The intended feel of Wake the Dead is a genre called magical realism, a style of fiction in which the fantastical or magical is presented in a straightforward manner alongside more realistic or mundane events. Much of Tom Robbins’ work (Skinny Legs and All, Another Roadside Attraction) falls into that category, as well as literary exam-ples such as Van Gogh’s Bad Café (Frederic Tuten) and The Time-Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffeneg-ger). Cinematic examples include Midnight in Paris (2011, dir. Woody Allen) and Like Water for Chocolate (1992, dir. Alfonso Arau).
The genre isn’t widely associated with horror, largely because of the disconnect between what the protagonists in horror movies believe is real and what the antagonist of a horror movie reveals to be real (that is, one of the big scares in vampire movies is the revelation that vam-pires exist at all). That said, there are sources of inspiration that walk the line between the two genres successfully. Several of the films based on Stephen King’s work include elements of magi-cal realism, including It (1990). Others worth looking at are The Serpent and the Rainbow (1987, dir. Wes Craven), The Craft (1996, dir. Andrew Fleming) and Practical Magic (1998, dir. Griffin Dunne). For purposes of this Tale, however, the best cinematic source of inspiration is probably Cemetery Man (1994, dir. Michele Soavi), in which Rupert Everett plays a gravedigger who has to cope with the dead rising from their graves.
The walking dead in Wake the Dead might behave like the flesh-eating zombies we’re so familiar with, but they might just as well try to pick up their lives where they left off. That the world doesn’t come to a screeching halt as word of this instance spreads is where the magical realism comes in. If that’s not a paint you want in the box, then keep the focus of his story local and assume that even if people do spread the word, no one outside the community believes it.
Interchangeable Parts
The characters might be truckers, runaways, a band, students out to “discover themselves,” a group of writers and artists trying to be Hemingway or Kerouac, ghost chasers, or storm chasers. Whatever they are, they need to be able to live nomadically. More importantly, one or more of the characters
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needs to be directly responsible for the death of another person.
Maybe the players know about it or maybe it’s a terrible secret one keeps from the others. The example character, Lucien McJack, is presented as a man killed by accident, but feel free to adapt him to fit any unfortunate victim of the characters.
Blueprints
The God-Machine’s plans have started to unravel thanks to a random act of mortality. When its designs were coun-termanded, some gear or wheel started spinning backward.
The living continued to die, but some of the dead just started living again. It isn’t a thing the God-Machine is doing directly, but rather, a side effect of messing with its plans.
Because human death is so indiscriminate, these resur-rections are similarly chaotic. As the characters run into more incidences of people returning from the dead, (though not always coming back to life — most often, they come back as undead creatures), they might see that even the happiest end-ings have a bitter twinge to them, with a painful ironic twist hovering over each person touched by these events. A father might wish, fervently, for his son to come back to life — but when the boy does return, is that really what the father wanted?
A person killed by her lover in the heat of passion returns to life and crawls out of the shallow grave she was buried in. Does she want revenge? Answers? Maybe she forgives her lover and wants to go back to him, whether or not that’s what he wants.
Ultimately, the characters unravel the cause of the chaos: the man one of them killed is now a soulless corpse possessed by an evil spirit (see Lucien McJack, p. 119). At this point they’ll have to face their own actions, their own mortality, and agents of the God-Machine as they try to stop this senseless nightmare of life and death. They may try to bring back the man they killed to end the onslaught. They may get the idea that bringing him back will be worse and try to stop the God-Machine instead. That might involve finding out what was so special about the man they killed — a man who, unfortunately, has already returned to “life,” but is in no condition to pick up where he left off.
Linchpins
Anyone brought back from the dead bears the mark of the God-Machine or its servants. Common effects are burn scars that look like a giant raptor put its talons into the vic-tim and the smell of rust that won’t quite go away, but not everyone manifests marks the same way.
Early on, the characters hear tell of uncommonly big carrion birds near affected locations. Someone else describes metal angels with lists of names for judgment sparkling across the mirrored surface of their wings. Witnesses don’t realize they’re talking about the same being, but the angel in ques-tion — called the Mirror Vulture — isn’t here to feast on the dead. It’s only here to check each of the returned dead and see if the one the God-Machine wants has returned. Its mis-sion says nothing about putting the dead back down again, so it doesn’t bother.
The Mirror Vulture’s traits can be found in Chapter Three (p. 138).
Methods
Occult: How many different cultures talk about the dead returning to life? Actually, almost all of them. How many of those cultural tales have useful information on how to put the dead back down? That might take some research. Start with Intelligence + Occult; it’s probably an extended action.
Science: This feature bears all the marks of use — it’s got dust particles between the barbs and individual barbules, and it clearly fell from a wing. So how in the world can it be made of mirrored glass? Roll Intelligence + Science to run some analysis.
Stealth: When you met dead-Nancy at the bar, she’d been back six months and dead three years before that. She’s pretty sure if you want to see the “things” that brought her back, you’re going to have to hide out at the cemetery at night.
Come nightfall, you realize you aren’t alone. Roll Composure + Stealth to stay still enough to go unnoticed while you wait for the other lurking figures to reveal themselves.
Survival: The miles between towns seem to stretch on forever, and it may be time to admit everyone is too tired to keep traveling. The temperature has dropped. Roll Wits + Survival to set up a warm safe camp for the night and hope you can ignore the sound of beating wings.
Persuasion: Turns out the local sheriff isn’t too keen on people poking around his town, especially since he’s got more than a few things to hide now that the dead may be talking.
He’s got the shotgun and the power to make bodies disappear (assuming the damn things stay dead). Roll Manipulation + Persuasion to convince him you’re on his side in all this.
Socialize: The party started out as a wake, but then the de-ceased stood up and quaffed a beer and now it’s gone all weird.
Roll Presence + Socialize to get everybody celebrating again.
Merit: Medium (p 173): The disembodied dead stand as silent witnesses to the horrific mutilation of the natural order. They are mostly impotent in their rage, except that you can hear them. You can hear just how very angry they are.
Merit: Indomitable (p 163): When you find Lucien McJack, he’ll probably be angry, since you killed him. Being strong of mind will help you resist his fear-enhancing powers.
Escalation
The end of this story might see the characters leaving the region with a feeling of “what the hell just happened?”
and heading into an area where things are a little more…
normal. While “normal” isn’t a term that applies to events in the God-Machine Chronicle, it might underline the mood of this Tale to step things back a bit, perhaps using a more accessible Tale like The Key (p. 80) or The Hatching (p.99).
Note that “accessible” is a highly relative term.
On the other hand, Wake the Dead can form a transi-tion into some truly strange Tales. From here, your characters might wish to enter other dimensions (Missing Persons, p.
82) or encounter celestial beings (This is Hell, p. 103).
wake the dead
14th July 2012 Dear Gina,
I know, another letter, but oh GOD, Gina, it has been the weirdest couple of weeks and these aren’t things I can send you in e-mails or talk about on the phone, which sounds paranoid but really, really it isn’t. All the Olympic stuff is in full swing now and I’m watching more obscure sport than I have ever watched in my life, just to pass the time, because I don’t feel I can go out. When I’m at work, Stephen keeps setting me to do these weird sales and purchases that don’t make any sense and makes me do it really quickly, and it’s almost as if he’s trying to get me to make patterns on the screen, like I’m playing Bejeweled with stocks and shares. Between the weirdness at work and the other thing, I think I’m going mental. It’s so hard to get anywhere right now. But, at the same time it’s easy to get lost in a crowd so I’m going to do just that, get lost in a crowd and put this in a postbox when she doesn’t see it.
Who’s she? “She” is the bane of my existence right now.
See, I appear to have found myself a stalker. I promise, I swear to God I haven’t done anything wrong and everything is fine when we talk on the phone but I can’t tell you on the phone, I really can’t. The last time we talked I knew you’d realized that something was wrong. This is it.
Remember how in the last letter I wrote to you I mentioned that weird little woman who followed me back to work from the sandwich place one lunchtime? Her name is Mary. I know this because she followed me along that street every day for a week.
I don’t know how you deal with stuff like this. The first couple times she caught up with me and said hello, and I said hello back and tried to walk away, and she started trying to engage me in some sort of weird conversation, and all the time she called me
“William” which should have been the sign that I was dealing with a nutcase here. I tried to be polite, and then after a few days of this, I went, “Look, I know you’re trying to be friendly and everything and I’m sure you are lovely when people get to know you but really, I have a girlfriend and I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to be talking to me anymore.” And I walked off before she could burst into tears or be really strange or anything.
That was on a Friday. Then she didn’t appear for a few days and I thought, phew, she’s gone.
And then on the evening of the following Friday, I was closing the lounge curtains and there she was, on the street looking right in to the window. She smiled and waved. I think I said, shit, out loud and just swooshed them shut and stood there, hand on mouth, wondering what the fuck I was going to do.
I thought maybe if I ignored her she’d go away.
She was there all day Saturday. I stayed in and watched TV I had never given a fuck about before with the curtains closed just to pass the time. On Sunday morning, the let-ter came through my door, hand-delivered, addressed to “William Dear, Esq.”
It was a love letter. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but as far as I could make out, she had been in a relationship with this William who was a drug dealer or a doctor or something and it hadn’t ended well and now she was convinced that I was William, only I didn’t know it.
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Somehow I managed to make it to work every day that week, knowing that she was there on the street. My reward was another letter, every day.
Eventually I did a really stupid thing. I mean, it takes a while for you to admit you’ve got a stalker. It’s not something you’re supposed to have as a man, and no one tells you what to do.
So I did this stupid thing. I wrote back. I wrote her a stiff, formal letter saying that I wasn’t who she thought I was and could she please go away, good luck, all that bollocks.
I know, I know. But I haven’t heard from her for a week. I hope that’s it now.
I haven’t seen Henry for a couple days. I hope he’s OK.
I hope you’re doing all right, Gina. I miss you so much.
Yours Jon