Shaved Bullet Mishap Table

Background

I'd been reading FUTUREPUNK lately and had a hankering to play some OSR cyberpunk stuff.

Here is Scrap Princess' original post about shadowrun. It is the greatest post on shadowrun I've ever read, and really applies well to making cyberpunk more dystopian and crazy.

Here's a Reddit post summing up Scrap Princess' awesome post on Shadowrun.

She mentioned how guns and ammo in the cyberpunk future are like electronic devices and shitty chargers / cables but a million times worse. So you can find a gun and no bullets, or a gun and like there are 10 bullets for it in the city. BUT you can probably find a street vendor who can shave some bullets and can use some of those in your gun, and there totally won't be a table of terrible things that can happen when you use them.

If stuff is in parenthesis, that's GM knowledge, don't share it with the players without a roll, or without the player asking good questions. Sometimes bullets fail in ways that are weird or not obvious.

Totally not a table of terrible things that happen when you use scrap bullets.

1. Keyholes - the bullet doesn't engage the rifling in the barrel, doesn't spin like a football, but tumbles like a dodo thrown from a cliff. Damage disadvantage, aim disadvantage.
2. Cartridge case cracks, warps, jammed in place. Shot goes off as normal, but you need metal fingers or tools and a quiet minute to pry it out. Metal fingers means you can do it in one round.
3. The casing stovepipes coming out, is in pieces. Gun fires as normal, but you have to work the gun to clear the case, turn it upside-down, shake it, etc. Low/normal dexterity characters need a whole round; high dex means you can do it as a free action. If using a revolver, ignore this!
4. Squib round. Gun barely makes a noise, has little recoil. (The bullet is lodged in the barrel.) Describe that, roll to notice / know what this is, if that's your system. If you fire the gun again without spending minutes hammering the bullet out of the barrel, the gun will explode. Hopefully the PC wasn't using auto fire or it's boom time.
5. Barrel cracks from too-hard / too-powerful round. Damage and aim disadvantage going forward. Each shot afterwards has a 1/6 chance of the gun exploding.
6. Bullet shatters as it exits the barrel. Aim advantage, damage disadvantage.
7. Misfire, gun goes 'click,' low/normal dex means 1 round to clear. Revolvers can just keep firing - you clear the misfire by pulling the trigger more.
8. Misfire, see above (actually a hang fire shhhh. Gun will shoot in some number of seconds). Low/normal dex = 1 round to clear. If cleared, 50/50 chance the gun explodes when the bullet detonates out of battery, otherwise it pops off on the ground and the brass casing flies off, pretty harmless if you're not standing directly atop it. If using a revolver, can keep firing, but gun explodes in 1d4 rounds. (The textbook / at the range thing to do is keep the gun pointing in a safe direction and wait 30 seconds, but hah, like shadow runners are gonna do that. If they did then it's like taking an aimed shot.) (PCs probably know that misfires and hangfires happen, and that they closely resemble each other for the first couple of seconds.)
9. Badly shaped. Aim disadvantage.
10. Accidentally armor-piercing. Ignores armor. (An IRL myth of bullet shaving.)
11. Accidentally hollow-point. Damage advantage, armor is stronger against this.
12. Gun goes click. Bullet jams in the magazine. Can reload to keep using the gun. Need a few minutes to fix the magazine or to get any other bullets out of it.
13. Tracer round! Can ignite gasoline, makes a bright zippy light pointing right back at you.
14. Depleted Uranium Round! Ignores armor, dust from the bullet can give birth defects or cancer.
15. Hyper Round. Super loud, huge blast, 1/6 detonates non-hyper-tech guns. Check if deafened for 1d6 hours, or explodes a silencer if attached. No damage bonus, this was a marketing gimmick.
16. Ripper Round. Delayed-fuse exploding monofilament. 50% it explodes in battery (ie in the gun) and wrecks gun and guaranteed does damage to PC, no roll to avoid like below. Otherwise damage advantage, ignores armor. They never worked the bugs out, so these never caught on.
17. Gun fires but it was shaved so much, practically a blank. At point-blank range the gun has damage disadvantage, otherwise no effect on target.
18. 911 e-phone round. Summons a very confused DocWagon in 1d20 rounds. Emits a loud screeching alarm from the wound / thing shot.
19. Curved shot. Cannot hit target, roll attack against someone else randomly to your front. 
20. Curved upward shot. Goes almost straight up. Normal attack at point blank range, otherwise you just made loud noise woo hoo.

When should you roll on this table

It depends on how shitty you want shaved bullets to be. If I was running Futurepunk I'd make every scrap bullet use roll 1d6, on a 5-6 you don't have to roll on this table. (The tradeoff is slowing down combat potentially, but, EH. Just roll an extra d6 that's a different color, or have the GM roll for mishaps and the player roll for firing.) My goal is to make an excuse for people to use swords in a cyberpunk dystopia. Or for, as someone stated in the Scrap thread, for characters to beat each other to death with their phones.

Shaved bullets should be awful; high-tech guns should roll on some kind of 'high tech malfunction' table per use or so as well. Anything good that works consistently should be some rarified high-tech that people will kill over. Or some rare modern gun which wasn't destroyed by a weapon-eater nanite cloud during the Digital Wars.

Gun Explodes Rules for Futurepunk

Roll 2d6. Roll 3d6 if you have really serious gloves, a riot helmet with a face-shield, fully enclosed armor is maybe 4d6, etc. If any die is a 5 or a 6, you're fine! Otherwise you can take damage, get disoriented, get knocked down, whatever, the GM makes a hard move kind of thing.

Answering an Age-Old Question: Can an RPG session fit on a postcard?

Yes it can! I wouldn't have written a post simply stating 'NO' in 40-point font.

In Mailhouse 1, I try to work (yet again!) but find things... difficult. As hard as a banana split, as simple as VCR assembly, as easy as falling up from a log.

In Mailhouse 2 a small dog (terrier?) attempts to purchase an antler for the purposes of gnawing. Do dogs grind their teeth and, if so, does it matter? I actually don't attempt to answer that question. Spoilers. I will say this is inspired by reading lots to a young toddler, so things are a lot less dark.

Again, these games are based on the Funhouse RPG I found whilst scrolling through the Lone Wolf G+ roleplaying community. Come to a decision point, make a list of possible outcomes, and roll. Mailhouse 1 is also inspired by the Surrealist game of never being able to leave a particular room, but when walking out (and immediately coming back in), something changes.

These postcards were sent to my niece and nephew.

MAILHOUSE 1

MAILHOUSE 2 MR MEEPLES EDITION

Funhouse Surreal Solo Play 2: Office Edition

I come into the office and it’s Monday. I leave and come back and it’s Tuesday. Then I leave and come back again and it’s Wednesday, then Thursday, Friday. I don’t return until Monday again, go in, work, leave. Then

1. It’s Tuesday
2. It’s Wednesday
3. It’s Thursday
4. It’s Friday
5. It’s Saturday
6. It’s Sunday.

d6 => 5

I come in the next day. No one is around but a confused support agent, O_____. He stares at me but doesn’t say anything. 

“Pretty dead for a Tuesday, eh?”

“It’s Saturday.”

I laugh. O_____ does a lot of deadpan humor. He keeps looking at me calmly and I slowly see he’s not kidding. 

“Yeah, but… It’s Tuesday,” I say, still trying to get in on the joke. 

“Listen C_____. It’s Saturday. I saw you Wednesday, remember?”

“No. No, it was Monday. Yesterday was Monday. Let me… I’m going to call my wife.” I say, walking away.

“Get her to tell you it’s fucking Saturday!” He calls out behind me.

I walk out and am suddenly back in and

1. It’s Tuesday
2. It’s Wednesday
3. It’s Thursday
4. It’s Friday
5. It’s Saturday
6. It’s Sunday.

d6 => 3

Some people have shown up. Several people. No one was in the hall. Right? No one came in the back, the back door and the front door are right next to each other in the same hallway. I could see them both. I’m just not sure if I remember being in the hallway.

O_____ is gone from the support room. His manager’s computer is on, unlocked. I look at the time displayed at the top. The day of the week: Thursday.

“What the hell, what the hell. What the fuck.” I murmur. 

“C_____?”

“Hey, hey man,” I say to the support manager, who is directly behind me. “Sorry, I blanked out, was just, ah, you know.”

“Hah, well, week’s almost over, C_____.”

“Yeah.”

I flee to my desk and open my laptop. Pull up a calendar. Time has passed, time has flown by. Almost two weeks I can’t account for. I look at emails… I’ve responded to things during my missing time. Pull up my tickets, work to-do notes.

1. I have no work to do
2. One ticket: ‘get out’
3. Normal workload
4. Strange meeting with CEO
5. Text moving around (lazily? hypnotically? like a predator?)
6. Feed sheep

d6 => 5

The text wavers in front of me, as though I were trying to read it across summer asphalt. The letters twist and dip. I can’t read anything. I pull out my phone, try to call my wife, J_____. Same deal. I numbly thumb the too-bright screen and a YouTube video plays, loud, someone running a tabletop game. People laughing. People - the real ones in the office - look at me over the cubicle walls. Nervous faces.

I apologize and they lower behind the fabric walls. 

I can’t read, I can’t work. I reach for a piece of paper. I know I can get through this, somehow. I can write something and see what happens.

Writing

1. A ransom note that appears to have been made from glue and cut-up magazines
2. A sentient, self-aware poem (which is nevertheless not very good) 
3. I realize I’ve signed something but I can’t tell what
4. I’ve drawn the office building but it’s on fire
5. A sketch of a spiral or vortex
6. The paper is black as a void

d6 => 5

A spiral. It holds my mind in place and I am falling, falling down it. Faster and yet slower, so fast and yet I never get closer to the center. Floating.

The office is full of floating debris, cables, people floating in midair. People hover above their gently drifting monitors and peck at keyboards perched in their laps. 

My boss pushes out of his offices and wafts over to my cube. 

“There’s still chicken biscuits in the break room, C_____.”

“Ah… great!”

“Are you alright? You look a little peaked.”

“Oh you know, just, you know. Thursday for you.”

He nods as if I said something sensible and pushes off my cubicle, which creaks, heading down the hallway. 

OK, ok. OK. I drew something and things changed. I could draw… going home. And get out of the office. 

I begin writing, scrawling, drawing. I can’t tell. 

Writing

1. A drawing of the car ride home
2. My third eye opening
3. The building is on fire
4. Dogs have taken over
5. Printers are spewing out papers like machine guns
6. I am a baby at a daycare

d6 => 3

The drawing of burning cubicles shakes in my hands. I smell smoke. 

People are on the bounce, flinging themselves down the main hallway as smoke fills the air. I flail after them, slamming off carpeted walls. The fire flows in zero g. I see that the fancy lounge part of the office has been converted to escape pods. Looking out the windows I see stars and void. I get in an escape pod and strap myself in. The hatch irises shut and I am slammed into my crash harness and am suddenly back in the office.

1. It’s Tuesday
2. It’s Wednesday
3. It’s Thursday
4. It’s Friday
5. It’s Saturday
6. It’s Sunday.

d6 => 2

It’s the day before, I remember it now, every detail. I walk in backwards and say goodbye backwards to my boss. Other people filter into place in reverse. I unpress buttons and words are rubbed off the screens, which I can read again, as I turn something into nothing. 

I want to try to escape before lunch, before I have to pull food out of my mouth, form it a bite at a time. Hell, I’d like to escape before my last bathroom break of the day.

But my thoughts are empty, useless, without action, and my acts are on rails. I cannot break the past. I pour water out of my mouth into an upturned cup and leave the office to go to the bathroom. When I return

1. It’s Tuesday
2. It’s Wednesday
3. It’s Thursday
4. It’s Friday
5. It’s Saturday
6. It’s Sunday.

d6 => 1

It’s Tuesday. It’s the day after Monday. I work a normal day. I go home and I work from home the rest of the week. 

Funhouse Surreal Solo Play 1

What it is

Funhouse Rpg is something +Chad Robb came up with here. I thought it was worth a spin, and enjoyed it. The d6 tables I generate aren't very generalizable - they're probably not going to help you at your table. But they're still fun to dream up.

I've been reading Itras By lately, and I suppose the surrealism is leaking through a bit. The Menagerie mentioned a surrealist game of re-entering the same room over and over again (no matter how you try to leave) but one or two things change, so that's what I used to run this.

Actual Play

When I come back to the office

1. everyone is a cat
2. computers trying to eat everyone
3. no one is there
4. raging inferno
5. giant party
6. grass is growing in the carpet

d6 => 3

The office completely emptied out before I returned. What had I left for, even? I hadn’t been gone long. The disgusting fluorescent light bathed empty swivel chairs. Computers were on, screens unlocked, as though people left in a hurry. I tried not to think of Aliens, where the marines nervously sweep and clear the vacant living quarters of the colonists on LV426.

“Hello?” I yell out.

1. YES reverberates from everywhere around me, basso profundo.
2. An alien from Aliens drops from the cheap ceiling tile, its white dust coating its bug-like visage
3. Nothing responds
4. I hear music outside the office
5. the fire alarm goes off and the sprinklers hose me down
6. I smell fish coming from behind one of the cubicle walls, which has moved.

d6 => 4

I hear Alt-J’s Matilda start up behind me. Behind me is the wooden door to the office. A narrow vertical window stretches floor-to-ceiling beside it. The hallway outside is pitch black. It shouldn’t be. It should be lit. It was just lit.

“This is for, this is for, this is for Matilda.”

My hand shakes as I turn the door handle. I step outside into the dark and am still in the office. Where I just was, on the other side of the door.

WHAT HAS CHANGED

1. Everyone is back
2. Everyone is back and have turned into cats
3. Every computer is playing that song
4. Ankle-deep in water, fish eat algae
5. Cubicle walls are now trees
6. Outside I can see the ocean

d6 => 6

The grey sky is gone. Outside I see blue. Wind thuds itself dumbly against the windows. I pull a fingerful of blinds down. 

The ocean. Waves break against the shore. The office sits at the edge of dunes, elevated, atop wooden beams. The sun is coming up slowly, languidly. 

I try to open a window to go outside

1. A voice calls out, saying, ‘Don’t go’
2. The window turns black like a TV screen dying
3. The ocean recedes, sweeps in over the beach. It carries the office building out to sea.
4. See 3 but then you fall off the edge of the earth into spaaaaace
5. The sea swallows the office up and now you’re under water
6. Walk outside and wind up back in the office

d6 => 2

“You’re not allowed to leave.” A computerized voice says, all around me. The window I’d opened is dead, black. Around me, all the other windows - the screens that imitated windows - hiss static. The other lights have gone dead, but everything is bright in the glow of the window-screens.

“Test phase two of four is about to begin.”

PHASE 2

1. Infantry flood in, weapons drawn
2. Shadows gather and cohere in one cubicle-corner.
3. 100 feral cats enter the room in search of food
4. The room begins to fill with small balls of fur which hum and purr
5. Water begins to flood the room
6. The walls start to close in

D6 => 6

The walls shudder and groan around me. They move in at me. The window-screens crack and shatter at the periphery and fall down. There’s still an office door that hasn’t been completely occluded across the way, visible over the cubicle walls. I start to run.

WHAT HAPPENS

1. The walls back up and rush in, I am crushed
2. The floor shatters beneath me and I fall…
3. The walls rush in and are made of styrofoam; I burst through.
4. I wake up with a start
5. I make it to the doorway and rush through
6. A hatch in the floor that didn’t exist in the ‘real’ office is open, I fall through into the ocean

d6 = > 4

I wake up with a start. 

It’s 6:45am. I need to get up, eat breakfast. I need to go to the office. 

Coral Made 3: Solo Cthulhu Dark Actual Play

Harvey Mills: 

Drone Pilot

Insight 3

clues: forgot 3 days, Steve is missing, Steve’s sub is missing with all hands lost, Dr Bright did something terrible to Steve in a dream. Others have had terrible dreams. Seismic activity opened up C11, the route down the Rift where the Cyclops was lost.

The too-sweet rot of sick permeated the tiny Drone Control System room. Mills was crammed in between the large bank of controls and the wall behind him. Beside him was the trash can into which he’d vomited. He didn’t notice the smell. 

Mills focused on green screens of the drone cameras, sonar, IR and LIDAR translated to something he could see and understand. Even blurred as the images were, they were crystal clear to Mills.  

His hands flitted across toggles and joysticks. The fleas flexed their limbs and spun up their props. 

Mills had spent months laying down nodules of wired and wireless data transmitters, so the fleas could talk to each other and to him. That mesh network had been rent. Half of his work was gone. No obvious signs of what had happened.  

"In 3 days? 3 days?” Mills murmured.

He set a few drones through automated repairs of the network, and drove the rest around, looking. Headed two towards C11. In the meantime he had one zoom in on a former mesh network node.

(Investigate the mesh network through the drones roll)

M: 3,4

It looked as though something had flowed over the mesh and wiped it away. There were some smoothed-over microbolt remains where it had been attached. They were designed to come out cleanly if pulled, to minimize damage to the area, but the nodes hadn't been pulled. It was as if they’d been shaved off the rocky surface.

A glimmer on one screen drew Mills attention. The fleas falling down C11 had seen a glimmer of thermal emission. Faint, distant. He pushed the drones down, having one lay down new nodes so they could keep up their broadcast.

Down, down. The craggy tunnel became a column going straight down. 30 meters in diameter, with a faint undulation to the rock. Regular. Like it was undergoing a slow stone peristalsis. He was closer to the heat signature. The cameras cut out. 

"No, what? No!" Mills slammed a palm into his desk. "Come back. You were at double bandwidth cap. Double! Come on."

He flipped switches and the central broadcast nodule at the top of the Rift pumped more power into the mesh. 

One screen flickered on. 

The walls were covered in a smooth heat source. It flowed. Mills tried to move the drone closer to it but the prop didn't respond. Rear cam showed it was wrapped in heat. 

In front, a section of the shaft bubbled, one large swell. It unfurled, slowly, like a linen sheets underwater, sinking. Edges drifting lazily, one layer moved out of the way and another drifted upwards. So many layers. Something under them, jerking, rolling. The temperature was rising. Water began to boil around the drone. 

Alarms flashed, but Mills couldn’t hear them, couldn’t look at them. He could only hear water boiling as he numbly hit controls to swim up and away, to flee. The drone was transfixed, like Mills, robotically staring at the diaphanous veils still drifting open before him, at the spherical thing beneath them, swiveling back and forth. The heat came from it, from a circular shape upon it. It roved about and suddenly shot around to point at Mills through the screen. A lance of heat passed over the drone. Everything went white.

Insight check => 6, ++ (to 4)

The speakers crackled around him. The drone that had seen it all - XF12 - its screen faded a hair, and he could just see the outline of a human.

"Steve?" Mills said. It was the long, lean frame. The swept-back short hair.

The figure leaned forward. Closer, closer. Steve's lips. 

"I miss you."

"I... Steve. I miss you too, but this... isn't real. I'm dreaming you."

“You think you’re dreaming me?" The figure grasped the camera, Mills could see bright white teeth snarling. "He is dreaming us! We are His dreams and when He awakens -"

Insight check: 5, ++ (to 5)

Mills jerked awake, still seated in his chair. The screens were dark. He tapped a key and they hummed awake. 

SIGNAL LOST.

All the drones gone. Static flickered and hissed through speakers. 

The door behind him slid open. 

“Mr… Mills?” A too-familiar voice asked.

He stiffened, hunching over the controls. He flicked a toggle and the screens went black.

“I understand you’re the senior drone operator here. I need someone in-the-flesh to pilot some drones for a, ah, rescue. We might move considerably beyond the mesh network’s range."

“You’re sending people down the Rift? To... rescue the Cyclops?”

“Indeed."

Mills licked his dry lips. 

"When, ah, when do we leave?”

Bright smiled. “Tomorrow at 1000. I have some work to do. If you have any relevant telemetry from the drones, please pass it along.”

Mills nodded. Bright walked out.

He turned around and found the recorder chit under the monitor bank, backing up the drone camera feeds. What he'd seen. No, he thought, that was a dream. I fell asleep. He opened a metal desk door, stuck the chit in halfway, and slammed it shut. Again, again. Again. He cracked it against his thumb and moaned. Shards of plastic littered the drawer. 

(Reduction roll: 6. No)

The whole time the blank monitors seemed to stare at him. Like the men and women in line for alcohol from his dream of catering, bored, waiting. Like the great thing in the Rift, rolling, spinning, spearing him with a ray of light. 

(Miso check: Is the central networking nodule still up?

yes: 2

no: 3 )

It’s slagged by whatever killed the drones. It was at the top of the Rift, the lip of that dark mouth. Can’t break it to reduce Insight)

Mills emailed Bright what fragments of drone telemetry remained. She would see where they had last been, that the mesh was down, but no evidence of what he'd seen. Dreamt, he thought. Mills made his way back to Hab 4 in a daze. 

Watkins had supplied Steve and Harvey with bootleg hooch, in plastic bags. High West Whiskey, something Steve picked. Steve had always loved westerns, the machismo, the hats. The lonesome figure striking out. A love that was both ironic and unironic by turns. A few DVDs were on a shelf, and Mills had put one on.

He got listlessly, confoundedly hammered. Numb, he could pretend he wasn't in pain. He lay in their cubby, sealed in, drinking and watching Unforgiven. What Steve had called one of the greatest deconstructions of the genre ever.

"I don't deserve this, to die like this. I was building a house."

"Deserve's got nothing to do with it."

Mills raised a bag of whiskey in a toast. 

Reduce Roll: 4. Reduction

Harvey Mills, Insight 4, incredibly tired and hungover.

Coral Made 2: Cthulhu Dark Solo Play

Harvey Mills: 

Drone Pilot

Insight 3

clues: forgot 3 days, Steve is missing, Steve’s sub is missing with all hands lost, Dr Bright did something terrible to Steve in a dream

Mills found himself standing in the cantina, holding a tray of food. He didn’t remember coming here, doing this. He kept trying to recall the last thing he said to Steve. He couldn’t remember that either. 

His face was wet. He wiped at it.

Watkins and Jens were at a table; they stopped talking when Mills walked up. Watkins, Mills now saw, looked exhausted, bags under her eyes. Jens looked distracted, kept glancing off towards the tiny porthole window in the commissary, his lips pressed together. Like he didn’t know what to say to Mills.

“Any news on the Cyclops 1? Where Ste - where it was headed?” Mills’ said hollowly.

They looked at each other.

(Investigation roll!)

M: 4

(Mills learns everything possible. Jens and Watkins must have privy to higher-up conversations or data taps or something)

“You... don’t recall?” Jens asked.

Mills sat down, shook his head. 

“They were heading down the C11 shaft, one of the larger ones?” Jens screwed up his face as though remembering were an effort. “Your prior drone-mapping had shown it dead-ended, but it looks like that had changed. Something moved, probably during the last seismic event. So, it opened up, and some geologist figured seismic activity wasn’t going to happen again. Cyclops went down, everything was dull, regular. No seismic activity of note. Then we lost the signal.”

“That’s it.”

“Well, the transmission we’ve seen… Cuts a little too cleanly. If it was interference you’d expect a degradation of signal, rather than an abrupt halt. If the ship was hit or damaged suddenly, maybe the data cuts hard, but no evidence of such on the playback. It’s possible,” Jens glanced around, leaned in close to Mills, looking at him cautiously. “It’s possible what’s been released, what we’ve managed to see, was cut off early. Edited.”

“By whom?”

Jens opened his hands in a shrug. Watkins shook her head. “I’m just saying, Sally,” Jens said, defensively. “It’s possible."

“And what, nothing, no one sent down yet?”

“Seems like Bright and Lieutenant Dima are arguing about that. Dima doesn’t want to risk more personnel. ‘We don’t know what we don’t know.’ You know.”

Mills nodded. Jens stared at him and then looked away, clenching his jaw, blinking. Wanting to ask something, not doing it. Watkins leaned in.

“What - what happened to you, Mills?” Watkins asked.

“I don’t know. I’m, I mean,” Fine? Steve is gone, I’m not fucking fine. A tear welled up and Mills wiped it away, another. Jens glanced over at him. Watkins reached out and put a hand over Mills’. “I was asleep, I had… nightmares, about Steve. I don’t… I didn’t think I was in our room for three days. Lost track of time in there.”

“We’ve been having nightmares too.”

“You have,” Jens said, staring past them. “I haven’t had nightmares.”

Watkins ignored him. “It’s been awful. It’s… something to do with Bright. I saw her,” Watkins shook her head, rubbing her face. She had a worn, tiny New Testament clutched in her other hand, Mills saw. She rubbed the pages absently while she talked. 

“I think something terrible is happening here. Maybe it’s what happened to the Argos 1.”

(You always want to imply that the horror happened before.)

Jens sighed wearily.

“You can believe what you want, Jens,” Watkins said, quiet with anger, letting go of Mills to hold the tiny book in both hands. “Something bad is happening here. Something we shouldn’t be around for.”

“Look, Sally, I’m sorry... I’m not trying to go at you. But nightmares... don’t make people disappear,” Jens said.

“Well, Steve is gone,” Mills said, almost whispering. “Disappeared into the Rift.”

Jens and Watkins just looked at him. 

“We’re so sorry, Harvey,” Jens said, his eyes bloodshot, watering. Watkins nodded, biting her lip.

“Me too,” Mills murmured.

Harvey Mills: 

Drone Pilot

Insight 3

clues: forgot 3 days, Steve is missing, Steve’s sub is missing with all hands lost, Dr Bright did something terrible to Steve in a dream. Others have had terrible dreams. Audio and video cut off really fast on the cyclops 1, not clear if it was edited by someone in the Argos II facility or if the vehicle was damaged. C11 shaft used to be closed off, opened by seismic activity is the guess. 

Coral Made 1: Cthulhu Dark Solo Play

Harvey Mills stood in crisp black clothes at the outdoor bar, gleaming bottles before and behind. Beyond this parapet of glass, a line of smiling, laughing guests in suits and dresses stood, waiting their turn. They stood beneath a canopy of leaves and outdoor lights, harsh and bright. Just beyond the curve of the line, Mills could see a corner of a freestanding veranda.

Above the sibilance of scattered conversation, a tone rang out, glass sounding hollowly.

The hum of conversation dimmed and died down. The couple before Mills turned smoothly, as though standing on wheeled platforms. Silence fell and still the tone came again, pause, again, pause. Again. Mills' ears began to ring, a lower pitch than the glass, until that sound drowned out everything.

Suddenly it ceased. The line parted just slightly, and Mills saw a familiar face staring out, severe and serene, under the lights of the veranda. 

“The festivities are about to begin,” she intoned to the silent crowd, which emitted a polite applause and abruptly, as one, stopped.

A squeak came from behind Mills; from the building where some of the other catering staff was working. It repeated and repeated, gathering tempo. A wheelchair came into view, rolling on the brick path between ferns, pushed by a caterer Mills couldn’t make out. Speak-squeak, squeak-squeak.

The wheelchair had a figure upon it, bound, hooded, half-familiar. Squeak-squeak. Pulling arms and legs against restraints, fingers clawing at the armrests. Sqeak-sqeak. All this went right past Mills and to the woman in white, who he could now see as the crowd parted.

No, he saw because Mills had left the bar and pushed into people, through them, numbly, as they muttered angrily at his rudeness. The woman smiled triumphantly and yanked the hood from the bound man.

Steve. Mills’ heart raced. Steve, whose firm hands and lean frame had been wrapped around him just before, before... There was blood all over his face. Wounds all over his face, bored in. Mills began to run towards him.

Insight: 1, no change

Mills pushed through the crowd and left a wake of startled yells and inhuman growls. The woman, who looked just like someone, someone Mills knew, but not from this time in his life, not from catering. Dr Bright. From where he knew Steve. From working in Argos II. From under the ocean. She locked eyes with him and smiled. Mills moved towards Steve as she lapped blood from her hand.

“You… came for me,” Steve said weakly.

There was a tunnel of red gore bored into Steve’s chest. It was too deep to see all the way down, and too full of dark blood, which drooled out slowly. Broken chunks of rib and sternum glinted sharp white around the edges. Mills had a towel in his hand and pushed it to the wound, trying to apply pressure, and his hands slipped inside the wet warm wound. Steve gasped.

“Dreaming me,” he muttered.

Insight: 6, ++ to 2

Mills woke up. The coffin sleeper he and Steve shared was cold. The alarm dully stated 6:22 in red, and the sleeping bag they used as a blanket was soaked with sweat and churned about. Steve was gone. Had some 0500 shit he had to be at, Mills remembered. He crawled to the end of the sleeper and cranked open the hatch.

He could smell himself: sour, like piss after too much coffee. He grabbed a towel off the hatch’s built-in rack and padded off to the showers, trying to shake the unreal fear from the dream, trying to remind himself that Steve was ok.

Sally Watkins found him in the commissary, drinking coffee, eating voraciously.

“Micah wants to see you,” she said, looking nervous.

“What, is it that bad, Sally? I've never seen you look spooked.”

Watkins shrugged, not making eye contact. “I got to run and check some atmo scrubbers; just head there real soon, you hear? I don’t want to get it in the neck from her.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make you look good.”

Watkins snorted, shook her head. “You’re going to go, yeah?”

Mills held out his hands. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

Micah’s office was as far from general quarters as it could be and still be in Hab 4. It was right next to the access way leading to the military spire, its drone control rooms and moon pools and machine rooms. Her office smelled faintly of the oil and grease running through the veins of the spire, and it was as clean as some of the labs in the science center, from what Mills had heard.

Micah gestured to a chair, so Mills sat, leaned back. “How’s things, boss?”

“OK… How are you, Harvey? How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine, you know. About to head to drone control.”

Micah nodded slowly, looking slightly perturbed. “Yes. We need you to get back to work. It’s been three days since you.. shut yourself in. I understand - I really do.” She held up a hand. “I know we have rules about fraternization on the books, but I’m not interested in enforcing anything like that. I just need you back in the saddle.”

Three days? I went to work yesterday! Yesterday! I… I know I did. And fraternization? What on Earth does Steve have to do with this? He had some piloting to do with some researchers...

The steel decking seemed to sway under Mills feet. The chair he was in seemed to rock. He kept his eyes on Micah, and tried not to react to feeling lost at sea in a swell. His mind raced to come up with some way to ask without tipping her off, getting a trip to the company shrink.

“So is there any, ah, news?” Mills asked slowly.

Micah shook her head. “The Cyclops is still missing, all hands as well. I’m sorry.”

Steve’s boat. Steve was gone.

Insight: 6 ++ to 3

Roll to seem normal!
M: 5
F: 1

“Thanks for, for giving me time to recover.”

Micah nodded.

(Micah didn’t seem to suspect that Mills couldn’t remember the last three days, at all. Mills’ heart raced, he was sweating. He felt numb all over.)

“If that’s all, I’ll let you return to your work. You’re cleared through to the spire.” Micah was already looking through a stack of papers, work requisitions from the military or the scientists.

“Thanks Micah.”

It felt like groveling. The words tasted like ash in Mills' mouth. Thanking her. For 3 days in a fugue, while Steve was probably dead or dying. And now back to work like everything was fine. Mills numbly stood and tried to cry quietly as he left the room. If Micah noticed she didn't say anything.

Harvey Mills:
Drone Pilot
Insight 3
clues: forgot 3 days, Steve is missing, Steve’s sub is missing with all hands lost, Dr Bright did something terrible to Steve in a dream