An introductory scenario to the world of Unseen armies -Dragged kicking and screaming into a hidden world.
Inter-related newbie characters come under an attack from a powerful Entropic. Things start slowly and the players are exposed to particularly violent memories, getting worse – I was thinking of a “basic instinct” build up of nastiness. Everyone involved at first thinks what they remember happened but can easily discredit it as being impossible.
This is one powerful entropic however and things get worse.
The memories become more complete and real as time goes on – the players realise they know that these things couldn’t have happened but also know that they did happen.
If left to continue the memories occur in real-time. One player is the victim and the others are prepped on how to act (usually nastily). Injuries inflicted vanish after the event but the gradually increasing psychological damage doesn’t.
By now the players should realise that they need help. Medicine won’t work; science thinks your crazy -where do they turn to.
As things spiral out of control a player is contacted in some way (dirty card on their windscreen, tied to the leg of a dead pigeon – something). The message instructs them to a voodoun / occult shop in a dangerous part of town, preferably a ghetto and ask for Mister Razi. Play up the environment and the danger
The Jamaican shopkeeper can, rather haltingly and worriedly direct them to “ Mister Razi, him ginnal; obeah man, he may ‘elp you in tis lickle ting o your’s”.
He speaks in heavy Jamaican patois (heavy enough hopefully to be near impossible to interrogate).
The address he gives leads them to the outskirts of the area to a suitably memorable house (dependant on city of setting – could be a rotting colonial house by the swamp or the only standing tenement in a semi-bulldozed district wasteland). Play up the fact that the local crime, drugs and squalor tiptoes around the location in deference, fear or respect – mentioning the name Mister Razi in the area will likely defuse a mugging situation or even let the players traipse merrily through a crack house unharmed – no-one wants to invoke Mister Razi’s wrath.
I unashamedly based Razi on Papa Midnight – he is a powerful, well spoken, intense South African who is prepared to solve the player’s problem in return for favours. He will give them a ritual shopping list and tell them that they must collect the components for themselves.
They probably wont trust him (despite claims that he knew about their problem due to the stink on the ether) – and they are right not to. Sure he knows the ritual to remove the Entropic, he attacked them with it.
He is leading them on this merry dance to firmly open their eyes to the real deal so he can use them as pawns (his last pawns died an untimely death). It doesn’t matter – he is the only one that can help them and likely some kind of contract will become involved, binding them to his requests.
(will detail the conversation components on next upload).
Alternatively, Razi is a genuine helper / mentor, more interested in why the players were targetted in the first place – the description is generally vague to allow it to be adapted easily to suit any setting, story arc or demographic (could just as easily be an austere european on a council estate).
Razi is too focused to be an Adept I think – Quite possibly an Avatar with enemies (leading to near home confinement).
I like it. I haven’t run any UA games lately, but this one is just asking to see the daylight of playtime.
Glad you do – I intended it for my newbie players, to give them a shared trigger event and drive them into the Occult underground.
Still trying to formulate Mister Razi’s agenda and Avatar though.
Just a spontaneous idea, but maybe Mr. Razi is a rising avatar of the Merchant. A possible agenda could be to use the player characters as pawns who can sniff out dukes who are potentially big buyers and sellers in the occult underground.
I like the Merchant Archetype but it wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I was designing Razi – Have posted the Dabbler Archetype – see what you think.
Good match. Maybe as a Dabbler, he’s only an agent for TNI, and has on an-going contract in reeling in newbies to do field work for the outfit. In turn, Razi could be gleaning some information and collecting artifacts and rituals and keeping them away from the prying eyes of Mr. Abel.
I think if he was affiliated with TNI it would be in his past and have ended badly (now a marked man). He has become powerful but paranoid and his home is his stronghold, protected by numerous magical gewgaws. However it has also become his prison, which is why he requires outside agents to continue pursuing his obsession. At a later date his enemies may proposition the players to deal with him, giving me the opportunity to resolve the story arc and induct them into a major cabal like TNI.