Surprise, surprise!

We found a way to save both my character and Brenda's in the Call of Cthulhu game from a nasty engineered virus that was going to kill them dead, dead, dead. My character will basically be an indentured servant of a bunch of Mages, but at least she and the other person will live, so well, okay. Of course, the true horror has arrived because her mother, who has never appeared in the game before has shown up and is having none of her 'paranormal investigating' as a...horrors...job. Celeste comes from a very aristocratic family and her mother is an opera singer, who in her very carrying voice, attended by several minions, made it very clear in the hospital that she would no longer be associating with our group and was coming home to be married off to someone of quality. I think she'll find that Celeste (when she is better; her heart was damaged by a cultist's spell) will not go so gently into that good night, and the Mages have a claim over her, anyway. But it's been a good run as an investigator. Her most memorable line was when she discovered footprints and declared them to be giant floppy clown shoes. Hey, she knows her shoes. And she was right, as the adventure, if I remember right, was called 'Killer Cannibal Clowns'.

Anyway, it was a good game. It's so weird to not be going home after it ended. I'm not used to the fact that I'm home already. I started doing a computer backup but a friend of YKWIA's called, so I put the last of the laundry away, took my things to my room, put the fans on, turned on some music, plumped up the pillows, burned a lavender soy candle for awhile, and went through some random shells and stones that I put out around the room, although there is an entire bag left. But I found a space for that, too. I've gotten ready for bed and set my alarm. I'm working from 8:00 am to 5:30 pm tomorrow and Wednesday, our busiest days, but the whole week is supposed to be busy, I think. I didn't see the numbers, as they hadn't come out yet and I was off on Friday. That extra day really helped. I'm much more rested, feel better, and my knee and ankles are doing much better. I really was hobbling around on my right knee. But I should go to bed soon; I have to get up about 5:45 or 6:00 am to get to work with time for the traffic and the shuttle. Good night.

There is a very good chance

That I will lose a character next time we play the game (next week is right before the move, so I may need that Sunday for last-minute packing). Both Brenda and I have characters hanging in the balance, both infected by a mad scientist who took the only vaccine, with no known cure. The scientist was killed by ghouls after we unmasked him as a horrible serial killer and mad anatomist, but the damage is done. Magic is possible, but we don't have the time or materials needed for such a large spell. I came up with a possible solution after Brenda left, which the game master is considering, but even if it's iffy. I think the best we can hope for is to save Brenda's character. The scientist used a spell to nearly destroy my character's heart before infecting her, so she's not likely to be saved. But Brenda's might be. And he has kids and a wife who's going to be really passed if we let him die. Mine is unmarried and started out as a shallow princess (literally--she's a Savoy), but who's grown over the years. She's not my favourite, but I am rather fond of her. If she dies, it'll be the second killed of in less than two months, and the fourth in 26 years.

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.

So the game is on hiatus for a bit

mostly for the month of January. The last thing we did was have several characters celebrate Beltane, and the gamemaster rolled and one of my characters is pregnant. Tonight he had me roll on a pregnancy table, and lo!, it's twins, a boy and a girl. I'd already had a boy's name (Aiden). Now I have to come up with a girl's name. Of course, this is why I own several baby name books. I'm thinking of Fiona. The mother is mostly Irish in background; the father is Vietnamese. It should be an interesting turn of events. That character is one mission short of going up a level; looks like it will now be awhile. I try not to take the pregnant characters out on missions given what happened to one poor woman in the Everglades. (Let's just say Alligator Men and evil mad scientists working with a variant of the Herbert West serum do not go well together when you go on your honeymoon and you're six months pregnant.) That's the fun thing about Call of Cthulhu--anything goes when it comes to the horror factor, and anyone is fair game for sanity loss.

I've felt off lately

and YKWIA has noticed it too. I'm wondering if it's the Strattera I started a couple of weeks ago for attention-deficit disorder. I've been on it before, several years ago, without problem, but my mood has been somewhat depressed and blah of late. I don't know if it's my normal mood fluctuations, or if it is the medicine. I'll give it a little more time to see. I go back to my doctor in early September, and I haven't quite reached the therapeutic level yet in terms of ramping up the dose slowly. I'm close, but not there yet. So far I haven't really seen any really beneficial effects, but I'm not at the full 80 mg yet, either, of course.

Despite feeling off, I had a good day. We went out to Masala, the Indian restaurant for the buffet, and my friends picked up my meal, along with a scoop of Baskin-Robbins ice cream (pumpkin cheesecake) afterwards. Then we went to Barnes & Noble, which is in Hamburg (Masala is in Beaumont, so on opposite sides of town). I stayed in the car during that (my back was still bothering me, and the seat in the car is comfortable. Plus, I find it somewhat painful to go into bookstores when I have no money to spend). :) I accidentally left the ignition on accessory, and didn't notice because I'd turned the radio off, and the battery almost didn't start, so that was a little worrisome--but it did, on the third try, and I drove enough to get the battery back up to speed over the rest of the day. After Barnes & Noble, we went to Lowe's there in Hamburg (I had not been in that one before). After I took my friends home, A and I went and did the grocery run. After that, YKWIA and I watched an episode of 'Lost Girl' (we're in the second season, now). During that, Brenda called. Her son is getting married next month and she had forgotten that the second bridal shower was tomorrow, so she'll be going to that instead of the game. This put me off the hook for having the game notes finished by tomorrow, and it also means I can go over a little later in the day. Yay!

I've been home for awhile and have been working on revising a document with my characters' pictures in it (mostly actors and actresses that YKWIA or I thought would match them well). I put it into a format his version of Word (XP) will read--he has no desire to upgrade to one with tabs and a ribbon, so the one he had from school still suffices for him. Here are the people that were picked:

• Zooey Deschanel
• Emilie de Ravin
• Lisa Edelstein
• Melina Kanakaredes
• Dana Delany
• Anne Hathaway
• Morena Baccarin
• Max Greenfield
• Kristanna Loken

There is one character that I cannot find a photograph for, but I found a very representative drawing that worked. She was originally modelled somewhat after Gillian Anderson, but had a couple of physical transformations that made her hair white, her eyes green, but otherwise she looks like an ancient Aegyptian. That's hard to find. :) But I found a portrait of a woman who looked right who had a headdress on so you couldn't see the colour of her hair. Oh, did I mention she is both a doctor and a necromancer? Oddly enough, we have another one of those, a male non-player character that started out as a player character (until she left). He is married to the latest of my characters, the one who looks like Kristanna Loken.

Anyway, I sent that on to him. I'll print out the newer pictures (I did some revisions, based on his input) and affix them to my character sheets. So that's been a fun couple of hours.

I think I'll do some reading now. I'm wanting to watch 'Galaxy Quest', but I don't feel like going out to the living room, and the little DVD player I have is out there, so it's either hook it up here to my ancient (circa 1990) TV, or take the fan, with its wonderful breeze, out there. :)

Reaction set in this morning

I don't want to make it seem like I'm too enmeshed in my character; I'm not. But when you roleplay to the extent we do, you really do put part of yourself into the character--we're not hack and slash sort of players, where you get treasure and kill monsters and that's about the end of it. Our characters have lives, sometimes rather messy ones, with ties to other characters and beyond.

I was on my way to pick someone up from work this morning and just with as real death, I found myself thinking of things unsaid, undone, and I cried a little. My character was pretty quiet, with a bit of a sense of humour, and wasn't the brightest or best, certainly. He was talented in photography, and in martial arts. Also, he was the best tracker and navigator in the Antarctic group, having survived cannibal cultists in the Amazon as his first Cthulhoid experience. He hadn't had a lot of play and had just one mission to his name, involving the Mi-Go.

Because I do so much writing during note-taking, I sometimes have trouble interacting and roleplaying, although the recorder is helping that. (It's the only real record I have of his sacrifice--I wasn't taking notes at that point.) He could have been fleshed out better by now. But now he's gone, in a horrible but somewhat noble death, and the record of his life is over, and there's no second chances, at least with this character. Maybe if I'm allowed a new one at some point, I can work more dilligently on bringing that one to life, or more importantly, develop the ones I already have. So I guess his death has some unseen consequences for me as a player as well as for those in the game. I have to learn to be less passive, more active, and really roleplay to my fullest. I've been doing this long enough that I should be able to.

But for the record, even though it's not real, here's a little closure:


Joshua Daniel Adler
Born February 7, 1980 Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
Died December 7, 2006 Western Mountain Range, Antarctica


He had dark brown hair, blue eyes, and was lanky, about 5'10" and 150 lbs. He looked very much like Adrian Grenier (see picture by David Shankbone). He had O+ blood. He was Jewish, somewhat religious, and kept kosher when he could. His father is Evan Adler, a professor at Hebrew Union College. His mother is Miriam Adler, a librarian, and his sister is Rachel Adler, an elementary school teacher. Nice, normal folks, who've never heard of Cthulhu. They've never come into play, although they may now that he's dead. How do you tell someone your son died to save the world? [SPOILER ALERT FOR Beyond the Mountains of Madness!] More likely they'll say he died in the terrible earthquake that hit the mountains, along with the other men who died during the trip. There isn't a body to bring home; his head and brain is incorporated into the Elder Things' machine, his body--skeleton, really, since shoggoths are very efficient--lies in an abattoir within the lighthouse.

Goodbye Josh.

Sometimes you just have to step in and save the world

Warning: I'm about to majorly geek out on you and babble about things which you probably neither understand nor care about, which is the game I play based on the fiction of HP Lovecraft. It's my main hobby. You have been warned.

Today was a good day. Okay, so I didn't finish this week's notes despite a marathon session last night of six hours (but the game master was benevolent). And I didn't arrive when I was supposed to be somewhere this morning (I was a minute late). And I didn't finish some work I was doing for someone on time.

But the game absolutely rocked. For those of you who play Call of Cthulhu and intend to go through the campaign Beyond the Mountains of Madness, you should read no further. This is a friendly spoiler alert.

***************SPOILER*******************

So we've been playing the Antarctic adventure for MONTHS, from checking and re-checking the ship's manifest to exploring the citadel of the Elder Things. Last time we explored the great pharos tower in hopes of finding our lost comrades, only to find evidence of their deaths.

For years one of the non-player characters has had visions of this mission; she's insisted all along that she had to be on it and went to great lengths to assure this. She also insisted that she would die on the mission in order to save the world, although she didn't know how, and that is why she had the visions. Each day we got closer and closer to her doom, with her getting more and more depressed. She didn't want to die--but if she didn't, it would be the end of everything. One of the player characters is in love with her, and kept trying to find a way to save her. I have to admit, I did too. I didn't want Sarah to die--she's been in the game for years and we're very fond of her. But it couldn't be as simple as pushing her out of the way at the right moment; there was no way of telling if in doing so we would doom everyone, for if it didn't work, reality itself would be sundered and the world, the universe, would end (and the game, too, unless our game master did some sort of alternative timeline). The stakes were pretty high.

I'm an incredibly passive player, often to my detriment. My character on this mission isn't as fleshed out as the others, although he was slowly coming out of his shell and I've enjoyed that. It is only his second mission, although he'd survived a plane crash (yes, he was the one who fell out of the sky en route to his first attempted mission so many months ago). He has at least one dark mark on his soul due to his sword being used to kill someone after being stolen. He has family, but isn't married, isn't involved with anyone, doesn't have the ties that the others have (one is married; another is in love with Sarah). He has become fond of Sarah and has a lot of respect for her. Unlike the player characters, she never took an oath to protect humanity. He considers her an innocent to protect, along with the ordinary folks they have in tow.

So when the moment came, he took it. The character in love with Sarah showed his Elder Sign when confronted with a shoggoth and a couple of Elder Things. Now the Elder Sign was created by the Elder Things. It surprised them that lowly humans could use it. I had already considered that if we did show the Elder Sign to them, they might recognise us as sentient, and that is what happened. Sarah could read and write their language. They asked if she, too, had the sign, and my character urged her to show hers, which she did. I was thinking that if she were considered sentient, then they couldn't use her in their organic machine to contain the Outer God they'd snared so long ago.

She offered herself up to them to make the machine work, and they indeed, told her that they had never killed anyone within the Unity of the Elder Sign. Then they asked about my character, and he did not show his Elder Sign, and told her that there was no need for them to know he had it, too. The other options were for one of the three ordinary humans along with us to die, or our other compatriot, who was not there at the time. He told her to tell them that they offered him (the Elder Things assumed he was a normal human, and the others' food source) up to the machine to keep the great horror sealed inside the Pit. Reluctantly she agreed. He also asked her to seek safe passage for the rest of them in return for this, and it was granted. Then he was taken away, stripped naked, and fed to a shoggoth alive, going insane at the end. Then his head, with his brain and neural webbing were incorporated into their machine just as the horrible thing began to escape, the power of the creature being such that mountains toppled. But then everything quieted as my character became part of the machine, the central processing unit upgrade that could power it for years to come. Somewhere his soul, with its Elder Sign, will reincarnate eventually. But the remains of his body power the machine at the heart of the Antarctic waste, standing guardian on that which would burst from the Earth and destroy reality.

It was a good death. I have a martyr complex, and I guess it's times like this it comes out. It's only the second character I've lost in the 17 years I've played Call of Cthulhu. The first went insane when she saw Shub-Niggurath and was stepped on by the Black Goat with a Thousand Young. Oddly enough, both characters were Jewish. I feel good about it, although a little sad, too. You get attached to characters when you play them as long as we do. Ours is not the brand of Cthulhu where you run a game now and then, but a continual universe that has developed for nearly two decades, with an excellent game master to bring that world to fruition.

Of course, the campaign isn't over for the others. There's still the Germans to contend with, and getting back home alive. There's another 30 pages left in the module. But it's over for me, except for taking notes and cringing when I think of something that the others don't, and I can't address because technically I'm not really there as a character. But I like to listen to the story unfold even when I can't play, and I want to see the end of this huge, long campaign.

It's moments like this that I really love about roleplaying. How often in the real world do you get to make a difference on this scale, after all?

Want a taste of what we've been doing? Here is a faux trailer for a fictional movie for HP Lovecraft's 'At the Mountains of Madness' (upon which the campaign is based) put together by a game master for another group. I think the person did an excellent job.