The Blog of Roon

My, you’d think I wasn’t gaming at all. Not a single gaming post for going on two months.

Anyone who cares to can take a look at the Murder at Christmas site. As I believe I mentioned, I played a trophy wife not overendowed with brainpower… but very much in possession of secrets.

It’s not much of a spoiler to say that my character wasn’t the murderer. In fact, I kicked myself midway through for giving Selina a rock-solid alibi for the second murder. Nonetheless, I appear to have made her into a tempting red herring, which is all I ask of a murder mystery.

(I’m dreadful at mysteries. I’m chewing my nails over the one I’m currently playing in Dragonhunt, hoping not to make too great a fool of myself.)

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to. Hope to have more gaming bloggery soon.

It suddenly occurs to me that I haven’t talked about my games in a while. Can’t have that. I’ll lose all my geek cred.

Ruth Green in Galactic Renaissance rescued an infant noble from kidnapping, has been tapped as the infant’s mother’s new bodyguard, and has gotten her family’s permission to accept the role, which was harder than it might at first sound. Ruth is (by design) profoundly plebeian; she should shake up the palace quite nicely. And, of course, she can rebuild it when she’s done. She’s handy that way.

We just finished the Dragonhunt prologue for Renate’s new brother-in-arms Aryk Lazarus. I pitched in to play Sabra Congreve, a brusque but conscientious young archer, and much fun was had by all—especially over my string of unbelievably hideously bad die rolls in the climactic fight. (Like, five twos in a row on a d20. The Fates were just not my friends.) The third prologue, for the ever-so-enigmatic Rien, is scheduled to begin shortly.

Ex-mermaid Delphine of Enclaves is learning to walk, getting into and out of fights with her lover, and establishing quite clearly that while she will sacrifice many things for those she cares for, her pride is not one of them. In the associated Green Room (for out-of-setting character chat), Delphine has just assisted with a lovely prank involving hanging a man’s lower garments from the stage lights—you wouldn’t believe it of me, would you?

I have also been invited to play in Murder at Christmas, a short murder-mystery game played during winter holidays. I shall be playing Mary St. Pierre MacKenzie-Brown, new wife of the new laird of Verrisay, Scotland. Expect mayhem, my best Wodehouse pastiche (guess which character! go on, guess! I’ll give you a hint: she’s from the Jeeves-and-Wooster cycle), and of course murder.

The GM of Enclaves has gotten Delphine integrated into the action. Me being me, Delphine just dropped a bomb that the rest of the room is going to have a bit of difficulty responding to.

Delphine, as I believe I have remarked before, isn’t Tamasi, though I suspect she rather resembles a younger Tamasi, before Tamasi’s dreadful in-laws wore her down. She is less guarded, more open, gentler.

No less smart, though, certainly no less proud, and in her way no less fatalistic. Caught between the proverbial rock and hard place—sacrifice herself for whatever she’ll bring, or risk bringing her lover and his realm to ruin when They come and take her—she is proffering the only reasonable choice.

The rest of the room hasn’t answered yet…

Mel’s Enclaves game has a separate mailing list in which the characters hang out together in a completely non-game setting (at the moment, a ritzy dinner party). Goofball interactions, one-liners, you know.

She was kind enough to pull us up to the door of the restaurant in a limo and give us a flashy intro, so I went ahead and pulled out all the stops on Delphine’s entrance. (Well, all the ones I could pull without giving a few too many things away. I did drop hints. I always drop hints.)

The reaction was… most satisfactory. I am still grinning.

To be fair, Delphine is visually… unusual, as I explained earlier, which gives plenty of scope for messing with people’s heads. But it was still fun.

Oh, and… he took her up on it, yes he did.

First they murdered her household. Then they tried to kill her. Then they threw her into the shore-tide like a bit of flotsam, thinking they’d succeeded. Then the sharks came. Then she was rescued by a smokin’-hot young merman with a handy pod of dolphins (!).

Delphine kinda had a rough first day…

I like her, though. I like where she’s going. Given my history, I perhaps shouldn’t, but I do nonetheless.

Delphine is, as Tamasi was not, stunningly beautiful. It’s practically part of the setting. This is Amber, after all—all the women are stunningly beautiful and (almost) all the men are smokin’ hot. Something in the water, one presumes. Possibly because the GM and several players are female, I find my usual resistance to physical pulchritude in my characters much lessened. I suppose it’s that I can trust these folks to treat Delphine as more than a pretty face.

Me being me, though, I gotta be subversive somehow. I borrowed the body-art notion from Passions of the Tide; Delphine is quite covered in scarifications, face to waist. What the other characters think of this should prove interesting. Likewise Delphine’s utter lack of a nudity taboo. I mean, merfolk, clothes, why? Especially since, like Tamasi, Delphine is bioluminescent. So “dressing for dinner” means turning on the light-show, you know? And clothes would only get in the way.

Again, I can’t quite see myself doing this in a male-controlled game. This game, I think it’ll work. Most games, it wouldn’t.

She just made a small but unmistakable pass at her rescuer. Talk about things I normally wouldn’t do in a game… but it doesn’t bother me one whit. And I do hope he takes her up on it.

I have been handed a lovely opportunity to reclaim what I liked best about Tamasi, despite the rough and abrupt end to her campaign.

The new character will become part of Ask Not of Amber: The Enclaves, run by the same GM as Galactic Renaissance, who kindly invited me to join and is putting up with a rather unusual character with uncommon grace.

Delphine du Vallonarete is not Tamasi, but she shares quite a bit of what made Tamasi intriguing. Fatalism, distrust mantled in propriety, noblesse oblige, managerial efficacy, a hidden talent or two, a bad marriage started too young that ended when her husband’s life ended.

And, of course, the whole merwoman thing.

Tamasi was (so to speak) out of her depth, a deep-mer in the shallows. Delphine will have to navigate an even harsher transition: she will become a fish out of water, a sea-creature who will have to live on land. I don’t plan to make it easy for her.

I just sent off a rather sanguinary intro to the GM for approval. This should be fun…