The audio

I'll post a link to the audio later. Basically, though:

Flynn

Flynn found his way to the Golem and got a ride to Muddos. This was uneventful. See below for my thoughts on eventfulness.

Pyrol

Pyrol made a trip to Hothouse to visit his estate, though his ultimate object was to get Ishi to his home world of Muddos. While in his estate, however, Pyrol found the building occupied by three rakshasas who told him of Jirac's work — the evil magician has enslaved almost the entire rakshasa species (a ver new species, as Hothouse is still birthing itself) as an army to ride on Halberd. Why Halberd? No one knows. The rakshas, Shutar in particular, want Pyrol to clean up this mess.

Pyrol is sympathetic, but explains that he has to get Ishi to his home first. He has made an unbreakable promise.

Shutar is ever-pragmatic, however, and determines that the short path to getting his way is to kill Ishi. The rakshasas launch a Domination conflict with the objective of destroying Ishi's mind (since the rakshasas in humanoid form are powerful magicians). Pyrol diverts the conflict to Diplomacy to try to find a diplomatic solution, perhaps by undermining Shutar's two allies. To his surprise, however, the rakshasas turn into enromous tigers! That's their special ability — once in a conflict they can shit to their alternate form. Of course, tigers (we established this in the previous session) have no Influence and cannot be affected by a Diplomatic contest.

This places Pyrol in a hard place: his best skill is no good to him and Violence is contraindicated since it's a tiger's Identity skill. So Pyrol tries to navigate through conflicts to get back to Domination, hoping to cast a summoning or mind-control to terrify or control the rakshasas. They constantly use Subterfuge to try to get back to Violence — they are upset by the magic and distracted by the sleight of hand, but are padding around trying to find enough advantage to strike. They get through once, clawing Pyrol, but not badly. Since they still need his help it's obvious they would rather not kill him but they well get him bleeding enough to surrender!

Pyrol manages finally to get his spell cast, with Ishi's assistance, and partially summon's Amak, the leader of refugees and a powerful wizard in his own right (the tigers wind up with two feeble (1d) consequences, "Suggestible" and "Terrified of Amak"). However, the spell is poorly constructed (Pyrol is no expert) and the weirding glass sputters and sparks. The tigers break his attention by creeping around behind him and Pyrol chooses to submit (concession), agreeing to forsake his friend Ishi and pursue the rakshasa's goals.

Conflict ideas

The problem we ran into with Flynn was a mis-identification (on both our parts) of where the conflict was. Flynn summoned the Golem with his Ritual skill but as I think on this, I realize that there was no interesting failure: the test should not have been Ritual to summ — the ritual should have been a given — but rather negotiation with the Golem for passage. This would have been pretty cool since failure might go a couple of ways.

As ref I would require a choice from a small number of solutions. In this case either Subterfuge (trick the Golem or hack his programming, which is what Flynn did by pure narration) or Tenacity (hang on for dear life as the Golem returns to his homeworld with an unwanted passenger).

Subterfuge succeeding would require narration of the success and that's fun. Failing, it would result in a Domination contest as the Golem tries to resist the arcane hacking and Flynn tries to steal its minde for his own purpose. Perhaps the Golem goes into an automatic defensive magical subroutine to reject the intruder. In any case, Domination contest!

Tenacity succeeding would require narration of the hellride. Awesome. Failing, it would result in a Violence contest as the Golem tears Flynn away and rushes him. Flynn's no match for a Golem (Flynn's refusal is Violence) and so he'd need to find another solution to survive.

The Golem

Of course I had to stat the Golem and from this I extracted some ways to build monster stats. I started with its stress since that seems to be definitive.

SUBSTANCE: can the Golem be harmed? I think it can, since it's huge and stony but not magically invulnerable or lacking a body. It's iconic, though, being an Artifact from the magic level on Muddos, so it's powerful. I give it five boxes. OOOOO

ESSENCE: Can it be controlled? Obviously, yes! It has powerful programming but it's hardly invulnerable. Let's call it extra heroic and give it four boxes. OOOO

INFLUENCE: Does it have allies that can be used as levers to persuade? It does have programmers and other riders, so yes, but does it care what they think? I decide it does but it is hard to subvert the alliances of a million years. Four boxes. OOOO

TERRITORY: Can it be out-maneuvered? Here I would decide is its special power. It is invulnerable to attempts to control its position and maneuverability. It's the fucking Golem! No TERRITORY track.