The Great Glass Mountain - Session Six

The three Knights of the Company arrived at the Funeral Plain at the end of Spring, on Tax Day. The Green Season drew to a close as the days got shorter and the Great Glass Mountain sent its heralds to collect a share of coins from those of appropriate social standing to trade in currency. The Chain, Horn and Salt Knights would worry about that later. They had a funeral to attend.

They were not the only guests on the funeral plain. They heard it before they saw it. A man screaming. He knelt in front of a half-finished mausoleum, next to the one where the mourners interred the Pearl Knight. He slashed his arms with a flint knife and screamed. Two servitors stood by, wearing coats and trousers but no tunics. They had seen this all before.

 

The mourners emerged from the tombs and flower fields to take Reme's body off the Salt Knight's horse. They unwrapped the chains holding the shroud over him. The Knights saw that the half-finished tomb was roofed with sod atop the stone, in which the mourners planted seeds and bulbs. They had not delivered news of the squire's death but already the tomb was half finished.

 

One of the screaming man's servants handed Tiber a note, scribbled on birch bark paper.

He liked flowers. 

With his newfound clarity and his memories of what came before he emerged from the sea, Tiber recalled that Reme had been raised by the Screaming Seer.

Mythic Bastionland Myth: The Bear

  

The villagers called it the Third Bear because they had killed two bears already that year. 

 

But, near the end, no one really thought of it as a bear, even though the name had stuck, changed by repetition and fear and slurring through blood-filled mouths to Theeber. 

 

Sometimes it even sounded like “seether” or “seabird.”

Riverboat Gambler: Shrine of Sanctification

 

she threw a rock. she didnt want to throw rocks at him because he was her brother. he found a thing in the hard stuff. it was like the gold blades they carried but it was blue in color. he kept it because he had never seen anything like it and he didnt understand it was forbidden. he had no way of knowing because hed never seen it before. the others knew and they caught him swinging it at a cactus and they threw stones at him until he died and she had to throw too even though he was her brother. they were all brothers but they still threw the stones. a large stone fell on him where one of the older brothers threw it and he died.

 

the judges came and burned him and burned the blue knife. the body of her brother burned but the flames made the blue knife glow bluer. the judges sang a song and the tribe went away but when the sun went down the blue glow was still visible. it lit the glass around it so it looked like the little moon had fallen and got stuck in the bled. she thought of her brother and his blade and thanked god.

 

Riverboat Gambler: The Dent in the Shield

Stomp your foot
Flick your sword

Across the body

Of the fat

Thing from the

Jar and toss

With the same 

Motion your shining

Sword to the 

Man waiting to

Catch it so

The blade is

Not lost as

The pincers close

Around your head

You are not

The dancer you

Are the dance 

So if you

Miss one step

The part that

Matters will 

survive

 

The Great Glass Mountain - Session Five

Chain Knight Valenta, Horn Knight Auckland and the Squire Reme rode back to the orchard. They got there at sunset and caught Sparenot and her kids putting away their tools for the day. She invited them inside for dinner and a drink. Valenta sent Kemp and Kana outside to go get grandpa Crucifer, what she had to say wasn't suitable for children. Sparenot wouldn't have tolerated anyone except the queen of the realm issuing direct orders to her children. She feared the worst.

Riverboat Gambler: Three More Tombs

David Roberts

 

The enormous statue had once stood over the river but the river had meandered in the ages since it was erected. The sages at first believed the features had been scraped away. A supernatural confirmation kill in one of the dynastic struggles on the ancient Plain. But it had simply been sculpted like that. Faceless except the open mouth. Without eyes and ears and nose the expression was unreadable despite the carefully sculpted teeth and tongue. It communicated fear or laughter or pain or hunger as the viewer wished. 

 

The engineers clustered around the statue at the neck and prepared to blow it up. The Bronze Head was going to open a new restaurant in Hylem-Xylem, which everyone just called Sugar City now that the rhyming slang of the chaotic argot was out of favor again. They couldn't find another bronze head, or they just didn't believe in doing the same thing over and over again.

  

Gorgojo had never been to Last Autumn. He had the architectural drawings. The sketches of the streetscape and planned exterior facade and interior decor. He knew how much space he had to work with and the maximum weight the structure would support. But he had no real sense of the place to which he would take his prize. He was from the pampa, the sea of grass where a single tree was a sight to behold. A city rising out of an ocean of trees shaded red and purple and yellow and orange sounded like something out of a dream.  

 

The charges would break the head free and the sorcerers would catch it with floating discs. They would bear it to the barge, and from there down the river where it joined with the river Hog. From there to the sea, and then back to the world. Once aboard the ship it was the responsibility of the captain. Gorgojo would, nonetheless, accompany it to its new home. He wanted to look up at it while he drank annix and ate purple worm in mole negro. Then look up further still at the trees.

 

The engineers verified, for a third time, that the charges had been set correctly. The mages promised, again, that they had triple checked the carvings at the base of the statue. Lorem ipsum. The same word repeated again and again without meaning. They had to move soon. The potions would wear off and they'd have to dip into the reserve during the trip back.

 

The heat haze made the tongue dance in the statue's mouth. Gorgojo thanked Logic and The Draftsman for checking his work and lit the fuse.

Riverboat Gambler: Three Tombs

Clearing a tomb of undead was routine. You approached by half light or by day and you used a weapon that burned everything inside. The average grave was no more than a few rooms deep. Enough flasks of alchemist fire generated convection sufficient to cook unliving flesh until it fell off the bone. Skeletons charred into heaps of cremains, wights came gibbering out the entrance to dissolve in the sunlight. Mummies made sounds like a man suffocating in a bag. The loss of scrolls and cloth and delicate artwork was regrettable. So was being chewed for an hour as the potion of troll blood surging through your veins kept you alive just long enough to feed the ghouls.

 

For living things it was the same. Set an ambush at the entrance, smoke them out and slaughter them. 

Tabor fondled his amulets and mouthed a prayer to the Hungry Dungeon before tossing the flask. Eda and Salvador had thrown theirs unlit, a "wet shot" to splash fuel into the corners before igniting. With the God propitiated, he threw.

 

A word came from the cave. He didn't understand it.

 

The burning oil went out. With it, the sun.

 

Eda kindled a Light spell but it would not spark. Without even the moons to light them the dunes looked like waves in some primal watery abyss, awaiting the creation of the world.

 

The sound came again. Tabor realized it was his name, spoken from the mouth of the tomb. 

Riverboat Gambler: Twelve Points of Interest

 

 

She stood at the helm of the riverboat and raced the pike-shaped congregation of egrets above as it flew across the Plain. The cold surged up from the swift water and dueled with the killer heat that scoured the land beyond the river of life. 

 

It passed over her and for a moment she was back.

 

On the lakeshore, one side of her shivering and one side warmed by the bonfire that ate the snow before it touched the beach. The Giantess' heavy body fit to burst out of the dozen animal skins she wore for her wedding, flushed red and blue. The Giantess surging down to embrace her new husband, then exploding when the rebels struck her with the death spell, splattering blood over the freshly crowned King of the Giants. The brawl that erupted in the stands as the Red Ball wizards raised their winestained fists and struck with their wands, battering the Giant clergy with magic missiles that smelled like juniper and blossoms of annix. The adventurers lashing out with poisoned bolts and bullets and strokes of their enchanted blades. The cake leaping in the air with the lifting charge and detonating at chest height to cut down pikemen and ogre doppelsoldner before they could reinforce their deceased mistress and her guests. The brave mage and his stone men who held the wedding ground against all comers until the red dragon incinerated the proceedings. The mage transformed into a red dragon himself in a gambit to escape the consuming flames, holding off the ancient worm in a desperate melee until it tore out his throat. 

 

She couldn't go back. Not to the path of agriculture and the social contract and duty to family and the Goddess. The path that led her family through the ovens and onto the Giantess' table. 

 

No. For her there was only the life of adventure. Men and monsters. Spells and magic swords. Step into the grave and catch the blade with your heart. Strike while your foe's weapon is immobilized and trust the Godman behind to heal you through the damage. Snap back from unconsciousness or from death and leap back into the fight to be struck down again. O Sun chased over the horizon by Great Moon, then chased by the sun, then the moon again.

 

The Halflings lying around on the deck were friends she met on the killing floor after the wedding. She had said nothing in the kitchen when the little alchemist had crawled out from under the cake, black with chocolate and coffee dust after planting the bounding mine inside. He held a gloved finger to his lips and replaced his beret and she let him leave without telling the guards, although another bomb would have meant complete extermination of all the slaves in the holding. For this they named her a Neighbor Man when they found her scavenging magic items on the beach. One of the good humans, who could be trusted to accompany them on adventures. Because for them, it was the same. Their village too had been fired and there could be no return to bass fishing and meat pies and blocks of cheese. The only holes in the earth they could now delve were tombs.

 

She gave a cry, because up ahead were the rapids. The rapids that ate the hulls of ships so the things that lived in the rocks could eat the crew. In an instant the hairy little gluttons came to life. They prepared to repel boarders and to guide the vessel through the cataract into the uncharted waters beyond. They yanked dust tarpaulins off the swivel guns. They pulled on their hoods of dark cloth, leaving only their grinning mouths exposed.

 

The Great Glass Mountain - Session Four

 

The Company woke up atop the sea cliffs to the sound of shouting. It was audible over the sound of waves and it came from the landward side. The Company shouted back, unsure if leaving their camp was wise in the middle of the night, worried it might be another mirage out of time. Kemp shouted that the voice was his grandfather Cruicifer. The Salt Knight ran down the mountain path, Reme and Kemp following him. He rapidly lost his way in the dark, less concerned with following the path than descending quickly, but avoided injury as he hopped down the boulders and rocky slopes. 

At the bottom of the mound was an old guy dressed in nothing but a breechcloth, cloak caught on a gnarled tree root sticking out of the earth. He was trying to climb a boulder and getting nowhere. Kemp rushed past Tiber and went to help him up, but something yanked Crucifer's leg down. The Salt Knight and Reme rushed to help. A gnarled root wrapped around the old man's leg. Tiber leaped down to hack away the root and the old guy was yanked downward into the earth. The Salt Knight grabbed onto him and was pulled with him. The earth closed over them without a sound.

 

Riverboat Gambler: Encounters in Hogman's Plain

Tap the arquebus on the soft sand with enough force that the ball falls down the barrel. After a couple shots the bore will be fouled enough to require the ram, but if the next volley doesn't break the charging Mantids there won't be need for another.

  

Strike the earth 

Shovel the soft mud aside. By nightfall the sand will crawl and the camp must be completely encircled by the little canal to protect you. Damp earth is a portent of danger where you're from. An incipient flood, already too late to stop. On the plain it's a luxury. Perhaps you could rest a moment until it closes over your head. The water is dark. The water is black. 

 

Strike the earth

 

Your payday is cornered in its burrow. A fortified tunnel system with a trapped entrance, suicide to take by frontal assault. You stand on the outcrop over the grave and press your ear to the stone. Pound once, twice with a clenched fist. Brush aside the sand. Draw an X with your charcoal stick. Work fast with the pick, leave time for killing before the sun comes up. Brush the grit from your beard.

 

Strike the earth

 

These ones have ears. You don't have to stretch them out and work two at a time to take the heads.

 

Strike the earth 

 

You wanted to be a cheesemaker.

 

Strike the earth

 

Aim low to skip the ball off the ground. In the dunes the sand swallows the shot but on rock the bullets track flat surfaces. Into the ankles of the laughing men, beneath their manskin shields with metal plates sewn into the fabric.

 

Strike the earth 

Can the Hammerer punish a man if that man is an inert lump of clay? How many blows will it take?

Strike the earth 

The hyena shovels the scrimshaw bone into its mouth. The Caster sees this and lifts a finger to stop it but all the creature has to do is bite down. The cracking sound comes from somewhere inside your body. Inside your head.

 

If it's your leg they won't take you with them.

Strike the earth.

Unknown Armies NPC: Bartholomew Gates

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The Great Glass Mountain - Session Three

Valenta the Chain Knight, Tiber the Salt Knight and his squire Reme arrived at the Seat of Power on Sceptremas, the high holiday where the vassals of the realm renewed their loyalty oaths to the ruler. The Glass Mountain was a series of triangular spires, clad in white limestone so they shined in the summer sun. The jagged range of wavering peaks swept down to a white walled bailey overlooking a harbor at the end of a vast inlet, stretching south for leagues and widening until it was too far to see across from east to west. 

The Knights watched as ships from the Pearl Knight's domed cove tied up at the docks. The largest vessel beached itself on the pebbly beach, where teamsters waited with wooden rollers to haul it out of the water.

 

The Great Glass Mountain - Session Two

Valenta the Lost Knight and Tiber the Salt Knight tumbled down the hill, away from the shadows and away from Reme and the horses. Tiber bashed his head on a rock, leaving him addled and vulnerable. He asked Valenta if the Knight he rescued had escaped the shadows. She told him that it was so. He got up and looked around. The Squire would either double back and try to find them after losing any pursuers, or would climb to a high place to get a better view of the area. The Knights decided to do the same. Tiber was headed into the mountains anyway to find the shining thing atop the spire that he saw from the deck of the wrecked ship. The one the Pearl Knight denied was there.

The Lost Knight opened the locket she carried down the mountain with her, alongside her armor and longsword. Inside was a man she didn't recognize. Or couldn't name. The face was familiar. The white and gold clothing.

mellonbread reviews Starwater Strains

I wrapped the Starwater Strains collection a month or two back. I didn't believe the cover art was real until I actually had the book in my hands. I love Endangered Species but the best stories are squirreled away at the end and there are a lot of duds to wade through. Wolfe At The Door has some bangers, but also several stories I only enjoyed reading in conversation with his other work (and some juvenalia that's only worth reading out of historical interest). I think Strains strikes the right balance of rich-but-approachable. Like in At The Door the stronger entries are strategically placed to prop up the weaker ones so there's never a losing streak, and the longer entries are bookended by shorter ones so the reader never leaves exhausted.

As usual, I'll skip the summaries and go straight to my thoughts.

Mythic Bastionland Myth: The Flying Swords

 

The faithful five

The flying swords

High-hearted, fierce-fighting wind-warriors

The closer they get to the sun

The further they have to fall

Against Surprise?

I've been thinking about surprise attacks in RPGs. Rather than making up caricatures and laundering my opinions through imaginary critics, I'll go straight to listing some games and how they handle the subject.

Gencon 2025 Recap: Pickup Games

I ran two pickup games at Gencon 2025 for some friends. One was a familiar game and scenario, one I had never run before.

Gencon 2025 Recap: Scheduled Games

My Disco Elysium outfit. I promised #monumenthobbies I'd post this to my socials in exchange for a bottle of their Gencon jungle juice paint
 

Rapid fire play reports from my Gencon 2025 games. The scheduled games were reruns of old mellonbread adventures, so I'll just post what happened without digging deep into the context. Click through the links to get the full story about the scenarios.

(I'll do a little editorializing after each one).

 

mellonbread reviews Shotguns vs Cthulhu

Shotguns Vs Cthulhu is a 2012 short story collection by Pelgrane Press, full of pulp action stories where humans fight supernatural forces. I won't be providing full plot summaries because I believe reviews like this are only fun for people who have already read the story.

Bonus Cleric Post: The Black Mariahs

Hutter

They looked ridiculous at a dead run. Sexless yet sensual with protective codpieces and pigeon breasted armor and thighs enormous from carrying it up endless flights of stairs and ramps and cornices. The crowd parted before them. Nobody wanted to get within arm's reach. Even brushing against them was enough to sever fingers, break bones, shave skin off muscle. Their falling bevors were peeled down so they could breathe easy as they ran and one of them had no lips and drooled steam through the gap in their perfect teeth. 

The largest one had no weapon and carried a dented shield painted with a woman embracing a barbed devil with the text HELL CAN'T BURN ME MORE THAN THIS encircling the act. The smallest wore a quilted jacket and had a carrion crawler wrapped around their shoulders like a stole. The bug held on tight with its tarsal claws but resisted the instinct to luxuriantly stroke the exposed mouth with its fluttering tentacles. To kiss and then to feed.

The middle one carried a gun. The inside of the barrel glowed, lit blue and purple by the charge rammed down the wide mouthed bore. An explosion already in progress held back only by the thin layer of sealing wax that kept the bullets from falling out.
 
Ahead of them was the terrace. The urban canyon that separated the Company neighborhoods from the wafer-thin alleys of red lit Elftown on the other side. The big one casually bundled the others into their arms without slowing. They both reached behind the giant's neck and held on to the dragstrap protruding between the gorget and backplate like a tongue of black leather. The brute pushed off with a single foot that left a cracked footprint in the yellow stone.

The moment held suspended in the air was a perk of the job, equivalent or better than the sex and potions and winning fights and the embrace of the Flesh God who drank the pain like water. To feel protected by armor and the thick body of the fighter. To fly. Over the Mulch at the bottom of the swale to the narrow balcony on the other side. Stumbling down the chute to another room that smelled like blood. Bathing, drowning in the heat and sweat of love.

Riverboat Gambler: Baradye the Blue

The edge of the old crater formed a ridgeline steep enough on both sides that the night creatures couldn't climb it. Norte sat on the edge and kicked his legs and watched the monsters crawl over each over like waves lapping at a cliff. They crawled and climbed and often managed to get a third or even halfway up the slope before the unliving pyramid collapsed and sent them all tumbling back into the pit.

He liked to imagine what the corpses did when there were no people for them to slaver at. If they rose out of the sand and stood and stared at the moons until the sun came up again. Perhaps they lived in ordered societies and spoke intelligibly to one another when nobody living was around to listen. He was a Man of the Forest by birth but he was first of his family to leave the path of flower and beast and tree. First to sail in a boat and shoot a gun and use coins dug up from the burning sands to purchase goods. It occurred to him that his father may have been correct regarding man and whether he was patient or plague. That here he was the interloper and the carpet of undead, however unnatural they might seem, were the rightful stewards of the place. 

Two shooting stars flashed before Norte's gaze. The air above the Plain was thick with them. Comets or ships in the void or celestial conflicts between elementals and the things that lurked outside the envelope of air that cushioned the world. The sparks flashed again, closer this time, a blue that hurt his eyes in the dark. Without taking his eyes off the spot he swept his hand across the snaplock of the long gun cradled across his knees. The sound, he hoped, would wake the others without the need to individually clout them to attention or hiss directions. 

Then she spoke to him.

Riverboat Gambler: Settlement Gazetteer

I wrote a bunch of desert tombs full of monsters who prey on the colonists swarming across the narrow habitable band of Hogman's Plain. Here's a basic taxonomy of colonies for them to attack. We can combine them with the river generator from Magical Industrial Gunboats to create the map.

Minidungeon: The Unquiet Tomb

In the distance, shimmering in heat haze so thick they may have been a mere illusion, a lounge of bright white lizards skated across the Plain. Their skin regulated the diffusion of heat and moisture, allowing the particles only to move one way and thereby letting them control their internal temperature in the lethal heat. By day they jogged across the dunes, legs thrashing like pistons driven by the strange energy of glowing crystals. By moonlight they climbed rock formations to sleep out of reach of the night creatures, and it was not uncommon for travelers on the plain seeking similar shelter to surprise such lizards and send them leaping out of rock fissures at top speed. Like the corpse leaping from the grave as the necromancer cast his staff in, soul returned to the place it once called home but thinking only of ruin and the necessity of flight.

The green men who called the Plain home showed the first adventurers how the skin of such a creature could be made into a heavy cloak that would protect the wearer from the heat, or a half-shelter or a tent to rest inside during the day. The adventurers built vast reeking meatcamps and slaughtered the lizards in the thousands to make garments that would permit their further expansion into the deserts of the frontier. The camps tinted the river red and blue and iridescent shades as the menu of creatures disassembled for parts expanded and the effluent from that biological pillage flowed ankle then knee deep. 

Coxinha stomped toward the jagged cliffs at the edge of the plain, wrapped in such a cloak. Her eyes were shielded by protective goggles made from the eyecaps of a Rhagodessa and smeared with a thin layer of smoke colored oil to dim the sun and stop them fogging. The cloak was wrapped around her face below the goggles to stop the superheated air from scorching her lungs. It cooled the air but the feeling of suffocation went nowhere. Slow death in a jar. A capsule confined to the airless void of space.

She couldn't see the ranger up ahead. His cloak was bright white like hers but never seemed to shimmer. Never gave up his position. Ahead of where she thought he was, the entrance. Low tide in the desert pulled the dunes away from the mouth of the cave. A tunnel without ornament but clearly artificial. Unplundered.

Unknown Armies: A Bed of Roses Playtest 3

The year was 1521. The place was Tenochtitlan, head of the Triple Alliance of the Aztec Empire. The island-city had just been conquered following a ninety day siege by a coalition of Spanish Conquistadors and their Nahua-speaking allies from neighboring city-states. Weakened by starvation and smallpox, the surviving Mexica were at the mercy of their conquerors’ insatiable lust for gold. 

Emmanuel Leutze

In a Pochteca Guild Hall, three merchants were confined to a storeroom amid sacks of cocoa beans and bolts of cotton cloth - the majority of the Guild’s liquid wealth, which the Spaniards had no interest in.

• Jumping Spider, Merchant and luxury goods trader 
• Two Legs, Merchant and spy
• Yellow Thorn, Merchant and far-traveler

Their hands were tied and they only had a moment to contemplate what they would do next, before a group of hairy men from the other side of the world hustled them out into the banquet hall.

The Test Firing 4/4: The Big Gun Down

it flew over the plain in a cloud of thinning dust and its beak was slick with carrion shellac and its wings ragged but still functional and its thoughtstream had already migrated on from the two prey animals it had swooped and pecked at and although it would recognize them again if it encountered them it no longer thought about them at all and it should have been unable to distinguish between people because none had existed in the ancestral environment but years of patient study compressed into a thin sheet of metal had taught it to recognize the sound and appearance of the man who carried it close to his heart imprisoned crucified on the wall of the barn where it had hung for centuries since the men posing with guns had holed its wings and smashed its bones and punctured its lungs and sent it falling out of the air and now in the air once again it detected the voice and the heat and the heartbeat of the man far below it and circled to plan its descent with the sun behind it so if he spotted it he would be unable to see

The Test Firing 3/4: Entombed at La Momia

Corporal Danny Obierika and Private Gerald Maw crouched behind the great gun, which shielded them from the worst of the skinning sand. Danny donned a welder’s mask, Maw had a pair of safety goggles to protect his eyes, and both wore condoms over the barrels of their loaded muskets. The cannon could survive a little sandblasting, though it might erode the engraved crowns and maple leaves and Southern Crosses and other symbols of empire decorating the metal. They were more afraid of deliberate sabotage. A “freak” dust storm driving off the crowd was just too inconvenient to ascribe to mere chance.

They couldn’t hear each other speak, and even with bandanas over their mouths it would have only have filled their mouths with enough dust to turn their teeth to powder. Private Maw had to elbow Danny to get his attention as he pointed his weapon to the sky. Though the cloud looked black as it came toward them it appeared red from the inside.

The Test Firing 2/4: Inch of Dust

Yazdegerd and Roxana stumbled toward the great shining house at the end of the plain. The horse had panicked and refused to go on and nothing he did could coax it further. Roxana and he were used to running on bare feet but they had fled with only the bare minimum they could gather. They carried horse blankets, a little water, a handful of nuts, a little vinegar, a clasp knife, a fistful of pilfered denarii and their six month old son, Julian.

(They told each other Yazdegerd was the father. Not one of the soldiers who regularly inflicted themselves on Roxana - and on Yazdegerd when they were drunk)

They were no longer on the border, that much was clear. The grasses and flowers were unlike any they’d seen. So too the black towers strung with rope. Strange fortifications dividing the lands into parcels with abatis of metal. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. When the soldiers got lost and blamed the scouts and the unfortunate local guides recruited at swordpoint and the “filthy fucking fire worshipers” who twisted the terrain and summoned visions of things that couldn’t exist. Its apparition was perfectly timed. The soldiers caught them fucking and decided to cut off Yazdegerd’s balls. Roxana endured their abuse, acted suitably chastised, then freed the stablehand before the smithy could heat the gelding knife.

The Test Firing 1/4: Do you have 500 pound balls?

Outlaw Journalist Namond Lick sweltered in his PRESS vest and bucket hat and scribbled in his notepad as the Redcoat told him the score. He was wired for sound and everything was recorded anyway, but people liked the notepad. They wanted to be remembered.

The guy who wanted to be remembered was Colonel Ravinder Bhoja of the 333rd Regiment of Foote. His living history troop was out in the Wyoming backcountry for a little demonstration of a project they’d been working on. Men (and, Namond noted, one woman) in red jackets fussed over bags and boxes, showed off their kit and practiced their musketry in front of a crowd of onlookers (mostly family and friends), firing live buck and ball loads from their land pattern muskets at improvised targets of stacked stone. Unusually for a reenactment group, especially from this period, there wasn’t a single White face among them, and it was that topic that the Colonel had chosen to expound upon.

Against Torches

You ever tell someone you don’t like [food], and they tell you “no you just haven’t had GOOD [food]”? So you go to the restaurant they tell you and order the thing they tell you and, surprise surprise, you still don’t like it? 

That’s me with tracking torches. For years I’ve considered it a waste of time. And whenever I tell anyone this they say “torches are good, you just have to make tracking light matter!”

Unknown Armies Playtest - Holiday in Caledonia

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Unknown Armies Shotgun Scenario: The Greggs and the Graveyard

The Fourwentways Bronze Age Cemetery, off the A11 interchange outside Cambridge. Past the roundabout where the trucks park, behind the Travelodge. A small interpretive sign explains the significance: four thousand years ago, primitive Britons inhumed their dead beneath a complex of burial mounds that once stood on this spot. Today, the site is naught but a fenced off patch of grass and a few sickly trees, littered with rubbish from the nearby combination Burger Greggs.

It’s the middle of autumn and the middle of the night. The moon’s the color of bone but you wouldn’t know it through the clouds. Everything is wet.

Unknown Armies Playtest - The Greggs and the Graveyard

Four Catholics in a borrowed Nissan Altima pulled into the parking lot of a combination Greggs/Burger King off the A11 in Cambridge, England.

• Sister Agia, Missionary of Charity and Parapsychologist Nun
• Dario "Johnny Boy" Ambrosio, Geriatric Wise Guy
• Father Romero, Jesuit Priest and Padre With a Shotgun
• Deacon Sur, Drunken Priest and Exorcist

They were from the Order and they were tracking illegal digging at Bronze Age sites across the UK. They knew the burial ground behind the Burger Greggs off the A11 roundabout at Fourwentways would be next. The back windows of a fast food restaurant, a Shell station and a Travelodge all looked out over the shallow domes of the fenced historic site. It was Autumn and almost midnight and everything was wet.

Monster Mash Test Drive - The Tunnel Under the Tundra

 

A Dwarven exploratory mining expedition disappears beneath the permafrost layer of the ancient tundra.

Unknown Armies Shotgun Scenario: Black Coffee

 
1980. Skyrocketing coffee prices induce East Germany to send engineers and help the Vietnamese establish first rate coffee plantations. In exchange the GDR will receive half of Vietnam’s coffee harvest for the next twenty years.

Coffee is to Teutons like tea is to the English. Its absence is apocalyptic. It’ll take years for the Vietnamese coffee operation to bear fruit. The way things are going, there won’t be an East Germany by then. 

Unknown Armies Playtest - Black Coffee

After a grueling multi-day trip, four East German farmers peered out the windows of a Soviet made Mi-4 transport helicopter as it descended toward an old coffee plantation in the wilderness of Vietnam's central highlands.

• Arnold Lindwurm, 19, unemployed since finishing conscription. Malcontent with a knack for evading surveillance. Raised chickens illegally in his apartment.
• Kasper Pfennig, Volkssturm child soldier, raised in a Free German Youth camp after the war. 50 years old, loved working outdoors and with kids.
• Melissa Preisner, apolitical hog farmer from a collective farm outside Berlin. 25 years old, liked animals and heavy physical labor.
• Sandro Griebel, Russian war bastard fathered during the rape of Berlin. 35 years old, worked in a slaughterhouse, raised sheep on his one acre “personal housekeeping” plot.

The year was 1980.  Skyrocketing coffee prices induced the German Democratic Republic to send engineers and help the Vietnamese establish first rate coffee plantations. In exchange the GDR would receive half of Vietnam’s coffee harvest for the next twenty years. Coffee was to Teutons like tea to the English. Its absence was apocalyptic. It would take years for the Vietnamese coffee operation to bear fruit. The way things were going, there wouldn't be an East Germany by then.

That's why the four mages had been rounded up by Kramer, a Stasi transvestite who somehow knew they were all Agrimancers. Their mission: use their magic to accelerate coffee production at the plantation by any means necessary.

Unknown Armies Pashacon Jam Results

Another Unknown Armies jam wrapped a couple weeks ago. Parameters will be familiar to anyone who's been following this series. Let's see how we did.

 

His Majesty The Worm - Pile of Blades Masterpost

Pile of Blades is a city and undercity I wrote for His Majesty The Worm. I played through it in seven sessions, about one for each realm of the Undercity.

 

His Majesty The Worm - Session 7

Four adventurers from the Elite Underman Excavation Company showed up for the final mission:

• Aethelbald the Green, Horse Girl (and Wall the Griffin)
• Hyacinth "Cindy" Hakkapeliitta, Mad Brewer (and her new husband Fovean Blaster Caster)
• Chrysanthemum "Chris" Hakkapeliitta, Ex-Legionary
• Gyrfalcon "Gary the Mage" Hakkapeliitta, Wizard

The Unicorn explained the mission at Aethelbald's ranch outside of town. With the psychic protection they got in the Demon Ruins they could now enter the Cave of Squids and eliminate the threat to the City. Jerry the Mage had used his alchemical expertise to make a big bomb, all the Guild had to do was take it into the dungeon and drop it in the room with the jars, and the thing inside the jars. They'd recognize it from their nightmares, and when the Unicorn said that they realized they would. The dream of an enormous body, trapped in a confined space, dimly aware of the innumerable dreaming minds in the world above.

 
An assault on the Cave of Squids would provoke an immediate response from the inhabitants, who would use their psychic powers to draw in all their servitors from the City and Undercity. To that end, a team would hold the entrance to the Cave and protect the Guild's line of retreat.

• The Unicorn
• Jerboa "Jerry the Mage" De Hornachos
• Jerboa's cousin Baramundi "Barry the Mage" De Hornachos
• Jerboa's uncle Scarab "Scary the Mage" De Hornachos

The Guild chose the Cave entrance in the cellars beneath Hangman's Hill, rather than the flooded drain from the Giant Conclave. Aethelbald hefted the bomb, Cindy took the sack of spare psychic resistance rings, and they descended into the final area of the dungeon.

Clerics in Begone, FOE!

A few days ago Prismatic Wasteland put out a call for posts about about Clerics. I'm going to talk about Clerics in my personal fantasy heartbreaker Begone, FOE! I've been workshopping alternate names like Loot Bastards or Slop and Splendor but nothing has emerged as a frontrunner. This post serves as an important reminder that I should get back to work on Revision 15. 

In the Hands of Osiris - Masterpost

Ferenc Eisenhut

 

An Unknown Armies 3e double feature set during Napoleon's invasion of Egypt.

 

In the Hands of Osiris - Music Post

Lecomte de Nouy

 

Mostly recycled from prior soundscapes, but I compiled it anyway. A friend said she liked the scenario and might run it someday.

 

His Majesty The Worm - Session 6

 
Gary and Cindy Hakkapeliitta met up at Aethelbald's ranch outside the city, to get their next mission from the Unicorn the Orc brought out of the underworld. The beast knew a lot about what was going on in the undercity, and explained the situation to the Guild: The destruction of the telepathic statue sabotaged the Squids' alliance with the Giants, who realized they'd been duped when the fog of mental interference suddenly lifted. But any attack on the squids themselves would require psychic defenses, and that's what the Guild was going to get. The Demon Ruins were full of evil spirits that would trade for what they needed. The Unicorn couldn't go with them because he hated Demons. They killed his rider and he would savagely attack them on sight with no thought to the mission. He didn't feel good about sending adventurers down to do the job, but he offered to pay them real nice if they brought back enough psychic defense for everybody.

There were two ways into the Demon Ruins: a long drop down the waterfall in the Stone Garden, and the frozen doorway in the Giant Conclave. The waterfall was dangerous to traverse but not actively monitored by the monsters. The Conclave door led into the hanging palace of a particularly nasty Demon who wouldn't sell the players what they wanted. The siblings chose the Conclave entrance. Climbing down a giant rope under a waterfall was one thing, climbing up while being pursued by monsters was another entirely. Better to have a secure line of retreat than an easy way in. The Unicorn thanked them for their service, he wished he could pay them better for giving up a piece of their souls but the City would be better for it.

Unknown Armies 2025 Jamuary Jam Results

Ken Currie

A couple months ago Unknown Armies fan server user Cliomancer ran another Unknown Armies jam. It had similar rules to previous jams, with a list of prompts and a short wordcount limit.

Instant Loss - Music

 

Music post for Instant Loss, the Unknown Armies 3e shotgun scenario about professional wrestlers getting revenge on the house shooter at their z list joshi promotion.

 

Listen to the actual play here.

 

His Majesty The Worm - Session 5

Three adventurers from the Elite Underman Excavation Guild met their contact in a conference room above the Cult of Strength's physical therapy clinic in Shrine of Teeth.

• Aethelbald the Green, Orc Rogue
• Aten Hookmantled, Dwarven Beastmaster
• Sweetheart, Aten's Dungeon Worm
• Breadrick Bravebelly, Halfling Rogue

Their contact was a bald man with a perfectly regular grid of scars across his body, which he embellished with fresh cuts across the back of his arm as the Guild entered. They instantly recognized him as Dacian of the Tower, a high ranking hiero at the Temple of Swords, and thought they had walked into an ambush. Gary the Mage had caused some controversy by exposing the Church's swords-for-slaves scheme, and his anti-Temple stance had previously won him threats of hired assassination.
 

But it all worked out, because Dacian appreciated the Guild's dedication to exposing corrupt elements of the Temple. He had it on good authority that several members of the organization were victims of psychic dream sending from an unknown entity in the undercity, subtly altering their behavior in disturbing ways. The source of the emissions was a mysterious soapstone statue in the Thingstead of the Giant Conclave. If the Guild destroyed the mysterious statue, he'd pay them handsomely. The Guild decided that, as long as they were down in the dungeon, they would help Aten find another beast for his menagerie. Whatever monster they found could live at Aethelbald's ranch along with the Unicorn from the Stone Garden. There were two entrances to the Giant Conclave, one through the Fire Giant Forge and one from the cellar under Hangman's Hill.

 

Unknown Armies Playtest - The Lone and Level Sands

Elihu Vedder

1799. Following an outbreak of bubonic plague at Jaffa and a failed siege of Acre, French forces retreated from the Holy Land, endlessly harassed by Mamluks as they marched through the desert on their way back to Egypt.

Four frogs woke up in the shade of a huge pair of legs, all that remained of an ancient statue swallowed by the desert. 

• Dr D'Hubert, Savant
• Eugen, Grognard from Tolosa
• Jacques, Grognard from Bordeaux
• Louis, Grognard from Paris

They were alive and in pain from the pustules on their lymph nodes. They felt dry and desiccated and they were surrounded by blue-tinted corpses. The Armee D'Orient was nowhere in sight, tracks long erased by blowing sand. The Doctor realized that they all had the bubonic plague and had just survived an opium overdose. The Little Corporal had tried to euthanize them.

OSE Encounter Activities Test Drive: Fumigation of the Escheated Wizard Tower

After the death of the Monarch, the assets of his supporters were seized and redistributed to benefit the victims of his tyranny. The tower of the wizard Cloudkill, one of the Old King’s archmages from the College of Wands, was given to a pair of mutants who fought alongside the rebels. The retired partisans hired mercenaries to clear the “squatters” out of their dream home. The magical monsters are more than the hired guns can handle.

OSE Encounter Activities Test Drive: Shadowdance of the Lizard Corsairs

Walter Martishius

Lizard pirates sail to a secluded cove and hatch a sinister plan at an ancient temple. The local wildlife doesn’t cooperate.

Creature Cache Test Drive: Honey Trap of the Planeswalking Soulmaster

The Hanged King cynically founded numerous enclosed orders of nuns, drawn from the widows and orphans created by his endless wars, whose sole purpose in life was to be sacrificed to him and increase his magic power. The Elixir of Life religion was created as a ploy by the Tower of Pain, one of the newly founded Commonwealth’s largest religious corporations, as a ploy to absorb these directionless death cultists who no longer had anything to die for after the King was killed. It was impossible to talk that many religious fanatics into moving on with their lives, the best the Tower could do was offer them a more prosocial cause to die for.

Creature Compendium Test Drive: Volcanic Vent of the Pukwudgie Potentate

Our story takes us north of the Thousand Lakes, to the great ice sheet which covers the Cursed Mountains. These enormous spires lie frozen under vast glaciers, summits periodically exposed by magical fire events, deliberate excavation, or natural geologic activity. The melted peaks draw explorers to the extraordinarily hostile frozen wasteland in search of the ancient treasures concealed therein. As magic and science advance, so to do adventurers into the frozen north, drawing ever closer to the heart of the ice.