(Updated May 7th)
100 years ago something Happened in the town of Argleton. To this day, no one knows what. All that is known for sure is that Argleton no longer shows up on most maps and no longer seems located in the county it used to be in: and no one can even agree where that was either. It is a town people find due to need and desperation and one very few of them ever leave.
Because being in Argleton changes you, if you let it. And in some cases, no matter what we wish or let, things happen. Some call if the Curse or the Blessing. Most call it the Talent and become capable of strange tricks and skills that are seldom normal at all: a few even have the same trick in varying degrees of strength (this is especially true of siblings) and some people are never even aware they have a Talent at all.
The flip side of all this is that there are those who are dividing the town into the Talented and the untalented, some trying to make use of Talents for nefarious ends and rumours of talents being taken out into the World for experiments or that certain drugs can boost Talents and so forth. Over the years, the minor curiosity of a few people with tricks has blossomed into over 10% of the entire town and the only thing that seems to be holding things together is the mayor, who seems to be immortal, and the chief of police – who is, as far as anyone can determine, immune to Talents.
But even they are hard-pressed to keep a lid on the simmering pot of resentments and ideologies and have/nots that threatens to boil over. As such, a Citizen's Brigade has formed,a semi-official group to straddle the line between law enforcement and by-law enforcement for the town, and the PCs have been selected to be part of this. Perhaps by choice, or for community service, orders of parents or to impress someone: you're reasons aren't important to the mayor, who just wants the town to hold together.
Important Notes: Argleton is outside the modern world. Radio's work, local tvs work, but anything requires satellites won't, ditto with internet access. Pop culture does drift into it, via people coming into Argleton with items and there are some mysterious traders who seem able to enter and leave and will, often bringing newspapers and DVDs, but knowledge of the outside world is sketchy at best and some of the papers and DVDs seem to come from other earth's entirely.
ARGLETON
Argleton is a large town surrounded by farms, hills and a thick forest. The hill-folk tend to be quiet and insular, whereas the farm folk come in daily with food and supplies. Without the farms, Argleton would be a ghost town and the people on it are hard and tough, able to take what the land deals out and deal it right back when they need to.
Almost all the farmwork is done by hand but even if it wasn't, a town needs more than food and drink to survive. The hillfolk mine deep and sell what they find, but it is the grey-clad Traders who come into town with goods and items from the world that keep the town as part of the modern world, or at least try to do so.
SYSTEM
Risus!
12 dice, no one trait can have over 4-5 dice in it. PCs are expected to have
PCs must have a minimum of 3 cliches at 2 dice each.
Optional rule: Talent dice can be divided further into Power and Skill. So if you have 'burn shit down' at 4 dice, but want it to be more "I get mad and can't control it", you make it Power 5 and skill 3, for example. So any use of just fire comes in at 5 dice, any attempt to actually control the Talent is 3 dice.
Experience: This will be given out infrequently at best and is liable to be 'turn d6s into d8s' more than getting new cliches, unless PCs teach each other ones they know.
Notes
A Talent is pretty much a single trick that defies conventional reality. Some are terrifying, some are rather mundane, and many make no sense to anyone at all. The use of any Talent burns off energy, so how one loses and replenishes that energy is up to each pc. Generally, weaker talents burn les energy, and this holds true for a talent like 'fly in the air' vs. 'manipulate gravity': the more specific a Talent is, the less energy it will burn even if it is quite powerful.
What is known is that Talents develop sometime after puberty and often under stress. Existing skills can become Talents as well, so guy who used to be a Computer Genius is now a Tech Wizard and the like.
KNOWN TALENTS
Brute: Any talent involving one's own body. Toughness, strength, claws and such fall under this very broad rubric.
Elementalist: anyone with a talent for control over one or more elements. This is by far the most common Talent.
Finder: A knack for finding people and things.
Gearhead: Anyone whose talent involves tech and making things. Most forms of genius get lobbed under here.
Green Thumb: A talent generally held by at least one member of any farming family: stuff they plant grows very, very well.
Healer: Healers are uncommon and most end up working at the small hospital that services Argleton.
Lucky Duck: anyone with a talent over luck or possibility.
Mender: The common name for regeneration, but also applies to people who can fix items or stop them from breaking down.
Minder: Anyone whose talent involves the minds of others. Telepaths, naturally, are painted as bigger boogeymen than they really are.
'Porter: Teleporting, phasing and so forth. This is a pretty dangerous talent to the user, but does exist.
Transmuter: Aka a changer: Turn one thing into another. Limited by mass, volume, and a host of other things.
Many minor talents that are just improved normal ones exist as well and likely increase the amount of people with Talents far beyond the 10% of the town with impressive/visible ones.
Note: The Talent 'lottery' seems set to random. Few people end up with a talent that magically cures or fixes some existing issue in their lives. (For these people, The Witch can be a godsend if they can make a deal for a talent they'd like instead.) There are also very few cases of a Talent physically changing someone, though temporary changes [due to Pumping] may happen at times.
RUMOURED TALENTS
Binder: Someone whose words can bind others to a geas.
Booster: Someone whose sole Talent is to improve the talents of others.
Creator: A person whose talent is to create things from nothing. (Transmuting is confused with this at times.)
Death-touch: Or glare, or anti-healing. The ability to kill with a touch. Considered to be anti-Talent propaganda.
Destroyer: Someone who can will things out of existence.
Phoenix: Someone who can die and come back.
Phoenix, flawed: you die, and you come back with some very minor Talent each time. Rinse, repeat.
Trickster: Shape-shifting. All reported cases have turned out to be Minders making illusions in people's heads.
Vampiric: Talents that involve sucking energy out of others and so forth.
TALENTS THAT DON'T EXIST
Anti-Talent: Someone who can shut down the talents of others; if this exists, logic states it would have been used against the mayor by now.
Medium: If anyone can actually speak to the dead, they are keeping mum about it. (This doesn't mean there aren't charlatans who claim they can, naturally.)
Multiple Talents: Aside from what the Witch can do, no recorded person with more than one Talent exists.
Mimic Talents: Also never recorded, believed impossible as an actual talent.
Seers: Any talent involving the future and time aren't known. Anyone who has claimed post- or pre-cognitive talents has been shown to be lying.
Time Travel: Many would want it, no one has it
MAGIC
Magic is a tricky one: a lot of things a gearhead makes can qualify, and might, but in general magic is known to exist -- at least in Argleton -- and allow practitioners to learn specific spells with limited effects. The use of magic requires time, rituals, will and is exhausting physically, mentally and spiritually. All miracles fall under the classification of magic as well, as much as it angers some of the devout.
Unlike Talents, anti-magical spells do exist and magical charms and talismans of dubious provenance are sold in sketchy shops. Further, no one with a Talent is capable of working magic though they can assist in magical workings. Most Talents somehow provide an inate resistance to magic. Lastly, magic has never been observed to work outside of Argleton while some few strong Talents have.
PEOPLE:
Mayor:
Rudolph Donison: the nayor of Argleton, he has held the post for over 90 years and still appears to be 32 decades later. His only surviving son, Victor, is now in his 50s and rather bitter that he is getting old and dying. Rudolph has been known to deal with problems first-hand and thus far nothing -- in this world or of any other -- seems able to harm him. If need be, he is simply not where it lands but his body is also impervious to harm. He is quite willing to find and stop monsters to protect the town and his people. No one has even bothered with elections in the last 10 years.
Victor Donison: The mayor's last surviving son, Victor is a cold and bitter man who ran against his father three times for mayor until people decided having elections was rather silly. He has forgiven no one for that and runs a small pawn shop on the outskirts of town, selling weird things and information. Everyone is aware that his father disowned him 10 years ago owing to the horrible things Victor was doing to his son, but the details of those are unknown.
He is also one of the few openly practising magicians in the town.
Treyvan Donison: His grandson, now 18. While he does age, Victor possesses a regenerative talent that borders on the miraculous and allows him to heal from anything he's faced in his life thus far. On the flip side, he does feel pain so he's not exactly eager to test the limits of his talent. He is quiet by nature and tries not to use his family name for anything, but has finished school and is at loose ends.
The police:
Carmichael Jones: The Chief of Police. Carmichael Jones is a tough, grim man who has seen man's inhumanity to man and is known to be extremely hard on talents who abuse their powers against humans. He is human but considered by many to be the meanest and toughest man in the town when he has to be.
Wayland Chashi: The only flat-out Talent in the police department, Wayland is inhumanly strong and deals with rogue talents by hitting them until they don't get up again. It is widely believed that he sold his soul for his talent and that only Jones keeps him narrowly on the side of good.
Lance Christensen: Lance is a new hire for the department, since Jones was told he needed more talents. Lance's talent is to be able to spot the Talent in others and he is very, very good at it but also damn good at his job, much to Jones' chagrin.
The other four police officers work rotating shifts; all are male, which has been causing some fuss of late so the Citizen's Brigade has been ordered to incorporate more women.
The Policed:
Peter Spalding: Peter is a thin, balding man in his 50s who has the record for most time in jail in the entire town owing to a talent for telepathy, the fact that using talents on others is illegal, and lastly that his control has never been all that great. He spends most of his time very much alone and more than a little mad.
Mad Jack Jacks: Jack doesn't have a Talent, while the rest of his family does. Or did, until he dissected them all and attempted to figure out how Talents work. He's known to be somewhere among the hillfolk but beyond that no one is sure what he's doing or why, only that he is Argleton's Most Wanted and has somehow managed to hide from everyone and everything seeking him out for a damn long time.
Lenny Yu: A bright and fearfully ambitious man, Lenny is in his early 40s and convinced War Is Coming and builds things. Often weapons, and then he tests them, though seldom on people. Hence often being in jail and let out because he has a weapon or plan the town can use. He doesn't hate talents, like some people claim, but he hates the fact that they can do stuff that tales him years to learn and work out in mere moments.
Other People:
Mad Madeline: An old woman who is also a finder, though her talent manifests in finding things via seeing through the eyes of animals.
Trader Joe: One of the best-known traders, Joe has phenomenal luck and, for the right price, can find anything for anyone. He is also the only Trader to reveal his appearance, which is that of an albino man. He doesn't reveal how traders leave or return to Argleton and attempts at pushing him lead to finding out just how many people own him favours.
The witch: She goes by many names, none of them real, and moves about. Sometimes in Argleton, sometimes in the world, and currently goes by 'The Dealer', running a casino where you can trade anything for anything, because that is her Talent. If you want to trade something, she can make it happen. Talents, free will, skills, memories, limbs, even one's own life can be traded if both parties are willing. If she was ever human at all, she isn't anymore.
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