Moves and NPCs from the Climbers

We are currently most of the way through my long running Apocalypse World game, the Climbers, and in the middle of a 6 week break in play thanks to other commitments and my move to my first house. So I've decided to share some of the custom moves and characters from that game, specifically the henchmen of White, leader of one of the major fronts. Each minion had some interesting tools and moves. Also each of them succumbed to the violence of my players so their secrets are no longer relevant to the game..

Rue Wakemen

Threat Type: Grotesque – Disease Vector

Impulse: to contact intimate and/or anonymous

This tall black man paints his face with a white skull everyday. Dressed in a ragged suit and top hat, he knows much of the Voodoo religion and the psychic maelstrom. Thin and sickly, his eyes are covered in a mottled green due to 'the spots'.

Through his connection to the “loa” or “gods”, he somehow survived a terminal case of the climbers. Working for White, he worked on destroying or infecting the few holdings that resisted his master.

During play, he managed to shut down the Autodoc and tried to turn November Orleans (Skinner) to his cause. In the aftermath of the Autodoc shutdown, he was called by her into an ambush. Though he disabled the critically injured gunlugger, Gator, his compatriots knocked him out. Then they burned him.

Custom Move

• Receiver of the Loa: when you open your brain to the psychic maelstrom (in regards to him) or contact his mind psychically, he gets to ask a single question from Read a person. Answer truthfully.

Cougar

Threat (Cougar's siege): Affliction - Barrier

Impulse: to impoverish people

Cougar stands over 7 feet tall, her face covered in a mask of bone, silver and leather. Beneath her leather armor, her body is scarred and heavily muscled. With a powerful but high pitch voice, few know what to make of Cougar, except to fear her.

Cougar serves as White’s war leader, leading his men to destroy those who oppose him. She seems to like this status and has never turned on her master.

When she led White’s men against the Music Bowl, she was defeated by November Orleans and her unnatural charms. Later the dangerous beauty lured the giant to her secret sacrificial chamber. Then she slit Cougar's throat.

Custom Move

• Giant: Cougar possesses 4 health and acts like a small gang at all times (+1 damage and -1 harm when facing single opponents).

Gear:

• Machete [3-harm hand messy]
• Autoloading shotgun [3-harm close messy]
• Leather clothes [1-armor]

Winona

This techno-psychonaut possess inhuman yellow eyes and a fierce gaze. Dressed in a dark cloak and keeping a collection of strange weapons, she is more interested in her own experiments than power over others.

Winona along with Rue Wakemen served as advisers to White. Her own goals seemed to require a powerful patron. What those goals were however are unclear. Winona kept to herself, living in the irradiated depths of the Big ship grounded off the coast of Miami.

Her technical skills were impressive and she managed to subvert the Autodoc's AI. In the end, Violet Jefferson (Touchstone) killed her in the main computer room with a well placed shot to the head.

Custom Move

• Eyes of the Maelstrom: Winona can see anything in the vicinity of her psychic surveillance devices.

Gear:

• Implant darts [0-harm far hi-tech reload]: a device the size and shape of a rifle that fires darts filled with a solution. In this case the solution is the same as an implant syringe (as the brainer gear).
• Pain wave projector: as the brainer gear.
• Psychic mine: by mentally attuning two rod-like devices, Winona can set up a psychic trap for whoever passes between them. Those who pass between the two rods suffer 2-harm ap and are momentarily stunned (s-harm). After discharging their psychic blast, the rods must be recharged.
• Psychic surveillance devices: these physically attuned hydroponically cultured fungi sit suspended in metal cages. They sense any mind that passes by them.
• Kevlar reinforced cloak [1-armor]