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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David J Rodger – DATA

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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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David J Rodger – DATA

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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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David J Rodger – DATA

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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 – 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 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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Video: #zombie infection caught on smart phone (app)

Infected

Unknown scientific study of the Infection that swept the planet following the Callisto burn-up and explosion in the atmosphere; the event known as Yellow Dawn.

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Other Zombie Infection Videos

• part 3_first RV location_infected woman_find the resistance
• part 4 trying to get to church- sanctuary and ambush
• part 6 Infected vicar

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#Free RPG Download: Monsters of the Mythos – New Outer Gods, Great Old Ones and Non-Human Species

Cthulhu Mythos

This supplement has been written as part of the post-apocalyptic survivor horror RPG: Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur. It expands upon the concept of the Cthulhu Mythos, introducing a raft of new Great Old Ones, Outer Gods and non-human species for characters to encounter.

If you’re more into narrative than rule systems, you can enjoy new flavours of the Cthulhu Mythos in the novels, EDGE, Dog Eat Dog and The Black Lake.

Click to download the free PDF

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Available from LULU

YELLOW DAWN – THE AGE OF HASTUR: The Earth has been ravaged by viral pathogens, the death of billions observed by the orbital colonies and deep-space habitats that were largely unaffected by the Outbreak. Terrified of infection, nobody came to help. Less than 30 percent survived the first few weeks. Then came the 2nd Wave of infection, spreading steadily outwards from the impact points, and that was when the horror really began…

This book is crammed with everything you will need to create characters, run scenarios and experience horror and adventure in the fictional world of David J Rodger.

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. Purchase via LULU.

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 15th December 2012 ¦ Return to Little Boston – Roots #1

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
At New Boston, about to set off to the small settlement of Chambrig on request of Captain Kennedy who has close friends whose daughter has “run away” – he’s too busy with training new police recruits in New Boston.  Meanwhile, Josh is abruptly suffering terrible pains in his joints, his skin is starting to discolour and ugly lesions are rapidly forming on his flesh. Any initial attempts to perform a ritual of cleansing fail. And then he gets a radio message from Dr Zach to say that a very disturbing statue has appeared on the roof of the main building in Little Boston – he recognises it as the item the team discussed on their return from Horror on the Orient Express and has made sure nobody touches it – but, can Josh come back and URGENTLY remove it as it is causing a bad vibe at the settlement.

• Team depart New Boston and return little Boston.
• Josh, Marcus, Paul and Clint head up to roof and find Sedefkar Simulacrum there. Clint finds himself entranced by it whilst Paul and Marcus hang back. Josh performs Ritual of Cleansing and suffers fear and terror for an hour after – but the effects of corruption vanish.
• Team head back to New Boston then on to Chambrig – meet parents and young brother sister of Karen.
• Paul gets photo of Karen.
• Josh finds second letter in Karens room (but that’s all).
• Team walk to campsite that night, interview Ali’s parents, then Ali and Max and Steve – discover that Karen didn’t have argument or run away but left according to a plan – heading west, heading towards Gerlock along the eroded road.
• Sleep at campsite – although Paul forced to sleep on his own by a fire pit near woods due to his nocturnal condition.

Monday 26th Sept YD+1

• Team wake up to sound of wood being chopped.
• Try to interview and angry young man with a jeep but he tells them to mind their own business (fuck off) and drives away.
• Team head West on foot – to find angry young man being held up by UDP militia on a road block.
• Team visit gas station and tell Chris and woman there they’re heading to Gerlock looking for missing girl.
• Team finally reach Gerlock around 6pm, both Josh and Clint are suffering aches and pains from a whole day walking (25 miles).
• Town has about 90 residents with a 3:1 female to male ratio.
• Healthy, vibrant looking people. Simple but quality lifestyle – less survivors of Yellow Dawn and more like, they’ve just always been there, getting on with life.
• Encounter Cynthia / Janine on road with young girl and boy.
• Josh, exhausted from walk talks Cynthia up on offer for a place to stay – goes to her house. crashes on sofa whilst she cooks him spicy food; as he eats she tells him how lonely it is living here without a man in the house. Josh gets a bad vibe about eating the food – and doesn’t, just leaves.
• A group of men hang about in centre of town square – watching the characters with muted interest. When characters try to talk to them they slink off, not interested in much conversation (they’re all strong bodied, able looking men; manual workers on the farms etc).
• Clint, Paul, Marcus visit Sheriff, only get to talk to Deputy Steel – he asks them to place weapons in his locker.
• He takes them to see Joy -
• Joy readily admits to sending letters to Karen and is a little bothered that Karen has gone missing, probably whilst on way to see her – but not as bothered as maybe she should be.
• Clint accepts offer to spend night at Joys.
• After a shower he finds his clothes gone – he flees house, climbing through bathroom window wearing just a towel – it’s a little before sunset. He runs across a garden to a woodshed; a few minutes later the neighbours (women) lead Joy to where he’s hiding. Are you OK they ask? Perplexed.  Clint goes back inside with Joy – but then runs away again, into the night. Later he’s picked up by Deputy Steel for being a weirdo. Arrested, he’s locked in cells.
• Josh, Marcus, Paul, meet the old man who runs the general store. He doesn’t seem too bothered about life in Gerlock; been here all his life, nice place – even if the woman are a little forward.
• Josh does go back to Cynthia, apologising for behaviour – spends night with her. She tries it on but he avoids her seductions.
• Marcus sleeps at Janine’s house – yet to be described (Next Session).
• Paul sleeps at Connies house – yet to be described (Next session).
• Nobody has been to visit Father Allberry yet or been into the Diner.

RESUME
Evening of 26th Sept YD+1 (Monday) For Marcus and Paul. And Early AM of 27th Sept for Josh and Clint.

GM NOTES:

• None

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Cyberpunk culture today: GRIMES – plastic chics and male babes with medieval weapons and hair-extensions – freaking awesome

Grimes

Still from Genesis video by GRIMES – click for full size

Before I say anything else. Go to Amazon or  iTunes and buy this album – Visions, by Grimes. It’s phenomenal.  If you know me or are familiar with my blog you’ll know I don’t make recommendations lightly.  These guys like The Hacker’s album – Rêves Mécaniques – ingested through a sparkling haze of aerosol narcotics.

• Visions by Grimes on iTunes
• Visions by Grimes on Amazon UK

The video is from the single GENSIS (free download on soundcloud), taken from the Visions album.   Great visuals that are suitably edgy and memorable to do justice to the jaw-dropping native talent of the album and artists its representing.  This is great music but the video helps place it in the gritty gloss of tomorrow, embossing the sounds with the hallmark of Cyberpunk culture: 20 minutes into the future.

It’s David Lynch – Lost Highway – meets Olympic Airways by the Foals – just with more fake nails and lip gloss.  Sniff deep and suck hard on the gong-pipe.  This will make your face crease with a languid smile beneath half-lidded eyes.  

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On a personal level, the sight of people so absorbed by alternative fashion that they appear almost alien – who are also riding around in combustion engine vehicles whilst carrying modern medieval weaponry – just captures the quintessential dichotomy of the world of Yellow Dawn.  Yellow Dawn is the Earth of the near future after a cataclysmic event delivers apocalyptic changes to life on the planet.  Survivors either cluster around a few Living Cities or cope with the new wilderness – bushcraft and patched-up technology.  But a video like this shows the almost freakish collision of city survivors heading out into the new wilderness.  Naive and thinking they can head out for some quick thrills facing off against a hostile environment or capable fear-junkies who have the ability to back up the action?  How well they cope depends on what kind of guides they’ve invested in, and what kind of jacked up biological systems they’ve got inside of them – thanks to bioweave implants or the more grungy, hardcore tech of cybernetics.

It’s also another stellar signing by those devilishly clever folks at 4AD (think Dead Can Dance and Clan of Xymox) and more recently the ludicrously talented Purity Ring.  Cyberpunk today. Yup. It’s happening super quick now.  We’re sliding towards a singularity of burned chrome.

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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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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 20th October 2012 ¦ Return to Little Boston – Ghost Dog #2

Ghost Dog

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 2 A.M on 21st Sept Y+1
Characters turfed out onto the streets of New Boston, with Andrew.
Truck and weapons are locked up by main entrance.

Josh applies magical energy to Andrew’s wounds, providing some relief but he is still terribly weak and confused.

Team take him back to truck to rest; but later that morning Captain Kennedy finds them and takes custody of Andrew again.  The team get involved in research after a ghostly apparition daubs the name Kenley on a smudged bit of glass. They eventually find that Kenley died during 1600s trying to protect a young woman that he’d foolishly fallen in love with – despite being married himself. The young woman was accused and eventually charged with being a witch. Both Kenley and the woman were executed on Kenley’s estate – on request of his pregnant wife, who watched on, spiteful and pleased to be exacting revenge for this embarrassing affair.

However, the young woman was able to imbue part of her energy / soul into the unborn child – and so formed a guardian spirit (hound) that travelled with the bloodline through history.

Team track down the estate and Tempest mansion in a remote area 15 miles north-west of New Boston. They go there – encounter a small frightened community of survivors: a man recently arrived at the abandoned mansion, full of strange questions and frightening abilities (A road mage).

The team approach the abandoned estate cautiously. Three cats…. actually 3 demons – protect the boundary and there is a tense amount of conflict as the demons attack the team. Eventually the road mage himself comes out and takes on the team personally – and would have probably destroyed all of them if it wasn’t for the curious abilities (extra power and protection) of Joshua Crow (thanks to Sedefkar Simulacrum he was tricked into activating at the end of Horror on the Orient Express).

Marcus is temporarily blinded and Josh is hit by a pile-driving blow of raw energy (bouncing off his magical aura).

With the road mage dead – the demon cats disperse (the two that were physically destroyed failed to take possession of Josh, Clint or Marcus).

The team investigate the estate and discover an opened grave by the base of the great tree;  there lies the skeleton of the young woman executed as a witch several hundred years earlier -  the team deduce the road mage was trying to use occult powers to sever the link between the corpse and the protective hound, with the intention of taking control of it for malign purposes – and at the expense of murdering Andrew (to break the link).

Consequences are that Andrew is saved – he makes a full recovery and gets to publish his article about the low-level criminals taking hold of the north end of New Boston; the result is that Captain Kennedy gets more resource to police that part of the town.

RESUME 25th SEPT Y+1
At New Boston, about to set off to the small settlement of Chambrig on request of Captain Kennedy who has close friends whose daughter has “run away” – he’s too busy with training new police recruits in New Boston.  Meanwhile, Josh is abruptly suffering terrible pains in his joints, his skin is starting to discolour and ugly lesions are rapidly forming on his flesh. Any initial attempts to perform a ritual of cleansing fail. And then he gets a radio message from Dr Zach to say that a very disturbing statue has appeared on the roof of the main building in Little Boston – he recognises it as the item the team discussed on their return from Horror on the Orient Express and has made sure nobody touches it – but, can Josh come back and URGENTLY remove it as it is causing a bad vibe at the settlement.

GM NOTES:

• All characters HAVE received COOL rewards for succeeding in the scenario.
• All characters do need to attempt a RANK ROLL
• Josh needs to resolve the issue with his rapid deterioration
• Review Augustus Clay III actions within Little Boston / involvement with Captain Kennedy in a certain prohibited group activity and the proximity / attitude of the nearby UDP garrison.

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 15th September 2012 ¦ Return to Little Boston – Ghost Dog #1

Ghost Dog

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 17th Sept Y+1
The characters have returned from Horror on the Orient Express and settle back into the almost idyllic swing of life in Little Boston

• Joshua Crow
• Marcus Carfax
• Paul Bishop – and his bizarre magical train

Everyone takes stock of what they have achieved and what they possess.

All other characters that having been “sitting on ice” within Little Boston community were reviewed.

All inventory items were reviewed.  Everything to do with Little Boston is up to date:

Caveat: output from food growing and fuel production needs to be checked at end of month, along with risks from bandits and other wilderness types who might take notice of such a prosperous survival settlement in the middle of nowhere.

Josh is worried about the satyr-like behaviour of Marcus Carfax – ever since he had a deep and potent interaction with  Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath in Belgrade (see relevant session notes here) he’s been seducing women left right and centre. To be so “corruptive” here in the closely knit community of the farm, which includes several woman – who are in relationships with other male workers, could be harmful to the smooth running of their food growing and fuel production business. The characters have made Little Boston self-sufficient in this respect.  It could be a disaster if things are disturbed by internal tensions.

Meanwhile, one of the farm hands, Chet, approaches another farm hand – Clint – about a favour, and this results in Clint getting the characters involved in a trip to New Boston (23 miles east on an eroded road, part of the interlink).

20th Sept Y+1

• Josh, Marcus, Paul and Clint take the 2 1/2 ton truck to New Boston
• They’ll nearly blasted off the road by a truck in convoy with armed outriders (Akinolo Odusola).
• They talk to captain Kennedy – details of Marsha and her missing boyfriend Andrew (Sage), and the details behind Andrew being sectioned and his escape.
• They observe and are observed by a couple thugs of the Bronte gang.
• Paul asks around town and learns there are only about 20 thugs in the Bronte gang, that they resent the UDP coming in to take over; they make moonshine and run gambling nights including dog fighting (which is where Andrew was injured) – they’re aggressive but not known to be murderers – but Bronte himself looks like he’s trying to expand the local operation.
• Team visit Marsha at the house she shares with Andrew:
  • - a friend called Patrick is there, hostile to their arrival. He’s skinny and stinks of bong smoke. He’s been sleeping on floor, whilst Marsha sleeps on sofa (she doesn’t want to be in her and Andrew’s room right now).
  • - Josh goes on Astral plane and encounters a hound by Andrew’s bed- it tries to attack him.
  • - Team get Andrew’s sketch book which shows a storm blasted tree, in a clearing in some kind of forest near a house (not drawn) and a large stone slab lying in overgrown grass with a massive black hound watching over it —– in the drawings the house is always looking AWAY from the viewer, as if it has seen something else arriving. Marsha says that Andrew has always dreamed of an old lady and this dog and that they’re normally nice but two weeks ago thinks started to change, the dreams turned bad, 7 days ago Andrew caught by Bronte’s filming the dog fighting, 3 days ago sectioned and escaped.
• Team travel with Captain Kennedy to part of New Boston where clothes and food are going missing in neighbourhood. Clint finds Andrew (Sage) hiding in burned ruins. The team get him to a squalid B&B for safe-keeping, he’s exhausted and weak and badly injured (wounds with no blood)… something keeps attacking him in the in the night …. Andrew says “It doesn’t want to harm him, it’s being made to harm him.”  But the wounds are getting deeper and closer to vital organs.
• That night, sleeping on straw and scratchy blankets in damp basement of B&B, Marcus discovers that Paul’s clockwork heart sneaks out of his mechanised torso and has a passion for sucking blood {think Chronos}.  It leaps onto Marcus’ thigh causing (-1 STR). There is much screaming – with result that owner and her beefy son come running downstairs demanding to know what’s going on. A bribe of 100 credits sends them away. Then an hour later in the wee hours of the night/morning Andrew has another dream attack that leaves him with new wounds visibly appearing in front of the characters eyes – an invisible, intangible assailant. Lot’s of screaming has them ejected from the B&B this time.

Ghost Hound

RESUME
2 A.M on 21st Sept Y+1, turfed out onto the streets of New Boston, with Andrew.
Truck and weapons are locked up by main entrance.

GM NOTES:

• Review Augustus Clay III actions within Little Boston / involvement with Captain Kennedy in a certain prohibited group activity and the proximity / attitude of the nearby UDP garrison.

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Have you seen the Yellow Sign?

UTOC Warning Notices begin to appear in urban areas

Is there one near you?

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

I had an @davidjrodger on Twitter from some bloke in England. He’d found this sign in his area and then gone about trying to find out what it was about.  He found Yellow Dawn.

Image source: Oli Mortimer, visit his website here.

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A couple weeks earlier I had a 15,000 unique user spike in web traffic to my wordpress blog when somebody posted a similar image to an end of world thread on reddit and managed to get onto the reddit home page.

Photo by Boothy – click for full size

Image Source: Boothy, view his photographic work here

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It would be super cool to see these percolating into public areas. Some great surreptious publicity for Yellow Dawn but also a chance to form a question mark and maybe a bit of a chill down the spine of your everyday zombie-fodder.

Make your own sign

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

 

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David J Rodger – DATA

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Nostalgia: Dead Son Rising – Hayling Island – Cyborgs and plot lines – Horror on the Orient Express beyond the realm of Infected zombies

¦ dialling in from Sky Bunker ¦

I love it when you play a piece of music and it whisks you back to some place / point in time; sonic librarians of the mind, responding to memetic codes, flicking through the filaments of neural tissue running up through the crown of your spine into your brain.

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From the album Dead Son Rising – related links: (Wiki Data) (Buy Amazon.co.uk)

So this track came on today and it took me back to November 2011. A period of time that sticks out against the backdrop of the year itself.  It was the weekend I hired a car and drove the Yellow Dawn (Age of Hastur) players to a house on the edge of the sea (owned by my friend Lone Pine who is happy to let me use it when the need arises).  The drive was through wild storms. A brief moment of sunlight when we arrived – me running on the expansive and deserted beach after we parked up, clutching a bottle of bourbon. Later, I’d be swimming in the chilly ocean, late November, under the alabaster glare of a full moon; the water like glossy black glass around me.

(Related Blog Post: Hayling Island – November 2011 – a Yellow Dawn weekend)

Awesome times. It was also a fantastic couple of days of RPGing. The players deep into Horror on the Orient Express, a CoC campaign I’d modified to be run within the post-apocalyptic horror adventure universe of Yellow Dawn.

Also nice to spend quality time with friends. Nice Guy Tony, Game-Breaker Hagen, and Doc Toc.  Missing from the medley this time was Sharky Bones McCoy, now based in Madrid -  in Spain, but he made the reunion we put together a few months later.

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The Gang

R2L: Hågen Landsem; Tony Jordan; David J Rodger (centre); Chris Halliday; Kelvin Wright

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The whole album is fantastic; if you were ever into the electronic punk of the late 70s or like Trent Reznor / NIN then this should be a walk Down In The Park just right for you.

This period also slots into the timeframe of the novel I recently started writing; one of six  that I’ve had simmering for a few months now.  It’s when I first began considering cyborg characters within the Yellow Dawn world, so my memories are riddled with concepts like:

Large joint casings with G-TAN honeycomb structural inserts, beneath custom-weaved carbon, aramid hybrid fabrics and glass, fibre-reinforced, epoxy.  Not so much expensive to fix as time-consuming.    Beneath the anti-ballistics, the mechanics were pretty crude; hallmark of the Boris brand.  The bulk of the raw lifting power came through hydraulics rather than synmov – the latter being the synthetic muscle systems, vat grown, for more advanced chassis. 

- Rise of the Iconoclast

Read More (Sample Chapter 1 & 2)

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Rise of the Iconoclast will be the 3rd story to be set in the world of Yellow Dawn, following on from Dog Eat Dog (2010) and The Black Lake (due to be released August 2012).

Talking about Horror on the Orient Express; the group finally finished the campaign last weekend after a solid year of game play, starting July 2011. It’s been epic and a pleasure to run such a wonderful story; also very satisfying to see it working in the Yellow Dawn universe – with a few tweaks – demonstrating again how adaptable YD can be to absorbing scenarios from other RPG systems.  You can browse session notes here.

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David J Rodger – DATA

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 28th July 2012 ¦ Horror on the Orient Express # 13

Sofia – Istanbul

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. Learn more…

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RESUME

17th Feb @ University of Sofia

The team begin to display dark veins and diseased discolouration to their faces and heads. It is a clear sign that the head of the statue is now within their domain.

The team are arrested by a thuggish Detective Ratuk:
I know about your journey across Europe and the blood you’ve left spilled in every destination. You might not be the Orient Ripper but he travels with you – and yet knowing this you still come here?

Image from lolailo.co.uk – Orient Express Diary 1920s CoC – Click to go there

Meanwhile, Josh continues to have horrendous visions through his eye, that was plucked from his skull by a mad cultist – and then insanely implanted in the cultist’s head. Josh is viewing momentary glimpses of what this cultist can see.
- inside a cavern lit with oil burning bowls.
- a massive crowd of men in ceremonial robes / middle eastern theme – but with bare chests to expose torsos covered with different patches of flesh, badly fused – the arms of different bodies stitched or fused onto others.
- a mountain of severed heads piled up on the floor, the oldest, lowest ones now skulls – with moist, decomposing ones one top.
- a blurred figure attacking these people, comes into focus
- It’s Count Drogo in his true form, twisted, blackened and stiff like bark from some ancient tree, the centuries of corruption (from the statue) and being locked away are evident in his deformed figure.  He is wild, a Thing of nightmares and molded by madness – he butchers everyone – takes the head of the statue, AND rips away the head of the cultist containing Josh’s eye… and departs.

Josh, in a police van with Marcus, conveys what he has seen happening. He is barely able to stay sane, gibbering, horrified.

Marcus is worried that Drogo, who now has the head and who knows where the rest of the statue is being stored – can come and get it as and when he wants.

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Head of the Sedefkar Simulacrum Statue – image by sirylok

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Josh gets another vision:
Drogo arriving at the hotel suite – assembling the statue, kneeling before it, simpering, holding it, cradling it – and then the young female receptionist comes up into suite thinking Marcus has returned. Drogo – tears her apart.

In the police station, Marcus, Josh and Paul Bishop are roughed up and threatened; Detective Ratuk wants money to let them go.  Josh and Paul get a heavy beating.

A representative of the British government arrives and ensures their speedy release. “Charles Parker says hello and sends his gratitude”.

Back  the hotel, the media are buzzing.

Marcus, Josh and Paul go up to the suite with trepidation.

Blood on the floor and walls. Gore dripping from the assembled statue. Half-eaten carcass of the receptionist in the bathroom.

The team begin to act – they need to leave, and quickly.

Drogo emerges on the balcony outside.

Josh goes to talk to him, and does not yield to his demands of servitude; Drogo nearly eviscerates him with one powerful slash of his claws.

There is a media drone hovering above. Recording.

A huge fight takes place, that stops and starts each time Drogo is driven back – but not away. Marcus has the back of his thigh sliced open.  Paul gets into a hand-to-hand tussle with Drogo, both of them clinging onto one assault rifle; which Drogo then uses to batter Paul in the face.  Josh lays down several three round bursts from another assault rifle into Drogo.  It takes the characters a while (too long) to realise that Drogo will NOT leave but merely lurk, licking his wounds, waiting for an opportunity. Drogo attacks to wound and not to kill; he’s plucking chunks of flesh from the characters – wearing them down, fulfilling the ancient code of his kind – the Great Magi – but not really; his version of the code is twisted and corrupted, as his flesh and soul, because of centuries of exposure to the statue.

Police sirens begin to converge on the hotel. The fight is attracting a lot of attention.

During this fight, Josh is ready to create a portal out of there – taking the statue and the body of the receptionist with them (Paul scooped her shredded remains into a hotel duvet and dragged them to the edge of the prepared portal).  Marcus creates an incendiary device with the contents of the cleaning cupboard (LUCK ROLL) and a chemistry skill check (- double zero, whoops – )

MIxing the contents together in a waste-basket, the steaming hissing gas acts like poison. Marcus collapses, muscles going into spasm, barely able to communicate or breathe -lungs on fire. The gas also affects the main room of the hotel – Paul Bishop collapses, going into cardiac fibrillation. Josh can barely move -but manages to drag Paul out onto the balcony and snaps his and Paul’s ArmWatch Medivac account cards – countdown to rescue is 5 minutes. Paul starts going into cardiac arrest.

Josh crawls back into the hotel to find Marcus – when they return to the balcony they find Drogo feasting on the interior of Paul’s chest, now cracked open, chewing on his heart.

It’s gruesome. Shocking to behold.

Josh drops to his knees with the horror of it – he left Paul out there, this is partially his fault.

Marcus snaps his Armwatch medivac account card.

And then a figure drops down from the roof of the hotel suite. A humanoid that looks similar to how Drogo may have looked before his corruption. Another Great Magi. A powerful one of its kind that has become enraged by Drogo’s activities and blatant disregard for their cultural traditions. This thing kills Drogo.

Then Armwatch arrive.  Aerodynes hovering overhead whilst armoured troops descend on zip lines, accompanied by paramedics.  Paul is bundled into a cryo-tank, his brain’s vital signs stabilised and his body, what’s left of it, put into stasis.

The team regain consciousness 7 days later in a private medical facility, somewhere in Bulgaria.

Josh and Marcus are in adjoining beds, handcuffed.  Paul is in a fridge in the corner. There’s an official in a suit waiting to talk to them.  Things might have been different, even with the fuzzy, badly degraded video footage of Drogo attacking them, if it hadn’t been for personal intervention by Fargas Laslo, who put his reputation on the line to vouch whole-heartedly for the innocence of the team.  “They’re better men,” stated Laslo.

Things are not all great. The corruption of their physical bodies, caused by prolonged association to the statue, is now dramatically worse.  Marcus loses 1 INT and 1 APP; Josh loses 2 POW; Paul loses 1 INT. And it’s accelerating. They can’t lounge around. They need to destroy the statue – as planned – by taking it to the Shunned Mosque in Istanbul.

After some final red-tape bureaucracy..

Josh and Marcus are flown by covert military helicopter out of Bulgaria and deposited at an airbase in Turkey.  Paul remains in Bulgaria, his mind active within a virt, awaiting major surgical operations to replace his rib-cage, lungs and heart, and repair surrounding tissue damage. This will take many many weeks to complete surgery and post-op recovery.

{tony leaves game at this point}

Istanbul Turkey Sultan Ahmed Mosque

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Josh and Marcus are greeted by a senior Turkish military official who begrudgingly asks no questions.  They make their way to a rough part of Istanbul and check into a run down hotel.  Josh is adamant he wants to recover magical artefacts from the cavern-scene he witnessed through his severed eyeball.  He creates a portal that he and Marcus step through, and which closes directly behind them. The cavern is not abandoned as Josh had assumed. There is a brief combat.  Marcus and Josh return with a chest of items. One of these is a cube that Josh accidentally activates – he is hurled back through time, witnesses the artificial creation of this “bubble universe” by  Duc Des Essain!!!! and then further back, through the space-time stream of the true universe – to a primordial age before dinosaurs – where Serpent Men and then before them, the Elder Things, roamed. Bad luck for Josh – he is spotted by a Hound of Tindalos. Josh accelerates forward through time again. Returns to the hotel room where Marcus has only blinked in all the “time” Josh has been away. Josh starts to jabber, panicking, about “something is coming!!!! Get ready!” And sure enough, the Hound soon comes through. It’s a repulsive fight but with Marcus’ magic pop gun and Josh hurling energy bolts at it – they drive it away (for now?).

A fitful night of sleep in the slums of Istanbul.

Next day, they check into the Great Istanbul Hotel, against the wishes of Josh because this place is part of the Orient Express itinerary. And sure enough, their arrival there triggers a number of “flags”.

The manager welcomes them personally, like old friends, and shows them the gold that their benefactor  – Mr Solomon Kane – has deposited in the hotel safe for them.

Upstairs, Josh and Marcus enjoy a brief afternoon of luxury – until the Brotherhood of the Skin arrive to “collect them” – and the statue. It’s strange, it’s as if the Brotherhood believe Josh and Marcus are working for them. They are transported to the Shunned Mosque in the belly flap of an obscene “flying thing” made of once human flesh.

At the mosque there is a diabolical ceremony around the now assembled statue: Josh and Marcus experience horrors that cannot be described here but certainly left characters and players sickened and losing significant COOL points through failed Anxiety checks. Duc Des Essain is there – Josh and Marcus are exceptionally wary of this “god like” figure, but are also baffled by his friendly response – and his surprise that the characters are in fact “one of them”.

At the point in the ceremony where the leader of the Brotherhood (Selim) is about to activate / invoke the power of the statue, he is murdered by his son, who is then blasted and killed by Duc Des Essain – who is seen sprinting towards the statue. Only…

Josh and Marcus suddenly phase out of this world and return to the world of Yellow Dawn. The mosque now empty, derelict and flooded by moonlight streaming through a shattered dome. And there is the statue, fully assembled, glaring back them, radiating menace.

And in their wake… comes a seam of light, and the Duc Des Essain steps through. He’s followed their magical trail.  But as he emerges, he realises exactly where he is. Not in some other part of the universe he created, but in the universe he fled from (the characters discover this later, that  Duc Des Essain fled this universe, from Nyarlathotep, by creating a realm where Nyarlathotep did not exist).

The Duc Des Essain whirls around in a panic, looking for some point to exit by. And is then frozen.  The Skinless One – an semi-human aspect of Nyarlathotep – steps forward and condemns Duc Des Essain.  Josh and Marcus witness a gruesome, grisly end to the great sorcerer.

The Skinless One glances over at Josh and Marcus, then departs.

Josh and Marcus hear the sounds of a vast surge of Infected sprinting towards the mosque. They seen  Duc Des Essain’s briefcase and his horse-hair lasso (used for porting). The briefcase contains scrolls! All the scrolls of the statue.

They use the lasso to return to Little Boston. Quite an emotional and surreal moment, to find themselves standing outside their settlement on the main road, beyond the driveway – watching the storm that started when they came here [ a year of game play, we started this campaign in July 2011 ] now fading and diminishing.

On the roof of Little Boston, Josh attempts to perform the Ritual of Cleansing.

Only to find Nyarlathotep had another little trick up his sleeve.

Bearing in mind that it was Marcus who murdered / destroyed Rahmun Sada – the human aspect of Nyarlathotep in this universe (At the end of Shadows of the Quantinex) as they unravelled the truth behind what caused Yellow Dawn to happen – and what new and nightmarish plot has been lined up against humanity.

Nyarlathotep has been able to manipulate and use the characters to a) destroy Duc Des Essain  and b) re-install a human aspect of Itself within this Universe and c) see the Activation of the statue take place.

RESUME

<>RECONNECT WITH LITTLE BOSTON Settlement and characters.
<>Deal with return of Paul Bishop (arrives in a huge metal steam engine with a replica of the Orient Express train attached – and some very strange phenonemon about it). He has a mechanical right arm and mechanical chest (brass like fittings with steampunk tech).
<> RANK ROLLS  (note all players had rank rolls at end of Sofia and JOsh also had his character birthday roll).
<> Follow up idea of heading back to Sofia – Dead City Run – to find the gold left at the hotel.
<> Understand the consequences for Josh of what has happened to him with the statue being activated – Nyarlathoteps little sting in the table surprise.

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 7th July 2012 ¦ Horror on the Orient Express # 12

Belgrade – Sofia

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. Learn more…

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RESUME

15 FEB – around 4 a.m.
The team are scheduled to board the Orient Express for 9.37 am departure to Sofia.
Roman has two satchels, 2 x FN-RAL assault rifles, one with 10 clips, one with 9 clips. 2 x laser scopes.  A bandolier of 5 frag grenades and 5 flash bangs.  Smart SCope goggles with IR and thermal vision.  He also has conduits to carry them across borders – but needs to be careful to ensure he follows protocols.

Characters have noticed black dogs, black cats, black insects…. observing them more of less continuously since fleeing the village.

The team are escorted to Orient Express departure lounge to watch the flux and flow of important and wealthy passengers arriving.

Many stories flicker within exchanged glances or rigid eye contact.

Team quietly discuss the big picture now forming.  There are four parties interested in them / the statue.

(1) Their employer. The man who pretended to be solicitor in London – Solomon Kane. The man who died three times in London. Mehmet Makryat.  A man capable of changing his appearance by killing victims and wearing their skin.  He is the reason the team are travelling across Europe in this train, gathering bits of statue on Mehmet’s behalf.  Why can’t Mehmet do this himself? Because his father, head of cult in Istanbul, Selim, is looking for him.  Mehmet told team that he wants to destroy the statue, to stop his father from activating it and unleashing a terror into the world.  Josh doesn’t buy this.
Query: if the characters phased into this universe – was it on Mehet’s request? Did Mehmet have the ability to make this happen or was it a “favour” from a powerful Outer God?

(2) Selim.  The father of Mehmet and leader of cult in Istanbul. Not much known about him or the cult.  The team are supposed to take statue there – to the cult’s mosque and destroy it by placing it within niches in the walls.  Selim has men scouring Europe looking for his son (to kill him?) and for the statue that he must now is being collected together.

(3) Count Drogo. Previous owner of the statue. A member of the race of the Great Magi. Drogo stole the statue from Sedefkar during the Crusades in the Middle East back in the 12th century.  Drogo survived for centuries, using the statue to walk within the realm of men… a predator concealed in the skin of his victims.  Drogo wants it back – but what has two centuries being bricked away in a wall in an asylum in Paris done to his mind?

(4) Duc Des Essain. The bloated, larger-than-life mad man from Lausanne who created his own “blister reality” where he was able to torment the inhabitants there.  When the Duc approached them in Belgrade, he said this world belonged to him.  What did he mean by that?  This world?  This entire parallel universe or…? Whatever the answer the characters realise he is possibly one of the most powerful and dangerous adversaries they face.  Marcus believes that the Duc wants to stop Selim – or anyone – else from getting the statue because its activation would shift the balance of power. Right now – in this reality – the Duc is king, perhaps?  And the Duc wants to keep it that way.

In the departure lounge, the team take notice of Charles Parker and Walter Protheroe and his assistant, Amy. There is some kind of sardonic dynamic in place between them.

On the train, luxury comfort and relief to be moving again. Characters won’t totally relax until they’re over the border and hopefully away from SPARSK assassins.

Marcus begins to exhibit Satyr-like qualities. An influence of his close encounter with the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath. Women begin to act very strangely around him.

In salon car, team discover that Fargas Laslow (tall, glossy and highly groomed Italian) is riding with them: his job is to observe them and ensure no more massacres by the “Orient Ripper” take place.

Leaving the region of Belgrade, their following of black birds and insects fades away.  Josh thinks it was Baba-Yaga.

Later…

Walter Protheroe is found dead in his compartment. Shot through the head. Gun in right hand. Window locked and a pile of Arabic stim-pipes crowding a small ashtray.

Laslow puts his ego and desire to best the team, above the desire to properly solve the crime.

Marcus and Josh put together a solid line of reasoning and work through the clues, with a final twist of help coming from Paul Bishop “It’s a locked room case”.

A locked room. Of course.  The room was locked but there should have been a smell from all  the stim pipes.

Team discover a false witness statement and the fact Amy found Protheroe dead from suicide, but she re-arranged clues to try and have Parker (who she hated) accused of the murder – which nearly worked because Laslow followed her bait.

When the truth is revealed Laslow is gutted – and flits between drunkenly sneering or praising them.

The the Bulgarian border, Roman is removed from train by authorities. An issue over protocol; but he ensures the team still have the bags and the webbing.

An avalanche
stops train in the mountains, 2 hours from Sofia. Paul goes to front of train to take a look; Marcus goes with him and so does Josh – but Josh stops to grab a coat. Alone, trying to catch up with the others he is attacked by a maniac with a knife. The maniac gouges out his eye and runs off with it.

Later, a grisly discovery is made in the snow – tracks leading from train into forest… they find an eyeball, but it doesn’t belong to Josh.

Josh begins to experience flashed glimpses of another point of view.  His eyeball now in the head of the maniac.

It’s horrible.

Laslow comes up to Marcus and proffers to him a hardscreen loaded with latest newspaper; page 5, article about a strange ceramic head dug up yesterday by a farmer.  It is the head of the Simulacrum.  International paper.  Everybody who might be interested in it now knows the head is at the University of Sofia for study.

Sofia

Arriving in Sofia the team are taken to their hotel, the Caravaggio. Marcus seduces the reception girl and gets a presidential suite. Private elevator, marble statues, a sunken lounge with window wall views across city, bullet-proof glass, gas-filtered air-vents.  A private fortress.  Josh and Paul refuse to pay the male receptionist “a surcharge of 500 per night, each” so are given “standard rooms”.  These are down in the lower floor of the hotel overlooking car park. They’re not impressed.  Eventually they go up to Marcus’ suite and sleep on sofas there.

They notice when Marcus comes out of shower, stark-bollock naked, he’s walking around as if he has hooves for feet and is stoking his thighs as if they’re covered in coarse matted hair.  It’s obvious this is what Marcus believes. Strange. Instead, Marcus just has the same skin deformity and scars and aching joints across his limbs and torso as the rest of the group (dire consequences of possessing the statue pieces).

17th Feb
Team leave hotel by extortionate taxi (again) and travel to University of Sofia. After much delay and procrastination by people who either wants bribes or don’t talk English, they finally get to meet the professor studying the recently found head.  Meanwhile – Josh is experiencing all manner of strange glimpses of the journey of the maniac who gouged out his eyeball. A river gorge. A cavern.  A ceremony…

The professor is intrigued by the character’s knowledge of the strange, unidentifiable ceramic material the head is made from. He agrees to show them the head.

However, when they walk into the work lab… a horror scene awaits them.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT SESSION

Sofia city

GM NOTES:
() Next Rank Roll should be when they complete Sofia.  Laslow is in Sofia keeping tabs on them.
() All Cs have yet to experience TAINT from Dark Young
(!) Marcus has started experience something particularly potent due to his mind engaging with the things.The question is, where is this going to end up?

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David J Rodger – DATA

DJR: thoughts for next session on local copy of these notes.

Bestseller in sci-fi dark fantasy for June 2012

June 2012 – Bestseller

Available in paperback or Kindle

June saw a battle for top spot between my hand-picked collection of short stories – Songs of Spheres, and the post-apocalyptic crime thriller, Dog Eat Dog, which is the first novel to be set within the world of Yellow Dawn (Mad Max meets Blade Runner; Earth ravaged by the Cthulhu Mythos).

Dog Eat Dog won out in the end with a combination of paperback sales through LULU and Kindle versions through Amazon.

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Other News

I finished a new novel earlier this week. The Black Lake.  Now going through proofing and review.  So far, great feedback… it’s a fast read with the tension building up nicely.  I’m aiming to release it before September 2012.

I’m now working on the next novel.  Rise of the Iconoclast.  Another one to be set in the world of Yellow Dawn.  A rip-roaring romp of post-apocalyptic cyborgs, holding together as a bandit crew and heroes for hire. Very different to what I normally write. But I like the challenge.  I’ve got my crew defined and relevant bits fleshed out – so watch this space for updates as the story evolves.

CREW OF THE GINNY – aka Genie

• Izaäk Raske
• Hariwald Hlavač
• Tristão Steinsson
• Malthe Herriot
• Nikias Solberg

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Dog Eat Dog 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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YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY:

• Sci-fi, Cyberpunk and Steampunk gems

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A novel

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WiP: The Black Lake 55,000 words

Work in progress

Another tough patch hacked and blasted through with the new novel. What’s helped is taking time out from sitting in front of a computer.  Morning sessions sitting in the Boston Tea Party (cafe) with an Americano stained with milk until it’s the colour of mud, pen in hand, and leather-bound paper notebook from Santiago. Letting the ideas percolate through skull and emerge as scribblings of hand.  Random lines of thought staining the notepaper with ink, eyes scanning, absorbing, feedback loop to brain and so progress made.

This recent part of the novel required me to describe a character rapidly going mad and losing touch with reality because of his isolated existence, surrounded by strange goings-on.  A combination of Mythos episode and ghostly haunting.  I’m thinking that some part of this process – having to immerse my brain in that state of mind to capture the essence of it – caused me to feel pretty rubbish the past two weeks.  I’ve certainly been feeling a little “off”.

Possibly also down to the fact I’m writing a book without a solid plan; if I finish, as hoped, in the next couple of weeks it’ll be the fastest novel I’ve ever written. The last one, Living in Flames, only took 3 months.  This one could come in at 8 weeks.  Fingers crossed.  Although I’ve still got to come up with the ending  – and judging by recent experience, I’m liable to go mad during the process.

*grits teeth, sets jaw at determined angle, marches forward with pen poised*

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The Black Lake.  A post-apocalyptic ghost story. A consortium of private businesses put together an expedition to a remote Scottish island in the sub-Arctic. Five men leave Malta to undertake scientific observations of a strange and alien meteorological phenomenon that followed the event known as Yellow Dawn.  It’s a story of escape, wonder and terror.

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WiP: The Black Lake 51,000 words

Work in progress

I managed to get up surprisingly early considering I had a late night bender playing Warrior Knights and drinking whisky until way past 1 AM. After clearing up the debris of five blokes – empty bottles and discarded snack wrappers – I’ve got down to the current novel, The Black Lake. 51,000 words in and feeling the pace rapidly slowing as I wade through another tough part. This is a book I started writing middle of May after getting back from Malta – no plot map, just a seed idea and no pages of notes on characters. I just “got on with it”. Not my usual way of working. I’m having to craft the dread and depression of a character existing alone, hundreds of miles from anyway, stranded in a post-apocalyptic wilderness (on a remote island)… and strange and disturbing things are happening to him there. A mixture of Mythos horror and supernatural haunting. Hey-ho. Battling on with words I go.

I’ve got some wildly hand-scribbled notes I made yesterday morning as my current plot-map.  Plan today is to work through this as much as possible then bail out with a rocket drive into town, do the harbour walk, sink into deep thought mode and park my bum in a cafe to write down more notes.  Repeat and continue.

The Black Lake.  A post-apocalyptic ghost story. A consortium of private businesses put together an expedition to a remote Scottish island in the sub-Arctic. Five men leave Malta to undertake scientific observations of a strange and alien meteorological phenomenon that followed the event known as Yellow Dawn.  It’s a story of escape, wonder and terror.

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David J Rodger – DATA