The GLOW 1996: Agent Johnny Blue - Chapter Six and Finale [Tricube Tales Solo] [Multi-Phase]
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| Image © Dean Spencer |
- "Previously on..." and Campaign Summary
Chapter 6 - Chapter 6, Scene 1 (Descending the Staircase)
- Chapter 6, Scene 2 (Confronting the Witch)
- Chapter 6, Scene 3 (Freeing the Wolf)
Finale - Doug's Commentary [including arc wrap up]
- Mechanical and Story Notes
- Credits
Previously, on The GLOW
Johnny Blue is changing into a werecat as the Bast Sigil rewrites his entire existence. Joining up with the werewolves Macy Maron, Barlow Hendrix, and Tad Jackson; Johnny enacts a ritual to learn what is causing the psychic threads to go awry. Here he finds new werewolves are being made in the Blue Sky Grove: the infamous place where The GLOW began. After a final confrontation with Amy Patel, Johnny and the wolves travel to the Grove where they find strange cultists and a powerful witch. She has been carving new sigils into the people she has forcibly changed into werewolves. As Macy takes control of the fledgeling wolves, the other three go deeper into the surreally liminal space of the Grove to find the witch and the cause of everything.
About The GLOW
The GLOW is an aether-noir mega-city along the American Gulf Coast which is powered by the Larmarkian Process, aka "The Harrowing". Spirits are extracted and tortured to create immense amount of energy, bringing back magic in the process. As money and technology skyrocket, the Arcane Order and Muncipal Police try to keep order in a city where humans traffic in super powers and ancient curses.
Content Warning: Smoking, Drinking, Drugs, Violence, Sex, Magic, Language, Spiritual Torture...
This post is in MULTI-PHASE style. See the about page for this blog for more details. The Image Oracles described in the post (gamemaster phases and mechanic notes, especially) are from the Arcane Agents one-sheet. They can be seen on the Tricube Image Oracles page.
Chapter Six
{{ GAMEMASTER PHASE }}
Current scene count (+X-): 1♣1 | 2♢2 | 3♡0 | 1♠0
Current plot invokes (+X-): 1K0 | 1Q1 | 0J2
The scene is Johnny, Tad, and Barlow running down the overly massive spiral staircase trying to catch up with the witch. Rather than have them show up at the bottom, I figure it could be nice to have a few moments of a more surreal sort because the deeper you go into the Blue Sky Grove, the less influence reality has over the surroundings.
Currently, Johnny has accrued 7 victories versus 3 losses. This is a pretty strong showing and sets the final confrontation coming up shortly as being 2 effort. However, a mechanic I have tested exactly ones before it something I call the "gauntlet." This is a mechanic to try and burn off some bad luck by running through a number of quick challenges equal to the number of setbacks (aka loses).
Pulling 3 cards and taking them as is we get: (1) A♢ (new person) into Joker (new event) + 3♠ → there's going to be someone (or something) new and some strange event related to it and a standard agile to overcome it. This is a guantlet not a full scene so it needs to be kind of brief. We'll do that at the end of generating these.
(2) is 4♢, Hard Agile. We'll leave details about this kind of vague and play it off as a continuation of the first.
(3) is 6♢, Standard Brawny. I think this can maybe be the witch herself and more Barlow's fight than Johnny's who will push past to try and get to the new proto-wolf who is being held at the bottom of the stairs.
That just leaves figuring out #1. Let's use the almost never used by me "Realm Features" table from Tricube Solo to generate a couple of features. Then a couple of Image Oracle rolls to figure out the person/entity witnessed. 4,4 Shrieking Winds + 6,2 Vile Stench. The IO rolls are 6,5 Temptation + 4,2 Horned Reptile. OHHH, you know what has temptation and vile winds intertwined? I got this. The previous episode was leaned more Lovecraftian but Dante and Blake were cited as an inspiration for the language in the The GLOW. The Second Circle of Hell in The Inferno is guarded by the serpentine Minos as the lovers are subjected to violent winds. Let's go.
The way we'll do it is roll once for each on 3d6 [all three will be in were-form and these are all physical rolls]. A miss will lose one ally and if all three miss then Johnny will crash down to the floor below and be at some disadvantage for the next scene.
Barlow never left his hulking werewolf form and by the time the three of us are running down the stairs after the witch, Tad and I have joined in shifting. It feels like kilometers of distance as we leap down a half dozen stairs at a time. Already, looking up, it is hard to make out the start of this staircase spiraling out a biblical-level hole in the ground. I have told myself a half-dozen times I will avoid words like "The Pit" but it Tad is not helping.
"We are running into The Pit, right? Fire and brimstone THE PIT the pit, abandon all hope ye who enter here?"
I refuse to answer him because I am not sure what we are running into (though I am impressed by the quality of education). Despite our entire Order being formed in this building, Agents are effectively verboten from knowing more than old, quaint photos of the outside. The structure feels like a giant three dimensional lattice of our own sigils. The same ancient reborn language is evident in both. I know that from the very first sigil, it is not uncommon that Agents will start to have dreams about this place. It is one of the things they leave off the brochure. If I still had any sigils I would probably be shitting myself, right now.
I wonder if Nurse ever got told any more about this place than I have. I would guess not. It is an open secret in a place where secrets are stock and trade. How have the Patels never showed up and squatter's rights? Any of the thousands of other criminals I've dealt with since taking the badge?
Ok, ok, no more questions. It is time to focus on the road ahead.
First, I can smell something pretty interesting coming from up ahead. I think my human nose would be freaking out but my cat nose is more intrigued than terrified. I find myself, well, curious about it. What is that?
"Everyone else can smell brimstone, right?," chimes in Tad the helpful helper, "Remember The Pit that we are running into..."
Tad's own education suddenly has to take backseat to my own because I can now hear something as well and I dig back to think of a reference I have not thought of since college? You try to not think much about Dante's Inferno while doing Dr. Hell's handiwork. [1].
"Tad, Barlow, hold on, a wind is about to hit us!"
Sure enough, a strong wind slams up into the three of us but I grab Tad before he slips over the edge of the outer step into the great unknown and Barlow probably wouldn't slow down if it was a tornado. Tad shouts a thanks over the loud roar of the wind and we speed up to catch up to Barlow. [2]
After only a few minutes, and probably another kilometer lower in our ever downward descent, we see the source of this wind. A giant snake is curled upon the stairs and from its mouth is pouring out the vile torrent.
"Yes, Tad, I see it," I say to cut him off as I see Barlow already leaping over it or at least trying to. The giant snake is reaching up to bite him and I saw push my cat-like legs to the limit to intervene. I leap several meters off the ground and grab Barlow by the leg. Rather than hold him back, I actually toss him forward and let myself land on the snake's back. I trust that Tad is following as the two of us are now running across a very angry serpent trying to throw us off but staying ahead. [3]
Past the snake, finally, I can finally see some sort of glow coming from down below. Between us and it, though, is a sight that bothers me. The witch has stopped and stands facing us with her silver dagger out. Barlow is several feet in front of me and I know it's pointless to shout at him to slow down so I just brace for the impact between an unstoppable force and an immovable object.
Barlow, who just plowed through dozens of cultists and handled an entire giant snake, is around three feet from the stationary witch when, with a flick of her wrist, she launches the silver dagger right into his chest.
Barlow falls into space. [4]
Ok, I changed my mind. Writing about the sight of Barlow falling I think will slow Johnny and Tad down. Johnny has spent most of this series terrified of Barlow but even though Barlow deserves being stabbed I think Johnny is very much the kind of guy who will kind of instinctively lash out to protect his partners even when they are murderous werewolves. Tad will follow Johnny.
The Gauntlet is left unresolved. It does not make the final fight harder or easier. However, before we get there we are going to confront the Witch fully.
Just one card is needed. 7♣. Hard Brawny. It is going to be a rough fist fight. The Witch is wearing her own sigils and invoking a power that Johnny cannot expect. Barlow did not. Since Tad did survive, I will put it at 2 effort and reduce that by one.
I scream Barlow's name way louder than makes any sense. Last week I would have considered the news that Barlow had been killed fighting a witch to be a cause for rejoicing. Like I cashed in my next three birthdays and two Christmases and a wedding gift all at once. Only now I feel like I had pulled Barlow into this and that made me feel guilty.
Worse, facing Macy after killing the Hendrix half of the Maron-Hendrix partnership absolutely terrifies me.
These thoughts drift in my head over the few seconds it takes me to close the distance to the now disarmed witch and I only have those few seconds to appreciate that she has been carving sigils into her own arms while waiting on us. The fact that she moved fast enough to have time to do that is a warning that I unable to appreciate because I am moving faster than I have ever moved and have a breaking distance somewhere around two football fields past where she is currently standing. She punches me in the gut hard enough that I fly over her head and slam into the wall.
My cat reflexes help me to roll with that way better than would be expected and I am already springing back off when I see Tad run neck first into her grip and come to a dead stop that would have snapped the neck of a human. [5]
While she is giving way too much thought about the pain she can inflict on my young friend I am behind her and raking claws through the flesh of both of her legs.
She drops Tad and turns towards me. This is a mistake because Tad is street and scrappy and has already recovered enough to full punch her in the back of the head. [6]
I go to grab her arms and try improvise a technique I like to call "ripping a witch's arms off" only I am too late reminded that her fresh sigils were carved with a silver blade and I feel my hands flare up in pain and then start to go numb.
As I am stepping back from this and trying to get enough distance between us, she moves in for the kill. At this point, the still forgotten-by-her Tad grabs her by the hair and lifts her up. She hisses and tries to twist out of his grip and casually flips into space where her body tumbles in the same direction Barlow's went. [7]
"Don't say it," I say, but Tad is persistent with the quips.
"Ding dong, the witch is..."
I am already running down the steps even faster. Whatever thing is happening, there is roughly 0% chance that the witch's death is going to make it better.
This is going to finally wrap it up. They are going to face the new-wolf trapped in a cage designed by the Witch to torture him and generate a constant flow of wolf blood. The heroes are going to have to get the cage open and free the poor man, potentially with risk of harm, insanity, or loss of life.
First, to establish something, let's see how Barlow is doing. We are going to pull two cards. He has two Resolve left. If he passes at least one of these two, he is alive. If passes both, he is well enough to assist with the final scene.
3♡ Standard Agile + 10♡ Hard Crafty. Ok, let's see how it goes. One success on the first so he twists in the air and pulls the knife from his chest as he falls. AND one success on the crafty! Good job, murderwolf. He is falling into impossible space and he reaches out and pulls himself back into reality with enough control that he slams like a piano dropped from an airplane but nevertheless he is a Hendrix and beings immediately to start pulling himself back together.
By the time Johnny and Tad get to the platform, Johnny will have healed the hit from the wall. However, the silver burns remain. Likewise, Tad lost his resolve by the direct hands of the witch. All three have two resolve each. At last Barlow will when he looks less like roadkill.
Did the witch survive the fall? 3♢ → no. Despite all of her reality building powers she was free falling and heavily injured. Either she fell out of reality or she hit at the same speed Barlow did which is far more lethal for mortals, which she still was.
The Final Challenge is 8♢ → Easy Crafty. 2 effort for all three.
"That might actually be the moon."
Tad was looking at me and he was going to ask so I figured I would answer. What we are looking at is, well, certain a moon and it might be the, I don't know. The base of stairs led us to flat plane of blood red sand and there, both only a few meters from us and also a few kilometers away is a cage. In it, a man is constantly undergoing transformation into a werewolf. Only some sort of mercury looking substance that is no doubt silver-containing is flowing around him like the Blob and his skin keeps burning. His blood drips off in helix streams and drifts into ritual bowls outside of the cage. Considering the bowls are overflowing blood into the sand—and I mean into all of the sand—I am guessing he has not been checked on for some time. The smell is something I will not attempt to explain. Just answer any questions you might have with, "Yes," accordingly.
And as crazy as a werewolf being forced to transform constantly while sentient silver-mercury feeds on him and his blood falls like dandelion fluff might be, it is mostly the moon that is messing with our head. Literally.
Cause this moon is FULL. Fuller than any moon could be from the surface of the earth. Illuminated on all sides at the same time, glowing from some inner light. It seems to be only around 100 meters wide and floating a few hundred meters off the sandy floor. Just like the cage, though, it is both that size and also the size of the real moon at the same time.
A full moon. Shining full force on three lycanthropes.
"Oh shit, is that Barlow?," I hear Tad ask from behind me.
Ok, four lycanthropes.
I look over to where Tad is now staring and sure enough the Big Bad Wolf is there only roughly in the geometric shape of the practical joke vomit that kids buy despite it never being funny. As I watch, an arm comes up and pushes ribs back into a chest and a head seals itself back shut. In surprisingly little time, the flat shape is already roughly back to "wolf" and pretty soon it is going to start standing up.
Note to self: I am never, ever going to fight Barlow Hendrix again.
Turning back around, though, this is a much bigger problem. This tortured man has been turned into a living sigil and his blood is pouring out to become a new soulink. The kind of aether-tech that is no doubt highly illegal but also would be studied for years by an entire coven of Order witches. And those bowls already contain enough the Order could have an entire army of werewolves by the end of the month. The entire GLOW will descend into hell if any of this gets out ever.
Further descend, I guess.
How long has he been here in whatever time this place is going through. There is a lot of blood soaked sand. But the spirit saw him just recently outside of the Grove. He could have been in this other place for just a couple of days or for centuries. I hope the witch bounced of a few walls on her way down, where ever she is.
The options seem to be
One. Find some way to save the guy.
Two. Find some way to kill the guy.
Three. Skip both and leave him to suffer forever.
Four. Contact the Order and have both him and myself become their plaything. Which is probably why they sent me to begin with. Just like in Florida. My chance to not make the same mistake. The fox-faced bastards.
I look over at Tad and nod. I have no idea why I am nodding but I kind of feel like this should inspire confidence.
I sit on the floor in a similar position as I took at the start of the ritual last night and I wonder about the names of spirits, the shape of reality, and the moon that is and is not the moon.
I think of other things. The ritual I performed with Macy. The relationship between Luca and Sofia. The relationship between Nurse and myself. Amy Patel and her mantis. Jeffrey Lamark and his Witches Three. This place and the sigils on the skins of hundreds of Agents.
Soulink. Soulburn. A place full of magic because it is full of spirits crying out in pain just like the man in the cage. Full of magic that often takes two parts. A sigilist and a witch. A psychic and an agent. A Hendrix and a Maron. Dr. Hell and his Bitches Three.
A city full of connections and relationships and so many of those relationships are really just a mirror so all blood and suffering can be seen turning into a contant neon glow children breath and exhale like breath on a winter's day.
I gesture to Tad, Barlow, and even the man in the cage who is now staring at us while he goes through his own personal Harrowing—
Thinking the words brings them into focus. That's exactly what I am seeing. A city powered on suffering meeting a species that famously can heal back wounds after feeling the pain of them.
She has turned this man into a power source strong enough to suffer forever as long as the moon burns over his head—I gesture to them all to take a seat in the sand. This whole place here because he is dying forever. But what if he stopped suffering for just long enough that the battery collapsed?
I reach out with my mind and try to find his. I was a class three psychic. Specialized in lies. Not all lies are bad. The lies I made Shane Ratthys's mind tell him saved countless tortured lives. Tad no doubt tells his siblings that it will be ok. Luca no doubt tells Sofia he forgives her. I use a fake name because it sounds cool and inspires confidence. Neon once told me that Hawking did not suffer much in the aftermath that terrible Florida trip. My mom told me she never blamed me for what happened all those years ago. Lies are complicated things.
I can tell the Bast Sigil is almost gone. Better said, Johnny Blue is almost gone. The Bast Sigil is almost fully in control. Still, a little of that old Sofia and Luca magic is on me. Demontongue. The master of lies. One last time.
Touching that man's spirit, I try and tell it that it's ok, all the suffering is just in his head. It goes poorly at first and instead I get all the suffering he is going through pouring back over me. It hurts. A lot. My lies finally failing me at the end.
I feel Tad's hand on my shoulder and his hope for a brighter future is there in my head. I realize then that the best lie is the truth. This city is a place where literal magic happens. Where folks like Neon can change their body to what they want to be. Where people play act as crows right next to people with aether-tech sewed into their body. Where space lasers and flying cars can be a reality. Where people walk around with golems as best friends.
Behind me, Barlow has mostly reformed and he lets out a wild howl. He promises with that howl a chance to run free. The woods. The rivers. The dark where werewolves used to rule. When the moon was their holy mother. Where folks like Macy Maron run with you and protect you for years. After The GLOW falls. After the experiment of civilization falls.
My turn, again. I think back to all the times I screwed up an assignment and thought myself clever only to get the sense that I was sent to do exactly what I did. Given free reign because magic needs that freedom or it just becomes science. The GLOW is a place where we spit in the face of rules while following different ones. No, no, right now we are giving praise to lies. Louder for the ones in the back.
Where an Agent under lock and key can tell an entire Order to go to hell and do good. To save a friend's marriage and children. To save a scared family from a monster they called up. Where an angel can stop a hedge magician. Where a redneck can get into a fight with a giant insect. Where a person like me can belong. To meet wonderful people like Nurse. And Tad. And Macy. Where you realize the biggest lie of all is why you were chosen to begin with but it does not matter because you still would have come.
Just like that I feel a fourth mind join this new strange pack. The man in the cage. The wolf in the cage. A cage that he builds with his own suffering. A hedge magician doing cantrips for kids. Just a stupid little impression where he acted like a wolf so four year olds might laugh. Only he went to far and found out he had a much bigger gift that he knew. He tells the biggest lie of all. That seeing the look of happiness on all those kids faces was worth it. That he would do it, again.
"My name is Alfonso," says that immense and yet immensely small voice there in that quiet place where there is no suffering. No pain. No fear. No Harrowing.
"Hey, man, my name is Johnny..."
The world ceases to exist. [8]
Finale: The Death of Johnny Blue
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| Image © Dean Spencer |
Midnight at the Moonheart Accessories lot is extremely busy. Vans, campers, trucks and cars are all lined up as the pack prepares to move out. Macy has taken control of the situation and is keeping people calm but dumping nearly fifty new werewolves into the mix, many deeply confused by their recent forced transformation, is bound to get a few hackles up. What's more, The Big Bad Wolf Barston is clearly walking off an injury and that is a sight to inspire a mixture of awe, fear, and also, just a little bit, that old rage that thinks: "I could take him." It will be several weeks before this settles down. If then.
"You can come with us to Bunker, Kitty," Macy says with me. I like think she is covering up sadness with this den mother routine. That or I dodged one heck of a bullet. Probably both. Always two truths in this place and both a lie. At least two.
We have been at full tilt the past few hours since getting back from the Grove. After we broke Alfonso from his Harrowing loop, the Grove snapped back into something close enough to reality that The GLOW would consider it boring. Barlow, Tad, Alfonso, and I were in the back of a slightly outsized conference/ball-room with a chintzy water curtain falling in the middle of a small stand where a four-piece band might feel crowded at whatever counted as corporate Christmas parties for Lamark and his people. The water looking brackish and already slowing down as the pumps remembered they had been shut off for decades. The staircase and that infinite descent into hell had closed. I have no doubt that it is still there. Reality is soft in the Blue Sky Grove.
Where all your dreams can come true as long as pain and suffering of someone is involved.
Either Macy called some favors or the pack sensed her and Barlow's distress because by the time we were limping back to the entrance, now only a couple of rooms and a few meters from the big central room, the pack was here and loading up the poor scarred werewolves. Macy made sure everyone was kind. As kind as werewolves can be.
Turns out she knows a place around an hour north of here, hour and half depending on the backroads. Near the weird city of Cresthill on the very edge of The GLOW's territory. Bunker, Alabama. A podunk place of trailer parks and closed factories.
"Cresthill was weird before Papa Lamark knocked up Mama Lamark. Hell, before people ever came to this land. It remains outside of the Order's influence, even if they don't admit it. Not even those freaks are going to test the patience of the Gnoles or The Kid," she crosses herself and looks shockingly scared as she says that last seemingly non-sense name, "These poor babies should have some room to learn and grow without the next Johnny Blue being sent to pester."
Unfortunately, I cannot go. I realized it there at the end. The thing the Psychics were picking up. The thing they feared enough to send me to deal with a werewolf pack that might simply just kill me. It was me. Alfonso was a bonus payment. Sofia broke the rules with the Bast Sigil and something new grew out of the place where tortured ape met the heavenly cat. I'll be in a cage soon enough or sent on even more dangerous missions.
I am going off to meet up with Jacob Maron and his wife. Out in Colorado. He is not exactly running clean but mostly sticking to the kind of unsavory where there's some legal precendence. Bounty hunting. Even without my sigils I have a lot of training with tracking people. Macy made a call for me and Jake sounded actually glad to hear I might be coming. Was looking forward to meeting the new kitty cat.
"I get these cubs settled down and acting like proper wolves, maybe I'll come visit. You tell Jacob he better give me a grandbaby. I'd like a girl. Like me but maybe a bit taller to keep Barlow in line. Whatever happened down there has given my boy airs." She then looks at me with those full-moon eyes before reaching up and pulling me down into a kiss. A long one. I don't know if I will ever see her again but I am glad I met her. All three times. Macy turns from me and the pack is starting to move out.
Tad walks over as I stand around, unsure what to do with myself just yet. He is not going north. He's going to stay and try and get his kid brother and sister on a path to success. I had hoped he might come with me. For the longest time it was mostly just me and mom. Then for over a decade I had Nurse there with me as a friend and a surrogate brother. The loss of my sigils mean I have lost my connection to him. Tad sort of filled that role this past couple of days. Only he has his own small pack that not even Macy can break up. I get it. He can help me in a particular way, though.
"Tad, can I borrow your scrying glass?" He looks at me only a moment before handing it over and trade a certain pattern of sigils I am not even supposed to know. I have no idea what time zone the other side is on but I hope he has been waiting to hear from me.
"Um, hello?"
"Hey, Eustace..."
The voice on the other side sputters. "Jani?! Holy shit, man, you can't...wait, give me a second."
I hear Eustace Delmont, aka Nurse, shuffling rapidly as he is clearly trying to make sure he has privacy. I can hear the sound of water nearby and used to get a sense of him being somewhere under the waves. Rumors have it the Psychics are kept down under the Gulf where they are always surrounded by enough soulburn to make even the factors seem dim.
"What the hell, Jani?"
I cannot help but smile. "You said my name correctly, Eu. Been a long time since I heard that. My mom, I guess."
"Are you ok? The reports from your apartment were pretty rough. Amy Patel is currently out of sight because her mantis chopped up a couple of civilians."
"At least one of them might have deserved it. But no. I mean, yeah. I am doing sort of ok but not really. I just got in a fight with a witch and got turned into a werecat and I think I lost all my magic powers. Gained new ones. Ups and downs you know."
"You will need to explain that. Look, where are you? I can call a pick up and get you checked out. I can fast track any pro..."
"Nah, man. This is it, unfortunately. I have a small window before some fox-faced Field Psychic gets a lock and that's it. I am just calling to say that I love you, I will miss you, but I have to go away for a very long time."
Eustace leaves me in silence for almost half a minute. I give him time. "I love you, too, man. You were the best damned agent ever. Even with what happened in Florida."
I laugh at that jab. Only I don't know what to say. Eustace and I have been bound for such a long time that we would share dreams. Most of our conversation was just knowing someone else was there for the hours we did not talk. Both of us are going to growing pains.
I know I need to cut the line but before I do I think of two more things, "Oh, Orange Beach Mall. A scrying glass kiosk. Sells little fake charms. I stashed the disk there. Amy Patel or her brother are bound to go and retrieve it, possibly on a rampage. I would hate for some part-time student earning minimum wage to get hurt. Can you call someone and have them get it before some kid gets a Patel thug gets there first. Assuming its not too late. And...call Luca. Tell him and Sofia they need to go. I'd say underground but it sounds like a pun. Once they fail to get me, they may go for her."
I don't ask Eustace to look into Neon's murder. Detective Hernandez strikes me as the type to bust balls until someone spills some answers.
"Yeah, I can. I... we should probably kill this call. Probably don't call again, just in case." His voice has gone a bit strange. I'm a Class 3 Psychic. Eustace is at least a Class 6 and I suspect he has been hiding his true potential. The threads must be unweaving already.
"Ciao, Nurse."
"Goodbye, Demontongue." The connection is broken.
I hand Tad back his scrying glass. "That was Nurse, huh? He good?"
"Nurse had damned well better be always good. He's a great man. How about you, you good?"
"Yeah I am, Johnny Blue."
"It's Jani Blum. I took on the other name because it sounds cooler. Well, and I am a habitual liar."
"Demontongue. I remember. Macy said you were leaving The GLOW. How will that impact this whole thing you got going on?"
To answer his question I pull my loose fitting shirt up. It was one of Barlow's spare stock. When you turn into a werewolf four meters tall, you tend to tear through a lot of clothes. He has a lot of thrift store spares. I know what Tad will see. Or, as it was, fail to see.
"The cat is gone. That mean you are already cured?"
"No. The cat is here," tapping on my chest in a kind of corny way, "It's me, now. Replaced my organs. My nerves. My eyes."
"Ah..."
Much like with Eustace, I could feel this moment coming to an end with nothing but silence to answer it and I do not really mind. In another world I could have spent years making friends with Tad. Nurse in my head giving me instructions. Of course, in that world I might have been told by the Order that I had to put Tad down or never interact with werewolves again. The threads give and the threads take away.
I lift my hand and he reaches out and fist bumps it. Then we hug for a fair amount of time.
As the last of the pack pulls out in their convoy heading up to Bunker, I turn and walk into the night.
The GLOW will return in 2025 with
The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont
DOUG'S COMMENTARY
No lore this time. I was thinking of sort of free-writing how a city so different and out of place with the rest of the world handles all the people that would be flocking to it. The idea I had was essentially... It's a self sorting problem. Lots of folks go missing. Others end up fleeing. Others get ground by magic fights, monster attacks, or the other violence. But in the end, the city population is constantly growing and yet people may or may not live down any street. As the soulburn field grows, there are starting to be more and more layers to The GLOW.
At least that's the kind of approach I was going to take. I tried both times and both times it felt better to leave it vague for right now until the mood strikes to write it proper.
There was a final "accidentally hidden" oracle test at the very end. I had already shuffled the cards and put them away when I realized I was not sure which ending I wanted. I asked if Tad would join Johnny/Jani and pulled a card from the reshuffled deck and got a 5♠ → "No, but..." I think the "but" there is a potential for the future but not for now. Tadeo Jackson was initially just a "quick" plot point but it was a lot fun showing them becoming very fast friends. It wasn't until the finale scene that I realized that part of it was the fact that Johnny had Eustace for most of his life and was suddenly without the most significant relationship he has ever had and it made him a bit vulnerable. Also, there's a part of this whole story where on the surface it is werewolves and a werecat punching witches into the abyss but underneath it is about getting past the rules of relationships. For Jani, a close relationship is essentially impossible because he is a once-in-a-century changing of the rules. Still, the universe hears his inherent loneliness and keeps giving him friends for a time. Neon Foster, Eustace Delmont, Luca Rodriguez, Tadeo Jackson. Several of those ended tragically but Jani Blum is the kind that guy you feel like you can trust even though he specializes in tricks and lies. He, at least, is rarely to blame.
I knew from roughly the second post that there would be a werewolf wrapped in silver near the finale. This series has been partially is an exercise of finding Dean Spencer stock art that vibes well and then finding a way to explain how that specific stock art makes sense in this game world. The Finale is actually a rare exception even though some of the hazy soulburn/GLOW aspects used that image as a reference.
Knowing the big beats would be connected somehow to images that I had mostly already pre-picked across two three waves as I let ideas flow over me, I still gave myself a good amount of freedom. As is my style, I threw out some big concepts and let them drift down in bits and pieces without worrying too much if they truly stuck together or made a lot of sense at the end. It was not until I got the final part of Chapter 6 though that all the threads started snapping together in my mind and much in the same way the "serpent" + "wind" made me realize that The Blue Sky Grove was a gateway into a symbolic Inferno I suddenly realized that the three very important themes—Harrowing as a source of power, Jani as an agent of false truths, and werewolves as being who can suffer a lot more than most people—actually made a lot of sense when combined. Considering how much stuff was just bouncing words off dice and cards, it worked together shockingly well. Alfonso was trapped by his own pain and his own pain was powering his cage. Jani's one specific capability there was not to be fast or strong but to tell one final lie in a city where everyone is condemned just by breathing the air: "It will be ok." Except, as the four men around—and in—the cage attest. Sometimes folks manage to find ways to process a lot of griefs. Little and big lies but sometimes those are also the truth.
I wrote that third part of Chapter 6 in essentially one uninterrupted burst and I am really happy with it. Besides the practical effect of stopping the witch's plan, it was a nice way for myself as a player/writer to take a moment and think about all the things I had been juggling.
I have no idea what happened in Florida. It was big. It was brutal. It now involves someone named Hawkings and some notion of a family summoning something. It was a complete failure. It was just fun to keep hinting at it. I like to think that the "failure" was that Jani did the right thing but violated orders, hence the one call back. Maybe one day we'll have a prequel and find out. Time will tell.
Another quickly tossed out detail that reshaped most things is the bit about a cat + outline becoming a cat tattoo which was sort of just going to be "he has some cat like reflexes" but as I was writing up the bit about Luca and Sofia I typed the words "Bast Sigil" and said it was forbidden tech. Once Jani started failing rolls right after that, it was fun to chalk up the failures to the changes he was undergoing. The fact that the rest of the oracles always came back to it altering who he was only added to my joy.
The name "Jani Blum" by the way was surfacing in the back of my head around the second part but I just kept it in my pocket until the end where code names are no longer of any importance. I have no idea if it makes real world sense but The GLOW is a world where reality is collapsing so I am not that bothered if it does not.
I could probably type stuff about this series for a while but I think I will just limit myself to three more things arbitrarily. First, in the Gareth Hendrix we have an nearly fundamentally different version of Macy and Barlow who are beaten by life but also a bit more evil in their actions. I do not really have a way to solve those contradictions. Here, Barlow fights a different version of Lucretia Castillo. That makes Mrs. Lucy 2-and-0.
Second, as is promised in the "next time" tag, the series will return in a month or two with 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont and I have a couple of set-pieces I am already thinking about. As it was becoming clear that the end of Johnny Blue's 1996 arc was going to take a turn and not run for four or five more posts to have time to do everything, I drifted around the idea of having other character storylines. 1993 Hacker Neon Foster or 1998 Detective Aurora Hernandez. Etc. Then I realized that some of the plotlines I thought might show up for Jani could be handled by a very unlikely second character: the cloistered psychic Eustace "Nurse" Delmont who, despite having no real physical Traits at all—Eustace comes from the Maidenstead Mysteries one-sheet that has Aware, Brainy, and Charming instead of Agile, Brawny, and Crafty; essentially it has Crafty split into three but neither of the others—could be subjected to a lot of high octane set pieces that might make Jani sweat. That being said, I kind of need to finish off the Alabama Weird timeline version of Eustace first since one of the points of The GLOW is to be a surreal variation on things that exist there.
Third and final, if you had asked me where this was going back in Chapter One, I was pretty sure I was building up to a chapter or two with the werewolves and then several with Agent Johnny Blue getting entangled with the Patels and probably having some sort of violent love affair with Amy Patel while also being betrayed. I thought a lot about how cool it might be to have a finale with the Rambler crashing down as speedy Johnny Blue has to leap from windows or something. Early on, the Patels were a stronger image in my head than Jani was. This is why I spent a couple of scenes trying to come up with a clever way to hide the disk and set up a few various NPCs that might get caught up in the crossfire. Imagine an alternate version of the story where Johnny avenges Neon's death while protecting some kiosk worker from a killer mantis. Only, the very next scene introduced the Bast Sigil and new concepts were starting to turn in my head.
Which is why I play solo rpgs the way I do. I have no regrets. I get to tell many stories about these people and at the end, one of those stories turns out to be "the truth." At least, the very best lie.
MUSICAL SHOUT OUT: Rather than the standard techno/cyber-synth music I have tended to listen to while playing these sessions, this final episode of Johnny Blue's arc was accompanied by Ringo Shiina's astounding "best of" collection: "The Apple of Universal Gravity." Years ago, maybe close to 15 or 20, Ringo was very regular rotation on my playlist. Back when it was either hard—expensive, time consuming, and requiring some luck—or pretty easy—torrents, IRC, and some more luck—to get Japanese rock and pop CDs/music, I picked up some sort of Japanese pop/rock sampler torrent that was a bunch of lo-res music videos largely by artists I did not know (and now have mostly forgotten). The only other one I remember besides Ringo's Koko De Kiss Shite was by EE Jump and that takes me back.
As is the way of things, I eventually stopped listening to Ringo except every once in a while and then it just faded. However, this past week I got reminded about her music and quickly remembered how deeply good it is. I picked up "The Apple" because it was the easiest to snag on the iTunes store and played it several times. It was still playing when I was playing this, and that kind of mixture of emotions and sounds and beats infused into the text in a way I really like. If you want a glimpse of the soundtrack as Jani, Tad, and Barlow are leaping over a giant serpent of temptation, just imagine this one.
MECHANICAL AND STORY NOTES
- Standard Crafty to see if Johnny can remember the Inferno and the Second Circle. He gets a success so we will decrease it to Easy Agile.
- One success. Failures reduced by one.
- Another success, failure again reduced by one.
- No successes. Barlow gets stabbed. We'll find out what actually happened to him later.
- No successes. This witch is whipping them all. They both lose a point of resolve. They are lyncanthropes so would normally heal but right now I am going to say that the witch qualifies as a mystical event.
- Finally, Johnny gets double successes against the witch. It's a pretty solid hit. Tad gets one.
- Johnny again misses any successes. Makes sense that he is not yet respecting his silver sensitivity. Tad finishes her off, though.
- Johnny at first gets no successes and loses one of his remaining resolve. Then Tad gets two. Barlow gets two. And Johnny gets two. After that first setback it is basically successes with style all the way down. Johnny completes his last great psychic lie and all four embrace a moment where they can feel no pain nor suffering. This ends the Harrowing of Alfonso and the magic battery that is warping the Blue Sky Grove out of alignment.
CREDITS
The system is Tricube Tales and Tricube Solo by Richard Woolcock and Zadmar Games. The base system has been extended with my own "extended framework" which a new version is being play-tested during this so I'll provide an updated link as that works out (probably after this playthrough wraps).
Some artwork © Dean Spencer, used with permission. All rights reserved.
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