Things on my Radar

 It’s been a while.  Here are a list of games and authors that I am either actively reading or actively pursuing.  I do not have enough information to review any of these products yet, but they have all piqued my interest. 

Games

Holdout- a solitaire, roll-and-write resource management game in which you must grow your wasteland settlement, deal with mishaps that drain your resources and daily bandit raids and achieve certain objectives to win.  

I am interested in this game, because I wanted to examine simple and fun resource management games, what makes them tick, and how they can be iterated off of.

Holdout is by Humble Bard Games. $5. This is a print and play game. A video overview is here.

Dangerous Space- A sci-fi solo game that is published by PNP Arcade and designed by Jason Greeno and Jason Tagmire.

The description for Dangerous Space says: 

"Dangerous Space is a dungeon crawl experience in futuristic starships.

This solo, roll & write game has a tactical emphasis on dice management and careful placement. 

With puzzle-optimizing challenges combined with a hero tech tree, you’ll find yourself racing the clock, dodging enemy laser blasts and confronting some deep space terrors.”

The Dangerous Space Core Set is $4.

Stoneburner- I’ve been reading through this game. Stoneburner is about being a Space Dwarf and inheriting a space mine in an asteroid that is infested by demons and worse.  It takes its inspiration from Deep Rock Galactic, Doom, Dwarf Fortress, The Expanse and Firefly. In addition, it claims it is “solo friendly.”

Mechanically, to perform a check you roll a skill die, or a die from an item.  The roll result of 1-2 indicates you outright fail, or you may succeed with a major complication. A roll of 3-4 means you succeed in your endeavor, however there is a minor complication.  A roll of 5+ means you greatly succeed, and the higher the roll result the better. 

Now after you use a skill or item, your die for that skill or item decreases by one step, (ie 1d6 turns into a 1d4).  Skills cannot go lower than a 1d4.  Dwarven classes have three skills: Strength, Dexterity and Willpower.  These skills may vary from 1d4 to 1d8, depending on starting class. 

Stoneburner is created by Fari RPG’s, specifically by René-Pier Deshaies. It is $15. 

Bandit Republic- The Bandit Republic OSR hexcrawl from itch.io is set in an alternate history 1925 where the Republic of Jelenia broke off from Poland and the characters are all deserters from the Army of Jelenia. There are artillery, radios, soldiers and spies from East Prussia, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia; guns galore, witchers, leshy and other supernatural oddities along with revolutionaries and communists.

The system is based on the Wolves Upon the Coast hexcrawl's system. Bandit Republic was created by Tom Mecredy who some of you may remember as the author of the Napoleonic naval OSR hexcrawl Shot and Splinters that I liked so much I designed two additional random tables for.  

 

Bandit Republic is currently 50% off through 1/30/24. Normally it is $20 as of January 2024. As the hexcrawl is further developed, the price will increase.  

Over War: Monarch Edition-  

UPDATE **Kickstarter is LIVE Through Feb 15th** 

Patreon post link about Over War: Monarch Edition here. 

Over War: Monarch Edition is a tactical tabletop rpg (inspired by Fire Emblem, Yggdra Union, Langrisser, and the works of Yasumi Matsuno) soon to be a Kickstarter (possibly in February) by author Richard Kelly and expanded by Blackoath Entertainment.  Blackoath was responsible for Across a Thousand Dead Worlds which I enjoyed reading and wrote a review of.  So, expect the Blackoath touch of a solo mode and tons of interesting random tables with Over War: Monarch Edition. 

Here is the blurb that got me excited about Over War: Monarch Edition from the Patreon post.

“But how does it play, I hear you ask? Well, players maintain a warcamp, unlock new units and supplies between missions, then take to the field, relying on the types of characters they've recruited and the formation they've put them in to carry them through battles.

Missions take place on hex maps covered in unique terrain types. Cities can be conquered, swamps can be slogged through, units can take to the air to avoid the effects of terrain or stand on mountains and fire downward into foes for extra damage. Throughout all this, the emphasis is on keeping things simple and keeping choices meaningful. Dice are rarely rolled. Attacks typically hit. And good formations, tactical choices, and resource spending carry the day.”

Want to see how the original Over War plays? There are FREE Community Copies of Over War: The Night Comes Down on the itch.io page. Make sure you scroll down to the bottom to get it. 

Books

Mark Samuels; The Age of Decayed Futurity- I’m sorry to say I first heard of Mark Samuels and his weird and Lovecraftian fiction upon an announcement of his passing on r/WeirdLit. The blog Wormwoodiana had a very nice tribute for Mark Samuels, specifically saying that he was a passionate advocate for Machen, Lovecraft and Ligotti. I am looking forwards to reading some of Mark Samuels’ “best” short stories as collected in The Age of Decayed Futurity once I get my hands on a physical copy.   

Premee Mohamed; No One Will Come Back For Us - From her bio on Amazon, Premee Mohamed is “a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta.” Her science degrees are in molecular genetics and environmental science. 

I recently downloaded the Kindle sample of Premee’s book No One Will Come Back For Us. It contained two and a half short stories: Below the Kirk, Below the Hill; Instructions; and The Evaluator.  In Below the Kirk, Below the Hill; and the section of The Evaluator that was present in the Kindle sample, Premee Mohamed creates a mood of a normal world but with pinpricks of oddity that she pulls on to lead the reader through mystery and horror indicating that what these people live in, is not our world, or if it was; something very alien has happened to their surroundings and they are trying to cope.  I’m very eager to continue reading The Evaluator to see how the story develops.  I’ll report back if she is one of the authors who also treads the path of cosmic horror in her tales.  

Adapting the Laird Barron Mythos to Delta Green, Part 1

 Laird Barron, the weird fiction and supernatural horror author has crafted a Carnivorous Cosmos with several entities that may be similar to each other, but they all view humanity with various unholy lusts, including love.  In this post I describe some of my thoughts on Barron’s Children of the Old Leech and how the mechanics and mythos of Delta Green could handle them. 

WARNING: Heavy spoilers for Laird Barron’s work, in particular The Croning and on the subject of the Children of the Old Leech. 

I am convinced Barron’s creativity and views on Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror are rich places to mine for horror that would be fresh and new to players of Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green.  In fact, mellonbread submitted two shotgun scenarios to the 2002 Delta Green shotgun scenario contest, inspired by Laird Barron’s works: Saturnalia and BUGS BUGS BUGS.  Saturnalia won the People’s Choice and Second Place awards in the 2002 Delta Green shotgun scenario contest.  I had the opportunity to speak with mellonbread and he told me Saturnalia was based on two of Barron’s stories: Termination Dust from Swift To Chase and Jaws of Saturn, featured in The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. BUGS BUGS BUGS was inspired by the story Proboscis in The Imago Sequence, and the X-Files episode Folie a Deux.

Recently I saw a blog post from fellow Delta Green enthusiast, magnificentophat, and part of it inspired me to consider how Barron’s dreadful supernatural aliens the Children of the Old Leech could be generated in a Delta Green context. Barron mentions the Children of the Old Leech in several stories (which I may delineate in a future post) but for today I will focus on Barron’s novella The Croning where the Children are most explicitly described in the climax in the following passages:   

p. 221 "“…behold the portal. To be taken through it is to be carried to the home of the Children of the Old Leech, chief among the Dark Ones who serve vast blind things in the lightless wastes where mortal physics collapse into nonsense.”"

p. 220 "“The Dark Ones don’t procreate as we do.” Rourke said. “Their system of reproduction is via assimilation, absorption, transmogrification.”"

p.131-132 "“Hey,” Mr Dart said, “I’m curious-you ever ask yourself what the connection is between the Wolvertons, Rourkes and Mocks? Other than big fortunes?”

“You gotta include the Redfields too,” Mr. Claxton said. “Although, I don’t know how deep that goes.”"

How deep indeed Mr. Claxton, how deep indeed. 

These passages suggest that there are mortal families that will be “adopted” and transmuted into Children of the Old Leech in a terrifying ritual or procedure. The Children of the Old Leech are the top Servitor race of a group called the Dark Ones, all of whom serve the Old Leech or apparently comparable beings, i.e. “vast blind things in the lightless wastes where mortal physics collapse into nonsense.” And the Children of the Old Leech, they love us, yes they do. 

In The Croning, it is implied the mortals chosen for conversion into the Children are flayed of their skin, changed in some terrible fundamental way, then rewrapped into their own skin and can carry out their human roles, looking none the worse for wear except a long scar somewhere on their body which they explain away as one accident or another.  It may also be possible for the newly inducted/changed Children to slip their mortal skin and reinhabit it later as needed.  

See page 152 "A muddy inscription near the bottom of one canvas read, Fathers and Mothers come as slaves and depart as kin." 

So, is there a current Delta Green mechanism that could explain or describe the horrible transmutation that mortals are forced to undergo to rise as Children of the Old Leech? Yes. Magnificentophat created a variant of the ritual Changeling Feast, that is most often associated with Lovecraftian ghouls, that was inspiring to me.  I’ve quoted the full text from the magnificentophat blog, below:

Changeling Feast

The operator may pay part of the WP cost when they consume the body and the rest when they assume the disguise. The latter cost is reduced, as it must be paid repeatedly. Eg: 6 WP and 1D4 SAN during cannibalism and 1D4 WP (or 1 SAN if they have any) every time they ‘change shape.’ Maybe it takes anywhere from a round to a minute to assume someone else’s form and taking damage disrupts the illusion. A successful Ritual Activation roll could enact a speedy change. Unnatural entities always transform quickly. Some versions ‘only’ involve skinning and tanning the victim’s corpse (1/1D4 SAN from violence) to make a cloak or belt that disguises its wearer. It can’t be disrupted but isn’t as easily put on and taken off as the traditional glamour.

Alternate Names: Consume Semblance, Deathly Glamour, Yig’s Deception

For full comparison and reference, below is the original ritual Changeling Feast from the Delta Green Handler’s Guide page 175.

Changeling Feast

Complex ritual. Study time: days; 1D10 SAN. Activation: days; 12 WP, 1D6 SAN.

This ritual allows the operator to consume a human corpse and later assume the victim’s likeness. The likeness is not deep. It does not change the weight of the operator; bright light casts the operator’s true shadow, not that of the likeness; and it does not emulate the victim’s behavior, personality, or mannerisms.

Consuming a human body costs 1/1D6 SAN for violence. Devouring a human corpse takes days for a human operator. Some inhuman entities can do it in far less time and gain access to a victim’s thoughts and memories. How much of the body must be devoured, and whether a human operator can use this ritual to devour and change into an animal or unnatural entity, are up to the Handler.

Now the ritual for conversion of an appropriate human into a Child of the Old Leech is described, either literally or metaphorically, in the following passage from The Croning, page 163:

“The passage in question was accompanied by an elaborate woodblock illustration inscribed, The Croning (fig. i); a depiction of thirteen naked, apparently middle-aged women encircling a massive boulder.  A buxom figure lay supine, draped across the face of the stone, shackled or bound in some manner.  Don instantly recognized this piece as the subject of Michelle’s sketches.

The drawing was exceedingly baroque, freighted with peripheral figures: winged gargoyles; demonic beasts that resembled kangaroos with tusks (these latter feasted upon the carcasses of men in Conquistadors’ distinctive armor); cherubs; flautists, and peeking from the roots of a mighty oak tree, shadowy woodland sprites, imp faces twisted in dark merriment.  Its overall effect was singularly disturbing, like a Bosche simplified and shrunk to minuscule dimensions. Michelle had scratched in a list of initials and alchemical symbols; she’d even gone so far as to make a charcoal sketch of the original on a piece of textured art paper.“

I will be referring to this ritual as The Croning (ritual). The Croning (ritual) may require up to 13 cultist participants, require the presence of an elder or non-human Child of the Old Leech, a human victim (the converted-to-be), an occult location of power devoted to the Old Leech and an auspicious calendar time at night.  In the process of The Croning (ritual), the victim is transformed into a Child of the Old Leech by an unspeakable process that involves flaying the victim’s skin, modifying the victim with biological and physiological processes that are so advanced they appear supernatural, forcing the victim to consume their human parts that are no longer necessary according to the Children, and literally re-wrapping the victim now Child of the Old Leech in their original human skin.  

The idea of “forcing the victim to consume their human parts that are no longer necessary according to the Children” is inspired by the Children of the Old Leech’s predation upon human beings, and I think it is fitting because The Croning (ritual) process can then be linked, in part, to the Delta Green established ritual Changeling Feast.   

I don’t have a full idea of how to mechanically define The Croning (ritual), but inspired by magnificentophat’s version of Changeling Feast, Children of the Old Leech should be able to impersonate themselves when wearing their own human skin.  It is also suggested in Barron’s The Siphon from The Beautiful Thing that Awaits Us All, that the Children of the Old Leech can take on the forms of those humans they have consumed, assuming they have flayed the human victims first.  I am assuming that the supernatural beings described in The Siphon are Children of the Old Leech. 

I suggest the following new magical ritual that Children of the Old Leech would know upon conversion by The Croning (ritual):

Changeling Feast (Child of the Old Leech):

This ritual allows the operator to consume parts of their own body or a complete human corpse and later assume the victim’s likeness, assuming the operator has access to the near complete flayed skin of the victim (themselves or another). The likeness of a Child of the Old Leech’s personal human form is complete and fully convincing, with the exception that there is a long scar somewhere on the Child’s human body. This scar is the location where the Child can “unzip” their skin and regain their true monstrous form.

In the case where the Child wishes to impersonate the likeness of a complete human corpse that they have consumed, the Child may pay part of the WP cost when they consume the body and the rest when they assume the disguise. To be clear, the Child inhabiting the flayed skin of a victim is wearing a disguise and not an illusion. The Child can shed their skinsuit and emerge as their true form in a round. It takes a minute and requires a dark location for a Child to wear a flayed skin and disguise themselves in it. 

I’m not sure whether, like the original Changeling Feast ritual, the inhuman operator does gain access to a victim’s thoughts and memories. I will have to do additional rereads of Barron’s corpus to come up with a ruling that is accurate based on the source material. 

I will note however, that the operator of Changeling Feast (Child of the Old Leech) does not automatically emulate the victim’s behavior, personality, or mannerisms.  That is up to the Child to do through their stats and skills, not the ritual. 

The operator of Changeling Feast (Child of the Old Leech) may be detected by the abhorrent taste or scent of their skinsuit. For example, The Siphon describes the following:

“The group dispersed, shuffling off to their respective rooms, and Landcaster shook the hands of the men and kissed the hands of the ladies – Kara’s skin tasted of liquor, and Mrs. Cook’s was clammy and scaly and bitter. He glanced at her face, and her eyes were heavy-lidded, her thick mouth upturned with matronly satisfaction at his discomfort.” 

“He remembered kissing Mrs. Cook’s hand the previous evening, its repellent flavor of sweet, rotting fruit and underlying acridness.”

In addition, the operator of Changeling Feast (Child of the Old Leech) may force a San check from observers by allowing their monstrous nature to bleed through their disguise for a round. This may generate a 0/1 or 1/1d4 San loss once and only once per observer as determined by the operator.  Note I have yet to define what the San loss would be upon seeing a Child in their full monstrous form. At the moment, I suggest at least 1d6 San loss from a failure or perhaps 1d8. 

Anyway, more to come on this subject and others as I continue to mine the Barron Mythos for nuggets of pure undiluted horror with advice from friends. 

Shot and Splinters, Useful Tables 2

 

Image from chess set here

I’ve mentioned Shot and Splinters, Tom Mecredy’s naval Napoleonic hexcrawl before and I still find myself hearing the siren’s call of the Age of Sail.  In short, I have designed two additional tables for use in naval adventures around the time of 1800, inspired by history and my own flights of fancy. The trinkets and treasures d30 table describes things of value of the era or that are adorned with things of obvious value. For some of the entries I researched for museum pieces of the time and used those as inspiration. An example is the “traveling calendar timepiece from a Swiss watchmaker,” that I discovered in one of the references down below. 

Sailors have always had superstitions, so I mined those ideas and an article on ship leisure to generate the d20 table for incidents aboard ship.  Without much trouble, one could adapt the entries to apply to the crew of a spaceship as well.   

More sources for naval and Napoleonic history:

• Society in Napoleonic France

• Exploration and Discovery in the Napoleonic Era

• Breguet timepieces Napoleon owned

• One of the entries in the trinkets and treasure table is a direct reference to HP Lovecraft’s The Temple. 

• Some sailing superstitions 

• Leisure during the Age of Sail

CRASH//CART After Action Report and Review

 I had the opportunity to play a one shot of the indy game CRASH//CART and I had a blast, even though the group and I had some critiques of the system.  

The Game and Character Creation

CRASH//CART is about a group of paramedics and their flying emergency medical vehicle trying to save patients while working for a for-profit corporation, all in a cyberpunk world. If you are familiar with Cyberpunk 2020, think of Trauma Team International.  If Shadowrun is more of your jam, consider Doc Wagon or CrashCart or one of the other corporate medical services.

CRASH//CART was created by Galen Pejeau and is hosted on itch. 

A Blades in the Dark based game, CRASH//CART uses a modified deck of cards instead of dice to resolve actions taken in game. I’ll get into the mechanics more later. Right now, suffice to say that this was my first exposure to the CRASH//CART mechanics as a player and my first encounter playing with a Blades in the Dark system.  I had read Blades in the Dark in the past, but reading a system and actually playtesting it are two utterly different experiences as you all know. 

Let’s get to how my character, “Action” Jackson (no last name) came to be. I was playing with one other player and a Game Master.  This is significant because CRASH//CART recommends 3-5 players on the itch page. Since we were less than the recommended number of players (page 22 of the pdf recommends four characters), we followed the playbook prioritization of Medic, Pilot, Orderly and Mechanic.  My compatriot chose the Medic and I selected Pilot.    

Summarizing character creation a bit, as a Pilot I started off with one dot each in the Actions Evading and Fraternizing; and I was given four more dots to distribute among my Actions as I saw fit.  Since I didn’t have a full understanding of the system, I chose to put one point in Scuffling (since my character had a Vice of Violence), and a point each into Moving and Hacking. I put the last point in Evading since I assumed that was the “Get the Fuck Out of Dodge” skill.  In retrospect I likely should have put that second point from Evasion into Moving, since Moving was used far more often; but on the other hand, Evading did come into play in a couple of clutch moments. 

Then we got into development of our bird, the flying emergency medical vehicle, which the game refers to as a Ground Effect Vehicle. The game also refers to the vehicle as an EMV at some points in the text, which I’m going to go with and assume it stands for Emergency Medical Vehicle. The important things here were the Crew Upgrades and upgrades to the EMV’s four systems.  We picked the upgrade to the Engines, Smart Gearbox, because it allowed the EMV to take off and land with increased effect. Mechanically, “increased effect” means if a success is pulled from the deck, it will become stronger when resolved.  Ultimately neither of us players wanted issues on takeoff or crashing upon landing so the Smart Gearbox was a solid choice.  We also chose Pathfinder Drones and Smart Gurneys. Smart Gurneys were a no brainer since we didn’t have an Orderly on the team to actually move the gurneys from the EMV to the patient.  Pathfinder Drones were a great decision by my fellow player, since they could scout ahead of the crew, and again we were only two.  Lastly, we chose Skeleton Key under Netlink Upgrades.  Essentially it allows you to have great effect on an intrusive hacking action.  Putting some forethought into our choices was actually very helpful, as we used all four upgrades during our adventure. 

The Adventure

Speaking of adventure, our GM started with an abrupt emergency call for a PLATINUM level client.  We only knew that they were in medical distress. Oh, and also they were a clone. Welcome to the world of Cyberpunk.  The address we were given landed us in an extremely posh estate on the coast with a lavish view of the now-toxic sea. There were floor to ceiling glass doors and one of them had been smashed to pieces. The Medic played it wisely and sent one of our shiny and new Pathfinder Drones into the house through the broken door. The commotion was on the second floor.  Our PLATINUM level client was on his back trying (and failing) to fend off a much hairier and more muscular naked person on him who was trying to gouge his eyes out.  Standing there ineffectually and shouting at the assailant to stop were…two more clones? Yep, something very odd was happening in this house, but that didn’t matter; we had a PLATINUM level client to save! 

Our Pathfinder Drone circled the assailant and yelled at him to stop, as the Medic and I jumped out of the EMV with important gear. The Smart Gurney exited the vehicle autonomously and trundled along behind us. As the Pathfinder Drone got closer to the assailant the hairy man turned around and we got a good look at his face before he backhanded the drone to the floor.  Yes, you guessed it, the muscular naked hairy man was yet another clone, with the same facial features as our PLATINUM level client, who by the way was writhing around in his own blood and screaming as one eye was not so gently removed from his face. Squick. 

As a side note, in CRASH//CART, all playbooks have a list of equipment for each character. The equipment by default is kept in the EMV.  When you exit the vehicle and enter a scene each player may take only two pieces of equipment from their equipment list.  One of the pieces of equipment I took was Fine Buzzknuckles.  They were “impact resistant gauntlet[s] with embedded taser leads and capable of delivering multiple 1,200 volt shocks,” according to the book. When the medic and I raced into the manor and up the stairs, I was smiling. Those Buzzknuckles were just charging up. 

The Medic, professional as ever, quickly introduced himself to the two ineffectual clones (turns out one of them had placed the call for an ambulance) while I dove at the muscular fiend with Buzzknuckles blazing.  I tackled the hairy clone and the electrical discharge sent him slamming into the far wall.  The Medic convinced the two ineffectual clones to help restrain the hairy one (You! Grab an arm. You! Grab the other arm and hold him down!).  I got off our mangled PLATINUM level client’s body and joined the melee to subdue the now angry hairy man. The Medic jumped on our client’s body and immediately began emergency services as he now saw a deep gash along the clone’s stomach, likely caused by a knife or maybe even a shard of glass from the now broken glass door downstairs.  

The mystery of all these bloody shenanigans would have to remain unsolved for us. We had a client that had to get to a hospital, and the sooner we got there, the sooner we got paid. Wrestling with the hairy muscular clone was hard, even with assistance from his two brother clones. Frantically, I looked around for something heavy and expensive. Luck was with me and I found a crystal brandy snifter. Smash! 

The hairy and now alcohol smelling clone slumped to the ground at about the time the Smart Gurney chimed amicably and arrived.  The Medic and I carefully slid the PLATINUM level client’s groaning body onto the gurney and then we turned and ran out of the manor house.  Was there a story the clones were going to relate?  Was this some sort of clone’s twisted homicide/suicide plot against himself? Don’t know; doesn’t matter.  We had our patient secure in the EMV and began flying towards the hospital. That was until we got a call from the Leland.  

      

What the hell is a Leland? You know them. Everybody knows them on an EMT team. A Leland is that person who is a repeat caller to an EMT squad.  They always seem to be in trouble and they are a fixture of the sector where the EMT team works.  The Medic’s player had an interesting twist on the Leland. They suggested that the Leland was an owner of a night owl dive diner who acted as sort of a den mother to people from the street.  She wasn’t calling for herself, she would call for medical services for her patrons repeatedly, thus she got the Leland nickname.  The Medic added additional details by saying his character would go to the Leland’s watering hole after his shift so he had a motivation to keep her happy. 

As the Medic was treating the gut wound of the PLATINUM level clone client, I gently touched down in the middle of the city where the Leland was flagging us down and clearing a path to her diner for the Smart Gurney to trundle along.  Our new patient, “Dennis”, a youngish man, had overdosed on something and was having seizures. At least that is what we were told when we saw Dennis covered in some strange blue goo emanating from his mouth and hardening enough to prevent us from removing him from the floor.   What the hell was this situation? As I chatted up the Leland to gather more information (using the Fraternizing action), the Medic was using his background as a former medical scientist to Diagnose what this hard blue goo was.  A solid success gave the Medic the information that the blue goo was actually experimental medical nanobots that had been given to some soldiers during the last war. Dennis was evidently a war veteran that had taken some drug that caused this adverse reaction, and he needed help now.  The problem was he was stuck to the floor. Fortunately, the Medic had taken a Laser Cutter from his kit on the EMV and while I was telling the Leland “I’m sure your building insurance will cover this, honest”, the Medic cut a Dennis shaped hole in the linoleum.  

The Smart Gurney chimed and cheerily trafficked Dennis into the EMV where I hurriedly prepared for takeoff.  Because there was a problem. Our PLATINUM level client was groaning because his stomach was expanding with the gut wound, and I’m not a doctor I’m just a pilot but I knew we had to get our patients to the hospital fast.  The EMV was careening through the wild blue yonder when we got two signatures on our radar.  The Medic was using his Microsurgical Rig (designed for brain surgery but it should work on a gut wound in a pinch, right?) on our clone patient when over the radio came the demand “Turn over the criminal to us or we open fire”.  Two corporate black helicopters were on our tail. 

Mere minutes away from the hospital landing pad I turned on the radio, said “No” not knowing or caring who was the criminal; and immediately took evasive action, jinking and swerving the EMV to avoid their missiles from locking on (keep in mind I had two points in Evasion).  Well, these daredevil antics made my compatriot the Medic less happy as he struggled with using his brain surgery rig to try to close the worsening gut wound.  The GM ruled that my shenanigans, though successful in shaking off the weapons lock, banged the patients around in the interior of the EMV and they both took a point of damage as a result.  Not even bothering to say “sorry” I managed to land on the hospital landing zone (thanks to our trusty Smart Gearbox) and the corporate helicopters decided to peel off.  Now the patients were the hospitals’ problem.  We cheered and momentarily celebrated another shift completed in the absolute chaos of the CRASH//CART world. 

Now I do want to point out I usually play characters more empathetic to NPCs, however the world and the design of the game really focuses the players on the EMT job and getting the patients to medical care as quickly as possible. So, I would have loved to delve into the mystery of the clones or been more careful with the patients that I frantically flew to the hospital, but the message from the game was clear. That simply wasn’t our job. Look at the omnipresent Dispatch, Patient, Destination tracker under the EMV schematic.  Our objective was to deliver as many patients to the hospital as possible while being under budget.  And yes, that is gritty and horrific the way cyberpunk can be at times.   

During Downtime for the shift (which I will explain in more detail later), I decided to indulge in my vice of Violence and go pick a fight at a bar a decent walk away from the EMV’s refueling area to Blow Off Some Steam. Fortunately, this action reduced my 8 stress to 2.  Feeling chipper, if a bit sore and bruised, I got back to the corporate canteen where the Medic was just waking up (as he had spent both downtime actions to Catch Some Z’s).   We were ready to go for another run. 

 

The Medic and I suited up, locked in to the EMV, and received a distress call from a GOLD level client.  The client had made the call from her motorbike, screaming down the Interstate-10 with a biker gang in close pursuit. There was only one tiny little problem. The client was legally dead. 

Normally I didn’t think our policies covered dead people, but based on the call and context of the situation I was rapidly coming to a disquieting conclusion. Our client was likely a Shadowrunner, fleeing a botched job.  I brought our EMV to a position above the client’s motorbike, matching her speed as she tore down the highway.  The bikers behind her were shooting and occasionally hitting their target.  Unable to directly talk with the fleeing client for technical reasons, our Medic had the bright idea of using one of our Pathfinder Drones to hover around our client and announce the fact that we were here to help. 

The drone flew down and circled our client’s head, beeping and booping happily.  Watching the video feed, we caught a disturbing bit of audio.  Our client was speaking with two voices. Uncertain of what to do or what state our client was in, things suddenly became clear.  We heard the client yelling in one unmistakably blended voice, “Get them off of me!” 

Then I said something you never want to hear from your Pilot, let alone your EMT. “I’m going to try something stupid,” I said to the GM, grinning. I pulled two black face cards. A critical success. What I had done was to use my two points in Evasion to fly dangerously low between the bikers and the client and to kick up dust with my rotors to give the client time and distance away from the pursuers.  It worked like a charm.  The bikers shot their guns up in the air and booed unhappily as they peeled off. Then we saw the second wave of antagonists. Three police vehicles.   

Disheartened but not exactly surprised (after all, this was cyberpunk), I attempted another risky maneuver; but this time everything hinged on our Medic. I flew radically low to the ground so the Medic could hop out of the EMV and grab the Shadowrunner client as she came to a screeching stop with the motorbike and nearly passed out into his arms. Still flying, the EMV was hovering off the highway by inches when the Medic, our hero, fireman-carried the bleeding client and jumped into the back of the EMV where the Smart Gurney was waiting, chirping invitingly.  

But it didn’t stop the police from pursuing us. The Medic was screaming at me from inside the medbay that the client was bleeding out due to bullet holes.  To complicate things, some asshole had coated the bullets in some form of acid so they were melting through the Medic’s metal tools.  Our client was none too happy with the fact that she was dying, and was very vocal about it.  

In the eye of this shit-maelstrom, the police were demanding that I land and hand over the “criminal”. They punctuated this by shooting some glue ball into one of the rotors, gunking up the works and forcing me to compensate for the EMV pulling to the side. Things were going to shit and fast.  I sat down for a hot second and tried to strategize with my Medic.  His suggestion was just to stall for time, to comply with the police request while he patched up the patient, and then spring a little trick on the cops.  

Won over by my Medic’s argument, I terminated evasive action and ever so slowly brought the EMV down for a landing on the interstate.  Why is that you Officer Bob? I recognize your voice from this cop bar I frequent … I began attempting to Fraternize with the enemy.  The Medic got the patient stable to some degree, or at least to a less leaking state.  But bullshit can only last so long.  The cops came to a full stop, surrounding our EMV on the highway and slowly started to wander up to our vehicle.  Hey, only half of the cops had guns drawn on us when they approached. I consider that a success! 

As I slowly got out of the cockpit and went to meet and greet our pursuers, I asked for the Warrant for our patient while our Medic was in the back, furiously hacking the computer.  Why? Do you remember the fourth upgrade, the Skeleton Key? As I was talking to the head police officer in charge, our Medic deployed the Skeleton Key to back hack the channel the cops opened to send us the Warrant so we could scramble the cop’s connection to the Warrant database.  “Are you sure your Warrant is up to date officer?” I said. “It’s all blank…”  Just as the cops were decrying their computer glitch, something happened that invalidated CrashCart’s warranty. 

The client, on some very good happy drugs, had had enough of this bullshit, jumped out of the gurney, ran into an unoccupied cop vehicle and hightailed it out of there before we could all blink. “Well, I think that’s the end of the shift,” I mused, smoking an illegal cigarette and looking at our once-client fly off into the yellow-red Pacific coast sunset. Another police vehicle tried to lift off and ended up crashing into a local Wendys.  The smoke enhanced that beautiful reddening sunset between the palm trees.  Synthwave was pounding from the EMV’s speakers as the dejected police officer threw his cap on the ground and said that that was yet another toll runner that they’d never be able to catch. 

Roll credits.   

System Description

Before we get into a description of the CRASH//CART system, let me describe the software we used for our game’s online setup.  Character sheets were hosted for players on the Fari App.  Our GM had generously provided a character sheet for CRASH//CART in a json format that we updated and edited with information from the playbooks.  The gameplay space with the deck of cards and tokens, which you can see in the pictures above, was provided by PlayingCards.io.  PlayingCards.io was very intuitive to use as a player.  We could draw cards from the deck, flip the cards, shuffle and keep cards apart from the deck in our hand in the bar below the graphic of the EMV.  

The basic system of CRASH//CART is based on Forged in the Dark mechanics. However, a major difference is that you pull from a preconstructed deck of cards to resolve actions rather than rolling dice.  The preconstructed deck is created as follows:  Add a black ace through six plus the face cards of both the clubs and the spades to the deck. Next, add the ace through nine for both red suits. Finally, include one joker. Aces are not considered face cards in this game. They count as a draw of “one”. 

To summarize a bit, when you are carrying out an Action, your GM tells you your Position (Cautious, Risky or Desperate) and you draw a number of cards governed by the number of dots you have in a particular action. A mixed success is drawing at least one black card. A black face card gives you a full success and drawing multiple black face cards is considered a critical success. Now here is the trick. If you drew a black face card you may put it in your Cache.  All other black cards (mixed successes) end up in your Trash.  Red cards drawn go into the Discard pile.  When the Joker is drawn, you set it aside and draw another card.  A drawn Joker adds a complication to the story. Also, all cards remaining in the deck and in the Discard pile (only red cards) are shuffled into a new deck.  

Since each player puts successes (black cards) that they drew from the deck into either the Cache or Trash, as play progresses, successes (black cards) become more and more rare to draw.  Also the rate of drawing a Joker increases. All of this is by design. As the author says on page 2 of the book, “The deck runs down as the players take actions, gradually diminishing their future odds of success. The players have opportunities to partially refill the deck during their downtime, but each successive run on a shift will get more and more difficult.”  This “diminishing successes” mechanic ensures that the pressure is kept on the Crash Cart players throughout the game (as the author says the GM should do on page 39). 

There are several mechanisms to enhance a player’s odds of success (if there are any successes left in the deck).  First, the player may push themselves at the cost of two stress to draw an extra card. Also, the player not acting may acquire two stress if they have at least “one dot in the relevant action” to allow the acting player to draw one card. A note about stress, if you ever reach the maximum of 10 stress, you are essentially out of the game as you can no longer interact with the deck in a given scene.  

In the game we played, our GM ruled that if you could justify using a skill you had as contributing to the primary player’s task, regardless of the skill name, then you could obtain two stress and allow the primary player to draw an extra card. I thought this was a flexible interpretation of the rules that made the game as a whole flow faster.     

In addition, in order to draw an additional card, any player may ask the GM for a Devil’s Bargain. A Devil’s Bargain is an exchange; the player will lose something concrete or suffer some narratively interesting disadvantage in exchange for the opportunity to draw one more card. 

So, as you can see, the maximum number of cards you can draw on any one action is 3 (Push self, Help from another player, Devil’s Bargain) plus the number of dots you have in a particular action. 

System Criticism

The trouble our group found with the rules came near the end of the second shift.  Specifically, when we ran into the diminishing successes mechanic for the final few Action Draws in the game; the fact that the players were able to estimate that there were only one or two successes (black cards) in the deck, and that we had about the same chance to draw one of the black cards as to draw the Joker, killed any sense of anticipation as to what was going to happen for those final rounds.  For us at the table, the forgone conclusion of failure made the last bit of the game boring. 

Now given that our opinion is that the diminishing successes mechanic leads to a boring conclusion, were there mechanics in game that could have mitigated the diminishing successes mechanic, for example replenishing the deck with successes (black cards)?  The answer is yes. Let’s look at each of these success replenishment mechanics in turn. 

First of all, let’s look at Downtime. During Downtime after a shift, you have two downtime actions.  If you want the opportunity to replenish the deck with some successes (black cards), you can spend both downtime actions to Catch Some Z’s, which allows you to return half of a player’s combined trash and cache to the deck.  However, since Catch Some Z’s takes both downtime actions, this prevents you from doing anything else in this phase.  

During our Downtime, in between getting the clone and overdosing patient to the hospital and before encountering the fleeing Shadowrunner, my character had acquired 8 stress. As previously stated, a player that gets to 10 stress cannot interact with the deck, so it was imperative that I reduce the stress with whatever downtime actions I could. Fortunately, there was the downtime action Blow Off Some Steam, which takes one downtime action, essentially allowing a player to potentially reduce their stress.    

The problem is that I only could carry out the Blow Off Some Steam action to make myself potentially useful in the next coming shift, or ignore my character’s issues and return half of the successes I drew to the deck and hope that my fellow player could capitalize off of them without me, assuming I would take another two stress hit somewhere in the new shift.  

I think a more workable option for Downtime, would be for the Catch Some Z’s action to cost one downtime action and recycle maybe one-fourth or one-third of a player’s combined trash and cache to the deck.   

In addition to downtime actions, if players choose a particular ability from their ability list during character creation, they may have the opportunity to replenish the deck with successes during the game. The Abilities Shortcut Queen (Pilot), Queen of Borrowed Time (Medic), Hustle Queen (Orderly) and Queen of the Grid (Mechanic) all allow a player to discard a Queen from their Cache to allow another player to recycle their Trash (non-face black cards) into the deck, thus increasing the chances of success for successive action pulls.  My fellow player and I did not choose any of these starting abilities because we had limited exposure to the system when we started playing and didn’t quite have the system mastery of CRASH//CART under our belts at the time.  

Another factor that the GM brought up was that he could have massaged the card economy by calling for more Fortune Draws during the game.  Fortune Draws are used to establish the condition of some situation in game. Mechanically someone, maybe a player, draws a number of cards equal to the dots in their relevant action, plus and minus a number of cards depending on the circumstances of the situation the GM gives you. An example in the book is that a player is trying to establish the nature of a landing zone as the EMV approaches.  This could be a Moving Action, so prepare to draw a number of cards equal to the dots you have in Moving. If this is a milk run for the players, add a card.  If the opponent has the Edge or they have had no briefing whatsoever, subtract a card.  Then draw the final number of cards.  As per normal, a black card will give you a partial success and a black face card gives a full effect or success.  

Now this is different. After the draw and the result has been determined, you get to shuffle the deck.  This means that Fortune Draws do not hinder future successes, unlike normal Action draws, and therefore do not change the balance of the deck. If the intention of Fortune Draws is to have the player keep success cards in their Cache or Trash, this is not indicated.  Thus, we are assuming that all pulled cards get to be recycled into the deck.  

Suggestions for New Players/GMs and Final Thoughts

Upon discussion with my GM, we recommend the following suggestions for players and GMs new to CRASH//CART:

• (Players) At least one player should take one Ability at character creation that restocks the deck with black cards.
• (GM) Be mindful of the length of clocks. You'll always have at least three clocks: retrieving the patient, delivering the patient, and dealing with their primary aliment. Keep most clocks at 4 or 6 segments.
• (GM) Understand that Clocks aren't necessarily advanced by card draws. Actions in the fiction can just cause Clocks to advance.
• (GM) Be mindful about the distinction between Action draws and Fortune draws. Many Action draws can justifiably be Fortune draws.
• (GM) Helping Other Players. Allow any other player to justify using a skill, and taking two stress to give the acting player the option to draw one more card during an Action. 

Ultimately, I did enjoy the game of CRASH//CART, but there are issues with some of the systems. If you don’t enjoy the fact that at some point before your shift ending there may be a high or total rate of failure given any action you attempt, you are going to have a bad time. Granted, our group was one to two members below the recommended minimum, but I don’t see how that could have affected our main issues with the mechanics.  I bought CRASH//CART after our game, and though we definitely feel another editing pass to the pdf would be very much appreciated and we had our quibbles with the rules, we had fun.  

Special thanks to Staggered Amusement Machine for introducing me to CRASH//CART, being the GM, revisions, additions and discussions. Additional thanks to Anonymous who played the Medic and for discussions about the system. 

Resources

Here is a link to the CRASH__CART.fari.json character sheet designed and hosted by Staggered Amusement Machine.

How to use the CRASH__CART.fari.json character sheet:

Download the CRASH__CART.fari.json file from the link.

Goto the fari.app website

On the fari.app website, click on My Binder on the upper left

Click on the Characters folder

Import the CRASH__CART.fari.json file  

Click on the CRASH//CART Template

To modify the character sheet, make sure the “Advanced” button is toggled to the right 

Enjoy

Edit: The CRASH//CART character sheets are publicly available on the Fari.App now.

Go to My Binder -> Characters -> New, then on the character sheet click the Templates dropdown and search for "CRASH CART" or find Nightjar games.

All character playbooks and the EMV sheet can be found there.

Shot and Splinters, Useful Tables

 

I bought the ttrpg Shot and Splinters from Tom Mecredy’s itch page. I’ve had it for three weeks and I am preparing to run a game of it. It is wonderful. I’ll let Tom Mecredy describe his product himself. 

Shot and Splinters is a naval OSR hexcrawl set in the middle of the Napoleonic era, at about 1801.  Players will have the opportunity to raid the French coast of Brittany and engage in all sorts of nautical misadventures with the other nations warships and merchants plying their trade in the area. 

The main rules are very brief, in the OSR style and character creation only takes up a couple of pages. Tom Mecredy considers his creation to be a hack of the very well regarded OSR hexcrawl Wolves upon the Coast by Luke Gearing.  The DNA from Gearing’s epic Wolves upon the Coast shines through Shot and Splinters.  For example, in Wolves upon the Coast, each character rolls for three characteristics only: Strength, Agility and Constitution. In Shot and Splinters, each character rolls for four characteristics: Authority, Brawn, Dexterity and Intellect.  Since players will be associated with or on a ship for the majority of the adventures in Shot and Splinters, it makes sense for Authority to be added as a characteristic.  Authority measures respect and reputation among the crew. In a similar vein, since players may engage in intellectual activities like navigation, having Intellect as a characteristic allows the GM to abstract to dice rolls certain elements of ship maintenance. 

In preparation for running Shot and Splinters I did some research about the Napoleonic era. I am not a history buff, but I found the world of 1801 to be a rich and cosmopolitan place. Inspired by this I decided to make a d30 table with interesting travelers that players could encounter on Brittany or off its coast. I attempted to fill the table with an international motley of entries so that each encounter would be unique.  Also, since bandits abound in Shot and Splinters, I made a short 1d6 table to add some color to those encounters, giving some of the bandits an interesting background. I may expand on this latter table in the future. 

 In poking about the world of Shot and Splinters and 1801, I found the following sources to be helpful:

• Galvanism
• Brittany
• Jonathan North’s writings about Napoleonic history
• In addition, one of the characters on the interesting travelers table is a De la Poer. Read HP Lovecraft’s Rats in the Walls to get that reference. I just couldn’t help myself!

Movies:

• Master and Commander
• Napoleon
• Damn the Defiant!

Delta Green After Action Report. Enemy of the Tribes, Part 1

 

Four men stood under the harsh illumination of a halogen light as they contemplated the ice cream card.  There were three blank spaces remaining. “I wonder if they have jimmies,” said one. “They’re called sprinkles in New Mexico,” responded the other absently as he threw the empty wallet on a nearby table, thumbing through the IDs of PFC Paul Clark. “I could go for some vanilla right about now,” said the third, his back to a clear jar colored cherry red with the biological stains of parts of Paul Clark and Paul Clark himself (mostly at least) silently staring up on a slab with a Y-shaped incision on his chest.  “We are missing something important,” remarked the fourth, holding up the card, “Who gets the free ice cream here?”

Silent cogitation and the shuffling of wingtips greeted this comment.

--recollections of Jim Coake

I am playing Jim Coake, an FBI Agent involved in investigating Middle Eastern artifact smuggling around Iraq, in TopHat’s Delta Green campaign.  The campaign will be focused on the published Delta Green scenario Iconoclasts, with additions of other adventures as TopHat sees fit.  For example, our first adventure was titled Enemy of the Tribes, a shotgun scenario written by David Tormsen, found here.

We did not know the title of the adventure going into it. 

Along with myself, there are three other players with the following characters:

FBI Agent Gabriel Almeida, a hulking man who is very physically capable and a keen investigator.  

Doc Taylor is the gung-ho enlisted Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Corpsman. He has interfaced with SEAL teams before, but has had bad experiences.

William ‘Big Bill’ Chester, a paramilitary operations officer with a specialization on electronics, and the most senior Delta Green agent in the group.

The four of us reported to Albuquerque, New Mexico where our case officer, Army Colonel Gwin, met us in a nondescript hotel conference room.  The name of the game was an unnatural murder and we had to cover it up and solve it. Manilla folders were opened, papers were rifled through, and open laptops were swiveled. The victim was one Private First Class Paul Clark, recently returned from overseas where he had served multiple tours in Iraq.  He was dead, and not in the nice way.  Evidently PFC Clark had been torn to shreds in his Albuquerque home, 30 minutes after he had placed a 911 call rambling about “insurgents” and “exfiltration” before a single gunshot punctuated the call and the phone hit the ground.

Big Bill and Doc Taylor listened to the 911 call carefully. It was unusual, at least in more than one way. PFC Clark seemed lucid and adhering strictly to military doctrine when he made the call and was barking orders at the 911 operator.  Whatever stress he had been put under; Clark was operating tactically as an experienced Army veteran.  Before he died, at least.

Gwin provided our cover. We were a military police investigative body experienced in counter-terrorism and on the case for a “revenge killing”.  At that time, we had no idea how accurate that was.

In the nondescript black van that was to be our second home during the investigation, we reviewed documents and threw theories back and forth as we drove to the morgue to talk to the medical examiner.  We learned that PFC Clark lived alone and had divorced his wife rather shortly after returning stateside. Not all together uncommon, but a detail niggled at our brains. What if he knew what was coming for him?

With that detail in our minds, we pushed open the double doors of the cold and sterile morgue with the ME in tow. It was bad. Even Big Bill had to take a seat at the sight of Clark in different locations and containers.  Bill had seen plenty of shit in Iraq. A body shouldn’t look like that unless an IED got it, and that wasn’t supposed to happen in America (failed San Check).  It wasn’t an IED that caused this though…maybe some sort of animal? 

We started correlating our contents. Clark was in two major pieces: upper and bottom half. Most of the wounds were prior to Clark’s death, some were postmortem.  The actual cause of death was shock and blood loss.  The upper body told us an interesting story. There were defensive wounds that look like he fended off edged and blunt weapons.  The bottom half…well it was a mess.  The right leg looked of all things like it had been gnawed.  The left leg and meat had been removed with a cleaver.  The remainder of the left leg, it was sort of not there. It had been pulverized into a human stain; it was collected in a glass jar, crimson and cherry red.

We got to work. Agents Coake and Almeida dove right into DNA collection and forensics examination. The right leg had teeth marks on it all right. Weird ones though, like the teeth of some primate. The top of the body was definitely assaulted with knives but the strange thing was there was sand in the wounds. Like if PFC Clark had been stabbed then rolled around in sand.  Someone suggested a sandblaster was used, but that was a head scratcher too. We knew whatever this was appeared to use tools, but a sandblaster? The teeth marks suggested to everyone cannibalism or at least consumption of the body. Parts of Clark were missing after all. 

Further investigation indicated Clark had been intentionally stripped by bladed implements before being whatevered to death.  This suggested multiple murderers but how many? And were they more animals or humans? It just didn’t make sense. At least we found out Clark had a beer in him before his demise. Couldn’t imagine going out like that sober.  

Then it hit us. There was, well a scent for lack of a better word. Maybe funk. Yeah, that works. The corpse didn’t smell of decay, it smelled of urine and less savory things.  It was pervasive, annoying and we could smell it through our masks.

Done with the funk, we gathered around Big Bill who had wisely chosen a spot far away from the body. He was examining Clark’s wallet and his phone.  We found three contacts in Clark’s phone: a Kirkman, Lacroix and Jackson.  Kirkman had been called a few days ago for five minutes. Big Bill found it pinged to Germany though the area code was local to New Mexico. The other two numbers, Lacroix and Jackson had not been called. They were just programmed in. Then out came the ice cream card from the wallet like a rabbit out of a hat. We stared at it for a while, the humanity of what happened brought into focus for a moment.

The four of us collapsed into the black van. Windows rolled down; cigarettes were shared with impunity. Except for Big Bill. He said smoking was a nasty habit and grabbed some dip. We were on to the crime scene.

Clark had a house on the outskirts of Albuquerque. Well, that was too nice. It was in the sticks. We identified it by the windows being smashed in and the good old yellow do-not-cross tape, cordoning it off late at night, flapping forlornly in the breeze. As we approached, all four of us looked to each other and nodded. We could smell it.  It was worse inside. A musky piss scent, same as what we encountered on the body in the morgue but fouler.  We put on our masks and went to work.

PFC Clark didn’t go down without a fight. We knew there was an M-16, bagged from evidence, and it appeared that Clark shot out his backyard glass door, aiming at something.  There were footprints or bootprints, lots of them, inside where the body had been found.  Blood was everywhere. Fortunately, it was dried at this point.  It was clear there was a violent struggle with multiple attackers. Maybe five to ten guys?  Sand was also present in the scene, which was weird.  But it wasn’t the strangest thing.

There were bones strewn about in a circle where the corpse had been found.  A bit of forensic know-how revealed they were a mix of canine and human.  They looked for all the world to have been scrimshawed with petroglyphs that made Jim think of the indigenous peoples of the American South West.  At least that sort of made sense, given New Mexico.

We collected DNA evidence from the shattered glass and from shattered dishes in the kitchen. Someone had slammed someone else’s head into the dishes.  A cleaver was found thrown under the refrigerator. This was clearly the or one of the murder weapons used to cut up Clarke’s leg.  That indicated tool use. What type of weird creature had primate-like teeth, attacked to eat you and carried a cleaver?  What exactly were we into? 

Jim also found the source of the stench. There was oily residue all over the kitchen walls.  It was tagged and bagged and sent to our Delta Green supervisors.

Doc Taylor and Big Bill explored the rest of the house while Gabriel and Jim fussed about the kitchen and circle of bones.  PFC Clark was evidently aware of his condition. Doc Taylor opened the bathroom and was assaulted with a near opposite scent from the nasty funk in the kitchen.  Bottles, potions, lotions and soaps were stacked in the bathroom. Big Bill found some paperwork.  PFC Clark had been honorably discharged for “undisclosed medical considerations”.  “He smelled like ass,” Bill translated dryly.  Medical notes indicated Clark had been suffering from this funk since he served overseas. He had been treated for skin lesions and some sort of “bromhidrosis”.  Poor guy couldn’t catch a break. Divorce papers with one Karen Clark were arranged neatly on the coffee table. No reason was cited, but we knew why.

Credit: magnificentophat

Photographs were taken of the bones from every angle. No stone unturned you know. On a closer look one of the pictographs didn’t make sense. It didn’t fit with the Southwest angle. No, it looked like a carving straight out of the Middle East, Jim said. One that was associated with…pre-Islamic mythology. Specifical ghuls.

Bandying about ideas about extreme body odor and things that go bump in the night, the group followed the mess of sandy footprints outside. Then things got serious. There was evidence of a dog. Nice things you know? Dog house, dog bowl with water, squeaky toys. But no big Newfoundland like was written up in the police report. 

Suspicious, we walked the perimeter.  We found the remains of a short fight. God, thankfully it was short. The attackers had killed and eaten the dog, likely before Clark was murdered. It was bizarre though. What kind of attackers lick up the blood? Or was it sucked up like a vampire?

Chupacabra, Gabriel said. No one argued.

Color symbolism in Laird Barron’s stories

Laird Barron is a writer of weird fiction, a supernatural horror author, and in my view, one of the most terrifying modern heirs of H.P. Lovecraft.  Don’t take my word for it though.  Barron has won the 2007 and 2010 Shirley Jackson Award for his collections The Imago Sequence and Other Stories and Occultation and Other Stories.

Interested? Some of his fiction is free online here. I highly recommend “Shiva, Open Your Eye” and “The Forest”. 

A while ago I wrote a forum post about how Larid Barron uses color symbolism in his stories. My thoughts below directly reference Barron’s stories and sometimes include MASSIVE SPOILERS. 

Sigil of the Old Leech by Cody Tilson from The cover and back of The Croning by Laird Barron

Red is most often associated with the totally unnatural. Recall that the pinhole of madness shines with a RED light.

Evidence:

"Jaws of Saturn"

The protagonist observes the Warlock Phil Wary:

"Afternoon bled into red evening and the stars emerged in the silver of sky through the window behind the couch. Franco was in a state of partial delirium when Carol knocked on the door. Mr. Wary smoothed his shaggy hair and quickly donned a smoking jacket. Carol came in, severe and rushed as usual. He took her coat and fixed drinks and Franco slowly strangled, his view curtailed by the angle of the closet door. "

...

"In due course, Mr. Wary shut off the record player and the apartment fell quiet but for Carol's breathing. He said, "Come my dear. Come with me," and took Carol's hand and led her, as if she were sleepwalking, to a blank span of the wall. Mr Wary brushed aside a strip of brittle paper and revealed what Franco took to be a dark water stain, until Carol pressed her eye against it and he realized the stain was actually a peephole. A peephole to where though? That particular wall didn't abut another apartment--it was an outer wall overlooking the rear square and beyond the square, a ravine."

...

" "Your turn," he said upon turning his attention to Franco. He unclasped the belt and led him to the wall, its peeling flap of ancient paper. The peephole oozed a red glow.....

"Vastation"

The peephole

"During my explorations, I discovered a barred door behind a rack of jars and pots. On the other side was a tiny cell full of scrolls. These scrolls were scriven with astronomical diagrams and writing I couldn't decipher. The walls were thick stone and a plug of wood was inset at eye level. I worked the cork free, amazed at the soft, red light that spilled forth. I finally summoned the courage to press my eye against the peephole.

I suspect if a doctor were to give me a CAT scan, to follow the optic nerve deep into its fleshy backstop, he'd see the blood-red peephole imprinted in my cerebral cortex, and through the hole, Darkness, the quaking mass at the center of everything where a sonorous wheedling choir of strings and lutes, flutes and cymbals crashes and shrieks and echoes from the abyss, the foot of the throne of an idiot god."

Red light here is directly referencing Azathoth.

"Hallucigenia"

Before the main character encounters the cursed barn with the unnatural therein, there is red and yellow imagery.

"The crumbling grade almost tripped him. At the bottom, remnants of a fence--rotted posts, snares of wire. Barbs dug a red zigzag in his calf. He cursed, lumbered into the grass. It rose coarse and brown, slapped his legs and buttocks. A dry breeze awoke and the yellow dandelion blooms swayed toward him"

"The Broadsword"

After the protagonists harrowing ordeal with the Children there is this passage:

“It is always hot as hell down here,” Hopkins the custodian said. He perched on a tall box, his grimy coveralls and grimy face lighted by the red glow that flared from the furnace window. “There’s a metaphor for ya. Me stoking the boiler in Hell.”

...

"“ Finish it off. I’ve got three more hid in my crib, yonder.” He gestured into the gloom. “Mr. 119, isn’t it? Yeah, Mr. 119. You been to hell, now ain’t you? You’re hurtin’ for certain.” Pershing drank, choking as the liquor burned away the rust and foulness. He gasped and managed to ask, “What day is it?” Hopkins held his arm near the furnace grate and checked his watch. “Thursday, 2: 15 p.m., and all is well. Not really, but nobody knows the trouble we see, do they?” Thursday afternoon? He’d been with them for seventy-two hours, give or take. Had anyone noticed? He dropped the bottle and it clinked and rolled away. He gained his feet and followed the sooty wall toward the stairs. Behind him, Hopkins started singing “Black Hole Sun.” "

Hopkins appears to stand at the exit between the unnatural Children's world and the real world of the Broadsword hotel. Reverse psychopomp if you will.

"Six, Six, Six"

At the end where the main character is exposed to the unnatural there is the following line

"The family patriarch stood, dressed in a black robe with the cowl thrown back. He was flushed and beaming with paternal joy. His left hand rested upon his son’s head. Her husband made a labored sawing motion and the feet twitched and danced, slapping against the floorboards. The room blurred in and out of focus and began to slide toward the crimson edge of her vision. She made a small sound and the trio glanced toward the stairs. They seemed surprised to see her."

Red and black are often associated with each other, and with the unnatural in Barron's stories.

Evidence:

"The Broadsword"

"He imagined lost caverns and inverted forests of roosting bats, a primordial river that tumbled through midnight grottos until it plunged so deep the stygian black acquired a red nimbus, a vast throbbing heart of brimstone and magma. Beyond the falls, abyssal winds howled and shrieked and called his name."

"Six, Six, Six"

Please see the above Six Six Six quote and note that "black robe" and "flushed" are in adjacent sentences.

"Figures, distorted by the shuddering frames, skulked between the boles of the trees, capered as the light downshifted to red, then black, and when the panel brightened, beneath a conical hat a white, lunatic face with strips of flesh peeled to chipped bone leered at her, twisting a stork neck to get a better view. She screamed even as the ghoulish visage rippled and morphed into a hillock amidst a sea of long grass beneath a too-full moon. More figures loped and gamboled toward the foreground; tall, yet stooped, garbed in cowls and robes, sinewy arms raised in an apish manner."

"The Forest"

"He inhaled to scream and jerked awake, twisted in the sheets and sweating. Red light poured through the thin curtains. Nadine sat in the shadows (ie color black) at the foot of his bed. Her hair was loose and her skin reflected the ruddy light. He thought of the goddess Kali shrunk to mortal dimensions."

"Vastation"

Before murdering the potter and encountering the peephole

"The sun lowered and flatted into a bloody line, a scored vein delineating the vast black shell of the land. When the potter squatted to demonstrate an intricacy of a mechanism of his spinning wheel I raised a short, stout plank and swung it edgewise across the base of his skull"

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Anyway, Barron uses a lot of consistent color imagery in all three collections (The Imago Sequence & Other Stories, Occultation, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All) to foreshadow the pretense of the unnatural.

I'm not going to cite examples here, but there is similar evidence that the colors blue and green represent normalcy, while the colors yellow and orange represent a warning transitional location or state between reality and the unnatural.

So does Barron simply follow the ROYGBIV spectrum? I don't think so. Violet is more than once associated with "unnatural" passages but I'm not sure exactly what the symbolism is or if there is any.

Also in the Nanashi Novella, the color symbolism other than his consistent use of red/black as unnatural is different than in previous work. I have yet to figure that out.