[UA] Homebrew Cabal: Memnon

[Chris Cooper]

--- David Tormsen <tormsen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah I know what you mean. I'm trying to figure out
> a way of limiting
> their clued-in-ness. Thats why I tried to limit it
> to narco-alchemical
> workings. 

Why not give them a whole bunch of Narky Works just
random drugs with strange names and give them to the
players. They have no idea if they they have all
magickal or partly magickal drugs. Let them taste test
and pop their brains.

When the mercs are given whack drugs,
> they're not going to
> think "magick" they're going to think "cutting-edge
> chemistry". 

Military men are known to be notoriously superstitious
as well. Or are the PCs the mercenaries. 

> The African activities are a bit more prone to
> meltdown, which I was
> hoping I was trying to suggest with the unnatural
> phenomena.

Y'know you could always "legalise" the mercenaries as
security consultants sent to the DRC to do covert
activities. 

President Mbeki has worked hard to bring around his
African Union idea into something practical. There's a
lot of trade agreements and accords being signed
between all these Sub-Saharan Africa.

Thus, you could keep it in Africa and let them
discover magick while doing dirty deeds. Weird howls
moving in the treeline and child soldiers dressing in
drag and shooting tricked-out AK-47s sounds like a
nice UA possibility.

> They do know jackshit about the American OU at any
> rate, as they have
> barely been involved in it. They have mainly been
> operating in the
> fractious and chaotic equivalents in Latin America,
> Africa and the
> Middle East. 

As above, you could keep them in Africa. It then
avoids the South American and Middle East dealings
immediately. Perhaps it is something they can
discover.

And they have no clear picture as to
> how magick works,
> and they don't know anything about the Invisible
> Clergy, etc. Their
> most reliable assets are their narquis and the
> records of that cult in
> Johannesburg, both decidedly dubious in their own
> ways.

Perhaps the NIA hires sub-contracts Mnemon to
anonymously investigate evidence of real witchcraft.
They do this to keep their hands dirty and can easily
blame their activities on a nebulous "third force". 

There's a lot of illegal aliens in South Africa,
perhaps a few are running from consequences further up
north. It puts a spin on the growing xenophobia in
informal settlements and disadvantaged communities.

I can imagine fugitive Zimbabwean sorcerers squatting
in Hillbrow tenements. Perhaps Ponte Tower can be made
into a symbolic wand for the city. You could put in a
whole subculture of magicians in there - the higher
you live means the bigger occult fish you are. 
 
> One of the reasons the merger worked so well, and
> they moved much of
> their operations to Namibia. I should maybe pull
> them out of SA
> altogether.

Or keep them in SA. Many international companies keep
independent security divisions. Shell Oil, who has big
interests in Nigeria, as the world's biggest mercenary
army. There's all that crap going on with guerilla
activists and protestors fighting Shell's investments
and kidnapping executives.
 
> Thanks, you're right. I had intended this group to
> be basically just a
> homebrew alternative to TNI, dangerous NPC badasses
> who later turn out
> to be rather clueless. I had envisioned a
> catastrophic collapse for
> Memnon as it gets involved in an occult war it can't
> understand with a
> large Voudoun sect, alerting both the Sleepers and
> the Cecilines as
> well as the mundanes to something rotten in the
> State of Texas. 

Oops. You are keeping this in the US. Lots of what I
said still applies. Special Interest groups etc. War
is international.

I
> didn't mean them as some sort of powergamer
> unstoppable
> uber-military-magick guys.

Cheers,

Chris.



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