Compromise and Conceit

Compromise and Conceit 7: Pestilence

February 7, 2009

After a summer’s evening party meeting the main factions operating in the New World, we meet our heroes as they try to decide whether they need to pick sides, and what sides to pick. Sympathies seem to lie with the Natives, though those sympathies would perhaps extend to the colonials were they not so thoroughly bent on genocide. So the characters choose to explore their Indian sympathies a little more, by visiting the native camp near Albany to speak to The Prophet. Unfortunately, when they arrive the Prophet is engaged in a sun-staring trance which, Magua tells them, will last days. So they speak a little with Magua, who reveals accidentally that he is a “follower” of the Prophet (even though the Prophet is Delaware, and Magua was Huron). Magua seems quite interested in peaceful relations with the characters, though they can’t tell why. They leave the camp, and return to town, where they are joined by a new character, a woodsman and colonial who has been drawn to them by a dream in which his woodland realm is destroyed by a mysterious force.

The characters are invited to meet the British Head of Spies at the Albany Freemen’s Club, where they are offered a new opportunity at fruitful work. The Spymaster, a Mister Jake Abanatha, reveals to them that the Delaware Indian tribes near Ohio have been suffering from a strange plague, against which their magic is useless. Rumour is flying around the Indian tribes that this is English work, and the British suspect French treachery. The characters are to visit the region and investigate the cause of the disease. If French calumny is involved, Jake suspects it will prove to be the work of the recently escaped spy, La Belle dame sans Merci, and possibly also foul-mouthed Jacques. If so they are to employ their usual discretion to destroy everyone responsible and undo the damage. They are to travel openly as agents of the British come to investigate the disease, and are to stay at Thorn Lodge, the home of a colonial magician called Jake Luma. David Williamson, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Colonial Militia, will also be present. The nearby trading town of Thorntown can be used to store goods and send or receive messages.

The characters set off the next day, but are interrupted in the afternoon by Magua himself. Initially suspicious, they soon find themselves at ease in his presence. He tells them that he has a favour to ask of them:

When you discover the true nature of the lodge you are staying in, if it suits you to do so, you will open the gates. My Braves and I will be waiting nearby, and will enter to cleanse the place

He tells them he knows no more than they do of this request, but was sent to ask them by the Prophet, who had a vision. That is all he can tell them.

The characters continue to Thorn Town, which they discover is home to a Hungarian gunsmith, who offers to sell them Hungarian Fire-lances if they are interested. Needless to say, they are, and they promise to return to investigate further. From there they proceed to Thorn Lodge, where they are welcomed by Jake Luma and David Williamson, and given rooms. Russell Ganymede searches the entire interior of the mansion with his Demonic Vision, and discovers that the Magician Jake Luma’s private “study” contains no evidence that it is a study – it consists of a couple of couches, a whisky cabinet and a bookcase of French porn. Where, then, does he do his “researches”? The characters are intrigued. The house is also heavily guarded by between 50 and 100 elite militiamen, which seems passing strange…

After night falls the characters sneak into the garden to explore, and soon discover at the rear of the grounds a large stretch of dense forest, whose exterior is patrolled by many militiamen. Speaking to one of the militiamen, the Woodsman is told that Indians attack through the forest, so it must be guarded. But another militiaman tells him it is an Indian graveyard, so he cannot enter. These two ideas are mutually exclusive! So the characters sneak inside, and discover that it is, indeed, an Indian graveyard, for they are attacked by a ghost. This ghost they kill, before Lord Merton moves forward to speak to the others in Huron, telling them he is here to investigate the land beyond, and not to desecrate the grave. Showing them his Iroquois coup-belt, he convinces the ghosts, and they point up the hill at the rear of the forest, into the darkness, begging him to free their land of “the stain which desecrates it”.

The characters move past the ghosts and deeper into the forest, travelling uphill until they come to a small clearing. Beyond the clearing is a waterfall, and perched near it a sinister stone building, squat and drab. Standing at the front of the building, still as the dripping trees, are two demonic-looking creatures the characters have never seen before: Myrmidons. What shall they do, and what does the building contain that it must be so guarded …?
Moments of Feng Shui Madness

February 4, 2009
So, here are some examples of how we play our Feng Shui craziness…
1. Psycho Gun nut gets to work: Sure, we were meant to be reconnoitring and using our (very sub-standard) seduction skills to get into the building site, but our armed-to-the-teeth Chow Yun Fat hard-boiled wannabe gun nut decided to go in the “easy” way and started a gun battle with all 6 security guards, who turned out to be quite well armed. Being unarmoured and soft, the rest of us decided that this constituted a distraction of epic proportions, and ran off to the other side of the building site to cut a hole in the fence. As we ran away, Yukiko texted some advice to the psycho gun nut: “Keep M Busy. Die well. thx c u l8r”. Improvisation by text, I like it!
2. The karaoke sanctuary: we have been encouraged to use the terrain and surroundings to our advantage, and to make them up as we go, so I obliged. Before we went to the afore-mentioned building site Yukiko identified a karaoke bar on the other side of the road from their hiding spot. She popped inside, used her conjuration magic to sanctify one of the singing rooms for several days, and then paid for an all night ticket. This meant that the characters had a karaoke-box bolthole should they run into any over-powered supernatural creatures on the building site…
3. Don’t talk now, I’m concentrating: So Miss Yukiko needed to do some reconnaisance while the rest of her group had their arses handed to them by a big, lipless bastard. So she squatted down behind a dumpster bin, flipped out her phone and started playing tetris. While so concentrating, she summoned up a Yuki no onna (Snow woman), a kind of ghost, to prowl the perimeter of the battlefield looking for fleeing or incoming baddies… all while she played tetris behind the dumpster.
4. Flattening the baddies: so the battle wasn’t going at all well because the big lipless bastard was a named bruiser, not at all nice. Again Yukiko invented some surroundings, this time noticing that the named bruiser was right beneath a huge construction crane. She flipped her phone, summoned a specialised battering-ram demon on top of the crane, and had it smash the gantries so the counter-weight would fall on the named demon. Then she texted all her fighting fellows: “Trouble coming, get away, thx cu l8r”. Unfortunately, in flattening the bad guy she also flattened his phone, which had their only lead to the head honcho… oh well…
Miss Akizuki is definitely the most fun I’ve had with a modern adventurer for a long time. I’m hoping there’ll be lots more hijinx to come…
秋月雪子：Introducing Yukiko Akizuki

February 4, 2009

Yukiko Akizuki is my Feng Shui character. She is a 20 year old ex-shrine maiden from a Shinto Shrine in Izu, South of Tokyo, whose shrine was ransacked by ugly big-nosed foreigners. These foreigners killed the other residents of the shrine and stole the god that lives behind the shrine, and Yukiko – who survived somehow, possibly not entirely intact – has vowed to find them and destroy them, and return her shrine’s god to its rightful place. To help her in this quest, the shrine’s fox messengers gave Yukiko some special magical powers, and a tuft of fox fur she can use to conjure them when she is in need.

Yukiko, having just flattened a Named Bad Guy

Yukiko then went to Tokyo, where she sank into Shibuya culture for a while and became a Yamanba, living in internet cafes and causing lots of trouble, before she finally sorted out some money (no-one knows quite how). During her time in Shibuya she may have become involved with some seedy characters, because she has a book of purikura (Print Club) photos. Purikura are the little pictures you take in those photo booths in Tokyo, then decorate with stars and funny faces. All of Yukiko’s purikura photos are of her with the various demons she can summon. They serve as proof that she can conjure a variety of different nasties…

No-one in this image is a demon

In Feng Shui game terms Yukiko is a Magic Cop archetype, with 1 gun shtick replaced with a kung fu shtick (the foxy one, of course). Her magic is healing, conjuring and fertility. She is pretty weak and very prone to avoiding combat. Most of the time she uses her conjurations and stays out of combat. We are still working on the conjurations, but it seems that she needs to play tetris on her mobile phone in order to concentrate when she is casting spells. Yukiko is a bit strange and anti-social, and maybe not very sensible… but maybe that will change when she gets her god back…
Current Role-playing: Feng Shui

February 4, 2009
So my role-playing group split into 2 sessions this year (as a kind of new years’ resolution I suppose), largely because I’m too lazy to do a session a week. So we had a vote (the only time democracy has been allowed near my Infernal campaign!) and eventually settled on Feng Shui, being DM’d by my nice Cumbrian friend Martin.

Feng Shui is some kind of crazy rules-lite rpg based around the genre of Hong Kong action flicks. Essential properties of Feng Shui (at least, as we’re doing it) are:
- All the PCs are essentially crazy super heroes with crazy powers
- All the archetypes are based on some kind of hollywood or hong kong action movie
- PCs have special powers called shticks which are really the main thing they use
- NPCs are divided into named NPCs (bad arsed enemies) and unnamed NPCs (cannon fodder)
- All PCs have to have a plot hook, a reason they are in the adventure, which requires some kind of nemesis, and a really shlocky story
- Wherever possible, PCs should do crazy, heroic and fantastic things for fun
Our group is half kung fu girls and half psycho boys, and we are carving our way through a cast of unnamed badguys. I just flattened the named one using a 50 ton weight. It was fun. We are really enjoying it and getting into the flow of things. I am not usually a fan of rules-lite games, especially with the rules as broken as they are in Feng Shui, but I have to say I don’t care in this case. The rules are so broken that I have had to invent suggested conjuring rules, because the ones in the book are useless. We’re kind of making it up as we go along. But it’s a barrel of laughs and so far the most fun I think I have ever had while playing!
Map-making the easy way…

February 3, 2009

It’s been a long time (maybe 7 years) since I did any role-playing in a world of my own creation, with its own maps and such like. I really enjoy making the maps – the last map I made involved a light table I scavenged from somewhere, a contour map and an attempt at redrawing the map of Europe to account for catastrophic global warming – but I no longer have the energy for it, and my maps are in any case inevitably really crap. That global warming map – my God! – it involved photocopying sections of an atlas and doing careful calculations so different parts of the atlas were all mapped to the same scale, then all stuck together, and then flooded, and then painted with water colours. That’s crazy, right? And of course I lost the lot at some point when I moved house, and there is no scanner big enough to scan it all so I have no digital version.

I also when I was younger bought myself that Campaign Cartographer package and tried to use it, but it’s fiendishly complicated and you can spend hours on a single 4 room dungeon, only to discover that adventure time has come again, and the you haven’t had time to populate the map. Plus of course, the players never appreciate it. So what’s the point!?

A mysterious place of unknown provenance

Now I do most of my adventures in pre-existing worlds (i.e. Middle Earth) or in Europe/America, where I can just use pre-existing maps. I don’t make my own, I just scavenge others. I particularly like using historical maps and pre-existing maps of places and buildings. As an example of the sorts of silliness I get up to with maps – here is one I found in Japan. I found it on a sign, and the map is actually a photo. But what is it a map of…?
Infernal Constructs: The Myrmidon

February 3, 2009

A formidable obstacle to peace on the Continent…

The crowning achievement of the pre-Victorian era, the Myrmidon first appeared in Europe in the mid- to late 18th Century. The Myrmidon is a construct of demon-hardened ceramics, artificially living flesh and bone, and superhard steel. Endowed with the spirit of a simple Demon and bound to specific magical and religious commands, the Myrmidon is capable of following simple orders delivered by a priest, infernalist or conjuror. The Demon measures about 7’ in height and has strength greater than any human; it is also very fast, and the Demon learns to fight just as a normal human would. Inexperienced Myrmidons fight as well as an untrained militiaman, but as the Demons become older and more experienced they improve their skills just as does a normal warrior, though more slowly due to their extremely limited intellect. Myrmidons are always accompanied by a priest or infernal engineer and are designed to fall apart when administered a command from a remote location, preventing their capture or the revelation of their deeper secrets. They heal minor damage if inside a church, though major repairs require experienced technicians. They can follow simple sets of commands, and can be given a “framework” within which to operate, with the framework following a basic template such as skirmisher, warrior or berserker.

Myrmidons are heavily armoured and highly resistant to infernal energy. Magical energy and physical attacks do no more damage than usual, though it takes a formidable mortal to penetrate their magically enhanced shell, and their huge physical structure takes considerable damage to wear down. Most Myrmidons also have at least some basic combat feats, and most are also designed to incorporate an infernal rifle or pistol of some sort. Some of the more intelligent constructs may also contain a confustor or impulsion field rod, and as their design becomes more sophisticated they also develop powers of flight, teleportation or leaping. By the mid-19th century, they became the most feared soldier on the battlefield, proof against all but the most hardened of soldiers.
Off-topic comments about the stupidity of British racism

January 31, 2009

So, the English press is afire at present with the decision of British “workers”[1] to protest supposed off-shoring of their work to Italian workers. There really is no reason for me to care about this except that I am British but I feel like a foreign worker, because I’m really Australian[2]. So today I am going to rant in a completely off-topic way about the stupidity of the British response to this “problem”.

First, the problem: A French oil company building a new refinery in Northern England has tendered out a short-term construction contract, and an Italian company beat 5 British companies to the job. This Italian company is going to import 400 workers from Italy, who will live in Barges in the nearby port and work on the site. It’s a new contract, so no existing jobs will be lost, but there are lots of unemployed people in Grimsby who could supposedly do the job. So the local workers have downed tools in protest at the lost employment chances for their unemployed neighbours, and other workers in other cities are “spontaneously” going on strike in protest. There is lots of talk of “cheap labour” and a so-called “race to the bottom” (the bottom being, apparently, Italy – not Grimsby) and general left-wing pride at the unions taking on transnational capitalism.

Only, it turns out (if you read the Humber business news) that the Italian workers are being paid British rates. And if you read that Cruddas article about “cheap labour”, you’ll note that he simultaneously claims that the British workforce is unprotected and exploited, while simultaneously accusing the Italians of undercutting the “most unprotected workers in Europe”. Now usually, when I read two contradictory opinions in the same sentence, it’s in a right-wing piece – am I sensing racism here? In Australia we have a term for this kind of subtle message, we call it a “dog whistle”[3]. I always thought that “cheap labour” was a rallying cry of left-wing internationalists, but it would appear that in the left-wing British press (for that is what the Guardian is, and Cruddas is supposedly a Labour politician) it seems to be a rallying cry of racism, carefully coded so that it can sound reasonably whilst riling up the troops. That, my friends, is dog whistle politics.

So why is it racist to protest Italian workers being shipped in barges to do a job in England? Shouldn’t British workers do that? Well, perhaps. But it’s a 4 month contract, and hiring 400 locals could take a bit of time. And – count them – 5 British companies tendered for this contract with staff being paid at the same rates and couldn’t win it. So an Italian company which has to ship its workers over here, pay them British rates and pay for their accomodation and food won the contract over 5 British companies with no such expenses. Could it be the British companies were being greedy? Or couldn’t guarantee completion of the contract? Or that there was no British company set up to win short-term construction contracts? Maybe they were busy doing building contracts down south? Sounds like poor British business management, or greed to me. Sound familiar? Poor British management and greed has been in the news a bit lately, something about a “credit crunch”.

And what does this mean for me, a foreign worker in this country because no-one could find a British person capable of doing my job? Does it make me feel welcome? I think of those Italians on their barges and I wonder if some lunatic BNP[4] member might decide to sink one. I think of the Polish people who are doing all the catering work at my company because no white British person will do a job like that… do they feel welcome here and respected when they leave their poorly paid jobs and see this in the news? While outside the British lumpen proletariat, all those unemployed Brits who’d rather pull a welfare cheque than serve coffee, wander around stabbing each other and swearing.

And if we’re to get into the business of recalling foreign workers who are doing jobs that locals could be doing, does that mean that British expats in Tokyo, Dubai and New York should go home? All those British backpackers who spent a year living off their trust fund in Australia, earning sub-award[5] rates tax-free to steal Aussie jobs, should also go home? It’s a can of worms.

But the fundamental problem here is that British companies are incompetent, the British are unskilled and undereducated, and they can’t do their jobs let alone compete. But here we see the British solution at its best: blame the foreigners!

[1] One day I will prepare another off-topic post on all the ways in which the British worker’s incompetence and slovenliness has made my life here hell…

[2] For anyone who is confused by this I have the magic words “commonwealth”.

[3] I have no idea if this is an international term, but I won’t have foreigners stealing my work.

[4] British National Party, for my American/Canadian readers – it’s a funny British thing, it rhymes with “National Socialist Party”

[5] An “award” is an industrial agreement setting out what employees should earn.
Some Diary Entries, by various Fictional People

January 31, 2009

Colonel George Washington, 5th August 1754

Attended Madame C’s Firefly party last night. Better than last year, more pretty dancing girls (one Chinese with a cloud of fireflies particularly feisty in the back of the library, damn her for saying no but she learnt the hard way that no-one can!). Guests were worse though, one supposes that the greater the effort on a soiree the more of the public one needs to invite, and one could hardly avoid inviting a few of the heroes of the French-Indian war, but bringing Frenchy? And those damned natives? It may not be proven, but everyone knows Magua murdered Colonel Munro in cold blood, ate his heart by all accounts, and damn my breeches if I can tell how exactly Madame C expected Francois Frenchy to get along with that bloody native Tacharison, who slaughtered Jumonville right in front of me (not that I told him to stop, heh!). A weird mix by all accounts, and there was that brazen slut Cora Munro fawning over her father’s murderer! I swear she had a hand in it the ungrateful tart. Bit of a shame I could never get my fingers in her, but now that her Daddy’s shamefully put aside maybe I can give it a go… Magua will have done the white man one favour at least… maybe a bit of attention from a white gentleman will prevent her going native like her retarded sister did…

Of course, it was interesting to meet the “heroes” of the French and Indian War. Bunch of ignorant foreigners, we thought they might have some value for colonial interests but it seems they can’t even summon enough racial pride to support any white man, let alone to throw in their lot with the Americans whose rightful country they’re in. I tell you, it sticks in my craw that some Irish Priest can have the balls to call me a coward when all 5 of those pimped up heroes were hiding behind native skirts for every battle. Though I suppose they did go into Huron territory, which is more than you would catch me doing! It took all the balls I had to encourage Braddock to ambush the French at Monongahela, even though they were running away, and that didn’t exactly go as planned now did it? Frenchy couldn’t be bothered chasing retreating Americans, and we had to sign that damned peace deal after all. But there’s a lesson in that isn’t there? Never hatch a plan which relies on others to do your own dirty work.

Still, I thought those heroes might have some use, even if it was only temporary. It looks like they’re pretty soft on the natives though, so any use we put them to would be pretty limited, and I reckon half of them still have loyalty to the old White Father. Best keep an eye on their contacts, in case they become trouble, but we definitely won’t be relying on them for anything else. Friends with two different native “nations”, and proud of it! A disgrace…

Anyway, we’ll see what comes of it all… maybe there are other ways we can use Frenchy to our advantage than just by accident!

Miss Cora Munro, 5th August

Dear Diary, it would appear I have the singular distinction of being able to report on a most diverting evening at Madame C’s Firefly party, the first I’ve been invited to in the New World and surely one of the most illuminating events I’ve attended in years (oh dear, do pardon the pun won’t you my dear diary?) Of course I had the chance to meet that fascinating brute Magua, who tells me my dear sister has hunted her first deer and eaten it’s heart (I do hope that when he says deer it is not a euphemism for anything else!) I do declare this to be positively disgusting, but my sister has always been a tad strange, so it’s best I suppose that she is doing something she likes, and it’s not as if she hadn’t first hand experience after seeing what happened to Daddy (Satan take him), but really… I shall have words with her about a Lady’s Decency when next I visit her. No word on children, so I don’t know yet if she’s come around to his ways, lord knows I would in a flash… oh don’t blush dear Diary, there’s far worse in your earlier pages and you aren’t telling anyone, now are you?

Of course I also met those dear stuck up Frenchies, they had nothing much to say except trying to slobber on my hand, of course, but infinitely more charming than the colonials. I really don’t like the way that Colonel Washington looks at me… he may be a battle mage and a hero, but that doesn’t give him the right to look at me like that. And by the way dear Diary, how does one get to be a hero by merely retreating? I could do that! I would never say it, of course, but I was mighty entertained to see the English Heroes burt it out like the quaintly uncultured chaps they are. That Irish Priest is rather dishy, I must say if I were to have a chance to see under his habit I would rather like to take it, but I suppose it shan’t be happening. So mysterious with the collar and the coat! And even the Torturer is so much more charming than oily George Washington, the fast-footed hero of monongahela. Anyway, it’s nice as well to see that they interacted with the Natives as if they were men (and Kings!) instead of fools… maybe there is some good yet in the White man…

Anyway, dear Diary, I suppose I should speak a little of my garden. There was [ Several pages of botanical science follow]

Magua, 5th August

Hmmm. Interesting. The prophet suggests the White Heroes may have a use. The Colonel has only one use, but the White Heroes showed his skin too thin to be used in even the smallest war drum. Fools, these Americans. Dangerous arrogant fools.
Recent things – books, role-playing, movies…

January 31, 2009

So between October and April England disappears into a murky world of fog and chilly, dark afternoons. What does one do during that time? I have been reading, my role-playing group switched to an old favourite, and I watched a few things. Here are the things I have been reading and doing recently:

Rolemaster in middle Earth: My role-playing group did a 5 or 6 session short campaign in good old-fashioned Rolemaster (Classic, to be precise), set in Mordor at 10th level. It was fun but with 8 players and high levels, it got a bit tedious at times. I’m not sure if my players liked my vision of Mordor either – 10km deep canyons and cities of Undead didn’t seem to appeal. Well, can’t be helped… but in fact Rolemaster was a lot less fun than I remember and I won’t be DMing it again. I originally intended to write the results here but I couldn’t be bothered in the end. ennui, much?

A concise Chinese-English dictionary for lovers: recommended by a friend, this book is by a Chinese author, and tells the story of a Chinese girl who comes to London to learn English and, ah, doesn’t quite fit in. She meets a 40-something ex-anarchist and they start a quite fucked-up relationship. I’m sure this book is autobiographical. It also contains some beautiful observations about the horribleness of London. There’s a passage where the Chinese girl compares British weather reports with reports from a war, and it’s so true. It’s a sad book but a really interesting description of cross-cultural confusion. Strongly recommended!

Emma: also happens to be the name of my partner, but in this instance is the manga tale of a Maid in Victorian England. I think it’s by the author who wrote “Mermaid Forest” but I’m not sure. I’ve been struggling through the Japanese version (i.e. the original) of book 1. You can get the whole thing online in English, but I think I’ll stick to misunderstanding the Japanese. 4 months= nearly finished.

Dexter: Just finished season 3. I love Dexter!

Neverwinter Nights 2: I have returned to this, and spend maybe two or 3 hours a week saving the world. It’s not going too well, but at least I’m back into it. It is still too easy though… and I have discovered that when NPCs die they don’t die, they just lie down until the fight is over. This is all the encouragement I need for sloppy, drunken adventuring…
Back to life

January 31, 2009

So, a two month absence… the truth is that London life has been wearing me down recently, and I haven’t had any interest in anything actually worthwhile. Then christmas came, and like every other person in London I got sick, repeatedly. Plus, of course, when one is in a new town one needs to get out and about and socialise … so blogging, though not role-playing, suffered a little. I’m back to life this year though, exercising again and trying to work a little better and also paying attention more to the international role-playing world I was neglecting. Hopefully now I can find some things to say…

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