I feel like we've just met a vegan elf

Ah, I was wrong. This is actually where we tried to get the big ox god’s head up the big hole in the ground. The god is dying and the head needs to get back to where it was taken from. We finally put it on a cart and dragged out of the city.

We get rides from barbarians with ginormous creatures. Two hours later we get to a clearing with a big ox corpse in the presence of elves, and save the god.

The next morning, Elsiosi barges into Murmei’s bedroom. He tells her off. Valgai throws her out (for barging in like that), then invites her back in when she's suitably apologised. She comes bearing a letter from Mother, summoning Murmei to Ravenia. Elsiosi also wants to give Murmei tea to cure the abomination problem that he doesn’t actually have - he's just wearing a belt.

Valgai announces he's planning on retiring and heading back across the mountains. The rest of us convince him to maybe come with us first to Ravenia so Murmei and Deadorna can tell Mother to shove it.

I've been trying to get disowned for years!

The weird thing here is that my first note from this session reads: "Spider god: GTFO." I can't remember if this was us encountering a spider god, meaning we need to GTFO; or if it was a spider god telling us to GTFO; or if it was a spider god actually hiding in that hill that people were trying to dig up, and therefore that's why we should all GTFO and stop digging. I think my personal RAM is on the fritz.

People are leaving the camp now, at any rate, and we suggested the powers that be that they should go to where Erdugald was, but beware the murder hornets ...

Murmei practiced making leather armour so he can make snakeskin armour for Deadorna once he gets enough XP to get Blacksmith at Adept, because the armour will be a lot better then. His sister is considering making him fancy ink to write with as a thank you.

In the end we bricked up the bit where people had got closest to breaking through to the thing inside the hill, so we can leave the place and the barbarian tribes can ward anyone off from getting too close. A job well done, we think!

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.

It's fun to heal at the OMHQ!

Valgai got the minimum amount of healing possible from someone at the Ordo Magica because dice are evil. We also delivered the book back to Master Eufrynda, who was so delighted with us she gave us another task we could do. Someone had gone missing in the Davokar forest and would we mind awfully going after them?

Yes, yes we would, but here we are, putting together an expedition and planning to escape the town unnoticed ...

Speaking of unnoticed, Elindra was trying her hardest to spread misinformation around the beggars and cutpurses ... but was so terrible at Persuasion she ended up murdering a whole bunch instead. C'est la vie?

YOU get a girlfriend, YOU get a girlfriend, EVERYONE gets a girlfriend!

Booker and Jayson ventured into Solomon, a town with a big Aztec pyramid. They forgot to relay this information to Gorbash, who was mightily surprised when he finally joined them.

There was a group of mercs in town. Bad people. We considered using them as meat shields for a while, and then ended up by recruiting one of their Juicers. The lady in question was heavily flirting with Gorbash, so it seems now the whole party have someone to have some heterosexytimes with when we're not busy trying to save the world and whatnot.

Investigating the pyramid, because it's OBVIOUSLY a CLUE in the finding of the Key of Solomon, we found a door. Inside the pyramid was a Cyber-knight who had been missing for the past couple of years. Perhaps he knows something.

You're very pretty for an orc

Back in the wonderfully post-apocalyptic world of Rifts, we have encountered things like a kidnapping plot against Maria, a gang leader who might also be having a bit of handsome Cyber-knight whenever it takes either of their fancy. The plot was a way to get to us through Jayson (who would of course be obliged to rescue his damsel in distress, even though said damsel could definitely kick the bad guys where it hurts). You see, we were hiding out trying to avoid getting murderised by people who would be paid very handsomely for that deed.

Bizarrely, we didn't foil the plans, they just ... went away. The price on our heads, as it turned out, had been rescinded by Splugorth. Why Splugorth wants us alive, we aren't entirely sure about, but it's making us uneasy for sure.

We also met up with Ixchal and took a trip with the Kizzards in order to give Alistair's brother his life back. Alistair's brother is now a mute Kizzard with a human soul, and Booker discovered that Hecate has absolutely no sense of humour. You don't tell her jokingly that she should stop Jayson holding a blade to Booker's neck (a warning as he was starting to move in a very shifty way), because Hecate proceeded to lightning bolt Jayson, who, as it turned out, could smoulder not just in figurative ways but also in very literal ones.

What does the desert fox say?

In this riveting final episode (for now) of Godbound, we discover that the god Gond isn't dead after all! And it's very possible Mystra isn't either!

We investigated a few places, and came across a Thayan wizard dude and there had been a lot of people dying and so on and so forth. Because Gunda took the Thor word, she walked along being some kind of lightning rod so that everyone else wouldn't get zapped.

We met a Shadow Prince as well. I have a sneaking suspicion I'm mixing up things here quite a lot, but it's been over a week since we had this session and I'm writing this half asleep. In fact, the Thayan wizard wasn't a Thayan wizard, it was Gond. The Thayan wizard was the dude with the flesh golem miners.

And then we came across a mountain where flesh golems were mining platinum, totally nicking our idea. They were ... taken care of. Turned out Gond had been stuck in some other plane of existance for quite some time. Some being tried to pretend to be Oghma, but this didn't seem right to Denethor, Oghma's second in command.

There was a city of platinum hidden in that mountain, and a portal to another place, so we sealed it up because things shouldn't come out of there. Nothing good comes out of there.

This is the strangest GM-ing I've ever done

Further (mis?)adventures of a bunch of Victorian superheroes ... basically because during our regular Monday session there was just the three of us and we played the crap out of Joking Hazard and didn't take notes.

Why is there not a Save vs Dumbass?

A session in which we all decided to become citizens, because it seemed like a good idea. Probably just as well because then we went to talk to the kind of people who look up to Booker because he's the Chosen One and all that. When we finished, the people in the house across the street (Nxla cultists) were less keen on seeing the Chosen One. Fighting ensued ...

He can thank me later

We're still in Soul Harvest, that magical place full of reanimated skeletons and corpses. Zombies as hotel bellhops, with cheeks made up to look slightly less dead. Creepy.

Booker's back in the game (being played by the GM last week, we all thought he was acting strangely out of character!) and wasted no time associating himself with someone who seemed important - a vampire, apparently. Didn't try to drink any Château de Booker Dayes, though.

The rest of the party gathered information and were deciding whether or not to get citizenships as well, seeing as how Donna was acting a bit Cyndi Lauper and just to be safe, maybe the rest also should be citizens. May we live in interesting times and all. Interesting, necromancy-infested times.

Get out of my guts!

We're back in the future, and this time we have a couple of new friends:

• Elliot Harrison, a Templar
• Rufus Sterling, a Huckster (replacing Duke Carpenter)

We've travelled a lot and made it down to Louisiana, where we stopped because the van broke down and helped a guy not to get slaughtered by a pack of rats. Aaaand then we were about to be attacked by river pirates, so we got out of there.

We are the best-looking party ever

Moving deeper into Coalition State ...

The Rebels made their presence known today

Sarge's majestic shot from the previous session seems to have turned into him shooting down the Death Star single-handedly ... Well, when you're epic, you're epic, right?

To throw a spanner in the works, a bounty hunter showed up in town asking for Nole's whereabouts. Much to everyone's surprise, Kon didn't cash in on the bounty. The bounty hunter did track her back to where the rest of the party were hidiny., on the other hand.

Trying to be nice and give the lady some flowers as a token of his appreciation, Nole ventured outside the walls ... and was shot at. Kon, running to the ship in order to dismember dismantle the threat also got shot.

On the plus side, neither were killed, and for those to whom it matters, the gun that shot them was pretty damn awesome. Just the kind of gun the party could use for assassinating the governor, as a matter of fact. Unfortunately, the bounty hunter got away ... with his awesome gun.

Wounds patched up by Doc, it was finally time to launch the plan. Complexes were infiltrated, droids were placed in places to suggest they had broken down and triggered alarms. NG went scouting and became mistaken for one of the security droids and had to do the rounds.

Shots were fired, but the governor had a pet Force user to save him. Running and more shooting ensued, but at least the Rebel message was broadcast as planned. As everyone made it to the ship, the building exploded and Sarge was lost in the ensuing rubble. OR WAS HE?

Oh well. What's a Royal Ball?

Doc seems to have taken the lead (he can namedrop Luke Skywalker et al and have the selfies to proove it) wanted some scouting to be done in the capital of Gerrenthum. The obvious (?) choice for this were Konvoru and Nole, who got on so famously last session. One was to gather intel, the other keep an eye out for security.

Stopping at a local market, an NPC suggested that he had some intel to part with ... for 100k worth of credits. Our current party funds are in the region of 160. (That's 160.00 not 160k.) Nole, probably because he's spent a lot of money in such establishments, suggested they might raise some cash if Kon took her top off. This did not go down well with her. At all.

The charming NPC offered the group a job as alternative means of payment (transport some goods to a Hutt) and offered to take Konvoru to dinner later that night. This later happened, although she decided to pick Rhan as a bodyguard instead of Nole for reasons unfathomable to the latter and unknown to the former. Probably a good thing that she did, because on the way back, they were being shot at, but Rhan managed to kill six people in one round of firing.

Meanwhile back at base Doc continued to plot the upcoming assassination of the governor, when not busy making people pancakes for breakfast and recounting when he met Luke Skywalker. NG wasn't impressed by this, seeing as he had served as a medical droid previously and helped patch him up. Did you know Luke's hand is only a version 2?

50 Shades of Enid Blyton

We're doing some other bits for a couple of weeks or so, while one of the players is away. For this session, we played a two-player Jurisfiction adventure, to see what that was about.

Arthur Hastings, from Agatha Christie's Poirot novels, joined forces with the new recruit Dr Abraham van Helsing, from Bram Stoker's Dracula. The Bellman never told them that it's technically a single-player mission, but hey, if you take a complete rookie and the somewhat dimwitted veteran Hastings, it sort of adds up to a single, competent player.

The mission itself was a simple matter of internal plot adjustment: making Shadow the Sheepdog by Enid Blyton have a happy ending. It should have been a simple mission that couldn't possibly go wrong, but ... alas ... they got out of a sticky situation by teaching a bunch of villagers all about S&M, in a bid to turn their idyllic rural village into something from Midsomer Murders.

Son of a gun, we'll have some MORTAL PERIL on the Bayou

So there we were, party of three stranded in the middle of a swamp on an oil drilling platform, where we after much deliberation decided to spend the night. In the morning, after shooting an alligator right between the eyes, we started heading back to Manchac ... this time without a guide.

We came across some redneck trappers, who were apparently both hairy and Cajun (they still exist!), and who later decided to kill us. They caught Sutcliffe and Murphy in beaver traps, and we had a hard time getting out of there.

Fortunately, Sutcliffe made them pay for the ambush. Unfortunately, he left the battle with a hole where his chest used to be. Seeing as how he's Harrowed (YES, HATCH AND MURPHY FINALLY REALISED!), it meant he didn't stay dead. As the trappers so rudely tried to get rid of us, we looted their bodies before continuing back to the town. Murphy passed out from exhaustion, as we hadn't thought to pack any food. Fortunately, she woke up and could take the train with Hatch, while Sutcliffe (bundled up in beaver pelts) had to pay double for his ticket.

Back in New Orleans, Sutcliffe came back from the dead the next day, and he finally had some 'splainin' to do!

Method acting on the Jeremy Kyle show

After rescuing the family, who were so kind to let us stay over, from their burning house (only one casualty), we were informed by Sutcliffe that he'd seen the car we were looking for - and had been asking about around town the day before - and we all shook our fists and blamed evil petroleum company Hexaco for the arson.

Because little do we know it was actually Sutcliffe's Manitou that was responsible ...

We decided to go to the oil derrick that the singer's brother allegedly (read: according to Hexaco) sabotaged, and found a bloke willing to take us through the swamp on his bateau. Three hours later, we found the deserted derrick and investigated.

And then the bateau guy was sliced in half by some kind of invisible spirit creature that we tried fighting. We survived, but only because it decided to dissolve into thin air after Sutcliffe managed to hurt it with magics. We then had to fix the bateau so we could get out of there, as the spirit thing might have seen us as Hexaco people returning to keep mutilating the precious eco system of the swamp - which is probably what caused the destruction of the derrick in the first place.

But now it's dark, and we're three hours away from being out of the swamp ... and there are alligators nearby ...

Some of these things make more sense than others

As the next place we needed to get to was about an hour or so away by car, we had to weigh our options very carefully. How could we get to the singer's home town, Manchac, and still have money left to pay rent at the end of the month? In the end, we decided to go to Fat Dan at the Absinthe House (a.k.a. the client) and ask if he had a car we could perhaps borrow, because we really needed to get somewhere.

He did. And he also got one of his guys to drive us up there.

We found out the family lived about four miles north of the town, which meant we had to say goodbye to the driver and walk. At the end, Morgan Freeman and his family were very hospitable and served up a tasty seafood gumbo, and then we went to bed.

Doesn't sound like a lot happened, perhaps, but just as we were finishing off the session, the GM asked Sutcliffe for a Spirit roll. After having spent his final Bennie on a re-roll, he botched ... It's Manitou time!

Welcome to Louisiana Fried Rat, can I take your money?

Exciting times ahead! Hatch and Murphy are still blissfully clueless their new accomplice is long dead, because he's still doing things like moving around and talking. Ohhh the hilarity that will ensue when they finally succeed on those Notice checks!

In other news, the team decided to find out where the singing dame's fanboy/stalker lived by tracking down his place of work (a bank), pretending they wanted to interview him for a newspaper article. He hadn't come in to work, as it happened, but by promising to do a favourable article on the bank manager - and later do him a favour pro-bono (it's difficult even typing those words!) - by discreetly investigating why the guy wasn't at work, the trio finally found their way to his apartment.

Sadly, it seemed to mostly be a dead end. And there wasn't even any money in it. Hey GM, we've all got rent to pay, you know!

Second-hand lockpicks, here we go!

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
WEDNESDAY, 6 MARCH 1935

In this very first airing of our new characters, they were hired to look into the disappearance of a man's sister. She had been courted by a local slimeball, who may or may not have had something to do with the disappearance. Investigations ensued, taking us both on a stake-out and to a retirement home, with the mysterious Dr Chainsaw. The name might be a clue.

The heroes of this piece are the investigating team of Hatch and Malone. Private investigator Napoleon "Nape" Hatch likes to drink, and to ogle pretty dames. His colleague is a little bit harder to explain. Penny "Dreadful" Murphy is trying to become a full-time reporter, but these are troubled times and her articles aren't always selling - hence why she's also working as a private investigator. It would be a conflict of interest to write articles about cases you investigate, hence why she's using the (fairly obvious) pseudonym Molly Malone.

The two met while working on a case. Hatch was investigating whether or not some dame's husband was being unfaithful, and Malone was trying to get a scoop investigating the same thing, so they decided to work together. And then they thought it would be a good idea to continue working together. We'll see who regrets it first.