SITUACIÓN SOCIOECONÓMICA DE LOS EXTRANJEROS ENTRE LOS

Possessions

Voorhees owns little of his basic necessities

— he still lives at home with mom — but has a great deal of luxuries: comic books, video games, RPG sourcebooks, SF&F novels, and a completist’s collection of Warstar-7 junk.

He wears a Starforce badge on his Scotsman’s uniform. The most interesting curio he has in his grubby little mitts is a production prop of a

“Pulsator Pistol” used on Warstar-7, which he got off eBay. He’s pretty sure he can enchant it

— er, “synergize it with the hyperstitial fi elds”

— so that it can be used as it is on the show, to stun people. (A particularly kind GM might allow this to work thusly: if Voorhees puts a signifi cant charge through the enchanted prop, he can force an Unnatural Stress Check. Rank of the Check is equal to the tens place on the roll against Magick: Videomancy, and dura-tion of the “stun” is equal to the ones place, in minutes.)

Notes

Warstar-7 follows the dauntless crew of the eponymous Galactic Alliance cruiser under the command of Captain Santiago Church. Other characters of interest include Una (the bipolar alien female, possessing a hyper-intelligent but standoffi sh and frigid “winter form” and a hypersexual but impulsive and hot-blooded

“summer form”), Sergeant Bach (the geneti-cally-engineered warrior), and Robo-Alpha-Lambda-Four, aka “RALF” (the mechanoid engineer). While purest space opera, the show has lasted several years through a combination of good writers, excellent performances, and a modicum of critical praise. Some in the Occult Underground claim to see subtle indicators that at least some of the writers are clued-in, pointing to things like the Archons (a pantheon of immaterial aliens who can possess humans and grant them powers), the Sandmen (an alien race dedicated to euthanizing the entire galaxy), and “the Niamreg” (a melancholy immortal doomed to wander the stars forever).

There’s a rumor that Dirk Allen sold at least

two script treatments to the Warstar-7 story editor. Who knows?

Voorhees has formalized one Warstar-7 focused formula spell called “Captain Church’s Fight Theme.” For a signifi cant charge, he can use his Magick skill in place of his Struggle skill, as long as he keeps humming the tune or for fi ve minutes, whichever comes fi rst. He then uses the Captain’s signature fi ghting moves, like the locked fi sts brought down on someone’s back. He also quickly gets rips in his clothes and arcing red wounds that are no worse than paper cuts, which look very dramatic.

For the Rubble-Rubble crew, Voorhees is the Geek of All Trades: computer man, mean-ingless trivia man, and “butt of jokes”-man.

But he always comes through in the clinch.

He’s a little scared of Isidore (because he’s a criminal) and Summer (because she’s beautiful), but nearly worships the ground Chandasekhar walks on.

He knows both versions of the Ritual of Lesser Correspondence, as well as the Ritual of Fealty and Plague of Hiccups (see UA2, p. 97). He’s done the Fealty ritual numer-ous times, because it helps him to feel like he fi nally belongs somewhere. And for that, Voorhees is eternally grateful: he’d die for the cause. He wants, desperately, to get onto the Brainfood List.

Street-level Version: Body 30, Speed 30;

WP 30; Computers (General Education) 35%, Dodge 15%, Judo (Struggle) 15%, Nerd Lore 25%, Notice 20%, TV Trivia 20%, Who Needs Sleep? 15%

Hooks

• A PC/GMC may own a piece of Warstar-7 memorabilia that Voorhees is slavering for.

• A PC/GMC may share the name of an actor who played a bit part on Warstar-7;

Voorhees comes looking for an autograph.

• A PC/GMC could need to double-check the ingredients for a ritual, which is unfor-tunately pop-culture encoded; Voorhees could help

Return-Path: <[email protected]>

X-Sent: 27 Oct 1990 02:58:19 GMT

Subject: RE: [MA] Abduction Experiences Date: Sat, 27 Oct 1990 19:58:11 -0700 x-sender: (undisclosed)

From: Corey <[email protected]>

>>Which makes me realize the whole deal was probably just an

example of >>Sleep

>Paralysis, aka Old Hag Syndrome. (I

ʼm not certain where, but I >>remember reading

>about the hallucinations associated with said event >>mainly being of women,

>which is what reminded me, but now

I canʼt fi nd a >>source to back that up.)

>Yeah, I remember hearing/reading somewhere that some

substantial >percentage of

the population has hallucinated waking up with someone >sitting on their chest -- the full bore thing, visual and somatic >sensations. Any of y

ʼall had this?

Well, not exactly...

I started having hag dreams when I was in high school; for a long time I had one or two a year, usually during high-stress periods. The form they usually take is for me to “wake up” in whatever room I

ʼm sleeping in, lying on my back, able to see the ceiling very clearly (unusual since I really canʼt see detail more than a

foot or two away without my glasses; itʼs also interesting to note that the light is always correct -- if it happens while I

ʼm napping during the day, then itʼs

daylight, etc.). I lay there a while, graduall

y becoming aware of a vague physica l

discomfort; eventually I try to shift position -- and discover I can

ʼt. At this

point, I begin to perceive another presence in the room, off to one side, somewhere beyond my peripheral vision -- if I

ʼm near a window, itʼs often right outside;

otherwise itʼs usually to my right and behind. It then becomes very important for me to *look* towards the presence; there

ʼs a feeling that Iʼm in some danger if I

canʼt look at it -- only of course I can

ʼt move. Eventually this develops into a

full-fl edged panic atttack, as I desperately try to move to dispel the growing Evil Presence before it can Get Me; usually I end up making enough noise to make myself wake up, though sometimes Iʼm also awakened by a loud noise nearby. (I still feel a karmic debt to the person who bounced a basketball off my wall and woke me up once in high school.) Curious thing, here -- when I wake up, I open my eyes; the room loses detail as I do (glasses, remember?) but otherwise is the same as the

“dream”, including the lighting. I

ʼve never been able to properly rectify this

with the standard explanations of sleep paralysis.

Anyway. The “peak” of my hag dreams came the year after I graduated from college.

By that point, Iʼd learned to recognize them for what they were within the dream, and knew to consciously try and make noise, rather than just trying to move. So when I started having a hag dream, I tried to take to control; I started trying to speak, while thinking to myself over and over “It

ʼs only a dream. I just need to

wake myself up. The Evil Presence is just my own panic. Stay in contro

l. Thereʼs

no one else in the room...”

Then a voice spoke: “Thatʼs exactly what I want you to think.” And I felt a hand suddenly laid on my chest -- It

ʼs been nine years but I can still remember distinctly feeling each fi nger on the hand, and the scrape of the long

fi ngernails as

they slid across my ribs...

I was afraid to go back to sleep for a go

od 24-36 hours after that one.

Iʼve had hag dreams since, though theyʼre much less frequent; but I make a point to let myself be scared now. It feels... safer, somehow.

-Corey