“By no means has the day been special.
Burgers were flipped, milkshakes were stirred and fries were fried. There was another little scuffle in the queue to your counter: Two white males, aged 25-40 loudly argued over politics and soon enough their argument turned violent, so that you and two of your co-workers had to break up the fight.
Funny, now that you think back, you are having a hard time remembering what the argument was about in the first place. When the fights first started, you were very keen on trying to understand the background of the arguments. Back then, you would get on the internet and research everything on the topic as soon you got back home. Inadvertently, your interest faded and you stopped caring.
You turn on your television set, a gorgeous 40 inch HDTV you bought on Black Friday, and surf channels. Usually, commentary on political events and policy making is a sufficiently good reason for you to change channels once more, but this time you linger longer than normal and something draws your eye.
This particular program has a white-haired, bespectacled middle-aged man almost feverishly explaining, how the attacks of 9/11 were funded by the current democratic administration with help of the teacher’s union.
A very elaborate flowchart on a massive blackboard is at the center of the television presentation. Its wooden frame is ornamented with strange and foreign symbols, which seamlessly bleed into the flowchart and the other way around. The hypnotic chants of the TV presenter elicit a strong response in your perception. Your senses numb until you finally cannot see, hear or feel.
Now, you know.”
Ancient horrors stalk the night, determined on bringing the world as we know it to its knees.
Stale and overused as this notion might be, bordering too closely to cliché as to be taken seriously, it remains cosmic fact.
There has been an increasing tendency within the news media to engage in controversial political debate. Aside from the merit of certain positions, the political commentary and reporting has become an occult undertaking.
The teachers’ unions, the dockworker unions and several other unions are working in unison with liberal media outlets to conjure horrors beyond human comprehension. They go by many names, “The Truly Free”, “Order of the Peacock” or the “99%” being only a few. Blood sacrifice and unspeakable rituals, propaganda and misinformation are widely used tools to further their agenda.
200 years ago, a small cabal of avatars and adepts stumbled upon this ancient conspiracy and has since engineered means to counter any nefarious plans by the 99%. Dubbed “the 1%”, they have greatly struggled to come into positions of relatively modest power and reach against almost insurmountable odds.
The 1% are few and mostly use their position in the news media to spread their message and counter the global campaigns of misinformation by the 99%. The 1% strongly believe that education and knowledge are the appropriate means to fight their powerful enemies. They have devised ways to magically enhance their broadcasts and send out tiniest fractions of charges with each program. Those 1/1000ths of fractions carry the seed of wisdom and enlightenment.
The way they choose to conduct themselves in front of the public serves two purposes.
Firstly, by inflaming the political debate, they force viewers to engage more strongly, either by agreement or dissent. No matter what your personal outlook on things might be, the 1% force you to choose sides and involve yourself.
Lastly, the extreme nature of their statements hides their true agenda in plain sight. It is hard for the 99% to make out who is a rambling madman and who a legitimate threat to their plans to end the world.
It remains unclear what other organizations think of those two groups and whether they perceive them as actual power players. 200 years of summoning eldritch abominations is a relatively recent pastime after all.
Designer’s notes:
The entire concept revolves around the question: What if the current political climate in the United States has occult reasons. What if the Tea Party and the associated TV pundits are actually the good guys? What if there is a method to their madness?
Essentially, this is a very American thing to me. TV programs like “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” poke fun at the current political debate and go into lengths to establish certain pundits as frothing madmen.
I could never shake the feeling, that there must be something to the way FOX News portrayed certain events and the sheer mass of followers channels and programs like that attract, compelled me to look further down the rabbit hole.
However, aside from a world where the Queen of Hearts reigns supreme and speaking animals have merry tea parties, I could not see anything else. For Unknown Armies though, I like to imagine that most things I hold dear and true are subverted and mean more or less the opposite. Thus, the whole idea of assigning clear morals and secret incentives to the 1% and the 99%.
Unknown Armies and related names are the Intelectual Property of Greg Stolze and John Tynes and protected by Copyright. These items have been used unofficially and quoted exclusively as reference with no infringement on any associated rights intended and without implying endorsement by the copyright holder. Other contents of this articles are published under the following license:
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Unknown Armies und damit verbunde Namen sind Geistiges Eigentum von Greg Stolze und John Tynes und urheberrechtlich geschützt. Diese Elemente wurden inoffiziell und ausschließlich als Referenz zitiert ohne die Absicht damit verbundene Rechte anzufechten und ohne eine Billigung durch den Rechteinhaber zu implizieren. Andere Inhalte dieses Artikels werden unter folgender Lizenz veröffentlicht:
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