[TML] Weird jump phenomena (was jump weapons)

[Richard Aiken]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 8:46 PM,  <shadow at shadowgard.com> wrote:
> Given that jump space isn't well understood, I thought of a couple of
> "natural" phenomena that could make for interesting "color".
> I used quotes around "natural" becsause they might actually be
> artifacts left behind by the Ancients.

<snip of cool ideas>

> Either one of these effects could affect more than one system.
> More fun is if they affect only *part* of a system.
> More useful as "local color" or "mysteries of the galaxy" than as
> gaming material. Except for the "part of a system" version.
> And probably lots of other things.

Hey Leonard,

A while back, I bought the WoD book "Midnight Roads."  It's full of
advice about running a nomadic WoD campaign (rather than the usual
sedentary, city-based one).  While I don't like the game system for
beans, I find that WoD supplements like this one are really
interesting. "Midnight Roads" did not dissappoint.

I mention this because there are two adventures therein which are very
similar to what you posted.  The first is a town that exists outside
time.  The characters find a "Deliverance" style hick town . . . then
find they can't leave it.  Turns out the local "rich weird eccentric"
made a deal with Something back at the start of the Great Depression,
a deal that would "protect" everyone from the disaster befalling the
rest of the world.  The further the PCs get from town, the stranger
and more dangerous/monsterous everything becomes.  The actual way out
for the characters is left up to the Storyteller.  But over the
decades of unmoving time, the townsfolk have discovered their own way
out: *persuading* travelers - through whatever means necessary - to
say the words "I will take your place in [Town Name]."  Whoever can do
this can then leave without any trouble.  The poor traveler, however,
ends up very gruesomely dead when the next dawn arrives.

I've been thinking that this would make a cool "lost world" scenario.
The players are visiting an out-of-the-way system that's listed by the
IISS as uninhabited.  But when they come out of jump, the stars are
subtly wrong.  While the navigator ponders the problem, they head in
toward the "abandoned" asteroid settlement.  Only it's not really
abandoned, but rather inhabited by folks who speak a strange stilted
dialect of Gallanglic and are dressed/equipped with vintage Vilani
gear.  Then the navigator finally figures out that the stars are just
right, if the date were actually -1776.  If the PCs try to jump out,
the seconds leading up to jump initiation drag out FOREVER . . . as
THINGS ooze through from jump space and start attacking.  The only way
to survive them (until they find the McGuffin) is to abort the jump
sequence.

The second Midnight Road adventure is even weirder.  It's a Road that
has died.  When the character's reach the end of it (the pavement
peters out in an empty field . . .), they discover that they can't
leave.  Also, after a time, they realize that are (effectively) dead
- complete with appropriate ghostly powers.  Then the spirir of the
Road begins to manifest as dopplegangers, one for each party member,
trying to get them all to die for real.  The only way out is to
persuade the Road that (like any other ghost) it's actually dead and
should give up and "pass on."

I think this would make a great misjump adventure, for one of those
jumps that just keeps going and going and going and . . . About the
end of Week Two, the events described above start happening.  Only if
the Jump Space doppelgangers can be convinced that they aren't
*really* the PCs does the jump finally end . . . at the correct
destination, after only the usual week.  As far as anyone else can
tell, the PCs all had a collective nightmare . . .

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein