Red Flux: A New Weird Quest for Justice, Freedom and the Self

[x] Get the book you borrowed.



"I'm going to finish the job I started. I'm going to get the book and I'm going to go back to my job and get a favour from my boss for it."

"Oh my." Atyche covers a laugh with her hand. "Aren't you a hard worker? Very domestic."

You glare at her but decide against a reply. Setting off back the way you came, it takes you about twenty minutes to make way back to the apartment. The gang has gone from the street around it, leaving only blood trails and pools of crimson. You worry about Rayburn. Hopefully he'll find his way back to you.

Atyche opens the door and gestures you inside. The book is on the shelf with many others, heavy and black bound. "I've got everything I can from it, it's yours now."

"What is it exactly?" You pick it up, see the familiar stamps and lamination of the library, the expensive covers fixed around with synthetic to keep them from marking.

"An account of the minions of fate. The watcher and its ilk, as you now harbor."

It's so normal for a book containing this. For a moment you feel like the bottom of the world fell out. This morning you were just doing a normal job. Filing books, working nights for extra money. You had unrealistic plans, had dreams of making it. Had a stable world.

And now? What do you have? How many of your plans are even slightly good?

You sink down into one of the armchairs and begin to cry. Atyche's arms go around you slowly. She makes shushing noises. "It'll be okay."

"It's never been okay! Not once!"

"Leigna!" You look up to see Rayburn coming through the door. He's hurt, bloody from a dozen minor scratches, and with a black eye. His knives have disappeared. He rushes forward, then looks at Atyche. "Are you okay?"

You collect yourself, cough, then nod. "You're hurt."

"I'm okay. I was fighting with the gang when something came up out of the sewers at us. We got separated then, and I had to double back. I got in here…" He cuts off. "It's worse than it looks."

"Let me clean your wounds. You might have got red rain in them." Atyche walks around Rayburn, pushes him down into the other armchair and brings a medical kit over from the kitchen.

"How do you know how to fight so well Ray?" You lean back in your armchair. "Those knives, those moves, they weren't something a regular university student would know."

"Would you believe I learned in a university dueling society?" He says, then winces as Atyche pushes a compress against the cut above his eye.

"No."

"We're called the Eleos."

You'd kind of guessed. Leftist rebels, called anarchists by some. Criminals against the order of the city. Someone like him. Someone like him would be an obvious candidate for recruitment. You nod.

"Leigna, my cell would really like to get ahold of that book. I was sent to the library to study material like that. I have a forged version that'll stand up to scrutiny for a while, but we badly want the information inside there. It'll be a favour, and I'm willing to pay."

[ ] "Alright..." [Hand over the book, receive +1 Resources and +2 Favor (Eleos)]
[ ] "No, not yet, it's too dangerous."

"Either way. I should drive you back home. There's a city wide curfew coming down within two hours. No one allowed out."

"What about you?" You ask Atyche.

"I think I'll make myself scarce for a while. I'll look you up when I figure out a way to tamp down on your passenger." She pulls a bag out from under the desk and holds it up, her tattoos glowing. It starts to vacuum up her books, growing no larger as it does. Rayburn watches, fascinated.
"Alright" You push up, suddenly exhausted. "Let's go."



You wake up with the street lights coming on through your blinds. A police ornithopter buzzes past in the dusk, searchlights sweeping. You roll over and look down at yourself. You're still wearing your work shirt and stockings, your outer clothes discarded near the bed when you fell into it. You only intended to rest your eyes for a minute before you took a shower and ate a meal. You should do that now.

The world distorts, flickering with a red overlay. You blink, and suddenly you're upright, walking across the room.

You right to grab back control, feeling the Watcher stir within you, pulling you across the room for all your attempts to resist it. Finally it stops before your full length mirror and reaches down for your hairbrush.

That's when you manage to force your eyes shut and regain control of your body.


You snarl a little, open your eyes and glare into the mirror. Your new body is as you've always wanted it. Less thin, with shapely muscles and just enough plump to only become apparent when you tense. Your hair really is in a state, having grown and regained some of the weft and thickness that stress and cheap food had cost you.

"Why do you even care about my appearance?" You sniff. The mirror finally confronts you with a face and body that isn't a stranger's, and it has to be like this. With this passenger watching you through your own eyes.


"It's not for you."

"You're the one who tried to possess me."

"And now? I heard it. Your god denying you a place in his kingdom."


You're saved from further discourse by the phone ringing. The ring tone for your other work. You pick up, The Watcher now making no attempt to control your body. "Hello?"

"Hey Liegna, it's Foresti." Your immediate boss at the cabaret. You mostly stand bar, though you sometimes wait tables. On the busy nights they prefer the prettier and more sociable staff for the former. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I managed to get back home before the curfew." You walk to the window and peer out. A line of troops in heavy rain gear carrying automatic rifles are moving down the skybridge below, torches up.

"Has anyone else called you?"

"No? Is someone missing?"

"You know Halna? Cute, short, short hair?"

"Yeah."

"I can't get hold of her."

"She hasn't contacted me." You've got her address. You could probably get there from where you are now fairly easily, especially with the powers of the watcher you feel boiling inside you. It might be dangerous, but people like you have to stick together.

What will you do?
[ ] Go to her address by using the streets, which would be faster.
[ ] Go to her address by using using back alleys, which is unlikely to result in encounters.
[ ] Go to her address by using rooftops and balconies, which will be challenging but sneaky.
[ ] Call Cadmey and see if you'll do you a favour and track her glass.

Leigna Sheridan
Occupation: Librarian/Bartender (Part-Time)
Age: 28

Height: 179 cm
Weight: 46 kg

Your willpower is STRONG, but WEAKENING. You are worried about the future, your life, your sanity and the purpose of your existence in the universe after unpleasant revelations. Sleep is no longer safe. You are slightly happy about your changing appearance.

Your health is POOR, and IMPROVING FAST. Exposure to the red rain makes you ill. Your knees and limbs no longer ache, your breathing is easy and natural, and the wounds around your respirator plate are starting to close. Chronic fatigue seems to be a thing of the past.

Your fitness is LANGUID, but RADICALLY IMPROVING.
Your coordination is CLUMSY, and RADICALLY IMPROVING.
Your reflexes are AVERAGE, but RADICALLY IMPROVING.
Your memory is GOOD.
Your perception is GOOD, and IMPROVING.

People consider you FAIRLY ATTRACTIVE, and you DO NOT. These are BOTH IMPROVING.

You have an ADVANCED knowledge of Orgonic theory and library science. You have a GOOD understanding of politics, economics, history, mixology and medicine. You have a BASIC understanding of driving, mechanical engineering and style. You are BAD at fighting and sport.

ORGONE
You do not know any theurgy.

You have orgonic script on your hands and scalp. Your right hand can levitate and move small objects, while your left hand senses marked books and can generate a volumetric display for pathfinding. Other tattoos bolstered your health and controlled your endocrine system to autoregulate your body's natural hormones.

You have a prosthetic throat piece. It previously allowed you to eat and speak after surgical treatment of throat and esophageal cancer. The corresponding tissue is beginning to regenerate.

????
You have transformed 0 times.

You have only spoken a little bit with The Watcher.

When you broke from the Watcher's control and took control of it, it granted numerous abilities.

COMPLETE FOCUS on the Ox-Blood hue has allowed you to rapidly reshape your body to your whims. With time and effort you could become anyone, anything.

FOCUS on the Amaranth hue provides nigh-unstoppable defense and regenerative power. The world around you feels less fragile.

You are ATTUNED to the Crimson hue, which allows you to perceive and manipulate water and orgone. You suspect you can heal creatures and draw orgone out of things that do not resist it.

You are WEAKLY ATTUNED to the Flame hue, which allows you to perceive and understand primordial fire and prima materia, as well as the world that originates from it.

You are DISCONNECTED from the Vermillion hue. You may only access liminality at sunrise and sunset, transporting yourself and others between spaces.

[X] "No, not yet, it's too dangerous."
[X] Go to her address by using using back alleys, which is unlikely to result in encounters.



It doesn't take long to get dressed although circumstance forces you to opt for a skirt when the stitched thick linen slacks you had don't quite fit anymore. Pulling your raincoat on, you head out your apartment door. The corridors are silent, the other residents afraid enough of chance of getting caught up in a raid to stay inside. In the internal corridors, even the outside is muffled, the occasional gunshots and the sound of police vehicles muffled by the weight of the old building around you.

A latch door leads out into one of the alleys that runs behind this block of apartments, nicer than those at the Bottom but only marginally. The red rain leaves a the air tasting coppery, puddles of crimson rippling as the sky continues to pour down. The smell is a little noxious, but also slightly intoxicating. You clip your rebreather on to purify rather than use your mouth or nose, not wanting to give yourself any new health disorders given your tenuous circumstances.

Halna's apartment is only a few blocks away. Small high walled back gardens, fire escapes and waste containers are arrayed along the muddy walkway that runs parallel to the main roads. Wires and clotheslines run between the structures in a tangled patchwork, nearly bereft of any clothes. Patrols don't much like to come back here, and the curfew doesn't seem to have changed that. Through the cross streets, you catch glimpses of knots of police and soldiers, standing next to heavy ground cars and armoured vehicles, all wearing chemical masks and heavy waterproof clothing. The street lights are out, but it's better for you that way.

You're nearly at the fire escape that you've taken up to Halna in the past when you wanted to make a covert delivery when you notice the patrols are starting to thin and become more distant. One group, around an army truck and a pair of police armoured vehicles load up nosely and roll out down the skyway as you watch, crouching at an alley side. Perhaps there have been no more incidents to complicate things. You are brought to attention from observing of the world under the unceasing inundation of red by a screech in one of the yards.

A chittering of teeth and wet hiss alert you, a shadow in the haze leaps at you. You only manage to avoid being stricken by it by throwing your whole body to the flood, painting mud on your left side.

"What the..." You lie on your back, gasping and trying to get a good look at what attacked you.

Glossy, unblinking eyes look back at you. The creature is the size of a mountain ram, mingled features of rat and beetle. It skitters sideways, then forward a bit, menacing. A long sharp horns and a plastic, chitinous hide glitter in the dim streamers of light coming through half-curtained windows. It chitters again, a high, wetly rumbling noise that manages to be evoke unease and nausea over any other feeling.

You stagger back, grabbing the lid off a trash bin to fend it off as it leaps. Those horns are sharp, carving through metal, and its six digitigrade legs have the strength to drive you across the muddy sod into a wall. It could crush you or shred you to ribbons just like that. Breathing quickens, yours more than its. How are you going to get out of this?


"Shut up! I don't care about your stupid cosmic moralizing right now!" You duck out of the way of another strike and slip out from underneath the creature's horns. Your hands scrape across rough gravel, and there's a second sting as you feel the wounds draw the muddy rain in. You scupper back to your knees, running back for the gate in this yard to get back into the alley.

The creature shakes, attempting to free itself of the lid. You have moments to flee before it resumes the chase.


"And what can I do?!" The fire escape up to Halna's apartment rests ahead, at the end of two turns of narrowing alleys and another gravel yard. You run, your legs and lungs doing more work in a night than they have in most of your life since you were a child.

If you weren't running for your life, you'd be exhilarated.


"I…" you watch the thing chase you, legs skittering along the mud. Your body freezes in the unfamiliarity of the situation. What will you do? Can you follow through? Is this really going to be how you die!?

The Watcher's voice screams in the corners of your mind.

[ ] Listen to the Watcher (WRITE-IN)

Leigna does not begin RED FLUX as a seasoned fighter, and has only limited knowledge of theurgy and other magical techniques. She has a rational and perceptive mind honed by her experiences in academia and life in a poor settlement where her skills went to good use, but her imagination is entirely limited to what she believes herself to be able to do.

The Watcher that she now shares her body with has had thousands of years to hone abilities that she now has access to and a much more refined awareness of the mechanisms of fate. While not quite medium-aware, consider it to know everything the players do (as opposed to Leigna who only knows what she does as a character in this world).

With the help of the supernatural creature now inhabiting her, Leigna may now make decisions based on things outside of her knowledge by receiving guidance from the Watcher. This is represented by a write-in mechanic which will be available at certain points. The quality of write-ins and her relationship with Gader Hael will determine the overall success of these options.

Most, but not all, of these actions will have little to no negative consequences for her and open new possibilities for future actions.