OK, this is interesting: I just rolled a 9 on 3d6 for the next religion's God View, which means that it's an interactive monotheism. Like Mormonism and some evangelical Christianities (and, I imagine, some Judaisms and Islams, too), this religion says that there is only one God and that that one God is constantly and ongoingly actively involved in the lives of sophonts. This is “God is My Co-Pilot” and “I Have a Testimony” territory. How is this going to interact with the Spirit-Listeners' watchful eagerness to take the path the spirits of the dead have made easy? Will they be great allies on this tech-worshiping world, or will they be at each others' too-similar throats? Let's find out!
Also, the Lost Secrets of the Rose Brothers are monotheistic, meaning that this might be the successor to the previous religion, perhaps a Mormon-like and/or fundamentalist shift in the guild's teachings?
Well, rolling a flat 2d6 gives us a Spiritual Aim of 6. It appears that this is a religion focused on getting into a heavenly paradise after death. That certainly doesn't sound like anything the Rose Brothers would put forth, nixing that idea. So, is that highly-interactive God trying to get you into Heaven, trying to create situations in which you have to make that choice, or trying to prevent you from going to Heaven after you die? Those last two are more interesting to me than the first. On the one had, you have a God actively campaigning against indecisiveness, apathy, and going with the flow and on the other, you have either a malevolent God who wants to hurt everyone (a maltheism) or a benevolent God trying to save sophonts from the numbing euphoria that awaits them.
The 9 we roll on 2d6-1 gives us a point of similarity between this religion and the Lost Secrets of the Rose Brothers: both have meetings only every other month, Isheean religions don't ask for much in the way of formal worship from their members! (So far, anyway.) I get the sense that Isheean culture, whether Fraternal, Oleinikan, Jermainish, or TCI focuses primarily on the ethical and embedded elements of religion, rather than orthodoxy or ritual. Rolling an 8 on 2d6+2 merely provides more evidence, as we learn that this religion has a loose hierarchy that leaves most decisions to the local level. I'm starting to get a sense that this religion might be similar to some Mormonisms, with a strong focus toward receiving testimony from Heavenly Father, Heavenly Mother(s), and/or the angels. In the case of this science-fictive religion, the hierarchy would mostly be chosen on two bases: (1) a higher-than-average rate, comprehensibility, accuracy, and detail in the messages they receive from the divine, and (2) more importantly, their skill and creativity at incorporating the testimonies of their congregants into a guiding plan for the community as a whole. Above the local level, clergy would be receiving more testimonies and, as they rise in rank, more summaries of collections of testimonies and trying to synthesize them into a whole ~ high clergy's role is reactive, rather than proactive.
Maybe their theology is modeled on distributed computing? A syncresis of Mormonism and distributed computing? We are all the sons and daughters of God, which means that we are all components of a massive distributed algorithm designed by that God for some ineffable purpose. But how does Heaven fit into this? Ah! If we take it as a God who is creating situations in which we need to make a choice between Heaven and Hell, then each life could be a bit in the process, bit as in the technical, computer-science meaning of the term.
It seems Isheean culture as a whole sees religion as something more akin to philosophy, as we again roll a 10 for liturgical formality, resulting in those bimonthly meetings being formal study groups discussing and interpreting holy writings. As I develop this idea of a testimonial/oracular distributed theo-computing, I imagine them discussing and interpreting not only the writings of the past that laid out the foundations of their beliefs, but also the testimonies of other worshippers and communities, reflecting on how those visions intertwine with their own.
There are active efforts by this religion to acquire converts across the subsector, if not further (rolled a 4 on 2d6-2). After all, the more sophonts engaged in God's distributed computing efforts, the faster, more powerfully, and more effectively the program can run. However, certain sophont species possess nervous systems so divergent from those that devised this religion that its followers cannot see how their testimonies (if they have testimonies at all) could fit together with those of the church as a whole, and so such sophont species are left alone by the missionaries.
3d6-4 gives us hundreds of thousands of adherents to this religion. Random.org tells us that the precise number is a highly respectable 810,552. That's smaller than the remaining available population of Ishee, so I'll invert my process and roll to see what percentage of those adherents live on Ishee. 53% of them live on this planet we are creating, which comes out to 429,593 Isheeans.
Finally, we roll the dWikipedia for a seed of a name . . . how about the Beaumont Cosmological Computing System? Yeah, let's go with that, with a note that the name doesn't capture the heavy Mormon influence on the origins of the religion ~ I'm seeing it as a techgnostic take on Mormonism.
The religious landscape of Ishee so far:
4,966,607 sophonts (31% of the population) atheist/agnostic/non-religious
7,690,230 sophonts (48%) Liberty Fellowship of Spirit-Listeners (known as Fellows, Associationists, or Listeners)
6 sophonts (essentially 0%) Lost Secrets of the Rose Brothers (generally just called gerontocrats or old fogies)
429,593 sophonts (app. 2.7%) Beaumont Cosmological Computing System (generally called Beaumonters, Algorithmists, or Systemites)
2,934,918 sophonts (app. 18.3%) not yet accounted for
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Sunday, July 29, 2018
The other half of the equation: Traumas (Design Domingo #6)
In addition, your character has five Traumas, each of which has a Hardened score from 0-10 and a Failed score from 0-5. These measure how close you are to going crazy, freaking out, freezing like a frightened deer, falling on your sword, or running into the night howling like a wolf. These things happen when you start talking with demons, melting your face to win friends, and exorcising the supernatural resonance of a sex crime. It’s tough stuff, and the medieval world offers little to stand between you and going completely gonzo batshit. But why go crazy if you already live there? If you’ve had some heavy trauma in your life (which is depressingly common), you can go ahead and put up to three points, total, into any of your character’s Failed Traumas. For each one you add, you can also put a point in a Hardened Trauma as well. They don’t have to be in the same Traumas ~ if you’re going to be crazy, be your own special kind of crazy. And if you want more than three of each, talk to your GM. Remember to wear clothes.
You’re going to face a lot of threats and do a lot of things out there, and not all of them are physical. You’re going to be exposed to stresses that are beyond the normal, experiences that challenge your mind’s ability to fit them into your view of how the world works. These stresses are measured by the Traumas. As mentioned before, there are five scores that measure how resilient or susceptible you are to different mental stress: Violence, the Unnatural, Helplessness, Isolation, and Self. It’s quite possible to be very casual about, say, Violence, while being a basket case when it comes to the Unnatural.
Each Trauma has two scores. Hardened Traumas represent stresses you’ve endured, and they are scored 1–10. Failed Traumas represent stresses that have broken you even just a little bit, and they are numbered 1–5. It’s common to have nonzero scores in both versions of a single Trauma. Someone who’s deep in both directions on Isolation probably has a highly ambivalent attitude towards being alone, which is perfectly in character for people who have been repeatedly exposed to that mental stress. Someone with the same situation for Violence feels little or nothing when exposed to most forms of bloodshed, but when something is so shocking that it gets through the hardened barrier, the result is devastating.
Remember that the following descriptions include examples of rolls that each Trauma is often used to make, but that these are suggestions and indicators of frequency. Once again, a character’s reasons and emotional realities determine which trait is used for any given roll; talent, ability, training, and more esoteric things in that category are described with skill ranks and feats.
Violence Trauma
You have an instinctive revulsion towards actual violence. It’s stressful to hurt others, to watch others get hurt, and to get hurt. This Trauma also covers the fear of death that everyone suffers from in varying degrees.
Though it is relatively easy to imagine situations for every Trauma to contribute to any given kind of roll, both Hardened and Failed Violence are probably the most common to use when making attack rolls. They are both often used to make Perception and Knowledge (dungeoneering) rolls and also Craft rolls that produce arms, armor, and the like. Like Valorous/Cowardly, both are also often used to make Climb, Swim, and Sense Motive rolls. Failed Violence is involved in calculating your character’s Armor Class (AC) whereas Hardened Violence is involved in calculating hit points. Hardened Violence also adds to damage rolls, like Cruel and Vengeful and is also often used to make Appraise rolls to appraise arms, armor, and the like. It’s sometimes used to make Will, Heal, Survival, and Intimidate rolls.
The Effects of Various Levels of Failed Violence (FV) Trauma on Personality
1 ~ At this level, you’re superficially fine. Perhaps you’re a little edgy whenever a knife in the room happens to be pointing your direction.
2 ~ You are very aware of violence, both as it exists and as it is depicted. It strikes you as somewhat odd that so many people don’t realize that the violence in the stories and songs of troubadours is very different from real violence.
3 ~ You get alert or uneasy every time you see blood, even badly faked blood in a play (or even a puppet show) or when someone cuts a rare steak. Sometimes you have nightmares about violence you’ve witnessed.
4 ~ You instinctively take a defensive posture whenever there’s a loud noise or raised voice nearby. Your nightmares are frequent, and you have a hard time looking at anyone without imagining (if briefly) what you would do at that moment if they attacked you.
The Effects of Various Levels of Hardened Violence (HV) Trauma on Personality
1–3 ~ Superficially, you’re much like everyone else.
4–5 ~ Your attitude towards violence shows on your face when the subject comes up in conversation, unless you work to keep it hidden. It might be intensity, or nervousness, or just a grim silence, depending on how you cope.
6–7 ~ Violence is a common feature of your mental landscape. Unlike less-hardened people, you show little reaction at all when it is discussed or depicted in fiction.
8–9 ~ Your callousness shows in your every word and expression unless you make a continuous effort to suppress it. Again, the exact tone is up to you: it could be bitter and harsh, feverish and vehement, or icy cold.
10 ~ It’s not hard for people to realize that the deepest horrors of torture and brutality have become commonplace to you, unless you work very, very hard to keep it hidden—which means you come off as tense and guarded all the time. The death of others, or yourself, has no intrinsic significance. You might prefer to stay alive, but it’s only a matter of personal taste. Life, in the abstract, doesn’t mean anything.
You’re going to face a lot of threats and do a lot of things out there, and not all of them are physical. You’re going to be exposed to stresses that are beyond the normal, experiences that challenge your mind’s ability to fit them into your view of how the world works. These stresses are measured by the Traumas. As mentioned before, there are five scores that measure how resilient or susceptible you are to different mental stress: Violence, the Unnatural, Helplessness, Isolation, and Self. It’s quite possible to be very casual about, say, Violence, while being a basket case when it comes to the Unnatural.
Each Trauma has two scores. Hardened Traumas represent stresses you’ve endured, and they are scored 1–10. Failed Traumas represent stresses that have broken you even just a little bit, and they are numbered 1–5. It’s common to have nonzero scores in both versions of a single Trauma. Someone who’s deep in both directions on Isolation probably has a highly ambivalent attitude towards being alone, which is perfectly in character for people who have been repeatedly exposed to that mental stress. Someone with the same situation for Violence feels little or nothing when exposed to most forms of bloodshed, but when something is so shocking that it gets through the hardened barrier, the result is devastating.
Remember that the following descriptions include examples of rolls that each Trauma is often used to make, but that these are suggestions and indicators of frequency. Once again, a character’s reasons and emotional realities determine which trait is used for any given roll; talent, ability, training, and more esoteric things in that category are described with skill ranks and feats.
Violence Trauma
You have an instinctive revulsion towards actual violence. It’s stressful to hurt others, to watch others get hurt, and to get hurt. This Trauma also covers the fear of death that everyone suffers from in varying degrees.
Though it is relatively easy to imagine situations for every Trauma to contribute to any given kind of roll, both Hardened and Failed Violence are probably the most common to use when making attack rolls. They are both often used to make Perception and Knowledge (dungeoneering) rolls and also Craft rolls that produce arms, armor, and the like. Like Valorous/Cowardly, both are also often used to make Climb, Swim, and Sense Motive rolls. Failed Violence is involved in calculating your character’s Armor Class (AC) whereas Hardened Violence is involved in calculating hit points. Hardened Violence also adds to damage rolls, like Cruel and Vengeful and is also often used to make Appraise rolls to appraise arms, armor, and the like. It’s sometimes used to make Will, Heal, Survival, and Intimidate rolls.
The Effects of Various Levels of Failed Violence (FV) Trauma on Personality
1 ~ At this level, you’re superficially fine. Perhaps you’re a little edgy whenever a knife in the room happens to be pointing your direction.
2 ~ You are very aware of violence, both as it exists and as it is depicted. It strikes you as somewhat odd that so many people don’t realize that the violence in the stories and songs of troubadours is very different from real violence.
3 ~ You get alert or uneasy every time you see blood, even badly faked blood in a play (or even a puppet show) or when someone cuts a rare steak. Sometimes you have nightmares about violence you’ve witnessed.
4 ~ You instinctively take a defensive posture whenever there’s a loud noise or raised voice nearby. Your nightmares are frequent, and you have a hard time looking at anyone without imagining (if briefly) what you would do at that moment if they attacked you.
The Effects of Various Levels of Hardened Violence (HV) Trauma on Personality
1–3 ~ Superficially, you’re much like everyone else.
4–5 ~ Your attitude towards violence shows on your face when the subject comes up in conversation, unless you work to keep it hidden. It might be intensity, or nervousness, or just a grim silence, depending on how you cope.
6–7 ~ Violence is a common feature of your mental landscape. Unlike less-hardened people, you show little reaction at all when it is discussed or depicted in fiction.
8–9 ~ Your callousness shows in your every word and expression unless you make a continuous effort to suppress it. Again, the exact tone is up to you: it could be bitter and harsh, feverish and vehement, or icy cold.
10 ~ It’s not hard for people to realize that the deepest horrors of torture and brutality have become commonplace to you, unless you work very, very hard to keep it hidden—which means you come off as tense and guarded all the time. The death of others, or yourself, has no intrinsic significance. You might prefer to stay alive, but it’s only a matter of personal taste. Life, in the abstract, doesn’t mean anything.
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Crowdsourced campaign idea (Shadowrun, or rather: Shadowridiculous)
While trying to read up on Los Angeles to prepare for the upcoming Poison Oak Mentoring Month I'm writing up, I found this little bit:
{In Shadowrun, Los Angeles has been beaten by repeated major earthquakes, leaving a good chunk of its megaplex as underwater ruins and most Angelenos homeless refugees}
"Several charity clinics in West Covina serve the refugee camps and are known for being less than picky about IDs, especially if you can actually pay.
. . . .
Pomona and the Covina Floodwall
The gateway to the Inland Empire, the city of Covina became a sort of breakwater for all of the debris carried along by the flood. As a result, the city of West Covina is now a sort of monstrous floodwall keeping the toxic stew of the floodwaters here out of the rest of the IE. On the east side of the floodwall lies Pomona, now populated mostly by the down and out, those too poor to move to higher ground and out of the shadow of the floodwall. Massive refugee camps sprawl out, temporary pre-fab structures rise shakily towards the sky, and bright graffiti stands out against the predominately gray buildings and residents. It is a bitter and hopeless sort of place, as the shadow of the floodwall serves as a constant reminder of LA’s most recent calamity.
The Covina floodwall, practically the size of a small city itself, is a massive construction designed to filter and purify the toxic waters on the other side and pipe them to the Inland Empire. A small army of engineers and drones maintain the equipment and constantly monitor the status of the waters on the other side. The floodwall is a joint PCC and Maersk project, with Maersk providing much of the aquatech needed to run the operation. PCC forces have a strong presence in the area, and security has increased significantly after the recent bomb scare. Despite the increased security, there have been numerous raids on the floodwall in the past months. Mostly small sabotage, although a few key structural points have been targeted.
Pomona and Covina are really hopping with independent assets right now. Pomona has a lot of places to hide, despite the increased security, and enough people who are too busy trying to make it through another miserable day to care about a stranger’s business.
> If you’re looking for work in the area, try Mitzie’s Bar. The crowd is pretty hardcore, and you won’t find any fancy LA drinks, just piss-poor soy-beer. The bartender, Macy, has some good Azzie contacts and will hook you up, for a price.
> Alex Machine"
And I thought: what would Crazy Ex-Girlfriend be like if it was set in the Sixth World? What do y'all think? Any ideas for musically ridiculous nuanced-feminist adventures in the post-Awakening world? What would it be like if Rebecca Bunch hired your shadowrun team for one of her schemes? How does the story change if West Covina is a bunch of buildings sticking out of irradiated salt water like broken teeth and everyone is wearing rags they plucked from underneath the waves? What if Darryl Whitefeather wasn't just a lawyer, but actually working for the beleaguered Pueblo Corporate Council government? Which character is the secret Aztechnology agent (are Greg Serrano or Valencia Maria Perez disaffected Aztechnology employees?)
{In Shadowrun, Los Angeles has been beaten by repeated major earthquakes, leaving a good chunk of its megaplex as underwater ruins and most Angelenos homeless refugees}
"Several charity clinics in West Covina serve the refugee camps and are known for being less than picky about IDs, especially if you can actually pay.
. . . .
Pomona and the Covina Floodwall
The gateway to the Inland Empire, the city of Covina became a sort of breakwater for all of the debris carried along by the flood. As a result, the city of West Covina is now a sort of monstrous floodwall keeping the toxic stew of the floodwaters here out of the rest of the IE. On the east side of the floodwall lies Pomona, now populated mostly by the down and out, those too poor to move to higher ground and out of the shadow of the floodwall. Massive refugee camps sprawl out, temporary pre-fab structures rise shakily towards the sky, and bright graffiti stands out against the predominately gray buildings and residents. It is a bitter and hopeless sort of place, as the shadow of the floodwall serves as a constant reminder of LA’s most recent calamity.
The Covina floodwall, practically the size of a small city itself, is a massive construction designed to filter and purify the toxic waters on the other side and pipe them to the Inland Empire. A small army of engineers and drones maintain the equipment and constantly monitor the status of the waters on the other side. The floodwall is a joint PCC and Maersk project, with Maersk providing much of the aquatech needed to run the operation. PCC forces have a strong presence in the area, and security has increased significantly after the recent bomb scare. Despite the increased security, there have been numerous raids on the floodwall in the past months. Mostly small sabotage, although a few key structural points have been targeted.
Pomona and Covina are really hopping with independent assets right now. Pomona has a lot of places to hide, despite the increased security, and enough people who are too busy trying to make it through another miserable day to care about a stranger’s business.
> If you’re looking for work in the area, try Mitzie’s Bar. The crowd is pretty hardcore, and you won’t find any fancy LA drinks, just piss-poor soy-beer. The bartender, Macy, has some good Azzie contacts and will hook you up, for a price.
> Alex Machine"
And I thought: what would Crazy Ex-Girlfriend be like if it was set in the Sixth World? What do y'all think? Any ideas for musically ridiculous nuanced-feminist adventures in the post-Awakening world? What would it be like if Rebecca Bunch hired your shadowrun team for one of her schemes? How does the story change if West Covina is a bunch of buildings sticking out of irradiated salt water like broken teeth and everyone is wearing rags they plucked from underneath the waves? What if Darryl Whitefeather wasn't just a lawyer, but actually working for the beleaguered Pueblo Corporate Council government? Which character is the secret Aztechnology agent (are Greg Serrano or Valencia Maria Perez disaffected Aztechnology employees?)
Friday, July 27, 2018
Boanerges's character sheet 1/3 (Fantasy Friday #6)
Boanerges, “The Unseen Heart of the Flame”
Cismale CN/CG ifrit vigilante (splintersoul, zealot of Awi) 3
History: The origins of the roving army known as the Sulxonmo (“The Fifty”, in the Dzena-drif language) stretch back a century and more. The Bonfire Queen of the ifrit theocratic kingdom Rashab at the time, Alfonyath of Astwera, claimed her newborn son was the rightful heir of the Presterjho nation of Cusulu. Naturally enough, perhaps, Sehjic (the Bykeg of Cusulu) disputed this claim. A cold war developed; Alfonyath hinted at invading Cusulu to make it a protectorate of Rashab, but delayed while sending a series of adventurers to search for the Great Erolamadu, a magical ivory scimitar and symbol of her office.
Nothing turned up before Bonfire Queen Alsonyath died and was succeeded by her niece Oramir of Astwera. Hoping to establish dominance and end the decades of hostility, Bykeg Sehjic demanded Oramir re-establish an ancient tradition of sending 50 common and 50 noble ifrit virgins to Cusulu in tribute, a tradition Alfonyath had defied from very early on in her reign. As Oramir seemed to consider giving into these demands, Alfonyath’s son Matamor of Astwera grew angrier and angrier, incensed that what he considered his rightful birthright would be frittered away by his peace-loving cousin. He began to gather a horde of disaffected ifrit and form them into an army of preening, vain, daring warriors. Their tactics were founded upon the intimidatory potential of excessive (and loud) shows of skill and confidence; in short, they were swashbucklers with whacking sticks. He named them the Sulxonmo in mockery of the tribute demanded by Cusulu and allowed his rage to pull him into leading them in more and more despicable ways. Such as the forced recruiting (as in, kidnapping) of children to serve as soldiers.
A few years into his agitations, Matamor had a revelation of a dream in which a child rode a white horse under a banner made of a fishing net, wielding the Great Erolamadu. Born to a wealthy fisherman and his dancer wife, Boanerges was a child of but 35 years at the time. In fact, on his 35th birthday, he went fishing with his own cousin, an ifrit by the name of Logadé, in the Negdal Fields of northern Rashab. After being pulled into the water by a large fish, Logadé found an ivory scimitar, beautifully carved. When they returned, Boanerges watched as his cousin played with the other children of the village, miraculously not wounding them when he struck them with the blade. Everyone he struck, however, began to act like the legends of the zombies people talked about existing in far countries.
Several months later, Boanerges was captured by the Fifty in a raid led by Matamor himself, who recognized the child from his dream. A quick and threatening interview later revealed the location of the Great Erolamadu and its bearer Logadé. Once the Sulxonmo tracked down and kidnapped the boy, Matamor told Boanerges that he had to kill his own, beloved cousin in order to be initiated into the horde. When Boanerges refused, he was told that the alternative was death. When he still refused, Matamor sighed a heavy sigh and hit him with the Erolamadu. The domination effect brought the intended effect, and Boanerges became a member of the Sulxonmo covered in the blood of his own kin.
Cismale CN/CG ifrit vigilante (splintersoul, zealot of Awi) 3
History: The origins of the roving army known as the Sulxonmo (“The Fifty”, in the Dzena-drif language) stretch back a century and more. The Bonfire Queen of the ifrit theocratic kingdom Rashab at the time, Alfonyath of Astwera, claimed her newborn son was the rightful heir of the Presterjho nation of Cusulu. Naturally enough, perhaps, Sehjic (the Bykeg of Cusulu) disputed this claim. A cold war developed; Alfonyath hinted at invading Cusulu to make it a protectorate of Rashab, but delayed while sending a series of adventurers to search for the Great Erolamadu, a magical ivory scimitar and symbol of her office.
Nothing turned up before Bonfire Queen Alsonyath died and was succeeded by her niece Oramir of Astwera. Hoping to establish dominance and end the decades of hostility, Bykeg Sehjic demanded Oramir re-establish an ancient tradition of sending 50 common and 50 noble ifrit virgins to Cusulu in tribute, a tradition Alfonyath had defied from very early on in her reign. As Oramir seemed to consider giving into these demands, Alfonyath’s son Matamor of Astwera grew angrier and angrier, incensed that what he considered his rightful birthright would be frittered away by his peace-loving cousin. He began to gather a horde of disaffected ifrit and form them into an army of preening, vain, daring warriors. Their tactics were founded upon the intimidatory potential of excessive (and loud) shows of skill and confidence; in short, they were swashbucklers with whacking sticks. He named them the Sulxonmo in mockery of the tribute demanded by Cusulu and allowed his rage to pull him into leading them in more and more despicable ways. Such as the forced recruiting (as in, kidnapping) of children to serve as soldiers.
A few years into his agitations, Matamor had a revelation of a dream in which a child rode a white horse under a banner made of a fishing net, wielding the Great Erolamadu. Born to a wealthy fisherman and his dancer wife, Boanerges was a child of but 35 years at the time. In fact, on his 35th birthday, he went fishing with his own cousin, an ifrit by the name of Logadé, in the Negdal Fields of northern Rashab. After being pulled into the water by a large fish, Logadé found an ivory scimitar, beautifully carved. When they returned, Boanerges watched as his cousin played with the other children of the village, miraculously not wounding them when he struck them with the blade. Everyone he struck, however, began to act like the legends of the zombies people talked about existing in far countries.
Several months later, Boanerges was captured by the Fifty in a raid led by Matamor himself, who recognized the child from his dream. A quick and threatening interview later revealed the location of the Great Erolamadu and its bearer Logadé. Once the Sulxonmo tracked down and kidnapped the boy, Matamor told Boanerges that he had to kill his own, beloved cousin in order to be initiated into the horde. When Boanerges refused, he was told that the alternative was death. When he still refused, Matamor sighed a heavy sigh and hit him with the Erolamadu. The domination effect brought the intended effect, and Boanerges became a member of the Sulxonmo covered in the blood of his own kin.
Thursday, July 26, 2018
I'll just put this here for later inspiration . . . .
Call of Cthulhu (being aware of and addressing its inherent racism, obviously)
+
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon
+
"Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley
(+
An optional infusion of Unknown Armies, maybe?)
=
One of the best ideas I've ever had!
And if you're wondering why, just hold this in the cosmic horror part of your brain:
In shoujo magical girl anime, the only thing that can save the world is love.
And then read the lyrics of "Crazy":
I remember when
I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place
Even your emotions have an echo in so much space
And when you're out there, without care
Yeah I was out of touch
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough
I just knew too much
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Possibly
And now that you are having the time of your life
Well think twice
That's my only advice
Come on now, who do you
Who do you, who do you
Who do you think you are?
Ha ha ha, bless your soul
You really think you're in control?
Well
I think you're crazy
I think you're crazy
I think you're crazy
Just like me
My heroes had the heart
To lose their lives out on a limb
And all I remember, is thinking
I wanna be like them
Mm hmm ever since I was little
Ever since I was little it looked like fun
And it's no coincidence I've come
And I can die when I'm done
Maybe I'm crazy
Maybe you're crazy
Maybe we're crazy
Probably ooh hmm
As for Unknown Armies, I'll just remind you of its old tagline: You Did It.
+
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon
+
"Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley
(+
An optional infusion of Unknown Armies, maybe?)
=
One of the best ideas I've ever had!
And if you're wondering why, just hold this in the cosmic horror part of your brain:
In shoujo magical girl anime, the only thing that can save the world is love.
And then read the lyrics of "Crazy":
I remember when
I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place
Even your emotions have an echo in so much space
And when you're out there, without care
Yeah I was out of touch
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough
I just knew too much
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Possibly
And now that you are having the time of your life
Well think twice
That's my only advice
Come on now, who do you
Who do you, who do you
Who do you think you are?
Ha ha ha, bless your soul
You really think you're in control?
Well
I think you're crazy
I think you're crazy
I think you're crazy
Just like me
My heroes had the heart
To lose their lives out on a limb
And all I remember, is thinking
I wanna be like them
Mm hmm ever since I was little
Ever since I was little it looked like fun
And it's no coincidence I've come
And I can die when I'm done
Maybe I'm crazy
Maybe you're crazy
Maybe we're crazy
Probably ooh hmm
As for Unknown Armies, I'll just remind you of its old tagline: You Did It.
Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Leftist Hufflepuffs ~ finally we have an alcove off the Common Room to talk!
I just created a new Facebook group for Hufflepuffs who have some form of Leftist politics, whatever they might be: anarchists and communists and all that. Come let's talk insurrection, badgers, and cooking!
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Starfinder Actual Play 1.1: Miscreants Meet, Amid an Incident on Absalom Station
I finally have a gaming group again!!
My Owner’s son Dylan paid for me to join him at a Magic: the Gathering Two-Headed Giant tournament a couple of months ago. As the crowd of card-flippers was gathering, I looked around and muttered to Dylan:
“Fuck, am I gonna be the only feminine-presenting person at this thing?”
Dylan responded, quite naturally, “Well, it IS a Magic: the Gathering tournament,” and then another feminine-presenting person entered the room. The timing was so perfect that it proved magick isn’t just a card game!
Turned out that she and the store rep leading the tournament were our third and final opponents. We got to talking afterwards, with me barely keeping up while the two of them talked Magic. I’ven’t played really for a decade or mebbe a dozen years, so I had to keep asking what certain things meant. I did get a chance to introduce Michelle (which is her name) to the old Game of Thrones CCG (I dropped out of card games well before the LCG resurrection), and we got to talking about RPGs. I mentioned that I didn’t have a group, and she offered to run Starfinder.
Then I travelled to Fairyland in Oregon for three weeks >.<
Luckily, Michelle was still into it when I returned, so I sent out a mass message to like 60 of my friends to get a group together, and we ended up with a group of Michelle, her friend Labryssa (one of my new favorite names!), Dylan, me, and my friends Tanuki, Barry, and Nameless.
We’re starting with the first adventure of the Dead Suns Adventure Path, Incident at Absalom Station. Once we finish it, we’ll decide if we want to continue with its storyline or go off to tell our own varied stories. As such, if you care about spoilers, you should know that there’s spoilers in this nebula.
***
Duravar Kreel sat up, finally, the fourth time his personal assistant told him to. His muscles cramped and complained; sitting all day is not good duty for a dwarf! No matter how comfortable the couch at this caffe was.
His ancestors had mined the mountains of lost Golarion, and cousins of his did similar still in the Diaspora, but all he had to show for the surprising strenuous job of sitting he’d done was a folder full of contacts he’d messaged. Many had been easy ~ publicly available email messages, interlocked social networking profiles, and the like ~ while some had required something much more like mining than his parents would ever believe. Sometimes the Starfinder Society had use of folk to whom an easy finding would be a danger, indeed.
Speaking of his parents, he remembered suddenly that he was to bring the beer for his sister’s celebration tonight. Snapping his computer shut, he stiffly grumbled his way to the merchant’s.
*
Waystone0 was out on the frontier of known space when it got its message.
For 27 years it had worked as an engineer in, and later the head engineer of, a fleet (if you could call it that) of space pirates that raided the systems of the Vast from its home in the Shadari Confederacy. Waystone0’s ties with a prospective new "Admiral" had ensnared the android in a surprisingly peaceful transition of power within the fleet.
Pulling its head from a panel in the ship, leftover wire ends with snips on both sides dripping from its ears and nose and the top of its head, Waystone0 scanned the dwarf’s message for a lazy 0.3 second and sighed. It had realized a couple weeks back that its Admiral friend would now be seeking to consolidate their power in the Confederacy and establish their authority and safety in the face of both their inexperience and their status as a mutineer. The days of exploring unknown regions of space for treasure or raiding the ships of the mysteriously hostile Azlanti Star Empire as they had under the old Admiral would be on hold until that process ended. Waystone0 calculated that it would take a minimum of 1.59 years, which was a good 1.427 years longer than its patience for such lack of novelty. It decided to return to the Pact Worlds for the first time in almost half a century for the promise of a free flight there and new, beautiful space to explore.
{{{Dylan is playing Waystone0, neutral agender android spacefarer operative, with an invasive jerkass AI in its head. I’m honestly not sure Waystone0 even knows how the AI got there. The 0 in Waystone0’s and Johnny Coy0te’s names indicate that their bodies are still inhabited by the first soul to ever do so.}}}
*
Usually Bexch Prliz was not one to get distracted while riding the dick of the ringleader of a intergalactic circus, but he’d been the star acrobat of the show for the last year. He’d seduced the ringleader on day one.
At first glance Bexch might have passed for an eccentric human female. He wore his purple hair large so he cold brush his short antennas back into it. Some have said it’s blue and some have said red ~ they were both wrong; it was purple! A swirl like wind under his left cheek and four parallel lines on the entirety of the right side of his face glowed unnaturally bright all the time, the child of his solarian practices resonating with his lashunta heritage. They would have been far too easy to recognize if he had left them uncovered, so he kept them covered in make-up. When he was highly emotional, or in the middle of a fight, or about to cum, they did glow brighter, bringing on oddly muted shine to his face whereupon his makeup seemed to float. They weren’t glowing any brighter than usual when he got the message.
Other than kasatha microcord, Bexch only ever wore skirts that were either mini short or loose and flowy with slits cut all the way up to the hips. Shiny shiny jewelry made up the other half of the lashunta’s wardrobe. Green eyes and pointed nose, Bexch was a beautiful androgynous specimen whose outward glitz was a disguise that only made sense to him, considering how many star systems he was wanted in and how badly the leaders of the lashunta wanted Bexch dead before his great list of crimes becamewider knowledge. Bexch was a blight on the good name lashunta had made for themselves in the galaxy. Maybe some deep loyalty was the reason Bexch was so careful to keep his marks covered? Nah!
Bexch checked the blinking message alert on his phone, which he’d placed on the table at the foot of the bed just for moments of boredom like this one; the nice thing about the reverse cowgirl position was that what’s-his-name couldn’t see Bexch’s yawn or scrolling. It had been some weeks since killing local spectators-turned-tricks had turned him on like it used to. So he read the message, considered what it said for a couple thrusts, snached his blade from where it had sat next to the phone, and in one spinning motion, slit the ringleader’s throat, and cut off his pinky. It would make such a beautiful addition to the bones in Brexch’s hair once it had decomposed enough. His most precious treasures (other than the modified comm with an adorable pink kitty on its case) were the bedazzled pinky bones Bexch had braided into four strands of hair around his face. They helped distract from his antennas.
What’s-his-name should be honored: it was only a precious few who interested Bexch for more than one night and thus got a body part added to his hair. It was time to leave anyway ~ surely the Stewards knew of at least a few of Bexch’s victims by now. This Duravar person says he’ll facilitate Bexch’s initiation into the Starfinders, too. Maybe they’d be able to help with this recurring Steward problem Bexch had? Seriously, they’re worse than head lice!
{{{My friend and ho-bro Nameless is playing Bexch Prliz (pronounced “Bitch Please”), chaotic neutral crossdressing cismale damaya lashunta outlaw solarian, an entirely accidental answer to the question “What if the Talented Mr. Ripley was a telepathic crossdressing Manic Pixie Dream Jedi?” and a true glory of a trashperson.}}}
*
Wakiin shoveled some more fried wasps into his mouth, not giving his right arm a chance to rest. His chef had just broke up with him. Bad. The gourmet-hunter wasn’t sure what use the thrown dishes were intended to have; they hadn’t hurt Wakiin any, and now the chef would just have to buy some more. Obviously, the chef cared about his knives more. Those weren’t thrown so much as brashly gesticulated with, brandished even, near the few spots on a vesk’s body where the scales didn’t quite cover the skin.
Now his money was all gone, sacrificed into a frenzy of eating his feelings. Wakiin has big feelings: he nearly caused infrastructural collapse by eating what a human platoon of infantry might consider a fortnight's worth of luxury rations. A colony on the outer rim of the Vesk system like this one probably didn’t have the economical fortitude to withstand such an assault, so he’d decided he needed a change of scenery. Wakiin had put in some job applications to places that would fly him in for free; the effort had felt uncomfortably like actual self-care, but he really did need to leave, just in case this particular colony should actually collapse. Surely, someone would hold him to account for that kind of thing.
What better place to go than the highly central Absalom Station! Surely it’s hiding some rare Golarian delicacies in its corridors that might soon be lost forever. Also, this Duravar person says the job’ll pay.
{{{Tanuki, whom I’ve known the longest in the group (all the way back to my coffeeshop hipster days at Barefoot Coffee Roasters), is playing Wakiin Leviathanbiter, lawful neutral masculine vesk icon soldier, a gourmet-hunter heavily inspired by the anime Toriko.}}}
*
Recovery meetings are supposed to be anonymous, so Neliblai’s white-clad fingers played with the inverted ankh and black butterfly charm dangling delicately from uir right wrist, while uir lips mumbled half-hearted prayers of gratitude to Nyarlathotep and Black Butterfly. “Thank you,” ui forced uir lips to say, “thank you so much for keeping my vlog obscure so far.”
Uir vlog had followers, certainly, and was syndicated to the infospheres on more than one planet, but it wasn’t yet widely known. And while one is waiting for a chance to give one’s share at a recovery meeting, that feels like a threadbare blessing. Plus, it helped distract Neliblai during the inexorable crawl of a meeting. This wasn't nail-biting entertainment, but it helped. It helped uim to get through the nights when all ui could think of was Jelusrem’s face.
Another threadbare blessing: Neliblai had remembered to put uir comm on silent this time. Finally. Hands switched places and now the circled rat dangling from uir left wrist was being fondled and sneakingly quiet Lao Shu Po was receiving thanks. As lips finally lay still against each other, ui snuck a glance at the comm screen.
The Starfinders. An Acquisitive, no less! The job didn’t sound like it would generate much useful copy, but the investigative reporter who ignores the semi-secret society they joined in order to get leads is an investigative reporter doomed to anonymity for life. A couple fingertips on the comm screen set up a software agent to make arrangements, and Neliblai leaned back against the chair again.
The former addict who lets anything take them out of a recovery meeting will not be former for long.
{{{I’m playing Neliblai, chaotic good uisha maraquoi icon empath mystic (Starfinder data jockey), a hard-boiled reporter in the noir mode with a lot of contacts, a diet composed almost entirely of cigarettes, and too many other people’s secrets. In the absence of Paizo officially declaring pronouns in Maraquoi for each of their seven genders, I am deciding that Neliblai’s pronouns are ui (subjective), uim (objective), uir (possessive), uirs (substantive possessive), and uimself (reflexive).}}}
*
Others received Duravar’s message in their own ways. Many refused, of course, for any number of reasons from the rational to the irrational. Three, however, accepted the job.
{{{Michelle’s friend Labryssa is playing the thief No, chaotic good agender android ace pilot operative. I am super curious how it got its name, I must confess! On the metagame level, she gave it that name because someone asked if she’d come up with a name yet and she said “No”. A similar thing is how Nameless got the name Nameless, actually.}}}
{{{Barry, whom I’ve known almost as long as Tanuki, is playing the superbly cyberpunkly named Johnny Coy0te, neutral androidgynous male bounty hunter operative, without much revealed backstory just yet. Johnny feels a lot like a shadowrunner, actually; that might be part of what gave me the idea to rewrite Starfinder as Shadowrun’s Eighth World, with the Gap being the entirety of the low-mana Seventh World. What happened while magic was gone?}}}
*
The shuttle Okimoro had made the rounds to pick everyone up, even travelling the Drift all the way to the Vesk system. Neliblai, ever the inquisitive, asked about their route and its reasons shortly after ui boarded at the station on Verces, and was impressed. The Starfinders had managed to make such a wide route make just enough sense as to be plausible.
Now the Okimoro was unboarding at Absalom. The few passengers who weren’t answering Duravar’s summons meandered out, eager to get to their family or their tourism attractions or their restaurants or their bathrooms. The four who had heard from Duravar let them go first.
Well, “let” wasn’t always quite the exact right word. Bexch Prliz probably just didn’t hear the docking announcements over the bouncy pop music blaring from his comm, an intoxicating blend of simple rave beats and complicated psychedelic melodies tying knots around them. Once he did notice they arrived, however, he was the first of the not-yet-a-group to leave the shuttle, dancing out of the airlock, each step a sinuous shake of his ass. Waystone0 noted his exit and its style while appearing to read the local holonews now that the infospheres have synced.
Wakiin shook himself awake, or perhaps was shaken awake by Bexch’s loudness passing as he wriggled his rhythmic way off the shuttle. Realizing that the shuttle wasn’t hurtling through the Drift anymore, he walked out with Neliblai close behind. The maraquoi raked everything around uim as ui exits with uir bulging, insectile eyes and uir tail-borne camera comm. Ui paused just before disembarking and lit a cigarette to celebrate uir arrival. Waystone0, in its insulated work gear and backpack, was the last to leave the shuttle. It strolled down the ramp with the indifferent interest of someone who has done this same thing all across the galaxy.
It seemed the divet between the end of the ramp and the space station floor was having none of Waystone0’s affectation of having seen it all. It tripped the android, who would have rolled into a mess of backpack, rifle, and nanites if it wasn’t for Wakiin’s hunt-trained reflexes. The hulking and hungry vesk snapped his hand out and grabbed Waystone0’s rifle. The android hung like floating for a brief moment before being dropped the gentle last half foot or so. Waystone0’s expressionless “Thank you” was mostly matched in its blandness by a reptilian “You’re welcome.”
Dressed for the job it wanted rather than the job it had, the android thief known as No watched the group enter. None of the other passengers looked like they had anything interesting in their pockets, not worth the picking. These last few, undoubtedly the “others” Duravar had alluded to, looked like they had even less ~ their accounts were probably measured in lint, let alone their pockets. The lashunta had a nice booming comm, tho. Specialized comms could earn a centicredit or two.
A tall dwarf (well, tall for a dwarf anyway) with a gray beard almost hiding an unusually thin body in a dockworker’s jumpsuit proudly displaying the Starfinder seal began to walk toward this gaggle of a crowd. The airlock hissed closed behind them. As he did so, six people suddenly stopped milling around and dove behind piles of crates to either side.
Neliblai looked from side to side. “Already?” With a shrug and a smoky inhale, ui began to walk ~ nay, stroll ~ towards the action. Verses from the Prophecies of Kallistrade cascaded through uir mind, tuning it to the minds of those in front of uim. If ui could just find the right frequency . . . . Wakiin fingered his hammer and Waystone0 asked, without inflection, “Are you planning on killing the dwarf?” For some reason, this seemed to convince Wakiin to move his hand to the whip at his waist.
“Does anyone else see this happening?” No asked.
Neliblai replied, “Yes, I’m working on it.”
Meanwhile, the two groups started shooting at each other, with the dwarf in the middle. Their triggers triggered the vesk, who left a thud of a backpack behind him as he sprinted to Duravar, almost impossibly fast. The reptile-colored blur, all green with orange racing stripes, swept Duravar off his feet and onto his shoulder. Stopping well past the line of fire, Wakiin looked down to see an unmoving dwarf. A quick flipover told him why ~ his back was a novella written in laser burns.
Not just Duravar, though. Neliblai took a laser to the shoulder as ui took a deep toke of tobacco, then grunted and coughed the smoke back out in a puff. The reporter creepysmiled.
Waystone0 noted the directness of the hit, the lack of any dodge in the maraquoi’s body, and calmly asked, “Is this within mission parameters?”
“Finding that out still,” Neliblai replied. “Psychic powers take time.”
“All right then.” And with that, Waystone0 sat down on the floor and began assiduously ignoring the battle while No drew and dove behind some nearby crates its own self. Johnny, meanwhile, ran at one of the people on the side that shot Neliblai. His opponent saw Johnny’s fist, and there was a knife in it. Bexch cartwheeled to cover while throwing his starknife to no effect. The spiky blade soon disappeared, showing up again in Bexch’s hand.
Waystone0 told Neliblai to “Tell me if you need medical assistance.”
Uir reply? “If you can do it without throwing off my flow.”
“What are the parameters of your flow?”
Neliblai replied by rattling off the infosphere address of uir blog while Wakiin walked all the way back to the fight, emptyhanded now, and casually hammered one of the shooters. He was paid immediately with a potshot leaving a long burn across his side. Another bolt caught Bexch’s hair, throwing a quick lick of flame into the air for a moment. Neliblai, on the other hand, gets a bit of a break as uir assailant turned his pistol on Johnny. The last of the six shooters was still fighting the original fight but didn’t hit any of them.
Johnny kept stabbing. His opponent fell to the floor. The starknife shot across the battlefield again, a metal meteor unable to land. Its owner cartwheeled toward the other group of three.
Neliblai leaned into uir enemy’s face and blew a steady stream of smoke into as ui did so. Uir spell had told uim three things: one gang was of these triads was a squad of the Downside Kings, the other represented from the Level 21 Gang, and someone was paying them. “Who’s paying you?”
Wakiin dealt more hammer to more faces. Well, the crate next to a face. Neliblai took a whack across the face from the person in front of uim. Wakiin barely noticed as laser bolt and knee made friends.
While No shot Neliblai’s attacker in the back, Johnny stabbed things, and the lashunta blew the fuck up, Waystone0 looked up from its speed-reading. “Your three-part exposé on Brethedan internal politics was quite insightful,” it told the maraquoi. Only its timing ~ ensuring that it could be heard ~ gave any indication that it had noticed the firefight or the solarian explosion in front of it.
“Thanks.”
“Also, if you want medical help, I advise walking away from the people shooting you.”
Hearing this offer, Bexch threw his hair and his face over his shoulder to call out, “I want medical attention!”
“Then I‘d give you the same advice.”
Neliblai bowed uir shoulders and head forward, slid one foot behind uim, and with another creepy smile stepped back. A tooth tucked away in the corner of that smile glinted in the dock’s cheap lights. It grew into a glowing ball that detached itself from maraquoi mouth. The ball, as bright as a flashlight, busied itself floating distractingly around the attacker’s head. Neliblai turned uir back and walked toward Waystone0.
All of the gangers ran, except the one graced by the attention of Neliblai’s wisp ally. That one ran up behind uim and clubbed uim on the head. Johnny prevented another from running by playing gun kata with them, a distraction and entanglement that allowed Bexch to stab him in the back. Licking his knife, the lashunta exclaimed, “First blood.”
“Closer . . . ,” Waystone0 told Neliblai. “Observing your near-fatal injuries, I find that I must ask: is this a combat situation we must attend to?”
An addict’s uncaring shrug accompanied uir reply. “If you want.”
Waystone stared, pulled out its rifle and shot the person pursuing the vlogger. It could see Duravar’s corpse through the hole it had blasted right through the ganger’s back. “Now, would you like me to perform medical assistance on you?”
Johnny quipped, “That’s a horrible pickup line, by the way.” To which, Bexch replied, “Eh. It would’ve gotten me.”
Neliblai walked up to Waystone0, looked at the android with a sibling respect, and said. “Your pickup line did get me.” A blast of stunning lightning flashed behind uim from uir waist, followed shortly by the blue fur of its head. The last of the gangers was out cold at uir pulsecaster’s blast.
Johnny and Waystone0 busied themselves with looting the bodies, finding 3 azimuth laser pistols, 3 clubs, and 3 credsticks with 100 credits each while Neliblai’s drug-ravaged muscles dragged them all into one spot inch by inch. Once ui had finally finished arranging the pile of bodies, Waystone0 began the work of ensuring ui wouldn’t die. Wakiin did much the same as the two androids and the maraquoi while it did so.
“I don’t have my full medkit,” Waystone0 said to Neliblai, whose tail was recording everything on uir comm, “so I wasn’t able to provide full assistance. You will probably need to visit a hospital or wait until I purchase my own medkit on station.”
Wakiin pulled out a comm and a granola bar from one of the dwarf’s pockets. Neliblai nodded at him. “I’ll take that.” The vesk threw the comm to uim and the bar into his mouth while a giggling Bexch snatched a shiny button from the dwarf’s jumpsuit and began wearing it as a monocle.
The dwarf’s recent messages reveal that his last communication had been to someone named Chiskisk saying, “I put out the word. Expecting them today. Be by this afternoon.”
“Chiskisk, Chiskisk,” Neliblai started muttering, “sounds like a shireen name.”
Johnny perked up at the mumbled name: “Chiskisk, I know of them. I never got any jobs directly but I’ve been to the office.”
“They work out of the main office?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go, then.”
“Are they now the one we will be getting our pay from?” asked Waystone0.
Neliblai shrugged. “Dunno.”
“We should at least report this,” Johnny suggested, “otherwise there’s no chance to get paid.”
The android nodded. “Good enough.”
“How about a snack on the way?” came a reptilian grumble from the vesk.
“Apologies. I didn’t know you could speak the Common language.”
A silence followed Waystone0’s comment.
Johnny broke the discomfort, bending down to reclaim his coffee cup. “The place where I got this has, like, bagels and things.”
“Hey, vesk.” called Neliblai. “Can you carry this ganger with us? He’s not dead, just pulsed.”
Wakiin shrugged. “Sure.” He snapped some restraints had in his backpack onto the human’s wrists before placing the unconscious body in said backpack.
Meanwhile, Johnny called the Starfinder main office to report the situation. Neliblai didn’t give him a chance, talking over him: “Starfinder Neliblai, number 071382, taking local ganger into custody for later questioning.”
“Bring him to the office,” came the tinny reply.
“Already on our way. Tell Chiskisk: medium-priority appointment.”
“Looks like you’re already on schedule.”
*
A walk through the power-clashing market promenades of Drifter’s End and a snack from one of those garish vendor stalls with the menus in 23 languages later, the ragtag group arrived at the Lorespire Complex. “We’ll take that.” A Starfinder was waiting for them in the lobby, and indicated the unconscious body on Wakiin’s back.
“OK,” Neliblai said. “Name and Starfinder number?”
“Look, we’ll just take him and interrogate him for you.”
“Name and Starfinder number?”
“I don’t need to ~ we’re just trying to make it easier for you, y’know!”
“I know. Name and Starfinder number?”
“What’s going on here?” interrupted Waystone0.
Neliblai responded: “Pissing contest.”
“But neither of you have your genitalia out. How will you know who wins?”
The guard throws his hands up in the air and walks out of the room, mumbling insults all the way. Waystone0 gives a smile and a wink, an expression of emotion that lasted a fraction of a second.
“Does this mean we have to feed the ganger?” asked Bexch.
“Only if they answer our questions?” was Neliblai’s reply.
A hologram flickered into existence and led the group to an office, Bexch cartwheeling the whole way down the hall. Waystone0, on the other hand, slammed a door shut as they passed it in the hall. With its face.
It turned out that Chiskisk, as the namesceen on their office told them, was a member of the Forum, which made them a bit of a bigwig in the Society. They also turned out to be a shirren in plain, understated business clothes behind a plain desk, nervously playing with their antennae. A lot of shirren do that when they’re perplexed. “Please, please, sit. Have refreshments. I wish I was welcoming you under better circumstances. Kreel’s death is a tragedy.”
“Are you our new quartermaster?” asked Waystone0.
Chiskisk ignored the interrupting android. “To those of you new here, these violent events are rare. He was a dear friend, and he will be missed.”
Johnny Coy0te this time took on the mantle of interrupting android: “How many stars did he find?”
A deep and frustrated sigh. This meeting was not going the way Chiskisk had expected. “That is not what that means.”
“I always wondered what you did here.” Neliblai restrained uimself from a chuckle and a grin at Johnny's irreverence, but not quite in time.
Chiskisk chose Waystone0 as the less mocking of the two. “I will not be acting as your commander, though I will be asking your aid in a certain matter.”
“And that will be compensated?” Wayfinder0 asked.
“Yes.”
Bexch clarified: “In money?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for that clarification.”
“The thing is, I don’t really understand the circumstances.”
“I recognize the colors,” Johnny said, “we just got caught in the crossfire.”
“Yes, but the docks are far from their respective territories. I can’t help but feel like they want more.”
“Who doesn’t in this life?” Neliblai retorted.
“I want you to find out if he was a target or just caught in the crossfire. Security will just record it as an accident. Consider this a very impromptu initiation if you will.”
Johnny grinned. “My favorite kind.”
“Do we have permission,” asked Waystone0, ‘to engage in less than legal activities such as investigating the police?”
“Officially, the Starfinder Society doesn’t condone or allow illegal activity. Which is why I won’t be asking about it.”
“So we’re getting paid more?” Bexch sounded excited.
“You will be made a member and get info the public doesn’t know.”
“So this is an internship?”
“You will still be paid for the mission.”
The lashunta wouldn’t drop it. “So is there a number?”
The screen on Chiskisk’s wall shows 200 credits in the process of getting transferred to each of the assembled ne’er-do-wells’ accounts. “Call that advanced pay. It should cover expenses, too.”
Waystone0 cocked an eyebrow. “As that is approximately 200% my total savings, you have effectively purchased my loyalty for the moment.”
“Before we get started,” Wakiin finally spoke, “where is the best place to eat? That snack kicked up an appetite.”
“The Moon of Sleep is a hotel favored by Starfinders. They will give you discount lodging as long as you are with Neliblai.”
“Discount food?” The vesk almost sounded like an eager child.
“I dunno about food . . .”
“C’mon we’re doing a favor for you!”
“I’ll pay for your food if you give me a piggyback ride,” Bexch offered.
“OK”
“And,” added Waystone0, “I’ll pay for 10% of your food expenses for the day as thanks.”
My Owner’s son Dylan paid for me to join him at a Magic: the Gathering Two-Headed Giant tournament a couple of months ago. As the crowd of card-flippers was gathering, I looked around and muttered to Dylan:
“Fuck, am I gonna be the only feminine-presenting person at this thing?”
Dylan responded, quite naturally, “Well, it IS a Magic: the Gathering tournament,” and then another feminine-presenting person entered the room. The timing was so perfect that it proved magick isn’t just a card game!
Turned out that she and the store rep leading the tournament were our third and final opponents. We got to talking afterwards, with me barely keeping up while the two of them talked Magic. I’ven’t played really for a decade or mebbe a dozen years, so I had to keep asking what certain things meant. I did get a chance to introduce Michelle (which is her name) to the old Game of Thrones CCG (I dropped out of card games well before the LCG resurrection), and we got to talking about RPGs. I mentioned that I didn’t have a group, and she offered to run Starfinder.
Then I travelled to Fairyland in Oregon for three weeks >.<
Luckily, Michelle was still into it when I returned, so I sent out a mass message to like 60 of my friends to get a group together, and we ended up with a group of Michelle, her friend Labryssa (one of my new favorite names!), Dylan, me, and my friends Tanuki, Barry, and Nameless.
We’re starting with the first adventure of the Dead Suns Adventure Path, Incident at Absalom Station. Once we finish it, we’ll decide if we want to continue with its storyline or go off to tell our own varied stories. As such, if you care about spoilers, you should know that there’s spoilers in this nebula.
***
Duravar Kreel sat up, finally, the fourth time his personal assistant told him to. His muscles cramped and complained; sitting all day is not good duty for a dwarf! No matter how comfortable the couch at this caffe was.
His ancestors had mined the mountains of lost Golarion, and cousins of his did similar still in the Diaspora, but all he had to show for the surprising strenuous job of sitting he’d done was a folder full of contacts he’d messaged. Many had been easy ~ publicly available email messages, interlocked social networking profiles, and the like ~ while some had required something much more like mining than his parents would ever believe. Sometimes the Starfinder Society had use of folk to whom an easy finding would be a danger, indeed.
Speaking of his parents, he remembered suddenly that he was to bring the beer for his sister’s celebration tonight. Snapping his computer shut, he stiffly grumbled his way to the merchant’s.
*
Waystone0 was out on the frontier of known space when it got its message.
For 27 years it had worked as an engineer in, and later the head engineer of, a fleet (if you could call it that) of space pirates that raided the systems of the Vast from its home in the Shadari Confederacy. Waystone0’s ties with a prospective new "Admiral" had ensnared the android in a surprisingly peaceful transition of power within the fleet.
Pulling its head from a panel in the ship, leftover wire ends with snips on both sides dripping from its ears and nose and the top of its head, Waystone0 scanned the dwarf’s message for a lazy 0.3 second and sighed. It had realized a couple weeks back that its Admiral friend would now be seeking to consolidate their power in the Confederacy and establish their authority and safety in the face of both their inexperience and their status as a mutineer. The days of exploring unknown regions of space for treasure or raiding the ships of the mysteriously hostile Azlanti Star Empire as they had under the old Admiral would be on hold until that process ended. Waystone0 calculated that it would take a minimum of 1.59 years, which was a good 1.427 years longer than its patience for such lack of novelty. It decided to return to the Pact Worlds for the first time in almost half a century for the promise of a free flight there and new, beautiful space to explore.
{{{Dylan is playing Waystone0, neutral agender android spacefarer operative, with an invasive jerkass AI in its head. I’m honestly not sure Waystone0 even knows how the AI got there. The 0 in Waystone0’s and Johnny Coy0te’s names indicate that their bodies are still inhabited by the first soul to ever do so.}}}
*
Usually Bexch Prliz was not one to get distracted while riding the dick of the ringleader of a intergalactic circus, but he’d been the star acrobat of the show for the last year. He’d seduced the ringleader on day one.
At first glance Bexch might have passed for an eccentric human female. He wore his purple hair large so he cold brush his short antennas back into it. Some have said it’s blue and some have said red ~ they were both wrong; it was purple! A swirl like wind under his left cheek and four parallel lines on the entirety of the right side of his face glowed unnaturally bright all the time, the child of his solarian practices resonating with his lashunta heritage. They would have been far too easy to recognize if he had left them uncovered, so he kept them covered in make-up. When he was highly emotional, or in the middle of a fight, or about to cum, they did glow brighter, bringing on oddly muted shine to his face whereupon his makeup seemed to float. They weren’t glowing any brighter than usual when he got the message.
Other than kasatha microcord, Bexch only ever wore skirts that were either mini short or loose and flowy with slits cut all the way up to the hips. Shiny shiny jewelry made up the other half of the lashunta’s wardrobe. Green eyes and pointed nose, Bexch was a beautiful androgynous specimen whose outward glitz was a disguise that only made sense to him, considering how many star systems he was wanted in and how badly the leaders of the lashunta wanted Bexch dead before his great list of crimes becamewider knowledge. Bexch was a blight on the good name lashunta had made for themselves in the galaxy. Maybe some deep loyalty was the reason Bexch was so careful to keep his marks covered? Nah!
Bexch checked the blinking message alert on his phone, which he’d placed on the table at the foot of the bed just for moments of boredom like this one; the nice thing about the reverse cowgirl position was that what’s-his-name couldn’t see Bexch’s yawn or scrolling. It had been some weeks since killing local spectators-turned-tricks had turned him on like it used to. So he read the message, considered what it said for a couple thrusts, snached his blade from where it had sat next to the phone, and in one spinning motion, slit the ringleader’s throat, and cut off his pinky. It would make such a beautiful addition to the bones in Brexch’s hair once it had decomposed enough. His most precious treasures (other than the modified comm with an adorable pink kitty on its case) were the bedazzled pinky bones Bexch had braided into four strands of hair around his face. They helped distract from his antennas.
What’s-his-name should be honored: it was only a precious few who interested Bexch for more than one night and thus got a body part added to his hair. It was time to leave anyway ~ surely the Stewards knew of at least a few of Bexch’s victims by now. This Duravar person says he’ll facilitate Bexch’s initiation into the Starfinders, too. Maybe they’d be able to help with this recurring Steward problem Bexch had? Seriously, they’re worse than head lice!
{{{My friend and ho-bro Nameless is playing Bexch Prliz (pronounced “Bitch Please”), chaotic neutral crossdressing cismale damaya lashunta outlaw solarian, an entirely accidental answer to the question “What if the Talented Mr. Ripley was a telepathic crossdressing Manic Pixie Dream Jedi?” and a true glory of a trashperson.}}}
*
Wakiin shoveled some more fried wasps into his mouth, not giving his right arm a chance to rest. His chef had just broke up with him. Bad. The gourmet-hunter wasn’t sure what use the thrown dishes were intended to have; they hadn’t hurt Wakiin any, and now the chef would just have to buy some more. Obviously, the chef cared about his knives more. Those weren’t thrown so much as brashly gesticulated with, brandished even, near the few spots on a vesk’s body where the scales didn’t quite cover the skin.
Now his money was all gone, sacrificed into a frenzy of eating his feelings. Wakiin has big feelings: he nearly caused infrastructural collapse by eating what a human platoon of infantry might consider a fortnight's worth of luxury rations. A colony on the outer rim of the Vesk system like this one probably didn’t have the economical fortitude to withstand such an assault, so he’d decided he needed a change of scenery. Wakiin had put in some job applications to places that would fly him in for free; the effort had felt uncomfortably like actual self-care, but he really did need to leave, just in case this particular colony should actually collapse. Surely, someone would hold him to account for that kind of thing.
What better place to go than the highly central Absalom Station! Surely it’s hiding some rare Golarian delicacies in its corridors that might soon be lost forever. Also, this Duravar person says the job’ll pay.
{{{Tanuki, whom I’ve known the longest in the group (all the way back to my coffeeshop hipster days at Barefoot Coffee Roasters), is playing Wakiin Leviathanbiter, lawful neutral masculine vesk icon soldier, a gourmet-hunter heavily inspired by the anime Toriko.}}}
*
Recovery meetings are supposed to be anonymous, so Neliblai’s white-clad fingers played with the inverted ankh and black butterfly charm dangling delicately from uir right wrist, while uir lips mumbled half-hearted prayers of gratitude to Nyarlathotep and Black Butterfly. “Thank you,” ui forced uir lips to say, “thank you so much for keeping my vlog obscure so far.”
Uir vlog had followers, certainly, and was syndicated to the infospheres on more than one planet, but it wasn’t yet widely known. And while one is waiting for a chance to give one’s share at a recovery meeting, that feels like a threadbare blessing. Plus, it helped distract Neliblai during the inexorable crawl of a meeting. This wasn't nail-biting entertainment, but it helped. It helped uim to get through the nights when all ui could think of was Jelusrem’s face.
Another threadbare blessing: Neliblai had remembered to put uir comm on silent this time. Finally. Hands switched places and now the circled rat dangling from uir left wrist was being fondled and sneakingly quiet Lao Shu Po was receiving thanks. As lips finally lay still against each other, ui snuck a glance at the comm screen.
The Starfinders. An Acquisitive, no less! The job didn’t sound like it would generate much useful copy, but the investigative reporter who ignores the semi-secret society they joined in order to get leads is an investigative reporter doomed to anonymity for life. A couple fingertips on the comm screen set up a software agent to make arrangements, and Neliblai leaned back against the chair again.
The former addict who lets anything take them out of a recovery meeting will not be former for long.
{{{I’m playing Neliblai, chaotic good uisha maraquoi icon empath mystic (Starfinder data jockey), a hard-boiled reporter in the noir mode with a lot of contacts, a diet composed almost entirely of cigarettes, and too many other people’s secrets. In the absence of Paizo officially declaring pronouns in Maraquoi for each of their seven genders, I am deciding that Neliblai’s pronouns are ui (subjective), uim (objective), uir (possessive), uirs (substantive possessive), and uimself (reflexive).}}}
*
Others received Duravar’s message in their own ways. Many refused, of course, for any number of reasons from the rational to the irrational. Three, however, accepted the job.
{{{Michelle’s friend Labryssa is playing the thief No, chaotic good agender android ace pilot operative. I am super curious how it got its name, I must confess! On the metagame level, she gave it that name because someone asked if she’d come up with a name yet and she said “No”. A similar thing is how Nameless got the name Nameless, actually.}}}
{{{Barry, whom I’ve known almost as long as Tanuki, is playing the superbly cyberpunkly named Johnny Coy0te, neutral androidgynous male bounty hunter operative, without much revealed backstory just yet. Johnny feels a lot like a shadowrunner, actually; that might be part of what gave me the idea to rewrite Starfinder as Shadowrun’s Eighth World, with the Gap being the entirety of the low-mana Seventh World. What happened while magic was gone?}}}
*
The shuttle Okimoro had made the rounds to pick everyone up, even travelling the Drift all the way to the Vesk system. Neliblai, ever the inquisitive, asked about their route and its reasons shortly after ui boarded at the station on Verces, and was impressed. The Starfinders had managed to make such a wide route make just enough sense as to be plausible.
Now the Okimoro was unboarding at Absalom. The few passengers who weren’t answering Duravar’s summons meandered out, eager to get to their family or their tourism attractions or their restaurants or their bathrooms. The four who had heard from Duravar let them go first.
Well, “let” wasn’t always quite the exact right word. Bexch Prliz probably just didn’t hear the docking announcements over the bouncy pop music blaring from his comm, an intoxicating blend of simple rave beats and complicated psychedelic melodies tying knots around them. Once he did notice they arrived, however, he was the first of the not-yet-a-group to leave the shuttle, dancing out of the airlock, each step a sinuous shake of his ass. Waystone0 noted his exit and its style while appearing to read the local holonews now that the infospheres have synced.
Wakiin shook himself awake, or perhaps was shaken awake by Bexch’s loudness passing as he wriggled his rhythmic way off the shuttle. Realizing that the shuttle wasn’t hurtling through the Drift anymore, he walked out with Neliblai close behind. The maraquoi raked everything around uim as ui exits with uir bulging, insectile eyes and uir tail-borne camera comm. Ui paused just before disembarking and lit a cigarette to celebrate uir arrival. Waystone0, in its insulated work gear and backpack, was the last to leave the shuttle. It strolled down the ramp with the indifferent interest of someone who has done this same thing all across the galaxy.
It seemed the divet between the end of the ramp and the space station floor was having none of Waystone0’s affectation of having seen it all. It tripped the android, who would have rolled into a mess of backpack, rifle, and nanites if it wasn’t for Wakiin’s hunt-trained reflexes. The hulking and hungry vesk snapped his hand out and grabbed Waystone0’s rifle. The android hung like floating for a brief moment before being dropped the gentle last half foot or so. Waystone0’s expressionless “Thank you” was mostly matched in its blandness by a reptilian “You’re welcome.”
Dressed for the job it wanted rather than the job it had, the android thief known as No watched the group enter. None of the other passengers looked like they had anything interesting in their pockets, not worth the picking. These last few, undoubtedly the “others” Duravar had alluded to, looked like they had even less ~ their accounts were probably measured in lint, let alone their pockets. The lashunta had a nice booming comm, tho. Specialized comms could earn a centicredit or two.
A tall dwarf (well, tall for a dwarf anyway) with a gray beard almost hiding an unusually thin body in a dockworker’s jumpsuit proudly displaying the Starfinder seal began to walk toward this gaggle of a crowd. The airlock hissed closed behind them. As he did so, six people suddenly stopped milling around and dove behind piles of crates to either side.
Neliblai looked from side to side. “Already?” With a shrug and a smoky inhale, ui began to walk ~ nay, stroll ~ towards the action. Verses from the Prophecies of Kallistrade cascaded through uir mind, tuning it to the minds of those in front of uim. If ui could just find the right frequency . . . . Wakiin fingered his hammer and Waystone0 asked, without inflection, “Are you planning on killing the dwarf?” For some reason, this seemed to convince Wakiin to move his hand to the whip at his waist.
“Does anyone else see this happening?” No asked.
Neliblai replied, “Yes, I’m working on it.”
Meanwhile, the two groups started shooting at each other, with the dwarf in the middle. Their triggers triggered the vesk, who left a thud of a backpack behind him as he sprinted to Duravar, almost impossibly fast. The reptile-colored blur, all green with orange racing stripes, swept Duravar off his feet and onto his shoulder. Stopping well past the line of fire, Wakiin looked down to see an unmoving dwarf. A quick flipover told him why ~ his back was a novella written in laser burns.
Not just Duravar, though. Neliblai took a laser to the shoulder as ui took a deep toke of tobacco, then grunted and coughed the smoke back out in a puff. The reporter creepysmiled.
Waystone0 noted the directness of the hit, the lack of any dodge in the maraquoi’s body, and calmly asked, “Is this within mission parameters?”
“Finding that out still,” Neliblai replied. “Psychic powers take time.”
“All right then.” And with that, Waystone0 sat down on the floor and began assiduously ignoring the battle while No drew and dove behind some nearby crates its own self. Johnny, meanwhile, ran at one of the people on the side that shot Neliblai. His opponent saw Johnny’s fist, and there was a knife in it. Bexch cartwheeled to cover while throwing his starknife to no effect. The spiky blade soon disappeared, showing up again in Bexch’s hand.
Waystone0 told Neliblai to “Tell me if you need medical assistance.”
Uir reply? “If you can do it without throwing off my flow.”
“What are the parameters of your flow?”
Neliblai replied by rattling off the infosphere address of uir blog while Wakiin walked all the way back to the fight, emptyhanded now, and casually hammered one of the shooters. He was paid immediately with a potshot leaving a long burn across his side. Another bolt caught Bexch’s hair, throwing a quick lick of flame into the air for a moment. Neliblai, on the other hand, gets a bit of a break as uir assailant turned his pistol on Johnny. The last of the six shooters was still fighting the original fight but didn’t hit any of them.
Johnny kept stabbing. His opponent fell to the floor. The starknife shot across the battlefield again, a metal meteor unable to land. Its owner cartwheeled toward the other group of three.
Neliblai leaned into uir enemy’s face and blew a steady stream of smoke into as ui did so. Uir spell had told uim three things: one gang was of these triads was a squad of the Downside Kings, the other represented from the Level 21 Gang, and someone was paying them. “Who’s paying you?”
Wakiin dealt more hammer to more faces. Well, the crate next to a face. Neliblai took a whack across the face from the person in front of uim. Wakiin barely noticed as laser bolt and knee made friends.
While No shot Neliblai’s attacker in the back, Johnny stabbed things, and the lashunta blew the fuck up, Waystone0 looked up from its speed-reading. “Your three-part exposé on Brethedan internal politics was quite insightful,” it told the maraquoi. Only its timing ~ ensuring that it could be heard ~ gave any indication that it had noticed the firefight or the solarian explosion in front of it.
“Thanks.”
“Also, if you want medical help, I advise walking away from the people shooting you.”
Hearing this offer, Bexch threw his hair and his face over his shoulder to call out, “I want medical attention!”
“Then I‘d give you the same advice.”
Neliblai bowed uir shoulders and head forward, slid one foot behind uim, and with another creepy smile stepped back. A tooth tucked away in the corner of that smile glinted in the dock’s cheap lights. It grew into a glowing ball that detached itself from maraquoi mouth. The ball, as bright as a flashlight, busied itself floating distractingly around the attacker’s head. Neliblai turned uir back and walked toward Waystone0.
All of the gangers ran, except the one graced by the attention of Neliblai’s wisp ally. That one ran up behind uim and clubbed uim on the head. Johnny prevented another from running by playing gun kata with them, a distraction and entanglement that allowed Bexch to stab him in the back. Licking his knife, the lashunta exclaimed, “First blood.”
“Closer . . . ,” Waystone0 told Neliblai. “Observing your near-fatal injuries, I find that I must ask: is this a combat situation we must attend to?”
An addict’s uncaring shrug accompanied uir reply. “If you want.”
Waystone stared, pulled out its rifle and shot the person pursuing the vlogger. It could see Duravar’s corpse through the hole it had blasted right through the ganger’s back. “Now, would you like me to perform medical assistance on you?”
Johnny quipped, “That’s a horrible pickup line, by the way.” To which, Bexch replied, “Eh. It would’ve gotten me.”
Neliblai walked up to Waystone0, looked at the android with a sibling respect, and said. “Your pickup line did get me.” A blast of stunning lightning flashed behind uim from uir waist, followed shortly by the blue fur of its head. The last of the gangers was out cold at uir pulsecaster’s blast.
Johnny and Waystone0 busied themselves with looting the bodies, finding 3 azimuth laser pistols, 3 clubs, and 3 credsticks with 100 credits each while Neliblai’s drug-ravaged muscles dragged them all into one spot inch by inch. Once ui had finally finished arranging the pile of bodies, Waystone0 began the work of ensuring ui wouldn’t die. Wakiin did much the same as the two androids and the maraquoi while it did so.
“I don’t have my full medkit,” Waystone0 said to Neliblai, whose tail was recording everything on uir comm, “so I wasn’t able to provide full assistance. You will probably need to visit a hospital or wait until I purchase my own medkit on station.”
Wakiin pulled out a comm and a granola bar from one of the dwarf’s pockets. Neliblai nodded at him. “I’ll take that.” The vesk threw the comm to uim and the bar into his mouth while a giggling Bexch snatched a shiny button from the dwarf’s jumpsuit and began wearing it as a monocle.
The dwarf’s recent messages reveal that his last communication had been to someone named Chiskisk saying, “I put out the word. Expecting them today. Be by this afternoon.”
“Chiskisk, Chiskisk,” Neliblai started muttering, “sounds like a shireen name.”
Johnny perked up at the mumbled name: “Chiskisk, I know of them. I never got any jobs directly but I’ve been to the office.”
“They work out of the main office?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go, then.”
“Are they now the one we will be getting our pay from?” asked Waystone0.
Neliblai shrugged. “Dunno.”
“We should at least report this,” Johnny suggested, “otherwise there’s no chance to get paid.”
The android nodded. “Good enough.”
“How about a snack on the way?” came a reptilian grumble from the vesk.
“Apologies. I didn’t know you could speak the Common language.”
A silence followed Waystone0’s comment.
Johnny broke the discomfort, bending down to reclaim his coffee cup. “The place where I got this has, like, bagels and things.”
“Hey, vesk.” called Neliblai. “Can you carry this ganger with us? He’s not dead, just pulsed.”
Wakiin shrugged. “Sure.” He snapped some restraints had in his backpack onto the human’s wrists before placing the unconscious body in said backpack.
Meanwhile, Johnny called the Starfinder main office to report the situation. Neliblai didn’t give him a chance, talking over him: “Starfinder Neliblai, number 071382, taking local ganger into custody for later questioning.”
“Bring him to the office,” came the tinny reply.
“Already on our way. Tell Chiskisk: medium-priority appointment.”
“Looks like you’re already on schedule.”
*
A walk through the power-clashing market promenades of Drifter’s End and a snack from one of those garish vendor stalls with the menus in 23 languages later, the ragtag group arrived at the Lorespire Complex. “We’ll take that.” A Starfinder was waiting for them in the lobby, and indicated the unconscious body on Wakiin’s back.
“OK,” Neliblai said. “Name and Starfinder number?”
“Look, we’ll just take him and interrogate him for you.”
“Name and Starfinder number?”
“I don’t need to ~ we’re just trying to make it easier for you, y’know!”
“I know. Name and Starfinder number?”
“What’s going on here?” interrupted Waystone0.
Neliblai responded: “Pissing contest.”
“But neither of you have your genitalia out. How will you know who wins?”
The guard throws his hands up in the air and walks out of the room, mumbling insults all the way. Waystone0 gives a smile and a wink, an expression of emotion that lasted a fraction of a second.
“Does this mean we have to feed the ganger?” asked Bexch.
“Only if they answer our questions?” was Neliblai’s reply.
A hologram flickered into existence and led the group to an office, Bexch cartwheeling the whole way down the hall. Waystone0, on the other hand, slammed a door shut as they passed it in the hall. With its face.
It turned out that Chiskisk, as the namesceen on their office told them, was a member of the Forum, which made them a bit of a bigwig in the Society. They also turned out to be a shirren in plain, understated business clothes behind a plain desk, nervously playing with their antennae. A lot of shirren do that when they’re perplexed. “Please, please, sit. Have refreshments. I wish I was welcoming you under better circumstances. Kreel’s death is a tragedy.”
“Are you our new quartermaster?” asked Waystone0.
Chiskisk ignored the interrupting android. “To those of you new here, these violent events are rare. He was a dear friend, and he will be missed.”
Johnny Coy0te this time took on the mantle of interrupting android: “How many stars did he find?”
A deep and frustrated sigh. This meeting was not going the way Chiskisk had expected. “That is not what that means.”
“I always wondered what you did here.” Neliblai restrained uimself from a chuckle and a grin at Johnny's irreverence, but not quite in time.
Chiskisk chose Waystone0 as the less mocking of the two. “I will not be acting as your commander, though I will be asking your aid in a certain matter.”
“And that will be compensated?” Wayfinder0 asked.
“Yes.”
Bexch clarified: “In money?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for that clarification.”
“The thing is, I don’t really understand the circumstances.”
“I recognize the colors,” Johnny said, “we just got caught in the crossfire.”
“Yes, but the docks are far from their respective territories. I can’t help but feel like they want more.”
“Who doesn’t in this life?” Neliblai retorted.
“I want you to find out if he was a target or just caught in the crossfire. Security will just record it as an accident. Consider this a very impromptu initiation if you will.”
Johnny grinned. “My favorite kind.”
“Do we have permission,” asked Waystone0, ‘to engage in less than legal activities such as investigating the police?”
“Officially, the Starfinder Society doesn’t condone or allow illegal activity. Which is why I won’t be asking about it.”
“So we’re getting paid more?” Bexch sounded excited.
“You will be made a member and get info the public doesn’t know.”
“So this is an internship?”
“You will still be paid for the mission.”
The lashunta wouldn’t drop it. “So is there a number?”
The screen on Chiskisk’s wall shows 200 credits in the process of getting transferred to each of the assembled ne’er-do-wells’ accounts. “Call that advanced pay. It should cover expenses, too.”
Waystone0 cocked an eyebrow. “As that is approximately 200% my total savings, you have effectively purchased my loyalty for the moment.”
“Before we get started,” Wakiin finally spoke, “where is the best place to eat? That snack kicked up an appetite.”
“The Moon of Sleep is a hotel favored by Starfinders. They will give you discount lodging as long as you are with Neliblai.”
“Discount food?” The vesk almost sounded like an eager child.
“I dunno about food . . .”
“C’mon we’re doing a favor for you!”
“I’ll pay for your food if you give me a piggyback ride,” Bexch offered.
“OK”
“And,” added Waystone0, “I’ll pay for 10% of your food expenses for the day as thanks.”
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