Highmoon's Ponderings

Something has been made clear to me from the discussions we’ve had here in the past month or so due to my posts on the Lady Blackbird game and now on the post about Vampire: people want to hurt my characters, “beat the living snot” out of them, as was put by both Mick and Rich. The reason for this is that they both feel that the characters they have seen of mine in a game have been Machiavellian double-crossers playing both sides of the game. And they are absolutely right.

I’d never really stopped to think about it until Mick pointed it out in an in-character comment on his blog in which he called my character, Kale Arkam, a “manipulative loudmouth prick who thinks he knows more than everyone else in the Blue.” That got me thinking, as I wasn’t actively trying to play Kale as manipulative, though he certainly was playing both sides of the equation. This is also the case with my character in the Star Wars Primetime Adventures game we’ve played at Gen Con, Obi-Wan Skywalker, who has been revealed to be both aiding the Rebellion and be in league with the evil Sith lord, Dark Ackbar, at the same time.

So I started thinking back to other characters I have played in the past, and though it isn’t an universal constant, I came up with other characters cut from the same cloth, including an ex-Imperial Scout Trooper who had defected to the Rebellion in a game of Star Wars D6 back in the early 90s. I guess to this I can add all the NPCs I played in our late-90s Vampire chronicle, as well as my main NPC character in the Changeling chronicle, and even my D&D character from the legendary campaign we played while in high school. All these characters have one thing in common: they all walk the line between good and evil.

Cue Alien Sex Fiend here.

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Yesterday I was supposed to be studying for a Psychology test but I could not concentrate. In letting my mind empty for a few moments to see if I could get in the study zone, it instead wandered over to my past, to the late 90s, to Vampire: The Masquerade. This isn’t out of nowhere; recently I’ve been talking to Rich Rogers of the Canon Puncture Show (the GM in my recent Lady Blackbird game) about Vampire: The Masquerade. He was also a huge fan of the game and ran a long chronicle around the same time I did. I told him it would be fun to revisit that game with the tools and techniques we have learned since for more story-driven style of play and he agreed. We’re kicking it around and maybe we’ll do something with that in the future (maybe Megacon, if I manage to go?).

Vampire. That game still has a hold on me even though I haven’t played in about a decade. It was my first foray into personal stakes in a roleplaying game, even if I was crude about achieving that, if I ever did. Read more…

Another tale of Ierne:

He held her arm as she took her first step up the hill towards the gate. “You can’t go there,” he whispered.

She looked at him with a curious look. “Why’r ye whisperin? And why I cannae go? Tis jus’ a ruin, tha’s all.”

She was beautiful, he found himself thinking. Her auburn hair spilled like an unruly cascade down her back and framed her plump face as she turned to look at him in a way that just made his heart ache. She was so beautiful. And she knew it. Used it to get her way many times. Used to make him do things he did not want to, used to do things he wanted to but felt too shy to do, used let her do things that she shouldn’t, things like going up the hill to the ruined gate. But she couldn’t. “I whisper because we are not alone in these woods. And you simply cannot go up the hill. And no, it is more than just a ruin.”

She gave him that practiced look of hers: full smile revealing only a sliver of her teeth, rosy cheeks pushed up making her eyes small and sparkly. Like every other time he melted inside. She was so beautiful. But he must stand firm.

“That there is a gate from another time, brought here by the Otherworld. The fili says the Tuatha travel through all places and times of Ierne, and sometimes things get dragged behind them. Like this gate. My grandfather’s grandfather saw it appear one day when in the woods training, I’m told. The fili also says we should not go up to it, lest we be pulled into the Otherworld. So no, you cannot go up.”

“Ye don’ wan’ me going to the Otherworld?” she teased.

“No,” he said smiling, blushing. “I want you here, with me.”

She looked at the ruined gate, its dark stones in stark contrast with the snow all around them. She looked at her young warrior-in-training, his strong hand still holding her arm. Gate. Him. Gate. “Let’s go back,” she said as she slid moved his hand from her forearm to her own hand.

They walked through the snowy forest, the cool air stilling everything around them except the sound of their feet on the dry ground. He put his arm around her shoulder, holding her to him, feeling her warmth, basking in the scent of her hair. She was a handful, but she was so beautiful. And maybe one day. One day…

She tripped him.

It was a simple movement of her foot, something he should have been able to recover from and turn into an offense, something his trainer would be ashamed to see him fall prey to. And fall he did, on his face. He managed to get up fairly quickly, but by then she was gone. He could hear her giggling ahead, running through the crackling underbrush, heading towards the gate. He called to her, asked her to stop, pleaded. She kept running, laughing. It was a game to her. It was horror to him.

He reached the foot of the small hill panting, but could not hear anything anymore. No laughing, no giggling, no sound of a young woman running, walking. Nothing. He looked down and saw her tracks headed up the hill, to the gate. Taking a deep breath, filling his lungs with cold courage, he ascended the hill as well. One step at a time. Matching her tracks. Left. Right. Almost there. Left. Right. Now at the gate. Left.

Nothing.

He stood with his right foot in the air, looking around for the next track. Nothing. The next one would be inside the threshold of the gate. He thought about it. He made a most minuscule move, almost a step. Almost.

He stepped back. All the way down the hill. She was gone. Into the Otherworld. Where he could not go. She’d be fine there, he thought, fighting back tears. She was so beautiful.

I found this photo (originally published at the Irish Independent website) linked from a post at the Irish Fireside Blog & Podcast about the recent freeze in Ireland. It caught my attention immediately, and I wanted to know what its story was. I guess now I know.

I also know what Ierne will be. But I’ll leave that for a post all its own.

I had to drive my car this weekend for a very short distance, but it was enough to remind me of something very important and which I need to keep firmly in mind: my car is slowly dying. It is loosing power steering fluid quite fast, it has a minor but consistent motor oil leak and the left wheel wobbles a bit at the point where it connects to the axle. To repair these would cost far more than I am willing to put into the car, so I basically now have a motorized carriage with a countdown. To add to the thoughts I already had going about the car, I got the tag renewal papers in the mail: $58 to get the new 2011 sticker. And insurance is just around the corner.

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A new vignette from Ierne:

From Thúr Rí they sailed, ten black small ships each carrying three soldiers. Three giant soldiers. Three giant Fomori soldiers.

The ships moved independently, pulled by some dark magic over the rough seas on their approach to mainland Ierne. On each mutated hand, each demon held a wicked blade as sharp as hatred, a blade that could tear a horse in half, a bull in quarters, a man in shreds. With these cruel instruments they tore into the sleeping seaside village, wasting no time to unleash death. Into thatched roofs they stabbed, through lime-covered walls they broke, spilling warm blood from warm bodies onto cold earth. Stomping over the village, towering over the sluggish defenders, they slashed at the small and slow targets as if they were little more than chickens in a pen come dinnertime. For dinnertime had arrived.

When it was all over, twenty-nine Fomori dined on the crudely-cooked corpses of sixty-four men, women and children. Sated, they capped the feast with the one fallen giant, fuel for more chaotic mutations, its strength absorbed into the rest.

On their own one or two feet, or in the bellies of the others, all thirty Fomori would reach the walls of Dún nan Gall and recover the stolen eye.

So did Balor command. So it would be done.

What I want to do with this is becoming clearer in my head. I still need to figure out some Aspects of the whole, see how they fit within the greater Fate of Ierne, but maybe in a couple of weeks I’ll be able to tell you something more concrete.

DriveThruRPG took an amazing initiative last week by offering $5 donation and $10 donation options for Haiti relief which would be matched dollar for dollar by OneBookShelf. Wanting to find a way to help out as well, publishers asked OBS what they could do, and the result is something that can only be called inspiring.

As of today, and for the rest of January, DriveThruRPG and a multitude of publisher partners, are offering the Gamers Helping Haiti $20 Donation Bundle. When you “purchase” this product, you donate $20 to Doctors Without Borders, the recipient charity of all donations collected via DriveThruRPG. As a gift, you get a bundle of products worth over $1400.

Click here to purchase the Gamers Helping Haiti $20 Donation bundle.

This is a win-win situation, as you help out a worthy cause and get some amazing RPG products for your collection. You have until January 31 to get it, so don’t let it pass.

My company, Highmoon Games, is proud to have included four products in the bundle for all those who help out:

1. Liber Sodalitas: The Dream Healers (Pathfinder)
2. Shrouded Agendas: The Purifiers (D&D 4e)
3. From Stone to Steel (OGL 3.5 Fantasy)
4. Frost & Fur (OGL 3.5 Fantasy)

The last two will only be available via the bundle and will go back to being “out of print” at the end of January.

Let’s all be a part of Gamers Helping Haiti.