We Do WHAT In The Shadows!? - Ep. 3

Episode 3 brings us a secret volleyball cult planning a takeover of the league. We also meet a Parisian noble vampire, who just might know Guido's parents.

Content warning: Profanity, murder, references to Space Jam (1996)

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Special thanks:

Tim Hutchings for designing this awesome game,

Epidemicsound for music

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello, and welcome to your worst nightmare, another RPG actual play podcast. Solotude, a journaling RPG podcast, is just me in a room, not to brag, with a journal, solo RPG, and some damn good coffee. I play to see what happens in the story, write in my fictional journal, and you get to hang out next to me by the fire. So welcome! I hope you enjoy our time together. This is Solotude. We do what in the shadows? I'm not really sure how to open these episodes, because this whole show is just an excuse for me to keep playing. Last time we did something I called Musings from the Shadows, and we'll do that again now. I'm not going to prepare anything for the game, since the thing I enjoy about the journaling game stuff is I can just show up, press record, and start playing. I'm not going to plan anything ahead. Of course I'm going to write the journals down, but otherwise the actual play... be a reflection of what it's like to play a journaling game, so I'll just improvise my way through. So some thoughts Guido has right now. Guido has not been practicing holy ball since they moved to Firenze with Garibaldi, but he has been keeping up with his routine. In holy ball there's, like capoeira style, there's certain movements and routines you can practice on your own. And Guido has discovered since getting turned into a vampire and practicing his holy ball routines that the movements are a hidden martial art. All the movements hide useful strategies and exercises for vampires. All of this of course very consciously created by Arnold Weissschneger. Yeah, the maestro himself. By Big Papa Cheese himself. Guido always wondered why the sports contained a lot of jaw and tongue and lip warm-ups. Now it makes sense. Most of the warm-up movements had nothing to do with holy ball or playing the actual sport. He always wondered why they were supposed to warm up their jaw muscles and do a lot of biting motions. But now it all makes sense. It all comes together. His favorite warm-up move is called the anaconda. Because the anaconda don't want none unless you got blood, hun. And with that, I think I'm ready to roll. I'm super excited to see where we end up. Here goes. It's a three and a three, so we stay where we are. We stay in prompt four. In the book, there's three options or three stages for each prompt. So now, since we're doing prompt number four again, we will take the next one, which is, you are adopted into a strange cult who take you in despite or because of your Outlander origin. I fucking love this. This makes perfect sense, continuing from where we left off. Guido has already been making a name for himself as the guide, so it makes sense that since he's singing and giving all these life philosophy lessons, that he gains kind of a following. People notice him, which might be trouble for him as well. Okay, so let's do the mechanics first, so check a skill. Which... which skill? We already checked the musicality one. We can check sexual mastery, holy ball spiker, or bloodthirsty. I have a feel- I'll check bloodthirsty, I think. Because I want the cult to be a weird, violent sec- Or wait. What if we go the other way around? Bloodthirsty is the obvious choice. We also have sexual mastery, which I want to save that for later, don't we all? Holy Ball Spiker. What if it's a cult of volleyball players? It's a volleyball cult. Like, they are trying to create a supernatural team. They've been looking for the perfect player... They've been, okay, yeah, they've been Frankensteining a corpse together to be the best defense player of all time. They've been looking for, they've been looking into ways to teach animals to play volleyball or holy ball. They've been figuring out ways to teach cats to play holy ball. So their team would be quicker than anybody else's. They see Guido doing his exercises and they recognize these. They see that his form, that his biting form is better than anybody's and they deduce that this is the chosen spiker. They keep an eye on Guido, they follow him around, they see him do his stuff. They don't know what he is. So they don't know he's a vampire. They think he's the chosen one. They truly believe this is the holy ball player sent to them by God. Or whatever weird deity they worship. I like this. It's a volleyball cult. So essentially just a volleyball club, I guess. And the secret cabal? That's the team's name. What vile initiation ceremony do you undergo? Okay, how did they find you? I covered that. They saw Guido doing his warm-ups. Do they know what you are? No, they do not. They do believe Guido is supernatural, because, I mean, he has supernatural powers, but... And Guido doesn't hide them from the team. What vile initiation ceremony do you undergo? Hmm. We have to make this team an actual cult. So it's not just a holy ball... Enthusiasts. It's a fucking cult. It's deranged, the stuff. The lengths they are ready to go to in order to have the strongest team. Arson, murder, theft, kidnapping, nothing is out of the question. Unholy ceremonies. And that's what they do, the initiation into the team. You know what? I think the secret cabal is gonna space jam it. If you're not familiar with space jamming as a concept, then read a book. Space jamming is kidnapping the team and trying to absorb their powers. So the secret cabal will kidnap a holy ball team, which is like a local church's... which is people from a local church or something like that. Priests, nuns from local churches. And they'll try to steal their powers and seal them into a holy ball. Like in the classic literary masterpiece, a space jam. That's the initiation ceremony. Powers transferred from players to ball and from ball to the secret cabal. And they believe Guido is essential to this ceremony working, because he's the chosen player. I don't want to jump forward in time that much yet, so let's make this event a year into the future. The book suggests that you use a few early prompts to kind of create a platform. And that's what I'm trying to do. I don't want to jump a hundred years into the future before I really know who this guy is. And I think we're starting to... I feel like I'm starting to get a good grasp on who Guido is. Hopefully you too.

UNKNOWN: 9:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 9:33

I checked the skill Holy Ball Spiker. I gained a resource, the Secret Cabal. He's now part of an Eldritch volleyball team. And that's a resource he can use if he ever needs something. Perfect, let's do another prompt. Okay, that's a seven and a three, so four spaces, five, six, seven, and eight. You are recognized for what you are by another creature like yourself. Ooh. Create an immortal character, lose a resource, and gain a skill. What did you lose to them? Well, a creature like myself, so maybe it has to be a vampire? Or maybe it could be another kind of immortal? Or maybe it could be another kind of immortal? I'll look at my resources, if I can get an idea from there. We've already checked Father Augusto's loot, so we have beauty, the family handkerchief and the secret cabal. I don't want to lose the secret cabal because I just got it. It's not super inspiring to just get and lose stuff immediately. I don't want to lose beauty. So if it's going to be the baby blue handkerchief with the initials, this was a memento of Guido's parents who turned out to be French aristocrats. How about we make a French aristocrat vampire? You can't fucking play a vampire game without having a snobby Parisian aristocrat vampire. It's in the vampiric law. I like that. So we get recognized by someone. So let's say the baby blue handkerchief is in our breast pocket, because Guido always likes to keep it close. This vampire recognizes it and tricks us into guiding them into the place where Garibaldi and I murder people. And once the murdering is about to begin, the vampire reveals itself to be who they are. He? She? They? I'm not sure. We can make it a her. Yeah, let's do that. What's her name? I want it to be the most fucking fancy-ass name you could think of. Angelique? I like Angelique, just because of the inherent irony. Angelique Boulangère. Boulangerie. That's the extent of my French... Angélique Boulangerie. Let's do it. It's not the most fancy-ass name, but ooh, what if we make it off Boulangerie? Angélique de Boulangerie. That's a fucking countess right there. Yes. That is it. Guido is there with Garibaldi and trying to, and about to kill her. When, and things have been odd throughout their journey there, she doesn't act like people usually do. She seems to play with Guido. She seems interested in him. She's playing a game and he doesn't know the rules. So as he's about to bite her neck, she reveals who she is. She clearly knows who Guido is. She recognizes the handkerchief and she takes it. Turns out the Boulangerie family is a rival family of the... An old rival of the Z family. I don't want to look up a surname that begins with a Z. It's just gonna be Z. The Z family. That's very Resident Evil. The Z Corporation. She tricks Guido into giving it to her. She can play with him and get him to do stuff. So it's not a friendly relationship. But I do gain a skill from this. What kind of a skill would make sense? Um... What if she had some kind of a supernatural power? I know that's a bit of a stretch for a supernatural creature, but... Like a classic vampire thing, like hypnosis. What if she's able to influence Guido's mind in supernatural ways? Like, maybe it's not as effective on vampires as it would be on mortals. But what if everything goes black and then suddenly Guido realizes that they're back at the stinking Bieber? If the skill would be somehow conveyed through the hypnosis to Guido, I think it would be... I just want Guido to have this skill. So if Angelique would use that on Guido, Guido would gain this skill. To use at his leisure. Yes, let's make it hypnosis. She does it on both Garibaldi and Guido, so they all end up in the place she wants. Because it's her way of showing she's the one who wears pants in this rendezvous. Needless to say, Garibaldi's always pantsless. Like, never... has a strong... strongly opposes pants. There's... in Firenze, there's an anti-pants movement that's really... that's really gaining traction. And Garibaldi feels very strongly about that. Sorry if this is getting off track a little bit, but I feel like this fleshes out the character of Garibaldi, which I will admit is kind of thin still, and I... When something terrible happens to Garibaldi, I want to feel like shit about it. So I want to build his character up to that. She clearly wants to use Guido in order to gain an advantage over the Z family in Paris. And Guido wants to know more about the Z family, so he's kind of dependent on her. He wants her to like him. He wants her to help him, but she's slippery. She's smart. She's playing a game he doesn't understand. She could just take what she wants, but she dances through the night and plays with him like a cat plays with a mouse. And I'm fairly sure Garibaldi hates this. Garibaldi doesn't want to share Guido with anyone. And I think he hates Angélique with a burning passion. And even if the relationship isn't super friendly, I don't think Guido hates her. He needs her. So if there's like a feud between families in Paris and this de Boulangerie family is, at least one of them is immortal, probably there's weird stuff going on otherwise as well. I'm wondering if the Z family is somehow immortal as well. Maybe they tried to save Guido from this exact fate by giving him away when he was just a child. I don't know, but I am eager to find out. That's it. I think that's it for today. We made it two prompts forward. So the only thing left is to place the memories. So the first one being, she's preparing war with the Z family and she seems to believe that Guido is the key to this. The Kido, as Angelique calls him. The point where we end today is that Guido is being used by a local cultish volleyball team And by a Parisian noble vampire who wants to destroy Guido's biological family. I think Guido is becoming quite interested in the Z family and he might make his way into Paris to try to find them. But that's next time. And then we'll find out what happens together. Because it's just as big a surprise to me as it is to you. So... Yay. Okay, the first memory I'll... It doesn't fit into murdering loved ones. It doesn't... The Holy Ball Tournament is pretty close, but it's not... The memory is traveling for Holy Ball Tournaments, and it doesn't really fit. I will say the traveling for Holy Ball Tournaments is close enough. I don't feel like it's a good place to create a new memory. I think... The holy ball tournament is essentially what's going on here. So I'll write that down. Being scouted by... Being scouted by a volleyball cult that has a killer team. And they essentially worship him as the chosen one of holy ball. And then meeting Angelique... It doesn't fit. So I'll move... learning music, the memory of learning to play and read and compose music into my diary. There's only one spot left in my diary. So our vampire forgets this, but can and will read upon this memory in his diary. One more spot in the diary before I have to start forgetting stuff. The mechanic is, this mechanic is super evocative. I'll make it a vague, discovering a wider, immortal world. Which is, he's, this is Guido's first encounter with someone else who suffers from the same kind of condition that he does. I mean, there was the muscled hair, but there was Arnold Weichneger, but... That was different. This is someone who's kind of equal in a way. So under discovering a wider immortal world, I put meeting Angelique, a French vampire noble. And I'll continue learning of the war between her and Guido's family. And that's it. We'll meet next time with these journal entries. I hope you enjoyed this. See you around. Thanks for listening, folks. My name is Auri Itamaki, and Solotude is my personal project. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Additional episode music and sound effects courtesy of Epidemic Sound, theme song courtesy of me. You can follow Solotude on Instagram at solotudeshow, and if you got something to say, drop a message or comment. I'm still kind of figuring out the exact format of the show, so I'd be super delighted to hear your ideas, suggestions on where to take it. Also, please rate and review the show so people might be able to find it. There's no budget or anything, it's just me in a room. Not to brag. So, it would be awesome if more people found the show. Tell a friend. Tell a spouse. Whisper it into the shadows. Do what you gotta do. Or don't. Solo 2 drops every week. Every other week there's an actual play episode, and on the off weeks I'll do a proper journal reading with music, sound effects, the whole deal. So you can enjoy Solitude as an actual play podcast, or as an audio drama if you prefer just to listen to the journal readings, or both. It's up to you. Thanks again for listening. Bye!