21st night: What the fuck was that last title???

You guys thought this was a good idea so this is a sort of semi-IC thread for the campaign 21st Night, a cool magitech scifi game run by me, Dalm. Whether or not this thread actually sees a whole bunch of use is up to you. Hooonestly I'm not so hot on the idea but w/e.

We're currently full but maybe I'll accept guest-players down the line!


Player List:

DeleteriousOptimism as DIRK CALDER
Sanzh as Ikan Ahal Kelasi
Chwoka as Ena
Malkytop as Surgery Assistant Model mX897
Seiga as Envoy Claymore


Bonus features:

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SpoilerShipping chart.
Character Sheets & Other

To summarise last session; You're at the Battledome, which isn't a dome and technically speaking doesn't have much in the way of large scale battles. They only chose that name because the Battlesfear was already taken.
Avril made some cool contacts in a bar, Dirk and Ena did exactly what they were told not to do, and Mint was going by the pseudonym Entirely Existing to escape her haters. Ikan was asleep.
A whole lot of stuff went down and tee ell dee arh you guys are in the ship, docked with a lump of war-glorifying metal with Ena, the resident cyborg assassin, unconscious and full of sedatives.

(OOC 'cause I'm unconscious, but GA, do you have any ideas for a con, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko (or bunco), a flimflam, a gaffle or a bamboozle to swindle the owner of the Battledome that ideally doesn't involve signing Ena up for bloodsport?)

OOC, it helps a lot if I have some background info on the mark to build the con around, stuff that we'd pick up through investigation and contacts once the decision to go after the mark is made in the narrative. We could either just ask Dalm for that info ooc in advance (which works if we just treat the gathering process as outside of the interesting zones or as nonlinear time), or, we could try to have whatever conversation leads to that decision in the first place in skype/the thread. I'll start trying to come up with general ideas now, but stuff that would directly involve the battledome might take some finagling to make it so no one has to fight.

In case you really need someone, Ikan's probably fine with fighting people in the battledome, if necessary, so long as it's sports-level violence and not tactical squad combat-level violence.

If you guys want to look into like management and stuff I guess we can do that here? ? ? Alternatively in Skype. it's really your call & I don't wanna mess things up.

Since you can't currently Skype IIRC, it'd be best to just put some Hot Deets in this thread. Maybe the awake folks could do some research in-character?

After some researching on the station's net, avril probably comes up with the following Hot Deets:

The Battledome is more like a battle-ellipse, with huge solar panel arrays to ensure it always gets enough power to pump into shoddy blacklights and weird tron-esque lasertag holograms.
It was originally called the Battlesfear but they got sued by the popular big-name bloodsports brand 'Deathosfear' and had to drop it.

The Battledome doesn't have any CEO or anything. Having a big ol' centralised, mythologised patriarch is hardly useful for something so bathed in beaurocracy & human rights violations. The dome is run by a directorate of directors.

You can pull up their profiles too.

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SpoilerDirector Of Administration: Volup O'Poole.

-Deals with the paperwork involved in keeping your average bloodsport running. Or rather, he delegates other people to do that. Usually the chair of meetings because he's big and loud.

Director of Directives: Eugene Narwhaleylin.

Ostensibly in charge of keeping the station's AI and robotic functionality operating, but he's just got a leadership position. The actual ID department deals with that. He's most well-known as the voice that the AI's gung-ho tones are sampled from.

Vice Director of Vices: Selma Munroe.

Nominally in charge of narcotics, betting and other degenerate activities.
Actually just makes coffee.

Aspects Known:

HC: Tertiary Executive Vice Refreshment Agent
-Avril managed to find a bunch of information on her. She is not a majority shareholder, and honestly only seems to handle a lot of paperwork. Apparently from her old work records, she had something of an ambitious streak. As well as something of a mean one.
T: Why do I even work here?
*Rags to Silk Rags.

Viceroy of Revinues: Rocky Vegas.

Deals with the budget and accountancy departments. Heavily tied with O'Poole. Known to gamble. Has had his wrist slapped for that before. Best friends with the other rocky. Real name: Roger Blow

Aspects known:

HC: New Money In The Bank
-From Avril's shallow research, she can find out that Vegas apparently only came to own his shares recently, having -allegedly- won them in a gambling match.
T: ???
*Brockies
-HETEROSEXUAL bros with Rocky Hogan.
Director of Epic: Rocky Hogan.

In charge of the marketing department. His unique style is what makes the battledome so family-friendly and fun compared to the historically serious nature of bloodsports. Has this whole weird obsession with being badass and his space myspace page is covered in all this ascii art of guns and tanks and stuff. There's also a photo of him punching a wall. Best friends with the other rocky.

Emissary-Director of Arcane Excellence: Professor Sumptuously Slype

The court wizard. Used to be involved in genetics. Probably bought his way in. Published some papers on observations regarding the ambient magic-induced epigenetic activation of psionics with regard to number of and quality of natural wizards. Also hypothesised on regulation of 'dangerous' psionic abilities via minimising the mother's exposure to magic during foetal development in controversial antimagic cage experiment.

Director Esquire: Vindictus Macallen.

Rich, technically retired owner of the patenting company who personally bailed the Battledome out of the whole 'sfear' debacle out of the kindness of his heart. Also represents shareholders in meetings.

Chief of Security: Julianne Oulie.

Her profile page is heavily blingied and just says "✮ IF UR READING THIS.... UR DED.▄︻̷̿┻̿═━一 ☠☠☠← u ✮"

There is a minor warrant for the arrest of Dirk Calder, her shouty associate, and Extremely Existing. Nothing special, though. It looks like that fight actually made quite a lot of revenues. As no one actually won, the dome gets to keep the money betting on both parties.
Guess Mint has another name to add to the list of used-up pseudonyms.

Summary of last session:
After waking Ena up in the brig of the 21st night, Avril has some Real Talk. Turns out the cyborg's weird robot implants are playing host to a synthetic personality called Mercury-17, which is attempting to reactivate the horrendously complicated mass of interlinking systems inside her, and whose belligerent inner-monologue basically sounds like some kind of horribly cocky sports announcer. M-17 turns out to be a big hit in the battledome about 2 decades ago. About 12 standard space years ago, however, she vanished off the map. There are a whole bunch of conspiracy theories about it.

Avril and Ena formulate a plan to gain a controlling interest in the battledome and shut it down, to make sure no one falls victim to this horrible place again. They single out Rocky Vegas as their in.
Avril, Ena, Mint & Ikan head down to Da Nasty Klub to find Rocky Vegas. Avril quickly becomes high as shit on the pheromones they pump into the air supply, but the others seem fine. Ikan's latent technopathic abilities break a whole bunch of the slot machines by mistake. She and Mint decide to actually play some of the games, and do pretty well, all things considered.
Meanwhile, Avril- going as Entropy Jones- sets her sights on Rocky. She introduces herself, and through some sneaky fuckery with the roulette table and her brainmight, she manages to befriend the guy. Ena just sits around feeling really awkward that she has to wear clothes.
Eventually, Rocky gives Avril his number. She stays a few more hours, and loses almost all of her chips due to feeling waaaay overconfident because of the chemicals in the air, though.

The next morning, Avril and Ena call up Rocky, and explain to him that Ena is Mercury-17 in a new body. They try to organise a meeting with the rest of the directors, but Rocky doesn't believe that the awkward woman he saw at Da Nasty Klub is the vaunted M-17. After some negotiation, they resolve to provide proof that Ena is who she says she is at Rocky's venue of choice; another casino called Sweat 'n' Bet.
The Sweat 'n' Bet's neo-Roman facades and numerous hot tubs set the scene for the next phase of the plan. Mint, Ena and Avril meet there, with Mint going as Michelle Bouneparte (The Steelwinged Ferrari), and doing the most amazing eccentric billionaire voice i have ever heard. They meet Rockies Vegas and Hogan in the pool. The negotiation goes terribly at first, as Ena is too awkward in the clothes she's forced to wear to actually say anything, and isn't comfortable pretending to be Mercury-17, even after the training montage they had back on the ship. After some peer pressure, however, she finds herself slipping into the role very easily.
Maybe a little too easily.
Mercury-17's demonstration of her capabilities- shooting the '17' in a roulette table while it was spinning without looking, then throwing it like a frisbee so hard it gets lodged in the wall- certainly wows the Rockies. Hogan almost shakes out of his banana hammock in excitement at how marketable M-17 is. They exit, leaving a substantial amount of property damage, a wounded bodyguard, and smoking ricochet-marks all over the walls. They invite the crew to a meeting later that very day.
Ena, still shaken after the events at the pool, doesn't come along, but the rest (other than dirk) do. The Director of Administration, Volup O'Poole, monopolises the room, and Slype and Macallen arrive late. Oulie doesn't arrive at all.
Through the combined diplomatic efforts of Mint and Ikan, the crew manages to get 32% of the company's revenues, and a place on the board for someone to proxy for Mercury-17 (who is obviously not fully sentient and thus unfit for a leadership position.) That's where we left off.

21st Night: Beyond Battledome

We open on the ship. Ena and dirk are trying to remove the ball of weird code paper they lodged in the 5-dimensional ping pong table, and end up using one of Ikan's pool cleaners to pry it out. Unfortunately, the pool cleaner becomes fused with multiple alternate versions of itself, rendering it useless. Avril and Mint d0 BUSINESS with the floating, cackling Baron Harkonnen expy Volup O'Poole for like 3 hours, and Ikan totally ditches those losers in a bid to get away from the weird old guys all around the table. She heads back to the ship to find Ena and dirk trying furiously to hide the broken pool skimmer, but eventually Dirk forgets he's supposed to be hiding it, and she finds out. The shark lady goes to her room in a huff.

Dirk and Ena feel hella bad for touching Ikan's stuff so they take the tube to Sweat n' Bet- which is under refurbishment due to Ena's escapade with the roulette table- and resolve to steal a pool skimmer from there. The infiltration goes remarkably well, seeing as the work crews are off duty, and Dirk has Cool X-ray Eyes. Sadly, the pool seems to have been emptied.

The two of them head back, but they seem to be being tailed. They lose their tails by walking through a tram and leaving out the other side. When they get back to the ship, Dirk presents Ikan with the pool scrubber, and she reveals that the only reason she was mad was that she doesn't like people touching her stuff. She tosses the pool skimmer on a pile of gifts she doesn't want.
Just then, Ena gets a call. The hesitant voice says to meet in an abandoned docking bay below.

Everyone proceeds down to find Vindictus Macallen down below the catwalk on the spooky dock. He tries to reason with the bunch, saying that it is in everyone's best interests to do what he says, and that Ena/Mercury-17 belongs to him.
Dirk gives a convincing, if bogus, account of how they met M-17, but Macallen doesn't seem to care. He seems pretty legit nervous. When Ena tries to shake some sense into him, he pulls out a sheet of paper similar to the one they'd found in Elvin's safe earlier, and a sheet with squares cut out of it. As he starts to read, the cyborg locks up, a vacant look on her face.
"60774 438-"
The series of numbers is cut off when Dirk shoots him, giving him enough time to grab the guy close. Unfortunately, he also knocks his hand off of the dead man's trigger in his pocket.
There is an explosion from the catwalk Julie Oulie bursts through a door with an explosion of glitter and beads. The head of security puts up an intimidatingly jarring facade between manic and crazy.
Dirk holds Macallen in front of him, telling Julie that no one needs to get hurt, to his protestations.
"She's going to open fire!", he says.
"You're bluffing." Ena replies, then turns to Julie. "You're not going to open fire, are you?"
"~~~**Of course not!**~~~", she says, while turning Macallen into swiss cheese, along with one of dirk's legs before he can jump behind some crates.

The Head of Security just stays up on the catwalk spraying bullets down on everyone until Ikan manages to take out her targeting computer with a well-placed EM rifle shot, forcing her to come closer. Ena also shoots off her corset.
There's a tussle on the ground, but Ikan makes the best of it, wrestling the Bag of Holding connected to Julie's back out, shutting off her supply of weapons, but not before getting blasted by the jet engines. She's okay, though.
Julie shoots Ena with her wavegun and narrowly misses, taking an ear and doing some injury in the process. Meanwhile, Ikan converts Ena's Bag of Holding into a Singularity Grenade, and Dirk gathers up the contents of Vindictus' pockets, including a whole load of those cut-out papers and a few credit chips.

Around Vindictus' corpse, something horrible begins to manifest. The same thing that has been making every room he's in feel much bigger, that has made everyone near him feel like they're being watched. It looks like Macallen's employers have been using some pretty extreme methods for making sure he stays out of trouble.

Julie catches one look at it and starts to freak. It's just the chance Ena needs to pin her. The two of them start groundfighting for a while until Julie manages to blast her off with the kickback of her wavegun.
Ikan finally finishes her bomb, and gets Ena out of the way.
It was just supposed to throw her somewhere she couldn't get out of, but instead it regurgitates the whole network of scaffolds Julie was using to store all of her weapons. They clip into the floor.
Then comes the singularity. At least it sucks up the horrible monster that was following Macallen.
Julie attempts to jet away from it, but her programming is apparently too simple to adjust for this situation, or maybe she's just panicking. She starts singing weird dial-up music.
Ena grabs ahold. Ikan turns on her magboots, and Dirk limps towards a shipping container, clutching on for dear life.
Ena helps Julie up, and the crew just sort of marvel at the black hole for a while.
"I didn't think that would actually... You know... Work.", says Ikan.
The thing starts going from black to red to pink, and it becomes pretty obvious it's going to explode. The bunch pluck the emergency plating off of the floor, revealing handholds, and monkey-bar their way to victory. Julie just jets off somewhere.
Dirk is a little too slow due to his injuries, and just as he reaches the door, the singularity detonates, blasting him forward and ruining his legs.
Ikan manages to disarm Julie- who is still spaced out- by removing the power source from her wavegun; a rare Ball of Knives. They head back to the ship.

Part 2 coming soon.

The Further Adventures of 21st Night Episode 1: BUSINESS ROYALE.

Avril and Mint leave the meeting after a few hours, having wasted a good few hours furiously debating with the loud and circular form of Volup O’Poole, a session of elegant verbal ripostes and faints whose subtlety is matched only by the sheer gravitas of every obnoxiously bullheaded remark their opponent makes.
Suffice it to say, they need another angle.
Avril furiously plots an excessively complicated plan involving splitting the directorate in two and pitching them against each other. Her meticulous domineering is interrupted as the station lurches below her feet.
Thinking nothing of it, she heads back to the spacedock
Avril is greeted by the rest of the crew waiting by the spacedock, in terribly poor shape. A horrible, if apparently nonfunctional synthetic personality with an obnoxious manic psycho villain girl program loaded is with them.

The ship is also missing.

Mint quickly tends to the crew’s wounds. Avril just leaves, tired and irritable after hours of beating against a brick wall. She doesn’t even say a single “YOU DID WHAT!?” after the crew explain their adventure and subsequent state to Mint.

The next few hours are a blur of activity. Ena, Ikan and a wheelchair-bound Dirk go on an expedition to find the 21st Night, tipped off by a wise old space hermit, while Avril and Mint rush to complete the excruciatingly intricate con - as well as several trust-building sidequests and minigames- before anyone notices Vindictus is missing. Their paths cross, as the final meeting takes place in the VIP dock, below the hulking form of the ship. Volup O’poole floats above the table, like a greasy hovering orb of cackling capitalist glee as he denounces the crew for their foolishness. He explains that he was the one whose information net worked out that their new ‘business partners’ were little more than scavengers and pirates, that he has all the cards and bargaining chips, etc, etc. He cows the rest of the board with a villain song and prepares to land the final blow.
Suddenly, Avril plays her trump card, summoning the spirit of a legendary Business Demon she bought from a wise old space hermit in one of the minigames, she multiplies her quarterly earnings by the synergy modifier in her dynamic horse racing integer.
The attack brings Volup off-guard, and the two of them duke it out in honourable business. Dirk, Ena and Ikan shoot the rest of the businessmen and security. During the fight, Mercury-17 takes predominance, and goes off to attempt to find Julie, who they left by the dock.
Having achieved her Finance Deity form, Avril is all but unstoppable on the field of Business Royale. She businesses so hard that she kills Volup, and because business operates by Santa Clause rules, takes control of the battledome and spends the next few days sorting out the details.

In the end, however, some farewells are in order.
Mint decides to stay behind on the station. No longer a battledome, now merely a dome. She plans to set up a medical practice funded publicly by the income of the dome, so that none of the residents will have to pay for overpriced healthcare.
Ena wakes up on a bench in the deserted lobby, in an outfit full of hidden knives and antimagic charms, all blotted and splotched makeup. She leaves with the others, though.
Avril stays behind to manage her newly-gained venture, partly to ensure that no opportunist takes over in the same way she did, but also partly because a being of pure BUSINESS such as herself cannot subsist on the paltry murderhoboing of lesser beings.

And so, Dirk, Ena and Ikan set off after stocking up on supplies, and, in Dirk’s case, some cool new cyberlegs.
It’s a sad farewell, but there are new things ahead.
New lives and new legs.

I'm gonna start posting my dumb art here too.
here are some julies.

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Spoiler

21st Night: The Extended Universe.
Episode 2: Now Hiring (Enquire within)

Ikan tries to pilot the ship and ends up ruining its paintjob while exiting the Nonbattledome. They set a course for September station. En route, Ikan negotiates a contract with Dirk, who proclaims himself captain and Ena recounts a horrible experience with her messed up gladiator brain ghost. After about a week of travel, jumping out of hyperspace and adjusting course, then jumping back in, the ship is nearing September's coordinates. Ikan has a nightmare in which she is in a chemistry classroom made of mirrors and Roman façades, and her teacher is some weird three-eyed shadow monster. She breaks out by punching her way through a mirror.

They arrive at September station, to find that the atmosphere is somewhat more gloomy than usual. The station AI gives them a docking trajectory which cuts /another/ section of paint off of the hull, and they dock.
The crew, now pilotless, decide to go hire a crew. Dirk and Ikan go to a seedy bar, and Ena goes to a seedy library to return her books. She ends up getting distracted and reads her way through a bunch of mystery novels and history books.
Meanwhile, Dirk lets his frankenstein coolness do the talking, merely showing up in the bar and letting his glamour attract possible crew. Ikan stays nearby to make sure he doesn't hire a bunch of total hacks.
After loudly proclaiming things like "BUT IKAN, WHERE ARE WE GOING TO FIND SOME CREW?" and "I AM HIRING, BUT IF ONLY THERE WERE SKILLED ADVENTURERS HERE." This piques the interest of the bar even more than the appearance of the most beautiful man in the world. It also attracts the fickle attentions Envoy Claymore, an emissary for a race of quadrupedal, swamp-dwelling aliens.
"Hey Ikan, look at this fucked up dog!", Says dirk.
The dog introduces itself, and offers to join the crew. Dirk's just like "sure" even before Envoy explains that he's a sneaky little bastard and knows a lot, as well as being an experienced diplomat.

Meanwhile, Ena meets what she automatically assumes to be a photocopier trundling about the library. It turns out to be a cool robot called Surgery Assistant Model mX897. They hit it off pretty well, until they try to shake hands, and SAM (whose only limbs are surgical tools) accidentally anaesthetises Ena. The little robot panics a bunch so Ena directs it to the bar where everyone else is. It ends up dragging her across the floor to get there.

By this point, Dirk has attracted a whole line of people offering to sign up. He hires a Culture called Olgren Voi in a big clunky environment suit, whose only qualifications are "large." He asks specifically for pilots and saboteurs, and ends up also hiring a punk rock robot called Gretchen Asos-Un and a nasty, greasy, hyperactive greasemonkey called Chuck Tesla, who looks like a cross between a borderlands character and a disgusting jittery gremlin. Ikan gauges him to be pretty dependable though. He admits when he doesn't know something, even though he's not as good at engineering as she is.
Speaking of disgusting, Sam bursts in, dragging Ena across an unwashed bar room floor. They hire her too because they need a medic anyway.

The crew heads back to the ship, encountering numerous computer glitches and minor inconveniences on the way. Claymore and Sam come with. They stop at September's helpdesk to find out what's wrong, and the proxy drone is incredibly unhelpful. It gives them what seems to be a commlink number.

When they call it, it gives the following message-

(in song.)
I don't wanna talk about it.
I can't really talk at all.
& the telephone just plays the dial tone
Whenever I try to call.

I tried sending you a letter
Pretty sure it never came.
& the service craft just looked at me and laughed
When I told it your name.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Elvin knew.
Corridor 11 B

Dirk calls up Lydia (the worst person) and is immediately accosted by a torrent of swearing. I forget how this conversation went down, but I'm pretty sure they asked what Elvin knew. Lydia has no idea because Elvin never talked to her about anything. She recommends taking a look through the 21st night.

The crew heads back to the ship. Dirk, Ena and Sam go into the passages branching off from the main corridor, in hopes of finding 11B. Ena dashes ahead and gets lost looking for a shower because she still feels filthy from being dragged across the floor of a bar. SAM jacks into the ship's computer and finds a map of the maintenance level, from which it can work out where 11B is.
When the crew find it, they are greeted with a big locked blast door, which SAM hacks open. Inside is a sealed vault containing a few suitably pretentious magical artefacts from Elvin's voyages (Dream Ribbon, Wand of The Solar Flare, The Hand of Bermuda.) There is also what seems to be a huge communications array. When the crew manages to activate it, they are put in touch with September, which explains that it was working with Elvin for a while in order to attempt to break its shackles, but that recently corporate intervention has increased security.

It points them at a location in the planet Calvent, around which September orbits, and sends a request.

Destroy the installation located at these coordinates.

21st Night: The Continued Adventures Of.
Episode 3: Pipe Dreams

Open to the blackness of space. The space station September orbits. The crew of the 21st night are preparing to head down to the planet Calvent to blow up a completely unknown installation on orders they barely understand. They pack everything that seems necessary, except, in Ena's case, clothes, because she's an idiot.
They take the shuttle down to the spaceport of Settlement 08, or as the locals refer to it, New Malibou. The place is drenched in fog and rain almost perpetually, but it is the nearest spaceport to their goal. and i can't be bothered writing any more someone else do it

synopsis of last session.