What do you get when you search an adept’s apartment? More than you bargain for…
In the tradition of the “Top Ten” lists we had recently… ten thing syou can find while searching an adept’s apartment while he’s otherwise indisposed.
1) A cell phone. To use, just dial the ID number of any prisioner in the state. They’ll find a phone somewhere in their cell. If timed right, this can get the attention of the authorities.
2) An ant farm. The tunnels spell out ‘Help Us’ if held up to a mirror. There are no ants.
3) A collection of horor movie DVDs with arcane-looking symbols carved into them. IN the stack of movies is, for some reason, a copy of “It’s A Wonderful Life”.
4) A doggie dish, half-full of kibble. No other signs of dog habitation (leash, papers, shed fur) are around.
5) A stack of microwave burritos, a microwave, a stopwatch, a teapot (full of water), and a notepad of times. The last time indicates that the teapot will reach boiling thirty-three minutes from the time of discovery (whatever that may be). The stove is off.
6) The names, birthdates, and phone numbers of the city council. Carved into an old piece of bark. On the wall hangs an old photo of a large tree. The caption states the tree was cut down decades ago to make room for a new courthouse.
7) A photo of one of the searchers, standing next to a wife and two children he’s never seen before. They all look quite happy.
8) Life-size replica of th eguy from Weekend at Bernies. If examined closely, the latex on the face will come off to reveal the corpse of someone recently reported as missing.
9) A cassette tape of someone reading from the phone book white pages for Fairbanks, Alaska. There’s a two-second gap that makes one of the names and numbers unintelligible. The tape is labeled “The Native?” in dark blue vegetable dye.
10) A colletion of cards for a popular collectable card game having to do with the occult. Some of them have been reworded with whiteout and pen to be formula spells of the adept’s domain.
Bonus Item!
11) A small ticking package. If opened, it’s just a clock. If the clock’s alarm goes off, the clockwork clock sprouts wings and stingers and begins attacking the intruders.
Here are a few:
1) A box of shotgun shells containing LifeSavers candies, stacked to approximately shotgun shell height
and arranged by color. These stacks are stuck together, and can be fired like regular shells. Anyone
“shot” by one of these stacks is healed of an amount of damage equal to the attack roll. (Except the
red ones. Those do double damage.)
2) A locked closet door that opens onto a brick wall. Behind the brick wall is a small closet, which
contians nothing but a well-locked safe. Inside the safe is a padlocked chest. Inside the chest is
a parrot, alive and well. It asks for a cracker (in ancient Hebrew).
3) A large stuffed teddy bear. Packed inside of it are the bones of many dogs and the instruction manual
to a home security system. It growls quietly when a weapon is brought within twenty feet of it.
4) A little yellow cat. It enjoys destroying furniture, and its presence is infuriating to anyone
encountering it. It also cannot be destroyed.
5) A pen lying on a piece of paper. The pen is out of ink. Tightly rolled up inside of the pen is a wallet-sized photo of the Earth, apparently taken from the surface of the moon. The photo is worn and faded,
and on the back is written “It’s not working any more; I’m coming home.” The paper on which the pen
was lying contains only the words “YOU DID IT” written in large, clear letters.
Yay, things!
1. In the back corner of the room lies a box full of old 90 minute tapes. If listened to, on each tape there is a 3:33 minute long song that is recorded backwards, the rest of the tape being blank air. Some tapes have a label, some do not.
2. In a closet, there are 11 shirts, all of which have the center of them cut out in a heart design.
3. In the kitchen, a set of plates are set out in a straight line for 13 people. On each plate is etched in a name of an Apostle, with the 13th plate having “Jesus” etched in.
If a successful Notice check is made, the searcher notices a piece of paper under Jesus’s plate, reading:
“They had it wrong in the picture.”
If the searcher has any knowledge of religion, they’ll notice that the plates are set up differently than they are in the picture of the Last Dinner.
4. In a drawer, the searcher finds a metal cast cap gun with a ring of half used (six shot) caps in it, and four full rings. If used in combat with the caps provided , the Cap Gun does no damge, unless the target is wearing Kelvler, in which case, it does regular hand gun damage instead of Hand-To-Hand damage. Once the user runs out of caps, the gun dissapears by “accident”.
5. A book case holds a set of 28 dictionaries, all made by different companies. All are in the native language of the searcher. If two people look at the dictionaries at once, and both have different native languages, the words are written in Greek, except for page 82, which just has in large letters:
“Nien.”
Can’t help myself…
1. What looks like an international phone number on a post-it note next to a phone. This is nest to a diagram of the Tree of Life with Kether circled in red. The number has a string of three threes in it. Anyone who dials it once will hear a loud screeching white noise and will have to make both Unnatural and Self checks. Anyone who dials it a second time will hear the message “We’re sorry, but the party you have dialed can not be reached at this time”.
2. A human arm wrapped in notebook pages written in Old English and tied above the door. The pages are copies of the original text of Beowulf.
3. What looks like a bunch of voodoo dolls tied together with red thread. Each doll has a photograph of one of the PCs for a face. Next to them is a note that says “Phase One: Get them together some how”.
4. An old Tiajuana Bible from the fifties. Those in the Occult know will discover that the tiny porn comic has the same plot and characters as the Naked Goddess Tape.
5. What looks like a collection of William Blake etchings, only with characters from a Certain Popular Fast Food Franchise. Ronald casting the Hamburgler out of Heaven, Mayor McCheese blowing the Horn of Judgement, that kind of thing.
Thom
a completly empty room with a single catholic service wafer lying 1/3 of the way into the room on a piece of paper. when the wafer is picked up it transubstantiates into a human ear
the piece of paper is a notification of a condemned church.
1. One of those menus that takeway places give out to customers. All the dishes’ names are replaced with traumatic injuries. For example, number nineteen is ‘blow to the temple with an aluminium baseball bat’.
2. A globe with all the continents positioned as if after a severe nuclear war had caused continental drift.
3. Three bricks and a length of rubber tubing.
4. An old BBC computer. Nope, nothing unnatural about it except that it appears to be broken.
5. A map of some unidentified town. Some of the small side streets have been coloured in using a blue highlighter, spelling out the words ‘Don’t Let It Get Me’.
6. Several hundred sheets of plain paper with 0s and 1s written on it in ball point pen, so that if they are laid down in sequence to form a 10×20 rectangle, a picture of someone being violently beaten to death by a fire extinguisher can be seen from a far distance.
7. A copy of the Good News Bible with sardonic notes in the margin. (“Or so he thought!” “What they didn’t know was that on the other side of the hill, Moses had just sold them all.”)
8. A cheap plastic toy kitten with one ear missing. Examination reveals that the toy has plastic bones, plastic internal organs and what appears to be a plastic heart tumour.
9. A Parker fountain pen (one of the re-fillable ones) which only writes when filled with blood.
1. A cup with some tea leaves in it, if hot water is poured into it and the leaves left to settle, it will eventually spell out the word “Doom”.
2. A small (old style) key made out of intricate clockwork, upon inserting the key into any old door locks, the cogs will rearrange themselves and the door opens.
3. An urn of someone’s ashes, if they are scattered into the sea or a river, the ashes will briefly draw out a picture of the owner’s last moment before vanishing.
4. A book with “Magic Book” written on the front, upon first inspection, the book appears to contain blank pages, but if read back to front, then the pages are suddenly filled with archaic letters. If thumbed through by placing your thumb about halfway down the page and just flipping the pages, it’s appears to be a children’s magic book.
5. A long receipt, but letters have been replaced with references to the bible (Such as “John 16:21”). Whoever manages to crack this cypher finds that it points to certain letters in a big bound book. The letters spell out the name of someone and their address.
1. Two revolvers, one with one bullet loaded into it and one with five bullets. There is nothing inherently unnatural about either.
2. A manniquin spray-painted silver and covered in Greek words written in black sharpie in hanging upside down from the ceiling by 1/8th inch chain.
3. A marlin-head stuffed and mounted on the wall with a dry brown stain on the end of its beak. If checked scientifically or magically, the stain in a human blood stain from whomever scraped the blood off the beak.
4. Four bell jars full of what looks like dirt each labeled differently (grave, crossroads, nation of my birth, and toxic waste dump).
5. Empty cardboard six-pack container from a six pack of bohemia beer with a post-it note that says, “I’ll be back for my last one. –Jesus”
Hee hee, I had to split my list in order to get it added.
1) a 2’x3’ burnt umber colored shag carpet remnant. On the underside threads of various colors have been woven to form what looks like a street map of the city in which the adept lives. Three small brass tacks have been inserted into this design so that someone walking on the carpet normally might be impaled by them.
2) a precariously balanced shelf just inside and above the front door of the apartment supporting dozens of reprintings of Izaak Walton’s _The Compleat Angler_. Words scratched onto the edge of the self with a ballpoint pen read “ONE of them has to get it right!”
3) what looks to be an origami swan made out of an AOL advertising CD. A 10 penny weight brass nail has been driven through its center, pinning it to the table. Underneath it is what looks like a pool of fresh silver paint, or possibly mercury.
4) a notebook of yellowed newspaper clippings, all describing accidents, deaths, or unnatural occurrences. The first searcher thumbing through it will find an obituary with his (or her) name and exact time of death. The paper it was printed in stopped circulation before he was born. No details of how or why he died are given, but the date is next week.
5) a take-out container from Ming’s Jade Palace has been shoved to the back of the fridge. Symbols and sigils of containment have been drawn all over the sides, and a wax seal with the star of David on it prevents the top from being opened.
Part Two
6) in the bottom right desk drawer is a cigar box full of broken pens, pencils, crayons, and other writing utensils. No mater how many are taken out the box is always full when opened.
7) in the medicine cabinet there is a prescription pill bottle with only the word DREAMS typed on it for a description. There is one pill left, but it is two months past expiration.
8) a terrarium containing bonsai bamboo. Close scrutiny reveals a small hut hidden amidst the stalks. What appears to be a miniature bottle of milk and a newspaper sit on the welcome mat. When examined again later the bottle is empty, and the newspaper and welcome mat have disappeared.
9) in the freezer are three dead cats with tags labeled Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
10) a form-fitting pair of leather gloves. Only after putting them on will a searcher notice that the original owner’s fingernails and hairs are still attached. And that the gloves won’t come off.
11) a now threadbare terrycloth bathrobe, original color indeterminate. There is a matching coffee mug in one pocket. In the other is a list of telemarketers’ names crossed out in red ink. Research indicates each died in his or her workplace between 7:30 and 9:00AM of massive coronaries or cerebral hemorrhaging.