Unknown Armies NPC - O'Saa the Yellow Mage

Based on the character of the same name from Fear and Hunger 2: Termina.

By orange

Baron Samedi and Papa Gede. Kali and Shiva and Yama. Edward Teller and J. Robert Oppenheimer. The Gods of Death. The Destroyers of Worlds. Every pantheon has ‘em, but there’s no ascended archetype to match. Someone should work on that.

O’saa is a Yellow Mage, a member of a decentralized avatar cult created by an unknown Motumancer who wanted to uplift the archetype of the Destroyer to the Statosphere. You get this type of Motumancer singularity sometimes - guy spends a major charge to inspire other flagburners to do something. They flame out fast, because by definition they can’t constructively participate in a social movement without losing their powers. Yellow Mages get around it by being an antisocial pyramid scheme. It never rises to a real community, just a shared bad idea that the “members” pursue for personal reasons. Everyone wants to be the Destroyer.

Nobody knows why they're called Yellow Mages. Whatever meaning the name had to the original founder of the sect has been erased by time and distance.

Personality: Stoic. Odd sense of humor. Confident in his own ruthlessness, which sometimes falters in stressful situations.
Rage: People who have the opportunity to learn, but choose to remain ignorant. If you get killed because you weren’t paying attention, that’s on you.
Noble: O’saa is very susceptible to flattery. Fear is a form of flattery and he has a hard time killing people who are scared of him.
Fear: Nudity. O’saa doesn’t want to expose himself or see others exposed (Self)
Obsession: The power to erase things from existence with a thought.
Wound Threshold: 50

Motumancer 60%*%: Gains Charges, Casts Rituals, Casts Gutter Magick
Mail Order Doctor of Divinity 60%: Of course I can pretend to be a priest, get people to confide in me, get people to give me things (Subs Status, Subs Lie, Coerces Self)
Yellow Mage 60%: Of course I can recognize avatars, decipher the workings of the universal machine, prophecy the end times (Subs Knowledge, Coerces Unnatural, Protects Violence)

Notches	Helplessness	Isolation	Self	Unnatural	Violence
Hardened	3	5	3	5	5
Failed		2		1	2

Appearance: Black, pierced ears, mustache, hazel eyes that turn gold in the wrong light. Always wears an article of yellow clothing, usually something small like a tie or pocket square. Rarely goes "full regalia" in his Yellow Mage getup, except when he wants to cash in on his fearsome reputation.
Possessions: O’saa keeps a couple significant charges stored in an enchanted rattle, in case he ever needs to divert attention from law enforcement or an angry mob.

ARTIFACT: CHAC-CHAC
POWER: Significant
DESCRIPTION: This rattle is made from a calabash gourd filled with birdshot. The gourd is painted blue, with a face drawn on it. The face is well detailed but the features are misaligned. One of the eyes is a plug that can be removed to access the rattle’s contents.
EFFECT: Grasping the handle and giving the rattle a deliberate shake transfers a single significant charge from the user into the rattle. Removing the plug at the end of the gourd and swallowing one of the lead pellets from inside transfers a significant charge from the rattle to the user. You should induce vomiting afterwards so you don’t get lead poisoning.

CUSTOM FORMULA SPELL: HURTING
COST: 1 Significant Charge
EFFECT: Motumancy doesn’t have a blast, but this is the next best thing. Spend a significant charge and choose a limb attached to a target within line of sight. That arm or leg is amputated from their body. That’s what Motumancy does, right? Severs things from the whole. The removal of the limb inflicts damage equal to the sum of the casting dice.

RITUAL: DANSE MACABRE
COST: N/A
RITUAL ACTION: Cut the heart out of a live animal and crush it, still beating, in your closed fist. Lead a group of people in ecstatic dance. It technically doesn’t need to be a big group, you could hypothetically do it with one other person. But it’s better with a crowd.
EFFECT: For every person who gets injured in the dance, the ritual caster gets a minor charge. Every person who dies grants them a significant charge. Common ways to get injured in an ecstatic dance are exhaustion and breaking the legs or feet. The most common cause of death is falling and being trampled or suffocated by the crowd. Staging injuries grants the caster no charges, you can’t hold a dance in an active steel mill or throw grenades into the crowd.

ibid

WHAT YOU HEAR

It’s easy for Motumancers to get majors. Just fail a stress test that engages all three of your passions. For O’saa almost any sexual encounter fits the bill, as a good looking man who loves flattery but hates getting naked and is ashamed and angered by his own ignorance of sex. Once he’s finished freaking out over his own erection, he can spend the charge to create an ideology or social movement from whole cloth. He’s already done this a few times, manufacturing destructive cults dedicated to uplifting him to the heavens as the Destroyer.

• Blue Throat - Cabal of police officers in Uttar Pradesh, led by himself in his aspect as Inspector Tandava. Kills magick users, stages the encounters to look like shootouts.
• Knights of Posadas - Believes a bloody war between mages and mundane humans is inevitable, allowing the Chairman to build a socialist society in the irradiated ruins.
• Novos Church of the Destroying Angel - Syncretic evangelical Protestant religion following the self proclaimed third son of God, after Jesus Christ and Hong Xiuquan.

This has only gotten O’saa a measly 19% on his Cosmic Objective of ascending as the Destroyer, but has built him a fearsome reputation in the occult underworld as a powerful cult collector and blaster caster. Those who know the real score consider him a troublesome con artist, dropping Majors to juke the stats and leaving a trail of bodies and severed limbs in his wake. The only reason someone like the Sleepers hasn’t killed him yet is the rumor he successfully spread that clipping him would only speed him on his path to the Invisible Clergy.

O’saa has not attempted any mass casualty events to buff his cosmic role identification as the Destroyer. He hasn’t worked up the courage to kill that many people, and he’s also not sure it would work. If nuking cities didn’t get anyone from the Manhattan Project the big seat, maybe it’s not about bodycount. Is there a necessary ritual preparation? A way to increase the thematic resonance? It would be worth a shot if he had something more concrete to go on…

That’s where he’s at now. When O’saa shows up, it’s to tear everything apart looking for occult knowledge. If there’s an oracle dispensing prophecies, or a library of hidden tomes, or a major unnatural entity from another world, or mass demonic possession, he’ll be there to squeeze the secrets of ascension out of anyone in blasting range. As a Motumancer, O’saa can’t assume leadership of any of the cults dedicated to him. When he needs backup he brings in a handful of checkers who owe him favors, fear his power, or find his antics fun. He discovered through trial and error that he can work with about three people at a time before he risks tabooing.

• Daan - Doctor, bartender, fencer, furry. Refuses to believe in magick.
• Karin - Vulgar but persuasive conspiracy theorist. Avatar of the Outlaw Journalist.
• Levi - Heroin addicted sharpshooter. Unknowing Avatar of the Executioner.
• Marcoh - Underground boxer and Culteurge. Loves hitting people, hates killing them.
• Marina - Devout Catholic demonologist. Things this apocalypse thing is totally cool.

Maybe the Destroyer is above the Invisible Clergy. Maybe it’s one of those jobs like First and Last Man that you don’t get by just walking into the Statosphere. That’s fine too. Killing the Human Eternal and Old Mother Apocalypse will open the way.