Here is the penultimate entry in this little subseries. Getting a bit spooky with this one; UA is a horror game, after all.
The Mad Leading the Mad, Part 4
Many serial killers have been called soulless, sociopathic,
heartless. Often there’s an element of metaphor, or at least
exaggeration to these accusations. But for Steven Smith, it’s
literal.
Smith had no upbringing. He wasn’t born. A glitch in the universe shat him out, fully formed, fourteen years ago. Well, fully formed, sans any kind of blood, bone, internal organs, or soul. If you haven’t already inferred, he is a nonentity (see UA2 Core Book, p. 304). Of the roughly decade and a half he’s existed, he has spent very little doing anything of note, which is typical of his kind, and necessary for his survival. He wore sweater vests and khakis, walked into a cubicle at a struggling temp firm and stared at its wall eight hours a day. After clocking out, he found a secluded alley, 24-hour diner booth, or the like to spend the night doing nothing.
This changed one night, nearly a year ago now, in the darkened Hot Topic of an isolated shopping mall. Smith sat motionless in the changing room he’d selected to spend the night, the college-age employee either having forgotten he’d gone inside or failing to give a shit when they locked up. The floor-to-ceiling grate outside the store rattled up, and a thanatomancer (see Postmodern Magick, p. 111) by the name of Florence Simon walked inside, pushing her sacrifice ahead of her.
As she explained, in brutal detail, her plans for the poor homeless woman she had chosen to harvest a sig from, the aura of terror wafted to Smith like a macabre apple pie on a windowsill. Silently, he unlatched the door to the changing room and watched the proceedings from the shadows.
Over the next three hours, the butcher did her work and cleaned up afterwards. She never even noticed Smith staring. Her victim did, but by that point she had been overwhelmed with agony, her screams long grown indistinct, her tongue cut out. Simon left dragging two heavy black trash bags and a fleshy fetish in a pouch hanging from around her neck. Enthralled, Smith followed.
Simon was on the warpath with an enemy cabal. She had just started charging up nightly for the span of a week in anticipation of some supremely grisly workings. However, on the third night, she caught Smith, because he had become overwhelmed with bloodlust and wanted to join in. Startled and angry to have a carefully planned charging rite ruined, the death mage reflexively unleashed a significant blast on Smith. She expected him to fall to literal pieces, but he just kept kneeling over her gagged and flailing sacrifice, digging fistfuls of meat from his chest cavity.
Simon went from upset to frantic. She struck out with her flensing knife, severing three fingers from the philosophical zombie. Though they were coated in the sacrifice’s blood, the stumps did not bleed themselves. From this point, her rage and terror escalated to twisted reverence.
Nonentities are immune to magick, but, though it’s vanishingly rare, they can still practice it. Smith’s obsession with suffering and pain dovetailed beautifully with thanatomancy. He also had the benefit of a devoted tutor. Unaware of what Smith was, Simon had interpreted his immunity to, and fixation on torture as a sign he was some kind of cenobite-esque entity, perhaps one she had attracted after her storied career as a ritualistic killer.
Unfortunately for both, but mercifully for the local unhoused population, their morbid attraction had allowed Simon to forget her feud until it was too late. The cabal got the drop on her, and although Smith harvested four significant charges in the aftermath, she received a nasty stab wound. It wouldn’t have been fatal, though she was in and out of consciousness for most of a day. But once Smith had finished with her attackers, he took one last boon from his mentor.
Short-lived as his training was, Smith learned enough of Simon’s ideology to know how to cover his tracks. It had been important to Simon to conduct her sacrifices in public places, but to leave no trace behind. So became Smith’s practice. He disappeared from his job, causing a minor kerfuffle, but before anyone could decide if they wanted to check if he had any emergency contacts, his firm went under. No one who knew him before ever thought of him again.
Now, Smith spends his days stalking and planning his sacrifices, and carries them out at night. His body count is in the hundreds. He has evaded erasure by the universe only because no one has ever associated him with his actions. He takes teeth or knucklebones as fetishes, which now weigh down his pockets, but do not slow his pursuit. He is stealthy, steady, and perfectly forgettable. And no one who he chooses to cross paths with lives to tell the tale.
There is one other oddity about him: he never casts a spell. He never fully learned how from Simon, and moreover, he’s obsessed with the process of the sacrifice and its resultant emotions. He couldn’t care less about exercising mystic power. He is a hollow man suffused with the equivalent mojo of several dozen major charges. It’s unlikely mundane authorities will catch him, but unnatural phenomena have been dogging him for months now. Surely, when he’s discovered by the occult underground of one of the cities his trail of blood passes through, he will go out with a terrible bang.
Steven Smith, Soulless Thanatomancer
Obsession: Ritualistic murder and the resultant froth of pain, fear, and misery in the victim.
As a nonentity, Smith has no passions and does not face stress checks. He has a base rating of 15% in all abilities.
Thanatomancer 75%: Casts Rituals, Casts Gutter Magick
Soulless Killer 75%: Substitutes for Pursuit, Substitutes for Struggle, Coerces Violence
