Similar to a comrade motion picture, maternal fornicator!

We're caught in politics about who's to rule Nottingham, and if that wasn't all, the potion administered to the princess had echoes of Dark Fae, so even though she seems to feel better, she now has a Something Something Something Dark Side to her. Hmm. How do we fix that?

Actually, we need to put that one on hold because there's a wedding that needs planning - Finn's!! - and someone needs to become the Count of Nottingham, and as Jack's a baron, we went along with him to a big meeting of all the local barons.

There, we found Jack's uncle - who doesn't have one set of eyebrows, but two; the second pair look like a pair of caterpillars on his forehead and we suspect they are a separate species of Fae entirely - and Jack's uncle told us some rather interesting things about Jack's parents and why they were in Borneo. Apparently, there were assassins after them. Good to know! Moments later, an assassin crept up on us, trying to take out said uncle. We saved the day, of course, even though the assassin had a scary iron knife. We may or may not (emphasis on the latter) let him live.

A little bit of sick, a little bit of Slick

The swamp turned out not to be such a big deal after all. Us players were the biggest challenge. To begin, we had a big discussion as to the name of the guy from CSI: New York - not Kevin Bacon but in fact Gary Sinise, whether or not The Stand was a film or a TV series and when it was from ... and then it turned into a discussion who Gary Busey is, what he's been in, and in particular, who was in Leathal Weapon, and so on. Hence why we decided in the end that next time we're trying to think of an actor, we'll say it's Kevin Bacon and leave it at that, or we're stuck for at least half an hour before someone has the idea to use the IMDb app on their phone ...

At the same time, it was decided  that any film we also couldn't think of would be Care Bears, meaning that later on, when the question accompanying a banjo tune, was "aww, what's the film called?!" the answer was Care Bears rather than Deliverance ... and we imagined a hybrid of the two ... we completely lost it and roared with laughter for five minutes.

(You had to be there.)

In-game, we found the town of Blacktree, mainly because the GM thought better of leaving us in the swamp, what with the inbred Care Bears and the ghost of Slick roaming around below the surface, and said we reached the place in a very quick time. Huzzah! We obtained a sample of the eponymous black tree through the cunning use of squirrel, and then discovered the master healing potion maker was in fact a witch. (You should have seen the look on Set's face when the GM told him the witch was an old woman ... Priceless!)

While Jack's negotations with her didn't seem to help all that much in getting her to co-operate, Hugo's 20 gold dross quickly won her over. Flora got to see the potion being made, took notes, and is considering spending a working holiday there. After the potion was finished, we got the bottle and started heading back to Nottingham as quick as we could. As Jack saw a merchant with his missing father's sword in the crowd, he decided to chase after him, with Finn in tow, while Alysiana, Set, Flora and the bottle - and some NPCs - started in the direction of home. Quickly.

Go directly to jail, do not pass Wollaton Hall!

Finn's back, falling off a chandelier when waking up from a drunken night. We all got taken to the police station because the police arrived suspiciously early because they heard a couple of drug gangs were fighting it out at the Hall, and when the police looked through the house, found a pound of drugs in a safe. Turned out Jack's event manager was responsible, so we were all let off.

After speaking with our friend the Count, we got invited to a party, to celebrate Jack being raised to Baron. Huzzah! He immediately got plastered on really strong Troll ale and had to be restored by Flora. While Finn was on the scene playing guitar, Set ran off to help when hearing a Redcap had broken into the kitchen. This turned into a showdown between him, the Redcap, Hugo (one of the Count's men) and Jack, who had come to see where Set had rushed off to.

The Redcap, as it turned out, was breaking in to attempt reading poetry at Sophia Valdemar, the Count's daugher (whose brain tumour we still haven't been able to find a cure for), but he got locked up in the toilet instead. At least he wasn't killed.

Meanwhile, at the main table, Alysiana tried flirting her way into the skirts of a beautiful Sidhe woman, and Flora sat there nursing her ale, pondering what she'd put up at the crafts fair suggested by Jack. The session ended when we were just about to enter into a full-on drinking game, so that'll be for next time ...

So Soylent Adeen are people?

Before we finished the adventure - which we technically did last week, but we spent a whole session wrapping things up, half the party went to the Queen's Medical Centre (a hospital in Nottingham), to a ward for terminally ill patients, trying to get to Kaddapolix before he popped his clogs. As it turned out, there were evil Fae about, who looked decidedly like old ladies ... Then there were the bit where Jack researched Alysiana's non-Fae self on YouTube and came across a film that had us all talking. Meanwhile, Alysiana had something big to announce. A theory of who she really is ...