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Devil's Tower is officially worse than 'Nam

Shovember dealt a few black jokers to the party out-of-game so we were a player down. Because of that, the GM decided not to take the chips he normally does, to give us a sporting chance. We're probably only looking at one more session, and then it's The End. Quite literally, actually, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

We ventured up some stairs, opened a door, saw some baddies, threw some dynamite into the room and took cover - and blew up half that level of the cave. Including the stairs, which we're going to need to go up, seeing as how our date with Stone is set to be up top.

Instead, we worked our way down the corridor, opening random doors and encountering aliens trying to kill us (and a Chinese man being in the process of being turned into an alien in a most painful way), until we eventually found a generator room ... which also contained the portal to the future. Unfortunately, that's not where we need to go right now. Not without a certain stone ... and there's us, having blown up the staircase and everything. Way to go.

On the plus side, we found a room full of alien tech, and one of the beings we killed had a kind of translating gadget collar ... which we promptly fitted to Scraps (Reynard's dog). He turned out to be translated into a posh English accent (while he's more Deep South in Reynard's head, confusing the heck out of him) - at least until it got damaged. Now, he barks at us in Japanese instead. Kamikazeeee!!

The universe wants us dead

It's not going well. After last week's party deaths, Reynard removed Sam's steam-and-ghost-rock-powered Gatling gun from the burning remains, to ensure it wouldn't blow up, while Slick helped himself to the contents of Gunney's pockets. Slick then decided the best thing was to put a bullet through the steam canister to make sure it wouldn't blow up in our faces - so it blew up in his instead. Pretty much.

Mary dealt out some healin' to the reluctant alchemist, and we headed off down the maze. We managed to find our way out of it eventually, only to find some aliens with force fields for protection. They were really difficult to shoot at. In fact, not until Slick put out Slumber Gas and Greek Fire did we manage to even damage one of them - but sadly, Slick died in the process because those aliens do pack a helluva punch.

Our previous encounter meant that we were getting low on chips (Mary had to use her two legend chips not to lose limbs), and once you're out of chips, you're out of life. Or, if you're Reynard, it doesn't matter, because you can't spend chips to negate wounds anyway. First Slick went down, then Reynard.

Fortunately (?) both quickly felt much better, even if they looked very Death Becomes Her, so to speak. Mary is now the only original PC left standing, but hopefully, with two Harrowed in the party, maybe she, Jackie and Scraps the dog can still manage to save the future. At least four of them have died trying.

Well, that didn't pan out

You guessed it, we're still dungeon crawling our way through the Devil's Tower. We sneaked upstairs, fought a Madonna squad of monsters (they were re-enacting Vogue, we swear!), nearly blowing ourselves up in the process and then sneaked on through a maze. There were traps in that maze.

Slick and Reynard found a blade trap and tried to figure out how to jam it, but they were taking too long, so Sam decided to sneak off in another direction to do some investigating. There, he came across some bat men (well, they dropped on him from the ceiling, specifically), forcing the rest of the party nearby into attack mode.

Gunney used his newly found ray gun to help and blew off one of Sam's legs ... and then his guts, completely by mistake. Trying to use potions to bring him back to life, it didn't work out so well. Sam came back as a living dead (nearly a barf zombie - we really got our hopes up for a bit there) and clawed Gunney's guts out. Slick had to finish him off with a Greek Fire potion.

So now, we've lost two characters and thereby 40% of the party ... We're gonna cause Armageddon, aren't we?

Let’s not use blowing stuff up as a way to get upstairs

Still dungeon crawling our way through the Devil's Tower, we managed to make our way to the cave containing a way upstairs. Soon after that, we found the next staircase we wanted to go up ... but we also found a hidden door, and what do roleplayers to when they find a locked door? They try to break it down. Slick didn't manage it and Sam's new alien super-claw broke the locking mechanism so Mary couldn't pick the lock, so we had the brilliant idea to let Reynard blow the door off its hinges.

The roof caved in, blocking our way to the staircase. Oh, what a surprise.

So instead, we had to take the long way around (fortunately, Gunney's pace has improved - this whole Armageddon-preventing trip must be rejuvenating), being chased by an acidic, black blob that causes temporary paralysis and which doesn't even taste very good. Unlike the bug-like creatures who attacked us in our sleep, who, when cooked, taste a bit like chicken. With Slick in the party, a whole new world of culinary delights have really opened up for us. This week, he surprised us all by actually managing to make cheese and cucumber sandwiches WITHOUT people in them!

Also, there's a new word on the block: scrota, a portmanteau of "scrotum quota". Best not to ask, eh?