Tuesday, October 29, 2013

The Fateless Momentaries

http://exhibits.slpl.org/lpe/data/LPE240022874.asp?thread=240029400

The Fateless Momentaries only appear at night. They have forgotten most of who and what they were in life. They're shadow people, remnants and revenants, wandering inside the Zone, or in the lonely neighborhoods and places contiguous with it.

The Momentaries came from people killed by Silver Cobwebs. When the webs touch people, some die immediately. Others appear to be fine right after contact with the Silver Cobwebs, but start to sicken and die some 12-24 hours later. Fateless Momentaries can come from either kind of fatality.

Most  were Stalkers, or people that Stalkers escorted into the Zone. However, there are a few left who are soldiers or paramilitaries. These spectral unfortunates were sent into the Zone right after the Visitation in a futile attempt to subdue and reclaim sovereignty over it.

The ones still in the Zone today are recently created. They're trying to find their way out. All of them have forgotten exactly who they were, but they're all looking for clues about their past. When they arrive in town from the Zone, Momentaries roam places that look familiar to them, haunting their old neighborhood, the public squares, a favorite haunt in the city (you can sometimes find them sitting at a table in the shadowy back of a dingy bar, or in a place that resembles a distant home.

No Stalker tries to harm a Fateless Momentary; it's considered bad for the trade. The Fateless have trade secrets to share. Momentaries are constantly muttering. A few people who are good at listening to them can tease something intelligible from their babble. The skill of listening to, understanding, and bargaining with the Fateless Momentaries has created a small cottage industry of listener-brokers.

These intermediaries converse with the Momentaries and help Stalkers learn about new caches of artifacts in the Zone. The Momentaries know where the good swag is buried.  The Stalkers are often very well connected. They can often help the Fateless Momentaries learn something about the lives they lost and who they were. The listener-brokers make a bundle setting up these exchanges.

While Stalkers never try to harm a Momentary, the military, paramilitaries, and police are quite aggressive in dealing with them. These forces won't enter the Zone, and can't control it. But they seek to maintain the zone of exclusion around it. Part of their containment effort is clearing whatever weird things cross from the Zone into town. Bullets don't bother the Momentaries very much, but they are uniquely vulnerable to bright flashes of light. Flash-bulbs, flash bang grenades, and strobe lights are very effective weapons against the Momentaries.


OGL MECHANICS


Fateless Momentaries
Spectral shadow people from the Zone (neutral)

ASPECTS:
  • High Concept: They've come back but forgotten who they were
  • Trouble: Bullets don't harm them much but flashing lights do
  • Aspect: Constantly muttering
  • Aspect: Know where the good swag is  buried
  • Aspect: They'll bargain for memories
APPROACHES
  • Careful: +2
  • Clever: +2
  • Flashy: 0
  • Forceful: +1
  • Quick: +1
  • Sneaky: +3
STUNTS:

All Fateless Momentaries have these two Stunts:
  • Hide in Shadows - Take +2 to Sneaky Approach to Create an Advantage by hiding.
  • Insubstantial - Take +2 to Forceful Approach when Defending against physical attacks from melee or ranged weapons.
Momentaries also have at least one of the following Stunts: 
  • Double Doppel - Once per session, one of the Fateless Momentaries may create a lasting double of itself. Both the original and its double will work together to find clues about its past existence.
  • Silver Touch - Once per session, one of the Fateless Momentaries may remove a patch of Silver Cobweb and transplant it to another location. The transplanted web will grow in its new location. The transplantation creates a spatial bridge between the two webs (see Webcrawl, below). 
  • Webcrawl - Once per session, one of the Fateless Momentaries may touch and pass through a Silver Cobweb in one location, and enter The Webwork, a kind of Tidal Pool that radiates from Zones. They can pass through The Webwork and will step out in another location where there is a Silver Cobweb. Once a Fateless Momentary lspends some time in that other-space and learns the local Webwork, they will be able to reliably navigate it to desired exit locations. 
REFRESH: 1-3

1 comment:

  1. Intriguing creatures--they open up a few very interesting opportunities for exploration and adventure, as well as make for some very dangerous encounters. Do these beings have any idea of what the Silver Cobwebs actually are, or are they just totally caught-up in the on-going fall-out of whatever happened? Like a bird with its neck caught in a cast-off plastic six-pack carrier...so much trash discarded casually, leading to such terrible consequences...

    ReplyDelete