The Junkman Cometh is one of my most beloved books in the Wasted West line. Which is kind of odd, frankly; toxic spiritworkers and Doomsayers tend to be more my style in a lot of ways. Something about post-apocalyptic kitbashes of scrounged junk that shouldn't be able to do the things they do just lightens this little anti-civ eco-anarchist's moldy heart.
The idea, of course, is that junkers use traditional spiritworking methods to interact with the tech spirits. Everything has a spirit, but the less involved people are with the production of the object, the less it resembles what it might have been had humans not involved themselves, the more its spirit changes. Eventually, these changes build up to enough of a difference that the object's spirit can no longer be called a nature spirit. It just doesn't play by their rules or have their relationship with the world, divorced from its components' original contexts. These are the spirits the junkers talk to and negotiate with and convince to make their devices do things.
The Junkman Cometh, the splatbook for junkers, introduces the idea of browser spirits. Tech spirits who have braved many battles with the fear spirits that serve the Four Reckoners, the gremlin spirits that sneak into devices, and the nature spirits grow more and more powerful by absorbing these opponents. Once they get large enough, they can serve as mentors and familiars to junkers who are particularly good at what they do.
Five types of these browser spirits are described in the book: appliance, building, car, computer, and gun. While these seem particularly appropriate for the wandering and adventuring survivors of the ghost-rock apocalypse, they don't seem to cover all the possible types of tech spirits out there. This, then, is the first post of mine trying to rectify that by introducing five more types of browsers (and, thus, of tech spirits): clothing, drug, sex aids, toy, and vittles (industrialized food).
Associated Powers: Agility, brains, finish, jerry-rig, miniaturize
Almost as powerful as car spirits, the spirits of the toys given to and enjoyed by children (of all ages!) have long enjoyed the caring devotion of their organic friends. Anything which might have been given to another for their amusement and laughter had one of these spirits inhabiting it, from teddy bears to the two-inch plastic dinosaur the 5-year-old carries everywhere to complicated robot amusements that moved and lit up and made sounds. Sports equipment, as well, provided them a home.
Toy spirits often seem unintelligent, as they often know naught else but silliness. Junkers with particular kinds of hearts can see that this silliness is often the best way to communicate some essential bit of wisdom from the spirit world. It's certainly the most fun. Every toy spirit pursues their goal, to lighten the day with smiles and giggles, with a dedicated and obsessive focus seen in few other beings. This often results in toy spirits and the junkers who have befriended them seeming limited or overly self-contained in scope, even more so than most junkers. Tainted junkers can never have a toy browser; they're just no fun.
The past 13 years since the g-bombs fell have seen another element of their work grow to prominence. So many people in the Wasted West are lonely.
White: The junker gains a +4 bonus to all tale-tellin' and ridicule rolls for an hour.
Red: Friends of the toy spirits live a charmed life. Reduce a single roll on the Backlash table by -4.
Blue: If the junker succeeds on a Hard (9) leadership roll, they can allow a Tainted junker to act as if they had one level less of the Taint for 1d20 minutes. The TN of this roll is increased by +2 for each of the following Hindrances possessed by the junker: mean as a rattler, bloodthirsty, and vengeful.
Legend: With great exertion, the browser can flood an area no larger than 25' on a side with its joyful essence, lowering the Fear Level of that area by 1 for 1d4 hours.
Queer Spirits: Categories are useful bullshit, and the edge cases are the most fun. Toy spirits (and other kinds of tech spirits) can occasionally resemble or shade into other kinds of tech spirits. For example, drones and other types of RC gizmos can be inhabited by toy spirits, car spirits, or spirits that are kind of both. Robots can lend themselves to a similar situation involving computer spirits and toy spirits, as can things like video game systems, Building spirits find themselves merging with toy spirits in engineering kits, the flashy sort of Legos marketed to parents who want their kids to go into STEM when they're older; bits of those kits might instead resemble a cross between tool and toy spirits. EZ-Bake ovens and the like hold within them spirits that resemble both toy spirits and appliance spirits, while clothing and toy spirits intermingle in costumes and clothes intended for dress-up games. It can be hard to find the queer mixture of toy spirits and vittles or drug spirits, but candy (and the sort of medicines designed to mimic candy) is the best place to look. I don't think I need to mention that sex aid and toy spirits blend and intermingle both easily and often.
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