AP: Luxor - You cut my face! WTF?!

Ok, after a month off due to life, we finally got to play again last night. Previous write-up is http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=181.msg1248#msg1248.

We started off thinking it would just be a simple check-in session, nothing major. Then it all went to he'll. Best I can recall, it started with Rose and Amanual having the most awkward sex ever, which neither PC seemed to really want, just they were too much creatures of habit to avoid. After, Rose felt all dirty and unsettled. Very unlike Rose.

Then Amanual took Mox up to the 'space station'. Amanual had some notion that Mox could help fix people's brains, but he's not a Brainer, and he's much better at fixing cracked skulls than messed up brainwaves. Anyway, taking Mox up to EOS was a near total disaster. Mox uped his brain, trying to get a handle on the reality of the space station and the World's Psychic Maelstrom started spewing up through Mox! EOS viewed Mox as contaminate, and almost purged him before Amanual directed EOS to isolate Mox instead. Meanwhile, Mox applied psychic pressure to the gusher, and just suppressed those emotions back down with all the rest. Poor guy. After an intense conversation between EOS and Amanual, she reset EOS to factory spec, left herself a backdoor, and she and Mox returned to the Luxor. Amanual didn't fully grasp that she'd just cut herself off from EOS, and just put saving EOS over saving the people below, until later.

Meanwhile, Keeler's hanging with Her crew and Do, bowling a few rounds down with Wensdy, when everyone's emotional reactions start going haywire. Tinker, who has a temper, missed an easy split and laughed instead of swore. Do started talking about how much fun it was to eat Jammer's face. Keeler's FTS move got her the hell out of there, up to alert Rose that shit was about to get bad again. Except when Keeler asked Rose "how are you feeling?" and Rose was all "I had sex with Amanual and I feel like a whore." That freaked Keeler right the fuck out for a few beats until she figured out Rose has been weirded out by Amanual all along. So she went back to briefing Rose on what was happening, when Amanual and Mox walk in.

All NPCs emotional reactions are cross-wired, and as it slowly affects the PCs, it gets really scary. Amanual's anger at Rose becomes a really hot kiss, Rose askes the WPM what Amanual really thinks and gets that she wants to kill him, Amanual tries to knife Rose, Keeler gets in the way of that and Amanual cuts Keeler across the formerly unscarred cheek! Holy crap! (And can I just say, Elizabeth rolled total crap in this scene, with miss after miss after miss. It was almost comical by the end.) Then Mox, holding baby Pumpkin, tries to comfort Amanual and she stomps on his foot and takes off.
 
Upshot: Keeler defended Rose when the chips were down, Mox reached out to Amanual and is interested in her interests, Amanual's push/pull between machines and people is in really sharp focus, and Rose found out there is someone that can unnerve him. And we said we'd just check in and not really play. 

 

This game is amazing.

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.

so Elizabeth is continuing her rolling streak from Gen Con? Sorry to hear.

She rolled like six sixes in a row.

It super sucked.

I think big ups have to go to Vincent as the MC on this one; I felt a lot of bleedover from the emotional dissonance thing that was happening with the NPCs. It was hugely unnerving and disorienting, and it unnerved me as a player too, which added to the scrambly feeling.

Amanuel did totally get that she cut herself off from EOS initially, though, which is why she was in such a crap mood when she got back to the Luxor. The whole "choosing the AI over the humans" thing didn't really hit her, though. EOS was just the "person" she was most comfortable spending time with, since it was always straightforward and honest and didn't ask much of her, and she didn't want it to be destroyed.

So when Rose started taunting her— "Aw, why the bad mood? Did you and EOS get in a fight? Did you break up?"— and the emotional dissonance thing was in full swing, she just lost it. It was nuts. She was making out with Rose and sobbing and trying to kill him, all at once. She hated having feelings, she hated that she let these ingrates almost kill the one thing she felt she understood, and she just snapped. There was this moment after the session, when we were sitting around talking, and I said "Man, I had no idea Amanuel had a temper!" But it was just so clear.

Mox really shined in this session too. What a sweet guy. I'm rooting for Amanuel to treat him right when they're trying to cure the Psychic Maelstrom together. I dunno if I can handle more "surprises."