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View Full Version : Leonardo’s Incomparable Nightmare Engine (A Chuubo's [...] campaign log)



CN the Logos
2018-03-27, 11:22 AM
So, I promised a campaign log for the one-on-one game of Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine (specifically the Glass-Maker’s Dragon campaign) that I'm currently GMing for my wife, and now that I have some content to post, I intend to deliver.

A little bit of background: I met the woman who is now my wife just under seven years ago, and one of the things we initially bonded over was a shared love of tabletop RPGs. Early on in our relationship I ran a one-on-one game of Promethean: The Created for her, and I posted the campaign log on this forum. Unfortunately, life got in the way of us finishing the game, but we’d always wanted to run another one like it, and with our schedules finally stable enough that we can run at least one session per two weeks, we’ve started this thing.

I’m not going to give a detailed rundown of Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine here; I figure that if you clicked on a thread called Leonardo’s Incomparable Nightmare Engine, you already have an idea of the basic setting. If not, there are some fairly good guides to it available through the magic of Google. I will however give a list of changes we’ve made to the default setting and the campaign itself:


Since my wife decided to play Leonardo de Montreal and she’s the only player, the story’s going to be darker than the default Glass-Maker’s Dragon campaign, both due to the POV and me changing some stuff to be more thematically appropriate. It won’t be grimdark, mind you, but it will be dark enough to change the genre from Pastoral to Gothic/Techno. For example, monsters don’t become human just because a human gets to know them and likes them. They have to want that too, and even if they do, becoming human is probably going to require a long Quest, maybe an entire Arc to break their curse.

Chuubo is the Wishing Girl, but is still called Chuubo.

Cats are the setting’s sapient heroic(ish) animals rather than rats. They work pretty much as described in The Secrets of Cats (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/134533/The-Secrets-of-Cats-o-A-World-of-Adventure-for-Fate-Core), except there’s no point in pretending they aren’t sapient or that magic doesn’t exist anymore. If the rat population of Town rises above an unspecified number, the eldritch horror called Malice the Plague will manifest using them as its vessel.

The parts of Rinley and Natalia will be played by a thirty-seven-year-old, possibly Russian, cyborg fishmonger and former pirate law-abiding sailor named “Crazy” Sergei.

Since I don’t have to worry about publishing this thing, I can stop tiptoeing around Simon’s resemblance to Slender Man and just say that he’s Slender Man. Also, some of the Nightmare Realm’s inhabitants will be familiar to fans of the Silent Hill series. There may be other characters or plot elements I borrow in a similar way, but nothing that would require anyone to be familiar with the original source.

Some other stuff that might be spoilery, or that I haven’t thought of yet.

In addition, I’m going to note right off that this is my first attempt at GMing (or HGing, or whatever) for this game and I’m kind of learning as I go, so if any rules weirdness (e.g., I’ve had a hard time remembering to hand out Issues so far) or confusion about the setting as written occurs, that’s probably why. Feel free to ask questions or comment on whatever.

CN the Logos
2018-03-27, 11:28 AM
Session 1: Prologue and Tutorial


"Once upon a time, a witch and a glass-maker made a dragon out of glass and taught it to hate the world. It raged and it would have destroyed everything; only, it shattered, instead.

"Maybe it found some reason to love the world.

"Maybe their hearts weren’t really in it—not the glass-maker’s, not the witch’s.

"Maybe it was just that the dragon was made of glass."

Leonardo finds himself treading water in a nightmare. It's night out and the sky is filled with falling stars. Not meteors: actual stars, falling from the sky. As he watches, the night seems to get darker and darker, but instead of finally ending in blackness, it seems like there are always more stars to fall, so that the sky can get darker without an end. It hurts to watch it for too long. Looking around, he realizes that he's in Big Lake, and starts to paddle towards shore. Before he can get very far though, something grabs him and attempts to drag him beneath the water. Unable to get his foot free, he is dragged down to face his attacker: an obviously undead woman with eyes that glow like the embers of a dying fire. Another attempt to break free of her grasp doesn't work, nor does the paralyzing toxin Leonardo had installed in his blood in case of attack. As she reaches for his throat with her decaying, clawed hand though, Leonardo realizes that she doesn't seem angry or hungry. She seems sad. He catches her hand in his and tries to caress her arm in a way he hopes is reassuring. The attack stops. This is odd; normally his nightmares that involve monsters end more violently than this...

At this point, Leonardo realizes that he's been under the water this entire time, and he's going to drown if he doesn't get air soon. He franticly gestures to the dead woman, and she, desire to drown him apparently mollified by his gesture of sympathy, shoves him to the surface. As he gasps for air, she surfaces beside him, and in the never-quite darkness of the falling sky, he recognizes her: Jade Irinka, the murdered sun. He wakes up.

His room is wrecked; apparently something broke out of his nightmares while he was distracted dreaming of the dead sun. He's pretty groggy, so it takes him a second to remember why he isn't in his apartment in Old Molder (read: for us to decide where he lives now). Then he becomes aware of the ever-present fish smell wafting from below. At this point, the present-day action pauses, and we start to establish some setting details:


Leonardo's currently living in a loft above "Crazy" Sergei's Fishery and Seafood Emporium. The fishermen make a lot of noise coming and going, and the fish smell is awful, but the rent's cheap and it's right on Big Lake, so he can get readings on the chaos coming off the water without even having to leave his room. He still leaves his room to get some seafood-free air, but it’s very convenient in theory.


Sergei himself is surprisingly tolerable.[1] He's loud, doesn't understand tensors, and hasn't been the same ever since a hundred bodied octopoid kaiju ripped off his right arm and leg and he saw a prophetic vision of the circumstances surrounding his death in the creature's gaze. But he's remarkably blasé about the monsters that occasionally crawl out of Leonardo's dreams, was willing to accept fishnets woven from despair[2] as partial payment for the initial rent and security deposit, and has already requested additional nets for his other boats only a few days of using the ones Leonardo gave him, which is a much-needed affirmation of Leonardo's capabilities from a person he didn't expect to like at all of no concern to Leonardo whatsoever except that it makes paying the rent easier.


Leonardo considered staying in the Archive, but children are so childish (even if the older ones aren't that much younger than him), and a grown man that spends most of his time with children he has no formal relationship to is deeply suspicious.


Chuubo and Seizhi have been hanging out in Fortitude recently, for reasons unknown. Chuubo is obnoxiously... Chuubo-esque, even if it might be interesting to compare notes on the construction of their respective Engines and her hair is very pretty in a girl-next-door sort of way and Seizhi is the Platonic ideal of a beta male, so them not contacting him at all since he moved to Fortitude is fine. Really.


Jasper Irinka, the daughter of the dead sun, is spending her summer on San Helia[3] (a.k.a. Little Island), the island where her mother had her combination temple and summer home. Leonardo’s talked to her a couple of times in passing, and it’s hard for him not to be curious about someone he literally gave his heart to save, but she’s much more popular than him at School so they don’t interact that much.[4]


Before he left to join the Bleak Academy, Leonardo was scouted for the SEED program by Principal Entropy. When asked to show a project demonstrating his value to the reformation and preservation of the world, Leonardo showed off the scar he got from ripping out his own heart to restart the sun, and Entropy's response ("...Huh.") was worth Speechlessness XP. Exactly what happened after that is uncertain, but given that Leonardo went to the Bleak Academy afterwards...


Back in the present, Leonardo considers what to do for the day. Readings are generally OFF THE SCALE, but he's going to need some historical context for the data. With a sigh, he decides that he is totally going to have to check out the Archive.







"Crazy” Sergei is an excellent example of good stuff happening spontaneously in play. I came up with him off the top of my head by asking “what sort of recurring NPC would be best for deflating Leonardo’s ego without totally killing the mood we’re going for by existing in the same setting?” Then it turned out that my wife loved the interaction between him and Leonardo, so I decided to include a bit more Sergei then I was planning to… and after about ten minutes of thought and quickly double-checking the Fortitude sourcebook post-session, I had a detailed backstory for him.
Nearby fish realize the essential meaninglessness of their lives and commit suicide by net. Horrifying but effective!
Techincally, “San” is a male suffix and “Helia” is a feminine name, but “Santa Helia” didn’t sound right to me. Fortunately, I can just say it’s part of a running gag where things related to the sun get names that don’t match their gender. Maybe Jade saw all the cultures that had decided she was male, and rather than get offended, she decided to make a joke of it? Coincidentally, the God of Silent Hill (born from two people making offerings to the sun in the hopes of it granting what would probably be Bleak wishes in CMWGE terms) is also female despite being called God rather than Goddess…
Much more popular than Leonardo is a low bar. Jasper’s actually considered kind of weird by most students at School, even if people do occasionally feel the urge to genuflect to her.

solidork
2018-03-27, 01:33 PM
I've been looking forward to this!

CN the Logos
2018-03-28, 11:46 AM
Session 2 : Chapter 1.1

Leonardo enters the Archive, hoping to find some historical information on the storms that come off Big Lake from the Outside. Unfortunately, the Archive is badly organized and there's no one at the front desk to provide assistance, but Leonardo perseveres, and manages to find a few interesting books after several hours of searching.


The first book he finds is a meteorological description and analysis of the abnormal weather patterns around Big Lake written prior to the death of Jade Irinka. It confirms that even prior to the parts of the Void closest to the world boiling over and forming the Outside, the storms from the lake were known for their strange effects, and the dust coming from the lake has existed for as long as there has been a lake, let alone a town by it. One interesting tidbit that directs Leonardo's search in a new direction is the observation that increased storm activity on the lake typically heralds the arrival of a new kaiju, with more dangerous kaiju associated with stronger storms. It's unknown whether the developing the kaiju cause the storms, or the energy from the storms trigger the development of the kaiju.


The next book is a history of kaiju sightings and attacks over the last hundred-odd years. There are references to kaiju attacks before this, but the book primarily concerns itself with kaiju that appeared after Town developed the technology to photograph them. A layperson's introduction to the subject to be sure, but it does cite sources. Of particular interest is the information on Abzu, the kaiju that appeared the last time storms got this intense. Abzu emerged from the depths of the lake just over a month after the death of the sun. Leonardo only vaguely remembers it because he was still recovering from self-performed heart surgery at the time, but Abzu killed several hundred people, injured hundreds more, and caused massive property damage before it was slain... by none other than Sergei, who sustained severe injuries during the battle. The book also includes some basic information and nice pictures of the steampunk/deviant science powered devices used to fight them. Another more scholarly book on the kaiju provides various theories on how they work along with more detailed descriptions of historical kaiju. Both mention the glass dragon that appeared in the sky over Town fifteen years ago; an anomaly among kaiju.


The final book Leonardo picks up is a detailed account of the events surrounding the glass dragon: the unusual phenomena in the months leading up to the dragon's arrival, the strange shattering of the dragon before its attack could begin in earnest, and the injuries caused by the falling glass shards. It also describes how a few individuals injured by the shards seem to have developed paranormal abilities of some kind.


As he turns to take his books to the front desk and hopefully find someone to borrow them from, a girl carrying an enormous stack of books runs right into him, sending both of them (and their books, as well as her adorably gothy top hat) flying. After she stammers an apology and they pick up their books, she introduces herself as Miramie Mesmer. She tells Leonardo that she lives and works at the Archive, and helps get him signed up for the Archive's equivalent of a library card while she awkwardly rambles about her plans to turn the nearby manor into a combination art gallery/cafe. She seems good-natured enough, but Leonardo finds her slightly unsettling; the large, round mirrored sunglasses she wears make it impossible to see her eyes...

On his way back to Sergei's, Leonardo is walking along the shores of Big Lake when he sees something unusual. A young (anywhere from a mature-looking nine to a young-looking twelve year old), boy, talking with an eight-foot tall, faceless, shadowy, tentacle-armed, slender man wearing a nice suit. The creature is obviously a monster from the Nightmare Realm, but the boy is harder to read. Leonardo approaches to see if the boy needs any assistance when the slender man looks at him directly, and beckons him over with an outstretched tendril.

The slender man introduces himself as Simon Brambles, the Prince of Thorns,[1] and the boy as Keiichi. Simon already knows Leonardo's name. When Leonardo asks what's going on, they explain: Keiichi ran away from home some time ago (Keiichi has lost track of time, but doesn't think it's been longer than a couple of weeks; Simon found him on the shores of the lake nine days ago) for reasons he doesn't want to talk about. Simon found him because the boy has a powerful psychic presence that acts as a beacon for creatures of nightmare.

For Simon, who can already leave the Nightmare Realm for several hours at a time if he wants to get something from the Waking World, Keiichi's awakening psychic powers are mostly a curiosity. But there are other nightmares, led by a monster called the Ill-Made, who want to use Keiichi to make themselves permanently "real": a process which Simon claims will require them to vivisect the boy. Simon says that he's become fond of Keiichi in the short time he's known the boy, and would rather that not happen, but he's not sure he can single-handedly win a fight with Ill-Made and her entire gang of monsters. But he's confident that if Leonardo (from whom he expects "great things") could create some sort of dreamcatcher to make Keiichi's dreams harder to infiltrate, he would be able to fight off any invading nightmares as they were struggling to get through the defenses. He asks Leonardo to undertake this project on his behalf, and notes that he can pay a substantial sum for Leonardo's trouble...







For this version of Simon, I increased Superior Plant-speaker to Rank 2, replaced Superior Snake-speaker with Ominous Ritual Magic 1, and changed his arcs to Of A Certain Place 2/Allegory 2 to better fit in with the (good) Slender Man material. Simon's canon self is already so close thematically to the Slender Man, I figured, “Eh, what the Hell, make it explicit. It’ll be fun.” Before anyone gets worried: he's not meant to be a Knight of Cerebus (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KnightOfCerebus). He could potentially do the disturbing stuff Slendy's known for, but it loses some of its horror factor when the protagonist is a nigh-invulnerable mad scientist. There might still be horror at some point though. Not ruling it out.

CN the Logos
2018-03-29, 01:35 PM
One more session already played and logged. After this I'll be updating as sessions happen.

Session 3: Chapter 1.2

Back at Leonardo’s loft over Sergei’s fishery, Nightmare’s Angel, the Prince of Thorns, and the Haunted Child discuss their options. After some debate, they decide to go with a nightmare science powered dreamcatcher. After discussing Keiichi’s fear of the Ill-Made (“It hurts to look at her”) with him, Leonardo is able to reach into the boy’s nightmares and pull out:


A large spider, cobalt blue with vivid orange markings, which is strangely docile despite its massive, venom-dripping fangs.


A mongoose, which is decidedly less docile than the spider.

While he works, my wife and I go over what Leonardo already knows about the Nightmare Realm:


The Nightmare Realm is a “shadow” cast on the Void (now the Outside) by the Waking World. It reflects both actual, physical objects from our reality and abstract concepts, sometimes at the same time and/or in the same place. The geography is… unpredictable.


It actually isn’t all nightmares.; pleasant things cast a shadow here as well. A better term would probably be “Dream World” or something like that. But Leonardo’s caged blasphemy ensures that he always ends up in the ugly parts, so he calls the whole thing the Nightmare Realm out of spite.


While some inhabitants of the Nightmare Realm are actual tulpas, most natives are independent entities. They’re still shaped by things in the Waking World and would die if it were ever destroyed, but that’s not because they aren’t “real”, whatever that means; it’s more that they get energy from our world the way we get energy from sunlight.


Parts of it have become infected by a Blasphemy that is wrecking the place and driving out or corrupting the locals. This is probably related to that thing the Headmaster of the Bleak Academy shoved inside Leonardo’s chest.


After a bit of coaxing, Leonardo gets the spider to spin a small web in an iron ring. He then extracts one of the mongoose’s eyes and uses SCIENCE to fuse the two into a dreamcatcher strong enough to entangle any nightmare that might attack Keiichi, and especially against the Ill-Made, who has been described as being serpentine in some way. The spider is returned unharmed to the nightmare realm. The mongoose is placed in a cage so that Leonardo can build the poor thing a replacement eye for further experimentation.

Inspecting the dreamcatcher, Simon says it looks like good work, but that Leonardo still needs to be able to call him if it malfunctions or simply breaks. Leonardo warns Simon that the dreamcatcher won’t discriminate between Ill-Made’s minions and him, to which Simon replies that he has other ways of traveling between the Nightmare Realm and the Waking World if he likes. He shows Leonardo a sigil (http://theslenderman.wikia.com/wiki/The_Operator_Symbol), and asks him to channel his Will into it. Leonardo does so, and as if on cue, the lights grow dim, and the lake outside is replaced by a fog-shrouded forest. Pleased with the result, Simon gives Leonardo a heavy bag filled with something that goes “clink” and a piece of his shadow, which he says could be fashioned into a device to contact him. Already inspired to do SCIENCE, Leonardo conjures what looks like a sand tiger shark tooth from the Nightmare Realm, and works it into an earring, with the shadow piece set as a jewel. The result is a device that will let Leonardo contact Simon (or vice versa) and allow communication between Nightmare Realm and Waking World. After putting the final changes on it, Leonardo throws both the earring and the dreamcatcher into the Incomparable Nightmare Engine to harden them before giving the dreamcatcher to Keiichi.

Before he leaves, Simon makes one last request. If Keiichi won’t go home, he says, Leonardo should find him a safe place to stay. In return, the slender man promises, he will assist Leonardo with his work investigating the storms from the Outside, which he believes are connected in some way to the Blasphemy infecting the Nightmare Realm. If he suspects Leonardo has a connection to it as well, he gives no sign.

Short on ideas and wanting to make sure Keiichi is taken care of (because he’s a potential way for nightmares to invade the Waking World and one should be careful with that sort of thing), Leonardo takes the boy to the Archive, hoping to talk with Miramie about finding a place for Keiichi. On the way, he confirms what he suspected; the bag Simon gave him is full of gold coins. Gold coins with an aura of nightmare and marked with his sigil, but actual, physical gold regardless. Apparently Simon is loaded.

Miramie is sitting at the front desk reading when Leonardo walks in. After a nervous greeting (she wonders if the books weren’t what Leonardo was looking for and apparently thinks that would reflect badly on her for some reason) they get around to the subject of a place for Keiichi. Miramie’s happy to help; a couple of the teenagers staying at the Archive recently moved out and got an apartment together, so there’s plenty of room. When Leonardo offers her a few of the gold coins in exchange for seeing to Keiichi’s needs, she’s overjoyed; the amount of gold Leonardo offered will pay for quite a bit of repair work on the old manor turned café/art gallery. Before leaving though, Leonardo gets an odd feeling, and decides to see Miramie’s most wicked thought.

“Maybe I was right to create the glass dragon.”

Cue Leonardo screaming internally.[1]

Leonardo puts on his best poker face while he decides what to do. Grabbing Keiichi and running would probably alert the witch to Leonardo’s discovery, and he isn’t sure what’d she’d do if she knew her cover was blown. Talking to her for a few more minutes, he concludes that she’s not actively plotting or working towards the destruction of what’s left of the world right now, and he doesn’t think that his composure slipped enough for her to realize what he found out. Cursing mentally, he concludes that leaving Keiichi with the witch is probably the only way to avoid her becoming suspicious. Forcing a smile, he promises to be back to check on Keiichi regularly.

He visits several times over the rest of week, talking to Miramie, and trying to figure her out while he does so…






My wife just skimmed the default character options until she found a few that appealed to her to read in more detail. So the shy goth girl living at the local library being (what’s left of) the witch who helped create the glass dragon was an actual surprise to her. I didn't set out to keep it a secret, but since it worked out that way, I'd like to give her the satisfaction of figuring some things out for herself. So if you want to discuss the character of Miramie and how what I've described so far relates to canon, PLEASE USE SPOILER TAGS. Use spoiler tags for any future quest/character talk, actually. Thank you.