Straight Life

It's been a bizarre 24 hours or so.

I requested loan of the Akashic Brotherhood book from Toos and pre-game, she presented me with not only that one but Verbena, Dreamspeaker, Virtual Adept (why?) and a CD burn Andy O did for me of just about every conceivable Exalted thing I could possibly need, including the Zenith handbook. Only one I don't have my grubby little mitts on yet is Sons of Ether, so I'm pretty well covered as far as that's concerned. I wouldn't put it past Mark to play the mad scientist, though...

Then there was game. I like Alison as a character, but she's got the combat skills of a limpet. Actually, that's not fair; put her in a knife-fight or a shoot-out and she can at least hold her own. However, she cannot scale buildings and rescue chandlers, which was all the action we actually saw last night. Well, apart from the duel between two members of the party and the encounter with the extortionists. And to be fair, I was involved in both of those. We didn't know that the dozen men we ran into in front of the cheese shop were the ones running this protection racket we'd been hired to stop, but it was a fair guess, so Toos' characters challenged them and there was much testosterone-fuelled slinging of insults until I put a gun to their leader's head. At which point eleven men were pointing guns at me, but Alison's never claimed to be that bright. As for the duel, well, I basically made that happen, but only to prevent one character from stabbing the other in his sleep. Stupid men. Stupid honour. Stupid duelling. And I think just one session of Kayla has spoiled me -- I want to be in on the arse-kicking!

Then, after getting home, eating, shower, conversation, that kind of thing, phone rings. At 2 a.m. -- guaranteed panic. Cue an upset Claire on the answerphone; apparently, she and Andy P had some kind of altercation and she wanted to be away for the night. I don't know the details, really, because it's absolutely none of my business, but cholten99 picked her up and delivered her here for the necessary post-mortem and the use of the study/spare room. Of course, the post-mortem involved my beloved occasionally invoking me as point of comparison, and while he did make the effort to lower his voice so I wouldn't have to listen to it, she didn't and I got a fair bit from context. So at three in the morning, I wind up wandering around Enfield, suddenly unable to believe my life. While out, I texted Andy P to let him know I hoped he was okay; sometimes the other party gets short shrift in these things and I thought he could use a note of concern. I think I finally got to sleep a bit after four. Oh well. I've gone longer on less sleep.

This morning, e-mail from Andy O, giving me details on his House Thig Hermetic Mage character. Oh, I like him. He's suitably twisted. I'm perfectly willing to be at least a little generous about the available freebies for one particular bit of stuff he employed, mostly because he's really shafted himself in the "GM will drool because damn this character will be fun to play with" way. While I'm still nervous about the whole GMing thing, I have a lot to play with and I know I'm good. Question is, will I be good enough? I think at least two of these guys have some pretty high standards...