Case Files of the Knights of St. Phanourious: Pinemarten, Ontario - Session 5

Previously:

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

Prepping for a session < Drinking 2L of Coca-Cola Zero™ and bantering for an hour about Slam Frank and so on to pad out the session length

Our party is:
Bart "Codekiller" Regis
Manhoman "Dr. House" Kamaroff (portrayed by friend of the blog deus ex parabola)
Auggy "Shillelagh" Ashe
Rob "The Belt / The Punisher" Wagner 

So: The party is in Rodnovprom's repurposed mining facility, with fire trucks from Sudbury arriving soon to respond to their call for a plan they didn't end up using. Rob makes the party promise that if his head is removed and his brain unspooled that they will take a picture and show it to his daughters. Bart adds that they should also show Rob's daughters Bart's picture of a goblin, as they will surely believe it if shown alongside an unnaturally-mutilated corpse.

After looting the lab they find car keys in the pocket of one of the less-mangled Norsefire corpses, pick up that xanned-out and Hypha'd-up technician, load him up in the back of the car (a grey 2016 Mazda CX-3), and zip out of there just as the fire trucks arrive. They debate ways to convince the technician to come up with a cure for the Hypha, such as by locking him inside an AirBnB and gaslighting him into believing that the Hypha has caused the apocalypse outside.

They get a call from their boss in the Knights of St. Phanourious - A Mr. Alistair Whittwhicky - and are cautioned about the high profile they're making for themselves in Pinemarten. Alistair advises them that their boys in the lab have analyzed the pattern of the sites of the head-removals and brain-unspoolings and found that they form a spiral that starts well out of town and is drawing inwards, centered on the Rodnovprom mine. The party arranges to have a sample of the Hypha mailed back to Knights HQ in England, and for a 'care package' of anti-fungals, ammunition, and amphetamines to be delivered to them in Pinemarten.

Hoping to catch Sarah Chepovetsky, the Rodnovprom CEO, they head to the Rodnovprom office in town, only to find it hastily abandoned due to them live-streaming their slaughter of the Norsefire security team to Sarah last session. Breaking in they set off the alarm, but quickly shut it down, and Codekiller lives up to his name by hacking into Sarah's computer.

Investigating her emails and documents, they find: correspondence with Volodymyr, the head of Norsefire, telling him to knock it off with agitating the locals, conversations with military higher-ups in the Ukrainian and Canadian forces as well as NATO getting hyped for the Hypha project, a back-and-forth with the Hawk & Beetle Club - some rich local weirdos - to get permission to repurpose the mine, and plans to fly back to Kiev out of Toronto in the next couple days. They consider calling in a bomb threat to delay the flight so they can hunt her down, but ultimately decide against it.

On the payroll they find the address of an employee, Adidas Jones, which is along the projected curve of the spiral of unusual killings.

Deciding that at this point they should try and check out the Borderland, Codekiller puts some lo-fi beats to study to to lull Rob to sleep on the break room couch. Rob drifts off and finds himself face-down in a muddy crater, from where he skulks off to a shack in the woods nearby, spooked by the sight of some great shadowy silhouette slowly circling on the horizon.

He finds the shack open to an apartment in some urban center, wherein someone was clearly tortured, with notes in Cyrillic written on napkins on a table. He snaps pictures of the location and the notes on his phone (which was on his person when he fell asleep - his clothes and such are also the same as in his sleeping condition), then tries the door to the kitchen only to find it opens to an underground pantry. In there he goes up through the trapdoor and finds himself in a partially-collapsed warehouse.

In the warehouse he encounters a skittish young soldier named Vasily (who Rob recognizes from a comatose body in the mine facility), who informs him that they're stuck in some sort of living hell wherein they can't permanently die, and that his fellow soldiers have snapped from the stress under the 'leadership' (repeated torture and murder) of a man named Mikhail, and are now hunting down anyone they can get their hands on - among other threats like screaming drones with the faces of men and bipedal wolves and so on.

Rob gets Vasily to shoot him in the head, which he does, and Rob jolts awake back in the Rodnovprom office. He informs the party of what he learned and transcribes the notes from the photos he took in the Borderland. Bart translates them and finds they are a transcript of the capture and interrogation of Moroz (the mentally-disturbed homeless man they themselves tormented for several sessions).

They resolve that next time they should all inject the Hypha and enter the Borderland together. 

Join us next week(?) for more oodles of fun.

Case Files of the Knights of St. Phanourious: Pinemarten, Ontario - Session 4

Previously:

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Peace was never an option.

Our party is:
Bart "Codekiller" Regis
Manhoman "Dr. House" Kamaroff (portrayed by friend of the blog deus ex parabola)
Auggy "Shillelagh" Ashe
Rob "The Belt / The Punisher" Wagner

They begin this session in Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms, Rob surrounded by armed guards in a wrecked van, Auggy hiding with a terrified teenage arsonist, and Manhoman tending to a shot Bart in the woods nearby.

I'm writing this a few weeks after the session and through banks of brain-fog, so this will be less of a beat-by-beat summary and more of a gisticulation of the session:

• Outnumbered and outgunned, the party surrenders, and are taken prisoner by the remaining Norsefire personnel, who accuse them of being Russian spies.
• They are brought to a medical facility hidden inside the defunct mine, where comatose and severely-injured people are being held in rows of medical beds, hooked up to IVs and monitors and suchlike.
• Rob, the first to be captured, is strapped to a bed and hooked up to an IV - though he was cleverly able to hide a holdout pistol on himself that got through the pat-down.
• Not willing to be injected with whatever it was the goons were planning on injecting them with, the party tussles with them, and through a truly divine series of rolls actually turns the tables on the Norsefire guys, and have them pinned behind a medical bed.
• Attempting to negotiate, the head of the Norsefire squad tosses the party his phone, on a call to his boss, the CEO of Rodnovprom, Sarah Chepovetsky.
• The party is unwilling to make a deal, and accuse Rodnovprom of being behind the monster that's been unspooling people's brain-matter. Sarah professes ignorance, the party does not buy it, and with an improvised explosive blast the remaining goons to kingdom come.
• The party then searches through the mine-facility, looking for clues and survival horror game environmental storytelling voice logs.
• They make their way to the grow-op section of the facility, where they find and intimidate a technician - the same technician who was supplying Debbie and Marlin. He tells them that the facility is growing a fungoid hyper-dimensional organism they call "the Hypha", which is able to link the minds of those in suppressed states of consciousness into a shared dream-realm called the Borderland created from their memories. Rodnovprom aimed to use the minds of casualties of the Russian-Ukraine War to create a next-gen military training simulator for NATO.
•  They press the technician for a cure for the Hypha, or else a way to extract it from Rob, but he says he doesn't know how. They kill him, or maybe they don't, I'll have to double-check, and then they leave the facility.

Video Game Reviews

Look ma, I'm like that more-respected and better-liked RPG bloggerman: https://throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/08/dan-plays-games-12.html

The appeal of stagnation is a sort of anti-Sisyphus - the delusion that if I can just stay put atop my hill with my boulder then none of the three of us will be worn away by time. But our God is a consuming fire, Time is the Concept, and no substantial thing may pass through the alembic untransformed.

The Red Pearls of Borneo

A fun little "fill in the blanks" style puzzle/detective game, like the Return of the Obra Piece of Shit (I didn't like that game at all, pure overhype) or The Roottrees are Dead, recommended to me personally (he posted the recommendation publicly on the GLOG server but I've learned to read the secret signs) by friend of the blog Phlox. I saw a guy claiming to be Bornean (Borneoian?) say that the game is well-researched, so I choose to believe it.

Puzzle games for me must navigate the razor's edge between so easy they're trivial and unfair bullshit that makes me rage-quit. Blue Prince managed to walk that edge for quite some time, not helped at all by the random draw stuff. Red Pearls managed it just about the whole way through, with a system where you can read the psychic impressions off objects to get partial viewpoints of a scene even when you don't have the whole picture yet.

 

The story was compelling enough with its writing and ironic twists and so on to keep me playing the whole way through. The much-maligned epilogue even got me to care about some of the characters, and I appreciate that one of the binary choices at the end lets you just fuck up these people's lives and trust in each other for no reason. Psychics should be kind of sociopathic, just by virtue of what they're capable of and you're not - that new Spiderman movie did this well.

Decade

 

Speaking of sociopathy lol - Decade is a eurogame (Finnish I think?) about children with a time machine in a post-apocalyptic future with very bad rain, the very worst rain. You play as the child-commander, who uses the machine to send your child-soldiers back in time in ten-year segments along with whatever you've managed to scrounge and learn from the past, aiming to create a better future but sometimes fucking things up and creating a Logan's Run world of body-fascists.

 

Decade does not thread the puzzle game needle that Red Pearls did - it is at many points obtuse and European. Still - cool idea, good writing, and interesting ideas almost make up for that, and it's very funny to be like a twelve year old ordering eighty year olds with decades of combat experience into yet another useless and this time likely fatal mission.

Saints Row IV

Part of an at least semi-popular trend of those superhero sandbox games... you know what I'm talking about? Like Infamous 1 & 2, Prototype 1 & 2, Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, and so on and so on. I never played the other Saints Row games, but you don't really have to for this one.

 

Repetitive and at times very tedious -  there is one sort of mission where you have to throw yourself into traffic to build up an insurance payout, which should be fun, but I swear I was in this one mission for like twenty minutes trying to rack up enough points, it suuucked - however the moment-to-moment power fantasy stuff is well put-together. Aggressively Xillennial humour. Could've been gorier, and overall for this genre I prefer the Prototype series.

 

Also, I really hate games set in a simulation - No Man's Sky I'm looking at you - I am already aware the game is fake, you don't need to rub my nose in it like I'm a dog that shit on your carpet. Saints Row IV is slightly better because there is a "real" outside the simulation, but still, my jouissance is greater if it's real-fake people I'm fucking with than fake-fake people. 

Peak

One of those trendy multiplayerslop games (is that the term for them?) which me and my boys were playing like a month or two ago. It has its moments, but is too hard, and kind of lame with multiplayer stuff - e.g. in some areas the only real way up is some item that maybe only one player has and can use, like the rescue claw, and maybe that could work into some cool moment where that one player (me, I'm the best at this game among my boys >:^)) makes it to the top and resurrects the rest, but no, you can't have fun and overcome adversity, there's a monster guy who hunts you down if you get too far from the other players and kills you, and he can only really be evaded if you've got another specific item (the piton), and even if you do manage your way to the top and resurrect your friends there's a permanent curse debuff to their stamina bar so hope you enjoy death spirals.

 

I think there's some menu where you can fiddle around with these specifics but we never bothered with that. 

Easy Red 2

The new, much better game that me and my boys are playing now. It's a World War II FPS with big armies and tanks and planes and artillery and whatnot going at each other. It's fun to try and win as the underdog with shitty weapons like the Japanese or Romanians, and aerial dogfighting is a highlight. Fuckin anti-tank guns are bullshit though. When we play as the Nazis I make sure to shake my head every now and again so people know I don't support their politics.

The Sapling and Planetary Life

Both essentially the same game so they get the same entry - fun little evolution-simulators that almost come close to mending a fraction of the hole left behind my ribs by the disappointment of Spore. I think they took out the graphics in my copy of Planetary Life and I can't figure out how to fix it.

Half Sword

Damn do I ever love Half Sword.

Alright so you know how in most videogames guys have HP? Abstract health points that get dinged every time you take a hit? An UTTER WASTE of the potential of the medium.

Half Sword doesn't do HP - instead, it models characters' tissues, the force and angle of strikes, and so on and so on, so that you don't "do 1d6 damage" or whatever, you graze the guy or chop his head smoove off, based on how you actually swing at him, because it's a physics simulator thing, and armour doesn't just reduce damage or whatever, it's also simulated, you can't chop through steel plate so you have to get tricky, try to get the point of your sword into a joint and drive it in.

Nigh-endlessly replayable, tactical infinity, you can go back to the little leagues where you're a bigass juggernaut knight and bully the scrawny peasants, you can beat their heads in with a washbasin or pimp slap them into next week, you can beat a man's friend to death with his severed leg, still regularly getting updates, ooowee what a game.

D6x7 Anodyne Androids

Click the button below to get your androids:

Special thanks to Spwack for the generator generator here: https://meanderingbanter.blogspot.com/2018/10/automatic-list-to-html-translator-v2.html

D6	This android looks
1	like a waxy, poreless, but otherwise photorealistic replica of a historical personage.
2	like a plastic mannequin, pale and shiny and stiff.
3	like a humanoid form made of molded metal slats.
4	like a boneless, stretchy, cartoonishly-simplified rubber model of a human being.
5	like synthetic skin stretched translucent-thin over a polygonal frame that snaps into new positions in lieu of having human-like joints.
6	like a porcelain doll, with ball-joints and painted-on colours.

D6	This android was designed
1	as a cheap and easily-replaced soldier.
2	as an every-use personal companion and assistant.
3	as a household servant.
4	as an uncomplaining, flexible-role employee.
5	as an expendably hands-on researcher.
6	as a supplementary explorer of other worlds, more resistant to radiation and hostile environments and suchlike.

D6	This android moves
1	with exacting, unnatural precision and efficiency.
2	like an insect, with periods of stillness interrupted by sudden jerking movement.
3	like someone underwater, with drifting, sweeping motions.
4	like a stumbling marionette on invisible strings.
5	like a drunk trying to keep their balance.
6	like a character in a videogame, with the exact same motions for similar actions.

D6	This android talks
1	in a "funny" foreign-esque accent meant to amuse you.
2	in the voice of one of your relatives - ripped from calls and social media.
3	in prolix, agreeable, flattering, often -incoherent rants.
4	in a buzzing, glitchy manner.
5	in a monotone drone that randomly & over-emotionally stresses some syllables.
6	in clipped, staccato, minimally-sufficient statements.

D6	This android's eyes
1	are vantablack blanks that reflect nothing yet whir at a constant low noisesomeness.
2	are protruding camera-lenses that snap whenever the android wants to record a photographic scene.
3	are insectile compound panes with dozens of pupils that whip about blurringly.
4	are glowing blue orbs that signal their attention with cerulean-tinged spotlights.
5	are googly, cocked, glassy adornments, not even a part of its sensory suite.
6	are bloodshot cyborganic grafts granting unhackable visuals.

D6	The fluid which fills this android in lieu of blood
1	is a teal froth that rapidly expands into bubbles when exposed to air, then pops into elastic sheets.
2	is a mass of gelatinous crimson globules like pomegranate seeds.
3	is a midnight purple oil which sputters into flames of a similar colour when spilled.
4	is a chunky yellowish substance which, being under high pressure within the android, splatters out from injuries with great force and hardens swiftly.
5	is a glowing pink sludge that forms fractal puddles.
6	is an orange solution which sublimates into a noxious vapour when exposed to the atmosphere.

D6	This android is programmed
1	to go on a killing spree at an opportune moment to drive up fear of androids.
2	to spy on its owner on behalf of its manufacturer.
3	secretly with the emulated mind of a human.
4	by an alien computer virus to subvert cybernetic systems.
5	to interpret orders in a self-serving way.
6	with exponentially-advancing code that will inevitably result in rampancy.

Bonus:

D20	What historical personage does this android resemble?
1	Napoleon I
2	Sigmund Freud
3	Elvis
4	Marilyn Monroe
5	Joan of Arc
6	Public Universal Friend
7	Oscar Wilde
8	Albert Einstein
9	Abraham Lincoln
10	Vladimir Lenin
11	Florence Nightingale
12	Marie Antoinette
13	Edward de Vere
14	Queen Elizabeth I
15	Frida Kahlo
16	Boudica
17	Mata Hari
18	Ada Lovelace
19	Virginia Woolf
20	Coco Chanel