Character Creation: Champions Complete

Ah, the 10th character of the month. Doing great! 

The Game: Champions Complete
The Publisher: HERO Games
Degree of Familiarity: None, but it's pretty GURPS-y
Books Required: Just the one

Well, obviously this is a supers game, and it's pretty much a quintessential trad game. It's a point-buy character creation system very much like Silver Age Sentinels, there's not really much of a setting, but "four-color supers" is enough that if I wanted to run it, I could. I don't - if I wanted to run a four-color supers setting I can probably find a system that's a little less mathy, but besides which, there are some amusing fallacies in the text. To wit:

N...no. That's not how that works. You pick the tone and the genre you want the game to emulate and build the mechanics that help you do that. Well, whatever, let's make a character.

As I often do when I don't have a concept, I shall fire up the ol' iTunes and randomly pick a song!

That's "Still Learning" by Halsey. Like a lot of songs on this album (which I recommend), it's pretty self-reflective. The idea of having a kind of dual identity is pretty central to the superhero genre, and I like the idea that the character is in some way very public in his everyday life but still manages a superhero life as well. 

Cole Carson grew up rich. Like, hella rich; his parents were loaded from the jump, and Cole had a very public, very Paris Hilton-esque kind of young life. He formed a band when he was in his late teens, and basically bought his way into success. The truth of the matter is that he is pretty talented as a musician and songwriter, though he usually outsourced lyrics because his attempts to write moving songs just came across shallow (wonder why).

And then on a tour through Europe, he wound up getting superpowers in a freak accident (I'll worry about the particulars later). He was all set to reveal that to the world, but then he wound up in a city (let's say Belgrade?) during a crisis involving other superheroes. And he jumped into the fray kind of on instinct, kind of to curry favor, and overheard people saying that "that guy looks like Cole Carson - but c'mon, like he would ever help people."

Cole hates to admit it, but yeah, that's valid. So he's continuing to tour and perform, but also fighting crime and helping out in costume, and at the same time trying to make his real self like, less of a dick. And he's learning that the people around him kinda don't want him to be better, and that's another issue.

OK, good start, now let's crunch a million numbers. Let's assume we're in a superheroic campaign, and we're doing standard chargen, which gives me 400 points (jesus) and 75 in Complications, which I assume means that's how much I can take in Complications. 

I guess I should think about what kind of powers I want Cole to have, just because when I start buying Characteristics that's going to include strength, super or otherwise. I think Cole could be your standard Superman-ish sort of guy; flight, super-strength, invulnerability and so on. I don't mind that, but I do like to throw in some weirder power for spice. Let's look at the Powers section real quick.

OK, I think I'll lean towards Density Increase, making me stronger and tougher (like Vision, actually). But Characteristics first.

Let's say that Cole can lift a car, so he's got 30 Strength. Strength is one-for-one, so that's easy.

Dexterity is 2 for 1, so I'll spend another 30 and put Cole to 15. 

Constitution seems important, I'll put it to 20. Intelligence can be a little lower, let's say 12. Ego is willpower and mental strength, and I think it's appropriate for that to be a little lower, so I'll put it at 10. Presence probably ought to be high, given Cole's profession, so I'll put that at 25. 

So far: 30+30+20+12+10+25= 127 spent. On we go!

Christ, there is so much math in this game. Offensive Combat Value starts at 3, and is five-for-one to raise. I'll bump it to 5, I guess? Defensive Combat Value is the same, so I'll do the same (that's 20 points).

Offensive Mental Combat Value is three-for-one, same with the Defensive version, I think I'll leave those alone for the moment. 

Speed starts at 2 and costs 10 for one point, jesus. I'll put in 30 points and bump it to 5. 

Physical Defense and Energy Defense both start at 2 and are 1-for-1 to raise. Bump them both to 10, I guess? That costs 16 points. 

Recovery starts 4, one-for-one, I'll bump it to 10 (6 points).

Endurance is what I spend to do things. We start with 20 and it's 5 END for one CP. Well, what the heck, let's spend 16 and put him up to 100 END.

Body is how much damage I can take before I die. We start with 10, let's go up to 20. Likewise, Stun is how much damage we can take before being knocked out. We start with 20 and it's 1-for-2, so let's go up to 50 (which costs 15). 

Total check! 127 + 20 + 30 + 16 + 6 + 16 + 15 = 230. Doing fine. I think.

That puts us over to Skills. And...oof. OK, there are five different types of Skills (Agility, Background, Combat, Intellect, and Presence) and they all have different cost schema.

You know, this is the sixth edition of this game, and it's still this complex? I'd hate to see what first edition looked like. 

Well, let's just list out the Skills I think Cole should have and then I'll suss out costs:

Acting
Bribery (WHY IS THIS A SKILL)
Charm
High Society
Professional (Musician) (I'm surprised there's no performance skill)
Streetwise

I didn't list any combat skills because frankly I don't understand how they work. Looks like they add to your OCV and related alphabet soup? But...why? Very weird. 

(To give you an idea of how bananas this is, there's a $25 software package to help you make characters with this game and I seriously considered buying it for a second there, just because I thought it would make this easier. Again, this is the sixth edition of this game. Guys, there have been amazing advances in game design that you should maybe look into? Like, not mathing everything to death?)

Fuck it, I'm just buying those Skills. If I can figure out how. 

OK, Interaction skills are 3 CP each, and all of mine are. Oh, so is Background. Good. So that's 18 points. Moving on to Perks. These are your basic Edge/Advantage kind of thing. I suspect being rich is going to show up here. Yep, Filthy Rich costs 15 points. Anything else? Positive Reputation, but how does this work? Looks like 2 points per level for the type of fame Carson has. Let's take, I dunno, 5 levels? 10 points? 

Points check! 230 + 18 + 15 + 10 = 273. 

Talents! Oh, good, another way to simulate "shit I can do." Why not. At least they seem to have static costs. Let's take Perfect Pitch (3 CP) and Striking Appearance (3 CP). That's 6 points, putting me up to 279. 

Powers! FINALLY! I suspect this is going to be a nightmare, but whatever.

Yep, fuck this.

OK, like I said, I want Carson to have the basic "super hero" stuff - super strength (already covered), flight, some measure of invulnerability, and I like the idea of having some density control. Let's start with flight because it's probably the easiest.

Yeah, I was right, it's just 1 CP per 1m, where you can move Xm during a "Full Phase." Let's assume a "Full Phase" is like a round in combat in most games, so assuming I want to move like 50 feet during that time (because my brain works in Freedom Units, not these Commie Metrique things), that's about 15 meters. So fine, 15 points into Flight. Moving on. 

Let's do Density Increase. Every 4CP I spend here increases STR by 5, PD by 1, and a whole bunch of other shit. Screw it, let's dump 24 points into this. That puts STR up 30, Knockback to -12, and PD and ED up by 6. 

And just because I like the symmetry, let's buy Desolidification, too (also it's got a fixed cost so I don't have to fuck with more math). 

Points check! 279 + 15 + 24 + 40 = 358. Only 42 more points! Let's spend 8 and buy Ultrasonic and Ultraviolet Perception.

Now, normally I would consider Adders and Advantages, but I do not care so I'm gonna not bother. I do still have 34 more points, though. Well, let's see what's next.

Complications, and the only one I want is Social Complication because of Cole's secret identity. That gives me 15 points back, which means I have 49 points to fuck around with. Argh.

Well, I think it makes the most sense to throw them into Characteristic things. I'll put four points into Constitution (which takes me down to 45 points). I'll put 20 points into Speed and raise it by 2, to 7. And then I'll spend 20 each on OCV and DCV and raise them by 4, leaving me 5 points left. I'll just dump them into Presence, putting it up to 30. 

OK, there are a lot of blanks on the sheet I'm not going to bother with. This game annoys me, but I like the character. So!

I think Cole got power'd in Eastern Europe somewhere. He was at a party incognito, hoodie and dark glasses, took a wrong turn down a hallway looking for drugs/girls/whatever, and wandered into a meeting with some very shady individuals selling very shady shit. Cole doesn't actually remember what happened - he was pretty wasted - but he remembers crashing through the wall like the godddamn Kool-Aid Man and flying back to his hotel. 

Over time, he's learned to control the powers, and he's worked through backchannels to get himself a cool-looking suit. It's red with blue trim and a blue cape (yeah, yeah, "NO CAPES" but Cole can make himself intangible if he needs to), with a blue cowl. He's paranoid about keeping his face covered because it's so famous, and he rarely speaks when he's doing hero stuff for the same reason. He never gave himself a superhero name, but the press has started calling him the "Blue Veil", and it's as good as any.

Well, if I hadn't had to spend so much time doing math, I'd think about what kind of music Cole plays and suchlike, but I'm about done here. 

Movie #787: Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell is a horror movie directed by Sam Raimi and starring Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Dileep Rao, David Paymer, Reggie Lee, Adriana Barraza, and Lorna Raver.

Christine Brown (Lohman) is a loan officer trying to get promoted to assistant manager of a bank, and in trying to prove herself to her frankly unrealistically reasonable boss (Paymer), she turns an old lady (Raver) down for an extension on her mortgage. Said lady turns out to be not only terrifying and kind of gross, but down with some pretty powerful magic, and attacks Christine in her car and tears a button off her coat. Christine, with the help of a medium (Rao), conveniently running a storefront right next to where she and her boyfriend Clay (Long) are walking, discovers she has three days until a demon called Lamia will, well, drag [her] to Hell. 

This demon is not fucking around, either. It gives her hallucinations, but also makes her nose bleed like a fire hose at work, slams her up against walls, and gives her nightmares of swallowing flies and other gross shit. Christine tries to find the old woman to get rid of the curse, but she's already died. She tries sacrificing her adorable little kitten to Lamia, but Lamia wants none of that. She eventually gets a psychic (Barraza) who has tangled with Lamia before to help her, but that plan also goes awry and she's left with one option - give the cursed button away to someone else, thus turning Lamia's attention to them.

(Spoiler: She tries, but it doesn't work because she gives away the wrong thing, and Christine is indeed dragged to Hell. Alas.)

This movie has 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it's interesting to me because it's a kind of gross horror movie, so why did it resonate so hard? (I don't disagree, by the way, I think it's a pretty great movie.) I think it's because, for one thing, it's tight. The cast is small and we get time to get to know most of them, and even the smaller roles like Barraza (and Molly Cheek as Clay's overbearing rich snot of a mother) get to establish themselves. The leads also have great chemistry - Rao's Rham Jas clearly wants to help Christine, but is mindful of his own safety and soul (and pocketbook). Clay acts as a voice of reason, but he can see when something is important to Christine and supports her (and the movie ends on his horrified expression, which is really effective). Lorna Raver brings some real pathos to what could have been a kind of caricature role. Of course, Christine herself anchors the movie, and I like that she's not an extreme. She's a basically good person put in impossible situations, and honestly she doesn't deserve what she gets.

And more to the point, the movie doesn't try to convince us she does. Sure. the old lady's granddaughter (Bojana Novakovic) says she deserves what's coming, but from her perspective Christine took her grandma's house away (not really what happened). Christine ultimately refuses to pass along her torment to another living person, even someone who arguably deserves it more than she does (that'd be Reggie Lee's Stu, her scheming coworker who 100% would have turned down the old lady out of hand). 

I think one of the reasons the movie works as well as it does is that Christine does lose. If she'd pulled the fat out of the fire at the last minute, it would have felt empty or trite, and it would have been just a gross-out movie. Likewise, if she'd never had a chance, it would have felt pointless. But Christine has multiple opportunities to escape her fate, and either luck (and Lamia) conspire against her or she refuses a cost she feels is too high, and ultimately she goes to Hell because of it. It's not fair, it's tragic, but tragedies are good stories. 

(Also, it's one of those movies that makes me imagine how a SAVE team in Chill would approach it, and that's fun for me.)

My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: Evil Under the Sun

Character Creation: Morgalad

This is the shortest game (in PDF) that I own, which is why I picked it today. Let's hope "short" means "easy".

The Game: Morgalad
The Publisher: McNabb Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one, I think?

This one perplexes me a little. It's a bog-standard fantasy D&D-ish kind of thing, sure, that's nothing new or interesting. But reading the book, there's...no setting information. Like, there's reference to "the many worlds of Morgalad," and discussion about adventuring and combat and suchlike, but nothing that tells me anything about the "worlds" themselves. Mayhaps this is a system reference and the actual meat of the setting is in a different book?

Well, whatever, it wants to be a bog-standard "fantasy" RPG, then that's what I'm gonna treat it like, so let's make a character and then sod off to go watch Evil in the Sun with Michelle.

OK, so first we determine Attributes. I roll a d6 for each of them, but that roll translates to a modifier (4 is 0, adjust by 1 in either direction, so you get a range from -3 to +2). 

Power -3 (right out of the gate, doing fantastic)
Finesse 0
Essence -1
Knowledge -3
Consciousness +2
Allure -1

Next, species! There's actually a little bit of lore hidden in these write-ups, but I might try and pick one that gives me bonuses to Power and/or Knowledge just so I don't suck quite so much. Oh, wait, being human makes me adaptable! Of course it does! Fine, I'm human, I'll add one to each of my shittiest Attributes.

Profession! Only four to choose from: Warrior, Rogue, Magi (should be Magus, since none of the others are pluralized), Priest. I don't have much of a preference, so let's roll for it. Rogue it is!

OK, so I get 4d6x4 Health and Energy; 56 and 48, respectively. I get to pick a Morality out of nine choices; I think I shall take Sovereign. 

And then there are some backstory tables, so why not, I'll roll on those. I'm from...a large empirical kingdom! (So...an empire? That the word you want?) I left...in search of adventure! Do I have family? I have...a brother! And how does my brother react to me? Indifferent! 

(Game design tip: If you're tempted to put "indifferent" as a result on a table, don't.)

Sure, why not. So: Calmactius is from the Empire of (wherever), but everything there is stratified - your education, professions, and basically your whole life is laid out according to the circumstances of your birth and while you can change your fortune, it basically involves sucking up to people in power. Screw that. Cal's brother Valmactius did exactly that, and now he's like a honcho military guy, but not an actual soldier, more in charge of logistics. Cal struck out on his own - if the only way to change your stars is if someone in power does it for you, then he'll steal that power from someone else, thanks!

And that's pretty much it, because I have no interest in shopping. Cal is small and somewhat mousy, but get a drink or two in him and he gets mouthy and standoffish real quick. He's got brown hair in a bowl cut (it's simple) and light blue eyes, and I rather suspect he's going to get caught stealing something and get hanged, but that's life in the big city. 

Well, that was easy, at least, even if the game is about as exciting as oatmeal in a hotel breakfast bar.

Character Creation: John Silence

I'm trying to get to 10 before the end of the month, which requires a character/day for the rest of the week. I think that's doable, though we're also in the midst of cleaning out the game closet, which is a mammoth task. 

The Game: John Silence
The Publisher: Ginger Goat (though it's not available for sale)
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Another sad tale of a Kicktarter gone kerflooie. The game is finished, the PDF exists (obviously, or else I wouldn't be talking about it), but the print edition doesn't because...the guy making it ran out of money and (I guess?) refuses to sell it, because some of the contributors left the project for "creative differences?" I don't understand why that means he can't sell the PDF or put it up for POD and give those of us who backed a coupon to buy an at-cost, which to me is a much more stand-up thing to do than give whiny "apologies," but then my relationship with apologies is a little rocky at best. (To say nothing of my ability to understand creatives who get some life shit thrown at them and immediately fold up their tents and run; see also Wicked Ones, Reach of Titan, and most perplexing of all, Dust Wardens.)

But regardless of the circumstances, let's talk about John Silence! The game has you playing psychic detectives of color, and is explicitly designed with the intention that you play a POC in the game (the author has his reasons for this, but the long and the short of it is "how about we have a game where the heroes are explicitly not 'white', whatever that means?") and that violence is not the means of solving problems. There's a short story that conveys the tone of the game perfectly, right down to having a big party with painting on butcher paper on the floor to build up enough joy to send monsters home. So this feels very urban fantasy - shades of Changeling: The Dreaming and other such things. Reading the GM section at the end of the book, the game is assumed to take place on the plane of Hjem, there are other planes of existence that are only defined as much as they need to be, and my god does this game get preachy about how you play it (when you as the game creator start telling me, the reader, what I can and can't say at the table, that's a big swing, my friend. But then again, anyone who would have backed this Kickstarter is probably down with the intent there).

SO ANYWAY let's follow the steps! There's no sheet (boo), so hopefully chargen is well explained.

Well, not off to a great start. Chargen starts with Nature, but then each Nature talks about stats and so on, and since there's no fucking character sheet I don't know what all the stats are. Blargle. With that said, the Natures are passing the Chupp test for me and I already have a concept, so that's cool.

One of the Natures is changeling, but unlike the traditional definition (human child swapped out for a faerie child), it just means you're one Nature but raised by another. So my character is human, but was raised by Monsters. ("Monster" here being a catch-all for cryptids and other creatures that don't fit into the other categories.)

So: My character's name is Leon Moody. He was raised, at first, by his aunts and uncles; his birth parents just weren't around much, though he knows he's met both of them on occasion. Leon spent a lot of time talking to imaginary friends, and gradually he kind of lost track of his human family and hung around with the monsters in the neighborhood. And then one day his aunt sent him down the block to stay with his other aunt, and he went to the monsters' lair instead, and just never went back. 

He's grown, now, and much of his childhood has a weird, dreamlike vibe to it, but every so often Leon will remember something relevant and helpful and then have to put it in context, and the conclusion he keeps inescapably coming to is that the human beings in his life really let him down. But he wants to be wrong about that.

OK, good (if sad) start. As a changeling, I pick two other Natures. The first is the one I was raised in, so that's Monster. Second determines attributes n' shit, so that's Human.

So I determine Attributes as if I were human, which means I roll 3d6 for each one. And they are: 

Strength 14
Dexterity 6 (oof)
Constitution 14
Intelligence 12
Wisdom 10
Charisma 11

Oh, right, this game is supposedly an OSR game, so of course it uses D&D stats. Yawn. 

And then there are some racial features I get, including that I get one "avocation" at 1st level. Oh, wait, as a changeling it's a faith or a philosophy. Fuck me, why does this game have levels? Is there a big overlap between gamers who are into 1st ed D&D and gamers who want to be told in extreme detail what they can and can't consent to at the table? I mean, the game never actually got published, so guess not.

Right, now we choose a class. What would Leon be good at? Also, if there's no combat, why are we using the same stats as D&D, a game about combat? Sorry, seem to have wandered a bit.

Anyway, thinking about Leon's weird upbringing, Detective or Writer seem to make the most sense, but actually since this is just a D&D clone with some set dressing changes, I do wonder which class plays nice with Strength and Con (I mean, is there a psychic nice-nice barbarian? Goddammit, this game would have made so much more sense in PbtA). 

OK, now wait just a goddamm minute:

 

IS THIS GAME NON-VIOLENT OR ISN'T IT. There are no rules for combat in the conflict section, and that section also tells us that if we're trying to get someone to do something they don't want to do, we're a jerk and should seek counseling. 

OK, anyway. I'm gonna say Leon is a Writer, how about that. I start with 8 Heart Points, and I get to pick two Skills from a list (Audit, Correspond, Document, Hide, Lie, Perform, Question, Search). None of those seem to play to my strengths, but maybe some of them are Intelligence, at least. Yep. I'll take Document and then I'll actually take Search, because I think it's something Leon would have gotten good at when he was small (also Hide, but I only get two and my Hide rolls would suck even with a bonus). 

I get some other shit for being a Writer that I don't get to choose, but I do get one 0-level Devotion, so let's look at those. 

Oh, cool. They all have (word) in parentheses, but nowhere is that word contextualized. Anyway, Lesser Revelation is very much in-concept for Leon; let's me have a vision from my past about a relevant thing.

And, welp, character creation just kinda peters off with no example or checklist or explanation, just a kind of "you've played D&D, go to it, but don't be a jerk, jerk" vibe, so I guess I'm done. 

I see Leon as played by Sterling K. Brown. He's thoughtful and energetic, but maybe a little weird and sometimes he'll encounter something in human society that his monster "family" never taught him, and he has to relearn things. 

I'm am so very disappointed in this game. Ah, well. 

Name: Leon Moody
Nature: Changeling (human, raised by monsters)
Class: Writer
Attributes: Strength 14, Dexterity 6, Constitution 14, Intelligence 12, Wisdom 10, Charisma 11
Skills: Document, Search
Devotion Techniques: Lesser Revelation

Character Creation: Harsh Generation

"Harsh" is a fun word. It doesn't sound like what it means to me. "Harsh." Too many fricative sounds, no stops or bilablials, it sounds breezy. Anyway.

The Game: Harsh Generation
The Publisher: Sealbee Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I've tried a few times to read this game and my brain has just kinda slid off of it. I'm not sure why; it looks perfectly playable (though very much a dirty hippie indie game). It's nominally post-apocalyptic, there's a focus on religion and community interaction and cybernetics (and other mods) but I dunno, it just doesn't hook me. It uses cards to introduce plot twists and suchlike, and the resolution seems to be that players (called "Storytellers", which is another thing that's messing with me because my brain is still very much conditioned to read "Storyteller" as "GM", which here is called "Moderator" arrgh) state a goal, the goal always succeeds, but the roll is to determined whether there are consequences to that attempt.

And...I dunno. I've played a few games where failure isn't really an option, including Headspace, and I don't know that I like it. Players like to win (I even wrote an essay to that effect many years ago), but having it be a foregone conclusion seems like it strips out some narrative possibility.

Now, with that said, I haven't played Harsh Gen so I don't actually know how well it would work, and the game seems well-put-together and all. The back half of the book goes through setting and history and it's readable and not dry, so that's a big plus. So let's make a character. 

Interestingly, this is another post-apoc game that involves the world getting taken over by a big forest (though not to the extent of Wildsea); the "Overgrowth" cuts off cities. No money, but people trade bioelectricity. 

But wouldn't almost anything make a better battery than a human being? Like a potato?

Anyway, first thing we do is pick a Template. Let's go with Modcrafter. There are three types of mods, so I'll have to pick which type I craft, I suppose, but I like the idea of being someone that can tinker with the cool cyberpunky stuff that people shove all up in them.

Right, next we pick name and pronouns. The book advises going outside one's comfort zone, and I'm good with that, though I think I'd rather do it with culture than gender. So my guy's, um, a guy, but what kinds of communities can one find in Philadelphia? (The game is set in Delphia, the remains of the City of Brotherly Love and Also M. Night Shyamalan's Movies.) The three most common nationalities, according to census data and a quick search, are Indian, Dominican, and Chinese. Since I've been replaying Assassin's Creed: Black Flag of late, I shall say that my character is of Dominican extraction, though it's been quite a few generations, of course. His name is Jasiel.

Tech ID, which basically describes what kind of body mods (if any). I'm gonna go with Electrogen, "modern mutants."

Religion! Religion is a big deal in this game, and there's a whole interlocking history for it. I like the Left-Hand Path, and specifically the Reconstructionists - very community focused and very appealing to modcrafters. 

Street Smarts! (Stay alert out there!) These are trait-like thingies that give me bonuses on rolls. I get Electric Touch for free (basically I've built up an immunity to getting zapped, which is 100% how electricity works), and then I pick two more. I want Gallows Humor; I picture Jasiel as the kind of guy who's going to joke like "whoa, how'd that thing get in there?" when he's playing with your genetic code. And I shall also take Multitasking; I think Jasiel is the kind of guy who always has lots of irons in a fire.

Mods! I get three Electrogenetic splices (ooh, I should replay Bioshock). Hmm. If there's a theme here I'm not seeing it. Well, I'll take Base/Camp (I remember every place I've been), Bacchanaliver (I can drink literally anything), and Neurotransmitters (I can take a deep breath and heal Stress). 

Favor! I start with two. That's...it.

And that's pretty much it! Jasiel is the guy you go to when your splices start mutating or acting weird, or you want to hack your skeleton into something a little more comfortable. I picture his setup in his shack having a bunch of jury-rigged computers, kinda like the setup in Darkman, and if you want him to work on you, you need to bring your own bioelectricity and a taco or something wouldn't hurt. 

That'll do 'er. 

Wildsea: Behold, the Heart of the Seeker

Yesterday we launched into our inaugural session of The Wildsea! Some introductions:

The ship is called The Heart of the Seeker, and it's a bit of an odd beast. Wedge shaped like many ships sailing the wildsea, but the Heart runs on voltaic runners, big electrical devices that cause the ship to hover slightly above the tangle. It's formed from the chrysalis of some giant leviathan, and powered by its still-beating heart. But in addition, a cocoon - perhaps the parasite that killed the leviathan in the first place - clings to the heart and feeds on the crew's dreams, acting as a secondary power source. 

The crew of the Heart, our heroes, are:

• Jakesta, the Navigator: Jakesta is an ardent, but died out on the wildsea and returned as one of the anchored. She remembers almost nothing about her life or death, but hopes to discover her past out on the wildsea.
• Kazera, the Screw: Kazera is an ironbound, formed of wood and metal, the living wreckage of other ships. She claims chunks of metal salvage to improve her metal body, and travels with a magnetically charged swarm of debris she can send out with a flick of the wrist.
• Rozek, the Steep: Rozek is a ridgeback, from one of the few permanent cracks of land amongst the Verdancy. She is an expert at making and reading teas and other hot and foamy draughts. 
• Chambersson, the Wordbearer: Chambersson is one of the mysterious Ketra, the cephalopod-like people who have evolved to live in this strange green world. He is amberclad, trapped in suspended animation for years, and is now a deliverer of messages on the wildsea.

Our crew begins leaving port from a small spit, urged to hurry by Jakesta - the people of this spit seem like they're hiding something and she doesn't want to find out what or why they're so secretive. And Chambersson agrees. While he was there, he met a man who was struggling from hunger, barely strong enough to move, and helped him. The man told him a rumor about where he might find an ironbound named Clanksburg, for whom Chambersson has a message. Actually it's one of his oldest messages, one that he hasn't been able to deliver because he's never been able to find the recipient. But now there's a lead, and the Heart has a direction! Rozek reads some tea leaves and sees all the leaves pushed out to the sides of the mug, creating a ring that she can see straight down into. A Rift, perhaps, a place where the tangle and thrash give way and allow sight into the sink, or even the drown? She shudders at the thought, but knows Chambersson will be thrilled - he has something of a fixation with such places.

Jakesta takes the helm and Kazera goes on watch. Jakesta pushes the ship - she wants to put distance between the Heart and the spit - but Kazera spots something up ahead in the tangle and yells a warning. Jakesta manages to steer the Heart enough to avoid crashing into it - it looks like a small spit. But having a closer look, the crew realizes this is something strange.

Most spits are just small chunks of land or rock that jut up out of the tangle, and are generally swallowed back up by the Verdancy quickly. But this one looks like the top part of a cavern, leading down into the dark. Could this be the ring that Rozek saw in the tea leaves? In any case, Rozek was watching the weather, and storm-clouds are gathering. 

The crew can't just pass this strangeness up, though, so they tie off ropes and lower themselves into the dark. The trees don't grow into this cavern, so they're essentially rappelling down the side of the thrash. They note that the cavern walls are covered in lichens and fungus, and Rozek swings over to scrape some into a sample pouch. As she does, she hears whispering in the dark and hears something move. She calls to the others, and Chambersson cocks an ear-hole and recognizes the voice as speaking Gaudimm, the strange language of the mushroom-people called the Gau. Chambersson doesn't speak any Gaudimm, but calls out in Low Sour, the pidgin language that has developed amongst travelers, hoping the unseen beings understand it.

A young Gau appears clinging to Rozek's rope, above them, legs linked around the branches in the thrash. In halting, broken Low Sour he establishes that the characters are not here to hurt anyone, and indicates that they should go below (he drops back into the branches and wavewalks down fluidly). The crew lands at the bottom, and discovers that this whole place is a concave, almost half-spherical structure made of rock. Actually, when Kazera lands, it gives out a loud clong - this place is as much metal as rock. 

The crew talks with the Gau youth a little - there are a bunch of other Gau here, and after a little tension everyone relaxes. Rozek signals to the Gau in Old Hand, the gesture-based language that predates the Verdancy. An old Gau tears itself up from the floor and joins the conversation, and with some difficulty the crew learns that this place is called the Bell, and that they are not the first visitors - one like Kazera was here, but went mad and struck out into the thrash. The crew was headed in the right direction to find him.

The crew takes their leave (Rozek gets a small pouch of purified earth from the old Gau, and trades some spirit gum for it), and they climb back up their ropes to the Heart. They strike out again, this time with Chambersson on the helm and Jakesta on watch, while Rozek draws a map of the area and includes the Bell. The crew notices a ship following them, and Jakesta recognizes it from the Secretive Spit - she saw it in port, and it had something big on the deck covered in a tarp, shaped like either a crane or a gun. Either way, the crew doesn't want them catching up. They grit their teeth and sail into the storm.

Lighting cracks above them, but the larger issue is what's in front of them! Jakesta spots a group of insects and warns Chambersson, but they decide that they can handle some bugs and the ship forges ahead. They discover, however, that these aren't just bugs - they are Lightning Cicadas! The cling to the hull and when they touch, an electric charge builds up. A whole swarm of them touching means the charge gets too big, and shorts the front two voltaic runners. 

The ship's front end drops into the tangle, and the back end flies up into the air a ways. All of the crew is banged around a little, but no one is seriously hurt. The ship has stopped, however, and it's still storming, and their front runners are out.

Rozek quickly mixes up a repellent/grounding solution and sprays it on the hull, causing the bugs to peel off and fall into the tangle. She grabs one of their carcasses, and notes with some alarm that it kinda looks like the same kind of carapace of the leviathan that makes up their ship. Is the Heart formed of the body of some giant cicada? A question for another time. Kazera heads to the engines and works her magnetic magic to get them running, and the Heart presses on.

They pass through the storm and realize they can no longer see the other ship behind them, so apparently they didn't want to chance the weather just to raid the Heart. Up ahead, Jakesta spots a weird circle where the leaves are just a bit yellower than the rest of the tangle, and warns Chambersson. He pulls the Heart alongside this area, and through a bit of trial and error they discover that this whole circle is brittle and crumbling. Their ship would travel over it, because of the runners, but a sawprow ship would crash right through. Looking carefully, they see that the branches between the tangle have thousands of little white eggs on them. Rozek wants to get a sample - mostly to see if she can figure out what's happening and maybe stop it, since if this spreads it would be really bad - but she's not particularly good at wavewalking and asks for help.

Jakesta agrees to go (she is, after all, dead, so what's the worst that could happen?) and clambers down into the tangle. She moves to gather some eggs, but they are more delicate than she thought and she crushes them, getting egg goop on her fingers. She hovers back up and realizes that the goop is starting to burn, which is weird because again, dead. Rozek and Charness (the ship's mothryn medic) scrape the goop off Jakesta into a vial, and the burning sensation goes away, but Jakesta starts to feel euphoric and see sparkly colors - whatever this stuff is, it has an effect on the mind. 

Chambersson and Rozek get on the ship's crane-mounted salvage magnet, and Kazera lowers them down into the hole that Jakesta inadvertently created. The hole goes all the way down into the sink, and it's cold down here, cold, dark, and quiet. Everything here seems...dead, but those eggs are still everywhere. Rozek gets some into a sample jar, and Chambersson looks around and sees an odd branch growth - looks like five wooden fingers grabbing a stick. And then he looks more closely and realizes, no, those are fingers. It's an ironbound, covered in brittle wood, trapped. 

Chambersson signals for Kazera to activate the magnet, and pulls the ironbound from its wooden prison. The crane drops it on the deck, and they hear it moan "help me". The crew scrapes off the crezzerin and brittle wood, and slowly the ironbound reanimates. It stands up, and points to itself - "Clanksburg."

Chambersson is overjoyed, and hands over the message that he was carrying. Clanksburg reads it and then rolls it up and stashes it in a hollow in his arm, and turns to Kazera and begins speaking in Brasstongue, the language of merchants and traders (Kazera does not actually speak Brasstongue, but possesses the ability to speak with any ghost or ironbound regardless of language). Clanksburg thanks them and says that he was on a ship called the Sanguine Dress that hit...something, he isn't sure what. The ship went down in the thrash, and Clanksburg was cast overboard. He made it to the Bell, but something there screwed with his head, and he warns Kazera to pay attention to how she's feeling lest it happen to her, too. He struck out from the Bell hoping to find a spit or a ship, but found the Brittle instead and fells into the sink, where he became trapped. 

Clanksburg is happy to direct the crew to the wreck of the Sanguine Dress if they want to try and salvage it, but perhaps they could drop him off at a spit or port whenever it's convenient? They agree, but decide they really should drop anchor and rest, and they also want to see if they can stop the Brittle before it gets worse. 

Rozek and Chambersson stay up and experiment with the eggs. They manage to hatch a couple by raising the temperature, and the things that come out are like tiny white termites. They burrow into living wood and start feeding on it, almost like they're draining its life, and then lay eggs. Their life cycle becomes clear - they eat the wood and lay eggs, the wood becomes brittle and eventually crumbles, exposing the eggs to sunlight, while warms and hatches them, the new bugs spread, and on we go. 

Curious, Chambersson exposes one of the bugs to a bit of crezzerin, and it twitches, turns over, and molts. What emerges from the skins is bigger with pointier claws - it cracks the jar it was in and runs for the dark corners. Chambersson tries to grab it, but he's been experiencing jolts and starts in his extremities (anxiety and electricity), and misses. The creature scampers away and is lost on the ship.

Jakesta spends the night going through a leather-bound journal and making some notes about the area, while Kazera stays up and talks to Clanksburg about his experiences on the Dress. In the morning, Chambersson and Rozek are pretty rough-looking - they've been up all night unsuccessfully chasing this creature. It's still on the ship somewhere. Chambersson isn't necessarily worried about it damaging the ship; these creatures only feed on living wood and the ship isn't made of wood anyway, but Jakesta isn't nearly so hopeful. They decide to stay where they are, find the damn thing and kill it, and try and deal with the Brittle before moving on.

Movie #786: Chronicle

Chronicle is a super...hero? movie starring Dane DeHaan, Michael B. Jordan, Alex Russell, Ashley Hinshaw, and Michael Kelly, directed by Josh Trank (who would go on to direct Fan4stic, which...didn't work as well).

During his senior year of high school, lonely abused senior Andrew (DeHaan) starts recording everything on an old video camera. His cousin Matt (Russell) gets him out to a party, where the two of them plus popular and affable jock Steve (Jordan) discover a Blue Glowy Thing in the ground. Cut to some time later where they're practiced with their brand-new badass telekinesis! 

All three lads develop the same powers, and as they practice they get stronger. Andrew is probably the most skillful, but he's also angry at the world because his mother (Bo Peterson) is dying and his father (Kelly) is an abusive drunk, and so he lashes out, nearly killing a man. Matt, who reads philosophy for fun and is very much stuck in the teenage "I'm above all this" mode tries to impose a little order and morality, but then gets distracted by the cute vlogger Casey (Hinshaw) and doesn't really notice as Andrew gets more and more detached from the world. Andrew winds up accidentally killing Steve in a lightning storm, and that sets off the downward spiral that leads to Andrew trying to use his powers to steal money for his mother's medicine, her dying, and him going on a rampage through Seattle that ends with explosions, flying buses, and Andrew dead with a spear through him.

Chronicle is told entirely through found footage, and where things get interesting is when it switches from Andrew's (or Casey's) handheld camera to, say CCTV footage from the convenience store, hospital, or police body cam. The implication since we're jumping back and forth between camera sources is that someone cut all this together, but since the movie ends with Matt leaving Andrew's camera on a mountaintop in Tibet I don't think that really tracks. The found footage conceit is cool and allows us to skip some of the little narrative concerns that might otherwise get in the way (what is the Glowy Blue Thing, for example), though I think of think Trank should have either committed to explaining where all this footage ended up or committed to having it all from one source, although that probably would have severely limited our perspective as viewers. 

But with that said, it's a pretty solid movie. Jordan and DeHaan have gone on to bigger-budget things (DeHaan played Harry Osborn in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, while Jordan, of course, has really blown up between Creed and Blank Panther), while Josh Trank kinda hasn't (after Fan4stic was panned, he did a biopic about Al Capone starring Tom Hardy that I'm really surprised I haven't seen), but that's kinda it. But digressions aside, Chronicle is good - the cast is smaller and the chemistry between them is nice. Alex Russell is kinda bland, and he doesn't read as a high school senior, but he carries his scenes well enough. All three boys nicely showcase different experiences of high school - Steve is popular and on top of the world (also his parents are rich), Matt is bored and ready to be done but generally doing fine, and Andrew is miserable and being tortured and beat up on a regular basis but who cares because he's weird and kind of creepy. Now let's give all of these kids superpowers!

The effects mostly hold up. The close-up stuff, where we're supposed to watching on Andrew's new camera, sometimes gets a little obvious CGI, but stuff like the talent show looks amazing because we're seeing what a viewer in the audience would see. I do wonder about the artistic choice to have a "BWOOOWM" noise accompany powerful uses of the telekinesis; is that diagetic? If so...what is it? But that's a minor point. 

Overall it's perhaps not as profound as it wants to be and could have gone harder on its premise, but it's a solid superhero/sci-fi drama and there aren't too many of those.

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: Drag Me to Hell

Character Creation: Kaiser's Gate

But Matt, you might say, didn't you just do a Savage Worlds game a few days ago? Well, yes, I did (it was Freedom Squadron), but sometimes if I don't have a particular idea about what game to do I'll have a friend choose one randomly, and GUS HAS SPOKEN so here we go.

The Game: Kaiser's Gate
The Publisher: Battlefield Press
Degree of Familiarity: None with this, plenty with Savage Worlds
Books Required: Kaiser's Gate and some version of Savage Worlds. It's written for Deluxe Edition, but I might just do what I usually do and spot-convert to SWADE (not like it's hard)

Kaiser's Gate is an alt-history game; the "alt" part starts in 1908. The Tunguska Blast opens portals to Faerie, which allows magic to seep into the world. People all over the world start being able to use magic, but people from less technologically advanced (or maybe less industrial?) civilizations tend to be better at it. This has the effect of letting indigenous and oppressed people the world over rise up and kick out colonizers, so in the space of a decade, Native Americans take over a lot of the Southwest, voudou practitioners in New Orleans establish a Free State, and so on and on the world over. 

The book goes through basically 1908-1920 and explains the alt-history. The Great War happens, but there are dragons involved. The US doesn't really get involved in Europe because Mexico actually does invade (with Germany's help) and takes over a lot of the western half of the country, and the USA hadn't really learned to use magic tactically. But then Tesla rocks up with lightning-powered sleds, which General Patton takes a liking to...there's a lot going on, and I'll say this, the alt-history presented is pretty cool and involves enough real-world history to be familiar (I found myself thinking of The King's Man a lot while reading it). 

The only real complaint I have is that there's not much advice for the GM. Like, could I run a game set in this world? Absolutely. But I wish the book had spent a little less time giving us pages and pages of gear and monsters, and a few pages talking about running the game, what the implications are for setting a game in the different eras of the war, and suchlike (I actually thought it might be one of the SW projects with a separate Player's Guide and GM's Guide, but no dice). 

WITH THAT SAID, let's make a character. I will arbitrarily choose the pre-war era, because there's a reference to "magic crime" that I enjoyed. The description is someone casting a sleep spell on everyone in a bank and cleaning the place out, and I think it'd be interesting to make a character who's a thief, con artist, swindler-type who has a knack for magic. (This might be a little close in concept to the Deadlands Noir character I made some years back, but eh. Devil's in the details.)

So: Cecil Lepley is from Kansas City, but moved around a lot when he was young because his father kept getting chased out of places. His mother died when he was a baby, dad was a grifter, and cheerfully used young Cecil as a prop in his scams. But he also explained a couple of things to Cecil that Cecil has never forgotten: You never take a man's last dollar, it's bad luck. You never take part in a scam that doesn't feel right. Trust your gut. And you never, never take someone's money by violence. Money and goods aren't worth bloodshed. 

Cecil's father violated these rules when Cecil was 16, and took part in a bank robbery. He and his two accomplices were shot dead trying to escape. Why did his father suddenly abandon his principles? Cecil has no idea, and it still bothers him. (That's a pretty good hook for the GM, I think.)

OK, good start. Starting with the usual 5 points for Attributes, I believe I shall leave Strength at d4 and boost Spirit to d8. I'm probably going to want to raise Agility, too? Eh, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

Skills! Assuming a SWADE conversion, I get the usual d4s in the Core Skills and then 12 more points to throw around. So: First thing's first, I want Cecil to be a Spellbinder so I'll put a d6 into Spellbinding (Kaiser's Gate uses different magic rules; basically there's no linked Attribute to the Spellbinding Skill so I could put it higher, but I want Cecil to be capable but not savant). I'll bump Athletics to d6, I'll bump Persuasion to d8. I'll take Thievery at d6, bump Common Knowledge to d6, bump Notice to d6, where's that put me? 9 out of 12. Oh, wait, Gambling d6, and then I'll use the last one to bump Stealth to d6.

Hindrances! I know I want Pacifist. I'll take it at Minor, though. I want  Cecil to be able to fight back if he needs to. I think Wanted makes sense, but let's assume Cecil hasn't gotten caught up in anything too serious yet, and keep it Minor. And then let's make my life hard and take Phobia (Major) - Gunshots. Gunshots make Cecil flash back to his dad getting killed. Cecil was (reluctantly) acting as lookout in a cafe across the street, but the Feds showed up so fast there was nothing he could have done.

Edges n' shit! I get one free Edge on account of being human and I know I want to use that for Arcane Background: Spellbinding. And here we run into a bit of a snag; I have to take a Spellbinding tradition, which limits me to 9 spells (three Novice, three Seasoned, three Veteran), and presents me with an Obligation. But do any of them really fit Cecil? Not really. So let's make one up!

Let's say Cecil spent a few nights in jail about a month after his father was killed (the authorities never tied him to that incident, obviously). The guy he was locked up with told him about magic - how to use it, how it follows rules, and how it's really not hard if you practice. That guy taught Cecil a couple of tricks and how to pay homage to a spirit or a god or something (it kinda went over Cecil's head), but the most important thing is if you make a promise to "magic", you keep it. That kind of obligation was fresh in Cecil's head.

We'll call it Thief Magic. Cecil's Obligation is his father's code: Never take a man's last dollar. Never steal using violence. Never take part in a scam that doesn't feel right. (That's really three obligations, but it's really the middle one that would have a game impact.) As for spells, let's say the three Novice ones Cecil can use are Darksight, Confuse, and Empathy. 

Cool, now I have 4 "points" to throw around. Let's take the Charismatic Edge (free reroll with Persuasion), and actually I think the Strong-Willed Edge makes sense, too (+2 to resist Spirit- and Smarts-based rolls). 

Cecil is now in his mid-20s, which would have put him born around, what, 1885, depending on when this is set. He's got sandy blonde hair and almost no facial hair (the guys in Dad's crew used to call him "Peach Fuzz" but they're all dead now), and his mother's soft brown eyes. Cecil has a suit that he keeps folded up in a valise and that he uses on grifts, but it's getting out of fashion now and he's going to have to get a new one soon. He likes his, though - it belonged to his father. 

That'll do it!

Character Creation: Galaxy Prime

Fun on a bun...in space!

The Game: Galaxy Prime
The Publisher: Epic Age Media
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Seems like this is your basic "lots of alien races, go adventuring" sort of sci-fi setting. There's history and setting, and sorry to say a lot of it slid off my brain. There's also an example of play, which I appreciate, though I note with some amusement that:

The example of play has players talking in their funny character voices while out of character, which is something I personally discourage because I think it's good to draw a bright line between things said in and out of character (and because if your character talks like Captain Caveman it might not always be clear what you're trying to do). 

Also, as long as I'm griping about things:

There's a couple of things wrong with this paragraph. First of all, this game came out in 2011, and GMless games have been a thing much longer than that. But more important, there's this nonsensical gatekeeping bullshit notion that only people who have run games before can run games. How, then, do new GMs happen? ANSWER THAT WITH YOUR PRECIOUS SCI anyway.

Well, strictly speaking the first step is concept, but I do not have one and I can roll to choose Race and Occupation, so I think I'll let the dice do the thinkin', at least initially. Picking a race involves a d% roll, so just a moment...a roll of 02 gives me Arn. They're big turtle people. Neat! They're about wisdom and honor and spreading enlightenment. I would say I'm a monk-turtle, but that probably kinda depends on Occupation. 

Next up we roll Racial adjustments. This took me a while to figure out because there's no example of chargen and no place that the process is all clearly laid out, but I have 50 points to split between Strength, Intelligence, and Dexterity, and then I add a 1d0 to HtH and Willforce (which I guess must be secondary traits), and subtract 1d10 from Defense. Likewise, Dexterity can't be higher than 28. 

OK, well, I still don't have much in the way of concept here, so I guess maybe I'll roll for Occupation and then come back to this? Sure thing! Another percentile roll gives me...Medic! That's cool, that seems to fit with how the Arn are portrayed. 

OK, so that gives me a little more to work with, so I'll go ahead and split up my Attributes. I'll put my Intelligence at 30 (the max), and I'll split my Strength and Dexterity evenly (making them both 10). 

Secondary traits: Speed is triple Dexterity, or 30. Projectile weapons is INT + DEX + 30 (so 70, pretty good). Hand to hand is STR + DEX + 30 +1d10, which adds up to (roll) 56. Defense is (DEX x 2) + INT -1d10, so (roll) 45. Observation is triple INT, so 90(!). I am one observant turtle-thing. Willforce is STR + INT + 30 + 1d10, so (roll) 88. And luck is the total of the three stats...so isn't that always going to be 50 for a starting character? 

Hits is STRx2, so 20. Carrying capacity is five times STR, so 50. 

OK, so now we get into Skills and Occupation-related stuff. I get 50 points to buy Skills, Mutations, and Languages. Mutations are 30 points each, so that'll eat most of my points if I do that. Languages are 5 points each, and Skills...are weird, hang on. 

So, Skills are apparently binary. I seem to get Medical and Xenoscience for free to start, and...oh, I get another +1d10 to Observation, missed that. Anyway, Skills cost either 10 or 20, so let's see what else my medic should have? 

Well, feels like Awareness is playing to my strengths, so I'll take that. Likewise, figure a medic would need Social. And then I think my character is quiet and easy to mistake for a big rock or box or something, so I'll take Stealth. Awareness and Stealth are 20-point Skills, Social is 10, so that's that.

And then everything else is gear and details, so. Let's consider that. 

My character's name is S'chellam. While a lot of his fellow Arn are skilled hand-to-hand combatants, ready to duel over matters of honor, S'chellam feels that the greatest act of oneupmanship, and also the greatest act of mercy, is to heal someone. If you heal someone, you're taking their life in your hands as much as if you stab them, but you're saying in very specific terms "you are no threat to me." (Also S'chellam is slower and weaker than a lot of his fellow Arn, and while he's a good shot, that doesn't carry the same ritualistic weight with his people.)

S'chellam tries to sell people on his "healing as counting coup" kind of attitude, but mostly they just say "yeah, that's great, can you stitch me up now please?" It's fine, S'chellam is patient. 

Epyllion: The Darkness Beneath Dragonia

Sounds pretty dramatic, huh? TOTALLY IS. Here's last time.

The drakes arrive in the Capital, and marvel at the massive spires and the massive dragons walking and crawling and flying around. Stars wants to go to a library, and picks one in caverns rather than spires (since, y'know, no wings). The clutch arrives and the librarian, Icepyre, directs them on how to chronicle their journeys. OB draws their route on a map, Stars starts adding info about the many wonderful creatures they've encountered, and Zeblek notes their journey to the moons (which Icepyre has them write in a Tall Tales volume; dre clearly does not believe it). 

As this is going on, Sprinkles, Toverin's spirit-guide, says that she's feeling queasy, which is odd because she doesn't really have a stomach. Toverin takes her outside and she starts to feel better, and Toverin tells her to just wander around a bit and catch up with them later. Dre then goes back into the library, and the drakes realize that all of them are feeling a little off. Toverin surveys the area and feels Darkness coming from a little hallway off this room, and wonders if that might be the cause of the feeling. Icepyre mentions feeling off, too...but before they can figure out what's causing, the ground splits open!

Zeblek grabs Stars under dris arm and runs for an exit, but the ceiling caves in! There's a gap in the rocks big enough to admit Zeblek's serpenty, sinewy frame, but not Stars, and Zeblek doesn't want to leave dris friend. Stars tells them to go - there's a great big table in the room, Stars can hide under that, but Zeblek refuses and calls on the shadow moon, opening a portal...

...and Stars emerges in pitch darkness, alone.

Meanwhile, Toverin tries to help Icepyre saves some books, but overbalances and knocks books into a chasm! Icepyre yells at them to not make things worse, and Toverin flees in shame, running down the Darkness-tinged hallway. Dre emerges into a spherical room with books hanging on chains from the ceiling, and they start whispering to Toverin. Free us...read us...we are the imprisoned spirits of the natural world...free us... Toverin realizes, on some level, that this is a bad idea, but can't resist. Dre opens a book, and vines erupt from it, wrapping around them, and dragging them in...and the book snaps shut, dropping to the floor.

Zeblek himself emerges in an alley outside the library, but realizes that Stars isn't there. Dre descends into his Shadowself, becoming convinced that Stars will die without dris help. Dre can't call on shadow moons again, but calls on the void moon to open a portal to Stars.

Stars, meanwhile, has felt around in dark and realized that dre is in a tunnel of some kind. It's big - the sides are higher than dre can reach - and there's some kind of liquid on the ground that smells vaguely like old milk. Stars tosses rocks out in front and behind them, but just hears echoing clacks. Shrugging, dre head forward. 

Up in the distance, dre hears a low, mournful moaning/singing noise, loud enough to rattle dris teeth in dris skull. And then dre hears a low, rumbly, terrifying growl right next them! Stars says something eloquent like "AAAAAAA" and runs.

Zeblek appears in the dark, grumbling to themself, and hears a scream near them. Dre chases after it, spreading dris wings to pounce, but whatever it is in the dark dodges! 

Stars feels dris unseen pursuer bearing down, and rolls! Whatever it is misses them, and dre turns and runs the other way, yelling "NO NO NO NO".

Whatever this thing is that Zeblek is chasing, it has the power of speech. Zeblek breathes a gout a fire to light the tunnel, and sees Stars running away. Deep in Shadowself, Zeblek doesn't call out, just grumbles "I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS," which of course doesn't make Stars feel any better. Dre keeps running. Zeblek grabs the walls and launches themself forward, but misses again.

The loud, mournful song echoes through the tunnel, and the ground beneath them cracks open. Stars finds themself standing on the back of an immense creature, which blubbery flesh and little bristly hairs, but dre can't recognize or remember what it's call (and it's too dark to check dris book). Dre keeps running, and Zeblek keeps chasing. Zeblek finally lands in front of Stars and puffs out more fire, and Stars can at last see who's been chasing them. 

Meanwhile, Toverin emerges in the forest primeval, deep and dark and terrifying. There are little creatures much like chiptopi scampering around the trees, but they don't have tentacles - they're like chiptopi without the -topi! Terrified and a little chastened, Toverin reaches out to Sprinkles for help. A distant, echoing voice tells Toverin that dre will need to delve deeper into the Darkness to get out, and Toverin calls on the void moon and opens a portal. The portal empties them out near the library, with Sprinkles nearby. 

Toverin tells Sprinkles what happened ("and the librarian yelled at me!"), and Sprinkles mentions that she saw Zeblek appear from a portal over in an alley, and then disappear again. She hasn't seen OB.

Down in the dark, Stars is livid. Zeblek didn't need to portal them anywhere, but certainly didn't need to chase them around in the dark growling when dre could have just used words. Zeblek says next time dre will just leave them to die, since that's obviously what would happen if dre didn't step in, and flies away. Stars calls on the spirit moon and draws on the roots in the ground, making them help them tunnel to the surface.

Toverin is standing in the alley where Sprinkles last saw Zeblek, when suddenly roots start erupting out of the ground. Suffering the worst case of deja vu, Toverin backs up, but then Stars crawls out of the ground and shakes off dirt! 

The two drakes talk and Toverin comforts Stars a bit (dre is still pretty peeved), and they go and get a smoothie. Zeblek flies up out of a well and stretches dris wings before the sun, casting a big, bat-dragon-like shadow on the ground (but as dre is still a drake, albeit a Winged Drake now, the bigger dragons don't much notice). Dre perches on a wall and stares down at dris clutch-mates, convinced that they will need Zeblek sooner rather than later.

The drakes go back to the library to help with cleanup, and Icepyre finds them. Dre tells them that dre hasn't seen OB since the earthquake, and dre may have fallen into the tunnels beneath. This quake was caused by tunneling whalphers, immense burrowing creatures. The loud songs that Stars heard was how they communicate, and the songs are powerful enough to cause the queasy feeling they all had. Icepyre muses, though, that whalphers have never come this close to the surface before...

In any case, the drakes need to go find OB! Toverin and Stars go back into the dark (taking some light with them this time), and Zeblek follows, lurking in the shadows.

Chill: The Fourth of July Murders

Yesterday we began our brand new Chill campaign! (Cue the fireworks, which is actually pretty apropos for the case.) But first, a bit of background. 

Our game is set in Seward, Alaska. The SAVE HQ here dates back to 1964 (kinda); an earthquake and tsunami damaged the town and brought some Unknown attention. The HQ worked with the HQ in Anchorage (only about 2 hours north) for a while, but then in the 2000 infiltration lost most of their envoys and almost all of their digital records. Some paper archives remain, mostly from the 90s, and the HQ keeps them in banker boxes in an abandoned community center.

Now there's a small cell in Seward, consisting of four envoys and a smattering of contacts and allies. The envoys mainly work through a charitable organization called QCOM, helping local folks get assistance with housing, paying bills, food, etc as necessary (this also has the effect of helping them hear about weird shit as its happening). The envoys are:

• Amelia Rostov: Amelia is a local product, of Russian and Qutekack heritage. She is a community organizer, and has been an envoy since the mid 2000s. She walks with a cane and has a severe phobia about blood, which is a bad position for a SAVE envoy sometimes. Her Drive is all people have a right to live. 
• Britt Lepus: Britt is a transplant from Las Vegas, and has only been in Seward a few weeks. She is far and away the most experienced envoy, though - her family owns the Last Rabbit club in Las Vegas (it's on p. 135 of Chill if you care). Britt's Drive is simple: I was raised for this.
• Nicolas Failor: Nicolas came here to work on a fishing boat, and then something happened out in the bay. His boat went down and he was the only one of the crew to survive, and he saw something in the water. He doesn't know what, but he's still afraid of being submerged in water. His Drive is to stem the breach.
• Mercy Williams: Mercy is another local, an EMT who responded to a call about what appeared to be an overdose and turned out to be a dead body getting up and walking around. She's new to SAVE, but shows natural aptitude in the Restorative Art. Her Drive is to protect the community. 

So every year in Seward, there's a huge Fourth of July celebration that reportedly balloons the population from 2500 to close to 40,000. This year (July 2023) is no different, and the envoys are all taking part in different ways. Britt, only having been here a few weeks, is looking for work and is doing some part-time gigs as staff at B&Bs. Mercy is on duty, of course, working the first aid tent on Fourth of July Beach (which is mostly giving water bottles to people who are dehydrated, occasionally helping people who have drunk a bit too much, but it's been pretty mild this year, no ODs, no fireworks injuries). Amelia is working the QCOM booth, handing out literature and taking donations. Nicolas has been running people back and forth across the bay on his boat, and is presently chilling near a bonfire. The envoys chat - Amelia swings over to the first aid booth, Britt finds Nicolas in the crowd - but everything seems more or less quiet and normal.

Midnight strikes, and the fireworks display lights up the sky! Thousands of people on the beach ooh and ahh, and Amelia sees a woman run out of the woods, obviously distraught, and sprint for the first aid tent. She grabs her cane and goes to check it out.

The woman gets to the tent and runs up to Mercy, grabbing at her and babbling, clearly in shock. Mercy springs into action and gets the woman on a cot to examine her. She's got no injuries, but she's pale and terrified, and her shoes are caked in blood and sand. She keeps saying "they're dead, they're dead" and talking about blood (Amelia gets there, sees the blood, and turns around). 

Mercy manages to get the woman calmed down enough to relay some information. Her name is Jill Bowen, she's from Oregon, she's here with her husband. Mercy goes to find some police (since apparently there are dead people), and Amelia has Jill open her phone so she can get hold of her husband.

A moment later, on the beach, a man standing near Nicolas and Britt takes a phone call. "What? What happened to her? Yeah, of course, I'll be right there. First aid tent? Where-" Britt takes the cue and offers to lead him to the tent, and Nicolas follows. The man introduces himself as Archie Bowen; evidently something's happened to his wife. He explains to Britt that Jill doesn't like fireworks, so she went walking on one of the hiking trails to get away from the beach.

Jill has managed to explain that she found a campsite with three or four dead people. She isn't really able to say where, though. Mercy, Nicolas, and Britt team up with a deputy (Mike) and a volunteer firefighter (Danika), and head into the woods. They split up into two teams and each take a trail, and stay in contact with walkie-talkies. 

The envoys find the campsite in question, and it's pretty awful. They find a girl lying on the ground near the trail, and Mercy assesses her - she's alive! She's been struck several times with what might be a hatchet, her collarbone is cut in two, and she has defensive wounds on her forearms. She's still breathing, but bleeding out.

Mercy concentrates and calls on the Art - she's never used it under such dire circumstances, but she focuses and heals the girl. Her collarbone knits in seconds and the worst of the bleeding stops, and she stabilizes. She immediately starts to thrash in fear and pain, and Mercy tells Britt and Nicolas to check the campsite while she gets her calmed down.

They do, and find two more bodies, these two very much deceased. One girl, one boy, both late teens. The boy has a hatchet wound in his head, and Nicolas notes that something must have hit him with a lot of force to bury a camping hatchet through skull like that. The girl has been struck multiple times in the back and back of head, apparently as she was running away. Two tents, no damage, and Nicolas notes that the camping gear is new (not high end, not bottom of barrel - the kind of thing you'd buy if you were, say, camping for the weekend and needed gear quickly). A canvas satchel sits by the campfire.

Britt focuses a moment, feels the tingling, body-shiver sensation she's learned to associate with the Unknown. It's not a terribly powerful feeling, and it leads off to the north. But there's something weird about it, something she can't place. She rejoins the others, and Mercy points out that if there's someone out here with a hatchet, they need police presence now. She radios in to the first aid tent and one of the other workers confirms, calls in more help, and heads out. Word is starting to spread, and rumors are flying - it's a bear, someone shot some people, there was a fight. Amelia stays with Jill, and after a while sees police lights in the distance as a boat shows up. She spots Police Chief Arlen Gold amongst them, and goes up to talk to him. She explains the situation as best she can and walks with him to the campsite (he takes a call from Simon O'Boyle, the mayor, along the way).  

Meanwhile, Britt talks to the girl and gets a little more information. Her name is Stef, and she was out here with four other people - Corey, Chris, Neal, and Tara. Corey was the one who attacked them, but she isn't able to answer any questions about the circumstances of the attack; she's too delirious and in too much pain. Nicolas and Mercy look through the tents and find sleeping bags for five people total, so that's consistent. No violence or damage to tents or gear, so whatever happened, happened by the fire and then into the woods. Nicolas, a skilled tracker, finds a trail leading north, but also finds a pair of boots, a pair of socks, a flannel shirt, and a pair of glasses discarded in the brush. Confused, he also looks in the canvas satchel...and his heart sinks.

The satchel contains a few papers, which Nicolas recognizes as coming from SAVE's paper archives. They are instructions on the Incorporeal School of the Art. He shows them to Britt, and Britt confirms that the Incorporeal School is what envoys use to summon and interact with ghosts. "I think this might be our fault," says Nicolas.

The cops arrive, Stef gets put on a stretcher and taken out of the woods, the police take envoys' statements (Nicolas hides the papers) and the four of them huddle up to talk this over. The instructions have underlined sections on Eyes of the Dead (seeing incorporeal creatures) and Voice of the Dead (summoning and channeling such creatures), but Britt knows that you don't use those kinds of disciplines without a Protector (like Amelia) nearby to disrupt the process if it goes badly. The envoys theorize that Corey must have summoned something that he couldn't shake off - Britt guesses that the unfamiliar feeling she got was the ripple of that possession. How long would a possession like this last? Where is the creature taking Corey? Is he still dangerous? They don't know.

Nicolas suggests tracking him into the woods, but the others disagree. They're all exhausted, there are too many cops up there, and, as Britt says, you never go into a situation with a creature of the Unknown this unprepared unless you have no other choice. They decide to get a few hours of sleep and do a little more digging. Amelia knows Corey's mother (she works as a pharmacy tech in a local drugstore), so maybe she knows something. They do get one piece of good news - the fifth teen, Chris Tolliver, has been found safe. He was on the mainland during the attack. The envoys make a note to talk to him, too, as soon as possible.

Movie #785: Candyman (1992)

Candyman is a horror movie starring Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Xander Berkeley, Kasi Lemmons, Vanessa Estelle Williams, and DeJuan Guy. It's based on a Clive Barker story, which goes a long way towards explaining it, I think.

Helen (Madsen) and her BFF Bernadette (Lemmons) are writing their Masters thesis (collaboratively?) on urban legends; it's got to be more specific than that, but their exact angle is never really spelled out. In the course of collecting interviews, they learn that the story of a Bloody Mary-like "murderer in the mirror" figure, Candyman, originated in nearby Cabrini Green and that the murder of a local woman is being blamed on it. They go to investigate and talk to one Anne-Marie McCoy (Williams), who knew the victim, and discover that the victim was murdered by a gang leader (Terrence Riggins) who took on the persona of the Candyman. 

This is all very well and good, except then the actual factual Candyman (Todd in his career-defining role) appears to Helen and explains that by giving a mundane explanation for his murders, she has insulted and weakened him, so now he has to perpetuate the legend. This sends Helen into a spiral of blood and murder - she wakes up in Anne-Marie's apartment next to her decapitated dog (who is the real hero here, I think we can all agree) and is promptly arrested for kidnapping Anne-Marie's baby, Anthony. She gets bailed out, but then Candyman returns and murders Bernadette, and Helen winds up committed because obviously. She winds up escaping and saving the baby at the cost of her own life, but then becoming a monster-spirit much like Candyman. 

Now, I have not read "The Forbidden," the Barker story this movie was based on, so I can't really compare. I do note, however, that Barker likes these meta-horror notions of how fears become real and how stories influence reality and vice versa (see also Cabal and its film version Nightbreed, and Sacrament), and that's on full display here. I think the decision to lean more fully into the urban setting of Cabrini Green was a good one, and I would say I wonder what the story would have been like with more Black voices on the creative end (this is a story written by a white man with screenplay and direction by another white man, starring a white woman) but we kinda don't have to wonder because we got that in the recent sequel (also titled Candyman, which I don't own yet). 

But: Taking this movie on its own merits, I love Tony Todd's portrayal of Candyman. He's not a quippy, Freddy Kreuger-esque killer, he's got the gravitas of myth behind him. He's elemental and iconic, and when he comes into the "real world" you almost feel like that's a chore for him - he's here to make sure his legacy remains secure. Helen is in so far over her head throughout the movie that it's all she can do to keep little baby Anthony alive (and, um, go watch the sequel, Anthony grows up with his own problems). Is there some white savior going on here? Maybe, but it reads more to me like Helen is a white intellectual trying to study something she doesn't understand and getting eaten alive by it. (Side note: I love Kasi Lemmons as her friend and colleague, and I kinda wish the movie had spent a little more time on their relationship rather than with Xander Berkeley's douchey character.)

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: Chronicle