Previously, on The GLOW: 1992: Agent Johnny Blue vs The Kid
Johnny and Lanette met with Upton Reece's family and were able to regroup at his car to plan their next steps. While there, Tanya Green gives Johnny a pair of dowsing rods used in rituals involving the Pale One. However, these rods will lead them to Finley Estevan. First, though, they need to get back Johnny's gun and badge from the cultists. And Lanette senses that Billy is at an old place with children's things and needs help.
About The GLOW: 1992: Agent Johnny Blue vs the Kid
Agent Johnny Blue is sent on a mission into mid-Florida to find Finley "Farsight" Estevan, a powerful remote-sensing psychic. His only clue is a hedge mage Maria "Madame Sinister" Salas, who seems equally powerful at reading the future using tarot cards. Estevan and Salas are involved with a backwoods cult trying to find the Illuminated Codex: a grimoire tied to a mysterious figure known as The Kid. Just exactly what The Kid is, why the cult is trying to summon him, and what Estevan looks to gain from it is unknown. At the same time, a group of four psychic young adults have decided to take it upon themselves to find Johnny because he has stolen a powerful relic [and lost it]. Also, there are eco-terrorists and a missing man. This is the story of Johnny's worst case ever and his biggest failure.
Content Warning: Occasionally very foul language, lots of smoking, quite intense violence, drinking, gambling, non-graphic sex, drugs, criminal behavior, and black magic. References to slavery and racism and related concepts show up. The GLOW is a world of spiritual torture and weird horror.
Part of The GLOW series of adventures.
Two common visual oracles are the Dixit: Mirrors card set and the image oracle from the Tricube Tales: Arcane Agents one-sheet. Items made available for use of demonstration.
This post is in the standard Doug Alone post style. See Anatomy of a Post for more details.
Attribution for the tools and materials used — including the splash art—can be found in the Credits below along with some details.
Tweaking Mythic
I have no real idea how much longer this story has. It might be just a few more sessions. It might be less than half-way done. I'm letting it progress organically.
With that being said, I want to do a few things to adjust. For whatever reason, the natural Mythic pattern of control increasing and decreasing for the character has not panned out. The little scrappers keep ending up on top of things. This means the Chaos Factor has stayed relatively low unless I intervene. Since we have gravitated out of Act 2(ish) territory, I wanted to introduce a few tweaks to Mythic to better drive the horror wagon.
- First, I will bring in horror themes from Mythic Variations.
- This means the Horror Focus Table will replace the normal Focus Table
- I will also use a variation [pun!] of the suggestions for the Chaos Factor, see below
- Will introduce the various Horror- and Mystery-related Meaning Tables from Mythic Magazine #40
- For Fate Questions, I will use the Low-Chaos Factor Chart, again because of changes to the Chaos Factor
To explain the changes to the chaos factor, I am going to start it at Chaos Factor 5. CF5 will be treated as the floor. Rather than go up and down per scene, it will instead be based on milestones.
At a new milestone or otherwise significant shift:
- If Johnny was mostly in control, it will stay the same.
- If Johnny has had setbacks or an onslaught of weird: it will increase by one.
- If and only if Johnny manages to actually shut down a major thread, it will decrease by one.
This should result in an overall increasing Chaos Factor. Once it gets to the upper reaches (8-9), only then will the Fate Chart shift.
I will also use the suggested rules [like the Horror Focus Table, on page 12 of Mythic Variations] to set the Altered/Interrupt to { 1-3 = Altered | 4+ = Interrupt }. As the CF goes up, more jump scares, basically.
Now, time to post the next little blurb, below, and then spend half an hour or so adjusting my tools & rules folder to have all the correct documents.
lyrλmbient once again as inspiration
lyrλmbient's music has been referenced a couple of times in this campaign and this one make use of the two most recent on the Bandcamp page: "Winter Feels Lonely" and "Rain in My Head".
I like the music, it fits the campaign, and the album art works well. For instance:
The GLOW 1992: Agent Johnny Blue vs The Kid, Part 8 - Playthings
Setting the Scene, e8s1.
Chaos Factor: 5
Expected Scene: Johnny and Lanette are en route to get Billy.
Scene Test: 1, Altered Scene.
Actual Scene: The place is harder to find than expected because the roads have been reclaimed a bit by the swamp.
Let's first figure out how hard is to find. I'll do a simple Fate Chart test and base it on that: 19 = Yes. So just Normal. I figure it will be Agile + Crafty. Second: Is it possible to get there by car? (50/50) → 79 → No.
That's fine. Back into the woods.
Let's use some of these new tools to create some notions of the place, using Mythic Magazine #40's "Secluded Location" and "Supernatural Influence" to just tell a bit of a story:
- Secluded Location: 36 Hills 81 Ruins
- Supernatural Influence: 60 Mysterious 18 Curse
Now, two Dixit: Mirrors cards:
- Robot spider with medical supplies (8th Row, 3rd Column)
- Bunch of kids overcrowded on a subway (5th Row, 4th Column)
And perhaps a bit oddly, lets use two Image Oracles for finishing details:
- 4,2 Horned Reptile [again]
- 2,6 Cowled
To stop from going too deep into madness, the latter two we'll use for a name. Cowled makes me think...robes. Horned reptile, let's go with horn. Hornrobe. Then with a little bit of a slur to our speech, Thornrose.
Thornrose is a daycare from years ago. 1950s, 1960s. Only it was for kids with special needs. It sat in an old house on top a hill overlooking the swamp. We'll even say a nicer part of the swamp. Clear water. Dock. Nice grounds.
People from all over paid the caretakers good money to keep children than needed constant care. Including the traditional trope of kids with mental and physical disabilities. I'm semi-picturing the kids on the school bus in Trick 'R Treat.
Only, I'm not really interested in directly abused kids per se. This is more a case that the place became so popular that it struggled to keep up with the demand.
Over time, we'll say by the 1970s, it was over capacity and a lot of parents had more or less abandoned their kids there. The workers did their best but something went awry. Some sort of "curse." We don't need to flesh out anything, let's just ask the question: Do we know what happened to the kids left there? (Very Unlikely) → 87 → Exceptional No.
In 1975, the children and the caretakers vanished and the swamp wasted no time taking the land back. Now the swamp eats the roads and ways in.
Occasionally the sound of laughter can be heard. And the best bit, some of the toys and paintings seem suspiciously new.
Rain in My Head
Date: Sunday, July 5, 1992.
Time: 9:31am.
Place: Backroads on the eastern side of Waukepsie Swamp.
The rain started half an hour ago, pelting through the fog. Lanette and I have been on these roads for over an hour, now. Trying to find this place she can sense but not fully. A memory of a dream. "Kids toys and stuff," she said, "but not in a happy way." Which is pretty damned ominous.
Only the universe is not having it. We've been criss-crossing, going on her psychic sense towards William "Billy" Lug, her boyfriend, and the roads keep fading into nothing. I don't mind poor transit planning. I mean asphalt abruptly ends with heavy trees growing through it. Or gets swallowed into the dirt. Or is underwater as the swamp eats away any signs of modernity.
Worse than that, there have been some houses. I am not much for gambling, but I would be willing to bet that most were built since I have been born. Now they are dissolved into foliage and decay. One had a mid-80s car out front, the windows shattered and vines pouring out of it. I have no idea if the owners got out or not. Swamps like this always have a few skeletons in them. Only this one may have been taking a proactive role in adding to the tally.
I can very nearly taste it. Spreading like a fungus. Putting out a barrier.
And every time Lanette points in a direction, it is always to the center of whatever this might be.
Can Johnny still communicate with Eustace? (Likely) → 19 → Yes. Pretty clearly.
I've been pinging Nurse to look up road maps from the area and without going into any details that might put ideas into Lanette's head, and therefore interfere with her psychic vibe, have been triangulating the two different datasets together.
Which is why, when we get to a a spot where the dirt road is washed out by a river that the constant drizzle cannot explain, I get out and start going to the trunk to get a flashlight, a non-Order-issue gun, and my rain coat. I toss the latter to Lanette. She's standing there with a look on her face, holding the thing, like she has a bad taste in her mouth.
"What is it?"
"The rain, it's...in my head."
I don't leap to any judgment. Her powers are growing pretty rapidly and she might can sense something that I cannot.
"Then let's get out of it as soon as possible. This way?" I point in the direction my mental math predicts to be the place she has been trying to take us.
Let's do a Hard Crafty check just to see if he's right.
3 and 2. Nope.
She reaches out to grab my hand and pulls it about ninety-degrees around to point in a different cardinal direction and then nods. "Exactly."
Great, the woman conceivably young enough to be my daughter is now lecturing me. I am having a great time.
I press three sigils on my forearm and the car makes a beep noise before fading into the background like rain. I turned the obfuscation wards to high just in case.
"Let's go find your boyfriend, missy," I say and then start following where she pointed my hand. She has my raincoat on, which makes her look like a teenager wearing a father's jacket. I once again wonder why I am bringing her along on this. What will I do if my actions get her hurt?
Normal Agile/Crafty, but let's make it take 3 effort each to see how far they get. It's not dangerous, so they won't lose Resolve, but we'll give them three turns:
- Turn One: Johnny → 5,5,3 → 2S.
- Turn One: Lanette → 3,2,2 → 0s.
- Turn Two: Johnny → 1,1,3 → 0s.
- Turn Two: Lanette → 6,5,4 → 2S.
- Turn Three: Johnny → 5,4,4 → 1S.
- Turn Three: Lanette → 3,2,1 → 0S.
One success off. Ok, then, Is this curse somehow related to the Kid? (50/50) → 99 → Absolutely No.
Hard Crafty. Can Lanette reach the entity inside? This one will be Dangerous, though. She can use her Perk, though it will remove the last of her Karma. 2,3. Not even close. She takes one Resolve damage for the mental struggle.
One last thing to potentially put it on track: Are they close enough to be heard shouting by the people at Thornrose? (50/50) → 51 → No.
Will the curse start fighting back against them? (50/50) → 13 → Yes.
How hard? Another 50/50 roll to "vibe check" → 34. Normal. Effort (50/50) → 40 → I'll say two each.
Can the gunfire be heard? (Likely) → 30 → Yes.
So Johnny and Lanette will have to fight off elements of the curse but the gunfire will get the attention of those in Thornrose. What form does the curse take? A Dixit card:
- A bunny(?) asleep under a bed of clouds that look like sheep (4th Row, 4th Column)
The fog and rain morphs into shapes that physically attack them.
Brawny/Agile Normal 2 Effort Challenge
This is a big enough shift that I will actually broach this into a new scene.
"Can you. Can..." Lanette asks, stop-start fashion, "You feel the rain trying to get in?"
This is after we had pushed through the forest and time after time felt we were getting close. On time I even glanced a structure through the trees, but each time we tried to find a way to get to it we somehow kept ending up further away. I was just thinking about climbing up a tree — like a cat, why does that phrase bring up such strange thoughts? — when Lanette asked her strange question.
Only the answer is stranger because there in the shape of the rain, in the sound of fog, things were moving. Something almost human. Something anything but.
And they have teeth and claws.
Setting the Scene, e8s2.
Chaos Factor: 5
Expected Scene: Johnny and Lanette have to find fog entities created by the Thornrose curse
Scene Test: 5. An interrupt. Let's try the Horror Focus table: 24, Remote Event. This seems like a good time to jump to Billy's point of view.
Actual Scene: Billy, Erze, and the others are in Thornrose as things start getting tense.
We can take the fact that the curse is somehow the exact opposite of the Pale One's power as maybe it is actively keeping Johnny, with the crown, away. He won't be able to enter Thornrose.
Let's do some checks for stuff happening inside.
Is Jayson able to recover? (Unlikely) → 26 → Yes. He's at 1 Resolve but can heal over time.
How many other Terranauts are here? Let's say {1-4: 1 | 5-7: 2 | 8-9: 3 | 10: 4} → 6 = 2. Erze, Billy, Jayson, and two additional Terranauts.
Let's create the first one:
- Universal NPC Emulator: 90 Optimistic 20 Rogue + 58 Privileged 70 Clairvoyant. Motivation = 99 Overthrow 37 Secret Societies.
- {Younger | Same | Older} (than Billy) → Older. {Male | Female | Non} → Female. 20+d60 = 20+13 = 33-years-old woman.
- Name (using Dicegeek's Book of Random Tables: 1980s-1990s) → 57 Maria 52 Roberts.
And the second with the same process:
- 50 Conservative 32 Explorer + 17 Foolish 35 Adept. Motivation: 28 Aid 05 Prosperity.
- 20-years old. Male.
- 74 Joshua 53 Torres.
We have Maria Roberts who is a bit more of a classical conspiracy theory leaning hippy. She considers criminal acts against The System to be ok, and is a lower level hedge mage. Originally from money, she lives up her free life while talking about those in control.
We also have Joshua Torres. Younger man. Also has some degree of power but wields it more like a weapon. He thinks of his time with the Terranauts in much more libertarian terms: the strong survive and protecting nature is more about fulfilling his sense of what makes a strong society. He sees a future where natural energy creates a utopia.
Are they hearing standard spooky noises? (Likely) → 65 → Yes. But like, just barely.
It Became Too Rainy to Play
Appropriately, I had to stop playing the session because of a physical reality. I was writing about trapped in the dim rain and fog and then it got very murky here in Grimbergen. The nook I where I play these games has no overhead lights so I tend to play by open windows. With the rain, there simply was not enough light.
I could barely read the dice, it was giving me a headache to look at the cards, and most other physical materials were visible only in the dimmest sense of the word.
While excellent mood-setting, I eventually backed away rather than push through. I am now back two days later on a much sunnier day — even if it is one prone to rain — and now have a lamp that should help a lot.Which is good, because Belgian winters are coming and I won't have as much daylight.
Winter Is Lonely
Date: Sunday, July 5, 1992.
Time: 10:15am.
Place: In the remains of Thornrose.
Billy fidgets with the toy in his hand.
A He-Man action figure. Makes sense. It's a kids bedroom of sorts. More like a dorm room. Yellow walls. Broken and peeling. Cartoons and kids shows from the 60s and 70s on posters gone to mold. Old dolls dot the place. Only most are truly old. They feel old. This toy, though, right there on the unoccupied bed? When was He-Man on the air? Ten years ago? Less. Hell, he watched it on TV while his dad slept in on Saturdays.
Billy suddenly feels like an old man for his nineteen-years.
For not the first time, Billy wished he smoked. He has never taken up the habit and largely does not want to take up the habit. He grew up around parents who smoked three to four packs between themselves daily. Dad out of work. Mom working in a clothing factory, stiching "Made in THE GLOW!" labels to Taiwanese jeans. The old Westerns on TV. "I like 'em when they don't count the shots," dad saying. Cigarette dangling from his lips. A fifty-year-old man looking sixty after the accident.
This is before the heart attack. Before mom remarried.
Before Billy found out he could see things. More importantly, he can make other people see things. Always surrounded by various losers and nerds at school. People looking for someone to tell them what to think.
Billy hadn't meant to abuse their trust, but neglected children sometimes neglect themselves.
After leaving home to live out of a cracked, ill-painted old ghost of a house, away from people he could hurt, Billy was first glad to not always smell like stale tobacco. Only the second hand smoke had become a friend. Sure, he can rationalize that it is addiction. It is also the smell of home. One to which Billy has no interest to returning. He buried it at the same time he buried Tommy Lug.
Too bad the people Jayson and he are with don't seem to be the smoking types, he might bum a cigarette. The house they are in...correction the daycare...could use it. Something to cover up the smell. The deep scent of years.
And why is it so cold? It's July outside. July in Florida.
"Winter is lonely," Jayson says from the bed. Which is actually just an old kid's bed frame with some moldy plywood on the built-in springs. Covered in a sleeping bag gotten from military surplus by one of the Terranauts.
Billy tries to stifle some of the excitement at hearing his friend speak. He had not been sure that Jayson would be ok. Hence why he is not leaving the bedside. Live or die. Billy wants to take blame from what Jayson suffered.
"What's that, Jay?"
"Just thinking that I used to hate Christmas break. Well, the holidays. My family is Jewish but like, atheists. Lapsed. Whatever. The kind that didn't really like any holidays. Everyone else was bragging about their gifts and their family coming and I would just stay home and be cold and stuff. Summer was a bit different because it was nice enough to get out. Winter was just, well, lonely."
"You ok, man?"
"Fuck no. I hurt all over. I smell like a hippy sock. What is this shit they put on me? I don't think it's helping. Real drugs would be nice. The kind you get from a bottle and have Surgeon General warnings. Also, I'm freezing. Why the fuck is it so cold?"
"I don't know...it's..."
I just want a minor manifestation. What shape is it taking? One Dixit: Mirrors card...
- A small (kid?) cowboy with red hair, big mustache, and a carrot [5th Row, 5th Column]
Does Billy *see* a kid? (50/50) → 80 → No.
A crack happens from across the room and Billy whips his head towards it. Nothing is there, but a strange sound seems to drift across the space and fade.
"Jay?"
"Yeah?"
"Did that sound like someone eating a carrot to you? Or like, maybe chewing wood?"
"Ummm..."
"There's our patient!"
An older woman. Well, older than Billy, is standing in the doorway to the bedroom. Maria. A different Maria. What a weird coincidence.
This one is less a femme fatale made flesh and more the fun young aunt that's a bit too weird at birthday parties. She's bleach-blonde, roots showing, and wears a jacket. Not so much against the cold as Billy is pretty sure she's the type to just wear one year round. Maria is the one who smeared ointment on Jayson. She also talks about stuff like chakras and freeing your inner slave.
Is Maria the one who found this place? (Very Likely) → 02 → Exceptional Yes.
Is this because of the missing kids angle? (Likely) → 94 → Exceptional No.
Well, that's a swing. This means she has some other connection to it, perhaps. Let's do a Meaning Table: Actions and Meaning Table: Supernatural Influence to see why she was drawn to this place:
- Actions → 34 Dispute 02 Adversity
- Supernatural Influence → 61 Nature 35 Future
Ah. We know she's from money. Enough money to buy this estate. It was up from sort of development and so she bought a large stretch of cursed land to prevent it. Is she from around here? (50/50) → 11 → Yes AND a twist...
Horror Focus → 17 → Horror NPC.
Horror that happened to her? I'm for it. She's in her mid-30s. This means she would have been around ten when the people went missing. Was it a sibling? (50/50) → 64 → No. Not a sibling. Let's do a Meaning Tables: Evil Deed and Meaning Tables: Perilous Situation to see how it involved her:
- Evil Deed: 37 Injustice 07 Body.
- Perilous Situation: 100 Wounded 94 Trap.
As a kid, she was already having early showings of her psychic powers. Weak, though. This would be before The GLOW fully took hold in this area. When the news got out, she kept having glimpses of children playing and running in halls and was convinced that adults were making some sort of joke about the kids being missing. She went looking for them herself and got caught in a coyote trap.
Not strong enough to free herself, she stayed in the woods for three days barely subsisting on rain water and chewing leaves she could reach. Before she was rescued on the fourth, she had the sense of someone watching her. She looked up and saw three kids standing in the woods. She cried out for them to help but they would not cross to touch the iron trap.
After the rescue, doctors and family dismissed her story as being expected hallucinations.
Over time, she has somewhat forgotten the specifics. She thinks the woods hold fairies [technically true by way of The Kid] and is trying to figure out what she forgot from those terrible days.
Billy catches Maria looking around like she can almost see something. Reaching for her leg. As the silence continues a bit too long, he prods her, "Maria?..."
"I told you, I prefer Le Mer."
"Ok, um, Mer, are you ok?"
"Of course, silly Billy. Is my grandma's ointment helping, Jay?"
Jayson goes to shout some angry words and Billy slaps him on the burned leg. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE..."
The gunshots brings Jayson's tirade to a halt.
"Billy?," he asks like a scared little kid. Which Billy realizes he is. They all are. Playacting heroes from an RPG.
Billy glances to "Le Mer" and sees her eyes start to panic. Seconds later, as more gunshots ring out, Erze and Josh run into the room. Josh starts shouting about Claus and Ellen and the other shout back. Maria is saying something about a lot of hunters here and their conversation is descending into panicked babble.
Let's do an Easy Crafty to see if Billy can pick up on Lanette being out there? → 1, 1, 5 → Yes. With just one success, it's more an inkling than a certainty.
"We have to get out there. I...trust me."
Let's do a round of tests to see what the others think? For each, the question will be Do they agree with Billy? (Unlikely)
- Jayson → 32 → Yes.
- Erze → 41 → No.
- Mer → 72 → No.
- Josh → 85 → No.
Ok, this means only the person too weak to really help is able to help. Well, let's see if he is too weak. We'll do an open ended Brawny to see how well he has healed with treatment → 5,5 → he gets two normal successes, so I'll say he has recovered enough to move.
"Who the fuck do you think you are? Adults are talking!," says Josh, who cannot be much older than Billy and Jayson. He actually seems glad to have a focus for his anger.
"Look, man, I just feel..."
"Billy," this is Erze, "I'm sorry. We can't risk it. If it's Claus, we are in danger. If it's hunters, we are in danger. If it is just random madmen with guns? We are in danger. We need to hide. We lost too many."
Billy sighs and accepts this logic. The bonfire took out...
Let's do 6d6 and say {1-2: 0 | 3-4: 1 | 5: 2 | 6: 3} per dice → 6, 5, 2, 6, 2, 5 [weird] → 10.
...at least ten of their closest friends. Several of their other "close" friends are now siding with someone called Claus. Hence why they fled to this crumbling house in the woods. To hide.
Only Billy can feel he needs to get out there. The gunshots are important to him. Fuck it, he can go alone.
He is standing up and getting ready to head out into the woods and towards what seems to be danger when he here's a voice. Mer's to be precise. Telling Jayson to get back in bed. Jayson is shrugging the sleeping back around himself to make a makeshift toga.
"Wait up, Billy..."
"Jay. No!"
"Fuck you, fat ass. You ain't leaving me with this hippie Brady Bunch."
Billy feels like has no time to argue. "Ok, let's go."
Before we move on, I want to test how the fight went. We have three rounds of gunfire described. Roughly.
- Johnny: 5,4,3 → 1 success (out of 4)
- Lanette: 2,3,2 → Failure, -1 Resolve (out of 3)
- Johnny: 1,1,6 → 1 success (out of 3)
- Lanette: 1,2,2 → Failure, -1 Resolve (out of 2)
- Johnny: 6,6,2 → 2 Successes.
The rain/fog creatures do heavy damage to Lanette before Johnny manages to keep them at bay.
That perfectly lines up with the three rounds I said before.
Setting the Scene, e8s3.
Chaos Factor: 5
Expected Scene: Billy and Jayson try to reach Lanette.
Scene Test: 10.
Actual Scene: As expected.
This will be in theory a quick scene which will establish some rules for the moment.
Is the "hurricane" the Kid's doing? (50/50) → 03 → Exceptional Yes.
Are the fog/rain creatures from the Kid? (50/50) → 06 → Yes.
Ok, this means the fog/rain creatures are trying to push through into the forest to stop Johnny from getting to the place. The curse keeps the Kid at bay. Is Thornrose the eye of the hurricane? (50/50) → 22 → Yes. And...another Horror Focus → Horror PC.
I'll say this is something that Billy will face in this scene.
Meaning Table: Perilous Situation → 32 Enter 04 Adversity.
A straight up attack. A Dixit: Mirrors card:
- A floating, fat polar bear with children on him [1st Row, 8th Column]
Well, that can be shockingly literal.
I'm picturing the bear creature from Annihilation but with a twist. A group of small kids cling to its matted, rotting fur. Gas masks on their faces, while tubes like esophagi connect them to the bear.
To figure out what kind of challenge this, I'll draw three cards from the Tricucabe Tales Solo Deck until I get three challenges(ignoring Aces and Jokers for now, face cards will add Effort):
- 9♢ → Standard Crafty
- 8♡ → Easy Crafty
- J♣ → +1 Effort
- 9♠ → Standard Crafty
Ok, combining that all together, we get 2 Effort Standard Crafty. This is definitely a psychic assault.
Going to Random Realities, what are a couple of sensory points that clues Billy that something is about to go bad?
- 2,3 Vinegary Odor
- 4,6 Hmmm, Pine Needles or Sudden Crack. I like scents right now, so we'll do the former.
The bear creature has the smell of vinegar and wet pine needles.
The Smell of Vinegar and Pine
Date: Sunday, July 5, 1992.
Time: 10:31am.
Place: Out in the swamp terrain near Thornrose.
"Ok, Billy, fess up. What the hell are we doing, man?," Jayson asks while trying to keep the sleeping bag from tangling in the undergrowth.
Let's draw another Tricube Tales Solo Card to see what kind of struggle it is → 6♡ → Standard Brawny → 4,5 → Jayson manages to keep tearing it out of the brambles. It's taking some damage but he's staying mostly dressed.
With a tug, he tears it free for the third time and wraps it around himself.
"I just had a feeling. Like I could feel....Lanette."
"She's here?! Oh shit! LANETTE!"
"Keep your damned voice down, I don't know if she was the one being shot at or the one doing the shooting."
"You think Lanette has a gun? That's pretty badass. She can protect me."
"I don't know what..."
Billy steps past a tree and several sensations hit him at once. The pool of water to his left, sibilant in the rain. The mud on his feet. The temperature has gone from late Autumn chill to mid-summer heat. The rain has increased. The sense that the world is spinning has picked back up, dizzying after growing unused to it.
And there's a smell.
"You smell that, Jayson?"
Can Jayson smell it? (50/50) → 75 → No. His powers seem to be behind the others. He is definitely lower grade.
"Um, be more specific. I can smell a lot of things."
"Like, pine needles soaked in vinegar?"
"You are asking me if I smell pine needles in a pine forest?"
Is this a pine forest? (Likely) → 97 → Exceptional No.
"You see any pine trees, shitbrain? That's my point!" Now Billy finds himself shouting. It might be all for naught, he hasn't heard any gunfire since they left Thornrose.
He's on the cusp wondering if they should just turn around and head back when the thing raises up out of the water and comes closer.
It has been a second since I've included soundtrack cues for any of my games, but Lustmord and Karin Park's "Hiraeth" started playing right as I began typing about the thing and I'm going to lock it to loop for the rest of the scene. To establish it more as a slow-and-creepy rather than fast paced battle.
Can Jayson see it? (Likely) → 52 → Yes. Maybe a little less clearly than Billy.
"...goddammit...," Jayson whispers, again like a little kid.
If Billy had to name the thing, his first word would be "bear" but that's so far off that it's like calling a mouth full of broken teeth a smile. It's broken. Face warped out of alignment with all natural law. Skin peeled back in places. A human arm grows where it's left arm should be, like a car driving on a spare.
Like someone afraid of the dark, deathly afraid of the dark, was asked to draw a bear to represent their fear.
And on its back a group of small children ride it. Masks strapped to their water-drenched heads. Eyes blackened by swamp decay. Esophageal tubes attaching them to the thing's lungs. Maybe it's their esophagi, stretched and elongated. Billy doesn't want to know.
And when they laugh, the bear laughs. When they cry, the bear cries. Are they the puppets or is it?
It moves to block their path.
"That can't be real, right?" Billy has never heard Jayson this afraid.
Billy stares at it and feels something stir inside of him. A belief. Felt like he should be feeling fear. The horror that has followed him his whole life. The idea that he can merely speak truth into being. Will it. Only always feeling guilty to do these things.
"No, Jayson. It does not exist."
This is Billy's show.
First roll: 1,2,4. We'll use Billy's talent for telling things to give him one success. -1 Karma.
The bear-thing laughs the voice of several small children and advances. But as it does, Billy is sure the human hand is no longer pressing so hard into the mud. He has wounded it.
We'll let Jayson in this time.
Billy: 5,6,3
Jayson: 1,3
Billy wounds it two more times (out of 4). Jayson loses a point of his recently recovered Resolve and staggers hard.
The human hand pushes down and the big bear claw reaches up to swipe down and Billy shouts, "STOP IT!," and the claw fades into fog before it hits. The children on the back scream and wail and kick their feet.
Jayson, encouraged by this, runs up and flaps out the sleeping back like a weapon but the bear opens its mouth and behind the sharp, broken bear-teeth are rows and rows of children's teeth. The pine and vinegar smell washes over the injured young man and blood flows from his nose as he falls back.
Billy does not stoop to help Jayson, but leans into his newfound power.
Billy: 6,5,3
"Go back to the wet and the dark. I'm stronger than you. GIT!"
And with a deep sigh, the bear-thing turns back to the water and walks into it. Right as it fades under the surface, a child's voice calls back, "Bye, bye!" and then turns into gurgles.
Billy feels his heart racing. Wishing he had took better care of his weight, he bends down now and gets Jayson up. Takes the muddy, wet sleeping bag to wipe at Jay's nose.
"We can do this, Jay. Now, let's find Lanette."
He looks at the trees trying to confound him and says in his most grown up voice, pulling a strength up through his vocal chords that will have his throat sore in the morning: "You, too, get out of my way."
Hard Crafty. He gets a 4,5,1. With another Karma (1 remaining), he succeeds.
With a loud crack, the trees that have twisted themselves into a complex maze bend back and Billy helps walk Jayson through.
On the other side, he sees a strange man — the one from his vision, the one he knows stole the Forked Tongue — helping Lanette back up. She has no obvious physical injury but like Jayson she is bleeding from the nose. Only worse, also her eyes.
Billy runs over to her and shoves the man aside and holds her up.
"Hey, Laney, I found you."
Lanette just smiles.
All around the storm intensifies and strange shapes in the rain frolic and dance.
DOUG'S COMMENTARY
That feels a fine place to call it. I like how tweaking the various horror elements into place made it very quickly feel like the sort of horror game it is meant to be. Much quicker than I expected, really.
The fact that Thornrose is a spiritual opposite to The Green Heart is interesting to me. One was a place of youth. One one was for older people. One is a place against The Kid. One has been turned into a temple.
Both are abandoned. Both involve the spiritual energy of missing children.
The Chaos Factor will rise to 6.
Johnny was never once in control of this. Billy is in more control but he's not really "the PC". He'll always be in third person.
I'm also going to add both Thornrose as a place as the fact that's the eye of the spiritual hurricane. That will probably come up later, especially since Johnny can't approach it. Fact is, that's another Thread to add, the ability of Thornrose to keep him out.
One of the challenges for me in this — much harder than playing a horror game which comes pretty natural — is making Billy Lug different than my usual PC. He doesn't really have to be. It's my game. My characters to play. Still, I don't want him to just be another Eustace or another Johnny. He kind of fits the same spiritual space as my other self-inserts — the discussion of his parents were basically a discussion of my parents with only faint tweaks — but I think I want him to be a bit meaner, more quickly assured. The kind of guy who goes from fighting the system to joining it. If he survives.
I suppose I did slightly mess up with Jayson. He's meant to be more of an anti-sidekick. The kind that grumbles and sasses. He had that but was also a bit more of a play-along. After the events of his last couple of session, we can probably drop him off back at the motel with Torrey for the moment.
Now the Billy is away from the Terranauts, that storyline might be cooking along in the background. I feel like Billy is going to want to go after Maria Salas but we'll see. This might be one of those where I have to do rolls and such to figure out how off-camera scenes are progressing.
Now to find out if the Kid — aka the dice — will let Johnny try and get his gun back. If not, we'll blame the Kid.
Bonus Fact: While trying to look up Billy's age to make sure I got that right, I realized that Billy was supposed to be with Torey in the original handwritten drafts [played out now around four months ago]. Torey was non-binary and black. Lanette was bubbly blonde. By the time I had shifted to playing on this blog, I swapped those two around a bit. Lanette was young, bubbly and black. Torey had become a bit white and blonde and dumb. I fixed that a bit in post but there might be other glitches.
As there always are.
CREDITS
The GLOW 1992: Agent Johnny Blue vs The Kid is played using mixture of the Tricube Tales one-sheet Arcane Agents (Richard Woolcock) and Mythic Gamemaster Emulator 2nd Edition (Tana Pigeon) along with Mythic Variations and Mythic Magazine #40.
Other resources include the Arcane Agents Image Oracle compiled from of Game-Icons.net's various Creative Commons licensed imagery, the Mirrors expansion for Dixit (with art by Sebastien Telleschi), and Cezar Capacle's Random Realities. Some inspirations are taken from disparate sources and these are usually noted at time of use.
The original The GLOW campaign arc was inspired deeply by Arcane Agents though has since grown dramatically from that source.
ART CREDIT AND EXPLANATION
"Swamp Road" is from a photo by Yves Moret on Unsplash.
Thornrose is from a photo by Silver Ringvee on Unsplash.
"The Bear" is from the movie Annihilation and the screenshot was snagged from this article: https://ew.com/movies/2018/02/25/annihilation-screaming-bear/ All rights reserved.
"The Children" is from Trick 'R Treat, all rights reserved.
"Rainy Swamp" is from a photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.
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