We just started a new game set in the cold frozen land of (undetermined). We have a strange mix of PC's: a Angel (me), a four armed Skinner (Meg), and a newly awakened Quarantine (Elizabeth). I'm really excited to see how this will go.

I just watched Atanarjuat The Fast Runner (http://www.isuma.tv/) with the dynamics of living in a vast cold area with little livable space, and few people. The slow burn to explosion of the conflicts is interesting, as is the very ritualized group conflict resolution (taking turns punching each other in the head, which I guess could prevent or stave off outright murder). The film is part of a trilogy, and was the first Feature length film spoken entirely in an Inuit language

You can watch the movie online I think, or download it for a suggested donation of $10. Isuma TV is an awesome project founded by the director and producer of The Fast Runner. I'm not in any way affiliated with them, but I got really excited about the things I watched here, donated, and downloaded, and want to share their awesomeness.

From the website: IsumaTV is an internet video portal for indigenous filmmakers, with unique indigenous-language content available 24/7. Our goal is to help films and filmmakers reach a wider audience; help audiences see themselves in their own languages; help communities connect around common concerns; and help worldwide viewers see indigenous reality from its own point of view.

IsumaTV a FREE service to filmmakers and viewers: a serious, professional, high-quality space to post your films on the internet, in a respectful user-friendly context.

IsumaTV is an open call for existing films and new concepts of internet TV, we invite filmmakers, partners and financial contributors to join this collective effort to preserve and enhance global indigenous filmmaking.

Part 3

Oh--So why is this called Rose Colored Glasses? That's a drink they serve at The Garden. Rose asks for a couple of shots of vodka and opium (which is essentially laudanum) with a shot of grenadine when he's getting the deep brain scan sex move from Brace the Friendly Brainer.

So Mill is all happy to be getting married. Exit is a little more reserved and asks a ton of questions. When? Two weeks, and we'll have a big party. Rose and Exit negotiate the marriage contract. Rose can still sleep around since it helps with business negotiations. Mill and Exit can have a say in whom he can't sleep with. Rose won't make them have sex with anyone they don't want to--of course! And they can have sex with other people as well, although Rose can veto their partners. No sex with Ammanual. Mill is happy that Do will still join them. Rose may take another wife or husband.

Then there's a matter of children. Exit was once part of the Pregnant Lady cult where the women had their husbands or baby daddies cut off their hands, as instructed by the Voice of EOS. Exit's first husband, the late Vonk the Sculptor cut off his hand. Exit's worried that the same thing would happen to Rose, so she doesn't want any more kids. Rose is a little disappointed, but Mill wants babies, so Rose agrees to find out from Mox if he can father children. Rose had a son when he was a teenage girl. Rose really wants more children, and OMG isn't Baby Pumpkin just the cutest thing ever?

Now what of the wedding banquet? What to serve? Exit informs Rose that where she comes from they don't eat people, and she does not want there to be human meat on the wedding banquet menu. But Rose is a trained gourmet cannibal chef. He's is a bit disappointed. He really likes being a cannibal. He hadn't eaten people for years and then he killed and cooked Kettle to make a point to Vega, and his taste for human meat came back. Still he agrees to a human meat free menu, and they'll discuss whether he'll be permitted to continue to be  a cannibal after the wedding.

Those will be some strange vows.

Meanwhile, Brace the Friendly Brainer taps into the psychic maelstrom and finds out that it really wants there to be human meat at the wedding banquet.

So everyone's all happy and getting hooked up or married or both at the Luxor. This was like a first episode, since we moved ahead in time and met Brace. Prosperity, love, health care, and a depraved hedonistic cannibal Hardholder is settling down, getting married, and becoming a family man. Because OMG Baby Pumpkin is so damn cute. What could possibly go wrong?

There was a funny culture clash moment in a conversation between Rose and Brace. Rose says to Brace, "You remind me of me brother, Pallor. He was a mindfucker. He used to work for me. Some people are into that. Mindfucking." Elizabeth looked shocked as if I'd made a racist remark, but she was trying to be polite. Pallor was my first PC in this game, a Brainer. Then Vincent showed me the Maestro D' splat, and I created Rose and made Pallor his youngest brother. Pallor became an NPC and went from Brainer to mindfucker. Apparently it's not PC to call a Brainer a Mindfucker.
Other players, chime in, please???

Previously, at The Luxor

Six months later....
Ammanual has retired to safety on her little satellite with EOS, whatever their relationship is. Mox visits occasionally. Rose sent her +1 barter's worth of tools, and since she doesn't remember sleeping with the Harholder, she has no idea why. Oh well.  Life goes on

And apparently it goes on pretty well. The holding is doing very well. I levelled up last sesion and increased Rose's hard to +2, and rolled a 10 at the beginning! Everything's right with the world! Mox is running a state of the sick bay in the marketplace, courtesy of EOS. The marketplace is booming. A rival warlord visits frequently. His people guard the perimeter because the Luxor is a cornucopia of good food, good sex, and health care.

Get this: a Brainer's set up house. A nice Brainer. His name's Brace. (Elizabeth's new character.) He makes his own paints. He's an artist. He counsels the Pregnant Ladies, who are pregnant no more, through the trauma of going crazy, miscarrying their unborn babies, and coming to their senses. He painted a sweet picture of Baby Pumpkin, which hangs in the sick bay. Speaking of Baby Pumpkin, she's the cutest thing you've ever seen, sitting in a gated area in The Garden, knawing on a bone (she's teething) or a ball of twine. Someone even made her a stuffed pumpkin toy.

Do and Keeler watch over bustling marketplace with their feet propped up on the railing of the balcony. They're bored. Everything's fine. They get to talking about what they could do. Go raiding or maybe just go check out what's outside the Luxor. Then Do asks, "You wanna get married?" It's unclear if he's asking her if she wants to marry him or if she wants to get married in general. It gets a little awkward. He says he doesn't to her. There's an odd pause in the conversation. Finally one of them says, "Let's go to The Garden and get some dessert." And they do.

They chat with Rose and gush about how cute Baby Pumpkin is. Keeler offers to go out and get any supplies that The Garden or the Luxor need. It'll help keep Do from getting too antsy. Rose consults with Oh, the new manager of The Garden. She needs the usualy: more luxe food, meat, some more employees. She's having to turn people away because she doesn't have enough people. Rose asks Keeler to go out and get some luxe food, meat, and to go to Been's place and get some luxe prostitutes. I had "I owe been for it [The Garden]" on my Maestro D's character sheet, so I figured Been runs a brothel where Rose once worked. So they agree to go pick up the supplies.

But Rose wants to know what else is going on with Keeler and Do. Not much. They're bored. Rose asks what else they're thinking about doing. Well, there's that short discussion about getting married. Not to each other, of course. And of course Rose wants to know who they'd marry, or who they're into. Um, well. And Rose is asking because he wants to see if he could help blossom a romance. He doesn't know that he's the object of someone's affection. He asks Do to tell him who he's into. Do can't say. But why? He just can't. Now I can't remember how the conversation shifts, but it takes Rose a while to figure out that Do is into him, but when he does he asks if he wants to go into his room and, you know, do it? Do's happy about that. Rose calls Mill, his slave who acts like (and is treated like) his girlfriend and her sister Exit. Exit is Baby Pumpkin's mother, and apparently in the past six months she's also acting like (and being treated like) Rose's girlfriend. They all go to Rose's quarters and have sex. Good times.

Part 2 of this session to be continued tomorrow, and/or by the other players?

Gunkanjima looks cool! I want to visit!

I thought we weren't going to talk about it. What about "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?" ;)

So for once I thought I hadn't rolled that bad for my Hardholder roll. I think I got a 7, and picked disease as the want. It was a toss up between idle and disease.
 
At the beginning of the game there was question as to whether Rose's authority as Hardholder was contested by Ammanual. Since she had EOS transmitting happy praise about her to everyone. Rose's authority was not contested, but he felt threatened. So when Ammanual went to visit her friend Daf at the infirmary, Rose asked to have a word with her. He basically told her to stop making everyone love her. Tell EOS to say nice things about him. Then Elizabeth rolled a hit to read Rose, and he admitted that she made him uncomfortable because she wanted to return him to factory specs (make him a woman again), and because she's the first person he's felt zero attraction for. So he reasoned that maybe if they had sex, he'd understand her. It's worked before, I'm sure.
And then when they're laying there in the post coital awkwardness, Ammanual calls EOS. It felt less awkward then to Rose, because he realized that maybe she'd rather bed with a space ship!     

I am worried that the last person who unnerved Rose was Mom, his mother. He poisoned her.
It was possibly the strangest session ever. There was a really sad undercurrent even though no one really died (for once!). The saddest scene was when Ammanual asked EOS how she could fix it, and the only way was to restore it. It was a bizarre break-up scene. Actually I think this session was the Ammanual/EOS break up session.

That was beautiful! My mom happens to be coming to visit tomorrow for a few days, and my in-laws may come by as well. The idea of saying, "hey guys, let's play Apocalypse World!" to them is hilarious.

So is your dad going to play again?

So we've been playing this game since November or so, and one of us is just getting around to doing an AP report. I'll try to clue you in as much as I can, but consider a lot of what's already happened to be backstory. This AP begins with last night's session, but I'll give you a quick overview of the characters. Elizabeth, Meg (Margolotte), Vincent, please correct me or flesh out details.

We've described our current cast of characters in character thread, but here's a quick primer.

We have Rose (played by me), the newly installed Hardholder of the ruins of Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. A former Maestro D', Rose was born at the Luxor. While he's not the toughest Hardholder, he's manipulative but caring. He has a slave named Mill, who forgets her place sometimes and acts like she's Rose's girlfriend, and for some reason he seems to let that slide. Rose probably looks something like this.

There's also Keeler (played by Meg) , a gifted young Gunlugger, also a life long Luxor resident. She and Rose grew up together. She served with the previous Hardholder, Vega (played by Rob). She drives a big blue armored truck with mirrors all over it.

Mox (also played by Meg), is a new arrival to the Luxor. He's a Chopper turned Angel. We haven't seen too much of him yet. He spends his free time enjoying tea and luxe food in the Garden, Rose's old establishment. He seems to be an accidental and perhaps reluctant Angel.

Another new arrival is Ammanual (played by Elizabeth). She's a Savvyhead. She came from the Airport, a neighboring holding that a lovely young Operator named Lafferty (played by Elizabeth) had started a food for gas trade deal with, until her unfortunate and untimely demise. Ammanual decided to go where the food was and moved to the Luxor.

So on to the story!
Idle besieges the Luxor. Do, who oversees the marketplace, and his gang take to terrorizing anyone they can. The gang who runs the Stews (laundry and baths) ups their prices. Rose decides to deal with Do and his people first. I get a miss on a "Fingers in Every Pie" move, which means Do shows up at the Garden (Rose's former Maestro D' establishment, where he still resides), but with wicked strings attached. Do and his people think Rose has invited them for a party. Rose has Oh, his protege and the current manager of the Garden, serve everyone mushroom and Cheetos salad and the "special" drinks. Rose serves Do his salad personally. [An aside--a few sessions back, using the move "Just Give me a Motive", Rose served his mother--"Mom''-- Cheetos soup with syphillis/typhoid-tainted Cheetos and killed her after she finally explained to him why she sold him into prostitution when he was a 14 year old girl. Yes, girl. In a conversation with Mox, Rose says that people should learn to use their illnesses to their advantage, and gives a playful cough. We'll leave it at that.]

So Rose tries to get Do to admit that his people are terrorizing Luxor residents, to no avail. Finally, Rose puts his hand on Do's and suggests they talk in private--in Rose's suite. Do agrees and off they go (a hit on a Hot roll). Rose's slave Mill fixes them some tea and draws a bath. Rose offers to give Do the night of his life, plus a little jingle to give his gang, if he'll put a stop to the terrorizing. If he doesn't, Do will have a problem. Do can't stop talking. He talks about what people say about Rose (that he offed his mother, who was a scary-ass motherfucker), that he runs hot and cold. Rose doesn't deny any of it, and reminds Do that he's very good at what he does, and that he used to be a woman. He "knows" things. Do eventually agrees to the bargain, and is apparently pleasantly surprised at how nice sex with a guy can be. He plans to return at some point. Rose is happy that Do thinks he's a scary motherfucker.

Meanwhile, Ammanual has figured out a way to get on to a space station in low orbit that has been transmitting messages to people from the "Voice of EOS". The space station is uninhabited, stocked with food, clean lodgings, computers. Ammanual contacts the EOS and asks it to give her a job. A track of lights connects her to the communication room, where she can see the vitals, and other information of people from the Luxor....

Now throughout our game, the Voice of EOS has given our intrepid AW people trouble. The Voice of EOS used to broadcast messages to people of the Airport commanding pregnant women to cut the hands off their husbands, boyfriends, and baby daddies to give to the fertility god, who happened to be Keeler.
Ammanual repaired an abandoned helicopter (that Lafferty also worked on before she died) and took Rose and Keeler on a joy ride to try to reach the Voice of EOS. EOS shot them out of the sky and nearly killed them.
Rose set up an infirmary to house all the pregnant women, and they basically keep to themselves in a big room, collecting bits of stuff, talking about how the angels will take care of their babies. Rose opened his brain to the psychic maelstrom and saw the angels. He sent his slave Mill to infiltrate the pregnant women, but that didn't work. He moved Mill's sister from the group and put her to work in the Garden so he could keep an eye on her. EOS is a problem.

The next morning, after Do leaves with his jingle and a new perspective on sex between two men, Mox approaches Rose with a pretty bauble he found on the table where the pregnant women put things they collect. Rose opens his brain to it and hears Ammanual in his head! She's so happy and excited! She sees Rose's vitals, images from his birth, from his life, his full name* ("you killed your mother with syphillis tainted Cheetos?"). She asks EOS things ("How did you become a man?"), and EOS brings up what information it can. She tells Rose about how great the space station is. She tells Rose to ask her anything. I think Elizabeth expected me to ask about the pregnant ladies. Instead, Rose asks "Where's my brother?"** EOS replies, "Unexplained." (or something like that.) Rose asks Mox to bring him a cup of tea with vokda. He keeps talking to Ammanual, while both Mox and Ammanual answer him. Ammanual finally remembers to tell Rose that all the people from the Airport are making their way to the Luxor. Just as Keeler shows up to say that a caravan coming under heavy fire approaches.

Up at the space station, Ammanual sees the ground action on a computer screen. The people from the Airport are highlighted in red, the ones trying to kill them are highlighted in blue. OES highlights a fighter to activate it to kill one of the "red" people. Ammanual attempts to override the commands. EOS shuts her out, turns off all visuals, shuts the lights out.

Meanwhile on the ground, Keeler and her gang and Rose's gang lead by Horse go out to defend the Airport people. At first, Keeler and crew take heavy damage. Then the attackers just stop fighting...

Ammanual figures out how to control the attackers as EOS was. She continues to override the shutout command every time EOS realizes she's hacked into the system.  The ground people fend off the attackers at least. Hopefully Elizabeth and Meg will explain this scene better than I have. I'm missing some details, but I was having too fun listening, and it was late.

This game gets better and better. We keep ending with, "that was the best game!"

* Rose's full name: Rose Red Nakamura
**Rose is the oldest of 3. I originally played Pallor for one session. He was the baby, a Brainer. I created a Maestro D' instead, and Pallor became an NPC. A mindfucker, who worked at the Garden with Rose. Keeler killed him while she was possessed or something the following session. In this session we learned that Rose's middle brother is Amethyst, but his whereabouts are unknown, even by EOS.