Moe Lane

Wyrmslayah – Google Docs

Wyrmslayah

This is, of course, the famous katana that John Adams used to slay the Wyrm of Quabbin Hill — oh, yes, right.  Wyrmslayah is something from the secret history.  The non-boring history.  The history that they only teach you in school if you’ve been good.

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DV-9999 – Google Docs

DV-9999

When DV-9999 was discovered drifting in Jupiter’s orbit by an extremely classified American military black-ops program, it was the US Navy that ended up getting the derelict interstellar ship after it was towed back to Earth (it is, again, an extremely classified program).  Oh, sure, other groups tried to claim it, but the Navy just had the better bureaucratic knife-fighters this time.  Sometimes it just comes down to that. It probably also helped that the discovers’ were sort of related to the Navy, in a fairly recondite sort of way.  Besides, the Navy was willing enough to share.

Of course, the value of DV-9999 is actually a somewhat complicated question.  Its tonnage is about 200 tons, and looks like it was designed for 6 crew members and 4 passengers (assuming human-sizes throughout).  There are extensive open spaces inside the ship itself, with direct access to space via a set of doors. The outside also has two hardpoints that look like they were designed to fit weapons pods of some sort; one of the hardpoints is occupied with broken machinery, and one is a melted pile of slag.  DV-9999 is also heavily damaged and open to vacuum, with burn-throughs and impact craters consistent with energy and explosive weapons.

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Space Dust – Google Docs

Space Dust

Space Dust? ‘Tis the scourge of the space-ways, it is.  Not because it affects any Galactic species that still operates in this plane of existence, because Space Dust doesn’t.  It really is just made up of regular interstellar dust particles that have been collected until there’s enough to be worth selling to a member of the Precursor species.  The species who have theoretically transcended this plane of existence, in other words — but yet now find that Space Dust is the most absolutely, completely, and reverse transcendentally amazing high in any plane of existence.

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Lockcracker – Google Docs

Lockcracker

Description: Lockcracker was clearly adapted from a 1950s one-handed Geiger Counter; the cover and dials have been painted over, the buttons have all been disabled, except for one painted red, and the hand-held sensor unit has had three wires added.  One wire ends in an alligator clip; another in a thin, flat piece of metal with rounded edges, and the last in a what appears to be a very tiny microphone. If Lockcracker has batteries (the casing is quite thoroughly soldered), they haven’t been replaced in fifty years.

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Humanbane – Google Docs

Humanbane

It’s a sword. Specifically, it’s a carp’s tongue broadsword; it has a wide blade that tapers down to a lengthened point. It’s suitable for slicing, stabbing, and/or thrusting. Human’s provenance is, based on various details, dated as being somewhere around the 12th century BC. Which is awkward, because the blade is made of something roughly equivalent to wootz steel.

Normally, something this anachronistic would be dismissed as a clumsy joke or forgery, but they pulled this sword out of a previously-undisturbed burial mound in northern France during an extremely well-documented expedition. There’s no way that Humanbane could have been inserted into the dig somehow: the cameras were operating 24/7 throughout the entire operation. In some ways, it was a relief when the nice people from the — well, they’re from a pan-European agency, and had the right officials vouching for them, and that was enough — came to collect Humanbane. And replace it with something that looked like it at first, but looked like something else entirely when cleaned. (more…)

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.

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Gemul – Google Docs

Gemul

Description: A handmade dagger, made out of what appears to be a leaf spring from an automobile.  The edges are supernaturally sharp ,if a little irregular; and the ‘hilt’ is simply a section that has been heavily wrapped in duct tape. It looks like it should be about to rust, but never has.  It’s light to both hold and use, too. Scratched into the hilt are Hebrew letters that, when transliterated, spell out ‘Gemul.’

Behold Gemul!  Yes, that’s right!  This is the very dagger used to kill Walter Arnold Foehrkolb!

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Applenut Pie – Google Docs

Applenut Pie

This pie is made from special apples and nuts; which is to say, ones used in certain rituals for divinatory purposes on Halloween night. Once the rituals are done the apples and nuts are baked into a pie, which then serves as a powerful aid to spiritualism and voluntary possession. Whoever eats a slice of Applenut Pie will find that she has become incredibly sensitive to the spirit world; a spirit may possess the subject automatically if she does not resist, and ghosts and ethereal entities are likewise automatically audible to the subject. The effects usually only last about ten minutes, and eating an entire pie will almost certainly render the eater unconscious after about an hour or so. (more…)

Haunted Humietown – Google Docs

Haunted Humietown

Description: one of about fifty of two sheets of glossy paper folded over once (no staple) to make an eight page pamphlet.  The formatting is, fair to say, higly erratic: the ‘interior’ pages are upside down in relation to the exterior pages, and both the photos and the ‘text’ seem to have been arranged by hand (and an indifferent one at that).  There is no recognizable printer’s information. The paper is remarkably stain- and water-resistant; it also smells foul.

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Boneflower and Boneflour – Google Docs

Boneflower and Boneflour

Yes, they’re pronounced the same.  And yes, it’s supposed to be confusing (potentially lethally so).  Necromancers will have their little jokes, particularly when they promise to be entertaining to watch.

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