[UA] Throw some ideas around

[d *]

Ok, now, i'm assuming that your party are all native
to Britain - if they're based in Portsmouth. If
they're yanks coming in, then there is a whole
different mess waiting for them :) We're not just the
51st state - we do things differently here...

But that's a discussion for another thread...

Otherwise, the travelling to London and finding
somewhere in London is a area rich in interesting ways
to screw your PCs.

London is an OLD city, a city with a long and bloody
history. Not as old as Rome perhaps, but it was the
centre of the British Empire, or if you'd prefer, the
drain into which all the scum and dregs of the empire
eventually ends up...

Any campaign run in London needs the background fully
fleshing out if they're staying there for any length
of time. Travelling in and around London has it's own
perils - Perhaps the flying woman avatar is worried
about the PCs being seen by another avatar of the
Flying Woman - so urges them to keep out of sight; on
the London Underground.

A subway system (the oldest in the world?) with links
to the subterranean world under the city, the natural
caverns, the largest victorian sewer system, the old
bomb shelters, the fact that the Underground map has
no bearing at all on the actual layout of the tunnels.
Travelling using the True Map reveals that it's the
Kabbalistic tree of life. Gaiman's 'Neverwhere' book
is interesting here, as it G.K Chesterton's 'Napoleon
of Notting Hill.' Of course there is nothing to say
that the trains will emerge at the right stations,
right times (they were used as bomb shelters during
the blitz) or right mystic realities...

Any run ins with London adepts or avatars would be
interesting. Given it's bloody history, any
Urbanomancers or True Kings could be particularly
nasty. To say nothing of the very powerful
Cliomancers.

If your PC has a taste for working girls - there is
Whitechapel and the Ripper murders. A Pornomancer
might stumble upon something VERY interesting in the
sex shops of Soho.

You could play up the weird oppressive qualities of
London - where everyone is an outsider. Have them
menaced and hounded by a gang of local adepts,
definitely including an Urbanomancer, who are prepared
to bloody their noses to keep them off their turf.
Lots of hit and fade attacks in the disorientating
crowds of London, their hotel rooms obviously searched
and ransacked, being left envelopes stuffed with
polaroid photographs of them when they thought they
were alone. Paranoia. A string of contacts sending
them back and forth across town - a simple 'take X to
Y' mission can become nightmareish, when you're in an
unknown city and you're being menaced and attacked all
the time, by people you don't even know. Especially
when you have to go everywhere on the crowded,
stiniking, claustrophobic tube.

An interesting subplot might be having one of the PCs
trapped on the tube - by the doors sliding shut or
being knocked down by the crowds. He could then spend
a nightmarish journey, unable to exit at any station -
though the stations might have names like 'Resentment'
'Failure' 'Complicity' from which board passengers who
resemble all those whom the PC has ever betrayed,
lost, had his heart broken by etc. Before eventually
emerging in Waterloo, feeling, and loking as though
he's been on the train for a week.

The Merchant's shop could well be based in one of the
lost stations, but requires the purchase of a True
London Underground map (at what price?) and a (ghost)
train ticket (at what price?) and then a tormentful
trip (like the one before) to reach Terminus Abeyance
(The boundary of ownership.)

There they can make their trades and then negoiate for
a ticket out of there. Like all good UA scenarios the
PCs should be glad to leave, and thankful they only
ended up owing a little...

Hope this helps...

d*

>Traveling to a new place could be an excuse for all
manner of 
weirdness. 
 Such as:
>So my PC meets the Flying Woman and after a short
talk she remembers a 
special camera the Chronicler had. He directs him to a
shop in London 
dealing with this kind of stuff. This is where we left
off, and the guys 
are going to take the trip from Portsmouth (our base)
to London to 
follow the lead.
>
>I want this to be a whole scenario, not just an
encounter with a shop 
owner. It is meant to last a whole game night,
possibly two but not 
more. I have a few ideas (like a Merchant in the store
and such) but 
please feel free to give me some of yours.
>
>They will be better than mine if past experience
serves me right.
>
>Nick Vlaseros
>


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