jacinto amateur hour, Carcosa, intro, magic, modern, nephilim, Pop Tartary, pseudomonarchia

yer a wizard, henry

Henry Flagler was most famously a Florida industrialist, but he had other, more esoteric interests, pursued in ritual garb on the manicured lawns of his estate or chased down in a naked frenzy among the swamp and cypress. Henry Flagler was a dedicated occultist, and used a considerable portion of his wealth to establish Black Cypress College, a private institution with a mission to plumb the breadth and depth of the magical sciences.

actually Flagler College

You are a magician, possessed of a wonderful and secret power. As such, you have been accepted to Black Cypress College to further your craft and the advancement of magical knowledge. What you find there might be corrupt, venal, sclerotic, and frequently disturbing, but right now, it’s all you have.

Character Creation

Factors and Factions

Virgo Invictus
Something like the John Birch Society by way of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a far right secret society dedicated to the propagation, destruction, imprisonment, resurrection, or study (possible all of the above) of an ancient spiritual entity known as Virgo, Victor, or sometimes just V.

The Grecians
A mystic order of alcoholics who hold bacchanals in the cypress swamps. They claim to learn magical secrets during the ecstasies from Dionysus Krocodilia, an etymologically suspect and distinctly Floridian aspect of the Greek deity himself. Several Grecians have gone missing lately, perhaps drowned in the swamp, perhaps devoured by their fellows in a fit, perhaps feuding with the local Santeria community.

The Deans
The quasi-immortal administrators of the College. Nearly a century of access to the generous (and free) faculty dining hall  has rendered them immensely fat, alcoholic, hematomatic, wracked with gout, yellowed with jaundice, and nearly identical in their grotesqueness. There are thirteen of them, each ruder than the last, and they hate each other more with every passing year. Rumor has it they have hatched a scheme to restore their youthful vigor

The ██████
Everyone knows that the College has a ██████, which is odd since nobody can bring themselves to talk about him. Or her. Or it, really, since the ██████ gone unseen since the founding of the school, and the door to their office is always and unpickably locked. Students and faculty have looked into the College’s reclusive ██████ over the years, and it has always ended in tears, murder, or mysterious disappearances resolved by sudden showers of gore during Commencement.

Golconda, by Renee Magritte
jacinto encounters, miami, modern, nephilim, occult, Pop Tartary, pseudomonarchia

MIAMI PSEUDOMONARCHIA

This was a bit of a challenge since all the photos has to be creative commons. Not sure how well it turned out, but it was an experiment.

MIAMI PSEUDOMONARCHIA
Fortean Horror and Occult Investigation in South Florida

Something is wrong with Miami, something is wrong with you, you have become unstuck from the world and nothing is right. Your friends forget your face, strangers know your name, the graffiti addresses you as a friend and voices call for you from static and dial tone. 

HAPPENINGS
There are old women in chintz dresses, they crawl about on all fours and follow you through the streets. Nobody else notices them and you don’t know what happens when they catch you.

There’s been a man walking in circles around your block for the last month. He ignores you when you try to stop him, but blood is welling out of his shoes and he is as thin as a famine victim.

There’s an angel trapped inside the walls of the office down the street from your apartment, or at least it tells you when you walk past. A lot of people have been jumping off the roof of that building lately.

You notice children have been paying the ice cream man in teeth, and what he’s been giving him sure doesn’t look like popsicles.

A man has been murdered in the alley behind your apartment every night for the last week. The exact same man, at the exact same time, and the police never answer when you call.

When they tried to raze the old theater, it bled like a living thing.

All children who live on a single block have begun speaking ancient Greek, to the exclusion of all other languages. Their dialect and accents are eccentric even for scholars, but they seem to be trying to warn you of something.

A local genetics researcher is in a bit of trouble. They thought they were developing extra-wooly sheep, but now the lambs speak, and do so with the voice of multitudes

Whenever you try to use a phone, the God In The Wires talks to you. It has very peculiar and very specific demands.

FOR STARTERS
You know the name of one of the orishas. Your parents taught you to say their name just right.

You saw what they did in the church basement every Sunday night, and the memory still follows you, deep black and indistinct.

Last year you woke up with a hangover and a tattoo of stylized eye on the back of your hand. Its pupil is the most remarkable shade of blue; it hardly looks like skin.

You had to get vaccinations for international travel recently, and the nurse gave you an extra injection before you realized it wasn’t supposed to happen. You remember the needle dripping something oily and black.

You only have the faintest memories of your mother. They don’t quite make sense, and whenever you think about her too hard, you get a bad nosebleed.

You tried to kill yourself at one point. You woke up in the hospital, but you distinctly remember it working.

ATTRIBUTIONS

  • Dromedary Camel by Dallas Krentzel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/31867959@N04/4355606704/
  • The Gentleman’s Ritual II by Gabriele Negri https://www.flickr.com/photos/nimahel/7456854198/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
  • The Surfer by Bill Dickinson  https://www.flickr.com/photos/skynoir/7985457219/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
  • Efeito Borboleta by Jaaiiro Souza https://www.flickr.com/photos/jairojoker/12388079333/  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
  • Miami Beach by Ricymar Photography https://www.flickr.com/photos/ricardo_mangual/5758714155/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
  • 03.22.ManHunt.WP.SBM.5mar05 by Elvert Barnes https://www.flickr.com/photos/perspective/25975610/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
  • miami by Kevin walsh https://www.flickr.com/photos/86624586@N00/10174559/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
  • Albino Alligator by Matthew Paulsen https://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewpaulson/13117317195/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
  • e pluribus unum by sherber 711 https://www.flickr.com/photos/sherber711/2452736107/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
  • Palacio de Vizcaya by Jorge Elias https://www.flickr.com/photos/italintheheart/4017460039/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
  • Miami Herald Demolition by Phillip Pessar https://www.flickr.com/photos/southbeachcars/15335017002/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
  • City of Miami with Miami beach in background by Kent Wien https://www.flickr.com/photos/flyforfun/2127317967/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/
jacinto LotFP, Pop Tartary, table

It isn’t all glitter

Pop Tartary is awash with sour psychic static: The Signal, a malign spectrum emitted by America’s most gorgeously horrible nightmares.


When The Signal manifests…
1) The Gate Opens
All nearby screens go to static and _______ begin to swarm out.
   1. Rats
   2. Black snakes
   3. Crows
   4. Hagfish, coiling through air as if it were water
   5. Cockroaches
   6. Flies
2) Something Wicked This Way Comes 
The area is suffused with the fatigued yellow glow of a sodium bulb, and everyone present loses 1 point of Strength every round until they make a Save vs Paralyze. Once everyone had made their save, the following creature appears and attacks everyone present:
     Incarnation of Ennui
     Lumbering sickly radiance, immense grasping hands, wet ingénue eyes
     HD: Total number of Strength points lost
     Saves: 18-Strength lost
     Damage: d8
     Special Attack: Target must Save vs Paralyze or go last the following round
Once the creature dies, everyone recovers their Strength.
3) All Is Still
Nothing apparent happens. The party is now being followed The Noise, an irreal creature that wants to help them, but is only able to do so through spectacular acts of violence. The party will leave in their wake a trail of murder and mayhem, most of which tips the balance in their favor. At least until somebody notices.
4) You Change
   To find out what happens to the ones exposed to the Signal, roll a d6:
   1. Their eyes vanish, and their sockets look into a hissing field of static.
   2. They now look grainy and washed out, like an old photograph.
   3. Their shadow always looms behind them, black and twisted, like that scene from Nosferatu
   4. Their voice comes from nearby speakers when they try to speak, but they are otherwise mute
   5. Their breath smells like metal and cooking meat. Animals and children hate them.
   6. Their face is always blurred, like on the people being arrested on Cops.
5) Deceit Rules
    Pick a random PC. A Signal entity secretly tells them that an important (preferably seemingly friendly) NPC is secretly evil and must be stopped.
   Pick another random PC. A Signal entity secretly tells them that this NPC will play a vital role in stopping a terrible, possibly apocalyptic plot.
  A Signal entity secretly and separately tells each of the remaining PCs that a malign intelligence has seeded several of their comrades with dangerous delusions.
   Which of these messages is correct is up to you.
 6) Power Gathers
Those exposed to the Signal gain a random MU spell. They can cast it once before it is gone forever, but the must make Wisdom checks in times of stress in order to not cast it right then and there.

Noomancer
HP, XP and Saves as Magic-User

Noomancers are people who have a device that has Signal and can use it to warp the world around them. Spells are alien transmissions propagated through the Signal. A Noomancer starts play with 1+half level+Intelligence modifier spells, randomly selected from all spell levels of the Magic-User and Cleric lists. When a Noomancer spends 6 hours tuning their device, all remaining spells are replaced with 1+half level+Int mod new spells. They also must make a Save vs Magic or reality weakens. (Table compiled by Patrick Stuart)

jacinto items, LotFP, Pop Tartary

Pop Tartary Warfare

 I know I said I wasn’t going to use Pop Tartary, but this is too much fun.
Level 1

Weapons
Can be anything you want, really. Pick a range and size, and if you think your weapon should be able to do anything else, like stun or entangle, let me know and we can work something out. 

Range 
Melee: base damage is d10
Reach: base damage is d8
Ranged: base damage is d6

Size
Small: -1 die size. one handed, easily concealable
Medium: base damage, one handed
Large: +1 die size, two handed


Armor

The more remarkably you’re dressed, the better your defense. You get a bonus to your AC equal to your Charisma modifier, rather than your Dexterity modifier. 
 
Boring: 12 AC. Examples: T shirts, cargo pants, gym shorts, something you’d wear to work (for most of us)


Cute: 14 AC. Examples: You know it when you see it.


Titillating: 16 AC. Examples: fur coats, handcuffs, stompy boots, big hats, leather, things with lots of buckles, cabana boys and French maids, dayglo

Toxic: 18 AC. Something you’d only ever see on a runway.  Whole animals, stilts, fish tanks, peacock feathers


As a note, this isn’t “Painstaking describe what your character is wearing” (unless you want to, of course). I am more thinking “find something amusing on Image Search.”

Not sure where this fits in, but I feel like it belongs

jacinto intro, LotFP, Pop Tartary

Post Pop Apocalypse


DnD requires give and take between what the players want and what the DM wants, and so there are some ideas I have that will probably never see the table, just because my players aren’t interested and I don’t have the confidence to pull it off if they were. This is one of them.
Pop Tartary* tastes like bubblegum and isopropyl alcohol.
Pop Tartary looks like Divine:
And sounds like these:
 
 
Pop Tartary Americana is: ruined future, nuclear science and black magic, leather vests, platform shoes, pop star prophets, glitter in the streets and blood in the water, go go boots, sweat sheen, garbage witches, strange frequencies and nightmare channels, sentient music videos, compulsory reality TV, weak reality, false eyelashes, record producer liches, Lady Gaga has a cult but Azealia Banks has an army, nasty cute, the devil wears Birkenstocks, occult street drugs, glass jewelry, Elvis impersonator priest/esses, Our Lady of Wigs, neon samurai, the Electric Saint, the Rocket Messiah, vinyl miniskirt is 18 AC, syringe demons 
Classes:
Noomancers tap weird subliminal Jungian frequencies to produce Magic-User spells; rely on radios and cell phones to work their art
Pop Mediums create servants from the psychic leftovers of lost fame
Gleaming Divas/Shining Adonises glammer their enemies with preternaturally good looks and eldritch voices
Neon Samurai fortify their martial expertise with the power of the electromagnetic spectrum
Henshin have turned sad fantasy into violent reality by actually gaining superpowers when they don costumes

Who’s Who of Pop Tartary:

Johnny Deluxe is the oldest vampire in Las Vegas
Marie Laveau is still alive and more sorcerous than ever
His Royal Majesty, The President of the United States of America is the iron-fisted monarch of the world’s greatest democracy
Adam is a superintelligent AI from Silicon Valley that has flourished since the end of the world
Monsters
Uranium Elementals, glowing nightmares born in the aftermath of the Incident
Discoheads have disco balls for heads and flail about with needle sharp claws
The Trash Dragon was born from a landfills and terrorizes the Southwest with its fallout breath
Big Crocadilly rules the luminously green swamps of Florida
Static demons crawl out of televisions tuned to the wrong sorts of channels
Paparazzi avoid direct conflicts, but love to snap pictures of you in compromising positions. Wagers of social warfare. 
Inspiration 
Blueprints of the Afterlife, Persona, Scissor Sisters, Diplo, Simon Green’s Nightside series (thoroughly mediocre!)
*by this I mean it is an anachronistic post-apocalyptic science fantasy setting like Richard’s Tartary and Jason K’s American Tartary, not that it is set in Asia