Character Creation: Moonlight on Roseville Beach

Here, queer, etc.

The Game: Moonlight on Roseville Beach
The Publisher: R. Rook Studio
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one 

It's not Carved from Brindlewood, but the game feels like Brindlewood Bay in a lot of ways. You're playing people living in or visiting the titular beach, which in 1979 is a safe haven for queer folks (inasmuch as they are the norm here and can be out and visible without harassment, as long as they don't do something silly like "call the police"). Unlike Brindlewood games, Moonlight etc has the GM create a mystery to solve and give the PCs a reason to solve it. Often it's because something wonky is happening in town and you or someone you love is affected, and as mentioned even if the authorities would investigate, they are likely to blame you because you're one o' them queers.

The vibe of the game is right there on the cover - it's queer pulp mystery horror. System-wise, it reminds me of Rebels of the Outlaw Wastes, in that you roll a bunch of dice and allocate those dice to results on tables, so more dice is better because you have more chances to roll 6s (there's another game that does this and now I can't remember for the life of me what it is, that's gonna bug me). Anyway, chargen looks fun, nice balance between PbtA and a kind of lifepath or Shadow of the Demon Lord kind of thing (that is, pick the background elements and then build a character around them, which I guess is what lifepaths do, too), so let's get into it!

First thing we pick is an Origin Story (there are a bunch to pick from; they're not quite playbooks but that's the basic idea). I kinda like the Stranger (an otherworldly being that is pretending to be human), so I think I'll indulge my inner "video for Chappel Roan's "Casual"" today. I get to pick a home, one of the choices is "beneath the seas", and that sounds good to me. Let's call him Nai Kits (almost certainly a name he picked randomly, since his real "name" isn't pronounceable). 

I get to roll my apparent age (or pick, but I'm fine rolling; it's 3d6 + 19, I roll 8, so I look 27). I have some innate sorcery; this game uses Words of Power, much like Here, There, Be Monsters, and I get to pick two off the Witch list. I'll take "Flood" and "Call," I think. I like the idea of my Stranger being able to call things up from the ocean sometimes, including, like, a lot of water. Once per session I can do some consistent magic related to my Words, as long as it doesn't physically hurt anyone. Hmm. Let's say as long as I'm outside and in view of the ocean, I can speak to anyone I know by whispering. It's not two-way communication, but I can tell them as much as I want.

I'll get two additional skills related to my Job, but we haven't gotten there yet. I get two skills from my Home, and I'll take Intimidating and Swimming. I think my Stranger isn't intimidating in the sense that he's big, muscular, or overtly scary, he just makes you feel like you're lost at sea, and sometimes the waves crash or thunder rolls at dramatic moments when he's speaking.

I have two Troubles: One person who knows or suspects what I really am, and a person who anchors me to the world of humans. For the former, let's say it's Carrie Fleur (she's described in the book as "cunning"). I think Carrie probably thinks Nai is dangerous (and who knows, maybe), and knows that he came up out of the sea one night and now sometimes floods happen. 

For my anchor, we'll say it's Orman Hellstrom (or "Orri," as he's usually called). Orri was the guy who found my character on the beach, putting on his human form. Orri helped Nai figure out how "legs" worked, and the two of them have since grown...close. My guy has no idea how Orri really feels about him, because he doesn't really understand human emotion. It hasn't been a problem yet. 

Next I get a jorb. (A what? A great JAERB. Anyway.) One of the options is Backup Dance at Fleur Manor, and I like that. Clearly my character doesn't know Carrie's onto him. I get two skills off the list, I'll take Music and Jumping.

Strange Event! The way this would normally work is all players would choose one (there's a list, again) and another character who experienced it with us. Since it's just me, I don't have to worry about that second bit. I will say, however, that Nai went and saw the Fortune Teller, who looked horrified and called him "Roseville's Doom" before shooing him out. I get to roll to see if I get another skill...I do, let's take Alluring (it's not on the list, but it fits).

Troubles, Allies, Comforts! My Troubles are handled already. I'll say my Ally is Orri, obviously. I get three Comforts: A special place, a special memento, and a special person. I'll say the special place is the stage at Fleur Manor, but only when it's empty. It reminds Nai of the beach, in a way, if the audience is the ocean. I'll say his special memento is a wooden human hand. It's from the figurehead of a ship. He doesn't remember the name of the ship, but he lives in it for a while when he was considering coming up to live amongst humans. And, finally, his special person (because I don't want to triple up on Orri) is Cathy Fleur, Carrie's sister. Nai and Cathy just kind of vibe. 

And that's pretty much it; if I were actually in a group we'd figure out the Bungalow some, but it's just me. I picture Nai as white, brown but sea-bleached hair, green eyes, a little checked out a lot of the time, but always remembers what you say to him. Never, ever forgets a slight, but also never seems angry. Also, heaven help you if you take food from him without asking. He bit a guy at a party once. 

That'll do it!

Movie #873: Skyfall

Skyfall is a James Bond spy thriller starring Daniel Craig (his third time in the role), Javier Bardem, Judi Dench, Ben Whishaw, Naomi Harris, Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney, Rory Kinnear, and Bérénice Marlohe. 

Bond - James Bond (Craig) - has his usual exciting opening sequence in Istanbul (not Constantinople), during which Moneypenny (Harris) gets out from behind the desk and...accidentally shoots and apparently kills Bond. A few months later, the MI6 building is bombed while M (Dench) looks on, and some shadowy cyberterrorist threatens to release the names and identities of agents every week. Meanwhile, MI6 itself is under investigation and M is being squeezed out by Gareth Mallory (Fiennes), a bureaucrat with a long job title. 

Anyway, Bond returns, goes back on active duty despite roundly failing all the exams to do so, pursues the assassin he was trailing in Istanbul, and winds up on an abandoned island with our real Big Bad - Raoul Silva (Bardem), a former agent who was left to die and/or be tortured because M gave him up. His plan is, ultimately, to humiliate and kill M, and we end up with Bond, M, and Bond's family gamekeeper (Finney) on the Bond estate in Scotland (the titular "Skyfall") for a good ol' fashioned Die Hard-esque home invasion/shootout. M dies (spoilers), Mallory succeeds her because he has the proper initial in his name, and Bond returns to duty while Moneypenny gets the hell back behind her desk.

I enjoy this movie; I don't think it's quite my favorite Bond film (I think Casino Royale edges it out for that), but I think it might be the best one in a lot of ways. But I do think it's got a weirdly...conservative, maybe?...vibe to it. This is Dench's last go as M, and she doesn't exactly retire with honors or even die heroically. She bleeds out in a church just after Silva nearly shoots her, she's left MI6 largely in shambles, and the wrap-up scene where Mallory takes over as M has Bond walking past the now firmly out of the field Moneypenny into M's office and calling him "M" for the first time and saying he's ready to get back to work. The vibe is very much "OK, we've been fucking around long enough, now." 

Combine that with the repeated idea that comes up in the movie that one can do more damage with a computer than with a bomb, and that the old methods of espionage are quaint and outmoded (and more damaging than helpful), but that the movie ends with a very physical, very analog action sequence involving shotguns and booby traps and explosives. Skyfall feels like a reset in the series, not in continuity (because we have two more movies in this series), but in its priorities and aesthetics. (I kind of want to rewatch Spectre and No Time to Die and see if that continues; it's been a while.)

And then there's Bardem's Silva. I really like the character, and I think they could have done a lot more with him, but he's an unseen presence for the first act of the movie. The scene where he "seduces" Bond likewise could have gone further - if we're to see Bond as someone who will do things that are against his nature in service to Queen and Country, then why not fuck a dude occasionally, regardless of whether that's where his proclivities take him? (Not Silva, though; the situation was very much not that.) Bardem manages to walk the line portraying a character who is intelligent, ruthless, and in control but still broken and chaotic, and that's hard to pull off. (Does his plan actually make sense? Eh, it makes as much as sense as any other Bond villain's, and more sense than most of them.)

Skyfall is uncommon in the Bond series because it seems to be actually about something, rather than just a series of chases, shootouts, and sexy one-liners, and I appreciate that, because I think the days of Bond being goofy but wanting us to take him seriously are probably over. I'm interested to see what the next incarnation of Bond looks like...but since he's now owned by Amazon, I dunno. There's some interesting things to say about corporate takeover of what used to be government business, but we'll see.

My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: Taken 

Character Creation: Shadows over Sol

Like moon over Miami, I guess.

The Game: Shadows Over Sol
The Publisher: Tab Creations
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one 

I picked this game because the company that made it currently has a Kickstarter going for a second edition, so I wanted to see if I liked the game enough to support it. Actually, looking at the cover, it reminds me of The Alters, which I just finished playing and really enjoyed. 

However, reading the game, I'm not sure if that's the vibe? Like, it's billed as "science fiction horror", but on a read it almost more of a dystopian sci-fi kind of thing? I mean, there are definitely alien/bioengineered monsters around, which could be a horror thing, but much of the initial chapters are history of the setting and the subcultures involved, and I did find myself wondering when we'd find Cthulhu in the stars, as it were.

That is by no means a condemnation of the game, because I actually found the history really interesting to read, which is rare. Basically, it's 2214, people have colonized parts of the solar system, corporations have replaced governments for the most part, and everything is on "the net." AR is a big part of most people's everyday experiences, and your world is overlaid with little tags of information. This plays into "subcultures", which are siloed social groups - physical location isn't really important, because you can "be" virtually almost anywhere. 

I really like that in theory. It's a logical, if horrific, extrapolation of where we are now, where everyone gets their own curated news and it's possible for two intelligent, educated people to have radically different beliefs about something just based on their online habits. I don't find the subcultures as presented especially compelling, but I think that's just my opinion, man. Shadows Over Sol also has the problem that a lot of detailed settings do, to wit, playing it would require either extensive info-dumping or that my players actually fucking read the book, but the concepts therein are familiar enough that maybe it wouldn't be a problem.

Likewise, the GM section has a nice, accessible discussion of both sci-fi and horror and the assumptions of both genres, so it's not like anyone just slapped "horror" on the cover and didn't think it through (the way "-punk" often gets added as to games that don't deserve it). 

System-wise, the game uses cards, so that's cool. Haven't played it, don't know if it would suck at the table (this particular system, not card-based games in general, which I know can work perfectly well). Let's make a character for this rather bleak future. (Side note: one of the things in this setting is "vatmeat," artificially created foodstuff that mimics whatever kind of meat you want, and I was thinking that this is made by factories, but no, you can have a vat on your counter like a rice cooker, which I actually think is cool as hell.)

Step One: Concept. Always tricky when I'm doing this, especially in a setting this big, with no GM to give me a framework. But there's a sample scenario in the book, so let's give those a look and pretend I'm making a character for that. (There are also a bunch of published scenarios, but I don't own those.)

So, our scenario has us being woken from cryo-sleep to answer a distress call, because that worked out so well for the Sulaco. Let's assume we're scrappers, because that's a setup I've always found compelling (again, Alien, but also Ghost Ship, which coincidentally is the name of the scenario here). I think I want my character to be a chemist of sorts, really good at analyzing constituent materials of things and then breaking them apart without destroying them. He calls himself an "un-builder." Let's say his name is Jocco Pereira. 

Step Two: Stats. I get an array (7, 6, 5, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2) to plug into eight stats. Let's see. I feel like Intelligence and Perception are going to need to be Jocco's strongest points, though I probably shouldn't neglect physical stats. Let's put his 2 into Speed (Jocco prefers to take his time; his catch phrase is probably "don't rush me, dude"). We'll put the 7 into Intelligence and the 6 into Perception. The 5 can go into Strength, how about, and the fours into Endurance and Determination. That leaves 3s in Dexterity and Charisma. 

Step Three: Skills. Same drill, working from an array. There are 25 Skills, but I only get scores in 9 of them (I get three ratings of 3, 2, and 1 each, where 1 is basic familiarity and 3 is professional competence). 

Well, my 3s should go into Engineer, Mechanic, and Phy-Sci, obviously. My 2s can go into Comp-Ops (figure on there being a lot of software to help find break points and rivets and shit), Vehicles, and Ordinance (not so much for planting bombs as disarming them, though y'know, if he had to). Finally, my 1s can go into Bureaucrat, Awareness, and Athletics (I'm never sorry to take Athletics). 

Step Four: Geneline. Everybody has had at least some genetic modification, so which one Jocco has probably says more about his parents and what they could afford than what he'd want. Hmm. Let's assume that Jocco's parents were not people of means, but his dad always wanted to go into space and managed to scrape together enough money for the Spacer's Standard geneline.

What this means is that I get to raise my stats thusly: You raise it up a level when you accumulate experiences equal to your current level + 1. As such, my Strength doesn't go anywhere because I don't get anything there, but my Dexterity goes up to 5 (4 points from my 10 to go up to 4, then 5 to go up to 5, one left over). Neat! Speed goes to 4, Endurance doesn't change, Intelligence goes to 8, Perception goes to 7, Charisma goes to 5, and Determination goes to 5 (but I'd just need one experience to raise it again). That's pretty cool, actually. Now, what about this weakness? Oh, it gives you a card in play when it impairs you. Sure. OK, I'll say Jocco gets coughs easily, resulting in a -2 to Endurance sometimes when the air quality fucks with him.

Step Five: Subculture. Hrm. A couple of these vibe pretty well with Jocco, but I think Techno is the best - Jocco's "take it apart for the best bits" attitude meshes nicely with the Techno subculture's goal of transcending meatspace. That gives me two experiences each in Comp-Ops, Engineer, Mechanic, Phy-Sci, Program, and Vehicles. That boosts Program to 1, but just gives me experiences to bank in the others since I already had scores of 2 or 3 in all of them. I do need to actually pick experiences for these; basically when you gain experiences you note (very generally) what they were, and then you can get a bonus when that experience is relevant.

Well, for Comp-Ops, let's say AR and sensors. For Engineer: architecture and sensors (figure an experience that hits one might hit another). For Mechanic: jury-rigged components, demolition (in the "let's break this apart" sense, not the explosive sense). For Phy-Sci: chemistry and orbital mechanics. For Program, I actually get a level and then I'll take security systems. And for Vehicles, we'll take low gravity and groundcars.

Step Six: Scores & Traits. Derived traits n' shit. Damage reduction starts at 0, Defense is 8 ([Speed + Perception + Dexterity]/2 and then 16 to get a crit on Jocco (the sum of those stats). Edge is the average of Intelligence and Charisma (round down, so 6 for me). Encumbrance is 5, Shock is 9, Wound is 4. 

I get familiarity with the Techno subculture and I speak one language, which I'll say is Portuguese.

I can take more Weaknesses if I want. I want one more, let's take a Shortcoming and call it Combat Paralysis (-2 to Shock; Jocco freezes up easily).

Step Seven: Wealth & Gear. Aw, mom, do we hafta? Actually this doesn't look bad, so I'll g'head and do it. I get clothes for my Lifestyle (which I'll pick momentarily), AR glasses, a hand terminal, a toolkit, a Geiger counter, and rope. Let's say Lifestyle 5, that's about what I think scrappers on a team-owned ship would be at.

And that'll about do it! Jocco is probably in his late 20s, black hair, brown eyes, kind of a rasp to his voice because his throat is often irritated. He's got a real interest in how things go together and come apart, but literally no interest in how that applies to people (too goopy). He's saving up for some cool implants. 

Movie #872: Singin' in the Rain

Singin' in the Rain is a musical starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, Jean Hagen, and Millard Mitchell. 

In the era of silent movies, former vaudevillian Donald Lockwood (Kelly) is at the top of his game. He and his ditzy co-star Lina Lamont (Hagen) rule the box office, and his best friend Cosmo (O'Connor) collaborates on scripts and accompanying music. He and Lena are a rumored couple; they're not, but she believes it, and Don finds himself in a spiral of self-doubt after he meets an actress named Kathy (Reynolds) who puts in perspective exactly what he is: a dancer and stuntman who prances for the camera, but doesn't really act. 

And then a new technology that allows for movies to have recorded sound as well as images shows up, and while studio head R. F. Simpson (Mitchell) wants to be an early adopter, they aren't sure how to do anything with it, Lina can't act or speak especially well, and early screenings of The Dueling Cavalier threaten to end Lockwood's career. He, Kathy, and Cosmo have the brilliant idea to make it a musical, which is great, except Lina can't sing, either. Kathy agrees to dub her voice, on the understanding that it's only happening once and then she'll have her own career, Lina threatens to derail all that by not being quite as dumb as everyone thinks, the truth sets everyone free, Lockwood and Kathy smooch in front of a billboard.

Singin' in the Rain is from the era of musicals where the plot was interrupted every scene or two for a song, rather than later ones like Les Miserables where the songs effectively replaced the dialog. As such, summarizing the movie makes it feel thin, because not a great deal actually happens, but the movie is still pretty long because there's a lot of time taken up in musical numbers (including the big Broadway Ballet in the middle, which is just Lockwood explaining his vision for The Dancing Cavalier and does exactly nothing to further the plot). It's not a million miles from movies like, say, John Wick where much of the movie and indeed what everyone really comes to see is the set pieces (actually, porn works this way, too, there's a thought). 

But you can't say the tunes here aren't catchy. Everyone knows the title song, but "Good Morning" and "Make 'em Laugh" are classics, too. Likewise, there may not be much to it, but the chemistry between Lockwood and O'Connor, Lockwood and Reynolds, all three of them, and even Lamont and Lockwood, makes it all work. Jean Hagen manages to make Lina just hate-able enough to be fun and laughable enough to be funny (and she was nominated for an Oscar for the role), and I appreciate that there's no third-act breakup between Lamont and Lockwood (other than very, very briefly when Lockwood pretends to go along with the whole "you will be Lina's unseen voice forever" thing). 

Musicals of this era can sometimes be hella overlong, but Singin' in the Rain is pretty well paced, probably because it was a movie first (actually a jukebox musical, since it's based largely on songs from Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown's catalog). I'd seen it on stage, but never seen the movie, and it definitely holds up. It's interesting that Hollywood has been making "Hollywood love letter" movies basically all along, too.

My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: Medium-low

Next up: Skyfall 

D&D: The Dead Valley

After taking a month off so people could do vacation things (but playing one-shots of Longshot City and AGON), we triumphantly return to the land of Abhaile! Here's last time.

In the city of Cian, at a tavern called Nine Cups Inn, a group of local folks sit around and drunkenly tell stories they've heard about adventurers going out and doing their things. One talks about Zeke the Bleak, a dour and dire gnome wizard who threw fire and destroyed a host of enemies as well as some of his own companions. Another tells a story how this bard ended the rampage of some evil witch by seducing her, but then it went tits up anyway because the bard had also seduced that witch's husband (not a one-to-one to anything the characters have done, though certainly their bard has been known to seduce people). A third tops that with a story of how a group of adventures beat an owlbear by having their druid turn into an owlbear and lure the first owlbear away with her owlbear wiles. And another tells the story of how this band of adventurer took on a succubus that was posing as its own sister ("I want to meet a succubus," says one. "Frank, you're cut off," says the bartender).

The party's legend is growing, but they have other matters on their minds. They go back to the Arcanum to meet with Magister Luch, the wizard who was looking into the chant that the spider-monster was forcing its victims to repeat. Luch tells them that he couldn't fully translate it, even with magic, because he was just working with a phonetic repetition of the chant from Zook's memory, but he was able to come up with a few things he felt certain about.

First, he didn't know what language it was, but it wasn't any known language of Abhaile. As such, it must be something from beyond the borders (which, as we all know, is kind of big deal, since people in Abhaile don't tend to leave the nation). Second, Luch thinks it was a prayer or an entreaty to a god, also not something common here. He isn't sure the name of the god, but thinks that it was referred to as "dark queen" or "hungry cannibal mother". Zook notes that spiders are cannibals, so that kind of fits. 

Luch has done a little research into what kinds of gods or demons might be called "hungry cannibal mother" ("dark queen" is far too basic), and Madoc the Necromancer came up in his research. The heroes have all heard the story of Madoc - he raised the dead of every cemetery from Cian to the eastern swamps and march on the city; it was the last time the great southern gates of Cian were closed. (This was mentioned back here.) Madoc's army was driven north to a gorge, and he himself fell into it, burning. The area is now called the Dead Valley. 

The characters don't have much else in the way of leads; they talk about tracing Madoc's path backwards, heading east, but ultimately think it's probably more useful to look into where he ended up. Luch asks that if they're going to the Dead Valley, they make some notes about the physical and magical layout of the place - other bands of adventurers have descended into the Valley, but he's not aware of any that came out again. He gives Zook a scroll allowing the creation of magic circle, figuring it'll help him out. He tells them that the village of Salann is near the Valley, and they maintain a watch, as undead creatures sometimes crawl out.

The heroes spend a day or two preparing to go. Aisling buys a hand crossbow, while Zook picks up his saddle from Ioan Glassbeard. They also put some gold together and buy a donkey to pack their stuff onto (Dara asks it its name, and it replies that it doesn't really have one; its current own sometimes calls it "you stubborn ass". It does mention liking carrots, however, so Dara names it "Carrots"). The party heads out, going north, and in a couple of days they enter a pasture with a bunch of long-haired cows and the occasional ox. In the distance they see a watchtower, and momentarily a man rides up on a horse. "Ehya," he says, and then waves to the person in the tower. "You're not undead, can't have my cousin puttin' an arrow in your eye." 

He rides with them back to the village proper, and tells them the story of the place. Salann herds cows and processes hide and meat and bone, but their other main function is to watch the Valley. Someone mans the two watchtowers day and night, and shoots any creatures that slither out. Failing that, the villagers attack them with pitchforks and throw them back in. Zook asks what they do with their own dead, and the Cowherd says they burn them. It's customary for the oldest and most able-bodied male relative of the deceased to sit up with the pyre while it burns, and other folks in the village will come and sit with them and talk (he had to do this when his mam passed last year). Aisling asks if they ever take the undead creatures from the valley and burn them, but the Cowherd says that they don't want to invite that curse into their village. The area around the Valley is blighted and salted; nothing grows there and they don't want that evil to spread.

The villagers put the heroes up for the night, give them beef and potatoes and beer, Aisling plays some songs and Zook makes some fireworks. These villagers are a little less starstruck by the adventurers than some of the others they've met (probably because of their proximity to Cian). The Cowherd tells them they basically have three approaches to the Valley - they can go in from the eastern entrance, and walk down the slope. They can rappel down the sides, or they can go to the western edge and climb/rappel down. That edge leads to the deepest part of the valley, but the edge is probably the easiest to climb. In years past there was a waterfall there, and the cliff is rocky, but now is blasted and dry from the curses on this place. "Scorches the hillside and salts every root," says the Cowherd.

The heroes decide to take the bull by the horns and go into the deepest bit. They leave Carrots and Maeve with the Cowherd, and head to the western edge. Dara casts spiderclimb and skitters down the side of the cliff, anchoring pitons and tying guide ropes, and Zook rappels down first, followed by Aisling, and then Clara.

Zook touches down and notes that there is nothing alive down here - no weeds, no moss, no insects. He expected something like this, but it's still disquieting to see it. He casts dancing lights to give a little illumination, and almost immediately, the undead respond.

A pair of skeletal bodies shambles out of the darkness, and a pair of much...meatier corpses wanders over as well. A couple of sets of armor shake themselves out of the blasted earth and advance on the gnome. Aisling, still on the rope, hurls a spell into the enemies' midst ("close your eyes!") and calls up a hypnotic lights display, and the two zombies just kind of stop and stare. Dara, still clinging to the wall, throws a moonbeam onto a creature lurking in the corner, and sees that it's a definitely a walking corpse, but it seems more aware than the others, holding a longsword like a warrior. But then the moonbeam hits it, and its flesh starts to burn away.

Zook hurls a fireball into the battlefield and incinerates the skeletons and one of the zombies. The armor is too close, though, and slams into him, but it barely has time to do more than knock him around a little before Clara lands next to him, dropping the last 40 feet like she's hopping off a log. She strikes the set of armor and knocks it over, and pounds on it until it stops moving. Aisling hits the other one with an arrow, and Zook finishes it with a barrage of magic missiles. Dara moves the moonbeam around and burns the last two undead, and all four of them gather at the bottom of the cliff.

The dark of the Dead Valley stretches before them, and Aisling activates her driftglobe, casting one bright light in the gloom... 

Chill: Lucid Dreams

Yesterday we played some Chill! Here's last time, though this time began a new case.

It's been a year since the Fourth of July murders (the first case in this campaign), and the parents of Tara Edwards, one of the victims, have arranged a memorial. A bunch of the people who were involved, as victims or as helpers, attend, including the envoys (all of whom were the ones who initially found the campsite where Tara Edwards and Neal Morgan were murdered, and who later helped to find Corey West, the killer). The envoys, of course, also know that Corey West was possessed when he killed his friends, largely due to experimentation with the Art. Corey is still institutionalized awaiting trial.

Amelia Rostov, mingling, sees Danika Baburin, a volunteer firefighter who was also with the envoys when they went into the woods and found the campsite initially. They chat, and Amelia notices a bandage on her arm. Danika says that a dog bit her - she's a dog groomer, it's an occupational hazard, although this one was more serious. Amelia digs a little and learns that the dog in question had never been aggressive before. Also, Danika looks a little peaked - she's lost weight and she looks pale and tired. There's a guy with her that she introduces as Dustin, but they don't seem to be a couple. Amelia takes Danika to the refreshment tent to get a drink, and sits down with her.

Danika reveals that she's not been sleeping especially well of late, but as the conversation progresses, also mentions that she and a few of her friends have, for the past year or so, been part of a meditation circle and have learned to lucid dream. She says that Dustin has kind of guided them (he's a massage therapist and reiki master), but that the impetus came from a stranger source.

See, when Danika and the envoys found the campsite, Danika found a piece of paper and pocketed it without thinking (she was kind of in shock). She read it later, and it turned out to be instructions on meditation - maybe part of a manuscript for a self-help book or something? With a sinking feeling, Amelia gets on the group chat and summons the others. She also touches Danika and uses Disrupt, but doesn't notice any immediate difference. Dustin comes back in as well, and the two of them gradually tell the envoys a bit more. 

There are four of them in this meditation group: Dustin (Holmes), Danika, Jean Cameron (owner of Sweets of Seward, a candy and confection ship, which all of the envoys know and love), and Rochelle Downing. They've been using the techniques outlined in the paper to meditate and dream, and they've gotten pretty good at it. But...some strange things have happened. Danika was bitten by the dog, OK, maybe that dog was hurting or something. Jean spilled molten sugar down their leg and wound up with second-degree burns. And Dustin...

Dustin clearly has something to tell them, but would rather do it somewhere a little more private. They decide to all go to the Crab Pot on Britt Lepus' suggestion ("post-memorial drinks?"). First, however, Nicholas Failor senses the Unknown, and the familiar sensation of being immersed in cold water comes over him. Both Danika and Dustin are carrying something...but so are Amelia and Britt, and so is he. Mercy Williams doesn't seem to have anything on her, but the presence is also elusive, and Nicholas can't quite get a read on it. 

The six of them go to the Crab Pot and Dustin explains a little more. He had a booth at the recent Fourth of July dealie downtown, where he was doing massage and energy work. He was doing reiki on a woman - barely touching her - and suddenly she leaned over and threw up an impressive amount of blood...and also a bunch of black beetles. She was taken away to the hospital, and Dustin's booth was shut down, but the beetles seemed to disappear and the organizers kind of swept this under the rug (the last thing Seward needs is another bloody mess associated with this holiday). Dustin insists that he wasn't attempt to harm the woman, he wasn't even thinking about anything - he empties his mind when doing energy work to avoid bringing any of his own issues to bear. 

After a little back-and-forth on the group chat, the envoys decide the only real course of action is to tell these people the truth. Britt and Amelia (far and away the best of the cell with people) explain SAVE and the Unknown, and, to a lesser degree, the Art. Danika says that the paper she found did mention "the Art," but without more context it was hard to know what that meant ("but you went ahead and did it anyway,"mutters Mercy). They decide to change venues again and head to the Community Center, and to have Jean and Rochelle meet them there.

They explain everything to them, and they have some different reactions. Rochelle apparently has not seen anything weird, thanks them for their concern, and heads home - she has two little kiddos and she leans on her mom for childcare enough as it is. Jean, however, is a little more open to it, and once Rochelle leaves, they explain why. 

"I didn't drop the sugar by accident," they explain. Jean was making candy in their kitchen while their wife and baby son were at the table eating, and for just a moment, Jean had an intrusive though - throw the sugar at them. But unlike most intrusive thoughts that just go away, this one bounced around in Jean's head, getting stronger and stronger, and finally Jean upended the pan of sugar on their own leg rather than follow the thought anymore. Jean is, of course, horrified at what they almost did, and asks if that's the kind of thing this "Unknown" can do. Britt confirms that yes, the Unknown can make you do stuff and make you think it was all your idea (like, say, want to marry a zombie).  

The envoys still don't have a good idea of what this might be, however. Nicholas doesn't have a firm location to use Postcognition, and while he's been experimenting with Premonition, that only works for about a minute's worth of future-sight. They decide that Amelia will go home with Danika and Britt with Dustin, just to keep an eye on them, but in the meanwhile, no more lucid dreaming! They give Jean contact info and tell them to contact the envoys immediately if anything else weird happens.

Amelia goes to Danika's place, and in talking to her, learns that she's been under the weather for a while. Not sick, just...run down, weak, like she's about to get a cold but can't shake it. Amelia wards her bedroom, just to see if that helps for tonight, and crashes on the couch.

Britt, meanwhile, talks with Dustin, and asks if he or the others have ever encountered something weird before. Dustin hesitates, and Britt asks if maybe that's "second date" conversation. They stay up a bit watching TV, Britt tells him a little about her family in Vegas and how she's basically been part of SAVE her whole life, and then they both go to sleep.

Sleep is unquiet, however. All four of the envoys dream. They are walking through the woods, and can see each other, but in that weird dream-logic they can't call out. They see something running behind the trees, just out of sight, and then the person leaps out and buries and ax in Britt's head. They all wake up, a little the worse for wear.

Dustin is already up, and Britt asks if he had the dream - he did. Danika comes out of her room, stretching, but looking refreshed. She slept just fine and doesn't remember any dreams. The ward worked, apparently. Mercy texts the brand-new group chat with all eight of them and asks "Murder dreams? [tree emoji ax emoji]" and gets back "yeah" from Jean and "wtf" from Rochelle. 

Everyone has shit to do today, of course. Nicholas has supply runs to make. Mercy has a shift. Britt doesn't work until later, and Amelia decides to spend the day doing some research - specifically, she wants to take the page that Danika found (which she happily gives back) and put it in its proper context with the other SAVE papers. 

She learns that this section of the printout was a primer on astral projection. The page that Danika found describes exercises to relax the mind and "loosen" the soul in preparation for leaving the body. The four of them took those exercises and combined them with Dustin's guided meditation, and got really good at lucid dreams...but also apparently got something's attention. 

Nicholas, later that morning, is flying back into Seward when the weather changes. A storm blows up out of nowhere, and he considers a water landing, but manages to keep the plane under control and land. And as soon as he does, the storm disappears. He looks at the weather that NOAA is tracking, and there's nothing in the area. 

Britt also decides to do some research, and looks into shared dreams. She discovers that lucid dreaming generally isn't hard to do with practice. Shared dreaming is usually associated with shared experience or a one-time psychic phenomenon (two people having the same dream of a mutual  acquaintance dying before it happens, that kind of thing). When it's described as a negative experience, it normally hearkens back to some shared trauma. Britt recalls that Dustin seemed to have something to tell her, and texts him that maybe it's time for that second-date conversation.

As she does, she hears a rattle behind her. She glances back and sees a book on her shelf vibrate, and then hurl itself at her head. She ducks expertly and tenses for more attacks, but nothing else moves. 

The envoys decide to get together to go over this some more, and head for the community center. Mercy gets a call right at the end of her shift, though. The ambulance goes to the dock and she hears a woman saying "I did not stab anyone! I don't know what happened!" Mercy looks over and realizes that the woman saying that is Stef Copeland, the surviving victim of the Fourth of July murders. Mercy actually saved her life with the Heal discipline last year.

Mercy is directed to a man leaning on a pylon with a wound in his shoulder. It doesn't look like a bullet or a knife - actually it looks more like a hatchet. It's not deep enough to be fatal but it's going to require some stitches. Mercy patches the guy up and then checks in with Stef, and through listening to the witnesses and talking with Stef, learns that she was waiting in line to get on a ferry, the guy was standing in front of her, he turned around to look at something and suddenly he just fell over bleeding! Someone yelled that she'd stabbed him, and then everything went nuts. Stef just wants to go home, she was waiting on a ferry to take her to where she's catching her flight.

The police arrive and Mercy tries to get them to delay Stef, but the cops decide that would be a dick move and there's no evidence that Stef did anything wrong. They're not sure what did happen - no weapon was found. Mercy feels a sudden rush of confusion and nearly tells the cops that Stef did stab the guy, but stops herself. Whatever is messing with the dreamers, it's apparently noticed the envoys as well...

Movie #871: Session 9

Session 9 is a psychological horror movie starring Peter Mullan, David Caruso, Brendan Sexton III, Stephen Gevedon, Josh Lucas, Paul Guilfoyle, and Larry Fessenden. 

A group of hazmat cleaners, led by Gordon (Mullan) and his right-hand man Phil (Caruso) are hired to remove asbestos from the Danvers State Hospital (a real place, check it out). Gordon has a new babby at home and is desperate for money, so promises the guy coordinating the project (Guilfoyle, but I don't know his character's actual occupation) that he and his crew can do it in a week. This is obviously nonsense and Phil tells him so, but he brings in Hank (Lucus), the gambling-addict/fly-by-night guy who's also sleeping with Phil's ex; his nephew Jeff (Sexton III); and former law student and smart guy Mike (Gevedon), and they hop to it.

It becomes very clear very early on that this is going to go badly, it's just a question of how. The relationships and conflicts of the crew are pretty well-established: Phil hates Hank for obvious reasons. No one really trusts Jeff, who's not only kind of a doofus but also afraid of the dark. Mike finds an old tape player and becomes obsessed with listening to therapy sessions of one Mary Hobbes, a girl who had multiple personalities in the old Sybil style. Mike also explains the Satanic Ritual Abuse hoax to the others and mentions that "repressed memory" therapy was a big deal here, as was lobotomizing patients. Gordon, meanwhile, is slipping - he's clearly living in his van and not talking to his wife, he's suffering from sleep deprivation, and quietly losing his shit.

This all comes to a head when Hank goes to the place at night to grab a stash of coins and other metal objects he finds in a chink in the wall (actually the place's incinerator, though I don't think he ever figures that out) and is attacked by an unseen assailant. From the crew's perspective, he just disappears, but then Jeff sees him standing at a window a couple of days later, and everything just completely unravels.

So, spoiler warning: It turns out that Gordon snapped and killed his wife, his baby daughter, and even their dog, and his brain came up with a scenario to explain why he can't go home (he confesses to Phil that he struck his wife in a moment of anger). He kills the other members of the crew one by one; he actually lobotomized Hank (with some pretty impressive precision, given that he's both not a doctor and running on fumes). We end with him talking on a smashed cell phone, begging his wife to let him come home.

I really enjoy this movie, for a few reasons. The script is nice and tight, and the filming makes it seem like maybe this place is haunted by the spirit of Mary Hobbes (or her evil alter, Simon) or maybe something is possessing or haunting Gordon, but we don't really know until the last scenes. You couldn't ask for a better location for a haunted house story - the Danvers is huge, but since we're only dealing with a few areas we do develop some of my beloved sense and familiarity of place that's so critical for this kind of movie. The script takes its time and lets us see the crew interacting, which allows us to get to know all of them to a greater or less degree and get a sense of their relationships. Everyone kinda thinks Hank is a dick, but they need the extra hands. Everyone kinda thinks Jeff is a dumb kid, but he's Gordon's nephew and they need the extra hands. And so forth.

David Caruso is really the standout as far as actors go, which makes sense, but Mullan also does a great job at showing Gordon unraveling while keeping everything mostly under wraps. His descent into madness isn't a loud, gibbering mess, he's just obviously exhausted, and honestly any new parent can relate to that kind of sleep deprivation where the physical and mental fatigue mixes with the guilt over not loving every second of this and really grinds you down. Session 9 also doesn't have much in the way of budget, and so it compensates by letting us hear rather than see some of the worst things (Gordon's murder of his family, f'rex). 

The director did a couple of rom-coms before this, but he apparently found his happy place because he's basically been doing horror ever since. Which is good, because he seems to have a good sense of it. He directed The Machinist, which I haven't seen, but I've heard goods things about, so maybe I'll have to check it out.

My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: Medium-low

Next up: Singin' in the Rain