Steve

Merry Christmas, fellow Heroes!

The crew of the PC’s ship is remarkably diverse. At a rough count…
 
Seven male humans (two are PCs)
Three female humans (NPCs)
One male human with cybernetics (PC)
One male flesh-covered android (NPC)
One female flesh-covered android (NPC)
One uplifted gorilla (NPC)
One male Vargr (NPC)
One female Aslan (NPC)
Five robots of varying levels of sentience
 
They’ve now managed to conquer an all Aslan-crewed pirate ship with around ten female Aslan techs and a few surviving males.
 
Forging this motley band of pirates into a unified fighting force will take every ounce of Captain Nemos’ leadership ability and a considerable amount of luck.

Yes, there should be few difficulties. Raiding the treasure ship will be a piece of cake.

The crew of the PC’s ship is remarkably diverse. At a rough count…
 
Seven male humans (two are PCs)
Three female humans (NPCs)
One male human with cybernetics (PC)
One male flesh-covered android (NPC)
One female flesh-covered android (NPC)
One uplifted gorilla (NPC)
One male Vargr (NPC)
One female Aslan (NPC)
Five robots of varying levels of sentience
 
They’ve now managed to conquer an all Aslan-crewed pirate ship with around ten female Aslan techs and a few surviving males.
 
Forging this motley band of pirates into a unified fighting force will take every ounce of Captain Nemos’ leadership ability and a considerable amount of luck.

Yes, there should be few difficulties. Raiding the treasure ship will be a piece of cake.

Player decisions are the bane of every GM everywhere. Having just given us a mission in Aslan space, we wiley PCs decided to forego adventures in Aslan territory and instead further plunder the Trojan Reach for crew, equipment, and targets of opportunity. Granted, as we understood it our Aslan mission is a fetch quest where we bring the stuff to the place. If the place already had the stuff within easy reach, they wouldn't need expendable outside contractors such as ourselves. We were hoping to plunder more from our favorite megacorp PRQ (Pretty Rotten Quality?), when one of the PCs spotted the name Techworld on the system map. His eyes lit up like a kid at a candy store, and it didn't take much to convince the rest of the crew that we needed a world's worth of tech.
 
Kudos to @Steve for improvising our visit to left field so that Popeye could continue his quest to acquire more robotic or replicant minions followers and ship's crew. Fortunately he'd read ahead and knew the basics of the Hilfer system. We also gave him some extra time by having a side discussion about our ship's mixed stances on slavery and slavers. We are one robot revolution away from "ALL FLESH MUST DIE!" and yet Captain Nemos is vehemently anti-slavery. I'm sure this is fine, and nothing bad will happen.
 
This session had a lot of story told by the dice. For example:
A GM roll produced an enemy ace fighter pilot. GM combat rolls for Hroal Irontooth were consistently deadly (both deadly hit locations and high damage rolls) PC luck roles where we earned 5 counts of luck on 6 dice. PC critical success on a constitution roll. We also managed to use our entire supply of HAP. It turns out that deadly combat is deadly. All in all a great session with lots of complications and avenues for further development. I'm sure inheriting a pirate crew of Aslan will be fine. I'm sure the obstacles between us and the Treasure ship are few and manageable.
 

Another way to classify the CV characters is by their powers. This sometimes gets *more* subjective than origin types, because there are judgment calls about the boundaries of power types and whether a given power is really important to a character. But again, some trends might become visible.
 
* MENTALISTS are the most objectively definable, because Mental Powers are a distinct and definite set. You have them or you don’t. But I also include a few Powers such as Images, if the utility for the character is to modify another character’s actions through deceit.
 
* BRICKS, at least, are straightforward. Mostly. The question is how much Strength a character needs to be classified as a brick. I decided to make 40 STR the cutoff. Many characters have 30 STR just because it’s really useful to have at least 30 STR (especially in past editions with Figured Characteristics). But in a Superheroic game, a 6d6 punch is not a meaningful attack. So I insist on a minimum of 40.
 
* ENERGY PROJECTORS are blurrier, though. Anyone who principally attacks at range with non-Mental Powers is probably an Energy Projector. But if a character emphasizes ranged Drains, Entangles, Transforms, Change Environment, and other attacks that are more, hm, “battlefield control” than causing direct harm, I might file them under “Other” instead of (or in addition to) Energy Projector. But I repeat, this is *very* subjective.
 
* MARTIAL ARTISTS also get blurry around the edges. It’s for more than characters who use the Martial Arts mechanic: I also include many characters who emphasize nonranged attacks whose damage is not primarily due to Strength, such as a person with a shock-stick or a blade. But some unranged attacks are strange enough that I call these “Other” as well, such as characters with Damage Shield or stunning Phase Touches. I can’t pretend that these allocations are all that objective, either.
 
* OTHER accounts for Powers that push the boundaries of the big four categories further than I like, or characters that emphasize Powers such as movement or Shape Shift that aren’t directly used to cause harm. For instance, Vixen’s chief power is her intangibility: She has Martial Arts, but her damage classes are too low for this to be a major part of the character.
 
* COMPLEX characters fit in three or more categories. For instance, Tartarus is principally a brick but he also has Hellfire Blasts and some Mental Powers. Whenever possible, though, I try to pare characters down to their top two classes.
 
A WORD ABOUT POWER POOLS: I generally ignore them in classifying characters, because in most cases they would automatically make characters Complex. I stick to the Powers listed on the character sheet as always usable. So, Dr. Destroyer gets classified as a Brick and Enerrgy Projector — not because he couldn’t produce Mental Powers or other stuff from his whacking great VPP, but he won’t always do so. Or Dr Yin Wu gets filed under Martial Artist (his principle attack mode) and Other (Summoning his army of monsters), even though the sample Powers for his VPP include ranged attacks that could make him an Energy Projector.
 
The Power Class breakdown works out like this:
 
Brick: 76 characters; 26%
Energy Projector: 139 characters; 48%
Martial Artist: 53 characters; 18%
Mentalist: 45 characters; 15%
Other: 39 characters; 13% (but many of these could arguably be filed as Energy Projectors or Martial Artists)
Complex: 30 characters; 10%
 
Nothing here seems noteworthy. The analysis gets more interesting, IMO, when you *intersect* the two classifying methods to find, say, the Power breakdown for Supernatural Beings or the Origin breakdown for bricks. Forthcoming.
 
Dean Shomshak

SUPERNATURAL BEINGS:
 
Brick: 9 characters; 30%
Energy Projector: 10 characters; 33%
Martial Artist: 2 characters; 7%
Mentalist: 6 characters; 20%
Other: 6 characters; 20%
Complex: 9 characters; 30%
 
Male: 23 characters; 77%
Female: 7 characters; 23%
Other: —
 
TOTAL: 30 characters
 
The first thing I notice is the prevalence of complex characters. This is partly because supernatural creatures can have lots of different powers (and Powers), and partly because supernaturals are heavily represented among Master Villains who tend not to be one-trick ponies. But some of them could be pruned back to two power classes if you decide that some of their Powers shouldn’t count as major aspects. 
 
For instance, Takofanes is mostly a ranged combatant, with his undead horde Summoning as a major Other power, but he has a pretty big Mental Blast, Undead Command, and his Power of Command, which I think qualify him as a mentalist. But your mileage may vary. Arguments can also be made regarding Skarn and Tyrannon. OTOH I call Tezcatlipoca a Brick/Other (for his Drains and his battlefield control Darkness), but he I wouldn’t argue if you called him Complex for having a few mental powers and his Soul Strike (which could qualify as a Martial Artist Power).
 
I've waffled over other characters, too.
 
Deadman Walkin’ and Samhain are the only characters I classed as martial artists: DW for his knife use (but not quite being a brick), Sammy for his weird NND antlers. If someone wants to create a supernatural villain with an unusual feel, a non-brick unranged combatant might be a good place to start.
 
Dean Shomshak

MUTANTS/MUTATES:
 
Brick: 12 characters; 18%
Energy Projector: 23 characters; 35%
Martial Artist: 13 characters; 20%
Mentalist: 18 characters; 28%
Other: 7 characters; 11%
Complex: 2 characters; 3%
 
Male: 44 characters; 68%
Female: 21 characters; 31%
Other: 1 character; 2%
 
TOTAL: 65 characters
 
Masquerade is the one nonbinary character.
 
Nothing here surprised me. It seems esthetically right to me (as well as consistent with Marvel mutant portrayals) that mutants should have focused powersets: the only two complex characters are the Rogue expy Eclipse and the mutate Thorn ("plant powers" can cover a lot). Maybe I expected more bricks, but I wouldn't call the proportion strangely low. Mutant mentalists have long been a thing in SF, so the relatively high proportion seems apt. It would probably be even higher if more members of PSI had made the cut to CV2.
 
Dean Shomshak

A socially-conscious supervillain unleashes an airborne, easily transmissible, delayed effect virus that rewrites the chromosomes of all humans into a single racial type, effectively homogenizing all of mankind.

The problem would be with the Adder-based (or optionally Adder-based) Skills, including those that changed from that structure in 6E.

I've got an update posted which should allow for Custom Adders to be applied to Adder-based Skills without interrupting the cost calculation shenanigans that need to occur on those abilities.

As a player, I like HAP when the dice don't agree with a narrative element I've almost achieved. I resist the temptation to negate all my failed rolls. Good stories are not made by an endless succession of successes. Some of the best stories are in fact stories of overcoming setback or failure. In my opinion, HAP work well as a finishing move to complete a trend. That is you're most of the way there, but the dice generate a random number at odds with the trend. For example, you've almost convinced an NPC to accept your harebrained scheme or the fight is almost over. Ideally I would only use my HAP to complete a scene.
 
Sometimes the trend is going against me, and I just can't roll a success. While I'm tempted to use HAP to buy myself out of trouble, I do my best not to negate failure. Partly this is a metagame decision to trust my GM with the consequences of my failure. Most genres allow you to come back from failures. Even dying can sometimes be nothing but a setback. In this game, I trust that most non-combat failures will not be lethal. Not everyone at our table shares my opinion. Just last session one of our players used almost all of his HAP to overcome a string of failures during a social interaction with an NPC. Personally, I thought failure would have been the more interesting result, but he had the HAP to spend and used them to resist an entanglement.
 
One game mechanic I like is giving everyone a stack of HAP at the beginning of the game. We can in theory earn more during play, but we rarely do because we rarely run out of HAP. This is a good mechanic for tables where not everyone has real life social skills or likes power gaming by earning HAP. Those who prefer roll-play to roleplay don't have to worry about gaining HAP through their amateur acting abilities. How many HAP is a good amount will vary from table to table. I would fine tune it to your PCs playstyle.

I use HAPs in my current Traveller Hero game, and they are mostly used to mitigate rolls at critical points. I home-brewed effects a bit. Neutral Luck (roll 3d6 and count the ones and sixes to see effect) also crops up from time to time. The players like that they have some control over the narrative using them.
 
However, in my Delta Green Hero campaign I run from time to time as an alternate, I specifically don’t use HAPs to enforce the feel of an uncaring universe in that setting. If I ever run a pulp era Cthulhu Hero campaign, I would likely do the same.

I'm pretty sure Champions Beyond was written after the Champions Villains trilogy, so Steve didn't have him at the time.
 
But I've been working on Xarriel's world and disciples for some time, hoping to eventually get them published under the Hall of Champions umbrella. Life keeps getting in the way, but someday...

On reflection, the shortage of robots and androids does not surprise me as much as I first thought. Thinking back on the much more populous Marvel Universe, how many robot villains were there as of, say, 1995? (About the time I stopped paying attention.) Using OHOTMU as the standard for who's important, I can recall Ultron, Machinesmith, the Super-Adaptoid, the Mad Thinker's Awesome Android, Dragon-Man (an alchemical construct IIRC), Master Mold (representing the Sentinels), Nimrod, Quasimodo, and... um... It, the Living Colossus? Plus the Kree Sentry robot and the big HYDRA robot whose name escapes me at the moment. But AFAIK only Ultron and the Sentinels are that significant. And Doombots, but they're agents. So I son't think robots are under-represented in the CU. But OTOH -- which gets to one of the reasons for this exercise -- it also means that if a GM wants to expand their version of the CU in a direction that hasn't been done to death already, robots, androids and other constructs are one way to go.
 
Dean Shomshak

I wondered which origin types are particularly popular for the Champions Universe, and what types of Powers go with them the most.
 
Why? Because
1) It might point to character concepts that are cool but have been neglected; and
2) I’m a deranged nerd.
 
So this has been my spare-time project for the last week.
 
The whole CU is very large, but not all of it is equally propmoted. So I’m restricting the domain of analysis to the three volumes of Champions Villains. 292 characters total, not counting “agent” types such as Doctor Destroyer’s robots or Necrull’s Necrullticians. Individual characters only!
 
Here are the categories I devised when I did this analysis for my own Champions settings:
 
* SUPERNATURAL BEINGS are innately magical creatures: demons, dimensional conquerors, undead, etc. Examples: Bloodrage, Takofanes, Tyrannon. Also people with supernatural ancestry, such as Frag.
 
* MUTANTS were born with super-powers in their genes. I also include MUTATES, whose origin stories specifically say that their powers are the result of genetic manipulation (such as anyone given powers by Teleios). Examples: Menton, Hurricane, King Cobra.
 
* ROBOTS AND CONSTRUCTS are artificial beings. They have powers because somebody else built them that way. Robots are of course the result of tech; but golems and similar magically-created artificial beings fit in this category as well. Examples: Mechanon (duh), Syzygy.
 
* ENCHANTED characters were given powers by magic: a curse, a spell cast upon them, a magic potion, or the like. Examples: The Basilisk, Black Fang, Harpy.
 
* WEIRD SCIENCE covers all those lab accidents, exposures to industrial waste or atomic radiation, and empowerment processes that are scientific but aren’t specifically called out as exclusively based on gene-splicing. (Though some origin stories are not clear on this point.) Examples: Durak, Bulldozer, everyone in Project Sunburst, Sunspot.
 
 
* CYBORGS started out as normal people but gained powers by having bits added to them. Usually techm but I extend the concept to magical additions (such as a magical gem permanently affixed to the character’s body) or other surgical modification. Examples: Interface, Fiacho, Cairngorm, Howler.
 
* SORCERER characters cast spells. Examples: Doctor Yin Wu, Demonologist, Talisman.
 
* INVENTOR characters build gdgets (including, but not limited to, powered armor) or otherwise do things using SCIENCE! It’s implied that they can build new tech, even if they don’t have VPPs — they aren’t limited to just one device or suite of gadgets. Examples: Doctor Destroyer, Teleios, Utility, Binder, Doctor Philippe Moreau.
 
* TRAINING: If a character’s powers come down to extraordinary skills that aren’t super-tech or sorcery, they go here. Mostly martial artists, but there might be others such as a super-thief with incredible skills but uses mundane tech, Examples: Scorpia, Green Dragon, the Cahokian.
 
* WEAPON: The character’s powers derive from a device that could be taken away, whether it’s tech, magic, or undefined. Moreover, the character lacks the skills to replace or alter the device easily. Examples: the Warlord (he didn’t build his own battlesuit), the Crowns of Krim, Lazer.
 
* MASTERMINDS would be powerful just from the people and resources they command, even if they didn’t have any other source of power. Example: Franklin Stone and Doctor Philippe Moreau are “pure” Masterminds; Doctor Destroyer, King Cobra, and the Warlord have extensive organizations in addition to their personal powers; Baron Nihil and Tyrannon rule entire populations; and the Demonologist can Summon whatever demons he wants, while the Engineer creates robots at will.
 
* ALIENS aren’t human, but aren’t specifically supernatural. Extraterrestrials such as Herculan and Firewing go here; but so does Leviathan (a Lemurian) and Ape-X (uplifted gorilla). This is often a “meta-origin,” worth noting even if not being human is not specifically the source of powers (as Herculan was artificially given powers that are not natural to his species, the Fassai).
 
* OTHER is anything so rare and weird that it doesn’t justify creating a new category, or the source of the character’s powers simply is not known. Example: Timelapse, Glacier.
 
* COMPLEX: Characters can fit within multiple categories, as the dimension lord Skarn is both a supernatural being and a sorcerer, or Cheshire Cat is both a highly trained martial artist and gained teleportation powers through weird science. But if a character fits in three or more categories, I just call it “Complex.” Example: Josiah Brimstone has one set of powers as a sorcerer, another set from the demon that’s fused to him, and a third set from magical devices. OTOH I make exceptions for Masterminds and Aliens, as these tend to be meta-origins — and I try to limit assigning categories based on what’s really important to a character. Just packing a gun or minor gadget, for instance, isn’t enough to place a character as using a Weapon.
 
Placing characters in origin categories can be iffy. Like, I don’t assign every character with martial arts on the character sheet to the Training category: Often its just an add-on and the character would function as a superbeing without it. And as the discussion of Weird Scienct and Mutate characters suggests, the line between them can be blurry. But the goal is to spot patterns, not to precisely classify every character.
 
Here’s the result:
 
Supernatural Beings: 30 characters; 10%
Mutants/Mutates: 65 characters; 22%
Robots/Constructs: 8 characters; 3%
Enchanted: 23 characters; 8%
Weird Science: 54 characters; 18%
Cyborgs: 9 characters; 3%
Sorcerers: 33 characters; 11%
Inventors: 26 characters; 9%
Training: 31 characters; 11%
Weapon: 44 characters; 15%
Mastermind: 25 characters; 9%
Alien: 17 characters; 6%
Other/Unknown: 9 characters; 3%
Complex: 3 characters; 1%
 
Further analysis available if anyone's interested.
 
Dean Shomshak

Interesting. I have to say, I have myself noticed a relative dearth of robots (including androids), cyborgs, and aliens in the ranks of both CU villains and heroes, compared to the previous incarnation of the CU through Fourth Edition. I believe I've identified certain contributory, but not exclusive factors influencing that discrepancy.
 
On the cyborg front, the current CU lacks any official scientific genius with that particular specialty, comparable to Dr. Samuel Levy, his proteges Heinous and Despite (see more about them from Classic Enemies and 4E VIPER), and Doc Digital  from High Tech Enemies for 4E. ARGENT has demonstrated impressive expertise with cybernetics and bionics, and could be further exploited to create more such supers. Champions Online built up a minor background character from the history of Justiciar (a cyborg superhero in 5E Champions of the North) called Cyberlord, who used to provide bionic augmentation for pay, but was repurposed as a full-on cyborg mastermind villain.
 
In regards to aliens, the "super" potential of the CU was greatly diminished by basing the Milky Way on the version used in the Star HERO line, which has almost no races with physical superpowers, although a number of them have "psionic" abilities. There's no one official comparable to Kryptonians or Saiyans. There is an out, though, in that many of these races can develop powers through the same methods that you identify for human supers. It's just that they usually develop them at a lower average power level, less frequently, and/or over a narrower range of abilities, than humans do, thus maintaining the usual comic-book conceit that our supers are our equalizer against superior alien tech.
 
Champions Beyond helps address that gap, identifying more than four dozen alien supers (mostly villains, but not all). Around half of them have full character sheets, while the rest are named and briefly described. For my part, I've sometimes repurposed alien supers from previous editions of Champions by adapting them to current continuity. For example, I made Myrmidon from the 4E Champions of the North source book a Malvan (his look was right, and his history didn't require a lot of rejiggering); while I redefined the winged alien hero Quasar from To Serve and Protect as a Thrinu, a slave of Firewing whom the Malvan had augmented with light powers so he could fight in the arena.
 
All that being said, I don't think we can discount the possibility of Steve Long, during his time as Hero's Line Developer, simply not having as much interest in those types of characters as in others.

I stumbled on an updated version of the HERO system module for FoundryVTT! Still for FoundryVTT v9, but it will be updated to v10 soon! A new developer has taken over the project. 
 
https://github.com/dmdorman/hero6e-foundryvtt

We can still be friends!

Apparently, WoTC has failed Market Research 101. Their survey of recent changes may pull One D&D on a different direction. 
 

I didn't see it mentioned, but the old Johnny Quest cartoon was very much Pulp.

My older brother Joel died yesterday.  He had been suffering from RSV for weeks and suddenly he just was gone.  I know none of you know him or probably even care but he was the world to me.   He was the one who got me into role playing games.  He taught me to love the blues and Pat Metheny.  He provided for me and housed me for decades when my health failed.  He was my biggest fan, supporter, and promoter for my writing.  I love him so much and I miss him so badly it hurts so much I can hardly breathe right.  Everywhere I go, everything I see brings back a flood of memories and emotions and it is so hard to take.
 
I just need to say something about him here because the whole world should have known my dear brother Joel Aaron Taylor.  I want to shout it to the universe, I want everyone to know how wonderful he is and how much I miss him.
 
Thank you for your patience with me.

Setting up Tabletop Simulator for the game 
 
Me: What the HELL is standing behind you?
Shev’s player: Wha- Oh, that’s Skave.
Me: Ah - so you're using the custom asset you made in HeroForge, and he’s using an actual gasmasked Skaven asset. 
GM: Yep. Which explains why the villagers react to him the way they do.
Me: At least he’s wearing appropriate safety equipment for the lab.
Shev’s player: Yeah, but he doesn’t have appropriate safety PROCEDURES for the lab - that’s half the problem.  
 
Miya’s player: How adorable.
Me: Look behind him.
Miya’s player: …..ah. 
 
Arram's player: Honestly Shev is more alarming - THOSE EYES
 
Skave’s player later creates a much cuter asset to use as the ratman.
 
Skave’s player: the temptation to add tiny little horns is really powerful, but I shall resist
 
GM: Hang on, my notes have vanished into the ether.
Me: That’s why we switched to safer anesthetics. And besides, anything that can vanish into the ether is way too high a combat level for this party.. 
 
The aforementioned rodent is down at Selversgard’s docks buying some fish, when there is some commotion in the water. A small boat is being rowed by a young man, with a blood-covered young dwarf as a passenger.
 
Skave: Ah, codfish, tastes like elf. Don’t ask me how I know that. What’s going on over there?
Shev OoC: Alas poor dwarf, we barely knew you.
Gonno OoC: I wonder if Skave has heard you can use gunpowder as a cauterizing agent yet.
Shev OoC: … he just admitted to cannibalism in public. That which speaks is not food!
Gonno OoC: For one thing you can get psittacosis from parrots.
 
The adolescents were fishing when they were attacked by a giant pike.
 
Gonno OoC: From context I’m guessing the fish and not an animated weapon. 
 
Unfortunately, there was a third member of the party - Mari, who got to shore OK, but south of the old monastery that everybody avoids. The whole area has a bad reputation, not least because the god in question, Aroden, died under mysterious circumstances a little over 100 years ago. 
 
GM: There’s rumors something nasty happened at the monastery at the same time. 
Gonno OoC: Well, all the monks were out of a job for a start.
 
Shev is quite impressed that the kids rowed 15 miles upstream to get help.
 
Shev: Damn, kid, you have some guns on you. 
 
On the other hand, the pike was merely 6 feet long, so merely a large pike rather than a Giant Pike. 
 
Arram: That said they ARE supremely aggressive and will have a go at anything, The kids just panicked. 
 
Shev commandeers the nearest boat, and intends to use his giant rat to tow it as necessary. Arram is currently childfree as all his students are at work in the fields, and Gonno comes along despite being very uncomfortable in water more than neck deep. He’s certainly happy to be back on dry land, although the banks are so thickly overgrown and tangled that the missing girl would have to head away from the river to make any progress. Also, that pike is still hanging around.
 
Gonno OoC: At least it’s not a shark with freakin’ lasers. 
 
It certainly looks as though Mari’s taking a large detour around the ruins. And it’s such a lovely day that the miasma of evil coming from the ruins barely registers. Happy laughter coming from a stand of fruit trees on a nearby hilltop is much more distracting. The girl is sitting under a huge oak, next to a fire, while her clothes dry. Whoever rendered her assistance has their back to us, and a distinctly nonhuman head. There’s also a human? Woman with intensely red hair peeking out as us from behind the oak.
 
Arram: Mari? Had a fun adventure this afternoon?
Mari: Mr Arram! You came to find me!
Arram: I hear you had a run-in with a rather large fish.
Galiante the Tiefling: She certainly did.
Shev: It’s getting late - may we share your fire for the night?
Galiante: Best ask the actual owner. Kayla! Ah just a minute, she’s shy.
Shev: Fear not fellow child of Erastil, we mean no harm.
Kayla: Well, not exactly Erastil, but.. *literally steps out of solid wood*
 
The dryad lets us stay in her grove as long as we are no threat to it, her, or her guests.
 
Shev: *leans in close to Skave* Brother….
Arram: Literally do not move for the next 8 hours.
Skave: Yes yes, I’m not going to set fire to the tree.
Shev: You’re not going within 20ft of the tree. It’s not that I think you’ll set it on fire, I’m afraid you’ll want to investigate its alchemical properties. 
 
Shev: How come you to the woods?
Galiante: Well, that’s a long story..
Shev: We have a fire, and I brought stew.
Galiante: *brightens up* I do like stew.
 
Galiante is from Cheliax, and tells us her life story suitably edited for her presumably innocent new friend Mari.
 
Shev OoC: She’s a 14 year old country girl - she knows. 
 
Despite her Tiefling heritage, Galiante was the mistress of a Chelaxian higher-up who tried to move higher in the pecking order and ended up just as high as the top of a pike - weapon, this time, not the fish. 
 
Skave OoC: I didn’t know Barzillai Thrune had a girlfriend? *takes notes*
 
She got out of town fast, but not before kicking in the head of an overly proactive government employee, so she now has a company of hellknights hunting her down. Despite that, she would probably be welcome enough in Selversgard. 
 
Galiante: Really? I’m a tiefling and a prostitute. 
Arram: Honestly I don’t think the first thing will matter.
Shev: They put up with us.
Arram: And that’s the second oldest profession, probably just after murder-hobo.
Galiante: And that’d be you guys?
Shev et al: Oh no, I’m a scout/carpenter/schoolteacher/parcel delivery man.
Galiante: Huh, and he was me thinking you were adventurers.
Shev: No, we have real jobs, and we are good at them. With a few notable exceptions.
 
Well, if we’re competent maybe we can help the dryad with a problem - an unpleasantly pushy Twigjack that won’t leave her alone. He’s even made a copy of her grove, that’s wrong in every possible way. 
 
Gonno OoC: At least the tree in the middle isn’t a Gympie-Gympie.
 
There’s no sign of the malign occupant. 
 
Gonno OoC: I bet that’ll change the moment I get my axe out. 
Arram OoC: ‘He’s a lumberjack and he’s ok’
 
In fact the furious fey doesn’t show up until Gonno actually swings at one of its trees, and the entire party is waiting with suitable weapons. Unfortunately the Twigjack can teleport and blast us with splinters. Fortunately our suitable weapons are Arram’s Fireball spell and Shev’s blunderbuss loaded with a Dragonsbreath round, and the creature is reduced to ash. 
 
Skave: Well, while you guys make sure there aren’t any more about, I’m going to sit over here. And start pulling out all these splinters. Ow. Ow. Ow. 
 
Hopefully not where all the poison ivy is growing. 
 
Mari’s parents are very pleased when we get back, although they are very not pleased that their daughter went so far downstream with her friends. Galiante can probably stay at Gonno’s place for a while - his new house has room for a second person now, at least, and he can make her a bed easily enough. 
 
Gonno OoC: At least I’m a quiet housemate.
Arram OoC: Unless you’re working.
Gonno OoC: Yeah good point - if she’s working nights….
Miya OoC: Let’s not make any assumptions about her future employment. 
 
Galiante does spend the rest of the season working in the fields, then gets a job at the Yellow House, Selversgard’s only brothel. 
 
GM: She’s doing what she knows. 
 
Arram finds an old map of the monastery, which he adds to his collection of local historical documents. Maybe he can start a small museum, one day. Skave hears from some relatives that want to move into the Warren, and Miya, sadly, hears that one of her adoptive parents has died.
 
To their mutual surprise, Gonno and Galiante actually develop an attraction to each other, and she moves back in. 
 
Gonno: *basking in the daily pleased surprise, and planning the better furniture he’ll make for her, to go with the chest of drawers he’d made as a moving out present*
Shev OoC: She was probably amazed that he offered her a bed with no ulterior motive. ‘You literally just wanted to put a roof over my head?’
Miya OoC: ‘I’m gonna keep you!’
 

From today’s Pirates of Drinax/Traveller Hero session.
 
”A man that can punch a gorilla in the nuts can do anything.”