Séances

OOPAs - Out-Of-Place Artefacts - are mysterious, intricate, and dangerous. To most Scholars of the occult, this makes them a fascinating challenge. The process by which OOPAs are assembled, disassembled, and investigated is through a Séance.

A Séance is mostly a puzzle - hence it being a Scholar skill. Séances must be led by a Scholar, as nobody else has the mental training to take apart an occult object without breaking it. However, as channelling the Séance takes a great deal of concentration, it will always require at least one other participant.

What are OOPAs?

Each OOPA is an object with something occult about it, whether that’s a curse, a possession, a haunting, an otherworldly Infection, or something stranger still. Each of these is unique, though some may be similar. These eldritch qualities are referred to as the OOPA’s Core. (Examples might include the ghost of a kindly grandmother, or the last trick of a lost devil.) A core cannot exist in isolation outside the temporary balance of a Séance, and must normally be stored in a housing: an otherwise mundane object that contains it, and which it acts through.

The core will interact with its housing to produce the overall effect. If the core is a malevolent poltergeist and the housing is a sewing kit, it might stab the user with needles; moving the same core to a housing of a puzzle box might lead it to un-solve itself, making it much more difficult to open. (Any mundane object can be a housing, but if the refs didn’t provide it, please ask first!)

How do Séances Work?

To perform a Séance, the Scholar must prepare a suitable flat surface, and place the OOPA they wish to take apart on it. All participants should be seated, or otherwise settled, around that same flat surface. The Séance will involve solving a puzzle, usually with a non-obvious solution, based on either a deck of cards, a set of tangrams, a chessboard, or a tower of blocks.

Once the Séance begins, the Scholar cannot speak. They may bring the correct puzzle to the surface, but cannot then touch any of its components. A Séance has a time limit: stronger cores may be channelled safely for longer periods of time, but will require more difficult puzzles to fully control. An example Séance card is below.

To begin, the Scholar will silently read the Séance card, which will instruct them to draw a certain number of burden cards, each of which applies a specific restriction. (Burdens increase in number as the core becomes more powerful.) These must be divided amongst the other participants, as evenly as possible. The timer begins as soon as the scholar begins drawing burdens. Some example Burden cards are below.

Once the Burdens have been distributed, the group must then complete a puzzle relating to the core, in order to move it from its current housing to another (prepared) housing. In a typical Séance, the other participants will begin moving pieces around, at which point the Scholar will signal them without speaking as to whether or not they are going in the right direction. (Non-verbal noises, nodding, shaking your head, thumbs up/down, and miming are allowed.)

In the example above, Grandmother’s Wishes, the Scholar will bring the tangram set to the Séance surface, before starting the correct timer and, quickly, distributing the two required Burdens to the other participants. They will then begin moving pieces, with the Scholar signalling them when they go right or wrong. (A clever Scholar might signal the right approach by miming a small shape, then bigger, then bigger.)

If the puzzle is completed before time is up, the Scholar should call “stop” aloud, to signal to other participants that the Séance is over. If not, they should call “stop” when the time is elapsed, in which case participants are likely to suffer harm for the failure to safely re-contain the spirit, as it snaps back to its former housing - or, in extreme cases, may escape.

Once a core is re-housed, the properties of the new OOPA are not guaranteed, but they are reasonably predictable, and a Scholar with an Eye for the Occult can generally tell what sort of thing a given core will do. (For example, Grandmother’s Wishes will almost always be benevolent.)

Players may only have one OOPA at any given time.