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.

Painting Plates

Since Yaya loves doing artwork so much (just like a certain Pak Yope of hers), we found a place nearby, Paintbrush Pottery, where you can choose something ceramic (a plate, figurine, etc.), paint it, and they would fire it up and glaze it for you. It was a nice Saturday afternoon surprise activity for Yaya. She wasted no time in choosing an owl plate to paint and an angry bird figurine for Adik.

13th Anniversary and Raya Haji in KL

It was Sitiawan's turn for balik kampung Aidiladha this year. But I did not get paid for a work I invoiced so we could not gas up to go anywhere far. So Atok and Opah travelled from Sitiawan to Kuala Lumpur for the holiday. Also, Irfan's exam week was looming. Coincidentally, Aidiladha was also the 13th wedding anniversary of Ain and I.

So we decided to scrape up something for the day.

13 years through... a lot of things. Amazing things. Not so amazing things. Unbelievably inspirational events. Events that would destroy the spirit of anyone not prepared. Things I do not mention even in this blog. I owe a lot of people a lot of things. My parents. Sila and Vin. But without Ain to prop against and support my weight in the worst of times, it would have been a different world today.

After solat Aidiladha, we took photos. As usual Atok's camera and photography skills produced some great pictures.

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.

Return to Orange Beach - The Other Stuff

So now that we are done with the beach pictures and the pool pictures, here are some of the other fun pictures taken during our trip to Orange Beach.

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Return to Orange Beach - The Pool

So the beach pictures are done. Now for some pictures of the fun we had at the hotel pool in Orange Beach, AL.

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Return to Orange Beach - The Beach

Contrary to popular belief, the beach in Orange Beach, AL is actually not orange. In fact, the sand was beautiful, white, fine sand. Wheee! We loved it so much when we went there in April that we decided to go back there for a longer almost week-long vacation there in September. At the time of this entry, it has been almost a month since we were there, but given my track record it's a wonder it's only been delayed a few weeks. Hehe

We chose to go after the Labor Day weekend, so not only was it fairly quiet, and we had the beach mostly to ourselves, but it was still hot and summery. And with off-season rates, well, it was icing on the cake.

Rafe's 21 Month Birthday

And the boy is now 21 months old! 3 more months and he's two! Wheee!

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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.

62 Months

Sixty-two months since the girl was born!

The hat was a gift from Pak Yope and Wan Yong way back in 2010.

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Irfan's Eleven

Irfan's eleven now!

It started when we thought about inviting Emma's forthcoming family-in-law for dinner. It just so happened that it was on Irfan's weekend's birthday! So unlike other years, Irfan had more people over for his birthday than before, including the forementioned forecoming familiy-in-law of Farid's, Irfan's cousin Aiman and Zara, and his schoolmate Fikri our neighbour from the next tower (but the same arcology - so to speak).

Irfan sliced up his cake using his melee weapons skill.

I got a photo of Ain with Irfan. But because everyone was busy with guests, no photo of me was taken.

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.

Picnic at Sungai Gabai

It had been awhile since we went for a picnic at the waterfalls of Ulu Langat. So last Sunday, we went for a morning drive out to the country and headed for the Sungai Gabai picnic area near the small town of Sungai Lui. Ain had made mee goreng the previous night for the picnic.

I was worried that there would be excessive traffic because of the three-day Malaysia Day holiday weekend, but because it was early in the morning the roads were clear and parking was relaively easy. However, there were a lot of visitors already there at the picnic site.

We have been at Sungai Gabai once before, but I could barely remember the earlier visit. We would remember this visit as we got wet in the river and had mee goreng there. Also, because we took photos and there's a blog post about this visit. So yeah, it would be remembered. Unless the blog died for some reason and I lost all the photos and we did not talk about it for decades after. But I digress. 

Without using any sort of airborne drones we identified an empty spot by the river on the far bank, so we crossed the bridge to take it. 

I took a photo of the falls while we crossed the bridge. We did not approach the falls during this visit. Perhaps later.

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?

Mysterio's Fishbowl Head

What the world needs right now is universal peace.

That, and a drawing of Quentin Beck's head as a fishbowl.

Salvage Ops Card Art

Here are a series of artwork for Salvage Ops card game by DWD Studios. Players play members from four space salvage corporations. Here are five of the gear in space derelicts that the players could grab for points during the game, and two of the hazard card artwork that might thwart your operations!

Purchase the game, which is now available at GameCrafters!

Cybergenetic Codex

Devastator Cannon

Jump Gate Generator

Multifusion Reactor

Polylingual Decoder

Hazard: Alien

Hazard: Robot

Rafe's 20 Month Birthday

Our intrepid hero is now 20 months old! Whee!

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