Eternal Cubicle Denizens
I’ve got a review next week if Mohinder finally comes in. Quarterly reports due in two weeks but I think we’ve synergized with logistics. *harsh cough followed by weeze* So we should be 5×5 for the stockholders meeting before earnings call
—According to the nameplate on the desk Jeff Carter, Regional Manager, spoke whilst experiencing cardiac arrest and dying whilst talking.
So what does a sanity hit that puts you below zero actually look like. For some, it doesn’t. For some it simply means that their minds are unable to process what’s happening. Take for example corporate office employees with their ISO certifications and their agile sprint planning and meal planning schedule. These are people who are routinely pushed beyond the limits of normal human cognition and so often that they begin to offload most of their lives to structured processes either physically documented or permanently burnt into rote memory. It becomes instinctual for them. Get up, make coffee, doom scroll morning emails, set action items, go to the bathroom, shower (the order of those two recently switched for efficiency as part of learnings from a seminar on the agile Improvement Kata), consume coffee pouring a second cup in a travel mug, drive to train station, and so on. They will travel up to sixty miles to an office building before actually having a conscious thought. Then it all goes away.
One day, that pesky apocalypse comes. That thing that ends all things. The harsh reality of our tiny place in the universe and the rank and utter insignificance of all we hold dear. How does one do that math? How does one justify what they have become, what they have sacrificed, their families, their dreams, years of slivering off small slices of their own soul for something that is now gone. Some simply can not. Instead, they dissociate completely. The horror of the situation serves as the rebar to the mortar of their delusion.
Get up, fuss with a powerless coffee maker and it’s now fur covered grounds, thumb mindlessly on their cell phone, further befoul a dry, rotting toilet before ineffectually hitting the handle, stand naked in a burned out bathtub that used to be a nice addition to their home, consume dirty water from the earlier coffee maker debacle before pouring a second cup in a travel mug and then walking 30 miles to the remains of a burned out office building in the heart of the city, otherwise known as ground zero. They then sit there for four hours, attending meetings that may have no other participants although sometimes they do if there’s more of them about, they then leave the office and kill a rat or find the remains of a dog finally succumb to air borne toxins in an alley. In their mind they’re buying a dodgy hot dog from a street vender. They then return to the building, and eat at their desk like a typical all star overachiever. After another 4 hours they either head to the smoking crater that was the local bar, or commute home. The poisons of the city; gas leaks, radiation from bombs or nuclear plant meltdowns, sewers exploding, will have saturated this poor soul all day, making them toxic to even be around as they trod back to the suburbs. They will keep doing this, until they too meet the same fate as the dog they had for lunch. However, this is a powerful delusion, and the stars have become right… they simply don’t stop. They don’t even notice their own deaths. They shamble, rotting, still trying to make those quarterly earnings figures.
They are not aggressive in nature, as they are apt to avoid a particularly obnoxious beggar or other source of drama unless it make them even more late for their meetings, however being close to them for too long, or finding one’s domicile will create massive toxic risk. They’re literally seeping a caustic cocktail of all the toxins they’ve encountered such that they’re a walking, sweating fugu fish liver. They will VIOLENTLY attack with blind animalistic rage however if ANYTHING threatens their delusions or forces them to deviate from their routines.
SPECIAL POWERS
Toxicity: The creature itself is a “sin eater” of poison and radiation. Feel free to treat them as a source of poison for whatever is tainting your games. For all intents and purposes both themselves, their office and their homes are not safe for players to stay in long. Assign damage and sickness as is prevalent in your own apocalypse.
Suburban Zombies, travellers of the starbucks
STR: 15-17
CON: 15-17
SIZ: 13
DEX: 15-17
INT: 15-17
POW: 1
HP: 14-15
Damage Bonus: +1D4
Move: 7½ meters/yards in a combat round
ATTACKS
Attacks per round: 1
Fighting attacks: Bite 30% damage 1D3, Club/laptop/weapon 1D8+1+Damage Bonus
Armor: none.
Skills: Office work
Sanity Loss: 0,1D3 if alive due to signs of poison, 1/1D8 if dead
