- 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
With the way clear, Eva brought her sword up, ready for the charge… and then did nothing.
The others all stared at her for a scant few moments… then all groaned as one.
“Don’t tell me it gets to act before you.” Litec said, pinching her nose in annoyance.
Father Trephan buried his head in his hands. “This is my fault. I suggested she change up from her usual and play a tank. Now all that armor means she’s slower than everything!”
Having heard all this, Ghoja looked at all of his companions, then at the molebear, then at himself. He was the only one still in reach of the monster without it taking any move actions. “…Ah shit. How many attacks is that?”
The god spake after some consultation of his holy writs. “Claw, claw, bite, auto-grapple check to latch on. Four.”
Ghoja looked up at the slavering maw and fleshy face tendrils of his opponent and squinted at it in contempt. “I can soak that.” Then his face went hard and he raised up his hammer. “Have at me beast. For every wound you lay upon me, I will repay a thousand fold. And when you are finally broken and dead, I will go to the house of the greatest shaman in the land, and he will conjure up your spirit so that I may continue my retribution until my dying day—at which point I shall come and find you in the spirit world. And make a fine coat of your fur.”
Following that mighty boast, the molebear responded with one of its own—it swung its huge, brutal claws toward the big man, roaring at his insolence. Hemmed in by the lubricant, the great warrior couldn’t dodge, but it would have mattered little, as the second claw struck home most mightily… and in a critical spot.
Claws made to crush earth and stone tore through armor and flesh offered little resistance. Ghoja was lifted bodily off the ground and flung back ten feet, a puncture wound between his ribs trailing blood. He hit the ground, limp, and slid another five feet long the ground. Unable to continue its assault, the molebear let out another roar at the fallen man as if taunting him to get back up.
The others all winced.
“How bad?” asked Father Trephan. “I can cast staunch wounds at range.”
“That’s… not gonna do it.” replied Ghoja, ignoring that he was unconscious from shock. “That critical hit was big enough to be a Grievous Wound. Unless I get a big heal in one turn, I’m toast.”
Litec frowned guiltily “I’m closer to you,” she told Trephan, “Maybe you can get to me and I can use our transfer ability to send it to him.”
“First thing’s first though.” Eva pointed out. “It’s my turn now. Let’s take down the molebear so it can’t get anyone else.”
“No, no. Don’t worry about me, just in System Shock, one turn to live. I’m good.”
Eva smirked. “Drama queen.”
“I’m up for Sancho in Man of La Mancha this spring, actually.”
“Really? That’s awesome.” said Vedan.
The god cleared his throat. “Unless Eva’s sword’s a healing shiv or a razorblade of remedy, there’s not a hell of a lot she can do for you.”
“Render aide on a healing check.” Ghoja suggested jokingly. “But actually, a sword that heals would actually be kind of useful. You pull your punch and deal one damage to heal six or something.”
“Point stands, unless you want me to euthanize you, I’m better off getting with the stabbing on Mr Mole over there.”
Ghoja (still unconscious and in shock) waved vaguely. “Don’t let me stand between the molebear and immanent stabbing. Have fun storming the castle.”
The god chuckled and spake. “God I love that movie. You know they’re doing another remake? The Bastion is playing the giant dude.”
At this Ghoja winced. “Seriously? How does he still have a career when he’s…” He suddenly remembered he was in mixed company, “…such an awful wrestler?”
Father Trephan and Eva both glared at him. “You did not just trash talk the Bastion.” muttered the former.
“You did not just get him started on wrestling.” added the latter. “You know, I stood in the rain two hours on his birthday to get Bastion’s autograph.”
“Stabbing. Roll.” spake the god.
“Right.” said Eva flourishing her sword in a quick circle before bringing it up into position for the charge. “Better make this hit matter. I’m going to charge, call my shot with Decisive Blow so if this hits, it’s critical automatically, then I’ll blow a Skeins of Fate point to get a second attack.”
That said, her mouth set itself into a firm line and her body slipped into a practiced martial stance. “Unnatural beast, the world needs to be cleansed of your filth! Have at thee!” As quickly as she could in her heavy armor, she loped across the chaotic battlefield to meet the molebear.
The monster growled and rose up on its hind legs to meet her. It proved to be its undoing.
Four feet of iron bit into its belly and carved an upward path until it caught in its sternum. The bone turned the last of the blow into a shallow cut up to the shoulder, but that was after several vital organs had been slashed open. Eva took a step to reposition, then flicked her weapon around again, drawing a bloody line across the molebear’s throat.
Blood droplets arced artfully through the air framing the image of the heavily armored woman holding her pose, sword extended, forward knee bent and rear rigid. She was more than aware that if the molebear survived her attack, it would have a chance to repay her min kind.
“Systemshocksystemshocksystemshock. Please say I made it hit System Shock.”
After a long (drama-preserving) pause, the mighty molebear shuddered and keeled over on its side, blood flowing from its copious wounds as it slipped into unconsciousness.”
“Yes!” The entire party chorused and whooped regardless of injured status.
“So… are molebears edible?” asked Vedan, “because if so, mission success.”
“Not yet. Someone do something for Ghoja!” Litec demanded, pointing at the injured man. He lay in a steadily growing pool of blood mixed with the mystically generated lubricant, unmoving.
All eyes turned to father Trephan, all delaying their own actions until after the priest made his attempt. For his part, the older man looked disheveled and nervous. “Okay, so I need to move five over slick terrain… good thing I’m wearing vestments instead f armor.”
With tentative steps, he started toward his fallen ally… and only managed to get ten feet before slipping and falling in a heap in the goo coating the ground.
No one else was in a position to do anything, and so brave and mighty Ghoja breathed his last.
***
Tink winced as JC brought up a little tombstone marker on the holographic map to mark the place of Ghoja’s demise. She looked sideways at Warrick and wrung her hands. “I’m so sorry, Warrick. If I hadn’t used my wand…”
Her boyfriend shook his head. “Then Meghan’s character would have stayed in that grapple and probably died. It’s not like you could have predicted that lube-splosion or JC’s rain of crits on me.” He leaned over and bumped her with his shoulder. “Besides, this just proves we’re low on magic mojo. I think I’ll roll up a shaman or a bard next week.”
Guilt not completely assuaged, Tink still gave him a mischievous smile. “Really? Because I was thinking of raising Ghoja as Litec’s revenant thrall. I wonder if he’s still think she’s so ‘foul’ once he’s undead.”
Across from them, Jamie blew a raspberry. “And here I thought you two weren’t going to do the ‘playing a couple’ thing. I’m glad we’re not that shamelessly disgusting.”
“Maybe we should be.” Ron smirked. “Though it’d be kind of gross in this game. Father Trephan is probably three times Eva’s age.”
Jamie snorted. “We could always kill him. Hey, Meghan, does your boy game? We could run some sort of couples scenario sometime. Maybe in HAC-King?”
A small sigh escaped Meghan’s lips. “That sounds great, but I’ve got no idea anymore what Hank’s up for. I get that he didn’t want to go to OrcConOne with me last month, but he’s been skipping out on a ton of things lately. He says he’s trying to focus on his studies, but that shouldn’t mean he’s got zero free time, right?”
Almost as soon as it came out of her mouth her eyes widened and she covered her moth with her hands. “Uh… never mind that. Now that we have our rations, we should get back to the plot.”
The others reluctantly and awkwardly got back to the task of extricating their characters and their new source of food from the lubricant. Meanwhile, Tink leaned over to Meghan and asked, “You want to talk about it? You know, after?”
“I don’t want to take you from Warrick. When you’re not here, it’s like the poor guy is lost.”
Tink smiled faintly at the idea, but shook her head. “He’ll probably spend a couple of hours hanging out with the others anyway. Long enough for us to grab a coffee and for you to vent.”
After a big of thought, Meghan ducked her head. “I guess it might help to talk to someone…” Thanks, Tink.”
“Hey, what are friends for?”
***
The improv group wasn’t anything like Kareem imagined. In his head, he thought there would be concert seating like at the theater, but the show was actually being held in the patrons lounge of the Old Commonwealth Theater, which had more of a club atmosphere.
While there was still a stage, it was in front of tables instead of theater seating, with a bar at the back. There was a bit of a noir atmosphere, what with the mingling smoke and low lighting on everything but the stage.
Malcolm had offered to buy them all drinks, and not to be rude, he was carefully sipping a rum and coke. There was no telling what being drunk and a telepath could lead to.
Luckily, alcohol wasn’t necessary to enjoy the show so far. It was like an old Vaudeville Variety Hour except the acts were determined by whatever the audience shouted out. And some of the audience members were very creative indeed.
“Thank you, ladies and gents, you’re just lovely.” the man playing the emcee said as the last act (really three of the same five people who were doing the entire show aside from himself) left the stage. “For our next act, we have Tyler and Mona. They’re going to do an animal taming act for you, but of course, you get the say about what kind of act.”
The aforementioned Tyler and Mona came out, acting as if they were afraid of what the audience would make them do.
“First of all, Tyler is going to be our animal, what I need from you is what animal he should be…”
“Dog!” shouted some poor, uncreative soul. This was followed by “Peacock!” “Giraffe” “Gerbil!”
“Penguin!” Juniper shouted with a huge grin.
“I think I heard ‘gerbil’ from the man over there.” said the emcee. “obviously not a fan of Tyler.” Tyler mugged and shook his fist at the audience. “None of that. You’re a gerbil now.” the emcee said. Tyler reluctantly raised his hands like paws and pulled back his upper lip to make buck teeth.
“Perfect.” said the emcee. “Now Mona is going to be taming him, only she’s not really a gerbil tamer. Let’s give here a different profession, what do you think? Any ideas?”
“Spots commentator1” came the first reply. “Hairdresser!”
Juniper half-rose out of her seat. “Drill sergeant!”
The emcee actually laughed. “Okay, that’s a good one. Everyone let’s here it for Tyler the gerbil and his trainer Mona the drill sergeant.”
Before the applause even died down, Mona had already leapt into character, rounding on Tyler with a glad. “What do we have here? Some kind of fuzzy-butt little rodent? Boy, this ain’t no saw-dust filled cage here. Ain’t nobody gonna just hand you pellets and a bottle of water. What do you got to say for yerself?!”
Tyler, still keeping his teeth bucked and without missing a beat replied “Hwwweeet!” and mimed scratching his head with his paw to uproarious laughter.
“This is pretty amazing.” Desiree whispered, cuddling up close to Kareem. “They got up there with no idea what they’d be doing and now look at them.”
Kareem nodded. “I must say I am impressed. Thinking quickly in their feet like that isn’t a simple thing. I can’t help but admire it.” And envy if only a little. The same trait in his friends had saved his life several times over, but his own victories came from ambush and brute force. He’d sought to improve himself by learning more about the astral, but given his control over the astral matter, some spontaneity and creativity would be an immense help.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Juniper watching the show intently. Of course she knew this already. Something else he would understand that the others wouldn’t. He needed to spent time with Juniper more often.
Too soon, the act was over, with Tyler forced to pretend he was running laps on a hamster wheel and failing because he was a comic, not a gymnast. Not that he didn’t do his best to try. Once more, the emcee took the stage.
“Alright folks, now’s that magical part of the evening; that time where you get to volunteer your friend to get up here with us and make total fools of themselves.” He pulled a face, “I mean, time for us to take volunteers from the audience. Let’s have two people up here to play a game with Tory and Mona.”
Several hands went up around the room, accompanied by drunken giggles. Juniper’s hand joined them almost instantly, followed by Malcolm’s. Kareem noticed that Desiree was keeping her hands on the table.
“You’re not going to try?” he asked.
“You’re not?” came the instant reply and a quirked eyebrow.
He gave her his best reassuring smile, the kind he was suddenly and oddly aware that he mostly used with Melissa and hardly ever needed with Desiree. “I will if you will.”
Telepathy wasn’t necessary for him to see the brief conflict going on behind her eyes before she nodded. “Alright, on three. One. Two…” They both raised their hands, making their table’s participation unanimous.
The emcee was making a show of looking around the room. Kareem wondered what it was he was looking for: people who looked embarrassed? People who seemed like they might do well? Probably whoever would make the show better, but he had no idea what ‘better’ was in this case. Then the man’s eyes alighted on them and on bushy brow rose.
“How about you, the lovely couple right over there.” He was pointing at their table. Juniper pointed to herself and he shook his head. “The dark gent and the… uh… lovely gray lady there. How about you two come on up?” His slip didn’t go unnoticed and Kareem looked over at Desiree to see if she took any offense. When she didn’t seem to, he rose and offered her his hand while Juniper clapped for them, followed by the rest of the room.
When they stepped up on stage, the emcee was there to greet them. “Thanks for coming up, folks. Mind telling the audience your names?”
The mic was trust into Desiree’s face and she rocked back to avoid it. After a moment to get herself back together, she offered a tight-lipped smile, “Desiree.”
When the mic came for him, Kareem was expecting it and didn’t flinch quite as much. “Kareem.”
“Desiree and Kareem. I don’t think I’ve seen you two here before—and I think I’d remember—so here’s what we’re going to do.” As the emcee spoke, two of the performers, Mona from before and an older, balding man named Tory, came out to stand on opposite ends of the stage. “The game is Questions, and in the interest of not making anyone jealous, it’s going to be guys vs ladies. Desiree, you’ll be teamed with Mona, Kareem, you’re with Tory.
“The rules are simple: One member of each team will be up at a time, and you can only speak to one another in questions. If you use a sentence, you’re out and your partner takes their place. Simple enough?”
Both nodded.
“Perfect. Let’s get to it then—give these two a hand, everyone!”
Kareem exchanged one last look with Desiree before moving over to where Tory was standing. The man gave a broad smile and extended his hand. “Hey, nice to meet ya.”
“Likewise.” said Kareem. “I’ve really enjoyed your show so far.”
Tory grinned. “Fun’s just beginning. You want to go first?”
Not really, but if he was going to give it a try, Kareem was willing to go big with it. Especially after Juniper had described him in such heroic terms at the diner. “I think I will.”
“Brave man.” Tory said, “That’s what we like to see. Who knows, you might impress your girl. Chicks dig the funny ones, you know?” At this, Kareem just nodded. In his experience, he was more of a straight man and it never seemed to hurt his prospects.
Soon enough, the emcee told them to start. Kareem stepped forward to find that Desiree apparently wasn’t so brave and he was facing Mona instead. The comedienne didn’t go easy on him, immediately miming as if she was holding something and asking, “Will you smell this and tell me if it’s gone bad?”
Muscle memory made him recoil. How many times had Cyn asked him that in their time living at Freeland House? He forced that reaction away, however, well aware that he was taking too long. “Er… why don’t you smell it yourself?”
“What do you think I keep you around for?”
That one was easy, Kareem affected a sly smile and reached up to slick his hair back like he’d seen Warrick do when Tink jokingly asked that question. “For my rugged good looks?”
He saw a muscle twitch around Mona’s mouth, but she was a pro. “Was that a joke?”
Easy again. “You don’t think I’m handsome?”
“Is that your real face?”
He couldn’t help it, he laughed at that and couldn’t come up with a reply. The emcee called him out but he didn’t care. Juniper was right. This was fun. He wondered if Desiree would want to come back some time…
***
Liverpool, England
The tremor started like all the others had over the past week. The only difference now was that he was ready for them. Even as the tiny cell of a flat shivered and shook, he crossed over to his laptop and set programs in motion to hack information from local geological surveys and monitors.
That information was added to what he’d gleaned from the previous quakes and projected onto a map.
A thin, joyless smile formed on his face at the picture that formed—or rather the void where the picture didn’t form.
“Just as predicted.” said Dr. Tang. “Avalon rises by the grace of God. And into the hands of the Sineaters and the Adriel falls the sword of flame that will cleanse this world of sin and vice. Blessed are we, and Praise his name.”
End Issue #82
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
a bit
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.