In space no one can hear your stress

We are trying out the new Alien RPG! The first session turned out to be a lot about getting used to the system and how Stress dice work. We found ourselves getting super stressed very quickly. Heeh. In the end there were some house rules we decided on for next time.

We began by having our characters waking up from cryosleep five days earlier than scheduled. Another spaceship had been found. There was a dead body floating around and a Synth that wanted to murder us. It very nearly succeeded because Stress is a tricky mechanic and we may have been doing it wrong? Oops.

For the next session again, we found another ship, the Potemkin, where we also came across a teenage kid hiding in a room. Wait, why do these things sound familiar? Is there a ginger cat around here somewhere too? ;)

And the last thing, which I believe was on a third ship, we found bodies hanging from the ceiling. Like thousands of them. Space is apparently not a very nice place, but then we're probably about to find some of those alien things, aren't we? Things are bound to go downhill from there!

Introducing the future victims:

• Don[atella] "Dry" Martini, pilot
• Joshua "Josh" Brown, doctor
• Michael Knight, Colonial Marshall

 

Tearing down windows and doors and I could not find eyes like yours

This whole session was basically all dream. Except this time they were in the same one (sans Val) - the Egyptian primordial sea of darkness thing. Lottie turned on Auspex and discovered her and Frankie were floating in what will basically become aura/everything.

A pyramid and an Egyptian god emerged from the water, Tatenen with the sun crown. Turns out if you use True Sight on a god you can get a seizure, a splitting headache and get glowing, golden eyes.

Tatenen wanted to know the cousins' names. Lottie negotiated some sort of immunity for three people each of their choosing in return for giving the names. She only really wanted the immunity for Julius, and offered her other two spots for Frankie. He chose to decline them, and after giving it a lot of thought chose the other three people that are now connected to their new unlives: cousin Val (who we guess was left out of the dream not because he was lucky, but because he's now an NPC), and ghouls Benny and Angela. Tatenen told them to stay and learn.

They observed fighting snakes-with-frogs-heads, the sun rising (doing them no harm, which was nice), and then blood with black aura streaks gushed forward, so they ran to avoid it. There was a creepy and quickly developing foetus that came out of a piece of flesh, and another god stabbed himself in the right hand. It was all very strange and neither characters nor players had a single clue WTF was going on.

Frankie woke up with bite marks in his hands, and since he botched the understanding roll, Julius must have some kind of a rat problem. Lottie woke up with golden eyes - huh. Val, it turned out, had also had wet dreams, but in the other sense of the word. They told him and Julius about the weird dream and about what happened the night before.

Lottie worried that she was the one choosing Julius as a sire because she had asked for him to be protected at the very beginning of time. He tried laying those fears to rest, and complimented her on her new eye colour, which she now hopes will be permanent ...

I've been trying to get disowned for years!

The weird thing here is that my first note from this session reads: "Spider god: GTFO." I can't remember if this was us encountering a spider god, meaning we need to GTFO; or if it was a spider god telling us to GTFO; or if it was a spider god actually hiding in that hill that people were trying to dig up, and therefore that's why we should all GTFO and stop digging. I think my personal RAM is on the fritz.

People are leaving the camp now, at any rate, and we suggested the powers that be that they should go to where Erdugald was, but beware the murder hornets ...

Murmei practiced making leather armour so he can make snakeskin armour for Deadorna once he gets enough XP to get Blacksmith at Adept, because the armour will be a lot better then. His sister is considering making him fancy ink to write with as a thank you.

In the end we bricked up the bit where people had got closest to breaking through to the thing inside the hill, so we can leave the place and the barbarian tribes can ward anyone off from getting too close. A job well done, we think!

Everything IS better in Brooklyn

Lottie met back up with Julius who told her about an 8th gen/800-year-old vampire called Ekaterina the Wise, a.k.a. the vampire Val met the previous session. Her jaw is all messed up from an attack (that was meant to hurt people close to her?) that didn’t fully heal when she was turned. They decided not to tell Frankie about this, because a Frenzying Brujah in the living room sounded like a bad idea. (Frankie's murdered sister Caterina is his berserk button.)

Meanwhile, Frankie and Val (henceforth an NPC as the player dropped out) went to a restaurant in Lexington to meet up with "Cola" Schiro. Cola was successfully intimidated and spilled that he'd met Jeanine before, at a party in Staten Island, and had been giving her info for the past two months while she used him for snacking. She was particularly interested in Frankie as of three weeks ago (read: a week before the cousins were turned). Once interrogated, our cousin Vince was left to take care of him.

Weirdly, Prince Wellsley showed up in disguise to tell us he wanted Umberto Valenti disposed of, quickly and quietly. He will grant us one question truthfully answered, but we decided to save it for later.

Back with the Malkavians, they do some research, because parks are losing their auras. There's a planned road called Anaconda Street, and its planned path goes through a park. The work started the same day our cousins were Embraced. The park, it turns out, has "no voice".

They also met with Aisling Sturbridge, a Tremere friend of Julius's, to investigate the park situation by way of a ritual. There were runes, blood and a chalk circle and they felt uncomfortable. Lottie insisted on her blood being used instead of Julius's.

In Harlem, the guys investigated the scene of the drive-by looking for clues, and followed a trace to an old Family safehouse, where they discovered an old vampire with a forked tongue - a Follower of Set. He wanted an unspecified favour in return for giving up the location of Umberto Valenti. Val tried to Dominate him, but it didn't work and the guy got a bit grumpy. They then had to high-tail it back to Julius's Manhattan place to not get fried by approaching dawn.

Lottie and Julius had a long-awaited talk about blood-bonding, deciding to say yay to double-sided, nay to one-sided. We'll see what happens with that. It was getting light outside, so everyone went to bed, meaning to discuss the night's details the following evening.

Snakes on a claim!

Loot the wizard! Get all his things! Then we stuck barbs in a Blackcloak's underwear to stop him (her?) from being influenced by the thing under the hill.

We also bought a bunch of other people's claims to stop them from digging up the hill, because y'know, don't do that maybe?

The party finds some big-ass snakes kill them and bring them to Murmei for identification – a double botch later and it’s obvs clearly one of those harmless snakes that only eat small prey (and totally not sisters) and drop blood on books …

Maybe she's Made-belline?

Following up from the gunfire cliffhanger, Val went to check what's going on and who's violating our territory. A lot of this, from Lottie and Frankie's perspective, was sitting around at Rusty's answering phone calls. Turns out the territory was being attacked from the south AND the north? What in tarnation?

Val hears someone with a raspy voice being suspicious. The guy that shot up the precinct the other night - Umberto Valenti - did a drive-by in the Family's Harlem territory to try to off Cola Schiro?

There was a howl - werewolf! - and then the steelworks in Gowanus (this name amuses us forriners) went BOOM. Fortunately Val didn't freak out from seeing a massive ball of fire, especially as he encountered a creepy-looking vampire on the rooftops ...

 

One of the plans includes getting laid

Ah, so this is the session in which the big boar (aboar?) was spoken to and was treated to having the spear stuck in its side removed.

Some guy hired 40 workers to try and dig something out from below the hill. This isn't good. We need to get claim owners away from the hill, because the thing inside it should NOT be let out!

We fought a fire wizard, Sikander. We took him down because Elindra and Deadorna almost died, and neither of those dying was part of our plan.

Oh yeah, and one of the plans included Valgai seducing someone. Valgai didn't go for this plan.

Because of budgerigars

Val spoke to a sergeant cop saying influential people told the cops to keep an eye on Brooklyn. Wait, that's our turf?

There was some kind of consideration about comparing "blood flavour" between the teen ghouls and the kid Jeanine sent Frankie as a present, but in the end we decided this was a stupid idea. So Val invited his sire Charlotte around to his place instead.

She, it turned out from Auspexing Malkavians keeping watch outside, had some kind of weird spiderweb looking red bond thing going on in her aura??? Marco (Val's ghoul) was puppeteered into relaying a warning message to Val from Julius ... and brings some girls from the club for people to snack on. Some might have done this more reluctantly than others.

Charlotte decided to have an impromptu Celerity training session with Frankie, because Jeanine is kind of a pretty shitty sire, so threw cutlery in the air for Frankie to catch. She was impressed that he managed to do this, even with a bit of a flair, that she let it slip that Jeanine is busy playing with a new toy. One she's planning on presenting at the next Elysium.

And then there was gunfire downtown and we were all on high alert ... A vampire gangster's life can be complicated. Although perhaps not quite as complicated as what was going on in our 1932 AU at the time, which is what the beginning of these quotes references.

Character therapy sessions, though? Those are awesome and come highly recommended.

Ain't no such thing as civil Ambrians!

Well, my notes for these two sessions are ... scant. It was months ago. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There was a spirit boar the size of an elephant. It had something stuck in it. This was removed ... but maybe that was a later session?

The place (or the pub?) was called Salindra's Hope and someone wanted 200 thaler to make sure "things don't escalate". Bit steep? Unless we were the ones being offered it? Who knows, months ago. Hrm.

Murmei sort of accused the innkeeper of murder by proxy. This didn't go down well.

"Stuff?" XD

Say no to unsafe blood sex

AltLottie came out to play, suggesting that maybe Angela had been mindwhammied by Julius at a previous date and that's why she was so, ahh, low on inibitions last session. (She was so forward even Frankie was thrown by it, although he didn't exactly complain at the time.) On the plus side, AltLottie also insisted on Val getting un-mindwhammied.

Julius also finally got the Charlotte situation, with his (presumed) relatives being Jeanine's ghouls. Allegedly. Is Jeanine the problem or is she being set up as being the fall guy? Is Charlotte the actual problem here, maybe? What game are they trying to play? We concoct a plan to meet Charlotte at Val's place (her being his sire and all) and watch her aura for clues. Maybe someone's mindwhammied HER?

We did warn you about him

We saw an ogre stepping away from a big fire, leaving behind an alchemical parchment. Is this a thing? There were hungry wild boars and big crowds and the ogre turned out to be the sheriff.

Deadorna can turn into a kotka, and two kotkas playing meant they spilled ink. Murmei wasn't happy.

We found the elf we were looking for. There was much suspicion all around.

Descriptions are kinda difficult three months after the game. *cough*

You're one of those Old Ones, aren't you?!

This session was AMAZEBALLS.

We had no dreams, yay! Val went off doing business stuff ... because his player sadly wasn't feeling well. This meant the only guy with an actual Driving skill wasn't present, which caused a few issues. (Turns out you if you don't have the skill you can't roll it, unlike Rifts where only stunt driving kinda thing requires the skill but generic "Sunday driving" doesn't. Or at least it does in our game.)

Julius was kind enough to gift us all some armoured clothing - in Lottie's case an Edwardian evening dress. Lottie asked Julius to get some kind of tracking thing be put on her so he'd be able to find her.

Lottie, Julius and Frankie went over to the house where Lottie grew up, and where her father Andreas is being cared for by Angela, who was finally going to be turned into Lottie's ghoul. The two Malkavians headed upstairs. After tasting his blood, Julius let Lottie know that Andreas isn't her father after all. Her mum had a thing with a bartender in Sicily before emigrating, so Andreas has never been a blood relation ... and subsequently Lottie isn't actually a Mangano after all. They decide it's probably best not telling anyone else about that.

When you have ridiculously high level Dementation, you can cause someone severe mental anguish for the rest of their miserable life by basically tearing their soul apart and putting it back together - repeatedly. Julius was happy to do this because FUCK THAT GUY Andreas Mangano! Lottie found Julius super hot torturing her not-actually-biological father that they ended up having sex in front of him afterwards. Well, he was a drooling wreck anyway.

Meanwhile downstairs, Frankie and Angela sat down together, because neither was welcome upstairs for obvious reasons. On the plus side, this meant the gift of the very fancy bottle of wine could be delivered, and, uh, asking Angela out turned out to be a LOT easier than Frankie expected. (The actual exchange had me as a player roaring with laughter.) He might've had a crush on her for the past couple of years, but apparently she's really rather into him as well. They had a walk around the garden.

Hrm, so anyway, making Angela into a ghoul went off without a hitch. The three vampires then went over to the Blackthorne to meet with Benny, so that Frankie also might get a ghoul. Benny was, uh, less easily convinced and required a lot of alcohol. He had to be mindwhammied (before AND after) to not freak out about his best friend and brother from another mother being a vampire. We'll see how that works out. At least we all have a ghoul each now.

Oh no, you're not!

We're back in Davokar, where we left off. Erdugald is about to shift again, so we really ought to get a move on. Especially as the stones covering the hole in the ground with the murder hornets will go with it ...

The party is promptly attacked by ice trolls (dicks!) when a barbarian girl with a pet kotka show up. The kotka's name is Yahana. The barbarian girl introduces herself as Deadorna ... who was formerly known as Rilia of House Vesuvion ... a.k.a. Murmei's younger sister ...

Then there was an elf asking us to find someone in a camp, where someone rushed in shouting "he's dead!"

I'll pretend I didn't just Google that

There was a lot angst, angst and more angst in this session, because of the thing we learned the previous session and how we couldn't discuss it with Julius. On the plus side, Frankie's BFF Benny got to make his first appearance!

We talked to Julius about our weird chaos dreams. Turns out Lottie is having Norse mythology dreams, Val is having Greek mythology dreams, and Frankie Egyptian mythology. We were advised to keep the dreams going as long as possible to learn as much as possible.

Lottie and Val went to place a call at a phone box, which was essentially the two of them arguing for half-hour IRL. After which, we cut to another half-hour of Julius and Frankie having a chat involving discussing if relatives of vampires are somehow protected by default - because Frankie would be very concerned about the Manganos obviously and it totally has nothing at all to do with those two ghouled relatives of Julius Charlotte showed us last session. No way, no how, no siree. #smooth Then they awkwardly had a talk about ghouls in general (because of Benny), and being in love with Angela - at which point Julius botched a roll and somehow got the impression that Lottie and Angela were lesbian lovers?!?

Did we win?

So, we were faced with a number of creepy evil clowns and then a big octopus monster thing and creepy Walt Disney type dude? I may have got my notes and memories a little scrambled. We take it down, the deadland becomes ... not so bad any more?

Going back to the people we were trying to save and the town to tell them of our progress, Vince accidentally chatted up a widow by botching his pheromone roll. She was planning on dumping her kid and coming with us ... but um, we got the heck out of there. Because ain't nobody got time for that. He was very sad about it, it was touching. But at least he got laid, eh? ;)

Why did I end up with a fucking monster as a sire?!

Val and Frankie waited for Marco, who turned up with a couple of cabaret girls ... and turned out to be very keen on blood. He ... he might have become a blood junkie already?

Julius was finally introduced to AltLottie ...

I have a note that legit says "Frankie awkwardly having The Talk with Lottie" which I think refers to how she's a big girl now, and ... well, she's a vampire now, so not like she can get pregnant.

We met up with Charlotte at a house that contained ghouls gone wrong. She introduced us to two teenage ghouls who are alleged descendants of Julius, but that Jeanine has been keeping them as bait to see if Julius would break the Masquerade - because she’s pissed off with him spurning her a century ago. We don't know if this is genuine or not, but that's the explanation we were given. Lottie was very freaked out.

So, how can we plot to get Jeanine out of the picture without triggering Julius, or killing anyone - and making sure Frankie isn't on the line considering Jeanine is his sire.

We know it's corrupted

There was an icky axe-a-mole thing in the arcade. I mean, everything about this place is icky and creepy, but ... y'know. We found a guy. We went into the Enchanted Wood, where we went past a creepy picnic (which we ignored, yay us) to find a shed in the woods.

There was an animatronic werewolf attacking us, because for some reason we were the three little piggies and we got out of the shed just before it collapsed? Being in a deadland is not recommended, by the way. You easily get damaged - as Vince can confirm.

Do we have dinner coming to dinner?

We wanted to go on a raid against the White Hand warehouse, but realised we were way outgunned. Genius idea - go to a hotel and borrow their phone and call the cops on the warehouse (because that's totally how the mafia do things ... we've realised much later when we found their code of conduct on Wikipedia). Then we just had to sit back and wait for the cops to bring the numbers down to a better level.

While doing this Frankie also received relationship advice from his cousins. Lottie's advice might have been slightly better than Val's, who was very matter-of-fact and didn't actually address the problem:

"How do I talk to her? You're good with dames, what do I say to her?"
"Well, if you want a girlfriend, she's technically the only and/or logical option. So good for you."
"... Uh ... thanks?"

At least Lottie suggested getting Angela a present, maybe a really fancy bottle of wine that could be used for when she ghouls her. The fanciest bottle available was swiftly requisitioned from the restaurant where we had camped out, and it was WELL fancy.

And then we had really weird dreams again. What's up with those?

My hair pin is amazing!

Back in post-apocalyptic land, a woman threw herself in front of the van. She wanted a lift into a town that wants help help with bandits. This took us all the way to a creepy, deserted theme park - Magic Island! We had to walk along a monorail line to get there.

So, we shot at people holding townspeople hostages. We free hostages (I think). Creepy theme park is creepy. There are blood-soaked buildings, a fountain with screaming cherubs that start spluttering blood, because OH HEY THIS IS A DEADLAND. Are there evil clowns? Of course there are. And then the monorail, a.k.a. the only way on or off the island, has collapsed. Permission to freak out?

Don't look a gift knife in the mouth!

We continued our plan of taking over the Irish gangs' territory, partly because we want to and partly because they fucking tried to murder us. Seeing as how the week leading up to this session had been spent on writing pretty extensive backstories for our characters (well, two of them at least) Lottie, through Auspex, finally realised one of her cousins has a long-standing crush on her BFF and now ships them in character as well as out of character.

So, we were trying to get some info on a place that had a gambling den in the basement. It required catching one of the people used as a look-out and persuading him to talk. He was not an easily persuaded kind of a person, despite our best efforts. At this point the GM hadn't actually read the backstories we'd so painstakingly put together (with miles upon miles of rope with which to hang us later), but it was rather fitting that the guy decided to suggest he'd been busy fucking Frankie's sister and that's why he didn't fancy answering. It hit right in the backstory berserk button. The guy was slightly more talkative after a broken jaw, but he was never getting out of there alive. Cousins fed, Frankie drained the last two points of blood, punched the corpse for good measure and lost a Humanity point in the process.

Someone who didn't lose a point in Humanity this session was Val, who, after we'd raided the gambling den decided we should blow it up to avoid witnesses. Because that's totally how the mafia roll ...

Deadliest Catch: Human Slaves Edition

In the final session of Rifts, for what might be a very long time because we've complicated things for the GM now, our best laid plans involved using a warlock to create a distraction. He unleashed a water elemental that would turn the town of Moreno into a lake. A lot of people, including the vampires' human slaves that we wanted to save. Gorbash managed to save a handful, and took them to safety, but not without a body count because he had to do it very quickly, in a kind of trawler manner.

But we got the people we were sent there to save, so that's good? Mission accomplished? There were a number of vampires in storage somewhere else and they appear to not be there any more, but that's not going to be a problem, right? No, let's head back home to Blackstone Juggernauts HQ and get ready for our next adventure, I'm sure it'll be fine.

We should totally do this film

The aftermath of the shootout meant that Frankie was pretty beat up still, but on the plus side Marco (Val's ghoul) has a cousin that owns a pet shop so he provided us both with enough small animals to make sure we could heal up.

We started raiding assets from a list provided by Jeanine. Enemy assets, you might say. Our protection racket rates are much more agreeable than the ones the Irish were asking for, for instance, and we ended up talking to a Ukrainian guy that was in charge of a distillery that provided pretty good (strong) vodka. Well, they can provide pretty good (strong) vodka for us now. Also, for all his talk of his wife or girlfriend or whatever, the Ukrainian also has someone on the side. Jeanine told us so, because he was the guy in the couple she and Frankie had snacked on in a previous session. This is not at all suspicious.

At the end of it all, some creative door-smashing and dramatic entrances later, and it was time to go to bed again, there was a pearl-handled knife stuck into Frankie's bed frame at Val's, courtesy of Jeanine. Whom he had earlier asked to please enough with the games already, they're growing tiresome. Is this ... like ... some kind of truce? Or is his sire basically just shit-stirring for teh lulz?

We're going to Chicken Pizza!

So, ahem, I think I may have been slightly distracted here, because my notes literally say "we do a robbery?" (someone died, and we feel bad about it ... I think) and then mentions something about a pig truck and aligning with a good goddess whose name I can't remember. The interesting thing to note here is that Hecate was willing to let go of Booker, provided he do her a favour (it was finding someone and/or killing them?) and in turn he got to swear fealty to this new goddess that we had just helped.

Maria was happy to receive swords from Gorbash. He treats his professional girlfriend quite well, it seems! The second session I didn't make memory notes for, so ... someone who is not me might have a functioning memory in order to recall what we were actually doing.

Who wants to give a recap?

Well, since this session and calling ourselves out on being ungrateful players, we've provided the GM with pages upon pages of backstory, which he can screw us over with later. We're very proud.

That did not come into play in this session, though. Something else did, but I can't remember exactly what because I forgot to note down helpful reminders that I could use when trying to remember it months later.

Although I do remember why we only had a handful of quotes from the 30th (which I've included here) because while Lottie was busy having it off with Julius, Val and Frankie were followed when heading back to Val's place. It was a rival gang, and they ended up getting shot at. Frankie got shot quite severely, actually, and we were worried there for a bit. Fucking Brenda Toner.

Questions find answers

We went into an Aztec pyramid, where killed vampires and were very nearly killed in the process. At least Booker and Jayson were, had they not been pals with a dragon that turned their SDC armour into MDC armour. It was a tough fight, but we killed the vampires, removed some pillars and escaped with the target we were there to rescue. Yay us!

Girl's gotta have bubbles

Okay, I have no notes about this session, and I don't remember exactly what we did, but whatever it was it was GLORIOUS.

Other than we found a way to get in touch with Julius, because he didn't give us a number to call him on, because he's been around centuries before telephones and he's old-fashioned that way.

Was this the session where Val's car got wrecked, perhaps?

Smite, smote, smitten

In this round-up post of the last of the Godbound campaign for now, we did some big battle scenes, but they don't render well into quotes because it's a bunch of dice rolling that keeps you busy. It involved going to Thay, where it turned out Varion used to be one of the Red Wizards. (Elani wasn't impressed, but I don't think any of us were in fairness.)

We connected to Faerûn's world engine so that was finally stabilised and fixed and thus because proper gods, and in the end managed to convince Mystra to give us a chance to show that we're fixing things so there's really no need to unleash an apocalypse after all. We did good. Praise be to us!

Does she need all her limbs?

Now armed with another PC in the party - yay! - we seemed to spend a heck of a long time trying to come up with a plan to maybe blow some stuff up and get an imprisoned god (?) from the ruins, and then that was decided against or something. It all got very jumbled up by the end of it that I lost track completely, and let's just say we're going to spend next session battling it out. Possibly in a Leeeeeeroy Jenkins style, because the Juicer might get bored with all the planning.

The horde was in storage at the time

We have another player joining us for Rifts, taking over the role of the (now former) Juicer NPC Maria "Speedy" Gonzales. This session was mostly to get a feel for how the party have been running the character.

So, in order to impress our new player we all rolled exceedingly poorly, but somehow still managed to take down the group of vampires we managed to antagonise last week.

On the plus side, we're now definitely in Mexico, but the tequila hasn't yet started flowing.

We found vampires using mech suits, though, so that was kind of ... a thing.

Can we put this moat on our expenses?

We continue our journey toward Mexico, the land where there are absolutely no vampires whatsoever. Except we found a bunch on the way, like a whole storage warehouse full of coffins. There were talks of constructing a moat and filling it with water, and ... yeah.

There were fewer coffins by the end of it. And then the vampires found us.

So you come from a land Down Under

We're going on an adventure down under! No, not Australia - Menzoberranzan! We're trying to get down to the entrance to Faerûn's world engine and hopefully Bahamut will let us in. But first, we'll have to traverse a number of traps put in place by Lolth. But she's our friend ally now, so that should count for something, right?

We came to a trapped tower on an island in a lake and encountered two angels, because of course there had to be sodding ANGELS. Well, now there are no angels. Yay us!

Not that we're not still battling to get to where we're going, though. There's a yellow brick road and a sign saying to keep off the grass and everything.

Bahamut is in a bad shape.

Gunfight at the OK 5th Precinct

Sometimes we have to remember that we aren't just vampires, but also gangsters, and do some gangstering.

Well, first of all Janine is showing herself to be very untrustworthy by sending Frankie a messenger with a fancy bottle of wine. He declined to try it, and he also didn't use the messenger boy as a snack. In fact, he was kind enough to give the kid a bottle of cheap booze as a tip.

Lottie is trying to find a HQ for us, sort of a blood bank perhaps, and maybe it could masquerade (har-har) as a clinic for sailors ... We'll see how that develops.

Anyhoo. Now that we're made men and woman we were going to a meetup of different mob bosses, as some stuff had been going down. Even more stuff started happening. Gunshots. Someone had gunned down a mob boss outside the 5th Precinct, and there was more gunfire about.

The mob bosses at the meet had to be evacuated, and shit would probably rain down on all of us. The speakeasy had the emergency shutdown orders executed, and we strongly suspect one of our NPC cousins to have taken a photo of Lottie's dad from the speakeasy - possibly with a view to kill him and set him up as a fall guy.

What's worse is that our sires seem to know about what's going on here, and we don't like it.

Oh, and there was some frost on the water as we crossed That Bridge again, but hey it's only May, so it's perfectly normal, yeah?

Exorcising the brain fart from hell

Lockdown adventures in post-apocalyptic USA somewhere *motions vaguely to the west* continues. We're heading toward Mexico, as it happens, where the tequila flows freely - we presume. There are no vampires in Mexico, honest guv'na.

Except the ones we keep on finding.

(The sessions 22^nd and 29^th were cancelled. People still get ill in lockdown, even if it's thankfully not Covid-19 ill.)

Arriba!

An audience with the Prince of New York

The cousins Mangano were summoned to the Prince of New York to be introduced to vampire society. They were very well-behaved. Janine was slightly disappointed Frankie didn't take the bait and ingratiate himself with his elders.

We - Lottie in particular - keep seeing weird stuff going on when we cross the Manhattan (?) bridge. Something's clearly going on there, but what?

Side note: we saved a(n Italian) kid from being beaten by an Irish gang and decided to meddle a bit in a competitor's territory ...

Being unkempt is not a death sentence

Lockdown adventures in Faerûn continues. We're now friends (or at least allies) with Lolth, because we all need more spiders in our pantheons and lives.

Brrrr.

It's up to you, New York

The cousins Mangano continue to try to get used to the idea of being vampire gangsters in 1920s New York City ...

Anybody who is anybody will soon walk through that door

It's 1922 and the Mangano crime family are keeping their part of New York, uh, safe? Going about their daily lives, three cousins run a speakeasy and a gambling den, things like that. One day they're told they're going to be Made Men (and Woman), and have the ceremony with lots of booze ... and the next thing they know they black out, and when they wake up they're in pools of blood and lack a pulse.

Huh.

It didn't go so well for little Lottie, whose mind was somewhat ... fractured in the process. At least her sire brought her a snack. Val discovered that while he might still bite the first hobo he came across, he wasn't going to eat him without first cleaning the guy's neck. Frankie decided to be cautious and not eat a cop, but instead went for a canoodling couple, because hey, dinner AND dessert! (He even offered some to his sire, who wasn't as impressed as he expected.)

This was sort of session zero, in which we get to know the characters and take them through the traumatic lovely memorable experience of being turned into vampires. Turns out the Cosa Nostra is a bit bloodier than expected ...

Starring:

• Carlotta "Lottie" Mangano, Malkavian flapper girl
• Frankie "Fatso" Mangano, Brujah speakeasy bootlegger
• Valtena (Val) "Pretty Boy" Mangano, Toreador gambling den maestro

We are NOT becoming the Columbos!

So, here's what happened. We have that Gamma World game run every month or so. The February session was cancelled because people weren't feeling well. It was rescheduled to the end of March, and by that time we were in lockdown and decided to get together over Discord instead. Because reasons we decided to put the Gamma World game into hiatus for now, and maybe get back to it when the world appears slightly more normal than it does at present.

Question was then what to do instead, as we still fancied roleplaying. Our Gamma World GM had an idea for a gangster Vampire: The Masquerade game set in 1920s New York. "Gangster vampires, eh?" said the players and so it was decided on as an idea. I've never played this game before, but the other two players suggested we all play newly turned vampires so that they would both be as clueless in-game about the specifics as I am in real life. (Read: part of my struggles with some games we've played before is that everyone knows the setting extremely well except for me, so I feel left behind when I don't know stuff everyone else takes for granted, and it means I don't enjoy playing.)

Plus, who can resist 1920s New York gangsters who turn into vampires? RIGHT?!

Having decided this is what we were going to do, and the other players saying I'm allowed to tell them off if they start to go over my head with their combined decades of experience, we tried to figure out what characters to play and how they'd fit together, and what their family name would be. We ended by having decided not to be relatives of Detective Columbo, but to be of the Mangano family, of Italian-American mobster fame, and were left generating our characters as homework before the next session.

How often we're going to play remains to be seen.

There might even be Medium Teeth

As per the previous post, we're gaming over Discord instead of meeting up twice a week around our kitchen table. On the plus side, no one has to drive home afterwards, so if we happen to get stuck in a battle, it doesn't matter so much because no one has to get up and drive for an hour (give and take) to get to work, and don't even have to change out of pyjamas.

On the negative side, the person with attention problems finds concentration even harder than usual, so this is the result of three sessions. Or, technically two, because I was so all over the place last Monday that I forgot to open the document I've been using for notes, and never even realised until the session ended. FUN TIMES. Look after your mental health y'all.

There was a table where we were sucked into some other dimension and Gunda got to speak to Tempus and was named his successor. And then there was a library and a clone of John Irenicus who was a dick, unsurprisingly. And he was alive, but somehow not, and he was trying to die properly, but because Silvanus cursed him, he kept coming back in different bodies. Something like that.

Can we blame Canada if there's a devildemon incursion?

Sooooo the current situation is that we're now working from home and are doing our two weekly games (currently Rifts and Godbound) over Discord. The current situation, and self-isolating for a couple of weeks due to cold symptoms, are not particularly conducive to good mental health - even for hardcore introverts like me - so I've had real problems concentrating recently. And my concentration isn't the greatest at the best of times. I'm trying to work on it, but it's difficult. We're staying home and we're staying safe, that's the main thing.

That being said, this post is a combination of three sessions, so ... yeah. One of the sessions was mainly battling with a dragon, so we didn't say a lot anyway because we were busy with dice rolls. But ... yeah. Yeah.

Under the Dome was a bit different to this

We got to a town currently covered in a massive dome. Our friends are inside, and we need to get inside to talk to them. Unfortunately they're also besieged by a bunch of gnolls or related monsters. There was a big artefact, which Denethor eventually crashed his precious airship-not-a-warship into, and somehow we ended up killing Gruumsh, despite siege engines being teleported just as we were about to hit them.

It was a big battle, though, so we didn't "say" much. Hence why the session after is also included.

Fun fact: Blogger has updated and is very confusing now and you can't backdate posts. Blegh. Thankfully, the option to revert back was there so I didn't have to go through the rigmarole of migrating the whole thing to WordPress.

Microchips in a crisp bag

Coming across some weird purple stuff on the ground, shining a light on it made it sprout tentacles and suddenly we made a new friend - it called itself Terminus and the group decided to give it a moral compass. Like don't take stuff people need to survive, don't kill people (unless they're trying to kill you first), family is important, that kind of thing. Gunther added that it "shouldn't let the bastards grind it down", which may or may not be good advice? The thing grew and grew and maybe we have unleashed a monster on the world.

We got back to the barge-on-wheels and were stopped by some other mutants, who wanted to jab us with needles before explaining what they were for. Turned out to be some kind of vaccine, but as far as we saw it, it was an unprovoked attack and they were trying to inject us with goodness-knows-what, so we put the pedal to the metal and drove out of there. The vaxxers were very insistent, however, and gave chase. They exploded in a fireball, but not before taking out one of our wheels - Cecil was NOT amused.

Moral of the story: if you're regenerating, eating weird berries is fine. To everyone else, they're less fine.

Welcome to the minimum damage club

The bigger thing that came out we did some damage to, and then it fell through a hole in the floor along with the other creature. We battled some things and a giant tentacled brain in the middle of the goop pool, until it exploded.

Maybe we should get out of there? Dragging an unconscious Orson along with us (his player couldn't make it, unfortunately) we found a room with lights, and Jetstream picking up said lights made things rotate and all of a sudden the spaceship (yes, we were in a spaceship) decided to start a countdown for take-off. We managed to convince the system to stay put until all the terraforming bits and other things had been recalled. Which happened kind of quickly.

We found an engine room full of what appeared to be weird sex dungeon loot, and the vents in the floor turned out to be exhaust vents. As we had to scarper, we jumped down and fell out in the crater below the spaceship ... and ran for cover, because that thing was taking off!

Starring:

• Cecil, a grumpy plastic ladybird toy come to life
• Gunther von Lunar, a vampire from Unspecified European Country
• Jetstream, a regenerating speedster who does Science with bowling balls
• Mr Johnson, a seismic shapeshifter with some very good ideas ... on paper
• Orson, an unconscious hypercognitive octopoid scientist

I'm the best support class ever!

It's been a while since we were last on Faerûn with our new gods. Of course, last time we were thrown back out into the world after some time away in the Night Roads and other shenanigans. Our friends were basically gone, and things were looking rather bleak.

Maybe things can be less bleak going forward, because now we have clerics and paladins and rangers, oh my! Basically, because a bunch of gods have died, it seems we're a bit more powerful and if people choose to BUH-LIEVE then they get their powers back that were previously bestowed upon them by other gods. So that's pretty cool. (GM has also said he'll be using this version of Faerûn next time he runs D&D, which means our characters are going to be the gods of the game! Which sounds awesome.)

Tilverton has been taken over by Lolth and her people, so the plan is to go get our pantheon's capital back, thank you very much. We just need to get there first. By way of creating wolf pups and getting attacked by gnolls.

I need more than a Venn diagram

Gorbash went to speak to Ixchal, and managed to encounter an adult evil dragon calling himself Roka. He was clearly looking for something, such as the feathered serpent which Booker let slide to someone he shouldn't have. Apparently they're rare and super magical or something like that.

"Show me yours, I'll show you mine", Roka [insert lineage blurb here] said to Gorbash, who complied. Ixchal was less willing. Especially when the other dragon the first one rode into town with also turned out to be Splugorth-aligned. We really hate those guys.

Someone's also trying to get to Booker's head to get the information about the feathered serpent, so he's currently renting a place in downtown Stormspire, as if someone does something there, there will be hell to pay.

Warlord Doom is a stupid name

So, how do you follow up the massive feat that is hitting the Emperor of Coalition States with the Orb of Solomon? By finding out that the Cyber-knights are aware of a Situation developing up in Calgary in Canada. They're digging a massive hole in the ground and there are a lot of demons-or-devils involved and did I mention it's like a 3-mile wide hole in the ground? They're gearing up for battle, and a massive supernatural creature war taking place on Earth is not ideal.

I think we may have gone into Psyscape and had a chat with people there as well, I'm not sure. (I haven't actually written any notes at all in the margin here. Hrm.)

Time for some thrilling heroics

Booker (or technically Barnabus Dayson - have I mentioned he had a make-over and a name change?), pretending to be Sergeant Anderson, got picked up by Coalition States troups and brought into Lone Star. Meanwhile, Jayson and Gorbash hid a bit away from there, waiting for The Signal.

While he didn't manage to get an audience with the Emperor, undercover Booker did manage to get close enough to lob the Orb of Solomon at him. It grew in size and out popped the naked lady. She was quickly shot to pieces and as things were kicking off, Booker got out of there.

Eventually finding his way to lab and shown the way by monkeys who showed him the way out - or at least the way to the rats.

The Signal was signalled, as it were, and Gorbash turned himself and Jayson invisible and flew in. Who'd have thought his Dance skill finally came into good use, dodging through the air? The duo reunited with Booker and a magic portal was opened to a bit further away, everyone got out just in time for the Coalition States to set off 16 missiles on where we had just been!

And then we flew a bit further away, but as we hadn't teleported away we managed to get away alive. And it does seem like the Orb of Solomon was successfully delivered to the Emperor. Question is how he's going to use it.

The Emperor ... selectively inhibits serotonin re-uptake?

We parted ways for a bit in order for Gorbash to go back to Blackstone Juggernauts and give John a heads up about the trade agreement Booker had negotiated with the murdery alien dudes. They had hardly finished talking when the guy showed up. That was surprisingly quick!

Booker and Jayson went to see a battle, and then went back to wait for Gorbash at a hotel in Roswell, where the group had decided to hang out.

We later went back to one of the battlegrounds to salvage whatever could be salvaged, and set Booker up as a one of them, by changing an ID of someone who was the closest match we could find. Unfortunately, it was done by Gorbash and all humans look pretty much the same to him ... He did finally get to use his Singing skill, though!

The plan being that Booker, disguised as lone survivor Nathan Anderson, would go into Coalition States and gain access to the Emperor by being the sole survivour of a terrible battle. Because surely the Emperor would want to pat him on the back for that?

Just like the French

It has been a while since we did this (don't believe the posting date, it's a month later) and my notes are a bit scant, so it's anyone's guess what we did at this point.

Something about an adult dragon being a dick, teleporting 5m up into the air, almost forgetting Booker, Jayson on the ground, and "Shemarrians here?!"

For the second session, we went to Roswell and looked at Naruni weapons and the Coalition States came to blows with the Shemarrians and Splugorth.

This is the way to Amarillo

First session after our holiday break, and during our break stuff happened over the internet. Booker went to Dweomer to find out stuff about a weapon, Gorbash and Jayson went to Psyscape to ... also find out stuff. Stuff was found out.

Booker also managed to marry his girlfriend Joan the Cyber-knight, and when we all finally met up at Blackstone Juggernauts HQ again, Booker had plastic surgery to change his face to be less recognisable and also he's now using the name Barnabas Dayeson. I might not be spelling that correctly.

I wonder if moon flu is flammable

In a break from regular scheduled programming, he's a session from a few weeks ago, when we were supposed to have a one-shot session of Gamma World, which turned out not to be finished, so we'll continue at some point.

The group of mutants (the GM and one of the players are making their first appearance here on the blog - hi guys!) assembled on a keelboat headed for Fargo. It didn't get to Fargo, it got to some place where the sandy ground was turning into glass. A big metallic worm robot thing told us its task was to terraform the planet, despite our protestations. Fargo, it said, had been wiped out. It then decided to suck up a lot of water and turn it into sulphuric acid. Fortunately, before this, it ate the boat and spat it out much improved, so we were able to get the heck away from there.

To Fargo, as it happened. There was a horse and a bunny and some other creatures there. Turned out the bunny had some kind of robot eye-arm stuck in its brain, which we got rid of. (Not that the bunny seemed at all grateful for it.)

We used the mechanical eye-arm to lure out a bigger thing, made of goo, from a kind of pyramid structure. It made a noise to turn everyone against each other, making Jetstream use her flamethrower to make Orson into calamari, but we could play at that game too and so almost accidentally commanded it to kill itself.

On the inside the pyramid contained a massive pool of green goo and a person who didn't seem too happy to see us. And then a bigger thing came out.

Starring:

• Cecil, a plastic ladybird who used to be a children's toy and therefore hates everyone
• Gunther von Lunar, a vampiric plaguebearer from THE MOON!
• Jetstream, a regenerating speedster with a short attention span
• Mr Johnson, a seismic shapeshifter
• Orson, a hypercognitive octopoid former biker and also scientist