This talisman is - interesting. You see, Winston Churchill liked to use his
bath-times to plan strategies both military and political; apparently, he did
some of his best thinking in a bathtub.
When you mix that with such a mythic event as World War II, well, it's
not unusual that some mystical power might coalesce as a result. This particular item acts as a Talisman/4
(adder) for both Tactics and Knowledge: Military Strategy, provided that the
user is actually taking a bath in it.
Yes, this means that the user has to be naked and immersed in water - in
the tub! - for at least an hour in order to make the talisman work.
This is not a problem, really. Taking a bath is a normal part of life,
after all. Nobody looks funny at a
person who claims that a nice long soak is conducive to Deep Thinking; indeed,
many people have similar opinions. In
other words, using the Bathtub of Blessed Winston is in and of itself not going
to be particularly unusual.
However, there have been... modifications.
It's all the fault of Mad Jack Wheelie (known
officially as Jack, Ofanite Master of Valor - actually, no, by now the first
name is the one used in even the official reports). Mad Jack Wheelie got his hands on the Bathtub back in the mid-Sixties:
he appreciated the bonuses to his already obscenely high tactical rolls, but to
actually sit in a bathtub for an hour?
It was a strain. When Mad Jack
Wheelie needs to make a Tactics roll for his squad of Warriors, he usually
needs to make one right now - so it's kind of pointless to run back and
take a bath. Probably dissonant, too,
come to think of it.
So, he experimented a bit. A little checking revealed that filling the tub with water
manually worked just fine, which was good.
At first, he put wheels on the tub.
That worked, as long as he assigned a squad member to push. That was sort of unacceptable, so he tried
motorizing the wheels. That made the
talisman self-mobile, but slow.
Twin mini-jet engines ('liberated' from Revelations and Development) on
the rear increased the speed to something approaching reasonable, but the
entire thing was clumsy and still easy to hit.
Armoring the Bathtub minimized it, but the speed dropped.
Any rational being would have long since given up,
but we are talking about Mad Jack Wheelie, here. So, he called in a favor or three - and found an artificer also
mad enough to enchant the whole thing with Numinous Corpus: Wings. Between that and the jet engines, Mad Jack
Wheelie was ready to take to the air properly, providing of course that
'properly' encompasses 'naked, up to the waist in water and flying an armored,
armed bathtub'. It's amazing how often
people disagree with him on that definition of 'should' - almost as often as he
manages to get away with using the blessed thing, which is quite often, really.
What? You're
asking about the 'armed' bit? Yup,
armed: waterproof, front-mounted twin .50 caliber machine guns, to be precise
(use the stats for heavy machine guns found on page 116 of the CPG).
Perfect for strafing runs, don't you
know.
Remember.
The name is Mad Jack Wheelie, and Michael would be keeping the
Inquisition off of his back even if he didn't like the guy's style.
Talisman/4 (Tactics) 08pt
Talisman/4 (Knowledge: Strategy) 08pt
Relic/2* (NC:
Wings) 06pt
Activation time: an hour -3pt
Convenience: specially inconvenient** -2pt
Fragility: extremely tough +3pt
Tracking: can track owner -2pt
Use Restriction: must be naked and in water -1pt
Visibility: automatically detectable (gee, you
think?) -3pt
Vulnerability: Ethereal Artifact destroyed -3pt
Total: 11pts
*A reading of the Liber Reliquarum makes it
unclear whether a talisman can be enchanted into a relic. If this is not possible in your game, simply
decree that Mad Wheelie Jack's equally mad artificer was capable of ignoring
such trivia. I mean, this sort of thing
is what the Archangel of Creation is for, right?
**Technically, this is a vehicle, and as such should
have no Convenience penalty. On the
other hand, it's a flying armored bathtub packing twin .50 caliber machine
guns. That's got to be worth some sort
of inconvenience points: indeed, -2 may be understating the case.