RFK ‘72 Posters

This collection of four posters, created in the retroactive backwash a week prior to the temblor at the St. Francis Hotel, are ostensibly artifacts from the universe of Andrew Krane’s Atlantis Risen series. They promote incumbent President Robert Kennedy's bid for re-election in 1972 against Ohio Senator Robert Taft, Jr. In the universe of Krane's novels, Kennedy, in charge of the war against Atlantis for the past four years, won 49 states and the District of Columbia, losing only Nebraska (it’s implied in the third novel in the series, Hail Atlantis!, that MARPA information warriors, using pilfered Atlantean information magic, seeded subliminal pro-Kennedy messages on all three television networks and in all major newspapers; Nebraska, as the only triple-landlocked state, was unaffected by anti-Atlantis propaganda).

The four posters depict the same stencil of Kennedy with the four basic messages of the RFK '72: Four More Years (red, promoting Kennedy's domestic successes), Peace. Hope. Unity. (blue, trying to bring America together after being internally riven by Atlantean infiltration), American Magic (green, reminding America of the advances that MARPA has brought into their lives since the chaos of 1968), and Defeat Atlantis (yellow, a declaration that the war against Atlantis is the second-term Kennedy Administration's number one priority, in an attempt to peel off conservative Republican voters).

Gazing upon one or the other of these posters for a minute and concentrating on the ahistorical energy contained within grants the viewer a minor boon (and a Quirk) for 24 hours depending on which poster is viewed as the viewer innately channels the power of the RFK meme from the Atlantis Risen universe. Once a poster has been “used” it no longer contains the reality-warping energy and is a spent force. URIEL currently has a handful (six to eight) of each version of poster.

• Red: Kennedy the Politician. Gain a +1 to any negotiation or politics rolls. Also gain the Quirk Uncompromising.

• Blue: Kennedy the Poet. Gain a +1 to any verbal artistic expression rolls. Also gain the Quirk Self-Important.

• Green: Kennedy the Bringer of Magic. Gain a +1 to any occult-related rolls. Also gain the Quirk Obsession: Occult Knowledge.

• Yellow: Kennedy the Cold Warrior. Gain a +1 to any warfare-related skills (Strategy, Tactics, etc.). Also gain the Quirk Dislikes Commies and Hippies.

Using any variety of poster also bestows the Quirk Delusion: "RFK was re-elected in ‘72," which will stay in effect for 1d days after the initial 24 hours expires. If the Kennedys come up in any capacity in conversation or otherwise, the viewer will assert with confidence that Kennedy was not shot in Los Angeles in 1968 and that he is currently President. This is a minor reality shard and therefore only costs 1d-3 Corruption to use.

Specific Study (both this and the Atlantean Cultural Mission Plaque): Charley can see clearly the origin of these posters; they come from Earth-Krane. A group of clean-cut young Kennedy boosters, real go-getters, received the poster design from the President's re-election campaign, the Team to Re-Elect Kennedy (TREK), and ran off a bunch of these posters in October '72 to aid the prospects of the President in what the *less* clean-cut kids in town still called "Occupied Yerba Buena" (San Francisco). As hinted at by Stoney, northern California was a real battleground in the years following Atlantis's rebirth: not only political, but military. By Election Day 1972, the city of San Francisco had been "liberated" by U.S. forces, but even with the support of the tradition city fathers in business and finance and MARPA settling in for a lengthy counterinsurgency, it's clear these posters did not curry favor with the Atlantis-aligned magical youth of the Bay Area.

But among the "silent majority" of San Franciscans, those who believed that the Atlanteans went WAY too far in overthrowing American cultural norms during their roughly two-year occupation of "Yerba Buena" after the Battle of Berkeley—the paganism, the outré sex and psychedelic drugs, the psychic hive-mind orientation activities, the teaching of magic to everyone willing to join the Atlantean movement—these posters were a sign of hope. Of normality returning to everyday life. Of RFK's exceptional ability to balance the new reality of magic being in Americans' lives again while not interfering with other esteemed American traditions: traditions like democracy, capitalism, private property, and so forth. This is why the messages on the posters received and stored such intense belief energy, energy that enables users of the posters to "consume" them and gain skills in realpolitik, in persuasion, in American magic. Just one of the ways mass production met thaumaturgy in Robert Kennedy's/Sebastian Stone's America. Is it against the spirit of free democracy? Maybe a little, but hey, '72 was a close one in California, with the vote being split almost perfectly in thirds between RFK, Republican Robert Taft Jr. (strong in Orange County and Silicon Valley), and third-party People's/Venceremos Party candidate and Atlantean stalking-horse Jane Fonda (who turned 35 right before Inauguration Day on the winter solstice of '72, qualifiying her for President!) and her VP candidate Benjamin Spock. Every little bit of magical oomph helps.

The energies around the plaque, however, are very different from that of the posters. This was placed on the St. Francis when Atlanteans took over the building and made it into a cultural embassy, and so it's overlaid with bespoke Atlantean magic rather than American mass-produced magic. The plaque allowed for peaceful exchange of ideas and philosophies within the walls of Earth-Krane's St. Francis building, but much like cultural exchange with the Soviet Union or communist bloc in our timeline, the people inside the building will remain fundamentally wary of anyone with an agenda truly opposed to their own. Essentially the plaque allows for visitors to be tested for their loyalties, allowing Atlantis to recruit the likely and weed out the wary.

The posters and the plaque do still contain a minor, dirty tinge of History B; after all, Rich and Carl were given the keys to Earth-Krane thanks to Anunnaki glyphics used with the particle accelerator, and theoretically it was the reality temblor that retrocreated these objects before the temblor actually happened on Friday, June 29 at 11:15 am. And Charley wonders after spending so much time with these objects, if it's a case of again of some force among the Anunnaki sliding these objects into existence—one (batch) American, one Atlantean—to show how magic, no matter the source, can be tainted by Anunnaki efforts. Sadly that's all the Specific Study gives her on both of these.