Chill: Return to Kuna Cave

Here is the previous session, and on we go! Back on Zoom, but hopefully just for this month!

The envoys head back to the ranch. Dylan asks Beth Anne to elaborate more on this "Jaworsky" character, and Beth Anne reiterates her adventures with the creature under the bed as a kid. During all of this, she hears him whispering, and she reveals that he agreed to help them with the "copycat", but required a favor of her. He hasn't named it yet, and he's never asked for a favor before. Vicki asks if Jaworsky is a butcher ("don't know, sounds like a butcher's name") and he whispers to Beth Anne that he certainly could be a butcher if that's what she wants. BB points out that making a deal with Unknown creatures is never going to be a good idea, no matter what they might offer, and they really need to make dealing with this thing a priority.

They arrive at the ranch and split up. Melinda helps Dee with dinner, Vicki and Dylan hit the books, Emily cleans and stows their gear, Beth Anne sits in the corner mumbling to herself (actually talking with Jaworsky), and BB introduces Dusty to Sweet Baby Jesus. 

Beth Anne's conversation with Jaworsky is disturbing. He specifies the favor he wants (which I'm not going to put down here because my players read these write-ups), and when Beth Anne balks, he says that she ignores her promise at her peril. And then Beth Anne's mind gets fuzzy - she can't focus or hold a thought in her head. 

Vicki and Dylan dig into folklore. Vicki discovers that "Jaworsky" means "sycamore" or "maple," and is a traditionally Jewish name. Looking further, she finds tales of the dybbuk, a ghost in Jewish mythology that normally possesses young woman (the ghost itself presents male). She points this out to Dylan, who has been trying to find something on the "copycat", but hasn't come up with much. The two of them bring their theories down to dinner, and Vicki notes that a prayer case called a mezuzah might drive off Jaworsky, if he is in fact a dybbuk. Dylan also notes that Jaworsky is behaving differently - asking for favors and so on, so maybe this thing that's been talking to Beth Anne recently isn't Jaworsky, but the copycat? 

The characters are confused and tired, so they head to bed. Dylan wards Beth Anne's room, and she immediately feels clearer. They drift off...

...but then in the middle of the night, Vicki, Dylan, and Melinda wake to hear BB's dog barking his little head off. Vicki enters BB's room and sees him tossing and turning, and blood seeping from a wound on his shoulder. She tries to wake him but can't, and Dylan, not wanting to take chances, raises a Sphere of Protection. BB calms, and Vicki wakes him up easily. 

He explains that he was dreaming that he was back in the church basement, where the envoys got their asses handed to them by a bunch of trolls. In the dream, he's holding Dusty, but Dusty wiggles out of his arms and runs into the dark. He hears something like a nail gun, and then something slashes his tendon and he falls. The trolls surround him with hammers and other tools, and go to work...and then he woke up. 

The cut on his shoulder looks like it's from Dusty; Vicki figures he might have scratched BB trying to wake him. They disinfect the scratch and BB goes to sleep on the couch, and the others go back to bed. But the dreams return - and now Dylan has the dream, too. BB dreams that he goes berserk looking for his dog and fires a shot into the dark, only to see Dylan stumble out with a hole in his throat. He tries to heal him, but a troll bursts out of the wound, and BB wakes screaming.

Likewise, Dylan dreams he's hung upside down in that basement, with the trolls taunting him. There's a gunshot, and then he falls, and stumbles out, and sees BB holding the gun. BB grabs his throat and chokes him, and before he wakes he sees BB's eyes are the same sickly yellow as the trolls'. 

Both of them wake up terrified, but BB is also badly wound. His nose is broken, he has bruises and lacerations all over him, and worst of all he has a hole through his left hand. Emily, hearing the screams, comes into the room, and after ascertaining that there's no immediate threat, dresses the wound. Dylan comes downstairs and after some dry-heaving at all the blood, explains what he saw. 

Beth Anne wakes up, feeling refreshed, but then she hears Jaworsky's voice. He reminds her to complete the favor he wants, or else "more sleepless nights." Beth Anne joins them and tells them that she's not sure what to do - fulfilling the favor might hurt them, not fulfilling it definitely will. 

The envoys talk about all this a bit more, and put in a call to Father Will to see if he knows a rabbi or someone that maybe could make a mezuzah. He agrees to make some calls. At that point Darnell walks in and gives them some news: A family has gone missing up near Kuna Cave, and a young boy reported that he saw a "bear" or a "gorilla" attack them in the caves. The characters remember a case they were on nearly 18 months ago, involving a sasquatch. Is that monster back, hungry for human flesh? Or is it the copycat? 

Either way, this is happening now. The envoys gear up and head out to Kuna Caves (and Beth Anne is quiet on the way, reading something on her phone...). When they get there, they find chaos - media, police, EMTs. A group of cops is getting ready to go into the caves, and a young boy is sitting on an ambulance with a bandage on his head. Beth Anne charms her way over to him and talks to him about what he saw.

He says that he was in the cave, hiking with his parents and his sister, when his mother saw something behind him and screamed. Something hit his head and knocked him down, and everyone ran, but he must have run toward the cave entrance and his family ran back into the cave, where it's colder and darker. He describes the creature - a huge, hairy, thing with sharp white teeth. Beth Anne says she's seen it, too, and she and her friends are there to help.

Vicki scouts around and finds a hole leading into the cave, big enough to wiggle through. Emily, though, decides to follow the cops into the cave - she's not about to let another squad of soldiers die at the hands of the Unknown. BB and Melinda wiggle into the hole, but Vicki gets stuck. It takes them some time to get her free, and then Beth Anne follows, but Dylan panics (he's claustrophobic) and can't bring himself to enter. He heads back around to find Emily, but they've already gone in and the cops guarding the cave entrance turn him away.

In the cave, Emily sticks close behind the cops. The other envoys start heading deeper into the cave. A guttural, echoing snarl sounds, and the cops train their guns on it. The envoys hearing the snarl behind them, and then all of their lights go out.

Emily notes that her flashlight just...stops down a nearby tunnel. She remembers this tactic; the copycat used it to get her to shoot into the den. She calls out to the cops to take cover, and they do (as do the envoys, since they hear her yell). 

At that point, the sasquatch appears behind one of the cops, picks him, digs its claws into his ribs, and pulls, ripping him open. Emily draws a bead and fires, wounding it and knocking it back into the dark. The envoys hears the gunshots and creep through the dark area to find the cops, and Emily desperately trying to save the wounded one's life. She can't, though, and Beth Anne gets through to her by reminding her about Mohammed - this isn't him, and she can't save him.

Emily sobers up and heads off into the dark, toward the sound of a crying child. One of the cops asks BB what the hell is going on, and BB tells him that there's no time for questions - there's something here, it killed a cop, and the envoys know how to fight it. The cop agrees and follows the envoys, but tells BB there's going to be questions later. BB agrees, and the bunch of them head into the dark.

Movie #656: Below

Below is a period horror movie directed by David Twohy (of Pitch Black fame) and starring Bruce Greenwood, Holt McCallany, Jason Flemying, Dexter Morgan, Matthew Davis, Nick Chinlund (in a rare not-villain role), Olivia Williams, and Scott Foley.

In WWII, the USS Tiger Shark is on patrol in the Atlantic. It comes across the flaming wreckage of a hospital ship, and picks up three survivors: a nurse named Claire (Williams), a British soldier named Kingsley (Morgan), and a badly burned German POW (Jonathan Hartman). The commander of the sub, Brice (Greenwood), is accommodating enough at first, but then it becomes clear that a German destroyer is following them and someone seems to be trying to reveal the sub's position. A new ensign, Odell (Davis) tries to remain by the book about the whole affair, but the commander and the two lieutenants, Coors (Foley) and Loomis (McCallany) seem squirrelly and follow Brice's lead. 

So it turns out that Brice assumed command after the actual captain, Winters (Nick Hobbs) died. The circumstances of his death make up the meat of the mystery in the movie, and it turns out it's his ghost that's haunting the sub.

Oh, yeah, it's a ghost story on a submarine. 

Below isn't a perfect movie, but Twohy turns a sub into a haunted house expertly. I always say that the key to a good haunted (whatever) movie is giving us a sense of place, and Below does that - we get a sense of the scale of the sub, the various compartments and who's in them, and then as they die off the effective space shrinks and everyone gets pushed into tighter and tighter quarters. Finally, then the sub surfaces and Brice meets his fate, instead of feeling relief at seeing the sky again, everything just kind of feels exposed.

Standout performances from Greenwood, McCallany (now a bigger deal following Mindhunter), and Williams. I actually really like Chinlund as Chief, mostly because he's a voice of reason and that's kind of a different role for him (see: Billy Bedlam in Con Air). Matthew Davis as Odell is fine as a POV character, though I do find him a little bland. The ghost effects are minimal and therefore contribute to the growing paranoia, and I really enjoy Stumbo's (Flemying) conjecture that everyone on the ship is already dead and at the bottom of the ocean. 

My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: Blades of Glory

Character Creation: Starblazer Adventures

Spaaaaaace! 

The Game: Starblazer Adventure
The Publisher: Cubicle 7, but it's out of print
Degree of Familiarity: None with this game specifically, but it's Fate (kinda)
Books Required: Just the one

 

Starblazer Adventures is based on a comic series that sounds pretty cool, but that I have no familiarity with. It's pulp sci-fi/space opera, though, so that's easy enough to get one's head around. The character creation process seems more reminiscent of the older versions of Dresden and Spirit of the Century. This version, however, uses the take on the Fate rules that you can do if you don't have any Fate dice (like a damn weirdo); roll two six-sided dice and subtract one from the other, giving you a swing of -5 to +5. I mean, sure.

It also gives you a method of doing some of chargen randomly if you don't have a group. So since I don't really have a concept in mind, let's do that, at least to start off. So first I roll for background (that is, where I grew up). 1 gives me...a small village (the saga begins). Quality of life? 1 again, which is "second class citizen." So I'm basically doing OK. Actually, more like Luke than Anakin at this point. Next, background twist! 0, which is "nothing unusual." Allllll right. And at this point, the handy tables to create things just kind of end. For cryin' out loud. 

OK, well, back to the normal chargen section. Oh, wait, there's a random world generator, maybe I can use that to make up my home planet. Ice Dwarf planet...wait, didn't I already make a dude from an ice planet? Try again. Well, I'll just reverse the dice and it comes out to Gas Giant. That's cool, let's continue. We've got an atmosphere incapable of sustaining life by default. We've got a full ring system and a large number of moons. The population is in the hundreds of thousands; small colonies. And then I could roll a bunch of times to determine what skills the planet has, but that's a) dumb and b) time consuming. So.

The planet is called Aqua Vitae, and it is completely incapable of sustaining human life. That's because it's made of a dense, almost soupy matter that causes plants and other small organisms to immediately bloom. Diluted and processes, it's a superfuel that makes farming on even the most lifeless rocks possible. Unprocessed, it makes gut flora and any other bacteria or fungi on the body explode into life, killing a person in seconds. So no one lives on/in Aqua Vitae, but lots of colonies exist on the outlying moons, all designed around traveling to "the Well", scooping up some liquid with big mechanical drones, and then processing it for farming and shipping out to other planets. 

My character's family works in that industry, as do a lot of people on his colony moon of Cade U4 (thank you random name generator!). He basically had the "normal" upbringing for his planet, though let's say his mom worked with the drones that collect "the Goop" and made frequent trips to Aqua Vitae, so my guy's been on such runs, too. His father was/is a schoolteacher. He's got a younger brother and an older sister; his brother is still in school on Cade, and his sister joined whatever the equivalent of the Democratic Order of Planets (DOOP?) is in this setting - Star Corps, there it is. His name is Ren Rubid. 

Characters here can be gritty, standard, or heroic. I'll go with gritty - Ren hasn't been off the colony world that long. That gives me:

OK, so now we're into phases. Phase One is "training," which is where I'd be in academy or otherwise coming into my own. Let's say that for Ren, he got a job with the company his mother worked for, but worked on a different rig (company regs prohibit family members from working the same rig). His rig, the Big Dipper, was crewed by a bunch of guys in Ren's graduating class and overseen by Brix Caesi, a gruff but fatherly figure to all of them. They were on a routine run when an meteor shower tore into the Well, smashing their rig and puncturing Brix' suit. He patched it as best he could and kept all the guys calm until a rescue rig could be dispatched, but he knew he was done for and didn't board. Only Ren saw what happened to him. I get two Aspects from this whole time in Ren's life, so I'll take Crew of the Big Dipper and No Way for a Man to Die. 

Phase two! Ren's first Starblazer Legend! I kind of want to say that Ren and his buds stuck together after the tragedy, but didn't work for the company anymore. In fact, let's say they all discovered that even their minimal exposure has left their bodies...changed. The Legend is: Ren Rubid and The Search for the Black Comet! Synopsis: Ren Rupid and the crew of the Big Dipper know that their days are numbered after coming into contact with the liquid atmosphere of Aqua Vitae. Together, they search for the Black Comet, a strange celestial body made of an isotope that can counteract the effects - but will it leave something worse in its wake?! 

Aspects: "No one dies without my permission!", I Can Race a Comet

Phase three! Guest star! This really requires more players, but whatevs. Let's say that Ren's sister, Rayl, contacts him. There's a group of corrupt Star Corpsmen out on a colony world not dissimilar to the one they grew up on, except it's largely cut off from other worlds due to an asteroid belt so the Corps doesn't really bother with it. As such, the Red Giant Ring runs the world with an iron fist. Rayl can't get the Corps to back her, so she goes with Ren and his chums to clean up the colony! Legend: Rayl Rubid vs. The Red Giant Ring! Synopsis: Left out in the cold by the uncaring higher-ups of the Star Corps, Rayl Rubid has no choice but to call on her reckless but loyal brother Ren and his band of daredevil space jockeys to take on a group of corrupt Corpsmen! 

Aspects: Daredevil Space Jockeys (hey, it works), My Big Sister Needs Me

Cool! Now we're done with phases as I am gritty, and we move on to Skills! I get 15 points, and I've gotta do the standard pyramid. But, since I only have 15 points, I can't really put stuff too high. Let's see what Skills I need for Ren. Oh, god, there are too many. Hokay. I need Starship Piloting, Leadership, Engineering to be decent. I feel like some rating in Starship Engineering (yes, they're separate Skills) and Starship Systems wouldn't go amiss either. Well, I can do six Average Skills, three Fair, and one Good. 

Let's make Leadership my Good. We'll put Engineering, Starship Piloting, and let's say Alertness in Fair. And in Average, let's take Starship Engineering, Starship Systems, Fists, Guns, Survival, and Athletics.

Stunts! I get three. This is old-school Stunts where it's a discrete list rather than a system for making them up. I'll take Bounce Back (I heal quick; side effect of the Aqua Vitae exposure, maybe?), We Need it Now! (I can fix starship stuff on the fly) and...hmm. Kinda want something to represent the crew, but the only stunt I can take that makes sense is Minions and I don't love that. Let's keep looking. 

Erm. No, that's really the best fit. OK, then. 

That's actually it, I think? That's all the steps in chargen, anyway. Man, later Fate incarnations are so much better. 

Well, anyway, Ren Rubid is tall, straight (as in, good posture), black hair, brown eyes. He cuts an imposing figure and he's well aware that leading means making decisions based on the goal, not the sentiment, but he's also a firm believer in Brix' style of leadership: Command respect, don't demand it. See your men as people, not resources. And always remember, if things go badly, you do not have permission to die if your men are still alive and need you. 

That'll do it!

Movie #655: The Serpent & The Rainbow

The Serpent & the Rainbow is a horror movie inspired by the book of the same name, starring Bill Pullman, Cathy Tyson, Conrad Roberts, Zakes Mokae, Paul Winfield, Brent Jennings, and a very young Paul Guilfoyle, and directed by Wes Craven. 

Dennis Alan (Pullman) is an anthropologist who roams the world looking for new and exciting plants that could be turned into best-selling drugs (which would probably make him the villain in a contemporary movie, but this is the 80s). He winds up first in South America where he gets dosed with a hallucinogen and discovers that his spirit animal is a jaguar, which is pretty cool, and then winds up going to Haiti during the Duvalier regime (unwise) to learn about a "zombie powder". His source here is that he's got a death certificate for a fellow named Christophe (Roberts), and then a recent photo of him. Seems a little flimsy to me, but whatever, off he goes!

He winds up meeting with a psychiatrist named Marielle (Tyson) who treated Christophe, and together they go looking for what really happened. This search takes them to graveyards, torture, run-ins with the evil head of the secret police (Mokae), a local hougan (Winfield), and a guy named Mozart (Jennings) who can actually make the zombie powder. Marielle and Dennis wind up together, Dennis is framed for murder and kicked out of Haiti, but then comes back and is almost immediately poisoned with the powder. His jaguar comes through in the clutch, though.

My rather spotty summary aside, it's a good horror movie. The science is junk, obviously (tetrodoxin is now and was then pretty well understood), but the movie does a good job of capturing the feel of a nation on the brink of revolution (hahahahasob). Likewise, while Pullman isn't the first name I'd think of to headline a horror movie, he pulls it off nicely and comes off as vulnerable and out of his depth, though still competent in his field. 

The real star of the movie is Zakes Mokae as Peytraud, though. The first scene he's in, while Marielle is being ridden by Erzulie (boy, that's a sentence that changes if you don't know the context), just has him sitting at a table and tapping a glass with a fork, but he manages to exude so much casual menace that you immediately know he's dangerous. Likewise, Craven spends enough time building him up as a threat and showing that Alan is (rightly) afraid of him that when the tables finally turn it means something.

The end fight where everything gets all magic-y is perhaps a little clumsy, but I'm happy that they didn't fridge Marielle, and I think it's cool that Peytraud's downfall coincides with Duvalier's fleeing Haiti and the subsequent revolution. I also think, however, that this movie could stand a remake with Jordan Peele's involvement somewhere.

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: Below

Slipstream: Into the Stygian Depths

Into the aether! Here's last time.

The heroes fly towards Stygia, the mysterious fragment in the Dust Cloud. They make good time getting there, but as they approach what their instruments tell them is a fragment, they still see...nothing. Too late, Iris realizes that they're going to crash, and tells the others to brace for impact!

The crash into the surface of the fragment and skid around in a circle, slamming into something rocky. No one is injured, but the planet is completely dark - no natural light sources at all. Iris feels her way around the exterior of the ship to the thrusters and determines that the acceleration has been damaged - they can probably fly, but it'll be slow. She tells the others and they find some flashlights so that Oola can work on fixing the ship.

But as Oola is walking around the ship to the thrusters, she just...vanishes. She finds herself in water, completely unable to see, sinking faster. Iris falls in as well, and the two of them thrash around a bit before Oola manages to find Iris, but even then they're not sure where to go. (See, no one ever thinks they're gonna need the Swimming skill...)

Zeenia gets on top of the ship with Twoot and scans the ground, looking for the others. They spot a crater leading into the water and some ripples, and Zeenia jumps in with a light. She swims down toward them, but all they see is a light and Zeenia, ironically, had already warned them them about swimming towards light in a pitch-black water (the Deeps are where things want to eat you, see). And then a song comes up, a lovely and haunting melody from below. Oola, always curious, tries to head down for it, but Zeenia catches up with them and they all surface. 

The three of them talk over what they've seen (well, heard). Zeenia can survive here - the water is colder than she'd like, but breathable. Iris has no desire to go diving again, but grudgingly admits that the strange song is the only thing they've seen (again, not seen, but y'know) on this fragment that is indicative of life, and they don't have the first idea where to look for the Kryptoria. Zeenia notes that this fragment is dotted with craters leading into the water, and concludes that Stygia is essentially filled by an ocean and covered with a rocky outer crust. Anything that slams into the fragment with any kind of force punches right through it, which is probably what happened to the Kryptoria.

Oola fixes their ship, first, in case they need to leave quickly. And then Oola and Iris don their space suits and take air tanks, and they all head down into the depths.

For a long time, there's nothing. Then they hit an underwater slope, and slide all the way to the sea floor. The ground down here is just as black as the surface, and their lights don't help much, especially when they note creatures swimming past their field of vision. Oola reaches out with her mind-reading device and determines that these creatures - which look like big eels - are determining the best way to eat them. She warns the others ("Not friendly!") and the creatures attack. 

One of them lunges for Iris and a set of tentacles on the front of its face opens, revealing spiky protrusions and a lamprey-like mouth. She draws her sword and fends it off, but another one swoops in and strikes Zeenia's body. It fails to penetrate her suit, however. A third one clamps down on Oola's back, sinks its teeth in, and swims away with her. 

Hearing Oola yelling for help over the radiophone, Zeenia pursues her and finds her in a crevasse in the wall. The creature is sucking her blood out, but Zeenia kills it with her vibro-blades. The other two try to attack Iris, but she fells one with her ray gun, and Zeenia (after checking that Oola is not dying), rushes up and kills the last one. 

In the crevasse, Oola hears the song rises again. In the light of her flashlight, she sees a humanoid figure. It reaches out and touches her head...and then blissful nothing. 

Zeenia and Iris head back to the crevasse, but Oola is no longer there. Zeenia squeezes in and feels around at the apparently solid wall, but her tentacle goes right through it. Something gently but firmly pulls her into the dark, and she grabs Iris and drags her along. 

The characters awaken (but were they asleep?) in pitch darkness. They are linked telepathically to each other, but there is someone else in the link with them. They ask who it is, and the voice that answers is oddly soothing. They are the natives of Stygia, the voice tells them.

The voice is polite and helpful, but explains to them that the Stygians are a truly ancient race. The struggle that the characters are in at present - a charismatic leader rises, assembles an empire, abuses power, and is brought low by those not just willing to fight, but able to inspire others - is one that they've seen countless times before. They can't say if the characters are the ones to end Anathraxa's reign, or indeed if one side is really "good" or "evil" in any objective way. They are, however, willing to answer some questions. 

Iris asks about the Barrier, and the voice responds: "Go to Dracos. Do not get distracted. Gaze upon the queen's beauty, but not too close. You will hear the voice you need." Oola asks if the Queen's fear of mind-reading is significant, and the voice says that Anathraxa fears psionics because they might truly see her, and she feels that if her true nature were known she would lose her position. Oola wonders if they might be able to resolve this without violence, but the voice says that they won't - Anathraxa's influence is too deeply entrenched. 

They ask after the Kryptoria, and the voice says that it is happy - rather, willing - to show them to where it lies. It crashed into the fragment and no one survived, sadly. Zeenia, during this conversation, marvels at the voice and its apparent lack of physical form. She asks if she might return to converse more, and the voice says that she can, but that the Stygians see things on a different scale than other races. "The stars, to us, are not points," the voice says, "but streaks, for we see where they have been in addition to where they are." 

Zeenia's brain breaks a little, and she realizes that this isn't something she's prepared to learn. The voice asks that the characters not reveal the truth about Stygia to anyone, because they don't wish to be inundated with people seeking knowledge. Just say that Stygia is a dark and mysterious place, and leave it at that.

The characters thank the voice, and it raises them up to the Kryptoria on a song (Zeenia's brain breaks a little more). It then raises the entire ship into the ether, and the characters get back on their own ship to tow the Kryptoria back to Barter. 

There, they talk to Lux again, who is amazed that they brought the whole damn ship back. She agrees to build their weapon and throw in a hover-scooter (she's still coming out well ahead, once she gets done selling this thing for scrap). She asks where they found it and, upon hearing it was Stygia, obviously wants to know more.

"IT IS A DARK AND MYSTERIOUS PLACE," responds Zeenia, and Lux just kinda leaves it at that. She needs a few days to build their weapon, but after that, the characters are heading to Dracos!

Character Creation: Bury Mary

Here's a weird one. 

The Game: Bury Mary: The Great Lich's Bake-Off
The Publisher: Tritonis Games
Degree of Familiarity: Haven't played this yet, but I suspect it's gonna happen
Books Required: Just the one

I love GBBO, it's comfort food for the brain. Bury Mary is a silly little game in which a lich has decided it doesn't want to "live" anymore and invites the seven most skilled baker/adventurers in the land to destroy its phylactery. It's a GMless game, so let's see what we need to do here.

It looks as though to make a character, I just need to answer a few questions. Supposedly this is PbtA, though, so are there stats? Oh, I see, there are but you assign them before each round, so you keep shifting them as you go. That's fine. 

The questions I need to answer, then, are: 

I picture my baker/adventurer as a rogue-type, meaning I want an ingredient that reflects his dark and shadowy predilections. His signature ingredient, therefore, will be black garlic (I love black garlic, anyway). 

His magical school is alchemy. I want the complex mixtures of flavors and precise balance of ingredients (kind of Snape-like, except not such a tool). 

My alchemist/rogue is named Porthos Bruno ('cause we don't talk about Bruno). Porthos seeks the Silent Whisk of Corlescu, a magical cooking implement that would allow him to stir ingredients into any liquid without anyone noticing. Very useful for a rogue!

Porthos has dark eyes. He's got thick, wavy, black hair, a salt-and-pepper goatee, but he usually hides all that under a dark green or black hood. In the competition, of course, he'll be wearing an apron, so he makes sure to always stand slightly in shadow. He always has a lot of pockets and pouches to keep ingredients in. 

And...that's it, actually. Everything else would be part of play or require a group. Bake!

Character Creation: For Coin & Blood

Let's be bad guys.

The Game: For Coin & Blood
The Publisher: Gallant Knight Publishing
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

This is one of many games I've gotten in bundles, and to its credit it's one of the more playable-looking ones. That doesn't mean I necessarily want to play it, though. The idea is that you're playing scoundrels - the character classes are things like assassins, diabolists, and fallen nobles. It bills itself as "old school fantasy," and it's big on "the GM should just go ahead and make rulings" rather than having a bunch of complicated rules, and that's cool and all. The system didn't make a big impression on me. 

The setting...well, there's not much of one. There's a sample adventure, but there's not a world. We're bad guys, and we're told to go ahead and be evil, but there's no context for it. My thought while reading the game was "wow, this game wants to be Blades in the Dark when it grows up." The other issue is that, in my experience, if you're running for a group of "evil" characters, there needs to be a damn good reason for them to stick together and not stab each other in the back, or else, well, they'll stab each other in the back. 

But never mind all that, let's make a character so I can go to the store and get the stuff I need to make fish soup!

Now, I will say this for For Coin & Blood - it passes the Chupp test. Even the brief descriptions of the character classes sell them, at least in theory. I've been kind of into nihilism as a villain motivation lately (blame Rami Malek in No Time to Die, I think), so I think either a diabolist or a witch-hunter. Sure, let's do witch-hunter. My character is all about snuffing out magic users from the world ("too many sorcerers"). 

OK, now attributes. There's a whole weird process here. First I pick my most important Attribute and put a 12 in it. Ummm...I guess that'd be either Might or Agility, and since witch-hunters get pistols, I'm gonna go with Agility. Cool, so Agility 12. Next two most important get 11. Might and Learning, I think? And then Insight, Fortitude, and Charisma get 10. 

And now we roll 5d6 and lay them left to right in any order. OK, that gives me 4, 6, 6, 2, 1.

And now we do this: 

So that gives me Agility 16, Might 13, Learning 11, Charisma 8, Insight 9, Fortitude 10.

And then Infamy starts at 2d3, which, sure. Snake eyes gives me 2. I get Fortitude + 1 hit points Lifeblood, so that's 11. The book asks me to pick a Profession, but there's no place for that on the sheet so it can't be that important. 

Currency! I get 60gp multiplied by my "Prime Attribute" modifier. What's my Prime Attribute? Oy. The book says that each character class has a Prime Attribute listed in the description, but there are several that explicitly don't, including the witch-hunter. So let's assume I just get 60, since that's the minimum. I'll fill in my other abilities and then go shopping. 

So, I do a base of 1d8 damage (all weapons do the same damage, and it's class-dependent). I'm proficient in light armor and all weapons. I start with a pistol and a melee weapon of my choice (I'm thinking a flail, but I'm not sure yet). I get Advantage against any target I've seen cast a spell in the last 24 hours, I can use a torch as a weapon (why on earth can't anyone do that? "The burny end goes into the other man"), and if I kill a spellcaster with my pistol, I get an immediate free reload action. 

OK, then. Any gear I want to buy? Yeah, leather armor, since it's the only kind I can wear. 10 torches. Ball bearings, rope (for hangin'!), hammer, manacles, lock, tinderbox. Still need to pick a melee weapon. I think I'd want something with some versatility, maybe some reach, since if you're going after spellcasters the first thing you need to do is keep them from casting. Maybe a trident? Yeah, sounds good.

And that's pretty much all of chargen! Let's do the fun stuff.

Karum grew up in a village that lived under the rule of a wizard. As he remembers it, the wizard lived in his stone tower and did exactly nothing to earn his keep, but people brought him food and gold under pain of death, curses, and fire from the sky. Karum grew up hating magic and spell-casters, and he left the village as a young man to join a military company (little more than brigands, but they were always looking for new blood). Karum wound up talking with an older fellow who, while not a witch-hunter per se, had a lot of experience dealing with "those hand-waving bastards" and taught Karum the best ways to fight them. Karum has since left the company, and struck out on his own. He'll kill witches and wizards for money, but he'll do it regardless. Let's see them wave their hands around and chant with a trident point through their hand and a pistol at their temple. 

Karum is lean and sallow. He's got pockmarked skin and black hair, brown eyes, and a steady, almost monotone voice that only really livens up when he starts talking about spellcasters and how to kill them. He's thought about taking a trophy from his kills - teeth, maybe? - but honestly that kind of sounds like something a spell-caster would do. 

That's that, then!