[UA] The mysterious case

[Timothy Toner]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ronnie Grahn" <zyko at telia.com>
To: "Unknown Armies" <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 6:31 AM
Subject: [UA] The mysterious case


> In my UA campaign one of the players is a drug courier over the Mexican
> border (and a Plutomancer). In the last session he smuggled a case with
> unknown contents over the border. Three Mexicans tried to stop him with
> force but failed (they survived). He delivered the case to a single
> white guy.
>
> I haven't really decided what's in the case and was looking for some
> ideas. I think I want the three Mexicans to be "good guys" in some way.
>
> Shower me with ideas... =)

It's a MacGuffin.  By definition, there can be nothing in the case that's
consequential to the plot.  Otherwise, it's really about the contents of the
case, and not the unsubstantiated desire to get whatever is in there,
regardless of what's in there.  Unless you can think of something
gangbusters, disclosure only cheapens it.  Think Rosebud, in Citizen Kane.
There are people who HATE HATE HATE that ending, because it's all a little
too pat.  But that's really not the point--the point was the journey which
led to the disclosure, and for the ten people in the audience who needed it,
Rosebud was a bone throw to their underdeveloped imaginations.

Of course, all of this is an homage to Kiss Me Deadly, the first 'glowing
briefcase' movie.  In that movie, the MacGuffin was thinly veiled--given the
proximity of the Rosenbergs' trial for selling A-bomb secrets to the
Russians, it's all about the H-bomb.  In Pulp Fiction, the skuttlebutt is
that the briefcase contains Tarrantino's Oscar for the Resevoir Dogs
screenplay, OR Marcellus' soul (taken out of the back of his neck--it's why
he has a bandage there) OR Val Kilmer's Elvis jumpsuit from True Romance.
One is cool, the other two silly, but none of it really matters.

Now, there is a reason to put something in the box--if you want to deal with
the ramifications of his actions.  In that case, it can be something cheap
and mundane, to illustrate how low his life has become (cf. Trading Places,
where everything is done to Dan Ackroyd and Eddie Murphy for a dollar bet),
or something wondrous.  Wondrous can get out of hand.  Here's some ideas:

*    Mundane idea taken from Traffic:  A way to chemically disguise
narcotics so you can then mold them as you would plastic, and ship them
undetected across the border.  The plutomantic potential is enormous, not to
mention the cost in human life.

*  The Mexicans don't want it to enter Mexico.  Maybe it's a mystical
version of Hot Potato.  Something exited Mexico, and can't come back--if it
does, dire things will happen.  Maybe Santa Ana's leg, or a hunk of iridium
that, when brought near the mass that slammed into the Yucatan Penninsula 93
Million years ago, initiates critical mass.

*  Maybe it's an apology, so that Montezuma won't take his revenge against
Gringos anymore.

*  A strange artifact called The Fire Ring, which was painstakingly carved
from obsidian.  To charge it, someone has to walk "The Ring of Fire," which
is the edges of the Pacific Tectonic Plate, and forms the rim of the
Pacific.  Once this is done, the plate and all its various junctures and
faults, is now under the control of the wearer.  Imagine new islands
springing up in the Pacific, or Tsunamis that wash Japan away, or California
finally settling into the sea.  Sure it's a little overpowered as such
things go, but do you know how hard it would be to charge that sucker up?


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