Unknown Armies Play Report: You're Not Alexander, Playtest Two

The time: the fourth century BC. The place: the ruins of Troy, in the shadow of the Temple of Athena. The cast:

• Jocasta, the last virgin sacrifice offered by the Locrians in a thousand year ritual to cleanse the sins of Ajax the Lesser at the end of the Trojan War. Survived the bloodrites and was allowed to live as a slave at the Temple of Athena. Champion boxer, serves as the town's police force.
• Kancharmonetes, busker who makes a living re-enacting battles from the epics of old. Also by hooking on the side. Avatar of the Sacred Androgyne with the ability to physically change his sex, which helps sell both types of performance.
  
• Pseudanor, bastard son of a drug dealing maenad and snake priestess. Incapable of casting his mother's snake based magick, but blessed with innate snake abilities. A teenage hellion who loves pranks and mischief. 

Pseudanor's mother, India, was out collecting snakes in the foothills of Mount Ida, and wouldn't be back for a couple days. It was up to the trio of hospitality workers to deal with what happened next.

It started with Kancharmonetes. It was the middle of the night and he was swapped to female, looking for customers at the Fawn's Heart - the only hotel in the ruined city. She was approached by a pair of Dorians interested in taking the roles of Achiles and Patroclus in her infamous Briseis act. They offered her a single gold Alexander for her trouble, which was an insane amount of money. Enough to allay her suspicions that something was up with the pair.

 

 

The pair of Dorians revealed what was up with them when they got upstairs to one of the tavern's private rooms. They pulled out iron-bound clubs and demanded that Kancharmon come with them, by order of the Hipparch of Hellespontine Phrygia. They didn't wait for her to respond. She took a blow to the head before she could get a word in edgewise.

You're Not Alexander Masterpost

 

You're Not Alexander! is an Unknown Armies adventure set in the ruined city of Troy at the end of the Classical era. A group of hospitality workers in the Trojan tourist trap must save their friend from being sacrificed in a thousand year old bloodrite.

• Scenario Folder including player document, spell school and avatar paths.
• First Playtest Part 1
• First Playtest Part 2
• Second Playtest
  
• Music Post

You're Not Alexander! - Music Post

 

I only had a few for this one.

 

Unknown Armies Play Report: You're Not Alexander! Part 2

Continued from Part 1.

Pseudanor ran up the hill, quickly scaling the ruined foundation of the Citadel and vaulting the wall into the sacred precinct of the Temple of Athena. He ran around to the portico of the temple, and was about to shake Jocasta awake before he thought better of getting within arm's reach. He tossed a small pebble and she instinctively lashed out with a foot, before realizing where she was. Pseudanor explained that soldiers were coming up the hill, and one of them was among the four who attacked her last night.

By Peltast

Pseudanor was interrupted by the Priestess Tritogenia, second in command at the Temple. She told Pseudanor to get the hell out, then told Jocasta that the place had better be spotless because the Hipparch of Hellespontine Phrygia was on his way to the temple. Jocasta got up to make sure the sanctuary was clean, but was interrupted by a shout from the High Priestess' hut. The old lady Atrytone needed help getting ready to receive a visitor, and her demands trumped those of the younger Tritogenia. Atrytone's mind was still sharp, but her failing body necessitated Jocasta's assistance as a mobility aid. Atrytone needed Jocasta's help dressing quickly, but refused to be carried out to meet the Macedonians, using a staff to support herself.

The Hipparch, clad in a robe and cape and wearing a flat cap over his mostly gray hair, entered the precinct with eight of his elite soldiers.

Unknown Armies Play Report: You're Not Alexander! Part 1

The story was a strange one. Because the Thessalian hero Ajax had murdered the prophetess Cassandra at the end of the Trojan war, oracles had ordered the nobles of the Hundred Families of Locri in Thessaly to send two virgins yearly to the Dardanelles and leave them to make their own way through to Troy. By tradition, the natives would come out to catch and kill them, armed with axes and stones, and only if the virgins escaped would they enter Athena’s temple by a secret passage and live there in safety, dressed in a slave’s robe and shorn of their hair until a replacement managed to relieve them. The rite was to last for a thousand years, but at some point in Alexander’s life, it is known to have been interrupted. As ruler of the Thessalians, it was perhaps Alexander who first dispensed his subjects from their duties.

(The text says Ajax "murdered" Cassandra. Anyone familiar with the lore knows the details are more graphic. Ajax the Lesser raped Cassandra on the Altar of Athena after she claimed sanctuary in the temple, turning the Goddess against the victorious Achaeans.)

 

Enough of that. The time is the fourth century BC. The place is the ruined city of Troy, four miles inland from the West Coast of Anatolia - modern day Turkey. For centuries, a small temple of Athena squatted in the ruins of the Trojan citadel, receiving occasional pilgrims come to pay homage to the heroes of Homeric lore. Then the Great King Alexander crossed the Dardanelles and liberated Troy from the Persians, opening the city to tourists from across Magna Graecia. He dedicated his armor and weapons to the Goddess at the shrine and promised to build Athena the largest temple in the world.

 

Our story begins with three people living in the Trojan Tourist Trap, a decade after its "liberation" by Alexander the Great:

• Jocasta, virgin sacrifice offered by the Locrians in a thousand year ritual to cleanse the sins of Ajax the Lesser at the end of the Trojan War. Survived the bloodrites and was allowed to live as a slave at the Temple of Athena. Champion boxer, serves as the town's police force.
• India, snake handler and devoted worshiper of Dionysus. Sells tourists a "kykeon" made from opium, wine and snake venom. Gains supernatural powers from handling snakes. Deals drugs to Jocasta in exchange for protection from ruffians.
• Pseudanor, India's son by a wealthy tourist who disappeared long before his birth. Incapable of casting snake based magick, but blessed with innate snake abilities. A teenage hellion who loves pranks and mischief.
  

Pseudanor was up late and creeping around town, as usual. His infrared vision let him see at night, and the dark held no terrors for him. What it did hold, which he saw when he left the house he lived in with his mother, was a group of men waiting in ambush. The five figures were watching the house, and conferred with one another when they saw Pseudanor leave. The snake boy pretended to leave, then hid on the terrace above the house to observe the strange men. The strange men must have spotted him, because one raised a burning object to his lips and emitted a cloud of smoke, obscuring the group from Pseudanor's heat vision. He reocgnized the smell from his mother's drug collection - the strange man was burning hempseeds in a clay pipe.

Pseudanor climbed onto the roof of the house to get a better look, concerned that the men were approaching through the smoke cloud. He was right, a hand reached up from the cloud and tipped the heated residue from a clay pipe onto the thatched roof. Pseudanor brushed the hot embers off the roof to prevent a fire, shouting at the arsonist to identify himself.