- Issue #73 – Give Thanks
- Issue #74 – Bit Part Bad Guys
- Issue #75 – Kaiju for Christmas
- Issue #76 – Silicon Soul, Adamantine Will
- Issue #77 – Date Night
- Issue #78 – Delved Too Deep (Une Mascarade Brisée Part 1)
- Issue #79 – Tome of Secrets (Une Mascarade Brisée Part 2)
- Descendants Special #7 – The Curtain Rises
- Issue #80 – Bitter Work
- Issue #81 – Kin, Speed and Ducks
- Issue #82 – What To Do With Your Downtime
- Issue #83 – Avalon Rises
- Issue #84 – Darkness Falling
- Descendants Annual #7 – First Frost
Kareem felt vaguely guilty about having doubts about the potpie. Ugly it may have been, but it was also delicious and he was sad to see it go. The Dutch apple pie that came after was almost as good too. He made a mental note to come back to the diner some other time.
“So,” Juniper took a moment to drain the last of her coffee, “We should probably get going if we want to get to the show on time, especially with this rain.”
“I hadn’t even noticed it started.” Malcolm said, taking a look out the window to find a steady patter coming down, visible only in the beams of the parking lot lights. “But you’re right—especially with Virginia drivers. People here seem to think they can dodge the raindrops and won’t hesitate to make the attempt.” He slid out of the booth and stood to stretch and retrieve his wallet.
Kareem did the same, only to find Desiree sliding out right behind him. “I need to pay a visit to the little girl’s room.” She explained, then looked toward Juniper questioningly.
The other young woman shook her head and drained the last of her coffee. “I’m fine, thank you.” Desiree nodded and headed on her way.
“I think I’ll follow her lead.” said Malcolm. He took out a cash card and passed it to Juniper. “Wouldn’t want to end up in distress if I end up on stage. Be a luv and put everything on my card?”
“Sure.” Juniper chirped and sent him off with a bright smile.
A smile she turned on Kareem once her beau was gone. “So are you having fun?”
Kareem ducked his head. “I have to say that I am. In fact, I think I’ve found a new place for lunch in the near future.”
“That’s good.” said Juniper, relaxing a bit in her seat. “It’s nice to do normal stuff every once in a while, isn’t it?” Just as she said it, she scowled. “Um… I mean aside from Desiree. Not that she’s not… Er… you know what I mean, right?” Her tone turned pleading at the end.
“I do.” Kareem said calmly. While he trusted Juniper’s judgment that she’d already made sure no one was listening, he still scanned the room with his power, searching for surface thoughts directed at them. Sometimes an eavesdropper might not be visible.
When he found the coast clear, he continued. “Desiree’s protomorphism is a step below what we deal with on a day-to-day basis in terms of the unusual. Besides, Desiree is normal for me, and I know you didn’t mean what you said in a bad way.”
“I really didn’t.” She said, “Really, I don’t see any of the stuff Cyn or Lisa or Kay seem to. Maybe they just never gave her a chance.”
“That is my guess also.” Kareem reached up and scratched the side of his face. The more he shaved, the more his beard seemed to want to spring into being.
Juniper picked up a sugar packet from the condiment island on the table and fiddled with it. “So you’re really having a good time? I kind of got the feeling that something was bothering you earlier.” She had an uncertain expression on her face, and a moment later, when she looked up at him, he didn’t need his powers to read the hope in her eyes.
Looking for approval.
Looking for his approval.
Not for the first time and not just from Juniper either. Kareem failed to meet that gaze, not out of shame, but because he didn’t think he deserved it half as much as they thought he did. It was easy to seem wise when one could read minds and see astral bodies. It felt unearned.
He decided to earn a bit of it with honesty. “I will admit that I’ve never been on a double date before. Nor have I gone to an improv show like the one you described.”
His friend’s big, brow eyes widened in shock, and she tilted her head as if he was something she’d never seen before. “You mean… you’re nervous?” Somehow, she made it sound like she was afraid he’d laugh in her face at the assertion.
Kareem shifted his weight and leaned on the high back of the booth seats. “I would be lying if I said I was not.”
That earned him a slow, expressive blink followed by: “Really?”
“I… yes?” He tried to remember a moment in their lives together that would indicate that this should be seen as odd.
Far more sharp than most gave her credit for, Juniper quickly caught the subtext and blushed in embarrassment. “Sorry. I just figured that nothing could make you nervous.”
“Oh?”
Juniper fidgeted more with the sugar packet, shaking the grains from one end of the tiny envelope to the other. “You’re always so calm about everything. I never imagined something like being on stage could bother you. I love being on stage…”
“As lead singer for Snackrifice, you are on stage fairly often. Meanwhile, I have never been on stage for more than graduations. Performing is not something I’ve had much experience with.”
Her cheeks reddened by a fraction. “Oh. I hadn’t really thought of that. You know, they don’t call everyone up on stage though. And even if they do, you don’t have to go, that’s fine.”
“Does Malcolm go up on stage?” Kareem wondered aloud.
That made Juniper smile. Not just her usual, cute and friendly ‘sunshine’ smile, but a playful, kind of clever smile she only rarely showed. “He’s kind of like Desiree that way: looking at him, or even spending a little time with him, you don’t really get to see anything but what’s on the surface. I know I only thought of him as a nice, safe guy when we first met, but he’s a lot of fun once he’s feeling comfortable. Kind of like you, really.”
Kareem wasn’t aware that he seemed… un-fun… on the surface. He wasn’t even sure if that was something he should take graciously. From anyone else, he would have been perturbed. From Juniper, it was likely a genuine complement.
Er… I suppose…”
“Malcolm is the one that first took me to one of these shows.” Juniper said happily. “He knew I liked singing and acting and he thought I might like it.” Her smile turned self-deprecating. “It’s true what they say though; comedy is way harder than drama.”
Not really what Kareem needed to hear at the moment, but he wasn’t about to let Juniper know that.
“…But that’s part of the fun.” She added unexpectedly. “Sometimes you end up panicking and saying the first thing that pops into your head and it turns out so funny you make one of the actual improv guys—some of them are even from Second City—corpse,”
Kareem really wanted to know what ‘corpse’ meant, but Juniper was on a roll.
“And sometimes, you just get tongue-tied and that becomes the joke. It’s nice that way: even when you screw up, even when you do it really, really badly, it’s okay. That’s something we don’t usually get.”
Sometimes Kareem forgot that beneath her sunshiny persona, Juniper was as wise and thoughtful beyond her years as the others considered him to be. Suddenly it made a lot of sense why Juniper would like performing in all its forms—when she was Zero, failure could be a life or death prospect.
He nodded. “I think I understand now.”
She beamed at him. “I thought you might. Warrick wouldn’t get it. Cyn would just got to make fun of it. Melissa would get it, but I’d never get her to come. It’d be Night of Karaoke all over again.”
Kareem laughed. “Indeed.” As disasters at Freeland House went, the discovery that Juniper, Lisa and Kay were the only ones with even passingly decent singing voices might have been unique to say the least, especially when the auto-tune cut out in the middle of Melissa’s first and only attempt to join in.
Putting the packet of sugar back in its place, Juniper picked up the bill and left the booth. “See? I knew this would be a good idea. We really don’t hang out together enough anyway.”
“That’s true.” said Kareem, following her up toward the waiter’s station. “We should move to correct that.” In the back of his head, a weight started to lift. Like Juniper said, even if it might be embarrassing, it wasn’t like he was headed for a catastrophe.”
***
Litec throw back her cloak to reveal three miniature scabbards of hardened, red leather hanging from her belt over her left hip. Each one held a length of polished wood about the length of her forearm and the width of her index finger.
With a deft movement, she grasped one and drew out the wand of lubricate, twirling it between her fingers before bringing it on point. For a brief moment, the inscribed artifact’s form wavered into something inappropriate.
“It does not look like that!” spake the god in annoyance, at which point it returned to its normal form.
“Spoil-sport.” Vedan muttered, seemingly nonplussed about being caught in the molebear’s jaws.
Litec snickered. “Are you sure it doesn’t? I bought the imperfect version to save my starting gold.”
Upon hearing that, Vedan’s eyes widened, more worried about the wand’s typing than the molebear. “Wait. What?”
Eva groaned and palmed her face. “You did not.”
The undead woman rolled her eyes. “Oh calm down guys. Lubricate is one of the safest spells you can cast through imperfect implements. The only random factors on it are duration and area of effect. It isn’t like I’m casting imperfect spectral murders here.”
And upon saying that, she pointed the wand.
Everyone fell silent for a long moment
“…that’s a lot of 6s.” spake the god.
“Sixes mean you add five and reroll.” said Ghoja, taking a giant step back from the molebear. He knew full well that it wouldn’t be enough.
After another pause, the god cleared his throat. “Huh. So…”
A sphere of clear liquid the size of a human head appeared in the air directly above the molebear and by extension, Vedan. Then it exploded into a tsunami of slippery goo that washed across the forest floor, engulfing the entire party and one hundred and sixty more feet of terrain in all directions.
Soaked in the slick substance, Vedan popped out of the monster’s jaws like a cork from a bottle and slid thirty feet along the nearly frictionless ground.
Everyone, even the molebear, glared at Litec. The sorceress rubbed the back of her head (which made a sound like ‘splorch’ thanks to the ooze matting it. “Okay. So, the bright side is, as long as none of us uses any movement or grapple actions and we don’t try and pick anything up, this stuff really doesn’t do anything. Also, the molebear is in the same boat, so it’s good for us. We just need to think tactically.”
“…says the spellcaster.” said Eva, gripping her sword and trying to look as if she still had some dignity.
“You could throw your sword at him.” Ghoja suggested. “That’s what I plan to do with my hammer. If the knockback hits him while he’s covered in this goop, he’s screwed.”
As Eva pondered her action, Father Trephan had his eyes closed, communing with his goddess to figure out what spells he could request. After some deliberation, his eyes flew open. “Hold you action a minute, Eva. I have cleanse area. If I center it just right, I can remove the lubricant spell from all the squares between you and the molebear without removing it from the molebear.
Ghoja surveyed the distance and frowned. “Not quite. If you cast it now, you can get all the squares except the one Eva’s in.” He gave Eva a serious look. “You’re going to have to reposition.”
The swordswoman gave him a murderous glare. “Are you nuts? I’m in the third heaviest armor in the game. I have the balance stat of a drunk, three-legged turtle and half the Grace score. If I move—even a free reposition, I’m going flat on my back.”
“Okay.” Vedan said, still in her back herself. “Let’s think about this. We just need to get her one more tile of movement to reach the molebear.”
“Charge and leap?” Ghoja suggested, rubbing his broad chin with a gooey hand. Only after he did so did e realize what he was doing and desperately try to scrape the stuff off his face.
“She’d only get one attack before she lands in the goop and falls over—right next to the bear.” Father Trephan pointed out.
“Oh. Right.” Ghoja tried pulling up his shirt to wipe his face only to find that similarly doused. “Anyone got a potion they could toss her?”
Litec shook her head. “Even if we did, they’d be under the lubricate effect too and she’d have to roll to catch it. I’m really sorry about this, guys.”
“It’s fine.” Eva waved her off. “What were the chances it’d end up like this?”
“With our luck in games? Nine out of ten.” said Father Trephan.
“Anyway…” Vedan interrupted the non-productive tangent. “The bear’s just been hanging around for ten minutes while we gabbed. We need a plan.”
Ghoja scoffed. “Eh, let him wait. It’s your turn and he can’t do anything until you and Trephan act.”
The temple elf’s eyebrow twitched. “I’m never going to get used to turn-based gaming. Okay, so let me see what I can do…” After a bit of mental inventory, she smiled. “Hey, it turns out that Kip up isn’t a movement action for me: it’s entirely free.”
Bending her spine, she flexed her legs into the air, then snapped them down. Even with a good inch of lubrication on the ground, he feet planted firmly, giving her leverage to work herself up into a crouch from which she could stand.
She grinned and performed a complex series of motioned with her arms; striking outward rigidly, then bending her joints in sharp, jerky movements. “And for my next trick… Earth Furrow Fist!”
Stooping nearly to a knee, she jabbed the ground with the heel of her hand. In response, the dirt churned and parted in a rapidly extending line that extended from the point of impact to fifty feet in front of her, skirting just past the molebear. In the process, all of the lubrication goo in the path of the furrow was tilled under—including in the space adjacent to the molebear
Vedan smiled at her handiwork, then winked at Eva. “He’s all yours! Get ’em!”
To Be Continued…
Seems to me Warrick loses out gaming with people who don’t know about his powers. He could easily make custom miniatures for all the characters and have them walk around the tabletop on their own.
He did that in the original game he showed up in :p
So two groups possibly involved in events this issue: Warrick, Tink, JC, Meghan, Ron(Meghan’s boyfriend right?), Jamie(who?), and Kareem, Juniper, Desiree, Malcom. Will they be entirely separate, is one a red herring, will anyone’s identities be revealed in the chaos that appears to be inevitable, will anyone work out the most probable Tome mole, will Cyn start selling custom homemade clothes online because it’s no different than wool off a sheep? Why wouldn’t Warrick think his brain turning up the fantasy of a threesome healthy? It’s a perfectly natural thought given the unique circumstances, though maybe not healthy to his relationship(s) if it’s not shared.
And the most important question of all: Vaal have you decided what to put on 4th Wednsdays or keep using them for one-offs and/or well deserved time off for a while more?
“Kareem sighed. “But no. If you must no…”
Second ‘no’ should be ‘know’
Ron and Jamie were caught in the DeathGate virtual reality gaming system in the Gremlin and Game, and they were in the Immersion one shot.
Ron and Jamie also showed up in Crashers at the Halloween party.
Hmmm, stuff I can answer:
– The two stories won’t intersect, but all the segues link up so the last line of one section refers to the first of the next… if that makes sense.
– While nothing is revealed in this issue (It’s a fun, cooldown before Avalon Rises Parts 1 and 2), I can assure you we are in the last days of the Tome Mole plotline. It’ll be over before the close of Volume 8, and it is going to be either awesome or heartbreaking depending on the reader.
– Cyn really, really should. Sadly, it’s one of those things she would never think of on her own. Someone should suggest it.
– Warrick thinks the threesome is unhealthy because 1) he’s kind of old-fashioned and thinks of it like cheating on Tink and 2) PrimeTimeline!Meghan has not shown any sexual interest in him at all. She’s just a friend.
– Fourth Wednesdays, starting this month will host the proud return of So I Married a Supervillain.
Cyn actually thought about selling ivory and chitin all the way back in… *search function* …Issue #29: Little Girl Lost. While explaining to the readers that giant mutant arthropods are totally a thing in the Descendantsverse, because scientists make them to harvest for parts.
I’d like to imagine she was stymied by being unable to find a place that bought huge carapaces without asking questions.
She just needs to learn some new tricks. Once she figures out how to produce nacre she can make a nice living growing pearls.
“…an abomination until several gods…”
Unto.
I can’t help but shake my head condescendingly at the naivete of people wondering about something being in the local random encounter table. Any good encounter table will have entries for moving to other tables, and that’s how with a bit of rolling you get woodland random encounters like ‘a demon dragon teleports in from the plane of darkness to kill you’ or ‘That hill you set up your camp on? It’s a sleeping behemoth, and you just woke it up.’
I find it interesting to look at the style of play here. They’re very focused the actor stance, up to and including to discussing character builds in-character (which boggles me a bit), but at the same time the metagame runs rampant and they’re oddly stuck on the mechanics.
For example, they are actually playing out a scene of hunting because someone didn’t buy food. As opposed to hand-waving it with “I hunt for food since I’m broke” “You got skills for it? Okay then that’s fine, moving on” and getting back to the adventure.
Then again they may be doing it on purpose of course, to intentionally flex their builds a bit with some random fights. Might be something similar in play as my usual play group’s house rule that if a player insists on rolling for something they don’t need to roll for, that means they’re actively looking for a risk of catastrophic failure so any adverse results are scaled up to reward them.
Actually I should probably just shut up here. Doing so now.
I’m pretty sure we’re just seeing everything playing out in-game because it’s funnier that way. The narration actually tells us when Warrick is speaking in-character, and he hasn’t been discussing mechanics while doing so.
Yeah, all the table chatter is coming out of the character’s mouths and they’re mimicking what their players are doing (besides eating of course). JC let them actually go hunting because it was time for a random encounter anyway :p
This whole thing is a love letter to my old webcomic, Ledgermain Comics, where the characters lived in an RPG-Mechanics universe and understood the game rules like we understand math and physics. We’re shifting into maximum over-silly because Avalon Rises Parts 1 & 2 are going to be intense.
Wands of lubricate, bottles of oil… this all sounds strangely familiar….
I… I couldn’t resist.
“Back at camp, Litec was having the same reaction to the previously stoic Eva did the same.”
Doing the same I guess?
“The gravy seeping out from beneath the pastry lid of the potpie as orange.”
Was.
So, is “Coming Up Daisy” a real thing in the DU or are they making a reference to a fictional movie that appears in a real movie more than twice the age of the oldest character here? Which would probably mean at least one of them is a huge cinephile.
I was unaware of a real movie of that title, so yeah, someone used the obvious name I should have realized would have been taken sometime in the 2070’s.
Funny thing: novel authors don’t have to do clearance for stuff like this like movie and TV writers do.
Guess it’s a bit obscure, appears in the 2008 movie Burn After Reading. Wouldn’t have known about it either without googling, which is why I had to ask since I have no idea if there’s some characters and greeting like that in it.
In regards to the first typo correction, you could also change “to’ in the sentence to “as” making it…
“Back at camp, Litec was having the same reaction as the previously stoic Eva did the same.”
“The bear’s just been hanging around for ten minutes while we gabbed. We need a plan.”
This sort of thing is why in Macho Women with Guns there’s a rule that if you spend more than 10 seconds to think about what you do on a combat turn you get -1 exp (normal gain for a session is like 2-5 or so). You get this penalty again for every 10 seconds you spend thinking, and yes it can mean you get negative exp for a session.
Which is not to say I’m in favour of that level of strictness, just that I see the point. What I actually AM in favour of is that talk actions are actions, too, and you only get to make actions on your own turn so if the players want to start discussing a plan mid-combat they have to spend turns doing it, and the enemy gets to listen in if they understand the language.
Which can make for interesting complications when you find out in the middle of a tough fight that one of the PCs actually doesn’t know the language you used to keep the orc adventurers from understanding and as such has no idea what the plan is.
So that’s a fantasy roleplaying game with Shadowrun DNA as well as D&D’s? I recognise that mechanic!
I’ve never liked mechanics preventing/disincentivizing people from talking during the game, unlike Mazzon. It always seems to hit RP which is the point of the game after all. If slow decision making is a problem for some you try to push those people towards characters who don’t have a dozen subtly different combat options.
I feel what I said is being misunderstood here. Players chatting in-character is great, and should be encouraged. But if you spend 15 minutes chatting during a time period that in-game lasts like 10 seconds during which your character is in mortal peril, that’s not RP. That’s people pausing the game so they can chat out of character.
Which is fine, too, if that’s what people want. I’m as much a fun of pausing the action to frame what someone just did as an indication of an unwholesome interest in sheep as the next guy.
Now, getting to plan and trade information between characters during a fight is a big resource. If it’s something that a team used to working together could be expected to have planned ahead for then sure, let it slide and assume the characters actually just said something like ‘attack pattern theta, variant green five’. But if they’re trying to cope with a situation nobody saw coming, like what they have here, getting to plan makes a bigger difference than any single action any of the characters is probably capable of taking, AND I’d even say it detracts from RP since you miss out on the players coming up with what their characters do in the situation and in stead get the players figuring out how their pooled resources can best solve it.
In my experience though, ‘what the character would do’ goes out the window if the answer is ‘die’.
I get what you’re talking about, but really some of the most fun I’ve had on the player side of things was hashing out a stupid, complex plan while the DM looked on in utter confusion, shading to surprise when it starts to work.
Different strokes for different folks I guess. The people I play with are less into wacky cunning plans and more into safe, efficient by-the-numbers plans, so the fun stuff mostly starts happening when the plans break down (most common reason for breakdowns being that somebody decides they have a better idea).
Yeah, we’re more Antics4Life.
We like to THINK we’re about safe, efficient plans, but really we tend to degenerate to “let’s use the corpses of our enemies to make a barricade” alarmingly often…
Of course, considering our DM’s propensity to send hordes of surprisingly tough mooks at us, choke points are often just as valuable as enemy corpses are plentiful.
immanent stabbing
imminent
The Bastion is playing the giant dude.
Was that supposed to be The Blockade, professional wrestler and supervillainous Knight Amore Detestabilis?
to repay her min kind.
in
slipped into unconsciousness.”
no quotation mark
vestments instead f armor.
of
if he’s still think
he’ll
she covered her moth
mouth
After a big of thought
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talk to someone…” Thanks
no quotation mark
Everyone let’s here it
hear
rounding on Tyler with a glad
glare?
Thinking quickly in their feet
on their
It is indeed supposed to be The Blockade. Because he’s very thinnly based on The Rock.
Yay, wounds that actually do stuff! A clear improvement over certain nowadays popular systems in my book.