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Purple passages
Nov. 23rd, 2025 02:51 pmWhile Magda was alive, Sunday evening was always Shadowrun night. I enjoyed that right from the start, despite the dystopian setting, because Magda gave us a fair bit of latitude as a GM which meant that as a group we could manage to do stuff here and there to make it a bit less dystopian; but it got even more fun when we were joined by Purple.
Purple was originally a joke. We had a player whose primary character was very tech-orientated, very focused, not very sociable, quite possibly autistic-spectrum (the player himself definitely wasn't), and extremely serious. And, after a while, this bloke decided that he wanted a change; so, just for fun, he decided to create a character that was about as far from the primary one as he could manage. The primary character was called Zolty, which is Polish for "yellow"; so it was immediately obvious that the new one should be called Purple.
Purple was, indeed, purple. Part of the concept of Shadowrun is that "metahumans" exist, who (quite conveniently) resemble various fantasy races; my character was an elf, though not, in Shadowrun terms, a very typical one. Purple was also an elf, but he was a Surged elf. The Surge was a thing that randomly happened to a few people; it was a magical thing. You'd go to sleep one night, and then you'd wake up the next morning with a whole slew of strange new features and abilities (so it was pretty expensive, in game-mechanical terms). In Purple's case, it meant that he not only got the funky skin colour, but a prehensile tail and a pair of cute little horns. He was utterly laid back, had virtually zero sense of either danger or responsibility... and he was sex-mad. Fortunately, Magda had already home-brewed a little extra feature for my own character, Lethruel, which was "Asexual". It meant Lethruel could neither use nor be affected by the Seduction quality; and, since the advantage and disadvantage of that balanced out, it came free of charge.
So Purple liked and respected Lethruel quite a lot for being the one person he couldn't seduce, and Lethruel liked Purple quite a lot too, though the respect in that direction was somewhat counterbalanced by a certain frustration, as it usually ended up falling to Lethruel to ensure that Purple didn't get either himself or any other members of the party injured or killed. They were, in short, the most wonderfully unlikely pair of friends, and the whole thing was a ton of fun. It was really Purple who got me writing Shadowrun stories; he was such a fun character that I couldn't resist taking him further (with the full support and encouragement of his player). I even got another friend to draw him, much later; he did a truly wonderful job of the bedroom eyes.
It didn't end there. Purple's player liked some of the things I'd done with Purple in the stories so much that he incorporated them into the game (such as "oh, Purple needs to buy a new pair of socks, well, in that case obviously they're going to be pornographic socks"). I don't even know what pornographic socks would look like. I don't need to. All I know is they're what Purple would wear. Purple pornographic socks, of course (he went in for a lot of clothes that toned with his unusual skin colour). If you know of anyone who makes those, I don't want to know. :-D
Purple was originally a joke. We had a player whose primary character was very tech-orientated, very focused, not very sociable, quite possibly autistic-spectrum (the player himself definitely wasn't), and extremely serious. And, after a while, this bloke decided that he wanted a change; so, just for fun, he decided to create a character that was about as far from the primary one as he could manage. The primary character was called Zolty, which is Polish for "yellow"; so it was immediately obvious that the new one should be called Purple.
Purple was, indeed, purple. Part of the concept of Shadowrun is that "metahumans" exist, who (quite conveniently) resemble various fantasy races; my character was an elf, though not, in Shadowrun terms, a very typical one. Purple was also an elf, but he was a Surged elf. The Surge was a thing that randomly happened to a few people; it was a magical thing. You'd go to sleep one night, and then you'd wake up the next morning with a whole slew of strange new features and abilities (so it was pretty expensive, in game-mechanical terms). In Purple's case, it meant that he not only got the funky skin colour, but a prehensile tail and a pair of cute little horns. He was utterly laid back, had virtually zero sense of either danger or responsibility... and he was sex-mad. Fortunately, Magda had already home-brewed a little extra feature for my own character, Lethruel, which was "Asexual". It meant Lethruel could neither use nor be affected by the Seduction quality; and, since the advantage and disadvantage of that balanced out, it came free of charge.
So Purple liked and respected Lethruel quite a lot for being the one person he couldn't seduce, and Lethruel liked Purple quite a lot too, though the respect in that direction was somewhat counterbalanced by a certain frustration, as it usually ended up falling to Lethruel to ensure that Purple didn't get either himself or any other members of the party injured or killed. They were, in short, the most wonderfully unlikely pair of friends, and the whole thing was a ton of fun. It was really Purple who got me writing Shadowrun stories; he was such a fun character that I couldn't resist taking him further (with the full support and encouragement of his player). I even got another friend to draw him, much later; he did a truly wonderful job of the bedroom eyes.
It didn't end there. Purple's player liked some of the things I'd done with Purple in the stories so much that he incorporated them into the game (such as "oh, Purple needs to buy a new pair of socks, well, in that case obviously they're going to be pornographic socks"). I don't even know what pornographic socks would look like. I don't need to. All I know is they're what Purple would wear. Purple pornographic socks, of course (he went in for a lot of clothes that toned with his unusual skin colour). If you know of anyone who makes those, I don't want to know. :-D
