Character Creation: Last Night on Earth

Not "The Last Night of the World," which is a song from Miss Saigon. 

The Game: Last Night on Earth
The Publisher: Ex Stasis Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Last Night on Earth is one of those games that's hyper-focused on one particular type of game, and I think it would do that thing pretty well. Specifically, it's the last night before the end - if not of everything, then definitely of you. You're dying of a zombie virus, pledged to give your soul to a demon, whatever, but this is your last night, and you've got a Burden to set down. 

I really love that premise, where I was iffy is how it would work for a group. You could do it, but it'd be pretty contrived. And I still think that, but having read the book I think it'd work, but I think it would really top out at three players plus the GM. But I also think it could make for a great game, so I think it's going on the list for when I have a small group but we want a one-shot. 

This game really requires a scenario/Burden to make sense, and lo, the book includes one! In the example, the city is burning and we have to find someone and save them. And that's...all we get. But that's plenty for my purposes. 

"Origin" is what I did before becoming doomed. My guy was a landscaper (rather, he was trying to get his landscaping business to really take off, but mostly what he did was mow lawns, and that's fine, gotta start somewhere). His name is Ahmad Johnson. That makes me skilled in three broad areas, so I'll take mechanic, wildlife (I had "botany" at first, but that's too scientific and too specific), and local knowledge. 

Now we pick Ahmad's Affliction - why's he doomed? I'm gonna say he's Transformed. When the fires spread he wound up running and driving off an embankment, coming to rest in a ravine, and something...saw him. He doesn't know what, but he saw its amber-colored eyes, heard a canine growl like thunder, and felt something move inside him. He's becoming something primal and primitive, and it's making his senses dull and slow (because I like the idea of going against the usual "you're a werewolf so now you're Daredevil" kind of thing). I get Vigor (misspelled as "vigour") as my Power, and I get one more, so I'll take Fortitude to really double down on the idea that I'm becoming indestructible as nature - burn me, and something grows from the ashes.

The group's Burden is to save someone, I guess? So I suppose we'd decide who. Let's say we have to save Dylan. I don't know who Dylan is, I just wanted a name.

But my Drive is personal. I think Ahmad wants to run away into the woods. He wants to escape the fire and go somewhere damp and cool, root himself in the loam, and go dark. But if he does that, he won't be able to save Dylan. 

And that's it, really! I think Ahmad is in his early 40s, black hair that's thinning a bit, a little on the heavy side, still wears the wedding ring even after the divorce (he's gained weight and he can't get it off). Since the incident, he's started breathing through his mouth and drooling a little as he's losing muscular control. 

Character Creation: Far West

Into the west...the far west. (dramatic music sting)

The Game: Far West
The Publisher: Adamant Entertainment
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Ah, Far West. One of the first (maybe the first?) Kickstarters I ever backed. Indeed, one of the first RPG to ever be crowd-funded on the platform! It raised about $50K, which was huge for the time and pretty respectable nowadays, but it was pretty emblematic of problem Kickstarters - lots of overpromising. At the time, we just didn't know. 

Other RPG Kickstarters of the time also over-promised and under-delivered (see also Apotheosis Drive X and They Became Flesh and Project: Dark), but Far West turned into one of the most infamous, partially because the creator insisted up and down that the game was really going to happen. Twitter wars ensued, there was even a site called "Is Far West Out Yet" at one point, and the game became synonymous with "why it's risky to back a crowdfunding project," even as the vast majority of them do indeed deliver. (Seriously, I've backed literally hundreds of RPGs on Kickstarter, and it's less than 5% that don't fulfill, though a lot of them are late.) This dragged on for twelve fucking years.

Indeed, I had written off ever seeing this book, but then Pinnacle Entertainment swooped in and helped with printing and fulfillment! And lo! Last September, I actually got the hardcover I paid $50 for in 2011! It's not "signed and numbered" and "limited edition" like my pledge rewards said, but whatever, I don't generally care about those things and I'm just amazed I ever got anything at all. 

So...let's make a character! I rather doubt I'd run this game, but I dunno. I read the setting chapter last night, and it's got some interesting ideas. At the very least it was readable and my eyes didn't glaze over, so that's good. There are some pretty harsh reviews out there, but I admit I'm reading the book with kinder eyes because a) I don't care how late it was, that's not the kind of thing I get outraged over and b) I want to like things. 

PCs in this game are assumed to be "wanderers of the Dust Road," members of the martial arts underground. The more easily understood way to look at that, I think, is "adventurer," though there's a spaghetti western/wuxia vibe to it that's a little different than the D&D meaning of the term. I actually had something of a concept, though it's a little half-baked. There was a huge battle about 32 years ago, and without going into the whole history, it was pretty much what made the titular Far West what it is. I thought it would be interesting to play someone who was a child during that battle and saw his parent(s) go off to fight and then never return. Assuming he was maybe 5 at the time, he'd be 37 now. I can live with that, I think.

Well, set that aside for the moment. I guess the first thing we do is Rank? The GM would set this, normally, but it says that Initiate is the default, so let's do that. 

Attributes are that second column, so I get 23D (max 5) to stick into those. The game system here seems to work like the old WEG d6 system, in that I can split dice into pips. There are seven Attributes: Reflexes, Strength, Wits, Toughness, Presence, Knack, and Kung Fu. So I suppose I should think about concept a little more. 

The next step is Background. I feel like that should have been before Attributes, but what do I know, I don't take 12 years to make a 300-page game. You can roll Background randomly, and ordinarily that's what I'd do, but my concept would seem to restrict some choices. Eh, actually, I'll roll and see if I hate the result. 

Either Back East - the Periphery or the Eagle's Claws, so either on the border between the Empire and the West or in the mountains. I can see it going either way. I feel like Eagle's Claws is more interesting, though, so let's say that my character, as a little boy, waited for his parents to come back and when they didn't, he panicked and fled north (I think) into the mountains. He arrived at the stronghold of a Mountain Clan, half-dead, a few days later, and they were all set to leave him (they're not big on outsiders), but one of their elders pointed out that this kid made it halfway up a mountain - sounds like a Mountain Folk to me! 

That gives me +1 to Reflexes or Toughness, and then +1 to any two Skills or +2 to any one from Climbing, Craft, Driving, Riding, Scholar, or Survival (Mountains). Keen, does that bonus to an Attribute count towards the max of 5? I looked through the pregens and didn't see any with stats of 6, so let's assume it does. And then let's go back and do Attributes.

I think the bonus should go into Toughness, considering, so I'll start with 1D free there. Let's put that up to 4D, which gives me 20 more to throw around. Let's put 2D into Knack (it's about using tools and tech) and 3D into the other five, does that math work? Yeah, that means I've spent 20, which means I have 3 more. Let's bump Strength, Reflexes, and Kung Fu up to 4D. That's 23!

OK, jumping back into the actual order, let's go to Occupation. Again, we can choose or roll, and I'd rather roll. Depending on how we cross-reference the dice (you roll two and check a chart, so there are two ways to read any roll unless you roll doubles, which I didn't) I could be a stablehand or a hunter. 

I don't figure there are a lot of horses up in the mountains, so let's go with Hunter. This covers both animal-hunter and bounty-hunter, and I think my guy is the former - he hunts and provides meat to the Clan (and maybe to other little villages in the area, why not). This lists Stealth, Survival, and Tracking as my Skills, what does that mean? Oh, I get 3 pips to put in these, so I could put one pip in each one, 1D in one Skill, or split them. I'll just keep that in my pocket for now, but the next bit is Skills, so it won't have time to melt there (wait, what?). 

Next step is indeed Skills. I get 15D to throw around. Skills start with D equal to their controlling Attribute, so I already have 4D in all my Toughness Skills (rather, both of my Toughness Skills), plus I get a couple of dice to put into the six I can choose from my Background. And then I can take Flaws later to get more Skill dice (or buy Edges). 

Well, looking over my list, I might want:

Athletics
Dodge (ugh)
Stealth
Climbing
Jumping
Hide
Search
Survival
Tracking
Animal Handling
Willpower
Traps

And then Kung Fu Skills are weird, I don't use Skill dice for those. So I'll ignore that for now. 

Well, of the above Skills, I know I want to put dice into Traps because it starts at 2D and that's kinda weak. So let's put 3D there because I'm a hunter. 

Let's put 1D each into the rest except for Climbing (which I'll leave where it is for now), and split that last dice into specializations. I'll specialize Survival in Mountains, Traps in Rope, and Navigation (which I didn't put any Skill dice into, I know) in Mountains as well. And then let's add my free shit. I'll put 1D from my Background into Survival (Mountains) and one into Climbing. Then I get those three pips, let's just split them up evenly. 

Kung Fu! Instead of using Skill Dice here, I get to split up my Attribute Dice (4) betwixt the four Kung Fu Skills. I think Allegiance plays into this, so I'm gonna leave it for now. What's next?

Spirit & Aspects! Oh, right, this game started life as a Fate hybrid. Spirit is an inner strength kind of thing, and there's a formula: [Kung Fu + (lower of Reflexes and Wits) + (lower of Presence and Knack) + (lower of Strength and Toughness)] x 2 because I'm an Initiate. For me, that's [4 + 3 + 2 + 4] x 2 or 26. 

Aspects! These work more or less like they do in Fate, and wow the lines you write them on in this character sheet are teeny. Anyway:

The book recommends that the first two relate to the Virtues of the Dust Road, and in my case I think maybe the Occupation one will, but for the Background one I want to say that he Witnessed the Glorious Defeat. For Occupation (hunter, recall), I think drawing on Altruism makes sense, so I'll say his Aspect here is No One Should Starve When Food is Plentiful. 

Something related to one of my highest Attributes (several are tied), hmm. I think Toughness is probably the most defining (feels like this happens a lot with my characters, actually), so I'll say the Aspect here is Child of the Mountain. His lowest Attribute is Knack, so I'll give him a more negative Aspect and call it Machines are a Mystery. And, finally, I get one based Rank...what does that mean? GEE I WISH THERE WAS AN EXAMPLE OF CHARGEN. Guess that would have taken another six months.

Well, let's focus it on him wandering the Dust Road and let's get a little macabre with it: My Parents' Ashes are Out There Somewhere. 

And now, Edges & Flaws! Ooh, I kinda want Animal Companion so I can have a hunting falcon, but I'd need a Flaw. I like Hindrance - I choose a group of three Skills and take a +1 or +2 difficulty to using them when the Hindrance applies. Let's say that my character is mildly agoraphobic; forests (and therefore the foothills and mountainsides) are OK, but large, flat plains are scary and remind him of the Glorious Defeat. I'll say the +1 difficulty applies to Running, Navigation, and Willpower. That gives me 1D, which I can use to take Animal Companion, and I'll say it's an eagle, since they're native to the Eagle's Claws (doy). 

Any others? Well, Phobia is actually its own Flaw, so I'll take it just to be consistent and get 2D back, and then immediately spend it on the Sense of Direction Edge.

And now we're on to Allegiance! I...don't think I'd have one. Rather, I think his allegiance would be to his clan, but maybe not even that. Wandering Stars isn't bad, either, but there's a focus on poetry (and drinking) that I don't see him having. Let's say he's a Drifter, with no allegiance. 

Kung Fu isn't its own step (which it should be). I get three Styles that I don't have to pay Spirit for. Let's see if I can suss this out. 

OK, this is pretty easy. There are a zillion styles here, and I can only take styles that I have the Skills for. I have 4D to split between the four Kung Fu Skills, so what I should do is pick my styles and make sure I have the Skill points for it. On we go!

(I can already tell I'm gonna put points in Lightness. I love the acrobatic shit.)

I want Dancing Puma, which lets me increase my speed - useful for a hunter. Ooh, Eagle Descending looks nice (letting me drop on opponents for greater effect), but let's keep looking. Healing Spirit would let me heal my own damage more easily, which seems appropriate for my self-sufficient character.

Oh, Leaves of the Mountain Forest, yes please (falling without taking damage). And then we'll take Way of the Flowing Mountain Silhouette (defensive style that only works outdoors). That leaves me with three Lightness styles, so I'll put 3D into Lightness and 1D into Internal.

And I think that's everything, actually. I need a name, of course. My character doesn't remember his real name. The Clan that took him in (rather, the elder that vouched for him) called him Chick, since he was clearly someone's kid but had "fallen out of the nest". The villages that he visits (to bring them game and catch up on gossip and so forth) know that he's from "up the mountainside," so "Chick Mountainside" is about the realest name he has. He calls his eagle Kimmy - he's not sure why. It was just in his head.

I think if I were playing Chick, I'd ask the GM work "Kimmy" into his family somewhere; maybe that's his long-long sister's name or something. 

Chick is bigger than you think. He tends to be hunched over because he's tracking or hunting, but if he's stood up he's over six feet. Kimmy perches on his right arm or left shoulder (and Kimmy is big, she's an eagle, not a falcon), and Chick always carries a length of rope for setting traps and a dagger to finish off animals he catches. Chick has extremely limited experience fighting humans, which as I think about it I could have worked into an Aspect, but that's fine.

That'll do it, I think.

Movie #817: The Cutting Edge

The Cutting Edge is a romantic sports drama, which...thinking about it, might be my least favorite genre of movies! Anyway, it was directed by Paul Michael Glaser (which I only mention because he also directed The Running Man, which bakes my noodle a little) and stars Moira Kelly, D. B. Sweeny, Dwier Brown, Roy Dotrice, and Terry O'Quinn. 

Doug Dorsey (Sweeny) is a hockey player who, while playing at the Olympics, sustains a head injury and develops a blind spot that prevents him from playing professionally. Kate Moseley is a figure skater raised from childhood to compete professionally, but largely cut off from the real world by money and her punishing lifestyle. THEY FIGHT CRIME.

No, that would have been so much more interesting. Instead, they meet because Kate can't find a partner for doubles and rather than do the obvious thing of becoming a singles skater, her very Russian coach Pamchenko (Dotrice) finds Dorsey still desperately trying to get a hockey team interested in him and recruits him to be her partner. And of course they hate each other, mostly because he's cocky and arrogant and she's elitist and insufferable, but eventually they fall in love, aw. (And they compete at the Olympics using a move that Pamchenko invented that defies physics!)

I dunno. It's a rom-com without the com (there are a couple of funny moments, but it's not a comedy, it's a romance), a sports movie without ever getting into the nature of the sport in question, and a drama starring two people who are just kinda...boring. What I find really annoying about it, though, is that the promotional material thinks it's a comedy - the trailer includes all of the funny moments in the movie, the poster has them zooming towards each other while the tagline boasts that they have a "love skate relationship!" which is so twee it makes my teeth hurt, but the movie itself just doesn't have that vibe. It's not sad, because they get together, but it's not sweet, because they spend most of the movie being just kind of awful to each other. 

The movie has a following and it's formative to some folks, and given some of the awful movies that were formative to me I'm not gonna judge, but it ain't my thing.

My Grade: C+
Rewatch Value: Low

Next up: Kill the Irishman

Character Creation: Cocaine Owlbear

SNOOOOOOOOOORT

The Game: Cocaine Owlbear
The Publisher: Fainting Goat Games
Degree of Familiarity: None yet!
Books Required: Just the one

What a time to be alive.

Cocaine Owlbear is obviously inspired (font and all) by Cocaine Bear, but the game system is taken from Honey Heist, a game in which you play bears doin' a heist of, well, honey. The central theme of the game system is that you've got two tracks (in this case, Cocaine and Woodland Creature), and you'll fluctuate between them. Max out either one, and you're out of the game (either losing sentience and returning to just being a standard owlbear or deer or whatever, or turning to a life of crime and betraying your crew). 

I'm actually gonna run a one-shot of this game on Monday, so I figure I should make a character. Also I haven't finished reading Far West yet, so I can't do that one today.

So first I roll to see what kind of critter I am. There are actually two tables with six possibilities each, so let's just roll a d12, shall we? A roll of 2 means I am a ferret! On cocaine! That's exciting. That gives me the Master of Disguise talent, letting me change into a variety of ridiculous costumes to fool people.

Next we roll for a descriptor...Curious! So far, so good.

What did I loot from the courier that we found? A long coat! Makes sense for a master of disguise. 

My role in the party is...muscle. My strength and ferocity make me the primary enforcer. Seems silly, given that I am but a wee mustelid, but ferrets can be pretty intense. 

And then we roll for a magic spell! But...there are two tables. Do I roll on both? Just one? 

(This game is not well explained, I have to say. And I've found two actual play videos, and neither of them address this.)

Screw it, let's say I get one of each. I get an Arcana spell and a Pastoral spell. For Arcana, I get...Gord's Gravity Gail! Gravity in a localized area goes wacky. Neat! For Pastoral, I get...Ivy League! I can make local plant life create a quick ladder. 

I start with 3 in Cocaine and Woodland Creature (my two stats), and that's it, son! My coked-out ferret's name is Rigley. He's not sure why, that's just what he's started thinking of himself as since the cocaine. If the coke wears off, will he still be Rigley? Is Rigley just the coke, or is it the ferret, or some unholy amalgam thereof? I'M FREAKIN' OUT MAN. SNOOOOORT. 

(I can't wait to run this.)

 

Movie #816: Collateral

Collateral is a thriller/drama directed by Michael Mann and starring Jamie Foxx, Tom Cruise, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Berg, Barry Shabaka Henley, and Javier Bardem (Jason Statham has a tiny cameo, which I only mention because it's been suggested that he's playing his character from The Transporter).

Max (Foxx) is a cabbie who's really good at his job, but is (perpetually) saving money to open a limo company. One night a well-dressed man named Vincent (Cruise) gets into his cab, and offers him extra cash to drive him around to several spots throughout the night. Max, of course, takes the easy money, but it turns out Vincent is a hitman with a kill list, and the very first dude on said list goes plummeting out a window onto Max' cab, which results in Vincent holding Max hostage all night, killing anyone who crosses them, and racking up the body count as he goes about his mission.

The action sequences are about what you expect from Mann (he of Heat fame), but really where the movie really lives is in the interplay between Max and Vincent. Vincent is a cold-blooded killer, but some of what he says clearly resonates with Max - Vincent is a nihilist and a narcissist, but talks to Max about the futility of inaction and how everyone is one tiny speck in the scheme of things, so there's no point in waiting or delaying if you know what you want. Meanwhile, Max goes from denial to terror to actually taking some agency and fighting back, and the evolution is believable because Max doesn't become a badass fighter or anything, he just finds his courage and his motivation. 

Tom Cruise has had something of a checkered career but he's actually a really good actor when he's allowed to be (though I notice he still gets to sprint around like a maniac in this movie; it's just a thing he likes to do). When Vincent starts to come unglued it's not huge and showy, it's just the ironclad control that he's shown starting to curdle a bit, and his facial expressions and slight changes in vocal volume really make it. Meanwhile, Jamie Foxx (who was rightly nominated for an Oscar for this role, though I think it should have been Best Actor, not Best Supporting Actor, but he actually won that year for Best Actor for Ray, so). 

I remembered all that, but what I'd forgotten is how stacked the rest of that cast is. Javier Bardem plays a drug lord, he's in one scene, but he manages to make the character menacing, calculating, and even a little relatable in that brief moment. Mark Ruffalo plays a detective trying to figure out what's going on, and gives Max a little moment of hope (before Vincent shoots him dead). Jada Pinkett Smith plays an attorney who's on Vincent's list, but is in Max' cab before Vincent and they manage more chemistry in one conversation than some actors manage in a whole movie.

There's a little wankery, of course (was that coyote there for any particular reason?), and there was more that got cut (fun fact: Cruise's character was originally named Vincent Collateral, which, uh, c'mon now), but it's a really well made and watchable thriller.

My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: The Cutting Edge

Character Creation: Wearing the Cape

WELL. Turns out I'm going to be running a supers game, spanning multiverses (and therefore game systems), using Marvel Superheroes (also known as FASERIP), Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (also known as "Cortex but now it's out of print so I could just as easily use Cortex Prime and MAYBE I WILL, JANICE), Claim the Sky, and Wearing the Cape. Of those four, Wearing the Cape is the only one I haven't made a character for, so here we go!

The Game: Wearing the Cape
The Publisher: Wearing the Cape Productions
Degree of Familiarity: Haven't played this, but I'm pretty conversant with Fate
Books Required: Just the one

There are a few supers games using the Fate system, including Venture City, which I found a little sparse. This is the one I like best of the ones I've read. The writing is readable and the interstitial fiction is fun, clearly written by someone who knows how to write fiction and knows the four-color genre. 

In the Cape-verse, there was this Event some time ago. Everyone in the world blacked out for three seconds, all electronics went off for a few seconds, and a lot of people died because, well, vehicles stopped or fell from the sky, people fell over in bad places, etc. (One thing I appreciate about this game is that it pays attention to, if not the pure horrific realism of this situation, then the verisimilitude of it - it's the inciting incident for the world, so it's treated with some gravity.) Anyway, during this Event, people also developed superpowers in what's become known as "breakthroughs." Some people became heroes, some became villains, some are more supernatural being than superhero, but there's a lot of room to move.

I actually had an idea for a character when I was reading through the book, or at least a character backstory (didn't get as far as the actual powers or anything). London got hit pretty badly in the Event for a few reasons, and immediately post-Event any breakthroughs got sent to "Camp Acorn" for detention, assessment, and "training" in how to use their powers. It was pretty totalitarian for a minute, but it kind of evened out afterwards (the setting isn't a Days of Future Past kind of dystopia; people do get sent to Camp Acorn but it really is for assessment and training, and they aren't drafted into service thereafter, though I suspect the recruiters go pretty hard). I want to play a bloke who went to Camp Acorn kinda close to the beginning of all of this and had a bad time of it, and when he got out he beat feet for the USA, having heard that capes could leverage their powers more easily there. Let's call him Soren Simons (you know my feelings on superheroes and their alliterative names).

So! Starting the actual chargen process, as is typical for Fate games, I'm doing Aspects. The High Concept Aspect in Wearing the Cape is replaced by a Power Aspect and a Hero Aspect. The Power Aspect pretty fixed - it tells me the power level (A, B, C, or D) and the "type" of hero we're talking about, which, in turn, gives me permissions later to buy certain stunts. These types exist in-universe; "Atlas-types" are named after Atlas, and they're basically Superman - flight, super strength, invulnerability, heightened senses. This might seem overly narrow, but it's actually dirt simple to make up a new type if you want to (and some of the types are pretty flexible anyway). 

The Hero Aspect, meanwhile, focuses more on the "why" of being a superhero, so I think that's where I'll start for Soren. I think his Hero Aspect is Decent Enough Bloke. It's not that Soren has especially high-minded ideals, but he's a good guy, and if he can help he will. (Now, he'd very much like to be able to get paid into the bargain, but he's not the kinda of bastard that's going to check someone's insurance before helping them - he's not American, after all.) 

Trouble Aspect is pretty standard, and I think I want to tie it back to his time at Camp Acorn. Actually, yeah, let's say he was "Trained" At Camp Acorn, the implication being they might have done something more than just train him, whether or not he can remember it (shit, am I making Bucky?). 

OK, better figure out my Power Aspect. I was initially thinking plant control, but I did a supers character like that some time ago (honestly it's getting a little hard not to repeat myself; I think this makes like 55 supers characters?). Well, let's go with terrakinesis instead. Soren can control earth and rock, which makes him a fucking magnet for collateral damage (for which this game has a pretty robust subsystem). 

I don't have an inkling about power level, but let's say he's B-Class - not top of the heap, but still pretty impressive. That makes his Power Aspect B Class Kinetic-Type. 

And now we get two Background Aspects, and these can be basically anything - ideals, quotes, talents, whatevs. Aspects, y'know. Soren is a Northern England Ex-Pat, and I think that's a pretty relevant bit of his character, so I'll make that an Aspect. I think I'll save the last one until I do some of his other stuff; I don't have a good idea and while I could make something up, I'd rather wait until I firm up his Attributes and Skills and so on. 

Speaking of that, next up we do Character Ratings (which include Attributes and Skills; already we can see this game is a little more granular than Fate usually gets). I get:

But that's got to last me through six Attributes, 13 Skills, and three Resources. Let's look at my Power stuff and see if I've minimums I have to observe. Not really, though Willpower should be high. I'll put my Superb there. Where should the Greats go? I feel like I want Soren to be kinda stacked, so I'll put one of the Greats into the Physique Attribute and one into Presence (he's friendly but can be commanding when he needs to). 

I'll put the Goods into Rapport, Athleticism, and Provoke, the Fairs into Alertness, Discernment, Fight, and Investigate, and the Averages into Academics, Aid, Engineering, Stealth, and Contacts. Everything else gets Mediocre. 

As a B Class, I get 12 Campaign Starting Fate Points (I use these to buy up Power stunts, anything I don't spend becomes Refresh). As a Kinetic-type, I can take Projection stunts as well as the few listed under Kinetic, and there are definitely a few I want.

I want Area Attack (I can hit everyone in an area; seems appropriate for a guy who can make earthquakes). Likewise, I want Hard Hitting; when I succeed with style on a Kinetic Attack, I can reduce my shifts by 1 and gain a Situation Aspect with a free Invoke (this would let me do stuff like do less damage with an attack but give the area something like Unstable Foundation or Jagged Rocks or something). I want to give him Great Control and bump Willpower up; that costs 2 points per +1 bump, so let's put Willpower up to +8, how about (that costs me 6 points, so I've spent 8 of my 12). 

And then I think I want Strong Walls; I get a +2 to Create an Advantage or Defend with walls or barriers. That leaves me 3 points left for Refresh, and I wouldn't want to go lower than that.  

Still got that last Aspect to consider. I kind of want something related to a terrakinetic's propensity for causing collateral damage, so I'll say that Soren tries to have a light touch with his powers. Restraint is Key makes for a good Aspect, I think.

Stress and Consequences! I get one- and two-Stress boxes in physical and mental automatically. Since my Physique is Great, I get 3- and 4-Stress in physical, and since my Willpower is Legendary, I get those plus an extra Mild and Moderate Mental Consequence, too. 

Right, that's all the numbersy stuff. What about the rest?

Soren moved to the US to the great city of Wherever This Game is Set. Let's assume it's somewhere prone to earthquakes, actually, and that a big one hit a few months after he moved there. Soren wasn't able to stop it - he was too afraid of making it worse - but he was able to shift the rubble to help rescue people and prevent further catastrophe. Somewhere along the way people started calling him "Rumble," and he likes it (partially because British slang gives it a different meaning for him). He's not sold on the idea of being a superhero, and he doesn't have a uniform yet - they're expensive! - he just wears his Camp Acorn training jumpsuit with the logos painted over. He also hasn't really bothered with concealing his identity, because he figures the powers-that-be know all about him anyway. 

Rumble is definitely the sort of superhero who wouldn't go out of his way to get into hero-ing, but would get swept up and before you know it his programing kicks in and he's toppling buildings or something. He's also the kind of hero who would really strive to keep himself under control, so when the point in the movie that he gets to let loose arrives there would be a real "oh, shit" kind of moment, and I dig that. Secret Invasion sucked, but I can see Kingsley Ben-Adair playing Rumble. 

One HONK Before Midnight: The Prophecy

HONK. 

Our setting: the tiny town of Stafford-on-Gander. Our heroes: the Gaggle. 

The Gaggle is a, well, gaggle of four geese: Ganderson Cooper, the Golden Goose. Honquin Phoenix, the Silly Goose. Goosilla, the Greylag Goose. Cardi Beak, the Fighting Goose. These geese have grown from goslings being told of the mythical Feathered One, the ancient goose who was defeated by Sir Wallace and imprisoned beneath the stones of Stafford-on-Gander. But if the three mystical artifacts can be brought together - the Bell, the Dagger, and the Shield - then the Feathered One will rise again and subjugate the humans! And this Gaggle is gonna make it happen!

They set out from the Cave of Honking and consider where to start. There's a bell at the old church, they know that much, so they waddle up the road to check it out. On the way, they spot a multitude of their smaller, dumber cousins, the chickens, imprisoned within a fence, being pawed at by young humans! This cannot stand!

Honquin charges in, honking and causing khaos (this is what he does best), while Goosilla sneaks around the fence to unlatch the back gate and Cardi flaps into the yard and herds the chickens out. This all works OK...except that Goosilla can't quite get the gate open! Cardi throws all of her considerable might behind a great flapping leap and pushes the gate open, and the chickens scatter, clucking gratefully!

The geese, empowered by their noble victory, waddle on to the church. As they get there, Ganderson remembers that the old priest zipped out of there like a shot when the fire alarm was tripped. Where can they find a fire alarm? The nearest building is the bakery, and they're pretty sure that has one.

But as they approach, they smell delicious bread cooking! They must have it. (And also pull the alarm.) They find an old trench coat and hat on a line in an alley, and determine that if they stack themselves up, they can pretend to be human! Ganderson winds up as the head, Goosilla as the middle and Cardi as the feet. Honquin, meanwhile, hides in a crate of flour.

Inside, Mrs. Pembleton, the old baker-lady, doesn't notice the strangely goose-ish person. She just talks about the Giant Vegetable Festival and the ceremonial loaf of bread, and how it's got to be put on that shiny silver plate to be cut later. The geese look over and realize that the "shiny plate" is in fact the Shield! What luck!

Ganderson calls upon his magical goose-gift and speaks to Mrs. Pembleton, claiming that the priest sent him to get the loaf and the plate. Mrs. Pembleton blinks a little, and then says "well, all right then," and the three-goose-in-a-trenchcoat picks up the Shield to carry it out...but as they leave, they stumble and tumble apart! Goosilla tries to drag the Shield to the pond, but it's too heavy!

Cardi chomps on some bread and is empowered! She jumps on the Shield and slides down the path into the pond, gracefully gliding off into the water. Meanwhile, Honquin leaps out of the flour and pulls the alarm! The ear-splitting noise shocks the village and the geese scamper up the road, passing by Father Riley as he dons his fire marshal hat!

Inside the church, the geese find a convenient dish of crackers on a big stone table, and after eating them, feel blessed by some holy spirit! They also spot a series of buttons next to six rows of lights. Honquin does a little dance on the buttons and a couple of them light up orange, and he's all set to keep dancing, but cooler goose-heads prevail and Goosilla nudges him off. The geese put their heads together and consider the puzzle.

It's nine pictures of animals - giraffe, ox, snake, horse, pigeon, badger, lion, owl, and eel. Through process of elimination, they discover that if an animal button is pushed and is in the right sequence, the light turns on green. And then Ganderson cracks the code: Giraffe, Ox, Owl, Snake, Eel! GOOSE! Of course!

A hatch opens and a ladder leads down into a secret room, and there the geese find the Bell of St. Clyum! They also find a pile of gold and jewelry, but they aren't sure what's happening there. Goosilla takes a few pieces of gold, and Ganderson puts a shiny bracelet around his neck, and the geese climb up the ladder by entangling each other's necks together. They rush out of the church just as Father Riley is returning!

As they're fleeing, they spot a line of humans being allowed up to a giant sword jammed in a stone. Could this be the Dagger?! No, it's too big, but Honquin wants a go anyway. He waddles up to the teenage human in charge, who shrugs and points Honquin to the sword. Honquin tries, but cannot muster the strength to free the sword. 

Ganderson tries next, and calling up the holy power given to him by the cracker, he draws the sword! The human, confused, takes the sword and taps Ganderson on the shoulders (or wherever), saying "OK, I knight you, um, Sir Goose." Ganderson preens for the rectangles that the humans point at him, and the Gaggle gets on with its quest.

Now they have a dilemma. They have the Shield and the Bell, but not the Dagger, and they don't know where to find it. They consider the village, and decide that the oldest building in town might be a place to start, since it's likely to be owed by Sir Wallace's descendants. But isn't that the church?

No, Goosilla realizes, it's the old windmill! The geese rush to the windmill and discover that there are no windows on the ground floor, but there's one open on the second floor. Ganderson positions Honquin and takes a flapping leap, and dives into the window! He lands and finds himself surrounded by two dozen ducks.

The ducks all stare gormlessly at Ganderson. He tentatively greets them, and they quack the same greeting back in return. He looks around and sees a woman sleeping in a chair, and on a table, he spots a dish of butter and a shiny knife - the Dagger!

Ganderson heads downstairs (the ducks follow), unlatches the massive oak door, and gets the ducks to help him push the door open. All this noise wakes the woman, however, and she starts coming downstairs as the geese rush in. She tries to shoo them out, but Honquin calls upon his goose-magic, and grows to twice his normal size! She screams "DEMON GOOSE!" and runs back upstairs, but Goosilla is already there.

Goosilla picks up the Dagger, stares at the woman, and shakes her wing. Gold falls out on the floor. Goosilla nods, and leaves with the Dagger. The Gaggle flees the windmill, leaving behind a very confused (but slightly richer) woman.

Now, nothing to do but take these artifacts to the town square! They decide to cause as much Khaos as they can. Ganderson flaps into the square and preens in all his golden glory, since he's a famous knight now. Cardi rides the Shield down off a roof, landing on a box of tomatoes with a squoosh! Goosilla rushes in and stabs a giant cucumber with the Dagger (this doesn't make as much of an impact as she'd have liked, but people are still watching the tomato-squashing). And Honquin flies around frantically ringing the bell!

And this magic works! An immense goose with four human legs emerges from an alley! THE FEATHERED ONE! The Feathered One prances around making strange shuffling noises (almost like...two humans in a giant cardboard costume), and the Gaggle is given bread and veggies, as is their due for being the Chosen Gaggle. As everything calms down, the Gaggle returns to the Cave of Honking, secure in the knowledge that, for now, the Feathered One honks supreme!

HONK!

Movie #815: Children of the Corn

Children of the Corn is a horror movie (or an "adult nightmare," as the trailers of the time had it) starring Linda Hamilton, Peter Horton, John Franklin, Courtney Gains, Robby Kiger, Anne Marie McEvoy, and R. G. Armstrong. 

We open with the children of Gatlin, Nebraska rising up and systematically and brutally murdering all the adults in town, led by extremely creepy young man Isaac (Franklin) and equally creepy but more ginger young man Malachi (Gains), but narrated by Job (Kiger), who is not part of the slaughter. Three years later (though Job and his sister Sarah (McEvoy) barely seem to age at all!), Burt (Horton) and his...girlfriend? Vicky (Hamilton) are heading through Nebraska on the way to Burt's new residency. They accidentally run down a boy in the road (Jonas Marlowe), but discover he was actually already dead; his throat was cut. The two of them wind up in Gatlin and discovering the terrible secret - these kids believe in God, but without love and compassion!

OK, well, there's more to it than that; there's a monster in the corn called "He Who Walks Behind the Rows" that the kids have been worshiping, but no worries, all it takes to make the kids realize they made a terrible mistake is a stern lecture from Burt and they are willing to help him burn the corn. That's how cults work, right? Anyway, at the end of it all, Burt and Vicky are cheerfully getting ready to adopt Job and Sarah, and I guess to heck with the rest of these waifs. 

Children of the Corn is one of the fairly rare instances of a movie based on a property I'm actually familiar with - the short story is in Night Shift and I read it when I was a kid (it also gave rise to Graveyard Shift and Gray Matter, both of which have also been adapted to the screen). Short take: The story is better. Longer take: The story opens with Burt and Vicky running the kid on the road down and then slowly discovering what happened in Gatlin, rather than letting us see it all and removing any mystery. It ends with Vicky sacrificed in the corn and Burt getting swallowed by He Who etc etc. 

Now, I'm not saying it should have been faithfully adapted - in the book, Burt and Vicky are constantly fighting and on the verge of divorce (Burt actually seriously considers belting her at one point), so it's easy to see why that was changed to give us more likable protagonists. But it really does feel like a Stephen King story with training wheels on - not only do our protagonists survive, but they save the day, the terrifying chthonic god is reduced to a really awful special effect or a giant gopher, and the kids shake off their programming with relative ease. The addition of the two kids who didn't get brainwashed also adds a bit of levity to a movie that really didn't need it; if anything it needs to take itself more seriously. 

A lot of the titular children aren't really children; the actor playing Isaac was 25 but had a growth hormone deficiency so he reads as a kid, but some of them are very clearly adults, and that undercuts the horror. The addition of the old mechanic (Armstrong) was also unnecessary - what's scary about the story is that all of the adults are gone because the kids fucking killed them and that their god approves so they're able to keep secret. In the movie the kids seem to have some kind of plan, but it's never really explained, and while some of them come off as creepy they never quite manage the inherent horror that comes with cults. Also Peter Horton is just kinda goofy-looking, but that's not his fault. 

There have been a couple of remakes, but it looks like neither of them really hit the mark. Maybe this one is just hard to get right, I dunno.

My Grade: C-
Rewatch Value: Medium-low

Next up: Collateral

Wildsea: PIPES

Back into the Wildsea! Splash! Or rather, um, rustlerustlearrrghthecrezzerin. Here's last time.

The crew of the Heart of the Seeker got into a barfight last time, and kinda got their butts kicked a bit. They figure, however, that they're aren't in any particular danger on their ship at the Tart docks - sure, Zeku and his friends might hold a little grudge, but it's not likely they're going to raise a posse and hunt anyone down. They take the night to rest and recover - Rozek mixes up a poultice of honey and vinegar to treat her cuts, Jakesta and Chambersson start practicing fighting so that this won't happen next time, and Kazera breaks up a rusted cup she found to replenish the chunks of metal in her rivet swarm.

In the morning, they consider their options. They talk about taking on some cargo to sell, but they don't really have much to trade with to get cargo. They do, however, have a line on a ship to salvage - the Sanguine Dress, the ship Clanksburg was on when it went down. They decide to go find that thing, since they have a map to it, and spend the morning getting ready to go. 

Rozek goes to visit Lightrime, the ironbound chef, and asks if, when they return, she might come back for another lesson. Lightrime says they'd be happy to do that, and Rozek asks if there's anything the Heart might bring back for them. They tell her that if they happen to stop by the big ol honey-tree (which the crew passed on the way into town), and they can do so safely, maybe get some honeycomb? Lightrime has honey, but wants the wax.

Chambersson and Jakesta go to the wordbearer post in Tart. Most towns have these, places where people take letters and packages they want delivered, and a wordbearer eventually comes through, takes them, swears the oath (This Will Be Delivered), and goes about it. There are a bunch of letters and packages in the post, and Chambersson, not wanting to overload himself, picks up a letter and what looks like a blank canvas in a wooden frame. 

Jakesta notes that there's a gau here dropping off a package, and says that she's looking for someone - maybe he could help? The gau looks uncertain, but then Jakesta describes the person that she saw last night in the bar who said (whilst leaving) that he knew how Jakesta died. The gau says, from the description, that it sounds like Ippet, an ardent who used to be a wildsailor but now lives here in Tart. Noting that Jakesta is with Chambersson, the gau asks that Chambersson take on his package as well - a small, rectangular box. Chambersson agrees ("this will be delivered"), and they head back to the ship.

And back on the ship, Kazera is directing the undercrew in preparations to ship out. She hears an "ahoy there!" from the dock, and sees an ardent man, short in stature but very wide and with a big potbelly and huge bushy beard, calling up to her. He asks if they're shipping out and if they might consider taking on a passenger. Kazera invites him up and notes that he has tools for working metal and wood on his belt. He says that he's happy to trade his skills for passage, and Kazera says that she's willing, but needs to talk to the others first. The man, Rokko, takes up residence in a cabin to wait.

The others return and Kazera explains the situation, and the others agree. Rokko wants to go to the spit he grew up on (if it's still there), but he's not in a hurry. The crew agrees, and they set out, making their destination the wreck of the Sanguine Dress! 

They zip across the thrash out of sight of Tart, and then Kazera (on watch) and Rozek (on weather-watch) spot a storm coming, But as they peer closer at it, they see what look like tentacles in the clouds and hear voices in the thunder. They've all heard tales of living storms, and they have no desire to meet one up close. 

Jakesta tries to steer them away from the storm, but misjudges where it is and actually steers closer. But she does find the wreck of the Dress - they can see parts of it in the thrash, and every so often a gout of steam jets up (Clanksburg said it was steam-powered). The living storm is still distant (though closer than they'd like), and the crew considers whether they should explore the wreck or come back later. They also, however, notice another ship approaching. Jakesta peers through the spy-glass, and sees that the hull is painted with stormclouds and the crew has tattoos and face painting depicting lighting. The captain, too, is wearing big rectangular sheets of metal, but their face is obscured. 

The crew asks their passenger, Rokko, if he has any idea what's happening here, and he says he's heard stories of the "Storm Hive", a tzelicrae who captains a crew - or a cult - or storm-worshippers. The crew wonder how these folks will respond to their ship, which rides on voltaic runners. 

Rozek snorts a big handful of bloompollen and lets the visions take her. She sees - feels - pressure, from the oncoming storm, from the storm-chasers, and from the wreck itself - and knows that if the pressure isn't relieved, something will explode. She feels that if they don't salvage the wreck soon, it might not be here tomorrow. The crew decide to take their chances with the storm-chasers, and lower Chambersson on the magnet crane to scout out the wreck.

He sees a big hole in the hull, and pipes running all along in the inside of the ship. Every so often one bursts open and spews steam, and he realizes that the pipes are rattling - attracted by the magnet! He yells to the others to turn it off, and then returns to the ship and opines that maybe Kazera should go down (she's a screw, and is therefore more conversant with metal).

Kazera and Jakesta lower down on the crane, and start working on relieving the pressure so they can safely remove the pipes. They spot a valve that looks important, but it's hard to reach. Kazera takes a different tactic, she talks to the ship itself, and the ship howls in pain - the pressure is too much! It tells her that in the captain's room, the pressure can be relieved, and Kazera and Jakesta start picking their way through the ship.

Meanwhile, on deck, the storm-chaser ship glides close and Rozek and Chambersson see them pointing at the runners and the rail cannon. They take the initiative and use the shutter-lamps to signal "everything's fine, no assistance needed" and the ship signals back "acknowledged, see you soon, storm-runners" and pass them by. 

Down in the ship, they reach the captain's room, and it's full of valve that are, for the most part, unlabeled. (They also find a Captain's Log, but that's no help.)  Kazera asks the ship again, but it doesn't know which valve does what, and it's not sure about concepts like "color" or "see." Kazera instead touches the valves and lets the ship guide her to the right ones, and little by little lets out the steam in the ship, averting the possibility of explosion. The ship sighs in relief, and Kazera and Jakesta get to work ripping out pipes. They check the cargo hold, but it's full of serpents in a big pile, and although the serpents pose no threat to them, they aren't interested in disturbing them.

They retrieve a bunch of pipes and raise them up with the magnet. Kazera also notes a strange blue substance on the hole in the hull, maybe residue from whatever the ship hit. She takes a sample to give to Rozek, and the crew gets underway.

They want to go back to Tart at some point, but they also want to go to Stonebark, the spit that Rokko called home (if it's still there). They decide to do that first, and to take a roundabout way there and see what they see in the meanwhile. Jakesta goes on watch while Chambersson takes them helm. Kazera goes on weather-watch and sees nothing but clear skies and moonlight!

Chambersson finds the canvas he took on to deliver and asks Rokko if there's a way to protect it or secure it; Rokko says he'll build a better box for it. Chambersson also notes that in moonlight, images appear. He sees the Conflagration in the background, a ship moving across the thrash away from it in the foreground, and a person standing on the deck holding what looks like a small flame. "Well, that's not a good omen," murmurs Chambersson.

Jakesta, on watch, spots a land mass (using Captain's Log + The Past Abides in Stone to make a discovery, if you're interested) and figures that must be what the Dress hit. Chambersson decides to drop anchor for the night, and in the morning, they'll explore this tiny spit. He dreams of the stone, descending down into the trees, past the sink and into the drown, and at the bottom, into a deep, deep pool of icy water. He knows that this lake was man-made, not natural, and that those who made it also made it cold on purpose. He also knows that it has changed the stone somehow.

Next time, perhaps we'll find out what that means!

Blades in the Dark: Smashing Pumpkin('s house)

Last time we got our plan together (inasmuch as you ever have a plan together for Blades), this time we did the thing! On we go!

Not a great start for the Snakeskins, unfortunately - the Cabbies, another Duskwall faction apparently allied with the Wraiths, were hanging around outside the Wraiths' tower. That would have made it very difficult to sneak in. Fortunately, Two-Tooth had already covered this (through the magic of the flashback!). See, Two-Tooth had gone into Brightstone (where the theaters are located) and arranged things so that the Cabbies who would usually be around when the shows let out...weren't. This caused a sudden demand for Cabbies, and lo and behold, shortly after the Snakeskins arrive at the Wraiths' tower, the Cabbies pick up and leave!

One goat gets a little stubborn, but Moon sends a ghost over to goose it a bit and make it move. Now with a clear path into the tower, Sower opens a window a little and lets Aksha slither in to check for traps. Aksha, unfortunately, finds a warm spot and curls up without really letting the scoundrels know anything, so that doesn't help much. 

Sower takes up a position on a nearby rooftop to act as lookout/sniper, while the other three sneak into the building (Two-Tooth gives Hollow a boost to go first, but good news! No traps!). They all three slip in, and the ground floor is nothing but storage and some squiggles on the walls, which Moon recognizes as practice for summoning demons. They slip upstairs and on the second floor, find a makeshift lab with a bunch of spirit bottles. Hollow goes to check it out and trips a wire attached to an alarm bell, but Two-Tooth grabs it and silences it in the nick of time! 

Aksha, by now, has woken up and crawled into Moon's pocket (which is a kind of religious experience for her). Also, before the score Moon and Sower worked a way to co-attune to the snake so that they could communicate through her. Sower, across the street, peers into the fifth and sixth floor windows. On the sixth, she sees several Wraiths in masks. On the fifth, she sees Jack (the guy in the jack o'lantern mask) and Pumpkin, alone. She sends this information to Aksha to relay to Moon, and after a brief bit of confusion ("what the hell does she mean there's 'gourds'?"), they figure it out. They'll have to deal with the folks on five, but there's just the two.

They head up the stairs, quietly, and manage to get there without alerting the place (though they do trip a trap that sends a ghost hurtling through them, zapping them all with electro-plasmic energy. Two-Tooth: "GAAH I so prefer getting punched in the face."). They get to the fifth floor and Two-Tooth pulls out a Cabbie's cap and walks in, knocking on their door and affecting a north Duskwall accent, asking for help. "Just need a minute, don't want goat-bundles all over your doorstep, right, just a minute, please." 

Jack follows closely, and Two-Tooth leads him to the stairwell, and then jukes out of the way! Hollow gives Jack a snoot-full of standstill poison, which paralyzes him. Pumpkin, however, wasn't close enough behind, and she runs.

"Lethal force now?" asks Hollow. "NO," says Two-Tooth and tackles her. "DRUGS DRUGS DRUGS!" Hollow doses her with trance powder and she goes limp. They tie her up (and hogtie Jack and hang him from the ceiling), and Two-Tooth questions her a little. Turns out she's getting inducted into the Wraiths because she stole a valuable map book - it's right in the other room! Moon goes to grab it (deftly dodging more wire-traps with the help of a friendly ghost). 

Curious, Two-Tooth takes Jack's mask off...and sees that his eyes are sewn shut. "OK, then." 

Hollow sets up the explosives on the ceiling to drop the spirit well, and Two-Tooth tries to set the charges in the stairwell...but then the electrical fuses start to spark. "Uh, Hollow?" "OH SHIT TIME TO GO."

Two-Tooth grabs Pumpkin, and yells for someone to cut Jack down, but Hollow doesn't bother and Moon doesn't hear. Sower does, fortunately, and after accidentally putting a bullet in his leg, she shoots the rope holding him. Hopefully he survives the explosion, too!

They leave Pumpkin just outside the tower ("Don't fuck with Madame Tesslyn," Two-Tooth reminds her as the drugs wear off), and split. 

Back at the boathouse, they talk over what to do with the book - both the Leviathan Hunters and the Hive want it. In the end, they decide to make a copy and sell one to both (that might bounce back on them if the Hunters find out, but that's a problem for future-Snakeskins!). This job definitely brought some heat, but fortunately no one died, so it's not as bad as it could be. However, Sower still gets brought in for questioning and pays off the Bluecoats. 

The scoundrels go about their various hobbies - Hollow indulges in fine dining, Moon goes to visit her spiritual leader about her growing ophid worship, and Sower...well, Sower overdose it and vanishes into Duskwall for a while. She does manage to scare some folks into leaving whatever they think they know about the Snakeskins alone, however, and this coupled with Two-Tooth spreading rumors and misdirection takes some of the heat off. 

Hollow starts working on a "chemical lockpick," something that burns hot enough to melt any lock. Two-Tooth hires a street doc to help the crew heal up from the ghost-zaps they endured. And the crew sets their sights on making sabotage jobs more profitable by setting up covert drops up around the area. The Crows, another gang, already has such "nests" - all the Snakeskins have to do is take 'em.

Movie #814: Children of Men

Children of Men is a dystopian sci-fi/drama starring Clive Owen, Chiwetel Ejofor, Pam Ferris, Clare-Hope Ashitey, Julianne Moore, Charlie Hunnam, and Michael Caine. 

It's 2027 and the world has truly fallen to shit. The environment is failing, war and violence is rampant, and oh yeah, there have been no new births or pregnancies in 18 years. The world is losing hope and England is the last real functional government, but it's fallen to fascism and xenophobia - immigrants are rounded up, put in camps, and shot. 

Theo (Owen) is an ex-activist just biding his time and drinking his days away, when Julian his ex-wife and current leader of the Fishes terrorist/activist group (Moore), contacts him and asks his help getting travel papers and then an escort for Kee (Ashitey), a young refugee who is eight months pregnant. Theo gets drawn into this thing and initially is only going to help her get into the countryside and to a boat to take her out of England to safety, but then Julian is killed, her second Luke (Ejiofor) takes over, and Theo learns that Luke intends to kill him and use Kee and her baby as a political tool to start an uprising. 

What follows is Theo, Kee, and a midwife named Miriam (Ferris) trying to get to the coast and get a boat to meet up with the semi-mythical Human Project, while dodging violence from both the government and the Fishes. Eventually they do make it (though Theo gets shot in the process and dies in their little rowboat as Kee sees a boat hove into view), but that's not the amazing part of this movie.

There's a scene (spoilers for a movie that's old enough to vote, I guess) in the movie where Kee and her newborn baby are taken into a building by the Fishes, and the building is promptly assaulted by the Army. So there are refugees, soldiers, and terrorists (because the Fishes are fucking terrorists, no matter what their motives) getting killed and blown up right and left, and Theo manages to find Kee and bring her and the baby out, and as they're walking out, everyone, refugees, terrorists, and soldiers alike just stop in utter awe. It's the best depiction of a revelatory, almost religious (which is how a lot of the people treat it) experience I have ever seen on film. 

I've seen this movie exactly twice - once in theaters in 2006 and then once last night - and both times, when Theo and Kee are walking out of that building holding a crying baby and everyone stops literally killing each other for just a moment and dares to hope again, I had tears streaming down my face. I cry at movies a lot, but very few have affected me that strongly, and I'm still not 100% certain why - it's a powerful scene, sure, but the reaction is so strong and so immediate. I've always had a strong protective instinct as a dad, so I'm sure that's part of it. But I think the larger part is because "hope" is such a tricky emotion to portray, and hope is fundamentally a naive thing to have. Hope is the belief, or at least the fervent wish, that something good will happen, that things will improve, despite all evidence to the contrary. And Alfonso Cuarón so expertly showed us a world where hope is gone, and then gave the people in that world a little glimpse, just for a moment. It's probably one of my favorite scenes in any movie ever. 

The movie is shot in a kind of newsreel sort of style, and the result of that is that the violent scenes have more of an impact because they feel more visceral and immediate (the ambush scene where Julian dies especially). The performances are kind of subtle, and Clive Owen is the perfect casting because he has a quiet strength to him - he's not an action hero, he's not capably violent, but for all his despair at the beginning of the movie he stands up when he needs to. The movie doesn't scan to a hero's journey because it's not about the hero, it's about the world (Cuarón is really good at this) and what's happening to it. 

Watching Children of Men is a rich experience. There's a lot going on, it's uncompromising, and as our would-be leaders are rabbiting on about "illegal immigrants" and making up horrors to make people afraid, it feels really topical. I hope (heh) it doesn't get any more so. 

My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: Low

Next up: Children of the Corn

D&D: Suck, You Bus!

These are the jokes, folks. Here's last time.

Our heroes are in the swamp, having defeated a bunch of bullywugs and their hungry hungry mounts. They take a moment to rest (and Clara grabs one of their spears and takes the sharpened rock off the end to replace the quarterstaff that the bullywugs stole), and then Zook activates his magic cap and swims into the swamp, hoping to find the stash that his father left behind.

He finds a door without a handle or keyhole, but text written around the margin: "Stand on one foot with your heart in your hand - who are you?"

Zook considers this, and then says "Zook Timbers." The door does not move. "Zeb's boy." Nothing. "My father's son." Not a sausage. "Damn it, dad." 

He swims up and admits defeat, asking for help from the others. The characters put their heads together (and Aisling casts a spell on Zook to make him smarter), and Dara asks what Zeb's sense of humor is like. "Dad was something of a pain in the arse," says Zook. Clara notes that artichokes have hearts, and Zeb considers that his village grew various vegetables, including cabbage and celery, which have hearts. He dives back down and names a few, and when he gets to "cabbage" the door unlocks.

It doesn't open, however, and Zook notes that the water probably wasn't here when dad built the stash, and the pressure is keeping it closed. If he opens it, the water will rush and potentially ruin anything in there, and he can't have that. He explains this to the others, and they look about and find the wash-ups made of detritus, dig a few trenches, and drain off the water. Now it's getting dark, but the door is out of the water.

Zook opens it, and finds a room beneath the tree. There are four little alcoves, each of them labeled: Zook Timbers, Shay the Hawk, Clodagh of Cnoc, and Sorcha Oakwood.

The heroes recognize these names. Clara has heard of Clodagh; she was a bard from (as the name implies) Cnoc, but she isn't sure if Clodagh was actually a "bard" the way Aisling is or if she was just musically inclined the way a lot of people from Cnoc are. Dara recognizes Sorcha as the daughter of Morne Oakwood, a druid and hero in her own right. She also remembers that Shay the Hawk was a rogue and fighter skilled with blade and bow. This, Zook realizes, must have been his father's party. 

The alcoves are not empty, either! In Sorcha's, they find what looks like a mail shirt, but the links are made with tightly woven wood (and it's not quite finished, but they figure someone in Fiadh could help). Shay's alcove has a short bow (from which the heroes feel some weak magic - enhanced, perhaps?) and a strange, slightly curved sword. Aisling also finds a gold coin, but it's stamped with a symbol she doesn't recognize. Clara finds a little mechanical crab that moves when she's not looking - seems to be just a toy, but it's cute. Dara finds a little doodle of a goblin (maybe drawn while on watch?).

Zook finds a box which clicks open for him, and inside a note from his father. It tells him that if he's reading it, he's followed in his father's footsteps and become an adventurer, and expresses hope that they might meet on the road one day. He also says that Clodagh (also a wizard) foresaw that Zook would take an interest in magic and divination, and she left something for him. Zook checks in her alcove, and finds a slim box with a black, concave glass lens - when Zook stares into it, he starts to see images and movement. (It's called a "keek-stane," if you're interested.) Zook also finds a pair of homemade wool socks - they fit!

The characters bed down for the night and shut the door, and sleep peacefully. In the morning, they get ready to move out, and notice another inscription around the door frame: "There is ground to break, whatever's still to come." They wonder if this might be another riddle, but it could also just be an affirmation. 

The party heads out, following Clara (since she's the only one that made the Survival check to find her way back). As they're approached Fiadh, Clara is suddenly yanked up into the air by a snare trap! She frees herself, and a small group of hunters emerges from the brush, laughing. ("Don't think we're allowed to hunt halflings." "We're not good eating anyway.") The men say that they've been hunting the last couple of nights, looking for boar or deer, but until now hadn't caught anything. (Dara: "Good job hiding the trap, though.")

The characters ask about the weird mist they found, and the hunters say they've heard stories about lights that you should not follow - "will o' the wisps," Zook calls them - but not hunger-fog. One of the men mentions that he's been under the weather, but this has been good ("I feel lighter than I have in so much time") - he lives in the southwest end of town and woke up feeling wiped out.

The party heads into town and goes to the bathhouse to wash off the frog-slime. Dara finds a wood-worker to finish the armor and fit it ("day or two," he says), and Clara goes to the southwest side of town and asks around about the "malady." It's mostly what she remembers - sometimes men wake up tired, dark circles under the eyes, drained - but one of them confides that he had erotic dreams that night, too. Clara reports this to the others, and it does seem to support their "succubus" theory.

They think about what they know about such creatures. Zook knows that succubi tend to charm and drain people, and that they're capable of assuming human forms - even taking on the forms of others ("ugh, again?"). Dara notes that she didn't realize shapeshifters would be this big of a problem, but she also knows that succubi and similar creatures usually appear on this plane because they've been summoned. But who, or what, summoned it? And why is it just draining people in southwest Fiadh - there have been no reports of deaths, so what's the point here?

The heroes decide to wander around that end of town tonight and keep an eye out. They get some dinner at the tavern, and then head into that area - the town is going to sleep, but there's still activity at night. They find an old woman sitting outside her house, knitting, and she greets them. They ask her about the men and the malady, and she invites them in to talk about it and gives them a cup of mead. She's cooking something over a fire ("oh, it smells lovely now, but when it's done it's more like rotting flowers - smelly, but it's a wonderful poultice for poison oak and the like"). She tells them that the malady has been happening for about a year, and she's heard the "sexy dreams" report from other victims, too. 

Zook asks her point-blank if she's the succubus, and she says she's not, but she understands the suspicion. They consider what might be going on - if it's been going on for a year, what happened a year ago? Any new arrivals in town? The old woman remembers that Colm, the chandler, brought his sister to live with him about a year ago. The sister, Dearbhla, came here after her husband died (they lived in a village north of here), and she seems pleasant enough. Bit of a flirt.

The characters decide that's worth a look, so they head down the road to Colm's place ("can't miss it, bunch of candles on the windowsill"). Dara wild-shapes into an owl and flutters up to the roof, and hears noises from within - thrashing? muffled cries? She reports this to the others, and after a couple of kerfuffles (Clara tries to get down the chimney, but it's too narrow) they get inside. 

They find Colm tied up on the floor, blindfolded and gagged. They free him and he immediately cries out "She's not my sister!" 

He explains: The woman posing as his sister is a creature of some kind, and when she looks at him he can't help but love her. But then she ties him up and the feeling fades, she goes out for the night, and then comes back before dawn and the feeling returns! He asks for help, and the characters decide to ambush the monster: they re-tie Colm (with his consent, of course) and hide around the room.

And indeed, just before down, the door opens and a pretty woman walks in. Zook pops out and throws a blinding spell at her, but it has no effect. Aisling takes a more direct approach and stabs her with her sword. Clara and Dara emerge, Dara tries to cast a spell to hold her fast (which fails, and the creature laughs at the futility of it all), but then Clara scampers over and clobbers her. 

She explodes into her natural form, becoming impossibly alluring and unveiling huge, bat-like wings, but the heroes are undeterred! Aisling throws a cloud of daggers around her, and the daggers shred her wings, while Dara enchants her staff and strikes her. She flies behind a table, away from the daggers, but Zook hits her with magic missiles and Clara runs over, jumps up, and punches her in the sternum. Something cracks, and she collapses to her knees. 

Flames start to lick up around her and she puts a hand on Clara's shoulder. "You think you killed me," she says, "but I've never been happier. And I'll come back, and you'll find me howling outside your door." And the flames erupt (but do not burn anything, only smell of brimstone) and she vanishes.

The heroes free Colm again, and search the succubus' bed. Beneath it, they find a chest filled with gold and gemstones! Also, three potions (which Aisling identifies as invulnerability, heroism, and mind-reading) and a scroll (Zook reads it and realizes it's for a spell called "dimension door," though this spell was written for a different understanding of magic than he has - doesn't mean he can't use it, but it might take some doing). 

They split the money with Colm, and donate some of the rest to the other victims of the succubus. They decide to go back to the hidey-hole and stash the rest, and maybe poke around the woods a bit more. 

Character Creation: Scurvy Buggers

Yarr, buggers!

The Game: Scurvy Buggers
The Publisher: 9th Level Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one, laddie

Scurvy Buggers is a game in which you play pirates (or "pyrates", going by the text). It uses the polymorph system (same as Very Good Dogs of Chernobyl), and focuses on pirates-as-found-family, kinda. It very much takes inspiration from Our Flag Means Death, although there's no bibliography so that's never mentioned (but like, c'mon). 

Would I run it? I dunno. I like how it leans into queer content and I like how the focus is less on the buckles and swashing thereof and more on interactions between pirates ("pyrates") and telling stories. But the system is weird; like Very Good Dogs, what number you roll on your die determines what you succeed at, but it's not about value of the die, but literally what digit you roll. To succeed with Savvy, you need to roll a 2 or a 3, so the Genteel (the Role that uses a d4 only) has the best chance of succeeding there. 

I think it's a pretty big conceptual shift for a lot of players and I think it'd be hard to get your head around at the table, but not impossible. The game also isn't as laser-focused as Very Good Dogs, though considering that it's taking its cues from some pretty specific tropes (myths, one might say) about pirates, it's not exactly setting-agnostic, either.

So let's bugger a pirate! Er, make a scurvy pirate bugger! Pyrate! Whatever!

Razzum frazzum not bookmarked PDF grumble...

Anyway, first thing we do is a pick a Role. I believe I shall go with Dauntless. My pyrate's name is Boots Lochlyn; he's called "Boots" because he was a cobbler back in Merry Olde England and through a series of wacky circumstances wound up out here on [this ship]. Boots, therefore, has a skill that might actually be useful, if there were tools and leather enough. Which there's not. 

But Boots is also first one up the rigging when we're spotted a ship to seize, first across to their deck with a knife t'ween his teeth, and first asleep at night with a big smile on his face. 

So what's Boots' Flag? (That'd be his motivation for piracy.) Clearly it's Adventure. Boots probably could have returned to England or at least gone to a colony - they need boots there, too, but then he'd miss out on the clang of steel, the spray of the sea, and the rousing shanties! 

(There's no fucking step by step for chargen, have I mentioned how fucking annoying that is?)

So anyway, Bonds would require a crew, so I'm gonna skip that. I think, though, that Boots likely keeps himself apart from his crewmates, at least emotionally. If he gets close to them, it's hard to be excited about life-and-death struggles that involve them, right? (Likewise, if he starts to see the enemy, whoever that is, as human, that's gonna fuck with him, too.)

Right, what else. Edges! Edges are like skills or advantages, and here's a fun fact, they're not mentioned in the context of chargen. Ever. But all the pre-gens have two, so I'll take two. I'll take Scrappy and Sea-Legs, those sound pretty in-keeping. 

And that's it, y'all! Boots is 23. He's got thinning brown hair and a light beard growth (he never lets it get more than that because it itches). He's got a pair of boots that he keeps up meticulously, but he doesn't normally wearing them at sea unless there's gonna be violence. 

Movie #813: Blast from the Past

Blast from the Past is a thoroughly 90s comedy starring Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, Dave Foley, Nathan Fillion, and Joey Slotnick.

In 1962, Calvin Webber (Walken) and his very pregnant wife Helen (Spacek) are hosting a dinner party when the news of the Cuban Missile Crisis breaks. Webber, who is a brilliant scientist but also more than a little paranoid, kicks everyone out and pulls Helen into his homemade fallout shelter. A couple wacky coincidences later, Webber is convinced that the Bomb has dropped and seals the shelter for 35 years; meanwhile, on the surface, the same wacky coincidences convince everyone that the Webbers are dead. 

Flash forward to 1997. The Webber child, Adam, has grown up into Brendan Fraser. The shelter finally opens and Calvin goes up to find himself in late-90s Los Angeles, is immediately convinced that the world is a dystopian, irradiated hellhole (two of three ain't bad) and suffers a heart attack. Helen sends Adam out into the world for supplies, and Adam takes on modern LA armed with nothing more than a lifetime of intense training in manners, languages, boxing, and various other topics, a lot of money (in the form of vintage baseball cards), and his can-do attitude. 

He meets Eve (Silverstone), because there ain't no nose like on the nose, a young woman trying to be cynical but failing miserably, who winds up becoming his assistant and guide in the world and, obviously, falling for him. At the end of it all, they wind up marrying and building his parents a house outside of town, and gently breaking the bad news - there never was a bomb blast. (Calvin doesn't quite buy it.)

I like this movie, and I was thinking about why it works for me when a lot of 90s comedy doesn't, and I think it's because it's not mean. Sure, there's some borderline problematic stuff (though far, far less than a lot of films from the era), and there are a lot of things that go unexamined (to wit, there's kind of an unstated assumption that things were better back in the early 60s, which has the potential to be really hard to stomach, but the movie doesn't really dwell on it). But it works because Adam is not only a product of his era but a product of his parents. It's not that Adam has manners and he's polite, it's that he approaches this brave new world with joy and wonder and he has manners and is polite. There are some similarities in performance here between Fraser's portrayal of Adam and his performance a couple years earlier in George of the Jungle, and it works because it lets him be earnest and a little awkward but ultimately kind and sweet (compare/contrast to his character in Bedazzled, who is earnest and awkward but something of a douchebag). 

Silverstone, likewise, comes off as trying to be disaffected but having a moral center, and her conversations with her roommates Troy (Foley) hint at their upbringing not preparing them for the simple truth that empathy and kindness is a better attitude to take than fear and cynicism. (And it's interesting, because Adam's father is afraid but not cynical - he believes the world is doomed but also that he can help his family transcend it.) 

Anyway, that's more character analysis that this silly film probably needs. Is it funny? Absolutely, Fraser is a great comic actor and he brings the right amount of naivete and competence to the role. Also worth mentioning is the bit with Joey Slotnick's character, who witnesses Calvin ascend from his shelter and starts a church around it, complete with the most baffling mantra ever ("leave my elevator alone"). 

My Grade: B
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: Children of Men

Asunder: After the Gathering

Yesterday we played what was supposed to be a one-shot, and then we decided to split it into two, so here's part one OK GO.

The island of Pacari, home to nomadic tribes, diverse biomes, and lots of animals. The people of Pacari bond with animals, and some of them learn to change shape or use the aspects of their companions. Every six years, all of the creatures on Pacari trek to a menhir in the middle of the island and stand, placid and almost reverent, staring at it. The people of Pacari come as well, and those who do not yet have an animal companion walk among the throngs of animals until the Essence of the world leads them to their bondmate.

The Gathering has just finished, and the animals are slowly heading back to their homes (their normal instincts vis-a-vis eating each other don't kick in until they get home). The Pacari people are likewise heading out, but there are multiple camps, some formed by particular tribes, some by disparate groups of travelers. And it's in the Highfield Camp, one of the latter, that we find a group of people gathered around campfire. Four of them are what we call Seekers:

Quaker is a young Pacari, only 18. She found her companion, a tiny stoat named Oat (yeah, I know) at the last Gathering, when she was 12. But somewhere in the intervening years, she tried to steal a handful of seeds from a tribe that was very protective of their stuff and wound up imprisoned for three years. She learned to be a valet and learned more about plant architecture during that time, and now she's finally free - with perhaps a bit of a chip on her shoulder.

Bob is a courier; she takes messages and letters from tribe to tribe, though she herself resides in one of the few permanent settlements on Pacari (not far from the menhir, as it happens). Her companions is an immense sabre-toothed tiger named Li'l Bob (Bob got the tiger as a tiny cub; the name no longer really fits). Li'l Bob has wings, but he's far too big even to glide anymore.

Ssanan is something of an oddity; a Pacari raised by a Naga. The Naga usually do no get along with humans, but for whatever reason, one fostered young Ssanan and brought her up to adulthood. This is the first time that Ssanan has attended a Gathering, and therefore although she's in her 20s (maybe? Naga don't keep time the same way as humans so she's really not sure), she's just become an adult as far as Pacari are concerned. Her companion is Clover, a small elephant-like creature that can expel toxic mucous from her trunk (her species grows considerably over their lifespan, and eventually loses its poison sacs but becomes large enough that it has no predators).

Finally, Marja watches all of this craziness around her. She's isn't Pacari, she's a "Skimmer," from the Sky City. Marja was a thug and a retrieval expert, working for a noble doing some shady stuff, and failed (deliberately?) to recover a target. The noble had her imprisoned for six years, and she did her time and got the hell out of Sky City. As she's a skilled tracker, she figured she could make a living on Pacari, and here we are!

The four of them (plus some other folks, including an older Pacari lady who stares into the fire and doesn't say much) sit around and chat. Ssanan has harvested some Pacari nuts ("in Pacarai, we just call them 'nuts'"), and Oat is cheerfully nibbling on one. Bob is roasting the head of some creature in the fire, just enough to crisp the skin, whereupon she gives it to Li'l Bob to crunch. Clover lounges between Ssanan and the fire, happily getting tummy rubs and making little toots with her trunk. Things are pretty relaxed.

Nearby, there's a pen of field rats - rodents the size of large dogs that someone in this camp is herding. A horrible squealing sound erupts from the pen, and the Seekers turn and see the pen door give, and three of the rodents, foaming at the mouth and frenzied, charge at them!

(Ssanan and Marja also notice a rezzik - a reptilian-wolf creature - in the pen chewing on the carcass of one of the field rats. But they don't have time to do much with that information before the field rats charge!)

Quaker cracks her whip, hoping to scare the rats away, but misjudges the distance and nearly hits Li'l Bob! The tiger reads this as a threat and tenses to pounce, and Bob has to take a second to tell him not to kill Quaker. Marja, employing the gravity-manipulation that her people are known for, leaps over the fire and lands in front of the rats, brandishing her glass knife. 

Ssanan backs into the shadows with Clover, while Quaker sends Oat up onto a nearby rock to keep watch and make sure nothing else comes their way. Bob strikes a rat with her spear, and Li'l Bob roars and strikes, handily killing it. 

One of the rats leaps on a bystander and starts chewing on her shoulder. Quaker spits a dart at it with her blowgun and misses, and then tackles the rat in frustration and pulls it off the guy. Marja notices the old lady run over to the pen, and, seeing that one rat is dead and the other two have several people taking care of them, follows. 

Ssanan has Clover sneak around behind the rat to spit poison at it, but strikes with her dagger to keep it busy. Another Pacari bonks it with a club, while the one that Quaker is wrestling squeals and tries to get loose...until Li'l Bob dispatches it with a swipe of his claws. Ssanan notices that the rat she's fighting has a wound on its haunch, and Clover toots poison at it, but misses. The rat pounces on Ssanan and bites her savagely, and she falls, bleeding. Fortunately, the rat has other opponents and doesn't finish by ripping out her throat. 

Marja sees that the old lady is sitting by the rezzik with her hand on its shoulder, calming it - Marja has questions, but she glances over and sees that the last rat is still giving people trouble. She gets a running start and bounds into battle, and between her, Bob, and Li'l Bob, the last field rat falls dead.

The wounded get some medical attention; Ssanan comes to with herbal poultices pressed into her bites to make sure they don't get infected. The old woman, Leyva, explains that the rezzik is the bonded companion of a man named Serrai - and something terrible has happened to him. He's alive, for the moment, but if he isn't returned, the rezzik's madness will probably consume it and it will have to be put down.

Marja, who has made a career out of finding people, immediately volunteers to help. Ssanan is less concerned with Serrai than his animal, but admits it does seem a neighborly thing to do. Bob is pretty convinced these fuckers will die without Li'l Bob there to save them (and like, in fairness, she's probably right). Quaker is initially a little reluctant - everything dies, Pacari is harsh, right? But Quaker is proud, and if Serrai needs help, well, that just shows how great Quaker is. 

The four of them prepare to go out into the night and save Serrai (after first confirming their Novice Paths: Quaker is Marauder, Marja is a Survivor, and Ssanan and Bob are Bonded).

Next time, we'll see if they can find and save Serrai, or if his weird lizard-wolf will pay the price!