Item Seed: Spectral Grenades.

Spectral Grenades – Google Docs

Spectral Grenades

 

Description: Spectral Grenades look like they were made to the same template as the US military’s M84 Stun Grenade, with an additional standard US MIL-SPEC power plug set in the base.  Also, the pull ring is designed to be reinserted after use. After one use, Spectral Grenade recharges in 24 hours, assuming that it’s been properly hooked up to a power generator.

 

If the US military is ever involved in a supernatural outbreak of any sort, eventually the troops on the ground will be issued a crate of these things.  They operate like flash-bang grenades, with one vital exception: they have absolutely no effect on ‘normal’ people. Ghosts, monsters, espers, mages, lycanthropes, constructs, spirits, vampires, demons, angels, daemons, tulpas, faerie, sensitives, and anybody or anything else that exists outside of the scientific-materialist worldview?  Unless they’re prepared, they’re all writhing on the floor after you use a Spectral Grenade, for about five minutes or so. Regular, mundane people? They’ll just be a little confused at all the fuss.

There are several major design limitations to Spectral Grenades.  The first is that nobody’s been able to make one larger than a grenade, or to produce a constant energy field instead of a burst; there are elements of the US government who would like to be emitting whatever-it-is a Spectral Grenade emits constantly, and all across the country, but so far it’s not happening.  Second — and this is not considered to be a major limitation, by those same US government elements — Spectral Grenades do not and cannot distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ supernaturally-potent entities.  Third: Spectral Grenade do not have any permanent effects.

 

Still: these items are an excellent way to explain why supernatural activities tend not to get noticed above the neighborhood level.  Assuming that the MiBs have weapons with a bit more of permanent impact, of course. Because once somebody gets over a Spectral Grenade, they’re invariably deeply, deeply unhappy at everything in general, and the person who threw the Grenade in particular. It’s generally deemed best not to leave supernatural witnesses alive (or functional) after use.