this blog has moved to @augmentalize

Mimosa Tisane has been hired with promises of interesting gossip to deliver breakfast communion to The Chapel. Breakfast communion consists of a bread called Peekins Crustants, a type of croissant made with pecan flour, as well as a kernel of brightseed for each member of the congregation. Patience also invites Mimosa to participate in the communion.

Mimosa finds the entire congregation to be strange and weird, but delivers the product and accepts xir payment in the form of a piece of information: Sister Shirley, an opulent member of Sister Patience’s former coven, is running a pickpocketing ring. Mimosa dislikes the prospect of others coming into the market and stealing from people, so this is information that xie’s definitely pleased to have.

Patience lays out the croissants and brightseed on a long marble table so that the congregation can take their communion, but before they can, the Psychic Maestrom manifests. The croissants float off the table and form themselves into a humanoid figure. The figure points ominously to Patience and Mimosa, then collapses. Mimosa declares the five second rule and takes a croissant off the floor and eats it, then asks if Patience is going to finish her ceremony. Patience picks the rest of the croissants off the floor and declares “In this scarce economy, we cannot afford to waste food, even if it’s haunted”.

Before they can partake, the croissants form into a face that introduces itself as ‘Andy’, the ghost of a man who was buried under the floorboards of the Arby’s 2: The Sequel to Arby’s. After a long argument, Mimosa gets annoyed and splits the croissants among the congregation, much to Andy's protest. Eventually, said protests fade away as the bread is eaten, and the brightseed takes everyone’s mind off the incident, though church is most definitely not in session after all that.

In the next scene, Puck visits The Mothman, having heard that they specialize in fixing things. Any things, really. They bring Mothman their broken Original Game Boy®, hoping that Mothman will fix it. Mothman calls it a box repeatedly, but offers to fix it in exchange for Puck supervising their direcoon, Dwayne, when he’s out on his walks. Dwayne, who spends most of the scene eating forbidden fruit while Mothman insists he is a good boy, has a habit of getting into it when people upset or startle him. Puck agrees to look after Dwayne for the three days it will take to fix their console, and Mothman gives them both a few pats on the head before seeing them out the door.

Three days later, Puck returns to pick up their handheld with Dwayne in tow. When Mothman asks if Dwayne has been a good boy, Puck hides a series of scratches they got when Dwayne dragged them through a bramble bush in spite of their Lucky Guesses telling them to take another path. Puck says Dwayne was fine, and Mothman gives them their handheld, which has been fused with a species of bioluminescent fungus that will provide it power, as long as it’s kept often in a moist and dark place.

On their way back to their apartment, Puck’s handheld is stolen by a traitorous individual while wandering through the marketplace as a manifestation of the Varied Scarcities. They search the market for it, but most people just pass them by. Mimosa steps out of the crowd and offers to help Puck find it. Xie advises them to put an ad out on the digital bulletin board, one of the few forms of local working internet, offering a reward for the stolen object and hoping someone will bite. Eventually, someone responds to the ad, and Puck arranges for them to meet at their apartment, planning to let Mimosa ambush them.

Our third scene finds Mimosa and Puck in Puck’s apartment in The Nest, along with two surprise guests. Mothman, having heard that something they recently fixed was stolen, has come to assist in the retaking of it. They’ve brought Dwayne and are making tea for everyone while teaching the direcoon to play solitaire. Puck is drinking their tea while Mimosa allows several mugs to grow cold while xie plays Brick Break on xir old flip phone and spends some time glaring at Dwayne, who once bit xir when xie ran into one of the rope bridges on a test flight of xir glider.

After some time, the thief arrives. Known to his friends and enemies as Dangly Bill, he’s a body modification fiend who lost his lips in a mutation incident, leading him to cover lower face with a kerchief to hide his bare teeth. He’s also a matter eater gainfully employed by Sister Shirley, who provides him with unique things to eat in exchange for his services. Upon being ambushed and held at nail-gun point by Mimosa, as well as faced with Mothman existing in his general vicinity, Bill gives up the game boy. He’s escorted out by Mothman, and Puck gives Mimosa a hug of gratitude. Mothman comes back with something squishy and wet in their pockets and tries to join in, but Mimosa springs xir wings out to stop them. In exchange for xir help, Puck tells Mimosa that the moss figure in Sister Patience’s lobster tank is named Verisimilitude and leaves as soon as xie’s sure Puck is okay.

For our final scene this session, Sister Patience calls The Mothman to their chapel to check on the moss figure in the lobster tank. Formerly someone who was slated to be executed by The Coven, Verisimilitude was spared due to Patience’s mercy and they both fled The Saint of the Open Eye. A man who once helped keep The Nest stable, he also acted as Patience’s muse, and was someone she greatly cared for. When he died, Patience asked Mothman to bring him back because The Nest needed him, which rendered him into this form.

During their check-up of the moss person, the Earth Itself manifests and the moss person begins to bang on the glass of the tank until it begins to crack. Mothman reacts with extreme excitement, telling Patience that “It’s ready” and begins to dig around in their belongings for something. Patience tries to calm the moss person, who continues to bang on the glass. Eventually, it’s stomach splits open and a strange moss child, chunky and about the size of a toddler, crawls out.

Mothman hands Patience a moss tunic to swaddle it in, and while she’s able to do that at least, Patience is in shock. She insists that this is not what she wanted or expected, and when Mothman tells her it needs a name, she passes the child off to them instead. Mothman names it Verse, and gives it back to her, telling her that it won’t be quite right since it wasn’t named by someone more human.

“What does it mean?” Patience asks.

The game is set in an area known only as The Enclave. The features of the Enclave are: A Bustling Market - In an area in the center of the Enclave there’s an old amphitheater. The seats have all been torn up to make room for the booths and kiosks where people hawk everything from their possessions to their services to consultations that would have cost a $20 copay a few years ago. Heavy Industry - The district the Enclave settled in was once one of industry, where things were built, made and shipped all around the world. Now all of that has been taken over, and while the presence of the old industry has its perks--the solar panels that keep the lights on, in some cases, machines to assist with building in others--the the stark contrast of industry makes the presence of the Kudzu all the more obvious. Overgrowth - What would have once take years started to take seconds, and in a matter of a few months, people were waking up with trees in their houses and vines strangling their cars. The Enclave does it’s best to cut back what it can, but many people worry that it’s only a matter of time before the Kudzu overruns them. Eerie Warning Signs - There are noises coming from the woods. No one really knows when they started. Everyone always says they’ve heard something from the woods at one point or another. Now it’s a constant. Every evening, when it’s quiet, the citizens of the enclave can hear a slow and steady song coming from the woods, almost like a nursery rhyme but without really saying anything anyone can understand. Most people find something else to be doing around that time. Something louder. Synanthropes - Explosive growth didn’t just affect the plant life, but the wildlife as well. The Enclave is rich with pigeons and rats the size of racoons, and the racoons? Well, now they’re the size of capybaras.

The Enclave is made up of four walled cities, organized into towers: Tower 5, which houses The Nest, an overgrown lower area where people who are less uncomfortable with the overgrowth slum it away from the sun and a good deal of the population. Puck and Sister Patience both live in Tower 5. The Bunker, which is one of the more overgrown towers, having lost nearly an entire corner, with it’s residents beating back the Overgrowth daily. Mothman lives here, and their laboratory takes up three floors of one of the apartment complexes. The Saint of the Open Eye, a walled city that has nearly been completely overtaken by The Coven, who govern most of the aspects of life for citizens around there. While clean and orderly, it is nearly draconian in enforcement. Church-going is mandatory for anyone living in a district under the jurisdiction of The Coven, and crime is punished harshly. A petty misdemeanor might be punished with a public shaming of beating, while those guilty of more severe crimes are simply executed. The Gilded Ladder, which is the most polished and clean of all the walled cities. A bastion of intact society, much of the daily goings on in the Gilded Ladder haven’t changed from how they used to be before the apocalypse. The tower has its own form of currency, its own facilities, and some of the most stable electricity in the Enclave. Mimosa lives in a shed on the roof of the highest outermost building, which xie uses as a jumping off point for xer gliding.

As always, the setting elements are the Earth Itself, the Society Intact, the Digital Realm, the Psychic Maelstrom, the Varied Scarcities and the Outlying Gangs. Each setting element wants something different. The Earth Itself desires strange new forms and The Fall of Man. The Society Intact desires profit eternal and a digital solution. The Digital Realm desires escapism and an expanded network. The Psychic Maelstrom desires fervent intimacy and human dependence. The Varied Scarcities desire suffering without and paranoia. The Outlying Gangs desire mutant blood and the smell of fear.

And with all the setting elements established and characters set-up out of the way, let’s get into the play summaries.