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.

Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - SESSION 9

Session nine began in Salem Hospital. DBD was kept overnight after the club shootout in case he had another seizure (which he got from the poolwine) or a concussion (from the ceiling tile that hit him on the head). Rachel was kept because her arm was missing. The news had a story about the attempted mass shooting at the cub, which injured two but thankfully didn't kill anyone. The burger war news blotter CHEAP MEAT had a video taken outside the club, of Bobby Smiles being led out by police. In the video, he comes outside, melts into a pool of the same blue ooze as the poolmen were made of, and slithers down a storm drain.

Tal came to the hospital the next day to visit DBD and Rachel. They went over what happened at the New Maks show and subsequent assassination attempt. Dr Vrolick, the same doctor the cabal met when they cured the terminally ill kids, came into the ward. He explained the path forward for Rachel: she'd be evaluated for a prosthetic, possibly the injured arm would need to be "trimmed" further surgically to ensure a good fit. Followed by a long course of physical therapy. But he knew Rachel wasn't going to do that, because she was magick and could just buy another arm or something. So he wasn't surprised when she asked to be discharged.

Reba was busy with Endemic Spice, setting up the eruv that the group got during the Boston trip, in order to give Tal veto power over magick in Salem. So it was up to DBD, Reba and Tal to load the eyeballs into the unspeakable servants before the deadline.

The way it worked was, Rachel had spent the last few months setting up the required corpses in rural areas outside Salem. Animals stuffed inside animals stuffed inside animals. The only thing missing were the eyes, which needed to be installed into the bodies on a moonless night. She had five of these gross things prepared in different barns she'd rented from farmers across the State, and it was time to finally put all the eyes she bartered into them. A force of five servitors would be a potent defense force for Salem.

 

The insertion had to be done after sundown. The first one went fine. The team took Rachel's pickup out to the barn she left the horrible thing in, unwrapped the tarp they put around it to keep the rats out, and put the eye inside. Rachel needed help since she was still missing an arm. 

It was on the way to barn number two that things went wrong.

Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - INTERLUDE: THE BOSTON TRIP

THE BLACK HATS
You meet Ruth, Sam and Abe in Olmstead Park, by the pond. Rachel sells the increased memory storage to Abe. In exchange:

You receive a big spool of black fishing line. The Hebrews explain that this eruv was strung atop the geomantic heart of Boston for half a century, and is marinated in occult energy. Imbued with the proper magick, it can be used to create a barrier, enclose the area of effect of a large scale spell, or permanently mark out a path for safe travel.

Abe blinks. He doesn’t notice any change, at first. It’ll be a while before the true effects become apparent, when he doesn’t forget the things happening to him right now.

Ruth and Sam also thank you for your work getting Maria and Harlan (the two shotgunners from the club) out of trouble. Judith was wondering what happened to them. You know how Mom is addicted to taking in strays? Maria was a killer nun, Harlan was a “raincoat” in some secret army. Both were refugees from the burger wars. Judith gave them new identities, a place to live. Buried a guy who came looking for them a couple years later. Everyone thought they were out of trouble.

The child following them around for the last couple weeks was a little suspect, since Maria couldn’t actually have kids, and also he basically appeared out of nowhere. They all disappeared a few days ago, before anyone could investigate. Now they're back, mostly in one piece. Maria can't raise her left arm above head level thanks to the shotgun wound.

For bringing them back alive, Mom wanted you to have this special cheesecake. She juiced it up so it’ll cure anything. Possession, curses, debuffs, magickal diseases, doesn’t matter.

VINCULUM
VINCULUM used to be an upmarket opium den, frequented on the sly by Boston’s WASP intelligentsia. A century later, it’s now a tea house and club, popular with the city’s financial elites. It’s not the kind of place the Bao Down crew would normally be welcome, even Rachel might have trouble getting inside. Thankfully, the owner is also Reba’s mom.

Yawen Rebkin welcomes the cabal. She absolutely refuses to discuss any occult business, feigning ignorance until the cabal realizes she’s afraid someone is observing her. In the back room, after pouring drinks for the crew, she opens a cabinet and removes an ancient record player. She throws on a twelve inch LP of MUSIC IN THE WALLS (composer unknown) and speaks quickly over the sound of horns and musical saws, so that she can get her whole message out before the music ends.

Rachel’s mom, Lucretia “Lucky” Tudor, is back in the game. She’s up to something in the Salem area. Yawen doesn’t know more than that. There’s a fog around Lucky that blocks scrying, the kind a cliomancer puts up when they don’t want to be observed.

When the record ends after four minutes, Yawen goes back to discussing something completely mundane. The rest of the visit is pleasant.

Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - SESSION 8

DBD, Rachel and Reba (accompanied by Scooby the Unspeakable Servant) got to the No Blood For Sex at about 8:30, half an hour before the New Maks' band Cannon Song went on.

Arthanari and Ramachandran were outside the venue, talking with the metal toothed woman the Bao Down crew had seen following Sin Woo-Jin around a day or two ago. That was Alice the ustrinaturge. She offered Reba a cigar, biting the end off with her steel dentures and lighting it with a minor charge.

No Blood For Sex was a basement club decked out with jeweled, gilded skeletons. There was a metal cage enclosing the stage, probably to shield the teenage band from thrown objects (less likely) and underage drinking (likely). Rachel and DBD sneaked backstage to parlay with the band. In attendance were Dandy Hirsch the Empty Vessel on bass guitar, Scrawny Davy the Vestimancer on guitar/vocals, and Brent on drums. Also the drug dealer and sound guy Bobby Smiles, helping them set up their amp. Rachel had some harsh words for Smiles, warning him not to sell any mystery stones to the New Maks. He assured her that he had no interest in messing up his meal ticket, but that if she wanted to tangle he'd back his family over her shoggoth any day of the week. DBD tried to persuade Dandy that she should become a capsicinaturge. The pitch was too conceptual and abstract for her. She thought he was talking about drugs. Which she was into, but which didn't communicate what he actually wanted.

Outside on the club floor, Ramachandran bought drinks for Reba and Ardhanari. He congratulated Reba for skillfully playing the other factions against each other. One of the CSC shooters was dead at the hands of the police, and now the Coterie was sending their top hitter to strike back at the cop who did it. He showed Reba a couple videos on CHEAP MEAT - Dispatches From the Burger Wars: tightly edited daredevil assassinations by a woman in rollerskates, who used drive by magick to set up her targets for gruesome fatal accidents.

The band played their first song. DBD went to look for some drugs. In the bathroom he scored a water bottle spiked with X, but noticed that a gateway to the pool rooms had opened in the end bathroom stall. Out on the dance floor, Reba noticed the Orthodox Jewish couple from the McDonald's parking lot earlier that day. The man was carrying the creepy child like a ventriloquist dummy. Rachel approached the lady and apologized for Tal magicking the child's head off during their initial encounter. The woman didn't know what she was talking about. Rachel suspected she was drugged or something. The couple was clearly armed, short shotguns under their heavy clothing. DBD cannoned out of the restroom, stumbling into the man as he made a beeline for the stage with the kid. He dropped the child and pulled out his scattergun, as did his wife.