From The Unspeakable Oath 19, now available for purchase in print and PDF.
Written by Monte Cook,© 2011. Illustrated by Dennis Detwiller, © 2011.
The investigators go to spend some money and discover that one (or more) of their ten dollar bills are identified by a clerk or bank teller as counterfeit. They learn that people all over the community are finding the counterfeit bills. The investigators most likely find this inconvenient but not terribly interesting. That is, until they learn that a surprising number of deaths have been reported in the area as well, and all of the bodies have been found with some of the fake currency.
Nothing else seems to link the deaths. Two bills were found on a man who committed suicide by hanging. Another was found on a woman who was struck by a car. Three were found on the body of a man murdered in an alley in a drunken fight.(The Keeper is free to add more, similar deaths.)
Option 1: Haunted
The bills are haunted. The counterfeiter committed a handful of horrific murders in the same room as he crafted the phony money. The essence of those slain victims,imbued within each bill, haunts any that carry them.The investigators, if they still have any of the counterfeit money with them, begin to have terrible nightmares when they sleep, and hear strange whispers just at the edge of perception while awake. Objects begin to move on their own around them, sometimes in subtly threatening ways. Worse,even if the investigators rid themselves of the money, they soon find it mysteriously returned to their wallets or purses.Eventually, terrible calamities begin to befall those with the bills, or the whispering voices begin to drain their sanity,perhaps driving them to murder or suicide. Only the death of the counterfeiter, who is still at large, puts the ghosts to rest. (Alternatively, some rite of exorcism or properly researched binding spell could solve the problem as well.)
Option 2: Cursed
The bills are a mind-control ploy perpetrated by a pair of serpent men sorcerers. These recently awakened fiends of ancient times hide among humanity, hoping to exert some mastery over them. Having seen humans’ preoccupation with money, they have chosen to use that predilection against them. Using the flesh of shantak birds disguised by spells to appear to be normal paper, the inhuman sorcerers have created the fake currency as a test. Many of the subjects died during the test, either by design or accident, as the serpent men work out the fine details of their sorcerous process. Investigators with the bills may find themselves hearing voices in their heads that are not their own. They may awaken as if from a trance to find that they have taken actions of which they were unaware.Destroying the bills proves difficult because they are not printed on real paper—only the serpent men know how it can be accomplished. This latter fact may serve as a clue, however, as no matter what is done with the bills, or no matter how long they are in circulation, they always appear to be brand new, crisp sawbucks.
Option 3: Tainted
The money is not the problem—it’s the counterfeiter spreading them. A degenerate individual whose mother had been impregnated in a ritual calling upon an avatar of Yog-Sothoth, the counterfeiter commands powers he does not fully understand or control. His otherworldly essence grows in power and influence with each day, so that now when he spends considerable contact with an object (like the bills, but also his tools, his printing press,and essentially everything in his basement apartment) it is imbued with the taint of the Outside. Each of them is a like a tiny crack in the fabric of our universe. Madness and death follow these objects like a curse, but the true threat is the man, who—if not found and stopped—himself becomes a physical gateway, letting in true terrors from beyond that threaten all mankind.