[UA] Plot help? (long)

Wed May 22 20:57:03 PDT 2002

I would arrange for him to be kidnapped from his home, taken to a small, isolated island, compelled to live in a distorted abstraction of a Village, where everyone is numbered, rather than named, and subjected to bizarre, ultra-tech brainwashing experiments to extract information.

Or I'd hire a stone fox to ostensibly research him for a biography, gradually drugging him and pulling some Phillip K Dick on him. Is this a flashback? Am I living an incredibly accurate simulation of my own life? The she turns out to have an agenda of her own...
--Stu

I may have mentioned this before, but George RR Martin's Armageddon Rag could give you some ideas.

----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Kiel
Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2002 6:48 PM
To: ua at lists.uchicago.edu
Subject: [UA] Plot help? (long)

Hey all,

Planning on returning to a UA game that has been in hiatus for some time.
The story revolves around a washed up punk rocker named Johnny Kaine.  For
those of you who have been on the list for a while, you might remember me
posting about him.  Here's the deal:

1962:  Johnny Kaine born (London)
1978:  Johnny forms punk rock band "Hate".  Begins dating Lilly Blade
(a.k.a. Lilly Bancroft, daughter of Parliament member Hugo Bancroft).
1980:  Johnny’s band Hate makes it big with a “hit” punk song.
1982:  Band breaks up (all members save Kaine dead…).  Johnny develops a
heroin problem.  Lilly Blade denounces Johnny and punk rock music, joins
religious cult, Sisters of St. Jerome.
1985:  Johnny is briefly jailed for threatening to set the Queen on fire,
claims he was “jus’ kiddin’, right?”
1989:  Lilly Blade leaves the Sisters of St. Jerome, reunites with Johnny .
While traveling around the world together Johnny finds a occult book
entitled, “The Book of the Black Fever.”
1991:  Johnny records “Black Fever,” the album - a haunting collection of
operatic arias and choruses of voices.
Lilly Blade dies of heart failure.  Johnny sets his L.A. home on fire,
arrested for Arson—pleads not guilty by reason of insanity and is sentenced
to a mental institution.  Master tapes for “Black Fever” apparently
destroyed in the fire.
1991-1993:  Johnny spends two years in Baronhill Mental Health Center in
Southern California.  Johnny spends much of this time antagonizing the staff
and becomes a favorite victim of their abuse, which at the high end includes
arranging for Johnny to undergo unnecessary electroshock therapy.
1993-1998:  The “Missing Years.”  Johnny retreats from public view, grants
no interviews during this time.  Reporters claim to spot him in Paris, Rome
and Cleveland Ohio.

Behind the Music:

The truth is that at one point Johnny Kaine could have been one of the most
powerful adept the world has ever known.  It was a natural gift for Johnny,
and he always had a powerful interest in the occult and fringe culture
groups.  These two seemed to mesh in the punk rock music scene, so Johnny
formed a band of his mates, called “Hate.”  All the members of Hate had
serious occult interests, but none of them had Johnny’s natural ability.

Totally unaware of his what he was doing, Johnny began to develop a school
of magic “Phonomancy”— magic that took its power from sound, especially the
loud and furious sounds of punk rock music.

In 1982, Hate broke up (because all the original members except Johnny were
dead) and Johnny’s longtime girlfriend and fellow occult enthusiast, Lilly
Blade left him to join a Christian Cult.  Johnny took to alcohol and spent
most of the money he’d made pursuing weird and mostly pointless occult
oddities, recording music when the urge struck him.

Eventually Lilly left the cult and returned to Johnny.  In 1990, the couple
traveled to Austria where Johnny came across a text called “The Book of the
Black Fever.”  In its pages Johnny saw links connecting the occult and what
he was doing on stage  (Phonomancy), he began utilizing the power of
operatic arias and choruses of voices.  Johnny made arrangements to record
“Black Fever,” an album Johnny thought would help attune the masses to the
powerful occult forces in the world.

Man, was that a bad idea.

Kaine believes “Black Fever” took on a life of it’s own.  He believes that
the book was actually an elaborate summoning spell.  Johnny thinks he
unwittingly released a powerful demon (Asharak) into the world.  The demon
proceeded to “thank” Johnny by taking its sustenance from among those who
had worked on the album and those who had heard it.  Realizing what he had
done, Johnny went insane and tried to destroy all the copies of “Black
Fever.”  He set fire to his L.A. home in a desperate attempt to destroy the
master tapes and any remnants of anything that hinted at the truth behind
“Black Fever.”

That’s all wrong…

What actually happened is the Sleepers got wift of what was occurring and
descended on Kaine like Oprah on a baked ham.  They made what they did to
Dirk Allen look like a schoolyard taunting.  They replaced what actually
happened in Johnny's mind with the bit of fiction above.  Only one problem
for the Sleepers, Johnny hid the master tape, and they never found out what
he did with it.

Which brings us to the latest chapter of the story.  I'm using the plot seed
"Truth at 24fps" from "HUSH, HUSH" - the Sleepers Sourcebook as a starting
point (that's the one about the director who's enacting a powerful ritual to
bring Magick to the masses by creating a "clued in" movie. The director's
name is Milos Ruran).  Ruran is making his movie and wants to use "Black
Fever" as the sound track.  How does he know about the existant of the
album?  Because Ruran has an accomplice who used to be a Sleeper...

So my question to all of you.  If you were are former Sleeper and you wanted
to get a bit of info out of a brainwashed, burnt out ex-punker (and wanted
to make a cool scenario out of it for the GM) - how would you do it?

Suggestionswould be most appreciated?

M.

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