adventure – Page 9

Adventure Seed: Vengeance of the Weevil Empire.

Vengeance of the Weevil Empire

“Good morning, Agents. [Picture appears, of an elderly Caucasian male with glasses and a short beard] This is a picture of Harvey Grisham of Tuttle, Kentucky. On May 17, 1995 he opened his back door to discover that an alien colony ship had crash-landed in his very extensive and back yard. The ship was from the Radiant Glorious Space Weevil Empire (their own name for themselves cannot be translated into a human language), and had been damaged while heading for an uninhabited colony world. Please note that the average Space Weevil [picture appears, of a beetle-like creature wearing a shiny jumpsuit, with a penny for scale] is about three quarters of an inch long, which meant that the entire colony ship – one rated for about 100,000 colonists – was about the length and volume of a mid-sized car.

Continue reading Adventure Seed: Vengeance of the Weevil Empire.

Adventure seed: The Devil Double-Bind

Somewhere out there in the multiverse there is a continuum where the forces of supernatural Good and Evil are locked in a nigh-eternal struggle. Neither side wishes to provoke a final battle, because neither side is confident of victory. So an armed and often threadbare truce barely holds, but is bitterly resented by both sides. Both sides scheme and plot and hatch byzantine plans to gain momentary advantage. Often the plans are subtle and complex, as befits the machinations of immortals…

And sometimes there’s just a disaster in the paperwork.

Continue reading Adventure seed: The Devil Double-Bind

Adventure/Item RPG Seed: Belief Sinks

Belief Sinks

Once upon a time, there was magic in the world, powered by the beliefs and dreams of people. But those who secretly ruled the world decided that that not everybody who could wield magic deserved to wield magic – and that there wasn’t enough magic to go around anyway. So they had their own magicians create special mystical devices that would suck up all the magic in the area, and concentrate it in one place. That would allow the secret rulers to properly control who got access to the magic, and keep it out of the hands of those that the secret rulers disapproved of. And it worked! It worked so well that eventually the secret rulers forgot to keep good records of how to make those special mystical devices. But that was fine, because there were plenty in storage. So they all lived happily ever after – well, everybody who mattered did, at least.

And then the Industrial Revolution happened. Steam power! Vaccinations! Germ theory of disease! Anesthesia! Nutrition science! Suddenly human-powered magic generation was no longer a scarcity problem. Quite the opposite, in fact: the stuff was building up. And when magic builds up too much… things can happen. Sometimes good things; sometimes bad things. Sometimes both at once, or, well, plaid things. Trust me; if you ever see a plaid event in the field you’ll know what I mean by that. And wish that you hadn’t. Continue reading Adventure/Item RPG Seed: Belief Sinks

Adventure seed: The American Herd.

The mundane details are all true, by the way.

The American Herd

Oh, this one is tricky, esoterically speaking.

It goes like this: there is an ethnic/linguistic group in Africa called the Maasai. They live more or less in Kenya, where they herd and maintain a semi-nomadic lifestyle. And, about a decade and a half ago, a certain attack in NYC prompted one tribe of the Maasai to gift the American people with some of their cattle. This is significant because one of the folk traditions of the Maasai is that they in fact were given all the cattle in the world by God; apparently the rest of us are simply taking care of the cows until a Maasai tribesman can come to collect them (yes, not unrelatedly: the Maasai are legendary cattle rustlers). So just giving the USA some of their cows is… ‘significant’ is not the word to use. Try ‘remarkable’ and ‘virtually unprecedented.’

Continue reading Adventure seed: The American Herd.

Adventure seed: The Liberty Artifact.

The Liberty Artifact

“Good morning, Agents. Yesterday afternoon this item was brought in voluntarily by a movie memorabilia collector who purchased it on e-Bay, under the mistaken belief that he was bidding on a prop from the film Cloverfield:

Continue reading Adventure seed: The Liberty Artifact.

Adventure seed: Topeka Wireless Interplanetary Telegraphy Company.

Blame this.

Topeka Wireless Interplanetary Telegraphy Company

Established 1921

This company does not exist in electronic record, so don’t bother looking it up. The thing is, though: it should: the state of Kansas has older companies in its online database. However, for some reason, the only files are all in paper form and stuck in an archive somewhere. Very likely misfiled, too. Continue reading Adventure seed: Topeka Wireless Interplanetary Telegraphy Company.