Anna Khan and Bliss Dogs

I didn't expect our game of Bliss Stage to produce a result that made me want to run Dogs in the Vineyard set in the aftermath.

Oakland Resistance Cell, incoming transmission.

Sunday 2007/12/02 at Endgame Oakland I ran the second half of Final Act, the scenario included in Ignition Stage (modified so starting bliss was lowered into the 70s). The pilots were Josh, Keenan, Anna and Sarah.

The three anchors (in order) were Beth, carrying playboy Keenan's child; Nicole, former leader of a gang destroyed by Anna & Laura's gang; and Cameron (Cam for short), an androgenously gorgeous longhaired bishounen sleeping with both Josh (secretly) and Anna, but not at the same time.

Anna is also sleeping with the last awake adult on earth, Jim, meth-head ex-cop-wannabe deadbeat dad of Josh, so that her 2-year old son Archer will have a father. She doesn't know who Archer's real father is.

Sarah's older brother Derek keeps the ANIMa gear running and isn't sleeping with anyone, or even sleeping much at all anymore since he's reaching the age where people stop waking up.

Keenan recently kissed Sarah but Sarah doesn't trust him. She's sweet on Josh but can't work up the nerve to let him know.

Laura, Anna's trusted righthand girl from her gang days, is sleeping with Keenan, but knows him for what he is.

In Part One, run a few weeks ago, aliens attacked the base while only Sarah's ANIMa creche was available, because the other three were offline while Derek was upgrading them for a secret project. So the pilots all used Sarah's creche one at a time. The aliens were fended off by Josh & Nicole, Keenan and Beth, Sarah and Cam, and then Anna and again Cam (because 4 pilots, 3 anchors).

Most notable moment was the lightning storm where the giant alien (formed from fractally recursively smaller people) turned into Josh's father and Josh used the shiny giant sword that was Josh's (secret, gay) relationship to Cam to split the father-alien in half, exposing the alien pilot in the form of his mother who pleaded with him to join them. Josh stepped on her/it.

Nicole ejected Josh after he squished his mom (the alien in the FORM of his mom), and got punched in the face as Josh's first action. Just like Dad used to treat Mom. Being an anchor is hard.

Don't worry, Derek thoroughly scrubbed out the tank after.

For interludes, Sarah and Derek relieved stress with a sibling chat.

Keenan comforted Nicole and got into her pants (intimacy to 5), but Beth walked in on them in the middle (Nicole: "Hey Beth?") and delivered the news she was carrying Keenan's child. Both Nicole and Beth felt their trust was broken by Keenan.

The fallout from that was a humanization scene between nonpilots Beth and Laura, with Beth warning Laura to "stay away from my man."

Anna spent her interlude with her baby Archer, reducing the point of tress from using him to defend the base.

Lastly there was an interlude where Anna and Laura made a blood oath (mingling their blood, so raising intimacy to 4) to take Archer and leave together after the next mission, no matter what.

On to Part Two!

Laura thinks Anna's promised to leave the resistance cell after her next mission, taking Archer and getting away from Jim. She knows Anna is running on empty, and Jim's not good for her (or anybody).

With all 4 pilots needed for the big upcoming mission and only 3 anchors, someone has to train as an anchor. Jim's an adult and can't. Not Derek, he's the only one that understands the ANIMa tech even a little, and can't be risked. Not Archer, he's TWO. So it's gotta be Laura. And if Laura's gonna train, Anna's going to be her Pilot, don't even *think* about it Keenan.

Laura's anchor training is successful at terrible cost. Anna burns out her relationship to her lover Cam, and exceeds 108 bliss. She resolves the first Hope to say that as long as people care for their children, we CAN raise another generation.

Josh and his bishounen boyfriend Cam (formerly Anna's lover too) have an interlude where Cam asks Josh why he picked Nicole as his anchor to defend the base, instead of him. "Why didn't you pick me?" Josh starts to explain that he didn't want his Father to know about what they share, and then grows a spine and declares that he's tired of sneaking around, and will tell his father Jim that he loves Cam. That makes Cam very happy (and nervous), and builds trust.

Josh confronts his meth-head deadbeat ex-cop-wannabe dad Jim who calls all the pilots "Son" except for Josh, who is always "Kid." Josh stands up to his father for the first time and bravely says he loves Cam. Jim yells something awful at Cam and lunges to strangle him and Josh knocks his dad cold. (Josh has 3 Trauma, so causes harm, but it takes 5 trauma to kill.) Jim is unconscious for the first time in 7 years. Will he bliss out? Josh leaves Jim lying in the hall.

Sarah finds Jim lying there but can't carry him so fetches Keenan to drag him to a hospital bed, then they go find Anna. (Trauma relief for Sarah.)

With Jim out of the picture and Anna no longer able to pilot, Anna the former gang leader becomes the new authority figure (an available option when exceeding 108 bliss, although the first time player declined the chance to become GM with it). Laura is delighted skeezebag Jim's out of the picture and Anna won't be doing the dangerous piloting any more. Sarah's delighted she still gets to babysit Anna's 2-year old son Archer. No one misses Jim.

Anna, now dressed in her old gang colors rather than her pilot suit, calls everyone together to explain she's in charge, and to give a much more coherent mission briefing for Operation Slingshot, the assault on the alien base discovered on the dark side of the moon from lucky tracebacks during the earlier alien attack on the base. Sarah's older brother Derek has juryrigged the ANIMa for the extra range to reach the moon, but it'll only work once.

Goals are simple: Reach the moon, evade patrols (or fight), somehow figure how to enter the alien base, locate the central core, and destroy it. She doesn't even mention coming back, and everyone understands and doesn't ask. No one turns down the mission.

Anna tells the pregnant Beth (carrying Keenan's child) no more anchoring until delivery (without going into details about what Derek thinks might happen due to anchor feedback from the ANIMa, because Beth anchored during the alien fight before anyone knew she was pregnant).

"Josh will be anchored by Cam, and congratulations." Sarah will be anchored by Nicole. Keenan will be anchored by his lover Laura. "I'm counting on you to keep her safe, Keenan." Anna is very mission focused, and gives a little speech about doing the job no matter what. She calls Josh "Son", which is more than his father ever bothered to do.

Highlights during the assault on the alien base:

Josh ignoring Cam's recommendation to be stealthy and lighting up the entire hemisphere in the dreamworld with his jetpack's fire as a symbol of his love for Cam.

Sarah having a flashback to her second kiss, stealing one from Josh as he was entering his ANIMa pod. Her dreamecha is no longer the big friendly teddy bear of before, but all grown up and serious (except for the bear sticker on the chest, and a tendency for the jet pack to sparkle).

All three pilots reach the moon, evade the alien patrols with some trouble, crack the egg-shaped alien base with a sonic ultrasound device formed from Keenan's relationship to his unborn child (which burns out doing it), and enter to find their way to the core through a series of egg shaped rooms of all different sizes that resize the mechs as they enter, filled with the sleeping forms of thousands and millions of people, some of whom the pilots recognize. By now terror is building and all the anchors are cut off except Nicole, who is barely reaching Sarah. Messages of love and support are relayed through Nicole but garbled. Josh, at Trauma 5, equips his relationship with his comatose dad as a corpse-fuse on a ten-ton stack of dynamite, and nightmare turns the dynamite sticks into multiple versions of his mother.

In the search for the core Sarah flashes back to confronting Anna just before the mission, in private. "Why does it have to be us? I'm just a kid!" Anna: "No one's a kid anymore." (Trauma relief, not intimacy building).

Keenan flashes back to Beth, who wants him to agree to raise his child. "You don't have to love me, just love the baby!" Keenan protests "There's too many babies." The interlude redefines the core of their relationship so builds trust to 2.

Keenan follows the bodies back as they get younger, reaching the core which he sees as a giant fetus encapsulating his fears of fatherhood - he's a playboy and never been responsible for anything more than his own fun. The other pilots home on his signals and Josh sees the core as his father awake and angry when Josh was too small to remember what happened, and Sarah sees the core as everyone having fun without her and talking behind her back how they can't stand her and not to invite her anywhere.

Near blissing out, Josh is getting younger and experiencing the terror of his father's rage, and the giant version of his father in the core is trying to crush Josh, and just then his anchor/lover Cameron can't stand the pressure and ignores Anna's gun pointed at his head to eject Josh, dragging him from the ANIMa creche into his arms. Derek distracts Anna at a critical moment so Cam doesn't get shot, or maybe she couldn't have shot her former lover anyway. We'll never know.

Sarah rolls horribly, plunging the knife that is her grown-up relationship to Anna into the alien core and destroying her relationship with Cam (realizing she hates him for stealing Josh away and ejecting him safely from the mission at the last moment). Nobody loves Sarah!

That sends Sarah into bliss, which sends Keenan into bliss, which cascades Josh into bliss anyway. Both pilots fail to destroy the alien core.

Sarah resolves the hope "Can the aliens be defeated" that the aliens realize that even though they took all the adults, even a child as peaceful as Sarah will throw away everything she loves to fight them no matter what the cost, and that as long as any human is left the aliens will never win, and so they leave the earth.

Keenan resolves the hope "Can we understand the aliens." The aliens take all the sleeping minds of the adults with them back to the stars, but leave behind the children still awake, leaving the world to them to rebuild if they can. Those in Bliss will never awake.

That includes Josh. Cameron puts Josh's unaging undying smiling sleeping body in a shrine, where generations to come will consider him the hero that sacrificed himself to save the world. Cameron never loves another.

Sarah and Keenan leave the group forever, taking Keenan's lover Nicole with them. Sarah and Nicole BFF forever!! Sarah's mechanically inclined brother Derek refuses to join them, he's staying behind to help Anna rebuild the world, but very bitter about it. (All the pilots were dumping '-' dice into their relationships to Derek during the mission.)

Keenan is too cowardly to tell Beth goodbye to her face so he asks Anna to pass along a message that he's leaving because he knows he'd make a terrible father and his child will be better without him in its life. Anna never passes the message along so Beth thinks Keenan abandoned her without a thought and raises his child to hate him.

(Keenan's player based the decision on whether he would bale on the baby vs. staying and being a father upon whether he blissed out or not. It was a close thing (109 Bliss) before the Bliss-cascade at the end.)

All hopes resolved, Josh narrates the future. Anna's leadership forges the surviving children together and uses them (and the military gear Derek gets running) to conquor more lands, until one day most of the world will be under the dominion of Anna Khan in a strict meritocracy. Her son Archer will have to prove himself too, there's no nepotism. Laura will be her devoted lieutenant just as in the old days, but on a bigger scale. The eternally sleeping Josh will become the focus of morale-building legends and Sarah and Keenan's roles will be ignored by history (which Anna may regret but things develop a momentum of their own). Beth's child will be raised as a daughter.

Laura confesses her love for Anna, but we'll never see the answer.

Decades later Keenan's child finds him to exact vengeance, but that's a story for another time.

Postscript: And you know, I think I could run Dogs in the Vineyard with the Khan's Empire as the Territorial Authority, and the Faithful led by founders and prophets Sarah & Keenan & Nicole settling the wilderness and having young enforcers to protect them from the dangers of OldTech and Stray Dreamlings and the Nightmare Golems of the Khan and such, preaching the heresy that there were other saviors than just Josh, and his Prophet the Khan.

But that too is a story for another time.

There were some bumps and rough edges along the way, but the ending was very satisfying, and I'm really happy to have run it for such excellent players and look forward to running it more times. Thanks for writing such a wonderful game, Ben!

Oakland Resistance Cell, out.