Character Descriptions, Character Webpages, Game Session Logs
This particular Mystic Masters campaign is going to have a sort of 'magic incognita' theme to it.
On the surface of it most people think of magic much as they do in the real world: for some its superstition, for some its fringe religious elements, CULTS, for some its -their- fringe religious element, some are fakes/frauds and most practices without the religious aegis or having simply passed into 'just things we do' (like saying 'bless you' when someone sneezes or lawn gnomes in the yard) get lumped together with psychic advisers and UFO nuts at best and deviant nuts at worst. What a lot of people don't realize is that, while they may not believe in the magical world it sure believes in them. Magic is real, more rare than people think of course, but its there despite all the fakes and frauds; practitioners have just had to keep their heads down a bit more since the 1600's and the dawning of the Age of Reason that followed. There is no Mage- style force of Paradox or a looming Technocracy to keep practitioners in check, the mundane population is quite capable of that all on their own: there simply aren't that many wielders of magic of notable strength and while a bullet to the head makes you just as dead as slung spell, there's also the fear of being committed to a mental institution. But both worlds keep on turning, one alongside the other, and sometimes Things happen and someone has to step up to deal with it. The U.S. Navy destroyed their records of a bombardment of something off the New England coastline in the 1920's. People in the know don't like to talk about the soul gaki outbreaks in California in the 1950's and in New York City in 1971. Most people simply don't know that these things happened at all outside of the occasional wild story.
Starting character points are 250 (150 points base + 100 points in disadvantages with no more than 50 points in any disadvantage type.) Despite the point base this is a heroic level campaign. You have this many points because, while you are merely 'heroes', you are heroes with powers that can get pretty expensive in a hurry.
All human characters must take the 'Normal Characteristics Maxima' disadvantage, worth 20 points since its technically optional for the campaign, while all non-human characters must take at -least- that many points in racial disadvantages and explain to the GM how they blend in with normal society (or don't as the case may be).
Normal equipment is bought with cash, not points (no, you don't have to buy a flashlight with the Images power if you don't want to or a fork with HKA) but given this many points to play with weapons and armor -are- bought with points although if they are lost or destroyed all you have to do is repurchase them with money unless they were rare or magical.
There are only two other planes of reality that magical practitioners deal with with any regularity. The first and most common goes by a number of names: the spirit world, the shadow world, the Nevernever, or simply 'out there'. This realm encompasses most of what people think of in terms of magical realms, its just a matter of how far into it you go. The deeper you go into the spirit world the less 'human' and the more 'alien' things become. Close in you have human spirits that haven't moved on to an afterlife and those beings that routinely interact with the real world, a bit farther out you get into some of the mythical lands (such as Faerie) and a little farther out you get the afterlives and the realms of the various god-forms, farther out still are the elemental realms and certain 'demon' realms until eventually you get so far out that everything has faded to the point of abstraction. Beings can move around within this plane but it requires power to venture beyond one's native area, increasing with the relative 'distance' from home and still more to cross over into the real world for want of a physical body. Most beings making the Crossing either make a body from ectoplasm or inhabit an existing form (like an inanimate object, a dead body or a live one if they can wrestle the host's will down). So if a demon from the Ninth Pit of Hell manifests somewhere and starts chucking fireballs, that's burning up a lot of juice.
The real world does manifest in the spirit world, at least those parts closest to it, and the degree of duplication depends on a number of factors: age, significance or symbolic power, associated emotional energy, etc. A brand new house, built from scratch, that has never had a family live in it will barely register in the spirit world while an old church that has seen thousands of weddings, funerals an baptisms or a very old home that has had generations of families living within it will be a much more solid presence. In the New York City area the most recent addition to the spiritual landscape came with the events of 9/11: the Twin Towers are still there, they're still burning and there are more than a few souls who haven't been able to leave them including a few very surprised hijackers. This also means that such places tend to have power. The necromantic potential of the 9/11 site has only started to diminish recently, for instance, but many dwellings have what's called a Threshold. A Threshold can stop or slow down certain types of spiritual beings and the older and more established the Threshold is, the stronger it gets. This only applies to places that somebody calls home, where emotional attachments are formed and maintained. This is the reason a vampire can't walk into your living room uninvited but could easily walk down the street and shop at Sears. Note, this does also apply to religious sites such as churches which have a lot of emotional power and are considered 'Houses of God (or Whoever)'. An invitation unlocks a Threshold for most things, but it must come from a resident, and there are rituals in some traditions for revoking the privilege: simply having a crony break into someone's home and then invite his vampire friend inside doesn't work.
The second, and least common, world besides our own is often simply referred to as Outside. It is not Earth, it is not part of the spirit world, it is something altogether different. It is a totally alien realm, part of which resemble the love child of H.P. Lovecraft and H.R. Geiger but most of which is worse. This is the home of truly colossal, alien 'gods' and 'demons', and good luck telling the difference. It takes an incredible amount of energy to bring a being from this realm into either of the other two, and vice versa, and would require an active and willing traveller, a prepared arrival point -and- a multitude of mystic raising power for all they're worth at best. Still, crossings have been recorded in the past ... some of them more distant than others. The common belief, in mystic circles, is that only a mortal mage can summon these beings at all: the truth is thatthose beings of the spirit world powerful enough to do it are simply old enough to know better.
What does all of this mean, mechanically? A simple Enhanced Sense can view the spirit world at its closest point and perceive things that are there to be perceived whether they're 'native' to that area or have come in from another. Farther than that one needs to use Clairsentience to remotely view into more specific areas farther out. Dimensional Travel can be used to journey to specific parts of the spirit world but anywhere beyond the closest points will require a greater expenditure of Endurance. Certain locations may make this easier (such as going to the spirit world via a known haunted location, out to the Faerie realms via a ring of toadstools, etc). This works both ways.
The subject of ghosts has been brought up and I'm debating how to handle them. A desolid/invisble/flying ghost (a-la the Hero Beastiary) is sufficient for an Earthly manifestation but doesn't quite cover the rest of their extra-planar existence. So I'm still working on how to handle ghosts and am open to ideas as to how to handle the mechanics.
Magic does not need to be especially quiet or covert, although somebody tossing around fireballs may want to be a bit discreet about it lest the mundane authorities poke their noses into the incident. And some people will know more than others: mundanes with a history of magic in the family, for instance, or a beat cop that's seen one too many trolls manifesting on the Brooklyn bridge on a dark and foggy night. Mundanes aren't harmless: if they know what they're doing and how to go about it, good old monkey ingenuity can bring down some pretty notable opponents, just ask said troll about those steel jacketed slugs (sure its a mountain of meaty meanness, but those things -hurt-!)
North Brother Island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Brother_Island
http://www.history.com/content/life_after_people/episode-guide/armed-and-defenseless
http://www.history.com/video.do?name=Life_After_People&bcpid=16574995001&bclid=20353852001&bctid=25828969001
The island was uninhabited until 1885, when Riverside Hospital
moved there from the island now known as Roosevelt Island.
Riverside
Hospital was founded in the 1850s as the Smallpox Hospital to treat
and isolate victims of that disease. Its mission eventually expanded
to other quarantinable diseases. Typhoid Mary was confined to the
island until she died.
The hospital closed shortly
thereafter.
After World War II, the island housed war veterans who
were students at local colleges, along with their families.
In the
1950s a center opened to treat adolescent drug users.
The island
is currently abandoned and off-limits to the public.
A dense
forest conceals the ruined hospital buildings and supports one of the
area's largest nesting colonies of Black-crowned Night Heron.
Wreck of the SS General Slocum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Slocum
Launched 1891.
Burned and sank with over 1,000 casualties mostly women/children June
15, 1904.
It was never christened.
Four months after launch,
it ran aground off Rockaway.
One night with some 4,700
passengers, it struck a sand bar so forcefully its electrical
generator went out.
The same year, it collided with the tug R. T.
Sayre in the East River.
1901 carried 900 intoxicated Paterson
Anarchists, some of the passengers started a riot.
The General
Slocum ran aground again in June 1902.
June 15, 1904, chartered
by the St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1,300 passengers,
mostly women and children. Estimated 1,021 people had been killed by
fire or drowning, with 321 survivors.
The remains of the General
Slocum were recovered and converted into a barge, which sank in a
storm during 1911.
The church that chartered the ship for the
fateful voyage is now a synagogue, "Community Synogogue Center",
at 323 E. 6th St.
Character Web Pages
Granny
Steinberg
Mystic Masters 2009 New York game
logs
Prologue: Monday, August 24,
2009
Session 01: introductions Monday, August 24, 2009
Session 02: continuing intro action Saturday, September 5, 2009
Session 03: ghost whisperer, hospital interviews Monday, September 7,
2009
Session 04: time for John Doe/Patient Zero Monday, September
21, 2009
Session 05: tea time Monday, October 5, 2009
Session 06: a case of gas Monday, October 19, 2009
Session 07: a swamp full of trouble Monday, November 2, 2009
Fun links:
Carol
of The Old Ones on YouTube
Awake
Ye Scare Great Old Ones on YouTube
Oh
Come All Ye Old Ones on YouTube
We shall begin our prologue at a well appointed dance studio in Lincoln Center, used by the attendant ballet company. Its a fine Monday morning in late August and the company is coming together to rehearse a minor performance of Swan Lake, the old chestnut that it is, just in time for the various schools of higher learning in the area to begin their sessions. One of the younger performers, a male dancer named Michael Landers seemed to be quite under the weather when he arrived for practice. Ashley has the PrimaDonna part in this one. From what you can see of young Michael he's not just sick, he's very sick. Sweating, coughing, he fever is ... climbing like mad. You barely have time to keep him from hitting the hardwood floor when he cries out, not quite a scream, clutching his stomach and doubles over even as his knees give out on him.
And just at that moment you saw something ... almost like a pale greenish mist around him, peppered with pitch black motes ... flare out and then subside.
Help is called and he's definitely in worse shape. His temp is as high as you've ever seen in somebody that was still alive, he's drenched in sweat, and to your senses his intestinal tract is going haywire and his lungs are even more congested.
Whatever you saw faded out almost immediately, nothing answers your question and the rest of the company is too concerned with Michael to pay much attention otherwise.
GM: (He doesn't look to have taken any body or damage ... out of
what you've got the third might accomplish something as one's Con can
temporarily fall during severe illness)
Anya: (I am thinking
anti-damage, (simple healing) but if organs that has to be can heal
limbs right?)
Anya: I concentrate and wave my arms over him and
try to fix his organs.
GM: Okay, well, that certainly seems to
lessen his pain but the root cause is still there. It feels like a
disease to you, and its moving fast. There is a nurse on hand,
normally concerned with bumps and bruises and strains and sprains,
and she gets there rather quickly with several cold packs and a
couple of those blue-grey medical blankets. You don't have a lot of
time to talk to him and Micheal is getting less coherent as time goes
by.
Right now he knows that his gut hurts and his head hurts
(from the fever) and everything just hurts. He rambles about pudding
for a moment before clenching his teeth and doubling over again.
Ashley: Concentrates again and waves hand again
GM: That last
would have healed it of any damage and there isn't really all that
much ... its distended, sensitive to the touch and you can't tell if
he's going to wind up with explosive diarrhea after this or a serious
case of constipation. It all just hurts. You don't really have
anything to deal with disease, per se, so you've got him as well as
you can ... which, sadly, isn't but so good.
Then the nurse gets
there and applies the cold packs to his forehead and the back of his
neck. She shoos you away so that she has room to work getting his
shirt off and listening to his heart and lungs. She has the usual
questions as to how he was when he came in, what he'd been doing over
the weekend, etc. After a few minutes she decides to call an
ambulance and asks everyone to stay in the room.
Anya: OK keep an
eye out for that thing
GM: It hasn't reappeared so far. When the
ambulance arrives the EMT looks Michael over and gets this look ...
somewhere between concern and horror and calls a code into his radio.
Ana might recognize it: infectious disease. Everyone's asked to stay
where they are until a crew from the hospital arrives. When the nurse
asks, he only half whispers, "Typhoid."
[END PROMO, CUE OPENING CREDITS]
(Our
opening credits theme music is Buffy the series.)