Whispers from the Deep - Biplanes & Bisexuality

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Character Sheets
  • Informational


    • Character Sheet
    Isabelle Morgenthau
    A Fisher

    Isa (right) and her boyfriend Arren (left)

    Hard Keen Calm Daring Wild
    +4 -2 +4 +1 -1
    Moves
    Creepy: When a comrade sees you perform a ritual, overhears your prayers, or sees signs of your alienness, they lose Trust in you. Once they learn one of your Moves, they are no longer affected, but they gain Creepy as well.
    Deep Ones: You can call on your patrons to Help you on a roll. On a 1, you Break after this mission.
    Blessing: When you dab fresh blood on a piece of working equipment, roll +Calm. On a 16+, take both. On an 11-15, choose 1.
    • Take +1 Ongoing with this item this Routine. (+1 Handling for a plane)
    • The item cannot break or be lost this Routine. (+1 Armour on 1 Section of the Plane.)
    On a miss, you need a bigger sacrifice. Don't disappoint.
    Ideomotor Response: Your plane effectively has a programmable autopilot. It does not have to be switched on and off; it "knows" when you are behind the controls.
    Soul-Bound: When you paint a rune in blood on an aircraft, you are linked. While in flight, you can take incoming Structure damage as Stress, 1-1. You can take a hit that would strike a Component as Injury, or give incoming Injury to your Engine.
    Bond: (Witch move learned from Wulf) When you hold an object of significance and make an emotional connection to it, take 1 Stress. The object becomes a magical Focus, and you learn it's Nature (Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Iron, or Blood).
    Contemplation: When you draw a ritual circle and stay within it, roll +Calm. On a 16+, you come out of it about an hour later refreshed; strike 3 Stress or 2 Injury. On an 11-15, it takes the whole night, and you're unreachable in that time.

    Mastery
    The Bushwack
    Ambush Predator: When you strike an enemy who is unaware of your presence, roll with Advantage.
    Forced Evade: When you fire to scare an opponent off, spend 1 ammo and roll +Hard. On a hit, instead of dealing damage, choose one: Target dives 1, target climbs 1, target loses speed in a forced turn. On a 16+, roll attack dice on them anyway.
    Momentum: When you dive onto a target, add +1 AP.
    Scissors Snip: When you disengage, give an ally +3 towards dealing with your target.

    Familiar Vices
    - Drinking
    - Prayer
    - Dancing

    Vice Progress
    - Breaking Stuff: ☑☐☐
    - Cannabis: ☑☐☐

    Intimacy Move
    When you are intimate with another, choose one of you to get a hold. They can spend that hold to give the other a command: if followed, then forward to their next +Stat move, they will always score at least a partial hit, regardless of what the dice say.

    If you use this move in the air, there are two holds, and they can be distributed however you agree.

    The Company
    People
    • Isabelle (Fisher): The PC. She's out to find her way in the world. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Arren (NPC- Confidant/Observer): Your cute fish boyfriend. Artist and recently trained observer. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Wulf (Witch): Former bandit leader. Actually half wolf. Hot as hell. Ex-Goth. 1 thaler per Routine.
      • Hard +3, Keen +3, Calm -2, Daring +0, Wild +3 (Avenger)
    • Minna Hammerl (Soldier): Inexperienced but highly trained soldier and passionate duelist. Speaks all formal-like. The most beautiful woman in the world. 1 thaler per Routine.
      • Hard +4, Keen +1, Calm +2, Daring -2 (Professional)
    • Heinrich Engel (Student): Political science student working on his thesis-slash-manifesto.
    • Anny Meldgaard (NPC - Mechanic): A young half-Fischer, half-Himmilvolk woman from Piav, trained by the mechanics there. Looking for adventure and her origins. Blushes red?
    Aircraft
    • Isa & Arren's Plane: A Teicher Möwen seaplane. Steel frame, liquid-cooled engine. Deeply possessed. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Fang Howl: Wulf's helicopter. An experimental pre-war model. Liquid-cooled radial. Three wolf moon. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Pup: Wulf's Kreuzer Skorpion prototype retrieved from a sealed hanger. Gets a lot out of an underpowered engine.
    • Minna's Kobra: An inline-engine powered, wood framed fighter. All around an excellent machine. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Heinrich's Reconstruction: A canard plane with a 30mm cannon in the nose. Awkward and unstable but hits like a train. 1 thaller per Routine.
    ​
    Stress XP
    3 7
    ​
    Cash Expenses
    41 10.5
     
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  • Informational
    • According to the pinned character sheet, we have 75 thaler banked up. Buying the cargo plane is a big investment, but it's not as if we're going to risk going bankrupt or anything over it. Buying the rotary, the cargo plane and upkeep will still leave us ]with 15 thaler, which should keep us going until we can use our bigger, meaner, and heat-ray-ier flying circus to build cash reserves back up.
     
    Well building cash reserves up kinda depends on
    A: finding a job
    B: not failing
    And i'm not really that comfortable about pushing our luck after last one.
    But still, if we wanted safe, we'd be in the village, possibly murdering the priest in secret to take his place, not flying around seducing sexy bandit leaders.
     
    [X] Do not buy the engine.
    [X] Buy the engine, parts, labour, and eventual plane. (40 Thaler)
    -[X] Talk it over with everyone and put it to a vote first.

    We can find a better engine elsewhere and Pup is perfectly functional until then, especially as Wulf also has Howl in situations where it's applicable. On the other hand, to get elsewhere to find a better engine (and do anything else) we kinda need to buy the cargo plane unless we want to leave behind at least one of our planes in Piav.
     
    [X] Do not buy the engine.
    [X] Buy the engine, parts, labour, and eventual plane. (40 Thaler)
    -[X] Talk it over with everyone and put it to a vote first.
     
    [X] Do not buy the engine.
    [X] Buy the engine, parts, labour, and eventual plane. (40 Thaler)
    -[X] Talk it over with everyone and put it to a vote first.
     
    [X] Do not buy the engine.
    [X] Buy the engine, parts, labour, and eventual plane. (40 Thaler)
    -[X] Talk it over with everyone and put it to a vote first.
     
    8-19: The Contract Is Signed
  • Threadmarks
    • I'll admit, the engine doesn't interest me much." You said. "I don't think it's a good fit for my plane."

    "Fair." The foreman said. He was an inlander man in maybe his mid-forties, who had all the bearing of a life of hard work but none of the grimness that often seemed to accompany it.

    "That said, I'm very interested in the cargo plane, if you can get it working. It's kind of a big expenditure, so I want to consult my company, but we have the money. We'll buy your engine up front, you get her workings, we pay for the rest?" You offered.

    "That seems good to me. Just give the word."

    ---

    You headed back to the tavern at just past midday. Anny, Heinrich, and Minna's stuff were all piled around the same table, while Minna herself came back within a few minutes from taking a run up and down the dam. In her undershirt. Her short cropped undershirt. Biceps glistening.

    "Everyone here stares a lot." She said as she headed back to her chair. "I thought this town was used to outside trade."

    "I can't imagine why, honey." Heinrich deadpanned.

    Self-consciously, you tried not to stare, but it wasn't easy. You'd always sort of pictured her being sort of soft under her uniform, because of her curves, and in places it was certainly true, but her arms, shoulders, back muscles... whoa.

    How did you fool yourself into thinking you were straight again?

    Piloting was an intensely physical activity, and it showed in physiques. Most pilots weren't quite like Minna, who had literally a lifetime of physical training (Wulf was more wiry and boney), but you couldn't be a pilot and not be fit. Not for long, anyway. Pulling your two-seater out of a dive or banking into a hard turn was a serious core workout. Even Heinrich, who looked like a pasty scholar, was probably pretty solid under his jacket.

    "Does anyone know where Wulf and Arren are?" You asked. "We have to sign the contract, and I already have our first vote."

    "Haven't seen hide nor hair." Heinrich said.

    "I swear to the gods, if they're still asleep, I'm shooting them both." You said, turning out of the tavern back to the inn. Seriously, between Arren being a total night owl and Wulf just being sleepy all the time, it was a wonder anything got done.

    On the way back, you couldn't help but ponder the questions of your physique, especially as you caught sight of yourself in the polished window of a nearby house. It was... weird, for you and Arren. You'd grown up poor and food wasn't super consistent, and it showed. You were a little scrawny, even if inlander food and money to buy as much as you liked was starting to fight it. So was he, not that you'd say it, though he had a pretty wide frame and was bulking out much faster than you, despite the fact that he sat in the back of the plane and you actually flew the damn thing.

    You'd always vaguely known there was some sort of chemical difference between men and women accounting for that, and it had been deeply fascinating when Wulf had actually explained it all, told you what estrogen and testosterone was and what it did, how testosterone helped build muscle and warm the extremities, how estrogen interfered with somatotropin so girls stopped growing taller when puberty started, even how her elixir worked (and why it made her need to pee all the time). She was so smart when she wasn't acting like an idiot, and sometimes you wondered if she acted like an idiot so nobody would suspect she was smart.

    That same food insecurity in your youth was probably why you were so short. There had been a few good years in your early teens, before trade started drying up (or more accurately, before the High Priest got greedy skimming off it), which probably accounted from Arren having sprouted to his current height, but the timing of that was probably why you were almost a full 30 centimeters shorter. By the time you were eating three good meals a day again, you'd already hit puberty (or more accurately, if Wulf was to be believed, you probably hit puberty because you were eating properly).

    Wulf had said the Goths ate really well, even her. They had food to waste, pulled out of the ground by slave labour. Between that and still being... well, boy-embodied during her early teens, that probably explained her height. She was just a bit shorter than Arren, with her ears and poofy hair seemingly putting her just a bit taller. She had said, when you asked her about it back in Aldershof, that she'd suspected she might have gotten another few centimeters if she hadn't started transitioning.

    "Does it freak you out, being so tall for a girl?" You asked.

    "Fuck no. It's awesome!" She said, putting her hand flat atop your head with a goofy grin.

    Minna and Heinrich were about the same size, right in that awkward spot that made Minna tall for a woman and Heinrich short for a man. Anny was about a centimeter taller than you, if that, and you suspected she'd never gone hungry a day in her life here in Piav, so there must be something else going on other than nutrition deciding that.

    You agreed with the whispers. Bodies were weird.

    You reached the door to your room at the inn and, suspecting they hadn't bothered locking it after you left, you opened the door.

    "Alright you sleepy- oh."

    They weren't sleeping. They also weren't dressed, and while they didn't look like they were doing anything more than intensely making out, it was still... a lot.

    They pulled away from one another, both blushing.

    "Hallo Isa..." They said in near-unison.

    "Cool. You guys know what time it is?" You said. Wulf grabbed for her watch on the bedside table, but you cut her off. "It's past noon, you two. Like an hour past. I'm all for... whatever this is, but we have work to do, so please put on some clothes."

    Wulf muttered something that sounded a lot like "buzzkill".

    "I heard that!" You called over your shoulder.

    ---

    The two of them joined the rest of the team at the tavern about an hour later, doing their best not to look too awkward and failing miserably. Anny was busy talking to some of her friends from town and Minna was, as usual, oblivious, but somehow Heinrich picked up on the vibe immediately and looked delighted.

    "So glad you two lovebirds have decided to join the land of the living!" He said, rushing right past their shock and objections to the purpose of the meeting. "Now that we have assembled our merry band of mercenaries, it is finally time for the formal legal procedures to begin, which is how I hope they announce both my nuptials and my funeral. Behold, the contract."

    It was a mere three pages, with the third page being nearly blank for signatures. "I suggest everyone read it before signing, always an optimal strategy, and do let me know if any of the language escapes you."

    After a few questions and clarifications, he flipped to the final page, where your bloody, plumb-coloured thumbprint lay near the top.

    "Now, I understand we have quite the fischer contingent among us, so if you are of a weak constitution, do look away when they step up to the document." Heinrich said, and then promptly looked away as Arren went to make his mark.

    Anny looked torn. You could tell she was about to ask for a knife when she thought better of it and signed her name instead. Minna signed her name in very careful cursive, which took about four times longer than anyone else. Finally, Heinrich scrawled out his signature in a scribble of ink, and the document was complete.

    "Well, everyone, welcome officially to Morganthau's Minnows!" You declared, and the whole team cheered. "Right, so, as my first act, I immediately call a meeting of voting employees."

    "That power's already gone to her head." Arren said sadly.

    "I know! I'm so proud." Wulf added.

    "Okay, first order of business, no snarking from dork flight." You said. "Second, the mechanics shop just so happens to have a mostly-intact cargo plane they're willing to fix up for us. She's huge. Finished, she'll have almost a thousand horsepower and will be able to move two planes disassembled. Problem: It'll run us 40 thaler, and they have to put her back together."

    "We're going to buy the Pioneer?" Anny said excitedly. "They've been trying to fix that thing for, like, 20 years! It landed right before the storm at the end of the war cut off everything, and it was carry a bunch of people, including my dad and my friend Ronja..." She pointed to a woman off in the corner with the rest of her friends, waving, and Ronja waved back. You thought, oddly, that she looked a little like she was Skyborn. "... she was a baby though. The pilot said they had had to put down in the forest and cut their way out, and they flew here with half a wing missing and there were gremlins everywhere and it actually took out the dam for almost a whole year before we tracked them all down. They made all the newcomers help with the gremlin hunts and thats how my dad met my mum."

    "Sounds like it has quite a history." Minna said.

    "Uh-huh. It was in tatters by the time it got here and they said it'd never fly again, so they sold one of the generators to a town downriver on a barge and took it apart for parts, and then when I was a kid they started to put it back together. You have to let me work on it. I already did most of the number two engine myself anyway..."

    "Well, the vote at this meeting is to determine if we're going to buy it or not." You said. "It's a big expenditure, but it could open up a lot of avenues for us. Yes or no?"

    "JA!" Anny said, her hand shooting into the air.

    Arren looked at you seriously. "Forty is a lot. I'm worried a bit about our stability in the short term." He said. "Nein."

    "I agree with Arren." Minna said. "Nein."

    "Nein. I like this company, let's not spend all its money right away." Heinrich said.

    "I'm for it." Wulf said. "Gotta get Howl around somehow. Ja."

    "Obviously, I'm for it." You said, and you started adding the totals up in your head. Heinrich was much faster.

    "44-42. We're buying a plane." He said. "The system works."

    "Does it really?" Minna asked flatly.

    "It'll take a while to get finished, right?" Arren asked Anny, who nodded.

    "Definitely. A week, at least."

    "A week. That's a while. We should find some work while we're here and recoup those costs." He said.

    [ ] Heck yes, let's find work with...
    - [ ] The Local Workers Council (Lower pay, jobs usually useful to people.)
    - [ ] Passing Pilots (Medium pay, wide range of jobs)
    - [ ] The capitalist dogs (Highest pay, jobs dangerous or morally dubious.)​
    [ ] I think we can wait for the plane to finish before we find work.

    Feel free to write in specific people to go to for work, by the way. Piav is organized as a series of worker-owned co-ops that elect representatives for town government. It doesn't really have a moneyed class who buy stuff for individual interest, hence that option not existing.

    After this you can do plane customization purchases, either in light of your next mission or to take advantage of stuff before you leave.    ​
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • open_sketchbook said:
    Feel free to write in specific people to go to for work, by the way. Piav is organized as a series of worker-owned co-ops that elect representatives for town government. It doesn't really have a moneyed class who buy stuff for individual interest, hence that option not existing.
    Click to expand...
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    Can we also write generic groups? For example, the dam finally got it's generator. I assume that means there'll be a lot of representatives from nearby forts coming in tonegotiate the final deals on all the contracts.
     
    open_sketchbook said:
    How did you fool yourself into thinking you were straight again?
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    Arren. He's a very convincing argument.
    (and why it made her need to pee all the time)
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    That's such an anglo-thing. A lot of anti-androgens don't have that effect, but because the most common one in the anglo-sphere does, it's almost a meme there. FYI, the most common anti-androgen in Germany (and AFAIK, historically fitting ones) don't have those effects.
    But, write what you know and all that.
     
    Serafina said:
    Arren. He's a very convincing argument.
    That's such an anglo-thing. A lot of anti-androgens don't have that effect, but because the most common one in the anglo-sphere does, it's almost a meme there. FYI, the most common anti-androgen in Germany (and AFAIK, historically fitting ones) don't have those effects.
    But, write what you know and all that.
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    Also, it's fucking funny.
     
    I like this town a lot, and I'm very much in favor of it becoming a place we regularly return to. Not quite a base of operations exactly, but at least the default place we go for goods or services when we are in the area.

    I'm up for whatever on the missions, but first I'd rather pick up the giant pile of money we left sitting on the metaphorical table.

    [X] What about going back to loot that other plane?
    -[X] From the air this time, since we know where it is and have cleared out the hangers and we know there is an adequate landing field.

    That plane is worth something. Even after we salvage the power equipment, it is still an adequate fighter, just add guns, and I fully expect it to go for well in excess of 20 thallar. I've even got a clever scheme in mind for how to level the playing field if there's a big nasty that has already moved in. Something probably more at home in one of @open_sketchbook's other rpgs.
     
    brmj said:
    I like this town a lot, and I'm very much in favor of it becoming a place we regularly return to. Not quite a base of operations exactly, but at least the default place we go for goods or services when we are in the area.

    I'm up for whatever on the missions, but first I'd rather pick up the giant pile of money we left sitting on the metaphorical table.

    [X] What about going back to loot that other plane?
    -[X] From the air this time, since we know where it is and have cleared out the hangers and we know there is an adequate landing field.

    That plane is worth something. Even after we salvage the power equipment, it is still an adequate fighter, just add guns, and I fully expect it to go for well in excess of 20 thallar. I've even got a clever scheme in mind for how to level the playing field if there's a big nasty that has already moved in. Something probably more at home in one of @open_sketchbook's other rpgs.
    Click to expand...
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    I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
     
    It'd take at least two people to get that quadplane airborne, and the only aircraft we have that don't need to leave one person on the ground to take off are Howl and The Cthulhumobile.

    There's not a good landing spot for the cthulhumobile, so that means we're high cover while Wulf and someone else land Howl, push the plane out of the hanger, and start it. Wulf would then fire up Howl and rejoin us in the air.

    If it works, we can rip out the electrics and give the Pioneer a turret ring for the heat ray, and then sell the quadplane to the air militia or something.

    For some reason, I don't think it's going to work smoothly.
     
    The patch of cleared area it would be taking off from is presumably also suitable for landings, so I figure we could also be the ones to land if that would help. Which it very well might, since howl can provide covering fire or the threat there of.
     
    open_sketchbook said:
    Wulf had said the Goths ate really well, even her. They had food to waste, pulled out of the group by slave labour.
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    Ah, so that's where the slave labor is going. Makes sense. There would be less of a market for cash crops post apocalypse, and an army marches on its stomach and all that.

    Serafina said:
    A lot of anti-androgens don't have that effect, but because the most common one in the anglo-sphere does, it's almost a meme there. FYI, the most common anti-androgen in Germany (and AFAIK, historically fitting ones) don't have those effects.
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    Huh, neat.

    I don't know if the other plane will still be there. We told not!Rand that the place was safe (and also that Piav is both willing and able to hire mercenaries to bomb their town). If I were her, I'd have immediately sent some people to the airport using the local militia's planes.

    Also, I like Piav. I'd like to build up some more goodwill and also try to help the town prosper. So, I vote:

    [X] Heck yes, let's find work with...
    - [X] The Local Workers Council (Lower pay, jobs usually useful to people.)
     
    [X] Heck yes, let's find work with...
    - [X] The Local Workers Council (Lower pay, jobs usually useful to people.)
    ancusohm said:
    Ah, so that's where the slave labor is going. Makes sense. There would be less of a market for cash crops post apocalypse, and an army marches on its stomach and all that.
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    You'd be surprised. Spices and cotton are worth a hell of a lot more post apocalypse, the hard part is getting them to the destination because the demand is going to drive it through the roof.
     
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    [X] Heck yes, let's find work with...
    - [X] The Local Workers Council (Lower pay, jobs usually useful to people.)
     
    [X] Heck yes, let's find work with...
    - [X] The Local Workers Council (Lower pay, jobs usually useful to people.)

    Could I get 2d10+4?
     
    Choose 1.
    [ ] The employer is desperate. Add +1d10 to their starting offer.
    [ ] The job is simple and straightforward, so only 1 complication.
    [ ] Lean times gives Advantage the players in negotiations.
    [ ] The client is offering two contracts the players can pick between.
     
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