Eat the Book Lady, even if she looks gristly!

The party loot the corpses of the people foolish enough to try and murder them last week before deciding they should probably start heading back.

Murmei, meanwhile, discovers that the owner of the Silent House (my notes for this session are really thorough, the previous sessions are scant at best, so don't look at me) lives in Ravenia. That's the same kind of area where his family's lands are.

He then decides to look and see if he can find any information about his beloved's family. Turns out one of them live in Thistlehold, and the place where we went in a previous session and saw monogrammed chairs had one that matches this person: RG. Do we really need further evidence that the Garlaka family are shady as fuck, though?

Seeing as how no one's come to pick him up, he's eventually thrown out of the Queen's Legate when they have to close for the night. Elsiosi intercepts him on the way home, and wonders what he's doing out alone late at night on dangerous streets. He pointed out he's a skilled adventurer, whereas she is a lady and should definitely not be out alone at night, so he escorts her back to her inn. Instead of coming upstairs for a drink, he bid her a good evening and stomped off back home to sleep.

In the night, the rest of the party return. In the morning, it turns out that the copper tablet contains the Prophecy of Sarkomal. Something about a woman on a throne. No one can make heads nor tails of this.

We go to look at Anadea the Templar's house, now that I believe she's no longer alive. There's a malnourished young mare cat in the box. Deadorna feeds it and decides to make it a pet while the others search the rest of the room.

There's a mysterious note and a map of what appears to be some kind of underground system. There's a sedative potion and some kind of reddish truffle-looking thing, but it's far too rare and advanced for Alchemy Novice Elindra to be able to identify.

That tangented quickly

Things go bump in the night. Troll shadows, but we're in a Witch Circle so they don't see us. We subsequently make camp, and then six hunter wolves with some kind of weird, glowing beetles inside them show up.

FIGHT!

And because there was a big fight, there wasn't a lot said in the session or about the session, except of course that we won.

Why did I end up with a fucking monster as a sire?!

Val and Frankie waited for Marco, who turned up with a couple of cabaret girls ... and turned out to be very keen on blood. He ... he might have become a blood junkie already?

Julius was finally introduced to AltLottie ...

I have a note that legit says "Frankie awkwardly having The Talk with Lottie" which I think refers to how she's a big girl now, and ... well, she's a vampire now, so not like she can get pregnant.

We met up with Charlotte at a house that contained ghouls gone wrong. She introduced us to two teenage ghouls who are alleged descendants of Julius, but that Jeanine has been keeping them as bait to see if Julius would break the Masquerade - because she’s pissed off with him spurning her a century ago. We don't know if this is genuine or not, but that's the explanation we were given. Lottie was very freaked out.

So, how can we plot to get Jeanine out of the picture without triggering Julius, or killing anyone - and making sure Frankie isn't on the line considering Jeanine is his sire.

This is the way to Amarillo

First session after our holiday break, and during our break stuff happened over the internet. Booker went to Dweomer to find out stuff about a weapon, Gorbash and Jayson went to Psyscape to ... also find out stuff. Stuff was found out.

Booker also managed to marry his girlfriend Joan the Cyber-knight, and when we all finally met up at Blackstone Juggernauts HQ again, Booker had plastic surgery to change his face to be less recognisable and also he's now using the name Barnabas Dayeson. I might not be spelling that correctly.

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

Summer is coming

When we got back to Auriga's chamber she wasn't there - but Yeenogh was unconscious on the floor, having been drained of divine shards. Auriga had gone up north to battle with herself.

We went inside the mind of the winter general (which had the interesting temporary side effect of turning Gunda into 50 copies of herself) and beat him. He was a long-dead halfling and an old friend of Auriga from back in the day. A black goo spider creature had turned him into an undead creature, but we banished it and hopefully now all is well.

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?

We all live in a city submarine

Well, there we are, going about our day, levelling up, and sending off our Purple Knight buddy Alwyn to Suzail in Cormyr. He sent a panicked message back, Varion opened a portal to Suzail and lots and lots of water came rushing through. I believe the phrase was "you were supposed to open a portal to the harbour - not INTO the harbour itself!"

Turned out someone had put like a big invisible box around the whole city, and the surrounding area, and dumped a lot of water into it. The city was quite ruined by this.

Denethor rescued survivors by putting them on board our big airship, and Elani turned people into dolphins to get people there. Gunda, who doesn't need to breathe and can't feel cold, went for an underwater stroll instead. Underwater was a big dome, held in place by a wizard. There were lots of people inside.

Elani started turning people into winter wolves to stop them from contracting hypothermia while Gunda went to town on cracking the invisible box and let the water back into the bay. Sadly, the person we were looking for was found dead in the palace vault. OR WAS HE? And who was the fish woman some actual fish mentioned? And who was the figure on the boat in the bay that caused the big box?

On a side note: Elani's player has gathered notes on characters and Elani's thoughts on them, and for Varion, the note was "icky, slimy wizard, up to no good", because she doesn't like or trust him. Plus a general dislike to wizards in general.

We're not here to assassinate the guy from The Fast Show

In the third and final part of this Victoriana session the party have dinner with Lord Ralph, make countless references to The Fast Show, find out that Ted's wife is actually Mrs Doyle, and try to find out if Ralph, Ted or Mrs Ted know anything about why they might have crashed an airship in a field nearby.

They find out that there's another manor not too far away, belonging to the Waldegrave family (who may or may not be shady), and that there's a vicar who might know something that could help them.

Aslan was my direbadger form

At the end of this session, all three of us actually managed to join up again, yay!

Tannhauser dared Gorbash to travel through dragon territory and say hi to the dragon kings. Gorbash said (tl;dr) challenge accepted, because he was going to travel to Tolkeen with Jayson - once Jayson got back from the spa retreat that is Psyscape. Psyscape has a psychic hobo as a chief who liked blowing some kind of weird smoke bubbles at people, and who had a really nice rug.

Booker, meanwhile, was travelling by boat toward the same place. Some Mystic Knights tasked the legendary Booker with finding and killing Aureol the Avenger and get the ancient artefact "Mobius Band" for them. This is on par with getting your mitts on the Holy Grail, but he didn't know that at the time. He also said he would do what he could within his capability, and killing an ancient Great Horned dragon is not what he considers one of them. Gorbash certainly wasn't pleased to hear of it!

Also: maybe Gorbash is some sort of reincarnation of Jesus. Like Aslan.

You deserve a shotgun refund

This session was sort of like three solo adventures. Or, well, side quests. We all went around doing our own things. Talking to people. Training montages from Psyscape. Dreamlike visions of Nxla followers. Plans being made up. Distances were estimated and fact-checked against Google Maps (although technically we measured the driving distance, not the way the dragon flies).

Hopefully we'll come together next week and do some stuff together as a party.

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.

In Soviet Russia 'flubber' is a verb

We didn't have a roleplaying session this past Monday, so here's one we played earlier:

Our Soviet Russian characters have now moved into the 1980s, and oh the 80s music punning that ensued ...

The only one with a Driving skill is the NPC

We drove toward Coalition State, dressed up as Coalition State agents. Gorbash in particular found the suit very uncomfortable. Near the border we spotted some green spheres that were following us, but we got some help from our "friends" to take them down.

We then found the city of Lone Star, and paid a visit to a local farmer so that Gorbash could flex his wings. Clearing out the barn, the sewer grate was found to lead not just to the sewers but to an entire population of human-rat hybrids ... that Gorbash casually threatened with genocide. Like you do.

Now we just need to find John at that outpost, rescue him, and get the hell out of there before things kick off.

Falling for the plot device

Jack tried to flirt with the tanker truck driver he decided last session he was going to marry. She wasn't impressed.

Vince had a chat with the other Syker in town and Maggie discovered they had come to some sort of hipster vegetarian hideout where they grew their own food and served bran muffins and stuff.

We then helped to build a fence around the town and waited to be attacked. And so we were. Epic Syker blew head off bad guy - there was a mini mushroom cloud and nuclear fallout and everything! \o/

You do crit damage on a fumble if you crit on the damage roll

So, this is where it ends. Well, not entirely, of course, but for now.

We broke out Alistair and his Shemarrian assistant/slave from their prison, there was fighting and some of us got our heads encased in ice. Lucky for us we all had a spell on us which meant we didn't actually have to breathe, so it was more of an inconvenience than anything else.

Somehow we got out of there alive, all of us, and headed back to Magestar. But where, oh where, is our Beloved Leader of the Blackstone Juggernauts, a.k.a. John?

Human culture is weird

We're on the way - to, uh, wherever it is we're supposed to go - and on the way decided to stop at a charming little village which time seems to have forgotten about. It was a bit like a renaissance fair, and everyone was friendly and oddly unarmed. "Trouble doesn't seem to come this way", they said, which sounds utterly suspicious. Turns out it was also kind of correct. Seeing as how we didn't mean the town or its citizens any harm, we could see the town and enter it - others were not as lucky.

The next day we moved through a place which was rammed full of astral beings who might or might not be after a snack. It was creepy.

Almost as creepy as finding a lady by an Egyptian obelisk who insisted she wasn't the goddess Isis, despite compelling evidence that said otherwise ...

You know there's such a thing as dice rolling apps, right?

We continued fighting the Nxla cultists who so rudely interrupted us when we went to visit their neighbours.

Oh well, they're not standing anymore, that's for sure.

We then decided it was high time to get out of that town ... because even though we've paid for our citizenship, they will probably still frown on mass murdering ...

Help, I'm in a cage with a creepy paedo!

We did actually have a session last Monday, but it was just the three of us playing a couple of boardgames, so I gave the quote book a night off. Therefore:

Stuck at a creepy carnival, our heroes found themselves being asked to play various parts in some kind of Alice in Wonderland story. It was pretty weird.

It got weirder.

People were killed, libraries exploded, robots were fixed, journals obtained, and ... yeah. Zombie magicians. Sloth being a walrus. Alice stuck in a cage. Pretty darn weird.

And we still haven't found the school.

Pretending we're in Venice and not Baton Rogue

Making our way down the river we eventually reached the flooded remains of Baton Rouge and met the locals, who were rather surprised to learn that a horse had been trained to go outside to take a dump. The locals seem friendly enough. Maybe next time we find out they actually want to turn us into gumbo?