The Strange: Travelers from Other Recursions

New game! Wooo! 

We used the "Spark" method to pick a game (based on the Spark RPG; more info here). Our sparks were as follows:

• Matt: The Gentlemen: Competency/badassery emerging from relationships and trust, winning but because of the effort and the relationships rather than isolated action
• Amanda: The Craft: Emerging supernatural power without the expectation that you’re necessarily going to be the Good Guy
• Cael: The Wildsea: Ocean-going and mobile base with base-building/upgrading elements, advancement geared around change rather than just increase
• Michelle: Murderbot Diaries: Identifying the problem and fixing it 
• Ada: The Stranger: Perception/POV changing emotional and environmental impact of stimuli/events

So based on all of that, I pitched a few games (Ashen Stars, Between Clouds, Conspiracy X, Stealing Stories for the Devil) but the one we landed on was The Strange!

Now, I ran The Strange once before, back in 2019-2020. We only got to play seven sessions and then the pandemic hit, and that particular group wasn't one that wanted to play online so we just put the game on indefinite hiatus (and obviously never picked it back up). But I always liked it; I enjoy the Cypher System anyway, and I like the idea of being able to universe-hop and change things a bit. 

So we made characters, and then last night did a little more character development and game setup, and that's what we're writing up today! None of these characters are from Earth, interestingly.

Aylin Aster, Strange Witch (Paradox) that Consorts with the Dead on Hallows. Aylin is from a recursion called Hallows, created from fictional leakage of things like Charmed, The Craft, and so on - it looks much like modern-day Earth, but magic and the supernatural are real. It's not common knowledge, but there are secret societies and government conspiracies galore. Aylin found a Book of Shadows in her grandmother's library and learned the technique of meditation and translation (which makes you wonder about her grandmother, doesn't it?). She translated to Earth and finds it interesting and familiar, but somewhat more limiting. On the other hand, since no one really has magic here, the little magic she can do really gives her an edge. Her focus on Earth is Explores Dark Places. 

Since being on Earth and hooking up with the Estate, she's started having nightmares about planetovores - eldritch beings from beyond the Strange - eating her world. That's enough of a motivation to get her to help out. 

Clay, Tough Vector that Changes Shape. Clay is from Ruk, a world governed by mad science. Clay is...kind of formless, a being that embraces change and evolution. They hibernated and, while their form rested, let their mind wander...and it wandered all the way into the Strange and onto Earth. 

Clay hates Earth. They can't shapechange here (their focus is Hunts With Great Skill here), and they feel extremely limited within its laws. But the Estate, and translation and other recursions generally, present new opportunities - perhaps Clay can find the recursion that allows them to truly evolve, and reach a zenith? 

Bismuth, Mechanical Paradox that Crafts Unique Items. Bismuth is from Waxen, a world governed by the principals of alchemy. Lead is non-toxic here, and can be used to create almost any substance by altering the balance of elements. And then the Grand Alchemist to the King performed some kind of experiment that started changing all matter into lead, and Bismuth, a crafter of metal and chemicals, found a way to escape. Of course, that may mean that everything in Waxen has been destroyed. 

Bismuth, therefore, has joined the Estate to help prevent similar disasters in other recursions. She doesn't mind Earth; chemistry works, albeit not quite in the same way. She does feel like she's less likely to explode here, but on the other hand, she's not a fan of how shiny everything is. 

Violet Spoon, Inquisitive Vector that Solves Mysteries. Violet is from Mapleplank, a recursion that just includes The House. Violet and her fellow little-folk live in The House, living around the big-folk and their mysterious ways. Violet, always natural curious, fell into a teacup next to a mysterious box of tea, and wound up on Earth! 

Earth is weird - there are no big-folk (or maybe we're all big? Although Violet is still pretty smol by comparison). But Violet likes it (she actually likes most places, because they're always interesting). She does enjoy the fact that there don't seem to be as many cats that are big enough to eat her here. Violet didn't have to be told twice to join the Estate; she wants to explore and this gives her an amazing way to do it!

These four folks are a pretty good fit for each other - Bismuth and Clay are both scientifically minded, and Clay enjoys that Bismuth is trying to change. Aylin, likewise, sees that Bismuth is haunted by what happened to her world and wants to help her, and sees Violet as adorable and needing protection. Bismuth and Violet are both fundamentally curious people, and as for Violet herself, as long as you're relatively nice and not actively trying to eat her, you're fine! 

Next time, we'll see what hijinks these folks get up to!

One-Shot: High Noon at Midnight - Showdown at Alchemist Alley!

Last night we played some rootin' tootin' High Noon at Midnight! Yee-haw!

(Actually it was pointed out that we're not sure about the rootin' tootin', though my dog Noodle has been known to both root and toot, so he's got us covered there.)

Anyway, on we go!

I wound up running one of the scenarios in the HNaM book, which I found to be very well-written and easy to follow, which, as someone who used to write scenarios for RPGs quite often, I know is no mean trick. Anyway, our setting is the Ghost Range, something very much like the American Wild West but decidedly not, so as to avoid all of the horrible shit that comes with that period in history. But also with the addition of ghosts, demons, and alchemy. 

Our heroes are all weary travelers, all converging on the city of Midnight, probably the biggest city out here, with a population of over 5000. They all have their own reasons to be out in the badlands, but they're all at least a little glad of some company...

First, we have Mabel Underwood, the Weird Speaker who Shepherds Spirits. Mabel is an itinerant ghost physician, and as she's quick to tell you, that means she treats people who have ghost problems, not ghosts that are sick. Maybe travels around in a wagon with a big ghost painted on the side, pulled by an ancient horse named Thistle. She's very affable and prone to quoting Scripture when she needs to encourage others.

And then there's Flynte Locke, the Trigger-Happy Explorer who Shoots Fire and Lead. Flynte used to be a Marshall, but encountered so much corruption in the organization that he left. He travels around now, doing what work he can and picking up the occasional bounty. He carries a gun infused with the power of death, letting him shoot forth black tendrils of rot at his enemies. 

Next we have Sage "Tumbleweed" Steele, the Exiled Warrior that Masters Weaponry. Tumbleweed travels, too, but remains alone, running away from some tragedy that he never speaks of. Sometimes, though, you can catch him rubbing a locket with a sad fondness...but he's not the only tragic figure here.

Raven Starr, the Guarded Adept who Was Foretold was being trained in magic, but her power and insight far outstripped her mentors' abilities to keep up with her. One day she accidentally burned the place where she was being trained, and fled, not knowing if she was wanted by the legitimate law, the witches she ran from, or both. 

And finally, there's Ember Henley, the Unforgiving Warrior that Bears a Halo of Fire. Ember was a homesteader, living out in the prairie with her family, and then one day it all burned. She knows that none of her family lived, and she knows with certainty that someone set that fire. She also knows that she carries the fire within her now, and she's going to unleash it on the ones who took her life from her.

These five people arrive in the city of Midnight one day. Mabel stows her wagon and Thistle at the livery ("don't you give him no oats, now, you won't like what happens"), and then the five of them head for Alchemist Alley. There's a store there called the Alchemitorium that they wish to visit. Flynte hasn't been here in a while, but he recollects a lady named Ainsley Yang runs it and he wants to say hi and see if she has anything interesting to sell. But as they approach the corner, they hear gunshots!

Flynte charges in with no regard for life or limb. He sees two rough-looking men wearing bandanas around their faces guarding the door of the Alchemitorium, holding rifles. Several people lie in the street, bleeding, but alive - apparently these guys aren't interested in just murdering people outright, but they do raise their rifles at Flynte. 

But Flynte shoots first, hitting one with an inebriating round. The outlaw is suddenly tipsy, and stumbles a bit. Mabel ducks behind the corner for cover and starts yelling Bible verses to the others, while Raven sneaks around the back and slips in the door to the store. There, she finds two more people - a man dressed similarly to the others outside, and a woman with long black hair and a seriously bad temper. She rants and raves and smashes stuff, and when she sees Raven she yells "Ainsley! That you, you miserable poisonin'" the rest of her rant is obscured by gunshots as she fires at Raven, but it probably isn't complimentary. 

Tumbleweed, for his part, whips his rifle to his shoulder and shoots the other outlaw square in the chest, dropping him dead. Ember, still wondering if this is a scuffle she needs to be involved in, takes in the situation and spots two more outlaws on the roof of the hotel across the street. She decides that the people in the street don't deserve to die like her family, and yells a warning to the others. 

The outlaws fire, but aren't able to hit anyone. In the store, Raven calls up a magic field around her, crackling with aqua-colored energy, and then the woman rounds the corner and fires at her. The spell absorbs it, but Raven is annoyed, and unleashes magic, slamming the woman against the wall and dazing her.

Outside, Flynte shoots the outlaw with another drunky shot, and the man falls over, reaching for his gun and mumbling something about horseflies. Tumbleweed notes the guys on the hotel hiding behind the ridge of the roof, but figures that ain't bulletproof, and shoots through it. He hears a faint "aw, hell with this" and suddenly there's no one on the roof to worry about anymore. 

But still one desperado in the store! Flynte and Ember approach the door, while Mabel goes to check on the folks in the street. The outlaw in the store, not entirely sure what's happening with Raven and his companion, grabs a bottle off the shelf and hucks it into the street. Lightning flies up from the ground, and then a humanoid figure made of lighting and surrounded by swirling dust rises up!

The elemental throws lightning right down a line, aiming for Flynte, Ember, and Tumbleweed. But Flynte and Ember nimbly dodge, and Tumbleweed takes in the chest. "All right," he growls "let's see if you freeze." He loads an icy round into his pistol and shoots the elemental. The bullet whizzes by Ember and Flynte's ears and they exhale a hoary breath just before the elemental becomes encased in a block of ice, lighting sparkling within. 

The last outlaw surrenders, and the characters tie up the three survivors. The sheriff, a young fellow named Billy Winthrop, arrives on scene (he's been trying to get the rest of the citizenry out of harm's way), and talks with Flynte. He identifies the woman as Inez Cabello, and says that this is all very unlike her - she's a rancher and always seemed to have been a level-headed sort. Mabel talks with her, and she explains that she was sure that Ainsley Yang poisoned and killed all her cattle...but she only had the word of Boone to know that.

Boone? Yeah, he and his boys showed up at her ranch and they seemed good sorts, so she let them stay, but then all her cattle died. He told her that Yang was responsible and she just saw red. "I think," says Flynte, "that this Boone may have been messin' with your mind."

"Yep, probably," says another voice. Ainsley Yang steps out of nowhere, but then clarifies. "I ain't Ainsley," she says. "I'm just using her form. Ain't that a kick?" She flickers a little, and the characters see a figure with glowing, smoky red eyes standing there before "Ainsley" reappears. Mabel figures it for one of the "strange folk," probably a shape-shifter, but that doesn't make it demonic necessarily. 

"Well," it says, "Boone called in a favor and had me come out here and pretend to be Ainsley a while and look for this thing called the 'Hand of the Eclipse.' You humans, you're always looking for a Grail or a Chalice or a Lance or a Helen of Troy or whatever, like it's gonna solve everything. Anyway, I couldn't find it, so I guess Boone got impatient and sent these idiots." 

"Boone..." Ember muses. "Where did he come from?" 

Inez thinks. "Out of the Northwest, I think?"

Ember seethes. That's where her homestead was. "Did he kill my family?"

Fake-Ainsley shrugs. "Dunno. I think he'd burn a homestead, though."

The characters look around the place a bit, and find a few more alchemical bullets. Raven finds a lead box and tries to open the latch, but can't, whereupon Ember just shoots it open. Inside are two scraps of paper with words of power on them - break and door. 

Fake-Ainsley sidles up to Flynte and hands him a vial and a piece of paper. "Think you oughta have this," she says. Flynte reads the paper. It says to pour it on "me" if "I'm" covered in crystals, and it's sign "A.Y." Flynte pockets it. 

Inez asks for the characters to help - Boone played with her mind and now he's back at her ranch, doing who knows what. Flynte agrees, and when Sheriff Winthrop comes back he says that Inez isn't responsible for what she did and stakes his reputation on it. That's good enough for Billy, and he lets Inez go, but has the other two hauled off to the hoosegow. 

When apprised of the full situation, Billy asks for the characters to accompany Inez back to her ranch and deal with this Boone character. "He's got a bounty on him anyway," says Billy, "$3000." That's a good motivation, but Ember would probably do it for free...

"I'll tag along," says Fake-Ainsley. "Y'all are fun." 

They get provisions together, and then the next day head out. Inez says it's only about a day's ride. 

At the end of the first day, they camp, and they haven't seen the ranch. They figure they're moving slower because of the wagon (Thistle does not, after all, ride like the wind). 

At the end of the second day, Inez admits she's confused as to where they are. Come morning, Flynte and Ember put their heads together and use all their know about navigation and tracking, and by the end of the third day, they find Inez' ranch. As they approach, they realize that it's surrounded by cairns made from the bones of slaughtered cattle.

Mabel figures that these things are what's making the ranch hard to find; she can sense the magic from the cairns, but nothing from within the ranch. Fake-Ainsley points out the writing on the skulls and Raven identifies it as demonic script - Boone might be a demon possessing a person, or just otherwise demonically influenced. Trouble is, Raven gets up close and starts reading the script aloud, absent-mindedly, but she triggers something, and the cairn pulls itself together into a huge, skeletal steer. "MOOOOOOO." 

It lowers its horns to charge. Flynte shoots it, cracking its skull, and Raven dives out of the way of its horns. Tumbleweed puts a rifle shot in the crack and its head crumbles, and the bones collapse.

The characters kick over a couple more of these things, and Mabel feels the enchantment on the ranch fade. "Good," says Fake-Ainsley, "now if you don't come out, I'll be able to tell Sheriff Winthrop where to find this place." The characters prepare to move in, and Tumbleweed tosses Fake-Ainsley a harmonica. "Here you go," he says by way of thanks. "Aw, thanks, partner!" Fake-Ainsley tosses Tumbleweed a bullet, corroded and ashy, and Tumbleweed, knowing alchemy when he sees it, keeps it around for later.

The six of them move into the ranch grounds, accompanied by the low and eerie sounds of Fake-Ainsley playing the harmonica in the distance. Nothing stirs. Mabel calls on her highly attuned magical senses, and feels death coming from the bunkhouse and dire magic from the main house. They decide to investigate the bunkhouse first...and inside, find the outlaw gang.

What's left of it, anyway. There are men on the bunks, all dead, with their hearts cut out. Demonic writing adorns the walls, and the whole place smells like a tanner's worst pair of knickers. But Mabel knows that where violent death lurks, often there's a ghost wanting to chat. She finds one of the bodies and notes that the man is barefoot, and sets out some whiskey and a few of Dr. Graham's Digestives and calls up his ghost.

The young man's spirit sits up and floats down the floor. "Where are my boots?" he says. Mabel doesn't know. "Them boots was expensive," he says. "Them boots were handmade out in Crescent. That sonofabitch Boone took my boots? Maybe when he cut out my heart?"

Mabel asks him to elaborate. "Boone, that sonofabitch, he killed us all and took out our hearts, and then he woke a few of us up and now he's got 'em chanting in the basement trying to wake up that rock lady." He confirms that Boone has Ainsley, but that she broke some alchemical thingie and covered herself in crystals, and now she's unable to talk, which means Boone's unable to question her. 

Ember nudges Mabel, and Mabel asks about the homestead. "Well, we did rob a homestead," says Boots, "and it did burn down, but I didn't have nothing to do with that! Me and Chip, we went to the barn to steal some chickens, and then there's this fwoosh and the house goes up, and Boone walks out with the fire behind him! I think Royce was with him, but I wasn't!"

That's good enough for Ember. Mabel promises to return his boots to him and bury them with him, and Boots thanks her and fades away. 

Inez confirms that there's a cellar - she found a natural cave and used it to make a root cellar. The characters approach the house and Ember hears chanting coming from below. Good - that means they're otherwise occupied.

The six of them sneak down the stone steps to the cellar, but just as they get to the bottom, Raven slips and knocks a stone down the stairs! The chanting stops, and five men turn to them.

Four of the men have big holes in their chests, the gaps where their hearts used to be. That makes them risen, undead men often bound to the one that raised them. The fifth man, of course, is Boone, a well-heeled, well-dressed man standing at the far end of the room, behind a stature of a woman in a circle of blood - probably Ainsely.

There's a moment of tension. The men's hands hover over their guns. And then Tumbleweed whips up his rifle and fires. 

A demon like Boone isn't vulnerable to much, but the round that Tumbleweed fires is a heavenly fire round. It strikes Boone and knocks him back, and Flynte follows with a soul-killing round. Boone realizes that he's in danger. He yells "kill him!", indicating Tumbleweed, and the risen advance and all fire on Tumbleweed. He weathers that storm pretty well, but he doesn't have another onslaught in him.

And to make matters worse, Boone casts a charm on Ember. Her vision blurs, and then she realizes that she's surrounded by six Boones! She whips out her pistol and shoots one, and it falls, bleeding (she has, in fact, shot Inez). Raven throws Ember back with magic, hoping to snap her out of it, and Mabel tries to talk to her down. 

Tumbleweed has a more elegant solution; he shoots Boone in the forehead and drops him. But one of his boys says "oh, I got it!" and pulls out a playing card from his pocket. He tears it in half, and Boone stands up, revived!

Flynte charges in, firing at the risen, but they turn on him and fire back, injuring him and dropping him to one knee. Ember, the spell broken when Boone died, calls up the fire and bursts into flame, provoking awe from her companions. She runs into the fight and punches one of the risen in the chest, and hears his flesh sizzle as he screams.

Raven comes up and starts hucking whatever she has in her pockets - a horsehoe (which hits Ember by accident), a knife (which embeds itself in a risen's shoulder). Mabel fires her little pistol at Boone, but misses, and then starts yelling encouragement to the others. The risen fire on Flynte again and injure him further, and he takes a moment to call on his reserves of strength, standing up and calling the power of death into his gun.

Tumbleweed shoots Boone a third time, and the heavenly fire kicks in - Boone turns into a pillar of salt! Ember sees this and seethes, as she wanted to see him burn, but his boys are still around. She punches the one again, and he bursts into flame and collapses into giblets. Flynte shoots another and it bursts, and Ember loads a hellfire slug into her pistol and kills the third. 

The last one drops his gun and raises his hands - he's missing his heart, but he's still got a brain. "You Chip?" asks Tumbleweed. "Naw," he says, "I ain't!" "That's a shame," he says, and puts a bullet in his head. 

Flynte pours the potion on the rocky statue, and the crystals fall away from Ainsley Yang. She motions to the shackles she's bound in, and Ember uses the power word that Raven gave her and snaps them in two. Ainsley thanks them - Boone was after the Hand of the Eclipse, and he could have used that to...well, do some bad things. 

They hear a moan from the other end of the room. "Oh, shit, Inez!" She's gut-shot, thanks to Ember ("sorry, thought you were Boone." "It's OK, he does stuff like that."), but Mabel gets her stable. She needs a doctor now, though. Fortunately, Raven still has the other power word, and she opens a door back to Midnight.

Most of the characters go through, but Mabel has to stay (Thistle and the wagon won't fit, plus she promised to give the ghost back his boots), and Ember has some unfinished business. She smashes the salt pillar and burns it - no idea if that's necessary, but it is for her.

That finished, the rest of them head back to Midnight, wondering what sights they might see on the way...

Character Creation: High Noon at Midnight

Yee-haw, pardners! I'm a demon!

The Game: High Noon at Midnight
The Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Degree of Familiarity: Never used this book, but I've run Cypher System games 
Books Required: High Noon at Midnight and the Cypher System book

High Noon at Midnight is one o' them there sourcebooks, detailin' a whole new genre for the Cypher System (see also It's Only Magic and The Stars are Fire). This one zeroes in on the "Weird West," which was probably most famously RPG'd by Deadlands. But High Noon doesn't just combine westerns with horror, you could just as easily do Cowboys vs. Aliens. It's really just about the genre mashup. As with most of these books, reading it makes me want to run it, which is always a good sign. 

There are a lot of things you could do with this book, but for my purposes I'm going to use the Ghost Range setting. It's not a million miles from Deadlands, inasmuch as it's a wild west setting with some supernatural and horror-based elements, but it's set on not-our-Earth, so it avoids the messier aspects of the Wild West (to wit, no Civil War, no indigenous genocide, that kind of thing). 

PCs are assumed to be the sort of folks that would take on jobs for pay, so I think what I'll do is look at the setting-specific descriptors and foci and see what appeals.

Ooh, I kinda like Trailblazing as a descriptor. I can see playing a character who prefers to be out alone in the wilderness, happens upon the other PCs, and is too decent of a guy to not get involved. The obvious choice for type is explorer, though I do think that's a little redundant. Eh, let's just double down today. I'm a Trailblazing Explorer that...hmm. Are there new foci here? 

There are, and there are a couple that I really like. One of them is "Blazes Paths," and while I do like it, I think tripling down might be a touch much. I think I want Strikes Like a Rattler. 

So. My guy is Arnan Church. Arnan took a job running mail from Midnight (the main city in the setting) to some of the outlying homesteads and towns, but took a wrong turn and wound up wandering in the wilderness, dehydrated, and nearly dead. He fell off his horse and managed to hit a nest of rattlers, and got bit a bunch of times, but he never killed or harmed any of them. Wasn't their fault, way he saw it.

Some snake-spirit or serpent god or what have you thought that was right kind of him, and let him get up and get back on the horse, on the understanding that he never harms a snake. Arnan feels that was perfectly fair.

OK, neat, so Arnan is a Trailblazing Explorer who Strikes Like a Rattler. So, starting with type, I get 10 Might, 9 Speed, 9 Intellect, and 6 more points. Well, I feel like Speed should be the highest one, so I'll put 4 points there and two points into Intellect. I get Edge 1 in Might, I can carry two cyphers, cool cool.

I get four abilities from Explorer. I want Block, which lets me avoid the next melee attack against me (it's called "block" but it's based on Speed). Danger Sense, likewise, eases initiative, that makes sense.

Definitely want Improved Edge so I can have Edge in Speed. And then I'll take Physical Skills and be trained in Climbing and Balancing.

Cool, over to descriptor. I get +2 to Might, and I'm trained in perception, wilderness navigation, and identifying creatures and plants. Downside, I've got inability in anything that requires sustained attention.

And then finally, I get a couple of cool snakey powers. I can make my punches venomous, and I can grow scales that give me armor. I could swap out one of those with a power that lets me move quickly (slither!). You know, I think I like that better than the venom-punch for Arnan. 

That's basically it, everything else is gear. I know I have a hand compass, and I'm sure I can have a six-gun (I'd also like a rifle, but whatever). 

Arnan is a tall drink of water, lanky and slim, and his ankles and wrists just look too thin for his body. He used to have really nice blue eyes, but they've gone amber since the incident with the snakes. He has a rattlesnake embroidered on the sleeve of his duster, and he's got a habit of shaking his revolver and letting the bullets rattle if he wants to scare someone. 

Tidal Blades: Out to Sea

Yesterday we finished up (for the foreseeable future, though we might return to it) our Tidal Blades game. Here's last time. 

Our heroes head back to Bol's Oils and ask Bol where they might find Cyan. They also ask if Cyan is, in fact, cyan, and Bol says that she is not, she's the sort of pale pink that most betalods are ("It makes you think."). In any case, Bol isn't sure where she is at the moment. She does know that Cyan's ship, The Gob Fruit, has been out on the water a lot lately, but she gets oils delivered to a spot at the base of the nearby mountain and there are tunnels leading into the interior.

The characters follow Bol's directions to the mountain and find the tunnels. They all squeeze in and make their way into the interior - this is easiest for, say, Bait than it is Sobek, but they all manage. They find Cyan's evil lair. It's a laboratory, actually. Cyan's Lab! (I shame to admit that I didn't think of that pun, one of my players did.)

Anyway, they look around and, in addition to a few loose cyphers, they find plans, maps, and a couple of vials of ground-up coral from the Bright Reef. Hobie and Bait look through the papers and determine that Cyan plans to reverse-engineer vault cards and then crash the Naviri economy! But worse, she has a trade route set up - the Bright Reef to harvest coral, then a spot near where the heroes fought the mudcrab (presumably to process it), then back to Angler's Cove to deliver it.

They decide to head out to this beach area and see if they can find the ship, so they wriggle back through the tunnels and strike out for the beach! It's about sundown when they get there, and they spot The Gob Fruit a little ways off shore. They decide to try and wait until the crew is off the ship and then steal it. That'll learn 'em!

Faesli scampers up a tree and activates a distortion field to hide. Bait buries himself in sand. Hobie and Garnet head out into the water and hide under the surface. Sobek hides behind a rock, but fails to notice his tail is still sticking out and Faesli notices that someone on the deck the ship sees him. She whispers to Sobek that he's made, and he emerges and pretends to be digging on the beach.

The Fruit comes in closer and Sobek waves and says he's been looking for treasure. The crew of the Fruit - most of whom the characters have seen before; the tyro, the magnafron, two crocs, a turtle at the helm, and Cyan herself - come ashore, leaving the turtle and one of the crocs behind to guard. 

Faesli far-steps to the ship and lands on the boom. Bait wriggles into the water and swims for it, and starts to climb up the figurehead. Hobie and Garnet find the anchor rope and wait for the appropriate time to cut it, while Sobek briefly talks to the folks on shore.

The croc in Cyan's crew recognizes Sobek (they've talked before), but not from where, and Sobek slips away into the water. He swims up to the ship and starts climbing aboard, and the stage is set for stealth...except Bait loses his grip and attracts the notice of the croc and the turtle!

Faesli decides that's a good distraction, anyway, and leaps down next to the croc, grabbing him from behind and covering his eyes. Sobek climbs up on the ship and tries to yeet the turtle overboard, but he's too big and heavy. He tries to do the same to Sobek, but Sobek is a mighty warrior and will not be yeeted. 

Hobie has Garnet cut the anchor rope and then climbs aboard, and Bait finds his footing and runs for the helm, pointing the ship out to sea. Cyan and her crew on the beach try to swim after it, but it's moving too fast and Bait ties off the wheel to keep it moving.

Faesli summons all of her skill (and uses a perfection cypher) and strikes the croc on the neck, stunning him, and then ties him up (she thinks) very securely. Sobek, tired of wrestling this turtle, bonks him on the head and dazes him, and then shoves him overboard. The heroes take a pause and realize that there's a weird device on board - a long, metal cylinder on a big metal frame with some levers and buttons.

Hobie spends a few minutes figuring it out, and realizes it's a michronic device that, when activated, would send out a pulse of intolerable noise - probably this is how they intend to clear the Bright Reef! Hobie looks for a way to disable it, but suddenly the croc leaps for it, attempting to turn it on! Turns out he wasn't securely tied up! 

But Hobie is ready for him (or rather, Garnet is). Garnet socks him in the snoot, and Sobek follows that up with a blow from his hook. They throw the croc in the brig, and Hobie shows Garnet where to punch this thing to break it. The device disabled, they take the Fruit back to Angler's Cove, where they find a bunch of people on the docks waiting for them - including Angler himself, as well as Cyan and his crew.

They disembark and Angler says that Cyan has told him that they attack and stole her ship! He has a flunkie bring out a big, impressive hat and gives it to Bait, addressing him as Captain. He then turns on Cyan and scolds her publicly - yes, they're pirates, thieves, and scoundrels, but they're not colonizers. 

Cyan stomps away angrily. The other croc in her crew asks if he can retrieve his brother, and Bait offers them a job. The crocs agree to join up; they know how the ship works, and they're not really interested in running with Cyan now anyway. They introduce themselves as Hip and Hap. 

Bait's dads arrive, too, with Tangerine the reefin in the water nearby. Everyone reunited, Bait rechristens the Gob Fruit as the Friend Ship, since this is his ship and it's crewed by his friends! (Hobie rolls their eyes a little at the pun, but is actually very happy for Bait.) 

The crew hops to getting provisions and making ready to head out on the Howling Sea! Who knows what adventures await! 

FIN...for now! 

Tidal Blades: Ayup, Welm a te Brai Ri!

Last night we managed to squeak in a game before the oncoming blizzard (so they say, but who know when or if it'll hit here. I fully expect the yetis to be outside the door by dinnertime for that comment). Here's last time, which was a while ago, since we missed our December game due to illness.

Our heroes are still near the Bright Reef. Hobie hangs out with their shrimp, Garnet, and her recently-rescued mama. The others look out over the Bright Reef. 

It's bigger than they thought at first. They see lots of people - tyros, magnafrons, iota, golfins - all living in a village. But the colors, good grief. Everything and everyone is bright and more colorful than normal. Tyros are usually blue with orange fins:

Like so

But the tyros here have deeper blue scales starting at the tops of their heads and getting greener until they reach the shoulders. The orange in their fins likewise goes from deep red to bright, vibrant yellow. And everything, including the coral of the reef, is like that. 

The characters see families, schools of iotas, a couple of tyro teens tossing a ball around, another tyro fishing with a net. They split up to go look around. Faesli swims over to look at the reef and the coral itself - what is it about this place that makes it so attractive to coral miners? Coral generally is used as a building material in Naviri, so maybe this colorful coral would be premium stuff? 

Bait grabs his net and goes fishing, but has some trouble. A tyro swims up to him. "Ayup," he says. "Trin a fit?" 

"...what?" says Bait.

This continues a bit, as Bait grapples with the Bright Reef dialect, but eventually the tyro shows him. If you put your net on the surface of the water with an attached guide rope and wait, the fish come to the surface to nibble it, and then you yank. "A deh go! Rigglas!" He rubs his belly. "Yum!"

Meanwhile, Sobek swims over to the tyro lads and gestures for them to toss him the ball. They do, and he realizes it's actually a volcanic rock with little pockets, into which they've inserted other rocks to act as weights (and thus adjust the weight of the "ball"). They play for a bit, and the lads ask Sobek if he doesn't have to go up for air (Sobek, for whatever reason, seems to grasp the dialect a little better). He says he does, but he can hold his breath a good long while.

Hobie swims over the reef and talks with a local, or tries, but the local eventually manages to convey that there's a lost creature of some kind ("orandolp", but Hobie doesn't know what that is) here. Hobie is, of course, happy to meet a new friend, and the fellow calls over an iota. "Ayup," he says. "Hear you're looking for the reefin."
 

A reefin. You're welcome.

He introduces himself as Noop, and clearly speaks "standard" Naviri dialect. He leads Hobie to his home, where a veritable swarm of iota children are playing, and points to a couple of them frolicking with a reefin. "Bran tof hi!" he calls, and the lads swim over with the critter. "She got separated from her pod," Noop explains, "and washed over here. We love her, but we can't keep her - reefins need room to roam, and we don't leave the Reef much. Do you-"

"YES," says Hobie calmly. They talk with the reefin for a bit, and the reefin flips over and wiggles her fins while Hobie scritches her belly. 

Meanwhile, the others have come over, and Noop chats with them. Faesli asks about why someone would want to harvest this place, and Noop isn't sure specifically, other than the coral. He does politely ask if the characters would mind looking into and maybe stopping that? The folks in the Reef aren't exactly worldly and they have a hard time talking with outsiders, and Noop would go, but he has (he does some quick math) 26 kids to take care of. ("How do you remember all their names?" "We make up a song. Every kid gets a line." "...long song." "My parents had (math) 227 kids. That song was very long.")

The characters, of course, were going to look into this anyway, and they're quite happy to help the Reef. Noop mentions, too, that there's a shipwreck nearby, if they'd be interested in looking at that? They are, of course (Bait's eyes light up at the word "ship" in any context).

Noop shows them the shipwreck. It's not salvageable - it's got a big hole in the hull. The lettering on the side identifies the ship as the Fluttering Fantasy. Bait and Sobek both recognize it - it's a ship from Naviri. Sobek even remembers that it transports michronic cards (the kind used to get into battles in the Rings, or similar identification purposes) around the Citadel. So how did it get all the way out here? 

They investigate, trying to figure out what sank it. They do find some cyphers in the wreckage (Bait finds one called a "Reset," which, when broken, erases the last five minutes of time and rewinds everything back to that point, with Bait the only one who remembers what happened, which everyone, including Bait, agrees is far too much power to give to Bait). Bait figures that what did this punched a big hole in the hull from the outside, but left no residue or paint, so it wasn't a ramming attack from another ship. Faesli guesses it could have been a mud-crab - maybe even the one they killed back on the beach! 

Faesli finds a glass circle, like a porthole window, which she realizes is a cypher (letting her detect all living things within an area). But as she's looking at it, she drops it! She quickly swims after it and catches it, but down on the sea floor finds a small, wooden box. Bait pops the lock, and inside they find a stack vault cards.

An aside: Currency in Naviri is typically either gob fruit or michronic shells, but both of those are hard to carry in large amounts. Hence, the Citadel created vault cards. You take your money to the Citadel, they issue a vault card coded for that amount, and any merchant with a reader can deduct money from that card. Bait is thrilled - there are twenty vault cards here, maybe they can buy a ship! Sobek notes that this assumes there's any money on these cards. If they're new cards, the Fantasy may just have been transporting them to the Citadel to be encoded. They might still be worth something, though. And, Faesli notes, maybe they could sell them to Angler. If he could find a way to put money on them without actually putting money on them...

Hobie, at this point, swims back up (they had drifted away to start getting to know their new friend and introduce her to Garnet). They introduce the reefin ("this is Tangerine, and she wants to go adventuring with us!"), and gets filled in. Hobie quashes part of that plan; vault cards are unhackable, at the moment. Folks who hack michronic tech are called "entanglers," and no one's figured out how to entangle vault cards. They have multiple redundancies to protect against that.

Well, Angler might still want to buy them, they figure, so they head back up to their rented boat and head back in to shore. Bait's dads agree to watch Tangerine and throw her a fish every now and then, while the others go ashore. Their first stop is Bol's Oils, as they figure she probably has a card reader.

The shop is still closed, but they can see a light on. "Helloooo," calls Faesli from outside. 

"Hello?" Bol calls back. "Are you a spirit? Come to deliver some fell portent?"

"No, it's Faesli. Can we come in?"

Bol opens the door. "You should have knocked. I thought you were a spirit. I suppose you could have been. It makes you think."

The characters talk with Bol a bit, always a surreal experience, and she does indeed have a card reader. She scans each of the cards. "This one is empty. And this one is empty. This one is empty. This one is empty. This one is empty." 

Turns out all of the cards are empty, so Sobek was probably right, they're unencoded. Bait is a little disappointed, but such is life. And hey, maybe Angler would give them a few shells. They take their leave of Bol and head to the Battle Ring to find Angler.

He's there, though the crocs guarding the stairway to his box give them some trouble. Faesli is close to talking their way past, but Bait keeps jumping up and down yelling "Angler! Angler!" and the croc knocks him down the stairs with a tail swipe. Sobek stands up ("Nobody does that to my friend!") and the croc knocks him down the stairs. 

"WHO WANTS SOME TAIL?" the croc bellows, not really thinking that threat through. Faesli squares off and the croc strikes, but Faesli has been working on dodging and nimbly jumps over the tail! "Ugh, fine, go," he says.

They go up the stairs to Angler's box, where they find the turtle finishing up a meeting. "Well, look who it is, the Snacks." 

"Snacks?" Hobie is momentarily confused. "That our new team name?"

"Yeah," says Angler. "You beat The Appetite." 

Hobie beams. "I'm a Snack!"

Faseli gets the point, and asks about the Bright Reef. Angler seems vaguely familiar, but either he's being real cagey or legitimately doesn't know what they're on about. But they talk to him for a bit (and make some impressive social kinds of rolls), and he comes around. 

The Bright Reef has some weird michronic properties, and Cyan, one of his chief Entanglers, was pushing to harvest the coral. But Angler wasn't really interested in doing that. For one thing, it's very close to the coastline and thus to Angler's Cove, but more important, like, people live there. Angler's a crime lord, but he's not a dick, and he's not going to displace a whole village like that. 

The Snacks describe the crew they saw checking out the reef, though, and Angler nods. "Yeah, that's Cyan's crew." He also confirms that the crew of the Fluttering Fantasy made it ashore in their longboats after their ship sunk - it drifted off course in a storm about a month ago, got attacked by a mud-crab and then made it close to the coast before sinking, but the crew made it off. Angler negotiated with the captain and provided passage back to the Citadel, but he remembers that Cyan was very pushing about talking to the captain alone. 

Angler is annoyed by all this - Cyan is one of his best people, but he doesn't want his people going behind his shell. He tells the Snacks that he knows that Cyan has a private hideout, but isn't sure where. He does know, however, that Cyan buys Bol's oils to maintain michronic machinery, and that machinery isn't in any hideout Angler knows about. He tells them that that other hideout is not under any protection from him, and that Cyan has been out on the water lately. If Cyan has a boat, well, he's not going to complain if someone takes it and gives Cyan a little wrap on the fins.

Bait's eyes light up again. "Ship?" 

Tidal Blades: Majestic Time Flap-Flap

Last night we returned the watery world of Naviri. Kind of appropriate, since I just got my copies of Blue Planet: Recontact the other day. Anyway, here's last time. 

Our wet heroes (sounds bad) are out on the water. Two of them are, anyway (Faesli and Sobek). Two, Hobie and Bait, are in the water, trying to figure out what's up with this strange fissure that seems to have wibbly time effects. 

Up on the surface, Sobek watches the boat they saw before, containing a turtle, a croc, a tyro, and a magnafron. He decides to swim over and eavesdrop, and Faesli distorts his image a bit to make him more stealthy. He swims over, quietly, and listens. He hears them talking about this "operation" being very lucrative, and hoping they can join it. The croc expresses concerns for "the people living here," and the maganfron replies "it's a big ocean."

Meanwhile, Faesli tries her hand at fishing and manages to catch a couple of nice big ones! They're beautifully iridescent, and she asks Lowery (one of Bait's dads and the chef of the ship) whether that's a problem. He says it's not, it's just the scales and he's gonna take them off anyway. Lowery heads to the kitchen to start dinner, and Faesli notes Sobek swimming back. He reports what he heard, and Faseli agrees that doesn't sound good.

Down in the water, Hobie peers deeply into the fissure and figures that it's michronic in nature. They swim up to retrieve Faesli and Sobek, figuring Faesli probably knows more about this michronic stuff (fun fact: Faesli actually has an inability in michronic tech, but she does magicky stuff so it's an easy guess that she'd be the one to ask). Faesli and Sobek accompany Hobie back down, and Faesli does her best. 

She starts by scanning it, and learns that it's more like anti-michronic. Michronic tech works on intent, and this fissure just saps that away. If you went in, you wouldn't have the intent to form intent. Faesli relates this, but can't resist poking her finger into it.

Something makes sudden, violent contact with her mind: The bipeds are coming. They're going to grind this whole reef down into powder. Faesli finds herself stuck, unable to move or form intent to move, but the thoughts use her as a loudspeaker and suddenly all of the mantis shrimp above them descend, clearly ready to punch.

Garnet tries to stop them, but they don't listen to her. Sobek puts himself in front of Hobie and Hobie desperately tries to calm them down, but they swarm around those two and up to Faesli, and punch her repeatedly. This does have the effect of pushing her away from the fissure so she can function again, but it's painful. Bait, meanwhile, just tries to swim away, but in this case "away" means "down." He gets away from the shrimps, but sees a beautiful, bobbing light coming towards him.

Just as the last minute, he sees the fangs attached to said light, and swims as fast as his little blobby body can take him. He swims back up, past the depths where the deep-sea fangly fish can follow, and by now Hobie has managed to calm things down. 

The four of them decide to swim up and have some fish stew and talk this through. They hit on a brilliant idea - suppose they get some of that time-oil from Bol, and put that on or near the fissure? Would the michrons and anti-michrons cancel each other out, leaving a neutral state? Sobek also tells them about what he heard, but they decide to deal with the fissure first. 

They all sail back to Angler's Cove, and head to Bol's Oils. There's a "CLOSED FOR RENOVATION" sign out front, but they can see Bol puttering around inside, doing repairs. She invites them in and they explain their plan and she nods and says the area becoming neutral is a logical conclusion. Of course, it might also explode or throw them all somewhen else or any number of other things. Anyway, she sells them a bit cylinder with a plunger and some time-oil. 

They decide to get some sleep and resupply before going back out. They bed down in the ship, and in the morning head to a general store run by a human and his daughter. Faesli purchases some sundries (salt, tapioca flour, and so on), and asks the man about what kind of "operation" might happen out at the reef.

He says that although coral mining is illegal, there are a few groups that do it - it's not like the Citadel has a lot of reach out here. Faesli presses and describes the people on the boat, and the man looks a little taken aback. He writes them a receipt for their purchases and tells his daughter to help them get their stuff to their boat. Outside, Faesli checks the paper: "Angler." 

Faesli is perplexed for a minute, but Sobek fills in the blank. "As in 'Angler's Cove.'" 

"Oh, that's not good." 

They decide that maybe Angler will listen to reason? Anyway, they want to address this fissure thing first. 

The group heads back out and dives back down, and Bait spurts time oil into the fissure. There's a sudden rumble, and then the fissure splits, opening like an immense Pez dispenser. Blue light wells up, and suddenly the characters (and all the shrimps!) find themselves being carried away. The ground feels fleshy and only partly solid, and once they get their bearings, they see immense wing-tips out to either side.

Only much, much bigger

The characters are awed and fascinated, but quickly come to the conclusion that they'd better get off. They disembark and take the shrimp with them, and the creature "flies" out to deeper waters, passing through the ground and any other solid object as necessary.

Hobie looks around and realizes they've lost Garnet, and there's a moment of panic, but then the others find her snuggling up with a larger mantis shrimp. Hobie asks "is this your mama?" and Garnet confirms it!

Hobie is thrilled and wants to give Garnet a little time with her mom. They all swim back to the ship and decide to hang out here for a while. They want to talk to some of the Bright Reef locals, too, and see if they learn why Angler is so gung-ho to mine this place.

Character Creation: Rust & Redemption

Figure we're about due for an apocalypse.

The Game: Rust & Redemption
The Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Degree of Familiarity: Getting more conversant with the Cypher system all the time, and I'm pretty hip to post-apocalypse settings
Books Required: Rust & Redemption and the Cypher System core

This is one of these genre sourcebooks for Cypher, like The Stars are Fire and We Are All Made Here. As with those other books, it presents an examination of the genre (in this case post-apocalypse) and gives us some assumptions of how that genre works, what set pieces you might see, different permutations, and rules for how it would work at the table. As usual, I read this book and I think "I could totally run this", which is the sign of a well-done game book.

(Side note: I lurk on the RPG reddit a lot and I often see people bag on the Cypher system and I don't get it. I find it actually pretty intuitive and it works just fine at the table; been running Tidal Blades for a few months now and it's been a lot of fun. But whatever, people are strange.)

There's a convenient setting detailed in the book called The Radio Quiet Zone. Basically, internet and wifi technology was a little more advanced in this world, the Y2K bug was a real problem - maybe? Actually the problem was that the government sent out AI "Fixkits" the morning of Y2K and they all gained sentience. Each one decided it was going to be the only one of its kind, and a bunch of different apocalypses kind of cascaded. Now it's 20 years later, the Quiet Zone is a community with its own stuff going on, including some people who fell into a coma on the night it all went down and are just starting to wake up and some psionic folks and so on.

I didn't get too far into the weeds on the particulars of this setting, because I kinda came up with a concept as I was reading it. There are bands of raiders that sometimes hit the Quiet Zone and the outlying farms. I'm gonna make someone who was part of a raiding party, and then turned over a new leaf. Let's call him Lenny McGrath.

I already know Lenny's focus, that'll be Raids (it's in the R&R book). I think I'll keep it simple and say his type is fighter. But what of descriptor? If focus didn't change when he gave up his old life, descriptor probably did. Ooh, let's take Hopeful (also from the R&R book).

So, Lenny was about 15 when the apocalypse happened, meaning he was in high school. He was at a New Year's Eve party with some buds when the shit went down, and a lot of people died in the ensuing weeks. But Lenny and his friends helped each other through trauma, helped each other survive, and gradually they got down to the Quiet Zone. But by that time, membership in the gang had changed, some of his friends had died, some new folks had joined, and it had become a matter of what you could take rather than what you could find. 

And then they were getting ready to raid a farm, and another band of raiders found them first. They had guns, but these guys had bigger ones and weren't interested in new members. They shot Lenny's group (including Lenny) and dumped him on the side of the road, assuming he'd died off. The kids of the farmer they'd been planning on raiding came along the next morning and found him bleeding, took him back to the farm, and patched him up. It took a while for Lenny to recover, but after he did, he felt...good? Like, watching people die was nothing new, but seeing kindness to strangers was really uncommon. It's given Lenny a lot to think about.

Right, good, on we go! As a fighter ("warrior," actually, but whatever) I get 10 Might, 10 Speed, and 8 Intellect, and then 6 more points to throw around. I'm gonna just distribute them evenly, leaving me with 12, 12, 10.

I get Edge 1 in either Might or Speed. I think Might makes right more sense. Two cyphers at a time, sure. Practiced with all types of weapons, sure. And then I get four warrior abilities. Let's see now.

Well, Improved Edge is not a bad idea, so I can take a point in Speed Edge. Maybe it's just been because I've been replaying XCOM-2 lately, but I think Overwatch is a good idea. I'll take Physical Skills and be trained in running and climbing. And then as much as I like Swipe, I think Trained Without Armor is more realistic for Lenny.

Cool, so, over to Hopeful. I get +4 to Intellect, holy shit. I'm trained in Intellect Defense. I can shrug off disappointment, meaning that I get a free level of Effort when I try something (noncombat) after I fail (which usually means that I break even, since it normally requires that I apply Effort to try again, but that's still pretty good). 

But, nothing's all sunshine and roses. I'm hindered in Might Defense (oof) and in all movement tasks (double oof). Let's assume that's a result of getting shot.

And, focus! I get a tattoo that identifies me as a raider, probably something that my boys and I got in the years following the collapse. Let's say it's a Spartan symbol (the "Spartans" was our mascot in high school) on my right shoulder. 

I get Ignore the Pain and Wilderness Life, which are...? I ignore impaired and treat debilitated as if it were impaired, that's cool. And then Wilderness Life means I'm trained in two of a few skills. Hmm. I could take swimming and break even. Nah, I'll take identifying plants and creatures, and navigation.

And that's it, kids. Lenny is now about 35. He's got blue eyes and brown hair, but he buzzes his head whenever he can. The Spartan tat is his only one (he got sick after he got it; might have been the ink, but he's not taking chances). He's muscular, but he's lost some weight and muscle mass since getting shot and he gets winded easily. He looks like a meathead, but Lenny was actually a straight-A student in high school and he's pretty sharp, it's just that his education stopped at 15 and everything else has been, shall we say, practical. 

Tidal Blades: Slow Burn

Yesterday, sea creatures. Here's last time.

Our heroes fought and killed a giant mudcrab, ate some of it, and now drag the shell back to Angler's Cove to see if anyone wants to buy it. They find Angler himself playing cards in a pub, and he gets excited when he hears they caught a mudcrab. Less so when he finds out it's dead - live ones are really valuable, he says. But he'll pay 250 shells for what's left. The characters accept that, Angler calls some of his guys to take it away, and they ask about whether there's anywhere around to buy a ship.

Not for 250 shells! But maybe they could rent one. Sometimes there are ships in the dock that stay there because their owners need to remain in port for a while. Angler warns them, though, that stealing one of those ships or bringing it back damaged is a good way to have every pirate in the Howling Sea after you.

Taking this into consideration, the characters ponder their next move. But then Hobie sees fire! A building down the way is burning!

The characters run to help; Bait joins a bucket brigade, Hobie goes around knocking on doors trying to get people to assist (no one listens). Faesli gets close to the fire and realizes it's burning slowly. Like, not smoldering, but the flames are literally crackling at about 1/10 the speed they should. She gets close and senses michronic energy. She glances up at the storefront's sign: Bol's Oils. That's not good. From the back of the store she hears someone call for help. She runs in to get the person, but slips on the oil and falls on her bum.

Sobek spots her, grabs her and pulls her out, and then runs into the back himself. He sees a betalod trapped under a cabinet, hefts it, and picks the little gal up and carries her out. The four of them help with the bucket brigade (sand, not water, because you don't throw water on an oil fire), and once the danger is passed, they talk to the betalod and survey the damage a bit.

The betalod is named Bol, and it's her shop. She mixes oils and spills them (in a tray, not on the floor) to read fortunes, and then has people dip bread in it to taste their future. Sometimes the future is sweet, sometimes bitter, sometimes salty, sometimes sour, sometimes...the other one. "Savory?" says Faesli. "Umami?" says Bait. "No, I have no children," says Bol. 

During all of this, a chameleon pushes his way to the front. He says that he runs the shop with Bol; she mixes the oils, he does the readings (which makes sense; Bol is a lovely person but talking to her takes patience). The chameleon, Thwin, points to a hole in the building's roof - it's round and scorched on the edges. Bait wonders if it's a meteor strike. Thwin says he doesn't know, but there was a boom last night, but no fire until now. Bol adds that the cabinet didn't fall until just now. Faesli guesses that the oil's michronic power might have something to do with this.

A passing citizen notes that he saw a beam of light lance in from the north and strike the roof, but since it didn't catch fire and no one seemed hurt, he didn't raise the alarm. Faesli realizes that she probably caused this when she fired a cutting light beam at the mudcrab and missed yesterday, but keeps that to herself, as she suspects that Thwin isn't the type to let that go. Instead, she offers to help clean up. Thwin enthusiastically accepts - he has a bad back. Old war injury. 

The four of them join Bol in the oil shop and start mopping up. Being that close to the spilled oil gives them visions, though. 

Faesli sees herself swimming deep underwater, and then sees red tentacles emerge from the shadows, grab her, and try to drag her away...

Hobie sees themself stepping up to a podium in front of an audience, with Garnet in the front row giving them a thumbs-up (or as close as a shrimp can manage without thumbs). They start to talk, but then realize they have a huge stain down their shirt...

Sobek is giving a rousing speech to a crowd of crocs, all armed with hooks and tridents. As he takes a breath to start his rally, he inhales a bug, so the first thing they hear him say is "ACK"...

And Bait is on a longboat, watching a ship sink in the distance. He looks down and sees his own body, and he drifts upwards...

Somewhere in all of this, Thwin, who's been watching, offers to go get breakfast. Everyone enthusiastically agrees, and then he hits them up for money, since the store's cash probably burned. Bait, however, holds up the cash box, and Thwin, unable to fast-talk his way out of that, goes to get money. 

The five of them talk a little about the oils and how Bol mixes them and uses them to see the future. She says they'd be welcome to dip some bread into the oil, and offers to go to the back to get some bread. Hobie points out that Thwin is coming back with breakfast. "But will he have bread?" says Bol. "There is no way to know. It makes you think."

"Go get some bread," says Sobek. Bol nods affably and goes to the back. Bait takes the opportunity to lick some of the oil, hoping to time travel. He does, kind of - it's a moment ago, and Bol is talking about bread and breakfast and the possibilities thereof. And then Bait licks the oil...and time loops again. This continues a few times until Bait manages to lick the oil within the loop before licking the oil and break the cycle. 

Thwin returns with a box of flizzers and a jug of jellyfish smoothie, everyone eats, and the characters go on their way (someone asks Bol if her partnership with Thwin is even, and she replies that no, it's pretty odd). They head down to the dock and ask around if there are any ships to rent, and the harbormaster points them in the direction of the Ungava, a small sailing ship that put in to the Cove some weeks back. It hasn't moved because the owner got stabbed in a bar brawl and the crew is working out what to do with it.

The characters find the captain, a tyro, playing darts in a pub. They explain the situation, he verifies they're not planning on taking the ship into the Fold or anything stupid like that, and charges them 20 shells for a week of use. They pay up, give the ship a once-over, and then the six of them (the four characters plus Bait's dads) get on the ship and head out to sea! 

They wind up not far from where they fought the crab, and Hobie holds Garnet up to see if she can direct them. She just wriggles right out of Hobie's grip and jumps into the water, and starts swimming down happily. Hobie jumps in after and Sobek follows for protection, and they wind up discovering a long coral reef with the brightest, most vibrant colors they've ever seen!

The whole place is a riot of color, and the fish that live in it are just as colorful. A tyro (also brightly colored and stripe) swims up and says hello, and Hobie asks about their shrimp, only to discover that the tyro's dialect is thick enough that they can't really understand him. A little pantomime later, and they learn that the mantis shrimps live down below the reef, and they might well eat an outsider. 

Hobie swims after Garnet, but Sobek runs out of breath and has to head for the surface. Up top, a small boat with a crew of four - a turtle, a croc, a tyro, and a magnafron - pulls up and anchors. The tyro and the magnafron jump in and the turtle tries to make small talk with Bait, but quickly finds him insufferable and tells him as much. Faesli asks what they're doing and the turtle tells them "surveying," but when he tries to say more the croc raps him on the head with his spear. "Um, water," he says.

Sobek resurfaces and fills the other two in, and Bait jumps in to go help out Hobie. Hobie, meanwhile, swims down below the reef and sees a fissure in the sea wall, covered in more colorful coral...no, that's just a lot of mantis shrimp. 

They jump off the wall and swim/wriggle (swrimgle?) towards Hobie, but don't get hostile. Garnet swims up and hugs Hobie, and Hobie realizes that Garnet is scared. She leads Hobie to the fissure and indicates that something is in there, something Garnet...wants? But she's scared of Hobie going in. Hobie tosses in a biorb to light the area, but it just...stops. Doesn't sink, doesn't bounce around, just halts in place.

Bait swims down, passing the tyro and the magnafron (the magnafron picks a little piece of coral off the Bright Reef and crumbles it, and then nods - that's probably not important). He finds Hobie and offers to go into the fissure, but that scares Garnet too. Bait tries to poke the biorb with his trident, and finds that as he pushes the trident into the fissure he meets more and more resistance. He manages to extract it, but it takes some effort. 

In the back of the fissure, they think they see something move slightly, but they can't quite identify it... 

Tidal Blades: Eaten or Be Eaten

Last night we played some Tidal Blades. Here's last time. On we go!

It's been some time since the characters defeated the Brotherhood of the Forgotten Hunger and lulled the Dire Suchid back to sleep. They've been hanging out in Angler's Cove, each kind of pursuing different ends.

Faesli has decided that she needs to be more effective in a fight, or at least, needs to get out of the way rather than taking it on the chin so much. She's been learning about adventuring and sparring with folks. 

Hobie has finished their book about the Dire Suchid and sent it back to the Library of Time. Since then, they've set up their cart and acted as a kind of scribe/mail post for Angler's Cove. They've also been thinking more about Garnet - why is this mantis shrimp so smart? (You know, for a shrimp.)

Bait wasn't going to send his dads back to the ship that didn't even notice they were missing. Instead, he wants his own ship. He's been trying to construct one! It...hasn't gone well. Bait is a competent sailor, but that's a very different skill set than being a ship-builder.

Sobek has been helping Bait to try and build the ship, and also putting out feelers for where to buy one. In the interim, he's been arm-wrestling at various bars. 

On this particular day, the crew is washing up on a beach (as we all do from time to time). They were out on a boat that Bait built, and this one was more successful than any of the others - it made it out of the harbor! But two things kinda went wrong. First, the rudder was installed wrong so the ship took them north around the coast (they were trying to get back to the Shattered Reefs). Then, the material Bait had used to lash the ship together disintegrated in the salt water, and the ship floundered.

As they're swimming to shore, Hobie notices something cool - a ship seemingly hovering above the water-line! This is an optical illusion that you can sometimes see on the water...or IS IT?!

Anyway. They wash up on the beach, and Bait grabs a glob of mud and throws it at Hobie. "What was that for?" they demand. "'Cause it's fun," replies Bait. "SAND FIGHT!"

The others oblige. Faesli, who washed up a little further down the beach, walks up and catches sand in the noggin, and Far Steps behind Bait, pouring sand down his shirt. Bait huffs and goes to wash his shirt out, and the Garnet, who'd been exploring around the beach, comes running up to Hobie and jumps into their arms, shaking. 

"What's the matter?" Hobie asks, and Garnet turns one eyestalk back down the beach. Hobie sees something very large start to pull itself out of the sand...

GIANT MUDCRAB! 

The immense crab emerges from the sand and scuttles toward them. Faesli is familiar with these things - they're ravenous, and they're sometimes used as opponents in Colosseum fights. Also, their meat is delicious and they fetch a high price...if you can kill one. Faesli yells out as much of this as she can, and the others try to get running. Sobek, characteristically, gets between the crab and his friends, and the crab snaps him up into its claw and pulls him toward its mouth.

The others spring into action! Bait tries to smack the thing in the eye to give Faesli an opening, Hobie tries to distract it to do the same, but the monster is too focus on its croc-dinner. Faesli focuses and fires a beam of cutting light at it, hoping to sever its claw, but misses. Something in the distance explodes, but the characters don't have time to worry about that.

The crab stuffs Sobek into its maw and starts chomping! Faesli runs up and tosses Sobek a cypher, and slides under the crab. Sobek activates it - it gives his skin hard, crab-shell like properties (and protects him a bit from the teeth). Hobie tries to yank Faesli out from under the crab, but can't get past the legs. Sobek smacks the crab with his hook, and Bait hits it in a joint, forcing the crab to drop Sobek.

Bait dances around to get the crab's attention and it obligingly snaps him up with its claw and stuffs him in its mouth. Faesli scans the creature and remembers that it'll go for the easier source of meat - maybe they could trick it? But Sobek has other ideas. He unsheathes his hook and bashes the thing in the face. Bait wriggles free (fish mucus!) and Hobie yells "CLOSE YOUR EYES!"

Hobie hurls a cypher at the crab and it bursts in a bright flash of light. Sobek and Faesli manage to look away in time, but Bait doesn't, and so both he and the crab are blinded. Hobie tries to yank him out of the way, but the mucus makes Bait too slippery. Faesli, now with a tarn the size of the broad side of a barn, fires her cutting light again and hits the crab on the underside. A sizzling sound, and a delicious smell. "HOT CRAB DIP!" she yells.

Sobek follows up with several blows from his hook, and the crab collapses dead. The characters plop down heavily on the sand, and after a brief rest, decide to stay here for the night, rest up, build a fire, and eat well.

They decide, in the morning, to build a litter and drag the crab carcass back to Angler's Cove - there's still a lot of good meat, and the shell will be worth something, too. As they're getting underway, Garnet wriggles out of Hobie's grasp and heads for the water. Hobie follows, figuring Garnet's just being obstinate again, but she makes a noise that Hobie has never heard.

Hobie can now communicate with Garnet in a very simple fashion, and asks what's up. "Home!" responds the shrimp.

Hobie is startled - they have no idea what "home" is to Garnet. But they don't want to go out on the ocean without a boat. They manage to convince Garnet to come back to the Cove, get a boat, and then go investigate. Garnet might not understand all of that, but she agrees, and the party gets to draggin' the crab.

Tidal Blades: The Attack of the Natural 1s

Last night we played Tidal Blades and wrapped up the storyline we were in. We also saw about the worst run of dice luck I've ever seen, which considering how long I've been doing this is saying something.

Last time, our heroes rescued Bait's dads from their croc captors by defeating said crocs in the Battle Ring, and then stayed for dinner with Angler. Angler, some of the heroes realized, is a former Tidal Blade who was exiled from the Citadel of Time some 15 years ago and came to be the de facto leader and pirate king of Angler's Cove (he's someone on whom it's helpful to make a good first impression, is the point). 

They talk about how they all got out here and then about the Dire Suchid, the giant hungry monster crocodile that supposedly sleeps in the water around here somewhere. They tell Angler the story, and Angler looks worried and asks whether one could consider this thing a monster or an anomaly. Faesli says it absolutely is, and Angler says that's a problem - he sold a device to the Appetite designed to attract monsters. Normally it's used to lead such creatures away from populated areas, of course...

The characters start trying to put their heads together and figure out the true location of the Suchid, so they can get ahead of any impending disaster. Trouble is...things kept happening (the players kept rolling 1s. Seriously, there were like five in a row). Bait is knowledgeable about history, but drank his jellyfish smoothie a little too fast and passed out (Angler: "Some people just can't hold their jellyfish."). Hobie is, of course, nearly expert in this particular legend because they just did an illustrated version on commission, but gets distracted by their pet mantis shrimp, Garnet, knocking over a cart of banclams. Faesli manages to pull some information together - the Suchid is an immense crocodile with a hunger big enough to swallow the world and all the seas. It got disappointed because it couldn't, according to legend, so it went to its lair to sulk. Said lair was in deep water and in a valley, because it liked to wedge itself into tight spaces ("tight" here being relative). Angler has one of his guys pull out a map:

They continue thinking on the legends (I decided they could get the info, it just took time, because while I subscribe to a general philosophy of "don't call for a roll unless you're prepared for success or failure" this was reaching a point where I was running out of good GM intrusions), and remember that the Suchid reportedly hates islands because it can't eat them. The characters figure maybe it's hide in the coves down the coast east from Angler's Cove, but then Bait (who's sobered up a little) recalls that this whole area was probably under much deeper water back when the Suchid was romping around. It could very well have wedged itself in the inlet where Angler's Cove now sits! 

Presently, though, it's late, so they decide to tackle this in the morning. They head back to the docks and discover that the Lunch, the ship they stole (and renamed Lunchbox, actually) is gone - apparently The Appetite stole it back. Grumbling about this, they camp out on the beach. 

Barely an hour goes back, and the ground rumbles beneath them! They all awake with a start, and see that buildings in the Cove are start to lean, the waters are getting rough, and they hear commotion from the people! Bait focuses a bit and realizes that the epicenter of the quake is come from further inland - the Suchid seems to be awakening! 

Bait and Sobek spring into action to steal another boat, but utterly fail to get it under control in the rough waters and it sinks (that is, more natural 1s). They find another boat and Bait's dads help out to get it under control. Faesli uses her Far Step power to leap inland see if she can see what's going on. She tries to dive down to find the croc, maybe stare into its eyes and uses a cypher she has that allows for mental contact, but she can't swim deep enough before the water displacement forces her back up.

She surfaces as the others rock up on their stolen ship, and they pull her aboard. Bait has a brilliant idea to sing the croc a lullaby to get it back to sleep ("always worked on me!"). Hobie really puts their tentacles to the grindstone and thinks about this - a lullaby might actually work, but knowing how to produce it would require some deeper insight into the croc's mind. That mind oculus cypher that Faesli has would allow that, but someone needs to dive deep enough to look the Suchid in the eye. Also, as long as the Brotherhood of the Forgotten Hunger is using this device to wake the Suchid, it's probably not going back to sleep. 

The heroes split up! Sobek and Faesli head onto the beach to find The Appetite and the device, while Bait dives down into the water to find the croc, and Hobie and Bait's dads keep the boat steady. 

Faesi and Sobek find the crocs quickly enough. The Appetite stares out over the water, nodding in satisfaction, as the Suchid rumbles. His flunkies, Amuse and Bouche, are maintaining the device. Deciding that this is not a time for subtlety, Faesli leaps into the midst of them and strikes the device with her battlestaff...which promptly snaps in two (yes, another 1). Sobek charges and wangs the device with a cypher he was carrying (it's a Best Tool, which gives an asset on any task that uses a tool; we joked that in this context it's a big rock). The device sputters and shorts out, and the fight is on!

Amuse and Bouche nod at each other, leap into the air, and tail-smack both of them! Faesli tries to bonk Amuse and run away, but fails to get clear (she does activate her resonance field, however). Sobek knocks Bouche off her pins with his big ol' hook. He then grabs the device and yeets it across the river! The Appetite joins the fight and grabs Faesli in a big bear (croc?) hug, but immediately gets zapped by the resonance field.

Meanwhile, Bait dives down into the water, pushes past all the silt and mud (using biorbs to light his wait), and comes face to face with an eyeball the size of a ship. He activates the mind oculus and searches for soothing sounds, and hears the croc's "lullaby" - a medley of ocean currents, birdsong, fish...voices, and so forth.

Bait takes a deep breath (as it were) and sings...and manages to reproduce the song. Between that and the device having been destroyed, the Suchid settles back into its lair and falls asleep.

The Appetite realizes that his plans are foiled, and calls his flunkies back onto the Lunch(box). "Well see you again!" he snarls as they sail off. 

The heroes reconvene and rest. Angler makes sure they have good accommodations. Hobie finishes up the telling of the Rescue of Bait's Dads and the Sleepening of the Dire Suchid, and Sobek reflects on his defeat of the Brotherhood. Faesli marvels at the worlds of possibility open here - the Droskani Desert? New Mingu? Vines? Where to next?!

Bait is having similar thoughts. On the one hand, he really wants his own ship. On the other, he's beginning to wonder who is birth parents are?
 

Tidal Blades: Bait's Dads are Found!

Yesterday we played Tidal Blades once again! Here's last time! I am very sleepy!

Our heroes sail their stolen ship, the Lunch, southwest to Angler's Cove. Angler's Cove, as Bait informs his fellows, a pirate hotspot, the place where ne'er-do-wells, buccaneers, scampers, coral miners, and monster hunters congregate. But that's apparently where the Brotherhood of the Forgotten Hunger has taken his dads.

They pull into the harbor and give the harbormaster a shell. He asks the ship's name, and Bait says "The Lunch", and Hobie quickly adds "...box. The Lunchbox." They disembark, and decide to split up and look around.

Bait goes off by himself down the docks, to see if he can find the Breakfast and/or Dinner, since hopefully that'll indicate where his dads have been taken. Hobie, Faesli, and Sobek go into the Scary Tigress, a nearby bar (why, yes, I do use a random generator for tavern names), both to get a lay of the land and to see if there are any crocs who might be members of the gang hanging around.

The place is busy and there are crocs, but no one they can identify. Hobie gets an idea - they ask the bartender (a chameleon making using of his independently mobile eyes to watch the patrons) if they can tell stories and perhaps earn some shells. The bartender chortles and says that if you can get this crowd to listen to anything, good on ya. But this guy don't know Hobie.

Hobie finds a corner of the room and calls for attention, and then tells the story of the Dire Suchid. Sobek stands behind them menacingly, with a "you better listen" kind of look on his face, and Faesi watches from the sidelines. And sure enough, Faesli spots a skinny croc slip out the door. She signals to Sobek and they sneak out after him, following him all the way across town and over towards an arena!

They manage to remain stealthy enough to avoid notice - there's one close call where the croc looks back, but Sobek ducks into a doorway and Faesli quickly activates her distortion power. In any case, they eavesdrop as the croc meets with another, much larger croc, and tells him that there was some cuttlebeard in the pub talking about the Dire Suchid! Should we tell the Boss?

"Nah," says the other one. "Let's just go grab it. Boss'll like that." And they head back into town to find Hobie.

Meanwhile, Bait walks down the dock looking for the Brotherhood's other two ships. He doesn't find them, but he spots Steefan, and old sailing acquaintance, and chats with him a bit. He tells Steefan that he's got his own ship now ("I'm the captain...and the navigator...and then first mate...and the cook") and asks whether he's seen his dads. Steefan initially says he hasn't, but then seems to remember something. Bait pushes the issue and Steefan says that he saw a couple of ships pass by the entrance to the docks, and he saw a frog on the deck of one of them that looked like Lowery Cain. The ships were heading to the southern bit of the Cove. Bait knows that ships sometimes anchor near there and let the crew camp near the Battle Pit. 

Hobie, back at the tavern, has Garnet hold up a hat so folks can throw shells in it. They spend a spell and buy a box of loyters (edible clams) and then head out, but Garnet scampers off almost immediately. Hobie follows and spots Bait down the block ("I'm gonna assume you knew Bait was there and not that you're a BAD SHRIMP"). They fill each other in, and Bait sits down to fish. 

Sobek slips up to the crocs and reverse-pickpockets a bad-luck cypher into the big one's pockets, and then he and Faesli get ahead of the crocs and head to the Lunchbox to wait. They are below decks when they hear someone board the ship, and Sobek yells "WHO'S THERE". One of the crocs responds "YOU'RE ON OUR SHIP." Faesli and Sobek come up, and the skinny croc and his beefy companion are there, looking annoyed. The fight is on!

Sobek socks the big one in the snoot, dazing him, while Faesli strikes the skinny one with her battlestaff. The big one recovers and charges Sobek, bad luck kicks in and he loses his footing, and Sobek is able to avoid harm. The skinny croc tries to shove Faesli into the drink, but Faesli activates her resonance field and the croc bounces off. Sobek handily knocks down the other one, and the skinny one goes for the railing, but Faesli trips him up. These crocs know when they beat, and Sobek ties them up. Faesli goes to find the others, and Sobek stays to guard them.

Faesli does find the others and has them come back to the ship, but when they get there, the skinny croc is gone! Apparently Sobek's knot-tying skills need work. But Bait just dives straight into the drink and sees the croc swimming away. Crocs (in this setting) aren't terribly strong swimmers, which I know is silly, but Bait is a very strong swimmer, and quickly catches up with the wayward croc. He tosses a net over him and drags him back to the ship. The characters then demand that they talk!

The crocs (Brisket and Speck, if you're interested) tell them that the Brotherhood has a camp outside of town, near the Battle Pit. The boss, a croc they call The Appetite, is meeting with someone to buy...something, a gadget used in monster hunting, they don't know. The frog-dads are with them at the camp.

The crew isn't sure what exactly to do with these guys. There probably isn't a "jail" per se in Angler's Cove, leaving them tied up seems cruel, and they certainly aren't going to do any lasting harm. Instead they decide to get them drunk and take their clothes ("crocs without clothes are mostly harmless," muses Faesli), but while that works, the merriment is infectious, and basically everyone gets very hammered and wakes up the next morning on the ship with pounding headaches. (Garnet gently punches Hobie until they wake up, because yes, they're hurting, but FOOD TIME FOR SHRAMP.)

The heroes gather themselves together, and Bait makes them all a pirate hangover cure ("what's in it?" "Rum."), and they head out to whether the crocs indicated the camp was. They don't see the frog-dads, but they spot a couple of crocs turning a large something on a spit (for one horrible moment Bait thinks it might be a frog, but it's the wrong shape). 

Bait has a crazy idea - using a disguise cypher, the croc's clothes, and a little cardboard, he dresses up as Brisket! He walks into the camp clear as day and asks the other crocs where everyone is. They tell him that the Boss is taking a meeting in the Battle Pit, and he's got the frogs with him. Bait tries to guess which bedroll is Brisket's, to get his "stuff" (hey, maybe he's got some money around), but he guesses wrong. The other crocs tell him he'd better get out of Amuse's stuff, or she and Bouche are going to kick his ass. Noting this, "Brisket" heads on to the arena, and the others catch up.

A big bouncer-turtle at the gate asks if they're there to compete, but they say they aren't and he doesn't have any information about crocs ("there's lots of them here." "...yeah, OK"). The heroes enter the stadium and spot a huge croc sitting in a box overlooking the arena. Bait's dads are there, with collars on their necks, and a few more crocs are seated around the big one, but there's also a huge blue turtle there with them.

The heroes head over, Bait hoping that the disguise will hold, and slips in behind the crocs. Two of them, one orange, one blue, turn and look him up and down, and then pull off the disguise. "You're not..." says one. "...Brisket" finishes the other.

The big croc turns and sees the golfin, and things look a bit tense, but it's pretty clear that it's the turtle who's really in charge. Actually, Bait knows who this guy is - he's Angler, as in "Angler's Cove." Faesli notices that he's got a big scar down the back of his shell, and this rings a bell, but she's a little preoccupied right now.

Bait demands his fathers be released, and the big croc - The Appetite - refuses. Bait challenges him in the arena, and the Appetite rather arrogantly agrees to fight all four of them. He puts up the frogs as the prize; Bait also offers to give back his boat, but The Appetite doesn't agree to that ("I'll be taking that either way, it's my boat." "No, we stole it fair and square." "MY BOAT." "...we'll come back to the boat."). 

Angler facilitates the match, and all four of the heroes go into the ring with The Appetite. 

A cuttlebeard referee comes up and tells them the fight goes to a clear winner, until one side can't or won't fight anymore. Faesli and Bait both place bets on the heroes to win, and the fight is on!

Hobie, not much of a fighter, activates a cypher that lets him swim through the air, flies upwards out of The Appetite's reach, and starts whipping up the crowd to boo the croc! The Appetite, though, doesn't seem fazed. He charges forward, leaps into the air, and spins, smacking Sobek, Faesli, and Bait with his tail. They all land, realizing they need to take this fight seriously.

Faesli activates her resonance field to give herself a bit of protection. Sobek charges in and slugs The Appetite, dazing him, but even dazed the croc is a skilled pit fighter. He lashes out again with his tail and smacks the heroes around a bit. Sobek strikes, but The Appetite dodges and stabs him in the leg with the coral-spikes on his bracers. Bait, fortunately, is clever, and jumps at The Appetite in a feint.

This leaves The Appetite distracted, and Sobek is able to get in a shot with his hook. Faesli leaps behind The Appetite and trips him with her staff, and at that moment Hobie strikes! They swoop down from above holding Garnet, and Garnet punches The Appetite in the snoot, knocking him right out!

The fight is won! The crocs released Bait's dads, and the twins help the Appetite out of the arena. Angler, amused, invites the heroes to dine with him, and Bait picks his frog-dads up and hugs them. Victory!