TOE-FAT COUNTRYSIDE: Session Seventeen (Guest Post)

With the new year we decided to pick up our campaign with the hope of finally getting to play Iconoclasts. As I am still working to prep a few things I asked one of my friends to run a couple scenarios for the group. This week they ran a modified version of In Darkness We Wait set in Afghanistan. Since I didn’t know anything about this scenario I actually got to play as an Agent this week. I’ll leave the rest of the explanation to the Handler.

Atoll of the Shark God: Session Seven

In the hold of the ship, Aedric dreamed of cursed items. The talking bone-sword, the clay tablet, the green amulet, the coral ring, and the shark-tooth pendant danced around him, laughing. Then he awoke to the noise of something snuffling through his pack. It was the nightmarish fish monster! Slightly smaller than before, but still just as horrible. Vraifigi was already awake, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. She leapt onto its scaly back and carved chunks out of it with her shiny dagger. Mateo cast Light so the rest of the party could actually see. Simon stumbled out of his hammock and threw his own dagger directly in the beast's eye. It sunk deep into the socket, only to rocket back at him as the old eye fell onto the floor and a new one popped out to replace it. Then Francesco chopped it in half with his sword.

Atoll of the Shark God: Session Two

Josian awoke to the deafening sound of a trumpet. When she ran up to the deck, assuming the worst, she found that it was just the sailors playing with the Shofar Ram. They were hazing each other, seeing who could last the longest in the cone of its sonic attack. The rest of the party was unable to get the sailors to hoist them back up to the ship for the night, so they sent Mr. Feathers to find Josian. 

Back on the ship, Aedric tried on the blue shark-tooth necklace. He was immediately overcome with hunger, but also a sense that feasting on fish would make him stronger. He also found himself unable to take it off. Aedric called upon the powers of the Grain Goddess to fill his belly so that he might discard the cursed item. The party briefly entertained the idea of cursing Portygul with the necklace, but realized a very hungry dragon was probably a bad idea.

Atoll of the Shark God: Session One

The Satyrdance still had a month's left of contracting for the crew, and Aedric had received word of a new treasure site from the church of the Grain Goddess. So they sailed south to the titular atoll. With the better weather, they were able to fully survey the islands with Josian's spyglass. They could see a small orange dragon lounging on the beach next to a longship and decided to make landfall further south. The southernmost island proved to be full of nothing but seals. The Satyrdance continued clockwise around the atoll until they spotted a large ram atop a hill.

Low Tide on the Spit: Session Three

The party returned to find the Iron Cup fort in lockdown mode. Too many people had gone missing and they weren't letting anyone in or out without express permission from Tovosia. So the group decided to spend the night on the Satyrdance, anchored at the shore. 

They set sail at first light for the southern tip of the southern-most island. With Josian by their side, they hoped to incapacitate the pirate crew by spamming Sleep. However, as they sailed down the eastern shores, they were once again distracted by an interesting sight. A massive rock formation with steam billowing out of the base where the stone met the sea. The steam seemed to be coming out of shore-level caves. Once the party was sure the caves wouldn't flood and drown them and that the steam wouldn't boil them alive, they entered one.

Low Tide on the Spit: Session Two

The party woke up the next morning with the intent of finding the pirate ship Man's Fate. As they began to circumnavigate the southernmost island, Josian spotted a large shape in the fog. It was so far away that not even the spyglass could resolve its features. Was it a ship, an island, or a massive sea monster? Nobody knew. The group held a vote and unanimously agreed to investigate. As they sailed closer, a tall craggy island stretched out of the fog, rocky and dotted with trees. A little above the shoreline, a dolmen was nestled into the cliff side.

Low Tide on the Spit: Session One

The survivors of the Lost Vineyard were sailing towards The Spit, an archipelago of sub-polar islands currently experiencing a record-breaking low tide. Vraifigi had christened their ship the Satyrdance. Josian stood at the prow, peering into the fog with her newly purchased spyglass. Simon slept in the hold, waiting for an important message to come to him in his dreams. Amalia watched her hawk, Mister Feathers, fly alongside the ship, while she entertained her hounds, Behemoth and Leviathan. Aedric chatted with his retainers, four humans from Caecely, home to the infamous caecillians. Mateo the Magic-User, Theresa the Thief, Carlotta the Cleric, and Francesco the Fighter explained that they were massive worm-like beasts sometimes farmed for their milk.

The Lost Vineyard: Session Four

 

 

Aedric, Josian, and Vraifigi awoke to find a note from Gwimbly telling them he had left to go join a halfling guerilla group. As they discussed their plans for the day, they heard the sound of galloping hooves. Amalia Benedek rode into their camp and tumbled off her horse, who immediately collapsed. She started cursing and kicking it. Josian made a movement to save the horse with the healing power of Mercy, but Aedric pulled her aside. The horse required more divine intervention than the two of them combined could muster and it would be best to stay out of the way of the new heavily armed and armored arrival. Amalia explained that she'd been fighting in the crusades in the Sanctuaries until she and her horse were blown off course by a djinn whirlwind. Completely unaware of her sister's demise, she joined the party to sate her bloodlust. After all, there was a dragon wyvern to kill!

The Lost Vineyard: Session Three

Josian stumbled back into the Megaron's cellar to find Aedric had woken up. He wasn't surprised to see a new face, other people had to have heard the rumors of this place, and surely some of them had to be insane enough to go investigate. Both of them were surprised when Vraifigi popped out from behind one of the Megaron's cyclopean stone walls. 

The Lost Vineyard: Session Two

 

Ancient Stone Tower by William Henry Holmes

Márta Benedek awoke to find her companions fast asleep. Blaming the laziness of alcohol-drinkers, she squinted into the rising sun to see two figures walking towards the Megaron.

• Josian, a woman with short hair and a red scarf, marking her as a Lawful worshipper of Mercy in its original aspect, here to restart the winery
• Charl, a bearded man with colorful poofy clothes over chainmail, sporting a zweihänder and massive codpiece, here for the same reason

The Lost Vineyard: Session One

My friend mellonbread has been toying around with Skerples' Monster Overhaul. He recently used it to write up a little adventure, which I thought was really cool. So my regular Delta Green group (plus some other folks) is taking a break to play some OSR.

TOE-FAT COUNTRYSIDE: Session Fourteen

The "fearsome foursome" were summoned to Denver to investigate a dead construction worker who 'woke up' in his body-bag, chanted something in a strange language, and then went back to being dead. Aside from maybe their ordeal in Baghdad, the Agents hadn't encountered something this overtly supernatural from the outset. Still, no one seemed to be in immediate danger, so the group decided to stick to their regular cautious approach. Jim asked the case officer for a copy of the bodycam footage and headed to the library to try to translate whatever the corpse was saying. 

TOE-FAT COUNTRYSIDE: Session Eight

When Jim and Taylor left the Abu-Ghraib prison complex, they had a message waiting for them: there's another Khawla sitting in a Baghdad police station. The two sped off to snatch her up before, in their case officer's words, it "ends up on the front page of Al-Jazeera."

TOE-FAT COUNTRYSIDE: Session Seven

For the next scenario, I decided to have one of my friends run Jessica's Bodies, or more accurately, Khawla's Bodies, as they 'ported' it to Iraq, right after the US pulled out.

The group's case officer briefed them on the situation. Two parents refused to accept the bloody corpse they found in their apartment was their daughter, Samira. The Iraqi police tested her DNA and found she was an exact match for a woman who had been killed by her ex-boyfriend a few weeks ago, Khawla Rahim. They chalked this up to shoddy labwork and asked the remaining Americans to double-check their work. They got the same result.

TOE-FAT COUNTRYSIDE: Session Six

Picking up right where we left off, the group parked their truck outside the quiet zone's perimeter and proceeded on foot. Soon, they had entered a strange world of fog and distorted sounds. Thanks to the Taylor's wilderness survival skills, the team was able to evade four Leng Spiders disguised as men and riding a fifth Leng Spider as a "horse" long enough to brace themselves for the arachnid cavalry charge. It was harrowing and chaotic, but everyone kept their cool and somehow no one got bit or hurt. 

TOE-FAT COUNTRYSIDE: Session Five (part 2)

The next morning, Big Bill made sure to arrive at ISI HQ as early as possible. When Akhtar Ghazali exited the building, he was waiting, leaning against a rented car and smoking a cigarette. When she drew closer, he offered a hand, "Hello, I'm special agent Fox Mulder and I think we have some common interests." Ghazali stared at him for a few seconds before plucking the cigarette out of his other hand and grinding it underfoot. Bill grinned, "Okay, but I do actually work with the American government and I think we should talk before anything bad happens to you." Jim drove the two of them back to her apartment. 

TOE-FAT COUNTRYSIDE: Session Five (part 1)

Bill interrogated the two ISI agents using his red beard and faked accent via fluency in Chechen to pretend to be part of the Taliban. "Just because the big man is gone doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. Now tell me, why does the ISI care about a UFOlogist?" In the scenario, agents Mirza and Kalmati are written as unflappable and tight-lipped. But I figured the recent course of events was enough to shake them up. Mirza explained al-Zahabi had tipped them off to a downed aircraft in North Waziristan and that the higher ups were very interested. There were machinations going on, but the conspiracy didn't go all the way to the top. It was just a new project within the ISI, albeit a large one. Jim drove them to the hospital where Chester unceremoniously rolled the unconscious Kalmati out of the truck bed and onto the ground. As they drove away, they could see Mirza frantically making a few calls on his phone. Pretending to be Taliban was a smart move, as ordinarily the ISI agents tell al-Zahabi the CIA is looking for him and that he needs to get out of town.

TOE-FAT COUNTRYSIDE: Session Four

Over the past few months, I've slowly been running a Delta Green campaign for some friends in an attempt to finally run Iconoclasts. Glancy's new magnum opus suggests running it as a capstone for experienced Agents, and the pregens on offer all have two damaged veteran packages to match. But I thought it'd be more fun to manually put the Agents through the wringer. Plus I wanted to get to know them better so I could make Iconoclasts pop.

The campaign structure is an alternation between scenarios set domestically and ones set overseas, usually in the middle east. I'd already run them through tormsen's Enemy of the Tribes. Our cast consists of

• Jim Coake, an FBI agent focused on artifact smuggling.
• Gabriel Almeida, a very large FBI special agent
• Nelson 'Doc' Taylor, former navy medic, currently pursuing a new career at the CIA
• William 'Big Bill' Chester, a retired SEAL turned CIA Paramilitary Officer and communications expert.

Big Bill and Doc Taylor were already in Pakistan because of their jobs, while Jim and Gabriel were generously flown out on Delta Green's dime. A month ago, a team of Navy SEALs filled Osama Bin Laden with bullets. In the process, an encrypted flash drive containing an exchange between Bin Laden and the local Taliban was discovered. Once cracked, it contained enough hints of something spooky that Delta Green assigned a team to investigate.

Ankhs but no Thanks - A Play Report

 

a plaster cast of the titular ankh

I ran Ankhs but no Thanks, a Delta Green scenario by mellonbread. The party consisted of:

Karina Lask, AKA 'Rowan,' a woman in her mid forties who still looked twenty-five thanks to a vampire bite that so far has had no other effects.

Sophie Walley, an actual twenty-something who worked for the CIA's Covert Influence Group who would look more at home on someone's Instagram feed.

They were told a coroner friendly in New Jersey had found something weird and wanted Delta Green to check it out. The coroner's office was a converted bungalow with a climate-controlled shipping container shoved through a hole in the wall. It served as a relatively more secure lockup and after sealing the gaps between the metal and the bungalow's drywall with insulation, it kept the office cold too. Despite the ramshackle nature of his workplace, Dr. Goldberg was a real doctor and kept his certificates framed on a wall. He showed the Agents over to his find.

ANGUISHEDWIRES session three

After a long hiatus, it's time to run ANGUISHEDWIRES again! Or rather it was, since I ran it last night. The usual crew couldn't make it, so it was up to Litho resuming his role as Octavia, and a new join, Goliath, who dropped in with Zo, a man almost religiously devoted to martial prowess.

I'd finally written up enough of an equipment list to start using it, so it was time to shop. Between sessions, Octavia had recruited a cadre of eleven hirelings, for a mere 56 SP per day. Four men-at-arms, two crossbowmen, three porters, and two thieves, all of them 2nd level. At thirteen strong, the party crossed the river and marched into the dungeon.