And remember, kids, the GM wants you to fumble!

We battled people in a corridor. It wasn't great for them. It wasn't great for us either, in fairness, Valgai got badly injured, but he lived and most of the people on the other side didn't.

Next session, the party left Murmei (and Knightlight) at the Queen's Legate to look at books to find out more information about house ownership, and so on, while they went to search through some houses. They get into a massive fight, because of course they did, and Deadorna for a long while was the only one really damaging them. Lucky for us, the party survived. The people (Templars?) attacking them didn't. Don't mess with motivated adventurers, FFS. Will NPCs never learn?

We did warn you about him

We saw an ogre stepping away from a big fire, leaving behind an alchemical parchment. Is this a thing? There were hungry wild boars and big crowds and the ogre turned out to be the sheriff.

Deadorna can turn into a kotka, and two kotkas playing meant they spilled ink. Murmei wasn't happy.

We found the elf we were looking for. There was much suspicion all around.

Descriptions are kinda difficult three months after the game. *cough*

There might even be Medium Teeth

As per the previous post, we're gaming over Discord instead of meeting up twice a week around our kitchen table. On the plus side, no one has to drive home afterwards, so if we happen to get stuck in a battle, it doesn't matter so much because no one has to get up and drive for an hour (give and take) to get to work, and don't even have to change out of pyjamas.

On the negative side, the person with attention problems finds concentration even harder than usual, so this is the result of three sessions. Or, technically two, because I was so all over the place last Monday that I forgot to open the document I've been using for notes, and never even realised until the session ended. FUN TIMES. Look after your mental health y'all.

There was a table where we were sucked into some other dimension and Gunda got to speak to Tempus and was named his successor. And then there was a library and a clone of John Irenicus who was a dick, unsurprisingly. And he was alive, but somehow not, and he was trying to die properly, but because Silvanus cursed him, he kept coming back in different bodies. Something like that.

Is Archie short for Arch Enemy?

In the aftermath of taking down big-ass flying battlestation we came across an android calling itself A-51, proclaiming to work for some guy called Archie, who seems shifty - but then apparently he has a whole book about him or something. A-51 said something in a foreign language, Gorbash translated by the cunning use of magic, and she bolted.

Found out later she was still following us, and may or may not have liked to hear Gorbash speaking Splugorth? We don't know. And she basically exploded in our faces.

We went back home, getting armours fixed, having the remnants of the robot examined, talking to Ixchal, trying to get Jayson a pay rise without telling him (because being all noble and "I couldn't possibly, won't someone think of the starving children in Tolkeen" or something), and oh, apparently now Splugorth wants Booker's head. Again. But for a more serious 40 million credits this time.

You are defeated, I have the moral high ground!

As it was a bank holiday we convened earlier and started by playing The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth boardgame. We did not succeed with our mission, sadly.

Then we went into the edges of Davokar, pretty much, on the hunt for the escaped gargoyle. We found it - or it found us - and it decided to attack Elindra. She got two permanent corruption for her trouble. Fortunately we had given that seed to the witch in a previous session, which she had grown to a tree that can remove permanent corruption, so she's "only" on one now.

The engagement between Murmei and Elsiosi Garlaka went ahead, and she left town with Murmei's mum. Not before trying to convince Murmei that Elindra is just a mercenary who doesn't really care about him and would turn against him as soon as someone else paid her more than he did.

As a parting gift Elindra and Valgai were given bottles of expensive wine, as a thank you for looking after Murmei. Valgai re-gifted one of the bottles to Elsiosi's brother, who was visibly uncomfortable by it. HMMMM. The party decided to try the wine on a rat, but all that happened was that the rat got drunk. Did that mean the wine wasn't poisoned, or was it maybe a human-only poison somehow? Because even Murmei finally had to admit something fishy was going on with his future wife.

Everyone in the countryside is nuts

The story continues!

The group is not sure why Cid would have dressed in women's clothing, but they have a search through the burning remains of their crashed airship in case of clues. They find a piece of a map and spend a long time wondering where they might be on it, despite the map being of a city in Africa and they're clearly in the Queen's own country. Suffolk, as it happens.

They find a dead parrot, which is given a proper burial rather than being eaten for dinner, and perhaps make some headway as to who they might be and what they were doing.

That's when they come across a field with a drainage problem being assessed by a quiet Irish handyman and an awkward lord who invites the party back to the house ...

We're middle management with magnet armour

The GM started regretting he set this adventure in Forbidden Realms rather than a non-D&D setting right about when the ranger/druid character (Elania) thought it would be a great idea to use the local fauna as miners.

Was this before or after we had a great debate about cold versus hot custard? Because that was a thing. Hot custard vs cold vaniljsås. Your mileage may vary depending on if you're British or Swedish.

Anyhoo. Game-wise we headed south, and entered a thing called Land's Mouth, which is some kind of opening to another dimension or something like that. The map looked like a diagram of female anatomy, at any rate. There was a crashed sky city in there, and creatures that drew metal spikes and swords out of their arms in a decidedly creepy way.

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.

We're nice and very comforting people

Ehhhhh, long time no see?

We opened a café and, uh, things have been a bit hectic ever since ...

How much XP do we get for rolling 0 on initiative?

Having solved the Redbrand problem for Phandalin, we decided it was time to get back to looking for the Rockseeker brothers. Without having really investigated what it was, we went down the Miner's Trail to look for more information.

We found some, and went to follow up on them going down another trail. And then we were attacked a couple of times in the middle of the night, because XP. The first time went pretty well for the party, and the second time ... Hematite the cleric would've died if it hadn't been for the quick-thinking of Malinda, who emptied a healing potion down her neck. "It wasnae the best night ever."

All good deeds must be given with a minor crime

And we're off!

So, we killed Milan, the dragon allied with the Rakshasa, and that was just the last adventure. For this, Booker Dayes (the gunslinger) got a mystery box from the Gray Seers, filled with all manner of weird and wonderful things. There's a protective amulet, a kinetic force gun (totally frickin awesome), a brick with a cryptic message, some red bandannas and a bag of what 1200 credits later turned out to be table salt.

As the Blackstone Juggernauts chief went out to buy loo roll or something, he put Booker Dayes in charge, so when a creepy guy called Rolf (without an Aussie accent, we hasten to add) said he wanted us to find his missing girlfriend, Booker got us a pretty sweet deal. Hopefully.

The missing woman is slightly beyond a Jessica Rabbit level of hotness, so the rest of the team seemed quite interested in helping out. Perhaps less so Christopher Drake the Glitter Boy who, when not in his armour, is dead from the waist down. Well, presumably he still is even in his armour, it's just that he can move around.

Baradhi and Jayson went to check out the place where Jessica Rabbit has a magic shop, and Gorbash had a look around with Drake but things were heating up, so they got out of there. It might have had something to do with Drake threatening to maim a guy ...

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.

Dragonslayers are GO!

As far as cunning plans go, ours was very cunning indeed. First, Gorbash antagonised Milan by dipping a toe in the guy's territory. Milan, so big and strong, apparently needs six Rakshasa to combat Gorbash, which says a lot about both of them. Gorbash tried reasoning with him, but Milan wasn't interested.

With Milan out of the way, Baradhi and Sir Jayson went to find the gate box. Baradhi astral walked into the building, down some stairs and found the box in the basement. Unfortunately, there was someone there who could see him, so he had to make a quick exit.

After reporting back to HQ, we decided that the best option to retrieve the box - or destroy it - was to not have Milan there, because he's a fricken DRAGON. So we went somewhere near a ley line in his territory, tooled up and waited.

He shot first.

Or, okay, breathed fire first, barbecuing some poor bystanders in the process. Baradhi cast Carpet of Adhesion to make sure he couldn't move, and then we shot him with everything we had. First, Gorbash was blinded and accidentally blew up a building (with innocent people inside) thinking he was aiming for Milan. Sir Jayson, who was blinded next, still had a good aim, though, and his robot horse came into its own as well.

Now Milan is dead, so we can all call ourselves Dragonslayers. W00t! Gorbash took the body to the head of Stormspire (who wanted four pints of dragon blood), said "here you go" and as a reward, the guy is going to go after - and destroy, we hope - that box we were after. So, uh, we appear to have finished the adventure already.

I think my dice are scared of sidequests

Plot Progression!

Baradhi went ley line hopping over to the town of Londonium, from where it would appear the gate box originated. Around the house where it was presumably created, around 40 people had died mysteriously.

We finally went back to see the insect people, whose queen gave Baradhi his gift - a headband full of mystical runes. Once adorned, the headband would not come off.

Meanwhile, bad dreams kept pestering Jayson, including visions of a guy called Gabriel, who kept repeating "Must save the world" over and over like some sort of mad wizard dude. We suspect Gabriel is being manipulated by Nxla, considering he seems hellbound to opening portals from Nxla's world to ours, sucking out souls and that.


Either way, we're not doing what the GM expected us to do, but then what else is new?

And then the zombies came.

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.