The GLOW 1996: Agent Johnny Blue - Chapters Four and Five [Tricube Tales Solo] [Multi-Phase]
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| © Dean Spencer. |
Previously, on The GLOW
Special Agent Johnny Blue has been tasked with making contact with a pack of dangerous werewolves with which he has history (albeit, not all positive). In order to improve his chances of surviving the encounter, he has allowed an experimental and powerful sigil to be grafted to his body. Using its powers, channeling the "spirit of Bast," he has recently helped a captured werewolf—Tad Jackson—escape the Municipal City Police (MUNI) while being held for the crime of hedge magic. While confronting and trying to make peace with Marcella Maron and her partner Barlow Hendrix, Barlow decided to test out Johnny's new body and powers. Johnny slammed into the wall and passed out from the hit. Now, recuperating, he has to figure out the rest of his task. Johnny still has not figured out how to handle a situation involving carrying out a plot by the Patel crime family or how to deal with being wanted in connection with the murder of his old friend Neon Foster.
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.
<< LORE PHASE >>
On the Formation of the Arcane Order and the Rise of Aether-Tech
As the 1960s progressed and outposts of The GLOW were cropping up all over the Gulf Coast (eventually being absorbed into the Gulf-Lamark Ordinance officially) the City had an unusual problem. A number of mayors and council members got into fights about decisions where one area might differ from another in the increasingly sprawling mega-city with its entire new set of rules and lifestyles. The de facto leaders—Dr. Jeffrey "Hell" Lamark and his Witches Tree—were feared more than they were respected. Three roughly humanoid figures in black cowls did not inspire confidence despite their immense demonstrations of power.
Thus, the Arcane Order was created.
The initial seeds of the Order were nine new members to join The Witches and Lamark. Each of these nine were more personable, taking control of one aspect of the mega-city's daily tasks: infrastructure, technology, education, and so forth. All told, this Coven of Thirteen was the new face of The GLOW. Lamark was making fewer public appearances. Spending more time at his Blue Sky Grove.
Over the next decade, members of the Order enlisted helpers, secretaries, assistants. People with magical and psychic capabilities were brought in.
Eventually, the Arcane Order became the title of not just nine adepts carrying out the order of Lamark and the Witches but the entire structure to guide The GLOW to a new future.
In 1971, two things occurred. First, the Witches Three—if it really was just three people and not a whole host of folks under the cowls—ceased to make any public appearances. According to reports, they had vacated the Blue Sky Grove and gone elsewhere. Lamark ceased to appear around this same time. Second, the Chair of Technology at the Order announced a breakthrough in aether-tech. Using the latent energy created by soulburn, a new form of communication was created where runes and information could be sent through psychic wavelengths and be stored into the literal clouds of energy building up in The GLOW.
By the 1980s, roughly 70% of households had scrying glasses and were accessing information through the aether. The aether-tech had grown to include sound, video, and even programs on par with and outpacing more traditional computer infrastructure. Giving rise to a new type of issue: mythic virus code and other aether-hacks.
Chapter Four
{{ GAMEMASTER PHASE }}
Current scene count (+X-): 0♣1 | 1♢2 | 1♡0 | 1♠0
Current plot invokes (+X-): 0K0 | 1Q1 | 0J1
How long does it take Johnny to recover back up to full Resolve (and I'll be nice and give him back 1 Karma)? {couple of hours | several hours | over half a day | a day or two | most of a week | over a week} → several hours. He heals pretty fast but we are looking at the next night (funnily, only about 24 hours since he was handed the mini-disk).
How much as the Bast Sigil rewritten Johnny? K♣ → A lot. Like, as much as it can, essentially. It is done cooking and it has cooked a lot.
Is Johnny back in human form? 10♠ → Yes, but... something about him is a clear sign. I like it being the eyes. His blue eyes have cat-like slit irises in them. It won't stick out that much in a place like The GLOW but it is a definite change.
Now, on the scene. 4♣ (a task based scene of fairly low stakes) + 2♣ (involving a task, double ♣ meaning the task is very core of the scene) + 6♡ (A standard brawny challenge). The task is the whole scene. Johnny's part will involve Brawn over his other abilities so it will a pretty physical demand on him.
The ritual that has been building up will be (Image Oracle 3,2 Cut Palm + 2,6 Cowl + 1,5 Cat) something involving bloodletting. The cowl makes me think of a spirit but in the sense of the spirit will be inside, wearing someone like a cowl. Cat is pretty much Johnny at this point. Blood must flow and Johnny will be the vessel. Time for a certain noir standard. Apologies in advance.
[[ PLAYER PHASE ]]
I wake up and see Tad on a chair nearby. Deja vu to Luca and Sofe watching over me.
"Shit, man, I thought you were black."
I sit up and brace for some sort of post-concussion headache but there is none there. I look outside and realize on some instinctive level that it has to be dark out but I can see things relatively clearly, just tinged more towards blues and grays. My arms are human again so I assume the rest of me is as well. At least, mostly human. It takes me a couple of seconds to clock to what's wrong. My arms are devoid of all the sigils that I spent months having installed. This pulls me out of bed as I tap around my chest and behind my left ear. Nothing.
"They, uh, moved." Tad is pointing at something behind me and I realized he is pointing to my back. A mirror in an open closet in the room gives me a glance. I cross over to get a better one. My clothes have been removed by someone (Tad or Macy? Flip a coin, but I can imagine Barlow finding it funny). First, I see my body is...um, enhanced.
I always lean to a runner's build but now it is tauter. Tighter. Second, I can see no sigils at all on my front nor any sign that there ever was any. No scars. No burns. Only that demon tongue brand on my hip. Sporting cat's eyes. My heart is beating hard and I can feel the panic fight with another emotion. A sense of freedom.
Going with Tad's directions I turn enough so I can see my own back, a lot easier now than it once was to twist my whole body, and there it is. The Bast Sigil. Only, it's not.
You take a thousand grade school kids and task them with drawing a cat and you will get at least a few hundred variations of roughly the same thing and not a one would look like this. Except, if you were to stack all those kids' drawings on top of each other and then shine a bright light through all the watercolor-stained pages you might get a glimpse of it. A fraction.
I don't like using words like eldritch or primal or non-Euclidean lightly—not in a place like The GLOW—but those words come immediately to mind. This is the word "cat" spoken in a language before humans were around to witness it. A Platonic Ideal.
No longer on the back of my neck, it has slide down my spine and covers most of my whole back. And it has, apparently, eaten all my other sigils and is currently digesting them.
Looking back at the mirror, my irises are bluer and my pupils are no longer human. I search around in my brain to see if I can tweak those but my brain thinks these are my eyes now. Which I guess means they are. Explains why I can see in the dark.
"How long was I out?"
"Hours. It's 9pm, now."
"Just hours? After being hit by Barlow? I've seen him punch another werewolf's head off with less a punch than that."
I wonder if I should worry about Amy Patel or giant mantis. I wonder if I should worry about Detective Hernandez and her crusade to bust the Order wide open. Neither inspire even a flicker of worry to match my awe and fear at what is going with my own body.
"I reckon I got you to thank for helping to heal me back up?"
"Nope, wasn't me. It was all..," he gestures at me and my mono-sigil with a broad circular motion to finish the sentence. "You hit the ground hard enough the way I hear it there were brains leaking. By the time some of the old timers got you picked up and drug you to this old trailer and came and got me, your skull was back together. In minutes, you patched yourself up and then the cat kind of fell off you and there your pale ass was."
"Where are my clothes?" I ask, looking around what I now realize is a classic styled old mobile home. Memory serves, there were a few of these hidden behind the factory. A place for pack members to crash if they need to hide out.
"Mrs. Macy removed them herself. She wanted to...see."
I stare at Tad for an uncomfortable few beats and he at least as the grace to be embarrassed on my behalf. "Well, can I have them back, now?"
"She said come as you are. Would just slow down the ritual if you had to get dressed to get undressed. She's getting ready. Knew you'd be up, soon." Tad had the graciousness to cough and look embarrassed. I am starting to like the kid.
No weapon. No clothes. No sigils. No idea how my body works. I decide to just embrace it all and walk on out the front door and cross the backlot to where Tad is leading me. At least I have the comfort of knowing my Bast-enhanced body is one of the hottest things in the entire GLOW right now.
We are in a part of the factory the machines hide from the main workroom. Macy is there in ritual robes. A few other of her acolytes sit around and tend to a fire composed of a fairly complex mixture of oils and hardwoods in a run of the mill metal barrel you might fish out of the Gulf. Various markings and floral decorations mark the floor. A then futon style mat is near the fire. Barlow is absent but I figure him and the other bruisers are patrolling the parameter. Anyone who tries to get in tonight will have a really bad time.
Tad leaves us at a nod from Macy who then turns and tells me to sit on the mat. I oblige. Macy and the others are moving at half speed to start. Giving me a chance to object. I realize I do not want to object.
She is smoking a large cigar that looks comical in her small hands. The smell is tobacco, marijuana, and other scents I cannot place. I do not know if it is the contents of her cigar or my new nose taking some getting used to. She shouts some words in a language I do not know and her acolytes respond. I stay quiet, watching.
Somewhat unexpectedly, she shrugs of her robes and stands as nude as myself. Chronologically, Ms. Macy is around her late forties or early fifties. Her silver hair she's had since childhood—it is the Maron mark—and her matronly bearing makes it hard to know her age just looking her, even more confused by her natural werewolf healing factor staving off age. A very attractively dark and fit body with experience behind it as well as something else older, more mysterious. Mother, maiden, and crone all in one person.
She stands in front of me, looking down, puffing that ritual cigar. I realize this is where I come in. Ah, what a choice of words. I look up at her and nod. Then nod again as she arches her eyebrows. Finally a nod a third time to let her know I am aware and accept. I am a sucker for the dangerous ones. It's a trope in my line of work.
The nude Marcella Maron straddles me on the floor and wraps one arm around me. Taking a deep inhale of her strong cigar she shoves her lips against mine and forces enough smoke into my lungs that a normal human would require hospitalization. Even with my new healing factor, it burns. My body already shrugging off the effects of the drugs before I feel them and that realization barely distracts from the woman pressed hard against me. The very, very nice and pretty woman. I call out silently to Bast and any other gods for sale to give me advice for how to proceed and not a damned one answers so I am going to be learning this dance in real time.
Macy smiles at my body's response to hers. I can't help but notice my pale arms are covered in black fur and my hands are already claws. It makes me ask a question I refuse to look down and verify.
Twice more she inhales and exhales large lungfuls of smoke into me. I can tell now. It's not just smoke. It's something else. She has brought forth a spirit, one she is sharing me with through shared air.
Behind her, one of the male acolytes cuts the throat of the chicken and pours the blood into a bowl holding wine and flower petals. He brings it over and Macy drinks from it before taking another mouthful and pushing into my mouth. I feel my teeth sharpen and my tongue turn rough. I hear a noise in my throat and think that I'm purring like a housecat before I realize it is a growl. This seems to satisfy everyone because the rest of the bowl is poured over both of us.
As the chicken, the rest of the wine, and the rest of the flowers are tossed into the fire, Macy lets her wolf teeth out and bites down hard into my neck. Barely in control of my own body, someone else piloting, I rake cat's claws down her back. Both of us are bleeding freely into the mat. She pushes me back until I am looking up at her and finishes climbing on top me and the ritual gets very serious indeed.
An hour later, the two of us have been left alone with the embers of the fire. Exhausted, we are back in our human forms. She is stroking my chest as I hold her. Our wounds are healing but the mystical nature of them is resisting somewhat so my neck still hurts and her back has obvious marks.
"Don't get the wrong idea, Kitten," she says, "I still love my Sammy even if he left me in the GLOW. It was nice, though. You did good." [1]
I have no idea who Sammy is but Jake must have a father somewhere out there. Maybe him. I had half assumed her and Barlow were an item but I no longer think that. Two families running together but never intertwining.
Whatever spirit had wrapped us up inside and led us through ritual lovemaking is gone so Macy is back to motherly now. Looks twice my age and concerned. I get some of that concern. Instead of sweet nothings I shouted out strange phrases in language I have never heard, a kind of wolf growl Patois. The terrifying bit is while doing this, in the middle of the ritual, I got an image in my head of a plain white building surrounded by man-made mountains. Well, witch-made.
I knew the place. Every Agent does. Lot of us in the GLOW has dreamed of this place in the middle of our nightmares, gotten visions of it as we breathe in the soulburn we wrap our lives within.
It was the Blue Sky Grove. It was the birthplace of the Harrowing and the one-time home to Dr. Hell and his Witches Three.
{{ GAMEMASTER PHASE }}
Current scene count (+X-): 0♣1 | 1♢2 | 2♡0 | 1♠0
Current plot invokes (+X-): 0K0 | 1Q1 | 0J1
Since the Blue Sky Grove was on the original seed images, I knew we would build towards it and the ritual scene feels like a good point. I have a vague notion of what is inside (and know that it ultimately involves a sorcerous experiment to create new werewolves that is involving innocent bystanders) but specifics can hold off until at least the next chapter.
For this scene, we have 8♡ (a scene around talking/discussion) + 5♢ (a scene that needs an object) + Joker (6, New Event) + 8♣ (a bit of skill/action element to the shift) into J♠ (something bad for the arrest plotline) + 6♣ (Standard Brawny Challenge). What's the event? Urban Events 5,5 Tech/Magic Terror (oooo) + 6,1 Theft/Mugging. A couple of Image Oracles 5,1 Minions + 4,2 Horned Reptile. Does this involve the Mall Kiosk worker in any way? 4♠ → No (and fairly definitely so), but it might involve something with the disk. {Amy | Raj} → Amy Patel. The Magic Terror is therefore her Mantis (the horned reptile might just be a "killer beast" in this case). She has found Johnny's apartment after he failed to do whatever she expected him to do with the disk. She and some minions are currently ransacking his apartment. Something in the apartment though, is necessary for Johnny to get into the Blue Sky Grove.
He will be walking back into a trap but this time around he is something quite different than she expects. The fight with the mantis will take {1 | 2 | 3} → 3 effort.
It is a good time to ask, though. What is she wanting from the disk? Complex Question x2 6,2 Technology + 2,6 Control. Image Oracle x2 2,3 Chicken (again, something about chicken on the disk...ah, egg) 1,6 CCTV Camera. This feels cheaty but this is the best time to find this out... How "good" is Amy Patel's intentions? Q♡ → Quite good, and... she is willing to follow through with them even making an enemy of her own family. She wants to go legit in business and break away from the crime family aspect especially since the family is starting to dabble in some dark hedge magic. She is the kind of businesswoman to shut down a loan when it hurts the most but she wants to play by contract law, not with demonic forces. She has woven a couple of mechanisms into the disk: one to give control to an outside force to the Rambler (which can be dropped like an "egg") and open up her family business to outside surveillance.
She wants control of the company by betraying Raj and the Doctor.
However, when Johnny failed to plug the disk into Agency computers, and therefore failed to trigger the loss of the family's hold on the Rambler, she has now assumed that he has betrayed her and is working for someone. Her brother or father. The subsequent destruction of Johnny's apartment will be more evidence for Hernandez that Johnny is hiding something.
[[ Player ]]
Macy took me back to the trailer—both of us still nude—and demonstrated a few different sorts of wrong ideas I could get be getting with surprising creativity. I held up admirably but I had been awake for something like three straight days and at some point I went out. I woke up in the light of a new day. My clothes were on the floor by the bed and Macy was gone. I made it about as far as the front door before I realized I was absolutely starving and I could smell food.
Barlow, Macy, Tad, and a few others were tucking in around a table and not saying I word I sat down near Tad and tore into a few plates of biscuits and fried chicken. My new body apparently requires a lot more calories than my old.
I tried my best to avoid eye contact with Macy and Barlow's side of the table but the one time I did she smiled and made a kind of cat's paw gesture back at me and Barlow caught this and laughed so hard he nearly choked. After this, I did not make eye contact with anyone else. Not even Tad whom I could tell had questions and was wanting to get my attention. [2]
Everyone stuffed with enough food to kill a few dozen average Americans, a few of us reconvened back in the office. A tarp covering the hole my body had punched through the day before. We had a long discussion about the results of the ritual. I said nothing. It was time for the cat to hang out on the windowsill and listen.
Macy and Barlow are natural matriarchs and patriarchs among werewolves, coming from the kind of families that will always lead a pack. In fact, the Maron and Hendrix blood had been spiritually entwined for generations and grew more powerful in conjunction. This gave them a general mystic connection to the very concept of werewolf in a region. Tapped into a primal wave of lycanthropic energy.
Over the past month or so, the two had been picking up a sense of something happening. A number of new 'wolves nearby. Something reshaping some definitions.
Until the ritual, they could not get more specific than that. Apparently the strange speech I was screaming last night was another chunk of the story. Someone in The GLOW, a hedge magician, had a breakthrough. The Curse was rediscovered. He ended up being his own victim. The new fledgling werewolf wandered randomly until he met up with someone else. A woman. A very dangerous woman the spirit mostly sensed as a yellow flame
This yellow flame realized what his breakthrough meant. Led him to a place the spirit could, but did not want to follow: The Blue Sky Grove. Every few days the pair goes out and finds someone new to bring back. A least a dozen victims have been brought back to the Grove. Likely a fair more.
Up until the 70s, the Grove was the core of The GLOW. Dr. Hell and his Witches ran the city from within. Then, the United States government pulled one last stupid attempt to regain control of all the money and resources The GLOW was amassing. They sent multiple special forces teams, all with deep MK Ultra training blended with something a lot more mystical to prep their minds, under the guise of transport personnel on oil tankers. The teams launched a heavy assault of mid-range rockets at Dauphin Island and the Grove in an attempt to cut off the dragon's head. Only, all at once as if they had been there the whole time, a ring of mountains were there around Dauphin Island and the attack bounced off the dense stone. Literally the whole time, by the way. Geologists later confirmed that all signs show those mountains being roughly as the American continent despite being newborns.
Before the smoke finished clearing, the tankers left the Gulf and headed back up to New England ports. No communication came from the ships. When they docked, investigative crews poured on board and found not a single body nor living person. Instead, the tankers were filled to the brim with human blood. After this, no further attacks were ever held on The GLOW and several nations passed laws making it against their constitutions to even attempt such an action. A couple of laws formally recognize to never mention The GLOW again. Verboten.
The Witches were never seen again and the Arcane Order took over. Lamark faded a few months later. Some say he is dead. He is officially dead. I am officially not a cat. This place if full of lies.
There is no official rule about entering the Grove. There are no official barriers. Just those mountains. The sense deep in everyone's soul that no good could ever come from approaching.
Of course, the Grove is exactly where I have to go next. With one stop on the way.
In my apartment I have a whistle. Does not look like much. Just a tin child's toy looking thing on an old shoe string. Only, the whistle is actually attuned to the Blue Sky Grove. It would be cataloged as a Class 5 relic and deeply illegal to keep had I ever registered it.
Where I got was a street thief named Tony MacGregor. He had hit up one Jules Mintzer's house on a cold winter night in 1989. Mintzer had worked at the Grove but MacGregor did not know this. Tony was just hungry and wanted something he could sell. I doubt even meant to kill Mintzer but sometimes dumbasses do dumb shit. Most of the items got sold so fast that MUNI had leads. I got to Tony first because he did another dumb thing. He found that whistle and listened to its tricksy, evil inner voice suggesting he blow on it far away from the deep fields of the Grove.
Nurse later found out that such whistles and flutes and bells are common at the Grove. Anti-magic notes that allow doors to open and disable security. Played outside of the Grove, though, it was like a hammer punch into the soulburn all around Tony. The backlash fried his mind and he was burning blue and pink like a lava lamp turned caught fire. I got to him right before he exploded, begging for his dad, and wrote, "Who knows?," on the official report. Only I found the whistle and that dumb voice did not work on me. I decided to keep it just in case it was ever needed. [3]
I am such a smart guy.
I head out from the factory lot and head all the way to New Orange Beach where my apartment is. Unlike Old Orange Beach—which is now a practically landlocked city park, large city mall, and gentrified commercial art factory pretending to be a hipster art destination—New Orange Beach is about fifteen kilometers south and actually gulf front property. The water glows like a fiery night sky bright enough it is actually visible in the day and a lot of people have the good sense not to swim in it. Still, it rakes in the tourist dollars and living here has the advantage of being the kind of place that will keep its collective mouth shut for the right price. I make good money at my rank.
I live on the sixteenth floor and suspect nearly nothing until the last second when I catch the elevator girl's eyes and realize she is trying to send me a warning. I very carefully walk down to my apartment, 1618, shifting into werecat form, and open the door. The smell of Amy Patel's cigarette smoke does not require a cat's nose to pick up. [4]
Thanks to this, I am already moving when the mantis blade-for-arms is swinging for my face. I pull back and tear a chunk of the synthetic chitinous exoskeleton with my claws. After this, it seems to shift ServiSynth gears to more serious mode but I am also moving more seriously and take another chunk out when it lunges again. Finally, as it decides gripping me in a love hold and ripping my head off is a good idea I leap out of its reach and come down with my clawed feet to drive those bladed arms deep enough into my floor that it struggles to get them free. [5]
"You are full of surprises," says Amy Patel as she tries to hide her emotions—my cat brain struggles to decide if it is fear, excitement, or anger—and pretends to puff leisurely upon her cigarette. No holder this time. I see a few butts smoldering in my carpet. Drawers and shelves have been ransacked. "Was it my brother or my father that tipped you off?"
I fall back into my regular form (still can't get my eyes to shift back, Macy said a lot of lycanthropes have a mark and I guess that's mine). "What in Dr. Hell's sweet, blasphemous name are you talking about?"
"The disk. You were supposed to turn it into your spook buddies so they could plug it in. That never happened, so I assumed you have been paid off."
I figure out fast enough that she knew I was an Agent and I fill in the rest of the blanks easy enough. By avoiding giving it to the Order I actually scuffled some plans she had been brewing.
I laugh for a few seconds. Even when a couple of women in general "Patel Crime Family Retainer" outfits come out of the back where they have no doubt been destroying my bedroom. Guns in holsters because they have been using both hands to break open my stuff.
"The disk is stashed in a mall kiosk. Well, was. I haven't been able to double check." I give a very brief rundown of that encounter and add a few barely true flourishes about how I was trying to protect it from the Patel family, and the Order, in the bargain. It's clear she doesn't believe me so I describe the kiosk in detail. "Go and check. Be easy on the person there, though, they got caught up in it." [6]
As her bodyguards are dropping the debris of my past life and pulling out guns and getting ready to open negotiations, and I'm wondering how I can get the whistle, the old Johnny Blue luck comes a'knocking.
One of my neighbors whom I have said not one word to in my entire time here bursts through my door and opens fire. I guess fighting a giant mantis while in cat form was the kind of thing that might get some folks attention. The GLOW or not, this is still Lower Alabama and people love their guns.
Unfortunately for the three women in the room with me (I am sure the mantis can take care of itself and who cares if it cannot), the neighbor opens fire with a handgun with the general goal of taking out any and every target in the room. You can hear the spittle and righteous anger in his heavy breathing.
I am in cat form again and grabbing ahold of Amy Patel faster than her brain can catch up—the bullets hitting me in the back but my body already working to shrug off the un-silvered damage—and have cleared the distance to her bodyguards and toss their employer into their arms hard enough that all three fly backwards into my bedroom. Turning around I don't so much run and blink from there to the neighbor as more bullets hit me in the chest and I shove him through the door and force break in the shooting. Finally, I lift up the mantis's arms to free it from its entrapment and run once more to my spice cabinet as the neighbor is getting up and realizing a highly protective familiar is now free to act.
All the way back, behind all the real spices, is a 1979 can of pumpkin spice. From it, I pull out the whistle as a few neighbors realize the sound of gunshots and start screaming and the vigilante neighbor starts shouting and running for his own life. One final leap later, I am out my own window and hoping my cat-body is good at landing a sixteen-story fall. Which it is. [7]
As the sirens approach, I am already leaving the scene and getting ready to head down to the Grove.
Nurse is going to have a whole stack of injunctions to file for this one. Assuming I ever get a chance to talk to him, again.
Chapter Five
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| © Dean Spencer |
{{ GAMEMASTER PHASE }}
Current scene count (+X-): 1♣1 | 1♢2 | 2♡0 | 1♠0
Current plot invokes (+X-): 0K0 | 1Q1 | 0J2
For simplicity sake, we are considering Amy Patel's storyline practically finished for this arc. Johnny told her mostly the truth and he is not likely to either activate the disk or to turn it over. I have plans for that but it will not be right now. For now, future Q cards will be assigned good or bad to the primary plot. In a similar fashion, the arrest plotline is likely at a place where solving Neon's murder or trying to prove any sort of innocence is well out. Jacks will also go towards main plot for the time being. We are in the final few scenes.
To find the current status of the two closed plotlines, we'll pull cards. Amy Patel's plotline had equal good/bad shifts. 1 card to rule them all. The Arrest/Neon plotline had 2 bad shifts so we'll pull two and take the lowest.
- Amy Patel: 8♠ → Slightly more positive than negative (just slightly) but Amy thinks Johnny has played her in some way. He did just save her life (and her bodyguards' lives) but she is going to rethink her strategy, for at least a moment, regarding the disk.
- Arrest/Neon: 3♣ → Very bad. Detective Hernandez is going to be trying to convince people that Johnny is a criminal force that is killing associates and the attack on his apartment is just proof.
Did Amy Patel get out of the apartment before MUNI arrived? K♠ → She complete cleared out but the mantis attack and the expensive cigarette butts she left at the scene are both a trail that could lead back to her. Will Amy Patel try and recover the disk? J♡ → Yes, and she will actually take Johnny's advice about "going easy on the kid". The timing of that will be a bit put-off, though. She won't go there right away but will wait to have time to compose herself and make sure she is not being tracked by MUNI.
On to the current scene. Johnny, Tad, Macy, and Barlow are going to go to the Blue Sky Grove. What will be required to get inside?
Q♠ (an extended challenge [2 effort] involving conflict + 4♡ (a scene involving relationships, teamwork) + 2♡ (an easy Agile Challenge). The scene will require the group to team up and get past some sort of guards or trap but will not be super challenging. There are four characters, though, so it will take a combined eight effort.
Using the Location Tag table, we get 3,6 Infested Overrun + 6,3 Underwhelming → The building from the outside is covered in vines and bramble and gravel litter the yard. Rats and raccoons and other native wildlife live in bushes and the overgrown yard. Overall it looks like a dinky bit of architecture. Just a small bunker that might be standing in for a kind of too-mod-for-mod 60s/70s-style office block [minus any obvious windows] that has been left to rot for 20- to 30-years (I avoided filling it full of strange mutant creatures and such, but it was tempted). Image Oracle 4,5 Magic Portal + 6,1 Modern City. The exception to this vibe is the front door has been replaced and covered in wards and the lights around the door have been renovated.
There are a half dozen guards carrying guns between the gates and the front door. Person Tag 2,6 Creepy/Weird + 5,3 Pious/Righteous → They are strangely dressed. Not so much as guards but as clerics. Matching the art that partially inspired this chapter, they are dressed in yellow robes with a fairly "tentacles" motif.
[[ PLAYER PHASE ]]
I pull the others back. "Hmm," I say by way of explanation.
Tad, the only other one besides myself letting any nervousness show here, asks, "What do you mean, 'hmmm'?"
"Guards. Half dozen. Maybe more. Very much so not Arcane Order or Dr. Hell's cult unless they had a sudden change in motif."
Barlow looks unconcerned by any of this. "So we smash them and bash them and toss them aside? What's the deal?"
"The guns they are carrying don't really bother me. We can all take a bullet. Only..."
"Only if this building is where the fake-wolf was brought, these people are probably carrying silver." Ms. Macy finishes my thought which, well, it feels weird to call her 'Ms.' anything.
"Right. And I get a weird vibe just staring at them. They move funny."
"Sigils? Aether-work?," Tad asks.
"No, just...," I look around at the others while fishing for words which very nearly brings the right words to the surface but they sink back into the depths. "...weird."
"Ok," says Barlow, "Scaredy cat is scared. I'm going to go kill some things."
No way am I going to place any hands on Barlow to slow him down. Instead, I am doing the mental math of how much I can stay behind him in this fight. Only, cat claws and cat face coming out, my new body has other ideas...
I run fast past the mountain of a werewolf growing up beside me and hit the first guard fast enough that he flies back and slams into another. I am already bouncing off of that hit into a crouch to keep going. The poor guy that turned to look at me gets caught by Barlow and flung up towards the roof of the Grove. He does not make it because the building is some nonspecific height where it is always around a story taller than you think, but the sound of his body slamming into the wall has to be audible for miles. On my other side, Macy is in her wolf form as a silver killer—only about a couple of feet taller than my cat form but somehow almost scarier—and gut punches a fourth. By which I mean she punches him in the guts and pulls out some intestines. Up close, I get another whiff of that weird.
These people have a strange aquatic quality about them. "Does anyone smell fis...?" I start to ask as the first gunfire finally hits with the guards' brains finally registering the attack. Macy, Barlow, and myself are all moving out of the way of any bullets but a cry behind makes me glance. Tad has gone down, clutching his shoulder. [8]
This angers my cat-brain enough that I hit the shooter with my feet and rake down his neck and back. His unfortunate friend that tries to round on me has half his face ripped off. Watching him bleed out, it occurs to me that this is far from the first person I have killed but the first time I have ever actually felt myself doing it instead of using long range attacks. I am a little shocked by how right it feels. I am so distracted by this that I do not witness Barlow pick up the last two standing guards at once and crush both of their skulls in his fist. Nor do I notice that Macy has been slicing the throats of the two unfortunates I knocked down first. [9]
I run over to Tad and help the werewolf up. It is funny to say a black-furred wolf looks a bit pale but he does. "This damned bullet, Johnny. Never been shot with silver before. It stings." I try to be gentle as I reach in with two claws and pluck it out.
Barlow growls behind us, not precisely unsupportively. "You'll get a nice scar out of it, kid." Barlow just so happens to be holding the last surviving guard up with claws jammed down into the man's spine. "Ok, you. We get three wishes."
The man with strangely wide eyes stares at Barlow and spits something that sounds like, "Yee-haw fu taw gun," as Barlow glares and then pulls the man's head off his shoulders.
"I guess that interview is over," coughs Tad, "You should probably work on your interrogation techniques."
Barlow ignores the jab and starts crunching on the man's skull.
Macy looks over at me with her iron wolf eyes. "Johnny?"
I drop out of cat and walk over towards the door. Get close as I can and try to not remember Tony crying for his dad to help him.
Here it goes, I think as I blow upon the whistle.
As I start blowing on it, the tone bounces around in my head and I feel something strange warp and bend through my body. My bones are a tuning fork attuned to this note and they hitting resonant frequency. I feel a heat not unlike what I imagine a microwave dinner must feel and I start to wonder about a burning smell and how much of that is myself.
The door vibrates and cracks and pops and then burns away. The magic inherent in the Grove is much stronger than the hedge magic wards put in its place. Whoever put this here had some talent but the Grove is beyond talent. Just ask the billion year old mountains that were born roughly the time as myself.
I look down and see I am nude except for a few ashes of my nice suit. All of my fancy, pretty, sexy-agent-man gear is incinerated. The scraggly grass at my feet is charred. The wall near the door is charred. The air is charred. My lycanthrope body survived but everything around me looks it was subjected to extreme heat in a matter of seconds. Even the whistle is blackened with the string burned away. And this is something that survived being held by a Tony the Human Torch with barely a scuff.
"What are we going to do with you, kitty cat?," Macy asks as she walks her silver wolf body past me through the doorway. Barlow says nothing as he forces his much heavier bulk through the door like arctic wolf trying to enter into a doggy door meant for a corgi.
Tad, back into his everyday human form with bonus bloody shoulder, stops by me. His lupine shape is only a bit bigger than his humans so his clothes are intact minus some tears and stretches. "I got a serious question, man."
"Yeah?"
"How many more times am I going to have see you naked this week?"
"Oh, I don't know, a couple. Probably. Way it's going."
"Oh, good, glad to know. You look fit, man."
Using his non-shot arm he slaps me on the back—smearing only a bit of blood on me in the process—and we go inside, together.
{{ GAMEMASTER PHASE }}
Current scene count (+X-): 1♣1 | 1♢2 | 3♡0 | 1♠0
Current plot invokes (+X-): 1K0 | 1Q1 | 0J2
This one is going to involve a witch, some innocent bystanders, and a perhaps dramatic cliffhanger. Let's go with some basics...
K♡ (a scene involving an extended challenge around talking/debating). 7♡ (another scene needing teamwork, relationships). 2♢ (Easy Agile). A very similar scene to the previous one but with more of a focus on talking it out. Ultimately, success will be down to dodging out the way of folks but victory lies not in beating them in conflict but beating them in a more social way. Like, what if a bunch of newbie werewolves come up against Macy and Barlow and we have a test dominance. A pretty serious one?
Now for a witch suitable to fit the art that inspired the scene.
Lucretia Castillo is a Crafty Witch with Sigil Weaving Abilities but a Dedication to a Dark and Forgotten God.
Finally, what is like on the inside. I am picturing stone (marble and cement) and liminal sort of space. Gray. White. Angles and rooms not exactly in a logical layout. Somehow more space on the inside than the outside. A parkour runner's dream with various ledges and posts and such. To add to that, Location Tags 5,1 Overwhelming + 6,4 Vandalized. I really like that. Broken and underwhelming on the outside. Broken and overwhelming on the inside. Paintings and expensive furniture remains but is splashed. Punks have graffitied the walls. Spots with campfires. Old mattresses. Drug needles. That sort of thing. It is a spot of once-power that still has the vibe but has been abandoned by the powers that be.
Only Johnny assumed the vibe kept people out. It hasn't. Folks were squatting here. Lucretia's first victims.
[[ PLAYER PHASE ]]
I follow in the wake of Macy and Barlow. As many dead guards in here than out there. Probably more. Good to know that I contributed.
Tad and follow through a large lobby through a massive hall suited more for a mall than an office building. Up a set of stairs. A lot of the 60s-motif corporate art. A lot of absolutely-not corporate art that was likely expensive as hell. Some stuff that makes Hieronymus Bosch look tired. Good furniture. Even better furniture. Old many cannot account for this many styles being mastered at once and forced together. No wonder the Patels want a bigger slice of this pie.
All this baroque and a lot of it smashed. A few char pits show where kids turned a hundred thousand dollar table into a weenie roast. The damage in this place has to amount to millions of dollars and the vandals were only getting started.
As we bolt through the Fall-of-Rome-as-Directed-by-David-Lynch (see also: Caligula by way of John Carpenter), we traverse an amount of space that has to cover than the entire island outside. Miles to go before I sleep. All that.
Finally, we come up to a set of open double doors that are absolutely just showing off, at least a few dozen feet tall and by all accounts taller than the Grove by a stretch. Macy and Barlow have finally stopped running and killing. They stand right inside and look at something. Oh, what a something it is.
Matching the "bigger on the inside" motif of this place, we are now standing at the edge of a courtyard that stretches far enough it threatens to have its own horizon. In the center of this forever-in-miniature is a dais big enough to host a whole orchestra convention and cutting that in half like one hell of an art deco curtain is a waterfall pouring from somewhere in the impossible ceiling and cutting the room in two. Mist blankets the whole space combined with the smoke of a dozens of censers.
Upon the dais stands a woman dressed in robes the same yellow color as the poor suckers who tried to stop us from getting here. Only while they had a general gist of tentacles in their clothing choice, she is full on embracing the concept. A design very much not at all like octopus while being pretty much exactly like an octopus adorns her crotch while the tentacles radiating out from it go up around her shoulders and breasts. Her eyes are stained with ink that seems burned into her skin.
Arcane Cephalopod. That realization brings everything else into focus. The stone tables on the dais which look just like—because they are—sacrificial alters, the victims on them (some still moving but others clearly butchered), the bloody knife in her hand she is currently washing off in the waterfall while pretending to ignore us, the clear glint of silver.
"She's a witch! She's been Order trained!" The Order has a lot of classes of people in its employ. Agents like me who look good in suits and bust fairly specific bad guys in a city full of bad people. There are the Psychics like Nurse who read from the threads and boss the rest of us around. Mages who use their sigils to manipulate elemental forces. Sigilists who apply those arcane symbols to souls and skin.
Finally, there are witches. People who weave the wards, runes, and sigils to begin with. They bridge the gap between magic and reality and pave the way for the rest of us. Agents and Mages tend to have an upper limit. Psychics eventually punch through into the threads so much there is no coming back and they astral project into a better place while their corpse collects symbolic pension. Witches, though, as long as they weave it, it is truth. This whole city is built off the backs of just three of them.
Folks from the Order go bad all the time. Some are put down. Others are roped back in. A bit of chaos is needed to keep the threads from locking up. One of the philosophical problems from an arcane group that can pluck at the strings holding reality together. If they control it too it becomes a quilt and unable to change. The cloth is woven loosely so that good can happen. Well, I say, good...
Anyhow, back on track, a few Order folks go well bad. We are looking at one. She is using her weaver training to create sigils. Since she needs silver to make it work, well...
I now notice between us and her are a lot of people. Three or four dozen. Prostrate. On their knees and bellies. Worshipping a new goddess mother in front of them. Their bare backs and ribs showing ritual scarring and very rough sigils carved. Not any approved Order alphabet, she is using some new language.
I walk past Barlow and Macy and wish I had a gun when I shout, "This has to stop!" quite loudly.
She looks back at me—I really wish I still had clothes—and only smiles a mad smile. She chants in that same odd dialect the guards outside were using, "fan glue ee mog lew naf huh kaht loo loo reh lwah waga nag ul fuh taw gun," and then finishes it up with an "EE AH" and the half-dead sycophants around her follow suit.
As they continue to chant these non-sense phrases I keep walking forward. If I can get close, I can probably move faster than she can react but witches have special sigils and wards they reserve for themselves. Even in my cat form, she is a threat. Since she is controlling an entire room of likely werewolves by herself, I have to assume she is on a power scale above anything I have faced—Florida not included—and so wonder if I should just risk it all and call in backup.
Barlow forces her hand. I hear him running like a semi-truck behind me. I try and shout, "Don't get close to the silver dagger holding witch, dammit!," but only get through half of "Don't" then yellow-flame witch is chanting something about "sou kah ahza tho tho" and all those prone folk around us are up and sprouting fur and teeth.
Seconds later, they are a wave charging in on the four of us like the Red Sea charging the pharoah. Dozens of werewolves with the orders to kill. The human shape drops from me and I am bouncing towards the cause of all this as she steps back and through a a gap in the waterfall as it parts for her.
A group of enraged wolf-zombie-slaves (I will workshop the name later) crash into the spot I was as I leap around five meters in the air. Coming down I see Barlow getting ready to mow down a half dozen while I bee-line for him. "Barlow, please, these are victims. She's the one making them fight. These are..."
"New werewolves." Once again, it is Macy that finishes my sentence.
Barlow looks at me and then grabs a few but rather than slice them, he tosses their starved stray bodies a good distance away. Behind me, Macy and Tad are also staying out of their reach. [11]
Then Macy stops and starts to howl. A few seconds later, Barlow joins in. Let me tell you, I am not even the -wolf part of the were- and I can feel it. I see Tad slow and stumble as well. Natural matriarch and patriarch. Old wolf blood. To these newbies, it would hit like a couple of angels shouting at you in your shape of your own soul.
Tad and I keep running around and pushing the mob back while the howling continues. One by one, the mob stops and joins in. Soon, the whole room is one loud howling. Tad even joins in. [12]
The new wolves all bow their heads toward the leader of the pack: Marcella Maron. Her iron eyes glow deep silver now and I realize I have been wrong all this time. Her eyes are not silver iron, they are twin full moons. Matron Mother Marcella Maron and her three fools. You can feel the centuries coming off of her. I think I am starting to fall in love.
"Go, boys," she says to the three of us with a voice from out the deep past, "Mama will take care of these babies."
Like that I dash at full speed towards the waterfall and punch through it with Tad and Barlow behind me. It does not part for us so it hits like rocks thrown from a cliff.
Getting through, In front of us, the ever growing interior space has grown even more. A spiral staircase inscribes and outlines a descent into a pit large enough you could fill it with a pair of sky scrapers.
"Now that's just dumb," says Tad.
I agree with him.
DOUG'S COMMENTARY
This is the first time I have solo played even the semblance of a sex scene (at least the preamble to one) and it brings up an interesting point (hush, you).
As I write these posts, there are a few different "passes" that occur. The first is the play version. These can be pretty rough. I tend to know early on (or before) a session if I am going to be posting it to a blog so I have likely already entered into a goal of "somewhat readable" by this point in time. The idea though is to not really slow down and write but to use the short bursts of writing to help give myself some space and time to contemplate what is happening in my game. This stage is very enjoyable for me since it is mostly just playing the game though in such a way that I feel like I could explain it afterwards [pre blog, it was a lot messier of a concept and harder to back-reference, hence why I started this blog].
The second pass happens almost immediately after and you could call it the editing phase. This is where I try to get from somewhat readable to "fairly readable and enjoyable." This is still decently in the session mindset (though time constraints might make it an hour or a day later) and might even involve double checking some oracle tests or random rolls or other game mechanics to make sure what I did made sense. I rarely outright change anything important, just mea culpa down in the commentary which I write at the end of this second pass, usually. I am not really aiming for perfection at this time but mostly just something that makes sense and that represents me and my play style. The first stage is about playing with writing as the distraction. The second pass is about writing with playing as the distraction. I also now do the HTML and CSS (and other such elements) mostly by hand so the second pass is a good time just to make sure the anchor tags href properly, no divs are sticking out awkwardly, and all the rest.
The commentaries, by the way, are largely just for myself. Session debriefs are an important and often overlooked part of roleplaying. They are a great way to recenter the fiction and play-acting back on the players that matter far more than either of those other two aspects. When playing by yourself, it is not considered talking to yourself if you write it like other people are reading it. *taps forehead*
In nearly all cases, the end of the second pass is where I set up a date for it to go live (possibly immediately) and I hit the "publish" button. There will be typos, grammatical mistakes, broken logic, HTML glitches, and such but most imperfections are fine right where they are. This is not a fiction workshop, this is a let's play blog. The rough is just as much part of it as the smooth.
Some posts, though, especially those that resonate with me on both a lore and a gameplay side, get a third pass a few days after the session (hopefully before the publish date hits) where I go through and try and fix up as many of those imperfections as I can. I work in a few future oracle rolls into the fiction (things I stopped and figured out later but were technically true at an earlier point). Sometimes I have blanks in my world that I realize I need to figure out [the lore bit about aether-tech is because I had kept it pretty vague just how a 1990s world has more advanced tech than we currently enjoy].
This third pass is the polishing phase where it is enjoyable to go back and relive what I wrote and try to make it better. Here, I want to go from fairly readable and enjoyable to more "a solid read" at this point. One that is obviously from me. One that is obviously tied to its solo rpg roots. Just with some polish.
I sand down some of the rough edges. Mostly it is just some sentence and story structure choices that detract from the write-up and clash with my usual voice. That and occasionally some idea or game play that got edited out or slightly hidden by other details (such as what is meant by "witch" in this world: a person who weaves sigils and such and locks magic into place as the backbone to their society, it is not gender specific).
Some of it is where a middle-aged, disabled librarian is trying to write a fun story as a more active, often younger, person. Sometimes its factual mistakes or misconceptions that cannot be brushed off due to world- or reality-shifts or in-character-ignorance. Some of it is jokes or off-the-cuff descriptions that did not work out as well as I thought they did when I was typing 75 words a minute in a dice-fueled glee. Cramming my socially-awkward brain into paragraphs sometimes spawns misunderstandings.
The third pass gives me a chance to balance the Doug-that-is-me to the Doug-that-is-shared-with-you. It also helps me catch some things that I should have caught earlier. Sometimes there are several of these third-passes. It is the nature of fixing bugs that you may create new ones.
Way back when with the eighth and final session of Gareth Hendrix and the Bunker Bigfoot campaign I talk about in the commentary about how I completely un-wrote a certain character's death [which made it through the first and second passes]. Why? Because killing off certain characters in certain relationships with other characters for quick and cheap emotional damage should be reserved for very special, possibly never, occasions. Oracles give us results but some questions need not be asked.
Another such mistake occurred here that made it through the first and second passes. I do not know when the idea that Johnny Blue and Marcella Maron would have sex during the ritual came from. It's just the kind of thing where I had some flirtation in the previous post and then it just made a then-and-there sense while I was playing through that scene and that's kind of how solo play works. You take the ideas you had right then and there and you work with them for a time until you realize they don't work or it is time for another idea to take over.
In this case, it was not the sex scene (more a preamble to a sex scene) that was bothering me, it was the way it was written. It is stated that Johnny Blue is disoriented by his recent transformation from Arcane Order Agent into a werecat and in the midst of this disorientation, Macy pushes herself quite literally upon him and with the help of drugs initiates a sex scene that Johnny is seen to at least slightly protest. I was not thinking of it in that way but I wrote it in that way, and that is all that matters really. It was wrong of me to not catch that for any length of time.
There has been a long trope of sexual assault and rape in genre fiction being played as at least partially if not outright forgivable (especially against male presenting characters) if it is for character growth, humor sake, or just to establish the world rules. I try to not write that kind of fiction, ever. I made a mistake, here, even allowing the impression of that trope to surface. I am deeply sorry.
I went back and essentially rewrote the whole scene while keeping in the parts I did intend. It is more or less a reference to Angel Heart which is a great classic of the paranormal detective genre. Johnny is more openly willing. Macy is more openly understanding. There is still blood and ancient magics taking over but only by two people who have begun the process.
On less serious terms, writing this one made me think about some of the changes from previous versions of these characters in the Alabama Weird.
In Eustace Delmont, a different Amy Patel also has some issues with a different Dr. Patel's business dealings. Though that Amy is currently missing (and Eustace will eventually help to try and find her) the general flow of things here felt like a good time to revisit that. I was saving it up to find out if Amy or her brother Roger or both were the true danger. I mean, Amy is a true danger but not in the way that other villains are. The world would not really mourn her passing.
In Garth Hendrix, one of the final twists was that Ms. Macy was more dangerous than Barlow. The young werewolves considered her a calm, grandmotherly figure but this is 30-years before that. Where she is younger (Ms. Macy was never properly young, she's a natural matriarch) and Barlow is more or less just her weapon of choice. He'll eventually become even more powerful and more his own self but in the mid-90s he is a young man who looks a bit like an old man who has not really matured.
== MECHANICAL NOTES ==
- He got one success which he successfully gave his body over the spirit but kept himself enough to not lose control.
- He gets one success, so he might have a detail or two wrong but should be close enough.
- What is the object that will help with getting inside? Arcane Items 3,6 Horn/Flute/Harp + 1,4 Boots/Shoes. A Oh Whistle and I Will Come to You style whistle on an old shoe string. Blowing it will open the doors. Who had it? Urban People 6,5 Thief + 4,4 Lawyer/Judge. One of the people who had worked for the order in the late 60s had been robbed in the late 80s by a thief. The thief got the whistle and... Image Oracle 6,5 Temptation + 3,3 Daemon Pull... was tempted to blow on it and, well, got Oh Whistled and I Will Come To You'd.
- Card pull to test difficulty for a Craft Challenge: 5♡ → Easy Crafty and he gets two successes. Johnny is well prepared. I will reduce the next challenge by a difficulty level (to Easy).
- Using the lycanthrope rules from Champions of Fenrir, Johnny rolls 3D6 for tests of strength and quickness. 1 success, 1 success, and 2 successes means he dominates the fight in werecat form.
- Card pull to test difficulty to convince: 7♠ → Hard [Crafty]. No successes.
- Trying to see how the scene ends, pull a card to see what kind of Challenge can get Johnny free. A♡ (6, New Event 4,4 → Prowling Vigilante) & 5♣ into 2♠ → Easy Agile. Johnny was already good at Agile tasks. In cat form, he gets 3d6. With karma spent, Johnny gets 3 successes. All things considered, including that this is normal humans he is dealing with, that level of exceptional success will be dang near magical. Challenge to land the fall was 6♠ → Standard Brawny and he gets another success there so he does tank it.
- Johnny gets two successes (finishing off his part). Barlow gets one. Macy gets one. Tad misses and takes a hit.
- Johnny pumps his last karma into the fight to get another two successes. Barlow gets two more successes and this finishes it.
- Does the whistle still work? Joker (6 new event: Image Oracle 5,2 Cash + 6,6 Vibrating Phone...I have not a scooby do so I will see the rest of this) into J♢ (something good for the only plotline left). 9♣ → So yes. I think this means, as a stack, that the whistle still works but it does something to Johnny's possessions and shifts him more into the were-side of himself.
- What is required to get Barlow to listen? 9♡ → Standard Crafty. Johnny gets a success. For the fight intself, Johnny gets two successes. Barlow gets three. Macy gets two. Tad gets one.They clear eight of the twelve required in the first turn.
- Two successes from Johnny again and Tad gets three to finish it off.
== 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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