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Glad ya'll like these!Golden Bee posted:Do my BIDDING! Two rich girls versus a floating city of fascists. This was a two-hander adventure between mystic orphan Devika Velyapur and Gertrude Contessa “Trudy” Truman. A rich girl reporter first introduced as Florence‘s constantly imperiled girlfriend, she and Devi had instant chemistry. (We nearly had three players. A player arrived late with notice, said one sentence in character, then had a family emergency. It was the least gaming I’ve seen out of someone who actually showed up.) April, 1935. Devika was in Venice for a fashion show. The fascist government was trying to whitewash its image, and that meant beautiful foreign models and ridiculous outfits. The Hyderabadi girl ruled the runway in a variety of bird-themed outfits, posing for the cameras and quick-changing behind the curtain. As you’ll see, this adventure had a huge number of outfit changes. On the way back to the hotel, Devi pestered Trudy about an exclusive interview. The Aussie countered that she had already interviewed D after the last adventure, and the girl hadn’t done anything new interesting! Being notable was the cost of appearing in the newspaper. The streets were starting to flood though… Maybe the duo should head to the hotel for a change of clothes? Caccola stopped them in the lobby. Who’s he? Apparently a kid who’d been robbed of a family artifact! Trudy sensed BS though, getting the kid to admit that the “thieves” had stashed it in an active church. “Sounds notable,” offered Devi. (She also said some complicated intellectual stuff, and mean mugged the kid when he made faces at her!) There’s an old saying in journalism: if your mother says she loves you, check it out. Trudy Truman wasn’t going to take the word of a waif, and her initial contacting revealed a few fun facts: *He was a member of the blackshirt kids brigade. *The boy’s name was Italian for booger. * Steel Eagle, the Tibetan spirit of the Bronx, was in the city for a “cultural exchange” but had been tactfully uninvited from all of the events. He and his sidekick (Eddie-Jim Pulaski) were day drinking in a taverna. And they’d be happy to accompany the ladies! The quartet made their way to the Church of San Zaccaria. Inside were tessellated tiles and amazing frescos. Trudy worked her charm on the priest, who gave the players more info: a leader named Commander Giallo was after them. Inconvenient! Devi sensed the artifact in the basement; the implication of a large donation gave the group privacy in the crypts. The place was half flooded (there’s a reason most places in Venice don’t have basements!), but the group continued. When they extracted the artifact, the room started to flood and the upstairs door locked! The group swam to the stairs, where Steel Eagle used his special “Fordham crowbar strike” to break the door. In the main church, the kindly father was being held at gunpoint by Giallo! They gave over the artifact, no one would get hurt. Sure, Devika could probably warp his mind with her psionic whammy… but that might give the game away. Instead, Trudy used an essential journalism skill… Blathering. First, she didn’t know if she or Devika had the artifact, did anyone know who had it? And second, they might’ve grabbed the wrong thing, could he describe the artifact? When Giallo’s focus was completely gone, Steel Eagle threw him a Bible… Then punched him in the face, caught the Bible, and delivered a spin kick. “Proverbs 13:24!” The group led the priest to safety, throwing coins across the square to cause a traffic jam and deny pursuit. At the hotel (and after another costume change), Devika and Trudy got deep. The kid millionaire opened up about her birth parents, her alienation, her suppressed crush on Penny… they were about to make a breakthrough when Steel Eagle knocked on the door. “Guys in bird masks are watching you.” Trudy headed to the roof and scanned a full 360° around the city. (+4 base notice and an additional +4 on the dice for a perfect epic result; musta been one one of those Assassin’s Creed style synchronizations.) Not only did she notice every rooftop masquerader… she also saw the one hiding behind the hotel’s chimney. He explained that he was the leader of the Brotherhood of the Wave, the Fratellanza dell'Onda; since the city’s founding, they had kept it safe with the help of an Atlantean artifact. Mussolini’s goons wanted it, and they already had half. Not only did they need the fascist’s piece, but there was a secret word that was printed on the top of the Bible held by the lion on top of a huge pillar in Saint Mark’s Square. Without all three things, massive floods were imminent. The group split up duties: Trudy called in favors to set up a meeting between the local authorities and the “international fascist friendship league.” Devi hired a tour group to make trouble at the far end of the square, giving the Steel Eagle time to climb and study the lion. After dinner, it was time for the final costume change of the adventure! Devi had up uniforms for the entire group, with faux leather accouterments and angular fits. She also gave herself a fake mustache; “no one wants to pick a fight with a dangerous midget.” A bit of blathering and the plan went perfectly! Perfectly except for the part where after cutting the power, the girls discovered that the only escape route was out the balcony window and into the canal. The two left (Miss Velyapur going first, Trudy following and quipping “When in Rome...”). Devi sighed as her mustache floated away. Oddly enough, the two were instant experts at gondoliering, easily escaping their pursuers. They made their way to the secret anti-fascist gondolier clubhouse and got dry clothes (oops, another costume change!), then rendezvoused with the order. Venice was saved. No thanks to Booger. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Dec 11, 2023 03:59
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Golden Bee posted:Waters of Venice! To Florence, melting mutants meant a future imperfect. Sometimes you plan an interesting adventure and the players blindside you from the start. That was the case this time, when I situated a little scene of financial drama… and it went sideways. Lord Simon and Lala Santinella were contacted by Devika’s financial manager. The 13-year-old millionaire had made both of them the chief beneficiary of her will… did they want to handle the paperwork and the assets, in case something bad happened? Both of the characters grew up poor, so I thought this would be an interesting back-and-forth social combat…then Lord Simon pulled out a ring and proposed. Sure, he was gay, and Lala was interested in other people, but this solved all their problems, right?* She didn’t say no to the offer, and the problem was kicked down the road! The main focus of the adventure (because again, I did not prep for that!) was about Florence Zee releasing her world music album at a refurbished world fair. After some heartfelt speeches from the other PCs, a “journalist” in the crowd hypnotized her… the fake reporter was Amram S. Khan, her nemesis from Baltimore! Throughout the adventure, the hypnotism passed from person to person, causing Florence and Simon to relieve key moments of their past. Florence was making a deal with a devil in a railway car; Simon, pulling a scam in India, accidentally met Devika, then recalled one of his failed schemes, which left them sleeping in a rainy alley in London. Worse yet, the park had been overtaken by former security guards, transformed by genetically modified meat into containment suit-wearing Goo-Troopers. So-called because their deaths led to explosions of green muck. The main attractions were the Aboriginal art Temple, the Bank of Tomorrow (which Simon felt compelled to burgle), the farm of the future, suburbia ‘55, and the News Plaza. Each needed to be navigated to unlock the central tower, which was the most likely hiding spot of the villain. The futuristic house was the site of the most drama. Florence and her beloved, Trudy, finally talked honestly about their future. Kabir questioned Lord Simon’s need for a fake marriage. Devi and Lala discussed the failure of her Hollywood movie, and Devika‘s need for a constant mother, not a celebrity. Awkwardly, all the arguments carried through the echoey home. Worse, Devi and Lala were attacked by the goo troopers in the laundry room. At least clean up was super easy! There were many, many misadventures (including a tank/train engine Lala found, called the “Orientation Express”), but one stands above any other. The players confronted Amram S Khan, master Mystic, in a slipshod way. They were very clever to divert reinforcements, so he tried to flee the way he had before; a puff of smoke and his clothes left on the floor. Unfortunately, his invisibility spell failed, and he fled starkers. He evaded Florence’s attempted trip, sending her tumbling down the stairs (to be caught by Kabir). Khan fled to the elevator, heading towards the basement garage… where Lala was waiting with her motorcycle. He tried hypnosis, but she pinned him to the wall and he had a quick, painful death. Few could believe the movie actress killed a nemesis by “running over his dinger”, but it happened. With an army of mutoids between them and the villain, the players hatched a scheme. First, they broke radio etiquette until the mastermind yelled at them, revealing their identity… Bebe Brossard! Yes, Florence’s greatest rival was here to ruin her album release. (The swarm of thugs was just a lucky coincidence.) As the party fought off swarms, desperate to protect the broadcast tower, Florence goaded Bebe into a meeting. And in the third huge shocker of the session, Zee went alone… and apologized. She gave an amazing, historically splendid apology, so pure that Bebe’s hug exorcised the last traces of Flo’s demon. *This led to the line of the night. Lala boosted Simon up to a rooftop as Devika griped, completely innocently, “Husbands and wives shouldn’t be climbing all over each other.” Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 17:19 on May 17, 2024 |
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Dec 18, 2023 02:42
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Golden Bee posted:VINYL Fantasy! The best art is visceral. Here’s an extremely suspicious phrase: “I didn’t spend a lot on your Christmas present. Now get packed.” Devika gave Florence a mailbox shaped like a treasure chest… That was assigned to a hut in Rura Tonga, a remote tropical island northeast of Australia. She could share it with Trudy (no house of the future, but what is?), while Aldous got one of his own. There’s nothing funnier than giving a fastidious butler a dirt floor hut; It was an hour before Devika revealed that there was actually fitted stone flooring waiting at the dock. The mailbox said Ziegler Investigations: South Seas, and promised tons of adventure! The final two members of the team, inventor Professor Callahan and wandering Martial artist Xiao Yun, were eager to solve some crimes and set things right.* Any day now. Surely there was -some- action on an island with a population of 105? ——— So after a very, very relaxed holiday season, the gang was eager to return to Los Angeles for an actual case. Outsider artist Christian Stark wasn’t answering his phone, and San Diego mobster Samuel Stone wanted him for a meeting. The only lead they had was a letter where Stark promised to meet in an LA park at 9 PM that night. Trudy Truman’s journalism skills got a huge workout this session. She contacted the arts desk at the LA Times and got the address of Stark's Gallery. Bingen the Butler was suspicious though; fearing the worst, he circled the block and found out the suburban gallery was under surveillance. It was time to get in the back way. The gang hopped a fence and examined the backyard. TT’s sensitive nose paid off… She found a trail of smelly detritus leading from the unlocked back door of the gallery across the lawn, and down into the sewer. She also smelled blood...and human flesh. Only Yun and Trudy had the fortitude to make their way inside. The smell was a mixture of sewage and the stuff bodies are made of. Trudy opened the windows and the gang explored the remains of an art opening-turned-massacre. Who could’ve done this? A babbling psycho in the downstairs bathroom tried to assault the team with a butcher knife; Xiao disarmed the maniac and smashed him into a brick installation. Back in the grasp of sanity, all he could talk about was his torment and his fear of “the great devourer.” Weird! The investigation continued, with the group splitting off. The professor and the Australian girls headed to Stark’s Apartment. The butler and martial artist made their way to the 9 PM rendezvous. Instead of Christian Stark, they were ambushed by… an ancient Roman soldier?! Meanwhile, the Commonwealth trio arrived at Stark’s downtown digs. The lobby sign said it was on the eighth floor... Rather than walking all the way up, the professor got out his tool kit and fixed the creaky elevator. Good as new! ——— Yun greeted the man in Latin. He asked if they were the artist. Hearing “no”, he decided to take out a Gladius and attack! Yun, a master of both wuxia and acupuncture, gave Aldous a chance to disarm the man, sending his blade into the park lake. The soldier still fought furiously, prompting Aldous to shoot him in the leg. A wonderful idea, except that they were trespassing…and to park security, it looked like they were attacking an unarmed man! Back in the apartment, the players discovered the elusive artist wasn’t there…but he was being stalked by a jealous collector called Howart, who was obsessed with Roman history. Trudy sniffed… something horrific was coming up the stairs. Rounding the fourth floor and moving swiftly was a gelatinous mass of faces and limbs. A cairith, personally sent by whoever was trying to put a kibosh on their investigation. It was the entire width of the stairs, and they weren’t going to escape out an eighth-floor window… Quick, to the elevator! At the park, the ever-prepared Bingen produced his firearms license and retrieved the Gladius. He would be happy to be booked for misdemeanor trespassing… but maybe the assault charge should go to the weirdo who didn’t speak a word of English? Downtown, Callahan Ziegler and Truman crowded into the elevator. Luckily, they could take it full speed to the bottom, moving past the oozing mass. If they hadn’t fixed it, they would’ve had to deal with the creature, which could’ve easily gotten into the elevator cage… A horrifying death, avoided thanks to engineering! Reconvening, Trudy once again used her research skills. Howart was an art collector and a Rome aficionado. He had a secured compound in Beverly Hills… but how were they going to get in without rousing the police? The Hollywood Butler had an idea. They could schmooze with the local fire department, say that his old boss mod was doing a movie, and enter the premises disguised as firemen. Professor Callahan created a smoke grenade cannon and fired it from an adjacent Beverly-Hill. The guards were utterly baffled. So was the group when they found out Howart’s library had a gateway to a much hotter place…Hell. The art collector had gone mad from Sorcery. Drawing from dark forces, he called damned Romans to fight for him. And now, in an ancient Church beyond time, he prepared to sacrifice a mystically gifted artist to the goddess Morta. Howart was to be the new Roman emperor, a Caesar to rule over the living and the dead. That would be bad enough, except the Cairith Monstrosity was bound to his will as well. Several tons of undulating gelatinous corpses, standing between the Ziegler Agency and the man they needed to rescue. The Wuxia master sprinted into action, jumping over rows of soldiers and interposing between the Emperor and Christian. If he wanted to kill the artist, he was going to have to defeat her hand-to-hand… Not likely. Meanwhile, Trudy ignored the thousands of black candles, using her journalistic sensibilities to find something awry…and noticed a small box on a pedestal. It seemed to have a piece of flesh floating above it, and she theorized that it was a reliquary, controlling the abomination. If Florence could just shoot the thing… Surviving the Romans was the hardest part! The party could handle itself in a brawl, but these were crack troopers in formation. Between that and the blob bearing down on them, it wasn’t a matter of if they would lose, but when. To make things worse, the emperor tried to dominate Xiao’s mind! Dozens of horrified voices cascaded into her skull, but the Chinese patriot knew Rome was inferior. She fought back with a series of bone-breaking strikes… Florence finally got clear of the retentii, exploding the reliquary with her pistol. The blob attacked the Romans, who tried to stab it back. With the enemies fighting each other, the investigators had a shot at survival. The Emperor decided to take drastic action. If he couldn't sacrifice his captive, he would sacrifice someone more important… Himself! He slit his own throat and fell on the altar, his blood rising towards the ceiling and summoning an angel of death. That got the players panicked. Xiao used some of her healing skill to re-balance Stark’s Chi, allowing him to limp towards the exit. Aldous carried him even further, trying to help him hobble back to the library. The swirling chaos threatened to engulf all the characters, but Florence called upon the emotions that had led her to sell her soul in the first place, confusing the angel long enough for everyone to escape the underworld. Back in Beverly Hills, all the characters had to deal with was a swarm of pissed-off guards and a confused fire captain. Aldous’s stealth and Trudy’s charm let the group weasel out of things; Callahan asked if all the thugs wanted to be held on suspicion of kidnapping and satanism. Uhhhh... Not willing to trust their mob employer, the Ziegler Security Services Team had a quandary. Where could they hide this famous artist where the mob couldn’t get him? Maybe on a remote island in another hemisphere? *Yun had appeared previously, but with that player being out of the campaign for months, we handed the reins to a new player. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Dec 24, 2023 04:15
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Golden Bee posted:Gallery of Souls! by Magnus Seter and Petter Nallo Kisses are a form of chemistry... This week’s thrilling adventure is the 52nd of the year! I’ve never successfully run an annual campaign, so shout out to my players and everyone reading this for keeping the momentum. As usual, we had a Last-minute new player, who brought to life Zahir Al-Adwani! A janitor at the American University in Cairo, he had fooled many people into believing that he was a mathematical prodigy, and not someone who emptied the dustbins. An overwhelmed every-man, he was a great contrast to the arrogant heroes he joined this week, Australian songstress Florence Zee, and inventor-professor-pilot, Winston Callahan. The characters were in the most southern city in the world, Ushuaia Chile, for an academic conference. It was a social minefield, as egotistical intellectuals try to get the better of erudite gossip columnists. Also on the scene was mustachioed midget "Diego", who looked suspiciously like a certain 13-year-old millionaire who didn’t want people bothering her for money. Completely different person though; Diego was a hard-working cabby who didn’t want to speak Spanish because it "felt like a showoff thing to do". The players’ troubles started at the cantina.Outlaw academic Callahan responded some gentle razzing with screamed expletives, getting formally banned from an event he wasn’t even invited to. Zahir tried to show off, and was so impressive he was booked to give a 20-minute lecture on the subject he had only sort of heard about. Meanwhile, Florence tried to play interfere to keep Beatrice the gossip columnist from interrogating Maude Brown’s father, the radio genius. He was terrible at lying, and new details about his daughter's exploits that could bring scandal to the party. (Abandoning her radio show to become a princess in an ancient Roman city in Tunisia and being mind controlled, then throwing her butler down the stairs were among the top no-no’s.) Also an issue was Jennings Petrie, an agitated scientist who was fighting expulsion. Surely Florence could persuade everyone he was a good guy and that all the rumors were false? The rumors weren’t false. The Gold Coast chanteuse worked the venue, discovering Dr. Petrie repeatedly ignored ethical standards and had experimented with something called "cold fire". The question was, how to let a psycho down gently? Meanwhile, Zahir and Winston put their heads together. Winston would write the speech, Zahir would perform it. While Callahan wrote, janitor Zahir snuck around and secured a custodial disguise for the pigheaded professor. The speech was a huge hit! For all his flaws, Winston Callahan was an excellent and clearheaded writer, and Al-Adwani a skilled deceiver. It went so well, that Zahir was able to get Callahan readmitted to the conference. After failing to prep Professor Brown with technically correct deceptions, Florence headed to the bar. Beatrice cut her down with a series of cruel and accurate barbs, yet Florence rose above it. The gossip columnist knew she and Trudy were a certain way… Florence asked, was 'Trice at all curious to see how it worked? In the main hall, everyone wanted to kick out Petrie. He was dangerous and uncouth, as well as unsociable! Unfortunately, the doctor had predicted this outcome, storming into the room prepared to threaten them all. Zahir, used to professorial tantrums, backed his rolling chair into Petrie’s path. A small silver canister slid across the floor, landing at Callahan‘s feet… Now, Callahan has a trouble that hasn’t come up before. In fact, I forgot he had it until just this moment. It’s "I look with my hands." So while the villain was ignominiously defeated, Callahan opened the canister… UNLEASHING COLD FIRE! Thermophilic ice spread across the ceiling, causing the chandelier to buckle and crack. Wallpaper separated from wall, and architecture started to buckle under the suddenly increased weight. Nearby, Trudy Florence and Beatrice were lazily sorting through their clothes. The mood turned to panic when one of Trudy’s stockings froze solid! Once again, Florence found herself fleeing a rendezvous through a hotel window. Down below, Callahan and Zahir told everyone to stay back. They had science to do! They could use electrical wiring and the synthetic fabric of the hotel furniture to reverse the effect, creating a chemical thaw. Everyone assembled cheered as the freezing agent reversed, and the hotel was merely wet instead of collapsing. Wait, did anyone have eyes on Professor Petrie? Zahir used one of his stunts, allowing him to make a notice check as if he was anywhere he had been that adventure. This allowed him to remember where Jennings had parked. TAXI! "Diego" was straightening her mustache on the curb. Callahan jumped behind the wheel, speeding off into traffic. They were behind, and the mad Doctor was on a motorcycle, But the trio had something better. Something to prove! Zahir unfolded the road atlas in the backseat. If they took a shortcut, they could… Petrie had jumped over a rising bridge. But of course Winston Callahan could follow. He was a pilot. Nothing could stop the Outlaw academic. His taxi was a missile, ignoring spilled instant-ice, careening through narrow alleys...They almost caught up as Petrie prepared to ramp his bike onto a getaway boat. Stomping the gas, Callahan brought the car right alongside, and ZAHIR OPENED THE DOOR! Instead of an easy escape, the Madman crotched himself on a pylon. And people think academics are boring. --- In the second part of the adventure, the players were shot down over a mysterious island, escaped*, and reached Rura Tonga. François made a brief cameo; the Canadian outdoorsman never knew how much he would learn to love sunscreen! Everything was relatively hunky-dory, until Devika revealed that there were three spies on the island, and she didn’t know The identity of any of them. Anyone up for some volleyball? *The second part of the adventure is not particularly noticeable. Here’s a warning that’ll save us both a lot of time: it’s super hard to run zombie adventures, especially in Fate, especially in open areas (for example, a cursed island in the South Seas). Players are just too smart and flexible to really make Zeds scary. It can get gory in places… But not thrilling, because it’s so hard to set up social and ethical stakes. Two people got bitten in half by a zombie shark and this sentence is the only mention of it. Thanks for reading! Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Dec 31, 2023 01:25
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Golden Bee posted:Pros and CONFERENCE! The thing about being a goddess: there’s no retirement plan. Our session had tons of players (six, then a seventh briefly who had to go), so it wasn’t rife with incident. instead, we had some laughs and some intense emotional scenes. The group traveled to India to put a stop to the Red Jasmine Cult. On board a train, Devika decided to prank the Westerners by making their meals extra spicy. She didn’t know at the time that the food was already spiked with mystic peppers! — — — The players got to the villain’s lair. Mr. Bingham and Lord Simon were on sneak-around duty. They found a few cult prayer books, but the GM grinned wickedly when he said that the villain’s diary was written in Hindi. Bingen reminded the GM that he possessed a common butler item once per session, and he brought a translation dictionary. The last moment was the heartfelt one. it turned out one of the major players in the cult was Devika’s uncle Goga! He had sold her to the group after her parent’s death, since he was an itinerant alcoholic. Now he seems to have cleaned up his act and attained great mystical power. Everyone was raring mad, eager to kill him, especially Lala Santinella, Devika’s adopted mother. Everyone except Devika, who got him alone and poured her heart out about how she missed him. She had observed plenty of broken homes. Love wouldn’t have bridged the gap. The cult may have left her tremendously bored and stifled her education, but there was food, shelter and respect, more than most kids got in 1934. Goga’s mystical powers were ineffective. His evil plan to turn her into a living goddess, conquering Asia and then the world, couldn’t stand up to a breathtaking guilt trip. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Jan 8, 2024 03:22
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Golden Bee posted:Translation TERROR! On a mutated island, who can tell friend from foe? Another action-packed adventure! We’re back on Rurotonga. Lawyer/Boxer Tacito, Florence, Penny and Aldous are our heroes this week. quote:Natives fishing in waters far to the north of Rura-Tonga spot a disturbing species of fish and race back to the island to tell their chief. Lautoka fears if the heroes don’t find some evidence of the Instead of a blow-by-blow description, I’m just going to focus on a few of the NPCs, the problems they presented, and how the players dealt with them. Chief Latouka: His daughter was recently rescued, by three men from a nearby island. (it was a take on the Legend of the Magic Pomegranate.) Knowing that Tacito Velasco was a great lawyer, he challenged him to solve the riddle… Tacito took credit for the group’s consensus (the youngest brother was the right one). “Curd” Slocum: The island’s only Appalachian and moonshiner. Accusatory and easily outfoxed. Beating him at poker inspired Penny to give to her gambling fixation, which was only a problem which she won the majority of money on the island. People were pissed. Devika and Trudy: The plane the characters needed, Professor Callahan’s, only fit five people. Devi and Trudy both argued that they should be the +1. After selecting Devika, the girl responded to most of the island's perils by saying “you know who loves mutated boar-men? Trudy.” The giant "Fish": The players went to examine it but fled from a nearby Japanese submarine. The damage led to a "minor" plane crash. The giant Snakeipede: This was an actual monster, the size of three connected school buses. The players snuck around it (with Aldous’s butlerly shushing a major asset). Finding themselves outnumbered at a Japanese missile base, they eventually lured it over by setting fire to the ammo dump. Mutated boar-men: The players wisely hid from these guys. The Drunk British Sailor Imprisoned by the Japanese: Florence promised to save him only if he went to sleep until things were safe. The plan worked! Admiral Saeki: Penny’s plan to set fire to the base's kitchen went perfectly well… Until she ran into her best friend’s father, the base commander. She schmoozed him, Then fled when one of his soldiers recovered the plane's passenger manifest, Which completely contradicted her story that she had been in a single-passenger crash on the island*. He later lured the players into a standoff. He complimented Florence’s album, And was going to douse Tacito and Penny with nerve gas… Until the Jaguar-Spirited Abagado kicked down a 5" steel door. Saeki surrendered and fled. *She had filled it in, accurately, as former a Hotel Lifeguard. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 04:49
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Golden Bee posted:Rockets Of The Red Sun! by Peter Schweighofer When we last left off, the players were met by a mysterious voice. Having refused the three trials of the Ascension, the group felt pretty confident that the Red Jasmine cult was weakened in Nepal. Things were complicated by the arrival of the warrior RAVA. She had a flaming sword and demanded to take the trials herself. To emphasize her point, she cut a magic hole in reality, replacing Lala Santinella and Lord Simon with two party acquaintances. (Convenient since we had new players: Thaza O’Rourke, a cat burglar raised by apes, and Sidney Rosenthal, a second-grade teacher who moonlights as the mysterious masked wrestler THE ORCA! Thaza was a rival of Devika and a huge fan of Florence Zee. Sid read Trudy’s articles whenever he could, and he knew Devika from storytime at the New York Public Library.) The group readied for battle, but RAVA disappeared when Mr. Rosenthal took off her blindfold. Weird. Trudy’s contacts (along with some disturbing dreams) pointed the group to Devika’s hometown of Hyderabad. There, Thaza argued that they should use Trudy Truman as bait. Florence loudly disagreed. Meanwhile, Trudy wandered off and got kidnapped. Long story short, everyone who entered the shadow portal ended up being cloned! It took the combined efforts of Thaza and Sidney to take on the Trudy mob. Just before the group could rescue Lord Simon and Lala, someone dragged a flaming sword across the ground… RAVA was easier than a half dozen Trudy’s, since the group was able to assemble and take her on 5v1. But instead of surrendering, she sacrificed herself to demonic powers! The group had an argument: by persuading her uncle and “defeating” RAVA, didn’t that mean Devika had already completed two of the trials, the third of which would make her an evil Goddess? “Fine, you adults do it, I don’t care.” The thirteen-year-old pulled out a copy of Vogue. There was a brief detour as Mr. Rosenthal did what so a few others in the party could do: stand up to the teen millionaire. He said that while it was important to listen to her, she needed structure, which she wasn’t getting from her movie star mom or crooked father. Devika told the 6 foot 10 teacher that he should watch out before someone stole his golden goose and cut his beanstalk. Unfortunately, the 3rd trial was a portal demon! All the adults were sent into fits by its gaze. Devika, not wanting to show everyone up, blocked its vision and proposed a better solution: dynamite. As the richest girl in India, and someone who had sent a lot of money back, it was easily accomplished. Florence pulled permits. Devi and Trudy bought wheelbarrows of top-tier blasting materials. Sydney used his knowledge of architecture to plant everything… KABLAMMO! The ancient temple was leveled. All except for an untouched bookshelf filled with skin-bound volumes. Probably not a big deal.
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Jan 22, 2024 06:13
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Golden Bee posted:Translation Terror: Part Two! A slow-moving disaster of two mismatched hearts. New York City. It was a morning for ill-fated nuptials. Lord Simon and Lala Santinella were set to be wed, despite the former’s homosexuality and the latter’s indifference. Also on hand was their separately adopted daughter Devika, Lala’s ex Penny An’Te, And reliable butler Aldous Bingen. Adding to the tumult was the fact that this was an interfaith wedding in 1935. Simon’s family was Jewish, the Santinellas were Italian. So there was both a Rabbi and a priest, who felt the need to organize the activities and ask personal questions about faith and children. Gambler Penny ran a betting pool on just who would interrupt the wedding. This was the most emotional of our adventures in this multi-year campaign. Lala implied marriage was to protect Devika and her assets, which the millionaire found baffling. She was much more supportive of Simon… This was just another con job, and if they muddled up the wedding contract, none of this hooplah mattered. Meanwhile, Aldous second-guessed all of the venue’s decisions, and knowing the general vibe, let in a mysterious millionaire stranger. The aristocrat offered a motorcycle as a wedding present. It was sleek and futuristic. Lala privately provoked Penny with declarations of love. Devi used her training as a fashion model to buy Simon time during the photo shoot. The contract was voided...Everything was clear for the rooftop wedding! This turned out to be a problem, because nobody interrupted the ceremony. Both the priest and the rabbi asked if anyone had any objections… And no one did. Until finally, luckily, there was a smoke bomb! The Grey Gargoyle arrived, accusing Simon as an accessory to murder! Phew! But things grew complicated as Simon’s mother ran between her son and the vigilante. Her love for her son countered his Gargoyle Gaze long enough for the crowd to be evacuated. Then, the teen millionaire/model/bridesmaid grabbed the Gargoyle’s glare. “This is completely unfair, you have to let me into the Century Club!” Yes, Devika knew the secret identity of the crimefighter: millionaire playboy Gregory Leslie Goyle! As a trained mystic, he was able to counter her mental assault. They were locked in a battle for control as Lala stood up for her fiancé. Maybe Simon was a criminal, but Goyle’s absence of proof was equally gauche*. Interrupting a wedding to try an extrajudicial arrest? Shame on him! Devika grabbed one of the smoke bombs from the Grey’s utility belt during the lambasting. She threw a pellet down so Penny could knock the interloper off the rooftop. He activated his gliding cape, vowing to return. The reception was awkward. Lala announced that the wedding was going to be delayed due to the circumstances…and partygoers fell asleep! Worse, the interloper millionaire had swapped out the wedding cake with one containing a machine gun-toting robot! But this fauntleroy hadn’t studied under the temple bells of Neban. When Devika found him in the kitchen, his mind was no match for hers! Aldous quickly threw the remote control device in a pot of boiling water, ending the electronic threat. With the latest villain subdued, the party was ready for an interrogation and a monologue. Unfortunately, Lala decided to menace him with a butcher knife, sending Devika into hysterics. She ran off to the walk-in freezer. Simon went to check on her. Her teary monologue went as follows: this whole wedding was based on a series of poor decisions that started with her picking Lala as her mother. Devi was crushed by her parents' death, and while she appreciated the worship of the Red Jasmine Cult, it was an environment free of love and nurture. Lala has been really really nice, so Devika just took her on as a mother. Tempted with someone rich and needy, what else was a broke Italian stuntwoman to do? The gentleman thief told his sidekick that she was the only girl he needed in his life. He didn’t need her money, she should give it to charity if she felt bad. This was his fault, and it was handled. Now couldn’t they enjoy the party? Meanwhile, the rest of the group discovered their nemesis’s motives: he was a war profiteer that they had unintentionally foiled repeatedly. Penny said she hoped he had good lawyers, because he’d be facing 100 counts of attempted murder! The group woke up the draughted guests and started the party. Simon made sure to connect with his old boyfriend Max. Devi was coaxed away from her gal pals by Lala, but the damage was done. She didn’t want a mom who blamed her for her own bad decisions and threatened tied-up people with knives. Despite Penny’s efforts, Lala fled, ashamed, into the night. *Goyle observed the killing in the very second episode of this campaign! Simon and Devika distracted while sniper/wedding photographer Javid Kulfi assassinated gangster King Solomon! Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Jan 29, 2024 05:53
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Golden Bee posted:Kiss Kiss, Ratatatat! It started as a gimmick and sent men to their graves. Atlantic City: a Saturday in April, 1935. The weather's gone from lamb shower to deluge, and Pandora Moulin is pissed. She was promised the nightclub singer/detective, and in front of her were two teenage girls, an elementary school teacher, a lifeguard and a lawyer. It didn’t interest her that the teenage girls were mystic Devika Velyapur and her tomboy bestie, Ava Astor; that the teacher was secretly masked wrestler The Orca; that the lifeguard was premiere gambler Penny An’Te; or that the lawyer was Brujo-trained spirit boxer Tacito Uriel Velasco! Still, they had a job to do: secure the mythical Pandora’s Box, so it could be displayed at the nightclub and bring in crowds. Unfortunately, the box had been stolen from the manager’s office, and the manager had disappeared. Also, the mob was involved. Thus began a tremendous comedy of errors. Devika, when asked to detect the box, had turned red instead of purple, then passed out in her soup. When consulted, Professor Callahan insisted that he would love to figure the box out, and of course that would involve opening it. Tacito helpfully reminded the group that the mythical Pandora’s box was a vase… So this was just a box that unleashed terrific monsters that either chewed people out of reality or slew them in gory ways. The group was in over their head learning Syndicate politics. But mooks and buttonmen were no match for a boxer, a wrestler, and a pistolero. The path of magic destruction led to a shindig at the Seekers of Eternal Knowledge lodge. Unfortunately, one of the members was the Orca’s nemesis, MAN MOUNTAIN DEAN! 350 pounds of wrestler stuffed into a tuxedo, he was a formidable threat. Also a threat? The fact that the box thief, Leo Carpozi, was one of Tacito’s former clients. A social/magic threat was the head of the order, Klaus Sourfeld. With Penny’s semi-intentional help, he and the rest of the club set up betting lines: how many seconds from when Leo opened the box until its contents destroyed him? Tacito refused to let a former and future client be devoured by monstrosities! He slid past the room’s mystic barriers and slapped the box out of Leo’s hands! The Orca also tried to jump down, with much less success, with one of his feet going straight through the wooden floor. DEAN told Penny there was nothing he liked less than crooked promoters; she fled over the railing, and landed on Orca. Oops! The cult decided to use the stairs, except for DEAN, who decided to do his finisher: a flying splash called THE MOUNTAIN SLIDE! It dislocated Penny’s arm, and annoyed the Orca. The party was in a powerless position, but never count out Tacito Velasco, The Jade Jaguar! He reminded MAN MOUNTAIN DEAN that he had helped the continental champion beat racketeering charges. How about a quid pro quo? DEAN, having defeated the Orca, left agreeably. Then there was the matter of the cult. Klaus was about to stab Leo with a jagged knife. Instead, Tacito jumped off a wall, smashing the Seeker of Wisdom with an overhand right. Two enemies defeated in one round! Although they only had five working arms, the group played keep-away with the box until Tacito could mop up the rest. But how to get rid of this cursed artifact? Well, there was always new construction going on… time to put it in concrete. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Feb 5, 2024 22:22
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Golden Bee posted:Pandora’s Box by Glyn White! Thousands of years of history… And blood by the bucket. The sturmbahnführer held Professor Hamilton at gunpoint. With a sneer, he demanded the party tell him everything about their mission… Or their egghead pal would be thinking lead. And to show he was serious, he cocked back to the hammer. Captain Semya Ivanova snorted derisively. "Men who pull back the hammer are gutless. You’ve saved a fraction of a second for a projectile that can move 2735 km an hour. Here’s what’s going to happen: Your Nazi goons are going to run away. I’m going to drag you back to Nukeograd Syet^. There, great Soviet scientists will keep you in an experimental state between life and death, while your fraying mind tries to think something other than 'pain pain pain'." The Anwärters fled first. The sturmbahnführer kept a brave face a second longer, before fleeing too. He earned a lash across the back, a reminder not to cross the Russian. *** Devika's player, on a whim, decided to switch to another character, Captain Ivanova. Imagine a mix of Indiana Jones, the Continental Op, and Alexandra Kollontai. She wasn't alone, though; she was joined by songbird Florence Zee, the gentleman thief Lord Simon, and two arrogant mechanical Fly-boys, Raymond “Jonesy” Jones and Prof Winston Callahan. (It’s quite a coincidence, because Jonesy's player comes by only rarely, and the professor was first invented to replace Jonesy!) Let's start at the start. Professor Hamilton Dickinson was a colleague of Calla’s, and had dedicated decades to studying the Templars. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been subtle about it, and was robbed by a sword-wielding lunatic on a motorcycle. And of course, the Reich wanted whatever treasures the 13th century Order had been holding onto. What Ivanova was to overland travel and intimidation, the professor was to clue-solving. Latin abounded at every step of the adventure, from DC, to Egypt, from rural France to Iceland. Meanwhile, Florence used her charm to prevent one ambush (Using her Cairo contacts to run an endgame around a traitorous Bedouin), and stopped another when she convinced a Bloodthirsty Templar of the group's honorable intentions. Our most thrilling encounter was in a remote Egyptian Temple. The prof’s curiosity accidentally awakened the Temple guardian, a giant clockwork snake covered in spikes. Florence distracted it, and Lord Simon was able to place a gem in its empty eye-socket, sending the beast back into torpor. Once the group looted the treasure room, Nazi saboteurs made themselves known. They wanted the map to the next location...or else. Semya stared down the platoon of Nazi soldiers. She held her torch next to the map, and said she would only trade it for the Gem Eye of the Serpent. The Nazis, intimidated, agreed. The creature immediately awoke. Needless to say, that fight was truncated. ^Science City Seven, dear reader! Ivanova's hometown! Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 06:20
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Golden Bee posted:Treasure of the Templars! by Paul "Wiggy" Wade-Williams I didn’t run this adventure, but got a chance to read it afterwards. As written, it has the same problems as P "W" W-W's sky pirate one. Many, many, many fight scenes, plus chases and puzzles that have to end with player success. If you run Treasure of the Templars, you can truncate almost all of DC by having Dickinson give the players the clues (instead of going to his house, going to the auction, having a fight scene, and making sure that the auction prize is smashed open). You can also skip the plane crash, because it feels weird and railroaded. Our GM Had us land in Cairo, gear up for the expedition and follow some rumors into the desert. The final ice genies can also be skipped, because it's right before the climax.
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Feb 12, 2024 06:22
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Golden Bee posted:Treasure of the Templars! by Paul "Wiggy" Wade-Williams A city under siege, with pride on the line. Buenos Aires, 1925. We see Bingen. as we’ve never seen him before. Long curly hair, athletic wear, but most surprisingly, drenched in sweat. Aldous aka "Bee-Sting" is training for Pan-American glory… But can’t outrun his teammate, "All-Star" Ozzy Ojeda. Coach Pirozzi encourages him, But has a dark look on his face… Aldous asks what’s wrong. Pirozzi tells him those radical meetings aren’t safe anymore, take these tickets and bring your sister to America. Tonight. — Santa Monica. 1935. Poker night! Jonesy and his crooked dealing has flummoxed reporter Trudy Truman, Shutterbug/sniper Javid Kulfi, and educator/secret professional wrestler Sidney Rosenthal. Aldous, cleaning up, turns over a copy of the Times, and nearly drops it in shock. On the front page of the world section is his old coach, but with the new title: General. The headline’s just as startling. ‘Leader of Buenos Aires declares autonomous fascist zone!’ Off to Argentina! The city bureaucracy was an enemy to the players. Even landing at the foggy airport was an ordeal. Luckily, the players knew someone with a spare hanger… Unluckily, it was Mack Silver, Jonesy’s number-one frenemy. From there, they had to find the general’s plot and counteract it. Zara Bloom of the NYT had a lead: The general was using motor couriers to discreetly command his forces. Two were about to leave soon, one in the city, the other through the countryside… Which meant splitting up the group. Aldous was the driver for the city. The ambitious Jonesy used his private plane, the Vivian Leigh, with the Afghan gunner-photog in the second seat. They easily caught up to the motorcyclist, but that was only half an answer: He could duck into the underbrush, but they couldn’t. He fled into a nearby village and got off his bike, which required Jonesy to land the plane… Aldous is a fabulous driver, as he proved while navigating a flash-frozen Chicago back in the "Storm of the Century". Unfortunately, his decorum cost him here. His quarry zigzagged through a street market while the butler was forced to take the long round. Trudy devised a faster route, and they cut the biker off in a seedy alley. Orca picked up the guy and shook him. Out in the hinterlands, the driver was a bit more canny. He threw his documents in a water trough and told his pursuers that he didn’t speak any English. Quick thinking Jonesy bribed the village’s bilingual citizen to translate. Plans acquired. Fearing police retaliation, the party fled into the city’s catacombs. There, they got lost (‘It’s hard to memorize a dank warren’ argued Aldous) until they stumbled upon a local smuggler…"All Star" Ozzy Ojeda?! In pulp stories, this is where the group would join up with an old teammate. Unfortunately, the players were ceaselessly rude. Back at Ozzy’s place, a fastidious Javid demanded to use the shower. Jonesy tried to run a scam, Bingen refused a re-race, and Trudy told the criminal that she was in the city as a reporter. All were tossed out on their ear. Still, the players had the motorcyclist’s info. General Pirozzi had a plan for the city’s 10,000 homeless people… Forced labor to entrench the city against presidential forces. The group hurried to the city’s largest encampment. Mr. Rosenthal reached out to a local kid (an eight-year-old who said his name was "lord fartmaster") And used the gossip pipeline to warn everyone quickly. Not quickly enough though… smoke floated up the other end of the favela. "FUEGO!" Someone shouted. Out of the smoke stepped a group of soldiers led by…EL PRINCIPE DEL INFIERNO. Yes, a luchador named "the prince of hell". Orca put on his mask and faced the prince in battle. The luchador threw the Orca a chair… when he caught it, did a spinning kick into his face. Elsewhere, Javid opened fire. Fascists fell into the mud with each report of his rifle. Bingen, the patriot, organized a bucket brigade, demanding the fleeing indigents stand up for themselves. In the confusion, Trudy was grabbed by a goon squad, but freed by Raymond ‘Jonesy’ Jones’s automotive heroics. The wrestlers fought back-and-forth, until the Orca picked up his opponent… And suplexed him into a burning pool of oil! When the smoke and debris cleared, the prince of hell was gone. Trudy knew how to fight back against the tyrannical government… In the press. After the news broke, Pirozzi went into damage control mode, throwing a party for the visiting president… And of course, the group scored an invite. At the party, Aldous’s Hollywood expertise paid off. He was able to read between the lines of his former coach’s pronouncements…Pirozzi was trapped, flailing, and would abdicate if given a graceful option. Meanwhile, the group noticed a very particular guest… Visiting royalty, in fact. From hell. Jonesy, looking to make a quick buck, decided to set up a fight between Javid and the prince. ("Of course he’s a tyrant, he’s a monarchist!"). This idiocy would’ve certainly led to a death, until Aldous unveiled his plan… Using ketchup to fake an assassination attempt! Pirozzi exited public life, and the group got away without being detected. All that was left was the extra fees at the hanger. And the mob boss said disrespected. Probably nothing. BACK TO SANTA MONICA! Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Feb 19, 2024 08:18
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Last Time: Golden Bee posted:It's not me, it's COUP! Captain Walker posted:Oh, the luchador from earlier in the adventure! Not an actual literal devil prince. I would have raised an eyebrow at that but not much more. Your crew gets up to enough nonsense on the surface of the earth that I'd figure As Below, So Further Below! was just another thing I missed Glazius posted:This is probably the original adventure talking, but IIRC an Academics-leaning character starts out with a bunch of languages and can stunt for more or even infinity, letting you rotate clues a whole bunch without keeping them out of their strike zone. I always forget exactly what engine you're running this is, if it's original Spirit of the Century or just a regular Fate drift that checks most of the same boxes. Also: these adventure summaries aren’t one-to-one who did what when; lines and actions are transposed to present an image of an adventure group where everyone always has a perfect amount of spotlight. With that explained, please enjoy: The girls from Brazil! If looks could kill...they would. “ I’m sorry, this area is uniform only.” The call girls laughed, taking a hat from each guard. The nazi dupes opened the door and left to find refreshments. *** “My supposition: Igor took your superbike to Brazil.” Captain Semya Ivanova supported her argument by pointing out the tire tracks outside the garage and the Portuguese language guide buried under an old carburetor. Penny An’Te corrected her: it wasn’t her bike, it was the one her ex Lala Santinella left her! Florence, who realized her trip to Science City Seven was going to be a bust, suggested the trio get to the airport. As the group flew into Rio de Janeiro, they could see the bike keeping pace…at hundreds of miles per hour over the open ocean! But where was it headed? The girls learned the score from the local communist cell. The Nazis had a base in the jungle, impossible to raid. That’s where the bike was. Florence teased the Russian explorer about her boots, when a lightbulb appeared: their group was three beautiful women. They didn’t need to raid the base, the guards would let them in. And so, a lot of flirting later, the “callgirls” were able to steal back the bike. Unfortunately, the ensuing chase ended up with an enemy rocket bike exploding against a pole in downtown Rio, but that’s life in the fast lane. The Brazil base’s shipping manifests led back to Germany. More disguises! But when they got to the base’s address, it was in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. Two houses with a patch of dirt between...no base. It’s worth noting here the party was not skilled in science, burglary, infiltration, or even very good at driving. Which makes it even more impressive that the group was able to slip past a father and daughter in their backyard, infiltrate the base (via basement tunnel), and get to the mad invention without getting caught. The invention was a new superzeppelin, designed with the motorcycle’s engine as base. The Reich had learned from its last mistakes; the facility was extremely fireproof. Collapsing iron hatches assured that any saboteurs would go down in flames. A tricky spot. Semya, devout communist and nazi hater, went through the personnel files, and learned that the plant’s manager wasn’t in. She called his home number and demanded he get to work! Pissed to be yelled at by an anonymous woman, he said that he’d bring every factory worker that would pick up the phone. Less than ideal for a sneaking mission... Florence grabbed some accelerants, including gas and rags, and set them up near the zepp’s weak point. Penny, pistolero, measured the angles. Unfortunately, there was no way to hit the zeppelin and be on the safe side of the blast doors… Unless she hit a trick shot. And when she shot, sneak-time was over. The ladies gathered beyond the door, holding their breath as Penny aimed for a ricochet. It missed the zeppelin but hit the gascan. Penny fired again, and a wave of force knocked the women backward. The capital began to shake as the girls made it to their escape vehicle…Just as Penny noticed the father and daughter, kicking a soccer ball obliviously! Captain Ivanova rolled her eyes as the Hawaiian lifeguard dove to get the citizens out of the blast radius. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Feb 26, 2024 05:56
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Golden Bee posted:The girls from Brazil! Teenager, mentalist, millionaire… lazybones?! Devika Velyapur refused to attend Lord Matthew’s annual black-and-white bash, simply because she was unconscious and poisoned. This wasn’t what stuntwoman Lala Santinella needed. She was at the end of her rope after her failed wedding, And had come to apologize to her adoptive daughter, only to find her unresponsive due to a paralytic neck dart! Complicating matters were her ex (but not her former fiancé) Penny An’Te, Hawaiian gambling queen…and Lord Simon, Devika’s adoptive parent the girl actually liked! Unfortunately, the best place for safe medical care and Manhattan was the Century Club! The group had made many enemies among the elite adventurers of the CC… And none of the trio were particularly charming. They hastily recruited Florence Zee, who probably would’ve preferred performing at the black-and-white party… And with the help of Gertie An’Te and Bebe Broussard, convinced crimefighter Gregory Goyle to house and care for the comatose desi. Luckily, Lord Simon made himself scarce; Goyle still wanted him and irons for the assassination attempt on " King Solomon" all the way back in "Park Slope Snipe Hunt!" The group followed their lead, a thin gold coin Devika had clutched in her palm, to the NYC Natural History Museum. Simon felt a pang of guilt. It was this museum that he, Javid and Devika had robbed together that had set her down a path of "relic acquisition." The group found a relevant historian, Walter W. Chenoweth, and told him a much simpler story about the source of the coin and poison. quote:He gestured with his glasses, explaining that "It was all simple really...", when his left frame was shattered by a blow dart. In the doorway of his office was a real-life Aztec warrior! The group gave chase. Lala was fast on her feet, Penny understood the criminal mind, and Florence was able to deal with the packed crowds. (At least somewhat well; when asked by a nun for a donation, the Aussie gave her entire purse!) But it was Lord Simon’s knowledge of museum security that helped the most… He was able to clandestinely trace the invader to the basement. Unfortunately, Lala found the crate the Aztec was hiding in… and with her pistol, put an air-hole into his forehead. *** After the initial shock, art thief Simon solved two problems at once. He found the crate the Aztec was shipped in… and changed the purchase order so the corpse would be returned to sender. Not only that, but the group knew the logistical core of their enemy… A little warehouse in the Bayou. Hopefully the volatile Italian stuntwoman remembered how to fly a DC-3… After a brief consult With Marie Laveau, the players had a full picture. The coin wasn’t a unit of currency… It was a mystical focus from the deadly spider cult of Tzmitze! And if they wanted a cure for the poison, they needed venom direct from the spider Goddess. Simon snuck into the cult’s warehouse, raided the filing cabinets, and found a web of addresses that crossed the entire southern United States and Mexico*. The center of the web? A temple in the jungles of the Yucatán! Penny hit the tables in New Orleans, Racing the clock to afford the group’s most desired piece of equipment…a gasoline-powered, top-of-the-line Stihl chainsaw. The group picked up the trail in Mérida. Florence’s contacts among the ranchero-set helped the group pick up the trail… With their guide noting it was weird to see so many foreigners lately. The trip was a multi-day trek up the river and into the unmapped wilds. Despite the natural beauty, the trip was mostly quiet, interrupted only by sarcastic questions from Devika’s tag-along teenage pal Ava Astor. Ava was rude, and unlike Devi, was to fascinated every time Lala engaged in the old ultraviolence. Who knew how many jaguar-dressed men they could make history of? *** The territory of Tzmitze wasn’t subtle. Rocky outcroppings were blocked with walls of webs. Torch and chainsaw helped to get through, but woke up the local spider population, from ones the smaller than nickels to speedy red ones the size of dobermans. It took every bit of Lala’s athletic talent to get the team through without deadly bites, and they were making great time… Until they reached a white bridge over a chasm. Wait a minute, that wasn’t rope… It was spider silk! The players fled through the smoke and flame, waiting until their enemies were on (and below) the bridge… Then chopped it to pieces with the Stihl! A short time later, the players emerged into an ancient Aztec city. There were murmurs of activity all over… Apparently a sacrifice, a white woman. It couldn’t be…it was. Trudy Truman, Florence’s “roommate” And international reporter extraordinaire! Simon snuck to the rescue. Florence used her observational skills to direct traffic, and Lala took out the warriors with her electric-axe. Ferocity and home-field advantage were nothing against a chainsaw. When the priest died (due to Penny’s persistent bullets), there was a rumble from the central pyramid… And slowly, from the center, emerged an arachnid the size of a semi-trailer! Lala was able to distract the thing, barely, but her chainsaw barely scratched its hide. And a splash of its venom sent Penny into a psychotropic freakout! Simon took charge, asking how much gas the chainsaw had. Turns out… A lot. Florence tricked the creature back into the pyramid, where jerry cans of fuel combined with ancient braziers. The spider cult had outlasted Pancho Villa and the conquistadors, but nothing could beat a five-gallon Molotov cocktail. *** Back in New York, Dr. Herbert W flicked his glowing syringe. Penny and Devi were brought conclusively back to the land of the living. What followed was a lot of heartfelt admiration and scolding, with Devika explaining how she wanted to prove her independence and take down a “relatively minor” cult. She gave Florence a present (a stuffed kangaroo with a hobo bindle) and asked for some privacy… After all that time in a coma, she could really use some sleep. In the hallway, Lala stopped the Grey Gargoyle. She was looking for a job to keep her in town… And he told her that he had a brilliant idea. He needed someone willing to take on “glamorous” crime… in the new Gargoyle radio show! *In the initial adventure this had a fight scene, which I intended to cut… But the players also snuck their way past a fanboat chase! Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Mar 4, 2024 18:45
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Golden Bee posted:Web Of The Spider Cult! by Paul "Wiggy" Wade-Williams But the GM had a migraine, which caused a cascade of players leaving. With two hours left of the four-hour session, the remaining players were Kulfi and Wilcox. So enjoy… The Doom of the Lost Library! by Peter Schweighofer. The city was lost… But lost is different than abandoned… The author and photographer were relaxing in beautiful Ruratonga. It was too relaxed, in fact…Querida’s publicist Dolores kept pointing out their “work” for Ziegler Security Services was going to put them behind schedule. Luckily, a new client arrived on the supply boat! Yale orientalist professor Carter Dudley needed help traveling to an abandoned island. According to legend, it was settled by an Indian fleet long ago, but was destroyed in the squabble between Kali and Ganesha worshipers. Miss Wilcox took the gig and flew the group to the island. It wasn’t until they landed that she discovered sneak-thief Lord Simon, napping on the seaplane’s supplies. More importantly...It turned out the rumors were true! The overgrown jungle concealed an ancient city, with two temples visible from the air. Shortly after they landed in the central lagoon, horrifying ape-men ambushed the party! But apes were no match for the blue-collar brawler and the Afghan militiaman. Unluckily, the Ganesha temple’s guardians were mightier. Lord Simon accidentally activated and distracted the stone guardians, with Carter Dudley chasing after. The writer and the photog braved the inspiring temple, carved out of a giant cave with care. Trapped with care, too. Cunning and experience help them avoid a seesaw hallway and crumbling stairs. A disregard for tradition and curses allowed them to loot several historical artifacts. Querida explained that they weren’t stealing… They were furnishing proof that this place even existed. Smart. The greatest treasure was a 3-foot-long piece of embroidered ivory. “Ganesha’s Tusk”, explained Javid. Dolores sighed. Carter Dudley appeared when they reached the temple’s library… Just in time to steal a sacred book and cause a cave-in! The group easily guessed his destination: the Kali temple! Unfortunately the Yalie had a massive lead, and they didn’t have a way to catch up… Until Querida decided to lasso and ride an elephant! They arrived at the Central Lagoon just in time to see Carter Dudley steal their seaplane… And putter it slowly the other half of the lagoon. The group would’ve swam for it… Except the water was filled with sharks! Sharks that were willing to eat aggressive, evil ape men, turns out. The group was forced to leave the elephants behind, and trudged through more of the ruined city. Lord Simon helped them sneak into the crumbled side of the Kali temple… But Carter’s third eye had opened, and they were discovered before they could get a shot off! Querida Wilcox was an expert at fighting outnumbered. As the apes climbed at her, she stomped the fastest in the eye, sending him onto his fellows. The crack of broken spines reverberated through the temple, which seemed to glow in satisfaction. Javid shuffled backward, using his pistol deftly. Kali may have created these monsters, but she didn’t prepare them for Nagant. Too bad fighting the British didn’t prepare Javid for mystic attack! Professor Dudley snickered as he emerged from a secret passage, his eyes purple. He called upon the goddess to paralyze the man, and the Afghan felt his arms and legs lock in place! Luckily, Dolores and Simon had been carrying around the massive Tusk. Simon tried to make the stiff Javid carry it… Which cured the paralysis magic completely! But this sent the tusk tumbling to the floor, where the apemen were able to grab it. Freed of malicious intent, they carried it back into the jungle out of sheer curiosity, with Lord Simon chasing after them and yelling. “Hey! We stole that first!” The sorcerous New Havenite whirled on his opponents. This was academically dishonest, a complete violation of their escort contract, and heresy! His blood magic would’ve made a mind-slave of Querida… But her brain was rescued when publicist Dolores demanded she snap out of it and stick to the schedule! Despite a small amount of boxing training, Carter Dudley was ill-prepared for the blue-collar brawler and ex militia sniper. His wounds turned into purple vortexes of energy. The Temple rumbled. In a moment of desperation, Querida lassoed his stolen tome… And threw the book at him, literally! Kali took her toll from the academic, his blood snaking through the air and splattering all over her statue. His bones rattled to the ground… And the group fled for their lives! Although Querida rolled her ankle, everyone escaped before the temple collapsed even more. Now all they needed to do was steal back a mystic artifact from a group of monkeys. And hopefully no one saw them leave with Carter... Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Mar 11, 2024 05:45
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Golden Bee posted:The Doom of the Lost Library! by Peter Schweighofer. Fifth Avenue seen through a sniper’s scope! May 1935. Raucous applause in the Cotton Club. Madame Valeria, formerly Valerie Schmidt, gave her all to introducing one of tonight’s stars, Florence Ziegler. The Australian songbird was competing with Bebe Broussard in a “friendly” competition. Soon, the applause-o-meter was exactly tied, a tie broken by the late arrival of some rowdy staffers from the Australian embassy. They, along with music agent Bert “the Beast” Wilde had messages for Florence… But someone else was sending a message, too. By burning down Ziegler Security Services! Luckily, butler extraordinaire Aldous Bingen was on hand to rush the team to Fifth Avenue, where the smoldering clues led to a hobo camp in Central Park*. At first, there was no sign of an arsonist. But Madame Valeria had a talent besides theatrical introductions… Speaking with the dead! It turns out, their arsonist was also a killer, and not just any killer…But ZSS’s foe Peck, the Swan Street Slicer. And he was ready to slash the party to pieces, cutting Florence and terrifying Bingen. Luckily, the players had an ace in the hole: photographer/gunman Javid Kulfi! He found secret passages through the man camp, and was able to wound the killer in the kneecaps and the stabbing arm. A brief interrogation followed. The miscreant was hired by America’s richest man, Doc Midas, whose office was the top two floors of the Empire State Building. The town wasn’t big enough for Doc and Florence, but a coffin would be the right size. Additional questions were silenced by a sniper! Peck took one right through the eye, and more shots followed. Valeira panicked, fleeing the hobo camp into open ground, getting a hole in the rib cage for her trouble. She faked death. Aldous helped the rest sneak to safety, rescuing Valeria under the cover of Emergency Services. The group regrouped. How could they hope to take on the Midas organization? He was beloved, wealthy, and surrounded by corporate titans. The question was answered with good old detective work. Midas was aided by his Fearsome Four, and they were arrogant enough to be featured in Forbes. I’ll give the summaries below: Pulse Pounding Pulp! posted:“Happy” Herman Haas, war vet and sniper. A dour man who wears elaborate suits and has a passion for fencing. Hap represents Midas Industries as its main White House lobbyist. Gobbler Gottlieb was a victim of his own ego. The players had friends and family call him at all hours of day and night, promising prestigious events and canceling, or rebooking. A scheme that could only work a few days, but that’s how long it needed to. For Todd, they tried a legal option. Madame Valeria took a boat onto the East River, searching for and recovering a disappeared body. Todd fought back by clobbering Javid outside of the club. But the bruiser overplayed his hand. Indian millionaire Devika bribed his secretary to turn state’s evidence, and the next day, the bruiser had to trade French cuffs for handcuffs. Happy was easier. The players snuck into his apartment and faked an urgent telegram from Washington. Aldous chuckled from a nearby shoeshine booth as the mark headed up to the nation’s capital. Florence tried the personal touch with Esther Crane. Flo found her prey belittling a sales girl at the Macy’s beauty counter. Florence argued from naked self-interest: did Crane really want a scandal she couldn’t 'cover up'? The argument was half convincing…but not fully. Luckily, Florence moves indirectly. She riled up the shopgirl under her breath. Esther continued berating. When the 17-year-old slapped the cosmetics giant in the face… SCANDAL! Crane swore she’d fire everyone in the store, everyone on the block! Florence took the raging chemist outside, leading her to a taxi...and telling the driver ‘pronto to Poughkeepsie’. The next day, the gang pored over newspapers. Their tricks had worked. The only wrinkle was the front page of the Tribune, reporting that a Nazi zeppelin had docked at the Empire State Building! The party loaded itself for bear. It was easy enough for Madame Valeria to lie them into the building. But she was the only master of disguise: the others would be found out soon enough. Another complication arose when she got into Midas’s office… and heard the loud flapping of an oxygen machine! Midas’s alchemical innovation, the one who wanted to sell to the Reich, had given him terminal cancer. Worse, Florence’s nemesis, Klaus Adler, was sitting in the buyer’s chair! But only a fool would count out our gang when their back’s up against it. Selling chemical weapons to foreign powers? The response wasn’t gunfire, but journalism! Florence and Valeria stole janitor disguises so they could break into filing cabinets. Javid and Aldous pretended to be window washers, secretly snapping pics of the conversation. It pained Kulfi not to blow up the zeppelin, but he couldn’t risk metal debris raining over Midtown. But hadn’t they forgotten something? Oh, Bert and the embassy! Both barged into Florence’s dinner party. And they both had amazing offers: Bert promised a world tour, the first of its kind. Florence could dine with queens and sing for sheikhs. She’d be a more common household word than “window”. The Aussie Rep had a much more subdued itinerary. She was a hero in Australia… It was time for her to prove it. Bookings up and down both coasts, bringing joy and hope back to a beleaguered nation. Mutually exclusive from the other offer, and not as lucrative… But she was needed. Florence, once obsessed with fame and glory, a former hobo who had bartered her soul for financial success, chose her country. Bert was utterly irate, and so was Devika (who had accepted a large deposit on her personal jet). But there was no arguing with her: Not money, not fame, not hordes of beautiful women, could overcome her loyalty to the grand old land of Oz. A great send-off to a great character. (The player will stay, luckily.) *(That was a real thing, look it up.) Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Mar 18, 2024 05:33
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Golden Bee posted:Back In The New York Mood. Winston Callahan looks with his hands. And he wanted to see the soul jar! Captain Semya Ivanova is different from many pulp heroes. She’s not a greedy ex-con. She’s not a square-jawed South Seas captain, or a Broadway celeb solving capers that resemble their greatest hits. Doesn't use eastern martial arts to stand up to crooks and cloud the minds of men. She has a cause, of course: international communism. But her methodology is all her own. The adventure started when one of her fans contacted her. James Shen, of San Francisco Chinatown, had a favor to ask: Could she help him bring unity to a divided community? Without it, there was no chance that they’d support rising communist factions in the Middle Kingdom. "Captain I" brought along her sometime pal, outsider Professor Winston Callahan. A scientific genius, well-studied, decent in a fight, and more importantly, someone with his own airplane. They met up with self-assured former Butler Aldous Bingen, who had invited stuntwoman Lala Santinella to the West Coast to get her away from family drama. Their sightseeing was short-lived. A funeral procession degraded into violence. The Hop Sing Tong (which James was affiliated with) was ambushed by the shady On Leong Tong. Soon, cleavers were out, bullets were flying, and Jackson Street was a war zone. Lala sped through the fray on her motorcycle, rescuing the overwhelmed widow, Madam Wong. The well-traveled Captain Ivanova called on some friends in the crowd, grabbing James Shen and brawling to freedom. Though it’s better to elide the gory details, here’s a life lesson: be careful when someone uses a whip to fling kitchen equipment. Unfortunately, the attack was just a ruse! The vile On Leong stole an amphora from the Hop Sing Benevolent Society. The well-read Professor Callahan explained that the stolen jar could greatly expand a person’s chi. Luckily, chi was baloney and science governed the universe. Outside, hot-pistol Aldous perforated some street thugs who were trying to give Lala neck tattoos. She tried to chase down the jar, but lost the thief in San Fran's winding alleyways. Luckily, Captain Ivanova always does her research on local languages. (Subversives might claim her instant language retrieval is based on hypnotic suggestion, perfected in her hometown of Science City Seven.) She hit the streets as Aldous worked over witnesses, and discovered the secret tunnels used by the On Leong. Unfortunately, after a well-deserved night of rest, the group had a new setback. Widow Wong had checked her husband’s coffin, currently laying in state… And it had been smashed open from the inside! The dark sorcerer Wu Zhi had corrupted the pillar of the community, turning him into a hopping vampire! According to lore, hopping vampires jump because their legs are incredibly stiff. On the plus side, they are tremendously strong, capable of draining human life force to power their own, and near bulletproof. They have weaknesses to peach-tree wood, certain rices, and fire. Callahan heard “fire” and went off to develop a flamethrower. (Mad science Isn’t any less dangerous if it’s predictable.) Lala offered to secure the Benevolent Society headquarters. Semya and Aldous cooked rice. The secret tunnels were cramped and dark. They didn’t smell much, not until Callahan unleashed burning accelerants onto Wong’s resurrected corpse. Bingen hurled bags of rice to confuse the creature. But its undead fury was boundless; it raced through the flames to grab Captain Semya. She couldn’t escape its grasp, so she jabbed it repeatedly with a peach tree staff, the wood passing through its flesh like pudding. The creature rotted and burned, until she was slamming parts of its chest against the walls. Evil sorcerer Wu was tougher, but easier on the nose. Semya interrupted his ritual by yelling random words in Cantonese, impressing her cohorts (who assumed she was knowledgeable in counterspells). Aldous stood back, and used one of his greatest skills: being judgmental. Despite his predilection for hurling globs of caustic gall, Wu was endlessly arrogant. No non-Chinese could ever mess with his plans. But no arrogance could predict Winston Callahan. When he wants to touch something, he will. And he wanted to figure out the soul jar! Ivanova punctuated her insults with lashings. Aldous knocked over ritual candles. Winston grabbed the device… And turned a knob while holding it to the black-tongued mage’s face. Within seconds, the artifact had absorbed Wu Zhi. It was hot to the touch, leaving a desiccated husk as the only proof someone had tried to siphon its power. There was only one thing to do: convince the On Leong Tong to abandon criminality in favor of community-mindedness and cooperative economics. The fact they had the former leader’s skull was a major persuader. EDIT: Some backstory I put into an earlier post. HOW KID SIDEKICK DEVI BECAME A MILLIONAIRE! Over the course of some adventures that I didn’t write up, including The Curse of Sekhmet by J.C. Connors, Devika became extraordinarily wealthy. The first was when she helped purge the ghosts from a Yukon gold mine and took it over. The second was the intro and outro of “Curse”. It starts with the players foiling a multiple-bank robber. Devika, unaware that Italy didn’t have FDIC insurance in 1935, decided to split the money recovered with her peers. One of her peers was a Russian journalist who despised money, so Devika became rich splitting 7 robberies two ways. "Curse" ends with the players a lost tomb, filled with golden statues, so … how else to spend a lot of money for a globetrotting explorer than buy a state-of-the-art jet? Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Mar 24, 2024 08:13
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Golden Bee posted:Pailou Pileup! Paranoia pays off. That’s the lesson learned by Javid Kulfi, Afghan technician/photographer, and pal Devika Velyapur. Devika (ex-cultist/child millionaire) was still stressed out by the events of "Web Of The Spider Cult!", especially the part where she was put into a coma by a spider cult. So they were turning art dealer Sir Matthew’s townhouse into a fortress, much to his chagrin. (Devi had taken up semi-permanent residence ever since her mentor, Lord Simon, had moved in.) The doorbell rang after dinner, with two new faces: formerly dead detective JP Diamond*... and a five-year-old whose name he did not know. He found her in the woods while working a case in Minnesota, and all his instincts said bad hoodoo. And for better or worse, Miss Velyapur was an expert in cults, magic, and as a 13-year-old girl, girls. *JP Diamond has appeared once before in "The B-Team!". He met Devi very briefly in "Beignet, Done That", and is played by Florence’s old player. Because of the events of “Beignet”, he suffered from mild zombieism, which while “cured”, continues to have knock on effects. It was evening, so there was little for the team to but secure the house more and go to bed. It was a good thing were paranoid: the next day, there was evidence of powerful mystical attack, a spell designed to snatch the five-year-old’s mind and lead her back to captivity. The "fix the five-year-old" project was assigned to Devika, who called information. The right person for the job was "Dr. Dan", Manhattan’s premier child psychologist. And he was helpful, getting the girl to draw and write out her problems. The pictures contained odd blobs, chains of teeth, and other unsightly oddities. Javid consulted his knowledge of the occult and suggested Devi attack the psychic construct in the girl’s head! The ersatz exorcism had its intended effect… as much to Dr. Dan’s amazement the girl began to speak! Well, first scream, a lot, but after that, speak! Her name was Aurora Coil. She wanted her mommy. Her dad was a wicked man who wanted to open her soul to demonic possession. This scared the hell out of the already-addled child millionaire. After some effort and cupcakes, Javid and detective Diamond coaxed Devika back to her normal, arrogant self. It was scary, to be sure, but she was an expert. They needed her! Devi agreed on the condition that Aurora not be allowed in her room. It wasn’t hard to find the Cole residence. The decaying manner was in the woods near Duluth, a multilevel Victorian with its windows shuttered or barred. Infiltration was also easy, with JP pretending to be an encyclopedia salesman, and the other two sneaking in the back way. Despite locked doors and mystic wards, there was only one thing that could stop them: nerves. Fastidious Javid and cowardly Davika both screamed when they found the basement’s Sacrifice Chamber. It reeked of entrails and maggots. The screams eliminated the element of surprise. But the narrow, corner-filled house worked against the cultists. JP hammered them with haymakers. Javid put bullets through eyebrows. Devika ran support with her dagger. JP took a .45 to the sternum… and sighed, knowing he’d have to sew up that suit. Les Cole was another matter. The alienist commanded the house itself against our heroes: the windows bricking up, the furnace going full blast, the stairs inverting their nails. Cole had a weakness, though. (Two if you consider lunacy to be a weakness.) His greatest powers required eye contact. Devika took the sheets from the master bedroom and hurled them on his head! Cole soon traded his mansion for a drawer in the morgue. Detective JP scoured the now-normal grounds for clues. Old wedding records, framed photos, travel documents… It would take some doing, but he could now reunite Aurora and her mother. Javid told Devika to gather Aurora’s toys and clothes before they burned the mansion to the ground. The rest was cleanup! Diamond found the cult’s New York member in a fleabag motel. It wasn’t hard for Javid to put the man’s ideas on the wall behind him. For her part, Devika was emboldened by the group’s success. She treated Aurora like a little sister. Games, new outfits, even a guided tour through Devi’s various globetrotting knickknacks. And after mother and daughter were reunited, Devi had one more call to make. Did Dr. Dan work with adult patients, ones who we were 13? Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Apr 1, 2024 05:20
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Golden Bee posted:The Whisperer in Duluth! In 1938, Austria was invaded. In 1940, London was not. Was a statue to blame? We open in Verona. Journalist Trudy Truman has an inkling of the story… a Greek artifact that was said to be lost to time. To help her get it, she teamed up with an all-new adventurer, Dr. Hemet Hazoul. He’s a genius with a doctorate in engineering and history… and has all the humility of a Hollywood publicist at award time. He had been "encouraged" by the rest of the staff of his Turkish university to go on permanent sabbatical, and submit his research via correspondence. Rounding out the posse was Tacito Uriel Velasco, lawyer, boxer, and wielder of a Mexican panther spirit, and stuntwoman Lala Santinella. She and her adopted daughter Devika (millionaire, mystic, etc.) were visiting her homeland to work out a few glitches in their relationship. They brought a lawyer because of a little business that was… What’s the word? Elective? "Compulsory", corrected Tacito. Trudy was contacted by a member of British Intelligence. He was being followed, so the best place to talk would be during a local performance of Macbeth. Someone must’ve said the play’s name outloud too much, though. All the agent could divulge was "Minerva, at the pantheon" before being shot. The killer timed it during the witches’ lightning, and despite the lawyer's best effort, the killer got away. Hemet explained, with no degree of humility, the Pantheon was a famous structure in Rome. Lala went under protest, in disguise. She Wasn’t popular in Mussolini’s Italy after publicly leaving a Germany/Italy film collaboration. Unfortunately, that very same movie was shooting at the Pantheon! Lala’s old pal and rival, Elena Altieri, was starring in the movie Santinella turned down. The stunt woman tried to hide in her car, while Trudy used her gift for blathering to distract Director Leni Riefenstahl. The statue itself weighed hundreds of pounds, but with Hemet’s advice, the lawyer moved it aside and looked underneath. There was a gem and a scroll, which claimed a secret would be revealed at the sun’s zenith in the Flavian Auditorium. Wait, what did they call the building nowadays? The Colosseum! The stadium was 30 minutes away and it was 11:40. But the group was blessed to have an Italian leadfoot! The group rushed to the Colosseum with seconds to spare, barely noticing the new platforms and fresh sand. At noon, Hemet directed the sunlight onto a brick on the emperor’s box, burning up a Nazi flag…And springing the trap! Herr Strauss, a Nazi commander with delusions of grandeur, told our heroes the score. They could live with the knowledge they acquired… if they could beat him and his unit in gladiatorial combat. he presented a range of ancient weaponry… And the battle was on! Trudy had always been blessed with a strong nose. Instead of immediately joining the fight, she observed her surroundings… and could smell a very unfamiliar scent. LIONS. The “fair” Nazi challenge was a deathtrap! The professor was used to brawls and ancient weaponry. He held off the brown shirts… but the Lions had the opposite effect on him and Tacito that Trudy might’ve expected. Hemet had the world’s greatest ego. The lawyer had the instinct of a panther, and there was no way he’d surrender to another large cat. Lala, brimming with common sense, snuck off to open an escape hatch. Tacito and Hemet kept the lion away from Trudy. After choking the beast unconscious, Tacito flung blood onto his opponents… Making them all the more appealing for the other Pantero Leos. Egos assuaged, Trudy led a retreat. After fleeing, the group laid low at a much less historic venue… Their local library. The Palladium, the object of their search, prevented cities from falling. so there’s no way it was still in Rome. But some dusty tomes suggested it’d been moved to Constantinople! It was an awkward homecoming for Professor Hazoul. His rival, Cleric Marduk, had charged him with violating the school's decorum code… By fighting animals in a world wonder. But Hemet had an ace up his sleeve. It was his new friend, one of Earth’s greatest lawyers. Tacito emphasized that the lion fighting had been done in self-defense, and in pursuit of an archaeological treasure. This set Hemet up for some self-serving lies… and the honor committee was completely, 100% on board. The cleric shook his fist as the other panel members suggested that HH could teach ancient weaponry as an elective next semester. Trudy got to the telegraph office to send in her story. Nazis digging up the Colosseum was front-page stuff. She had another contact in town, Stavros “The Bull” Papadopoulos, a merchant mastermind with an interest in antiquities. He agreed to meet her and her cohort at the Turkish baths. Suggested wardrobe: a towel. Papadopoulos, (when not interrupted by Hazoul), explained that the Palladium they saw it it was in a monastery 70 miles out of town. And completely coincidentally, he had a delivery truck headed in that direction. A spare ride at a reasonable price. Trudy’s astounding senses paid off again… As she heard footsteps down the hallway. Assassins! The fez-wearing killers had the group at a disadvantage, but no sword can defeat the human mind. Especially when that mind belongs to a dirty-fighting professor. He soaked one end of his towel in water, and set the other on fire. The hashish-eaters caused problems, slashing Trudy’s arm badly, but the crew was clever. Braziers were used to set their foe’s robes on fire. Tacito held a goon’s head under the bath. Lala soaped the floor and smashed people in the face with water buckets. Soon, there was gap in the flow of hired killers. The group rushed to the changing rooms, and from there to Papadopoulos’s cousins’s truck. Kristos let Lala drive, but the cabin was cramped. A few people would have to ride in the back. Devika, feeling useless, gave Trudy one of the many crates. Trudy, playing along, opened it up, asking what it was. Devika read the label. quote:"Nitrog…nitro gly…" Yep, Kristos was hauling enough explosive fluid to send the truck into orbit. Not a problem, until a Nazi half-track came around the bend. The party had very little in terms of ranged combat skill. They did have a maniac behind the wheel, when the Ahnenerbe machine gun opened up, Lala hit the gas like she was driving a Ferrari. And although they needed to cover miles and miles of ground, and couldn’t dodge bullets forever, the group had a mechanical genius on board. And his idea was rebellious. It was dangerous. And it was perfect. They had a truck bed full of explosives? Why not just detach the truck bed? Instead of throwing crates one at a time, they unleashed a huge trail of explosive ordinance. Far behind, a commandant demanded his troops check what was in these mysterious crates… And then proceeded, very slowly, to remove them. By the time the nitro was safely disposed of, the players had gotten away. The monastery was a bust. But it could’ve been much deadlier if the group didn’t travel with a design historian. Trudy detected a trap, and Hemet was able to keep the hidden wall blades recessed. Tacito and Hemet examined the corpses of less-careful Crusader tomb robbers… skeletons who had coins from 14th-century Vienna. Could Austria be the place?! It turns out it was. And after an ambush in Europe’s second-largest graveyard, the group found a gigantic statue of the Pallas Athena! While the antiquarians examined the device, Devika and Lala had some one on one time. Devi was concerned that Lala had gone off the deep end after the failed wedding and Devi’s time in a coma. Lala admitted that things had gotten drastic, but moms were allowed to get a little crazy. Just the way things go. The group hurried. Austria wasn’t a Nazi state yet, but brown-shirts had free reign there. The statue opened a nearby fountain, which led to a cavern containing the Palladium, and a weird electrical grid pattern. Lala was about to unplug it… When Professor HH had a better idea. The group rewired the trap. The fascists might have outnumbered our heroes, but hatred can do very little against electricity. Herr Strauss’s dueling saber was nothing more than a lightning rod. Lala, Tacito and Hemet mopped up the rest. The only thing left to do: figure out where to move the statue! Trudy was loyal to the British crown. Tacito argued that they should honor the sacrifice of the agent who told them about the thing in the first place. Hemet was fine with any option as long as he got to write the archaeological report. The Palladium was stored securely in the tower of London. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Apr 8, 2024 07:37
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Golden Bee posted:The Palladium Peril! By Paul "Wiggy" Wade-Williams. Here are the things I cut in the adventure to make it run swiftly in four hours: *An NPC professor who explains everything the players find. *A double-decker bus chase, to catch thugs who don’t really know what’s going on. *A trip to Oxford, to search a townhouse, which involves a fight scene the villain has to escape from. *A lead to a fencing Academy, where you fight the Nazi again, as well as his students. (He can lose here but they suggest you use the savage world rules to let him escape one more time, so he can die in the Colosseum.) *A chase to taxi onto a Douglas C32 cargo plane. (The players can’t fail this.) Instead of a movie set, at the Pantheon, players will find local toughs, who will then chase them on mopeds. The players also can’t fail the chase, but you’re not supposed to tell them that. The Colosseum fight I kept, but the players are supposed to win it and then more Nazis show up with guns… So that players are forced to surrender and enter an underground death trap. It’s a cool death trap, but it was extremely hard to force my players to fight and then lose instead of just trying to run away from the trap. They are suggestions for if the players failed the death trap (they take a ton of damage, nearly drowning). Whatever happens, they find a jar that explains emperor Constantine took the palladium to "his city." The cool Turkish bath fight is followed by a brawl in the bazaar, which feels downright redundant. The ancient trap is interesting, but if the players get sealed inside the tomb, Stovro’s cousin is supposed to rescue them…and then they get ambushed by Nazis anyway. In my write up, I cut out an interesting side character, Beni Hassan, a coughing, disgusting assist to Stavros who betrays the gang to the Nazis. After the tomb is another fight with the Nazis, which the colonel escapes from, with plot armor. Then in Vienna, you’re supposed to fight again in the graveyard, figure out the statue fountain, and then fight an additional time. In Conclusion: It’s like an ice cream sundae covered in melted marshmallows and candy bars. A lot of goodness, spoiled by having too much of it. I plan to run more Paul Wade adventures but the general pattern is too much incident, with very little flexibility for players doing unexpected things.
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Apr 8, 2024 07:56
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Golden Bee posted:The Palladium Peril! By Paul "Wiggy" Wade-Williams. The bandits held the countryside… Ivanova had a whip. If you’re getting too much exposition, the worst thing to do is roll a legendary+ on an investigate. That was the case for our adventurers this week. The Boston Museum of Fine Art had lost touch with one of their archaeologists in the deserts northwest of the Punjab province. On the case were undead detective JP Diamond, Soviet explorer Semya Ivanova, gambling prodigy Penny An’Te, and cowgirl-novelist Querida Wilcox. The group stayed on task, so I’ll stick to the highlights and skip the procedural elements. Querida wanted to move some novels, and demanded her publicist set up a reading in Lahore. It was attended by a bunch of British officers and no one else… So in a quest to be a woman of the people, Wilcox put out her cardboard standee at a table in the village bazaar. Her main achievement: almost getting pickpocketed. The players traveled overland to the archaeological site. The land was plagued by bandits, but the group was hard boiled. Ivanova made short work of tough guys. At one point, she threatened a gang of Nazis by saying “If you don’t put down your gun, your family will get a flag.” The group ran into the incorrigible Professor Callahan at the archaeological dig^, and he was eager to help the Captain spread fear. When a murderous Bedouin started getting lippy, Semya dangled him over a canyon. Callahan grabbed his legs for leverage. “How would you like a very fast tour of your country?” Querida was handy to have around. When an assassin tried to slide a snake into her tent… She tied it into a knot and threw it back! And Penny’s pistol skills were essential. She and her purse-heater blew away a whole swarm of ambushers. It evoked her similar stunt in Baltimore, during the mission to save Dr. Enigma. Penny was a lifeguard and a lifetaker. Eventually, the players found the secret at the center of the deadly desert...a bizarre statue? An expert in mad science, Callahan explained its purpose. The “Flower of Death” was a drilling machine, sent up from below the surface of the Earth! In the end, the bandits were dispersed, the museum was mollified, and Nazi archaeologists were put in the ground. Still growing, however, were sparks between the coldhearted Russian explorer and the undead PI. Was it professional respect between two superlative surveyors? Or something more? ^AKA the player joined in, two hours into the game. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Apr 15, 2024 05:47
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Golden Bee posted:The Flower Of Death! A boot on a nation's neck...and a hand around the girl's! "Don’t expect respect". It’s true all over the world, but it’s especially true in Calcutta. The players were on a mission from the University of Istanbul; grab some artifacts from a temple, bring them back. And with a little more kindness, that would’ve been the whole thing. Unfortunately, they made an enemy of Sir Walter Sleeman, high ranking brit, and his hulking 7’3 bodyguard Mazaboot. To be fair, reporter Trudy Truman, and huge farmhand Elliot McCaffrey held their tongues. Less so phony Brit Lord Simon, Afghan shootist Javid Kulfi and the arrogant professor Hemet Hazoul. The party kept a balance of heroism and shameful practicality. They stopped a truck bomb from destroying the palace; at the party they were invited to, after making some acquaintances and trying to rob the palace, they attacked a group of lecherous colonial soldiers. (Intriguingly, Lord Simon decided to start with the palace’s basement… Scouting out the dungeon as well as its escape routes. He ran out of time before getting any loot.) The chicanery continued at the archeological site. Arrogant Dr. Hazoul claimed he could "quickly" survey the entire Northwest section of the temple before the Teamsters had loaded all the artifacts. Instead, he and the group fell down a hole. There, they found a bloody altar to the goddess of death, and activated a rolling boulder trap. Lord Simon led the group to safety… But Elliot’s attempt to crash through a thin wall were too effective. He knocked the trap out of alignment, and it began destroying the entire basement of the complex. The destabilized temple sunk into the ground. No one was badly hurt. Lord Simon saw a bright side: the artifacts he and sidekick Devika would steal were even more priceless. A few lies later, the group was on the train back to Calcutta. The module had a tribe of Afghan raiders attack the train; it didn’t think one of the characters would be an Afghan tribesman! Hazoul and Javid got the horseback riders’ attention, and hastily shouted quote:"Don’t rob the train, we’re already robbing it." The lie was a good idea, except the train had Afghan campaign veterans. The railway cops were very curious about this outburst. Lord Simon would normally be in charge of deception, but he was at the other side of the train, relabeling boxes and changing inventory…AKA robbery. Trudy suggested that the group pay some fines for "causing calamity", and the trip was saved. Our heroes tried to get some rest at a hotel. This was a surprise delight in the session. The room pairings were Simon & his adopted daughter Devika, the professor & the farmhand, and the journalist & the photographer. The last duo immediately turned their suite into a darkroom. Although Trudy was from Australia’s upper crust, and Javid had spent much of his life sniping out of caves, they both loved photography. One room over, Elliot stared at Hemet. Of all the things to do with one’s time, why waste it with a book? The professor asked why it bothered Elliot so much… And the Texan admitted he didn’t know how to read! The professor was baffled but began forming a rudimentary curriculum. It was a nuisance, but it wouldn’t do to travel with someone so uneducated. Simon teased Devi as she prepared for her bath. What did she think of the 12-year-old Maharajah they had met at the party? She had pawned him off on Trudy, Devi said. "As the richest girl in India, I don’t need his money, and he’s way too young for me." (He was eight months younger than her.) Devi took to the bathroom, and Simon started reading Colliers. His reading was interrupted with a scream! In the bathroom, Devika was being strangled by a black bandaged hand! Despite his lack of physical acumen, he rushed to her defense, struggling against the severed limb as she grabbed for a towel. The commotion brought the others, and Elliot was able to restrain the appendage. Hemet said it was impossible that the thing was magic. And he proved himself right, slicing off the thumb and discovering a mass of wiring! Back in Calcutta, the group moved carefully. Someone was watching them. (Someone who overestimated the amount they bathed; each hotel room had the same trap, but only Devika activated hers.) Trudy went through the newspaper archives to find a pattern to recent stranglings… and found a web of conspiracy that eventually led back to Sleeman! (There was a brief detour to a pottery, and car chase to save one of the victims, who was eternally grateful but also an arse.) The best place for damning documents? Sleeman’s mansion. Elliot would provide a distraction up front, Trudy and Lord Simon would sneak into his office from the back. The ‘sneaking into the office’ part went wonderfully. There wasn’t a signed criminal confession, but there was a letter from the maharajah, thanking Sleeman for the additional sepoy soldiers. It was time to beef up security, considering there was a thugee strangler cult around! Meanwhile, Elliot rang the doorbell and met the butler. Being courteous, the farm boy had a hard time not being invited inside. The living room was empty except for the towering Indian bodyguard. El smiled. "I never liked you, big man. Fists up." Javid was smoking by the car, scanning the driveway for issues. He barely dodged out of the way as the front windows broke open and Mazaboot was hurled into the engine block. So much for sneaking, and so much for the villain’s bodyguard! The group drove the damaged car to the palace, hoping to stop Sleeman’s evil schemes. Yet the Brit was persuasive. The players HAD destroyed a massive temple and caused an incident at a public hotel. And, a messenger informed him… destroyed the front of his house? Death. Death to the evil cultish foreigners! Simon was clever though. It would cause a huge scandal if they executed people from so many countries and India’s richest girl. Perhaps a lifetime sentence in the dungeons? The scam worked, and the group spent mere minutes imprisoned. But they had an equal and opposite problem: assassinating Sleeman would bring chaos to India, supporting his cause of a stronger Raj! Luckily, Sleeman and the Maharajah were in the pleasure garden. It had beautiful flowers, beehives, a tiger enclosure… Trudy helped Javid sneak into a sniping position. The afghan waited for Sleeman to try and strangle someone, and aimed for the madman’s fingers. His… Mechanical metal fingers? Across the yard, Elliot covered Lord Simon as the latter unlocked the tiger enclosure. The Americans barely got clear! Sleeman and his thugs might’ve been a match for the tigers, even with his thumbs shot off… until Elliot put a pistol hole into a beehive. Cause of death? Indigent wildlife. Trudy saved the maharajah, who proposed to her… But completely lost interest when she lied she was pregnant. "Gross!" yelled the preteen prince. Don’t expect respect. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Apr 22, 2024 07:09
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Golden Bee posted:The Hands of Kali! By Paul "Wiggy" Wade-Williams. Graveyard by the Nile. Based on Pulp Egypt & The Charioteer’s Tomb by Peter Schweighofer "In Cairo, digging up bodies is big business… and everyone wants to collect!" They woke up in darkness. Tacito Uriel Velasco was pragmatic. He felt wood around him, listened for the sound of wheels… Wherever they were shipping him, he wasn’t being moved now. Good ol’ boy Elliot McCaffrey was less calm. " I didn’t do it, and no one saw me if they did!" The Mexican lawyer kept calm: he had been trained by a hedge magician, a brujo. Tacito tested the wood with his palm, and began striking, putting a hole through. Soon he was free. Wherever he was was stone, and lightless. He could hear the Texan, somewhere in the hallway… And with a whispered "lean backward", the Jade Jaguar knocked off the top of the shipping container. But someone else was here. Tacito relied on the powers of the jaguar, his heightened hearing and sense of smell… and detected the faintest hint of aftershave. Down the hallway, in his own crate, was butler to the stars, Aldous Bingen. Ever prepared, the butler had a box of matches. The stone room was a subbasement of the National Museum of Egypt. Each man had a lump on the back of his head… which meant there was a mystery and some painful clues. The lawyer put it together. "We were up to something… We got blackjacked, put in the museum, so we could be discovered and charged as burglars." Bingen’s eyebrow twitched. if he was here, then he was derelict in his duty to "socialize" his latest charge, the 14-year-old menace Ava Astor. Has she been kidnapped too? Unlike most countries, Egypt’s millennia of history was being rapidly unearthed. That meant that there was more being surfaced than any museum could organize. Here in the sub-basement tablets, scrolls, ubshantis and funerary artifacts were stored haphazardly. The group crawled past shattered pottery and cataloging equipment. There was a shrill screech from the darkness-- a screech mixed with a roar. Elliot couldn’t believe his eyes; there was some sort of griffin, hawk-faced and lion-bodied. Something had been spilled or bumped, decanted or summoned… and our trio were face-to-face with it. Despite having one of the best creature-punchers in the business, the party tried a charm offensive. Elliot used his knowledge of farmyard creatures to calm the beast down… and Argentine Aldous sung it to sleep like it was a winning bull after a Corrida de Toros! Watching their step, the group was able to escape the museum without further incident. (After all, the security system was designed to keep everyone out. Outside, the morning sun rose over the capital. It didn’t take long to find Ava (shooting clay pigeons at the sportsman's club), but it was harder to find their mutual benefactor. Someone had given the trio lumps, and it was time to repay the favor. Of course, they had another mission in town. They have been tasked with setting up a new worldwide base for Ziegler Security Services (the last one was burnt down in Back In The New York Mood!). And apparently someone didn’t want'em in town. Elliot wasn’t dumb muscle… His grandpappy taught him the essence of investigation. Step one was to retrace your steps… step two was to find out who the locals wouldn’t talk about. quote:Mahmoud Al-Adwani was the name on nobody’s lips. An angry man, he played it cool and posed as "very European." Which meant smoking thin cigarettes and getting others to do his dirty work. He owned a houseboat on the river. If the fellas weren’t smart, he’d slip town. They got smart. The Harbormaster was happy to trade a few hundred bucks for a "surprise inspection". A few minutes later, Al-Adwani was yelling at his goons to move the merchandise off the ship… giving Elliot time to listen and observe. There was a blonde man on the boat, in athletic wear, not doing much of anything. It was Johannes Mahler, the "Million Dollar Mauler", German boxing champion. What was he up to, slumming it with an angry Egyptian crime lord? Aldous got the scoop. The middleweight didn’t like the direction Germany was going, didn’t want a part of it. When the Nazis told him to get in line, he left town… Only to end up under Mahmoud’s thumb. Tacito, both lawyer and a former slugger, cut a deal. Mahler leaves Mahmoud out to dry, Ziegler Security gives him a cushy job in the South Pacific. Mahler thought about it… and took it. Unfortunately, he thought about it too long, and ran into his former boss on the quay. He raised his fists… but Tacito Velasco put up a hand. "I don’t know why you’re trying to detain this man, Adwani… I don’t imagine he was working under contract?" The gangster replied to the sharp tongue with brass knucks. But that’s what the Jade Jaguar wanted. He rolled the Egyptian over his back, and booted him into the Nile. "Hope that hurts as much as a sap to the back of the head." The dockworkers, sensing weakness, decided to take home their stolen goods. Matter settled. [We took a detour here to do something completely different… Design the base! The players had a blast putting in an escape tunnel, a roof garden, a deep freezer and dining room, a library meditation space… As well as a mad science workshop and an infirmary on the ground floor. No reason to drag a bloody person up and down the stairs. Getting everything built will require a discreet building team and some architectural experts… You don’t want an amateur thief designing the artifact vault. Keep an eye out in future adventures.] The ambitious design meant cash was a concern. The group offered their services to a historical dig. It was easy money, until the professor lit up a cigar and burnt up a methane deposit, blowing him and a fellahin to the realm of feathers and scales. Easy money was now hazard pay. The trio really sweated this one out. None of them had backgrounds in traps or burglary. Through luck or caution, they avoided canopic jars filled with beetle swarms and deadfall traps. The lawyer even knew a little ancient Egyptian, translating for the rest: quote:“Henu-Akhet found that the hostile ranks of the fallen ones from Hatti had hemmed in the camp of Pharaoh [Ramses the Great], while His Majesty sat alone without his army being with him.... Henu-Akhet called to his charioteers, ‘Stand firm, be bold-hearted, my troops! Become like Set, great in strength, like Sekhmet in the moment of her fury!’ They charged the hostile ranks of the despicable Fallen One of Hatti. They let none of them escape, their hearts confident in the great strength of Pharaoh, their good lord, being around them like a mountain of copper, like a wall of iron forever and ever and always. Raymond Chandler it aint, but remember this was before indoor plumbing...Not before magical statues though. Aldous was close to meeting up with the still-smoking professor… but the Jade Jaguar had other plans. His hands shattered magical stone like it was cheap plaster. Elliot used his massive strength to keep the flailing statues from knocking out any pillars. With the guardians gone, it was simply a matter of getting the jeweled sarcophagus out of the tomb. Above ground, the workmen wanted extra money because of the cursed nature of the site. The group had a lifeline, though. Lieutenant Edwards of the Third British African Rifles had a lorry for treasure extraction. He would secure the coffin, the players could calm down the workers. Patient words won the day. Everyone's happy. *** A few days later, poolside at the Continental-Savoy hotel. Someone on the white courtesy phone had a question… Where the hell was the coffin? Lieutenant who? Did he give an address? No?! All that work, only to get bamboozled. As Elliott's pappy might say: "That's a real kick between the thighs and navel." quote:There was one tomb as twisted as Henu-Akhet’s: the British bureaucracy. The party wasn’t very provocative, but they knew how to play good cop/bad cop. The perp broke down, but before he could confess, Tacito offered him a business card… "It sounds like you need a lawyer. Stop digging." Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Apr 30, 2024 |
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Apr 29, 2024 20:17
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Golden Bee posted:Cairo Many of the modules I read about pulp adventure made it seem like a trifle, a two-dimensional interlude between serious games about vampires or airlocks. But I started reading a lot of stories on archive.org: old western magazines, Black Mask, Adventure, Colliers....Got into the Shadow radio show, “Let George Do it!”, even the weirdo comedy shows like Rocky Fortune (starring Frank Sinatra as a detective who gets a new odd job every episode). And I realized my write-ups, and even the RPG sourcebooks, were missing the best part of pulp stories: the grabber headlines from the table of contents. Editors had only a few words to hook readers, and they used them well. Here's two examples The Kitten by Frederic pelham, jr. Night after night the young lieutenant and his ghost patrol slipped out and terrorized the German lines. Then an advance of their own regiment found them all dead, all stripped of their puttees, the men shot through the brain and the lieutenant, unmarked, with an empty automatic in his lifeless hand. Bowie and His Big Knife (a fact story) by meigs o. frost The eighteen inches of sudden death that carved new frontiers — and old enemies. I know people in this thread are fans of my stories, and that's why I put in so much effort. But my goal isn’t to brag, it’s to get more people interested in the genre. So I went back to the roughly 70 stories I wrote up in this thread. And each one got its own grabber, sometimes a few words (Terror at Fashion Week has simply “Turn. Pose. Kill."), sometimes remembered dialogue from the session. Here are a few of my favorites: Treasure of the Templars Thousands of years of history, and blood by the bucket. To end all Wars! “That’s a Matisse,” sighed Valeira. “People will bomb just about anything.” THE BEST DEFENSE! His hands were shaking… Was it fear of expulsion, or the terrible cold? If you want to read all the adventures (or just the new grabbers), here’s a link! Start near the bottom. And thanks again for reading! Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Apr 30, 2024 |
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Apr 30, 2024 22:14
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Golden Bee posted:Graveyard by the Nile. Based on Pulp Egypt & The Charioteer’s Tomb by Peter Schweighofer Secrets secrets hurt someone. A party invitation. Normal, even expected, except when it’s addressed to Ziegler security services and ‘especially Lord Simon Alfric.’ The Louvre doesn’t have that obvious a frame. But Cincinnati’s premiere Secret Society underestimates our heroes (Simon, gambler Penny An’Te, troublesome Professor Winston Callahan, communist explorer Captain Semya Ivanova and especially undead PI Josiah P Diamond). They had us outfoxed at first. Simon thought he caught a tail on a member of the society… Only to grab a dead drop with the words quote:"Nice try, Lord Simon." The first one had cojones. Captain Ivanova cracked a whip a half inch from his face… and he calmly left. "I don’t want none of that." The second fell to one of Diamond’s jab-cross-elbow combinations…The third one was trickier. Six foot five, a wall of muscle, he smashed the desk lamp across JP’s face… no reaction. it was a stalemate, leaning in the thug’s direction… until Semya had an idea. She opened the room’s far window, and Diamond knocked the guy into the rolling office chair. A two-story drop doesn’t care how tough you are. Callahan was a bit of a scofflaw in his youth. His B&E skills made him a natural companion to Lord Simon. Unfortunately, the Society had prepared. The host was freshly dead in the room with the safe. Lord Simon instinctively pulled his vanishing act, leaving Winston to be discovered with the body. Instead of guilt, Queen’s College Malta’s only professor responded with outrage. He performed an immediate cause of death investigation, finding close-range gunshot wounds… explaining the host didn’t like him enough to get that close! The group swung into action, interrogating guests, creating a timetable, checking pockets… a tremendous amount of evidence gathered in mere minutes. Nick Charles could’ve presented a hell of a case. Unfortunately for the murderer, captain Semya Ivanova is not an erudite detective. She is a devout communist, and a class warrior. She delivered the evidence with sarcasm and vitriol. quote:All he could sputter out was a "wait, you know he… He made me do it!" before collapsing into a heart attack. As the crowd gasped in terror, Lord Simon added "He also threw someone out the window." *** Hard times in the big easy, based on Quill Noir by Tim Snider Josiah could solve the case… If he could keep his crew from getting arrested. The second adventure was more of a kitchen sink drama. It started with JP returning to New Orleans for the first time since his death. His landlord had changed the locks. The detective was almost supernaturally frightening in his request for the new keys, right now, thank you. --- The phone rang in Diamond’s office. It was kid millionaire Devika, inviting herself over to "help solve a case and teach the gang a little discipline." Of course, there wasn’t a case yet, so the group got distracted by Josiah’s threadbare office. Devi suggested photos of herself from her time as a model. Javid Kulfi, master photographer, had only a few prints on him; moody shots of Bourbon Street and other areas very close to the office. Lord Simon, seeing the cracked wallpaper, discreetly pickpocketed twenty bucks into the detective’s wallet. The next case wasn’t exactly the Hound of the Baskervilles. 5000 smackers had been stolen from a local bank. The owner suspected the night watchmen. Simon and Winston investigated the vault… and found proof that it was an inside hit. Someone had used every single second they needed. As they figured it out, they were confronted by the new nightwatchman! Neither was particularly adept at honesty, and barely convinced the rookie that they were there on official business. Javid and Penny had a much wider interpretation of criminal procedure. They decided to wait for the bank manager… on a rooftop across from the bank. Instead of the manager, they found their old friend/foe Professor Paradox! He confronted Javid about the assassination back in Hawaii (back in "Slicin' Sand!"). He handed Penny a pamphlet about "the eventual triumph of the Sunkissed races." The players found him completely unaware of any bank robberies, though… and the recourse to a loose supervillain was to fill in Dr. Enigma, Paradox’s nemesis. JP showed why he earned his detective’s license. He found out that the bank manager had a gambling problem and the night watchmen had been hired by him specifically, after six years in the clink for robbery. Harder than the case was surviving dinner with his sister-in-law Alice… who kept hitting up the party for money. At least none of his "team" needed bail.
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May 6, 2024 06:04
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Golden Bee posted:Rainsplatter & Stealing the Stars Art is universal. A glamorous October night at the Cocoanut Grove. It’s a premiere party for Cecil de DeMille’s latest and greatest hit, 'The Crusades'. Lord Simon (with Devika), Captain Semya Ivanova, Trudy Truman, Professor Winston Callahan, all the greats are here. The running gag is how much Trudy looks like Vivian Leigh (because that’s her character portrait.) Carol Lombard was giving her opinion on love and romance when the lights went out! The players rushed outside, and Trudy's journalism revealed the extent of the problem… A 30-mile zone of electrical disruption! This matched the theories of party guest Dr. Horace Abernathy. . But when the power went on, there was no damage. The best thing to do was get a good night's rest and check out the papers the next morning. And what headlines there were! While the city was blacked out, someone stole a 7’ x 5’ painting from the Huntington Museum in Pasadena! It was Lord Simon’s time to shine. He bumbled an attempt to sneak into the museum ("I thought the gardens were open, so I’m in those…") but was able to replicate the crime scene. The skylight was slightly skewed… Someone had stolen the painting from above! But strangely, the rooftop had signs of human footprints. Was it aliens? Humans? Shapeshifters? The thief had left a note. Trudy was able to weasel a look from the police. quote:This is the first time you will hear the name of the Zephyr but not the last! I am the greatest thief in the world, regardless of what some “English Lord” may say. Callahan took charge, demanding the group go to the newly built Griffith Observatory. There, he and Simon climbed one of the 25-foot statues, retrieving a strange metallic device. (They were yelled at; it was two pm.) Inside, Dr. Abernathy begged off from lvanova’s intimidating glare. He had seen a UFO, recently, while he was at smoking… but by the time he got a colleague, the thing was gone! He and the British scientist examined the device… discovering it had the power to short out electricity in a 30-mile radius. This doohickey caused last night’s outage! But the mystery remained… Who had done such a thing? Simon called his art fence boyfriend and hatched a plan… Find a big art gallery, listen for UFO sightings, and catch the baddies at the scene of the crime. This led the group to Chicago, meatpacker to the world. During the flight, Captain Semya continued her bickering with the wealthy Trudy Truman. The journalist called her all kinds of names, but wasn’t curious at all about her life. Why? Trudy replied that she would love to be curious if the captain wasn’t a bitch. *** Over the past few adventures, Lord Simon and Professor Callahan had developed a mutual love of crime. In order to leave his calling card behind Chicago’s largest painting ('Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte', by Seurat), Simon needed a distraction. Any ideas? The professor intentionally stumbled into a series of balustrades, requiring three docents to pick him up out of the mess. Back at the hotel, Trudy worked her reporter magic. She was assembling a map of UFO sightings based on radio shows and fringe newspapers...but Ivanova had carelessly left some old articles in the suite's sitting area… something about a political assassination in 1917. A little more snooping found the captain's suitcase half open… with a small framed photo of a Russian brunette who looked a lot like Trudy. Truman tried to sneak back. The Captain was sitting in Trudy’s chair. "The Revolution went well. The Civil War, less so. Did you learn anything going through the bitch’s things?" *** Simon and Winston stood on a windy rooftop in downtown Chicago. Above them was a 35-foot tall statue with an odd device lodged near the crook of its neck. Simon prepared himself for the climb, when the professor put one arm on his shoulder. quote:"Think smarter, not harder," said the professor, pulling out of magnet. The EMP device flew into his hands. "A few tweaks and we’ve got our trap." *** The women sat in silence. Trudy knew the power of silence, and her lips were sealed. But she wasn’t going to crack the cold-blooded Russian. quote:"You miss Ulyana," said the Aussie, "and you’re pissed my girlfriend is alive when yours isn’t." A few hours later, three of the heroes were standing on a rooftop near the Art Institute of Chicago. (Devika was back at the hotel, having only stop shopping because all the stores closed.) The city's lights went out. A strange UFO floated into view, letting down men with odd helmets. The men quickly removed the skylight of the museum, attaching it to the UFO. They unfolded their ropes, and began to climb down… When one of them was hit in the side of the face by a Russian boot. Simon ziplined in next, undoing the ropes of two mid-air heisters. The UFO responded to an intrusion by swinging the entire skylight at them! Ivanova rolled to safety, Simon scrambled behind a vent. If it kept up like this, both would be knocked off to their deaths. Luckily, Callahan was an excellent pilot. He harried the "UFO"… and with the help of Trudy’s flashbulbs, forced the ship to land on the streets! His modification of the EMP worked out perfectly, because Chicago got its power back in mere minutes. Simon and Semya gained control of the roof. After punching and questioning the "aliens", something was clear. These were skilled crooks, but they were from Basque country, not Mars. Yet none of them knew the deal with their boss… Simon snuck in the back of the UFO. Inside, the ship was quickly identified: A customized dirigible! And aiming her gun at the door with Simon’s newest rival, the Zephyr. The gentleman thief tried a flashy move, emptying his enemy’s gun and tapping her on the shoulder. She replied with a spin kick to the face. Zephyr was wearing the same lowlight 'alien' helmet as her minions … which gave Trudy an idea. She took a close-up flashbulb picture, blinding the woman enough for Semya to deliver a knockout strike. "You almost had her," said the Captain to the thief, helping him to his feet. Callaghan examined the ship's controls… And found out that they were made by a company called Lancaster. quote:"Wait", said Trudy, "like the guy who attacked Simon’s wedding?"
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May 13, 2024 06:25
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Golden Bee posted:Stealing the Stars Don’t believe everything you write in the papers. A hot December day down under. Trudy Truman, ace reporter, is finally back in the newsroom of the Melbourne Age. Despite her award-winning stories, she’s alienated her coworkers by being a gallivanting rich girl. She wins them back though, taking point on a difficult mining story on the far side of the country. She may be haughty, but her sheer -enthusiasm- is charming. Uptown, freelance butler Aldous Bingen is charming without a hint of enthusiasm. The staff is moving in tremendous quantities of new furniture. There is nearly a snafu… Until Aldous spies a porter holding a floor plan upside down. The doorbell rings. The prodigal daughter is home for lunch. quote:"Trudy?" Trudy was suspicious when her father forbade her to cover Aussie mining. She put two and two together when she saw all the new crates. But prying would provoke an argument… And a reporter should have more than one source. That meant talking to daddy’s financial manager. He couldn’t tell her anything… Until she threatened to withdraw -her- funds. The money-man wheedled, cajoled, begged… In the waiting room, Aldous Mapped a tasteful, tranquil garden. Callahan stared at the secretary, who stared back even harder. Soon, Trudy emerged, smiling like the cat who caught the canary. But she had something better: the name and financial records of daddy’s new, successful mine, all the way in Western Australia. The Alan Arani was currently with Jonesy in New Zealand, so the group had to rely on professor Callahan’s plane. Under the influence of Captain Ivanova, Callahan named his plane "The Spectre [of communism]". It could do the job, but it wasn’t the DC-3 the gang was used to. They soared above the sweltering city, into the freezing air. They make good time; Aldous is an able pilot, so there’s no need to break for sleep. They arrived in the sleepy town of Woomera a few days later, and learned about the situation at the mine. The Big Bend mine was active again after years of bad luck. Not just active; it was impossibly productive. Jade, Ruby, tanzanite, carnelian, gold and silver… All were there. And unfortunately for the miners, others had taken notice. The gang woke up early, dressed down, and headed for the Bend. Itinerant laborers were blocking the tunnel! They were willing to work hard, any shift, to feed their families. The union miners weren’t going to go along with that. Violence was imminent. Aldous hustled to gather a vox populi report. Trudy namedropped several famous Australian mining disasters… it didn’t matter how much enthusiasm they had, letting newbies in endangered everybody. The Itinerants left, despite Winston’s rumbling towards communism. Trudy was thanked by the Big Bend’s foreman… who immediately recognized her as an outsider, and then as the eldest Truman daughter. There were plenty of reasons not to allow the boss's daughter, and a famous journalist, into the mind, but Tru had a baffle-gab answer for all of them. The rumors were true… The walls of the mine were studded with gems. Rubies, citrine, lemon quartz, jade… But at the bottom level of the mine was a strange pink liquid, ankle deep. Honore de Balzac posted:Behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Professor Winston Callahan knows a little of everything. Or maybe too much of everything, because he recognized what had happened. The gems were the scales of the rainbow serpent of aboriginal myth. The pink liquid was psychotropic blood, a link to the dreamtime. His attempt to subtly inform his companions led to a panic. None of them were adroit liars. They just barely held it together long enough to fool the foreman. Money was good, no problems here, gotta go, don’t tell Trudy’s dad she was here. This was an ethical crisis. Trudy had already spent newspaper money to investigate the case. If she reported it as a hoax, any loose rumor would sink her career. And even if the Workers kept quiet, someone noticed that they all got houses and boats. Then again, the truth was just as bad. She had betrayed her father, attacked the family's pocketbook, and indirectly exportation and torture of a Mythic creature. And doing nothing wasn’t possible… There was no proof that a kilometer-long serpent could be peeled forever. They had to move the serpent… But how? It wasn’t something that aeronautics or butlering could answer. There was one lead Trudy could follow up on…She knew of a shaman who could help them. But he lived in the outback. And they didn’t bring enough aviation fuel for a detour. They would have to drive. Journeying through Western Australia is hard. Hard navigationally; in 1935, it was largely unmapped. After a few hours in the wrong direction, Aldous corrected Trudy’s driving in what he considered a 'polite' way. Tensions were raised. The physical side was worse than the emotional. Aldous had lived his adult life in a tux, so going down to an undershirt and shorts was a vacation. Callahan, Used to the chillier parts of the northern hemisphere, turned into a sweat soaked mess. (Mad dogs and Englishman, and all that.) When they got to Wolfe Creek crater, he was eager to lie in the shade. There, the shaman, very confused to receive visitors, taught them a ritual to awaken the serpent. Unfortunately, they’d still have to free it… Without destroying the mine. (Instead of playing out the return trip, we did a cutaway to Trudy’s younger sister confronting her asset management team, wondering where she went and why no one seen her in nearly a week. Everyone had fun with the staring secretary.) Back in Woomera, Bingen, who lives to serve, made sure to telegraph the family and let everyone know Trudy was OK. It was unclear if he knew that telegrams include their station of origin... The trio had what they needed. The plan is made: sneak into the mine, modify the tunneling equipment, awaken the creature, and pretend it did it all that on its own. *** Subtlety is a specialty of Aldous’s, so the infiltration goes well. Modifying equipment outside of specification isn’t a specialization for the professor; it’s more a hyper-fixation. The project takes all night, but he’s and wise to put in extra effort… because when the creature flees to the sky, it nearly hits the Alan Arani! The group tries to flee, but their only real means of escape is the airfield, A.K.A. the empty patch of ground where the Spectre is parked. When Daddy lands, reporter Trudy finally told him the truth…. The blood of the creature, shed while escaping, made the mine non-operational. A write-off, hopefully. Unless someone wanted to corner the market in psychotropic gems… --- Spies of Egypt Who's who? Everyone's dying to know. We had some time left in the session, so the group continued their project of building the Cairo base! They argued that their mining experience meant they could make the escape tunnel they had been dreaming of, but the rooftop gun range was a more political problem. The administrator of Cairo was mildly happy to help. Someone in the office was a Nazi spy, if our heroes found out who, they’d get carte blanche for building projects. Gertrude Contessa Truman's investigation was perhaps too good. She cornered the Nazi and got a faceful of chloroform. When the Australian woke, she was in a chair, dangling off the side of a rickety building in the Cairo slums. Aldous has always had a soft spot for the common man. So it’s no surprise that after hours, a janitor showed him one of his "pranks"…rummaging through employees’ desks. All fun and games until you find surveillance photos and extraction plans. *** The Nazi, "Nina Brill", had gotten under Trudy’s skin. As a reporter, Truman had heard a lot…but Nina was rough. quote:"Poor little rich girl. At least when you hit the pavement, you’ll have a butler to it wipe off." Nina was guarding the stairway, so former pentathlete Aldous jumped over from a nearby rooftop! As a butler, he always had the perfect item at hand, and today a simple pocket knife was enough to free the reporter. Callahan punched out the local talent. The fight was even (because this was, frankly, a non-combat trio), but that changed when Aldous provided "covering fire" on the narrow rooftop. Nina saw her chance, fleeing, yelling to the police officers that "there’s a maniac with a gun, help me!". It was a great plan (Nazi spies love to lie), but Tru defeated it with her deep well of contacts. quote:"Officer Abdelaal… What are you doing with this screaming German national?" Nina fled again, but was cornered by Aldous and the professor, who had grabbed a pair of bicycles. Case solved. After that live fire experience, they had earned... the right to a rooftop gun range. Suddenly less exciting.
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May 20, 2024 06:30
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