[UA] "Saw" Thought Experiment

[Unknown VariableX]

I have not gotten much sleep lately, so bear with me.

A god-playing, self-assured, mastermind-ish serial killer in the line of 
Jigsaw -- brillaint, disturbed, and brilliantly disturbed -- tries to 
inflict his life-or-death games on denizens of the Occult Underground. 
Seeing as how these people face the constant violation of physical laws, the 
problem of reality erasure, and the occasional astral parasite as a matter 
of day-to-day life, I suspect the odds will tend to shift slowly against the 
killer.

This starts out low, with the dukes who have no unnatural abilities being 
slightly more prepared for such stuff psychologically. Avatars, depending on 
archetype and power level, will range from no better than Joe Mundane 
(Necessary Servant, Scholar, Healer) to serious threat (Flying Woman, 
Masterless Man, Savage). Of course, once things get into Adept territory, we 
find that the odds vary drastically between schools. A Bibliomancer, for 
example, would be most likely cut off from his Library, and a Mechanomancer 
from her gadgets. Epideromancers and Entropomancers, among others, might not 
even be slowed down.

Note, of course, that with the victim of the game being in a mystically 
savvy cabal (especially one with Bond Tilts) the odds of survival increase 
dramatically thanks to outside help and the possibility of magickal tracking 
rituals.

The biggest example of a Jigsaw-wannabe biting off more than he can chew is, 
of course, putting the First and Last Man in one of his traps. Not only is 
he invulnerable to physical harm, he doesn't require food, water, or even 
air, and can easily spend a few months or years scraping stone walls or 
metal doors with his fingernails until they wear away. For that matter, how 
the hell would the guy get him into the trap to start with? How do you 
kidnap a guy who can't be poisoned, drugged, or rendered unconscious by a 
brick in a sock?

Of course, that's one side of the arguement and requires that somebody used 
to preying on mundanes accidentally grabs a duke or lord of the Occult 
Underground. Since the traps used by a Jigsaw-style killer would need 
extensive study and investigation, a mundane type would either realize he 
was out of his league really fast, get drawn into the underground in ways 
much different from his present interests, not realize what he was getting 
into because of one derangement or another, or perhaps never even consider 
the duke as a target to start with.

Concurrently, this raises the idea of a clued-in Jigsaw style guy, who sets 
up such life-or-death traps while keeping the taboo of the target in mind. A 
Bookworm must destroy a book to get at the combination to his shackles, if 
an Entropomancer tries to daredevil his way through the razor pendulums he 
endangers somebody across the rooms, stuff like that. Similarly, a cabal 
would have to get past layers of anti-scrying countermeasures to find their 
kidnapped member. I beleive that there's a non-adept serial killer type who 
works for the Sleepers that does something like this, without the elaborate 
traps or overall philosophy behind them. Jimmy Dunes, right? Correct me if 
the name is wrong.

Of course, such a guy would STILL be screwed if he tried to get St. Germain. 
Maybe.

Thoughts? Taboo-triggering traps? Ideas on how to catch St. Germain without 
biting off more than a thousand clockwork dentures could chew? (Greg pointed 
out one in the Twilight of the Odds thread way back, but it has a few 
limitations. For example, you have to Wake the Tiger, survive the chaos that 
follows, and be The Freak.)

-Variable (Live or bake a Pie. Your choice.)


***
"What is this? Did the quadratic formula explode?"
-Strong Bad
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