Yellow Dawn Session Notes 18th May ¦ Aigues-Mortes – East to Prudence #1

Heading East on a mission…

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by British Science Fiction & Dark Fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. It also has two novels set within it: Dog Eat Dog and The Black Lake.

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Aigues-Mortes established itself as a Living City with perfect defenses against the Infected. However only wealthy survivors get to live within the walls. Everyone else squabbles in the mud outside the walls – and this is where the Canal Market exists

RESUME 12th March  YD +10 (ten years after Yellow Dawn happened)
Bela and Winter to return to Aigues-Mortes. They’re now free men. They’ve left their jobs here at the market outside Aigues Mortes. Being back is strange despite it only being a few days since they’ve left.  Bela sees Abu and can’t stand the Somalian little piece of shit so walks away, tells Winter he’ll be back in a month – says he needs to be alone in the wilderness to work out what it was he saw that night at the sanctuary at Fable.

Meanwhile, Abu is harassing the young good-looking Portuguese Alex and his new friend (a slim, swarthy maker of moonshine from Marseilles: Jean-Luc).

Baron Toten Reich arrives on his horse, with a new character in tow: an Irishman called Brendan Black – there’s something not quite right about Brendan’s appearance, the eyes are a little too close together and his facial features are narrow and haunted. Dressed all in black, much like the Baron, but that’s where all similarity ends: Brendan’s clothes are caked in mud, his pale skin is greasy with sweat and grime from days being on the road. He exudes an aura of strangeness and seems to not say much but linger back, observing, everything, very closely.  (He is a low-level Road Mage.)

Toten Reich gives the group instructions to head east, to a small survivor settlement built around the tiny fishing port of Prudence. It’s recently been doing very well with fantastic catches of fish and a small tech industry setting up there funded by some UDP science groups who are interested in aspects of the local area.  Oddly, in the past 2 months, 24 fisherman have been found dead – adrift in their boats a few miles from Prudence. All of them asphyxiated.  Toten Reich has friends in Aiges-Mortes who have business interests in the booming fishing industry there and want to make sure nothing is going to jeopardise it. The characters are to travel east, 100 miles, to Prudence and see if they can find out what’s going on.

Toten Reich agrees to pay the group 60 coppers a day, in total, for up to 2 weeks of time. He wants word back from them in 2 weeks about what is happening, otherwise he will cease payment until word is received (after 2 weeks are up).

The rest of the morning is spent selling what they don’t want to take with them and buying what they need.

By early afternoon they set off.

Several days of travel get them only 60 miles. It’s tough going – and this is whilst following the relatively easy route of the Interlink. It doesn’t help that on 3rd day they are ambushed by 11 bandits – desperate half starving men who barely have clothes on their ragged bodies.  These men run onto the road in two groups wielding club-like-branches. And then… recognition flashes between Winter and the bandit leader.  It’s Marius! The man Winter and Bela forced away from Fable. Enraged, the 11 men surge in to attack the people who caused them so much trouble. It’s a long a bloody fight.  Neither side are well equipped. But eventually Winter gets into the swing of things with his two tomahawk blades and the new guy, Jean-Luc proves to be especially deadly and bloody with an old farm scythe he’s brought along.

Later that day, coming to the end of an exhausting trek and reaching the 60 mile mark, bloodied and bruised, the team find an abandoned utility building tucked away behind some trees, surrounded by chain link fence long since smashed down in places. The building exudes decay but Alex and Jean-Luc see it is massive and may hold some items of interest. They step inside.  Brendan and Winter are uneasy. Only a couple of miles back they had to skirt the edge of a Dead City.

Cries of panic from inside realise their worst fear is true. Alex and Jean-Luc come dashing outside.  Three Infected in pursuit.  he Infected scream their dry rasping dead shrieks and sprint at the characters.  It’s an especially dark, bloody and gruesome fight… hand to hand, with Winter and Jean-Luc desperately pushing back and slashing with blades, doing nothing but hacking chunks of Infected flesh off these undead monsters until eventually causing enough damage to cause the things to collapse, dead.

Winter’s clothes are covered in Infected gore. He has to strip off to dispose of the garments. (Jacket / Trousers).

RESUME
Evening of 17th March YD+10.
<> What Clothes is Winter going to wear?
<> Team need to set up a camp.
<> FOllowing day team have still got another 40 miles to travel just to reach Prudence.

GM NOTES:
Rank rolls required.
All money up to date.
Bela has some raw components and specialised components (written on your notepaper).

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Invitation to join: Tatters of the King – Online RPG – Starting 3rd July

Horror Stalks Back to London 1928

The King in Yellow slithers through time to take on the minds that attempt to deny its dominion over this reality.

The King in Yellow may clasp your oblivion yet – click to take part

When Simon Brake isn’t writing blood-drenched scenarios for Call of Cthulhu (see Roots in “The Things We Leave Behind“, collection), or being spotted as a zombie “extra” in a certain movie, he’s giving up his Wednesday evenings July onwards to run an online RPG session called Tatters of the King.

THIS IS AN INVITATION FOR YOU TO TAKE PART:

Just CLICK HERE or go to Facebook to get involved.

Introduction

This game is aimed at fans of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, Robert W Chambers’ The King In Yellow, or anyone who’d like to role-play a horror campaign starting in 1920s London, and spreading further afield and through the decades that follow.

It takes its name from the Tatters of the King campaign for Call of Cthulhu, but will hopefully develop beyond the confines of the one campaign and the one system. I’m hoping to use a much streamlined set of ‘rules’ that will mean the game places out more like interactive fiction (no dice!), whilst still being under the control of the ‘Keeper’ (the games master or, in this case, Admin).

You’re not stupid, so you’ll probably realise that there are spoilers out there on the internet. You’re welcome to look for them, but I’d rather you didn’t. It’ll take some of the edge off the events that will occur.

The game will hopefully be played, as group sessions, on Wednesday evenings, starting at about 7.30/8.00. Players will read and reply to the same thread, although when split up (or, in the case of the opening session, when the Characters will sit quietly to watch a play and filter it through their own past experiences) they’ll be directed to threads where just the individual Character and the Admin can chat privately.

The first session is likely to be on the 3rd July – although it’ll be mid October in game, at which point the Characters will meet up to go see a play…

ROOTS

Roots is a scenario written by Simon Brake for the RPG, Call of Cthulhu.  I gratefully received a beta version to play test. It led to two epic Saturday sessions with my regular game crew and an extreme mortality / character-ending effect. Also demonstrated again how flexible the Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur universe is to accommodate the storylines’ from other RPG systems.

About Simon Brake

Graphic designer. Writer. Father. Happy go lucky. Trying to get more writing done nowadays, but it’s hard to find the time. Still, the words are trickling out into the world and people are liking what they read. This year’s goal: a novel?

Graphic designery person. There’s more info (and graphic designery stuff) on my MySpace page – www.myspace.com/breakerspace – but to be honest I’ve probably got more up to date stuff here nowadays. MySpace is self advertising. Facebook is for reconnecting with real life people. And Twitter… Twitter is where the real party is.

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Available in paperback or Kindle

Paperback : from LULU & kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

DOG EAT DOG { novel } Ten years after the Earth has been devastated by a viral pathogen seventy per cent of the population is dead and only a handful of cities survive intact. The majority of urban spaces have been abandoned to the Infected, creatures that were once human.  Whilst above, the orbital colonies spin within their artificial gravity wells, helpless observers to the shocking events below.  Mikhail Drobná and Carlos Revira.  Two survivors, both hungry for money and power, and fuelled by a desire to carve their names onto this new world.  One provides services of violence and protection for powerful corporate criminals in New York; the other is a renegade intelligence agent forever running from the demons of his past. Strangers, until events conspire to bring them together. There’s a complex and deadly political power play in progress. Private armies. Corruption and murder on a massive scale.  Both men seek to seize their opportunity at whatever personal cost.  But a cosmic Evil has infiltrated the remote corners of these brutalised lands and it has its own plans. Will these men work as one to defeat it or will their bitter rivalry bring about their destruction. In the end, who will devour who?  David J Rodger delivers a novel of epic vision, character depth and nerve-popping tension.

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Dark Art: Evil Spirit by Danielle Tunstall

Evil Spirit

Evil Spirit: image by Danielle Tunstall – All Rights Reserved – Click full size

Part of a series of images from the shadowy fringes of the Internet.  Visuals that stir my sense for the eerie and macabre.

Blessed are the damned for they walk in wake of the divine light, robbed of forgiveness and healing they remain to roam the mortal lands until the end of all things.  Danielle Tunstall delivers another visual impact.  This is a particularly haunting blend of photography and digital manipulation.  Is this the fresh host of a demonic possession?  Or is it something more outre, a direct attack by some cosmic horror that exists within the pantheon of psychological and physical nightmares known collectively as the Cthulhu Mythos.  Or is it a new hybrid of Infected and Changed (Orc) spinning out a new vector from the cocktail of organic and military-designed compounds that came together in the apocalyptic event known as Yellow Dawn?

Danielle Tunstall has a vast repository of images she’s created and showcasing on her website, definitely worth a look if you’re into the darker side of Cyberpunk, verging on horror, smeared in blood and corrupted tissue.

• Danielle Tunstall website.

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Available in paperback or Amazon Kindle

Paperback: LULU & Amazon Kindle US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro), FR (Euro)

THE BLACK LAKE: The Earth has been ravaged by an event known as Yellow Dawn. Ten years later, survivors are putting lives back together and probing the frontiers of a new Wilderness; whilst overhead the orbital colonies slide across the sky, removed and unaffected. Five men leave the fortress island of Malta on an expedition to the sub-Arctic waters above Scotland. They intend to undertake scientific observations of an alien meteorological phenomenon that has followed the apocalyptic event. What they find is a cosmic horror that seethes amongst the shadows of a shattered Earth. It is a story of escape and wonder, of madness and terror. David J Rodger’s trademark unforgiving rendering of harsh reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a novel that tears open a rent in the boundary of reality, providing a nerve-jarring glimpse of the Outer Chaos and the horrors that lurk just beyond the threshold of our fragile, human existence.

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Back of Book Blurb – Bane of a Writer’s Life

One Upon a Time…

It’s the thing I really dislike. You’ve sweated for weeks and months over something that’s 70,000 or more words in length.  Punchy start that launches well-crafted characters out across story arcs that see them rising, falling, crashing, burning, surviving or dying, and ultimately succeeding or failing as all the threads come together.  And then you have to take all that work and condense it down into a few lines that don’t just read like the contents of a tin of dog food. You’ve got to couch it in terms so compelling that a person might even consider eating that tin of dog food because you’ve made it sound so good.

I’m about to go through an overhaul of all my novel cover designs (bloody 7 of them!), either going for a much muted, graphic template approach or just some typographical first-aid to what I’ve currently got (create a more consistent feeling to show they’re all unique, independent stories, but all part of the same universe).  Working with a freelance designer on this.

But it’s made me review the back of book blurb’s I’m currently using and there is much nose wrinkling on my part. Don’t like what I’ve got. So, I’m in the process of re-writing them. Cue pained expression and a face like a dog chewing on a thistle.

Here’s five of them:

God Seed

God Seed { novel } For acclaimed documentary film-maker, Adam Kyle, this was going to be another feather in his cap. Embedded within a team of highly trained corporate mercenaries, he was covering the start of an operation in England. But when the operation goes terribly wrong, Kyle finds himself battling for his life, his sanity, and maybe even his very soul as a new and dramatic story unfolds, dragging him across the globe…and beyond. It isn’t just his documentary that is at stake, but the fate of every living thing in the Universe. David J Rodger delivers a gut-wrenching and epic journey in a novel that plunges deep into the crawling chaos and takes you to the edge of the membrane of human existence.

BUY > paperback : from LULU
BUY > kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

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Dante’s Fool

Dante’s Fool { novel } Detective Sergeant Louis Cloud is a hard-boiled cop hungry for power and promotion, and he’ll do anything to get it. When a courier descends from orbit and is murdered by an armed gang who rob him of precious gemstones, DS Cloud sets eagerly upon their trail, but he quickly learns there are other forces out there – and things from other realms of reality – that will also stop at nothing to get what they want. DS Cloud’s life is literally torn apart as he plunges headlong towards a terrifying confrontation with one of the sub-princes of Hell. Thrown into this violent mix of corporate corruption and demonism is Natalya Dorganskya; previously the adorable daughter of a now deceased movie-megastar, she has turned to crime to give her the kicks she once got from a borrowed fame and fortune. Once a world-class pilot, her neural network ravaged by custom drugs, can she overcome the torments of her past to defeat the horrors of her immediate future? Non-human things that have come stalking through time and space to take back what she and her compatriots stole from the courier. David J Rodger delivers a dark and edgy vision of the near-future in a novel that reveals the boundaries between the Satanism and the Cthulhu Mythos.

BUY > paperback : from LULU

BUY > kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

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Iron Man Project

Iron Man Project { novel } Former special-forces operative, Vincent Brent, is tough, ruthless and highly trained; he’s now using his skills for whoever will pay him without cashing in the bounty on his head. In this world of the near future, the UN has failed. Wars are fought in boardrooms through attorneys and politics, and on our streets with private armies of military or criminal assets. In Sicily, Jean-Luc Korda, the Chief of Security for one such corporate alliance struggles to survive as hidden forces attempt to manipulate him for their own ends. Both these men find their fates intertwined. In the cross-hairs of powerful adversaries, they must both make decisions of life and death in a choice between command and conscience. David J Rodger delivers a palm-sweating ride in a complex novel that will keep you turning pages until the end.

BUY > paperback : from LULU
BUY > kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

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EDGE

EDGE { novel } Ethan Carmichael, technical wizard and prolific inventor is close to burn out. Taking time out at a luxury snowboarding resort in New Zealand seems like the perfect opportunity to refresh his mind and spirit. But the mountain is a gateway to something much older than humankind, a malign and alien force that even now is oozing back into our reality, hungry for flesh and fear. On the other side of the world, Halo Santana, an unscrupulous concept scout scrambles onto the trail of a new technology that has vanished from a corporate R&D lab. Quickly out of his depth, he enters a frantic race to track down the missing components to save his life. Both men find their fates tangled in a deadly web of lies, treachery and a cosmic horror that comes from beyond the stars. David J Rodger delivers relentless narrative pace in a tense action-packed novel.

BUY > paperback : from LULU

BUY > kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

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Dog Eat Dog

Dog Eat Dog { novel } Ten years after the Earth has been devastated by a viral pathogen seventy per cent of the population is dead and only a handful of cities survive intact. The majority of urban spaces have been abandoned to the Infected, creatures that were once human.  Whilst above, the orbital colonies spin within their artificial gravity wells, helpless observers to the shocking events below.  Mikhail Drobná and Carlos Revira.  Two survivors, both hungry for money and power, and fuelled by a desire to carve their names onto this new world.  One provides services of violence and protection for powerful corporate criminals in New York; the other is a renegade intelligence agent forever running from the demons of his past. Strangers, until events conspire to bring them together. There’s a complex and deadly political power play in progress. Private armies. Corruption and murder on a massive scale.  Both men seek to seize their opportunity at whatever personal cost.  But a cosmic Evil has infiltrated the remote corners of these brutalised lands and it has its own plans. Will these men work as one to defeat it or will their bitter rivalry bring about their destruction. In the end, who will devour who?  David J Rodger delivers a novel of epic vision, character depth and nerve-popping tension.

BUY > paperback : from LULU
BUY > kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

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YOU CAN SEE MORE OF MY SCI-FI DARK FANTASY WORK ON MY OFFICIAL WEBSITE

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20% discount on sci-fi dark fantasy paperbacks from David J Rodger until 2nd May

Special Offer

David J Rodger is a British science-fiction and dark fantasy author with seven novels under his belt. LULU have all of them available to purchase in paperback via their online store.

- The Guardian called his work “Atmospheric and Creepy”

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LULU are offering a tasty 20% discount

on paperbacks purchased through their online portal

For any order

Just use coupon code SILEO at checkout

(code is case sensitive)

Offer Ends 2nd May 2013

This is a great opportunity to grab any of my 7 novels, anthology of short stories, RPG work and any other authors who publish through LULU – in one awesome literary grab.

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If you’re a fan of the Cthulhu Mythos then why not try my latest novel: The Black Lake.

A novel

“The Black Lake: where only death survives.”

Order a bookstore quality paperback from LULU with 20% discount.

Full description & customer reviews on official website

The Earth has been ravaged by an event known as Yellow Dawn. Ten years later, survivors are putting lives back together and probing the frontiers of a new Wilderness; whilst overhead the orbital colonies slide across the sky, removed and unaffected. Five men leave the fortress island of Malta on an expedition to the sub-Arctic waters above Scotland. They intend to undertake scientific observations of an alien meteorological phenomenon that has followed the apocalyptic event. What they find is a cosmic horror that seethes amongst the shadows of a shattered Earth. It is a story of escape and wonder, of madness and terror.

BUY THE BLACK LAKE TODAY

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Go back to the start

Alternatively, if you’re interested in my first novel you could try God Seed.

View on Lulu

“Mankind will be judged, and smitten and cleansed”

Order a bookstore quality paperback from LULUwith 20% discount.

Full description & customer reviews on official website

I wrote God Seed in 1996: it is a tense, tightly packed thriller following a documentary film-maker as he tries to complete a new project: filming corporate mercenaries operating in western Europe. What starts as an action-packed campaign quickly descends into horror and madness as the film-maker is drawn into a conspiracy that goes far beyond the political, religious and ideological boundaries of neo-Nazis and Islamic fundamentalists, propelling him out beyond Earth, into the very heart of darkness.

BUY GOD SEED TODAY

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An entire universe to discover:

In between God Seed and The Black Lake are a number of novels that share and create a common universe for your imagination to roam, enjoy and find new thrills and terrors within. You can find a complete list of my work, including précis and customer reviews, on my official website.

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Click to browse paperbacks on LULU storefront

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Got Kindle?

If you’re keen to try these novels in digital format then you can buy all these titles at Amazon with a choice of currencies, $ US Dollars; or £ GB Pounds, or the Euro.

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Catching an internet meme with the End of the World and Mythos apocalypse – UTOC Public Safety Notice

A Yellow Dawn kind of Morning

Interesting morning.  Checked my blog traffic stats and saw a 700+ spike from last night and another 700+ so far this morning.  Everything feeding off this article I posted back in March 2012.

davidjrodger.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/post-apocalyptic-wallpaper-utoc-public-safety-notice-from-early-days-of-yellow-dawn-infection-warning/

Then I had a text from Ben Chapman, the artist I commissioned to create the poster for my RPG, Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, way back in 2008. I wanted a poster to help catch eyeballs at a gaming / writer convention I was attending.  Ben did an excellent job. You can see it behind the Stormtrooper. Made a good T-shirt, too.

Follow Ben Chapman on Twitter (The Sprezz)

David J Rodger and a new Imperial Fan

Yellow Dawn is basically the shared universe of my fiction novels twisted through an apocalyptic event; the result of machinations of the Cthulhu Mythos. You’ve got a new wilderness, like the badlands of Mad Max; infestations of non-human species and Great Old Ones taking a hold now that the majority of Earth has been left dead… or to the undead. Things that have been mistakenly described as zombies by survivors. And you’ve got survivors, living out in high-tech luxury within the Living Cities or slithering around in poverty and squalor (think D&D adventurers ripe for setting off on their first desperate adventure), forced to rely on crude weapons and old technology, scavenging in the ruins of a former glory or braving the mind-warping horror of the Dead Cities

Ben was super excited because he’d found the image trending on Imgur, with a lot of comments bubbling up on Reddit.  He sent me the links.

http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/1cxxgc/if_you_discover_a_dead_body/

and

http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/x385g/welcome_to_the_end/

It’s pleasing, flattering even, but more so it’s really interesting and rather exciting to see an idea take off on its own; other people, other minds taking it and doing their stuff with it. (Although a credit to Ben and myself is always appreciated).  A couple of very cool examples of this are below:

UTOC Safety Notice – Copyright David J Rodger – Image taken by Oli Mortimer

Image source: Oli Mortimer, visit his website here.

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Photo by Boothy – click for full size

Image Source: Boothy, view his photographic work here

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Available in paperback or Kindle

Paperback : from LULU & kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

DOG EAT DOG { novel } takes place in the near future, after the Earth has been devastated by a viral pathogen unleashed when a corporate cargo hauler crashed into the atmosphere; breaking up as a fireball across the sky, it showered Southern Europe and North Africa with a deadly rain of infected debris. Ten years later, over seventy percent of the human population is dead and only a handful of cities survive intact. So called ‘Living Cities’. The vast majority of human habitation is abandoned to the undying creatures left mutated through a brutal twist in the infection. Greed and corruption are left hovering over this bleak and brutalized domain and a cosmic horror is now free to infiltrate the remote abandoned corners of the Earth. Above this, the orbital colonies spin within artificial gravity wells, impartial observers, unaffected by the shocking events below. Within this mix the lives of two survivors collide: a renegade intelligence agent and a cold-blooded master of violence, shaping events with their virulent hunger for money and desire to carve their name onto this new world.

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Make your own sign

You can download a good res copy of the sign here.

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Free Audio Book (short story): Masters of Chaos

MASTERS OF CHAOS

A Short Slab of Speculative Fiction written by British Sci-Fi Dark Fantasy Author David J Rodger
Audio Book narration by American Voice Talent Cody J Johnson

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-BLURB-
MASTERS OF CHAOS: {Speculative fiction} A man contemplates the world around him, taking seemingly meticulous notes of certain random but repeating events. Can he influence the world through such observations? And to what end? When unseen things are scratching at the doors of perception.

- BACKGROUND -
It’s 3,800 words, fairly meaty for a short story and uses an unusual style that, in my head at least, is based on the awesome narrative monologue method used in the film Pi by Darren Aronofsky. It charts the terrible fate hanging over the Earth during the esoteric experimentation by somebody who has stumbled onto (or been led into) the loathsome, diabolical and reality shattering concepts practiced by adepts of the Cthulhu Mythos (H.P.Lovecraft).

-COPY-
I’m in my apartment. It’s morning. I’m standing by the window looking down; dressed in a crumpled shirt, tie and suit trousers. In one hand is a bottle of expensive mineral water. In the other hand is an old-fashioned Dictaphone with a cable running up to an ear-piece and throat microphone.
My point of view: I’m looking out of the window down on a busy city street.
Picture it, a montage of ordinary people on their way to work.
Some years ago, in Argentina, an old woman decided to withdraw a little more money from her bank than usual. There was a small delay as she got her pesos. A minor cash flow problem for the bank. No harm done. Except, word of this problem got around, it echoed, and caused a run on the banks that led to the economic collapse of an entire country.
One little old lady.
One grain of sand bringing down a mountain.
It was the day I discovered I had a talent. But as with all of nature’s gifts there is need for a mentor, to nurture and guide.
I lift the Dictaphone a little even though there is no need:
8.10 – Look out apartment window.
I see a smartly dressed business woman stopping to cross a busy intersection. Her face shows she is a burns victim. She’s wearing red gloves and is holding a Starbucks.
I lick my lips and thumb record again:
8.12 – Girl A arrives on street corner, gloves, Starbucks coffee in her hand. She waits 43 seconds to cross road.
A few moments elapse and then I focus on a male student in a scuffed leather jacket, carrying a paperback novel.
8.13 – Man B appears on street corner. He is carrying a book in his hand.
I turn from the window, pull on a jacket, pocket the Dictaphone, and head outside.
Picture it. My journey to work. A sequence of images: waiting at bus stop, sitting on bus, walking through downtown city streets, walking into modern office building. A finance company.
Through all of this I appear detached and deep in thought.
8.15 – Left for work. It takes 45 minutes to get to there.

-MAKE A SMALL CONTRIBUTION-
Like the story? Share some wonga.  Make a small financial contribution (link takes you to my website, then PayPal).

-GET THE STORY AS A PDF-
Click this link for a free PDF copy of the short story Masters of Chaos.

Click to grab the PDF. Personal use only.

- LINKS -

WRITER
David J Rodger official website: http://www.davidjrodger.com
David J Rodger Twitter: @davidjrodger
David J Rodger Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-J-Rodger/10090348898

VOICE TALENT
Cody J Johnson on Voices (Talent Website): http://www.voices.com/people/codyjohnsonaudio
Cody J Johnson on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cody-Johnson/44537397887

SONGS OF SPHERES
Anthology of short sci-fi dark fantasy stories: Cyberpunk and Cthulhu Mythos.
The short story Masters of Chaos comes from an anthology of 15 shorts, available in paperback from LULU and from Amazon for Kindle.
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Available in paperback or Amazon Kindle

Paperback: LULU & Amazon Kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro), FR (Euro)

SONGS OF SPHERES: {short story collection} 15 short stories hand-picked by the author as his personal favourites and presented with a brief introduction to each story. There are monsters that squirm and slither through the dark spaces beneath our feet, our dead are like carrion to them; and us, the living, are often victims of their hunger for violence and their taste in blood and terror. There are men and women who prey on the predators – a rough justice or karma in action. Technology carries information beyond the wires but what else can ride the electromagnetic waves? Demonic forces that infiltrate the mind through the new technology implants of the cyberpunk era. In dream-like realms, brave souls adventure deep into the strange worlds conjured by far flung minds. What mysteries do they discover and what secrets do they bring back with them into physical flesh and the reality of Humankind? The King in Yellow regards Earth from behind a pallid mask of silk; reposed on a throne of madness, corruption and decay within the black tower that stands beyond Carcosa. Hastur – the Great Old One that must not be named – the bearer of the Yellow Sign, has been brought forth. In tales of Yellow Dawn the consequences are here for those who dare to see. WARNING: some of these stories contain scenes of a disturbing and sexual nature.

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 6th April ¦ Aigues-Mortes – Alex and the deserted island #2

Bela, Fable

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. It also now has two novels set within it, Dog Eat Dog and The Black Lake.

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RESUME Early March  YD +10 (ten years after Yellow Dawn happened)

• <> Winter and Alex have not returned within the week given to them by the Somali.
• <> Somali takes it out on Bela. Tells him to take Rico, one of Somali’s loyal thugs, and head north to see if his friends are trying to steal the medical equipment for themselves. Bella is furious. He despises being bossed around and controlled like this.
• <> That night Bella makes a knife in the forge to use later, intending to kill Rico. But on the journey North he realises Rico is just another grunt doing a job. They don’t become friends but they do get along.
• <> The journey takes two days. They reach the lake and get rowed across to the island by the guy who took Winter and Alex.
• <> On the island is a one story house. However, beneath this, Bela discovers a rocky cavern system that takes him down and down. He discovers Alex and Winter held captive at gunpoint by Dr Karlow.  Dr Karlow is a genius scientist who came out here over a decade ago to complete experiments on rejuvenation of tissue. He was driven away by traditional scientists and scorned. But he made great progress here, using a wealthy man who was dying as his primary patient. The man would have lived, grown young and strong again, if his spoilt nephew hadn’t arrived with several lawmen demanding Dr Karlow stop the experiments. It all led the to man dying and to Karlow, the nephew and the lawmen being caught in a freezing mist.  Alex and Winter woke these people up a week ago (by accident).  It led to a situation where the nephew destroyed Karlow’s only copy of the formulae that proved to be so successful… Karlow, enraged, shot the nephew then held the others captive in order to continue his experiments and rediscover the formulae. In the past week his experiments killed all of the captives: Alex and Winter are due to be next.  Bela, however, interrupts proceedings. A ladder is thrown. Dr Karlow nearly has his arm broken. Winter grabs him, knocking gun away and takes control. The situation is resolved.
• <> Except, the characters now debate what to do with this “treasure trove” of medical lab equipment.
• <> External factors force their hand: the sister of the missing nephew (over a decade) has used the same information that the Somali was given. She arrives in a Marseilles military helicopter with a handful of heavily armed men. They take Dr Karlow, so he can continue his experiments (for their profit) and they fly the characters back to Aigues-Mortes. Some cash as a small token of appreciation.
• <> Somali is furious but there is nothing he can do, other than continue his abuse of Bela and the others.
• <> The C’s are desperate to get away from Aigues-Mortes.
• <> Baron Toten Reich (mystery man wrapped all in black leather, black cloak, and a black leather face mask) approaches them with a job. Go find a missing girl, the wealthy uncle wants her back, she’s run off with a bandit called Marius.  The Somali will know where Marius is.
• <> Winter talks to the Somali. Turns out Marius is no friend of his. Marius owes him 2,000 copper. Somali tricks Winter into “buying” the debt. Winter not only has to find Marius, return the missing girl, he now owes the Somali 2,000 copper.
• <> Winter and Bela head to Fable, 40 miles West. Turns out it is a mission for the Changed. A rambling French villa perched high up on terraced hill, surrounded by frozen vineyards and farmland, and lower down about 30 properties with 100 residents. It’s a nice place and Bela is welcomed. The Mission is run by Samu Fable: elderly, jovial, drinks a lot of wine. Samu knows Marius and despises him because Marius came to the Mission and robbed the place.
• <> Team manage to persuade the 24 Changed and several locals to join them next day, to confront Marius. The ploy works. Marius is totally intimidated as are his half dozen thugs. Marius ditches the girl like she was Infected. The girl is mortified and furious. She flees but is quickly caught by Winter and Bela.  Marius and his bandits are given basic supplies and told to leave the area forever. The girl returns to the Mission and is happy there. Samu is happy for her to stay.
• <> The team send word back to Aigues-Mortes about the situation
• <> That night Bela can’t sleep. Going outside he feels he is being watched from the distant ridge of landscape. Then he sees a large figure step away from cover and mount the back of (what Bela thought was a stunted tree in silhouette) a large, winged beast – which then flaps up into the night sky. Bela thinks maybe he was dreaming.
• <> The next day the uncle arrives on horseback, along with Baron Toten Reich and three armed mercenaries. These men have a meeting with Samu.  Which leads to Samu asking the girl to leave with her uncle. The girl is horrified and feels betrayed.
• <> Baron Toten Reich hangs back to discuss a new job with team. He says the Somali has been paid off. (2,000 coppers).  He asks them to return to Aigues-Mortes and then head north, up the coast about 100 miles, where there is a situation he wants them to look into. The team agree.
• <> That night, Winter indulges himself with a human girl again (Carina) whilst Bela drinks 24-year-old bottle of whisky with a Changed called Adam: later, Bela witnesses something (a warrior orc?) outside the building, observing him, communicating in a tongue that is familiar but he cannot yet understand.  Bela starts to get fleeting glimpses of blue lightning around an ancient tower on the edge of a black lake.

RESUME:
12th MArch YD+10
Bela and Winter are about to leave Fable to return to Aigues-Mortes, meet with Alex and then head North.

GM NOTES:
All Rank rolls complete
All money up to date.
Bela has some raw components and specialised components (written on your notepaper).

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 19th March ¦ Aigues-Mortes – Alex and the deserted island #1

Introducing Alexander Dumas

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. It also now has two novels set within it, Dog Eat Dog and The Black Lake.

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BEGIN 25th Feb YD +10 (ten years after Yellow Dawn happened).

This is a sub-session to introduce Alexander Dumas (Nice Guy Tony) into the Aigues-Mortes fold. This session takes place after Winter and Bela have returned from their travels, just before a number of weeks elapse at Aigues-Mortes where Bela attempts to construct a crossbow.

Alex arrives in Aigues-Mortes broke and lucky to be alive after the merchant caravan he was travelling with was attacked by bandits. Everyone but him was killed and he escaped with a sack of provisions and the clothes on his back. 22 years old he was only 12 when Yellow Dawn happened so has little memory – or nostalgia – for the old world. Slim, wiry and strong, with remarkably attractive rugged good looks, bold charm and vibrantly intelligent, he wins over most people who meet him at first glance. For this reason, Alex is able to occupy an empty stall at the Canal Gate Market rather than being turned away as most other refugees are. After a couple of days standing at a table trying to sell the few provisions he was able to save from the bandit attack, he is desperately thinking about what his next move can be. How does he get stock to kick-start a trading enterprise? He gets to meet the local “security” – a Native American Indian with a physique like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger.  And he encounters the arrogant, scathing, abusive Somali who acts as lieutenant for the local crime gang who controls the market. The Somali takes a bottle of Alex’s water and says Alex “owes him” for letting him pay late rather than up-front for occupying the market. Alex is told he owes 20% of anything he earns to the crime gang – for protection.

Then next day, Alex shuffles over to the carbo-plastic hut on the edge of the canal, near the market, where Winter’s boss lives and works. Hot weak coffee is being handed out to security men.  Winter blags one for Alex – who is deeply grateful. Then the Somali arrives and tells Winter’s boss that he is late on payment and owes the “big man” money – to avoid a beating, the Somali takes Winter (and Alex) away for a job. He sends them up the coast, 30 miles along an Interlink, and then 10 miles inland where there is apparently: “.. and island loaded with medical equipment. Ripe for picking. Meant to be worth a fortune.  Go there and come back in a week and tell me if it’s for real and worth anything.”  There’s no mention of Alex or Winter being cut into a share of any profits; they’re merely being treated as slaves under threat of violence – and violence towards Winter’s boss – if they fail to comply.

The journey North is good – the first day. Although that night both Alex and Winter fail to build a proper camp, fail to get a fire going or find food or enough water, so have to huddle and shiver and eat into their scarce provisions.

The next day both men suffer aches and pains for the exertion of travelling – they reach a small settlement where they spent the night by a fire (paying for it with provisions) and get fed a hearty stew. Freak weather conditions drop the already freezing night down to -10c and Alex nearly freezes to death; he suffers exposure and has to spend the next day getting warm and resting  – thankfully the locals take pity on him and offer help, otherwise he would probably have died!!!

The next day, Alex and Winter head west and find a scattering of huts on edge of vast lake – rain and mist obscure much of what’s there. They ask to hire somebody to take them out to the island by boat – at first, the locals say there isn’t any island.  Aware they’re lying, Winter and Alex press the point and learn that the island is shunned. Some crazy medical men used to live out there with a patient – then 9 years ago, after YD happened, a lawman from Marseilles arrived with three other men – one of whom was young wealthy and arrogant, looking for the medical man. They were taken over to the island, but never came back.  Locals went there looking for them after a few days – found the house there empty and intact, even found their coats all hanging up, but no sign of anybody. And that’s how it’s been left all these years.

Alex and Winter get rowed over there (2 hours!!!) and dropped off. They ask the boat man to come back for them noon the following day. Boat man says he will, but he won’t come back again if they’re not around. It’s a creepy and unnerving idea. On the island Alex and Winter find an overturned boat in good condition – so at least they have a way of escape if they need it.  They also find a large cottage in a bad state of decay.  Empty. Coats hanging in hallway.  No sign of anybody in years.

And then Alex falls through the rotten floor into a chamber below… and from that moment, everything changes….

More to follow.
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Yellow Dawn – the struggle of post-apocalyptic survival

The hardships lead players to push desperate characters towards considering crime or taking more risks

post-apocalyptic survivor – image credit: unknown

¦ Dialling in from the Sky Bunker ¦

I ran a session of Yellow Dawn (The Age of Hastur) yesterday.

Great game and very different flavour to the high-tech, big action, thunderous magickal power play that’s been running for  the past few years: a previous set of characters who rapidly established a settlement of their own (using rules in the game book for renovating damaged structures) and went on to accumulate a lot of wealth, technology and experience.

All a lot of fun, but it usually meant the characters (and players) were able to side-step many of the issues and hardships of survival. They had a vehicle. They had access to fuel and food and water.  And they had equipment that made life comfortable

This new character group have started dirt poor, starving and stuck in a rut.  No transport.  Low survival skills.  Hemmed in by wilderness, the danger of the Infected and the threat of dying from exposure if they try to get away.

The soft pace of the session really allowed me to build up strong visuals of the area in southern France that I know and love, personally. The medieval crusader fort of Aigues-Mortes, a location I’ve used in the Yellow Dawn novel, Dog Eat Dog and the massive, globe-spanning campaign Shadows of the Quantinex.  It was great to bring it to life in the mind of the players.

But also to indulge in the full background of the new characters; why are they in Aigues-Mortes, what do they want; how will they get it?

I guided them into a simple, small scenario that required them to travel 30 miles to collect goods from a remote settlement. It was a chance to properly use the Wilderness Survival rules (consequences of fatigue and not finding food or water; risk of exposure, dangerous critters and bad weather), and I was very pleased by the result. The characters, not experts, survived, but were uncomfortable, in pain and becoming thirsty.  They players experienced vividly the shock of how “at risk” they were to falling foul of the elements, because of their low skills.  It meant that when they found their destination, the remote settlement, and were treated to hot food and warm beds – there was a tangible sense of “enjoying such simple luxuries”.

 

It’s a good case in point, that keeping the characters poor and hungry for the first few sessions really builds up the tension of survival.

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Their low ability to cope with Wilderness Survival also served to reinforce how trapped the characters are, eking out a hard existence in the grubby market outside Aigues-Mortes. Forced to sleep on the dirty floor of the stall every night, no money for proper accommodation, and actually starving because of not having enough money to pay for proper food (one character suffered a reduction in STR stat over course of 6 weeks due to poor diet)… the players are now discussing desperate measures to try to break the vicious downward spiral. If they stay here, they’ll just waste away, starving, until they grow so weak they can’t do their jobs and then they’ll be tossed out into the mud with nothing.

It really was a bleak experience.

Rather wonderful to have it come to life so vividly. *smiles* Both with narrative, and the hard numbers of the rule systems, showing their lack of funds against the cost of living; and the system generated consequences of not eating enough over time.

You can read the scenario write-up here.

It was also a great chance to use the “map of the land” system, where the GM can fairly quickly generate an expanding route littered with ruins (for scavenging), settlements and other rare oddities. Plus the ever-present danger of encounters with people, wildlife and things that should not walk the Earth at all.

It’s been a great case study of getting back to basics. Seeing how players begin to shift their characters towards crime or high risk strategy’s in order to progress; and this creates more tension, more drama and more opportunity for GMs to weave in further plots for the game.

Just had a text from one of the players who was here yesterday:
“Forgotten how tough it is just to survive. I wonder how the others will fare.”

Result.  And they’ve not even encountered the Cthulhu Mythos yet.

We typically play one Saturday every three weeks. Bookmark this link to read further updates on the character’s exploits to survive – or delve back into the bigger action plots the players went through with previous characters.

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YD 2.5 – from LULU

Paperback : from LULU ¦ Hardback (with black cover): from LULU

Primary Rulebook (2.5) This book is crammed with everything you will need to create characters and run scenarios. [] Features narrative examples of key themes • The Influence of Hastur • Medical theories on the Infection • Zombie surges • Dead Cities • Wilderness survival • Comprehensive scavenging system and how to repair or build things with resources • Backgrounds and motivations of government bodies and corporations • Computer hacking and drug abuse • High-tech immortality options • Non-human characters • Enhancements through cyberware and bioware • Weaponry, equipment and armour • Complete character generation and development system • Complex political, corporate and quasi-religious tensions • Schools of Elemental Magick, occultism, demonology, and the alien horrors of the Outer Chaos – the Cthulhu Mythos.

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 9th March ¦ Aigues-Mortes and the Star of Eternal Life #1

A New Character Group

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. It also now has two novels set within it, Dog Eat Dog and The Black Lake.

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BEGIN 15th Feb YD +10 (ten years after Yellow Dawn happened).

This is a brand new character group for the players.

Storm Winter: a Native American Indian who had been travelling through Europe ten years earlier when the shit hit the fan with Yellow Dawn.  With an innate “body-builder” physique, he’s survived by providing protection and security to people who have needed his help.  Over the decade he’s drifted south, seeking warmer climes, hating the frozen and prolonged winters that savage survivors.  Finding himself in coastal region in the South of France, he migrated to the former medieval crusader fort of Aigues-Mortes.

Bela: once a Hungarian engineer in the UTOC Civil Defence Force, he fell sick like the majority of his platoon when the 1st pathogen struck. But unlike the 70% who died horribly over the next few days, he went into a coma and then woke up… changed.  The military personnel who survived Yellow Dawn had Bela locked up and seemed ready to perform some brutal experimentation on him, in order to try to understand what the heck was happening to the global population of the planet.  Several of his former battle colleagues got him out: recognising the human that was inside of the “monster” being caged in the penal block.  Since then Bela has survived lynch mobs and all the terrors of waking up to be no longer quite human.  Hounded, harassed and hated, his life followed the path of many Changed – suffering the abusive terminology and prejudice reserved for what survivors were calling ORCS.  Drifting south, he made his way to Aigues-Mortes and got stuck there.

Aigues-Mortes, fortified survivor settlement in South of France

Canal Gate Market is situation bottom left, outside the high walled enclosure of the settlement, squeezed in between the canals and amongst the trees (long since chopped down for firewood by early survivors). It’s a landscape of mud and filth and desperate people.

Aigues-Mortes

Within the high medieval walls, survivors are wealthy, successful, political creatures that do whatever they can to ensure their lives remain comfortable and well-supplied with the resources they need.

Winter and Bela do not have such a privileged existence. They live outside the fortified walls.  Always at the risk of any Infected that might stumble into the area – although 10 years after the Infection first showed itself in the screaming, shrieking, biting, flesh-tearing victims that sprinted through populated areas… Aigues-Mortes has done what it can to clear as much of the risk from the surrounding land as it can. There is no Dead Zone. Just the odd cluster of scavenged buildings and lots and lots of wildly growing foliage.

Both Bela and Winter have survived outside the walls for several years.  Bela works for Anitole, a weaponsmith and blacksmith, at the Canal Gate Market. Winter works for Gaiyan, a former boxer, now a greasy, filthy, overweight shadow of the man he used to be, who lives and works out of a carbo plastic hut on the edge of the canal, next to the market, providing bodyguards and security for the market and merchants who need such people.  He always has a cold, unlit, saliva drenched stub of a cigar in his flabby mouth.  Winter walks around the Market ensuring the daily influx of desperate survivors who arrive at the area – and get washed back by the armed militia on the gates of Aigues-Mortes – don’t become a nuisance as their desperation turns them to theft and violence.

It is a grim life for both Bela and Winter. They never make enough money to buy proper food and are often starving.  Winter, best friends with Bela, sleeps on the floor of the market stall, huddled next to the warmth of the idling forge.  Bela rarely feels the cold but appreciate the companionship of his friend.  Besides, neither of them could afford to pay for anywhere to stay.

Life is a struggle.

Water is three times normal price due to difficulty of supply; the local area is very salty.

Outside the walls, people don’t give anything away for free.  And the market area is “controlled” by a criminal gang under the rule of Herriot. His Somalian right-hand thug has an acute dislike for Bela – and the other two Changed – two woman who live and work in the scavenged debris heaps.   Both Bela and Winter have discussed killing the Somalian many times because of his sneering, aggressive taunts towards Bela.

One day, Bela is told by his boss that a young “wealthy” couple have come to Aigues-Mortes to sell a large stash of scavenged metal. They don’t have the metal with them… too fearful of travelling with it. But they sell it to the boss for a low price, on the agreement that the boss will have to go and collect it himself.  The boss sends Bela. And talks to Winter’s boss – who agrees to send Winter with Bela.  This means neither Bela or Winter get paid any extra as it is considered part of their job.

They hike 30 miles, part way along the Interlink and then turn off along a badly overgrown horse trail.

Sleeping one night in the ruined shell of an old farmhouse they discover how hard it is to be comfortable; it’s a grim night. The next day, cold and thirsty, they push on to their destination.

They arrive in A_______, a small wealthy settlement of about 40 survivors, and discover a strange funeral taking place. They are mostly welcomed by the residents who are delighted to have strangers to talk to – and new stories to listen to, although Bela and Winter have very little fun stuff to discuss due to their lives being so grim back in Aigues Mortes – so they talk about who they used to be. But this pleases the residents of A_____ no end.

Strange things occur later that night, with the recently buried body seemingly coming back to life to exact revenge on employees who betrayed his final dying wish; the son and daughter of the dead man compete with others to find a missing piece of jewelry, the star of eternal life.  There is the servant, the corrupt lawyer, and a mysterious Egyptian gentleman who arrives in a jeep in the early evening, claiming the Star belongs to him.

It transpires the dead man wasn’t dead at all but had been so convinced he was dying – and would be resurrected – that he went into a comatose state. And then woke up in his own tomb.

Bela and Winter are involved in capturing the lawyer – who murdered the Egyptian and tried to flee with the Star.

The son and daughter are grateful. As is the settlement of A_____.   All the locals give Bela and Winter a little food or something for their return journey. It’s a token gesture but one that means a great deal to both of them because it is at least some small reward for what they have done.  They received nothing but a handshake and some gratitude from Marcus and Claire (the wealthy son and daughter who return to Marseilles).

Ironically, they get to drive back with the jeep (and the lawyer) allowing them to transport the stash of scavenged metal back to Aigues-Mortes quickly and safely.  They also stop at the ruined farmhouse and spend a day and a night there, doing some asset stripping, gathering metal and other raw components that Bela might be able to use later.

Returning to Aigues-Mortes, both Bela and Winter experience an overwhelming despondency. They don’t want to exist like this. The lawyer departs, with the jeep (as agreed, to return to Marseilles to carry out his side of the bargain that led to him not being strung up for killing the Egyptian or trying to steal the Star). And so the daily grind of life in the market starts to sap away their strength. Literally, Bela’s character loses a point of 1 STR due to not being able to afford a proper diet every day.

Ramparts of Aigues-Mortes

Both characters (and the players) experience the hunger of desperation and the craving to break out of the negative cycle. To do something before they waste away and die here.

But they’re also aware of the trap they’re in. Because they don’t have the skills to really survive out beyond Aigues-Mortes. Their bad night in the ruined farm-house made them acutely aware of how unprepared and unskilled they are.  They could leave Aigues-Mortes, and they could conceivably find enough food and water to survive… but they would never generate an income and they would fade into the filthy peasant things that you find on roadsides along the interlink.

They have no money to really go far or get equipment. So they’re faced with the prospect of turning to crime – or finding some kind of lucky break. Or risking a Dead City run.

Interesting days ahead.

RESUME:

6th April YD+10. Aigues-Mortes market. Two new characters (Chris and Tony) should come online at this session. Meanwhile, Winter has spent several weeks waiting for Bela to finish making a crossbow from some of the scavenged resources they found at the ruined farmhouse, but he keeps making mistakes.Time drags by. They are becoming desperate.

Cash: notes written down and up to date.
Raw Components: 21 KG
Specialised Components: 1KG.
{kept in an unsecured location within Anetole’s market stall}

GM NOTES:
All rank rolls done and up to date; including occupation rep rolls for Bela and Winter.

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Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur – update – March 2013

D&D as a setting for Yellow Dawn?

A global apocalyptic event or a regional phenomenon

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It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for Yellow Dawn (RPG).  I had my first game session for 2013 last month, where we concluded a brief, eerie and brutal “character killer” scenario written by Simon Brake, called ROOTS (read session notes).  It’s pure H.P.Lovecraft.  Great piece of work from Mr Brake.  Dark goings-on in a remote landscape: easy to adjust to the “new wilderness” concept in post-apocalyptic Yellow Dawn.  The scenario itself was perfect for this point in the life-cycle of the character group, which had been in existence since I first drafted and ran beta test sessions of Yellow Dawn as a game system (back in 2007).

So a poignant moment, seeing a lot of familiar faces either dying horribly or being driven close to total insanity by the unyielding, corrupting force of the Mythos. One character actually changed entirely, physically and psychologically to finally embrace the pure spirit of the Great Old One that had come to dominate so much of his waking life.

It was an especially satisfying example of a Mythos orientated scenario working really well within Yellow Dawn.

Note, I wrote Yellow Dawn specifically to be adaptable to a number of scenario flavours: Gamma World, Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk and Shadowrun were at the forefront of my mind. These were the games I grew up on.  These are the genres I write my novels within.  But I’ve since found Yellow Dawn adapts itself well to other flavours.  Westerns, where  the Wilderness of post-apocalyptic Earth can be swapped in for the plains, prairies and mountains of the Wild West that spread along the Oregon Trail and Gold Rush fevers; the brutal treatment of The Changed can be compared to some examples of what happened to Native American Indians when conflict erupted between the new and old.

I reckon it could work with D&D, too.   Michael Tresca and I exchanged emails some time ago about an RPG campaign he was hoping to set up for his players, using Yellow Dawn as a setting:

MT: I’ve been pushing hard for my next campaign to be set in your universe, a post-apocalyptic horror taking place at the start of Yellow Dawn when the robots begin eliminating everyone who is infected…

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But it seems his players just wanted to stick with D&D.

Which led to this idea.

Having Yellow Dawn taking place within the D&D Universe.

Rather than robots attacking everything as Day Zero unfolds… it is warforged, operating under a council edict to remove a dangerous “magickal” infection from spreading through humans. Throw in a totally unknown aspect of Hastur (a D&D version ) which begins to take hold of reality.  It would be a wonderful twist to the usual hack and slash D&D experience, with characters finding their physical and magickal prowess undermined by the brutish, bone-crushing onslaught of warforged: these things actually leave the characters be as they’re not Infected.  Followed by the madness of the King in Yellow’s entry into this medieval realm of fantasy.  As to what could have caused Yellow Dawn to happen in a D&D setting. No such thing as a corporate merchant cruiser crashing into the atmosphere as it hurtled in from Deep Space… but perhaps the very human architects of this insane scheme sent something up into the atmosphere (a version of a meteorological balloon?) with the required items attached ready to – detonate.  A chaotic medley of alchemical, organic, necromantic and Mythos compounds, fused and scattered by whatever was loaded onto the ascending device as an explosive catalyst.

It’s totally untested and could be blowing smoke out of my arse, but I reckon it would be great to hear from any D&D folks who fancy giving it a go.  Get in touch if you do.

Great Southern Land

On another front, I’ve had the pleasure of striking up dialogue with a chap in Australia called Joshua Hanson.

He’s taken a wonderful depth of interest in the Yellow Dawn universe and is now working on the first draft of an Australian sourcebook for the game.  Working title: “Great Southern land”.

Early days yet. But it’s likely to contain:

• Some new weaponry and additional modern combat techniques
• Use of drones with smart / AI emulation software
• Dramatic destruction of extreme weather caused by the meteorological shifts the followed in the wake of Day Zero, with Australian suffering some of the more brutal weather reactions
• Notes on Mythos infestation(s) in the badlands away from the Living Cities but perhaps disturbingly close to remote survivor settlements

It all promises to be rather exciting. For me, there’s just a huge pleasure and grinning anticipation in waiting to see the output of another mind that is engaging with one of my creations. It will be the product of Joshua Hanson but couched within a setting that is familiar, couched in the language of Yellow Dawn.

I’ll post updates over time.

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The Oatmeal Presents: Nikola Tesla – The Greatest Geek Who Ever Lived!

Nikola Tesla: Geek, Genius

Nikola Tesla: Serbian-American inventor, engineer, engineer, physicist, and futurist. Click full size

As an aside, Tesla presents an intriguing character for any Cthulhu Mythos campaign. I especially enjoy the idea his brilliant capacity for opening up new portals of thought comes from the fact he may have been (unwittingly) shifting back and forth between the fabric of temporal reality – hence his penchant for isolation and moments of “madness”.  Or perhaps he was the successful host of some cosmic projected mind streaming in from a far-flung angle of space and time?  I certainly like to think that characters in a near future cyberpunk / far future fantasy might encounter a reflection, or actual physical contact with the man as he flits back and forth along the time continuum.

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From The Oatmeal:

Wonderfully engaging illustrated praise of Nikola Tesla and the vast range of inventions and ideas that owe a great deal to his incredible mind. And some rather interesting bashing of Thomas Edison.  Described throughout as a douchebag. Informed hilarity ensues.

Click to read more (via The Oatmeal)

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I strongly recommend following the link through to The Oatmeal to enjoy the rest of the comic. Brilliant and informative.

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Getting back into a creative groove

¦ dialling in from the Sky Bunker ¦

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March. Means I’m back into writing after taking February “off” from the insane creative drive of the last 3 years – and following on from the three months I took off between September and December when everything in my world seemed so… dark.

David J Rodger working on new novel set in post-apocalyptic London

Taking February off wasn’t easy to do by the way; almost had fights with myself first weekend of Feb when I headed down to the harbour to relax — whilst some other part of my brain was scowling, “what are you doing? Get back home. You should be writing!”  This is the voice that’s been whip-lashing me all these years.  It’s been highly productive.  Four novels, one RPG (plus a complete re-write for version 2.5) and a major campaign book (Shadows of the Quantinex) since 2007.  But there comes a point when you look at the things you’re not doing with your life whilst focussing so much energy in just one area…

Anyhow, I really enjoyed Feb. Managed to do a lot of social things and other bits and pieces that would normally be considered “getting in the way” of the creative process. Have I found balance? Who knows. I’ve now got to cold-start the engine and see if the words will flow — or if I splutter and cough dank fetid fumes from lack of use. Whatever, I’m now back into The Social Club – novel #8 – picking up where I left off: Senior Verifier Jadon Purgo in trouble with the Power of Eight Group in a post-apocalyptic version of London, ten years after the event known as Yellow Dawn struck the Earth.

You can eyeball my previous novels here: Science Fiction Dark Fantasy by David J Rodger.

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David J Rodger – DATA

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RPG phenomenon – the emotional response when fictional character groups come to an end

End of an era

Yesterday saw the end of a group of fictional characters who have been together since 2007.

The last few years, I get to roleplay roughly once every three weeks. I have a group of keen and loyal players (one of them since 1994) who willingly sacrifice an entire Saturday to the game; they make the journey to my house on a hill, here in Bristol, and subject themselves to whatever corporate menace of cyberpunk fantasy plot comes their way; or endure the nerve-biting, skin-crawling dread of a Cthulhu Mythos nightmare unfolding around them.

I’ve been into RPGs since 1981, age 11, when I discovered Dungeons and Dragons.  Come 1985 I got into Call of Cthulhu and the works of H.P. Lovecraft. 1989 it was Shadowrun and Cyberpunk.  In 1996 I put together my own system – a rough blend of CoC and Cyberpunk and in 2006 I started  writing my own commercial RPG, Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur; which launched early 2008.

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. It also now has two novels set within it, Dog Eat Dog and The Black Lake.

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During 2007, I had a beta version of Yellow Dawn in my hands and I started running it with my group. I was nervous as hell but after the first session knew I had a winner.  Although overall considered post-apocalyptic, the setting is polymorphic – enabling GMs to dig out their favourite old campaign books and scenarios, and adjust them with minimal effort to work in the Yellow Dawn universe. Cyberpunk adventure. Cthulhu Mythos horror. Mad Max mayhem. Gun-slinging anti heroics of the Westerns.  Swords and sorcery. Ghost hunting and Wilderness survival.

My group created a bunch of characters. Skint. Barely surviving. They came together at a Living City desperate for cash and willing to sign-up to a tour with the CRC (City Recovery Corps) heading out as a unit into the nearest Dead City to scavenge and bring back resources essential to the Living City’s daily grind. Hard work. Risky business.  The Infected crowd the abandoned roads and buildings. And the Influence of Hastur is an invisible, pervasive threat to sanity and soul alike.

They did well. In fact, they managed to beat off a random attack by a bunch of aggressive Changed (Warrior Orcs), capturing the truck these things were using harass a remote wilderness road.

The characters used the truck to scout nearby wilderness, found an abandoned mini business park; a few corporate buildings. They took it over. Stripped it clean and repaired damage from 10 years of neglect and weathering.  They built a base.  And it was perfect.

From there they became involved in a wild range of scenarios and campaigns, including Shadows of the Quantinex – heading off-world into Deep Space at one point – to discover the truth behind what caused the apocalyptic event known as Yellow Dawn to occur. And to stop an even worse catastrophe from hammering the few million survivors of that event into dust.

It was all thrilling stuff.

Throughout this, the characters increased their hero rank and wealth. They gained superheroic bonuses and increased skills beyond levels of normal mastery.

And then, yesterday, 16th February 2013 (real date) or in the world of Yellow Dawn, 27th September YD+1 (11 years after Yellow Dawn event rocked the planet), that group of characters came to an end.  Some of them at least. One died (throat hacked open at the climax of a brutal ceremonial orgy); one of them vanished – taken by a mysterious golden figure, an Elder God, which had been haunting his dreams for weeks; one of them changed into sub-human creature of the forest, associated with the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath and finding a sort of perfect ending after weeks of torment since a traumatic encounter in the mountains of Belgrade, in Europe (Horror on the Orient Express). And one of them survived, barely, after an epic struggle to beat off madness and death – but was so exhausted and traumatized, he has decided to depart back into orbit and then Deep Space.

So the character group that is known as Little Boston has come to an end. Not all dead. Not over forever. The settlement they build is there, as are some secondary characters and a whole bunch of NPCs who run the farm and small bio-fuel facility. But it will be a long time before any of us see them again.  New characters are going to be created. A new starting point, possibly Aigues-Morte on the coast of the South of France.

So like the players, I’m going through a profound moment of reflection.  When I was packing away all the stuff from the dining room table this morning; the folders crammed with character sheets and player notes; I flicked through the thick slab of GM notes I’ve built up since 2007… most of them I threw away after reading, but I’ve decided to keep some of the early ones. It might seem strange to an non-RPG player, but reading those notes brings back memories and emotions that are as vivid (and valid) as anything you or I might experience in actual reality.

At the end of the session last night several of us wandered over to the local pub and knocked back a couple pints of real ale in quick succession, calming nerves, soothing brains and then easing into smiles of nostalgia and fond recollection.  We could have talked for hours about the “shared memories” of these game sessions.

I think for me that is the enduring appeal of roleplaying. Sitting around a table, effectively carrying on the tradition of oral storytelling, but one where the participants get to interact with the story and influence its path through dice rolls. Real memories from fictional moments.

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YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY:

• Letters ¦ Feedback on Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur – RPG Rulebook Gets Thumbs-up

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YD 2.5 – from LULU

Paperback : from LULU ¦ Hardback (with black cover): from LULU

Primary Rulebook (2.5) This book is crammed with everything you will need to create characters and run scenarios. [] Features narrative examples of key themes • The Influence of Hastur • Medical theories on the Infection • Zombie surges • Dead Cities • Wilderness survival • Comprehensive scavenging system and how to repair or build things with resources • Backgrounds and motivations of government bodies and corporations • Computer hacking and drug abuse • High-tech immortality options • Non-human characters • Enhancements through cyberware and bioware • Weaponry, equipment and armour • Complete character generation and development system • Complex political, corporate and quasi-religious tensions • Schools of Elemental Magick, occultism, demonology, and the alien horrors of the Outer Chaos – the Cthulhu Mythos.

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David J Rodger – DATA

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 16th February 2013 ¦ Roots #2 – end of a character group

Roots

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. It also now has two novels set within it, Dog Eat Dog and The Black Lake.

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RESUME 25th SEPT YD+1 (LATE EVENING )

Clint was visited in his jail cell by a local priest; a father Allberry. He took Clint back to the small house attached to the church (closed) and gave him a bed for the night. In his room he finds a curious photo of a lake, taken a sunset, with figures standing between trees – something ceremonial? A map on the wall shows there is a lake a few miles north. Clint was wary but exhaustion took hold and pulled him into sleep (or maybe something else did).

Paul is with Corrine. She makes him food (possibly drugged) but then seems to have a change of heart; throws away the meal before he can take a mouthful and takes him to the Diner.  Meets Stu Woolley and Chris KNight. She leaves him with them. They drink into the night.

Marcus is with his hostess for the night. A woman called Janine who “comes onto him” but then abruptly backs off – as if sensing something familiar about him.  Remember that Marcus has a potent Mythos Taint due to his encounter with Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath in Europe (Horror on the Orient Express). She says… “You have the Spirit within you – why are you here? In this settlement?”

Marcus isn’t too certain about her question but he goes with it.  She takes him to the edge of Lake Nemi where the fuck like wild things – biting – punching – shrieking. Exhausted but not finished, she takes him to what looks like a figure of an ancient satyr carved into the truck of an old tree – except the figure appears to be frozen in the act of emerging from the tree. There by the base is a wooden cup filled with a vile stinking fluid  – something that Marcus remembers intimately from his experience in Europe. She offers it to him, “Do you want to know your Spirit?”
He drinks.

27th Sept YD+1
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Josh wakes up in Daphne’s house and is unable to contact any of his team. He spends time in town trying to find them, becoming increasingly worried. Eventually he finds Clint at the church; he finds Paul hungover but rested at the Old Store…. but there is no sign of Marcus.  Later, Clint also vanishes again after going to find Father Allberry. Clint finds himself by an abandoned church at Owl Creek – he rings the bell but it’s daylight and nothing happens. Meanwhile, Josh and Paul have threatened Janine – grabbed her, tied her up, hurt her to make her talk – to learn where Marcus is. By the lake, she says. But Deputy Steel arrives to check up on her and all hell breaks loose. They disarm and tie up the Deputy. Intimidated by Paul – who clutches the deputy’s throat with his ornate brass-like robotic hand; the deputy explains that the town has always been this way. And that Karen, the missing girl, if she is anywhere will be by the tree (this transpires to be the deputy setting the characters up for a fall).  Later, Josh uses his profound occult powers to Possess the deputy and walk back to the sheriff office to recover their guns.  The Sheriff asks him what he’s doing and Josh (as the deputy) manages to talk a way out of the situation.

Josh and Paul escort the deputy out to the edge of the settlement, into the forest; the deputy leads them to the Lake – where they find Marcus, asleep and partially transmutated into wood, but he shifts back to human and wakes when his compatriots call to him.  Around now, Clint also makes his way to the lake having left the abandoned church to find the place he’d seen into the photograph.  Together again, the team make their way with the deputy leading to the Tree.

It’s a dark and foreboding place.

And as the sun concludes its descent towards nightfall – the place comes alive with the things that are normally dormant (sleeping, looking like wooden figures) during daylight.

It is an epic fight for survival.

But Marcus finds the Taint which has infected his psyche and his physical being since the traumatic encounter in Europe, has a profound and mesmerizing influence on him here. He becomes entranced by the tree – and the new fluids now coursing through his veins lead him to suffer an episode of wild, furious abandon.

The things, dozens of them, that come streaming out of the forest like a swarm of humanoid locusts take note of him and their leader stops to challenge this… would be imposter.  Marcus and the leader square off but Marcus loses the Alpha battle – however, he accepts the authority of the leader and so joins THEM.  Turning against his compatriots.

The other characters are firing assault rifles on full-auto. Burning up 9,000 credits of ammunition every 2 second pull of the trigger (emptying magazines).  They slaughter a couple dozen Things, but are eventually overwhelmed by them… grappled, disarmed, manhandled. Josh uses potent magic to blast them with energy bolts, but he too is finally grappled and dragged to the ground – he is stripped naked and finds himself the victim of the ugly lust and unrestrained passions of these monsters.

“An amusing moment with a lightening bolt.”

There is a fresh clash between Marcus and the leader. Marcus kills him with a blow to the skull – and finds himself becoming the new alpha of hundreds of these Things.

Josh, Paul and Clint find themselves chained to The Tree. Two women arrive. A female matriarch and the missing girl. “Choose one”, the matriarch says to the girl. Clint is chosen. Held down by the Things, he is stripped naked and mounted by the girl. She then cuts his throat at the final moment of climax.  Paul and Josh scream in horror – helpless and agonised by what they’re witnessing. They also lose a dramatic amount of Anxiety points. Clint’s corpse is torn apart by the bare clawed hands of the Things and eaten.

THe night passes and they are ignored. When daylight comes, the Things return to the state of being wood. Marcus is nowhere to be found.  The bloodied, shredded remains of Clint lie nearby… buzzing with flies.

As a fresh night approaches, Josh recalls a difficult occult operation  that he knows might free him. It enables him to flicker between different planes of reality. He tries it and remarkably succeeds – and then endures a terrible struggle to escape the “gravitational” pull of the monstrous entity that occupies the heart of the tree he is chained to. It pulls him IN, so that as the flicker operation ends he finds himself entombed within the solid core of the trunk. He would have died instantly, if it wasn’t for the properties given to him by the Sedefkar Simulacrum.

He tries again and after a mighty battle of wills, escapes. He frees Paul and they flicker, together, back to a safe place. But the forest starts to come alive with the Things which are in pursuit now.

Josh opens a portal. Back to Little Boston, Paul screams. But  Josh takes them back to the Sheriffs office. He wants his stuff. Stepping through, Paul and Josh enter a struggle with the deputy and then the sherif. Eventually overpowering them.

Josh steps into the sherif’s back office where the woman lies bleeding, but alive; and he skins her… taking her flesh.  He then does the same with the deputy. It is hard for Paul to keep his nerve.

But all this delay allows the THings to make a rare appearance in town, as the sun sets. And they crash through the doors, swarming into the office.  It all happens again. Paul and Josh are about to be overpowered. But then… like a miracle. A blaze of golden light fills the street. Outside – an incredibly ornate brass-like version of a steam train has materialised in the road with a figure stepping down, an outline of a human but filled with the fire of the sun, swirling clouds of plasma and energy within his outline… he points at Paul, and Paul comes.  Whilst the THings cower and harden back to wood in the light.  Josh tries to follow but the figure (an Elder God) refuses him to approach: you are accursed.

Paul vanishes with the God and the train.

Josh is surrounded by the swarms of wooden horrors now coming back to life. He flickers away to a safe distance, then makes another portal and returns to Little Boston.

Paul is not there.

Marcus has vanished too – no doubt living a life of indulgent passions of eating, fucking, hunting and killing in the forests around Gerlock.

Clint is remembered with sad fondness.

!!! NO RESUME !!!
This scenario marks the end of the Little Boston group for the foreseeable future. The group is now parked on ice. A fresh set of characters are going to be created – dirt poor and with back to square one with skills and abilities. Probably based outside the survivor settlement of Aigues-Mortes, a medieval crusader fort on the coast of the South of France (as featured in the Yellow Dawn novel, Dog Eat Dog.

<>Josh is planning on heading back into Space – taking the evil Sedekfar statue with him.
<>Paul will be experiencing adventures with Elder Gods – but is likely to reappear at Little Boston, in the train, as if no time has elapsed whatsoever.
<> Marcus is happy with his fate.

About ROOTS

Roots is a scenario written by Simon Brake for the RPG, Call of Cthulhu.  I gratefully received a beta version to play test.  Also demonstrating again how flexible the Yellow Dawn universe is to accommodate the storylines’ from other RPG systems.  Simon Brake will be making Roots commercially available later in 2013.

About Simon Brake

Graphic designer. Writer. Father. Happy go lucky. Trying to get more writing done nowadays, but it’s hard to find the time. Still, the words are trickling out into the world and people are liking what they read. This year’s goal: a novel?

Graphic designery person. There’s more info (and graphic designery stuff) on my MySpace page – www.myspace.com/breakerspace – but to be honest I’ve probably got more up to date stuff here nowadays. MySpace is self advertising. Facebook is for reconnecting with real life people. And Twitter… Twitter is where the real party is.

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David J Rodger – DATA

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Work in progress: Audio Book of Short Story: Masters of Chaos

MASTERS OF CHAOS

A Short Slab of Speculative Fiction written by British Sci-Fi Dark Fantasy Author David J Rodger
Audio Book narration by American Voice Talent Cody J Johnson

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This is work in progress of an audio book of the short story Masters of Chaos.

-BLURB-
MASTERS OF CHAOS: {Speculative fiction} A man contemplates the world around him, taking seemingly meticulous notes of certain random but repeating events. Can he influence the world through such observations? And to what end? When unseen things are scratching at the doors of perception.

- BACKGROUND -
It’s 3,800 words, fairly meaty for a short story and uses an unusual style that, in my head at least, is based on  the awesome narrative monologue method used in the film Pi by Darren Aronofsky. It charts the terrible fate hanging over the Earth during the esoteric experimentation by somebody who has stumbled onto (or been led into) the loathsome, diabolical and reality shattering concepts practiced by adepts of the Cthulhu Mythos (H.P.Lovecraft).

David J Rodger and Cody J Johnson are collaborating to produce a complete audio book version of the short story.  Rodger is intending to seek submissions from illustrators and graphic artists who want to win a commission to provide visuals (static or otherwise) to accompany the finished product on YouTube.  Follow David J Rodger’s blog or Twitter – links below – to keep informed of this when the invitation goes out.

-COPY-
I’m in my apartment.  It’s morning.  I’m standing by the window looking down; dressed in a crumpled shirt, tie and suit trousers. In one hand is a bottle of expensive mineral water. In the other hand is an old-fashioned Dictaphone with a cable running up to an ear-piece and throat microphone.
My point of view: I’m looking out of the window down on a busy city street.
Picture it, a montage of ordinary people on their way to work.
Some years ago, in Argentina, an old woman decided to withdraw a little more money from her bank than usual. There was a small delay as she got her pesos. A minor cash flow problem for the bank. No harm done. Except, word of this problem got around, it echoed, and caused a run on the banks that led to the economic collapse of an entire country.
One little old lady.
One grain of sand bringing down a mountain.
It was the day I discovered I had a talent.  But as with all of nature’s gifts there is need for a mentor, to nurture and guide.
I lift the Dictaphone a little even though there is no need:
8.10 – Look out apartment window.
I see a smartly dressed business woman stopping to cross a busy intersection.  Her face shows she is a burns victim. She’s wearing red gloves and is holding a Starbucks.
I lick my lips and thumb record again:
8.12 – Girl A arrives on street corner, gloves, Starbucks coffee in her hand.  She waits 43 seconds to cross road.
A few moments elapse and then I focus on a male student in a scuffed leather jacket, carrying a paperback novel.
8.13 – Man B appears on street corner.  He is carrying a book in his hand.
I turn from the window, pull on a jacket, pocket the Dictaphone, and head outside.
Picture it.  My journey to work. A sequence of images: waiting at bus stop, sitting on bus, walking through downtown city streets, walking into modern office building. A finance company.
Through all of this I appear detached and deep in thought.
8.15 – Left for work.  It takes 45 minutes to get to there.

-GET THE WHOLE STORY-
A PDF version is available free.
http://davidjrodger.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/free-short-story-sci-fi-dark-fantasy-tale-masters-of-chaos-retweet-or-share-and-its-yours/

Click here and share the link to get a free copy of the complete short story (PDF)

- LINKS -

WRITER
David J Rodger official website: http://www.davidjrodger.com
David J Rodger Twitter: @davidjrodger
David J Rodger Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-J-Rodger/10090348898

VOICE TALENT
Cody J Johnson on Voices (Talent Website): http://www.voices.com/people/codyjohnsonaudio
Cody J Johnson on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cody-Johnson/44537397887

SONGS OF SPHERES
Anthology of short sci-fi dark fantasy stories: Cyberpunk and Cthulhu Mythos.
The short story Masters of Chaos comes from an anthology of 15 shorts, available in paperback from LULU and from Amazon for Kindle.
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Available in paperback or Amazon Kindle

Paperback: LULU & Amazon Kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro), FR (Euro)

SONGS OF SPHERES: {short story collection} 15 short stories hand-picked by the author as his personal favourites and presented with a brief introduction to each story. There are monsters that squirm and slither through the dark spaces beneath our feet, our dead are like carrion to them; and us, the living, are often victims of their hunger for violence and their taste in blood and terror. There are men and women who prey on the predators – a rough justice or karma in action. Technology carries information beyond the wires but what else can ride the electromagnetic waves? Demonic forces that infiltrate the mind through the new technology implants of the cyberpunk era. In dream-like realms, brave souls adventure deep into the strange worlds conjured by far flung minds. What mysteries do they discover and what secrets do they bring back with them into physical flesh and the reality of Humankind? The King in Yellow regards Earth from behind a pallid mask of silk; reposed on a throne of madness, corruption and decay within the black tower that stands beyond Carcosa. Hastur – the Great Old One that must not be named – the bearer of the Yellow Sign, has been brought forth. In tales of Yellow Dawn the consequences are here for those who dare to see. WARNING: some of these stories contain scenes of a disturbing and sexual nature.

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David J Rodger – DATA

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Photography: Ethereal Being – angel, demon or the mythos in disguise – Kristian Schuller

Ethereal Being

Photography Ethereal Being: Image by Kristian Schuller – All Rights Reserved – Click Full Size

Ghostly light and shimmering golden skin, this apparition of a human male form could be mistaken for an Angel or the seductive beauty of the creature, Lucifer.

Romanian born fashion photographer Kristian Schuller has crafted this shot with a more sombre hand, angling away from his usual flare for vibrant colours and dramatic form.  It’s a stunningly simple effect. A male face, in thoughtful repose or slumbering.  But the concept leaps towards the super-human… or non-human in a bipedal, mammalian guise.

The Cthulhu Mythos is riddled with non-human species that have adopted the human form. British science fiction and dark fantasy author, David J Rodger has added to this pantheon with several of his own creations.  Things that walk shoulder to shoulder alongside the creaking, arthritic, nefarious and polymorphic creations of H.P.Lovecraft.

Most hideous of these new additions are the Grom crabs.  Parasites, a little smaller than a human fist, they resemble a translucent grey crab, with horribly long spider-like legs, a segmented carapace with hard black chitinous pincers.  They wield a Nerve Sting attack, effected by a set of “semi-visible” tendrils that can lash out up to 6 metres; made of an alien matter that can slice through flesh, bone, clothing and armour to reach into the nervous system of any living thing and deliver a crippling, paralysing attack. Any living organism can be affected. And the effects are instant; the target becomes paralysed, all muscles cease to function. The primary use of this attack is to allow the Grom crab to crawl into any cavity near the brain (usually the mouth), and burrow into a suitable resting place, from which to occupy and control the host. Highly intelligent, the Grom roam different worlds, taking control of hosts – including human victims – and building empires.

Upon arriving in a suitable location, they construct hive-like temples, dedicated to their god, Murg, incorporating the flakes of crystal they excrete through their appendage from time to time (Resonators). Grom themselves are
rarely encountered outside of a larger “host” creature; they are often accompanied and served by mutated-beings known as Groth.

In the post-apocalyptic “Mythos fiction” novel, Dog Eat Dog, the Grom are encountered by the main protagonists.  The encounter, sinister, brutal, and shocking in its climax reveals the silent incursion of alien horrors into the abandoned spaces of an Earth left ravaged by the event known as Yellow Dawn.

The photo by Kristian Schuller is more akin to the sublime and mysterious creatures known by erudite scholars as the “The Great Magi”. Formidable sorcerers from a time on Earth predating the evolution of Modern Man.  They are anthropomorphic, walking upright, with a humanoid head that resembles a cross between a chimpanzee and a cheetah.  However, they are renowned for their use of potent illusionary magick to walk amongst humans as if one of them. Often mesmerizing with the physical beauty and charm.

Skeletons of The Greta Magi have occasionally been discovered by scientists and mistaken as the “missing link”, these people are normally silenced and the evidence removed (by the Order of the Amber Eye) before the truth ever comes close to the surface. The Great Magi came to Earth after the Elder Things had retreated beneath the oceans and for a while came to dominate the proto-human savages that had evolved from the Elder Thing experiments. In their ancient culture they wore ceremonial robes and carried weapons (typically daggers). The Great Magi warred heavily with the far older race of Serpent People. Because of this war, only a few remain in existence at this time on Earth. The Order of the Amber Eye is based in a sandstone city on a remote planet, a temple held up by vast ape-like statues, surrounded by alien jungle; any Great Magi will have access to this place via a magical gateway.

Kristian Schuller has an incredible portfolio of imagery from his career in photography and fashion. You should certainly take a peek at his work on his website:

• Kristian Schuller website

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YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY:

• More creations for the RPG Yellow Dawn in a free download called Monsters of the Mythos
• The Ninth Gate: occult and tarot-like symbolism in the engravings by Aristide Torchia and Lucifer, plus wider meanings of the movie

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Available in paperback or Amazon Kindle

Paperback: LULU & Amazon Kindle US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro), FR (Euro)

“Atmospheric and creepy” – The Guardian

THE BLACK LAKE: The Earth has been ravaged by an event known as Yellow Dawn. Ten years later, survivors are putting lives back together and probing the frontiers of a new Wilderness; whilst overhead the orbital colonies slide across the sky, removed and unaffected. Five men leave the fortress island of Malta on an expedition to the sub-Arctic waters above Scotland. They intend to undertake scientific observations of an alien meteorological phenomenon that has followed the apocalyptic event. What they find is a cosmic horror that seethes amongst the shadows of a shattered Earth. It is a story of escape and wonder, of madness and terror. David J Rodger’s trademark unforgiving rendering of harsh reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a novel that tears open a rent in the boundary of reality, providing a nerve-jarring glimpse of the Outer Chaos and the horrors that lurk just beyond the threshold of our fragile, human existence.

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David J Rodger – DATA

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Photography: cyberpunk gang member and a Mythos apocalypse – Tattooed survivor with a samurai sword, by Danielle Tunstall

Life or death in the flash of a blade

Tattooed survivor with a samurai sword. Image copyright danielle tunstall – all rights reserved. Click full size

Part of a series of images from the liquid metal, carbo-plastic, hydrogel and permacrete core of visual creators on the Internet.  Images that stir my senses and evoke plots and concepts for what I’d like to see (or fear) in the future.

In the post-apocalyptic world of Yellow Dawn, survivors don’t just have to find food and resources to stay alive – they have to defend themselves from those who would take it from them.  The apocalypse strips away the pretensions of our current age.  Your platinum credit card won’t protect you from the swarms of feral gangs feasting on the remains of your city  – where more than seventy percent of the population died from an aggressive fever and coma within a handful of days.

Holing up in your apartment will only seem like a good idea until the food runs out and the water stops flowing.  Eventually you’ll have to go outside.  And face the random vicissitudes of a life now slotted into a survival track.  Getting out of the city is your only true option but then do you know how to grow or even harvest the things you need to live?

The man with the sword could be your nemesis or merely your own reflection in a grime spattered storefront – long since raided and emptied of anything useful.  There are worse things to fear out there. Depending on how close you live to southern Europe and North Africa, the 2nd pathogen – the Infection is spreading outwards from the original impact crates of the doom-laden deep space merchant cruiser the Callisto.  Shrieking in mindless rage, sprinting on limbs that will never grow weak or tired, or crawling around in shattered bodies that seem unable to die, the Infected come stalking into the urban places to create Dead Cities.  It is eventually here that the brave and the desperate come, to scavenge and explore, to find artefacts from a close yet distant era of human civilisation on a planet still quivering from the aftershock of what has happened.

High above, untouched but grieving, the orbital colonies spin silently and observe the expanding push for a new life into deep space.  Backs turned on mother Earth. Whilst down below, in the abandoned spaces, fresh horrors are being born as non-human things drift down from alien dimensions of space and time to reclaim  a landscape they once ruled as their own.   When it comes to it – it’s you and the sharp-edged blade of the sword. You’re a survivor or you’re a victim.

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur is an RPG and the setting for a collection of novels.  British sci-fi dark fantasy author David J Rodger is currently working on The Social Club, the third novel placed in this post-apocalyptic survival horror world.  It follows  Dog Eat Dog and The Black Lake (which recently received critical review in the Guardian newspaper website UK).  All three novels are separate stories but share the one universe.  Another five novels exist, taking place in this shared universe before Yellow Dawn wrecked such global havoc and devastation. You can view all of these novels here.

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Danielle Tunstall has a vast repository of images she’s created and showcasing on her website, definitely worth a look if you’re into the darker side of Cyberpunk, verging on horror, smeared in blood and infection.

• Danielle Tunstall website.

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David J Rodger – DATA

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Horror Animation: UK TV Show – Countdown – reveals the gruesome, flesh shredding face of H.P. Lovecraft’s Mythos with a quivering nod to Carpenter’s The Thing

Mythos Horror Meets Countdown

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Short and delightfully “on the money” in regards to Carpenter’s The Thing – a concept that blends seamlessly like thrashing tentacles into the nightmare polymorphic forms of H.P.Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.

Movie poster for John Carpenter The Thing (1982) – click full size wallpaper

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When the Cthulhu Mythos meets Cyberpunk:

Available in paperback or kindle

Paperback : LULU & Amazon Kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)
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Recently given 5 star review: Brilliant piece of Sci-Fi literature

EDGE { novel } In the near future, a prolific inventor is close to burn out. Desperate for a break he grabs an opportunity to go snowboarding in New Zealand, thinking it will refresh his mind and spirit. But a malign and alien force is oozing back into our reality, older than humankind and growing strong as it emerges after centuries of absence. Zen Dow snowboarding and ski resort, perched in the foothills of the volcanic mountain Ruapehu, is about to experience mind-shredding consequences as one of the Great Old Ones returns. On the other side of the world, an unscrupulous concept scout scrambles onto the trail of a new technology that has vanished from the corporate R&D labs. Quickly out of his depth, it becomes a race to track down the missing components before competing corporate agents kill him. David J Rodger’s trademark relentless narrative pace is here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a tense action-packed novel that blends corporate espionage, with a creeping, spine-chilling horror.

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David J Rodger – DATA

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