Temple of the Crying Buddha - Music Post

Music post for my first run of The Temple of the Crying Buddha.

 

Unkown Armies Play Report: The Temple of the Crying Buddha

Nanking, 1937.

Amidst a grand guignol of violence and pillaging, Captain Hojo sat on a heap of loot taller than a man, a fat bladed dao with a jeweled hilt laid across his knees. Beneath him: antique furniture, gold and silver, wine and rare spirits. There was a Mercedes in there somewhere, half buried under a massive bolt of silk. A pair of kempeitai goons came in with a crate of pure morphine and left it at the base of the pile.

The Captain leaned forward and grinned at a trio of Imperial Japanese Army privates.

• Katoki the gambler, in need of money
  
• Suzuki the addict, looking for his next fix
  
• Takeo the glutton, always hungry
  

“You louts are going to do a job for me. There’s a temple near the Purple Mountain. Inside is a special cup. It’s made of a big piece of jade and shaped like a dragon skull. You’re going to get the cup for me.

Anything else you find in the temple is yours, you can keep it. I’ll keep the others out so you’ll have the place to yourself.

Go!”

To refuse the Captain would be unwise.

 

Without wasting time on preamble, the three Privates made haste for the iron gates of the Temple of the Crying Buddha.

Delta Green Play Report: Eight Folds to Infinity

You stand on a vast red plain, which extends to the horizon. Mountains are visible in the distance, silhouetted red by a green haze that filters upward into the darkness beyond. The plain is red, ankle deep in blood.

Before you is a massive desk, like a judge would use. It towers above you. On the desk is written:

 

Sitting at the desk, peering down at you, is a gray little man in a green accountant’s visor and red vest. He squints, and asks, in his dusty voice: How many people have you killed?

Unknown Armies Play Report: ICONODULES V2

Another day, another playtest of ICONODULES. Another year, another Jackson Elias Convention. If you want to read up on the premise and the basics of the adventure, check the first playtest.

 

This time, we had

• Ecrin - Experienced Occultist and Wage Slave
  
• Mehmet - Closeted Defender of Gay Turks (And Armenians… and Kurds)
• Suliman - Expert Fencer, Martial Arts Master, Total Coward
• Zuhal - Precocious Technology Expert

After character selection and a rules tutorial, play began with the burger warriors pulling into the Akpet off the highway to take a piss and grab some snacks before the final drive to Göbekli Tepe. They spotted three weirdos who seemed worth investigating.

• A seventeen year old Syrian kid, filling up gas cans at the pump. 
• An American guy in a fiberglass mask emblazoned with a hand of mysteries, carrying bottled water and calorie dense snacks out of the store.
• A Kurdish lady in a blue headscarf smoking a safe distance away from the pumps, who Zuhal recognized from Kurdish_Professionals, a weirdly ritualistic lesbian XVIDEOS channel that got taken down after people mass reported it. 

The group offered to help the Syrian kid, but he wasn't interested in strangers pestering him, especially a girl his own age. Mehmet tried to forge a connection with the Kurdish lady, using his Solid Citizen powers to connect with a member of his tribe. The lady misinterpreted his "how do you do, fellow gay?" overture, but not in the way he expected. Rather than a fellow member of the homosexual underground, she assumed he was a fellow worshiper of the Goddess.

Delta Green - Shooting For Survival

I've cooled off on Delta Green over the years, but I was recently asked by a friend of the blog to repost this article from my DG master document. I wrote it a few years ago when I first started playing Delta Green. I saw a lot of characters die because the players misunderstood how the game system worked, made poor choices due to rules inexperience, and didn't take advantage of simple but easily forgotten mechanics that would have protected them. Automatic weapons and explosives killed more Agents than all the monsters in the game combined.

The tips presented here are mechanical rather than tactical. They will not save Agents from poorly chosen fights, bad strategic decisions, or an overly bloodthirsty attitude that comes back to bite them. But nobody should die because of a game rule that wasn't intuitive.

Unknown Armies NPC - Jenny Wex

In her mind's eye, something made Jenny want to recoil even before it came into focus.

A man. Mustard. A mustard m- no, a man in a mustard pin-stripe shirt... the room smelled vaguely of mustard. Old, like the kind around the rim of a squeezebottle.

The man was nondescript, sitting in a room like Darth Vader's chamber in Star Wars... meditating? But the horrific thing... the horrific thing was that he sat on a pink mass. The pink mass was slick and soft and luminous with a meaty sheen all over its carpetlike surface...

Jenny's mind ejected itself from her astral form.

"Nope," she said definitively, reaching for the Tums in her purse. "Too close, even at that distance."

A light came on in his head, disrupting the symphony of flesh surrounding him. There was a smell like tiny cubed onions, frying. In his shadow body, a thousand light years away, a fresh stream of drool issued from the side of his mouth, joining the layer of effluent caking his chin and neck. The edges of his jaws hurt in anticipation of the taste. The carpet rippled under him like it was alive.

 Then he was away from the sealed chamber and back in the mass, moving toward the spot where the light had come from.

Unknown Armies Play Report: ICONODULES

Pistachio Milkshake: employees at the McDonald’s in Gaziantep, a city in Turkey about 45 kilometers from the Syrian border. Also members of the Scottish Rite, an occult conspiracy of fast food workers fighting for the magickal revolution. They help people with their problems, make the world more accepting of magick through ostentatious supernatural demonstrations, and argue a lot on a secret imageboard of fellow burger warriors.

Lately the website has been abuzz with discussion. Nine out of ten psychics agree: a “moonchild” is going to be conceived somewhere in Anatolia. This powerful being will bring about a reign of blood and terror, the absolute last thing the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Turkey border region needs. Someone needs to either prevent the conception, or ensure that the resulting zygote comes out good instead of pure evil.

So when an archaeological dig at the ancient neolithic temple of Göbekli Tepe uncovers a living MILF Statue, only a two hour drive from your store, it’s clear what needs to be done. Everyone calls in a sick day and climbs into the group's battered Westfalia. Next stop: the oldest megalithic site in the world.

In attendance: 

• Hurrem - Wannabe Femme Fatale, Occasional Dipsomancer
• Mehmet - Closeted Defender of Gay Turks (And Armenians… and Kurds)
• Suliman - Expert Fencer, Martial Arts Master, Total Coward
• Yusuf - Old Man With Empathic Powers
• Zuhal - Precocious Technology Expert

Their objective: Prevent a being of unspeakable evil from being conceived at Göbekli Tepe.

Unknown Armies - Where the Hell is Adrian Lebarge Masterpost

Where the Hell is Adrian Lebarge is a oneshot for Unknown Armies 3e. Step into the shoes of a cabal of Pornomancers on the hunt for a con artist and the mysterious treasure she found in an ultrawealthy gated community.

• Scenario Folder with the adventure, the player document and the pregens.
• Play Report of the first run.
• Poolside, the setting.
• Adrian Lebarge, original writeup of the titular character.

ANGUISHEDWIRES - Music Post

I didn't do this originally because I felt it was too similar to the track list for my other dungeon The Manor of the Giant Arminius. But a friend asked me to compile it because he wanted to run ANGUISHEDWIRES.

 

Unknown Armies Play Report: WHERE THE HELL IS ADRIAN LEBARGE?

Four perverts from the Sect of the Naked Goddess, a Chicago based sex cargo cult, assembled in the conference room at the Pagan Video building for a briefing by ageing but still thoroughly MILFtacular high priestess Daphne Lee.

I got a message from a con artist I know. Says she found a treasure we’ve got to have. It’s a little thin, but she’s brought us some winners in the past.

Meet her in the bar at the hotel Basilica in Poolside, FL. 6:30 PM. I handled the reservations, if you have to stay the night or just need a place to charge. Figure out what she found, and if it’s something we want, get it. Try not to spend all the money. If she holds out for more and won’t move, kick her ass and take it. I don’t want you killing her unless you have a damn good excuse.

And watch out for the locals. Poolside’s a funny place, and I doubt you’ll be the only chargers there.

 On the team:

• Aura, as in "Cougar With a Threatening"
• Claude/tte Squish, Killer Femboy
• Kitty Hussman, Sectsy and She Knows It
• Organ Nick, Gachimuchi Wrestler

The three pornomancers and accompanying transvestite caught a flight to Miami. If they got straight in the rental when they touched down, they'd make Poolside in time for their 4:30 check in. They had two rental cars, a couple handguns, props and set dressing for pornomancy charging, and 20,000 dollars in bribe money.

Unknown Armies Otherspace: The City

ACCESS

Alan Madagascar wrote the equation that created the City, a formula that procedurally generated the world he saw every time he closed his eyes. He was able to transit into the place by simply constructing and solving the equation in his head. As he got older, he had trouble remembering the formula. He transcribed it into notebooks, so that all he had to do was input the final value to reach the other side.

Today, there are two ways to get into the City. Find a written copy of the formula, or derive it yourself. The former is the only hope a normal person has. The latter requires either extreme mathematical skill, lesser mathematical skill and a powerful computer, or a magick school fixated on architecture and buildings.

Either way, just drop a value in for X (the seed) and you’re off to the races. You must be inside a structure for this to work. Leave the building, and you’ll exit into the City.

Leaving the City is as easy as going back through the door you came through.

Unknown Armies Location: Mummy Roads

Beginning with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, and heightening throughout the 19th century as European powers displaced the Ottomans as Egypt’s colonial overlords, European (and American) interest in Egyptian mummies created a vibrant tomb plundering industry among the fellahin, who were more than happy to sell the stupid things to gullible foreigners as quickly as they could exhume them.

While some of the preserved corpses were purchased for legitimate scientific and archaeological purposes, large numbers were acquired by private parties as trophies and decoration, and more still were ground up and recycled into fertilizer for their high nitrogen and potassium content. Still more were consumed in a more obscure and vaguely occult capacity as paint pigments or medicine.

And a few were used to pave roads.

Dune 2d20 Masterpost

I've been running Modiphius' Dune 2d20 system on and off for the last few months. The adventures of House Viracocha and the War of Assassins with House Orlok.

By Stepan Alekseev

My feedback on the game system is that if you want to run a Dune RPG, it's worth using Dune 2d20 rather than hacking another system. Any further praise would have to be counterbalanced with a listing of the game's flaws, both in the rules themselves and the explanation given in the corebook. I might do a full F&F writeup of the game, or a shorter review on this blog if I don't feel like putting myself through the full meatgrinder.

Dune 2D20 - Peripheral Houses

HOUSE AT TAM

House Major

Homeworld: Niushe

NPCs Known: Beg MacAdder at Tam (hit on Tost Viracocha once)

House at Tam hails from the "purple world" of Niushe, whose retinal based ecosystem gives the planet's plant life its distinctive coloration. They have a reputation as honest brutes, fond of violence and self indulgence, yet utterly pious in their devotion to the Horned Mother. They keep trade and communication with the rest of the universe to a bare minimum, out of fear that other Houses and various secret organizations will subvert their culture through the media and send spies into their homes undetected. They keep large parts of their world at a medieval level of technological sophistication. They hate House Orlok for stealing away their beloved priests of House Nuntius after defeating House at Tam in a War of Assassins.

Dune 2d20: Music Post

Music from the Dune 2d20 game. Some tracks were originally slated for one location and used for another. Not all tracks were used.

By Guchi

 

Dune 2d20: Session 7 - THIS IS KANLY

Klamm Orlok, bastard son of Marquis James Orlok, and Kleft, defacto commander of the Sulfur Dragoons,  held Lydia Amaru, Agent of House Viracocha, at gunpoint in Klamm's apartment on the Acid Spit, the Sulfur Dragoons' spar of the aerostat Dhal on House Orlok's home planet Rulag.

 

Lydia convinced them that she was actually Cappy Viracocha, daughter of Earl Alejandro Viracocha and valuable hostage. She didn't have a signet ring to back up any of her outlandish offers in exchange for freedom, so the pair had her confined to the state room next to Klamm's apartment while they decided what to do with her. They hadn't alerted the rest of House Orlok yet, which was good.

Mockingbird the Face Dancer disguised themself as Klamm and told the guards to bring Lydia out. They almost made it off the Spit, but were interrupted by the return of Kleft. Mockingbird changed faces into a random trooper before Kleft spotted them. Disguised Mockingbird told Kleft that Klamm had ordered the prisoner removed. Kleft assumed it was a coup, and ordered the other Sulfur Dragoons to kill disguised Mockingbird. Mockingbird ran out through the pentashield Lydia tried to follow, but didn't have a keycard, and bounced right off the prudence door.

With Lydia in captivity, the rest of the Agents considered their options. They had a squad of Watchers and another of Free Shooters ready to deploy to the aerostat, a Face Dancer who could change their appearance at will, and a dissembler keycard that would let them into the prudence door protecting the base. A military operation would rescue their operative and give them a chance to capture the Sulfur Dragoons' leaders and destroy their base of operations, all while looking stylish.

Unknown Armies Cabal: All the World is Green

Artemisia Culpeper (formerly Gordagina Smollet) has a vision. A world swept clean of humans, the works of civilization covered with green, growing things. A world of exquisite beauty and perfect solitude, where she could wander forever. Walk city streets under a canopy of trees. Climb overgrown viaducts and watch chunks of skyscrapers calve off and tumble into urban canyons below, slowly collapsing under the weight of the ivy.

Why does she want this? She has no strong environmental sentiments. She doesn’t hate other people, at least not enough to want them exterminated. She wants this because she has a vague memory of the place, the world without people with the ruins still standing but overgrown and wild. She doesn’t know if this is a memory or something she saw in a dream, or in a picture that convinced her it was real. It’s beautiful and she would sacrifice anything to go back there. Including every other person in existence.

Unknown Armies Sandbox: Poolside, FL

No art, print friendly version here.

Poolside, Florida. Founded by Dan Poolside in 1925 during the boom. While everyone else was busy inflating real estate bubbles, Poolside bought water rights and built infrastructure, obsessed with his dream of a Mediterranean resort town in the Everglades. It sounded insane, but it’s not that different from how Naples turned out. Today, this city of 3,991 people boasts a “thriving” upstairs/downstairs economy of wealthy retirees and a rotating cast of service workers scraping by at subsistence levels.

Poolside is built on an island of rock and concrete fill, piled up around a truly massive boulder. The top of the rock outcropping is the highest point in South Florida outside Miami. The stone mound is crusted with buildings, hanging gardens, and decorative water features. Down to the waterfront, a facsimile of a Neapolitan tourist village.

Surrounding the town are the florida Everglades, a flooded morass of freshwater forests and “wet prairies”. The Everglades were acquired as a National Park in 1934, Poolside was spared eminent domain by smart legal maneuvering on the part of the founder. The entire Poolside incorporated area encompasses a couple square miles of swamp outside the town, which is not fenced but clearly demarcated as the “City Limits” by buoys and signs.

All public lighting in poolside has red lenses, to protect the elderly residents’ night vision and avoid generating light pollution. The town has blackout laws restricting open windows at night.

Dune 2d20: Session 6 - THIS IS KANLY

The House Viracocha counselors sent three agents to House Orlok's home planet Rulag:

• Lydia Amaru the Disguise Specialist
• Marcus the Mentat Spy
• Zak Vezas the Hypnotist

Their mission: to collect information about House Orlok and its servitors, infiltrate The Sulfur Dragoons mercenary army, and find secret information that could be used to embarrass or destroy them.

The trio of Agents arrived at the spaceport on the Aerostat Dhal. A helpful Guild agent listed them as pilgrims and got them tourist visas in exchange for some information about House Runasimi's plans for the war.

by KhairulHisham

The aerostat was a floating city filled with breathable air. This allowed it to float in the heavier-than-air atmosphere of the planet's upper cloud layer. Marcus suspected the city also had suspensors carrying some of the weight. The shuttle bay was on the top spindle of the hab, with an elevator that went down to the main habitat "bowl" inside. This enclosed space was filled with bridges, mezzanines and concentric rings of terraces, going from the rim of the bowl down to the lower levels. Everything was decorated in colorful banners. Everyone carried weapons. Massive screens advertised House Orlok's military might and their impending victory over House Runasimi. And a strange abstract warning, where a dancing figure with a sword was "stomped out" by a giant boot.

 

Unicorn Meat - First Impressions

I took Throne of Salt off my "blogs I read" tab a while back because I found I was no longer reading most of the posts. I noticed the other day though that the guy finally wrapped Unicorn Meat, a scenario that he's been posting about for a while now. This isn't a full review because I haven't actually played the module. But he specifically says in the release post that people should post what they think of it after reading.

The art in this post is from the book, drawn by Rowan A

 

PREMISE

Unicorn Meat is a module about a factory farm that butchers unicorns for meat and magical spare parts. Since unicorns are driven into a berserk rage by the energy emanating from sexually mature humans, but docile and friendly toward children, the company running the farm enslaved a large population of orphaned, kidnapped and purchased girls, who did the grunt work of hunting down and killing the beasts. 

Fast forward to the present day, and the adults who ran the place have all wandered into the haunted forest surrounding the property and been eaten by mysterious chthonic entities capable of projecting themselves into the dreams of mature humans. The surviving semiferal slave children are trapped on the farm by magical implants that prevent them from escaping, left with nothing but the dwindling supplies left behind by the company and a haunted swamp filled with unicorns for sustenance. You play as these kids.

Dune 2d20: Session 5 - THIS IS KANLY

A few days had elapsed since House Viracocha's operatives returned from their Trip to Gamont. House Runasimi decided that, rather than pretend expertise in matters they had no knowledge of, they themselves would pursue a defensive strategy, and outsource offensive operations against House Orlok to House Viracocha. While the bulk of the mercenary forces would be stationed in the University City of Huanchaco with House Runasimi's leadership, House Viracocha would be given forces and assets sufficient for the prosecution of the war off-planet.

The Agents of House Viracocha were promoted in accordance with their skillsets

• Huascar was promoted to Warmaster
• Dr Ichuri was promoted to House Physician
• Sister Victoria was promoted to Spymaster
• Tost was promoted to Envoy

The newly promoted House Viracocha Councilors stepped into the Chamber of Understanding in Crannog Viracocha, the House's lakeside estate. Mentat Joe, Figaro and Rug were doing sapho shots and arguing viciously about something irrelevant to the Councillors. They paused their discussion to explain the situation.

Dune 2d20 - Watcher and Free Shooter Chargen Options

The two armies procured by the agents of House Viracocha have a handful of unique talents that supporting characters can take in place of (or in addition to) traits from the trait list in the corebook.

Players may purchase these traits for their main characters using advancement points, receiving training from teachers in the corresponding military force.

WATCHERS

The Watchers are a mercenary company specialized in observation. If they have a chance to watch their target and assess their weakness, they can methodically dismantle them in battle. If caught off guard, they struggle in direct combat.

The typical Watcher trait is either Watcher or mercenary.

The new talents available to Watchers are:

• Amtal Rule: You are an adroit assessor of weakness. Any time you attempt to force a trait onto a target, you may reroll a single die.
• Limited Prediction: In conflict, as a free action, you may spend two momentum to learn what an NPC (or group of NPCs in cases such as warfare where multiple people are treated as a single asset or entity) will do next. The NPC(s) must attempt the predicted action when their turn comes up, unless changing circumstances  render it physically impossible.

FREE SHOOTERS

The Free Shooters are former slaves from Gamont, granted their freedom by House Viracocha and enlisted by their parent House Runasimi as spies and assassins. Their lack of skill in personal combat is counterbalanced by their superb tradecraft and their unshakeable faith in the existence of another universe in which they will be reborn after their inevitable gory death.

Free Shooter traits are either the generic "freed slave" or a specific former job function like gladiator, prostitute, tour guide, chef, etc.

Les Francs-tireurs by Auguste Louis Lepère

New Talents available to Free Shooters are:

• Berserker: In conflict, you can add one additional die to your pool on a roll, in exchange for reducing the difficulty of attacking you by two until your next action. This bonus die does not increase the cost of dice purchased with momentum.
• Deep Cover: You can play any role, no matter how unpleasant. When disguised or undercover, and your cover is blown, you may choose to take a complication to maintain your cover. You cannot do this again until you remove the complication or change disguises.

Dune 2D20: Session 4 - Trip to Gamont

Huascar Quilago hung from the remains of the recently nuked suspensor platform by his krimskel fiber rope. Dr Ichuri hung from Huascar's legs. Alan Nomad dangled from Dr Ichuri. Below them: 100 feet, then the ocean. The Doctor grabbed the rope and climbed up over Huascar onto the suspensor. He used the rope's self tightening action to gradually haul Huascar and Nomad up onto the floating ball.

 

100 feet below, Sister Victoria woke up on a beach. A small child covered in the same identifying tattoos and scars as the other slaves was prying the rings off her fingers. She chased the kid away and stood up. There were a few dead bodies washed up on the beach. She did a quick inventory of her cells and found no evidence of radiation sickness from the blast, indicating a "clean" fusion reaction. The child had retreated inland, into a wild forest.

 

Victoria went into the woods, hoping to find someone who could help her. She found crashed pieces of the suspensor platform, and drag marks where bodies had been removed from the scene, leading deeper into the forest. By climbing a tree and suspending her breathing, she avoided a skirmish line of armed slaves, moving through the forest looking for survivors. They didn't look friendly.

Tost Viracocha sat in a clearing in the forest, along with Ser Rhineland Rashomon and a handful of mercenaries from the convention. They had been captured by the rebels, who were standing around with various weapons, out of reach of Tost. It was clearly a hostage situation, the surviving nobility who had washed ashore after the blast were acting as human shields for the surviving maula. It would only be a matter of time before forces from House Thoss (or their parent House) showed up to reassert control of the situation, and things got bloody.

 

Dune 2D20: Session 3 - Trip to Gamont

When we last left off, the Agents of House Viracocha had arrived on Gamont, and attended the first day of the mercenary trade show. They had identified a free company, the Watchers, as a likely candidate for the procurement they'd been assigned to oversee: recruiting a mercenary army to help their parent house, House Runasimi, defend itself from House Orlok in a War of Assassins.

The second day of the Trip to Gamont dawned, and the Agents of House Viracocha found that nobody had attacked them in their sleep. Lydia stayed behind to make sure Mentat Joe didn't choke on his own vomit from his drug bender, while the rest of the group caught a shuttle back up to the trade show. They recalled Mentat Joe's incomplete warning that, while their deal with the Watchers would be successful, something else bad was going to happen.

They shared the shuttle up to the flying convention platform with some familiar faces and some new ones. They recognized the delegation from House Rashomon, the leader wearing a pair of heavy sunglasses to combat photosensitivity from his hangover. There was also a new guy, which they recognized by the flashes on the collar of his Hawaiian shirt as the colors of House Rust, a House Minor from Giedi Prime with a controlling interest in the Eyeflash Miracles, one of the mercenary outfits at the expo.

Dune 2D20: Session 2 - Trip to Gamont

When we last left the agents of House Viracocha, they had identified a couple promising candidates to hire as mercenaries for House Runasimi's war against House Orlok:

• The Eyeflashes, warrior hypnotists who could induce seizures in their targets
• The Watchers, observant fighters who carefully observed their targets to learn their weaknesses

The next step was to make sure that whoever they chose didn't sell them out, and figure out how to get the best possible price. The team planned their next move in the flying bar at the end of the lounge, attached to the suspensor platform where the conference was taking place.

The agents queried the elderly drug addict Mentat Joe about the loyalties of the two mercenary outfits, hoping he might remember something useful. Joe recalled that the Eyeflashes were majority owned by House Rust. House Rust was a House Minor on Geidi Prime, always trying to imitate their masters' gift for scheming. It wasn't a good idea to hire them as mercenaries. That left the Watchers as the obvious choice. Sister Victoria could use her truthsayer powers to determine whether the Watchers were on the level, and then the group could workshop how to get leverage over them for a better price.

Dune 2D20: Session 1 - Trip to Gamont

The blue sun rose over Bonavera, lighting up the Studio City of Lake, glittering off the almost-frozen surface of the artificial body of fresh water that half encircled it. The planet wasn't warm enough to have a natural water cycle, yet.

 

Figaro, two fisted editor and House mentat to the Viracocha dynasty, summoned four people to his office for a secret mission:

• Tost Alejandrez, Superfluous offspring of Earl Viracocha 
• Sister Victoria, Bene Gesserit Bodyguard
• Huascar Quilago, Stunt man but for real
• Doctor Saman Ichuri, Slumming Suk Doctor

Figaro didn't turn to greet his visitors, watching them in the rear view mirror of his editing desk with one eye, while the other focused on his work. He was cutting together three movies at once, hands flicking across the controls as he put the finishing touches on a documentary, an investment pitch and a porno. He cursed the director's sloppy work, then remembered he had company.

The situation was this: House Runasimi, to which House Viracocha owed fealty, was at war with House Orlok (and by extension House Nuntius). House Runasimi was good at political maneuvering, not direct combat, and needed mercenaries. Runasimi gave the procurement to Viraccha, and now the mentat was giving it to the four agents. They were competent enough that they might actually succeed, expendable enough that it wasn't a big deal if they failed, and low profile enough that they wouldn't instantly be recognized on the covert adventure they were about to embark on.

 

The specifics of the mission: there was a convention on Gamont, where a number of mercenary armies would be holding demonstrations and soliciting contracts. The agents had the dispensation of the house to initiate a contract with one of these armies in order to defend the house. Figaro stipulated that the ideal mercenary army would be

• Effective
• Loyal
• Within House Runasimi's budget

He understood that in procurement, you rarely got all three of "good, loyal, and cheap". He counted on the agents negotiating aggressively and using their heads to get a good deal.

 

The agents concurred with Figaro's plan for the expedition: they would travel as tourists undercover, using a commercial shuttle to board the Guild Heighliner and staying at a hotel on Gamont prior to attending the conference. They decide to bring three retainers with them:

• Lydia Maru, makeup artist and master of disguise
• Mentat Joe, ageing human computer with a drug bug addiction and a phobia of insects
• Jasper the Bodyguard, alcoholic House Ginaz fanboy
  

The group picked up some minor equipment from the House reserves, and away they went.

Dune 2D20: House Viracocha

House Viracocha rules the Studio City of Lake, the heart of House Runasimi’s media empire. Though Bonavera is an unpopular place to shoot film due to the harsh light of its blue star, one out of every five movies in the Known Universe is produced in Lake. Filmbooks, movies, documentaries, pornography, Viracocha does it all.

The House is led by Earl Alejandro Viracocha. A sound mixer born into the pyon class, Alejandro’s skill at blackmail and his ability to instantly tell whether something would be popular saw his meteoric rise through the house production companies. He attained Earldom by buying off the sitting Earl’s debts, in exchange for the hand of his daughter Castine Viracocha in marriage. He is adept at anticipating and servicing House Runasimi’s media and propaganda needs. Privately, he considers them soul crushingly dull, referring to them as “corporate” or “the suits” in conversation.

Earless Castine Viracocha is an enthusiastic skier, mountaineer, hunter and explorer. Most of her media appearances are documentaries about her outdoor adventures. The Imperium is a mature civilization, but many colony worlds remain undeveloped or underexplored. Bonavera itself is only fully mapped at a satellite level, and Castine enjoys leading visiting nobility on hunting trips and ecological surveys to see if House Viracocha’s terraforming efforts are taking. She channels profits from the Viracocha media empire into real estate and tourism projects, building resorts for winter sports like skiing and repulsor jumping.

The Earl’s chosen heir is Capæcnencæpæc "Cappy" Viracocha, investigative journalist. Cappy is a master of disguise and an expert at getting people to share information with her. Her budding intelligence network gives House Viracocha greater control of incoming information as well as outgoing. It also makes her suspicious enough to be worth assassinating, or at least taking as a hostage. The Earl has told her publicly that if she gets captured doing something stupid, he’s nominating one of her siblings as heir rather than paying the ransom.

The Viracocha family would be helpless without House Mentat Figaro, the two-fisted screenwriter-editor-producer who leaves his personal touch on all the House’s most popular brands. Though his formal training is in propaganda and psychology, his true love is special effects work, hand painting each frame of a film to achieve the perfect blend of photorealism and style. He even finds time to do a little HR and personnel management work in-between, though he considers it an irritating distraction and prefers to farm it out to the House Truthsayer.

Dune 2D20: House Runasimi

House Runasimi rules the terrestrial planet Bonavera, the fourth planet orbiting the blue star Rigel. Blue stars are poor candidates for life but the rocky world once hosted vast ecologies of alien coral, which now form the backbone of its massive mountain chains. The first settlers to the world lived in tunnels and caves carven from the planet’s natural “pores” while they slowly terraformed the surface, binding atmospheric nitrogen and using it to cultivate algae, fertile soil and plants until the air was breathable.

 

The world now sports patches of plant life, cultivated by enterprising dirt farmers on ridges and valleys in between the marble cliffs.

Runasimi’s military is just powerful enough to govern its own planet, and the assorted houses minor who directly administer the regions beyond its own holdings. Lacking vast armies or skilled assassins, the house exerts influence on imperial politics through soft power. The Diplomacy College in the planetary capital of Huanchaco is second only to the Bene Gesserit finishing schools in teaching its pupils to acquire and wield power, attracting students from other houses across the Imperium - and giving House Runasimi direct influence over their education and beliefs. The “Studio City” of Lake (so called because it sits on the shore of the world’s only lake, an artificial creation of the planetologists who oversaw the original settlement) is one of the main centers of cultural warfare in the Known Universe. Great Houses across the Imperium commission filmbooks and plays, songs and comic operas from Lake. All vying to contaminate the universe’s high and low culture alike with their own messages and propaganda.

House Runasimi’s “scholarship” program recruits promising peasants from other houses across the Imperium, offering transportation to Bonavera and a full ride at a premier school. In exchange, the recruits are bonded to the House, repaying the investment with a lifetime of service. It’s a better offer than they’ll get at home.

Dune 2D20: House Nuntius

Nuntius is a House Minor, acquired as a trophy of war by House Orlok in a skirmish with House at-Tam. As a condition of victory, the losing house was forced to bankroll the relocation of House Nuntius’ entire temple-city of Berenike to an aerostat on Rulag.

House Nuntius’ own religion is a cult of the Horned Mother, one of the primary avatars of God appearing in the Orange Catholic Bible. Agents of House Nuntius present as ecumenical missionaries and translators, who can be hired or bought to smooth diplomatic relationships between Houses with radically different religious and cultural beliefs. Privately, within the hermeneutic lecture halls of Berenike Bible College, House Nuntius’ most learned doctors of the church debate the most effective methods for subtly converting outsiders to their own religious views.

House Orlok employs diplomats from House Nuntius to “mediate” disputes with other Houses, primarily to make themselves appear more fearsome by comparison. And also to claim that they have made the required peace overtures prior to declaring war.

Dune 2D20: House Orlok

House Orlok rules the greenhouse world of Rulag, a terrestrial planet orbiting the excessively bright yellow star Rho Cassiopeiae. The planet is shrouded in a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid. This toxic “heavier than air” atmosphere renders the surface uninhabitable, but allows the inhabitants to live in aerostats, floating cities filled with breathable air. The planet has no native life outside primitive aeroplankton, which planetologists incorporated into an aerial ecology populated by sports of earth birds which can survive in the poisonous atmosphere.

House Orlok are great warriors obsessed with their image as great warriors. The war colleges and assassin schools of the Floating World teach their initiates to kill with artistry that inspires fear and respect. They are assisted by a propaganda apparatus that brands and markets the Legions of House Orlok according to their modus operandi: The Flame Cataphracts, who ride into battle on suspensor bikes and suffocate enemies inside their shields with gouts of chemical fire. The Bomb Knights, who kill with spears tipped with high explosive squash heads. The Sulfur Dragoons, who wade into battle wearing thermoplastic fatigues and dissolve their enemies in seas of acid.

House Orlok’s obsession with reputation is its achilles heel. Its soldiers would rather die with style than win and look bad. This also means that any attack on the House’s reputation is a mortal threat to its power. When House Runasimi included unflattering footage of House Orlok’s forces in the third reel of Soldiers of the Queen, its comedy series documenting the Imperium’s most ignominious military pratfalls, it was tantamount to a declaration of war. House Orlok responded with an actual declaration of war, vowing the extermination of House Runasimi in exchange for the sleight.

Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - Masterpost

DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE was an eleven session playtest for the Brethren of the Curb, a Mak Attax successor conspiracy from the upcoming Special Orders book on Statosphere. The players were food truck pirates with a recipe for dumplings and a quest to make Salem the new Tortuga.

 

Photo by me, for once

 

I really overloaded the corkboard and the campaign took about twice as many sessions as I expected, but I enjoyed every one. Unknown armies takes a lot of work compared to something more pick up and play like Delta Green, but offers a much richer menu of options, both narratively and mechanically.

 

Here are the play reports for each session.

• Corkboarding
• Session 1
• Session 2
• Session 3
• Session 4
• Session 5
• Session 6
• Session 7
• Session 8
• Interlude
• Session 9
• Session 10
• Session 11
• Bonus: Music 

Writeups of game content (NPCs, factions, otherspaces, magic items et al) will either appear in the final Special Orders book, a separate book, or on this blog, depending on how well they fit into each one.

 

Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - Music Post

Music used in DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE, an eleven session playtest for the Brethren of the Curb, a Mak Attax successor conspiracy from the upcoming Special Orders book on Statosphere.

 

Bao Down mascot costume - rejected concept

Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - SESSION 11

Rachel's unspeakable servants were born. The eruv was set up, granting Tal Safdie control over Salem's minor magicks. Endemic Spice retired to their rented cottage, while the Bao Down gang met up to discuss their next move. They still needed to guarantee the New Maks' independence. Rachel could allocate an unspeakable servant to protect the McDonald's where they worked, but that would still leave Dandy vulnerable to demonic possession. DBD had a plan for this, worked out with Endemic Spice. He would teach Dandy Hirsh capsacinaturgy, so she could make herself too spicy for demons to infest.

 

Dandy was a teenager, and lived with her parents in Peabody, adjacent to Salem. She was grounded after being caught underage drinking at the site of an attempted mass shooting at the Blood For Sex Club a couple nights ago. Rachel bought her "grounded" Status and assigned it to one of her unspeakable servants, confining the beast to the Bao Down truck. Dandy accompanied the crew to Mack Park, where DBD made the offer: he'd make her an adept in a spicy spell school, which would keep the demons away. Dandy was a little suspicious, she knew from the anon list that being an adept was no laughing matter. But the crew was able to persuade her that it was worth the cost. She sealed the deal by eating an extremely spicy dumpling and gaining a few percentages of DBD's power.

 

Rachel asked if Dandy was ok with Bao Down putting an unspeakable servant in the Ronald McDonald statue outside the McDonald's where the New Maks worked. Dandy asked what an unspeakable servant was. Rachel showed her the one in the truck. Dandy freaked the fuck out. Rachel and DBD calmed her down. Dandy also mentioned that a guy from the Court had offered them all great scholarships if they'd sell out the Rite - the two cabals had a truce, but that didn't preclude economic warfare. Rachel confirmed that this man was Sin Woo-Jin, and he was not to be trusted.

Now it was time to load an unspeakable servant into the Ronald McDonald statue outside the Salem McDonalds. The statue was solid plastic and they needed a way to hollow it out. There were a number of ways they could do this, but they'd just observed the cigar smoking mage Alice use her powers to delete an engine out from inside a vehicle. And she had given them her cell number, in hopes that Reba would call her. And Reba was kind of into the whole "butch cigar smoking Jaws" thing.

Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - SESSION 10

While the rest of the Bao Down group was driving around Massachusetts setting up the unspeakable servants and fighting the Court of the Burger Queen, Reba was setting up the artifact eruv around Salem, to symbolically enclose it so that Tal could extend their magick exclusion ability over the whole town. Reba was joined by the Indian mages of Endemic Spice:

• Ramachandran the Videomancer
• Ardhanari the Mancymancer
• Leatherface the Reverse Vigilante

The eruv, a fishing line charged with several decades of geomantic energy from Boston, needed to be strung up around the borders of Salem.

Leatherface knew how to operate a cherrypicker, and Ramachandran had the money to rent one. It would take all night and then some, but they had the technology and the expertise to hang it on the power lines. Yellow vests and hard hats ensured that nobody would ask them questions while they "worked the lines" at night.

They were in the Harmony Grove Cemetery when they ran into trouble.