#jasminite

[theultrablog]

Pulp Storytime #49: Who could stand Unawed?

And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the light of the Midnight Sun, And sometimes I wonder if they was, the awful things I done. I started the session like this:

"Canadian Thanksgiving. The second Monday of October, at the Hotel Vancouver in the town of the same name. A seemingly endless procession of local delicacies have been brought into the penthouse dining room. Out the window, snow drifts over Coal Harbor. At the head of the table is honored guest Robert W. Service, the bard of British Columbia. Taped to the wall is a map of the Yukon, where a special little girl has a goldmine. What’s everyone wearing, and who is sitting next to who?"

I would recommend, in modern games, always asking the players what they’re wearing. Florence had a smart red suit with a tiny white hat. (Devika later copied the look.) Connie showed up with slacks and a stained sweater. Simon was dressed elegantly, in a coat with lots of hidden pockets. Yoriko “Zelda” Saeki and her best friend Penny An’te were both bundled up, even inside. Early warning that Canada wouldn’t agree with them.

The group was told, after dessert, that Devika’s gold mine was no longer paying up. It wasn’t a banking issue, but lately the profits weren’t making it downriver. Anyone up for a journey into rural BC?

The players’ adventure prep was hilarious, because no one wanted to spend their own money. Penny’s attempts at gambling were utter failures; miscounting cards and misidentifying fake bettors. Despite initial attempts to dissuade Zelda (“These aren't blueprints, they’re… a really boring board game you wouldn’t like. We don’t even know why we’re playing it”,) Flo and Simon had a perfect heist. The only thing they were unsure of was if the forgery replacement was any good. A problem for another time!

The trip out of civilization went swimmingly… until the aerial tram ride down and over Devil’s Gate River. Red Jasmine cultists attempted to kidnap Devika by stopping the tram and attempting to kill everyone else. The group’s chaotic response involved a lot of gunfire. The would-be kidnappers at the ride's bottom tried to destroy the mechanism, so Connie clambered on top of the tram car and swung down the wire using her bat like a zip line.

Lord Simon found the e-brake in time to prevent a catastrophic crash, and Zelda splattered a Jasminite who had managed to get the drop on Connie. It was a gory finish, observed by the woman waiting to rent the group sled dogs.

Normally, Lala or Aldous take over driving duties. With neither of them around, leading the expedition fell to Penny. Given the short straw, she bonded with the dogs, but had absolutely no sense for outdoor winter survival. The group (minus Connie Johnson, hearty pro athlete) was shivering and ill by the time they made it to town. To get the idea across, I made the players (minus Connie) read this selection of Robert W. Service’s The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill.

The player stopped in the town of Minarette because it was the closest thing to civilization, a pause point for couriers. Someone here had to know where the gold profits went. In Minarette, players investigated the scant locations: the sawmill, the general store/bar, and the logging camp. Leighton Lee, the Metís owner/operator, convinced Zelda that the payments had probably been stolen by Paul “the Blackheart” Patnaude.

The players were frightened to learn that Patnaude was a bear trainer and a cuss. He had lost an eyeball to the creatures but still trained them and owned a great stretch of land outside of town.

More pressing than this was the sleeping situation. After days of unpleasant camping, no one wanted to rough it, but the “hotel” was a single bed in the back of the general store. Devika claimed the room immediately for her and Lord Simon. Florence used her charm on a little old lady, staying in the guest room in exchange for a lot of prayer. The rest of the group headed to the logging camp. After very forcefully setting the terms of the visit (“not prostitutes!”), they were goaded into gambling. But the lumberjacks didn’t like cards as much as they did log rolling. This competition quickly led to Penny and Zelda taking a dunk in the ice-cold river, and Connie defeating all comers. Athletics was athletics, whether it was batting, fielding, or running in place on a log.

The next morning, Connie asked the loggers how to contact the Blackheart. A carrier pigeon was dispatched, and a few hours later, the outdoorsman arrived in a sled pulled by two black bears. He was ornery, but Connie was charming. She leveraged her newfound popularity into a deep conversation and potentially a romance. It turns out that Patnaude hadn’t killed any gold mine courier; that was a lie by the rat bastard Leighton! The bastard probably meant for the group to trespass on Blackheart’s land and get slaughtered.

Simon and Zelda, the sneakiest members of the group, infiltrated the mill. His lordship found evidence that the sawmill was mostly made to inconvenience the gold mine, on behalf of Doc Midas’s New York company. Zelda noticed that some of the machinery was too clean… but was conked on the back of the head, and woke up tied to a log! Lord Simon rushed to stop the whirring factory and this might’ve been the unluckiest roll of the year+ long campaign. The players had to reroll twice and spend another fate point just to get to adequate… Zelda barely survived, with her beloved bowler hat being mulched, and her hair winding once around the sawblade before the power got cut. The group jumped into search for the owner, barely avoiding more death traps. They were in the control room when they heard the whistles and horns of the RCMP… the Mounties were here, to investigate “trespassing!” Florence called upon her charm and status as a commonwealth citizen to calm them down. Wouldn’t they like to see evidence of criminal behavior? Leighton, furious that he was outargued by “imbecilic outsiders”, grabbed a Mountie’s pistol and shot Saeki. She flinched, and it pierced her shoulder. She responded with one shot between the legs and another through the forehead. Gasping, she explained: “Officers, if you come this way, we have some evidence in the office…” Of course, the group would need another way home. The air tram was closed for repairs. This is when Florence's player pointed out that the mystery's solution was obvious. “The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill was about someone getting sawn up.

Detective Zelda:

[indraniartsandcrafts]

#dhanteras #handmadeart #diwali #returngift #festivaloflights #newdesign #gift #indraniarts #jasminite #clay #oillamp #diya #plasterofparis #india #solopreneur https://www.instagram.com/p/CkA8jvDhgQp/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[georgefancys]

@kottaraiskonvergenssi about your tags: im begging you

the only good ending is morse getting his girlfriend and boyfriend

[lievbios]

Angel || Fred Burkle

Name: Fred Burkle

Age: 23

Relationship: Single [Verse depending]

Sexuality: Pansexual

Job:

Faceclaims: Amy Acker

Winifred “Fred” Burkle is a physics student and member of Angel Investigations, and later the head of Wolfram & Hart’s Science Division.

Born in Texas, Fred moved to Los Angeles to attend graduate school at UCLA until one fateful day when her jealous physics professor, Oliver Seidel, used dark magic to banish her to the demon dimension Pylea, where she spent five years as a human slave; the time there took a serious toll on Fred’s sanity. In 2001, Fred was finally saved and returned to Earth when the vampire Angel and his friends arrived in Pylea and liberated them from the control of the Covenant of Trombli.

Upon recovering from her mental trauma, Fred joined Angel Investigations, adding her smarts and scientific knowledge to the team. Unfortunately, when Angel Investigations took over Wolfram & Hart in late 2003/early 2004, Fred met her end when one of her coworkers, Knox, brought in an ancient sarcophagus which infected her with the essence of the Old One Illyria, and despite her friends’ best efforts, Fred perished and her body was taken over by Illyria itself; though her soul was apparently completely destroyed in the process, Illyria retained Fred’s memories and some of her emotions and personality traits.

However, after Illyria’s death and the reversal of the end of magic, Fred was resurrected in London, actually Fred and IIlyria share the same body.

Fred was born in Dallas, Texas to Roger and Trish Burkle. When she finished San Antone High School,[1] she moved to Los Angeles for graduate school at UCLA. Originally majoring in history, Fred took a physics class with Professor Seidel which inspired her to take another path. Around this time, she began working at Stewart Brunell Public Library. On May 7, 1996, while shelving a demon language book, a curious Fred recited the cryptic text out loud and was accidentally sucked into a dimensional portal to Pylea. Her future friend, Lorne, was sucked into the same portal on his side and ended up in Los Angeles. The portal was actually opened by Fred’s jealous college professor, Professor Seidel, who had sent every promising student to it, essentially sending them to their death. Fred was the only one of at least six to return.[2] While still in school, Fred was a marijuana user and was something of a conspiracy theorist.[1]

For five years, Fred spent an arduous life as a “cow,” the Pylean equivalent of a slave. The harsh life of solitude and serfdom took a serious toll on her social skills, as well as her mental health. When Angel met Fred, she was curled up in a cave, scribbling on the already-covered walls, having seemingly convinced herself that her previous life in Los Angeles had not been real. Fred had once been forced to wear an explosive shock collar. However, Fred’s salvation came when Angel and his crew arrived in Pylea to find Cordelia Chase, who had become trapped there. When Angel’s demon came fully to the fore, it attacked just about everyone but Fred, including Charles Gunn and Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Despite this shocking display of violence, Angel never seemed to scare Fred and even at his most demonic, he never attacked her. In fact, she seemed to have a calming effect on him.

After Pylea was liberated, Fred accompanied Angel and the rest of the gang back to Los Angeles and stayed in the Hyperion Hotel to re-adjust to life on Earth and regain her mental stability. Despite several traumatic instances, such as being held hostage by Gunn’s old vampire-hunting crew, she adjusted quite well to “normal” life. Her knowledge of physics and mathematics made her an excellent asset when researching and developing strategies. Fred’s ingenuity and resourcefulness also allowed her to create several constructs and contraptions that helped her adapt to stronger and more powerful enemies. After some time, Fred’s parents came to Los Angeles looking for her, but Fred avoided them and appeared afraid of them, briefly leading the rest of Angel Investigations to believe that the Burkles were abusive. However, Fred’s reluctance to see them was a result of her trauma from Pylea and the Burkles were in fact loving and supportive. Though she initially decided to return home to Texas with her parents, Fred ultimately decided that her place was in Los Angeles with Angel Investigations, a decision which her parents respectfully accepted.

Everything changed for Fred when she and the rest of Angel’s crew joined Wolfram & Hart. A spell removed all of her memories of Angel’s son, Connor. Fred received her own laboratory and became the head of Wolfram & Hart’s Science Division. She was a major asset to the team. Angel consistently relied on her department to quickly and efficiently solve problems. At this time, Fred was concentred to help to materialize the new member, a ghostly Spike. During a mission paired with Wesley, she was almost killed by Emil’s henchmen. Angel blame Wesley for it. After going on a few dates with co-worker Knox, Fred began to have feelings for Wesley again. The two paired up for about a week, but the couple’s happiness was not to last.

As she lay dying, Fred’s mind began to give way. Nearing the end, she panicked, stating that Feigenbaum, a stuffed rabbit named for mathematical physicist Mitchell Feigenbaum who studied chaos theory, should be there. When Wesley asked her who Feigenbaum was, Fred replied that she did not know. Cradling her in his arms, Wesley stayed with Fred until the moment she died, after which her body was taken over by Illyria.

Shortly after these events, Angel used Fred’s death to his advantage in order to infiltrate and ultimately destroy the Circle of the Black Thorn, the Senior Partners’ primary source of power on Earth, by making it appear that he himself was the one who arranged for Illyria’s sarcophagus to be transported to Wolfram & Hart.[3]

Some time after Illyria’s death, Angel encountered what appeared to be Fred walking along a street in Magic Town, London.[6] Talking with Fred as she is assessed by Nadira, Angel determines that Fred was apparently restored by the restoration of magic causing most of the old rules to be ‘reset’ as things that were lost were brought back. Fred explains that she remembers Illyria’s time in her body, such as her attempt to awaken her armies, but is still aware of Illyria within her, granting her access to Illyria’s older memories and occasionally allowing Illyria to take over when she is exhausted or stressed (Although they both sleep when Fred sleeps). Thanks to these flashes, Fred is able to reveal to Angel that Eldre Koh’s tribe were killed by Illyria centuries ago to frame him so that the cult he belonged to would be disbanded.

Fred was a normal human woman with no supernatural abilities. However, her brilliant mathematical mind, immense knowledge of quantum physics and science, and a natural ability in designing inventions made her an important asset of Angel’s team.

During this time, Fred also acquired some moderate fighting skills, mainly using a crossbow as a weapon, but even sword and gun. Later, when Jasmine took over Los Angeles, she was forced to face down all of Los Angeles on her own and was also able to hold her own unarmed, taking out a few armed Jasminites, including one armed SWAT member.

Following her resurrection, Fred has acquired a 'Jekyll-and-Hyde’-esque dynamic with Illyria, with Illyria able to manifest from Fred with her full powers and abilities while Fred only has the potential of those powers rather than being able to use them herself.

Fred was a fairly kindhearted and sweet individual, perfectly willing to help others. The most notable example was perhaps her interactions with Spike. When he confided in her that he was being slowly dragged into Hell, Fred worked tirelessly to build a machine that would restore his corporeal body. She was the first to believe that Spike was “worth saving” and though her efforts ultimately failed, she nonetheless earned Spike’s perpetual gratitude. Her personality was, in a sense, similar to that of Willow Rosenberg.

Just as Fred was willing to help others, she was also fairly vengeful against those who threatened her or her friends. When she and Gunn realized that Connor was responsible for Angel’s three month disappearance, Fred berated him while repeatedly hitting him with a stun gun. Another example was when Fred pursued revenge against Professor Seidel, an act which nearly came to fruition, if not for Gunn’s intervention.

Fred was also an innocent, unassuming young woman which often led people to underestimate her. On many occasions, she used this to her advantage, such as shocking Connor with a stun gun and knocking out a suspicious lab assistant at Wolfram & Hart. Also, she showed signs of great inner strength and an innate ability to survive on her own despite overwhelming circumstances. This was shown as she attempted to flee from Jasmine’s followers and earlier with her experiences in Pylea. In fact, while conversing with Illyria, Spike had said that Fred was one of the strongest people he ever met, solely based on the fact that she could still be able to love as after everything she had gone through in her life.[7]

Due to her traumatic experiences in Pylea, Fred briefly suffered from an undiagnosed mental disorder, although she fully recuperated. Although that it return brievly when she was attacked by an intedimensional tentacle demon, invocated by Seidel.

VERSES

[magicalcreaturesofthenightbios]

Fred Burkle

Name: Fred Burkle

Age: 23

Relationship: Single [Verse depending]

Sexuality: Pansexual

Job:

Notes:

Wanted fc:

Winifred “Fred” Burkle is a physics student and member of Angel Investigations, and later the head of Wolfram & Hart’s Science Division.

Born in Texas, Fred moved to Los Angeles to attend graduate school at UCLA until one fateful day when her jealous physics professor, Oliver Seidel, used dark magic to banish her to the demon dimension Pylea, where she spent five years as a human slave; the time there took a serious toll on Fred’s sanity. In 2001, Fred was finally saved and returned to Earth when the vampire Angel and his friends arrived in Pylea and liberated them from the control of the Covenant of Trombli.

Upon recovering from her mental trauma, Fred joined Angel Investigations, adding her smarts and scientific knowledge to the team. Unfortunately, when Angel Investigations took over Wolfram & Hart in late 2003/early 2004, Fred met her end when one of her coworkers, Knox, brought in an ancient sarcophagus which infected her with the essence of the Old One Illyria, and despite her friends’ best efforts, Fred perished and her body was taken over by Illyria itself; though her soul was apparently completely destroyed in the process, Illyria retained Fred’s memories and some of her emotions and personality traits.

However, after Illyria’s death and the reversal of the end of magic, Fred was resurrected in London, actually Fred and IIlyria share the same body.

Fred was born in Dallas, Texas to Roger and Trish Burkle. When she finished San Antone High School,[1] she moved to Los Angeles for graduate school at UCLA. Originally majoring in history, Fred took a physics class with Professor Seidel which inspired her to take another path. Around this time, she began working at Stewart Brunell Public Library. On May 7, 1996, while shelving a demon language book, a curious Fred recited the cryptic text out loud and was accidentally sucked into a dimensional portal to Pylea. Her future friend, Lorne, was sucked into the same portal on his side and ended up in Los Angeles. The portal was actually opened by Fred’s jealous college professor, Professor Seidel, who had sent every promising student to it, essentially sending them to their death. Fred was the only one of at least six to return.[2] While still in school, Fred was a marijuana user and was something of a conspiracy theorist.[1]

For five years, Fred spent an arduous life as a “cow,” the Pylean equivalent of a slave. The harsh life of solitude and serfdom took a serious toll on her social skills, as well as her mental health. When Angel met Fred, she was curled up in a cave, scribbling on the already-covered walls, having seemingly convinced herself that her previous life in Los Angeles had not been real. Fred had once been forced to wear an explosive shock collar. However, Fred’s salvation came when Angel and his crew arrived in Pylea to find Cordelia Chase, who had become trapped there. When Angel’s demon came fully to the fore, it attacked just about everyone but Fred, including Charles Gunn and Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Despite this shocking display of violence, Angel never seemed to scare Fred and even at his most demonic, he never attacked her. In fact, she seemed to have a calming effect on him.

After Pylea was liberated, Fred accompanied Angel and the rest of the gang back to Los Angeles and stayed in the Hyperion Hotel to re-adjust to life on Earth and regain her mental stability. Despite several traumatic instances, such as being held hostage by Gunn’s old vampire-hunting crew, she adjusted quite well to “normal” life. Her knowledge of physics and mathematics made her an excellent asset when researching and developing strategies. Fred’s ingenuity and resourcefulness also allowed her to create several constructs and contraptions that helped her adapt to stronger and more powerful enemies. After some time, Fred’s parents came to Los Angeles looking for her, but Fred avoided them and appeared afraid of them, briefly leading the rest of Angel Investigations to believe that the Burkles were abusive. However, Fred’s reluctance to see them was a result of her trauma from Pylea and the Burkles were in fact loving and supportive. Though she initially decided to return home to Texas with her parents, Fred ultimately decided that her place was in Los Angeles with Angel Investigations, a decision which her parents respectfully accepted.

Everything changed for Fred when she and the rest of Angel’s crew joined Wolfram & Hart. A spell removed all of her memories of Angel’s son, Connor. Fred received her own laboratory and became the head of Wolfram & Hart’s Science Division. She was a major asset to the team. Angel consistently relied on her department to quickly and efficiently solve problems. At this time, Fred was concentred to help to materialize the new member, a ghostly Spike. During a mission paired with Wesley, she was almost killed by Emil’s henchmen. Angel blame Wesley for it. After going on a few dates with co-worker Knox, Fred began to have feelings for Wesley again. The two paired up for about a week, but the couple’s happiness was not to last.

As she lay dying, Fred’s mind began to give way. Nearing the end, she panicked, stating that Feigenbaum, a stuffed rabbit named for mathematical physicist Mitchell Feigenbaum who studied chaos theory, should be there. When Wesley asked her who Feigenbaum was, Fred replied that she did not know. Cradling her in his arms, Wesley stayed with Fred until the moment she died, after which her body was taken over by Illyria.

Shortly after these events, Angel used Fred’s death to his advantage in order to infiltrate and ultimately destroy the Circle of the Black Thorn, the Senior Partners’ primary source of power on Earth, by making it appear that he himself was the one who arranged for Illyria’s sarcophagus to be transported to Wolfram & Hart.[3]

Some time after Illyria’s death, Angel encountered what appeared to be Fred walking along a street in Magic Town, London.[6] Talking with Fred as she is assessed by Nadira, Angel determines that Fred was apparently restored by the restoration of magic causing most of the old rules to be ‘reset’ as things that were lost were brought back. Fred explains that she remembers Illyria’s time in her body, such as her attempt to awaken her armies, but is still aware of Illyria within her, granting her access to Illyria’s older memories and occasionally allowing Illyria to take over when she is exhausted or stressed (Although they both sleep when Fred sleeps). Thanks to these flashes, Fred is able to reveal to Angel that Eldre Koh’s tribe were killed by Illyria centuries ago to frame him so that the cult he belonged to would be disbanded.

Fred was a normal human woman with no supernatural abilities. However, her brilliant mathematical mind, immense knowledge of quantum physics and science, and a natural ability in designing inventions made her an important asset of Angel’s team.

During this time, Fred also acquired some moderate fighting skills, mainly using a crossbow as a weapon, but even sword and gun. Later, when Jasmine took over Los Angeles, she was forced to face down all of Los Angeles on her own and was also able to hold her own unarmed, taking out a few armed Jasminites, including one armed SWAT member.

Following her resurrection, Fred has acquired a 'Jekyll-and-Hyde’-esque dynamic with Illyria, with Illyria able to manifest from Fred with her full powers and abilities while Fred only has the potential of those powers rather than being able to use them herself.

Fred was a fairly kindhearted and sweet individual, perfectly willing to help others. The most notable example was perhaps her interactions with Spike. When he confided in her that he was being slowly dragged into Hell, Fred worked tirelessly to build a machine that would restore his corporeal body. She was the first to believe that Spike was “worth saving” and though her efforts ultimately failed, she nonetheless earned Spike’s perpetual gratitude. Her personality was, in a sense, similar to that of Willow Rosenberg.

Just as Fred was willing to help others, she was also fairly vengeful against those who threatened her or her friends. When she and Gunn realized that Connor was responsible for Angel’s three month disappearance, Fred berated him while repeatedly hitting him with a stun gun. Another example was when Fred pursued revenge against Professor Seidel, an act which nearly came to fruition, if not for Gunn’s intervention.

Fred was also an innocent, unassuming young woman which often led people to underestimate her. On many occasions, she used this to her advantage, such as shocking Connor with a stun gun and knocking out a suspicious lab assistant at Wolfram & Hart. Also, she showed signs of great inner strength and an innate ability to survive on her own despite overwhelming circumstances. This was shown as she attempted to flee from Jasmine’s followers and earlier with her experiences in Pylea. In fact, while conversing with Illyria, Spike had said that Fred was one of the strongest people he ever met, solely based on the fact that she could still be able to love as after everything she had gone through in her life.[7]

Due to her traumatic experiences in Pylea, Fred briefly suffered from an undiagnosed mental disorder, although she fully recuperated. Although that it return brievly when she was attacked by an intedimensional tentacle demon, invocated by Seidel.

VERSES

tba