Unknown Armies Shotgun Scenario: The Greggs and the Graveyard

The Fourwentways Bronze Age Cemetery, off the A11 interchange outside Cambridge. Past the roundabout where the trucks park, behind the Travelodge. A small interpretive sign explains the significance: four thousand years ago, primitive Britons inhumed their dead beneath a complex of burial mounds that once stood on this spot. Today, the site is naught but a fenced off patch of grass and a few sickly trees, littered with rubbish from the nearby combination Burger Greggs.

It’s the middle of autumn and the middle of the night. The moon’s the color of bone but you wouldn’t know it through the clouds. Everything is wet.

Unknown Armies Playtest - The Greggs and the Graveyard

Four Catholics in a borrowed Nissan Altima pulled into the parking lot of a combination Greggs/Burger King off the A11 in Cambridge, England.

• Sister Agia, Missionary of Charity and Parapsychologist Nun
• Dario "Johnny Boy" Ambrosio, Geriatric Wise Guy
• Father Romero, Jesuit Priest and Padre With a Shotgun
• Deacon Sur, Drunken Priest and Exorcist

They were from the Order and they were tracking illegal digging at Bronze Age sites across the UK. They knew the burial ground behind the Burger Greggs off the A11 roundabout at Fourwentways would be next. The back windows of a fast food restaurant, a Shell station and a Travelodge all looked out over the shallow domes of the fenced historic site. It was Autumn and almost midnight and everything was wet.

Monster Mash Test Drive - The Tunnel Under the Tundra

 

A Dwarven exploratory mining expedition disappears beneath the permafrost layer of the ancient tundra.

Unknown Armies Shotgun Scenario: Black Coffee

 
1980. Skyrocketing coffee prices induce East Germany to send engineers and help the Vietnamese establish first rate coffee plantations. In exchange the GDR will receive half of Vietnam’s coffee harvest for the next twenty years.

Coffee is to Teutons like tea is to the English. Its absence is apocalyptic. It’ll take years for the Vietnamese coffee operation to bear fruit. The way things are going, there won’t be an East Germany by then. 

Unknown Armies Playtest - Black Coffee

After a grueling multi-day trip, four East German farmers peered out the windows of a Soviet made Mi-4 transport helicopter as it descended toward an old coffee plantation in the wilderness of Vietnam's central highlands.

• Arnold Lindwurm, 19, unemployed since finishing conscription. Malcontent with a knack for evading surveillance. Raised chickens illegally in his apartment.
• Kasper Pfennig, Volkssturm child soldier, raised in a Free German Youth camp after the war. 50 years old, loved working outdoors and with kids.
• Melissa Preisner, apolitical hog farmer from a collective farm outside Berlin. 25 years old, liked animals and heavy physical labor.
• Sandro Griebel, Russian war bastard fathered during the rape of Berlin. 35 years old, worked in a slaughterhouse, raised sheep on his one acre “personal housekeeping” plot.

The year was 1980.  Skyrocketing coffee prices induced the German Democratic Republic to send engineers and help the Vietnamese establish first rate coffee plantations. In exchange the GDR would receive half of Vietnam’s coffee harvest for the next twenty years. Coffee was to Teutons like tea to the English. Its absence was apocalyptic. It would take years for the Vietnamese coffee operation to bear fruit. The way things were going, there wouldn't be an East Germany by then.

That's why the four mages had been rounded up by Kramer, a Stasi transvestite who somehow knew they were all Agrimancers. Their mission: use their magic to accelerate coffee production at the plantation by any means necessary.

Unknown Armies Pashacon Jam Results

Another Unknown Armies jam wrapped a couple weeks ago. Parameters will be familiar to anyone who's been following this series. Let's see how we did.

 

His Majesty The Worm - Pile of Blades Masterpost

Pile of Blades is a city and undercity I wrote for His Majesty The Worm. I played through it in seven sessions, about one for each realm of the Undercity.

 

His Majesty The Worm - Session 7

Four adventurers from the Elite Underman Excavation Company showed up for the final mission:

• Aethelbald the Green, Horse Girl (and Wall the Griffin)
• Hyacinth "Cindy" Hakkapeliitta, Mad Brewer (and her new husband Fovean Blaster Caster)
• Chrysanthemum "Chris" Hakkapeliitta, Ex-Legionary
• Gyrfalcon "Gary the Mage" Hakkapeliitta, Wizard

The Unicorn explained the mission at Aethelbald's ranch outside of town. With the psychic protection they got in the Demon Ruins they could now enter the Cave of Squids and eliminate the threat to the City. Jerry the Mage had used his alchemical expertise to make a big bomb, all the Guild had to do was take it into the dungeon and drop it in the room with the jars, and the thing inside the jars. They'd recognize it from their nightmares, and when the Unicorn said that they realized they would. The dream of an enormous body, trapped in a confined space, dimly aware of the innumerable dreaming minds in the world above.

 
An assault on the Cave of Squids would provoke an immediate response from the inhabitants, who would use their psychic powers to draw in all their servitors from the City and Undercity. To that end, a team would hold the entrance to the Cave and protect the Guild's line of retreat.

• The Unicorn
• Jerboa "Jerry the Mage" De Hornachos
• Jerboa's cousin Baramundi "Barry the Mage" De Hornachos
• Jerboa's uncle Scarab "Scary the Mage" De Hornachos

The Guild chose the Cave entrance in the cellars beneath Hangman's Hill, rather than the flooded drain from the Giant Conclave. Aethelbald hefted the bomb, Cindy took the sack of spare psychic resistance rings, and they descended into the final area of the dungeon.

Clerics in Begone, FOE!

A few days ago Prismatic Wasteland put out a call for posts about about Clerics. I'm going to talk about Clerics in my personal fantasy heartbreaker Begone, FOE! I've been workshopping alternate names like Loot Bastards or Slop and Splendor but nothing has emerged as a frontrunner. This post serves as an important reminder that I should get back to work on Revision 15. 

In the Hands of Osiris - Masterpost

Ferenc Eisenhut

 

An Unknown Armies 3e double feature set during Napoleon's invasion of Egypt.

 

In the Hands of Osiris - Music Post

Lecomte de Nouy

 

Mostly recycled from prior soundscapes, but I compiled it anyway. A friend said she liked the scenario and might run it someday.

 

His Majesty The Worm - Session 6

 
Gary and Cindy Hakkapeliitta met up at Aethelbald's ranch outside the city, to get their next mission from the Unicorn the Orc brought out of the underworld. The beast knew a lot about what was going on in the undercity, and explained the situation to the Guild: The destruction of the telepathic statue sabotaged the Squids' alliance with the Giants, who realized they'd been duped when the fog of mental interference suddenly lifted. But any attack on the squids themselves would require psychic defenses, and that's what the Guild was going to get. The Demon Ruins were full of evil spirits that would trade for what they needed. The Unicorn couldn't go with them because he hated Demons. They killed his rider and he would savagely attack them on sight with no thought to the mission. He didn't feel good about sending adventurers down to do the job, but he offered to pay them real nice if they brought back enough psychic defense for everybody.

There were two ways into the Demon Ruins: a long drop down the waterfall in the Stone Garden, and the frozen doorway in the Giant Conclave. The waterfall was dangerous to traverse but not actively monitored by the monsters. The Conclave door led into the hanging palace of a particularly nasty Demon who wouldn't sell the players what they wanted. The siblings chose the Conclave entrance. Climbing down a giant rope under a waterfall was one thing, climbing up while being pursued by monsters was another entirely. Better to have a secure line of retreat than an easy way in. The Unicorn thanked them for their service, he wished he could pay them better for giving up a piece of their souls but the City would be better for it.

Unknown Armies 2025 Jamuary Jam Results

Ken Currie

A couple months ago Unknown Armies fan server user Cliomancer ran another Unknown Armies jam. It had similar rules to previous jams, with a list of prompts and a short wordcount limit.