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• The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont Episode 19 - Alright Ramblers, Let's Get Ramblin'
• Quiet Anticipation™
• The Battle of the Rambler
• Doug's Commentary
• Credits

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Previously, on The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

Getting into the Villa was only the start. After a mechanical error downs the Green Lady, the team comes face to face with a trio of rogue psychics. Pushing themselves to the limit just to survive the fight, they are now regrouping and preparing to storm the Rambler. Amy Patel has her mini-disc back and with it, the controls to shut down the whole Patel empire. However, Eustace wants to make sure that the cabal can never be reborn.

About The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

Eustace Delmont is a psychic on the cusp of "graduating" into a full-blow Field Psychic. He requests his right to Walk, a brief period of freedom to encourage psychics to see the other side of The GLOW. He tries to finish his long-time partner Jani Blum's final unfinished mission: to find a mini-disc and crack open the Patel crime family. He meets Hitomi Meyer, a criminal hacker. The two are now on the run between a powerful crime family and an even more powerful adversary: The Order and its plans for Eustace.

Content Warning: Occasionally very foul language, lots of smoking, quite intense violence, drinking, gambling, non-graphic sex, drugs, criminal behavior, and black magic. The GLOW is a world of spiritual torture and weird horror.

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.

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Coming to Coinflip: Trigger the Showdown Right Now or Nah

I realize I'm at a bit of personal impasse, a snag of analysis paralysis. By this point, the story has been told excepting one last piece of the puzzle: fighting Roman Patel. We could reasonably jump through a couple of scenes and kick off the showdown this very post. BUT, I feel like...maybe not doing that. There was a time where this series could have taken on a tower-climb or heist type vibe. The Rambler, floating above the GLOW, could have been several episodes of Die Hard fights and tight corridors. That time is a bit past. Still, it doesn't feel quite right to have it all just skip to the end.

I think what I'll do is draw some cards. The "Difficulty Number" is a bell curve centering around 5.5. Between three and four "warm up" scenes feels appropriate. 3x5.5 = 16.5 and 4x5.5 = 22. The average of the two (aka, 3.5x5.5) is 19.25. We'll round that down to 19. Draw cards. Each card we will use to figure out some challenge or scene. Once we exceed 19, we will then be in the penultimate fight or task or what have you.

Then the final showdown with the siblings and Roman Patel. Roger will likely show up and have to decide if he joins Amy in this.

There are, basically, two Plan Bs at this point. (1) The Witches Three show up and unwind reality to prevent the Yuggothians from being resurrected. (2) Amy activates the kill switch for the Rambler and drops it to the ground.

Both are bad and will involve people dying.

Ultimately Eustace and Hitomi will have to decide when it is time to pull those triggers.

But first, a time out. Folks are tired, exhausted, and needing to evade some MUNI who are definitely on the way.

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The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont. Episode 19 - Alright Ramblers, Let's Get Ramblin'

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EPISODE SOUNDTRACK: Yeule's album, Evangelic Girl Is a Gun dropped just yesterday (May 30, 2025) in what is a most epic birthday gift. Anyhow, that will 100% be the soundtrack for this episode.

Setting the Scene, e19sX.

Don't need to work out too much in the way of set-up here. It's a Time Out. Maybe not the last Time Out but it is 100% nearing it. Still in the bar, let's ask a quick but important question.

Are MUNI close to the villa? (Good) → [c4] No? This means that Detective Hernandez has managed to gather up the folks she can trust and is running interference. We'll probably never explore just how important she is to the finals segment but this is likely her shining moment. Since there's a "?" there (aka, "but") some will likely show up after a moment so we might still get a race but we'll do that at the very end of the Time Out. It just means we don't have to compress everything into rolls.

Everyone but Hitomi has "You Look Nervous". One of their actions will be clearing that. Hitomi will be the only one to get two actions.

DATE PLAYED: May 31, 2025.

Quiet Anticipation™

Date: June 7, 1996.

Time: 12:27pm.

Place: The "bar" of Roman's fake Villa.

"Bird. Bird. Bird," BrokenRecord chimes while looking at Eustace which makes Hitomi feel slightly better. At least it's not just herself who can see the other-Eustace seeping out into reality. He had said thirty-six-hours but she puts him at less than twelve to go. Burning a flickering candle twice as fast. If only Amy Patel had picked a different time to flirt, it might have been less confusing to Hitomi's brain. Twenty-seven is too young for this much shit.

Varvara is handing out a cannister of artificial emotion while Amy is pouring shots from the few bottles that survived the psychic onslaught. The entire group — sans Eustace — is resetting their emotional state. Hitomi is not sure these short term energy restorers are going to be enough for her until she hears a mechanic bark and looks up to Jones coming into the room with Libby. "BOO!," Hitomi shouts and goes over and starts petting the robotic dog despite Libby having no external sensors.

"I found this downstairs and had a sixth-sense to bring it," Nemesio Jones says. The chubby man looks washed out after the last few hours and Hitomi goes to say some — any, really — words of encouragement or thanks or condolences or...whatever. Jones seems to catch her struggling to speaking and waves his hand. "Nah, don't. Saving the world can't be easy. I don't think I really believed it at first but the stuff we've seen. Like..."

"Him?"

"Yeah, it's weird to hang out so close to a guy whose eyes glow. Have you looked into them? Well, whenever I do I have glimpses of the whole world burning in Soulburn and people bowing to at his feet. Only..."

"...only that's not what he wants."

"Right...and if he's fighting himself to save us, I figure I can fight beside him. For now. Just don't judge me too hard if I chicken out and go home."

"Juan will know someone to get the Green Lady back."

"It's ok, I think after this I might retire to a farm somewhere. And plant not a goddamned thing."

Jones walks off with a slight wave as Hitomi starts to check over Libby and is glad to see her robotic companion is ok. She glances up when she hears footsteps approaching and sees Bee. Hitomi grabs her long time friend and practically adopted younger sibling in a hard hug. The conversation turns to Eustace and the changes that have happened since Bee saw Hitomi and Eustace last.

As they talk, they see swirling light beginning to gather around him.

As they continue to stare, three orbs form near his head and he grabs them and presses them against his flesh. Each forms a strange shape. A letter from an alphabet older than the Solar System.

"I'm sorry, Mochi," Bee says.

"Don't be. Maybe after all this the two of us can go back into the kiosk business. Sell coffee or something."

"I'd like that."

15 minutes later...

The boat they bought from Jal Pilkin is loaded up with Jones behind the wheel. Another boat has been pulled over and Amy, Bee, and BrokenRecord — and the prone figure of the mantis ServiSynth — are on it. MUNI sirens are approaching and the time to leave is now. The plan is that Amy will get to cybercafe and launch the mini-disc. On command, or when she loses communication with the team, she will launch the "DROP" command on the Rambler.

"Be safe, you," she says to no one in particular. Then throttles up the boat and heads north.

Jones listens to the sirens and asks Genny if they think they get gone before company shows up.

Genny says, "We are good if we go right now."

Jones looks sadly back at the half-crashed Green Lady and speeds their boat back to the South and Genny's truck. As they pull into a side canal, Hitomi catches a glance of MUNI boats approaching at speed. After a few moments, she knows they manaaged to get away.

Setting the Scene, e19s2.

Expected Scene: The [loyal] Order troops are clearing the way for the team to storm the Rambler.

Scene Test: [c51] 1. Helllllllll. 2d10 = I mean. 3 + 6 but let's be SHOCKED. "A safe haven is exposed." I think this one is self-explanatory.

Actual Scene: The Rambler is a battle ground as Patel's full army are fighting off the Order in a large scale battle that is burning down the GLOW around it.

Without the Green Lady, Eustace is the primary flyer so we'll see depending on how this goes.

Intensity for this section will be... [c69] 9. Dang. This fight will be pretty massive right off the start.

There's enough good guys fighting bad guys that feats and special actions will be a weird way to handle it, so let's do an converted sort of "Chase". 18 Need. Damage will increase as it goes on. Every 4 Need filled, it will go up an intensity. Basic → Critical → 2xCritical → Extreme. Critical will remain the "defense" of the bad guys. There's enough around that you will be shooting someone. Genny will be the 'pilot' as he leads the group across the way. Starts with a "speed" of 1 and it will go as he plots a way to get the team through. The idea is the fight will essentially go on until Patel falls (perhaps literally).

DATE PLAYED: May 31, 2025.

The Battle of the Rambler

Date: June 7, 1996.

Time: 1:45pm.

Place: The base of the Rambler.

Genny turns the corner and it's a repeat of the Villa. The Rambler continues float, almost serene, above it all but the houses and businesses down below are on fire. He tries super hard to not flash back to the numerous conflicts where he was paid good money to do this kind of damage to property. "Frontline morale destroyer". The people with him — well, Hitomi, Varvara, and Jones at least — need him to stay strong, here. Eustace...whatever is going on with him will just have to play it out. If he could happen to get Hitomi as far as possible from the blast radius. All the better.

He slams on breaks and pulls in behind the remains of a clothing shop which is now mostly just some walls and some summer clothing well on fire. "Everyone out, follow me!" He doesn't look back to see if the team is listening. The team will be listening. The best damned troops he has ever lead. So what if a couple of them are just kids. That's how war is always fought. People like him leading kids to die while the people in power print out awards and certificates and make bank in stocks.

Gunfire slams into the other side of the wall as more psychic lashes explode a car half a block down. Genny needs these to actually be on Eustace's side. Otherwise, he's going to radio Amy to just blow the whole joint.

Still not looking back, he plots out a path that will get them to a car lot that somehow has managed to stay mostly intact.

A couple of quick shots shatters the glass and he leaps through. He points to some '96 model luxury cars and begins crawling around behind them. He hears glass crunch behind him and is glad to know that at least someone is following him.

Unfortunately, one of the Patel bastards has spotted them and a few more are running. These cars look awfully fancy but Genny doubts they will be able to stop many bullets. He points down and dives.

As glass shatters down, Genny notes that Eustace and Jones are a bit exposed and he finally breaks his "don't look back" rule to grab then and pull them both into a better place. As Eustace — the strange bird-demon impression stronger than every — looks up and nods thanks, Genny pats him on the shoulder. Just another kid in over his head.

Genny jumps up and opens fire to mow down their attackers.

As the Patel bastards drop, it opens up a gap in their flanks. Genny shouts "Let's GO!" and takes off through the corpses. Again, he is glad to hear the sound of crunching glass behind him.

Several fox faced psychics are up ahead pushing hard against their opponents. One glances back and sees the group — and Eustace — and then nods. A few seconds later, the psychic is cut down as bullets tear through them and a phalanx of Patel troops try to flank the now outnumbered psychics.

Hitomi punches Genny on the shoulder and points to some azaela bushes — on fire — with concrete planters. The mixture of fire and smoke will make a great approach and soon the team is making the way through the unexpected path. Genny feels a moment of regret leaving what he assumes is compatriots to face gunfire but again, that's war. Besides, just three psychics pushed this entire group to their limits. There seems to be dozens fighting Patel right now. He almost feels bad for the other side. Not really, though.

Up head, a building that housed a art school reaches critical damage and falls into a pile of rubble. It makes a nice short cut but the group will need to find a clear path.

Genny rushes forward and shoves the wreckage aside and there's a ramp that will get them within a block of the Rambler — which is nearly wide open — but they will have to make it through flames and a collapsing structure.

As the group jumps down and brushes off the burning debris — and Hitomi pulls a shard of glass that had jabbed her in the leg — they now need to make a mad dash through a relatively open parking lot and park to get into position under the Rambler. "What the fuck do we do when we get there?," Genny shouts back to the others.

Eustace says in a voice full of all the death in the GLOW: "Trust me."

"Yeah, figured you'd say that. Ok...I'm going to punch through."

Genny gets his gun up and starts taking out Patel troops on the left and right. Here, the battle has barely reached so it is clear they were expecting a completely different kind of combatant.

He clears enough space that they can underneath the Rambler, floating twenty meters above their head. Unfortunately, other bastards are noticing them and starting to turn. There will be no protection, here.

Then Eustace speaks in a language that is clearly non-terrestial in origin and pulls at one of the sigils on his chest until he is holding an orb. He crushes it in his hand and a bubble of Soulburn flows out to form a wall that seems to be keeping the Patel troops out. Only, as Genny watches the walls warble and warp under bursts of gunfire, he knows it is short lived.

Only, somewhere outside he hear's a cry: "For the Witch-King, for the Order!" Then there are more screams and pops. At least their enemies are going to be occupied for the moment.

"Ok, NOW what?," Genny hears himself shouting way too loud.

Eustace spreads wings. that fill most of the bubble and starts to wrap around the others there with him.

"Now," and Genny feels that Eustace's voice sounds just like his grandfather and suspects the others also here someone else they trust, "We fly..."

Laying on burning fields

With you, as we watch

The Sun on fire

Burning our love down

Into dust, just like how

God takes away

A man from the dogs

All I want to do is

Love you, oh

But all you want to be is

In a dream

-- Yeule, "Skullcrusher"

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DOUG'S COMMENTARY

I might have another scene in me but the chance that it could end up being a pretty intense one again makes me think that I'll just pick it up next time. I'm really happy with the makeshift chase scene there since it felt like a nice way to handle moving through an increasingly dangerous place.

I thought about having to deal with a rope ladder or some other system but we're fully in "super hero" mode right now.

That was Genny's scene for sure. Maybe the next one will be Hitomi's. I like the idea of giving the others a chance to shine. I think I'll do that.

Couple of personal notes. Yesterday was my birthday. I'm now 48 years old. That seems like a good age to be. Has a lot of factors including some of my favorites like 4, 8, and 16.

Second, one of the reasons this entire series slowed down is because I started taking Wegovy back in January and in February, around when this campaign should have been taking off, the dosage increased enough that Saturdays and Sundays tend to be washed out. I was working a full-time job and having to do a lot of weekend errands in the middle of the week to make up for the loss of the weekends, and it just got tricky to ever have as much mental energy as I wanted.

I am still exhausted as I play this on a Saturday but it was nice pushing through even if it was around a scene shorter than it might have been otherwise.

Onward and upwards.

CREDITS

The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont is played using Two Little Mouse's Outgunned and Outgunned: Action Flicks (especially, but not limited to "Neon Noir" and "Great Powers"). It uses Larcenous Designs' Gamemaster Apprentice Deck: Cyberpunk 2E as its main oracle.

Other sources used include:

• Zach Best's Universal NPC Emulator.
• Cesar Capacle's Random Realities
• Kevin Crawford's Cities Without Number
• Matt Davis' Book of Random Tables: Cyberpunk 1, 2 and 3.
• Geist Hack Games and Paul D. Gallagher's Augmented Realities.

ART CREDIT AND EXPLANATION

The Rambler: Photo by Luke Witter on Unsplash. When I first was thinking of what to do with this image I had contemplated creating some collage art to represent the Rambler floating in the air. However, as soon as I saw Luke Witter's photo of the John Hancock Skyscraper it struck me as just perfect on its own. It leaves me with a bit of a gap for next episode since it won't be as easy to match up other photos to it, but push comes to shove I'll just re-use Witter's awesome photo.

For the destruction around the Rambler I wanted to avoid using any real life footage of disasters so I snagged this render. For reasons.

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• Reader Options/Controls
• "Previously..." and Campaign/Arc Summary
• The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont Episode 18 — Hacker Girl Meets Mantis Girl
• Icarus
• A DOUG WALL BREAK: A Slight Delay and COMPRESSION Due to IRL Thingamabobs
• Securing the Villa (Actual/Quick Play)
• Outfoxed
• Doug's Commentary
• Credits

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Previously, on The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

After two brutal fights, the team has managed to — at least briefly — secure the out perimeter of the Patel "villa." Now they need to get through the vault doors and deal with the interior troops and rescue three people inside.

About The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

Eustace Delmont is a psychic on the cusp of "graduating" into a full-blow Field Psychic. He requests his right to Walk, a brief period of freedom to encourage psychics to see the other side of The GLOW. He tries to finish his long-time partner Jani Blum's final unfinished mission: to find a mini-disc and crack open the Patel crime family. He meets Hitomi Meyer, a criminal hacker. The two are now on the run between a powerful crime family and an even more powerful adversary: The Order and its plans for Eustace.

Content Warning: Occasionally very foul language, lots of smoking, quite intense violence, drinking, gambling, non-graphic sex, drugs, criminal behavior, and black magic. The GLOW is a world of spiritual torture and weird horror.

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.

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The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont. Episode 18 — Hacker Girl Meets Mantis Girl

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Expected Scene: The team has to get through the doors while Eustace "reprograms" the relic that guards that lawn.

Scene Test: [c118] 6. 2d10 = 7 + 10. Major Change.

[c118] says "A Critical Injury" is inflicted. { Eustace | Hitomi | Genny | Jones | Varvara } → Jones. I don't think we really need more details for the moment besides something goes wrong as Jones is trying to land. We'll allow him a chance to save vs Impossible. I mean, he might make it. The initial "injury" will be the Green Lady itelf.

Actual Scene: The Green Lady's shaky part that was field fixed will break at the worst possible time.

Setting the Scene, e18s1: Icarus.

Date: June 6, 1996.

Time: 11:17pm.

Place: Front lawn of Roman's fake Villa.

DATE PLAYED: May 18, 2025.

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Icarus

Date: June 6, 1996.

Time: 11:17pm.

Place: Front lawn of Roman's fake Villa.

"Hold up, Jones, Eustace is doing something. No, I don't know what...," Genny says to his pilot friend as Jones hovers around 50 meters above the villa's front lawn. Eustace has been chanting something other his breath and writing a series of symbols down.

Eustace turns around and nods to Genny. Hitomi is jacking her laptop into the door frame's hidden controls. Any passers-by would see just a fancy, mildly-decorated mahogany door. In reality, it is about foot thick and made of metal. The windows showing opulent rooms are aether-enforced glass and much of the facade is a fake to hide the exterior. They might have an easier time punching through the wall in a random place.

Hitomi is tapping away on her keyboard for a minute and then gives a positive shout. With a loud clunk, the heavy door starts sliding away, ruining the illusion as a whole chunk of wall starts sliding open slow. The sound of large, heavy gears can be heard turning inside. Genny brings his gun up and Vavara goes into a fighting stance, just in case they have company.

Eustace calls out a warning. Genny looks back to Jones and the Green Lady, about half way down, as the rotor shoots out bright sparks and flames and the Green Lady starts dropping. "JONES!," Genny calls out.

As Eustace is already expanding out his Soulburn wings, Jones does some complicated maneuver to pull the Green Lady back away from everyone the ground.

The Green Lady slams hard right on the edge of the water and Jones lets out a groan. The seat absorbs some of the impact but he will be bruised in the morning. "Shit, Shit!" He jumps out and snags the fire extinguisher and starts trying to douse the flames. The rotor is ruined. He knows at a glance that it could take hours to do decent repairs if he was back at his shop. Out here, he might be able to do some risky field work but how long before it does that again, higher up with less flat space to land?

Genny runs over and checks Jones out and then pulls off his own jacket to help beat back some flames. "Goddamnit, man. You scared the shit out of me."

"Scared the shit out of you, welll...my apologies. She's toast. I can probably get her fixed but not here. We should have waited for the proper parts. Damned junk part got stressed too hard with the flying we've been doing today!"

By this time, the front door is fully open and the interior hall is in view. There is no resistance yet, but Hitomi knows it can't be long.

"We have to go, now!"

"Looks like we're taking the boat out of here," Genny says, patting Jones on the shoulder, "You just got promoted to assault team."

"Fucking great!," Jones says. Dreaming of happy days reading comics and not getting shot at.

A DOUG WALL BREAK: A Slight Delay and COMPRESSION Due to IRL Thingamabobs

May 22, 2025

Doug here. Just jumping in to note that there was an unexpected gap between Scene #1 and Scene #2 of a few days and then a longer than intended gap between Episode 17 and Episode 18. The long story short is that there is a lot of stuff going on in real life. Nothing horrible or the like, just a lot of tasks that require pretty much all my mind power. In fact, after a couple of days of moving quite literally tens of thousands of files into appropriate archives, it almost hurts my eyes to look at screens. Still, I'm going to play out the rest of this as best I can.

A very minor consequence is that we are going to essentially skip a scene of combat on the interior. We've done combat in this series. A lot. The only thing I am going to do is draw three cards. The first two will represent the "good guys" who are non-ironically good guys despite the cyberpunk trapping. The third will represent the bad guys. I will pick the highest of the first two and compare it to the third. This will establish how well the fight went. If it ends up going quite poorly, then I will work out some stats changes and the like in a fun but super quick way.

This means that basically "Scene 2" will be a quick "raw notes" type scene so we can get to Scene 3 pretty quickly which is the meeting with Amy Patel.

REMEMBER IN SOLO PLAY THE ONLY PERSON YOU HAVE TO PLEASE IS YOURSELF. As life compresses, you can squeeze stuff up to be tighter. As stuff relaxes, you can take more time. You are the boss.

Securing the Villa (Actual/Quick Play)

This scene is a compressed take on what was meant to be a third fight. In the original plans, it was to be a weak fight with maybe a slight twist of there being hostages. By this time we have had two fairly strong shake ups to the fights and have had the Green Lady taken out of commission. It's been rough going.

To generally set this scene, the villa's lavish exterior is much more office space inside. Things kept clean. Store rooms to move various goods that Roman Patel. One of which is the current prison of BrokenRecord and Bee. We know that Amy is being kept near the bar. We'll find out more about that in the next scene.

To just give some structure to the fight, we will draw three cards. Cards A and B will be used to determine how well the team fought with the highest card being the overall result. Card C will be how well the guards fought. The team will win, but this is to figure out what sort of licks and kicks they took punching through. Then, the next scene it will be a bit more lore-structured but include elements of the fight in there.

Card A → [c45] 4. Card B → [c32] 6. Card C → [c93] 2.

With a 4 and a 6, the PCs did not necessarily excel, but the guards inside are definitely behind the quality of the exterior guards.

There will essentially be no losses for the PCs. I will give them each +2 Adrenaline for the now four encounters (including the crashing Green Lady).

DATE PLAYED: May 22, 2025

Expected Scene: The team finds Amy Patel at the villa's bar and try to convince her to join in.

Scene Test: [c54] 6. 2d10 = 8 + 7. Another major twist. "A harsh alarm klaxon..." "Your accounts are compromised..." "Hunters are hunted..." Someone has betrayed them. It could be Juan if he is trying to get into good graces. Myranda is a possibility as well. Let's try it like this: {Juan | Myranda | Someone else} → someone else. Got it. Some of the field psychics that do not like being out-shone. Remember, Eustace had a 91% chance of "rebellion". Maybe what the field psychics were detecting where them actually rebelling against Eustace.

Actual Scene: A trio of Field Psychics along with some armed folks are waiting inside, trying to take down Eustace.

Setting the Scene, e18s3: Outfoxed.

Date: June 6, 1996.

Time: 11:40pm.

Place: The "bar" of Roman's fake Villa.

This is likely going to be the second hardest fight in the entire campaign arc. These guys need to be "boss" level. A case where someone else besides Eustace has super powers.

Before we come up with actual stats for them, let's find out a couple of details.

First, is Roger Patel here? (Even) → [c77] No? He's not here right now but he's en route. Second, is Roger's loyalty to his sister? (Good) → [c68] Yes. We'll say that Roman is very aware that some rogue psychics are at the villa and has let it slip to Roger who is trying to get to Amy and protect her rather than let her be bait.

Third, we know that Amy was trying to stop her family in some way, and it makes sense that she is trying to stop the Second Impact. How well will she react to her "saviors" (considering she's the type to try and use her allies so even if she agrees with someone she might not be a "good friend" type) → [c34] 5. Pretty much exactly neutral. They will have to prove themselves to her.

I have long forgotten how many "Plan B" type elements I have used but there's a big one here: the Witches Three. If things go south the Witches will intervene because they are at least temporarily considering Eustace to be the lynchpin for some new future that does not have the Yuggothians take control of the Earth.

Now, let's look at some stats. Boss Template 3. Extreme Attack. Critical Defense. 12 Grit. Hot boxes on 3, 6, and 9. They have 5 feat points. 3 will be spent on "Evil Genius" (from "With Great Powers"): Heroes suffer -1 to all rolls to find the Enemy Weak Spot. When a Hero uses any Feat that requires them to spend some Adrenaline, they must flip a coin. If the result is Head, the Enemy can predict their move. The Hero loses the action and the Adrenaline used. Additionally, the Enemy begins combat with 1 Adrenaline. That should be pretty fitting for a psychic. They also have "Armored": Heroes suffer -1 to rolls made to hit the Enemy. In both cases, these are related to their psychic powers.

Special Actions will include (1) Help Me Please (1ADR) [During an Action Turn, the Enemy threatens the life of an innocent bystander. A Hero must give up their Action Roll to save the victim. If nobody does, all Heroes bear this weight on their conscience and lose 3 Grit.] with Amy/BR/Bee being the obvious choices. (2) Double (2ADR) [The Enemy creates a multitude of clones or illusory copies. From now on, whenever a Hero lands a blow, they must flip a coin. Heads: The Hero only hit a copy. The Enemy loses no Grit. Tails: The Hero hit the original. The Enemy loses Grit as normal. Heroes can try to locate the original Enemy by making a roll or using a Feat, as they would to locate a Weak Spot.] (3) Chaos (2ADR) [The Enemies scatter around, break everything in sight, and cause a racket, or they set off an alarm, or start a small fire. From now on, the Heroes are dazed in the chaos and can no longer spend Adrenaline to gain +1 to their rolls.] Again, this latter one will take on a bit of a "psychic" flavor.

I said there are guards with guns when I started typing but frankly, I think this trio will be enough.

Also, really quickly: have any of the guards had compatible ammo to Genny? (Good) → [c84] Yes. Ok, good. He'll fill up his ammo since there won't be any time to do any shopping at this point.

DATE PLAYED: May 26, 2025

Outfoxed

Date: June 6, 1996.

Time: 11:40pm.

Place: The "bar" of Roman's fake Villa.

Genny pulls the body of the guard from where it's slumped over a small table. The vase that had occupied the table now smashed unto the floor. Cheap? Expensive? Genny has no idea. Weird he almost regrets it more than shooting the guy whose body he is now tossing to the floor on top of the shattered glass. Rifling through the ammo belt he finds some clips that will work. "Waste not, want not," he says, mostly to himself. The others — despite instructions — have gone on ahead. Once they breached the vault door and got into the main structure, they found what is largely a replica of a Japanese-owned style business. Much like with Magnus's church/shrine housing a bunch of cubicles, the members of this cabal drop all pretense as soon as it is time to hit a budget line.

At the end of the corridor, a half dozen meters from Genny, Hitomi is shoving open the third door and as soon as the cigarette smoke comes out she knows she has hit pay dirt. God, a smoke sounds good right now but it feels wrong to stop moving to light up. She looks back at the others who are holding tight in formation behind her. Eustace is closest with Varvara flanking out. Jones behind Eustace. Hitomi briefly tries to recall what color Eustace's eyes were before they were replaced with the swirls of Soulburn. He's lost another few kilos since she first clocked that his body is burning itself out to stay alive.

Enough moping. Time is quite literally running out and so with a nod she pushes the door open and enters with her gun drawn and scoping the place. After the sterile office space the rest of the interior embraces, she was half-expecting the so-called bar to be a set of vending machines. Instead, it fits up to its name. A rainbow of browns, cigarette smoke, and a sense of age. A mishmash of themes. The bar itself is fairly upscale American with a months-long supply of liquor. The back is much more rustic and Euro. Enough tables to sit a small army. Which brings home what this villa is most likely really for: a place to avoid the consequences of ones own actions.

"Who the fuck are you people?," a bitchy, feminine voice asks from the corner of the bar proper. Hitomi has been plugged into the scene long enough to recognize Amy Patel at a glance. Even in casual-wear, Hitomi can see why the rumors are that Amy is only a few years from running the Patel empire on her own. Or, at least, was. Amy takes a long drag off her cigarette while staring down Hitomi in turn. "At least your cute. You want to sit by me while they fight it out?"

"While who fights it out?," Eustace asks from behind Hitomi and Hitomi gives a little jump. His voice has a tendency to shift into some strange low key like the rumbling of an earthquake. Like whatever thing the-man-named-Eustace is piloting is starting to speak from the voice box of reality itself.

To answer Eustace's question, three shapes merge from shadows that do not exist. People who were clearly standing there the whole time just outside of sight. Three people wearing fox masks and standing like they have not a care in the world.

"Ah, fuck shit," Genny says entering into the room just in time to see the psychics drop their obfuscation. "Hey, Eu, these yours?"

"No, I do not think so," Eustace replies. Which makes the psychic in the lead chuckle. Hitomi catches a whiff of anger coming off the other two. Speaking of earthquakes, this is full on earthquake weather. Something bad is about to happen. And she says this as a person that watched the man she loved die just a day or so ago.

The one who was in laughing steps forward and she is all about cocky violence. Her laugh is a machine gun. A tool she has used to threaten others. Hitomi thinks back to that first fight where she saw Eustace slaughter a trio of other people who are cocky but by comparison this group represents enough power to destroy a small city. Field Psychics following orders can break the brain of a dozen people from a distance. What might three psychics who are acting on their own accomplish.

"No, we are not his, this so called Witch-King. We are very much our own people."

"Why are you doing this?," Eustace asks.

"Why," asks the guy to the leader's left (meaning Hitomi's right). His voice is cultured. Fancy. Like he studied abroad and still expects that fact to carry some weight. "Aren't you king of the psychics?"

Leader laughs again, another threat pretending to be mirth. "I'll make it easy for you, child-boy. Because you are getting in the way. Wrecking our shit. So we are going to wreck yours."

Jones pieces it together. "Ah, bullies. Just found out that you are not going to the high school with all your previous victims and are about to be picked on yourself by the jocks. Got it."

"I'm going to kill you, personally," Leader says, pointing to Jones, "but tell me, what good does it do me to have all this power and be stuck in fucking Gulf Shores? I could be in Paris. Tokyo. No, right here tending to stupid little Southern Sheep like a good old shepherdess."

"Holy shit," Genny cuts in, "You think the GLOW spreading over the world is a good thing because you get travel benefits?"

Hitomi feels the anger grow and knows violence is eminent. As she is figuring out a path to get to Amy — who has been smoking and watching this whole exchange with a look of amusement bordering bemusement — Eustace sprouts his wings and goes for the one on Hitomi's left. The quiet one. Genny — who has never had a chance to even put his gun down — takes aim at the Leader and Varvara is moving to cover the third. Jones is going for the bar. Hitomi squeezes off some shots as she tries to clear the distance towards Amy.

Eustace impacts the quiet one and sends the other man flying back. Actually, check that, Hitomi realizes. The man is literally flying. Eustace has latched on with his talons and is holding the man up. That's the last she gets to see as she aims in the general direction of the other two and takes shots at them.

Genny and Varvara both seem to have more success. As Genny opens fire up on the Leader, Varvara does a running jump kick at the third. Both land glancing blows and push the psychics back. Jones has gone behind the bar.

Amy is standing up and realizing she is probably in a bad spot. Hitomi has nearly cut the distance when she feels the Soulburn lash of the psychics' counter attack slamming around the room.

As the tendrils of psychic energy tear into the room, light fixtures and old wood explode into sparks and splinters. Hitomi hears the others cry out as no one is spared the painful wrath of three psychics working in tandem. She feels a mixture of physical pain mix with a lifetime of negative emotions slam together. And she is relatively clean. How is someone like Genny holding up? Someone who has pushed morality to its limits so often. She doesn't glance back to see how he is doing but sends out what positive thoughts she can muster as she leaps over the counter and tries to drag Amy with her.

Hitomi snags Amy by the shoulder and pulls the other woman down with her as the two land hard behind the bar. Amy's face — already shocked as the psychic assault began — goes from fear to anger to something like confusion as she realizes that Hitomi is protecting her. "You can stop flirting, you know, just ask me out. What kind of food you like?"

"Hush, you," Hitomi says. Feeling a little bit chickenshit knowing that the others are still out there.

She misses seeing Eustace carrying off the quiet psychic like a bird of prey carrying a rabbit as he flies back out of the room and down the corridor towards the open vault doors.

She also misses Genny walking forward and pressing heavy bursts of gunfire into the Leader's space as Varvara punches Snooty boy before kicking up a table to act as a shield in-between.

Unknown, real name Nick Allent, is fighting perhaps his strangest opponent. Which makes sense. He has made a career out of picking on the weak, the undisciplined, and the powerless. A few hedge mages here or there have been a surprise but nothing like this. In his mind, Eustace "Witch-King" Delmont is barely a man. Instead, he is a giant crow with antlers. Talon's cut into Nick's body and he calls on his sigils to slice away the arms holding him tight. Only Delmont does something quick and Nick's attack fails to land. "What is your issue, man, you could be be leading us all to glory. Now Nephele is going to kill your friends. Is that what you want?"

"Can you fly?," the bird-demon asks in a voice like thunder and Nick is too stunned to respond for a second before realization kicks in. Eustace is flying in open sky and has just released Nick to fall. It doesn't take a psychic to know the fall is about to be quite fatal.

Back in the room, Genny is marching towards Nephele — whom Hitomi has been calling "Leader" — and continuing to let out a stream of bullets. Even as the second round of psychic whips explode around the room — this time accompanied by a great Soulburn wind that is just crunching the furniture and glass bottles into shards and debris — Genny shrugs off the stings and Nephele realizes that she might have misjudged picking a fight with an actual soldier as opposed to wannabe gangsters.

For his assault, Mimic is only slightly pleased to see the young woman he's fighting stagger back as he hits her in the face with a particularly potent lash. She's still standing, but blood is pouring from her nose and her eyes look dazed. She's maybe one hit from falling. Only, as he is ready to start gloating, Mimi — Andre Thomas — feels Unknown's life forced snuffed as Nick is swallowed by fear. And now he is returning. Only he is not alone. They are nearby. Nephele has just convinced Nick and himself to commit suicide.

Andre barely gets the thought out when he hears Nephele shout out and collapse. He doesn't even try and turn to see the bullets that tear through his own chest a few seconds later. In some ways, he is glad. Had the Witches Three arrived while he was still alive, it would have been a lot worse.

Genny gets to Varvara as she starts to fall back and grabs her. "Stay with me, Clean. I got you."

Behind the bar, glass and splinters have peppered Hitomi's back as she continues to brace over Amy. As the noise dies down, Amy pushes Hitomi back gently and pulls out a pack of smokes. "You never answered my question."

Hitomi reaches over and snags the lit cigarette from Amy for herself. "About going on a date?"

"That too, but who the fuck are you people?"

Before Hitomi can answer, Eustace lands on the bar and perches like a crow looking down. Even facing him head on, Hitomi is distressed to see she is starting to see the other-Eustace like a fuzzy overlay. He is very nearly gone.

"Ms. Patel, I am here to help you stop your father."

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DOUG'S COMMENTARY

I had a back-up for this scene where if more than one hero got dropped then the Witches Three were going to show up and lash out at reality. It's still on the docks as a Plan B since I think we've only used one so far.

Considering this episode got split into thirds due to me wrapping up work and dealing with all the stress and energy-drain of that, I think it went mostly ok. Not my best writing but that fight (essentially a mini-boss fight) was a lot of fun because before it turned around, it was looking pretty bad. We'll pick up next time (hopefully in just a couple of days and not a week and a half) with the Time Out related to re-equipping from scraps and getting Bee, BrokenRecord, and the Mantis.

I'd guess roughly two episodes remain at this part. Maybe three, depending on if the Three get called. Then maybe a coda.

Including the Dean Spencer art I used in The GLOW's prologue [which was used in Arcane Agents and the kick off of using Dean Spencer art, kind of...] and The "newspaper clipping" of Amy Patel from Chapter 10 of Eustace & Hitomi, this makes the third not-really-the-same character image for Amy. That has to be a record. Hitomi and Eustace did not get images in the OG run of the series that bears their names and their Alabama Weird versions are somewhat different. Alabama Weird Eustace is basically me in my mid-20s: fat, bearded, curly haired. Alabama Weird Hitomi is a young woman with long hair and a bit too thin even for her American-Japanese frame. Both are hotter and fitter here. Well, at least Eustace was. Hitomi still is.

Still, a strange paradox of both of these series is that Amy Patel is practically the third character and in both cases she sort of shows fairly late to the story. At least in this case, she is actually kidnapped and not just pretending to be kidnapped to try and force an investigation into her father. Also, that Amy was basically a business + liberal arts grad into queer rights and charities masking it a bit by being a bitch. This Amy is the kind of bitch that has most likely killed people, even if those people are a bit on the bad side of morality.

Originally, I figured they would rescue Amy around Episode 4 or Episode 5. And I was going to call it "Mantis Boy Meets Mantis Girl" in reference to Eustace's arm blades. Now he has triple blades on each arm that come out more like crow feet so I tweaked it a bit.

CREDITS

The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont is played using Two Little Mouse's Outgunned and Outgunned: Action Flicks (especially, but not limited to "Neon Noir" and "Great Powers"). It uses Larcenous Designs' Gamemaster Apprentice Deck: Cyberpunk 2E as its main oracle.

Other sources used include:

• Zach Best's Universal NPC Emulator.
• Cesar Capacle's Random Realities
• Kevin Crawford's Cities Without Number
• Matt Davis' Book of Random Tables: Cyberpunk 1, 2 and 3.
• Geist Hack Games and Paul D. Gallagher's Augmented Realities.

ART CREDIT AND EXPLANATION

Amy Patel: Photo by Maksim Istomin on Unsplash.

Patel Bar 1: Photo by Giovanny Ayala on Unsplash.

Patel Bar 2: Photo by Nicolas Hoizey on Unsplash.

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• Reader Options/Controls
• "Previously..." and Campaign/Arc Summary
• The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont Episode 17 — Storming the Villain's Villa
• Smoke on the Water
• Doug's Commentary
• Credits

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Previously, on The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

The team has gotten equipped and are preparing to storm Roman Patel's "Villa" which is actually a safe-house pretending to be a quaint, million-dollar house. Hitomi has also realized that Eustace has only a bit over a day left alive. With that, they are now in the midst of their one last ride.

About The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

Eustace Delmont is a psychic on the cusp of "graduating" into a full-blow Field Psychic. He requests his right to Walk, a brief period of freedom to encourage psychics to see the other side of The GLOW. He tries to finish his long-time partner Jani Blum's final unfinished mission: to find a mini-disc and crack open the Patel crime family. He meets Hitomi Meyer, a criminal hacker. The two are now on the run between a powerful crime family and an even more powerful adversary: The Order and its plans for Eustace.

Content Warning: Occasionally very foul language, lots of smoking, quite intense violence, drinking, gambling, non-graphic sex, drugs, criminal behavior, and black magic. The GLOW is a world of spiritual torture and weird horror.

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.

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The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont. Episode 17 — Storming the Villain's Villa

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Expected Scene: The team (sans Jones) ride the ex-MUNI boat and take out the guards along the perimeter.

Scene Test: [c97] 7. 2d10 = 3 + 8. Minor alteration. "Hit by a stray shot". Is the shot directed towards the player characters? (Even) → [c70] No.

Ok, there are some options: {Thom Marius | The Apostates } = Thom Marius.

Actual Scene: Right as the team shows up, they find the outer guards tussling with Thom Marius's goons.

Setting the Scene, e17s1: Smoke on the Water.

Date: June 6, 1996.

Time: 10:41pm.

Place: The canals of New Pensacola Beach.

First off, why is Thom Marius attacking now? Scene 2 of Episode 2 established that it was a potential that Marius would act but sense then the two "rival gangs" — Marius's people and The Apostates that took over Dave's turf — have been ignored. Let's get three cards and make something of them... [c16] Lose [c14] Holy [c08] Council. Patel was keeping Marius at bay due to {Dave | Magnus} → Dave's fake church business. At least one of the "real" jobs for the Church of Holy Illumination was to help Marius traffic in some sort of illict goods. What kind? [c17] has an icon of clockwork and an icon of a combination lock. The "belongings" portion of the card mentions expensive meds. The Church was helping crack containers of medical supplies for Marius to get out on the street as narcotics. Once the Apostates turned against Dave [for reasons never explored], this cut off a major revenue stream for Thom. Roman would not have considered it his business so now Thom is going after Roman Patel's most favored possession: Amy Patel.

Now we'll roll 2d10. First one for Patel. Second one for Marius. To see how the teams are faring. Less than Δ3 will be evenly enough split that this could be treated as a distraction. Greater than Δ3 and one team is winning fast enough that whichever team it is will be the new fight, though weakened. A Δ6 or greater means it was so one-sided that the winning team is in full force (essentially). Patel = 7. Marius = 10. Marius is winning but not so much so they will be at full force.

Does the Marius group have boats? (Even) → [c60] No? Ok, so they have boats but not at the spot. They could get boats but that wasn't their plan. {Foot | Flight} → Flight. They are hovering over in helicopters. Making a spectacle. Which means the stealth suit in the villa grounds will get a teaser. It doesn't make sense for it have surface to air missiles, but it fits the genre pretty well.

For the Marius invaders, we'll use "Villain's Private Army" since that seems fun. 12 Hit Boxes. Hot Boxes on 3, 6, and 9. 2xCritical Attack. Critical Defense. Bulletproof Vests and Piercing Bullets. A small stash of special actions. However, to represent the wear down effect, we'll take away 4 boxes [and one hotbox]. They have 8 remaining [starting on box 5]. Also, they will lose a feat: {Vests | Bullets} → Vests. This means they still have bullets but their armor has been worn down by the fight. The sucky thing is this negates the bulletproof vests and the armor of the boat. Full cover is still a possibility, though.

SOUNDTRACK: Karl Casey's White Bat 45.

DATE PLAYED: May 15, 2025.

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Smoke on the Water

Date: June 6, 1996.

Time: 10:41pm.

Place: The canals of New Pensacola Beach.

The sound of helicopter blades and gunfire is obvious some distance from their location.

"Hey, Jones," Genny says into the headset, signalling the pilot flying some distance overhead, "We have a situation."

"One second," Jones voice comes back over the radio.

"Looks like three 'coptors tussling with the boys on the boats. Considering the bodies floating around the boats and one boat being on flame, I think the 'copters are winning. I'm holding a bit further back."

Genny throttles down the boat and faces back. "We have bonus company. No clue what that's about but it seems like they are hitting the same place we were planning to hit."

Genny sees Eustace's eyes glow a strange magenta hue. "Thom Marius's goons. Looks like they are pissed about something and have found out about Amy. They are showing up for a good old fashioned kidnap."

"Didn't anyone tell them that's our job?," Genny asks.

"We can't bail, they'll get to Bee," Hitomi says, the edge of worry starting to crack her voice. With Eustace's death and the constant forward momentum, she kind of just convinced herself that Bee was safe and just slightly out of reach. However, she now feels like time is running out for multiple people she loves. Mrs. Yuuki is in the hospital. Bee is captured. Eustace is...

"Wasn't planning, In fact, this might work in our favor if we play it right. They are making enough noise we can get closer. Though someone is likely to call MUNI."

"I have someone on the inside helping to run interference, but it's not going to hold up long," Eustace says.

"Man, why is everything out of your mouth just absolutely terrifying today, man?," Gennya asks, and starts piloting the boat closer.

As they are pulling out of the main canal into what can only be described as the villa's moat — think less castle moat full of gator and a half-dozen meters wide and full of boats and dying people — one of the three helicopters is starting to land in the front lawn of the villa. Only, from seemingly nowhere, a flash explodes upwhere from near the front door — in actuality a heavy metal vault door looking innocent from the outside — and strikes the helicopter. In a large flash, the helicopter explodes and flaming wreckage pours down onto the heavily landscaped grass. MUNI can't ignore this much longer.

"And then there were two," Genny says.

"I'll take that one," Eustace says, pointing to the helicopter that just pulled back further from the explosion. The other one, though, has clearly spotted the boat. When they were dealing with Patel — who has a good deal of MUNI on his payroll — the ex-MUNI boat was a boon. Now, Marius's thugs are going to see it as an immediate threat. There are only a few seconds before they come under fire and based on the wreckage of the other boats in the moat, they are packing serious heat. Eustace gestures to Varvara, "Favor some up and person close combat?"

The street monk, hopped up on Righteous Anger™, nods. Eustace grabs her hand and pulls her up. A few seconds later he has sprouted his Soulburn wings and is flying Varvara and himself straight at the more distant helicopter. Genny pulls out his assault rifle and takes aim. Hitomi feels a bit left out with just her pistol so jumps behind the wheel and tries to out maneuver the gunners flying overhead.

Eustace flies up and right as he is about to grab hold of the door of the helicopter falling back, the pilot is alert and starts banking away. Eustace swings Varvara up and she twists in the air to land inside with a rolling kick that knocks one of the gunners out the open door on the other side. The luckless gunner plummets down and lands with a crunch on the ground. The pilot is sweeping the helicopter around to try strike Eustace with the blades. Varvara leaps into the co-pilot seat and starts striking the pilot. She's not landing any major hits but she's disrupting his ability to handle fine maneuverability.

Down, below, Hitomi steers the boat towards the lower helicopter — currently aiming right for them and getting ready to unleash some heavy gunfire — and then guns it so the boat shoots under the helicopter's belly. Before the gunners can adjust to the moving target, Genny stands up and empties a clip into the fuel tank and another of the three helicopters bursts into flames.

Seeing this, the final one has decided that they are outmatched and peels back and starts heading north.

Varvara, seeing that she is currently on a helicopter moving away from her destination — and her team — tries to make a mad dash to leap out of the side where she hopes Eustace might able to catch her. Unfortunately, right as she is tensing her legs and getting ready to jump, the other gunner in the bay grabs her bulletproof vest and snatches her back and slams her down into the floor. As she is struggling to get her arms up and back into a fighting stance, a multi-colored light plows into the bay with her. Eustace has flown through the helicopter, slamming the second gunner back, and snatched her up.

As she looks down she is being carried back to the boat, below.

All four back together again, Genny radios Jones and tells him to hold tight while they find out what exploded the first 'copter. Jones takes absolutely no convincing.

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Expected Scene: The team have to fight a tanky, aether-cloaked fighter guarding the front.

Scene Test: [c98] 6. 2d10 = 9 + 7. A major complication. Neat. On the card we get a sticky boot icon and the text of an ancient artifact. Some sort of magical protection that causes invaders to become stuck. A second card ([c49]) says "Caught Red Handed." A third ([c61]) says "Silence. Heroic. Scum."

Actual Scene: As the group tries to set foot on the island, a aether-artifact of some power holds them fast while knock out gas starts seeping up like fog.

Setting the Scene, e17s2: The Sneaky Bastards.

Date: June 6, 1996.

Time: 10:52pm.

Place: Front lawn of Roman's fake Villa.

We'll make this pretty extreme. Like, literally. Resisting the "sticky foot" effect will be EXTREME difficulty. Knock out gas will be Critical but that will be every turn they are stuck in place. All the while, the mech-pilot will be honing in. Attack 2xCritical (the last "Critical" is the knock out gas). Defense: Extreme (while cloaking is active, Critical without it). Three hit boxes. We'll ignore special actions but the suit has Titan so can only take one hit per time.

Basically, we start with a Reaction turn. failure to get at least one Critical means the character is knocked out. Characters can choose to "unstick" themselves but need an Extreme to succeed. Eustace is "immune" because of his flight. The rest are not. Jones can't get close because of the missiles. That seems nice and hard.

SCENE SOUNDTRACK: We'll keep the Karl Casey train going with White Bat 47.

DATE PLAYED: May 15, 2025.

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The Sneaky Bastards

Date: June 6, 1996.

Time: 10:52pm.

Place: Front lawn of Roman's fake Villa.

Genny is first off the boat and is shouting commands as he starts to run across the lawn but lets out a shout as his feet stick hard to the grass and his entire body slams hard into the ground. As he pushes himself up, he finds his shoulder is now also stuck, as well as his hands. "What the fuck is this?"

It is too late for Hitomi and Varvara — both rushing to aid Genny — to realize what is happening as both women end up caught in the same trap. Hitomi goes down as hard as Genny and ends up fully affixed as well. Varvara pivots better with the fall and only her feet are caught while her hands stay up.

Eustace flies past them and slams into something standing closer to the door. Varvara is the only with a vantage point and while she can hear the loud metallic thud as Eustace pivots in air and starts flying up, she still can't see what it was that he it. It was like he collided hard with air.

As Varvara watches and tries to make out their unknown attacker, a light blue gas starts seeping up through the ground. Genny, combat-trained, immediately starts fighting back and resisting and shouting that the others need to hold their breath. Vavara clamps her hand over her mouth but Hitomi does not get a chance to react as her body goes limp.

"Genny, Hitomi's down!," Varvara shouts. Genny curses and starts trying to push his body up.

Varvara can hear a whirring sound as the unseen attacker's gun starts prepping to fire. At that time, the multi-colored form of Eustace — attacking like a bird of prey hunting a rabbit — flies down and again a loud clang as he impacts something large and metal and bounces off. This time, instead of flying up, Eustace bee-lines for the prone body of Hitomi and with an elegant spiral manages to grab her and pull her free from the ground and takes back off towards the boat with her.

Denied the flying guy, the invisible foe takes it out on Genny and Varvara. The old soldier can't do much and shouts in pain as the bullets tear into his patch. Varvara manages to weave back and forth despite her stuck legs and avoids the brunt of it. Her momentum helps her to get her one leg up and then her other. She briefly does a mental coin flip between stopping to get Genny or going for the attacker. She goes for the attacker. The prolonged burst of fire against Genny helps her to pinpoint the thing and start running towards it. If it moves, it might all be for naught but she will strike as soon as she feels like she is in range.

Varvara closes the distance and leaps up in a kick, which is knocked aside. She had the general approach but the thing is firing from its left side, not its right, and so she misjudges. Rolling with the rest of her momentum, she sees another wave of that strange light blue gas come up. Again she's able to scoot back and get her breathing under control but she sees Genny sag. Before she can even contemplate trying to help him, she hears a click nearby and realizes it is pointing at her. She starts doing back flips to get out of the way but it's very hard to dodge bullets you cannot see.

Glancing back just briefly, she sees Eustace flying fast towards them. Still, she has a moment to get her revenge for her miss. Focusing on the air in front of her, she sees the strange sight of a grass stain hovering in mid-air. That would be the thing's side. Doing some quick head math she figures out where the "head" might be and does a double sort of hop and then kicks hard and fast straight up. She hears glass shatter as suddenly the invisible foe's camoflage turns off and she is standing in front of a mechanized body suit around three meters high. She has caved in the large glass shield that allows the pilot to see through the stealth. As she is roughly face to face with the guard inside, and as he is bringing the now quite visible gun arm down to aim at her, Eustace gets there. The entire mech suit is slammed back into the wall and the claw like blades on Eustace's arms are out as he pulls the pilot out and demands to know where Amy Patel and the others are.

As the guard starts shouting about the storeroom behind the bar, Eustace picks him up and tosses the man into the wall. The guard collapses in a stunned heap.

Eustace looks around at the ground and breathes slowly. Even to Varvara's eyes, the Soulburn starts intensifying around him. Reaching forward, he scratches a complex symbol in the grass and suddenly the strange effect that has been pulling her down the whole time let's go. She feels several pounds lighter. She runs over and pulls Genny up, easily, and starts rousing him.

While Eustace is going to wake up Hitomi, Genny radios to Jones that it should now be safe to land the Green Lady.

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DOUG'S COMMENTARY

That's two fight scenes a bit more hectic and tougher than expected, even if Genny trivialized the one. I think it's a good stopping spot and we'll pick up next time with Hitomi trying to get access through the doors and the last fight inside.

I personally think I do better when I am playing this game in this style. Not quite Rules As Written and finding ways to play at the rules. That felt like the kind of fight I like. Similar to the case where Hitomi was having to buy Eustace time to cut through the wall and they were fighting the stealth soldiers. Might not be tournament legal but it has a lot of chances for narrative.

Eustace and Varvara are both pretty drained and even with the "free adrenaline" I am about to give them, the next fight will likely rely more on the other two. We'll see.

CREDITS

The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont is played using Two Little Mouse's Outgunned and Outgunned: Action Flicks (especially, but not limited to "Neon Noir" and "Great Powers"). It uses Larcenous Designs' Gamemaster Apprentice Deck: Cyberpunk 2E as its main oracle.

Other sources used include:

• Zach Best's Universal NPC Emulator.
• Cesar Capacle's Random Realities
• Kevin Crawford's Cities Without Number
• Matt Davis' Book of Random Tables: Cyberpunk 1, 2 and 3.
• Geist Hack Games and Paul D. Gallagher's Augmented Realities.

ART CREDIT AND EXPLANATION

New Pensacola Beach Canals = Photo by Hyukjoon Sohn on Unsplash.

Patel Villa = Photo by Owen Roth on Unsplash.

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• Reader Options/Controls
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• "Previously..." and Campaign/Arc Summary
• The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont Episode 16 — One Last Ride
• Back to Square Juan
• Prepping for the Ride (Actual Play)
• The Briefest of Respites
• Doug's Commentary
• Credits

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The Final Stretch

This post is going to be laid out a little bit oddly.

We are either at the final "real" location or at the penultimate one. Partially, I am unsure. When this campaign started, I was thinking that it might be nice to have the Rescue Amy Patel moment kind of early. Then Dave Akari, Magnus Odinson, Juan Uno, and the Moonblink showed up. There were Fractal Apocalypses, Heretics, and Shaolin Dragons. Eustace went from being a decent psychic to a scarred Witch King on borrowed time burning up his own life force to finish a mision. It's been ups and downs.

Therefore, there has been this notion of some estate somewhere — not the Rambler — where Amy Patel was being held and that freeing her would unlock the final gap. There's stock art of Amy Patel sitting in my bookmarks. She was initially conceived as being a somewaht major ally/foil (she would be a bit of both, kind of an unstable companion who had her own agenda). However, because of all the other stuff and the entirely unexpected meta-game that has developed about what the events Johnny Blue kicked off actually mean, Amy has been a bit downgraded. Rescuing her will no longer open the final stretch. We are in the final stretch. This leads me to a bit of a coin flip.

Will this estate also house the final fight with the stuff involving the Rambler being kind of a epilogue? OR, will there still be one final showdown afterward?

I think a fun way to figure this out will be to draw three cards. Card A will represent the human-based active defenses: guards and Patel thugs. Card B will represent non-human active defenses: turrets, robots, ServiSynth, and tech available to group A. Card C will represent security features and passive defenses: locked doors, computer security, possibly magical traps. For each card I get the "intensity number" [looking it up, it's called the Difficulty Generator]. I've been using this to generate a kind of swing value for scene interrupts and twists. It's a bell-curve centered around 5-6 with 4s and 7s next in line. There's one 1 and one 10. I think. At any rate, I'll pull the three cards in order and generate "two details" for each: how strong that category is (from 1-10) and use the other elements on the card to generate a few keywords.

If the total is greater than 17 — i.e., greater than the statistically average of 5.5 x 3 = 16.5 — or if any single value is greater than 8, this villa will essentially be the final showdown and we'll trigger a last Advance. Roman Patel will also be here. However, if neither of those are true there will be at least one final fight at the Rambler.

Group A: [c56] 6. A normal amount of resistance for this time in the game, just slightly tweaked up. Some keywords/icons: There's "jumping puzzle" icon and the phrase "On the water". Since this is all about human guards, I like the idea of there being a moat and this is attached to some canals in a classic Grand Theft Auto boat race type scene. Not a full on chase, just more a few boats full of heavily armed guards. A lot of the heavier enforcement will be outside the parameter.

Group B: [c88] 2. Not a whole lot at all. Clues from the card include references to stealth and military vessel. Maybe a single military-grade piece of equipment that cloaks the user from human sight. A small mech type option? That sounds fun.

Group C: [c10] 6. Kind of like the human guards. Solid, but not super punchy. The only keyword/etc on the card that sparks joy in this regard is the phrase "grinding gears..." which kind of makes think of big, strong doors and systems that open slowly.

This brings the total to 14. Not enough to trigger this as the final final fight. You have a villa surrounded by water. Guard patrol in boats. In the area between this and the courtyard is a stealth suit that represents something like a mini-boss. Past that is the interior which does not have much in the way of active defenses. Instead, it has large and heavy doors and a small, single contingent of troops inside. Not the siblings. I want to save them to be Roman's elite guard. Roger and his folks, maybe. We'll actually find out if Roger sides with Amy or Roman during the fight.

This sets up 3 fight sequences: boats (can be bypassed by flight but what's the fun in that?), the stealth suit, and the inner guard. There will be some skill needed to get inside. Amy, Bee, and BrokenRecord are being held inside.

Is Amy's Mantis also inside? (Good) → [c50] Yes? It's there but it has been deactivated so it has to be found AND restarted.

Since this will not be the showdown with Roman, it is not yet time for the Advance but that will be very, very soon.

Previously, on The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

Eustace has enlisted Detective Aurora Hernandez to help with the corruption in the MUNI and Sofia Rodriquez to being building up a new group of witches to help his plan: to protect the GLOW and its people by "destroying it." To rebalance The GLOW to be more compatible with human life. Now the time has come to finally fight back against Roman Patel but the first stop is Patel's private villa where Amy Patel, Bee, and BrokenRecord are being held hostage.

About The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

Eustace Delmont is a psychic on the cusp of "graduating" into a full-blow Field Psychic. He requests his right to Walk, a brief period of freedom to encourage psychics to see the other side of The GLOW. He tries to finish his long-time partner Jani Blum's final unfinished mission: to find a mini-disc and crack open the Patel crime family. He meets Hitomi Meyer, a criminal hacker. The two are now on the run between a powerful crime family and an even more powerful adversary: The Order and its plans for Eustace.

Content Warning: Occasionally very foul language, lots of smoking, quite intense violence, drinking, gambling, non-graphic sex, drugs, criminal behavior, and black magic. The GLOW is a world of spiritual torture and weird horror.

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.

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The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont. Episode 16 — One Final Ride?

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Setting the Scene, e16s1: Back to Square Juan.

Date: June 5, 1996.

Time: 3:00pm.

Place: Juan's Cafe.

The crew is all together at last while the various cogs that Eustace have set into motion do their thing elsewhere — will find out how well this works when we get to the scene of storming the Rambler.

This one will be quick and mostly lore with maybe a few oracle pokes. Basically just a set up for what will follow where things should speed up until the end.

DATE PLAYED: May 12, 2025.

Back to Square Juan

Date: June 5, 1996.

Time: 3:00pm.

Place: Juan's Cafe.

Hitomi looks around at the gathered folk and thinks how many of them had been here just thirty-six-hours ago to talk about Eustace's death. Now they are all watching him. With a look of fear. Maybe. A look of awe. It's a lot to process and she would be willing to bet none of them feel these feelings as hard as she does.

When you look at him directly, he looks like a body-builder who has been through a couple of chemo treatments. That's before you get to the scars or the beard that is moving fast into gray and already showing signs of white. Eustace was in his late-thirties when she met him just a few days ago. Now he looks like he is pushing his early fifties. And it might be paranoia, but she thinks he already looks more wasted than when she met just a few hours ago. Whatever is happening to him is happening fast. He might only have a day or two left at this rate. She wants to scream at him to slow down, to just give it up, but she also knows that that he won't. It's up to her to go with him — and, in the process, kill him — or walk away. She knows she can't walk away.

The other problem is when you don't look directly at him. Out the corner of your eye he no longer looks like Eustace at all. He looks like some other. Huge. Larger than life. Head bent over because it no longer fits inside of Juan's cafe. That other explains the first problem. Something inside of Eustace is eating him alive. That thing is most likely himself. He'd likely call it a metaphor.

Eustace has been answering Genny's question about what happened with Dave Akari. "...lucky that Lamark's process was flawed and unrefined enough that the essence of the beings from Yuggoth — so called Mi-Go though the variations of the fungoid beings is quite large — was too..."

Juan interrupts, "Is this necessary to understand what struck down Akari?"

"Sort of. The basic principle is that too much knowledge is a bad thing in this case. Once you reach a higher degree of refinement — which the that Hitomi helped steal — sorry Hitomi — does — the fungal nature of the original beings can infest new hosts. Dave Akari is around 220% Yuggothian at this point."

"I think your math might be off," Jones says.

"No, Soulburn spores do not play by the rules of reality. They are filling up until..."

Genny makes a exploding gesture with his hand. "Like stepping on a puff mushroom."

"And then exponentially expand from there. What's more, based on testimony from the future — it would help if you would stop interrupting — the second impact in 2012 will actually be even more infected by Yuggothian spores. Though by then the process will be so refined the entities will be able to hide the process."

Varvara lets out a sigh. After a day of straight Contemplative Bliss™ she has actually taken the night off any Artificial Moods, and it seems her natural disposition tends to a bit sad and forlorn. Or maybe it is just her Eastern European accent.

Hitomi feels the need to ask, "What is the Order going to do with Dave?"

"Their plan is to actually increase the process in Dave. They think that he represents self-sustaining Soulburn potential. A self-Harrowing. What...well, someone...called the Crucible."

"There's no way we can let that happen," Genny says.

"I said that's the Order's plans. Other entities have already started working to foil them. I think they will succeed."

"Who?," Hitomi asks.

"The Witches Three."

At that, the room goes silent. Hitomi can see a range of questions on people's faces but there's a part of her that notes the reaction is muted. After a moment it occurs to her that everyone here is a transplant or too young to really know the lore. She's been in the GLOW for a few years. Genny a few years more and Jones with him. Juan has been here a bit. Eustace probably has the most time in the GLOW. One of the few who actually remembers the strange acts of terror the Witches performed to protect the city and Lamark's legacy. How would someone like Mrs. Yuuki react, she wonders.

Genny continues to steer the conversation forward. "Ok, let's trust those three old biddies can carry it off and stop the Order from making a big mistake. Let's look to the present and what we need to do. Roman's little home in rich-folk-town. What's the schematics say?" This last bit is directed towards Hitomi was to try and dig up information.

"Quaint little bank vault pretending to be a villa from the outside. Surrounded by a canal system. Fresh water. To show off. A good old fashioned moat. Interior has some military tech but it seems Patel prefers the human touch."

Jones: "Can we land on the property?"

Hitomi: "Maybe. But getting access will require us punching through the kind of heavy duty doors that would seem ridiculous on a space ship. Meaning it would take enough time that any and all guards will have to be dealt with."

Genny: "We split, then? Some on boat, some...," looking towards Eustace, "...maybe fly in?"

Eustace shrugs at this. "We would do best if we're a team, I think. We go in on a boat first and then maybe cycle around to flight approach if it looks clear enough."

Genny looks to Juan. "You wouldn't happen to know a boat we could borrow, would you?"

"I know a man who could sell you a boat, no questions asked. One suitable."

"Fair enough. Let's go get some shopping done and prepare for one last ride, eh?"

Setting the Scene, e15s2: Prepping for the Ride (Actual Play).

Date: June 5, 1996.

Time: 3:30pm to 9:30pm.

Place: Around Pensacola.

In the official rules, there is something called a GEAR UP! where you emulate movies and shows where the good guys show up at their supplier and start stockpiling. In Outgunned, these are meant to align with Turning Points and Showdowns. This session isn't quite either but I want to do two things that fudge the rules because I think it makes storyline sense.

One, I want to have a GEAR UP! here because a GEAR UP! later will make very little sense.

Two, I want to go ahead and give Genny a "free" Advance because he has generally been left out. It makes sense that Jones and Varvara would be a bit "behind" but Genny has been somewhat attached for around half the sessions.

Note: This means Genny will still get an Advance before the assault on the Rambler but I think this will bring his character up to aligning. Hitomi and Eustace are still a bit ahead. Then Genny as the heavy secondary character. Then Jones and Varvara as the tertiary ones.

The rulebook says that GEAR UP!s should be dramatic but I also want to blend a lot of "shop" talk in with this one so am just running it actual-play style rather than mechanics + GM + player style.

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Boosting Genny

Genny gets 2 Skill Points and 1 Feat. For Skills, I think Stunt and Dexterity to show a bit more aplomb in the field. For Feat, hmm. I think I like Selfless. He gets a Free Re-Roll when saving or defending others. His general character arc has been to move from a selfish sort of guy worried about his bottom line and considering himself something of a leader who is taking care of his troops.

He also gets +1 Adrenaline. Which likely won't last long.

Shopping Spree

Just to speedrun this part a bit and get back into action (well, back into action next time): the team will spend ALL their money to get 3 Bullet proof vests (One for Hitomi, One for Jones, One for Varvara, Eustace is a bit past worrying about his damage taken). They will have maxed ammo for Genny and Hitomi and 2 extra clips for Jones. And they will get an ex-Muni boat that will grant +1 Help to dodging gun fire while on board due to its armor.

DATE PLAYED: May 13, 2025.

The Briefest of Respites

Date: June 5, 1996.

Time: 9:45.

Place: Jal Pilkin's Military Surplus, the back lot.

Genny is laughing at some raucous joke with Jal. Jal Pilkin is a fat, one-armed drunkard that traffics in second-hand military gear. Stuff from The GLOW, the US, India, Japan and others show up here. All, technically, above board. Then there is the back lot. Stuff not so decommissioned. Stuff that would summon MUNI down on the place with haste. At least, if Jal wasn't bribing MUNI to look the other way and swapping a few military-grade pieces for a few MUNI-grade pieces in trades that seemingly favor MUNI enough to keep them satisfied all the while running a hefty profit on Jal's side of things.

Genny's truck has a boat hitch so they have a way to get it to the water. The cover will hide the fact that it is not a fishing boat hopefully long enough for them to get it into the network of canals and artificial rivers that cover that stretch of The GLOW: an artificial area so fake that fake nature is on the minor side of the true expense. It's not like fishing boats are allowed there. Of course, it's not a fishing boat. It's a MUNI intercept boat. Armored. Fast. Lots of places to hide out from gun fire. The hope is that Patel's folks will assume it is one of theirs until too late.

Jones will be in the Green Lady. As soon as the ground is deemed clear, he'll come in for a landing and they will enter into the faux villa together.

Genny, still laughing, is strapping a bullet proof vest on Varvara, instructing the young woman on how to get out alive. "You see me go down, you don't stop for me. I'm an old soldier, right? You keep moving."

"Genny has changed, hasn't he? Gone from a fussy, selfish bastard to a over-caring, doting bastard," Hitomi says to Eustace beside her. He's now wearing a shirt and clothes that no one has died in so the improvement is notable. The past six hours, though, has aged him another half-decade. Hitomi watches him for a reaction while strapping on her own bullet proof vest and pulling her shirt down over it.

"I think we're seeing what he was always like. Sometimes when you care about a lot of people, it becomes a kind of selfishness. If you are gone, who is going to take care of folks?" Eustace says that not with any sign of psychic awareness, just a person talking about a new friend they are getting to know.

"I'd feel better if you were wearing one of these vests."

"I...don't think it matters. I'm not sure I can die. Until..."

"Until your time is up?"

"Yeah."

"How much longer do you have?"

"36 hours, give or take."

"If you die before we get to have sex one more time, I'm going to be irate."

"I love you, Hitomi."

"Jesus. What did I say about the el-words."

"It's true, though."

"I know, goddamnit. Fuck. Shit. Ass. Fly north, you fuckhead. Get past The GLOW and just be a dumb, normal person."

"I think it's too late. I take the GLOW with me, now. If I flew north, it would be the city left behind by Soulburn, not me."

"I hate this."

"I know."

"I don't think I can say 'I love you,' back. It would hurt too much."

"Ok."

"But..."

As she starts crying, he picks her up. Despite the obvious loss of muscle mass, he is still strong as an ox.

Genny looks over to tell them it is time to go and sees the two kissing. And, inside, the old soldier knows it might be for the very last time. So, he gives them the briefest of respites.

DOUG'S COMMENTARY

This is somewhere between an interlude and a play session. More "gamey" than the pure lore post that preceded it, less "gamey" than the "it's going to be mostly fight scenes" post that is likely to follow. Unless we get a few MAJOR TWISTS, which could happen.

Nothing much else to say right now. I feel like I have set this up just right for the kind of story that I like to play. I am glad that Eustace has more than, say, 6 hours to live. If the Magnus Odinson "1 hour until..." thing is any indication, time gets away from me.

Jal Pilkin is a somewhat obvious Grand Theft Auto: Vice City reference, because I can't not see this as a bit of a tribute to GTA:VC. I love those old PS2 games.

CREDITS

The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont is played using Two Little Mouse's Outgunned and Outgunned: Action Flicks (especially, but not limited to "Neon Noir" and "Great Powers"). It uses Larcenous Designs' Gamemaster Apprentice Deck: Cyberpunk 2E as its main oracle.

Other sources used include:

• Zach Best's Universal NPC Emulator.
• Cesar Capacle's Random Realities
• Kevin Crawford's Cities Without Number
• Matt Davis' Book of Random Tables: Cyberpunk 1, 2 and 3.
• Geist Hack Games and Paul D. Gallagher's Augmented Realities.

ART CREDIT AND EXPLANATION

The Juan's cafe post used second is possibly the most used recurring theme image in the campaign. Also the one I used to demonstrate some of the tools I use to tweak the photos while making the art for this campaign.

The first one, though, is from a fairly similar looking cafe [at least, at a glance] and is from: Photo by Darya Luganskaya on Unsplash.

Since that is likely the last ever scene at Juan's, it's kind of a goodbye. As the hero's leave, the literary "tavern" becomes empty.

• Reader Options/Controls
• "Previously..." and Campaign/Arc Summary
• Another Lore-ish One
• The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont Episode 15 — Meetings
• The Adventures of Neon Foster and the Spaceman
• The Witch and Her Iguana
• Doug's Commentary
• Credits

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Previously, on The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

Eustace Delmont has returned, now with the ability to fly. As Genny, Varvara, and Jones begin preparations to assault one of the Patel strongholds to put an end to the cabal's plans — Roman Patel being the only primary member still in power — Eustace and Hitomi have gone back into the heart of the GLOW. He has a need for allies and has a couple of people in mind.

About The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

Eustace Delmont is a psychic on the cusp of "graduating" into a full-blow Field Psychic. He requests his right to Walk, a brief period of freedom to encourage psychics to see the other side of The GLOW. He tries to finish his long-time partner Jani Blum's final unfinished mission: to find a mini-disc and crack open the Patel crime family. He meets Hitomi Meyer, a criminal hacker. The two are now on the run between a powerful crime family and an even more powerful adversary: The Order and its plans for Eustace.

Content Warning: Occasionally very foul language, lots of smoking, quite intense violence, drinking, gambling, non-graphic sex, drugs, criminal behavior, and black magic. The GLOW is a world of spiritual torture and weird horror.

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.

Another Lore-ish One

There are some scenes and ideas that were effectively cut by the large-ish shift in The GLOW and as I am getting back into the groove of regular playing, I wanted to give some notes to them. Primarily the first one of this post.

The major impact of this is that this one will remain a fair bit "lore heavy" with minimal rolls. The plan is to build up after this to what will likely be mostly action oriented as we play out the final sub-arc of this campaign arc.

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The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont. Episode 15 — Meetings

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Setting the Scene, e15s1: The Adventures of Neon Foster and the Spaceman.

Date: June 5, 1996.

Time: 10:22am.

Place: The Apartment of Detective Aurora Hernandez.

Detective Hernandez was introduced in the opening chapters of The GLOW and was at one point in time a kind of foil. In that same post, there was an incident in which one of Johnny Blue's (aka, Jani Blum's) friends — a non-binary hacker named Neon Foster — is killed by a person or entity wearing a space suit. Think 1950s style retro-SciFi. As stuff tightened up and Johnny = Werecat become the primary focus, the whole Amy Patel + Neon Foster + Spaceman + Aurora Hernandez storylines were dropped.

Before there was a Eustace Delmont in the works, there was a vague plan to have a The GLOW 1992: Neon Foster and the Spaceman. That was postponed and after some soul searching was decided to not be followed up. I'll discuss more about the decision process in this post's commentary.

The original arc of The GLOW didn't do a whole lot of precise time tracking. I could probably go through and figure out a precise time-line, but let's say one week. That's good enough for me.

DATE PLAYED: May 1, 2025.

The Adventures of Neon Foster and the Spaceman

Date: June 5, 1996.

Time: 10:22am.

Place: The Apartment of Detective Aurora Hernandez.

One Week Prior

Detective Aurora Hernandez takes three breaths before entering the interrogation room. It has been a rough week and one name continues to float up from the cesspit: Johnny Blue. Demontongue. Agent for the Order. Professional asshole. Blue entered into Aurora's life after calling in the murder of one Neon Foster. A hacker whose real name is scrubbed so hard from MUNI records that Aurora suspects that Neon Foster is the real name and the hacker was hiding in plain sight due to the benefit of some techno-urban-hippie parents. Reality is most likely "Neon" seduced someone hard enough that said feckless clerk traded in professional ethics for a chance at brief and varied love affair with a singular person who made a personal trade in being many different people.

That's the first and second breath explained. The third is the person. Thing. IT. Inside. With Jerry Quell. Her assistant. Jerry has been grilling the so-called "Spaceman" who was found near the murdered Foster and who, according to Blue, assaulted a Order Agent. MUNI tech has been unable to unseal the spacesuit even with massive threats of violence. Truth told, Aurora's own obsession with Agent Blue has prolonged what should have occurred over 36-hours-ago. A formal interview with a murder suspect. It's just that a place like The GLOW always has other things a cop could be doing. Her dad, also a cop, liked to say that big cities breed crime like a shit-house breeds maggots. Only in The GLOW, those maggots sometimes speak in dead languages and hack into computer systems.

There is only so much space on the shelf to stack the books, to quote her brother the librarian.

If a cop wants to get around doing anything you just claim other books got stacked on the available shelves. That works for a while. Hell, sometimes prisoners just fade out of existence while in MUNI custody. Some problems literally go away on their own. No questions asked. No answers given.

But that's not Aurora Elora Hernandez. She prides herself on being the good cop. The one who cares. Who shows up to a perp's mom's house with a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Who helps little old men cross the street. Not the cop who lets prisoners melt into the shadows. No matter how hungry The GLOW gets.

She enters into the interrogation room and sees, in order, (1) Jerry Quell pulling a cigarette from a pack, (2) The Spaceman still in helmet, (3) Beat MUNI Ralph Hines standing behind The Spaceman, (4) that Jerry is now smoking her favorite brand. Ex-favorite.

Aurora was a long-term smoker since the age of sixteen but a relationwhip with a crunchy yoga instructor brought that to a close in exchange fro a highly modified application of downward facing dog. Had Marabelle not kept up the All MUNI Are Assholes rhetoric, they would have no doubt now have moved on to Tree Pose and life would be swell.

"Quell, you had best not be thinking of smoking in my interrogation room. Interview. Sorry," she says, to The Spaceman. Like a character from a Buck Rogers serial needs to be explained updates to departmental lingo but Aurora herself petitioned for that change and is proud of it.

Jerry sheepishly puts the smoke back and Aurora resists taking the pack from him as she sits down and announces the day, time, and location. She asks if The Spaceman would like any sort of legal representation and notes, out loud for the recording, that the prisoner — John Doe — shook their head inaudibly. 

"You were caught at the scene of the crime by a highly respected Agent of the Lamarkian Order," she manages to say without choking on the last few words, "and are being held for the suspicion of the murder of the GLOW citizen known as Neon Foster and for the willful destruction of Foster's equipment which has been used in the assistance of The Order and MUNI investigations. Would you like to explain your presence at that location and your assault against Agent Blue?" She feels a moment of shame that she desperately hopes that The Spaceman might put some of the blame on Agent Blue. Anything that might explain why Agent Blue's apartment was the site of an attack by a large crimson mantis ServiSynth and the daughter of one of the most powerful non-Lamarkian men in the whole of the city. Hell, Roman Patel likely counts as powerful by non-GLOW standards.

Silence stretches out long enough that Aurora is beginning to script a whole bad-cop/good-cop approach with her and Jerry — which would be more of by-the-absolute-book Good cop and cop-who-is-good-at-jokes Fair cop scenario — when The Spaceman reaches and begins fiddling with his/her/their/its helmet. Ralph is reaching for his gun and Aurora is desperately waving her hands while reciting for the recording, "The Suspect is engaging with their space-helmet-like costume while no force is being used by MUNI in response."

After a few seconds, Soulburn starts seeping from the edges as the seal gives away. The sigils that flare up along the neck of suit are highly stylized and by all appearances greatly advanced aether-tech. Once the pressure stabilizes, the helmet is lifted up. And Aurora manages to not gasp (like Ralph) or shout (like Jerry) at what she sees. While the head is essentially human, and effectively male, there is no flesh. Instead, the person sitting across from her seems to be shaped out of pure Soulburn into the semblance of a human.

When he speaks, the voice is far too normal to make any sense. Like a 1950s husband in a radioplay. "I did kill Neon Foster and wrecked their equipment. I was in love with them and trusted them and they betrayed me and my cause."

Aurora reaches out for Jerry's cigarettes. "Give me a lighter, Quell."

Now

Aurora blinks back a hangover and has her first cigarette of the day clenched between her lips as she walks from her bedroom into the living room in search of her lighter. After a full ten days on the job, she finally gets the day off and so spent a lot of her time last night getting drunk, high, and full to the brim with sex and nicotine. Marabelle and all her talk about chakras and good living can go to hell. Being told by a Soulburn ghost from the future that the world is coming to the end over the next forty years takes good living out of you.

Tuesday nights aren't the best night to hit up lesbian bars and seduce strangers but needs must.

The Spaceman — real name for the record being Sigma Theta DW63 — told them a story that was way too stupid and complex to be a fabrication. In 2012, a second impact strikes off the coast of India. In 2020, a third. By 2031, seventeen total asteroid strikes have laid waste to the world (including the OG one all those years ago that took out the dinos). The so-called Seventeen Steps. As various billionaires become trillionaires and race to have their own personal darkly-enlightened GLOWs to own and control. Only something is wrong. Rather than a semi-controlled Harrowing, Sigma calls it the Crucible. Humanity and all life on earth beings to change and mutate. Billions die over two decades.

Finally, a person declaring themselves to be Raphael Lamark and supposedly the bastard son of the bastard son of Dr. Hell himself comes up with a radical plan. The few humans clinging to a world being devoured by Soulburn can be transported off planet into colonies far from the earth-sized GLOW. Only, there's a catch. Supplies are critical. Time is critical. Hope is critical. Yadda yadda yadda. A mere One-hundred-and-forty-four-thousand people are selected for the twelve floating space colonies — Kreuger-Lamark Advanced eXoterran Orbiting New-colonies, KLAXONS — and each and every one must be converted into immortal beings composed of self-generating Soulburn.

No names, only call numbers. Like her brother's library books.

Thirty-thousand or so years into the future, the Soulburn-forged remnants of humanity finally realize that their own suffering with immortality is powering their own existence. Some start blinking out. Then more. Finally, KLAXON F is the only KLAXON remaining with a sustainable amount of lifeforce and a group come up with a desperate plan: sacrifice themselves to power a time jump back to thirty-years prior to the second impact.

Sigma was chosen. Upon landing, he struggled at first to maintain his own existence in a world where the Soulburn was unrefined, much like a human forced to live on primordial soup. Eventually, he got his functionality up high enough that he could start working on his mission. He met Neon Foster and fell in love. At the time, Neon was in male-persona but gender was like morality to Neon: subject to whims. The two worked together and became quite close for six months until Neon did the unthinkable. At a critical junction, when Neon was supposed to help Sigma stop a known-to-MUNI criminal Dave Akari from getting plans that would lead to the second impact, Neon joined Akari and betrayed a stack of people on the way down. Sigma was so heartbroken he very nearly willed himself to cease to exist but the ultimate paradox is that his own suffering only made his lifeforce stronger.

He eventually decided that he was not enough to stop the future but he could at least get revenge for the heartbreak and murdered Neon Foster. Since then, the dullness of his mind has been spreading. Turns out once you punch through ennui hard enough you enter into too blank a state to care about your own suffering. Had Agent Blue not shown up at that exact moment, Sigma would likely have been turned into space dust over the next couple of days. Instead, being forced to deal with people had slowed the process. But not stopped it. Sigma was dying.

Aurora pulled some strings and got Sigma up on the roof top early the next morning as morning light cut through the GLOW's never dark saturation of colors, he faded into the Soulburn flowing over the MUNI headquarters. Aurora clocked out and went and bought two cartons of smokes and decided that was a good enough hobby to occupy her time until the world comes to an end around in her lifetime.

Now if only she could find her lighter.

"Do you need a lighter?," the voice from the couch asks rather helpfully.

Aurora screams and — because she is the type of cop to go down fighting — dives to grab a weapon. Unfortunately, because she is the kind of cop to not leave her service revolver unsecured, the only weapon she comes up with is a her television remote. Trying to keep it cool as she can, she points it at the voice and sees a large, shirtless man and a woman sitting next to him. She looks like a relatively normal type for The GLOW. He also looks relatively normal for the kind of people The GLOW likes to grow. His bare chest is covered in strange marks and sigils and his face and beard looks oddly wizened. Like a street prophet that you steer away from because hedge-magic is real and he might just have the gift.

Aurora can't shake the feeling that she is underselling it. Still, this is her apartment and you never win a fight by starting off by backing down.

"I'm calling MUNI so you might as well leave."

"You are MUNI," says the woman."

"Exactly, so I know exactly who to call for a quick response."

"Sorry for the disturbance, but Jani trusted you," says the man, finally speaking for the first time.

Aurora is debating how hard it will be to get to her scrying glass, currently in the bedroom, without taking her eyes off the pair. "Who?"

"Jani. Johnny. Blue."

"You are somehow tied up with Johnny Blue!?" Aurora reaches out and grabs the woman's lighter and lights up. She does not immediately hand it back.

"My partner. Ex-, I suppose."

"I didn't think his type of agents had partners. Wait...," Aurora pauses as her sluggish brain begins processing a rough org chart for the Order, "...shouldn't you be in a mask or something?"

"I, um..."

There's something in his manner, some aspect which could very much be described as "apologetic confidence" that answers the situation for her. A person so powerful that they do not even understand they are looking down on you. A person so above reproach that they had no idea they should be afraid breaking into a cop's apartment. Like had there been a gun, it wouldn't have fired bullets but instead shot out butterflies or lemon soda. Like his brain has to slow down to think of the world like a normal citizen and the kind of stuttering apology is his equivalent of a big man talking to a small dog. The fucker. "You are a witch."

"Yeah."

"I'm still going to call MUNI," she says as she is sitting down, no longer caring about calling anyone. She just wishes was high or drunk right now instead of hungover. She hands the lighter back to the woman with the witch — at least Aurora doesn't think she is a witch, because two in one place is very nearly completing a triple and that's very bad for everyone — and the woman uses it to light her own cigarette and the pair smoke while the witch waits patiently.

"Good, but just know that there is a cabal of people right in here in the GLOW that bringing about the end of the world." At these words, Aurora stops and thinks of the fading spaceman dying as much of a broken heart as 30,000 years of ennui. "I've killed one of them myself. I have another one in custody. There is one remaining. And this third one owns a fair chunk of MUNI so if you mention any of this, you will be dead within a week."

"I already wrote several of the details about this in my report and submitted it."

"I know."

And in the end, those two words were the scariest thing the strange, large man on the sofa said for the entirety of the conversation. Because if he knew, who didn't. Besides perhaps Good Cop Detective Aurora Hernandez.

Setting the Scene, e15s2: The Witch and Her Iguana.

Date: June 5, 1996.

Time: 12:19pm.

Place: The Underground.

Luca "The Iguana" and Sofia Rodriquez were introduced in Chapter Two of the OG The GLOW. At the time, Luca was the main operative and represented a way of Johnny Blue to protect himself against Barlow "The Big Bad Wolf" Hendrix. Since the scene was constructed around Luca — ex-sigilist for the Order who was disgraced after his wife was co-opted by an insidious blackmailer — Sofia was downplayed a bit. "A low level witch" is how I described her. One who was a potential victim type. Since then, the notion that even a low-witch is capable of outranking upper grade Field Psychics has slipped in. What's more, it has become a kind of head canon as to why the actual cause of the family's misfortune received a lesser sentence than her husband. The Order is scared to punish witches. Witches are the lifeblood of The GLOW and the Order. They have the ability to make all the rest of the magic possible.

By the end of their section, Sofia had constructed a sigil so complicated it could rewrite destiny. Essentially, she was nearly ret-conned immediately into a witch so powerful and capable of creating new magic they downplayed her. Johnny Blue didn't really put it together but he isn't the sort of person to look up, right? Eustace would see her potential immediately and consider it so obvious he never pointed it out to his partner.

They were said to have two children. An older daughter in college. A younger son who was going the way of gangs and drugs.

Another fun tidbit, this was a case where Johnny's more demonic side was demonstrated. He went in hard to punish those that had hurt his friend and his friend's wife.

It might be nice to bring them back. Like Eustace, The GLOW is eating the Rodriquezes alive. Despite Sofia's ability to make it stop if she just trusted herself.

DATE PLAYED: May 7, 2025.

The Witch and Her Iguana

Date: June 5, 1996.

Time: 12:19pm.

Place: The Underground.

Sofia Rodriquez once went by the call-sign "The Butterfly" but her symbol was butterfly wings with tentacles underneath. Recognition of her outward beauty and interior strangeness. A inner weirdness she has tried to hide most of her life. Never floating too high. Never soaring. Keeping herself in the river. And if sometimes she swam with the current and sometimes she asked the river to swim for her, then so be it. Who didn't take advantage of their situation?

She awoke to the smell of marijuana smoke and a quiet hovel. Ignacio, her younger son, no doubt to blame. Sofia feels like a bitch telling her kid to avoid drugs — Luca and herself definitely partook back in the day — but Iggy has been pushing it. Thinking back to the pain she put her family through she fears trying to rein him back in. When does Sofia-the-Mom stop and Sofia-the-Witch begin? What if she altered him and made Iggy into something new? With Josi, off at LSU, it is easy enough. That girl reeks of goodness and will likely settle down with a whiter-than-white-bread accountant and raise mildly artistic kids in a safe neighborhood. At least, Sofia hopes. A quiet life for one of the four. That's good odds in this world.

A knock on the door pulls her eyes to the front room. She calls out for Luca and hears no response. It's a Wednesday. He's out helping the Thomases gather recycling. She herself was up late the night before helping the Ekubos out. Their young twins had picked up a bit of Soulburn sickness. Sofia has a knack of coaxing it back out of the human body. Like the pied piper, she knew the song to sing to cause the colors to swim up out of the dark skin of the Nigerian children and dance and fade and leave them whole. A song made of colors rather than sounds. In her head, it was deafening. To others it probably sounded like she was barely whispering an atonal whisper. They can not see like she can see.

She pulls her shirt closed over her bare chest and opens the door — expecting either a client for her own hedge-magic or someone looking for Luca to do some odd jobs — and stops at the sight in front of her. A human-sized crow — no, a crow that is larger than human — with tree-branches growing out of its skull like large antlers stands there. Only, that's not right. It is a person. A person who is barely hanging on to his own humanity. Beside him, a woman maybe a few years older than Josi is standing in a pose that Sofia recognizes as "Bad Bitch Protects Her Man." A few folks from the underground are walking around and Sofia is confused that no one is bowing. She is struggling to not bow down before him.

Up the tunnel she sees three young girls and knows in her heart of hearts that if she stops and really looks at them she will not survive the encounter. Her brain is already so full.

"Come in," she says, struggling to stay upright.

"Thanks," she hears a Southern-accent tinted voice say. A painfully human voice. One that she very nearly recognizes. Then it all comes back. Johnny Blue going all in to help her and Luca and the kid. And behind Johnny another, the other half to Johnny's soul.

"Nurse?"

"Hi, Butterfly. It's weird because we've never met in person but I know your face pretty well."

"Mmmm hmmm...," says the woman beside Nurse with a definite intonation. Sofia could no doubt take her in a fight but she immediate appreciates just how much willpower this younger woman is showing. And appreciates the compliment that such immediate jealousy might imply.

"I figured you'd be a little scrawny boy, not a..." Crow? Demon? What is he? Even without the double-self, Eustace "Nurse" Delmont is big even by Luca's standards and that's saying something.

Seemingly sensing her discomfort for the first time, Nurse looks down and maybe sees himself as she sees him. He coughs and does something complicated with his hands, tracing sigils in the air, and the crow-shape is gone. Not that it helps all that much. The real him looks washed out and devoured in some critical way. A big dude. Strong. A natural fighter. But fading fast as his own body is being consumed by his spirit. He's burning himself alive in a race to some miracle. It does not help that those three "girls" let out a giggle at this transformation and then fade back into the shadows. Out the corner of her eye, Sofia nearly sees and squeezes her eyes closed for a second to prevent her mind from filling in the gaps.

Nurse and the woman with him — he introduces her as "Foxteeth" before correcting himself and says Hitomi — enter into the room. Then, after saying they were fine without any tea or coffee or water, Nurse proceeds to wait. Five minutes later, Luca comes rushing in with a look of fear on his face. It does not surprise her that her husband could not only sense her distress but was able to tie into it before she was even aware it would be showing. Fortune telling by way of vibe. Marriage among the truly gifted hits a bit different than normal wedded bliss.

Luca looks down — his face going from the edge of confrontation to something like happiness — and lets out a barking laugh. "Eustace? Holy hell, mi amigo. What are you doing here?" It is the paradox of agents and their psychics that the two shall never meet. But sometimes the same sigilist applies both sigils: a demon sticking out his tongue for Johnny and a simple snake curled around a staff for Eustace.

The two chat for a bit before Eustace "Nurse" Delmont — only now Sofia knows that "Nurse" is no longer his name — and says, "Butterfly...I mean, Sofia. And Luca. I need your help. I need help by people of true power."

"True power?," she says with her most convincing scoff, "Me?"

"That sigil you placed on Johnny was old world magic that represents the most powerful witchery that the GLOW has seen in years. At least until..."

"Until you?"

He nods. "The GLOW is under threat and I plan to save it and its people in the only way I know how."

"How's that, Eustace?," Luca asks.

"By destroying it."

DOUG'S COMMENTARY

In the days when The GLOW was still forming in my headspace, there were ideas. See, the whole campaign was basically a technical experiment. I wanted to a) figure out the Dean Spencer stock art used in the Arcane Agents Tricube Tales one-sheet, b) wanted to work out more complicated formatting for my blog, and c) wanted to come up with my own weird take on the magi-cyber-punk genre. A lot of the big ideas just fell immediately into place: the Harrowing. Words like "witch" and "mage" and "psychic". Dropping Eustace into an unrelated story.

Then some ideas grew out of weird rolls and burned brightly for a moment before being left behind. One such example was Neon Foster and the Spaceman. I had a weird notion of a person in a space helmet. This later morphed into a more complete space suit but not to start with. That grew out of a single oracle check giving me a crystal ball and me thinking "old timey space helmet from retro Science Fiction." Neon Foster was also a series of oracle checks and rolls: non-binary, theatrical, dead. I thought maybe it would be fun to have an entire story about the two of them and why the Spaceman killed Foster but there was never any time to work it out in Johnny/Jani's story. Should I play The GLOW 1992: Neon Foster and the Spaceman? Well, no, is the answer.

And the real reason why I didn't is because Foster was non-binary by way of being omni-gendered. They swapped their body back and forth from football star to cheerleader to punk girl to femboy. It was going to be a fun quirk that underneath the technical skills and theatrics was a rather accomplished hedge-magician who used all their powers to shape themselves into a complex myriad of beauty standards. Only I wasn't really willing — or able — to give time to such a character that both deeply embodies but also kind of trivializes the trans experience. Despite all my queerness and general acceptance of gender relativity, I am definitely cis and spend a good deal of time watching the impacts of "ally privilege" on a community under constant assault. Neon Foster's story is not quite my story to tell.

At the same time, the whole reason for why the Spaceman exists — and why MUNI can't remove the helmet — threatened to be very complicated.

One day I sat down and tried to work it backwards: the scene in the interrogation room. Almost exactly like it is, above. The Spaceman wears the helmet because he is purely made of Soulburn. The KLAXONS existed much as they do in the above post — though the Kreuger were originally an alien species — and he had come back in time to try and prevent that future. The big difference is that the GLOW from that storyline was not a catastrophic event brought about by human greed but simply a natural occurrence of the GLOW's nature. It spreads and it feeds.

The fact that Neon Foster's death was able to be tied into the Dave and Hitomi fall out and bring the now month's-long campaign into something like a tighter knot was just too damned poetic to ignore. It's almost like I planned it instead of just rapidly interpreted what is now hundreds of dice rolls and card draws into something sensible.

Sigma Theta DW63 is all just a big tribute to Doctor Who because I can. The joke of an un-named character — a character known more by their nickname than any real name — being called Sigma Theta got a small chuckle out of me.

There were two other planned outings for the GLOW. The GLOW 1997 was going to look at Aurora Hernandez and her dealing with some of the crimes around town in the aftermath of the Johnny/Eustace saga. The GLOW 2001 was going to look at Josi Rodriquez — who is a witch stronger than her mom and hiding her powers from her family as she is back in town to solve the death of her brother.

I no longer think I will. So, in some ways, the whole point of this episode is to kind of give voice to those three stories altogether. And, well, maybe one day I will revisit this strange twisted place.

But first let's finish out the current arc with a bang.

CREDITS

The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont is played using Two Little Mouse's Outgunned and Outgunned: Action Flicks (especially, but not limited to "Neon Noir" and "Great Powers"). It uses Larcenous Designs' Gamemaster Apprentice Deck: Cyberpunk 2E as its main oracle.

Other sources used include:

• Zach Best's Universal NPC Emulator.
• Cesar Capacle's Random Realities
• Kevin Crawford's Cities Without Number
• Matt Davis' Book of Random Tables: Cyberpunk 1, 2 and 3.
• Geist Hack Games and Paul D. Gallagher's Augmented Realities.

ART CREDIT AND EXPLANATION

The opening image of the Spaceman started out as a render by Alex Shuper.

The spaceman walking around was a render by Cash Macanaya.

Both were pretty prefect as they were but I kept to the consistent motif for this series. Sure the two different suits are...well, different...but it gets the brain thinking in the right way. I mean, that's probably the least eggregious continuity error I have made.

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• "Previously..." and Campaign/Arc Summary
• The Doug Alone Returns
• The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont, Episode 14 — Crow Boy Meets Hacker Girl (Again)
• Wild Goose Chase
• Crow Boy Returns
• Doug's Commentary
• Credits

Previously, on The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

Hitomi, Genny, Jones, and Varvara have infiltrated the Moonblink. Only things are not what was expected. Rather than a high-tech party ship, it has minimal protection and a host of pretend people. What is secret that Dave Akari has been hiding from the world? At the same time, the reborn Eustace Delmont — now dubbed "Witch-King" — is starting to gather allies to help protect not only the Order but possibly others from the worst case scenario: The GLOW spreading to cover the world.

About The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont

Eustace Delmont is a psychic on the cusp of "graduating" into a full-blow Field Psychic. He requests his right to Walk, a brief period of freedom to encourage psychics to see the other side of The GLOW. He tries to finish his long-time partner Jani Blum's final unfinished mission: to find a mini-disc and crack open the Patel crime family. He meets Hitomi Meyer, a criminal hacker. The two are now on the run between a powerful crime family and an even more powerful adversary: The Order and its plans for Eustace.

Content Warning: Occasionally very foul language, lots of smoking, quite intense violence, drinking, gambling, non-graphic sex, drugs, criminal behavior, and black magic. The GLOW is a world of spiritual torture and weird horror.

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.

The Doug Alone Returns

The Spring 2025 semester is winding down and so there is more mental space to commit to actually posting again without everything having to feel rushed, panicked, or half-thought. It's not quite like riding a bicycle but it might take me a few minutes to fully get back into the groove so I'll just take it easy and chill and relax. I am looking forward to it.

There will be an experiment starting with this one. Rather than use footnotes [my preferred method for most of this blog] I will explore how it looks to add in mechanical rolls into the middle of passages. For example.

I personally consider this a bit of an either/or thing. Either having footnotes or more in-line notes works just fine. For a lot of my stories, having the notes a bit separated out is better for the flow. For others having it more in-line will help. The GLOW 1996 is probably former case but it's my current game so I will explore it here and then maybe switch back and forth from post to post to see what vibe strikes me as the better vibe. Since I built a new system where people could hide commentary like this (which also breaks my footnotes) this is one possible solution out of many. Alright, time to get back into the vibe.

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The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont, Episode 14 — Crow Boy Meets Hacker Girl (Again)

---

Expected Scene: The team learns the truth of Dave Akari's illness.

Scene Test: [c17] 5. 2d10 = 2 + 5. As expected.

Actual Scene: As expected.

Setting the Scene, e14s1: Wild Goose Chase.

Date: June 5, 1996.

Time: 8:41am.

Place: The server room upon the Moonblink.

I think this will mostly be a "lore" type scene since we've established most of the details up until this point and these are known twists that have been brewing behind the scenes.

The scene card does have some text like "Follow Pandering Afflicition" and "Expensive Meds" but really we have already decided this. It's just a nice coincidence.

DATE PLAYED: April 28, 2025

Wild Goose Chase

Date: June 5, 1996.

Time: 8:41am.

Place: The server room upon the Moonblink.

"This makes no sense, there is nothing here," Hitomi says, "Well, nothing that is important to the cabal's plan. There's a lot of things about Dave's medical condition but these numbers make no sense." Ignoring the no smoking signs placed around the server room, she has a cigarette smouldering on the side of the desk. Genny has a cigar and is puffing on it while aiming his gun back at the door in case any intruders try to enter. They saw a guy in a blue Hawaiian shirt. He poked his head in, saw the gun, put up his hands and walked away. Whatever is going on is past his pay grade. Which is exactly the message that Genny is trying to send.

Varvara is staying outside the room where they stashed the guards. Turns out the room they picked was once a bar but has been basically kitted out to host a whole bevy of medicines. The kind of stuff that goes past your neighborhood pharmacy and goes into specialist hospitals that only exist in the GLOW.

"As for the cannisters of whatever the hell Wonsca...the gas tanks were, Tsuna is not willing to answer the question," Hitomi says after plugging in more details and questions.

"Tsuna?," Genny asks.

"The ServiSynth. Codename Tsunami. Doesn't like being called that since the name is a force of destruction."

"The kind that might happen from an asteroid strike near a populated area."

"Exactly. Tsuna is not exactly on board with the whole plan. Hence why they have routed out most of the data to another computer."

"Does 'Tsuna' know where the data is now stored?" Hitomi is glad to see that Genny voiced the air quotes but did not actually make the gesture.

Hitomi brings up a map display on her laptop and points. Genny whistles. Security will be up a good notch there.

Genny asks, "Patel owned?"

Hitomi exhales smoke and nods.

"Well, looks I am going to get to shoot some more fools. I'll call Jones and get him to land. Time's fleeting."

"Wait," Hitomi interjects, "I want to find out what happened to Dave."

Expected Scene: The find the door to Dave Akari's chambers and learn the truth.

Scene Test: [c25] 4. 2d10 = 7 + 3. There we go. "A bond or connection is explored" but really, it's the return of Crow Boy. With friends.

Actual Scene: As Hitomi and crew approach the door, Eustace shows up with company.

Setting the Scene, e14s2: The Arrival of Crow Boy.

Date: June 5, 1996.

Time: 9:03am.

Place: On the Deck of the Moonblink.

More lore-heavy to move things into the final arc.

DATE PLAYED: April 29, 2025.

Crow Boy Returns

Date: June 5, 1996.

Time: 9:03am.

Place: The deck of the Moonblink.

"GUYS!," Jones voice comes over the communicators. "We have incoming!"

Genny pulls up short in their jog. He, Varvara, and Hitomi have been scooting down the stairs to where the floor plans say that Dave Akari is currently being held. In a room with more intense security systems than your average bank vault. "Jones, is it Patel?"

"Negative. It's...I mean, it looks like some large bird. And there are three copters following. Order. The kind of Order equipment I don't think any of us have the clearance. A certain fox motif."

At this last bit, the team stops running. Hitomi pipes in, "Jones, you have to land right now, we have to vacate this..." but it is too late. The Moonblink shudders as something lands in front of them. Something that looks like a larger-than-human crow made up of Soulburn.

Even as the wings and the beak are fading into the morning light, Hitomi is already running forward. As Eustace turns out, she is leaping into his arms.

"Hello, Hitomi. I'm glad you are ok."

"YOU WERE DEAD. HOW ARE YOU ALIVE?"

"Um, well, I'm not really sure but..."

Eustace sets her down and she steps back to look at him. He's lost a good 10%-20% of his body weight. His beard looks grayer. Like he has aged 10+ years in the past day. His skin is now covered in strange, twisting sigils that are hard to look at. His Gnole-enhanced arms look different. More organic.

"You had me worried, jerk."

"I had me worried."

Their reunion is cut short as the three Order helicopters — looking far more sleek than the Green Lady — hover overhead and a number of Field Psychics, masks fully secured, drop down to the deck. Genny and Varvara have backed up as far as they can against the wall and are trying to look scarce.

Of of the Psychics approached Eustace. "Witch-King, are we ready to transport Akari?"

This phrase causes Genny to speak up. "Witch-King? What the hell, Nurse?"

Eustace waves a hand at Genny and mumbles something about long story. He starts giving instructions to the Field Psychics. Hitomi tries to follow along the things being said but around the time she hears the phrase "scuttle the Moonblink" she speaks up.

"No, don't do that. Tsuna is an innocent."

"Tsuna?"

She explains to Eustace about the ServiSynth brain at the heart of the Moonblink and he nods. "Hitomi, can you ask Tsuna to follow the Order helicopters back to Anti...um, a place?"

One of the Field Psychics starts to complain and this is when Hitomi notices that not only are they trying hard to not make eye contact with Eustace — the so-called "Witch-King" — but they are doubly so trying to not look up above or around Eustace's head. Hitomi, herself, looks up to get an idea and right at the corner of her eyes she thinks she catches something. More than one something. Hovering there. Like a storm cloud past the horizon or a tooth ache in a lover's mouth. Right out of reach. Right out of taste.

"Eustace, what..."

"I'll explain as best I can. Do you want to go for a flight? I need to meet people."

"Flight, I...yes. I want to go with you."

"Good. Genny, will be ok to get back off the Moonblink?"

Genny points to the Green Lady, a speck some distance but holding formation.

"Ok, meet Hitomi and myself at Juan's at noon."

Varvara speaks up in her always calm voice. "What about BrokenRecord and Bee?"

Hitomi sees Eustace's question before he asks it and explains.

Hitomi watches a flash in Eustace's eyes as his powers kick in. To her, it looks almost like a nictitating membrane made of Soulburn blinking in front of his sight. He shakes her head. "They are not here, I'm sorry."

"I think I know where they are," Hitomi says.

"Ok, let's get Tsuna some directions and then we have people to meet."

Twenty-minutes later, they are back on deck. The sound of blow torches and diamond saws can be heard cutting something large from its structure. In the duration, The Green Lady has landed and the Field Psychics have been gathering the scant guards and nurses and prepping to load them into their 'copters.

Eustace stands on the edge of the deck and motions for Hitomi to join him. She does. A few seconds later he leaps off and as Genny watches, massive Soulburn wings sprout and the two are flying at great speed back towards the heart of the GLOW.

"What the fuck was that about, Genny?," Jones asks as he initiates take off.

"That's Nurse. It's a long story."

DOUG'S COMMENTARY

April 29, 2025

The Kitsune-Masked Psychic image used above is most likely the currently longest span of stock art being chosen and actually showing up in the flow of the story. Back on December 3rd, 2024, in the very first ever The GLOW post, it was mentioned that the Field Psychics wear Kitsune [aka fox spirits] and fox-themed masks and motifs. This was inspired initially by looking up the Dean Spencer art to use in that post and spotting the image being used in this post. This means it has been nearly five months and over a dozen posts between being inspired to add that detail and actually using the art in question.

There are at least two other pieces of Dean Spencer art not intended for The GLOW that will be the absolute longest in that one of them was the first piece of stock art purchased for this blog: in a story that has not showed up yet. Hopefully it will.

I can tell that the vibe of this post is a bit off. Taking the break and changing up the flow a bit will do that to you. The next one will also be a lore-heavy, rolls-light and will bring up a few things intended for a long time but never discussed. I'll explain those more as they happen.

With this one, and with the simplification of some of the flow, the plan is to return this to a multiple times per week post. So more 2-3 scene posts rather than just a single 5-6 scene posts. I think that overall fits my brain patterns better.

As a bonus, a lot of the vibe of this one was generated while listening to Colin Stetson's Uzumaki OST album. It will likely be continued in at least a good chunk of the next one. It's swell.

CREDITS

The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont is played using Two Little Mouse's Outgunned and Outgunned: Action Flicks (especially, but not limited to "Neon Noir" and "Great Powers"). It uses Larcenous Designs' Gamemaster Apprentice Deck: Cyberpunk 2E as its main oracle.

Other sources used include:

• Zach Best's Universal NPC Emulator.
• Cesar Capacle's Random Realities
• Kevin Crawford's Cities Without Number
• Matt Davis' Book of Random Tables: Cyberpunk 1, 2 and 3.
• Geist Hack Games and Paul D. Gallagher's Augmented Realities.

ART CREDIT AND EXPLANATION

The close up of the crow's eye is this photo by Zdeněk Macháček for Unsplash+.

The Field Psychic illustration (aka "Character - Kitsune") is © Dean Spencer. All rights reserved. Used with Permission.