The Bass of Bob Connor

By Timo Harjunen (timo.harjunen@sonera.fi)

Level Two Artifact

Background

Back in the eighties there were many garage bands in [insert city name here]. Most of them sucked, but there were few that burned brighter than the others. One of these bands was 'Fatrazor', a heavy-punk group formed in 1987 by three high-school classmates. They became somewhat famous in the underground music scene of the city mostly because of their bizarre stage-acts. After a year of rehearsing and performing, they got a record deal with a small local indie label Scum Records. All was going really well for the band until that fatal evening in November 1988. The boys were performing in a local heavy-club for the biggest audience so far. While playing their hit song 'Deepthroat', bassist Bob Connor decided to do some stage diving (this was his speciality). But something went terribly wrong and Bob fell on the floor and suffered a blow that broke his neck. He was dead in a second. Afterwards Bob became a local hero, an example for the punk-scene in the region. His bass (which he had ironically named 'Neckbreaker') was placed in a local club on display. It was however destroyed in a fire that burned down the club in 1991.

For some reason the bass ended up as an artifact in the Shadowlands. It has since served many wraiths and was last owned by a successful performance artist Jack Hubber. Someone stole it from his locker room after a sold-out show at 'Ye Olde Haunter' (a popular pub for wraiths, it was once a legendary tavern in the real world but was torn down about a hundred years ago and now exists only in the Shadowlands) and no one knows its current whereabouts.

Outlook

The bass is an old Ibanez [or some other manufacturer that you prefer], built in 1984. It is in a pretty bad shape (it looks like it's been banged into walls and such a few times) and two of the four strings are broken (good luck in finding artifact strings!). It has three stickers on it (one of them is a Batman logo, another one has the word 'Neckbreaker' written on it and the third one is a picture of Gene Simmons spitting blood!).

Powers

The bass is a real instrument and can be played by anyone who has the skill. It doesn't require electricity or an amplifier of any kind. The sound is heard clearly by wraiths. Mortals can't hear anything except for Mediums who hear the sound just like wraiths do. The bass has a weird special power. Any wraith who (after someone has performed with the bass) applauds to the musician must dance for the duration of the next song played by the bassist. There is nothing special about this action; the listener just has the overwhelming urge to dance.

The bass doesn't have any other special powers but it can be used as a weapon (add +1 to the weapon skill because of the fact that in real life, Bob used to whack roadies with it on-stage).