It’s all about victims and their victims.

Willis Adelaide Guthroe, Bradley Shaeffer, Robin Sebastian Munley, Seth Masters, Andrew Clarkston, Ferdinand Paulo de Salo, and Eric Monichs are all serving time or dead or in mental health institutions. Some swore to a jury of their peers and protested their innocence. Others screamed to anyone that would listen to their hopelessly delusional fantasies. Another took his own life. Another tried and was put on suicide watch, but succeeded in prison weeks after being sentenced.

Of course, two weeks after the last was incarcerated everyone forgot about them. Family’s welcomed the silence, the victims moved on from counselling to therapy and onto the rest of their lives. The media machine moved for next five-week hype feast to sell advertising time.

The people are actually all innocent. They all committed the same crime on different people at different times in different cities. There are enough corroborating testimonies and DNA fingerprints to make these men guilty in trial.

If they’re innocent as I say, lets take the story back a little further, back to the death of Winston Jethro Urkhart. Urkhart died in a car crash. I hit a lamp driving off his ears on coke and spirit coolers in 2000.

About 4:30 AM, January 1st, 2000.

Coming back from a New Years party. He was flung through his windshield but didn’t die yet, and skidded across the road but didn’t die yet. His head hit the curb first and his body continued its scrape up onto the sidewalk. His neck couldn’t flex severely enough through that strain. This is when Jethro died.

But this is not enough to connect us with these solvable, unsolvable crimes. So we go back further.

Winston or Jethro as he preferred, entered Columbia to study Economics in 1997. The plan was simple. He would get his degree, work for seven years cutting his teeth on other firms before returning to run daddy’s business. In that seven years he should have bought a house, got a wife and some kids. Easy as pie.

So Jethro enrolled and studied. He studied hard and found his high school wrestling days had been left behind. Unwilling to get let his tuned body go chubby, Jethro went to gym. It was an upscale gym with a nice wine bar so people could chat up what they saw on display inside. It was all pretend rich and faux fortunes.

People that wanted to be seen handing over lots of expensive favours and buying on nearly maxed-out credit cards. In this environment, Jethro found a steroid dealer. Jethro would take a little here and there to supplement his irregular gym schedule.

It worked, but Jethro wanted more. He dropped out of his off-again on-again dating circle ‘cause “he didn’t have the time” and went full time into studying. A few weeks later he went into body building full time. He stayed around, popping into the odd party with his bottle of water and quirky smiles. But he effectively vanished when he moved out of residence and rented an apartment from a gym friend.

He had to get two part-time jobs. The work, his bodybuilding and his studies quickly made him a stranger within the college crowd. But, Jethro thought, who needs them anyway? At one time some fucker made a comment about his muscles. He pushed him right across the room with a flick of the wrist. It hurt nothing but the fucker’s ego. Snotty little fuck. He left the party, but it had died the moment when he pushed the mouthy guy.

With his supplements and work and studies, Jethro took a few more steroids and when the hour was really early in the morning, he took a few diet pills to keep him upright and alert.

Jethro was a bright boy and he did really well. Distinctions and nods from prestigious companies (keep up the work now, young man, and we’ll make sure you have plenty time to enjoy yourself later).

He messed around with a few of the gym chicks, but nothing lasted more than two, maybe three dates. “I get bored of them,” Jethro told his father about his love life over a phone call, “after a meal and a glass of wine, they look like cardboard toilet-roll tubes with way too much blush on.”

After his third year exams, Jethro was invited to a plush New Years bash in one of the gym yuppie’s ultra expensive apartments. He had a few spirit coolers but felt he was loosing it. And there was this drunken trader’s shill telling everyone how well he was climbing the corporate ladder. He wasn’t bad, but the other varsity post-graduate yuppies circled the poor guy, nodding at him while in their heads they thought; well, well, look at the mail boy, good little mail boy. Then they started calling him Mail Boy and told him to shut up and cut-up the coke into lines and then told the mail boy to stay the fuck away from the lines of coke he cut.

Jethro felt sorry for the mail boy, but snorted coke and felt sorry no more. The mail boy left sometime after that.

Four hours into New Years Day, Jethro thought that he didn’t need these varsity preppy fuck-wits and told them all to suck his cock and left the party forever.

And he died trying to swerve an amber light while D.Y.I. At least that’s what the cop wrote down. And all that insurance on the car and Jethro didn’t have to pay out.

I understand that all this still hasn’t linked Jethro to the guilty innocents named above. Let’s slow time down now. Stop all this reversing and fast-forwarding.

Jethro died. This much is clear. He just didn’t die enough. Jethro came back from the dead. And the problem with the dead is that they’re filled with regrets. And not having a body to express these needs, those regrets become obsessive poisons.

Jethro died in denial. He never requited himself to his homosexuality. It shamed him in a deep, profound way. He took all frustrations out on himself, working out until it hurt and watched as his body bulged, becoming a grotesque and hideous reflection to his eyes. Only naked men could only arouse him. He did everything to blur the pain of unwelcome passion. It would never be enough.

Maybe he should have just confronted his father. Maybe he should have taken up with that cute guy instead of shoving him across the room. Maybe he should have been honest. Maybe he should have become a better person because of it. Maybe he would’ve become the wonderful person he always thought he should be. He so much hated being angry and hurtful and tired all the time.

Well, it’s too late. Jethro rapes now. And he rapes twice. He rapes. It’s what he is now. Jethro is a monster…

Jethro

Obsession: Making up for lost time. Jethro is purely a thing of sexual violence. His entire core being revolves around projecting the anger, hatred and self-loathing onto other men with a sexual act. Jethro has become a boiling mess of lust and violence – a nightmarish, undead alpha male forever locked into a battle for dominance that only exists in his own psyche.

Rage: Fucking dirty fags piss him off. Any man that is partially or fully undressed in front of him is a filthy homo fag. Jethro is also enraged at the thought of fellatio or any other form of sexual expression.

Fear: Any target that responds with affection, tries to talk his way out, or actually accepts Jethro’s proposal of rape by sodomy stuns Jethro momentarily, then it triggers his rage anyway. No way out here.

Noble: Older or ugly people. Jethro ignores people older than twenty-five or younger than eighteen. He goes for younger man. He also won’t rape homely men. He certainly can get violent if anyone tries to help. He looks for athletic, good-looking college types.

This isn’t much of a noble passion, but then Jethro isn’t much of a man.

BODY: 0 (use host’s Body)
Pump it up: 20%
Trained Athlete: 35%
Brutalise: 45%

Pump it up isn’t the standard demon Body skill. Pump it up gives the host +20 Body. This increases even above the normal maximum of 70. The host’s body expands and swells and the muscles and veins bubble and bulge and drip with impending violence.

Brutalise is how Jethro quells his victims. He slaps them around to give a taste of what will happen if they don’t comply. He doesn’t want his goods damaged. He mainly intimidates by stressing the victims Violence or Helplessness gauge. For NPCs make Jethro’s Brutalise damage Firearms damage. If the victim takes more than half of his Wounds in damage, consider him made meek.

SPEED 0 (use host’s Speed)
Dodge 45
Drive 40
Initiative 33
Jethro will have his skills capped if the host body’s Speed is lower than his skills.

MIND: 55
Economics Degree 25%
Hide: 10%
Notice: 15%
Jethro’s education is purely to let his victim relax if he has the time. If he’s pressed, he’ll immediately start by pinning his victim, slapping him and removing clothing.

SOUL 65
First Rape First 65%
First Rape First is Jethro’s possession skill (UA2 pg. 221). Jethro never stays long anyway.

Sanity Gauge Fail/Hard
Violence 0/9
Unnatural 0/0
Helplessness 3/3
Isolation 3/1
Self 5/7
Any changes to Jethro’s sanity will slide right off the moment he vacates the host body.

Signs and symptoms
Jethro also has permanent minor phenomena that occur when he possesses the host. The host body’s penis immediately becomes erect and the body, incredibly aroused. The body grows bulkier, bigger and the muscles become more pronounced. The eyes always become a brilliant green and the host’s breath smells of sweet alcohol.

Modus Operandi…
Jethro drifts around gyms. It is where his prey gathers. He locks onto his first victim the suitable host, which has to match the criterion listed under Noble passion. Once he manages to possess the host he patrols looking for the second victim, which is has to fulfil the athletic college boy profile.

Jethro is always aware of time. If he has minutes he will kidnap and abuse the victim immediately. If he has hours, he can take his time engaging in a paroxysm of courtship with the target.

Once he finds the victim, he may chat with him to help him relax. Maybe buy a few drinks. Otherwise he will start by brutalising his victim into a submissive state and trying and manoeuvre them both somewhere unobtrusive – the cleaner’s closet being a favourite. Once secure Jethro will immediately start the rape.

Jethro always gets shot out the host’s body at the moment of ejaculation – Jethro is forever left unfulfilled by the act that motivates him. And thus the cycle of violence and degradation continues.

The host, another victim, is left with a head full of undifferentiated memories of the attack and both of them covered in blood, bled from torn soft tissue. Jethro is rough on the host victim too.

Plot Hooks
Well since rape is a very touchy subject in any fictional medium, I would strongly suggest that, as a GM, you think long and hard about this duke and that none of the player’s characters get directly involved. They could intervene in a close encounter in a gym changing room. The best option is if the PC Adepts and Avatars can intervene because Jethro has no defence against sorcery and as his Sanity Gauge works, he is unlikely to remember for very long.

·Some Avatar of the Flying woman or a high level Pilgrim enlists the character’s skills to deal with Jethro and the focuses the game into a cat-and-mouse detective story.

Why did I do this?

Unlike the plethora of RPGs on the market very little of them focus on the consequences of mundane people being fucked up and evil. This is one of core strengths of Unknown Armies.

Since this is Unknown Armies, I intend Jethro to be played by mature gamers. If you feel someone is not up to dealing with this level of personal infringement then don’t use him. As soon as you feel Jethro will stop your game from being entertaining, stop trying to use him. RPGs are not a Reichian therapy group. If someone in your group bursts into tears, it is not a success story. It means you fucked up. Fucked up badly…

Many people play UA and get all cosmic and don’t stop to deal with the fact that the cosmic is not necessarily any more excusable when it spends its time clawing at the lives of normal people.

Life isn’t fair. The afterlife isn’t either.

Even the simplest and stupid things can kill the soul. Jethro’s personal cowardice and society’s expectations walked him over that special road to hell. The one paved with good intentions.

Jethro’s days of making up to himself are sadly gone. He is irredeemable. Jethro is a demon. Demons are not always misunderstood ghosts. They are foully obsessed, wrapped-up minds with all the good stuff squirted out like so much diarrhoea.

Rape is rape. No one rape is any less excusable than another is. I pondered making Jethro into a woman at one point and felt that it was actually irrelevant (and to avoid catering to stupid revenge fantasies that involve violence by women against men as justifiable, even acceptable). Jethro is a neuter and violence is violence.

Jethro is also designed to show that demonic possession is a rape too. His hosts are just as messed up by the event as the victims.

Perhaps self-obsessed adepts can get off their jerk-off pedestal and do some good by removing some bad. Let’s see a dipsomancer get his lips around soul-sipping this one.

Beating up on monsters is cathartic but violence is never a solution, only a reaction. Beating up on Jethro’s host makes things worse.

I wanted to see how much repulsiveness and hideousness I could roll into Jethro. I think I did it.

That’s it.