No Mean City: Sebastian Spencer

Sabastian Spencer:

Sebastian Spencer is a 20 year old student, studying Computing Science at Imperial College, London, and just starting a gap at a small computing company in Glasgow. Sebastian is the only child of Vicky and Tom Spencer, who worked in a bakery before winning a large sum of money on the races just before Sebastian was born. They've spent the time since trying to climb the social ladder and into the upper middle class.

Their attempts to do this mostly involved splashing money on all the gadgets money can buy and trying to mold their son into a Paragon of the middle class. As a result, Sebastian had the finest tutors and any interest he developed, no matter how fleeting, was indulged; including Chemistry and Computers. He also had a range of "extracurricular" activities including shooting, camping an metal working. He would create "practical jokes" that involved covering people in foul smelling liquids. He would go on protest marches about all manner of things, and he would use the computer equipment he had to hack into secure servers and build computer viruses.

Due to the indulgence of his parents, he learned to drive at 15 and as driven on racetracks, on and off-road. Being a spoiled only child, he also developed an ability to lie convincingly, able to avoid most consequences of his rebellious actions. As time went on, Sebastian focused much of his attention on computers, building a network of online friends, while spectacularly failing to make more than one or two friends in the real world.
He even rebelled against his parents religious views- being staunch Anglicans- and began to study and follow a more alternative spirituality. He dabbled in Wicca, Buddhism, Druidry and other varied and eclectic paths while never settling on any one.

At 18, he was accepted into Imperial College London to study Computing, mainly due to a large "donation" and recognition of his existing ability rather than any previous academic achievement. He continued this trend of half heartedly performing the academic work but scraping through assessments because of the quality of his practical work. Towards he end of his second year his tutors, despairing of his academic ability, persuaded him to apply for a gap year placement working for a computer company. He was accepted onto a year long work programme with "North Central Software and Management," a company that designs and maintains software tha runs banking and cctv systems. He caught the coach from London Victoria Station

Mage the Awakening: No Mean City

Way, way back in 2011 I spoke about starting a Werewolf: The Forsaken Game chronicile in Glasgow. It kind of fell through, but I've about to start DMing a Mage chronicle based loosely on the original campaign outline, with a few changes here and there to bring it up to speed with the present day.

Here's a nice piece of foreshadowing I sent my players, along with a portrait of our first character, Becca Adams/Threnody Noire. Mage and Burlesque dancer extraordinaire. I'll put up her full profile and background in a couple of days.

TEASER:

An hour south of Glasgow, the bus slumbers. The "Let it Go" family at the front of the bus have fallen silent, bleary-eyed parents whispering quietly over the somnolent forms of their sleeping children. The rugby-sevens team from Glasgow University, triumphant after their away victory at King's College, London, are snoring loudly. The contents of their re-filled "soft-drinks" bottles long since imbibed by throats parched in the dry heat of the darkened cabin. The bus is lit intermittently by the passing motorway lights, illuminating the cabin every few moments in a rhythm uncannily in tune with the human heart beat. Overhead, a few reading lights remain lit, indicating that you are not the only passenger still awake on the packed London-to-Glasgow Express. Muted, ceiling-mounted televisions display BBC News 24. Tomorrow's referendum on Independence looms large in the hourly newscasts, the sombre faces of the anchors looking ever so slightly troubled at the prospect that tomorrow might witness the death of the United Kingdom. The latest poll figures flash ominously across the bottom of the screen. "Should Scotland be an Independent Country?" 51% Yes, 49% No.

The bus is packed with expatriates returning home, many of them City professionals who work in London through the week, returning to their families mostly at weekends; taking a rare weekday break to cast their ballot. Forced to "slum" it in the bus with the riff-raff by the huge numbers of Scot's clogging the United Kingdoms airways and railways. All desperate to have a say in their country's future. A future in which only the Scots - and a few hundred thousands other EU nationals living in Scotland- will have a right to vote in a matter that affect the future of every man, woman and child in three countries and one province.

Someone coughs a little further down the aisle. It's the off-shift driver, stirring in his sleep. His leg stretched far out into the centre isle. You can just barely hear the stilted "patter" of the late night Radio Clyde DJ, his voice meandering lazily down the aisle to your seat in the middle of the bus. A few rows further down, you can hear the French woman make another disgusted tutting noise as -for the third time in as many hours- she's forced to nudge the head of a sleeping drunk away from her shoulder.

You're just about to -finally- doze off when a intense flash of orange light fights its way past your closed eye-lids. You've no time to blink away the after-image before the blast hits you -followed shortly thereafter by a wall of sound and humans screams. You feel your stomach lurch, grateful you had the sense to leave your seat restraints buckled as floor becomes the ceiling and two dozen passengers fall from their seats onto the roof and luggage racks. A terrible shriek of grinding metal tells you the bus is on it's roof, sliding across the motorway embankment. With another sudden lurch, the bus rolls. One of the "Let it Go" Children flies past you, her horrified baby-scream lost in the noise and tumult. Something wet, acid and smelling of bile soaks your clothes, a window smashes, and a man is crushed as the bus rolls again, his upper torso still in the bus while the lower is pulped into paste by the still-rolling vehicle.

After a few moments more, the bus comes to an -almost- rest. It's not moving any more, but it's rocking up and down like a see-saw, as though poised at the edge of something. You can hear what sounds like gunfire nearby. Outside, you see lightning flash. Was it lightning that did this? But no, the skies were clear. You reach up to a warm sticky spot on your forehead. Some-ones blood is running down your face. That's when you see the rapidly approaching headlights. There's a screech of brakes then... nothing.

It feels like a very, very long time before you wake up.

Edarnia: Gods and Weather

In Edarnia, my home-brew setting, weather doesn't depend on climate patterns in the same way as it does in real-life. Instead, on Edarnia, weather exists at the whim of the Gods. So, the weather experienced in any given geographical area is entirely dependent on which pantheon is worshipped locally, and on that pantheon's relationships with other pantheons that might influence the local weather.

Take the Protectorate of Zama, for example. Here, the Pantheon of the Sun (the Phoenician Pantheon)is worshiped by the vast majority of the inhabitants. As one might expect, this results in warm, sunny days and (because the Pantheon of the Sun also has purview over the moon and stars) warm, clear nights. Because the Pantheon of the Sun has fairly warm relations with the Pantheon of the Earth, the soil is healthy and experiences a long growing seasons. Three to four crops a year are common, but crop growth is also dependent on the Pantheon of the Suns' somewhat difficult relationship with the Pantheon of the Sky (also known as the Pantheon of Storms). Thus, when it does rain, the rain often comes accompanied by high winds and can damage crops as much as nourish them. Thus, the Protectorate of Zama does all it can to keep on good terms with the Pantheon of Rivers, which provides a steady source of clean water to irrigate Zama's crops.

In a similar vein, the lands under the reign of the Pantheon of Storms are dark, cold and often windy. Due to the difficult relationship with the Pantheon of the Sun, the lands see very little direct sunlight through the omnipresent cloud cover. And due to the outright hostility the Pantheon of the Earth bears the Pantheon of Storms (due to the rape of an earth goddess by a god of the skies), the soil is extremely poor. Thus, the population in these lands is dependent on the seas for raiding, fishing and trade - and the violent Storm Gods have assured themselves of the cooperation of the Pantheon of Seas by the simple expedient of having taken one of their number hostage.

Under the Earth, in the lands between the surface and hell, the Pantheon of Darkness alone holds sway. Thus, there is no sun and little breeze, for the one thing the Gods of the Sky and the Sun can always agree upon is that the Pantheon of Darkness is their greatest foe. That being said, the Pantheons of Water and Sea have no quarrel with the Pantheon of Darkness, and so both fresh and salt water can be found in the Underearth. Moreover, the neutrality of the Mycenean Pantheon, the Pantheon of Fire, (who reside under a mountain themselves, after all) ensures the Underearth remains warm. This combination of water and heat allows some plants to grow and fish and other animal life to prosper in small number.

Finally, the lands of the Imperium are bleak and barren. The humans who reside their have turned their backs on the gods to traffic with demons and devils. Thus, the temperature is always either too cold or two warm, the lighting is always dull and grey, water is brackish, there is very little direct sunlight and it almost never rains. Thus the humans of the Imperium ever see to expand their lands by conquest and enslavement and rely entirely on conquest, trade and tribute in order to feed themselves.

L5R Characters

Here's a group photograph of the miniatures I painted for my L5R group. From left to right: Tsuruchi Daiki, Agasha Haruki Naoki-Ro, Chuda Fumiko, Bayushi Midori, Hida Tadakatus and Kuni Kasumi.

Kuni Kasumi

Dark Heresy/Death Knell

Isn't it typical? No sooner do I start recording our adventures on the blog than the game dies. While a few of our players were away over the Holidays, I started up a game of Legend of the Five \rings with my group, using the Heroes of Rokugan III organised play modules.

My group liked it so much, we've moved over to playing L5R instead of Dark Heresy. We're now four module in and all the payers who have been able to make a full session so far love it. One of my players commented that they loved the challenge of navigating the put-falls an constraints of what is, to westerners, an entirely alien society. The other quickly agreed.

And that, I think, is what's central to the appeal of Legend of the Five Rings.

Unfortunately I won't be able to put up any actual play reports here for a good long time (because it's an organised play campaign, anything I put up here would constitute spoilers). But I am keeping a journal. So when the campaign ends I about a year or so, I'll put the journal up for all to see.

Dark Heresy Episode 1.2

I'm a week behind in the write-ups, as we've just finished playing episode 1.3. Just before we started last session, Stuart realised that he had already played the original Call of Cthulu campaign on which this Dark Heresy campaign is based. Before the start of the session, we briefly discussed our options as a group (carry on with the campaign, play a different published campaign with the same characters, or switch to Legend of the Five Rings). For the time being, we decided to continue playing and decide what we would do next week.

The Acolytes:

• Cadence: A Tech Priest CyberHound handler. Played by Ali.
• Grimoire: Potent Void-Born Psyker. Played by John.
• Gunner: Down-Hive Gun-Slinging Scum. Played by Fiona
• Ishtari: Novice Sister of Battle. Played by Caroline. 
• Lemantz: Penumbrae Hive Enforcer. Played by Niall.
• Zane: "Squat" Flamer-wielding Cleric. Played by Stuart.

Outside the door of Chamber 401, the Acolytes begin a hurried discussion, first determining (after a brief word with the ship's captain) that they are standing outside the only exit. The immediately instruct the captain to withdraw to the next bulkhead and seal both it and the one on the other side of the room.

Once "safely" locked in to a very confined space with an unknown foe on the other side of the door, Cadence easily bypasses the lock.

Inside, the once-stateroom is in disarray. Three naked human figures, "clad" only in bloody war-paint stand around a small, metallic letter bin (the sort you might find next to any scribe's work-space) throwing in documents, books and other artifacts. An odourless, colourless steam rises from the bin. Meanwhile, on the bed, lies a headless, mutilated corpse. The three intruders reach for their weapons while the door hisses open: each carries a sharpened human thighbone, carved with strange runes and already stained with (presumed) human blood.

The Acolytes gun them down before they can even move.

Entering the cabin, the Acolytes quickly begin an investigation. Cadence and Ishtari immediately move to rescue what documents they can, particularly those already consigned to the bin. Inside the small metal receptacle, they find not flames, but a strange, purple goog that appears to be slowly dissolving any non-metal objects placed within. 

They rescue a number of documents from the flames, including a hard copy of an astropathic transmission, a formal "chop" of the sort used by Rogue Trader and noble houses in the Crone Sector to announce themselves, a metal jho-stick lighter (on the carpet next to the bin), a trade receipt and (rescued from the bin itself) a partially dissolved, grainy pictograph of a star-ship.

[Handouts 1-5 from the previous post]

Meanwhile, Grimoire reaches out with his less natural senses. The temperature in the room immediately drops slightly, but no-one seems to notice. Grimoire's senses detect a dispersing warp nimbus, with a similar "taste" to the one he experienced in the Surgeon' lair [Episode 0.4] immediately following their quarries escape. It's only similar though. Not identical.

Meanwhile, Zane examines the dead "painted men". He can find no clue as to their identity as individuals, but notes that the war-paint is indeed blood (very fresh blood) that has been painted atop a pattern of swirls and jagged lines carved into their flesh and long since scarred over. He also gets a closer look at each of the three thigh-bone clubs and confirms that they did indeed once come from a human being. He can make out a number of runes carved into each, but they mean nothing to him personally (or, indeed, to any of the Acolytes). Each painted man wears an identical white mask, seemingly carved from a large piece of ivory (a shoulder bone perhaps?). The masks are worked into a rough oval, featureless except for two triangular vision holes and a long "mouth" from which protrudes a long, bloody (and somewhat rotten) animal tongue of some kind. Similar to that of a grox.

Gunner looks around the rest of the room, carefully checking for anything the painted men might have dropped or missed in their search. He finds a hand-written letter on the carpet beneath a dresser [Handout 6] and a small hard-bound book beneath the bed [Handout 7]. 

Meanwhile, Lementz, the most forensically-aware member of the group, examines the corpse on the bed. It's a man, with an appearance anywhere between mid-to-late thirties, although it's hard to be sure for two reasons: the relative availability of rejuv treatments in the Crone Sector and, most significantly, the fact that the body has been horribly mutilated. Lementz can tell that the marks carved into the body were made while the victim was still alive, all the more horrible given the extremity of the mutilation. The head has been severed from the body by a number of down-word strokes from a crude, sharp object, leaving a ragged wounded and a series of puncture wounds to either side of the point of separation. An especially large rune [Hand-Out 8] stands out among the smaller wounds on the body.

The group briefly confers after their sweep. They briefly discuss the various clues they have found. The central issue for the group seems to be whether or not the corpse on the bed is Jeremiah Elias. After all, they have no-way of identifying the body as yet. After a brief discussion, they step out of room 401 and close it behind them. They they summon the captain.

Prudently, the captain returns with a fair-sized Securitor team at his back. The ship-board guards are wearing full flak armour and carrying boarding shotguns. The captain, looking relieved, leaves his escort at the bulkhead and approaches the party alone. The relieved look soon vanishes from his face (replaced with near-panic) when Cadence, who's understanding of Geller fields is somewhat sketchy, instructs the Captain that he will need to have the ones onboard ship checked immediately. The Captain (assuming that the occupant of room 401 was killed by Daemons who boarded the ship while it was at warp) immediately orders a full sanitation sweep of the ship and an inspection of it's Geller Fields.

Although the Captain clearly wishes to return to the bridge to coordinate these efforts, the acolytes use their authority as Throne Agents to keep him where he is. They escort him into the room and ask him to confirm if he recognises any of the corpses. As it transpires, he claims he can't. He never met Jeremiah Elias in person and does not recognise the three painted men as being among his crew. But then, given that there are around 1400 crew onboard, that's not surprising. 

"It's difficult to give an exact figure," the Captain admits, "We regularly conscript fresh bilge-scum from the prisons at every stop we make. In-fighting and disease amidst the lower deck crew insures a high-turnaround. We don't even bother to keep track of who lives and who dies anymore. Haven't for centuries, in fact."

The other acolytes are not pleased (nor especially convinced) by this, but settle down a bit once the void-born acolytes, Grimoire and Zane, confirm that this is fairly common practice among warp-capable vessels of all kinds. Even a luxury transport such as this.

The Captain is them grilled about possible ways for an outsider to come onboard. Grimoire in particular is convinced that warp-craft or teleportation was used but Cadence argues that without the protections of the Blessed Omnisiah and possession of certain powerful machine spirits, the painted men would have been destroyed by the denizens of the warp mid-transport.

At this point the captain is dismissed with instructions not to leave Penumbrae Space Dock until released by Inquisitorial Authority and with even stricter orders to permit no-one save the Inquisitional Forensor teams the Acolytes will be summoning to access this chamber.

Meanwhile, the Acolytes wait for a number of the "Zorias'" to arrive to retrieve the bodies and begin a more in-depth investigation of the scene. In the meantime, they again discuss whether or not the corpse on the bed could be Jeremiah Elias or just some dupe. After a time, they realise that speculation is pointless and instead decide to attend the planned rendezvous at the Irridium Guesthouse. Partly in the hope that they will find Jeremiah there alive and well. Partly to see who else might turn up to the planned meeting.

They thereafter turn back to the other clues and identify some leads that they can pursue without having to leave Penumbrae:

• The Trading House
• The Hand-Bill for the Lecture
• The Librarian
• Lady Eika Coriolanus herself.

They are still debating long after troupe of  stitched-face Zarius serfs arrive to take custody of the bodies and chamber 401.

[In fact, they won't decide which lead to follow up after the Iridium Guest-House until well towards the end of he next session.]

Dark Heresy Hand-Outs Session 1.2

Clues found in the rooms of the deceased Remembrancer, Jeremiah Elias.

Item 1: 

A hard-copy of an astropathic communication. Dates of transmission, rebroadcast and reception have been expunged. 

To: Lord Coriolanus

From: Jamal Nazir

Gracious Lord, I am informed you desire knowledge of our world of Pharos. In my possession are singular curios which I believe to be of interest. These I shall willingly display to you for your edification and gratification. Naturally, they are ancient and priceless beyond compare. I will arrange matters to your satisfaction when your agent calls upon me in the street of Jackelis, Old Quarter.

Item 2: 
A folded piece of hard-copy, embossed  with the chop of a prominent Rogue Trader family, House Penhew. Beneath the chop can be found the name Evard Gavigan along with his title, "Seneschal, Tabula Rosa

Item 3:
A metal jho-stick lighter, made from cheap pressed metal. It is stamped with the words: " Shambling Tigura, Shian City."

Shambling Tigura Lighter

Item 4:
A pictograph -very dark and grainy- depicting a massive merchant vessel of some kind. The ship orbits a generic looking space dock to which it is attached by umbilicals. The star-field is partially obscured by the grainy quality of the image. Three letters are visible on the ships bow. "D-A-R".

Item 5: 
A trade receipt from an establishment calling itself Imassa Imports, located in Penumbrae City close to the shuttle port. The receipt mentions unspecified "services". On the back has been scrawled the words " Silas N'Kwane".

Item 6: 
A handwritten letter addressed to Jeremiah Elias, care of Prospero House. Return address is: Miriam Arrarat, Universitat Penumbrae. The letter seems quite old and travel-stained. It reads:

"Sir, the text of which you enquired is no longer in our catalogue. The information you seek may be located in other volumes within our collection. If you contact me upon your return to Penumbrae, I will able to assist you in locating such volumes."

Item 7:
A small sheet of hard-copy, inserted between the pages of Gideon Ravenors: " A Mind in Darkness". It marks the beginning of chapter 11, "Fetishes in pre Imperial Cults." It is a handbill advertising a lecture on "Pre-Imperial Cults in the Crone Sector" delivered by a Signeur Antonius Kowlis, a fellow at Penumbrae's Eschkatonic Universitat, speaking as a guest lecturer at the Universitate Penumbrae. The lecture was several years ago.

Item 8:
Symmetrical marks have been carved onto the corpses chest, which has also had it's tongue ripped out. The marks resemble two bloody crescents with a round object in the centre.

Symbol carved into Elias' Chest