It's all gone a bit strange 'round here

 Three new characters, two strapping young lads and an old lady, are mysteriously invited to a building in the city. It's about a job. Our job interview is basically an escape room scenario. We have to find certain things - at least three of them - and evade something called "cleaners" (killer robots, sort of) in order to find the way out.

One of the ways to do this is to have skills that mean you can tell them to go away, or for one to take care of the other two. After finding three, the group has a choice - do we continue to look for more of the thingamabobs or leave? We decide to continue, which was the correct answer. Had we decided to go back to the lobby, job done, we would have failed the job interview!

Turns out the organisation that invited us deal with multiverses, and it just so happens there's a case to go on straight away. In Wisconsin. A university student seems to have certain skills and knowledge that he really shouldn't have (they appear to come from one of the multiverse locations). Why is that? Is he actually from that place, and not from Guildford after all? Let the investigation commence!

Starring:

• Beverley "Bev" Squares
• Colin Scarlet
• Franklin "Frank" McClure
  

 

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?

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.

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.

I don't read the script, the script reads me

We discovered what the Key of Solomon is for ... and that it's an orb with a lady in stasis in it. It's pretty out there. It can also be very useful. We were perhaps not in agreement with the Grey Seers and the other Cyber-knight about what to do with it.

To cut a long story short, Gorbash wrote and directed a play based (in the end) on Booker's plan, in which Gorbash would say "screw you guys, I'm going home! And I'm taking the Key (and my new girlfriend who coincidentally is also called Maria) with me!" in order to lure the Coalition States into Xiticix territory so we could sit back and wait for them to obliterate each other.

Plan went off without a hitch. Even Hecate got in on the action, vaporising a dude. Good times!