SPIRITs

by Tara Zuber

One last chance. When a person has filled their life with cruelty and injustice despite opportunities to grow and change, they sometimes get one last chance.

They get you.

Your team delves into the minds of the hopeless—the Scrooges of the world—and finds some small degree of salvation. Your clients are a mess of insecurities and hatreds that have solidified into a coal lump of a person. You help them rediscover their spark, to become a light in the world once more.

You’re not sure how you got this gig or how your clients are chosen, but you do know that you’re doing good.

And that’s all that matters.

Right?

SPIRITs

The Special Philanthropic Identity Reprogramming and Internalization Technicians do not work for money or fame. They work for results only they can achieve, the good only they can do. They offer redemption to the irredeemable, beating back the world’s darkness with hearts reignited by hope and love.

The world is teeming with terrible people. Heartless CEOs who build their empires from others’ bones. Twisted people who promise comfort and provide pain. Liars. Cheats. Cold misers who demand everything and give nothing.

Scumbags who get one last chance.

Clients.

The SPIRITs dive into their minds and confront their darkest fears and deepest anxieties. They investigate the web of people who have molded them and unearth their good memories and forgotten passions. SPIRITs meet these louses face-to-face, share memories and stories from the clients’ own lives, and convince them to change. Those fortunate enough to receive a visit from SPIRITS think of them as dreams, passing ghosts who turned their lives around in their darkest hour.

The Mental Landscape

SPIRITs do not slip down into their clients’ minds and commune with electrical impulses and foggy morasses of thoughts and memories. For one night, their client’s mind is given order and shape—a mental landscape in which the SPIRITs can work.

SPIRITs must be ready for anything—cities, old houses, bayous, carnivals, or spaceships. The landscapes obey their own rules; the SPIRITs must do the same. People from the client’s memories fill the mental landscape, living out “normal” lives for the night the SPIRITs visit, and wearing colors that indicate relationships and opportunities for the spectral agents.

Every mental landscape is unique to the client, concrete, and full of dangers. The clients did not become the way they are because they thought happy thoughts.

The Figments

Memories aren’t the only inhabitants of the mental landscape. As the mind coalesces into a specific place, the client’s three strongest fears, doubts, and anxieties also take form.

• The angel-of-mercy doctor pushing a syringe into an IV.
• The sea dragon toppling villages with giant waves.
• The queen bee wielding rumors with a sweet smile.
• The news editor publishing misery with every headline.

Each client has their own figments of the imagination, each secure in a stronghold—a lair—within the mental landscape. If the SPIRITs can take down these figments, convincing the client to change gets that much easier. But the figments are always the ones with the power, the keepers of secrets. They will not go quietly.

The Keys

The clients’ minds are filled with more than nightmares. Memories of people they know fill their mental landscapes: some from long ago and some from a chance meeting the day before. Many of these people have only an average effect on the client, even those tied to the same strong emotions as the figments.

Three of their memories, though, are important to the SPIRITs’ work: the people who left sticky fingerprints all over the client’s mind and heart. The people they’ll never be able to wash away. These keys are the person the client feels they’ve let down, the person whose good opinion matters to the client, and the person the client somehow loves.

These three keys are almost always vital tools the SPIRITs must use to convince the client to change.

The Dossier

The SPIRITs have a secret weapon in their mission: the dossier. Information. The dossier squeezes into the SPIRITs’ minds like an ice cream headache while the client’s mental mists are condensing into the fixed landscape. The knowledge is instant; they know the client’s name and the strong emotions that hold them in thrall.

As the SPIRITs meet people in the mental landscape, the dossier associates information with each name. This person is associated with one of the figments. The client loves that person. That person is a figment. With the dossier, the SPIRITs know all the key people as soon as they meet them.

The edge may be slight, but when dealing with a mind of tangled memories filtered through the client’s emotions, the SPIRITS rely on this crucial information to finish each job.

Setting Creation

As a Quick Start Adventure for Fate Accelerated, SPIRITs has everything you need to jump right into your first session. Before you start, discuss the broader setting with your group, perhaps even reading aloud the descriptions of The Mental Landscape, The Figments,_ The Keys_, and The Dossier so everyone is on the same page.

At the start of play, explain the current client to your players and ask them to fill in one or two additional negative aspects—with the accompanying faces and locations—associated with Anthony Small listed below.

Current Client: Anthony Small

The current client is Anthony Small, a client desperately in need of some redemption. The dossier doesn’t give any immediate information, but it’s clear that Anthony is a cold man who hides his loneliness under a fierce temper and a bully’s demeanor.

Anthony once wanted to be an artist, but gave up his passion for the security of cash. He delights in forcing others to also give up the things they love, justifying his sacrifices through their loss. He is an influential man who could do a lot of good in the world, if he ever had the care to do so.

Anthony’s Landscape: Prohibition City

Anthony Small’s mental landscape takes the form of a Prohibition-era city complete with the Mob, speakeasies, and jazz. Heavy on style and light on accuracy, the city stinks of illegal booze and money. Cops stuff themselves at Rita’s, trading smiles and small talk with mobsters. Down the road, a street band jangles out a danceable tune. Flappers’ fringes fly as their heels kick and hands wave. Down a hall and a flight of stairs, smoother music seeps out over a smoky room like oil. A bartender pulls out a bottle of the “real stuff” with a wink and a marked-up price. A city of vices that feign at virtue on Sunday mornings. This is the shape of Anthony’s mind.

Ask your players for images they associate with a Prohibition-era city and work them into the landscape. Note down some of the themes of Anthony’s story—deception, hypocrisy, sacrifice—to guide the tone of game while inside his mind.

Negative Aspects

Anthony’s mind has three negative aspects, the primary negative emotions (e.g., fears, doubts, anxieties, cynicisms) that have helped shape him into a horrible person who refuses to change his ways. The SPIRITs will strive to change these aspects and redeem Anthony’s future.

Two of the three negative aspects for Anthony Small are below; your players will create the third negative aspect:

• Someday I Will Die Alone
• Art Is a Waste

Creating the Third Negative Aspect

Give each of your players an index card on which to write down a possible negative aspect. The negative aspects affect how Anthony acts in his daily life. They will be something that limit his perception, predispose him toward destructive behaviors and disengagement, or arrange his priorities in a toxic way. Ask each player to write down an idea for the third aspect on their card.

Collect the index cards from your players and read each out loud. Let the players decide which aspect they prefer. If they can’t reach a consensus, work with them to re-word one of the aspects to something they do agree on or pick one for them to keep things moving.

Faces

Each negative aspect has three faces. The first is the figment or mental avatar of the emotion behind the aspect. The second and third faces are memories of real people outside the client’s mind: someone who helped to create the emotion or who has recently reinforced it. The faces for each aspect are unique and do not overlap.

Aspect: Someday I Will Die Alone

Figment: Naomi Pine, owner of a popular club and all the dancers within it.

Originated by: Angela Small, his mother who abandoned him as a child.

Reinforced by: Quinn, his administrative assistant who writes mean blog posts about him.

Aspect: Art Is a Waste

Figment: Felix Morello, the city’s criminal kingpin.

Originated by: Gerald Maddox, his uncle—a painter who died poor.

Reinforced by: Alice, his niece who wants money to attend art school.

Ask your players to think of three faces for the third negative aspect: one figment, one originator, and one reinforcer. Figments need a name and a brief explanation of how or why they have power and influence in the mental landscape. The people who originated and reinforced the negative aspect need a name, a relationship to the client, and a brief explanation of how they’re related to the negative aspect.

Write the names and information of the six people who are memories, not figments, on separate index cards.

Developing the Figments

Select approaches for the three figments. Each figment has one approach at Great (+4), one at Good (+3), two at Fair (+2), one at Average (+1), and one at Mediocre (+0). In addition, they have three aspects and up to two stunts. If you already have ideas for the aspects and stunts, add those. Otherwise, create them during gameplay. The figments have three stress boxes and one moderate consequence.

The Lairs

Like a mad scientist and her lab or a king and his castle, each of the three figments has a stronghold or lair. Action, secrets, and memories congregate around these key locations. A lair is where the figment has the most power in the mental landscape. Each figment designates one approach that’s tied to the lair; any action the figment takes involving that approach receives a +2 to the roll.

Naomi’s lair is Le Rêve, her nightclub and speakeasy (Flashy). The spacious club with its generous dancefloor, real crystal chandeliers, and large booths is the place to be seen in the city. Playing at Le Rêve can make a musician’s career. With a bit of money and the right words, patrons can find themselves gaining access to Backstage, an intimate speakeasy with real alcohol, smoother music, and beautiful people all willing to trade their bodies for some coin.

Felix’s lair is Rita’s, his legitimate business and favorite restaurant (Careful). He holds court from a wall booth from which he has full view of the front and back entrances and kitchen door. He keeps an office on the upper floor. The office and restaurant both are full of art Anthony would have painted, had he stuck with art. The restaurant also has a couple trap doors and tunnels out to the street in case Felix needs to make a quick escape. Criminals and cops alike mingle freely at Rita’s and enjoy the superb spaghetti made from Felix’s “own grandmother’s recipe.”

Ask your players to decide on a lair for the third figment. If needed, prompt your players with the setting and figment descriptions. What kinds of places fit into the setting? Where would the figment spend most of their time? Add a name and a brief description that sets the mood and explains how the figment is connected to the lair, including which of the figment’s approaches is tied to the stronghold.

Relationships

Each client’s mind is a network of connections between haunted thoughts, persistent memories, and the people associated with each. Hidden among these connections are the dreams, desires, and passions the client has forgotten or repressed. Some have been so pushed down, they are present only as colors tying memories together, hinting at deeper relationships. The SPIRITs use these relationships to change their clients’ perception of their darker beliefs and remind them of the humanity they’ve lost.

Take the six cards you previously created when developing the non-figment faces and mix them in with six blank cards. These twelve cards and the three figments are the primary people your players will interact with during gameplay. You’ll use this deck of cards to establish the keys the SPIRITs need to connect with in order to save Anthony.

Keys for Anthony

Hold out the stack of twelve cards and ask your players to draw three. The first card is someone Anthony feels he has failed. On the NPC’s card write “Key: Failed.” The second card is someone whose good opinion matters to Anthony. On this card write, “Key: Opinion Matters.” The third card is someone Anthony loves romantically or as family. On this card write, “Key: Loves.”

If a card is blank, ask your players to make up a new NPC. The NPC needs a name and relationship to the client. Fill in the blank index cards as your players meet new NPCs. Using this index card system ensures new NPCs have a built-in relationship to the other characters in the landscape.

Color Groups

Each color group is associated with a dream, desire, or passion the client has forgotten or repressed. SPIRITs locate and talk with everyone wearing a certain color, trying to discover how those people are linked and why that link matters to Anthony. During gameplay, encourage your players to exercise their inner therapist as they determine what each color means by figuring out what the four people have in common—no matter how odd—and why that commonality is important. Players can then convert these meanings into aspects.

Shuffle the three key people back into the stack of twelve and mix up the cards. Shuffle the cards, face down, into three piles of four. Ask the players to assign a color to each pile. Write these colors down. Then, without showing the players, write down who is in each color’s pile. Leave the blanks to fill in later.

When you describe these characters to your players, incorporate each character’s color into their clothing. For example, a character may wear a green tie or red shoes. Remember to only describe each character wearing one color to avoid confusing your players.

Color: Orange	Color: Violet	Color: Green
Relationship	Relationship	Relationship Belief in the Improbable
Aspect	Aspect	Aspect Little is Impossible
1.	1.	1. Alice (green skirt)
2.	2.	2. Angela Small (green scarf)
3.	3.	3. _____ (green tie)
4.	4.	4.

Character Creation

SPIRITs works best with Fate Accelerated characters. Because all action in SPIRITs is an exertion of the character’s willpower, they could conceivably have any skill. How players approach and accomplish actions matters more in _SPIRITs _than detailing skills for each mental landscape.

Character creation follows the same process explained in Fate Accelerated Edition. Instruct your players to select their aspects following the guidelines in Fate Accelerated Edition (page 8): characters have one approach at Good (+3), two at Fair (+2), two at Average (+2), and one at Mediocre (+0).

Once the mental landscape is shaped, it is concrete. Everything within it operates by the rules of the setting. Everyone, including the memories, figments, and SPIRITs, interacts with that landscape as though it were a real place, so approaches work as they do in any other Fate setting.

Aspects for SPIRITs

In SPIRITs, the characters are experienced technicians who don’t remember anything about their lives outside of their jobs. They do, however, remember their past clients.

Players should create at least three aspects: a high concept, a trouble, and one additional aspect based on their character’s previous experiences helping clients or their relationships within the team. SPIRITs can have up to five aspects, but more can be filled in during the missions.

Since the mental landscapes the SPIRITs enter vary wildly, character aspects must be setting-agnostic. Instead of being The World’s Best Swordfighter, a character has Whatever the Weapon…. In a castle landscape, this may mean being an excellent swordfighter. In a landscape of suburban malls, however, the aspect could mean the character is an expert with a cell phone and social media.

If your players struggle with writing good aspects, ask them to think about how their characters approach life and what experiences they have had as SPIRITs. For example, why do or don’t they enjoy being a SPIRIT? Have they fallen in love with someone else’s memory? Do they easily blend in with the client’s mind or do they always stick out? Do they have a fellow SPIRIT with whom they prefer to work?

Pet Theories

Most SPIRITs have at least one pet theory about their work. Ask your players to consider what their character thinks about the job and what they think their “real life” might be. SPIRITs may be dead, comatose, anthropomorphized ideas, memories, dreaming, spiritual time travelers, or something else—what is their character’s pet theory? What is the character’s idea about what comes next, if they think a “next” even exists?

Opening Scene: Trouble at Rita’s

The scene opens in a small alleyway across the street from an inviting Italian restaurant. Warm light spills over the sidewalk out of large picture windows and the restaurant bustles with activity. Over the door, a sign reads Rita’s. The noise stops suddenly like a held breath and you watch a man be dragged out the front door and tossed onto the sidewalk. A man in a well-tailored suit follows, his hands casually in his pockets. “I’m disappointed in you, Gerald,” he says.

Gerald Maddox, the mental dossier supplies, Anthony’s painter uncle who died penniless. He helped form Anthony’s aspect Art Is a Waste and is associated with the figment Felix Morello and Alice, Anthony’s niece.

“I want that sketchbook. Bring it to me in three days, or I’ll forget that we’ve always been great friends,” the suited man—Morello, probably—says. He nods to his men and they follow him back into Rita’s, leaving Gerald on the sidewalk.

Down toward one end of the street, raucous music jangles out of a large nightclub. Down toward the other end, your players can find the third lair they designed.

Will the SPIRITs talk with Gerald and learn more about this sketchbook? Or will they head into Rita’s and find out what Felix Morello is planning?

Doing the Job

This opening scene starts the “laying groundwork” phase of the SPIRITs’ task. Convincing the client to change is a massive challenge. Laying groundwork makes the challenge manageable by changing Anthony’s perception, digging up his lost humanity, and nullifying the figments’ toxic influence.

When the SPIRITs finally confront Anthony, the GM has 30 challenge points to distribute among the three arguments they make to him about why he should change his ways. If the SPIRITs don’t lay any groundwork, each argument will be a +10 difficulty—nearly impossible to overcome. Since the SPIRITs need to successfully make two of their three arguments, laying groundwork to reduce these difficulties and build up positive assets is critical.

SPIRITs lay groundwork three ways:

• Changing the negative aspects
• Creating new, positive aspects
• Taking down the three figments

Each of these methods relies on interacting with the figments and memories of people in the landscape. Changing or creating aspects often requires investigation, while taking down the figments requires planning and often direct action.

Changing the Negative Aspects

Changing a negative aspect is an overcome action, similar to removing an aspect from play. Before the SPIRITs can overcome the negative aspect, however, they must collect evidence undermining the aspect so that they can launch their attack from within Anthony’s mind.

For example, to counter Anthony’s negative aspect Art Is a Waste, the SPIRITs may find one of his old sketchbooks or talk with someone who once encouraged him to pursue art. The better the evidence they find, the easier the overcome roll will be.

Once they have found evidence, the SPIRITs write the negative aspect somewhere in Anthony’s mental landscape on a wall or other space and cross it out. If they use tools relevant to the environment (create advantage!), they may find it easier to get rid of the negative thoughts. Everything is symbolic.

The players roll to overcome the aspect. If the roll is successful, they revise the aspect to be more positive. If they succeed with style, the aspect becomes especially positive.

The focus of the aspect must always remain the same. Anthony’s aspect about his relationship with art must remain about his relationship with art. However, Art Is a Waste may shift to Art Isn’t Worthless or, if they succeed with style on their roll, Art Has a Place in My Life.

When they overcome the old aspects, the SPIRITs write the new aspect on the wall. They know their change has been successful when their mental dossier includes the revised aspect. Each revised aspect has one free invoke during the client confrontation. As the SPIRITs gather more counter-evidence, they can choose to change the aspect again, making it increasingly positive, and adding more free invokes for use later.

Creating New, Positive Aspects

Creating positive aspects within Anthony’s mind requires interacting with at least three of the four people in one of the color groups; how those four people are connected and why that connection is significant reveals the color’s meaning. A color may represent the client’s desire to travel, love of baking, or any other dream, desire, or passion they’ve pushed out of mind.

Remind your players to keep track of the possible common factors among the people within a color group and determine what each color might mean. As long as they can justify the meaning, anything goes. If they decide the connection is Santa Claus, bedtime stories, and the Peanuts Halloween special, they could declare the color represents Anthony’s wonder or belief in the improbable.

Once your players decide what a color means, they can spend a fate point to convert that meaning into an aspect that is added to their mental dossier. Possible new aspects include Freedom in Flight, Seeking Safe Harbor, and Pie Goes with Everything. The new aspects, each with one free invoke, become another tool in the SPIRITs’ arsenal when confronting the client.

As with the initial three negative aspects, the SPIRITs can work to make these aspects more positive by gathering evidence and rolling to create more advantages on the aspects, adding additional free invokes.

Taking Down the Three Figments

Besides revising and creating aspects, SPIRITs also work to take down the figments that hold sway in the client’s mind by removing the figment’s social or political cachet. Taking the figments down means ending their influence more than it means ending their life. With Naomi Pine, discrediting her reputation as the trend leader of the city would remove her power; getting Morello arrested for his many crimes would remove his sway over Anthony’s mind.

Each figment that is taken down removes five points from the GM’s challenge pool, greatly reducing the difficulty of the final confrontation.

Middle Scene: A Gallery Opening

After improving and creating some aspects, the SPIRITs are ready to try to take down one of the figments.

An art gallery is opening across the street from Le Rêve. The featured artist (a blank card if you have one; any of the established NPCs if you don’t) is flitting between people browsing the art, answering questions with a nervous smile. Then Naomi Pine quietly leads several people through the front door. Naomi stops by a painting and shakes her head. “Trash,” she says, tutting. “Look at those lines and the muddiness of the color. Simply trash.” The people around her murmur their assent. The gallery slowly empties.

The artist withdraws, diminishing more with each cruel comment.

Will the SPIRITs allow Naomi, the tastemaker of the city, to demean the artist? Will they take the opportunity to remove Naomi’s influence from Anthony’s mind?

Final Scene: Convincing Anthony

Once the SPIRITs feel they are ready to convince Anthony to change, they announce, “We are ready for the client,” and all action stops. The landscape wavers as wind thrusts up around them. The SPIRITs close their eyes and open them in Anthony’s bedroom. The SPIRITs are still only mental energy and so appear as ghosts.

Anthony twists in his sleep and awakens fitfully. He stares at the SPIRITs wide-eyed, his comforter pulled up to his nose. “Ghosts aren’t real,” he says, his voice muffled.

Unless the SPIRITs can convince Anthony to change, all of the work they did to end the power of the negative emotions controlling him and change his perspective will fade like a dream in the morning.

Convincing the Client

SPIRITs convince the client to change by presenting three compelling arguments to the client in the form of stories or scenarios. Three of your players will each present a single argument to the client. If you have fewer than three players, one person goes multiple times.

The arguments draw on what the SPIRITs have learned about the client and may involve reminding the client of past events, important people, or old goals. To make it easier for your players, prompt them by telling them to each address one time period: past, present, or future.

Remind them of The Christmas Carol—their argument can be kind and beautiful or scary and intimidating. They can sneak up to their point or outright tell the client what they need to know. Let the players decide their own approach.

The story or scenario allows the players to create an advantage to raise their roll by framing the argument to be its most persuasive. Players can also invoke any positive aspects from the dossier that fit within their argument, building to a final roll at the conclusion of the argument against the difficulty set by the GM.

The client’s initial resistance overall is a +30 challenge, divided evenly into three. For each figment the SPIRITs disempowered, the resistance lowers by 5 points. If the SPIRITs defeat all three figments, the challenge level is +15. This means that the difficulty of each of the three arguments must overcome will range from +5 to +10. Any leftover points are assigned at the GM’s discretion.

To convince the client to change, the SPIRITs must have at least two successful arguments. If all three arguments are successful, then they succeed with style and may treat the completed client as a significant milestone (see Fate Accelerated Edition, page 33). If all of the three arguments fail, each SPIRIT receives a moderate consequence for mental fatigue at the end of the confrontation.

Aftermath of Failure

If SPIRITs do not convince the client to change, they have two choices: try again or take the failure.

If the SPIRITs decide to try again, they state their intention and touch the client’s forehead. They return to the mental landscape and resume laying groundwork. Because the client is aware of the SPIRITs, all actions become one step more difficult.

If the SPIRITs take the failure, they return to wherever they spend their off-time until the next job. The players alter one of their character’s aspects to reflect the failure; Anthony’s mind will have an impact on them for some time to come.

Plot Hooks & Adventure Seeds

Each client the SPIRITs help allows them to strengthen their skills and improve their team; each client also provides opportunities for the GM to work in hints of a grander plan. SPIRITs’ episodic nature also makes it easy for new people to join in or for other players to miss a session or two. Here are a few plot hooks and adventure seeds to keep the story going, in addition to simply providing new client assignments.

The Black Knights

The SPIRITs are attacked. No warning. In the aftermath of the battle, the SPIRITs learn their assailants call themselves the Black Knights. “We protect people from mind-controlling parasites like you,” the Knights tell them. “Cease your work here immediately or we will cease it for you.”

Will the SPIRITs give in? If they best the Knights this time, what’s to stop them from showing up in the next mind and the next? Who are these people? Why are they so opposed to the SPIRITs work? How can they be stopped? Should they be stopped?

The Pinocchio Memory

Every newbie makes the mistake at least once. The mental landscapes and people within them are so real, they forget that everyone they meet is either a figment or a memory. But this memory is different. They’ve asked for the impossible—a way out.

But can a memory ever leave the mind that houses it? Where would they go? Are SPIRITs memories who got out of their cages?

Something’s Wrong with the Director

When the SPIRITs leave the current mental landscape to confront their client, they are surprised by an additional woman at the client’s bedside. She tells the team she needs their help. The director of the SPIRIT agency has been acting strangely and making questionable, irresponsible decisions. She offers them a chance to explore the director’s mind and find out why.

This job won’t be like any other, though. They’ll be on their own without a dossier. Will they seek out the truth? What will they find? Can they help the director return to normal? +

Sample Characters