Atlantis: Burning Crocodile Circuit Puzzle

After two missed sessions, back at it! Here's last time!

Our heroes cross the Lady's Wail, the violent current in front of the pyramid in the sunken city of Elapi. Imani swims across and ties a rope, and the others haul themselves through the water. Eithne winds up nearly losing her grasp, but Imani catches her and Thanos casts a spell and nudges them to the pyramid. 

There, Akala studies the ancient locks and, with the practiced ease of someone who's seen the inner mysteries of the universe, opens the doors. They enter, and find an immense room with crystal matrices and wires of copper and gold creating circuits of Vril energy. Thanos realizes that the circuits are incomplete, and that if they fix them, they could extend the force shields creating dry areas to the whole city.

The four of them work together to move the wires and the matrices, taking care not to cut power to the ones that already have it or to create a loop that would short the system. Thanos and Akala easily solve this puzzle, and the pyramid hums to life. 

As do the giant bronze scorpions that guard the place. 

The guardians rush forward and snap Eithne and Thanos in their claws, but Thanos grabs the wires and reroutes the Vril into the thing, disabling it. Eithne calls up ice and attempts to freeze the other one in place, but loses control of the spell and sends ice up the wall to one of the wires. It starts to flicker, and Akala hurriedly flies down and fixes it...but falls into a fugue state and starts flying in spirals. 

Imani takes Eithne's spear and hurls it at the scorpion, lodging it into the thing's plates and disabling it. She roars in triumph, and the heroes walk out of the pyramid to see the populace of Elapi coming to meet them, cheering for them. 

Akala starts talking to them about Vril and spirals (still not entirely out of the fugue state), Thanos collapses (his ribs are broken), and Imani starts bragging about her mighty battle with the guardians and recruiting any Elapians who'll listen to join her crusade to kill her mother-in-law. Also, she talks trash about Oshún, and some of the folks listen, while others look a bit horrified. 

Akala notices Enu, the Triton that was helping them out last time, trying to make eye contact. She talks to him and he tells her that Apep is trapped - he was in a crevasse when the water went away and now can't get out, but he'll manage eventually. Akala tells the others, but Imani and Thanos are injured too badly to go right then. Eithne stays with them, while Akala goes with Enu to see the situation. They find Apep, as promised, in a crevasse, snarling at the Tritons. Akala peeks over the edge and figures he must have swam in and the gotten stuck when the water receded...but then takes a step back and realizes that the ground here is soft, far too soft to hold the monster in place. She sends Enu back to the get the others to hurry, and keeps Apep talking. 

She asks why Apep is after Thanos, and he shows her the wound in his side and says that Thanos did it. She also asks about his habit of eating the hearts of sentient beings, and he responds that only sentient beings nourish him. He asks if Akala's heart is beating faster, and then says he'll find out soon enough - and leaps up with a roar. 

Apep grabs at her leg as she takes to the sky, but Imani blazes in like an avenging angel and smacks her out of the way. That means, unfortunately, that Apep bites into her chest, and she feels his poison coursing through her veins. She cracks his neck open with her mong, and Thanos rakes his arm with own claws and flings his blood at Apep. The blood burns him, and Apep tosses Imani away with a howl and rends Thanos with his talons. 

Akala flings her chakram at him, striking his wounded patch. Eithne sees this and and casts a spell at him, widening the wound. This much magic might have killed him anyway, but Imani charges in and slams her horns into his side. Apep's body explodes, and burning crocodile-monster blood rains down. Imani passes out. 

The others manage to put the fire out and revive her, but she's badly hurt. Apep, however, is dead, the pyramid is powered on, and the people of Elapi are giving up their cultish ways, slowly but surely. Next time, we'll conclude this Great Work.

Character Creation: Eldritch Skies

Busy couple of weeks at work, plus I started playing X-Com 2 again and that game eats my life every time I replay it. 

The Game: Eldritch Skies
The Publisher: Battlefield Press
Degree of Familiarity: It's Savage Worlds, so I know the underlying system, but I haven't read the whole book so I'm sure there's some stuff I'll miss
Books Required: Eldritch Skies and some version of SW rules

The idea behind Eldritch Skies is a Lovecraft-inspired RPG that leans more toward sci-fi than horror. Takes place in the far future, humanity colonizing the stars, but then it turns out those stars might well be right, as it were. I think the premise is solid and the writing drawing the distinction between Lovecraft-as-horror and Lovecraft-as-sci-fi is really compelling. Sadly, much of the rest of the book is not so compelling, and I found myself just kind of hitting a wall when I tried to read it. It's not bad by any means, it just didn't hook me. 

Some other little niggles, too. The book says that you need d6s, but of course SWADE uses a full suite of dice. The book says that a particular chapter talks about "Cinematic Savage Worlds" rules differences, but all that chapter gives you is gear. 

Anydangway, I'm gonna make a character. First step, then, is race! Oh, wait, no, first step is "type," but I'm gonna stick to "Civilian," since that's a starting character. I think I'll stay human this time around. 

You know, since I'm playing X-Com, I think I'll make a psionic character. His name is Dieter Klass, and he's an older gent - sixties, beard, grey hair, distinguished bearing (picture Stephen Lang but less muscular). Looking ahead, that means I have to take the Hyperspatial Exposure Hindrance, which the book says makes the Arcane Background free, which...isn't really the way Edges & Hindrances work, especially since Hyperspatial Exposure at level 1 (which is the required level) is a Minor Hindrance. All right, well, let's just assume I know how the rules work, so I need to take that Hindrance as one of my Minors, so groovy. Smarts needs to be high because I'll use that for my powers. 

Indeed, moving on to Attributes. I'll put Smarts at d10, Spirit at d6, and Vigor at d6. That'll make Agility-based skills expensive, but life's like that. 

Speaking of Skillz, let's do those! I'll just g'head and dump 4 points into Psionics so I have a d10. I'll put a d4 in Piloting (assuming spacecraft). Better put a d8 in Notice, d6 in Persuasion, d4 in Stealth. That leaves me 4 more. How about a d6 in Repair, a d4 in Shooting, and a d4 in Taunt. 

Hindrances! I already have one Minor, so I want a Major and another Minor. Any good ones in Eldritch Skies? Not really. Secret, maybe, but I don't have a good idea for one. Oh, well, actually the book says that psychics get hired as business negotiators, so maybe Dieter did some things that got a lot of people very angry with him. If there are folks out willing to kill him, that's worth a Major. 

Just need another Minor, then. How about Stubborn? I can see ol' Dieter being a bit bull-headed. 

OK, so, I used my free Edge to take Arcane Background, so I've got four "points" yet. I shall use two and buy Agility up to d6, one to buy a d4 in Fighting (so my Parry is higher than 2), and the last one to buy a d4 in Knowledge (Corporate). 

Neat! Now powers. I have to take Psychic Sensitivity, but then I get two more. I'll take Confusion and Stun, so Dieter is pretty skilled at rendering people insensate, which I'm sure has helped him get away from people looking to harvest his organs. 

Derived stuff: I've got Charisma 0, Pace 6, Parry 4, Toughness 5.

Gear: Nah. I think that Dieter is probably a privately licensed psychic for hire, and went off-Earth after shit went south with his former employer. He knows he's a little old to be on the run, but out here between the stars he figures he's got a fighting chance. (And he does, at least a fighting chance of being eaten by a shoggoth.)

Slipstream: A Battle on the Lines

Tonight Slipstream yay! Last time here is. 

Our heroes, recall, have been found by Officer Ioptis and his ship, the Dead Jellyfish. The heroes leap to their battle stations! Iris pilots the ship and fires their nose-weapon, a weighted net, but the Jellyfish deftly moves out of the way. They fire their nose cannon, a devastating heat ray, but misses, and Oola uses her Deflection machinery to protect the ship. Figuring that maybe she can disable their nose gun, she fires a magnetic grapple, but the pirates respond in kind, firing several more. The pirates start slipping along the cables towards the characters' ship, and the heroes rush out to meet them. Iris, as is her usual way, shouts her battle cry, while Zeenia uses her protective coloration to turn invisible and Oola just tries to avoid harm. 

Oola attempts to put a pirate to sleep, but he fights through it and rushes her. She scrambles back in the ship, and two pirates follow her. Iris zaps a pirate off his line with her ray gun, but now she faces Ioptis himself! 

Zeenia, meanwhile, slithers along the mag cable and tosses a pirate out into the ether, and the boards their ship and does the same thing to the two guys left behind to man it. She gets on their radio-phone and informs them that she has their ship...

But over on their ship, two of the pirates have captured Oola and hold her up in a window. Ioptis, who has been trading blows with Iris, steps back and gestures. Iris sees this and considers surrendering...but no. She is Iris Blue of the Daikini Valkyrie, daughter of Orchid Blue! She leaps through the ether, smashes in the window, dodging ray-gun fire and knocks the pirate away!

Zeenia disconnects the mag cables from the Jellyfish and then slips back along the last cable toward Ioptis. They fight, but Ioptis seems to have practiced against tentacle swarms because Zeenia can't land a blow. Inside the ship, Oola wriggles free of her bonds and hides, but the pirates best Iris and blast her into unconsciousness. Oola tries to rescue her, but the pirates spot her and train their guns on her, and it seems like the pirates have hostages again...

But then outside, Zeenia slips behind Ioptis and cuts the mag-cable, setting him adrift. Oola points that out to the pirates, and, seeing as they're well and truly out of their depth, they call it a draw. The pirates (with some effort) withdraw to their ship, Oola heals Iris, and Zeenia takes the helm and manages to blow the ship even further into the Graveyard. Once Iris is up and about, she gets them out, but it takes hours, by which point the pirates have surely withdrawn to whatever wretched hive of scum and villainy they came from to plan their revenge. 

The characters manage to touch down on Hosbec, where they turn over their cargo and sell the stuff they found in the Graveyard, turning a tidy profit. Their next stop is likely to be Avia...but first they need a drink.

Movie #645: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

Friday the Thirteenth Part VII: The New Blood is the next up in our cavalcade of murder and mayhem, starring Lar Park Lincoln, Kevin Blair, Susan Blu, Terry Kiser, and for the first time of four, Kane Hodder as Jason. 

Young Tina Shepherd (Jennifer Banko) loses control of her budding telekinetic powers and topples a dock onto her drunken, abusive father (John Otrin), killing him. In the process, she disturbs the resting place of Jason Vorhees, but that doesn't become relevant until years later. 

After those years later (which, by the way, would put most of the events of The New Blood in 2003 or so, which is bananas), Tina (Lincoln) returns to Crystal Lake with her mother (Blu) and her psychiatrist Dr. Crews (Kiser), ostensibly to cope with the guilt of killing her father. In fact, Dr. Crews is testing the notion of amping up Tina's fear and trauma so her powers manifest themselves, which is great, except that Tina manages to free Jason from his watery prison. As luck would have it, there's a fresh group of meat teens next door intending to have a surprise party, so Jason has something to do when he shows up (that is, kill 'em all). Tina winds up using her Carrie-like powers to toss Jason around and set him on fire and so on, but is unable to stop him killing...basically everyone in a mile radius, except for Nick (Blair), the hunky young man who plays the role of Hapless Male Sidekick (a venerable and time-honored institution in this series). 

Lots of gratuitous sex and nudity here again, and much like the previous couple of installments everyone is on the chopping block. What I did find interesting, though, was that the censors made the filmmakers cut a few seconds off each death, with the effect that they seemed truncated and, pardon the term, choppy. 

I did like the makeup and costume effects on Jason, at least while he was still in his mask - his flesh rotting away and his bones visible were nicely creepy. And then they went and screwed it up by removing the mask and showing his purple, bug-eyed, alien-mask lookin' mug in the last few scenes, but hey, can't have everything. 

We have, of course, well and truly crested any real fear or dread this series managed to cook up and gone full schlock - this movie is the origin of the "Jason beats a girl in a sleeping bag against a tree" thing, which gets referenced again in Jason X. It does mean, though, that it's fun to yell at the movie, and I fully expect the next one to be even worse.

My Grade: D
Rewatch Value: Medium-low

Next up: Friday the Thirteenth Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

Movie #644: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

Friday the Thirteenth Part VI: Jason Lives is, as the name implies, the sixth installment of the franchise and the first that sees Jason as explicitly supernatural. It stars Thom Mathews, Jennifer Cooke, Dan Bradley, C.J. Graham, David Kagen, Renée Jones, Darcy DeMoss, Kerry Noonan, Nancy McLoughlin, and in his film debut, Tony Goldwyn. 

Tommy Jarvis (Mathews) returns to Crystal Lake, now renamed Forest Green, to dig up the body of Jason Vorhees (Bradley and then Graham; Bradley left the production some ways into filming) and burn it. He winds up going into one of his patented rage fits and stabbing Jason's corpse with a metal fence post, which is conveniently struck by lightning. That's enough to bring Jason back as a kind of immortal zombie, and he spends the rest of the movie hacking his way through camp counselors, policemen, and just random passers-by until Tommy and the sheriff's daughter Megan (Cooke) manage to chain him to an anchor and sink him in Crystal Lake. 

That's a terse summary of the movie, but as far as content goes it's not much different than the rest of the series. The tone, however, is a marked change. There are explicit fourth wall breaks, more humor and action-oriented content, and since Jason is no longer human in the slightest, the movie changes from "people fighting a killer who's extremely tough" to "people fighting an inhuman monster that does not give a shit for your bullets." The thing I find most indicative of the tonal shift, though, is this bit at the beginning, when Jason dons his mask and then does a take to the camera and we get the James Bond thing where he walks across our field of vision, and then turns and slashes at us. 

We tend to associate this kind of meta-humor with Scream, but it's not like there were no examples prior to the 90s, and Jason Lives did it pretty well. This movie was also a return to form after A New Beginning, which not only had a much meaner vibe to it but had no Jason at all, and any chance of doing this franchise without him was pretty much gone as of Part II. 

My Grade: B-
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: Friday the Thirteenth Part VII: The New Blood

Cairn: A Hauke So Gud

Here's last time! Now's this time! 

The fuzzy animals were sleeping, except for Ratatosk. Ratatosk is still coming down off the enervating powder, and so is zipping about making sleeping draught. And then screaming from outside!

Ratatosk runs outside and sees Cairn citizens running about yelling in fear. A shadow falls across the town - Ashfeather has come to Cairn. Ratatosk tosses a smoke bomb and helps some folks get to cover, and manages to keep his terror of the Dire daggerbeak under control. 

The others wake up and rush out to help. Russelet and Snootabur fire arrows at it, and Rumdiggle summons up the spirit of the ripper and grows huge and bristly. Russelet yells to the others to lure it into a blind, and for Snootabur to get to a high point to use the rope arrows he fashioned. Snootabur does, but then sees the hawk and succumbs to the fear, curling up into a spiky ball. 

Ratatosk lures the hawk and flings sneezing powder in its face, but Ashfeather catches him in his talons and rends him. Rumdiggle jumps on the hawk's back to keep it from flying away, and Russelet yells encouragement to Snootabur, giving her the strength to uncurl herself. They both fire their arrows and entangle Ashfeather, and Snootabur, still smarting from the talon wounds, zips around tying up the hawk. Snootabur leaps down from the top of the Town Hall with the Cairn flag and puts it over Ashfeather's head, which takes the fight out of him considerably. 

The Knights gather around the hawk, and discuss what to do. Rumdiggle isn't interested in killing a bound foe, but Russelet keeps an arrow trained on it - it's Dire, and a merciful death might be the only option. Ratatosk casts Speak to the Small and finds that Ashfeather wants animals to fear it, and presently feels humiliated and angry. The Knights hear a mob approaching - the citizenry of Cairn is here, and they're afraid and angry.

Keeble Brownberry, the Lord Mayor of Cairn, scampers over and talks with the Knights. Ratatosk gives a very Luis-like recounting of the last couple of days, culminating in passing out from blood loss. The others fill in the gaps, and Keeble tells them that he'll support whatever they want to do, provided they get rid of the hawk one way or another. They agree, and Keeble tells the citizens that the Traveling Knights have captured the Dire daggerbeak and they're going to make sure it never bothers Cairn again. Folks disperse, and the Knights decide to call in Whisper Greenleaf, the priest of the Lodge of the Bright Ones. 

She tells them that Dire animals can be saved, but they have to choose to walk that path. She can cast a ritual to open a conversation and make Ashfeather more receptive, but it won't force him to be redeemed and communicating with him is hard. Rumdiggle gets her lute and prepares to sing Ashfeather back to balance, if possible.

Whisper casts the ritual, and Rumdiggle sings a song of balance and harmony, the natural majesty of the hawk as opposed to the violent fear he's inspiring. It works - Ratatosk confirms that Ashfeather is still in Discord, but is no longer Dire

The Knights take Ashfeather out to the Shady Forest and let him go, and he takes to the sky. Whether or not he manages to completely shake off the Disharmony is up to him now.

Movie #643: Friday the Thirteenth: A New Beginning

Friday the Thirteenth: A New Beginning is the fifth installment in the franchise, and stars all of the old familiar faces you've come to know and love! Nah, I'm kidding, it's a whole new roster of meat for the grinder: Melanie Kinnaman, John Shepherd, Shavar Ross, Juliette Cummins, Carol Locatell, Ron Sloan, Tiffany Helm, Dick Wieand, and To Morga. There's a lot more, but I don't want to be flipping back and forth between this and the wiki all day. 

After three movies taking place right on each other's heels, we now jump forward in time some years. Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman in a cameo, Shepherd in this movie) has been institutionalized for much of his life after chopping Jason Vorhees all to meat after Jason killed his mother and everyone else in the zip code in the last movie. He's sent to live at a home for disturbed youths run by Pam (Kinnaman) and Matt (Richard Young), and chock full of angry, disturbed teens that you just know are going to murdered in gruesome new ways. (OK, not so much "new.")

It becomes pretty clear early on that Pam is our Final Girl, although she's an adult, not a teen. Likewise, we have Reggie (Ross), a young boy whose grandfather (Vernon Washington) works at the group home, who follows the usual path of being a kid in these movies (that is, he survives, but his entire family is gruesomely murdered). 

The plot, such as it is, has one of the kids at the home (Mark Venturini) snapping and hacking up another one (Dominick Brascia) with an ax. Shortly thereafter, a masked killer (Morga) starts knocking off everyone he runs into. Said killer is obviously assumed (by the audience) to be Jason, but in fact it's Roy (Dieand), the unassuming EMT who it turns out was the murdered boy's secret father WHAAAAT.

OK, so this movie is terrible. Everything that gave the first couple of installments some heart is gone. We spend almost no time with the supporting cast, and when we do it's long enough to see some titties before the blades go in. Likewise, these people are terrible to each other, the worst of them being Ethel (Locatell) and her unpleasant, loud son Junior (Sloan), whom Roy has no reason to kill other than they're both awful and we as the audience would like to see them beheaded/stabbed and left in soup. It's not really even worthwhile to talk about acting or script, because both have descended so far into the mire at this point that the movie is best served as snark-fodder.

With that said, John Shepherd does his very best to portray Tommy Jarvis as what's left of the sweet, nerdy kid from the last movie. He sells Tommy being violent by impulse, if not by nature, and he does it with very few lines because Tommy only talks when you push him. He's probably better than this movie deserves. 

Next time, we get to see another actor playing him, and shit gets overtly supernatural for the first time!

My Grade: D-
Rewatch Value: Low

Next up: Friday the Thirteenth Part VI: Jason Lives