Real-Life Weirdness

[dcarson]

The club for dead people might be interesting in a RPM/Monster Hunter game. There has to be some symbolic value in having officially dead people involved in a ritual.

[Anaraxes]

"Michele Fallon was driving near Danville, Penn., last Friday when she saw two trucks collide. Boxes littered the road. She stopped to help.

Onlookers believed the boxes were full of cats. Fallon had no idea they contained 100 lab monkeys until she met one face to face. The ruffled monkey hissed at her.

I thought I was just doing the right thing by helping. I had no idea it would turn out this way,” Fallon told local news station WBRE.

Fallon had a cut on her hand and apparently, the highway was strewn with monkey droppings. That’s about to become important."

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politic...-sick-n1552703

Luckily, you know some PCs that can step in to save the day. Or just try to rebuild civilization after the inevitable plague spreads.

[sjard]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Luckily, you know some PCs that can step in to save the day. Or just try to rebuild civilization after the inevitable plague spreads.

Or this is how they've decided to reframe Summer of the Monkeys for modern audiences. So instead of wanting to catch them for the bounty so he can afford a pony and a rifle, it's for a new cell phone and a PS5?

[William]

A black diamond named "The Enigma" will be up for sale soon. Having been traveling the world through Dubai and Los Angeles, Sotheby's of London will be selling it with an expected price of several million pounds.

* It's huge: 555.55 carats.
* It was cut to have 55 faces. Okay, so we're immediately getting into lapidary numerology here.
* It is carbonado, one of the toughest forms of natural diamond.
* It is at least a couple of billion years old.
* Since it contains osbornite, the most likely theory of its formation is in space, prior to falling to earth in a meteor.

So: an unearthly, dark, near-indestructible gem with cleverly manipulated numerical characteristics is going to be auctioned off to an elite clientele for an enormous sum of money. Definitely something various crews could sink their teeth into.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by William

Definitely something various crews could sink their teeth into.

There will be 55 different groups trying to heist it before, during and after the auction. And they will all trip over each other behind the scenes.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by WingedKagouti

There will be 55 different groups trying to heist it

No, just 5 groups. Ocean's eleven, and four other groups of similar size. Prime factorization is not a coincidence around The Enigma.

[William]

Y'all ever hear of the Cadaver Synod?

Also known as the Synodus Horrenda, the causes are about as complicated as you might expect medieval papal politics to get, but in short, Pope Stephen VI wanted to nullify some acts of one of his predecessors, Pope Formosus. The act named above occurred when Stephen had the seven-month-dead Formosus exhumed. The corpse was enthroned and Formosus was tried on various charges, leading to a guilty verdict and a retroactive nullification of his Papacy.

The corpse was stripped of his vestments, the three blessing fingers were cut off of his right hand, and he was reburied in a graveyard for foreigners; then he was dug up again and thrown into the Tiber River.

The public thought very poorly of this grim spectacle. Formosus' body washed up on the banks of the Tiber and rumor spread that the body was performing miracles. An uprising quickly deposed Stephen and he was killed in prison. Successors overturned the synod and had Formosus reburied with honors.

For additional miraculous occurrences attesting to Stephen's foolishness, other reports have an earthquake occurring during the trial, and a claim that images of the saints in the Basilica saluted Formosus when he was reinterred.

As a scene in a game, a Cadaver Synod might involve a great deal of political and legal maneuvering; a Pope at the time was embroiled in international politics up to his very fragile ears, of course. Part of Stephen's weird motivation in so desecrating a holy man's corpse might have been an attempt to strip his relics of their power; centers of veneration dedicated to one's deceased political opponents could easily become centers of organized opposition to one's present rule.

In a fantasy world, the entire macabre farce could surely be some sort of necromantic ritual. With walking ghosts, communication with a Heavenly (hopefully) afterlife, or speak with dead or Summon Spirit as usable spells, the dead man could be an active participant in the trial!

There is one question that no source I've read has answered, though, and which you might be able to use profitably in a game set right up to the modern day:

...what happened to the fingers?

[dcarson]

Originally Posted by William

Y'all ever hear of the Cadaver Synod?


...what happened to the fingers?

That's going on the idea list for my current Monster Hunter game. may never use it since they are set in Arizona.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by dcarson

That's going on the idea list for my current Monster Hunter game. may never use it since they are set in Arizona.

A set of preserved "holy/magical" fingers could easily make it across the pond.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by WingedKagouti

A set of preserved "holy/magical" fingers could easily make it across the pond.

As could rumors/people chasing the rumors, Maltese Falcon style There's three mummified fingers in circulation, maybe from mummified outlaw Elmer McCurdy, but one or more parties have gotten the idea that they're the long-lost fingers of Formosus, which would have some supposed miraculous power, and all sorts of machinations happen to get hold of fingers that, if anyone gets them, turn out to do nothing at all.