(Not that I think it's likely, but if you remember the details below from the first time they happened, you really should stop reading and do something a little less harmful.)
It began in my campaign with the combination of an audacious plan on Vapula's part (using damned souls in a half-hearted attempt to create some form of ambulatory life form for wandering the physical realm), an even more audacious plan on the part of an NPC (Joab, Malakite of Eli, Angel of Creative Mayhem), and the plain old chutzpah of one player's dice, who love rolling sixes.
The end result was a perfect set-up for Saminga in some wasteland outside Las Vegas, as one particular soul involved in the very end of the adventure actually had his Forces disbanded explosively, leveling both an abandoned casino and a sizeable chunk of one of Vapula's labs at the same time (did I forget to mention his plan was audacious?).
No, he doesn't have a "soul destruction tether" set up yet; not only did Heaven set up a picket around the area listening for any symphonic activity, but the local police and FBI came by to investigate what they considered a mighty suspicious explosion. The Infernals can't get close enough to it to harness and consecrate it, but otherwise, everything is in readiness; the area is swimming with power.
And this is where it's going to start going pear-shaped for everyone involved. And I mean everyone, Angelic, Infernal, Human, and anyone else who may be involved.
(By the way, if the thing at the very top of this message applied to you, STOP READING.)
Enter someone with medical and psychological problems. He starts as a five-Force human with some really bad hang-ups, medical problems, etc. Let's just say he's a psychotic serial killer waiting to happen, and something elsewhere in his life finally makes him snap. The great thing about this is that it doesn't even have to be Angelic or Infernal influence that pushes him over the edge. It works even better that way, in fact: he comes completely out of left field, and takes everyone by surprise.
This individual -- and I'm leaving the details intentionally vague because the circumstances will best be tailored to your specific campaign -- will start on his killing spree. The sequence would normally be snatch victim, take victim to secluded location, kill, dump body, repeat. Serial killers are notoriously regular that way, and catching them is made easier by their predictability.
One thing keeps this from being just another serial killer scenario: the location he chooses for his killing is close enough to the proto-tether above that something very special happens: each time he kills someone, he gains a Force. He becomes tougher, smarter, more willful, more clever, more dextrous, etc. And in time, he may even become Symphonically aware which, to an unbalanced individual, could be misconstrued in entertaining ways.
What starts as a simple police procedural turns into an investigative nightmare, as the killer becomes more powerful with each death. When he gets enough forces, this unstable individual may also become Symphonically aware (what he interprets the Symphony as is anybody's guess), so they have to find and catch him while creating as little Disturbance as they can.
A number of questions can come up, and should be answered on a game-by-game basis, unless of course they get answered here first:
Is it possible for a human to activate a Tether? Ordinarily, one might think not, but given that this is a Samingan Tether-wannabe, and a serial killer is getting repeated rushes from it, it's hard to say.
How do they stop him? After four such deaths, he could be a physical 1:1 match with any starting Celestial, and even superior to some. And should they stop him? Killing him and sending him to Hell would only given Hell more ammunition to work with, though perhaps it's worth it in this case. And then, what if they kill him on the grounds of the Tether-to-be? What happens in that case?
Humans can generally only hold 15 Forces (5-5-5 configuration). What happens after the 11th killing? If the case manages to go on that long, he'd pick up his 16th Force, which he can't hold. The idea of a (living, moving) human tether to Saminga would not be without its irony. Nor would having him "fission" into two identical copies of himself, eight forces each. Or maybe he goes up in a huge fireball, activating the Tether.
Back to the INC Mainpage.
Back to the Adventures page.
Send mail to the Curator