A CLOSE SHAVE - Play Report

Sir Edwin Landseer

In the sunny lands of Urth's equator, the potentate of Shamash the Lioneater has descended into anarchy. After a failed campaign against rebel forces, the Nephil's armies of chimeras have been scattered. The god-king himself is rumoured to have been horribly maimed. 

The golden-haired cripple was last spotted on a pilgrimage to his cult's mountaintop temple. There's been no word from him or his cultists since. If there was ever a time to rob a demigod, it's now. Get in and get out before someone beats you to it.

The New Age - Session 2, Part 1

With Doug Walters in the wind, J-Cell set about getting a search warrant for the Enolsis chapterhouse. Fortunately, FBI forensics had already run samples taken from the Mercedes. The blood type matched Ronald Valiant's military records, and they even discovered it was a genealogical match for Senator DiTorrio thanks to a hospital trash bag JENKINS had absconded with.

Given Valiant was a wanted fugitive with a laundry list of violent offences, JOSEF had no issue getting a federal judge to sign off on a clandestine warrant. He even assembled a crack team of US marshals from the St. Louis field office for backup on the warrant service. Meanwhile, Scanlon was ratfucking every tracer round and smoke grenade he could find from the FBI armory. If bullets didn't hurt that shapeshifting monster, maybe burning magnesium and phosphorous would.

The New Age - Session 1, Part 2

Knee deep in enhanced photography, microfilm, manilla folders and interagency reports, JOSEF had found some leads. The marine in the photograph with Colonel Daniels was one PFC Ronald Valiant, a dishonourably discharged teen delinquent with a storied criminal record. Apparently Valiant used to run drugs for the Contras, before being shot down over Nicaragua and imprisoned by the Sandinistas. After somehow escaping back to the US, he'd entered the St. Louis drug scene, garnering a reputation as an ex-CIA mercenary with a commie ear collection. Valiant had fled St. Louis a few years back, suspected of dosing up a rival dealer on heroin and then burning him alive with homemade napalm. 

This "Doug Walters" character appeared to be the deacon of St. Louis' Enolsis chapter. His listed residence was even the same building as their chapterhouse - he lived in an apartment upstairs. Curiously, Walters had a surprisingly sparse bureaucratic trail. Sure his SSN and birth certificate checked out, but he'd only applied for a drivers license a few years ago. Right after Valiant fled St. Louis...

The New Age - Session 1, Part 1

July 13th, 1997. St Louis, Missouri.

The Agents and Friendlies of J-Cell were brought together by Delta Green into a secretive FBI taskforce. Their mission - investigating the bombing of a retired USAF Colonel. 

• Agent JEAN / Faith McGuire, CIA.
• Agent JENKINS / James Jefferies, FBI.
• Agent JESSE / Dusty Morgan, ATF.
• Agent JOSEF / Ron Czerwinski, USMS.
• Jackie Scanlon, NNSA.

Sic Semper Tyrannis (GLoG Class: Ranger)

Caravaggio

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

Psalms [23:4]

Of Blood And Bronze (GLoG Class: Fighter)

Giovanni De Min

When I was a lad, my mother said
"You dry your tears and go to bed,
I know my son will travel far,
Born beneath a shooting star."

In after years, my father said,
As he pulled my hair and knocked my head,
"They mustn't whimper at a scar,
Who're born beneath a shooting star."

A mage I met, and the mage he said,

"I see for you a future red,

Fire and riot, raid and war,

O born beneath a shooting star."
The Claw Of The Conciliator [11-12] 

His Terrible Swift Sword (GLoG Class: Barbarian)

Guercino

The woodsman sighed and stared at his calloused hand, worn from contact with ax-haft and sword-hilt. Conan reached his long arm for the wine-jug. The forester stared at him, comparing him with the men about them, the men who had died along the lost river, comparing him with those other wild men over that river. Conan did not seem aware of his gaze.

"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind," the borderer said, still staring somberly at the Cimmerian. "Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph."
Beyond The Black River [63]

GRAPES OF WRATH (Setting Primer)

PRIMEUMATON came up with a writing challenge: make a seven-hex adventure set in your bespoke TTRPG setting. I like this. Similar to eating your vegetables or properly disposing of a corpse, forcing yourself to write gameable content (instead of pages and pages of lore) is always a good idea.

I've been toying with a setting idea (Book of Enoch meets Ancient Greece meets Book of the New Sun meets DEAD gODS meets the Lovecraft Mythos meets Ogre Gods), so I'll be picking up the gauntlet. Any good project needs a name, and given my inspirations GRAPES OF WRATH is a strong contender.

Jacob Jordaens

Dying In The Dark (GLoG Race-As-Class: Dwarf)

Ana Victoria Esquivel

"They were terrible in a fashion I am not certain I can explain - like apes in that they had hairy, crooked bodies, long-armed, short-legged and thick-necked. It was something in their faces, perhaps in the huge pale-irised eyes. It told me they were as human as I."
The Claw of the Conciliator [303-4]

SIN EATER

Skill: 1. Brewer. 2. Combat Engineer. 3. Metalsmith. 4. Stonemason.

Starting Items: A pick mattock (heavy), or a warhammer (medium) and a buckler shield, a steel chisel (light), a coat of plates (medium), a flask of mushroom wine, a jar of pickled fungus, a pouch of iron nuggets, brass scissors for maintaining your beard and two Tools of the Trade.

Sin Eaters are a slave race of troglodyte labourers. In centuries past feuding Nephilim demanded huge sums of copper, gold, iron and silver to satiate their war machines. When their mine slaves couldn't meet quota, the impatient godlings perverted them into something that would.

The Dogs Of War (GLoG Race-As-Class: Wood Elf)

Francisco Goya

“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth."

Genesis [1:26]

DEODAND

Skill: 1. Herbalism. 2. Butchery. 3. Handcrafts. 4. Astronomy.

Starting Items: An applewood flask of water, a dense brick of pemmican, a heartwood bow (medium) and a quiver of two dozen arrows, a chert spear (medium), an obsidian knife (light), the tanned skin of something you killed (light), cabachon jewellery and two Wyld Trinkets.

The Deodands are to humans what wolfhounds are to wolves. Something that looks like you, but twisted into a form better suited to kill you. Elongated limbs and clawed hands. Massive saucer eyes and distendable jaws with too many fucking teeth. A race selectively bred by the Nephilim into bipedal killing machines with a divine mandate to bring the wild places of Urth to heel.