March 26, 2014

From “Douche Noir” by Orion H. Duce

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The city is more full of hard cases than a whiskey warehouse. But that sign on my door says walk-ins are welcome, even if each new client at my hole-in-the-wall detective agency chips away a little of my faith in humanity like a sculptor at marble. But when I saw that client there–duck’s ass haircut, popped collar, pink polo shirt, the works–I knew I was in for another deep dive into the underbelly of a city that never sleeps.

The name’s Chad Schmidt, and I’m a private eye for douches.

The client approached my desk, the sharp shadows from my blinds cutting into his tanned skin. “Check it. Rush is in two weeks, brah, and someone took all our Jaeger.”

I leaned back in my chair, the springs squealing like a mob snitch under the hot lamps. “You messin’ with me? All of your bros’ Jaeger is missing?”

“Jeeah, brah. We went out for tacos, and all 500 bottles were gone! So my bros and I were like ‘sick’ and I was all ‘dude.'” It was a sad story with a sad end. This city filled libraries with stories like that, libraries that left them so moulder on sad, forgotten shelves caked with sad forgotten dust.

“Dude, chill out,” I said. I placed one hand on the revolver taped under my desk. A desperate man with a desperate story had a way of turning on you like a wounded bobcat, after all. And it was clear to anyone who saw him that this man was hurting inside. “What’s it got to do with this guy right here?”

“We, like, heard about the time you totally found Phi Qoppa Beta’s missing kegs.”

“Totally, brah. No one messes with the Phi Qops and their sick keggers.” I massaged my temples. That had been a hard case. A lot of good booze had been lost, and the newest pledges had even wound up stone cold sober. That’s the part about being a douchebag detective that they don’t put in the books, the cases that keep you waking up at night in a cold sweat.

“So you’re all about finding my bros’ Jaeger?” There was hope in the client’s tone. Hope is a dangerous thing in this town, a town that enjoys making hope die a slow, screaming death or running it out on a rail.

“Lay it down for me, brah.”

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March 25, 2014

From “The Sonnet Bender” by Reno Bendtsen

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They tacked Professor Hudson by following his trail of destruction. Scattered and tattered papers at a poetry slam in Moose’s Bar. A trail of detritus leading from open mic night at Shooley’s Pub through the library and out the emergency exit. When the great author and sometime lecturer was finally found, he was passed out half-naked on a suburban lawn that wasn’t even close to his own.

Incholate, Hudson would only groan at them when prodded, spurting gibberish in a definite a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g rhyme pattern.

“Come on, professor,” said Lucy, “we have to get you home.”

“Love is too young to know what conscience is/Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?” Hudson groaned convulsively. He rolled over and lay face-down in a pool of composition textbook pages.

“Oh man, oh man!” cried Adam, who was not at all used to Hudson’s escapades. “This is bad. What’s wrong with him?”

“Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss/Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove.” Hudson spat out the words as if they were choice-cut chewing tobacco.

“Isn’t it obvious?” said Lucy, a veteran of hauling Hudson hither and yon in the dead of night. “He went on another sonnet bender. He’s been reading and writing them all night, and his brain sonnet level is probably way north of .08.”

“For, thou betraying me, I do betray/My nobler part to my gross body’s treason,” said the professor with a sound halfway between a sneeze and vomiting.

“What are we gonna do?” Adam was on the verge of panic.

“Don’t worry. We just need to get the poetry content of his brain down a little bit so we can walk him home,” said Lucy. “Did you bring that copy of Emery’s Twilight of the Vampires like I asked?”

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March 22, 2014

From “Ruins & Rogues: Librarian Core Class Statistics” by Altos Wexan

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Sourced from the Ruins & Rogues Adventurer’s Guidebook, 5th Edition

Class Description: Works of obscure scholars publishing in dead tongues centuries ago, tales so popular they are stolen over and over again by jealous cheapskates, statistics of obscure government agencies beyond mortal control…these arcane secrets and many more are a siren song to people with little ambition, an obsessive-compulsive’s eye for detail, and an intellect that absorbs trivia like an organic sponge. This is the path trod by Librarians. These canny scholars gather, catalog, and occasionally deign to answer questions regarding arcane information. While they are generally incapable of acting on the information so gathered to work wonders like a Wizard or touch the immortal divine like a Cleric, the Librarian is not to be underestimated. Or so they say. Some Librarians specialize in particular areas, devoting decades to schools of bibliomancy like cataloging, circulation, or reference, others dabble in all of the above with knitting and felinomancy to boot. Whatever their particular knack, Librarians are a force to be reckoned with whenever the campaign includes a library, archive, bookstore, or similar agglutination of books and information.

Role: Librarians are masters (and mistresses) of lore and learning, capable of finding books and information to at least sort of meet every conceivable need. While their offensive, defensive, magic, and healing skills are generally nil, a skillfully employed librarian can often mean the difference between spending three hours or seven lifetimes in the Great World Library dungeon.

NOTE: Unlike the previous editions, the 5th edition of Ruins & Rogues now classifies Archivists as a separate class rather than a subclass as in the 3rd edition or a prestige class as in the 4th edition. No Librarian skills can be learned by Archivists or vice-versa without dual- or multi-classing. For more information on the more focused, more intuitive, but less open and share-y Archivist class, please see pg. 488.

Alignment: Generally Lawful Liberal, Chaotic Liberal, or Neutral Liberal. Lawful Conservative, Chaotic Conservative, and Neutral Conservative Librarians suffer -1 to all rolls and saving throws versus Peer Pressure, Unspoken Assumptions, and Ivory Tower.

Hit Die: 1d4 -1

Starting Wealth: 1d4 x -100 gold pieces (average -250 gold pieces) to represent crippling student loans and low pay in general.

Starting Equipment: Each Librarian character begins play with an outfit worth 10 gold pieces, a library worth 100 gold pieces, and a cat worth -100 gold pieces (to cover the cost of vaccinations, spaying/neutering, and damage to real property). A Librarian character may forego the cat to increase the value of their starting library to 200 gold pieces but will suffer a -1 penalty on all bibliomancy rolls against other librarians.

Primary Class Statistics: Intelligence (INT), Obsession (OBS)

Secondary Class Statistics: Dexterity (DEX), Cats (CATS)

Class Skills: A Librarian’s class skills are Appraise (INT), Bibliomancy (see below), Cataloging (OBS), Circulation (DEX), Evaluate (INT), Felinomancy (CATS), Knowledge (INT), Linguistics (INT), Research (OBS), and Repair Book (OBS).

NOTE: A Librarian character’s bibliomancy skill is equal to: (size of their library)/100 + Intelligence

Skill Ranks/Level: 1 + INT modifier + OBS modifier

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March 20, 2014

From “The Unholy Rollers” by Hollner Southerly

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“Are…are you sure it’s okay to play here?” Jared Bowen, one of the usual players in Blaine Saunders’ Ruins and Rogues roleplaying group, shifted nervously in his chair. They were set up in the Frontier Books store that had once dominated downtown Hopewell, MI, surrounded by empty shelves and torn-up displays and walled off from the remaining functional parts of the store by still more empty shelves and torn-up displays.

“This place is going out of business in a month,” said Blaine irritably. “The fixtures are for sale. I bought this table and chairs that used to be in the Stubb’s coffee upstairs for fifty bucks, and until I con borrow my cousin Jimmy’s truck it stays here. Also, I’m assistant manager and about to lose my job after firing everyone who worked under me.” He tapped his soon-to-be-turned-in maroon vest for added effect.

“But still…I dunno…” squirmed Jared.

“Okay, look. There’s a shelf of gaming books by the exit. The Ruins and Rogues Adventurer’s Guidebook, the Creature Compendium, even the Interverse Guide, all 5th edition, all 40% off. Please buy one to support your local failing Frontier Books location. There, I even made a sales pitch. Are we cool now?”

“We’re cool,” said Neal Tate, Blaine’s other Ruins & Rogues veteran. “But just so you know, the 5th edition is the Antichrist. 2nd edition for life.”

“Of course.” Blaine rolled his eyes. Before he could continue setting up the gameboard and Adventure Master screen, he squawked at the sight of Neal placing a small–and bright international orange–bag of dice on the ex-Stubb’s table. “Whoa-whoa-whoa! What are you bringing out the Unholy Rollers for?”

Neal shrugged and dumped out the dice onto the table. “It’s supposed to be a fun game, right?”

The Unholy Rollers were dice that had become indisputably jinxed, a fact which all the players in Blaine’s group believed unquestionably. The Unholy Rollers would unerringly roll a low number when a high one was called for, or a low number when a high one was ideal–unless you anticipated the jinx, in which case it would refuse to work. Worst of all, the effect was contagious. There had been only one Unholy Roller to begin with, a bone-white d20 that had been given out as a tchotchke at a long-ago WyvernCon, but every dice it had come into contact with had acquired the curse. It was a cherished in-joke and a source of much humor among the players.

“Listen, Neal,” said Blaine. “I was able to get Rosetta McFadden to join us as our noob this campaign, okay? I have been working on turning her mild interest in boardgames into actually showing up for months, literally months. I held the game here specifically so she wouldn’t see my apartment–or, gods forbid, my parents’ place, which is where I’m headed when I get laid off and my rent check bounces. You’re not going to jinx me, or her, with the Unholy Rollers. Not this time.”

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March 18, 2014

From “Xenofever Strikes!” by Feris Knox Everest

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“Don’t come near me,” sniffed Celeste. “I’ve got the Xenofever.”

“I’ve heard of that on TV, I think,” said Akeisha. “Is it really as bad as they say it is?”

Celeste turned her head and sneezed violently. The mucus sizzled and smoked where it hit the cinderblock wall, burning a pitted opening through three inches of solid concrete as the molecular acid therein did its work.

“You tell me,” she said, reaching for a denatured asbestos tissue.

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March 9, 2014

From “A Duesy of an Ending” by Gum Tullis Appleby

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Art Huck–and, for that matter, his moll June, 24 years his junior–always seemed a little schizoid, arguing with themselves about decisions with any sort of ramifications. That was in full swing right now, with Art riposting with himself while riding bitch on Captain Ramirez’s motorcycle about the merits of opening fire on the fleeing forms of Rosie the robot hooker and her captive paramour Rich “The Bitch” Bichovic (LAPD badge number 1138) over one shoulder and Lawrence Wong, a Buddhist clergyman, over her other.

“Shoot her in the head, I invented her and it’ll slow her down! No, no. Just wing the Bitch and it’ll slow her down even better. No, we don’t want to hit him. But we don’t want to hit her either. Damn!”

Ramirez, wondering how the meaty slab of a passenger–and a known pimp at that–had goaded him into a ride-along in the sidecar of his ’28 Indian Chief cycle, snapped back: “I’m not shooting at anything! Say your stop word like you promised.”

As any good part-time mad scientist with a gynoid automaton should, Art had programmed Rosie’s difference engine to stop at the utterance of a specific word. But Art was also determined to see Rosie undamaged and her passenger–and his attempted murderer–laid out on a slab. He fumbled in his vest pocket for the .32 Iver Johnson break-action revolver, loaded with armor-piercing slugs, that he always kept on hand.

For her part, when Rosie had abandoned the bus to Reno after the police had blown out its tire on the side of the road, she’d had nothing on her mind but matrimony with a side of escape. With her beau in one hand and a priest in the other, all she needed was the rest of the wedding party. It was, after all, her day. But when she saw a roadside Woolworth’s, though, Rosie the Riveting made a sudden, and sharp, turn. Woolworth’s had everything, after all, including everything you needed for an impromptu wedding.

Captain Ramirez, shaken by the report of a pistol right next to his good ear, shouted at the small-time pimp and part-time mad scientist riding bitch in his sidecar to drop his weapon. Art argued with himself about it, but was largely drowned out by the roar of a Dusenberg V12 alongside–his wife, June Huck, behind the wheel. She’d caught up with her husband by stealing his car, and was shouting something about a safety deposit box. The bitch had been trying to get into it, to make off with Art’s nest egg, since he’d met her.

That was enough for him. He shouted out the safe word.

Rosie’s mainspring unwound, and her storage compartment–with a door located about where you would expect on a hooker automaton–sprang open. Every little thing Art had ever used her to hide, from weapons to diamonds to oil, splurted out. All at once.

The massive pile-up accident that followed went pretty much like one would expect.

Inspired by Fiasco by Bully Pulpit Games, specifically the Los Angeles 1936 playset.

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March 8, 2014

From “Rise of Mecha-Bridezilla” by Gum Tullis Appleby

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Officer Richard Bichovic, LAPD badge number 1138–“Rich the Bitch” behind his back, or to his face if you didn’t mind a knuckle sandwich with a pound cake for dessert–turned the tumblers on the lock to his cheap apartment. The Bryson Towers apartments, once the Mayfair Hotel, had weathered the depression about as well as Rich himself had. The interior was a dark snarl of empty liquor bottles, .38 special shells both live and spent, unspeakable stains, and private armies of cockroaches marching in lockstep as they fought fierce turf wars.

Shaking down Art Huck, that big Stonehenge of a part-time mad scientist turned full-time pimp for robot girls of his own invention, had once been Rich’s best source of quarters to stick into robo-girls (or to stash in the rainy-day fund to buy the occasional soft silk ladies’ undergarments in size 42). Now that mook had the gall to turn the tables and blackmail Rich with a pair of a pair of Lovelace-brand lacy lavender ladies’ lingerie panties and a newsreel of them in action. His wife, June Huck, had been far too uninterested in killing her husband given their 23-year age difference and her repeated insistence that the relationship had been all about Art’s key to a safe deposit box at the Commonwealth Savings & Loan.

But when the streetlamp light from outside illuminated the inside of Rich’s apartment, sending all manner of fellow vermin scrambling for somewhere dark and moist, Rich realized that his earlier thought at Florian’s Bar–that things couldn’t get much worse–had been perhaps the understatement of the year. Or at least tied with Captain Ramirez of the 77th Precinct saying that Jesse Owens had done “okay” in the Olympics.

Rosie Nuts ‘n’ Bolts–Rosie the Riveting, Art Huck’s earliest robot gal, still his number one earner, a robo-prostitute with a heart of gold (Rich knew, he’d seen it, he knew where the hatch was)–was sitting on the moldy, sheetless Murphy bed. She was wearing a wedding dress, holding a diamond ring big enough for King Edward VIII to set in a crown for his mistress.

“I-LOVE-YOU-RICH,” she said. “I-LEFT-FATHER. WE-ARE-GETTING-MARRIED.”

“…wha?” Rich said.

“THIS-IS-MY-DAY,” Rosie said, her vacuum tube eyes flickering brightly and sparks shooting from her mouth. “WE-ARE-GETTING-MARRIED. I-LIKE-IT-SO-I-AM-GOING-TO-PUT-A-RING-ON-IT. FATHER-O’HOULIHAN-WILL-MEET-US-IN-RENO.”

“L-look, babydoll, this is all a little sudden,” Rich slurred, through half a bottle of Olde Fortran Malt Whiskey from Florian’s private reserve. “Don’t you think that you could get those panties from your ‘dad’ for me? Burn that film? What good’ll it do it get married if my reputation’s in tatters?”

“THIS-IS-MY-DAY,” repeated Rosie. Rising, she seized Rich’s tottering form with a whirring of flywheels and servos, thrust the ring onto his right index finger (spraining it and drawing blood). Against his half-hearted protests, she carried him to the bus stop.

“WE-ARE-GETTING-MARRIED,” she repeated to the bust driver on the Reno Express, departing hourly from the Del Mar racetrack. “THIS-IS-MY-DAY. TAKE-US-TO-RENO.”

The bus driver, uneasily eyeing the automata carrying a semi-conscious uniformed LAPD officer, demurred. In addition to worries about the law, he was a Traditionalist Catholic who strongly objected to Pop Pius XI’s recent recognition of robosexual marriage, and explained his concerns to Rosie as simply and straightforwardly as he could.

In response, the mecha-bridezilla flung him bodily through the window. Depositing Rich in an empty seat, she slammed the accelerator and headed for Reno with twenty terrified nuns, a tour group from Chinatown, and a typewriter salesman from Sacramento.

Inspired by Fiasco by Bully Pulpit Games, specifically the Los Angeles 1936 playset.

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March 7, 2014

From “Art Huck’s Patented Automaton Gals” by Gum Tullis Appleby

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Arthur “Art” Huck had bigger dreams for the small-time auto garage and filling station he’d inherited. The small-time crook and part-time mad scientist had transformed the oily floors and smoky, squealing lifts into a smouldering den of sex wreathed in cigarette and exhaust smoke. LA was full of pimps in ’36, preying on girls that came to the big city with stars in their eyes, but people tended to notice when they turned up with a shiner or rigor mortis. Art Huck’s girls, though, had no such problems.

All they needed was an oil change every six months or 3000 miles. Whichever came first.

The first client into Art’s garage bordello, illuminated only by the late-afternoon sunshine streaming through grimy windows, was Officer Richard Bichovic, LAPD badge number 1138. He might have been handsome had he not been so irredeemably greasy, but luckily Art’s robot gals liked ’em greasy. “Rich the Bitch,” as he was known behind his back, had a fixation with Art’s number one bot, Rosie, that was matched only with his fixation for money and self-affected swagger. Rich’d been hustling Art and his young wife for protection money for years, ever since being put on the beat.

All that was about to change, though.

“Hey, Art,” Rich said. “What are you doing, standing in my way like a rock out of Stonehenge? You know how much I love shaking you down for quarters to put in Rosie’s slot, but that cycle of life doesn’t work unless I get in there to meet her.”

Art, as much a thick cut of beef at 42 as he’d been in his prime, was unmoved. “Look, Bitch-ovic. You and me, we got business.”

“It’s pronounced Beak-o-vick,” Officer Bichovic snarled. “In the old country it meant ‘fierce warrior,’ so show a little respect.”

“Well, it don’t mean that here,” Art said. He shifted his oily cigar in his mouth. “Bitch,” he added, with a deliberate cloud of smoke.

“You just keep at it, then,” said Rich, shaking with barely concealed fury. “I’ll slap another percent onto your ‘rent’ foe every time you say it. Now beat it. I got a hankering to see Rosie again, put some more of your quarters in her slot.”

Ah, Rosie. Rosie the riveting. Art’s first robot creation, with a copper bodice molded onto her like the hood ornament of a Rolls-Royce Phantom III. She was a robot with a heart of gold, Rich knew. He’d seen it. He knew where the hatch was.

“I got another thought for you,” said Art. “You’re not gonna take any more of my quarters from now on…Bitch.”

“Beak-o-vick!” Rich snapped.

“You’re gonna put your own quarters in Rosie’s meter from now on, or you’re going to sit at home with your new gal Hoover. Unless, of course, you want the boys at the precinct to see this.” Art held up a pair of lacy lavender ladies’ lingerie, Lovelace-brand panties, up with one finger.

Lacy lavender ladies’ lingerie, Lovelace-brand panties with a 42-inch waist, that was.

“Those could be anyone’s drawers,” Rich said, trying his best to hide the nervousness in his voice.

“Rosie’s got a photographic memory,” Art said through a cloud of fresh sun-dappled cigar smoke. “Want to take my word for it, or would you like to see the newsreel?”

Inspired by Fiasco by Bully Pulpit Games, specifically the Los Angeles 1936 playset.

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March 3, 2014

From “Bait and Switch” by Dawn Achtbitsi

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“We’ve retitled your course this semester, Reginald,” said the dean. “Take a look.”

Reginald took a copy of the catalog and blanched. “This is too much, Fred,” he said. “It really is. Do we really want to reduce British literature to something so glib?”

“You’ve mentioned it in class before,” said the dean, bristling. “I’ve read the evaluations.”

“Only to keep the kids from sleeping,” Reginald continued. “Only as a low-rent, bargain-basement entry in the the greater world of literature. They have been producing fine literary works in Britain since the reign of Claudius, Fred. That canon has Beowulf and Chaucer and Spenser and Milton.”

“Well, who’s to say this won’t be in the canon?” the dean asked.

“It’s a bit early for that, wouldn’t you say?” snapped Reginald. “There were books considered absolutely essential a hundred years ago that no one reads now. I’m sure a deacon at Oxford would have thought teaching The Water-Babies was a good idea in 1914, but who remembers that soggy moralizing tripe now, popular as it was?”

“Well, when people forget about this, we can change the name of the course back,” the dean said icily. “Until then, in this climate of cuts for arts and humanities, hitching your carriage to something popular is the only way to keep teaching this course. Unless you’d like to take 5 sections of English 101, of course.”

“Welcome to ENGL 433: Harry Potter and Friends,” Richardson grumbled to his class six weeks later. “In this course we will look at British literature through the lends of boy wizards, and read texts that J. K. Rowling may have been influenced by, referred to, owned, or seen on a bookstore shelf at one time or another.”

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February 23, 2014

From “A Series of Surreal Fungi” by Levi Paris Schroeder

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The Thinking Cap
Cerebruortuum segniores

This delectable and brightly-colored fruiting body has the curious effect of speeding up cognition and allowing great intuitive leaps in a relatively short span of time, at the cost of permanent synaptic damage and eventual brain death. An antidote was first synthesized by Reswob in 1887 and is widely available; some graduate students have been known to abuse the cap along with the antidote to benefit from these effects, which is–needless to say–strongly contraindicated.

“The use of cerebruortuum segniores in the Chinese Imperial Examinations was punishable by death, but they were nevertheless smuggled in with astounding ingenuity. Naturally, the long term effect of brain death meant that cheating one’s way into a good score was an exercise in futility, but the false belief that the effect could be counteracted through acupuncture and the consumption of baiji ovaries meant that every year dozens of students had to be carried out of their cells in comas to expire peacefully in what Ching Dynasty chroniclers called the 菜園–the vegetable garden.” – Dr. Phineas Phable

The Bamf Puff
Nocterepunt xavier

The Bamf puff gets its name from onomatopoeia: it causes imbibers of the immature puffballs, or those exposed to newly-released spores to be teleported a short distance away, leading to a distinctive sound as air rushes to fill in the void. It is a defense mechanism designed to disorient predators who might otherwise feast on the fungi’s succulent flesh, which is highly regarded as a delicacy by humans and animals alike. Intact puffballs are extremely difficult to harvest without rupturing but were highly valued as quick getaway tools by highwaymen and assassins.

“The difficulty with the buff’s teleportation effect is its randomness–it tends to be in the same horizontal plane as the puff, but not always. Stories of hapless mushroom hunters and would-be assassins trapped in trees, buried underground, or even fifty feet in the air are not uncommon. No one is quite sure what happens to the material displaced by the appearing victim, but it is always gone for good–an effect that people have occasionally tried to harness for waste disposal, the keeping of secrets, and even murder. They are rarely successful, save by the rarest kind of luck.” – Dr. Phineas Phable

The Princess Toadstool
Fortunadcaelum relinquere

A distant relative of the famous Cordyceps genus of behavior-modifying ascomycete fungi, princess toadstools also alter behavior through fungal infection, albeit in a much more regimented way. Princess toadstools are clonal, with a large number of fruiting bodies connected to a single, subterranean, fungus. Consumption of one of the fruiting bodies leads animals–or humans–back to the initial site, where they are compelled to tend to the larger fungus by bringing it food, irrigating it, and creating what Bharadwaja called “princess gardens” in his Ayurveda. An antidote is available, though mild cases will often clear up on their own.

“In the hollows of the Himalayan foothills near the norther border of Kashmir, there is a particularly large and ancient princess toadstool that is surrounded by the skeletons of laborers and charcoal-makers it has ensnared over the years. It is at the center of a particularly large and lush princess garden, one lined with stones and fed by an aqueduct from a glacial spring. No one is sure how old they are, for none dare approach it.” – Dr. Phineas Phable

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