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Children of Fear – Episode #6
24 September 1923. The morning arrived without drama, which in its own way felt like its own kind of warning. No one woke to missing possessions. Zahra’s carefully prepared invitation, her ghazal baited with blood and sincerity, had not been taken in the night. Kulou House held its quiet, rain-dim composure, and for a few
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Hot War: Fallout, Monsters, and the Messy End of Empire
There’s something distinctly British about imagining the end of the world and immediately worrying about the paperwork. For many of the generation before mine, the formative apocalypse diet was Threads, grim BBC docudramas, and public-information films that strongly implied your best defence against nuclear fire was a kitchen door and a tin of emulsion. Reading
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Children of Fear – Episode #5
23 September 1923. The expedition’s timetable said Sian was a pause. The last city with General Wu’s escort, the point where the university cars would turn back east, the place where arrangements with Mi Han would be made before the long pull toward Tun-Huang. In practice, Sian behaved like something else entirely. It offered the
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Children of Fear: Who’s Who in the Midnight Society Expedition
For readers of the Children of Fear campaign, here is a short profile of the investigators introduced so far. The campaign uses both Open Table and Troupe play so the number of player characters is probably larger than most campaigns. Hopefully, this serves as a useful guide for those following along the story. Miriam Ashcroft
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Children of Fear – Episode #4
23 September 1923.The gate’s echo was still in the investigators’ bones when Sian closed around them. Rain hissed on brick. Steam lifted from cookshops. Lanterns tilted in the wind like watchful eyes, and the city seemed to breathe in bells and coal smoke. Mi Han’s runner, quick, unremarkable, and certain of every turn, pulled them
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Arcana Rising: Fireballs, Day Jobs, and the OSR Urban Fantasy That Got Away
There’s a very specific brain-worm that afflicts some of us. The conviction that surely there must be a game out there that does “modern wizards in our world” in a way that clicks with your group. I’m not talking high-concept urban horror and this isn’t about superheroes either. I’m talking about people with rent, phones,
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Children of Fear – Episode #3
22–23 September 1923. Peking fell away behind the convoy under a low, rinsed sky, the city wall shrinking to a pale bruise against the rain. General Wu’s escort moved with competent purpose. Trucks that coughed and rattled, carts and canvas covers tapping like loose drumskins, flags snapping in the wet air. The investigators sat among
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Out of the Ashes: Community at the End of the World
Sometimes I look at my fantasy campaigns and realise we’ve spent several sessions arguing about which direction to march in and about twenty minutes talking about what anyone is actually marching for. We do the epic road trip, we do the last stand on the battlements, and then the curtain falls before anyone has to
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Children of Fear – Episode #2
21 September 1923, Peking. The morning after the lecture carried the familiar texture of routine. Breakfast trays, soft voices, the faint clink of cutlery. Yet it landed wrong. Too many of the investigators had woken with the taste of their visions still on the tongue, the sense of having been briefly displaced into somewhere real
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Is this blog AI generated?
Last night I finished watching the Traitors (UK) – don’t worry, no spoilers ahead. Then this morning I got asked by Thomas at the Rascal whether this blog was AI generated. He has enjoyed my writing but was warned off it by someone else. Besides being chronological events in my life there was something about
