[UA] Starting out... (Don't read this if you're in my upcoming game)

[Tim Toner]

Holy Crap!  Westmont, Illinois?!?!?  That's where I grew up!  Westmont,
notable only because it's the highest point between Chicago and the
Mississippi, which meant that train cars, loaded with bricks, would
naturally roll downhill to their destination.  

Westmont.  That place sucks.  The only place that sucks harder is Darien,
IL, its neighbor, and that's only because it had at one point the second
highest radon level in groundwater in the US (number one was a community
where plutonium rods were manufactured).

Okay.  Back when I was a big WoD fan, I had this creepy recurring image from
my past that I had to work into a scenario.  It involved the perpetually
lowered railroad gates, and a little girl in a parochial school smock.
After ten minutes of waiting, with cars lined up to Maple Avenue, the little
girl tentatively wanders onto the tracks, looks left and right, then waves
the cars along.  The motorists, eager to take advantage of the break and the
kindness of strangers, proceed...and get flattened by a coal train moving at
top speed. Ten people dead, including a family of four in a minivan.
Investigators pick meticulously through the wreckage, trying to find the
remains of the little girl that everyone saw but no one can describe.  The
smock was familiar, but her brownie collar hadn't been worn since the late
1960s...  When at last they give up their search, it is only because there
has been another accident, this time one crossing west, but the details are
identical.  Gates that have been lowered for at least 15 minutes.  A helpful
girl in a parochial school uniform, and a train whose warning sirens cannot
be heard, whose approach cannot be seen.  In the story, the little girl was
killed when her classmates were throwing rocks at her along the railroad
tracks, and she fled right into the path of a commuter express.

Here we can do some adapting to your needs.  The old man gets up from his
table, leaving his coffee unfinished and his McMuffin half-eaten.  This is a
guy who seriously abuses the generous bottomless cup policy, and is always
complaining about the quality of service and the cleanliness of the eating
area.  This day, though, he's annoyed by the endless signal at the railroad
crossing.  He walks out of the restaurant, and stands on the tracks, peering
intently in both directions.  At last, he waves the cars on--the first of
which is, of course, a school bus headed for nearby Holy Trinity.
Kee-RUNCH!  Everyone makes various stress checks to deal with the enormity
of the accident.  As was the case with 9/11, the McDs becomes a temporary
command center, and the players become privy to all sorts of inside info,
the first of which is that the old man is now an utter pariah in the town.
One of the investigators specifically asks for the remains of the old man's
last meal, and looks grimly at the remains, especially the unfinished coffee
(if the slackers are actually doing their job and have cleared the table,
the investigator is still fascinated by the bag-o-trash, and asks some of
the PCs to sort through it, wherein they find a variety of random items that
can have great significance later on or be utter red herrings, but at least
one should point at a character's hidden secrets.

The next day, an old lady that sometimes came with the old man to the McDs
arrives and asks the PCs to come to his funeral.  The whole town now sees
him as a murderer, but she remembers him as a brave war hero, and a
dashingly handsome man.  She mutters something about how difficult it seems
to be to get his tuxedo from the dry cleaners, and how the police don't care
one way or another.

Etc., etc.  All red herrings.  The old man has his first bout with senile
dementia at exactly the wrong time.  The dry cleaner is making the best of a
bad situation, and, given that the last time the old man wore the tuxedo
(might be cooler as a military uniform, or OOH! Even better, as a Knight of
Columbus, with the serious saber and whatnot) was when he was young and
heroic, this might possess enough juice to make the bridge complete.

Ah, Westmont.  The opportunity to see carnage wreaked in your fair streets
does get the creative juices flowing.


Republicans for Voldemort 
Because Fictional Elections Deserve Fictional Characters. 
http://www.goats.com/archive/030808.html 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ua-bounces at lists.unknown-armies.com [mailto:ua-
> bounces at lists.unknown-armies.com] On Behalf Of Rich Ranallo
> Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 8:56 PM
> To: ua at lists.unknown-armies.com
> Subject: [UA] Starting out... (Don't read this if you're in my upcoming
> game)
> 
> We're making characters for my fledgling UA campaign this week, and I'm
> making mental sketches about how the game is going to go, from beginning
> to
> end. I thought some feedback would be helpful.
> 
> The PCs will be playing a Mak Attax franchise crew based out of Westmont,
> Illinois, a rusty little suburb of Chicago. In real life, I've experienced
> more weirdness in one day of lingering in downtown Westmont than a year
> spent anywhere else.
> 
> Right now, I've got a few good plot points going, but I'm having a little
> trouble linking them up.
> 
> First, an old man--a Special Order recipient--gets hit and killed by a
> train
> right after leaving the restaurant, before any unnatural phenomena
> manifest
> around him. A list member will conveniently suggest (if the group doesn't
> decide this on their own) that they follow the body from his wake to his
> funeral and burial, to see if any weirdness goes on there; they might be
> able to get some valuable information about the nature of charges and how
> they're passed on this way.
> 
> Here's my first problem; I'm hoping that the group decides to crash the
> guy's funeral. It shouldn't be tough to convince my players that this is
> the
> best course of action, of course, but if they don't, things are kinda
> stuck.
> Once in the funeral, they find out that the family is pretty troubled by
> the
> fact that they couldn't get the deceased's tuxedo back from the dry
> cleaner
> that had been storing it. The guy had always wanted to be buried in it,
> since he wore it to his wedding, but he had to go to his coffin in a cheap
> suit because the dry cleaner was being an ass about giving the tux up.
> 
> Point number two: I want the group to start looking into the dry cleaners'
> itself, but this seems like a little tenuous of a hold. I'm betting on the
> Philanthropic Principle and a general feeling that the group might
> actually
> be responsible for the guy's death leading them to a bit of obligation to
> the family.
> 
> Once they start looking into the cleaners, and its owner in particular,
> the
> plot is pretty simple: the owner is an occultist with a severe Egypt
> fetish.
> He's discovered a ritual that allows him to travel to the land of the dead
> (or so he thinks), but this requires the clothing from a recently-deceased
> wealthy person. By wearing the clothes, he can fool the dead into thinking
> that he belongs there...until he gets to the front of the line and has to
> present his heart to Anubis for judgment. Being a living human, he can't
> rightly tear his own heart out and expect to ever return to the land of
> the
> living, but he's obsessed with doing just that. He steals clothes from his
> dead clients to travel there and back for reconnaissance, but he needs a
> human heart in order to go all the way. The heart of a young, idealistic
> occult revolutionary would do nicely (mechanics-wise, the heart will have
> to
> come from someone with no hardened or failed madness notches, which at
> least
> one PC will have).
> 
> Of course, in realty, it's not the afterlife that the cleaner has gotten
> access to; just an Otherspace that strongly reflects Egyptian mythology.
> This fact will come as little consolation to any poor Attaxer that gets
> his
> heart ripped out in the attempt, though.
> 
> >From Whom It May Concern,
> Rich Ranallo
> 
> "I don't have any problem with any of the ghosts. Remember, I'm perfect."
> - Billy Mitchell, world Pac-Man champion
> 
> 
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