behind the scenes of our new hex crawl
Alaska Violence 1986 (writing process part 4... featuring Haha I'm Using Violence)
Before I begin, Violence is a rules-lite TTRPG by Luke Gearing (available on his blog, itch, or purchase a physical copy from Spear Witch). All proceeds from this project go to Ukraine refugee aid. Fuck war.
Find a plot of land.
Write words upon the land every 'so many' miles.
Paint numbers over the words.
(research)
Spend 9 months writing, rewriting, and eventually running your setting for your closest friends.
Alaska Violence 1986 will be the next zine released by Spooky Jaguar. It's a setting/west march/whatever the fuck. I really like the Violence game rules.
I'm going to begin sharing our process as it comes to life.
The following are excerpts from our upcoming release's second self-edit...
The call of the moose at twilight rings your ears.
Hex 6. The Fisherman
He cuts holes in the ice with his chainsaw, then fishes and drinks on the lake for d4 days. His truck is parked on ice. There's a camper in the bed of the pickup truck. Only he knows the safe path to drive the truck on the frozen lake.
Hex 7.
The forest is made of furs and pines that are laced together with cobwebs and rivulets of frozen sap. The woods are saturated underfoot and overhead, dark and dripping and slippery, dead falls covered with a skin of slime. On the ground is an old felt hat with netting tied around the brim to keep mosquitos off. A warning of things to come. If players spend the night here, they will be attacked by a mosquito swarm if they’re not cautious.
Hex 10.
Lucianne washed her hands and clothes here, back in '66, after she finished burying her husband next to a tree marked with a crossed L+M, not too far from the river. If his body is dug out, Mark will have more bones than rotten meat; he is still wearing a Speedo and a waterproof Seiko on his wrist. He kept his promise.
Hex 15.
A married couple, both deaf, Mark and Maryann. She was born deaf, and he got old too fast. They wear hearing aids, sometimes she forgets to change the batteries. She is seventy-six, he is eighty-one. They’re self-sufficient, living in a house they built together. When they first arrived in Alaska they were ridiculed by the locals, but they were never afraid of bears, guns, lynxes, ticks, human traffickers, young people, wolves, or squirrels. They own three shotguns, two pistols, and enough shells and bullets to get them through more winter. Only trusting of indigenous people.
HEX 17.
Underground magma creates hot springs, sitting on the ring of fire.
HEX 18.
A wet fog that came down and never lifted again. You can find two men decapitated, naked, hands removed. They once wrote a few books together.
Hex 21. A Camp in a Clearing…
Or what is left of it.
Downed tents, brand-new shirts, pants, drawers, boots, and hunting caps stung about, sacks of dried apricots and beans slashed open and scattered among the clothes and ashes. A slab of bacon lying on a heap of trampled canvas tents, bottles of whiskey, and a new axe.
Hex 22.
Two men hide in sleeping bags in the roots of a dead spruce, reeking of whiskey. One has a rifle, and the other is unconscious and wrapped in ripped clothing, a bloody mummy.
Hex 23.
A grizzly bear in hyperphagia (an extreme hunger that cannot be satisfied) has caught 30 salmon today.
Hex 26.
A seaplane named Electra sits in a spruce grove—its final resting place—intact except for the sheared-off landing gear and a missing wing. The cabin is packed tightly from rear to front and floor to ceiling with more than a thousand pounds of sealskins. The pilot is buried inside the half-ton of fur, smiling and still warm; dead by suffocation.
Appendix N:
The album Disappeared by The Sarto Klyn V (bandcamp). Noir Jazz.
The album KIller Whale Atmospheres by Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement (bandcamp). Ambient Techno.