Two men have been arrested for a domestic disturbance in Trenton, New Jersey or perhaps the same man has been arrested twice. Elroy McIntyre and ELROY MCINTYRE are sitting in separate holding cells in the Trenton Police Department Headquarters. Both men claim to be sovereign citizens who are not beholden to the laws of the United States, and more importantly, both men claim to be victims of identity theft. Elroy and ELROY claim that the domestic disturbance was the result of confronting the impostor. As far as Trenton PD can figure out, both men are who they claim to be, so the Agents have been sent in to figure out what’s going on, and eliminate any Unnatural influence at work.
THE TRUTH
Elroy McIntyre is a libertarian who recently went down the sovereign citizen rabbit hole. Wanting skip out on his taxes, his alimony payments, and the legal fees from his divorce, Elroy paid $500 for a pamphlet filled with instructions on how to separate himself from the legal fiction or “Strawman” that shares his name in order to be governed only by the laws of God. Unfortunately for Elroy, the ritual in this pamphlet was decidedly less bogus than other similar instruction manuals, and Elroy never asked which God he would be responding to.
Elroy has divorced himself from his legal identity, but has done so by inviting a being of the outer planes to inhabit his Name. The horror of the ritual led to Elroy drinking himself stupid and attempting to kill his newly-summoned doppelganger. This immediately broke the Unnatural laws of the Black Man’s that Elroy had bound himself to in the ritual, and now his life is forfeit. Before the hunting horror lurking in his Strawman could kill Elroy, Elroy’s landlord called the police over the commotion. The agents arrive on the scene the next morning, faced with two hungover sovereign citizens cooling their heels in the holding cells.
This Unnatural Person is an agent of Nyarlathotep who seeks to kill Elroy and assume his place in society in order to further it’s master’s inscrutable goals. The Strawman is identical in every way to Elroy, minus some notable Unnatural distinctions: the Strawman is not a thinking being; it is animated by Elroy’s unconscious persona, essentially a projection of his Jungian shadow. The Strawman is also driven by strange instincts, the most immediate and potentially noticeable of which is its aversion to bright lights.
People of Note
- Elroy’s Landlord, Tony Linetti: Linetti looks like a former football coach gone to seed, with the temper and demand for unwarranted respect to match. He doesn’t like Elroy, especially since the sovereign citizen has lately started to try and find ways to weasel out of paying his rent.
- What Linetti Knows: The lock on Elroy’s front door wasn’t broken or tampered with; this means whoever got inside for that massive racket must’ve had a key, or otherwise bypassed the door.
- The Cop, Jason Higgs: Higgs is tired. He worked the night shift when Elroy was picked up, and he’s about to go home when the Agents talk to him.
- What Higgs Knows: This isn’t the first time Elroy’s been arrested. He’s one violation off of losing his driver’s license, and he keeps a laminated copy of some card “explaining why the Magna Carta lets him drink and drive” in his pocket as if it were a literal get-out-of-jail-free card. The apartment was a mess when Higgs got there, but there was no sign of forced entry. Higgs will say that one of the two Elroys was definitively winning the fight when he got there, but fuck if he could say which “twin” that was now.
- The Lawyer, Al Silverstein: Silverstein is the public defender who was assigned to represent Elroy in a battery case surrounding a fistfight behind a local diner. He’s at the age where he’s reached a state of amused zen in regards to the inanities of court life.
- What Silverstein Knows: Elroy insisted on taking the stand and speaking for himself at length on nonsensical sovereign citizen “loopholes” that should’ve rendered the case moot. Elroy subsequently spent more money on his contempt of court payments than he would’ve for a private defense attorney. Silverstein still cleared Elroy of his battery charge somehow. Elroy is stubbornly independent to a fault. Silverstein also knows a fair amount about sovereign citizen crank legal theories now, and can educate the Agents.
Separating Fact From Fiction
Catching the Strawman out as an impostor is the goal of this scenario, and as such shouldn’t be something the Agents are able to accomplish by blind chance. If an Agent indicates that they “want to roll HUMINT” or any other statement without description as to the sort of tells they want to look for, or any other explanation as to how they intend to catch the impostor, the roll fails and all they are able to tell is that both Elroys believe themselves to be the true original sovereign citizen.
Similarly, forensic evidence taken from both men will be identical; fingerprints, bite prints, height, weight, blood type, and even their genetic sequences if the Agents can somehow get that processed will all indicate that both men are Elroy McIntyre. This costs 0/1d4 SAN.
Using the Elder Sign will show that both Elroys are Unnatural, and both will lose POW. Both will complain that their headache got worse, which may or may not be further hangover symptoms. Using the Voorish sign shows the Agents a hollow man in Elroy’s place, and a hunting horror somehow stuffed into a human skin in the Strawman’s place. Take 1/1d6 for seeing that Elroy is empty inside, and 1/1d10 for seeing the hunting horror.
Tests that will show conclusive results revolve around sovereign citizen rituals. This is because Elroy animated the Strawman by divorcing himself from his Name as represented by the legal fiction of ELROY MCINTYRE, the name on his government documents. According to most sovereign citizens, once divorced from your Strawman, you can be reunited with it through various methods such as filing for a driver’s license, or taking social security. If the Agents can get Elroy to willingly sign himself over to some form of government authority then the strawman will disappear from its cell, as Elroy has recaptured his Name.
Agents will know these things about sovereign citizens and their beliefs with a Law or a Bureaucracy over 50%. Law, Bureaucracy or INTx5 rolls will give this information as well. If any of the Agents work for the IRS or a police department, they get +20% to any roll to discover such information, as they may have run into this kind of thing before. Speaking to Al Silverstein in the Municipal Court building attached to the Police Department Headquarters should point them directly to the types of actions sovereign citizens avoid in order to maintain their “immunity” to legal action.
Because the Strawman is an unthinking copy of Elroy’s Jungian shadow, the two Elroys are driven by very different Motivations (see stat blocks below.) For example, Elroy will be resistant to signing a document, but the Strawman will categorically refuse even under pressure of dying.
That’s Not Me!
Both Elroy and the Strawman will insist that the person in the other cell is the impostor. If introduced to one another, they will become violent, claiming that they’re going to force the impostor to admit the truth. If they grapple for three rounds without being interrupted, the Strawman will win the fight, biting off and swallowing some piece of Elroy in order to finish assimilating his consciousness in the moment of Elroy’s death, making the disguise perfect, and granting the hunting horror human intelligence (represented by Elroy’s INT stat.)
If the Agents kill Elroy before the Strawman can, Elroy’s unconscious persona is also extinguished, leaving the Agents faced with a now undisguised hunting horror with no guiding force beyond the desire to cause maximum damage and destruction before its own death.
Killing the Strawman while it’s still in human form is as easy as shooting a handcuffed murder suspect in a police interview room, and carries all the same consequences. Once the Strawman is dead, its corpse will disintegrate in sunlight.
Killing either Elroy costs 1/1d10. Finding conclusive proof afterwards that the dead Elroy was the Strawman (such as when the corpse begins to decay in sunlight) grants the Agents 1 SAN.
If the Agents kill both and let god sort it out, that’s 1/1d10 SAN lost for each dead Elroy. Then the Handler rolls 1d100. Any result over 51 results in the real Elroy getting shot first, killing him. At that point the hunting horror bursts out of the guise of ELROY MCINTYRE and attacks the Agents. Witnessing the transformation costs 1/d10 SAN. If the Agents manage to kill the hunting horror in its unbound form, they recover 1d6 SAN.
STAT BLOCKS
ELROY MCINTYRE/SOVEREIGN CITIZEN
''The Real Slim Shady, Age 31''
STR 10 CON 10 DEX 10 INT 10 POW 10 CHA 10
HP 10 WP 10 SAN ?? BREAKING POINT ??
MOTIVATIONS: Discover the Truth — Maintain Independence — Remain Free
RITUALS: Create Unnatural Person
DESCRIPTION: A short, angry man who wouldn’t look out of place in an office building, or getting arrested for starting a fistfight in the parking lot of a Denny’s. Massively hungover.
“ELROY MCINTYRE”/LEGAL FICTION
The Other Slim Shady, Age ??'
STR 10 CON 10 DEX 10 INT 10 POW 10 CHA 10
HP 10 WP 10 SAN ?? BREAKING POINT ??
MOTIVATIONS: Hunger — Please Master — Assimilate Lawbreaker
DESCRIPTION: Physically identical in every way to Elroy McIntrye, minus the hangover.
THE UNNATURAL MAN/HUNTING HORROR
The Needle in the Strawman
STR 60 CON 30 DEX 13 INT N/A POW 21 CHA N/A
HP 45 WP 21
DESCRIPTION: A writhing mass of shadow attached to a tube-shaped body that features ever-shifting arrays of tentacles, spikes, snouts, claws, maws, and massive bat-like wings. Right now, it’s stuck in a small room and can’t teleport.
ARMOR: 10 points of bubbling matter (see RESILIENT and THING OF THE VOID).
SKILLS: Flight 75%.
ATTACKS: Bite and rend 70%, Lethality 30%, Armor Piercing 5 (see BITE AND REND).
Seize 90% (see SEIZE).
UNLIMITED COSMIC POWER, ITTY BITTY LIVING SPACE: Every round that the hunting horror is in combat, roll Luck to determine whether or not it bursts through the side of the building. Once it breaks through, it is exposed to sunlight (see THING OF THE VOID.)
BITE AND REND: The hunting horror can extrude a bone filled maw that is spring-loaded with enough force to shatter bones, shred flesh and even crush metal, inflicting a Lethality 30% attack on anything unlucky enough to be caught in it.
NON-TERRENE: Hunting horrors are at home in nearly any environment, as long as they are not exposed to the visible wavelengths of light (see THING OF THE VOID). Poison and disease are harmless. Unseen radiation, pressure, cold, vacuum, and other environments have no negative effects on them. They can move on the surface of Saturn, the depths of the ocean, or in open space with equal ease.
RESILIENT: A successful Lethality roll does not destroy a hunting-horror, but inflicts HP damage equal to the Lethality rating.
SEIZE: A victim seized in a hunting horror’s writhing grasp suffers the same effects as being pinned. The victim can attempt to escape with a STR test opposed by the hunting horror’s Seize test. A hunting horror can continue to take actions while keeping a victim seized. It can also squeeze a seized victim once per turn with an opposed Seize vs. STR test, inflicting 2D10 damage (which ignores body armor). This does not count as the hunting horror’s action. It can fly while holding and squeezing up to two seized targets.
THING OF THE VOID: Hunting horrors retreat from light that’s comfortable for human sight. Bright light inflicts 1 HP per turn. The dazzling flash of a stun grenade inflicts 3D6. The full light of day sears a hunting horror to gray dust. Fire inflicts double damage. All these effects ignore its armor.
UNNATURAL BIOLOGY: The hunting-horror’s physiology would baffle any biologist. Making a called shot for “vitals” or another apparently vulnerable area inflicts normal damage, with no special game effect.
SAN LOSS: 1/1D10 to witness its transformation, or to see for the first time.
Credits
This was an entry to the 2020 shotgun scenario contest. Written by Bird Bailey