[UA] UA Stories (A LONG ONE)

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

Someone was calling for UA stories.  I've done three
recently, and only one sucked.

My favorite one so far was called "Rental on the Edge
of Forever."

The players were my wife, another young lady and her
younger sister.  We were also introducing the younger
sister's boyfriend to the hobby.  Having become
enamored, of later, with Terry Pratchett, my wife
suggested that she and the other two women play out
their own variation on the Maiden, the Mother and the
Crone theme.  

The Crone became a 14-year-old epideromancer who
dressed in "old lady" make-up and apparrel (cat-eye
glasses on a string of fake pearls, big blouses with
high necks, etc.) to hide her scars.  

The Mother was a free-love hippie mechanomancer who
channelled the Flying Woman.

The Maiden was an Infomancer with five linked
commercial websites.

They decided that they all shared rent on a big,
run-down Edwardian townhouse and needed a fourth
room-mate, which allowed us to introduce "Danny," the
boyfriend's character and center of the tail we have
to tell.

Danny was a young man, obsessed with video games, out
on his own for the first time.  The three witches
needed someone to "feed the room" at the top of the
stairs which was just chock full of phallic imagery. 
They also labelled a closet "Verbotten" and told young
Danny that it was off limits on pain of
excommunication from the household.  He should also
stay out of the cellar.

The very first night, Mr. Truman, the ghost who lived
in the tower room visited Danny and asked, threatened
and cajoled him into helping with a ritual to return
Mr. Truman to the flesh or some such nonsense.  Danny
told his room-mates about it in the morning and they
all agreed to help the poor demon complete the ritual
(without, alas, examining the connotations.)

Danny was supposed to meet with members of Mr.
Truman's old semi-clueless cabal at a downtown leather
bar, so he decided to dress like Tim Curry from the
Rocky Horror Picture Show.  After making a
less-than-sterling impression at the bar, he let a
cute blonde named "Roxy" get him sauced and stumbled
out into the alleys with the Crone (who had a false
ID.)

The strange pair caught the attention of three guys
who'd just been laid off by their somewhat effeminate
boss, Mr. Tate, and were looking for a little
homophobic payback.  They'd seen Rocky Horror Picture
Show back in high school, too, and decided to push the
Crone and Danny around a little.  Danny failed his
stress check and choose to "fight."  He beat the
largest of the three bullies to death while the Crone
smeared one guy's face to the other side of his head
with her skin magic.  The third guy fled, screaming,
into the night (only to be picked up by the police,
half-mad and ready to finger Danny one way or the
other.)

-Incidentally, I don't make players roll their
stressors.  I just let them choose between Callous,
Flight, Fight or Catatonia.  It works great and you'd
be suprised who choses what.-

Danny's collarbone was broken in the fight (he only
took a little damage, but I needed a lingering
physical mark as a lynchpin for the guilt I planned to
lay on him later.)  He ended up in the emergency room
dressed in a merry widow and thigh-high leather
stilletto boots, which the witches teased him
mercilessly about.  
The police began to question Danny and the survivor
from the night before collapsed into foaming, ranting
paranoia when they were brought face to face.  Danny
gave a more-or-less convincing alibi and the police
told him to stay in town and stay in touch.

Shaken, aching and suffering from a hang-over, Danny
went back to the house while the three witches were
out rescuing one of the Mechanomancer's disguised
creations from the dog pound.  He went down to the
cellar first, only to discover two bodies buried down
there.  One of them was Mr. Truman and the other the
guy from the alley the night before (the Crone had
turned the large bully's body into a wheel-barrow and
buried the evidence while Danny was getting patched
up.)

That was it, Danny decided to found out what was going
on once and for all.  He marshalled his forces, got a
little more calloused and marched up to the landing
where the forbidden door was located.  He yanked it
open and beheld a closet filled with dead babies.

Danny screamed (the players actually freaked out for a
moment, which was great.)  A flashbulb went off right
in his eyes.  As they cleared, he saw that the closet
was, in fact, full of naked plastic dolls nailed to
boards (and sprinkled liberally with ketchup.)  There
was a digital camera in the center of it all with a
line leading to the Maiden's room.  

Danny raced around the corner just in time to see the
Maiden's computer noting "downloading complete."

Later on, they got involved in the Swap Meet storyline
(from WEEP) and Danny got Spider all mad at him while
the Crone swore eternally alleigence to the twisted
little thing and secured them tickets to the frozen
north.  They needed the tickets to retreive yet
another wayward invention of the Mother's, one which
the Sleepers and TNI had also gotten wind of, not to
mention, by now, the Mafia. 

Hope that gives you an idea how I play.

(PS. I decided to play Spider like the Dalek Supreme. 
It worked well.  YOU WILL OB-EY SPI-DOR! I AM THE
SUPER-IOR BEING!)

=====
-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/

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