Chimerical Realm

A Simple Plan Scene 5 Leah hadn’t known much. Oh, she was willing to talk about everything she did know, which was mainly all the dirt she had on McGuire Woods. She just didn’t know much that I needed. She was another cog in the machine that had played me. But, she had known the cog above her. Apparently, she had mainly been working with Preston Thurges, one of the senior partners at the firm. If anyone knew what they were after at Vulcan, and for whom, it’s be the good Mr. Thurges. So, it only makes sense that he had vanished that morning. I’m sure that my visit to Vulcan had nothing to do with the sudden “family emergency” that took him away from the office for the first time in five years. But men like Thurges don’t just vanish like you and me. They buy plane tickets, rent hotels, make sure people know how to reach them. They leave a trail, and I just had to pick it up. So, I headed over to his house. Something else Leah had kno...

A Simple Plan Scene 4 Do you have any idea how many “O’leary’s” there are in the greater New Canaan metropolitan area? Five. Five damn places called “O’leary’s” or some variation. So, first I had to figure out which one my “date” would be at come midnight. I felt pretty safe ignoring the seafood restaurant and the “family grill.” It took a while, but I eventually found the one that would be open late, and sounded like a nice, hole in the wall dump. Just the kind of place “Mike” would have liked. I got there about 11, and tried to keep an eye on the place. Though, to be honest, I didn’t know what I was looking for.  I guess I thought it’d be a stereotypical “tough guy” bar, but there seemed to be a decent mix of people. Professionals still wearing their button-down shirts, college kids, and fans of one team or another--just folks out for a drink. Not something I ever did, when I was alive. Not that I was against drinking. Guess I ...

Deirik, Eirik, Ygvard, and Boldulf, alongside their friends Kiro the hobgoblin and Sergei the (horse-sized) wolf, return to Alucard and report to Lord Krogan what has occurred in Rulla. They also show him the dagger they removed from the well. Ygvard mentions, "The dagger's hilt is empty, but it must've contained some type of poison or chemical that would not only kill the townspeople, but turn them all into Fell. I don't recognize the substance though." Deirik quickly interjects, his hatred plain on his face, "I'm sure it's NO COINCIDENCE that this happened in the town just beyond the border you share with Torvald." Krogan thinks it over for a moment, "I'll need more proof than a shared border to act against Torvald. In the meantime, we need to go clear that town before they spread further and kill more of my people." With that, the Men of Mjarn accompany Lord Krogan and a large contingent of his orcs and hobgoblins to Rull...

A Simple Plan Scene 3 Mikes car wasn’t anything special. Just a generic sedan, nothing that would look out of place at a typical car rental lot or outside any office building. If you were looking for it, you’d never find it. But, I already had. I knew it was part of a fleet of cars through “Morningside Courier.” I’m not sure what kind of relationship “Mike” had with Morningside. Maybe he was a courier who took a chance at something big. Maybe he was a plant. Maybe the whole thing was a front. The only way I was going to find out is by going there. But first, I had to get out Vulcan. Terry snuck in to the quarr y in the back of a work truck, so he has no ride out. The simplest thing would be for him to steal one of the workers cars, but what’s “simple” and what is “right” are often at odds. Terry is, fundamentally, a good person, and his Humanity of 7 makes such theft repugnant to him. To see if he carries through with it, he’ll...

A Simple Plan Scene 2 I got out of there as fast as I could. No one seemed to be pursuing me, and I'm not sure I blame them. I figure none of them understood what they had just seen, or why they were fighting. But, it’s not like they would just shake it off and think it was a hallucination or anything. They knew someone had been there. So, I was now screwed two ways. First, I hadn’t been able to get the files I had come here for. Two, they had seen me. Which is the biggest “no no” I can think of. I managed to make a nice mess of things, and I hadn’t even been able to figure anything out. I just wanted to get out there, crawl up back home, and put the night behind me. But as I was walking away—well, ok, creeping away—a thought hit me. What if they call the cops? What if I they had tapes? What if I had managed to screw up the Masquerade? And then I thought, what if they don’t call the cops? I knew whoever had hired me wanted information on...

A Simple Plan Scene One See, I wasn’t really sure what they were after, just that I had to get to it before “they” did. And I wasn’t even sure who “they” were, other than the lawyers. But I was sure they were a front, of some sort. Some were involved, probably, but I had no way of knowing who. Not then, at least. But, whatever, that’s not important. Yet. I had no idea how to get into the Vulcan facility, so I had to hitch a ride on one of their cement truck things. It went pretty well, got me all the way to their quarry. In through the gates, no problem. No one even thought of looking back there. Though, I suppose that’s not surprising. Have you ever been in one of those things? If it was on, or even kind of full, it would kill you. So, thanks to my brilliant plan, I was inside the gates. Of course, what I hadn’t thought about was that they don’t park the working vehicles near the office. The office gets the sedans and pickup trucks. The c...

A Simple Plan Prologue Winter was the best time of the year. When he was alive, Terry despised the winter. It was cold, and dark, and slick with snow and ice and the dirty sludge that covered the city after every storm. But ever since he died, winter had become the only time he felt even somewhat human. The cold didn’t bother him anymore, and he had seen far worse things than the filthy sludge. Even better, with his hood pulled up and a scarf covering his face, he could actually go out in public, and be around the happy, normal people who still had their lives ahead of them. He had slowly and carefully made his way to the park. The wounds were still raw, and would take time and blood to heal. But for tonight, there was nothing more he wanted to do than to be around people. They may not speak with him, the cold driving them to move quickly to their destinations. But he could be at least near them, as if he were one of them. And, fo...

Last time , we created the character of Terry. Now it’s time to figure out what the world has in store for our poor Nosferatu. For this, I’m going to bring in some additional tools, specifically the Storytellers Handbook . First, I roll for Theme and get a 6 , for Pursuit . Rolling on the subtables, I get an 8 —“A new witch-hunter has come to town and has managed to find out something about the character.” Huh, guess Terry’s going to have to come to grips with his nature real fast then, won’t he? I also wanted to make Backgrounds more of an element in the story. Rolling on those tables, I get a 9 , for Resources . Rolling on the subtable, I get a 6 , which leads to “Unless the character takes prompt action, she will likely suffer a great loss of Resources.” Maybe the hunter is doing the old “follow the money” play book? I think I have a pretty good setup for a story, but I roll on Scarlet anyways, just to get some inspiration. I roll a 2 and get An Antagonist seeks to st...

Getting ready to create the next character for my ongoing Solo vampire game, and I realized that I need to do a little bit more book keeping. I can’t keep calling the city “City” or the Prince “Prince” and the like. Riffing a bit off of the background elements from the first story, I’m going to go with the following. Chronicle Name : Promised Land City Name : New Canaan Location : Fictive. Somewhere north of Boston alone the East Coast of the United States. Prince : Matthew Parker. A Ventrue (seriously, I rolled a 7 on the Clan Chart). He has ruled for the past 50 some odd years, and tends to have a very “hands off” approach to the affairs of his city. Indeed, his tendency to veer between extreme laxity and harsh crack downs is a major source of complaint for the Elders. Situation : For decades, New Canaan was racked by constant infighting and conflict, and Princes rose and fell with an alarming regularity. This ended when Parker took sides in the last great war. ...

With the A Lonely Hope story having come to a close, I'm thinking about where I want to go next in my Solo journey. I definitely enjoyed the heck out of playing Hanson, but there were some growing pains involved in it. The " Scarlet Rules ," as a base line, worked out pretty well I thought. Though I did run into some issues with the Threat  element of the mechanics. Now, these rules are of course taken from Kevin Crawford's Scarlet Heroes , an excelled OSR style game. In those rules, Threat  is, roughly, related to the character's level. Well, that may not be entirely accurate, but it's close enough for now--I recommend checking out the book on it's own, as it's really an excellent game in its own right. The point is, for my game, I altered how Threat  was determined and utilized, to better reflect Vampire  and how its mechanics are implemented. My changes worked decently, but not wondrously, so I want to tweak them a bit. One of the challenges is ...

A Lonely Hope  was a Solo Vampire: The Masquerade I played between October 2017 and February 2018. While I have done Vampire  games before, A Lonely Hope  was a bit of an experiment. For this game, I combined the "urban adventure" rules from the Kevin Crawfords Scarlet Heroes game with Vampire. The result, while rather scatter shot, did end up creating a pretty tense and thrilling pulp-style game.

Scarlet Vampire A Lonely Hope Scene 15 Blaine had pulled the car to the edge of the back alley, and Hanson and Dona quickly made their way to him. As they got closer, Hanson headed to the driver’s seat and Blaine, reluctantly, moved over. Dona hopped got into the back. “Where are we going?” She asked. “The Prince is bringing in everyone, wants to settle this once and for all. I know Marko has been questioned, and the Prince is pissed. Not sure if Gypsy has tracked down Adrian yet or not. “ “Adrian? What does he have to do with this?” Hanson sighed, forgetting how out the loop with everything Dona was. She turned around to face her, and noticed the cops were gone. It was time they got out too. She threw the car into gear and took off down the road, starting to fill Dona in what had been going down. Blaine kept interrupting with his own color commentary, and the explanations quickly descended into an argument. An arg...

Scarlet Vampire A Lonely Hope Scene 14 A cold rain drummed mercilessly on the roof of the Camry. Hanson and Blaine were parked at a closed service station, her beat up car blending in well with the others needing attention. Across the street, they could just make out the Quick Stop Shop and, more importantly, the bar near it. The bar where Hanson had run into Cora, and nearly died. The place seemed quiet, or at least less busy than it had been on Hanson’s last visit. Whether this was due to the time of the week or for some other reason, they couldn’t tell. “I don’t get it. Why would they bring Dona here, of all places? Why not Adrian’s monastery or, hell, somewhere no one knows about.” “Pretty sure no one knows about this place. Except for me, and I don’t think I count very much. But more importantly, do you remember your little ‘office’ at Voodoo ?” Blaine turned to look at her. “I remember,” he answered, carefully. “We...

Scarlet Vampire A Lonely Hope Scene 13 In the last scene , Hanson scored a victory and was able to capture one of Adrian’s pawns and bring her to the Prince for questioning. After the raid, though, the city is still on edge… “What the hell are you doing here?” Hanson was leaning contemptuously in the doorway. “Funny. I was going to ask you the same thing.” She brushed past Blaine and walked into the barely furnished apartment. It was a second floor unit in a “garden style” building, out in the middle of the suburbs. Ever since the raid, Blaine had made himself scarce. No one knew where he was hiding, and this little slice of “post-college suburban” life must have been torture to him. At least he had a lovely view of the parking lot. “No, I mean…SHIT,” he looked out into the hallway, apparently figuring half the vamps in the city were out there, waiting for him. Seeing no one, he closed and locked the door. Double locked, just ...

Deirik, Eirik, Ygvard, and Boldulf, alongside their friends Kiro and Sergei, steel themselves for the fight to come. With sunrise not too far off, the Fell are going to make their move. With reckless abandon, arms and legs flailing, the Fell race towards the long-hall in which the Men have decided to make their stand! The men wait in the dark, as they have for the past few hours, hearing the rain growing louder as time has gone on. The Fell build up in a huge mass surrounding the long-hall, clamoring against the walls trying to climb up and once again creating ramps of themselves. While they may only have three flasks of oil left, the opportunity won't get much better to affect as many Fell as possible as this one. With that shared thought, Kiro removes a flask from his pack and Deirik goes to light a torch. In the faint light provided by the sparks of flint, Ygvard focuses his eyes and notices something. The amount of dust in the air from all the activity on the roof, but more t...