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unsettlingshortstories · 3 years ago

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The Laughing Man

J.D. Salinger (1949)

IN 1928, when I was nine, I belonged, with maximum esprit de corps, to an organization known as the Comanche Club. Every school day afternoon at three o’clock, twenty-five of us Comanches were picked up by our Chief outside the boys’ exit of P. S. 165, on 109th Street near Amsterdam Avenue. We then pushed and punched our way into the Chief’s reconverted commercial bus, and he drove us (according to his financial arrangement with our parents) over to Central Park. The rest of the afternoon, weather permitting, we played football or soccer or baseball, depending (very loosely) on the season. Rainy afternoons, the Chief invariably took us either to the Museum of Natural History or to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Saturdays and most national holidays, the Chief picked us up early in the morning at our various apartment houses and, in his condemned-looking bus, drove us out of Manhattan into the comparatively wide open spaces of Van Cortlandt Park or the Palisades. If we had straight athletics on our minds, we went to Van Cortlandt, where the playing fields were regulation size and where the opposing team didn’t include a baby carriage or an irate old lady with a cane. If our Comanche hearts were set on camping, we went over to the Palisades and roughed it. (I remember getting lost one Saturday somewhere on that tricky stretch of terrain between the Linit sign and the site of the western end of the George Washington Bridge. I kept my head, though. I just sat down in the majestic shadow of a giant billboard and, however tearfully, opened my lunchbox for business, semi-confident that the Chief would find me. The Chief always found us.)

In his hours of liberation from the Comanches, the Chief was John Gedsudski, of Staten Island. He was an extremely shy, gentle young man of twenty-two or -three, a law student at N.Y.U., and altogether a very memorable person. I won’t attempt to assemble his many achievements and virtues here. Just in passing, he was an Eagle Scout, an almost-All-America tackle of 1926, and it was known that he had been most cordially invited to try out for the New York Giants’ baseball team. He was an impartial and unexcitable umpire at all our bedlam sporting events, a master fire builder and extinguisher, and an expert, uncontemptuous first-aid man. Every one of us, from the smallest hoodlum to the biggest, loved and respected him.

The Chief’s physical appearance in 1928 is still clear in my mind. If wishes were inches, all of us Comanches would have had him a giant in no time. The way things go, though, he was a stocky five three or four–no more than that. His hair was blue-black, his hair-line extremely low, his nose was large and fleshy, and his torso was just about as long as his legs were. In his leather windbreaker, his shoulders were powerful, but narrow and sloping. At the time, however, it seemed to me that in the Chief all the most photogenic features of Buck Jones, Ken Maynard, and Tom Mix had been smoothly amalgamated.

Every afternoon, when it got dark enough for a losing team to have an excuse for missing a number of infield popups or end-zone passes, we Comanches relied heavily and selfishly on the Chief’s talent for storytelling. By that hour, we were usually an overheated, irritable bunch, and we fought each other–either with our fists or our shrill voices–for the seats in the bus nearest the Chief. (The bus had two parallel rows of straw seats. The left row had three extra seats–the best in the bus–that extended as far forward as the driver’s profile.) The Chief climbed into the bus only after we had settled down. Then he straddled his driver’s seat backward and, in his reedy but modulated tenor voice, gave us the new installment of “The Laughing Man.” Once he started narrating, our interest never flagged. “The Laughing Man” was just the right story for a Comanche. It may even have had classic dimensions. It was a story that tended to sprawl all over the place, and yet it remained essentially portable. You could always take it home with you and reflect on it while sitting, say, in the outgoing water in the bathtub.

The only son of a wealthy missionary couple, the Laughing Man was kidnapped in infancy by Chinese bandits. When the wealthy missionary couple refused (from a religious conviction) to pay the ransom for their son, the bandits, signally piqued, placed the little fellow’s head in a carpenter’s vise and gave the appropriate lever several turns to the right. The subject of this unique experience grew into manhood with a hairless, pecan-shaped head and a face that featured, instead of a mouth, an enormous oval cavity below the nose. The nose itself consisted of two flesh-sealed nostrils. In consequence, when the Laughing Man breathed, the hideous, mirthless gap below his nose dilated and contracted like (as I see it) some sort of monstrous vacuole. (The Chief demonstrated, rather than explained, the Laughing Man’s respiration method.) Strangers fainted dead away at the sight of the Laughing Man’s horrible face. Acquaintances shunned him. Curiously enough, though, the bandits let him hang around their headquarters–as long as he kept his face covered with a pale-red gossamer mask made out of poppy petals. The mask not only spared the bandits the sight of their foster son’s face, it also kept them sensible of his whereabouts; under the circumstances, he reeked of opium.

Every morning, in his extreme loneliness, the Laughing Man stole off (he was as graceful on his feet as a cat) to the dense forest surrounding the bandits’ hideout. There he befriended any number and species of animals: dogs, white mice, eagles, lions, boa constrictors, wolves. Moreover, he removed his mask and spoke to them, softly, melodiously, in their own tongues. They did not think him ugly.

(It took the Chief a couple of months to get that far into the story. From there on in, he got more and more high-handed with his installments, entirely to the satisfaction of the Comanches.)

The Laughing Man was one for keeping an ear to the ground, and in no time at all he had picked up the bandits’ most valuable trade secrets. He didn’t think much of them, though, and briskly set up his own, more effective system. On a rather small scale at first, he began to free-lance around the Chinese countryside, robbing, highjacking, murdering when absolutely necessary. Soon his ingenious criminal methods, coupled with his singular love of fair play, found him a warm place in the nation’s heart. Strangely enough, his foster parents (the bandits who had originally turned his head toward crime) were about the last to get wind of his achievements. When they did, they were insanely jealous. They all single-filed past the Laughing Man’s bed one night, thinking they had successfully doped him into a deep sleep, and stabbed at the figure under the covers with their machetes. The victim turned out to be the bandit chief’s mother–an unpleasant, haggling sort of person. The event only whetted the bandits’ taste for the Laughing Man’s blood, and finally he was obliged to lock up the whole bunch of them in a deep but pleasantly decorated mausoleum. They escaped from time to time and gave him a certain amount of annoyance, but he refused to kill them. (There was a compassionate side to the Laughing Man’s character that just about drove me crazy.)

Soon the Laughing Man was regularly crossing the Chinese border into Paris, France, where he enjoyed flaunting his high but modest genius in the face of Marcel Dufarge, the internationally famous detective and witty consumptive. Dufarge and his daughter (an exquisite girl, though something of a transvestite) became the Laughing Man’s bitterest enemies. Time and again, they tried leading the Laughing Man up the garden path. For sheer sport, the Laughing Man usually went halfway with them, then vanished, often leaving no even faintly credible indication of his escape method. Just now and then he posted an incisive little farewell note in the Paris sewerage system, and it was delivered promptly to Dufarge’s boot. The Dufarges spent an enormous amount of time sloshing around in the Paris sewers.

Soon the Laughing Man had amassed the largest personal fortune in the world. Most of it he contributed anonymously to the monks of a local monastery–humble ascetics who had dedicated their lives to raising German police dogs. What was left of his fortune, the Laughing Man converted into diamonds, which he lowered casually, in emerald vaults, into the Black Sea. His personal wants were few. He subsisted exclusively on rice and eagles’ blood, in a tiny cottage with an underground gymnasium and shooting range, on the stormy coast of Tibet. Four blindly loyal confederates lived with him: a glib timber wolf named Black Wing, a lovable dwarf named Omba, a giant Mongolian named Hong, whose tongue had been burned out by white men, and a gorgeous Eurasian girl, who, out of unrequited love for the Laughing Man and deep concern for his personal safety, sometimes had a pretty sticky attitude toward crime. The Laughing Man issued his orders to the crew through a black silk screen. Not even Omba, the lovable dwarf, was permitted to see his face.

I’m not saying I will, but I could go on for hours escorting the reader–forcibly, if necessary–back and forth across the Paris-Chinese border. I happen to regard the Laughing Man as some kind of super-distinguished ancestor of mine–a sort of Robert E. Lee, say, with the ascribed virtues held under water or blood. And this illusion is only a moderate one compared to the one I had in 1928, when I regarded myself not only as the Laughing Man’s direct descendant but as his only legitimate living one. I was not even my parents’ son in 1928 but a devilishly smooth impostor, awaiting their slightest blunder as an excuse to move in–preferably without violence, but not necessarily–to assert my true identity. As a precaution against breaking my bogus mother’s heart, I planned to take her into my underworld employ in some undefined but appropriately regal capacity. But the main thing I had to do in 1928 was watch my step. Play along with the farce. Brush my teeth. Comb my hair. At all costs, stifle my natural hideous laughter.

Actually, I was not the only legitimate living descendant of the Laughing Man. There were twenty-five Comanches in the Club, or twenty-five legitimate living descendants of the Laughing Man–all of us circulating ominously, and incognito, throughout the city, sizing up elevator operators as potential archenemies, whispering side-of-the-mouth but fluent orders into the ears of cocker spaniels, drawing beads, with index fingers, on the foreheads of arithmetic teachers. And always waiting, waiting for a decent chance to strike terror and admiration in the nearest mediocre heart.

One afternoon in February, just after Comanche baseball season had opened, I observed a new fixture in the Chief’s bus. Above the rear-view mirror over the windshield, there was a small, framed photograph of a girl dressed in academic cap and gown. It seemed to me that a girl’s picture clashed with the general men-only decor of the bus, and I bluntly asked the Chief who she was. He hedged at first, but finally admitted that she was a girl. I asked him what her name was. He answered unforthrightly, “Mary Hudson.” I asked him if she was in the movies or something. He said no, that she used to go to Wellesley College. He added, on some slow-processed afterthought, that Wellesley College was a very high class college. I asked him what he had her picture in the bus for, though. He shrugged slightly, as much as to imply, it seemed to me, that the picture had more or less been planted on him.

During the next couple of weeks, the picture–however forcibly or accidentally it had been planted on the Chief–was not removed from the bus. It didn’t go out with the Baby Ruth wrappers and the fallen licorice whips. However, we Comanches got used to it. It gradually took on the unarresting personality of a speedometer.

But one day as we were on our way to the Park, the Chief pulled the bus over to a curb on Fifth Avenue in the Sixties, a good half mile past our baseball field. Some twenty back-seat drivers at once demanded an explanation, but the Chief gave none. Instead, he simply got into his story-telling position and swung prematurely into a fresh installment of “The Laughing Man.” He had scarcely begun, however, when someone tapped on the bus door. The Chief’s reflexes were geared high that day. He literally flung himself around in his seat, yanked the operating handle of the door, and a girl in a beaver coat climbed into the bus.

Offhand, I can remember seeing just three girls in my life who struck me as having unclassifiably great beauty at first sight. One was a thin girl in a black bathing suit who was having a lot of trouble putting up an orange umbrella at Jones Beach, circa 1936. The second was a girl aboard a Caribbean cruise ship in 1939, who threw her cigarette lighter at a porpoise. And the third was the Chief’s girl, Mary Hudson.

“Am I very late?” she asked the Chief, smiling at him.

She might just as well have asked if she was ugly.

“No!” the Chief said. A trifle wildly, he looked at the Comanches near his seat and signalled the row to give way. Mary Hudson sat down between me and a boy named Edgar something, whose uncle’s best friend was a bootlegger. We gave her all the room in the world. Then the bus started off with a peculiar, amateur-like lurch. The Comanches, to the last man, were silent.

On the way back to our regular parking place, Mary Hudson leaned forward in her seat and gave the Chief an enthusiastic account of the trains she had missed and the train she hadn’t missed; she lived in Douglaston, Long Island. The Chief was very nervous. He didn’t just fail to contribute any talk of his own; he could hardly listen to hers. The gearshift knob came off in his hand, I remember.

When we got out of the bus, Mary Hudson stuck right with us. I’m sure that by the time we reached the baseball field there was on every Comanche’s face a some-girls-just-don’t-know-when-to-go-home look. And to really top things off, when another Comanche and I were flipping a coin to decide which team would take the field first, Mary Hudson wistfully expressed a desire to join the game. The response to this couldn’t have been more clean-cut. Where before we Comanches had simply stared at her femaleness, we now glared at it. She smiled back at us. It was a shade disconcerting. Then the Chief took over, revealing what had formerly been a well-concealed flair for incompetence. He took Mary Hudson aside, just out of earshot of the Comanches, and seemed to address her solemnly, rationally. At length, Mary Hudson interrupted him, and her voice was perfectly audible to the Comanches. “But I do,” she said. “I do, too, want to play!” The Chief nodded and tried again. He pointed in the direction of the infield, which was soggy and pitted. He picked up a regulation bat and demonstrated its weight. “I don’t care,” Mary Hudson said distinctly, “I came all the way to New York–to the dentist and everything–and I’m gonna play.” The Chief nodded again but gave up. He walked cautiously over to home plate, where the Braves and the Warriors, the two Comanche teams, were waiting, and looked at me. I was captain of the Warriors. He mentioned the name of my regular center fielder, who was home sick, and suggested that Mary Hudson take his place. I said I didn’t need a center fielder. The Chief asked me what the hell did I mean I didn’t need a center fielder. I was shocked. It was the first time I had heard the Chief swear. What’s more, I could feel Mary Hudson smiling at me. For poise, I picked up a stone and threw it at a tree.

We took the field first. No business went out to center field the first inning. From my position on first base, I glanced behind me now and then. Each time I did, Mary Hudson waved gaily to me. She was wearing a catcher’s mitt, her own adamant choice. It was a horrible sight.

Mary Hudson batted ninth on the Warriors’ lineup. When I informed her of this arrangement, she made a little face and said, “Well, hurry up, then.” And as a matter of fact we did seem to hurry up. She got to bat in the first inning. She took off her beaver coat–and her catcher’s mitt–for the occasion and advanced to the plate in a dark-brown dress. When I gave her a bat, she asked me why it was so heavy. The Chief left his umpire’s position behind the pitcher and came forward anxiously. He told Mary Hudson to rest the end of her bat on her right shouder. “I am,” she said. He told her not to choke the bat too tightly. “I’m not,” she said. He told her to keep her eye right on the ball. “I will,” she said. “Get outa the way.” She swung mightily at the first ball pitched to her and hit it over the left fielder’s head. It was good for an ordinary double, but Mary Hudson got to third on it–standing up.

When my astonishment had worn off, and then my awe, and then my delight, I looked over at the Chief. He didn’t so much seem to be standing behind the pitcher as floating over him. He was a completely happy man. Over on third base, Mary Hudson waved to me. I waved back. I couldn’t have stopped myself, even if I’d wanted to. Her stickwork aside, she happened to be a girl who knew how to wave to somebody from third base.

The rest of the game, she got on base every time she came to bat. For some reason, she seemed to hate first base; there was no holding her there. At least three times, she stole second.

Her fielding couldn’t have been worse, but we were piling up too many runs to take serious notice of it. I think it would have improved if she’d gone after flies with almost anything except a catcher’s mitt. She wouldn’t take it off, though. She said it was cute.

The next month or so, she played baseball with the Comanches a couple of times a week (whenever she had an appointment with her dentist, apparently). Some afternoons she met the bus on time, some afternoons she was late. Sometimes she talked a blue streak in the bus, sometimes she just sat and smoked her Herbert Tareyton cigarettes (cork-tipped). When you sat next to her in the bus, she smelled of a wonderful perfume.

One wintry day in April, after making his usual three o’clock pickup at 109th and Amsterdam, the Chief turned the loaded bus east at 110th Street and cruised routinely down Fifth Avenue. But his hair was combed wet, he had on his overcoat instead of his leather windbreaker, and I reasonably surmised that Mary Hudson was scheduled to join us. When we zipped past our usual entrance to the Park, I was sure of it. The Chief parked the bus on the comer in the Sixties appropriate to the occasion. Then, to kill time painlessly for the Comanches, he straddled his seat backward and released a new installment of “The Laughing Man.” I remember the installment to the last detail, and I must outline it briefly.

A flux of circumstances delivered the Laughing Man’s best friend, his timber wolf, Black Wing, into a physical and intellectual trap set by the Dufarges. The Dufarges, aware of the Laughing Man’s high sense of loyalty, offered him Black Wing’s freedom in exchange for his own. In the best faith in the world, the Laughing Man agreed to these terms. (Some of the minor mechanics of his genius were often subject to mysterious little breakdowns.) It was arranged for the Laughing Man to meet the Dufarges at midnight in a designated section of the dense forest surrounding Paris, and there, by moonlight, Black Wing would be set free. However, the Dufarges had no intention of liberating Black Wing, whom they feared and loathed. On the night of the transaction, they leashed a stand-in timber wolf for Black Wing, first dyeing its left hind foot snow white, to look like Black Wing’s.

But there were two things the Dufarges hadn’t counted on: the Laughing Man’s sentimentality and his command of the timber-wolf language. As soon as he had allowed Dufarge’s daughter to tie him with barbed wire to a tree, the Laughing Man felt called upon to raise his beautiful, melodious voice in a few words of farewell to his supposed old friend. The stand-in, a few moonlit yards away, was impressed by the stranger’s command of the language and listened politely for a moment to the last-minute advice, personal and professional, that the Laughing Man was giving out. At length, though, the stand-in grew impatient and began shifting his weight from paw to paw. Abruptly, and rather unpleasantly, he interrupted the Laughing Man with the information that, in the first place, his name wasn’t Dark Wing or Black Wing or Gray Legs or any of that business, it was Armand, and, in the second place, he’d never been to China in his life and hadn’t the slightest intention of going there.

Properly infuriated, the Laughing Man pushed off his mask with his tongue and confronted the Dufarges with his naked face by moonlight. Mlle. Dufarge responded by passing out cold. Her father was luckier. By chance, he was having one of his coughing spells at the moment and thereby missed the lethal unveiling. When his coughing spell was over and he saw his daughter stretched out supine on the moonlit ground, Dufarge put two and two together. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he fired the full clip in his automatic toward the sound of the Laughing Man’s heavy, sibilant breathing.

The installment ended there.

The Chief took his dollar Ingersoll out of his watch pocket, looked at it, then swung around in his seat and started up the motor. I checked my own watch. It was almost four-thirty. As the bus moved forward, I asked the Chief if he wasn’t going to wait for Mary Hudson. He didn’t answer me, and before I could repeat my question, he tilted back his head and addressed all of us: “Let’s have a little quiet in this damn bus.” Whatever else it may have been, the order was basically unsensible. The bus had been, and was, very quiet. Almost everybody was thinking about the spot the Laughing Man had been left in. We were long past worrying about him–we had too much confidence in him for that–but we were never past accepting his most perilous moments quietly.

In the third or fourth inning of our ball game that afternoon, I spotted Mary Hudson from first base. She was sitting on a bench about a hundred yards to my left, sandwiched between two nursemaids with baby carriages. She had on her beaver coat, she was smoking a cigarette, and she seemed to be looking in the direction of our game. I got excited about my discovery and yelled the information over to the Chief, behind the pitcher. He hurried over to me, not quite running. “Where?” he asked me. I pointed again. He stared for a moment in the right direction, then said he’d be back in a minute and left the field. He left it slowly, opening his overcoat and putting his hands in the hip pockets of his trousers. I sat down on first base and watched. By the time the Chief reached Mary Hudson, his overcoat was buttoned again and his hands were down at his sides.

He stood over her for about five minutes, apparently talking to her. Then Mary Hudson stood up, and the two of them walked toward the baseball field. They didn’t talk as they walked, or look at each other. When they reached the field, the Chief took his position behind the pitcher. I yelled over to him. “Isn’t she gonna play?” He told me to cover my sack. I covered my sack and watched Mary Hudson. She walked slowly behind the plate, with her hands in the pockets of her beaver coat, and finally sat down on a misplaced players’ bench just beyond third base. She lit another cigarette and crossed her legs.

When the Warriors were at bat, I went over to her bench and asked her if she felt like playing left field. She shook her head. I asked her if she had a cold. She shook her head again. I told her I didn’t have anybody in left field. I told her I had a guy playing center field and left field. There was no response at all to this information. I tossed my first-baseman’s mitt up in the air and tried to have it land on my head, but it fell in a mud puddle. I wiped it off on my trousers and asked Mary Hudson if she wanted to come up to my house for dinner sometime. I told her the Chief came up a lot. “Leave me alone,” she said. “Just please leave me alone.” I stared at her, then walked off in the direction of the Warriors’ bench, taking a tangerine out of my pocket and tossing it up in the air. About midway along the third-base foul line, I turned around and started to walk backwards, looking at Mary Hudson and holding on to my tangerine. I had no idea what was going on between the Chief and Mary Hudson (and still haven’t, in any but a fairly low, intuitive sense), but nonetheless, I couldn’t have been more certain that Mary Hudson had permanently dropped out of the Comanche lineup. It was the kind of whole certainty, however independent of the sum of its facts, that can make walking backwards more than normally hazardous, and I bumped smack into a baby carriage.

After another inning, the light got bad for fielding. The game was called, and we started picking up all the equipment. The last good look I had at Mary Hudson, she was over near third base crying. The Chief had hold of the sleeve of her beaver coat, but she got away from him. She ran off the field onto the cement path and kept running till I couldn’t see her any more.

The Chief didn’t go after her. He just stood watching her disappear. Then he turned around and walked down to home plate and picked up our two bats; we always left the bats for him to carry. I went over to him and asked if he and Mary Hudson had had a fight. He told me to tuck my shirt in.

Just as always, we Comanches ran the last few hundred feet to the place where the bus was parked, yelling, shoving, trying out strangleholds on each other, but all of us alive to the fact that it was again time for “The Laughing Man.” Racing across Fifth Avenue, somebody dropped his extra or discarded sweater, and I tripped over it and went sprawling. I finished the charge to the bus; but the best seats were taken by that time and I had to sit down in the middle of the bus. Annoyed at the arrangement, I gave the boy sitting on my right a poke in the ribs with my elbow, then faced around and watched the Chief cross over Fifth. It was not yet dark out, but a five-fifteen dimness had set in. The Chief crossed the street with his coat collar up, the bats under his left arm, and his concentration on the street. His black hair, which had been combed wet earlier in the day, was dry now and blowing. I remember wishing the Chief had gloves.

The bus, as usual, was quiet when he climbed in–as proportionately quiet, at any rate, as a theatre with dimming house lights. Conversations were finished in a hurried whisper or shut off completely. Nonetheless, the first thing the Chief said to us was “All right, let’s cut out the noise, or no story.” In an instant, an unconditional silence filled the bus, cutting off from the Chief any alternative but to take up his narrating position. When he had done so, he took out a handkerchief and methodically blew his nose, one nostril at a time. We watched him with patience and even a certain amount of spectator’s interest. When he had finished with his handkerchief, he folded it neatly in quarters and replaced it in his pocket. He then gave us the new installment of “The Laughing Man.” From start to finish, it lasted no longer than five minutes.

Four of Dufarge’s bullets struck the Laughing Man, two of them through the heart. When Dufarge, who was still shielding his eyes against the sight of the Laughing Man’s face, heard a queer exhalation of agony from the direction of the target, he was overjoyed. His black heart beating wildly, he rushed over to his unconscious daughter and brought her to. The pair of them, beside themselves with delight and coward’s courage, now dared to look up at the Laughing Man. His head was bowed as in death, his chin resting on his bloody chest. Slowly, greedily, father and daughter came forward to inspect their spoils. Quite a surprise was in store for them. The Laughing Man, far from dead, was busy contracting his stomach muscles in a secret manner. As the Dufarges came into range, he suddenly raised his face, gave a terrible laugh, and neatly, even fastidiously, regurgitated all four bullets. The impact of this feat on the Dufarges was so acute that their hearts literally burst, and they dropped dead at the Laughing Man’s feet. (If the installment was going to be a short one anyway, it could have ended there; the Comanches could have managed to rationalize the sudden death of the Dufarges. But it didn’t end there.) Day after day, the Laughing Man continued to stand lashed to the tree with barbed wire, the Dufarges decomposing at his feet. Bleeding profusely and cut off from his supply of eagles’ blood, he had never been closer to death. One day, however, in a hoarse but eloquent voice, he appealed for help to the animals of the forest. He summoned them to fetch Omba, the lovable dwarf. And they did. But it was a long trip back and forth across the Paris-Chinese border, and by the time Omba arrived on the scene with a medical kit and a fresh supply of eagles’ blood, the Laughing Man was in a coma. Omba’s very first act of mercy was to retrieve his master’s mask, which had blown up against Mlle. Dufarge’s vermin-infested torso. He placed it respectfully over the hideous features, then proceeded to dress the wounds.

When the Laughing Man’s small eyes finally opened, Omba eagerly raised the vial of eagles’ blood up to the mask. But the Laughing Man didn’t drink from it. Instead, he weakly pronounced his beloved Black Wing’s name. Omba bowed his own slightly distorted head and revealed to his master that the Dufarges had killed Black Wing. A peculiar and heart-rending gasp of final sorrow came from the Laughing Man. He reached out wanly for the vial of eagles’ blood and crushed it in his hand. What little blood he had left trickled thinly down his wrist. He ordered Omba to look away, and, sobbing, Omba obeyed him. The Laughing Man’s last act, before turning his face to the bloodstained ground, was to pull off his mask.

The story ended there, of course. (Never to be revived.) The Chief started up the bus. Across the aisle from me, Billy Walsh, who was the youngest of all the Comanches, burst into tears. None of us told him to shut up. As for me, I remember my knees were shaking.

A few minutes later, when I stepped out of the Chief’s bus, the first thing I chanced to see was a piece of red tissue paper flapping in the wind against the base of a lamppost. It looked like someone’s poppy-petal mask. I arrived home with my teeth chattering uncontrollably and was told to go right straight to bed.

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teenagetragedymentality · 5 years ago

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Friends and Being a female

I have been wanting to vent for a while now about the lack of connection between females. Either to become friends and stay life long friends or the simple compliment from a female to another female, trying to bring each other up! It just seems to not exist any more!!!!! Here is my story!!!

This blog is about my childhood friend who I come to learn wasn’t the “friend” I thought she was. In my younger years i thought we would always have each other until we grew old and one of us croaked.

I had a very traumatizing experience/loss happen to me and my family in 2018 ( that’s another blog for another day). Felecia was always there for me through the little kiddie stage, teenage stage, and some of my young adult stage. We went to school together. Her Grandma introduced my mom to my bio dad (another blog for another day. My bio dad is a real piece of work) At almost 29 I don’t have any “friends” anymore (and I am not one ounce mad about it) because for whatever reason people don’t know how to have compassion and empathy, at least that’s what I am thinking, I don't know.

Up to the point in 2018 I never had one issue with my gal pal. She would come to birthday’s for my son, and I would go to her son’s birthday’s. I have pictures with her family and she is in pictures of mine. I remember a time where her and her man would come over after a dinner outing and stay for hours until both boys were exhausted. Felecia would even come over for no reason just to get out of her house and come to bug me at mine. I helped them move into their home. I was there for her and her family 100 percent.

Our friendship started going down hill when I filled for divorce in late 2017, yes you read that right when I filled for divorce, why things started changing up is beyond me. Why MY divorce had anything to do with her and our friendship was mind blowing.

I was younger then (lol) so I started up a plentyoffish.com page. I was also doing it for a get back at (at the time my soon to be ex husband) since he was out cheating, doing whatever he wanted and thinking I was going to be a nurse and take care of everything by myself, so I figured I would do it by myself and divorce him and move on with my life. I have flashbacks of those days and I am so happy and thankful of where I am today!

On this dating site I see the soon to be ex had a page on plentyoffish. I also noticed that Felecia’s husband (her and her man where on and off for years. I believe he is a P.O.S) had a plentyoffish account. I screenshotted that shit and sent it right to her in a text. I freaked out I said “what in the hell is going on?” She asked me to come over and of course I jumped and ran to her like we both normally would.

I sat in her living room talking about old times, old crushes, old men’s we use to want to sleep with or people that she had throughout their on again off again relationship. I never slept around while married even through the divorce I didn’t start sleeping with anyone until I felt like it was a right time. I am a female who needs and craves love and attention not sex. Sex is sex how you treat a female means more to me than sex so I didn’t have many crazy sex stories like her. Sex and her was way different than me and sex lets say that.

She was mad, hurt, shocked, all the things that she was entitled to feel. She still to this day loves Mike. She loves him very much. I don’t know about him because he just doesn’t seem happy and when your man goes out on you it just doesn’t seem very loving. I know I been there. Now they have two children together and I am not sure if they got a divorce but they live not too far from me, really right around the corner.

We stayed friends even though Mike (now of course) hated me. I called him out and screenshotted his dating profile to his wife I get it but then don’t do hurtful stupid shit to a girl who I would have considered a sister. I would have protected her against anything and if I couldn’t of I would have died trying.

After laughing and reminiscing, she asked me why I had one anyway? She asked me a bunch of questions (I cant remember all but she asked a good 12-15 questions) I answered all of them up until she told me that I shouldn’t have a dating profile and I should be waiting until the divorce is signed and dried and I am no better than Mike.

This plentyoffsh account never got me any in person meetings. Really, it just got my Facebook to get all kinds of friends requests and then (the normal from where I come from) stalking follows shortly after a month of having one of those guys on Facebook. I had to learn the hard way.

I was taken back by it. I couldn’t believe what she was saying to me about my life, my home life, my sex life or the lack of it. I wasn’t attracted to my husband anymore. I didn’t like the idea of the person who I was married and fully dedicated to would steal money from me just to give it to all his girl friends. Physically caught him 3 times with other females. While I was at work he cleaned the house out and gave everything away to his girls, mind you I bought a good portion but when married it don’t matter its equally the both of yours.

To Felecia all that bad stuff he did to me needed to be forgiven and let go and move on with love for him. My son didn’t need to be shuffled and of course she really didn’t think that was a good mom move to file for divorce and have a dating page even though I never met up with anyone from POF and no one met my child. My child even would tell her about the women he would be around. I remember my son telling her a story about an Amy and he helped her make the bed after his dad and her where done in there. I was flamed.

I couldn’t forgive, I couldn’t forget, and I most certainly couldn’t love someone I couldn’t trust. There was a lot that went on between me and the ex so I drifted away from her in person but would still talk through social media or text even though that went down to about once a month or so. I got into drugs really bad because I couldn’t find a release or relief. Life was bearing down on me and the load was getting to heavy so I started doing really dumb shit.

The dumb shit I was doing with the drugs and who I was hanging around at the time gave me a bad name. I take full responsibility for my actions and became one hell of a sober writer through it all. It was a name that pretty much said beat me, tear me down, and make sure when I am down to kick me a few extra times. I was going through the roughest time. I lost my Grandma who was my life in 2016 now this with someone I promised to be with forever.

I was younger at this time, I did let the world get to me. Everyone got into my head and made me feel like I was the problem. After all the questions and the distance me and Felecia had, started making me think what if I can make this work? What if I can forgive? What if I have to forgive? It was a very hard situation.

When I was mad after being hurt by the ex whether it be verbal, physical, sexual, or mental abuse I would say I wish he would go find another family or just go die in a ditch somewhere. I didn’t mean it, I was mad, hurt, hell even thrown threw a window and needed some one to talk to. I was mad and hurt and who do you think I would vent to? or at least try Felecia.

Most of the time she was that always there for you person, always two sided, always was fair and listened to both sides. She usually was a good impartial party to talk to now changed up on me.

At first the ex would talk to her husband so really it worked out since they both were POS. They got along great! But why did Felecia and my ex need to talk? Oh I was pissed! (and I believe I am putting that lightly) She was texting and messaging my ex to find out what drugs I was on, what I was doing, why was he doing this to me, she even flirted on the messenger from Facebook. I was so angry.

Up to this point she was my go to when the world was crashing. Until the day she started talking to the Ex! Her and Mike believed everything that he was telling people and people where telling people, my creditability went down the drain. Shoot even the police told me that. My life was getting darker and darker. Felecia at this point was not talking to me.

Felecia changed completely. I backed way off. We went from super tight. Example, she would see my mom in the store when my mom was going through a divorce from my bio day in late 2016 early- 2017. My mothers divorce was finalized June 8th 2017. It was ugly and my bio dad wanted to kill my mother and me his own flesh and blood because I sided with my mom. Felecia would call me or text me if she saw James (bio dad) stalking my mom. She was that girl. She was a ride or die type of friendship until that crazy hundred and 1 questions.

In April of 2018, a crazy and traumatic event caused by my ex and his jealousy of other people in the world being able to be with me when I wanted nothing more to do with my old life drove him to murder a good friend of mine and hold me hostage and pulled the trigger on me the police shot him. I lived he didn’t and neither did the innocent life he took for no reason to me. At this point I have come to the conclusion I know the answers but I don’t like them and really wonder what in the hell was going on in that brain to snap the way he did.

After being treated badly by a large number of people I decided I was going to go forward not backwards no matter how hard it was or who I lost in the process, not only for myself but for a better life with my son.

After that day in April and I was done being questioned and drilled by the police I went to Felecia’s to tell her what happened for comfort, for anything really. I just watched my own life flash before my eyes with a bullet flying through my hair and a bullet flying past my ear striking my ex right under his eye killing him instantly.

I had a guy friend drive me to her house. I didn’t have a phone, car or a house until the police were done with everything because the nature of the crime. The ex and I had problems that’s why I filed for divorce I knew in my gut to try and get out and save my life as well as my sons. That whole ordeal was a really freaking close call. I will be forever scared and mentally fucked up for the things I have seen and went through. Just like millions of other out here but you always want to have one person in your corner.

Felecia, of all people I thought in this time of no bullshit just real life events and the truth that happened that day, she would be there for me. Well the exact opposite happened. Of course the event was already on the news way before I could get to anyone.

I show up to her house. She was home with her son, her man was in the garage drinking and messing around with his manly stuff. She flew out the house. Cussed me out, I can’t even remember everything that she said or did that early evening. What I do remember is being accused of being on drugs and drunk at her doorstep when I went to her house for comfort, to tell her, to talk to her, for really any type of comfort that I thought I was going to get. Now I look back and I have no idea what I was looking for because I knew she wasn’t going to be that person since everything went down hill before this day.

I had never been so hurt, so heartbroken, by someone who I broke bread with, sat down and ate with, trusted, had her in my hospital room after I had my hysterectomy. She had been though a lot with me. She knew my parents she knew what James was about. She was the only female who I really opened up with and loved very much.

After that day I never had the same feelings towards her. She also had to eat her words when I told her it was her man in the garage drunk doing drugs. I am a Medical Marihuana Patient so if she was referring to that as a drug she would be incorrect nevertheless I wasn’t even stoned because I had been with the police and before that I was held at gun point waiting to die. Not sure when I the time to get all fucked up but after that meeting I was fucked up. Felecia kicked me when I was down. Something I never done to her. All the time she would come to my house all hours when Mike would leave her. All the things that I had tried to pick her up when she was down.

We would vent about our parents. She would bitch and then it would be my turn. We could relate, which where we were raised is really hard to find. Now in my adult life I have noticed all those who haven’t had anything happen to them have now finally had things happen to them to where now they are understanding what I was going through at a much younger age. Made it hard to fit in.

I feel like this type of “friendship” happens way too much in today’s society. I am the type of female who likes to build people up whether it be man woman or beast, life is hard enough why do we need to make it harder on each other by tearing each other down or hurting and killing one another.

I hope this story will inspire to be nicer to others. No one ever knows what some one goes through 100 percent no matter how close you are or you aren’t. With all the craziness we need to learn how to be a whole lot more understanding, care genuinely about one another and have empathy towards your fellow human. WE ARE ALL THE SAME!!!!!! WE ARE ALL HUMANS!!!!! WE ALL GO THROUGH SHIT!!!! WE ALL NEED EQUALITY!!!!! WE ALL NEED A REALITY CHECK!!!!!

Stay tuned for more real life events that have happened in my life. I have had to learn most of the things I know on my own and if I can learn how to be a little more caring less edgy more forgiving (to an extent!!!! that’s more blogs to come) and less judgmental than anyone can!!!!!

#onelove #truestory #mystory #my writing #flashbacks #venting #longpost #live and learn #olderthanmyyears #compassion #empathy #mental health #friendsin2020 fake fakefriends tricked

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kayawagner · 7 years ago

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Interface Zero Megabundle [BUNDLE]

Publisher: Gun Metal Games

This special bundle product contains the following titles.

A Facsimile of Death Regular price: $4.97 Bundle price: $0.50 Format: PDF A Facsimile of Death is meant as an introduction to the world of Interface Zero, as well as to the Fate Core version of the game. There are some firefights, but most of the adventure involves investigation, planning, social navigation, and trying hard not to be betrayed. It’s the story of Avery Price, a murder victim with nobody to look into her death…until the PCs come along. A Facsimile of Death uses a set of extra rules called the Whodunit System. In this adventure, there are four potential murderers, and any one of them could have done the deed. You, the GM, will figure out who the killer is along with the PCs, and the adventure will adapt to their choices. In the end, though, nothing is ever really what it seems.... Boston: The Broken Cradle of Liberty Regular price: $8.99 Bundle price: $0.91 Format: PDF NOT ALL CITIES ARE CREATED EQUAL... One of the hottest Hot Spots of North America, Boston was saved from the encroaching seas by a massive civic undertaking, and declared the capital of Atlantica. Now, in the face of riots and acts of terrorism, the American 'Cradle of Liberty' reels under martial law as dissidents protest unpopular decisions in an effort to stoke the flames of rebellion. With soldiers patrolling the streets and violence a way of life, Boston stands poised to either blossom into something greater or be wiped off the map and into oblivion. SOMETIMES YOU'VE GOTTA MAKE 'EM THAT WAY! Boston: The Broken Cradle of Liberty has everything you need to take your campaign into the highways and byways of Boston. Whether you're a GM who wants to know what's going on i... City Tiles Volume 1: The Sprawl Regular price: $3.00 Bundle price: $0.30 Format: PDF Looking for some cool city tiles to flesh out your modern setting? Need a street for that chase scene or gun battle? Well Look no further! Designed by Aaron Acevedo, City Tiles, Volume 1: the Sprawl provides you with a quality set of twelve tiles you can use for any modern game!... Cyberpunk Floorplans: City Street Regular price: $2.49 Bundle price: $0.25 Format: PDF Need a map of a City Street for your Interface Zero 2.0 game? We got you covered ami. This floor plan reveals a level of a generic apartment complex. This map is available for printing in two options: • A 24” x 36“or 36”x 48” map. These are "standard" miniature-ready maps, in which 1 square equals 1 inch, and each square represents 5 feet. These maps are ideal for throwing on the table and instantly playing, but not many people have large format printers in their homes. The maps can usually be printed at a copy shop relatively inexpensively. • A series of pages that, when laid out correctly, form a single, complete map. This tiled version requires some invisible tape and scissors to put together. To tile a single wi... Cyberpunk Floorplans: Run Down Tenement Regular price: $2.49 Bundle price: $0.25 Format: PDF Need a map of an apartment complex for your Interface Zero 2.0 game? We got you covered ami. This floor plan reveals a level of a generic apartment complex. This map is available for printing in two options: • A 24” x 36“or 36”x 48” map. These are "standard" miniature-ready maps, in which 1 square equals 1 inch, and each square represents 5 feet. These maps are ideal for throwing on the table and instantly playing, but not many people have large format printers in their homes. The maps can usually be printed at a copy shop relatively inexpensively. • A series of pages that, when laid out correctly, form a single, complete map. This tiled version requires some invisible tape and scissors to put together. To tile a si... Drip by Bloody Drip Regular price: $4.14 Bundle price: $0.42 Format: PDF The group is hired to grab some medical research files from an abandoned naval base on the Puget Sound. Seems simple enough, except nobody thought to deactivate the base’s security systems. Can the group survive military-grade security robots and drones long enough to retrieve the data? And why is another recovery team on the base? Drip by Bloody Drip is an adventure for 3 to 5 characters of Seasoned rank or higher. This PDF is layered for easy printing.... Extraction with Extreme Prejudice Regular price: $4.14 Bundle price: $0.42 Format: PDF The job seems simple enough; grab a high profile geneticist from Bio Solutions, and deliver him to the contractor. In, out, done. Easy Peasy, right? Wrong. Word spreads fast in the sprawl, and once the wolves hear about the dandy diaper baby coming down from his ivory tower, he becomes a huge payday, and everyone wants to cash in. Will the characters complete the job as promised? Or will they succumb to greed and sell the mark to the highest bidder? Do they even have a choice? Extraction with Extreme Prejudice is an adventure for 3 to 5 characters. This adventure also includes Fast, Furious and Fun rules for creating your own safe house! There are two versions of this product; a layered screen version you can use to create a printer friendly PDF, and a versi... Extraction with Extreme Prejudice (Pathfinder Edition) Regular price: $4.14 Bundle price: $0.42 Format: Watermarked PDF The job seems simple enough; grab a high-profile geneticist from Bio Solutions, and deliver him to the contractor. In, out, done. Easy Peasy, right? Wrong. Word spreads fast in the sprawl, and once the wolves hear about the dandy diaper baby coming down from his ivory tower, he becomes a huge payday, and everyone wants to cash in. Will the characters complete the job as promised? Or will they succumb to greed and sell the mark to the highest bidder? Do they even have a choice? Extraction with Extreme Prejudice is an adventure for 3 to 5 characters of first or second level.... From Gaza with Love Regular price: $4.14 Bundle price: $0.42 Format: Watermarked PDF Welcome to the Middle East! The trophy wife of a brutish Russian-Israeli oligarch falls for a charming Arab taxi driver and the two elope to Gaza. Some time later, her kids are gone, snatched off the street by Bedouin thugs-for-hire. Dame wants her kids back and has the credits to make your time worthwhile. Classic story. First question to pop into your head -- are you willing to brave the radioactive Negev desert and the bio-horrors it spawned, the Israeli border patrol with its drones and bots, and the Russian Mafia with its Russian Mafia? Sure you are, that's all in the freaking job description. But then, there's a second question ringing in your brain -- on whose toes you gonna step if you take this job? Why are Israeli drones always buzzing above? What game is the Russia... Hostile Takeover Regular price: $4.97 Bundle price: $0.50 Format: PDF THE VIEW FROM THE TOP The Megacorp is a staple of cyberpunk literature. These titanic, inhuman forces of naked greed and lust for power are like the gods of the mythic age. Their aims are enacted in the realm of mortals through their employees; agents that are expected to further the ends of their corporate masters in exchange for the best gear, cash, and a lifestyle that is the envy of many. In most cyberpunk games, the ways that player characters interact with megacorps are strictly one-sided: the Corp hires the PCs to do a job, always with a looming threat of an attempt to screw the poor suckers over. In Hostile Takeover, we turn this relationship on its ear. With this book, the player characters are put in charge of a fledging corporation. Can they swim in the sea of dang... Hot Potato Regular price: $1.25 Bundle price: $0.13 Format: Watermarked PDF A streak of luck brings the heroes into possession of a package worth a lot of creds to the right buyer. The people who lost it want it back and are willing to do anything to get it, add in two corporations, a gang and a mafia hit team and the heroes have a hard time surviving, let alone getting paid. Hot Potato is a one-sheet adventure for a group of seasoned characters, though it can easily be scaled to different levels. It uses the Interface Zero 2.0 setting for Savage Worlds. ... I-zine vol. 1: Message in a Bottle Regular price: $3.32 Bundle price: $0.33 Format: Watermarked PDF Introducing The I-Zine! Welcome to I•Zine, your interface to all things Interface-Zero. In the coming months we hope to give you a virtual tour of the world to come in 2088. The world is a big place and we plan on exploring every nook and cranny. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the regular features we have planned. Risky Ventures • In my opinion the best way to learn about someplace new is to mingle with the sprawlies, have an adventure and maybe blow a few people away with that nickle-plated gat you’ve been itching to try out. I•Zine will travel globe looking for the hairiest messes to drop your troupe of intrepid raiders into. Every I•Zine adventure is hand-crafted by a sadistic game designer dedicated to making sure that y... I-Zine Volume 2: Wanted! Regular price: $3.32 Bundle price: $0.33 Format: Watermarked PDF izine2.indd Reality Deviant Publications is pleased to bring you I-Zine volume 2: Wanted! <o:p></o:p> Welcome to the first installment of Wanted! In this on going data feed you will find a catalogue of some of the most desperate individuals in the world as ranked by the prices on their head. In this installment we focus on the five most wanted individuals in the Great Lakes Union. Also, you’ll find more information about daily life in the GLU, brought to you by Worker Wendy! Learn about law enforcement, the latest Goth and Pop Goth trends, and pick up the newest designer drugs and upgrades from Doc Pango’s Emporium! Grab your copy today! Want to learn more about Interface Zero? Listen to Atomic Array 005.... I-Zine Volume 3: Zeeks Expanded! Regular price: $1.66 Bundle price: $0.17 Format: PDF Yo fellow sprawlers, bit heads, script-kiddies, sims, blue platers and freeks, there's a lot of misinformation going around about Zeeks right now. I asked one of our frequent posters and confirmed Zeeks, "Smoke_And_Mirrors" to write something up for us, to get the skinny on just how Zeeks fit into the world. His words are below, as he says, pay attention and you might learn something. -Sysop Welcome to Zeeks Expanded! By Smoke_And_Mirrors (AKA David Viars) So you're looking for the straight skinny on Zeeks, Psions, Psychics, those weird people who can use their mind to do freaky things, well congratulations you've run across this guide! If you're a baby Zeek, you'll find all kinds of info in here left out of the mainstream publications. Lots of useful stuff to help you survive... Interface Zero Regular price: $16.53 Bundle price: $1.66 Format: PDF Welcome to the Future! Interface-Zero, is the first book in the Interface-Zero Cyberpunk Setting by Reality Deviant Publications. IZ brings your True20 game up to speed with the dark, frenetic world of 2088. Future sourcebooks and adventures will further add to the bleeding edge setting presented in this core setting book. Didja Bring Your Gun? Within the pages of Interface-Zero, you can match wits with ancient triad lodge masters, anarchist hackers and digitalized corporate moguls. Thwart the machinations of the New Chinese Mandarinate, or the Theocratic UCSA. Stare down the end of your gauss rifle at or match nano-woven steel with ganglanders, gene-spliced hybrids and borg shock troopers.Â How About Your Hacker? Interface-Zero is 162 pag... Interface Zero (Pathfinder Edition) Regular price: $16.59 Bundle price: $1.67 Format: Watermarked PDF The Year is 2090. The Tendril Access Processor—or TAP—connects humanity to the Global DataNet, allowing interaction with Hyper Reality and all the Global DataNet has to offer, for better or worse. Malware, viruses, and hackers are as much of a threat as they ever were, and now your personal computer is woven into your cerebrum. The human genome is an open book to science, one that can be rewritten to order if you can afford it. If transgenics aren't to your liking, then chrome yourself with the latest cyberware and let technology improve upon the original model. The geopolitical landscape has been fractured and reformed by revolutions, nuclear exchanges, and economic collapse engineered by a rogue AI. This world is filled with new, wondrous people. Bioroids are on t... Interface Zero 1.0 Regular price: $4.15 Bundle price: $0.42 Format: PDF Welcome to the Future! Interface-Zero, is the first book in the Interface-Zero Cyberpunk Setting by Gun Metal games. IZ brings your Savage Worlds game up to speed with the dark, frenetic world of 2088. Didja Bring Your Gun? Within the pages of Interface-Zero, you can match wits with ancient triad lodge masters, anarchist hackers and digitalized corporate moguls. Thwart the machinations of the New Chinese Mandarinate, or the Theocratic North American Coalition. Stare down the end of your gauss rifle at or match nano-woven steel with ganglanders, gene-spliced hybrids and borg shock troopers. Are ya Wired? Life is fast in 2088. If ya wanna survive, you need to be faster. Don't worry Ami, we got ya covered. Fast Furious and Fun cybernetic rules enable you to create any type o... Interface Zero 2.0 GM screen Regular price: $2.49 Bundle price: $0.25 Format: PDF Looking for a handy GM screen to run your Interface Zero 2.0 game? Here it is! This product has four panels filled with quick references for attack options, gritty damage, injury tables, a step by step process for hacking, sysop countermeasures, Hyper Object difficulty ratings, engrams, Network stats, Street Cred bonuses and penalties, job payouts, and the full list of cybernetic augments, so you can know at a glance what a piece of cyberware does. In addition, you’ll find six panels of artwork to insert in the front of the screen!... Interface Zero 2.0 Iconic figure flats Regular price: $2.49 Bundle price: $0.25 Format: PDF Need some cyberpunk-themed figure flats for your Interface Zero 2.0 game? Look no further! Enclosed is an assortment of paper models or “figure flats” intended to represent characters on the tabletop in skirmishes and other situations where it’s important to tell who is where. Just print out on regular copy paper (or on cardstock if you’d prefer a bit more weight), then cut out and assemble. The names on the tabs are just for inspiration purposes. Ultimately, the figure is whatever or whoever you want it to be! There’s a focus in this set on more unique individuals who might be useful for the heroes or their allies, but of course some of these could be just as useful as adversaries. This pack contains well over 80 figure flats for your Interface Zero... Interface Zero 2.0 Threats figure flats Regular price: $2.49 Bundle price: $0.25 Format: PDF Need some cyberpunk-themed figure flats for your Interface Zero 2.0 game? Look no further! Enclosed is an assortment of paper models or “figure flats” intended to represent Threats on the tabletop in skirmishes and other situations where it’s important to tell who is where. Just print out on regular copy paper (or on cardstock if you’d prefer a bit more weight), then cut out and assemble. The names on the tabs are just for inspiration purposes. Ultimately, the figure is whatever or whoever you want it to be! This set focuses on various threats your group might encounter on missions. This pack contains well over 80 figure flats for your Interface Zero 2.0 game!... Interface Zero 2.0: Fate Edition Regular price: $9.12 Bundle price: $0.92 Format: PDF Full Metal Cyberpunk action, now for the Fate game system! You’re hanging from the summit of a mile-high skyscraper, your cybernetic claws holding you in place while gunfire shatters the windows around you and a computer virus burns its way through your brain. When your network link to the rest of your team goes offline, you’re sure of one thing: You should have charged the client double for this mission. Interface Zero: Fate Edition has all the rules you need for cyberpunk action and adventure in the megacities and wastelands of the 2090’s. Inside this book you’ll find hackers, drone pilots, cyborgs, androids, cybermonks, human/animal hybrids, psychics, cybernetic implants, guns, armor, vehicles, agile powered armor and massive war robots. Pre-built aspects, ... Interface Zero 2.0: Full Metal Cyberpunk Regular price: $16.59 Bundle price: $1.67 Format: PDF FULL METAL CYBERPUNK! In a not-so-distant future, the world has been ravaged by global warming, subjected to the horrors of nuclear war and natural disaster, witnessed the collapse of the mightiest nation in the history of the world, and the rise of other nations to take its place. In East Asia, the Bear and the Dragon battle for control of the resource-rich continent, and an emergent A.I. known only as Charon has destabilized the whole of Europe, sparking revolution and chaos not seen since the Second World War. On the North American continent, the prospect of conflict once again rears its ugly head as terrorist bombings in Atlantica, bring the nation to the brink of war with the North American Coalition. Is this the work of Charon, as well, or are other forces moving behind th... Interface Zero 2.0: Player's Guide Regular price: $8.29 Bundle price: $0.83 Format: PDF FULL METAL PLAYER TOOLS! Want everything you need to create a character, but don't want to get the entire Interface Zero PDF? Then Look no further! The Interface Zero 2.0 Players Guide gives you everything you need to create a character. Inside this book you'll find 16 cyberpunk archetypes, new races, edges, tons of equipment, and all the setting rules, including cybernetic rules, drone rules, gollemmechs, Hacking, and much more! Interface Zero 2.0 is created by Peter J Wacks, David Jarvis, Hal Maclean, Matt Conklin jr. and Patrick Smith This E-book comes in two versions, a flattened file for viewing on your IPAD or Kindle, and a layered screen version so you can create a printer-friendly file. NOTE: THIS PRODUCT CONTAINS NO NEW MATERIAL. ALL OF THE INFORMATION IN THIS E-B... Interface Zero: 2090 World Map Regular price: $4.15 Bundle price: $0.42 Format: PDF Want to know what the world looks like in 2090? Now's your chance to see! This full color world map presents the world as it exists in the Interface Zero 2.0 uiniverse. It is 24x36, making it a great size for a poster, should you wish to print it out hang it on your wall! If you simply want to view it on your screen, this map is best viewed at 25 to 30%, using Adobe Reader X™ (https://ift.tt/2GVrq7P;... Interface Zero: Modern20 edition Regular price: $16.53 Bundle price: $1.66 Format: Watermarked PDF Welcome to the Future! Interface-Zero, is the first book in the Interface-Zero Cyberpunk Setting by Reality Deviant Publications. IZ brings your Modern20 game up to speed with the dark, frenetic world of 2088. Future sourcebooks and adventures will further add to the bleeding edge setting presented in this core setting book. Didja Bring Your Gun? Within the pages of Interface-Zero, you can match wits with ancient triad lodge masters, anarchist hackers and digitalized corporate moguls. Thwart the machinations of the New Chinese Mandarinate, or the Theocratic UCSA. Stare down the end of your gauss rifle at or match nano-woven steel with ganglanders, gene-spliced hybrids and borg shock troopers. How About Your Hacker? Interface-Zero is 120 pages full of setting, history, rules, and... Japan: Empire of the Setting Sun Regular price: $4.98 Bundle price: $0.50 Format: PDF In the Empire of the Setting Sun, honor is everything...or you are nothing. Welcome to the Japan of 2090, nakama. You’re being given access to a secure data cache that reveals what the country and its people have truly evolved into. Here, “ronin” isn’t just a street nickname, but a dark legacy fraught with deadly peril and crushing burdens. From the highest Zen master to the lowliest yakuza thug, from bio-molded cities to ancestral cyberspace vistas, prepare to be plunged into an empire transformed by its unique cultural identity as much as the world’s rampaging technology. Delve into the DATAfeeds of the Chrysanthemum Corporation or have your appetites whetted by the orbital pleasure palace of Golden Heaven. Master stealth technology to join the shinobi o... Jericho Rose Regular price: $4.14 Bundle price: $0.42 Format: Watermarked PDF Managers and producers know the secret. It isn't what's hot now, it's what's next. That's the key. Not what they're listening to now, but what they're going to listen to tomorrow. Lorna Jericho could be next. A hot look, a new sound and lyrics that turn fans into fanatics. She's dangerous. She has no fear. She asks all the wrong questions, shouting them out loud to her loyal followers. Shadows in tall buildings say, "She has to be stopped." They say, "She has to be silenced." And perhaps, they've gotten her wish. Because like a ghost, she's gone. Vanished. And it's up to you to find out who stole the Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes. Written by critically acclaimed author John Wick, Jericho Rose is a cyber-noir adventure for 4 to 5 ch... Phoenix: The Terrible Valley of Static Regular price: $4.97 Bundle price: $0.50 Format: PDF Under the burning sun, one of the hottest places in the world just became a whole lot more dangerous. In early 2090, Phoenix, Arizona dropped off the map. Nobody knows how or why. Not even the people who live there. But some of them are finding out. And when they do... they're as good as dead. Written by Origins Award Winner and Phoenix resident John Wick and David Jarvis, Phoenix, the Terrible Valley of Static pulls back the curtain on this isolated, broken city, giving you all the dirt you'll need to get involved with any of the new factions which vie for control of Phoenix. You'll also find rules for Ghosting in Hyper Reality, new edges, hindrances, specialized gear and new cybernetics!... Real Estate Regular price: $1.25 Bundle price: $0.13 Format: Watermarked PDF The Crazy Devils gang is making inroads into new turf, they made the mistake of picking the turf where the heroes live. Dragged into gang warfare not of their making the heroes must survive and fight back. The gang are fighting for the real estate, the heroes are fighting for their homes, justice and a big pile of credits. Real Estate is a One-Sheet adventure ideal for introducing players and novice characters to Interface Zero 2.0. It can easily be adapted for any tier of heroes. It can be run on its own or lead into a more complex adventure for the heroes. One-Sheet adventures are designed to be run with minimal prep and contain enough content for a game session or two. These adventures are also great as filler in longer campaigns, to use as a spring board for a longer adventure, or... Road Rage: Figure flats! Regular price: $2.49 Bundle price: $0.25 Format: PDF Need some figure flats and markers for your next "Road Rage" jump race? Then Look no further! These figure flats and race markers are specially designed by Jordan peacock to work with the race rules in Road rage: Life in the fast lane! This pdf contains 80 race tokens, barriers, and 27 figure flats!... Road Rage: Life in the Fast Lane Regular price: $4.15 Bundle price: $0.42 Format: PDF Put the Pedal to the Metal… Yeah, tomo, you've heard of Jump Bike racing, but do you really know what it is? It's one part Formula 1, one part Street Race, one part Demolition Derby, and possibly the most popular blood sport of the 2080s. Ever since Mickie O'Laragh demonstrated how weapons could determine the outcome of a race, the sport of 'Motorized Steeplechase' has never been the same, and Street Cred —or just plain Credits —often ride on the outcome of these events. … and Rage Your Dream! Road Rage gives you all the tools you'll need to enter the world of Jump Bike racing, Interface Zero style. It doesn't matter if you're a player looking to build the ultimate street racer, a GM looking to offer a different sort of challenge to your j... San Francisco: The Ruins by the Bay Regular price: $7.46 Bundle price: $0.75 Format: PDF NOT ALL CITIES ARE CREATED EQUAL... SOMETIMES YOU'VE GOTTA MAKE 'EM THAT WAY! Once one of the largest sprawls on the West coast, San Francisco was ravaged by war and natural disaster. Now, some twenty years after a major earthquake leveled the city, San Francisco is home to a wide range of hybrids and humans who eke out a meager existence in this harsh, post-apocalyptic ruin. Take care though, traveler, because as much as the people of San Francisco can’t stand each other, they hate outsiders even more. These cats’ll gladly gut you and leave ya naked and bleeding out on the broken concrete if you so much as look at them the wrong way, tomo. So, if you stumble into the wrong zone or forget to pack extra ammo when scavenging in the ruins, well... Don&rsqu... Seeds of Discontent Regular price: $4.14 Bundle price: $0.42 Format: Watermarked PDF A Bitter Harvest The family farms of the King County Cooperative in late 21st Century Seattle are just trying to operate on their own to make ends meet. They're not prepared to deal with big agricorps or with marauding biker gangs raiding their property. That's where you come in. What starts off as a simple job protecting the little guy from trouble and finding out who is behind it gets complicated real fast, however. Someone has been preparing a bitter harvest indeed for the Cooperative and anyone working with them, sowing... Seeds of Discontent Seeds of Discontent is an adventure for 4-5 characters of Seasoned Rank or above. ... The Delivery Regular price: $1.25 Bundle price: $0.13 Format: Watermarked PDF The heroes are hired for a simple delivery job, some might even say a milk run. The team has two hours to deliver a briefcase across town, but not all jobs are as easy as they look. In order to make it in time, the heroes will have to overcome a few obstacles that threaten to keep them from making their deadline. One-Sheet adventures are designed to be run with minimal prep and contain enough content for a game session or two. These adventures are also great as filler in longer campaigns, to use as a spring board for a longer adventure, or just to mix it up.... The Exchange Regular price: $1.25 Bundle price: $0.13 Format: Watermarked PDF A corporate executive is being held for ransom by a local street gang. Management wants him back, but doesn't want to get involved, so the hire a group that can handle a delicate job like this. The heroes are hired to make to make the exchange, with a promise of a bonus if they return the executive alive and hold on to the ransom money. A simple job, right ami? Just have to handover a case for the suit. But this is 2090; every job is not always as it seems. This one page adventure is designed a 4 to 6 hour session of play, but easily can be extended for a longer session or used as part of an on-going campaign. ... The New York Reclamation Zone Regular price: $4.98 Bundle price: $0.50 Format: PDF The best city money can buy! Once the greatest city on earth, New York was abandoned in 2038 after terrorists blew the levees protecting her from rising sea levels. Forgotten by America, the Big Apple became soggy, slowly rotting away, with only a brave few remaining within its bounds, refusing to give up their once-proud home. Yet in the half-century that followed, New Yorkers proved time and again just how adaptable they could be in the face of disaster, natural or otherwise. Now, the waters may still hold the Big Soggy hostage, but its denizens reject any notion of surrender. The city has changed, with flooded streets and ancient subways teeming with aquatic predators while human colonies scrape out a brutal existence on those skyscrapers that haven’t collapsed into the sea. ... The Republic of Texas Savage Worlds edition Regular price: $4.98 Bundle price: $0.49 Format: PDF Ask any Texan and they’ll tell you that life in the Republic is about one thing: freedom. Life here isn’t a cakewalk, but it’s far better to die on your feet than live on your knees. That’s Texas in 2090, amigo, better get used to it. Learn what it means to be a citizen in the Lone Star and how Texans remember the breakup of the old nation in order to form their more perfect union. This is a land where freedom reigns supreme because it’s surrounded by enemies and uncertain allies on all sides. Engage in high-tech espionage in the new range wars. Go south and live lawless, or head to the Austin-Antonio sprawl and get closer to the center of power or trapped in an AI/gang turf war. Plunge head first into the Runenberg Corporation’s financial...

Total value: $198.48 Special bundle price: $19.99 Savings of: $178.49 (90%)

Price: $198.48 Interface Zero Megabundle [BUNDLE] published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

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kayawagner · 7 years ago

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Interface Zero Megabundle [BUNDLE]

Publisher: Gun Metal Games

This special bundle product contains the following titles.

Total value: $198.48 Special bundle price: $19.99 Savings of: $178.49 (90%)

Price: $198.48 Interface Zero Megabundle [BUNDLE] published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

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