Greywind

Children shouldn't play with dead things.

“Kate?”

“Yeah, Lene?” Kate took a baking sheet out of the oven and set it on the counter. “I'm sorry, Marlene. I didn't think.”

Marlene smiled. “It doesn't bother me. Honestly, I've missed it.” Kate smiled back. “Keep on using it if you want. Where's the sketchbook Jason gave you?”

Flipping her oven mitts off onto the counter, Kate said, “I'll get it for you. Jason change his mind and want it back?”

“No. I just want to look through it for something.” Kate pulled it out from the closed bottom of a book shelf. “Thanks,” Marlene said when Kate handed it to her.

Sitting on a stool across from Kate, who was collecting cookies off the baking sheet with a spatula, Marlene began flipping through the sketchbook. She stopped on the picture of Aaron and the nameless girl.

“This one is different,” Marlene said. “All the others he did of Aaron has his face scarred. Not this one.”

“Yeah,” Kate agreed. “He said he didn't know who she was.”

Marlene frowned and shook her head. “No. He said he hadn't met her yet.”

“I don't think he would say that now,” Mary said. Aaron was curled up on the couch beside his Nana. Mary rocked gently side-to-side with Sandy in her arms. “If you were to ask him again.”

“You mean...?” Marlene said.

“Stacy, Jason's mother, I counted her a friend. That picture reminds me of her. And she reminds me of you.”

6 hours ago, Tjack said:

    To knock this question down to it’s bare bones, to a formula that can be used in any game, any genre, it would be the opposite side of the coin to “garbage in, garbage out.”

      The more history, details, background, illustrations, whatever you can provide will get your players to create more interesting, more varied, more detailed characters.  There’s no way to know what will get two neurons rubbing together in a players brain and create a spark that will light up your game.

    It doesn’t have to be a dry history and timeline that you wrote but instead refer your players to the books, TV shows and movies that inspired you to create that world and run that game.  Put on your Professor Harold Hill straw hat (or the guy who sold the monorail to Springfield) and get them fired up. The more excitement you can generate to them is the more fun you’ll all have in the game.

     If you’ve ever seen the movie L.A. Confidential remember the opening sequence with the postcards and newspaper photos of Los Angeles in the early ‘50’s.   How it brought you into that world ?  That was all taken from the pitch meeting presentation the would be Producers of the movie did for the studio exec’s to try and get funding for the project. It was such a success that it became the entryway for the audience as well.   This is what you have to do for your players 

  It’s an axiom in the military that “The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.”  The same thing holds here. The more you give the player, the more you will get from the player. 

Not necessarily true. The players want to play, yes, but not all the players want to take the time to work up a backstory.

I had one player give me a lot to work with at one end of the spectrum. At the other I had a player that had a character sheet that just listed abilities. Others fell in the middle. "Why is so much about his character?" "When are you going to start giving me stuff I can work with for your character?"

Pudding!

And I feel like a number, feel like a number
Feel like a stranger
Stranger in this land, feel like a number
I'm not a number, I'm not a number
Damn it I'm a man, I feel like a number
Feel like a number, feel like a number

Waking up, Kris realized she was face-down on the bed. It was still dark. Her wings shifted. She smiled and gave them a gentle flap. Her stomach rumbled. Kris was ravenous. “That must be why there was more food on the table.”

“Yes,” Jason answered. Kris sat up. Working on his second chicken, Jason had stripped the first down to bones. “It was either more food or MREs or protein packs.” He glanced at her and then stared. “That was totally unexpected.”

“What was?”

“You still have gray in your hair, but you look about twenty years younger.”

Kris grabbed a potato out of the bowl and ate it on the way to the bathroom. In the mirror, she recognized the woman she used to be. “Unreal,” she whispered. Her belly rumbled again. “Save me a chicken.”

“Or two,” Jason called back.

Kris came back slowly. “How are you doing?”

“I dealt,” Jason said, pulling another strip of meat off a chicken. Kris noted her shift draped over the back of a chair.

Slipping into it, Kris said, “When you healed me before you took it on yourself. The same with Emily. When you healed Sharon, you blinded yourself for hours. How are you dealing? You don't have wings.” She dropped herself into the chair.

“And every nerve ending in my body screamed at me about it,” he said. “I dealt with it.”

Kris tore a leg off and bit into it. There were other questions she wanted to ask, but every time her mouth was empty she took another bite of something.

Jason got up and scraped food waste off his plate into the waiting bin. He returned to the table for an empty bowl. Then for another plate. By the time he was through, the only plate left on the table was hers and she was picking remnants off the carcass. She didn't realize how much she had eaten or how much time had passed.

Standing up, she dumped what was left of the chicken into the bin and passed Jason the plate. “A wipe-down of the table, and I'd say we're done for the night.” When Jason was done washing the last plate, Kris washed her hands and her face. “I'll take a shower in the morning.” Kris nodded.

Jason took his shirt off. The negators gleamed in the light of the lantern. Kris carried the lantern to a table near the mattress. She watched while Jason got comfortable. “Something wrong?” he asked.

“Still hungry, I guess.”

“I pretty much shot my load with six chickens, roasted potatoes, and the beans. Protein bars or MREs are pretty much it until I go out again.”

Kris shifted her wings and the shift fell around her feet. “Different kind of hunger.” She crawled on the mattress, straddling Jason. “Don't worry. I'm a doctor. I know what I'm doing.” Her hand grazed him, felt him respond to her, and she smiled. When she leaned in and kissed him, Jason responded to that, too.

Cord Wood
Justin Thyme

Lots of female names are flowers.

Wonder Woman's daughter.
 

When I'm down I make a call
Got the number written on the wall
First it's busy then I try again
Oh, who's she talking to, could it be him?

I got the number and it starts to ring
I get excited and I start to dream
I start to fantasize of memory lane
Then she answers and she says right way
She says "I'm home on my own, home all alone"
So I got off the phone

She's tight
She's ahead of her time
She's tight
She's one of a kind
She's tight
She's a talented girl
She's tight
She's got her head down tight

I have something got to say to you
Amnesia and my train of thought
On the tip, the tip of my tongue
I had a vision when I was young

You floated in, we floated up
Through the window and down the hall
I had a smoke and went upstairs
Turned the door and opened the key
She spoke "I'm on my own, home all alone"
So I got off the phone

She's tight
She's ahead of her time
She's tight
She's one of a kind
She's tight
She's a talented girl
She's tight
She's got her head down tight

She's tight
She's giving me the go
She's tight
She's giving me the high sign
She's tight
We'll turn off the lights
She's tight
Pull down the shades
She's nice, she's tight
Turn on the cam'ra
She's nice, she's tight
And getting ready for action

She's nice, she's tight
She's nice, she's tight
Turn off the radio
She's nice, she's tight
She's nice, she's tight
Turn on the video

She's nice, she's tight
She's giving me the go
She's nice, she's tight
She's giving me the high sign
She's nice, she's tight
We'll turn off the lights
She's nice, she's tight
Pull down the shades
She's nice, she's tight
Turn on the cam'ra

Standing in front of a cracked mirror, Kris toweled her hair dry. It had felt good to have Trese and Aaron at dinner. Even Melner and Kira. Sharing old memories, remembering absent friends. If only Elyse could have made it. They were Guardians again. Still.

Hanging her towel up, Kris turned and flicked off the light. She made her way down the hall, back to the open room that was whatever room it needed to be at any given time. Sitting room, dining room, meeting room, bedroom.

Jason had turned off all the lights except one lantern. The blackout curtains were open, allowing a cool breeze to blow in. The table, instead of being cleared of the remnants of their meal, held more food. Four more roasted chickens. More potatoes.

“I thought you were going to put stuff away. Not add to it.”

By the light of the lantern, Jason was flipping through one of his sketchbooks. Kris noted the absence of his pencil. “Did you mean what you said? That you want to be a part of it?”

“Yes. You heard Trese. I'd be in the way.”

“Not necessarily.” He looked up at her and closed the book. Kris saw her name on the cover. “I want to try something if you're willing.”

“What?” Curiosity touched with... Excitement? Nervousness? Maybe a little of both, Kris decided.

Jason turned. The book disappeared from his hand. “Last Christmas... The Christmas before you yanked me here, I gave Sharon her sight back.”

“I remember,” Kris whispered. Her mind churned with the implications.

“It will hurt. I need to reopen the wound. I can't heal the stump, but if I have a fresh wound to deal with, maybe it will work.”

As a surgeon, Kris understood the necessity of cutting away the bad to let new growth take place. “Do it,” she said quietly. Jason nodded.

“Stand or lay?”

“I plan on sleeping on that mattress,” she said. “I don't want to have to clean blood out of it first.” Turning her back, Kris braced her arms on the table. Jason moved the shoulder of her shift to the side. It slid down, caught by her wrist.

“Sorry,” Jason said.

Kris flipped it off her hand. The entire shift fell to the floor. “I lost my modesty a long time ago.”

“I'm sorry for that,” he said quietly.

Kris smiled over her shoulder. “Planning on having your way with me?”

Sliding his hand over her belly, Jason hugged her gently. “Yes.” A leather strap appeared. Jason placed it against her mouth. Kris accepted it and bit down to hold it in place. “I am sorry that I will hurt you again.” Kris nodded.

Then she screamed into the strap.

If you ever read Corum, Goffanon was a dwarf. A dwarf giant, but a dwarf nonetheless.

Irish made small adjustments to the image she was scanning. “Ooch.”

“Something wrong?” Jordan asked her.

“Wainwright. The man was an absolute genius. The way Archie's wetware joins with the biological elements, it's fascinating.”

Jordan nodded, agreeing with her. “The man was broken upstairs. Imagine the things he could have done if he were on the right side of things. As much as I hate to agree with it, I think Jason did the right thing calling that nuke in.”

“You really think that?”

“Aye, Love. I do. Wainwright would have just gotten worse over the years.”

Rocking back in her chair, Irish put her head back. “I honestly ha'e no idea if this can even be reversed. An' from what Archie said, it was all automated. It's like the man was using lasers when the rest of medical science was knocking holes in peoples skulls to let the demons out.”

Steveston isn't the boonies, Ms. McFarland. It's the sticks...

right before the boonies.

There are moments in your life when everything crystallizes and the whole world reshapes itself right down to its component molecules. And everything changes. I have looked upon the face of a Vorlon... Laurel. And nothing is the same anymore.

Tamlyn Tomita

What do you call a wreath made of $100 bills?
 

On 9/27/2021 at 9:56 PM, Pariah said:

Remember, there's no "I" in "team", but there are two in "schizophrenia".

There is. It's in the A-hole.

Some free advice. You ever get back there, you hoard toilet paper. You understand me? Hoard it. Hoard it like it's made of gold. Because it is.

Kudzu?

There's always room for a Does Your Mother Know.

Particularly in light of "The Corps is Mother. The Corps is Father."