It gave me the following idea for an unusual way to create potency: just set up shop as a witch doctor and convince rural people that if they bring you peoples' skins that you will be able to provide valuable magical services for them. Claim you can cure their parents' cancer, or find a lost child. Really work their emotions regarding their loved ones in order to lure them into doing something really horriifc for you, like bringing you somebody's skin.

I suppose the icing on the cake would be that the skin itself doesn't do anything but give you more potency. It's all just a ruse to make normal people act in evil ways.

Hmm. A magical teenage girl who gets Potency by mutilating the children she's trusted to babysit?

This reminds me of the story of Adam in the UK.

And more wiki info on Muti killing (or "medecine killing" as they call it): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_murder

How else do you think Pat Robertson can do 700-pound leg lifts and tell the future?

Really the more story-appropriate scenario is to have the PC's unknowingly working toward the evil magician's goals, so that the more success they have in the setup chapters, the tougher the final showdown will be. Doing it the other way around is anticlimactic.

I'd suggest making both available. As long as they just do as they're told to get the nuyen, potency increases. If they get a case of morality, they may realize what's going on and be able to (at little or no direct pay) interfere with their replacements as they try to figure out how and where to fight the mage.

That would be your cult leader. It would be very easy for a mage to lure in gullible and lost people with a little magic and get their own manson family thing going on.

I ran a campaign sort of like this years back. The team in question was was in a rural area doing an investigation. The small town, a few hundred people, mostly dispersed, that they sort of operated from was attacked one night with dozens killed and mutilated. The team investigated and found it was a twisted shaman and his cult. Thing of it was, they were practically worshipping a Wendigo (read up on them and you will see how that fits). The team hit back and killed most of the followers, but the shaman and Wendgio escaped. The rest of the campaign was chasing them and trying to stop them. After a series of smaller attacks and the shaman recruiting some new members, there was a big showdown in the wilds in what is now northern Canada. After each successful attack, the shaman gained more potency and power. In the end, the Wendigo was just corrupting the shaman to make him good eating. When the shaman fell badly wounded, the Wendigo carried him off and ate him. The team caught it enjoying its meal and killed it, putting an end to the campaign.

You twisted muther.... I love it.

Darn gypsies!

Hmmm... reminds me of the religious groups that have their people doing things like selling/preaching at airports. (A friend of my sister in college got into that crazy thing. Very, very crazy)

You would. Dumpshockers usually would love such stuff.

does that make 2 fans?

it was a one-ton leg lift. Jesus is Pat Robertson's personal trainer!

The entire Harlequin campaign was based on ruining someone. It was an ancient elven vengence rite that showed the one side could destroy everything the target loved and held dear and that there was nothing that they could do to stop it. I think there is more about that in the Tir Tairgire sourcebook, if you can find one.

On a less lethal note, but kind of like the Gargoyles reference, there is something else a villian could do. The villian, or aggrieved party, could harass the target with humiliating scenes. If they are married, have a hacker get access to their account and charge things like hotel rooms, jewerly and flowers to their account. When the spouse finds that, they will have some explaining to do. Along the same lines, have flowers sent to the wife but with another woman's name on the card, and have a hacker raid the florist's system to make it look like sending flowers to the other woman was a regular thing. You could also hire a woman to show up at a restaraunt, or where ever, the target is and make contact. That should also cause a scene.

Here's a good one I read a while back: when the target and girlfriend/wife are together, have a woman storm in carrying an "inflatable date" and throw it at the man saying stuff like that's all he's fit to be with and asking wishing the wife good luck with the pig.

The target could also find themselves getting very odd messages because he has accounts at several "adult dating service" sites, the more embarassing the better. They could also end up subscribed to raunchy pornography as well.

Have an ugly troll stripper show up at a business meeting, hired by the target, assuming that would shock and offend the other members. If not, use whatever metatype, etc. that would offend.

There are plenty of things that could be done just to harass the target into madness. One fun one is to keep a person's car topped off with gas, especially if they are very possessive about their car. It will drive them crazy wondering who is driving their car to fill it up.

Or just turn all the lights green at the same time. Instant gridlock. Something else would be to have the grid cause all vehicles to pump the brakes while driving. That jumpy motion would be sure to cause lots of motion sickness. Hmmm, maybe that could be an angle for a cabal of dry cleaners and auto detailers: it would be sure to bring both lots of business.

Seeing how car accidents are responsible for a lot of deaths each year doing something like that is probably no joke. Like, it would be legitimately evil.

That's pretty awesome, but how would you work that into a campaign?

What campaign?

See, though, the whole "indian burial ground" is extremely cliche. If that did come up in an adventure I'd personally see it more as a comedy detail than a scary detail. I would have trouble taking it seriously and would be more tempted to just keep cracking jokes about it in-character.

I once did something vaguely like that on a Halloween game. In the middle of the night in a museum gallery filled with vintage weapons a whole bunch of ghosts materialized and sprayed the party with automatic fire using M14s.

Right. Think about it this way: most PCs are mercenary mass-murdering bastards and yet they're STILL not allowed to be twisted adepts and magicians. In order to be a twisted adept or magician you have got to be head and shoulders more evil than just an ordinary mass murderer for hire.

Only if cast within that magic hour right after breaking.