Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Sunday, July 31, 2016

Usually

when I go to pick up A on weekend nights, I'm half asleep, but I got some rest this evening, and I'm perky and awake, and it's almost 2 am now. I've taken my various night meds, brushed my teeth, flossed, and rinsed my mouth (that's one of the things I have to do with my asthma medicine, rinse my mouth), I've put some Neosporin on the cat bite after washing it again, and generally I've done all the other stuff to get ready for bed. I'm sitting here listening to some music and contemplating going to sleep for the night. I want to get up fairly early and get my laundry together tomorrow, as well as take the trash out and even make breakfast, if I can get going then. I've some eggs and milk, and some pancake mix. That sounds really tasty. Then it's over to my friends' house and my Sunday duties and my laundry to do. We may watch something, too. Next week we end our hiatus from the game and start that back up, which I'm very excited about. This month marks the 25th anniversary of the start of our campaign. Yes, really, we've been playing the same Call of Cthulhu game since July 1991; our characters have come and gone, some have children, that sort of thing. I still have my original character, mainly because she has been insane, pregnant, recovering from a physical injury, or stuck in Yog Sothoth for periods of time. Her son is a scary mad genius of sorts, and he's twelve. When he was three or four, he opened a dimensional portal in the kitchen microwave. It's been a challenge. Here's the cast of my characters:
  1. Rosalind Marie McVey--former linguistics graduate student at Miskatonic University who was a founding member of our group after her first Cthulhoid experience and training. Was put into a crystal room in a lost city in the desert, where her latent telepathy woke up and she was able to communicate with Cthonians and other Mythos creatures. A former colleague who had gone to the side of evil impregnated her and put her back into the room, making their unborn son incredibly smart, telepathic, and oh, yeah, having almost emotionless intellect with little regard for others. At one point, Rosalind was captured by the government, which augmented her telepathic gifts and used her as a weapon. Her Mythos knowledge got very high; her comrades were able to save here, but it took a lot of regular knowledge out of her brain and damaged her gift, which is mainly just a connexion with her son these days. She is currently working at the Orne Library at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts. Her brush with the government technically left her 'dead' in terms of identity, so she is living under an assumed name, Eileen Neila MacLeod.
  2. Melissa Jane Andrews--physician who joined the group early on. Her father was a former American soldier; her mother was a British journalist. In her tenure in the group, her magical gift for necromancy woke up, and she had a transformation physically from someone who looked a bit like Scully from 'X-Files' to an Ancient Aegyptian with white hair and green eyes. She spent 65 million years in a Greater Race of Yith stasis pod on the moon, then travelled to the end of the time and into our present timeline. making her essentially immortal (although she can be killed). She cannot have children due to her status as a necromancer. She is currently in a magical order that is in a bubble of reality. She recently lost an eye in a mission. Her transformation was so difficult to explain, that she is living under a different name, Alexandria Mereneith Amentiri. (The last name I temporarily forgot,  then remembered it was derived from a name for the ancient Aegyptian Underworld.) 
  3. Miranda Amelia Wainscott--her great uncle and she lived in a sprawling mansion outside Arkham, Massachusetts. Unknown to her, he was a cultist related to the Whateleys of Dunwich. He killed her parents and tried to sacrifice her at age 16, but it went terribly wrong because she wasn't actually a virgin. One a mission under the Atlantic, she went through a gate to another world full of water, where the people there changed her with various implants so she could survive under the sea. She returned, but had to be magically changed to be able to live in Earth's polluted oceans. She has three forms: her normal human form, a base aquatic form, and a silver battle form. She is currently in the magical order with Melissa. She has no children. Her house is now our headquarters. She is bisexual, but has had no children.
  4. Sara Rashel Baum--an archaeologist who was born in Israel. She was seduced by a mystical creature, had a son, and died two months later by being stepped on by Shub Niggurath, becoming toe jam. Her tagline was 'You can get stepped on by a Dark Young of Shub Niggurath and live.' Unfortunately, the Mother with a Thousand Young herself was too much for her. Her child is being raised by other characters, and will turn into the same sort of creature as his father when he's older, becoming a life force vampire of sorts.
  5. Ariana Sofia Krios--an electric engineer from California of Greek descent, she is now in the magic order studying as a Hermetic mage. She is of Witchblood, but never knew it--but has an affinity for air and water magic. She is a lesbian who has not had children.
  6. Carolyn (Carol) Kathleen Reardon Grant--probably my favourite right now. She is a nurse who worked with Doctors Without Borders in Bosnia during the war there. She is a Witch in a coven with some other members of the group, apparently a late bloomer in her family. She has a daughter by an English lord who was possessed by one of the mystical creatures akin to Sara's lover. As a result, her daughter is very intelligent. She is currently pregnant by one of her comrades, who is an elemental mage. The children have their father's elemental magic, each with two of the elements, and are already demonstrating the gift in the womb.
  7. Therese (Tessa) Celine Cavaillion--an artist from Quebec who is very much 'the good girl'. She was a novice in a convent but left to experience the world, and wound up having a Cthulhoid experience. She has some healing ability and a mysterious 'friend' who shows up occasionally to have her do certain things. She has a high will but seems to never be able to resist vampires, faeries, or anything like that. She married one of the other characters, and was pregnant with their daughter, but they went to the Everglades, battled alligator men, and she was injected with a mad scientist's serum, which caused the child to have augmented body-shaping ability (an extension of the biokenesis in Tessa's family) but also made her 'download' various aspects of Tessa's personality, splitting her into several discrete personalities, able to change form for each until that gift was turned off psychically. One of the personalities is male, one is an alligator creature, and one is totally sociopathic and is terribly dangerous. When she was two, she drove a screwdriver into a character's eye, partially blinding him. She is now in a mental hospital where she occasionally tries to get out and is very rough with the staff. The father was killed by a Dimensional Shambler in the future on the moon. Tessa has another child by a mobster (long story, let's say magic was involved), who's pretty much normal, and is raising her quietly in Newton, Massachusetts. She ran afoul of the mystical creatures that Sara was involved with, some of whom basically killed most of her family off, so she's had a lot of death and tragedy in her life.
  8. Celeste Malfalda du Mornay--raised as the daughter of an opera singer (who was one of the Savoy family, the former rulers of Italy) and a French industrialist (who was killed in a car bomb when she was young), Celeste is actually the daughter of an English lord whose family figures prominently in our game (several of Brenda's characters are members of that family). Celeste was kicked out of several boarding schools and is an unlikely operative, but she is doing pretty well. She lives in Arkham, Massachusetts with her Bichon Frise, Abelard, and her nieces, who are blood magicians from another timeline, and a long suffering but well-paid maid. She has a small precognitive gift. She is bisexual, with no children.
  9. Joshua (Josh) Ethan Adler--my only male character. He was somewhat telepathic He survived a plane crash only to save the world by manoevering himself into a position where the Elder Things would not recognise him as sentient and so they had him killed by a Shoggath and his head put on a machine that keeps a horrible Mythos creature at bay. Note that the two characters I had that were Jewish both died. Josh was a photojournalist; the one other photojournalist in the game (the father of Rosalind's son) died horribly as well, after going mad. So Josh was doubly-cursed, apparently. But his death was very good in the sense that it saved a non-player character I am very fond of, and also saved the world. I love a good martyrdom.
  10. Alexandra (Alix) Evelyn Bishop Rhodes--a former socialite and soldier who is married to a necromancer. They have a newborn son who was fated to suffer his family curse upon his father's death, but she had Carol's mother, a Witch, potentially solve that problem. She is mildly telepathic and a recovering alcoholic. She has a lot of trouble around magic of all kinds, and it tends to screw her over a lot. She lost an eye, which was replaced by an NPC with future technology. She is unhappy with her husband's familiar, which is an undead cat that has magically been transformed to look alive, which hates psychics of any sort--but who tolerates her based on her husband's commands, and who would protect their child with every ounce of her undead might, but it does make getting a nanny problematic.
Am I forgetting anyone? I don't think so--I did almost forget Alix. That's eight children, total [Tristan, Jason, Lia, Kaia, Claire, Nathan, Aiden, and Eden], if you count the two on the way, I think. That's the character list for me, in a nutshell. Taken together,  they incorporate much of my personality and interests.  Anyway, I'm looking forward to going back to the game. I'm curious as to how Carol's twins will turn out. She just survived a warlock attack. Hopefully there won't be any more for awhile.

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