Okay then. I don't really have any projects, so just wander and see the sights for a bit.
You walk away from the Transworld entertainment venue and across the bridge, into the southern side of London where Coven associates rarely go.
A little way out you pass an outdoor market, several magical beings sitting about and enjoying the cool autumn air. A band of cyclopes sit around a huge campfire, their heads still level with second-storey windows, barbecuing a goat the size of an elephant. An still larger centaur relaxes a little way off, her legs tucked under her and a sword apparently carved from the body of a truck resting by her side, sipping from a beer keg and looking out over the rooftops. In the park nearby a group of samurai in resplendent armour demonstrate tai chi, while a crowd of undead attempt to follow their movements. You notice a bunch of mortals who've joined in, mistaking it for some kind of public fitness program.
You wander into a courtyard where a dark, skinny young man is furtively running his hands over a brick wall, the material shivering and warping beneath his fingers. He looks round as you approach, and scurries off.
Finally, you come to an industrial wasteland, plastic bags rolling across the dirt plain, half-fallen fences separating boundaries no longer heeded, a few construction vehicles with cobwebs choking the cabins standing outside partially demolished factories. All at once the sepia calm is broken by a mighty screech, and a patch of ground erupts, concrete and earth flying through the skies. A roaring subway train leaps from the earth, screaming out a cry of battle or joy, wheels scrabbling at empty air. The great worm travels in a might arc, plunging back into the underworld in a fountain of debris, TFL's potent mark flashing on it's carriages. A gem glints in the glare of the front lights, sending strange scatterings of refracted light across the plane.
Looks like you found something.
"Okay, I'm in. We don't go if the boss says no, though."
Go with Namani's plan, but check with the boss first.
Vince commends you on your ingenuity, and tells you it's the first time someone in the Coven's found a solution to a problem without asking him or blowing something up.
And yes, he's completely ok with you robbing jewellery stores or whatever.
Speculate on ways to make money with those winged horses. If nothing else, could probably charge people for seeing them. I'm sure they sell well, but there's a difference between frolicking near me and willing to be harnessed.
..anyway, on to the heist.
"Okay, Don, I think I'm going to pull the classic scam of passing off cheap gold as real gold. Here's how it's going to work:
We find a couple of jewellery stores, preferably not too close to each other, and then go into one of them posing as a couple that doesn't have much money. We then discuss buying some lower-end jewellery, stuff that we could replace with better things when we have the money, and get the shopkeeper to demonstrate the difference between the two when tested. We then buy some cheap pieces.
We then split up and head to the other store, and I go in to sell the jewellery, using an illusion to pass it off as much more valuable stuff. When I've got the sale wrapped up, you would then enter the store which would make the proprietor put the goods out of sight or back in a case or something, and we can then meet up later.
"Sound good?"
You could always just film the winged horses and put it in a youtube video. Get a lot of views from seven year olds, cryptozoologists, MLP fetishists, that sort of thing. Or just kill them and sell the meat, feathers, etc. Selling them as mounts might get you something, but catching wild horses that can fly isn't going to be easy. Neither is training them.
Prac: 1+3, 4+1
You manage to charm the owner of a small but reasonably upmarket jewellery store into showing you how to properly identify cheap and expensive goods. Don proves as adept at deception as Nanami, despite the thick bony casing over his back hastily concealed by an illusory coat.
Nanami then passes off some extremely cheap pieces as expensive ones in several uptown jewelleries, masquerading as a down-on-her-luck countess.
Prac: 3+3
She manages to keep the illusions working even when the pieces are taken into a back room and tested there, her impressive personality and aura of wealth covering for any minor irregularities. She gets on a lot of CCTV, but that won't be a problem due to illusory disguises.
The two of you make a £6,200 profit, using Don's money. Which Nanami is currently holding onto, by the way. Hey, stealing from mortals is
easy!Inquire about this someone that can teach me the basics. I would like to start doing necromancy, all I can do right now comes only from wands.
The knights send you to a primary school PE teacher a little way out of the city centre, who takes you through the elementary ideas on her lunch break using the corpses of crushed spiders. A friendly enthusiast, you gather.
She shows you how to raise a zombie or skeleton using only a point of puissance, that will stay together and do the one simple task you told it to do until knocked apart. You could do this repeatedly, and get potentially massive hordes going, though they might be hard to control once you've told them to do something. Blind obedience, all that.
You also learn how to create much hardier undead using puissant clots or power sources (occult or otherwise, a car battery would work), undead beings nearly as hard to kill as you. These are capable of independent thought, and can be augmented through attaching new body parts, machines, occult objects, etc. A whole tier up from your average stumbling undead.
Ben scratches his chin as he considers his options. Hocking artifacts is out; while these people might be willing to take some random weirdly-shaped sticks he picked up off the ground, that might also piss them off. You can never tell with these crazies. Money's also out, since he doesn't get paid, and lives with a bunch of insane homeless people--and Nanami who, as a man, he can't accept money from. That leaves the vehicle.
"Tell me more about this vehicle. What is it, who has it, where are they, can I kill them, can I kill the vehicle?"
Questions about the quest. If they're all answered, and it doesn't seem like there's more that the rep wants to say, Ben will agree and leave to inform his allies of the probably-deadly mission he signed them up for without their consent.
"It's a train. Capable of moving on rails, or simply tunneling through the ground."
"The computers controlling it have gone haywire. Maybe there's sabotage involved, maybe someone's driving it, we don't know. You can kill anyone you like, outside our organisation."
"Don't damage too much other than the brainpart. The computers in the front. Those you can blow up if you want to. A few scrapes on the rest are ok, but destroying it isn't an acceptable option."
You go tell Vince, who puts the word out somehow, or claims to. Guy's just whispering in a shell, as far as you can see.
Vince's voice comes through the ear of everyone not Ben. He talks about a task you need for safe passage, given by the mighty Transport For London mage group, involving retrieving the body of an escaped underground train. One that Jane happens to have stumbled across, in fact.Name: Nanami Adachi. (Nanami)
Unnatural beauty granted by demonic contract and the adoration of mortals. Slight charisma/popularity boost.
Power from mortal media.
Can create illusions.
Conscripted into twenty-nineth legion of Amdukias.
Puissance: 2 +1 not from Amdukias
Ritual: 0
Runic Sight: 1
Banal Combat: 0
Aim: 1
Melee: 0
Agility: 1
Praticality: 3
Inventory: £7000
Backpack, expensive camera + memory cards
Quality sketching paper, art pens+pencils, charcoal, etc.
Sketches of self as main character, Amdukias, the non-mortal world, etc.
[Tier Two Glass Rod Crystal Wand] - Enhanced slightly through media
Large, fist-sized mind-controlling spacerock fragments.
Painting supplies, a glass cutter, battery powdered soldering iron, eighty feet of red cloth, white rag and thread
Diving gear: masks, suits and some scuba tanks. (dumped)
Knife
Runes
Pestilence: all living things will someday die. This rune accelerates the processes of death with the energies of life - a draining and a consumption at once.
Puissance: 11/13
Puissant Clots: 2
Ben Breeze
Stats:
Puissant fettle - 0
Ritual potency - 0
Runic sight - 0
Banal combat - 6
Aim - 1
Melee - 1
Agility - 3
Practicality - 0
Inventory: 2xtaser, handcuffs, police baton, stab vest, torch, incapacitant spray, and a first aid kit. All in sports bag.
4 Athames, 2.5 legs War Bacon (Vince's Fridge), a worn face-concealing hooded coat, bin bags.
Concealed: knife in one boot, knife on a leg, and one on his torso.
Two generous Roast Beef and Horseradish Sandwiches
Two bin bags of assorted pills from pharmacy (Vince's fridge).
£20
Set of keys and passcard
Gunfarmer P90 (50/50) (in bag)
FN Minimi light machine gun, 200-round belt, (59/200) round belt
Gunfarmer's Silenced MK-23 Pistol 12/12
Puissant clots: 7
Puissance:5/5
Name: Zamenis Paean
Puissant fettle: 3
Agility: 3
Aim: 3
LICH: feeds on the bleeding hearts of his enemies.
Undead. Necromancy bonus.
Heavily Charred, not that it matters to you. But you look like you've spent the night on a live barbecue grill.
Respined and very slightly shorter.
Inventory: £1, Certificate from Belial (valid for one sample of occult substance)
Large Knife, knife.
Surgical tools: scalpel, a saw, and tweezers.
A length of shimmering, crystalline rope,
{Extremely Strong Sleep Potion}
Dragon Tooth Phylactery on [Tier Three Steel Mop Broom]
[Human Leg Wand]
[Ulna and Hand Wand]
Lightning Longsword
Human spine caduceus
Puissant Clots: 0
Puissance: 14/14
Name: Don Joe
Back covered in bone casing, small spikes
Ritual Strength - 2
Runic Sight - 1
Puissance - 1
Aim - 2
Agility - 1
Practicality - 1
Inventory: £100
Card of Mortal-mind cleanup guy
[Chain Coin Pendant]
[Giraffe Wine Chalice]
[Venom Blood Syringe Chalice]
Simple Knife
Five bone spikes
Gunfarmer's Browning 9-mm 13/13
6x Polycarbon Body Armour
6x Divinely Enhanced Riot Shield
Runes
Market Savvy: You know what things are worth, and who will pay for or try to get them. From your time spent as a banker, a passive rune.
Acid: a rune that eats into whatever it touches.
Nebula: a rune that glows brilliantly, written in brilliant points of light. Can be written on the sky itself to send messages through the stars.
Carnage: paint this on something, and increase the likelihood of large numbers of people being killed or maimed near it. How on earth could you have picked up such a rune?
Puissance: 6/6
Puissant Clots: 1
[spoiler=it's the cycle of life]
Name: Jane Zisigin
[Heeded by Deep Ones]
Puissant fettle: 2
Runic Sight: 1
Aim: 3
Inventory: [Tier Two Deodorant Stick Wand]
£50
Bag of living scrap metal
Samples of: Human blood, Roses, Rotten Food
Transworld Entertainment Card
Runes
Megafauna: the first magical creature Jane really saw was a demonic rhinoceros trampling the broken bodies of her parents. This rune gives a passive awareness of nearby massive beasts, and will attract them when written.
Waif: boost to stealth when alone.
Muster: a rune that aids you in hiring or recruiting people to your cause, especially combatants.
Clots:0
Puissance: 9/9