The group sends a message by courier to the Shreev Molok and the Eminent Compulsor. They don't expect back up to arrive for hours, so they must prepare for the rendezvous with the mysterious Wol Zunderbast themselves.
As anyone faced with nothing to do but wait and the ability to expense luxuries, they order room service: grilled velocipede haunch with a side of turnips. Antor requests his well done to the scandalized reaction of the staff. When Nortin opens the dome on his dish he finds a large, fat worm-caterpillar thing with glowing, strobing eyes.
The creature was attacking them psychically! They had to struggle to avoid its soporific effect. They attacked the creature, and Jerfus finally knocked it to the ground, smothering with his bulk.
At that point, the man calling himself Wol Zunderbast revealed himself. He was then wearing the traditional garb of a professional assassin. He had an organic-looking ieldri style needle gun pointed at them.
The group firmly declined his offer to politely allow him to kill them. A combat ensued, a mix of successful moves and almost slapstick failures. Despite Zunderbast's superior skills, he was out-numbered, and Antor and Yzma had distance weapons.
So far as is known they have two sexes. Bidirectional hermaphroditism occurs, so that an individual may switch sex several times in a lifetime. The triggers for these changes are unknown, and it seems to be a topic they are reluctant to discuss with other species. Personality changes occur along with their sex, and o'omkaro society accommodates this shift in its members, altering responsibilities and roles as needed.
Many o'omkaru are followers of cultural fads (especially those from other species) and many are collectors of some sort. Almost any new religion, political philosophy or art form they sweeps known space is guaranteed to count o'omkaro among its enthusiasts. O'omkaro history has been painted but historians of other species as a churn of secret societies, revolutionary ideas, and religious awakenings.
The year is 2979 and the PCs are the (former) crew of a corporate hauler doing a Luna-Ceres run. Finding themselves out of a job when their employer was bought out by Ares Corporation (the Martian baddies), they find themselves sitting in the Tycho City dive called the Free Fall Bar and Grill, listening to bad karaoke and spending their last paycheck. The characters are:
The group is approached by a woman who gives her name as Chandra Roberts. She's a lawyer who needs a crew to fly a salvaged ship back to Earth. She's offering 1000 Martian Yuan for a one day job. It's good money, so the group says yes, but almost immediately things get complicated.
A guy and some goons come in. The guy claims to be a Lunar cop and places Chandra under arrest. Something smells fun, though, because why aren't these goons in uniform? And why doesn't the leader's uniform have identification? When the group balks, one goon draws a gun.
When Hesperos quick draws his pistol, a fight breaks out. In short order, the thugs are on the ground courtesy of the stunners Zarek and Ganult have, but the real cops are likely on their way.
They flee the bar and as soon as they get a moment, Roberts reveals that she works for ORE, the Organization for the Renewal of Earth, and the ship in question is a stolen yacht that once belonged to Ares Corp chairman, Alexei Loehr-Zau, and seems to contain a drive with sensitive Ares Corp data.
Roberts wants the crew to help her buy by the data (and the ship) from pirates.
TO BE CONTINUED
Bao dwek Thabub (art by Steven de Waele)
Our Gnydrion game in Grok?! continued last Sunday. The group was all there:
Ensconced in a suite in the Thono Inn, expensed to the Eminent Compulsor, the group enjoys a nice dinner and a bit of rest. The next morning finds them beginning their investigations to uncover the identity of Wol Zunderbast. In doing so they encounter (and are distracted by) some of the other guests: Bao dwek Thabub, typically pungent hwaopt scholar studying something called "fey vortices" in the area; Sula Av and Tharom Welk an overly friendly couple on holiday from Ascolanth.
Finally, after leaving a message at the desk in a failed stratagem to find Zunderbast's room, they encounter the man himself:
He's intense and no nonsense but arranges a meeting later that evening with Nortin to discuss the "item" further. He also invites in the game in the casino (five frond hokus or thari or even quorn lancets) but Nortin declines.
With the meeting set, the group decides to take advantage of the famous gas bathes fed by the eldritch substance of the Lake of Vermilion Mists. They head to the bathhouse, but they are told its out of order by the inebriated engineer, Ormuz Halx, who raves at them briefly about something in caves that wants to kill everyone. Before they can dig into these remarkable claims, Gris Samber shows up to usher Halx away apologetically, citing his drunkenness as the source of his odd behavior.
The basic idea is the same, though. Civilization on Earth is pushed to the brink in the 22nd century by climate change and the political and social upheaval that follows it. Eventually war breaks up, and the Western world essentially collapses.
While all this was going down Silicon Valley and other wealthy futurist types had been developing their exit strategy by pushing space colonization through private companies to orbit, the Moon, Mars, and Venus. The forward-thinking government of China gets in on these efforts, and eventually a hybrid, corporate culture emerges on Mars.
So we fast forward a bit to a time where Mars has colonies established in Earth-Luna Lagrange points and is the colonial power seeking to rebuild (and exploit) the backward Earth. Martian colonial types and the Earthers that get with the program live in arcologies (like the Plexmalls of American Flagg!), but outside of those it's all warlords, mutants, and dangerous left-over bio- and cyber-weaponry from any number of wars.
There are also rebels out there. Earthers, sure, but also bioroid and cyber beings trying to escape exploitation by the rapacious Corporation of Mars. The Earth independence forces have secret bases in orbit and if not friends, at least allies on other worlds who would like to check Martian power--through proxies, naturally.
Anyway, beyond the influences mentioned about, others might be film/tv like Andor and Rogue One, Blakes 7, The Creator, Elysium, and games like Transhuman Space and Jovian Chronicles.
Well, I still don't understand the point of that as I haven't read Void Rivals or the Transformers series written by Daniel Warren Johnson, but when I read a review of Duke #1 written by Joshua Williamson with art by Tom Reilly, I got onboard to the universe in general.
Cobra Commander #1 followed a month later by Williamson and Milana. Issue 2 of that series hits comics shops today, I believe.
What they're doing is sort of Ultimate G.I. Joe (in the sense of Marvel's original Ultimate Marvel Universe), but the more realistic/modernized version of the cartoon G.I. Joe universe than Hama's original comics. Duke #1 opens at a point before there's a G.I. Joe, where Duke is a traumatized soldier (he saw a bud crushed in the hand of a giant transforming robot who the reader might recognize as Starscream) and his command structure (personified by Hawk) tells him he's mentally ill and dismisses what he saw.
Duke hooks up with a group of conspiracy theorists and discovers a link between the robot alien technology and M.A.R.S., who seem to be building a private army with advanced tech. The conspiracy group is killed, and Duke has to go on the run. Hawk is forced to send other elite troopers to bring him in--a group which the informed reader will recognize as including Rock-n-Roll and Stalker. Duke is renditioned to some sort of secret prison where he meets...
At this point, you are either the sort that this will appeal to, and you are already sold or it doesn't interest you at all, in which case these series probably aren't for you. I will say I think Williamson's stories for both series are a nice balance of fan service and inventiveness. The world is made more "real" in the sense of implications of alien technologies and human motivations, while retaining all the fantasticness (perhaps goofiness) of the source material. I wouldn't have thought he could make Cobra-La work, but he pretty much does.
After a bit of a hiatus, or Gnydrion game using Grok?! continued. The party was complete:
Inside the mysterious chest in the wagon was a device of the Ancients that the group surmised was the peddler's means of making his patent medicines. It seemed to be missing any substrate for manufacture at present. The group loaded up the chest with the device and personal supplies of the medications, which Antor and Jerfus wasted no time indulging in.
Back on the road, they soon were in sight of the resort on the banks of the Lake of Vermilion Mists. They turned over their caloot and hostler with a suitable tip. They also chose to confide in the make regarding their special mission, but then they swore him to secrecy.
They make their way into the main building of the Inn, where they are greeted by Yrleen Thono, the 25th generation of her family to operate the resort, and her husband, Gris Samber. They confide in the couple regarding their mission from the Compulsor. After overcoming Samber's qualms, they are allowed a look in the guest book. There is indeed a "W. Zunderbast" who has been there 5 days. Probably the malefactor they are looking for!
Yrleen has Merva, one of the servants, lead them to their suite. They have their luggage (mainly their appropriated chest) brought up to the room. They look forward to a dinner of lake gas steamed land crab and seasonal vegetables.
The basic idea involves a future Earth controlled by benevolent AI that is something those presented in the novelization to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Stross' Accelerando and a little like Watts' Blindsight. Most people are enmeshed in digital simulations to various degrees and have little, direct human contact. They're content to let the AIs run things. More individualistic, conservative elements of human society, still interested in physical experiences and challenges, have moved to the outer Solar System.
When a wormhole gateway left by a previous intelligent culture is discovered in the Solar System, the AI guides of the human race see the perfect way to channel the more erratic humans of the outer system: they open up the Frontier.
Exactly where in the galaxy (or perhaps the universe) the Frontier is located is unclear, but it's far from Sol. In a relatively small area of space compared to Sol's local environment, it has a number of human habitable worlds--and a few technologically advanced alien species.
Megacorporations are allowed to guide settlement of the region. Both the settlers and the AI on Earth ironically agree that a new society replicating the one on Earth shouldn't be created on the Frontier. To this end, technology is limited and controlled, policed by the Institute. This gives the Frontier a somewhat retro, "cassette futurism"-tinged vibe.
Eventually, the Frontier develops away from corporate rule, but after the unexplained collapse of the wormwhole back to Sol, there is war, and then an economic depression that paves the way for a corporate bailout and a re-establishment of central government via a "special-purpose district." The megacorporations promise to re-establish full representative democratic rule in time for the bicentennial celebration of human arrival on the Frontier.
A fight broke out as one kept blasting them with glowing orbs, while the other triplicated himself and attacked. The party triumphed, but only after depleting poor Dagmar's healing magic keeping them from going down. They wore forced to take a long rest in the barricaded room and wind up having to bluff a Phanfasm and his goblin troops once and them stay quite when some other (unseen) wandering monsters came sniffing around.
The next room contained the crystalline Gob, himself--or more precisely, Gob's self-image. He was at work on some sort of geometric equations and fretting over the elementary particles responsible for good and evil. The party got to ask him some questions about the origins of the world, discovering that Azurth was a sort of "terrarium" and outside it's "event horizon" was the rest of the universe. Whatever any of that meant!
After that, they had to backtrack to the domain of the Snooty Elves to go another direction. They found a room with a red crytal altar that held another piece of armor, a greave, floating in the middle of the room. When Waylon tried to grab it, he was frozen in some sort of stasis field. The party tried dispelling it (didn't work), then moving things with mage hand (didn't work in the duration of the spell), but finally Erekose was able to drag Waylon out. They then used mage hand to put a noose around the greave and they took turns slooowly dragging it out of the field.