The GLOW

Arcane Agents one-sheet from Richard Woolcock and Zadmar Games
Arcane Agents is by Richard Woolcock & Zadmar Games

 

The GLOW character arcs in publication order

1996: Agent Johnny Blue

Codenamed: Demontongue

The original arc which established many of the baseline rules and assumptions, this story focuses on Arcane Order Agent Johnny Blue who is tasked with discovering what is happening with werewolves in The GLOW and why the Order Psychics cannot read the threads around it. At the same time, Johnny is being hounded (no pun intended) by his previous mission involving the dangerous Patel crime-family and the murder of an old friend. Only, a forbidden sigil gets used and Johnny realizes most other problems are going to have to take a backseat to his rapidly changing reality.

  1. 1996: Johnny Blue, Prologue & Chapter One
  2. 1996: Johnny Blue, Chapters Two & Three

About The GLOW metaseries

The GLOW is the Gulf-Lamark Ordinance, a mega-city spread from the eastern coast of Mexico to the western coast of Florida. Powered by the Lamarkian Process, aka The Harrowing, it derives its vast amounts of energy by extracting and torturing spirits. Officially, only the spirits of long dead creatures contained in petroleum and other post-organic materials are used. In reality, hints are that things are much darker underneath...

The GLOW is soulburn, a glowing gas released by The Harrowing that covers much of the GLO in a constant neon-light of blues, oranges, pinks, and purples. In The GLOW, magic has returned.

Dr. Jeffrey "Hell" Lamark and his Witches Three have disappeared after founding the process and the city and now the Arcane Order and the Lamarkian Society are tasked with running an impossible city and its half-billion people.

Order Agents are powered with sigils made by combining soul-ash (the remnants of soulburn) and arcane ink harvested from a strange cephalopod species whose secret was only known by the Witches Three. Order Psychics read the threads-matrix to try and control the ever blooming chaos but controlling it too tightly violates the Caveat. Order Mages and Witches manipulate elements and symbols to support the Agents.

Aether-tech is the hybrid of soulburn based energies and cutting edge technology far beyond the rest of the world.

All the while, other nations and agents try to get access to the secrets behind the The GLOW in a constant battle where Lamark's vision continues to spread and reshape the history of the human race.

The GLOW frequently uses characters, themes, places, and events from my other solo play series but always as an alternative variation. Good characters might show up as bad. Bad characters might show up as good. Themes might be turned on their head. This is on purpose.

Unique at the time of its start, "The GLOW 1996: Agent Johnny Blue" was not only the first time I used paid stock art for this blog but Dean Spencer's stock art was used as a key oracle with each chapter including at least a passing nod (and sometimes a full scene) dedicated to one piece of art.

The GLOW is played using Tricube Tales, a custom hack of Tricube Solo, and a mixture of one-sheets including Arcane Agents (the core), The Champions of Fenrir (to handle werewolves and other lycanthropes), Maidenstead Mysteries (for Eustace "Nurse" Delmont), and others as needed or when it makes it more interesting. All historical, social, scientific, and magical facts/tropes are subject to wild inaccuracies. It is Dr. Hell's fault.

CONTENT WARNINGS: The GLOW metaseries makes frequent refrences to smoking, drinking, drug abuse, cosmic horror, spiritual torture, various levels of violence, gore, abuse, and general questionable morals.

As is true of my solo playthroughs, The GLOW embraces a reality where queerness in general and self-gender-actualization specifically is considered a norm. It ignores any possible objections that might have arisen to these facts. It also ignores or outright refutes the majority of racism and sexism with no care for anything like historical accuracy. This is a world of bad people doing bad things and good people doing bad things but it will always spark joy and should not be considered anything like an accurate potrayal of its area/time. While The GLOW is set in a Judeo-Christian reality by the nature of souls and how they are portrayed, absolutely no moral claim is made on this behalf and everyone is warned that the reality of its spiritual warfare is going to be more HP Lovecraft than CS Lewis.

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