Dark Future Ahead 8 – News from the ‘Net of a Cyberpunk bent

Interested in how the Japanese build idol singers and bands?  IO9 breaks it down for us.

On that theme, music is one way to tie a corporate family together, IBM used to have its own orchestra and songbook, read more about them here (and even hear song clips).

Need an interesting place for a character to live?  What about a converted passenger aircraft?

Or perhaps in a huge vertical slum, like the Tower of David in Caracas, Venezuela?  The authorities are now clearing it out, after a mere twenty years.

More tips on how to camouflage yourself from facial recognition systems from CV Dazzle.

Looking as the possibilities of ectogenesis (artificial wombs), a world of options open if these can be perfected..

Close ties between corporate R&D, the state and the military, Israel has all those, seems like the megacorporate ideal!  “We know how to talk military, we know the needs. And we know how to translate these needs into technology.”

2000AD has a preview out for their new Jaegir comic one shot which has a good dark industrial feel to it.

How about spying on or hacking the systems of a car?  It is going to become increasing possible.  Best invest in good firewalls.

Campaign Report – Evard’s Black Orchestra*, Second Symphony

*the greatest musical show that hasn’t happened yet, name subject to revision (it is noted as such on all their posters).

As our GM is still recovering from being sick, we moved forward on the EBO game this week, adding a new player and thus a new character (also a child of Alamarian Dulcimer):

• Jet Sexual-Magnetism Dulcimer, baddest of the bad boys, on the outs after a disastrously failed solo tour.  Vocals and mandolin.  (Tiefling Warlock 1, played by B1.)

L arranges for Jet, who arrived too late to board the ship before it sailed and whom L has good reason to believe is being pursued by Paladins of the Sun, to be ferried via pegasus to the Silver Eagle.  Serasala Swiftwind, the pegasus rider, unceremoniously dumps Jet on the deck of the ship with a terse “Get off my pegasus”, tosses Amethyst a bag of messages from L and flies off.

Amethyst and Jet have a long history of rivalry and their reunion is not a happy one.  But, it does mean that they have someone to play the lead of Cedric in their song cycle.  Amethyst, Lewis and Jet spend the next several days, and indeed the rest of the journey, arguing music, lyrics, staging, casting, just about everything and anything.  Ren takes to training with the dancers and climbing the rigging to keep in shape and, later, sparring with Conscience.