Oxymoron wrote:Y
Okay, so the 9/11 scenario was written in 99 and is called "Fly to Heaven". The UA universe is modern-day occult with a postmodern approach. One of the supernatural types are Avatars, who are people who can tap into Archetypes by acting like the Archetype- the True King must establish rulership over followers and land, the Flying Woman cannot let herself be tied or kept down, the Pilgrim's gotta keep on his pilgrimage. New Archetypes can be made by people putting a concept into near-universality, and the guy that does the final step ascends and becomes the embodiment of the Archetype. Simon Diulio is a paranoid, lazy loser. He was practicing a little bit of magic, but killed his mentor because he was afraid she was messing with his head. Then he heard about avatars and decided that he was going to take the easy way out. He was going to ascend as the Terrorist, by hijacking a 747, turning it into a symbolic representation of America and the human body, and crashing it into downtown Chicago. He brainwashed an airport employee with his magic, and used up most of the rest of it to put out the rumor that he's "Apu al Sayid", murderous international terrorist.
The PCs are all people on board the flight, and they have to try and stop him from succeeding. He starts out by raving a little bit, then locks all but two of the flight attendants into the bathrooms, and then demands for the Air Marshall (there is none) to stand up. He murders one of the flight attendants, or anybody that stands up. He then proceeds to set up the plane as a symbolic America by giving particular passengers mementos of Maine, Washington, DC, NYC, and California, and then spilling a glass of water across the aisle halfway down the plane to represent the Mississippi. Then he uses electrical tape to make blood vessels and nerves and secure the passengers in their seats, and then makes his demands. He waits a bit, then assembles ten people to be the "heart", including a PC and a PC's kid. At this point, blood starts dripping from the mementos and the red tape, and screams can be heard from outside the plane. He shoots three times at the heart (people start hallucinating Munich in 1972 and Oklahoma City at this point), then moves to kill the pilots and crash the plane.
The PCs are Fatima Yijifril, a flight attendant in training to be a pilot, Jack Chance, a cleaning supplies salesman who does judo in his spare time, Jeanette Pryce, an Avatar of the Mother (she starts out with the abilities to perform psychological triage and heal minor injuries for anyone that sees her as a parental figure, and major bonuses to fighting in the defense of children), and Matt Winokur, a political speechwriter. They are split between the upper deck and the lower deck of the plane, and each have opportunities to stop the plan. If they win, the PCs become heroes and move on to some success. If they lose, Simon ascends, and the world becomes a shittier place, where senseless terrorism becomes more prevalent and flying becomes an exercise in paranoia.
But the really big one is "A Garden Full of Weeds", which is set in Garden View, a symbolic representation of the ghetto. The books says that it stands in for Cabrini Green, or the Bronx, or Highland Park, or any decaying and desperate inner-city area. Marcus Longman was one of the first black sci-fi writers to make it big, and he had a respected career as a journalist and then editor for the city's black newspaper. He was also Godwalker (the most powerful Avatar) of the Chronicler, through his ability to capture the life of Garden View. Then he had a bad breakup and divorce, and quit writing, and became drunk and bitter. He then started writing again. It was all violent, sadistic pornography about those who had mistreated him. But the succeeding Godwalker had died without a successor, and so his stories started coming to life through all the pent-up energy associated with it. He's making Garden View a shittier place. No child born in the city in the last seven months has lived longer than two weeks. His already horribly racist ex-girlfriend, Yvonne Cole, has become a cannibalistic witch, murdering and eating the souls of those black children so they can be reborn white. His estranged ex-CIA son has become a monster out of urban legend, the "Mirror Man", stealing people's souls with his sunglasses. A gang, the "K" has moved in and is terrorizing the streets, led by a KKK member who's been magically impersonating a younger black man, and are slowly turning into the KKK themselves. The eaten children's remnants have started possessing feral cats to try and take revenge on Yvonne. All sorts of terrifying, unnatural events will occur if the PCs stay for long.
The PCs are thrown into this, and have to figure out how to deal with it all. The villains are old men and women, arthritic and not all there. Killing Longman will cause a horrible, overwhelming storm as all his pent-up anger flows out. Convincing him to break his self-obsession (a massively uphill struggle) and take up the power of the Chronicler again, though, will allow for healing, and hope. Leaving after taking care of the surface problems causes further decay and abandonment until Longman dies, but Garden View will still be abandoned and devastated. There are a few other ways, but there are no easy answers, and no easy fixes even in the best outcome.