It's been awhile, hasn't it? Is the war bacon supply running low? If so, Ben will go out and plant a bullet in some homeless dude's skull, and take a leg or two to refill our fridge.
It has.
You go out and near-silently murder a homeless man, then chop a leg off and wrap it in a handy tarpaulin, then go back to Vince's for a roast. As it says in that Dating Advice book you either wrote or hallucinated, a good provider will always put food on the table.
Back at the performance:
Try sculpting my hand-flames into vegetable-like shapes.
At the mugging:
"Very well, then."
Use my glass eye to pinpoint the muggers' locations, then reach into my pocket (or wherever my hammerspace is), touch my tupperware container, and murder all of the muggers with my summoned worm. Loot the bodies (if there's anything left of them), then head back to base. If any of the muggers survived and saw something magical, restrain and heal the magical mugger with my paintbrush (paint flesh over wounds and paint flesh between the ends of the mugger's limbs and his torso), then carry him with me back to base (in a more covert fashion, of course) and present him to Vince.
I assume you keep your stuff in your pockets. But you can summon demons with your mind alone, you don't keep the container.
So using the demon, eh?
Rit: 4+3 vs 3,4
You yank the toad out of whatever acidic slime-hell it dwells in and out of the wall behind the two muggers. You're showered with fragments of brick and droplets of acid as it catches them completely off-guard, mouth opening and arms flailing wide.
The things just straight-up fucking
swallows one of your victims, throat gulping and swelling madly as a tongue like a fire hose yanks him in. Almost as an afterthough, it slashes wildly at the other with each mantis-like leg as it passes over him, spraying acid from its midsection all the while. He survives, though ends up blood-covered and steaming, clothing ragged and burnt.
Eh, he probably won't remember anything except horrific assault. Mortals are pretty good at forgetting about magic.
Re: the performance: you don't have that much control over the flame yet.
Get there by air, of course. I've got an ungraded broom and 3 agility.
Makes sense. You swoop through the skies above the city, standing on a level with the majestic trash-wrymes, the flitting pigeon hive-minds, the scrapping seagull deities snatching oxes and kangaroos from London zoo and devouring them. Standing on a roomba, which gets you a few odd looks from your fellow commuters, though they're mostly just relieved you're not some vigilante bastard in a cape floating around looking for trouble and making everyone's life difficult.
The graveyard itself is pretty quiet, a few people wandering round it. There's only one tomb with an entrance, a locked wooden door against white marble. You press your hand against it, and the lock turns, the door creeping open. A flight of steps awaits below, extending dubiously far down. The walls are lit by flourescent tubes, a sickly glow on the bare concrete. After a few dozen metres, the stairs end, and a marble corridor begins. Shallow alcoves on either side hold stone sarcophagi, handsome and pearl-grey dear departed reclining on top, well-proportioned heads propped up on elbows.
At the end of the corridor a young man sits with his back to you, surrounded by what looks like a meth lab built by a Renaissance artologer. Complete with stuffed crocodile. He turns round, and woah, this guy is chiseled. He wears simple stuff, but those jeans are really form-hugging... enough. You're here to make money, not admire an extremely handsome human male. He greets you politely, opens the box calmly, and performs a few chemical checks on the pinkish shards of crystal inside. He seems satisfied.
"Hey, you want to try some of this stuff? Least I can do for someone capable of such a fast and smooth delivery. We could really use someone of your talents, you know? Don't worry, it's proper product, none of that addictive and dangerous mortal shit. Go on, on the house."
Aight. I'll try to squeeze it in, but it'll probably be a couple more turns before I'm ready. (feel free to stop this in mid-execution if it's too much.)
Go hang out in some coffee shops, or gallery spaces or bookstores to try and find a local artist who would be interested in collaborating. Use the sketchbook (and a little seduction) to help things along. Make sure to find someone who can draw people, and has some sort of a web presence, as I'm starting from zero.
Then spend the next few days writing up posts. Do some posts travelogue style (or travel-blog), introducing the readers to places in magical london I've been and recounting experiences and such. The other kind of posts will be stuff introducing people to the storyline of the OC, and be where powers and plotlines and such are done.
(If that works and I can feel some power earned, I'll describe what abilities to try and introduce another turn.)
Right. You manage to find a slightly jittery young hipster, Dave, who does fairly realistic pencil drawings and has illustrated a few books. His characters are sort of gaunt and spiky, but he's pretty spot-on with the creatures, and doesn't mind working digitally and in colour. He's also fairly enamoured of you, which is useful leverage. You spend some time collaborating on what could be the start of an online graphic novel, which he excitedly tells all his hipster friends about. You get about a thousand people following it, after a day or two, at which point your hair changes length. A number of other physical changes also occur: your jeans and shirts get just a little tighter in places, your eyes slant a little less, your skin gets even clearer and more luminous. In fact, thanks to Dave's style and Amdukias's glamour, you have a scary and unearthly clarity to your features. You also feel a slight buzz of power running through you, though it's not doing anything except making you look good at the moment.
What next?
...Hmm.
Wander a bit. Look for interesting stuff (for a nerd, you know?)
For a nerd, eh?
Well, you see a bunch of stock traders standing on a balcony high up on a financial building, gesturing at thin skeins of gold that swirl around them like currents, tiny figures glimmering. Blood drips down from the guttering; some sort of sacrifice probably took place.
You wander into a programming lecture in a university and see two huge snakes wrestling on the floor, sprays of blood and venom coating the chairs. It's on real-life applications of Python.
You find a shop full of old, broken tech whose clientele are dressed almost exclusively in black robes and bone ornaments. Some of the unlikely price tags boast of horrific accidents the devices have been involved in, while others involve things that clearly aren't legal tender. The necrotechnician behind the counter glares at you suspisciously while modelling undead apocalypses on a linux setup involving a stuffed raven, a many-ringed human hand and a chunk of mayan calendar. You glance down at the nearest memory stick: it claims to contain Lethe.exe and could be yours for only six inches of rusty barbed wire tied around a sheep skull.
Finally, you come across a hunter peering down into the depths of a sewer. His nets are woven from fine steel mesh, and several steel crab exoskeletons hang from his belt.
"There's a lovely litter down there, almost two hundred eggs. Parents nowhere in sight. Nab one now, and you might domesticate the little blighter. Still, parents never go far from their young, and steel scuttlers are
very good at hiding... it's a risk."
Flash Muggers, Shoot muggers, Ride off to Vince's place.
You execute the two mortals as they try to recover from the flash, then ride on back. Would have rolled for it, but you can blind people, they have no chance with no magical defence.
Name: Nanami Adachi. (Nanami)
Unnatural beauty granted by demonic contract and the adoration of mortals.
Power from mortal media.
Conscripted into twenty-nineth legion of Amdukias.
Puissance: 1
Ritual: 0
Runic Sight: 0
Banal Combat: 0
Aim: 0
Melee: 0
Agility: 1
Praticality: 2
Inventory: £325
Quality sketching paper, art pens+pencils, charcoal, etc.
Sketches of self as main character, Amdukias, the non-mortal world, etc.
Puissance: 5/5
Puissant Clots: 2
Bob Howard
Puissant fettle - 1
Ritual potency - 1
Runic sight - 1
Banal combat - 0
Practicality - 3
Inventory: £50, 1d20
{Certificate from Belial; Valid for one Potent Medium}
Puissance: 5/5
Puissant Clots: 2
Goethe T. Helle
Puissant fettle - 1
Ritual potency - 2
Runic sight - 1
Banal combat - 0
Aim - 1
Melee - 0
Agility - 2
Practicality - 1
Inventory: £25, clockface minus one hand, highlighter pens, two kitchen knives, half-empty cologne bottle
From the beast: one bone,
Italian Dinner suit, stored at Vince's place.
[Dog Collar Pendant][Molasses Clockhand Wand]
[Icecream Beast Blood Fur Chalice][Beast Remains Wand]
Runes:
Isolation: you never had many friends or allies, so are used to poor odds. +1 to rolls when outnumbered and alone.
Stoicism: a rune that calms those dealing with shock, tragedy or injury.
Perseverance: despite all the odds, you managed to kill a huge beast using nothing but hot syrup. Bonus to attack and extra damage to powerful or resistant enemies after several turns of combat or aggression.
Dwarven Weapon Storage: learned from a dwarf carrying a small armoury on his back. Increases load of weapons and tools that can be borne without being hampered or slowed down, or collapsing outright.
Ruination: when written, it makes a bad situation worse, and an irretrievable one more so. Learned after the second mission.
Puissant clots: 1
Puissance: 6/6
Name: Ellen York
Puissant fettle: 1
Runic sight: 1
Banal combat: 1
Agility: 3
Runes:Unending Avarice: you can tell which loot is the most expensive and tradeable instantly, and can grab it as well. Pearls, money, fur coats, expensive champagne, and all things glamourous are magically attracted to your questing fingers.
Wallfish: a rune derived from snails you particularly enjoyed eating with pearls and vinegar. Better at avoiding damage when in or heading for cover.
Inventory: Duct Tape, nettles, crocuses, thorns,
Thorny and gothic katana
[Broom - Tier 2] - Roomba wrapped in rusty barbed wire.
[De-thorned Rose Wand]
Box containing drugs.
Puissant Clots: 0
Puissance: 6/6
Name: Sir Worthington the Fourth
Has a pretty crappy wooden broom for a leg.
Stats: Ritual Potency: 3
Practicality 3
Agility: -1 (wooden poles and plastic bristles do not a good leg make)
Inventory: £15, Pint of royal blood (stored at Vince's)
[Glass Eye Pendant] [Paintbrush Wand]
[Toad Demon Battery Acid Tupperware Chalice]
Novice's Pyromancy Flame - Heal Burn (1P), Create Flame (1P)
Puissant Clots: 0
Puissance: 5/5
Jimmy "Car bombs" Castanza
Slightly slowed by a heavy load.
Puissant fettle - 0
Ritual potency - 0
Runic sight - 3
Banal combat - 1
Aim - 1
Melee - 0
Agility - 0
Practicality - 3
Inventory: £25, very rusty saw, length of pipe stuck to block of concrete, highlighter pen
[Lightbulb Antenna Wand]
[Broom - TIER 3] - Bike handles for steering.
Glock 17
Runes:
Detonation: volatile stuff explodes or catches fire more when you're around it. You can't help it, it must be genetic. Written rune used to detonate volatile substances.
Dead Man Running: you escaped the wrath of a mafia boss. Higher chance of surviving things that should really be deadly.
Mafioso: a mafia hitman, you preferred not to let your targets know they were hunted until after they were spread over an area of three hundred metres. Bonus to carefully planned unexpected attacks.
Alchemical (definitely idiot) savant: you saw an alchemist's shop when wandering around London, and deluded yourself that you understood something of how it worked. Because of the nature of magic, this belief is now partially true. Use this rune to make substances a bit more useful or volatile when used in alchemy.
Trader: a rune that when signed signifies to people that you'd be a good guy to buy from and sell things to.
Reticence: a rune whispered to you by birds perched on phone lines, you can get information without giving away much about yourself.
Bethel: a rune that enhances and aids summoning performed where it is written.
Degeneration: you saw men turned into animals. This rune turns advanced things like steel bolts into crappy primitive things, like wooden bolts.
Entrance: a god tried to break into our world. You now have a +2 in breaking into magic places you shouldn't be messing about with.
Hiijacking: Sand crashed a summoning-party and inserted herself into the centre of the ritual. Things with this rune written on will be more central to events and will conduct more power and magical energy than they should by rights.
Hassle: a rune that allows you to deal more effectively with multiple threats, distractions and tasks at once.
Scrap-crafting: after making a wand with bicycle horns, you have improved at making stuff out of junk. And you were already great at making stuff out of junk.
Oligarchy: a rune revealed to you the first time you flew over London, spelled out in the twistings of the financial buildings and the houses of millionares. Increases your power according to how much money you have.
Punctuality: You're good at getting things done on time.
Puissant clots: 0
Puissance:5/5
Ben Breeze
Stats:
Puissant fettle - 0
Ritual potency - 0
Runic sight - 0
Banal combat - 4
Aim - 1
Melee - 1
Agility - 2
Practicality - 0
Inventory: knife, taser, handcuffs, police baton, stab vest, torch, incapacitant spray, and a first aid kit. All in sports bag
Also a bag of athames, 2.5 legs War Bacon (Vince's Fridge), a worn face-concealing hooded coat.
Two generous Roast Beef and Horseradish Sandwiches
Gunfarmer P90 (44/50) (in bag)
Puissant clots: 3
Puissance:5/5
Name: Derrick
Marked by horrific burns.
Puissant fettle - 1
Banal combat - 2
Melee - 1
Agility - 1
Practicality - 2
Inventory: scrap metal spike, new katana and leather armor secured in crate
[Pocket Knife Wand] [Scrap Metal Shield Staff] - Where? You're unsure.
Puissant Clots: 1
Puissance: 6/6
Author
Topic: COVEN: Gulled Goldsmiths and Lost Locomotives (Read 153925 times)