Some Changes For Last Things Last - Part 2

In my last post I gave some examples of (hopefully) fun, minimalistic additions to make to Baughman's apartment in Last Things Last. In this post, I'll be expanding on an oft-given piece of advice for LTL - to use the contents of the locker in Baughman's Cabin as an opportunity to seed future scenarios.

To this end, I put together the "Baughman Locker Jam" on the N@TO Discord to create a sizeable numbers of items that connect in some way to a published scenario/faction. Whilst we didn't quite approach a wholistic list, I'm still very pleased with how this Jam turned out. Many thanks for those who took part, and contributed a total of 11 submissions! I'll be displaying all of them here for posterity, and putting all of your preferred online handles next to your entries.

Now, I certainly wouldn't recommend dumping all of these in Baughman's poor little locker - just the ones for scenarios you want to run in the future. But for those you don't use, they can always make good entries to pad out any Green Box the Agents might stumble across in the future!

(Of note, whether examining these entries grants skill percentages and/or costs SAN, like a true Unnatural Tome does, is up to the Handler's discretion. If you were to do so, I'd limit the SAN loss to between 1 - 1D4 and cap skill percentages at 1 - 3%. And I wouldn't add any Rituals.)

Baughman's Locker Contents

1) Sentinels Of Twilight - By Dragoleaf

A thin manilla folder containing a series of files. The first are numerous missing person reports for children (between the ages of 3-14) lodged with the National Parks Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation and numerous local law enforcement agencies. There's a great deal of crossover between this list and cases reported in the Missing 411 conspiracy theory - especially as the files are focused around disappearances in the United States' national parks.

Someone has exhaustively plotted out the last known locations of these missing people, and then superimposed that data over maps of American cave systems. While there is a disturbing correlation arising from this statistical comparison, it's nothing definitive. Additionally attached are diagrams of the internal structure of Earth - with the mantle scribbled out and annotated with: "ALL A LIE. N'KAI LIES BENEATH. WHAT DO THEY WANT WITH THE CHILDREN?". 

The final file is a crude sketch of a towering stick figure snatching up smaller figures - children.

2) Presence - By Dragoleaf

An intercepted communication from a Canadian non-profit, the Paragon Foundation, to an unknown recipient - dated 26/01/2000. It's a report on the "suspected presence of a sizeable population of Talents located in the CONUS. Intelligence suggests a potential psychic hot-spot within the state of Vermont. Our assets are not permitted to investigate south of the border, as Embassy Row has the Gods recalcitrant to authorize it. Stand by for further instructions".

The paper has been annotated with several scribbled writings in red pen - "What is a ‘Talent'?", "Gods = P.I.S.C.E.S?", "Must watch out for infestations.", "Fucking head-lice better stay out."

3) Hourglass - By Dragoleaf

A 1987 case file from the police department of Hourglass, Oregon. Its subject, Joseph Owens, claimed that a "little boy with the eyes of Lucifer", whom Joseph was unable to accurately identify, magically swapped bodies with him. Joseph testified that in the hour-long period that he was trapped in the young boy's body, he was sexually abused by laughing, masked men who spoke in bizarrely antiquated New England accents.

It was this story that Joseph used to explain why he had a total lack of knowledge regarding him raping, murdering and dismembering his wife of seven years, Candice Owens, and their four-year-old daughter, Jessica Owens. The case file states that an attached videotape, which Joseph had recorded himself, shows the man gleefully committing the inhumanly sadistic deed. Thankfully, the tape itself isn't present within Baughman's locker.

Joseph was successful in an insanity plea, with numerous psychologists attesting that he must have suffered a catastrophic mental break. Further research reveals the man later committed suicide in the Oregon State Hospital in 1993. A brief inquiry was held into how staff enabled him in taking his own life, but no findings were ever officially reported.

4) Kali-Ghati - By Dragoleaf

A very recent CIA intelligence report by clandestine service officer Timothy Ellis. It's entirely unclear how Baughman managed to get his hands on such restricted information.

The report regards Officer Ellis' preliminary investigation into "unexplained electromagnetic interference" in the southern Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, near the Durand Line (the Afghanistan-Pakistan border). Ellis was stationed out of Forward Operating Base Turner, in the Sar Hawza district of Afghanistan's Paktika province - under the cover of being a Major in the United State Army Signals Corps. Despite being ostensibly benign, Officer Ellis' report is still classified "TOP SECRET//SPECIAL ACCESS REQUIRED-SECURITY STUDIES GROUP".

4) Music From A Darkened Room - By Dragoleaf

A poor-quality tape showing a trio of masked urban explorers performing a nighttime exploration through an abandoned suburban home. The atmosphere is oppressive, with the men complaining about hearing strange noises that the camcorder never picks up. Two explorers, including the cameraman, claim to hear a piano playing in the next room and move to investigate.

They become visibly disturbed upon realizing there's no one in the room, especially as both men are obviously able to hear the piano still playing in front of them.

When the explorers return to find the third explorer, they discover him standing in front of a mirror in the house's bathroom, smiling at them through the reflection. Without turning around, he calmly slits his own throat with a shard of glass. The man doesn't move, continuing to smile widely as blood gushes from his ruined throat - even as his face goes pale from exsanguination. The other two explorers scream and the camcorder is dropped - abruptly ending the footage.

Reviewing the footage in post and cleaning it up reveals an easily missed detail - at several points in the video the diminutive form of a wrinkled old woman (always completely naked) can be seen in the periphery of the frame. The explorers never notice her. She's always smiling widely - revealing something stuck between her teeth. It looks like hair.

6) Meridian - By Dragoleaf

An audio surveillance tape with an evidence tag identifying it being from 1998's New York FBI field office. It holds a recording of two unidentified female voices in muted conversation. 

VOICE ONE - “You can’t die, Kattie, you can count your cars forever. You’re gonna say thanks, aren’t you, Kattie?”

VOICE TWO - (Coughing.) "Th- thank you my Lady."

VOICE ONE - "Don't waste your gift Kattie. Your's is an eternal work."

VOICE TWO - (Continued coughing.) "Y- y- yes my Lady."

VOICE ONE - "Very good. As you were Kattie."

VOICE TWO - (Begins listing the make, model, license plate, occupants and approximate speed of cars. This continues for ~4 hours without any breaks, until the tape runs out.)

7) Observer Effect - By Tairbaz

A hastily written list of times (22:03:37, 18:46:16, 20:57:50) written on a piece of paper. 

The crumpled paper is stained with flecks of dried blood and has obviously been torn from a larger sheet. Agents with Science (Physics) 40%, or who succeed on a roll, note that the paper comes from the printout of a powerful supercomputer - the sort that processes complex physics and mathematical data. Unfortunately, the paper's origins are impossible to investigate further.

The first Agent to interact with the paper who succeeds an INTx5 roll realises the scribbled list is transcribed their own handwriting (0/1 SAN to the Unnatural). If the blood stain is examined forensically, it is found to be an exact match to that same Agent (0/1 SAN to the Unnatural).

8) CONTROL COPY - By Gravityspiker

A single manila folder with two files inside. The first file is a blurry copy of an arrest warrant for one “Jan Weever”, dated 06 February 1997. The listed crime is delinquent tax evasion, and the issuance court is located in Newark, New Jersey.

The second file is a death certificate for this “Jan Weever”, dated 17 November 1997 and issued by a county coroner in New Mexico. Weever's cause of death is listed as multiple gunshot wounds sustained during a shootout with state troopers and federal agents. No irregularities, notes, or other indications of unnatural incursions are present in the documents.

8) The Good Life - By Fee Fi Fo Fin

A ring-binder labeled “RHIZOME ‘87”. Inside are plastic sleeves, containing old newspaper clippings describing the ritual held by the Ku Klux Klan atop Stone Mountain in 1915. 

Other sleeves contain old, stained photographs of Ku Klux Klan rituals, including grainy photocopies of the Stone Mountain rituals. Notes in the margins, and upon torn pieces of paper, link these rituals to European occultism, particularly of the Salem witch trials and various witch trials in Spain and France. A hand-written note in the back of the binder reads as follows:

“Jean, 

This is all I was able to find, couldn’t tell ya what came of the rest of it. Send this along to Uncle Joe and see what he can tell you. It’s a far cry from what you were telling me, about your ‘friend’ Teddy, but maybe something will turn up. Ask him about Chile too, if any of those old files are kicking around. Best of luck.

Be Seeing You,

C.B.”

9) The Labyrinth: The Lonely - By Ceurelian

A sheaf of papers printed in the default layout of a Microsoft 7 Word document. The papers detail a fictional story about “Marcus”, a dark fantasy wizard that the audience seems to be expected to know, committing violent genocide against various Tolkien-style settlements. 

According to the story, each use of his magic spells rot Marcus’ body further until he degenerates into a skeleton animated solely by hateful magic. Amidst this stack of papers is a newspaper clipping outlining a 2011 mass shooting and suicide bombing of a rural Michigan police station, perpetrated by Marcus Wallace, social malcontent and member of a play-by-post D&D forum.

A lime green sticky note is stuck to the clipping, reading: “Jay Sanders”, “Ann Scottsdale,”, “Dan Portman”, “All ours. How did he know? Call Phone 3.”

10) The Labyrinth: Agent Renko - By Max/Owlbear

A manila folder containing a dossier with documents from both the CIA and NSA about suspected male and female Russian spies operating on U.S. soil from the period of 2006-2012. There are photographs of numerous suspected spies, with one particular collection featuring a handsome, slender man in sunglasses and a dark suit meeting with an individual who appears to be a male escort. Agents can later learn that this is Agent Renko of GRU-SV8 if they meet him. 

Several handwritten notes, varying calligraphy implying several authors, exist in the dossier’s margin: "potential unnatural connection?", "does MI6 know?", "not this one”, "would fuck", "why always carrying salt?", "Dagestani mountains?", and anything else the Handler desires.

10) Impossible Landscapes - By Idas

A small brass gear which, if incorporated into a clockwork device, never needs to be wound up. Agents who thoroughly inspect this anomaly lose 1/1D4 SAN to Unnatural.

A map of the Trivelino Mall, an abandoned property in western Massachusetts. Every word and symbol present has been redacted, except the pictograms of fire identifying the emergency exits.

“I Wear No Mask: The Shadowed Face of Gods, by Arthur Logan” - a book on syncretic religion which cherrypicks stories from different cultures into the story of the King In Yellow: a stranger who comes to town and is revealed to be the most high divinity in disguise. The writer, getting high on his own sociological supply, asserts this is the most important connection between faiths. Agents who study this book and fail a POWx5 roll, lose -5% from Anthropology and History, but gain +15% in Occult as they begin to believe the book’s ridiculous and ahistorical “truths”.

A partly melted video tape of an interrogation within a dingy cellar. Baughman sits opposite a subject who’s probably a Caucasian man in his 30s-40s. It’s hard to tell with the burlap sack covering their face. Baugman asks them to “start at the beginning”. The subject only gets to say “along the shore, the cloud waves break-” before the screen fills with static. Despite this, the garbled video tape proceeds for another hour, until the camera suddenly clears and reveals a single, still shot of a raging fire. The video then abruptly ends.

11) The Labyrinth: CMC / Sentinels of Twilight - By Salazaar

A waterlogged dossier from the Centre for the Missing Child consisting of papers, dating from 1982 to 2010, that pertain to the disappearance of Brandon McGill and other children of similar ages in the Hetch Hetchy area. The files include photos of the Devil’s Chair as well as interview transcripts from the missing childrens’ parents. 

The files include  notes in messy handwriting, growing increasingly distressed with the lack of solid leads for the case. The files appear to have been collected by Donna Stibbert of the CMC, in her mid-thirties at the time and now buried in Oak Woods Cemetery.

This was among the first cases the CMC investigated, already cold when they picked it up. Donna maintained a lifelong obsession with the McGill case, and briefed Joe Dawant on it when he joined the CMC in 2007. Neither ever came close to solving it.

Dawant’s knowledge of the McGill case can be used to insert him into Operation FULMINATE:

• Stage One Dawant is a helpful consultant, only getting involved if the Agents ask. Getting trapped in the station can be a good first exposure to the Unnatural for him. 

• Stage Two Dawant will go to the ranger station of his own volition, and will act irrationally and violently to protect and “rescue” (read: kidnap) McGill. 

• Stage Three Dawant is the most dangerous, as he will insist on bringing Mudede and possibly DePasqua as a field team to help solve the case, exposing them to the Unnatural.

12) Reverberations - By AstroCat

A heavy book with a dark green cover, and no author, titled "Space-Time: Perception or Law?". It argues that time is a manifestation that humans place upon themselves and it can, in theory, can be moved through by freeing the mind from the “shackles of Euclid”. 

Annotations in an unusual Southeast Asian dialect (that Agents with Anthropology 70% can identify as the native tongue of the Tcho-Tcho) criticize the book’s thesis. They state that while the mind can move through time, movement through space is only achievable by higher entities.

A newspaper clipping from the Chicago Times' cultural section discussing renovations of the Chauchua-American Advocacy Alliance HQ in Chicago after a racially motivated arson attack. An improvised incendiary was thrown through the street-facing window of the CAAA building by Anna McCallan, 54. McCallan was reported to have been shouting slurs and blaming the group for the death of her son, Charlie, in a botched drug deal last Saturday night. 

Officials have stated “no known connections between the CAAA and organized crime”. The letters “R. E. V. E. R. B.” have been circled in red ink and the words "no known" are crossed out.

A 2002 autopsy report of a woman struck by a car outside “Studio Underground”, a nightclub in downtown Chicago. The woman was under the influence of MDMA and an unknown alkaloid that toxicology could not identify. It appears that the autopsy report was seized by the DOJ and since classified as "TOP SECRET//SPECIAL ACCESS REQUIRED-YELLOW COMBINE".

13) VISCID - By Blaborb

A CD in a clear jewel case. The case does not have an insert, but someone wrote the word "RECOIL" on the CD in black marker. The reflective layer of the CD is slightly discolored and has small holes in some places, the first signs of disc rot.

The CD contains a few dozen image files in TIFF format. All of these images appear to be low-quality scans of files pertaining to soldiers that were employed by the US Air Force in the 1990s: personnel record files, medical records, security clearances, etc.

The onsetting disc rot has resulted in artifacts in many of the images, making the information in them difficult to read. One of the better preserved scans is that of the death certificate of First Lieutenant Daniel Ulee, who apparently died in a training exercise in 1992. Also listed is his spouse, Isabella Ulee, and their home address: 19099 Pulaski Street, Billings, Montana.

14) Iconoclasts - By Akai

A very old OSS mission report from the 1940s, describing an Iraqi Delta Green operation. 

The paper is yellowed detailing the activities of a team of OSS Agents, their names long blacked out permanently and their local contact, a Tariq Mohammed Rassam, a well educated Iraqi who taught the OSS Agents an “Action of Sealing”. This ritual was employed against a nest of  flesh-eating desert "djinn" found in a cave - fires that consumed consciousness and thought. 

It is mentioned that Rassam is considered a long term asset in the region. A search for a man by that name brings up an alumni of the University of Cambridge, a Professor of the University of Mosul specialized in Mesopotamian archaeology, folklore and history who retired in 1997.

15) Puppet Shows And Shadow Plays - By Orvikino

A cream-colored fabric wrapped around a hollow wooden dowel. A thin leather cord is threaded through, presumably in order to hang  on a wall. When unrolled, it reveals a cross-stitch of a long poem, bordered by a very stock southwestern-style pattern and fringed at the bottom with colored feathers. It has the sense of the most schlocky gas station souvenir sold to easily-bilked tourists in the American southwest to hang in their suburban bathrooms. The poem reads:

“one day, Coyote sees Duck walking her ducklings,

Coyote asks her how she keeps them in a straight line,

Duck says she sews them together

with white horsetail hair every morning

and tugs on the line gently,

until the horsehair disappears,

that is how she keeps her ducklings in a row”

“as usual, Coyote leaves smiling, she sees a white horse

grazing in a nearby field,

she plucks a few strands of tail hair

and returns to her burrow”

“the next morning, one by one

she begins to sew her pups together”

“when she finishes, she gently tugs on the horsehair

and drags their little bodies along the ground,

Coyote tilts her head in dismay and becomes distraught,

she realizes she has killed her little pups”

–Laughter, by Crisosto Apache

16) Impossible Landscapes - By Suda

Inside the trunk contains a small Super 8 canister. There is a label in permanent marker that says “Macallister Building”. Once watched it just shows a two minute film of the small apartment building, with people walking past it. The film appears to have been taken in the early 1970s. 

Taped inside the canister are a series of polaroids and an old business card. Each polaroid is of a different entrance into the Mcallister Building, with one even including the roof access door. The business card is for a clown rental company, decorated with a faded monogram of a clown in a style reminiscent of the 1930s.

17) Impossible Landscapes - By Suda

On Reconstructing Extinct Languages by Dr. Ein K. Nige (“Drinking Eye”)

Language: English. Read time: 1 Week, +5% Anthropology, +20% Foreign Language (Tartessian)

An introductory text from 1890 on the science of language reconstruction. It is thorough yet written in a way that even a novice can understand. The book’s tone takes a sharp turn with a section on Tartessian. It ostensibly begins as an example of reconstructing a pre-Roman Hispanic language. However, midway through the first section, the professor announces a startling discovery: he has found a native Tartessian speaker, a little girl staying at a nearby hotel.

The unlikelihood that Nige found a speaker of a language last spoken in the 7th century BCE grows when he gives example sentences in Tartessian: ordering food at a hotel, making plans for a night at the theater, informing gendarmes of suspicious activity. These aren’t concepts that a language that old would be likely to have. 

Eventually one of the professor’s colleagues writes an epilogue. Dr. Ein has had a psychotic break. He claims the young girl on which he has based his Tartessian research comes out of the lake and returns to the lake after their interviews. As such he’s been quietly institutionalized.

If the player realizes that the little girl Ein mentions matches the description of Maude from Maude Goes to the Masked Ball they lose 1/1d6 SAN from Unnatural and gain 1 Corruption.

The Yara-Ma-Yha-Who

By Fee Fi Fo Fin

Introduction

“Yara red, Yara pink, Yara knowing what you think.
Waiting quiet in a tree, watching you and watching me.
Yara small, and not much bright. But Yara has an appetite.
Wandering kids, walk with care. Or into Yara’s mouth you’ll stare.”

- Blanca Martinez de Rituerto, 'Yara-Ma-Yha-Who'

The Yara-Ma-Yha-Who, or at least the version reported in publicly available records, is a niche but relatively popular Australian cryptid. This creature was first recorded by Aboriginal-Australian preacher David Unaipon in “Legendary Tales Of The Australian Aborigines”, a compendium of various myths published in 1930 (albeit this text would be credited to its white editor W. Ramsay Smith, and Unaipon would not receive recognition for its creation until 2001). 

Herein, it was described as a hunched, red-skinned humanoid bearing a loose resemblance to a frog, with sucker-tipped fingers, a toothless mouth and an oversized head. It would ambush lone travellers, especially children, exsanguinating their blood through its suckers to weaken them, before devouring its victim whole with its prodigious maw. 

Those devoured by the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who were reportedly not killed, but instead regurgitated with bizarre mutations - shorter stature and reddish-tinted skin. Allegedly, if this disgusting process of regurgitation and consumption was repeated enough, the wretched victim would eventually be transformed into another Yara-Ma-Yha-Who.

And for members of the general public even aware of this old myth, this is the extent of their knowledge - a morbid, but entertaining cryptid story to tell around the campfire.

But for the men and women of ESPER (and perhaps Delta Green), these disgusting creatures are no mere folktale or ghost story. For them the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who, or at least an unnatural entity bearing a strong resemblance to its legend, is a terribly real threat. 

The Truth

The Fungi From Yuggoth have long since inhabited the Earth, mining rare metallic ores, warring with pre-human civilisations and performing unspeakable experiments upon unfortunate humans. Delta Green knows of their mining efforts within the Appalachian and Himalayan mountain ranges, as well as their nefarious puppeteering of their sister organisation, Majestic-12. 

However, there is a reason for Australia's own bevy of UFO sightings - the Mi-Go have had no small number of operations in the vast confines of the sunburnt country. One such endeavour was their research into the Great Old One Tsathoggua, the Sleeper of N’kai.

During their worship-placation of the slumbering bat-headed monstrosity, the Mi-Go were fascinated by the ichorous secretions of the Great Old One - mostly their capacity to spawn all manner of unspeakable creatures. The capricious aliens, hoping to harness such hypergeometric power, took many samples of Tsathoggua’s innumerable secretions to study.

And it was within a laboratory deep in the Warlpiri country of the Tanami Desert that the Mi-Go submerged human prisoners in great stone vats of black ichor - spawning the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who. It is unknown whether these perverse creations were deliberately seeded across Australia's forested areas, or if they escaped from the facility after the Mi-Go merely declined to maintain it.

But in truth, the providence of these monsters matters little to their wretched victims.

YARA-MA-YHA-WHO - Degenerate Ambush Predator and Spawn of Tsathoggua

STR 21 CON 21 DEX 14 INT 9 POW 10

HP 21 WP 10

ARMOUR: Thick reddish-brown skin like slimy bark (4 Armour)

SKILLS: Alertness 80%, Anthropology (Human) 20%, Art (Dance) 40%, Climb 90%, Melee Weapons 35%, Waddle Around Clumsily 30%, Stealth 80%, Unnatural 30%

ATTACKS: Improvised Bludgeon or Thrown Projectile (35%, 1D8 DMG)

Exsanguination (60%, pin and see LATCH AND DRAIN)

Vomit (75%, 2 targets, costs 6 WP, see REGURGITATE)

Consume Victim (special, target must be pinned, see DEVOUR)

DEVOUR: To successfully swallow a human whole, the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who must first succeed on an Art (Dance) roll to perform a series of bizarre, rhythmic body movements as it tilts back its head and shoves its victim down its gaping mouth. If conscious,it prey can oppose this roll with their STRx5, escaping its grasp on a success, so it prefers to weaken its prey with LATCH AND DRAIN first. Being swallowed costs 1D6/1D20 SAN.

LATCH AND DRAIN: The Yara-Ma-Yha-Who latches onto its prey with an impossibly strong grip, exsanguinating their blood with hypodermic proboscises inside each of its suckers. Each needle is also laced with a potent muscle relaxant, further weakening the victim, who lose 1D6 STR every turn they are grappled. At 0 STR, they are rendered half-conscious and paralysed. The victim recovers 1 STR every hour, if able to rest safely.

REGURGITATE: If the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who fears for its life, especially when facing multiple opponents, it can vomit a spray of mucus at a range of up to 15m. This mucus has powerful amnestic properties, targets make an INTx5 roll at -20% or become disoriented due to sudden memory loss, being considered “Unaware” for the purposes of being attacked. They can repeat this INTx5 roll every turn, until they succeed or they are attacked. Even after succeeding, the victim suffers a -20% to all rolls for an hour. 

SANITY LOSS: 1/1D6

 

Corruption

The Yara-Ma-Yha-Who’s motivations for hunting humans are a mixture of recreational sport and reproductive urge. When it swallows a victim, the potent amnestics within their bodily fluids render them helpless as they are stuck inside a moist, black abyss with a inability to form even basic thoughts or recall the simplest memory. The Yara-Ma-Yha-Who keeps the victim inside their gut for approximately 24-hours, whilst drinking copious amounts of water. Somehow, the victim will not be suffocated during this traumatic process - perhaps its amnestic-mucus contains a heretofore unknown substance which sustains biological function.

After 24-hours of captivity, the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who will regurgitate the bewildered and weakened victim so that it may sleep. Particularly strong individuals may be able to escape during this brief reprieve, but the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who will attempt to hunt them down and swallow them again if it detects them fleeing. Some reports note particularly sadistic specimens deliberately allowing their prey to recover enough to escape, so that they may hunt them all over again. 

Each nightmarish day of digestion costs 1D6/1D20 SAN to the Unnatural. Every time a victim passes a Breaking Point due to this Sanity Loss, their body mutates and becomes more akin to the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who and at 0 SAN, the poor soul transforms into a Yara-Ma-Yha-Who. Even if a victim escapes before completing their metamorphosis, they would still be infected by Tsathoggua’s taint. They may even one day degenerate into worship of the Sleeper of N’kai.

Behaviour

The Yara-Ma-Yha-Who is most at home in heavily forested areas, like the lush rainforests of the upper reaches of the Northern Territory and Queensland. This is due to its impressive capacity for climbing and swinging through the treetops with its oversized sucker-tipped hands, and its penchant for ambushing its prey by jumping onto unsuspecting victims from above. On the flipside, the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who also has rather limited ground-based mobility, with its weak vestigial legs requiring it to clumsily stumble around using its arms to support itself, a mode of locomotion described by some witnesses as similar to the “waddle of a cockatoo”.

When it comes to hunting, the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who prefers unattended children as they are easiest to overpower and consume. However, the creature doesn’t strictly attack weakened targets and is quite happy to ambush isolated hikers, able to stuff even grown men into its salivating gullet.

Indeed, despite their preference for ambush tactics, Yara-Ma-Yha-Who are capable combatants. Prior to the introduction of firearms during the European conquest of the Australian continent, prospecting indigenous hunters of the degenerate creatures would need experienced fighters, well-armed with quality spears, woomeras and boomerangs, to have a hope of dispatching one. 

However, with the colonisation of Australia and the attempted genocide of many First Nations peoples, the oral history telling the true danger the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who has been lost. And while these perverted creatures have been pushed to the periphery of modern society, this means they once again disproportionately target rural populations of Aboriginal Australians. 

The isolation of disadvantaged rural communities, combined with their history of neglect from law enforcement, supplies the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who with ample hunting grounds for years to come.

Supplementary ESPER Pregens

 

Introduction

Mellonbread's ESPER is a fan-organisation for Delta Green - a private Australian corporation that secretly recruits psychic wizards, 'Talents', to fight the Mythos in the Land Down Under. As an Australian myself, I'm quite fond of ESPER and I'd like to run more scenarios using them.

Mellonbread already has a few pregenerated characters spread throughout the faction write-up and his scenarios, which are all very good. However, there was still four unused psychic powers in the faction write-up. So myself and two members of the N@TO Discord, Tophat and Grandini, created a pair of Talents that use those powers, which I've compiled them into this blogpost.

Enjoy! 

Zoey Smythe

Zoey was the sort to get bullied throughout school. Badly. But when some bitch tried to “prank her” by setting her hair on fire during school camp, Zoey lost it - telling her to go die in a hole. Surprisingly, her tormentor obeyed - throwing herself into a nearby drainage ditch, cracking her skull and breaking her collarbone in two places. It was the best day in Zoey's life.

Never one for direct confrontation, Zoey stumbled across a means to monetise her powers when her elderly grandmother was victimised by a Bangladeshi scam caller. The psychic started calling major Australian companies - hypnotising office workers into giving her the keys of the kingdom. She even had good enough OPSEC to avoid the cops after the money was transferred.

At least until she tried to pull the same trick on ESPER’s CEO, Alexander Cross. Unaffected by her magic, Alexander had ASIO contacts backtrace Zoey’s IP address. After tracking down the terrified fujoshi, he gave her two choices; go to prison for wire fraud or work for ESPER.

Zoey chose the latter.

ZOEY “i_am_u4ic” SMYTHE - Girlfailure and Psychic Phone-Scammer
STR 11, CON 9, DEX 13, INT 14, POW 15, CHA 9
HP 10, WP 15, SAN 60, BP 45, Anxiety Disorder (It’s easier over the phone)
SKILLS: Accounting 50%, Art (Forgery) 40%, Bureaucracy 50%, Computer Science 60%, Craft (Electrician) 40%, Craft (Locksmith) 40%, Craft (Microelectronics) 60%, Criminology 50%, HUMINT 50%, Law 40%, Search 60%, Science (Mathematics) 40%, SIGINT 40%
ATTACKS: High-Powered Flashlight (65%, Opposed DEXx5 or -20% on Rolls for D6 Turns)
Swung Flashlight (40%, D4)
BONDS: Alexander “Alex” Cross (ESPER Mentor) 9
Margaret Smythe (Sickly, Naïve Grandmother) 9
Animal Kingdom (Black Hat Hacker Ring) 9
MOTIVATIONS: Outsmarting the opposition.
Correcting stupid people.
Sticking up for the little guy (me).
Kicking up your feet.

HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION: The Talent must overcome the target in an opposed POW test. On a success, the Talent pays 8 WP and D4 SAN, and the target obeys any command given by the Talent for a single turn. Commanding a victim to commit murder, suicide, or some other awful act costs the Talent the same SAN as it costs the victim.

PSYCHIC HEALING: This ability causes injuries to swiftly heal. The target recovers 1D4 HP every turn for 1D4 turns. The Talent must spend 6 WP, and it costs the Talent, the subject, and all witnesses 1 SAN each.

Zoey looks like an unkempt basement dweller with a permanent Snapchat filter on their face; constant abuse of psychic healing fixes dermatological her issues, enriches her hair and whitens her teeth. In spite of her slovenly appearance, this nearly makes her idiosyncratically attractive.

Unfortunately magic can’t fix terrible fashion taste, so Zoey still insists on wearing bulky, long-sleeved clothing (adorned with food stains and anime characters) no matter the weather. Whenever ESPER's contracts force her to go somewhere in the Outback, she borrows her grandmother’s big straw hat and slathers on a comical amount of SPF 50+.

Beau Nicholson

Despite growing up poor in rural NSW, Nick was a real Renaissance Man in his youth. A talent for piano and a Chinese language degree let him travel across Oceania and Asia - living the high life through his artistic skill in Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo.

Unfortunately, an early diagnosis with a neuro-degenerative disease cut Nick’s travels short. Rather than seeking help, Nick spiralled into nihilistic hedonism and gambling - eventually collapsing in a hotel bathroom with no one to help him up. He only survived by a miracle - literally “willing” his cellphone into his hand so he could call for help. But soon after this bizarre event, he discovered his neurological disease gone into sudden remission.

Realising he had a new lease on life, Nick soon transformed into a true psychic con-artist by using his telekinesis to cheat at dice, roulette, pool and darts. ESPER discovered Nick from a police surveillance of an illegal gambling ring, who witnessed the 50-year-old cripple flee the premises, levitate a trash-can lid to block a thrown bottle and outrun a horde of enraged bikies.  

ESPER offered Nick a cushy consultancy gig, training for his psychic abilities and the chance to do some good in the world. He happily accepted.

BEAU “NICK” NICHOLSON - Debonair Bogan and Telekinetic Dice-Cheat

STR 13, CON 11, DEX 9, INT 11, POW 13, CHA 15 

HP 12, WP 13, SAN 52, BP 39, Alcoholism (Drink, fuck up, drink because you fucked up)

SKILLS: Alertness 50%, Art (Piano) 40%, Athletics 50%, Criminology 60%, Disguise 50%, Dodge 40%, Drive 50%, Firearms 40%, Foreign Language (Mandarin) 40%, HUMINT 70%, Law 20%, Melee Weapons 40%, Navigate 30%, Persuade 70%, Stealth 50%, Survival 30%, Unarmed Combat 50%

ATTACKS: Ornate Weighted Cane (40%, D8+1)

Over-Under Shotgun (60%, 2D8, 1/2 AP)

Ringed Fist (50%, D4+1)

BONDS: Joseph Krennel (ESPER Accounts Manager and Top Bloke) 15

Frankie Anna McDonald (Fellow Con-Artist) 15

Holly Weaving (Cougar Ladyfriend) 15

Lee Xianhong (Chinese Expat Antiquarian) 15

MOTIVATIONS: Keeping the good times rolling.

Doing it for the love of the game.

Seeing the looks on their faces.

Being generous.

TELEKINESIS: The Talent can move objects with their mind. This ability costs 1 SAN per round of use, and has several applications.

• The Talent can lift and move objects at cost of 1 WP per 1 kilogram, or twice that if they want to move them especially fast (i.e. cheating at dice, roulette, pool or darts costs 2 WP).
• For 5 WP, the Talent can strike a target telekinetically for D6 damage. The target must make a STR save or be knocked prone.
• The Talent can stop incoming kinetic damage if they are aware of the attack, at cost of 1 WP per point of damage, or 1 WP per percentage of lethality.

UNCONSCIOUS LEAD: At cost of 10 WP, the Talent can take two actions in a single combat round instead of the usual one. To the outside observer, they appear to have superhuman reflexes. This allows them to attack twice in a single round (or run up to 60m in a single round).

Suave and tan with rakishly styled black hair only showing a stylish hint of grey, Nick’s a real silver fox. His style is slightly outdated and gaudy, preferring linen suits and garish silk shirts to complement his alligator skin loafers. But he owns it - strutting about with the confidence of a man who knows he looks good and doesn’t give a damn about what’s currently in fashion. 

The ivory-handled cane he holds in his bejewelled right hand is now mostly decorative since his powers overcame the neurological disease that robbed him of his mobility. However, its heavy weight and iron tip make for a effective bludgeon when things get too hot at the blackjack table.