The First Coin of Luck - An Artifact for Shadowrun

 

A Recent History of the First Lucky Coin

    Known by the title Lu (wealth), this magical artifact in the form of a humble bronze cash coin supposedly brings prosperity and riches to it’s bearer. Originally given to a Hong Kong fisherman named Sun Yat-Sun through a bequest in Dunkelzahn’s will, the coin was stolen by a group of Yakuza from a now defunct branch of the Watada-rengo. After their murder of Sun Yat-Sun and theft of the coin, they family was rocked by a series of disastrous unlucky breaks; within months, every single member of the crew that stole Lu was dead, and the clan itself broke apart. From there the coin passed into the hands of the Great Eastern Dragon Ryumyo. Sensing the curse associated with acquiring the coin through dishonest means, Ryumyo quickly gave the artifact to one of his underlings, the Oyabun Fukumoto Kanzaburo. It only took a few days to prove how effective the coin really was—Kanzaburo’s horse won 13 races in a row, and the Yakuza boss won the lottery 3 times in spite of the fact he never bought any tickets.

Kanzaburo

    Seemingly a boon, the influx of cash brought along with it attention from the authorities. Even with their substantial influence, Kanzaburo was still imprisoned for a “mere” 25 years. Unwilling to pass up on such an obviously powerful magical artifact, Ryumyo tried to give the coin away to another one of his underlings. Politely rebuffed by nearly everyone with whom he was willing to trust with the coin, Ryumyo was annoyed but undeterred. The Dragon gave the coin to a homeless man by the name of Bakin Kita. Mr. Bakin went from being destitute to owning a mansion and driving a Maserati within 3 weeks. However, to Ryumyo’s horror, the man was murdered while in possession of the coin during an altercation at a casino in Macau, in spite of the fact that several dozen Yakuza soldiers were acting as surreptitious bodyguards for him. After disposing of the failures, the Dragon was able to arrange for someone to retrieve the coin; it should have been a milk run, Kita’s body had been dumped into a shallow grave in the city limits by the ignorant goons of the casino. Astonishingly, his agents were successful, but the plane that they were traveling in fell out of the sky, and the coin was lost somewhere in the East China Sea.

Ryumyo

    Searching exhaustively for the coin in their backyards, Ryumyo unwittingly tipped off Lung, Mang and Masaru to the fact that he was interested in something in the ocean. Not willing to let sleeping dogs lie, the other dragons sent out feelers. They soon discovered the truth, and began searches of their own. After nearly a decade of fruitless hunting, the plane’s wreck was finally located by a team which had been hired by Lung. The dragon told those who found the coin nothing, had them dead-drop it at a pawnshop in Hong Kong, and then paid them a truly exorbitant amount of money for their trouble. The coin sat, untouched, in storage for another four years as it was studied by a number of Lung’s apprentices. They declared that while Lu was as powerful as ever, it had been tainted by being party to so much greed and violence. They suggested to their master that the coin never be entrusted to anyone that Lung didn’t wish ruin upon, at least until Lu could be purified.

Lung

    The Great Dragon decided that the best course would be to hand the coin over to an organization, rather than to an individual. The Red Dragons and Wuxing are too central to Lung’s power-base to be risked to protect a single magical item. Resolving to kill two birds with one stone, Lung founded a new magical society made up of former Yellow Lotus members. No longer needing the Lotus within the ranks of Wuxing or in scattered gangs, the Dragon gathered 9 awakened former members, he named them the Siblings of Ill-Fortune, bound them with terrible oaths, and then bid them to stand vigil over whatever he turned over to their care. He smoke-screened the true purpose of the society by shipping them a bevy of mystical items before the coin was to arrive. Assigning a group of the 58^th Battalion to look over the Coin as it was being shipped from Hong Kong to Shanghai, Lung plotted a ruse to steal the coin from himself using a trusted minor triad known as the Bronze Sharks. The leader of the gang, Toothy Ruogang was a former apprentice of his, and her loyalty was unquestionable.

Stats for the First Coin of Luck

Befitting a relic from the Fourth Age, the Lu coin is incredibly potent. It grants the following bonuses to any character who has been willingly given the artifact:

• The bearer of the object gains +5 dice on any check related to gambling, games of chance, financial endeavors, or any action that is directly seeking to build wealth.

• Whenever the owner spends Edge for the purposes stated above, they only expend every other point used.

• The bearer will never be cut off from a source of funding. If their assets are frozen, they will be loosened by a coding error. If they are without cards or in an area that doesn’t take them, they will miraculously find the necessary type of currency that they need.

• The owner gains a re-roll on any test to check for availability or legality for anything that they wish to purchase.

    While originally the curse of the coin would only affect those who procured the it through violent or deceitful means, the relic’s long history of violence and greed has contaminated it. It now strikes anyone who bears it:

• The bearer can no longer re-gain Edge, short of completing a major story beat.

• When the owner is out of Edge, they gain a form of anti-luck; any action seeking to detect, track down or harm the character are at +2 dice. Further, they are subject to some sort of freak accident or run of bad luck every 1d6+2 days.

• The coin seeks to flee those who have run out of favorable luck; every 1d6 days when the owner is out of edge, the coin tried to slip from their pocket, grasp or possession in some way.