Steve

I picked up the Traveller core rulebook update 2022 and discovered that we made some rolls incorrectly for some of our life events that involved skills. Evidently you're not supposed to add a characteristic modifier to these rolls, but since we're simply using them as inspiration for Star Hero characters I don't think we need to be sticklers. Rules as written, there should be many low-stat and in-debt Traveller characters who live short brutish lives. I suppose Champions and 5th edition D&D have spoiled me for starting heroic characters. I look forward to a life of piracy in and around Drinax.

My group had our character creation session for the new campaign using Mongoose’s Pirates of Drinax campaign setting this weekend. It was quite a lot of fun, like a time-compressed pre-campaign session, and everyone had a great time following their character’s life paths.
 
One character started out with a fantastic stat set (three 12s rolled in front of me) and the other two were closer to average. Of those other players, one had his best stat as his social standing, and the third was fairly average with social standing as his dump stat (a five as I recall). Because there was a pretty big difference in the totals of their characteristics, we all decided to let the two with lower characteristics have some rerolls on their life paths to make up the difference.
 
They all then decided to go to the military academy for the Marines, and that’s when the fun began. My player with the golden stats failed to get into the academy and was drafted instead, ending up in the Marines anyway as a private. The low SOC player managed to successfully enroll on his first try and the third used one of his rerolls and managed to get in on his second try (and we explained that as his high SOC meant Daddy pulled some strings).
 
The other two later managed to graduate with honors without rerolls, entering the service as lieutenants, while the stat-lucky player finished pounding it out in his first enlistment and was promoted to a higher level noncom. The player kept joking about “college boys” like that sergeant character from the old “Black Sheep Squadron” tv show.
 
After that, things continued to be interesting. The golden-stat player kept getting injured and ended up losing both eyes, one each on two separate tours of duty which were replaced with the marines covering most of the cost. Meanwhile, the two academy grads steadily ascended in rank, never once failing an advancement roll and never getting injured that I recall. They also accumulated a small collection of contacts, rivals and enemies during this phase.
 
The high starting SOC player served his entire career in the motor pool, and the other graduate was a Star Marine.
 
During one particular enlistment later on, there was apparently a disastrous military campaign that took place that was the fault of the commanding officer. The low SOC player decided to turn in his commanding officer and received a bonus to his next promotion roll and advanced again in rank. The noncom player ended up getting injured in that mission and lost his other eye, getting that one replaced and picking up a bit more medical debt.
 
The golden-stat player, having had enough of the dangers of military service by this point, changed his career to being a corporate agent and then ended up almost burning his face off on his first tour of duty for his new employers but gained the Demolitions skill. This added to his accumulated medical debt for more repair work. Even before this, he was being compared to a young Nick Fury.
 
The other two players retired as Brigadiers with pensions and earned a lot of mustering out benefits. They also decided to pay for anti-aging treatments. The formerly low-SOC player finished with a 10 SOC thank to his rank, and the other somehow managed to become a decorated war hero with a SOC in the low teens all while commanding the motor pool.
 
After everyone settled their medical debts, the two Brigadiers joined up again with their old service buddy, who had become a deadly gunfighter based on his skill levels by then, and they ended up in the Trojan Reach together to begin their new adventure.
 
I’m now going to take their rolled characters and convert them over to Hero.

Part Five:
 
Upper Deck: About two-thirds of this deck is also open as a sun deck. There’s enough room to park the flitter if the main deck helipad is needed for guests. A large hatch leads to a shaft down to the lower decks.
 
The rest holds a forecastle that used to hold the ship’s bridge. That room is now the communications center and main security office with monitors for all the hidden cameras about the ship.
 
Another stair leads up to the roof of the forecastle. This holds a satellite dish and communications antennae. There is also a meter-wide polished steel ball on a gimballed pedestal. Controls in the comm center activate this device: The sphere splits and unfolds into petals framing a mechanism with a large plasma ball in the center and a barrel wrapped in a spiralling fluorescent tube. The tube pulses on and off while what is very obviously a powerful energy weapon makes a loud wom wom wom hum. The pedestal extends and swivels as the comm center controller directs.
 
As the representative from the Landlady explains, their service usually builds villain bases, and villains usually want at least one location wired for a superweapon. The Liaden is similarly equipped. The “weapon,” however, is merely an impressive-looking fraud.
 
 

Part Four:
 
2nd Lower Deck: The bottom deck is divided into a series of rooms. The narrow triangular room at the fore holds miscellaneous stores. Furthest aft is the generator room with diesel fuel tanks and banks of batteries.
 
A corridor leads from the gymnasium to a narrow triangular storerrom at the fore of the ship. On one side is a small sickbay (at this point little more than a couple beds and some first aid gear). On the other is a lab. Well, it has a workbench, plumbing and power connections for a lab; the team hasn't decided what to do with it yet.
 
Aft of the gymnasium, a trophy room bends around a vault. Avant Guard didn't keep trophies and mementoes from its adventures. No problem: The Landlady pre-equipped the trophy room with odds and ends cleaned out from the bases of villain clients who were captured or killed, and which could not be sold to other villains. Only a few are identifiable. Here's what Avant Guard received:
 
• A giant credit card (non-functioning).
• The scepter and lion-man costume of the deceased animal-controlling villain called the King of Beasts. The scepter is just a club with a flashlight and some flashbulbs in the head. The costume has ballistic cloth lining, but no special powers.
• Costumes of Rhinestone Cowboy and his minions. The laser jewels were removed, but they still look ridiculously gaudy.
• Several hooded cultist robes, dark blue, blazoned with the I Ching hexagram #23 ("Breaking Apart").
• The Coach of Crime's whiteboard showing the "game plan" for his gang's last robbery.
• A fake marble bust of Marcus Aurelius with a hidden compartment for a canister of knockout gas (now removed), formerly owned by the Rome-obsessed criminal who called himself Caesar.
• A bell jar full of swirling green smoke.
• A metal canister labeled "Q-Matter Containment Unit — Do not let power reserves drop below 10%." The indicator is at 9%. There is no obvious way to recharge the unit.
• A mini-fridge holding a can of Diet Sprite and a half-eaten hot dog (mustard only). If you remove them and shut the door, a new can and half hot dog appear five minutes later.
• The infamous Gay Ray Gun of Alternative Person, allegedly a variation on the Professor Pain/Doctor Bliss technology.
• A large black slab, framed like a work of art but apparently featureless.
• Arm of a battlesuit with fried circuitry.
• A fire extinguisher stenciled with a silver cross and Bible verses.
• An oversize blue ring octopus in ajar of formaldehyde.
[UPDATES: The security system recorded Helix taking the blue ring octopus, apparently an early creation to which he feels sentimental attachment. "Who's a genetic abomination? You're a genetic abomination, yes you are!" Also, the King of Beasts' son recently contacted Avant Guard and asked them to destroy his father's costume and scepter: He saw it in the YouTube tour the team posted of their new base, and he found the sight of his father's criminal gear upsetting. Avant Guard did as he asked.]
 
Aft of the trophy room, two stairs descend to a well-equipped machine shop with tools for both electronics and mechanical engineering.
 
Finally, the rearmost room holds a diesel generator, drums offbel and racks of batteries.
 
 

 
 

Part Three:
 
1st Lower Deck: This deck consists of rooms fore and aft, a corridor between them, and matching rooms to either side. Two pairs of stairs come down from the main deck, and continue down to the second lower deck. A wider central area holds the foundation for the crane and a small guest bathroom. Steel pillars connecting the decks help strengthen the ship’s structure. A shaft in the ceiling leads to the upper deck, while a steel hatch in the floor below leads to the lower deck.
 
The forward triangular room holds the base’s water pump and heater; the underside of the hot tub sticks down through the ceiling. The curved rear of the deck is a home theater with a projector in one corner. A wet bar in the other corner lets this double as a party room.
 
In between, the larger rooms are bedrooms for Anunit, Csongor, Huntsman, Night Train, Thing Fantastic and (if he returns to active duty) Nomad. Each bedroom has its own closet and a compact bathroom with toilet, sink and shower. Interspersed among them are six smaller guest rooms, each with a small closet.
 
One small room wedged between a stairway and the hull is actually a getaway capsule (another villain base-inspired feature). A small console lets the people inside seal the door, blow the hull and eject the capsule, which can speed away underwater for several minutes. The capsule can also tap into the security cameras.
 
The other small room is left for the team to develop for themselves.
(ADDENDUM: New teammate Huntsman turned it into a "panic room" against demonic attack by painting warding pentacles on the floor, walls and ceiling. Not represented as a Power; it takes advantage of demons' Physical Complication that they can't enter or leave a correctly drawn pentacle.)
 

Part Two:
 
Main Deck: The rear third of the deck is a helipad where the team can park its flitter, a repaired MONAD transbot. A small helicopter could also park on the pad, though it would be a tight fit. The fore quarter holds deck chairs and a hot tub for outdoor relaxation. Narrow aisles connect the fore and aft areas, flanking the main cabin.
 
A crane dominates the rear of the cabin, flanked by two stairs to the upper deck.
 
Inside, the fore of the cabin consists of a wide briefing room. Windows fill most of the curving fore wall. There’s a table, chairs, podium, large television screen for videoconferencing, and side-table with coffee maker.
 
Stairs behind the briefing room lead to the upper deck and first lower deck. Next come a small dining hall and rec room with sofa, comfy chairs and wide-screen TV with entertainment center and video game controllers. The rear is divided into a library and office. In between are a compact galley and pantry, a head (just a toilet and washbasin), a laundry room, and a sealed shaft running between decks. Stairs from the library and office lead down to the first lower deck.
 
Dean Shomshak

The thread about buildings that could make cool hero bases reminded me of an earlier thread in which I offered and solicited ideas for buildings and other places that villains could easily convert into secret bases. That in turn led to the HQ the PCs acquired in my Champions campaign, Avant Guard: a refurbished derelict ship. Our forum colleague Lord Liaden suggested the idea, so I named the ship the RV Liaden. The Champions forum has been a bit slow lately, so I thought some people might be amused by seeing what I eventually devised -- with maps. (Hex mapped, because we still play 5e.)
 
Here's the first section:
 
AVANT GUARD BASE: THE RV LIADEN
 
Background: The Liaden was an oceanography research vessel about 30 feet wide and 160 feet long. The Landlady bought it and reconditioned it as Avant Guard’s headquarters. It no longer has engines; it’s permanently docked among other semi-derelict ships so that attacks on the base will not endanger many other people. Concrete props under the ship mean that hull breaches won’t sink the ship.
 
Much of the base’s cost came from reinforcing the hull with advanced composite materials, making it much stronger but not much thicker. The Landlady also gutted and replaced much of the interior: The Liaden still has four decks, but bulkheads were moved to create completely different rooms. The stairs are still steep and narrow, though.
 
The hull is painted white with “Avant Guard” painted on both sides of the bow. There are rows of portholes on the main deck and first lower deck, and wider windows in the forecastle.
 
Security: Dozens of tiny cameras are hidden throughout the ship, inside and out. It is flat-out impossible to approach the ship or go anywhere on it or in it without being on camera. (It is up for the team to decide how assiduously they watch the monitors. The team’s bedrooms also have hidden switches to turn off the cameras within them. The cameras are represented as Area Effect Clairsentience.) Exterior doors have keypad locks and alarms in case they are forced open; fine wires in the windows and portholes similarly guard against breakage; and motion sensors turn on lights inside and out, showing the general location of any intruder. (These off-the-shelf security systems are represented simply as a Security Systems rating for the entire base.)
 
Dean Shomshak
 
 
 

It sounds like a form of Extra Time to me.

For computers specifically, cosmic rays are a problem and become more of a problem as circuits get smaller and lower-voltaged.  Back in the day when I was analyzing astronomical data, it was hard to miss a cosmic ray strike on the detector since it would leave a maxed-out white streak where it hit.  Spacecraft do not have atmospheres or planetary-scale magnetic fields to deflect cosmic rays.  So there is a plausible reason for a minimum size for spacecraft computers.
 
Not that modern computers are necessarily small.  CPU die sizes are getting smaller, yet data centers still exist, and they pull eye-watering amounts of electricity to run.  Like climate-change-significant amounts.
 
Furthermore, having worked on some projects for the Navy, I can say that naval computers are just NEBS3 compliant servers, the Network Equipment Building Standard being a measure of environmental (temperature, humidity, voltage, shock range mainly) resistance.  NEBS3 is not so awesome that you couldn't disrupt such a server with a sufficient power surge or physical shock.  (I should add that modern navel vessels are generally unarmored and intended to avoid battle damage rather than withstand it.)  I could very easily picture a shipboard engineer scrambling to diagnose and change out a fried PCIe card in time to reboot the main radar before the next salvo of missiles arrives.
 
Lastly, I can't think of a worse ship-to-ship combat system for Traveller than SFB, but I used to wipe the floor with Klingons (and everyone else) using web caster-equipped ships.  Especially the DPW, although that has more to do with the literally overpowered ship rather than my skill.
 
 

When my friends and I watched it way back when, we couldn’t seem to help ourselves from riffing on the bits it seemed to steal from Star Wars. Not a surprise given who produced it.
 
The Evil General was also given a costume seemingly made for mockery by teenaged film goers like we were.

On the old age of sail ships, most casualties (dead + wounded) were not from the cannon shot, but rather the splinters caused by the shot passing through the hull and bulkheads.
Modern warships (and many commercial ships) surface mount piping, conduits, ducting, wiring and various boxes for several reasons.  Ease of access, ease of inspection, ease of repair and, in the case of a warship, to reduce the amount of shrapnel from a penetrating round/missile. For damage control teams one of the most dangerous fires is one in a berthing space.  Berthing is one of the areas where you will find wall coverings and cubbyholes.  They will usually be filled with personal possessions, that include thermal, explosive and poison gas bombs.  Also known as personal electronics with batteries.  Plus all those blankets, comforters and sheets cunningly stuffed into tiny spaces are great to add to the fire and gas contents of the usually fully enclosed with limited ventilation compartment. People have died from asphyxiation ten feet from outside air because a hatch is heat-warped and the compartment is filled with toxic fumes from heat and fire.   The Navy learned a long time ago that leaving fittings and exposed and avoiding paneling and covers in the working parts of the ship radically sped up not just repairs, but being able to actually spot repairs.  On a ship every pipe has it's purpose and content painted on it with a direction of flow arrow.  In fact everything is identified by color code and direction if applicable.  
 
As for critical devices such as lighting and communication, they are all designed so that you have with zero electrical power to the ship.  Battle-lanterns are everywhere and the sound powered phones work off the the power of your voice as is implied by the name.  Control panels are designed so a crewman can operate it by feel in the event of no lighting and critical ones can operate without external power.  Because Murphy guarantees you will lose power.  
 
In space this becomes even more critical. If a micro-meteor puts a tiny hole in an outer bulkhead, I don't want to have to remove square yards of paneling to find the leak.  I also don't want to have half the personnel assign to the compartment shredded by fragments of of the covers that only served the purpose of "looking nice".  And when the lights and power goes out, I really hope I am not stuck with a touch screen as my only control panel.  And unless I can carry 5 or 10 spares of everything, I really hope that my critical systems have backups that are either electric components or integrated circuits build from electronic components such as transistors and for applications that require clean signals or power handling those much maligned tubes.  Give me a micro/min tool set and a micro-repair bench and I can repair them.  If necessary we can "rob" what we need from other gear.    And components are actually pretty small and you can store thousands of them in one cubic yard of space.  In real life high altitude flight is one of the reasons that reloading firmware and software packages is pretty routine.  You don't hear as much about commercial airlines because they don't really have anything and the majority of critical systems have been hardened.  The loss is because of the reduced protection from particles at altitude.  Microchips a especially vulnerable to particles and other EMI.  An actual spacecraft is exposed to far more.  And I am pretty sure anything that actually goes into interplanetary or interstellar will really see damage.    You cannot fix a chip.  Spare chips have to be carefully packaged and most of the particles that do the damage are not stopped by the ships structure or your body.  A chips is just a device that has millions or PN junctions (transistor, diode, etc)  and connecting runs at the microscopic level.  I have seen microscopic pictures of a failing chip from equipment that was in orbit.  The surface of the chip was covered in craters that looked like WW1 nomansland.  A full-sized or miniature semiconductor (transistor, diode, etc), component (resistor, capacitor, etc) or tube is so massive in comparison to the same purposed portion of a chip it wouldn't even notice the damage.  You will be losing a steady percentage of micro-components each and everyday you are outside the protective field of a planet.  This will happen invisibly and undetected until the new chip is installed and does not work.  A storage of components that are miniature or full-sized will survived for years unless they are mishandled.  
 
I have the good fortune to be able to work on not just a new platform with new birds that are less than a year old, but also the old legacy aircraft that have been flying for 40+ years.  If we get a blade or other circuit card and it has been over 5 years form manufacture it usually means problems of one kind or another, bios or firmware updates and sometime outright failure.  It just doesn't work for some reason.  But they recently released old war-stores for one the aircraft being sun-downed.  We cot old style circuit cards and IC that are literally 50 years old and still in the manufacturers original packaging, and they all work like the day they were manufactured.
 
Modern tech is fantastic and I don't know what I would do without my laptop.  
But to depend on microcomputers to be my only option if I were to go on a multiyear voyage with no way to abort? 
Nope.  They would need to ensure the existence of manual auxiliary methods of performing all the critical tasks. 
Otherwise the crew might as well just suicide before they go so the families can at least have something to bury.
 
 

My daughter caught it last week along with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, around June 1st.
 
The in-laws went and stayed in a hotel when they first manifested symptoms and he tested positive. They just came back home yesterday after their symptoms were gone. He was vaccinated and she wasn’t, but he had the far worse case. She only had very mild symptoms.
 
My daughter had three days with a sore throat, then three-four days with cough, body ache, loss of smell and extreme tiredness, and then it faded back to just a sore throat and tiredness as she recovered. She never had much of a fever, like only one degree. She tested positive last weekend and missed her promotion from 8th grade. She was all better again as of Friday.

My daughter caught it last week along with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, around June 1st.
 
The in-laws went and stayed in a hotel when they first manifested symptoms and he tested positive. They just came back home yesterday after their symptoms were gone. He was vaccinated and she wasn’t, but he had the far worse case. She only had very mild symptoms.
 
My daughter had three days with a sore throat, then three-four days with cough, body ache, loss of smell and extreme tiredness, and then it faded back to just a sore throat and tiredness as she recovered. She never had much of a fever, like only one degree. She tested positive last weekend and missed her promotion from 8th grade. She was all better again as of Friday.

My daughter caught it last week along with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, around June 1st.
 
The in-laws went and stayed in a hotel when they first manifested symptoms and he tested positive. They just came back home yesterday after their symptoms were gone. He was vaccinated and she wasn’t, but he had the far worse case. She only had very mild symptoms.
 
My daughter had three days with a sore throat, then three-four days with cough, body ache, loss of smell and extreme tiredness, and then it faded back to just a sore throat and tiredness as she recovered. She never had much of a fever, like only one degree. She tested positive last weekend and missed her promotion from 8th grade. She was all better again as of Friday.

My daughter caught it last week along with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, around June 1st.
 
The in-laws went and stayed in a hotel when they first manifested symptoms and he tested positive. They just came back home yesterday after their symptoms were gone. He was vaccinated and she wasn’t, but he had the far worse case. She only had very mild symptoms.
 
My daughter had three days with a sore throat, then three-four days with cough, body ache, loss of smell and extreme tiredness, and then it faded back to just a sore throat and tiredness as she recovered. She never had much of a fever, like only one degree. She tested positive last weekend and missed her promotion from 8th grade. She was all better again as of Friday.

My daughter caught it last week along with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, around June 1st.
 
The in-laws went and stayed in a hotel when they first manifested symptoms and he tested positive. They just came back home yesterday after their symptoms were gone. He was vaccinated and she wasn’t, but he had the far worse case. She only had very mild symptoms.
 
My daughter had three days with a sore throat, then three-four days with cough, body ache, loss of smell and extreme tiredness, and then it faded back to just a sore throat and tiredness as she recovered. She never had much of a fever, like only one degree. She tested positive last weekend and missed her promotion from 8th grade. She was all better again as of Friday.

That’s another possibility. I could convert them into points towards a Free Trader vessel Perk.

The Hostile RPG by Zozer Games follows this sort of universe paradigm, since it emulates gritty, retro-future (zeerust) movies from the 1970s like Outland and Alien. Computers are robust, easy to use and easy to repair to survive whatever gets thrown at them in the unforgiving vastness of space. Solid and well-made keep people alive, so buttons, dials and toggle switches took the place of more fragile touch screens and keyboard commands while gauges and meters replaced multi-purpose LCD screens.
 
 

I’m in the process of setting up a possible campaign in the Trojan Reaches for my gaming group so sat down to try out some conversions from Mongoose 2nd edition to TH. Here are some things I noticed when converting my first rolled up character.
 
Seth Arlen, a six-tour, retired Imperium Navy officer that managed to be promoted all the way to Admiral with only middling physical stats for STR/DEX/END but very high INT/EDU/SOC converted over at about 130 points with barely anything spent on stats and most of that spent on skills and perks.
 
In converting him over to 6th Edition, I gave him some Reputation bonuses due to his high ending SOC (15), his rank of Admiral, and one of his later life events being that he saved his entire ship on a mission. He also had two successful diplomatic missions on prior tours.
 
The amusing thing is that I started him out on his career path as a Navy Engineer after he graduated from a university, so he ended up with really high tech abilities but also picked up pretty good skills in Tactics (naval), Diplomacy, Blades and Leadership.
 
He ended up a fusion of aspects of Kirk and Scotty, which amused me.
 
I think he can stay at 175-points when I am done buying up more of his characteristics and tweaking him, but I honestly expected a retired veteran after 20+ years in uniform to cost more points.
 
My thinking was that a character converted over might get a point bonus for extra tours past their mid-thirties, an XP loan that could be paid back over time so they advance very slowly in play compared to a much younger character.
 
in looking at the stat conversions, I’m wondering if the conversion rate for STR/DEX/END might be better set at 1.75x rather than 1.5x due to how things ended up with Seth. His stats converted over to nines for STR and DEX. Of course this means that some alien races could go into the twenties for some stats if they have good scores in that other system, but that didn’t seem out of line to me.
 
Mongoose Traveller has a skill called Diplomacy that I didn’t see in the conversion chart, so I used Persuasion to convert it.
 
They also have Ship Shares as a Benefit item for mustering out which I guess is new, so I’’m currently converting it as a Money Perk for now.
 
I used Mongoose’s guide path for making a Traveller character because it provided a neat narrative path for pre-game life and established links to other characters during this process, which I thought would help make a more cohesive group. I might end up just using Traveller’s mechanics though.

R.I.P. BlackJack

Horror on the Orient Express - Dreamlands - Dylath-Leen to Aphorat
 
February 1923
 
In Which The Investigators Take A Break From Vivisection And Graduate To Genocide And Child Murder
 
The three investigators are currently holed up in a waiting room in Milan’s Stazione Centrale, keenly aware that the authorities in at least three cities can connect them to a series of grisly deaths, even if they weren’t actually responsible for them. 
 
Alex: Well, that makes another city we can never come back to. I got into this because I thought it would be fun, but it’s not being much fun. And where’s the booze? I should never have let Flo drag me into this. Not that I recall much actual dragging. 
 
Florence might not be nursing any injuries, but she has another problem - if she reports the events at La Scala accurately, and Alex’s father realises that Alex was the foreigner that was ‘injured in a fracas at the Opera House’, he’s going to blow a gasket. Their mother would too, of course, but since she’s dead it would be freaking out from beyond the grave.
 
Alex OoC: Quite possible - she always said she’d be looking down on me. 
 
Huxley, on the other hand, has an entirely different problem - he’s still in denial that magic exists, so obviously that old woman that was trying to tear the larynx out of Faccia’s throat with her bare hands can’t possibly be the missing Diva. He reluctantly concludes that the Signora must be dead, and her organs stolen by the same lunatic that transplanted the automotive worker’s lungs. It might even become his default hypothesis whenever somebody goes missing - they’ve been kidnapped and vivisected.
 
Buried under a small mountain of blankets thoughtfully provided by the staff of the Orient Express, the exhausted investigators fall fitfully to sleep, and wake up in one of the luxurious pavilions of the Dreamlands Express. Huxley even has the tiny black kitten Blackjack snoozing on his chest. 
 
The Dreamlands Express’ creator and conductor Henri Peeters is immediately aware that the investigators are still stressed by events in the Waking World, and arranges some relaxing draughts and a light meal to settle their nerves. The train beasts will soon be arriving at the port of Dylath-Leen, to pick up passengers and swap cargo. Until then, Peeters listens sympathetically to Huxley’s tale of events in the Waking World, and how favorably the Dreamlands compare. 
 
Huxley: The whole place was wrong - everybody was so miserable and on edge. Nothing like the Milan in the travelogs.
 
Florence spends most of the time playing with the kitten.
 
The new passengers are one Mironim-Mer, a wine trader with solid yellow eyes, delegations from the cities of Sarnath and Ib on their way to appeal to the wisdom of King Kuranes, and at the last minute the dancer Zsuzsa, just ahead of her pursuit by the Prince of Dylath-Leen’s secret police. She’s certainly quite taken by Huxley, although she just as clearly doesn’t like talking about the Waking World. 
 
Dylath-Leen might not be the most salubrious locale in the realms of Dream, but given how well-appointed the train-slash-caravan-slash-gelatinous-tentacle-monsters-carrying-palatial-pavilions is, is not like you actually have to get off the Dreamlands Express to have a good time.
 
Florence: Five stars, would travel again.
 
She probably won’t get the choice - apparently you can only ride the train all the way to the end of the line once. She should probably just make the best of the trip. Alex certainly is - for one thing they actually have a male body here. Unfortunately their first opportunity to shave goes disastrously, and they cut themselves badly.
 
Huxley: Maybe this will give you a rugged bad boy look
Alex: Oh, go impress your flibbertigibbet. I’m just going to let it grow next time, I swear.
 
Huxley certainly hopes to impress Zsuzsa, and goes to breakfast dressed as dapperly as possible. Maybe that’s why the Sarnathian delegation decide he’s the only one of the investigators worth talking to, and rudely invite themselves to the shared meal despite the fact they were noisily partying all night. After they realise that the King George and the British Empire that Huxley was a soldier for are in the Waking World, they ask more questions. They seem a bit surprised that the Waking World is so miserable that the Dreamlands are a restful delight by comparison, and Huxley has to explain about the Great War. That puzzles them even more.
 
Sarnathian delegate: But you were on the winning side! Your enemies defeated, and therefore subhuman and beneath contempt! Take pride in your victory!
Huxley: …
 
By lunchtime, the train has reached Zar, the Abode of Unformed Dreams, and not a place restful for dreamers. Which may explain the screaming, eyeless lunatic that runs up to the train, and that has to be subdued by Henri, Huxley, and the tentacle beasts. The Sarnathians find the struggle quite entertaining. Henri is reluctant to have the madman on board, but Huxley persuades him to have him restrained in the baggage car, until then can get him into the care of somebody better suited.
 
The Sarnathian delegates hope Huxley wasn’t insulted by their laughter at his scuffle with the madman, and invite him along for some harmless entertainment. The harmless entertainment is ambushing one of the flabby, frog-like Beings of Ib, and holding them against the wall until they stick. Huxley wants no part of it, and helps the silent and passive Being down afterwards. 
 
Huxley: You know, I think I know why you're sending a delegation to this King Kuranes - These Sarnathians are cads.
 
Karakov, the arms dealer from the Waking World, can confirm that there’s very bad blood between Sarnath and Ib, although everybody was extremely surprised when the Beings showed up again, since the extermination of their kind happened a thousand years ago. Karakov acknowledges that a lot of the history might be propaganda by the winners, but does not appreciate the comparison to the Armenian Genocide AT ALL. But then, he was an arms dealer to the Turks, and many others. Huxley does note that Karakov seems guilty under the ire, however. 
 
After lunch Florence heads off to spend time with all the cats from Ulthar, Huxley goes to spend the afternoon with Zsuzsa in her compartment, and Alex has to go scrub their hands after they find another Being of Ib stuck to the ceiling outside their compartment. 
 
Alex: You might have warned me to grab a towel before I tried to help them down. 
Huxley: I don’t understand why the Beings don’t fight back. 
GM: If they call you in as a witness in the court of King Kuranes, you can accurately report it was the Sarnathians that started everything. 
 
While Alex is cleaning up, they hear a startled Meow and a thud from the next compartment, but it’s empty when they go to check. They do tell Huxley what they heard, before they head off to the afternoon’s entertainment - Zsuzsa in Huxley’s case, and the men’s saloon for Alex. 
 
Huxley: You thought you heard a puddy tat. 
 
Zsuzsa surprises Huxley with the heat of her ardour, and he enjoys an athletic and surprisingly flexible few hours. But then even the Waking World Express has a reputation for romance.
Huxley: What happens in the Dreamlands stays in the Dreamlands.
 
Alex’s afternoon is pretty enjoyable too - there are thagweed hookahs provided for the gentlemen, a large rack of various alcohols, and an entire sideboard of sandwich ingredients for when they get the munchies. The diplomatic courier and wannabe poet Mackenzie is already there preparing a snack. 
 
GM: This is certainly becoming a theme with you - try a new recreational drug of the Dreamlands, pass out.
Alex OoC: Well I am here to enjoy myself.
GM: Although in this case it’s not so much pass out as grin goofily and sit staring at your hands. “My fingers… they can touch everything except themselves”
 
It’s Huxley that returns to the compartment first, needing a fresh change of clothes. So it’s him that finds the corpse of Blackjack the kitten, hidden in his trunk. He’s been repeatedly stabbed.
 
Huxley: … oh dear. 
Florence’s player: DRHOZ! He’s a BABY!
GM: In retrospect I should have already had chocolate here, by way of apology, since I knew this chapter predicated kitten murder. Although it’s hardly the first Cthulhu module to have the brutal death of children in it. 
Alex’s player: It’s not not supposed to be cute furry animals, just humans.
 
Huxley dithers for a bit, then goes to find the conductor. Henri is understandably distressed, even before Huxley asks how the death will affect the agreement the Express has with the sacrosanct Cats of Ulthar. And what will they tell Blackjack’s mother, Sophie. Huxley basically blurts out the situation to Flo, in front of the entire carriage-full of cats. 
 
Henri Peeters: That was not tactfully done, Monsieur.
 
At least the three investigators have pretty solid alibis for most of the afternoon - Florence was buried in pussies, Huxley enjoying one singular, and Alex so completely blazed on thagweed that they probably couldn’t walk in a straight line.
 
GM: Even if certain historical assassins are famous for both their deadliness and their drug use. 
 
Henri asks the three investigators to wait in the banquet car, while he tracks down the distraught mother cat and tries to deal with the situation. Huxley collects Alex.
 
Alex: *waggling their fingers at Huxley* Have you got some of these as well? 
Huxley: Yes, at least twelve.
Alex: Do you know why they can’t touch each other? You’re a medical man
Huxley: … I should probably sober them up.
Alex: I'm a him! I can show you.
 
Florence consoles herself with strong drink, Alex slowly becomes aware that something serious is happening, and Huxley tries to figure out what caused the wounds - they’re too big for Being of Ib claws, and more like a letter-opener than a proper knife. Eventually Henri ushers the rest of the passengers, delegates and their servants, and a large number of very angry cats, into the banquet pavilion.
 
Henri Peeters: Ladies and gentlemen… I have grim news for you. There has been a murder on the Dreamlands Express. 

You can put someone to 1/2 DCV or even 0 DCV with a PRE Attack. You can Flash targeting senses which impacts DCV in various ways. You can attack people from behind at 1/2 DCV (though some groups ignore that rule). Entangling, Grabbing, Stunning all affect DCV to 1/2 or 0. 
 
And so on. There's a DCV modifier chart somewhere in the rulebooks and supporting rules text that go thru all of this.

FIST is the local costumed criminal organization. FIST organization is more of a "crime union" than most mal-legal groups. The leader is known only as One. It is One who provides insurance and medical for the agents (the Many). Many is the backbone of the group. There is also Doctor , Professor among others.

Prehaps one of the weirdest looking villains is Eyebite. Ivan Jones is a mutant able to project illusions directly into the sensory areas of the brain. Also, his face is literally upside down (his mouth and jaw are where his eyes are, his eyes are where the mouth should be). Beyond illusion casting, Eyebite can disconnect a person's ability to perceive (Sight Flash VS Mental Defense), the ability to make himself unprecevable (Mental special effect of Invisibility), and even create a passive displacement effect (Deflection). Eyebite has to make eye contact to cast illusions.
 
His goals is to get rich by thefts and shove it into the faces of those who tease him growing up (he especially hates the name "Flipface").
 
It should be noted...he doesn't exactly have a distinct feature because he can use his powers to make people believe his face is just like anyone else's face. Or if he does have one, since he can use his powers to eliminate that then it is to a lesser degree. 

Possibly one of the funniest moments we've had:
 
The players have started a new hero team and only that day came up with a hero team name. The meet up with the bad guys...
 
Hero: "All right! Now you're going to have to deal with us! We're..." (player looks at other players) "Who are we again?"