A Dark And Quiet Room

…incoming transmission …
… Peoria Resistance Group…

Bliss Stage makes me think of this.

Broadcast Archive:
Saved through childbearing
Love and violence in Peoria

Last week sometime, my nine year-old daughter comes up to me and says that she has drawn up pictures of the entire family as Bliss Stage characters. She’s hearing that, in this game, you fall asleep and fight aliens, and that it’s an anime game. So she shows me the pictures and they really are quite good. I don’t mean “good for her age”; I actually mean, “demonstrating skill and technique”. I’m really impressed, and I tell her so.

Then she asks, “So, can I play Bliss Stage with you?”

Quickly, I blurt out, “No!”

Hopefully I kept the combination of panic and laughter out of my voice.

That’s right. The Peoria Resistance Group is at it again. Jude finally begins to be a sympathetic character, we discover another resistance group, and we fight nasty aliens that look like flying Koosh balls. So suit up, strap in, and prepare for launch!

Jude’s big break

During the last mission, Jude’s relationship with Rachel broke. According to the rules, we needed to have a denouement action to close out that relationship. So, we led off with that. Crystal says, “Rachel comes into the base looking for Jude, and she shows up while Jude and Leah are having dinner.” And so it was. Joseph catches her trying to sneak in, and he brings her to Jude, right in the middle of his romantic dinner with Leah. This puts Jude in a difficult place, to be sure.

So, Jude goes off from Leah and confronts Rachel, pretty much discarding her like a tramp. It was pretty harsh, actually, and Joseph was there, watching the whole thing. In response, Rachel slapped him across the face and then kicked him in the groin. Joseph was making sure that Rachel didn’t escape, but he wasn’t necessarily making sure that she avoided all physical contact with Jude.

After this, Crystal called for an interlude with Jude and Leah. Jude dragged himself back to dinner and told Leah everything. He sat there and dumped his entire life into her lap.

And she still accepted him.

We called this Stress Relief, because it couldn’t be Trust-Building.

Anchor Training

I can be a sadistic GM. I admit it. And so, when the briefing action came down that Jared wanted Jude to train a new anchor, it was fairly obvious who he was being paired up with.

Along the way, Jude started asking Jared questions about this whole “getting married” thing. Apparently, the group has an old copy of the Book of Common Prayer, and they read through the marriage ceremony (at least the bits that aren’t water-damaged) to get married. Jude is suddenly quite interested in this.

But then, when he arrived at the ANIMa crèches, he saw who he was going to be training.

Gloria.

Mission Brief
…begin briefing…

Anchor Training
Form ANIMa
Visualization test
Guidance test
If all successful, character is now an anchor
…end briefing…

So, uh, yeah. This didn’t really go well. Gloria didn’t really trust Jude, so she had her knife out on the console when he got back from getting changed into his pilot suit. Then the mission started.

Gloria’s inexperience was fairly obvious, but she did okay until the guidance test. Gloria had Jude turn right around a corner and walked him straight into nightmare. A dark cloud engulfed his ANIMa. She tried to back him out, but it was getting worse. In fact, the chassis took damage, breaking Jude’s relationship with Gloria. The dream started leaking across into the real world. A black tentacle reached through the fabric of things and groped for Gloria. She screamed and cut it with her knife. Then she slapped the panic button.

As I recall, Jude completely went off on Gloria before stalking away. Gloria yelled at him too, then stormed off the other direction. On the console, the severed tentacle twitched.

Blowing off Steam
Jude blew into Jared’s office and started screaming at him about his incompetence. Underneath, Jude was afraid. Very afraid. He was almost lost in the dream because of Gloria, so he’s turning his fear into the fury that he is venting at Jared. I called this Trauma Relief.

In contrast, Marcus told Beth that he needed to get away for a bit. So he spent the day away from everyone, not seeing anyone or being needed. Trauma Relief.

…acquiring signal…