The Switchblade Sorority

The city may have gone through industrialization, through the seizing of the lighting by humanity, through the shadow of nuclear disaster and even the dislocation of self and noise by the digital network. Yet it is still concreted smoke, and dark smoke hides abominations as much as concrete is occupied by thugs and freaks. There’s monsters everywhere, children of the starless night, conclaves of primordial slime and shadow sculpted in hideous visage. Some are willing to pay to get rid of them, or each other.

A Switchblade Sorority is a sorority of hunters and criminals. You don’t fight for humanity or order – as far as you can tell the monsters are the upper echelon of society, and you might raise some terrorist ruckus if it strikes your fancy. You only have one thing to lose: your sisters.

The Basics

• You know the supernatural underworld, or the even odder sides of an already odd world. Your sorority is already entrenched by the start of play and has previous relationships to at least two factions of monsters, as well as a few independent patrons.
• You are all equipped with a switchblade, your sorority’s uniform and a trinket/patch. Your switchblades always have a rose, either as a keychain or painted/carved somehow. Determine the color.
• You recently lost your crib and need to establish a new base of operations.
• You either look like a group of mid-twenties actresses portraying a highschooler or highschoolers portraying mid-twenties actresses.

Gang Tables

The Switchblade Xs (d66)

You all have a term to name yourselves, said with an ironic smirk but heard in a voice most warm and sincere. What is it? It can be either The Switchblade Xs or The Xs (the switchblade in your hand says the rest).

11 – Sylphies

12 – Dryads

13 – Naiads

14 – (Un)Seelies

15 – Pussycats

16 – Dolls

21 – Troll(babes)

22 – Sailors

23 – Gals/(Un)Dead Gals

24 – Amazons

25 – Boudicas

26 – Saints

31 – Jets

32 – Ladettes

33 – Shoujos

34 – Liliths

35 – Scoobies

36 – Daughters (of the Switchblade)

41 – Dreamers

42 – MILFs

43 – Detectives

44– Nancies

45 – Carmillas

46 – Patches

51 – Jezebels

53 – Playgirls

54 – Misfits

55 – Chevaliers

56 – Ambers

61 – Lionesses/Panthers

62 – Socialites

63 – Dilettantes

64 – Poets

65 – Sirens

66 – B/Witches

Uniform (d6)

Switchblade Sororities have uniforms that both solidify their shared identity and carry small charms and sigils for arcane protection within the fabric. What’s your fashion statement?

1 – Leather coats (biker edition)

2 – Frilly dresses

3 – Roaring Twenties flapper fashion

4 – Failed merchandise from your old art project

5 – Tattoo on same body part

6 – Old masculine suits

Proclaimed Speciality (d6)

What’s your preferred served poison?

1 – Killing

2 – Exorcism

3 – Stealing

4 – Smuggling

5 – Espionage

6 – Demolition

A Contact (d6)

Don’t trust them too much.

1 – Dr. Benson: Has his heart on the blood-smudged jacket sleeve. Always offering free vaccines (don’t take them). Offers discrete surgery in the back alley and well-connected enough to tell you what’s going down.

2 – Father Gunnison: An old priest whose faith has great dwindled as his occult obsession and discovery of monsters turned vicious. Always paranoid about being discovered by the followers. Can share in a cryptic way what’s strangely told in confessions and point towards esoteric lore.

3 – Mr. Crowley: The tall shadow of a park tree, the unperceived lamppost in a busy street, the stranger in the playground that only a few children see. Clad in a coat and a hat that hides his face, he speaks on a deep voice of the next mission and knows many secrets for a dark price.

4 – Dial S for Switchblade: A voice message that finds the Switchblades somewhere, in phones or speakers or radio or letters or a voice booming from a dank cave near the beach. An excited telemarketer voice tells you of incredible job opportunities nearby (and where and who is selling the best dangerous artifacts in the local ghoul market)

5 – The Red Bride: A porcelain woman with nary a hair, wearing a dress as red as the wine in the glass. Either an ancient vampire or a mutant sorceress – is there a difference? Always willing to give information and cut more Faustian bargains.

6 – Bob: A government worker, often meets the gang while eating a bagel (Bob won’t share). Bob has a family and likes to watch football. Bob doesn’t talk much but he knows what needs to be done around town and how to facilitate legal issues.

Favorite Hang Out (d20)

You are out of a crib, but there’s still places to go and relax.

1 – Pizza place

2 – Broken down record store

3 – Greasy comic store

4 – Underfunded library

5 – Skate park

6 – Arcade

7 – Bar with pool table and darts

8 – Queer-friendly club

9 – Community center for playing domino

10 – Basketball court

11 – Independent movie theater

12 – Corner restaurant

13 – Broken down building for smoking totally legal substances

14 – Junkyard

15 – FLGS

16 – Demolition-scheduled shopping mall

17 – Museum

18 – Artist shared run down loft

19 – Down-on-its-luck church

20 – In your shared dreams

What Do the Switchblades Moonlight As? (d8)

If your sorority for any reason decides to present as something else for regular society, instead of just operating within a horrific gig economy.

1 – Dedicated nurses

2 – Streetwalkers

3 – Just out of the garage band

4 – Honor students

5 – Social workers

6 – Local library bookclub

7 – Town’s pride sports team

8 – Repair crew

Twists for the Gang Concept (d6)

When you want to raise some girl gang hell but the usual set-up doesn’t quite cut.

1 – In the reflection of a puddle after the rain strikes the pavement, in a badly-tuned television, in your e-mail chain, in dreams, a sleeping god reached out to you and brought you together. Your roguish activities shall bring together the fonts, flesh and followers that will give it shape to rule once more as you desire.

2 – Death couldn’t stop any of you, and while you are Broken, you will merit your way into a better afterlife by collecting enough souls and gifts to bargain with the metaphysical royalty. Demonic patrons and angelic messengers are all the same; you just want a crib to eternally rest.

3 – The imperishable night struck the land and its mares came forth; the city is no longer itself. It might have curiously settled for the culture clash, or fully given into waste, but in both cases there’s a vacant throne in your map. May your sorority take it.

4 – Your vampire sire might be dead but you all are still so, so thirsty.

5 – You fell through a portal, probably while really high together. The moon is no longer the same, those things that shouldn’t talk do and the few that look human stay silent or speak with the sound of mountains and forests. As outsiders, you can do some things that are taboo to insiders. “Guess we are doing this now.”

6 – You all woke up like cuckoo children to the deeper power within. Mutants and freaks, unsubjetified by peers, and unable to hold jobs to survive; only the world of monsters lying beneath the typical veil, but clear to your extrasensorial perceptions, offers sustenance.

Your Sister

Name (d50)

Birth name or codename? What’s the difference?

1 – Kitty

2 – Boar

3 – Angel/Angela

4 – Valente/Valentina

5 – Joey/Jimmy

6 – Belle

7 – Amber

8 – Kat

9 – Felicia

10 – Sammy

11 – Louise

12 – Screw

13 – Jupiter

14 – Neptune

15 – Mars

16 – Luna

17 – Venus

18 – Mercury

19 – Pluto

20 – Saturn

21 – Gaia

21 – Dietrich

22 – Clair-Lune

23 – Izabella

24 – Thora

25 – Bette

26 – Hazel

27 – Spider

28 – Hela

29 – Troia

30 – Jeanne

31 – Athena/Utena

32 – Artemis

33 – Nefertiti

34 – Splatter

35 – Mandy

36 – Dorothy

37 – Ozma

38 – Wendy

39 – Alice

40 – Fairuza

41 – Bronte

42 – Kleo

43 – Electra

44 – Winona

45 – Dawn

46 – Aero

47 – Faith

48 – Fall

49 – Lolita

50 – Bob (no relation to the contact)

Personal Item (d20)

Just girly things.

1 – Watch, either wrist or pocket

2 – Flag bracelet

3 – Band pin (the most convoluted the genre’s name the better)

4 – Broken handhold console

5 – Doll head

6 – Cartoon shirt

7 – Comix sticker

8 – Ballet ticket

9 – Your old school badge

10 – Religious pendant

11 – Baseball cap

12 – Old trading card

13 – Gnome keychain

14 – Cat-scratched handbag

15 – Fake letter knife pouch

16 – Heart-shaped sunglasses

17 – Dog-bitten walkietalkie

18 – Dog collar with name (either yours or the one you use in disreputable places)

19 – Hairband

A girl can’t live by just with a switchblade passion, can she?

1 – Meat hammer

2 – Scissor (garden or unusually sharp one)

3 – Machete

4 – Electric drill

5 – Nail gun

6 – Barbed wire

7 – Anatomy lab femur

8 – Hunting knife

9 – Big barber razor

10 – Chainsaw

Your Favorite Patch/Keychain [+ Suggested Effect] (d10)

1 – Political slogan. Good at getting into college campuses.

2 – Symbol of an all-girl experimental noise band. You have exceptionally good hearing.

3 – Shaped like the Yellow Sign. You have a knack for identifying occult art and graffiti.

4 – Hello Kitty knock-off. You have one additional woman contact who is unstable but otherwise well informed.

5 – Long closed retro diner logo. You don’t get food poisoning.

6 – Symbol of faith. Religious figures from town related to your religion will speak to you.

7 – A simple heart. You have more ease using romance or sex as a leverage on NPCs.

8 – Minuscule photo of yourself, daguerreotype-style. You are more resistant to mind-altering magic.

9 – Out of syndication cartoon. Children trust you by reflex.

10 – Drawing of monster. That kind of monster is more likely to break morale fighting against you.

Scars [+ Supernatural Explanation] (d6)

1 – Missing eye covered by eyepatch. Donated to wizard in exchange for a better accuracy spell.

2 – Burned lip. Intense makeout section with a pyromancer, made you resistant to heat.

3 – Cut cheek. Went through a magic hedge in search of a rabbit, resistant to magic plants.

4 – Missing fingers. Had to cut the infection from a cursed vermin ring, still has the ring’s benefit of influencing critters.

5 – Head scar with hair missing. Had to sell a lot of hair from the root for a wandering gnome, the sisters got a magic item from the deal.

6 – Missing part of face with Glasgow Grin. The dread clown from the sewers got to you, can intimidate even creatures that consider themselves fearless.

How Did You Join? [+ Suggested Effect] (d6)

1 – You were a mole but the mask got mixed to your skin. You have one Contact within a faction that hates the Sorority.

2 – You were found by them, afraid in the cold, after the horror was done with you. You have a very soft catlike step.

3 – You were a horrific thing but they reached out for you. Describe a small mutation.

4 – You were drunk and angry and looking for a fist fight, and you traded blows with a few member until you were friends. You keep control and skill while inebriated.

5 – Got in by previous friendship/sex with a member. You have an ease while talking to non-supernatural individuals about the gang.

6 – You were a founding member. Declare one supernatural type in the city that owns you a favor.