[UA] New artefact and ritual

[Robin Pfeifer]

Hi,

I have created an artefact and an accompanying ritual for my UA campaign.
Any feedback will be appreciated.

The Clandestine Gun

A significant artefact for Unknown Armies

In the 1880s Howell Ferguson was a renowned arms manufacturer catering to an
audience with special ideas about their personal safety precautions. He
custom-built whatever shooting device his well-to-do customers wished to
have. He was also a skilled Mechanomancer.
One day he traded a formidable weapon for a secret: a magical ritual that
could make a person or a unique item disappear from all kinds of record and
stay that way. The ritual came in handy, as Ferguson was just facing a
trial; he was charged with being an accomplice of murder. Apparently one of
his devices had been used to kill some very influential person.
Ferguson cast the ritual on himself and disappeared from public record.
People still remembered him but no written records of his name or person
remained for long. Word of mouth still gave him an occasional customer. All
but forgotten he died in 1923.
One of his creations survives to this day. It is a revolver with a 7 shot
barrel which fires caliber .29 bullets. This caliber was a specialty of
Ferguson's, handcrafted and never again seen or built after his death - with
the exception of such cases when this particular weapon was used. The
revolver is made of perpetually well-polished steel with wooden inlays on
the grip. Its nose is rather short.
Ferguson used the ritual to make the gun impossible to record and thus to
trace. In effect all records made of the gun, be they written statements,
photographs, films, whatever, are either misplaced or destroyed soon after
they are made. This includes records of the .29 caliber. This has the effect
that its relatively safe to use the gun for criminal purposes as all
investigations under these circumstances become rather difficult. While
individual investigators may know about the gun (memory is the only kind of
recording device that is not affected by the ritual) the official channels
usually require reports, written statements etc.
This is not the only magick Ferguson put into the gun. The gun has a knack
of turning up in the hands of very desperate persons. They find it in the
gutter, acquire it cheap from pawn shops or chance upon secret caches where
the gun waits for them. It is always loaded with seven bullets with golden
casing.
Usually the finder eventually uses the gun. The gun then soon disappears
again; usually when the last shot is fired. It can also be lost or given
away by mundane means. It always disappears when someone creates .29 caliber
bullets for it; it won't let itself be loaded with any ammunition apart from
that which appears in its chambers by magick.
The gun has become an urban legend. It even has something of a cult
following: somehow the knowledge has seeped into the Occult Underground that
a Clandestine Gun is out there which cannot be traced and which appears in
the hands of desperate people. Some golden cases have been retrieved which
are revered as talismans by the followers of the Clandestine Gun. The
followers are usually desperate (or perceive themselves as such) and try to
obtain the gun; but actually the hope of getting the gun is in the way of
fulfilment of that wish for as long as there is that hope they are not truly
desperate.
But those in the know find another way to use the magick of the Clandestine
Gun for their purposes. They hex their enemies by writing a description of
the Clandestine Gun on a piece of paper and hide it among the personal
effects of their enemies. Often something untoward happens to the person who
has such a note: they are run down by a train, catch fire or meet some other
violent and very messy end. Naturally the closer the note is to the body of
the victim the more probable such a result is. There is no guarantee that
the note will be destroyed in a violent fashion, it's just as possible that
the victim simply loses it or it gets wet and unreadable. But you can always
try again...

The Unwritten Word

A significant ritual for Unknown Armies

This ritual hails from the dawn of recorded history; in fact it is a
reaction to the recording of history. It has been passed down the millennia
by word-of-mouth only. You won't find a person who knew it in any history
book - that should be proof enough of its power. The ritual is commonly used
on persons, but it can be used for any item as well. The only prerequisite
is that the item must be completely unique; there may be no other copy or
version of the item, nor may there ever have been one. Note that it might be
possible to break the spell by creating an exact and working copy of the
item, but so far this has not been proven.
Cost: 5 significant charges
Ritual Action: Cover yourself, the recipient of the ritual or the item with
symbols of as many languages and alphabets as you can find with reasonable
research. No symbol may be used twice and the complete body must be covered
with only as much space as needed to still recognize the symbols. The
symbols must be drawn with the blood of the caster at the time of the new
moon. Next the body must be completely encased in wet clay (breathing holes
are allowed). The clay-encased body must be placed outside before dawn, and
the clay must harden under the sun; the body may not be moved before
sundown. When the sun has disappeared under the horizon, use a bronze hammer
to shatter the clay encasing (in case of casting the ritual on yourself
someone else may wield the hammer). The symbols will have disappeared from
the body without a trace. Effect: From the breaking of the clay onward no
written (or in modern days, filmed, sound-recorded or electronically stored)
record of the person or item made or already in existence will last long
enough to be of practical use. For modern purposes this means that security
video tapes will be accidentally erased before they can be watched; police
reports will be misplaced or accidentally shredded so that no investigations
will be made; business cards will vanish before the phone numbers on them
will be used or memorized; the possibilities are endless. The only recording
device not affected is memory. Anyone may remember a person on whom the
ritual was cast, talk about him, know his name and phone number, and even
give them to others, but if the information is written down it will soon be
affected by the magick.

Robin



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