Jegergryte's Crew

Some months back, I drew some player characters for Jegergryte's Edge of the Empire RPG player characters. I pushed my digital painting abilities, exercising my skills so they would be closer to what they should be if I am to land better freelance art jobs.

Jace

Jace Maverick is a swashbuckler with a vibrorapier and a charming smile. I thought I'd give him a costume design resembling the Naboo Security Force's.

The Kraken

Thracken "The Kraken" Artox is a grimy Rodian gadgeteer with a cyborg eye and a MerrSonn Type-434 "DeathHammer" heavy blaster pistol which obviously has been through a lot.

Doc

Doc Ariela Mengalic a.k.a. Ghia Necil Zilar is a Colonist / Doctor. She has a Tenloss DXR-6 disruptor rifle, a medpac on her hip and a bandolier of ready-to-use stimpacks.

Blue

Walian "Blue" Mothma is a human Force sensitive assassin who wields a BlasTech A280 blaster rifle, with a underslung grenade launcher.

Che Rohn

Che Rohn is a Cathar thief who wields a Merr-Sonn Quick6 blaster pistol with a grappling hook launcher attachment and a wrist-mounted dart shooter.

Syris

SY-RS2003.12 is a unique pilot smuggler droid with a Thunderer T-6 blaster pistol.

These are awesome player character concepts. Wish I was in this campaign with these characters.

Eclipse Phase: The Standoff at the Cumulus Hotel

Eclipse Phase: Clouds of a Morning Star continued from the previous session.

Location: Aphrodite Prime, about 50 km above Venus' surface.

Active Gamera Security (GamSec) Personnel: DANAI and Wandering Ina (and Wandering Ina-α) the infomorphs, William Cable Jr. - paranoid terrorist in a neotenic pod morph and Hokusai Tarnungshaut - neo-octopus artist in a slitheroid morph

Inactive Personnel: Badal Jones - Lunar Lagrange Alliance (LLA) envoy and Boris Ivanov Rasputin the Second - a neo-hominid lawyer in the shaper morph.

Mission: To provide security and investigative services to Badal's superior the LLA's ambassador during an art show at the Cumulus Hotel, where reclusive posthuman artist Marquis d’Homem-Christos from the asteroid 163693 Atira would be showcasing alien sculptures he collected from the extraterrestrial Factors. LLA had intercepted a vague communique about a terrorist attack during the event and would like the attack thwarted. Their secondary mission was to help Gretchen Ambelina of Pax Familae by covertly disrupting the Marquis' event which will deal a blow to the terraforming efforts of Venus, something the Solid Ground Initiaive (SGI) was a proponent of, and what Venusian terrorist groups like the Free Fall Network (FFN) were against.

Crossposted on Obsidian Portal.

A Happy Place

DANAI found herself frolicking in a green field beneath a bright blue sky and under a nourishing yellow sun. Baffled by current events, she looked down and discovered that she was in a body of a living fox, red bushy tail and all. What had happened before? She was uncertain.

Suddenly a window opened in the sky. A man looked at her from behind the window. Just when she wondered why there was a window in the sky, another one slid open seemingly across from the first window. Another man was there looking at her.

He then looked at the first man and asked, What does the fox say?

Then DANAI woke up from her strange dream.

Night's Black Agents: The Quiet Week At Brentford

I missed the last two Night's Black Agents RPG sessions.

Since inflitrating the freighter Heimdall in the Irish Sea, Nikolai Kaidanovsky, Sami Harkonen, Shiina "Misha" Mikado, Zlatan Kljulic and Abraham von Helsing the Russian borzoi hound (all wearing keffiyehs - even Abe) escaped and sank the ship killing the vampire hounds in the cargo compartment. They abducted the surviving technician Jones who told them everything he knew about the Emartech Pharmaceuticals' and Inish Medical Group's plans to use the haemocanis parasite-infected blood from Eastern Europe dogs for nefarious purposes. Before returning to London, Jones had to take a walk with Zlatan because he knew too much and could identify the agents.

It was time to stake out Inish. They rendezvous with Jacob Novazembla - who had returned from Italy - at their headquarters, while Misha had to forego the mission to visit her daughter. Before heading to Brentford in Ealing, Sami put Abe in the care of his dog handler contact out in the country.

The entire town of Brentford was under the thumb of Inish Medical. The Inish headquarters complex was a large building overlooking a golf course. A lot of the localtown services were contracted to Inish, such as security, medical and waste disposal. Information out of the town was monitored and filtered by Inish.

The founder of Inish Medical, Donal Inish, had died in a helicopter crash many years ago, leaving a wife. Among the confirmed vampires at Inish were Farris Barrar the Vice President of Safety who was the one that Misha saw tear the small-time mob boss Gary Camon into pieces. They also suspected one Mister Chow of being a vampire as well.

Jacob's contact at Blackberry Benny Snowden informed him that Inish was installing hardware and software in their servers that would allow encrypted communications for important employees via brand new Blackberry 10s. Jacob would infiltrate the heart of Inish Medical as "Rory Winston" one of the Blackberry employees tasked with installing and configuring the new gear. His real mission is to install a back door to their secured servers which the agents would be able to access.

Jacob, as Rory, got in easily enough. He was chaperoned by Anise, a beautiful Inish employee. While Jacob charmed the IT team over the course of five days, Nikolai, Sami and Zlatan stayed in B&Bs in town monitoring the situation. The IT team loved Jacob. They even went on a pub crawl that led to a brawl with some football hooligans, which the IT team later said they'd enjoyed! Jacob also learnt that Jessica Ellis, Zlatan's failed date (to put it lightly) and former Emartech employee from the Cardiff mission, was an informal security consultant there as well.

It was during the fifth day that Jacob, escorted by Anise, bumped into Vienna "Vin" Cesarescu, the vampire who was once their prisoner. She had been a member of the Camon Gang who was abducted by Inish Medical after the murder of Gary Camon and destruction of the group. Vin looked pale and anaemic.

In the deserted hallway, Vin hypnotised Anise, clouding her mind while she pleaded Jacob for help. She would meet him in the Rehabilitation Clinic level of the headquarters the next morning.

AND NOW THE CONCLUSION!

Day 06: The Penultimate Day

Information From Vienna

The Rehab Clinic took an entire ground floor of the Inish headquarters. It faced the golf course, although there was a security moat that prevented golfers from entering the facility grounds. Sami and Zlatan took up a reconnaissance position from within the bushes in the golf course. Encrypted comms allowed them radio contact with each other. Once in a while, golf balls would zip near their heads dangerously.

Doctor Who AITAS: The Flames of Salem

Doug ran a great Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG session just in time for Halloween! Continuing the previous session Feet of Flesh, Feet of Steel!

After discovering that the blue box that the Doctor and Cindy brought them into was bigger on the inside, Max Fox the amnesiac robot engineer from the year 3027 and Doctor Olujimi the Kenyan country doctor from 1975 were ready to leave the planet Klaris.

At the control room, the Doctor - looking bewildered - asked if they smelled something cooking. Max and Olujimi did. They followed the Doctor who ran through a doorway that brought them even deeper into the TARDIS. Ultimately, they halted in a room full of pipes. There was a heavily-built man, blonde and barrel-chested with thick arms wearing a grimy apron and a chef's hat. He was frying a kipper while singing The Turkish Song of the Dead. There was no stove, just glowing hot surfaces in the room. He had an array of condiments and a bottle of olive oil on a makeshift shelf on the wall, which might not have been designed to be a shelf. Olujimi asked, "Why do you have Popeye in your blue box, Doctor?"

He introduced himself as Sebastian Cuddy a sailor from Alaska who the Doctor picked up at a previous stop. He offered them some kipper, but the Doctor was aghast at his usage of the Transducer Modifier as a hot plate. After being chided by the Doctor, Sebastian cheerfully stowed away his cooking gear. Even the kipper was stuffed into his trousers pocket.

Sebastian appeared to believe that they were aboard a seagoing vessel, talking as if the TARDIS had a sail, an engine room and a bilge.

Without warning the lights went out. Even the Doctor was surprised. In the dark there emerged a ghostly vision of five faces: An African man wearing a top hat, a lady, a little girl who suddenly threw a spectral brick at Max scaring him, a shivering man with pointy ears and a woman with her eyes looking down. Suddenly the woman looked up at them and screamed a spine-tingling shriek.

As abruptly as it appeared, the vision disappeared.

The Doctor called everyone to follow him as he returned to the control room. He pulled on levers and pressed on buttons. Everything rocked and swayed violently. Cindy, Sebastian, Max and Olujimi struggled to stay on their feet.

The rocking ceased and the Doctor rushed to the entrance and opened the door. Cindy told the others, "You'll get used to this."

Episode 02

Salem, Massachusetts, 17th Century Earth

To Max and Olujimi's wonder, the TARDIS was now standing in a small clearing forest field surrounded by maple, oak and birch trees on what is recognisably the planet Earth. The Doctor led them all through the woods where he claimed there should be a town. Soon, horse-drawn carts were trundling past them and chimney smoke rose into the blue sky not far away.

Eclipse Phase: Web of the Jorōgumo

Eclipse Phase: Clouds of a Morning Star continued from the previous session at Wira Games and Hobbies.

Location: Aphrodite Prime, about 50 km above Venus' surface.

Active Gamera Security (GamSec) Personnel: DANAI and Wandering Ina (and Wandering Ina-α) the infomorphs, Boris Ivanov Rasputin the Second - a neo-hominid lawyer in the shaper morph, William Cable Jr. - paranoid terrorist in a neotenic pod morph and Hokusai Tarnungshaut - neo-octopus artist in a slitheroid morph.

Inactive Personnel: Badal Jones - Lunar Lagrange Alliance (LLA) envoy.

Mission: To provide security and investigative services to Badal's superior the LLA's ambassador during an art show at the Cumulus Hotel, where reclusive posthuman artist Marquis d’Homem-Christos would be showcasing alien sculptures he collected from the extraterrestrial Factors. LLA had intercepted a vague communique about a terrorist attack during the event and would like the attack thwarted. Their secondary mission was to help Gretchen Ambelina of Pax Familae by covertly disrupting the Marquis' event which will deal a blow to the terraforming efforts of Venus, something the Solid Ground Initiaive (SGI) was a proponent of, and what Venusian terrorist groups like the Free Fall Network (FFN) were against.

Crossposted on Obsidian Portal.

The Flurry of Planning Activities

Badal Jones stayed close to Karamojo Bell, his fellow Lunar ally and self-fashioned big game hunter from the Mare Imbrium Credit Union, whose biomorph killed during the battle with the flexbot combiner at the Ikea-Tata Constructions site at the Aviary. Unfortunately for Badal, Bell in his new morph has a new fun hobby: to get infected with tailored extinct diseases, enjoy the suffering and then purge the disease before the end. If he died from the disease, he would just happily resleeve in a new morph and enjoy a new disease all over again.

Elsewhere, Cable was just finishing up in a healing vat in a hospital, the medichines in his body expediting the treatment. Hokusai arrived to visit with some flowers. Unsure what to do with the flowers, he dumped the entire bouquet over the top of Cable's vat. Boris arrived shortly just in time to see flower petals drift down toward Cable's face.

Then Cable munched on them.

Back at the airship in his sheldon morph, Ina was preparing to unleash his DDOS attack onto the whole aerostat city's security systems. When Aphrodite Prime's systems would be under attack, it was hoped that the FFN's embedded agent would be flushed out. Meanwhile, out in the skies over Aphrodite Prime, a regatta was underway. Sleek, lighter-than-air racing dirigibles were circling the city's airspace.

Suddenly, the GamSec mesh network alerted them that the Marquis d'Homem Christos was now farcasting into his body all the way from his asteroid 163693 Atira. Isolated within the Marquis' resleeving computer in Total Rekall Resleeving Inc., DANAI and Ina-α were ready for action.

Irfan at the Game Shop

Earlier today, there was an Eclipse Phase game at Wira Games and Hobbies in Subang Jaya. Irfan came along for the ride. At first his plan was to buy his own set of polyhedral dice. His Own Stuff that he'll be able to use with games like Swords and Wizardry whose quickstart he'd printed out. Then he planned on reading or watching us play. However, Chang, the owner of Wira Games had a better idea.

He and his staff taught Irfan to paint Warhammer Fantasy miniatures, starting with a High Elf mini.

EOTE: Aggressive Negotiations

Edged by the Empire

Episode 03 Aggressive Negotiations

The Star Wars RPG adventure continues from the previous session with Act 2 of The Long Arm of the Hutt free downloadable adventure (PDF download, low res version, 2.4MB). The original title of this chapter is Geonosian Negotiations.

On the run from Teemo the Hutt, the smuggler Hondo Pash found himself with new Twi'lek allies on Ryloth after helping to overthrow a bullying mining boss at the town of New Meen. The Twi'leks of Nabat, including the commander Nyn Kablo and the fighter Numa, helped Hondo to repair the YT-1300 light freighter that he had liberated from the Trandoshan slaver Trex. The ship had now been renamed Lava Jaeger.

Yeesh. I need to organise things better.

Farewell to Ryloth

The return trip from New Meen to Nabat was uneventful. The Twi'lek miner B'ura B'an had decided to stay behind at New Meen to help with the clean up. Upon their arrival, they immediately reported to Nyn Kablo, who informed them that a crashed Dunelizard fighter was found about 30 klicks south of Nabat. It might have been the one that attacked the Lava Jaeger (then the Krayt Fang) during their Ryloth approach. No pilot was found, but they discovered a partial holo recording of Teemo the Hutt ordering a Kubaz named Thwheek to kill a Geonosian droid engineer. The recording of Teemo said, "The Geonosians must never know what Sivor discovered. Archduke Poggle the Irredeemable (no relation to Archduke Poggle the Lesser) of the Kaliklak Hive must never know we killed Sivor if we are to purchase battle droids from him. Bring Sivor to Trex. He'll dispose of the body. Meanwhile, track down this Hondo Pash and kill him."

Why had Teemo ordered the Archduke's droid engineer killed? What had Sivor found out? Numa said, "We must not let Teemo have battle droids. We have to stop it."

Numa geared up with an armoured jacket and grabbed an EE-3 blaster rifle that she had left with Kablo for safekeeping. As they headed for the Lava Jaeger, they saw someone slink out of the docking bay's front door. It was a Kubaz. Thwheek?

The Kubaz unholstered his blaster pistol. Numa fired a burst to distract him. It worked as Hondo's subsequent shot hit the Kubaz. Although wounded, he still stood. The Kubaz's blaster scored a blow. Hondo was hurt (minus 9 wounds to 3 Wound Threshold.) Numa managed to shoot his pistol out of his hands (Triumph in an attack roll.) He attempted to jump the weapon but failed to grab the tumbling blaster. Hondo had his DL-17 pistol trained on the Kubaz and he pulled the trigger. A flash heralded a billow of smoke from the Kubaz's chest.

Kablo and other armed Twi'lek came running to see what the commotion was all about. Hondo found two grenades on the Kubaz. Before their flight to Geonosis, both Numa and Hondo performed a visual inspection but did found nothing out of the ordinary on or aboard the black-and-yellow Lava Jaeger.

The Lava Jaeger

Mecha Kaiju Cover

After producing some interior artwork for Heroic Journey Publishing's Mecha Mercenaries last year, they commissioned some more artwork for their new supplement, Kaiju: A Mecha Supplement of Terrible Creatures and Giant Fighting Robots to be released in the near future.

Click here to check out Mecha Mercenaries at RPGNow. You would require the Chris Perrin's Mecha RPG core rule book to run the game.

Check out the cover of the mecha Experimental XJ-13 versus the spaceborne kaiju Taoitora below.

Eclipse Phase: The Great White Hunter Job

Eclipse Phase: Clouds of a Morning Star continued from the previous session at Wira Games and Hobbies.

Location: Aphrodite Prime, about 50 km above Venus' surface.

Active Gamera Security (GamSec) Personnel: Badal Jones - Lunar Lagrange Alliance (LLA) envoy in the splicer morph, Boris Ivanov Rasputin the Second - a neo-hominid lawyer in the shaper morph, William Cable Jr. - paranoid terrorist in a neotenic pod morph and Hokusai Tarnungshaut - neo-octopus artist in a slitheroid morph.

Inactive Personnel: DANAI and Wandering Ina.

Mission: To provide security and investigative services to Badal's superior the LLA's ambassador during an art show at the Cumulus Hotel, where reclusive posthuman artist Marquis d’Homem-Christos would be showcasing alien sculptures he collected from the extraterrestrial Factors. LLA had intercepted vague communique about a terrorist attack during the event and would like the attack thwarted. Their secondary mission was help Gretchen Ambelina of Pax Familae by covertly disrupting the Marquis' event which will deal a blow to the terraforming efforts of Venus, something the Solid Ground Initiaive (SGI) was a proponent of, and what Venusian terrorist groups like the Free Fall Network (FFN) were against.

Crossposted on Obsidian Portal.

A New Arrival

After being briefed by GamSec office administrator The Wandering Kid on Gerlach station, newly-employed lawyer Boris, wearing a shaper morph skinned as a male splicer, arrived at Aphrodite Prime to rendezvous with the team and brought up to speed on the mission.  His job would be to use local law to their advantage and to take down enemies. Boris was more of an intellectual property specialist than an Inner System Law specialist but he would have to do. (His Thrown Weapons skill was 40% so perhaps he could throw the book at enemies.)

A Convention Grounded Solid

The SGI was hosting a convention to lobby for terraforming on Venus at the Cumulus Hotel to the Morningstar Constellation, the political cooperative governing Venus. A minor ballroom was reskinned in AR to look like a lush, green tropical paradise with palm trees, sand and the sea. Waiters served pina coladas. People from near and far came in attendance to hear what SGI was offering. Socialites, politicians, businessmen.

Badal entered the ballroom, under his official LLA envoy capacity. His bodyguard was Hokusai, in his "Heinrich Ausfahrt Plissken" cover ID for GamSec and an official security contractor for the LLA. Boris also arrived to schmooze with those in attendance, attempting to obtain intel and if possible discover and ferret out names of possible terrorist agents. Cable sat outside in the hotel reception area, connected to everyone else via GamSec's secure mesh network.

SGI was pushing for healthy place to live and wellness on Venus. 160 years of investment is nothing for a green Venus for the children's children to live on.

Eclipse Phase: Machinations of a Lumpy Space Princess

The entry title for this Eclipse Phase session report is play on the title of the game Machinations of the Space Princess from Postmortem Press.

Gamera Security's Venusian investigations continued: Kai took on the role of neotenic-morphed Billy Cable Jr. (a.k.a. Brandon Leigh), Darren played infomorph DANAI (a.k.a. Vadislav Sender) and I was again the slitheroid-morphed Hokusai Tarnungshaut (a.k.a. Heinrich Ausfahrt Plissken).

Andrew's Venusian glider-morphed Wandering Ina (a.k.a. Kana) and Matthew's Badal Jones the Lunar Lagrange Alliance Envoy were absent and was used as NPCs at crucial times of the session.

Ivan GMed, as this photo shows:

The mission, which continued from the previous session, was to help Badal Jones with the security for his LLA ambassador's contingent as they attended the art show that would display the Factors' alien sculpture pieces collected by the reclusive posthuman artist Marquis d’Homem-Christos at the Cumulus Hotel on Aphrodite Prime. There was a second, a more secretive mission from Gretchen Ambelina of Pax Familae: which is to sabotage the art show. The team had decided that these two missions could be run side-by-side without any conflicts of interests.

Adventures in Lumpy Space

First thing in the morning, Cable aided Hokusai to build up Rep for his art social media meshsite renamed Obloquy (the original name Digital Easel didn't have a controversial online activist vibe enough. Also it sucked). Hokusai would update socially controversial artwork, slam heads together, induce squabbling then try to gain and sift intel from squabblers, by pushing the right buttons with people in F-Rep circles. Hokusai's cover ID in Obloquy was Pickman Algol, Cable's was The Lumpy Space Ambassador and although he hadn't activated his account yet, DANAI planned on being an online troll with an opposing viewpoint named Shasta.

Hokusai uploaded a digital painting of the disc of the planet Venus with three layers. The top third of the planet - encompassing the northern hemisphere - showed greenery and life. The middle equatorial third showed Venus' surface as it was. The bottom third was a mishmash of darkness and burning human skeletons that trailed bits of flame and debris into space.

Apparently this "Pickman Algol" dandy was against the terraforming of Venus.

EOTE: Rugged Road to the Ryll Mines Part 2

Edged by the Empire

Episode 02 Rugged Road to the Ryll Mines, Part 2

I totally forgot when this Triumph came up.

The adventure continues from the previous entry: I ran the second session for Act 1 of The Long Arm of the Hutt free downloadable adventure (PDF download, low res version, 2.4MB) on Tuesday morning.

Barreling Through the Badlands

The mission began in the morning. B'ura and Hondo were joined by a Rutian Twi'lek female named Numa. She was in her early twenties and bore a blaster pistol and a vibroknife. Kablo brought them to the east end of Nabat where a tech crew was rolling out an old landspeeder from storage. They were to head east through the badlands for about 300 klicks.

At first piloting a speeder over the badlands was a cinch. Then rocky mounds appeared, and forced Hondo to steer carefully past the dangerous rocks. However (with a Piloting - Planetary roll that resulted in a Triumph) Hondo was able to swerve past all obstacles with no problems.

Fifty klicks from New Meen a tall mound of reddish, misshappen rocks loomed to their right as they passed it. (Hondo failed a Perception check so...) A sniper blaster bolt struck the speeder's right engine. Failing to avert a crash, both Hondo and Numa were lightly injured, and B'ura was unhurt. Numa used a stimpack to treat her own wounds and pulled back behind the crashed speeder's chassis.

However a well-placed bolt struck B'ura as he leapt for cover, badly injuring him. (11 damage out of 12 Wound Threshold - 3 successes with a 8 damage blaster rifle.)

EOTE: Rugged Road to the Ryll Mines Part 1

Edged by the Empire

Episode 02 Rugged Road to the Ryll Mines, Part 1

With the new EotE Core Rulebook, Irfan earlier created his own player character based on the Beginner Game pregenerated character Pash. His new PC in named Hondo Pash, a smuggler with a pilot specialisation, and purchased the Talents Let's Ride, Galaxy Mapper and Skilled Jockey. He wields a DH-17 blaster pistol and a vibrosword. His story continues from Pash's story from Escape from Mos Shuuta from the Edge of the Empire Beginner Game.

His Obligation was to the safety of his younger sister Yuzy Pash who lived on Tatooine. Fortunately, the Obligation was not triggered at the start of the game.

Previously, Hondo, who escaped the wrath of Teemo the Hutt - a crime boss based in the city of Mos Shuuta on Tatooine - by evading the Hutt's thugs, Imperial stormtoopers and stole the Krayt Fang, a rust-colored YT-1300 light freighter that belonged to Trex, a Trandoshan bounty hunter. After a brief skirmish with TIE fighters launched from an Imperator-class Star Destroyer, Hondo made a short jump to lightspeed and escaped his pursuers.

Quick Pause at the Heliopause

The Krayt Fang reverted back to realspace at the edge of the Tatooine system. There were loud klaxons, flashing alert icons at the navicomputer and loud snorting and grunting sounds coming from the cockpit speakers. Worst of all, there was a nasty stench from which there was no escape aboard the ship. Hondo tried to determine the source of the spoor but failed. (And thus incurred a Setback die for every dice pool thereon.)

Hondo shut off the klaxons and the Gamorrean opera (he discovered on the audio player's playlist). Then he found that one of the alert icons denoted that fuel was low. The navicomputer tagged the Ryloth system as the only location the ship could reach to refuel before fuel was depleted. However, he was unable to decipher the second alert icon.

The smuggler made the jump to Ryloth without any problem. (The Galaxy Mapper talent removed the stench-caused Setback die to the Astrogation roll.)

Pui-ui

The Pui-ui was a sapient species created by Brian Daley for his 1980 novel Han Solo and the Lost Legacy. (I love the book. I've even ran games that took different gaming groups to Dellalt a few times.) I searched the internet for pictures of them but none was to be found. So I thought I'd paint some simple sketches of the alien. According to the Wookieepedia article there were two versions descibed in two different versions of A Guide to the Star Wars Universe.

There were suggestions on Twitter for me to draw both versions. So here they are, each with character ideas for RPGs.

Pui-ui Gunslinger, Velasco variant.

For a larger view at DeviantArt, click here.

Pui-ui Explorer, Slaviscek variant.

For a larger view at DeviantArt, click here.

Westward is Released!

Westward, the role-playing game from Wicked North Games whose development I have been involved with in this past year, has finally been released. Westward is a game of steampunk wild west set on an human-colonized extrasolar planet.

Players and gamemasters of this game play and create adventures around humans whose ancestors were marooned on the planet Westward centuries ago. Lack of conventional power generation has created new technology that uses exotic local minerals and steam to build airships and steam-powered mech. Politics of the cities and settlements make for great conflict for players to embroil themselves in. And deadly alien creatures and hazards await adventurers in the dry badlands of Westward.

I'd like to thank Wicked North Games for the opportunity to work on this product and with a host of talented writers and artists, some of which have been people I've admired since the early '90s.

Download a pay-what-you-want low resolution version here. Download a Premium version of the PDF here.

The physical books are at the printers' and will be on sale in a week or so.

In the meantime, check out the Westward tag on this blog here for posts of game artwork!

Eclipse Phase: Electromatic For The People

Last time on Eclipse Phase: Clouds of a Morning Star the team was joined by Matthew's player character Christoph de Beers from the Jovian Republic.

However, there was a quantum temporal flux and the character metamorphed into the Lunar Lagrange Alliance envoy Badal Jones, a Welshman. The out-of-character retcon avoided difficulties of roleplaying a character from a racist, pure humans-only society mixed with a group of posthuman player characters.

Also, Kai played neotenic-morphed Billy Cable Jr. (a.k.a. Brandon Leigh), Andrew played Venusian glider-morphed Wandering Ina (a.k.a. Kana), Darren played infomorph DANAI (a.k.a. Vadislav Sender) and I was back as the slitheroid-morphed Hokusai Tarnungshaut (a.k.a. Heinrich Ausfahrt Plissken).

Jones had commissioned Gamera Security's services for the upcoming art gallery event at the Cumulus Hotel at Aphrodite Prime. The event would display Factors' alien sculpture pieces collected by the reclusive posthuman artist Marquis d’Homem-Christos who lived on the asteroid 163693 Atira and would be farcasting to Venus in a few days.

The mission objectives were clear: Jones engaged GamSec to protect the LLA ambassador during the show and (two session ago, when I was absent) Gretchen Ambelina informed Cable that she wanted the show to fail. The two objectives were not necessarily exclusive. They need to ensure the LLA visitors' safety while they sabotaged the event.

But how would they do that?

Doctor Who AITAS: Feet of Flesh, Feet of Steel

Doug GMed Cubicle 7's Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space RPG for Irfan and I for the first time and it was an enjoyable night. For Irfan this was the first time someone other than me was the gamemaster.

We played Fox and Olujimi just as they were stranded on the planet Klaris in the far future after hunting and failing to detain the big game hunter Breybrooke who was driven insane, corrupted by alien technology he had unearthed in Kenya in the year 1977.

Episode 01

Klaris

The game began as the duo was dining with their impromptu host Hermis, a Klarisian who served them haphis, a floating and slowly-spinning ball of edible mass that replenished itself as it was being scooped by cutlery. Olujimi thought it would taste more like cheese but it did not. Fox just ate away in silence.

Stranded on Klaris

City guards knocked on Hermis' door, and the guard leaded, a woman named Hollis, insisted that the newcomers who helped fight off Breybrooke be brought before their leaders. The guards were heavily hooded and gazed only at the floor. Hollis took them through the Klarisian city with domed buildings, columns and floating light globes. Olujimi and Fox were brought to a tall chamber with alien sculptures that floated and appeared to slightly move. Obus, a hooded man wearing elaborate robes and a tall collar awaited them there.

Doctor Who AITAS: Fox and Olujimi

Irfan and I made player characters for Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space RPG. We might be playing the characters Doctor Simon Olujimi and Max Fox soon, game mastered by Doug.

Here is their backstory and how they came to be travelling with the Doctor:

Big game hunter Lord Percival Breybrooke was on a safari in the Kenyan jungle in 1977 when he was corrupted by alien tech that he had unwittingly unearthed. The alien tech grafted itself onto him and drove him insane. He went on a killing spree, shooting humans and animals with his arm-grafted energy weapon.

Doctor Olujimi was the one treating injured villagers. All of a sudden, a man mysteriously popped out of nowhere, with a burnt out wrist Vortex Manipulator. This temporal event somehow activated a similar time device on Lord Breybrooke's alien graft and he was shunted into another time in a burst of light. The newcomer had no memory of who he was, but he had a holocard on him that read, "Max Fox, Robot Mechanic" with the date "3027 A.D." written on the back. Even bereft of memory, Max repaired the Vortex Manipulator and discovered that it had only enough power for two additional jumps with two passengers. They decided to stop Lord Breybrooke together by chasing him through time. By using the Vortex Manipulator's time sensors to lock on to Breybrooke's temporal signature, they jumped back in time and cornered him 100 million years B.C., where he had been killing dinosaurs at random. But he escaped to the far future where he hunted alien citizens of an extrasolar planet named Klaris. Lord Breybrooke succeeded in escaping them once more, and the duo was stranded on this alien planet.

The TARDIS appeared. The Doctor then helped Fox and Olujimi with their immediate plight and took them as Companions. The Doctor realised that they were men out of time and wished to return them where they belong, but dangerous circumstances kept getting in their way... like Autons, Daleks and Cybermen (where Max Fox's Robot Mechanic skills were invaluable, again even though he was an amnesiac).

And they were still looking to thwart the time rogue Percival Breybrooke.

Eclipse Phase: A Jovian Jovially Joins

Last time on Eclipse Phase: Clouds of a Morning Star... the Gamera Security hypercorp gang was involved in several events, namely Cable played by Kai having a freefall date with Gretchen Ambelina of Pax Familae down through the lethal atmosphere of Venus, and Darren's AGI DANAI having to perform an impromptu psychosurgery on the other AGI Wandering Ina, played by Andrew.

But I was absent because of Eid vacation and stuff. In-character, Hokusai was busy setting up a new online ID and creating an art community site called the Digital Easel to boost his F-Rep and attempt intelligence gathering there. (Or is he?)

This week!

We were met by Captain Christoph de Beers an envoy from the Jovian Republic with military background, played by Matthew. Christoph's superior Ambassador Marie MacDonnoll will be attending the invitation-only Marquis d’Homem-Christos' art show, which will showcase the sculpture he acquired from the mysterious aliens called the Factors to be held at the ballroom of the Cumulus Hotel at the aerostat Aphrodite Prime.

Gamera Security was recommended by one Jovian Major Kate Stackhoff (from episode #somenumber which I did not participate in) back in Jupiter space, who noticed that Gamera matched the profile of another troubleshooter hypercorp she was familiar with named the Fastball Express. (All the forks all the time!)

Miridon - with Stats!

I owe this blog a Miridon stats entry. Miridon is a sea monster that appeared in the Droids animated series.

Miridon

This big aquatic carnivorous reptile was seen swimming in the oceans of Tarnoonga used by pirates to dispose of unwanted guests, and also trying to eat said pirates who were not really smart to begin with. It spends its time in rocky caverns and crevices underwater

Edge of the Empire Core Rulebook

Upon arriving home from Pasir Mas after an overnight drive via Jeli, Gerik and Kuala Kangsar, I discovered this note from the post office right outside the door of the house.

So Irfan and I went to pick it up. It was a box and I was ecstatic at the size, shape and weight of it. Even if I was cautious about it. With my luck, it could have easily been some court summons because I'd accidentally strangled some duck to death 15 years ago or some weird thing like that.