>
Opening up this section for a discussion on anythingmagical or mystical in nature that you’ve seen or have some information on that has no current explanation.
Let’s see if we can shed some light on it.
>
Glitch>
I’ve got a good one. I took a job in Malaysia a few monthsback where I saw the strangest thing in the Awakened world, I swear to ghost. I was working for a fairly wealthy and prominent person in the country (I won’t say who, of course), doing an investigation and counter-hit job. It seems this prominent (married) man had a mistress (no surprise) who was also pregnant (oops). Shortly before I took the job, something very strange happened to this mistress. She was out in the jungle at some out-of-the-way resort (perfect place to stash a mistress you don’t want found), and one morning woke up to find that her unborn baby was dead. What was most unusual was the way the baby died. It looked like something sucked the little bugger’s heart right out of the womb. Right out of the body. There was a small puncture mark on her belly (she was sleeping at the time) unlike anything I had ever seen. Of course this was considered suspicious, but my employer couldn’t go to any legit authorities, otherwise he’d have to explain who this woman was and how that baby got there in the first place. So I get called to look into the matter and find out if it was a hit by a rival, blackmailer, or what.
>
Pistons>
That’s odd on a couple different levels. First, the method ofdeath is highly unusual, that’s a given. But second, the fact that the child was killed before any sort of communication or notification doesn’t make any sense. If someone found out about this guy’s bastard child and wanted to use it against him, the last thing they’d do is kill it.
>
Haze>
Maybe it was a mistake? They were trying to extract a blood or DNA sample and screwed up?>
Mihoshi Oni>
That would be the fuck-up of a lifetime.>
Haze>
No, there was no mistake. The doctors were very clearthat the removal of the heart was very intentional. A lot of blood was pulled out as well.
>
Pistons>
Something to do with ritual sorcery?>
Ethernaut>
The mages I paid to look into it said there was a strangemagical signature they couldn’t identify, so I started thinking about magic. I’ll skip all the dead ends I looked into and get right to the good stuff. I finally got a lead when I described the case to this old-school witch doctor woman. She had the idea to check some of the other little villages out in the jungle to see if any other women had their babies eaten. Turns out she was right—they had.
>
Pistons>
Wait, there was more than one case of babies being eatenright out of their mother’s womb?
>
Nephrine>
Sadly, yes. So we’re staking out this village that has apregnant woman who hasn’t had her baby eaten yet. We watch the place for three days, but the night of the fourth something finally happens. I’m dozing, almost asleep, when my AR flashes a warning from a perimeter sensor I’d set up. I send over a surveillance drone to the location and bring the visual feed up in my AR. I was not expecting to see what I saw. There, striding in the dim moonlight, is a naked, butt-ugly old woman. Just as I’m wondering what the hell is going on she sprouts bat wings from her back and—I shit you not—her torso fucking rips off of her legs and flies off. Well, I’m still in shock from what I saw when another sensor alarm goes off in my AR—this one for the inner-most motion sensor in the bedroom of the pregnant woman. So I grab my guns and haul ass into the house.
>
Pistons>
That’s unlike any spirit or critter I’ve ever heard of, and Iknow quite a few.
>
Axis Mundi>
Once inside I get a better look at the top half of the thing.Like I said, it had bat wings, wicked claws, and a long, thin snake tongue. I didn’t wait around to engage this thing in
putting bullets into it. Thing is, I didn’t really seem to be hurting it, and I had to roll away from a couple nasty swipes from those claws. Once the witch doctor showed up and starting slinging mojo, the thing buggered off.
Right away she asks me if I’ve seen its legs. Good thing my drone was still tracking them back where it left them, so we hoofed it over there as quick as we could.
>
Pistons>
Its legs were still walking around and shit? Freaky.>
/dev/grrl>
Yeah, so we track down the legs. Witch woman tells meto keep its top half away while she tackles its legs and starts grinding some special magic powder or some shit into the “open” top end of them. That’s when the top half comes at us like a bat out of hell, literally. I’ll shorten things up to say that was one hell of a fight, and I’ve been in more than a few in my life. Both me and the doc got raked and were bleeding something fierce when she suddenly said she was done and ran for the hills. I didn’t stop to ask questions until later, while she was dressing our wounds. She said the special salt she rubbed on the legs would prevent the thing from reattaching and it would be dead by morning. She went to go check the next day, but I had an answer for my employer, and enough of that hellhole, so I left.
>
Pistons>
I have heard scattered legends of such a thing, amanananggal. I had cautiously hoped they were not real. Pity.
>
Lei Kung>
I’ve got another strange one. I have this chummer whowas always a down-on-his-luck kind of guy, a real “lovable loser.” Great guy, but just never seemed to catch a break, you know?
>
Turbo Bunny>
That sounds just like my brother-in-law, only without thelovable part.
>
Rigger X>
Anyway, about six months ago things suddenly turnaround for him. Drek that normally always seemed to go wrong for him, just turned around and things started magically working out. At first it seemed like just dumb luck, random happy chance. Like he was finally catching a few breaks.
>
Turbo Bunny>
What’s weird about that?>
Nothing, and I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I was happy for him. But it wasn’t just a temporary run of good luck. Things kept going good for him, on and on and on.He was making deals bigger than ever before, pulling jobs like a pro, and scoring chicks like a player.
>
Turbo Bunny>
Sounds like his luck just turned around. Karma of theworld just rebalancing itself, I guess.
>
Jimmy No>
As I said, I didn’t think much of it at the time. It’s onlyafter what happened to him in the end that I’m starting to question things now. A few months into his run of good luck, he took me out for dinner. I suspect he was trying to get me into bed, but whatever. Anyway, while we’re chatting and he’s more than a little drunk, I make some comment about his luck finally turning around, universe giving him a break or something like that. Anyway, in response he says the strangest fucking thing I’ve ever heard him say, “Fuck the universe, I made a deal for my luck.”
>
Turbo Bunny>
What kind of deal?>
Ethernaut>
That was my question too, so I asked him. He goes on totell me this story about how he was out hiking in the back woods one night on one of his excursions for a big score of reagents. While he’s out he comes to a place that seems like it’s busting at the seams with magic. Wandering around in this place are some creatures that he’s never seen before, and I’ve never heard of. He could never really tell me what they looked like, just that they were very small, look vaguely metahuman shaped, but appeared
“hazy,” almost like they weren’t really there. Any smart person would walk away from some strange thing in the woods they’ve never seen before, but my friend being the dumb screw-up that he is, walks right up and starts talking to the things. I guess he was still looking to make a nuyen from them or some shit.
>
Turbo Bunny>
There are still a great many things we do not know aboutthis Awakened world. It is always best to be cautious.
>
Axis Mundi>
Yeah, well, my friend wasn’t exactly known for his gooddecision-making. Anyway, he tells me that he talked with the “little glowing things” (as he called them) and they offered him a deal. He does some stuff for them, and they turn his life around—make things better for him.
street sam, he agrees to the deal. He does what they ask:
plant some special seed in a different part of the forest, he said. No big deal. That’s when things started to turn around for him.
>
Turbo Bunny>
I’ve heard of such Faustian deals before—they alwaysstart small. Simple. They never end that way.
>
Ethernaut>
So, life starts looking up for him. He just goes into theforest and does whatever they say. He figured he’d hit the jackpot of a lifetime. By this time in the evening he was way past piss drunk and could see he wasn’t going to get a lay out of me, so he headed home. He called me (royally hung over) the next day, and he sounded like his was pissing his pants. He just kept saying over and over that he should never have told me about “them,” that I should forget I heard anything he said. Made me swear not to tell anyone. Null sweat. Then I didn’t hear from him for a couple of weeks.
>
Turbo Bunny>
I think I can see where this one’s going. One day fortunestopped being his bitch?
>
Clockwork>
One night he shows up at my door in the middle of thenight and he looks like hell and smells worse, drunk again. Through his tears he tells me that what “they” have been asking for has gotten harder, worse. It’s not simple anymore, it’s big stuff. Tough stuff. Now he’s had enough.
Last night they told him to set fire to a house full of kids.
He wouldn’t do it, he wanted out of the deal. They told him he couldn’t get out of the deal, and if he didn’t do what they wanted there’d be consequences.
>
Turbo Bunny>
The other shoe drops. No such thing as a free lunch!>
Clockwork>
Try not to be so cavalier—this is a good friend we’retalking about. True to his word, he tried to stop, but that’s when things started going bad. Real bad. I thought he had bad luck before, but that was nothing compared to this.
All kinds of crazy, random bad shit started happening to him. He suddenly can’t stop popping chips when he’s never touched them before, he can’t sleep at night, contacts won’t talk to him, he gets panic attacks just being out in public, and he goes into anaphylactic shock from something that he’s eaten a million times before. Few days ago he’s walking out of the hospital and gets pasted by a runaway autocab. “Autopilot malfunction” the company
behind it. If I ever find those “little glowing things” they’ll have a score to settle with me.
>
Turbo Bunny>
The day metahumanity outgrows its temptation toengage in deals with the devil, whatever shape that devil may take, will be a remarkable one indeed.
>
EthernautTOXIC MAGIC
When magic first returned to the Sixth World, it was readily apparent that it was tied to nature and the nat-ural world. Wherever nature was allowed to thrive, untouched by man, magic was more potent, thriving in tandem. Conversely, wherever nature was plowed, bulldozed, and overridden by the machinations of man, magic waned and fizzled. What no one antici-pated was what would happen to magic when nature was not removed and replaced, but instead tainted into something foul. While the fires of industry churned on, fueling the insatiable appetites of consumers, the by-products of those factories were dumped in forgotten places, away from prying eyes. In these places, where unnatural chemicals seeped and fouled like a sickness, nature turned into a dark and twisted parody of itself.
So too did the magic that pooled there.
Mana flows from the metaplanes and other unknown sources into the physical world. As it collides with the emotions and circumstances of the physical world, it ac-quires something like a taste or flavor of the people and past events in particular locations. When it eventually crashes into the shores of astral space, it has absorbed the essence or character of the location where it co-ex-ists. Thus, in a place where careless dumping has turned nature from inviting and life-giving to cruel and harsh, so too will the magic—and especially spirits—of that place be spiteful, twisted forms of what they once were. This is toxic magic.