Unknown Armies Shotgun Scenario: The Full Boot

The Sleepers were bad people who got what they deserved in the ‘03 war, but even their detractors admit they performed an important pest control function. If they were still around, a place like The Full Boot wouldn’t last a week.

THE FULL BOOT

The Full Boot is a bar in an old Ancient Order of the Hibernians temple. The one the Know Nothings bombed in 1851, killing a dozen Irishman and leaving shrapnel scars on the interior walls still visible to this day. The name is a pun on the novelty glass boots they serve beer in, and their signature performance completely flaying the skin off a victim’s foot and lower leg.

The stairs lead down into the bar area, which is poorly lit during business hours. Low tables, cigarettes in defiance of the indoor smoking ban. Bar counter against one wall, where the soft light makes the things in the bottles swim. There’s something wrong with the barman. Other side of the room is the stage. They used it to give speeches, maybe a hundred years ago. Now the old wood is bloodstained, no matter how many tarps they lay down and how hard they scrub.

Behind the stage is your employees only area. Dingy but modern, lots of bare cement. Iron cages just small enough you can’t stand up in them. An improvised morgue. Lockers, tools.

Below that is the cave, with the hole that goes down forever. The one the Hibernians used to toss deer into. It’s unlikely anything dropped down there would ever be found.

PERFORMANCES

Full Boot performances are led by Mister Flat Affect the Thanatomancer. He wears a blazer or overcoat and black trousers, keeping his feet and chest bare. This he augments with safety goggles, a splash guard or a welder’s mask where necessary. To generate a significant charge, he goes on stage and ritually kills victim over two hours. He keeps a tooth from each victim in a pouch worn around the neck, which he needs to spend the sigs gained from their sacrifice.

Saint Catherine is Mr. Flat’s assistant. She wears a black mask, an unbelted robe and nothing else. She’s never seen offstage and that leads people to suspect she’s actually one of Mr Flat’s animated corpses, pretending to be his lovely assistant Ligotti style. She’s actually an avatar of the Naked Goddess, wearing a different face and persona everywhere she goes. She’ll leave the whole act behind when her act gets stale.

Full Boot performances are drawn-out exercises in sadism. Flaying, pressing, strappado… Often they let someone from the audience participate, like drilling holes or eating sushi off the still-living victim. Never striking the final blow, that privilege is reserved for Mr. Flat. If he wants to use a body after death he refrains from any gratuitous dismemberment, leaving all four limbs attached and sense organs functioning. Otherwise he gets creative.

Watching Mr. Flat and his lovely assistant torture someone to death is a minimum Violence 3 shock, escalating to 4 or 5 in a particularly gory performance and potentially hitting Helplessness if the victim is able to yell for help.

The rest of the bar is run by the Gargoyles. These are corpses of Mr Flat’s victims that he reanimates, possessing them with (unrelated) demons bound to his will. They don’t decay but neither do they heal, bearing marks of whatever torment he inflicted on them before death. They do Mr Flat’s killing when he needs to get rid of someone and can’t make a performance out of it - personally committing nonmagickal murder breaks the Thanatomancy taboo.

• The Barkeep has no visible scars, his skin is greasy but he doesn’t sweat. The soles of his feet are burned all black.
• The Bouncers are missing regularly shaped patches of skin, exposing the muscle tissue underneath. They carry machetes in their trousers.
• The Janitor has a gunshot wound through the eye, concealed poorly under a headscarf. She wears elbow length gloves and knee high rubber boots.

Jean-noël Lafargue

WHAT YOU HEAR

The Full Boot attracts visiting villains and sycophantic clingers on, voyeurs and sadists.

• Garden Without Weeds the Agrimancer is working up the courage to kill his children for Major charges. He’s not going to draw it out like they do here. They won’t even see the knife. He hopes they’ll catch on and kill him instead, like he did with his father.
• Siona, one of Mordecai Thanatos’ concubines from the Church of Death Triumphant. Joined the cult to leech off the big guy’s money, got a taste for blood. Since the main outfit folded in ‘04, the Full Boot is a risk free way to indulge her fixation.
• Dr. Warren Marimow, professor of ritual murder. Wrote the book on occult executions in Mexico, Celtic “corn king” sacrifices, African muti killings, and neanderthal cannibal rites. Currently studying human sacrifice-for-charges in the modern underworld.
• Motumancer Gabby Ambrosio’s greaseball father was killed by wizards in ‘04, during the Retaking of New York. She’s never been more grateful for anything in her life. It opened her eyes to the liberating power of ritual magick.
• The Mean Guys, a group of teenagers making their first forray into the occult underworld. The bar doesn’t card them. The zombies and the performances let them build up hardened notches. It’s a perfect fit.

The Full Boot is ecumenical when sourcing victims. They kidnap normal people with no connections who will come looking for them. They grab checkers whose friends aren’t powerful enough to fight back. They accept “donations” of victims from people who want an enemy tortured to death, provided the donor brings the victim in properly gift wrapped. It’s the type of outfit that would have brought instant retribution from the fun police in the days of grand metaplot conspiracies.

For now, they’ve terrified everyone local into submission with a mix of gratuitous torture and intimidating magick. Law enforcement don’t trace disappearances back to the club thanks to Sergeant Gold, a cop Mr. Flat Affect killed and discreetly reanimated. He keeps the rest of the precinct from following the trail, letting the Thanatomancer disappear anyone who won’t be missed by anyone important. Until someone steps up, The Full Boot will just keep cutting.