Are we SURE we're the good guys?

We had a look at the records over at the Queen's Legate to see which (read: whose) houses went down the hole, in case that has some significance. The archivist there seems to have the hots for Valgai.

When going to speak with a Father Servola, people threw lanterns at us, and we ended up in a fight with some cultists? They weren't being very nice to us, at any rate.

Then some kind of "special" (in a Chosen One kind of sense) 6-year-old child proclaims Murmei is evil. This is a surprise to everyone, because being a bit of an idiot? Sure. Evil? Umm ...? Valgai's Witch Sight confirms this - the belt makes it look like Murmei's some kind of corrupt, evil thing. Perhaps it's a good idea to un-bind himself from that belt at the nearest opportunity?

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.

There's one such thing as coincidence

We're still in Thistle Hold. Elindra has a great plan to avoid getting mind-controlled by the Symbaroum king again, which probably won't work and she might end up wiping the rest of the party. As she came to discover the cellar where we found the flayer in a previous session was part of some ancient Symbaroum ruins. Maybe the whole town was built upon ancient Symbaroum ruins?

Valgai decided to play politics and have the domestic servant clean the house in order for Murmei's mum and her entourage to have somewhere to live when they arrive, while he and Elindra stay in an inn somewhere. He probably has some kind of blood-based tracking spell on him, but doesn't currently want to remove it for strategic reasons.

Murmei stayed in his tower learning to summon a fire elemental into the armour - and succeeded! He now has a pet, and proudly told everyone what he's calling it. Whether or not it can speak is yet to be determined.

Oh, and the place where Elindra had seen the cultists go in and out? It burned down, and she didn't do it. Plus some dude in a tree house inn was curious to know more about when Murmei's mum was arriving. Curiouser and curiouser for sure, and we're no closer to actually starting our Davokar expedition either.

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 ...

Are you trying to abuse your powers?

Forgot to post this last Sunday, because we have been busy playing what is effectively Godbound the computer game - Divinity: Original Sin 2. We didn't have a roleplaying session this week, but it was time to post this, on the other hand.

We continued to work on the town. There was a visit to a nearby farming community to talk to the people there about how Tilverton had been liberated and they could now go home. Then a visit to that person's sister was paid, and reiterated that Tilverton was free and it was time for re-building rather than invading, and so on.

Then we all met up again and went into the cave system underneath Tilverton in order to find some people who had gone missing down there. There were bone golems, but luckily we had brought meat shields.

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.

He wasn't dying a moment ago

We went into some kind of other-dimensional house with a magic lift (elevator) and got stuck in various rooms and it wasn't necessarily all fun and games. Someone came upon a chained-up vampire that he decided to free (because why not?) and another room had a booze collection and Elgar records that simply weren't up to Elgar's usual standard.

And then Florence Nightingale turned out to be a bad guy, because these things tend to happen in M&M. :D

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 ...

Even bad guys have a bad feeling about this

On the way to Bespin, Kon felt woozy. She just about managed to say as much to Nole (who smelled something funny) before they both passed out. Fortunately, Doc got his rebreather on in time - Sarge not so much - so that he and Declan the engineer could figure out what was wrong. Turns out the Nabooan flowers in Sarge's cabin were some sort of pollen factories and that was polluting the air - air that was already in short supply because we had a few more people on board than we normally would.

All flowers, including the ones adorning the cockpit, were put in the cargo hold, pollen sucked in, air sucked out ... airlock opened. People started coming to, and in Kon's case, when she realised how bare the cockpit looked and her flowers were outside the window ... she was not a happy bunny.

On Bespin the plan was to have Kon pose as a gas buyer, but that turned into a scheme to import plants to Bespin in order to fund the Rebellion. Always good to have contingency plans!

When we got back to the ship, because things were starting to feel rather shifty in Cloud City, the ship wouldn't start. Apparently the fuel had been siphoned off and the pump had been enthusiastically disabled. In fact, power went off on the platform. There was an encounter with a translation droid (the evil silver ones, not the nice golden ones like C-3PO) and it was found that the problem was with the city's central core. Let's go be heroes and save the day, it's great PR for the New Alliance!

Yeah, except there was a Purge Trooper about (BUT NOT FOR LONG!), and when we got to the core, there were more of them and they were shooting at Stormtroopers and Bespin security guards. One firefight later and the Purge Troopers were pining for the fjords, Sarge was blinded and Doc shot in the back trying to help. Doc got better, Sarge will have to work more on his Third Eye or something like that, yadda yadda, Force powers.

Also: the reason for the core acting weird is because they've recently installed a droid brain to run the place, and they must have got the brain from some guy called Abbe Normal ...

Okay, duct tape bandage it is

This is the episode in which we get tooled up - at B&Q and a local garden centre, of course, we're not savages - and begin a dungeon crawl. The end of the world - and the campaign - draws near.

The cave system somewhere outside Leamington Spa had baddies in it, like a vampire and a werewolf and a Russian bear, and they had also abducted Eddie's brother. Things that generally put us in a bad mood. Armed to the teeth (in Rommel the pseudo-dog's case literally, he was carrying a knife in his mouth) we went after them.

Having found a chamber which split off in three different directions, we split up the group - with all the PCs going down the same route. There, we first found a table with chairs and some very familiar mystic symbols. Trevor, Zolistagol and Alex sat down by their respective symbols, and immediately zoned out. Worried, Eddie and Tilly quickly jammed something between the table and two of their party members' hands (well, there was just the two of them) ... leaving Alex connected to the table and thus able to hear the vision presented to them. A vision from a long, long time ago, and which might possibly be helpful when we find the Burning Man.

The abductees were drained of blood, but we managed to find Eddie's brother and heal him a little before he expired. There was a vampire there. Heroic Molotovs, axes and other weapons came in handy. Then we heard a scream, and discovered one of the other groups in trouble. One of them got stabbed in the back by Eddie's axe (he was aiming for the Russian bear), but on the other hand we also managed to get the Russian bear after a number of Molotovs, shots fired and grenades thrown.

To be honest, it's a surprise we're all still alive. Just-IIIICE!

Is your hoover covered for supernatural ash damage?

The Derby crew had an interesting morning. Tilly woke up with a bed full of cats - and only two out of nine were her own. Instead of being weirded out by this, she thought it was lovely and promptly fell back asleep. Later on, trying to film them, they didn't show up on the recording, and as she mentioned this over the phone to Trevor, the friendly cats turned into a mass of black goo that went all horror film shock moment on her, causing her to pass out.

Worried, Trevor, Eddie and Alex went to her house and confronted the black goo, dragging the unconscious woman outside in her PJs for all to see, and ... when seen through "The Sight", the black goo was a rather pleasant druidic entity who could remove the curse from people. Eddie and Tilly are therefore no longer cursed, and are off the menu when it comes to both being the person who sparks Armageddon and being the person you sacrifice in order to stop it.

Meanwhile, clues pointed to Weymouth, Stonehenge, and Codnor Castle, with Leamington Spa somewhere in the middle-ish of the wonky triangle, so that's where we reconvened with the Nottingham crew. In a Travelodge. Trevor just had to finish being interrogated by the police because his doppelganger had been seen causing all kinds of shenanigans. Good thing Zolistagol spotted this on TV!

The Secret Life of Zolistagol Bagridan

Eddie and Tilly have dreams involving people throwing themselves into fires. In other news, pancakes were made, and one player had to cut the session short because he was feeling so unwell he didn't even fancy cake.

The rest of the session went by with the rest of us learning that Zolistagol isn't the only Russian in town. Half of the Bagridan clan appear to have set up shop in Derby, and they're all some kind of relation to him or other. There is also a rival Russian gang, because why not? It's a roleplaying game - any similarity with any form of reality is purely coincidental.

Right?

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."

Running with Molotovs

For the epic final showdown, we found ourselves dungeon-crawling for the better part of the session. We went to the place where we thought Trevor's sister was being held (she was kidnapped last session), but there was no on there. In the park was just a building for a junior football club or something like that. However, in the cellar, there was a hidden door ... and underneath it: dungeons!

The dungeons were mainly empty, save for a chav that was scared off by someone pointing a gun at him, and a creature that could make itself invisible. We found a stone table (no Aslan), and eventually emerged in a wide ditch, where Agatha and the (useless) bodyguard were tied to a big rock. There was some kind of Lovecraftian-looking creature there, previously known as Smith, and zombies.

We might have eaten through Willpower points and Conviction like they were candy, but by golly we saved the world Derby! :D

We're the very best at being BAD guys

Dr Sutcliffe is Harrowed, which is something both Hatch and Murphy seem to have accepted surprisingly quickly. They've gone out to get him meat and new clothing as if he was your perfectly ordinary convalescing OAP.

Not that any of us still have any sort of clues as to what has happened to the lady we're trying to find. Instead, we decided to have a closer look at Hexaco. We thought maybe we could sneak in, decided against it and tried to think of new lucrative business ideas to branch out to - like extortion and kidnapping. Then we ended up going to see one of the Hexaco people mentioned in an article about the "sabotage" in the swamps.

For some reason (i.e. money), we ended up accepting his offer of ridding the swamp of the swamp monster before the end of the week (in-game, it was Thursday) for a $200 return. Just to see if we could learn more about the swamp monster, we went to where the Voodoo people hang out, and spoke to Trevor ("call me Trevor - you can't pronounce my real name"), who gave us a spell type thing to use in order to make the spirit come into the mortal world and thus be killed.

Next session has DOOOOOOOOOOM written all over it.