For a relaxed, chilling out, end of con game, this session was awesome. Everybody was just in a fun creative space, serious and epic in the fiction, yet hilarious and chill around the table.
We started out with a mythic history of man-beasts and monsters, but before long it became all about love, baby. Yes, I'm talking about the romance / marriage / fighting / sulking jealousy of Radia & Forus, those crazy mixed up kids. It wasn't the only arc in the history, and it wasn't even the primary story most of the time, but it wove itself all through the history as we played.
Throughout our history, their relationship is... complicated. In typical Microscope style, they weren't made in one stroke, they emerged from building on each other:
"Scene: The nice goddess is being imprisoned by the Serpent Queen. The goddess's name is Radia."
"I'll play a dark warrior god helping the evil queen."
"Radia's thinking, 'Oh, that my ex-husband should betray me!' Yep, I'm looking at you, dark god."
There was a lot going on (tribes of savage goat-men, the serpent queen's rebellious daughter rising from her grave, etc.) but some of my favorite Forus & Radia snippets were:
- Kind Radia brings life and a diversity of species into the world and then Forus goes around killing all the critters he doesn't like. Which is most of them. And this is while they were still happily married.
- Johnzo playing the tricksy god Hecatron trying to cheer up his bro Forus with a monster hunting expedition when the wrathful warrior-god was moping because his ex-wife, the gentle and benign goddess Radia, had fallen in love with a beautiful mortal boy. For cheer up, read: incite him to go slay them all in bloody carnage. C'mon buddy, wouldn't that be fun? But Forus just sulks on the pile of hacked of hydra heads and mopes...
- "Fetch me my killing boots..."
And yes, there was a running stream of flying monkey jokes. Piles and piles. Mostly they didn't have to do with the history, except for the albino winged yeti-apes and their damn death curses.