Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - SESSION 5

After an eventful night at Nash Dino Center, picking up Shoggos from the apartment in Marblehead, and delivering everyone to their respective residences, the Bao Down crew reconvened the next day to execute on the schemes they'd cued up. They wanted to find the people who had cast the surveillance magick on David Ben David. He tried to use random magick to reverse the connection and spy on them instead, but wasn't able to get a clear picture. Reba recalled that one of the men DBD had seen spying on him in his vision was the same one Rachel spotted leaving the Brahman Occult Society Clubhouse, wearing a jacket covered in Sanskrit and Arabic patches. That suggested an occultist from the Indian Subcontinent.

 

The group new from Rachel's conversation with the BOS that there were some checkers from the Indian branch of the old Mak Attax conspiracy in town. They decided to check in with their contacts at the Golden Arches and see if anyone knew anything about the Indian mages. It was Saturday, which meant the New Maks would be out of school and working at the McDonalds in Salem.

Rachel went into the store to talk to the kid working the front desk, Dandy Hirsch. She was happy to see her friend in the Brethren, and immediately invited her to the set the band was playing later that night at No Blood For Sex. Rachel wanted to know if the New Maks had encountered any strange gremlins lately. They hadn't, but Dandy told them all about Endemic Spice, the Indian crew who recently arrived to help with a problem she had.

 

See, Dandy didn't have a soul. She was a normal, functioning human being who lacked a metaphysical self to go along with her conscious brain. That made her a prime target for possession by every opportunistic demon and vagrant astral parasite in the noosphere. Or every wizard who wanted an empty vessel to do magick shit to. To protect against this, she had an apotropaic prayer card with an image of Saint Dunstan, but the Mak India gang were working on a more permanent solution. They had a rented cottage just outside town and were generally super cool, and she wasn't just saying that because they bought her friends beer. She gave Rachel the address.

 

Outside, the rest of the gang watched a strange trio: an Ultra Orthodox family on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. They were strange trio because they were walking around Salem on a Sunday, a city which had no Ultra Orthodox community and definitely didn't have an eruv or any of the other religious hardware that would make walking around on the Sabbath a good idea for the chosen people. The wife was black, which was rare for a hasid. And most disturbingly, the son was staring intently at the McDonalds, watching Rachel and Dandy through the big window. 

 

Tal decided to use catapsi on the child and negate any minor magick he might be using. The kid's head fell off like a mannequin. He picked it up and put it back on. Rachel noticed a wisp of green smoke that briefly seeped out of his neck, sucked back in before he put his skull on. He glared at Tal, eyes hard as emeralds. His parents nervously dragged him away. Brent yelled out the drive through window, asking the cabal if they'd seen the kid's head fall off. They confirmed that they had. Rachel didn't recognize the magick the kid had used, he wasn't a golem or clockwork or anything like that. Either an artificial body, or a normal body with magick keeping its head attached.

The team elected against pursuing the strange child. They had some choice words for the India Maks.

Rachel sent her unspeakable servant around back of the house, to prevent anyone from escaping while Reba went up to the front door with a crowbar and started yelling at whoever was inside. An androgynous Dravidian in a puffy CRIMINAL TRIBE jacket came out and started yelling right back. Reba wanted to know why Endemic Spice was spying on Bao Down. The hijra, name of Ardhanari, wasn't having any of it. You wanted to talk to them, you didn't show up on their doorstep rolling four deep, weapon in hand, with your god damned blob person skulking round the back yard. Reba realized that Art had just debuffed them with the same weaponized cursing ability that they were using on Art. DBD stepped up to intervene, and Art cast Too Spicy For Me on him, the same spell he'd used to de-escalate conflicts.

 

Rachel stepped up and piled on with a coercion attempt, threatening Art with legal trouble if they didn't roll over and explain why they were spying on the cabal. Art wasn't phased, interested only in holding the line until the rest of Endemic Spice showed up to even the odds. Tal joined the argument, and was able to get a little information out of them: Mak India were the people responsible for giving DBD his spice magick powers, and they were observing him to make sure nothing horrible happened. The story about helping the New Maks was true, they were also here to do that. That was enough to get the Bao Down crew talking instead of threatening violence. Art cursed a blue streak anyway, but invited them around the back yard for a pitcher of bhang.

The cabal sipped the cannabis lassi and explained their position. They didn't like being spied on without their knowledge, they would have been ok with the whole thing if the India Maks had just come at them straight. Art didn't believe that for a second, plus they couldn't let their experimental subject know they were observing him. It would change his behavior, and they wouldn't get a good feel for what his powers actually were. The rest of Endemic Spice arrived: a man in a gimp mask with an opening for his massive beard, and a suit wearing upper-caste guy carrying a box of treats from Bagel World II. 

After a long argument, the two cabals agreed that the New Maks would continue the surveillance, but report their observations to DBD. DBD would attempt to persuade Dandy of the New Maks to become a capsaicinaturge, and work toward a solution that would make her body unappetizing to demons and sorcerers looking for a soulless vessel. Endemic Spice showed the Bao Down Cabal how to use their antiquated mailing list, in case they needed to communicate further over PMs.

• Leatherface (/u/leatherFace)
• Ramachandran the Videomancer (/u/townandCountry)
• Ardhanari the Mancymancer (/u/suspiciousEunuch)

Rachel also bought a few points of Mancymancy off of Art, in exchange for the same amount of telekinesis that Rachel previously purchased from the Forty Winks gang. This made Rachel into an adept, with a magick school based on copying other people's powers - which she could then cast once and only once.

The Bao Down crew left Endemic Spice peacefully and piled into the truck to leave. Rachel did her usual merchant ability swaps to power level Tal's magick negation abilities, supercharging them beyond their normal limits. They were now powerful enough that, with the right ritual preparation, they could advance to the next stage of their minor magick negation scheme.

The team updated their list of tasks:

• Cash in the existing eyeballs they were entitled to (two from Lindsey, one from Jonas the heroin addict) so that Rachel could make more Unspeakable Servants.
• Talk to Granny Ethel and get her take on some of the magickal phenomena the group had encountered.
• Take control of the Pool Rooms.
• Catch the New Maks' band, Cannon Song, at the Blood For Sex that night, and maybe try to persuade Dandy to become a spice wizard.
• Find a way to extend Tal's overcharged magick negation powers over the entirety of Salem.