The Adventures of Hackan & Marek

The campaign that never gets played, but will never die. This is a campaign run by Russell and played by Mike and Jeff.

This section is badly in need of some filling out. Russell has a metric tonload of written material on the setting, but a lot of it would need work before being put up.

Premise

The universe's greatest city is a place where you can buy any dream and get an extended warranty. Most people don't have the cash, though. Hub? is a mire of bureacracy, crime, and weird beauty. In this world of little grifts and major scores, Hackan and Marek just try to get by. Once thieves, now something murkier, they live by their own rules and steal other people's stuff.

The tone of the game is action-adventure buddy comedy with equal parts cyberpunk 'tude and swashbuckling panache.

Influences

  • our own unending 1337ness. oh, and, like every videogame russ and jeff wrote together during high school. and pirates, because they're cool. and the stainless steel rat.

Comment by Russell:
And here I was going to ramble on about Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Lupin, and the translation of the icons of fantasy gaming into a world influenced by Gibson novels more than anything else. Oh, well. That's what happens when I let Jeff beat me to filling out pages.

Comment by jeff:
Hey, you can still ramble on and on about whatever artsy stuff you like. Everything I said is still true.

System

d20, with some house rules. at least, when we recall how to run d20.

Comment by Russell:
That's a big "when." Given that there's anywhere from a month to a year between sessions, and this is the only d20 we do at all these days, we sometimes end up totally clueless about the rules. In which case I tend to just make up what happens.

Cast

  • Hackan Slash?: AKA Allen Schezar. Used to be a pirate offworld somewhere, now is a fighter/mercenary with piratey flair. Played by Mike.

  • Antonin Marek?: AKA Jonathan Scalia, AKA "Johnny." Marek pulls triple-time as a cunning rogue, an adept sorcerer, and a charismatic ladies man. Of the three, his prowess in half of them is definitely delusional. Do the math. Played by Jeff.

  • Vorbis?: Trusted and loyal in the way that only a trusted and loyal weasel can be. Marek's pseudofamiliar - he's not magical, but we agree to treat him as a familiar and not kill him, as long as Jeff doesn't make Russ have to kill him.

  • Hemlock?: An attractive, mysterious, and compulsively violent mercenary. Not nearly as subtle or clever as she thinks she is.

Comment by Jeff:
I never thought Russ playing a woman could be sooooooo sexy

Comment by Jeff:
did i just say that out loud?

  • Ker'Thul?: Hackan and Marek's fence, a mind-reading, brain-eating alien being from out of town somewheres.

  • Arson?: He gets around, you know.

Anthology

  • I - A Dwarf, Two Drow, and Some Mercenaries
  • II - The Foreign Soprano
  • III - Operation: Maximum r0xx0r
  • IV - The Devil and the Details
  • V - Two Point Owe