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Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters


Killer Shrike

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Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters

 

Hi Shrike,

Banshee post updated with packaged powers and complications (I had to post an .hdc rather than .hpk) that can be applied to normals.

I’ll definitely work in the Demimondes descent into the Banshee/Morrigan relationship but try and do it in a way that gives WilyQuixote GM flexibility.

5.

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Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters

 

The Morrigan (1st Draft)

 

This write-up is not meant to accurately reflect the Morrigan of Irish mythology, but to play upon certain details, reimagining the Morrigan in a way that introduces interesting role-playing / campaigning opportunities. In short, I’ve shamelessly mixed mythology with my own ideas…

 

“…and there, lying amidst the corpse-filth, we wounded watched as her black-winged servants came to parade, and feast, upon the fallen. And throughout it all, whilst we passed into the earth and our eyes were stolen from us, whilst the storm clouds shed their heavy tears upon the trampled Irish heather, the skies laughed thunderously, and with wild abandon…”

- Extract taken from the incomplete fragments of an unknown work, apprx date 438 AD.

 

Background and Motivation:

 

Little is known of the (possibly immortal) entity that calls itself the Morrigan. She appears throughout mythology in a variety of disguises and, whilst little is known of her motivations (which often appear to be conflicting), she is best described as a being that seems to embrace the glory, frenzied havoc and futility of war. She is fickle, ambiguous, inconsistent and very, very dangerous.

 

However, the UN is not entirely without understanding of the Morrigan: we believe that she is opposed to our mission of insisting that Supernaturals either operate within the Accords of Secrecy and Abeyance or risk being sanctioned. Whether this opposition arises from philosophical and moral differences (live and let live), or whether she seeks to glory in the vicious pandemonium that would ensue should Supernaturals be freed of the Accords of Secrecy and Abeyance, we are unsure.

 

Whilst we believe the Morrigan perfectly capable of intervening with most sanctions, she does not. Thus some of us can only assume that her interventions are designed to ferment chaos or to further some other, more esoteric goal. However, there are those who suggest she may be less powerful than we believe. The exceptions to her unpredictable interventions are the Bean Sídhe – the Morrigan always intervenes when one of these dangerous individuals is being hunted, even if it is only to exact vengeance upon the hunters, post-cull.

 

The origin of the Bean Sídhe / bean shìth / banshees is unclear and so we can only speculate upon their relationship to the Morrigan, but some have suggested that the Bean Sídhe are Demimondes, descendents of the Morrigan herself. This argument is supported by Irish folk tales, which suggest that certain of the old Gaelic families exhibit closer ties to the Bean Sídhe than others.

 

Known Powers:

 

 

 

History and myth record numerous instances of when the Morrigan has used her powers. It is unclear if the information below represents the full extent of her powers:

  • At the battle of Brú na Bóinne, the Morrigan is said to have summoned a murder of crows that numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The crows are said to have turned the battle in the favour of Aodh Ó Corragáin.
  • Shape-shifting, most notably: Crow, eel, wolf, cow, young woman and old hag.
  • Foretelling - or being an omen of - death and doom for great heroes and entire settlements.
  • Inciting ardour, rage and violence between entire clans/families
  • Performing a ritual which brings forth bounteous crops after several years of poor harvest and starvation.
  • Possible link to the mysterious dissapearance of an entire chapter of Hunters in Northern France

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Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters

 

Ok, here is the little bit I've put to paper so far. I have created a first draft of the Zombie Bus (first time I've ever created a vehicle) and will Email that to KS for his feedback. I've got a great photo for Zombie Dael, but have not created any of the characters. Anyone who wants to do character writeups, feel free. I am not likely to resume working on this for the next 24 hours or so.

 

Zombie Apocalypse

 

Zackary Hak was for the longest time, just a normal truck driver. Well, perhaps not quite 'normal', as he always had a bit of a geek streak. Zackary was a huge movie buff, loved 'B' grade movies, and had a special fondness for zombie movies. One of his favorite day dreams while driving his truck was how 'he' would survive a zombie apocalypse. And part of that dreaming was how he would kit out his truck to make it the ultimate zombie survival 'bus'. The other part of that day dreaming is what sort of a zombie movie 'he' would make, if he were ever in a position to make a movie.

 

Well, let's hear it for the lottery! One day, Zackary won big, real big. Big enough to actually fulfill his dreams. Zackary spent two whole years turning his truck into the ultimate movie prop, a real honest to god, zombie apocalypse survival vehicle. And while he was doing that, he wrote the script to the ultimate zombie apocalypse movie.

 

Or at least it seemed that way to Zackary. The problem when self financing your own movie is that there really is no one to tell you when what you are creating is, well, to put it generously, really bad. To make matters worse, normally a business savy movie producer will line up things like distribution 'before' they make the movie. Zachary made his movie, and then afterwards, tried to get it in movie theaters. That didn't work out so well.

 

So now Zachary is on the road, with his bus and a few of his cast and crew, doing a cross country tour trying to get their movie to play in theaters.

 

 

Characters:

 

Zackary Hak: 54 years old, dresses and looks like a truck driver, of above average intelligence. Zachary loves zombie movies, but despite his day dreaming obsession has no inkling that there really is such a thing as zombies. Zackary was the producer, writer and director of his movie, "Zombie Apocalypse" and had a major 'heroic' role in the movie as well.

 

Peter Arron: 51 years old, gray haired and out of shape. The cameraman 'director of photography' for the film. Peter's professional qualifications for this project are ten years working as an amateur pornographer. He has no formal education in film making and to some degree, it shows in the movie.

 

Raven Arkansas: 27 years old, tall, great figure, tough jawed beauty that has the brains of a total ditz. She played the heroic lead in the movie and had lots of nude scenes, with Zackary. She thinks she's a movie star.

 

Dorothy Michaels: 24 years old, not so tall but with a strong nice figure, looks like a blond haired bimbo. Dorothy played the screaming ditz in the movie and near the end died (not for real) in a rather decent, very gory scene. Dorothy is in fact a genius IQ and by far the most competent member of this team. She is also a rather decent kick boxer and knows her way with fire arms. She is a bit embarrassed by all of this but Zackary is paying her well to do this tour.

 

Zombie Dael: 29 years old, uber goth, strangely alluring beneath all that goth. Zombie Dael is the makeup artist, special effects wizard for the movie. And Zackary was very pleased with just how quickly Zombie was able to do all that makeup for 'really' believable zombies. And they way their heads exploded when shot with shotguns was amazing. It looked so real!

 

Zombie Dael is in fact a budding necromancer. She does in fact know movie makeup and special effects, but that is largely because experimenting with zombies is really easy to cover up when making a zombie movie. Zombie has a lot of natural power when it comes to her necromantic experimentation. If she can survive, she might become quite the force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately for all of her power, she does not have quite the degree of control she thinks she does. And as dangerous as experimenting with the undead is, she is playing far more dangerously than even that. She is dabbling with a true infestation, an undead variant that actually transmits an undead virus, just like 'real' zombies in the movies.

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Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters

 

Ah, good. Thank you, that will be useful for Zombie Dael and company.

 

I just got a hold of the Vehicle book and realized my first incarnation of that 'zombie apocalypse bus' was really badly built. I will try to do better soon. I have to actually do some 'real' work tomorrow, but hopefully I will have time to either fix that vehicle or build one of the other characters. It will be good to build Zombie Dael, as that will give the setting a sample necromancer. I hope you will give that character a fine toothed going over KS, as she of course is the lynch pin for the whole adventure seed.

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Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters

 

Okay' date=' I've gotta say it, the zombie bus is: Pure. Awesome. Genius! :D[/quote']

 

Wait a minute... Did you actually 'see' the Zombie bus, or is it just the idea of such a bus that you like? The existing write up is rather shameful now that I've seen the vehicle book. Also, the Zombie bus is not meant as being a bus full of zombies. Though it could turn into that depending on how the GM and maybe the players, play it. As it stands, the Zombie bus might get the players drooling and asking their GM if they can pool vehicle points to buy it as a group. It is not a cheap vehicle.

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Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters

 

Wait a minute... Did you actually 'see' the Zombie bus' date=' or is it just the idea of such a bus that you like? [/quote']

 

Hi Panpiper,

 

No i didn't see any of the build but it was the concept as a whole and the characters (especially Zombie Dael and her superb skills as a zombie make-up artisit - if you didn't know better, you'd almost think they were real...).

 

Also, for some really strange reason i kept thinking of the mystery machine when reading your post (I have no idea why!) :D

 

Is the ultimate vehicle worth buying (ships and helms is something that i've got to get round to doing for Esoterica)?

 

5.

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Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters

 

Ok, I finished all the character writeups including the redesign of the zombie apocalypse bus. I am going to wait for KS's inevitable (and always for the better) tweaks before progressing any further. Actually at this point I am not quite sure where to progress to. The idea is mostly a seed, rather than a lead a GM by the hand through the process. The set up is basically, crazy ass bus rolls into town with a motley crew and 'something' is bound to happen. It should probably not happen in the campaign city however, so I'll have to write up some suggestions.

 

I'm thinking something like, the players have finished up a scenario that has taken them out of the city, and they are resting up in a hotel is some small town, when the bus pulls in to the same hotel... Sabrina only needs one glimpse at Zombie Dael and all hell will break loose.

 

And now that I've written up both Raven Arkansas and Dorothy Michaels, I think both of them are a lot younger than I initially wrote. They both appear to be only recently out of high school.

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Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters

 

An "Adventure Sheet" is probably ideal anyway.

 

Some of the best adventures I ever ran were built up from front and back adventure sheets in the Greyhawk City and From the Ashes boxed sets. They had everything I needed to play out a scenario and nothing I didnt, and as they were free of cruft and pretty much self contained I could mix or combine them in whatever order or fashion my feverish young mind could invent.

 

Ah yes, 1988 - 1993 were really good roleplaying years for me. In addition to the great Greyhawk campaigns, a Warhammer FRPG campaign, a few WoD campaigns, some misc TSR boxed set campaigns like TSSCI, Gamma Worlds and FASERIP Marvel, 1990 is the year I discovered the HERO System.

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Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters

 

Zackary Hak

Zombie Apocalypse Bus

Dorothy Michaels

Raven Arkansas

Peter Arron

 

NPCs

 

Also...did you want credit for these Panpiper? You didint fill in the "Player" field, so I wasnt sure if you intended them to be listed as "GM" or if you just forgot.

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Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters

 

Also...did you want credit for these Panpiper? You didn't fill in the "Player" field, so I wasn't sure if you intended them to be listed as "GM" or if you just forgot.

I suppose I should put my name to them.

 

I am pleased to see that I got the bus right the second time round. I didn't see any changes. And of course I very much like all the extra tweaks you added to the characters.

 

Now I need to write a page for an 'adventure sheet'. That will probably simply be some editing of what I've already written here on the board and in Zachary's description, with maybe an extra paragraph or two.

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Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters

 

Hi Shrike, Panpiper,

 

I’ve got a couple of NPC character concepts for you. They’re not full-blown write-ups, but are stubs. Feel free to run with them / build on them. I'll try and develop them a bit more, but i'm more than happy for you guys to do that same...

Panpiper: I gave your Zombie bus it's very own "stalker" - hope you don't mind!

 

Hugo Glamour (stage name)

Timothy Gilmour, also known as "Hugo Glamour" when on stage, is an extremely talented, but intensely misanthropic, medium. Timothy was originally born in Surrey, England but moved to Vegas for reasons unspecified.

 

For whatever reason, Timothy works the strip, seemingly determined to cultivate the image of a shabby, psychic, stage charlatan who swindles people who-should-know-better out of their hard earned cash with vague, cheesy and pretty unbelievable messages from ‘beyond the grave’. Occasionally, when takings for his shows are down, Timothy will use his abilities properly to renew people’s enthusiasm just enough to keep him on minimum wage.

 

Timothy’s actually quite infamous because of a clip on Youtube which features him making an utter fool of himself when he singles out a member of the audience and, after the usual drama and showmanship, informs her that he is receiving a psychic message from her dead husband. The lady plays along before revealing that she has never been married before and her husband is actually sat next to her. It’s a pretty rookie mistake for a stage medium to make, hence the epic number of Youtube hits.

 

The irony of the incident is that Timothy was actually using his powers properly at the time and that the woman had actually been married before, but couldn’t remember [Note to Hunters: presumed suspicious - Casefile still under investigation]. Apparently, the woman’s first husband was trying to forewarn her of her impending death at the hands of her second husband. Needless to say, the unfortunate lady is now deceased and, despite the air of indifference that Timothy surrounds himself in, the incident seems to have affected him deeply.

 

Jimmy Hunt

Jimmy is an ex-cop who has been following the Zombie Bus around for the past year. Despite having no evidence, Jimmy is convinced that something is amiss with the passengers on the bus. He has absolutely no idea why he thinks this, he just knows something is wrong.

 

Jimmy’s obsession started a year or so ago when he bumped into Dorothy Michaels. A few weeks later, Dorothy ended up filing a complaint against Jimmy which resulted in him losing his job. Jimmy is becoming increasingly frustrated at not being able to work out what’s amiss, especially since his police training and experience should have equipped him for this!

 

Jimmy has started to exhibit classic stalker behaviour [note: I have absolutely no idea what that might be, but it sounds good - 5lippers] but his motivation is only to uncover the mystery of the bus and not something more sinister. Jimmy doesn’t see anything weird in his behaviour and would be surprised, and possibly shocked, if someone not-of-the-bus flagged this to him.

 

Jimmy may have had some sort of zombie-experience when he was a child and this may be behind his instincts. Jimmy cannot consciously remember the event and puts his gut-feeling down to nothing more than training.

 

5.

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Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters

 

Now that I've seen the whole picture' date=' im going to need to beef up Daile a bit to make this work. I'm going to give her some kind of "obfuscation" capability to prevent the cast and crew from becoming suspicious.[/quote']

Yes, I was soon to write up some sort of extra description for her 'Corpsey Ramone' zombie follower, tying to create a justification for being able to keep him inside of a bus with a handful of other people and them not clue in to there being something wrong. Her having extra 'powers' to do that would make life a lot more simple.

 

Panpiper: I gave your Zombie bus it's very own "stalker" - hope you don't mind!

Heh, not at all. Multiple people cooperating on a scenario almost always make it more interesting than one person doing it alone. Of course I have no idea really what is up with Jimmy Hunt or what he could possibly have done to Dorothy to cause her to lodge a complaint. In terms of a write up, he might have a total psych complication 'disbelieves in the supernatural' and yet actually has supernatural awareness. So he 'knows' something is up, but he cannot register what it is that he 'sees'.

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Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters

 

Yes, I was soon to write up some sort of extra description for her 'Corpsey Ramone' zombie follower, tying to create a justification for being able to keep him inside of a bus with a handful of other people and them not clue in to there being something wrong. Her having extra 'powers' to do that would make life a lot more simple.

 

 

Heh, not at all. Multiple people cooperating on a scenario almost always make it more interesting than one person doing it alone. Of course I have no idea really what is up with Jimmy Hunt or what he could possibly have done to Dorothy to cause her to lodge a complaint. In terms of a write up, he might have a total psych complication 'disbelieves in the supernatural' and yet actually has supernatural awareness. So he 'knows' something is up, but he cannot register what it is that he 'sees'.

 

 

He could be a weak suppressor. Maybe he didnt bump into Dorothy, who is completely normal. Maybe he "bumped into" Daile doing something she shouldn't have been doing. He shut her down and arrested her, but due to his Suppressor complications he couldnt remember the main details and thus could not justify why he used excessive force and arrested her. So, he was suspended. He KNOWS something isn't right about Daile, but HE CANT REMEMBER WHAT OR WHY. Is he going crazy? So, he's become obsessed with hounding her and catching her in the act again so as to prove to himself that he's not nuts. Of course, that's doomed to failure pretty much for sure since even if he does catch her in the act, he'll forget it again unless his subconscious can find some way to rationalize it to some kind of non-supernatural explanation.

 

It should be possible to take Jake Donaldson as a base, remove some of his fringe elements, and tack on the Suppressor package to get this character up and running with a minimum of fuss.

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Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters

 

Hmm... The crew is out shooting some scene for the sequel and Daile has 8 zombies out, 'acting' under her mind control. Jimmy Hunt shows up and his suppression causes Zombie Daile to blow her Necromantic Lore roll. The zombies eat the camera man. Much fuss ensues. Zachary freaks out, Raven runs every which way shrieking, Dorothy tries to save Peter, and Jimmy Hunt is trying to arrest Daile again as 'clearly' she has instigated this atrocity and so Daile is forced to deal with or run from Jimmy, rather than regain control over her zombies. The zombies go off in search of prey, but a few get away from Dorothy who is heroically trying to stop them. The zombies with their infectious bites, start a zombie epidemic.

 

Now we just need a seed to have the players involved somehow 'during' all of this rather than afterwards.

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