The evening started out with an explosion and a squirrely Thalos.  Thalos is one of the Eesani cousins who runs the gang in the city of Ellish.  Curtio is the brains and Thalos is the muppet arms.  We never seem to play Curtio, even though he is the brains.  I think this works out better, since Thalos isn’t as smart.  He’s easier to manipulate in that way and in different ways that aren’t straight forward and also a little fun.  Thalos spends the first part of the evening trying to cover for massive explosions that are occurring in the gang hideouts.  Surprisingly, the players brought a woman dressed as a “naughty medic”.  This played really well into the fact that Thalos was previously viewed to be a lecherous man.  We were really impressed with the idea that players had taken the time to consider what Thalos would be interested in.

Ultimately, the players discover that Thalos found some small firebombs and stored them in a cellar.  Some of them are unstable, and in trying to get rid of them before Curtio gets back from patrol, they blew up part of the hideout.  The players made rolls to determine if the bombs were live or duds and then a roll to see if they could carry the bomb safely.  It was a one failure or botch, one kill scenerio.  A bomb going off would have ensured permanent injury/near death/death.  Luckily, they passed their roll.  While the players could not have known this at the time, just simply trying was enough to get Thalos’ buy in.  However, they went beyond that and removed all the bombs, thus sparing Thalos from Curtio’s continued wrath (did we mention that Thalos accidentally stabbed and killed Curtio’s brother?).  In return for their silence to Curtio, Thalos offered them gang members as guides through Ellish.  In return for guides through Ellish, Thalos ended up with two chicks at the same time.

I love playing Thalos.  It is such a guilty pleasure to be a little bit skeevy and a little bit humorous.  While Ellish is, a serious and often scary story, I love that we are able to break the tension here and there.  It makes it a real place, a place of joy and sadness for me.

Today, I got a trial of Starcraft II running on my computer.  Now, I have never played Warcraft or Starcraft.  I am a complete imbecile at RTS games.  However, I am pleasantly surprised that Starcraft has a storyline far deeper than I expected in campaign mode.  When I think of RTS games, I think of peering over Bill’s shoulder while he made a bunch of things.  It didn’t seem to compel me.  In Starcraft, though, I really want to shoot hologram boards and free the people of the colony.  I’m not sure how they manage to make those peeples (tiny people in an RTS according to me) bring that much emotion, but, they did it.

My mother was visiting for a week, so, before that we had to clean like our lives depended on it.  As such, I didn’t get much else done and had very little energy for other things.  My mother, up until this week, had never played a video game.  I talked her into trying the Wii Sports game and bowling.  She didn’t do too bad!  At first, I was nervous that the controls would be a little too much for someone who has never used a controller.  However, bowling really uses A and B and you swing it.  It’s that safe.  So, we delved into it.  Eventually, my mother was moving herself around back and forth using the arrows and got strikes and spares!  It was a really good time and a good test of just how easy and compelling a system like the Wii can be for someone who isn’t a big fan of video games.