Author: Erin Klitzke

Posted on

Torg update – session of 16 July 2009

So another one bit the dust.  We all saw Albert’s imminent demise comimg as players, though probably not quite in the spectacular fashion he went out.  Though I get ahead of myself.

We start out on the pilgrim road to Avignon with a potential crusader against the technodemons.  He’s rabble-rousing and building a peasant army as we go, Ren is getting sicker and sicker to her stomach as we skirt along the border of Germany and France, where the evidence of slave raiding is quite clear.  She knows what that looks and feels like.  This, of course, means she gets more and more quiet and withdrawn as we move along the border.  Grace asks what’s wrong and Ren lies through her teeth.  Of course nothing’s wrong!

So, at one point as we’re getting closer to Avignon, Grace wanders away from camp to clean her weapons.  She proceeds to get into a fight with the Executioner we met before, who apparently wants to know what we’re up to before he kills us all.  In the meantime, ignorant of Grace’s straits, Ren pulls Mable out into the woods to talk about Allison, who Ren wants to know more about.  This is going to have to be played out via e-mail a bit since Liz doesn’t know much about Allison (David’s the one with all of that information).  We end up stumbling upon the aftermath of the little duel between the Executioner and Grace but don’t learn very much about the situation.

We make Avignon a few days later, and it’s a seething mass of humanity so thick you can barely move in the streets.  Amotep keeps going on and on about how awful and disease-ridden it is, saying that slaves in Egypt aren’t treated this badly (Grant turns to Ren at her eyeroll and says “Well, it’s true.”).  Ren doesn’t disagree that it’s bad, she just chooses not to dwell on how bad it is.  We eventually make it to our quarters in a less dirty area of the city and settle in for the night.  Much to Mei’s chagrin, she’s been informed that the pope is giving a speech the next day that’s essentially going to be the call to crusade against the technodemons and that we’re all going to go listen.  All right, minor wrench in our plans, since part of the reason we’d come to Avignon was to continue our hunt for DeSoto.  So…we come up with yet another plan.  We decide that while we’re at the speech, before the speech, Mable is going to swoon and Grace and Ren are going to drag her off to go lay down–of course, we’re not going to actually go lay down, we’re going to go hack the GodNet to see if we can get a lead on where DeSoto is.  The others are going to stay and listen to the speech because we really don’t have a way to get them out of it.

So the next morning, we go to the speech almost before the sun’s up.  Mable isn’t going to have a hard time faking a faint in her outfit, since she can barely breathe (she gets a promise that we’ll loosen her ties after we’re out of the crowds).  We actually get primo “seats” for this speech–we can actually see that there’s figures on the dias from where we’re standing!  Mable fakes her faint and the three of us beat feet further away to find a place to do our hacking.  We eventually find our way to a saint’s shrine that has a terminal that Ren sneaks in to try to access as the speech begins.

Problem.  There’s no keyboard.

So Ren sneaks back out and tells Mable and Grace that we need a new plan.  Mable asks why and Ren brings her inside to show her.  Mable looks at the apparatus for a few minutes and finally says that we don’t have any other choices–Ren’s going to have to improvise a head jack for herself to get into the computer, which is an idea that Ren’s wholly uncomfortable with.  But she does it anyway, since someone’s got to and she’s the only one with a chance at success.

So she novacanes herself up and stabs a needle into the back of her neck with some wires attached with Mable’s help and then she’s in the GodNet.

…and God talks to her.  It’s kind of scary.

And of course, the OS and organization of this computer system makes no sense.  So Ren starts working at trying to sort through that mess so she can start trying to find the information she needs.

In the meantime, Albert has moved forward in the crowds listening to the speech, having seen someone on the dias he recognized (and apparently needed to kill).  And someone starts tapping on the back of Mei’s armor.

Ting ting ting ting ting!

“Stop it!”

Ting ting ting ting ting!

“Stop it!”

Ting ting ting ting ting!

“Stop it!” 

She finally turns around and there’s Odette, but it’s not Odette, it’s her evil half.  And she taunts Mei.  This is very amusing, since Mei is played by Odette’s former character (and David plays a very, very bad Odette.  Which is fine, since we’re dealing with Odayle, Odette’s evil half).  Of course, Amotep is staring at this mess very confused and Grant is the color of a bedsheet since he can’t do a damned thing without blowing all of us.  Odette finishes her taunting of them and then bounces off to come find where we are.

And a few minutes later, Albert makes his move.  Trish drops a martyr card, goes RAWR PUPPY and leaps up onto the dias, turning one figure up there into goo.

Then proceeds to be obliterated by energy weapons fire.  Chaos and panic ensues.  Chaos and panic Ren can feel on the GodNet.  So she starts to pull out.  As she’s pulling out, she hears the obnoxiously endearing voice of an old ally, our good friend the Tachicomas:

“Hey!  Where’d you go?!”

And then she’s out demanding to know what’s going on.  Grace tells her Albert just got himself killed.  Ren utters a string of explicatives and tries to get back onto the GodNet, but the node is dead–like the system’s shut down as a security protocol in the midst of the panic.

And then Odette finds us.  She taunts Grace, wondering aloud if Odette was ever real, is she in the back of Odayle’s head screaming to get out, to make Odayle stop.  Grace isn’t sure what to do.  Odette/Odayle taunts Ren.  Ren counters.  She taunts us all.  Frederico DeSoto comes up in the midst of the conversation.  Odette/Odayle says she really didn’t care much for him anyway and skips away.  Ren laughs.

“Lying is a sin.”

And then we stumble out into the mess to try to find the others, or our way back to our lodgings.  We’re not sure which yet.  I’m bleeding from the neck thanks to my attempt to hack the GodNet.  I’m muchly looking forward to Grant’s reaction to that.  As Jen said in the car…at least it’d get them talking again.

 

…and as a side note…there was a zepplin that looked Nile when we arrived in Avignon.  Grant and Mable both confirmed that it could be from there, but it wasn’t anything they knew about.  So we’ll have to check that out.  Soon…

Posted on

Maintenance day update

So, I got some news the other day that is exciting and daunting all at once.  My paper that I proposed for the Great Lakes History Conference was accepted.  Now I just have to put together 20-30 pages for my session and make hotel reservations for that weekend in November.  Professionally, this is about as huge as my winning the assistantship at OU.  Personally, it’s a little scary.  The last time I did a presentation like this I was a junior (was I a junior?  I think that was the summer between sophomore and junior year) at Grand Valley State presenting on our work at 20KT275 and 20KT276 at Student Scholarship Day–a completely different animal.  I wasn’t flying solo on that one, for starters–I was presenting with two other people.  This is all me, and while the work on the subjugation of Wales under Edward I dovetails with my thesis research, it’s different enough that it’s going to take a bit of additional research to really get this together to my satisfaction.

On another note, officers and I announced that we’re shaking the RoA tree.  Some people are enthused, I’m not sure how others feel.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed, since I’d definately hate for this to fail.  I’m glad that we’re no longer working in the dark, though.  Folks know that we’re doing something, which is good.  Very good.  I have to get myself working on the charter documents based on what we have so far, since the whole IC angle of the mess seems to be my strength (well, no, is my strength).  And think of what the next set of things on deadline are going to be, since we have a deadline on some things coming up…gee….tomorrow.  And then roll from there.  I want everything in place before I start my assistantship in September.

Still haven’t told my boss at the mall about the assistantship.  I’m putting off the inevitable panic she’s going to have.  I’ll tell her in a few weeks.

Posted on

Torg Update, session of 9 July 2009

So, two weeks ago in Torg, in the session I didn’t actually write anything about since not much happened, we’d picked up Amhotep, an Egyptian mathematician (read: math wizard-priest) that we’d met while we were in Cairo (this character is a replacement for Amarant) while still in London and then picked up Molotov Dolly (real name: Mable; Terran Mystery Man) on the way into what’s left of the Chunnel, having decided that it was probably the best and safest way to get to France from England.  After weathering another reality storm, we ended up running into an Executioner on the CyberFrance side of the Chunnel who told us to turn around and leave, or die.  Of course, we can’t turn around and leave since we have to rescue DeSoto, figure out this Odette/Mariah tangle, and get the Starfire Wheel back from the bad guys (ie, the pope).  So we keep going.  (Apparently, the executioner also told Mei Lin that it was nice to see her again.  How delightfully odd.)  At the far end of the tunnel, we find a red, sharp-edged metal spade made of the same sort of material as the executioner’s helmet with the name “Carrie” on it–Carrie being the real name of our very own Grace.  This was two weeks ago.

This week, we trekked through the French countryside.  Of course, someone has informed the local lord that there are strangers in his land (I’m going to lay odds on the executioner, but who knows who told him) and he tracks us down.  Luckily, we bluff him into thinking we’re not as weird as we actually look (…of course, now that I think about it, this could totally be a trap and we just walked right into it — Ren should PROBABLY pull Grant and Mable aside and share this fear) and the local lord, Faust something-or-other, invites us home with him, assuming that Ren, Grace, and Anhotep are servants to Mei Lin, Albert, Grant, and Mable.  This results in three of us basically being left to our own devices when not needed by our “lords and lady” or being summoned to prayer (upshot of the prayer part is that Ren’s learning more and more about the differences between Catholicism and the new orthodoxy in France) and thus left us to sit back and be entertained by the social blunderings of poor Mei Lin, who is posing as a young male cyberknight.

Who got us invited to go on Crusade.  Lovely.  At least it gets us on the road to Avignon.

On the road to Avignon, Ren told Mable what she knew about gospog fields after mentioning that there could be real trouble if all the people Lord Faust had been rallying actually decided to go on Crusade against the demons–they’d just be more bodies to plant.  The next night on the road, Mei Lin gets a strange feeling and wanders out into the woods, only to run into something she described as a Techomage–something she thought was only a myth.  He had said his name was Galen, and then spouted something at her about a prophecy — apparently, we’re in the second round of a prophecy, one where we must “wake the sleeper.”  Albert suspects the sleeper is Odette.  Anhotep dropped Mei Lin into a vivid dreaming to hopefully find out more information….and waiting for her to wake up is about where we left off for the night.

So, apparently CyberFrance is going off to war against the Technodemons that were assaulting NATO forces that Ren was formerly attached to in Germany and further east.  Bloody glorious.  We’re all in scads of trouble.  Scads.

Posted on

Post-vacation update #1

Back from Wisconsin, and what a glorious trip without worrying about work calling me it was.  I got a bit of writing done, both WoWFic–including starting a new story, “Family Ties“–and work on Epsilon (Jen mentioned last night after her perusal that there was a marked shift between Sam Cooper’s attitude toward Aaron in one scene and her reaction to him the next morning.  I promised her it’d make sense later).

I’m still working in part on the revitalization efforts for Sentinels (US) — the RP community has suffered since the opening of Wyrmrest Accord and everyone has seen a sharp decline in numbers.  But at the same time as it’s brought out the lazy in some folks, it’s brought out the best in others.  One of the new blogs on the blogroll is one of those “bests” — Ravine of Lichbane has started a new blog with fiction and discussion of RP issues that I plan to be following closely myself.

Other recent addition to the blogroll is Erik’s blog.  I’ve known Erik and gamed with him for a long time (back since the days when I was almost exclusively doing things ISRP).  Lately, he’s been getting his campaign setting ready to hopefully query more gaming companies with.  I’ve seen bits and fragments of it, and while 4E is Greek to me, the flavor bits and pieces (which I think he really wanted me to pay attention to) are looking pretty good.

Also poked at Aurora Force with a stick, got set up for Michael Bullian’s tragic death at the Battle of Ithor.  I probably need to start drafting how that’s going to happen so I have it together and ready to go when we get that far.  If we ever get that far.

All in all, considering I spent several hours by a pool every day I was away, it was a pretty productive trip!  I’ll have to post pictures up here soon.

Posted on

Torg update – session of 11 June 2009 (part 2)

So Tolwyn’s awake but bad things are still coming our way.  Mei and I send Grace down to the castle bailey (she was at a heavily wounded health level at that time — a little worse off than my own wounded level, but what’re you going to do?).  We’re still down three men — Tyche hasn’t joined us from Avalon yet (we left her behind with Nicodemus) and Albert and Amarant are lost in the city someplace.  Great, just great.  Albert shows up poisoned and whimpering as a werewolf.  That gets fixed.  He has no pants and pouts as usual.

And then the crap starts landing.  Gargoyles, giant hellbats, and the Dark Lady–who looks exactly like a dark mirror of Tolwyn.

You can imagine what the first words out of my mouth were.

Epic combat ensues.  Things decide I’m tasty and chew on me.  About the fourth time, as I’m going to go stab something in the face…the something I was about to stab suddenly has its head explode.

Thanks, Grant.  I was about to vent my frustration on that.  So not only am I being rescued by my potential love interest, I’m also being shown up by him, since I’m not really a combat oriented character in the first place.  So much for somehow convincing him I’m not some sort of damosel in distress (though I’m sure it went miles toward convincing him to actually believe that I’m not Allison, his wife).  So before I can run off and stab something, he spins me around and points and says, “We have problems.”

Well, duh.

And then I notice that Mei is out of her suit and yelling in Chinese and think “Oh man.  Not again.”  So I go to her.  And try to get her to reconnect.

It works on the second try!

Of course, then there’s a dragon crashing down into the middle of the city, fighting something fugly and made of plants.

And then it decides Albert is a tasty treat and flies off with him.

Then, Tyche and the fey pull a Gandalf at Helmsdeep and come to our rescue.  The batle turns in our favor, though Tolwyn’s not in good shape and the Dark Lady isn’t anywhere to be seen.  Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.  But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Tyche has a ritual that’ll fix the seal on Draconis but at the same time seal off the Realm of Magic from the rest of the world.  I, of course, don’t like this much, especially when she says that she’s staying in the Realm of Magic.  Knee-jerk reaction is “there has to be another way.”  Eventually, I accept the inevitable, though I don’t like it.

Here’s the kicker:  There has to be a regal sacrifice.  Someone of regal blood has to become the living barrier between the material world and the Realm of Magic.  Amarant (being the Emperor a la his Tarot card) volunteered.

Of course, I’m liking this plan less and less every second.  But I’m not getting a vote.  So I get Tyche on the guilt train so she’s not happy, either.

In the end, we go down two characters — Tyche goes into the Realm of Magic to stay and Amarant becomes the barrier.  I told Tyche to kick some frog god ass for me.

And then there were four (well, five including Grant, who was scandalized that I forgot him in my protests against the plan–I countered with “Are you going to stick around?” and got an answer I could live with).

And we’re supposed to go to France next?  We’re doomed.

Posted on

Torg update – session of 11 June 2009 (part 1)

Well, crap.  I’m in the process of updating Ren’s journal after last night’s session and several weeks of not having between-game journal time (because all of our previous cut points had zero downtime involved–and I do mean zero downtime; we’ve been cutting in the middle of combat scenes, or right between combat scenes that were blending together with scant amount of time between to do anything other than patch up wounds).  It’s going to be a huge entry, because lots happened.

Aysle, when we got there, was in a state that can only be described as “totally screwed.”  London was beseiged by the Armies of Dark and the seals on Draconis were breaking down.  Oh, and the fey had all disappeared.  None of this was a happy thing at all.

So guess who drew the suicide mission to find Queen Mab, leader of the fey, and talk her into fixing the seals on Draconis?  That’s right, us.  So off we go to find our way to the Realm of Magic.  Adventures in fey lines ensue (walking through walls what?) until we come to Ys, where I banished an evil frog god back to whence it came (it’s still angry about that, by the way, and wants to eat my soul).  There were zombies there, wandering around half underwater.  So we fight zombies to get to a place where Tyche can open a doorway into the Realm of Magic.  Except there’s a problem.  Tyche screws something up and can’t open the door.  So Albert opens it.

Albert is never allowed to do that again ever.  Ever.  And I mean that.

We wander aimlessly through dark parts of unseen areas of cosms until Nicodemus finds us (he’s a half-pint of a fey that’s quite literally on speed) and leads us through the Wasteland into Queen Mab’s realm.  At which point she tells us that she can’t help us and sends us on a suicide mission to help her so she can be freed up to see what she can do about our problem.  Caught between a rock and a hard place, we head out to Avalon to fight some demons who are trying to break through into the Realm of Magic.

Demons.  I hate demons.  Mei hates them more, I think–no, I know.  Grace gets more pwned.  I get pwned.  Explosions ensue, but not before I scare myself doing some sort of crazy gun move that belongs in a Wachowski Brothers film (note to self, talk to Grant about that later).  So we manage to stop the demons from breaking into the Realm of Magic.  Great!  Three Sisters of Avalon send us back to the outskirts of London.

The seige is not going well.  The bad guys have breached the outer city and are now beseiging the keep.

For the first time since he got the damn thing, Amarant’s plasma rifle became a good plan.  Imagine Mike’s excitement.

We cut our way through the city and three of us make it to the walls and get hauled up by Tolwyn, who’s directing the seige…who falls on her head in the middle of a rainstorm when bad things are trying to eat our faces.  Of course.  It’s been raining since we left Avalon, by the way.  Lovely English weather.  We get her up on the wall and then I spot smudges on the horizon.  More bad things incoming.

Good thing I have a skill for shouting orders and making people listen to me.

We manage to wake up Tolwyn, who agreed that they were bad things.  And it only got worse from there before it got barely a little bit better.

And I do mean barely better.

Posted on

Adventures in French Hoods – part 1

So, I’ve gotten everything I need for this French Hood.  Yay!  And I’m ready to start my adventure.

I’ve gotten a pattern from Drea Leed’s wonderful Elizabethan Costuming site for a French hood dating circa 1535-1540, traced it out onto my interfacing.  Time to cut, and then bind the wire to it.

After tracing out the pattern onto my buckram and cutting it out, I proceeded to start binding wire to the buckram–I used a heavyweight embroidery thread to do this, which other than being a bitch to thread onto my needle was actually very easy to work with and did very well.

All told, it only took about an hour and a half or so for this stage.  I think I may try it with stiffer wire — I’m not sure if the wire I’m using holds its shape well enough; but time will tell.  I’ve got enough jacquard to do this at least twice.  So we’ll see what happens.  I may ask Trish about it tomorrow at game — she may have a tip or three about it.