More odds and ends of a mystical nature.
Roll a d10 or choose.
You look at the pile of papers, books, pens, and general knick-knacks strewn on the desk and find…
1. A WALL CLOCK
The wall clock only works when other time-keeping pieces are in the room with it. All clocks in the room – even on television shows – automatically skip and synchronise their “seconds ticking hand” to the wall clock. This will even work on digital watches and computer time keeping equipment.
2. WALL POSTER
The poster is of some unknown Norwegian-or-Scandinavian Death Metal band. The lead “singer” is foreshortened over the other members and he wears a pair of leather jocks. The rest of the singer is covered in long, single cuts that go up and down and across his body. The cuts are stitched together with medical staples. The staples are riveted to form of Viking runes.
2. HEATHEN IDOL
Some sort of Asia household kami immortalised in chipped plaster. It appears to be some sort of content and thin snake-headed, snake-bodied spirit. Upon closer inspection the snake-gut has been shrunk. The snake-kami has Soul 40. Once per month some sort of accident befalls someone living in the house it’s placed at. The damage is the hand-to-hand of the Soul roll with modifiers based on what sort of accident happened. On a cherry the wound is treated as a gunshot. On a critical the accident is fatal. It can only be removed if given away otherwise it just reappears. Otherwise it can be smashed apart with a measly 10 wounds.
If someone does die, the statue’s gut expands like a snake-Buddha with oddly human details.
4. SCIENCE NOTES
The pile of papers are a haphazard read detailing the method by which the shape-shifting serpent people genetically engineered the human species by introducing recombinant prehistoric ape DNA into prehistoric boar foetuses. This means that humans are not evolved from monkeys but pigs with a bit DNA fudging. The notes also refer to a shoggoth – presumably some sort of all-purpose mobile laboratory.
5. 999-PIECE JIGSAW PUZZLE
If constructed it is a gleeful picture of Albert Hoffman pedalling a bicycle through a wooded area. The jigsaw has an addictive fractal quality. The more one investigates the more detail pops up to the observer. The tree bark has striations, and weevils inside the striations. The long grass stalks have locusts – the locusts have tiger-stripes on their wing casings.
The deeper and longer the observation goes on for the more and more macabre it gets – the locusts eyes have irises and pupils.
The puzzle always has one piece lost. The hole for the hundredth piece moves around whenever the puzzle is reassembled. The picture itself also alters slightly in some ways.
6. ORIGAMI SET
The set consists of twenty-two exquisite origami sculptures of the tarot’s Major Arcana. If one of the sculptures is destroyed, a replica appears elsewhere in the world. If the set complete and in one’s possession it provides a perpetual anti-magic tilt. All spells directed at the owner of the sculptures has a –10% skill shift.
7. A 1987 NME MUSIC MAGAZINE
The NME has a big frontpage splash that details a mystical war fought over the Soul of Music. Elvis eventually won the war with great wounds that took their toll and killed him in 1973. Elvis wasn’t living in 1975 it’s when he eventually stopped moving. The King’s opponents known as the Holy Trinity, were Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. Joplin’s “accidental” death dragged the other two down with her.
8. CONSPIRACY QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER
The CQN proves that the man that shot JFK is the same man that shot Larry Flint and was the reason the mob moved out of Vegas. After this man died, they made a television series out of his covert activities. The series was called the A-Team.
9. A MEMO WITH A CIA WATERMARK
The memorandum clearly states that any US president that even threatens the use of nuclear weapons will be shown the “Special Dealy Plaza November ’62 Movie”. The last president allowed to use nuclear weapons was Franklin D. Roosevelt and he only did to ensure he became the next Holy Roman Emperor after Hitler.
10. A BLACK-AND-WHITE PHOTOGRAPH
The photo clearly shows Baba Yaga smuggling several visible East Germans over the Berlin Wall in her giant Mortar-and-Pestle during an overcast day. Nothing in the photograph indicates a date. The picture was developed in 1965.