shifty louts

Shifty Louts Session 12: The Pleasure Budgets of Garden Shield

Players

Monterey od Mecanizio-Manzaza, Redlander Barbarian (Chance), Brother Lump the Accountant Abbot (Phocas), and Frutilla Paon (hireling)

Summary

The two 1099 Diamante workers take in the Blonde City. Richard Hust leaves his mixtape for Brother Lump, who continues to recover from drinking the polychrome milk freely offered by the Nomobile Yurt Systems.

Monterey speaks to pursesnape Per, who tests him and considers him a cool cat at the Al Flogon. Monterey leaves and finds the Hour Gate, the entrance and exit into the Blonde City that’s dictated by surge pricing models. The current fee is 60d, and the helpful gorilla-man says that Heliodor Merctantile Standard Goods sets the prices.

Monterey heads out after waiting till the price drops to 10d and explores the Valuestates, eventually finding his way to the baroque glass-gated community of the Bycubes that encircle a lake. None of the guards speaks Free City Kriol, and he is detained by the butternut squash-armed guards until a female translator is found.

There are no Redlanders that share the familial lineage in the Bycubes, and Monterey is taken back to the Blonde City for 4d and dropped back off with Brother Lump via a skitterloose rickshaw.

The two wake up early and decide to head east, only to find that no road leads that way. The southern road turns into a highway that is desolate, marked only by the roaring of millipede trucks and fast cars. The groups cart and struthios trundle along the side of the highway.

the highway

Along the way, viso-billboards illustrate messages for the Bycubes that welcome Redlanders and Vinter Lords alike, fleeing the Bloody Popular Uprising of Sun (rising) of Camelia III, apparently out in the Redlands to the east.

Travel continues, as the group camps alongside a mountain. The next day, they continue and eventually see a large, glassy cube with scaly veins that seems to contain a worm-like creature. The group skillfully navigates around the giant, seeing the undead collection scrape metal from the form expels.

The 1099 Diamante workers eventually find the highway enters the town of Garden Shield, in the Orange Lands. An undead toll-worker charges 1d for entry, but they are identified as unregistered uncitizens as a swarm of amber-plate mailed knights carry whips and zombie porters swarm them.

They are taken to a DMV-esque building for Hedonic Burden Review, where a sleek four-armed anthropoid explains that in the Orangelands, uncitizens are registered as Citizens Living or Citizens Undead.

This process includes the aforementioned review to determine one’s pleasure budget. Which is to cover all their needs for the length of a standard efficient lifetime.

The Council of Ancestors and Descendants keeps strict time and energy records of every citizen to ensure a meaningful level of state function. Citizens Living whose total lifetime consumption would exceed their allocated pleasure, determined according to their pre-calculated needs, are politely encouraged to join the labor force of the Citizens Dead earlier than their statistical natural lifespan might indicate.

The group is given their Burden Review. Monterey’s Pleasure Budget is determined to be the longest, some 19 years. The group is deathly afraid of the Orange Lands as they are given a brochure for Amber Standard Hedonic Stations (ASHS).

They choose the cheapest - Happy Orchard Mart for 5pb and find that at least they are provided with “free and complimentary” warm nutrislurry that is distributed in their room via a synthetic teat.

Aftermath

Treasure Found:

Foes Encountered:

Rumors:

Deaths:

XP Awarded:

Notes