The Thessaliad Redux

Back at work after having to take Friday off sick with the unspeakable gut horror that's been killing my appetite and generally making my life a living hell lately. And no, I'm not, in any real sense of the word, 'better'. Yes, I managed a full meal yesterday. Somehow, as it's the first time I've actually eaten one full meal in the last week, it's not exactly comforting. But still, I'm here and I suppose it could be worse. I mean, I could have got minimal sleep last night.

Oh, wait...

Honestly, that part was once again as much my own fault as anything. Well, sort of. It's not my fault I'm a total freakin' insomniac, and that the fact that I couldn't get to sleep for ages even after I finally crawled into bed at some obscene hour of the morning proves it. Part of it's the stomach cramps. Part of it's the snoring. The quiet when he's away isn't exactly great, but apparently it at least does better things to my sleeping habits. So no, I didn't see the point of going to bed until about 4am and since I didn't actually get to sleep until 5-ish anyway, I stand by that decision so darkdanc3r should in no way feel guilty. (Besides, I'm blaming Dropbear because he's infinitely slow in RP - six minutes to write two lines?!?)

( And the news from Charleston by Night )

I purchased Grease on DVD on Saturday (£5 at Waitrose; the price was right) and have since realised that when you leave in all the cut-out snippets of dialogue and scenes they take out for pre-watershed TV, that's actually a fairly adult film. Cheesy in the extreme, but still adult. Which vaguely lessens my shame at still liking that happy sappy pile of tripe. I know it's not a good film, but it's a fun not-good film. Some people like their crappy shlock horror; I like musicals. Still want to pick up Funny Girl at some point. And various of the Disney flicks. I know, I'm sad.

Beyond that, not much is new. Levelled up the deathgnome to level 9, and level 10 is within my grasp. Trying to increase my cooking skill, which is hard when the crystal I'm using breaks half the time, taking various useful items with it. Recent amusement on the fields of combat was just finishing off a Crawler (one of the tougher things I beat up on a regular basis) and having a goblin thug led right onto me by a small party of two Taru and a Hume who just sat there and kind of stared at me in horror as I took on this stupid goblin with half my hit points gone. They healed me up nicely mid-battle, so I suppose I should be grateful for that, but if they hadn't led the fucking thing onto me in the first place... I'm considering starting levelling up White Mage, so that I'm ready when I hit level 18 to take it as a subjob. Apparently a common rallying cry is "Level your subjob, you n00b". I don't want to be That Guy.

So overview of the weekend - many, many people are screaming in the general direction of Stevenage (where Whit lives) for not being online to sort things with various characters and put various players out of their collective misery, deathgnome SMASH, and very little in the way of food intake. I think I'd feel better about going to the doctor if I didn't have this horrible feeling that my current status of overweight might prompt a certain lack of sympathy for my not being able to eat anything. The NHS is so het up over people getting themselves into the absolute optimum of physical health before they can be treated as patients deserving of respect. It's distressing to feel that this horrible gut misery and lack of caloric, fluid and vitamin intake might be shrugged off just because I'm fat. Well, if I pass out and/or end up on an IV drip, I'll ... well, complain, really. I hate IVs.

Note to any and all GMs: Just because a player goes "AAAAAAAAARGH!" a lot, it by no means indicate a lack of desire to play their character.

( The full story for those not in the know. )

All told, my character is pretty well screwed to the wall. Every dream she ever had is dead and the only way she feels she can be useful to anyone right now is to just go away, find a quiet, out-of-the-way corner unassociated with her friends, and die before the Technocracy can get their hands on her and make her tell them all the various tidbits she knows about the Charleston mages (and there are a lot of those). That on top of the actually having killed someone, the Technocracy fuckery committed on her eye and the vicious lies told about her character, nature and actions on local and then national TV and just about every media network you can name.

No, it's not a good situation to be in. But, y'know, it's a WoD game. Shit happens. I will freely admit that I will not be able to play the character anymore if one more thing goes to hell (because, y'know, that's everything now, basically), and I would hate to see that happen because I like that character and I know that I'm not the only one. I'm not complaining because my character has plot, or because I don't want to play her anymore; I'm complaining because I do want to play her, but I don't want to go any more emo angsty garbage than I have to. I don't want it to be annoying. But with this, I don't see any other way of playing her, and all I can hope is that I'm doing it well enough to avoid a call to the whaaaaaaamublance. I don't want to be 'one of those people' you read about on bad_rpers_suck.

So tonight's 'Endgame'. The trio who rescued Nina have called for help, and they're going to have a good hard look at what's wrong with her eye, and I'm going to be there when it happens because I don't even know yet. I'll stick this out until I can't anymore, because this is fascinating, in a train-wreck sort of way. Besides, I want to see how it ends. And if push comes to shove, I bring out my reserve Hermetic. Still, I'm now having to set deadlines on my Charleston forays (absolutely positively no later than 2am, at the outside) because fuck me raw, but I can't take any more of this "Getting to bed later than three in the morning when you have to be up at half-seven" shit. This is the problem with big scenes involving an Aussie, two Americans in different time zones and a Brit with a flakey Internet connection.

Tell you this for nothing; I had better be getting a serious wedge of XP for this, and so should anyone who's been in these scenes with me.

And so, Forsaken happened. Unfortunately, we had a minor problem with neonchameleon, who initially said he would definitely be turning up to this session only to have him text me less than half an hour before we were due to meet for lunch to tell me that the buses were being pains in the arse and so he wasn't going to bother. That was a little annoying. I don't really know what to think when he's cancelled the last three sessions. I'd hope that if he didn't want to play, he'd just tell me so - it's not like I'll get that offended. As it is, I'm having to keep things as open as I can for a player who's not showing up. At least it's early days, so it's not so hard, but...

Anyway, enough about that. On to the write-up.

( Two Backpacker Werewolves in London, and Other Stories )

So tired. I have next week off, though; it's marked on the calendar and everything. Whee. But I'm still tired and bored and would very much like to just go home. Oh well.

...My Dreamspeaker got 'sploded.

So we're sitting there, having a Midsummer Revel, everyone doing their own things - burying the hatchet with other characters, or grumbling about going in the first place, or in Nina's case, having a serious case of the nerves. She'd dressed up all pretty - casual, but pretty - for this do, partly because she had a 'date' with a hot bath and an equally hot Verbena named JJ. We like JJ. Great character.

And utter fucking sock puppet. JJ, it turns out, was created specifically for this one scene, where they have the Midsummer Revel and JJ, who's been infected with Technocratic bomb-bots, spits out four of the little exploding Techno-Doom things, which burrow into the house's foundations. Then manages to get to the door and tell everybody partying in the garden to run before he blows up, taking the back wall of the house with him one second before the rest of the house goes to bits.

Five Lethal in one fell swoop. Five. From "OMG I'm wearing a fucking skirt", Nina wound up lying in the remains of the buffet table with concussion, cracked ribs, a badly damaged ankle and numerous lacerations from flying glass - windows, bottles, glasses... Such a pity I chose then to have Nina take off her 'armour'.

However, Nina has advantages:

1) Extensive medical training
2) Survival and Crafts skills enough to improvise first aid kit
3) Life and Mind - just enough to resist pain for awhile
4) The Wits required to use all that stuff to its utmost

So Nina starts doing first aid and stitching people up, getting them stable ... then her magic runs out and she keels over for a bit. dodgyhoodoo's character Jericho, a little late for the party, turns up in the middle of what looks like a war zone. He managed to tie himself into the group that Nina's with (her Tradition rep, members of the cabal that's got an eye on her as a new member, that sort of thing) and helped do a bit of first aid, partly under Nina's direction. Then another member of the Barons of Suburbia (the aforementioned cabal) has healed Nina pretty much completely and now here we are, getting off the property, heading towards I-dunno-where with no one telling the guy who just took Nina from Mauled to Bruised or even fully healed that a favoured member of his Tradition is dead. It's a fun scene, and my character got to be heroic and stuff. Yay!

Okay, I'll shut up now.

Well, the good news is that things are picking up on the online RPG front. My Dreamspeaker's about to become a team rep for her Tradition from the looks of things, my Corax is trying to get to a corpse to drink its eyes and see how the man died, and Grace ... well, Grace is having an interesting time generally.

Okay, the situation goes as follows: there are two mechanics on the Hollow City board. One's Grace. The other is Alexei Korolev, kinfolk to one of the city's alphas. Grace is cute, dizzy, forthright and sweet, with a reasonably wide gamut of interests and a certain amiable charm. Alexei is also cute, kind of sweet in his own distracted way, and very, very focused on his truest love - auto repair and customisation. And of course, he's Kin and she's Garou. This sounded like it could be an interesting matchup however the relationship turned out, so we did some plot tweaking and made it so that Grace had to turn up at Alexei's garage for a job interview. She got said job, but throughout the interview and test process, neither of them had any idea what the other was, so were expecting to have to keep certain aspects of their lives quiet. However, when Grace went back to the flat she's now sharing with another Garou (who happens to work in the free health clinic that serves as a central meeting point for the Garou in SF) and mentioned Alexei's name, the flatmate pulled out a contact list and pointed out that Alexei was Kin. This amused Grace, but it also seemed providential, since in this game, Kinfolk are currently being sacrificed to demons.

So Grace went to work the next morning and started inching around to the subject and wound up getting him to blurt out another Kinfolk's identity before he twigged that she knew things she shouldn't. So he turned around and threatened her with a wrench, asking what side she was on, and Grace said all the right things and dropped all the right names (in typical ditzy style) and off they went to pick up his poor dead car from the clinic (so finally, Grace gets to go there). And as they're driving along in the tow truck, Grace mentions that she thinks he's cute. So now there's a date in the offing and it's looking pretty good for them because now they're sharing reminiscences about Pittsburgh, where he grew up and where Grace spent two months doing a total rebuild and custom job on a '83 DeVille.

So we have fun, and I get to game in Hollow City again, and I think I may have enough posts to point at to justify an increase in Grace's Perception soon. Which would be nice, because she is so thick sometimes... I completely blew a 'Getting to know the Urban Parent Spirit' thing by botching just one Perception + Empathy roll, and it sucks. Wah.

Right. Now off to do cheap but nice Japanese food with dodgyhoodoo. Then maybe blowing up Worms.

Okay, so we had our Mage session today. Those of you who are new to my journal and very much aware that a lot of this stuff cannot happen in White Wolf, please keep in mind that this is very much alternate-universe. The set-up goes as follows: the Wyrm is free, insane and pissed off at the players specifically, and the balance of the universe is in serious flux as a result. So there's a lot of chaotic stuff going on that shouldn't be possible, because the Weaver's strands are snapping and the Wyrm is eating the universe one bite at a time. The Wyrm gained its freedom on 1 January, 2000; at the same time, the Millennium bug had an actual catastrophic effect, destroying most technological systems on earth and killing many of the mundanes; the supernaturals are now the majority. This means that Paradox is lessened, but there are other considerations. The Cult of Ecstasy, Verbena and Virtual Adepts (the last of whom were blamed for Y2K) are now almost entirely gone, Pentex has control of the Technocracy and every so often, the world goes foggy and Silent Hill in its horror. One of the PCs has a Destiny (he bought it on his character sheet and everything); he must raise the universe's one hope of salvation -- the one being on the planet who can redeem the Wyrm and restore balance to the Triat. Read back a few write-ups to see what I mean. We call the campaign Year Restart, for the name the world gave Y2K. And now, back to the story.

( Holy crap, they get into trouble... )

So they're going to change the world. Not that they haven't already. The universe, such as it is, may stand a chance after all.

Just as a hors d'oevre, I thought I'd give the Mage quotes for the last couple of sessions. dodgyhoodoo's been keeping track of them in game, but I'm the better typist so: ( Mage quotes! )

( And a quick rundown... )

*sigh* Don't wanna go back to work tomorrow. At least I feel half-decently rested. Though that may be the caffeine at work.

( Mage today was interesting... )

guido_was_taken was talking about his girlfriend possibly joining Mage, if he could get across the idea that Mage is awesome, or something. This might be nice, though we are going to run out of room in the sitting room. Then again, it used to be dodgyhoodoo, weaselbitch, nadriel, cholten99, vampadvocate, markwelham and jeremiahtomasi, with occasional appearances by corone. That was nine people counting me, and with dodgyhoodoo, weaselbitch, nadriel, lokean, guido_was_taken and girlfriend, that's still only seven counting me. Then again, that was in a bigger sitting room. But there are the dining room chairs.

As for Hollow City, I am still stuck at Kaldi's. Argh.

And my holiday is nearly over. Boo.

Something I've been working on recently: additions to the Skank Fetish Lexicon.

‘Mum’, n: Refers to Lucille McBride, most decidedly NOT his mother but his Head of House.
‘Explodo’, v: To blow something up, generally using Forces (see “foom”). n: a specific act of detonation
‘Palpatine’, v: to throw Prime-Forces bolts from the fingertips, as Emperor Palpatine (ref: Star Wars)
‘Head-meat’, n: brain matter.
‘The Creature’, n: Rodney Delevan, a former cabalmate.
‘Technocrack’, n: Technocracy in general
‘Agent Smith’, n: Technocracy agents, generally Progenitors or Iteration X (also ref: Black Hats and Mirrorshades, general Mage lexicon)
‘Emily’s Pants-Wetting Driving Mojo’, n: Adept level Correspondence effect; transporting numerous people across vast distances with dangerous driving as a focus
‘Moo Hoo Ha Ha’, n: Evil. Alternatively, a noise indicating that he is about to commit some act of chaos through physical or magical (ref: ‘dodgy hoodoo’) means.
‘dead-guy hoodoo’, n: Thaumaturgy
‘Steamboy’: male steampunk type. Specifically referred to Professor Smith. (also ref: ‘Professor von Steam’)

Changeling was a hoot. The group consists of:

dodgyhoodoo: Silas Creech, a Sluagh Grump of a hermitous bent who prefers books to people.
neonchameleon: Lesley Smith, a Sidhe Wilder of House Gwydion with bishie good looks and insatiable curiosity.
weaselbitch: Edward (never got a last name), a Eshu Childling who's far too cute to be allowed.

These three had been taken out of their freehold in Doncaster by a troll named Olaf (and Lesley's bodyguard) who, on news from Silas that the nobles of their freehold had been behaving oddly, did some investigation and found that the house was going decidedly Unseelie. There was talk of stockpiling cold iron weapons and at least one instance of an enchanged mortal being brought to one of the recent gatherings, probably against her will. Olaf thought it was his duty to get what freehold denizens he could to safety, and still hasn't given up hope on one or two others (so the way is clear if lokean wants to join in when he's back from Easter break), so he fetched the Childling, the Wilder and the Grump out of Doncaster and took them to London, where he had already set up a life for himself as a nightclub bouncer.

Not much happened, since it was mostly prelude and character gen. They discovered a magely type acting very strangely, apparently having some kind of bent against artistic expression, and Lesley got fed upon by Toreadors. Then they went to the Natural History museum and saw two kids being abducted by members of their old freehold. They apprehended their old comrades on a London-Doncaster train, but not before running into Silas' colleague at the library at which he has found employment, a possible Changeling-in-waiting named Ella. Of course, Silas didn't know this when he fed her a Glamour-riddled Pocky stick to enchant her and "prevent the need for convoluted lying explanations later" so that she could help on the rescue mission. In fact, even afterwards, when Lesley called attention to the possibility, Silas screwed up his Kenning roll entirely and thought she was a letterbox.

Anyway, Lesley made good use of Sovereign and prevented too much counterattack from the Satyr and Eshu who'd taken the kids, Olaf protected Lesley from a flung cold iron switchblade, Edward got the kids away from the other Changelings by explaining that they were like the witch with the gingerbread cottage (provoking many tears from the poor little seven-year-olds) and they got off the train at Stevenage, heading back to London with all due haste. They took the kids home, got Olaf to A&E and then Silas got the bright idea to take Ella to a Camden freehold to completely immerse her in the whole Kithain thing, figuring that was one sure-fire way to get her Changeling side to come out. If she does come over all Changeling, though, there is a problem: her boyfriend, a somewhat unpleasant, potentially violent Bible-bashing fundamentalist Christian of the worst possible kind.

Plus they still have the mage and their former freeholders to deal with.

Typical "run-by-thessalian session, really.