Wushu Skidoo

The sun glares down its disapproval as he bolts the door behind him. When his eyes finally adjust, his heart sinks. Another sweep team already has him surrounded. They must have come up the fire escape before the vans even started their approach. Damn. They're getting better at this.

Jerry squeezes his eyes shut against reality. "Go to your unhappy place," he tells himself. He can hear the Miasma gathering like a wave. It rushes through his ears. Fear is the only language it understands.

Five rows of razor blade teeth burst up through the roof and snap shut around a Sweeper's legs. He's born aloft as the Great White attached to those teeth emerges from below. The roof tiles splash and ripple in its wake. It thrashes from side to side with enough force to snap the Sweeper’s spine like a popsicle stick, then dives back down below.

The rest open fire...

Parademic is the half-breed love child of two estranged genres: action and horror. Its heros are infected with an ungodly power, one that's difficult to control and feeds on fear. It’s perfect for Halloween gaming the Wushu way. (However, if you need more to get you through those long, October nights, see also my Bad Mojo and Untouchable settings. Make sure you didn’t miss the Wushu Guide to Spook-Fu that appeared at the end of last month’s article, too.)

A Plague of Magic

No one knows what it is or where it comes from, but the miasma is slowly and irrevocably transforming the world. Here’s what we do know: It spreads more like radiation than a virus, either Hard & Fast or Slow & Steady. It’s phobomorphic, which means it shapes itself in response to fear. It can alter reality in ways both subtle and profound, with complete disregard for niceties like the Law of Conservation or Newton’s Third Law of Motion. In time, it turns everyone it infects into a monster.

It always starts Slow & Steady. The miasma seeps into a place and builds up over months or years. It ebbs and flows in response to the ambient fears of people and animals from miles around. Early on, that means deep shadows and chill winds, eerie whispers and half-glimpsed apparitions. Later, it gives birth to poltergeists and spectres, then it clothes them in flesh.

Hard & Fast contamination happens when the miasma takes effect an object or person directly. There’s a chance you can get away clean from something like that, but it’s not a good one. Once you’re contaminated, or once people think you might be contaminated, you become a pariah. Sure, the crazy miasmic powers can be fun, but you don't control the miasma... you just give it ideas. If you’re lucky, the Sweepers will hunt you down and kill you. If not, you’ll become a phobophage, your own worst nightmare.

At first, the CDC tried to keep things under wraps. That didn't last long. The whole Men In Black routine got kinda tricky after a horde of pitchfork-wielding cacodemons ran amok in Times Square. The press called it a paranormal pandemic, which was quickly shortened to "parademic."

The public's reaction can best be described in two words: Mass Hysteria. The most measured response came from the CDC, which called for the immediate quarantine of all infected people and areas. Others replaced the word "quarantine" with "carpet bombing," but even they weren't as fired up as the End Times crowd. Those bloodthirsty fiends started putting Exodus 22:18 on bumper stickers.

The general public came to view the miasma as a contagion and adopted increasingly paranoid preventative measures. Gloves and face masks were just the beginning. The wealthy have walled themselves off in enclosed archologies. They sterilize their air and water, hold visitors in quarantine for weeks, and execute anyone who shows the slightest sign of contamination.

The rest of humanity makes due with ruthless policing by CDC Sweep Teams. After the miasma turned a few hospitals and prisons into phage-infested labyrinths, the government authorized the CDC to exterminate known pariahs on site. Guns and incendiary devices were added to their inventories. Their ranks swelled with trigger-happy vigilantes.

Then, they developed Serenity. This powerful narcotic suppresses the fear response without sedating or otherwise impairing its users. Certain Sweep Teams have had it since the early days, but the free market would not be denied and now Serenity flows like water. Though the drug cannot make you immune to miasmic powers, it does prevent infected places from manifesting your fears. That’s enough for most people.

It is an open secret that Serenity's chief side-effect is sociopathic behavior. Fear, as it turns out, keeps our basest urges in check. Without it, even the most empathic human beings can slip into the cold embrace of callous brutality... especially where the pariah are involved. This makes Sweepers even more dangerous, if you can imagine such a thing.

Pariahs don't have to imagine. They deal with it every day. When they finally started to fight back, "diabloterrorism" was born. Underground railroads backed by uninfected sympathizers allow a few pariahs to smuggle hundreds of others to secret havens in the third world. They also carry out political stunts and sabotage missions against the CDC.

In the fullness of time, the miasma will spread across the globe and transform our planet into a Tartarean hellscape. This is inevitable. The last bastions of uncontaminated humanity can no more hold it back than a flickering candle can hold back the night.

Parademic gives you three time periods in which to play. For a standard modern occult game, play a Sweep Team trying to contain one of the first outbreaks. If you want a game brimming with moral ambiguity, social commentary, urban combat, and full-on miasmic powers, you gotta go mid-parademic and play pariahs on the run from Serenity-fuelled Sweepers. Finally, you’ve got your post-apocalyptic option; play the guardians of the last human city, diabloterrorists trying to take it down, or a tribe of infected survivors who just want to see another sunrise.

Pariahs

Once you’re infected, your life is defined by fear... and so are your character's Traits. Your biggest fear is rated 5, your two lesser fears are rated 4, and your character concept becomes a Trait rated 3. (Don’t worry about a weakness. There’s a whole different thing for that.) Check out this thread for some excellent suggestions.

Your big fear should be something either profound or personal: eternal damnation, existential angst, alcoholism, realizing you were a bad parent to a dead child, etc. This is the fear that gives you the most miasmic power, but it’s also the one most likely to get out of control and transform you into a phage.

Your two lesser fears should be more action-oriented. All of the standard phobias apply: snakes and spiders, heights and small space, guns, blood, darkness, etc. (Jerry was afraid of the open ocean, particularly sharks, since he was lost at sea as a child.) Urban legends, traumatic events, and carnival clowns are other good sources of fear. Just make sure your fears will serve as good sources of Details.

Finally, figure out who your pariah was before they became infected. You don’t need anything fancy; things like Electrician, Cabby, Law Student, and House Husband all imply certain skills set and social contacts. Using them gives your target numbers a little boost, but nothing that beats the miasma.

Whenever you use one of your fears, there’s a chance that the miasma will get out of control. This happens if you don’t roll any failures. That’s right, failed dice are your friends. They help you keep your cool. When you lose control during combat, your next roll has to be either all offense or all defense. Fight and Flight are your only options when your darkest fears turn against you.

The only way out is to let the madness in, let the miasma gnaw away at your mind. That means “tainting” one point Chi. Tainted Chi must be spent after regular Chi and, if you don’t have any untainted Chi on hand, your only other option is to become a phage. The good news about becoming your own worst fear is that you probably still have the same enemies. Feel free to play out the current scene and put the hurt on whoever pushed you over the edge, but your GM might turn you into an NPC after that. You are, after all, a monster.

Each point of Tainted Chi should come with a tell: some mutation or persistent effect that marks you as a pariah. Jerry might start to acquire marine features like shark skin, gills, or multiple rows of teeth. His hair might start to move as if he’s underwater all the time. Someone who’s afraid of damnation might develop a conspicuous devil’s mark or start to reek of sulfur. You could acquire a totem spirit or animal familiar, whether you want one or not. In any case, your tells should build toward the phage you will inevitably become.

Sweepers

Whether PC or Nemesis, the only thing that really matters for a Sweeper is how much Serenity is coursing through their veins. When doing their job (tracking pariahs, enforcing quarantine, and generally dealing with miasmic threats) their default target number is 3. To get to 4 or 5, they have to mainline some Serenity. Of course, this only helps when dealing with miasma; versus mundane threats, 3 is the limit.

A Sweeper on Serenity isn’t immune to miasmic powers, but they have an easier time keeping their cool. The real danger comes when cool turns to cold. A Sweeper goes cold when they don’t roll any failures. Mechanically, that means their next combat roll should be all-out offensive. Thematically, it means they become a stone cold sociopath, capable of inflicting bone-chilling brutality on their fellow man.

Like pariahs, Sweepers should also have some fears. They determine what kinds of horrors an infected location brings to life... if they’re not doping with Serenity. Sweepers don’t suffer taint, but they can become infected. This happens any time a miasmic threat drains all their Chi, regardless of whether they win or lose the conflict. Once infected, the Sweeper’s fears become their new traits and Serenity no longer works on them. Plus, all their friends try to kill them.

Pick Me Ups

A CDC Sweep Team tries to clear a suburban hot zone during the last days of the cover-up. They use MIB-style culture jamming to discredit witnesses and misdirect the press. They sweep the neighborhood one house at a time, cataloguing the dead and exterminating any phages they find. When one of the group gets infected, they end up in a Mexican stand-off and/or hunt each other in a deadly game of cat and hellcat.

A group of pariahs find themselves trapped in a quarantined city with a Typhoid Mary who’s greatest fear is becoming a plague-carrier. (In other words, the only thing her miasma does is infect people.) The CDC wants to kill her, a team of diabloterrorists wants to use her as a weapon, and the panicked citizens are busy lynching anyone with a hairy mole. The PCs’ only hope is to find her before the Sweepers find them, but do they help her or turn her over? If the latter, which side do they turn her over to?

The last clean city on Earth has raised a brood of children to fear nothing more than the eradication of miasma. Now, they’ve been intentionally infected in order to turn them into miasma-killers, antibodies for the world. The PCs are diabloterrorists who want to complete the transformation of the world... and these children are all that stand in their way.

Next Up: Culture jamming, civil disobedience, and tactical frivolity!