Patchwork People
Forgotten Lore - Issue 5
By Travis Wilson
“If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.”- Margaret Atwood
Empty Spaces
Canada, a nation with vast stretches of sub-arctic land stretching across the continent, contains cities of millions, with an international presence that takes in as much as it exports. Canada still contains the empty spaces and primordial forests of North America, but most people dwell in urban environs of tightly packed industry and technology.
The Patchwork
Canada is a nation bred from hundreds of years of continuous migration. It is a nation without identity, finding strength in diversity. Old legends, modern stories, and monsters from all corners of the globe find themselves at rest in Canada.
In the World of Darkness, there are monsters that lurk in the vacancies, things that thrive on the divides between what is known and what is not. Among snow-swept cairns, rusted iron rails, and voices with a hundred stories to tell, these horrors dwell. Welcome to the Great White North.
Trapper, The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Quote: "Ne pas venir ici plus", "Do not come here anymore."
Lineage: Ulgan
Refinement: Centamani
Background: The Promethean who calls himself Trapper, awoke within the confines of an inuksuk: a stone cairn, presided over by one of the Yupik People. Blood and offal coated the interior of the stone, a raven sat on his chest, and the man spoke to him in a language he could not understand.
Then the raven spoke, it told him a story of a stranger, who journeyed with one of the People until a blizzard trapped the two men in a cave. The man, a trapper by trade, killed and ate the young tribesman so that he might live out the week. In the morning, the storm was over, and his dead guide's people were waiting for their son just over the next hill.
Trapper negotiated the territory of Tshishtashkamuku, the Shadow, for the shaman drove off any threats the tribe faced. He was called Atshen, and fed only on the flesh of the dead. When the winter came again and took the shaman away, the Promethean walked out onto the ice and never returned.
In the isolated expanse of the Yukon, he did not experience the curse of Disquiet as acutely as other Prometheans, and was unprepared for its effect when he entered Fort McPherson in 1931. Whether or not Trapper was responsible for the greatest manhunt in Canadian history, is largely a mystery - although it might explain the fugitive's week long, 150-mile foot chase in sub-arctic conditions.
Today, the land Trapper calls his own sits over one of the largest deposits of natural gas in Canada, much of which is in the process of development. He squats out over a cabin he built with his own hands, and camouflaged into the confluence of two hills. In this large Wasteland, no matter the time of day or season, the wind howls through the pass.
Description: Trapper looks every part the mountain man. His wide frame is swathed in a variety of coats he has taken from the dead. He often trudges barefoot through snow, or over ice. His beard is rough and unkempt, and his eyes seem to be always searching on the horizon. He seems constantly on edge, often communicating in broken French and English with things that may or may not be there.
Storytelling Hints: Trapper is a creature in isolation: his only human contact has been as a monster. For a time, he came to embrace Stannum, believing that he could find meaning through acting on behalf of his adopted people. But Trapper has only embraced the company of spirits of predation and cannibalism. The spirits, for their part, keep close company with the wild man, and it shows. He's suspicious to the point of paranoia, and believes himself to be truly a unique monstrosity. The arrival of another Promethean might be the shock he needs to return to the Great Work, or it might drive him utterly mad.
Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 4, Resolve 5, Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 4, Presence 2, Manipulation 2, Composure 4
Skills: Athletics 2, Brawl 4, Craft 3 (Traps), Expression 2, Firearms 3, Intimidation 3, Medicine 2, Occult (Innu) 1, Stealth 3, Survival (Blizzards) 4, Subterfuge 2, Weaponry 2
Merits: Language (French) 1, Outdoorsman 3, Shadow Contacts 4, Spirit Ear 3, Famous Face 1, Repute 1, Weatherproof 1, Lair (Security 3, Size 4)
Willpower: 9
Humanity: 4 (Suspicion)
Virtue: Fortitude
Vice: Gluttony
Initiative: 7
Defense: 3
Speed: 11 (22 Swift Feet)
Health: 9
Azoth: 3
Athanor: Atshen
Bestowment: Ephemeral Flesh
Transmutations: Alchemicus - Degradation (••), Fortification (••); Corporium - Swift Feet (•); Deception - Chameleon Skin (•), Leave no Trace (••); Disquietism - Rabid Rage (••), Iago's Whisper (•••), Electrification - Blackout (••••); Pandoran - Azothic Furnace (•••••), Sensorium - Bloodhound Nose (•), Discriminating Tongue(•), Nightsight (••), Ephemeral Gaze (•••); Vulcanus— Sense Flux (•), Sense Pyros (•)
Pyros/per Turn: 12/3
Athanor
Atshen - Survival (Ulgan)
Among the Innu mythology, Atshen is a monster.
Called Atoosh among the Cree, and Windigo among the Anishinaabe, it is a person who has gone wild and committed cannibalism. Each person it consumes causes it to grow in strength and size. A Promethean who assumes the Atshen Athanor then embraces the necessities of survival, and understands the sacrifices involved. While an Atshen might be terrible, it does not waste. It knows that everything eats, a Riven with this Athanor then does the same.
Trait Affinities: Stamina, Survival
Promethean Boon: A Promethean who wishes to harm another can spend two Reagent points during a scene. By succeeding on a “bite attack” (see “Grappling,” p. 157 of the World of Darkness Rulebook) and pulling away a mouthful of blood or flesh, the Riven can feed from the life force of a target. The Promethean’s player reflexively rolls Stamina + Survival - target's Stamina + Supernatural Tolerance. Successes on this roll deal additional points of bashing damage as the character consumes the target’s life force. The life force is conferred to a Promethean as points of Pyros, which disappear at the end of the scene. The target, as a result, feels lethargy, confusion, and cold settling about their limbs. If used against a Supernatural target, the victim instead loses points from their Supernatural power trait. The Promethean can only do this once per chapter against a given target, and is immediately aware upon "tasting" that the target is more or less than human.
Redeeming Boom: By sharing a meal, eating the leftovers of, or eating in the presence of another, the Redeemed can 'devour' a single intrinsic (i.e. mostly Physical, Mental, or Supernatural) merit. The character must succeed on a Stamina + Survival - the target's Stamina + Merit Rating. The target loses access to the Merit, and the Redeemed gains the mechanical benefits, although there are no obvious physical changes. For example a character consuming Huge Size is no larger, nor the target smaller. This lasts for 24 hours. A dramatic failure on this roll means that the target immediately becomes aware of the attempt. The Storyteller has the final say as to which Merits qualify.
Story Hooks
- Shutdown - A sudden influx of unemployed multinationals in the city leads the characters to discover that a natural gas refinery has been shut down due to an "accident". Some of the men describe what seem to be Pandorans attacking the facility, and another describes a man coming out and abducting one of the workers.
- Everything Eats - A man turns a bus (maybe one the characters are taking) into a grisly murder scene and then locks himself in, attempting to eat the corpses before the police arrive. It’s the third such incident, and it seems to be only growing worse. What's more, animals are eating their young. If the characters do investigate, they'll find an epidemic of cannibal spirits have taken root in Trapper's Wasteland.
La Chasse-Galerie, The Phantom Vessel
Background: A group of workers met the Devil on New Years’, and he offered them a ride home so long as they made it back before dawn. The men boarded a canoe that flew them home for celebrations. They returned to the flying canoe intoxicated, and crashed it into a snow bank. At first light, the Devil took their souls. The Cree tell the story of a chieftain's daughter who rejected a marriage of alliance to escape with her lover. The pair were carried off by a phantom white horse, only to be killed by a pursuing war party. A rail worker in 1908 swore that he witnessed a ghostly train ferry passengers across the CPR line in Alberta.
Drawn by necessity, or summoned forth, the phantom vessel arrives only at night - ready to ferry any who board it.
Description: It appears on a night clear enough to see the moon, and always awash in a pale white light. It can take any shape, so long as it is something a human being has used as transportation. A bus with the destination sign labeled as "midnight", a 17th century schooner engulfed in flames, a plane with no visible pilot, and a taxi with white charnel exhaust, are all apt examples. It is utterly silent as it travels, and routinely abandons paths or roadways as readily as it follows them, but it always arrives at its destination. In theory, it could take a voyager anywhere in the world. In practice, none have requested such an extended journey.
Storytelling Hints: It sits motionless, until someone asks to be taken somewhere. It can be addressed, but it never communicates in response. However, there is a price to its voyage: one which the passenger immediately understands upon boarding. It might be a trinket, blood, or something more abstract, like a memory or a year of their life. Characters who try to cheat the spirit find themselves hounded by travel related accidents, as well as visions of it in their dreams.
Rank: 3
Attributes: Power 4, Finesse 9, Resistance 8
Willpower: 10
Essence: 18 (20 max)
Initiative: 13
Defense: 4
Speed: 35
Size: Varies (Minimum 3 Maximum 20)
Corpus: 18 (Does not vary)
Influence: Travel 3
Numina: Materialize, Drain, Hallucination, Innocuous, Morphic Form, Pathfinder, Seek, Speed
Ban: It can only travel as long as there is moonlight to light the way. In the presence of daylight or absolute darkness it dematerializes, sending occupants crashing to the Earth.
Note: La Chasse-Galerie uses its Influence to open a Shadow Gate, the nature of which is up to the Storyteller to decide. Through this realm, it travels to the location requested without fail, normally reaching the location within the scene.
Story Hooks:
- The Dark Passenger - It seemed like such a simple sort of arrangement, summoning the La Chasse- Galerie. But now it is on its way home, and the route is looking circuitous to say the least. The characters are now surrounded by darkness, in pitch black clouds, the dark expanse of sea, or a tunnel that doesn't end. They aren't alone. Whatever it is, it knows their deepest secrets.
- The Last Stop - One of the characters, (or an ally) didn't step off the boat, and it departed into some supernatural realm. The phantom vessel is now harbored, whether hidden in the Underworld, Arcadia, or even the Supernal realm. The passengers cannot summon it until they have as many as originally boarded. If they find a new passenger, they might uncover some insight into the vessel and rescue their ally. If not, they might lose him forever.
- The Price - The characters are trapped when the La Chasse-Galerie arrives. It offers immediate salvation from their predicament, but at a steep price: a human soul. Whether one of their own, or another's, the vessel will return in the following night to collect its due.
Forerunners, Omens in the Darkness
Background: For hundreds of years, mysterious lights have appeared above the surface of Candle Lake, presaging terrible storms. On October 7th, 1859 residents in Charlottetown were awoken by the ringing of church bells. That evening, the passenger steamer the Fairie Queen sank, killing everyone onboard. Most recently, a group of high school students encountered websites depicting their deaths, enigmatic text messages, and phone calls with the sound of their own voices screaming for help. The following week, all but one had been killed in a school shooting.
The Forerunners do not cause disaster, but they are drawn to it. Neither wholly a thing of spirit or the dead, the entity is a manifested omen. They are a collective of spirits making up a single being. What brings them about? Any incident which takes human life, usually in great number, but they can appear individually. Forerunners might be a creation of native Mages summoned and bound to the land, a collection of minor Angels, or Quashmillion on some grand mission. Or perhaps no one who sees them ever dies - they're taken to Arcadia by one of these minions of the Gentry.
Descriptions: They appear as multi-colored, luminous balls of light, if one is able to see them at all. Normally, they manifest in how they demonstrate an impending threat. Knocks on the door, the appearance of birds associated with death, or the warping of images and sounds into macabre shows of the character’s demise.
Forerunner
Rank: 2
Attributes: Power 2, Finesse 4, Resistance 1
Willpower: 3
Essence: 8 (10 max)
Initiative: 5
Defense: 2
Speed: 6
Size: 4
Corpus: 5
Influence: Omens 2
Numina: Awe, Hallucination, Omen Trance, Sign
Ban: Cannot affect anyone who is wearing a mask.
Story Hooks:
- Interfaced - When the Forerunners were brought into the city, they changed. Fettered to machines, they learned how to network. This nascent consciousness has moved beyond a simple thing of the (un)natural world. It has begun ensuring that those who might die, will die. In another month, it will realize that there's power in a human death, if it can take it. In a month after that, it will re-fashion a human soul into one of its Forerunners.
- Doomed - A nervous phone call from an ex-lover. A diner meeting with an old friend who needs to talk about a dream. An e-mail containing an image dated a week in the future. The characters have each been contacted by someone who has seen an omen of the Forerunners. Are the characters at the center of a mystical attack against them? Are the Forerunners warning of an impending disaster? Or worst of all, are the characters going to do something that threatens the lives of everyone they know?
- Old Rivers - Once, Candle Lake was part of river to the dead, and the Forerunners were a whole being from the Great Below - perhaps even one of the deathlords. It might know Old Laws, the locations of every cenote in a 100 miles, or be able to tell the precise manner and time in which the character will die.
Benjamin Kind, a New Man
Background: Benjamin was a student, and vaguely recalls some sort of social sciences studies. At least, until he met an attractive woman in a dive club in Downtown Vancouver. She said all the right things, had money enough to drink but never got drunk. He found her again, behind voyeuristic one- way glass, in the washroom of a high end piano bar in Yaletown. He spotted her again a month later, stepping out of a cab in front of a filthy theatre-cum- punk club. She never ate, she never drank anything but alcohol. Benjamin doesn't remember her name, only going home with her, and her disappearing that night with him naked and feverish in a hotel room. He emerged a week later, changed. Now he is a parasite, a supernatural transient moving from one social event to the next, taking his fill of alcohol and sex.
Storytelling Hints: Benjamin is a new man, literally. He's at the center of attention for the first time in his life, and he can't get enough. He's addicted to the nightly outings, and has started playing his hands at danger: fighting in bars, engaging in drug deals. Benjamin's living an unsustainable party life, at least for the people who are drawn into his games. He believes he's moved past such concerns.
Virtue: Patient
Vice: Hedonistic
Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 2, Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3, Presence 5, Manipulation 2, Composure 5
Skills: Academics (sociology) 3, Computer 2, Investigation 1, Science (biology) 2, Athletics 1, Brawl 1, Drive 1, Stealth 2, Empathy (lies)3, Expression 1, Persuasion (seduction) 3, Socialize 3, Streetwise 3, Subterfuge 3
Merits: Tolerance for Biology, Ambidextrous, Double Jointed, Fleet of Foot 3, Iron Stamina 3, Anonymity 3, Barfly, Pusher, Safe Place 2 (old hotel), Striking Looks 2, Biokinesis 4
Willpower: 7
Health: 8
Integrity: 4
Size: 5
Speed: 9
Defense: 3
Initiative: 8
Armor: Varies
Note: Biokinesis, and the slew of other Physical Merits, best represent Benjamin's inherent ability to manipulate his body.
He also has access to the following abilities:
- Perfect Digestion - Benjamin can survive on anything organic he can eat or drink
- Skin Shedding - By spending a point of willpower and rolling Stamina + Resolve, Benjamin may change his hair or dress to any style. Whatever he currently has simply dissolves away, leaving behind a filmy white residue. Each success adds to the equipment bonus of the outfit.
- Cash on hand - Benjamin literally exudes currency, although only enough to get by for the night. At the beginning of the night, he takes a single level of bashing damage and rolls Stamina + Resolve. Each success generates a temporary Resources merit that lasts until dawn, at which point the money dissolves into a slew of proteins and amino acids.
Story Hooks:
- Downtown Eastside - Benjamin has found a means of producing drugs from his body as well. He's earned himself the ire of every dealer around him, but more importantly, he's flooded the local market with something of his own making. What is it? Is it possible that this can spread his condition to others? Or is he just giving these junkies what they want: a perfect no-strings-attached drug?
- The Boyfriend - One of the character's allies is in a relationship with Benjamin. They've been out every night, and she's not been looking well. She talks constantly of him and his affection, his gifts, his offers to buy them a real place. Does he genuinely care, is he even capable of it? Is Benjamin looking for someone he can make like himself? Or, is this an attempt to get close to a character who might be able to solve the mystery of what Benjamin has become?
- Outbreak - Provincial Health Services has recommended precautions be taken against a new type of flu that's developed over the last few months, believed to be tied to food distribution. In reality, it stems from Benjamin Kind, he's gone into heat - or as close a thing as something like him can get, but he's not quite figured out the mechanism for transmission. So far, a dozen men and women have died. The urge is consuming him, it could be that he's a vector for something much smaller living inside him, or perhaps he needs enough raw organic material to create something new wholesale.
- Waheela - This 'bear dog' is said to wander the northwestern territories. They've been known to travel in packs, and behave much like a regular wolf might - if they were about twice the size. Inuit say that they're related to the Amarok, a great wolf god who hunted only at night. The local Forsaken believe they are connected to Father Wolf, but it’s been a generation since any have encountered the beasts.
- The Healing Gift - The earliest settlers of Canada turned to homeopathic remedies, building a unique syncretism of French and Native American medicine. The 'healing gift' was passed in the blood, from mother to daughter. It functions by transferring the sickness or injury to another. Families sharing this talent have come together, forming Mystery Cults. They actively search, usually on ancestry and social media websites, for those who have the gift. Vitaline is a thirty year old engineer who spends her time off watching anime and considering returning for a masters, but she has a secret. She's accidentally killed two people, which hasn't stopped her from experimenting with the limits of her power.
- Screaming Tunnel - A small limestone tunnel located near Niagara Falls, and the sounds of a woman screams can be heard throughout. Flames lit in the tunnel are immediately extinguished. The local legends say that it is haunted by a woman who burned to death. That isn't its only effect; the tunnel dampens nearly all supernatural power to some degree. Local Sin-Eaters use it as a gathering place, it is often considered to be a place where grudges and negotiations can be hammered out.
