[UA] Parsons

[Stuart Anderson]

    I just read _Sex and Rockets: the Occult World of Jack
Parsons_, by John Carter. Knowing how many innerlechuls
there are on the list, many of you've already read it, and
Ken Hite's almost certainly done a column on him. But I had
to mention Parsons' immanent UAbility. A guy who seems to
have invented solid rocket fuel as we know it, and who tried
to reproduce Crowley's attempts to facilitate the birth of a
strange new kind of creature--you could do some cool stuff.
    My bifurcated campaign (most occurring presently, while
flashing back to the 70s to fill in some backstory) is going
well, and I might try it again. I like using Parsons'
untimely and unexplained death in 52 (he was blown up by an
experiment gone horribly awry) and post-war red menace
paranoia as the core of the backstory to a 58 hotrodding
hodad epic along the lines of High School Inquisition. There
are only six years or so between the backstory and the
present. I think that would make it a little easier for the
two storylines to influence each other as we go. The
toughest thing about my bifurcated campaign so far has been
adhering to my decision to let the backstory develop as it
will, having a constantly shifting impact on the present
story. The best thing about it so far has been the clear
change in tone from one storyline to the other.
    You would have that in this next campaign, as well. The
backstory would be dark and grim and paranoid--oozy and
creepy. The present story would be violent and crazy and
wild. The group seems to accept the two on-going threads as
permission to play more elaborately on the tone of each. In
the present day, they're an assembly of manhunters, pursuing
a cult gone to ground. It's the definition of relentless.
Delta Greene (my favorite character any of them have come up
with so far) was ready to die in a dark ploy to seduce the
leader's right hand man. I mean--they're *into* it. In the
70s, they're a would-be folk-rock band who's gotten mixed up
with Evel Knievel (god of all entropomancers) and is coming
to the maddening realization that the greatest threat to
reality as we know it is the Harlem Globetrotters. They play
that to the hilt, too. Possibly because it's funny to see me
laugh so hard beer spews from my nose.
    If anyone's used Parsons in a scenario before, let me
know. I'd like to get someone else's spin on him.
--Stu


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