Unknown Armies Adept: Intravenomancy

 

“When you're sitting back in your rose pink Cadillac

Making bets on your Kentucky Derby days

I'll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon

And another girl to take my pain away”
Rolling Stones

INTRAVENOMANCY

A.K.A. Trackmarkers, Tuskegees, Faucis (Ω + 1)

Are you afraid of needles? You should be. They’re not just an instrument of steel, glass and polymer, but a sacred fetish of scientific progress. A symbol pregnant with magickal power. That which cures the same pestilence it wreaks, that spreads the same agony it wipes away with blissful torpor.

Forget guns. If you’re searching for a postmodern magic wand, look no further than a hypodermic syringe. It commands power no matter who holds it. In the gloved hands of a surgeon it is a sceptre of technocratic paternalism, a divine decree that “doctor knows best”. Yet when possessed by the unwashed masses, it morphs into something else. A terrible thing of contagion and degeneration. An implicit threat of being dragged into that sordid underclass, be it through addiction or disease.

THE FULL BOOT - Play Report

This is a play report of an Unknown Armies shotgun scenario, written by Mellonbread.

The LUMPEN SLEEPERS, a Bostonian occult neighbourhood watch, had gathered for late night drinks in Jenny's dive bar. It was nearly 1:30am, well past final call thanks to unchanged COVID-era closing hours. But they had something important to discuss.

Opera Night

This post is dedicated to Fee Fi Fo Fin's Belli Occulta campaign and the brave Friendlies of Y-Cell, delousing the United Kingdom one parish at a time.

Unknown Armies - Favourite Foods

Based on the series of the same name over on The Rogue's Wallet. I've always loved adding pure filigree to TTRPG characters, and their favourite meals is top of that list. Everyone's gotta eat.

D20 Fantasy - Kill All Druids

A response to Deus Ex Parabola's excellent essay over on Numbers Aren't Real. 

Calder Moore

Ever wonder why nature cultists forbidden from wearing metal go adventuring for fistfuls of gold? It's because of these assholes. The Honourable Guild of Respected Agrimancers. The Druid Mafia.

A cartel of weather wizards, shapeshifters, lay priests and lumpen proles who seek a total stranglehold over agricultural production. Starving entire cities by calling down droughts and flashfloods, installing awakened animal monarchs amicable to their interests, unleashing fungal blights and selling the cure - nothing is beyond the pale for these greenthumbed mafiosos. 

But say you're sick of it. The economic blockades. The price controls. The disappearances late at night. The gangland executions. The government that won't do anything to stop them. What could you do? 

Unknown Armies Pregens

After a few years of skirting the periphery, I've started getting into Unknown Armies. Without an active community for pickup games (the Delta Green fandom is spoiled rotten by N@TO), I'll need to be the one running the show if I want to play. That's fine by me - be the change you want to see in the world.

Unknown Armies Adept: Cadavaturgy

 

“And he meets me in the graveyard, the graveyard where they made my bed, 

Plants a white flower under cold stars, on the grave of the forgotten dead.”

Frank Turner

CADAVATURGY

A.K.A. Resurrectionists, Bodysnatchers, Reliquarians (Ω - 2)

Bodysnatching is an ancient art. We’ve been exhuming people and chopping them into little pieces since the time of Galen, be it for advancing the sciences, stealing funerary goods or venerating the dead. 

Resurrectionists take it a step further, obsessing over cadavers to the point they turn into walking memento mori. Their domain isn’t death itself, but what comes after. The decay of flesh and memories. The person-sized void left in the world. How it changes those who remain.

Unknown Armies Avatar: The Bodyguard

systemflaw

THE BODYGUARD

Attributes
In centuries past the egregore of the protector was a knight in shining armour, shielding a waifish maiden from the forces of evil. Now it’s a man in a dark suit, diving into the path of a bullet. Imagery changes, but the substance stays the same; the Bodyguard sacrifices himself to shield those he's charged to protect. 

Heliomancy Unnatural Phenomena

 

Unknown Armies adept schools sometimes have an associated list of random effects that might fire off if spellcasters overuse or abuse their magickal abilities. Friend of the blog, magnificentophat, is chipping away at making a list of unnatural phenomena for all the published casters. I thought it'd be worthwhile to throw my hat in the ring and assemble such a list for Heliomancy.

Unknown Armies Adept: Heliomancy

“Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity”

Richard III

HELIOMANCY

A.K.A. Sunspotters, Peelers, Backburners (Ω + 1)

There’s something transcendent about the pain of a sunburn. Sure it’s probably the constant irritation, swelling and peeling skin. Or maybe it's the reminder that the sun, the giver of all life on Earth, is also that which bestows burrowing cancer, inflicts droughts and strikes all those who behold it blind.