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"Previously..." and Campaign/Arc Summary
The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont Episode 9 — Worse Angels

Worse Angels
In Between
Stalling for Time
How to Make Friends, Badly

Doug's Commentary
Mechanical and Story Notes
Credits
Taxonomy and Technical Data

Previously, on The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

After pushing into the heart of the Knives of the Fallen Star compound, Eustace + Hitomi + Genny have managed to find and kill Magnus Odinson while gathering up data on his anti-Order activities.

About The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

Eustace Delmont is a psychic on the cusp of "graduating" into a full-blow Field Psychic. He requests his right to Walk, a brief period of freedom to encourage psychics to see the other side of The GLOW. He tries to finish his long-time partner Jani Blum's final unfinished mission: to find a mini-disc and crack open the Patel crime family. He meets Hitomi Meyer, a criminal hacker. The two are now on the run between a powerful crime family and an even more powerful adversary: The Order and its plans for Eustace.

Content Warning: Occasionally very foul language, lots of smoking, quite intense violence, drinking, gambling, non-graphic sex, drugs, criminal behavior, and black magic. The GLOW is a world of spiritual torture and weird horror.

This post is in the standard Doug Alone post style. See Anatomy of a Post for more details.

Attribution for the tools and materials used—including the splash art—can be found in the Credits below along with some details.

The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont. Episode 9 — Worse Angels

Setting the Scene. Worse Angels.

This is a dream sequence where Eustace will be given a chance to realize what is up but it might not be a hard one. He'll also see upcoming calamity (which was a mechanic from the very first session of this but has been dropped). This will help to give some flavor to the next session or two outside of simply (1) Get Dave Akari, (2) Get Roman Patel, (3) Profit.

To generate elements of the dream I'll draw three cards and build up some things: [c100], [c20], [c48].

c100 has meteorites falling. That seems useful to use. Also a skeleton.
c48 has Confuse Arcane Container.
c20 has "the reek of vomit," "flames in the distance," and "hover-carrier..."

I think all three bits can make for some interesting screws tightening. This Anti-Order league is pulling a new asteroid towards the Earth to recreate The Chicxulub Event. They are on a hover carrier somewhere. Flames and vomit and other terrible scenes.

Date Scene Played: March 10, 2025.

An old, small white church surrounded by mountains and plains.

He walks across kilometers of dry grass under the heat of the sun. Large birds overhead. Three and sometimes four. Though always feeling like more. He thought they were vultures until he stopped and risked sun-blindness to stare at them. No, they have black wings like crows. Beak faced. Black-eyed. But their bodies are human. Pale skin. Dark skin. Covered in scars. Covered in stench. Some ancient furies looking for a battle ground to feed.

Behind them, in the sky, a new moon is visible. Misshapen. Broken. Falling towards the Earth. An asteroid untethered from millennia of gravitational stability. Falling into the gravitational well of the sun. Quick stop on planet Earth on the way down. Steadily getting larger as it approaches. In the distance, screams from an unknown host of people carry past the horizon.

Underneath it all, he keeps walking. Kilometer after kilometer. The day that will not end. Towards something.

As the forever sun is finally setting, he comes to a small white building on the edge of the scrubland plain. Mountains in the distance. The sounds of people screaming seem closer or the number of people has increased. Up ahead, the crow-angels move in a complicated spiral but now there are definitely three. Maybe there was always just three. The newborn moon is triple the size of its older sibling. Like some perspective trick, always directly above.

He takes three steps towards the building and then finds it suddenly in front of him on the fourth, the door swinging open with a crunch like he just kicked it. He walks into the black hole past the door and finds a building interior very much in tune with the external carapace but also defiantly different. Too long, too narrow. Cramped yet large like the fear of dark is large. Full of emptiness. Shattered into obscene order. Stone floor where the building would clearly have wooden slats. Plain glass windows are now a cacophony of stained glass spirals gone dark with time. The pulpit is an ornate nonsense edifice. The crucifix a complex design made of carved yet living branches and vines behind it. Perched upon it, three crows. With a spot for a fourth.

In the floor, in the middle of this place is a pit carved into the stone like some ancient dhole has dug up from underneath. The edges are rough with rubble but the pit itself is smooth like eaten clear by millennia of water erosion. Walking towards it, he hears the pit breathe and sigh and the smell is not unlike a cat's breath. Carnivorous and sharp toothed. The death of rats and dry food. He blinks and it is a green door set into an old castle wall. Blinks again and it is a still pool in a forest floor. Blinks again and it is a throat.

He walks forward and falls.

Outside the people scream and burn and fires erupt as the newborn moon grows to fill the sky. The three angel crows are just one, now, the size of mountain, as emerald threads fall out of it and cover the landscape.

He falls for as long as he walked. Longer. Shorter. Hours and days and months and years. Just a few minutes. Eventually he finds himself again walking though this time through a city street. Overfull. Stuffed to the brim with signs and glass and debris. Graffiti marks every wall. Some in languages approximating human tongue. Others in wild letters that could only be spoken by star-spawn. All empty of people. A great edifice. A great orifice. Devouring until it had consumed its only food source. The air is empty of Soulburn.

No more souls to harrow.

Eventually, he comes to a small fruit stand. The apples and oranges upon it gone to ash. The sign curled and twisted by some great heat. Past it, a small electronics store. The pieces inside impossibly antiquated. Some past eras concept of modern progress. Wires and cables like blood vessels and nerves. Machinery in the shape of hearts and livers. Old screens with green text burned into them. All of them saying just one word. Over over.

The sky, ahead, if he looked up, is a cavern roof. The newborn moon so wide there are no horizons that are not it. Gravity inverts, falls up into the sky. Dust and debris. The tops of buildings begin the crack. Glass shards spiral up into the newborn. Great pipes and tubes. Yellowed and oxygen burned paper. Old desks eaten by time and termite. All into the newborn's hungry mouth. Babies mouth the world. Tasting. Discovering. Finding it all lacking.

He is resolute down below. Walks into the shop as though gravity is the direction he chooses. He walks until he finds a door. Just a plain white door and on it is a sign that says "Employees Only." He pushes upon it and once again time distorts and he is already through and in front of him is a spider web of green lines and threads. Emerald yarn. Spider silk verdant and shimmering. In the middle of it, there is a woman. He knows her name like he knows his own name.

A taste rather than a word.

As he looks closer, he sees the green threads are lines drawn in the air. Sentences scribbled in crayon. And again, they over and over just say one word.

He looks down and arms end in two long blades. Like mantis arms. He is suddenly deeply aware that all these words threads strings silk ropes lines are his own work. He has been trapping her inside. He suddenly remembers what the word is. [1]

As the city outside breaks apart and falls up into the sky which is actually the new ground, as the planet is consumed into a newborn moon now older and more ancient the continents, inside this little shop that remains like a skull in a desert there is a man reaching up and pulling the woman from the threads. And he says the word:

"Foxteeth."

Setting the Scene. In Between.

Date: Sunday, June 2, 1996.
Time: 9:22pm.
Place: An apartment in downtown Pensacola.

Actual Scene: This is the Time Out scene where we wrap up things from last time before starting a new sub-arc.

This one will be blending in character actions and interactions with most Time Out mechanics. The characters will actually get around 24-hours of downtime while working on to their next step.

Eustace has two conditions to heal up. We also need to find out things like how many credits the team has gotten. Genny is kind of done as a side character for the moment. This next step will likely use Libby instead.

Normally I would play this out more quickly but since I just spent the last eight or so hours of playing going through constant combat and action scenes, I need one where the action is less about bloodshed and more of the broad sweep of the cyberpunk experience.

Heat has definitely gone up to 6 at this point. It just feels appropriate. At 6 Heat, they go up to 3 Lethal Bullets.

Date Scene Played: March 10, 2025.

A man enters into an apartment building on an urban street.

Eustace awakes from his dream with a dry mouth and a headache. For the first time in several days he finds himself craving a moment alone with his pipe and so gets up and starts searching through his old pockets to see if he can find it. Despite the beating the pants have taken over the past seventy-two-hours, the small briar pipe has has taken the abuse. Using his thumb to push the burley shag into place, he glances around for a light and finds nothing. At this point, where he is starts pushing its way to the forefront of his consciousness. An apartment. Pink sheets with white flowers. Corporate-level art on the wall. Knick-knacks on department store furniture. A mirror over the dresser showing his bruised body. A small crack in the corner to give it just enough verity. A place barely lived in but one that feels well-worn like a comfortable pair of shoes.

The apartment is owned by Juan and run very low down on the books. Accounted for as a storage space on the other side of The GLOW according to Juan's files and owned, by the building's files, by some woman named Mary Stewart. That particular Mary has been dead for a decade. Common enough name there are at least three other Mary Stewart's in GLOW at this point in time. A couple of soft lies to hide a bigger one. A hiding spot for jobbers that Juan rarely uses for only those he completely trusts. Hitomi has made the list. Eustace has no illusions how far he would get if he was on his own. He moves with a groan as he starts to pull on a shirt and then abandons it until a few more bruises heal. The whole time keeps his pipe clenched in his teeth. Myranda helped patch him up in the early morning hours but they only got so far before Hitomi decided that Eustace had been pampered enough. [2]

Speaking of Hitomi — he tries to not recall the dream and the word "foxteeth" — he pushes through the door and enters into a hallway decorated with old pictures of some family he does not know. The whole place smells of baked goods, mothballs, and stale cigarette smoke masked by lemon-scented candles. It smells of old photos and grandchildren playing. Synthetic scents. A gentle misting of Fractal Apocalypse-brand Contentment™ blended with a complex milieu of industrial grade esters. If MUNI somehow got wind and raided the place, their own brains would lie to them and convince them to take off their shoes.

Eustace finds Hitomi in a second bedroom (of three, Bee currently occupying the third) refitted to be a minor office space. She is asleep with a cigarette burned down in the ashtray beside her. Some dried blood on her shirt sleeve. He has no idea if it is hers. The green lines, such a steady companion for her these past couple of days, now mostly gone. A single line pulses between them, connecting their thread together. He realizes that aspect of his dream was true. Somehow he was embedding these lines into her, weaving them. He reaches out and pulls down a thin-as-spider-silk line moving faintly through the air and it actually catches in his grasp. He pulls it near his nose and smells. It smells like...fights and long nights. It smells like bleach and bed sores. A small TV playing the same meaningless commercial television on loop. A person barely able to stand because of exhaustion but so much requiring them to stand tall. Siblings? Lovers? Young lovers. Trapped by youthful love and long expectations. Never a marriage. A prison sentence. What attraction and hope was there is now gone. Eustace takes this thread so thin and light and he twists and turns a portion into a sigil he knows represents a way out, a removal from a trap. A dangerous game he could be playing. Leading to murder. To early death. But he feels deep down he has made the right call. [3]

After this he turns back to Hitomi and lifts her up. She weighs so little in his arms. She pushes a bit back but he ignores her protests and soon she is in bed, her soiled clothing removed. She'll need a shower but now is not the time. He re-enters into the office and glances at the screens processing data. After a few minutes of reading the output he grits his teeth. Another element from his dream come to life. Asteroid 27B-6. Spectroscopy results suggest Earth-like levels of carbon and organic materials. High likelihood of exposure to extra-terrestrial life. Complicated math suggest patterns that can be used to pull it out of its solar orbit and plummet it to Earth. Self-contained Soulburn Vessels. One map identifies the Indian Ocean as a likely target. Human casualties approaching half a billion or more. Massive fuel for a second Harrowing center, one built up with a different social structure. A particular spot in the Pacific ocean to act as an artificial atoll. Code named R'lyeh. Launching pad for a series of bespoke islands to store and harness concentrated doses of Harrowed energy.

A group business leaders who got rich playing by the rules looking to create a world where there are no rules but their own currency and power. Enough evidence already collected that Eustace could walk out with these computers right now and be considered a hero to the entire Order. Would be able to coast for the rest of his life. [4]

And in exchange, he would never see Hitomi, again. A return to Antioch. Or, based on his new-found abilities, perhaps whatever hidden dimension the Witches Three have been hiding in. Assuming they are still alive. He thinks back to those "Worse Angels," those crow angels. Watching him. He pushes down into himself and tries to find other threads being attached to himself, ones that he might not recognize. There, around his arms, he catches the glimpse of something new, a magenta thread. He reaches out to grab it but it slithers out of his fingers. He's not yet strong enough to grasp it and soon it fades from his sight. [5]

As he is struggling with that, he hears a sound at the door as someone enters. He rushes outside and sees Bee and BrokenRecord breaking out of their long kiss and turning, looking shocked and worried. "Is that your dad, is that your dad, is that your dad?," Broken says in her signature repetition vocal tick. Eustace realizes that to most people he — with no shirt and covered in bruises and cuts — would likely be a shock. To two young people on the slight and frazzled side of life's coin he might look like a complete threat. He knew that Bee had gone with someone to visit Mrs. Yuuki in the hospital but is a little surprised to see BrokenRecord. More threads tightening and interlinking people. Still, they should make a nice pair.

"You know me, Darya. How is Mrs. Yuuki, Bee?"

Darya, aka BrokenRecord, looks up and realizes who is in front of her. "Oh you! You! Nice! Nice!" All smiles now. Bee slaps up against her shoulder, seemingly not so sure. Bee has been saved twice by Eustace, both times thanks to Eustace chewing through an entire group of people who were threatening them. Bee has strongly mixed emotions about a man who will cut off another man's face — quite literally — even if the outcome is a good thing. They shrug. "She's out of intensive care but has a long way to go before anything like hitting safety. Looters took out the rest of her store. Maybe some of the food went to helping people." [6]

"She'd probably rather they paid."

"Definitely."

"Um, um, um..."

Eustace waves at BrokenRecord's interruption and turns to leave the two young adults alone. Then turns back, "Do either of you have a lighter?"

Half an hour later, he is finishing his first bowl of strong burley tobacco — the office air thick and swirling with tobacco smoke and Soulburn — and going over some of the files from Dave Akari's computer. Tech to store and make new Soulburn. Miniature Harrowing born directly out of torturing sentient beings. Trapping them. A space station design. Several places around the globe where tests are being carried out right now. Often with various false religious cults to cover for them. No mention on where Akari might be right now, or how to get closer to the Patels. Other people involved. At least not obvious mentions. Account names by way of numbers. A few codewords. Basilisk. Bloodhound. OpTimeL0. People? Organizations? Unknown. [7]

On the desk in front him, 4 blue Creds. His and Hitomi's share. Combined with what they already have, enough to get started. To fight back. Assuming she is in. And if she is out, will he turn against the world for this brief moment? He truly has no idea. [8]

Down the hall, he hears more giggles from Bee's room. He has tried to ignore the sounds as much as possible but they are quite loud. Only, it's not really the sounds he was expecting to be ignoring. Either the two of them are having the world's most ticklish sex or they have opted instead for a late session with a joke book. Frankly, flip of the coin between the two. Still, it reminds him that he should also be resting up. The future looks stark and steep.

He crawls back into the grandmotherly bed that Hitomi and he is sharing. She is snoring lightly. At his initial disturbance she makes a face like a person trying lemon for the first time. After a moment, though, she rolls over and gathers herself against him. He holds her tight and looks up to see that magenta thread twisting and waving over him. Looks at the ceiling and pictures, up there, plans for a space station that will create a man-made disaster to destroy a half-billion people. He reaches up and plucks at the thread he cannot hold, and along it he hears a laughter that is older than dirt and darker than the bottom of the ocean. A terrible crone's laughter.

His heart is racing when Hitomi makes a sort of shushing sound with her mouth. He had not even realized he had been talking out loud. No idea what he had been saying. Instead, he grabs her and pulls her warmth into his and holds her there. Remembering her saying no L-words and no-not-L-words. But he has trouble keeping it to himself. "I love you, Hitomi Meyer."

She smiles and then presses her face into his chest and starts snoring again.

Setting the Scene. Stalling for Time.

Date: Monday, June 3, 1996.
Time: 7:17pm
Place: The Palafox Street Market in Pensacola.

Before we roll the scene to test it for expectation, we are going to do something a little different. I'd like a bit of a street market scene which could be an interrogation (Expected), a chase (Minor), or a fight (Major). Basically, they are trying to find a confidant who can help them locate Dave Akari's base of operations [which we know from the initial dream sequence, or well, stuff on the back end, involves a hover-carrier].

Creating this person we'll do some of the standard things. { male | female | non } = Female. { younger | same | older } = younger. (from Augmented Reality // Hackers & Slicers) 70 Mother_Bored 96 Drug-addicted net regulator, knows system's weak points 27 Malnourished, pastey, dank. Real name (from Dicegeek's Cyberpunk 3 // Phillipine Names) 42 Eleanor 36 Clemente. Another hacker from the days when Hitomi and Dave ran together, only Eleanor/Mother_Bored stayed with Dave — at least, he stayed with her. MB's drug habits makes her a weak link in the chain but her knowledge of The GLOW aethersecurity and day job of doing legit business keeps her an asset.

Expected Scene: Hitomi and Eustace try to find Mother_Bored at the Palafox Street Market.
Scene Test: [c53] 8. 2d10 = 9 + 8. Minor complications are like...taxes. Inevitable. It's a chase then.
Actual Scene: H+E are having to chase Mother_Bored through the street market.

Need will be 10. Hotboxes on 3 and 7 just to add some more shenanigans. Starting speed will be 0. Once they catch her, we'll figure it out based on whims, dice, and cards.

Date Scene Played: March 12, 2025.

A street market at night with lots of people and well lit stalls.

There are moments like this when Hitomi very nearly loves The GLOW. The crowd on Palafox Street. Families. Couples. A few old men and women with canvas bags full of sandwiches and juice. A couple of guys playing chess on a table. The scent of good cigar smoke. Laughter. A kid eating funnel cake. Very few MUNI officers or private security. The general density and flow of the crowd increasing as they approach the market. The night version which is much the same as the day version: just a swap from grown goods to crafted ones. Late night it swings to more esoteric things. Early morning more baked goods and meal prep and medicinal. Some folks timesharing stalls, equipped with anti-humidity devices and bug-repelling light sources. During the day all the tomatoes you can eat for a few quarter creds. At night, all the tomato shaped necklaces. Drones fly overhead, giving live updates on foot-traffic flow and sales patterns. Palafox regulars tracking haggling and stock so they can better play at being farmer market's browsers.

Similar to the Citadel, there are layers upon layers of unspoken rules. Some quite loud. Enough of the old grandpas and young wives running the stalls — day or night variations — have ties to various street gangs that any assault upon the market would likely trigger an all out war. In fact, backed by folks like Juan Uno, the market is broadly under 24/7 Pax. Doesn't mean there aren't plenty of petty thefts and occasional violence, it is just understood that it will involve as little damaged merchandise as possible. Tourists meander through the street. No doubt some will claim that hanging out here has shown them the real GLOW.

"Mother_Bored was an early recruit to several security firms. By age of seventeen, she had mastered a complex series of wards unique to her own grimoire. By age of nineteen, she fell in Dave Akari and myself. A few weeks later, I was out and she was the new second-in-command. The trick to getting good at wards is that you are generally good at cracking them. Hooked up on various souldrugs. Became a liability to Dave and got kicked out of inner circle herself but too valuable to push far and much too valuable to kill. If anyone knows how to find Dave and his current troupe, she'll be it."

Hitomi has been bringing Eustace up to speed. Mr. Psychic likely can know all these details with a quick thought but it's nice to talk out loud. She can feel that their relationship has shifted. Become the kind of one where just talking to one another counts for something, and it worries her. Eustace has a non-zero chance of being able to slaughter every person on this street and while that could be downright sexy in some situations, it remains a bother. Not that Eustace seems the type but The GLOW is full of people who seem like they wouldn't backstab an entire swath of the population until they do. She read the reports snagged from Magnus and Dave: a second impact event calculated to extinct just enough people to make folks poised to capitalize on it richer than the word "rich" can convey.

Eustace, listening to Hitomi, is worried about coincidences. Palafox Street. Foxteeth. Crow-winged, scarred angels. Newborn moons. The dream/vision running amok in his brain. And the fact that many of the terrible things circling around Hitomi are directly related to him not so much reading the psychic threads matrix and rewriting it.

The two of them hit the main crowd and once again the general effect of Eustace's size does wonders as tourists and regulars part silently, doing their best to not be seen looking. The stall in question sells tat made of reclaimed computer parts. On the surface. Motherboards turned into wall art. Hard drives and disks turned into outsized jewelry. People in the know might be sold a CD on a kitschy chain. The CD just so happening to contain backdoor ward breakers into a credit union. Or a list of names and dates for expected souldrug drop offs. A rotating series of codewords and catalog numbers. The kind of place you have to very nearly not need to use in order to navigate its services.

Approaching it, Eustace gets his first glance of Mother_Bored. A woman a couple years younger than Hitomi but whose small stature and thin frame makes her look an anorexic teenager going on late-forties. Drug of choice is synthetic sleep blended with soul-speed. Manages a roughly twenty-two work day between aethernet security, this booth from 5pm to midnight, and various unsavory acts in the early morning. Brain always somewhere between deeply dreaming and wide awake. Eyes twitch as aether-goggles convert realtime talk to dreamlike sequences at x10 fast forward. Hence the nickname. Normie speed is a sin to her. She'll likely be dead before she hits thirty but will have lived a longer life than most.

Hitomi approaches while lighting a cigarette and asks for "Whole Wheat Flour, Ground Tuesday" which triggers Mother_Bored to start automatically reaching under the counter before she whips her twitching head to stare about a half-meter over Hitomi's head as the dreamland versions of events alerts her to just who made the request. Eustace is braced for a scene but instead he hears the shutters on the stall activated as MB bolts out the back while he and Hitomi are inside a security pen that would, in normal circumstances, require bioprint ID to unlock. Eustace has blades out between the sliding chain-link fence before it can close and arm and Hitomi is out past the gates and giving chase. Eustace shoves back against the gate long enough to get out himself and hears the shutters click behind him, powering on the electrofence grid. He does not look back as he catches up to Hitomi and they see Mother_Bored dive behind another stall. [9]

MB reaches into the neighboring stall — filled full of blown glass icons and religious trinkets — and snags out a big handful of ornate candle holders and slams them down into the ground in front of Hitomi's feet. The old Asian woman behind the counter let's out a curse in Vietnamese as her grandson — or paid thug — steps out to face Eustace. Hitomi leaps over the broken glass and keeps moving at full speed. Eustace turns to the man and points a bladed arm in his direction with a single shake of his head. The man holds his hands up and steps back long enough for Eustace to get past. [10]

Hitomi swings out further behind the stalls where the crowd is a bit thinner — even though the crowd is more likely to be sitting on the sidewalk and munching on street food — and runs through a group of college kids playing at some card game. Eustace leaps up on top of the stalls — the synthetic canvas actually a complicated aetherlaced metal meant to give the appearance of cloth — and leaps from stall to stall as some of the commerce drones start following and tracking him to put on a show for all the subscribers. [11]

MB hits some buttons on a large watch she is wearing and Eustace sees the drones blink as their blue light flashes red and they swerve down to strike at the two chasers. Then Mother_Bored abruptly turns and changes course to dive into the crowd and start crossing the street. Shoving against people larger than her. Several folks start cursing. As the drones dive down, more curses. People losing their entertainment. Eustace leaps through the air to strike the drones down before they can get to him and Hitomi. He uses this momentum to fling himself into the crowd. The crowd parts as he lands. Several people have camcorders and scrying glasses filming the action. Some tourists seem unsure if this is a planned show or just the natural entertainment that erupts in The GLOW. Hitomi reaches out and grabs hold off the supports holding up a stand of homemade jellies — spiked with tiny glimmering beads that glow with Soulburn — and swings out, using her momentum to turn to follow. [12]

Eustace powers through the crowd while trying to not trample anyone. A young mother with a small kid is giving a lecture about allowance and steps out in front of him. He pivots into the side, bounding off a ServiSynth made to look like a cartoon character — selling bootleg animation cels from a popular robot series — but keeps his pace up as best he can. Hitomi, too, is struggling to shove though the people, many focused on Eustace and closing the gap to try and get as much good video as possible. She grabs a middle-aged Japanese man in a suit and shouts, "ありがとう!," as he trips and falls back. No doubt he will have a fun story to tell his wife and kids back home. [13]

A bike trolley carring several tourists on a "pedal and sip" tour of Pensacola pulls blocking Eustace's view for a moment before he spots MB dodging down an alley. He lets the tourists go past before chasing down after her. Hitomi, further back, nearly misses this but catches the back of Eustace as it goes around the corner. She takes off after. Eustace is heading for the end of the alley when Mother_Bored's fletchette launcher fires off a few sharp blades. He smacks them down and then closes the gap and kicks her legs out from under her. [14]

A few moments later, Hitomi comes up as well, breathing hard. Almost regretting the pack of cigs she has smoked today. Almost. As soon as she catches her breath she is going to start on her second.

"What the hell, Ell?," Hitomi asks. Then, to Eustace, "Get her, we'll find some place we can talk."

Setting the Scene. How to Make Friends, Badly.

Date: Monday, June 3, 1996.
Time: 8:47pm.
Place: 8th Floor Auditorium of Pensacola Polytechnic.

Expected Scene: Eustace and Hitomi bring Mother_Bored to a location to talk to her about Dave Akari.
Scene Test: [c52] 6. 2d10 = 8 + 5. Minor twist. "Your net traffic is leaked.
Actual Scene: Private security is converging to liquidate Mother_Bored.

For the attackers, we'll go for 2xCrit/Crit/6. Won't worry about special actions so no hotboxes but they have a couple of feats: Tactics (need to flip a coin to get close), Piercing Bullets (ignore partial cover).

Date Scene Played: March 12, 2025.

"You just happen to have a key to a classroom?," Eustace asks, looking around as the lights flicker on. They are a fair sized auditorium, eight floors up in a single-building "university" called Pensacola Polytechnic. Corpo salary slave pipeline. The smiling PP board photos on the first floor were a who's who of mid- to very-nearly-large GLOW corp CEOs and CFOs. Roman Patel was one of the many on display, near the center with a slightly bigger portrait than the others. From students in suits to office drones in suits in four short years. If you have a particular knack of taking orders well and ignoring questionable lines on a spreadsheet, all expenses paid. Not the sort of place that Eustace would have considered Hitomi to have any connections. Surely she wasn't a student.

"I dated a professor. Well, still...dating. Maybe. It's complicated."

"Ah. Nice?"

"Skip. Next question! Like, where the fuck is Dave, Ell?" [15]

Mother_Bored scoffs at the old nickname for Eleanor and then stares back into space. Been nearly an hour since last fix after she bolted and left her stash back in her stall. In six hours time the stall becomes a fruit stand specializing in GLOW-harvested apples with purple skin. Of course, all her shit will be there which will rankle Tomas. Reality is starting to bleed in. She had been having such a lovely dream of falling through infinite space while multi-colored planets...

"ELL!"

Mother_Bored whips her head back up, coasting somewhere over a planet full of red hexagons for clouds. Hitomi and her new man talk. so. slow. The ever present fear of coasting back into fleshtime starts crawling up her spine.

"How about I slap her?," Hitomi asks.

Eustace stares down at this poor pitiful woman. DTs causing her to sweat. Body odor suggesting a lack of basic hygiene for going on a week, punching through any perfume. Candle burning from both ends, twice as fast. His first thought was she wouldn't make until thirty. Now getting a read he feels like she might not make it until 1997. Multiple organs on the cusp of failure. He slows down time around him, pulls forth the threads weaving through this room. So many colors. Not just the emerald ones to which he is attuned, but thousands and thousands of shades. He finds a gray, thin, dying line that represents the remainder of Mother_Board's life. Grabs and twists it into shapes. There's no rulebook for what he is doing. No grimoire. He can only go on the patterns that his own soul are trying to solve. He ties the thread off into a knot and let's go. A relatively minor miracle, one with immediate effect. [16]

Mother_Bored gasps and falls over, whipping off her glasses as the dream state she was in crashes into dull colors like an after effect of staring at fireworks. The sweat dries up. The need dries up. Her brain no longer overclocked she is cruising at 1:1 time. She's starving. Her back hurts. She desperate needs water. What the fuck just happened?

Eustace looks down at the panic in her face and tells her plainly, "I removed five years worth of addiction. Can't stop you from getting back on but your body has a chance to fight back against it."

"You did...fu...wha..." Mother_Bored — now just Eleanor Clemente — stops when she realizes Hitomi is just as shocked as she is. She wants to be furious but her body is now nearly too weak to sustain any emotion besides all the basic needs. Shit. Does this mean she is going to have normal dreams?

"Hitomi asked you a question, where is Dave Akari?"

Hitomi's hands are shaking as she is trying to light a cigarette and she gives up. She's had a sense that something is happening with Eustace but she realizes she has been undershooting the mark. She has a sudden unbidden thought of three figures in cowls. No people. Something much, much worse.

For now, though, she sees that Ell is resisting talking despite whatever the opposite of body shock might be so it falls on Hitomi to take on the good cop to Eustace's absolutely terrifying reality altering cop. "Dave is involved in some terrible fucking shit, Ell. Like, killing millions and millions of people. Maybe billions. Women. Children. Puppies, for fuck sake. We are trying to stop him before it's too late." [17]

Eleanor "Ell" "Mother_Bored" Clemente looks at Hitomi for a second and starts crying. "I don't know, Hitomi. He left me behind. I still have to keep getting him stuff or he said he'll cut me off from my supply. Well, I guess I don't have to worry about that any more. He's taken to The Moonblink. All I know."

"The Moonblink?," Hitomi asks.

"His hoverboat. Using Patel tech. Flying somewhere over The GLOW."

"Do you know where?," Eustace cuts in and Hitomi slaps him on the arm.

"Um, no, dipshit. Hover. Boat. It moves around."

"Ok," says Hitomi, "How can we possibly track it. Do you know?"

"Now that Mischa has pulled her mutiny, only likely terminal is Hasan's Terminal Farm." [18]

"Mischa? Hasan? Who are..."

Blood explodes as Eleanor's head explodes and Hitomi and Eustace whip around to see a pair of men in dark suits holding silence pistols aimed at the late Ms. Clemente. Without saying anything Eustace starts running towards the men as they split and run in opposite directions. After a second, Eustace has to turn and tracks the guy on his left. Hitomi whips out her gun and fires at the guy on the right before diving behind the lecturer's podium. [19]

Large chunks tear through the podium as the one gunman pins her down but none of the bullets find their mark. She hears the sounds of bullets ricocheting off of Eustace's blades as he cuts some of them out of the air but also hears him grunt as he doesn't cut through the entire barrage. [20]

From her spot she hears the sound of someone cutting through flesh and then the dull wet thwack as a man screams. Glancing out from behind the podium she sees the gunman she was targeting splattered with blood as the other man's head is still bouncing off of him. She takes advantage of the moment to open fire and the second gunman drops. [21]

Eustace jogs back up to her. She asks him, "Did you just cut one man's head off and use it to hit another man?"

"Seemed expedient."

"Ok, and now what the fuck are you doing?"

Eustace is wrapping one of the dead man's coats around Ell's body and picking her up. "We just chased this woman in front of a large crowd of people. They find her dead now, it won't take MUNI long to track us. Come on, security has to be coming."

Hitomi hesitates only a moment before following after him. She has to figure out who or what a Hasan Terminal Farm might be.

DOUG'S COMMENTARY

March 10, 2025

Worse Angels is a reference to a Laird Barron novel of the same name. One about experiments gone awry and state secrets. Outside of that, it does not really have any presence or impact — no pun intended — on the rest of the session. The dream sequence, at least bits of it, were somewhat inspired by Laird's writing style. But also just dream logic of a sort.

The church and its image at the start was picked by just scrolling through recent stock art and finding something that would make sense in that dream. Another picture would have flavored elements of it differently. The bit about the pit smelling like cat's breath was actually the first element I came up with while giving one of my cat's medicine. Giving him medicine requires getting him to open up his mouth and then getting the pill to the back of his throat. I get to smell cat's breath fairly often, thanks to it.

It does not help my mood that I've been reading over the past couple of nights the new-to-English book The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica. Post apocalyptic nightmare state BDSM nuns with post-modernist feminist lesbian romance inside of its terrible logic. None of its imagery really figured in the dream sequence but that sort of mood of things not fitting besides how they fit were inspired a bit by it. The book cost me a couple of nights of sleep and so take that as the high praise it is, even if the book sort of ends up in exactly the place you might figure it would.

27B-6 is definitely a reference to Brazil. The plot to destroy a country to get rich is...you know...also a reference...to something.

March 12, 2025

The Palafox Street Market is a real thing though something completely different. I figured if I was setting some sort of street market scene in The GLOW's Pensacola I should at least give a shoutout to a real one. It seems awesome.

There is no Pensacola Polytechnic. That originated out of a prompt from Augmented Reality. On page 48 I got "School Stack" and then realized that something that was a bit southern but also a bit cyberpunk would make sense. I didn't want to use a real location since I was going to be a tad unflattering, but I like the PP alliteration.

After the bang-bang constant rush of the previous few episodes, having a slightly "slower" and somewhat "smaller" one was nice. This one is a bit more standard Doug I would say, good or bad. A lot lore baked in. Each scene played on its own with some time in between to think. I would generally prefer more scenes like these, even if they take twice as long. Where each scene is its own puzzle. Figuring out the dream sequence. Figuring out the truth of the data they stole. Figuring out how the relationships are going. The street market and making that feel like a place. Even just the oddity of having the quick shoot out in the classroom.

Some of this was me watching Johnny Mnemonic earlier today. There are several "definitely 'punk" moments but there is also several scenes where reality is mostly just life in the XXI. A good percentage of the cyberpunk vibe is trash piled up in large spaces while extras playing homeless folk struggle to not look at the camera. Or people spazz out on the least convincing hospital set of cinematic history. While that is no doubt thanks in part to the budget and the 90s struggle to figure out what cyberpunk might look like if it was box office profitable, it is interesting to think about how Sprawl vs Top is sometimes not so clear cut. Most societies with extreme stratification of economic realities have a large middle class left behind by the true Top and those middle class people smear the lines between the other two extremes as they form bubbles of secondary and tertiary Tops. Hence the market which was contrasted to the mall. A place where violence and high tech and squalor can exist but also a place where people need to shop and buy trinkets. The school where people sell their souls to corps to get a middlin' education. I wanted to find those places where the 'punk is restrained behind the scenes. In an actual cyberpunk universe, a large number of people would just be living. Same as it ever was.

And some of it was this campaign changing one of its side benefits. Initially I had been playing it here to get the hang of playing the system as written with the plan of demo'ing at the 2025 Huntsville Pop Culture Expo. After some consideration — a bit between some financial concerns and between having issues running games at big cons now due to my disability — I am actually going to give running games a pass this year. It makes me sad but it can be really hard to spend something like fifteen hours running games and it just takes it out of me.

On the positive side, this means that I can swing back to playing Outgunned more like I tend to play games without having to worry too much about nitpicking the rules. It will still be Outgunned but it will also be a bit softer, with less focus on sticking to all of its mantras of action and pacing.

The next session — and I am sticking to one post per week combining 2-3 different sessions — will most likely be a Turning Point. We are starting to see WHY the campaign exists. I love the threat of these businessmen plotting to create a second impact. It feels proper outsized and dangerous. Still, next week will almost definitely have the showdown with Dave Akari on his hoverboat and build up to the final sub-arc of confronting Roman Patel.

MECHANICAL AND STORY NOTES

Focus + Fight to tear out his own accidental psychic hooks that have been increasingly trapping Hitomi. Dream Eustace gets a Crit + Basic. Good enough for me!
Did Eustace's pipe survive the last several days? (Even) → [c87] Yes. With Myranda giving + 1 vs Eustaces Focus + Healing checks, he gets Critical on his first and fails his second. He removes his Hurt but still has his Smashed. He will be at -1 Brawn to this session.
Eustace is gaining an Experience: aware of his ability to move threads (aka, witchery). For this test, Focus + Fix + 1 Help from said experience. He gets an Impossible. Boy has jacked the system. Let's pull two cards: [c45] + [c35]. A tense relationship is strained. Your heart breaking. Heavy tobacco smoke. Does this pair want to be together? (Even) → [c43] No. Why are they together? → [c109] A tripwire. They feel trapped due to one being injured.
Criminal + Fix + 1 Help (Libby) + 1 Help (Laptop). Even with all the dice she only gets Critical + Basic. Enough to find the data, not enough to snag extra money/etc from it.
Are the Witches weaving Eustace's threads? (Even) → [c80] Yes. This will require something big, like Extreme or Impossible, but all he gets is Crit + Basic using Focus + Fix. He is aware of it but not good enough to untangle himself from it.
Is Mrs. Yuuki recovering? (Even) → [c4] Yes.
Generated by drawing three cards - [c95], [c93], [c55] - and just riffing off a piece of information on each. I have no idea what these will be, if anything. Future fodder.
I rolled 3d6. 1-3 = 1. 4-5 = 2. 6 = 3. Got a 1+4+6 = 6. Split three ways gives 4. Hitomi had promised her share to Genny but he did not take it.
Brawn + Fight -1 (Smashed) +1 (Blades) nets him double Critical. He moves speed up to and gives them both a chance to get out. Hitomi goes for Brawn + Stunt to get out the opening and also keep up. Gets a Critical + Basic and also goes to Speed 1. Need = 1 for both at the end of the first round.
Hitomi with Nerves + Stunt manages to get an Extreme. We'll give her a boost of another Speed to 2. Eustace with Smooth + Speech gets a Critical with his free reroll.
Hitomi manages a Critical Brawn + Stunt to go up to Speed 3. Eustace, with adrenaline spent, gets a Extreme and goes up to Speed 3 as well. Both are at Need 4 and we get an adrenaline for a thing.
Brawn + Fight nets Eustace an Extreme. Enough to guard both himself and Hitomi and to increase his Speed to 4. Hitomi using Nerves + Stunt manages to corner the turn and keep moving.
Both using Brawn + Stunt. Both end up with just a Basic and maintain Speed. Eustace is up to 8 Need. Hitomi is up to 7. This triggers the next hotbox event.
Focus + Awareness to find her after losing sight. Both amazingly make it. She then takes a shot but he dodges that with Brawn + Stunt. Next Action turn will have him finishing it up so he has caught up to her.
Just in case it ever comes up, which it might, the professor's name is Dr. Mariya Kazuo. Just snagged that from c86.
Going to make him spend a Spotlight for this (he does not win the coinflip to get it back). He then goes for Focus + Fix. Gets Extreme + Basic.
Is Eleanor willing to talk? (Even) → [c108] No? Smooth + Speech + 1 Help for all the stuff happening. Crit + Basic.
Would Ell know about Mischa and the Apostates? (Good) → [c10] Yes. Hasan was just a name on the card.
In a move that surprises no one, Eustace does not detect the men. They kill Ell. Eustace loses his coin flip to approach so has to spend his full action to get there next turn. Hitomi gets Crit + Basic and so notches 1/6 Grit and takes full cover.
She's in full cover so takes no hits. Eustace rolls Brawn + Fight to get Crit + Basic to absorb 4 of the 6 grit's damage.
Eustace spends an Adrenaline to get +2. He gets a Extreme + Crit and does 4 Grit damage to them. They have 1 Grit left. Hitomi, even with the penalty, manages to roll a Crit without even rerolling. Good for her.

CREDITS

The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont is played using Two Little Mouse's Outgunned and Outgunned: Action Flicks (especially, but not limited to "Neon Noir" and "Great Powers"). It uses Larcenous Designs' Gamemaster Apprentice Deck: Cyberpunk 2E as its main oracle.

Other sources used include:

Zach Best's Universal NPC Emulator.
Cesar Capacle's Random Realities
Kevin Crawford's Cities Without Number
Matt Davis' Book of Random Tables: Cyberpunk 1, 2 and 3.
Geist Hack Games and Paul D. Gallagher's Augmented Realities.

ART CREDIT AND EXPLANATION

The 27B-6 above Earth shot is from a computer rendering by Planet Volumes on Unsplash. I wanted a photo of an asteroid above the earth and viola! Not exactly a photo but I'll take it.

The Dream Chapel: Photo by nathan gordon on Unsplash.

The exterior of the apartment is this photo by Giulia Squillace. She has others that will be excellent for the mood of this current session so at least one will likely show up.

In fact, the very next photo was a street market shot from her collection.

Pensacola Polytechnic is from this photo of a classroom auditorium.

Taxonomy and Technical Data

World: The GLOW

Campaign: The GLOW

Arc: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

Post: Episode 9 - Worse Angels

Dates Played: March 10 & 12, 2025. With editing and additional touch ups on March 13, 2025.

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