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Old 10-13-2017, 10:48 AM   #1742
Bruno
 
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
...a bit of weirdness or threatened supernatural weirdness to an otherwise normal modern game.
Panics of various kinds reoccur pretty regularly; sometimes it's "just" panic and fear, and sometimes it becomes aggression leading to witch hunts. Vampires, werewolves, literal witches, communists, poisoners, Satanists, evil clowns, monkey men [1] - when a community gets it into their head that they're under attack and they can't find the thing they're convinced is attacking them, things get bad quick.

Actual saboteurs/serial killers/serial arsonists/big old man eating animals are another thing, but they can get spun up into a panic. There have been a sharp uptick in lion-on-human attacks since about 2000 on the East coast of Africa. The particularly weird thing is that they're entire prides of healthy, young, fit lions, not isolated, injured, sickly lions. Its bizarrely caused by climate change - seasonal flooding has been worse since about 2000, and when the floods are bad the game animals disperse and the lions get desperate. First they begin to prey on domestic animals, and then because of this they become familiar with humans, and as the flooding continues they advance to preying on humans. Lions are plenty smart enough to go through thatched roofs, knock down light wicker walls, and pick off lone women walking to market, or children walking to school.
If they're not caught, then when the flood water recedes they take a break from hunting humans... until the next flood.
The net result was that the locals suddenly had a pervasive and persistent problem with mysterious disappearing, reappearing, man-eating lions. A lot of folks declared them to be spirit lions sent by angry or enemy witch-doctors (rumor seems to have been started by witch-doctors looking to make a buck selling spirit-lion-repelling spells).

[1] No, really. India had a series of mysterious "monkey men" incidents in various different big cities. Basically Spring-heeled Jack for the sub-continent.
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