Unknown Armies campaign idea

Apotheosis

There are so few left, so terribly few. Every few years the old gods put on new faces, ripping them from the flesh of the living, standing over the bones of the dead. These are only metaphors: but the gods change. All things change, or perish. One pursues novelty or clings to habits. Both ends may be destructive. All things change, and move towards their end.

Every year new gods are born, despite all the old gods do and be and every effort of will and desire. Things happen, despite our most feverent prayers, our most profound hopes. The world gives birth to new gods in this age of change and wildness where all the terrible power of old traditions breaks down and in the centre of the world the world discovers that the centre does not hold.


You've heard whispers, or rumours of them. Read graffito visible only under a new moon. Saw the homeless bum who told people The End was coming get bundled off by men in white suits when he tried to tell people the truth, screamed: "You did it!" to everyone he met, weeping whiskey tears all the while.

Something is changing, has changed, is coming. There is something in the air, the hint of a storm, the knowledge that the calm is over. The world is changing. You feel it in your pineal gland, see it in strange news items, read about it in the gossip section of the paper. Somewhere, out there, men who are far more than men are gathering, and men who are terribly less gather as well. Their are armies moving through shadows, down paths known only to small children and cats, and though they are unknown, they are still armies, and there is still a war.

Because the rumours say that we made the gods, and that the universe will remake itself once we've made so many. That they will make a new one. A better one. Or they did yesterday, and there are those who want the old one back -- it doesn't matter, not really. All that matters, all that is known, is that there are over 330 gods walking the world, and that unless we are terrible or clever or very lucky, soon there will be more and there will no longer be a world.


So, this is what popped out of my head for an Unknown Armies campaign. The PCs can be In The Know (as much as anyone is), or only some, or be thrown off the deep end to tread water and drown beautifully. Entirely up to the players, as is the PC.

Standard UA PC (220 points). Each PC has a Dark Secret, something horrible they've done and never want anyone to learn. And a Trigger, which is something Weird you saw (or the first weird thing you saw) that told you the world was even stranger than advertised on cheap talk shows during ratings week.

The PCs should be connect somehow. This can be an ally, an organization, them being neighbours in the same apartment complex -- it's up to you all, but your PCs should know each other before the game, at some level.

Where it's going: This is unknown armies. Surreal urban fantasy, sprinkled with horror. It's about power and consequences, and what you'd do to change the world. It's about having the guts to see the world as it is, not as we desire it to be -- and maybe, just maybe, finding a way to make the desire come true, or learn why it can never be. It's about being as hard as you have to be, as kind as you can afford to be, and doing what has to be done.

Because the heart of the world has a secret, and everyone knows it even if no one can really believe it. And it means everything, and nothing. You find it scrawled in bathrooms, written on your bed sheets when you wake up, replacing texts in a newspaper. Truth so old no one believes it. Magic so old no one understands it.

You Did It.

.... Now what are you going to do about it?