These sessions were originally recorded 11/1 and 11/8/2015.
Nov. 1, 6:37pm From the Journal of Josephine Maxwell October 21st, 1875
I set up my camera in the house that I had taken a picture of. We stayed in the house over the night.
We did not see or feel anything strange. We did hear the scream in the middle of the night. We went outside to investigate but found nothing.
The next morning I went out to go take a picture of the men that were working on building at the spirit lodge. The was a very strange aura that we could all feel. Once the picture was developed, it was very disturbing. I took it to the Yellow Rose to show them. It had a blackness behind the people in the picture where the lodge should be.
That night, a few of us decide to stay up and watch the town. We set lanterns and I laid red clay dust along the entrances and exits of town. That night I found the locket from the house in my bedding.
In the middle of the night we heard the scream again and followed it to find a girl in the middle of town. She looked sad, and pointed out of town toward the stream. We went out to the area indicated and found a lit cabin.
We called out to the cabin, and an evil-seeming man came out to greet us. There was a strange horse. He told us there were lots of spirits in the creek. He suddenly asked about the locket that I had. I showed it to him after it seemed to get warm. The man said his name was Burke. He grabbed my arms and tried to make a drinking motion toward it.
Juan punched him and he let go of my arm. We went back to town. There was a trail through the clay dust where the girl had walked.
The next morning, we headed out of town after a nap. We went to investigate the creek. We found an old cabin. In the cabin, under the floorboards we found three bodies buried in the ground. There were two women and a girl. We take them to bury them in the church yard.
The nightly screams cease.
Nov. 8, 6:37pm From the Journal of Josephine Maxwell October 31st, 1875
We decided to have a celebration around the totem and try to raise the spirits of people around town. The kids are going to trick or treat.
After the party is over we hear a man yelling for help. We run to try to help him - he was covered in blood and proclaimed "They're coming!" Then he ran away. We went to see who "they" were. Out of the darkness came a blood-covered woman who was missing half her head.
All the men shot her. She fell to the ground. Just then we heard more shuffling footsteps in the dark. There were more people covered in blood with split heads The things moved in a terrible way, and were upon us in moments.
We shot the men and took the bodies to the house of the Doctor. A man from town panicked when he we saw the bodies and us covered in blood. We all go to get cleaned.
Not long after that we heard gunfire and a terrible roar outside of town.
November 1st, 1875
The sheriff went to find the man that we saw covered in blood The man has left town.
Star Wars is one of the biggest properties around right now. I mean, it's always been a big deal (for at least my entire life) but it's not always at the forefront of pop culture. That has to coincide with special days / events - such as the release of a new movie. The 4th may be with us, but it's not the gigantic festival we've seen lately every single year.
We've seen how the franchise has gained traction in the gaming world over the past few year and a half or so with X-Wing blowing up, but things are starting to get a little crazy since this particular thing showed up on the internet a while back:
I thought I'd take a moment and talk about Star Wars at the Wargate, and our plans for the future. The franchise has some life back in it now, but we've been planning a resurgence of our own for a few years now. We had great campaigns earlier this year, and that just happened to coincide with the release of the new movie.
Most of us have fond memories of Star Wars of ancient times. Playing with action figures with our lil' buddies, watching the movies when they were first released, buying the glass cup set from Lucasfilms' promotional partners, etc. Dropping Boba Fett to his death from the dizzying heights of the swingset slide. I know I was overly fond of watching things fall and hit the ground when I was a child. That's not creepy - I never dropped any of my brothers off a ledge or anything. Action figures were not a protected species, however.
So about four or five years ago, there was a motion to bring Star Wars to the Wargate in the form of a supported season, but at the time the franchise and setting were regarded as passe. People were more in favor of FASA's Star Trek or Dr. Who and showed absolutely no interest in the Force. I didn't really understand all of that, but the focus group had spoken: not only was Star Wars right out, but in a sense we found that the whole thing was an object of derision and ridicule.
For us, I think the biggest reason we hadn't supported the franchise was the failure of Sony's Star Wars Galaxies than the prequel trilogy, which are widely maligned and at first glance you might have assumed that's why Star Wars got a bad rap. Yes, in 2003 we at the Wargate were total Star Wars nerds. Somewhere, it turned sour for us - probably born of that experience with Sony. Lucasarts, if you're listening then take note there. Your licensee was a total failure and cost you big - at least with this small club of gamers.
"Actually, I'm kinda 'meh' about this hyperdrive right now."
Fast forward a decade or so. We got a good deal on a pile of D20 Star Wars books - almost the entire run of the Revised D20 version. Then a peculiar thing happened. X-Wing had just released, and it looked interesting...so we checked it out. Then folks started looking at the D20 books...then we realized there were Star Wars miniatures in the treasure hoard. After that, it was easy - Star Wars was on a resurgence...and we jumped on it willingly.
We even started buying lots of the old Wizards of the Coast prepainted miniatures...something we hadn't done before the Pathfinder Battles line came out and showed us that prepaints didn't have to suck. X-Wing was a dealbreaker - everyone fell in love instantly, even most of the ardent Star Wars detractors. Then I finally started watching The Clone Wars animated series and began to understand what we had been missing this whole time.
I was still on the fence about The Force Awakens at this point in time. The first trailer (above) didn't really titillate me for some reason - maybe it was just the *bleh* of the prequels that kept my fervor from rising for the movie, even as the club's enthusiasm for the setting and, most importantly, the games continued to rise. Then, the second trailer came out. I had been hearing about it for a week, as it had broken the intenet. I avoided it, however...as is my wont with things so...mainstream I guess you might say. Everyone was on that wagon, and you know how that goes. Then, one night very late at night while I was by myself and about to crash out I was browsing YouTube and said "What the Hell?". I clicked the button.
I don't really know how to describe the feelings that washed over me as I watched that, alone in the dark and half asleep, for the first time. I felt an unfamiliar feeling as my face contorted into a grimace, and tears welled up in my eyes. For those of you that know me and know full well I don't even have emotions, let alone cry about things will know that this is highly peculiar, but it's true. I cried tears. It was weird.
It moved me. I was mad about it though, and started combing the internet for the week's worth of information I had missed. I was literally mad that it had touched me in a place I didn't even know existed and I wanted answers.
Turns out, I wasn't the only one. The first thing I found on the internet was this gem. Someone had made that. It was exactly how I felt. I have never, ever felt closer to Matthew Mcconaughey. Not even when I watched Magic Mike.
Turns out, I wasn't the only person this had happened to. It was like that trailer was perfectly designed by mind-control experts to tug on the heartstrings of nerds like me, i.e. brought up on or greatly influenced by Star Wars. And it worked like a charm.
So, we started getting models. We drafted Star Wars stories and began our RPG campaign. We played X-Wing...and loved it. The setting has things that appeal to everyone, even if they don't admit it at first (looking at you, Star Trek guys). What's more, people readily identify with Star Wars. I think the only other setting that's close to the familiarity folks have with Star Wars are the World War II games...and generally speaking are far more familiar with the space opera than the real world history. Star Wars was not only on the upswing for project enthusiasm here at the Wargate, it's picking up a lot of momentum in the mainstream.
A padawan might call this mainstream momentum "hype"...but true Jedi understand that this resurgence in the Force could very well herald the dawn of a new age. The amount of money that's behind this is only thrown at it because of the amount of excitement among it's target demographic is phenomenal. Perhaps even unprecedented. They aren't trying to brainwash you into watching the film, they pretty much already know you will (most likely whether you have any desire to or not). No, all those mainstream TV / product tie-ins are there because the demand is there.
We'll leave all the film speculation to other corners of the internet, as what I want to focus on here is what that means for us as gamers. The Force Awakens was titled conspicuously from the very beginning, in my mind. It long signaled that Disney wanted to revive the franchise long-term. I knew there would be at least six more films, judging simply by the release schedule. 3 films in the new trilogy (part 7-9) and then three stand-alones.
The idea that the franchise would be officially supported by the "hype-machine" helped us make the decision to keep Star Wars on the Wargate schedule long-term. 2020 is pretty much the foreseeable future, and we all want our investments to pan-out. However, apparently there is a lot more in store even than that, and that points our meters to an upcoming golden age of Star Wars gaming, headed up by Fantasy Flight.
Star Wars will be occupying Season 3 of next year's schedule. Next year will be slightly different in format, as there will be 3 four-month seasons instead of 4 three-month seasons. In fact, Star Wars will probably be our Season 3 setting for the foreseeable future, as it titillates us to no end that at the end of each season we'll be treated to a full-on Star Wars movie. December will be full of even more fun here at the Wargate - Krampus at the beginning of the month, and Star Wars movie release at the end!
Don't worry though. We're not going to build any new Death Stars. We'll leave that to Disney, and explore the Star Wars universe outside the immediate vicinity of certain types of artificial moons (i.e. with planet destroying super-lasers).
