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

Miami Pseudomonarchia Character Creation

intro
The mayor’s nephew has been hanging around the wrong kind of the wrong kind of people, and now he’s missing. A mayor’s aide has discreetly approached you and your associates with his last known whereabouts, a list of friends, and the promise of a sizable reward if you can find him without kicking up a fuss.

All rolls are just a 1d10+Relevant Attribute+Relevant Skill vs a target number. All PCs have a reason to stick together, even in the face of a danger.

1. Revelation
All player characters know the truth about the way the world works. Write down how your character found out, though you don’t have to tell anyone.

2. Attributes
Roll 1d6-3 for each. Arrange to taste.
Physique
Dexterity
Power
Perception
Intellect

3. Hit Points
d6+Intellect+Physique+4

4. Background
Examples: Snake Handler, Veterinarian, Veteran, College Student, Burglar, Accountant, Cashier, Refugee, Santero
Any time you can convincingly say “I should be able to do this better because I’m a [your class], you get a +2 to the roll, on top of attributes and skills.

5. Skills
Examples: Lockpicking, Athletics, Marksmanship, Andalusi Romance, Theology, Computers, Driving, Beauty, Lying
Pick 5 skills. Their values are +5, +4, +3, +2, and +1.There isn’t a list of skill, so you can make them up. Skills can help you recall information about supernatural things, but they don’t let you do anything a normal human couldn’t. Miami Pseudomonarchia is not necessarily combat intensive and you don’t have to pick combat skills, but if you want to be a fighting type, this is the place to make it happen.

6. Talents

Examples: Gematria, Monstrous Strength, Tarot Reading, Pyromancy, Demonology, Exorcism, Lycanthropy, Ouija
Talents function as skills, but they let you perform supernatural acts. All magic is Tampering In What Man Ought Not, and comes with certain risks. Every time you use a talent, you acquire an additional Catastrophe die. Each time you use that talent, you roll your Catastrophe dice with it. They do not modify the situation in any way, unless any of then result in a 1, in which case you fail at the supernatural act you were attempting in a spectacular and interesting way (the demon gets loose, the fireball explodes early, etc). You can clear all of your Catastrophe dice by resting in a place of safety (a good meal, a night’s sleep, whatever).

You have 4 points to distribute across you talents. You can have two talents with a +2 bonus, or one talent with  a +4 bonus. Catastrophe dice accrue per talent, so having several, weaker talents can be safer.

You can forgo having any talents to add +1 to all of your skills.

7. Gear
You have d10×$100 worth of stuff. Use Google to price it out. Don’t get put on a list.

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/