Tag: Naked Lunch

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Postcards from Avalidad Season #1 Episode #4

“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum.”

John Nada, They Live


The morning after the fire… Nakatomi is waiting for the lab results for the strange soft drink: Orgone energy was detected among a regular mix of caffeine, sugar, caramel and spices. It’s clearly an energy drink, but since it contains orgone, could it be marketed as an aphrodisiac drug? After some sips, she decides to call James C and ask him out for lunch, but his Personal Assistant tells her Mr C is in a meeting with Mr Houseman.

Arriving at the office, Aziz gets a call from his good old friend Leon MacAarthur. A blond, muscular and extremely well combed Leo greets him in augmented reality. He smiles dumbly, as always, but looks concerned. The actor and businessman now owns a small Rollerclash team, the Mean Machines, and is worried about the recent incidents. Aziz tells him not to be concerned, ZoneSec is already on it. After getting rid of his friend, Aziz drops by Clayton Reed’s office to talk about the previous night’s events. He feels they have to be more proactive in searching for Lance Jones. This is an extremely dangerous individual who seems to have developed psionic powers. Clayton tells him that the spec ops team is working on the case.


And indeed they have been; O’Malley, powered by Nutkicker, spent all night trying to develop a program to detect Jones, based on power surges and facial recognition software. If the data is right, it is possible to pinpoint Lance Jones to an underworld quarter, close to Biddonville. The agents answer Reed’s call in a triumphant mood. Clayton sends them out to do some discreet reconnaissance work. The team prepares a van for a trip to the Underworld, a low-income, run-down, low-tech residential area inhabited by poor workers. Eva decides to look for one of her informants, Willy the Squid, a small time crook that lives in the area. After bribing him, Eva is able to squeeze the information out of the Squid. She shows him a photo of Jones, and Willy confirms he has seen him. The guy stands out in the neighbourhood, he doesn’t look the type, plus there are bodyguards with him. Borges presses the crook to show her the building Jones is hiding in, but the little shit walks out on her.

“Luckily” it seems they have parked the van right across the street from Jones’ building, and weren’t as discreet as they thought they were being; maybe it was the Fresh Body Parts Collectors advertised on the side of the van… Just when Borges gets back to the vehicle, three menacing goons come out of the building and walk towards them. While Borges reaches inside the van to get her faithful Hauser Arms assault rifle and Jana picks up her 9mm, focusing on her psionic powers for tactical leverage, O’Malley decides to pop out of the sunroof and fire up his Remminger sub-machine gun, just like a hero in an action vid. Despite barely knowing how to shoot, he manages to fire a clean burst that knocks down one of the thugs and kills him. O’Malley shouts “die, bastard!” sounding a like an excited teenager. Armed with her Hauser rifle, Borges efficiently dispatches the second with a shot to the head. Jana misses her shot, giving the third guy a chance to run for cover before trying – and failing – to shoot O’Malley.

Meanwhile, Jana’s psionic senses made her aware that a new hidden foe has joined the combat zone, through an open window, some floors above them. She nervously lets the others know. Borges is focused on the third man; although he was under cover, his arm was showing, and now it’s bloody gone! However, the sniper hits her on the leg, as retaliation. Borges moves to the sunroof, preparing to cover Jana and Patrick, while they run towards the building. She is able to hit the sniper in the chest, fatally injuring him.

The coast is now clear. O’Malley frantically climbs to the third floor, ignoring Jana’s warnings to take it easy. Giving up on a lost cause – testosterone fuelled Patrick – she tries to sense the apartment where Jones is: in the middle of the third floor hall, she identifies two shapes. Jane is able to get the attention of impatient O’Malley, and points to the right door. Excited, O’Malley runs and kicks the door. Nothing happens. He then remembers he should shoot the lock (better late then never). The door is now wide open, but Patrick feels a strange tingling in his right leg, followed by a shocking pain. He screams. Calmly and steadily, Jana points her 9mm to a perceived shape inside the room, and hits it four times. Getting closer, she recognises the man lying down on the floor as Lance Jones. O’Malley, still excited, although limping, is mighty impressed.

When Borges finally reaches the third floor everything is under control; the rookies are handcuffing the two wounded and unconscious suspects. She calls for backup to collect the corpses and prisoners. Meanwhile, Gibson raises a pertinent question: Jones can be dangerous if he recovers consciousness. Borges pulls out her 9mm and simply says “a shot to the head will solve that!”. Despite protests and shock from the rookies, Lance Jones is swiftly neutralised, ZoneSec style. Borges is proud of her rookies and, after a trip to the infirmary and a debriefing with a surprised and impressed Clayton Reed, she proclaims it’s a night for celebration. Clayton is quick in updating his boss, letting Aziz know that, against all the odds, the rookies took care of Lance Jones and four accomplices. A relieved Aziz calls Doyle to deliver the news: “Malena is now safe!”. The Blue Parrot owner and the singer decide to celebrate with another live performance. This time without special effects…

Meanwhile, Dr Nakatomi receives a disturbing piece of news: James C, the hunky Rollerclash star, was caught by Pandemonium Inc. security brutally beating up the company’s CEO, and has been detained by ZoneSec. This upsets whatever plans she was starting to have for James. Concerned, she calls Aziz, who promises to take a close look into the matter. Aziz has a one-on-one with James, who admits his guilt, but claims he was just trying to interrogate Houseman to get to the end of the matter behind the Rollerclash deadly accidents.

Later that night, the Blue Parrot is once again filled to the brim. Malena sings, accompanied by Doyle on the piano. The singer attracts a different crowd: tonight the Parrot is full of young people. One group seems particularly excited and, suddenly, there’s is a commotion on their corner of the room. Doyle, who had left the stage some minutes before to greet Aziz and Isabella, quickly jumps up to see what the hell is happening in his bar. A young Asian kid has collapsed on the floor. Nakatomi examines him. He’s gone and it was clearly an overdose. Doyle is beside himself: people don´t normally OD at the Parrot, it’s just not that kind of bar! He pushes the punk’s friends around and they confess he took a new drug: Dark Dancer, the hot fashionable narcotic on the streets of Avalidad. Crowe is called to intervene and, once again, Malena’s performance at the Blue Parrot ends badly and abruptly.

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Postcards from Avalidad Campaign Setting (SPOILERS) Review pt1

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Red Room: The Year in (P)review

This has been a busy year here at the Red Room, with six books published by Postmortem Studios – Orpheum Lofts, The Memorial, The Sisters of the Seven Sins, Welcome to St. Cloud, Postcards from Avalidad and As Above, So Below -, a few interviews to independent role-playing game designers (Brian Shutter, Gavriel Quiroga, Liam Thompson, Venger Satanis, James ‘Grim’ Desborough and Chris Miller) as well as some other assorted articles, including the one about Giallo in Alarms and Journeys magazine issue 10. And next year may be even busier! Right now I have four new books already written and waiting for layout: the upcoming Postcards Companion an alternative setting location for Postcards from Avalidad and two Double Feature horror scenarios.

The Double Features are intended to emulate the Grindhouse phenomenon of the 1970s in a role-playing framework. There are now four of those short scenarios, prepared to be paired up in two volumes:

Double Feature Vol. 1


Sexual Holocaust: The fictional town of Hammettville, New York, is shaken by a series of gruesome and mysterious murders. The victim are all members of a S&M private club.

Brides of the Vampire: An anthology of plot hooks, set in different time periods, introduced along one character’s story, an old Eastern European vampire.

Double Feature Vol. 2


The Devil’s Country: A story within a story scenario about a movie cast and crew about to shoot a spaghetti western. Players start out as movie industry people, later slipping into their film characters in a western town situated outside our own reality.

Resort of the Dead: A George Romero/ J. G. Ballard crossover about a Zombie Apocalypse set in a formerly luxurious – but now decaying – summer resort in Portugal, during the 1980s.

Cards on the Table (working title): This is a mini-setting for Postcards from Avalidad. It adds the city of Lisbon, Portugal’s capital, to the Avalidad game world. Lisbon of the near-future is a new entry in the infamous list of gambling and vice cities of the world, such as Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Macao, Monaco and Singapore. There are several tie-ins to the original storyline through factions in the core book and plot hooks which require the characters to travel to the Iberian city. There’s also enough information to make Lisbon an alternative location for an Avalidad on-going plot.


Then there’s Nouveaupunk: Chronicles of the Belle Époque, the second campaign setting for James ‘Grim’ Desborough’s retroclone role-playing game *Punk. This one is still unfinished, but it will probably by completed early next year. And what is it about? Well, it takes place in the time period known as Belle Époque, dated between the early 1870s and 1914, at the beginning of World War I. It is neither the right time nor the right mood for Steampunk or Dieselpunk, but it is the era of Art Nouveau, an international style of art and architecture which had particular influence in the decorative arts. As it also uses the *Punk system, we called it Nouveaupunk.


This is where Umberto Eco’s Simone Simonini crosses paths with Jacques Tardi’s Adèle Blanc-Sec, Edgar Allan Poe’s Chevalier Auguste Dupin and Maurice Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin, amidst anarchist bombings, the echoes of the Dreyfus affair, the catastrophic side effects of secrets societies conspiring in the shadows and the mysterious results of experiences conducted by mad geniuses. Not quite pulp, not quite historical… but Nouveaupunk. Among the main inspirations for Chronicles of the Belle Époque there’s The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, a series of mildly Lovecraftian French graphic novels of the 1970s, by Jacques Tardi (also the 2010 movie adaptation by Luc Besson), Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery (2010) and Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt and The Purloined Letter, featuring gentleman detective Auguste Dupin.

And there are still other plans… After finishing Chronicles of the Belle Époque I’ll move to an Atompunk setting, partly inspired by Grim Jim’s wonderfully insane ’45 – Psychobilly Retropocalypse. Already on the works is a dark, low-fantasy, high-debauchery campaign setting co-written by myself and Sílvia Clemente. Other partnerships may happen in the future, but that obviously relies on other people’s availability so I can’t add much about it. I’ve been thinking about a few more projects, but it’s too early to mention them.

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Postcards From Avalidad Season #1 Episode #2

“Time moves in one direction, memory in another”

William Gibson


The Turkey

Aziz Crowe arrives home at about 5 a.m., but before he lays down besides Ka’athryn, he checks for forensic updates on the murder’s at Bentley’s mansion. Barbaroux’s DNA was found under one of the models’ fingernails, but the fabric belongs to one Sir Nigel Smythe, a retired British expat who runs the local Hellfire Club. Crowe has a premonition that Barbaroux is already dead and sends Zone Sec to find Smythe.

After finally going to sleep he has one of those strange psychic dreams: Aziz is inside an oven, alongside a roasting turkey. The headless turkey screams at him, with an outrageous accent French “Help me! You bastard!”. The dream lingers in his mind and once he awakens in the morning the first thing he does is to gaze from the window of his Olympian Tower penthouse and focus on the memory of the turkey. Unexpectedly his intuition points to the suburbs. Precisely to Dr Bentley’s Mansion!

Veronica, the Baboon


Crowe calls Michael Doyle asking his company to visit Dr. Bentley once again. He doesn’t want to call ZoneSec in just yet. He also asks a distracted Ka’athryn to call Isabella about a turkey Dr Bentley has in the oven. Isabella is delighted with the unexpected lunch invitation from William, and makes haste. Leaving the hotel she founds a very clearly disturbed Malena, but alas William is wanting.

While the trio is once again together Malena’s (Electronic Candombe star and Isabella and Ka’athryn’s friend) return is casually mentioned. This appears to deeply disturb Doyle. They had relationship way back when she was nobody.

They find Dr Bentley in his mansion lounging by the pool in Veronica’s company. Doyle insists in searching inside the Orgone Acumulator, an unfruitful venture, while the turkey is cooked for a late lunch.

But Doyle is a stubborn gentleman and, after inspecting the murder scene one more time with Aziz’s help, he notices an unscrewed ventilation grid. The muck from the Orgone Accumulator makes it that much easier for Doyle to slide inside the crawlspace. After some twists and turns, the corpse of Jean Paul Barbaroux is found. That kinda ruined lunch plans!

Back at ZoneSec, Aziz is able to revive the last visions of the dead women and the designer. The visions  point to the French designer being the killer, but something in Crowe’s gut makes him suspect Sir Nigel is involved somehow.

During the afternoon Isabella decides to drop by Babar’s Atelier to give his assistant Louise the sorrowful news. After drinking a couple of bottles of champagne to celebrate the life and death of Jean Paul Barbaroux – and Louise’s glorious new career – Isabella moves to the designer’s office to do a quick search. She finds some highly incriminating photos and a jacket belonging to Smythe with a matching missing pocket. She calls Crowe to tell him about the evidence and then focus her attention in trying the dresses Babar left behind. The late designer’s last work will be hotter then a roasted turkey.

Meanwhile Doyle arrives at the Blue Parrot to find a familiar scent in the air: Malena has returned searching for his help.She tells him about the weird events that happened during her latest shows. She may have a pyromaniac stalker for a fan. When Doyle asks why come for him, her answer is: “You are the only one I now I can trust!”


ZoneSec Blues

The team has assembled for the morning briefing. The task on hand is still Kurt Kilgore’s smear campaign. Patrick O’Maley, well-caffeinated, prepares to set up his plan. The boy’s innate talent for hacking catches Borges’ eye.

While Jana entertains the reporters with an improvised press-conference, Borges persuades Kilgore to step down by threatening to leak the fake compromising stories planted by O’Maley. It would be better for all if Kurt just gave up politics; and he does.

The team decides to keep an eye on Democracy Now! They make a short list of the next possible leaders to be ready to neutralise them.

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Postcards from Avalidad: As Above so Below (SPOILERS) review

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As Above, so Below Teaser #3

FACTIONS FROM AVALIDAD: ZONESEC
A unified security force in charge of enforcing the law in Avalidad, though it really works like a state police. Clayton Reed leads a shady spec-ops team – unofficially part of ZoneSec -, which was already featured in the core setting book. Reed and part of his group (Darius Jefferson, Eva Borges and Marisa Olafson) return in As Above, so Below.

Darius Jefferson
Eva Borges
Marisa Olafson


YOU CAN PURCHASE AS ABOVE, SO BELOW HERE OR HERE

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As Above, So Below Teaser #2

FACTIONS FROM AVALIDAD: LIBRARY OF FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE (AGARTHA)
After the Great Progressive Purge of the 2020s quite a lot of classical and popular books, movies, TV shows and musical albums became unavailable. There were some people who became collectors and curators of all the offensive and unsafe material in physical format, since the erasure had effects mainly over the digital editions. Mad Mike (pictured) is one of those. Through the decades he accumulated a gigantic stash of (previously considered) dangerous stuff, such as cult horror movies, stand-up comedy shows, sitcoms and, above all, 19th and 20th century books.

The Great Progressive Purge was just the way the process was later labelled, though there was never an authority actually doing the “purging”. Concerned “progressive” activists used the increasing power of social media – with the support of concerned traditional media, concerned governments and concerned corporations –, and coerced people to avoid the work of many authors and quite a lot of themes, deemed “problematic” and “unsafe”. Consumers were led to believe that liking that kind of content would turn them into fascists, and they sheepishly avoided “wrongthink”. Authors themselves steered clear of certain subjects, by fear of being deplatformed or cancelled. Companies were afraid to divulge “problematic” works, and those gradually became unavailable, even if they were never prohibited by law.

In fact, The Great Progressive Purge was much more insidious than state censorship, as people would likely rebel against that.The world never quite turned into an Orwellian 1984 dystopia – it was closer to a mix between Huxley’s Brave New World and Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 –, the public shunned thought-provoking art and entertainment, because it made them feel uncomfortable and unsafe. In the end, there were very few book burnings; authors, either led by fear of being cancelled, or goaded by the masses demanding uniformity of thought, self-censored their work, and corporations secured mass stupidity by spewing out inane, fatuous (but “safe”) contents. People in general were happy and comfortable about the end result and sat there consuming, obeying, conforming and watching holovision. Luckily, in this fictional setting, a substantial part of the population eventually became rather bored and dared to seek thought provoking art again. Quoting Kurt Vonnegut (who, obviously, was among the “purged” writers): “so it goes…”

YOU CAN PURCHASE AS ABOVE, SO BELOW HERE

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As Above, so Below Teaser #1

“I know this will all sound strange, the ravings of a madman, but I swear on my mother’s grave, everything I’m about to tell you really happened! It was a week ago, I was coming back from a pub…. And before you ask me anything about it, yes, I’d had a few drinks, but I can handle the booze, there’s no way spirits will bring down Pena Rodrigues, my friend! I can call you a friend, right? After all we are fellow countrymen…

Well, I was walking the streets, minding my own business, when I heard a strange voice, whisperin in a metallic tone, very irritating, very unpleasant. “Help me, old man, help me”. In that area I don’t usually stop when someone calls out for me, it’s not advisable, of course, not safe, but that voice sounded so fragile! It didn’t seem menacing… I went to take a look. Behind some garbage dumpster there was… something. Looked like a huge beetle, the size of a dog, with metal legs and pincers.

Okay, okay, I know now this is really sounding like the ravings of a drunken, silly old man, but you must have certainly heard the rumours. There’s talk on the streets about these… these half mechanical, half organic creatures. Supposedly they come from the future and bring some advanced technology with them. They say it’s thanks to these… things… corporations are able to produce miracles like Neuropods and other stuff. Biotechnology, and such!

Anyway, I’m a poor old sailor, I haven no tech knowledge, you probably know better than me what I’m talking about, mister big shot newsman! As I said, the thing, what they sometimes call “Machinatore”, asked for my help. It was injured, said it was involved in a dispute with others like him. Actually in the vicinity, amidst the debris, there were two piles of electronic components mixed with a gelatinous stuff, lying in a puddle of a white substance. Gross! The one talking to me had a slash on it’s carapace, it was dripping white fluid too, I suppose it’s their blood. I don’t know, man… Well, the tiny guy told me that, in exchange for my help, it would give me an “artefact”. Artefact is what it said. I know it meant some kind of technological prototype. This shit is worth a lot of money on the black market. Quite a lot! A brain implant, to boot, man, how could I refuse?

Then it made a very strange request: a pint of blood, a cup of semen, a car battery, some copper wire and a light bulb. Man, I know how this sounds, don’t give me that look, mister! That’s what the thing asked me! I was perplexed too, but it was no trouble at all. I asked it to wait for a few minutes, got the items it asked me for, and came back. But I was suspicious, man, I only delivered what it asked me for when it showed me the goods: a tiny metal thing, wrapped in a rag. Of course I didn’t know what the hell it was, but I pretended that I did, that I knew about these things. I handed it what was asked from me, took the package, and ran away from there as fast as I could!

Then I called a few fencers, explained what I had; the guys showed interest and said we’d probably do business, first thing in morning. Great, some money coming in, man! I went back to the Flesh Café, in Grand Socco, and had a few more drinks. I was nervous, you know? I also had me some Black Meat, because… well there were reasons to celebrate! Shortly afterwards, I went home. Or I was going back home because, in the meantime, somehow, I passed out in the middle of the street. When I woke up, my damn bad luck, someone had stolen the fucking artefact! Life sucks, mister, and I’ve never been a lucky man! Well, now, can you score me some Black Meat, man? I’m having the shakes…”

Pena Rodrigues, an Avalidad denizen, interviewed by Reynaldo Duque, aka Reporter X, for the Gonzo News RealBulletin

You can purchase As Above, so Below on DrivethruRPG or the Postmortem Studios store

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As Above, So Below – RELEASED!

In Avalidad there are urban legends about Agartha, an underground town inhabited by mutants and other outcasts. It is not a myth. As Above so Below is an adventure for the Postcards from Avalidad game setting. It includes statistics for Actual F*cking Monsters and *Punk, but usable with any system. Available now from DrivethruRPG and Postmortem Studios.*

*Print version from Lulu.com will also be available soon

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Unscripted & Unchained (Interview)

A few days ago I was interviewed by DM Bluddworth for his YouTube Channel Unscripted & Unchained RPG Review. We talked about my background as a role-playing gamer and my recent experience of publishing my own scenarios through Postmortem Studios. You can check out the interview here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgoX8n_4hKI&t=698s