Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon
Current CMF research looks to be primarily at North Carolina State University. Here is one of the most recent news blurbs, with a fistful of links to the previous ones. Weight is somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 that of RHA of equal DR, which isn’t quite as good as improved ceramic IIRC, but it doesn’t shatter upon absorbing a hit. Up to you if Kessler has significant ties to that particular university.
Late Edit: The head researcher’s name - Afsaneh Rabiei - intrigued me, so I did a little digging. Turns out she did her undergraduate work in the mid-80’s (when Strange Things started happening) in Tehran, which IIRC isn’t terribly far from a Vile Vortex (the one around Mohenjo-daro). She later did her PhD work in Tokyo in the mid-90’s (when Strange Things were starting to ramp up), which isn’t terribly far from another Vile Vortex (the one around the Devil’s Sea). I personally feel this sets her up well to have experienced Something, and perhaps her research is intended to help more than just the soldiers fighting our mundane enemies... |
Ah, that's a good thought.
Yes, certainly Ms. Rabiei could be developing armour against more than bullets from having lived close to two Vile Vortices. For that matter, the 'Bermuda Triagle' lozenge is not all
that distant from North Carolina, certainly close enough for there to exist ley line confluences and Places of Power in greater concentrations than in places like LA, New York or Gary, Indiana.
But should I relate her to Kessler or to one of the other groups out there aware of the occult? I don't want to give the impression that Kessler is at the center of all that happens at all related to the paranormal. He's locally important in the Caribbean and the Gulf Coast, but his occult organization hardly covers the entire US, let alone the world.
Considering Ms, Rabiei's origins, history and background, what might her connection to the world of the weird be?
If she has inborn abilities of her own (or was very close with someone who did), she might be among those few in the world who became aware of the supernatural in the 1980s. In that case, she might now be affiliated with an Iranian organization or group founded by some people she went to school with in Tehran.
If Ms. Rabiei did not learn of the existence of the supernatural until later, she might have stumbled into a group of occultists in Japan in the 1990s. Most Japanese secret societies are probably fairly chauvinistic, even xenophobic*, in their membership policies, but she might have belonged to a group of expatriates or a rare multi-ethnic group of Japanese and foreigners. Or she might have been accepted to an extraordinary degree into an otherwise almost entirely Japanese organization.
Or, of course, Ms. Rabiei might be associated with an American group. As the US is so very large and without a unified, official response to the supernatural, there will be any number of people who've learned the truth and found others who also believe. While less than one in a thousand of Americans belong to any kind of 'occult underworld', more than an order of magnitude more than this are aware that
something odd is going on, little though they may realize about the big picture. And at the start of 2019, it's been long enough since the first people became aware for groups, clubs, secret societies and other organizations to have come into existence.
Any group to which Ms. Rabiei belongs could be one devoted to the secret protection of an unaware humanity, but more likely, they would be some of the much more numerous 'neutral' groups, that are founded to share research and study of the occult and might be in the process of evolving into something resembling Lodges (of
GURPS Voodoo) or the
Cabal, if less powerful, without the great antiquity and not (yet) actively malevolent.
What do you think, what should be the true story of a fictionalized Afsaneh Rabiei in my campaign?
Would anyone like to propose a group of occultists for her to belong to, whether it's a few friends from school or a full-fledged secret society with thirty years of history?
*At least judging from what my friend, who lives in Tokyo and is married to a Japanese woman, tells me about mainstream attitudes toward race and ethnicity that are current in Japanese society. Things that would be considered extremely hateful and unacceptalbe expressions of racism in US or Western European societies (and be against the law in some of them) are viewed as perfectly ordinary features of Japanese society. A foreigner might work in a Japenese company for a couple of decades, live in Tokyo that long and speak Japanese fluently, but to most people, he's still a foreigner and can never belong in the way that a Japanese person could. Oh, and apparently, virulent, hateful racism toward other Asian ethnicities is not the slightest bit taboo even among ordinary, middle-class people who speak good English and interact with Westerners daily.