Johnny and Lanette regroup and meet Upton's family. Then, as they prepare to dive back into the mystery and start getting things accomplished, they meet a surprise person. A surprise person with a surprise gift.
Previously, on The GLOW: 1992: Agent Johnny Blue vs The Kid
Things have gone poorly: Claus Diamond has blown up most of the other Terranauts, Maria [and Berg] have been captured, Bunny & Frank are dead, and Johnny has had a crown of bone grafted to his soul. Now, Johnny and Lanette are with Upton's family and Johnny has to start plotting the course towards correction.
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.
Chewing on some notions, this one
The last two chapters (Bonfire and Bunny & Frank) created quite a few wrinkles in the world. People died, groups came together, and Johnny has been "cursed." Or helped. We'll see.
Therefore, I want to take a slight step back with this one and rearrange some thoughts and ideas. I have no idea what I expect or plan to happen next. As of the moment, I don't really have a post title or any images in mind. Just play a scene or two, primarily with a Johnny-focus. See what develops.
Narratively: Pull back the tension just a bit and try fishing to see what shows up.
I feel like this is getting ready to move towards something an end game. Maybe just not quite yet.
Cleaning Up and Altering Threads, Characters, Etc
There's a bit of note keeping I need to notekeep. Some of this was noted in the previous sessions, but may or may not have been finalized.
- -CHARACTER: Bunny Roberts
- -CHARACTER: Frank Roberts
- ΔCHARACTER: Upton moved to main characters
- ΔCHARACTER: Upton's Family split into two main characters:
- +CHARACTER: Darel Reece
- +CHARACTER: Geneva "Aunt Gen" Hawkins
- -THREAD: Upton Reece is Missing
- -THREAD: Ecoterrorist Protests
- +THREAD: Death at the Bonfire
- +THREAD: The Murder of Bunny & Frank
- -THREAD: Lanette and Billy's Growing Powers [Note: no longer really relevant]
- +THREAD: Claus & Ellen's Plot Involving News Crew
- +THREAD: The Kid Kidnapped Children (and cops covered up)
- -CHARACTER: essentially all of of the "quartet" who are now just mainstays
- +OBJECT: Bone Crown
- +THREAD: Johnny Is Wearing the Bone Crown
I am going to keep Erzse and Berg as "one character" even though they are currently split up. This might change.
Also, because The Pale Man is showing up a lot in various forms — Long Man and Bone Thing were in the last couple of sessions — I am going to enter it in more than once: Pale Man [tall, pale man], Long Man [immensely tall and thin entity that stretches up to the sky], Bone Thing [huge, hulking skeletal remains of a deer], and Elf-King [it's more "default" appearance as a wildman with a bone crown...which Johnny is wearing]. This means it is much more likely to show up in later scenes and such.
Setting the Scene, e7s1.
Chaos Factor: 5
Expected Scene: Johnny talks to Aunt Gen and sorts his plans.
Scene Test: 7
Actual Scene: As expected
We won't get Geneva Hawkins much in the way of stats and such, but her house might become kind of a new temporary base.
Let's do a little randomizing, though.
Aunt Gen's house is in {Arbuck | Geneva | Wales} → 1 → Arbuck.
What are two unusual features about her house? (Dixit: Mirrors)
- Card 1: Merman "writing" an ocean (7th Row, 2nd Column)
- Card 2: Business folk walk around anchors (3rd Row, 8th Column)
She has a large saltwater fish aquarium a bit out of style with her general humble/homely house vibe and there are various nautical implements: anchors, harpoons, etc.
Is her husband still alive? (50/50) → 58 → No. He died "recently," past couple of years.
Her husband worked on a boat and there is a theme. What did he do on the boats? (Image Oracle): → 3,5 Fingerprint + 1,6 Camera → He was harbor police.
One more card to get a slight feel for what she does or did (though I have a fair idea of her already):
- Cat statue overlooking boats (8th Row, 4th Column)
She also worked at the harbor, but more as a person who checked paperwork and such. I think this means that Arbuck is fairly close to the Gulf. Not more than an hour or so.
Coming Ashore in Stormy Weather
Date: Sunday, July 5, 1992.
Time: 6:07am.
Place: Kitchen, Geneva Hawkin's House, slightly west of Arbuck.
The police scanner squawks again. Multiple casualties. Burn victims. The codes trying to swim in my brain but often missing. The way important grammar rules drown after you let a language go unused after high school classes.
I need to brush up on police units outside of MUNI. I'm getting rusty in my middle-age.
I'm at a small, round table in a yellow kitchen now mostly lit from early morning light. The smell is coffee and scones. Lanette is snoozing at the table, head in her hands. She's acted dazed since around the time we were picked up. I'm letting her rest.
Across from me is a stern black woman of maybe sixty-years. She was introduced as Aunt Gen which I have parsed from context clues to be Geneva Hawkins. Said clues being a large sampler stitch saying "Benjamin and Geneva True Love" and towels that have "Hawkins" stitched in them.
Darel, Upton, and Torey [all of whose names I just learned in the past couple of hours] are all sleeping on the couch in the other room. Lit by a large tank with well-pampered fish and a pretend coral.
Aunt Gen, though, keeps staring at me while willing me to explain the answer to a question I was not sure I was asked. I never offer up free info so I decide to dance around and get a feel for her. Like the way her face is full of laugh lines but I have yet to hear her laugh once. Which one is the mask?
"Nice kitchen," I say, taking a sip of her excellent coffee.
"It is."
"Police scanner is busy, huh?"
"Benny liked it so I keep it."
She's also playing shut. I poke slightly more. Play a bit dumb.
"You know what's going on?"
She looks back towards the living room like she needs to visualize the scanner to understand.
"Some poor fools got caught accidentally exploding a gasoline can at a big bonfire. Lot of young folks did not make it, it seems."
"Just like to listen in on the cops?"
"Why is a cop like you in my kitchen with no shirt, no badge, and no gun?Only a young fool black girl who should be home and safe?"
"I mean, I'm not a cop..."
"No, you're Order, and that's worse. Because Order folks only truck near here when things are bad."
"...and I had a shirt, it was mostly wrapped around her head." Pointing to Lanette.
"No, you had an old man's hunting coat torn to shreds with cotton stuffing sticking out."
Something in her voice makes me take an unusual route. Mostly the truth. I spend around a dozen sentences explaining that I am on a manhunt, stuff went bad, and Lanette and I escaped. I fudge the fact that Lanette is mostly a could-be psychic and imply she's in training.
In exchange, Aunt Gen tells me that Upton, her older brother, has tied up with some kids for some reason and somehow she makes it sound like I am to blame. I don't mind taking some heat off Lanette in the process.
Going through a mental checklist I find myself reaching up and brushing at my head again, trying to figure out what this sensation is. Like a head cold. As my fingers touch, I get a shock. It feels like my skull is broken and swollen. I poke harder and I'm just touching hair. It is a weird.
Gen stares at me poking my head and I can see her wanting to ask but I try and move forward, using the old memory trick of talking to yourself out loud so your brain recalls it as conversation.
"I have to go and get my gun and badge back. I need my car back. Got to find the Tongue. Wait," switching to actually talking to her now, "Geneva, do you know an old house full of weird, creepy white folk who are up to no good?"
I give her a few other details based on my memory.
Does Geneva know about the Cartier Plantation based on his description? (Very Likely) → 13 → Exceptionally Yes.
"That sounds like that damned Celia Buttrey's place. Her and her man, Cash, get up to all sorts of mischief and shittery, there."
"Would I be able to get a ride out there. I think they have my stuff there."
"Absolutely not."
"Why not?"
She takes a long sip of coffee and chews on how to answer. She has taken to me, somewhat, but wants to be careful.
"Folks around here, not all that long ago, where pretty awful to folk like me. You know what I mean?"
Unfortunately I do, and I nod.
"Not far from here, a hotel owner poured acid in a pool to flush folks some protestors out for standing up for our rights.1 People got beat bad for eating food. Worse than that for looking at white folks wrongly. When I was in my 30s, I would not have let a person like you inside because it would have went bad for both us, got it?"
"Yeah."
"The GLOW is the devil. Satan's work. Awful. But it changed the rules. Suddenly white and black issues weren't so much so. Kind of place where no matter where you from, you are a person against that."
It is a fine way of explaining something I had noticed. An instinctive human need to get closer to The GLOW, but also a certain fear and disdain for it as a wholly alien force.
"There are people like Cash and Celia and their folk who never did like that. I ain't giving them an excuse to shoot me or my kin. Sorry."
"Don't be. Can you get me downtown Arbuck. I have a car there. I'll drive myself."2
"That I might can do..."
Lanette is waking herself up.
Can Lanette sense the significance of the bonfire? (50/50) → 85 → No.
And just to check, since it might come up later: Did the encounter with the Bone Thing disrupt her ability to remember Billy? (50/50) → 70 → No.
Maybe she never felt the sense of the bonfire because it is not a place she needs to be. It did not actually block her powers or memory, though. I'll leave this up to her a bit: Will Lanette prefer to stick with Johnny? (50/50) → 36 → Yes.
"I'm coming, too...," she says, groggily.
"The hell you are."
"Agent in training, right? Field experience."
I sigh deeply but part of me feels she is right. She has powers I don't have and has handled herself well. Not that I would actually take her into the plantation but having a getaway driver just seems smart.
"Fine. Any other requests?"
"See you are still shirtless." Darel has woken up and is standing in the kitchen doorway, blinking sleep from his eyes. He nods at me and then goes and fills a coffee cup. Looks back and stares at me sitting there shirtless. On the cusp of being a bit rude. "I heard what you asked. Come on, I'll drive you three out and let Uncle Up and Aunt Gen get some sleep before church. I'm missing today. Need rest. My husband is going to be pissed."
"You tell Tim," Aunt Gen says, "To bring his apple cobbler next Sunday. That'll make up for it. The church ladies love it."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Also, 'fore you go, go upstairs and get sexy cop here one of Marcy's old t-shirts. He doesn't need to be alerting the folk around here any more than he already has."
"Marcy?," I ask.
"My granddaughter. My eldest's eldest. Before she realized she was a Marcy, she liked wearing t-shirts from all our trips together. I ain't had the heart to toss 'em though she prefers frilly dresses, now."
Happy Halloween!
I'm going to put a slight pin in it, here. It's Halloween and I plan to spend most the day watching horror movies. I might get a chance for another scene later if my brain gets full up on rewatching some anthology flicks, but it might be a day or two.
Happy Halloween. May it be a (pleasantly) spooky one.
A Few Moments Later
Heh, when I posted that last note I kind of thought I'd be back maybe the next day or so, even later that night. In a time period where "Happy Halloween" still had a bit of meaning. Instead, a few things went down. I watched even more spooky movies. I started playing some of the new Dragon Quest remake. And just hung with the family. That kind of thing.
I also spent some time updating some of the older posts on this blog to the new format and playing around with that as a concept. I think I have a work-flow, now, but it will remain a "couple per day" because there are persnickety bits.
Anyhow, back to this one. Johnny has taken a long time to get to his car.
BONUS UPDATE: I have added Raffertie's The Substance Soundtrack to the broad The GLOW playlist. And Disasterpeace's It Follows. those combined should add some little bursts of joy.
Setting the Scene, e7s2.
Chaos Factor: 4
Expected Scene: Johnny shows up to his car and discusses plans with Lanette.
Scene Test: 2. Interrupt Scene.
Ok, let's find out what the interrupt is. 24 → NPC Action. Let's see which NPC: {1-70 MAIN | 71-100 Secondary} → 54 → Main → 7,4 → Tanya Green.
What is Tanya doing? We'll use Meaning Table: Action and roll twice: 75 Release 61 Object + 41 Escape 95 Victory. The latter one can either be "get away from victory" or "escape to victory". I like the from reading. She is close to winning something and chooses to not. What object does she release?
Let's first ask: Is this a good thing for Johnny/Lanette? (50/50) → 21 → Yes. Is it Johnny's badge and gun? (50/50) → 58 → No. Ok, then... Is it the Forked Tongue? (50/50) → 90 → Absolutely not.
So, something good for J+L, something unexpected enough to be a "twist," but not the two main missing objects. Ok, Dixit: Mirrors it is. Two cards:
- A goblet being washed up in a sink of soapy water (4th Row, 6th Column)
- Praying Mantises getting married while the groom looks nervous (4th Row, 5th Column)
An item for a ceremony. Is Tanya meant to be "the bride"? (50/50) → 25 → Yes.
Back to image oracles, then. What's the object in question → 2,5 Compass + 4,6 Magic Swirl. Dowsing Rods. At the tip, cat's eye gems. One green. One more golden red. These help the wielder to find places of power related to The Long Man. Like, say, if you are finding the place for a wedding.
Does Tanya consider Johnny to be an incarnation of The Long Man? (50/50) → 41 → No. Instead, she is being driven by her love for the Dwnaer [another name from the creature].
Actual Scene: Tanya Green is waiting by Johnny's car and has a gift for him, telling him to go and follow the path laid out by a pair of dowsing rods.
What does Tanya/Dwnaer want Johnny to find? [2 Image Oracles] → 6,4 Spy + 1,6 CCTV Camera. I think it's Finley Estevan. Why the Kid wants Johnny to find him, I don't know, but it seems to be time.
One last question, Is Johnny's Car ok? (Very Likely) → 4 → Exceptional Yes. Without the Tongue holding it back, it has actually engaged its own protection wards to keep people mostly away from it.
Wedding Gifts
Date: Sunday, July 5, 1992.
Time: 7:25am.
Place: Main street Arbuck, near the playground and Dorothy Lang monument.
Darel drops us off at the edge of the parking lot to the children's playground and then, with a sleepy wave, drives off. I asked if he was feeling up to making it home and he blinked at me twice. Maybe I should have detained him but armed with Marcy's "Visit Ruby Falls" t-shirt, I was feeling a bit spunky.3
This is not the time in the game where you go off on side-quests. You defeat the dragon.
I am glad enough to be on the edge of tears when I see my car. I glance at Lanette and see her squinting. To me, my car looks like my car. A 1991-model The GLOW special. Custom made for me with enough sigils and wards that it is practically an Agent in its own right. To most people, said sigils and wards make it seem like a amalgamation of various cars until their brain finally picks whatever random car they were expecting to be there.
Let's see if Lanette can punch through. We'll put it at Crafty Normal → 1, 6 → 1 Success. She finally does.
After a few seconds of enjoying her confusion, I see her eyes light up and she starts to smile. I won't know for half a second, but I'm pretty sure she has made it through the protection. My instincts about her are right. She will be one hell of an agent.
"That's your car? Holy hell, man. You must be rolling in it."
"What's this it you mean, young..."
I don't get to finish my system because I realize I let myself get too distracted. I failed to note the person sitting in the car we were passing (a much more plain model of 1990 design). I failed to note the pot smoke that was way too strong for a Sunday morning.
I especially failed to note that the person was Tanya Green: last seen being left behind by me as I went off on a wild goose chase. At the time, I worried I hurt her feelings. Only it turns out she just might be frolicking in the woods with strange pale things.4 I'm willing to call it a wash.
"Heeey, Johnny," Tanya says, her voice heavily drugged and sluggish. The weird thing? When I first met her, I pegged her as being in her late thirties and wearing it roughly.5 A person my age who looked older. Now I'd put here more as a fit late-20s. The realization that absolutely every person I had met in this town had been playing me like a fiddle is starting to irk me.
Tanya gets out — of the passenger seat for some reason, and as she wobbles I get the idea she has been there for hours — and looks down at Lanette and laughs. "Third one in three days? Hot damn, lover boy."
"You leave Sicily out of it," I say, trying to at least protect Lanette.
Does Tanya know Lanette's name? (50/50) → 69 → No. I'll say she'll just run with what was given, then.
"Don't you worry, Sicily. I'm just teasing him."
Lanette catches my cue and just fake laughs it off. She is glancing around, looking for points of exit. Possibly weapons. Who knows what. I don't bother. I'm nine-layers deep in a shit cake and tired of trying to figure out which icing is actually chocolate.
"Why you here, Tanya? Don't you have some weird shrine in the woods to sacrifice goats at? I stumbled upon it last night."
"Clever, clever duck. That's why we like you."
And I tell you, I hate that we with a passion. I'm not sure what happens if you punch someone like Scooter but I am more than ready to find out.
"That's why we want you to have something of ours. It's meant to be a wedding gift but you can have it for now."
She goes around and gets something from behind the driver's seat and I'm reaching for a gun that does not exist. I have to resist the urge to pretend to be holding it.
When Tanya turns back around, she is holding two copper rods with gemstones on the end. Cat's eye. I wobble slightly like I have a strange case of deja vu. Remembering something that hasn't happened yet.
She sort of pushes them towards me and I refuse to take the bait of closing the gap.
She looks at me with a strange expression and then says, "Mae Dwnaer yn awgrymu y bydd y goron yn eich amddiffyn, ac yn defnyddio'r gwiail hyn i ddod o hyd i'ch dyn."6
I laugh loudly at this and am three seconds from giving Lanette the command to run when Tanya blinks and catches herself. "Sorry about that, I am less myself every day. I was told to give these to you. You are looking for someone and they can lead you there."
"What's the catch?"
"Catch? Oh, pussy cat," again, the deja vu, "You finding your wizard in the swamp is exactly what I want to happen. You'd be doing me a favor."
Sure. I don't actually know what to say. Scooter and this weird pale being in the woods have the same goals in mind. Scooter is the pale being? Fuck it, in for a penny...
"You know Scooter?"
Does Tanya, via the Pale One or otherwise, know about Scooter? (50/50) → 10.
If this had been Chaos Factor = 5, it would have been an exceptional. It's such a pretty round number I'm going to fudge it by the 3% to make it one. Very much so.
What is Tanya's mental concept of Scooter? [Meaning Table: Character Motivations seems to work] → 56 Leader 33 Gratify. Ohhh. Order is important there. Let's "flip a coin" to see which one is first {Leader | Gratify} → Gratify. So she knows him to gratify her leader.
Heck, now I need to know another piece: What is Scooter attempting to achieve with this? [Meaning Table: Actions x2] → 61 Misuse 43 Illness + 80 Reward 01 Advantage. Scooter "Wisteria" Johnson thinks his actions will cause some sort of problem to spread, and he can profit off the chaos.
Now, are these the goals of Finley, as well, and Scooter is playing a long game? I don't know. Not time to know.
"Little bitty Wisteria? Oh, yes. He's using you, you know. Banking on you failing."
I think it hurts to hear, but I've known pretty much as soon as I realized that the urge to steal the Forked Tongue matches none of my prior em-ohs. "Yeah, I figured."
"Take em, Agent Blue. You need to find the Wizard."
I hesitate only for a few more moments and then grab the rods from her hand. As I do, I get a warm feeling in my scalp. Not unpleasant. The opposite of it. Like I'm being rewarded. Which is worse.
"He won't see you coming. Don't dally, though. All the king's horses and whores are gathering."
After saying that, she blinks a few time and her features sag a bit. Like she aged up a decade. She looks around like she is confused. A puppet tossed back in the box.
"Oh, Johnny. There you are. Who's your friend?"
"Sicily," Lanette answers, playing the part, still.
"Oh." A few lurches back and forth. "How high am I? Shit. I don't smoke that much weed anymore. Makes me too horny. I make some terrible mistakes. Speaking of...," and she looks at us. Kind of like an invitation. Hard to tell which one she is asking so both Lanette and I end up shaking our heads no.
"Oh well. Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to sleep this off in my car before it gets too hot. Those are pretty, though," she says, pointing at the rods she just gave me.
She does just as she says. Crawls in her car and starts to sleep. Day is going to be hot so wait until I can hear snores and then open up the doors so I can roll down all her windows.
Thing is, I can't tell if she really doesn't know her own part she just played in handing me the rods or it is just more pretend. Knowing this town, somewhere in between and both at the same time.
I walk to my car and speak three command words to open the trunk. I pull out a suit.
Lanette is staring back at Tanya. "I think I just got a contact high from being in the same ZIP Code as her. You think she'll be safe in there?"
"Do I think the Bride of Satan will be safe? Hell, no."
"Pun intended?"
"Of course."
"You are such a dad."
"Goddamn."
I turn around for a second and look to see if anyone is watching.
Are there others around? (50/50) → 47 → No.
Besides a snoozing Tanya and a now completely wide-eyed Lanette, it's just me. I figure Lanette has already seen my clothes ripped off once so I just start switching out into my back-up suit.
"Ok, Sicily, I need my gun and badge back. We need to fall for whatever trap this bullshit is. Any others?"
I'm just going to draw two cards to see what she thinks...
- A group of three elves (?) tied up and looking down at another (2nd Row, 1st Column).
- A cat, in a suit, juggling. (7th Row, 1st Column).
The first one feels like definitely getting back to Billy. Only she sees it still a bit as being "tied up" though has come to peace with that need to follow Billy around.
The second one feels like Johnny. The weird warping of reality has started to bring up notions that he is destined to become a werecat in the next three years or so.
She is torn between going back to her old friend group or continuing on this adventure where she's being treated as a full member.
{Billy | Cat} → Billy is winning out just a tad.
Can she sense that he is not at the motel? Normal Crafty → 2,5 → Yes. Can she sense where he actually is [which I don't know, yet]? Hard Crafty → 4,5 → will spend a Karma against her psychic "Knows where things are" [she's now down to 1K left] and say she can sense it.
Heck, let's find out where Billy is: a single card:
- A man plays with his kid on a bed floating in alligator infested waters (2nd Row, 2nd Column)
Hot dang, I love it when it vibes.
"I think Billy needs us to find him," she says. Points off in the rough direction of the swamp. "That way. Near the swamp. I can feel kid's toys and shit. But not really in a happy way."
"Ok, gun, then Billy, then trap. Good?"
"No, I think Billy has to be first."
I stare at her a moment. Then nod.
I tap my communication sigil to talk to Nurse.
Does The Kid allow the communication to go through? (50/50) → 17 → Yes.
"Nurse?," I ask to the sense of a presence in my head, and then wait for a affirmation, "I need you to do some research. Mid-Florida. Maybe a wider range. Strange pale figure tied to cult worship. I need some ideas what these fuckers are worshipping."
Can Eustace sense any interference on the line? [Hard Craft] → 4,2,1 → No successes. Either it's beyond him or the Kid is playing nice.
"Time-frame?"
"Eh, ASAP. Or just tell folks at my funeral."
"Roger roger, Space Cadet."
And with that snip, Nurse is offline. He does good work so I'm not worried about the scant details. Nor I am too worried that he will get snagged by Scooter's shenanigans. He probably can sense the danger better than I can.
"Ok, Sicily, let's go find Billy."
As we are getting in my car and she's wiggling like a small kid into the seat and enjoying the vibe, she turns to me. "You think we can get me a suit? I'd love a suit like yours."
"I'll put it on my to do list." I hand her the rods and we drive off into the dawn air.
DOUG'S COMMENTARY
I was thinking this would be a three-scener but the latter scene had so much information it feels a good idea to stop it here.
One of the tricks I pulled with this one was using the "50/50" as a vibe check. Don't assign any real value to likelihood and just let the dice play out. It's a good way to sometimes tease out the story by bits.
For the moment, we'll leave what happened to Maria and Berg to the unknown pit. After another session or two, I'll try out a side story, perhaps.
Oh, and for the record, I have no idea if Tanya actually remembers anything. This whole mini-arc is about traps within traps and lies within lies.
CREDITS
The GLOW 1992: Agent Johnny Blue vs The Kid is played and primarily built upon lore using Richard Woolcock's Tricube Tales Solo tables and the Arcane Agents one-sheet including the image oracle compiled from of Game-Icons.net's various Creative Commons licensed imagery. The campaign arc uses Tana Pigeon's Mythic 2nd Edition as a Gamemaster Emulator. Other oracles include 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.
ART CREDIT AND EXPLANATION
Aunt Geneva's Kitchen: Photo by Bruno Vega on Unsplash. All the photos in this series are glitched out to various degrees. To help establish a sense of calm, her kitchen is very nearly unedited compared to visuals that show up during more intense scenes.
Aunt Gen: Photo by Getty Images, per the Unsplash+ License.
Tanya Green: Andrea Giardini on Unsplash. For funsies, I used the same general techniques used to create the photo of the kitchen but dialed up the distortion more to contrast the "soft dawn light" between the two.
Johnny's Car is from a 3D render by A Chosen Soul, via the Unsplash+ License. For this one I took it back to the older school The GLOW effect, which was useful in implying a general shape of the car without showing too many details.
As always, apologies to all models for me bringing them into my strange world.
- My old blog has a write-up about this and the way the story became so poorly known that it ended up getting posted with a lot of bad information over time. ↩︎
- Fun fact, I sort of forgot that Johnny had his car still. It was left behind. Now that he has his sigils back working, the car would have some tricks. ↩︎
- https://www.rubyfalls.com/. Fun fact about that place. In 2022, I was up on Lookout Mountain with my family and fell while hiking across to an actual lookout. This fall was severe enough that it effectively shattered my left leg. Shortly before I fell, I made a stupid joke about "Ruby Falls!? Sounds like a nice trip!" It is an in-joke in my family that said fall, which has left me permanently disabled, was the spirit of the Falls punishing me for disrespecting her. ↩︎
- See "Family Business" back in Part 5. ↩︎
- See "Meeting Madame Sinister" back in Part 2. ↩︎
- "Dwnaer suggests that the crown will protect you, and use these rods to find your man." I used Google Translate to bring it from the Welsh (which is where he is known as Dwnaer). ↩︎
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