You didn’t need much money - but you had to have it. Not to buy things, not to invest or do anything with, but you’ve got this weird, overwhelming need to have money, to have long rows of numbers in your bank statements. Your McJob wasn’t paying enough, so you quit and moved into more…lucrative work. You started stealing, doing confidence scams and other stuff. You hated yourself for doing it, but you needed the money - literally. Then strange things started happening around you.

You’ve learned you can hear the money, listen to the secret songs the bills sing as they rustle in your wallet. Once you started getting more money, your hunger for cash twisted in on itself, and came back out through your soul as magick. You’ve been a sorceress all your life, but you didn’t know it. Once you made the connection between money and the weirdness, it all made sense in one moment of cosmic sanity and calm.

A few chance encounters with other mages allowed you to find out you’re a natural Plutomancer, a financial witch. You met up with a guy called Mr. Dante, a gangster of sorts, who was looking to make contacts among the mystically aware. Hoping that you’d be able to score the riches you desire through him, you agreed to work with him.

So far, Dante’s been good for you. While you’re not rich, you’re getting the occasional big wads of cash you need. You’re trapped by your addiction to money - you don’t really want to be working for a criminal, but you’ve got to have cash. You’ve kept your magickal powers hidden from the others, but they’ve got to suspect something. It’s obvious you’re not a professional.

You’ve all been hired to track down some guy called Static Harvey, in Atlantic City. Normally, you’d be able to mystically divine someone’s location, but something cloaking Harvey from your spells. Shit. This probably means there are other sorcerers involved. You’ve never had to deal with an opposing mage before…

Character: You’re a fairly quiet, unassuming person. You dress in soft earth tones, and speak softly. Think Willow from Buffy. You think of yourself as a nice person. However, you’ve got this unspeakable, consuming need for money, money to fuel your magick, money just to have and hold it, the green smell of lush currency engulfing your soul…

The Others:

Dante: The boss. He knows what he’s doing.

Josh Coleman: Josh scares you a little. He’s a career criminal, and is very dangerous. Still, he’s never done anything to intimidate you…

Pieternel Van Merne: A European woman who works with Dante. You don’t think she likes you.

Cohen & Franklin Ades: People hired by Dante. Franklin seems approachable enough, but Cohen makes Josh look happy and normal.

FRANKLIN ADES

When you close your eyes, all you see is the operating room, all you smell is the harsh tang of disinfectant and your own blood. Then you fell it all falling away all over again…

When you were 18 - seven years back, you were a college kid - you were in a car crash. A bad one. Blood everywhere, twisted bits of metal sticking into soft bits of you. Messy. And you died on the operating table. At least, that’s how it felt to you. You felt yourself floating up out of your body, everything dimming and losing focus. You panicked and flailed around somewhere near the white ceiling tiles spotted with drops of your arterial blood. Somehow, you found yourself back in your body. The doctors called it a miracle.

You’re not so sure. Ever since then, it hasn’t felt like your body, more like a set of fleshy clothes. You - your mind, spirit, soul, whatever - has only a tenuous connecting with your body. You’ve got to concentrate to do anything, and sometimes, your mind wanders and your heart stops. You’ve got almost no sense of touch or smell, and don’t feel pain much.

The accident and resulting mental fuckup resulted in a major life change for you. Up until then, you were a fairly normal guy. Since then, you’ve been wandering, unable to come to terms with what happened to you. You’re scared of letting yourself die, even though you brush against death every day, every time you close your eyes or get distracted by something.

You have found you can recreate what happened to you - astrally project, basically - but you run the risk of staying outside your body too long, and its organs shutting down with you to remind your heart to beat, your lungs to breath, your spleen to vent about your sucky life.

Enough damage has been done to your body, especially your heart and liver, that you need a lot of drugs to keep going. Your insurance doesn’t provide enough, and you walked out on your family in the aftermath of the accident. You’ve taken to selling your skills as an astral projector to people in the Occult Underground, that loose network of freaks and weirdos. Your current boss is some guy called Mr. Dante. He seems to be more of a hitman or organised crime boss than anything else. Whatever. You’ve died once, nothing worse can happen to you.

Character: Franklin was a fairly quiet but cheerful, normal person. Then he got spread out over a half-kilometre of roadway, and now he’s a quiet but bitterly half-dead and suicidal person. He’s confused, and scared, and still a little shell-shocked even after years of living with his condition. He still hasn’t admitted the cosmic unfairness of it all.

The Others:

Dante: The new boss. Pays well, and seems eager to use your abilities.

Pieternel: One benefit of being…whatever you are… is that beautiful women have less of an effect on you. She’s great-looking, but you don’t like her.

Darla Greenback: Quiet, weird chick. Has the stink of the Occult Underground about her, more than the rest of ‘em.

Josh Coleman: Hired muscle.

Cohen: The other new hire. You get the impression he’s a bit tough.

JOSH COLEMAN

You were a black kid growing up in a bad neighbourhood in New York. You learned to sleep through the sounds of gunfire and sirens at an early age. By the time you were fifteen, you’d outlived a lot of the kids you grew up with. You were an urban predator and a survivor. You hooked up with various criminal gangs, and slowly climbed the ladder from disposable black kid with a gun to a competent and trustworthy professional.

You’re not an especially violent person, though. You don’t enjoy hurting people, and you’re fairly personable in a quiet way. You read quite a lot, and are something of a closet geek. However, the only thing you really know how to do is point guns at people, kick down doors, and generally make life unpleasant for others, so that’s what you do. You work for a guy called Mr. Dante. Dante’s not especially well connected, but he’s ok…

…or so you used to think. Lately, Dante’s been acting weird - or, to be more precise, a different kind of weird. He’s been hanging with some very freaky people, including one notorious guy called “the Bad Man”. The Bad Man’s been a fixture in New York for decades. He’s more of a fence than anything else, but you’re heard very weird stories about those who cross him. If Dante’s trying to screw the Bad Man over, you don’t wanna be around.

The latest job is finding some guy called Harvey down in Atlantic City. You’ve got a bad feeling about this one…

Character: Take Samuel Jackson’s character from the end of Pulp Fiction, only turn the volume down a bit and replace the religion bit with an ill-defined yearning to find something better. For a semi-amoral gangster and enforcer, you’re an ok guy.

The Others:

Dante: The Boss. You do what he tells you, but you know he’s not as smart as he thinks he is. Don’t rely on him.

Pieternel: Bad news. An ex-drug smuggler from Holland, she’s as cold and scary as they come. Follow her lead, but don’t turn your back on her.

Darla Greenback: Darla you don’t get at all. She seems like she shouldn’t be involved with your kind of people. She’s quiet and…meek or something. You really like her despite yourself. She’s probably the only person here you’d trust.

Cohen: A new hire by Dante. You’ve heard about this guy. He’s legendary. He’s supposed to be so tough he makes Mr. T look like Erkle.

Franklin Ades: Another guy Dante just brought in. Seems ok.

MR DANTE

There are two ways to get rich in America, two ways to live the American Dream of screwing over your fellow man and getting rich off his manifest destiny. One of those ways is organised crime. You like to think of yourself as the Organised in Organised Crime - when you’re sent to work a guy over, you’ve got your sledgehammer and bolt-cutters laid out in neat lines and at right-angles like the most anal corporate exec would lay out his palmtop computer and briefcase. You are a professional criminal, and you take your work seriously and professionally.

At the moment, you’re something of an independent operator. You’ve got your own little team of pros, and you’re ready to take any job. Lately, though, you’ve been drifting towards that weird region of the criminal underground called the Occult Underground. It’s something of an open secret among the pros that there are weird fuckers out there who can do things, but most of them are too unstable or dangerous to deal with, even by the rather low standards of your fellow pros.

You gambled that making a few contacts in the Occult Underground would pay off in the long run. Even making those contacts cost you, and you’re in debt to a very big player in New York who calls himself the Bad Man. Getting out of debt to the Bad Man is your top priority at the moment.

About a week ago, you got a phone call. The guy sounded like he was phoning from the bottom of a lake, and wouldn’t give his name. He did make you an offer though. He wants you to find some guy called “Static Harvey”, and get him to Atlantic City. Mr. Anonymous offered you fifty grand - but also dropped hints about magick which got you interested. You asked around - and found that Harvey vanished last week. The Bad Man took pity on you, and gave you the name of a contact of his - Eckles - in Atlantic City, who apparently knows where Harvey is. It’s a start. You’ve hired some people the Bad Man put you in contact with, and now it’s off to Atlantic City.

Your luck is changing now. Everything’s going to come together. You love it when a plan comes together.

Oh - you traced Mr. Anonymous’ number to a casino in Atlantic City.

Character: You are not a loser.You are not a loser.You are not a loser. You are not a loser.You are not a loser. You are not a loser.You are not a loser. You’re smart, suave, dangerous, competent, thorough, tough. The real Bad Man.

The Others:

Pieternel: Oooh. A Dutch beauty with a touch of the beast. She was involved with some European crime syndicate, now she’s working for you.

Josh Coleman: Your muscleman. Dependable.

Darla Greenback: Darla caught your eye a while back, just when you were learning about Magick. She’s obviously unsuited for a life of crime, but she came to you looking for work, and money - lots of cash money. You’ve heard rumours about money mages…

Cohen: One of the new hires. The Bad Man described Cohen as a “Masterless Man”. He’s a mercenary with some occult powers or something. He’s also as tough as all hell.

Franklin Ades: The other new guy. Nervous and wimpish, but he’s apparently an “astral projector”. He’s got a drug habit, which is why he agreed to work for you.

PIETERNEL VAN MERNE

America sucks.

When Americans ask you what you do, you smile and tell them you’re an international cocaine smuggler hiding from a gang of murderous Bolivians. They get this stupid grin on their face, ‘cos they’re thinking “a good-looking blonde Dutch woman - she’s got to be a porn star or something”. As it happens, the story about you being an international cocaine smuggler is true, but no-one ever takes it seriously, which suits you just fine.

You left the Netherlands pursued by a gang of Bolivians who flushed most of your two business partners down the toilet in bite-sized red chunks. You intend to go back to Europe when you can, but until then, you need money and protection. You’ve got both by getting involved with a team run by a two-bit gangster called Mr. Dante. He thinks he’s a real player, but he’s a loser. That’s fine with you, though - you’re trying to keep a low profile. Let Dante think he’s in charge as much as he wants, as long as he doesn’t get you killed.

Dante’s latest scheme sounds even stupider than usual. You’ve all been hired by some backer to find some guy called Harvey. It all seems fairly simple, but Dante’s been secretive about everything, and the extra muscle he’s hired seems excessive - and a bit flaky. You’ve heard rumours about stupid religious cults and criminal hippies, but don’t believe any of it.

Still, it doesn’t matter. This is the kind of pointless shit work you need at the moment, to stay quiet and hidden and safe. And if things do go wrong, you can always deal with Dante and get your ass out of there.

Character: You used to be hedonistic. Coke, sex, crime - it was all a game to you. You were young and immortal and untouchable. Then came the problems with the Bolivians - you messed up, and had to learn to take things seriously. You’re a lot more focussed and careful now - but you’re still wild and heart, and need to cut loose every so often.

You tend to be rather arrogant, and bore easily. You feel contempt for most people who are weaker or dumber than you are.

The Others:

Dante: He thinks of himself as the brains of the outfit. Idiot.

Josh Coleman: He’s reliable, follows orders, and is good with gun. And he doesn’t get in your way. Perfect.

Darla Greenback: You don’t trust her. She’s too quiet, too secretive. And she seems utterly out of place. She should be running a kindergarten, not hanging around with gangsters.

Cohen: He could be a problem. A lone gunman hired by Dante, Cohen seems to be unstable and depressive. Don’t rely on or trust him.

Franklin Ades: Where does Dante dig up these losers?