The prettiest Arch Enemy in the land

The first session I forgot to note down what we were doing, but it's fair to say it contained the licking of wounds in the aftermath of fighting all the things that were coming up through that hole. Possibly even fighting more of the same.

The second session, Elsiosi turned up being very concerned about Murmei. I think it was suggested everyone should pretend he died in the attack to get her to go away, but ... that didn't happen.

We decided we wanted to be the ones to go down the hole on an expedition. We're brave heroes, right? We are clearly best suited for the job! Which is also the reason we give Ordo Magica when we go to ask them permission to go down there. They make us take some old, scary-looking wizard with us.

Funnily enough, Elsiosi didn't fancy joining us down the hole. Sucks to be her?

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.

Let's have a pre-emptive NOPE

The making-a-rat-drunk experiments continued, but we eventually had to let the little fella go. If there was poison in that wine, at least it wasn't meant for rats.

As luck would have it, we could now finally start our journey into Davokar! You know, the thing we were supposed to have done ten sessions ago but got side-tracked when Murmei was put into protective custody.

On the very short road leading into the forest, we found a small camp of witchfinders. The wine was mentioned. They took one look at it and said it was very bad mojo indeed. There was darkness in those bottles, make no mistake. As they knew what to do with said cursed liquids, we gave them the rest for safe disposal, while we continued into the forest.

We were attacked by a Skullbiter named Steve, and after much deliberation decided not to attack the group of them we found a bit further away, because while we could take down one of them (somehow, it has stupid levels of armour) we couldn't guarantee the same with a whole group. When it was killed it turned into a pile of earth with a piece of a runic spear in it. Interesting.

Near a place where it was fabled a dragon had been taken down ages ago, there seemed to be a witch's circle protecting the area. Somehow we ended up in a bubble of sorts, by a cottage occupied by a ghost we decided to call Rafe. Apparently in order to get away from there, we'll have to come up with some very tricky questions and the answers? We ... we might be stuck for a while.

This is how Game of Thrones started

Exploring the burned remains of the cultist hideout, Elindra found a chest. A chest which she cut open and found some letters relating to the Blight Council. It's complicated.

She later went clothes-shopping with Valgai, who pretended to be her dad, because surely we all need to look our best if we're to have an audience with Baked Alaska Nightpitch, the ruler of Thistle Hold? Murmei and Nightpitch seemed to ever so slightly bond over not being keen on Murmei's mum arriving. She apparently wants Nightpitch to organise a ball.

We also made inquiries into who the burned-down building belonged to, and it turns out it's a noble in Ravinia - a.k.a. the duchy (or whatever) that the House Vesuvion estate is in, and Murmei's dad often goes to the capital city. So this is all connected??? Scheming nobles, cultists, Davokar, and everything else?

In a bid to avoid his mum's insistance on him getting married, Murmei had the brilliant plan that he and Elindra could get hitched (in name only) because if he's already married when his mother shows up, she can't insist on him marrying someone he doesn't even know. Elindra wasn't as keen on the idea, despite the fact she'd automatically become quite rich, but on the other hand, as Valgai kindly pointed out, marrying a Changeling would probably result in Murmei being disowned anyway ...

We clearly don't have enough enemies

In this gripping episode, Valgai started to train the city guards (they clearly need improvement) and Elindra went undercover to try and find out more about the cultists lurking around Toad's Square. They are up to something, planning an attack. Nefarious creatures.

Murmei, locked up in a tower like Rapunzel, had a mysterious visitor - a man in noble clothes, wearing an owl mask, promising glory and whatnot ... but the problem is that he was trying to recruit Murmei of all people ...

The session ended when Valgai had a knock on the door. A dwarf woman came to the door, said some words in foreign, stabbed herself in the guts and died ... and turned into smoke. Her words were a warning from the old king of Symbaroum: "I'm coming for you."

Are you trying to abuse your powers?

Forgot to post this last Sunday, because we have been busy playing what is effectively Godbound the computer game - Divinity: Original Sin 2. We didn't have a roleplaying session this week, but it was time to post this, on the other hand.

We continued to work on the town. There was a visit to a nearby farming community to talk to the people there about how Tilverton had been liberated and they could now go home. Then a visit to that person's sister was paid, and reiterated that Tilverton was free and it was time for re-building rather than invading, and so on.

Then we all met up again and went into the cave system underneath Tilverton in order to find some people who had gone missing down there. There were bone golems, but luckily we had brought meat shields.

ACME miracle maps of Gibraltar!

We started the rebuilding of Tilverton with the help of the locals. A delegation of soldiers from Cormyr showed up to say that it was their town - we disagreed. There might be repercussions later.

Denny - or Denethor to give him his proper name now that he's a would-be god - was busy making weapons and armour. Elani made herself useful by recruiting allies in the animal world. Gunda started training people, as making sure the city can defend itself sounded like a good idea. She also got to try being a platinum dragon for a bit thanks to Elani - Elminster was not amused.

There are no nice guys in this game

We're back in Rifts, and we had a run-in with the Shemarrians. Elyssia took on one of them to proove herself worthy of looking after the squishy humans - especially the completely useless males (cue Jayson looking both confused and affronted, and Gorbash looking ... well, he's a dragon, so he wasn't really involved) - and they eventually agreed that maybe a demigod isn't so bad at the whole protection thing after all.

You make Samurai sound like dicks

So things went a bit hectic with opening a café and stuff, but here are - finally - some quotes from the most recent game we've played - Legend of the Five Rings. I was barely conscious during these sessions, which is why three of them are combined into one here, as not a lot of stuff was noted down at the time.

Even bad guys have a bad feeling about this

On the way to Bespin, Kon felt woozy. She just about managed to say as much to Nole (who smelled something funny) before they both passed out. Fortunately, Doc got his rebreather on in time - Sarge not so much - so that he and Declan the engineer could figure out what was wrong. Turns out the Nabooan flowers in Sarge's cabin were some sort of pollen factories and that was polluting the air - air that was already in short supply because we had a few more people on board than we normally would.

All flowers, including the ones adorning the cockpit, were put in the cargo hold, pollen sucked in, air sucked out ... airlock opened. People started coming to, and in Kon's case, when she realised how bare the cockpit looked and her flowers were outside the window ... she was not a happy bunny.

On Bespin the plan was to have Kon pose as a gas buyer, but that turned into a scheme to import plants to Bespin in order to fund the Rebellion. Always good to have contingency plans!

When we got back to the ship, because things were starting to feel rather shifty in Cloud City, the ship wouldn't start. Apparently the fuel had been siphoned off and the pump had been enthusiastically disabled. In fact, power went off on the platform. There was an encounter with a translation droid (the evil silver ones, not the nice golden ones like C-3PO) and it was found that the problem was with the city's central core. Let's go be heroes and save the day, it's great PR for the New Alliance!

Yeah, except there was a Purge Trooper about (BUT NOT FOR LONG!), and when we got to the core, there were more of them and they were shooting at Stormtroopers and Bespin security guards. One firefight later and the Purge Troopers were pining for the fjords, Sarge was blinded and Doc shot in the back trying to help. Doc got better, Sarge will have to work more on his Third Eye or something like that, yadda yadda, Force powers.

Also: the reason for the core acting weird is because they've recently installed a droid brain to run the place, and they must have got the brain from some guy called Abbe Normal ...

Well, he's got until Saturday to learn to sing

Last week we were two players down and decided to cancel the session altogether. That's why I've gone through the previously unposted posts and found this one, which is the first of three. It answers the question about what kind of shit roleplayers say when they watch the Eurovision Song Contest.

A quick re-cap: Austria won in 2014, meaning the two semi-finals and one final were hosted in Vienna. Brits don't really care much for Eurovision, but it's a massive thing in Sweden (spoiler: they won ... again) and there are two Swedes in the roleplaying group, so commenting on Eurovision is kind of a given.

This session was made up of 50% Swedes and 50% Brits, in 100% snark mode.

This is how the apocalypse starts

Having taken down the zombies posing as nice medics, we decided to head into the basement of the ruined compound, based on an intact power line leading down there. Duke fitted himself through a custom-made hole in the floor and had to step out of the armour in order to fit with the rest of us through an airlock.

On the other side was a laboratory with a couple of undead and a lady who turned into midges when confronted. It was difficult to do any damage to her, seeing as how she just disintegrated herself into a swarm of flies if we tried.

In the end, through the cunning use of roleplaying, we found some wasps and discovered they basically eat the pestilence midges, so we set them on the fly lady and when all was said and done, took the antidote and set the wasps free to remove the disease in the wild. And then we probably had a proper wash off, seeing as how some of us were covered in sewage from the last shower we had ...

Can I buy that die off you and chuck it away?

After more travelling, we came to the house of Agatha the Banshee. We gave her a nice comb and she answered the question we posed. We just had to try to remember (as players) whose magic book we were supposed to ask her about. As it happened, the person who always writes everything down hadn't written that particular bit down.

The GM "helped", saying it was a funny name and it began with "Bow", because apparently, when it had been mentioned in passing many weeks out-of-game previously, the person who heard it had said "it's funny, because it sounds like Bojangle". Let's just say the clue didn't help, because the name wasn't actually funny.

Aaaaanyway. We then came across a wizard in a tent, guarded by zombies. We got rid of the zombies, and instead of sticking around and getting information from the wizard, we got rid of him too. Oh the things we do for XP ...

You can't buy beer with frog ornaments

Taking the injured What's-his-face with us, the party finally reached the town of Phandalin, where rumours abound. (They have to, it's D&D law or something. Just like all dwarves have a Scottish accent.)

There were tales of the Redbrands, a gang of thugs saying they're "keeping people safe", and there was something about a banshee called Agatha, and basically, we went around town doing quest pick-ups. There were a whole bunch of 'em in the local tavern. (Please consider giving an honest review on Ye Olde Trippe Advisory!)

Gundren the missing dwarf is apparently with something or someone called the Black Spider. Meanwhile, his two brothers have also gone missing, so now the party cleric has three missing cousins instead of just one. Yay?

Offhanded guess becomes true!

I think we can summarise this session with "wow".

So, in the crowd, we saw this weird dude - who turned out was a Sunaj called Marvin. A Sunaj is some kind of Splugorth minion. He offered to give Booker something that will help him/us in the fight to come, and Booker managed to make the Sunaj agree to help out with the Lion situation.

Lion was brought forth, shed his disguise and was - gasp say it ain't so - a Rakshasa. Surprise! (Not really.) Fighting broke out. Booker emptied his guns into Lion's chest and Gorbash then grabbed hold of Lion, who turned into mist form beacuse he could. Dragonbreath singed him slightly, we think. At any rate, the Rakshasa disappeared and we had helped save the East Side Boys gang.

Their leader, Maria, having had the Cyber-Knight as a full body shield in the fight took a shine to him, and spent the next few hours flirting with him over cups of tea in the company of Baradhi. Gorbash went to talk to Ixchal about what was going on (Rita requested her presense), and Booker went to receive his gift. The gift turned out to be an Elom, a symbiod creature whose only real downside (maybe) is that only servants of Splugorth are ever seen wearing them. At the back of their neck. Still, it might come in useful later, so Booker named it "Bally".

We finished off by finally meeting Rita, a.k.a. Hecate, who hadn't really thought to check what dimension she was asked to make a portal to/from. She agreed that maybe that gate needs stopping after all. But that's the next adventure. Cliffhanger!!

Didn’t you say we were going to finish tonight?

Last session we had a shoot-out in a café, where we were supposed to meet up with a team of Hunters from Nottingham. Instead, we got attacked by some creatures and had to leave. Tilly got a bit upset because a creature was actually an innocent (she can see people's souls now) ... which didn't stop the rest of the party killing it.

This session we went to Trevor's and met the Hunters there instead. It turned out we all had pets, in one way or another (Eddie is Trevor's pet, vodka is Zolistagol's, and then there's Tilly's little Rommel, of course).

The other team were a bit weird - one of the women was about as doolally as Trevor's sister Agatha, and she talked about monsters being in the house, but we didn't see any. The Nottingham team spraypainted a corner of the living room.

And then came a policeman, Detective Black, who asked strange questions. As his car left the driveway, there was a noise from the roof - David Hayes (Trevor's bodyguard) had shot the guy. Great. Super-strength junkie woman (who kept babbling an awful lot) dragged the car up to the house and hid it in a barn, because now the mansion apparently has one. How to get rid of the evidence? Well, apparently creatures like the one Rommel is (when he's not just a puppydog) can go all CSI and eat any forensic evidence. So that's useful - and ever so slightly horrifying.

The Reincarnation of Axcalibur

The pregnant Eddie tried to drown his sorrows (foetus) in vodka. Strangely, he wasn't getting drunk from any of it, but instead, his body got very toned all of a sudden. He had never sported a sixpack before! Pregnancy really suits him!

We went looking for clues in Alvaston (or rather, Trevor was looking for a place to turn into a community centre), a rough part of Derby, and unfortunately, that's when Eddie decided to give birth to the big stone egg. Well, first of all, there was a thing crawling up through his throat and Tommy had to perform a tracheotomy and pull it out to stop Eddie from suffocating. The thing was a baby tentacle monster, as expected, and its gunk was highly corrosive. Luckily, Tilly performed some healing magics on him so that he wouldn't bleed to death.

Unfortunately, Eddie was carrying twins. There was also an egg and it decided to come out through his plumbing, so to speak. Ouchhh. The monster baby was dispatched and thrown into a hedge, where a tentacle monster and his tentacle monster dog then went looking.

So that was mentally scarring. We had visits from the blue-eyed German guy again, and some of us entered into bargains with him, which we're not exactly sure if it was a good idea or not yet, but we hope he isn't Fey, because then we're screwed. Eddie got another axe as replacement for his dearly departed Axcalibur.

Later on, we went back and were going to talk to the man and his dog, but the man ran into Zolistagol, Tommy and a patched-up Eddie and they didn't go easy on him. The dog, however, was behaving the way these tentacle monsters were supposed to behave ... so Tilly decided to try befriending it. How that works out, we'll find out next time.

MY BRAIN IS ON THAT THING!

We're back in Derby, picking up shortly after the end of the previous adventure. Eddie, or rather "Eddie", had ordered some goons to off the local police chief last time we played, so the real Eddie made sure to let his goons know to not just follow orders unless they're accompanied by a password, so to speak.

The group found a new (and slightly retconned) ally in the hospital porter Thomas "Tommy" Crane, who had some info about the semi-zombified people that were hospitalised. And later on, he was attacked by an invisible, brain-sucking ... thing with tentacles. It was unpleasant. But at least being attacked by otherworldly creatures means he's now one of the team.

And apparently, there's this guy with blue eyes who goes around warning people about "hollow knights" and burning buildings. What's that about?

Beavers and buttheads

After talking to Brian Tumnus in the pub, the group of Jurisfiction agents skipped ahead a few chapters and went to see the beaver couple, to check if they had any Christmas decorations stashed away, or at least knew anything about it. They had, and they did.

Van Helsing and Carmilla, in some kind of Mexican standoff, waited outside the beaver hut while Alice said hello to her idol Lucy Pevensie and her older siblings Susan and Peter. (Edmund was of course off somewhere fraternising with the enemy over some Turkish delight.) Lucy turned out to have more in common with a certain modern female character than anyone could have anticipated - much to the distress of Alice and the players.

Meanwhile, Louis and Long John went around investigating ... and met a nameless dwarf, who had a few things to say about his employer (the White Witch), his lack of a name, and the reason behind the recent influx of Christmas decorations in the book. Louis was kind enough to give the dwarf a name: Louis. Just a shame it won't last.

We're the very best at being BAD guys

Dr Sutcliffe is Harrowed, which is something both Hatch and Murphy seem to have accepted surprisingly quickly. They've gone out to get him meat and new clothing as if he was your perfectly ordinary convalescing OAP.

Not that any of us still have any sort of clues as to what has happened to the lady we're trying to find. Instead, we decided to have a closer look at Hexaco. We thought maybe we could sneak in, decided against it and tried to think of new lucrative business ideas to branch out to - like extortion and kidnapping. Then we ended up going to see one of the Hexaco people mentioned in an article about the "sabotage" in the swamps.

For some reason (i.e. money), we ended up accepting his offer of ridding the swamp of the swamp monster before the end of the week (in-game, it was Thursday) for a $200 return. Just to see if we could learn more about the swamp monster, we went to where the Voodoo people hang out, and spoke to Trevor ("call me Trevor - you can't pronounce my real name"), who gave us a spell type thing to use in order to make the spirit come into the mortal world and thus be killed.

Next session has DOOOOOOOOOOM written all over it.