Cache AZURE FELLOWSHIP
Description: a zippered, leather travel bag with an old-style handle. It contains the following items:
Psionic Crittertech
Well, it’s like this. During the 1970s there was a lot of psionic research that was being done by both the USSR and the USA; the Russians went in for mechanical and electronic methods that went nowhere, and the Americans went in for biological and genetic techniques that went nowhere. It turned out the problem was fundamentally that human brains are far too complex to successfully activate most psionic powers. Trying to do so ‘merely’ doesn’t work, at best — and fries the human cerebral cortex, at worst.
USS Oriskany Special Consulate
You know, they don’t normally sink upright aircraft carriers with the Oriskany’s combat record. There’s the matter of all those ghosts that will come along for the ride, you see. But then, the ghosts are sort of the point.
Neomenancy
The great secret of the various types of divination is that, at first, they were all pretty absurd ways of going about the business. After all, really: predicting the future from star patterns? Entrails of random animals? Throwing sticks in the air? The absolute first time somebody tried any of those techniques, or any of the others, they must have felt like complete and total idiots. And the divination method almost certainly didn’t work — at least until somebody sat down and made the blessed thing work from sheer force of will.
Apocalypse Gene
Appearance: prior to activation, there’s nothing particularly unusual. After activation, the victim loses all of his or her hair, teeth become bony plates that regenerate over time, the skin becomes hard but flexible, and the body loses most of its body fat. Primary sexual characteristics do not disappear, but someone with an activated Apocalypse Gene cannot reproduce.
Effects: increased speed; hyper-strength; exceptionally efficient digestive and immune systems; mild healing factor; skin effectively immune to unarmed attacks and resistant against both crushing and impaling damage; retractable, serrated claws on hands and feet; an optimal temperature range that runs from -10 to 110 degrees Farenheit; the ability to commit multiple acts of violence (including murder) without longterm psychological trauma; creative slave mentality, linked to a thankfully extinct Dominator leader caste; and an effective immunity to fear, shock, panic, and despair. Needless to say, once the Apocalypse Gene is activated the effects cannot be reversed.
Altvacs
‘Altvac’ is short for ‘alternate vacation.’ It’s one of the things that you get when the concept of alternate timelines is first finally proven, then commercialized: people go find a timeline where they exist, only in a different life, and then they and their alternate selves swap timelines for a week or two. It’s considered rude to not tell anybody that you’re temporarily living your alternate self’s life, but it often happens, which can lead to some very interesting social situations. At least one media company films the most entertaining ones, for later commercial use.
Confraternity of the Malignant Crab
Description: The Confraternity of the Malignant Crab is a secret cult of operating room surgeons and staff that is centered around the ritual sacrifice of cancerous human flesh. Acolytes of the cult can be found in many Western hospitals, including Japan. The cult has no formal symbol, but Confraternity cultists are understandably fond of crab imagery.
Well. The best thing that you can say about the Confraternity of the Malignant Crab is that they’re actually not utterly unreasonable, for a human sacrifice cult. Not actively malevolent, at least. It’s not like they make people suffer. Or at least, they don’t at the moment.
O’Donnell’s
Description: a single story (plus basement) brick and wood restaurant located somewhere suitably semi-rural, in the epicenter of a blighted circle one half-acre in diameter. And ‘blighted’ is no exaggeration; the circle is sterile, in the sense that nothing is capable of reproducing inside of it. That not just includes plant life; not even bacteria can successfully reproduce there. That includes the intestinal bacteria typically found within an investigator’s body — or, for that matter, an investigator’s various internal cells. Staying much longer than a day inside the O’Donnell’s ‘blasted zone’ is contraindicated, and pregnant women should avoid the place entirely.
Morbis Street
Description: In many walled medieval cities, there is a street just inside the walls that likewise continuously encircles the rest of the city. Morbis Street serves that function in a particular High Fantasy medieval-style walled city. Most of the year it’s perfectly normal.
One night a year, however (the exact date doesn’t matter, as long as it’s the same date every year), anyone who ‘Walks Up Morbis Street’ while carrying a certain arcane symbol vanishes, never to return. And if somebody does walk the Street on that night and vanishes, then somebody else (carrying the same arcane symbol) will appear, too. A person for a person. Most people who arrive do so with at most a traveler’s pack, but at least one person has arrived pushing a handcart.
(more…)Boots of the Beast
Description: crude black leather moccasins that can be somehow stretched to cover any human foot. Both Boots of the Beast must be worn (and against bare skin, and on the foot itself, and please stop trying to get around the enchantment, because it’s perfectly obvious that they’re supposed to be worn as shoes, and by one person) for the Boots to work properly. Boots of the Beast are more or less invulnerable, and smell faintly of burnt wood, sun-dried mud, and old blood.
Powers: when dipped in the blood of an animal, Boots of the Beast grants the wearer two random positive and two negative (only one of which will be random) aspects of that animal, without actually making any physical changes to the wearer. For example: dipping the Boots in the blood of a moose might give the wearer a certain invulnerability to blunt trauma, and considerably more invulnerability to head injuries, but might also make the wearer fairly aggressive when provoked. It also always makes the wearer think like a moose, down to reflexes and instinctive reactions.
, and is (to the best to my knowledge) in the public domain.Site by Neil Stevens | Theme by TheBuckmaker.com
