Palace of Fine Arts“I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there’s purpose and worth to each and every life.”--Ronald Reagan
Remember that this is a fantasy game. Play up the fantastic elements of San Francisco and Las Vegas, not the technology. Describe the sun rising over a strange land, the colored lights, the alien dress. Anchor it all on the people of those times, who were, each in their own way a bit fantastic.
You can also play with time travel, but be careful. The more definite things you lay out that haven’t happened yet, the more things there are to not happen as they should. Let the players bring the temporal anomalies, such as a photograph from 1969 to 1955. Photographs from 1955 might exist in 1969, but don’t tie them to a specific action or place, at least not immediately. Leave it ambiguous, and wait until the players establish what the action was or the place was.
This is not a dystopian game. The actions of the player characters, when done in good faith, should lead to a better world in the long run. So if they stop the Manson family and come back to this world later, they may be able to watch such movies as “Tess” and “Chinatown” with Sharon Tate-Polanski.
You open the door into a sparse, unpainted room. There is a simple wooden table in the center of the room. Above it a wheel hangs spinning from a post in the table, its jackpots muddled into a bloody grey. On the table lies a deck of cards on a rusted mirror. You hear a flutter from the butterflies behind you, but the noise is drowned out by boisterous singing.
“Away out here they’ve got a name for rain and wind and fire. The rain is Tess, the fire’s Jo. They call the wind Maria.”
“Hello. I wasn’t expecting you just yet.”
A man steps out, wearing a prince’s gaudy red suit and white stockings, with an epée at his side and a long hat with a white feather upon the long curly ringlets of hair streaked white and black. He takes off the hat and bows towards you.
“Welcome to my home,” he says.
Red Jack is Ordered Evil. He is also known as Ebeorie, the Lord of Discord. He is an emotional demon and draws power from riot and conflict. Within the constraints of the wheel and the deck he is trustworthy: the riddle gives him power, and he is bound by the riddle. Beyond the wheel and the deck, he enjoys suffering. He gains power through discord and heated arguments. He is the inspiration and the cause of many of the worst serial killers throughout the world tree.
Red Jack is virtually indestructible in his home. He has magic resistance 8, which means that any magic cast will fail on a roll of 8 or less on d20. Further, within the gambling halls magic costs an additional spell level verve to cast (if Red Jack is nearby, this cost is only paid if the spell gets past Jack’s magic resistance).
Red Jack: (Demon: 8; Evil; Survival: 42; Move: 14; Attacks: Special; Defense: +6; Special Attacks: Send to other world; Special Defenses: immune to normal weapons, regeneration; Magic Resistance: 8)
Demonic specialties: ride-along, words of power, influence, delusions, open doors, emotional high, invisibility.
Demonic power points: 23 (can store up to 24 points and have up to 32 points in play at any one time)
Intelligence 15, Charisma 14, Wisdom 11
Red Jack begins play with 23 demonic power points. He’s been soaking in a lot of discord by way of his ride-alongs. Jack currently has six points in play from the ride-alongs he maintains.
|
Power |
Cost |
Running total |
|
Zodiac ride-along |
1 point |
1 point |
|
A Vegas ride-along |
1 point |
2 points |
|
Jack the Ripper ride-along |
1 point |
3 points |
|
The Fork murderer ride-along |
1 point |
4 points |
|
A Hamokera murderer ride-along |
1 point |
5 points |
|
A Roman crossroads murderer ride-along |
1 point |
6 points |
If Red Jack becomes a recurring villain, later demonic specialties might include teleport or dominate, to make his ride-alongs even more deadly and mysterious.
Open doors: This specialty allows Red Jack to send any one target per round to a world that his doors open onto. There is no saving roll against this specialty. He will not send multiple victims to the same door unless he knows there’s an ambush waiting for them.
Regeneration: As the custodian, Red Jack regenerates 8 survival per round while within the Gambling House.
|
Suit |
Modern Suit |
Moral Code |
|
Loaves |
Hearts |
Chaos |
|
Sword |
Clubs |
Order |
|
Stakes |
Spades |
Good |
|
Dishes |
Diamonds |
Evil |
Red Jack will shuffle the deck and cut it into two piles: one for fortune and one for fate. If you’ve got sleight-of-hand skill with cards, it would be even cooler to have one deck, and ensure that each player draws one fortune and one fate. If, like me, you can’t pull something like that off, just separate the deck into standard cards for fortune and the major arcana for fate, and offer them a pull from each deck.
Tarot decks are easy to find nowadays. I used the Kalevala deck from Kalervo Aaltonen and Taina Pailos. The “forgotten gods” on the deck are the Finnish epic heroes.
As he shuffles the deck, Jack recites a bit of patter. However you handle the shuffling, when you’re done the “fortune” pile should be “normal” cards, and the “fate” pile should be the major arcane.
Step right up folks.
They call ’em playing cards, not watching cards. Watch the shuffle, it ain’t that hard.
The magician today is the devil tomorrow, fortune’s luck and fate’s your sorrow.
Draw the sun or the moon or the star, the deck’s bright fortunes take you far.
If you have nerve you may have more if fortune smiles upon your door.
Find the queen or fear the king, or face the anchorite in the ring.
Maybe you win, maybe you lose, it all depends on the cards you choose.
Cut it once or draw it high, only a fool lets the cards go by.
The mirror’s hot, don’t hesitate: draw once for fortune, once for fate.
At “once for fate”, he lays the cards down, the fortune deck on one mirror, the fate deck on the other. They can draw from the top, or cut once and draw from the new top. They may do this in any order (but remember that characters without a moral code can’t pull from the fortune deck). The player characters may try to discover the location of one or more cards, for example by watching the mirror to see the bottom card. The deck’s draw is random. If a character successfully “sees” some card’s location, roll randomly for what card they see. This is the characters’ only chance to draw the cards. While they may visit Jack again, he will only offer them the cards once.
Any character with a moral code may draw from the fortune deck. If a character without a moral code draws a card, that card will be blank. The fortune deck consists of the numbered cards and the face cards of the normal deck.
Numbered cards (2-10) provide bonuses or penalties when in a critical situation. The card will provide a penalty if the character has the opposite moral code, or a bonus otherwise. Bonuses may be played at any time by the player. The player may keep the card that they draw, and play it in a critical situation. Penalties have a 50% chance, until invoked, of being invoked the next time the player chooses to use mojo on a roll involving at least one opponent. They will be unable to spend mojo, causing their action to fail. The next action by their opponent is at a bonus of the number on their card. The bonus or penalty applies for that entire scene, once the card is played. It will apply to all rolls by the player (for bonuses) or against the character (for penalties).
The face cards grant a lasting bonus or penalty of two. This modifier will last until the character increases their level. The character will know, each time the modifier makes a difference, that their loss or win came from their draw.
|
Princess |
Wisdom |
The modifier applies to any roll to understand a situation or know the right path, both physical and moral. |
|
Prince |
Wealth |
The modifier applies to any rolls regarding money. |
|
Queen |
Love |
The modifier applies to any rolls regarding friendship, love, influence, or charisma. |
|
King |
Health |
The modifier applies to any rolls regarding healing or health. |
Aces provide an automatic success on the character’s next saving roll against death. If the ace is a penalty, the next saving roll against death is an automatic failure.
Any character may draw one card from the fate deck. The fate deck consists of the major arcana from a tarot deck. There are twenty-two cards in the fate deck. Four of them are speaking cards: the world, the hanged man, the chariot, and the falling tower. The other cards make something happen to the character who draws it. There are six each of boon cards, bane cards, and conflict cards. The character may not keep their fate card, but they may elect to save its effect for later if it is a boon. Cards can only directly affect one character, though in some cases, such as a wish, it doesn’t have to be the character who drew the card.
Characters will not always know the effect of the card when they draw it, but once the effect takes place, they will realize that it was the card that did it. Each card has a suggested phrase for Red Jack. He will always say something like “You draw well”, “a good card”, “very good”,”lucky”, or “Good, good”, regardless of whether the card is good or bad.
Empress: “The gifts the Queen bestows from her basket.” A special magic item devoted to the character’s archetype will appear in this or the next adventure. The character will know that something special is in store for them, and when near the item they will understand how to get to it.
Force/Strength: “In the heart of your enemy, that is where the truth lies.” The character gains 1 to their archetypal ability.
Justice: “Neither scales nor children can be fooled by artifice. Trust to the sword when the scales fall.” The character can, once, choose to understand the truth about someone or some situation. They will penetrate disguises, see hidden or invisible creatures, and know the veracity of any statement. The effects are instantaneous, but the knowledge is generally permanent: that invisibility spell or illusion no longer affects the character.
Magician: “In the flames of the craftsman are born all manner of wonder.” The player may choose one spell or field (at +1, with one skill) for their character, as if they had already known it.
Pope/Hierophant: “The pope comes out of the east. Never take the stage after children or animals.The character can, once, choose to undo or rewind an action or set of related actions (such as a scene) that the character took part in.
Sun: “And a little child shall lead them... down the proverbial primrose path.” The character can, once, convince any creature or group to follow them or to let them pass.
Devil: “Beware the man who goes masked and naked... watch the cards, there--” “You feel a sharp stinging in your fingers as you lift the card. A thin cut smears blood down the edge of the card. The blood beads up, rolls down, and disappears.” The character now has a blood puddle stalking them. The puddle is the same level as they are, and will follow the character and attack their friends when their friends are alone. Further, the puddle is tied to the character: any survival points lost by the puddle are also lost by the character (such points lost count as archetypal) and any injury points gained by the puddle are gained by the character. The puddle will act as intelligently as blood puddles normally do.
Emperor: “He will take your daughters, your fields, and the tenth of your seed, and you shall cry out because the king you chose over god has betrayed you. A noble card, and regal, for the scepter and the orb are at hand.” The character is ruined. The character’s reputation has been destroyed, and the legal system wants them imprisoned. No one, outside of the player characters, will trust the character if they have heard of the character. This bane may be overcome, but it will be a difficult adventure. The character will only discover clues leading to this adventure after they reach their next level. Even after restoring their honor legally, there will remain some element of distrust among people who have heard of the dishonor but not of the restoration.
Fool: “Pack up your troubles and smile, for the world opens up before you.” The character loses 1 from their archetypal ability.
Lovers: “What god has joined, let no man rent asunder.” A person close to the character will betray them or has betrayed them, most likely to an important enemy.
Moon: “When the hound bays, the master follows.” The character has been or will be unwittingly subverted by an enemy. At one point in the future, the enemy will command the character to do something, and the character must obey that command; the command might also be triggered by an event or phrase. There is no resistance to the command, but once carried out the character is free from further influence. The command shouldn’t take more than a few minutes of playing time to complete.
Popess/High Priestess: “Hard work and perseverance bring revelation, and the fields of the gods are ever brimming with boons for the faithful.” A cursed magic item will appear in this or the next adventure. The character will know that something special is in store for them, and when near the item they will understand how to get to it. Once acquired, the character will initially believe that it is beneficial, and it will be difficult to convince them otherwise.
Conflict cards put the character at risk, but if they pass their trials, they will gain a boon.
Death: “The reaper marks passage, not an end, and his scythe is sweeter for the cut.” History has changed: the character’s last battle left them seriously injured: they have four injury points that will not heal, with all the penalties that entails. For each life saved or each life taken, the character heals one injury point. If they survive this test and heal all of their injuries, they gain one point of endurance.
Hermit: “Inner sight sees farther than the eye.” The character is blinded. However, if they can survive to their next level, they gain an additional level on top of it. From that point on their character is always one level higher than their experience total indicates. The blindness is incurable until the next level, at which point it remains but is curable through divine means.
Judgment: “If all of your dead were to rise up, what would your greeting be?” The player and guide must list one action of their character that was wrong or that wronged someone. They must right that wrong before they reach their next level, or they will lose all experience gained over their current level.
Temperance: “Sunlight or sunset? Hard to tell, but this card presages change and shakeup.” The character is made aware of the eternal struggle between good and evil, order and chaos. They gain a glimpse of the world tree and the insects in its bark, of the city at the crossroads and the winding roads that lead to it. Characters that do not have a moral code may choose a moral code. The character must in some way prove their moral code. If they do, they will gain, three times during each level, a bonus of five to a roll in furtherance of their moral code. But while proving their code, they have a penalty of one to all rolls not made in furtherance of their moral code.
Star: “One foot in water, the other on land. Destiny lies in the margins.” The character will not regain survival (but will regain verve) until all survival is gone and they take at least one injury. When they take that injury, their survival is restored to their maximum.
Wheel of Fortune: Red Jack calls out your bet for the wheel: “Ten shillings minimum, play your bets before the wheel stops spinning.” And the wheel slows as Jack hands you ten strangely-colored coins. That’s your stake, and you cannot leave until you’ve bet it all. (The character must bet each of the chips, until each chip has been bet; they can bet all at once or dole them out over several spins. They can also bet their winnings, but they don’t have to. If the character ends up with chips, they gain a bonus of their chip count on all archetypal rolls for the next three game sessions. Every original chip lost means a penalty of one on all rolls for the duration of this adventure. Those two can combine. Use a real wheel, not ability rolls, for this. Use red chips for the original allotment, and white chips for the character’s winnings.)
One of Jack’s duties is to provide a voice for the world tree and the road. Should one of these cards force him to speak, that will end the characters’ time with him.
Jack gathers the cards clumsily, hurriedly. He turns away and leaves the room, closing the door behind him.
If they ask him to stay, or somehow ask him to tell them more:
He speaks quickly and without looking at you.
“The cards no longer make your life. That is up to you now.”
The wheel will slowly stop spinning. When Jack closes the door, it locks. He will not return in this guise for them, though he can return if they go through one of the doors and come back--but he’ll return in the guise appropriate for that door. They will not get another chance at the cards, however.
They will remember the voice and the words in their dreams. Their dreams will contain variations on what the speaking card described.
The World
If they draw the world, the road speaks through Red Jack.
Red Jack stiffens. His eyes roll back and he stares at you with empty orbs. Then he speaks, in a voice hard and rough, the voice of a man who has seen many troubles and many days.
“On the road to wisdom are many doors. The numbers of the roads are 49 and 61. They stand between life and death, wisdom and folly, the unknown and the known. I am the road. I am life. First the crossroads. Then paradise. Follow the signs. Should you find the road, do not lose it; once you lose the way, it is difficult to walk the same path again.”
The Hanged Man
If they draw the hanged man, the world tree speaks through Red Jack.
Red Jack stiffens. His eyes roll back and he stares at you with empty orbs. Then he speaks, and his voice is strong and clean, like a starry night or a green and lush wood.
“The roots of the world grow weak. Insects nip at the branches and gnaw at the trunk. The branches of the tree are the paths of the world: the road and the tree are one.”
The Chariot
If they draw the chariot, the eternal city speaks through Red Jack.
Red Jack stiffens. His eyes roll back and he stares at you with empty orbs. Then he speaks, and his voice is a harmony of many voices, off-tune but beautiful, the soul of humanity.
“At the end of the road, the spires of the city still shine but their light grows weak. The vandals are at the gates, and the sword of time is raised above its alleys and towers. The sword of Arthur and of Ellesan and of Roland, and the ancient grail stand as the axle of the crossroads. Wear your sword well on the road, for the road is filled with danger. The roads to the city teem with enemies, yet you will still find those who welcome pilgrims on the crossroads. Watch carefully for the 7 and the 13, the hidden numbers which mark the path to the city.”
The Falling Tower
If they draw the falling tower, the Insect Queen speaks through Red Jack.
Red Jack stiffens. His eyes roll back and he stares at you with empty orbs. Then he speaks, and his voice is pain, a high-pitched whine cold and inhuman, wavering with hate. “There is no road for you, only death. If you look for the road, you will die before you find it. If you find the road you will die in the traveling. The doors of the road are not for your species, who cannot withstand emptiness nor cold nor the fullness of the hive.”
If they ask to wager on the wheel, Jack will pull the betting surface out of his voluminous clothing and lay it on the table.
He pulls a scroll of cloth from his coat, unrolls it, and lays it upon the table. The cloth is covered in red and black squares, with numbers in each square. “What shall you wager on the wheel?” he asks. “Dreams? Hopes? Loves or Life? Trade your aspirations for a chip and lay down your bets. Bet on red or black, even or odd, high or low, or lay your chip on your lucky number. The sky’s the limit when the wheel turns for you.
Characters can wager up to three important parts of their life, dreams, or aspirations. Each will give them a different color chip. When they win with a chip, they get that color of chips back for it. Their winnings, if they have any, can be exchanged for answers to questions, fortunes told, and fortunes made.
Characters can wager on red or black, on numbers, on high or low, and on even or odd. Low bets are the numbers one through 18; high bets are the numbers 19 through 36. If you’re familiar with roulette you can let them bet any legal roulette combination. Red, black, high, low, even, and odd pay one to one: for every chip bet, they get their bet plus another chip. Numbers pay 35 to 1: for every chip bet, they get their bet plus 35 more chips. Bets on low third, middle third, and high third pay two to one: for every chip they bet, they get two more chips.
If you can get a real roulette wheel, I recommend it. Small portable ones are easily found on-line by looking for “roulette paperweight”.
Red Jack will gamble for answers, should they ask him anything important. He’ll wager the answer, and they must wager something of importance for them. They can wager anything, even pieces of their past or future.
“My dear boy, this is not a fortune-teller’s hut. The cards do not see the future, the cards are the future.”
“Why is our friend appearing and disappearing?”
“The vine that holds your world is beginning to sing; it will soon snap.”
“Why?”
“The man in the dugout canoe.”
“How can we stop it?”
“The branches of the world are strained because your friend is dead and not dead at the same time. If you can ensure that he is always dead, sometime when the world isn’t looking, you will remove the strain on the branches.”
“What happens when the vines snap?”
“The world breaks.”
“Where does it go?”
“You didn’t look very closely at the darkness at the edge of the crossroads. That was smart.”
“When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back.”
“Joe Lakono works for the abyss.”
“I am on nobody’s side. I have certain duties to fulfill, and I fulfill them.”
Palace of Fine Arts“Anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.”--Oscar Wilde
The characters arrive underneath the Palace of Fine Arts up by the Marina district and the Presidio. The palace was built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, a world’s fair to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal.
A few blocks north is the bay. To the west the Golden Gate Bridge will be visible spanning more than a mile across the bay with its red iron and cables. It is 30 yards wide and 70 yards above the water. At night it is a bridge of lights, with the lights of Oakland twinkling across the bay.
It’s a cold August. Temperatures in San Francisco normally range from 55 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit, but this month temperatures are hitting 50 to 65; August 14 will have a record low for that day, at 48 degrees. There is no rain in August this year, which is normal for the area. The moon is quarter full, and waning.
The characters arrive at about 8:30 or 9:00 on Tuesday, August 5, 1969. They’ll have some assistance from the Summit. Deanna Carmen, who made a Summit-inspired music video in 1968 about a dead San Francisco brought back to life by a magical Dean Martin, will bring them apple blossoms for their hair, and a band of mercenaries to help them at the end of the gauntlet.
But first, they’ll need to get past the trap laid by the mesh, possibly also by Joe Lakono. The player characters will probably have a short-term goal of tracking down Joe Lakono, assuming that Joe has made himself an enemy of the characters. Once the characters discover what’s happening, they should accept the goal of stopping the assassination of August Wey.
They will discover the assassination plot (and possibly some clues to the whereabouts of Joe or his waxen double) by interrogating mafia gunmen, calling the phone number in the Paradice matchbook, finding the address and date on an insect mesh gunman, or finding Charles Manson’s hit list (which also includes Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr.).
The door opens to a watery, organic smell. It’s a small tunnel, and a stream in the tunnel is filled with waste. Murky water flows slowly down a thin tunnel into darkness, to your right. A metal stairway on the other side of the stream leads upwards to a landing of some sort. A tiny ledge separates the doorway from the stream.
On the San Francisco side of the door, the door is a huge, circular, iron grate, secured with bolts. It normally takes about two minutes with a heavy wrench to open the door, and the door will close on its own given any opportunity. Once closed, it can only be opened by undoing the bolts. The door is pressed with the words “Key 7 Ironworks”.
The door clangs shut. Where there was a simple wooden door, there is now a huge iron circle in a stone wall. The iron is rusted an even red, and the wall is dotted with moss around it. Four small hexagonal protrusions form a square within the iron circle.
There are recent scratches around the bolts, indicating that they’ve been turned within the last several months, but not within the last several days. Anyone examining them can see this with an easy perception roll. If Joe Lakono (or his waxen double) came through recently, he’s still here.
The stream leads out to a man-made lake.
If they climb up the stairs and into the main basement, they’ll see a long hallway filled with boxes--and an ambush.
A magical light hanging from a rope on the ceiling about ten yards up throws a dim yellowish glow onto this wide hallway. Huge wooden boxes as tall as you line both sides of the hallway, arranged haphazardly. Those on your left are partially hidden in the shadow of a high shelf, which itself is lined with smaller boxes. Thirty or so yards down the hallway, the light fades into darkness, but you might see a slight curve in the hallway where the light fades.
Now is a good time to start the soundtrack if you’re going to be using it. Remember that magic is more difficult to use here!
There are six mafia gunmen and two insect mesh gunmen lying in wait in the basement of the Palace of Fine Arts. The mafia gunmen each have a six-shot .357 revolver. The two nearest the secret door also each have a 20-round M16 automatic rifle with one extra 20-round magazine each. When firing with revolvers, they’ll usually take the penalty of 1 to do 2d6 (and use two shots). When firing with the automatic rifles, they’ll usually do an unfocussed cone attack to do 1d8 damage to anyone in the field of fire (and using ten rounds). However, they may adjust their tactics if necessary.
Revolver gunmen: (Human: 1; Survival: 4, 6, 6, 8; Move: 10; Attack: revolver; Damage: d6/2d6; Range: 18; Defense: 0)
Assault riflemen: (Warrior: 2; Survival: 12, 16; Move: 10; Attack: auto rifle or dagger; Damage: d8 or d4; Cone: 1 yard every ten yards; Range: 30; Defense: 0)
The insect mesh hosts look human but have been infected with the insect mesh. They each carry a 13-shot 9mm Browning High-Power handgun.
Mesh gunmen: (Insect Mesh: 5. Human: 1; Survival: 16+1, 25+7; Move: 11; Attack: 9mm handgun; Damage: d6/2d6; Range: 18; Defense: +2; Special defense: slo-time)
Mesh insect form (Insect Mesh: 5; Survival: 16, 25; Move: 16; Attack: mandible; Damage: d8; Defense: +5; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
One of the mesh gunmen is marked with a crossroads scar on their temple. The other is marked on their lower back.
Once fire commences, some shots will hit the boxes and the plaster sculptures inside.
You hear a noise like strange thunder, quick and harsh. Insects whiz past you so quickly you can’t see them, some leaving blood in their wake. Holes appear in the wooden boxes around you, and clouds of white dust exude from the holes.
The ambush strategy is to wait until the player characters enter the basement and get about 26 yards from the riflemen, and use automatic fire on them. The only light left on is a hanging bulb with a green shade right about at the 30-yard mark. Having the light there means that the gunmen fire as normal, but any attempts by the player characters to fight back (or perceive what is beyond the light) are at a penalty of two.
If the characters destroy the light bulb, everyone will be in darkness and have the standard penalties for not being able to see. Note, though, that destroying an electric light with a metal weapon runs the risk of electric shock: the player must make an Evasion roll or take 1d6 damage from electricity and act as surprised for the next round.
The gunmen are supposed to be careful, but if they think they’re dealing with unarmed opponents they’ll be careless, for example, stepping fully into the open to use their automatic weapons. Otherwise, when initially firing they’ll have the advantage of full cover. If the characters are within ten yards of them, the boxes will only provide medium cover.
“What the hell was that?”
“We told you to stay out of sight,” says a high-pitched voice.
“I thought they were unarmed.”
“You were wrong.”
The mafia gunmen will back up the riflemen as necessary. The gunmen will not move from their position before the player characters arrive, but if the player characters retreat the mesh gunmen will send the mafia gunmen after them, and then follow themselves.
The gunmen arrived in two sedans. If any of them choose to flee, they’ll flee to one of those cars and drive away.
He runs to a very small, oddly-shaped white house covered in windows. He flings the door open and rushes inside; the house is so small that he has to sit inside of it. Suddenly you hear a roaring noise. The house emits a puff of black smoke low from one of its ends, and then zips quickly away with the man still inside. [If they can see the license plate: There are some letters and numbers you don’t understand on the lower back of the house.]
If the ambush succeeds, any survivors will be taken to the dungeons of Alcatraz, where the mesh will try to convince each of them to give in and host a mesh insect.
If they take any of the mafia gunmen prisoner and interrogate them, the mafia gunmen are tough but not heavily committed to the strange men leading them. A successful (but very difficult) Charisma roll or appropriate role-playing will give them the following information about the ambush.
“There was a hooded man talking to these things, they talked back in a high-pitched noise like a telephone line in the rain. The hooded man asked if there was a road nearby, and something about flowering trees. He asked about digging up the roots and sapping the roads.”
If any of the mesh hosts remain alive, the characters may be able to acquire information from them, although no form of intimidation or cajoling will succeed against an infected host. If the mesh possession can be thrown off, such tactics may succeed, A Demonic Clarity spell would work, for example. The host’s knowledge will be limited to what they’ve seen and some vague impressions of the mesh’s knowledge as a whole. Such a victim will, if they realize that their respite is only temporary, beg to be killed before the spell’s effects fade.
Deanna has never seen a mesh victim’s possession reversed. She’ll be very interested in the process.
One of the mafia gunmen will have a Paradice Island Lounge matchbook. If they gain identification information for one of the hosts, they can impersonate that host over the phone (it is impossible to impersonate a mesh host in person to another member of the mesh, because there will be no meshing). The phone number in the matchbook can direct a mesh host to an appropriate location to assist in the assassination of August Wey.
Mesh host Andy Cochino has his driver’s license, with an address in Sausalito which will turn out to be a dock, and a mailbox used by the Weathermen. Note that the bug will try to take this identifying information with him if it flees.
One of the gunmen has a key to their black 1968 Cadillac Sedan deVille. (The key to the white 1960 Chevrolet Impala sedan is in the car.) The cars are distinctive enough that if someone gets away in one, characters will recognize it if they see it again. Their license plate numbers are KRD-061 and UWN-916, respectively. Successfully asking around will bring the information that the cars have been seen at the north docks. The Impala also has information about the mesh hive in the glove box, scrawled inside a Paradise Lounge matchbook: “block a the rock”.
The Cadillac’s plate is registered to Andy Cochino (one of the mesh taking part in the ambush) and it has the Sausalito address. The Impala’s plate is registered to Jesse Hill at 1139 Grant Avenue.
Among them, the mafia gunmen know that:
* They were set up here several hours (or a day or two, depending on how long after Joe/the assassin realized they were coming and when they actually came) ago to ambush anybody who came up from the sewers.
* The ambush was requested by a hooded man who promised a quid pro quo--that is, to help the two whiners--if they provided the ambush.
* The whiners are called whiners because their voice is so strange.
* The hooded man wanted to know about a nearby road, and if there were any flowering trees in the path. No idea what that means. The hooded man wants to “sap the roads” and “dig up the roots”. He’s a crazy man.
* They work for the whiners because the whiners quid pro quo; that is, the whiners help the higher ups. They don’t know what the help entails, only that the higher-ups are appreciative of the services provided.
* They met the two whiners at the docks north of the park and followed their Cadillac here.
* The whiners are working some deal with the blacks. Some Angel of Death cult.
* The whiners been working with the military on some secret project.
* The hooded man asked them about the silver city and how to get to Highway 61.
“If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.”--John Phillips
A chill fog wafts along the ground through arches in a circle around you. There is a salt-like tang [that can only be that of the sea] in the morning air. You hear a long, low moan in the distance, and amidst it the occasional sharp chirping of some alien bird or insect. The deep and booming groan far to the north fades into the night. There are flowers of red and yellow blooming by the side of walking paths and wider roads.
The deep and booming groan are the foghorns on Alcatraz.
Once they step out of the arches, they can see the rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts.
Behind you, a huge dome rises above the arches you just stepped through. Behind it a small lake or pond sits still in the mist, and a colonnade leads off to the right. White bas-reliefs circling the dome depict people engaged in sculpting, painting, pottery, and music. A pair of columns separate each arch, and above each pair a woman in high relief gazes sadly into the world.
Now (or as soon as they realize where they are) is a good time to let them know that the soundtrack is part of the adventure.
This adventure has a soundtrack for about three hours. If you want to comment on part of the soundtrack, feel free to assume that your characters are hearing it or have heard it. You can ask non-player characters questions regarding the songs you hear, and you can make guesses about the culture based on these songs if you wish.
Deanna will arrive about ten minutes after they come through the door. She brings four team members who will fade out of the narrative after the characters enter it.
Summit Soldier: (Warrior: 2; Survival: 6, 11, 14, 14; Move: 10; Attack: pistol; Damage: d6/2d6;Range: 18; Defense: +2)
The summit soldiers each have ballistic shirts and a 7-shot pistol. Usually they’ll take the penalty of 1 to attack in order to do 2d6 damage (and use two shots).
When they meet (and the fight’s over), Deanna will reach out her fingers to touch one of them on the chest, in an “are you really here” gesture. Expect the player characters to be suspicious of anyone at this point, so be careful.
A woman in brightly-colored clothing and a low-slung round burgundy cap waves at you as an old friend might, a wide smile on her face. She walks up to you with her hands flat in front of her, a long wand like the one that your attackers had hangs, unheld, on her back. “Hi,” she says. “Um... Do you mind?” She reaches out tentatively with her fingers to touch [character] on the chest, as if checking to see if they’re real. Then she pulls her hand back.
“I’m Deanna... Welcome to San Francisco. Sorry we’re late. The directions were a little confusing.”
She’ll help them clean up after the battle, and ask them to move quickly so that they can leave before the police arrive.
Deanna is the only person among her soldiers that knows the characters and what they look like. She has told her soldiers that the characters are likely to be confused and disoriented from a trip beyond time. If something happens to Deanna, the soldiers will reasonably give the characters the benefit of the doubt, but if it looks like the characters are attacking or have attacked her, they will defend her and try to get her to safety, and they’ll use their weapons against the characters to the best of their ability.
Deanna will, at some point, light a cigarette. The matchbook she’s using is from the Moulin Rouge.
“Hold on a second,” she says. She takes out a piece of paper and tears something from it, and a small flame leaps from her hand. She holds it in front of her face and lights a small stick on fire, breathes in, and the end of the stick glows dull red in the morning twilight.
She may also ask one of her team members to take their picture using her Land Camera. She’ll ask them if they’d like a picture of to remember this. If they agree:
Deanna hands a box of some sort to one of the men she’s with. She steps towards your side and turns to face back where she came. The man with the device lifts it to his face; it appears as if he has one big eye. The device opens, and its front extends like an accordion. There is a bright light. You hear the device whir as your sight returns, and the thing slowly spits a piece of glossy paper from its mouth.
“Here you go,” he says.
The photo is theirs to keep. While instant cameras won’t work in Highland, the photograph will last.
Deanna will drive them downtown in her green 1965 F100 Ranger longbed pickup. They’ll have to sit in the back. She’ll park nine blocks away down Market Street, and then they’ll walk the rest of the way.
Deanna introduces you to her “truck”, a long, green building-like structure with wheels as if it were a huge cart. There are flowers and stripes painted on the sides in many colors. The front of the structure has a fine glass on all four sides, like some magical crow’s nest. The back of the structure is open and flat, with short walls on three sides. Deanna folds the back wall down.
She leads you onto the back of the “truck” and pushes aside some wooden boxes and a pail of apple blossoms, and spreads out a wide blanket on the floor of the thing’s back room. She asks you to sit on the blanket or the boxes. You’re joined by two of the men who accompanied her.
There is a short, cyclic whine that vibrates the entire frame of this thing. A dull roar leaps from the front nose of this “truck”. It jerks forward, and you can see Deanna turning a wheel inside. The truck turns according to how she moves the wheel as the truck glides forward upon the smooth roadway.
You exit the trees and meadows and enter an area dense with houses. Magical lights shine through the windows of many of the houses. You hear snippets of strange melodies, and people in strange costumes walking along the sides of the road. Some wave at you.
The kinds of buildings change from houses to flat, square buildings, and there are lights hanging regularly from large poles on the sides of the streets. Here and there brightly-colored lights hang from the buildings, some spelling out words such as “Beer and Wine”, “Breakfast All Day”, and some you don’t understand: “Mandarin” and “Sushi”. Soon these signs hang from every building, and larger ones loom above the buildings. There are huge crowds of people by the side of the roads, and many on the roads. Deanna turns her wheel and the truck glides through them.
On Market Street, they’ll go through a relatively minor demonstration. Marching, yelling, cursing, chanting slogans in unison, voices augmented by some magic bullhorns. Opposed by men in blue with shields and clubs.
“Ah, shit. We’re gonna have to get rid of these weapons. The pigs’ll freak if they see your big-ass swords.”
“Pigs. Fuzz. Cops. Police? Law enforcement?”
“You wearing anything underneath there? No, the armor. The rest of you fit right in. Here, put some flowers in your hair.”
The people on the sidewalks and in the storefronts are dressed in clothing as strange as Deanna’s. Like Highland, you see many colors of hair and skin, but there are some body types you don’t recognize. You even see a few people whose faces remind you of Joe Lakono.
The San Francisco Chronicle currently contains the crossroads symbol, with a news story about the Zodiac.
There’s a box on the side of the roadway, and inside of it is some sort of broadsheet with the scrawled crossroads symbol on it. Amidst news about water bills, broken taxes, and Wey in Washington large text reads “This is the Zodiac speaking”.
If they ask about it, Deanna can tell them about the cipher from August 2. The cipher’s solution will be printed on the morning of Saturday August 9. (If they develop contacts in the San Francisco Chronicle or police department, they can get the solution after noon on Friday.)
“It looks a lot like the scars that the insects leave on their hosts,” says Deanna.
The headline “Wey in Washington” leads an article about black activist August Wey, in Washington to “fight for” funding for schools in “slums” and laws to “end discrimination”. Mr. Wey will return to San Francisco on Saturday and speak about his efforts “to the people”.
If you have any sixties dimes or nickels, you can use them as props by having Deanna show them how to use the newspaper box, or a telephone booth, and she’ll then give them some coins so that they’ll be able to read the news and call her loft. Or have her toss them a handful of change to grab a cup of coffee and some donuts. There’s a coffeehouse across the street from her pad, the People’s Lounge.
Newspapers cost 10 cents. Telephone calls on a public telephone also cost 10 cents for the first three minutes (and usually have separate slots for nickels, dimes, and quarters). Being down to your last dime is a pretty important thing in 1969. Other magic boxes include refrigerated soda machines (cola and various flavored sodas for fifteen cents a bottle) and cigarette machines (for a quarter a pack).
Deanna lives five miles from the Palace of Fine Arts, in a large industrial loft near the Tenderloin district, just south of Mission on Third. They’ll ride an industrial elevator from the first floor to the second floor. There are pipes everywhere along the walls and across the ceilings, and hard concrete floors.
Her loft is decorated with sixties-era posters: a poster of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Beatles), Dean Martin in The Wrecking Crew, The Grateful Dead, Happy Trails (Quicksilver Messenger Service), After Bathing at Baxter’s (Jefferson Airplane), the hurdy gurdy man (Donovan), and Boots (Nancy Sinatra), for example.
From her loft, the neon lights they saw when they came down Market Street blink incessantly. She’s used to it, they will likely find it annoying.
If you want to draw this adventure out, they can be invited to a party by someone while walking through the march.
One of the things people do at parties is take drugs. This party will have alcohol, cigars, cigarettes, LSD, cocaine, heroine, marijuana, and probably a few others. If they ask Deanna about all the things people are smoking, drinking, and otherwise imbibing in the way of drugs, she’ll say:
“When it comes to drugs, you can get whatever you want in San Francisco. My rule of thumb is, if you have to inject it, snort it, or draw it from a mirror then it’s probably more danger than it’s worth.”
If you’re using the suggested soundtrack, you might bring this encounter up when Manson’s songs and dialogue comes on. You may want to adjust the location of Manson’s tracks according to how fast your games usually go; we have a lot of talking in our games, so I moved it towards the middle, since it was going to take an hour to go from the ambush to downtown San Francisco. If your game usually moves more quickly, you’ll want to move those tracks up, or queue them separately and play them manually when appropriate.
You see a young man playing the guitar, accompanied by several young women on vocals and tambourine. One of the young women stops you; “thou art god”, she says, giggles, and returns to her friends.
If they’re from Highland, they’ll notice something odd about Manson’s entourage. On a perception roll, they’ll realize that all of his entourage are white. On the other hand, these folks are more normal to characters from a semi-medieval world like Highland compared to Deanna. Deanna is clean--scrubbed clean. Charly and his girls are much more medieval in their hygiene (as are many other hippies on the street).
Manson is in San Francisco to receive more instructions on how to bring about the race wars that he thinks will leave him in power. He may be in the park when they arrive, or near Deanna’s pad later. If you’re using the soundtrack, then when his music comes on you should mention that a guy nearby is playing the guitar, surrounded by girls, etc. He can (if they track him, interrogate him, fool him, or use telepathy or other extra-normal means at their disposal) lead them to the mesh hive in Alcatraz. One of the girls might also be able to provide similar clues to August Wey’s assassin and to the headquarters of the insect mesh. Manson understands that his new friends are trying to start a massive, violent race war, and he believes that they’ll be successful. He also believes that if he builds up enough of a following he’ll be able to come out on top.
He will be driven back to Spahn Movie Ranch on August 7, where, on August 8, he will order his followers to go to Roman Polanski’s house and murder everyone there. They will kill Sharon Tate and her friends that night (or early the next morning) and leave markings (such as “pig”) that they think will implicate the Black Panthers. Manson will, the next night (August 9) take part in the LaBianca murders in the same area.
Manson has a “hit list” of people who should be killed. Besides Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr., it includes the note “Hollywood whites... blame on Panthers.” It also includes “August Wey--Jesse”, referring to assassin Jesse Hill. The note is titled rain harsh sin. (An anagram, or perhaps the solution, of Sirhan Sirhan.)
Some of the Manson family taking part in the August 9 and 10 killings are Susan Atkins, Charles “Tex” Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten. You might choose one of those names to be with Manson in San Francisco. Former song-and-dance girl Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme is likely to be with him too.
If the players decide to track down Manson (whether they know his name or just remember his songs) it won’t be hard to find one of the girls who hangs out with him. She’ll know his name (Charly), know his philosophy (that he’s preparing for the final conflagration between blacks and whites, during which they’ll live in an underground city), and that he lives in the desert near Los Angeles and hangs out with the Beach Boys (not true at this point). He’s also chauffeured occasionally by important-looking men in a new black Cadillac.
A music gig for Deanna. An optional scene. A murder in the night? A sense of Red Jack? Ebeorie on the walls?
Zodiac:
The Red Mill can (sans Zodiac) also be used at the end of the adventure to provide a nice party for the characters.
The word on the street is unreliable, but there is a grain of truth to it:
* The revolution is coming, between the straights and the hippies. (Which side are you on?)
* The revolution is coming between blacks and whites. (Which side are you on?)
* The Zodiac is a government counter-insurgency project to make people hate the people’s movement.
* The Zodiac is a secret project by the Navy. He comes in at night from the ocean, and leaves again from the docks.
* The military is trying to incite violence between blacks and whites, as a pretense for martial law.
* Governor Reagan is trying to incite violence between hippies and straights, as a pretense for martial law.
* If we don’t kill ourselves with nuclear weapons, we’ll die from over-population.
* The Death Angels are planning something big. They’ve been calling in all their members.
* August Wey is going to announce a run for office on Saturday.
* The Death Angels have been seen talking to a man in a Cadillac at the north docks.
* The Death Angels have a warehouse on Market Street, the Self-Help Moving and Storage.
* “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Some “students” have been recruiting for a war against the United States government, and want to create a white fighting force to ally with a black liberation movement. They’re getting nicknamed “the weathermen” and hang out on a houseboat north of the bridge.
* “The SDS folks? Yeah, the weathermen. You can’t miss them. Look for a boat called the Rainy Day Woman.”
If they manage to capture the Zodiac, he knows a few things about both Manson and the mesh.
* The silver city that Manson talks about is also called Paradise City.
* When you kill people, they become your slaves in paradise.
* We do this because the world needs it. The world needs chaos.
* Charly knows magic. Killing is part of the magic. When he (Zodiac) kills, it’s a magical high.
* We do this because we will be the rulers in the next world--the one that Charly and his friends will bring about.
* Charly’s friends are powerful people.
* Charly’s people will show them how to survive when the revolution come.
* Charly learns from his people over the water north of San Francisco.
* The symbol he uses is not a crosshairs. It’s a symbol of power for Charly’s friends. It helps chaos.
“Those days are closing fast.”
Another option is to see a movie. Chances are pretty good the characters have never seen anything like a movie. But they might sense a bit of déjà vu when they see the slow-motion effects of The Wild Bunch, because it will remind them of fighting the Mesh beneath the Palace. If they’ve seen a mesh insect, the opening scene of children playing a game of watching scorpions on an ant hill may also be disconcerting.
This is one hell of a movie, and you should make sure all of your players have seen it before reading the second paragraph.
A play of light is projected from high above and behind onto a great white wall. Words on the wall describe the actors in the play. Men on horses, with those strange weapons you’ve already seen, ride into a town, but they pass smiling children poking at an ant hill, and watching pale scorpions attacked by hundreds of large ants. You get the impression that the children have placed the scorpions on the ant hill as a game.
As the play progresses it becomes clear that these men are thieves; they’re swindled out of their first robbery after half of them die; they flee into another country chased by one of their own and sell more of those strange weapons for gold. One of those weapons sounds like the thunderous ones that attacked you in the long hallway beyond the door, but it’s bigger, and the thieves use it to kill an entire army before the thieves themselves are killed. Only the one who chased them survived, though he abandons his own friends to join another army. The play ends in laughter.
At 6:29 PM Thursday, August 7, if the characters have not made any headway stopping the mesh plot, there will be a minor earthquake in San Francisco, centered in the bay near Alcatraz Island. It will be felt throughout San Francisco, and the news of its location (sans the mention of Alcatraz) will be on the radio by around 7 PM.
If the characters are going to go see a movie on Thursday or if that’s the night that you’ve chosen for Deanna’s Red Mill gig, put the earthquake halfway through the show.
Before he leaves, Manson will order an attack on Deanna and the summit. Manson himself will not take part. He will send seven women (two of them mesh hosts): Lin, Abbie, Karen, JC, Dana, Dinah, and Mary. The latter two are mesh hosts.
Three of the women (Lin, Abbie, and Karen) will pound on the door several hours before the attack, asking for assistance (if they can run up to the group while the group is outside, even better). They’re being chased by a crazy man, maybe the Zodiac himself, they’ll say. They’ll want to stay with their protectors all night. (If your players have realized Charly’s identity, they can say that Charly himself is the Zodiac, and they’re scared of him.)
You hear a terrified scream, a woman in fear. A mousy girl, scared, comes running to the door and pounds on it. She is accompanied by two friends, both of them looking over their shoulders behind them in fright. “Hurry!” one of them cries. “Open the door!”
They’ll signal the best windows to break into at about 2 AM, opening them if possible, and their compatriots will arrive armed to the teeth; if possible, their compatriots will give the three scouts a handgun each. They use 1911 pistols with 7 round magazines.
Except for the two mesh hosts, the attackers do not know about Alcatraz, only about Manson. They won’t know where to find him. They will know some clue that leads to Alcatraz.
Distressed women (Lin, Abbie, Karen): (Human: 1, Survival: 5, 5, 3; Move: 10; Charisma: Low Average; Attack: knives; Damage: d4; Defense: 0)
Attacking women (Joline, Dana): (Human: 1, Survival: 4, 5; Move: 10; Charisma: High Average; Attack: 1911 pistols; Damage: d6/2d6; Range: 18; Defense: 0)
Mesh hosts (Dinah, Mary): (Insect Mesh: 5, Human: 1; Survival: 26+1, 21+3; Move: 11; Attack: 1911 pistols; Damage: d6/2d6; range: 18; Defense: +2; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
Mesh insect form (Insect Mesh: 5; Survival: 26, 21; Move: 16; Attack: mandible; Damage: d8; Defense: +5; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
The waxen assassin will also take part in the attack if it is still around. It doesn’t care about Deanna and will focus on the player characters. If it can take the shape of a woman, it will take the form of “JC” and replace Abbie as part of the initial distressed women. The waxen assassin can also use illusions to enhance the dangers that the women are claiming to face, perhaps even making an illusion of Charly chasing them stereotypically with a knife.
Waxen Assassin: (Demon: 6; Chaotic Evil; Survival: 43; Move: 12; Attacks: 1; Damage: d6; Defense: +8; Special attack: 6-yard illusions; Special defenses: immune to weapons, cold; resistant to elements; Magic Resistance: 6)
After the ambush, Deanna will move them all (and herself) into a nearby hotel, starting with the Franklin Arms. She will not stay in any hotel more than a day.
The five “normal” members of the Manson family are easy enough to interrogate. Lin, Abbie, and Karen will be easily intimidated; Joline and Dana are proud of their “creepy crawly” night missions and brag about them.
Among the three of them, Lin, Abbie, and Karen know that:
* JC (the waxen assassin) showed up just this morning offering to help Charly if Charly would help JC bluff her way into someone’s house. (Lin, Abbie, Karen).
* Dinah joined Charly’s group just a few days ago after they all arrived in San Francisco. (Lin, Abbie, Karen)
* They were helping the others get in because the others were more experienced creepy-crawlers. They hope to be better creepy crawlers for Charly later. (Lin, Abbie, Karen)
* They do their creepy-crawlies to steal things from people. (Lin, Abbie, Karen)
* Mary joined along with Karen several weeks ago in Los Angeles, but since they got to San Francisco she’s been acting very strange. She doesn’t talk to her friends the way she used to. She talks to Charly and Dinah almost like an equal. (Karen, Lin)
* Charly came up here to talk to some people. (Lin)
* Charly came up here to talk to some people about why it’s taking so long for the war to start. The war between blacks and whites. (Abbie)
* Charly knows people. He’s going to make a record. I saw him chauffeured around in a white Cadillac, I know it was a record producer. (Karen)
* Charly will be returning to Los Angeles soon (be careful that this doesn’t cause your players to send their characters down to LA) where he can hang out with rock stars and sell his record. (Lin, Abbie, Karen)
* JC (the waxen assassin) did a light show to make it look like Charly was chasing them (if that’s how they got in) and to make it look like they were still in bed when they were opening the window. (Lin, Abbie, Karen)
Among the two of them, Joline and Dana know that:
* They will likely berate Deanna for blacks not killing whitey. “You got to start the revolution, and then we can find the paradise city.” (Joline, Dana)
* Charly has new plans to jumpstart the race war between blacks and whites, since coming to San Francisco. Once they get back to him he’ll tell them, and they will need to move further into the desert to find the secret underground city. (Joline)
* They do the creepy-crawls to steal things from people and to kill them. (Joline, Dana)
* After they arrived in San Francisco, Charly left them at the docks north of the park. They don’t know where he went after that. He returned on Monday driven by someone in a shiny new Cadillac sedan. (Joline, Dana)
* There’s a big killing planned for San Francisco. Charly needs to hurry back to Los Angeles to be ready to start riots there when the riots start in San Francisco. (Dana)
* Charly says his friends know where the silver city is. They’re gonna help us find it. (Joline)
* Charly’s friends are men of wealth and class. (Dana, Joline)
* Charly is jealous of a guy named Jesse Hill. No idea why, Charly is a fucking god, man. But Jesse gets to do some fun creeping here. (Dana)
Use the flavor text in brackets if they come to the island at night.
Its rocky crags outlined sharply against the sky [stars], the island resembles a deranged castle, [one eye blinking steadily from the left/pier]. A huge blocky structure dominates the high part of the island; stone walls towards the shoreline crumble like jagged teeth in the mouth of a monster.
The bay is up to 350 feet deep at points around the Golden Gate. If the characters travel to Alcatraz by boat, it’ll probably be a small one, most likely a rowboat, and there are things in the vast ocean much bigger than them.
Every once in a while humpback whales will enter the bay, 12-yard-long creatures with great slowly-blinking eyes and perpetual, gigantic frowns. They can surface to blow water ten feet into the air, their huge bodies undulating above water and then descending again, their wide tail flapping upwards once behind them. They can also jump high in the air, bringing two-thirds of their body above water and landing again on their backs. An impressive site for someone who’s never been on the ocean before!
There are also ships traveling into San Francisco Bay from the ocean (or heading back into the ocean). Oil tankers, typically 180 yards long, ply the Bay day and night. Supertankers and container ships 300 yards long and 40 yards wide regularly travel through the bay, the latter loaded with towers of 20-foot boxes of many colors. These ships can make whales look like guppies, and when you’re near one in a rowboat your main concern will be to not be near one in a rowboat.
There are evils buried on Alcatraz. If the characters are carrying the broken sword of Ellesan these will rise as skeletons in the night. There can be up to twenty skeletons, though only one to six will likely appear at any one time.
Skeletons (Undead: 1; Move: 10; Attack: hands or weapon; Damage: d4 or weapon; Defense: +3; Special Defense: slashing weapons do half damage, pointed weapons do 1 pt)
Skeletons appear on a 40% roll every thirty minutes at night; roll 1d6 for number.
There are eight mesh insects in San Francisco. Six of them have hosts: two of the ambushers (one named Andy Cochino), two of Manson’s women, the leader Mark Wilford, and the assassin Jesse Hill. Unless he’s been called back specially, Jesse Hill will not be here, he’ll be at his apartment. Mark Wilford is black; the other mesh are white.
Mark Wilford: (Insect Mesh: 5, Human: 1; Survival: 26+6; Move: 12; Attack: 1911 pistols; Damage: d6/2d6; range: 18; Defense: +4; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
Mark Wilford mesh insect form (Insect Mesh: 5; Survival: 26; Move: 16; Attack: mandible; Damage: d8; Defense: +5; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
Free mesh insects: (Insect Mesh: 5; Survival: 23, 24; Move: 16; Attack: mandible; Damage: d8; Defense: +5; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
If any of the other mesh hosts are here, copy their stats on the appropriate line:
Ambushers:
Manson’s women:
Jesse Hill:
If they are chasing Joe Lakono (or his waxen assassin), he may be there as well, working with the mesh to bring about the order of Tawhiri.
The Zodiac might also be here.
The defenders have two motorboats on the docks on the north side of the island. They can use these to escape if they need to.
You push upon the simple metal gate, and it squeaks loudly as it opens. Thin stone stairs lead down to a ledge. There is nothing to your left but a steeply-dropping hill and the sea.
The map of the dungeons shows a secret passage that can be used by mesh hosts (and other medium-sized creatures). There are cracks everywhere, however, that can only be used by the mesh in their insect form. Free bugs can pretty much get anywhere within the dungeons, showing up in the walls or from the ceiling.
Moisture collects on the rock walls, and old lumber stands in the corners. There are shallow cisterns, damp but empty, near the northwest wall of the room. Cracks cross the ceiling and spread down the walls like dark lightning. The wind outside echoes eerily within this large, roughly-cut space.
The laundry room is ostensibly the only part of this area, but there is one secret exit (to the secret passage) and one hidden exit (to the dungeon cells).
Inside the dungeon area, moisture drips steadily in the corners. Iron rings are embedded into the walls and ceilings. There are cracks in the walls and ceilings big enough to put your fist into. Inside the cells there are initials etched in the walls, a rough calendar dated a hundred years ago. A gust of cold wind; a moan beyond the walls; a flash of a uniformed corpse hanging from the rough damp ceiling.
If they enter the back office of the dungeons of Alcatraz and defeat or bypass the mesh, they will find a list of people’s names in a simple desk, very similar to the list that Charles Manson has. These are people who the mesh wants to kill. The top of the list is:
one: trigger on August Wey... give to Jesse Hill; follow with death angels, weathermen
That’s the important line, because it will let the characters know about the assassination about to trigger race riots in San Francisco. There’s also a matchbook from the 49 Café, with an address on Market Street. By this time they should recognize a matchbook when they see one.
The list contains many politicians, activists, and movie stars. Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston are on the list. Sinatra and Davis are on the list as well. Others include Bobby Seal, Howard Thurman, Elizabeth Burton, Muhammad Ali, Richard Burton, Tom Jones, Huey Newton, John Lennon, and Steve McQueen.
Towards the bottom of the list, if you aren’t worried about sending the player characters on a wild goose chase, is “stars... blame on panthers... choose appropriately.” These are instructions for their human minions. If the characters recognize the list as a hit list, Deanna will know that killing them all would mean massive race riots. Most of the names are prominent blacks.
Deanna is not aware of who the weathermen (or the death angels) are; the player characters will need to get the “word on the street” to find out. If they ask Deanna, she’ll talk about newscasters:
“Weathermen? There’s nothing special about them. They forecast the weather.”
If it’s 6 PM or 10 PM or a little later, she can show them.
“Here, I’ll show you.”
She walks over to an opaque glass that’s sitting in the corner of the room. She turns a knob on it to the right. A tiny eye flashes in the center of the glass. It expands outward almost faster than you can follow. Suddenly there’s a man in the glass sitting at a desk--and talking.
“Those are the headlines for San Francisco today. We now turn to Drew Borden for the weather. How’s the weekend going to treat us, Drew?”
“Still gonna be cold, Alex. There’s a good chance of rain tonight, but it should clear up on Saturday.”
Once the players realize that the weathermen are a terrorist group, the weathermen are not hard to track down. They are easier to get talking than the Death Angels. They’ll be happy to share a toke with anyone who looks like a freak or who appears ready to join them.
* Any reason for revolution is a good reason. There is no time to create an ideological movement like those assholes at the SDS.
* They have been chosen as the core of a white fighting force that will ally with the black liberation movement.
* Our job is to lead white kids into armed revolution. Black kids have been fighting alone for years.
* The blacks are going to rise up any day now; when they do, we’ll follow.
* No price is too high to demolish the capitalist system. The United States government will fall, and with it every corrupt nation that joined it at the trough.
* Protests and marches won’t do it. Revolutionary violence is the only way. We’re ready to go now. We’re just waiting for the sign.
* The war and the racism in this society are too fucked up. We will never live peaceably under this system.
* We do not fight alone. Army deserters are coming to us. They’re going to help us tear up this system from outside and inside.
* There are Weathermen all over the United States, living in small cells and readying themselves to fight the revolution.
The Weathermen consider their mesh contact--Andy Cochino--to be a member, and are proud of his ability to make things happen. They know that he’s going to give them the sign sometime at the end of this week. It’s going to be big, it’s going to be bloody, and it’s going to rock the corrupt house down. Sometimes Andy comes to meet them up the bridge in his Cadillac. Sometimes he comes in from the bay in a motor boat.
They have some crude explosives ready to go. They use pipe bombs packed with nails. The designs were brought from Chicago by Bernardine Dohrn. The designer is her weatherman co-founder, Billy Ayers. Their nail bombs do 4d6 damage in a two-yard radius, 3d6 in a four-yard radius, 2d6 in an eight-yard radius, and 1d6 in a sixteen-yard radius. Victims can make an evasion roll for half damage.
The 49 Café is on Market near the intersection with Steuart. The mesh (Mark Wilford and one other mesh host, depending) met Jesse Hill regularly here so that the insect in Jesse could meld for a moment and share information with the Alcatraz mesh. Jesse sometimes wears an old army shirt or jacket. The others wear dark business suits.
The waitresses at the café do not know the name Jesse Hill, but they definitely remember Jesse and his “friends”, both their faces and their voices and simply the fact that they were very strange. They call them the zodiac men, because if anyone could be the zodiac, they could. If they connect Jesse to what the player characters ask about, they’ll say something like:
Handwritten letters are painted on a wide window: “49 CAFÉ”. In the doorway, colored strings, red, white, and blue hang down so that you have to push them aside to walk through. Inside, you can smell frying meat, bacon, sausages, and eggs, and an acrid smell of something burnt.
There are forty of the strings (shoestrings) hanging in the doorway, a reference to Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited. They can get breakfasts here, mostly eggs and ham or bacon or sausages, pancakes with syrup. The syrup bottles have a picture of a log cabin on them. The café is open from 6 AM to 4 PM. It’s a small café with a bar (for eating) in front of the kitchen and booths around the walls. There are two restrooms around the side (marked “bobs” and “joans”). The kitchen can be entered behind the bar or through a door near the restrooms.
If you want to try to imitate the Mesh host’s voice, try lifting your tongue to the top of your month, and then pulling it backwards (arching it towards the back of your mouth). You’ll sound sort of like Alvin and the Chipmunks.
The waitress who talks to them about it (if anyone does) is Julia. The waitress that saw Jesse walk down Steuart is Sharon.
“Oh, my god. The zodiac men. They come in here in a black Cadillac, like tin soldiers or something. They don’t talk much, just order a coffee in that crazy voice, sit down, “Hot enough for you?” “Sure is, not even laughing at the joke [note: it’s an exceptionally cold August], then they just stare at each other, stare out the window, at each other, out the window, drink their coffee, just a few minutes, not even as if they wanted it, stand up and leave.”
“They don’t even say anything when they leave. Just walk out the door.”
“Black suits and army clothes. They’re either murderers or CIA.”
“The one, the soldier, he walks up the street, right, the others--the black guy and the white guy--they go any which way, or if they parked right out front get in their Cadillac and drive away.”
“Creepy as hell.”
“Like they haven’t had practice being human.”
“Two of them leave in that Cadillac. The other walks away.”
“I seen one of them go into that apartment building on Steuart.”
Why is it called the 49 Café? “Well, you know, it’s the gold rush. But we like to think of Highway 49 as the unknown crossroads, everyone knows about Highway 61, but nobody knows about 49. So we hung up the shoestrings. You want anything else?”
The 49 Café menus are stained glossy typewritten two-pagers. The cover has the name of the café and a bearded old man carrying a pickaxe through large yellow rocks. Inside are strangely-named foods: sourdough biscuits, golden nuggets (“golden brown home fries”), “sourdough waffles with golden syrup”, 49-spice chili. The “mother lode” is a breakfast of three eggs “any style”, sausage, bacon, biscuits, golden nuggets, and gravy.
Hill, Mark Wilford, and Andy Cochino (all of them mesh hosts) last met on Monday, August 4, in the late morning. At least one will meet again on Friday, August 8, at 10 AM, if any remain. Their meeting will last five minutes; then the two other mesh will leave by Cadillac and Jesse Hill will walk back to his apartment.
If the Cadillac has been destroyed or they decide its too recognizable, they will arrive in a white Volkswagen Beetle.
The morning papers on Saturday, August 9, will carry the news that Donald Harden, a Salinas high school teacher, has solved the Zodiac cipher. They will print the solved version of the text in their newspapers.
Other news on the page is “Black Nationalist March Today”, about August Wey’s march to the end of Market Street, where he’ll give a speech today about his experiences in Washington.
If they know that Jesse lives on Steuart but not where, there are two apartment complexes in the block north of Market, and three in the block south of Market. Depending on how they ask, they might be able to get the apartment manager to tell them that Jesse does (or does not, depending on the building) live her without any roll. On average, though, this is a very easy Charisma roll.
The apartments north of Market are Steuart Bay Condominiums and St. Anne’s Court. Steuart Bay is closest to the corner. Steuart Bay is a new experiment called a “condominium”, where the residents share ownership in the building and the land it’s built on. It’s a bit more upscale than the other apartment complex north of Market. Eddie Jackson, the concierge, is a garrulous man who takes his job seriously. If they give him a reason to be suspicious, he will no longer be friendly (and will possibly offer to call the police). Otherwise, he’ll be happy to talk and help.
Eddie has noticed the black Cadillac drive by occasionally in the last two or three months. It seems to be stopping south of Market, just a bit down past the corner. SOMA doesn’t often get that kind of service. The Caddy probably comes by every week or two, but he hasn’t noticed any regularity about it.
The apartments south of Market are a bit more rundown than the apartments north of Market. They are the Linda Vista Apartments, the Sunset Apartments, and the Rose Field Apartments. Rose Field apartments where Jesse lives are the middle apartments in the south block. There is no concierge at Rose Field; they’ll need to buzz for the front desk half the time. She’ll do whatever she can to make them go away, including tell them where Jesse lives, but if they act like cops she’ll clam up. “I know you have to have a warrant or a write or something.”
The apartments here are fairly small.
If they manage to track down Jesse Hill, they will likely decide to confront him in his Rose Field apartment before the assassination. This apartment is a big drop from his working class house in on Grand.
You walk to the end of Market Street. Steuart Street runs left and right. Ahead of you is a small park, and beyond it are warehouses, and beyond them ships in the bay. Large buildings line this side of Steuart Street north and south.
Jesse has a corner apartment. The mesh have rented the apartment next to Jesse’s apartment on the side facing the street. They occasionally let allies use it. Note that Jesse pretends that he doesn’t know the people in that apartment. The apartment manager knows that the same people have been renting it for a long time while letting others stay there; as long as they don’t cause trouble she doesn’t care. She doesn’t know that Jesse is connected with them.
August Wey flies in from Washington, DC on Friday night. He will be surrounded by his people, giving commands and listening to reports until the speech. He and his followers will march up Market Street, where he will deliver a rousing speech on race, reform, and his time in DC from the open park at the end of Market with the bay behind him.
His speech is on Saturday afternoon, August 9. He will begin speaking at about 2:15 PM. A mesh-controlled (white) Jesse Hill will perform the hit, and will be released from the mesh after confessing--and implicating the U.S. government. Jesse is a Vietnam veteran who was been caught up in the Manson cult. The mesh has ensured that he’s been photographed near FBI offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco. These photographs will be released after the assassination.
Jesse Hill will shoot Wey from his fourth-floor apartment at the end of Market. He’ll be 190 yards away firing at an unaware target. He’ll fire one double shot from his semi-automatic scoped M16 rifle for 2d8 damage. Bonuses: +1 high ground, +4 unaware target, +2 careful attempt, +5 skill. Penalties: -3 range (six range penalties, but the scope negates three of them), double shot -1. The total bonus is +8, which means that a roll of 19 or less will hit.
Jesse Hill: (Human: 1; Survival: 6; Move: 12; Attack: knife; Damage: 1d4+1; Defense: +1; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
Free Insect: (Insect Mesh: 5; Survival: 20; Move: 16; Attack: mandible; Damage: d8; Defense: +5; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
If Wey doesn’t drop, Hill will fire one more single shot for 1d8. By then, Wey will either crouch down or will be pulled down by his bodyguards if he’s somehow still survived.
Remember that if Wey is not surprised by the first shots, the second shot will not get the unaware bonus, and Hill won’t get the careful attempt bonus or scope bonus in any case, so a second shot will be either at +4 or +0, meaning that a roll of 15 or less (Wey is surprised) or 11 or less (Wey is not surprised) will hit. Remember that in conflict, Jesse’s skill bonus of +5 with the rifle won’t apply.
August Wey will talk about his experience in Washington, DC, and the need for deep change within the system.
He speaks of a far-away place called Washington, and an inflexible system of government that is at war with its own people as well as with foreigners across a far ocean. He speaks of changing the system, but, he says,
“The system does not want to change. Here in our own California there are thousands upon thousands of people who draw their living from the prison system. They need prisons and prisoners. More and more of them every day. All the clerks, all the guards, all the bailiffs, all the merchants who sell to the prisons. They regard inmates as a natural resource from which they all draw their livelihood, and the crop they exploit the best are the black inmates.”
“When society’s institutions no longer serve the needs of the people, the institutions must be changed. We must change them. That is the American tradition: when we are tyrannized and our government answers cries for justice with more tyranny, it is our right and duty to abolish that government, to create a government that will extend justice impartially and humanely to all its citizens.”
“Stand up for liberty. Stand up for justice. Stand against death. We are set against a dying culture. Our change need not require bloodshed nor our revolution war, for the system is weak in the face of our conviction. We are life. We are the breath of the world. Our strength is strength that can change the course of history, a strength that can make a new society of cooperation, true freedom, and justice for all.”
He continues in that vein, exhorting the crowd to force the city to change, to force the state to change, and to force the nation to change. Apparently all of them can vote, and many of them are even eligible to become rulers.
If Jesse Hill is free to shoot, he’ll do so after “Stand against death”.
If August Wey is assassinated, a small portion of the crowd--several hundred peoples--will immediately riot back down Market Street. The police will try to bring things under control. That night, the weathermen will use a nail bomb at a police headquarters. This will trigger more riots on the part of whites, and will also cause the police to act more brutally against black rioters, which will in turn trigger more rioting. When the death angels begin hacking people with machetes in the night, all hell will break loose.
There will be minor rioting in Los Angeles until the Tate/La Bianca killings are discovered and assumed to be a retaliation for the Wey assassination. Rioting will spread across color boundaries here as well.
When Governor Reagan sends in the National Guard to both San Francisco and Los Angeles, any mistake on their part will be used to spread the riots to Fresno (California’s capital). Without assistance from the federal government, a lot of public officials will be killed, and it is very likely that the rioters will set up a new revolutionary government. The National Guard will then have to march back from San Francisco and Los Angeles to retake the capitol, leaving other riots behind them.
Rioting will also spread to New York City and Chicago pretty quickly, and to other major cities if those riots are not quickly put down. The weathermen and other groups primed by the mesh will commit racial crimes and try to instigate police crackdowns.
The federal government will be tied up in Washington, DC, where rioting will begin the night of the assassination. The weathermen will set more nail bombs in military facilities and state buildings, causing the federal government to declare martial law within the U.S. capitol. If the United States shows any weakness or likelihood of contracting inwards, revolutionary movements throughout the world will do their best to take advantage of it.
Some of this may be ameliorated if the player characters have removed some of the mesh’s chess pieces from the board. If Charles Manson is unavailable, for example, his followers will try to handle their part without him, but will likely bungle it. If the weathermen have been taken out of commission, or their bombs destroyed, San Francisco’s police won’t be quite as trigger-happy.
If August Wey is not assassinated, some of these groups will still perform their duties, but without a triggering event the bombings and killings will be spread across several years. The weathermen won’t bomb a police station until February. They’ll commit several other bombings and other killings or attempted killings through the years. They’ll show solidarity with Charles Manson once that case breaks, suspecting that his actions were part of the fizzled revolution. They’ll go underground after one particularly horrendous plan to bomb a dance and a crowded downtown area backfires on them. While underground they’ll write a book about violent revolution dedicated to, among others, Sirhan Sirhan, and eventually start filtering back into the mainstream.
The death angels will go on their murder spree in 1973. Manson’s killings, meant to coincide with an assassination that didn’t happen, will confuse more than incite. A few Manson family members will continue Manson’s work after he’s captured, the most public event being their attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford in 1975.
The zodiac killer will fade from public view, eventually becoming fodder for crime movies and conspiracy theorists.
The Moulin Rouge“What is man, that thou art mindful of him?”
Any mesh that the player characters leave alive in San Francisco will, if possible, be in Las Vegas, in the Paradice Island Lounge. Depending on what they know of the characters, the extra mesh may or may not be waiting in the basement along with the mesh host and free mesh that are trying to convince Joe Louis to let the free mesh insect enter him.
A good day to arrive is somewhere in August, three months after they’ve opened and two months before they close. August 15 is a good date. It is 1 AM when they arrive. Things are just about to get hopping at the Moulin Rouge.
You see what must be a wide room or hallway extending far to your right and left. Boxes are piled everywhere; metal pipes run left and right haphazardly along the ceiling. There is some light coming from your left, from around a corner about ten or fifteen yards away.
Water drips from metal to metal before reaching the floor or the boxes; the drip-drip-drip echoes down the hall.
The wall you came in on is covered in doors. There are a dozen or so doors next to you on your left. To your right, the doors go on forever, each of them marked with an arcane symbol.
The door you’ve just opened is marked with an odd, stylized butterfly-like symbol, two misshapen ovals composed of concentric lines all converging on the butterfly’s missing body.
They arrive through one of many doors. Their door is marked with the sigil of an extremely stylized butterfly-like pair of concentric circles (a Lorenz attractor). There are many other doors with stranger symbols, including one with a highway symbol and “49” written in it. These open onto the two roads that lead to the crossroads. The doors appear to go on forever, although if they try to follow them to the right, they’ll find that it’s an optical illusion. The hallway and the doors shrink as they move down, ending two hundred yards to the right. There are still a couple hundred or so doors, though.
The basement is an “L” shape. The corner is fourteen yards to the left (as they walk out the door). The basement is about six yards wide, and filled with junk.
Depending on when they look around the corner, you may have to adjust the order of these paragraphs.
You hear a voice coming from around the corner.
“You’re a rug-thrower, Joe,” you hear in a high-pitched whine, like metal wire drawn suddenly taut in winter. “A high-priced monkey in a red suit. Nothing will ever come of it. You know that. Your “partners” know it. They’re gonna dodge and shimmy and leave you alone in the ring again.”
A big man, a warrior, is tied tightly to a small chair about twenty yards ahead of you. Two men, one wearing a dark green plaid jacket, the other wearing a gold jacket with orange lines, are pacing in front of and behind him, talking to him. One leans over to whisper to him, while the other berates him.
“Look at your world,” says the man in the dark green jacket. “Diseased. Cancerous is the perfect metaphor for your world, Joe. It is at war with itself. It is dying from within; and your people will be the first to go, Joe. Understand that; then understand that we offer a solution. We offer a cure. There is a disease here; we provide the antibodies.”
“And you can choose to help, “ says the other man. “Choose unity. Let this be the moment that hope begins. Join us. Let us help you. All you need to do is invite us.”
His head lolls backwards, and you can see blood and bruises on his face.
“No.”
Around the corner, it is 20 yards to the chairs where Joe Louis, the Moulin Rouge’s doorman and partner, is bound and gagged. The mesh are trying to convince the boxer to accept them, so that they can use him to commit the Moulin Rouge massacre.
Joe Louis’s interrogators are mesh hosts trying to convince him to let them in. Remember that while the two of them are together, their magic resistance is 4, and in an eight-yard radius.
John is the man in green. He is the spokesperson for the mesh here, and coordinates with the mob. His pistol has seven shots.
Mesh host: (Human: 1, Insect Mesh: 5; Survival: 5+24; Move: 12; Attack: knife or pistol; Damage: 1d4+1 or 1d6; Defense: +2; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
Mesh form: (Insect Mesh: 5; Survival: 24; Move: 16; Attack: mandible; Damage: d8; Defense: +5; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
Austin is the man in gold. He plans to take part in the massacre later. His pistol has six shots.
Mesh Host: (Human: 1, Insect Mesh: 5; Survival: 1+26; Move: 12; Attack: knife or pistol; Damage: 1d4+1 or 1d6; Defense: +2; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
Mesh form: (Insect Mesh: 5; Survival: 26; Move: 16; Attack: mandible; Damage: d8; Defense: +5; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
“They’re going to attack my casino. I’m going to stop them.”
“Some people don’t need a reason. I don’t know why.”
The Mesh’s plan is to kill high-profile targets in America’s first high-profile inter-racial casino. If the player characters defeat the insects here, but one or more of the bugs escape, and the insects know that the player characters are out to stop them, they will accelerate the plan.
There are only two doors in this part of the halls, bare metal things with a single square of glass in them crisscrossed with tiny filaments. Joe leads you to one of the doors, and leads up metal stairs painted green. Up several flights of stairs which clang as you step upon them and echo loudly on all sides, you come to a solid blank door which Joe pushes open.
People mill about a long hallway; masks hang on walls, and green, grass-like barriers or short walls line the sides of the hall. Some women are dressed in grass-like skirts. Men look at you confusedly as Joe leads you through two tall, wide, glass doors lined in metal; the doors slide forward with a simple hush and you are in the cool, natural night of this strange world.
After 20 yards of stairs (ten yards straight up) they come through a side door into the entrance of the Paradice Island Lounge. This side door can only be opened from the basement side. Among the birds of paradise are tiki masks, fake grass barriers, and waitresses in fake grass skirts. The exit is a pair of wide glass doors guarded, on the other side, by a pair of bouncers. The bouncers will probably be a bit confused about the strange group exiting their casino, but they will make no attempt to stop people from exiting, only entering again. They are normal humans.
The door, on the hallway side, is a secret door, shaped to appear as nothing more than a panel in the tiki-themed wall. It has no handle and normally cannot be opened from topside. Forcing it open is extremely difficult; finding it is a normal perception roll, but since they likely will know that it’s there they’ll get a bonus of 4 to see it when and if they return.
When they exit the Paradice Island Lounge, the neon lights of the Moulin Rouge are visible across the tracks.
That symbol on your matchbook hangs in the air in the night. He leads you towards that light in the sky. As you move towards it, the crowds begin to thin, as do the lights. You pass through what appears to be a border crossing of some kind, with pairs of metal lines protruding from the gravel. When you cross the border, you notice that most of the skin colors are darker, and except for the oases you’re moving towards the lights are dimmer and fewer in number.
They’ll need to go down a moderately busy street, passing lots of people, and across some railroad tracks, to get to the Moulin Rouge. As they move towards the tracks, the crowd thins.
A gigantic sign across the roof sheds light across the lot, a wide expanse filled with bulbous wheeled contrivances. The sign reads “Moulin Rouge”. A little lower and to its left more writing says “Casino Dining Theatre”. A smaller sign above the lot by the road reads “Moulin Rouge presents Tropi Can Can. A dazzling revue with cast of over 50 by Clarence Robinson. Your host Joe Louis.”
There is a ringer at the front door, Wally Sagor, keeping track of possible targets. He’s a mesh host, and he won’t be happy to see Joe coming back with help.
At the entrance, a man in red and black, with yellow lines, stands welcoming visitors.
“Joe, entertainers use the side entrance.”
“I can use the front door in this joint. Who are you?”
If the player characters are all dressed up in armor, though, he’ll have a comeback:
“What about them, Joe? Whoever they are, talent uses the side entrance.”
“Yeah, okay, you got a point.”
Louis will rush them through, and will then split up with them to go upstairs and talk to management about emptying out the casino. They should see him again in the scene, “Baby in the Corner”.
Massive clusters of crystals hang down from the ceilings emitting a bright light over the hallway. The ceilings are lavender, covered in row after row of stylized yellow blades or flowers resembling ornate spear-heads.
You step through an arch down wide stairs into a room filled with people and gambling tables. Wheels spin; dice roll; men in black and red yellow-lined suits deal cards. The room is filled with tobacco smoke; everyone is laying down brightly-colored coins to place and collect their bets.
There is a café here (the Café Rouge), a stage, a bar, and a theater, as well as the casino area. In the west end is the hotel area, and between the hotel side and the casino side is a large pool.
There’s a stage, and people sit at tables around the stage drinking and talking. The walls are covered with drawings of ladies dancing, and windmills, and tightly-packed streets with tall buildings.
There is a little girl on stage, wearing a shimmering gown with a long plume on her head. She’s singing a song about the follies of youth, and how she’s glad she’s not young any more. Only a few people at the tables are paying attention, but those who are, are laughing hysterically. Two boys only a little older dance around her, and their feet hitting the stage make a loud staccato noise like gunfire. You’ve come in just at the end of their act; they bow and are replaced by a strong, lithe man with a chicken, surrounded by twenty or more dancing women; all of them wearing very little.
They should have just enough time to see the sights before the crowd panics. “He’s got a gun!”
The massacre is likely to be a running battle inside the Moulin Rouge, around the gambling tables, stars, women, food, kitchen, garden? The Moulin Rouge is packed between 10 PM and 2 AM, to the point where you can barely get through the casino area.
The mesh want to wait until 2 AM to start the massacre, because that’s when the white stars show up. Any mesh in insect form can use the air conditioning to get to anywhere in the Moulin Rouge very quickly, as if it were a direct line.
There are two mesh hosts performing the massacre, plus Austin Ellis if he’s available. One of them is Joe’s replacement at the door. The doorman (Wally Sagor) will kill as many high-profile people as he can. Austin Ellis and Miss Emma Willis will try to find Deanna. If there are any mesh from San Francisco, they may or may not take part. They’ll be on the lookout for the player characters and for Deanna.
Mesh Doorman: (Human: 1, Insect Mesh: 1; Survival: 3+24; Move: 12; Attack: pistol; Damage: 1d6; Defense: +2; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
Mesh form: (Insect Mesh: 5; Survival: 24; Move: 16; Attack: mandible; Damage: d8; Defense: +5; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
Mesh Host: (Human: 1, Insect Mesh: 5; Survival: 1+20; Move: 12; Attack: knife; Damage: 1d4+1; Defense: +3; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
Mesh form: (Insect Mesh: 5; Survival: 20; Move: 16; Attack: mandible; Damage: d8; Defense: +5; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
If there are other mesh hosts taking part, you may want to list them here. Remember that their slo-time fields are additive, and that magic resistance increases as well. Don’t forget to note two of them for the “Baby in the Corner” scene.
This is a chance for the player characters to rescue Deanna Carmen--as an eight year old girl. Hopefully some of the insect mesh in bug form are available for this scene. You’ll want two or three of them. Eight-year-old Deanna is protected by Joe Louis with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. providing backup. Her guardian, Gerald Gardner, is already dead. They outnumber their attackers three to two, but they’re moving very slowly (or if the characters are in the slo-time zone, their attackers are moving very quickly). Only Joe Louis can really fight, and he’s already injured. Sammy Davis, Jr. is even wearing an eye patch over his left eye--he lost it in an accident almost a year ago.
Given the opportunity after the fight, Deanna will touch them to see if they’re real (try not to do this in a manner that triggers an attack from the player characters). Preferably, Deanna will do this to the same character she did/will do this to in San Francisco.
The little girl reaches out her hand and touches you on the chest with her fingers, as if to make sure you’re real. “I’m Deanna,” she says in a quiet voice.
Because of his “interview” with the insect mesh, Joe Louis knows a little about their presence in the Paradice Island Lounge.
* He was caught because, when they first tried to kidnap him, he called the police. The police turned him over to Paradice casino manager John Ryder.
* They wanted him to start the killings.
* The Paradice is some sort of hive of bugs. It’s a headquarters of sorts for them.
* The mafia is in on it, and the bugs were talking to some mafia figures while they were holding him.
* They use some doors in the basement to travel all over the place. Places he’s never heard of, like Hanoker, and some places they just called “the frozen city” and “the road”.
* There doesn’t seem to be a swarm of them--he saw or heard referenced maybe four or five others (you may want to adjust this depending on how many bugs escaped from San Francisco to here, and whether they would have been mentioned in Louis’s presence).
Louis: “These are the folks I was telling you about, Sam.”
Frank: “I dunno about the police. Joe, you feel good about telling the police you killed a man who looked like a bug?”
Louis: “No, sir. I already called the cops this morning. That’s why I ended up in the Paradice chair.”
Sam: “You got a better plan?”
Louis: “Sometimes the best story is no story at all. Take the bugs in the basement and burn them.”
Depending on what happened during the fight, they may be able to treat the whole thing as a very realistic show, a War of the Worlds gone awry. There’s an incinerator in the basement that they can use for bug remains and dead mesh hosts. If the mesh succeed in killing or seriously injuring anybody, however, they may have to come up with some other story, such as that the killer ran away, or that there was more than one killer and they turned on each other, or some variation on a crazy lover.
Remember that Joe Louis does not trust the police. He knows that some of them work for the mafia. That can work in their favor, as any police officer on the take is less likely to make trouble for the Moulin Rouge: they’ll leave the trouble-making to the mafia.
Sinatra or Davis: “1969, huh? How many ex-wives do I have by then?”
Sinatra: “Yeah, I can do it. I know the town. Besides, your mick accent will bug the hell out of the clerks.”
Sinatra or Davis: “What the hell? I mean, what the hell is this? Some sort of deranged Disney World? These aren’t dames dressed up as pests, these are pests dressed up as dames?”
This encounter is specific to our group. You won’t find it useful to use exactly, but it’s an example of how the roads turn in on each other. In our game, one of the characters is a descendant of the Clanricarde, and has gone on a quest for Clanricarde’s stone (unsuccessful at the time of this adventure). So, I introduced a version of the Clanricarde legend heavily modified for this campaign. An Irish band is extremely unlikely in the Moulin Rouge, but one unlikely thing in service of the adventure is worthwhile. As one of the regulars will say about the folk group, “that’s what comes from letting Harry sing that folk music here.”
“Sure as Christ, you sound it.” (About them being related to the Clanricarde.)
“I thought I recognized the Connaught in you! Joey, a drink for my brother here.”
“Don’t worry, it’s on the house for the band. If they keep inviting Irish singers they’ll go broke.”
“The Clanricarde disappeared hundreds of years ago. No one knows where they went.”
“Castle? No, they disappeared, son. The Burkes, the castle, and the grave are gone. Where they went and when they return, no one knows. Across the western seas or down the faerie road, one legend is that they’ll return when the West needs them, but it’s ever a hard road for the Irish and they haven’t returned yet.”
The Clanricardes drove the Fir Bolg out of Connaught, with the aid of St. Grellan. When the Fir Bolg broke their treaty and the Irish went to war, St. Bridget prayed to God and opened the earth to swallow the Fir Bolg army. The Clanricardes established the ancient castle at Ard Rathain, dedicated to Christ and St. Bridget; they worshipped at the temple of St. Bridget in Comharba.
The Clanricarde and his men fought with St. Ruth at Aughrim, and died defending the village of Aughrim on the Irish side of the Shannon river. His wife, son, and mother were spirited away from Ardrahan under the noses of the British, but what happened to them no one knows. The earldom was forbidden by the British and has never been restored.
The band’s accent is familiar to Highland characters. The Irishmen will call Highland characters “Celts” for their accent.
They will probably want to break back into the Paradice to get home, and might also choose to try crippling the mesh here in Vegas. Assuming that Louis, Davis, and/or Sinatra survive, the newly-formed Summit will support destroying the Paradice. Louis knows from his “conversation” with the mesh that the Paradice is a virtual train station for bugs. They’ll want to make sure that any innocents leave. They know about fire alarms and the best time to avoid crowds (anytime in the late morning would be best--people have awoken to go about their business but have not yet started to crowd the casinos and clubs).
The door they used to exit the Paradice basement is a secret door that doesn’t open from this side. Magic might well be used to open it; or they can use the same door that Joe Louis was taken into when he was captured: the side entrance, metal stairs astride the building and open to the night lead into the casino’s second-floor offices. There is a small hallway; one door at the end five yards down; one door on the left; and two doors on the right. The immediate door on the right is the office of John Ryder and Jane Lyon. The door on the left is a records room, with file cabinets. The far door leads down to the casino. The far door on the right leads to the stairwell, which goes down four flights of stairs (27 yards) to the basement. Of course, this will mean getting past John (if he’s still around), Jane, and possibly armed mafia hoods as well as any surviving mesh insects and mesh hosts. There may be more insects involved in the Paradice than were involved in the adventure, depending on how long they wait and what they’ve done. Joe can give them a crude map if they want to take this more dangerous route.
The two bouncers (Jim Reid and Harry Stubbins) at the front door are not privy to the insect mesh or even to the mafia. The player characters really ought to be nice to them, but you know how player characters are. The bouncers will forbid any attempts to force the basement door open, but they can also be more easily threatened than the mafia or the mesh.
Bouncers: (Warrior: 1; Survival: 5, 7; Move: 10; Attack: fists; Damage: d3; Defense: 0)
Tony Fanel is a cold bastard, but even he is chilled by what and John Ryder and Jane Lyon are willing to do. He calls them the Ice King and the Ice Queen respectively. Tony helps maintain order outside the Paradice, and helps advance the mob’s interest inside the Paradice. He’ll be in the Paradice for at least an hour most nights, and sometimes (20% of the time) during the day. He is always accompanied by at least one bodyguard and usually two (80% of the time).
Tony Fanel: (Warrior: 3; Survival: 21; Move: 12; Attack: pistol or dagger; Damage: d6/2d6 or d4; Range: 18; Defense: 2)
Emilio Silva: (Warrior: 2; Survival: 7; Move: 11; Attack: pistol or dagger; Damage: d6/2d6 or d4; Range: 18; Defense: 1)
George Fabian: (Warrior: 2; Survival: 14; Move: 11; Attack: pistol or dagger; Damage: d6/2d6 or d4; Range: 18; Defense: 1)
Standard practice if they get into a fight is for the bodyguard(s) to push Tony behind cover; if they can get under cover, too, they will. Then start firing and let God sort it out.
I guess you could say that secretary Jane Lyon holds a pivotal position with the company. She accepted the mesh last April, and is now for all practical political purposes second in command at the Paradice. Tony Fanel and his men make jokes about her, but never where she can hear. She’s here every day, and is not here at night.
Mesh host: (Human: 1, Insect Mesh: 5; Survival: 5+27; Move: 12; Attack: knife or pistol; Damage: 1d4+1 or 1d6; Defense: +2; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
Mesh form: (Insect Mesh: 5; Survival: 27; Move: 16; Attack: mandible; Damage: d8; Defense: +5; Special Defense: slo-time; Magic Resistance: 3)
The characters can leave through the same door they came in, and thus return home. They can also choose another door for another adventure. It’s up to you. There are many doors in the sub-basement of the Paradice
The hall of doors is two hundred and sixteen yards long, and about one foot high at the far end: the doors and hallway shrinks more and more as they walk down to the far end, giving the illusion of being much further than it is.
There are three doors to the left of the Fork (Lorenz) door, and 172 doors to the right.
Suggested door symbols: a bloody handprint, five circles equidistant from each other forming a star-like shape, a whisk broom, the Lorenz (Fork) door, a flame rising from a series of seven perfect concentric circles, a pyramid with a shining eye in the middle.
The 101st door has a symbol that looks oddly like a highway symbol, with a multicolored cross-in-a-circle inside it, and “49” written above the circle inside the symbol. This door leads to one of the roads that leads to the crossroads. On either side of this door is a door with three fanning arcs around a central dot (a nuclear symbol) and a castle on a forbidding cliff.
You can of course make up any other doors you wish. Other doors before the 101st might include a bug that looks like a stylized mesh insect, an olive tree on an island, three deep scratches on a diagonal like a claw mark, red lips dripping blood, a bugle, a candle and an apple, a mushroom, a snake weaving itself around a female shape, three quarter-moon arcs set against a central circle (a biohazard symbol). Door after the 101st might include a circle woven of thorns, a skull missing its jawbone, two alien bipedal shapes simply drawn against a circle and a five-pointed star, a lute, and a long row of ants.
If you have a non-player character you want to get rid of temporarily in order to make room for Joe Louis and Deanna Carmen, have Jack ask for a marker.
When they return, they’ll need to rescue the marker. Jack is not a man of his word. He’ll have sent the marker into another world, or sold them into slavery in one of the other worlds. Or he’ll pin their soul into his butterfly collection.
This adventure isn’t really about Red Jack; it’s about the kind of world where Red Jack exists. By the time the characters get through San Francisco and Las Vegas they may be ready to head out the door to Fork and never come back.
But, and this is especially true if the adventure started as a murder mystery, they might also want to stop Red Jack’s murders. Killing Red Jack in his lair will be difficult at best. They might, however, be able to destroy the doors. On the “real world” sides of the doors, a good fireball or pile of dynamite would take out the doors and any hope of rebuilding them; Jack would have to go through the time-consuming process of relocating that door. He will eventually, however. One way or another Red Jack is always with us.