Wednesday Werk: No Wednesday Werk This Week

Sorry, folks.  No Wednesday Werk this week.

Don't be sad.  It will return next week (barring unforeseen incident, of course).  You could pass the time by looking at the backlog of Werk posts.

Or, you can step right up.  Tom Waits will take your sad away.

Happy Leap Day, everyone!

Cassandra Syndrome

Really quickly: noisms posted this awesome thing at Monsters and Manuals.  He mentions it with reference to story games, but really you could do it with any sort of game.

Make sure you read it.

Think of how different genres would change the tone: it would likely skew tragic in modern horror games (your mundane life would probably collapse under the strain, leaving you a shattered husk with no allies), but D&D characters would likely become more ruggedly individualistic than normal (nobody listens to you, so what the hell, you're going to do it yourself).

This, of course, assuming that characters don't take advantage of the situation (which seems particularly likely among murderhobos).  Imagine you know an earthquake is going to hit downtown, and will demolish the Lassater Building.  So you short sell the stock and wind up richer than when you started (incidentally, this is what Al Qaeda financiers did with the World Trade Center before it was attacked).  Or it's a fantasy setting, and the characters realize they can steal the Crown Jewels during the chaos caused by the earthquake.

Fun stuff.

Persons of Interest: Lana (formerly Larry) Wachowski

You did it.

You can argue that a celebrity who ruins his marriage by delving into L.A.'s BDSM scene and then starts identifying as female isn't appropriate for Unknown Armies, but you'd probably be wrong.

That level of symbolic tension is perfect for an avatar of the Mystic Hermaphrodite.

This basically goes in the same format as Nadya Suleman: you can check out Lana Wachowski by looking at Wikipedia or IMDB without my help.

I will, however, specifically direct you to this thread on The Straight Dope.  It talks about Larry's 2001 affair with Los Angeles dominatrix Ilsa Strix (leading to his 2002 divorce from then-wife Thea Bloom), as well as his transformation into Lana Wachowski.

Dukes put the smart money on Laurence encountering the occult underground during his time in L.A.'s BDSM scene, although a few tell a convoluted tale of a young Larry meeting the Freak back in Chicago.  From there, he made the conscious decision to channel the Mystic Hermaphrodite (by symbolically wrecking his marriage, changing his gender, and keeping this all very personal and quiet).

Some dukes also claim the Wachowskis are deliberately inserting mystic themes into their movies (some dukes claim the "desert of the real" is symbolic of the Statosphere and The Matrix is all about the Clergy's cycle) in an attempt to bring magick to the masses.  (Some even blather that The Matrix sequels sucked because the first one was just Hinduism in a science-fiction/action film while the other two were an attempt to reconcile human understanding with the incomprehensible symbolism of the Invisible Clergy.)

Smart dukes want to stay the hell away from that.  Between the Sleepers and the Sleeping Tiger, I'll take neither, thank you.


Personality: The Comic Book Nerd.  Friendly and outgoing on subjects that capture her attention, otherwise somewhat awkward and standoffish.
Obsession: Identity.  What makes people determine whom they are?
Wound Points: 45

Rage Stimulus: Violation of privacy.
Fear Stimulus: (Self) Losing track of herself.
Noble Stimulus: Teaching.

Body: 45 (Used to Work Construction)
Carpentry 30%, General Athletics 25%, Struggle 15%, Work Without Rest 15%
Speed: 40 (A Trifle Awkward)
Dodge 20%, Driving 30%, Initiative 25%, Squirrelly Reflexes 15%
Mind: 70 (Nerd)
Conceal 15%, Directing 35%, General Education 25%, Notice 15%, Writing 35%
Soul: 65 (Philosophical)
Acting 10%, Avatar: The Mystic Hermaphrodite 25%, Charm 20%, Friends in the Business 30%, Lying 15%

Friends in the Business: This represents Lana Wachowski's industry connections.  Mechanically, it's similar to A Friend in the Family (UA2, pg. 43).

Violence: 0 Hardened 0 Failed
Unnatural: 1 Hardened 0 Failed
Helplessness: 1 Hardened 1 Failed
Isolation: 2 Hardened 2 Failed
Self: 3 Hardened 2 Failed

(You can also see this entry over on the Unknown Armies site.)

Deadlands, Part X

You might want to watch or listen to this first.  To get you in the mood.

Ahem.  When last we left our heroes, they arrived in San Francisco, did a little opium, and met with Little Pete.

Little Pete's a very bad man.

So, David Hood, Father Seward, and Jeb are still under the influence of opium.  Jake and Ruby O'Flahertie were not.  There's a bloody woman in the corner, and a few goons around.

Little Pete makes the group an offer.  He wants the moon jar (you know, the one the Gentleman said can be used to cheat your way into Heaven?), because it holds secrets; specifically, anyone who touches the jar can access any secret within, but anybody who touches the jar also has his secrets added to the pool.  If we help him get it, he'll keep it, but we can access it whenever we want.  To sweeten the deal, he has a little ritual that will ensure nobody in the agreement betrays anyone else in the agreement.

We agree.  Little Pete speaks with the chained woman in the corner and they come to some sort of agreement.  He smokes a bunch of opium and an old Chinese woman hacks his left arm off (we guess he'll be at the game, too).  She then prepares this little ritual.  He eats a burning coal, drinks a fluid, and Father Seward, Jake, and Ruby all similarly drink.

To facilitate the search for playing cards so we can enter the game, Little Pete gives us a list of people, and where they're staying.  Knowing about Sonny, we decide to go there first.

We leave.  A figure with a rifle is standing on the roof, and a couple of people notice him as he takes a pot-shot at David Hood.  Father Seward draws and fires; the figure drops out of sight.  Tong gangsters and a few others go running, and find the figure to be a small boy.  Jeb takes his rather sad-looking rifle.

The group splits before the police arrive.

We travel to our new female companion's shop in Chinatown — she is evidently a butcher, and despite being Caucasian, she's a Chinese-style butcher.  People get cleaned up, and we solidify our plans.  Particularly since Sonny isn't supposed to be at the hotel, we presume this won't be easy, but at least it'll be predictable.  (Plus, maybe everyone's asleep and we can do this quickly.)

This hotel is in a rough part of town.  When we get there, though, it's not right.  The hotel is neither completely dark nor well-lit — a single, red light flickers in the background of the main windows.  We dither a while.  David and Ruby look inside and are shaken by what they see.  David is about to walk inside when he is restrained, but Father Seward takes the opportunity to glance inside.

It's a horrorshow.  Several people sit around a table, each with cards in hand like a poker tableau.  They are dead (or at least unmoving), but their bodies have been unnaturally twisted and deformed.  A woman — a prostitute by her mode of dress — lies on the table, spread-eagle.  A note is attached to the table with a knife.  We see it has Jake's name is on it.

Jake is reasonably confident that this is the handiwork of his old mentor, Cornelius.  We know this is bad news.  We leave.

The other hotel is in the ritzy part of town.  There is a fence and a gate around it.  Jeb keeps watch by looking homeless, while Father Seward makes a circuit around the block so as to look inconspicuous.  David, Jake, Ruby, and our new companion contemplate breaking in.  After some bickering, they decide to go around the back (if only to evade the police officer they hear walking this block).  Ruby sees a strange sight — a few rooms are lit and occupied.  Men occupy these rooms, but Ruby can tell that two of them are wooden dummies, and their pacing is regular, as if they are on a track.  The other man holds a six-barreled gun.  When he realizes he's been spotted, he ducks down.

After discussion, the group reconvenes.  Given the choice between the horrible, unnatural scenario and the super-science-and-possibly-getting-arrested scenario, we go for the supernatural one.

Yes, we all know what that says about our characters.

Anyway, we return to the horrorshow hotel.  We go inside, expecting a trap.

We enter, noticing a house of cards we could not see before.  Jeb goes upstairs and encounters an unseen force touching his cheek; he returns downstairs in a hurry.  The rest of us go about searching the bar and main floor.  Jake's note is definitely from Cornelius, as it indicates he "knows what to do."

We dither before Jake notes that Cornelius probably put something in the woman.  Our new companion — being a woman and a butcher — checks first.  She examines her orifices (nothing there), and then starts to cut her open.

By this point, Ruby is overcome.  Father Seward accompanies Ruby outside.  Jeb faints.

The examination continues.  The woman's uterus looks like it's bulging, so it gets checked.  There is both a box and an unborn child inside, along with a rush of black water.  The box contains a set of seven playing cards, each of which has the distinctive back marking them as entry cards for the poker tournament.

As everyone has gathered themselves again, Jake starts smashing bottles of liquor.  He notes that the house of cards has caught fire, so he just leaves, allowing the fire and the liquor to do its work.

We return to the butcher shop of our new female companion, (hopefully) ready for tomorrow's poker tournament.

Wednesday Werk: Quindra, Hallimox

In this week's Wednesday Werk, we'll look at the Quindra and the Hallimox.

The Quindra are an ancient race of crystalline beings.  When I say ancient, I mean ancient; we're talking aeons, epochs, and contacting the Hounds of Tindalos ancient.  Any given Quindra is probably millions of years old, at least.  This extreme age is complicated further by the Gordian Knot of space-time the Quindra inhabit: each one is actually a collective soul comprising five individuals, and all five are probably plane-hopping across planar boundaries.

This extreme age and alien intellect means that the Quindra effectively operate outside the morality of the sapient races or even the gods themselves; some half-mad sorcerer attempting to contact one for forbidden knowledge might be ignored, aided, or liquified from the inside-out without rhyme or reason (for that matter, the sorcerer might get that treatment from different facets of the same Quindra).

Sane magic-users avoid these creatures, but then again, sanity among magic-users is a very mutable quality.

There is a lot of variety among Quindra, and some of them are near-godlike.  Regardless, there are a few common qualities among them:

• They hold the knowledge of all they have encountered in their multi-dimensional facets.
• They even retain the sounds they have heard, and they can replay these sounds at will, even stringing them together in the speech and language of sapient races.
• In addition to unearthly sounds, they can also emit light and energy they have captured, typically as a defensive/offensive maneuver.
• Their multi-planar nature allows them a type of clairvoyance, allowing them to detect magic and see the invisible.
• Additionally, some specimens can use spells they have encountered, replicating the arcane harmonic frequencies they originally perceived.

A tale from the archives of the University for the Study of the Arcane Arts and Sciences in Duchy Jepson suggests a group of Vecna cultists once attempted to capture a Quindra to extract every secret retained in its crystalline matrix.  The lone survivor succeeded, after a fashion, but touching the alien intellect of the Quindra drove him completely catatonic, and any telepathic contact with his mind was noted as being "inimical to the health and sanity of the telepath."  Some of the magi theorize that Quindra may reproduce memetically, and that this shift marked the beginning of the cultist's transformation into a new Quindra, but no one knows for certain.

The following Quindra is suggestive of a typical specimen.  This one bears no spells, either being young or simply not using them in combat.  This creature will typically open combat with Song of Control, using Flash when two or three attackers are within range.  It will frequently spend an Action Point to use Shardswarm immediately after Flash, particularly if it seeks to flee rather than fight.  It then attacks with Song of Control if available and Song of Confusion if it is not.

The Hallimox are another race of planar travelers, although rather than the typical knowledge-seekers found amongst the planeswalkers, the Hallimox are death-cultists.  They have a particular interest in the varied funerary rites of the various sapients throughout the planes, focusing predominantly on mummification rites.  Many travelers have reported seeing them in the Shadowfell (for you classic cosmologists, the Shadowfell combines aspects of the Negative Energy Plane and the Plane of Shadow, among others; as an example, the so-called Demiplane of Dread exists in the Shadowfell), although they have been found in the lands of the living, as well.

The Hallimox are noted for their psychic ability to conjure necrotic balls of violet flame, as well as their relationship with the strange living darts they carry; these creatures are bred by the Hallimox as living weapons, and they use a rudimentary telekinesis to find their targets.  A given Hallimox probably only has three or so (the DM can roll 1d6 to see how many darts a Hallimox has), but they return to their owner after attacking.  Enterprising adventurers may attempt to grab these creatures by spending three minor actions (which must be used in the same round, effectively depriving the character of a turn as it tries to grab the fast-moving dart) and rolling a DC 25 Athletics check; a grabbed living dart goes inert immediately.  If the Hallimox loses all darts, it can no longer make a Living Dart attack.

Living darts captured by adventurers typically go inert (the darts' symbiosis apparently only responds to the Hallimox), but there's always some friend-of-a-friend story suggesting that some magus or alchemist has devised a way to keep them active for future use.

The following Hallimox represents the profile suggested above.  Rumor has it that some specimens actually spread a wasting disease with their fireballs (DMs wanting to replicate this should make PCs make a saving throw at the end of combat; failure indicates that the character contracts a Level 9 disease similar to Mummy Rot).

Gaming with Mike Mornard

So Rushputin of Warpstone Pile fame informed me of an article that I had to read.

I was not disappointed.

Blog of Holding has a seven-part series on gaming with Mike Mornard.  That links to the first part, and you can proceed from there.

In addition to some thoughts on old-school gaming, the series talks about Mornard's memories of gaming with Gygax and Arneson, but most importantly, it has this little gem I'd never heard before:

Mike gave a fascinating account of a typical early D&D game, with a peculiar detail that I'd never heard before. Gary never used maps or minis: maps and minis were Dave Arneson's thing. Gary ran games in his office, which was provided with chairs, a couch, and file cabinets. While playing, Gary would open the drawers of the file cabinet and sit behind them so that the players COULD NOT SEE HIM. They only experienced the Dungeon Master as a disembodied voice.

Rushputin and I are all for trying this; I don't know if it's something any of us would do frequently, but the idea of the Game Master as a disembodied voice is intriguing.

Also, it better explains the role and necessity of the party caller.  A caller is helpful in old-school gaming just to keep everybody organized (particularly with a large party), but if the DM can't see the players, a caller is essential to avoid confusion.

Anyway, go read the series, would you please?

A Passel of Things

As I've previously said, the worst thing for a role-playing blog is lots of role-playing.  (It doesn't help that most of the stuff I'm making is stuff I'm using, meaning either my players will read it or the notes are too sketchy to be useful to anyone but me.)

Anyway, here's some stuff you may have missed.

Swords & Stitchery has a random space harlot table.  If I ever run a space opera game, I'm totally using this.  (And maybe even if I don't run a space game.)

Lurking Rhythmically gives us Unknown Ponies: Failure Is Awesome, a homebrewed system for running My Little Pony with Unknown Armies rules.  This made the rounds a bit ago, and I totally neglected to mention it.  I don't know jack about My Little Pony fandom, but I approve of anyone who spreads the gospel of Unknown Armies.  Also, I'm fairly confident that this'll get used — imagine being thrown into some Videomancer's horrorshow where you are suddenly bound by the rules of My Little Pony.

Terrifying.

Finally, also for Unknown Armies, I give you this news story.  Some mountain man is breaking into isolated cabins in the Utah wilderness, living for a time before stealing provisions and vanishing back into the wilderness.  The feds have found his camp sites and his caches of heavy weapons, but the picture of him in the article is the only actual evidence of him.  His fingerprints don't match anyone in the database, the FBI can't figure out if he's on their most wanted list or not, and there are literally only two pictures of him.

Could be an Ascension bid, or it could be the old archetype of the Peacemaker, cast out of the Clergy and inverted, and now causing fear in the American west.