Unknown Armies

Unnatural

The Junkyard

An Otherspace: WITH CARS!

The junkyard

For as far as the eye can see(from ground level that's about 2 car lengths on a good day) stretch cars-old cars, new cars, rusty cars, and fresh off the production line shiny cars, model T's and 2015 honda panax's, limos and.... you get the idea

Counting from ground level(which isn't the actual ground but simply more cars squashed closer together until they are(mostly) impassable) the cars are stacked(and folded and slotted) up to 12 deep

Thus the junkyard may be traversed on the surface, where you just climb from roof to roof and can see the slight metallic blue of the sky.This is safe bar the occasional wobbly stack but unnerving due to the vibrant purple parrots that gather to watch with an intelligent gleam in their eye.

Or below by making ones way through the myriad of passages made by car doors and boots and windows(fairly easy as the piles are stable and the gaps conveniently sized)

Or even further down where the wrecks are so close together, passages may only be found with difficulty. But if you can find them you'll soon find the gremlins....

Gremlins

Gremlins are 1 inch high, brown and vaguely humanoid shaped in a paper bag sort of way(I make no apologies for this description)

No complex machines(including c'works except MAYBE automatons) work within (3inchs *number of gremlins in the group)... for simplicities sake this is when you can see them or the GM wants to stop you shooting pretty purple parrots

The gremlins are actually a pair of hive minds(lots of bodies but only one "mind" or 2 in this case) consisting or ~1/2 the population each.They live in harmony but seem completely opposed on every issue where outsiders(that's you) are involved

The 2 groups internally identify as the royalists and the parliamentarians(after some british guy was talking to them) but it really means nothing unless you're paranoid

Gremlins really just want sugar.Nothing special, just sugar.They crave it like an addiction and the only thing that means more to them than getting it is stopping the other side from getting it.(hilarity ensues)This would be potentially lucrative if only they had something worth having other than parrot feathers(from the aforementioned parrots)
Parrot feathers, when owned(one's enough-the effects don't stack unless by some twist of fate you come to own an entire parrot)cause one to happen across the unnatural a lot more often.
Find some money in the street? fair to middling it's a wooden nickel(p225 core rules )
Pick up some chick at a bar? probably an amoromancer
Walking down the road in the middle of the night? cue aliens
walk into a truck stop in middle America? hey look an Elvis "impersonator"

This is not a major thing since the feathers aren't really magic as such just a bit weird and otherspace-y.

one other thing - the gremlins? they don't know nothing, they just think the feathers are pretty

To enter the junk yard pour some sugar into the fual tank of a car then wind down the window and climb through it

to leave the junkyard sit in the drivers seat of one of the cars and jam on the accelerator(some of the cars still work so try not to cause an earthquake).You will arrive back at the moment you left sitting in the drivers seat of the car you used to get in. The car will be non-functional in every possible way and moving @ ~33km/hr

It's not as obvious as I'd like it to be but there are cars from the future in the junkyard.Also someone write some better entry rituals, I don't like these ones.

fhtagn | profile | Nov 05, 09 | 6:31 am

Visitor Comments

Visiting is quite dangerous and as for Leaving your mileage may vary.

In order to enter the junkyard you must be in a discontinued model of car with at least one more person You need to get up to a speed of over 20mph and with three hands touching the radio drive into a mirrored surface large enough to display the entire vehicle.

On impact the car is crashed and while there's no indicaton of damage to the mirror the car will look like it hit a brick wall. (enjoy your car crash) If anyone dies in the crash then a copy of the car can be seen in the stacks.

The car will remain in the junkyard as long as its motor keeps going. As soon as it runs out of gas it will appear out of nowhere back in reality and actually crash into the mirror.

According to the blue the bodhvista the trunks of some of the cars may lead to even stranger dreamlands.

RoseStCabal | profile | Nov 05, 09 | 11:05 am

I actually don't mind the entrance and exit rites you created, fthagan. The ritualist kills a car to get in (the sugar in the gas tank thing) and then rides its restless spirit back out.

Here's my addition/spin on your concept: the Junkyard is the domain of cars that have been "murdered"--deliberately sabotaged. Their spirits rust and decay just as their bodies do. The shuddering of the stacks of cars, resulting in the occasional collapse, is just their frustrated struggling to manage some kind of revenge against their fleshly slayers, even though it is mostly futile.

So, why would anybody go there? Well, at the cost of a (possibly stolen) car, one has a handy, relatively safe place to stash something valuable and/or incriminating. Some adepts do exactly that--some even go so far as to bring supplies and hide out for days or weeks.

The main reason to go there, of course, is for car parts. As the cars in the Junkyard are actually spiritual artifacts, parts taken from cars there have strange effects. For starters, they don't decay or wear out and always work at maximum efficiency--you'll never have to replace your break line again if you use one taken from the Junkyard.

Secondly, cars with parts from the Junkyard installed in them retain some of their spiritual nature and react strongly to magick and unnatural creatures. This isn't easily noticed with, say, a brake line, but a car radio that crackles with interference every time an adept spell is used near it or an unnatural creature is present is pretty useful.

Thirdly, because of their spiritual nature and sensitivity to magick, some adepts (mainly epideromancers and mechanomancers) have found great success in using them in quasi-cybernetic experiments and rites.

Basilisk | profile | Nov 05, 09 | 1:44 pm

Of course, if you take a part from a murdered car that has either a strong sense of betrayal or of having been a failure (which is why it was "punished" by being deliberately sabotaged), there might be... other effects.

Like in "Christine" or "The Wraith" or any of the rest. Except that it's not a car possessed by a human demon.

So, on the one hand, amazing car parts. On the other, the possibility that these amazing car parts want to A) Kill you, B) Kill others, or C) make up for their previous failures (with C being a very slim option).

And the more car parts from different wrecks you use, the stronger the magickal effects.

Neville Yale Cronten | profile | Nov 05, 09 | 10:00 pm

Think of demons, too. A car demon might have an obsession, too. It might just want to finally finish whatever task it was doing before it was destroyed. A car whose brake-lines were cut might just want to finally be able to make that last curve that previously it went flying off of into the ocean.

Of course, what happens to a demon that fulfills its obsession? It disappears.

So, if you use a part from a demon car, well, you never know when by chance (and probabilities are so much more temperamental in the UAverse) you'll happen to go around that curve again... or down that strip of road... or possibly more generally finally get a pregnant woman to the hospital.

And if that happens and the part you used was really necessary to control the car, well... maybe you make the first curve on that long winding coastal road, but maybe you don't make the second.

Neville Yale Cronten | profile | Nov 05, 09 | 10:03 pm