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.

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.

All in all you're just another dwarf in the door

Another dwarf lady showed up on our doorstep only to murder herself. This time Murmei was present and could do a live translation. Not that it really helped, because she was having a go at Valgai for not having left yet and reiterated that the old Symbaroum king is after him.

Meanwhile, the future Mrs Murmei has been found to potentially be an assassin. Her last two tutors have gone missing, never to be seen or heard from again. Her lovesick would-be future husband was undeterred - he just thought it made her sound really cool.

And that's when a couple of bodies were found in the street, and things took a turn from there. Especially as a third one was later found as well ...

It had to be maggots

In this thrilling instalment, Elindra was ambushed. It turned into Valgai also being ambushed and them killing a bunch of people before they had a chance to kill them. Maggot bomb spells were thrown, and it was gross and painful.

They caught a survivor and decided to interrogate him, while another of the survivors had legged it through the south gate. Murmei eventually was helpful in getting to some messages that were found, and another link to Ravenia was discovered.

Plot, thickening, and so on.

I spent all my dice on revolutions

This week's session was cancelled due to illness, so here's something we prepared earlier.

In Soviet Russia we decided what we were doing in the time between the end of the 1980s until 1994 or thereabouts. The communist state was overthrown. A hole was punched in the Berlin wall. Hulk Hogan became Hawk Hogan. A disillusioned propaganda/brainwashing machine went to England, a communist state, only to find herself in the midst of another revolution.

An assortment of TV show hosts (Lawrence "The Upholsterer", Alan "The Gardener", Dale "The Supermarket Sweeper" and a guy from Time Team "The Archivist") showed up to kick behinds. It was peculiar, although that's pretty common in M&M, to be fair ...

Let's get back to Mother Russia, because "at least it's home".

Problem is that suddenly this big planet or something had appeared through a tear in the sky, and there were now baddies flooding Moscow. Baddies with lots and lots of nukes and stuff.

(The Truth may have died, but she might also live on, having turned Evergreen into some kind of Horcrux. Or something.)

There was a battle. Supers fought bravely. Then the flashback ended ...

Is it bestiality if you're a metamorph?

Further delvings into the floating city we found last week. There was a tower, where a door mysteriously happened to be open (it's good when you've got a person with the Luck word in the party!). At the top we discovered something with vampire glass, so the building started to melt. Stuff like that.

There was also an orb that could, umm, turn nuclear. Our pet wizard turned it into a staff, because he didn't get an artifact weapon like the rest of us. Problem is that if he's ever to drop the damn thing, we'll all die in a Michael Bay style explosion.

When we got back to Tilverton we found that we had received summons to our respective gods' temples. Answering those summons meant that we're now properly middle management, sub-gods to the major gods Silvanus, Oghma and Tempus. Varyon's going his own way, because he's big-headed the world lacks a god of magic.

Yer a druid, Harry

New game, new characters! Godbound is set in Forbidden Realms (D&D), but the characters turn out to have special powers. It's a bit like Hunter, or Exalted, or Changeling, except it's not World of Darkness.

At first, we considered being an all-Cleric party, and then there was a couple of Clerics and a Paladin, or a cleric, a paladin and an archivist researcher, and in the end we're like a druid, a blacksmith (who also does archiving and research) and Brienne of Tarth.

• Denny/Denethor: a human archivist researcher who is also a very competent crafter-of-things
• Elani Tiatha: an elf huntress with aspirations of becoming Boudicca, except for the dying bit
• Gunda: a human paladin of Tempus; see also: Brienne of Tarth

We started off by fighting some bad hombres and by doing so we discovered we had special powers, because we didn't use to be quite as kick ass as we had suddenly become.

Isis Isis baby

So the Egyptian obelisk, Cleopatra's Needle, was guarded by someone who turned out to be Isis, except she didn't know she was Isis.

And then, of course, fighting ensued. Booker spotted one of those Mystic Knights (or Sith Cyber-knights, if you like) and decided to blow up a building. It got a bit hectic for a bit. Turns out they were kind of ... anti-anti Cyber-knights and of an order to do with a white rose. Interesting times!

Are we in an extended Shakespeare metaphor?

We ended up partaking in an M&M campaign, because it's nice to get the band back together, as it were.

It's taking place in three different times. In this particular session, modern day American characters somehow ended up transported to the island in Shakespeare's The Tempest, where they met a one-armed Russian teddybear with rocket launchers. Soooo yeah. :D

Whose side am I supposed to be on?

So what happened was ... Hecate showed up in Ulmolf's head and sang her siren song again. For character replacement purposes, Ulmolf said "alright then" and had Odin show up in town, asking him wtf he thinks he's doing. They both disappeared through a rift back to Asgard.

Ulmolf's replacement is a demigod by the name Elyssa. On the plus side, Elyssa is a good person, so maybe we can keep Gorbash on the straight and narrow for a while yet ...

In the warehouse where we found the necromancer last session, there was indeed a necromancer. She had a half-dead bloke tied to a wall and she was very pleased to see Booker.

Apparently it was all some sort of ritual to give Booker all the knowledge in order to fight what he needs to fight as the Chosen One, but we didn't really know this when we may or may not have conked her over the head and having her dying on us and completing the ritual.

A lot of people in town (whose HP were powering the spell) died in the process and because the spell sort of backfired because Booker was supposed to be the only one present in the building and not the entire party, Alistair let Gorbash and Jayson know they ended up with a soul each tied to them ...

We had our chance of dying horribly but we failed

Better late than never, right?

Nemiel managed to one-shot kill the demon prince and the group lived to fight another session. Somehow, despite a surprising number of botches around the table, we made it to the end of the session with only minor mental trauma - and a dead NPC, which Orlandis took very hard because they were friends.

Meanwhile on the Arkadius, the ship was being shot at from the ground and had to go into hiding behind a moon. Oh, and a small group of Tyranids are coming our way. Fun!

Are you planning to wrap up the end of the world?

Dungeon crawling continued, although Zolistagol decided to stay back - which, admittedly, was down to the player unexpectedly being absent. We found a tied-up accountant/lawyer who turned out not to be so mundane after all; he was actually a mage. Emphasis on was, because he died suddenly, ahem.

We also encountered a strange spinning room with gargoyles, but luckily only one of them was not a statue but an actual gargoyle. Again, emphasis on was.

Then there was that werewolf again, and Alex bravely sacrificing himself in order to kill it with explosives, so that's another monster dead - or two, seeing as how Alex was apparently a serial killer as a way to unwind. o.O

Then there was a big room with a bonfire that had featured in both Eddie's and Tilly's dreams. There, David Hayes (a.k.a. guy hired to keep Trevor's mad sister safe) was pointing a gun at Agatha (a.k.a. Trevor's sister). Long story short: she started the Burning Days, and since Eddie stood closest to the bonfire, he ended up becoming the Burning Man.

Meanwhile, Trevor was stuck in expanding foam (that he insisted on bringing with us), and Tilly made the mistake of freeing a tied-up Rommel (the person), who promptly knocked her unconscious as she turned her back for a moment. Curse his sudden but inevitable betrayal. Who'd have thought you couldn't trust a Nazi? Basically, he tricked us into starting the Burning Days because he enjoys ethnic cleansing or something ... problem is this time around, it's not Jesus or Richard the Lionheart that's the Burning Man, and there's no new religion or Crusades ... it's a zombie apocalypse. And we, plus what remains of the Nottingham crew, are now Hollow Knights (again in Eddie's and Tilly's case) and saving the world is our job. Insert list of expletives here.

Are you SURE you're the Chosen One?

After complaining that it's really complicated and soul crushing to generate a Rifts character, we got the show on the road. Booker managed to officially get in Ulmolf's Grudge Book (it's a book in which he notes down all the people he has grudges against ... obvs) after having a morality discussion with young Gorbash. The discussion went along the lines of "all people look the same to you, but you know that if they're wearing red headbands, they're bad and should be killed, even if they're not actually Rakshasa bandannas?"

We also went back to the Crow Bar and had Baradhi corner Granite the gargoyle in the astral plane room thingamajig again. (Yeah, he was outside around the corner, seeing as he's actually barred from the establishment.) Granite wasn't pleased. Especially not when Baradhi blew up the room again. Fortunately, we didn't care, and moved his body elsewhere. He dropped a compass and an earth elemental.

The compass looked suspiciously like the compass Booker's had in his mystery chest for some time out of game, which he (and we) conveniently had forgotten all about. Hey ho. It could be used to find the urn containing a part of Rita's soul (THAT'S RIGHT, IT'S A GODDAMN HORCRUX) and we're running out of time fast. Did we mention we only had 48 hours left, and it takes about 24 to get the astral room back up and running? Eh, woops?

Happy new year!

Sorry for the lack of posts in December - we had our last session on the 9th, and then the Blogkeeper went on holiday - which wouldn't have impeeded preparing a seasonal JPEG or putting together some other kind of post, but the entire holiday was a blur of nursing a bad cold, so ho hum never mind.

While we're waiting for normality to resume on Tuesday (yay!), we'd like to welcome in the new year by some random Facebooking:

"Only 3 more days to the tactical moustache... and cake!!"

Rifts GM: "What are we doing on Tuesday by the way - is it me?"
Player: "Rifts according to the calendar"
Rifts GM: "I better prep a bit then - hehehe"

Player 1: "Unfortunately X has lost his tactical moustache"
Player 2: "O.O No tactical stache.... shocking!"
Player 3: "Lost?!"
Player 1: "X has coiffeured his moustache and beard, so no longer has his tactical moustache."
Player 2: "I have bulding a theory - X found a threat to the world and the only way to stop it was to deploy the tactical stache permanently - as a barrier against evilness, so he can't bring it with him anymore."
Player 1: "Lol"
Player 2: "I like my theory better"

"What could be so evil that it needed a tactical moustache to stop it?!"
"So, I was thinking along the lines of USA finally realising that Sweden has 3 more letters in their alphabet than the English one has. Under pressure from the senate, USA decided to accuse Sweden for mass-alphabetication and was mustering forces when X deployed his tactical stache to protect the homeland of his fellow role players. USA, trembling in fear of the stache at their borders, decided not to go for it at the moment, as they have no matching stache to counter it."
"Thinking about it most US superheroes are clean-shaven! Wolverine's sideburns are probably their best bet."
"Wolverine is canadian!"
"That explains it!"
"Also, I am sure that sideburns would only compliment a tactical stache, not counter it - so even Wolverine's sideburns would be of no use against X's tactical stache.."

"I'm guessing their best bet would be Hagrid - Y is more the expert on him, so she will have to say if he would assist USA in their evil deeds or not"
"It depends ... will there be a dragon in it for him?"
"As far as I know, USA do not deploy dragons, so I would say no."

We're starting up Rifts on Tuesday, if that wasn't clear enough already, so see you in the next week with new posts!

Why are we cooking the goblin?

After much ado, we decided to pick one of the many questing opportunities and try to sort out those Redbrands. Or something.

We entered into a cave system (this is D&D after all) with a rickety bridge over a chasm to kill unweary adventurers. Fortunately, we have a mage in the party, and the mage decided to pick Feather Fall when levelling up. It paid of pretty much straight away. Hooray!

In the cave, we met eliminated a Nothic aberration and some bugbears, and set a goblin thrall free. We're nice that way, but not nice enough to heal the poor fellow's bleeding hands first. We also found a room where a rat looked at us and then disappeared when it was shot at. It's an animagus, I tell you!

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.

Aberrations of evolution, as chosen by God

Things turned interesting for the group this session. While the men in the group hid to avoid detection, Tilly tried shielding the girl/victim we found and ended up being hidden in plain sight. Something's obviously going on there.

Eddie went berserk with his axe, Zolistagol got to speak Russian ("Vladivostok!") and Trevor ... had his skin badly burned. To soothe it, Tilly grabbed some holy water from her bag (like you do), and lo and behold, the witch had apparently obtained magical powers, and the skin started healing!

After much ado, we ended up torching the warehouse to destroy evidence (might have accidentally burned someone alive, but hey ho), borrowed a fake brick of Nazi gold from the Russian mob, and the girl wasn't perhaps so much as a victim but a ghoul in training, or something like that. She wanted feeding to complete the process, and unfortunately, we were on the menu. No gratitude at all, that one.

We tied her hands and locked her in one of the bathrooms at Trevor's. And then we were visited by Tony the Ghoul, who told us what was actually going on. By that point, we couldn't really say sorry, we'd rather stay in with a pizza, beer and watch the Rams game on Sky Sports.

Will the real Harry Potter please stand up?

As we unfortunately was a player down due to illness this session, we were going to play something else. I got instructed to bring a game I'd like to play, so I brought Jurisfiction. It just so happens that I've always wanted to do an adventure set in the Harry Potter books, and suddenly, both inspiration and opportunity presented themselves.

Agents Hastings (Agatha Christie) and Van Helsing (Bram Stoker) had to leave their Enid Blyton pet project behind in order to go over to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to investigate a Potions book that had been stolen and replaced with a cheap knock-off. As they dawdled, Severus Snape himself arrived at Jurisfiction HQ to convince them to get a move on.

From there, they ended up force-feeding a Puking Pastille to Fred or George Weasley, charging Snape with assault, admiring off-duty Dumbledore in what can only be described as Rocky Horror Picture Show gear, listening to a PageRunning Draco Malfoy's teenage woes, finding beautiful Fanon Snape snogging his favourite student Hermione over in Fanfiction, and learning that Harry Potter enjoys going on Character Exchange trips to Fanfiction, where he doesn't have to put up with any of that false modesty nonsense, and can be worshipped like the freakin' BookWorld rockstar that he is.

Oh yeah, and Marvin the Paranoid Android occasionally works in the admin department at Jurisfiction HQ. (He doesn't enjoy it, brain the size of a planet, and so on.)

Whatever they did, that copy of the Half-Blood Prince's old Potions textbook, which is just a teeny tiny bit pivotal to the plot, was still nowhere to be seen ...

Murder on t' winding, windy moors

As we ended up playing Relic last week, which didn't end up being very quotable, here's something we played earlier. At a ChimeraCon in fact. This session was the Blogkeeper's first ever go as a tabletop GM.

To recap: A group of fictional characters, agents of Jurisfiction, are policing the BookWorld, namely:

• Alice from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Arthur Hastings from random Agatha Christie Poirot novel
• Frankenstein's Monster from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, nicknamed "George"
• Gabriel Betteredge from Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone
• Hari Seldon from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (although he was mostly asleep)
• "Outlander", i.e. one of the players playing himself, from the Outland

At this stage of the session, the characters have been briefed about some gruesome murders taking place within the world of fiction - murders that shouldn't have happened in the characters' usual narrative - and after much ado, they set off into Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.

They got to Trushcross Grange (try saying that quickly three times in a row!) only to discover the Lintons' fancy manor house was on fire, which is very out of character for it. But with their parents away, can the Canasta-playing Edgar and Isabella actually be saved or will the murderer have claimed two more lives?