The GLOW 1996: Agent Johnny Blue - Prologue and Chapter One [Tricube Solo] [Multi-Phase]
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| Image © Dean Spencer |
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, 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.
PROLOGUE
On the other side of the oversized desk, Amy Patel fits the cigarette into an ebony holder and lights it with a lighter which at least seems to be carved from some exotically dead animals horn.
The motif of the place is dark, mahogany and too much distance. Small hidden blue lights give everything a sheen only slightly brighter than the lights coming in from the oversized window behind her showing only a virtually blank night sky washed out by soulburn light pollution. The 80th floor of the Rambler Estate Complex. The sensation is like being in some sort of space station past the edge of the galaxy in a dying universe where stars are sparse and secrets scurry in the cracks.
Behind her and to her left, her brother sits. Roger "The Raj" Patel. Smoking a cigar. Her dad sits almost at the window itself. Dr. Patel has a first name but everyone in the know knows you only call him by "Doctor" unless you are married to him or his children. Doctor Patel is smoking a pipe. The whole family is a walking advertisement for Big Tobacco.
Only thing in the room besides me not smoking is Amy's ServiSynth familiar: a blood-red and larger-than-human-sized praying mantis. It stands there, beside and slightly behind her, watching me. Word on the street suggests that a single command from Amy could have me dead before I had a chance to properly know it.
"Johnny Blue," Amy says, getting my attention, smoke gently cascading above her head before swirling into arcane shapes and symbols: a strange halo in the deep space blue light aesthetic. She's bad news most likely but it is nice to hear and watch her talk. Father side is a family of multi-millionaire gangsters from New Dehli. Mom, currently out of the picture but amicably so, some research scientist turn gene-splicing-science mogul with an ancient shaman twist from Hong Kong. Amy takes after both of them in various ways. Her mom's calculating face and features elevated by a whiff of a voracious shark from her dad. Her eyes glow green in the dim light of the room.
I hope this is some sort of tricks to worry guests like me. It is working.
I smile, a bit sheepishly, and scratch behind my left year. Feel a tingle in my chest. "Yes ma'am, that's me." A put upon southern drawl that is only half a ruse. My name is not really Johnny Blue but it sounds so much like my real name that it is no trouble for me to respond to it.
She grins at me the way a less dangerous person might grin at a goofy orange cat trying his best to bat at a string. With a flick her wrist she slides a mini-disk across the desk expertly stopping a half inch from the edge. I pick it up, reminding myself to be graceful but not overly so, and look at it.
"You know what this is?," she asks.
I maintain my sly-but-dumb cat expression on the outside. "It's a paycheck, Ms. Patel." Inside I am pretty sure I have a rough idea and it likely won't be happy.
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| Arcane Agents and Tricube Tales are CC-BY by Richard Woolcock and Zadmar Games. |
{{GAMEMASTER PHASE}}
Ok, to establish some parameters.
PRIMARY PLOTLINE (which is not what's on the mini-disk): Rolling 3D6 and using the back of the "Arcane Agents" Tricube Tales one-sheet nets a 6, 1, 2. Assigning as I see fit I like 1 → "Wolf Hunt" (spell turns a sorcerer into a werewolf) as an Objective with 6 → "Magical Nexus" (island is a powerful nexus point) as a place. The remaining 2 is a bit awkward because as written it would be "spell turns innocent bystander into vampire" and that feels too much considering the objective so I will go back to the more general version of that: innocent bystanders get caught up in the werewolf transformation aspect.
This means we have a werewolf, somehow involving an abandoned island, and innocent people are being drawn into it. The Silver Fox herself, Marcella "Macy" Maron, along with The Big Bad Wolf Barlow Hendrix are going to show up at the core of this mystery. Dauphin Island is a place I adore and it is easy to work in why it might be abandoned. For innocent bystanders, I think once someone has shown how to turn normal folks into werewolves in a more controlled way, Ms. Macy would be the type to take advantage of it.
SECONDARY PLOTLINE (which is what's on the mini-disk): Using the Tricube Tales Solo "Suspected Crime" tables for this one, we have 2,6 → "Embezzlement" and 3, 4 → "Fraud". Adding in some Image Oracle from Arcane Agents we get also 2,3 → "Chicken" and 5, 4 → "Pentacle". That combination immediately brings to mind The Devil Rides Out style blood sacrifice (black cockerel and all that) with embezzlement being the crime Johnny is hired to due. Fraud is... not a crime, but a hint that Amy Patel is up to a extra layer of a trick here.
TERTIARY PLOTLINE will be left to be described later if it comes up in the cards.
Amy Patel is a Crafty Scholar with the the Elemental Power to control Air/Smoke and a Ruthless streak. Her glowing eyes are actually special contacts that connect her to the viewpoint of the mantis and its various abilities. For instance, she can see through illusions if the mantis can. Johnny does not even know he is being scanned.
Raj Patel is a Brawny Ex-Military who is Physically Enhanced and Destructive.
Doctor Patel gets no stats but he is extremely good at being what he is: a bad person. Likewise, The Mantis gets no stats. Generally conflicts involving either of these should be considered Hard by default.
Special Order Agent Johnny "Demontongue" Blue, is an Agile Detective with Psychic Illusions and a Stubborn Personality.
Johnny's "handler" (real name: Eustace Delmont, a Brainy Hacker with Mental Enhancements but prone to Heroism) is codenamed (IO 1,1 → Amublance)... Nurse.
[[PLAYER PHASE]]
The hovervator gets to the literal "ground floor" and the doors open with a rush of warm Alabama Gulf air. I walk across the cultivated garden greenway, careful to stay on the path and not set foot on the no doubt imported and quite expensive grass, and make my way to the parking lot without looking back. Behind me, the Rambler is an impossible site. An 80-story building floating 20-meters off the of the ground. A deep blue and orange glow underneath like some LED light show of a rocketship. An enormous waste of energy meant to show off the power of the Patels. Also helps serve two purposes related to their less savory transactions. First, the only way to access it is by the hovervator system that is activated from the inside. Second, if things get bad the whole building can be dropped all those meters and stories into the ground and all the King's Horses and all the King's Men (and the Order's Psychics) would not put it back together again.
My chest twitches again and I scratch at it to make it stop. I climb into a lower-side-of-middle-economy car that matches my "dockyard worker on supervisor pay" outfit and head south out of the Maidenstead District into the heart of the GLOW itself. Killing all automatic driving systems, I manually make my way to Pecan Street and head towards a automated car garage. Twenty years ago, this part of The GLOW would have been out in the Gulf itself, now the whole city extends a couple of kilometers out into the shallow waters.
Twenty years ago, this time of night would also have been dark or lit by a just a few street lights. Now The GLOW is more than just a name. It's an unmistakable cost of living here. Lamarkian waste energy infuses everything. Not just the lights and signs and ads that you are supposed to see. At the core of the city, even bricks have picked up the aftertaste of souls. The area is filled with an auroral mix of blues and oranges and purples and pinks, swirling and altering to a complex dance in a language that I am not even sure if the Order's top brass can understand. Not super bright. During the day, you can pretty much ignore it, but bright enough that in the most active places things like headlights and streetlights are borderline pointless after dark.
The seventh spot in the fifth row on the third floor. Most people would avoid this spot. Carefully planted wards make your average person see it as always too small, too crowded, or somehow distasteful to park here. By absolutely no coincidence, it is exactly a place where no security cameras in this building nor outside can reach.
Once parked, I reach to my own hands and any outsiders looking in (there are none, I've looked) would think I was peeling my own skin off. Which I am, in a more technical sense. I pull the synth-skin gloves from my hands and expose my real skin underneath. Skin covered in intriciate sigils shaped like like little stars and blades and planets. A mark of The Order.
Touching the sigils on my left palm to my car activates a chain reaction which elongates the bottom, flattens the top, and drops the illusion in place. The very practical, out-of-date car is replaced by a much sportier, much newer model. Likewise, the sigils in my right fingers play against the color of my docksman coat and my whole outfit tightens and reshapes into a well-fitted suit. [1]
My face, though, it does not change. Like my assumed name and its handful of minor variations, I usually keep my face true. Makes my talent of getting into places a bit easier when I don't have to work out a new face with a new smile, new way of handling the mouth, a new voice. Looking in the rear view mirror, I see myself as others do. Fit. Black hair cut short. Strong blue eyes. Sigils on the hands and expensive suit identifying me as an Agent of the Order. One of the elite members of the GLOW's special forces investigation unit.
I tap behind my left ear, the same place I was "inadvertantly" scratching earlier, and then tap my chest at the spot that kept twitching. "Did you get that, Nurse?"
"I did, Demontongue. By the way, I sure you noticed I've been pinging you all night long and you've been ignoring me."
"Giant death mantis, Nurse, you know how it is. I'd rather not be murdered just for answering your shopping list."
A strange side-effect of the communication sigils installed in the skull and ribcages of both myself and Nurse is that we can literally just think what we want to say and do it but both of us had the habit of talking aloud. Nurse is an Order Agent Liaison, aka my "handler," and by the rules Agents and their OALs are not supposed to see each other face to face to avoid any complications. That being said, Nurse and I have worked cases for years and I consider that strange disembodied voice to be pretty much my best friend.
"Be that as that may," Nurse's voice in my head continues, "You are currently being pulled temporarily off the Patel case..."
"Wait, what...no. NO! I just spent four months climbing the ranks at a shipping yard just to..."
"I get that, but..."
"Did I mention the death mantis? Here's a fun fact, I'm more scared of Amy Patel. Her eyes glow green, did you know that?"
"Right, but..."
"I feel like a husband in a very imbalanced marriage and my sweet, loving wife just asked me to pick up a very important card for a very important anniversary and if I fail to do this in a timely manner she is going to gut me with a fisherman's knife without cleaning the blade first."
"Look, I feel you but..."
"But what, Nurse? Help me to understand why you are killing me!"
"Because Macy Maron."
There is a pause that in real time was maybe about five and a half seconds but in my head took a lot longer as I briefly flew up to some magical happy spot well away from the GLOW and well away from long years and months being an undercover specialist for the Arcane Order. A spot in some Southeast Asian country, maybe. Sipping tea and playing fetch with my children. I imagined them growing up and me attending their graduation where they announced they were going to be doctors and artists and thanked me, their loving dad, for the opportunity. I grew old with my super-attractive and absolutely wonderful wife and we had such lovely funerals.
I said none of this to Nurse. Hell, he could probably pick up at least glimpses of it through the psychic connection we were currently sharing. What I did say, though, was...
"The voodoo werewolves, Nurse?! What is this, the third time?"
Chapter One
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<<LORE PHASE>>
On Lamarkian Energy and the Harrowing of Souls
During World War II, Dr. Jeffrey Lamark had profited greatly off of the war effort. With peace returning, however ficklely, to the land and with his interest piqued by the latent energy of the atom bomb, Dr. Lamark had three goals in mind: (1) continue to profit, (2) profit even more, (3) find some new source of energy to put those eggheads in their place.
In 1949, Lamark had the strangest and most unpredictable of possible breakthroughs. Lamark was an avid reader of William Blake and Dante combined with pantheistic writings of many-souls and many-gods. He realized that petroleum ("fossil fuels" were on a major rise after WW2) had a hidden secret. As the decayed remains of billions of tiny lifeforms, petroleum still had the inherent lifespark—the "spirit" or the "soul" if you will—of all its many, many previous inhabitants.
Lamark created a proccess where spiritual goop could not only be extracted through machines alchemists would have considered a bit esoterical AND he found a way to agitate the collected spirit mass to generate a massive heat reaction. In other words, he tortured the souls of plants and plankton to boil water. Why else would Hell be hot, he asked in a rare interview post-discovery, besides from an explosion of energy from condemned souls?
Lamark had been born in Mobile, AL and had some munition factories there desperate for work after the war so he went back home and set-up shop. He called his new process "The Harrowing" and he had only one step left to figure out. Which source of long-dead lifeforms had the biggest yield? By coincidence, he found extractions of oil and gas from the Gulf Coast showing great promise.
It was not long after Lamark cashed in lots of favors and tips to buy off representatives from the Gulf states [not at all hard to do, they were often for sale] and Mexico [only slightly harder due to the international flavor of it] that one of his chief scientists landed on a theory virtually unverifiable but good enough for Lamark. That an alien entity entered the earth's atmosphere and infused with the lifeforms there. Lamark considered it to be the fallen angels themselves, some of which must of died on impact.
Now, the Lamark Society now officially links this event instead to the Chicxulub Crater formation event. The running theory is that the so-called asteroid that crashed there was in fact an alien ark-ship full of life from another planet that crashed into the earth at enough speed to create not just one but two different extinction level events. The Lamarkian Energy for miles around was immensely energized and just waiting for a madman to pull it out. If the Society has other theories, they do not share them.
The people of The GLOW know Dr. Lamark—the man responsible for all their prosperity—by a wholly different name. An unholy different one if you will pardon the pun: Dr. Hell.
{{GAMEMASTER PHASE}}
At this point, Johnny Blue has been abruptly thrust into a case he was not expecting involving werewolves and missing people. He is also dealing with a long-term case in trying to crack open the Patel family. He does not realize that his cover is blown by Amy Patel. Has she let anyone else in the family know? 2♢. No, she hasn't.
The first real scene will be 9♣ (a scene related to a task) and A♣ → Q♢ → a twist (involving 5 → a new person) but one positive for the Amy Patel plotline). 7♡ → The challenge will be a Hard Brawny challenge. Not necessarily good for Johnny.
Before we figure out what the sort of task will be, let's come up with a location and a person and work from there.
LOCATION ("Urban Locations"): 2,4 → Garage/Workshop.
PERSON ("Urban People"): 1,1 → Actor/Entertainer.
Now let's add in a couple of Image Oracle rolls for flavor/understanding. 3,2 → "Cut Palm" + 2,1 → "Chalk Outline Murder". Well, that speaks for itself.
Johnny is going to be going to a friend's workshop to try and get the data off the mini-disk but upon showing up will find his friend murdered, ritualistically, and the attacker still there. The attacker will put up a fight (hence the Hard Brawny). The friend will be {male | female | nonbinary } → non-binary and {younger | same | older} → older. Named (IO 5,2 → "Modern City"...) Neon + "Surname" 2,4 → Foster.
The victim is Neon Foster. An older non-binary friend who is well-known for being larger than life and creative (maybe not a literal actor, but of the type). Has the equipment for reading and submitting the mini-disk safely. But, upon arriving, will be found just recently murdered. The TERTIARY PLOTLINE has just showed up.
[[PLAYER PHASE]]
Orders be damned, for the moment at least. I head over to Neon's workshop to take care of this disk. Months of work can end up down the drain if a fight with The Big Bad Wolf Hendrix smashes it to pieces.
The Order Psychics had picked up a thread brewing where Amy Patel was a bit pissy over the financial statements of Smiley Shipping. Thom Smiley had been a friend to old Dr. Hell back in the heyday and gobbled up lots of contracts. Decades passed (as did both Smiley and Hell) but their companies live on. Only Smiley's is not quite what it used to be. The Patels bought out most of the contracts to Smiley Shipping and made it almost, but not quite, a full subsidiary. Old Man Smiley's kid was smart enough to avoid complete dissolution.
Amy Patel does not like that her family's company is spending so much money to pay a second company to be their shipping arm when, by all rights, that company should also be hers. The plan that the psychics tapped into was she was scouting workers high enough up in Smiley Shipping to get past some of the security but low enough down to take the bait. Enter Johnny Blue. Spending months working his way up to middle-management over one of the main data centers. Upper-lower-middle management, as it were. Predicted to be the precise spot that Patel would pounce.
The disk, I was told, would simply need to be inserted into a data hub with at least a Four-Diamond security clearance. One of which, by an amazing coincidence, was in the possession of my department. There, the mystically infused computer virus would hide itself as it rewrote the code to make sure some of the Patel money got shipped back to their own off-shore accounts. Probably a drop in the bucket of their own worth but a way to wear down Junior Smiley's resolve over time.
I was to get the disk, get it to the Order hackers like Nurse, let them figure out what it does and then build in some hooks, and then go through with the plan while the Order gathered evidence so they could, in a year or two, bust Amy, The Raj, and Doctor for the quite likely tax evasion to follow.
Now that Order had nixed that plan, none of the hackers would touch it out of fear of the Kitsune-Mask wearing psychics finding out. I had no idea how long Maron and Hendrix would take to figure out, and did not want Amy and her mantis pet paying me a visit if this went into a few-days territory. I detour for the moment. As an undercover agent, and a class-three psychic, I am given shadow time because sometimes mutliple reads of the threads-matrix can lead to unpredicatable resulsts as different readings clash.
Neon Foster is an old ally of mine. Bright and joyful and pissy in all the right ways like on old sassy theater queen. Really good at using aether-tech. Even better at breaking it over their knee. Order is obviously aware of them but an agency working on the cusps of reality likes to allow a few outside forces to stop the threads-matrix from locking into place.
Only, getting to Neon's workshop—a converted car garage still boasting some 1960s paint gone to waste in the climate—it is immediately obvious that something is wrong. [2]
The sidedoor to Neon's shop is wide open and while Foster is known for throwing some hellacious parties the rest of the parking lot is empty. Neon's line of work is dangerous and they are too security minded to leave it open when they are by themselves.
I pull out my arcane pistol and check the tank is full. It glows blue showing it is in a ready state. A few taps along arms and legs activates sigils. My overall kit is best at fast movement over brawn but hit someone fast enough and it counts much the same as hitting someone hard enough.
I make my way up to the door and glance inside. A flickering light. What looks like blood. And, right as go to step inside, I catch a shadow of someone standing on the other side of the door way. Who ever it is, they must have heard my car. [3]
I speed through the door and try to get my gun up. I'm aware this could be Neon or one of their many romantic partners but I feel things are too much off for either of those to be true. Good thing I did because whoever this is, they are bringing down a bludgeon to where they assumed I would be if I was in human speed. Their face is covered in a strange mask like a ball-shaped helmet from an old science fiction story. No matter. I flip my gun to my left hand and slam my right hand with force against their mask which holds but jostles their precious human gray matter around inside. Spaceman collapses in a heap. [4]
Besides the unknown assailant, currently unmoving, we have Neon Forster's body not far away in a heap near their equipment. Blood shows a decent fight was put so good for Neon. Unfortunately, the arrangement of the body is suspiciously hedge magic. Whatever this is, it probably involves some aether-net grimoire.
I hope Neon kicked spacejerk in the balls.
Unfortunately, we also have Neon's equipment smashed to high heavens. Including the equipment I needed to read the contents of the disk. [5]
I have two deeply negative emotions fighting in my head. Make it three. I've been a cop for long enough to realize when you have such an attack it usually says bad things about the victim's innocence. I am (1) sad about Neon, (2) deeply confused about the disk, and (3) pretty sure Neon was into some deep shit.
I tap my left-ear sigil and ping Nurse.
"Don't be angry. I swear I was on the way to pick up puppy treats before talking to Maron but I got an update. Neon Foster is dead. I've taken out the presumed suspect. And, well...borrow my eyes for a bit, Nurse, you'll want to see this." I feel a tingling in my eyes as Nurse taps in and sees the destruction of the equipment. Nurse and I have worked together long enough that he has seen Neon and myself use this very equipment so he knows the context well enough.[6]
"Could anyone have known you were coming and wanted to stop you from reading that disk?"
Ok, now I have four negative emotions fighting it out. What if the Patels are one step ahead and somehow knew me getting here could be a problem? I had to push that one down because that means the Patels know everything and still gave me the disk. I am basically a dead-man walking if I am being used in a Patel-level cat-and-mouse (or female-mantis-and-male-mantis, as it were) game.
"I have no idea, Nurse. I'll detail the perp. Send MUNI over to help with the scene. Not Order. Do not want to explain why I am here juset yet. I'll babysit the sleeping spaceman and say goodbye to friend."
"The sleeping space..." Nurse starts to ask I tap the ear sigil to cut connection. I need some thinking time.
{{GAMEMASTER PHASE}}
Current scene count: 0♣0 | 0♢0 | 1♡0 | 0♠0
Current plot invokes: 0K0 | 1Q0 | 0J0
The first question to be answered is why would it be a good thing that Johnny Blue was not able to read the mini-desk yet. We know that Amy Patel was aware that he was an agent under an illusion but still gave him the disk. This means that him being an Agent either fits her plans or at least does not disrupt them. Let's start with two simple oracles. Who is it good for? { johnny | amy | patels | something else} and go { ♣ | ♢ | ♡ | ♠ } in that order... JOKER! (2, so negative for Johnny) + Q♣ (So....bad for the mini-disk plotline, hmm) into 8♣...so good for Johhny. Ok. All that is pretty confusing but this aethernoir is a confusing genre. For now, we'll go with "Johnny seeing the disk is bad because he does not know what he is dealing with BUT it is good because he does not know what he is dealing with. If he saw the disk, he would have a bad time AND whoever made the disk "really" (there's the whole weird black magic // fraud aspects) would be having a bad time as well. BUT, he'd know the truth of what is happening.
I was going to ask if Amy Patel knew he was an Agent the whole time but I'll actually leave it until the next time the Q-plot is invoked.
On to the next scene. Johnny is dealing with the death of a friend but slightly was more concered with the disk and the equipment. Some insight into Johnny's behavior. The MUNI cops have showed up and are covering the scene. Johnny is a agent who gives a story about Neon Foster being a known friend to the Order and him seeing the door open while on a routine visit. Does the investigator on the scene even blink? K♠ → Yes (very), but... the investigator does not trust Johnny at all but has issues with trying to intervene on official Agent businesses.
Let's make an MUNI investigator: {male | female | non} → female, {younger | same | older} → younger, "Female Name" 1,5 → Aurora, "Surname" 3,5 → Hernandez. {postive | neutral | negative} personality → neutral. Primary "Neutral Personality" 6 → Teaching/Explaining. "Urban People" 5,3 → Police Office (hahahaahahh, duuhhhh) + 4,4 → Lawyer/Judge (man). "Subject of Interest" 4,3 → Mystery/Secret. "Speech/Mannerisms" 3,6 → Hums/Whistles. Just a couple of bonus Image Oracles: 6,4 → "Spy" + 3,2 → "Cut Palm".
Detective Aurora Hernandez. Crafty Detective who is Well-Versed in Law but Naive. Mid-20s. Rose through the ranks pretty fast and is trying to hold on to it. Has a fairly calm personality. Takes the law seriously. The classic "by the book" trope. Often lectures folks at the scene, including people older and outranking her. Tends to whistle while she is thinking. Is trying to unravel the various mysteries and secrets surrounding The GLOW and the Order. Convinced the powers that be are in a cult, working for the Powers of Darkness. Belives them to undergo secret rituals (like cutting their hands, so the sigils are a way to hide this) when pledging to the dark lords. Thinks the hard working "staff" of The GLOW are the real citizens that she has to protect.
As to the scene, it is 9♢ → a Transaction Scene, K♢ → involving an object, with a 6♡ → Standard Brawny (??) challenge. What's the gist of the brawny challenge. "Complex Questions" 4,6 → "Love/Desire" Involving 4,4 → "Your Character". So the Brawny challenge is down to Love/Desire involving Johnny. Does Hernandez have a (previous, perhaps) romantic attachment to Johnny? 2♠ → No, but... she does "desire" him. We've already established he's a very attractive, very fit, fairly dangerous type of Agent. She sees in him something like her anti-ideal. The pretty boy who turns bad. She's going to try and arrest him.
On the other hand, Johnny has enough respect for the MUNI that he has not disturbed the scene at all: something that seems to have gone against him.
[[Player Phase]]
Dectective Hernandez has been standing next to me in the back of Neon's workshop. Sitting on the stairs. Upstairs is Neon's apartment but there's enough stuff going on down here that the current batch of MUNI folk haven't even touched it. She's whistling while staring at her scrying screen. A rough habit to take up, whistling. Exposing us all to second-hand humming. She should have taken up smoking like the rest of the dicks.
"Agent Johnny Blue," she finally says, "Codename: Demontongue. A specialist in illusions and trickery." [7]
Ah, shit. This means that she is in at least Internal 2-Diamond level security information about me. Bordering on 3-. That's the sort of level that starts pinging the Seers to record. So much for avoiding Order Pyschics.
"I will remind you," she continues, "It is a violation of code 265-39-§I-S for anyone, including Agents, to maintain illusory control of a scene in the interference of Municipal Law Enforcement official business upon the request of the Chief Officer at scene. I am asking you to drop any and all illusions, phantasms, and forced hallucinations." Then she stands there, like I have done any of these things. Funny thing is, the way she said that, you could hear the § symbol.
"I officially report I am maintaining no illusions, delusions, fantasies, or cotton candies, Detective."
She bristles at my sass and I regret it. I really, truly like the MUNI. They get a lot of stuff done while the Order consults ancient oracles and angelic alphabets to decide what to have on the lunch menu. I left the scene as is so they could see that respect. Only, we see what we want to see. She is under an illusion. One that I am somehow responsible for more than knocking the guy out. I say guy. Guy, gal, whatever. I even left the weird spaceman helmet on so it was entirely their scene.
"I am recording that you were obstructive and uncooperative. Do you have anything you would like to add, Demontongue? Such as why a civilian has been ritualistically murdered by a person seemingly dressed as a science fiction character?"
We are clearly losing the plot but I have a problem. It seems unlikely—not impossible but unlikely—that Neon was killed because of the disk in my backpocket but if I expose this to a person like Detective Hernandez can she actually be trusted to not slam it into the first departmental computer she sees? What will she release? If I let myself get detained—I'm not a fool, I can see where this is going—then that disk will end up in evidence. I can pull the Agent Official Business card but AOB forms take a moment to fill out and again we run the risk of some one trying to plug it in. I need to get this disk to someone I can trust. Can't do that if I am even temporarily detained and searched.
"Alright," I say, standing up, "I did you a solid and left the crime scene completely alone. I really liked Neon Foster and I hope you have great success in solving whatever bastard harmed such a lovely person. I hope you get spaceman's helmet off and give him/her/it," [can't rule out that it's some sort of ServiSynth construct], "one hell of a bad time. I have to go. Official. Agent. Business." Gods, it feels so corny to say that last part out loud. Maybe Dr. Hell can find some way to forgive me.
I am unsurprised when she nods to some beat cops that have been coming up behind around the edges of the stairs. By the time she gets, "Agent Johnny Blue, on behalf..." I am out of their reach, and past hers, and through the door faster than most humans' reaction times can even turn on. [8]
"NURSE, I AM BEING PURSUED BY MUNI." It is funny to be running at full speed (for me, this means giving a cheetah a run for its money while only tapping into a portion of the sigils in my legs and feet and I am alread around three clicks past that point) and hearing a psychic sigh come over the aether. No way Nurse is surprised. This is not the first time. "I need two favors. First, file an injunction on my behalf to pull the pursuit off my ass as fast as you can. Second, I need two...no, three psychic threads running an open, abstract analysis: where in the blue fuck can I drop this damned disk off where it will be safe until I get done with this Maron business?!"
Nurse is quiet a surprisingly long time or I am wired. I am areadly moving fast enough that I could warrant a speeding ticket on this backstreets but I am trying to put as much distance between myself and Hernandez's squad as possible. He finally speaks: "Injuction will be filed, as for the other, we have a strong match. Orange Beach Mall. First floor. Information Desk. They have a whole stack of disks used to store old maps, promotions, and such. Psychic dead spot around the mall and the inherent nature of..." [9]
"Yep, got it..." I say, cutting him off. It takes me only about five minutes to run the rest of the way to the mall. I hear sirens in the background but they are poorly equipped to keep up with someone pushing past human limits this hard. I easily outpace them and cloak my own existence as a particular energetic gust of wind to passers-by. Another blur at night in a city full of blurs. [10]
Mall is weirdly busy—not packed or anything, just definitely being used—at what has to be around an hour or less to midnight. We live in a city blanketed in the aftermath of burning souls for fuel. Everything glows. Actual witches decide our fate. I guess shopping for kids' toys at 11:38pm is a way to stay sane.
Get to the desk and find it occupied. An older guy slouches over the desk but as I approach I see him look at a mom and daughter asking a question and suddenly he is all smiles. Whatever he says, the daughter chuckles while the mom playfully rolls her eyes. As soon as they walk out, he immediately goes back down into a slouched over position. His name tag says Brian and as I approach I start to weave an illusion around myself to look like a corporate drone while a scream erupts and I turn to see that same mother and daughter being stalked by a man wielding a mall-qualilty dagger. Probably had the name "black magic summoning kris knife" or such on its tag. Some days are just full of joy. [11]
I can't let mom & sweet get chopped down for some probably-8-syllabled daemon found in a Waldenbooks grimoire so I cancel the weave and go straight into action. Dear Diary, this is how I got stabbed today. The madman-slash-wannabe cultist immediately turns on me and gets the knock off mall knife right into my ribs and that hurts. In turn, I swing a bit mean. I conjure an illusion of an angelic visitation right above his head and then punch him hard and fast while families sip their Cokes and eat oversized cookies and record it on their scrying glasses to send into the aether later. [12]
While the creep is collapsing and the mom and daughter are the getting all the hells out of dodge, I turn back to Brian and decide to put it all on the table. "Brian," I say, "Very bad people want this disk and I need this disk to not get into their hands. They make that guy look like small fries. Got it? Are you listening, Brian? Good. I need you to take this and put it on the bottom of a stack of disks you got back there and then forget it exists for me. Can you do that?" Brian goes to argue it so I decide to lean into the fact that I now see he him wearing a cross but before I can even lean into how a whole-ass angel showed up to help me out he is grabbing the security phone. I look around. Definite match, Nurse had said. Unless someone is literally cursing me, I choose to believe in my friend. My eyes see it then, a kiosk that sells little wiccan type charms to hang on the phone, crystals, the like. The young person behind the counter is clearly distracted by the shouts and the crushed cultist. I run fast and try to slide past the kiosk, slapping the disk underneath. Right as I look up, thinking I've done a good job, I see the kiosk person staring right at me and what I did. [13]
At this point, fleeing the scene where the only thing I did "wrong" was punch out an attempted-murderer, I am just going to trust the system. God help me if there was an Orange Julius stand I was supposed to spot.
== DOUG'S COMMENTARY ==
UPDATE DECEMBER 6, 2024: If you glanced at this page right at the start, the two images that here now were in place (the one of Johnny punching the guy at the mall was a bit differently placed, but in the "Chapter One" section). Then, I had a change of heart about the pacing of this whole campaign and I removed it and placed it at the start of the next post. That ended up having two slightly out of order images and I retooled the future posts to fit the original 2-chapters-2-scenes-per-chapter format. Part of the issue was I had four Dean Spencer images that had inspired various developments and roughly four posts worth of content so a picture-per-post made sense but part of the idea with this whole series was to stop bending my solo-play to blog-limitations so I went and got a bit more art (picked almost randomly besides some obvious options). This means we'll get a picture-per-chapter as makes the most sense.
I said there would be a break from posting content for around a week and this seems to turn that into a lie but there are reasons. The first is I had an idea and it is best to solo play when you are in the mood. The second one is that I needed a sandbox to try some fairly different backend elements and tests and this series will be my guinea pig.
The Dungeon Dive posted a video giving an overview and recommendation of Tricube the night before I kicked off this multi-session adventure that, as usual, started as a one shot and it made me think..."Yeah, it could be nice to just randomly play something." I had played Arcane Agent, before, with my partner, Kaz, [that inspired me to write my expanded Tricubes Solo framework which was actually intended for more co-op play] so it was one of the first ones that sprung to mind. I play so many beleaguered sorts I liked the idea of playing someone a bit more actually action-y. The first scene to come to mind while I was still milling about for an idea was the one with Amy Patel (directly inspired by the Dean Spencer artwork on the one-sheet) though the one used for Chapter One (here being Johnny punching the guy out in the mall) was the image that is why I wanted to do this campaign. I wanted to figure out why that was going down. I did not know when it would show up (but its nice I had a good excuse to use it early). From there, the phrase "The GLOW" came to me after a few seconds and a justification as to why Mobile, AL had turned into a mega-city. The concept behind the technology took less time that it took me to think of the name. "Squeezing the juice" just fit my aether-noir aesthetic, I guess.
Arcane Agents remains one of my favorite one-sheets and is a great one to drop in for a one-shot or two.
The hidden in-jokes were a bit more complicated as to their origin. It started out with "Why is Mobile a mega-city in an alternate 90s" and then I went, "What about Eustace and the Rambler?" So those went in. The femme-fatale became an alternate version of Amy Patel (the missing woman and central mystery of the Eustace series). Getting the Werewolf tag brought in the Hendrixes and the Marons. The Arcane Order returned. The Blue Grove. Essentially every other solo game I have posted to this blog has anywhere from a slight to a fairly major shout out even if everything is a different take.
This represents several firsts for this blog. This is the first time I have used paid stock art. As said, Dean Spencer's images used in Arcane Agents are direct inspirations of the set-up (being Amy Patel and Johnny Blue). It felt nice to go and pay for said artwork so I could use it here (along with a couple of other pieces). The images
This is the first time I have used the "Multi-phase" style blogpost for anything NOT The Bleak + The Pearl. I just wanted to see how well it worked with another system/setting. I like it.
I have no idea how many more sessions there will be with The GLOW but the idea is for each different mini-arc to focus on a different character at a different time. Unfinished business will show up from time to time. Etc.
Finally, this the first time where I actively coded the blog in support of solo play rather than trying to limit my solo play to mostly fit what the blog format altered. There are several improvements here (hover over footnote calls to see a summary of the note, links to specific footnotes, sections for the different phases, use of unicode to make certain game elements more legible). Part of the reason I broke this up into [long] posts is because I have to actually post it to work out the kinks. There will likely be a few changes as we go but overall this is kind of shaping up to be the future format of the blog (and retroactively applied to previous posts).
== MECHANICAL NOTES ==
- Johnny does not realize this but he failed a Hard Crafty check. Since he was not aware the mantis was scanning him (and sending information to Amy's contacts), I am not spending Karma on it.
- 9♠ → Standard Crafty to figure out something is up. Johnny gets double successes and is very aware.
- 10♡ → Hard Crafty challenge to spot the intruder. Johnny gets a success.
- Two successes. Exceptional success on the brawny roll so Johnny dominates the fight. What kind of mask is the perp wearing? IO 3,1 → "Crystal Ball" so sort of like an old sci-fi serial "astronaut" helmet.
- Is the machine for reading the mini-disk smashed? (Unlikely)? K♣ → Yes, actually, it is. Like it might have been a targeted attack against the equipment because it is very smashed.
- Can the psychic link transmit direct visual data? 8♢ → Yes, but maybe not a huge amount of super specific detail. Kind of like a 90s era camera level quality.
- Image Oracle 3,4 → "Conversation" + 3,3 → "Daemon Pull" = Demontongue.
- Using the rules where you can change the focus on the task, a Standard Brawny becomes a Hard Agile. Rather than fight off the cops, Johnny is more likely to just run. He gets one success.
- Crafty Challenge. Pulling a card to testing the rank: 8♠ → Easy. Nurse gets 2 successes. {person | person | person | place | place | object} → object. "Urban Location" 3,6 → Mall/Marketplace + "Urban Person" 2,3 → "Consultant/Guide" + Image Oracle 2,5 → "Compass".
- Pull card for rank of challenge, 2♣ → Easy Agile. Two successes, no problem.
- Is the desk currently staffed? J♠ → Yes, but... the person is prone to distraction and does not like being there. Using the same set-up we used for Hernandez, we get an older male. Personality pretty neutral. Neutral Trait 3 → Joking/Teasing. General Demeanor 2,3 → Conservative. Subject of Interest 1,3 → Behavior/Sin. Speech/Mannerisms 5,2 → Speaks Quietly. Urban People 3,3 → Engineer/Architect. Name 1,4 → Brian 3,5 → Jones. Brian Jones is an older man of religious upbringing who considers the GLOW to be a sinful, godless place. But, he is too burned out an apathetic to care too much (unless you get him ranting), and it has his benefits. He just mostly focuses on the day to day, not being noticed too much, and telling his dad jokes. Testing to see how difficult it will be to trick Brian, we get a JOKER (TWIST: Image Oracle 5,6 Sacrifical Dagger + 1,3 Arrest) + 5♠. Ah, ok. It's like that.
- Check to see what is needed, 7♣ → Hard Brawny. GOOOOOOOD...great. Rolls double 4s. Will spend 2 Karma to make this a critical success. BUT will also take away one resolve because that's a bit tricksy in the old rules.
- Will Brian take the disk and do what was said? 5♣ → No. Not without coercion. What check to convince Brian? Joker (4: new location) + J♣ → the next actions will actually hurt the whole Neon Murder + Investigation subplot. New Location = Image Oracle, 6,6 → Vibrating Phone. 5, 3 → Pentacle. A phone kiosk. Not a literal pentacle but mall-quality charms to hang on the phone. Actual check to convince Brian is 9♡ → Standard Crafty and Johnny fails. Agile Challenge to get the disk into the cellphone kiosk without being seen is 7♠ → Hard Agile and Johnny whiffs that, as well. Kiosk attendee = Younger. Non-Binary. Other details will wait.
== 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 and updated link as that works out.
Some art © 2015 Dean Spencer, used with permission. All rights reserved.
Front page of the "Arcane Agents" one-sheet used in screenshot is CC-BY Richard Woolcock.
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