TEXT: A WORLD OF 
  ADVENTURE FOR
  ed turner
  
  This adventure was made awesome thanks to our Patreon patrons at patreon.com/evilhat—thanks folks!
   
  INSIDERS
  Alan Bartholet
  Alexander Keane
  Alexander R. 
  Corbett
  Andrew Pomfret
  Anne-Sylvie Betsch
  Antero Garcia
  Arjun Comar
  Arlo B Evans
  Ben Mullen
  Brett Abbott
  brian allred
  Bryan Milstid
  C. J. Hunter
  C.K. Lee
  Charlton Wilbur
  Chris Bekofske
  Christopher 
  Gunning
  Christopher Vollick
  D.C. Upton
  Daniel Gallant
  Daniel Stack
  David Dorward
  David E Ferrell
  David L Kinney
  Demian Buckle
  Dusan Frolkovic
  Dustin Evermore
  Edward MacGregor
  Eric Willisson
  Frank 
  Frédéri POCHARD
  Garrett Rooney
  Gavran 
  Glenn Mochon
  Graham Wills
  Haakon 
  Thunestvedt
  Isabelle Parsley
  J Quincy Sperber
  J.M. 
  James F Thunberg
  Jamie Smith
  Jason Blalock
  Jason Cotton
  Jeff Chaffee
  Jeff Craig
  Jeremy DeVore
  Jeremy Tidwell
  Jim Hart
  Jim Nicholson
  Joakim Andersson
  Joe Trzos
  John Beattie
  John Donahue
  John Rogers
  John Rudd
  John Wyatt
  Jon-Pierre Gentil
  Jonathan Schmidt
  Jordan Dennis
  Joshua Lutz
  Katie Ramsey
  Keith Stanley
  Ken Ditto
  Kieren Martin
  Laura 
  LilFluff 
  Lore Graham
  Lowell Francis
  MAINGUET Francois
  Marc Mundet
  Maria Rivera
  Mark 
  Marty Chodorek
  Matt and Nykki 
  Boersma
  Matt Anderson
  Matthew Bowman
  Matthew Whiteacre
  Michael Bowman
  Michael Cambata
  Michael Dean 
  Hannah
  Michael Murphey
  Michael Pedersen
  Mitchell Evans
  Morgan Ellis
  Nicholas Hopkins
  Nick Daly
  Nick Reale
  Nicola Urbinati
  Nicolas Marjanovic
  Osye Pritchett
  Patrick Mueller-Best
  Peter Gates
  Peter Woodworth
  Philip Nicholls
  Randy Oest
  Rhel 
  Richard Bellingham
  Rick 
  Rick Jakins
  Robert Hanz
  Robert Kemp
  Rod Meek
  Roger Edge
  Ryan Singer
  Sarah Vakos
  Sean 
  Sean M. Dunstan
  Sean O’Dell
  Sean Smith
  Selene O’Rourke
  Stephen Rider
  Svalander 
  Taylor Hensley
  Thom Terrific
  Tim L Nutting
  Timothy Carroll
  Troy Ray
  Tyler Hunt
  vargr1 
  Will Goring
  William J. White
  William Lee
  William McDuff
  Woodrow Jarvis Hill
  Zach   
  ADVENTURERS
  A Person
  Aaron W Scott
  Ada 
  Adam Buehler
  Adam C.
  Adam Gutschenritter
  Adrian Arias-Palomo
  Aharon sharim
  Aidan Grey
  Al Billings
  Alan Phillips
  Alan Timothy Rogers
  Alan Twigg
  Alex Norris
  Alexander 
  Alexander Gräfe
  Alexander 
  Podczerwinski
  Alexis Lee
  Alistair 
  Allan Bray
  Allan Samuelson
  Alloyed 
  Amanda Valentine
  Andrew Betts
  Andrew Dacey
  Andrew Grant
  Andrew Horn
  Andrew Loch
  Andrew Turbott
  Andy Arminio
  Angus 
  Anthony Damiani
  Anthony Popowski
  Antoine Pempie
  Ariel Pereira
  Arlene Medder
  Arthur Lace
  ArthurDent 
  Aviv 
  B. Bredthauer
  Barac Wiley
  Bastien Daugas
  Becca 
  beket 
  Ben 
  Ben Scerri
  Ben White
  Benjamin Cush
  Benjamin Wandio
  Benjamin Welke
  Bill 
  Bill Eastman
  Björn Steffen
  Blake Hutchins
  Blue Kae
  Bo Madsen
  Bob Hiestand
  Brad Davies
  Brad Osborne
  Bradley Eng-Kohn
  Brandon Metcalf
  Brandon Wiley
  Brandt Bjornsen
  Brendan Conway
  Brent Ritch
  Brian 
  Brian Bentley
  Brian Creswick
  Brian Kurtz
  Brian S. Holt
  Brian Shourd
  Brittany Lenda
  Bruce 
  Bryan 
  Bryan Gillispie
  Bryce Perry
  C 
  Cardboard Sandwich
  Carl McLaughlin
  Carlos Flores
  Cerity 
  Charles  Evans
  Chip Dunning
  Chirag 
  Chris Caporaso
  Chris Mitchell
  Chris Nolen
  Christian 
  Christoph Thill
  Christopher Allen
  Christopher Smith Adair
  Christopher Stilson
  Christopher Stone-Bush
  Christopher W. Dolunt
  Chuck 
  Chuck Dee
  Cody Marbach
  Colin 
  Colin Matter
  Craig Maloney
  Craig Mason
  Curt Kremer
  Curt Meyer
  Curtis Hay
  Cyrano Jones
  Dain 
  Damon Richard
  Daniel Byrne
  Daniel Chapman
  Daniel Ellingsen Lund
  Daniel Hägglund
  Daniel Kraemer
  Daniel Ley
  Daniel M Perez
  Daniel Markwig
  Daniel Taylor
  Daniele Galli
  Darren Lute
  Dave Joria
  David 
  David Bellinger
  David Bowers
  David Fergman
  David Goodwin
  David Griffith
  David Maple
  David Millians
  David Morrison
  David Olson
  David S
  David Silberstein
  David Starner
  David Stern
  Davide Orlandi
  Declan Feeney
  Denis Ryan
  Derek Hiemforth
  Devon Apple
  dharp 
  Dianne 
  Didier Bretin
  Dillard 
  Dirk Methner
  Don Arnold
  Don Bisdorf
  donald murray
  Doyce Testerman
  Drew Shiel
  Drew Smith
  Drue Tucker
  Duane Cathey
  DudeInTheNight 
  Duncan 
  Dylan Green
  Earl Butler
  Ebenezer Arvigenius
  Edward Sturges
  Ehedei 
  Eirch Mascariatu
  Elsa S. Henry
  Elsidar Amhransidhe
  Emmanuel 
  Emmanuel Genot
  Enrique Esturillo Cano
  eric 
  Eric Bontz
  Eric I
  Eric Proton
  Erich Lichnock
  Erik 
  Erik Ingersen
  Ernie Sawyer
  Esteban Jauregui Lorda
  Ezekiel Norton
  Fábio Emilio Costa
  Fabrice Breau
  FelTK 
  Fide 
  Florian Greß
  Francisco Castillo
  Frank 
  Frank Beaver 
  Frank Jarome
  Frankie Mundens
  Gareth Marshall
  Garrett 
  Garrett Jones
  Garth Rose
  Gary Anastasio
  Gavin Oliver
  Genevieve 
  Geoff 
  George Harnish
  Gian Domenico Facchini
  Glynn Stewart
  Graham 
  Graham Meinert
  Greg Matyola
  Gregg Workman
  Gregory Fisher
  Gregory Hirsch
  Gustavo Campanelli
  Hakushaku 
  Hans Messersmith
  Heather 
  Herman Duyker
  HFB 
  Howard M Thompson
  Ian Charlton
  Ian Toltz
  Indi Latrani
  Irene Strauss
  Istrian Gray
  J. Keith Wykowski
  Jack Gulick
  Jackson Hsieh
  Jake Linford
  Jake Rides Again
  Jakob Hallberg
  James Beal
  James Endicott
  James Hoag
  James Holdridge
  James Husum
  James Marston
  James Odom
  James Pacheco
  James Winfield
  Jamie Lynne 
  Powell-Herbold
  Jamie Wheeler
  Jan Stals
  Janet 
  Jared Hunt
  Jason 
  Jason Bean
  Jason Best
  Jason Heredia
  Jason Pasch
  Jason Pelloni
  Jason Penney
  Jason Tocci
  Jayna Pavlin
  Jeff Boucher-Zamzo
  Jeff Mahood
  Jeff Pitrman
  Jeff Vincent
  Jeffrey Boman
  Jeffrey Collyer
  Jens 
  Jens Alfke
  Jere Krischel
  Jeremiah McCoy
  Jeremy 
  Jeremy 
  Jeremy Glick
  Jeremy Hamaker
  Jeremy Kear
  Jeremy Kostiew
  Jessica Wiedemer
  JF Paradis
  Joanna 
  Joe 
  Joe Littrell
  Joe Patterson
  Joe.D 
  Joel Beally
  Joel Beebe
  Johannes K. Rasmussen
  Johannes Oppermann
  John 
  John 
  John 
  John Bogart
  John Clayton
  John Fiala
  John Griogair Bell
  John Halsey
  John Helmuth
  John Hildebrand
  John Lambert
  John Portley
  John S. Fetzik
  John Taber
  John Tobin
  John William McDonald
  Johnathan Wright
  Jon Smejkal
  Jonas Matser
  Jonathan 
  Jonathan 
  Jonathan Finke
  Jonathan Hobbs
  Jonathan Korman
  Jonathan Perrine
  Jonathan Young
  Jordan Deal
  Jose A. 
  Joseph Formoso
  Joseph Gamblin
  Josh Salyers
  Joshua 
  Joshua Ramsey
  Joshua Reubens
  Juan Francisco Gutierrez
  Julianna Backer
  Julien Delabre
  Justin 
  Justin 
  Justin Beeh
  Justin Thomason
  Kaarchin 
  Karl Thiebolt
  Katherine Malloy
  Kenneth Benjamin 
  Holbert
  Kent Snyen
  Kevin Lindgren
  Kevin McDermott
  KevIn oreilly
  Kris Vanhoyland
  Krista 
  Krzysztof Chyla
  Kurt Zdanio
  Kyle 
  Larry Hollis
  Leif Erik Furmyr
  Leonardo Paixao
  Lester Ward
  Lisa Hartjes
  Lobo 
  Loren Norman
  Luca Agosto
  Lukar 
  m.h. 
  Manfred 
  Marc 
  Marc Kevin Hall
  Marcel Lotz
  Marcel Wittram
  Marcus 
  Mario Dongu
  Mark 
  Mark 
  Mark A. Schmidt
  Mark Diaz Truman
  Mark Harris
  Mark Widner
  Markus Haberstock
  Markus Schoenlau
  Markus Wagner
  Marley Griffin
  Martin 
  Martin Deppe
  Martin Felczerek
  Martin Terrier
  Marty Gentillon
  Mathias Exner
  Matt Houck
  Matt Landis
  Matt Overstreet
  Matt Timm
  Matthew Broome
  Matthew Caron
  Matthew J. Hanson
  Matthew Price
  Matthew Whalley 
  Max 
  Max Kaehn
  Michael 
  Michael 
  Michael Barrett
  Michael Bradford
  Michael Brewer
  Michael D. Blanchard
  Michael D. Ranalli Jr.
  Michael Hill
  Michael Hopcroft
  Michael Sawi
  Michael Shumate
  Michael Thompson
  Mick Bradley
  Mike Vermont
  Mikey McC
  Misdirected Mark 
  Productions
  Mitch Christov
  Mitchell Smallman
  Mook 
  Nat 
  Nathan Barnes
  Nathan Hare
  Nathan Reed
  Nessalantha 
  Nichlas Dyhr 
  Hummelsberger
  Nicholas Pilon
  Nicholas Sokeland
  Nick 
  Nick Bate
  Nick pater
  Noel Warford
  Olav Müller
  Oliver Scholes
  Olivier Nisole
  Owen Thompson
  paolo castelli
  Patrice Hédé
  Patrice Mermoud
  Patrick Chapman
  Patrick Ewing
  Patrick Fittkau
  Paul 
  Paul Arezina
  Paul Olson
  Paul Rivers
  Paul Stefko
  Pavel Zhukov
  Pete Curry
  Peter Griffith
  Peter Kahle
  Petri Leinonen
  Phil Groff
  Philippe Marichal
  Philippe Saner
  Phillip Webb
  PK 
  Porter 
  R R Clark
  R Roy
  Rachael Hixon
  Rachel Maegan
  Ralf Wagner
  Ralph Miller
  Randall Orndorff
  Randy Eckenrode
  Raun Sedlock
  Rebecca Harbison
  Red Dice Diaries
  Remy Sanchez
  Renzo Crispieri
  Ricardo Boccato Alves
  Rich Hewett
  Rich Hilborn
  Richard 
  Richard Greene
  Richard Lock
  Riggah 
  Rishi 
  Rob Meyers
  Rob Voss
  Robb Neumann
  Robert 
  Robert Biskin
  Robert Daines
  Robert Huss
  Robert Rees
  Robert Rydlo
  Robert Slaughter
  Rodrigo 
  Roe Portal
  Roger Carbol
  Ron 
  Ron Müller
  Roy 
  Ruben Smith-Zempel
  Ryan C. Christiansen
  Ryan Gigliotti
  Ryan Junk
  Ryan Lee
  Samuel Hart
  Samuel Steinbock-Pratt
  Samwise Crider
  Sarah Williams
  Schubacca 
  Scot Ryder
  Scott 
  Scott 
  Scott Dexter
  Scott Greenleaf
  Scott Hamilton
  Scott Martin
  Scott Puckett
  Scott Thede
  Sean Sherman
  Sean Smith
  Sean Walsh
  Sean West Money
  Seth Clayton
  Seth Halbeisen
  Seth Hartley
  Shadowmyre Kalyn
  Shai Laric
  Sharif Abed
  Shawn Fike
  Shoshana Kessock
  Simon Browne
  Simon Brunning
  Simon J Berger
  Simon White
  Simon Withers
  Sion Rodriguez y 
  Gibson
  Sirsmeg 
  Sławomir Wrzesień
  Sophie Lagace
  Spencer Williams
  Stefan Feltmann
  Stephan 
  Stephanie Bryant 
  (Mortaine)
  Stephen Figgins
  Stephen Hood
  Stephen Waugh
  Steve Discont
  Steve Kunec
  Steve Radabaugh
  Steven Code
  Steven D Warble
  Steven desJardins
  Steven K. Watkins
  Steven Markley
  Steven sims
  Stuart Dollar
  Svend Andersen
  Tara Zuber
  Tatu Sara-aho
  Teppo Pennanen
  Teresa O
  Terry Willitts
  Tevel Drinkwater
  The Roach
  Thomas 
  Thomas Balls-Thies
  Thomas Elmeblom
  Thomas Maund
  Tim 
  Tim Davis
  Tim Popelier
  Tim Scott
  Timothy Seiger
  Todd Estabrook
  Todd Willey
  Tony Ewing
  Tony Kelly
  Torolf de Merriba
  Travis 
  Trevor Crosse
  Tristan Smith
  Tyson Monagle
  Urs Blumentritt
  Victor Allen
  Ville Lavonius
  Vladimir Filipović
  Volker Mantel
  Vrakul 
  waelcyrge 
  Wayne Coburn
  Wayne Peacock
  Wes Fournier
  Will Foy
  William Johnson
  William Pitts
  WinterKnight 
  Wolfgang Reich
  Wulf 
  Yonatan Munk
  Z Esgate
  Zeb Walker
  
  MORTS
  A WORLD OF 
  ADVENTURE FOR
  WRITING & ADVENTURE DESIGN
  ED TURNER
  DEVELOPMENT
  ROB DONOGHUE & 
  BRIAN ENGARD
  EDITING
  JOSHUA YEARSLEY
  PROJECT MANAGEMENT
  SEAN NITTNER
  ART DIRECTION
  BRIAN PATTERSON
  LAYOUT
  FRED HICKS
  INTERIOR & COVER  
  ARTWORK
  LENKA ŠIMEČKOVÁ
  MARKETING
  CARRIE HARRIS
  BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
  CHRIS HANRAHAN
  
  An Evil Hat Productions Publication
  www.evilhat.com • feedback@evilhat.com
  @EvilHatOfficial on Twitter
  facebook.com/EvilHatProductions
  Morts
  Copyright ©2016 Evil Hat Productions, LLC and Ed Turner.
  All rights reserved.
  First published in 2016 by Evil Hat Productions, LLC.
  10125 Colesville Rd #318, Silver Spring, MD 20901.
  Evil Hat Productions and the Evil Hat and Fate logos are trademarks 
  owned by Evil Hat Productions, LLC. All rights reserved.
  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a 
  retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, 
  electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, 
  without the prior express permission of the publisher. 
  That said, if you’re doing it for personal use, knock yourself 
  out. That’s not only allowed, we encourage you to do it.
  For those working at a copy shop and not at all sure if this means 
  the person standing at your counter can make copies of this thing, they can. 
  This is “express permission.” Carry on.
  This is a game where people make up stories about wonderful, terrible, 
  impossible, glorious things. All the characters and events portrayed in this 
  work are fictional. Any resemblance to real people, teenagers, zombies, 
  office workers, revenants, guardsmen, necromancers, or jobs of the dead-
  end or undead-end variety is purely coincidental, but kinda hilarious.
  
  CONTENTS
  A Brief History of the Apocalypse ................................................. 3
  The Zombie Apocalypse ...........................................................................3
  Cascadia  ........................................................................................................ 4
  The Morticians ..............................................................................................8
  The World .....................................................................................................10
  Anatomy of the Undead .................................................................12
  The Types of Undead ............................................................................... 13
  Zombies  ........................................................................................................ 15
  Specters .........................................................................................................18
  Animations ................................................................................................... 21
  Creating Your Characters .............................................................. 23
  Vital Status .................................................................................................. 23
  Aspects .........................................................................................................24
  Skills ............................................................................................................... 25
  Stunts ............................................................................................................26
  Extras  ...........................................................................................................26
  Big Issues ..................................................................................................... 27
  Necromancy ................................................................................................ 27
  Creating Adventures .......................................................................31
  The Hub ......................................................................................................... 31
  The Missions ................................................................................................ 32
  Mission Chains ............................................................................................36
  Randolph the Lich King ................................................................. 37
  Eugene Southeast .................................................................................... 37
  Part I: City Under Siege! .........................................................................39
  Part II: In the Shadow of the Necromancer .....................................41
  Part III: The Deadly Ritual! .....................................................................43
  
  Zombies have been trying to get into the city for 
  decades, and you’re on the team in charge of keep-
  ing them out and taking care of anything which 
  manages to get through the walls. 
  …You have a crappy job. 
  Normal people don’t join the morticians. The pay 
  is bad, the hours are long, and it’s the only career 
  path where the leading cause of death is still “got 
  eaten.” 
  So if you’ve signed up for this life, odds are 
  you’re a desperate outcast. Or you’re sixteen, 
  barely aware of your own mortality but all too 
  eager for a job that doesn’t make you work all 
  that hard. Either way, you’re one of the morts. 
  Congratulations. 
  Time to kill some monsters.
  CASCADIA NEEDS YOU!
  JOIN THE MORTICIANS!
  THE UNDEAD ARE JUST BEYOND THE CITY WALLS! 
  WHO WILL KEEP THEM FROM COMING IN?
  STEADY PAY! FREE ROOM AND BOARD! 
  WEAPONS AND TRAINING SUPPLIED! 
  APPLY NOW, EXPERIENCE IS NOT REQUIRED! 
  NO BACKGROUND CHECK WILL BE PERFORMED! 
  
  A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE APOCALYPSE
  The morticians are the dedicated zombie-killers of a little country called Cascadia, 
  on the west coast of what used to be called the United States of America before 
  Congress ate the president. Civilization briefly collapsed after the dead rose, but 
  Cascadia and countries like it bounced back, proof that humanity is hard to kill.
  The Zombie Apocalypse
  About fifty years ago the dead started rising. Records are spotty, big surprise, but 
  as far as we can tell it struck the whole world simultaneously, one day early in 
  October. There’s a bunch of names for the period. In Convoy 14 it’s the “Red 
  October,” and in Davis it’s the “Rending of the Veil,” but around here no name’s 
  taken off like the zombie apocalypse—even though it seems really silly to call 
  something the “apocalypse” after life didn’t, technically, end. 
  There’s no shortage of stories about the apocalypse if you’re looking for them. 
  Dead rise, mass panic, violent deaths, blah blah blah. By all accounts it was 
  the worst event in human history. But then, we got over it. Sure, lots of people 
  died, but we’d kinda been training for this since 1968. Natural selection weeded 
  out the people who’d never seen Night of the Living Dead. If you made it to 
  Halloween that year, it was because you knew about headshots, safehouses, 
  teamwork, cardio, and all the other little lessons that movies and games had 
  been teaching us.
  Within a year, people were making permanent settlements again, because 
  that’s what people do. And as we discovered new realities of life in an undead 
  world, like specters and necromancers and weird zombie mutants, we adapted. 
  By the time Cascadia was founded, ten years after the dead first rose, life was 
  normal again. It’s just that normal had zombies in it now.
  3
  MORTS
  
  Cascadia 
  Cascadia is a narrow stretch of land along North America’s Pacific coast, from 
  Yreka, California, to White Rock, British Columbia. Mostly it runs along 
  Interstate 5. Officially, we’ve claimed nearly all the land west of the highway as 
  our own, but aside from a couple relatively reachable coastal towns, most of it’s 
  still wasteland, overrun by the undead and not particularly habitable. We have 
  a constitution, which is largely plagiarized from America’s: president, congress, 
  supreme court, partisan headbutting, things of that nature. Most morticians 
  aren’t super politically involved. The government signs your paychecks; anything 
  more than that is more for people inside the city walls to worry about. 
  Our capital city is also Cascadia’s largest and most bustling metropolis—and, 
  in the included adventure Randolph the Lich King, your home base: Eugene, 
  Oregon. That’s where Cascadia started, as Eugene incorporated nearby strug-
  gling settlements, and then just kept growing. It’s still growing! We’ve stretched 
  about as far as we can along the highway, so now Congress is talking about 
  how we’re going to push inland. President Bloom says she wants to incorporate 
  whatever remains of Bend within the next ten years, but most people think that’s 
  overambitious.
  Eugene’s the largest, but there are several cities in Cascadia and dozens of 
  little towns. Altogether, tens of thousands of people, all of whom wake up in 
  the morning content in the assumption that they’re not going to get eaten today, 
  because that’s the sort of thing that just doesn’t happen anymore. Or at least it’s 
  rare enough that you can pretend it doesn’t happen anymore. Inside the city 
  walls, people worry about the weather and money and jobs and the future and 
  everything else, but they don’t worry about the undead. That’s your job.
  4
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Walls and Fences 
  The wall-and-fence system is the reason Eugene thrived while everything else in 
  the area was fighting off undead every week. Build a wall around the place where 
  people live, using the sturdiest barricades you can. Then go out a mile or so in 
  every direction and build a fence. It doesn’t have to be sturdy—a dedicated cow 
  can push it over—but it’s not supposed to stand up to assaults. It’s a minimal 
  barrier to entry, which keeps the random zombie from meandering close enough 
  to realize there’s meat behind the wall.
  The fence works. Some zombies get through the fence, and some undead can’t 
  be stopped by walls. But it breaks up big zombie clusters and keeps a city from 
  being surrounded. It’s effective enough that whenever a city is incorporated into 
  Cascadia, the first public work is to shore up the walls and set up a fence. And of 
  course, this makes what we call the outskirts: the land between the walled-in city, 
  where there’s a real civilization, and the fenced-off, zombie-blighted wasteland.
  The outskirts are too important not to use. Where there’s clear space, it goes 
  to farming, which helps take pressure off the generally overtaxed hydropon-
  ics in the city. Then there’s foraging. There’s a romantic vision of treasures and 
  technologies hiding in ruined buildings, but mostly foragers bring back bits of 
  metal and other raw materials. Farmers and foraging teams live behind the walls, 
  though; they just commute to the outskirts.
  The outskirts are also a landing stage for the socially outcast or outright exiled. 
  There’s always a little shanty town near the city gates, housing a society of scav-
  engers and rejects who can’t cut it in the city proper, but aren’t willing to brave 
  the wastes.
  It’s also where the morts live. Where you live.
  5
  MORTS
  
  Points of Interest
  Morticians spend a lot of time in the outskirts, but plenty of emergencies can 
  pull you into the city proper, to deal with outbreaks, or even to other cities if 
  there’s a dire enough emergency. It’s worth being aware of the biggest places in 
  the country. 
  Eugene is the ever-beating heart of Cascadia. It’s worth visiting if only to 
  spend time in what might be the largest city in the world, but it’s also a cultural 
  touchstone. Congress meets in the old Wilcox Building, and the president lives 
  in the historical Allan House. Tours are available on the weekends. There’s the 
  university, which has a Necromancy major—it’s within the walls, but fenced off 
  from the rest of the city. There’s also the only really nice football stadium that 
  hasn’t been repurposed into farmland or high-density housing. Basically every 
  championship game in the country takes place at Autzen Stadium. If that’s not 
  your bag, there’s boutique shopping, expensive restaurants, and…fancy stuff. 
  Olympia, up in what used to be Washington, is the smaller, seedier Eugene. 
  Fewer museums and galleries, more casinos and clubs. It’s also where the music 
  scene is. Kids make pilgrimages to hear loud, angry music live in Olympia’s 
  cramped coffeehouses.
  Medford and Ashland are the twin cities of Cascadia’s entertainment industry. 
  Ashland has established itself as the hub of the fine arts in Cascadia, full of poets 
  and publishers and the theater. Medford is home to most of the country’s film 
  production, which has been a million-dollar industry since the very early days of 
  Cascadia. You want celebrities, here’s where you go. 
  Other places you might end up include Everett, up north. It’s home to the 
  largest building in the world, a former airplane factory turned massive manufac-
  turing center. Anything you use that’s not pre-apocalypse salvage probably came 
  down from Everett. Her sister city, Norcal, covers a lot of the northern part of 
  what used to be California. Norcal’s unique in that there are a half-dozen small, 
  individually walled districts behind one huge fence. Once six tiny cities, they’ve 
  pooled their outskirts to become Cascadia’s most valuable farmland. 
  Newport is Cascadia’s only port city of note, and the only important city that’s 
  not on I-5. It’s accessible by rail or State Route 20, which is zombie-infested but 
  otherwise pretty well maintained. It’s mostly a fishing town. We don’t do a lot of 
  trade by sea—every couple years someone sets off to see if Japan’s still there, and 
  to date nobody’s come back.
  Salem used to be a city in the early days of Cascadia, before it got breached by 
  the dead and thousands died in a bloody evacuation. Now it’s a ghost town in 
  the most literal sense—dangerous specters spawn there all the time. But it’s not 
  the most dangerous spot in Cascadia. That honor probably belongs to Portland, 
  which, like so many large cities, never bounced back from the zombie apoca-
  lypse. It’s filled to overflowing with monsters, and it’s right on the I-5.
  6
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Getting Around in Cascadia
  People over seventy have lots to say about how life was better before the dead 
  rose. Mostly, they’re standard gripes, but life probably was better with telecom-
  munications. Satellites run out of fuel and fail. Data lines don’t handle getting 
  chewed on very well. The days of phone calls between cities, broadcast entertain-
  ment, and whatever the Internet was are all over. For information to travel, it 
  has to travel with someone. Letters, newspapers, CDs, and flash drives are all 
  physically hauled across the country every day.
  The most popular and safest way to travel is moving via the Interstate, which 
  really is the backbone of the country. Morticians keep it zombie-free, and it’ll 
  drop you off at almost every major city. Unfortunately, gasoline goes bad over 
  time, and refining crude oil is super difficult to just, like, figure out from scratch, 
  so most people can’t use cars. There are a couple hundred diesel and electric 
  vehicles operational, but by law they belong to the government. Some get leased 
  to businesses, some are used for emergency services (including the morticians), 
  but most people only see the caravans: lines of vehicles bussing people and haul-
  ing cargo along regularly scheduled routes up and down I-5. And if you’re cheap, 
  there’s a lane reserved for pedestrians.
  Railroads are a crapshoot. Morts keep the highway safe, but trains are a private 
  enterprise. Rails belong to whoever has the cash and inclination to clear the 
  bodies off the tracks and get an engine working somehow. There’re a dozen rail 
  barons in Cascadia, running dilapidated engines from little towns to the near-
  est real city. It’s unfortunately pretty common for tourists leaving big cities to 
  discover that their route home has financially or literally collapsed. 
  The third and last choice is to brave the wasteland. It’s not totally suicidal, but 
  you know…zombies. Even if you’re confident about that, there are other dan-
  gers. There are criminals in the wastes, gangs of raiders who aren’t stupid enough 
  to attack a fortified city but will swoop like vultures down on lone travelers. And 
  there’s always mutated zombies, roving specters, and similar things that most 
  people don’t have the expertise to deal with.
  That doesn’t mean it’s not done. There are also buildings to scavenge and ani-
  mals to hunt and resources to collect and some crummy settlements that aren’t 
  even on the rail lines. So people walk or bike or rent a car if they can afford it. 
  You might even see brave idiots coming to town on horseback or riding some 
  bizarre necromantic abomination.
  7
  MORTS
  
  The Morticians 
  Every city in Cascadia has at least one chapter of the morticians, and most have 
  two or three. Eugene has eight. There are also chapters assigned to the highway, 
  responsible for keeping stretches of it maintained and zombie-free. Every chap-
  ter has a station of their own, usually a big house or apartment complex out in 
  the outskirts, where the morts all live. That’s one of the lingering benefits of life 
  as a mortician—free room and board.
  History of the Morts
  In the early years of Cascadia, different communities handled defense in dif-
  ferent ways, but it mostly boiled down to “anyone with a gun is encouraged 
  to point it at zombies and not at each other.” The constitution tried to codify 
  things by making every city establish the local armed militia, which would be in 
  charge of law enforcement and defense. Problem was, the LAMs were an awful 
  mélange of pre-apocalyptic cops, soldiers, and idiots with firearms. There was 
  a lot of internal conflict and corruption, which is bad enough, but they weren’t 
  even good at fighting the undead. They were too busy in the city to keep zom-
  bies in check, and too incompetent to stop large outbreaks. After the LAMs 
  botched the evacuation of Salem, it became clear that they weren’t cutting it for 
  Cascadia.
  The first chapter of the morticians started up in Gateway—now an incor-
  porated part of the Eugene metropolitan area—under the guidance of Charlie 
  Harris, a US Special Forces vet and zombie video game enthusiast. He took 
  the best of the LAMs, and trained them to handle the undead specifically. The 
  LAMs were kept as Gateway’s police force, and the morticians were dedicated 
  zombie-killers. Gateway’s mortality rate plummeted.
  The First Amendment to the Cascadian Constitution established the morti-
  cians as an official government agency tasked with “keeping the cities and roads 
  of Cascadia free from the threat of the undead by any means deemed necessary.” 
  Over the next few years, every city got their own chapter of the morts, usually 
  headed by a Gateway veteran. For the first time in its history, Cascadia felt safe.
  8
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  The Fall of the Morts 
  People who join the morts tend to be surprised by its history. There’s a mural 
  at the Eugene Federal Building of a diverse group of attractive young people in 
  the morticians’ distinctive leather jackets, each armed with shotgun and saber, 
  standing proud between the light of civilization and the encroaching darkness 
  of the undead. It’s well done, patriotic without being over the top, but it’s also 
  flaking, faded, and forgotten. Turns out, people need the morticians, but they 
  don’t like them. 
  The morticians were hamstrung by their own success. Once the undead 
  stopped being a day-to-day threat, the job became mostly invisible—it happened 
  outside the walls. People stopped respecting them. Some morticians stayed on 
  out of a sense of duty, but many retired for more-fulfilling work, and nobody 
  was lining up to replace them. The morticians relaxed their entrance require-
  ments, and eventually eliminated them entirely. That started a nasty feedback 
  loop. The more they were seen as a last stop for the otherwise unemployable, the 
  more true it became.
  The morticians haven’t seen a budget increase in a decade. The Research and 
  Development branch had to be disbanded. There are people who are honestly 
  surprised to discover that the morts still exist, despite the fact that the undead 
  aren’t going anywhere.
  Working for the Morticians
  Every mortician station has a Station Head, who oversees and coordinates a 
  handful of teams. Teams spend some time on patrol, wandering the outskirts 
  regardless of weather looking for trouble. Then they spend some time on duty 
  but in the station, ready to run out the door if there’s an emergency. Most 
  Station Heads like giving morticians specific in-house tasks—weapon mainte-
  nance, comparing notes with other stations, writing reports, whatever you’re 
  halfway good at. There’s also rotating cooking and cleaning jobs. Schedules vary, 
  based on need and time of year and how much of a hard-ass the Station Head is. 
  In theory, you get a few days off every week, assuming the station is sufficiently 
  staffed. Stations rarely are. 
  When you join the morts you get your leather jacket and a weapon if you need 
  one. You get shoved into whatever team could use another member, and they 
  try to keep you alive long enough that you figure out how to keep yourself alive. 
  Most of your job is about killing zombies, but that’s not the end of it. You keep 
  your city safe from the undead, and sometimes that means investigating why 
  undead outbreaks happened so they don’t happen again. That means tracking 
  down necromancers and dangerous spirits, clearing massive hordes, repairing 
  the fence, and doing whatever else needs doing. When the undead are involved, 
  you’re a beat cop, a PI, a knight errant, and a building superintendent, all at once.
  9
  MORTS
  
  The World
  Cascadia might be your home and the birthplace of the morticians, but it’s not 
  the only country that’s come forth in the last fifty years. We might not know 
  what’s happening on the other side of the world, but we’ve got neighbors.
  The Republic of Davis 
  During the zombie apocalypse, the staff and students of the University of 
  California, Davis, managed to hole up in their various buildings, surviving 
  mostly by eating cows from the Agriculture Department. Now the old university 
  is the core of a slowly expanding empire that covers most of central California. 
  The worrisome thing about Davis is that the university is still an academic 
  institution, but the focus has shifted almost entirely to necromancy. At the heart 
  of the empire, raising the dead is a part of daily life. They’re also more militant 
  than Cascadia. Their equivalent of the morts are called Psychopomps, and not 
  only are they trained in basic necromancy, but they’ve got the government’s 
  authority to kill anyone who abuses magic, while morts are only authorized to 
  kill people who are already dead. By treaty, Psychopomps are allowed to enter 
  Cascadia when in hot pursuit of someone.
  Seattle 
  Like most large cities, Seattle was too densely populated to recover from the 
  zombie apocalypse. But it got a second life, of sorts—the many, many undead in 
  the city have been enthralled by a powerful necromancer who’s set up a vantage 
  point atop the Space Needle. We don’t know anything about the necromancer, 
  but they oversee a city full of zombies who get out of bed, walk to workplaces, 
  buy products from one another, and otherwise play-act a parody of urban life. 
  All day, every day, with no signs of stopping. 
  Interstate 5 is impassible in downtown Seattle, and anyone with a pulse 
  is killed and eaten if they cross the border, so Cascadia bypasses it via I-405. 
  There’s a mortician station on either side of the city, partly to ensure travelers hit 
  the interchange, but mostly to keep a very wary eye on this place. 
  10
  
  Convoy 14
  So, there’s a massive convoy made up of about forty different vehicles, including 
  trucks, buses packed with people, and even an actual tank. They’re constantly on 
  the move just east of Cascadia, sometimes heading up as far as Olympia, often 
  disappearing into what used to be Nevada, and always on some mission they 
  won’t tell outsiders about. We have no idea what these cars are running on, and 
  we’ve asked. 
  According to the people in Convoy 14, there are dozens of similar convoys 
  around the country, and they represent the US government. They call us insur-
  gents and separatists, but otherwise they’re reasonably friendly. They’ll trade, and 
  we’ll help each other with undead problems. They’re also very well armed—some 
  with incredibly advanced military weaponry, others with swords and honest-to-
  goodness full suits of plate armor.
  The Canadian Rail Union
  When the apocalypse broke out, for some reason there was a thread of thought 
  across the central US that the answer was to flee north, as if zombies would just 
  hit a wall at the 49th parallel. Anyway, it was a terrible plan, because winter 
  doesn’t faze the undead but sure does kill the living. Vast tracts of the country 
  are so densely packed with the undead that they’re almost literally impassable. 
  …unless you’re in a powerful steam locomotive with a big-ass cow-catcher on 
  the front. The CRU is a conglomeration of hundreds of tiny city-states, exclu-
  sively connected by the rails. The settlements are both physically and culturally 
  isolated, and vary tremendously based on what group of desperate refugees 
  founded them. Many don’t speak English at all. The Union’s full of infighting 
  and complex politics, and the region is dangerous. Reports trickling down sug-
  gest that there are bigger, scarier undead monsters up there than anything we’ve 
  seen in Cascadia.
  The Global Economy
  Cascadia trades pretty freely with the other countries along the Pacific coast. 
  Davis is always short on water but grows fruit we don’t have the climate for. 
  Convoy’s got seemingly limitless weapons and ammo, but almost nothing else. 
  Even Seattle gets in on it for some reason. They want clothes and manufactured 
  goods, and they get us coffee beans, and no, we don’t know where or how they’re 
  getting them, but we’re in no position to complain. 
  The CRU needs a little of everything, but generally has nothing we want. They 
  did, however, spearhead the Coastal Starlight Rail. It’s a train that runs once a 
  week, from a CRU outpost in Vancouver to the heart of Davis and back, with 
  stops in Cascadia and Seattle (where nobody gets on or off) along the way. It’s 
  too small to haul much cargo, but it moves people and keeps the lines of com-
  munication open, so it’s worth keeping around.
  11
  MORTS
  
  ANATOMY OF THE UNDEAD
  Fifty years after the apocalypse, we still have no idea what caused it. Maybe some 
  powerful magic kept the undead at bay but finally wore off. Maybe there’s an 
  entity who lives in the realm of the dead and finally figured out how to break 
  through into the real world, dragging zombies with it. Maybe there really was 
  no more room in hell. Who knows?
  What we’ve got is a ton of empirical evidence.
  12
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  The Types of Undead
  As a mortician, you’re responsible for anything undead. That’s a wider, creepier 
  pool than most people think.
  Every city has its own argot for describing different kinds of monsters, and 
  the slang changes from station to station and year to year. Life-strangler, grim 
  Rasputin, jolly murderer…they’re all names for the same monster. Giving nick-
  names to the undead is normal, but for clarity’s sake, the morticians have a 
  classification system. Kind of a taxonomy of dead things, which starts by divid-
  ing them up into the big three:
  • Zombies are dead bodies that get up of their own accord, sometimes 
  mutating when they do so. 
  • Specters are non-physical entities that manage to survive in the real 
  world, even without a shell made of meat. 
  • Animations are dead bodies or things made of dead bodies that get 
  brought to life with necromancy. 
  The sentient undead, the ones who pass the Kim Test and are legally people, 
  can come from any one of those categories.
  Documented Undead and the Kim Test
  People think of the undead as monsters, and, yeah, usually they will try to kill 
  or eat you. However, there are sentient, sapient undead, like liches, ghosts, and 
  revenants. They’ve had a long struggle, given that most places just shoot any-
  thing undead that gets too close to the city, but increasing pressure from activist 
  groups finally led to the passage of the Sixth Amendment ten years back. Being 
  dead is no longer sufficient cause to deny a person citizenship. 
  Mort Station Heads and some government agencies are authorized to perform 
  what’s called the Kim Test, named after the senator-turned-revenant who helped 
  devise it. Answer five simple questions and don’t try to eat your interviewer, and 
  you’re considered a human being.
  Still, it’s a difficult existence for the documented undead—also called 
  Kimmies, among a ton of nastier epithets. Cascadian Kimmies retain their citi-
  zenship and name, but almost nothing else. Because property and copyright laws 
  were made with the assumption that dead people didn’t matter anymore, when 
  you die you lose everything. Legally speaking, dead-you is a new person unre-
  lated to living-you.
  Your estate gets divided up, and no, you can’t will your goods to yourself. If 
  you’re lucky, you have a support network and an employer willing to immedi-
  ately re-hire you. If you don’t, well, good thing you can’t starve to death. And all 
  this ignores the obvious social problems and dangers of being undead in a world 
  of people who don’t like the undead.
  Some Kimmies can get back on their feet, but it’s no surprise that many end 
  up pushed into the outskirts. 
  13
  MORTS
  
  Living as the Undead
  There are some commonalities among the undead, whatever their type, sentient 
  or not.
  Decay is slowed. There are still zombies out there who turned on day one, 
  although they won’t be around forever. Eventually meat rots, bones crumble, 
  and even specters grow fuzzy and dissipate. That just might take a century or so. 
  They don’t need to eat, though it’s more accurate to say that they can’t starve. 
  The undead still feel hunger and thirst. Obviously zombies eat flesh, and most 
  animations and specters will try to eat when possible. Kimmies usually eat small 
  meals if they can afford it. Eating doesn’t do anything, but it has a powerful pla-
  cebo effect that helps them stop feeling hungry.
  Likewise, air. The undead breathe out of habit, not necessity, but they’ll still 
  panic and even pass out if you smother them with a pillow.
  Then there’s sleep. Sleep is essential, evidently. Even mindless zombies go 
  torpid for about one hour in every four. In this way, Kimmies are a lot like living 
  humans: without eight hours of shut-eye—or dimmed-socket, as the case may 
  be—they’ll start going nuts. 
  Undead NPCs
  Most undead are simple creatures, and have skills which are much more narrow 
  and directed than a human’s skills. While sentient undead might be able to take 
  advantage of the various nuances of Fight, most zombies only know enough to 
  try to bite people, so their fighting skill is “Bite!”
  The undead are not subtle, so their skills always end with an exclamation 
  point. Sometimes, an undead NPC can have both nuanced standard skills with 
  simple undead skills. A skeletal archer, for example, might be able to Shoot like 
  a living person, but would only have a movement skill of Climb!
  No matter their skills, all undead were once human, which is why many have 
  a unique personal aspect. Often it represents something they’re wearing, or 
  some injury they’re showing the effects of, but it could also be some dim frag-
  ment of personality that they’re displaying. Not only does it give undead a little 
  character, but it also makes them easier to keep track of in a fight.
  GMs, you can certainly hand-tailor personal aspects for undead NPCs, but 
  you can also lighten your creative load by having your players come up with 
  them. Whenever an undead with a personal aspect bursts onto the scene, ask 
  someone to say the first thing they notice about that monster, and turn their 
  response into its aspect. 
  Finally, while undead PCs have special rules for how they handle physical 
  stress (page 26), those rules take more bookkeeping than the average undead 
  monster requires. You can stat up major undead NPCs like characters, but treat 
  everything else like a nameless NPC, with a single stress track which can be filled 
  by whatever sorts of damage the morts are able to dish out.
  14
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Zombies 
  There’s no such thing as a “zombie virus” and there never was. That took a while 
  to figure out. Lots of people got bit in the line of duty and ended up voluntarily 
  taking a bullet when a little iodine would have been more effective. 
  When a human dies, there’s a little tear in reality as their spirit gets pulled out 
  of their body and sent to the place where spirits go. Maybe half the time, that 
  tear closes right back up, no problem. Otherwise, a spirit from the other side 
  pulls through and wears the corpse as a suit. The body gets up and causes havoc, 
  and that’s what we call a zombie.
  One of the biggest problems that zombies pose is that the undead are sort of a 
  walking weak spot in reality. When you die, the closer your body is to anything 
  undead, the better the odds you get reanimated. If what killed you happens to 
  be something undead, your odds of getting right back up again are nearly one 
  hundred percent. With specters and animations, this is annoying, but with zom-
  bies it’s especially dangerous—outbreaks tend to keep reinforcing themselves 
  and growing.
  The Zombie Alphabet 
  Most of what the world is overrun with are what we call alpha-class zombies 
  or just alphas. They’re slow, stupid, and have an insatiable hunger for human 
  flesh. Standard stuff.
  Sometimes, the spirit animating the body also mutates it into something 
  especially inhuman. Some swell up with toxic bile. Some sport bulging muscles. 
  Some have one normal arm and one big old club of an arm, spiked with pointy 
  shards of their own exploded bones. All are incredibly gross. 
  These mutations are consistent enough that they’ve been classified. If it’s got 
  bulging, hyperdeveloped muscles that it uses to lunge at alarming speeds, then it 
  might be informally called a runner or a quarterback or a shadowlancer, depend-
  ing on the station, but they’ll all know it’s a beta-class zombie.
  The zombie designations are roughly in order of rarity. Betas are more 
  common than the bile-spewing gammas, who are more common than the tun-
  neling deltas, and so on. These mutations happen spontaneously, but they’re 
  affected by proximity—if you get killed by a beta, then you’re much more likely 
  to get up as a beta yourself. 
  It seems like mutations are getting more common. Twenty years ago, gris-
  tlegrinders and spewers were mostly hearsay, and the alphabet ended at lambda. 
  Now, they’re all over the place, and there’s real talk about what we’re gonna do 
  when we run out of letters. Maybe they just seem more common because we’ve 
  gotten better at keeping records and not getting killed off by rare zombies—it’s 
  kind of a shame the morticians don’t keep statisticians on staff.
  15
  MORTS
  
  VARYING THE DEAD
  Usually, alphas are cannon fodder, 
  while an omicron-class zombie, some-
  times called a titan, is a ten-foot-tall, 
  incredibly threatening murder-mon-
  ster. But the undead are people too, 
  kind of. A titan that’s been around 
  for decades might be nearly rotted 
  through, and go down in a single 
  hit. A single alpha that’s reasonably 
  fresh and happened to die with a 
  meat cleaver in its hand can be an 
  overwhelming threat. Morticians like 
  to think they have a handle on how 
  the undead work, but they’re often 
  thrown for a loop.
  GMs, mix things up sometimes. Add 
  or remove stress boxes, shift skills up 
  or down, drop in unexpected stunts. 
  Surprise your players whenever you 
  think they’re growing complacent.
  Epsilon-class Zombie
  Common names for epsilons include 
  skitterlurks and trapdoor spiders. 
  Shortly after reviving, their bones begin 
  growing and twisting grotesquely, 
  sometimes breaking and re-fusing at 
  odd angles. They’re too mangled to 
  stand, but they can crawl under old 
  cars and things and leap, teeth-first, at 
  whoever passes by.
  ASPECTS
  Grotesque, Mangled Zombie; 
  Squeezes into Tight Corners
  Personal Aspect:
  SKILLS
  Good (+3): Lunge and bite!
  Fair (+2): Hide!
  Average (+1): Skitter!
  STUNTS
  Ambush: A skitterlurk gets +2 to 
  attack any target who doesn’t know 
  where it is.
  STRESS 2
  CONSEQUENCES
  Mild (2):
  Alpha-class Zombies
  Zombies. The most basic kind, found 
  in every corner.
  ASPECTS
  Mindless, Shambling, Hungry 
  Undead
  Personal Aspect: 
  SKILLS
  Good (+3): Bite!
  Average (+1): Shamble!
  STRESS 1
  16
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Omega-class Revenants
  The zombie alphabet ends, for the moment, at tau, a mutation that’s just on fire 
  all the time. But omegas take up a special spot at the end.
  An omega happens when someone dies but their spirit doesn’t leave—it comes 
  right back and reanimates its own body. The result is a revenant: a zombie like 
  an alpha, but because their animating spirit is designed to inhabit this particular 
  body, the spirit’s control over it is much finer. The zombie retains all of their 
  skills, memories, and mental faculties. Basically, they’re the same person, just 
  dead. Sometimes it takes someone a couple days to realize they’re a revenant. 
  Handling Zombies
  When it comes to zombies, remember the lesson Uncle George taught us: 
  remove the head or destroy the brain. That’s enough trauma to ensure that the 
  spirit can’t animate the body anymore.
  But while headshots are extremely useful if you want to keep zombies down 
  permanently, they aren’t required. Zombies are still (mostly) human, after all—it 
  might not feel pain like a living person, but its body isn’t any better at compen-
  sating for its injuries, so sufficient damage will disable it. Hell, when it comes 
  to most varieties, just knocking them over will buy you like a half-hour as they 
  struggle to right themselves, although it’s considered good form to use this 
  opportunity to engineer a more permanent solution.
  17
  MORTS
  
  Specters
  When a spirit arrives in the real world, it generally has 
  a few seconds to either start animating a dead body 
  or dissipate. Spirit-stuff just isn’t meant to exist in the 
  world of the living without a shell of some sort. But a 
  powerful enough spirit can keep its form and exist as a 
  specter. They’re technically incorporeal, but most can 
  interact with physical objects, and the most powerful 
  ones feel as solid as a real person.
  Sometimes a specter is made when someone dies but 
  their spirit doesn’t cross over, but most arrive from the 
  other side. Thin spots in the wall between the real world 
  and the realm of the dead blow around like weather 
  patterns, although they tend to be drawn to cemeteries 
  and places like hospitals or accident sites where lots of 
  people died.
  The Specter Spectrum
  If you were to somehow forget that you had legs, your 
  legs wouldn’t go away. Your body is made of meat and 
  has a constant physical presence. But specters don’t have 
  a real body. They’re basically mental projections, so if 
  one forgot it had legs, it wouldn’t have legs anymore.
  It’s evidently normal for spirits to just forget who 
  they were as they spend a few decades in the realm of 
  the dead. Specters are classified based on how much of 
  their identity they seem to have retained.
  Category-1 and -2 specters are just wispy blobs or 
  vague human forms. Barely there. By Cat-3, a specter is 
  recognizably a former human, at Cat-4 you might even 
  have a disjointed conversation with it, and at Cat-5 it’s 
  effectively as self-aware as it was before it died.
  It’s at Category-6 and above that things get scary. 
  Cat-6 specters, some time after they died, grew obsessed 
  with something, usually related to their cause of death. 
  And obsession really matters for creatures who are 
  essentially made of their thoughts and feelings. Think 
  headless ghosts of vengeance, enraged and inhuman 
  haunters, and such. Technically intelligent, but unrea-
  sonable. Category-7 and -8 describe rarer specters, who 
  have been twisted into demonic or utterly inhuman 
  forms by their own madness. 
  The classification system is a spectrum, obviously, 
  and specters can float around it, even rising or falling 
  between categories as their mental state changes.
  18
  
  The Bonespear
  The bonespear is a pretty basic Cat-6 
  specter. It looks like a man in tattered 
  clothes, his face sliced or maybe burned 
  off, wielding in his right hand a spear 
  made out of the bones of his left arm. 
  General assumption is that he’s seek-
  ing revenge against someone, but he’ll 
  attack anyone who gets too close. He’s 
  been spotted all over Cascadia, some-
  times wearing different clothes, which 
  leads to the worrying conclusion that 
  there may be multiple specters with the 
  same profile. 
  ASPECTS
  Specter Fueled by Rage; 
  The Bonespear’s Bone Spear
  Personal Aspect:
  SKILLS
  Good (+3): Spear! 
  Fair (+2): Toss people around!
  Average (+1): Speed
  STRESS 2
   CONSEQUENCES
  Mild (2):
  Cryogeists
  A dangerous sort of Cat-3 specter. They’ve 
  kept just enough of their intelligence to 
  realize, and be really unhappy about, the 
  fact that they’re freezing. Because they 
  think they’re cold, they literally are freez-
  ing cold. One cryogeist isn’t a problem, 
  but they tend to show up in groups, 
  which suggests that there’s some place in 
  the realm of the dead that’s just really cold 
  and where all these things are falling out 
  of. 
  They’ll fight back, ineffectually, if 
  attacked, but otherwise they just want to 
  go where it’s warm. 
  ASPECTS
  Barely Coherent Specter; “So, so 
  cold…”
  Personal Aspect:
  SKILLS
  Good (+3): Chase warm bodies!
  Average (+1): Hit someone back!
  STRESS 1
  CONSEQUENCES
  Mild (2):
  STUNTS
  F-f-f-freezing: Whenever a living 
  person ends their turn in a zone with 
  a cryogeist, they take one physical 
  stress per cryogeist in that zone. 
  19
  MORTS
  
  Ghosts
  Category 5 is about where specters are as intelligent as living people. That is to 
  say, they know who they are, and they understand that they’re dead, and they 
  haven’t gone insane. They’re able to pass the Kim Test, and they’re what most 
  people mean when they refer to ghosts. 
  Mostly, ghosts look like they did at the moment they died, even if that means 
  they’ve got phantom weapons poking out of their back. But even the ones who 
  died in peaceful circumstances are clearly not quite there—they’re semi-trans-
  lucent, and their appearance isn’t entirely consistent from moment to moment. 
  Sometimes they grow more solid, or fade away, as their concentration waxes 
  and wanes. They might briefly grow older or younger, or change outfits in mid-
  sentence, based on how they see themselves at the moment. They’ll eventually 
  revert back to their just-died standard look, though.
  Ghosts tend to be the very recently departed, but there are some who died 
  even before the zombie apocalypse. The oldest one we know about died in the 
  1970s. Unfortunately, ghosts can’t describe what things are like in the realm of 
  the dead; there are vague recollections of dim grey plains and a common recur-
  ring nightmare about a waterfall, but mostly those memories fade away when 
  someone crosses back over to the world of the living.
  Handling Specters
  Low-category specters are usually annoyances. They’ll fade away with time, 
  and aren’t worth worrying about. Mid-category specters are people, even when 
  they’re confused or insane, and exorcising them is really about appeasement and 
  reasoning with them. Even high-category demonic things usually want some-
  thing, and if you figure out what they want, you can convince them to leave you 
  alone. You might even bring them enough peace that they stop obsessing and 
  slip down the spectrum into something more manageable. 
  If that doesn’t work, well, morticians do not believe that there is such a thing 
  as a problem that cannot be punched into submission. You might not be able to 
  injure a specter with physical violence, but you can cause them pain and, more 
  importantly, mental distress. If you cause it enough stress, it’ll flee, dissipate, or 
  forget who it is and turn into a vague Cat-1 blob. It can take a specter years to 
  regain enough of its sense of self to climb back up the scale, and some never do.
  20
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Animations
  Necromancy can be used to raise zombies and summon specters, but it also can 
  create weirder, idiosyncratic things. Animations are those monsters that don’t 
  occur naturally—they require magic to exist.
  There are a lot of different animations, but what they all have in common is 
  a vessel, usually a human corpse or a thing made of corpses. The necromancer’s 
  magic opens a hole in reality, yanks a spirit out from the other side, and shoves 
  it into the vessel, forcing it to gain a semblance of life. If they’re really good, they 
  might even be able to exercise some control over their creation. 
  The Animation Codes
  There are so many different kinds of animations that trying to list them all is 
  futile. New spells get discovered all the time, and powerful necromancers can 
  even tweak the spells they know, adding unique flourishes. U of O’s Necromancy 
  Department has a naming convention for animations, but it’s unrelated to what 
  they use in Davis, and any given necromancer might use one or both or neither. 
  In the morts, we keep it simple. When you’re reporting an animation, assign a 
  code; if you’ve never seen anything like it before, give it your best guess based 
  on how scary it looks.
  A code green animation is something you know isn’t going to hurt anyone. A 
  bone-walker, for instance, is just a walking chair made of bones. Not scary at all. 
  A code yellow animation is something that might cause trouble but isn’t an 
  immediate concern. Grave hands—disembodied hands that like to strangle 
  people—should be dealt with soonish, but there’s no huge rush.
  A code red animation is a top priority. Like a blood dancer…you know, a 
  swirling person-sized maelstrom of human blood that drowns people in itself. If 
  you hear there’s a code red, it’s time to run.
  Liches
  A lich is an undead person kept magically animated by their own spirit. Like 
  an omega-class zombie, the lich is fully sentient and in control, just no longer 
  breathing. The difference is, the magic required to make this happen on purpose 
  is intense, and it has a side effect of burning most of the body’s flesh off, leaving 
  it an animated skeleton.
  Usually, liches are necromancers who skeletonize themselves, either because 
  they don’t want to die right now, or they just want to show off their ability to 
  cast a really, really challenging spell. But that’s not always the case. Some people 
  ask to be transformed because they’re old or sick or just want a second shot at 
  life. Tracking down someone who’s both willing and able to help you make the 
  change is difficult and expensive. 
  21
  MORTS
  
  Handling Animations
  Even if animations look like zombies, the magic that created them gives the 
  spirit more control over its body: even if it has a head, destroying the brain won’t 
  necessarily make it dead-for-real. The good news is that they’re still just bodies, 
  and can be bashed, smashed, crushed, and set on fire. 
  But if you’re looking for an easier solution to your animation issues, find out 
  who raised them. The necromancer is the conduit for the spirits they’re using. 
  They are kind of the brain for every animation they’ve raised…take them out, 
  and their creations will all drop right away.
  Bone Horror
  All the long bones in this corpse’s limbs have been 
  removed, sharpened, and then lashed back on the 
  outside. Pointy, unpredictable, and code red. 
  ASPECTS
  Covered in Jagged Bones; Limbs Like Floppy 
  Tentacles
  Personal Aspect:
  SKILLS
  Good (+3): Stab stab stab!
  Fair (+2): Wiggle out of danger!
  Average (+1): Chase!
  STRESS 3
  CONSEQUENCES
  Mild (2):
  Dire Crows
  Take a dead flock of crows, shove a spirit into it, and 
  let it fly. A rare form of animated animal corpse, 
  and a hive-minded animation. Code yellow, mainly 
  for the annoyance factor when they swarm.
  ASPECTS
  Undead Crow; Many Bodies, One Mind
  SKILLS
  Good (+3): Dive-Bomb!
  Fair (+2): Fly!
  Average (+1): Peck!
  STRESS
  Dire crows have no stress boxes. When they absorb 
  stress, they get taken out.
  22
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  CREATING YOUR CHARACTERS
  Joining the morts is easy. There are no references to check, no physical exam, and 
  sure as hell no psych profile. You don’t even need to give your real name. Here’s 
  what needs to happen.
  Vital Status
  The morts are the number-one employer of documented undead in Cascadia. In 
  some areas, almost half the morts are Kimmies. First step to making your char-
  acter is picking your vital status. 
  • Alive: The default. Good in most social situations, and able to clear away 
  physical stress. You’re normal enough.
  • Revenant: An omega-class zombie. Easy to hurt but able to take a beat-
  ing, and likely to trigger a “shoot on sight” instinct with some people. 
  • Lich: A magically created skeleton. Liches are often necromancers, so be 
  prepared for that assumption. Since skeletons don’t have many vital areas, 
  liches are hard to hurt, but hits that do connect last a while. 
  • Ghost: A specter in that delicate position between forgetting who they 
  are and going full-on obsessive. They’re almost human, as long as they 
  keep both their sanity and identity. 
  23
  MORTS
  
  Aspects
  As in Fate Core, characters have five aspects.
  High Concept and Trouble
  Your high concept is the most defining, central fact 
  about you. Your trouble is the thing that always seems 
  to bite you. All the player characters are in the morts, so 
  you don’t need to reference that in your high concept. If 
  being a mortician is an essential part of your character, 
  you can reference it, but make sure it reveals something 
  unique. A Mort is a dull aspect. Former Station Head, 
  Back on the Team takes us somewhere more interesting.
  If you’re undead, your high concept must reflect 
  what sort of undead you are, but again be sure to make 
  it more in-depth than just A Lich. Something like A 
  Skeletal Sniper is a little better, and Assassin Who 
  Went Lich to Escape Her Past brings a lot.
  Weapon of Choice
  Your third aspect is your weapon of choice: what do 
  you like to use to solve problems? (Bearing in mind that 
  most of your problems involve something trying to eat 
  you.)
  The morts will happily supply anyone who signs up 
  with a shotgun or police baton, but they haven’t been 
  a proper military outfit for decades. General policy 
  is that the best weapon for the job is the one you’re 
  comfortable with. Doesn’t matter if it’s a WWII-Era 
  Heirloom Rifle, a Scrap-Built Potato Cannon, or a 
  Rusty Broadsword.
  While nothing is officially off the table as a weapon, 
  anyone who wants to arm themself with a chainsaw 
  is asked to watch an hour-long safety demonstration 
  counting down the ten increasingly bloody reasons this 
  is a terrible idea.
  Phase Trio
  Morts don’t work alone. That’s one of the few rules that 
  people still care about. Teams who work well together 
  stay together and, more important, stay alive. You’ll fill 
  in your final two aspects by detailing some of the danger-
  ous work you’ve done together, either on the job or off, 
  as you would in the Phase Trio in Fate Core (page  38). 
  The difference is, you don’t take an aspect from the first 
  phase. Your remaining two aspects will only come from 
  your guest appearances in your teammates’ adventures.
  24
  
  Skills
  Morts uses the standard skill pyramid: one Great (+4) skill, two Good (+3) skills, 
  three Fair (+2) skills, and four Average (+1) skills. Most of the skills come from 
  Fate Core (page 96). Some new skills have been made, and others tweaked, in 
  order to better reflect life in the outskirts.
  Academics: This is your basic knowledge skill, and it replaces Lore. What’s 
  not covered by Academics is knowledge about the undead or magic. That 
  stuff’s Necrology.
  Athletics: While this still covers climbing, jumping, and similar dexterous 
  maneuvers, straight-up running would be a function of Speed.
  Contacts: As normal.
  Crafts: As normal.
  Deception: As normal.
  Empathy: As normal.
  Fight: As normal.
  Investigate: As normal.
  Necrology: The study of the undead. Like Academics, except that this skill 
  specifically and exclusively covers your knowledge of the undead and of 
  necromancy. Its most commonly used to create advantages—for instance, 
  to remember a specific weakness of that one particular type of undead.
  Notice: As normal.
  Persuasion: Your ability to influence people, both positively and negatively. 
  This combines Rapport and Provoke from Fate Core.
  Physique: As normal.
  Shoot: As normal.
  Speed: Your ability to flee from things trying to eat your flesh, or otherwise 
  move yourself very quickly.
  Sneak: This combines Stealth and Burglary from Fate Core. It includes hiding, 
  infiltration, pickpocketing, and other thievery. You know, sneaky stuff.
  Resources: As normal.
  Will: As normal. Additionally, if you choose to attempt magic, this is the skill 
  you’ll use.
  DRIVING
  Most Cascadians never drive a car. Every morts station has a vehicle, and 
  morticians learn the basics, but the Station Head only gives up the keys 
  when there’s an emergency—a station in distress, or a spindle-dancer 
  gamboling down from the north or something similarly severe. Unless 
  you’re planning a campaign in which vehicles will play a notable role—for 
  example, if your players are a team clearing up State Route 20, or they’re 
  working closely with representatives from Convoy 14—then Drive would 
  be a wasted skill, which is why it’s not part of the standard list.
  In the rare instance that the players are spending in-game time in a 
  vehicle, treat it as a challenge: for instance, spotting sudden obstacles 
  with Notice and reacting in time with Speed. 
  25
  
  Stunts
  You’ve got three free stunts, plus three refresh, which you can spend to purchase 
  some extra stunts, as normal. If you’re undead, one of your stunts must be the 
  one below that matches what type of Kimmie you are:
  Revenant: You are an omega-class zombie. You lose your physical stress track. 
  Instead, because your body absorbs wounds easily, you gain another mild 
  consequence slot that can only be filled with a physical consequence. If your 
  Physique is Average (+1) or above, you gain a second such slot. At Good 
  (+3) or above, you gain a third such slot, and at Superb (+5) or above, a 
  fourth.
  Lich: You are a magically animated skeleton. You lose your physical stress 
  track. Instead, because skeletons have so few weak spots, you gain Armor:1 
  against all sources of physical damage. If your Physique is Average (+1) or 
  above, this increases to Armor:2, and if it’s Good (+3) or above, it becomes 
  Armor:3.
  Ghost: You are a Category-5 specter. You lose your physical stress track. 
  Instead, because your physical form is a mental projection, physical attacks 
  cause you mental stress. If your Physique is Fair (+2) or above, you gain an 
  additional mental stress box, and at Great (+4) or above, you gain another. 
  These stack with mental stress boxes you gain from having high Will. 
  Additionally, you can pass through solid objects such as walls, although 
  doing so causes you to take one mental stress.
  Extras 
  The jacket. The official uniform of the morticians is a leather jacket with a cool 
  insignia on the back and, if you survive your first month, your name embroi-
  dered over the breast pocket. Everybody gets one—even ghosts, whose jackets 
  have a special lining imported from Davis that helps keep them from phasing 
  right through it accidentally.
  As long as you’re wearing your jacket, you get Armor:1 against any melee 
  attack, and you are readily identifiable as a mortician. This Armor rating stacks 
  with anything else with an Armor rating you might happen across.
  26
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Big Issues
  As in Fate Core, the world of Morts has impending and ongoing issues for the 
  characters to deal with. These often have something to do with the undead, like 
  A Persistent Influx of Ebonghast Specters or The Skeletal Army of the Golden 
  Pharaoh of Missoula. But while morticians might live outside the city proper, 
  they’re still affected by city politics and problems. There might be a Water 
  Shortage, Entrenched Corruption in the LAMs, or Run-Down, Failing Trains. 
  Make at least one of your campaign’s big issues unrelated to the undead. This 
  will help ensure that the PCs are also tied, at least somewhat, to the “normal” 
  world in the city. 
  In addition to the two big issues unique to your campaign, there is a third 
  present everywhere in the world: The Veil Between Life and Death Is Wiggly 
  and Uncertain. This issue is entirely outside of anyone’s control, sitting there to 
  be invoked and compelled like any other aspect.
  At the beginning of each session, the GM gets free invocations of this aspect: 
  one free invocation plus one for every undead PC. That’s because the undead 
  tend to attract more undead. The GM also gains a free invocation whenever a 
  PC casts a necromantic spell, because that also attracts more undead. This aspect 
  can be invoked to make just about any undead monster stronger and harder to 
  deal with. The free invocations expire at the end of the session, so be sure to use 
  them.
  Necromancy
  When the dead rose, it wasn’t long before people figured out that some forms of 
  magic—specifically necromancy—worked. It wasn’t much longer before people 
  figured out that it was dangerous and generally a bad idea.
  Finding Spells
  Spells are rare, valuable, dangerous, and weird. They just appear, seemingly at 
  random. People stumble across words in an unknown language, written in the 
  margins of old books, or painted on the walls of forgotten basements, or things 
  like that. No labels. You’ll need to cast it to know what it does. One well-known 
  spell to raise alphas was first discovered carved into a chicken femur by a guy 
  who was eating the chicken in question, and who promptly died from a bad 
  case of “reading things aloud.” It’s almost as if there’s a mysterious force seeding 
  the world with necromancy all scattershot, tacitly encouraging us to work more 
  magic. Budding necromancers are advised not to think about that too hard.
  The thing about spells is, while the robes in Davis or even U of O can figure 
  out what they do, tweak them, and sometimes combine or alter effects, they’re 
  still a mystery. For one thing, they can’t be copied easily. That spell carved on 
  a chicken bone? It can be copied, but only onto chicken bones. Read it off of 
  anything else or try to cast it from memory and, best case, nothing happens. 
  Same with any other spell. This means necromancers collect a lot of weird stuff…
  bones, books, photos, dolls, a whole sack of random crap.
  27
  MORTS
  
  How to Cast a Spell
  Step 1: Consider not doing this dangerous thing.
  Step 2: Gather the components. Often it’ll be a human corpse, sometimes with 
  a few special preparations. Sometimes it’s a complex amalgam of parts from a 
  dozen human corpses. It always requires an unbroken circle to be made around 
  it, although whether that’s chalk, paint, little rocks, or anything else doesn’t seem 
  to matter.
  Step 3: Read the spell. This requires rolling to overcome with Will against 
  opposition that bottoms out at Fantastic (+6), but could be much, much higher. 
  Along with anything else which might increase the challenge of spellcasting, add 
  +2 to the opposition for every active animation that you created—you are a 
  conduit for the spirits, and there are limits to your bandwidth.
  Step 4: Resolve the effects. 
  • If you succeed, the spell goes off. You create an undead thing, which gets 
  up and starts moving around. After about a day the spell will wear off, 
  and the undead thing will be dead again.
  • If you succeed with style, not only do you create a thing, but you can 
  choose to make it obedient or permanent. If it’s obedient, it will obey 
  orders you give it, or at least attempt to, for the next hour or so. You don’t 
  get direct control—the animation is still an NPC, and a very stupid and 
  bestial one at that—but at least you can point it in the right direction. 
  If it’s permanent, then it won’t re-die in a day, and its existence doesn’t 
  increase the opposition to your attempts to cast spells.
  • If you tie, nothing happens.
  • If you fail, then your soul is rent from your body and pulled into the 
  realm of the dead, killing you immediately, irrevocably, and—if the brief 
  but intense screaming of failed necromancers is any indication—incred-
  ibly painfully. So…be aware of that.
  28
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Improving Your Odds
  If you’ve got the time, you can create advantages to help out the casting. A 
  Magically Potent Circle, for instance, will take a few minutes and a Good (+3) 
  Crafts roll. People versed in Necrology might be able to come up with other 
  ways to make casting go smoother, although creating these advantages is usually 
  almost as hard as doing the actual casting.
  For a quick and cheap +2 bonus to your roll, splash a little fresh blood around 
  the circle before you cast. Any living human’s will do. Voluntarily cutting your-
  self to draw a little blood will give you one physical stress. This is kind of like a 
  boost, so use it right away or lose it.
  A human sacrifice, now that’s a super-boost—if you kill someone right before 
  or during a casting, that’s worth +10 to your roll. But it’s also murder. Even in 
  Davis, where they do capital punishment and necromancy, that sort of thing is 
  not allowed.
  Finally, since necromancy involves making your mind a channel through 
  which spirits get pulled into the real world, you can always pay for it with your 
  own sanity. Take a hit of however much mental stress you want, and gain an 
  equivalent bonus to your Will roll. So taking five stress gives you +5 to your roll. 
  The good news is that you can choose to do this after you roll, so a failure isn’t 
  actually immediately fatal. The bad news is that however much stress you take, 
  you must absorb it with a consequence. Even if it’s only one stress, you’ll need 
  to fill your mild consequence slot to handle it. If you can’t or won’t do that, well, 
  good luck on the other side.
  Bone Charms
  Some clever necromancers have figured out how to turn spells into ready-to-cast 
  cantrips, carved onto a bit of human bone. If you have a corpse in a circle, all 
  you need to do is snap the charm in half, and the thing gets up, no effort on 
  your part.
  Now, it’s only going to be active for an hour, and you don’t get to give it orders. 
  But it’s going to work, and it’s not incredibly risky, except in the sense that you’re 
  trusting that whoever sold you this bone and said it was a code green pack mule 
  didn’t accidentally slip you a decidedly code red noose-tongued slasher. 
  29
  MORTS
  
  Spells
  Having access to a necromantic ritual is way above a mort’s pay grade, so start-
  ing the game with one puts you at an advantage to your peers. Players, if you’re 
  desperate to have a spell on hand, you can take the following stunt.
  Necromantic Ritual: Design a single necromancy spell. You have access to 
  that spell and may attempt to cast it. If you ever sell, destroy, or otherwise 
  rid yourself of the spell, you lose this stunt and may replace it at your next 
  minor milestone.
  Obviously there are more spells in the world than can be summed up here. 
  When you’re designing spells, remember that magic can allow corpses to defy 
  physics and operate in impossible ways, but it always comes down to a spirit 
  forcing a semblance of life into a dead thing.
  Basic Zombie 
  Spell: A dried chicken’s femur, covered in carved words.
  Opposition: +8
  Components: One human corpse, reasonably complete.
  Results: The corpse gets up, with the abilities and inclinations of a 
  standard alpha-class zombie (page 16).
  Scout Skull 
  Spell: A couple of words written in black marker on the shiny side of 
  an old CD.
  Opposition: +7
  Components: One human skull, severed between the third and fourth 
  vertebrae. Skinned or not, doesn’t seem to matter. 
  Results: Any flesh clinging to the skull is consumed, and it turns into 
  a Scout Skull. It floats about shoulder high and incessantly follows 
  the caster. For about an hour, whenever the caster closes their eyes, 
  they will see through the skull’s empty eye sockets.
  Bone Walker 
  Spell: A dictionary, with the spell jotted in the margins over several 
  pages in the Ts. 
  Opposition: +10 
  Components: Lots of bones. A few hundred; using two full human 
  skeletons has been proven to work, but the source of the bones 
  doesn’t matter as long as there are enough of them. 
  Results: The bones are reoriented into a bone walker: a sort of bony 
  chair atop two long legs that will stride forward inexorably. Riding 
  one is faster than walking, but it’s not very comfortable. Bring a 
  pillow.
  30
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  CREATING ADVENTURES
  Morts are, in their own way, heroic adventurers. They might not want to do 
  heroic things, but they’re still responsible for making sure civilization doesn’t 
  collapse, so adventures happen to them.
  That said, they aren’t fantasy heroes on grand quests across the countryside. 
  They’re losers with a dangerous job. They might get pulled into a big adventure 
  sometimes, but usually their life revolves around their day-to-day job.
  The Hub
  A mort’s life is built around a small area they see every day: their station and 
  the outskirts around it, where they do the boring work of trudging through 
  the wastes and killing lone alphas. This is their hub. As the GM, your job is to 
  make the hub an interesting place to explore. After all, while a mort’s work will 
  keep the city from being destroyed, that’s a pretty abstract motivator. A decently 
  comfortable room in the station, a couple of interesting coworkers, and maybe 
  some cool ruins to poke through? That’s something both the morts and their 
  players can care about. 
  In-universe, the hub is also where morticians train, fill out paperwork, and 
  clean the bathrooms once a week. That’s part of the flavor of the place, but it’s 
  just not stuff that’s going to make it into play. The station is a place where the 
  players can rest, resupply, and look over whatever loot they’ve picked up. The 
  area around it is a little sandbox, where players can explore during their “on-duty” 
  time, discovering neat places, killing random undead, and most importantly, 
  happening across missions.
  31
  MORTS
  
  The Missions
  A mission is a scene or set of scenes tied to a specific objective that’s more involved 
  than bumming around the hub. Teams of morts are generally self-directed, so 
  they’ll make missions for themselves, like clearing out dangerous spaces or track-
  ing down weird animations. But there are also people in the hub who might 
  have a task for the morts. The Station Head is an obvious choice, but there are 
  also farmers and foragers, travelers from the wasteland, and the down-on-their-
  luck scavengers in the outskirts.
  Missions aren’t long. A single mission shouldn’t last for more than a session. 
  It’s an issue of pacing: a mortician does their job and moves on. For deeper 
  adventures with major villains, missions can chain together (page 36), but 
  they should still be punctuated by calmer moments in the hub. One of the facts 
  that sells life as a mortician is the juxtaposition of the outrageous and the mun-
  dane: one minute you’re chopping a zombie in half, and the next minute you’re 
  chopping carrots because it’s your day to make dinner. 
  The hub is full of missions. Ideally, the morts can wander in any direction 
  and find something to do, pass on missions and come back to them later, and of 
  course, make up their own missions. Don’t worry, GMs, you don’t have to prep 
  for hours to fill every possible corner of the world. You can whip up a mission in 
  moments by following a few simple steps.
  Step 1: The Inciting Incident
  This is whatever thing that pulls the morts out of wandering and into action. 
  Sometimes you will have no idea what this could be until it happens—when the 
  players say “Let’s take a closer look at this” or “Where did this come from?” then 
  they’ve just made up an inciting incident. Run with it!
  Otherwise, inciting incidents can be whatever you want. Some options are 
  very likely, like wandering monsters, shouts in the distance, cryptic notes or 
  radio signals, and people asking for help. The smoke that indicates an undead 
  fire. Sometimes players won’t notice or care about a potential mission, and that’s 
  fine! Keep it around if possible, and let them come back to it when they want.
  A mission handed down from the Station Head, now, that’s railroading your 
  players. If they’re proving listless or otherwise need a push, it’s a big gun you can 
  use to get them moving. Do it sparingly.
  UNAUTHORIZED MISSIONS
  Morts have been known to help people in the outskirts who have 
  mundane problems unrelated to the undead. They’ve also been 
  known to smuggle drugs into their cities, play pranks on other 
  teams, or just ditch work and try to sneak into a movie theater. 
  Anything that gives the team a focus can be a mission, even if it’s 
  off the morticians’ beat.
  32
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Step 2: The Locale
  Where is this mission taking place? Sometimes it’s familiar territory—by all 
  means surround the morts’ house with a hoard of undead sometime—but usu-
  ally you’ll drag everyone into a new setting. The area between the wall and the 
  fence is filled with active farms, campsites, shanty towns, and ruins of any civic 
  structure you might imagine. Dangerous things might appear in the city proper, 
  forcing the morts to contend with civilization. And while it’s not encouraged, 
  morts can and sometimes must go beyond the fence and into the wasteland, 
  where there are more ruins, stretches of zombie-infested road, dense clusters of 
  alphas, and even necromancer’s towers. 
  Depending on your needs, the locale can be a single room or the entire city. 
  The point isn’t to limit the geography, but to give the mission a sense of place. 
  Exploring new and dangerous locations is part of being a mortician.
  Step 3: Keystone Objective
  This is the heart of the mission. Any objective can be a keystone, although some 
  of the more obvious options include “Kill this undead thing,” “Get to this place,” 
  and “Collect this important thingy.” Something concrete.
  The team might not know what the keystone is when the mission starts. For 
  instance, if they’re investigating how an everbleeding hulk got into the city, the 
  keystone objective might be to blow up the secret tunnel from the outskirts. It’ll 
  take some investigation to figure out what they need to do, but it should be 
  obvious when the keystone has been achieved—or if it leads to an interesting 
  outcome, rendered unachievable. It’s either the climactic moment of the mission, 
  or it’s an action that leads right into a climactic confrontation.
  33
  MORTS
  
  Step 4: Fodder
  If the keystone objective is the heart of the mission, then fodder is the soul of the 
  game. Morts spend most of their time killing alphas, and there are weak specters 
  and animations that serve a similar role—omnipresent, annoying, and easy to 
  kill. As a player, killing zombies should be fun, fulfilling, and rewarding (even if 
  the characters consider it part of the daily grind). To that end, most missions will 
  be filled with fodder: enemies who are everywhere. 
  While any sort of undead can be fodder, they are always a minor threat: one 
  stress box, if that, and no really scary abilities. Rather than being threatening, 
  they make other challenges more interesting.
  There are two important things about fodder. First, whenever a mort takes out 
  fodder, they get a boost. That’s to make sure killing fodder feels rewarding. It 
  also means that if the players are struggling with something, you can let some 
  fodder burst into the scene, which might actually help the morts out. 
  Secondly, as soon as the morts have completed their keystone objective, the 
  fodder goes away. This might make perfect narrative sense—for instance, if the 
  keystone objective involves taking out a necromancer, and the fodder are her 
  animations—but it might not make any sense. That doesn’t matter…doing this 
  helps the mission’s pacing. As soon as the players reach their important goal, 
  they shouldn’t feel threatened by incidental monsters. In-universe, the morts 
  would spend time doing boring cleanup work, making sure every fallen zombie 
  is actually dead. In-game, that’s not fun to play, so elide it unless something 
  interesting happens during the cleanup.
  Some missions won’t have fodder, especially if the team is doing something 
  unauthorized right in the heart of the city, or if being sneaky is essential. That’s 
  fine, and varying up the missions is important, as long as most of them give 
  opportunities to kill the undead. 
  HANDLING COMBAT INITIATIVE
  While any form of tracking initiative in a combat has its benefits 
  and tradeoffs, Morts works exceedingly well with Balsera-style 
  (aka “popcorn”) initiative. The GM figures out who’s acting first. 
  This will usually be the character with the highest Notice or the 
  creature lunging from the shadows unexpectedly. After that char-
  acter acts, then their player—or if they’re an NPC, the GM—decides 
  who acts next. It can be anyone, on either side of the conflict, 
  who hasn’t yet acted. Whoever’s controlling the last character to 
  act in a round decides who acts first in the next round. 
  Popcorn initiative makes it really easy for players to work to-
  gether, one creating an advantage that the next can immediately 
  benefit from, for instance. It also makes it easy for NPCs to work 
  together, giving even the lowliest fodder the ability to surprise 
  and swarm the players.
  34
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Step 5: Setpieces
  These are any particularly notable challenges that the team will face on the mis-
  sion, like powerful undead, environmental hazards, or people who need to be 
  talked down tactfully. Basically, any interesting challenges that will crop up, 
  usually standing between the players and the keystone objective. When you’re 
  prepping a mission, come up with two or three setpieces. Don’t worry about 
  what connects them. Instead, keep them on hand to drop in when the moment 
  seems right, based on what the players get up to. 
  If you’re a gifted improviser, though, you might not worry about setpieces 
  at all. You can just generate challenges on the fly. If you’re not a confident GM, 
  then come up with a few extra, just in case the PCs go somewhere you don’t 
  expect.
  Step 6: Rewards
  When a mission ends—after the keystone has been achieved (or rendered dra-
  matically unachievable) and any loose ends have been cleared up—the morts 
  should get something for their trouble. Something beyond a minimum-wage 
  paycheck and whatever satisfaction comes from a job well done.
  Morts get milestones, of course, but they should also get useful things. Fate 
  Core isn’t especially inventory-oriented, but cool stuff is cool, and one of the 
  fringe benefits of being a mortician is getting a shelf full of souvenirs. Stations 
  almost always have a trophy room full of weird skulls, broken weapons, and 
  other neat finds. Encourage your players to customize their stations with little 
  trophies. It won’t have a mechanical effect, but it will make the station feel a 
  bit more like home. But even beyond that, you’ll want to end most missions by 
  giving the players something.
  Magic stuff is extremely powerful, dangerous, and awesome. Actual spells are 
  usually not appropriate for morticians—they have the potential to dramatically 
  change how players approach problems. But a spell can be a great short-term 
  reward, livening up a mission or two before the Station Head takes it away. A 
  bone charm is also rewarding: players can sell or trade it, use it as a threat, or 
  even, in dire situations, use it. It’s especially fun if the morts aren’t sure what the 
  charm actually does, so you can try to get them into a circumstance where the 
  best course of action is to break a charm over a corpse and just see what happens. 
  Loot includes things like a little extra cash, or the goodwill of an ally, or a 
  giant pile of ammunition. They’re resources that are either abstract or not worth 
  tracking, and which belong to the team as a whole. Loot is basically a boost: an 
  aspect that the players can invoke for free, but once they do so, it disappears. 
  Regular boosts disappear very quickly if not used, but you can hold onto loot for 
  a long time. It will eventually fade, but might take weeks to do so. Loot is some-
  thing players might find on most missions, and shouldn’t feel the need to hoard.
  35
  MORTS
  
  Finally, there’s gear. These are the useful things players find: weapons, tools, 
  and valuable stuff. Each piece of gear has an aspect, like Rusty Old Chainsaw 
  or Set of Lockpicks. As long as someone’s holding onto the gear, its aspect can 
  be invoked and compelled by the GM and players. But gear is temporary—it 
  can be lost, broken, or stolen. Taking away someone’s gear is a compel, so it can 
  be refused. Gear aspects are described in a little more detail in the Fate System 
  Toolkit (page 16).
  Gear is great. Let a player stumble across gear whenever they do something 
  impressive. At the same time, stuff on the outskirts breaks, so use your compels 
  to churn through their gear. Players should never have more than two bits of 
  gear at a time, and gear really shouldn’t last more than a couple sessions.
  Mission Chains
  Missions in Morts don’t replace the scenes and scenarios of basic Fate Core; 
  missions just pace them in a certain way. A mission usually takes a couple 
  scenes—arriving at the locale, dealing with a setpiece, hitting the key objective, 
  things like that. Meanwhile, a scenario can play out in a mission chain, where 
  part of the reward for completing a mission is a new thing to do.
  These mission chains can proceed directly—having finished the mission, 
  there’s new trouble right in front of you that you’ll need to immediately take 
  care of—or indirectly: at the end of the mission, you stumble across informa-
  tion which suggests one or more new places worth checking out. Use the former 
  sparingly, never more than twice in a row before giving the players a break. A 
  fun way to introduce new missions indirectly is by changing the hub as a result 
  of what the team did: new people move in, or an inaccessible area opens up, 
  complete with new things to do. 
  Every story question (Fate Core, page 232) you have for the scenario can be 
  turned into a mission, but that doesn’t mean that every mission needs to answer 
  a story question. Let your players goof off, pursue side objectives, and make their 
  own trouble. That’s part of being a mortician. That’s most of being a mortician, 
  if we’re being honest.
  New Hubs
  Morts move around sometimes. After a big story arc, the old hub might feel used 
  up. If that happens, move the team to a new station or a new city entirely. New 
  people, new problems, new varieties of the undead. You can make the trip there 
  a short chain of missions in its own right. The morts might even be needed in 
  Davis or the CRU, where they’ll act as zombie-killing ambassadors in foreign 
  lands. 
  Wherever they go, they’re bound to find something to shoot in the head.
  36
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  RANDOLPH THE LICH KING
  This is a sample three-mission chain about a terrible villain trying to break into 
  Cascadia’s capital city. The only thing standing in his way are the morticians of 
  Eugene Southeast. 
  Eugene Southeast
  Morticians’ Station #12, better known as Eugene Southeast, is one of the eight 
  stations in the outskirts surrounding Eugene. The station is built into an old 
  apartment building, which means that every mort gets their own bedroom and 
  even has a little porch. It’s nice, although for safety reasons all the houses that 
  originally surrounded Hill House Apartments have been burned to cinders, 
  dampening the view somewhat. 
  The area contains a mix of old ruins and usable farmland; the latter is mostly 
  confined to a group of city parks to the south, closer to the fence than most farm-
  ers like. In your immediate area, most of the ruins are residential and ignored by 
  large foraging teams—too many doors and corners for undead to hide in, too 
  many living squatters. However, to the east there’s the remnants of a community 
  college, which is being slowly dismantled and brought back to Eugene proper. 
  Texts are of a particular interest; anything that’s managed to survive the elements 
  for fifty years will bring a lot of money to the foraging team, and this fact even 
  encourages random scavengers to sneak into the college late at night, alone. 
  Molly Burgess is your Station Head. She joined the morticians at sixteen 
  because she had nothing better to do. Now, she’s thirty-six. She’s got masses of 
  scars from stories she’s not going to share, and she can operate a lever-action 
  shotgun one-handed. She’s got no patience for people who are having a hard 
  time with the job. 
  Eugene Southeast only has one other team, which has three morticians on it. 
  In most cities, two teams is considered understaffed, but Eugene has eight sta-
  tions and a lot of overlap in territory, so nobody’s worried about it. Miranda Bard 
  is a teenager, here on judge’s orders. It was an alternative to doing six months in 
  prison for breaking and entering. Todd Perry also doesn’t want to be here—he’s 
  in his twenties, and he wants to emigrate to the Republic of Davis. He knows a 
  lot about necromancy, and thinks some time dealing with the undead will look 
  good on his resume when he applies. Funnily enough, the third member of 
  the team is a lich, Rory Sendak, who knows nothing about necromancy. Rory 
  doesn’t really talk about their past, except to say that “Rory Sendak” wasn’t the 
  name they were born with, they used to be involved with a military organiza-
  tion, and at some point they spent a lot of money to get a new start on life. Rory 
  favors a sniper rifle they presumably learned to use as a living soldier, Miranda 
  favors a baseball bat in the rare occasions when fists won’t do, and Todd carries 
  the basic-issue shotgun he got when he signed up for the job.
  37
  MORTS
  
  Randy King
  Vital Status: Lich
  High Concept: The Best Damn Skeletal 
  Necromancer to Ever Get His Tenure 
  Application Rejected at UC Davis
  Trouble: It’s All About Me
  OTHER ASPECTS
  I’ve Read Something About That; “Whatever 
  you’re doing, dress well doing it.”; 
  Charming When I Want to Be
  SKILLS
  Superb: (+5): Academics
  Great: (+4) Will
  Good: (+3): Necrology 
  Fair (+2): Persuasion
  Average (+1): Fight
  STUNTS
  Lich: Randy is a skeleton, so he’s got no phys-
  ical stress track. Instead, he has Armor:1 
  against any source of physical stress.
  Phylactery (Lich only): If he’s taken out, 
  Randy will regenerate at the safe loca-
  tion where he keeps his phylactery. 
  Doing so clears all of his consequences, 
  but gives him the severe consequence 
  Regeneration Sickness. If he’s suffering 
  from Regeneration Sickness when he gets 
  taken out, he won’t be able to regenerate.
  Eldrich Blasts: Randy has learned how to 
  attack using necromancy, summoning 
  spirits and hurling them at his enemies. 
  This lets him attack using Will, but only 
  in zones adjacent to his own.
  STRESS (MENTAL) 4
  CONSEQUENCES
  Mild (2):
  Moderate (4):
  Severe (6):
  REFRESH: 3
  38
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Part I: City Under Siege!
  Inciting Incident: This one gets handed down from on high while the play-
  ers are killing time in-house. Burgess explains that the other team is getting 
  exhausted by alphas on the south side of the wall, and you’ve gotta go help ’em 
  out.
  Locale: The South Eugene outskirts, starting at the wall. Like most of the city 
  walls in Cascadia, it’s a pretty pragmatic bit of masonry—most of it is made 
  up the edges of buildings and houses, with the streets filled in with bricks and 
  reinforced with sheet metal and whatever else was on hand. Your station’s other 
  team is there, keeping the peace.
  Keystone Objective: Figure out where the zombies are coming from! Players will 
  satisfy this keystone when they meet Randy King, who’s holed up at Resthaven 
  Memorial Park about a mile or so south. 
  Getting there is easy if the players track the zombies’ movements…they don’t 
  exactly cover their tracks. They could also just check for cemeteries in that direc-
  tion; there are only three, easy enough to just stop by them all. The funeral home 
  where Randy is doing his dark work has got an eldritch storm of purple clouds 
  above it. This is the most normal thing in the world when hedge necromancers 
  are doing stuff. 
  Alternately, if someone figures out that these undead are animated by necro-
  mancy, they’ll have the option of calling up a more experienced necromancer to 
  see whether it’s possible to get a read on local activity. That’s going to take a little 
  bit of persuasion, but people in the know can sense that there’s something going 
  down at Resthaven. 
  Breaking into the facility is as easy as breaking into any fairly sturdy building 
  guarded by a horde of the undead. Inside, the little chapel has been converted 
  into a lab, stuffed with cool magic stuff, with Randy seated at a makeshift desk.
  Fodder: Alphas everywhere! Technically they’re animations, but very simple 
  ones, indistinguishable from a basic zombie. See page 16 for stats.
  Setpiece: The only real setpiece is Randy himself. He doesn’t much look like a 
  necromancer. He’s a skeleton, sure, but he’s wearing a sweater vest and comes 
  across as a kind of a genteel Mr. Rodgers type. When confronted, he’ll politely 
  explain that he’s smashing into Eugene to confront his sworn enemy: Amanda 
  Martin. 
  The PCs will almost certainly not know who that is. She’s a minor administra-
  tor at the University of Oregon. She refused Randy’s application for a faculty 
  position in Necromancy because it arrived a week after the deadline. She denied 
  him his rightful place at the head of a classroom, as far as he’s concerned, and 
  he’s going to give her a piece of his mind in person. 
  39
  MORTS
  
  If pressed, and asked why he’s doing this by breaking down the city walls and 
  not by, say, sending a letter, he’ll begrudgingly admit that he’s also going to steal 
  any interesting spells in the library and probably burn it down on his way out 
  since, obviously, this two-bit enterprise doesn’t deserve to sit in the shadow of 
  UC Davis.
  If anyone suggests at any point that this is irrational, he’ll get quite peeved 
  indeed. If they try to stop him in any way, or even get too forceful in saying that 
  this is a bad idea, Randy will pitch a little fit and start fighting. He’s not much of 
  a fighter, but since he has a phylactery, he’ll probably keep it up until he’s killed, 
  at which point his body crumbles to dust. Even if the morts don’t have a lich on 
  their team, they’ll know that this is abnormal for fallen skeletons. 
  Rewards: When Randy goes away, things calm down, giving the morts plenty of 
  time to scour the area for cool stuff.
  New Mission: Figure out what happened with Randy. This is indirect. It’s some-
  thing the morts will probably want to do, but don’t need to do right away.
  Loot: Randy King’s Lab. It’s full of his old notebooks and equipment, and 
  could be useful.
  Gear: Randy’s lab is full of neat stuff. If this is the players’ very first mission, 
  they can all grab something. There are ceremonial daggers, expensive-looking 
  icons, a jar of glowing eyeballs, and even Randy’s sweater-vest if the fight didn’t 
  damage it too much. If those don’t appeal, ask the players if they see anything 
  neat among Randy’s things. He’s been living here for a few weeks, and he’s made 
  himself quite comfortable.
  40
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Part II: In the Shadow of the Necromancer
  Inciting Incident: Randy either got away or disappeared mysteriously. Odds are 
  pretty good that he’s still a danger. 
  If that doesn’t give the players momentum enough: Randy’s about to unleash 
  flocks of dire crows, targeting the people of Eugene and especially the university. 
  This is more of an annoyance than a direct threat, but if the players don’t follow 
  up on the last mission within a day or so, Molly will point this out and yell at 
  the players until they follow up on it.
  Locale: The University of Oregon, Eugene campus. It’s not nearly as full as it 
  was before the apocalypse, but it’s nice. Brick buildings, well maintained. It’s got 
  a very small, very theoretical Necromancy major, housed in the Gerlinger Annex. 
  Even though there are crows everywhere, diving at people, students are still dash-
  ing between the buildings, talking to one another, even trying futilely to eat on 
  the quad. These sorts of issues aren’t unheard of at the university.
  Keystone Objective: Find Randy!
  If the players take the time to look through Randy’s things back at the cem-
  etery, they’ll find some correspondence with another faculty member at U of O: 
  Dr. Ramona Hughes. The letters she’s been sending to him are variations on a 
  theme of “Randy, you’re getting a little nuts here. Calm down, alright?” She’s a 
  useful lead.
  Alternately, they could seek out Amanda Martin at the administration build-
  ing. Amanda barely remembers Randy King. If the morts convince her it’s very, 
  very important, she’ll dredge up a copy of his application, revealing that he was 
  a mediocre candidate, and the best thing he had going for him was a letter of 
  recommendation from Dr. Ramona Hughes, dean of U of O’s Necromancy 
  program. 
  Dr. Hughes is a rather severe-looking older woman, sitting outside her own 
  office, reading a thick tome of some sort. She worked with Randy years ago, 
  when he was still alive, and as it happens, she was the one who turned him into 
  a lich. She’s willing to help the morts if they help her: she seems to have acci-
  dentally raised a Cat-4 specter in her office. If they can take it out for her, she’ll 
  point them in the right direction.
  “The right direction” in this case is Hayward Field, not far away. Randy’s 
  running a big ritual on the grass, and has a pair of bone horrors guarding the 
  entrance. This is actually something the morts can discover just wandering 
  around as well…Randy’s not super subtle. Since the horrors are being obedient, 
  faculty and students alike aren’t terrified so much as concerned about whether 
  whatever’s going on will be wrapped before the game on Monday night. The 
  horrors aren’t the only animations on campus—lots of wannabe necromancers 
  have homework shambling along the quad—so they aren’t as immediately dis-
  tinctive as you might think.
  41
  MORTS
  
  Fodder: Dire crows, an alarming number of them. Not alarming because they’re 
  that scary, but because you have to ask how many dead crows Randy just keeps 
  on hand. Stats on page 22.
  Setpieces: Professor Fielding, the ghost in Dr. Hughes’s office. He’s a Cat-4 
  specter, verging on Cat-3: marginally and inconsistently self-aware. He appears 
  to be a stout, bespectacled old man wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches 
  at the elbows. At present, he’s flickering in and out of existence, and prone to 
  sudden and violent rages. He does not like when other people are in his office, 
  and he’s prone to poltergeisting.
  Fielding can be dealt with peacefully, if the players convince him that he’s 
  dead. Pretending to be a student will help keep him talking. Otherwise, if they 
  stay in a fight with him for a couple rounds and deal him a mild consequence, 
  he’ll get mad enough to burn out, conceding the conflict by reverting into a 
  Cat-1 specter: a little wisp of warm air that Dr. Hughes can readily deal with. Or 
  if the players are quick and tough, they can take him out altogether.
  Depending on how the morts handle getting into the stadium, the bone hor-
  rors may be a setpiece as well. They can fight their way through, of course—bone 
  horror stats are on page 22—but if they lure the horrors away or clamber up 
  the walls of the stadium without being noticed, they’ll get in as well.
  Reward: Not a lot of options here, just a new and immediately 
  important mission: stop Randy!
  Professor Herman Fielding
  ASPECTS
  Retired Professor of Linguistics; 
  Territorial Poltergeist
  SKILLS
  Good (+3): Telekinetically hurl objects!
  Fair (+2): Maintain physical form!
  Average (+1): Academics
  STUNTS
  Bound: Professor Fielding cannot leave 
  the office, nor can he be forced out of 
  the office by any method.
  Polyglot: Professor Fielding gets +2 to 
  Academics when attempting to read or 
  translate foreign languages.
  STRESS 3
  CONSEQUENCES
  Mild (2):
  42
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Part III: The Deadly Ritual!
  Inciting Incident: Randy’s right there. Just right in front of them. Just doing 
  some kooky ritual, after admitting his intent to rob and burn this place. The 
  math is not hard.
  Locale: Hayward Field, a former track and field stadium, now reclaimed for 
  football practices. It’s pretty much exactly like what you might expect a small 
  football stadium to be, except for the bit where there’s a naked skeleton at the 
  fifty-yard line working on some major spell, along with thousands of wispy spir-
  its appearing and flitting around randomly, drawn by the power of whatever 
  Randy’s doing.
  Keystone Objective: Stop Randy!
  At this point, if you can get to him, you can try talking to him. He’s not an 
  idiot—if a bunch of morticians managed to get to him twice, maybe he needs 
  to rethink this plan. 
  Otherwise, you can just hit him hard enough to interrupt his flow. He’ll try to 
  shoot folks down as they get close, but all of his actions are focused on maintain-
  ing the spell. If he gets a moderate consequence he’ll get distracted and screw it 
  up.
  Alas, once Randy has been stopped, the energy from the spell doesn’t just go 
  away! If you get him to stop relatively peacefully, he’ll try to redirect it safely, 
  and accidentally summon a sod monster. If you stop him violently, it’ll backlash 
  into himself, and he’ll be turned into a shattered knight. Fail to stop him within 
  about five rounds of combat, and he’ll summon a flameghast.
  Fodder: There are lots of Cat-1 wisps about. They’ve got one aspect, Mindless 
  Bundle of Energy, but no skills or stress boxes. Honestly, they’re just a distraction.
  Setpieces: Randy, technically, but he’s too busy with what he’s working on to 
  be a challenge. He’ll defend himself, but he won’t fight back. He has a couple 
  of alphas with him, watching his back, but the real danger is what will show up 
  after you talk him down, knock him out, or let him finish the spell.
  Reward: Well, there’s several hours’ work cleaning up displaced sod, flaming 
  masonry, or bone chunks. But there are some goodies.
  Loot: Tickets to the Next Eugene Ducks Football Game. That’s the upper 
  extent of the university’s begrudging respect. If the morts cleared the ghost out 
  of her office and didn’t do too much property damage, they’ll also have earned 
  Dr. Hughes’s Goodwill.
  Hub and Missions: If Randy survived, then he’ll disappear in the chaos after 
  the monster is killed and go back to his lab in the outskirts, remaining a semi-
  permanent resident of Eugene Southeast. Technically, the team should capture 
  him and deliver him to the LAMs—he definitely broke the law and might still 
  try to burn down the school—but that’s another mission entirely.
  43
  MORTS
  
  Flameghast
  So evidently there’s a way to summon 
  a spirit from the other side that’s made 
  out of fire. A proper necromancer 
  might suggest that even a Cat-7 specter 
  can’t be literally made of fire, but this 
  one is just so suffused with rage that 
  it takes on the appearance of a pillar 
  of flame. But the difference is largely 
  academic when Randy King is literally 
  cackling because you were too slow to 
  stop him from summoning this thing.
  ASPECTS
  Made of Fire; Fueled by Vengeance; 
  Bound to Serve Randy King
  SKILLS
  Great (+4): Burn things!
  Good (+3): Speed
  Fair (+2): Protect Randy!
  Average (+1): Fight
  STUNTS
  Bound to Serve: Whenever Randy 
  King is attacked, the flameghast 
  intercepts the attack if it is in the 
  same zone as Randy. 
  Burning Hate: Whenever some-
  one attacks the flameghast with a 
  melee attack, whether the attack 
  succeeds or not, the attacker takes 
  1 physical stress.
  STRESS 4
  CONSEQUENCES
  Mild (2):
  Moderate (4):
  44
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Shattered Knight
  The shattered knight is what Randy 
  will accidentally and fatally create if 
  the morts hurt him enough to mess up 
  his spell. It’s an eight-foot-tall human-
  oid shape made of whirling black and 
  purple energy, coated in armor made 
  from the shattered bones of its creator. 
  In other words, Randy exploded into 
  a monster. That monster, thanks to 
  the vestiges of Randy within it, wants 
  to destroy the school and will stalk off 
  toward the library first.
  ASPECTS
  Made of Pure Spirit; Bony Plates; 
  Fueled by Sheer Malevolence
  SKILLS
  Great (+4): Take hits!
  Good (+3): Hit people!
  Fair (+2): Grapple!
  Average (+1): Screech terrifyingly!
  STRESS 3
  CONSEQUENCES
  Mild (2):
  Moderate (4):
  45
  MORTS
  
  Sod Monster
  The sod monster is an underwhelm-
  ing name for an incredible creature. If 
  you peacefully talk Randy out of his 
  rampage, he’ll try to end the ritual by 
  pouring excess spiritual energy into the 
  ground…and the ground will come to 
  life. It looks like a vague human-shaped 
  mass of grass-covered dirt. It doesn’t 
  have any clear aims beyond a general 
  undead inclination to destroy whatev-
  er’s around it. The good news is Randy’s 
  right there to help you tackle this mys-
  terious thing.
  ASPECTS
  Possessed Sod; An Unheard-of 
  Magical Abomination; Incredible 
  Strength
  SKILLS
  Superb (+5): Bash!
  Great (+4): Trample!
  Good (+3): Grab from afar!
  Fair (+2): Tunnel underground!
  STUNTS
  Tangling Grasp: Whenever the sod 
  monster attacks and succeeds with 
  style, the defender gains the situa-
  tion aspect Entangled by Grass. If 
  the defender is already entangled, 
  then the sod monster gets a free 
  invocation of that aspect.
  STRESS 4
  CONSEQUENCES
  Mild (2):
  Mild (2):
  Moderate (4):
  46
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/FATE (fudge) [multi]/World of Adventure/Morts.pdf