Dystopic: Prometheus Contracts

After two weeks in Miami, the characters were also given a choice of two contracts.  One was an Associate contract and was meant to be signed on ordinary paper.  Associates could pick and choose the amount of time they spent in service to Prometheus, kind of like contractors.  The other was the Member contract and needed to be signed on special paper with a special pen using a syllable of the signee's True Name.  I actually wrote up the two contracts and put the Associate contract on ordinary paper and the Member contract on special paper.  I then had them sign OOCly the contract of their choice.  A few of the players even chose to look up how to spell their character's names using the alphabet from their character's country of origin.

I thought I'd reproduce those contracts here for your information:

Membership Contract

I, the undersigned, accept the terms and conditions set out in this contract.  As a member, I understand that I will be assigned a budget line according to the needs of my project from which my salary is drawn.  I can apply to my handler for additional funding or to requisition temporary equipment.  I am also aware that I will be granted access to sensitive information and locations and will treat such things accordingly.  I acknowledge and accept my rights and responsibility and those of the other members and associates of the Prometheus Project. 

Rights

·         140 days of annual / personal leave.  This can be taken in batches of up to 60 days with no questions asked although four weeks notice must be given.

·         May request medical treatment from a skilled Asharu twice a year.

·         May expect sanctuary for myself and up to five other individuals who have a blue listing (civilian non-threat) or higher clearance.

·         To be reimbursed for previously agreed upon expenses.

·         To be reimbursed for unexpected expenses subject to handler’s approval.

·         To be able to select my mission from up to three options wherever possible, although I understand that in some instances a mission may be too urgent to be denied without approval from superior officers.

·         To be assigned missions appropriate to my skills and experience or that of my team.

·         To have my celestial name and personal information kept confidential.

·         To have access to my handler, or a delegated handler, within 24 hours of an attempted contact.

·         To have access to my handler’s celestial name.

·         To refuse to assault declared staunch allies and instead work with the Prometheus Project to determine an alternative.  Where no alternative can be found to be allowed to leave the mission.

·         I may seek a review or an appeal of a decision.

·         I may request access to approved information of my security clearance.

Responsibilities

·         Report any likely connections to Earthbound.

·         Do not work with Earthbound.

·         Avoid communicating with, or drawing the attention of, Earthbound.

·         Do not betray the organisation, its ideals, or membership.

·         Decline missions that you cannot bring yourself to follow, do not undermine them.

·         Do not reveal the names of other members, associates or friendlies.

·         Do not reveal classified information to those who lack clearances.  Some information may be disseminated to others according to your best judgement.  This is any information of a clearance level equal to or below your own that isn’t marked ‘Eyes Only’.  When in doubt, ask your handler.

·         Do not reveal the location of safe houses without prior authorisation.

·         Do not reveal information on rituals, technologies, or other such matters developed by the Prometheus Project without prior authorisation.

·         If you notice a health and safety risk in a safe house or other Prometheus Project site, please notify your handler or the site manager.

·         Respect assigned Masquerade ratings in your surrounding area.

·         If you notice a security risk, please notify your handler.  If the risk involves your handler, please contact your assigned den mother.

I agree to all of the above rights and responsibilities and hereby pledge myself to the Prometheus Project.

Date:__________________

Signature:___________________________________________________

Associate Contract

I, the undersigned, accept the terms and conditions set out in this contract.  As an associate, I understand that I will be negotiating terms on a mission by mission basis.  I can apply to my handler for funding or to requisition temporary equipment.  I am also aware that I may be granted access to sensitive information and locations and will treat such things accordingly.  I acknowledge and accept my rights and responsibility and those of the other members and associates of the Prometheus Project. 

Rights

·         I may negotiate the terms of payment for each mission undertaken which could include monetary payment, access to information, services, or tutelage in a discipline or ritual.

·         May request sanctuary for myself and up to two other individuals who have a blue listing (civilian non-threat) or higher clearance although I understand that this will be subject to availability.

·         To be reimbursed for previously agreed upon expenses.

·         To be offered missions appropriate to my skills and experience or that of my team.

·         To have my celestial name protected alongside other personal information.

·         To have access to my handler’s celestial name and that of my team members.

·         I may seek a review or an appeal of a decision.

·         I may request access to approved information of appropriate security rating where that information is explicitly required to undertake a mission.

·         I may refuse to undertake any mission if I do not approve of the terms.

Responsibilities

·         Report any likely connections to Earthbound.

·         Do not work with Earthbound.

·         Avoid communicating with, or drawing the attention of, Earthbound.

·         Do not betray the organisation, its ideals, or membership.

·         Decline missions that you cannot bring yourself to follow, do not undermine them.

·         Do not reveal the names of other members, associates or friendlies.

·         Do not reveal classified information without authorisation from your handler or a member with the appropriate clearance.

·         Do not reveal the location of safe houses without prior authorisation.

·         Do not reveal information on rituals, technologies, or other such matters developed by the Prometheus Project without prior authorisation.

·         If you notice a health and safety risk in a safe house or other Prometheus Project site, please notify your handler or the site manager.

·         Respect assigned Masquerade ratings in your surrounding area.

·         If you notice a security risk, please notify your handler.  If the risk involves your handler, please contact your assigned den mother.

I agree to all of the above rights and responsibilities and hereby pledge allegiance to the Prometheus Project.

Date:__________________

Signature:___________________________________________________

Those who signed the Member contract: Tokyo, Nomad 6, and Leningrad (on the sly)

Those who signed the Associate contract: London, Miami, Oxford, and Leningrad (publicly, though Member contracts trump Associate contracts)

Dystopic: Arrival In Miami

There's been two sessions since the last write up but I'll try to be brief (this will still need a few posts).  Nice returned with a new guy called Oxford who wasn't all that well briefed on the situation although the other characters assumed he knew at least as much about being a demon as they did.  As I hadn't had a chance to brief the new player, the character had to be a real newbie as well.

They arrived in the city of Miami (will refer to the city in red text and the character in black) by way of a few islands and other places where the characters made a point of inflating the bill because Prometheus was paying.  That later bit them on the bottom when they found out they had a budget line assigned to them and they'd wasted a big chunk of it on a holiday.

Once in the city of Miami, the rest of the team gave Miami a chance to meet up with his family once more and fully reunite before looking at the question of where to live and what to do once they'd gotten there?  Miami met his mother-in-law and father-in-law as well as his eager daughter and autistic son in their occult / Santeria equipment store.  As far as they knew, he'd gone to a specialist hospital in New York (which his mother-in-law was unsure about consenting to) due to his comatose (in fact, braindead) condition. 

They were happy to have him back but his mother-in-law had some bad news.  Although Miami's host and his wife had paid off the debt on their shop / home, the banks claimed that they were badly in debt and that the place would have to be foreclosed.  His mother-in-law tried to prevent it but she had no proof since his home was ransacked, his computers stolen and his last years worth of receipts (including books bought / sold) were stolen. 

The father of one of the four Fraternity brothers who had kidnapped Miami's host and wife before raping / killing the wife and beating him to brain death was on the bank's board of directors and obviously wanted revenge against the shaming of his family brought on by the police investigation and subsequent mysterious death of his son in custody.

Miami also discovered five books missing from the collection of books that his mother had managed to salvage from the foreclosure:

The Sette of Odd Volumes" A London monthly dining society of wealthy bibliophiles, membership somewhere between 21 and 100, founded in 1878 by rare book dealer Bernard Quaritch. They are closely associated with the Athaneum Club. There is usually an after-dinner address by a guest speaker (past speakers have included Oscar Wilde, Samuel Clemens, W.B. Yeats, and other notable authors) on some erudite subject. The address is commonly privately printed for members afterwards, and these volumes occasionally enter the market, fetching good prices. This is one such volume. Past prominent members and office-holders in the Sette have included Sir Edward Sullivan, John Lane, John Todhunter, George Charles Haité, Sir Alfred Edward East, J.W. Brodie-Innes, Edward Heron-Allen, R. T. Gould, A. J. A. Symons, Alec Waugh, Vyvyan Holland, and Burton.

“The Book Of The Thousand Nights”
Volume 4 of the subscriber-only 1885 first printing of Richard Burton's The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, and looks to be in excellent condition. Furthermore, it is signed. The frontispiece says "To J.C. - from one Odd Volume to Another - Richard Burton".

“An Investigation into the Oracle of Sidon”
Ludwig von Domenstein, 1843
Whilst many of his peers and contemporaries dismissed the writings of Méric Casaubon (1599–1671) in "Credulity and Incredulity" as fanciful nonsense, informed more by wine and madness than by science, the Frenchman, whilst somewhat lacking in scientific method, seemed to describe with accuracy and good intent a valid phenomenon. Having spent many years investigating the legends surrounding the Oracle of Sidon, even visiting that region of the coast where the temple had previously teetered on the edge of a cliff only to fall to its ruin 600 years ago, the author, Ludwig von Domenstein, divorced due to his studies divulges in this work his findings.

“The Wooden Book”
The book is a curious miscellany; a large number of unevenly cut leaves, crudely bound with string and pressed between two hand-carved wooden covers. The front depicts an angel weeping; a small figure below catches the tears in a jug. The back shows some kind of flowering, spiky plant; perhaps a scotch thistle? It is written in Latin and contains leaves from a herbal book and some alchemical works as well as some theology tied in there (written in a late medieval hand) but has been bound in with a series of other peoples’ notes. It seems to be almost like a grandma’s cookbook with each generation adding their own recipes. The man who penned it was a Friar John Cor, ex-monk, Dissolution Period, who wanted to prove Trans- rather than Co-substantiation and attempted to distill Communion wine into the Blood of Christ, claiming to be acting on the orders of a ‘Hidden Pope’. The book has been handed down through generations and culminates in classic Victorian spiritualism where one traps spirits in bottles and asks questions by means of a pendulum.

“An Account of the Ottoman Kingdom, and select locations in the Holy Land”
1911 English translation from the eighteenth-century German edition of a previously unpublished manuscript from the 1580s. The author was a Burgundian mercenary who was hired by some vizier or other to train Janissaries to use heavy guns. This fellow, de Chaut, was also a student of religion. He spent his time investigating little known sects and denominations in the Ottoman Empire - Dervishes, Zorastrians, Miaphysitians, Rodnovers... those sorts of individuals. This tome collated what he had found.

Perhaps they were stolen?  But to what end?

The team then came back together to look for a bookstore site to purchase (they decided against renting) so that they could set up their cover as bookhounds.  I had the players describe what they were looking for, what suburb they wanted to live within (they chose Little Havana to be closer to Miami's family) and to describe certain aspects of it to give it some additional character.  Each one had to come up with two things about the place that were a little different.  The players really enjoyed that.  They decided:

• The bookstore has four storeys and a basement.  There is a shop on the ground floor.  A bathroom / kitchen / dining room on the first floor and two living levels filled with bedrooms.  I totally have to create a Sims 3 map of it.
• The store is occupied by a family of cats (mother and kittens)
• It has a resident ghost of a former tenant who was into HAM radios
• It has a funny burned out socket in the basement
• It recieves terrible radio signals but good internet access
• It has an excessive amount of power points
• It has lots of shelves made out of railway sleepers
• Mark's room is straight out of an IKEA catalogue
• Tokyo's room is straight out of a Hello Kitty catalogue
• It has a lot of roof access points
• It has a courtyard/helicopter parking space out the back which is only accessible by air (no driveway)
• It has a number of mirrors well-placed to make it easier to see people entering / leaving

When they were talking to the real estate agent, they tried to talk him down from the amount he demanded.  Oxford decided it for them by using his Crafts to figure out the right spot to gently thump the wall where a dent was likely to form.  He got over an exceptional success, so instead of a dent, part of the wall came down.  That certainly dropped the price!

I also had the players decide on a type of genre that they had a lot of books for.

Leningrad chose Russian Folklore.
Miami chose Ceremonial Magic.
London chose Victorian to Golden Age Crime Novels.
Tokyo chose programming manuals.
Oxford chose non-fiction on electronics.
Nomad 6 chose comic books.

Nice then offered for Dallas to go and live with them now that he was more settled in this brave new world.  She also apologised to Miami for having secured a scholarship for his daughter at a better school within this suburb without having sought out his permission but they wanted to set it up a few months ago before he was out of the pit to ensure that he wouldn't return to any more bad news.

The characters had two weeks to set up their bookstore.  Oxford, being a Malefactor, turned old railway sleepers into bookcases and fixed up the walls and Tokyo set up some pretty epic security (they all went in to purchase Haven Security 5).  They all made a promise not to check into Oxford's true name syllables as he cast his Lore of Forge (one can detect syllables from casting fallen magic). 

At their level of Torment (3 - 4), breaching a promise is a serious thing and could earn them further Torment (basically a sliding scale of how far they've fallen from grace which affects their ability to cast non-Evil versions of their spells).  Nice kept a look out for other Fallen using Awareness and, doubtless, a Fiend ally or two (Lore of Patterns can seek out the future or the past) though she also promised not to seek syllables and stated that one can ignore one spell while looking for the presence of others.  In fact, it's easier to do so.

At the end of the two weeks she gave them dossiers on their own deaths so that they can investigate it, should they choose, now that they are more settled into their lives and hopefully less likely to go off the deep end.  Of course, Tokyo has already solved her death.  Now Miami is gearing up to solve his own.

I'll post up the information found in their dossiers in a later article as there's a lot of information there, naturally, being as it reports on four people's deaths.  I haven't done Oxford's dossier yet.

Flashpoint: The Milkmaid

Okay, I've been pretty slack lately with the blog and I'm sorry about that.  I'll get on with posting up more articles soon enough.  For now, let's just look at the latest Flashpoint session.  Pre-warning: Sex comes up in this game a lot.  It also comes up in the start of this session where a magical misunderstanding leads to magical rape.

After about a day of river travel, Lenny disappeared from her perch on top of the plinth, which freaked out Lhye a bit but Proteus was over it.  They noticed an attractive milk maid washing her hands on the Taldor side of the river and Proteus, knowing that with the slow current and lack of wind the ship would be in view and travelling slowly for awhile, dove into the water and swam over to her.

The girl flirted with him but Proteus was suspicious, assuming that as everything else had tried to attack him that she might as well.  Then Lhye floated out of the boat and closer (Proteus assumed he did it to get a good view) and cast Unnatural Lust on him, causing him to grope her boob and kiss her tightly, Proteus assumed that the woman had used enchantments to sexually assault her.  Lhye had done it to ruin Proteus' chances with her.  So Proteus cast Sow Thought "I should totally have sex with him" and Suggestion "We should go behind the bushes and have sex".  Proteus knew this would be rape but figured it was only fair to 'rape the rapist'.

Lhye didn't notice the use of those two spells.  He used Charm Person on her, hoping to have a chance now that Proteus had obviously lost his chance (we use Charm Person as making a person friendlier, not more romantically inclined, merely shifting from Unfriendly to Friendly, say, so it's not as morally wrong a choice as it otherwise could have been).

Little did either of them know but she passed all three saves.  She didn't roll lower than 17.

Regardless, she invited them behind the bushes for a wild threesome.  Then, as her clothing was soiled by dirt and grass stains, she asked Proteus to fetch her a clean set from the farm house about 500m or so away.  Proteus had no interest in assisting her, considering her to be an attempted rapist.  Lhye, however, had no reason to dislike her and so went off to do just that.  Proteus remained with the woman, still not trusting that she wasn't some kind of hag or succubus or something.

Lhye used Disguise Self to appear to be a normal farmer and found her clothes hung out to dry across a railing by the well in a dirt courtyard with a barn on one side and the farmhouse on the other.  As he picked it up, he noticed that there was a lot of dried blood on the straw in the barn.  Going in for a closer look, he saw the piled up remains of bloody bones and clothing in a few spots.  He went to the house and found it locked and the shutters barred from the inside.  Rising up, he saw through the second storey window that there was a man, half eaten from the bottom down, laying across the floor as though he'd been rushing to the window.

Lhye returned and as the milkmaid saw him, she pointed him out to Proteus who turned to look.  By the time Proteus looked back (in the space of a glance), she had disappeared.  He drew his trident and swung it at the space where she had been but she wasn't there anymore.  Lhye explained the situation to Proteus who headed back to the boat.  Lhye proceeded to use Detect Magic and fly up and down the bank but he failed to find her.

Upon hearing what had happened, Archer turned the boat around, determined to do justice against one who would kill and eat a farmyard full of people.  Midshipman Wellard tracked the footprints back to the farmyard where she lost it amidst the other prints although there was evidence that she may have approached a set of wheelprints and hoofprints from a cart.  Wellard couldn't say how long ago the tracks had been there.  From a few minutes to a day away.

They searched the farmhouse, finding the front door broken inwards and the furniture shifted about as though by someone quite strong, and came to find a trapdoor that had been fixed in place by a chain bolted to the underside and to the stairs.  Archer used his guns to Disable the hinges and knocked in the trapdoor. 

He soon found a single young man, a survivor, who said that the milkmaid was a woman named Kitzy, who had arrived two weeks ago looking for work before hitching a ride in a cart.  She had one blue eye, one green eye (like the woman by the river).  They followed the cart tracks with Proteus remaining to walk with the survivor while the others jogged.

At the next town, they spoke to a militia man who was drunk (and a follower of Caiden Caylean).  Lhye and Lil both used Disguise Self to appear human.  They convinced the militia man to give them horses so that they could ride ahead to alert the next town (as the cart had passed through here) - pointing out that the farmyard had been devastated.  The militia man remained to raise the hue and cry amongst his townsfolk as they headed off.

The next town was much larger with a bigger wall.  They'd already been alerted by one of the militia's riders from the other town (who had plenty of ranks in Ride) and two clerics were waiting for them - one of Iomedae and one of Cayden Cailean.  They swiftly identified that a couple people were using disguise spells and they dispelled the one on Lhye, revealing him to be a tiefling, and basically stating that while they were happy with his support that he couldn't enter the town.  This quite offended poor Lhye who groused at them for a bit.

They found out that Kitzy had purchased a small boat a few hours ago (the timeline felt off to Lhye, though perhaps the seller wasn't quite sure of the time as they have no watches in fantasy land) and, knowing the winds and currents, Archer surmised that they could catch her even by riding back and taking their own boat down the river after her.

So they rode back, left their horses on the bank, and headed down the river after her.  They found the young woman in her boat with her back to them and, due to Proteus' calm waters bardic song, their ship moved on the currents very quietly.  She didn't notice them until they were a few rounds away and then Proteus kept her enthralled with his song.  With a suggestion spell, Proteus lured her aboard.

Once aboard, she turned to realise her boat was floating off and she reached for the boat hook to pull her own boat back.  The others prepared their spells - some of which to subdue her.  They readied an action.  Archer shot her in the back of the head.  Startled, the others unleashed their spells although the Sleep Hex, Curse, and Ray of Exhaustion bounced off her, leaving her fatigued but otherwise okay barring a little hit point loss.

She summoned a ball of flame using a divine focus half hidden by her cleavage and slammed it into Archer, slowly charring the ship.  After a few more attacks, Proteus bull rushed her off the boat and held her underwater as she drowned.  Worried by this whole thing and unsure whether they had the right girl (ever aware of duplicity), Lhye ordered Proteus to bring her up and then resuscitated her while the others bound her arms and legs.  She was still unconscious.

They returned to the major town and dropped her off with the clerics there to stand trial.  The clerics ensured their boat was repaired so they could head off and even gave a gift of Bracers of Armor +1.  They were grateful but didn't want to let the tiefling enter their town lest he begin corrupting people.

And that's where we left it.

Lhye's still uncertain if they got the killer or if she'd been set up but he's sure the good clerics will ensure that justice is served and that she won't die unless guilty.  So the plan, as it stands, is to keep heading onward to Augustana.

Flashpoint: River Explorations

This was a bit of an odd session.  They were heading down the river north of Kyonin in the hopes of getting down to Andoren and were first beset by a giant (medium-sized) dragonfly and then they ran aground on a large mud elemental.  Not realising what had beached them, Proteus stuck his trident into it in the hopes of shoving off, which obviously and naturally upset the mud elemental which bucked the boat up and forced a DC 15 reflex save not to get tossed.

            Lhye, the familiars and the NPCs (Lavender Lil, Wellard and Arexia) were the only ones knocked loose off the boat.  Lenny tied a rope to herself and jumped in after Lhye.  The others attacked the Mud Elemental though only Lunjun did much damage at this stage.  The Mud Elemental kept slamming the sides of the boat so Archer ran up the tilting mast to try and capsize it off the creature and Wellard ran up to assist.  The Mud Elemental knocked it off and sent it skidding across to the bank, damaged.

            Finally they managed to slay the Mud Elemental and Proteus leapt into the river to swim around and look for some loot.  Instead he found the river cave it was protecting.  The others hurriedly tried to repair the boat which, thankfully, wasn’t too badly damaged.  They were on the Kyonin bank after all and were worried about insular elves slaying them outright.

            Proteus spent ten minutes swimming through subterranean water caves before reaching a large cave half filled with air.  There were three tunnels, two out of reach, one coming off the limestone shelf that was still slick with rich calcium.  As he came out of the water he saw the statue of an elf, weathered by time so that it’s details were worn away, standing and staring out over the water.  He went through the tunnel accessible from the ground and followed it along until it opened up into an immense chasm so large he couldn’t see the ceiling and with a stone staircase of green-black marble that led down a thousand narrow steps.

            It took him awhile to go down there but go down there he did until he reached a hectagonal platform with an elven statue in each corner whose eyes, to Detect Magic, radiated a slight divination magic.  From their hands sprang coloured flame that hovered in place and lit the platform.  In the middle was a plinth with a narrow base and a wide opening that gathered water like a bird bowl.  This plinth had an overwhelming divination / conjuration aura.  Proteus, being a chaotic sort, swirled his finger through the water that had accumulated through the highly calcified droplets falling from the faraway ceiling.

            As he swirled it, it grew more opaque and cloudy until it reflected his face (yes, seems wrong but this is how it looked) but the eyes of his reflection were far more intense, near overwhelming.  He watched his eyes in the reflection fill up with a black smoke that then poured forth in tendrils into his own eyes, filling him up.  It wasn’t painful, merely cold.

            When it finally stopped, he found himself standing in a more blurry version of where he stood before as though everything had a translucency to it.  Figuring he was on the Astral Plane, but finding that he had a weight and the world a gravity, he started up the stairs again.  This time at the top of the stairs where it entered the tunnel he saw two beautiful Triton statues (the mer-people) standing with their weapon Tritons crossed overheard but then they flickered and became Kytons whose barbed chains seemed poised midair to strike each other, forming an arch overhead, and then they flickered back to Tritons then again to Kytons.

            He continued down the corridor and where it broaded into the half-submerged cave he found it entirely dry and it was instead an old amphipheatre.  An elven woman with glowing violet eyes sat at an organ of beautiful design that flickered so that her skin changed and went dark, hair lightening, her fingers going from playing to being drawn out nerves and tendons reaching into the organ, then back again.  As she worked, her lips skinned back to reveal raw cheek muscle, and then again she became a normal elf.

            “Hello?” asked Proteus, ever an opportunist to find out more.

            He was struck with 8 damage to the teeth and, gums bleeding, he turned away and continued to head on the way to the river.  He found at the entrance a beautiful elf woman with black hair that, when ‘she’ turned he realised was just a feminine him with violet eyes and as Proteus watched he saw the elf slowly mutate, black horns sprouting, black wings growing out, a tail falling down.

            Proteus heard footsteps and then a beautiful Marid rushed through him as though he were a ghost and she ran to the devil / demon as though they were lovers, only for the two to land on each other’s swords and turn to salt.  Proteus continued out and as he stepped out through the mouth of the river cave he found himself in a river once more.

            Meanwhile, his monkey’s eyes had turned black and it had started blathering as though speaking in tongues.  Lhye, nervously, used Mage Hand to lift the little thing into the air which didn’t seem to bother it.  Finally, the monkey began to sing a lullaby (I played Sleeping Priestess from Project Zero 3):

Sleep, Priestess, Lie in peace.
Sleep, Priestess, Lie in peace.
If you cry, the boat you'll ride
The last trip to the other side
Once you get there
Sacred marks you'll bear,
They shall be peeled off
Should you fail to lie still

Sleep, Priestess, Lie in peace.
Sleep, Priestess, Lie in peace.
If the Priestess wakes from her dream,
Perform the rite of stakes.
Her limbs pinned tight,
Lest the doors open wide,
And suffering unleashed on all.

Go to the other side.
Go to the other side.
Cast the boat, take a ride.
Cross the RIFT, to the other side.
Further, and further, to the other side.
It must sail, bearing your tattoos
And our offering of tears...
            The characters weren’t really paying attention to the lyrics, though, and wouldn’t know more than the two first lines.  Still it worked to get their attention.  When Proteus returned to this side, his monkey just went to sleep and didn’t seem any worse for wear later on.
            Upon learning about what Proteus had seen, and learning of the value of such an artefact, Lenny demanded that Proteus kiss-breathe for her so that she could return, uproot it (the two made critical successes on their Perception checks and found a fine crack where it had been slotted) and then dragged it back onto the boat.  No one was too keen to have it aboard (other than those two who declared that they wouldn’t share the wealth) and as they headed back they each had strange dreams.
            Proteus and Lhye dreamt of kissing – only Proteus was treated as though he were a woman.
            Lenny had the sensation of profound satisfaction.
            Lunjun found himself in a cave where carvings in the walls held great secrets but he could never manage to remember a small piece of it at a time.  If he could see the whole of it, he would learn great things.
            Archer simply remembered a promise he had almost forgot.

World of Darkness: Dogs of War Solo Game Summary

Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1994-009-17 / CC-BY-SA

I will warn you that I ran most of this on the fly and didn’t do much more than brisk Wikipedia research.  It will be riddled with factual errors.

So, as per usual, my partner and I decided to have a go at yet another sort of game.  I won’t be writing up further Actual Plays of this one as I don’t want Actual Plays to come to dominate this blog any more than they already have done.  This is a Dogs of War-type game set in World War II with an actual werewolf as one of the ‘dogs’.  As my partner had read a little Sven Hassel we decided that he’d play a German who landed in the army after he was forcibly enlisted by the military (not hit by conscription, technically a ‘volunteer’) when his pack mate’s brother was imprisoned due to a punch up caused over his love interest (a Jewish high school girl) being taken away by the Germans.  To make matters worse, the character owes his life to a Jewish doctor (recently taken away) who helped his mother through a dangerous birth (several times, as his mother didn’t give birth easily).

            So with this in his back story, we start the game with him setting off on a train full of other soldiers after a brief training course that taught him how to become a tank driver.  I figured out his job by making some random dice rolls on a few tables as while the German military was more efficient than Britain I still wanted to get across that sense of controlled chaos that an army mid-war has about it (its early 1942).  So he’s a Panzer tank driver.  His first train ride takes him too far so he has to wait a night (he manages to get a farmer to let him sleep in the wood shed with the spiders) before taking another train in the right direction.  It’s sweaty, humid, and smells rich with man sweat in a train compartment that is standing room only.

            I introduce him to a guy whose a real loud mouth, talking about women around Europe and boasting about his exploits while several other soldiers listen eagerly.  The two talk for a bit, which goes about as well as you expect, with this guy, Reudiger, placing a bet that someone will punch him in the face within a week.  The PC responds with  a bet of his own – that he will lay out the man who tries.  The PC’s words also start off a nearby Nazi on a rant about the necessity of a clean uniform, that makes Reudiger shake his head.

            Eventually they reach the launching off point for Operation Barbossa and everyone spills out of the train.  There’s so many people moving in so many directions that the PC is quite lost.  Then Reudiger comes out of the crowd, grabs his arm, and pushes him in a direction where he can make out the glint of tanks.  The PC heads off as Reudiger plunges back into the crowd to pull out more folks in Panzer uniforms.  Due to Reudiger’s efforts, Reudiger is late but most of the men aren’t.  The captain chews him out and reveals that Reudiger is actually a corporal.

            “Where’s your new uniform, corporal?” demanded the captain.  “Don’t you respect your new promotion?”  It’s obvious the captain doesn’t like him.

            “It didn’t get assigned to me,” said Reudiger.

            The captain rejects the excuse and starts assigning the new tank crews to replace the old (dead) ones and Reudiger gets the dead beats (including the PC – primal urge is a bitch).  Corporal Reudiger works the radio and gives the coordinates for moving the tank gun (blah degrees higher), there’s a tank gun loader and shooter, and a machine gun loader and shooter, and then the driver.  Not sure if they actually had six men per tank but we weren’t going for historical accuracy.  The corporal was quite good at giving the commands in degrees for tank gun positioning although the newbies obviously weren’t that good at it.

            The first mission involved them basically following everyone else into the smoke, brick dust, and screaming shells, but without a chance to really get involved with the combat as they were in the rear.  It certainly freaked out the werewolf to be in an enclosed space relying on humans with shells shrieking around where luck, rather than skill, made all the difference.

            Of course, I’ve sort of painted myself into a corner here.  Tank drivers aren’t the most exciting of roles to play around with dice about.  I suppose since it’s a solo game I could just give him control of the entire tank?  How does one deal with mass combats and tank versus tank?  So many questions!

            I’ve got a few ideas for what they can do outside of the tanks.  From ghostly parents trying to get them to smuggle out hidden children to plain old angry battlefield ghosts to wounds to missions where they must stealth out to enemy territory to gain the lie of the land.  Of course, as you can see, only the last section of the mission deals with ordinary human missions.  I’m having trouble thinking up more.

            You guys got any ideas?

Flashpoint: Locating Lil

Proteus pours a cure light wounds potion into the mouth of the strange gold-dragon-blooded horse.  Lunjun, hearing the battle has ended and knowing he requires Proteus’ blood to leave, returns while feeling like he should re-evaluated his life due to the Charm spell he had been slammed with.  Lenny disappears again as though she had never been there.

            The chatelaine of the castle approaches and as he does so Proteus’ bardic memory springs to the fore and he identifies the history of this noble family.  The island was, at first, the stronghold for a linch champion of Tar-Baphon, the Whispering Tyrant of Ustalav, who was said to have a portal to the Shadow Plane beneath the tunnel-riddled depths of an old volcano.  When the Shining Crusade passed through here, the champion was slain – but not before the volcanic mountain top exploded with an unholy pillar of fire.  The explosion, at least, collapsed most of the tunnels and made it more difficult for the wandering undead to spill out of the tunnels – more difficult but by no means impossible.

100 years ago the island was re-settled by the second son of Baron Vichny, Eddard Vichny, who seemed to undergo such a change in behaviour that people wondered if he were possessed or replaced by a doppelganger.  He took a small village worth of individuals and a dozen mages who were bent by his will, some said to be quite powerful that he kept in line with artefacts, who were forced to forge from the caldera a road, a moat, and a castle.  The effort is said to have slain several of the mages or perhaps he killed them later to keep his secrets buried.

            Over the generations, his sons were said to also be cruel and debauched, though the line between regular debauchery and assumptions that you are evil is quite slight in Ustalav so it’s hard for Proteus to be sure which way that swings.  It does appear that the bloodline grew less evil over the years and the castle has become all but unknown in recent decades.

            So with this in mind, Proteus apologises to the chatelaine and explains that they are willing to heal the castle’s Lord Wilhelm (which the chatelaine dismisses out of hand) and that they are here to seek Lhye’s mother.  The chatelaine demands to know why they brought a devil here, as one had followed them invisibly, of the type likely to report back to the other devils.  That devil has already left, doubtless to seek reinforcements.

            They explained that they were in a rush because they had a prophecy that Lavender Lil will die tonight.  The chatelaine states that perhaps it’s because they’ve led devils here.  He explains that Lil has married a woman, the champion of the castle, who has ridden out to examine the seals to the underdark but would return soon as she would have heard the gong.  They are provided with a clockwork horse to pull them in a cart as none of them can ride and they follow another dirt road past the castle which starts to wind down into the ground.

            Soon they hear the thunder of hooves approaching and Lhye levitates up to see their approach.  A woman with coal black skin and platinum blonde hair (they immediately OOCly think Drow) rides towards them on a white horse with smoking black eyes.  She leads six archers with dual short swords at their hip and six alchemists all in the castle colours.  There’s also about fifteen mages of eclectic races / ethnicities upon largely ghostly horses.

            The champion reigns in and Lhye calls out to his mother.  Lhye, being a suspicious Riddleport sort and not imagining her son as a likely caster, calls out for someone to bring him down with a Sleep spell.  One of the mages attempts a Sleep spell but fails at it.  It’s not until the Champion convinces Lhye to allow her to cuff him with dispellation handcuffs do they believe him.  The Champion, who is quite hot, then convinces the group to leave via a back way upon a small cutter-style boat as the devils will attack the castle and it’s important to get them away.  Apparently Lil has a Protection against Scrying / Detection amulet which will help her.

            Once they’re in the boat there’s a bit of an argument about whether to stay and fight or leave.  Proteus has his blood lust up.  Lhye figures it’s best to fight with the castle’s troops at his back.  Lunjun knows he’s out of spells.  Archer thinks retreat is wisest.  It’s only when Lhye figures out that devils are immune to fire / electricity and his enchantments (well, mostly, as they’re not ‘people’), that he gives in and decides they should leave.

            They head out toward the River Kingdoms.

Flashpoint: Storming the Castle

Lhye levitates up to peer over the curtain walls only to be approached by two apparent gargoyles who hop up onto the crenellations.  He has a conversation with them, paused in his levitation by their "halt" so that he can't yet see above the walls.  They respond to his questions only with: "Who goes there?", "Halt!", "No", and finally "Intruders!"  They could also say "You may pass" but as they didn't recognise them and they didn't say the correct command words the two constructs that appeared to be gargoyles never said it to him.

Proteus tried to distract them by calling up but he only managed to distract one.  Lhye tried to make his way past them which triggered them to raise the hue and cry "Intruders!" while flapping their leather-strapped wings against their backs in a drum-like noise.  Lunjun cast web over them and Lhye cast Obscuring Mist when he spotted the archers reach their slits - their appeared to be no door that led out onto the curtain wall from the guard towers.

The drawbridge began its descent and so he returned to the ground but not before Lenny leapt up onto the edge of the drawbridge and, spying a knight in ashen plate armor with glowing ember-like redness around the gaps riding forward on a horse she charged forward and attached him.  The horse had a flaming red mane / tail and black body (the mane appeared to be on fire at times so Lhye supposed it was a Nightmare).  The knight said little except to command them to leave.

The horse stamped its hooves and a blast of fire surrounded it.  Later it reared and lashed at her with its hooves.  The knight merely cast Charm upon each one in turn while they tried to whittle him down (massive Damage Reduction and a high Armor Class and Spell Resistance).  He had, however, belt at his hip an ice blue Claymore which he wielded effectively when finally forced to dismount by multiple attacks on his mount that left the horse dying (but not dead, it stabilised).

By this point it had charmed Archer who stopped shooting at him, imagining that this place with its shops and peasant smitheries set into the curtain walls on the inside and its market yard which they were currently in and its hedge maze (with wrought iron locked gate) that stood between them and the castle might mean that they had stormed a normal castle rather than an evil one.  He called out to his friends to stop in vain, stopping shooting himself, and then climbed up the gate to peer beyond where he saw a 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy dressed in the castle's colours (red and black) and it's tabard as they cowered partially hidden behind a hedge row.  They had rows of vials belted to them.  Archer tried to talk to them but they merely begged him to stop killing the knight (which he, personally, had done but the others hadn't).  He heard a dog bark and then a dog whose fur had a fiery sheen to it barked, someone begged it to hold still, but it broke loose and he saw it trail its lead as it ran up to the gate and jumped up at him (of course, being a dog, it couldn't jump high enough to get him).

The knight had also charmed Lenny who decided that she still wanted to fight (not strictly what is allowed by the spell but as she is Chaotic Evil I let it pass this time) to prove herself but not to kill him.  She considered a change in her line of duties as she could always choose to work for this impressive man.

Finally the knight charmed Lunjun whose spell shots had been striking him quite well and whose first attack was a Ray of Exhaustion that had deflected off the man (natural 1, critical failure) and struck his friend, Lenny (who luckily didn't see it as she was shot in the back).  He decided that this was all a bit much and so he turned and started walking off and out of the castle.

In the end, it was a battle-furious Lenny, the bard Proteus, and the witch, Lhye, who whittled him down to almost dead though not before the man drew his Claymore and struck Lhye with a blow that dealt only subdual (which shocked Lhye, why would an evil man use a Merciful blade?).  Once he got his chance to act once more, the knight vanished - likely teleporting away.  Somewhere within the castle, a gong rang out.

Lhye finally paid some attention to the horse and made a Knowledge Planes roll as Lenny and Proteus discussed if the horse was worth anything.  Lhye assured them it was, as it was likely to be a Nightmare, but on second thoughts upon seeing it up close and how it bled and struggled to breathe, he realised it was no planar creature.  They rolled Knowledge Nature and determined that it was, in fact, the equivalent of a unicorn of the Storval Plateau - a beast descended from a fire elemental and a gold dragon in it's distant past.

Proteus responds by tipping a Cure Light Wounds potion in its mouth.

Now they are all confused.