Just prepare the loot list for next week

We go on adventures with a mare cat! There's a village in the forest. Will they sell us a chicken? Elindra ends up giving them one of her daggers in return. One of the villagers has a symbol for the Punisher god? But he's forbidden - on pain of death! - to worship? The village is a bit whack. Giant trees, giant bears outside the village ... and a sleeping lindworm?! We tactically retreat.

A Mother Marsh says someone needs to owe her a favour if she's to guide the part across the marsh, unless we want her grumpy. Elindra does this, thinking she can do some convince-a-roo with the help of Xanatha later. We manage to safely cross the swamp.

The 6-year-old boy we met earlier shows up, and wants Murmei to eat some sort of nut to show he's not evil. Murmei eventually eats the nut, because he's not evil, FFS.

We were attacked by things we should've run away from.

There's an axe. There's a grove. There's an old elf? We eventually go to a cultist building and kill cultists. My notes vary greatly in their, ahem, detail. *cough*

We go to a land down under

We descend into the big sink hole! Therein, we encounter really big creatures, and the cave floor has a lovely mosaic pattern, which is a bit unexpected of a cave system. Seems like the tiles are Symbaroum-related, so someone's clearly behind this. It's not just a coincidence.

We also come across what appears to be a mushroom plantation, guard lizards, and spirit people in the water where there's an island of crystals. It would be beautiful if it wasn't so terrifying and deadly at the same time.

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.

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

Breaking plots since 2002!

We're still stuck inside some kind of witch's circle thingy and trying to find our way out - supposedly by finding some tricky questions and their answers. Apparently some questions we might come across aren't the questions sought, they're just there to trip you up.

There was a tree with an axe in it. Nearby we found a really old guy who kept ranting about demons. Maybe we were demons too? We were supposed to attack him, but instead managed to calm him down long enough to hear that he was a demon hunter who had sealed a demon in the tree with the axe. An artifact axe he was bonded to, in fact, and as he was aging, the seal keeping the demon in was getting weaker. He was having a heart attack at this point, but we Medicated him and let him rest ... and read his diary. And investigated the axe.

Setting fire to the tree didn't work ... so we chopped it down. Didn't seem to stop the tree from still displaying signs of possession, but the old geezer could no longer sense it, so we figured we'd probably killed it or something. Later, the guy showed signs of being in much better health than he had been, in fact he kind of looked years younger, but that MUST be unrelated and not at all a sign of demonic possession ... right?

We later came across what we thought was an unusually large troll, but turned out to be a sleeping giant. Murmei woke him up to speak with him, and wasn't horribly murdered in the process. The giant was suitably entertained by some stories of our adventures (although less thrilled by the rusty flute-playing) and gave us a few pointers on how to proceed with our quest.

That face doesn't inspire confidence

We're trying to get back to Thistlehold. First, we went and told the goblins what had happened, and they were very grateful that the spider had taken the Creeping Darkness with it. They weren't so keen on their hideout having partially collapsed when the sinkhole collapsed a bit further, although that wasn't actually our fault and we don't know what happened. We were lucky not to fall in ourselves, basically. No one was hurt, though, and that's the main thing.

The journey back was uneventful, up until the point where a big boulder with a sword sticking out of it was spotted. Turned out to be a massive arch troll, and Murmei was delighted. Those things are exceedingly rare, don't you know? It's also kind of rare to survive an encounter with them, but it didn't stop the young lad from striking up a conversation.

Because Murmei has awesome diplomacy skills (stop looking at me like that, he totally does!) the carts and oxen managed to get away a bit, and the troll, Uhux, was convinced to let Valgai ("who is big and strong and really good at stuff like that, honest") remove the sword from his shoulder.

The troll was so grateful to not have a poisoned sword in his shoulder that he gave the party a quest, to find where his friends had got to. They were going to Erdengald (Murmei stopped listening to what that was as soon as "great knowledge" was mentioned) but hadn't been heard from since.

Uhux even gave the party a map, and went to pat Murmei on the head, at which Elindra decided the troll was attacking her friend ("friend" here being used in the loosest of terms) and we very nearly had a diplomatic incident, i.e. Elindra would have been insta-killed, and possibly got the other two wiped as well. But as luck (helped along with some XP losses and temporary corruption) would have it, we were free to go on our merry way. With a magic artefact sword! We could also brag about having met and survived an arch troll! Win!

Spiders and reapers and fairies, oh my!

We continue our venture into Davokar Forest. There be swarms of spiders. We fought them off and got out of there. They were delicious. (They were represented by pieces of salty liquorice, so your mileage may vary.)

Then we found a group of treasure hunters who wondered if they could join us for the night (we said no), followed by a Necromage coming to attack them because someone in that group had decided to steal something of its. They died, it took its thing back and went away.

And then there was a wizard with fire-y bodyguards that turned out to be part of Elindra's arch enemy hindrance. Fun times were had. And by that I mean death (theirs).

Can I have your autograph?

Elindra went around town doing some investigations and interrogations. This led to CLUES! There was also a guy who looked very quest-givery, so we ended up heading off into the wild in order to find Lady Elsana a.k.a. the Night Lady in order to bring her back to the capital for lots and lots of money.

We bypassed a troll cave and ended up in a secluded village in a sort of basin type thing. It was a bit Maze Runner-y. She agreed to come with us, even after Murmei asked her to autograph one of his books ...

Two Thieves and What Am I Doing Here?

One of the group went on a well-deserved holiday and the rest of us decided to spend the following two sessions playing the boardgame Gloomhaven, which comes in what's possibly the biggest boardgames box ever. It's YUUUUGE.

We played a Mindthief, a Scoundrel, and a Tinkerer. Lots and lots of tokens. Fun game, though! :)

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.

I love it when a plan falls apart

We got the attack victims back to the little ramshackle town from whence they came. Turned out they used to live in an abandoned city nearby, Tilverton, which had fallen victim to darkness like 150 years previously. Not that this was a deterrent for us.

We went into the city with the muffin top of darkness and slew a bunch of nasty creatures, and did a fly-by to grab an amulet off a Cthulhian type creature. This made the muffin top go away, along with all the nasty critters, so the townspeople could have their city back.

We're big damn heroes now. Severely injured heroes, in two out of three cases, but heroes nonetheless.

Gorgons are the Spanish Inquisition

We continued the fight at the nexus point. The good thing about having impressive weapons and skills is that you can get rid of your enemies with ease. A bit too easy, perhaps, as the GM found out after we'd murderised all his baddies.

Anyhoo. We took back the nexus point for the Rakshasa and celebrated. The next morning we got the info we needed in order to find where John, the head of the Blackstone Juggernauts (a.k.a. our boss) and Gorbash's sort-of-adoptive father, had been taken to. It's in Texas. So next week I guess we put on our Stetsons and get ready to barbecue some meats. Oh, and rescue our friend/boss. Maybe.

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy

After levelling up (level 8, wooh!) we somehow got into a discussion about Cthulhu and tentacle porn and found out that yes, the internet will provide if you do an image search for Cthulhu dressed as a Japanese schoolgirl. Uh. Like you do?

Anyway. In actual gaming terms we went to the market, and most of the party pretended to be slaves belonging to Gorbash, who in turn pretended to be a Rakshasa. We found Alistair and his Shemarrian assistant/slave in a cell down at the slave pens, so that's good. That we found them, that is, as that's what we were there to do.

A couple of brothers, whose other brother we may have previously disposed of, recognised Booker. And then the setting off of explosions ensued ...

I've missed the harassment and forgotten how to roll dice

After a whole month's worth of not roleplaying, we decided to change Tuesdays into Mondays so we could continue.

The party ended up going to the Temple of the Grey Seers. We had to remove our weapons, which made us slightly uncomfortable, and then a room exploded. See, there was this guy who was kinda psychic and he bombarded us with messages to the point where even the Cyber-Knight started crying for his mother, just before he passed out.

Then there was the Sunaj bloke, Martin, who was responsible for putting Bob the Symbiode on Booker's back. He died. The party did try to kill him quickly, but he had really good armour and stuff, so it took a while.

Ulmolf is trying to teach Gorbash how to do rune magic as well, so they considered turning the soul of the Sunaj into a runic spoon.

Basically, Gorbash probably isn't falling from graces, he's more sauntering downwards in a leisurly fashion ...

Making your own gunpowder sounds way too methodical

This is short, but let's face it, it was a continuation of clearing out Rivergard Keep of a bunch of water cultists.

The party stormed the main keep, killed a wereboar, found a secret staircase and a hidden room, and really went to town on those cultists. They should now be considered a threatened species, soon to be extinct. As a GM, I'm very proud of them, of course.

Can we loot now?

There's not that much to say about this session, aside from that the party got busy attacking the water cultists in the keep.

Aial did his thing in one of the towers while the others attacked the people in the harbour area.

Hearing a female chanting in the chapel, Schnick had a Trauma Flashback and attacked the chapel with fire. He was quite successful.

Kyla stabberised a guide, and even the noble Lo-Kag got in on the murderising.

It was like watching a gory hoover in slow motion.

It’s a very entertaining scene

The party respectfully relieved the slain cultists of their earthly possessions before moving on down to Womford.

When investigating the village, they came across villagers who wanted to be left alone, a number of ruffians, and a jolly sea captain who had some interesting books to sell. Later that night, Kyla entertained the people from the ships which gave the other party members time to search one of the keelboats for clues. It seemed very likely that at least one of the boats was water cult-related.

After all the sailors having gone to bed drunk, an attack was made. The crew summarily slaughtered, the party tried to interrogate the captain ... by promising that Aial would do very bad things to him indeed. Then they stole the boat and headed upriver, horses and all.

I’m making my own rules

Having come across reviews of the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign, the GM (i.e. me, who has never really run a pre-written adventure before) was happy to conclude that feeling like a shit GM was less about actually being a shit GM and a lot more to do with a poorly edited and very confusingly laid out adventure book where the reason you can't find something is because it's spread out all over the place, and not necessarily in chronological or alphabetical order, or any other kind of order you would expect.

Anyway. The characters continued the partying at Feathergale Spire. Aial decided to check out the commander's private quarters while no one was looking, and then set it on fire to hide evidence. The order lost all of their initiates in the ensuing fire ... but of course the party wasn't present at the time the fire went off. Kyla, who earned a gold star with the order for killing the manticore last session, was taken aside and got the "hello, my name is Elder Knight and I would like to share with you this most amazing cult" talk. She later helped out with healing the wounded to show that yes, she's definitely initiate material. (As if.)

After a night when the party was randomly attacked by jackalweres (why they're not called "werejackals" we have no idea), the party headed down the road toward Womford. Stopping for a bio break, they came across some water themed soldiers that were suitably skewered by Lo-Kag and then turned into kebabs by Schnicktick.

You know, it's like there's some sort of elemental theme going on here ...

Bacon-flavoured breakfast ale needs to be a thing

We are now in the final dungeon, a big cave system called the Wave Echo Cave, because we're still trying to find Gundren's missing brothers. So far, we've met an ochre jelly and assorted map-making.

We left this session being attacked by some ghouls. Two out of five characters are paralysed ...

Do orcs need toes?

We nearly died in an attack - two players down, yay - but managed to get back up and win the day. We found the Wyvern Tor and a cave full of orcs and an ogre, and finally managed to take a hostage. Unfortunately, the spitting little git didn't know anything, so the "Lawful Good" Tan cut off his thumb, which Hematite dutifully bandaged. Then the party decided to dangle the orc over the side of a cliff and let him drop ... only to cast Feather Fall.

Long story short, he's now pining for the fjords.

On the way back to the Yellow Brick Trail, we encountered a group of goblins. Since goblins were the ones who actually had something to do with the Rockseeker brothers, we managed to take another prisoner who DID know stuff. He was hogtied in a very ... umm ... imaginative way. Let's just say it would appear Karak-Dag has some very exotic interests ...