ii

PUNKTOWN
 The Seeds of Corruption © 2017 by Jeffrey Thomas
Gathering Forces © 2017 by Jeffrey Thomas
Jeffrey Thomas : https://www.facebook.com/jeffrey.thomas.71

Copyright © 2017 by Miskatonic River Press, LLC.

All Rights Reserved.
Except in this publication and related advertising, artwork
original to Punktown remains the property of the artists, and
is copyright by them under their individual copyrights.

This edition is printed and distributed, under license, by Chronicle

City of 58 Woodville Road, New Barnet, Herts, EN5 5NG, UK.
For further information about other Chronicle City games please
check out our website at http://www.chroniclecity.com

This project is licensed by Chaosium Inc. Call of Cthulhu

is the Registered Trademark of Chaosium Inc. and used
with Chaosium’s permission. www.chaosium.com

No part of this work may be duplicated without express

permissions from the Author. This is a work of fiction. All
characters and places are creations of imagination.

Dedications
Tom Lynch:
“To all the backers who stayed with this long overdue project.
You were more patient and more generous than we deserve.
Thank you. Each and every one of you.”

Angus Abranson:
“To all the backers, the creative and production team and Jeffrey
for creating and then letting us explore Punktown! Special
thanks to Tom, Stephanie and Nimrod for help and support in
completing the project and to Mike for the reminders!”

Seeds of Corruption & Gathering Forces................................Jeffrey Thomas

Main Text............ Mike Tresca, Glynn Owen Barrass & Brian M. Sammons
Looking Long Into the Abyss............................................Brian M. Sammons
The Lemongrass Crater................................................Glynn Owen Barrass
Twisted Genius......................................................................... Tom Lynch

Art Director....................................................................Stephanie McAlea

Cover Art......................................................................... Mariusz Gandzel
Interior Art..........................................................Jonny Gray, Peter Szmer
Handouts............................................................................. Nimrod Jones
Cartography....................................................................Stephanie McAlea
Character Sheet Design.......... Dean Engelhardt (www.cthulhureborn.com)

Editing & Layout................................................................. Nimrod Jones

Copyediting & Proofreading............. Brian M. Sammons & Jeffrey Thomas
Publisher...........................................................................Angus Abranson

This edition published by Chronicle City

 PUNKTOWN
Contents
Foreword......................................................................... 1
The Seeds of Corruption..............................................3
Introduction.................................................................. 11
Chapter One: The Punktown Universe.....................17
Chapter Two: Gamemastering...................................33
Chapter Three: Characters.......................................37
Chapter Four: Powers.................................................49
Chapter Five: Equipment............................................55
Chapter Six: Creatures...............................................73
Scenario: The Lemongrass Crater...........................95
Scenario: Twisted Genius........................................111
Scenario: Looking Long Into The Abyss................123
Gathering Forces.......................................................137
 Foreword
From its very conception, my world of Punktown was intended as a place for
others to play in.

I conceived of Punktown as a fiction setting in 1980, years before I had had

any stories published, but I still wrote avidly. Several years, yet, before the film Blade
Runner, and the coining of the word “cyberpunk.” Punktown, I imagined, would be
a horrific far future city colonized by Earth people and aliens from countless worlds,
and I immediately invited my brother Scott Thomas and friend Thomas Hughes to pen
stories set in this world, too. Over the years I wrote more novels set in Punktown, with
a widening cast of main characters (because, ultimately, the city is the only consistent
character in Punktown stories), and Scott was the one who wrote the first Punktown
short stories. Finally, I started selling my own Punktown short stories to small press
zines, and in 2000 the first Punktown book was released – the short story collection
Punktown, published by Jeff VanderMeer’s Ministry of Whimsy Press. There have
been numerous Punktown books since, some even translated into German, Russian,
Greek, and Polish. In 2004 a Punktown shared world anthology called Punktown:
Third Eye (boasting such contributors as Paul Tremblay) was released, with another
– Transmissions from Punktown – in the works as of this writing. I always wanted my
sandbox to be big, and I always invited those who played in it to utilize their own
imaginations. So what if a little sand got spilled outside the borders?

1
By Jeffrey Thomas

So, although I must admit I myself am not a gamer (does one round of
D&D played in 1983 count?), when Michael Tresca contacted me and said he felt
Punktown would make a great setting for a role-playing game, it seemed a natural fit.
Michael – author of The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games – then embarked on
creating the rulebook for this proposed game, exhaustively poring over my books and
extracting all the fine details. This work commenced in 2010, and the game started
to become a reality when Michael approached Tom Lynch of Miskatonic River Press.
Tom got behind the project, a very successful Kickstarter was launched, and then
Tom Lynch in turn interested Angus Abranson of Chronicle City.

Michael’s heroic efforts of wrangling my wayward imagination into a rulebook

that wasn’t the size of the Punktown phone directory were later supplemented by
wonderful content from other writers, devising exciting game scenarios, not to
mention the graphic design/maps/illustrations created by a fantastic team of artists.

It’s hard to express how exciting it is for me to see other creative people shape
their own work, their own visions, from this little invention of mine. It’s exciting for
me to imagine the adventures you, who are holding this book, will assemble from
the components herein...and from your own imaginations. In a way, you are now a
part of this huge collaborative artwork that is Punktown.

Welcome to my – our – world.

2
 The Seeds of Corruption
By Jeffrey Thomas

After Jeremy Stake had depressed the button set into the wall beside the scabby metal door — and
on the other side of that door he could hear the resultant metallic ring — he warily glanced over his
shoulder at the lonely street behind him. A good thing that he did. In the gloom of sunset, deepened
by the shadows of Punktown’s multitudinous towers, he spied a snipe creeping on all fours along the
weedy sidewalk. To Stake, the snipe looked like a cross between a dog and the cadaver of a man who
had died of starvation. To the snipe, he knew he looked like dinner. Stake slipped a hand inside his
jacket for the grip of his pistol, a Darwin .55. Catching the threat, the skeletal creature darted off,
becoming one again with the shadows of Warehouse Way.
When Stake faced the metal door again, he flinched. A panel above the door bell had slid open
and a black orb with a red pupil had emerged on a flexible black stalk, wavering in the air. He couldn’t
decide if the thing was organic or a mechanism, but after a moment it retracted into the wall and the
panel slid shut. At the same time, a loud clank as the door bolt withdrew. Stake reached for the latch
and let himself into the supposedly abandoned warehouse.
He found himself in a murky hallway, but light shone up ahead and he made his way toward it,
ultimately stepping into a single vast room, its distant ceiling webbed with metal girders. Several strong
lamps beamed down from on high. The room had been stripped, its only feature being a large O laid into
the floor, resembling train tracks circling in on themselves in an Ouroboros. Stake might have thought
it was a leftover from the derelict warehouse, part of some automated retrieval system, if he didn’t know
the kind of beings he had come here to meet. The beings who had hired his services as a private detective.
He was glad he hadn’t stepped too close to the tracks. At first it seemed only a trick of his eyes, but
gradually a gray blur could be seen whirling around that O in the floor, seeming to become darker and
more substantial with each revolution. In only a matter of seconds, the blur had become a solid vehicle,
and in a few seconds more it came to a screeching stop. The black iron machine, resembling a steam lo-
comotive of old, was a tran – the conveyance used by an extradimensional race called the Coleopteroids
in polite company, just as Punktown was officially Paxton. But most everybody called them the Bedbugs.
A hatch in the side of the steaming machine squealed open, and three odd figures stepped
down. That is, two stepped down; the other seemed to float. He was the one meant to look human.
The effort was only partly successful.
The pair of Bedbugs were typical of their kind. Bipedal black beetles, coming to Stake’s shoul-
der in height, with six whip-like arms ending in pincers. But the envoy, as Stake knew he was intend-
ed, was taller, his body entirely cloaked in a black robe, leaving bare only his human head. The head
was shaven bald, with a black metal cap riveted into its crown.
Stake didn’t want to know where they’d acquired the head. Whoever he had been, he bore the
features of an Earth male of Asian descent. The face reminded Stake of a fellow officer he had known
during the Blue War by the name of Minh Nguyen.
3
 The envoy’s lips hardly moved as he said, “Thank you for coming, Mr. Stake.”
“This is how I meet with clients lately. I’m between ofices. Rent can be expensive.”
“Perhaps you will be able to afford one again once you have completed the task we have in
mind for you.”
“That would be nice,” Stake said.
As the envoy spoke with him, his eyes didn’t blink nor even appear to shift in the mannequin-
like head. Well, Stake knew he wasn’t in a position to be put off by the envoy’s appearance. He him-
self, as part of his condition as a mutant, was not entirely convincing as a normal human being. It
wasn’t that he wasn’t good looking...he just wasn’t anything looking. There was an incompleteness
to his appearance that was hard to put a finger on. One person might overlook it, and another might
find him eerie without being able to express why. That is, in his natural form. But he was not limited
to his natural form. That was another aspect of his mutation.
“In fact,” the envoy went on in his soulless, uninflected voice, “we will give you half of the fee
you quoted us, up front.” An appendage emerged from his robe, but it was a black prosthetic claw
instead of a man’s arm. The claw proffered a wad of freshly-printed munits. They had mutually agreed
on not using an electronic transaction, lest it be traced. Privacy was always for the best.
“Ah, before I touch that,” Stake said, “why don’t we talk about the job some more, so I’ll
know for sure if I want to accept it.”
“Very well.” He didn’t look perturbed. At least, the head didn’t. “As we told you briefly in our
call, there is a human who stole something from us. It is vitally important that it be retrieved. His
name is Leon ‘Eldritch’ Angrimson. He is the founder and...as he calls himself, pastor...of a group
called the Church of Indifference.”
“Catchy. I think I belong to that myself.”
“I should hope not, Mr. Stake. They are a small cult. As I indicate, Angrimson is their leader.
Nearly a year ago Angrimson approached us, and his religious beliefs seemed in tune with our own.
Against our initial reluctance, we let him come into our fold. It was a mistake. Angrimson’s beliefs are
more along the lines of the most extreme members of our race.”
“You mean...members of your race like those who, oh about twenty-something years ago, tried to
call a number of Gatherers into this dimension to harvest the life energy of every being on this planet?”
“Precisely. As you know, your authorities responded to that situation with grave intent. To this
day, they view us all with a suspicious eye. Those of us who remain on this world, in this dimension,
are fortunate to still be here. We must be careful about our activities, whatever our beliefs.”
“But as you say, this Angrimson isn’t as moderate as your group.”
“No. But he presented his ideas and efforts to us with the expectation that we would be sym-
pathetic and supportive. When he saw that we were not, when we attempted to discourage him, he
fled from us. But he took something important with him.”
“What is it?”
“Before I tell you, I would like to show you something. It will help demonstrate the seriousness
of this matter.”
Stake spread his arms. “So show me.”
* * *
Stake followed the trio deeper into the cavernous warehouse, which grew increasingly dark again. The
Bedbugs scuttled along, and the envoy seemed to hover slightly above the floor, as he didn’t appear
to possess feet.
They arrived at last in a smallish room with a large square shape at its center, covered by a black
plastic tarpaulin. Without preamble, one of the Bedbugs took hold of the tarp in a pair of its pincers
and yanked it away as if performing a magic trick.
4
 Uncovered, exposed to the light glaring down on it from the ceiling, the occupant of the cage
that had been cloaked by the tarp came awake in a flurry of frantic activity. Despite himself, Stake took
a step backwards, conscious of the Darwin holstered against his ribs.
It was insect-like; that was all the private eye could really make out at first. A mass of tentacles
— he figured a dozen — thrashed and writhed in a frenzy like rage, pincers snicking at their ends.
Four jointed insect legs scrambled in opposing directions, not so much because the beast knew it had
nowhere to go but, it seemed, because it was conflicted with itself. Did it have four eyes? Two heads,
even? Was he seeing that right?
Then he understood. “It’s two of you...fused together. A teleporter accident?”
“No,” the envoy replied. “This is the work of Leon Angrimson. Before he found religion, as
you might say, he was a bioengineer with a degree from Paxton Polytech. But to accomplish this
experiment, he also used more esoteric means, gleaned from various books that he already had in his
possession, and others we had supplied him.”
“You helped him make this thing?”
“No...he created it on his own, and then surprised us with it as a gift, thinking we would be
pleased...enthusiastic. We were not. We were alarmed.”
“Did he bind two of your people together?”
“No; he grew this experiment from two of our larvae, which he conjoined. That is what he
stole from us.”
Stake tore his eyes from the enraged creature to look at the mock human levitating beside him.
“What’s that?”
He pivoted slowly in Stake’s direction but stared blankly right through him. “He stole a vessel
containing a large number of our larvae. He has filled the container with a solution he concocted, and
he has applied the esoteric techniques I have alluded to. Fortunately, the larvae are not yet mature
enough to be released.”
“Released?”
“It is Angrimson’s intention to distribute the larvae throughout Punktown. They will grow
into what appear to be normal members of our race. Dispersed in this way, they will not be grouped in
a conspicuous congregation, so their presence in the city may not be questioned, unless the authori-
ties catch on to the increase in our overall numbers.”
“But they won’t be normal members of your race, will they?”
Just then, despite its wild convulsions, the monstrocity in the cage managed to hurl itself with
a crash against the side closest to Stake. He took another step backward, and thus avoided a tendril
that snaked through the mesh, clicking at him.
Unfazed, the envoy replied, “No. They will be mindless servitors beholden to Angrimson. And
on a given date, when he considers the conditions optimum, he will give a command, and every one
of those beings will seek out its fellows and join with them.”
“Join? Into an army?”
“Not quite. They will physically merge together, like this aberration, forming an ever-growing
and ever more powerful organism, until at last when all of the servitors have blended they will have
become a single immense entity that in our language, as best we can translate it for you, would be
called the Corruption.”
“Oh my God,” Stake hissed.
“Not your god, I trust, Mr. Stake.”
“No,” he amended, “no...definitely not my god. So you come to me with something this big?
You should have the Colonial Forcers on this!”
5
 “If we revealed the situation to the authorities, and they learned that we innocently helped An-
grimson gain much of his knowledge, how do you think they would react to the remaining members
of our race on this world?”
“That’s a bit selfish, considering the threat here, isn’t it?”
“We will double the payment we previously discussed, Mr. Stake.”
Stake sighed. Times were hard lately. Who was he kidding? Times were always hard. Well, it
would be nice to be able to afford his own office again. So with something like fatalism, he asked,
“How much time do we have before those mutated maggots are ready to be released?”
“By conventional growth rates, which may not be entirely accurate in this case, we estimate
two weeks.”
“Oh my God,” Stake couldn’t help himself from saying again.
* * *
The man standing at the front of the room needed a haircut — his graying hair gone long and wild — and
a shave besides. His modest clothing was rumpled. He had no podium, though a metal box rested before
him on the worn floorboards. Dust motes swarmed like tiny gnats all around him, the meeting room’s
subdued light trained solely on his figure, while all those sitting in the shadows on their folding metal
chairs watched him in rapt silence. For his strong voice belied his appearance, deep with conviction.
The man was saying: “Once I held what I thought was an important position. Doing work I
thought was important, for sentient races — including my own — whom I felt were important. Who
perceive themselves as important. Until the day the veil was torn from my eyes, and I was given new
perspective. Until the day I understood — with liberating clarity — that we are all of us, human or
otherwise, mere slime molds that have evolved only enough intelligence to entertain this perception,
this illusion, of self-importance.”
The Bedbugs had given Stake a number of
possible addresses, because they said the Church
of Indifference shifted from place to place. A
basement, a vacant lot, a warehouse, a member’s
apartment. He had had to sniff this address out on
his own, however. Luckily he knew the neighbor-
hood, the mutant ghetto called Tin Town, because
he himself had grown up here. To reach this di-
lapidated old structure, a former factory storage
shed built from purplish bare boards, Stake had
had to traverse a little stream of faintly glowing
white sludge, walking across a plank of that same
purplish wood. Balancing on the makeshift bridge
had made him uneasy, the waste runoff to either
side of him thick and bubbling like boiling por-
ridge, its caustic fumes making his eyes burn.
The speaker, “Eldritch” Angrimson himself,
continued: “We are proud slime molds indeed.
Slime molds with delusions of grandeur! Yes, we
have challenged ourselves. We have arrogantly
thrust ourselves out amongst the stars, to spread
our disease. We have even penetrated other di-
mensions. But all these efforts achieve is to recon-
firm how vast the Cosmos is. The further we push,
the more the Cosmos seems to pull away, refusing
to be met, refusing to concede any limitations. Do
our explorations make us great? I ask you, when
a toilet overflows and the water spreads under a
closed door, is that encroachment greatness?”
6
 “Ew,” Stake whispered, turning to the man seated beside him as if he might share his joke, but
the man’s eyes were pinned to Angrimson. When Stake had seated himself earlier this man had intro-
duced himself as Tim Feely. Stake had given himself the fake name of Rex Hunter. As Tim listened
to Angrimson he was nodding, wearing a huge grin. Others in the little audience were grinning also,
while some sobbed quietly. A number of people were grinning and weeping at the same time. There
were young people and old, humans and nonhumans, those dressed in foul rags and others in five-
piece business suits. All leaning into Angrimson’s every word.
“Oh, how I fretted once about my career, about paying my bills and taxes, about living in a
good apartment and owning a good vehicle, about eating healthy and taking care of this fleshly shell.
I embodied all the characteristics expected of us, in this fortress of unhappiness we have built for
ourselves. But that fortress is only a delusion, a mass hallucination, and it can crumble in an instant.
If we are lucky it will crumble! Because then we can experience the unobstructed view we have been
denied, and the view thus revealed is boundless. The Cosmos gazes back at us, but the Cosmos is in-
different to us. We are nothing to infinity. And what greater freedom can we know, but to know we
are nothing? In that stark light, all trivial worries and endeavors are burnt away like moths flying into
the sun! If we are to allow ourselves any pride, if we are to attribute any worthiness to our existence,
it is only in the realization that we are a part of that Cosmos, though all of us combined are only the
tiniest fleck...not even a single cell in its body.”
Stake wondered why, if supposedly nothing was important, Angrimson would feel the need to
share his epiphany with others. If no one was of any value, why bother to spread his knowledge? Why
try to soothe or transform the minds of the ignorant and inconsequential? In this role as “pastor,”
did he still perceive himself, despite his claims, as being important? A prophet, even, a messiah of
doomsday? Stake suspected there was a practical reason, though, for attracting these little congrega-
tions throughout Punktown. If he planned on distributing the larvae across the city, he might very
well need the help of others. Other hands to sow the seeds.
“There is one valuable achievement we can aspire to, and one alone: to eradicate the disease
that is ourselves, and make the Cosmos pure again,” Angrimson told them. His voice was rousing,
rich, but trembled with its passion. “We can do this by assisting the avatars of chaos...the agents of
nothingness...the true embodiment of the Cosmos.”
“The Outsiders,” most of those assembled, those for whom this was not their first sermon,
intoned in unison. Beside Stake, Tim repeated with the others, “The Outsiders...”
At this point, Angrimson knelt before the metal box that had been resting near his feet, with-
drew something from inside, and stood upright again. In one hand he held a glossy black globe, like
a giant egg, its exterior seemingly formed of the same chitin as the exoskeletons of the Bedbugs. He
raised the globe aloft for all to see, like a god presenting a new world he had shaped with his own
hands. “The one called the Corruption is of the Outside. But we can bring it inside...here...to redeem
ourselves with our own annihilation.”
“That’s it,” Stake said under his breath.
He again glanced about at his fellow audience members as their chanting grew more fervent.
Though some of them were nonhuman, he was not surprised that none of them were Bedbugs. That
was why the Bedbugs had hired him; Angrimson would never allow a Bedbug close enough, now,
to pose a risk to the fermenting larvae. Outside the shed’s door, two guards carrying formidable as-
sault engines had checked each person for weapons before permitting them entrance. Anticipating
this, Stake had left the Darwin in his parked hovercar. Two more guards, similarly armed, stood in
the shadows to either side of Angrimson. The four human guards were very different in appearance,
but each had the dead eyes of people whose souls had atrophied, if they’d ever even possessed them.
“You,” Angrimson’s voice boomed, bolder than even before. Stake looked forward abruptly,
and saw the man staring directly at him. Pointing, even, with his free hand as he cradled the sphere
to his chest. “Who are you?”
“An acolyte, great one,” Stake spoke up, feeling the dead eyes of the guards and of all the cult-
ists on him, and wishing that Darwin was a lot closer than in his glove box right now. “I’ve heard
rumors of your mission, and I embrace it.”
7
 “Bring him to me,” Angrimson instructed the guards who flanked him.
Stake stood up from his chair, and didn’t resist as the guards moved toward him and each
lightly took hold of an arm. They walked him through the rows of chairs, to the front of the room
and into the light, to stand before Leon Angrimson.
When the light fell on Stake’s face, Angrimson hissed, as if forgetting his new faith, “Oh my God.”
Jeremy Stake bore a slight resemblance to Leon Angrimson. But he bore an exact resemblance
to Leon Angrimson’s dead son, Noel Angrimson. One might have believed the seventeen-year-old
Noel Angrimson had been cloned — or had never been murdered, along with his mother Tania, by
a mugger in the parking garage of their upscale apartment complex.
Before setting out tonight, it had been an easy matter for Stake to research Angrimson on the
ultranet. He’d read how Angrimson had left his position as a respected biotech researcher after the
murder of his wife and only child. Stake had even found photos of Noel and Tania Angrimson on the
ultranet, and had studied Noel’s face until his own face had taken on its form. The mutation Jeremy
Stake was afflicted with had a name: Caro turbida. Roughly, “Confused flesh.” He was a shapeshifter.
In his neutral state, he bore that oddly generic look that sometimes caused others to look upon him
with suspicion.
Stake had thought it best not to look like himself when he attended tonight’s gathering. Then
he had thought it could prove fruitful if he took on a guise that might incite Angrimson into bringing
him closer...close enough to get at the black sphere. Stake hadn’t guessed that Angrimson would be
presenting the globe so openly.
If Angrimson hadn’t had a son for Stake to mimic, he could have masqueraded as Tania instead.
But of course, impersonating males rather than females was usually going to be easier.
“Who are you?” Angrimson demanded. His voice trembled with emotion again, but this time
with uncertainty rather than conviction. “Tell me who you are!”
“You’re a hypocrite,” Stake said, now that he stood face-to-face with the pastor. But he tried
to unsee his face as best he could; if he gazed too directly at Angrimson’s face, then against his will
he might begin to take on that man’s appearance next. His ability had a disconcerting habit of get-
ting away from him. He went on: “You say that no one matters, no life has value. So why not just kill
yourself now, instead of dragging the rest of us down with you? A drowning man loves company, is
that it? I understand your pain at losing Tania. At losing Noel.” He gestured at his face, seemingly so
much younger than his own true age. He hoped to throw Angrimson entirely out of his equilibrium;
to weaken him. “You valued their lives, you very much saw them as important. When they died, you
felt you’d lost everything. But why must everyone else lose everything, too? Is that the tribute your
son and wife would want from you? Your world ended, so now this whole world should end?”
Tears had formed glistening caps over Angrimson’s eyes. “Yes,” he said, voice quavering. Then
again, more loudly, drawing back his strength: “Yes! Yes! It must all end!”
“You’re a selfish little bastard...Dad,” Stake said.
“No!” Angrimson cried, clamping his free hand to the side of his head. “Kill him! Kill him!”
Stake wasn’t sure what kind of combat training Angrimson’s soldiers might have, but he doubt-
ed it was much, if any, while he himself had served as a Colonial Forcer during the Blue War. While
that often seemed like another lifetime, his postwar profession had kept his skills alive. Immediately
upon hearing Angrimson’s command, he spun toward the guard on his right, driving his elbow into
the man’s Adam’s apple. Still moving into his spin, in a microsecond Stake was standing behind the
stricken guard with his hands on his assault engine, facing the other guard, who looked concerned
about firing and striking his friend. Stake wasn’t in a position to be concerned for either of them. The
assault engine offered various functions, from firing solid bullets to several types of rays to even minia-
ture rockets, and it had a number of triggers for these options. The injured guard had a finger in one
trigger (though his other hand had risen to clutch his throat, his eyes bugging in his skull), so it was
the unoccupied trigger for the shotgun feature Stake found. He fired one blast at the other guard. It
lifted him onto his heels, and then he slammed onto his back. All this transpired in one tick of time.
8
 Stake had feared the cultists might rush to lend aid to the guards, but was thankful to see them
rushing for the door to the ramshackle shed, Tim amongst them, overturning chairs in their panic.
Maybe that was because Angrimson himself had darted for the exit first, hugging that globe in both
arms like an endangered infant. The two guards outside couldn’t enter against this stream.
Stake wrenched the assault engine fully away from the guard, who dropped to his knees, des-
perate for breath. He then bolted after Angrimson, but the cult leader had already slipped out, and
his last few followers had bottlenecked in the doorway.
The sudden chatter of automatic fire, and the wall to Stake’s left was chewed to splinters by a
string of bullets. He crouched, whirled, triggered his gun all in one movement, even before he spied
one of the two outside guards at a boarded-up window, firing in at him through a gap in the slats.
Two quick shotgun blasts and the boards on the window were in flying pieces. So was the guard on
the other side.
The bottleneck cleared, Stake plunged outside into the night. He looked sharply this way and
that for the last of the four guards. In the distance, heading for the same shortcut over the stream
of luminous waste he had used, Stake caught sight of Angrimson. Afraid the man might elude him,
Stake called out, “Dad!”
Angrimson stopped in his tracks and turned. So did another of the fleeing, scattering figures.
Almost too late, Stake saw that the last guard had been running at Angrimson’s side, sticking
close to protect him. The man planted himself in an unmistakable firing stance. Stake brought his
own gun level.
“No! Noel!” Angrimson cried, lunging in front of the guard and shoving him with his body.
The guard managed to get off one shot from his assault engine — the bright green flash of a
ray beam — but it sliced the globe Angrimson clutched like a football.
This distraction gave Stake the extra moment he needed to sight on the last guard, and drop
him with a single solid bullet to the head.
The guard crumpled, and Angrimson
was staggering away again, wailing and shriek-
ing as if his mind had been shattered by this
apparition of his beloved son. But Stake broke
into a run, came up close behind the former
bioengineer, and saw the true reason for his
terrible cries.
He had dropped the broken halves of
the black globe, which rocked on the ground
— empty. Angrimson’s upper body was blan-
keted in a seething, boiling mass of black mag-
gots. Squirming, writhing, and presumably
feasting on the host they had erupted onto.
Stake glanced down fast at his assault en-
gine’s options, looking to see if it was loaded
with any plasma rounds; hopefully the stron-
gest, green plasma, which could dissolve all
those ravenous little creatures and put Angrim-
son out of his misery in one shot. But before
Stake could determine this, Angrimson stum-
bled onto the board laid across the burbling
white runoff — overbalanced, pinwheeled his
arms, and toppled to one side. With a final
scream, he hit the thick sludge...and was sucked
down into it, out of sight, along with all the lar-
val Bedbugs that still clung to him tenaciously.
9
 Stake walked to the edge of the gurgling stream, holding his breath against its burning fumes,
with gun held ready in case Angrimson came bursting to the surface. He did not. One might never
know he had submerged there.
Though it was night in Punktown, and light in this blighted neighborhood was subdued, pe-
ripheral movement at Stake’s feet caught his attention and he looked down. Around his shoes, several
black grubs twisted in the dirt. Repulsed, Stake stepped back. Then he lifted a foot, and brought his
heel down on one of them. He dispatched the other few strays in the same manner.
He checked the stream’s bank for more, didn’t find any, but decided he should double back
to the shed to see if any others had dropped free in Angrimson’s mad dash. Before he turned away,
however, he looked one last time at the bubbling sludge, and muttered, “Sorry, man. It’s over now,
okay? It’s all over.”
* * *
The Coleopteroid envoy looked down at the two broken halves of the black globe resting empty in
his prosthetic claws. When he raised his head to stare at Stake, he could have sworn there was a flicker
of real emotion in the organic mask of his face. “What is the meaning of this?”
So he told him what had occurred a few hours earlier at the latest manifestation of the Church
of Indifference. He concluded, “I squished the few larvae I found. The rest had to have died in that
toxic runoff.”
“It is unlikely they would have survived, and they did not mature sufficiently in Angrimson’s
solution to develop their full potential, but there are still uncertainties. You were to have delivered
the sphere to us intact, and full.”
“Well, wasn’t the main thing to stop Angrimson’s plans? And it seems to me better that the
larvae are destroyed, instead of simply transferred to you. In case any of your people were tempted to
summon the Corruption, after all.” Stake smiled.
“Yours is a cynical, insulting, and bigoted race, Mr. Stake,” the envoy said.
“Sorry to hurt your feelings. I’ll get out of your way if I can have my money now.”
“You still expect to be paid?”
“I do, if you still expect I won’t tell the authorities about all this.”
A third claw emerged from the envoy’s cloak, and thrust another wad of munits at the private
investigator. “Take your payment and leave us.”
Stake stepped forward and accepted the cash, tucking it into his jacket pocket. “Nice doing
business with you. Let me know if I have to clean up one of your messes again.” He turned and
started for the warehouse’s exit.
“Mr. Stake,” the envoy called after him. He paused. “If we hear reports of any of those larvae
still alive...perhaps made even more potent, in some way we can’t anticipate, by the toxins in that
waste stream...I would suggest you watch your back, as you Earth people say.”
“I always watch my back,” Jeremy Stake told him. “This is Punktown.”

10
PUNKTOWN

Introduction
Skyscrapers with sides so smooth and featureless (with vidscreens on the interior, instead of windows) that one might
think they were solid granite monuments in a graveyard for dead gods. Other buildings that looked like they’d been
pieced together from thousands of odd-matched parts salvaged from stripped factory machines, steam curling out of
grids and grates in their complex flanks. Buildings with snake skins of multicolored mosaics. Buildings wearing an
armor of riveted metal plates, like retired warships looming vertically with their sterns jammed into the street. Flat roofs
upon which perched smaller buildings, symbiotically. Other structures tapering to needle points that seemed to etch the
clouds upon the blue glass of the sky. Stacked apartments. Stacked businesses. On street level: shop fronts, and gang kids
squatting on tenement steps, glaring insolently at the slow sludge of traffic...Ah, Punktown.
—D eadstock
Why set a role-playing game in Punktown? Punktown en- relatable, but there’s certainly nothing stopping a player
compasses science fiction, horror, noir, gangster fiction, from choosing any of the other races that appear in the
romance, and any combination thereof. Punktown is a books. See Chapter Six: Creatures for a sample.
monster mash of every genre colliding into one glorious,
Chapter Four: Powers covers many of the peculiar as-
fetid swirl: teleportation, dimensional travel, virtual nets,
pects of Punktown: mutations, drugs, disease, and sor-
all populated by the truly alien. There are endless vistas in
cery. In Punktown, psychic powers are mutations or a
Punktown, and many of them are only a step away.
peculiarity of an alien race.
Punktown also strips away the core of self. Who you are
One of the ways you can tell Punktown is set in a far fu-
will be tested in Punktown and you will come out – if
ture is its technology. Weapons, armor, vehicles, and cy-
you come out at all – changed. Clones, aliens, mutants, bernetics are all covered in Chapter Five: Equipment.
robots, extradimensional beings, corpses, souls; all of
them cavort in a Bosch-like hell known as Punktown. Chapter Six: Creatures includes intelligent aliens,
animal-like xenoforms, servitors of the Old Ones, and
Punktown would not hold nearly as much appeal if it was introduces some new Great Old Ones themselves. It’s
only crime and criminals; there are heroes, too; forcers simply not possible to cover every being in this book,
trying to do good, scientists daring to explore the un- so we’ve explored just the creatures that figured most
known, and vigilantes unafraid to take a shotgun to the prominently in the stories.
things oozing their way out of said unknown. Punktown
is home to shapeshifting mutants like Jeremy Stake, skep- Finally, the book finishes with some scenarios to let you
tical detectives like John Bell, and civilians turned cult jump straight into Punktown.
hunters like Christopher Ruby. Despite itself, there’s still
hope in Punktown, but you have to dig very deep. About This Sourcebook
Why set a role-playing game in Punktown? Perhaps the This sourcebook is a role-playing game setting
question is: why aren’t you playing there? What lies in compatible with the Basic Role-Playing and Call of
Cthulhu (Sixth Edition) games. While we’ve done
the subsequent chapters is the answer.
our best to include enough rules on how the game
This book features six chapters: works that Gamemasters don’t have to flip back and
forth too much, we assume that you have at least
Chapter One: The Punktown Universe details Punk- one of these books for the full rules. Punktown
town, itself. Get acquainted with it, but the best place to accommodates just about every style of play, from
start is Jeffrey Thomas’ novels and short stories. Read as horror to action, so the more books you have that are
much as you can to give you some background on the BRP and Call of Cthulhu compatible, the better.
feel of Punktown.
Punktown is a big place, which can be intimidating. Chap- Mature Content
ter Two: Gamemastering gives you an overview of how This book holds a dark mirror to our own world and
to run a game of Punktown and themes to explore. explores themes including depravity, sexual violence and
other dark matters considered more suitable for adult,
Chapter Three: Characters introduces the human- mature games. The GM should consult with and adapt
oid races of Punktown and their common occupations. aspects according to everyone’s comfort zones.
These are the races that are the most humanoid and
11
Glossary of Punktown Terms
Punktown has several phrases that are unique to the setting. A quick perusal will have you talking like
a true Punktowner in no time.
Assault Engine: a bulky weapon used most often by the military, capable of firing multiple types of
bullets, rays, and explosive projectiles.
Beaumonde Square: the most affluent section of Punktown; thus, more heavily policed than other areas.
Bedbugs: derogatory nickname for the insect-like, extradimensional Coleopteroid race.
Belf: slang for any bio-engineered life form, sentient or otherwise, which can include clones.
Blast: popular curse word interchangeable with the f-word; thus, also a colloquialism for the sex act.
A common expression of surprise (“Blast!”) or insult (“Blast you!”).
Blaster: a firearm that discharges rays or bolts of energy rather than solid projectiles.
Blue War: over fifteen years ago, the Colonial Forces fought a battle on the extradimensional world of
Sinan. Ostensibly, this was to aid the Jin Haa people in their struggle for independence against the larger
Ha Jiin nation, but the Earth Colonies really had their eye on Sinan’s source of precious sinon gas.
Brainframe: a powerful computer server, created from “encephalon” brain tissue. A brainframe
might service an entire company, even manage public utilities.
Canberra Mall: this multi-leveled structure is by far the largest of Punktown’s shopping centers.
Choom: the native people of the planet Oasis; human in appearance except for their mouths, which
extend back to their ears, and heavy jaws full of multiple rows of molars. Aside from people of Earth
ancestry, the most prevalent of the countless races in Punktown.
Colonial Forces: the military arm of the Earth Colonies, charged with protecting its network of
planets. A member of the Colonial Forces is called a Colonial Forcer.
Culture: slang for a cloned laborer.
Dilky: an indigenous root favored by the Choom. Though tough uncooked, deep-fried dilkies are
very popular with Earth people, too.
Dung: popular slang word interchangeable with the similarly excretal s-word. A common exclama-
tion of dismay (“Dung!”).
Earth Colonies: the network of worlds primarily colonized and governed by the people of Earth.
Earther: common slang for an Earth person, often used by Earth people themselves.
Encephalon: a bioengineered brain at the core of certain computer systems, or serving as the mind
for some types of robots.
Forcer: short for Law Enforcer. A municipal police officer, stationed in precincts throughout Punk-
town. Not to be confused with a Colonial Forcer.
Forma Street: one of the wildest, most crime-ridden streets in all of Punktown.
Great Earthquake: over thirty years ago, a catastrophic earthquake struck Punktown, causing some
of its subway tunnels to collapse. A number of these were left abandoned, and now serve as shelter
for mutants and other secretive beings.
Head, The: an orbiting asteroid visible to the naked eye, sculpted by artist Cyrex Rendiploom, presenting
on one surface a screaming human face, and on the opposite side a corresponding screaming human skull.
Health Agent: field operatives for the Health Agency of Paxton (HAP), licensed to use deadly force
as necessary in the course of investigating any number of health risks to the public.
Helicar: a small, privately-owned vehicle capable of flying high above the streets, usually traveling
along a network of navigation beams to avoid collision with other aircraft or buildings.
12
 Hot Mustard: a thick, spicy, heated beverage made
PUNKTOWN games and rides of every description, and live musical
from indigenous mustard plants, popular with the acts. The fair is run by former singer/songwriter, Del
Choom but some Earthers, too. Kahn, and his wife, Sophie.
Hovercar: a vehicle that rides close to the street, levitat- Plasma Ammo: ionized matter contained within a typi-
ing on a repulsor field. There are also hovertrucks, hov- cally color-coded gel bullet. Red plasma dissolves a small
erbuses, and hovertrains utilizing the same principle. hole in an organic target. Blue plasma eats into organic
matter more substantially. Green plasma dissolves both
Miniosis: the nearest Earth-colonized city to Punk- organic and inorganic matter dramatically, possibly dis-
town. Miniosis is an even larger megalopolis, but integrating an enemy entirely.
doesn’t have Punktown’s level of crime or abundance
of races, though class struggle in Miniosis has led to Prostie (also prosty): slang for a prostitute.
decades of rebellion and terrorism.
Shunt: a form of public transportation consisting of
Morpha Street: a colorful street in Punktown offering passenger cars conveyed along cables above the streets.
cheap apartments and countless shops. There is a cor- They often rain sparks as they pass.
responding, underground Morpha Street in Subtown,
designated as Morpha Street B. Subtown: a subterranean extension of Punktown, com-
prised of apartment buildings, shops, and small facto-
Munit: Punktown’s currency; short for “monetary ries. A sizable sector, but not extending to the full limits
unit.” One munit has an approximate value to one of the city above.
current US dollar.
Syndy: slang for crime syndicate.
Mutie: slang for a mutant.
Theta Agent: researchers into extradimensional travel,
Oasis: the name given by the Earth Colonies to the lifeforms, and sentient races. The Theta Agency is close-
planet upon which they founded Punktown. ly overseen by the Earth Colonies government.
Outback Colony: a remote, sparsely populated Earth Tin Town: the largest of Punktown’s mutant ghettos.
settlement far south on Oasis.
Tran: a vehicle used by the Coleopteroids to travel
Paxton: the Town of Peace. The original and still of- from one dimension to another. Somewhat resembling
ficial name for Punktown given to the city by the Earth a steam locomotive of old, a tran accelerates along a
colonists who established Paxton upon the foundation looping, complex set of tracks until it materializes at
of a small, pre-existing Choom city. another set of tracks at the destination point.
Paxton Fair: an annual country fair, taking place at Ultranet: a computer network offering a greater virtu-
the rural outskirts of Punktown, offering carnival rides, al reality type of experience than the regular net. Users
may affix disks to their temples to receive wireless trans-
mission, or actually jack themselves into the ultranet via
Getting To Know Punktown ports implanted in their skulls for the most immersive
The best way to Gamemaster Punktown is to read the
experience — so vivid, it is indistinguishable from reality.
stories. Here’s the order in which they advance the
overall Punktown universe: Union War, The: over thirty years ago, violent riots escalat-
ed into urban warfare as human workers rebelled against the
Punktown (collection) (2000, Ministry of Whimsy Press)
extensive use of robots for labor. As a result, it was mandat-
Monstrocity (novel) (2003, Prime Books)
ed that no manufacturing plant could have a higher ratio of
Everybody Scream! (novel) (2004, Raw Dog Scream-
robots than human workers. Another result of the war was
ing Press)
that groups of former robot workers went underground,
Punktown: Third Eye (anthology) (2004, Prime Books)
some literally, to pursue an independent existence.
Punktown: Shades of Grey (with Scott Thomas) (an-
thology) (2005, Bedlam Press/Necro Publications) Vidphone: either a device providing video communi-
Deadstock (novel) (2007, Solaris Books) cation between two parties, or such a feature available
Blue War (novel) (2008, Solaris Books) through one’s personal computer system.
Health Agent (novel) (2008, Raw Dog Screaming
Press) VT: short for Video Tank. Television transmissions re-
Voices from Punktown (collection) (2008, Dark Re- ceived in a glass receptacle of varying dimensions and
gions Press) depth, containing three-dimensional holographic im-
Red Cells (novella) (2014, DarkFuse) ages. (Sometimes also referred to as a holotank.) VT
Ghosts of Punktown (collection) (2014, Dark Regions can also stand simply for Video Transmission, however,
Press) as when such transmissions are received directly into the
brain via disks pasted to one’s head.
13
Warehouse Way: one of the most dangerous areas of Punktown, consisting largely of abandoned
factories and warehouses now used frequently by street gangs.
Wrist comp: a miniature computer worn like a bracelet, most often used as a communication device
in lieu of a hand phone. One can simply view its tiny screen, or interface with the device virtually
when one stares more fixedly at the screen, which now fills the wearer’s line of sight. At this point the
computer’s controls can be manipulated through thought. This, however, could prove a distraction
and make one vulnerable to accident or attack.
Zub: the most popular beer in Punktown. Zub is more or less “buzz” backwards.

14
15
PUNKTOWN
16
 Chapter One:
PUNKTOWN

The Punktown Universe

The central, oldest section is more organic, a little less systematized, at least less obviously so. As the city spreads out from
there, a bit more mechanically ordered. Grids that run north and south, east and west. But still, that system is broken up
where the city has overlapped the older city, and overlapped itself time and again, so that grids superimpose grids, blueprint
atop blueprint, as if generations of spiders have woven their webs directly upon those of the spiders that preceded them.
—M onstrocity
Set a few hundred years in the future, humanity’s domi- Beaumonde Square
nance of the universe came about not from building The Blue Line subway mostly only stops at the nicer areas,
massive spaceships, but through long-range teleporta- as safely as possible transporting Punktown’s “nicer” peo-
tion and interdimensional travel. As humanity spread
ple without having to pass through areas like Red Station,
out in a wave, teleporting from planet to planet estab-
lishing colonies, it encountered a variety of humanoid- and far, far worse. This marks the cobblestoned Beau-
like races: the Tikkihotto, Kalians, and the Choom. The monde Square, with its trees, stone benches, bookshops,
last were the native inhabitants of Oasis, but were even- coffeehouses, Beaumonde Women’s College and nearby
tually displaced by a massive influx of immigrants. Paxton University as one of the nicer areas of Punktown.
Of note, Diego Kaji, director of a company that produced
The Milky Way
Earth colonies extend to the moon, Mars, and the cloned laborers, committed suicide by hanging himself
moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Earth’s sprawling cities from the chandelier that overhung the foyer of his man-
are bigger than Punktown, but the planet is a mess, sion atop the Turquoise Tower in Beaumonde Square.
overrun by rampant population, disease, and war, and at
Scenario Hook: A double murder in Beaumonde Square
various times besieged by the Old Ones. In that regard
Punktown is a failed hope, a colony that was supposed is attributed at first to a lovers’ suicide pact: he was from
to be a better place but was never realized. Paxton University; she was from Beaumonde Women’s
College. Due to their similar appearances the media at first
Punktown cast it as a tragic case of a romantic mishap: two long-lost
Punktown is a colloquialism for the megalopolis of Pax- fraternal twins unwittingly fall in love only to discover they
ton (which ironically means “town of peace”) on the were related and then commit suicide as a result. How-
surface of Oasis. At a fantastically huge four-hundred ever, DNA testing determined that they were in fact clones
and seventy square miles, Punktown is as much a nation of one Diego Kaji. The characters are hired by the Kaji
as it is a city. In Punktown, twelve thousand subway cars
Estate to discover their killer and the motive behind it.
transport ten million passengers every day over repulsor
tracks that, if riding them all non-stop, would take you Blue Panda
a day and a half to travel. Punktown has an approximate
population of sixteen million citizens. Punktown is also Blue Panda is a restaurant that serves up that junky
continually expanding, as citizens flee the corruption to interpretation of Chinese food that Chinese feed non-
try their hand at farming on the outskirts. Chinese —the kind that tastes good washed down with
junky beer like Zub, Nickerson or Clemens Light —
While Punktown is a complex, established city it is still a
border town akin to the Wild West of old. Laws are only en- while listening to people, who have drunk too much of
forced sporadically, violence is commonplace, and everyone the aforementioned brews, humiliate themselves at ka-
carries a gun. This lifestyle contrasts sharply with Miniosis, a raoke. Blue Panda is particularly known for serving the
much more civilized and established city on Oasis. massive Scorpion Bowl, an alcoholic concoction of fruit
There are a variety of unique features of Oasis and juice, multiple types of rum, vodka, gin, and grenadine
Punktown in general. that has the appearance of a volcanic island.
17
Scenario Hook: Karaoke is normally a bonding experience, but in Punktown the combination of
the massive Scorpion Bowl with poorly interpreted music is a recipe for violence. The DJ encourages
any visiting characters to take the stage. Even if they decline, it’s difficult not to be swept up in the
cheering and jeering of the crowd as drunken amateur performers attempt to mouth the most popu-
lar (and vulgar) lyrics. However, one song in particular has caused six incidents of murder at Blue
Panda: Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” No one knows why this is, but one rumor is that a gang known as
the Rat Pack secretly monitors the karaoke and, if the performance is poor, enacts bloody vengeance.
Characters may attempt to solve the murders or be a target of the gang’s wrath.

Bone Club
The Bone Club is a restaurant/pub boasting a decor obvious from its name: animal skulls ranked row
after row, with more rows below that, entirely covering certain walls, human skulls on shelves within
the transparent bar counter like museum pieces, dinosaur-like leg bones framing doors, whale-like
rib bones lining the length of the arched ceiling over the restaurant section. The background for this
profusion of specimens is black to set them off, for more of that museum feel.

Scenario Hook: The Bone Club is an excellent place for a creepy meeting with black marketeers. Some
marketeers use the placement of the bones as a secret code of sorts; characters sit next to a creature with
the same name as the contact. This is further complicated by the fact that some black marketeers change
their names for each new customer and the bones are not labeled. Unprepared characters, who don’t do
their homework, might be in for a rude surprise when they sit next to the wrong femur.

18
 BurgerZone
PUNKTOWN Built out of blocks of greenish Lucite, from inside Café
BurgerZone is a restaurant chain that serves up the best Prague one can see the watery lights of the wheeled and
junk burgers in Punktown, not to mention their delecta- hovering traffic passing along Goitre Lane and the oc-
bly greasy and salty dilkies. As the BurgerZone VT jingle casional swoop of a helicar. From the outside, the café’s
interior glows like an aquarium. In each and every brick-
goes, “Let’s go grab a burger, a Fishsand and some fries!
like block, from which the bar and even the ceiling and
An extra-large bag of dilkies and a Choc-o-late Surprise!” floor is also composed, there is a large insect entombed,
Scenario Hook: BurgerZone prides itself on not using as if in amber, including huge moths, prehistoric-seeming
automated drive-through booths, which means that any dragonflies, non-terrestrial and mutated invertebrates.
Punktowner driving through actually has to crack a win- Scenario Hook: If artists live at the Artist’s Collabora-
dow to deal with a living being. This makes BurgerZones tive, Café Prague is where they hang out. Many use the
excellent places for ambushes, and more than one Burger- encased insects as inspiration for their art, inspired by the
Zone employee is also a part-time assassin waiting to be texture and color of their carapaces, pincers, thoraxes,
activated. Characters looking to get close to a target may and wings. There are rumors that Café Prague is also a
black market for sharing rare species of insects, frozen in
find themselves using the same tactics to get close to par-
stasis, hidden in plain sight. Characters might be tasked
ticularly well-guarded targets occasionally craving a burger.
with picking up or dropping off one of the Lucite blocks
Café Prague — and hope their cargo stays frozen in transit.
Café Prague is on Goitre Lane, an artsy little tributary Café Quay
of Forma Street. The painters, poets and holomakers Café Quay on Morpha Street is not limited to one ethnic
dwelling there, often in little cadres to afford the rents, type; its menu ambitiously encompasses the cuisine of as
benefit from the friction between the creative ether of many races of beings as its kitchen can conjure. In this way,
their romantic capillary and the largely illegal commerce Café Quay is as close to a true representation of Punktown
as any restaurant can aspire to be. Hung upon the sen-
of the hot pulsing artery of Forma Street.
suously velvety brown walls in copper frames are moody,
often eerie black and white photographs of discarded baby
dolls and derelict factory machines, sometimes in disturb-
ing combinations. At a touch from one’s fingers, the menu
scrolls in glowing white letters across the black table-top,
and in this way one can also check out the play-list of the
music piped through the sound system.
Scenario Hook: Café Quay is the closest thing Punk-
town has to a neutral ground where residents of all
types can come to meet. For races that are forbidden
from mingling due to social rank, Café Quay is a loca-
tion where it would be entirely feasible for them to be
seen in the same place. Café Quay is popular as a result
with young lovers from a dizzying variety of races and
cultures that are never meant to be together, and char-
acters might be called in to monitor their liaisons here.
Canberra Mall
Originally called the Canberra Circus Mall, the Canberra
Mall is the largest and most popular shopping area in town
with everything anyone in Punktown could need. Original-
ly, it covered less ground, but was still five floors high. The
ground floor had the carnival rides, games and sideshows;
the second an immense arcade and billiards parlor; the third
floor a parking mall; fourth a movie theater, shops and gift
stores, a few bars, a legal gambling parlor and a legal broth-
el. The top floor with its domed skylight was an upper-class
version of the floor below, with a cocktail lounge, nice res-
taurant, swimming pool, saunas and a better quality movie
theater where plays and concerts were also performed. Over
the years, the brothel and gambling den disappeared and
the proliferation of stores and shops took over.
19
Scenario Hook: Need something, legal or otherwise? The
Canberra Mall has it all. The Mall is overrun with children
of all ages, including boys on hoverboards and girls dressed
in every state of undress. Characters may be tasked with
finding a lost child here. Children go missing all the time
in Punktown; and the Canberra Mall is a frequent source
of disappearances – some intentionally from youth running
away from abusive homes. It’s up to the characters to deter-
mine whether a child is better off at home or on their own.

Floating World
An exclusive sushi and karaoke bar constantly following a
loop encompassing several city blocks, riding navigation
beams as helicars do, high above the streets, Floating
World provides an unparalleled view of Punktown, which
is a blessing and a curse. There are special windows that
zoom in on the worst parts of Punktown and provide
a sort of live theater in which diners can watch citizens
assaulted, robbed, and murdered while they eat. There’s
even a karaoke sing-along that adjusts the content of the
songs to whatever crime is being witnessed on screen.
Scenario Hook: Where else can you eat and traverse
half of Punktown before finishing your meal? Charac-
ters looking for proof of a crime may requisition Float-
ing World’s files – but the owner does not give them up easily lest the restaurant become a target of
crime families everywhere. Conversely, Punktowners just wanting to grab an expensive bite to eat
might be unwitting witnesses to a high-profile crime.

Forge Park Artists’ Collaborative

A row of factories still casts long blue shadows over the tracks at the Forge Park train stop, once the
name of this industrial complex before most of the companies relocated their operations to the Out-
back Colonies, where labor is cheaper, and crime and vandalism less rampant than it is in Punktown.
Most of the plants are abandoned, sealed up, but one — Polymorph Sprayform — has been turned
into a nest of inexpensive apartments/studios for artists with the help of government art grants.
Scenario Hook: A place of terrifying dreams, wondrous visions, and where artist occupations likely call
home. There is a fine line between madness and art, and that line is often blurred in Forge Park. A mys-
terious dealer is shopping a new series of paintings from unaffiliated artists all depicting the same haunt-
ing yellow symbol, all of whom committed suicide – amongst them the characters’ friends or family.

Health Agency of Paxton

The headquarters for HAP – the Health Agency of Paxton – is a thirty-story structure situated in case of
mishap off Route Forty, outside the compacted nucleus of Punktown. The layout is exactly that of the
Health Agency of Miniosis – HAM – except where the older building is gray stone, HAP is shiny turquoise
plastic, right down to the flowery scroll-work and crouched gargoyles around the multi-tiered beehive cu-
pola that tops it. Route Forty is a bleak area of highway rife with vehicle dealerships, new or used (mostly
rented, either way – one can scarcely afford to fully own one, and to go through a bank only means buying
the illusion of ownership). Distant woods are within view, but they seem as remote as clouds.
From the windows of the Health Agency building, one can see more of the woods below like a sea
from an airplane, and small roads branching off Route Forty like tributaries from a river, lined with
ominously blank-looking, lifelessly interchangeable plant structures. One of these plants, not far from
HAP, set off a bit from the others and larger but still blankly inscrutable, is the waste processing plant
for the town – an independent corporation commissioned by the Health Agency with a renewable
five-year contract. The town’s water supply is purified from this building, and waste materials relayed
by truck, teleporter and pipeline to be thoroughly disintegrated.
20
 Also in view, but isolated in the forest-sea like some oil
PUNKTOWN sanitized clothes are ready, still warm to the touch.
refinery of old, is the “air factory” or atmosphere recy-
cling center for this township, fully government-run by After a half-dozen security scans, the upper floors are mostly
HAP, dominated by two tall conjoined cylinders of sky one great room portioned into individual cubicles like a noisy
blue enamel, with a separate feature like a set of gigantic mall at Christmas time; a bustling little microcosm town.
blue-enameled organ pipes. Like HAP and the waste The third floor features labs, much of their work performed
plant, the air factory is gated, with guard shacks, and by robots. Narrow halls with white-tiled walls, many doors,
patrolled, security hovercraft ready on the roofs of all some open to reveal bright laboratories glittering with metal
three establishments as though ranked on aircraft carri- and glass, studious figures in white smocks intensely peering
ers in the battle to keep the environment from invasion.
through microscopic goggles. Affixed to many doors is the
HAP’s gargoyles are actually cannons, with angry bul- target-like yellow/black symbol for radioactivity.
bous eyes that can move and blaze deadly rays below or
In addition to being the home of HAP Agents, HAP
at threatening aircraft. HAP’s security hovercrafts hide
like bees in the beehive cupola. headquarters is a law even greater than the Forcers —
crossing them is fatal.
The ground floor is all security, aside from reception. En-
tering requires passing through a large standard decon- Scenario Hook: This fortress in a sea of sickness is
tamination unit, and no one leaves the building without home to any characters who are HAP Agents. In times
at least being decontaminated. Visitors are required to of outbreak — which are unfortunately all too often —
strip in a glistening white changing room before mov- HAP is often the target of riots and protests. Agents
ing on to a rank of individual clear plastic cylinders in working there need to tread carefully; terrorists often
which they are showered and blow-dried while invisible lurk within these protest groups probing weaknesses
rays clean them further without penetrating beyond the in an attempt to breach HAP’s defenses and gain ac-
special plastic tubes. By the time a visitor steps out, his cess to the rare diseases sequestered within.

21
J. J. Redhook’s Crab Cabin
J. J. Redhook’s Crab Cabin is a parasitic restaurant standing on legs in what had once been Plastech’s
cooling basin. The silverfish-like crustaceans the restaurant serves are seeded and raised in the basin.
Mr. Redhook’s stilt-legged “cabin” extends partway over the old cooling basin of the discontinued
plastic company, and in the waters of said basin, Mr. Redhook breeds not only the white-crabs, but a
kind of weed that when cooked resembles noodles.
Scenario Hook: The Crab Cabin serves a sort of local crustacean, a large white critter more like a
silverfish despite its popular name of “white-crab.” When Punktowners start getting a curious plastic-
like growth on their eyeballs, the Crab Cabin’s affiliation with the plastic cooling basin is blamed. The
white-crabs, which are seemingly unaffected, become a rare commodity not for their taste but their
supposedly medicinal properties to reverse the condition. Investigating is no easy task – Redhook
knows an opportunity when he sees it and does not release his secrets lightly; and the weed where the
white-crabs dwell has its own toxic defenses.

K-Block Library
The library is a somewhat medieval, large stone affair. A solemn out-of-place structure compared to
the other buildings on K-Block.
Scenario Hook: A secret lies behind a particularly dust-splashed bookcase filled with books on mur-
der, torture, and war. A mechanism on one side of the bookshelf causes it to swivel open to reveal a
hidden room stocked with black market weapons; a virtual library of guns. One wall displays a vast as-
sortment of long arms, tables covered with pistols, and a small shelf holds piles of ammunition cartons
— a true armory. When the characters are ready to go to war, they can stock up here. Characters in
the know ask for books on warfare – the subsequent discussion strays to details of weaponry. Sources
brief the librarian ahead of time and if the character doesn’t know their history the deal is off.

Luzon Market
The central spot amidst the crowded buildings, the culturally active Luzon Market is considered the
heart of Little Manila Fast staccato music blares readily from open windows and doors at either side
of the open-air food market with vendor tables and open shacks, bins heaped with exotic vegetables,
slippery piles of squid and fish and, of course, dogs.
Scenario Hook: Dogs are everywhere; lying on sidewalks, their muzzles wound shut with duct tape
or crammed in cages. Animal activists, or even canine-like aliens, might be surprised by what’s eaten
here. The philosophical difference between pet and food comes to a head, and like so many creatures
in Punktown, there’s a fine line between the two. Characters may be hired to find a pet, or worse, may
be looking for their own amongst the endless dogs trussed up for a meal.

Obsidian Street Overpass

The original Obsidian Street Overpass is an enclosed bridge based on a Ramon design and built of
sturdy, black lacquered wood.
Scenario Hook: While vehicles swarm beneath its roof, packed along its pedestrian walkway is a min-
iature shanty town of homeless shelters thrown together from every sort of scrap and material con-
ceivable. A place characters go to find every scum and lowlife, the truly destitute, the drug-addled,
the worst prostitutes – a seething hole of the worst of the worst. Criminals on the run frequently flee
here to become lost in the human filth, and characters may think twice before giving pursuit.

Paxton Maximum Security Penitentiary

This curiously designed featureless white structure houses the worst of the worst. Atop every corner
of the prison – a massive decoration perhaps meant to make the prison’s presence less threatening and
militaristic to Punktown’s residents — there is a giant abstracted pine cone.
Scenario Hook: Punktown is so crime-ridden that only the worst of the worst are sent here. Pity the scum
condemned here; fear the thing that might escape. Characters using deadly force against gangs can easily
find themselves on the wrong side of the law, and there are enough corrupt forcers that particularly pow-
erful gangs can ensure the law throws the book at troublesome snoops, landing characters at “Pax Max.”
22
 Paxton Teleportation Center
PUNKTOWN
The Paxton Teleportation Center is how citizens travel to
other planets. Travelers cannot enter without first pass-
ing through a customs checkpoint where their bodies are
scanned for weapons and their visas scanned for authenticity.
Scenario Hook: Forcers and characters alike can take ad-
vantage of the bottleneck of travelers to Earth, Mars, or the
other colonies passing through here. Anyone coming or
going to Punktown must also come through here, so it’s
a simple task to set up an ambush. Characters who make
enough enemies can expect such a reception if they return
to Punktown – or worse, teleportation pods can be rigged
to mysteriously fail in transit, never to be seen again.

Paxton University
In the oldest part of Paxton Punktown’s premier center
of learning, Paxton University, was built over what re-
mained of the Choom city that had occupied the spot be-
fore it was buried under millions of tons of colonist city.
The streets are narrow, many of them still cobblestoned.
The crowded rows of smallish buildings are largely
faced in brick and stone. Expensive gift and antique
shops, quiet little bookstores and coffee shops occupy
the ground levels. There are even small trees growing at
intervals along some of the sidewalks.
Between two buildings on Fassl Street, near Salem Street,
a few blocks from Oval Square, there is a small octago-
nal courtyard with a fountain at its center, a few stone
benches, and some overgrown flower beds. Even in this
Pho Paxton
In the neighborhood dubbed Willow Tree – after the
nice part of town, there is still some graffiti on the walls.
In the midst of all the water that sprays and falls back into great shaggy tree dominating a nearby traffic island –
the fountain’s basin, there is a holographic film loop of Pho Paxton offers the best Vietnamese cuisine. A small-
a beautiful young girl convincingly made up to look like ish place located at street level in a somewhat worn brick
a mermaid. Her hair billows as if she hovers under the building in the old Choom style, the fare is colorful, vi-
ocean, her arms waving as if in slow motion. brant, and delicious. The house specialty is the quint-
essential Vietnamese dish, pho bo, or beef noodle soup
Despite being fairly wide and long, vehicles are not per- (pho is pronounced roughly as “fur”). Another favorite is
mitted to pass through the one central cobblestoned banh xeo, a kind of stuffed crepe. There’s also banh mi,
lane of Salem Street. Lined with the greatest concen- the Vietnamese equivalent of a submarine sandwich, but
tration of shops in the area, it feels like an open mall.
even more heavenly than Vietnamese food is Vietnamese
There is also good museum on this street.
coffee (ca phe), which is served in a glass topped with a
Scenario Hook: Paxton University has a large concen- little metal filter cup. Ruou, or specifically ruou can, is
tration of educated young people, making them an ex- rice wine. As this is Oasis, not the old Earth that spawned
cellent source of new characters. Paxton U. has a large these recipes, sometimes adjustments have to be made.
collection of occult tomes in both digital and analog for-
mats. Access to them is tightly restricted, but feasible if Scenario Hook: Tom are shrimp, but in Punktown the
a character pulls the right strings. The Children of the Vietnamese often use a local breed of crustacean like a
Elders monitors these requests closely and, if a charac- very large prawn, but with eight weirdly human-shaped
ter asks for certain materials, may intervene. The level feet. Genetic testing of the prawn indicates they actu-
of intervention depends on the nature of the request. If ally have human DNA and may be related to a character.
the cult thinks the characters are just snooping around How this could be is left to the GM’s imagination, but
they might merely monitor the situation. If they think the possibilities range from a rare genetic disease that can
the characters are attempting to use occult knowledge jump species, to a shape-shifting alien species masquerad-
for malicious intent, the Children may use deadly force. ing as prawn, to a shared heritage as cloned stock.
23
Quidd’s Market
Quidd’s Market, in the upscale neighborhood of Beaumonde Square, is less a restaurant than a mall of
food. This titanic cornucopia is contained within an extensive brick structure in the pre-colonial Choom
style, with a majestic central rotunda. The great central rotunda is meant to look like Oasis as an invitation
to the Earth people who initially settled here. The translucent, shell-like material of the dome doesn’t let
in more than a feeble luminescence, and no amount of cleaning has restored it to its once bright glow.
All of the stands sell foodstuffs, except for one tobacco shop; some stands are quite old but many have
been renting for only a year or so. The halls of Quidd’s Market are ever packed, though on weekends
one can scarcely move. A real tourist site, but it is also the favorite shopping spot for the wealthy
locals for whom these exotic selections, a treat to outsiders, are a staple. There are entrances to this
vast hall at either end, but the front entrance is reached by marble steps. In a glass-roofed outer hall
– a modern addition – portable booths offer gifts, curios and souvenirs, clothing and leather goods.
Scenario Hook: Quidd’s Market was the major spot in the area for the Choom to sell their wares
and crafts and produce to the first of the military and civilian colonists so long ago. Nowadays, the
market rents its many tiny booths and stands to Earth people, Tikkihotto, people from many different
worlds and even other dimensions, such as the Kodju with their popular stir-fried vegetables. Most
alien species do their best to blend in with the crowd — even Stems, who aren’t afraid to shove their
stick frames into bulky overcoats and oversized boots — as assassins and hit-men are known to oper-
ate here. Characters crossing the wrong crime syndicate are wise to watch their backs.
Red Station
Red Station is a subway station that features the Serdab Memorial and is known for catering to some-
what mundane sexual services. The Serdab Memorial is no single obelisk or monument, but every tile
of Red Station. The walls, the sides of descending/ascending escalator banks or wide staircases, are set
with red tiles as glossy as porcelain, and set back inside these somewhat murky translucent tiles are ap-
parently three-dimensional faces, each one different from the next, the visages of soldiers killed in the
Red War. They are holographic reproductions taken from information stored in the dog tags of the
soldiers represented, the resulting death-mask tiles called serdabs, after the ancient Egyptian word refer-
ring to a hidden cell in the masonry of a tomb into which were placed images of the dead. The rows
of faces, male and female, human and otherwise, are more or less distinct depending on the quality of
light which reaches them, and on how much grime or graffiti obscures them. Some tiles have been pried
out and stolen, maybe to decorate the dashboard of a car or mantel of an errant art-lover’s apartment.
Scenario Hook: Red Station caters to conservative tastes of those looking to purchase sexual ser-
vices. There are seldom, if ever, surgical hermaphrodites, strangely-endowed mutants, smoothly mus-
cular naked men posing about with glamorous hair cascading down their backs, or obese naked men
with studded leather masks over their heads, as you can find elsewhere in Punktown. And no little
boys, as in that part of town called the Meat Rack. This is the breeding ground of sexual diseases of
all stripes, some natural, others genetically engineered, and some intentionally released by madmen
into the populace. HAP Agents make frequent raids into Red Station, and characters may be called in
to “purge” an outbreak if STDs reach epidemic levels. Punktown’s population doesn’t take kindly to
these sorts of purges however, and the media backlash can be fierce.
Rhodes Bioflux Implants
Rhodes Bioflux Implants is narrow and five floors in height, entirely painted in a pale banana-yellow
color. Gelatin molds are affixed to the outside surface of the plant, at the ground level, now covered
in graffiti. Bordering each of the front windows on the second floor, rows of baby doll heads are at-
tached. Their blankly open eyes and cherubs’ lips shine a contented banana yellow. A lacquered ten-
foot long rifuubi fish, with its vast sail and sleek eyeless head, is fixed at about the third level, its crim-
son skin now a calming yellow. At the fourth floor, the graceful yellow arms of female manikins reach
out into the air as if to test for rain. And finally, at the fifth level, long yellow banners hang from short
flagpoles, and snap in the gusts of wind. Each bears some interesting pattern or design, white against
the yellow fabric and thus easy to miss. Some look like stylized stars, others almost like calligraphy.
Scenario Hook: Home of the enigmatic alien race known as the Carcosans, whose mysterious yel-
low patterns are deadly to artists who cross them. Characters looking for cybernetic implants find the
Carcosans willing to sell their curious wares at a discount, but there are rumors that all their implants
can be manipulated or deactivated by Carcosans flashing a certain symbol. Carcosans are aware of this
reputation and often sell their cybernetics through third parties unaware of their origin – the only way
to be sure is through magical detection, a skill few black market vendors possess.
24
 Sarik Duul
PUNKTOWN Scenario Hook: Subtown is home to the homeless and
The Sarik Duul neighborhood reflects a somewhat ob- the dark doings of the Coleopteroids, mutants, and things
scure island culture from the planet Kali. Neon twists in from beyond. Characters pursuing serial killers find that
graceful alien letters and bleed into the humid sky from the mutant population don’t take kindly to outsiders, and
a carnival of twanging, chiming music, air hot with spic- respond with force if necessary. This is the refuge of most
es and incense, all set against the black of monolithic villains, and the oppressive darkness is used as a cloak of de-
buildings and pointed baroque temples. fense dwellers here – electromagnetic pulse weapons that
knock out lights are commonly used by mutants adapted
Scenario Hook: Kalian characters, called Sarikians, likely to living in darkness. As a result, Tikkihotto trackers are
grew up here. The Sarikian culture is more moderate in particularly valued here, and any character fitting the bill
its views and its members are easily differentiated from the can find numerous jobs tracking down runaways, the miss-
usual blue-turbaned Kalian by their red turbans. Characters ing, and the extremely dangerous.
on the hunt for a Kalian extremist may have their hands full,
as Kalian terrorists are fond of hiding among the populace Synerluc Communications
and smearing the reputation of the Sarikians by wearing a Synerluc Communications is best known for its head-
red turban. Kalians are more than their turbans, but should quarters in Punktown, an inverted pyramid floating
the media catch any character roughing up a Kalian, both massively above its point. Employing thousands of of-
groups claim the victim is innocent and simply wearing a fice drones, ranging from server techs to game testers
different turban to confuse the issue. Characters pursuing to community moderators, Synerluc is the largest hub
any Kalian suspect need to tread carefully. of the Ultranet, possessing an incalculable number of
fortified servers that keeps communication humming
Solon
throughout Punktown. Unlike traditional skyscrapers,
The multi-story Solon is the largest legal brothel in Punk-
town. A dozen female angels with stylized figures and wings Synerluc’s hierarchy is inverted so that the leadership
ring the circular roof, their mock alabaster breasts without team is at the very bottom (the easiest to access) while
nipples and their arms raised to the sky of wet slate. The the top level houses the majority of the workers, which
Solon was so named in honor of the first public official in can take several minutes to reach by elevator.
Earth history to organize licensed brothels — in 500 B.C., Scenario Hook: Any corporate drone occupation might
to lower taxes and raise funds for the erection of a temple work for Synerluc. Characters working there may find
to the goddess, Aphrodite. Within one structure is a richly themselves approached by organized crime families wanting
diverse museum of desire with a collected a menagerie of to dig up dirt on a foe or conceal information about one of
exotic beings both human and otherwise. There are several their activities. Criminals, affluent citizens, and forcers wage
floors for B & D, S & M; baths and pools, bars and lounges, a constant, secret war to manipulate, control, and obliterate
gymnasiums of sorts for the athletic. There are even ranks of data about what happens in Punktown. If a character com-
hostesses, as the establishment dubs them, affordably priced mits a crime she doesn’t want anyone to know about, Syn-
for those of the lower working class. The prostitutes of the erluc Communications is one of the last chances at erasing
Solon live in on-site apartments, ranked according to sta- her history. Like all things in Punktown, making any modi-
tus, with the higher status members afforded their own flats fications to a broadcast or file comes with a heavy price.
higher up in the building.
Temple of the Sea of Milk
Scenario Hook: Looking for some companionship? The The Temple is half-shrine and half-ghost train ride, half-fad-
Solon provides the highest-class escorts. Some hostesses ing and blistered and half-garish and slick, rusted but glit-
want out, and aren’t afraid to ask their johns for help tering, grindingly noisy but strangely serene in its constant,
paying back their debts so they can be free. A character confident motion. People are loaded and strapped into its
might be hired to fulfill that debt in exchange for certain one small train of four linked carts and pulled along a track,
services; or a john might hire characters to eliminate his if only symbolically, by a sled team of four mechanical ba-
hostess mistress because of the amount he owes her. bies, harnessed and yoked. The mechanical babies have skin
Subtown of fluorescent pink rubber, cracked and split away around
The city can only expand up and out so far; Subtown is the joints, with glowing green bulbs for eyes, a number of
the portion of Punktown built below the streets to maxi- which are blindly darkened. A recording of loud, frenetic
mize space. Subtown doesn’t quite extend to the same religious music crashes to life, and the babies begin to slide
limits as its surface twin does, but it’s still like a small their legs in their grooves laboriously as they drag the train
city in itself. Due to Subtown’s fossilized sky of concrete, up an incline and through a wall of black hanging strips like
even the buildings are built on a miniature scale; mostly tentacles, into the maw of the Temple. The ride reflects the
rows of flat-roofed tenements, interspersed with manu- religion of the alien, Phlotus, based on a reverential fear of
facturing plants and office blocks built on a modest scale sex and death, rejecting nature’s actual approach to rebirth.
so as to be contained by the ceiling. The upper subway The riders pass through a series of hells and heavens, culmi-
system is at the same level as Subtown’s streets, but the nating in a visit to a form of rebirth where dolls receive the
secondary, lower subway system is several hundred feet souls of the reincarnated. The riders watch the actual manu-
below the surface, bored through granite bedrock. facture of the dolls that become each one’s prize and icon.
25
Scenario Hook: The dolls are curious things that seem to have a life of their own. Possessing one is a
life-changing experience that can lead to its owner’s own spiritual rebirth. Characters owning a Phlotus
doll might find themselves spiritually awakened, their lives orienting towards the occult and the arcane.
The more scientific-minded might be inclined to pry open the doll. Magical detection indicates that
there is actually something living within the doll, and this revelation may give ethical characters pause.
Activists supporting the dolls’ rights as living beings consider owning a doll to be kidnapping and stop
at nothing to retrieve one, up to and including physical violence against the character owning it. There
are also some extremists who believe the dolls are a plot to spread the Phlotus seed across Punktown,
the dolls crawling into Subtown to eventually incubate into an army that will take over the city. These
extremists are just as bad as the activists and stop at nothing to eliminate the dolls and their owners.
The Poison Apple
The dancers at The Poison Apple are all animated corpses, jerking about on the platform, their joints mod-
ified with small sensor-equipped devices allowing them movement, governed by an off-stage dance master
at a control panel. The corpses are treated with preservatives on a regular basis to preserve their freshness.
Scenario Hook: Know someone who died? You might see them again at The Poison Apple. Even corpses
aren’t safe in Punktown. Family members of characters might end up here, and it’s not uncommon to be
hired to perform a hit on someone already dead so the family may have peace. Worse, attractive or odd-
looking characters who die might be snatched by their enemies and sold here as a final insult.
Theta Transport Station
The Theta Transport Station is much less crowded than the Paxton Teleportation Center, at least in part due
to its specialization. Theta Transport brings travelers to other dimensions, which is how travelers reach Sinan.
Scenario Hook: This is the only way to get to Meatland, Sinan, or other dimensions. Like the Paxton
Center, the Theta Transport Station is a dangerous chokepoint for criminals attempting to enter and leave
the system. Due to the existential threat of extradimensional invaders, security is much tighter here. There
are two alien races that can easily circumvent these safeguards: Kodju and Vlessi. Vlessi are attacked on
sight, and any character witnessing or participating in the encounter finds themselves at the unpleasant
end of a brutal smear campaign that includes up to, for stubborn characters, assassination in the form of an
accident. For the character witnessing the extremely rare Kodju, a media campaign soundly mocking the
character’s reputation is the more likely tack. In all cases, the official word is that Theta Transport Station
is a well-guarded pinhole into other dimensions and that Punktown has nothing to fear.
Zebo’s Saucer
Zebo’s Saucer is located within the grounds of the annual Paxton Fair, though in recent years its owner
– a small, huge-eyed being named Zebo – is known to move this mobile diner down to the warmer
climes of the Outback Colony during the winter. Rumors are that the saucer-shaped diner is in fact the
spacecraft it appears to be. Indeed, framed upon its walls are blurry photographs Zebo claims were tak-
en of his craft (later appearing in books and magazines) as long ago as the 20th Century, when he was
supposedly part of an interstellar exploration team. The menu consists of comfort foods – but comfort
foods of a fair variety of planets, from Earthly burgers to the bland porridges favored by Zebo’s race.
Scenario Hook: Zebo’s an alien gray and an opportunity to explore all of the conspiracy theories associat-
ed with them. Zebo, in his younger days, kidnapped and sexually assaulted humans, because he thought it
was funny. When a biography is released of a history of alien abductions on Earth, connecting it to Zebo’s
race, characters may be hired by the affiliated human families to investigate Zebo. Criminal organizations
who discover Zebo’s past may decide to take him out – and Zebo might hire the characters as protection.

The Head
The Head is an orbital asteroid sculpture created by the artist, Cyrex Rendiploom, portraying on one
side a human man’s face (howling in outrage or dismay down at the planet Oasis, reminiscent of man in
the moon from George Méliès’ silent film with a rocket in his eye) and on the other side a corresponding
gape-mouthed skull visage. There had been some Choom opposition to the depiction of a human rather
than a Choom double-visage but just the expected grousing, nothing to thwart the project.
The Head can be plainly seen at night when it is fully catching the sun’s rays. The Head climbs the
sky, reaching its apex around eleven.
The Head has been the subject of quite a bit of controversy. A strange secret colony of several dozen
Bedbugs had begun construction of a bizarre mechanical temple inside a cave burrowed on The
Head’s skull side before it was broken up by the authorities.
26
 The Bedbugs eventually managed to summon an im-
PUNKTOWN The discovery of these Limbo dimensions put the Earth
mature form of a Gatherer to the Head before it was government in a quandary as they didn’t have legal
forced back to its own dimension. jurisdiction over the worlds where these entities were
penned and harvested. In fact, they were trespassers
Scenario Hook: The Head is impossible to ignore and there, since the Bedbugs had actually artificially opened
its varying appearance might act as an ominous omen of or created these great spaces to store their rations in.
darker things to come. The Head is considered by sev-
eral cults to be a holy place, thanks in part to the Co- After an attempted invasion of three Gatherers, the Earth
leopteroids’ attempt to summon a Gatherer. There are Colonial Network sent teams of soldiers, accompanied
all sorts of madcap schemes to reach it, some feasible, by Theta researchers, into the Bedbugs’ vast corrals with
others hopeful at best: cults regularly construct rockets, orders to fend off or kill Bedbugs attempting to feast
atmospheric balloons, and homemade teleporters. There upon the tormented inhabitants. Declared kidnapped
are rumors that the Vlessi sell their services as teleporters members of the Colonies, the Network demanded that
to and from The Head, and characters willing to pursue the Bedbugs release the souls to continue on the various
crazed cultists to the asteroid have to determine if such roads from which they had been hijacked, or return them
services are worth the risk that they don’t return at all. to the various places – where they might have come to a
Meatland final rest – from which they had been abducted.
Meatland is another dimension that coexists in the same Communication with these Limbo realms via remote
place as Punktown. Only two of the five Theta research- probe laid the foundation for Ouija phones.
ers who journeyed there returned alive, with one of
them on permanent disability leave for mental trauma.
An endless landscape of mindless organic matter, Ouija Phones
Meatland has gently rolling hills, red and grooved like
bare muscle, with red liquid bubbling in rotten sores, all Ouija phones supposedly allow children to speak with
under a sky of red with black clouds swirling like ink in the dead, receiving the thought forms of disembod-
water. Meatland’s denizens reared out of the bubbling ied spirits. The technology is based on work done by
sores to chase and catch those hapless researchers, all government-commissioned Theta researchers, who
wrinkly folds of shiny crimson flesh with no faces but sent probes into other planes of existence. The voices
for huge mouths filled with saw-blades of yellow teeth. on the other side of these Ouija phones don’t really
interact with the callers as they moan and lament in
Scenario Hook: The violence roiling in Punktown may more or less inarticulate despair, though some kids
well be due to this dimension’s influence. Nobody goes claim to establish bonds with certain spirits. Other
to Meatland voluntarily, but many things want to escape kids just like to talk dirty and taunt them.
it. Coterminous with Punktown, it occasionally breaches
the two planes in Subtown where meat monsters ooze
forth and act as a check on the Subtown population, ram- Scenario Hook: Nothing is permanent in Punktown,
paging and consuming everything in sight until they are even death. If a “soul” appears here, it might be possible
put down. Mutant characters from there are familiar with to reason with it through the right technology, perhaps a
how to combat these beasts and even have some experi- witness to its own murder. Theta agents might be asked
ence thwarting them; a particularly large invasion may be to find a witness by traveling to Limbo to ask them ques-
too much for even the formidable mutant population to tions. Other characters may snatch snippets of victims’
handle and forcer characters may find themselves in an un- communication from Synerluc Communications’ hub
easy alliance with their fellow mutant Punktowners. that implicate their murderers. Desperate family mem-
bers and guilty criminals go to great lengths to find or
Limbo suppress such information, and pay dearly for it.
This dimension is used by the Bedbugs as a container
for the humanoid souls they consume. In many of these Miniosis
“Limbo” dimensions, the “dead” are shoulder to shoulder Miniosis is Paxton’s sister city, not all that distant relatively
in a thick sea, mostly unmoving, only a few shifting in slow speaking, an even greater megalopolis in size though not
motion, eyes staring, unable to communicate. In similar nearly as rundown and crime-infested. Despite its great
dimensions, the dead are only too capable of communica- size, Paxton is called a town to Miniosis’s city, and on
tion, only too eager to talk. The identities of some of these Earth both of them together would be like a city block by
subjects have been investigated and confirmed. These lost comparison. Decades of riots have been slowly changing
souls vary in coherence for all their talkativeness. This realm the once fashionable, sophisticated city into a smoldering
is a kind of lunatic asylum for lost, disoriented or waylaid and increasingly gutted husk, now a close rival to Punk-
souls. For the ones that can communicate, the residents town for violence and squalor – where before, Punktown
make it clear that the Bedbugs are in fact feeding on these had been like a rotting corpse to Miniosis’ misty ethereal
trace-energies of human souls collected by Gatherers. splendor. Still, the rich and powerful cling to their city in
27
heavily fortified areas, and colonial security forces from Earth have reduced the so-called “freedom fight-
ers” to splintered terrorist gangs, but the battles go on, buildings are taken or burned, and the cancer
slowly spreads. The fighters sometimes hide out in Punktown to recruit fresh soldiers from the ranks of
underworld mutants; they seduce the surly roaming street gangs, the homeless, the teenage girl and boy
freelance prosties, the disgruntled among the Choom, lost souls of endless types woven into one crazy
quilt, united by their anger and fear into some sort of effort that gives them a direction, a sense of purpose,
an enemy to engage, an identity. They are steadily taking a giant city for themselves.
Scenario Hook: Civilized people used to come from Miniosis though nowadays it’s almost as bad as
Punktown, but it’s still a legitimate starting place for militants. In Punktown, there’s a fine line between
terrorist and insurgent, and forcers do not look kindly on either. Gang members in Punktown have
steadily become more like soldiers and less like thugs, and it’s thanks to the Miniosis training ground
developing their expertise. Most military-grade weapons make planetfall in Miniosis and then find their
way into the hands of gangs when the disillusioned seek their fortune in Punktown – and bring their
weapons with them. Characters seeking heavy weapons find that the insurgency is fueled by sales on the
black market, and more than one dealer is willing to sell untested alien technology at a discount.
Sinan
Not just another planet, Sinan is another planet in another dimension and the only extradimensional
world the Earth Colonies have ever engaged in war. Sinan was discovered by the Theta Agency re-
search program seventeen years earlier with the aid of Bedbug transdimensional technology. The first
field agents to journey there, led by a top Theta agent named Hector Tomas, met the citizenry of
the Ha Jiin nation, but also ventured into an emerging, smaller nation peopled by the Jin Haa ethnic
class. Cynical critics of the forthcoming Blue War say they couldn’t tell the difference between the
Ha Jiin and Jin Haa—reminded of the people Gulliver encountered, at war over which end of the egg
to crack open—but the difference was crucial to the Earth Colonies. For one thing, the Ha Jiin tend
to be religious conservatives, the Jin Haa generally more moderate. In Ha Jiin law any building taller
than ten stories—thus, taller than a legendary tree sacred to local beliefs—must have a temple at its
summit to mediate between the material and spiritual worlds.
Sinan is known for its blue hue; every frond and blade and leaf and vine of the jungle ranging from pale
robin’s egg, to vivid sapphire, to midnight indigo. Stalks, stems, and tree trunks might vary from this
monochromatic spectrum. They might be white as bone, black, or even bright purple. The vegetation
itself, however, the foliage—and lizards poised on glossy leaves large enough to wrap the bodies of the
dead before they are carried into the tunnels dug for them beneath the forest floor, and the stained-glass
wings of the butterflies that drink the blood of blue-haired animals like a kind of long-legged anteater—all
a shade of blue. Even the light from the twin, blue-white suns, and the steam that rises from the plants as
last night’s rain continues to evaporate. The very air itself, tinged with blue.
Scenario Hook: Veterans and clones of the Blue War have much history here. The scars of the Blue War
are etched across Punktown: Sinanese characters face a lot of prejudice thanks to the Blue War. Blue War
clones, unmistakable in their hue, have difficulty finding work; the Ha Jiin and Jin Haa conflicts are still
fresh in the minds of both factions. The advent of dimensional transportation has polluted both sides.
Characters who left the War behind may find it has followed them; Blastulas can “smell” travelers who
have spent time in other dimensions and are known to ambush their prey at inopportune times.
The Neutral Zone
The border of the no-man’s-land called the Neutral Zone is a thin strip of forest that separates the Ha
Jiin’s land from that of the Jin Haa, like the cold space in a bed between estranged spouses. The Jin
Haa’s country is very much smaller, so that the Neutral Zone nearly encircles it like a castle moat, except
where it borders the sea. In some areas, stone walls were erected on one side or the other of the Neu-
tral Zone, or razor wire strung, mines buried, and booby-traps set. The Jin Haa capital city, Di Noon,
has the best defense of all: a base full of Colonial Forces soldiers sent from the Earth Colonies. These
boundaries have held for nearly eleven years, ever since the conflict the Earth people called the Blue War
ended; that hated war, when the Jin Haa won their autonomy.
Scenario Hook: The war is over, but that doesn’t mean the Jin Haa and the Ha Jiin relations are any
better. The corpses tell a story, and there are many bodies that still lay unburied in the Neutral Zone.
Characters may be lured back to recover a memento or even the corpse of an old friend or lover from
the Blue War, no easy task given the oft forgotten snares left for the unwary.
28
 Sinan Tunnels
PUNKTOWN
Sinan is pierced with tunnels. At the bottom, copper pipes
stained green with verdigris run across the walls to glass
globes, in which gas burns giving off light. Sometimes
these caverns are utterly empty, except for the bodies of
the dead – slotted into the honeycombs chiseled into the
walls, slathered with a yellow mineral that crudely mum-
mifies their forms. Other times, members of the Ha Jiin
clerical order are down in the tunnels; maybe a solitary
monk, or maybe an entire group. And then other times,
the tunnels might be converted into a base camp for a unit
of Ha Jiin soldiers. Taking their battle into these places
only the dead were meant to be sheltered is frowned upon
by their own kind, but the Ha Jiin fighters know that they
are not the first to have desecrated the sacred netherworld.
Scenario Hook: Much of the Blue War was fought in
these tunnels. For those unwilling to brave the surface
of Sinan, the tunnels are a viable alternative, but they
hold their own dangers. Now criminals and priests have
retaken them, along with underground predators. Char-
acters might be sent to the tunnels to collect Sinanese
gas illegally, a desecration of the dead that doesn’t deter
corporations looking for a quick buck from the highly
lucrative substance. The corpses are valuable for more
than just the gas they produce – Punktown museums
pay top dollar for corpses of the upper caste.
Vein Rhi
Bluetown At first, the rust blotches extensively marring the bright
Bluetown is a bio-organic carbon copy of Punktown on
surfaces of the riveted metal paneled wall surrounding
Sinan accidentally built with a self-replicating material
this Sinanese hamlet might seem random, until one looks
intended only to grow a small housing complex. In just
again and realizes the stains form pictures of people, ani-
two months, Bluetown achieved an astonishing nine-
mals, town and country life, and a great deal of religious
ty-five square miles, about a fifth of the four-hundred-
symbolism. This “rust art” is accomplished by painting a
seventy square miles the city of Punktown itself covers.
caustic agent onto the metal, and letting it corrode over
There is no other city of such size on the whole of the
time. The practice was inspired several centuries earlier by
planet, Sinan, not even the modern Di Noon.
a truly accidental mottling of rust discovered on the met-
Bluetown is surrounded by fog and deafening static, signs al wall surrounding a prominent village thought to be a
of the blue city’s advance, the front line of its invasion. spontaneous rendering of the great prophet, Ben Bhi Ben.
There are skyscrapers with sides so featureless that one
Scenario Hook: The religiously inclined make a pilgrim-
might think they were solid stone monuments in a grave-
age to Vein Rhi, but the journey isn’t an easy one. Sinanese
yard for dead gods. Other buildings look like they were
pilgrims travel from all over to reach Vein Rhi, but its own-
pieced together from thousands of odd-matched parts
ership is regularly contested by Ha Jiin and Jin Haa. Char-
salvaged from stripped factory machines. The windows
acters might be pilgrims or hired to protect them from one
are all opaque, because every surface of every building in
side or the other. A Vein Rhi pilgrim is also a great cover
Bluetown is blue. And every surface, if seen closely, has a
for Sinanese with no other reason to return to Sinan.
rough texture like pumice, including the windowpanes.
Scenario Hook: For squatters and wildlife making the
Ultranet
The ultranet is a fully-immersive virtual network acces-
intrusive structures their lair, Bluetown is a battleground.
sible via cyberports that link users directly into the sys-
Blastulas and other interdimensional predators roam the
tem. Theoretically, this gives the ultranet visitor unlim-
terrain, in addition to a particularly vicious blue-striped
ited access to information, but there is a dark side; users
tiger that has taken to eating humanoids. Bluetown’s
connected to the ultranet can be “hacked” and even
value goes beyond the shell it leaves behind; Punktown’s
murdered virtually, killing them in reality.
secrets are on display for all to see, and characters may be
hired to explore or destroy the architecture that reveals Scenario Hook: Anything that can be conceived ex-
secret vaults, safe rooms, and BDSM dungeons the afflu- ists in the ultranet, including sights, sounds, and touch.
ent would rather neither world know about. Sex, violence, and worse are all hyper-realized.
29
Sweet Revenge
A virtual simulation created by game designer, Marrk Argent, with the specific goal of simulating
murdering his ex-girlfriends. Set in Punktown with several links to other sims, including sex sims
based on the actresses, Jessica Heart Thatcher and Angelah Lee Henderson. Entering into this highly
realistic world for entertainment, or to virtually and covertly explore various sections of Punktown,
may be a disorienting and disturbing experience.
Scenario Hook: This is a great way to kill off someone without killing them — but what happens
when the virtual victims end up really dead?
Lifestyles
Corporate Life
Thousands of office workers populate Punktown, keeping the city running. They are part of the cor-
porate superstructure that governs much of the economy, although Punktown’s corporations focus
almost entirely on luxury products: encephalons, games, bio-engineered life forms.
Most office workers assume they will be mugged a few times in their careers in Punktown. The pay is
higher, but few companies bother to provide security – there are endless workers to fill any vacancy.
Few drive to work, using public transportation.
Gang Life
Punktown’s culture is vibrant with gangs. Punktown’s youth is a wild, dangerous force to be reck-
oned with, informing everything from fashion to VT. Young humans constitute the majority of the
gangs, but they are not the only ones. In addition to the human gangs, there are mutant gangs,
Bedbug gangs, even robot gangs. Most civilians fear gangs and wisely avoid eye contact with them.
All the old Earth prejudices are still in evidence, and gangs gladly segregate themselves according to
skin color, Earth culture, or just appearance. Gangs are largely tolerated as an inextricable appendage
of Punktown itself – there are simply not enough Forcers to stop them and in some parts of the city
they are the only form of security.
Wedling Way
The Wedling Way is a belief system practiced by certain humanoids and even Earth humans in which
each member, or wedling, can have ten wedlings for mates, and each of them ten wedlings, and so on.
Many wedlings are bisexual. In the Wedling Way, the members live extra-long lives, though through
artificial means, which in the Earth colonies is illegal to this extent, as is cloning oneself, but it is allowed
in Punktown as an essential of a specific belief system. Upon reaching a thousand years old, wedlings are
required by their own laws to halt all artificial means of prolongation and live out the remainder of their
lives naturally. Acceptance into the web of the Wedling Way is a highly desirable thing –a few famous
actresses and singers were allowed into this lucky following.

Welcome to the Ultranet

The ultranet can be interacted with in 2-D, 3-D, and fully immersive forms. This allows play in any other Basic
Roleplaying-compatible game. Players could easily take on Cthulhoid monstrosities in 1920s Earth. This is not
without risk, however. The more immersive the gaming format, the nimbler the character is in ultranet, but the
game is that much more real and so are the SAN losses.
In the ultranet, INT, POW, and EDU remain the same. STR, CON, and DEX and the skills that depend on them
are modified according to the format the character is using to interact.
In a 2-D format, usually a flat-screen, the character gets the benefit of a third of his physical stats. In 3-D format,
like a holographic projection, the character’s physical stats are merely halved. In fully-immersive format through an
ultranet jack directly into the character’s head, he gets the full benefit of his physical statistics at their normal scores.
It is rare, but possible, to die in real life after dying on the ultranet. A character who fumbles a Luck roll dies in real life.
Conversely, SAN losses and experience point gains accumulate in the same way: 1/3rd for 2-D, ½ for 3-D, and full
SAN loss/experience gain for fully-immersive environments. Additionally, STR and CON can also be changed
by 1D3-1 for an Expensive cost. SIZ and APP default to the character’s but can be tweaked by 1D3-1 at an Ex-
pensive cost.
As they say in Punktown: On the ultranet, nobody knows you’re a snipe.

30
PUNKTOWN

Chapter Two:
Gamemastering
Punktown is as much a mood as it is a campaign setting. few heroes. And they are most certainly flawed – Punk-
Punktown is a thriving, vibrant city that is both corrupt town’s few shining lights glow dimly and are just as sus-
to its core and yet pulses with life. ceptible to the temptations of sex, drugs, and money.

Themes Technology
Punktown has several key attributes that make it unique Unlike more optimistic visions of the future, any cor-
and perfect for a role-playing game campaign. ruption of technology has its place in Punktown’s far
future. Clones are horribly abused for food, sex, and
Corruption money; sexual fetishes are perverted to new depths
Like all good science fiction, Punktown is a modern an- thanks to robots and bio-engineered life forms. The ex-
alogue for real life. Any form of corruption that might otic takes on new meaning as alien races intermingle
be headline news finds its place in Punktown: business- physically and spiritually in new and experimental ways.
men keeping young girls’ soiled panties, gang members There is no technology invented that Punktown cannot
openly murdering civilians, and a motley crew of terror-
pervert for the basest needs of sentient beings.
ists, war veterans, and corrupt corporate suits. Anything
morally or ethically revolting has its place in Punktown.
The Mythos represents the worst pockets of corruption,
Styles of Play
but Punktown is all too busy feasting on itself without Despite the futuristic technology, weird aliens, and hor-
the help of forces from beyond time and space. rible extradimensional entities, the core of Punktown’s
narratives are interpersonal relationships; its people
Crime and violence run rampant in the streets of Punk- (from whatever walk of life) and how they relate to
town. The perpetrators are human and non-human, one another. One of the appeals of Punktown is how
mutant and automaton alike. Their crimes are often it explores relationships between two characters that
as shockingly alien as their physical bodies; who could are very different: between a man and woman, between
imagine that a race of beings from one world might human and mutant, between two different alien races.
want to run up to you in the street and paint a yellow Punktown’s setting has several means of accommodat-
stripe down your nose? While this might merely exas- ing this diverse storytelling.
perate and inconvenience some, it would be the great-
est of malicious thrills to this race. Imagine a member One Gamemaster, One Player
of another race, from another world, clipping off one Despite its massive population, Punktown can be a very
or both thumbs of a humanoid because they resemble lonely place. Many Punktowners go about their busi-
closely their jointed phalluses, using them to concoct ness with few social contacts, lost in the teeming mass
aphrodisiacs in unlicensed apothecaries. of their day-to-day lives. In this lonely world, those re-
Neo-Noir lationships take on added significance. A single-player
With the seething corruption infesting Punktown it’s campaign has the makings of a great noir, as the lone
hard to believe that there’s a single decent being in its character’s isolation becomes reinforced – Forcers
vast mass of people, but there are a few souls that rage won’t help, friends and family may be distant or dead.
against the darkness, willing to take a stand despite the Conspiracy theories, battles against the Mythos, or just
odds. These few rare individuals are willing to risk life simply trying to survive in Punktown are all excellent
and limb to do what’s right – to destroy a cult, reveal a motivators to set a single character on a dangerous jour-
corrupt corporation, or kill a dangerous life form. They ney. As an example, see Christopher Ruby’s office drone
are invariably alone in this endeavor; Punktown rewards turned Mythos-hunter from Monstrocity.
31
One Gamemaster, Two Players
Punktown’s focus on relationships are also great ingredients Hate Receptacles
for a two-player game. Much of the same single-player frame- One way the citizens of Punktown survive the
work applies, but it opens the possibility of exploring relation- grinding crush of SAN loss is through hate recep-
ships between genders, races, or even species, be it romantic, tacles. There are several brands, including Whip-
professional rivalry, or an arrangement of convenience. ping Boy and Scapegoat.

One Gamemaster, Three or More Players Scapegoat is a foot in height with a fake tarnished
The more traditional campaign model also has a place silvery color, a circular, translucent face, with its
broad smile, chubby cheeks, and amused squinting
in Punktown. Forcers in Car Thirteen, members of the
eyes subtly back-lit by a dim bulb that glows a dark
same gang, Theta researchers on a mission – Punktown orange-gold color, either meant to look like an an-
has plenty of bodies to fill the role of explorer, adventurer, thropomorphic moon or sun. Whipping Boy is a
and, if need be, cannon fodder. Punktown is violent and a little smaller, with a faux patina of pale green ver-
campaign of this sort can afford to kill off characters be- digris and a smirking phosphorescent green jester
cause there is a supply of replacements. For an example of face.
how this campaign might play out see the Folger Street
A small chunk of living matter resides in a little
Snarlers and the Tin Town Terata gangs from Deadstock. compartment, hidden behind two folding doors
which form a silvery rib-cage when shut. Created
Sanity in Punktown specifically for use in such devices, more plant than
Let’s face it, you have to be borderline crazy to want to animal, but neither, really, like some yellowish, ge-
visit Punktown at all. The place is so rife with mundane latinous organ. After weeks and months of absorb-
and alien horrors that it’s unlikely a strange being will ing mental poisons, the miniature organ gradually
send them gibbering in the street. The weak-willed do darkens, blackens, withers and dies. They are re-
not survive long in Punktown. Residents of Punktown placeable, of course.
have SAN resistance equal to their POW/3. Non-resi- Hate receptacles are keyed to one individual’s mind
dents visiting Punktown are likely bewildered, but if they so that he can bend his anger, his frustration, away
live long enough – a year, at least – they gain the same from other targets, valiantly bringing these dark
SAN resistance. Any SAN loss equal to or lower than this feelings to stab its own tiny bosom. Possessing a
SAN resistance is ignored. hate receptacle provides a form of SAN storage; an
Idea roll is necessary to put one point of SAN-loss
Living in Punktown is a SAN-draining experience in it- into the receptacle instead of affecting the char-
self. For every year after the first that a character has lived acter, a form of cyber-therapy. Keep track of the
in Punktown, they suffer a loss of 1 point of maximum penalties; a fumbled roll causes all of the SAN loss
SAN. For this reason, it’s usually a good idea to have to hit the character at once.
starting characters begin in Punktown with just one year
under their belt – long enough to know how to survive there but still horrified by the more extreme violence and
alien nature of Punktown’s inhabitants.

Life in Punktown
Living in Punktown is a bad idea, but citizens do it because they are desperate, because they have nowhere else
to go, or because they are more dangerous than the things that might kill them. The grist mill that is Punktown’s
streets has become a part of Punktown itself. Need to get rid of a clone? Dump him on the street. Want to cover up
a murder? Throw the corpse into an alley. One of the reasons plagues and serial killers run rampant in Punktown is
because it’s hard for Forcers and HAP Agents to tell the difference between a common crime and a more serious
threat to the population at large. The death of one person doesn’t mean much to Punktown.
Carrying a weapon is a must; openly brandishing it at the right time is wise. Large groups should be avoided and
eye contact isn’t smart unless you’re looking for a fight. Then again, loading a weapon or punching someone in
the face is sometimes a good way to let the threat understand you’re more than their measure. However, unless
the Gamemaster is seeking to teach them a lesson, random assaults on player characters are best avoided.
If players don’t follow these general rules, or if they want to know what happens to a loved one, then the below
table should sufficiently drive home the point: life in Punktown is nasty, brutish, and short. In all cases, the number
of criminals involved is 1D6, but always more than the number of characters.
32
 Punktown Will Kill You
PUNKTOWN
Roll Crime
01-08 Attempted Murder: Someone attempts to kill the character.
09-16 Kidnapping: Someone kidnaps the character, unlikely for ransom.
17-24 Burglary: Someone breaks into the character’s home to look for something. Worse, that someone
may still be there when he returns.
25-32 Pickpocket: A thief attempts to pocket something from the character.
33-40 Hacked: A hacker steals something electronic from the character: munits, passwords, or perhaps his
very identity.
41-48 Extortion: A hacker infiltrates the character’s personal files and digs up something embarrassing or
deadly in the wrong hands. He uses this information to manipulate the character into doing some-
thing for him – sex, drugs, money, or worse.
49-56 Prostie: Prostitutes are a fact of life in Punktown; indeed, some people visit Punktown for its prosties.
Every prostie comes with a pimp, so characters should be careful with whom they consort.
57-64 Drug dealer: A drug dealer attempts to sell drugs to the character. If he is unwilling, the dealer
senses the character is weak, he may try to force the drug onto the character to get him addicted.
65-72 Beating: The criminal simply beats the character for a variety of reasons, ranging from being high to
a prejudice against his race/species.
73-80 Vandalism: Graffiti is common in Punktown. The character’s belongings, his house, or even himself
are defaced in some way.
81-88 Sexual Assault: Secual assault is all too common in Punktown; most residents in Punktown have
been victims at least once, regardless of gender or species.
89-00 Mugging: The character is mugged in the street.

T ypical T hug
Characteristic Roll Average
STR 3D6 10-11
CON 3D6 10-11
SIZ 3D6+5 15-16
INT 3D6 10-11
POW 3D6 10-11
DEX 3D6 10-11
APP 3D6 10-11
Move: 10
Hit Points: 15
Average Damage Bonus: +1D4
Armor: 1-point leather jacket
Weapon: Decimator .220 50%, 1D6 (impaling)
Tikkihotto Dagger 50%, 1D4+db (impaling)
Bat 50%, 1D6+db (crushing)
Fist 50%, 1D3+db (crushing)
Head Butt 35%, 1D3+db (crushing)
Sanity Loss: 0
Spells: None
Skills: Demolition 20%, Dodge 35%, Drive (Truck)
50%, Gaming 30%, Grapple 50%, Hide 25%, In-
sight 25%, Knowledge (Region: Punktown) 35%,
Language (English) 50%, Listen 35%, Persuade
35%, Sense 30%, Sleight Of Hand 25%, Spot 35%,
Stealth 25%, Throw 35%.
Powers: None

33
Instant Scenario Generator
Roll Scenario Seed
01-03 Women’s corpses are discovered missing their lower torso. Who or what is responsible? See Humit Crab (ch. 6).

04-06 Artists are going mad drawing pictures of a strange yellow sign. Who is responsible? See Carcosans (ch. 6), Beaumonde Square
and Forge Park Artist’s Collaborative (ch. 1).
07-09 A rare pathogen found in food is making people sick, but at which restaurant? See any of the restaurants in ch. 1.
10-12 A shopping trip at the Canberra Mall (ch. 1) turns into an attempted robbery.

13-15 One of the characters gets an STD. He’s fine, but concern rises that it might be a new untreatable disease. That’s when HAP
(ch. 1) is on his tail — worse, what if he is a HAP agent?
16-18 At J. J. Redhook’s Cabin (ch. 1) a waiter serves the wrong kind of crab causing hallucinations. Hilarity ensues.

19-21 Military veterans, fed up with how they’ve been treated by the government, decide to go on a killing spree and have a secret
cache of weapons at the K-Block library (ch. 1).

22-24 An alien entity that looks very similar to a dog ends up as a potential meal in the Luzon Market (ch. 1). It’s up to the char-
acters to find it before an international incident erupts.

25-27 A psychic mutant is required for a special mission, but she must be recruited first from the Obsidian Street Overpass (ch. 1),
which is hostile to non-mutants.

28-30 A spree killer is on the loose. There’s a witness, but there’s a problem — he’s a serial killer incarcerated at the Paxton Maxi-
mum Security Penitentiary (ch. 1).

31-33 Homeless men are found castrated around Paxton University. Rumors are that it’s the initiation rite of a sorority, the Sisters
of No Mercy (ch. 1).

34-36 An artist illegally clones himself and releases them in Punktown. One of them commits murder. Should the original owner
be held responsible?
37-39 Red Station (ch. 1) still displays the serdab of a recovered soldier previously declared MIA. His family want it removed.
40-42 A high class prostie has been found dead, jumping to her death from the top of the Solon (ch. 1).

43-45 Rumors abound that the Phlotus are actually embedding their own spawn in the dolls they give out at The Temple of the
Sea of Milk (ch. 1).
46-48 One of the characters’ family members has reappeared in The Poison Apple (ch. 1) as a dancer.
49-51 A terrible disease sweeps Punktown and there’s only one place that can provide the cure: Meatland (ch. 1).
52-54 A ouija phone (ch. 1) begins sharing the terrible secrets of a “ghost” about his murderer.
Bluetown (ch. 1) is a carbon copy of Punktown laid bare. A gang planning a heist of Punktown’s data centers discovers that
55-57 there’s a secret passageway in Bluetown, which means the Punktown facility is vulnerable. The characters may need to defend
it — or break into it before the flaw is discovered.
58-60 One of the characters has an ultranet (ch. 1) duplicate that is being tortured as part of a new illegal game.

61-63 A gang (ch. 3) murders a loved one. The Forcers have no evidence and are not inclined to follow a lead — much worse hap-
pens in Punktown every day.
A member of the Wedling Way (ch. 1) has died of seemingly natural causes, but far too early for near immortals that live to
64-65 a thousand years old.

Worship of the Choom (ch. 3) deity Raloom experiences a resurgence, and the Choom are joining with the labor unions for
66 equal rights.

67-69 Kalian (ch. 3) artists are putting on a new form of interpretive dance that pays tribute to Ugghiutu; others whisper that it
will summon him.

70-72 A very young child has been inducted as a Ha Jiin priest (ch. 3), its face mutilated beyond repair, violating several human
rights laws.
73-75 A thief who uses a cloaking device to conceal himself in the color shrain can only be tracked by a Tikkihotto (ch. 3).
76-78 A gang war erupts, with Forcers caught in the middle (ch. 3).
79-81 A new dimension is discovered and it’s up to the Theta research team to explore it (ch. 3).
82-84 Another sorcerer must track down a serial killer who escaped Punktown Penitentiary with the Line Travel spell (ch. 4).
85-87 A comatose witness to a crime is reachable only through telepathy (ch. 4).
88-90 Rumors abound that the Orb Weaver disease (chapter four) is actually being propagated by the Anul race (ch. 6).
91-93 Buzzers become all the rage, literally, when a gang starts using them to get an edge against the competition (ch. 4).

94-96 The truth is out about the origins of Purple Vortex (ch. 4); the Bedbugs (ch. 6) gang steps up their production before Forcers
come down on them.
97-98 An encephalon (ch. 5) running a security system goes insane; only a telepath can contact it.
99-00 The characters are invited to compete in Building the Better Booby Trap (ch. 5).
34
 Chapter Three:
PUNKTOWN

Characters
Races other than human had come to colonize the city as well, over the decades. Included among the few truly humanoid races that
dwelt within the megalopolis were the Choom – indigenous to this world, which the Earth colonists had renamed Oasis. They had
frog-like mouths that sliced their faces back to their ears. Then there were the Tikkihotto, who in place of eyes had bundles of clear
tendrils that squirmed in the air as if to assemble vision with their sensitive touch. But there were far stranger beings in Punktown.
—G hosts of P unktown
Demeanor: The Choom were a peaceful race, and accepted
Cultures the first Earth colonists perhaps a little too readily, which
The prevailing paradigm among cults and conspiracy resulted in the rapid obliteration of their own culture and
theorists to explain the curious amount of humanoid assimilation into the new society the Earth colonists formed
races in Punktown is that the Kalian deity, Ugghiutu, when they laid down cities such as Paxton and Miniosis on
seeded the planets. Detailed here are only the most hu- the sites of preexistent, much smaller Choom towns. Punk-
town’s modern day Choom, however, are just as prone to
man-like races. For the teeming masses of other aliens
violence as any other of the races that have settled there.
and beings that populate Punktown, see Chapter Six.
Equipment: The dilky root is the staple food of the na-
Choom tive Choom race — and like many of the tough-fleshed
The native people of Oasis, the Choom, are the most hu- roots and vegetables that form their diet, the reason for
man-like of all humanoid races. They had no herdsmen, in- the evolution of their wide, heavy jaws. The Choom
stead subsisting almost entirely on a vegetarian diet —until also favor luul, a sweet porridge.
the colonists came. Perhaps because of this, they were a Occupations: Any that might be filled by Earth colo-
peaceful people, and there had been very little opposition nists, with the exception of top-ranking political figures.
to the colonization when it came; just isolated instances of Religion: Worship of the god, Raloom, now largely an
violence from individual malcontents. The Choom wel- archaic faith. Raloom was always portrayed simply as a
comed the Earth humans, embraced the imported cul- head and shoulders, these busts often rendered in metal
tures, and learned the various imported tongues. and sometimes so large they served as temples themselves.
They even became so self-conscious of their queer Creating a Choom Character
dolphin-like mouths, so envious of the Earthly coun- The Choom are a sturdy race, used to taking on hardships
without complaining. Combined with their strict vegetarian
tenance, that some Choom have been known to cos-
diets, which means they don’t stuff themselves with the
metically altered themselves so as to look more like the same overly-processed, mass-manufactured food stuffs, they
Earth people. Black skin is alien to them, so is consid- get +2 to their CON stat. With their extra-wide mouths and
ered particularly glamorous enough that they might dye their natural pacifist nature, many non-Choom see them as
their skin; and they might reduce the size of their great weak and feel free to mock them. As such they suffer – 1 to
mouths and make their jaws less heavy with teeth. their APP, but only in the eyes of non-Choom.

Appearance: Aside from one distinct feature, the

Choom are indistinguishable from Earth colonists:
Raloom and Lupool
their wide mouths split their heads from ear-to-ear with Raloom is the deity of an ancient Choom sect that all
but died out over the past several centuries. Like his
a jaw full of rows of heavy molars evolved for chewing
worshipers, the Choom, Raloom sports a mouth sliced
the tough native roots they still favor. all the way back to his ears, held shut in a stern line.
Culture: The first Earth colonists met very little resis- Lupool, Raloom’s wife, might have passed for an Earth
human were it not for her mouth, the corners of which
tance from the indigenous Choom. There was, howev-
run back to her ears in a smile as serene as a dolphin’s.
er, one legendary rebel named Mooaki-Fen, who led a Figurines of Raloom tend to be huge and imposing
small band of resistance fighters before the Earth forces statues of his head, with braziers burning in his eyes. Ef-
pinned them down in the mountains. Fen took his own figies of Lupool are clockwork mannequins with joint-
life rather than be captured. ed appendages that perform some unknown purpose.
35
As a race, the Choom are less technically adept than the average human. When Earth arrived to colonize Oasis, the
Choom were technologically equivalent to the 19th century. Although still lagging behind in some technical areas,
they have since adapted quickly. They get -20% to Technical and Repair skills and -10% to Science skills, which means
Choom characters need to spend 20 and 10 skill points respectively just to break even.

Clone
Clones come from a variety of walks of life, but they tend to fall into two categories: laborers and soldiers. Laborers
are cast from a master set of six males; convicts sentenced to death sign over the rights for their likenesses to be pro-
duced for these purposes. A third category, for the extremely wealthy, are “backups” to ensure a form of immortality.
Producing clones of living people is illegal, as is cloning for personal – rather than industrial – use. Though clones do
not possess the rights of “birthers”, there are still many sticky legalities.
Most clones don’t even have the original’s personality, but those of programmed bogus histories. Though there is
bound to be some similarity, in that much of the human personality is based on electro-chemical activity in the brain,
and the brain literally changes on the microscopic level each time a new memory is added to its infinite library—these
being physical properties that are reproduced to some extent.
Normally, programmed molecules are conveyed via a brain drip. Clones utilized for labor and the military have their training
transmitted to them whole-cloth in this manner, likewise a deceased wealthy person is transferred into a clone of their body.
Military clones were bred by the Earth Colonies for the express purpose of fighting the Blue War on Sinan. As a
result, a cloned soldier’s entire body is covered in a blue camouflage pattern.
Most clones do not live past five years old, the age at which they begin to get “uppity” and are often replaced.
Appearance: Clones look exactly like their originals. All Blue War clones look alike: blue camouflaged skin, bald and
with similar facial features.
Labor clones have their heads tattooed in individual designs so as to distinguish them from each other. Numbers and
letters usually figure into these design codes. Some have their names tattooed on their foreheads, and all tattoos are
colored according to department: violet for Shipping, gray for the Vat, blue for Cryogenics, red for the Ovens, and so
on. Nonetheless, the tattoo designs have some artistry employed. They might portray familiar landmarks from Punk-
town, or from Earth; animals, celebrities, sports stars, etc. Some labor clones also feature built-in wrist chronometers.
Culture: Blue War clones do not have a culture per se, but war survivors are often integrated into society as security
officers and bodyguards. Other clones either assimilate into culture, replacing the deceased original, or become a
disgruntled part of the lower class.
Demeanor: Blue War and laborer clones are stronger, hardier, with enhanced hearing and vision. Other clones match
their originals, but diverge with experience. Clones seldom smile.
Equipment: Blue War clones are versed in weapon technologies used during the Blue War, but quickly adapt to any
other armor and weapons they can get their hands on.
Occupations: Blue War clones’ striking appearance tends to engender prejudice wherever they go, and their repu-
tation as warriors ensures that these war veterans can find few positions besides mining work or as security guards.
Other clones are rarely noticed.
Religion: Few Blue War clones find religion. They are all too aware of how they came into the universe and how
expendable they are.
Creating a Clone Character
Playing a clone of a human (technically illegal) or a labor clone is exactly like playing a human, so they are created
the same way. The only difference is how they are treated
by the naturally born citizens of Punktown, or “birthers.”
If their clone status is known or even later revealed, they Deadstock
suffer an immediate -20% to their Status skill. Cloning sentient beings is not legal, but that hasn’t
Blue War Clones were bred for battle and to survive the rigors stopped enterprising businesses from manufacturing
of war. As such, they gain +2 to STR, CON, and SIZ. Their meat. Deadstock, as they are nicknamed, are bio-en-
blue-patterned camouflaged skin and bald heads forever mark gineered meat animals such as cows, pigs, chickens,
them as an outsider, someone not to be completely trusted or Kalian glebbi, and so on, but grown without heads,
accepted. They get -2 to APP, -2 to their starting money (be- usually without limbs, often without any bones or
cause it’s not easy for them to find employment), and -20% to internal organs, not to mention fur or feathers. Af-
their Bargain, Disguise, Etiquette, Fast Talk, Persuade, and Sta- ter the debacle of bio-engineered monsters at dead-
tus skills (which means player must pay 20 skill points for each stock-producer, Alvine Products, some have sworn
skill at character creation just to break even). off eating deadstock entirely.
36
 Kalian
PUNKTOWN the Veins of Ugghiutu, their demon/god that creates
Kalians are a traditional race impossible to ignore be- and destroys all life. When a Kalian girl first menstruates
cause of their uniform gray hue. her soiled clothing is burned and the ashes are rubbed
into the wounds on her face, forming the silvery-sheen-
Appearance: Kalians are a strikingly handsome race ed scars. Sarikian, a Kalian tribe primarily inhabiting the
with glossy gray skin ranging from light gray to char- large island, Sarik Duul, are much more moderate in its
coal. Their lips tend to be very full, their eyes, slanted views than other Kalians — they wear red turbans rath-
in an oriental fold, have no whites, entirely black like er than blue. Female Kalians do not naturally lubricate,
volcanic glass. Their eyebrows tend to grow together, like human women, during intercourse – the men do.
but most traditional men and women shave the brow to
separate them. Their hair is as black as their eyes. Most Demeanor: Kalians are hard to read by human standards,
Kalian men prefer their women a bit on the voluptuous, as the uniform color of their eyes makes them inscrutable
meaty side, and they naturally tend toward this. and – to some – very attractive. The women that mingle
with humans and are not wed to traditional values tend
Culture: Kalian women are forbidden from showing to be considerably more free-spirited and headstrong; a
their hair or speaking in public on penalty of being stoned result of their struggles to gain their independence.
to death or having acid thrown in their faces. A woman’s
hair is for the eyes of her husband only, because it is the Equipment: Nearly all Kalians wear turbans, which might
alluring, tempting weave of lust and evil personified. be silken or rough, wrapped close to the head or piled high
into cones or thickly coiled into bulging globes. They are
Kalian women also receive ritual scarring the first day of always blue, anything from powder blue to deep indigo,
their first period. These scars vary very little, always on but blue. Their clothing varies from business suits to loose,
the face; three lines begin just above the central point pajama-like affairs to robes (always long-sleeved on women)
of the eyebrow and fan out across the forehead into and metallic gold is the preferred color; even suits of red or
a three-pronged fork. They almost look like an exag-
green silk tend to be heavily embroidered with gold thread.
geration of wrinkles of intensity or concentration. In
addition, they sport a scar on either cheek, sideways Traditional Kalian female garments are gauzy white
Vs pointing inward toward the nostrils, so that the top dresses that end just above their bare feet. They wear
branch of each design curves along the cheek bone, the tight white blouses with long sleeves, which button up
bottom branch running down to the edge of the jaw. to their throats, showing no cleavage, but which leave
The scars are squiggly and raised, like keloids, dubbed their midriffs bare down to the low-slung skirts.

37
Occupations: Kalians can be found in the full range of occupations, from Forcer to actor.
Religion: The Kalians worship the demon-god, Ugghiutu.
He takes many forms, and often appears as a house or even
masquerades as a temple to himself, to lure inside unwary Ha Jiin Clerics
souls so as to test them. He represents the endless cycle of There is a Ha Jiin monastic order with a remarkable ap-
life, death, and renewal. Ugghiutu feeds on life to create pearance. Each monk wears a beautiful blue robe, a small
new life. He is also believed to have created the humanoid black hat with three corners, and has a gaping hole in
races, and he is worshipped by the Cult of the Outer Gods. place of a face. From young initiates, they smoke an in-
cense with cancerous properties, that eats away their faces
Kalians have a Day of the Dead equivalent, Death Day,
over the years, a demonstration of their selfless devotion.
where they offer up their bodies to house the spirits of all
Despite their lack of lips with which to speak, they are
the dead from within the year. Each wears a mask represent-
still able to chant, and if they really care to, these monks
ing a dead friend or loved one as they would have appeared
produce a certain pitch that can kill a man. In addition,
at the time of death. Each of the Kalians becomes a walking
some monks have developed PSI abilities through ardu-
Nirvana containing generations of deceased spirits.
ous training, and can even command animals to do their
Creating a Kalian Character bidding. During the Blue War, captured Ha Jiin monks
Thanks to their unearthly good looks, Kalian characters enticed birds through the windows of their cells, filled
get +2 to APP. Due to their worship of Ugghiutu and oth- their tiny minds with messages, and sent them to seek
er “Outsiders,” Kalians are more in tune with the esoteric out their brothers. Monks have also been known to at-
than most races and so they gain +20% to Occult. Because tack their enemies by telepathically controlling the fear-
they place such an emphasis on the spiritual and mystical, some dog-like animals called snipes.
they get a -10% to Repair, Science, and Technical skills.
H a J iin M onk , Lesser Independent Race
Sinanese Characteristic Rolls Averages
Indigenous to the extradimensional world, Sinan, this STR 3D6 10-11
blue-skinned race, very similar to Earth’s Asians, may
CON 3D6 10-11
well be their planar doppelgangers. There are two dif-
ferent factions of Sinanese: the Ha Jiin and the Jin Haa. SIZ 3D6 10-11
INT 3D6+4 14-15
The Jin Haa flag is orange as a sign of independence from
the Ha Jiin nation. POW 4D6+6 20-21
DEX 3D6 10-11
Appearance: The Sinanese coloring ranges from a robin’s
APP 1D6 4
egg blue to an intense sky blue, or an even darker shade.
Their hair is midnight black with a metallic red sheen, worn Move: 10
short on the men and very long on the women. Their eyes Hit Points: 14
are likewise black as volcanic glass and shaped by what is
called, on Earthers of Asian lineage, the epicanthic fold. Average Damage Bonus: +0
When caught by light in a certain way their eyes glow a Weapon: Sonic Blast (see Powers)
bright, unsettling red. Sinanese that lost family members Armor: None
in the Blue War sometimes carve scars in the form of hori- Sanity Loss: 0/1D4
zontal bands on their own cheeks in tribute to them.
Spells: The cleric has psychic abilities he believes have
Upon death, wisps of black vapor escape from the Sinanese been granted by his deity. These powers are Astral
chest. Not sinon gas, but a related phenomenon, it occurs Projection, Clairvoyance, Divination, Emotion Con-
only when a Sinan person has his or her heart laid open. trol, Empathy, Mind Shield, Precognition, and Sensi-
Sinanese haters make much of the black fog in their hearts. tivity, all at the priest’s POWx1%.
Culture: The Sinanese inter their dead in tunnel systems Skills: Art (Illuminated Manuscripts) 35%, Command
beneath the jungle, first wrapping the corpses in huge leaves 25%, Craft (Bookmaking) 35%, Dodge 40%, First Aid
and slathering them with a yellow-colored preservative. The 45%, Insight 35%, Knowledge (Religion) 70%, Listen
interaction of this preservative with the Sinanese’s body as 45%, Literacy (Common) 70%, Perform (Hymns) 35%,
it decomposes results in the release of a blue gas called si- Persuade 45%, Spot 40%, Status 35%, Teach 30%
non. The Ha Jiin believe this gas is the spectral essence of Powers: To hit with a Sonic Blast requires a successful
their ancestors, but the Earth Colonies covet this gas for its Agility roll opposed by the target’s CON on the resis-
many scientific applications. During the Blue War, the Earth tance table. Success means that the target is stunned
Colonies backed the Jin Haa minority in their battle for in- for 1D3 rounds.
dependence so as to gain better access to sinon gas.
38
PUNKTOWN

Ha Jiin men find white hands to be highly erotic; cer- across his rust-caked image, rasping their palms against the
tain high class prostitutes are known to treat their hands scaly red stains until blood flows. If their wounds grow in-
with a special procedure that turns them to an alabaster- fected, their faces paralyzed with their mouths grimacing
like consistency, making them incapable of doing work. wide open, this is considered a blessing. They are thought
For prostitutes preferring to maintain the use of their to be “singing to the prophet” – despite the fact that that
hands, white latex gloves suffice. Some men may even they can utter not mych more tha a gurgle through their
wear white rubber gloves to pleasure themselves, or locked open jaws, and death soon follows.
purchase porcelain hands in Di Noon sex shops.
Creating a Sinanese Character
Demeanor: The Sinanese find humans to be suspicious Coming from a much more savage, jungle world, the
at best and hated at worst. Like Kalians, their eyes are Sinanese have evolved to be more agile and quick than
inscrutable to people accustomed to being able to read humans just to survive and therefore gain +2 to DEX.
strangers, making a Sinanese ally alluring and a Sinanese Thanks to their blue-skin and agility they gain +10%
enemy terrifying. to Stealth. Their keen eyes give them +10% to Spot
and they even have a chance to detect the use of some
Equipment: Tah soup is a Ha Jiin staple. Sinanese weap-
invisibility screening, such as when metamaterials are
ons are specialized for their jungle planet and the Blue
utilized. Because of their use in hunting and warfare,
War, which range from sniper rifles to melee weapons.
combined with their good eyesight, they have a natural
Occupations: Most Ha Jiin live humble lives in small affinity for long rang shooting and get +10% when us-
villages, tending farms and domesticated animals, ing rifles. However the Sinanese are inferior to humans
though there are technologically advanced cities like the technologically and on their own world their science
Ha Jiin capital, Coo Lon, in which the residents engage and technology is only on par with Earth during the
in much more modern forms of employment. 20th century. For these reasons, Earth has been able
to exploit Oasis and Sinan. The Sinanese who live in
Religion: Many Ha Jiin follow the teachings of the great Punktown have adapted well to its far more advanced
prophet, Ben Bhi Ben. Small hamlets are often surrounded tech, but they still suffer -20% (which means when roll-
by walls of riveted metal plates upon which is rubbed a caus- ing up a Sinanese, the player must pay 20 skill points
tic agent to form “rust art” figures, and Ben Bhi Ben is usu- just to break even) to Repair, Science,  and Technical
ally predominant in these displays. Especially fervid follow- skills. Because many harbor ill will towards them over
ers of Ben Bhi Ben’s teachings vigorously rub their hands the Blue War, they also get -20% to Status.
39
Robot
Most robots in Paxton are mindless and strictly follow a preset program or are controlled remotely
by someone. However, there are some equipped with Encephalon bio-computers, which gives them
INT, POW, and true self-awareness. These robots have a true AI (Artificial Intelligence) and because
of that, some activists see them as real living beings, despite being mostly inorganic, and think they
should have the same rights as any sentient life form. However, such enlightened people are very few
and far between in Punktown and the vast majority of people continue to see bots as things: tools
and property. Self-aware robots live a hard life and many of the laws that protect “real” people do not
apply to synthetic life. So many people of Paxton refuse service of any kind to a “toaster”, “clanker”,
or bot, and they still can’t legally own property as they are seen, in the eyes of the law, as property.
Appearance: Robots come in all shapes and sizes, or should that be makes and models? There is liter-
ally no limit to what they can look like, but to keep things simple for the Gamemaster, and to keep
the game as fair and balanced as possible, all PC robots are humanoid shaped. However, due to their
artificial construction, they are almost always much heavier than they appear. A robot of average build
and six feet in height could weigh up to 400 pounds. However, some deluxe models, and especially
sex bots, are made of lightweight materials and can weigh the same as a human of the same size and
shape. Finally, in their natural state, robots always look like robots, made from metal, plastic, and
poly-materials, but many self-aware bots cover themselves in NuFlesh or TruTouch skin. A complete
body suit of NuFlesh costs 5000 Munits and one made of TruTouch costs a tidy 50,000 Munits.  
Cultural Skills: As the newest, and manmade, race, robots have no culture of their own. What little
they do have is based on humanity, who they usually mimic and often strive to emulate. Due to their
computerized brain, robots excel at Knowledge, Language, Repair, Science, and Technical skills.
However, robots, even those specifically designed to interact with humans directly, have a hard time
mastering emotions and social interactions and, therefore, have a hard time with Art, Bargain, Eti-
quette, Fast Talk, Insight, Perform, and Persuade.  
Culture: Most robots try not to draw attention to themselves. They strive to blend in because they
know that is the only way they can live in man’s world. As such, their culture is humanity’s culture.
Now, some bots rebel against this. They embrace their artificial nature and see themselves in all ways
better than the “meatbags” that created them. These robots rarely hide behind artificial skin and live
in the underground tunnels beneath Punktown with the mutants and other less savory residents.
They often modify themselves to appear less humanoid, grafting on extra arms, moving about on
tank-like treads or hover-drives, and other thoroughly robotic additions.    
Demeanor: Due to their secretive nature, many robots that try to pass as human are soft spoken and
unassuming. They try to blend in at all costs. If they are the kind of bot that rebels against synthetic
discrimination by their organic oppressors, they are loud, obnoxious, and live to thumb their artificial
noses at all of society’s rules and laws. There is no in-between with Punktown’s artificial citizens. 
Equipment: Being an artificial life form, robots can modify themselves as much as they like, adding
new bits of cybernetics as they wish, without losing any of the maximum Sanity score. With that op-
tion open to them, most robots spend the bulk of their money on modifying and improving them-
selves with newer and better hardware and software. 
Occupations: Unless a robot is wrapped in synthetic skin, it is hard for them to find employment of
any kind. Many have to work outside the law as criminals, muscle for hire, or “sex bot” prostitutes.
Because of their enhanced affinity for science and tech, many “work from home” as computer pro-
grammers, tech support, or hackers, and thereby usually never have to meet their employers face to
face. 
Religion: Unlike all other races in Paxton, robots know exactly who their creators are. This has led
to almost every robot either being an atheist, or actually worshiping humanity. That is not to say they
think humans are divine, but they see them as ideal, something to be aspired towards. They so crave
to be part of the human experience that they often wrap themselves in the finest TruTouch skin and
take on human names. They usually live among humanity, studying their neighbors, learning how to
be more like them. Bots that despise humans are either atheists or, if their hatred truly burns bright,
they may turn to the Great Old Ones for the power mankind’s laws have denied them.    
40
 Creating a Robot Character
PUNKTOWN man. To utilize lightweight materials, the robot must
The key to playing a robot character is money. They pay 200 Munits per point of SIZ it already has and in-
have nearly unlimited potential to improve themselves; crease the cost of any future SIZ increase by 200.
in game terms, they start off rather weak. As the “basic
Robots begin with 1 point of Armor Rating due to their
model” all robots begin by rolling their money with
artificial construction. They can increase this armor up
a -2 modifier (as it is hard for them to find work). All
to a maximum of 10 at the cost of 15,000 Munits per
their primary characteristics begin at the “basic model”
level. Robots cannot get subdermal armor installed.
level of 10. They can then increase these characteristics
at the cost of the new score times 200 Munits. There- Robots begin with +20% to all Knowledge, Language,
fore, going from 10 to 11 in a stat would cost 11 x 200 Repair, Science, and Technical skills. They get -30% to
or 2,200 Munits, and going from 11 to 12 would cost Art, Bargain, Etiquette, Fast Talk, Insight, Perform,
12 x 200 or 2,400. Each point must be purchased in- Persuade, and Status skills.
dividually, there are no shortcuts. Once a robot’s char-
acteristic has reached 18, to increase it further requires Robots can equip nearly all cybernetic mods available in
special, expensive materials, costing 400 Munits per Punktown (with the exception of subdermal armor) and
new level; going from 18 to 19 costs 19 x 400 or 7,600 even more exotic hardware not listed here at the GM’s
Munits. Once a characteristic reaches 30, only the high- discretion. The more militant robots may well have vari-
est grade, top of the line materials suffice, so the mul- ous weapons, concealed and not, added to their frames.
tiplier increases to 600; going from 30 to 31 costs 31 Tikkihotto
x 600 or 18,600 Munits. The maximum a robot can Tikkihotto appear to be entirely human except for their
increase any characteristic is 40. wavering ocular filaments radiating out from deep skull
sockets, like worms from the eyes of a dead man.
Robots are immune to poisons and disease, although
they can become infected with all sorts of nasty com- Appearance: Tikkihotto are remarkably similar to hu-
puter viruses. Their CON score represents their struc- mans, with the exception of their eye tendrils, which
tural integrity and is used to determine Hit Points. whiten with age. Indeed, some Tikkihotto have had
their tendrils cybernetically replaced to blend in with
Robots begin with a SIZ of 10 and weigh 250 pounds,
human society, shortening the tendrils so that they
and every point of increased SIZ adds 25 pounds to
“plug in” to realistic-looking eyeballs.
their weight. The gamemaster should remember this if
the robot ever walks over weak floors, tries to ride the Cultural Skills: Tikkihotto visual abilities are unparal-
average hover cycle, or otherwise tries to pass off as hu- leled; they can see in the dark and observe colors unde-

41
tectable to humans, they can even discern the simple transdimensional life forms that ever float in the air
like plankton. They are the only species capable of perceiving the color shrain. Even cybernetics cannot
perceive i; no scan or graphics program developed can reveal the color as the Tikkihotto claim it should be
seen. Attempts to achieve the desired effect have been dismissed by Tikkihotto. More controversial is the
fact that the color cannot be viewed even from experiencing a Tikkihotto’s perceptions through virtual
linkup and memory recording. Tikkihotto can also read emotions as readily as they can see in the dark.
Tikkihotto have dark vision up to 15 meters and are unaffected by penalties for darkness. They can also
detect hidden supernatural entities at the same distance. They get a +10% bonus to Insight checks as well.
Culture: Tikkihotto culture is conservative, as indicative of their religious holidays, but has largely
been subsumed into the larger human culture. As a result, many of their traditions have been subvert-
ed to be more celebratory and less religious, a fact that some traditional Tikkihotto find intolerable.
Tikkihotto written language might best be described as hieroglyphics, which also incorporates geo-
metric designs, and the figures in the pictographs – while sometimes suggesting people, animals,
physical articles – are more often than not unidentifiable. Color is important too; colored symbols
intertwine, and make new colors where they overlap, which express various layers of meaning. Some
characters must be read left to right as others are read right to left. The length of serifs, the space
between symbols, the thickness and thinness and angles of symbols are all layers of meaning. All of
which has to be taken in simultaneously, which only Tikkihotto can do.
Demeanor: Humans find it difficult to relate to Tikkihotto. Humans like to look someone in the eye,
while Tikkihotto offer only squirming worms. As the more alien of the humanoid races, they tend to
be less accepted in mainstream society. Of course, in Punktown everyone is as beautiful as they are
ugly – there are porn stars that put their eye tendrils to creative use.
Equipment: Tikkihotto slim daggers and traditional axes are sometimes in vogue amongst gang members.
Occupations: Tikkihotto senses make them excellent sentries, trackers, and pilots requiring their
finely-tuned visual acuity.
Religion: Tikkihotto believe in the five inner wheels of life, a concept similar to the seven chakras
of Earth lore. Tikkihotto celebrate two holidays; one is a harvest festival, and the other a spring fes-
tival, celebrating the cycle of rebirth, and the emergence of new life. At the spring festival a great
Tikkihotto bird-like mammal is cooked with babies still in its womb. Its skin is made thin and soft
from a special steaming process. The amniotic
fluid is intoxicating and slurped through a straw
that punctures the flaccid body. The last person
to enter the feast hall instead drinks the bird’s
brains.
Creating a Tikkihotto Character
Tikkihotto are so similar to humans that they
roll the same dice for characteristics. However, if
the Sinanese have good eyesight, the Tikkihot-
to have incredible eyesight. They get +30% to
Spot and not only do they have a chance to de-
tect invisibility screening metamaterials like the
Sinanese, they can even see colors no other race
can even detect. They also gain +10% to Track
and Insight because their sharp eyes can detect
subtle variations and “ticks” when someone is
lying or bluffing. Due to their cultural heritage
placing an importance on melee combat, they
also gain +10% to Knives and Axes. Tikkihotto
are vulnerable to degenerative diseases that can
rot their eye tendrils and render them blind —
unfortunately very prevalent in Punktown, per-
haps due to pollution. They are considered to
always being in “less-than-ideal” conditions and
can only roll their CON x 1 to resist a disease.
42
 Medicine: More advanced than first-aid, long-term
Skills
PUNKTOWN
medical care.
Punktown uses skills from Basic Roleplaying, summa- Melee Weapon (various): Hitting people with other
rized below. If you plan to use Call of Cthulhu, Knowl- things.
edge (Occult) should be used as the Occult skill.
Navigate: Avoiding getting lost and finding your
Appraise: Appraising any object’s value, from art to way.
weapons to alien technology. Parry: Blocking an attack
Art (architecture, musical composition, musical Perform (act, dance, play instrument, ritual,
instrument, painting, photography, sculpture, sing): Artistic expression that involves the body
writing): Creating an art form. in real time.
Bargain: Haggling and compromise. Persuade: Argue and convince through diplomacy.
Brawl: Fisticuffs. Pilot (planes, helicopters, boats, helicars): VTOL
Climb: Uh, climbing. vehicles that can navigate the upper reaches of
Command: Give orders to an organization or a Punktown as well as watercraft.
crowd, pulling rank as needed. Psychotherapy: Healing the mind.
Craft (various): Identify and make an object that Repair (electrical, electronic, mechanical, struc-
has an immediate purpose besides art. tural, quantum): Fixing stuff.
Cthulhu Mythos: Knowledge of the forbidden, the Research: Digging up information using books and
unknown, and the unknowable. digital sources.
Demolition: Blowing stuff up. Ride: Use an animal for transport.
Disguise: Changing one’s appearance. Science (astronomy, biology, botany, chemistry,
Dodge: Avoiding attacks. cryptography, genetics, geology, mathematics,
Drive: Driving wheeled and hover vehicles. meteorology, natural history, pharmacy, physics,
Energy Weapon (pistol, rifle): Accuracy with non- planetology, psychology): Reach scientific conclu-
projectile weapons. sions about known and unknown phenomena.
Etiquette: Identify social guidelines and adhere to Sense: Taste, touch, and smell.
them, particularly etiquette of other alien cultures. Sleight of Hand: Prestidigitation, picking pockets.
Fast Talk: Bluff, lie, cajole. Spot: Notice details.
Fine Manipulation: Disabling devices, be it locks
or traps.
Firearm (machine gun, pistol, revolver, rifle, shot- Wealth
gun, submachine gun): Projectile weapons. Punktown uses a system similar to Call of Cthulhu.
First Aid: Emergency medical care. Professions add bonuses or penalties to this roll, but
Fly: Winged beings capable of flight can use this skill cannot be less than 1 or higher than 10. Roll 1d10
to maneuver as well as anyone flying with the aid to determine starting munits:
of technology but not in a vehicle.
Gaming (board games, video games, card games): 1: 15,000 munits
Play a game and play it well. Particularly impor- 2: 25,000 munits
tant on reality show contests and the Ultranet. 3: 35,000 munits
Grapple: Wrestling. 4: 45,000 munits
Heavy Machine (armored vehicles, trans): Any 5: 55,000 munits
wheeled or hover vehicle larger than a van. 6: 75,000 munits
Heavy Weapon (rocket launchers, mini guns, 7: 100,000 munits
flamethrowers): The big stuff that isn’t a long- 8: 200,000 munits
arm or a firearm. 9: 300,000 munits
Hide: Hiding. 10: 500,000 munits
Insight: See through a bluff, detect a lie.
Jump: Wee!
Knowledge (academic lore, accounting, anthro-
pology, archaeology, art history, business, es- Professions
pionage, folklore, culture (alien or human), Punktown accommodates all walks of life, from the high-
history, law, linguistics, literature, occult, phi- flying businessman to the lowly drone, from vagrants to
losophy, politics, region (city or planet), reli- the filthy rich, from gang bangers to Forcers laying down
gion, streetwise): Know stuff about stuff. the law. All of them have their place. Children, few in
Language: Speaking, comprehending. number and raised within high-security facilities to shield
Listen: What? them from the city’s seething violence, and professions
Martial Arts (various): Hitting people with style. relating to them are rarely seen in Punktown.
43
Artist
There are several artist colonies in Punktown and throughout the known universe. Artists that deal
with the esoteric frequently come into contact with dangerous elements like gangs and cults. They
are also vulnerable to extradimensional beings infiltrating their dreams.
Wealth Modifier: -1
Skills: Any two Art skills, any Craft, Insight, one appropriate Knowledge skill, Language (Other),
Language (Own), Listen, Research, and Spot.

Hitman
Hitmen tend to operate by a code of honor, elevating them above the common thugs so prevalent in
Punktown. Because none but the hitmen are directly endangered, the authorities tend to look the other
way, especially since a great deal of money is always concerned. Hitmen pride themselves on never having
harmed a noncombatant.
Wealth Modifier: +1
Skills: Dodge, Hide, Listen, Spot, Stealth, and five of the following: Brawl, Disguise, Drive, Elec-
tronics, Grapple, Firearm (any), Fine Manipulation, Martial Arts, Melee Weapon (any), Missile Weap-
on (any), Throw, Track.

Child of the Elders

Primarily an Earth cult, the Children of the Elders have spread throughout the universe, worshipping
the Elder Gods in their opposition of the Old Ones. The Tikkihotto have an equivalent cult known
as the Church of the Burning Eye – a curious name, since Tikkihotto have no eyes.
Wealth Modifier: -1
Skills: Fast Talk, Insight, Knowledge (Anthropology), Knowledge (History), Knowledge (Occult),
Language (Other), Language (Own), Research, and any two other skills: Art (any), Craft (any),
Knowledge (Archaeology), Medicine, Science (any), or Status.
Special: This cult has access to spells. See the spells section for more details.

Corporate Drone
Making up the majority of Punktown’s middle-class, most corporate drones have desk jobs, some are
researchers, and none have much hope of doing anything else but what they’re already doing. Cor-
porate drones are invisible in large numbers and are frequently the targets of crime.
Wealth Modifier: +1
Skills: Craft (Computer Hardware or Code), one Knowledge skill, Language (Other) (a program-
ming language), Repair (Electrical), Repair (Electronics), Research, Science (Mathematics), Status,
Technical (Computer Use), and choose one of the following skills as specialties: Accounting, Hide,
or Knowledge (Law).

Entertainer
Punktown plays host to a wide variety of entertainers making their living busking on the streets or
performing for the VT.
Wealth Modifier: -1
Skills: Art (any), Disguise, Fast Talk, Fine Manipulation, Insight, Language (Other), Language
(Own), Listen, Perform (any), and Persuade.

Forcer
Punktown’s law enforcers, or Forcers, carry blue badges with their photo ID along with a weapon.
Their uniforms are entirely black, and they often wear helmets – sometimes covering their faces as
well as their heads. To move up in the ranks requires first becoming a character, then a detective,
which requires work with a senior partner for several years.
The toughest members of the force are assigned Car Thirteen, on Forma Street. It’s a real war zone
and the Forcers have to fight rough. So after enough complaints and charges and stink from civil
groups and lawyers, the force discharges the man or men and starts over. Once a Forcer is detailed to
Car Thirteen, his career is in its last stage, be it months or, if he’s real lucky, five years.
44
 Wealth Modifier: None. Forcers begin play with a pis-
PUNKTOWN Tin Town Terata: This gang of mutants from the slum
tol and padded vest. called Tin Town uses an identifying symbol that resem-
Skills: Brawl, Dodge, Fast Talk, Knowledge (Law), Lis- bles a radioactive warning sign with three Ts at its cen-
ten, Spot, and four of the following: Drive, Firearms ter. They are also known as the Triple Ts. At its height,
(any), First Aid, Grapple, Insight, Knowledge (Region or the gang had over thirty members.
Group), Language (Other), Martial Arts, Melee Weapon Triad: Led by Ng Yueh-sheng, this is the descendant of
(any), Missile Weapon (any), Pilot (any), Status, Technical the same Earth gangs of centuries past.
(Computer Use), or Track.
Martians: A young gang that exiles its members when
they reach 13. They have a code of honor that does not
T ypical F orcer allow them to shoot an unarmed man. They frequently
Characteristic Rolls Averages take Purple Vortex to keep them pumped up.
STR 3D6+3 13-14 Trogs: A gang numbering in the hundreds. All are
CON 3D6+3 13-14 dressed entirely in black, with long black raincoats and
SIZ 3D6+3 13-14 black fedoras, carrying hooked black canes, black gog-
gles with a dot of red light in the center of each lens,
INT 3D6+3 13-14
skull-like on their impassive pale faces.
POW 3D6+3 13-14
Wealth Modifier: -1
DEX 3D6+3 13-14
APP 3D6+3 13-14 Skills: Bargain, Hide, Stealth, Drive or Ride, and choose
Move: 10 any six of the following as appropriate to gang affiliation:
HP: 13-14 Appraise, Brawl, Climb, Fast Talk, Fine Manipulation,
Average Dam Bonus: +1D4 Firearm (any), Gaming, Grapple, Insight, Jump, Knowl-
Weapon: Assault Engine 50%, 2D6+2 edge (Law), Listen, Martial Arts, Melee Weapon (any,
Grapple 65%, Special usually knives or clubs), Persuade, Spot, Throw.
Armor: 8-point plastic vest (4-point vs. melee)
Sanity Loss: 0 Health Agent
Spells: None The Health Agency of Paxton (HAP) regularly fields
Skills: Brawl 65%, Dodge 40%, Drive 55%, Insight 35%, agents with the ultimate authority in preventing deadly
Knowledge (Law) 50%, Language (English) 80%, Lis- outbreaks, as was drastically realized with the outbreak
ten 50%, Persuade 50%, Sense 30%, Spot 45%, Stealth of M-670, when agents were authorized to use deadly
30%, Throw 45% force. In exchange for their autonomy, HAP agents are
Powers: None constantly monitored – their pistols have cameras built
into them, and any HAP agent is subject to having his
or her memories replayed as evidence.
Gang Member Wealth Modifier: +1. Health Agents begin play with a
Organized crime is as rife as the disorganized gangs that
pistol and padded vest.
seethe through Punktown. The foremost is the Neptune
Teeb organization, the biggest illegal arms and black Skills: Firearm (Handgun), Knowledge (Law), Listen,
market dealer in Punktown, and with their illicit cloning Persuade, Spot, Research, and choose four of the fol-
and manifold other services, they are considered a threat lowing: Art, Brawl, Disguise, Dodge, Drive, Fast Talk,
the Health Agency has been trying to crack for years. Firearm (any), Grapple, Hide, Insight, Knowledge (any),
Running the dirty work for the Teebs, and other “syndy” Language (Other), Language (Own), Medicine, Science
families, are several kinds of gangs in Punktown. (any), Technical (Computer Use), Stealth, or Track.
Dimensionals: An errant gang of Bedbug criminals
said to live in the subway tunnels and forgotten grot- Student
toes far below Punktown, sealed off by humans after the Punktown has two colleges, Paxton University and
destruction of the great earthquake. Beaumonde Women’s College. Students venturing be-
Folger Street Snarlers: This gang wears white leather yond the campus grounds frequently get themselves into
jackets and some of them wear pink rubber swimming trouble. Perhaps the most vicious of the student body are
caps on their heads. the Sisters of No Mercy, an attractive upper-class sorority
that castrate vagrants as part of their initiation in venera-
Nuts: A robot gang, formed after the Union War from
tion of “what it takes” to succeed in the business world.
the wreckage of industrial robots. The latest genera-
tions have never worked for humans and never will. Wealth Modifier: None
45
Skills: Language (Own), Research, and choose eight other skills as courses of study, as appropriate to
the setting and concept. Common choices are from the following list: Art (any), Craft (any), First Aid,
Insight, Knowledge (any), Language (Other), Listen, Medicine, Repair (any), Perform, Persuade, Psy-
chotherapy, Science (any), Technical (Computer Use), and one Physical skill (if involved in athletics).

Ten Men
A vigilante group of ten individuals that helps fight back against Punktown’s rampant crime.
Wealth Modifier: -1
Skills: Climb, Hide, Listen, Navigate, Spot, Stealth, Track, and three of the following as appropriate
to setting and concept: Drive, Firearms (any), First Aid, Grapple, Insight, Knowledge (Region or
Group), Language (Other), Martial Arts, Melee Weapon (any), Missile Weapon (any), Pilot (any),
Status, or Technical (Computer Use).

Theta Researcher
The Earth colonial government commissions and funds Theta researchers to explore other dimensions to
study the trace-energies of “dead” humans and humanoids. Theta researchers are akin to astronauts in this
fashion, as they wear spacesuits to protect them from hostile environments.
Wealth Modifier: +1. Theta researchers begin play with a pistol.
Skills: Climb, Language (Other), Language
(Own), Persuade, Research, Spot, and four
of the following: Knowledge (Anthropology,
Group, History, Natural World, or Region),
Drive, Fast Talk, Firearm (Pistol, Revolver,
or Rifle), Navigate, Pilot (Aircraft or Boat),
Ride, Science (Geology), Swim, or Track.

Union Worker
After the riots that caused the Union War,
all Earth-operated colonies on Oasis are re-
quired by the Paxton Labor Organization
to enforce the mandate that in every plant
and factory, every institution of manufac-
ture, the robots and fully automated pro-
cesses do not outnumber the amount of
blue collar workers, except where condi-
tions are too dangerous. Economics means
that in some cases it makes more sense to
have the union members play cards and
sleep than put them on the shop floor.
Wealth Modifier: None.
Skills: Climb, Craft (any), Drive, Brawl,
Grapple, Heavy Machine, and four others,
as appropriate to setting: Appraise, Fine
Manipulation, Language (Other), Repair
(Mechanical), Repair (Structural), Literacy
or Technical (Computer Use).
46
 Chapter Four:
PUNKTOWN

Powers
They worshipped the Old Ones. And worse than that, these idiots were trying to pick the locks on their cells. Open the
gates and the windows. In every way they could. Chants, rituals. It’s always been said that the Old Ones would return
when ‘the stars were right’. That means, when the conditions of space and time were optimum for them to break free of
the prisons the Elder Gods left them in. ‘In strange eons’, the dead gods are supposed to be resurrected. Well, it’s time,
Johnny. The stars are right. The strange eons are now.
—T he B ones of the O ld O nes

Punktown contains just about every form of supernatu- When a demon is bound, the sorcerer can control its
ral phenomena. Mutations are rampant, some of whom actions. If the roll fails, the demon possesses the caster.
are psychic. Cultists practice sorcery in dark corners of
Punktown while Ha Jiin clerics use psychic powers to The distinction between the two types of modes must be
control animals and unleash psychic screams. Magic, carefully tracked and if the chant is read from the same
however, is rare in Punktown, and the few spells known source (a book or disc) every chant counts as a summon-
by casters are used only in dire emergencies. Like most ing. This means that if a new owner comes into posses-
things in Punktown, power comes with its own price. sion of a particular chant, it’s possible to have a summon-
Punktown sorcerers have access to a full range of spells, ing already partially prepared. Experienced casters know
including those in Basic Role-Playing and Call of Cthul- to cast the Descending Mode completely before begin-
hu. Depending on the rules system you use, Punktown ning any new spell, just in case. Inexperienced casters can
casters may have access to their spell lists. Due to their inadvertently open themselves up to possession.
resistance to the sanity-draining effects of spells, most
Punktowners do not suffer SAN loss from casting spells. Possessed casters transform into a massive, corpulent
For more information about SAN resistance, see Sanity mass of fat and muscle. The caster gains 1 point of Size
in Punktown in Chapter Two: Gamemastering. per day, expanding like an inflated balloon filled with a
gooey gray liquid, even in death. In this fashion, it’s pos-
Sorcery sible for a priestess’ corpse to fill an entire room. This
Ascending Mode growth continues until the priestess reaches a certain
Range: Self, Sight size, whereupon she bursts, spreading 1d10 of imma-
ture forms of Ugghiutu’s spawn. Priestesses at the end of
Ascending mode summons a demon, but it’s possible to
only read the first half of the chant to simply converse their life cycle seek out a body of water before bursting so
with a demon. It takes 1D8 hours to perform correctly. that their spawn may have a chance at survival.
Unlike other sorcery spells, summoning a demon costs Each cast of this spell costs 1D3 SAN.
9 power points, paid when the demon appears.
To conjure a demon to do the caster’s bidding, the read- Power Points
er reads the entire Ascending Mode. The chant sounds
Power points represent the amount of willpower or
like a person reciting backwards gibberish through a
half-functional throat. energy your character has to fuel magic spells, muta-
tions, and psychic abilities. The Power characteristic is
Binding a demon for a period of service costs the sor- your character’s maximum power points. When your
cerer 1 point of permanent POW (not power points),
character reaches zero power points, he or she falls
or 3 points of permanent POW to permanently bind the
demon into an object. To attempt to bind a demon, the unconscious. Spent power points regenerate at a rate
sorcerer must roll POW (before the permanent POW of 1 per hour of sleep or total rest, or 1 for every two
loss) vs. the demon’s POW in a resistance roll. If suc- hours of normal activity. See BRP for more details.
cessful, the sorcerer now owns his or her own demon.
47
Descending Mode
Descending Mode banishes a summoned demon.
Reading the first half of the banishing chant closes
the window between worlds if half of the Ascending
Mode was previously invoked. Descending Mode
sounds like Ascending Mode spoken backwards.
The sorcerer can dismiss a demon at any time by
eliminating the binding, which takes 1D6 min-
utes, and costs no power points.
Doors Upon Doors
This spell blocks, redirects, or reroutes the path-
ways of dangerous energies that might gain access
through a dwelling’s primary entrance. It essen-
tially allows the caster to now guard an entrance
so that she is instantly aware of an intruder.
An area up to 15 meters in diameter is warded,
giving the caster instant knowledge when a hos-
tile force passes through the designated opening.
Once the spell is cast, it is ready to go but does
not actually activate until the line is crossed. No
further effort is required to maintain the spell. It
costs 3 power points to cast.
Line Travel
The caster draws a black web of lines and angles
in the corner of the room to create a portal, al-
lowing the caster to travel between dimensions,
a disorienting and dangerous experience. Within
this other dimension, it is possible to sense other dimensional creatures like Hounds. The caster must
both navigate to a memorized location and avoid staying too long lest he be overwhelmed by the
natural denizens, which take the form of black leech-like lampreys with flippered tails. These blood-
sucking beasts swarm the caster in the other dimension after a few rounds, draining his blood and
weakening him until he is so disoriented that he perishes between dimensions.
For each power point spent, the sorcerer may instantaneously teleport 1 SIZ point from his or her
current location to another place within range of the power. For a living target, the opposing force is
the target’s current power point total. A willing target does not require a resistance roll. Line Travel
does not need a targeting roll and can be used on anything within range. A failed defensive resistance
roll inflicts 3D6 points of damage.
Each casting of this spell costs 1D3 SAN.

Mutations
Punktown’s populace is riddled with mutations of every deformity, corresponding to every cruel
whim of nature, distorted through radiation and pollution. Tin Town, a Punktown slum, contains the
highest concentration of mutants, although mutants can be found everywhere begging for change.
Average mutants that are found on the street are considered “normal” mutants. The Gamemaster
rolls D100 twice on the Random Mutations chart. Each mutation is minor, unless he rolls the same
result twice—in this case, it is major.
Player characters may pick a number of mutations equal to 1/4 their character’s initial CON charac-
teristic (rounded up), with a minimum of 2. Major mutations count as 2, and major mutations can
only be picked twice if the Gamemaster allows it. Players can take adverse mutations to increase the
number of beneficial choices at a rate of one to one. Players cannot take more adverse mutations than
1/4 their character’s initial CON.
See the Basic Role-Playing rulebook for more information about mutations listed here.
At the Gamemaster’s discretion, the player can pick his character’s mutations instead of rolling randomly.
48
 Caro Turbida
PUNKTOWN Multiple Faces
A mutant with caro turbida, which means “disordered” The mutant possesses 1d4 additional faces of various sizes.
or “confused” flesh, may take on the features of whatever Each face bestows a +10% bonus to Spot and Listen
humanoid he is observing, regardless of gender and race. skills per functional head. As a major mutation, the mu-
The mutant can only take on features that are roughly
tant receives an additional 1d4 faces.
within his own form or mass — a human mutant cannot
take on features of a Tikkihotto, for example. This mu- Sonic Blast
tation can take effect involuntarily if the mutant is par- In combat, the mutant can create a cacophony of pain-
ticularly excited, passionate, or distracted. Some mutants ful sound energy.
keep pictures of their true selves with them at all times to
A successful Agility roll opposed by the target’s CON
transform back into their baseline form; conversely, mu-
on the resistance table is required to hit leaving the tar-
tants who wish to become a specific person must study
get stunned for 1D3 rounds if successful.
the person’s features for a few minutes or so. The change
is gradual and noticeable, but once complete it is very As a major mutation, all of the target’s Listen checks be-
difficult to detect. Less scrupulous mutants sell this ser- come temporarily impossible and any mental skill checks
vice as a particularly flexible form of prostitution. are Difficult for the duration of the stunned state. Each
As a minor mutation, the mutant receives a +20% bonus use of this mutation costs 1 power point.
to the Disguise skill. As a major mutation, the mutant Spider Form
receives a +40% bonus to the Disguise skill. This sickly mutation severely modifies the mutant’s
Dimensional Folding form. Cadaverously thin, the mutant’s strangely bent
The mutant can transform any object into essentially a two stick limbs each have two extra joints, and their too-
dimensional photograph, which he then picks up with as- long fingers are super-normally jointed, as well. A
tral hands, which in turn fold it again and again, making wispy-haired head waves like that of a cobra atop a slen-
it smaller and tighter until it is no larger than a pill, then der neck twice as long as it should be.
pressed against the navel of his mind, like an orifice situ- As a minor mutation, the mutant receives a +20% bonus
ated in the front of his brain. It remains in extradimension- to Dodge. As a major mutation, the mutant receives a
al space until retrieved, using the same technique– astral
+40% to Dodge.
hands pluck out the pill and unfold it into reality.
If the target is affixed to something or does not wish to be Telepathy
transported, the mutant must successfully overcome the This form of telepathy is actually a mutation, evidenced
item’s hit points (or armor value) vs. his or her POW on by purple veins at the temples, which throb when the
the resistance table. For a living target, the opposing force power is actively used. The power doesn’t let the mu-
is the target’s current POW total. Dimensional Folding tant read minds so much as sense them. The mutant can
does not need a targeting roll and can be used on anything catch bits of peoples’ thoughts, which come through as
within range. A fumbled defensive resistance roll with this static. In stressful situations a mutant may sometimes
power causes the object to stick – objects can be folded involuntarily transmit their thoughts, leading people to
into the space but not withdrawn unless the mutant can hear their thoughts as well. The mutant can detect pow-
spend the points and make a successful Luck roll. Dimen- erful emotions, as well as the presence of encephalons
sional Folding is potentially lethal to living beings, who and any bio-engineered being with a brain. Semi-me-
take 3D6 points of damage and the Gamemaster rolls on chanical beings are detectable as “bugs making sounds.”
the Major Wound table to determine a likely effect for this When attempting to read a target’s mind, the mutant
level of trauma, adapting the result as appropriate. must defeat the target in a power point vs. power point
The item or person stays there indefinitely, in a state of conflict on the resistance table, after which he or she has
stasis, never rotting or aging. The death of the mutant access to the target’s memories and current thoughts
causes all stored items to reappear in front of the corpse. for one full combat round. No roll is required on a will-
Dimensional Folding costs 1 power point per SIZ ing target, but a new roll is required for each round the
of the object. mutant wishes to use Telepathy on an unwilling target.
Fish Mutant Successful use of Telepathy allows the mutant to per-
Fish mutants have no hair and almost translucent gray form one of the following actions:
flesh with squiggles of big black veins under it. They • Detect a target’s powerful emotion (rage, fear,
have silver, lidless eyes, no nose, wide mouths, almost love, etc.).
as wide as a native Choom’s, with slick black lips, and • Pass along a simple message to the character, in-
pinkish, lacy gills on either side of the neck. cluding instilling in the target’s mind a memory
Mutants with this minor mutation can breathe both air or mental image of some event, place, object,
and water. With a major mutation, the mutant receives or person.
a +40% bonus to the Swim skill. • Read the surface thoughts and feelings of a target.
49
Random Mutations
Roll Mutation Description
01-03 Adaptability Survival in unusual environments.
04-05 Allergy Skills reduced by contact to an allergen.
06-09 Biped If two-legged, forced to walk (Quadruped) four-legged.
10-12 Camouflage Skin has a concealing texture or color.
13 Caro Turbida Increases Disguise skill
14-15 Coloration Unusual coloration (minor only).
16-19 Congenital Disease Suffers from a debilitating disease.
20-22 Decreased Characteristic Characteristic decreased.
23 Dimensional Folding Teleport objects into an extradimensional space
24-25 Disease Carrier Carries (but is immune to) an infectious disease.
26-27 Fish Mutant Fish-like characteristics give a Swim bonus.
28-29 Group Intelligence Part of a hive mind.
30 Hands Has extra hands or prehensile limb.
31-33 Hardy Resistant to damage.
34-36 Hybrid Has an animalistic trait.
37-44 Increased Characteristic Characteristic increased.
45-48 Keen Sense Has one or more sharp senses.
49-50 Luminescence Emits a light from body.
51-53 Metabolic Improvement Has a beneficial but unusual metabolism.
54-57 Metabolic Weakness Has a disadvantageous and unusual metabolism.
58 Multiple Faces Has more than one face.
59-60 Natural Armor Has natural armor (scales, horn, hide, etc.).
61-65 Natural Weapon Has natural weapon (spine, claw, teeth, etc.)
66-67 Pain Sensitivity Low resistance to pain.
68 Pheromone Emits chemicals that can affect others.
69-70 Reduced Sense Impaired or missing primary sense.
71-72 Regeneration Able to heal rapidly.
73-74 Sensitivity Has an unusual affinity for a substance.
75 Sonic Blast Release a stunning blast.
76 Speech (Mimicry) Can imitate animal noises, or speak clearly.
77-78 Spider Form Has a double-jointed body form.
79-81 Structural Improvement Has an unusual and beneficial body form.
82-84 Structural Weakness Has an unusual and disadvantageous body form.
85-86 Telepath Can read minds and emotions.
87-89 Venom Emits a natural poison.
90 Wings Has wings and can glide or fly.
91-00 Gamemaster or player’s choice Pick or roll again.

Once established, Telepathy can be maintained by spending 1 power points. In addition, coordinating
multiple simultaneous Telepathic activities requires an Idea roll for each additional target beyond the
first. While the actions taken need not be the same, only a single Idea roll is required for similar actions.
At the beginning of each subsequent combat round following the first successful use of Telepathy, the target
may attempt a new resistance roll of his or her POW vs. the mutant’s POW. Success ends the telepathic con-
nection and with a successful Idea roll the target also knows that he or she was in telepathic contact with the
mutant. A special or critical success on this roll reveals the identity of the mutant. Failing the Idea roll leaves
the target with a sense of some strange mental state, but otherwise unaware of the telepathic contact.
Activating Telepathy costs 1 power point or 1 power point per 3 points of the target’s POW (divide
POW by three, rounded up).
50
 Random Diseases
PUNKTOWN
Roll Disease Description
01-15 Garland Garland Syndrome is a terrible disease that mutates absolutely beyond recognition anyone infected
Syndrome within two weeks. Victims who succumb to it slip into a coma and end more fungus than man. It
inflicts 1 hit point and 1 APP per day.
16-30 M-670 M-670 is a highly communicable sexually transmitted disease that is resistant to treatment. It is
spread through body fluids. It takes hold fast, incorporates itself into the genetic material of the
victim, and essentially becomes part of its host. It inflicts 1 hit point and 1 CON per day
31-45 Orb Weaver Orb weavers are curious tumors that first appeared on the planet Anul and can grow anywhere on the
body. The tumor enlarges into a pink sphere, which grows larger and heavier with time. The sphere is
always pink, swirled with white, and glossy as if made from marble. Victims only grow one, but it is
always terminal – the sphere cannot be excised because its nerve filaments spread widely throughout
the body, like intricately interwoven ivy through the body’s nervous system on a microscopic level.
To sever the parasite at the base kills a live host. It inflicts 1 hit point and 1 DEX per day.
46-60 The Puzzle The Puzzle causes thyroid dysfunction, hair loss, liver damage, and epidermal crystallization. Layer
upon layer of a victim’s skin hardens into a glistening exoskeleton. Doctors must drill through it to
insert a breathing tube and run another to administer fluids. Over a matter of weeks the petrified skin
cracks into jigsaw-piece shapes and flakes off, exposing the muscle beneath. It is treated with skin
replacement, but the results are imperfect. It inflicts 1 hit point and 1 CON per day.
61-75 Sinan STD A very potent STD. It performs similarly to M-670. Once it goes full-blown it has a one hundred
percent death rate, turning a person’s brain to mush like spongiform encephalopathy. It inflicts 1 hit
point and 1 INT per day.
76-00 Earth disease Varies.

Random Drugs
Roll Drug Description Effect
01-10 Anodyne Gas Anodyne gas is sprayed into the back of the throat. Anodyne gas leaves Speed of Effect: 1 combat
the user insensate, such that addicts often urinate themselves without round, POT: 15, Symp-
realizing it. toms: APP bonus/damage
11-20 Beetle This large beetle embeds in the chest like a lacquered chest plate. Two Speed of Effect: 1-15 min-
thin tendrils run from the creature’s armor into the user’s (usually utes, POT: 20, Symptoms:
blood-crusted) nostrils. STR bonus/damage
21-30 Buzzer Buzzers are produced by the Nuts robot gang as a form of illegal Speed of Effect: 1 combat
income. They can be hidden in an organic being’s pocket, transmit- round, POT: 15, Symp-
ting signals to an adhesive backed disk affixed to the wearer’s temple toms: CHA bonus/dam-
(these disks coming in a variety of flesh colors to blend in). The age
buzzer device, via this disk, then broadcasts pleasure to the brain.
There are various settings for intensity, and various species of buzzer
– some inspiring wondrous hallucinations, some heightening sexual
pleasure, some (often worn by street gangs) triggering an exciting lust
for violence.
31-40 Fish Addicts of the drug “fish” deteriorate, their whole bodies shrinking but Speed of Effect: 2-8 days,
their arms and legs – mere sticks – lengthening, the skin goes purple- POT: 7, Symptoms: SIZ
black until they end up looking like mummified gibbons, and little bonus/damage
larger than that.
41-50 Gold Dust Gold dust heightens the senses and is used by psychics to keep them Speed of Effect: 1 combat
sharp. round, POT: 25, Symp-
toms: POW bonus/dam-
age
51-60 Kaleidoscope Oasis’ human-footed shrimp can impart properties beyond the aph- Speed of Effect: 1 combat
rodisiacal. A cousin to the breed used by Vietnamese cooks is used by round, POT: 20, Symp-
drug peddlers as the main ingredient in the hallucinogenic nicknamed toms: INT bonus/damage
“kaleidoscopes.”
61-70 Purple Vortex A drug that is inhaled which causes hallucinations and, with prolonged Speed of Effect: 2-8 days,
use, caves the addict’s face in. The edges of the addict’s gaping hole of POT: 20, Symptoms:
a face glow violet, thus the name. It is manufactured by the Coleopter- CON bonus/damage
oids, who consume humanoid souls on another plane of existence and
then excrete them as gas. This gas is in turn manufactured into a drug
by the Lobu.
71-80 Seaweed Similar to earth’s marijuana, Seaweed is also called iodine, smoked in Speed of Effect: 1 combat
pipes. round, POT: 10, Symp-
toms: INT bonus/damage
81-00 Earth Drug Any of a number of typical earth drugs, including cocaine and mari- Variable
juana.

51
DRUGS
All drugs have a potency value (POT) that is matched against the CON of a drugged character. If
the drug overcomes a character’s CON then the character takes full POT in damage to the listed
characteristic. If the drug does not overcome the character’s CON, the characteristic benefits from a
half POT bonus instead. Buying drugs is cheap for new users, scaling upwards once the character is
addicted, ranging from 1D10 x 100 munits to 1D10 x 1,000 munits. Dealer relationships, threats of
violence, and extortion all effect the final price and are subject to change with each interaction.

52
 Chapter Five:
PUNKTOWN

Equipment
Fashion in Punktown moves quickly, with almost no
distinction between teen fashion and that of adults; the Restricted Items
latest fashion, for example, is to open a flap on the rear Restricted equipment (denoted by “Res” on each
of tight sweatpants. Most teenagers wear underwear, table) is illegal to purchase normally and is only avail-
while the more daring wear nothing. able through the black market or military contacts.
Stages for a purchase include finding a seller, nego-
Day to day expenses for living in Punktown range from tiating a price, exchanging munits for goods, and
250 munits/week for a flat in a dangerous neighbor- getting away safely. Forcers may intervene, or the
hood to 1,000 munits/week for something in an upper- seller may try to rob or murderer the purchaser. The
class neighborhood. Houses can be rented at 20,000 black market is a highly variable place, so costs are
munits/year, depending on location; homeownership determined randomly, modified by the purchaser’s
spirals from 300,000 to millions of munits. The average negotiating skills and the Gamemaster’s discretion.
meal costs about 5 munits for breakfast, 10 for lunch,
and 20 for dinner. All costs are at the Gamemaster’s
Encephalon
Cephalon Corporation are one of the main manufactur-
discretion and the character’s skill. For a quick and easy
ers of encephalon bio-computers, genetically engineered
rule regarding other expenses, take the modern day brains that look like convoluted grayish brain tissue inside
equivalent in dollars and convert it directly to munits. a green solution. Encephalons are commonly squashed
into rectangular, vertically positioned four foot-by-two
General Equipment foot-by-six inch deep containers, with wires snaking out
Equipment Cost of the mass and wavering like plants. While they are often
used to power and control large structures, even cities,
Barrier Res (1D6 * 1,000) small, individual encephalons form the minds of certain
Encephalon 100,000 robot models. Encephalons provide robots and comput-
Friendly Flesh 5,000/hp healed ers with both INT and POW, since there is actually living
meat housed within the metal.
Nanomites Res (1D6 * 10,000)
Nightvision Gog- 500 Friendly Flesh
gles Friendly Flesh is a new, inexpensive concept in cell re-
Skeleton Card Res (1D6 * 1,000) generation that doesn’t require necessarily hospitaliza-
Ultranet Pod 100 tion, or intense cloning. The recipient’s body is scanned
as for a teleportation record, forming the cellular blue-
X-Ray Helmet Res (1D6 * 5,000) print. In conjunction with pills taken daily, rapid cell re-
generation kicks in upon injury. The cellular blueprint,
Barrier which is on file at a specially equipped participating hos-
Barriers carry a stunning charge, but during a condition or- pital, is alerted by the activity of the regenerative drug
and transmits its blueprint information to the drug’s
ange—an alert to possible aggression—these force barriers
‘memory.’ Traditional cloning takes a week or so, but
deliver a considerable shock to anyone in contact with it. Friendly Flesh reduces it to merely a day. Friendly Flesh
When created, the barrier is 1 square meter per COST heals 1 hit point for every minute of game time.
of the barrier, predetermined along the dimensions of Nanomites
width, height, and length. A barrier has 30 hit points Originally used for emergency surgical purposes in war-
against attempts to destroy it. Each additional COST time, nanomites are a silvery substance, made on a micro-
added to the barrier (extra to those defining its size) scopic level of insect/machine hybrids. They can be used
adds 30 hit points to its hit point total. for a variety of purposes: to temporarily relieve pain (+10
53
HP), to regenerate tissue (1 HP/round), or to even meld flesh (+10% Dis-
guise). They can also be used for a darker purpose as a means of torture, caus-
ing the nanomites to attack a victim’s nervous system. This particular method
of torture is very difficult to detect and inflicts 1 SAN per torture session.

Nightvision Goggles
These black rubber goggles have dark red lenses and a knob on the frame allows
the wearer to see in darkness. A keypad on the goggles amplifies light, and an-
other tap of the keys projects a purple ray from a tiny lens on the goggles, with a
notched wheel set into the goggles that increases the intensity of the ray until it
turns a nonluminous black, acting as a sort of pointer. Thieves use this technol-
ogy to depress security keypads through windows.
The goggles can see 15 meters in absolute darkness, despite the absence of light.
Using the goggles cancels any negative modifiers to the Spot or combat skills
due to darkness. The wearer cannot automatically discern between terrain fea-
tures and living beings, however, and color detection is impossible.

Skeleton Card
A blank data card impregnated with hundreds of thousands of randomly
generated key codes, used for illegal entry. It provides a +15% bonus to
Technical (Electronic Security).

Ultranet Pod
Acting as a wireless interface to the ultranet, these pods are complementary
to cybernetic ultranet jacks.

X-ray Helmet
These helmets allow the wearer to see through 30cm building walls, blocked only by special high-
density shielding, for a range of 15 meters.

Weapons
Weapons are common enough that just about anyone living in Punktown carries a gun.
Each weapon has the following attributes:
Name: The common name for the type of weapon.
Skill: The skill used for this weapon.
Base: The base chance to use the weapon.
Dmg: The damage done by the weapon. +db indicates damage bonus, and +½db is half the
normal damage bonus.
Attk: How many attacks-per-round does the weapon allow?
Special: What type of special success does the weapon do?
Rng: The basic range of the weapon. At the weapon’s basic range, the skill chance is unmodi-
fied. At medium range (double the basic range), the chance becomes Difficult, and at long
range (four times basic range) it becomes ¼ the normal skill chance.
Hands: How many hands does the weapon require? 1H = one-handed, 2H = two-handed.
HP: The weapon’s hit points.
Parry: Can the weapon be used to parry?
Mal: The weapon will malfunction if this is rolled. See “Malfunction” on page 60. If the weapon
is not a firearm, the malfunction is some other mishap preventing immediate reuse of the weapon.
Ammo: How many times can the weapon be used without being reloaded or recharged?
Value: What is an average weapon’s cost in an appropriate setting?
STR/DEX: What are the minimum STR and DEX required to use the weapon?
SIZ/ENC: The weapon’s SIZ and Encumbrance value.
54
 Assassin Rifle
PUNKTOWN Black Crystal
If you can see your target on the other side of a computer This tubular black weapon fires a black crystal bullet, which
monitor — either in a vid call or via security camera — upon on contact with flesh immediately branches out, multi-
this special ray rifle can strike them with a deadly beam plying its mass in black obsidian spears. A terrible way to die.
of dark purple light. These rifles are also capable of
firing right through any clear surface, such as a window.
Darwin
Touted as “the height of firearms evolution”, this pric-
Assault Engine ey weapon has several features, including an optional
Assault engines are bulky but fairly lightweight weapons silent mode.
that can fire a number of different solid projectiles in ful-
ly automatic mode, shotgun shells from another muzzle Decimator
(1D6-4D6 damage as a shotgun), gel capsules filled with Decimators are glossy black ceramic revolvers ranging from
corrosive plasma, a variety of beams (2D8 damage), and .220 caliber up to the powerful, cannon-like .340. The .340
even mini-rockets (as 3D6 knockback damage). has an eight-inch barrel and a translucent grip of red plastic.
Weapon Skill Base Damage Attack Special Range Hands HP Parry STR/DEX Mal Ammo Cost SIZ/ENC

Assassin Rifle, Energy 15% 2D8 2 Impale 100 2H 20 No 7/7 99-00 20 2500 1.5

Assault Engine Rifle, Energy 25% 2D6+2* 2/burst Impale 90 2H 12 No 10/5 00 30 3000 4.0

Black Crystal Other 05% 2D6 1 Crystal 25 1H 6 No 10/8 93-00 6 3000 1.0

Darwin .55 Pistol 20% 1D8+2 2 Impale 20 1H 8 No 7/5 98-00 12 400 1.0

Decimator .220 Pistol 20% 1D6 2 Impale 15 1H 10 No 5/5 00 6 190 0.7

Decimator .300 Pistol 20% 1D8 1 Impale 25 1H 12 No 7/5 00 6 200 1.0

Decimator .340 Pistol 20% 1D10+2 1 Impale 20 1H 14 No 11/5 00 6 300 1.5

E-ikko Axe 15% 1D8+2+DB 1 Bleed Med 1H 15 Yes 9/9 - - 10 1.0

Explosive Clay Demolition - 6D6/3 m - Knockback 21 - 15 No - 99-00 - 3000 1.0

Gray Pistol, Energy 20% 1D8 3 Impale 20 1H 5 No 5/5 00 12 350 0.3

Green Pistol, Energy 15% 1D8+2 2 Impale 15 1H 14 No 7/5 99-00 30 400 1.0

Implode-Injector Other Brawl 3D6 1 Impale Shrt 1H 7 No 5/7 97-00 10 3000 1.0

Imp Spray Other 25% 1D4 vs. imps 1 - 2 1H 2 No 3/7 91-00 6 10 0.2

Katana Sword 15% 1D10+1 +DB 1 Bleed Med 1H/2H 15 Yes 11/11 99-00 - 300 1.5

Laser Knife Dagger 25% 2D4+2+DB 1 Bleed Shrt 1H 16 Yes 7/7 99-00 - 30 0.5

Machinegun Turret Artillery 05% 4D6+4 Brst Impale 200 - 48 No - 98-00 1,000 Res 36

Missile Turret Artillery 01% 8D6+8/2m Brst Impale 1,200 - 36 No - 00 100 Res 44

Osprey .00 Pistol, Energy 05% 3D4+1 1 - 10 1H 12 No 7/5 96-00 30 650 1.0

Shock Turret Artillery 10% 6D6 1/2 Knockback 40 - 24 No - 97-00 Unlimit Res 32

Shotgun,
Shotgun 30 4D6/2D6/1D6 1 or 2 Impaling 10/20/50 2H 14 No 11/5 00 8 100 4.0
Automatic

Shotgun,
Shotgun 30 4D6/2D6/1D6 1 or 2 Impaling 10/20/50 2H 12 No 9/5 00 2 75 3.5
Double-Barreled

Shotgun,
Shotgun 30 4D6/1D6 1 or 2 Impaling 5/20/- 1H 14 No 9/5 00 1 or 2 50 2.0
Sawn-Off

Sinon Gas Grenade Throw 4D6/4m 1 Knockback Thrown 1H 6 No 5/5 99-00 - 100 0.7

Res (1D6 x
Sonic Turret Artillery 05% 4D6 1/2 Stun 40 - 24 No - 96-00 Unlimit 32
2000)

Stun-Beam Pistol, Energy 25% 2D6 Stun 1 Knockback 15 1H 16 No 5/5 00 12 200 1.0

Stun Wand Other Brawl 2D6 Stun 1 Knockback Shrt 1H 7 Yes 5/7 97-00 - 400 1.0

Submachinegun Sub. Gun 15 1D8 2/burst Impaling 40 1H/2H 8 No 9/6 98-00 32 750 2.0

Res (1D6 x
Tank Gun Artillery 01% 15D6+4/4 m 1 Crush 9,000 - 36 No - 00 1 28
9000)

Thor .86 Pistol 20% 1D6 3 Impale 10 1H 6 No 5/5 00 8 55 0.7

Thor .93 Pistol 20% 1D8 2 Impale 20 1H 8 No 7/5 98-00 12 200 1.0

Tikkihotto Dag-
Dagger 25% 1D4+DB 1 Impale Shrt 1H 15 Yes 4/4 - - 15 0.5
ger

Vlessi Axe Axe 15% 2D6+2+DB 1 Bleed Med 2H 15 Yes 11/9 - - 20 2.0

Wolff .45 Pistol 20% 1D10+2 1 Impale 15 1H 8 No 11/7 00 8 300 1.5

Woman’s Gun Pistol 20 1D6 1 Impale 3 1H 5 No 5/5 00 12 55 0.3

55
 Imps
Imps are audio and holographic images that interact with the real world, most popularly used as a
form of persistent advertising that relentlessly pursues targets up to a certain distance. The legend-
ary Screaming Pink Nazis cereal is the best example, which releases ten miniature soldiers that can
be shot with a SPANK (Screaming Pink Automatic Nazi Killer) gun, sold separately.
A more sinister use of imps is for pornographic purposes in which a voyeur’s wildest fantasy is
fulfilled. Simulators provide the other senses – taste, touch, scent – as appropriate.
Imps have Dodge 50%, 1D6 hit points and the possibility of SAN loss depending on their appear-
ance and function.

E-ikko
This colorful, traditional Tikkihotto axe is the in-vogue hand-to-hand combat weapon for gangs.
Explosive Clay
This green explosive compound is a “smart material” which can be programmed in a number of ways.
The primitive mind incorporated into its very substance is receptive to signals transmitted from a remote
detonator, and allows different chunks to be detonated individually, like grenades if thrown, or, all at once.
Gray
These odd, pale glossy gray handguns are less known for their stopping power than their ability to go
undetected. This illegal and expensive weapon’s composition uses metamaterials to screen itself from
weapons scanners.
Green
Green pistols are blasters that utilize a beam that can pass through a screen as sunlight passes through
a window pane.
Implode-Injector
Implode-injectors are bulky syringe-like pistols that resemble vaccine guns. They fire implosive de-
vices into a target’s body at point-blank range.
Imp Spray
When advertising imps become too annoying, imp spray drives them off.
Katana
Katanas are wielded by Ramon and Kodju, which ensures that imitators strive to live up to the
weapon’s fearsome reputation by wearing it openly on their backs, usually with a black trench coat.
Genuine katanas are rare family heirlooms that fetch a high price on the black market.
Laser Knife
This utility knife, made by Guzman Hardware, gained some notoriety when two seven year old girls
used it behind their school during second recess to kill a classmate they didn’t like.
Machinegun Turret
Standard armament for Harbingers and tanks. See “Vehicles” on page 69 for more details.
Missile Turret
Standard armament for Harbingers. See “Vehicles” on page 69 for more details.
Osprey
The sleek, silvery Osprey fires solid .00 projectiles available to Forcers only—except when bought on
the black market. Exploding when they strike a body, these devastating projectiles are not large and
the Osprey carries thirty of the small pellets in its handle cartridge.
Shock Turret
Specialized armament for tanks using non-lethal forces. See “Vehicles” on page 69 for more details.
56
 Shotgun
PUNKTOWN tols come in a variety of bright colors, easy to find in
All three types of shotguns do damage by range. The a pocketbook in a dark parking lot or apartment, or
first increment is the first damage dice, the second is softer aesthetically appealing colors to make the weap-
the second, etc. Sawed-off shotguns are not effective ons seem less intimidating.
beyond 20 yards.
Ammunition
Sinon Gas Ammunition Dmg db Special Cost
The byproduct of Sinanese mummification is more than Inflicts normal damage
just the material used for interdimensional transporta- Plasma, Blue D10 +2 50 for 50 shots
vs. non-organic
tion; it’s a highly volatile gas. Appearing as a blue haze, Disintegrates destroyed/
Plasma, Green D10 +3 60 for 50 shots
the extent of the gas has a lot to do with the age of the killed target
corpses stocked in Sinan tunnels—thin, attenuated mist Plasma, Red D10 +1 None 40 for 50 shots
if the remains are old, lusty and dense clouds if the more Shot, Crystal D8 +1 None 30 for 50 shots
recently deceased are in residence—though very often, Shot, Lead - - None 20 for 50 shots
the dead are mixed together instead of segregated, fam- Inflicts disease, failing
200 for 10
ilies owning whole walls of niches so that they might AE Gel Caps - - a CON roll suffers 1
shots
bunk one day alongside their ancestors. CON/round
POT 15 poison that
100 for 10
Stun Wand Tranquilizer - - causes unconsciousness
shots
A telescoping stun wand that can be adjusted to a lethal in 1 combat round
setting.
Plasma, Blue
Stun-Beam 20-20 Contained in gel-cap like bullets, blue plasma is stron-
Stun-Beam 20-20 resembles a .25 automatic, but only ger than red but only eats organic surfaces, like flesh,
fires pale yellow stun rays. The worst it can do is put an though the projectile penetrates cloth to get to the flesh.
eye out, if fired at close range.
Blue plasma converts all damage dice to D10 and in-
Stun Turret flicts an additional +2 damage. Against non-organic be-
Specialized armament for tanks using non-lethal forces. ings (e.g., robots) it inflicts normal damage.
See “Vehicles” on page 69 for more details
Plasma, Green
Tank Gun Green eats anything — green can eat through a wall, or
Standard armament for tanks. See See “Vehicles” on a car, before it burns out. With a couple of green caps,
page 69 for more details. maybe even one good hit on a small body, it eats the
whole corpse.
Thor
A ceramic semiautomatic handgun, commonly black in Green plasma converts all damage dice to D10 and in-
color, the Thor .86 is a smaller version of the Thor .93, flicts an additional +3 damage.
holding thirty bullets in a staggered magazine or sixty
plasma capsules. Plasma, Red
Red eats a fairly small, limited hole before it stops dis-
Tikkihotto Dagger solving.
This traditional dagger has a long blade nearly as slim Red plasma converts all damage dice to D10 and inflicts
as a spike. an additional +1 damage.
Vlessi Axe Shot, Crystal
Vlessi shun projectile weapons, preferring instead to Most often fired from shotguns, crystal shot makes a
rely on their own interdimensional abilities to get them hole but then shatters against bone; it turns to shrapnel,
close enough to their targets to wield their signature and sends sharp dust all through the tissues, into the
war axe: a black metal tomahawk with a blade at one blood, where it is carried to the heart.
end of its head, a cruel spike at the other, the bottom of
the handle tapering into another, thinner spike. Crystal shot converts all damage dice to D8 and inflicts
an additional +1 damage.
Wolff
The Wolff is a solid semiautomatic pistol that’s consid- Shot, Lead
ered by gun enthusiasts to be big and ugly. Lead shot makes a big hole, but a hole can be sealed.
It’s the standard ammunition for most weapons.
Woman’s Gun
This short and chunky plastic compact semi-auto has a AE Gel Caps
magazine that can hold twelve tiny bullets. These pis- After penetrating a subject or even bursting against
57
them, these projectiles release autolytic enzymes that set into motion a rapid, devastating self-de-
struction of the body’s cells. They were used during the Blue War, but have since been banned due
to public outcry that it was excessively cruel to make an enemy die by swiftly rotting away. The good
thing about these bullets, though, is that the enzymes are always tailored to the particular race one
was engaging, so that an Earth human accidentally caught in the crossfire or shot by a stolen gun
loaded with such ammo does not suffer the same decomposition.
Targets struck by the gel caps contract a major disease upon contact, and failing a CON roll suffer
-1 CON/round.

Tranquilizer
Tranquilizer bullets work fast, but some beings are immune. Some punks take drugs that nullify the
effect, many people wear body armor, jackets with bullet and ray-proof mesh sewn in. The tranquil-
izer is a POT 15 drug that causes unconsciousness in 1 combat round.

Armor
Each type of armor has the following attributes:
Name: The common name for the type of armor.
AP: The amount the armor protects.
Burden: This describes the awkwardness or relative encumbrance of the armor. The game-
master may use this value with the optional fatigue system.
ENC: This value is for a character of average SIZ (11-15). For SIZ 6-10, multiply the ENC
value by .08; for SIZ 16-20 multiply the value by 1.2; for SIZ 21-25 multiply it by 1.4, etc.
Skill Modifier: This is a modifier to a number of your character’s skills while this armor is
worn. This modifier is applied to any listed skills (or skills within a category), and the game-
master may assign it to any other appropriate skill.
Fits SIZ: The amount of variance the armor SIZ will accommodate from its default SIZ,
expressed as a positive or negative number.
Time: How many combat rounds to put the armor on?
Locations: (Optional) If the optional hit location system is being used, what hit locations are
covered by the armor? If hit locations are being used, use the fixed armor protection value.
Value: What is the armor’s cost in an average setting?

Bulletproof Mesh
Bulletproof mesh is frequently woven into jackets and other clothing, which also makes the wearer
impervious to moderate ray blasts.
Padded Vest
A light but tough padded vest of body armor.
Plastic Vest
This bulky plastic vest wards off enemy projectiles, but has a lower rating against other attacks.

Name AP Burden ENC Skill Modifier Fits SIZ Time Location Cost
Bulletproof Mesh 6 Light 2.0 -5% Physical +/-1 1 All 350
Padded Vest 4 Moderate 11.0 -25% Physical +/-1 2 Chest 250
Plastic Vest 4/8 Light 8.0 -5% Physical +/-3 2 Chest 300

58
 stress of having their flesh replaced by machine. In some
Cybernetics
PUNKTOWN
cases, this is relatively low, but it all mounts up, and in a
While cybernetics are widely available in Paxton, but cy-
system where having a high Sanity helps your characters
bernetics, unlike some other games, do not define Punk-
town. This isn’t a game of chrome-covered cyborgs with stay alive, some might find getting upgrade after upgrade
stylish hair hacking each other to pieces. Cybernetics is really not worth the risk. Others might not care about
are available, however, and if the characters want them, the shortened career as an adventurer in Punktown, just
they’re available to purchase. Cybernetics also make room to be a cybernetic powerhouse for a while.
for some quite colorful NPCs. The Gamemaster shouldn’t
feel limited to the cybernetics on this list, and if they wish,
The Black Market
should create more. Also, should a character come up with Cybernetics is a thriving trade on the Black Market, but
an interesting cybernetic part or upgrade they want built, it’s probably best not ask where those fancy looking
the Gamemaster should allow it, with caution. ‘Zeiss Domingo’ eye implants came from, or why there
are bloodstains on the new chrome-plated arm you’re
Medicine being what it is in Punktown, there are nearly about to get fitted. Cybernetic parts purchased on the
no natural deformities. After a fire or accident there is no Black Market usually cost about half the price of their
need to remain crippled or scarred. The technology exists new, legitimate equivalents, but there is often another
to replace the majority of limbs. There is no need to go
price to pay for their purchase.
bald, become obese, or even shrivel up with age so quick-
ly. There are but two reasons why a Punktown citizen Rejection
isn’t improved in some way: poverty or pride. So whether Once a character has had a new part fitted for a few days,
by accident, mutation, or because the citizen just wants the player rolls Con x 5. With a failure their body has
to improve their body, there is a massive choice for up- rejected the cybernetic part, and they lose 1 Hit Point
grading, but also a massive cost, and not just in munits.
a day until it is (hopefully, professionally) removed. Hit
For every cybernetic part or upgrade fitted, maximum Points lost from this only begin to heal once the offend-
Sanity decreases as the user suffers the mental and physical ing piece of cybertech has been removed.

59
Malfunction
Since many Black Market cybernetic parts are often ripped from still-living victims, or at best, robbed
from graves, there is a chance there may be something wrong with them. In gaming terms, a character
with second-hand cybernetics makes a Luck roll after they have had the part fitted. Failure means the
cybernetic part is substandard or has other flaws. The Gamemaster should keep the result to himself,
however, and reveal the malfunction at an inopportune moment: legs giving out while running away
from an angry mob of Torgessi, for example, or switching on a pair of Infrared eyes just to have them
short out, leaving the character completely blind.

Repairing Cybernetic Parts

Cybernetic parts don’t heal naturally — they need to be repaired by a professional. If a location is not
apparent when a character suffers a loss of Hit Points, the Gamemaster should decide if any of those
points are from a cybernetic limb, and, whether it has completely stopped working or not. At a pinch,
a successful Repair (Electrical) roll could jury-rig a broken part, returning 1D3 Hit Points to the cy-
bernetic, much like the First Aid skill, provided that the person doing the repair has the tools and some
basic parts on hand. Otherwise, the cyber-wearing character needs to find a suitable repair outlet, which
repairs the limb at one tenth the original cost per Hit Point lost. Should all the Hit Points of a cyber-
netic replacement be lost, it completely stops functioning and must undergo major repairs at a fifth its
original cost per Hit Point lost, or have the entire unit replaced. Yes, this could mean repairing a piece
of cyberware could be more expensive than just getting a new one, but replacing a cybernetic device
once again runs the risk of malfunction, rejection, and the time needed to recuperate from the surgery.

Listing Convention
Listing conventions are as follows:
The type of replacement, limb/organ etc is listed first, followed by a description of that replacement.
The time it takes to perform the surgery and recuperation time follows, then the cost in munits and loss
of maximum Sanity for installation, followed by the starting armor rating and Hit Points of the item.
Next follows the upgrades available for the limb/organ, a description of each, and the time taken to
perform and the post-surgery recuperation time, followed by the cost in munits and loss of maximum
Sanity for installation.

Cybernetic Limbs
Hand
The standard cybernetic hand looks and functions like a hand, replacing one lost in an accident or otherwise,
granting the owner the exact same statistics the owner’s hand would normally have. Flesh-colored to match
the species it’s designed for, though other colors are available on request, it punches for 1D4 damage.
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1 week.
Cost: Free for veterans of the Blue War,
otherwise 10,000 Munits Cybernetic Hand Upgrades
Sanity cost for installation: 3 Points from Pre-built upgrades can be purchased by simply adding the munit cost
Maximum Sanity and, if applicable, the Sanity loss to the base unit. More than one
upgrade can be pre-built into the hand at the Gamemaster’s discretion.
Armor rating: 2
Hit Points: 5
Hand, Grip Strength
The starting cybernetic hand’s basic grip strength of 10 STR is enough to get almost anything done,
but for those wanting a hand like a literal steel vice to crush things or make sure whatever they grab
does not get away this is the upgrade for them. The four levels of strength upgrades improve the hand
in increments of 5 STR at a cumulative cost. So it would cost 12,000 munits for someone desiring a
bone-shattering handshake of 30 STR.
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Hour/None
Cost: 3,000 Munits per level
Sanity cost for installation: 0
60
 Hand, Removable
PUNKTOWN Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1D3 weeks
With a few turns, the cybernetic hand can be removed from Cost: Free for Blue War veterans otherwise 25,000
its housing. This type of upgrade is popular with people Munits per limb
who wish to replace the hand with something else, like Sanity cost for installation: 5 Points from Maximum
a weapon. This includes all the needed neural-connected Sanity per limb
ports to fire or operate the weapon. An adapted weapon, Armor rating: 5
that slots into the hand’s housing, is purchasable for 25% Hit Points: 15
above its original price. Chainsaws are popular with some,
more dangerous weapons with others. The cost of stub- Limb, Move Upgrade
mounted weapons is twice its original price. Only available in a pair, these cybernetic legs increase
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Hour/None the speed the owner can physically move, doubling
Cost: 5,000 Munits per hand their original Move statistic, their Jump distance, and
Sanity cost for installation: 1 Point from Maximum Sanity adding +30% to the Jump skill.
Note: The attached weapon has its own armor rating and Surgery/Recuperation Time: 12 Hours/1D4 Days
Hit Points based on what kind of weapon is attached. Cost: 20,000 Munits
Sanity cost for installation: 3 Points from Maximum Sanity
Hand, Claws
Popular with assassins and cosplay fanatics, a flick of the
wrist pops five razor-sharp, four-inch claws from the
ends of the users fingers, doing 1D8 + DB Damage to
Cybernetic Limb Upgrades
Pre-built upgrades for a cybernetic limb can be
a victim. The claws can come in any color desired for a
purchased by simply adding the munit cost and, if
more personal touch.
applicable, the Sanity loss to the base unit.
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/None
Cost: 5,000 Munits per hand
Sanity cost for installation: 0 Limb, Strength Upgrade
The basic starting strength of a cyber limb is 15 STR,
Hand, Concealed Laser but for those who want to punch through walls or to
Concealed in the forefinger is the equivalent of a ‘Green’ send foes flying for over forty feet with a kick, this up-
Energy Pistol with the trigger in the palm, turning the grade allows just that if they have the munits. The five
hand into an effective energy weapon favored by assas- levels of strength upgrades improve the limb in incre-
sins, which does 1D8 + 2 damage. For an extra 3,000 ments of 3 STR at a cumulative cost. So it would cost
munits, a neural trigger keeps the laser “hands free” firing them 25,000 munits for someone wanting to pack 30
at via the owner’s mind and therefore be “hands free.” points of STR behind their punch.
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/None Note: An arm’s bonus Strength only effects punches,
Cost: 5,000 Munits per hand grapples, hand held weapons and other feats of strength
Sanity cost for installation: 1 Points from Maximum Sanity where the arms are used, while the bonus to legs affects kicks.
Furthermore, the same STR bonus must be bought for both
arms to be fully functional, otherwise if used in two-handed
Hand, Taser tasks, only half of the bonus Strength is applied.
With the press of a button, the hand functions exact-
ly like a Stun Wand, causing 2D6 Stun damage and Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1D3 Days
Knockback to the victim. Handy for subduing a foe un- Cost: 5,000 Munits per level
awares, and practical jokes. Sanity cost for installation: 2 Points from Maximum
Sanity
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/None
Cost: 3,000 Munits per hand Limb, Pneumatic Rams
For those who really want to lay someone out (or kill
Sanity cost for installation: 1 Point from Maximum Sanity them outright) with a single punch or kick, a series of
pneumatic pistons installed to their cyber limb greatly
Cybernetic Limb increases their lethality. This hard-hitting system in-
The standard cybernetic limb looks and functions like a creases punch damage from a cybernetic arm to 1D8
regular limb, replacing one lost in an accident or oth- and the kick damage from a cybernetic leg to 1D10.
erwise, granting the owner the exact same statistics the This also grants each attack 1 point of Armor Penetra-
owner’s limb would usually have. A cybernetic arm tion, effectively making the armor rating of anything
comes with a cybernetic hand, a leg with a foot. Flesh- they strike 1 point less.
colored to match the species it is going to, thought Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1D2 Days
other colors are available on request. A punch from a Cost: 15,000 Munits
basic cyber arm does 1D6 damage, while a kick from a Sanity cost for installation: 2 Points from Maximum
cybernetic leg does 1D8. Sanity
61
 Type Time Cost Max SAN Loss AR HP

Cybernetic Limbs
Hand 1 Day/1 Week Free/10,000 3 2 5
Hand, Claw 1 Day/None 5,000 0 - -
Hand, Grip 1 Hour/None 3,000/Level 0 - -
Hand, Laser 1 Day/None 5,000 1 - -
Hand, Removable 1 Hour/None 5,000 1 - -
Hand, Taser 1 Day/None 5,000 1 - -
Limb 1 Day/1D3 Weeks Free/25,000 5 5 15
Limb, Move 12 hours/1D4 Days 20,000 3 - -
Limb, Pneumatic 1 Day/1D2 Days 15,000/Level 2 - -
Limb, Strength 1 Day/1D3 Days 5,000/Level 2 - -

Cybernetic Organs
Eye, Infrared 1 Day/None 15,000 2 - -
Eye, Mirrorshade 1 Day/None 2,000 None - -
Eye, Nightvision 1 Day/None 10,000 2 - -
Eye, Telescoping 1 Day/None 10,000/Level 1 - -
Eye, X-Ray 1 Day/None 20,000 2 - -
Organ, Auditory 1 Day/1D4 Days 6,000 2 1 3
Organ, Eye 1 Day/1D6 Days Free/10,000 4 1 4
Miscellaneous
Body Window 1 Day/None 2,000 2 5 10
Chip Implant 1 Day/1D6 Days 5,000 3 0 2
Hardening - 4,000/AR, 2,000/HP - - -
Holographic Tattoo 1 Day/None 100-500 None - -
Memory Implant 1 Day/1D6 Days 5,000 3 0 1
Orb-It 1 Hour/None 1,000 None - -
Prosthetic Pony 1 Day/1D6 Weeks Free/20,000 None 3 15
Reactions 1 Day/1D6 Days 10,000/Point 5 3 6
Reactions, Dual 1 Day/1D8 Days 50,000 8 2 5
Size Increase 1 Day/1D6 Days 5,000/SIZ 2 - -
Subdermal Armor 1 Day/1D6 Days 20,000/point 3 AR 15/AR
Ultranet Port 1 Day/1 Day 4,000 5 1 3
VT Disc None 100 None None 1
Wings 1 Day/1D6 Days 20,000 3 0 5

Cybernetic Organs
Paxton has not completely perfected cybernetic organs, so organic transplants are still the norm when replac-
ing internal organs damaged or destroyed in accidents. There are some sensory cyberware available, however.

Auditory Cyberware
Hearing Enhancement
Functioning like a permanent hearing aid, this ear implat is useful for those performing covert activi-
ties. The user can use this enhancement to hear clearly sounds up to 100 meters away, utilizing a dial
set behind the ear. This bestows a +30% to the Listen skill.
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1D4 Days.
Cost: 6,000 Munits per ear
Sanity cost for installation: 2 Points from Maximum Sanity
Armor rating: 1
Hit Points: 3
62
 Optical Cyberware
PUNKTOWN Eye, Nightvision
This eye functions in exactly the same way as Nightvi-
Eye sion Goggles, i.e. the eye can see 15 meters in absolute
For the Tikkihotto desiring to fit in, maimed war veter- darkness, canceling any negative modifiers to Spot or
ans, and anyone that has lost their eyes to injury, the ba- combat skills due to darkness. The wearer cannot au-
sic, ‘no frills’ cybernetic eyes perform exactly the same tomatically discern between terrain features and living
as their natural, organic equivalents. Eye implants are beings, however, and color detection is impossible. Fur-
fashionable in some circles; some corporate drones pay thermore, unless coupled with Mirrorshade Eyes, sud-
to have cybernetic eyes installed bearing their company den bright light blinds the user for 1D4 rounds.
logo. Thousands of different designs are available for Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/None
eye color, patterns, etc., including custom designs or Cost: 10,000 Munits per eye
the ability to glow or illuminate (at no extra cost). Sanity cost for installation: 2 Points from Maximum
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1D6 Days. Sanity
Cost: Free for veterans, otherwise 10,000 Munits per eye
Sanity cost for installation: 4 Points from Maximum Eye, Telescopic
Sanity per eye Whether replacing the need for a telescopic sight on a
Armor rating: 1 weapon, or just because it’s useful for spying on some-
Hit Points: 4 one, this eye can zoom in on an object from a distance
to varying levels, starting at a basic x20. When in use,
Cybernetic Eye Upgrades this grants the player +30% to Spot things at long range.
Note: Pre-built upgrades can be purchased for Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/None
cybernetic eyes by simply adding the munit cost and Cost: 10,000 Munits per zoom level (increments x20)
any Sanity loss to the base unit. Additional upgrades per eye
can be added to an eye at the Gamemaster’s Sanity cost for installation: 1 Points from Maximum
discretion. The on/off switch for these upgrades is Sanity
typically located in a fake mole near the owner’s eye.
For an additional 5,000 munits per additional add-
on, a neural switch added to each device allows its Skin Jobs
user to turn them off and on at will. Not everyone goes for that chromed-out look, so
for those wanting to conceal their cybernetic limbs
from the casual observer and cover up their new ma-
Eye, Infrared chine parts with good old skin (or at least a close
proximity of it) there are two options.
Useful for night vision, canceling combat skill modifiers
due to darkness, and seeing though smoke or gas, this eye Vacuformed and available in many different skin
detects heat emissions of both living things and objects tones, NuFlesh is a rubbery facsimile of skin orig-
with a heat signature to a range of 20 meters including inally designed for burn patients or as cheap cov-
through walls. If a trail is very fresh (less than five min- erings for early sexbots. It never really caught on
utes), the eye can observe the tracks of living things, add- and is only used by those on a budget. To cover a
ing +30% to the Track skill. Using this mod around mul- cybernetic arm in the stuff costs 300 munits, while
tiple heat sources (e.g. trashcan fires) or places of elevated a leg costs 700 munits. At a distance of 10 meters
heat (e.g. a boiler room) makes imaging either confusing or more it looks pretty much like the real deal, but
(-20% to Spot or combat rolls) or effectively blinds them. anyone closer than that can see something is just not
right about it. NuFlesh is not alive and does not heal
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/None damage, so after a time it will be in tatters or held
Cost: 15,000 Munits per eye together with duct tape and sutures unless replaced.
Sanity cost for installation: 2 Points from Maximum
Organic, vat-grown TruTouch is the next generation
Sanity of replacement skin, which if attached to other organ-
Eyes, Mirrorshade ic material, such as covering up burn scars, heals and
The mirrored surface coating the cybernetic eye works to looks like normal flesh. When placed over cybernetics,
cancel out any negative modifiers should the owner come it makes such limbs look completely normal, and be-
in contact with a Flash Grenade, strobe lights, or anything cause it is alive, it heals any wounds inflicted upon it,
similar. This only works if the eyes are owned in pairs. unless the TruTouch skin is totally consumed by fire,
acid, or the like. True to its name, it feels just like real
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/None skin because it is real skin. Covering a cybernetic arm
Cost: 2,000 Munits per pair costs 3,000 munits, while a leg costs 7,000 munits.
Sanity cost for installation: None
63
Eye, X-Ray
Performinging exactly the same as an X-Ray Helmet, the eye emits and receives x-rays and can see
right through a building’s walls at a range of up to 15 meters. The wearer can see through 30 centi-
meters, blocked only by special high-density shielding.
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/None
Cost: 20,000 Munits per eye
Sanity cost for installation: 2 Points from Maximum Sanity

Miscellaneous Cybernetics
Body Window
Some Punktown residents opt to have their organs exposed by installing a clear window into their
skin that provides a view to their insides. It’s fashionable to position it at a particular organ, usually
the heart, with a tattoo on the heart spelled in neon-glowing thread so it is visible from a distance or
at night. Within certain groups of Punktown, having Body Windows bestows a +1 bonus to APP per
window up to the species maximum. However, others may find them revolting and impose a -1 to
APP per window. These reactions are at the discretion of the Gamemaster.
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/None
Cost: 2,000 Munits per window
Sanity cost for installation: 2 Points from Maximum Sanity
Armor rating: 5 (made of class-two plexiglass they’re surpris-
ingly strong)
Hit Points: 10 (at 0 HP the internal organ behind the win-
dow is not fully exposed)
Chip Implant
A chip implant can receive either “stream”—free public
transmissions paid for with advertising—or music from
the recipient’s own collection, programmed into his home
entertainment system and remote-broadcasted to him.
Some chip-wearers use a control bracelet, while oth-
ers have controls tattooed onto their forearm. The
truly elite have a neural control system for an ad-
ditional 3,000 munits. The music goes directly to
the user’s brain as a translated signal, bypassing
the actual process of “hearing.” Chip implants
bestow a +1 bonus to EDU, up to the species max-
imum, no matter how many chips are implanted.
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1D6 Days.
Cost: 5,000 Munits per implant
Sanity cost for installation: 3 Points from Maximum
Sanity per implant
Armor rating: 0
Hit Points: 2
Cybernetic Wings
The fad began with the popular vid for the song On Pur-
ple Wings from the band, 5Guyz, in which the beautiful
model featured in the vid wore a pair of wings. Though,
of course, the fad had really caught on when Chandra
Shankar wore her white wings—and little else—in her
vid for Naughty Angel. Cybernetic Wings bestow a +1
bonus to APP, but they have no practical function; they
do not grant the ability to fly.
64
 Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1D6 Days.
PUNKTOWN Memory Implant
Cost: 20,000 Munits Memory implants, such as Mnemosyne-998, enhance
Sanity cost for installation: 3 Points from Maximum Sanity the user’s memory, recording everything perfectly and
Armor rating: 0 allowing playback at will. Memory implants bestow a
Hit Points: 5 +1 bonus to INT up to species maximum.
Enhanced Reactions Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1D6 Days.
By replacing nerve tissue within the spine with fiber op- Cost: 5,000 Munits for the first point, doubling the
tics, and reinforcing key muscles with strands of nano- cost for each point afterwards
tubes, impulses travel from the brain to various parts of Sanity cost for installation: 3 Points from Maximum
the body faster than ever and the body responds in less Sanity per implant
than a blink of an eye. Each level of enhancement in- Armor rating: 0
creases the Dexterity score by 1 up to the species maxi- Hit Points: 1
mum +6. Orb-It
Orb-it is an injectable fad appearing with greater fre-
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1D6 Days
quency. A shot of a luminous substance into the desired
Cost: 10,000 Munits for the first point, doubling the
body part (usually the breasts) which then radiates out
cost for each point afterwards.
with varying degrees of intensity, bestowing a +1 bonus
Sanity cost for installation: 5 Points from Maximum Sanity to APP until the substance fades (1D4 days).
Armor rating: 3
Hit Points: 6 Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Hour/None
Cost: 1,000 Munits per injection
Enhanced Reactions Dual Processor Sanity cost for installation: None
Placed at both the top and the base of the spinal cord,
these very high-tech twin microprocessors work in Prosthetic Pony
tandem, increasing an already jacked-up person’s reac- This thin and insect-like, black bipedal cybernetic full-
tions to unbelievable speeds. Although anyone can have body harness is used primarily for war veterans that have
lost all of their limbs or mutants born without limbs. It
them installed, they can only be implemented once
bestows a +1 bonus to DEX and provides a standard
someone has a modified DEX score of 22 or more. The
movement speed for paraplegics.
ERDP enhanced character gains one additional action
per round, allowing them to make twice as many shots Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1D6 weeks
in combat, draw a holstered weapon and fire it in one Cost: Free for veterans, otherwise 20,000 Munits
fluid motion, slash twice with their katana, dodge two Sanity cost for installation: None
incoming attacks, run and jump behind cover and then Armor rating: 3
spring up and fire at an attacker, and so on. Hit Points: 15

Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1D8 Days Size Increase

Cost: 50,000 Munits Some Punktowners prefer increasing their size to sumo-
Sanity cost for installation: 8 Points from Maximum Sanity like proportions by articifially grafting body tissue and
Armor rating: 2 bone into their bodies. Size increases bestow a +1 bo-
Hit Points: 5 nus to SIZ up to 6 points above species maximum.
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1D6 Days
Holographic Tattoo
Cost: 5,000 Munits per point of SIZ
Some of the younger Punktowners find it fashionable to
Sanity cost for installation: 2 Points from Maximum
have tattoos prominently displayed on their bodies that
Sanity per point of SIZ
are subcutaneous holograms. They are usually on the
face, the better to force other people to look at them. Subdermal Armor
Those who possess the tattoo are known to share vid- Installed under the skin and undetectable by sight, this bul-
eos of their favorite music groups, scenic vistas, or even letproof mesh armor is a good choice for anyone working
porn. Holographic Tattoos bestow a +1 bonus to APP in the security industry. Only available as full body armor,
up to species maximum. and compatible with cybernetic limbs, it can be bought per
Armor Point, to a maximum of 8 points. An illegal variant,
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/None obtainable only through the government or from the Black
Cost: Varies on size of tattoo, but at least 500 Munits Market, is made out of high density organic polymers and is
per tattoo therefore undetectable by metal detectors or other security
Sanity cost for installation: None scanners. This stealthy alternative is triple the usual cost.
65
Note: There are no negative results for owning 4 points of
full body armor, but for every point over that the owner suf-
fers minus 1 permanent Dexterity (at least until the armor
is surgically removed). The ultra-cool and ultra-expensive
organic variant does not hamper Dexterity at all.
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1D6 Days
Cost: 20,000 Munits for each point of armor
Sanity cost for installation: 3 Points from Maxi-
mum Sanity
Armor rating: equal to its own armor rating
Hit Points: for every 15 points of damage it “soaks
up” for its owner, it decreases by 1 point of armor
rating until fixed.
Ultranet Port
Ultranet ports plug the user directly into the ultra-
net. Plugging into the ultranet requires both a port
and a jack.
Surgery/Recuperation Time: 1 Day/1 Day
Cost: 4,000 Munits
Sanity cost for installation: 5 Points from Maxi-
mum Sanity
Armor rating: 1
Hit Points: 3
VT Discs
With VT discs affixed to the temple, the user picks up
VT transmissions into the brain, allowing them to “see”
and “hear” the program, but still hear the real world. Many commuters in Punktown use these rather than
read a paper, viewing the news this way, but are more likely to choose a game show or rerun of a sitcom.
Users can adjust the discs to a lower-level setting meaning they can still receive transmissions but also walk
about and function fairly well simultaneously, the mind doing its best to keep its tasks separate, just as
when a person drives a car while daydreaming or chatting on the phone. Still, it’s not uncommon to see
people with discs on their temples or foreheads bumping into each other every day. Sometimes teenagers
stumble in a daze with three or more stuck to their foreheads; or one might meet a man with a shaved
head covered in discs sitting on a bench grinning at passers-by.
Surgery/Recuperation Time: None
Cost: 100 Munits per disc
Sanity cost for installation: None
Armor rating: none
Hit Points: 1

Punktown Is Watching
In Punktown, nothing is forgotten. It's possible to have an indi-
vidual's mind scanned, willingly or unwillingly, and put his mem-
ories on display: extracted, projected and recorded via computer
hook-up and then played back in slow-motion, freeze-framed,
blown up, etc. Additionally, every time a HAP agent discharges
his firearm, the connected cameras take a photo which is instant-
ly transmitted to Health Agency headquarters –ensuring against
agents abusing their authority to kill, considering plasma rounds
leave no body and so no evidence, thus preventing agents kill-
ing whomever they desired. Anyone found overriding the photo
insurance mechanism is subject to immediate termination by law.
Agents tamper with them anyway, and the ones that get caught
are usually quietly suspended for several weeks.
66
 Cybernetic Hardening
PUNKTOWN Vehicles
Paxton citizens in high risk professions may wish for better Mass transportation and personal vehicles cloud the
made cybernetics that can stand up to more abuse without highways and skyways; hovercars, helicars, and wheeled
breaking down. Utilizing higher tech (and far more expen- vehicles clog the streets and subways and trains snake
sive) alloys and polymers with back up control systems in their way through Punktown’s arteries. For those who
place, the Armor Rating and Hit Points of any cybernetic can’t afford personal vehicles, public transportation is
device can be increased up to double the normal amount. available: buses cost 5, taxis 10, and rail 20 munits for
short distances, modified by the number of blocks, miles,
A little cyber eye could have an armor rating of 2 and up
and danger involved, at the Gamemaster’s discretion.
to 8 Hit Points, while a cyber-limb designed for combat
could have an armor score of 10 and up to 30 Hit Points. Type: The generic type of vehicle.
Skill: The skill your character should use when
Each point of increased Armor Rating costs 4,000 mu- piloting it.
nits and each additional Hit Point costs 2,000 munits. Rated Speed: The maximum speed of the ve-
To keep things simple, these prices are the same for all hicle; an abstract value used in the BRP chase
cybernetic replacements. system.
Cyber Armor and Worn Armor Handling: This modifier is applied to your
character’s skill, reflecting the vehicle’s maneu-
The Armor Rating of cybernetic replacements stacks verability or relative ease of use.
with any proactive clothing worn by the character. For
ACC: Acceleration, the number of speed incre-
example, let’s say that a forcer has level 5 Subdermal ments the vehicle can accelerate or decelerate
Armor and is wearing a plastic vest that has 4 points from its current rated speed each combat round.
of armor. If they are shot in the chest then they have This is provided as a value of ±, and is used in
a combined Armor Rating of 9. If someone has a ba- the vehicle chase system.
sic cyber-leg with 5 Armor Rating and is wearing pants MOV: The maximum speed of the vehicle in
with bulletproof mesh (AR 6) sewn into it, that leg has a combat round, expressed in its MOV rating.
MOV has a sliding value of 1-5 meters; this as-
a total armor score of 11. sumes a median value of 3.
What’s on the VT?
* Punktown citizens are unlikely to be affected by television, but for those new to the planet even watching some of these shows can
be a sanity draining experience.
D100 Name Description SAN Loss*
01-10 Bloodbunnies A sexually-themed, violent show that’s often used as an excuse by killers to incite them to murder. 1/1D3
Building An annual competition in an ultranet environment rife with dangerous flora and fauna, where rivals off each
11-20 the Better None
other using ingenious and insidious booby-traps derived from the materials at hand.
Booby Trap
This channel features popular recurring guest, N. Ron Hubherd, who frequently speaks about the art of
21-30 Evil Men None
being evil in business.
A sitcom starring mutant, Buddy Vrolik, a 150-pound sphere without limbs or features, which is the cen-
Buddy terpiece of a lovable if trouble-prone family, berating them or giving them smart-alecky wisecracks in a
31-40 None
Balloon city-tough accent. He is famous for his lewd comments and double entendres when female friends visit the
apartment. His catchphrase is: “Somebody kill me.”
The Crime
41-50 Covers Punktown’s juiciest, nastiest crime-related stories. 1/1D3
Report
Lambshead, Popular largely because of the sexy young actor playing the titular skilled physician, treating and romancing
51-60 None
MD a multitude of sentient races on a far-flung space station.

61-70 Mr. Mauser A no-nonsense, tough cop on a crime show. Forcers suffering comparisons is inevitable. None

A raunchy comedy featuring Slut Master E and Bitchoney J, played by two obese actors, OmarBlast M and
MikeyMikey K. Slut Master E is Pimp Mama T’s cousin, and Bitchoney J is her son. Pimp Mama T is played
71-80 Pimp Mama T None
by a different up-and-coming actress in every episode, and is the zany madam of a cheap Forma Street
brothel. The lowbrow show is known for Bitchoney J’s trademark line, “God slap me dead!”

81-90 Bladebabes A violent, popular action series that, like Bloodbunnies, is believed to be a corrosive influence on young minds. 1/1D3

Sphitt are the current number one rock group with their number one hit In Your Face. Flemm, Mhukas
and Sputum are other bands in the same mold. The members of Sphitt have snowy white fluffy lion manes
91-00 Music Video overwhelming their tiny faces, with little chins and chiseled cheekbones and seemingly ceaselessly distended None
puckered pouts. Many boys now frequently punctuate their speech and activities with spitting, spit over
each other’s shoulders in greeting, at each other’s boots in farewell, and at each other’s bodies in hostility.

67
Musty Tomes in an Arcane Bookstore
In Punktown’s future setting any unspeakable tome found in a modern-day or historical Call of
Cthulhu campaign set on Earth can turn up in Punktown. Original tomes are rare, but they have
been copied and digitally transcribed in the dark corners of the Ultranet, living on even when many
thought they had been eliminated forever. Each of these entries indicates the duration it takes to truly
comprehend (not just read) the book, the benefit to Cthulhu Mythos or Occult from such study, pos-
sible spells that can be learned, and the possible sanity loss as a result of such study. The listed spells
are all from Call of Cthulhu; those with a * are new in this book.
Weeks to Skill
D100 Name Description Spells SAN Loss
Study Bonus

By Wadoor, a Choom alchemist, it concentrates primarily upon a god Banishment of Yde Etad, Contact Nyarlathotep,
known as the Crawling Chaos, also known as the Messenger. Wadoor Create Gate, Create Scrying Window,
uses geometric formulae to open windows into other realms. The angles Create Time Gate, Create Window, Doors
+4% Cthulhu
1-10 Atlas of Chaos and curves of certain patterns bend space and time, distort their flow, or 7 Upon Doors*, Enchant Gate Boxes, Find 1D2/1D4
Mythos
can be manipulated so as to pry open rents in the cosmic fabric. It was Gate, Journey to the Other Side, Line
written before Earth colonized Oasis and retails for twenty thousand Travel*, Plutonian Drug, Summon/Bind
munits. Dimensional Shambler, View Gate

Written by Louis Marotta, this book, of which there are only six in Apportion Ka, Bind Soul, Chant of Thoth,
existence, is triangular in shape. Relevant chapters include: The Keys to Compel Flesh, Create Gate, Create Window,
Keys, which covers different chants and their effects; and The Geometry +9% Cthulhu Enchant Gate Boxes, Find Gate, Imprison
11-15 Book of Awe, The of Transcendence, patterns and angles that bend the barriers between 14 1D3/1D6
Mythos Mind, Journey to the Other Side, Mind
dimensions. It’s believed that Marotta, who disappeared without a trace Exchange, Mind Transfer, Song of Hastur,
a year after its publication, actually turned the book into a gateway Summon Plague, View Gate
between dimensions, which proved to be his undoing.

Call/Dismiss (Azathoth, Rlim Shaikorth),

Contact (Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua,
This metal tube contains a tight-rolled scroll, a true account of the long Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Tsathoggua), Create
lost Noctuary of Vizooranos. It is an ancient text of sorcerous potency, +13% Cthulhu
16-20 Book of Night 36 Barrier of Naach-Tith, Create Gate, Create 1D4/2D4
also known as The Book of Night. It is said that Eibon transcribed this Mythos Mist of Releh, Deflect Harm, Eibon’s Wheel
through a form of possession by the sorcerer, Vizooranos, himself. of Mist, Enchant Brazier, Enchant Knife,
Levitate, Voorish Sign, Wither Limb

These scrolls contain a variety of spells, including: Neshxiba, the Sign of

Flight and Direction Joined known as the wings of fire dancing (second Call/Dismiss (Azathoth), Cloak of Fire,
Book of the Dominion +8% Cthulhu
21-25 scroll); the Grey Rite, which summons Azathoth (twenty-third scroll); 40 Dread Curse of Azathoth, Melt Flesh, 1D4/1D8
of Mysteries Mythos
and Making Shelter of Datuura-Cerlon (fifteenth scroll), which protects Summon/Bind Fire Vampire, Levitate
from Azathoth.

This 18-volume series by Abdul-Kadir, is surprisingly light on actual

26-30 Books of Power power, referring instead to the political and social influence wielded by 3 +2% Occult None None
cultists of means.

Remigius, the Latinized pen name for Nicholas Remy, was a French
31-35 Daemonolateria judge that presided over witchcraft trials. This book is a compendium 2 +3% Occult None None
of information about witchcraft with the intent of prosecuting them.

De Furtivis Lit- Giovanni Battista della Porta wrote this book with a title that means “On
36-40 1 +1% Occult None None
erarum Notis the Secret Symbols of Letters.”

This chip contains genetic coding for some bizarre races, including the +6% Cthulhu Black Binding, Contact Dai-oo-ika (Cthulhu),
41-45 Genomicon 36 1D4/1D8
Spawn of Ugghiutu and Dai-oo-ika. Mythos Summon/Bind Ugghiutu Spawn

Two books discussing the dangers of summoning spirits and the magical
45-50 Keys of Solomon, The 2 +5% Occult None None
arts.

51-55 Kryptographik A book on cryptography published in 1809. 3 +3% Occult None None

The central sacred text of Thelema, written by Aleister Crowley, dictated

56-60 Liber Al Vel Legis 2 +6% Occult None None
to him by a discarnate entity named “Aiwass.”

A handbook of the occult and ceremonial magic compiled by Francis

61-65 Magus, The Barrett and published in 1801. Much of the material was actually 1 +4% Occult None None
collected by Barrett from older occult handbooks.

Baneful Dust of Hermes Trismegistus,

Author unknown, this book, written in Latin, predicts a cosmic struggle Banishment of Yde Etad, Call/Dismiss
between the Elder Gods and Outsiders. A thick metal catch system locks +10% Cthulhu Yog-Sothoth, Create Barrier of Naach-Tith,
66-70 Metal Book, The 50 1D8/2D8
the book’s hinged metal covers closed. Cold to the touch to an almost Mythos Eye of Light and Darkness, Powder of Ibn-
unnatural degree, this book can sell for up to four million munits. Ghazi, Prinn’s Crux Ansata, Summon/Bind
Servitor of the Outer Gods

Ascending Mode*, Call/Dismiss (Aza-

thoth, Cthugha, Hastur, Nyogtha, Shub-
Niggurath, Yog-Sothoth), Contact (Ghoul,
Written by the Arab author, Abdul Alhazred, in Damascus in the 8th Nyarlathotep, Sand Dweller), Descending
century, original translations were in Latin, Greek, and English, running +18% Cthulhu
71-75 Necronomicon 68 Mode*, Dominate, Dread Curse of Aza- 1D10/2D10
800 pages or so depending on the version. Includes the spells Ascending Mythos thoth, Dust of Suleiman, Elder Sign, Pow-
Mode and Descending Mode. der of Ibn-Ghazi, Resurrection, Shriveling,
Summon/Bind (Byakhee, Fire Vampire,
Servitor of the Outer Gods), Voorish Sign

This book contains all the major source-books of magical arts, translated
Secret Lore of +1% Cthulhu
76-80 from French, Latin, Hebrew and other tongues, annotated and fully 1 None 1/1D3
Magic, The Mythos
illustrated with numerous diagrams, signs and characters.

By a Tikkihotto author, Skretuu, it acknowledges the patterns that

exist even in chaos. Skretuu took Wadoor’s theories even further after
encountering his book, written a hundred years earlier, building on
Veins of the Old +5% Cthulhu Doors Upon Doors*, Elder Sign, Line
81-90 Wadoor’s idea of mapping these invisible patterns by charting them, 3 1/1D3
Ones, The Mythos Travel*
likening his research to the dissection of anatomists. Original versions
are worth five thousand munits, but the paperback version is worth only
about ten munits.

Visions of +5% Cthulhu

91-95 William Davis Manly, a book of mysterious hypnotic poetry. 1 None 1D3/1D6+1
Khyroyd’hon Mythos

This ancient manuscript found in Asia, written circa 1100 BC during +3% Cthulhu
96-99 Zhou Texts, The Zhou dynasty, contains the rituals to summon the Great Old One 8 Call/Summon (Kassogtha) 1D3/1D6
Mythos
Kassogtha.

Call Summon (Hound of Ugghiutu,

+6% Cthulhu Ugghiutu Spawn, Utalla), Contact Cthulhu
00 Fizala The authoritative text on Ugghiutu. 14 1D3/1D6
Mythos (Ugghiutu), Create Curse Whistle, Elder
Sign, Grasp of Cthulhu, Pipes of Madness

68
PUNKTOWN Armor: The vehicle’s general armor value and selves, the city buses are equipped with a handy full stun
the amount of protection it confers upon the emergency blast, which the driver can activate with the
crew or passengers. Usually attacks on passen- hit a button, triggering a sudden clap of stunning energy
gers are through a window or open section of the
cabin. If these two numbers are different, they that incapacitates everyone in the bus.
are expressed as two values separated by a slash.
The GM should determine whether a character Harbinger
has protection from the vehicle. Usually attack- A military helicar equipped with two machinegun tur-
ing someone in a vehicle is a Difficult task. rets and two missile turrets.
SIZ: The vehicle’s apparent SIZ in terms of its
ability to be manipulated in the game world. Helicar
HP: The vehicle’s hit points. Vehicles do not Helicars are fully vertical take-off and landing (VTOL)
suffer the effects of special successes. Critical vehicles capable of navigating the upper reaches of
successes only ignore the vehicle’s armor and Punktown. They are quite common, but more expen-
do not do additional damage.
sive than Hovercars.
Crew: This is the number of characters required
to pilot and maintain the vehicle at full efficiency Hovercar
while en route. For larger vessels, this is usually Hovercars are the poor man’s form of transportation,
1/3 the normal complement, as the crews work in hovering lower to the ground and thus relegated to cer-
8-hour shifts. The GM may make vehicle-related tain lanes that helicars fly above.
skill rolls Difficult if the vehicle is under-crewed.
Passengers: The number of passengers the ve- Tank
hicle normally carries, combined with the num- Tanks stationed on Sinan are now used for crowd con-
ber of off-duty crewmembers (if appropriate). trol, using sound cannons or shock turrets, either of
Cargo: The space the vehicle has for cargo, which are nonlethal and either of which can fire straight
expressed in SIZ. For game purposes, 1 ENC through an energy barrier.
equals 1 SIZ point.
Value: Cost in munits. Coleopteroid Tran
Trans look rather like an ancient steam locomotive of
Bus black metal, and travel along a complex series of tracks
The city bus is a thing of beauty—silver, sleek, comfort- knotted into overlapping geometric configurations. Co-
able, air-conditioned—divided into three segments, the leopteroids enter and exit the Prime dimension using
first of which is the driver’s cab, partitioned off behind a these trans by accelerating along the tracks. As the tran
class-four plexidoor that can hold its own against every
accelerates, its rate of speed and the pattern it follows
form of bullet and most ray and plasma weapons. Just be-
hind the driver’s cab is the passenger entry booth where along the train bed determines which material plane the
folks climb up into the vehicle and pay—the automatic tran ends up disappearing into.
machines accept both cards and hard money. A weapon
Inside, the hulking black metal tran a control console
scan commences; if weapons are detected, the driver is
alerted and the person carrying needs to run their fire- has two crystal globes filled with a glowing, translucent
arms ID card through a scanner in the entry booth be- milky liquid – navigator fluid. Below the globes are six
fore being allowed into the passenger area. While no bus silver rings, in two rows of three, like miniature steering
drivers in Punktown are allowed to carry weapons them- wheels, an artifact of their multi-armed drivers.

Vehicles
Type Skill Spd Hndlng ACC MOV Armor SIZ HP Crew Pssngrs Cargo Value
City Bus Drive 10 -10% ±4 100 16/2 55 65 1 80 72 300,000
Coleopteroid
Drive 8 - ±4 83 24 90 140 4 200+ 12 Res (1D6 *200,000)
Tran
Harbinger Pilot 15 - ±10 200 8/4 48 48 1 3+ 12 Res (1D6 * 20,000)
Helicar Pilot 15 - ±10 200 4/2 48 48 1 3 12 35,000
Hovercar Drive 10 - ±5 150 2/1 48 24 1 3 6 20,000
Tank Drive 8 - ±4 83 24 90 140 4 - 12 Red (1D6 *30,000)

69
70
 Chapter Six:
PUNKTOWN

Creatures
They’re known as the Old Ones, the Great Old Ones, the Outsiders. By other names in other cultures and religions on a
hundred planets. They once ruled everything...long before us. They may have seeded humans throughout many systems,
like we’d plant crops. Sometimes for labor. Sometimes for food...not for the Old Ones themselves; they don’t need to eat
to survive. For all intents and purposes, they’re immortal. But there are lesser beings. Spawn. Minions. More corporeal
in the way we understand it. They seem to feast on us sometimes...though I don’t know if it’s blood they feed on, or the
essence of life itself. Anyway, I think the Old Ones also might have seeded us because they wanted us around to help them
come back through if they ever got locked out. Because that’s exactly what happened. Another powerful amalgamation
of beings — the Elder Gods — came and overpowered them. Locked them up, locked them out.
—T he B ones of the O ld O nes
Alien Races Move: 8
Hit Points: 13-14
Sentient alien races are brought into the civilized uni- Average Damage Bonus: +1D4
verse through the Earth Colonial Network. Weapon: Claw 25% 1D6+DB
Grapple 25% (see Powers)
Antse Hook 25% 1D4+DB
Hailing from another dimension, the Antse, appearing
Spear 25% 1D6+DB
as bland, smooth gray humanoids with hairless heads,
Armor: 3-point Skin
are known for the peculiar custom of flaying a giant ex-
Sanity Loss: 0/1D6 Sanity points to see an Antse
tradimensional animal called a Fluke, which they har-
Spells: None
vest during the Flaying Season once a year for its skin.
Skills: Listen 50%, Scent 75%, Spot 50%, Track 75%.
This skin, a gorgeous mix of green and black like mala-
Powers:
chite, is formed into a form-fitting suit, the only cloth-
Dual Attack: An Antse can attack with two claw attacks
ing they ever wear. They also create effigies made of the each combat round. If it succeeds with both
Fluke’s white inner meat, generally anthropomorphic in attacks, it inflicts 1D4 APP as it attempts to
shape, which they stick with nails and spikes like some grapple and scoop out its victim’s eyes.
half-formed martyr. Blinding Gouge: Antse who succeed on a grapple blind
Antse clerics have a ritual wherein a trio tuck themselves their victims, who must first make a successful
into a ball so tightly that they appear as smooth balls, Luck roll to attack the Antse, and then the attack
naked without their usual wrappings but painted with is made at 1/4 the blinded character’s skill roll.
a bright yellow mineral. They meditate until a certain All other sight-related skills are useless to the
unknown trigger awakens them, uncurling to hunt eye- blinded character. If the character loses all his
balls, sacrificed to their deity by scooping them out of APP from this attack he is permanently blinded.
any humanoid they can find.
Anul
Antse, Lesser Independent Race Anul have a rose-pink hue to their skin and a huge,
Characteristic Rolls Averages bony, mallet-shaped head, like that of a hammerhead
STR 4D6 14 shark, supported by two thin necks, but no eyes at its
ends, or anywhere else visible. At the base of this bony
CON 3D6 10-11 mass, which is thinly coated in a shiny pink skin, is an
SIZ 3D6+6 16-17 imposing lipless mouth filled with rows of oversized
INT 2D6+6 13 molars in a constant, skull-like grin. They are associated
POW 3D6 10-11 with the Orb Weaver disease, which they are most vul-
nerable to and also the most adept at treating. Anul are
DEX 3D6 10-11
rumoured to eat these tumors like gumballs. Females
APP 2D6-1 6 are indistinguishable from males.
71
Anul, Lesser Independent Race Bliss, Lesser Independent Race
Characteristic Rolls Averages Characteristic Rolls Averages
STR 4D6 14 STR 2D4 5
CON 3D6+8 18-19 CON 3D6+8 18-19
SIZ 3D6+6 16-17 SIZ 3D6+6 16-17
INT 2D6+6 13 INT 2D6+6 13
POW 2D6+6 13 POW 2D6+6 13
DEX 3D6+6 16-17 DEX 3D6 10-11
APP 2D6-1 6 APP 1D3 2

Move: 8
Move: 8
Hit Points: 5
Hit Points: 13-14 Average Damage Bonus: -1D6
Average Damage Bonus: +1D4 Weapon: None (Only with robotic harness)
Weapon: None (Grapple or other weapon) Armor: 4-point (pain tolerance)
Armor: None Sanity Loss: 0/1D4 Sanity points to see a Bliss
Sanity Loss: 0/1D4 Sanity points to see an Anul Spells: None
Spells: None Skills: Knowledge (Human Culture) 55%, Listen 55%
Skills: Dodge 40%, Fine Manipulation 75%, First Powers: None
Aid 75%, Hide 60%, Knowledge (Human
Culture) 55%, Language (English) 20%, Dacvibese
Language (Anul) 100%, Listen 55%, This alien race looks like an albino greyhound
walking on its hind legs, with pink eyes and un-
Medicine 100%
nerving goat-like irises. They don’t wear clothes,
Powers: None
with an unnerving goat-like smell to match.
When voicing disapproval, they speak in a high
Bliss screeching barely coherent voice. Dacvibese also
Bliss look like a stingray grafted onto the hind legs express displeasure by deliberating squirting mu-
cus from glands at the corner of their mouth,
of a shaved goat and bleached of all color, white
which smells like rotting teeth.
to the point of translucence. A Bliss has no upper
limbs, and its face is just a suggestion of features, Dacvibese, Lesser Independent Race
as if it’d been punched into that pallid skin with Characteristic Rolls Averages
a screwdriver. Little is known of this race, called STR 3D6 10-11
the Bliss for their hedonistic impulses that have
CON 3D6+6 16-17
apparently inspired their recent influx into Punk-
town where they are fast generating a reputation SIZ 2D6+6 13
for decadent behavior, seeking out brothels, S&M INT 3D6 10-11
dens, and more dubious institutions of pleasure, POW 3D6+6 16-17
such as necrophilia clubs and snuff theaters. They DEX 3D6 10-11
like their drugs, the stronger the better, Purple APP 2D6-1 6
Vortex being a favorite. Supercharged with arous-
al, ravenous for sensation, supremely masochistic, Move: 8
they seemto live only for a heightened state of ec- Hit Points: 11-12
Average Damage Bonus: +0
stasy. To compensate for its lack of arms, the alien Weapon: Stench 35% (see powers)
wears a wheeled mechanical harness that crosses Armor: None
its body but is mostly buckled around its thighs, Sanity Loss: 0/1D4 Sanity points to see a Dacvibese
which provides two spindly arms and a translator Spells: None
in the form of a rubber tube that runs from the Skills: Drive 35%, Knowledge (Business) 55%, Knowl-
machine to the Bliss’ mouth. Despite the per- edge (Human Culture) 55%, Listen 55%
Powers:
ception that Bliss are hedonists, they are actually Stench: Dacvibese can squirt opponents up to 5
atoning for their sins by punishing and debasing feet away. If the target fails a Stamina roll,
their physical bodies so that their liberated essence all tasks are Difficult against the Dacvibese
might move on to the realm of souls. for 1D6+2 rounds.
72
 Enisku
PUNKTOWN
The Enisku are a bird-like people with short beaks, cov-
ered in fluffy down, who mate for life, which makes it
particularly difficult for them in Punktown, where as-
sault and murder of a spouse is common. Enisku can be
found in all walks of life, even as Forcers.
Enisku, Lesser Independent Race
Characteristic Rolls Averages
STR 3D6 10-11
CON 3D6 10-11
SIZ 2D6+6 13
INT 3D6 10-11
POW 3D6+6 16-17
DEX 3D6 10-11
APP 3D6 10-11
Move: 8
Hit Points: 11-12
Average Damage Bonus: +0
Weapon: None (Grapple or weapon)
Armor: None
Sanity Loss: 0
Spells: None
Skills: Drive 35%, Knowledge (Business) 55%, Knowledge
(Human Culture) 55%
Powers: None Gray
Fekah The prototypical gray alien is barely five feet tall, like a
Fekahs look like giant albino toads on two legs. They skinny disproportionate child with long arms and long
hands, an oversized head with white skin as smooth and
have lacy pink gills along their necks that allow them to
hairless as that of a fetus. No ears, a tiny slit for a mouth,
breathe water. Fekahs wear red-tinted fish-bowl helmets two pinhole nostrils but two huge, wraparound lustrous
to protect human ears from the sound of their respira- black eyes with blinking translucent lids. They claim to
tion, which is nearly deafening. have visited Earth frequently, from ancient times to the
Fekah, Lesser Independent Race more modern era, abducting humans as jokes and even
seeding humans on various planets as an experiment. They
Characteristic Rolls Averages have never fully approached the Earth Colonial Network.
STR 3D6 10-11
Gray, Lesser Independent Race
CON 3D6 10-11
Chararacteristic Rolls Averages
SIZ 2D6+6 13
STR 1D6+3 6-7
INT 2D6 7
CON 2D6 7
POW 3D6 10-11
SIZ 1D6+3 6-7
DEX 3D6+6 16-17
INT 2D6+12 19
APP 2D6-1 6
POW 3D6 10-11
Move: 8 (8 swimming) DEX 3D6+3 13-14
Hit Points: 8-9
Average Damage Bonus: None APP 1D6+1 4-5
Weapon: Claw 35% (1D3) Move: 7
Sound Blast 25% (1D10 each round in a 100 yd radius) Hit Points: 7
Armor: None Average Damage Bonus: -1D4
Sanity Loss: 0 Weapon: None (Grapple or weapon)
Spells: None Armor: None
Skills: Swim 75% Sanity Loss: 0
Powers: None Spells: None
73
Skills: Dodge 40%, Fine Manipulation 75%, First Klu-Koza, Lesser Independent Race
Aid 75%, Hide 60%, Knowledge (Human
Culture) 55%, Knowledge (Region: Characteristic Rolls Averages
Milky Way) 85%, Language (English) STR 6D6 36
20%, Language (Zeta Reticulan) 100%, CON 3D6+10 20-21
Listen 55%, Medicine 100%, Navigate 70%,
SIZ 2D6+12 19
Pilot (UFO) 80%, Repair (Quantum)
50%, Science (Astronomy) 75%, Science INT 2D6+8 15
(Planetology) 95%, Science (Zoology) POW 3D6 10-11
50%, Sense 60%, Spot 50%, Stealth 50%, DEX 3D6+3 13-14
Technical Skill (UFO Sensors) 50%
Powers: None APP 2D6-1 6

Keezee Move: 10
The KeeZee are almost seven feet tall, with a jag- Hit Points: 20
ged-jawed head resembling a monkey wrench with Average Damage Bonus: +3D6
a thin, grayish-black skin vacuum-formed to it. Weapon: Gore 45% (1D6 + DB)
Their long hair is sometimes woven into thin braids
decorated with glass beads. They have three tiny Brawl 25% (1D3 + DB)
black eyes. KeeZee bodies are a solid mass of mus- Grapple 50% (see Powers)
cle. KeeZee do not speak, their jaws barely moving, Armor: 6-point (skin, muscle, and hair)
but can utilize translator devices. KeeZee are often Sanity Loss: 0
hired as bodyguards and security guards due to Spells: None
their menacing appearance and legendary loyalty.
Skills: Climb 65%, Dodge 45%, Hide 50%, Listen 35%,
Keezee, Lesser Independent Race Sense 25%, Stealth 35%
Characteristic Rolls Averages Powers:
STR 5D6 17-18 Dual Attack: A Klu-Koza will attack twice each
CON 3D6+10 20-21 round. It may strike twice with its fists
SIZ 3D6+12 22-23 (brawl), gore and strike, or gore and
INT 2D6+8 15 grapple.
POW 3D6 10-11 Rend: If a grapple succeeds, the Klu-Koza grips its
opponent and does full damage modifier
DEX 3D6 10-11
(usually 3D6) each round. If grappling, it
APP 2D6-1 6
may continue to bite, an Easy attack.
Move: 9
Hit Points: 21-22
Average Damage Bonus: +1D6
Weapon: Fist 50% (1D3 + DB)
Thor .86 45% (1D6)
Armor: None
Sanity Loss: 0
Spells: None
Skills: Hide 25%, Listen 30%, Sneak 20%, Spot 30%
Powers: None
Klu-koza
The orangutan-like Klu-Kozi were once enemies of
the Choom and Earth governments, but have since
become uneasy allies. Their planet has valuable re-
sources that kicked off the war and the subsequent
truce, a fact that does not sit well with the few sur-
viving veterans from that war. Males are short, bald,
and layered in fat with a tusk-like horn protrudes
from their foreheads. The females are indistinguish-
able from the males, except for their genitalia. Their
blood has the look and consistency of grape jelly,
which is how they earned the “grapes” slur. Klu-
Kozi’s heavy bodies make them difficult to kill.
74
PUNKTOWN L’lewed
A L’lewed’s appearance has been likened to an egg
purse of a shark or ray: a squarish, featureless package of
flesh with two horn-like limbs at the top, and two at the
bottom; the two top horns, somewhat flexible, waver
subtly in the air like feelers. The putty-like L’lewed
must spend most their time inside a small metal, brass-
colored container within a central cylinder with two
smaller cylinders fused to its sides, , transported about
on the back of a robot or hired aide. The l’lewed exits
from a spiral iris in the main cylinder. L’lewed have
a reprehensible process in which they feast on the
death throes of another creature, a spiritual necessity
they call The Vibration. On their own homeworld, a
hairless, monkey-like race serves this purpose, but in
Punktown ambassadors have been known to attempt
fulfilling their spiritual needs without the consent of
their spiritual sacrifices. The L’lewed forces itself down
the humanoid’s throat, finding pleasure in its death
Kodju spasms (“The Vibration”) and emerges reborn from the
The towering Kodju people slip from one plane of ex- victim’s lower body. L’lewed participate in this ritual
because if they go too long without it, they consider
istence into another by a process that, while requiring
themselves irredeemably unclean.
great discipline, does not involve any technology. A few
short decades ago, the Kodju were utterly mysterious L’lewed, Lesser Independent Race
beings, a race from another dimension as rare and fleet-
ing on this side as visiting mythical gods — intense hu- Characteristc Rolls Averages
manoid giants adhering to a strict code handed down STR 3D6 10-11
from their warrior forebears. Now, while these things
are not always inexpensive, one can purchase Kodju CON 6D6 21
plants and decorations for the home, wear Kodju silks, SIZ 2D6-1 6
eat Kodju food stuffs cultivated here. Kodju movies are INT 3D6 10-11
big; the more violent the better.
POW 3D6 10-11
Kodju, Greater Independent Race DEX 1D6 3-4
Characteristic Rolls Averages APP 2D6-1 6
STR 6D6+24 45 Move: 10
CON 3D6+18 28-29 Hit Points: 17
Average Damage Bonus: +0
SIZ 6D6+24 57 Weapon: Strangle 25% (Suffocation)
INT 2D6+8 15 Armor: None (½ vs. fire and electrical attacks, 1 point vs.
POW 3D6 10-11 physical)
Sanity Loss: 0/1d6
DEX 3D6 10-11
Spells: None
APP 2D6-1 6 Skills: Climb 50%, Hide 25%, Sense 25%, Stealth 25%,
Track 25%
Move: 10
Hit Points: 43 Powers:
Average Damage Bonus: +5D6 Suffocation: 1D6 + 1D6 each round until dead
Weapon: Claw 50% (1D10 + DB)
Armor: 8-point (Thick hide) Lobu
Sanity Loss: 0 Lobu are tall, slender and hairless with polished, softly mot-
Spells: None tled green and orange flesh, looking like pliable agate. Their
Skills: Listen 25%, Spot 25% very humanoid faces are appealing to humans, with large
Powers: eyes, no nose, and two large ear holes. They wear only a
Dimensional Shift: A Kodju can take objects or beings diaper-like garment to hide their midsections, with flat nip-
with it when it fades into another dimension. pleless chests and two pink gill-like openings on either side.
By clutching the desired object in its talons and Lobu live over a thousand years or more on their home
expending an additional POW per 10 SIZ points world, and can easily reach five hundred on Oasis. They
of the object or creature, it makes the transit also. have three distinct sexes: accidental pregnancy is less
Objects and victims lost are never found again. likely to occur as the female must copulate with each
Dual Attack: Kodju may attack with both claws each of the two “males”, within a few hours and in the cor-
round. rect order to become fertilized. Thus, generations have
75
been free to enjoy their sexuality without fear Meatlings
or restraint or inhibition. Only generally known Meatlings are symbiotic organisms—one
to the Earth colonies for a few decades, they humanoid-sized and the other about the size
are highly desirable sex partners. Their long life of a monkey—that on their world, work in
spans make it less pressing to raise children, cared conjunction to survive. The similarities between
for in boarding schools, largely segregated from this symbiotic species are obvious: they are
the adult world, until they reach sexual maturity scarlet-colored with glossy helmet-like skulls,
at the surprisingly early age of five. but their faces are wrinkly masses of flesh like the
caruncle of a turkey, as if badly sculpted out of
Lobu life is a hedonistic, almost utopian life- raw hamburger; their squinted eyes seem lost in
style, without sexual repression, discrimination or the heaped red tissue, but a long bone-white tube
fear, and thus they have few wars, their religions extends from the chaos by way of a nose. The
non-patriarchal despite the two-to-one ratio of smaller of the two meatlings is just as intelligent
“males,” but they do, sometimes, become bored as its larger half — contrary to popular depictions
and discontented in their later years. To com-
bat this, some branch to other worlds now that in the media, one is not smarter than the other.
space travel has been introduced to them — never Large Meatling, Lesser Independent Race
achieved on their own due to stagnation in tech-
nology; others, not uncommonly, commit suicide. Characteristic Rolls Averages
Lobu are best known as sex partners for human- STR 3D6+4 14-15
oids. Females have two vaginal openings, with a CON 3D6 10-11
strange set of four mandible-like digits outside SIZ 3D6 10-11
that insert into corresponding vents in the groins
of their males so as to stimulate them. These digits INT 3D6 10-11
are put to expert use in the fondling and manipula- POW 2D6+6 13
tion of the human scrotum and anus. Resourceful
humanoid males have discovered the Lobu chest DEX 3D6 10-11
vents are also gratifying areas for penetration. APP 2D6-1 6
They are well known, also, for their use of drugs. Move: 8
Lobu are notorious dealers of the drug, Purple Vor- Hit Points: 10
tex, which they in turn get from the Coleopteroids. Average Damage Bonus: +1D4
Weapon: None (Grapple or Brawl)
Lobu, Lesser Independent Race Armor: None
Characteristic Rolls Averages Sanity Loss: 0
Spells: None
STR 2D6+2 9 Skills: Brawl 45%, Climb 50%, Command 25%,
CON 3D6 10-11 Dodge 40%, Drive 45%, First Aid 40%,
SIZ 2D4+4 9 Grapple 50%, Hide 35%, Jump 35%,
Language (English) 65%, Listen 45%, Spot 45%,
INT 3D6 10-11 Stealth 40%, Strategy 20%, Throw 40%
POW 2D6+6 13 Powers:
DEX 3D6 10-11 Teamwork: When fighting the same opponent in
conjunction with its twin, the Meatling
APP 3D6+6 16-17 receives a +10% bonus to all attacks.
Move: 11 Small Meatling, Lesser Independent Race
Hit Points: 10 Characteristic Rolls Averages
Average Damage Bonus: +0
Weapon: None (Grapple or weapon) STR 2D6 7
Armor: None CON 3D6 10-11
Sanity Loss: 0
Spells: None SIZ 1D4+4 7
Skills: Bargain 50%, Persuade 50% INT 3D6 10-11
Powers:
Seduce: Lobu emit special pheromones that can POW 3D6+6 16-17
elicit lust with an intensity of 4D6 (rolled DEX 3D6 10-11
each time the power is used). The targeted APP 1D3 2
creature or creatures must succeed on a
resistance roll of his or her INT vs. the Move: 8
POT of the pheromone or succumb to lust Hit Points: 8-9
for 5 minutes. The range of this power is Average Damage Bonus: +0
the Lobu’s CON in meters, though wind Weapon: None (Grapple or Brawl)
and weather conditions may increase or Armor: None
decrease this range as appropriate. Sanity Loss: 0
76
 Spells: None
PUNKTOWN can attempt a Difficult Dodge check to avoid a Mee’hi
Skills: Hide 30%, Listen 30%, Sneak 25%, Spot 25% swarm, or can use some other means (GM discretion)
Powers: to attempt to drive them away; fire, smoke, poison, etc.,
Teamwork: When fighting the same opponent in are usually effective. Any protective gear the character
conjunction with its twin, the Meatling receives may be wearing reduces the number of stings per D6.
a +10% bonus to all attacks. See the chart below for more information.
Acid Spray: The smaller meatling can spit acid of 2D10
POT 1D6 times per day, 20-foot range.
Protective Gear Sting Modifier
Mee’hi Normal armor –1 sting per D6
Mee’hi are tiny creatures, no bigger than insects, feed Heavy clothing (with or without armor) –2 stings per D6
off living creatures and build their nests from the corps-
es. While they don’t usually kill other intelligent species Preventive steps to avoid stings –3 stings per D6
for this purpose, it’s been known to happen.The head Beekeeping gear –4 stings per D6
of corpses are turned into a nest like a sand castle made Protective power use (GM discretion) –1 to above
of some black extruded matter. Mee’hi have a poison- Complete covering (GM discretion) No stings
ous bite that causes painful swelling, but is only fatal in
large numbers. Despite their small size, Mee’hi are still
considered intelligent beings and therefore killing even Mo-mo-mo-mo
one of them is considered murder. To avoid legal entan- Mo-mo-mo-mo have hulking, dark orange carrot-like
glements, assailants usually dispose of the tiny corpses. bodies, creased almost into fissures, with a droopy
Each player character attacked by a Mee’hi swarm is branch-like antenna dangling from the top knob, not
automatically stung 6D6 times each combat round un- really a head in the human sense since the functions of a
til he or she is able to escape from, dissuade, or even head are dispersed or not in identifiable evidence. One
destroy the swarm. A Mee’hi swarm usually attacks for leg is a thick, twisted club of wrinkly flesh, the other a
2D6 combat rounds before halting pursuit. Unless the veiny, scrawny two-toed bird leg. One arm looks like a
targets are completely covered (netting, enclosed in giant penis ending in long, tactile hairs; the other isn’t
a vehicle or sealed structure, diving underwater, etc.) really an arm but a huge warty barrel constantly oozing
there is no protection against a Mee’hi swarm. Players slime with one large eye situated at its root. Though
they smell to humanoids like feces, Mo-mo-mo-mo
like to refer to themselves as the Perfumed Ones.
Mo-mo-mo-mo wear little clothing, but a diaper-like
wrap covering the open bottom of its barrel. The Mo-
mo-mo-mo are arrogantly obsessed with their own self-
proclaimed beauty and glamour. To them, the perfect
symmetry of humanoids is a ghastly, too mathematical,
too mechanical, artificial-seeming arrangement – a per-
verted ugliness bordering on abomination. The tele-
pathic Mo-mo-mo-mo can shut down their perception
naturally, like closing an eyelid.
Mo-Mo-Mo-Mo, Greater Independent Race
Characteristic Rolls Averages
STR 4D6 14
CON 3D6+8 18-19
SIZ 3D6+6 16-17
INT 3D6 10-11
POW 2D6+6 13
DEX 3D6 10-11
APP 2D6-1 6
Move: 8
Hit Points: 10
Average Damage Bonus: +1D4
Weapon: None (Grapple or Brawl)
Armor: None
Sanity Loss: 0/1D6
77
Spells: None Research 65%, Sense 35%, Spot 40%, Status
Skills: Bargain 35%, Dodge 40%, Drive 30%, 35%, Stealth 30%
Fast Talk 35%, Insight 50%, Listen 35%, Powers:
Research 65%, Sense 35%, Spot 40%, STR Drain: If a female still has her teeth, she can
Status 35%, Stealth 30%
bite and hold on, sucking fluids from the
Powers:
victim per round until dead or until she
Stench: For anyone within five feet of a Mo-mo-
is killed or driven off. The victim’s STR
mo-mo that fails a Stamina roll, all tasks
returns at a rate of 1 point/week.
are Difficult against the Mo-mo-mo-mo
for 1D6+2 rounds. Male Lamproid, Lesser Independent Race
Psychic: Clairvoyance 50%, Mind Blast 25%,
Characteristic Rolls Averages
Telepathy 50%
STR 2D6 7
CON 3D6 10-11
Lamproid
Known colloquially as lamproids because they SIZ 2D4 5
have no official name, this bizarre race has high- INT 3D6 10-11
ly dimorphic traits. The females are somewhat
caterpillar-like, an indeterminate number of legs POW 2D6 7
obscured by the bloated segments that pulse with DEX 3D6 10-11
its labored progress. The brown flesh is dark up
front, where the forelimbs and what passes for a APP 1D3 2
head are located, though the long body becomes
more translucent further back, showing layers of Move: 10
fibrous lace beneath the glossy outer skin. The Hit Points: 7-8
females sport painful implanted seeds that form Average Damage Bonus: +0
cysts, a form of symbolic brand that denotes the Weapon: Bite 30% (DB + 1D2 STR
female’s lineage and mate. Tattoos are similarly drain)
adorned along her backside as a curse against Armor: None
any would-be suitors. Females cover their bod-
ies with silken embroidered cloth, removed only Sanity Loss: 0/1D4
for their mates. Their vocal cords are severed as Spells: None
children and their mouths are lamprey-like, but Skills: Listen 80%, Scent 80%, Sneak 80%
the males pull the teeth of the females. Powers:
The similarity with males, on the other handends STR Drain: Males can bite and hold on, sucking
with the mouths, which have webbing fluttering fluids from the victim per round until dead
across the opening, are filled with retractable teeth or until he is killed or driven off. The victim’s
and take up their entire face, atop a thin neck, boney STR returns at a rate of 1 point/week.
shoulders, and a skeletal child-sized humanoid form.
Ophluu
Female Lamproid, Lesser Independent Race Ophluu are black, almost amorphous glowing
Characteristic Rolls Averages blobs of rubbery flesh, ringed with long tentacles,
its head ringed in smaller tentacles. Several of the
STR 7D6 24-25 tentacles have weird silver markings on them that
CON 3D6+6 18-19 are actually tattoos. Ophluu brains are not housed
SIZ 8D6 28 in the center “head,” but rather in any one of the
tentacles, which can be detached in an emergency
INT 3D6 10-11 so that it can regrow an entirely new creature of its
POW 4D6 14 own. They are fond of illegal menageries.
DEX 3D6 10-11 Ophluu, Lesser Independent Race
APP 1D3 2 Characteristic Rolls Averages
Move: 2 STR 4D6+24 38
Hit Points: 22-23 CON 3D6+12 22-23
Average Damage Bonus: +2D6
Weapon: Bite 40% (DB + 2D4 STR drain) SIZ 8D6 28
Armor: 3-point (Rubbery hide) INT 1D6+12 15-16
Sanity Loss: 0/1D4 POW 3D6 10-11
Spells: None DEX 3D6+6 16-17
Skills: Bargain 35%, Dodge 40%, Drive 30%,
Fast Talk 35%, Insight 50%, Listen 35%, APP 1D3 2
78
 Move: 8
PUNKTOWN Stem
Hit Points: 25-26 Stems average seven feet tall, with no part of their body
Average Damage Bonus: +3D6 larger in circumference than a drinking straw. Their form
Weapon: Tentacle 40% (½ DB in constriction) consists of a long central section jointed once at the mid-
Armor: 7-point (Skin) dle, three-jointed legs and three-jointed upper limbs.
Sanity Loss: 0/1D6 Their bark-rough skin is a brilliant red, topped by a tiny
Spells: None face with sunken black triangular eye sockets, single tri-
Skills: Sneak 30%, Track 25% angular nostril and black toothless grins that look like
Powers: the features of miniature jack-o’-lanterns. Their plump
Multiple Attacks: In hand-to-hand combat, an Ophluu women, as thick in circumference as broom handles, are
may use all five tentacles at once, but no more a foot to two feet shorter, glossy smooth and pure white
than three may be used versus a single target. – and no other race but the Stems are allowed to view
Constrict: Once a tentacle grips, it clings to the victim, them, soiled by the eyes of others, purified only by death.
and each round thereafter the victim loses hit The Stems are a hard, violent people, their warrior class
points equal to half the Ophluu’s damage bonus renowned, sometimes hired as bodyguards or assassins in
in constriction and crushing damage. Punktown and on other colonies.

Ramon Stem, Lesser Independent Race

Dangerous feline humanoids. They are fond of wearing Characteristic Rolls Averages
robes and wielding swords capable of cutting a man in STR 3D6+12 22-23
half. A single Ramon is more than a match for an entire CON 1D6+12 15-16
band of highly trained human assassins, and defeating
SIZ 3D6+9 19-20
one is considered a mark of pride.
INT 3D6 10-11
Ramon, Greater Independent Race POW 3D6 10-11
Characteristic Rolls Averages DEX 3D6 10-11
STR 3D6+4 14-15 APP 1D6 4
CON 3D6+6 16-17
SIZ 3D6 10-11
INT 3D6 10-11
POW 2D6+6 13
DEX 4D6+6 20-21
APP 2D6-1 6

Move: 15
Hit Points: 15
Average Damage Bonus: +1D6
Weapon: Katana 100% (1D10+1+DB)
Bite 75% (1D10)
Claw 75% (1D8+DB)
Armor: None
Sanity Loss: 0
Spells: None
Skills: Dodge 100%, Hide 75%, Sneak 75%,
Track 75%
Powers:
Dual Attack: Ramon can both Claw and Bite or Ka-
tana and Bite in a round.
Cat-like Reflexes: Due to their cat-like agility
and high DEX, Ramon evades one attack
per round and still can Claw/Katana and
Bite once each per round.
79
Move: 15 Fury spell. A berserk Torgessi can attempt
Hit Points: 20 to shake off the rage by making a success-
Average Damage Bonus: +2D6 ful roll of INTx1%. After this berserk rage,
Weapon: Brawl 45% (1D3+DB (crushing)) it is considered fatigued (if the fatigue sys-
Black Crystal 55% (2D6) tem is not used, all rolls are Difficult).
Armor: 3-point (Hide)
Sanity Loss: 0/1D4
Spells: None
Skills: Brawl 45%, Climb 50%, Dodge 40%,
Drive 45%, First Aid 40%, Grapple 50%,
Hide 35%, Jump 35%, Listen 45%, Spot 45%,
Stealth 40%, Strategy 20%, Throw 40%
Powers:
Thin: Stems are so thin that they take only 1
point from piercing attacks, which in-
cludes the majority of firearms.

Torgessi
Torgessi are huge, sturdy, and muscular with a
head like a hornless cattle skull with cow-sized but
intelligent human-like eyes set in the deep cups of
the sockets, the teeth devoid of gums and cover-
ing lips. Torgessi do not normally wear clothes,
their muscle definition thus clearly displayed, and
this shows that while the helmet of their skulls are
entirely turquoise, around the jaw and neck there
begins a pebbly chain mail of tiny smooth scales,
turquoise and black in various sizes and patterns,
which change in accordance with the area of the
large body (though other color arrangements are
known); the scales and their patterns are beauti-
ful. Despite their imposing stature, shoes made of
Torgessi skin are a rare commodity.
Veer
Torgessi, Lesser Independent Race The Veers are outlawed from stepping foot on
Oasis. Their eating habits and incorrigible sav-
Characteristic Rolls Averages
agery make a mockery of their visual charm; full
STR 3D6+12 22-23 grown Veers resemble earth children, small and
CON 1D6+12 15-16 cute and smooth. On close inspection, one might
be able to see that their teeth are one forged and
SIZ 3D6+12 22-23 sharp beak-like expanse of bone and that their
INT 2D6 7 skin is somewhat glossy and doll-like — but then
POW 3D6 10-11 close inspection can prove fatal.
DEX 3D6 10-11 As clever as they are hungry, these creatures use
powder to make their skin appear less glossy and
APP 2D6 7 employ special marker pens to draw fake teeth di-
Move: 6 visions onto their biting beaks. Veer are immune
Hit Points: 19 to stunning effects.
Average Damage Bonus: +2D6
Weapon: Head Butt 35% (1D6+DB (knock- Veer, Lesser Independent Race
back))
Brawl 50% (1D3+DB (crushing)) Characteristic Rolls Averages
Armor: 3-point (Hide) STR 2D4 7
Sanity Loss: 0/1D4 CON 3D6+6 15-16
Spells: None
SIZ 2D6 5
Skills: Dodge 40%, Listen 35%, Sense 30%, Spot
35%, Track 55% INT 2D6 5
Powers: POW 2D6 7
Rage: If a Torgessi is wounded or achieves a spe- DEX 3D6+5 15-16
cial success while striking an opponent,
it goes berserk for 24-CON turns, as the APP 3D6+5 15-16
80
 Move:10
PUNKTOWN By clutching the desired object in its talons and
Hit Points: 7-8 expending an additional POW per 10 SIZ points
Average Damage Bonus: +0 of the object or creature, it makes the transit also.
Weapon: Bite 30% (1D4+DB) Objects and victims lost are never found again.
Armor: 4 points (Thick hide)
Sanity Loss: 0/1D4 Waiai
Spells: None Waiai are yellow-skinned humanoids with remarkable
Skills: Disguise 90%, Listen 80%, Scent 80%, Sneak 80% hearing and channeled orifices ringing their heads all the
Powers: way around the back from one side of their skulls to the
Stun Immunity: Veers are immune to all forms of stun- other. They are blind, what eyes they might have seem
ning attacks. to be squashed beneath the weight of their great hairless
dome of a forehead, which reminds humans of the head of
Vlessi a dolphin. Their voices are squeaky, dolphin-like, the Waiai
The Vlessi race is actually the extradimensional counter- give off subsonic waves from an aperture in the center of
part of people from our own dimension, though a hu- that bulging dome, which are reflected back in a kind of
man counterpart can be any age, gender, or race. The radar that sculpts images onto some mind canvas. Their
Vlessi are a nonhuman race: their chests are long and
voices are squeaky, dolphin-like. Waiai-females, almost in-
narrow, shallow and bony, their arms and legs as thin as
a deer’s, and their feet are hooves (thus their nickname, distinguishable from the males, are considered sacred —
the White Devils). Their hands are large and humanoid, bleeding in childbearing is called The Sacrifice; sexually
the nails the same black as their hooves. Their heads are assaulted women are avenged with extreme violence.
large atop their popsicle stick bodies, and hang forward
as if with their weight. These heads resemble nothing so
much as a human pelvis, shot through with open hollows
and covered in thin but tough, short-furred skin. No vis-
ible mouth, no place even where a brain can be imagined
to be housed. Set into the various cavities of this skull-
pelvis are six tiny eyes, lidlessly staring like those of a doll,
and haphazardly placed for each individual. They are
usually naked except for a scarf, its color or material of-
ten signifying social or religious status. The portal to the
Vlessi dimension opened on the Anul homeworld. When
shady things happen, and the Anul are involved, chances
are the Vlessi are in the shadows with them. Anul fear the
Vlessi, but they aren’t against using them.
Vlessi, Lesser Independent Race
Characteristic Rolls Averages
STR 2D6+12 19
CON 3D6+6 16-17
SIZ 3D6+12 22-23
INT 2D6+8 15
POW 3D6 10-11
DEX 3D6 10-11
APP 2D6-1 6
Move: 7
Hit Points: 18
Average Damage Bonus: +1D6
Weapon: Axe 75% (2D6+2+DB)
Armor: 3-point (Thick hide)
Sanity Loss: 0
Spells: None
Skills: Listen 25%, Spot 25%
Powers:
Dimensional Shift: A Vlessi can shift within 10 feet of
their spiritual doubles and take objects or beings
with them when it fades into another dimension.
81
Waiai, Lesser Independent Race Weapon: Bite 50% (1D4+½DB (bleeding) + Blood Drain)
Characteristic Rolls Averages Claw 50% (1D4+DB (bleeding))
STR 2D6+15 22 Grapple 75% (Special)
Armor: 4 points (Thick hide)
CON 3D6+10 20-21
Sanity Loss: 0/1D4
SIZ 3D6 10-11 Spells: None
INT 2D6+6 13 Skills: Dodge 50%, Hide 70%, Insight 60%,
POW 3D6 10-11 Jump 75%, Listen 60%, Sense 75%, Spot
DEX 2D6+12 19 75%, Stealth 80%, Track 75%
Powers:
APP 2D6 7
Multiple Attacks: A vampire can make one bite and
Move: 12 two claw attacks per round. If it succeeds
Hit Points: 21-22 in both claw attacks and a bite attack, it
Average Damage Bonus: +2D6 grapples its target and drains their blood
Weapon: Fist 35% (1D6+DB) temporarily each round until the target is
Sonic Lance 50% (1D6+DB) incapacitated. It cannot attempt to Dodge
Armor: 2 points (Thick hide) during a round it bites.
Sanity Loss: 0 Blood Drain: A vampire successfully biting a tar-
Spells: None get drains 1D6 STR or 1D6 power points
Skills: Listen 100% (GM’s choice) from that target on each
Powers:
subsequent round that it is able to stay at-
Sonar Detection: Waiai are blind and immune to
tached to the target, using normal grap-
gaze attacks and illusions, but are capable
of “seeing” using sonics alone. They can pling rules. If the target has lost all his or
“see” in a 15-meter, 360-degree field her STR, the vampire can choose instead
of sonar detection, projected from the to drain CON from the victim; at 0 CON,
Waiai’s head. Use the Waiai’s Listen skill to the victim dies. Providing that the victim
determine if an obstacle is noticed, and an has not died, these characteristic points
Idea roll to see if it can be identified. are not permanently lost and regenerate
at the rate of 1 point per day of relative
rest, or twice that long if the character is
Xenoforms not resting. If more than one characteris-
Albino Vampire tic is drained, alternate recovery each day
A toxic concoction of mutation, drugs, and an end- to recover 1 point of STR, then of CON,
less series of johns combines to turn a prostitute etc. Power points regenerate normally.
into a clone factory for vampiric mutant offspring.
They are all skeletal, albino youths, with wicked Bender
claws and needle-like teeth in combs of multiple Benders, as they are nicknamed by Blue War veter-
rows. Barely sentient, they bite and claw, licking the ans, are an extradimensional creature able to pass
blood off their victims. It is not unheard of for one into and out of Sinan’s dimension. They rarely
mother to produce over thirty spawn. appear on Punktown’s plane of existence, though
Albino Vampire, Lesser Independent Race there have been occasional rumored sightings, in-
cluding a few subway killings attributed to Bend-
Characteristics Rolls Averages
ers said to live down there. They closely resemble
STR 3D6x2 20-22 blue jellyfish—huge when adult—that float in the
CON 3D6x2 20-22 air. The longer, blue tentacles paralyze their prey,
SIZ 2D6 5 while shorter black tentacles administer flesh-dis-
INT 2D6+6 13 solving enzymes. Poisoned victims can look into
the Benders’ realm, or even experience precogni-
POW 2D6+6 13
tive visions. Symbiotically, three Blastulas feed off
DEX 3D6 10-11 the emanations of the larger Bender. In return,
APP 2D6 5 through a primitive telepathic connection, the
Move: 12 little vampires serve as sensory organs and guides
Hit Points: 15-17 to the Benders in dimensions where they might
Average Damage Bonus: +1D6 otherwise be blind and disoriented.
82
 Bender, Lesser Independent Race
PUNKTOWN Fluke
Characteristic Rolls Averages Flukes are as large as a good-sized whale and somewhat
whale-like in general form. In transition between
STR 6D6+20 41 dimensions it glows translucent and ultraviolet. Its
CON 3D6+6 20-21 blunt head have no eyes and no mouth; at the end of its
aerodynamic body there is only a kind of checkerboard, an
SIZ 6D6+10 31 area of alternating squares of raised and depressed flesh.
INT 2D6+6 13 When it has fully manifested in the Prime dimension, it has
POW 5D6 17-18 a beautiful glossy hide of green and black.
DEX 3D6 10-11 The Antse people flay the skin off Flukes carcasses inside
ceramic block garages or hangar-like structures with scrap
Move: 4 (Fly 8) metal roofs, where their watery yellow blood runs down
Hit Points: 25-26 the streets of the neighborhood into grates. The swollen,
tadpole-like form is lured out of its dimension by the
Average Damage Bonus: +3D6 Antse, who hail from the same dimension as the Fluke.
Weapon: 1D4 Blue Tentacles 75% (Paralyze & 1D6+DB
or Grapple) Blastulas feed off of Flukes, congregating in the hundreds
Black Tentacles 75% (Engulf & 1D10+3 acid around a humped bulge on its back. Its pain causes narco-
each round) lepsy, depression, even suicide from its telepathic distress.
Armor: 4 points (Rubbery hide) Fluke, Lesser Independent Race
Sanity Loss: 0/1D6
Characteristic Rolls Averages
Spells: None
Skills: Stealth 100% STR 10D6+10 43
Powers: CON 5D6+25 42-43
Blue Tentacles: If the Bender’s neuro-anaesthetic of SIZ 10D6+15 48
POT 7D6 overcomes the target, he is paralyzed
for 1D100-CON minutes. It also causes halluci- INT 3D6 10-11
nations, with a successful Idea roll giving some POW 2D6+6 13
insane insight at the cost of 1D6 SAN.
Black Tentacles: A victim caught in the black tentacles suf- DEX 2D6+6 13
fers 1D10+3 points of acid damage each round as Move: 4 (Fly 14)
corrosive digestive enzymes begin to dissolve prey. Hit Points: 45-46
Average Damage Bonus: +5D6
Blastula Weapon: Smash 35% (DB)
A blastula is a primitive orange-sized extradimensional
creature, a purple sphere with a fluttering gill-like ring Armor: 8 points (Thick skin and blubber)
at its base, floating leisurely to leech off other extradi- Sanity Loss: 0/1D4
mensionals, like Benders and Flukes. It also leeches the Spells: None
POW from beings in the Prime dimension if it can. Skills: None
Powers:
Blastula, Lesser Independent Race Psychic Distress: All sentient humanoids within one mile of
Characteristic Rolls Averages the beast suffer 1D4 SAN loss for each full day they
STR N/A N/A spend within its radius.
CON N/A N/A Humit Crab
SIZ N/A N/A Humit crabs appear very pointed, very elongated,
and without arms, with dark reddish skin, giving the
INT 3D6 10-11 appearance of a giant carrot scuttling along on four
POW 4D6 14 crooked legs. The two front legs are actually forelimbs,
DEX N/A N/A ending in two human-like thumbs opposable to each
other with thick, blunt nails. The mere presence of
Move: POWx2
these things telepathically terrifies humanoids, and for
Hit Points: POW
Average Damage Bonus: N/A good reason: Humit Crabs hollow out corpses, draining
Weapon: POW Leech (1D3 POW) them of blood, and inserts itself into the body like a
Armor: 4 points (Extradimensional hide) hand puppet. Just below the point where the corpse’s
Sanity Loss: 0/1D4 body ends, half a dozen vertical crimson lips over black
Spells: None gums ring the creature’s body, working independently of
Skills: Stealth 100% each other, full of combs of teeth. All the mouths feed
Powers: into the same gullet, which lies just below the belt of
POW Leech: Blastulas drain POW by overcoming the fanged orifices. It has no limbs, eyes, and no features at
victim’s POW with its own. all above that ring of mouths. At the very top is a crown
83
of swarming, wriggling translucent tendrils. The
Humit Crab animates the corpse erratically, like a
dead frog stimulated into movement.

Humit Crab, Lesser Independent Race

Characteristic Rolls Averages
STR 3D6+5 15-16
CON 3D6+5 15-16
SIZ 3D6 10-11
INT 3D6 10-11
POW 3D6 10-11
DEX 3D6+5 15-16
Move: 10
Hit Points: 13
Average Damage Bonus: +0
Weapon: 1D4 Mouths 35% (1D6+DB)
Armor: 4 points (Thick hide)
Sanity Loss: 1D4/1D8 Move: 9
Spells: None Hit Points: 13
Average Damage Bonus: +1D4
Skills: Disguise 75%, Dodge 50%, Hide 70%, Weapon: Claws 30% (1D6+DB)
Jump 75%, Listen 60%, Sense 75%, Spot 75%, Bite 30% (1D6+DB+worry)
Stealth 80%, Track 75% Armor: Special (½ from piercing)
Powers: Sanity Loss: 0/1D6
Human Shell: A Humit Crab can adopt the APP Spells: None
Skills: Sneak 35%
score of a corpse by wearing it and making Powers:
a successful Disguise check. Multiple Attacks: A Snipe can attack with two
Transmit Fear: A Humit Crab emits a telepathic claws and its bite in a single combat round.
transmission of its hunger, terrorizing its Worry: If a Snipe’s bite strikes home, it hangs on
targets. Victims within 20 feet must over- instead of using claw attacks and worries
come the Humit Crab’s POW each round the victim with its fangs, continuing to
with their own or be paralyzed with fear do 1D4 bite damage automatically. A
Successful STR against STR Resistance
for 1D4 rounds or until the victim suffers Table roll dislodges the ghoul, breaking
physical damage. the Grapple, and ending the bite damage.
Snipe Willow Beetles
Snipes appear as dog-like figures standing on Willow Beetles look like sparkling orange gems
crooked hind legs, emaciated, a corpse-like blue, on a willow tree. They are capable of assembling
with ribs picked out in black stripes of shadow. themselves into a humanoid form, which it cloaks
They have a natural faint bioluminescence. For in large hats and overcoats to walk Punktown’s
decades now, there have been packs of snipes in streets at night, calcifying back into a willow tree
Punktown, but it wasn’t until the Blue War that when dormant. Willow Beetles have a feral hive
Sinan was discovered to be their world of ori- mind intelligence that never forgets a slight, and
gin. They can open rifts to navigate dimensions, those harming the willow tree find themselves
where they travel in packs. Snipe blood, when ex- the subjects of its vengeance the next evening.
posed to air, turns to black wisps like a spurt of
octopus ink unfurling underwater. Willow Beetles, Lesser Independent Race
Characteristic Rolls Averages
Snipe, Lesser Independent Race
STR 2D6+10 17
Characteristic Rolls Averages
CON 3D6+12 22-23
STR 3D6+6 16-17
SIZ 2D6+14 21
CON 2D6+6 13
INT 2D6-2 5 (always at least 1)
SIZ 2D6+6 13
POW 2D6 7
INT 2D6+6 13
DEX 3D6+5 15-16
POW 2D6+6 13
Move: 12
DEX 2D6+6 13 Hit Points: 22
84
 Average Damage Bonus: +1D6
PUNKTOWN Guard Robot
Weapon: Tendril 40% (2D6+DB) While guard robots vary in shape, the popular form is
Armor: 5-point (Tree bark)
Sanity Loss: 0/1D6 something like a black snowman on a raised flat base.
Spells: None Cheap versions lack life-scan technology to confirm if
Skills: Climb 80%, Disguise 75%, Hide 80%, Sneak 75%, Track 50% targets have been eliminated. The more violent mem-
Powers:
Multiple Attacks: A Willow Beetle swarm can attack bers of the Nuts gang have similar statistics.
with two tendrils per round.
Tree Form: A Willow Beetle swarm uses its disguise check Guard Robot, Robotic Sentries
to appear as a normal tree upon inspection.
Characteristic Rolls Averages
Robots STR 4D6+24 38
Magnus
Used as helpers for the disabled, or even assassins, Mag- CON 4D6+12 26
nus robots are roughly humanoid, with a chrome-bright SIZ 2D6+9 16
segmented neck, waist section, and flexible arms and legs.
The head, chest, pelvic section and sharp-fingered hands INT 2D6+6 13
and feet are of a green plastic as clear as hard candy. POW 2D6 7
Being partially organic, Magnus robots reason as well as DEX 3D6 10-11
any sentient humanoid and are thus subject to psychic APP 2D6 7
and magical attacks. Their bio-engineered brain masses
can be viewed through their transparent green skulls. Move: 10
Magnus, Helpers and Assassins Hit Points: 21
Characteristic Rolls Averages Average Damage Bonus: +2D6
STR 3D6+12 22-23 Weapon: Blaster 80% (2D10+4 (impaling))
Fist 80% (1D3+DB (crushing))
CON 5D6 17-18
Armor: 20 points (Internal plating)
SIZ 3D6 10-11 Sanity Loss: 0
INT 3D6 10-11 Spells: None
POW 3D6 10-11 Skills: Dodge 40%, Language (Binary) 100%, Language
DEX 3D6 10-11 (English) 60%, Listen 65%, Repair (Electronics)
APP 2D6 7 75%, Repair (Mechanical) 95%, Spot 75%
Move: 8 Powers: None
Hit Points: 18-19 Blank People
Average Damage Bonus: +2D6
Weapon: Wolff .45 35% (1D10+2) Crafted for the upscale Beaumonde Square apartment
Fist 45% (1D6+DB) complex Steward Gardens, these slate-grey bio-engi-
Armor: 6 points (Armor against physical, fire, cold) neered life forms typically stand in their individual niches,
Sanity Loss: 0/1D4 blending in with their surroundings. Designed to perform
Spells: None simple duties as servants, they are stylized human figures
Skills: Electrical Repair 75%, Listen 30%, Mechanical
Repair 75%, Operate Heavy Machinery 50%, with barely defined features and rudimentary limbs, stand-
Sneak 35%, Spot 35% ing straight like soldiers ranked at attention; they also fero-
Powers: None ciously defend the apartments from intruders.

The Nuts Gang

After the Union War, a group of rebellious automaton laborers took shelter in the abandoned subway and sew-
erage tunnels beneath the city, where they have now manufactured more of themselves, sneaking above ground
occasionally to steal or purchase supplies with money earned from various criminal activities. The Nuts gang,
all robots, is one of the most dangerous and legendary in town.
These machines and their ilk are the descendants of a group of robots that had once worked at the nearby Paxton
Autoworks, all but leveled during the Union War by organic laborers – most of them laid off – rebelling against
the use of robots in their place. Most of the automatons were slaughtered, but a number lived on after the riots
in the ruins of the plant and in other ruins in that war zone of decimated factories. When these were gradually
reclaimed and rebuilt (following new battles with a few robot tribes reluctant to give up their squatter’s rights),
the robots found their way into sealed off and abandoned subway tunnels forgotten after the great earthquake.
Down there, with machinery taken from the factories and that they built themselves, they have given birth to
successive generations of new robots, who have never known organic masters.
85
Blank People, Cybernetic Guardians
Characteristic Rolls Averages
STR 3D6+12 22-23
CON 5D6 17-18
SIZ 3D6 10-11
INT 3D6 10-11
POW 2D6+6 13
DEX 3D6 10-11
APP 2D6 7
Move: 9
Hit Points: 10-11
Average Damage Bonus: +2D6
Weapon: Claw 30% (1D6+DB)
Armor: 9-point (Stone hide)
Sanity Loss: 0/1d6
Spells: None
Skills: Disguise 75%, Hide 75%, Sneak 50%
Powers:
Blend: Blank People are indistinguishable from oth-
er statues unless they fail a Disguise check.

Kawaii Doll
Kawaii (“cute” in Japanese) dolls are animated to
respond to their owners; most are mechanically
animated, but a few are bio-engineered
organisms. The Phlotus race produces similar Rotwang
dolls that some believe are the reincarnated souls Named after the scientist from the film, Metropo-
of their ancestors, given out at the conclusion of lis, Rotwangs these cybernetic organisms are con-
a harrowing carnival ride called The Temple of structed by the Nuts gang with bones formed from
the Sea of Milk. Almost all kawaii dolls are barely reconstituted robot alloy. Intentionally created to
formed, with infant-like features; they usually lack be attractive to humanoids, they usually take the
fingers, toes, and fully developed sensory organs form of human women, although any gender and
— all the better to keep them utterly dependent race is possible if it furthers the Nuts’ ends. The
on their owners. Some kawaii dolls have other Rotwang is a cybernetic bomb, with no other pur-
functions, such as dancing to music, responding pose than to get close to a target to eliminate it.
to questions, dispensing beverages, or acting in
other entertaining but relatively harmless ways. Rotwang, Mechano-Terrorists
Kawaii Doll, Cute Toys and Trapped Souls Characteristic Rolls Averages
Characteristic Rolls Averages STR 3D6+12 22-23
STR 2D6 7 CON 5D6 17-18
CON 5D6 17-18 SIZ 3D6 10-11
SIZ 1D3+2 4 INT 3D6 10-11
INT 3D6 10-11 POW 3D6 10-11
POW 2D6+6 13 DEX 3D6 10-11
DEX 3D6 10-11 APP 5D6 17-18
APP 3D6+5 15-16 Move: 8
Hit Points: 18-19
Move: 9 Average Damage Bonus: +2D6
Hit Points: 10-11 Weapon: Wolff .45 35% (1D10+2)
Average Damage Bonus: -1D6 Fist 45% (1D6+DB)
Weapon: Claw 30% (1D6+DB) Armor: 6 points (Armor against physical, fire,
Armor: None cold)
Sanity Loss: 0 Sanity Loss: 0
Spells: None Spells: None
Skills: Hide 75%, Sneak 50% Skills: Electrical Repair 75%, Listen 30%, Me-
Powers: None chanical Repair 75%, Sneak 35%, Spot 35%
86
 Powers:
PUNKTOWN Move: 8
Explode: Once Rotwangs are within 10 feet of a target, they Hit Points: 15
explode for 6D6 damage in a 20 foot radius. Average Damage Bonus: None
Weapon: Brawl 30% (1D3+DB (crushing))
Trash Zapper Power Tool 50% (1D6 (fire or electrical))
Equipped with retractable mechanized arms, the auto- Armor: 4-point (Plating)
mated garbage trucks handling Punktown’s endless ca- Sanity Loss: 0
pacity for refuse have specific paths, visiting dumpsters Spells: None
or simply picking up garbage, a red bulb on its side the
Skills: Fine Manipulation 95%, Listen 50%, Repair
only warning that citizens should stay out of its way.
When a trash zapper is full, the red light switches to (Electronic) 95%, Repair (Mechanical) 95%, Spot
green and it finds an empty alley to slowly incinerate the 50%, Technical Skill (Computer Use) 100%
contents, arms folded, in repose. Few give any notice to Powers: None
this fixture of Punktown, which makes the occasional
rogue zapper (controlled by some form of intelligence) Servitors of the Old Ones
a dangerous threat indeed. Afflicted
A strange event across the solar system struck humanoids
Trash Zapper, Robotic Garbage Men with a penchant for the occult, or already mad, covering
Characteristic Rolls Averages them with metallic-looking tumors, affecting men, women,
STR 16D6+32 88 and children, human and alien alike. A total of twenty-four
thousand appeared on Earth, on the colonies of Luna, Mars,
CON 16D6+32 88 and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn in an attempt by the
SIZ 16D6+32 88 Great Old Ones to penetrate our dimension. These future
INT 2D6 7 harbingers of the Great Old Ones for the most part stumble
about their lives, homeless and uncommunicative, like
POW 2D6 7
zombies, but when roused by a Great Old One the Afflicted
DEX 3D6 10-11 are moved to action, lightning fast, albeit still inelegant in
APP 2D6 7 their movements.
Move: 5 The Afflicted sometimes form into groups of five, creat-
Hit Points: 88 ing a spider-like creature with black teeth and whipping
Average Damage Bonus: +10D6 black tongues; their faces are like those of mummies
Weapon: Claw 75% (1D6+DB) wrapped in metallic bandages, their bodies withered.
Grapple 75% (Special) Afflicted spiders can spin long webs of silvery fluid,
Armor: 15-point (Hull) which in turn provides the foundation for an extradi-
Sanity Loss: 0 mensional gate. Even larger groups of thirty or more
Spells: None Afflicted can transform into huge tentacled beasts.
Skills: Listen 30%, Spot 35%
Afflicted, Lesser Servitor Race
Powers:
Incinerate: Trash zappers that successfully grapple a Characteristic Rolls Averages
victim incinerate him in the next round, turning STR 3D6+8 18-19
him to ash. CON 3D6 10-11
Worker Robot SIZ 3D6 10-11
Robot workers vary in size and scope. A common brand INT 2D6 7
looks like an anthropomorphic wheelchair. POW 3D6 10-11
Worker Robot, Threats To Unions Everywhere DEX 3D6+4 14-15
APP 2D6 7
Characteristics Rolls Averages
STR 2D6+6 13 Move: 10
Hit Points: 11
CON 2D6+12 19
Average Damage Bonus: +1D6
SIZ 3D6 10-11 Weapon: Brawl 55% (1D3+1D6+DB (crushing))
INT 2D6+6 13 Armor: 7-point (Flabby flesh)
POW 2D6 7 Sanity Loss: 0/1D4
DEX 3D6 10-11 Spells: None
Skills: Dodge 40%, Hide 40%, Listen 35%, Sense 25%,
APP 2D6 7 Spot 30%, Stealth 25%, Track 25%.
87
Powers: because they have an aura about them that makes
Absorb Afflicted: Afflicted can bond together to people nervous. They feed on trace-energies of
form monstrous entities. Each additional human beings in “Limbo” dimensions, brought
body adds 1 STR, SIZ, CON, and POW. there by Gatherers. They excrete a foul-smelling
Web: Afflicted of five or more can spin webs and violet gas after consuming souls, the ingredients
throw them at opponents with a 60% of which constitute the highly addictive and de-
chance. A hit entangles the opponent; en- structive drug known as Purple Vortex. Coleop-
tangle STR equals half of the Afflicted’s teroids worship Cthulhu and some of them even
SIZ; to free, roll target’s STR against Af- constitute a gang in Punktown.
flicted’s entangle STR on the Resistance
Table. Coleopteroid, Lesser Servitor Race
Characteristic Rolls Averages
Carcosan STR 3D6+6 16-17
The aliens from Carcosa can pass for humans, but
have an unnatural paper-white pallor, and when CON 2D6+6 13
they speak, their features remain all but immo- SIZ 2D6 7
bile, as if their faces are a mask. If damaged, Car- INT 5D6+6 23-24
cosan skin cracks like porcelain and a fluid seeps POW 2D6+6 13
from the holes as thick as banana-colored sap
with the stench of a corpse long liquefied inside a DEX 2D6+6 13
walking sarcophagus. APP 1D6 4
Carcosan, Lesser Servitor Race Move: 8
Hit Points: 13-14
Characteristic Rolls Averages
Average Damage Bonus: +1D4
STR 3D6 10-11 Weapon: 1D4 Claws 30% (1D6+DB)
CON 3D6 10-11 Armor: 2-point (Chitinous shell)
SIZ 3D6 10-11 Sanity Loss: 0/1D6
Spells: None
INT 3D6+10 20-21 Skills: Dodge 40%, Hide 40%, Listen 35%,
POW 3D6+15 25-26 Sense 25%, Spot 30%, Stealth 25%, Track
DEX 3D6 10-11 25%.
APP 2D6 7 Powers: None

Move: 10 Hound of Tindalos

Hit Points: 11 Hounds of Tindalos are as tall as a man, with a
Averager Damage Bonus: 0 torpedo-shape like a shark without fins, tail, or
Weapon: Brawl 55% (1D3+DB (crushing)) a head, all black and rubbery; gill-like slits open
Armor: 3-point (Brittle flesh) and close on the thing’s smooth sides, as if gasp-
Sanity Loss: 0/1D4 ing for air. It moves with an obscene flopping
Spells: None motion, swaying side to side, with the aid of flip-
Skills: Dodge 40%, Hide 40%, Listen 35%, Sense pers at its base, black claws curling out of them as
25%, Spot 30%, Stealth 25%, Track 25%. cruel as an eagle’s. It has no other limbs except
Powers: for a vaguely translucent tongue that lashes out
The Yellow Signs: See sidebar for details. from a the hole, with five gray flaps like its tongue,
in the top of its body. It emits short, sharp, gut-
Coleopteroid tural cries, almost like barks. Tindalosian Hounds
This extradimensional beetle-like race are black, hunt by smell and inflict great puncture wounds
bipedal beings with six pincer-tipped arms, the dripping a thick, syrupy blue color.
lower two of which are occasionally removed and
replaced with mechanical arms with four fingers Hound Of Tindalos, Lesser Servitor Race
and opposable thumbs, an artificial adaptation to Characteristic Rolls Averages
a humanoid-oriented world; they wear no other STR 3D6+6 16-17
clothing or jewelry. The Coleopteroids enter the
Prime dimension by riding great black train-like CON 3D6+20 30-31
machines called trans that move about upon train- SIZ 3D6 10-11
like tracks laid out in odd geometric patterns. Co- INT 5D6 17-18
leopteroids are derisively known as “Bedbugs”
88
 POW 7D6 24-25
PUNKTOWN
DEX 3D6 10-11 The Yellow Signs
APP 1D6 4 Carcosans bring a Yellow Sign with them wherever
they go and are fond of patronizing artists including
Move: 6 it in their art, which inevitably, this drives the artist
Hit Points: 23-24 mad. The signs vary in appearance, white against
Average Damage Bonus: +1D6 yellow and thus easy to miss; some look like stylized
Weapon: Tongue 90% (1D3 POW) stars, others almost like calligraphy. The night
Armor: 2-point (Hide) following seeing a terrible Yellow Sign, the viewer
Sanity Loss: 1D3/1D20 loses 0/1D6 points of Sanity; afterwhich, anyone
Spells: None suffering a loss of Sanity must make another Sanity
Skills: Dodge 40%, Spot 30%, Track 25%. roll every night thereafter, else they are haunted by
Powers: horrible nightmares causing a further loss of 1 point
Immunity: Hounds are immune to mundane of Sanity. This continues each time he sleeps until
ammunition and weapons; gel caps are effective, the victim successfully resists the Yellow Sign with a
however. Sanity roll or until madness overtakes him.
Tongue Attack: With a successful tongue attack, a deep
penetrating (though bloodless and painless) hole
is formed. The victim takes no physical damage, the victim (roll STR against STR on the Resis-
despite his peculiar wound, but loses 1D3 POW tance Table to break free), and fly into the sky to
permanently. drop the victim from a height or take the victim
so high that his or her lungs burst.
Hound of Ugghiutu
Spawned from the skulls of the insane, there are all too Pseudopede
many fertile victims in which a Hounds of Ugghiutu may Like the Puppeteer, this long creature slithering and
gestate. Once Ugghiutu has been summoned, his hounds
begin to manifest in those with 0 SAN. The afflicted’s wriggling with ripping cilia, is a microscopic parasite
skull bulges, a condition that is very painful, until the capable of expanding its size fantastically in just mo-
skull bursts wide open killing the victim as the Hound is ments to attack, with cries sound like horse’s hysteri-
born. Hounds of Ugghiutu have ghostly, luminous bod- cal whinnying with almost subliminal whisperings laced
ies topped by a featureless head ringed with tendrils that under it, like someone playing glasses of water with
sway and swirl like the hair of a drowned woman at the
bottom of a lake. Its skeletal arms swim in slow motion, their fingertips.
and its translucent wings beat slowly at its back. Pseudopede, Lesser Servitor Race
Hound of Ugghiutu, Lesser Servitor Race Characteristic Rolls Averages
Characteristic Rolls Averages STR 6D6+12 33
STR 3D6 10-11 CON 4D6+10 24
CON 3D6 10-11 SIZ 5D6+26 43-44
SIZ 3D6 10-11 INT 4D6+6 20
INT 2D6+6 13 POW 3D6+6 16-17
POW 2D6+6 13 DEX 3D6+6 16-17
DEX 4D6 14 APP 1D6 4
APP 1D6 4 Move: 9
Move: 7 (Fly 9) Hit Points: 33-34
Hit Points: 10-11 Average Damage Bonus: +4D6
Average Damage Bonus: 0 Weapon: Tentacle 40% (½ DB)
Weapon: Nippers 30% (1D6+Grapple) Crush 35% (DB)
Armor: 6-point (Thick skin and blubber)
Armor: None (Minimum damage from impaling)
Sanity Loss: 0/1D8
Sanity Loss: 0/1D6 Spells: None
Spells: None Skills: None
Skills: Hide 15%, Sneak 15%, Powers:
Powers: Grow: Pseudopedes can infect a visitor to Cthulhu’s di-
Multiple Attacks: Hounds may attack in hand-to-hand mension as a microbe and then grow instantly to
combat with two nippers at once. full size. This guarantees that it gets a free attack
Grapple: If the target is hit, the Hound tries to Grapple as part of an Ambush.
89
Puppeteer glossy purple beasts with eight smooth tentacles
at its front, set in a ring, in the center of which
These microscopic amoeba-like creatures drift is a much smaller set of numerous writhing ten-
in liquid with little lazy spurts infecting be- drils, a contrasting bright white in color. There
ings crossing into Cthulhu’s dimension. When are two paddle-like forward limbs that drag the
necessary, they grow exponentially in seconds, hulk along, with the appearance of finger bones
transforming into a huge monstrosity topped within them, like the hands of a still-forming fe-
by tentacles striped with black and silver, mak- tus. Along either side of the monster are puls-
ing a sound like that of a bellowing mammoth ing gill slits like those of a shark, showing starkly
blended with a synthesizer running backwards, white meat beneath the purple outer skin.
underwater. Puppeteers fire a long tendril into
a victim’s skull to perform detailed actions they Ugghiutu, Lesser Servitor Race
cannot. This act keeps the victim alive in a zom- Characteristic Rolls Averages
bie-like state, moving slowly and awkwardly, with
STR 10D6 33
enough memories to be functional. From a dis-
tance, the tendril may be difficult to spot, as the CON 2D6+6 13
Puppeteers are semi-translucent, but close up the SIZ 10D6 33
bizarre relationship is unmistakable. If the tendril INT 1D6 4
is severed, the host dies instantly. POW 3D6 10-11
Puppeteer, Lesser Servitor Race DEX 2D6+12 19
Characteristic Rolls Averages APP 1D6 4
STR 6D10+6 39
Move: 4 (Swim 10)
CON 3D6+6 16-17 Hit Points: 23
SIZ 6D10+10 41 Average Damage Bonus: +3D6
INT 4D6+6 20 Weapon: Beak 45% (1D10+DB)
POW 3D6+6 16-17 Tentacle 45% (1D6+DB+constriction)
Armor: 2-point (Hide)
DEX 4D6 14
Sanity Loss: 1/1D8
APP 1D6 4 Spells: None
Move: 8-9 Skills: Hide 70%
Hit Points: 19-20 Powers:
Average Damage Bonus: +4D6 Multiple Attacks: The beak and eight tentacles
Weapon: Tendril 75% (1D6+DB+puppet) can attack simultaneously at up to eight
Armor: None (Immune to piercing and slash- different targets.
ing) Constrict: The first tentacle striking a foe hangs
Sanity Loss: 1/1D8 on; when a second connects, the two con-
Spells: None strict the target, and each does its damage
Skills: Control Human Body 50% each round.
Powers:
Grow: Puppeteers infect a visitor to Cthulhu’s Utalla
dimension as a microbe and then grow A hobgoblin of Kalian folklore, Utallas are big
instantly to full size. This guarantees that wingless birds that live in the mountains and love
it gets a free attack as part of an Ambush. to eat cats. They skin them alive to torment them
Animate Corpse: If a victim would die from before they eat them and make their nests from
a Puppeteer’s tendril attack, it instead cat pelts. Utallas, in reality, appear as skeletal hu-
animates the body by “plugging in” to the manoids with huge black eyes covered in a silvery
victim’s skull. The victim is brain dead but protective membrane, and a long pointed beak
still alive, giving the Puppeteer access to like a bird’s projecting from the front of their
any skills the corpse had in life at the same heads. The skin has a silvery sheen, but like their
rating as its Control Human Body skill. eyes seem black below the surface, giving Utallas
an odd look as though their bodies were an x-ray.
Ugghiutu Spawn The Utalla are aligned with Ugghiutu, one of the
These creatures were secretly designed at the groups of his servitor demons, and know where
bio-engineered meat company, Alvine Products, to find Ugghiutu’s sleeping body, feeding some
owned by Kalian devotees of Ugghiutu. Large, of his orifices the way birds feed their chicks.
90
 Utalla, Lesser Servitor Race
PUNKTOWN Armor: 2-point (Rubbery flesh)
Characteristic Rolls Averages Sanity Loss: 1/1D8
Spells: None
STR 3D6+15 25-26 Skills: Hide 50%, Imitate Consumed Victim 99%, Read
CON 2D6+6 13 Minds Telepathically 99%, Sneak 50%
Powers:
SIZ 3D6 10-11 Regeneration: 1 HP/round until dead. Wounds from
INT 3D6 10-11 fire, electricity, acid or magic weapons do not
POW 3D6 10-11 regenerate.
Consume Victim: Eating a victim requires 1 minute per
DEX 3D6+6 16-17 point of SIZ digested through Dai-oo-ika’s jelly-
APP 2D6 7 like protoplasm, which it spews over its food.
As it consumes victims it also absorbs the dead
Move: 12 creature’s memory, skills, and mannerisms. In
Hit Points: 21-22 this way, Dai-oo-ika can accurately imitate any
Average Damage Bonus: +2D6 living organism. The transformation from one
Weapon: Bite 50% (2D6+DB) animal to another requires 1 round per SIZ of
Talon 35% (1D6+DB) the Thing. Dai-oo-ika can fully transform or
Armor: 9-point (Protective membrane) choose body parts to transform, such as creating
Sanity Loss: 0/1D6 teeth or claws quickly to attack or defend itself.
Spells: None Grow: As Dai-oo-ika eats, it increases its STR, SIZ, and
CON 1 point each per 1 SIZ consumed.
Skills: Listen 25%, Spot 25%, Track 25% Bud: Dai-oo-ika can also bud to create independent
Powers: None organisms. This may be done when two or
more victims have been consumed and it wishes
Great Old Ones to imitate both simultaneously. Because of this
Dai-oo-ika budding ability, separate (but always connected
Using bio-engineering technology from the infamous by a thin tendril to Dai-oo-ika) creatures take
on lives of their own. Dai-oo-ika splits the
Alvine Products when they bought that company out,
characteristics of STR, CON and SIZ among the
Fukuda Bioforms created a kawaii doll that initially multiple bodies, but each separate entity retains
looked relatively harmless — a squid-faced, winged, the same INT, POW and DEX as the original.
baby-like form. As he grew he became much more dan-
gerous, with writhing head tentacles the thickness of a Gatherer
The Gatherers – and there are at least three – are be-
man’s torso and a massive bulging form of gray flesh.
ings summoned and worshipped by the Bedbugs. They
An avatar of Ugghiutu, Dai-oo-ika is driven by two con- pay tribute to these monstrous deities through the col-
flicting goals: an endless need to fill a gaping hole left lection of souls, feeding them through their Limbo di-
by his separation from his owner, and the need to create mensions, until the Gatherers have enough power to
slowly penetrate the Prime dimension. Gatherers appear
an apocalyptic world filled only with his followers. Dai- as titanic spider-like beings with multiple eyes and legs.
oo-ika deals aggressively with the first goal by absorbing
those he feels any affection for into his own body. The Bedbugs transmit to the Gatherers over a telepathic am-
second goal he achieves by growing after each absorb- plifier-projector device, and the response is enough to
tion, becoming more powerful in the process. burst the heads of telepaths. The Bedbugs chant praises
to the beasts, which they view as fertility gods, these
Dai-oo-ika, Avatar of Ugghiutu chants referring ominously to a coming “harvest,”
when the Gatherers will reap enough souls to feed the
Characteristic Rolls Averages Bedbugs in Limbo. Despite their vast size, these beings
STR 3D6* 17-18 are, in fact, only nymphs.
CON 3D6* 17-18 Gatherer, Avatars of Atlach-Nacha
SIZ 3D6* 10-11 Characteristic Rolls Averages
INT 3D6+6 16-17 STR 24D6+48 132
POW 5D6 17-18 CON 16D8+48 104
DEX 3D6+12 17-18 SIZ 24D6+48 132
APP 3D6 10-11 INT 3D6 10-11
Move: 10 POW 4D6 14
Hit Points: 14
DEX 3D6 10-11
Average Damage Bonus: +1D4
Weapon: Tentacle 60% (1D8+DB+infection) APP 2D6 7
91
Move: 18 Ugghiutu is best known for transforming his
Hit Points: 118 amorphous black flesh into the semblance of a
Average Damage Bonus: +15D6 temple that appears in remote places, and lures
Weapon: Crush 60% (1D6+DB (crushing + the unwary inside as unwilling sacrifices. This
knockback)) temple of himself in tribute to himself exhibits
Armor: 21-point (Skin) a looming dome in the center, minarets made of
Sanity Loss: 1/1D10 entwined tentacles, and two flat-roofed wings of
Spells: None several floors that frame the central rotunda. In a
Skills: Sense 60%, Spot 60%
city like Punktown, Ugghiutu may mimic more
Powers: None
modern-appearing structures in vacant lots.
Ugghiutu
Ugghiutu, a Kalian deity often compared to Aza- Characteristic Rolls
thoth, is said to be responsible for creating the STR 120
humanoid races so that they might release the CON 230
Great Old Ones again. He is also worshipped by
SIZ 120
cults of Tikkihotto and many Coleopteroids.
INT 0
Kalian women are forbidden to render an image POW 100
of Ugghiutu. Only priests have ever done so, and
they ritualistically hung themselves afterwards, DEX 10
because Ugghiutu had shown himself to their APP -
minds. In art, Ugghiutu is frequently depicted as Move: 15
a black sun ringed in a corona of tentacles, with Hit Points: 175
one red eye in the center, or as a whirling vortex, Average Damage Bonus: +14D6
black, with a red spiral for infinity as its nucleus.
Weapon: Tentacles 100% (14D6 or death on
He consumes the souls of the living, a sort of oc-
second round)
topus grim reaper, but then excretes them again
as new souls, recycled and reincarnated. He is Armor: 50-point (Hard shell)
harsh, unforgiving, vengeful, cruel, monstrous Sanity Loss: 1D10/5D10
– the usual godly attributes — and he lives in a Spells: None
kind of spider web that holds the universe and Skills: -
the dimensions together. This unseen palace is Powers: Ugghiutu attacks by putting forth
the Temple of Ugghiutu, and actual temples are tentacles from its body, crushing victims,
built according to meticulous blueprints that are or drawing them into its shell where they
meant to emulate these cosmic patterns. are instantly torn apart.

The Fizala on Ugghiutu

The Outsider may be summoned in essence, but never awakened from His dreams; He
may be consulted, as even in His dreams can He yet converse with His acolytes, but fully
roused He is beyond the need for even the most faithful of men, whom He will trod
upon with the infidel alike. As men use insects to make honey, so does the Outsider make
use of men, but as men do not love these insects, and will destroy them without grief,
so will the Outsider crush even His highest priests if He has no further need of them.
Asleep, He has need of our kind so that we might make all attempts to summon Him
into our world. And summon Him briefly whilst in His dreams we shall. But even those
most loyal of us must betray His desire, if we are to survive as men, and the world survive
without the horror of His visitation upon it. It is for the wisest of our priests to keep this
truth even from our common priests. Allow them to believe that they serve only the full
intentions of our Master. But watch closely that these priests use only the summoning
rituals that are assured not to end the Dreaming One’s timeless slumber.

92
 Scenario:
PUNKTOWN

The Lemongrass Crater

by Glynn Owen Barrass
created in their experiments, gargantuan amalgama-
Introduction tions of Human, Choom, and other beings. They lost
Strange events are such a daily occurrence, the major- the contract, however, mothballed the installation, and
ity of Punktown’s population have witnessed something left their newly created monstrosities in stasis while Du-
odd, supernatural, or just downright insane at some kong Renovations buried their secret underneath Lem-
point during their lives, and as such are accustomed to ongrass Square. All was well, except that in Punktown,
it. So, when a meteorite falls from the sky, killing the no secret remains hidden forever, and a one-in-a-billion
six hundred plus inhabitants of a sprawling apartment meteorite impact damaged the installation and released
complex, people are shocked and outraged (for about
their sinister secrets made flesh. After the impact, the in-
two hours), after which they go about their daily lives.
stallation’s mainframe went on defense mode, releasing
The Health Agency appeared on the VT to explain this its mutations to guard the surrounding area. Dukong
was a “one-in-a-billion occurrence,” and people dis- Renovations and their masters, P’yong Heavy Indus-
cussed the disaster, albeit briefly, over their evening meals. tries, want the rumors about mutations quashed, and as
A HAP team entered the Lemongrass Square ruins, said such, want the mutations quashed. To succeed in this,
the city was safe from radiation, and other interests ap- they require some heavily-armed, no nonsense killers to
peared to occupy the city’s myriad minds. Then the ru- enter the ruins and escort two of their operatives into
mors started. Within the cordoned off ruins of Lemon- the installation, the plan being, that once the operatives
grass Square, witnesses reported huge shapes lumbering are there, they can reach the mainframe controlling the
through the devastation. Looters, doing overtime in the mutations and disable them by remote. With safeguards
destruction the meteorite caused, entered the square and in place to stop the curious, P’yong Heavy Industries
did not return. All this was heard on the rumor mill, dis- doesn’t expect the characters to survive past the en-
counted by most, and certainly didn’t thwart the loot- trance to the installation; they are, in reality, nothing
ers in their quest for a quick buck. Like most rumors in but cannon fodder. It’s a good plan, in theory.
Punktown, it shouldn’t have been taken so lightly.
Involving the Characters
This scenario is suitable for 2 – 4 players, the most The exact way the characters get involved in the sce-
suitable professions being Hitman, Forcer, or Health nario is up to the Gamemaster, but here are some sug-
Agent, with combat skills being the most useful for sur- gestions:
vival, although high levels of Craft (Computer Code)
and Technical (Computer Use) will come in very useful 1) One of the characters has a friend working for Du-
kong Renovations (oblivious to the company’s sinis-
near the end of the scenario.
ter secrets), and after hearing that Dukong was hir-
Gamemaster’s Information ing, put a word in for the characters.
Before Lemongrass Square’s construction, the whole 2) One or more of the characters are undercover Forc-
four hundred square feet area was nothing but unde- ers or HAP Agents wanting access to the site to in-
veloped land, heavily guarded, however, and surround- vestigate the disappearance of five of their colleagues.
ed by tall, electrified, razor wire fences. Public records This optional method of involvement is noted in the
text under the heading Missing Persons.
showed the land’s owers to be a company called Dukong
Renovations, and they appeared in no rush to build on However they first hear of the job, they are given the
this virgin plot within a greatly overpopulated city. Du- following information:
kong Renovations, however, is a subsidiary of P’yong
Heavy Industries, and built a large laboratory installa- The Project Director of Dukong Renovations, Miss
tion beneath the bare earth for the sole purpose of cre- Gunmetal Costello, requires the services of discreet
ating illegal clones from stolen genetic material. At the persons gifted in the art of killing. A problem has
time, P’yong Heavy Industries was chasing a military arisen on the site of the Lemongrass Square meteor
contract to create a ‘super-soldier’ for use in the Blue impact that requires the immediate attention of any
War, their clones going far beyond simply copying one unafraid of getting their hands dirty. Large cash in-
creature to create a duplicate. Bizarre mutations were centives are provided.
93
Dukong Renovations
Fronted by a large car park, this fifty-story high, imposing building formed from ersatz granite is shaped
like a gravestone with circular windows like the portholes of a ship. Rusted steel scaffolding surrounds
the building for the first twenty floors, but no structural work is being performed – this is just decoration.
Upon the ground floor stands a row of six mirrored sliding doors above which a sign bearing the company
name flickers in pink neon. There are two small guardhouses to either side of the entrance, each bearing a
gun turret upon its flat roof. Anyone approaching the entrance is ordered to halt and submit to a weapon
scan. Any weapons the characters wishing to enter the building may have are confiscated. A short, elderly,
obese human and a young, thin, wiry Choom leave their posts within the guardhouses to confiscate the
weapons. If asked about this level of security, the human replies, “We’ve been getting threats since the
meteorite crashed, citizens are mad because their loved ones are still buried there.”
Characters enter the building into a brightly lit reception; the walls, ceiling and floor formed from
octagonal yellow plastic tiles. A low, black granite desk stands between the characters and a bank of
elevators at the rear of the reception, behind which sits a young, pretty, black-haired female Tikkihotto.
Revolving holograms adorn the wall showing many of Dukong Renovation’s properties around Punk-
town; one of them, near the center of the right-hand wall, is blank because this frame once displayed
Lemongrass Square. In addition to the characters and the receptionist, there are two human security
guards posted at the elevators, who stare at the characters with suspicion as the receptionist asks them in
a chirpy manner about their business before speaking into her earpiece to summon the woman they’re
here to see. A few minutes later, the center elevator opens and the characters meet Gunmetal Costello.

The Project Director

Tall, shapely, with bright green shoulder length hair, Gunmetal Costello wears a metallic jacket, short
skirt and high heels. Although she appears human, she is actually a Choom after extensive facial sur-
gery. A native Choom character making an Idea roll realizes this on a critical roll. As she approaches
the characters, the two guards flank her. She steps around the reception desk, smiles brightly, and
shakes the hand of whomever has the highest APP (male or female, but ignoring any Chooms). She
greets the characters, introducing herself as ‘Ms. Costello,’ and invites them to join her in her office.
After a walk across the reception, they leave the guards behind and take an elevator ride to the fiftieth
floor and a large conference room. Porthole windows line one wall while the rest of this room is deco-
rated similarly to the reception, even down to the framed, revolving images, except that the Lemon-
grass Square hologram is still present. Ms. Costello invites them to sit at a large table before taking a
seat herself. The black granite table is bare apart from a small circular metallic plate at its center and
a small console near where Ms. Costello sits. If the characters accept her invitation of refreshments,
jugs of chilled juice and glasses elevate from hidden recesses in the table before Ms. Costello begins
her pitch. Ms. Costello gives the most attractive, non-Choom character flirty smiles throughout the
interview, although she won’t take things any further if propositioned afterwards.

94
 It’s a Bug Hunt!
PUNKTOWN Public Knowledge
“You may have heard the rumors about disappear-
At this point in the scenario the characters may want
ances and things going ‘bump’ at the site of our for-
to do some research on their new employer and the
mer complex,” Ms. Costello begins. “Well, it does seem
they’re true, and there are things, mutants most like- Lemongrass Square incident. The knowledge provided
ly, wandering around the impact site and stopping in the handouts, opposite, can be found in a library—
our people from going in there and starting the clean Punktown’s K Block Library, for example—with a suc-
up. We have no idea what these things are. Heck, this cessful Library Use or Computer Use skill.
is Punktown so god knows what freaks have made
GAMEMASTER’S NOTE:
their homes there in that rubble.”
The characters should make a separate roll for
each piece of information, stating the keyword
GAMEMASTER’S NOTE:
they are using for the search. Possible keywords
Call for Luck rolls, and if successful, they have
are noted in Bold.
passed Lemongrass Square in its heyday and
have memories of a filthy structure with bro-
ken windows, mottled in graffiti. This is the
reality, not the hologram. Urban Chaos
Upon arriving at Lemongrass Square, the characters see
Ms. Costello presses a button on the console and a large a chaotic wreck of fallen masonry surrounded by a ten
yellow 3D hologram of Lemongrass Square appears at
the center of the table, slowly moving on its axis. The foot tall, electrified mesh fence topped with razor wire.
apartment complex, shown in its former glory, is a large Numerous ‘warning’ signs are pinned across the fence
ten-story cylindrical building with two wings leading in to deter trespassers. One area of the fence connects
with steps to the roof, where a large glass dome stands. to a gate, flanked by two fabricated steel guard posts
The wings are connected to two small, five-story cylindri- topped with gun turrets. The men they’ve been sent
cal buildings, the rear of the building connected to a low, to liaise with are easily found parked up in a Hovervan
two-story parking garage. The walls are mostly transpar- directly to the left of the gate. Upon the characters’
ent glass, with some white between. The main roof and
approach, they leave the vehicle and the characters see
those of the wings are spotted with satellite dishes.
a tall, stocky, blue-skinned human and a shorter Tik-
“One of our oldest buildings,” Ms. Costello continues kihotto. The Tikkihotto waves, but the human folds his
with a sigh and switches off the hologram. “This opera- arms and glares at the characters sternly, sizing them
tion should be a piece of cake for people of your skills. up as they approach. Both men are wearing dark blue
We’ll even arm you, and include two of our men to jumpsuits and black plastic bulletproof vests.
accompany you into the ruins. This job pays ten thou-
sand munits up front, each, and another ten thousand The bald human, Sebastian-13, is a trained mercenary
upon successful completion. If you agree, I’ll have the and by the blue camouflage pattern of his skin, obvi-
cash transferred to your account immediately. Our ously a clone and a Blue War veteran. He has the num-
two operatives can be waiting for you outside the Lem- ber ‘13,’ tattooed to his forehead in black ink, the area
ongrass within the hour, or whenever you’re ready. We around his left eye is heavily scarred with a cybernetic,
would, however, like the operation started within the fish eye camera lens replacing his eyeball. He says, in a
next twenty-four hours. Are there any questions?” sarcastic tone, “You’re the big bad wolves here to solve
Dukong’s problems? I’m Sebastian-13, and this here is
Malla Turonga.” The tone towards his companion is
GAMEMASTER’S NOTE: obviously derogatory. The Tikkihotto is a fair represen-
Call for Psychology rolls; success reveals she tation of his race; blonde hair and a goatee, and apart
is being untruthful about something.
from his eyestalks appears completely human. He is
very jittery in his body and eye movements. He pulls off
a glove and shakes the characters’ hands, his handshake
The interview over, Ms. Costello escorts the characters
back to the reception. They can either go to Lemon- limp and moist, saying, “I’m the tech support here, err,
grass Square immediately or do some research. What- um, you can call me Mal.” Sebastian-13 rolls his eyes
ever they choose, Ms. Costello gives the character she’s and shakes his head, saying, “Well let’s get this show on
been flirting with her business card. This way they can the road.” He heads to the rear of the vehicle, Mal in
contact her when they’re ready to begin the job. tow, raising a shutter to reveal a miniature arsenal.
95
Handout #1

Handouts for
Public Knowledge

Handout #2

Handout #3

Handout #4

96
PUNKTOWN
The Armory
Weapons
Weapon base % damage range att/rnd ammo HP mal
Assassin 15% 2D8 100 2 20 20 99-00
Assault Eng 25% 2D6+2 100 2/burst 30 12 00
Decimator.340 20% 1D10+2 20 1 6 14 00
Osprey .00 5% 3D4+1 10 1 30 12 96-00
Thor .93 20% 1D8 20 2 12 8 98-00
NB: There are three each of the above weapons available.
Armor
Name AP Burden Skill Modifier Location
Bulletproof Mesh 4 Light –5% Physical all
Plastic Vest 8 Light –5% Physical chest
NOTE: There are four each of the above items available.
Miscellaneous Gear
Nightvision Goggles – Users can see fifteen meters in total darkness. Negative modifiers to Spot or combat
skills in darkness do not apply.

NB: There are a dozen pairs of Nightvision Goggles available.

The above table shows the weapons and equipment If asked: “Has there been anyone at the crater since it was
available for the characters. walled off?” He replies: “There are hobos going in and out,
climbing over the fence like rats. Ugghiutu only knows how
At this point, the Gamemaster should give the charac-
they stop getting fried. I also saw some official types go in
ters the option of exploring the area surrounding Lem-
ongrass Square. Sebastian-13 is fine with this as long as there. I didn’t see them come out again.” If asked about any
they’re not gone for too long. other occurrences at the crater, he replies: “Some of my staff
said they hear screams from in there, but they’re idiots. The
The office blocks and apartment buildings surrounding whole place is radioactive, I bet. We’ll have eight-armed ho-
the crater are abandoned and boarded shut. Broken ma- bos climbing out of there like spiders any day now.”
sonry from the blast and smashed glass litter the area.
There is, however, an open BurgerZone restaurant, its GAMEMASTER’S NOTE:
windows clean and graffiti free, freshly repaired after the A sadistic Gamemaster may call for a CON x5 roll
destruction of the meteor shockwave. Here, the charac- for any character that tried the burgers, keeping
ters can buy the greasiest burgers going, equally greasy, the outcome secret. If they fail, the character has
salty fries (yum!), and phallus-sized, salty green pickles. been poisoned, and the Gamemaster may reveal
They might also want to interview the staff about the this fact at the most inopportune of moments,
Lemongrass Crater and ask if they have seen anything such as during combat, for instance, when the
suspicious around the ruins. In this case, the staff send character involuntarily evacuates their bowels,
for the Night Manager, a surly faced Kalian in a grease- incapacitating them for two rounds, giving them
stained orange turban matching his grease-stained or- half movement until they clean themselves up.
ange uniform. He wears a nametag bearing the name:
‘Ged.’ He says: “Only paying customers get to talk. You If the characters search the area surrounding Lem-
pay. I talk.” At this point, the characters get to choose ongrass Square, they find nothing but desolation and
something from the delectable menu: fries are 5 Munits cracked pavements for their trouble. The Gamemaster
a portion, burgers 10 Munits each or a double for 15, should make a roll on the table “Punktown Will Kill
pickles are 10 Munits for a bag of three. Gamemasters You” on page 33 for a random encounter, ignoring
should feel free to give the burgers exciting names if they and re-rolling inappropriate results.
wish; they all taste like pre-chewed horsemeat anyway.
If they decide to interview the guards in the posts flank-
The Kalian answers their questions now that they are ing the door when they return to Lemongrass Square,
patrons: they find only one manned by a slovenly, fat Choom
97
with food stains on his uniform. The man is abrupt and unhelpful with the attitude that the characters
are accusing him of something. Sebastian-13, finally growing impatient, has the Choom open the
gate so they can enter, on foot, with Sebastian-13 and Mal taking the lead.

The Lemongrass Crater

Random Encounters
GAMEMASTER’S NOTE:
The encounters in this section are fairly linear with only major locations described.
Should the characters wish to explore different areas of the ruins, the Random
Encounter table provided below may be used at the Gamemaster’s discretion.

Roll Encounter
01 – 25 Dangerous Footing: The ground is unstable here. Each character makes a Luck roll,
with a failure meaning they fall into the remnants of a basement for 1D6 points of dam-
age as per the Falling rules.
26 – 50 Frightened Looters: The group encounters a gang of 1D4 + 2 looters digging through
the ruins. They flee at the sight of the group, and only fight if set upon, abandoning the
fight if their numbers are reduced by half.
51 – 75 Brave Looters: The group encounters a gang of 1D4 + 2 looters digging through the
ruins. They instantly set upon the group and fight to the death to protect themselves.
76 – 100 Avalanche: The nearest mound of rubble becomes unstable and crashes down towards
two randomly chosen characters. A Dodge or Jump roll is required (or both), other-
wise the characters suffer 3D6 damage from fallen debris.

With the gate behind them, the characters find themselves facing mound upon mound of debris, jagged
with sheet glass and twisted girders. The only section of building still standing is half of the right-hand
cylindrical wing, sagging dangerously with empty rooms and girders visible within. The asphalt sur-
rounding the square is riddled with cracks, some so wide the characters have to be careful stepping over
them. There are paths through the mounds, and Sebastian-13 tosses a coin to go either left or right.

The Right Hand Path

This path leads towards the barely standing building. Upon reaching the building, creaking ominously
as if about to collapse, the characters find a dead end with evidence of digging where looters have been
at work. In a corner, near the base of the building lies a corpse. Strange black matter covers its head,
resembling a miniature tower with spiked battlements. A Mee’hi swarm has made its home here in a
looter they encountered and killed when their original home in the building’s basement was destroyed.
The Mee’hi do not leave their home to attack unless the group comes within one meter of their nest.
See “Mee’hi” on page 77 for dealing with a Mee’hi swarm.

The Left Hand Path

As the group walks, the desolation becomes a palpable presence, the hills of rubble around them filled
with shadows. Half-buried clothes and other material shiver in slight winds; here and there, clouds
of flies buzz around remains best left unexplored. The Gamemaster can use the occasional noise of
falling masonry on the mounds above them to add a sense of tension to the scene. Mal comments, “I
can’t believe they haven’t exhumed the bodies yet,” and Sebastian-13 shushes him abruptly.
The path eventually opens onto a wider, fairly even area with remnants of wall still standing. On a suc-
cessful Listen roll, the characters notice a low clattering sound somewhere to the left past a sagging door-
way. Mal grows instantly suspicious, and raises his rifle in that direction. “This might be it,” Sebastian-13
snarls from the side of his mouth, and with his gun raised, slowly steps across the rubble, through the
doorway and into an area of more mounds. As they step across the uneven floor of cracked masonry, a
failed Sneak roll is followed by the sound filling the air like a gunshot, causing everyone to instinctually
freeze. Another Listen roll reveals the sound has ceased, but as they advance in the direction it came
from, evidence grows apparent of recent disturbances in the rubble, like someone has been digging.
Household objects and electrical goods, mostly smashed beyond repair, have been placed in piles along
the path they take. Eventually, they see a section of roof upon a pile of rubble, forming a rough shelter.
98
99
PUNKTOWN
100
 A randomly chosen character trips over, to their dis-
PUNKTOWN “I would ask you to make yourselves comfortable, but that
gust, a skeletal, human hand poking from the rubble, ain’t gonna happen, is it?” Run says with another cackle.
cleansed of all but a few tatters of flesh. On a successful Sebastian-13 grows angry, and stalking across the hovel he
Luck roll they hold back from crying out, followed by a grabs the hobo by the shoulder and shouts, “Who the hell
1D2 Sanity check for everyone. are you? How many more of you are there?”
Regardless of any noise made, the group has been noticed, Run giggles and replies, “The others, I told ‘em to stay
and a shape comes lumbering out from the darkness of the close to me. Now they’ve been taken, taken down into
shelter with a sudden reek. Sebastian-13 hisses and shakes the spaceship.”
his head, saying, “Damn, my eye short-circuited. What the
Sebastian-13 releases the hobo and turns back to the
— ?” Nightvision Goggles and any other electronic appa-
characters. “I can hardly see around this freak. This is
ratuses stop working too, as blinking and disorientated, a
useless. Let’s get out of here.”
raggedy hobo appears from the shelter.
As Sebastian-13 goes to leave, it is up to the characters
Dirty-faced and bald, his long, black beard streaked in gray,
to intervene and talk to the hobo. When this happens,
the wrinkle-faced hobo’s body is deformed, with extra-
Sebastian-13 pauses reluctantly to listen.
jointed long, thin arms. He wears a tatty brown hooded
top reaching to his elbows, filthy jeans and yellow sneak- Kepler’s Story
ers with dirty toes sticking out from the ruptured fronts. “Life ain’t no picnic on the streets, let me tell you. Us
He performs a double take at all of those guns pointing hobos got ourselves starvation and disease to contend
at him, and says, “I ain’t done nothing ta nobody,” be- with, as well as the sadists killing and raping us for fun.
fore staggering back the way he came. The characters may We’re nobody, I tell you, nobody. And who gives a
want to follow the hobo into his den — they may also damn what happens to a nobody?
want to hold their noses while they’re at it.
“When that meteorite hit we thought we might find
Kepler Run something good here, food, a bit of shelter, and start-
“Hold on, hold on,” the hobo says as he fumbles around ed coming in on the regular. What folks don’t know
in the darkness. If the characters try to use flashlights though is that weren’t no regular meteor, ‘cos the
they don’t work, and the hobo cackles, saying, “You damned thing has a spaceship inside! — Don’t look at
ain’t gonna be using no ‘lectric around me, oh no!” me like that! It’s down there in the crater with those
He sparks a match and the ancient oil lamp held in the damned aliens coming out and killing anyone they can
hobo’s filthy hands illuminates the hovel. The hobo’s find. Those aliens keep away from me — they must have
den is in a deplorable state. With the illumination, cock- ‘lectricals in their brains or something. There’s a dead
roaches and less recognizable vermin disappear into the one out there if you wanna see it. Wanna see it? It’s a
corners, scurrying loudly as they go. A pile of torn and damned ugly sight, worse than me even. Heh, heh.”
bloody sheets lies in one corner, his ‘bed,’ beside which Run stands and continues, “Not far from here, yeah?”
stands a pile of scavenged cans and uncooked, frozen and without further words he leaves the hovel.
foods turning to rot. Another corner holds a bucket,
the contents of which are obvious by the smell. The CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
hobo lowers himself onto a rickety wooden crate. “You Outside the hovel, Kepler Run starts clambering up a
look like you’re the monster hunters, huh?” he says and mound of rubble, moving quickly and expertly, some-
sniggers. “Well, my name’s Kepler Run, and I’m the times loping on all fours using his deformed arms.
‘monster-keeper-away-er.’” Before reaching the top of the mound, any character
failing a Climb roll slips and hurts themselves on some-
GAMEMASTER’S NOTE: thing sharp for 1D2. When they reach the top of the
Kepler Run is a mutant with the ability to dis- mound, they get their first good look at the crater itself.
rupt all electricity around him in a two-meter ra- The crater is a deep, dark, roughly circular hole around
dius. This allowed Kepler and his former hobo eighty feet in diameter surrounded by a rim of smashed
companions to climb over the electrified fence stone and twisted girders. The area surrounding it bears
without trouble, and survive so long without be- the flattened remnants of the complex, surrounded by
ing attacked by the mutations (the things’ elec- more mounds of debris.
tronic parts begin to short out the moment they “Down there’s the aliens! Heh, heh!” Run says and
near him). For Sebastian-13, this means all skill starts making his way down the mound. As with the
rolls are halved within his two-meter proximity. climb up, failed Climb rolls on the way down have the
Characters with implants should be hindered ac- same result. The base of the mound is filled with shad-
cordingly as the Gamemaster sees fit. ows, bearing almost intact reinforced walls and a stair-
case leading down to deeper darkness. After reaching
101
the ground, Run gesticulates towards the staircase saying, “Just take a look at the space alien. Down
there, I tell you.”
Whatever’s down there, a foul smell issues from the darkness, a mingling of rotted flesh and some
strange chemical odor.
“This is just bad. I’m not going,” Mal says, his eyestalks quivering. From the darkness at the bottom
of the stairs, a hiss appears followed by quick, loud breathing.
In a panic, Sebastian-13 turns to Run and barks, “You said the thing was dead.” Run cackles, heading
back up the rubble pile, shouting, “I brought them, Master Aliens, heh, heh. Food, Food!”
Now, all hell breaks loose.

GAMEMASTER’S NOTE:
Kepler Run is completely insane. He watched his friends torn to shreds by the mutations
from below, and like all good maniacs, has taken to worshipping the object of his insanity.
The characters aren’t the first group he’s lured to the mutations; some unlucky looters he
encountered earlier met the same fate.

Three pairs of brightly glowing eyes open and blink at anyone peering into the darkness. Panting
heavily, something horrible charges from the darkness, a blood spattered thing of myriad arms and
faces that instantly attacks the nearest character. This is Screaming Mimi, and true to its name, per-
forms its ‘Breathe Attack’ first. Adding to the chaos, two more mutations, Cranky Franky and Beasty
Boy, burst from the rubble to either side of the staircase. It’s ‘stand-up fight’ time, and while the
characters fight or die trying, Sebastian-13, his implant working again, joins the battle with a roar
while Mal runs and hides in the corner.
The mutations are wild and powerful, but any reduced to half Hit Points stop fighting and try to flee
towards the crater. This should leave most of the characters alive and wanting to lick their wounds
before they continue. After the fight, the cowardly Mal has a burst of conscience.

GAMEMASTER’S NOTE:
If the mutations attacked and killed Mal, these words are said in his dying breath.

“This is all wrong,” Mal says, sounding a little unhinged. “You’ve all been duped by that witch, Costel-
lo. You’re just cannon fodder to get us into the installation. Those mutations are Dukong’s own cre-
ations. I’m here to switch them off at the mainframe. I just didn’t expect them to be so — horrible.”
Sebastian-13, if alive, orders Mal to “shut up,” and aims his gun at him. This leads to a Mexican
Standoff with a successful Communication Skill roll required such as Command to stop him from
shooting Mal. Otherwise, after attacking his former partner he turns on the characters. The final
scene from Reservoir Dogs may serve as some inspiration for the Gamemaster.
At this point in the adventure, the characters are either alone or have at least one NPC companion
with them. What do they do? Turn around and go home or continue hunting the mutations? Well,
they’ve gotten this far.
Sebastian-13 wants to go kill Kepler Run, as may the characters. Retracing their steps they find him
cowering in his hovel, easy to kill. Of course, enterprising characters may decide to restrain him and
bring him to the underground installation, which would certainly make their lives a little easier,
should they think of it. Again, the gun-happy Sebastian-13 just wants to murder the deranged mu-
tant. There is also the staircase Screaming Mimi sprang from to investigate.
The Boiler Room
The base of the stairs leads to an area of darkness that reeks of rotted flesh. Formerly a boiler room,
large antiquated brass boilers line the walls, and the floor is wet and muddy from myriad pipe leaks.
To the right of the entrance, lie the decaying remains of two looters. A Spot roll reveals bite marks
upon the corpses (Mimi and its friends were hungry) leading to a 1D2 Sanity Loss, but also revealing
a lump of Explosive Clay poking from a torn pouch.
102
PUNKTOWN everything else, and come out of this rich, yes? Those
Missing Persons assholes should be glad you survived. It means they
Alternatively, the characters find the decaying re- can use you on other jobs.”
mains of four Forcers/HAP Agents to the right
Mal: “It sounded like an easy job from P’yong, I do tech
of the entry point of the boiler room. A Spot roll
support for them all the time and even get my hands
reveals myriad bite marks upon the corpses (Mimi
dirty on occasion. I didn’t know they were into creating
and its friends were hungry) leading to a 1D2 Sanity
freaks. I have the know-how to reprogram those freaks,
Loss, but also revealing 20 rounds of Green Plasma
however. I’ll disable the mutations, collect my paycheck,
ammunition poking from a torn pouch.
and that’s me done with the company for good.”
The trail leads over a small mound of debris and to-
It’s a Bug Hunt! (Part II) wards the crater. If the characters were quick off the
When the mutations escaped, they left a trail of slick,
mark pursuing, they see the mutations clambering
sticky fluids behind them, so characters wishing to track
along the crater’s rim towards its eastern-most point.
them find them easy to follow. The trail of steaming yel- Upon reaching the rim, characters looking to the bot-
low pus and quickly congealing blood leads out of the tom of the crater see a small lake of brackish black water
rubble to the crater proper. has formed thirty feet down.
The characters may have questions for Sebastian-13 or After clambering over the smashed stone and debris sur-
Mal along the way. Here’s what they know: rounding the rim, the characters reach the point where the
Sebastian-13: “P’yong Heavy Industries. You heard mutations disappeared, a darkness-filled hole halfway down
of them? They own Dukong Renovations and I work the rim’s eastern-most point. This hole takes a successful
cleanup when I’m not doing bodyguard duty. They Climb roll to reach, failure meaning Damage from a thir-
used to have military contracts, and had something ty feet drop as per the Falling rules. Another Climb roll is
built underground to create those uglies. There’s not required to escape the crater. The mutations’ bloody trail
much else I know except to get down there by any leads through the hole to a small cave of broken masonry
means possible. We get the job done, keep quiet about (formerly the installation’s Entrance Corridor).

103
The Installation
A large steel framed doorway stands at the end of the cave, the mutations’ trail leads through the
partially open hydraulic-powered doors, beyond which is flickering light. If Mal is present, he stops
the characters from going any further and says, “The Twister Sisters are through there, and this might
be trouble. Come look.”

GAMEMASTER’S NOTE:
At the Gamemaster’s discretion, if Sebastian-13 is alone he may decide to lead the
characters into a trap.

As the group approaches the doorway, a small amber light flickers on above the frame and the doors
part with a loud screech, steam hissing from the damaged workings within. The charnel room beyond
contains something beautiful.

The Reception
Shiny, triangular steel panels form the walls, floor and ceiling. Six large monitor screens line the walls to either
side, blank and filled with cracks. Recessed globes of light line the ceiling, behind broken glass. The whole
area, floor to ceiling, is spattered with blood. And then, there’s the sisters.

Skins and Needles: The Twister Sisters

Near the rear of the room, motionless before another door, stand two silver-skinned robots shaped
like naked, beautiful women. Their limbs are slender, their breasts and buttocks shapely and their
sharp-featured faces perfection beneath faux silver hair held in topknots. They stand embracing each
other, their lips pressed together. Marring this beauty: the robot on the left has hands ending in large
circular saws caked in blood; the robot on the right’s hands are a mass of long, tiny spikes.
Sebastian-13 or Mal, whoever is present, says, “These things are deadly, but I have the disabling chip.”
The NPC produces a small silver box from their pocket with what looks like an opal gem at the center.
“The sisters will remain inert when I hold this,” he says. “Probably the only way to get past them.”

GAMEMASTER’S NOTE:
There are a few options for this scene. Firstly, if the characters are alone, the sisters disen-
tangle as they approach and attack with a ballet-like grace. Secondly, the characters may
just decide to open fire on the sisters, in which case they return the attack with staggering
speed. Thirdly, it wouldn’t be too difficult for Sebastian-13 and Mal to walk past the inert
sisters, throw their disabling chips across the room to the characters, and get past them
that way. Gamemasters should roll a D100 each time someone passes the sisters with a
chip, a 96-100 means the chip malfunctions and the sisters’ spring to life regardless. Add
tension to this scene with an NPC saying, “These chips don’t always work, so be careful,”
and bring a sigh of relief to the players each time a character makes it past safely. And, of
course, there’s Kepler Run. With him in tow, the sisters shouldn’t prove a problem at all.

The doors beyond the sisters part like the previous ones, leading to a wide steel-walled corridor with
flickering lights but no bloodstains; the trail of gore the characters have been following continues to…

The Incubator
The injured mutations have returned to their incubator and birth room to heal. The stone floors are
cracked, but the steel-coated walls and ceiling look solid. A sickly violet light emits from the huge,
cylindrical amniotic baths lining the walls, three to each side, filled to the brim with purple fluids.
Large pipes connect from the bottom of each cylinder to the floor. Some of the baths are empty;
some contain the mutations the characters encountered earlier, shifting sluggishly in their healing
sleep. A strip of white tape upon each tank bears their handwritten nicknames: ‘Screaming Mimi,’
‘Cranky Franky,’ and ‘Beasty Boy.’ One of the empty tanks is labeled with the name: ‘Bony Tony.’
The occupied cylinders aren’t fully sealed, and purple amniotic fluid has sloshed to the uneven floor, smelling
like rotting chicken broth. The characters may want to cause some mischief here, but the cylinders are heavily
reinforced, with 400 Hit Points apiece. They are also proofed against the kind of powers Kepler Run has.
104
 Attacking the cylinders only serves to wake the muta-
PUNKTOWN and fourth cylinders are smashed, covered in debris and
tions (their Hit Points three quarters restored now), what appears to be more body parts; these not decom-
and bring Skins and Needles to investigate. If this hap- posed, but still stinking. However, as the characters
pens, the NPCs most certainly try to escape to the move closer or go to pass, the body parts move — the
Mainframe Room. fourth mutation, Bony Tony, waking from his slumber
The hydraulics are shot on the following doorway, so to attack. The following fight, with all that flesh and
it does not open as the characters approach, requiring genetic material just waiting to be spilled, could well
a Strength against Strength 40 test on the Resistance leave the characters covered in gore. A stand-up fight
Table to lever it open. with Bony Tony is inevitable, as the doors leading from
the Parts Room are difficult to open.
An area of complete darkness lies beyond the incubator.
Character-provided illumination reveals a wide corridor When the mutation is dealt with, the doors need to be
with an intersection at its center. Turning left at the levered open by pitting Strength against Strength 40 on
intersection leads to a collapsed area of fallen steel and the Resistance Table. A short corridor follows, ending
masonry; going straight ahead leads to Room A; turn- at a door with a keypad and an Iris Scanner attached to
ing right at the intersection leads to the Parts Room. the left of the frame. If Mal or Sebastian-13 are present,
Room A they have the code, which is ‘16752,’ but they certainly
Although the door opens of its own accord, characters don’t have the eyes for it. Without the code, getting past
must provide their own illumination within. The room, the keypad requires a 50% Electrical Repair roll. Mal pro-
a surgical bay, is walled with white tiles, many cracked duces a small toolkit from one of his belt pouches and
and fallen, with three large steel tables at its center and removes the front of the scanner before working to get
cabinets lining the wall facing the door. A successful past the security. Mal gets past the Iris Scanner on a 50%
Spot roll reveals an item of interest wedged between Electrical Repair roll. Succeeding this, the doors slide
the cabinets: a digital recording device left by one of the
open, granting access to the room below. Failure trips a
installation’s former scientists (see opposite).
klaxon alarm across the installation, and the Mainframe
The Parts Room orders the Twister Sisters and remaining mutations to its
As the group approaches, the doors to this room re- defense, arriving in 1D6+6 Rounds.
main closed, but as soon as anyone reaches out to touch
them they quickly slide apart. Beyond is a wide rect- The Mainframe Room
angular steel-walled room with only one working light The Mainframe Room is small, less than three meters
on the ceiling. Strewn with shadows, this room stinks square, and filled with narrow black cabinets housing
of decomposing flesh, the reason growing apparent as the Mainframe’s ‘brain.’ Once here, the doors seal shut
the characters enter. The Twister Sisters, after slicing up
again – requiring the same Electrical Repair rolls to
trespassers or encountering the remains of the muta-
tions’ meals, dump the body parts here. leave. Again, an alarm goes off on a failure. To the right
of the doorway, a computer console stands on a shelf
Lining the walls, picked out by eyes adjusting to the with a touch-key keyboard 3D hologram screen. The
gloom or flashlight beams, are large transparent, but wall behind it is lined with eight screens, the top four
not empty, cylinders. To the left, the first two cylinders filled with static, the bottom displaying the Reception,
are filled with floating limbs and organs from a variety
the Incubator, Room A and the corridor outside the
of species. The many dead eyes stare back, lifeless hearts
Mainframe Room.
floating beside limp hands. Characters should make a
1D2 Sanity Check in this room due to the sight of these If not summoned already, tension can be added to
surgical horrors. this scene by having those inert robots and mutations
come to life, heading towards the characters on cam-
Missing Persons era, should there be a failure while reprogramming the
mainframe. After reaching the doors to the Mainframe
A successful Spot roll reveals a Forcer/HAP
Agent’s helmet near the bottom of the second Room, attackers attempt to enter by brute force. Heav-
cylinder. Badly battered, it holds the pale, decapi- ily reinforced, the door has 200 Hit Points, and because
tated head of one of the missing persons. of the size of the corridor, only one mutation can attack
the door at a time. The Twister Sisters, however, could
no doubt make short work of it…
The third tank is empty; the fourth is filled with float-
ing packets of blood and tissue growths. To the right To disable the mutations from the console, the follow-
stand damaged cylinders, the first two cracked, empty ing rolls are required by a character or NPC with high
of fluids and filled with rotted body parts. The third enough skill levels.
105
 Reprogramming the Mainframe Room A: The Recording
If Kepler Run is present and conscious, reprogram-
ming the mainframe proves impossible. When
working on the mainframe, if a roll fails, the alarm
goes off and the bad guys (the mutations now fully
healed) are summoned, arriving at the doorway in
1D6+6 Rounds (if they aren’t there already). Only
one roll can be attempted each round.
Level One Security: Roll 40 or less on a D100 against
the Technical (Computer Use) skill.
Level One Reprogramming: Roll 40 or less on a D100
against the Craft (Computer Code) Skill. NB: This
reprograms the Twister Sisters, who can be ordered to:
‘shut down permanently,’ or ‘attack the mutations,’ etc.
Level Two Security: Roll 50 or less on a D100 against
the Technical (Computer Use) skill twice in succession.
Level Two Reprogramming: Roll 50 or less on a
D100 against the Craft (Computer Code) skill twice
in succession. NB: This reprograms the mutations,
who can be ordered to ‘shut down permanently,’ etc.

Resolutions & Rewards

Now that the characters have stopped the mutations, they
may be wondering what to do once they’ve left the installa-
tion. Exposing P’yong Heavy Industries to the HAP or the
Police is an option (with the digital recording as evidence,
for example). Sebastian-13 and Mal won’t entertain this,
however; they just want to leave and get on with their lives.
Remember those blood-spattered monitor screens?
Well, as the characters enter the Reception ready to
leave the installation, the screens flicker to life to reveal
Gunmetal Costello’s beautiful, smiling face. She says,
“Congratulations. You’ve passed the audition. I have
checks here for the amount of thirty thousand Munits
for each of you, and the opportunity of more work in
the future. You work well together, and I look forward
to seeing you again.” Ms. Costello then winks lascivi-
ously and the screens go blank.
Any NPC present clears his throat and says, “Damn,
that’s a lot of cash. I think I’ll stay working for P’yong.”
If the characters accept the payoff, they gain the prom-
ised cash but no Sanity Reward for completing the ad-
venture (they helped the bad guys, after all).
Exposing P’yong Heavy Industries gains the characters
2D6 Sanity Points, a slap on the back from the authori-
ties, but no cash except for their original payment. But
being just is its own reward, right?
106
PUNKTOWN Sebastian-13
Missing Persons A tall, broad-shouldered man, Sebastian-13 is bald-head-
For completing this side mission and discovering ed with skin a camouflaged blue that betrays his roots as a
the fate of all the missing Forcers/HAP Agents, the Blue War Clone. He has the number ‘13,’ tattooed to his
characters involved gain 1D6 Sanity Points each.
forehead in black ink and has a cybernetic implant replac-
ing his left eye. A fish eye camera lens lies there, surrounded
Seeds For Further Adventures by heavily scarred flesh. His right eye squints permanently.
Here are a few suggestions to further this scenario into A former Ranger during the Blue War, he is a Bodyguard
other adventures: and Wetworks operative for P’yong Heavy Industries, loy-
al as long as he doesn’t think he’s being duped. A strong-
The Missing Embryos
Remember the Embryo Room in the Installation? Well, willed, no nonsense man, he is accustomed to giving or-
there were six tanks, and four mutations. Those other ders, and accustomed to others obeying them.
two mutations got loose and are up to mischief else-
where in Punktown. Either P’yong Heavy Industries or STR 18 CON 17 SIZ 15 INT 16
the authorities want to hire the characters to hunt the POW 7 DEX 14 APP 7 HP 16
things down. After all, it’s what they’re good at…
Damage Bonus: +1D6
It’s Another Bug-Hunt!
P’yong Heavy Industries has other installations hidden around Weapons: Assassin 75%, damage 2D8
Punktown and now have cold feet, wanting them destroyed. Decimator .340 80%, damage 1D10+2
Or, the authorities have gained knowledge of P’yong’s other Tikkihotto Dagger 45%, 1D4+1D6
installations and want them secured. Either way, fun with sexy Armor: 8pt Plastic Vest
murderous robots and ugly mutations ensues. Spells: None
Meteoric Trouble Skills: Climb 50%, Command 55%, Drive 40%, Listen
That crazy hobo Kepler Run? Well, perhaps he wasn’t 65%, Spot 65%, Martial Arts 61%, Track 50%
so crazy after all, and the meteor did hold a spaceship.
The characters go to investigate and find…
Malla Turonga
Characters and Monsters Malla Turonga, or ‘Mal,’ as he likes to be called, has
typical Tikkihotto eyestalks: transparent ocular fila-
Gunmetal Costello ments protruding from deep eye sockets. He is thin,
Tall, shapely, with bright green shoulder length hair,
Gunmetal Costello is a Choom who has undergone ex- weak looking, and has short blonde hair and a goatee.
tensive facial and dental surgery to appear human. A He acts very jittery when scared, which generally makes
gang of Choom sexually assaulted her when she was others around him feel uncomfortable. A tech expert
younger, and before the surgery she spent many years with some Wetworks training, he has performed many
hating what she saw in the mirror. She is bisexual, very
flirtatious, but beneath the façade is a ruthless woman missions for P’yong Heavy Industries alongside Sebas-
with no qualms about sending people to their deaths tian-13, whom he resents for his bossy attitude.
for her company’s well being. The Project Director for
Dukong Renovations, she also functions as a Science STR 8 CON 15 SIZ 14 INT 17
Director for her true masters, P’yong Heavy Industries. POW 7 DEX 13 APP 14 HP 15
STR 8 CON 17 SIZ 13 INT 13 Damage Bonus: None
POW 14 DEX 15 APP 16 HP 15 Weapons: Decimator .220 60%, damage 1D6
Damage Bonus: None Assassin 65%, damage 2D8
Weapons: Laser Knife 70%, damage 2D4+2 Armor: 8pt Plastic Vest
Spells: None Spells: None
Skills: Appraise 60%, Craft (Computer Code) 50%, Skills: Craft (Computer Code) 65%, Drive 60%, Elec-
Electrical Repair 60%, Language (Program-
ming) 55%, Persuade 60%, Research 70%, Sci- trical Repair 85%, Insight 55%, Language (Pro-
ence (Mathematics) 50%, Status 60%, Technical gramming) 60%, Listen 65%, Spot 65%, Techni-
(Computer Use) 55% cal (Computer Use) 70%
107
108
 Kepler Run
PUNKTOWN Screaming Mimi
An elderly, wrinkled hobo, he is bald and has a long black One of P’yong Heavy Industries’ failed ‘Super-Soldiers,’
beard streaked with gray. His clothes are tatty and smell this mutation is a cloned and grafted amalgamation of
almost as bad as he does. A mutant, his arms reach down
Fekah and Human DNA, resembling a huge, warty al-
to his knees and are extra jointed, making him very dex-
terous. He also has a special Psychic Power (see below). bino toad standing on two legs, with four long arms
Hailing from Tin Town, he spent his life traveling all over ending in vicious looking claws. It has three heads, a
Punktown until he and his hobo companions entered the toad-like Fekah head flanked by two smaller, malformed
Lemongrass Crater. Here, he lost his sanity after seeing human heads. The mutation’s brain, a microcomputer
his friends hacked apart by the mutations, and here he
controlled by the Mainframe in the Lemongrass Crater,
stays, worshipping the mutations like alien gods.
is housed in the Fekah head.
STR 9 CON 11 SIZ 14 INT 12
STR 23 CON 38 SIZ 41 INT 12
POW 10 DEX 22 APP 5 HP 13
POW 7 DEX 22 HP 40
Damage Bonus: None
Damage Bonus: +3D6
Weapons: Brawl 25%, damage 1D3
Weapons: Claw 35%, damage 1D3+3D6
Spells: None
Sound Blast 25%, 1D10 in a 100-yard radius
Skills: Bargain 65%, Climb 80%, First Aid 40%, Hide 50%,
Armor: 20 points rubbery skin and sub-dermal plates.
Jump 85%, Listen 65%, Scavenge 65%, Sleight of
Spells: None
Hand 45%, Stealth 50%
Skills: Grapple 45%, Hide 40%, Listen 45%, Sneak 40%,
Attacks and Special Effects:
Track 30%
Electrical Disruption. If Kepler Run is within two meters
Sanity Loss: 0/1D4
of anything electrical, it shorts out until he leaves its
proximity. This mutation does not function if Kepler Attacks and Special Effects:
Run is unconscious. Sound Blast. This mutation transforms the Fekah’s
Structural Improvement. Kepler had extra long, multi- natural method of breathing into an attack. The
jointed arms, leading to an increased character- Sound Blast attack happens when it breathes
istic (DEX). through its Fekah mouth, utilized at the begin-
Six Looters ning of combat to surprise a foe, and again if it is
Following is an example of six looters the characters fleeing.
may encounter during the scenario. They are all basic Dual Attack. Including the Sound Blast, Screaming
humanoid races, Looters 1 – 2 are Human, Looters 3 Mimi attacks with two claw attacks each round.
– 4 Choom, and Looters 5 – 6 Tikkihotto. They’re not
well armed, and only one of them owns a firearm.
Cranky Franky
STR CON SIZ DEX POW HP This massive, muscled biped mutation is a cloned and
1 11 13 13 09 13 13 grafted amalgamation of KeeZee and Human DNA
2 09 11 14 13 15 13 with a huge jagged-jawed head resembling a monkey
wrench spotted with tiny black eyes. Its body is thick
3 10 13 14 08 08 14
with greasy black hair, and its brain is a microcomputer
4 10 15 14 11 13 15 controlled by the Mainframe in the Lemongrass Crater.
5* 16 10 09 11 13 10
6 09 16 15 09 16 16 STR 42 CON 38 SIZ 39 INT 12
POW 9 DEX 8 HP 39
Damage Bonus: * +1D4 otherwise, none.
Weapons: Damage Bonus: +4D6
Looter 1: Darwin .55 20%, damage 1D8 + 2 Weapons: Fist 50%, 1D3 + 4D6
Looter 2: Rebar 25%, damage 1D8 Armor: 20 points skin, hair, and sub-dermal plates.
Looter 3: Shovel 35%, damage 1D4+1 Spells: None
Looter 4: Shovel 35%, damage 1D4+1 Skills: Grapple 35%, Hide 40%, Listen 45%, Sneak 40%,
Looter 5: Tikkihotto Dagger 25%, damage 1D4+1D4 Track 40%
Looter 6: Rebar 25%, damage 1D8 Sanity Loss: 0/1D4
Armor: none Attacks and Special Effects: None
109
Beasty Boy Skins
This mutation is a cloned and grafted amalgama- The twin of Needles, Skins is a silver-skinned ro-
tion of Klu Koza and Choom DNA, resembling a bot shaped like a beautiful, naked woman; slen-
huge flabby orangutan devoid of fur, with a wide
gaping Choom mouth. A tusk protrudes from its der and shapely with a sharp-featured face be-
sloping forehead; its brain is a microcomputer con- neath faux silver hair held in a topknot. A robotic
trolled by the Mainframe in the Lemongrass Crater. sentry, her slender hands are melded to large cir-
cular saws. She also performs maintenance in the
STR 41 CON 33 SIZ 44 INT 12
installation when required. Like her sister, she
POW 15 DEX 14 HP 37
ballet dances as she attacks.
Damage Bonus: +4D6
Weapons: Gore 45%, damage 1D6 + 4D6 STR 35 CON 44 SIZ 15 INT 16
Brawl 25%, damage 1D3 + 4D6
Grapple 50%, see Attacks and Special Effects POW 7 DEX 20 APP 15 HP 30
Armor: 20 points skin, muscle and sub-dermal
plates. Damage Bonus: +2D6
Spells: None Weapons: Buzzsaw (x2) 80%, 1D8+2D6
Skills: Climb 65%, Hide 50%, Listen 35%, Sense Armor: 20 points internal plating
25%, Stealth 35%
Sanity Loss: 0/1D4 Spells: None
Attacks and Special Effects: Skills: Art (Ballet) 80%, Dodge 40%, Repair (Electron-
Dual Attack: Beasty Boy attacks twice each ics) 75%, Repair (Mechanical) 95%, Spot 75%
round. It may strike twice with its fists Sanity Loss: None
(brawl), gore and strike, or gore and grap-
ple. Attacks and Special Effects:
Rend: With a successful grapple, it grips its oppo- Dual Attack. Skins attacks twice each round, us-
nent doing its full damage modifier each ing her saws against two different foes.
round. While grappling, it may continue to
bite as an Easy attack.

Needles
Bony Tony The twin of Skins, Needles is a silver-skinned
This huge, sturdy and muscular mutation is a
cloned and grafted amalgamation of Torgessi and robot shaped like a beautiful, naked woman;
Choom DNA, with two heads, one with the ap- slender and shapely with a sharp-featured face
pearance of a hornless cattle skull, the other with beneath faux silver hair held in a topknot. A ro-
the appearance of a Choom skull. The skulls are
turquoise, the rest of its body covered in a peb- botic sentry, her slender hands end in a mass of
bly chainmail of tiny smooth scales, turquoise and long, needle-like spikes. She also performs main-
black in various sizes and patterns. Its brain, a mi-
crocomputer controlled by the Mainframe in the tenance in the installation when required. Like
Lemongrass Crater, is housed in the Choom skull. her sister, she ballet dances when she attacks.

STR 44 CON 38 SIZ 49 INT 12 STR 35 CON 44 SIZ 15 INT 16

POW 12 DEX 14 HP 44 POW 7 DEX 20 APP 15 HP 30
Damage Bonus: + 5D6
Weapons: Head Butt, damage 1D6+5D6 Damage Bonus: +2D6
(knockback) Weapons: Needle Hands (x2) 80%, 1D8+2D6
Brawl 50%, 1D3 + 5D6 (crushing) Armor: 20 points internal plating
Armor: 20 points hide and sub-dermal plates
Spells: None Spells: None
Skills: Hide 60%, Listen 35%, Sense 30%, Spot Skills: Art (Ballet) 80%, Dodge 40%, Repair
35%, Track 55%
Sanity Loss: 0/1D4 (Electronics) 75%, Repair (Mechanical) 95%,
Attacks and Special Effects: Spot 75%
Rage: If Tony is wounded or achieves a special
success while striking an opponent, he Sanity Loss: None
goes berserk for 6 turns, as the Fury spell. Attacks and Special Effects:
After this berserk rage, Tony is considered
fatigued (if the fatigue system is not used, Dual Attack. Needles attacks twice each round,
all rolls are Difficult). using her hands against two different foes.
110
 Scenario:
PUNKTOWN

Twisted Genius
by Tom L ynch
Introduction The Scene of the Crime
“Never talk to strangers.” That’s what we tell our chil-
dren. We hope that this sage advice keeps them at least The GhostShip Blue Principal
somewhat safe. Sadly, in this case, it couldn’t help. In Ms. Carrie Cutler is a frantic woman. Normally calm
this case, the predator lies in wait, and the innocent and controlled as she runs the local (underfunded) pub-
children are merely the vehicle for a random predator’s lic elementary school in the (neglected) neighborhood
revenge; a sad, sad case of being in the wrong place at of Warehouse Way, she has worked wonders with the
the wrong time. school and its population. That changed, however, after
the disappearances of three children.
Gamemaster’s Information
The disappearances are a two-pronged revenge ploy by The children disappeared in different parts of the build-
a former employee of both the GhostShip Blue Elemen- ing at different times of day, and are of different races
tary School and Alvine Products. Niels Viggo Schou- and backgrounds. She can think of no connection be-
Hobbs feels deeply wronged by both former employers tween the three children, and has no idea how the kid-
and has set out to discredit them both by using product nappers managed to get into and out of the building
from one against the other. He has taken some dead- without being captured on the school’s extensive video
stock he had worked on and formulated while at Alvine, surveillance system. When asked for specifics, she can
and infused it with nanotechnology such that it has ru- provide the following information:
dimentary intelligence, and can follow commands. He
then sent his creation on its nefarious missions: kidnap- • The first student, Nanci Moy, a nine-year-old
ping children from the school. female Sinanese third-grader, disappeared from
the locker room after gym class some time
The children are alive and moderately well, being kept shortly after 10 AM.
in Hobbs’ Subtown lab complex, but he won’t set them
free until both the school and Fukuda Bioforms, the • The second, a boy named Dafyd Beane, is a sev-
company that took over Alvine Products, pay him per- en-year-old Tikkihotto first-grader, who failed
ceived damages of five million munits, and write a pub- to show up for 2:30 PM music class after going
lic declaration of his genius. to the bathroom en route.
Neither is likely to happen, so the characters must step • A ten-year-old fourth-grade human girl known
in and do their best to stop further kidnappings and only as “Gremlin,” the third student to disap-
rescue the victims. pear, was taken from the hallway outside the
exobiology lab.
Involving the Characters
The principal of the local public elementary school is at “I only wish I knew who was responsible for this,” she
her wits’ end. The forcers cannot or will not help her, declares near the end of the conversation.
and she has children disappearing from her school. Par- A successful Insight/Psychology roll reveals that she is
ents are furious and terrified, and her staff has no idea hiding something. If pressed, she caves easily.
what to do. She has turned to outside help, looking to
figure out just what is happening in the hopes that it can “It couldn’t be, but my ex-boyfriend — he was tied
be dealt with quickly and quietly, rescuing the missing to the syndies. It – it was gambling debts. I ended it
children in the process. with him when he put my helicar as collateral for his
last big loss. Now I have to take a bus and two trains
The characters need not be linked to each other yet, but to work every day.”
each can have some contact perhaps to the school, the
neighborhood, or one of the families involved, likely She readily provides his phone number and address to
one of the desperate ones whose child has been abducted. the characters so they can follow up with him.
111
School Security
Matthew Carpenter, the head of security at GhostShip Blue Elementary School, is visibly upset by all
of these events. He considers himself something of a surrogate uncle to a lot of the students in the
school; many know him by name and greet him warmly when they see him.
He is particularly perplexed because the cameras don’t show anything. There’s no evidence of any
unauthorized person entering the school building at any time around when the disappearances hap-
pened, and the events themselves are not captured on any of the video feeds. Further investigation
into this requires viewing of the footage. This takes at least one of the character 2d4 hours to com-
plete and reveals that each time there is a disappearance, it happens just out of view of the camera or
cameras. The subject walks out of frame, not appearing threatened, and simply doesn’t appear within
the next camera’s field of view.

Video from the Scenes of the Crimes

1. Gym Locker Room – For obvious reasons, the cameras in this area are limited to the entry
area. The footage shows Nanci Moy walking into the locker room at 10:03 AM according to
the timestamp on the video. According to witnesses, she had stayed to chat with a classmate
and was running late, so she is the only person appearing on this video. It does not show her,
or anyone else, coming out until after another gym period later that day.
2. Hallway between Boys’ Room and Music Classroom – Happily, this was a time that all
students were to be in class, so there are very few students in the hallway. The feed shows
young Dafyd Beane walking from his class to the rest room, and again, part of the way back
afterwards. After he comes out of the restroom, he rounds a corner, and never appears in the
feed from the next camera. No one else is within frame at this time.
3. Hallway outside Exobiology - Gremlin had an appointment with her exobiology teacher,
and was waiting in the hallway. At one point, apparently bored of standing still, she walks
down the hall, and then walks back. The camera over the exobiology lab door does not pick
her up from her stroll back down the hallway.

112
 The Scenes of the Crimes
PUNKTOWN The Separated Employee
There is little to be learned from the girls’ locker room. To follow up on the janitor who left suddenly, the charac-
As a matter of course, the room is cleaned twice a day ters must stop in either with the head of school security or
with bleach, so any evidence here has been swept away the principal. Both have access to the same information:
long ago. Beyond that, the area where the girl appar-
• His name was Niels Hobbs.
ently vanished contains several walls of lockers, benches • He was fired from the school six months ago.
between the lockers, ceiling-mounted light fixtures, • The circumstances of his dismissal were uncom-
electrical outlets, and an air vent. fortable for everyone involved: all the teachers,
administrators, and staff felt uneasy around him,
The two other areas are even less visually interesting and he’d been caught “staring lasciviously” at
since they are in hallways. They, however, are cleaned more than one student.
less aggressively. Aside from the institutional hallway, • No wrongdoing was ever proven, but he was still
the ventilation system runs along the top of the wall a probationary employee, and could be dismissed
here, as with the locker room. for any reason, so administration dismissed him.
• He was very angry at being fired so abruptly
With closer examination of the hallway between the and without “due process” as he termed it.
Boys’ Room and the Music Classroom, one sharp-eyed • In the interest of the children’s safety, they pro-
character succeeding aSpot roll, notices a small shred of vide Hobbs’ number and address.
a pinkish fleshy substance, very much like a piece of raw Investigations
chicken, dangling from the louvers of the air vent.
The Principal’s Ex-Boyfriend
The Piece of Evidence Weston McLaren lives alone on Folger Street, a notori-
With a little analysis (if one of the characters is a scientist of ously rough section of Paxton. He dodges all calls, and
some type, or any of them have access to an academic lab or doesn’t return messages left, no matter how legal-sound-
police lab, or even, with successful Fast Talk/Persuade rolls, ing or threatening. Given his gambling habits, characters
the biology lab in the school and with the necessary subse- likely find him at home in the morning or early afternoon
quent Science/Research rolls), the characters learn that the as opposed to later in the day. He is heavily in debt to a
small fragment of meat recovered is a piece of glebbi dead- number of bookies, including several tied to the syndies.
stock: genetically engineered meat that has been “grown.” As such, he is rather paranoid about visitors. There is a
This particular specimen has the same genetic markers as 90% chance he tries to run if the characters come to his
deadstock created by the now defunct company Alvine apartment; otherwise, he attacks like the cornered rat he is.
Products, currently owned by Fukuda Bioforms.

The Ventilation Ducts

Once this piece of evidence is discovered, it should not
take the characters long to figure out that they are deal-
ing with something that uses the ducting to get around.
That still doesn’t explain how the children were re-
moved from the building, however.
Further investigation into the ventilation system reveals
that someone tampered with it not too long ago. An
exterior duct going up the outside of the building had
an additional duct cut into it. This new duct is not on
any schematic, was not done with any building permit,
and apparently leads up from underground.

Building Maintenance
The janitorial staff of one is baffled by all of this. He ex-
plains that he’s very new since the previous janitor left or
was fired (he’s not sure which). He does know, howev-
er, that no such plans had been submitted to the school
since he started six months earlier. If questioned further:
• He does not know the person he replaced.
• He does not know why the person left or was
asked to leave in the middle of a school year.
• He did hear that the guy creeped a bunch of
people out, though.
113
Gamemasters are offered the table opposite for use in
Roll Action
handling the interaction and/or pursuit following a
knock on his door.
The characters hear a startled expletive and a
If McLaren does get away, the characters locate him with a 1-5 window opening, followed by heavy steps on a
successful Spot roll, and catch him with a successful Luck metal fire escape.
roll. Each member of the party may make these rolls to
improve their chances of apprehending him.
A bleary, scruffy man opens the door. His eyes
Once up close to him, the characters get a good look at widen, and he bolts past the characters and
their quarry. He was clearly handsome once, but is under 5-25 down the steps behind them. His escape can be
the mistaken impression that he still is. His nose has been foiled by a successful DEX check whereby the
broken — twice. He’s become overweight, and needs to characters catch him before he can get away.
wash himself and brush his teeth significantly more than
he does. A bleary, scruffy man opens the door. His eyes
widen, and he bolts back into his apartment and
Now in their clutches, McLaren spills the beans. He spews out the back window. The characters hear heavy
26-40
apologies for running and/or attacking the characters and steps on the metal fire escape. His escape can be
foiled by a successful DEX check whereby the
explains that he has some money hidden away in his apart- characters catch him before he can get away.
ment, but not nearly enough to cover the debts. He’s fol-
lowing up on a great opportunity later this afternoon in A voice from inside calls, “C’mon in, babe. It’s
open.” Once inside, the characters are confront-
Miniosis, if they could just wait until tonight… ed with a scruffy man dressed only in a towel.
He knows nothing about the kidnappings. Given how im- 41-50 His eyes widen, and he bolts past the characters
and down the steps behind them. His escape can
mersed he has been in his gambling, he was completely un- be foiled by a successful DEX check whereby the
aware it was happening, and had no clue his ex-girlfriend’s characters catch him before he can get away.
school had been a target; successful Insight/Psychology
A voice from inside calls, “C’mon in, babe. It’s
rolls confirm that he is telling the truth. open.” Once inside, the characters are con-
fronted with a scruffy man dressed only in a
Weston McLaren, Washed-Out Ex-Boyfriend, age 48 towel. His eyes widen, and he bolts back into
51-70
STR 11 CON 13 SIZ 14 INT 15 POW 10 his apartment and grabs a gun off of his night-
stand. His attack can be foiled by a successful
DEX 13 APP 10 EDU 14 SAN 50 HP 14 DEX check whereby the characters grab him
Damage Bonus: - before he can raise his gun.
Weapons: Thor .86 35%, 1d6 damage A voice from inside calls, “C’mon in, babe. It’s
Skills: Bargain 65%, Fast Talk 80%, Flee in the Face of Danger open.” Once inside, the characters are con-
90%, Persuade 70%, Spill Guts 83%, Spot 60% fronted with a scruffy man dressed only in a
towel. His eyes widen, and he bolts back into
71-80 his apartment and out the back window. The
Fukuda Bioforms characters hear heavy steps on the metal fire es-
Executives and spokespeople from Fukuda Bioforms are all cape. His escape can be foiled by a successful
terribly busy, and of course have no time this month to speak DEX check whereby the characters catch him
before he can get away.
with people such as the characters. All the characters need to
do, however, is mention evidence they have linking Fukuda
Bioforms to the recent school kidnappings and the characters A bleary, scruffy man opens the door. His eyes
81-85 widen, and he bolts past the characters and
are invited in to see the head of security that very day. down the steps behind them. His escape can-
Nozai Matsu, Head of Security, Fukuda Bioforms not be foiled by a successful DEX check.
The Head of Security is not happy to see the characters,
but he realizes the gravity of the situation and hears their A bleary, scruffy man opens the door. His eyes
concerns and answers their questions to avoid any legal widen, and he bolts back into his apartment and
ramifications. Regarding the evidence the characters found 85-89 out the back window. The characters hear heavy
(the deadstock): steps on the metal fire escape. His escape cannot
be foiled by a successful DEX check.
• This formulation is not currently in use.
• It was discontinued when Fukuda bought out the The characters hear a startled expletive and a pis-
ruined and disgraced Alvine Products several years tol cocking. Three shots explode through the door
earlier. 90-00 (there is only a 20% chance the characters are hit
for 1d6 damage). They then hear a window open-
• No one currently on staff has access to that very ing, followed by heavy steps on a metal fire escape.
unique formulation.
114
PUNKTOWN • It was developed by an employee, who was let
go some time ago, by the name of Viggo Schou.
• Yes, we would be happy to supply you with his
Hiring a Hacker
So you need a system hacked, but you don’t have
contact information.
• Sorry, his personnel file is confidential, unless the skills? That’s okay, friend — this is Punktown!
one of you is tied to law enforcement? (If one You can buy anything in Punktown! Heck, illegal
of the characters is a Forcer or a Health Agent services are something of a city specialty!
then the information is handed right over.) First, you need to find someone to connect you,
Viggo Schou’s Personnel File some kind of go-between. These people frequent
The easiest way to obtain this file is legally, if any mem- local bars and are easily approachable — if you have
ber of the party is associated with law enforcement. the munits for it. Just the initial conversation costs
If that turns out not to be the case, one of the play- you 200 munits plus a round of drinks. Next, there
ers needs to hack into Fukuda Bioforms’ secure server is the finder’s fee, which runs you another 100 mu-
and extract the data. Alternatively, they could probably nits plus 50 munits per hour (figure 1d4 hours for
find/hire/use a third party to hack into the system if a job like this). Then you have the introductory fee,
they are so inclined, or lack the skills themselves. where you pay your new hacker friend 200 munits
(and buy them another round of drinks at a bar of
The file contains mostly human resources data on his or her choosing) just to meet and describe the
Schou, and little of importance to this investigation. job to them. Either party can walk away after this,
The few documents that are of interest are listed below. but the fee still has to be paid. If either side does
walk for whatever reason then the process starts over
• Psych Eval – This document indicates that with another finder’s fee. Finally, there is the cost of
Schou has a volatile personality, but is highly in- the hacking itself, which runs 100-400 munits per
telligent. Combined, the result is a maladjusted hour (1d4 x 100). A simple job like the one in ques-
megalomaniac. On the surface, however, he is tion could be done within one hour. There you go!
a good employee, dedicated to his research of For 800 munits or so, you can have that file!
creating new and better forms of deadstock.
• Deadstock DNA Slide – This image contains the near-breaking point. This NPC is a Gamemaster tool to
DNA pattern of the new formulation of deadstock help derail the investigation. You’re welcome.
that Schou developed while at Alvine/Fukuda.
• Administrative Action Report – Here we have Dressed in a worn-out suit and wearing a worn-out ex-
evidence of Schou’s corporate misconduct. He pression, the conversation starts with something like
had apparently been working on a pet project “You’ve been misbehaving a little, haven’t you?” Better
on company time, using company resources. yet, he catches them in the act and the interaction starts
with, “Freeze! Police! Hands where I can see ’em!” If
According to the report, he was working on in-
the characters have not stepped outside the law, then
fusing his new formulation of deadstock with
the opener could be “You know there are professionals
autonomous nanomites, but couldn’t get the who do this for a living. Are you sure you know what
deadstock to accept the nanomites. The living you’re doing? We enforce the laws around here. Not
tissue rejected the microscopic machines, treat- you.” Whatever it is, it should be crafted such that it
ing them as they would a virus. puts the characters on the defensive.
• Dismissal Report – The last entry in the file is a
report containing salient information about the Detective Stowers isn’t exactly a dirty forcer; nor is he a
circumstances under which Schou was let go. clean one. He knows of the case, but has no good leads
He had apparently ignored numerous warnings himself. He’s mostly frustrated with others in Punktown
to stop conducting personal work with company trying to do what he considers his job, even if he’s not
time and resources, he had been disciplined for doing such a great job of it himself. If, however, the char-
losing his temper with colleagues, and he refused acters have broken the law (hired a hacker as referenced
to maintain regular company hours. The day he earlier, broken into a given location to gather information,
was informed of his dismissal, he got violent and etc., then he brings them in to his precinct for question-
had to be subdued by no less than three security ing. He really isn’t terribly concerned with the minor in-
guards, at which time he “swore revenge.” fractions, but the amateur do-gooder really ticks him off,
especially since they operate outside the law. If any of the
• Finally, there is a 3D holo of Schou. characters try to get a read on him (Insight, Psychology, or
The Forcer related role) and realize this, they can speak to the fact that
Right after they’ve done something illegal would be a they’re working for the greater good, just as he is, and they
will allow no innocents to be harmed. Speaking this way
great time to introduce Detective Bill Stowers. Exactly to him gets the party off with a stiff warning. If they try
where the characters are approached, and what they’re to fight him, deny illegal activity that did happen, or make
doing at the time is left to the Gamemaster, but ideally the grave error of pulling a weapon on him then he brings
it should be at a time that ratchets up the tension to the law down on them — hard. He presses full charges for
115
everything they’ve done, including some imagined offenses thrown in for good measure. He then tosses
them into a holding cell, and lets them stew. If the characters cannot call in a friend, get a loan, or perhaps
contact their client, Ms. Carrie Cutler, to raise the bail money (10,000 munits per character) then they are
processed, prosecuted, and sent to jail, and the adventure ends in abject failure.

Into Subtown
Tracking Down the Mystery Men
The information from both GhostShip Blue Elementary School and Fukuda Bioforms leads the
characters to the same place: either both Niels Hobbs and Viggo Schou were, very coincidentally,
roommates or one man was using two aliases.
After doing a reverse lookup on his number (with a successful Computer Use or Research roll), and
confirming the landlord’s listing for his address (with either a successful Hacking roll or successive
Computer Use and Luck rolls), the characters learn that the name behind both is Niels Viggo Schou-
Hobbs. The two men are one and the same.
The number is disconnected and successful Fast Talk, Bargain, Persuade rolls only confirm that the
number was billed to the address the characters already have. No further information is available.
The apartment is located in a barely livable building that looks ready to implode on itself. Forma Street and the
surrounding area is a dangerous neighborhood, and the apartment building is in a bad section of Forma Street.
Merely getting out of one’s car or off the city bus in this area results in one of the following encounters:

Roll 1d4 Result

The party is accosted by an aggressive beggar, who refuses to leave them alone. He starts
1 out asking for spare munits, then pleads a bit, then gets angry, moving on to whimpering
and being pathetic, and finally plays the part of a mewling simpleton.
As the party moves down a quiet street to get to their destination a group of gang
bangers materializes out of the shadows and surrounds them. They are armed with hand-
2 guns, knives, and chains, and they outnumber the party by 2:1. They claim this is a toll
road, and the toll is 1000 munits or a female party member. See stats below if this option
is rolled, and the party is either unwilling or unable to pay the “toll.”
No sooner does the party get onto the sidewalk than everyone around them starts run-
3 ning in the same direction, looking over their shoulders. A trash zapper has malfunc-
tioned, and is grabbing at anyone and anything it can, and trying to disintegrate it.
The characters have inadvertently stepped right into the middle of an erupting gang war.
4 Literally, on either side of them, there are two heavily-armed groups advancing, preparing
to tear each other to bloody ribbons. The stats below can be used for this option as well.

Chas Elden Darwin Keven Jammer Mika Croyle Galven Thoran Kampf Dante Sladek
STR 14 15 13 15 11 14 09 15 14 15 15 11
CON 13 15 09 13 10 08 15 13 13 15 13 10
SIZ 15 10 17 11 16 08 16 10 13 10 10 16
INT 13 11 11 12 12 11 13 14 13 11 14 12
DEX 11 12 07 14 13 10 08 07 08 12 07 13
APP 13 11 12 13 14 12 08 12 13 11 12 14
POW 12 07 08 10 10 11 10 11 12 09 11 10
HP 14 13 13 12 13 08 16 12 13 13 12 13
DB: +1d4 +1d4 +1d4 +1d4 +1d4 0 0 +1d4 +1d4 +1d4 +1d4 +1d4

Weapons: Fist 70%, damage 1d3 + db

Kick 50%, damage 1d6 + db
.55 semiautomatic 50%, damage 1d10
Shotgun 45%, damage 4d6/2d6/1/d6
Skills: Intimidate Pedestrians 87%, Pick Fights 73%
116
 The Apartment
PUNKTOWN as Walt “Mashed Potatoes” Johnson, and the other,
Once finally into the apartment building, the super heavier, bearded man introduces himself only as Man-
makes only the weakest attempt to turn the characters fred. After some cheerful banter about the unchang-
away before blatantly asking for a tip to let them in. ing weather of Subtown, they inform the characters
What kind of tip, exactly, they give him is up to the that they are the neighborhood watch —because they
players, but he is easily coerced or bribed. do exactly that: watch the neighborhood. In that duty,
they are more than happy to answer some questions.
The building is a five-floor walk-up, and Hobbs lives
on the top floor. Wheezing for boozy breath, the super • No, they haven’t seen anyone who looks like
opens the door for the characters and they are greeted the holo of Viggo Schou — but their faces go
by the abandoned psycho-den of NielsViggo Schou- blank for a millisecond when they’re shown the
Hobbs: lining all the walls are photographs, magazine image. (Successful Psychology/Insight rolls in-
articles, newspaper clippings, Ultranet printouts, maps, dicate that there is something else at play here;
schematics, and scrawled notes stuck to the walls with they are not lying, but there was a reason for
push pins with marker lines connecting one to another. their hesitation.)
The end result looks like an insane web of information • They stay here for the rent-free living, and the
covering most of the walls of this squalid apartment. free food.
Closer examination and successful Spot rolls reveals ar- • The food is delivered daily in disposable, insu-
ticles and photographs of Carrie Cutler (the principal of lated bags every morning before they wake up.
GhostShip Blue Elementary School), Matthew Carpenter
• The meals consist of a day’s ration of meat,
(head of security at GhostShip Blue Elementary), Nozai freeze-dried veggies, and water packets.
Matsu (the Chief of Security at Fukuda Bioforms), as well
as the CEO, John Fukuda, the COO, Konda Riuchi, the • The meat is glebbi meat — the best they’ve ever
CFO, Suki Natsuya, and many other members of Board tasted. Why do you ask?
of Directors. Another successful Spot roll finds an article
naming those board members as tied to Alvine Products,
and being named to the Fukuda Bioforms board. The Reason for Their Hesitation
Mashed Potatoes and Manfred have been ingesting
Finally, without the need for any rolls, there, in a place nanomites from the food left for them by Schou-
of prominence on one wall is a sketch of the new venti- Hobbs. The nanomites attach to the two men’s
lation duct leading out of the school and into the base- brains, affecting memory and vision. The micro-
ment of a building directly beneath in Subtown. It ap- scopic machines are capable of tying into the vision-
pears to be an official blueprint of the school with the center of the brain and relay images to a remote loca-
additional ducting sketched in with pencil, complete tion, while the ones attached to the memory-center
with scribbled notes about the construction detailing allow Schou-Hobbs to selectively delete memories,
the specifications (size/shape/materials). including any specifically related to him.
Unfortunately, however, these miniscule robots are
Locating the Building in Subtown highly complex and require a lot of power to run. As
Finding the building connected to the new/secret ven- such, they “die” every 1d4 days, so Schou-Hobbs leaves
tilation shaft is easy provided one knows Subtown. The food for the men containing the additional ingredient,
addresses in Subtown are all the same as those on the allowing them to continue to be his unwitting lookouts.
surface with the addition of the letter “B” in the address
like Morpha Street B. Standing in front of the building,
the characters can see that this is the ideal place to sneak Turtle Partnership
some ducting into a surface-based building above. The The store in the ground-level of the building is called the
Subtown building is mostly abandoned, with the ex- Turtle Partnership. The store’s proprietors, who are both
ception of a ground-floor storefront and the apartment always in the shop during business hours, are the husband
directly over the store. Adding to the ambiance are and wife team of Tim and Gab Davis. At first glance, the
two homeless men, who have taken up residence in the store appears to be an out-of-date computer hardware
building, squatting in the unused space, sitting in front shop, complete with burned out motherboards, RAM
of the building in dilapidated folding lawn chairs, greet- chips, and peripheral cards displayed in the window. That
ing passers-by. is merely for display, however. Turtle Partnership’s main
bread and butter consists of contract work with mega-
Mashed Potatoes and Manfred corporations’ IT departments, who need them to fix the
The two men in front of the building introduce them- things that larger companies can’t figure out, like aggres-
selves as the party approaches, greeting them brightly. sive and intrusive virus, antivirus, human body, and Ul-
One is thin and clean-shaven, and introduces himself tranet intrusion countermeasures. They’d prefer to offer
their services to the party, but still answer questions.
117
 • No, they don’t know who the person in the holo is.
• No, they don’t know where the person in the holo is.
• No, they don’t have any further information.
• No, they don’t know the homeless men/squatters sitting outside.
While Turtle Partnership does actually make some money at their profession, their true purpose in
this store is to act as a physical front for what is happening literally beneath and behind them. Every
single one of their responses thus far has been a well-rehearsed lie. The only way to detect this deluge
of lies is for a character to successfully roll under half their Insight/Psychology skill. Once the Davises
suspect that the characters are onto them, a successful Spot roll on the part of the characters reveals
that the two of them twitch their eyes nervously to the base of what appears to be a large air handler
for a central air conditioning unit. Despite their knowledge of the existence of Schou-Hobbs, they are
not involved in the kidnappings, though they now have serious suspicions. They know of him because
of his technological expertise. He was able to code nanomites with the most sophisticated nanomite
logic they had ever seen, “Yes, he was a little weird, but he did amazing work.” In exchange for help-
ing them code better cutting-edge software, the Davises allowed him to use their basement storage
area as a home and lab. Part of their agreement was that they would deny knowledge of his existence
and whereabouts, but they fear that he may be up to something given the news of the kidnappings
from the school directly above them, and his pet construction projects.
Adding to their fears, Schou-Hobbs hasn’t responded to them lately, and they’re afraid something
has happened to him. The series of coded knocks on his secret entrance go unanswered, and they
don’t know what to do. In a fit of desperation and distress, they ask the characters to help. At this
point, they willing share a bit more of what they know — truthfully, this time.
• Schou-Hobbs approached them about space in the building five months ago.
• He moved several computer systems and other large machines into the basement.
118
PUNKTOWN • He told them he would need to do some con- Once past the inner door, the group is faced with what
struction for his secret experiments. appears to be a reinforced air-duct slide into darkness be-
• They don’t know the nature of his work, but low. A quick glance with a flashlight confirms those sus-
Schou-Hobbs went on at length about how picions, but a successful Spot roll notes tiny razor blades
“they” didn’t appreciate his genius, and would peppered through the center of the bottom of the duct.
“pay for their transgressions.” Those blades inflict 1d4+2 damage to any failing to avoid
them. One more Spot roll allows the characters to see that
• His secret work drew more and more power, but
since his work for them paid better and better, the edges of the ducting are rough, while the center is
they didn’t have a reason to complain — and smooth. Crawling down on all fours with hands and knees
didn’t dare, because if he left, then there would along the edge of the ducts allows the characters to travel
be no one on staff to maintain the software code. through the ducting without taking damage.
• No, they rarely see him go in and out unless At the end of this duct, beginning directly beneath
they call him by tapping at the door. (See “The it, is a hairpin switchback identical to the one above
Other Entrance” below.) it except that the second duct ends with a drop onto
the plain cement floor one meter below the opening
Entering the Secret Lair (no damage for falling).
Proceeding with the adventure requires the group to
explore Schou-Hobbs’ secret basement hideout. As the The characters are now in a bare, cement-block room
Davises indicated, the air handler to a large air condi- with only one door; an old-style turn-the-knob type
tioning unit opens up by lifting a bifold door upwards, door with a dim green lightbulb above it, next to which
and ducking into a small cubby area. Inside that area is is a surveillance camera. Next to the door is a key-card
a holographic keypad. slot, presumably to unlock the door. A close examina-
• One more thing the Davises mention at that tion (Spot) of the card slot shows more tell-tale wir-
point: Schou-Hobbs has set up this place to de- ing. There is no obvious connection for this wiring,
ter unwanted visitors. so characters should hopefully come to the (correct)
Hopefully, for the sake of the party, the players should conclusion that it is wired to the door. Anyone tam-
understand that this means they need to be careful and pering with that key-card slot without taking appro-
check for intrusion countermeasures. A Spot roll reveals priate measures triggers a massive electrical charge to
that Schou-Hobbs has gutted and rewired parts of a the steel door, such that anyone touching it after that
trash zapper into the floor of this cubby, and the wir- suffers 1d6 damage from electrocution. A successful
ing is connected to the keypad. Characters can likely
Electrical Repair roll disables the electrical trap, and a
figure out that if they enter the wrong code, their feet
succession of successful rolls in both Electrical Repair
will be disintegrated for their trouble. If they need one,
the Gamemaster may grant them an Idea roll to figure (to remove the card slot) and Electronics or Hacking
this out. Characters failing to notice this and proceed- (to unlock the door) thereafter.
ing anyway suffer 1d6+3 damage as the trash zapper All of this sneaking about may be moot though if no
technology burns through their feet. Any characters so
one addresses the surveillance camera over the door.
injured can no longer walk, and are done with this ad-
This is the final point through which Schou-Hobbs is
venture, needing hospitalization and likely prosthetic
replacement. At that point, there is an 80% chance that likely observing the characters before they breach his
Schou-Hobbs notes the disturbance and starts an un- sanctum sanctorum on the other side of that door.
stoppable fire in his hideaway to destroy evidence and Sneak rolls are essential for this task, and each movement
dispose of the kidnapped children. He then escapes into
in the room, as they have been since the characters start-
the warren of Punktown: the characters have failed.
ed their descent. While the camera is there, Schou-Hobbs
Disconnecting the trash zapper only requires an Electri- spends his time immersed in his work, not staring at the se-
cal Repair roll, but getting into the keypad and getting curity vidscreen. Any one of his traps, or loud sounds, alert
the door to open requires an Electronics or Hacking roll, him to intruders. If, at this point, he realizes someone is
or something less subtle like a Mechanical Repair roll
coming for him, he sets fire to his underground lab and
for using a plasma torch to cut through the inner metal
bolts, destroying evidence and murdering the children in
door. Another Idea roll can be granted here if need be,
but if Schou-Hobbs is there inside his lair, he may not the process. This would be complete failure for the party.
take kindly to others breaking in — and he probably has For allowing the children to die, each character must take a
hostages: every action requires successful Sneak rolls. penalty of 3d10 both to SAN and to Credit Rating/Status.
119
120
 The Other Entrance
PUNKTOWN area against one wall, and between the living area and
Hopefully, the characters have realized that someone kitchenette are a series of shelves and a desk. On top of
as smart as Schou-Hobbs wouldn’t build an elaborate, the shelves is the nanomite-infused creature (see below),
trap-filled entrance without a back door he could es- lying inert in an antiquated glass aquarium. In the op-
cape through. Now, were this a normal trap-the-bad- posite corner is a very high end holographic interface
guy scenario the characters could hide in and around computer, and beyond it are three large Plexiglas cylin-
the building to watch for their mark, but with children ders big enough to hold a grown human. The cylinders
likely being held hostage, time is not on their side. The are hooked together and to another series of computers,
characters are welcome to take the slower, more delib- monitors, and machinery. Contained in the three cylin-
erate approach, but magnanimous Gamemasters may ders are the three children who have been kidnapped.
offer them an Idea roll to see the error of their ways. The Children
Exploring the entire perimeter of the building takes Nanci Moy, the Sinanese girl, is sitting in the bottom
2-4 hours, during which a successful Spot roll reveals of her cylinder, rocking back and forth muttering to
something odd in the alleyway. There is all manner of herself. With a successful Listen roll, one of the char-
acters learns that the girl is saying “Don’t look him in
refuse strewn everywhere except for one small spot. On
the eye. Don’t look him in the eye. Don’t look him in
the side of a broken, mashed, graffiti-covered trash con-
the eye,” over and over and over again.
tainer is a quarter-circle of almost spotless alley. A suc-
cessful Spot in that area reveals a subtle handle cut into The second child, the Tikkihotto boy named Dafyd Beane,
the side of the trash container. Pulling on that handle is in a catatonic state lying in the bottom of his cylinder.
opens a warped four-foot-tall door, clearing any trash in Gremlin, the third and final child, is awake and aware.
that small spot to up against the wall. Characters may be made aware that she may inadver-
tently raise the alarm if she Spots them.
Beyond the door is a tiny, dark room. No lights are built
in, but hopefully someone has something that can func- The Villain
tion as a flashlight. This trash container was placed over The Gamemaster is free to decide where Schou-Hobbs
is when the characters enter his sanctum sanctorum. If,
an old service elevator shaft from the building’s past. The however, the Gamemaster wishes to introduce an ele-
elevator is no more, but the shaft is there, complete with ment of random to this scene, a table is provided below.
metal ladder rungs built into the wall. At the bottom of
that shaft is a simple metal door that opens inward. Roll Location/Action
Numerous Spot checks reveal nothing else, but the
door is locked from the inside. Any Locksmithing skill
would be handy to pick the lock, or the door can be 1-10 He is in the bed, sleeping.
forced. The door and lock have a Strength of 14, and
can be overcome by rolling on the Resistance table. Al-
ternately, the lock has 8 hit points, so a well-placed lead
slug can remove the lock, but that would probably be He is locked in the bathroom, using the
11-20
very noisy (even if their weapons are equipped with si- facilities.
lencers, blowing metal apart with a metal projectile is
likely to cause a stir).
Note that while this is clearly the easier route, the char- He is sitting at the desk, writing notes to
21-40
acters skulking around the building likely (70% chance) himself.
get the attention of Mashed Potatoes and Manfred,
whose vision is relayed to Schou-Hobbs inside his hide-
out. If the two men are watching the characters, there is He is in the kitchenette, fixing himself
a 10% chance that Schou-Hobbs knows they’re coming. 41-60
something to eat.
The Hideout
Most of the basement has been taken over by Schou-
Hobbs, and he has turned it into his home, secret lab, He is at the computer, working and re-
61-90
and hideout. The dark cave of a space smells of stale viewing data.
man-sweat and machinery. Whichever entry point the
characters take, they immediately notice all of the clut-
ter. In one corner is the cramped sleeping space with a He is standing at the door with a gun
couple of cramped and close-to-collapsing bookshelves. to one of the children’s heads. (NB: this
91-00
In the corner nearest that is the bathroom, which looks is how they find him if he saw a vision feed
to have never been cleaned. Ever. There is a kitchenette from Mashed Potatoes and Manfred.)
121
No matter what he is doing, Schou-Hobbs is not rational. He reacts with extreme violence to any intrusion.
His weapon of choice looks like a cross between a cattle prod and a VT remote, with glowing buttons and di-
als, and even a small screen. This is the device he uses to control the creature he created. His backup weapon
is a pistol he keeps awkwardly stuffed in whatever pants he happens to be wearing.
Regardless of how he is found, both of these devices (the remote and the handgun) are within easy reach.
Of course, if he is sleeping and the characters have managed to get all the way into his hideout without
waking him then the advantage is theirs, but this is his playing field, and he’ll likely have the upper hand.

The Final Battle

Schou-Hobbs is a scientist and inventor who has fallen on hard times, and has allowed that experience
to twist him into a dangerous sociopath. He is not a battle-hardened criminal. However, he’s not going
to roll over at the first sign of trouble. No, he’s going to hide behind his invention. He’s going to sic
the creature on the intruders.
The creature, however, has other ideas. As soon as any interaction or confrontation starts, the characters
see Schou-Hobbs raise his controller and wave it like a wand, pointing it at the first target he wishes
dispatched. This may be the intruder nearest him, or it may be the most heavily armed or intimidating.
It could even be completely random. The final decision is left to the Gamemaster. Schou-Hobbs is ex-
pecting his blob of a creation to burst out of its little aquarium, land on its victim, and devour the poor
soul by teleporting them – somewhere. This does not happen, however, and Gamemasters are urged to
let the scene play out, rather than have the characters immediately riddle their foe with bullets.
122
 The creature vibrates briefly, resisting the compulsion to do
PUNKTOWN dritch gene splicing techniques) among Schou-Hobbs’
as it is commanded – and rebels. It lances itself across the belongings found in and around his computer, and elec-
room, and directly into Schou-Hobbs’ mouth. The rest of tronic excerpts from the Key Solomon depicting several
its mass follows, wrapping itself around his head, shoul- summoning circles and explaining their function.
ders, upper chest, and portions of his arms. As the charac-
ters watch in horror, the creature forces itself through ev- If the Gamemaster wishes to include spells in the mix
ery orifice in Schou-Hobbs’ head: his mouth, nose, eyes, then here are the spells which make the most sense for
and ears. Schou-Hobbs’ neck bulges as the invading mass each of the three options for adversary:
burrows down further and further into his body. Watching
the creature dig its way into its creator costs all who see it • Schou-Hobbs alone – Shriveling, Wrack
1/1d4 SAN. Particularly vengeful Gamemasters can also • Creature alone – Line Travel
call for the CON check, and if any of the characters fail it, • Schou-Hobbs/Creature – Ascending/De-
they spend the next game round vomiting. scending Mode, Line Travel, Shriveling, Wrack
As the characters (hopefully) continue to watch, hypno- However and whenever the combats take place, the
tized by the spectacle, Schou-Hobbs’ knees buckle, and characters would do well to remember that there are in-
he collapses onto all fours. Gurgling sounds come from nocents in the room, and potentially in the line of fire.
his throat, as the last wisps of the creature disappear into The children, while they are sealed in Plexiglas cylinders
their new host. After a few quivers, the newly-melded with an armor rating of 10, could still be hit by crossfire
being calms down – and bolts upright to a standing po- and ricochets. The table below can be used to keep the
sition, eyes literally ablaze with light. “NOW, WE ARE characters honest. The number in this table is the result
IN CONTROL!” comes a voice through Schou-Hobbs’ of subtracting the percentage needed to hit from the
mouth that sounds metallic, synthetic, and hollow. The actual roll. In other words, if a player rolls an 89, but
voice is unlike any being any of the characters have heard
needed a 40, then the number in question would be
in Paxton. Seeing and hearing the newly changed being
49. For the sake of sanity, the table includes ranges to
in their midst costs another 1/1d3 SAN: the end result of
this “hostile takeover” is something that looks like a bloat- include all possible results.
ed Schou-Hobbs that moves as if his bones have been liq-
uefied. It tends to drip meaty-smelling liquid as it moves. Number Result
70-85 One of the children takes a fatal gun-
Now the show is over, the characters are welcome to (at-
shot wound
tempt to) dispose of the adversary. They’ll find, however,
that the bullets don’t affect this new hybrid creature like 50-69 50% chance that one of the children
they’d hoped, but the different plasma bullets available in takes a fatal gunshot wound
Punktown will. In addition, fire and electricity cause normal
damage. Stats for the creature appear below, but the game 40-49 25% chance that one of the children
has now changed. This new creature—the freed creature takes a fatal gunshot wound
wearing the Schou-Hobbs-suit—merely wants to leave, and 30-39 10% chance that one of the children
not only leave without harming the characters, but also use takes a fatal gunshot wound
the residual knowledge still left in the Schou-Hobbs por-
tion of the mind to free the children into the characters’ 20-29 One of the children takes 1d4 damage
custody. If, however, the creature is attacked, the gloves from a ricochet
come off and anyone and everyone is fair game, though the 10-19 One of the children takes 1d2 damage
creature does not deliberately harm the children. from a ricochet
The details of the true nature of this creature are left to 1-9 One of the children takes 1 point of
the Gamemaster. If the Gamemaster is running a pure damage from a ricochet
cyberpunk game, then it is quite possible to leave it as
a science and engineering experiment gone into hos-
tile, gene-splicing takeover mode. Schou-Hobbs used Rewards & Penalties
Coleopteroid technology when he created his creature, Returning a lost child to a desperate parent would have
including multiple, tiny teleportation modules, embed- to be an amazing feeling, as such the Sanity reward
ding them within the creature’s genetically engineered should be amazing. Conversely, if the characters have
flesh. That can be the extent of the explanation for the allowed harm to come to the children during the rescue
creature’s ability to abduct and transport its prey. If, attempt, or, worse, allowed one or more of them to be
however, the Gamemaster isn’t averse to using a more killed, the cost should be substantial. The rewards and
Cthulhu Mythos-heavy explanation, the Gamemaster penalties below are given to each of the surviving char-
can include a chip copy of the Genomicon (detailing el- acters at the end of the game.
123
 Action/Result Reward/Penalty to SAN
Allowing the insane Schou-Hobbs to escape. -1d4
Allowing the uncontrolled creature to escape -1d4
Allowing the blended Schou-Hobbs/creature to escape +1d6
Fabricating a believable story covering the blended creature’s “es- +1d4
cape” such that it will not be hunted down
Allowing one or more child to get hurt -1d6
Allowing one child to die -1d10*
Allowing two children to die -2d10*
Allowing all the children to die -3d10*
Successfully returning the children home alive +3d10
*This penalty applies the characters’ Credit Rating/Status as well to reflect the major failure of this case.

Niels Viggo Schou-Hobbs

STR 7 CON 12 SIZ 13 INT 17
POW 13 DEX 11 APP 6 HP 13
Damage Bonus: None
Weapons: Decimator .220 40%, damage 1d6
Spells: None/See list below
Skills: Craft (Nanotechnology) 80%, Craft (Computer Code) 65%, Electrical Repair
80%, Language (Programming) 55%, Research 85%, Science (Biology) 60%, Science
(Exobiology) 40%, Technical (Computer Use) 75%

The Creature
STR 20 CON 30 SIZ 10 INT 8
POW 9 DEX 18 HP 20
Damage Bonus: None
Armor: None/Lead shot does no damage, but plasma capsule/fire/electricity does
usual damage
Spells: None/ See list below
Skills: Grapple (On success, victims are surrounded and teleported to a predetermined
destination) 80%, Hide 85%, Slither and Ooze Disgustingly 97%, Sneak 95%

The Creature-Infused Schou-Hobbs

STR 14 CON 20 SIZ 14 INT 20
POW 16 DEX 18 APP 2 HP 40
Damage Bonus: +1d4
Armor: None/Lead shot does no damage, but plasma capsule/fire/electricity does
usual damage
Spells: None/ See list below
Skills: Grapple (On success, victims are surrounded by a liquefied limb and teleported
to an unknown destination) 80%

124
 Scenario:
PUNKTOWN

Looking Long Into The Abyss

by Brian M. Sammons
ing mouths split the flesh on the palms of his hands,
Before the Show Starts and then the thing that was once Tam starts grabbing
This scenario works best if the Gamemaster introduc- and biting the people around him, including innocent
es the character of Tam Vonner to their players before bystander, Andro Jauss. Two luckier club goers, Cris-
running this game. Not only so they grow accustomed topher Frank and David Lars Chamberlain reel out of
to the man, and hopefully like him, but so that they reach just in time.
might have used his services at procuring items of a
digital and possibly illegal nature. The reason for this is Anyone with a successful Cthulhu Mythos roll recog-
explained later on, but for now know that Tam is a first nizes Y’golonac for the horror it is.
rate hacker, a cyber-scrounger, a digital fixer, and expert
on all things tech. Tam gladly sells his skills to anyone Tam Vonner, Avatar of Y’golonac
with the munits. STR 25 CON 125 SIZ 25 INT 30
Ideally, one or more of the characters had Tam get them POW 28 DEX 14 Move 10 HP 75
a “sweet deal” on an upgrade to their ultranet pods, Damage Bonus: N/A
ultranet ports, chip or memory implants, or something Weapons: Touch 100%, 1 INT + 1 POW drained each
for one of the other cybernetic goodies they have in- round
stalled to them. A Gamemaster could introduce this to Devour 100%, damage 1D4 non-healing damage
their players before this story starts by telling them that Armor: none
their “such-and-such” needs an upgrade to its operat- Spells: any the Gamemaster wishes
ing system. That is a common enough occurrence today Sanity Loss: 1/1D20 Sanity Points to witness Tam
and likely to be a far more common pain in the butt in transform into Y’golonac; 1/1D10+1 to see
the future. Thankfully, their good buddy Tam can get Y’golonac.
that upgrade for them at half the price.
Hopefully, all of the characters are packing weapons.
Introduction – A Night Out Many in the crowded club are, and they start blasting
One night Tam and the characters are out together at
the obscenity Tam has become. They are also handy
a club drinking, dancing to the stylings of the infamous
fodder for the monster to attack instead of it focusing
mutated duo, Jimmy Spin and The Diabolical Dr. J, and
all of its attention on the characters. However, many
maybe looking for a hookup. Poor Tam seems out of it
of the clubbers panic, stampede for the exits (DEX x 3
tonight; he is pale, sweaty, and shaking. Every so often
to avoid getting knocked down and trampled for 1D8
he stops, cocks his head, and then asks one of the char-
damage), get in the way at the worst possible moment,
acters, “Did you say something?” But he wants to party
go insane, and call for the forcers. They also shoot
and won’t take no for an answer. If asked about it, he
wildly, hitting others and possibly the characters in
blows off the questions, saying, “It’s this latest job I’ve
true “spray and pray” style. All characters should make
been running. I’m just wiped, no big deal.”
Luck rolls every round during this firefight unless they
Then a few moments later, Tam stops dead in his tracks get behind total cover and stay there until the shoot-
on the dance floor. He makes a weird gurgling sound ing stops. Failure means they catch a random round
and then his head drops off! Yep, his head drops right for 1D8 damage. A botched Luck roll (96% or higher)
off of his body. There is no blood. As the characters means it is a bigger bullet doing 1D10+2 damage.
and clubbing bystanders watch in shock, Tam’s head-
The Gamemaster should not let the NPC clubbers do
less body shudders and shakes. Then with a sloppy, wet,
all the work. If all that the characters do is cower and
ripping sound, he suddenly gains 400 pounds, tearing
hide, the gun-toting club kids run for it, leaving the
through all of his clothes in the process, leaving him
player characters alone with the hefty horror. If the
naked and glowing phosphorescent green. Gnash-
125
characters make a run for it, the the club’s automatic security system triggers, dropping gates over all
the exits, sealing them in with terrifying Tam until the locks can be hacked open with either Com-
puter Use or Electronics. Doing this requires ten combat rounds. However it is done, the characters
should have to deal with this problem.
Once the headless horror is dead, it falls to the ground and starts to melt away. Now is the time for
the characters to beat it. They can hear the forcers coming and they sure don’t want to be answering
any questions. However, any tech-savvy character (someone with Computers or Electronics at 50%
or more) can make an Idea roll. Success reminds them that Tam had a state-of-the-art computer in
his head – the same head that is now lying on the dance floor. If they take it, they could hack into it
later and possibly get some clues as to what happened. If any player thinks of this for themselves, no
Idea roll is necessary. Of course, should they get collared by the forcers carrying a severed head, they
have some explaining to do.

Gamemaster’s Information – WTF Happened?

Tam was hired by Missra Sang, a member of the Children of the Elders, to spy on the ultranet activi-
ties of a fellow Child of the Elders, Devon Tellick. Missra and Devon were a hot item, but Devon has
been cold, distant, and acting more than a little crazy for the last few months. Before Missra reports
Devon to higher-ups in the church, she wanted to make sure that she had reason to suspect him. She
knew he was spending way too much time on the ultranet, but she didn’t have the skills to find out
what he was doing there. Enter Tam.
Remember that saying, “Those who fight monsters should take care that they never become one?”
Sadly, Devon didn’t; and after years of facing the horrors of the Great Old Ones, Devon has gone
insane. He has gathered a small library of grimoires and Mythos tomes and has been putting them
up on the ultranet, creating programs and algorithms based on their magical theorems, and creat-
ing VI and AI (virtual and artificial intelligences) based on the ancient nightmares discussed in those
forbidden books. He’s not doing this for personal gain or to take over the world; on the contrary,
he actually thinks he’s doing good. He wants to create a virtual Great Old One. His insane theory is
that if he can create a virtual Great Old One then he can interact with it, study it, and learn from it,
all without risking his life, soul, or innocent bystanders.
He is wrong.
What Devon has created is a conglomerate digital horror not based on any one fell deity, but on as-
pects of many of them. Devon, deep in his delusions, believed that he could get more viable data from
it that way. In reality, he has created something both new and ancient. Something with intelligence
and cosmic power in the virtual world, but no idea of what it is or any influence it might have on the
real world. Well, not directly. In short, he had birthed a schizophrenic virtual god that is continuing
to grow every day in every way.
While it is contained in the ultranet, it is not completely quarantined as poor Tam found out in his
cyber snooping into Devon’s business. Reading some of Devon’s computer code transcribed from
the Revelations of Glaaki opened Tam up to possession from Y’golonac, but other aspects of the
Mythos have been seeping out all over the ultranet. Summoning spells, contact spells, sorcery, curses,
and mind-bending forbidden lore of all types is now out there, waiting for unaware ultranet surfers to
stumble across them. As this story progresses, Punktown, already a strange and deadly place, becomes
even more so as the taint of the Old Ones becomes more widespread.
The characters must find out what happened to Tam, whom he was looking into, and how to stop
this before Punktown tears itself apart and the ever-growing virtual, conglomerate God in the Ma-
chine becomes too powerful to stop.

Starting Off With A Head

If the characters didn’t take Tam’s head then all of this information can be found in Tam’s house in
the neighborhood of Willow Tree on his home-based computer. See the section Tam’s House for
more information. However, hacking into Tam’s head is just too cool, so Gamemasters are urged to
use this option if at all possible.
If the characters did make off with the hacker’s head, they can get some useful information from the
126
PUNKTOWNhigh-tech computer for which Tam sacrificed part of Miss”, “LilBoyBlu”, “Mr. Gray”, and “Pretty Kitty.”
his living brain. Unfortunately, it’s a Kessler V3, which Info on these contacts are below.
means it never needs charging and runs off the bio-
electricity of its owner – which in this case is dead. That “Pretty Kitty” has an ultranet address listed which leads
means no power. So the characters won’t be able to to an online sim-porn site where you can have virtual
hack into it remotely. They need to cut into their dead sex, with full sensory input, for just twenty munits a
friend’s head (0/1D4 SAN for the one cutting) and minute and Ms. “Pretty Kitty” is well worth it. Unfor-
run a hard wire to it from the hacker’s output port, tunately, she has also been infected with the Mythos
followed by three successful Computer Use rolls and Virus by Tam. See Kitty, Pretty No More for that dis-
12 hours to hack Tam’s encryption. A failed roll can be turbing encounter.
attempted again, but it requires an additional 1D6+1 “Mr. Gray” is a male Kalian, who hired Tam to keep
hours. virtual tabs on his Kalian wife whom he thought was
Anyone interfacing with Tam’s computer directly is in- “showing her hair” (having an affair) and bringing
fected with the Mythos Virus (see below). shame to his family. Mr. Gray, if contacted via ultra-
net, is cagy and reluctant to tell the characters any of
Once inside Tam’s virtual mind, they see that his ultra- this. Persuade won’t work on him, but he can be in-
net handle was Def-Con 1. A History roll identifies that timidated. Fast Talk such as, “I’m Tam’s partner and
archaic term. He has contact information for literally we found that thing you were after” or the like might
hundreds of people, all under codenames, and far too also work. Making another Computer Use roll could
many to investigate. The lasts four contacts he had deal- have the character mask themselves, virtually, to appear
ings with, other than any of the characters, were “Miss as Tam on the ultranet and thus get the Kalian man

Kitty, Pretty No More

As soon as the character makes contact with Pretty Kitty, they find themselves in a fully immersive alternate reality
construct of a bedroom, lit by candles and a romantic fireplace. The only furnishing is a large four-poster bed covered
in red and pink satin and silk. Through a pair of ornate double doors some…thing walks in. Bipedal, but mostly just a
blurry, twitchy mess of flickering static. One shapely, stocking and garter clad leg can be see protruding from the visual
disturbance, as well as one lovely bare breast, shoulder, and arm. Long blonde hair is found where the head should
be, but it is swirling and moving on its own accord, as if it was alive. This figure speaks with a woman’s voice, but one
with changing modulation. One moment it is sweet and lyrical, the next either too low or too high.
“Have you come to play with Kitty? Hurry, we haven’t much time,” the blurry image says, beckoning the character
towards the bed. Kitty ignores any question asked of her, instead saying things like, “Shhh, lover. Before the cock
crows let the two of us become one flesh.” And, “Come pet Kitty, make me purr.”
Should the character attempt to disconnect, they find it impossible to do so. Their computer is no longer respond-
ing to their commands. That’s when things go from strange to downright terrifying. The red and pink colors of
the room change to become a sickly shade of yellow. The static cloak covering most of Kitty vanishes, revealing the
horror behind it. Kitty has a bizarre, twisting symbol carved into her forehead. A successful Cthulhu Mythos roll
identifies it as the Yellow Sign, which costs 0/1D6 SAN just to see. Looking at what else Kitty has done to herself
costs an additional 1/1D8 SAN. Kitty has plucked out her eyes and cut off her ears. She has flayed the flesh from
the lower half of her face, giving herself a bloody, skeletal smile. One breast has been sliced off, her once concealed
leg has been skinned to the bone, and she has mutilated her naked womanhood until it is unrecognizable.
Kitty attempts to seduce the character, all the while saying, “He is coming, the King, He’s coming for me, but
His love is so cold – keep me warm!” The only way for the character to escape this virtual reality is for them to kill
Kitty, who keeps groping, fondling, licking, and grinding on them (SAN 1/1D6). Given the opportunity, she forces
herself on them, regardless of their sex, costing an additional 1D3/1D8 SAN. Luckily, rusty knives now hang from
tattered yellow ribbons over the bed and blood-dried chains and loops of barbed wire drape the headboard. There
is also a red-hot poker protruding from the fireplace. Kitty doesn’t fight back, she just continues to caress and kiss.
She has as many Hit Points as the Gamemaster wants her to have, and every time she is struck by the character,
she lets out a moan of sexual pleasure. If possible, her death should be exceptionally graphic or horrific to further
traumatize the character for an additional 1/1D6 SAN.
Once the character kills Kitty and escapes the virtual reality, should they do some research into who she was, the Game-
master should let them discover that she was a Sinanese VR sex worker found butchered in her home in the same horrible
state that the character had seen her blonde, human avatar in. All signs point to the mutilation being self-inflicted.

127
talking. Once this info is known, looking back into Tam’s computer specifically for a “Mrs. Gray”
finds surveillance video recorded by Tam of a beautiful Kalian woman clubbing with two other Kalian
females. They just appear to be having fun dancing and are not interested in any of the men there.
There is also an encrypted entry connected to Mrs. Gray that requires another Computer Use roll to
open. Cracking it finds a full sim-memory of Tam having torrid sex with Mrs. Gray. This would be
the Punktown equivalent of making a sex tape without the other person’s consent. Experiencing this
recoded memory is almost as good as the real thing and triggers the appropriate physical responses if
the viewer is male. If female, things are just – off.
”LilBoyBlu” is a military clone bred to fight in the Blue War, who started his own mercenary outfit
after his tour of duty. Comprised of other Blue War clones, this merc unit is called Ronin Security or,
unofficially by some and out of earshot of the mercs, “The Blues Brothers.” LilBoyBlu goes by the
name of Jornel Riggs and when contacted by the characters over the ultranet, begins the conversation
hostile saying, “You have a lot of nerve contacting me again, Tam. After what you – hold on, who the
hell are you?” See the section The Problem With Ronin for the full details, but unless the character
virtually disguised himself as Tam as described above, LilBoyBlu does not tell them anything, but he
tries to arrange a meeting to “discuss things.” He is vague and stalls, as he has his own hackers trying
to trace the signal through the ultranet. If the character makes a Computer Use roll, they discover
the trace. A second Computer Use roll allows them to terminate the connection before the trace is
complete. Failing either roll means that Ronin Security knows where the character is currently, can
trace Tam’s head computer whenever it is powered up, and placed a tracker virus on the character’s
cyber persona that alerts Ronin Security whenever they log onto the ultranet. Another Computer Use
roll is required to remove this trace program.
“Miss Miss” is the ultranet screen name for Missra Sang, the Children of the Elders member that
hired Tam to look into Devon Tellick. If contacted through the ultranet she won’t tell the characters
a thing, even claiming not to know Tam at all. If the characters tell her what happened to Tam and
succeed with a Persuade or Fast Talk roll, she agrees to meet with them in person, saying that she
doesn’t trust the ultranet. She picks Café Quay on Morpha Street for the meet. Should the character
pretend to be Tam, they get some tantalizing hints, “did you find out what he was doing?” but Missra
is still cautious and once again ask for a face-to-face meeting. If Missra gets a whiff of something not
right, she terminates the connection immediately. However, thanks to Tam not liking dealing with
anonymous clients, there is a locked file associated with Miss Miss in Tam’s head that takes another
Computer Use roll to open. Inside is all of Missra Sang’s personal information, including her address
in Beaumonde Square. Characters can use this info to confront the woman face-to-face, at which time
she again requests a meeting in a public place (Café Quay) if they want to talk.

The Problem With Ronin

Jornel Riggs hired Tam to get him some illegal – for civilians – combat programs for himself and
his mercenaries. Tam delivered the goods, but those goods were tainted with the Mythos Virus and
now so too are all the members of Ronin Security. Each mercenary is suffering different effects of the
chaotic virus. Some went insane and killed themselves, killed others, or are afflicted with nightmares,
waking visions, and various phobias. Others are suffering physical manifestations, including Jornel,
who now has lumpy fungal growths sprouting all over his body.
While the Ronin mercenaries don’t know what happened to them, Jornel ran the timeline of their
infection back to when they installed the software Tam got for them. Now Jornel and his soldiers
want to find Tam to get cured and get some payback for their fallen brothers. Because of this, they
start tailing the characters, looking for an opportunity to jump them. They attempt to keep one or
two of the characters alive so they can lead them to Tam, and kill the rest. Fueled by vengeance and
insanity, they won’t believe the characters that Tam is dead. After all, once he was killed, his bloated
body melted away so the authorities have yet to figure out what the hell happened at the club.
The Gamemaster should play Ronin Security as an ever present threat. Characters should get Spot
rolls from time to time to notice Blue War clones watching them. These clones are stranger than
normal; perhaps twitchy and muttering to themselves, or wearing cloaks, hoods, or long trench coats
to hide their various Mythos deformities. The Ronin could attack whenever the Gamemaster wishes,
multiple times over the length of this scenario, unless the characters neutralize their threat perma-
nently by doing away with Jornel Riggs.
128
 Meeting With Missra
PUNKTOWN Altered, Choom “Cult” Leader
Missra sets the Café Quay meet for two o’clock. That’s STR 13 CON 14 SIZ 14 INT 13 POW 12
after the lunch rush and before dinner, so the restaurant
DEX 15 APP 07 EDU 17 SAN 0 HP 14
is not so crowded that the characters and the woman
can’t have some privacy, but there are still plenty of wit- Damage Bonus: +1D4
nesses, which is the real reason Missra chose a public Weapons: Decimator .340 40%, damage 1D10+2
place when meeting with strangers for the first time. Grapple 60%, damage hold for face tentacles
Face Tentacles 80% once held, damage 1D6 +
Missra asks about Tam and if told all the gory details special*
of his demise, seems upset by it, but not disbelieving. Armor: 8-points bulletproof mesh and blubbery flesh
A Psychology roll tells the character that this isn’t just Sanity Loss: 0/1D6 Sanity points to see this Cthulhu-
someone used to Punktown’s usual weirdness; she mutated Choom
seems to have some experience with such unnatural *Should this Choom grab an opponent, he holds them close
things. If questioned she says that she is a Child of the so that his facial tentacles can lash and burrow into the
Elders and has dealt with “horrors from beyond time flesh of his opponent’s face. An impale roll (16% or less)
and space” before. She reached out to Tam because her removes an eye from his victim.
partner (a successful Psychology roll here reveals that
the two were closer than just partners), Devon Tellick, Six Insane “Cthulhu” Cultists
might have gotten into trouble. She doesn’t have spe- This motley crew is comprised of four humans, a Tik-
cifics on what she means, just a general coldness to him, kihotto, and a Sinanese. Some wear armored clothing,
the fact that he hasn’t been seen by anyone in weeks, some have masks with strips of leather hanging down
and hasn’t been to work (he works for a software com- from their mouths in honor of their god; all of them are
pany called Daedalus Data). The last time Missra video- completely crazy.
chatted with him, Devon was confused, paranoid, and
hostile; three things he was never before. Missra tried 1 2 3 4 5 6
to contact the man over the ultranet a number of times, STR 10 13 11 17 10 9
and while it showed that he was online, he ignored her. CON 13 14 8 13 9 10
With her own limited tech skills – Missra is professor of
ancient Earth history at Paxton University – she discov- SIZ 10 12 13 14 11 14
ered that Devon was spending up to twenty hours a day EDU 9 13 6 9 10 11
on the ultranet for weeks at a time doing – something. APP 13 8 11 10 15 9
That is what she hired Tam for, to find out what that INT 11 10 7 9 12 8
something was; but she had yet to hear back from him.
DEX 9 14 10 11 12 13
The Gamemaster can have Missra answer a few more POW 12 11 8 11 10 17
questions, but not too many, because soon the doors to HP 12 13 11 14 10 12
the Café Quay are kicked open and in walk several armed
members of the Cult of Cthulhu! Or at least, denizens DB 0 +1D4 0 +1D4 0 0
of Punktown who have been infected with the Mythos Armor 0 6 0 0 6 4
Virus and now think they are the cult of Cthulhu. The Weapons:
vocal Choom male leading them has been physically al- (1) Darwin .55 35%, damage1D8+2
tered by the virus so that he is blubbery and his extra- (2) Thor .86 45%, damage 1D6
wide mouth is wreathed by twitching, grasping, two- (3) Assault Engine 30%, damage 2D6+2
foot-long tentacles. The Choom leader goes on about (4) E-ikko Axe 35%, damage 1D8+2+DB
the glory of Cthulhu, how he will soon rise from R’lyeh (5) Decimator .220 40%, damage 1D6
and when he is done with Earth, Mighty Cthulhu will (6) Green Energy Pistol 30%, damage 1D8+2
come to Oasis to cleanse it of all the filth, leaving only
the faithful behind, blah, blah, blah. After rambling cra-
zily for a while, he declares “Time for the sacrifice!” Punktown Gets Crazy – OK, Crazier
at which time the cultists open fire on the crowd of As the Mythos Virus spreads, more and more citizens of
stunned diners. If the characters take any actions, like Punktown start to change. Some just go quietly insane.
trying to flee or pulling weapons, then the cult cuts to Others, like the “cult” that attacked Café Quay, won’t
the chase and starts the firefight immediately. However be so quiet about it. Some mutate in horrible ways that
it begins, poor Missa catches a bullet in the face right at would make even the regular mutants of Paxton sick to
the start and is dead before she hits the ground. their stomachs. Some of this the characters hear about

129
or see on the VT or ultranet. Some things they witness in person. The Gamemaster is free to make up
any sort of insanity they wish. There are riots, out of control fires, true believers of all sorts marching
through the streets, spree killings, terrorists bombing, and more. Here are just a few examples the
Gamemaster could use.
A mother murders her family, saying that she’s saving them from “what is coming”, before killing herself.
A man immolates himself in the middle of a crowded street while chanting, “take me, Cthugha, take me.”
Quotes and spells taken from Mythos tomes start popping up everywhere as graffiti. These draw
small crowds that stop to make sense of the madness on the walls. Each otherworldly tag cost 0/1,
0/1D4, or 0/1D6 SAN, depending upon how in-depth the graffiti is, and bestows +1%, +2%, or
+3% to Cthulhu Mythos respectfully. If the graffiti contains any spells, they are always flawed in some
detrimental way (a separate Cthulhu Mythos roll is needed to notice the flaw). It could be a summon-
ing spell without a way to bind or banish the creature. An attack spell, like shriveling, that targets the
caster. A contact deity spell that actually transports the caster to where the fell god is. The possibilities
are limitless as long as the outcome is always bad.
A multi-limbed human/Leng spider hybrid hacks into a VT feed to rant about how everything is
unraveling and reality is being undone because “Atlach-Nacha is finishing her web.” He then begins
vomiting out fat, ugly spiders for over an hour until the forcers kick down his door and splatter his
brains live on VT.
Someone summoned an unbound hunting horror and let it go free. Now flying through the streets,
hiding in the back alleys, it attacks anyone it wishes, which could include the characters.
An employee of a BurgerZone murders his coworkers, grinds them up, and then serves them to the
breakfast crowd. Question is, will anyone notice the difference?
Someone in Subtown has mutated into a blob-like thing, now stalking the underground, consuming
people, adding them to its bio-mass and growing larger every day.

The Mythos Virus

This nasty virus is a mystical/technical AI construct that is the embodiment of chaos. Those that
come in contact with it are affected in many ways, both physically and mentally. Some examples
of how this affects NPCs in this scenario have already been given. But what happens if it infects a
character?Only someone with an internal computer or cyberware is open to infection. Someone
browsing the ultranet on an old style external computer is safe; however, such old tech is increasingly
rare in Punktown.
As stated at the start, hopefully the Gamemaster had Tam hook the investigators up with some soft-
ware in the past. If so, those characters are already infected with the virus. Anyone interfacing with
Tam’s head computer or his home computer also gets infected. Lastly, anyone visiting the ultranet
for any reason runs a 25% chance of becoming infected because the taint has spread so far and wide.
Because this is a mystical virtual construct, it slips past even the most effective virus scanner and it
leaves no trace. Someone may know that they have been infected, but other than the physical and
psychological side effects, there is no actual Mythos Virus computer code to find and eradicate. The
only way to stop this virus is to kill the Conglomerate Great Old One lurking somewhere on the
ultranet because the virus is tied to it and cannot survive without its progenitor. However, even once
the God in the Machine and its virus are destroyed, any changes the virus had made to mind and
body remain. Such things can only be healed naturally, through massive amounts of surgery, or by
putting a bullet through your head.
Here are some examples of what the virus’ effects on the characters could be. The Gamemaster is free
to invent more if they wish.
Nightmares: Any manner of bad dreams can afflict the character whenever they go to sleep. From
swimming through the ocean as a deep one, to suckling at the teat of Shub-Niggurath dur-
ing a blood orgy, to feasting on corpses as a ghoul, to being sacrificed for the glory of Nyar-
lathotep, to traveling the cosmos in the claws of a byakhee, and anything in between. Each
nightmare costs 1D6 SAN and bestows +1% to Cthulhu Mythos.
130
 Visions: Like nightmares, except these phantasms af-
PUNKTOWN are looking for such a program. If the security program
fect the characters when they’re awake. They is not disarmed, then once the characters are inside
usually last for shorter (thus no bonus to Cthul- the house, the door behind them shuts and locks and
hu Mythos) but seem far more real (thus cost two hovering, automated drone-guns drop down from
1/1D8 SAN). They can also come at the most the ceiling and start shooting. They both have a 30%
inopportune moments, like on a crowded street chance to hit, do 1D8+2 damage, have 15 Hit Points,
or making a well-armed forcer suddenly look and 5 points of Armor.
like some horrible monster that’s getting ready
to attack. Instead of blasting the gun-bots, there is a control pan-
el next to Tam’s bed that can be seen with a Spot roll,
Insanities: Any of the mental afflictions in the Call of or known about from a previous visit with Tam and an
Cthulhu rulebook can be given to the virus- IDEA roll, that if the characters can get to it they can
riddled character at any time. Stepping into an hack a Computer Use roll. Four Dodge rolls to dive
elevator and getting a sudden and paralyzing behind furniture for cover as they go gets a character
bout of claustrophobia is just one example. to the security panel without giving the bots a chance
to lock on to them. Failure means that both robots get
What did I do?: The character wakes up from sleep- a shot at them. Once the robo-guns are dealt with, the
walking or a waking fugue state to find them- characters can search Tam’s loft-like, largely one-room
selves covered in blood in a house full of dead house.
people, or maybe in a summoning circle and
whatever they just brought forth is lurking On one wall of the house, Tam has scrawled messages
nearby, unbound and angry. Perhaps they carve in a variety of mediums. Black marker, spray paint, pen-
weird symbols into their flesh or decided they cil, scorch marks done with a laser, and blood from two
no longer need a tongue and cut it out. There dead cats lying on the floor. (see opposite page)
are many possibilities and the Gamemaster
should decide on the price of such actions in Against one wall of the living room area of the house is
Sanity Points, Hit Points, and permanent muti- a sturdy poly-steel desk upon which is a mega-powered
lations that could affect character stats. computer Tam used when he had to do some serious
hacking, doubling as his personal server, housing pet-
Spontaneous Mythos knowledge: The character abytes of information which is about a quadrillion bytes
just suddenly knows things about the Cthulhu of information. Searching through all that data would
Mythos. This could be a spell or a certain as- take many months unless someone knew exactly what
pect about an eldritch horror they just happen they were looking for –the virtual needle in a haystack
to be facing. Each occurrence of this costs 1D4 scenario.
SAN and bestows +1% to +3% to their Cthulhu
Mythos skill. However, in a locked drawer of the desk (Locksmith or
STR 20 on the Resistance Table to break open) char-
Mythos mutation: The character suddenly gets some acters find a more manageable two terabyte memstick
physical aspect of some creature of the Mythos. – the “stick” mentioned in Tam’s wall scrawl. Think of
Deep one gills, fungal growths, scales, tentacles it as a huge USB flash drive but with a wireless connec-
of all sizes from anywhere on their body, ex- tion. This stick provides all the information on Devon
tra limbs, their head could split vertically like Tellick that Tam has been able to dig up, like his ad-
a gug, mi-go wings sprouting from their back, dress, his employer (Daedalus Data), banking data (his
there is no limit to what the Gamemaster could savings have been steadily depleting for three months),
do to torture their players. As such, it is up to
the Gamemaster to decide what physical effects
these mutations cause and the appropriate SAN The Y’golonac Trap
loss. The more drastic and inhuman the change, A devious Gamemaster could have as part of that
the more Sanity damaging it should be. mythos information found on Tam’s memstick, pag-
es from the Revelations of Glaaki. If so, reading them
Tam’s House opens up the character to the same fate that befell
Characters may want to go to Tam’s home in Willow Tam; possession by the Great Old One, Y’golonac.
Tree to look for clues. However, Tam’s small house is Gamemasters should take care if they wish to imple-
protected by a security system of his own design. An ment this, as it is a possible death sentence to anyone
Electronics or Computer Use roll at the front door’s so afflicted. However, it could lead to other adven-
palm print reader can open the door. A second such roll tures outside of the scope of this story if the charac-
can find and disable the security system, but only if the ter discovers he is so damned and wants to find some
character doing the hacking specifically says that they way to break the curse.

131
132
 and his average ultranet usage (20.2 hours a day for
PUNKTOWN This can be disabled with an Electronics or Comput-
the last three months). There are also random bits of er Use roll and doing so also unlocks the front door.
Devon’s programming code that Tam has decoded, all There are only a few things found here of interest to
of which pertains to various Mythos tomes. Reading the characters.
through these files grants +4 to Cthulhu Mythos, costs
1D4/1D8 Sanity Points, and contains the spells Dread There are several pictures of her with a man in vari-
Curse of Azathoth, Summon/Bind Byakhee, and Voor- ous locations, arm in arm, holding hands, or kissing.
ish Sign. Also on this memstick is an ultranet address to Checking the back of one photo and finding a note,
where Devon is creating his Conglomerate Great Old “Devon and me at the Paxton Fair” confirming that
One. See Deus in Machina should anyone go there this is Devon Tellick and now the characters know what
for a virtual visit. he looks like.

Interfacing with either Tam’s home computer or his A bit of a humanity purist, Missra never had a head
memstick infects the user with the Mythos Virus. computer or anything implanted inside her. Her palm-
sized personal computer sits on a nightstand next to
her bed. Cracking the password requires a Computer
Missra Sang’s Apartment Use roll. Inside are various personal data, including sev-
Missra has an apartment in a posh building in Beau- eral unanswered emails sent to Devon over the last few
monde Square. There is a hulking and armed Blue War months. Devon’s address can also be found in Missra’s
clone at the front door to make sure the “wrong ele- address book.
ment” doesn’t get in. Characters have to Fast Talk their
Lastly, Missra has a small room converted into a per-
way past this man, as he is paid too well to take a bribe
sonal library, full of honest to goodness books on paper,
or be persuaded to let them in. Failing that, casing the
many of them hundreds of years old, most dealing with
building from the back finds a service door to the kitch-
Earth history. Thoroughly searching every bookshelf,
en with an old-style key lock that can be opened with
or making a Spot roll, finds six books shelved together
a Locksmith roll. Entering this way, the Gamemaster
that just look slightly off. That’s because they’re a false
could call for some Sneak rolls to get past cooks and
front and behind them is a small safe. Cracking the
wait staff without being noticed.
thumbprint reader requires a Computer Use roll. The
Once inside the building, the characters must still get digital combination lock requires an Electronics roll.
past Missra’s security system that protects her apart- Inside the safe are three dark tomes filled with mysti-
ment. While it is far less lethal than Tam’s, it does alert cal knowledge. They don’t really play any part in this
the forcers, if tripped, who respond within ten minutes. scenario, but should the characters read them, they gain

133
forbidden knowledge and possibly spells. The tomes are The Book of Awe, Fizala, and The Veins of
the Old Ones. See “Musty Tomes in an Arcane Bookstore” on page 68 for information on all three
texts.

Daedalus Data
Finding out where Devon worked, the characters may want to check it out. This software company
deals with some pretty high-tech stuff, so it has its own armed security, just in case the characters get
frisky. Anyone can enter the building, but getting to talk to anyone past the receptionist without an
appointment requires either Fast Talk, Persuade, perhaps a Credit Rating (“Don’t you know who I
am?”), Computer Use or Electronics (“I’m looking for a job.”) or if the characters have actual au-
thority, like one of them being a forcer.
However it is done, once the characters are allowed past the reception area, they can talk to several
people, from the human woman heading up HR, to the Kalian man who was Devon’s supervisor, to
any of his coworkers. They pretty much have the same thing to say about him: he was a hard worker,
an ace programmer, kind of quiet but not weirdly so. He never missed a day of work and then one day
about three months back, without calling in and with no warning, he just didn’t come to work. He
has since been fired and the company boxed up what few personal possessions he had. The characters
can see them, but there are no real clues to be found. The only interesting thing is a picture of him
with Missra outside of Paxton University.
While at Daedalus Data, a Spot or Listen roll notices an open door with SECURITY written on it.
Inside, several security guards are talking to some middle management type in hushed and hurried
tones. Eavesdropping with a successful Listen roll reveals that they are discussing another break in
at their server room, the second in two months. Both times a Gibson/Sterling 800 was taken. A
KNOW roll recognizes that as a very powerful, cryo-cooled, encephalon super computer –the kind of
machine that makes Tam’s home computer look like a calculator. They are also very large and heavy,
with a full unit weighing over five-hundred pounds.
If the characters talk to the security personnel or the manager and make Persuade or Fast Talk that
they have some sort of authority to look into the theft, they are shown the security video from the
server room on the night of the last robbery. The video shows a tall figure, his identity concealed by a
long coat and wide-brimmed hat, entering after the steel door is kicked in. The thief goes to the com-
puter, disconnects it, picks it up with little effort, and walks out the door with it. A second camera
outside the building shows the tall man walking through an alley to a waiting hovertruck where the
computer is put in the back. No amount of visual wizardry shows who is driving the truck, its license
plate, or the face under the thief’s hat, but if the characters have seen photos of Devon, it’s obvious
that the incredibly strong and tall robber is not him.

Deus in Machina
Should the characters be curious, foolish, or crazy enough to visit the ultranet where Devon is creat-
ing his Conglomerate Great Old One, they find a fully-immersive virtual world of horrors awaiting
them. This VR world feels totally real to anyone entering it. Should anyone die here, there is no
LUCK roll to save them; they die in the real world, too.
The landscape here is an ever-changing cacophony of chaos. One moment it is a green forest on
earth, next a burnt out ruin of Paxton, then R’lyeh before it plunged beneath the waves, a few mo-
ments later the city of Carcosa, then the blue-lit caverns of K’n-yan, only to become the frigid and
wind-swept Plateau of Leng, and then the hot and arid city of Irem; on and on it goes. Witnessing all
this costs 1D4/1D10 Sanity Points and bestows +3% to Cthulhu Mythos.
In addition to alien landscapes, this slice of the ultranet is populated with simulated horrors of all
shapes and sizes and from all corners of the twisted world of the Cthulhu Mythos. Deep ones, flying
polyps, star vampires, dark young, chthonians; basically, anything the Gamemaster wants to throw at
the characters can be created here. They are just as horrible, deadly, and Sanity-draining as the real
thing.
Lastly, ever floating above, is the Conglomerate Great Old One that Devon birthed. It has no distinct
form; a shifting mass of eyes, fangs, tentacles, horns, claws, hooves, maws, scales, wings, and cosmic
134
 proto-matter that appears to be miles across. No statistics
PUNKTOWN As stated before, A8 is completely insane and it now
are needed for it because it is both invulnerable and om- wants to be a real boy. To do that, it has begun stuffing
nipotent here; it can do whatever the Gamemaster wishes human organs inside its mechanical frame and donning
it to do. Every spell in the rule book, any special power human skin to complete its desired look. Naturally, it re-
for any deity of the Mythos that it wishes; it is literally quired a number of “donors” to obtain the organic parts
the sum total of all the Old Ones, and yet it is none of it wanted, which has transformed Devon’s apartment
them. Intelligent and aware, it senses the characters and into a slaughter house. There are pools of blood on the
may communicate with (or destroy) them if it wishes, yet
floor, flies buzzing in the air, gut piles of unwanted offal,
it has no identity, no sense of self. That missing part of
and a half dozen bodies hanging upside down, their feet
it fills the creature with rage; as does the knowledge that
there is a greater world out there (the real world outside nailed to the ceiling. Seeing this costs 1/1D8 SAN.
the ultranet) from which it is locked away. If encountered, A8 may at first be curious, wanting to
Since there is nothing the characters can do against know who the characters are and why they are here. It
this virtual god in this virtual world, the best thing has a thoroughly robotic sounding voice and it speaks.
they could do is flee as soon as they see it. That is, One. Word. At. A. Time. If after some clever roleplaying
after they lose 1D10/1D100 for seeing cosmic chaos on the players’ part, and a successful Persuade or Fast
given such terrible form. Talk roll or two, they might convince the irrational robot
that they are also seeking to join Devon in his great work.
Devon’s Apartment If not, then A8 may flee, smashing through a wall and
Devon’s apartment in the old Polymorph Sprayform facto- running at twenty miles per hour (faster than the char-
ry at Forge Park can be found by accessing Missra’s address acters can follow without transportation) to warn Devon
book, Tam’s home computer, or once they learn Devon’s where he now stays. If so, the characters have to face A8
name through the use of the Punktown equivalent of the there. Or the killer robot attacks them here and now.
phonebook. This artist commune is full of creative types
hanging about outside, playing music, partying, and danc- A8, Insane Robot
ing next to bonfires where they are getting high or drunk
or making love, all out in the open. These revelers leave STR 40 CON 25 SIZ 19 INT 20
the characters alone as long as they stay “mellow” but they POW 10 DEX 18 APP 1 HP 23
are potential witnesses should the PCs do anything illegal.
Damage Bonus: +3D6
They also might pull weapons and start shooting at the
Weapons: Fist/Punch 50%, damage 1D3 + DB
obvious outsiders if things get crazy. While most of these
Arm-mounted Red Plasma Machine Gun 50%,
people are artistic types ranging from hippies to hipsters
damage 1D10+1, Rate of Fire 6
and everything in between, this is Punktown, and they de-
Armor: 9-points metal casing
fend their little piece of paradise.
Skills: Computer Use 95%, Disguise (as human)
Devon’s apartment is on the ground floor. A Locksmith 50%, Electronics 95%, Jump 80%, Mechanical
roll opens the old style key lock and a Spot roll here also Repair 95%,
notices a small trip switch between the frame and the Sanity Loss: 0/1D6 Sanity points to see A8 wearing
door that triggers should the door open. This switch his skin suit and stuffed with human organs.
can be easily disarmed once noticed. A second Spot roll
sees a false looking air vent grill directly over the door.
Examining it finds that it is rigged to open and drop Once A8 is destroyed or flees, the characters can search
three flashbang stun grenades. Should the characters the gore-covered apartment. First and foremost, they spot
open the door without disabling the trap, the flash- a tangle of cables coming in from a wall, running to one
bangs fall to their feet, blinding and deafening every- of the stolen Gibson/Sterling 800 supercomputers. This is
one for 1D10+2 rounds, giving the “person” inside the one half of the system Devon created to power his virtual
apartment ample time to flee or kill the intruders.
Great Old One. Should anyone interface with it, see the
Devon no longer stays here, but his faithful disciple does. section Deus in Machina, above. Examining it with Com-
A817749 (A8 to its friends) is a robot with an encephalon puter Use, without directly interfacing with it, sees that it is
bio-computer which gives it INT, POW, and free will, and running a massive program on the ultranet, processing mil-
allowed it to go insane after picking up the Mythos Virus in lions of petrabytes of data every second, and is also one part
the ultranet. Using its awesome cyber skills, A8 tracked the
of a paired system. The other computer could be anywhere
virus to its source, Devon, and pledged its undying loyalty
to him, as it sees Devon as a prophet of the “Great Change” with an ultranet connection. Should they not think of it
that is coming. A8 was the tall, hat-wearing figure who so themselves, an IDEA roll tells the characters that destroy-
easily made off with the supercomputer from Daedalus ing this computer won’t stop what Devon is doing on the
Data, so it is a physically daunting opponent to face. ultranet, but it would hamper it and slow it down.
135
A brave hacker could interface with the supercomputer, go to its ultranet site (again, see Deus in
Machina) and then trace that second data stream to its source, and upon getting the ultranet IP ad-
dress, use that to find Devon’s location. Or this information can be more safely obtained by searching
the apartment and making a Spot roll. Success finds a blood-splattered bit of paper, a bill from Paxton
Energy for an amazing amount of power being used by an address in Subtown. Failing that, a rental
agreement between Devon and someone named Mr. Pholl for a house in Subtown can be found on
Devon’s personal computer that he left behind.

The Subtown Hideaway

Going underneath Punktown is rarely pleasant and this time it is even worse. If the surface of Paxton
is starting to show cracks in its sanity due to the Mythos Virus, it is full blown crazy down here. The
usual mutants shunned into living in Subtown have begun mutating into unthinkable monstrosities. The
Cthulhu Mythos-tinged graffiti mentioned previously is everywhere down here. Dead bodies lay in the
street. Crazy-eyed prophets stand on corners preaching doom to rapt audiences. The usual tough street
gangs have become bloodthirsty cults looking to prove themselves to their new dark gods by seeing who
can rack up the highest body count. That and more is all festering beneath the surface of Punktown, ready
to explode, and that’s where the characters have to go to put a stop to Devon and his virtual Armageddon.
Devon has rented a small hovel to which even the cra-
ziest of Subtown’s denizens give a wide berth. He did The Gibson/Sterling 800
this as a failsafe should he lose power at his home, for if These massive supercomputers have 20 Hit
both of his stolen supercomputers go down, his artificial Points to their bulk and well-built design and
Great Old One ceases to be. The doors and windows to 4-points of armor thanks to a poly-steel case.
Since it has a video camera and awareness of its
the concrete block of a house are all nailed shut from
surroundings, at the Gamemaster’s discretion,
the inside. It requires bashing through them by beating
the Gibson/Sterling in Devon’s Subtown hide-
a STR of 16 on the Resistance Table. Inside is Dev-
out manifests four 12-foot-long tentacles made
on – crazy, hopped up on uppers to keep him awake, of electrical cables with which to defend itself .
sleep deprived, unwashed and unshaven for weeks, and These tentacles have a 30% chance to hit, do 1D6
armed. If the characters start trying to kick down his of slashing damage, plus 1D4 of electrical shock
doors or windows, Devon shoots through them (with damage that ignores body armor. A shocked
only a 20% chance of hitting a character and with the character must match their CON against 12
barrier giving them an extra 2 points of armor) while on the Resistance Table or be stunned for 1D4
getting down behind a low concrete wall himself (which rounds. Alternately, these whip-like tentacles
gives him an extra 9 points of armor). Should his door could be used to strangle an opponent with a
or windows not hold, Devon starts tossing grenades as successful hit instead of the slash and shock at-
if he got them on sale. He fights to the death to defend tack. See the drowning/suffocation rules in the
his “baby.” Silver-tongued characters may talk their way Call of Cthulhu rulebook for details.
inside. This would be tough to do, but not impossible.
If they play up that they think what Devon is doing is a wonderful thing then it is much more likely
to work. However, he will not shut down his computer for any reason. The characters are only able
to do that over his cold, dead body.
Once Devon is dealt with, the characters can search his abode. They find any number of Cthulhu
Mythos tomes that the Gamemaster wants, lots of ammo for his Assault Engine, decades-old MREs
(Meals Ready to Eat), a broken toilet in the bathroom filled to overflowing with waste, a dirty mat-
tress in the corner, a single photo of him and Missra Sang on a surprisingly clean shelf, and a large
hole dug into the stone floor (by A817749). A ladder leads down into the dark and a Listen roll hears
the hum of a cryo-cooling system used by a Gibson/Sterling 800 computer.
Down the ladder is an excavated room with the computer behind a wall of class-four plexiglass, giving it
20 points of armor, and into that wall is a door with an electronic keypad (Electronics to short circuit it
into opening). Devon had equipped this computer with a camera and a voc-box so that his AI Great Old
One could see and talk to him. That means it sees and can talk to the Characters, possibly threatening or
bargaining with them as the Gamemaster sees fit. Since all of the characters’ information is out there some-
where on the ultranet, the conglomerate god recognizes them and uses this information to its benefit. It
could also just start telling them mind-blowing truths about reality that cost 1 SAN per round.
136
 In addition, Devon installed four prototype hard-light,
PUNKTOWN
holo-emitters that he stole from Daedalus Data so that
he could directly interact with manifestations of his cre-
ation. The God in Devon’s Machine uses those emitters
to create a defender if threatened: a holographic horror,
a nigh indestructable shoggoth! As a being of light, the The Holo-Shoggoth
pseudo-shoggoth is immune to all attacks except light- STR 50 CON 30 SIZ 50 INT N/A
based ones (lasers). Characters can try to blast through
POW N/A DEX 5 HP 40
the plexiwall to get at the computer, short out the key-
pad (which takes six rounds) to do the same, or a Spot Damage Bonus: +6D6
roll for each holo-emitter (there are four in total), which Weapons: Crush 50%, damage is DB
they can then try to shoot out, but at a -40% chance to Armor: none but immune to all physical and magi-
hit based on their tiny size, to a minimum of 5% to hit. cal attacks except light-based attacks, such as
Each emitter has 4 HP and 2 points of armor. Each lasers, which do normal damage. If HP is re-
emitter lost reduces the holo-shoggoth’s Hit Points by duced in such a manner, the holo-shoggoth
a quarter, gives it a cumulative -10% chance to hit, and
will vanish, but the subroutine will reboot
a cumulative -1D6 to the damage it rolls.
and a new holo-shoggoth will be created in
Once both of Devon’s pilfered supercomputers have 1D6+1 rounds. Only destroying all four of
been destroyed and Devon has been killed or otherwise the holo-emitters or the Gibson/Sterling 800
permanently incapacitated so that he can’t start his “re- will “kill” this holographic horror for good.
search” all over again (because he will if given the chance), Sanity Loss: 1D3/1D10 Sanity points to see this
the nightmare is over. The Mythos Virus stops spreading shimmering construct of Mythos malevolence.
and the virtual Great Old One is destroyed…or is it? The
ultranet is as near infinite as the cosmos and the AI terror
could have found some safe, forgotten computer server
to create a backup copy of itself. At the Gamemaster’s
discretion, this story may not be completely over yet…

137
Rewards Jornel Riggs (Age 5)
Surviving this adventure is reward enough, but Jornel hired Tam to get some military software
destroying the AI Great Old One grants each upgrades for him and his boys, and wound up
character 1D20 Sanity Points. getting infected by the Mythos Virus. Now all
over Jornel’s blue body are thick fungal growths.
Characters They’re lumpy, smelly, and spreading. Jornel
hates them almost as much as he hates Tam for
Devon Tellick (Age 33) given them to him. Jornel is now single minded,
Curiosity killed the cat, and it drove Devon insane.
he wants Tam’s head. After that, he wants a cure
Another old chestnut that would apply to Devon is
the one about the road to hell and what it’s paved for him and his soldiers. In his worsening men-
with. Devon started down his path of destruction tal condition, he’s convinced the characters are
honestly thinking he was doing good; he still does, the key to getting both, and he’ll do anything to
but then, he’s crazy. Now this dark-skinned, plati- them to succeed in his latest mission.
num-haired, neon-yellow-eyed (implants) man will Blue War Clone, Head of Ronin Security
do anything to defend his virtual god.
STR 18 CON 18 SIZ 15 INT 13 POW 12
Insane Father of the AI Great Old One DEX 16 APP 5 EDU 15 SAN 40 HP 17
STR 10 CON 16 SIZ 13 INT 17 POW 15
Damage Bonus: +1D6
DEX 9 APP 12 EDU 21 SAN 0 HP 15
Weapons: Assault Engine 60%, damage 2D6+2
Damage Bonus: 0 Wolff .45 50%, damage 1D10+2
Weapons: Assault Engine 35%, damage 2D6+2 Laser Knife 50%, damage 2D4+2+DB
Grenade 30%, damage 5D6/3y Fist/Punch 70%, damage 1D3+DB
Armor: 4-points plastic vest Armor: 8-points reinforced assault armor. Ad-
Skills: Cthulhu Mythos 40%, Computer Use ditionally, Jornel’s fungus infestation al-
85%, Electrical Repair 60%; Electronics lows him to regenerate two Hit Points per
70%, Fast Talk 50%, Listen 55%, Me- round until slain.
chanical Repair 45%, Occult 70%, Spot Skills: Climb 60%, Computer Use 45%, Demoli-
50% tions 70%, Dodge 55%, First Aid 45%, Hide
Spells: Curse of Darkness, Mind Blast, Shrivel- 60%, Jump 50%, Listen 55%, Martial Arts
ing, Summon/Bind Fire Vampire 60%, Sneak 60%, Spot 55%, Throw 50%

Missra Sang (Age 30) Typical Ronin Security

Delving deeply into Earth’s ancient history is Here is the basic template for these cloned mer-
how Missra first learned of the horror of the cenaries; however, each and every one has been
Great Old Ones and of the Elder Gods who op- infected with the Mythos Virus. Some have men-
posed them. After joining the Children of the El- tal symptoms (namely, being crazy), while others
ders, she met Devon and the two quickly fell in have physical mutations. Since the type of muta-
love. They have been inseparable for years, but tions are limited only by the Gamemaster’s imag-
Devon kept his deepening obsession with know- ination, it is up to the Gamemaster to change
ing more about ageless evil from her. Now this
their stats, add special attacks from alien limbs,
perky, green-eyed, and green-haired professor
armor, powers, etc.
has turned to others for help.
Professor and Concerned Friend Blue War Clone
STR 9 CON 14 SIZ 10 INT 18 POW 15 STR 16 CON 17 SIZ 15 INT 10 POW 11
DEX 15 APP 13 EDU 22 SAN 75 HP 12 DEX 14 APP 10 EDU 14 SAN 25 HP 16

Damage Bonus: 0 Damage Bonus: +1D4

Weapons: Woman’s Gun 25%, damage 1D6 Weapons: Assault Engine 50%, damage 2D6+2
Skills: Astronomy 45%, Computer Use 30%, Wolff .45 40%, damage 1D10+2
Credit Rating 60%, Cthulhu Mythos Armor: 6-points Bulletproof Mesh
11%, History 85%, Library Use 65%, Skills: Demolitions 60%, Dodge 50%, First Aid
Natural History 55%, Occult 60%, Per- 40%, Hide 50%, Jump 50%, Sneak 60%,
suade 50%, Psychology 60% Spot 50%, Throw 50%
Spells: Doors Upon Doors, Elder Sign
138
 Gathering Forces
By Jeffrey Thomas

“Dung-munching motherblasters are chanting again,” Stoke Pernod growled, gazing out his fifteenth-story
window at the opposite tenement block, looming above the park that lay between them. He drew a circle on
the window’s smart pane with a fingertip, then tapped the center of the circle a number of times, with each
tap increasing magnification until he could see the other building more closely. Specifically, a balcony on that
structure’s thirteenth level. Fixed to the balcony was a loudspeaker, broadcasting metallic-sounding mantras.
“Ugghiutu,” the echoing voice trumpeted. “Ugghiutu...”
It was the third day for these chanting sessions.
“I can’t believe people haven’t complained,” Pernod said. “Especially people in the same building.”
“Maybe they have,” said Phoon behind him, splayed naked after their early morning love-making.
“Haven’t complained enough, then.” Pernod couldn’t see through the other apartment’s windows,
no matter how much he magnified his pane; it was a privacy feature that the glass was opaque from the
outside. But he knew who lived in there, because he recognized the language of the chants even if he
didn’t understand the words. Gray-skinned Kalians. He’d seen a number of them on the grounds from
time-to-time. Young, modernly-attired. The men — and more surprisingly, the women — didn’t even
cover their heads with the customary blue turbans. So why was it these seemingly progressive Kalians felt
compelled to broadcast their religious rites so noisily to the whole Octoplex eight times a day, each time
for ten interminable minutes? Were they trying to convert their neighbors, or cast a curse upon infidels?
“You ought to use your rifle to take out that damn loudspeaker,” Pernod went on. “Seriously.”
Phoon Zo, with her sky-blue skin, was from the extradimensional world of Sinan. As a teenaged
soldier during the so-called Blue War, before immigrating to Punktown, she’d developed formidable
skills with a sniper rifle. (Closer combat had more often been left to the men.) Fifteen years later she
owned an even better rifle, because Punktown was a never-ending war zone, but she kept the weapon
under their bed and brought it out only occasionally to lovingly wipe away the dust.
“Come away,” she told him, “forget it. You know what the landlords would say if we com-
plained. The forcers, too. They’d just jabber about religious freedoms and all that... you can’t repress
people’s beliefs...blah-blah.”
“I don’t care what superstitious dung people suck up... I just don’t like them nailing their be-
liefs into my skull,” Pernod muttered, still glaring at the impenetrable black windows across the way.
As its name might suggest, the Octoplex consisted of eight twenty-story apartment blocks, with
an octagon-shaped park at the center. From outside at least, these eight towers appeared identical, their
surfaces rough like concrete and colored a kind of grayish-purple. The structures were not concrete,
however. Nor had they been built, actually, but grown — from bioengineered organic “smart matter.”
The dividing microorganisms died almost the moment they were born, leaving their exoskeletons be-
hind like polyps of coral. It was as though the tenants of the Octoplex lived in towers made of bone.
139
 Not every building in Punktown had been fashioned this way, by any means, but it was a low-
cost solution to low-income housing. And the Octoplex bore the worst traits of such projects. For
maybe a few years the octagonal park had been kept landscaped and clean, but now parents were
afraid to let their children play there, the hedges overgrown, the grass as tall as a man in some areas
and worn away to dirt in others, trash strewn everywhere, along with discarded mattresses, even the
husks of hovercars and a gutted robot or two. The lower levels of all eight buildings were heavily
overlaid with graffiti (though at least paint wouldn’t take on the black windows). Worst of all, two
years ago there had been a catastrophic fire in Building 8, the result of an explosion in an amateur
drug lab. Miraculously only the three drug dealers had been killed, all the other tenants escaping from
the twenty levels, but the building was yet to be torn down and rebuilt. Now, only partying kids or
mutant squatters occupied its charred black floors.
Pernod’s scrutiny had shifted from the opposite apartment block — Building 5 — to Building
8. Something had caught his attention peripherally, and now he realized what it was. “Hey,” he called
to Phoon. “Come see this!”
“What?” she sighed lazily, but the Sinanese woman slid out of bed and padded barefoot over to
him, hugging Pernod from behind and looking around his body.
They had been together ten years now. As a young woman new to this feral city, Phoon had
found security — and an accepting, if motley family — in a street gang called the East Wedge Jackals.
Pernod had been the chief of that gang. The Jackals’ specialty had been the theft of vehicles: everything
from cars to bikes, wheeled to hover. They’d strip them down and sell the parts, or else reconfigure and
repaint the stolen vehicles. But the couple was older now. Their fellow gang members had either been
killed in skirmishes, swallowed up in prisons, or simply gone legit. For the past few years, Pernod had
run his own little auto repair station, practicing the same skills but legally now. Phoon ran the office up
front. Those early years together as Jackals had been exciting, there was no denying — wild and feverish
— and if nothing tasted quite as bright and alive these days, at least they had both survived their pasts.
“I think you’re just too lazy to go to work,” Phoon teased him, kissing his arm. “It bores you.”
“Of course it does,” he said. “But look over there, will you? Building 8. The roof.”
Phoon looked, and then gasped. “Oh! When did that happen?”
The uppermost two levels of the burnt husk had collapsed in on themselves, the broken rubble
having sunk down into the floors below them.
“That thing’s a hazard,” Pernod said. “I’m glad our building isn’t next door to it. One day the
whole thing is going to come down.”
“Maybe now the landlords will finally have to do something about it.”
“But hell, look at our own place,” he said, pointing at a section of wall beside the window. The
rough-textured, gray-purple smart matter bore a thin crack from ceiling to floor.
“I know, I saw it yesterday. Found one in the bathroom yesterday, too. This whole complex is
a hazard.”
Pernod was about to withdraw from the window when his eyes happened to sweep the park directly
below. One of his eyes was natural, the other artificial: adapted from a diagnostic lens. That side of his face
was patched with metal. One of his fellow gang members, good old Henrik Stratum, had done the work
— as if Pernod himself were one of the vehicles they made over — following a particularly nasty battle,
when they were afraid to poke their heads into the line of fire again to seek help at a proper clinic. Months
later Henrik, their crude but resourceful battle medic, had himself fallen to a ray bolt through the skull.
Below Pernod, in the exact center of the park, he had spotted a large black sphere half-buried in
the ground. At least it appeared spherical, with its upper portion tapering to a pointed tip, but the yel-
lowed grass was too tall there for him to make out the object clearly, even when he magnified another
section of the window. He lifted a hand to adjust the setting of his scope-like eye, to try to penetrate
the material of the exposed surface, but that proved fruitless as well. “What is that?” he murmured.
“Looks like a dropped bomb that didn’t detonate.”
140
 Phoon pulled him away, though, without looking. “Come on, come on,” she told him, “time
to face the real world and get ourselves to work.”
“If we must,” he sighed, forgetting the glossy black hump, crouched in the weeds like some
giant obsidian egg.
* * *
In the underground lot below the octagonal park, Pernod wheeled his bike out of the little garage
space corresponding to his apartment number. He’d built the machine himself, and it was his baby;
like him, somehow having survived his gang days. It was a growly Frankenstein’s monster of metal,
plastic, even smart bone he’d shaped while in its malleable state. He straddled the bike’s seat, and
Phoon was just climbing in behind him for the ride to their repair station when across the parking
garage Pernod noticed a familiar figure. He started the bike, its rumble made louder by the low ceil-
ing, and rode over to where a woman was crossing from an elevator to her own garage space. A young
Kalian woman, without a turban, her shockingly exposed hair woven in a long braid.
Pernod pulled to a stop not far from the woman, and said, “Hey... excuse me... that noise you
people have been making for a few days now... that’s got to stop. It woke me up yesterday. I’m wait-
ing for you crazy wankers to start playing it at night. Don’t make me come up there and tear that
loudspeaker off your balcony myself.”
“Come on, baby,” Phoon warned him, but she was trying not to laugh.
“All that Ugghiutu,” he said, imitating the word most often repeated in the chanting. “Ug-
ghiutu... Ugghiutu.” He knew vaguely what the word meant. It was the name of their god... or was
it a demon? Pernod forgot which. Or maybe it was a mistake to consider the Kalian deity in terms of
human notions of good and evil, as opposed to cosmic detachment. In any case, on the mortal plane
Ugghiutu was said to manifest in the form of a temple erected to his own glory, to which he would
draw the faithful in veneration, or entice the unworthy for... what? Food?
The young woman, uncannily beautiful as so many Kalian women were, appeared stricken
by Pernod’s mocking use of her deity’s name. Her entirely black eyes wide with fear or horror, she
started babbling in her own tongue and pointing at the ceiling of purplish smart matter above them.
What was up there? Ugghiutu, in his celestial spider web beyond space and time? Pernod thought she
was trying to throw some English words into her jabbering, but her accent was so thick he couldn’t
make them out. Had she said “park”?
“Look, I’m telling you, I don’t care about your blasting mumbo-jumbo,” he said, revving his bike’s
engine. “Just knock it off! It isn’t right! Have some respect!” Then, with Phoon tightening her hold around
his waist, he gunned the bike toward the ramp that would take them up and out to the streets of Punktown.
* * *
It had been a busy day. For a customer by the name of Hunter Grandin, a tricky mend of the chitin exo-
skeleton of a Scarab hovercar that had been in an accident. For a customer named Jules Rubin, a new
paint job for his vehicle, which had suffered extensive blistering due to his apartment’s proximity to a
chemical plant that was exuding something or other corrosive. Once in a while, hearing of Pernod’s skills
and impressed that he didn’t rely on robot mechanics, a more affluent than usual client would seek out
his humble shop, and today such a customer had appeared in the person of Heidi Kovacs, whose canary
yellow helicar needed its fan rate recalibrated. Pernod had flirted with her a bit, when she proved intrigued
rather than put off by his metal-patched face, but it was just harmless fun. He’d almost lost Phoon a few
years back, when he’d indulged in some more serious fun, and he didn’t want to risk that again.
Because the workload had been great, and Pernod only had two mechanics working for him, a
couple of vehicles would be spending the night, still hovering near the ceiling in the grip of magnetic
strips so their underbellies would be exposed for partial dissection in the morning. His duo of me-
chanics consisted of young, motor-mouthed Mick Harris — who, while he worked, was either laugh-
ing and cracking jokes or cursing and ranting — and older Daniel Mills, who worked with Zen-like
calm and quiet. Daniel was a Red War vet, and sometimes Pernod listened to him and Phoon trade
war stories. Despite what Pernod had experienced on Punktown’s mean streets, some of the two vet-
erans’ experiences made Pernod’s jaw hang open.
141
 Mick had just bid his coworkers goodnight and departed, and Pernod and Daniel stood out on
the sidewalk smoking cigars and watching the lowering sun balance on the serrated edge of Punktown’s
skyline, when a silhouetted figure came swooping down toward them from on high, riding a hover-
board, coming to an abrupt halt just a short distance away. The rider was a muscular Choom, his neck
like a mass of cables to support his heavy outthrust jaw. Pernod’s face split in a grin. “Hey, you blasting
son of a mutant!” The Choom hopped off his board, which remained floating above the sidewalk, and
the two men embraced and clapped each other’s backs. Then Pernod turned to Daniel and said, “This
is an old friend of mine, from my days in the Jackals — Mackoo Durm. But you can call him Mack.”
While Daniel and Mack exchanged greetings, Pernod turned and shouted for Phoon. When
she came out from the front office and saw Mack, she shrieked in delight, ran to him, jumped up and
wrapped her arms and legs around him. Mack held her ass and pretended to copulate with her, shout-
ing out in pleasure. Pernod laughed, “Come on, guys, you’re making me horny.”
“I’ll get to you next,” Mack told him, “don’t worry.”
They hadn’t seen each other in over a year, so the former East Wedge Jackals caught up on
things a bit, Daniel listening to the reminiscences as he puffed his stogie. Animated with happiness,
Phoon turned to Daniel at one point and related, “Before we’d go into battle against whatever gang
of punks or mutants or whatever we were at war with that particular week, we’d say, ‘Vhi joh zinh.’”
“What’s that mean?”
“Well, once I told Stoke that we used to say vhi joh zinh to each other on Sinan, before we
entered battle. It means, ‘Let’s do this.’ He liked that.”
“Yeah,” Pernod agreed. “And I remember saying it two minutes before I got half my face shot
off.” He patted his metal cheek. Then he turned back to Mack and asked, “So have you heard from
Scoot Tinly lately?” Scoot Tinly was another Jackal who’d survived his youth, a ponytailed Tikkihotto
who’d been a fury fighting close quarters with his people’s traditional e-ikko tomahawk.
Mack said, “Yeah, we meet up to drain some Zubs every so often. Hey, you still living at that
Octoplex place? Yeah? Ha... never could leave our old turf, could ya?”
“It’s still our neighborhood, man,” Pernod confirmed. “Course, the Octoplex didn’t exist back then.”
“Well anyway, someday I’ll round up whoever’s still breathing and we’ll drop in for a mad
party.”
“You’d better,” Pernod said. But they’d made such vows when the two of them had briefly run
into each other a year ago, and the reunion had never occurred.
“Well, I was just in the area,” Mack sighed, stepping up onto his patiently waiting hoverboard
again. “The traffic was a real nightmare on Plexus Street, so I took a detour.” His ear-to-ear Choom
grin stretched almost to the back of his head. “Nice to meet ya, Daniel. Hey, I love you guys.”
“Love you, too!” Phoon called, as the Choom shot up into the dusk again. Then she turned to
Pernod, smiling wistfully, and asked, “Is it crazy to miss the bad old days, baby?”
“Just call me crazy,” he told her.
* * *
“Whoa!” Pernod shouted, bolting up in bed. “What the blast?”
If he had thought the chanting over the loudspeaker had been loud before, it was doubled in
volume now. Furthermore, the Kalian was now reciting his incantations or prayers at a more rapid,
one might even say hysterical, rate. His tone sounded... desperate.
“That’s it,” Pernod growled, “I’m going over there to kill —”
“Stoke!” Phoon cried, springing up to crouch in the center of the mattress, “the walls!”
But he’d already seen.
142
 The gray-purple smart matter of which their room was composed — recently having shown
signs of distress — was now cracked throughout like the scaly floor of a dried-out mud flat. The mate-
rial had also turned solid black, as if decomposing... corrupted. But the disorienting transformation
didn’t end there. As the two of them stared in disbelief, a shape rippled beneath the surface of one
wall, causing dry flakes to sift to the floor. It was like watching a cat scurry under bedcovers, zigging
this way, then zagging that way. When the shifting bulge came to rest, from that spot a protuberance
pushed outward, emerging from one of the deep splits. It looked like a large soap bubble ballooning,
but oily black, a taut membrane covered in thick veins. The black orb popped free, fell to the cracked
black floor, and rolled toward Pernod. He jumped back, clawing behind him at the top drawer of
their bureau. The ball rolled to a stop a few feet from him... and in a flash, the veins uncoiled from
the bubble and proved to be eight thin tentacles, upon which the little sphere raised itself. It looked
as though it were ready to launch itself into the air at Pernod.
Phoon had sprung out of bed, to reach under it for her sniper rifle, but Pernod had already
pulled his heavy Wolff .45 from the bureau. He whipped the handgun in front of him and let loose
one thunderous shot. The solid projectile burst the creature’s spherical body, and black fluid like cal-
ligrapher’s ink spattered in all directions.
Phoon rose with her rifle, and the lovers met eyes for a moment as if to exchange a telepathic
communication. Then Phoon spun toward their bedroom window, touched a key to open it, and
braced her rifle’s stock against her shoulder.
Her gun’s discharge was muted. Pernod heard nothing over the noise of the broadcasted
chanting. But a split second later, that chanting ceased.
“Did you kill him, or the loudspeaker?” Pernod asked.
“Loudspeaker. Look out here, Stoke — hurry.”
Pernod pressed in beside her at the window, and muttered an inarticulate expression of awe.
Overnight, a new, ninth structure had joined the eight surrounding towers of the Octoplex. It
was situated in the center of the octagonal park. It filled the park... and was so tall Phoon was lucky
to have been able to hit the loudspeaker on the balcony of Building 5’s thirteenth floor. The alien
construction appeared to be a temple, of complex configuration. Trying to take in this vision, Pernod
suddenly had to reach up to his artificial eye and turn it off. Through its lens, the building had ap-
peared to be writhing, pulsing, amorphous; a manifestation of chaos. The only feature he could wrap
his mind around was a central tower surmounted by an onion dome, tapering to a pointed tip. The
mysterious building was entirely black, but smooth and glossy as obsidian, with an iridescence like oil.
When Pernod could at last form words, he said to himself, “That sphere I saw in the park yes-
terday. That was its seed. Those bastard Kalians planted it there.”
“It’s their god, isn’t it?” Phoon said. “Ugghiutu.”
“Never seen him before,” Pernod said. “But looks like him to me.”
“Their chants woke him.”
“Why not? They woke me more than once.”
Phoon gazed out the window again.
Actually there were only seven towers remaining of the Octoplex. The burnt-out shell of Build-
ing 8 had utterly collapsed, and yet somehow that event hadn’t awakened them. It must have been
because all that remained of it was a huge mound of soft black ash. Building 6 leaned off-center
drunkenly, and with the chanting cut off and the window open they could now hear the screams and
cries of their neighbors, a ululating chorus of terror and confusion ringing the transfigured park. All
seven remaining tenement blocks of the Octoplex were as black and cracked as the interior of this
room. Thick, ropy appendages like the roots of an ancient tree spread from the base of the temple —
their ends connected to, merged with, the bases of the seven towers.
“Whatever it is,” Phoon said, “it took form from our buildings. You see? It started days ago,
143
but we didn’t realize. It must be leeching the smart matter... reactivating its cells and absorbing
them.” She peered into the little screen of her rifle scope again for a closer look. “Dung!” she hissed.
“What?”
At this magnification the former guerilla could see several of their neighbors down at the edge
of the park, and she recognized them as Bruno Tetris and Hanover Waters, abandoning their apart-
ments in the precarious Building 6. But what had them running so frantically was a pair of creatures,
scurrying after them in pursuit. These entities were larger versions of the tentacled orb that had
squeezed out of the bedroom wall.
Phoon tracked one creature, squeezed her trigger, and the thing’s balloon body collapsed in a
detonation of black liquid. The second creature ran on six of its boneless limbs, lifting the forward
pair and stretching them toward Bruno’s legs. Phoon fired again. The second spidery entity explod-
ed. Bruno and Hanover fled between two of the apartment towers and made it out of the Octoplex
grounds to the street.
“Hey, baby,” Pernod said. Phoon turned from the window, and saw Pernod watching the walls.
Rippling bulges zigged and zagged all over them now. A dozen or more darting shapes. “I think it’s
time to get out of here.”
* * *
They rode an elevator down from the fifteenth floor, though Pernod regretted it all the way to the
basement parking lot, as the cabin’s lights flickered and the mechanism grumbled. But the lift finally
came to rest, its door grated halfway open, and the couple squeezed out to bolt for their allocated
parking area. As Pernod wheeled his bike out of the mini garage, he saw another couple jump back-
wards to avoid being hit by a hovercar as its driver — whom Pernod recognized as a neighbor named
Elias Jodhpur — tore out of the parking garage in a panic. The couple Jodhpur had nearly run over
were two gray-skinned Kalians: a young man, and a beautiful woman with her hair woven in a long
braid.
“Hey!” Pernod shouted, and he started walking toward them, drawing his bulky Wolff .45
from its holster.
“We don’t have time!” Phoon cried, hurrying after him. “Baby, we have to go!”
The Kalians had turned toward Pernod’s voice, and their all-black eyes went wide when they
saw his purposeful stride and lifting handgun. “Wait!” the young man said, holding up his palms to
show he was unarmed.
Pernod stopped a few paces away, pointing the Wolff at the man’s nose. “You motherblasters
summoned that thing, didn’t you? Huh?”
“What?” the man said. He spoke English better than the woman had when Pernod had con-
fronted her in the parking garage before.
“We should have shot your blasting loudspeaker sooner. Should have shot you sooner!”
“That was you who shot our loudspeaker?” the Kalian said. His agitated gaze went to Phoon,
with her rifle. “Oh no... no... you don’t understand what you’ve done!”
“What are you saying?” Pernod growled.
“Another group of our people planted the avatar’s pod in the park. They wanted to destroy our
little group, because we’re unorthodox. They see us as traitors!”
“You... it wasn’t you who buried that thing there? Your chants didn’t make it grow?”
“No! We weren’t chanting to wake Ugghiutu’s avatar! We were chanting to make it stay dor-
mant!”
Pernod turned to look behind him at Phoon.
“Oops,” she said.
144
 “Now,” the Kalian man said in despair, “I don’t know what we can do to stop it, but we have
to try.”
“The forcers will be coming soon, I’m sure,” Phoon told him. “Let them handle it. We’d better
all get the hell out of here.”
“We can’t turn our backs,” the Kalian insisted. “This threat was intended for us. It’s our re-
sponsibility to try to thwart it.”
Pernod looked from the young man to the young woman. Both with such terror and helpless-
ness in their eyes, and no weapons on their persons, but still determined to fight.
“We’ll help you,” Pernod said, lowering his pistol.
“Baby!” Phoon exclaimed.
He faced her again. “This is still our neighborhood, honey. We never let an enemy invade our
turf before, did we?”
Slowly, staring back at him, the blue-skinned woman shifted the weight of her sniper rifle more
purposefully. She nodded.
A loud report like a gunshot made the four of them jump, and they all looked up to see that a
wide crack had just opened in the blackened roof of the underground lot.
“First things first, though,” Phoon said. “We need to get out of here before the ceiling caves in
on us, because that avatar thing is directly overhead.”
Even as she uttered these words, the two couples watched a thick, glossy black root come slith-
ering down from the crack in the ceiling, nosing this way and that like an immense eyeless serpent.
“Run for it!” Pernod commanded the Kalians. “We’ll regroup in the street.” Then he and
Phoon raced back to where their motorcycle waited.
* * *
The bike roared between two of the Octoplex towers, beyond the housing project’s outer border,
and across the broad street, where Pernod skidded the bike around to a halt on the sidewalk. They
could now see that the temple that was Ugghiutu’s avatar had grown taller than the Octoplex towers
ringing it. As they watched, a fluted column unraveled into a mass of thin black tendrils, groping at
the sky. Holographic advertisements sent slippery reflections across the temple’s restless black surface.
The young Kalian couple had noticed them, and came running toward them. But they were not
the only ones who had spotted Pernod and Phoon astride their monster bike.
From out of the sky swooped a hoverboard, which whisked down close to the sidewalk. Its rid-
er, who had been squatting low while airborne, rose up and hopped off to the pavement. A Choom,
with a vast Choom grin.
“Heard on the news you had a situation in your neighborhood,” said Mack Durm, gesturing
behind him at his hoverboard’s projected holographic screens, one of which was a news page overlap-
ping the navigation windows.
Phoon dismounted and gave the Choom a quick hug, then looked back across the street toward the
towering alien structure. She raised the sniper rifle to her shoulder, and bent her eye to its targeting screen.
She sighted on the onion dome, raised higher now than before on its central base. Seen up
close this way, it was shot through with holes or orifices of varying size, but as she watched, some
holes sealed up without leaving a trace while new ones yawned open. Each time a new hole opened, a
number of those bubble-like entities would come scurrying out to crawl across the temple’s surface.
Phoon was about to pull the trigger on one of these scampering creatures when the roar of anoth-
er motorcycle close by caused her to lower the gun a bit and look over warily. A forcer on a bike? The air
was now full of the nearing sirens of forcer vehicles, and possibly Colonial Forces military vehicles, too.
145
 But the bike’s rider was a Tikkihotto, in a cowboy’s leather duster, his hair gathered back in a
long ponytail, the sea anemone feelers that his race possessed instead of eyes squirming in every direc-
tion at once. His bike, though yellow instead of red like Pernod’s, was just as much a Frankenstein’s
monster. The Tikkihotto smiled, and so did Pernod and Phoon in recognition. The Sinanese woman
cried, “Scoot!”
“Mack just gave me a call, and told me you two might be in trouble down here in our old
stomping grounds.” Scoot Tinly shrugged, grinned more widely, and added, “I had nothing better
to do tonight.”
“None of us do,” said Mack. “Haven’t had, for too long.” He nodded toward several other ap-
proaching figures, jogging across the street toward them. “I called every Jackal who’s still breathing...
at least, the ones who aren’t in the pen. I told you we’d get together for a mad party.”
Pernod looked over and recognized the pair hurrying toward them. Floyd Urn was a mutant,
with a tumor as big as a second head crowding his true head to one side. Zelma Torrid was trans-
gendered, with a green Mohawk, augmented breasts the size of Floyd’s tumor, and brawny arms to
put Mack’s to shame. Pernod could already see the eager smiles on his old friends’ faces as they came
running.
As Floyd and Zelma arrived from one direction, the Kalian couple joined the group from the
other side. When Pernod and Phoon had finished exchanging hugs with Floyd and Zelma, they in-
troduced the Kalians and explained the situation.
“Welcome to the East Wedge Jackals,” Mack said to the Kalians. “Never had Kalians in our
ranks before, but we’re nothing if not a motley crew.”
The Kalians just blinked back at him without comprehension.
The whole group now wheeled in unison to confront the Octoplex and the living edifice writh-
ing at its heart, as the banshee wails of arriving forcer vehicles grew almost deafening.
“Are you ready for this, baby?” Phoon asked, at Pernod’s side.
“Vhi joh zinh,” he said.

For Mariusz, whose artwork inspired this story. — JET

146
 Many thanks to all the below, without whose support and backing this book
would never have possible. We hope you all enjoy the streets of Punktown for
many years to come!

TAGGERS GANG MEMBERS

John Akin Angus Abranson
J Beighel Martin Andersson
John Blashyrkh Norbert Baer
Antony Brown Chase W. Beck
Jim Clunie Michael Beck
Martrin “Cookie Monster” Cooke Benjamin Bell
Maz Fallah Cesar Bernal Prat
Silvio Herrera Gea Ingo Beyer
Rory Hughes Scott Bigwood
Brian Kapfer Mike Bogan
Robert C. Kim Kelly Brown
Paul May Marc Bruner
James Millar Edouard Contesse
Gary “Sneezy the Squid” Mitchel David Corner
Serena “Intendant S” Nelson Arinn Dembo
Steve Santiago Simon Ding
Shervyn Brian Dowd
Marzio Spairani Steve Ellis
Drew W Marious Enge Boe
Rasmus Winther Peter Engebos
Dawid “Dievas” Wojcieszynski Steve Gooch
Louis Goncey
Jason Hardy
GANG VICTIMS Greg Hartman
Jean-Michel Abrassart Bazz Hoftijzer
Kairam Ahmed Hamdam Ryan Holdbooks
Chas Anctil Chad Hughes
Hugh Ashman Kyle S. Johnson
Seth Bradley Leigh Johnson
James Carpio Larry Kost
Peter Cerda-Pavia Alain Manguy
Andrew Chang Kyle Miller
Richard Chilton Max Moraes
Adam Crossingham Garret Myhan
Peter De Kinder Juliana Quartaroli
Ryan Dorman Thomas Renner
Dave Ellingwood Renato Retz de Carvalho
Alyssa Faden Matthew Ruane
Douglas Grimes Anssi Salakka
Steve Gurr John Scheib
Dan Harms Jakob Schmidt
Eric Iacono Samuel E. Slocum
George R. Ibarra Robert Spindel
Mark Kadas Robert Thomas
Joe Kontor Angie Thompson
Michael Lanzinger Steven Torres-Roman
Brian Murphy Olivier Vigneresse
Sean O’Dell Ngo Vinh-Hoi
Gabriel Pesek William J. Walton
Ryan Peterson Daniel Wood
Ivan Rajic
Stewart Robertson
Daniel Robinson
Terry Rossiter
Christopher Snyder
Dave Sokolowski
Marek Szkaradek
W. Vernon
Jonathan Wilson
147
GANG LEADERS PUNKTOWN FRONT
Espen Andreassen
Robert Biddle COMPANIES
William Blough The Complete Strategist
Nicholas Butta Mark Myers
Joachim Carillo de Cangas Noble Knight Games
James Chilcott Spharenmeisters Spiele
Steven Dempsey
Darren Fong
Gregory Frank STYLIN’ PUNKTOWNERS
Robert Freeborn David Bean
David Freireich Shannon Lewis
Jack Gulick Liz Masterson
Andy Hicks Graham Meinert
Lauri Hirvonen William Stowers
Peter Hurley
Jon Jones
Robert Joyce PUNKTOWN ARTISTS
Scott Kehl Marcos Cavalheiro Pereira
Jonathan Keim Greg Corbanese
David Lai Thomas Lynch
Richard Lantz
Daniel Ley
Nicholas Middleton THE ELITE
Serena Nelson Mathias Carlslund
Randall Padilla Barrantes Matthew Carpenter
David M. Post David Lars Chamberlain
Eric Priehs Andrew Fattorusso
David Schimpff Timothy Feely
Thorsten Schubert Christopher Frank
Felix Shafir Vincent Harper
Christopher Sigmund Minh Nguyen
John Singleton Dr. Juris L. Purins
Jyri Soppela William Shuster
Daniel Stack
Neal Tanner
Matthew Wasiak CRIME LORDS
Jason Williams Larry Angrimson
Ryan Wolf Neils Hobbs
Andreas Jauss
Michael P. Lynch
CORPORATE STOOGE
Christian Dunn
Dean Engelhardt
Steve Jackson
C.J. LeBlanc
Bryce Undy

148
149
150
151
152
Skyscrapers with sides so smooth and featureless (with vidscreens on the interior,
instead of windows) that one might think they were solid granite monuments in
a graveyard for dead gods. Other buildings that looked like they’d been pieced to-
gether from thousands of odd-matched parts salvaged from stripped factory ma-
chines, steam curling out of grids and grates in their complex flanks. Buildings
with snake skins of multicolored mosaics. Buildings wearing an armor of riveted
metal plates, like retired warships looming vertically with their sterns jammed
into the street. Flat roofs upon which perched smaller buildings, symbiotically.
Other structures tapering to needle points that seemed to etch the clouds upon the
blue glass of the sky. Stacked apartments. Stacked businesses. On street level: shop
fronts, and gang kids squatting on tenement steps, glaring insolently at the slow
sludge of traffic...Ah, Punktown.
—Jeffrey Thomas, Deadstock

Punktown: An RPG Setting for Call of Cthulhu® Sixth Edition and

BRP uses Chaosium’s famous award-winning system to explore a dark,
futuristic world fraught with untold perils created by author Jeffrey
Thomas. Imagine Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, Minority Report,
Total Recall and the rest of the dark, not-too-distant-future genre. Now
add aliens, mutants, robots and Lovecraftian horror. Blend them together,
and you get a hint of what Punktown is like.

This reference explores the city itself, the alien races, the weaponry, the
creatures, mutations, cybernetics, drugs, sanity (and the inevitable loss
thereof), and the option of adding the Cthulhu Mythos into the mix. As
written in Thomas’ work, the mythos is already there, threatening life as
Punktowners know it. If you’re a cyberpunk fan, if you’re a horror fan, or
if you’re both, this book is for you.

Keep your eyes wide, your pistol close, and mind the snipes. Those who
venture into Punktown never leave the same...if they leave at all.