Mark's a seasoned Sanctum vet. His first tour of duty was the relentlessly inventive Twilight Apocalypse. Now, he remixes a cult classic from the Golden Age of Greed.

In the 1980s, it was morning in America again, and Warlocks were waking up to a whole new way to undermine society. The spread of a gleefully ultra-Calvinist attitude toward wealth – that poverty was proof of lack of moral fiber or divine disfavor, and that riches were God’s stamp of approval on whatever you had done to amass them – helped the Warlocks of Wall Street chart an economic course that would widen the gap between rich and poor into a yawning chasm.

Ironically, it was the view from rock bottom that was the clearest. In the nation’s soup kitchens, homeless shelters and Hoovervilles, people saw that malevolent forces were moving in penthouse offices and back alleys alike. Out of sight of the suburbs, hideous crimes were being committed in the crumbling inner cities, while in the glass fortress-towers of the business districts, Warlock CEOs and politicians were cutting a swath of depredation and misery at home and abroad. In an urban mission somewhere in the heartland, a pastor, an optical engineer and a materials scientist created a special type of lens through which a Warlock’s demonic essence was plainly visible. The trio began fitting the lenses into innocuous-looking sunglasses and distributing them to allies around the country, but their lab was destroyed, and the three killed, in a police raid before more than a dozen or so cases could be prepared.

The deaths of the founders couldn’t stop the movement they had started. The time was right, and a grassroots network of demon fighters began to spring up from coast to coast. The original Clear-Vues (as the magic shades became known) have been scattered far and wide across the country. Sometimes, a minister or activist will come into a few pairs and hand them out to trusted friends. Other times, a pair mysteriously appears in the mailbox or on the doorstep of a person whose skills or knowledge would help the movement. One or two lucky, blessed, or cursed fellas will stumble across a pair and try them on just for the Hell of it. Little do they know.

No one calls the organization Sanctum – nobody calls it anything yet. It has no leader, no headquarters, and no defined base of support. The group operating in one city or town may have no idea that they have fellows in most other states, or even that there are any other groups like them at all. When two people wearing Clear-Vues meet, however, they are instantly recognizable to one another, since the lenses of the glasses appear to shine with a soft white light when seen through another set.

Now that it’s becoming clear that the movement is more widespread than anyone had first thought, members are starting to leave signs for others who are new to the area. Somehow, groups across the country have independently settled on the same cryptic message – “The Demons Live” – to leave scrawled on dumpsters, spray-painted in alleyways, or traced in freshly poured concrete.

To set the mood of the period, here’s a brief list of scenery elements to include in an 80s landscape:

• Pro wrestling, Rambo, The A*Team
• Televangelists (Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell, Jim Bakker, The 700 Club)
• Synth-pop, hair metal, punk, a second British invasion (Duran Duran, Thompson Twins, etc.)
• Shoulder pads, leg warmers, skinny ties, pork-pie hats, acid-wash jeans, suspenders, fishnet stockings, enormous hair, baggy sweaters.

Main Street Sanctum

A wide variety of classic 80s heroes can be found in the ranks of the Sanctum of the era. Because Vice City inspired this article, a suggested game cliché is provided for each.

Rogue Cop

RC is out to clean up the streets and isn’t about to let the rules stand in his way. Shouting matches with the lieutenant, cussing out reporters and roughing up suspects are all in a day’s work for him.

• Streetwise - RC knows every dark corner of every stinking back alley in this city, plus who’s running what racket where.
• Metagamer - Watching the bad guys play the system for years has taught RC how to make the rules of law enforcement read exactly how he needs them to in any situation.
• Compelling - RC can browbeat, harangue and even occasionally sweet talk people into doing or agreeing to things that they would otherwise never consider (running down license plates, granting access to warehouses, loaning out ridiculously expensive or rare equipment, and so on).
• Cliché (investigative): Mendoza!!! – By bellowing your nemesis’ name to the sky, usually over the body of your dead partner, you swear a mighty oath that nets you a +1 bonus die on tasks relating to tracking down said nemesis.
• Cliché (combat): Smart bullets – You can open fire into a crowd of any size without ever hitting an innocent bystander.

American Ninja

A scrappy street kid, always in trouble, who would have ended up in prison or an early grave if not for the ancient ninja master who saw the kid’s essential goodness and began training AN as his successor.

• Ninja - Master of the traditional 13 disciplines of ninjutsu.
• Universal Driver - When swimming or horsemanship won’t cut it, a ninja has to be ready to pilot everything from an ultralight to a supercharged motorcycle.
• Gadgeteer - Today’s ninja has to know what to do when confronted with villainous cyborgs or genetically enhanced supermen, so AN has a working knowledge of various branches of weird science.
• Cliché (combat): He’s mine! – No matter how many foes you encounter at once, they feel compelled to engage you one at a time.

The Drifter

The Drifter’s origins are obscure. Some say he’s an economic refugee from the Rustbowl, or a farmer driven off his land by massive debt, or a hard-luck inner-city laborer. In any case, he now wanders the highways of America, working odd jobs when he can and fighting for the little guy in towns across the land.

• Handy - The Drifter can do journeyman work as anything from a short-order cook to a landscaper to an auto body mechanic.
• Wayfarer - Years of traveling on foot have honed the Drifter’s natural sense of direction to the point that he could navigate the back woods blindfolded.
• Knows People - He’s been everywhere and met all kinds of folks, so he can usually get a feel for a person’s character and intentions after a couple minutes of conversation.
• Cliché (contacts): You seem like a good guy. – Despite having no references, identification or visible means of support, you automatically come across as trustworthy and hardworking.

Vietnam Vet

Alienated from authority by his terrible experiences in the war, the Vet trusts no one but proven comrades. His combat skills are fearsome, but his B.S. detector is even keener.

• Tough - The Vet can soak up punishment that would kill lesser men and keep on fighting.
• Warrior - A one-man army, master of hand-to-hand combat and any firearm a man can carry and fire (and a couple one man shouldn’t be able to).
• Cynical - The Vet is so doggedly distrustful that it’s nearly impossible to bluff or fast-talk him.
• Cliché (combat): I ain’t got time to bleed! – Once per combat, you can shrug off any penalties imposed by your wound state for one turn.

Punk Girl

PG’s driving goal is rebellion against the established order and its replacement with – nothing at all. Born and raised in a city that was literally crumbling around her, she’s hell bent on laying low a power elite that bleeds the masses for their own benefit or amusement. Her devotion to anarchism is a little unsettling for her teammates, who don’t really appreciate the difference between anarchy and bedlam, but there’s no denying she’s singularly tough and determined.

• Nimble - PG has both incredible manual dexterity (witness her superhumanly fast bass guitar technique!) and tremendous agility.
• Épater les Bourgeois - Something about her Doc Martens, Cherenkov-blue hair and the safety-pins through her ears makes PG intimidating out of all proportion to her size and strength (she’s not what you would call strapping, thanks to her atrocious diet and a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit).
• Jerryrigger - PG epitomizes the punk DIY ethos. She’s a master scrounger and can build almost anything out of just about anything else.
• Cliché (contacts): Friends in low places. – PG knows at least one activist of every stripe who can provide all kinds of useful information.

Warlocks of Wall Street

Okay, they're not all from Wall Street, but they're all connected enough to party there!

Business Tycoon

The Tycoon is a dean of Wall Street who brings in money for shareholders hand over fist by alternately shafting the workers and fiddling the books. He works subtly, in large part through a circle of coked-up acolyte Masters of the Universe to whom he’s teaching the fine arts of bleeding corporations white and selling junk bonds by the caseload.

The Tycoon is also the major facilitator of the activities of other Warlocks around the world. His money funds diabolical operations big and small, and he serves as an informal coordinator. What he hasn’t yet realized is that, to a person wearing Clear-Vues, his cash is visibly different. On the face of each bill, rather than a president, is the sanity-blasting portrait of a Demon Prince; on the back, animated vistas of Hell squirm and writhe. Coins that he or his minions have handled become jagged disks of bleached bone, and always feel slightly warm to the touch.

• Stinking Rich - The Tycoon has more money than one person could spend in ten lifetimes, which means there’s always plenty on hand for bribing officials, hiring thugs, or trying to buy off Sanctum busybodies.
• Invisible Hand - By moving money from one holding company to another, or one state to another, the Tycoon can cause businesses, sectors, even entire regional economies to flourish or wither.
• Filthy Lucre - Money paid by the Tycoon, in whatever form, carries a trace of his corruption to the payee. Do a couple of jobs, get a few hundred, and you may feel a strange urge to splurge on a few lines of blow or some specialty services. When he’s paid you a few thousand, you’re budgeting for some very dark habits indeed; and by the time you’ve taken salary from him for a year and a day, you’re so far down a rabbit hole of debauchery that you’re starting to spread the taint yourself.

El Narcotraficante

El Narco is a Central American strongman whose small nation is hosting one of the U.S.-Russia proxy wars in the region. No one is sure what his political philosophy is, or whether he even has one beyond lining his pockets with drug money.

• President for Life - El Narco has the resources of a whole country at his disposal (Lord knows none of them are being used to the benefit of its people), including an incongruously large and well-armed military, secret police, and a cadre of foreign “advisors.”
• Guerilla - Before seizing the reins of power, El Narco was commandante of a brutal, paramilitary force almost indistinguishable from the ones he’s getting foreign aid to fight now. He hasn’t forgotten any of the dirty tricks he learned during those years.
• Pander - Whatever it is you really, really want but are too ashamed to admit, even to yourself – El Narco knows. He can see it in your eyes. And he’s ready and able to give it to you in exchange for your aid, complicity, or plain inaction.

The Alarmist

Poverty, homelessness, and support for dictators abroad might cause a fuss if people thought too hard about them. The Alarmist ensures that doesn’t happen by stirring up mindless panics. Child-abuse cults, secret messages in heavy-metal lyrics, Dungeons & Dragons – anything can be fodder for a nice, long, distracting bout of public hysteria.

• Influence - The Alarmist has powerful contacts in government, business and the media.
• Silver-Tongued - Even before he acquired his demonic abilities, the Alarmist had enormous powers of persuasion. Given enough time, he can convince almost anyone of almost anything, no matter how feeble his argument may be.
• Rabble Rouser - With a few, well-chosen, panicky words, the Alarmist can whip a crowd into a frenzy that makes the Bacchae look like Code Pink.

Commie Menace

CM does double duty for the warlocks, sometimes acting as a genuine agent of repression in brutal states like Romania and Bulgaria, sometimes spreading fear of a global Red Menace in the West. He’s a huge, brush-cut, virtually expressionless block of muscle, a visual embodiment of monolithic undifferentiation.

• Iron Man - CM has strength and stamina befitting a man who looks like he was carven out of marble.
• Brawler - A master of Russian wrestling and Spetznaz unarmed combat, CM knows a dozen ways to break each bone in the human body.
• Aura of Despair - CM radiates a field of futility, grey uniformity and helplessness that slowly crushes the hope in all around him. (It also literally sucks the color out of his surroundings.) Spend too long in his presence and any thought of resistance will be obliterated.

Splicer

Knowledge of the human genome had advanced just far enough in the 80s for gene-tampering mad scientists to become a real concern for heroes of the day. The rogue geneticist known as Splicer is on the cutting edge of this new science. Crime bosses and despots around the globe pay top dollar for his services in creating squads of juiced-up goons. What none of his employers realize is that Splicer isn’t just enhancing strength and endurance, numbing pain, and chiseling away at any inconvenient vestiges of conscience. He’s also recoding his subjects' spirits, snipping out chunks of humanity and replacing them with sequences of demonic essence. With each series of treatments, the “beneficiary” becomes less human and more an earthly vessel for infernal spirits.

• Mad Scientist - Although he’s a specialist in genetic manipulation, Splicer is a dab hand at every branch of weird science, from death rays to temporal dislocation.
• Personalized Weapons - With a tiny sample of a person’s hair, blood or other tissue, Splicer can construct drugs, poisons, or even diseases that are tailored to that particular person. Because he’s a warlock, the effects of said concoctions aren’t necessarily physical – they may instead cause compassion to atrophy, increase covetousness, or open the mind to diabolic suggestion.
• Platoon of übermensch - Splicer’s personal bodyguard consists of a dozen gene-boosted kneecappers.

Next Stop: The sweetest damn frat house on Greek Row!