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Social security numbers are actually the composite factors of the universal constant. If you multiply all SSNs of all living persons at any given moment, you will find the Name of God in numerical form.

There is no such thing as judges - they are a mass hallucination created out of the collective morals of all peoples present in the courtroom.

Moth dust is actually an incredibly advanced surveillance nanotechnology. But the dust wasn't invented by moths.

In 1853, John Murray Spear attempted alongside an unnamed woman to birth a mechanical messiah called 'the New Motive Power', but as it did not "achieve the effect desired", he immediately dismantled it - but not because it didn't work.

Ghosts aren't real. Neither is death.

All encyclopedias are written by an illiterate man who lives in Switzerland.

Rumors have it that if you open any web browser at an exact UNIX time with four consecutive digits, you will gaze upon destiny. (The only person to open it at a time with five consecutive digits had their computer explode, which fatally injured them.)

Nobody is born with blood. Nobody's quite sure where it comes from, really. But it sure as hell ain't natural.

It is said that if you write an entire novel on your own flayed flesh, that it will immediately become the #1 bestseller. Sure explains a lot about how complete shit keeps ending up there, right?

People look upon the Time Cube and laugh and joke. But they do not realize that we are trapped in a delusion, and that only Gene Ray has truly glimpsed reality.

Maps often include streets and locales that don't actually exist. The cover story is that these are 'copyright traps' to catch violators. The truth is that maps are the only object to carry over continuity between timelines - and that cartographer are the only people with access to time machines.

Do you remember West America? No? Shame.
>>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AIIsfKGlV8
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My next campaign is going to be heavily influenced by this here book. Chaos Nazis - angels of memory - gun farmers - a mob boss that's a living tattoo - and more. It's just absolutely fantastic, and totally a recommendation for some Unknown Armies inspiration.
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>>28549699

Legends speak of an underground market called 'Glamis' that sells - for an exorbitant price - a literal day in the life of any star of Hollywood.

Romantic breakups area all instigated and coordinated by a shadowy division of the US government. Without them, all relationships are perfect.

If you find a discarded manuscript of a novel in the trash, do not throw it away. Grind it to dust and snort it, and you will be granted the energies poured into that novel.

Doctors don't actually understand digestion. Food goes into the body, ends up in the stomach, and then spontaneously disappears with no emission of energy or radiation. What happens to it?

BC and AD are the four first letters of the alphabet. This is no coincidence. The alphabet was invented before time was.

There's a common philosophical conundrum that posits that nothing exists if you're not actively looking at it. This conundrum is ridiculously obvious to solve - everybody know that nothing exists in the first place.

Rats. Rats rats rats. Rats rats rats rats rats. Fear the rats. Fear them.

The US government tests nuclear bombs in the desert. But it tests nuclear propaganda in population centers.

One second is actually longer than one minute. It's a complex acrobatics of the brain that makes time work the way it does - but with a little bit of effort and a hell of a lot of luck, you can experience time in its true form.

"Fake it 'til you make it" is the common motto of confidence. It's also the business practice of three of the top five construction companies.
>>
>>28549973
Can we have some more UA novel recommendations- Tim Powers aside?
For my part, I'd suggest: King Rat, also be Mieville; A Night in the Lonesome October, Zelazny; and the Nightside Series, Simon R. Green (Yes, I know Dresden files is considered the first and best of the modern urban fantasy/psychic detective books, but Green setting is much more UA to Butcher's WoD.)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfdEdE96En0
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>>28550451
Yeah, Butcher is not Unknown Armies appropriate at all. Gotta admit, it's not exactly the highest quality stuff either... but it's a guilty pleasure.

I haven't actually read King Rat yet. Is it more like Kraken, or Perdido Street Station? I liked Perdido Street Station, but greatly preferred his style in Kraken.
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I want to play an Avatar of the modern concept of the government conspiracy "Men In Black." Embody the modern conspiracy theory.

Any help?
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>>28550495

So you want to be "The Man".
You'll have to convince people there's nothing to see here, crystals aren't magic and the fluoride is just a way to improve dental health.
You can never admit something is wrong or ask for help, nor reveal your full name to anyone.
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>>28550494
Nothing wrong with guilty pleasures, I'm interested in tone rather than quality. Green is fairly atrocious but I love the mad, throwaway concepts.
King Rat is definitely more like Kraken. Urban culture meets weird myth, rather than fantasy world stuff. It was his first novel, though, so objectively it's probably not as good as either.
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>>28550495
The first step to any Avatar is identifying what ole it represents. Avatars are NOT simply tropes - they also embody a path, a lifestyle, a philosophy. The Masterless Man isn't just a cowboy ronin cool guy - he is the manifestation of men who have lost their purpose, and must find it again.

Your avatar is not a a character. They are an icon. There is a difference.
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>>28550547

Any ideas for abilities?
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>>28550581
Obviously cover-ups of all sorts. Obfuscation of the truth, of reality, of perception and of critical thought.

Basically - take the idea of 'cover-ups' and make it into a symbology and philosophy.
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>>28550581

Well, you're all about Control, Authority, Conformity and Compliance.
I guess you should have some ability to produce any kind of badge you need or something to make people listen to you as if you had the authority to speak.

I think you should also probably never be able to be an adept. You have an affinity for speaking to officials.
I'm trying to come up with something symbolic but falling short.
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>>28550451
Stephen King, but not the novels. The short stories. You'll have to decide for yourself which are worthy of UA or not, but things like "Paranoid: A Chant" definitely are.

http://tiranacalling.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/stephen-kings-paranoid-a-chant/

I can’t go out no more.

There’s a man by the door
in a raincoat
smoking a cigarette

But


I’ve put him in my diary
and the mailers are all lined up
on the bed, bloody in the glow
of the bar sign next door

He knows that if I die
(or even drop out of sight)
the diary goes and everyone knows
the CIA’s in Virginia

500 mailers bought from
500 drug counters each one different
and 500 notebooks
with 500 pages in everyone.

I am prepared.
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>>28550640
I think the idea of 'the Man' as an implacable representation of the status quo and oppressive system works well enough as a symbol.
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>>28550581

Maybe something that erases people from records if you kill them?

And some kind of memory wipe later on, but you can only make their memories dull and average.
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>>28550670
Not a memory wipe; a memory 'wash'. You just make them remember 'oh yeah, that was normal. Just the Man doing their jobs.'
>>
Is UA ever getting more books?
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please explain this gaem for someone who has never heard of it

is it fun

good mechanics

interesting setting

y/n pls
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>>28550686

Much better.

But there's gotta be more here. It's not quite complete, even if we collate everything.


Taboos: You cannot act for your own benefit. You cannot show mercy or spare anyone. You cannot pick a side, but must assure Conformity and Normalcy for all. You are a Servant, not a Master.

1-50% Every office, any badge
51-70% Killing them removes them from record, but you can't kill for personal reasons
71-90% Normalize Memory
91% ???
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>>28550754

It's an elegant system about the disorganized occult strangeness of the modern world.
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>>28550759

91% You cannot be killed by magic or supernatural effects?
A gunshot? Yeah. Bleeding out, hypothermia, everything works. But not magick.
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>>28550754
>please explain this gaem for someone who has never heard of it
A game of postmodern magick (yes, the k is necessary), conspiracies and humans dabbling in the strange secrets underlying our reality. You have mundanes living their lives ignorant of the reality they shape, deviants using an obsessive worldview to rip that reality apart ot do their thing, driven individuals channeling the mundane's common unconcious as a path to divine power and random odd horrors.

That's probably not a great pitch but those are some of the things that come to mind without sperging into details.

>good mechanics
Iffy. The sanity system's more in-depth than systems like CoC's and I think makes for a better story. Combat's ultra lethal which is kind of neat thematically but ther'es probably some wonkiness there and in other areas.

>interesting setting
Oh hell yes. The material's so fun to read when you've got factions like "a billionaire almost ascended to the closest thing to Godhood we have, failed and is using his money to find out why," "fast food workers manipulating magick to bring about a better future that they can't agree on what it is" and "Count St. Germain is fucking everywhere doing his own thing."

The rumor sections are cool fluff building and the writing builds up this strange world of strange people behind the scenes without falling into World of Darknesse's retarded approach.
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>>28550277

All of humanity can be traced back to a single woman and man 200 years ago. There were no humans before then.

All vapors are a form of spirit. Steam - nitrogen - smoke - they are all the souls of inanimate objects, released from their prisons.

The flow of money on the stock market follows the patterns of the breathing of the True President of the United States. Nobody knows which one causes which.

The lost city of Iram of the Pillars fell not to the wrath of God, but to the foolishness of man. Modern arcano-archaeology has discovered that it was devastated by a nuclear attack.

Farms do not grow vegetables nor livestock. They grow farmers.

In every city, there is one true Way at any given moment through that city. By traveling along the Way, you shall face no obstacles, go through no delays, and at the end shall come to the destination you needed, not the one you wanted.

The press is a fabrication devised by the Old World Order in order to combat the New World Order. They are losing territory to the New New World Order's blogosphere, a complex Otherspace derived out of the ramblings of madmen on the internet.

Respect used to be spelled entirely differently before the song by Aretha Franklin. Nobody's sure why the word was magicked into the spelling it has today. But the purpose is, you guessed it, sinister.

Sugar and cocaine share 50% of their ingredients. Sugar and semen share 99%.

If you ever see the number 313, whisper - but do not speak - the name 'Walker'. If you do not, you will suffer the wrath of Runner.

Laws were invented in 1625 by King Solomon. I don't know what crackpot theories you believe in if you think otherwise.

Underneath every cobblestone in Philadelphia there is a single letter. If you combine all of these letters, you will find the complete occult notes of Benjamin Franklin and his search for immortality through lightning.

Organs - the instrument - have more in common with organs - the body part - than you think.
>>
Delta Green and UA fight for my favorite game of all time spot.

Don't they share authors?
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>>28550935
Looks like it. John Tynes and Greg Stolze both worked on Delta Green and created UA.
>>
>>28550935
>>28550967
Cross over time?
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>>28550967

Glorious. I can't wait for the new DG book to come out.

Is UA ever getting more books?
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>>28551021

In DG, there's a gang known as The Fate that represent the "occult underground."
>>
Before discovering fire, humans used to fear the Light. Most people still can't bear to look at the Sun. Those who do go blind from fear.

Nobody really knows what cats look like or remembers how they got here.

If you bury a body where two roads cross their ghost will haunt your dreams forever.

Evolution is a lie, the first signs of life were found in the ruins of Ancient Mesopotamia, some 5000 years ago. The ruins are far older.

Humans are born without teeth. Children's bodies are strong and fight them off for a time, but in adults they burrow into your brain. Never look behind a dentist's mask while they operate.

There are scattered paintings, pictures and recollection of a specific type of house on almost every street. Every rendition since the Carter administration has someone staring out the window at the viewer.

People are often spooked by noises late at night while they're in bed. When it's silent, it means all is set.
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>>28551027
>Is UA ever getting more books?
I'd guess its unlikely but I haven't been looking for UA news.

Tough there's an unfinished St. Cecil book out there I think; have to see if i can find that again.
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>>28551021

Sorcery is bad news in Call of Cthulhu. DG would hunt down every Adept they could find.

Come to think of it, Stephen Alzis could very well be an Avatar.
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>>28551062
Why would they just abandon Unknown Armies like that? WHY?
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>>28551046

Every time 4chan makes national news, it's secret masters come one step closer to cutting down the oldest tree on Earth.

Captcha isn't trying to communicate with you, nor does anyone choose to implement it. Those who buy "4chan passes" are never heard from again.

>>28551082
Unprofitable, rights issues, bored?
Maybe they got burned out?
Maybe there's only so much insanity you can write before going the way of Kirkbride/
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>>28551082
Because sooner or later the well goes dry and you move onto things that pay. UA isn't exactly an RPG juggernaut.

Found the St. Cecil thing; "Thin Black Line" is the title, turns out its non-canonical and 24 pages long. Looks like its free on SJGame's site, don't care neough to create and account and download it though.
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>>28551027
They were working on a contest to get some fan-made material published, but various copyright laws and other legal issues made it a no-go. I think they understand that there's an interest in seeing more UA. Most fans would love an 'updated' core book. Not necessarily a new edition, but just pushing the setting into the present and out of the early 2000's.
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>>28551149
Hopefully with more stuff about the internet. Seriously, there's gotta be internetomancers somewhere out there.
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>>28551149

Delta Green is getting a new core soon that updates the setting and divorces the mechanics from CoC. Wouldn't be surprised if it heavily cribs from the UA system.
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>>28551169

M00t is like some weird combo of Videomancer and Cleomancer.
Good trolling gives him minor boosts, doing something that bleeds into IRL is a moderate and bullying a teen to kill themselves is a Major.
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>>28551190
So what would the chanomancy formula spells be? What philosophical worldview powers it? I don't think "lelz max trollingz" counts as a worldview.
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>>28551149
Why wait for a new book when you can use the UA site http://ua.johntynes.com/ ? With such useful material like "The Tropamancer" and "The Sassy (Black) Woman?"
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>>28551210
"give as much misery back to the world as it gave to you"
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>>28551210

"Everything is a fetish"
or
something more profound on the nature of honesty when divorced from accountability.
Maybe it's just as simple as "Deep down, we are all shit."
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>>28551217
I can and have. I've even published on there.

But it's not the same as a new book and you know it.
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>>28551226
>>28551230

I think these could be connected pretty well. We put on a mask in the real world, pretending that things are just, that life is good - but we all know that to be false. Society forces us to try to act kind and generous, but the real world is anything but. Only through anonymity and the internet can the true, nameless, merciless nature of the world be expressed. We can exact vengeance for the crimes of the world, we can balance the scales in our favor. In society, we think that good and evil balance. This is false. Only misery can equal misery.
>>
had an idea for an UA game where the PCs had all made a deal with "the devil." Whether he was the real deal, a highly attuned avatar of The Merchant or something else, it doesn't matter. Thing is he gave each of them something in exchange for a favor down the line.

Now, a few years later, he's come calling. They all meet in an abandoned gas station outside of Vegas. He shows up, with the pitch: do this thing for me, and you are free.

Had some ideas like He always appears from somewhere associated with running water and underground. They were being sent to deal with an avatar of The Gambler or something. At chargen I'd ask "what'd you make a deal for?" and give the a skill, artifact or ??? about that.

>>28551210
Not your personal army
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>>28551230
>>28551210
>>28551283
>>28551293

Solipsism.
"The Anonymous" live in their own universe, divorced from reality and the needs of their own bodies. They shun society, are incapable of empathy or of entertaining thoughts that do not mesh with their own world view, while disguising this failing as "autism".
They lose all charges when they are reasonable or when their true identity is discovered.
>>
>>28551293
Very interesting. One-shot or campaign?
>>
>>28551295
>"They shun society, are incapable of... entertaining thoughts that do not mesh with their own world view"

Isn't that every adept ever?
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>>28551316
Uhhhh, not sure. Probably closer to one-shot if I had to choose. There's a very focused goal (Find the specified Dude and do Something to him) and after that, succeed or fail, the story's done.

I tprobably wouldn't fit quite in the UA setting, just steal from it wholesale. I just really like the Street level rumors and their atmosphere of vaguely defined weirdness. Global and Cosmic define things a little too much. Or something.
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>>28551295
>when their true identity is discovered

I'm now imagining anons doxxing each other as a form of combat, a la mid-2008 ED.
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>>28551343
That's how I'm approaching my campaign. Liberal inspiration from the UA setting, but not holding myself to its lore entirely. I think everyone does that, honestly.
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>>28551330


Sure, but the whole point of the Anon is the conflict. Think about it, /a/, /mu/ , /v/ all reputed to be shitholes that *hate* the thing they're about. Even on the same board we hate each other and our slightly different hobbies.
It's like Dipsomancers if they battled over what type and brand of booze was best.
Our power lies in the conflict and difference.

>>28551353
I sort of imagine all the powers would be internet related.
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>>28551295
avatar of anon
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>>28551390
Oh, of course. I meant IRL.

Even a mage has to deal with real-world consequences at some point, and nothing gets more real-world than getting doxxed.

Also:
>Avatar of the Oldfag/Newfag

Make it happen, /tg/.
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>>28551420

>you've been doxxed
>can't use internet
>Helplessness roll
>>
>>28551390
Hm, I see. As Dan Harmon called it, we have a "consuming by complaining" culture here on 4chan. That's an interesting way to look at it - the critic who loves the work they savage more than anyone. Tearing things apart as a form of ritual, as a sacred rite - and leaving the reconstruction to other people.

The works you love are shit. People are bastards. The world is a hellhole. It's our job to spread that message - who gives a fuck what the message ultimately means.
>>
>>28551068
>Come to think of it, Stephen Alzis could very well be an Avatar.

Alizis is probably Saint Germaine, or maybe they just share drycleaners.
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>>28550839
Organs the body part are a fairly diverse set of Things.

Are you supposed to try when you do these?
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>>28551440

Think of it as a form of virgin sacrifice, you destroy that which is pure before the world corrupts it.
The power lies in the exchange of the object of your love with the object of your desire.
>>
>>28551210
there's an Anonymancy or something like it on the UA website.
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>>28551482
Are they really that diverse?

And those were all inspired by my captcha I kept rerolling.
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>>28551210
there needs to be something like an avatar or something what turns you into a wizard if you are still a virgin by 30. Is there an avatar of a straight up Merlin style wizard? Channels based around being a cryptic asshole and pretending you knew how stuff would turn out all along . Symbols of the wizard includes wands, beards, starstudded robes and a staff.
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>>28551482
>Are you supposed to try when you do these?
In theory, yeah. But mostly rumors are an opportunity for people to spew too many words.
>>
>>28551494
http://ua.johntynes.com/content_comments.php?id=3151_0_3_0_C1

With the taboos of >>28551295 , and some much less stupid formula spells, this has potential.
>>
>there are people in the same galactic supercluster as you right now that thing the walls aren't caving in on us
>>
>>28551379
Yeah, the fluff is neat but its a lot of disparate shit to either pull together or ignore to focus on a specific theme or setting.

There was a brief discussion in another UA thread about how Street>Global and Cosmic. That feels a little relevant.
>>
>>28551696

I throw together chunks of UA, World of Darkness, and Delta Green for my games.
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>>28551696
Yeah, I feel like street level is way more fun. The mystery and weirdness of UA is a lot more prevalent in street-level than other levels, and I feel like that's the coolest part of UA.

With my street level campaign I'm working on (for newbies) I'm going for Pulp Fiction meets Kraken style weirdness.
>>
How can I play a Thanatomancer without being either useless or evil?
>>
>>28551726
>The mystery and weirdness of UA is a lot more prevalent in street-level than other levels, and I feel like that's the coolest part of UA.

Same here. You get that combination of real-world familiarity with UA's weirdness to create an uncanny valley of reality. Cosmic and Global rumors are fun to read but they seem to need more specific info/familiarity with the UA reality.

I haven't run or played a game yet but if I do, I'm probably just going to use avatars and adepts as material for creating GMCs to throw against street-level scrubs who are dipping their toes into the underground.

Like a Tokyo game where I there's a salaryman who's more than he seems and if fucked with, is trouble. I'll just grab the boozehound rules and go from there.

Or something. I've been gathering charges for dispomancy tonight so I'm probably missing something here.
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>>28553408
Yeah. It's a bit hard to find ways to get multiple street-level characters involved in the same adventure, though... I'm re-reading Kraken right now for some inspiration.

Anyone got any tips? More books to check out, perhaps?
>>
UA is great. Wish I could actually find people IRL who knew about it/were interested. Too bad the johntynes site hasn't been updated in years.
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>>28556811
Yeah. It keeps getting submissions at least.
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>>28550640
You can effortlessly find publicly available information on any individual, no matter how obscure or buried it may be. You're never put on hold, redirected to the wrong person, or given a dead link. Waiting periods magically shorten, people put you at the top of their lists. You don't struggle with the system because you are the system.
>>
>>28550451
Not books, but...

Baccano and Durarara are quite good inspirations.
>>
>>28550451
The Dirk Gently series is not as fantasy-centric as these other examples, but still does a great job of being a world founded upon impossible connections and broad conspiracies and (in the second book) mystical underpinnings.
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>>28557340
But they are books aswell... I love the feel of urban legends and rumor mongering in the first few episodes of Durarara!!! So many crazy things going on in sibuja which filters down to street level, slightly twisted in the telling.
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>>28558003
Ah, I forgot they started as light novels and not manga. My bad.
>>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0pBXHugmLM
>>
>There is no such thing as judges - they are a mass hallucination created out of the collective morals of all peoples present in the courtroom.
Except for Judge Judy. She's real, and far more alien than anything derived from our collective subconscious.

Re:4chan adept school - there have been a number of attempts on the UA site, most of them are really bad. Any attempt to make one usually ends up as horrible meme garbage.
>>
>>28558176
A 4chan adept school is probably best worked into a larger revamp of Infomancy/Videomancy - which are one and the same these days.
>>
>>28558003
>Sibuja

You strange Spanish man.
>>
>>28558332

or Cryptomancy, at least for denizens of the more advice-oriented boards.
>>
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Have you ever read up on how cell phones work? Fractal antennas, pulsed microwaves, all the really smart stuff is in the cell tower, it's so useful, everybody carries one around, always on. Yeah, it's all bullshit.

The aliens controlling world powers and slowly terraforming the earth to their requirements have unleashed an army of concealed agents unto mankind. Each cell phone contains an entity with hypnotic powers to accelerate the evolution of a slave race with a hive mind.

Think about it. But don't discuss it on Facebook or Twitter.
>>
>>28556220

Street Level games are deceptively hard to set up and one of the reasons why the game didn't take off as well as it should have imho - in hindsight it's obvious why of course.

Here's this wonderful setting, lovely crunch, fascinating fluff.

Now ignore all that, because you can't use ANY of it to create a street level game, not the hook, not PC Chargen, not why they're hanging together, none of it.

So my advice to GM trying to run a first time UA game is this: If you want to run a UA game, start at Global Level, it's where you want to go and what you really want to run.

My advice to GMs who want to run a Street Level UA game however is this: Create a Sitcom. Not one of those "odd couple" type ones but the "here is this fucked up workplace with this wacky cast of character" - think Community or Scrubs or The Office - and then start building episode plots around subtle Occult Underground plot hooks, shit like the freak visting the store or an unstoppable shoplifter or some really weird regular customers who regularly buy some weird combination of items, like an anhilomancer who comes in every day before valentines day to bulk order lighter fluid and picture frames.
>>
Which powers would an Edgymancer have?
Could there be an Avatar of the Fedora?
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>>28560400
>Could there be an Avatar of the Fedora?
There's a cabal working to ascend The Nice Guy to the Clergy and simultaneously oust that slut the Naked Goddess.
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>>28550663
>Stephen King
Also his story N. with some numbers being good and others bad and the stone having to be the right number and not the wrong one and too much bad numbers will let them through.
>>
>>28559964
>My advice to GMs who want to run a Street Level UA game however is this: Create a Sitcom. Not one of those "odd couple" type ones but the "here is this fucked up workplace with this wacky cast of character" - think Community or Scrubs or The Office - and then start building episode plots around subtle Occult Underground plot hooks, shit like the freak visting the store or an unstoppable shoplifter or some really weird regular customers who regularly buy some weird combination of items, like an anhilomancer who comes in every day before valentines day to bulk order lighter fluid and picture frames.
This is brilliant. I love your brain, man. Mind if I borrow it? I'll give it back when I'm done! Scout's honor.
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>>28559964
That makes me want to combine Always Sunny with UA.
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>>28562079
Yes?
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>>28559964
Oh man a thrfst shop would be perfect for this.
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waht is the best UK Oneshot I could run to try the setting?
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>>28551118
>Every time 4chan makes national news, it's secret masters come one step closer to cutting down the oldest tree on Earth.
Pic related.
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>>28559964
Dude, that sitcom set-up is the perfect inspiration I needed. Thanks.

And I think I disagree a teensy bit. While I like the fluff, the hook, the world, I also like the sense of horrible discovery and realization that UA has, and just starting off all magick'd is not 'transcendence', a major part of the game. A huge aspect of UA is the decision to keep going, to delve into madness, to do things you probably shouldn't.

But I do agree that a GM shouldn't 'put off' the good parts of the game; nor should they jump straight into it, though. A first time UA game should start at street level, but swiftly descend into much nuttier shit. After the first 'adventure', the door to global level should be open - and it should be the PC's decision to follow through.

Because remember - in UA, you did it.
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>>28550451
American Gods and Kafka by the Shore (or any magical realism book from Murakami) offhand. Also go hunting for urban legends.
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>>28559964
I like this sitcom idea. What are some more hooks we can get going, ones that are good for sessions?

>Unstoppable shoplifter
>Freak visits the store
>Weird regulars who buy unsettling or freaky combinations of items
>An older German gentleman or something, who always shows up before weird events
>A guild of shifty hobos who meet in the alley behind the store and are always conspiring
>A regular who always talks about what's in the news - from tomorrow
>OOParts keep showing up on your store's shelves; is someone playing a trick, or is there something about your store?
>A regular trounces a group of hooligan thieves in less than a second with what was clearly supernaturally skilled martial arts
>A regular dies outside the store, and everyone witnesses it. When they turn around then look back the body is gone
>The ice machine keeps making ice sculptures instead of ice cubes. Every time it does a mysterious wealthy customer buys all the ice in the store
>All electronics cease to work in a regular customer's presence. You sometimes notice him sneakily making "phone" calls on a bulky clockwork machine
>After you get a visitor from corporate, your store starts offering supernaturally weird discounts. "Buy two and get your sense of naivete back free!" Nobody in your group put up the signs.
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Did some brainstorming on that devil/vegas game today. The idea is that the "Devil" is a dude that makes deals and some time ago he made a deal with an entropomancer. The chaos mage either bailed on the deal or cheated and ran to Not-Vegas, a city in a desert designed by a mad, occult-minded architect. Though the city was never finished according to plan its strange streets and towers hold enough mojo to keep the Devil from entering. The mage knows this and he's hiding in the city, planning one big Something for a lot of Power.

The Devil Figure calls the PCs up for their favor. Find the chaos mage, confront him and take back the gift. Along the way they'd probably encounter mafiosos, desperate gamblers, an Elvis-impersonating preacher who knows the game and some other weirdness.

I'd probably during chargen ask everyone "so what did you ask for?" and give them skills or artifacts or just mad stacks of cash.
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>>28565950
This actually sounds seriously slick. I recommend looking into the twisted urban legends and history of Las Vegas and just twisting it around for "Lost Vegas".

Also, Elvis-impersonator Preacher sounds fantastic. Maybe a Church of Elvis?
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>>28566011
Thanks, I was also thinking of actually finishing Last Call for ideas too. But yeah, taking a map of Vegas and trying to see whch streets can be connected to form a circle of runes would be a fun player handout.

>Maybe a Church of Elvis?
Ha, that could be weird enough to work. Maybe either that or "disgraced ex-St. Cecilite who won't leave the fight."
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>>28550839
MORE.
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>>28550451
John Dies at the End might lean a little bit far on the supernatural scale but ever since I read it I've been dying to play a Narco Alchemist who manufactures Soy Sauce
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>>28550839
>All vapors are a form of spirit.
>Steam

More than 98% of all electrical generation on the planet uses steam as a working fluid. Our entire energy infrastructure runs on tortured animistic spirits.
So the whole green energy, save the planet thing? A whole lot more literal than you might think.
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>>28550277
I need more of this
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>>28550839
>>28566240
>>28566686

Number stations are litanies of logarithms, choruses of calculations, devoted to an unseeing and unthinking higher exponential power that defines the equations of the universe. Why pray to an uncaring and unintelligent god? Ask the number stations.

The four stages of attaining the magnum opus are nigredo - albedo - citrinitas - and rubedo. Carolus Linnaeus identified four major races - Europeanus which he labeled the white race, Asiaticus, the yellow race, Americanus, the red race, and Africanus, the black race. You can reach your own conclusions.

Excalibur was unknowingly melted down in WWII to be used for war materials. Somewhere out there is a bullet that never fails to reach its target, and a pistol whose owner cannot be killed.

Antarctica is the largest desert on the surface of Earth. However, the largest desert anywhere on Earth lies 500 miles beneath London.

September, October, November, December - these are the only months left from an alternate timeline. Do not be fooled by the history book's lies.

Artists don't go mad. They are driven mad, by a government bureau devoted to ensuring that no artists discover the truths that Da Vinci did ever again.

Everyone has a first love. But not many realize that everyone's first love is the same love, the same person, for each and every one.

Seven colors - seven continents - seven seas - seven days - seven cervical vertebrae - seven denominations of the American Protestant church. Seven is a very lucky number - but it ain't lucky for us.

The Dei Lucrii mentioned by the Christian apologist Arnobius 'preside over the pursuit of profits, which come most of the time from base sources and always at the expense of others" - but they are no gods. They are far, far worse.

Adolph Sax almost died at 2, 6, 9, 11, 14, 19, and 23 years old from various accidents and maladies. At 29 years old, he invented the saxophone. Someone really didn't want the sax invented - and for good reason.
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>>28567096
>Adolph Sax almost died at 2, 6, 9, 11, 14, 19, and 23 years old from various accidents and maladies. At 29 years old, he invented the saxophone. Someone really didn't want the sax invented - and for good reason.
Oh... oh, man. Oh shit. This, right here, managed to get goosebumps from me. Props, man.
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>>28567096
MORE

Have a creepy photo
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>>28570450
I'm not that anon, but I'll try my hand at a few.

You ever see this "turned your loved ones into diamond" gig? You have the corpse burnt, they take the ashes and produce an artificial diamond. From the carbon, presumably. That ain't no diam ond, though, real or fake; and it's definitely not made with your loved ones ashes. I don't even want to know what they need all that "essential dust" for.
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>>28549699
Is the Adjustment Bureau considered UA enough?
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>>28570607
Digital clocks are an effort to wipe out the older generation of mechanomancers. Nobody's got those old cog and sprocket"grandfather" clocks any more.

Obsession can be a dangerous thing; you know it, I know it, the whole underground knows it. Lately, I've noticed this trend, people obsessing voer times and the like. I heard good word that some of those who are consumed with their obsession, are starting to learn how to muck around with the universe. You guys better prepare yourselves for chronomancers.
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Be careful if you're the recipient of "abstinence only education". Especially be careful of these "pledge" or "promise" rings. Taking the pledge and wearing the ring ain't just a way to say you're not having sex 'til marriage; it's a ritual that'll stop you from ever being able to manifest any sort of mojo. The big guys in charge of this project are trying to limit the number of those who have the potential; why? That's a good question. Ain't got no answer for you, though.
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>>28570607
Do some more ! Have another creepy photograph
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>>28571322
Check out >>>/x/13771614
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>>28571322
I can't sleep any more. They're going to get me. You ever hear about these people, passing away "peacefully" in their sleep? It's anything but peaceful, let me tell you. I'd rather drink an arsenic cocktail than go through that hell.
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>>28551210
It's all a joke.
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>>28567096
>>28570450

Never listen to a magnetic tape that has been left out in the sun - you don't want to hear what the sun has to say.

In 1917, when Scott's Hut was dug out of Antarctica's ice, some expeditioners took artifacts as souvenirs home with them. These artifacts have seen the secrets of Terra Australis - and they hold tremendous power as a result.

Everyone knows their alphabet. But do you know your betabet?

The swirling shapes at the bottom of your drinks are not just light and shadow - they are the muses of aqua vitae, imbuing your life with, well, life. Dipsomancers speak of them reverently. You would be wise to do the same.

There are some very rare and very old markets in the United States that accept many more things than just money. Simply carve a star into your right hand, and you can trade in much more valuable currencies than cash...

The universe lies in a precarious balance of sames yet opposites. Up has its down; life its death; you your doppelganger; Earth its Antichthon. Look in your life for your sames yet opposites - and pray these opposites do not meet.

The North and South Poles are fonts of pure alchemic power, enough to fuel any transmutation you could imagine. The catch? You need to use both ends at once.

Coleridge's story "Kubla Khan" was not inspired by a dream of Xanadu - he actually was from Xanadu. And so was the person from Porlock.

A deja vu is a wrinkle in time caused by the actions of time travel. If two people in the same area ever feel deja vu at the same time... the consequences will be disastrous.

Orgasms cure migraines because the body's release of orgone counteracts the government's hold on your brain. Good advice - even if it's wrong, it gets you some nooky.

All rivers come from the same source. Walk along any river, and its spirits and guardians will beguile you from your path - but walk blind and deaf, guided only by touch, and you shall find the waters of life at any river's source.
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>>28571322
Don't trust cell phones. Not because of the cancer-thing, not because of the NSA snooping on you; PRISM is hardly about gathering information on people. Sure, they do that, ostensibly, but you don't need to be worried about them finding out your sexting history or stupid shit like that. They're listening for key words, and not just things like "bomb". They're making a registry of us 'mancers. Some people say it's to black bag us, because we're such a big threat, but others are telling me that you might just be able to land a cushy job, if you've got the right attitude and 'talents'.

Personally, I'm going top dye my skin a certain shade of blue. Let's see them catch me then, heh.
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>>28571568
Ah, the shade of blue that's said to interfere with Their radio emissions? Isn't that the shade They paint the sky sometimes to keep out the celestial messages?
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>>28571760
Yup. Same shade. I figure if I dye my skin with it, I'll basically be invisible.
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If you listen hard, and I mean reeeeeeally hard... you'll notice every sound you can hear at any exact moment in time syncs up perfectly. Not only that, but they sync up into a voice. You never noticed? Good. Because trust me, you don't want to hear what it says.
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What are your guys' favorite reoccurring motifs and themes? For instance, I like to have themes of "choice" - for example, I give my players forks in the road, or force them into kill-or-be-killed situations, or give them an extremely limited amount of time to make an important decision ("Do we trust this girl? We have to decide now - they're about to attack!")

I also like including lots of two-faced things (masks, facades, etc.), homeless and transients, birds, and trespassing and urban exploration.

What do you guys use?
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Purple doesnt exist as we all know - it s a fabrication made by the brain. But few know that the mechanisms to see purple were selectively bred for... and nobody knows why.
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>>28572977
Cats always seem to reappear for me.
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>>28574769
How else were we supposed to defend ourselves against the purple people eaters?
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lemme give this a go.

Every payphone in the continental United States is watched over by one operator. The same goes for the UK, mainland Europe and other landmasses with enough payphones. But you shouldn't worry about those. You should worry about the places that don't have enough payphones to warrant their own operator. Their methods of operation are wholly more sinister.

The Japanese have developed the entire manga/anime aesthetic because of a certain reason. Ever wondered why they draw everything with big eyes, small mouth and pointy chins? They can see the true forms of mankind.

Red ink did not exist before the Catholic Inquisition. Now recall that only the Pope can wear red shoes, that red is associated by alchemists with the philosopher's stone and that red is the colour attributed to the Devil. Red ink came into existence for a reason. I cannot tell you what it is, but it has to do with the Church, the Devil and the Secret to Immortality.

Contrary to common sense, cutting out someone's tongue does not make them mute. It simply allows them to speak in an older, more primal language.

Ever wondered why petrol stations almost always have a fast food restaurant? It's certainly not to appease hungers, the little station supermarket's there for that. Each station is a font of pyrokinetic power, and the fast food chains are vying for their control.

(not mine, but its awesome) Coke vs Pepsi is just another front in the war of Red vs Blue.

I'll post some more if anyone likes these.
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>>28576128
We can't, that's why there's no longer purple people (Homo Porpyrii).
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>>28576702
>Contrary to common sense, cutting out someone's tongue does not make them mute. It simply allows them to speak in an older, more primal language.
This is pretty cool, I'll have to use it some time!
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>>28576702
>Red ink did not exist before the Catholic Inquisition. Now recall that only the Pope can wear red shoes, that red is associated by alchemists with the philosopher's stone and that red is the colour attributed to the Devil. Red ink came into existence for a reason. I cannot tell you what it is, but it has to do with the Church, the Devil and the Secret to Immortality.
This is classic. Very nicely done. The other ones are good, too.
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>>28576702

Why are supermarkets called SUPERmarkets? the prefix usually implies magical or paranormal powers beyond the simple reach of humanity. And supermarkets don't have any of that. Do they?

There is no historical precedence for a lit evergreen functioning as a Christmas tree before Martin Luther. The Catholics instead, used a Nativity scene. It is a fact that in early cultures from around the world, Norse, Egyptian, Chinese, evergreens were associated with longevity and warding powers against demonic forces. The Protestants know something the Catholics do not.

(Sorry if these are a bit religiously themed btw. Also, all of these religious ones are based on fact)

A Bible was published recently, simply called the Message. It is written in a vastly different meter to other Bibles, based upon a translation of the Hebrew Torah by a priest who was also a poet. He did not complete this translation faithfully, and it is said that if one was to actually translate the Torah and compared it to this Bible, one would find the true message of the Message.

Unbeknownst to most, Secrets are a traded currency, listed on most stock exchanges and able to be traded fro in most Currency Exchanges. Exactly where they're listed or how they're traded is, as you might think, a secret.

There is drainage gate or a manhole cover on every street in the first world. Not all of them connect to the sewage system.

It is scientific fact that the sands of the Sahara are shifting due to wind, and are consistently shifting in one general direction. What scientists do not know is that the sand is doing so under orders.

Green Men, with foliage for faces are a present element in many of the UK and Ireland's churches. Their origin is rumored to be pagan. It is not. It is in fact alien. After all, where do you think all the trees came from?
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bump. needs moar rumour
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>>28577220
Only eat processed foods. Natural foods have been contaminated since the 60s. For God's sake, never eat anything raw.

Bitcoins aren't a currency, they're shares in a corporation that doesn't exactly exist in this reality.

If you plant a seed in a corpse you can bottle a soul in a tree. God help you if the soul manages to possess the tree.

You can never go wrong with a little peanut butter on a BLT.
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>>28577563
>Only eat processed foods. Natural foods have been contaminated since the 60s. For God's sake, never eat anything raw.
Especially not potatoes. Look what happened to them. The famine wasn't caused by blight destroying the potatoes, it was caused by the sudden and total understanding of just how sinister that root vegetable is.
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>>28576758
It sounds like some pure Sovereign Citizen shit right there. Which by the way, there's UA material there with all the babbling about the Magna Carta and strawmen and joinders.
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Most people agree that the Devil has sulphuric qualities. Sulphur was first discovered by the ancient Chinese around 2000BC. And they had just about the longest lasting empire of that period. See where I'm going with this?

Now here's a fact for you. Monsanto and other food megacorps are pushing for international use of modern fertiliser, insecticide and pesticide. Fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides that all have sulphur as a primary ingredient. That's the only reason simple food corps are so powerful. They've been liasing with the devil.
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>>28578183
>Monsanto
Monsanto has discovered the devil gene in 1999 and has abandoned all sulfur based contagion of the biosphere since the 2008 seed rollout. The oil cartel and fertilizer industry however still insist on sulfuric vectors. Europe is still all sulfur based.
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So how're the Sleepers and TNI books?
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Ok I know nothing about this game but it sounds like a ton of fun
How rigid is the character creation system? Is it as simple as "if its somewhat occult you can roll with it"?

Are the players supernatural beings themselves or are they humans with guns/magic? Or a mix of both?

How does a campaign start? I get that it could probably be about any kind of conspiracy or adventure (after reading many of the rumours posted in this thread)
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>>28578417
>How rigid is the character creation system? Is it as simple as "if its somewhat occult you can roll with it"?
Its a point-buy sort of thing; you get X points to spend on stats, Y to spend on skills, some skills you get for free at a base amount etc. There's no gear or spending money. The book seems to assume you'll be running with the core setting and assumptions with magick being sort of rare/hard to get. Street level characters for example are likely to maybe have some sort of occult knowledge skill but not actual rituals or an adept school. Sure you can be an adept/avatar but you're not going to really ahve the points to make it work.

>Are the players supernatural beings themselves or are they humans with guns/magic? Or a mix of both?
There's three rough character "types:" mundanes, adepts and avatars. Mundanes are you and me; we may or may not know about the occult underground, we may or may not know how to pull of a ritual but we don't have the mojo. We're also not obsessed freaks with a broken view of reality but I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Adepts are your magicky types. There are different Schools of magick, all which require you to break down your perceptions and assumptions of how the universe is and reshape them along a specific obession of sort. Examples include Plutomancy (money), Dipsomancy (alcohol) and Pornomancy (ritual sex acts based on an Ascended porn star). You perform actions related to your school's worldview for "charges" and spend those charges to do magic. You have taboos that if you violate them, you lose all your charges. I can do a writeup of a couple schools to give an idea; they're all distinct.

Then there's Avatars. See in the UA setting there is no God or Heaven. There's the Statosphere and the Invisible Clergy, ascended archetypes of our common unconcious. These are entities like The Mother, The Demagogue, The MVP.
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>>28578604
I'm typing too many words here but I can't stop!

Anyways, Avatars are people who are channeling a specific archetype. An avatar of the Executioner for example, embodies that killer at the command of a leader: the hangman, the man wit the hood and axe. By channeling the Executioner, the avatar becomes an unstoppable killer; at higher levels, nothing stops him from finding and swinging at a target. Nothing. Avatars have taboos too; breaking them distances them from their archetype and saps their power. An Executioner who kills on his own, without a master's sanction is weak.

>How does a campaign start? I get that it could probably be about any kind of conspiracy or adventure (after reading many of the rumours posted in this thread)
The book has several game starts depending on what level of play you're doing (Street, Global and Cosmic).

Street is mostly mundanes just getting exposed to the occult. The rumor stuff really comes in play here as you start to find out just how weird reality really is in the corners.

Global is where adepts and avatars really show up. You're forming cabals, making conspiracies and jockeying for power.

Cosmic is the big leagues. You're high-level magick types who are probably plotting to snag a major charge (charges come in minor, significant and major. A Personamancer gets a minor by pretending to be somebody else for a couple hours; it can be in front of a mirror. THey get a major by convincing a crowd of a million-plus that they're somebody else, like say the President). Or they're trying to ascend to the Clergy as a new Archetype (trying to create The Cyborg perhaps?) or to oust an old one with their interpretation. At this level, you are shaping the world.
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http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/13_33_freemason_sig.htm
This website may be relevant. I'm sure a savvy person could get all sorts of campaign fodder from here.
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>>28578417
>How rigid is the character creation system? Is it as simple as "if its somewhat occult you can roll with it"?
The game is pretty damn flexible with char gen. It lets you make up your own skills. That said, it views the occult in a fairly specific way. Magical traditions descended from stuff that began 200 or even 100 years ago (most of the stuff you see on /x/) don't work any more, because they're not rooted in the current times, so to speak. They did work then, but now it's all about the post-modern magick. The other guy already did a pretty decent job explaining what it is, but I'm just pointing out you're not going to be using one of the seals of Solomon to summon demons or whatever.

Not that UA demons would even be a thing you'd want to summon, generally speaking.
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>>28581694
>Not that UA demons would even be a thing you'd want to summon, generally speaking.
Pussy. Who wouldn't want to be the leader of their own Satan's Chosen Temple? After the first couple of possessed run away you catch onto proper procedures pretty quickly.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnLwHOVXkWE

This is how I mystic hermaphrodite
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>>28582494
I'm not gonna say you're doing it wrong, but this is how *I* would do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc80tFJpTuo
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>>28582077
The part where the Sleepers and the Order of St. Cecil take turns coming down on you like a ton of bricks first might put a damper on things.
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>>28582679
Keep things small enough and nobody important enough will notice. I'd probably keep things as a high-street level with dabbling in global where the Sleepers coming in woudl be the end of campaign "oh shit our hubris has come to kick our asses" and the epilogue is "who gets out alive?"
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>>28582939
>...and the epilogue is "who gets out alive?"

I suspect the answer would be "the handfull that got scooped up by TNI during the confusion."
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>>28583234
Hey, a new job right after your start-up collapsed in fire and hijacked bodies is nothing to scoff at.
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>>28583265
You know, if it wasn't for the whole risking life, limb and sanity thing, working as a magical consultant for TNI'd be a pretty sweet gig. Decent pay, access to useful research material, plenty of downtime and full dental coverage.
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>>28582939
That sounds like a pretty exciting end to a street-level campaign. "Welcome to the big leagues, motherfucker."
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>>28583456
I don't mean to be that guy that drags 40k into everything, but that reminds me of this.
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For those of you that read up on UA's 'canon' setting fluff...

Dermott Arkane ascended as the Heisenberg Messenger, didn't he?
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>>28583701
I'm not sure. It was one of the possible ending to the To Go campaign book, but I've never heard about any one outcome of that story being more official than another. Personally, I always considered that the Bad End of that storyline.
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>>28583790
Well, with the...state of news media and journalism today, as well as the general untrustworthiness of the internet, I don't see how it's anything but his fault.
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>>28584085
Could just be the aftershocks of his play for a seat at the adult table. Same could be said for with general corporate douchebaggery all over the world resulting from Erica Fischer getting a shot at becoming The True Executive.
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Were the Maxs doing something involving the afterlife/demons/cruel ones? I thought I saw that somewhere online but have't read the campaign stuff to check if I Believe The Lies or not.
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>>28585196
Not that I ever heard of. No mention of anything like that in Break Today, and I'd have a hard time believing they even know enough to fiddle around with that sort of thing if they wanted to. Now, an isolated cell with more lore than brains doing or looking in to something that gets them squashed two-dimensional by the Cruel Ones might happen at some point, but you could say that about any group out there.
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>>28586079
Yeah, that's what I figured. I have Break Today and To Go but I've barely touched them since Max Attacks or howeve ryou spell it doesn't really interest me.

Kind of bummed that UA Bundle of Holding a while back didn't have Postmodern Magick or the Sleeper/TNI books.
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>>28586188
You manage to find them online? If not, http://www.4shared.com/folder/zBDPtNF0/Unknown_Armies.html
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>>28586354
Haven't really looked due to trying to be a good moralfag regarding PDFs lately but thanks. Might crack sooner or later.
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>>28586188

Postmodern Magik got dropped because so much of the material was backported into the 2e corebook, and most of what didn't was kinda ugly mechanically, even by UA standards.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anLfoy2XsFw
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>>28586408
The head designers also considered several of the magickal schools to be poorly thought out or thematicly weak.
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>>28586408
Some of the non-adept stuff got my attention but I can't remember what now. Its mostly my packrat sense that's tingling.

>>28586515
>to be poorly thought out or thematicly weak.
What, like the iconomancer? Didn't that not have any real formula spells and was more "uh, depends on your icon I guess"
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>>28586551
More like kleptomancy (and some of the others) having no real paradox to it.
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You may think that by knowing magic, by learning the secret histories, you have become part of a world that is hidden from the public eye, a world inaccessible to normal mortals.
This is a lie. Everyone in the world knows at least a little of its secrets. Even the most boring guy you know, John from Accounting- he has a shrine to unpronounceable things in his closet, and a handgun in his desk drawer loaded with children's teeth.
The question then is, why does everyone think that magic is a rare and hidden thing? Why can nobody smell it on everyone they meet?
Who is preventing us from realizing how open the secrets of the world really are?
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>>28587037
Reposting some stuff I wrote for the last couple of threads:
If you learn all the languages in the world, you will gain the knowledge of the first language, the ur-language. It is a language of power, a language through which the world can be commanded; a language of true magic, without the limitations of the magic of the current age.
There Tower of Babel myth has some factual grounding, but it's wrong in one major aspect- the ur-language wasn't taken from us by a higher power, we did it to ourselves.
Out of all the currently extant languages, modern English is the closest to the ur-language. That's why the British Empire was so successful, why English is one of the most widely-spoken languages and the one to spread furthest from its homeland, why America is so dominant economically and culturally. The Anglosphere has an intrinsic occult advantage over the rest of the world.
All the various 'purity of language' institutes around the world exist to try and curb the spread of english; they fear what will happen should the ur-language become a reality again. They are losing badly.
l33tspeak and other such abominations are attempts to subvert english and draw it further away from the ur-language.
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>>28587069
It's not just English. All languages are drawing closer to the ur-language. The point of furthest regress was about 1000 A.D. This is what caused all the millennial riots- the masses could subconsciously sense they were at a nadir of human history (or an apex, depending on your viewpoint).
While magic is at a low ebb compared to the days of the ur-language, it's still at its highest point since then. Any ritual or conspiracy purporting to have originated between 1000 AD and the present is probably lying; statistically, they're far more likely to have been created in the last couple of decades, and given a history retroactively. As the ur-language draws nearer, things will only get stranger.
Globalization and the internet is accelerating the return of the ur-language, as the fractured languages of humanity draw back together. Occult Futurists predict that it will return anywhere from twenty to five hundred years from now. Others, however, worry about the potential for the space programs to disrupt the return; the parallels between the cancellation of the Apollo program or the Challenger disaster as too close to the Babel myth for their comfort.
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>>28587088
There is only one soul in the universe, and all sapient beings share it.
This means that with the right rituals, you can affect every sapient being in the universe simultaneously.

Aglets can prevent anything from unravelling- not just shoelaces. You just need to find out how to remove them from their shoelace intact, and be prepared to deal with the consequences of a shoelace unravelling.

All nuclear weapons manufactured after the Cuban Missile Crisis don't actually contain any nuclear material. After that, the mere idea of nuclear weapons was powerful enough to destroy cities on its own. The nuclear weapons programs of places like Iran and North Korea are actually attempts to resurrect the fear of nuclear war in the public, as the ease of powering weapons by fear has sharply reduced since the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended.

The 'Dead Man's Hand' nuclear launch system in Russia is not just a deadman switch- it is literally operated by a dead man's hand. If you can figure out who the hand belongs to, and the rest of his body, you could potentially use sympathetic magic to gain control of the Russian nuclear arsenal.

Whenever a hipster straight up makes up an artist to like, thus ensuring that no one else could have heard of them, that artist will come into existence shortly thereafter. However, the band will shortly gain hit status, and the hipster will stop liking them for 'selling out.' With the source of their existence having abandoned them, the band will fade into obscurity. This process is responsible for the vast majority of one-hit wonders, at least since the beginnings of the hipster subculture. There are rumors of occult-knowledgable record executives spying on the hippest of hipsters in an attempt to discern who the next one-hit wonder will be.
>>
Compact fluorescent bulbs save energy, but the reason your energy bill is lower is because they contain plutomantic sacraments that lower your energy bill directly. The power not used on lighting is instead sent elsewhere.
For all you clever bastards out there, don't think about breaking the bulb to get at the plutomancy. It angers the thing the energy is being sent to.

Frankenstein was an actual person. Mary Shelley created the story of Frankenstein as part of a ritual to sabotage his research.

It's incredibly easy to turn a toy gun into a real gun. The orange cap inhibits this process- for reasons beyond simply making it harder for people to get guns.
>>
>>28577002
You've all probably heard the fact that nuclear submarines can stay submarines can stay submerged for decades. This is true. However, the often quoted figure of 25 years is untrue. The American model from the Cold War era can stay submerged for upwards of a century, relying on nutrient recycling and onboard water desalination to nourish the crew. The Soviets outright got rid of life support on their models, instead interring crews in suspended animation until they're needed. Both superpowers sent subs deep underwater during the Cold War, and to this day, they circle the Atlantic and the Pacific, waiting for the order to surface.

Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas. He goes by many names. Some even say he is a ploy by Coca-cola to sell product. All the stories about him still don't explain how he can travel around the world faster than the speed of light, carrying a bag of toys that must have impossible mass. The fact that this only happens once a year might have something to do with it.

Many wonder just how Tolkien managed to come up with his fantasy races. Although, admittedly, the parallels can be draw between his races and the folktales of Europe and Scandinavia. But that still doesn't explain the idiosyncracies of his characters. The truth is that he wasn't an author. He was an abductee.
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bump
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>>28592670
Bump with actual content if you care about the thread so much. Seriously, it's not hard to give us a few rumors or something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPZmqMRF0iQ&t=50s

Watch past the end.
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The gangster computer god is engaged in a worldwide conspiracy to make you a foot shorter by the time you die.
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>>28593411
Whoa holy fuck, where is this from?
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As long as we're just posting random creepiness...
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>>28593471
Absolutely batshit crazy guy.

He would later accuse a judge's wife of trying to get him to lick her ass DURING a trial; then accuse his enemies of placing poison gas in ice cubes that melted and released the gas. (He defeated this plot by holding his breath for a few hours)
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>>28593471
http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/dec/rants.htm
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>>28593336
sorry bout that, I was at maccas and had wifi, but no time to formulate any rumours. But now I'm home, and I can write more!

It is said that the Western literary canon is the pinnacle of literature as art. What goes in and what does not is said to be determined by eminent philosophers and scholars. It is not. The canon is actually a collection of books each with mimetic subtext that prevents the brain from perceiving the supernatural. the Curriculum and English classes are only there to ensure that the Canon is exposed to everyone at a young age.

The Papal Bull is an edict or indulgence given out by the Pope himself, as an extension of God. It is written that it is so named in English for the use of the Papal Seal, 'Bulla' in Italian. Only and idiot would believe that. Why would an english term be named after an Italian phrase which was not of core importance to the object being described? The true reason it's called the Papal Bull is... well. If you know your Bible stories, you'd know that Moses abolished the worship of the Sacred Bull on Mount Sinai. He didn't. The Sacred Bull is still very much a core power in the Church.

It is a well known fact that the Statue of Liberty is green due to copper oxidization. The curious thing is that if anyone every examines the original plans for its construction, they would find that it was never made of copper in the first place. It certainly doesn't help that the only photos from before the 'copper' supposedly oxidized were in black and white.
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>>28593733
>It is a well known fact that the Statue of Liberty is green due to copper oxidization. The curious thing is that if anyone every examines the original plans for its construction, they would find that it was never made of copper in the first place. It certainly doesn't help that the only photos from before the 'copper' supposedly oxidized were in black and white.
This is a great one.
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>>28593733
Damn, you delivered good. Nicely done, anon.
>>
Ever notice that no matter what time one enters a gas station, the hot food items are always, always old? And when they aren't, the food is over brimming like some type of weird feast with food items you've never seen before. Seriously, since when the fuck has 7/11 started selling oysters and shishkebabs? I only saw it once, but I swear on my dog I saw it.
>>
It's a fucking crime this game is out of print.

I blame the sleepers.
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>>28595884
woah woah woah, hold up, this game is out of print? And here I was, making up rumors for a game which I had been dreaming of playing with my friends. So, uh, at the risk of sounding /r/, does anyone have the pdfs?

As a tribute, more rumors are coming
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>>28587037
When I read this I immediately thought of that one spell.

The one that, if you are under the effects of a spell, shows the name and face of the person who cast it on you.

The interesting bit, though, is when you don't have a spell cast on you, it shows the face of a woman and a name in egyptian heiroglyphics. Nobody knows who she is, but the only thing we can assume is that she cast a spell a long time ago that affected everybody in the world.
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>>28595923
Have you thought about balaclavas? They're used by both police special operations teams and by aspiring criminals. But ever realise that in the movies, the bad guy terrorist almost always has a three hole balaclava and the good guy cop always has a one hole? This is for a good reason. The numbers 1 and 3 are powerful numbers in the field of millinery

It is a common phrase to say 'there's nothing new under the sun'. Examine that for a moment. UNDER the sun. Whoever made up this idiom knows something that we do not.

We consummate marriages. We consume, we mate. This is no coincidence.

Why do the japanese produce so many flavours of Kit Kat? They release new flavours every year. Almost as if they are compelled to by a greater power.

The zodiac does not actually divide the sun's celestial path into twelve parts. That's a modern invention. It divides them into thirteen. And you don't want to know what the thirteenth zodiac animal is.
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>>28596006
>you don't want to know what the thirteenth zodiac animal is.
I DO know what it is, and it is in the Northern sky these days!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiuchus
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>>28586686

Well they had a paradox.

But someone stole it before it got to print, which is quite common actually.

You know all those books where the endings seem sudden or inconclusive? They had better ones once, but they were stolen too.

If you get the older hands in the printer districts of LA and london and New York talking over enough liquor, you might get them talking about people forcing their way into the printers and taking those sections of the books.

Give them a bit more booze and details like "robbed us at spear point" will start to emerge though they'll generally stop talking after that.

One old man I spoke to in northern CA, used to work in the printers in LA and boasts about having worked on the first printing of all of Phillip K Dick's novels.

He mentioned a name for these theives: The Legion.

Said they busted into his printers more often than not, shouting in italian or something like that, dressed from head to toe like roman legionaires with spears and eagle banners and everything.

Along with a thin indian man in a suit and glasses who'd translate for them, and tell us to "get the endings into a pile over there and no one will be harmed."

Said that all the endings to PKD's stories were lost like this.

Of course, he'd explain, the perk of a printer is getting a sneak look at some of the stuff being printed, and reading those PKD endings changed his life.

He doesn't eat salt any more for a start. Said that was how they get their grips into you. He said he was only me this because SOMEONE had to know, had to know about the endings, the Truth about the salt and Gandhi.

Said he was still alive, that you can't kill salt with a bullet, with mere SLUGS.
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>>28595923
i'm pretty sure it's not out of print. it's like 40 bucks though if you order it from the site.
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>>28596022
b-but a-anon, thats TWO animals!

>Accidence Tradien
It is whispered that a certain market online allows for the trading of accidents. Anything from a horrific motor accident to a simple slip and fall are able to be traded for currencies, and indeed, darker and rarer things. Who orchestrates and collects promised accidents is not known, but such things do have a way of working themselves out.
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>>28550495
http://ua.johntynes.com/content_comments.php?id=4058_0_3_0_C
I wrote this, but it might be shit because I wrote it all at once at 4am
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>>28558476
More, shitty moonspeak. I meant to say shibuya
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>>28596153
>>28550495

There's also the Executioner.

Of course I keep getting this idea for a cult of cryptomancers who hunt down any conspiracies they can find, learn all they can about them and then stop anyone else learning about them despite not actually being genuinely involved in the conspiracies.

I just get this notion of making PCs fight these MIBs to get at a conspiracy, and the conspiracy not having any clue who the MIBs were or why they were keeping people from finding out about the conspiracy.

Then the PCs get access to the MIB's massive catalogue of conspiracies being secretly protected by this network of MIB Cults.
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>>28593733
Not only that, but you know all those old black and white photographs? They're actually in colour, so to speak. Colour is actually a human creation invented by the film and photo industry. The world really did used to be in black and white.
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Mr. Teeth
What’s does Mr. Teeth look like? Well, he was well dressed, nice suit, but nothing flashy.
His face? Dark hair, dark eyes, I think… It was dark okay, and that smile was so distracting. Yeah, that fucking smile, and those teeth. They were huge. No, not inhuman, just big. Kept looking back, expecting them to be these massive pointy things, but they weren’t. In my dreams that all I see, that smile, with big pointy teeth.
You want to meet him? Sure, here’s a number. Doesn’t lead anywere, but if you leave a message he’ll find you.
Yeah, he’ll have what you need, but it’ll cost. Cost you something you’ll miss.
Money? Don’t make me laugh. You want to deal in money you don’t call Mr. Teeth. You call him when you want something money can’t buy, and he calls you when you’re willing to pay anything.
Leave the bottle.


Mr. Teeth is the fixer of the occult underground. An avatar of the Merchant, he stopped dealing in currency a long time ago. Or at least in the usual way, he’ll buy the first dollar you ever made, or trade for a tarnished silver coin. Mostly he deals in immaterials, desires, memories, or the most valuable trade of all, information. But he’ll deal in rarities too.
Adepts seek him out, rare tomes for the bookworms, machines for the tinkers, you name it he’ll be able to find it. For a price. And even the most delusional of adepts hesitate before paying what Mr. Teeth asks.
Sometimes Mr. Teeth searches out a client, and when he does he’s always buying. Most people are more than willing sell, because he offers to buy your pain, your fears your regrets, your addictions. These acts would seem like charity, but he doesn’t take them for free. He’s a trader, and he pays for what he takes.
Not much is known of Mr. Teeth’s past. Some say he sold it. He certainly sold his name. He wasn't born Mr. Teeth, but that's his name now.
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>>28596006
>Whoever made up this idiom knows something that we do not.
It's from the Old Testament.
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>>28598345
Isn't that an SCP?
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>>28593830
I don't get it entirely.
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>>28599661
Yes , one of the SCP - EX
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>>28549699
So I always see /tg/ jerking off this game like it's the second coming. But what the fuck is it? Why do y'all like it so well?
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A very long time ago the solar system was at peace, all spread out and relaxed, countless islands tumbling around each other in a great spiral of joy. But things changed.

At first it was just a few particles banding together and ganging up on their neighbors. But it quickly became worse. Factions formed, mass accumulated, and soon entire planetoids razed through the helpless gases.

After that tipping point the power structure condensed with no way of arresting the process. The central faction grew ever bigger and absorbed a never ending stream of satellites into its power monopoly.

Defenses were erected by the remaining but marginalized survivors, stable orbits well apart from each other to avoid collisions weakening the opposition as a whole, magnetic fields, atmospheres. Each planet protecting its own to the best of its abilities.

But the war is as good as lost, the end is inevitable. Sure, the empire of the sun will eventually consume itself, but by then all defenses will have been blown away. The chromosphere will expand to absorb the innermost planets whole while fortified atmospheres and magnetic shielding in the entire system will be eroded away by massive SMEs. There will be no winners of the last battle. The sun will collapse to a dimly glowing shadow of its former self and the rest of the system will be a lifeless empty waste.

Just know, when you look up and appreciate the summer sky: The sun is trying to kill you and the dying earth's defenses is all that stands between you and it.

>>28600947
It's just really good. Niche genre, but well made.
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>>28600947
it's a game about turning humanities obsessions and strangeness into something actually magical. Unlike a lot of modern fantasy games it doesn't have the magic and weirdness hidden from us by some handwaved separation, which is pretty awesome.

system wise it's pretty basic with some really cool innovations (the sanity system, charge/taboo based magic).

it's on /rs/ if you want to check it out.
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>>28600947
There's a few people talking about it up above in the thread, skim through.

I'll just say this quote from the creators:
" I think it was around this time that I got a bee in my bonnet about humans being the primary movers and shakers in UA. In most games, especially horror games, humans are kind of limp. They're not responsible for any of life's crap because they're not powerful enough to make it crappy. In Call of Cthulhu, people are cosmic accidents. True, so is everything else, but we're particularly small cosmic accidents. In the World of Darkness, things are smaller in scope but people are still either meal tickets or patsies. This is common enough in horror settings because powerlessness is horrifying. But responsibility can also be horrifying, and that was the tack we decided to take with UA. Think life's sucky? Well pal, you're the author of your own misfortunes. You did it. You can't foist this one off on some malevolent supernatural entity, because we're the malevolent supernatural entities."
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>>28599279
Well then. The Old Prophets know what is over the sun. And I'm betting it ain't God.
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Has anyone ever included the Cube Divinity in there games? I'm really tempted to actually dig into his rants and try to make a campaign out of this.
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>>28601365
Your post reminded me of an idea I wrote on a scrap once when I was really exhausted and sort of half-asleep already. I jolted awake and simply wrote;

"The planets are imprisoning the Sun."

Why? I don't know. But the idea made me very uneasy as a concept, so I kept the scrap.
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>>28593336
Your video reminded me of this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTFeVdERDYM
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>>28608526
Jokes on you - that wasn't a campaign idea, that was a vision.
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>>28608454
There is a special kind of power associated with that particular kind of insanity. Conjecturemancy, built around the paradox that an essential part of finding the perfect truth is imperfect guessing. It could be Unknown Armies' flavor of divination. Everything that is 'seen' with the powers must be believed by the character and should be narrated to the character in the format of the ravings of an unsound mind.
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>>28608947
Conjecturemancy is a poor name for it. How about Theoremancy?
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>>28609000
That works well. There is a sort of glitch in human thinking that causes people believe conspiracy theories. I was hoping to keep it close to whatever causes that glitch.
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>>28550742
There is a leaked draft for an Occult Underground sourcebook that was never completed, and there were supposed to be four pdf supplements that never got off the ground. I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of Unknown Armies, though.
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>>28551068
Sorcery is bad news in Unknown Armies, too.
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>>28609215
Thanks for bringing that to my attention. This is interesting stuff.
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>>28551293

I imagine a pretty decent percentage of the Occult Underground claims to be the devil.
>>
>>28586188 You should really check out Break Today again, even if you don't care about the Maks as a whole. I didn't/don't either but every single character in it is incredible. It's my favorite UA book. >>28585196 If I remember correctly, one of the Maks has acquired a ritual to summon Cruel Ones. It doesn't have anything to do with the Maks as a whole but things would get pretty interesting if that ritual ended up on the list.
>>
This may give some ideas for a Unknown Armies game. http://gideonkeys.wikidot.com/start
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>>28610425
what, is this like SCP but not?
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>>28611006
It's more like the Holders, and a lot like Gideon Keys.
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>>28611006
SCP is hardly the only series of creepy pasta to come out of /x/, anon.

>>28611028
Holders were always my favorite. Some of them were inexplicably creepy, despite the silly formula.
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>>28611006
It is hidden knowledge stuff. Go take a look.
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The reason children love Cinnamon Toast Crunch isn't the cinnamon swirls in every bite. The real reason is that each piece is a self contained galaxy that sustains life. Apparently extinguishing trillions of lives is delicious.
>>
Weathermen always lie about the temperature. But not many actually check their predictions against a thermometer, and when they do, it is easy to dismiss discrepancies as an error in your mercury. The actual numbers the weathermen say have very little to do with the temperature. The truth is that after the Cold War, numbers stations now exist in plain sight.
>>
This be good site to get idea too. www.silverladder.com/links/badscary/
>>
The fantastical creatures everyone thought to be myth are not. They're still here. They're simply better at being us.

(I know its shitty, but y'know, bump)
>>
If you ever want to know the true nature of reality, take a trip. Someplace desolate, someplace secluded, somewhere man hasn't been in years. I went hiking into the Rockies off the beaten trail myself. Get yourself someplace really remote where no one has been for ages. Breath in that fresh air, enjoy the pristine unspoiled view. Now, without thinking twice about it, without pausing, without revealing what you're about to do, flip over a rock to reveal what's beneath.

See what the world looks like when it thinks no one is looking.
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>you will never give the Freak a hug
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>>28551217
(most) of the fan-made avatar paths and adept schools on the official UA site are fairly bad. They're either overpowered or fail to match what I perceive as the tone of the setting.

Of course, what I think is UA and what you think is UA are going to be different, but still - most of what's on there sucks. A lot of the magick lacks symbolic tension, a lot of the avatar paths shouldn't really be avatar paths and so on.

There's some good stuff on there - I like some of the new narco-alchemical sig works, the thing about satellite astronomy has some real promise, but a lot of the fanwork is fanwank.

It's a pity, I wish it were better.
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>>28617318
most are bad, though I think that's largely a matter of it being hard to figure out these things on your own.
There are some good people who give decent advice on fixing the overpowered issue.

As for 'not fitting the tone', that varies a whole lot, and some I think are actively trying to change the tone for whatever reason.
>>
Are Greg Stolze or John Tynes from Illinois? Every one of the major conspiracies except the Sleepers seems to be based there.
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>>28617795
I think Greg Stolze is originally from Iowa, but he's lived in the Chicago area for a very long time. A lot of his work for Vampire is in the same area. Eh, write what you know, right?
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Walker, Dunn, and Dean were cultural icons ritualistically sacrificed by cabalists loyal to the international, underground fourth Reich.
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>>28617580
That does bring up a good question. What do you guys consider the tone of Unknown Armies to be?
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>>28618241
It's right between Over The Edge and Nemesis.
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>>28618241
If Drud-addled Hobo is a genre, then that.

Otherwise magical realism.
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>>28617318

The Adept schools section on the UA site is basically the lint trap for newfags - EVERYBODY wants to make an awesome kewl adept school after reading the fluff, when a lot of even the better schools have core ideas which would work better as avatars or ritual schools or even cabals.

Karmamancy and Maternamancy were good though, and the Unnatural and Unexplained sections have a higher than average hit/miss ratio imho.

The Misc section can sometimes surprise, iirc there's preliminary rules for doing a pre-modern (as in "medieval european low fantasy") game of UA, as well as the (semi-serious) rules for doing a UA LARP, plus don't rest your head conversions and similar.
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>>28598345
>>28599661
>>28600840

It's a reference to a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon.
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>>28620667
You know, Calvin's Dad is a veritable gold mine of Unknown Armies style thought... maybe there's more to him than he lets on.
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>>28622825
What if Calvin's dad is an SCP?
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>>28618435
>the Unnatural and Unexplained sections have a higher than average hit/miss ratio imho.
This. They are basically rumors threads and it's hard to go wrong with a rumors thread.

I remember a really awesome one about a real life newspaper article detailing the mythology of homeless kids in Miami. It was great, read like it was straight out of a source book. I'll have to dig it up.
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>>28622917
Found it

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1997-06-05/news/myths-over-miami/
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>>28622978
>>28622917
Ah yeah, I love this thing. I've been wanting to make a campaign out of it for so long.
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http://www.news.com.au./travel/world-travel/two-german-students-have-vandalised-part-of-the-pyramid-of-khufu-to-help-prove-their-lost-civilisation-theory/story-e6frfqc0-1226771863820
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>>28622978

That would also work for a Kult campaign.
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>>28623444
Sounds like some Cliomancers picking up some major mojo to me.
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Here's a good rumor, and it's good because it's true. Real-world true, not even messing with you, look it up.

A research group on mental health and folklore wanted to find out where the "Bloody Mary" myth came from. It pops up all over the place, see, the "demon woman from the mirror" shows up in lots of different cultures. They thought that perhaps reflective surfaces were difficult for people with mild schizophrenia to process, causing neurological mis-identification and hallucinations; basically, seeing your own reflection but feeling that it's something different and wrong.

So they did some simple experiments with dim rooms and mirrors.

And the control group, the SANE people... 20 minutes in a dim room with a mirror, and they could see the things inside it too. Horrible faces, angry, tormented. That is simply something that every human can see if they look in a mirror long enough.
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>>28624530
Truth is rarely stranger than fiction, but it's much, much scarier.
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>>28622978
Fuck yeah, this. Though not really because its depressing who's telling it but oh my God that is so many plot seeds in those myths.

>>28623862
cliomancer a shit. I never really liked their charging method, its too vague compared to a boozehound's "take a shot, take the crunch effect, get charges" or epidermonancer's "take damage, get mojo." The vaguer charging methods of some schools just bugs me. Like how the hell do you figure out "historical location but not really that popular of one" without having to get into straight up "make shit up" or "buddy up to a history major" territory?
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>>28624634
If you're playing a local game, research historical sites in the town you're playing in. Likely SOMETHING happened there, and likely most people don't give a shit.

If you're travelling frequently, well, tough shit, why are you playing a cliomancer who travels a lot anyways?
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>>28550547
You must have a compatriot who is also the man, the man is multitude, your name must always be duality pair, such as Mr. White and Mr Black, Mr City and Mr Country, Mr Right and Mr Wrong, you gain the ability to intimidate anyone connected to a hierarchy, the ability to manipulate beaurcracy, connections to the ASN, the secret level of the NSA, your invisible in crowds and you always have what you need. You gain your energy by surpressing minorities and quelling dissent. .
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>>28624701
See, that's the thing.
>>
There's a saying I've heard before: "A river never beats its head against obstacles. It always goes around, and it always gets to the sea." Why do you think that is? Once you know, you'll find using magick a hell of a lot easier, I tell you what.
>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaLjwSpZ6Cs
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>>28617286
Pretty sure zhe's way beyond that being able to solve things. Though now that I think about it, it's pretty much a given that Dirk Allen's dead by now, right? What d'you think the Freak's reaction was? Month long party or tantrum/killing spree that Allen wasn't around to torment anymore?
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>>28558176

It should go something like

>>hate everyone
>>Hate everything
>>Hate Yourself
>>An Hero

Seems pretty simple.
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>>28624598
Truth is almost always stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
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>>28565224
>>This thread is all of my want, thank you for reminding me that rpg's and storytime can be awesome.
>>
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>>28625008
No, it really doesn't.
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>>28582494

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaOgu2CQtI

>>This is how I first and last man
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>>28624830
That quote pretty much exactly describes the philosophy of how Avatars work.
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>>28624910
It probably depends on the way he went out. I can't imagine the Freak would be happy if Dirk Allen managed to outrun all the shit he did and die of natural causes.
>>
>>28558332

Yeah, an "be in an OC/epic thread = charges" school (which gets the videomancy "shared experience" essence, and also explains those posters who drop "POSTING IN AN EPIC THREAD" when OC like the skull fucker or wall tile threads happened) or a ritualist school where the charging ritual requires OC creation.

Be terrible for a game though, "my PC spends most of his day posting on imageboards hoping to capture lightning in a bottle".
>>
>>28625432
That'd likely make for a hell of a high level Sleeper adventure; Dirk Allen's passed away quietly in a Chicago hospital. Now the Freak's flipped the fuck out. Try to talk hir down before things go comepletely sideways.
>>
>>28625148

That's a good try, but, no, reality is stranger than that.

Comes down to the difference between a semiotic system and a physical system. The human mind, the internet, and fictional universes are all semiotic systems. Ideas, information, though, intention, those are the fundamental things there. But the real world isn't semiotic. Things don't have meaning and connotation; they have mass and velocity. And nothing is obliged to make sense, because sense is a thing in semiotic universes, not physical ones, and the translation is never perfect.

Is a photon a wave or a particle? Neither, those are both metaphors for human minds to understand behavior, and neither one is perfectly accurate. It's just a photon. What does it mean that dead fish make good fertilizer? Is it something significant about life coming from the ocean? What about the way the moon always has the same side facing earth? No. It doesn't mean shit, meaning is a semiotic thing, nothing in the physical world has inherent meaning.

Basically, what I'm saying is that the Princess Washburn thing makes more SENSE to a human mind than reality does. A demon, a thinking being that has certain powers and realms of influence, you can understand that more easily than, say, special relativity. Fiction is fundamentally less strange than truth because it's semiotic, it works the same way our minds work. Reality works the way rocks and stars work, which is nothing like a human mind.
>>
>>28625643
Like that's any different from "I have to watch this TV show every day or else" or "I buy a lot of books I'll never use" or "I hang around this not-quite-historical place eever day" or "I have boring sex."
>>
>>28625816
This isn't tumblr, you can use real pronouns here.
>>
>>28626223
>"I have boring sex."

It always amused be one of the major factors in Mak Attax and the Sect of the Naked Goddess not getting along was the burger flippers hearing "sex magick" and instantly starting to act like the basement dwelling nerds many of them are.
>>
>>28626377
Didn't know that, but it's funny to me. I was just rereading the corebook and I still crack up at the Naked Goddess part of the GM chapters where Hiram's like "its nice having all this sex, just wish it wasn't the same damn thing all the time."
>>
>>28626195
Meaning has no bearing on how strange something is.
>>
>>28626422
Yep, it's basicly a combination of the Attaxers dropping their spaghetti all over the place and the NG crew being too paranoid to believe any mystical conspiracy could possibly be operating with all it's cards on the table.
>>
>>28626284
There are no real pronouns to describe the Freak.
>>
>>28626549
>>28626377

I don't really want to use the Naked Goddess in my game, but it's kind of annoying how entrenched she is in the setting.
>>
>>28627054

You can switch her out with other archetypes and form immitative cults around them instead.

The key is: An Ascension gets filmed, magical tapes are made and circulate in the occult underground, cult pops up immitating the ascended person's actions for charges.
>>
bump
>>
>>28625337
sounds more like adepts to me

they find the paradoxes and go "cool."
>>
>>28629032
Not really.

They break on a fundamental level. They hit the rock, break into a million pieces, and maybe get back together somewhere down stream. There's a reason they don't seek out more paradoxes (or at least, can't learn two schools). Shit fucks your brain.

Avatars, on the other hand, do what you describe pretty much exactly. Their way is is going with the flow of the universe; the adept's way is opposing it.
>>
>>28629210
my headcanon for adepts is that they ascend and become cruel ones

they see the true form of the universe.
>>
>>28626223
no, they are very different.
The non-cliomancer schools are discreet and measurable actions.
Read 1 book, watch 1 show, perform 1 act of sex.
The problem with the clios is that what makes a place count isn't as easy to measure, their charging isn't the result of personal action (they just have to be at a place, not do anything), and unlike every other school both charging and taboo are a matter of time. (places charge every day, charges drop after a time), not a matter of action.
>>
>>28629249
this kinda contradicts what the general theme is for adepts and avatars.

The power of aspects is big but diffuse. Avatar powers don't let you do that much more than what a normal human can, but if you can get the the top of that power you have a huge amount of power under you.

Adepts are smaller, but extremely focused. It doesn't matter if there are hundreds of adepts of your school, or if you are the only one, because all that matters for your power is you. Ascending to be part of the universe doesn't fit.


Though in my headcannon there IS no true form of the universe. You did it, but your part of it too. You make it and it makes you.
>>
>>28624755
You lose all your charges if the pentagon gets bent into a circle.
>>
>>28563415
Is this thread archived somewhere?
>>
>>28630017
Not that I know of. It was on /x/ back before all /x/ threads were archived.
>>
Can someone post the pdf for Thin Black Line? I can't get it from the website for some reason.
>>
The Mormon Church is one of the more clued-in faiths, possibly second or third to the St. Cecilites. They weren't always that way but somewhere after Smith's death and the exodus to Deseret they encountered something that gave them the hard-knocks education. Some people say it was the Ark of the Covenant, Paul Bunyan's familiar or the navel of Gaia.

All I know for sure is that there's a reason only seven specially consecrated souls can peek behind the Salt Lake Tabernacle's organ.
>>
There is an obscure podcast where you can listen to two women named Air and mare talk about spell components and how to cast rituals for personal use. The problem is that the podcast is still receiving episodes, even though the two women had passed on three years before.

H.P. Lovecraft was an adept of the inconceivable object. This has granted him immortality and the inability to be recognized. At least his writing is popular enough for his magic.
One could tap into his inconceivable immortality. The trick is finding him again.

Romance novels are great sources of magic power for any adepts. The trick isn't to read them, but how to read the heart of the novel. There is a romance novelist who figured out how to recreate the magic for mass production.
Just look for the harlequin on the spine.


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