New York, March 1911. Easter is comming, and the children of Madam Sheridan’s orphan’s house and boarding school are excited with the Chocolate Egg Hunt that is sponsored and organized by the good men and women of The Century Club, to bring a little happiness and hope for the youth and poor in the Clinton Neighborhood.
As a plus, new sweets are launched every year. This year the new wave is the March Hare Chocolate Eggs, which, albeit cheap, is delicious. In fact, many can’t stop eating this.
However, one news shocked the city: one of the rare Faberge Eggs, made by the Fabergé Family, goldsmiths that works for the Russian Tsars, was recently stolen when put at display at the Smithsorian Museum! No one knows who stole it, even more considering the intense vigilance which the Egg was under! The New York Police are baffled, even more that all clues points to something that is not human!
Also, when the Young Centurions go to the Century Club in New York, they see a little man dressed in bizarre clothes that is asking the Club for help. This little man is none other than Mr. Willy Wonka, one of the biggest Chocolatiere of the world, and he has had his Wonka Sweets Recipe Book stolen, with all the secrets on how he makes the most delicious sweets ever imagined!
He will say that a strange half-man, half-rabbit creature stole his Recipe book, but he lost track of it in New York. He is now under a extreme paranoia, thinking that this creature had stolen his cookbook to sell it to his competitors by the biggest bid, but he doesn’t know what is happeing, and neither why the robber would use that weird costume while doing the larceny!
And more: if the characters read the newspapers or going through contacts in the East Side, they will discover that a half-man, half-rabbit creature was spotted near the Docks or somewhere near Central Park. No one had seen it enough, but enough to make people worried!
In spite of everything, the sale of the March Hare Chocolate Eggs goes a long way, being the last wave: they are so tasty that people can’t stop eating them.
As the days go by, however, more and more Rabbit-Man sightings are reported: specially seen during the night, they have been done heists, form money and stuff especially Chocolate. Curiously enough, this only makes the sale of the March Hare Chocolate Eggs continue in the stern, as curiously they are not stolen.
At this moment, another man searches the Club for help about something that was stolen: Agathon Fabergé, one of the House Fabergé’s golsmiths, will mention about the stolen Fabergé Egg and about another Egg, rarer and unknown (or so he thinks) outside Russia , The Secret Fabergé, that he was ordered to get back to the Tsar, or destroy if this would not be possible.
He will say the magical powers of the Secret Fabergé, especially the Shapeshifting one, and they will see a March Hare Chocolate Egg open, one of the Mentors (or other Adult Spirit or Sponsor) shoving the Egg into his mouth as there would be no tomorrow and becoming more and more obsessed with the Egg…
Not to mention the little whiskers growing out of the side of his nose!
A few days after, people are terrified with the raise of robberies and spottings of the strange Rabbitmen. At the same time, people stays buying and eating March Hare Chocolate Eggs as if there were no tomorrow, so much that starts a shortage on the Eggs people start to fight each other by the Eggs.
Characters who gone under Fair (+2) checks (by Careful by defaul) will notice that all those who started to fight for the eggs have bizarre but similar characteristics: hands with white shaggy fur at their backs, incisor teeth larger than normal, cleft lips with slightly raised noses, afluffy residual hair (fur?), albino eyes with huge pupils, and longer elongated ears! An Great (+4) check will show a link between the March Hare Chocolate Eggs eating and those mutations.
If they do not notice this by walking through the city, they will see that their mentor, after shoving March Hare Chocolate Egg after Chocolate Egg looks more and more like a Rabbit. Not to mention that he wants so much to get out and go to the East Side Docks, even without knowing why.
It will be up to the characters to investigate what is happening. To do this, they will need to go to East Side to see if they find any clue on why the March Hare Chocolate Egg is turning people into Rabbitmen and how to reverse the mutation!
As people goes more and more to one of the East Side Warehouse, the characters will realize that the Rabbitmen don’t worry about being followed, but about being blocked from going to East Side: any attempt to stop them will result in several of them grouping to fight the characters, and the last thing the characters will want now (we hope so) is to deal with a mob of rabid Rabbitmen.
As they arrive in the warehouse (apparently the Rabbitmen know where to go by the smell), they will see several people already turned into Rabbitmen, or at various transformation level. They are working in the Warehouse, that where turned into a candy shop, and they are working, and eating, something that everyone in New York is fiercing fight for: the March Hare Chocolate Egg.
In a balcony above the floor, the characters will see a strange creature: with the height of a small man, putting aside the light brown elongated ears, with a rabbit muzzle where his upper lip and nose should be, a big pair of incisor teeth showing over. Despite his size, his hands, or rather paws, are agile and, although they are finished in four fingers with retractable claws, they are quite skillful. His legs are now the legs of a rabbit, and he “sits” on his haunches, now thick and powerful as one of a rabbit’s.
The clothes of the weird half-man half-rabbit (or half-hare, to be exact), resembles Alice in Wonderland’s March Hare: cuff in an orange tone like those of his fur, white shirt and blue bow tie. He also wears cream colored trousers and a pair of leggings on her legs.
He is holding an egg-shaped jewel, a crystal with the sides with gold details, a golden top and a support in the same material. He is pointing the same to a large copper casserole, where the PCs can see chocolate being continuously melted and stirred, its contents poured into pots, where it’s mixed with other ingredients such as cocoa, sugar, spice, essences, nuts and stuff.
The chocolate smell is overwhelming, and anyone who had eaten the March Hare Chocolate Egg will feel an obsessive need to eat the Eggs until burst (Superb (+5) rolls to resist the temptation). All the “workers” are rabbitmen, and they basically wrap an egg and eat the next: all of them are already in a not quite human shape.
When confronted, the March Hare will gloat his history and how, according to him, “the future is of the Oryctolagus Sapiens, or, to put simply, the rabbit-men.” He will then tell about the Secret Fabergé and about how he thought on irradiating its energies in the chocolate, which he produces by using a recipe from the Wonka Sweets Recipe Book. The combination of the perfect chocolate recipe and the Secret Fabergé’s mystical energies resulted in a chocolate that is irresistible, and that turns those who eats it rabbitmen like the March Hare.
A Conflict here would be a big mess for several reasons:
However, some of the ingredients that are flammable, like Whiskey and Irish Brandy: the PCs can use them to create some distraction that, done rightly, might be the best way to make the transformed Rabbitmen run away or at least not help the March Hare: They, like the Rabbits who they are partly, have a Strong Flight Instinct, triggerd by almost anything. If the PCs uses fire as weapon against them or set fire to anything in the warehose, do a Fantastic (+6) check for the Rabbitmen: in case of Failure (most likely), they will Run for their lives, Like a mob.
The March Hare, however, will not suffer from this: he is smarter and can already (at least partially) contain this rabbity Flight instinct. And more, he’s megalomaniacal and selfish: in his mind, things are under his control.
However, if the PCs were clever enough, they may freeze him, by staring intensely him: if at any time, the PCs have a Success with Style against the March Hare, give them the option to put a Gazed Boost on the March Hare
We hope the characters successfully arrests the March Hare, and returns Secret Fabergé and the Wonka Sweet Recipe Book to their owners. Once the Secret Fabergé is took from the March Hare, his power overt the other rabbitsmen will be over.
However, there is still much to be solved:
This adventure is treated as a Minor Milestone.
For everyone else, the House of Fabergé is known as goldsmiths and jewelers, and they are known mainly because of the gorgeous Fabergé eggs, gave by the Tzars for ther mothers and wives each and every easter.
However, very few people outside Russia knows one of the most secret facets of Farbegé: they are mystics.
Working for the Tzars since their foundation, the House of Fabergé have the secret mission of creating some magical artifacts they could use for the Russian Crown interests. Simple things, like lies and poison detectors. They did this by hiding those powers under special sigils engraved in the famous Fabergé Eggs.
However, in the turning of the Century, the Tzar asked for a special Egg, one with more powerful enchantments, using the power of Mother Russia and Baba Yaga to enforce the Tzar will and doing all kind of magics, big and small.
As a security measure, the Secret Farbegé Egg would be a otherwise “Common” Fabergé Egg, but his real powers would be revealed and used when he was specially illuminated using candles and so.
One of the most terrible power was the Shapeshifting power: by opening a secret compartment and putting on it something that represents the final form of the subject after the magic done, the Secret Egg could turn people into other forms, either totally or partially, depending on how much time and how much of the something was in the compartment. The Tzar himself turned many of his enemies into donkeys, dogs, cats or goats, and even in half-animal freaks for exhibition in the Moscow Circus.
The Secret Farbegé was rumored since he was built, but he was safely held by the Russian Secret Police and so.
Until two years ago.
A crazy looney, called The March Hare, invaded and robbed the Secret Farbegé, during one of its rare exhibitions. He dressed as Alice in Wonderland’s March Hare and no one knew how and why he passed by all the guards and abducted so powerful magic item.
The Tzar gave a mission for the Fabergé: to acquire back the Egg, or to destroy it.
And Agathon Fabergé was the one incubed to take back the Egg.
He was now hunting the Hare like a Dog (no pun indeed), and discovered that the delusional men now is a half-man, half-rabbit freak and discovered how to enchant people and turn them into rabbitman under his will.
And Agathon could not allow this to go on.
| Type | Aspects |
|---|---|
| High Concept | From a Family of Goldsmith and Mystics |
| Trouble | Still need to understand the most of the his family magics |
| I need to find the secret Fabergé egg… And destroy it |
| Approach | Level |
|---|---|
| Careful | Good (+3) |
| Clever | Average (+1) |
| Forceful | Fair (+2) |
| Flashy | Fair (+2) |
| Quick | Average (+1) |
| Sneaky | Good (+3) |
Willy Wonka is somewhat a crazy man. When he was a child, his father (a dentistry) disallowed him to eat any kind of sweets, specially chocolate.
But, as it’s said, the forbidden fruit is the sweetest.
After a very great fit agains his father, Willy started to run around the world and learning how to do the best sweets all around, growing into the biggest and more successful chocolatier all around. There’s no sweet he could not do, and some of his main recipes are in the Secret Book of Wonka sweets, his main, secret recipes.
However, all this success attracted some dissafection and spying, and some of the people had took some of his recipes and made profit on it. But the recent invasion of the March Hare was the Last Straw: he closed his chocolate factory and gone into a wild geese hunt to find and defeat the March Hare, before he could go back to his chocolatier.
However, he’s growing paranoid and can’t find any clue to catch the March Hare. So, he found the only way was to call the help of some of the people he helped in the past: The Century Club
| Type | Aspects |
|---|---|
| High Concept | A man with an bizarre style and the best chocolatier everywere |
| Trouble | “Don’t talk about parents…“ - Parental issue |
| “Spies, spies everywhere” - Growing Paranoid | |
| “That weird rabbitman stole some of my secrets! I need to defeat him!” | |
| The Secret Book of Wonka sweets |
| Approach | Level |
|---|---|
| Careful | Good (+3) |
| Clever | Good (+3) |
| Forceful | Average (+1) |
| Flashy | Fair (+2) |
| Quick | Average (+1) |
| Sneaky | Fair (+2) |
Marshall “March” Hare was always someone crazy as a nut, or so people though.
But, as someone born in December 31st, 1879, he was obsessed with something. After all, he was a Negative
In fact, very soon he was obssessively attached with Rabbits, Hares and so on. After reading Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, he deluded himself as an inhabitant of Wonderland. In fact, he though he was the March Hare, as people called him “mad as a March Hare”.
Using Alice in Wonderland as a role model, he started to search for power, until he found the Secret Fabergé Egg, a powerful mystical artifact build by the Farbegé family for the Russian Tzars. Normally hidden, the March Hare had stole it even under a powerful security and discovered its shapshifting powers.
Then, two years ago, he undergone for what he thought was his freedom: by using the Secret Fabergé’s magical power, he undergone a transformation as a Rabbitman, a half-man, half-rabbit monstrousity.
He had grown even more intelligent, and his rabbity hyperactivity turns him even more dangerous, putting him under the Centurion’s radar.
However, he was clever enough to hide in his so-called “burrows”, his hiding points all around the world and worked into the Secret Fabergé’s powers.
Then, he discovered he could lace some of the Secret Fabergé’s magical powers into objects or people by illuminating them with special lights passing through the powerful magical artifact.
And then, an idea snapped into his mind, while he was eating, reading and thinking on how to dominate the world, all the same time!
Some months ago, he broke up into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and stole some of the best chocolate recipes. Using some people he abducted as guinea pigs, he irradiated some of the Secret Farbegé’s energies under some chocolate and made them eat it.
The effects were immediate: they had gone addicted into the chocolate and, after eating some, started to undergone a Rabbitman transformation as himself did! In some days, he had a good number of Rabbitman mooks to help him into the plan his mind started to formulate and now he was putting into action.
| Type | Aspects |
|---|---|
| High Concept | A man turned rabbit, crazy as a March Hare |
| Trouble | Hyperactivity plus Egomania equals Disaster! |
| “My Rabbitmen are my servants! And now it’s time for the rabbithood!” | |
| The Magical Rabbitshifter Chocolate Eggs | |
| “Fabergé will suffer under my paws!” |
| Approach | Level |
|---|---|
| Careful | Fair (+2) |
| Clever | Fair (+2) |
| Forceful | Average (+1) |
| Flashy | Good (+3) |
| Quick | Good (+3) |
| Sneaky | Average (+1) |
One of the most delicious kind of Chocolate Eggs someone could taste, it was made by The March Hare to turn people, specially children, into a kind of half-man, half-rabbit/hare monstrousity, under The March Hare’s dominion.
To do this, The March Hare used the mystical energies from The Secret Farbegé Egg, a special mystical artefact built by the Farbegé family and stolen by The March Hare. My heating the chocolate under a kettle specially illuminated by the Farbegé Egg, the mystical energies are absorbed by the chocolate, giving him an Almost Addict Taste and the Shapeshifters properties that make the Rabbitshifter Chocolate Eggs so infamous.
Everyone that eats this Chocolate Egg starts to turn into a Rabbitmen. The transformation is not all-or-nothing: each time the character eats more and more of the Rabbitshifter, he grows more and more a Rabbitman, under the control of The March Hare. After 5 times the character eats, the Character is turned a Rabbitman. Each egg eaten provides +1 at the difficult to resist another shot, if possible.
Using the rules for Distractions and Countdown from the Fate Adversary Toolkit, p. 23 and 25;