Fourth of July celebrations near a body of water.

"Previously..." and Campaign/Arc Summary
Getting Back into the Swing of Things
The GLOW 1992: Agent Johnny Blue vs The Kid, Part 4 - Celebrations

Doug's Commentary
Credits

Previously, on The GLOW: 1992: Agent Johnny Blue vs The Kid

Johnny Blue has walked into a trap. Due to the Forked Tongue, his powers were held back and he was unable to dodge it. Now he has lost the Tongue, his badge, and his gun to a cult. A note told him to seek out Tanya Green for help (or so he hopes). Meanwhile, kidnapped Upton Reece has decided to work with four psychic youths who are trying to regain the Tongue before it is used to do harm to the GLOW.

About The GLOW: 1992: Agent Johnny Blue vs the Kid

Agent Johnny Blue is sent on a mission into mid-Florida to find Finley "Farsight" Estevan, a powerful remote-sensing psychic. His only clue is a hedge mage Maria "Madame Sinister" Salas, who seems equally powerful at reading the future using tarot cards. Estevan and Salas are involved with a backwoods cult trying to find the Illuminated Codex: a grimoire tied to a mysterious figure known as The Kid. Just exactly what The Kid is, why the cult is trying to summon him, and what Estevan looks to gain from it is unknown. This is the story of Johnny's worst case ever and his biggest failure.

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

Part of The GLOW series of adventures.

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.

Getting Back into the Swing of Things

There has been some major gaps in the play of this and The Bleak + The Pearl so it will likely take me a few sessions to fully get into the groove. I also still need to rearrange some things to get internet fully back up on this computer so it might be another week before all the shifting of bookcases and what have you have played out.

In that light, this one is going to be a little "lighter" than normal. A celebration of returning to the hobby as it were.

Let's start with a few things just to set up some situations for this.

First off, let's draw a couple of Dixit: Mirrors cards to establish some themes and concepts to blend into this one. First card is a picture of Santa with elves playing in his beard [Row 3, Column 6]. Children playing. Not The Kid but actual kids. Festivals and celebrations. A Fourth of July gathering. Second card: a group of people holding up traffic signs like protest placards [Row 3, Column 5...I might not have shuffled these super well, but that's ok]. That one I have several ideas but one of the concepts I was thinking about was having some degree of eco-protest as a theme.

Combining those together, some people are protesting the Fourth of July celebrations. The fireworks are shot off near the southern edge of the swamp. This gives us a chance to bring a new group of people with their own interests.

Now, going to the Background Characters table we get 4,1 = Lanette Jemson. Somehow Johnny is going to have a run in with her. On her own? We'll figure that out.

On the Background Threads table, we get "Fourth of July Celebrations" [2]. I mean, that works for me.

Nearly this whole session will focus on the celebrations and what happens at them.

One final question I have, assuming Chaos Factor 6, is about Upton Reece. Let's say he calls his people and tells them he won't be in for a bit. Do they take him at his word. I'll put this at 50/50. 84 = No. We'll find out more about this as we go but whomever Upton called considers his attempt to assuage their fears to be a sign he needs help. In this light, I will upgrade "Upton Reece is 'Missing'" from a Background Thread to a Main Thread.

Let's find a bit of details about how "his people" react to this fear: It's a card showing grannies racing dogs [You guessed it: Row 3, Card 4]. Not cops, then. His family are showing up. Elderly like him so brothers and sisters (?). And they are bringing the family dogs. I'll add them as in Main Characters but with an * so that when they show up, or when we explore that, we can find out who it is.

That builds up a number of groups: Johnny (+ Eustace and maybe Wisteria), The Candlestick Quartet + Upton, Maria + Finley, The Cult, The Protestors, and Upton's family. That should do us for the moment.

The GLOW 1992: Agent Johnny Blue vs The Kid, Part 4 - Celebrations

Setting the Scene, e4s1.

Expected Scene: Johnny meets with Tanya to figure out what to do next.
Scene Test: Chaos Factor 6. Rolled a 9.
Actual Scene: As expected.

There some tests I want to make while establishing the rest of the scenes. First, is it Maria's handwriting. I'll say that's Very Likely so... 89. No, it's actually not. This means one of the other cultists is the one who passed along the note. Ok, is one of the cultist members actually trying to get an out because of reasons? Let's call that Very Unlikely. 76 → No. The most likely other person is that Finley Estevan himself wrote the note. Was he there at some point? He's high level enough psychic that he might have hidden himself from others and since we don't know his game, we'll put this at 50/50. 42 → Yes. This means that Finley's aware of Johnny but also helping him to some degree. That, or Tanya is part of the bigger game. That or he simply doesn't like the idea of backwoods cultists causing harm to a fellow agent for some reason. He could be using Johnny. We might resolve that later this session or just leave it up for grabs.

The second test is how will the protesters interrupt the fireworks? Ooo, we get a card of a maestro drawing light in the night sky [It is Row 3, Card 3? It is!] The protesters are going to interrupt the fireworks by controlling them to some degree. Drones or hedge magic? I like the idea of drones [which exist in fairly advanced form in this version of the 90s, already]. More tech/hacking than yet more magery.

Finally, what do the protesters call themselves as a group? A card showing a rock with drawings on it [yes, yes, Row 3, Column 2]. Showing some funky aliens and dinosaurs giving rise to the pyramids. So...Ancient Astronauts. Only these are people for the earth. Terranauts. Ancient Terranauts. I like it because it's just dumb enough to be a wordplay on "Terror Nots"...as in eco-terrorists who draw a line. Maybe randomly. Mixed with the "Old Earth" type mysticism.

DATE Played: 2025-09-11

Date: Saturday, July 4, 1992.
Time: 8:52pm.
Place: Grieger Park, North of Gaston, Florida.

Hamburger Helper

Tanya lights another cigarette using her previous one and then drops the butt of her ex-smoke to the ground to stop on it with her high heels. In a strange affectation of trailer park charm, she leans slightly away to blow the smoke away from me up into the air.

She's in the country version of clubbing clothes. Nice blouse. Tight jeans. Enough perfume to cover her two-pack-a-day habit. Heels. On grass, I might add. I don't get the vibe she is particularly dressed up for me, she's dressed up for herself. There are hundreds of people here on the edge of White Lake — a moderately clear body of water at the south end of the Waukepsie which Gaston claims though that city is roughly three miles south. Tanya, when I called, said she'd meet me but it had to be here because loved fireworks but hated watching them alone. So it is a date. Kind of a date.

How is Johnny dressed? He will have, essentially, stolen clothes. Card shows a robot knitting a orange sweater [Row 3, Column 1, shocker]. As much as I like the idea of him sweating it out with a knit pullover, I think the orange grabs me more here. Hunter's orange. He's in a hunter's camo jacket with orange stripes and a bit of a ragged t-shirt.

Just to check while I'm at it, let's do a Standard Agility test to see if he was able to steal the clothes with stealth? No successes, so no.

For my part, I'm wearing a hunter's jacket with enough holes in it to make it very nearly cool in the summer heat. And a shirt that looks like it might have been used to hold an old car engine together. Despite the obvious wear, and obvious stale smoke smell, there is a degree of care. Dead man's clothes where the wife cared about her husband crappy outfits more than he did. The one consolation is that while the camo + bright orange jacket should stand out, the variety of outfits on display paint me as only barely eccentric by contrast.

Tanya practically reads my mind and laughs in a way leaning just a bit to flirting. "Where did you get that, Mr. Blue?" Tugs on my jacket and a bit of stuffing comes out which frankly only helps.

"Nice old woman named Mrs. Marsh. Told her I was called by the Lord to walk across the GLOW carrying a cross. Only some kids wearing University of Florida t-shirts beat me up while shouting 'GOD IS DEAD!' Took my shirt, my wallet, the cross. She gave me these from her dead husband's wardrobe and sixty bucks. Said it was favorite shirt and jacket."

"You are kidding me."

I shake my head. I leave out the part that I was trying to steal some clothes off the line before realizing she was watching me the whole time. The story above came pouring out of me in a flash of inspiration after seeing a number of crosses and bibles in her living room. Don't worry, I plan on paying her back at least three fold once I get my stuff back. Eustace is already having back-up keys to my car fast shipped down and I have some gear stashed in the trunk.

A group of kids push past us, miracuously avoid Tanya's and other every other adult's cigarettes casually — and often drunkenly — swung out into space. The kids are hardwired on soda and churros and pushing fast towards the lake before the firework show starts. I resist the urge to glance for the parents. Around here, kids have to survive on their own. One girl, blonde and probably about eight and maybe the youngest of the group, picks up a shoe off the ground and starts swinging it at the others. Laughter erupts. Weird thing is, it seems to be and adult shoe of some worth. I know good shoes. Looking good is part of my work. I'd put this one as a hundred years past its best-by date.

One of the children with her, a pale kid wearing no shirt so probably male though features are hard to tell, takes the shoe from her and does some complicated hand motions and then viola, the shoe is gone. She giggles loudly at this and the pair fade into the crowd. As fast as my eyes move, I can't make out how he did it. There was literally nothing up his sleeve.

And there's a sense that while doing the trick he was somehow looking at me and her at the same time.

To get my mind off the sudden chill — despite the late Mr. Marsh's out-of-season jacket — I turn back to Tanya and bring out the paper. "Hamburger Helper? What did Maria mean by that?"

She shakes her head at me. "Nuh uh, Mr. Mothballs, told you. That ain't Maria's handwriting."

"Do you know whose writing it is?"

Let's do this with Mythic and say it is Unlikely she does know Finley's handwriting. 28 → Yes. She recognizes it. Will she tell Johnny? [50/50] 92 → very nearly an Exceptional No. She won't.

I'll say it is Easy Brainy for Johnny to know she's lying since she won't be particularly good at it. He gets one success. He'll likely let it go for now, though.

She looks at it in the very nearly no light like she is thinking about it. I know this look. She's thinking of what sort of lie she can tell.

"Nope."

"Nope, you don't know? Or nope you won't tell me?"

She shrugs so I push on. "Were you supposed to bring Hamburger Helper to some group luncheon?"

She starts to nod and it's such a stupid lie that I decide to let it ride. Away from the Tongue, I have enough powers back to take care of myself and I don't see a purpose for a trap within a trap at this stage. She's in on something and finding out that something involves staying close enough to her that the trap springs or the guardian angel that planted that note comes forth.

The fireworks explode in front of us. The first of many by Tanya's description. Gaston puts on a big show. As the sound erupts over the crowd, she puts her hand in mine and I glance at her. She is caught up in the awe of the spectacle. The cigarette dangling from her lips and the early wrinkles catching her face spoil any illusion of her being a kid again, but her eyes are back in her early twenties when the world was not such a jaded place. Then I catch her eyes harden with confusion and know right away that something is going on before the shouts from others hit and disrupt the mood

The fireworks have stopped. Turning back to glance across the lake, I see small lights flying up and and around the firework launch. Snipping some out of the air. Apparently assaulting the boat acting as the launchpad. Drones. Maybe quite advanced ones.

I suddenly have an idea. I just hope it isn't as dumb as my other recent choices.

Before I end this scene completely, I am curious what the note might reference. It is presumably a code [even though I just came up with the phrase randomly] but let's look at Mythic for inspiration. Actions: 63 Neglect 77 Prison + 41 Escape 30 Extravagance. We know Finley placed the note so this is going to be a code that means the cult has started to go outside of their boundaries. They are not sticking to the script and failing to maintain safeguards. Whatever Finley wants with the Codex, he needs the cult to stick to a "prison" [i.e., a timetable or behavior] but they are getting extravagant and he needs to escape this path. So Johnny will fit in with that, somehow.

Unexpected Break + The Kid

I played that first scene five days ago and then, in perfect timing, started showing symptoms for a pretty serious cold/virus shortly after. I was sick enough this past weekend that I took a chill from doing anything too extensive or creative for a few days as my brain reset. I'm recovering so I figured today was a good day to make up for lost time. Let's see how well I can stay on track.

Just to confirm, the pale kid with the other children is 100% "The Kid." I first created the entity back over a decade ago in a GURPS game set in late Victorian London where the characters played the Janus Club and were tasked with hunting down anomalies. It had living mannikins, strange puppets, the huntsman, ghosts, and robbers pretending to be ghosts. There were scenes where a pale old man, a pale kid, etc would show up similar to the above post. They eventually realized they were glimpsing the Big Bad.

The campaign ended due to IRL before they ever fully confronted the entity but they had learned about its connection to Elf King stories and — in that world's lore — how the Iron Age grew out of humanity fighting back against an entity that considered itself the true leader of people.

After that, it became something like a running joke to have references to "The Kid" in other campaigns. Sometimes very directly, sometimes not so much. In one Call of Cthulhu campaign, the encounters against the Kid were related to the campaign coming to an early end because I dialed it up a bit too much. One players still talks about his character playing chess against the Kid using a dead character's teeth.

I've been reading through the book Damnable Tales, a collection of Folk Horror stories from before such a term would ever have been used (as noted by the foreword), and no doubt that will have some impact over the next few scenes and sessions.

Why the shoe? I don't know. I really don't. I blame the onset of the virus but now I'm all in.

Setting the Scene, e4s2.

Expected Scene: Lanette Jemson shows up at the park and with Johnny.
Scene Test: Chaos Factor = 5. Roll = 5, Scene is Altered.
Actual Scene: It's not Johnny she meets.

Lanette is an interesting "edge case" for this on-going arc. She is not quite — at least not previously — a POV character but she is also not really an NPC. As such, I essentially wouldn't want to simply roll to figure out why she is here [a random roll has already picked her up as here, as it was]. I'll just wing it.

Hmmm. Let's ask a quick question: would she have been able to take Upton's car? [Likely] 47 → Yes. Ok, a follow-up. Would Upton's family or friends be somewhere where they might spot it? [50/50] 31 → Yes.

As a note, I am not 100% sure I ever gave stats for the Candlestick Quartet. Just in case not, Lanette Jemson, 19, is an AGILE psychic who KNOWS SOLUTIONS but DISTRUSTS AUTHORITY.

DATE Played: 2025-09-16.

Date: Saturday, July 4, 1992.
Time: 8:52pm.
Place: Grieger Park, North of Gaston, Florida.

A marble statue of a man holding a bundle.

"Man-sized in Marble"

Lanette realizes she lied about why she is here but she doesn't know if it really matters. When you friends are psychics, can you actually keep secrets? Still, the lie felt good. "I just really want to see fireworks!," she said. The actual reason was more complicated.

The problem with being with someone like Billy is the person takes a degree of control from you without even trying. It's easy to make fun of Billy's pomposity and natural tendency towards a young Brian Blessed, but that not-so-subtle force of will belies a related truth. Billy alters those around him. He's not doing it on purpose. He just simple exists in a space larger than his own frame. Those nearby are under constant assault of being brought along. The fact that he kept that up while under the negating powers of the Tongue hint that he might be one of the True Psychics. She feels guilty thinking this and normally gladly takes the reins as Billy's High Priestess but she's too damned young to be so in love. It makes her afraid. Maybe she just doesn't want him to sense the fear. He's self-effacing as it is. What if he senses that and leaves her? It's a weird place to be in her head.

Part of the weirdness is the sense of her own psychic powers returning. She has the ability to sense where to be and what to do. At least at times. Often not really knowing the why, she gets strong senses of the what and where. There's a certain tingling sensation she gets in her nose and right after a sense of deja vu. Like she is remembering some past self doing just this thing, or going to just this place, and is merely retracing her steps. Even when those steps would have been impossible at the time she thought them.

Did she take advantage of this a few times to snag some stuff she shouldn't have snagged? Sure. To get into places she shouldn't have been able to get into? Sure. Only to her it always felt like she was already there. Just living up to a fate that she cannot escape.

In ways, it was a relief to be on the farm. Where she didn't feel like she was living a script written by a different her that sometimes leaned to more questionable solutions than she would have liked.

When she felt the tingle this afternoon and she sensed fireworks, and shouts, and a man in a hunting jacket, she also knew to tell her lie. Billy doesn't like loud noises. It never came up on the farm but she knew it like she had talked to him about it. Jayson never goes out unless he has to go out. Tor is still feeling guilty about punching Upton and wants to make it up to the older man. It was a perfect storm of young adults all in over their head to give her the break she needed.

As the night goes dark, she feels the deja vu start. The fireworks fire off. Bang. Boom. People cheering. Less than a minute in, small lights swirl up from the lake and then fireworks start misfiring. People start shouting. She's almost dizzy with the sensation. Some other her has already lived this. How many times? Are there a million-billion Lanette's prodding and poking until they find the ways? Is she a person in line or a person at the end of the line?

Sure enough, there's the hunting jacket — a man who looks younger than he is is wearing it and running towards the lake at a speed that makes no sense with a woman who looks older than she is is slowly trailing after him — and Lanette is already moving forward to intercept him. He is significant.

Only, someone else cuts off her. A man. At a glance, she merely takes him as a tall and very pale man with a group of kids. Another merry-goer. As her bounce off of him, trying to already look past him to keep the hunting jacket in line-of-sight, she feels like the world is spinning out from under her. The man seems to stretch and bend into a thousand shapes like some sort of quantum event and she feels her vision bend and break and dance. He is everywhere in her sight line. When she gives and meets his gaze, she sees him in only one of those many forms.

Impossible tall, no one else comes up past his rib cage. Bald. Misshapen. Shirtless. Eyes a dark color too much a void to be called black. His mouth has too many teeth in his grin, like he took a bunch of baby teeth and built them into a mosaic of a smile. The weirdest sensation she has is despite him being at least seven- or eight-feet-tall, she gets the feeling she is seeing him slouched over, impossibly hiding his true height. Straight and thin and massive and curved.

Two things bubble up in her brain staring at him. The first is the phrase "Man-sized in marble" and she cannot place where she knows that from. Her dad was a big fan of old horror stories and she thinks it must come from there. The other is her dad's ebony statues of the shetani from his native Mozambique. Statues that look almost human but are bent out of shape in ways the eye has to dance with to understand. He is exactly as pale as they are dark, like a photo negative.

She realizes she is looking at a horizon curled up like a serpent. If he chooses, the man can slap her out of existence with a blink. Can slap all the people here into a void deeper than his eyes.

He nods at her and then turns and fades into the crowd. Now barely taller than anyone else. The children with him are half starved. Wearing rags. One girl who looks like she is suffering from a wasting disease is chewing upon an old shoe like the leather is a delicious jerky. Then, there is nothing left of the strange family. Just angry people mad that their celebrations are coming to an end.

Struggling to not vomit, Lanette considers fleeing the park only another tingle strikes her nose and she gets a glimpse of two angry black women standing next to Upton's car shouting at her, demanding to know where he is. She's made a terrible mistake.

Not knowing what else to do, she runs roughly in the direction the hunting jacket disappeared, to the place where the dancing lights have taken over the firework show.

A couple of inspirations

Since my play is a bit disrupted by real life as of late, figured I'd go ahead and pencil in two facts.

"Man-sized in Marble" is a short story by Edith Nesbit that has that wonderful phrase peppered in towards the end. It feels like a phrase that Nesbit must have heard somewhere and wrote the story to accommodate it. As soon as I reread that story a night or so ago, I knew it would work well for this game and kept it locked and loaded. It just took less time than I thought.

Second, I came up with the idea that her dad was from Mozambique pretty much at random while doing mild brainstorming about why she would be there. So I was curious and searched to see if I could find any myths that might align with strange pale figures. The answer seems to be "no" but at that time I came across shetani and it worked pretty well. The shapes of the figures, which need to be seen to be fully appreciated, are a perfect alignment to the effect of seeing such a thing as "The Kid," whose shape and form constantly suggest all the other possible shapes and forms. Looking upon it is like looking upon a constant spiraling descent into some terrible other world while also seeing just a person in front of you.

Setting the Scene, e4s3.

Chaos Factor: Stuff is building rather than solving, so +1CF = 6.
Expected Scene: Johnny tries to find the people with the drones because he wants someone to help him search the swamp.
Scene Test: 9.
Actual Scene: As expected.

Ok, Step One: A *gentle* shuffle of the cards. I've never played with this deck so them being somewhat in order is not a HUGE deal but still it's nice when I can't just see the most likely next card glancing at the document. This means that used cards might show up but we'll see.

Step Two: Let's draw two cards and get some inspirations for the scene:

Card shows two hands reaching up from smoke stacks, handing a rose to each other [on the sheet, it's the next to last card]. Nice, evocative.
Card shows a cat burglar [or old timey super hero/villain type] dancing as jewels fall down to feed a mechanic looking dragon with a little bit of a hungry hippo vibe [3rd Row, 9th Column].

Combined with the "conductor" image above, I'm picturing people wearing sort of 90s era Power Gloves meet mo-cap suits.

Only while the suits are sleek and black, instead of the "balls" on a standard mo-cap suit it is more like various sigils and ruins based on older belief systems. A pair of people are controlling dozens of advanced drones [even by 1990s The GLOW standards] through the two of them dancing an intricate set of steps through music. A perfect blend of "ancient" and "modern" to fit their motif.

Let's draw two more cards to set up their names:

An island on top of an iceberg [5th Row, 7th Column]
A pair of kids playing submarine in their bathtub [1st Row, 10th Column]

While the ice berg has a mammoth and an acorn — seems to be a reference Ice Age— I like the simplicity of "Berg" as a name. Short maybe for Bergund. As for the tub, the sub has a large "D" on it and I was thinking of a D-name or maybe a nautical one, but the idea of "bath" lead me to "Bathory" and that made me think of Elizabeth Bathory and so let's take her more native language version of her forename: Erzsébet. Only like "Berg" it is shortened: Erzse.

Erzse Berg seems like the proper bad pun I can admire. A man a woman. He is very much a Nordic Ballet type. Tall, thin, muscular. She is shorter. Hair in dreads. A bit Eastern European in heritage though her family have been Floridians for a couple of generations.

Now, Erzse & Berg clearly are aware there will be some sort of incriminations but believe they can get away. Unless they planned to get caught as part of the protest? [50/50] 15 → very nearly an exceptional yes. They have deeply considered it but also will try to escape if possible.

In that, Johnny will have a Standard Agile challenge to get close to them, but perhaps a harder time stopping other authorities from getting to them.

DATE Played: 2025-09-17

Date: Saturday, July 4, 1992.
Time: 9:17pm.
Place: Along the shores of White Lake, a few hundred yards from Grieger Park.

Up a Creek, Paddle Optional

I start out moving quite fast through the crowd. The sort of speed you might move at an airport with minutes until your flight. Then, as I get free of the tangle of human limbs, I begin picking up speed while simultaneously trying to weave a great big "Don't Look at Me" field around me.

Let's say this is a Standard Brainy kind of attempt: two successes with one a six. Passes it well.

I've left Tanya and her "Hamburger Helper" behind but this might be for the best. I doubt the local-yokels set me up to immediately fall back into their trap — doubt but do not 100% disbelieve — so my brain is leaning to a higher tier threat forming in the upper atmosphere. She's a puzzle piece, but not the puzzle underneath that is being covered up in all this weirdness.

I slap my communication sigil and call on Nurse. "Nurse, update. Some fools are disrupting a firework show with drones. I want to find them."

Years of teamwork and recognizing the urgency prevents Nurse from launching into a tirade of questions I can feel bubbling in his mental throat. He does whatever it is a PAL like him does and tries to answer my question using me as a focal point in the Threads Matrix...

Let's put this as Easy Crafty for someone as gifted as Eustace. 2 Successes but both are fours.

Are they on the same side of White Lake as Johnny? [50/50] 62 → Yes.

Quick Reminder: PAL = Psychic-Agent Liaison

He quick flashes some images of a space off to my right and on the same side of the lake as me. Something like a pier. Either they need to be closer to a parking lot or they are staying more away from the security around the launch barge than the people. Behind me, I can sense people starting to mobilize in what feels like slow motion to me.

I'm trying to mitigate the effects of unknown foliage — and unknown gators — while banking that I have mere seconds to reach my target.

Even if it feels a bit "jerk GM," I feel like the easy part is finding the pier. The hard part is doing it fast enough to not take damage. Let's set this up as a Complex Challenge: Standard Agile/Brawny/Crafty to find his way, but he'll mostly use his speed. Needs 2 successes. First Roll = No successes. Takes a Resolve. Second = No successes, he takes another Resolve.

So let's ask a question to the oracle: He was damaged the night before but in principle had care from Maria and time to rest before this point. Did he get his missing Resolve back from that rest? [Likely] 57 → Yes.

His next attempt, then, he gets a single success.

And then one more.

He makes it, but has only one Resolve left.

Unfortunately for me, some damned fisherman has left a fishing rod tangled in the bank. I catch it before hitting it at a speed high enough to embed it into my flesh but leaping over it, I fail to catch the dark, low hanging branch from the same tree as took the rod's line. I feel the branch dent my ribs as my feet keep moving and then the next few seconds are me tumbling through briars and reeds. By the time I get my legs back under me and working again, the hunter's jacket is ruined and I can feel blood on my face and chest.

Now to tortue poor Johnny some more, does he get the success to hit the pier before Erzse & Berg are leaving? 4,3,3 → No! Dang. We are learning why he hates talking about this case so much.

To make it up to him, we'll make sure he at least glimpses the pair so there are leads and then bend this back towards Lanette.

BUT, let's add a complication as to why he doesn't immediately follow — besides the pain.

Drawing a card we get a child's drawing in a trash can [5th Row, 6th Column].

Time to keep the sightings going...

I find the pier that Nurse was trying to show me and jog down to the end of it. Jog in a literal sense. The pain in my ribs is slowing me down to human normal. A lantern left at the end of the pier provides some light as I see a pair moving at speed across the lake surface. Jet skis? How damned Floridian. Blonde guy and dark-haired woman a foot shorter than him. Features not clear at this distance but caucasian. Suits they are wearing are dark with tracing of sigil lines that are starting to fade from view. A few of the drones start tracking back towards them and flying over their head like loyal magpies. Only a few. Others might have flown off in other directions to confuse the trail.

They probably heard me fight a tree the force of a gunshot. Hell, people back at the plantation probably heard it. I am trying to compress as much data about the pair as I can into my memory as I wonder about the possibility of getting enough speed up to run across the water and catch one but pain makes me a coward enough to at least want to look at what I am diving into...and that's...

The water is shallow here, showing White Lake is down at least half a foot or more from its normal depth. What should be a prime fishing spot is shallow, murky water more collected in pools and broken paths. It is maybe twenty-feet out before the lake starts more proper, which maybe makes it a great spot to launch such an assault. Only that's not what stops me.

What stops me is the kid I saw earlier. He is under the water. Staring up at me. The water is clearly only a few inches deep off the edge of the pier but he is somehow several feet down which is somehow further away and much closer at the same time. Pale like death. And laughing.

I'm backing up when someone collides into the back of me. I whip around and grimace from trying to get into a fighting stance when I see a young black woman somewhere near the tail end of her teens or early days of her twenties. And she looks about as scared and out of breath as I feel.

"Who...," I start before it turns a bit into a choking sound.

"You took the Forked Tongue!"

"How...," only this time I stop less from pain and more from confusion. She's psychic? Or another hedge mage?

"We have to go. People are after me. And something really bad is happening here. Do you have a car?"

This time I get enough breath and concentration to finish a whole sentence: "No."

"DAMN!"

DOUG'S COMMENTARY

"A little lighter than normal" I said at the start and then have three scenes where things get darker and more confused. Perfect. That sounds just like me.

Overall, despite throwing several wrenches into my own plans, things I have to figure out how to untangle, I like the murkiness of the plot so far. Tanya is involved enough to be moved up to main character list. As is Lanette. Her and Billy's growing power vs their relationship will also get added in there. We have a name for the environmentalist group and two members who, like the cultists, might be the only members or just sort of a forefront of characters.

Each picture in this one, not including the images included to give some inspiration, evolved a bit. From simple discoloration and masking to contrast coloration to slightly out of alignment masking. I don't want to commit to a precise technique just yet but I might use a system where higher Chaos Factors = more distorted images or some such. We'll see.

Speaking of, the Chaos Factor is definitely going up after this. As feels pretty typical for me.

CREDITS

The GLOW 1992: Agent Johnny Blue vs The Kid is played and primarily built upon lore using Richard Woolcock's Tricube Tales Solo tables and the Arcane Agents one-sheet including the image oracle compiled from of Game-Icons.net's various Creative Commons licensed imagery. The campaign arc uses Tana Pigeon's Mythic 2nd Edition as a Gamemaster Emulator. Other oracles include the Mirrors expansion for Dixit [with art by Sebastien Telleschi] and Cezar Capacle's Random Realities. Some inspirations are taken from disparate sources — such as some prompts by way of Glumdark — and these are usually noted at time of use.

ART CREDIT AND EXPLANATION

The Gaston Fourth of July Celebrations is from this photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash. I used a technique where I layed a couple of different distortions and then had some of the "real" photo bleed through upper layers so some portions are more true than others.

"Man-sized in Marble" is from a photo by Federico Lorenzi on Unsplash. The photo depicts a piece from the Torlonia Marbles as hosted at the Musei Capitolini. Once I realized the Pale One would show up, I thought such an image to be a great way to suggest but not 100% contain the mental image of the entity. Everyone sees it a bit differently, though there are striking similarities.

Power Glove is from Marcin Wichary's Flickr page and was provided through a CC-BY 2.0 License.

Comic-Con 2006 Motion Capture Girls is from The Pop Culture Geek's photostream and is provided by CC-BY-NC 2.0 License.

The Pier at White Lake is from Joshua Earle's image as provided by Unsplash+ License.

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